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Since assuming the presidency in early 2010, Victor Yanukovych has tried to pursue a balance between strengthening Ukraine’s integration with Europe and maintaining a positive relationship with Russia. He has also sought to avoid having to choose between the European Union and Moscow. On one issue, however, he could not avoid a choice: Should Ukraine conclude an association agreement, including a deep and comprehensive free trade arrangement, with the European Union, or should it instead join a customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan? Over the past several years, Yanukovych has consistently favored an EU association agreement, and Kyiv very […]

Last week, in the midst of a political campaign that has focused heavily on public security, authorities in Honduras deployed 1,000 military police as part of an effort to address drug violence and organized crime in this Central American country, home to the highest homicide rate in the world. Honduras is nearing its November elections, when voters will determine whether the same two parties will continue to dominate the political scene, or whether a new party will upend the election. The deployment of the newly created military police unit is another step in a 10-year process in which the Honduran […]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in Europe Monday and Tuesday in an effort to soothe mounting tensions in the relationship that have recently spilled into public view. Signs of strain in a pivotal U.S. partnership in the Middle East were evident last week when Saudi Arabia, in a surprise move, declined to assume a United Nations Security Council seat it had previously sought and won, citing the body’s failures in Syria. That was followed this weekend by the disclosure of the Saudi intelligence chief’s comments to European diplomats that Saudi Arabia […]

Last Friday, the Pentagon announced that, by next July, all U.S. troops will leave Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The base has served as the most important transit center for U.S. and coalition troops entering and leaving Afghanistan by air, but that role will soon be replaced by a base in Romania. The move comes in response to a July vote by Kyrgyzstan’s parliament to terminate the U.S. lease at Manas effective one year later, on July 11, 2014. It is not the first time Kyrgyzstan has threatened to end the arrangement. Unlike on previous occasions, this time Washington decided not […]

While the headlines about the latest round of Asian summitry in Brunei and Indonesia focused on U.S. President Barack Obama’s absence and China’s efforts to fill this void, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continued his impressive efforts to shore up relations with the countries of Southeast Asia as Japan and ASEAN commemorate 40 years of relations between them. Since taking office last year, Abe has visited eight of 10 Southeast Asian countries and plans to visit the remaining two, Cambodia and Laos, before mid-December, when Tokyo will host a special ASEAN-Japan Summit celebrating the 40th anniversary of ties. This diplomatic […]

Winston Churchill, the storied politician and former prime minister of the United Kingdom, once said, “I think I can save the British Empire from anything—except the British.” Churchill’s quote cleverly points out that great power decline is not just a function of external factors; often the worst wounds are self-inflicted. In recent weeks, observers around the globe watched with alarm as a dysfunctional American political system pushed the world’s most powerful economy to the brink of default. How could a country with so much global prestige and power risk both over petty partisan squabbling? Why would policymakers choose to squander […]

In early September, the U.S. executed a stunning volte-face in its declared policy on dealing with the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Backing away from enforcing a self-imposed presidential “red line” with an already announced military intervention, Washington instead embraced a Russian-developed diplomatic plan that turns Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a military target into an essential partner in ridding Syria of its WMD stockpiles. The reversal may not have marked “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,” as one retired British diplomat saw it, but the shift definitely raised questions […]

A historic change is underway in the global security system. As Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt wrote, the world is witnessing “a sharp decline in America’s ability to shape the global order.” In the future, Walt and others believe, “the United States simply won’t have the resources to devote to international affairs that it had in the past.” Christopher Layne of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University is even more blunt: “The epoch of American dominance is drawing to a close, and international politics is entering a period of transition: no longer unipolar […]

This month, India announced plans to buy eight mine-countermeasure vessels from a South Korean company in a deal worth $1.2 billion. In an email interview, Scott W. Harold, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corp., discussed the state of the South Korean defense industry. WPR: What is the current state of South Korea’s defense industry, and what is driving its growth? Scott W. Harold: From an extremely low base in the 1970s, the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) defense industry has been maturing in a number of areas including ground systems, precision strike capabilities, electronics and shipbuilding. It has also […]

In diplomacy, it is easier to pull off a stunt than sustain a long-term strategy. Last week Saudi Arabia managed some multilateral acrobatics at the United Nations by winning a seat on the Security Council unopposed and then almost immediately renouncing it. Most states lobby for a council seat for years and cling desperately to the kudos that it offers. But the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the U.N.’s failures to resolve the Palestinian issue and intervene effectively in the Syrian civil war add up to “irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out […]

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh signed an agreement to enable future civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries. While the text has not been made public, it appears that the agreement will not include a so-called Gold Standard provision proscribing Vietnam from enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium. The agreement marks the latest installment in a decade-long effort by the United States and other major nuclear powers to limit the further spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies (ENR), which can provide both fuel for nuclear power and fissile […]

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was discharged from the hospital this week after undergoing brain surgery to remove a blood clot. Prior to entering the hospital last week, the president had been actively campaigning for allies running in key midterm elections to be held later this month that will determine whether her party keeps control of Congress. The vote will also be seen as a test of where the parties stand ahead of the 2015 general elections. The president’s health is still being closely monitored, and she is unlikely to be able to return immediately to campaigning. Argentina has […]

The first round of talks between Iran and the P5+1—China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K.—in Geneva earlier this week ended on an upbeat note, with the concluding joint statement noting that the meeting had been conducted in a “positive atmosphere. A U.S. official was quoted as saying, “We really are beginning that type of negotiation where one could imagine that you could possibly have an agreement.” Having received the Iranian proposals, the negotiators are returning to consult with their respective governments and will reassemble in early November to assess the proposals submitted by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed […]

They are the biggest demonstrations Romania has seen this century. Across the country and beyond, tens of thousands have taken to the streets in protests that have included a human chain around Bucharest’s massive parliament, one of the world’s largest buildings, and a rally of several hundred Romanians in London’s Trafalgar Square. If the demonstrations have gained momentum in part due to economic hardship and especially disillusionment with the political elite, they were initially triggered by a highly controversial mining project and the ecological and cultural damage that it might cause. Though environmental issues have for a long time been […]

In early September, the United States and Indonesia participated in joint counterterrorism exercises, part of a trend of growing military ties between the two countries. In an email interview, Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, associate research fellow with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, explained Indonesia’s goals in modernizing its military and its military partnerships. WPR: What are Indonesia’s goals in modernizing its military? Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto: Indonesia’s military modernization is currently based on the Long-Term National Development Plan for 2005-2025, which calls for achieving a “minimum […]

Western powers tried to keep their poker faces, displaying calculated restraint in describing positive signs from the meetings with Iran this week in Geneva. In keeping with the new tone since the election of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, the atmosphere is by all accounts much more conciliatory, with talk of an end-game for resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. While there is no denying the sharp contrast between the old insult- and evasion-laden interactions that characterized the days when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was Iran’s president, there are a number of worrisome signs that indicate the current process is not as […]

After three decades of protracted conflict and four years of relative peace, a recent event has emerged as a sign that democracy, albeit ailing, is still alive in the island-nation of Sri Lanka. On Sept. 21, 2013, for the first time in 25 years, provincial council elections were held in the war-ravaged Northern Province, offering the country’s ethnic Tamil minority, largely present in the region, the opportunity to choose its own political destiny. Sri Lanka established provincial councils in 1987 as a result of the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement that called for the devolution of power to the provinces in a […]