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Pakistan’s elections Saturday will be the first time in the country’s 66-year history that things are going according to plan: A democratically elected civilian government completed its five-year term, ceding power to a three-month caretaker government that will oversee another election. Nonetheless, political violence in the past few weeks has effectively restricted campaigning to a single province, Punjab. This will all but ensure that the increasingly unpopular incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose campaign has been curtailed by the violence in its electoral strongholds, is removed from power. But even if the PPP had not been kept from campaigning, it […]

Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid visited Tehran last weekend to attend the 17th meeting of the India-Iran Joint Commission. Though the most surprising outcome of the visit was the agreement on a common diplomatic initiative for resolving the Syrian crisis, a number of other agreements, including for the expansion of the strategically important Chabahar port on the Arabian Sea, signal a closer alignment on a more critical geopolitical interest that the two sides share: ensuring long-term stability in Afghanistan. Clearly the scheduled U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is driving a new diplomatic engagement between India and Iran. Contrast this […]

When Israeli missiles struck Syrian facilities on May 3—an operation that Israel has not officially confirmed but is widely believed to have carried out—they showed the results of a cost-benefit analysis whose arithmetic yields clear results. Since the explosions shook Damascus, Israel has gone to great lengths to assure the Syrian regime and others that it has no interest in becoming embroiled in the Syrian civil war. Israel’s concerns, and the military strikes, focus on another enemy, namely Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia that is a close ally of Iran, an avowed enemy of Israel and the source of thousands […]

Late last month, the government of France issued a defense white paper outlining its priorities and plans for the military through 2019. In an email interview, Rachel Utley, an expert on French defense and security policies at the University of Leeds, explained the context and implications of the white paper. WPR: What are the major implications of the defense white paper, in terms of impact on force structure and capabilities, and any shifts of emphasis in terms of strategic focus and forward-deployed forces? Rachel Utley: French defense white papers used not to come along too often: 1972; 1994 in the […]

Since Nicolas Maduro’s narrow victory over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in Venezuela’s presidential election last month, tensions have escalated in the country, most recently with rival marches in the streets. Last week, lawmakers engaged in a fistfight in the Legislative Assembly, in an altercation underscoring Venezuela’s political uncertainty following the death of former President Hugo Chavez. Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, called Maduro’s inability to keep order striking. “A lot of his rhetoric and a lot of his actions reflect a kind of flailing about,” Shifter said of Maduro, explaining that while “he is trying to just […]

When the Cold War ended in 1991, the U.S. military assumed it would no longer be involved in counterinsurgency. The subject was dropped from the curriculum of the military’s professional educational system. None of the armed services wrote new doctrine or developed new operational concepts. The only lingering attention was a handful of war games with sideshow insurgency scenarios. Then the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the U.S. military and other government agencies to relearn counterinsurgency. The military wrote new doctrine and rebuilt its educational curriculum. Intelligence agencies refined their insurgency-focused analytical tools. Even the State Department and U.S. […]

President Barack Obama traveled to Mexico City on May 2 to meet with new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in an effort to recast perceptions of the bilateral agenda from security to economic issues. In 2012, for the first time in 12 years, the U.S. and Mexican election cycles coincided, providing an excellent opportunity to coordinate an agenda consistent with the political needs of the new administrations and the economic requirements of their respective countries. An early visit by the U.S. president was an important signal that Mexico’s significant contributions to the health of the U.S. economy can no longer […]

A Russian warship docked at the port of Haifa on May 1, making it the first Russian warship ever to visit Israel. In an email interview, Mark N. Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University who focuses on Russian foreign policy, explained the recent evolution of the Russia-Israel relationship. WPR: What is the immediate context of Russia’s decision to send a warship to Israel for the first time? Mark Katz: The visit of the first Russian warship to Israel is one more sign of how Russian-Israeli relations have steadily improved ever since Vladimir Putin first came […]

