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In its just-released final audit report (.pdf), the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds (SIGIR) last week warned that billions of U.S. dollars may have been wasted or misappropriated in the process of reconstructing Iraq. While reports of waste surfaced early in the post-invasion occupation of Iraq, problems have also plagued the transition since 2010 from a military- to a civilian-led U.S. mission in Iraq. Many of those shortcomings came to light during a recent hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to assess the interagency effort in Iraq now that all U.S. combat […]

High levels of crime and violence have given Central America the inauspicious title of having the world’s highest homicide rate — about 10 times the world average. Reversing this trend will require collective, crossborder action and regional partnerships that include the private sector. Unfortunately, for this to be possible, the mechanisms needed to do so must be strengthened significantly. Statistics paint a grim picture of what lies ahead if meaningful cooperation is not taken soon. Honduras, the most violent country, registered 91.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 2011 — nearly triple the rate observed in 2004, according to the U.N. […]

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto ran on an agenda alien to many in his once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party: change. More specifically, Peña Nieto emphasized the need for structural reforms that many in the PRI have showed little enthusiasm for approving in recent years. But Peña Nieto says times have changed, and he has promised that an ambitious agenda of structural reforms will mark his presidency. He also insists there’s no going back to the past, when the PRI earned a checkered reputation for corruption and crony capitalism prior to losing power in 2000 after 71 straight years […]

In 2000, when Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel formed a coalition government with Jörg Haider’s far-right populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the 14 member states of the European Union immediately agreed to sanction the country. Acting on the basis of bilateral relations, as the EU Treaty did not justify such sanctions, the EU member states froze diplomatic relations and sought to isolate Austria in international institutions, despite the fact that Haider and his FPÖ had been democratically elected. Today, with populism on the rise across the member states of the EU, this kind of forceful reaction is no longer even […]

Protesters hurled tomatoes and water bottles at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria. World News Videos by NewsLook

Moqtada al-Sadr, the populist Iraqi Shiite cleric, has returned to Iraq from Iran once more, ready to take on a prominent role in mainstream politics. For Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia was responsible for some of the bloodiest violence during the U.S. occupation, it is the latest of several evolutions since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Matthew Duss, director of Middle East Progress at the Center for American Progress, told Trend Lines that Sadr will have his work cut out for him moving forward. “Here is this firebrand who very effectively exploited popular anger at the American occupation, […]

This past week, during an unannounced visit to Kabul, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the Obama administration had designated Afghanistan a “major non-NATO ally.” Though the status does not carry with it any sort of legal expectation that the United States will consider an attack against Afghanistan as an attack on the U.S., it is one of the most significant designations in America’s diplomatic arsenal in terms of upgrading a bilateral relationship outside a formal treaty of alliance. Most reports indicate that this status was granted to Afghanistan to reassure the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai […]

In late-June, Turkey and Azerbaijan signed accords green-lighting the much-anticipated $7 billion Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), which will ferry 16 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field through neighboring Georgia to Turkey and from there to European markets. While the deal has been described as a deathblow to the once highly touted European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline consortium, TANAP’s emergence alongside a host of other alternative and unconventional energy options is also endangering Russia’s near-monopoly in the European natural gas market. In its original form, Nabucco, named for Verdi’s famous opera, was billed as a means […]

Four container trucks carrying supplies for NATO forces enter Afghanistan from Pakistan’s north-western Torkham border. World News Videos by NewsLook

Romania’s plunge into political crisis is the last thing the country needs. Still deeply scarred by Stalinist dictatorship, it is one of the European Union’s poorest member states and has been hit hard by a recent recession. Its rulers have long been criticized for corruption, remoteness and authoritarianism, and now they stand accused of tearing the country apart. The EU is seriously considering sanctions on Romania this week as the new government of Prime Minister Victor Ponta appears reluctant to back down on the moves it has taken to gain control of key institutions of state. Meanwhile, the government’s attempt […]

One evening last week, the Chinese government threw a dinner party for a visiting international delegation. If the menu that night in Beijing was strictly kosher, it was because the guests of honor for the event came from Israel. And the day had featured a remarkable event. Just hours earlier, China’s Minister of Transportation Li Shenglin and his Israeli counterpart, Yisrael Katz, had signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on a multibillion dollar project inside Israel that some say could constitute an alternative trade route to the Suez Canal. While it is doubtful the Suez Canal’s importance will be […]

The International Criminal Court sentenced Thomas Lubanga, a former militia leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to 14 years in prison Tuesday. The sentence, which was the first imposed by the ICC since it was launched in The Hague 10 years ago, established the use of children in war as an international crime. “The verdict and sentence underscore the gravity of the crimes charged — the recruitment, enlistment and use of child soldiers — and the determination of the international community to hold accountable those who commit them,” James Goldston, founding executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, […]

Uzbekistan formally withdrew from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on June 28. In an email interview, Alexander Cooley, the Tow professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, discussed Uzbekistan’s rationale for leaving the Russian-backed security organization. WPR: What were the causes, both underlying and immediate, behind Uzbekistan’s exit from the CSTO? Alexander Cooley: Uzbekistan had been a nonenthusiastic member of the Russian-led CSTO since 2006, when it rejoined the organization after falling out with the West over the government’s brutal crackdown on protesters in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan in May 2005. However, Tashkent has long […]

Last week, I made the argument that the crisis in civil-military relations in the United States is not actually much of a crisis after all. By any reasonable measure, civil-military relations in the United States are actually remarkably healthy. This week, though, I will highlight those areas where there are problems — and propose ways forward. To begin, both political parties have contributed to the problems the United States faces with respect to civil-military relations, as have both the U.S. military and the civilians it serves. In other words, all sides deserve some of the blame for several disturbing trends. […]

SHANGHAI — Following a period of relatively aggressive behavior from 2009 to 2011, recent events suggest that Beijing is pursuing a new strategy on the region’s high seas, perhaps in response to Washington’s Asia pivot. China’s new approach involves asserting sovereignty through civilian actors on a day-to-day basis while adopting a less explicitly abrasive military posture. Going into this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where hopes for agreement on a maritime code of conduct are rising, it seems China would need to radically alter this strategy to participate fully in any such arrangement. For manifest geostrategic reasons, […]

The west African nation of Niger is dealing with an influx of thousands of refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Mali. World News Videos by NewsLook

Uzbekistan’s decision to withdraw from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) highlights the dilemma confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin as he tries to strengthen Moscow’s pre-eminence among the former Soviet republics through the region’s multiple multilateral institutions. The CSTO and other Moscow-led regional organizations have important symbolic value to Russia regardless of their actual effectiveness, because they affirm Moscow’s strategic primacy in the former Soviet space. The other member states accept this arrangement since it can yield some tangible benefits, such as economic and military assistance, as long as it does not overly constrain their freedom of action. The […]