Editor’s note: Corridors of Power is written by veteran foreign correspondent and WPR editor-at-large Roland Flamini, and appears every Monday. AFTER WOLFOWITZ — A senior World Bank staffer says that while the squalor of Paul Wolfowitz’s arrangements on behalf of his innamorata got all the publicity, it wasn’t the main grievance inside the agency. “The bank is not Sodom and Gomorrah, but it’s not monastic either,” the source said, “and it has its share of romantic relationships.” What riled the staff more was (1) Wolfowitz’s reliance on a team of close political advisers whom he brought in from the Bush [...]
BERLIN — During the past few months, leading members of the major political parties comprising the German coalition government have expressed widely divergent views on the key foreign policy issues facing Germany. Senior representatives from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have made conflicting statements on the ballistic missile defense (BMD) issue, how to curb Iran’s nuclear program, Germany’s role in the war in Afghanistan, and other topics. At some point, these foreign-policy divergences, combined with differences over other policy areas, could lead to the coalition’s collapse before its scheduled dissolution at [...]
A week ago, when almost no media organization was paying close attention to the emerging disaster in the Gaza strip, we wrote about the ominous spiral of violence tearing through the Palestinian-controlled territory, as rival militias, gangs, religious extremists and common criminals turned the area into a free-for-all of terror. Since then, the Palestinian-on-Palestinian fighting has only intensified, creating a crisis that many veteran observers describe as the worst they have ever seen. Gazans, running for their lives from the street battles between armed factions, are now openly saying life was better under the hated Israeli occupation. Israel withdrew its [...]
