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I recently had the opportunity to participate in a comprehensive dialogue session at the Chinese Embassy in Washington among Chinese diplomats and American experts on China-U.S. relations. Several themes that emerged from engaging with our Chinese colleagues in these discussions deserve wider attention. The most interesting among them was the odd juxtaposition between Chinese policymakers’ concern about the Asia pivot with their feeling that Washington’s domestic priorities and concerns in the Middle East will ultimately derail the planned strategic rebalancing of U.S. diplomatic and military resources toward the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinese also insisted that their nonproliferation policies toward Iran […]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez flew to Cuba on Monday for his fourth cancer surgery after announcing over the weekend that he had designated his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, as his desired political successor. The announcement marked the first time Chávez, who has publicly battled the disease for more than a year, has suggested that his health could keep him from continuing in office. “Venezuela will never be the same again,” Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas and editor of Americas Quarterly, told Trend Lines. “There is no going back. The Chávez […]

Editor’s note: Richard Gowan will be writing the Continentalist column for the month of December. Does Lakhdar Brahimi have any good options for ending the Syrian war? Brahimi has served as the United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria for more than three months, having been chosen to replace Kofi Annan in August. Unlike Annan, who tried to mediate a resolution to the conflict under constant media scrutiny, Brahimi has adopted a low profile. But like Annan, he has struggled to find a way to bring the regime and rebels together. Brahimi’s sole significant public initiative to date was an effort […]

The British government withheld a $34 million aid payment to Rwanda at the end of November, citing charges in a U.N. report that Rwanda is backing rebels in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. In an email interview, Pamela Abbott, the acting director of research at the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research in Rwanda, reviewed the state of development aid to Rwanda. WPR: Who are Rwanda’s main aid partners, and how steady has this been over the years? Pamela Abbott: Rwanda’s main aid partners are the World Bank, the U.S., the Global Fund, the European Union, the U.K., Belgium, […]

Amid concerns that North Korea might conduct a long-range ballistic missile test as early as this week, reports have surfaced indicating that Iran has permanently stationed staff in the East Asian country since October as part of a recent cooperation agreement with Pyongyang. According to the reports, the staff is comprised of four experts from Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) as well as private firms. Some analysts speculate that the mission might be based near Sino-ri, a complex located near North Korea’s western coast and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, commonly known as Tongchang-ri, where this […]

The recent Gaza conflict and the negotiations that eventually led to a cease-fire on Nov. 21 highlight some of the shifts currently taking place in the Middle East, particularly in Hamas’ relations with Qatar, Turkey and Egypt. These shifts represent a considerable challenge for the U.S. as it attempts to facilitate democratic transitions in the region while maintaining long-standing partnerships. In early November, Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani became the first head of state to visit Gaza since Hamas took over the territory in a short but violent 2007 civil war with its rival Fatah. But if al-Thani’s […]

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the country’s main opposition party, is likely to sweep Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan in the general election scheduled for Dec. 16, according to polls released yesterday. The projected LDP win would install Shinzo Abe as the country’s prime minister for the second time. Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and William Grimes, chairman of the Department of International Relations at Boston University, told Trend Lines these elections have major implications for Japan, particularly in foreign policy. “This election could be a turning point for […]

The U.S. presidential election campaign, particularly as it entered its final months, sucked up much of the oxygen in the news universe, meaning that a number of small international developments that might have otherwise drawn greater attention escaped notice. Under normal circumstances, the issues that had been overlooked would have gotten a closer look once the election was decided. But because of the breathless coverage of the David Petraeus scandal last month, since replaced by the 24/7 focus on whether the United States is about to plunge over the fiscal cliff, that has not happened. But one development in particular […]

In 2006, the United Nations created the Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights. Among the numerous mechanisms the U.N. gave the council to promote and protect human rights is the ability to call ad-hoc special sessions when needed. These special sessions, when used against states, are an important tool for “naming and shaming” perpetrators of human rights violations and may, on occasion, precipitate movement at the Security Council. Through the first five years of its existence, the council held 18 special sessions, or almost four per year. That pace slowed down in 2012, however, during […]