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is currently in the United States, her first foreign visit since assuming office. Park will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, attend a special dinner to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and address a joint session of Congress, among other activities. She will also travel to New York and Los Angeles, but not to other countries, underscoring the trip’s significance. The visit signals Park’s desire to reaffirm the policy of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, who made relations with the United States his highest priority. That helped bilateral […]

Taiwan and Japan recently signed an important East China Sea fishing rights agreement after 17 years of negotiations. More than anything, the deal represents a striking concession from Japan. Since 1996, Japan had attempted to prevent Taiwanese fishing boats from entering its claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles from the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, which are known as the Diaoyutai in Taiwan. Taiwanese fisherman have a long history of working the waters surrounding the Senkakus. The Taiwan government also claims that sovereignty of the islands reverted to the Republic of China (ROC), as the Taipei-based government is formally […]

If you take any interest in the Syrian war and international diplomacy, you may well experience a disturbing sense of deja vu this week. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Moscow. His visit is part of a renewed American campaign to make Russia rethink its strategy of support for the regime in Damascus, which could culminate in talks between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin at the June G-8 summit in Northern Ireland. Kerry is reportedly optimistic that he can make some progress. But this new push is reminiscent of earlier, unsuccessful efforts to win over the […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s upcoming visit to the Gaza Strip, tentatively set for later this month, is proving to be yet another test for Ankara’s Middle East policy, which has been battered by the regional upheaval of the past two years. While Erdogan has long wanted to make an official trip to Hamas-ruled Gaza, he has also been receiving strong messages from the United States, as well as the Palestinians’ Fatah faction, to put the visit off. With Erdogan insisting that the trip will take place as planned, the Gaza visit is becoming an increasingly high-stakes venture for […]

In elections over the weekend, the ruling coalition in Malaysia, which has been in power for 56 years, won 133 out of 222 seats in parliament, despite apparently having lost the popular vote by a thin margin. Anwar Ibrahim, who leads the opposition coalition, claimed the election outcome—which kept Prime Minister Najib Razak in office and his National Front coalition in the parliamentary majority—was the result of electoral fraud. “We are in uncharted waters for Malaysian politics,” said Jason Paul Abbott, director of the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. “We just need to hope what we […]

In mid-April, Japan and Vietnam vowed to expand their defense cooperation during an official visit by Vietnam’s army chief to Tokyo. In an email interview, Corey Wallace, a teaching fellow at the University of Auckland who studies international security and Japan’s regional relations, explained the development of the Japan-Vietnam defense relationship and what it means for each country’s tensions with China. WPR: What has been the recent history of Japan-Vietnam defense cooperation? Corey Wallace: While official defense connections began developing when Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a key turning point for the defense relationship came in 2010. […]

Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto met in Mexico City to discuss the bilateral relationship. It was Obama’s first meeting with Pena Nieto since the latter took office in December, although the two did meet when Pena Nieto visited Washington as president-elect in November. In stark contrast to meetings between the American and Mexican presidents in recent years, the agenda included but was not dominated by security and organized crime. Instead, as underscored by the presidents’ joint press conference, Obama’s visit to Mexico City offered a varied menu of issues such as trade, education, innovation, […]

There has been a great deal of talk in U.S. foreign policy circles about “red lines” and the strength of American resolve in recent days. Much of it has revolved around the emerging evidence that chemical weapons, namely sarin gas, may have been used in the Syrian civil war, which drew attention back to the Obama administration’s declarations in 2012 that the use of unconventional weapons could be a trigger for American intervention in that conflict. The sarin discussion came on the heels of a brief controversy surrounding allegations made by Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen that the Chinese government was […]

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged earlier this week in the clearest terms to date that members of his Shiite organization, the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon, are helping President Bashar al-Assad fight the opposition in neighboring Syria. On Tuesday, in a televised speech, Nasrallah said Hezbollah would stand by the Syrian president and would not allow the country to “fall into the hands” of the United States, Israel or jihadi extremists. Two experts who spoke with Trend Lines agreed that while the speech broadly reflected the dynamics on the ground, Nasrallah’s characterization of Hezbollah’s role in Syria […]