A meeting of the Kimberley Process in New York last week concluded without agreement on redefining the term “conflict diamond.” But if the American chairwoman, Gillian Milovanovic, failed in this key endeavor, she can at least claim some measure of success in ensuring that the process was not completely derailed by its persistent and deep divisions. The World Diamond Council estimates the world’s diamond trade to be worth $13 billion annually, employing approximately 10 million people. The Kimberley Process was established in 2003 in response to diamond-funded conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to […]

There is practically no space left on the Middle East’s geopolitical plate for another conflict. Like it or not, however, the long-simmering animosity between Iraq’s central government and the country’s Kurdish minority is reaching a boiling point. The conflict has recently heated up dangerously, and it shows no sign of cooling down. Like so many other crises in the region, the tensions between Iraq’s Arabs and its Kurdish population find echoes in the complicated political realities of neighboring countries. Syria, home to a large Kurdish minority, is engulfed by an all-out civil war. Meanwhile, Turkey is grappling with its own […]

Meeting with Enrique Peña Nieto in Ottawa shortly before the new Mexican president’s inauguration, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to work to reverse a sensitive visa requirement for Mexicans visiting Canada. In an email interview, Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, discussed Canada-Mexico relations.* WPR: What was the trajectory of Mexico-Canada relations under Mexican President Felipe Calderon? Duncan Wood: At the beginning of 2006 relations were at a relative high point. Canada had identified Mexico as a strategic partner; the Canada-Mexico Partnership had just been founded; and the language, at […]

After the Vietnam War, the U.S. military was convinced that a renewed focus on warfighting was vital for its revival. The military’s leaders knew they might be ordered to do other things such as peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, but concluded that skilled warfighters could naturally handle these other jobs. There was little need for specialized organizations or technology for operations other than war. Large-scale warfighting became the coin of the realm, defining the U.S. military’s spending, training and promotion priorities. However appealing, this idea was always on shaky ground, since it assumed that ineffectiveness in military activities other than large-scale war […]

Writing in 1776, Adam Smith observed that in ancient times, rich nations had difficulty defending themselves from poorer ones, whereas by the late-18th century, the reverse had come to be true. If Smith were alive today, he might argue that the 21st century more closely resembles ancient times than his own era: Failed and failing states now generate far more worries for the international community than powerful ones. Consider the Failed States Index (FSI), an annual survey generated by Foreign Policy magazine and the nonprofit Fund for Peace, which reads like a who’s who of headaches for the international community. […]

Latin America prides itself on being a peaceful region — and with good reason. There has not been a military conflict between states for many years, and peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government may finally end the hemisphere’s only ongoing internal armed conflict. No other area of the developing world can boast such a record. It is surprising, then, that border disputes continually bedevil the region. Many of these tensions remain unresolved, and when they surface, as in the example of the Nov. 19 ruling by the International Court of Justice on […]

Israel is not backing down from a settlement expansion plan, announced following the United Nations vote providing Palestine with nonvoting observer-state status, despite a loud protest over the plan from five European Union countries. On Monday, the U.K., France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain all summoned Israel’s ambassadors to their countries in protest of Israel’s decision to construct 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to begin planning for a long-frozen development project in a particularly sensitive area of the West Bank known as E1.* Sharon Pardo, Jean Monnet Chair in European Studies and a senior […]

In discussions of the so-called Asia pivot, the roles of the U.S. Navy and Air Force have been prominent, especially given the Pentagon’s development of the Air-Sea Battle concept. But the U.S. pivot to the Asia-Pacific cannot be reduced to Air-Sea Battle. The strategic rebalancing is a collective effort that spans all federal departments and all branches of the military. The Army, in particular, has a significant, if less understood, role to play. In determining the respective roles of the Army, Air Force and Navy in the Asia-Pacific, policymakers must keep in mind the larger picture of the pivot’s objectives: […]