Home | News/Analysis
News/Analysis
Top Story -
News/Analysis
By
Eliot Brockner
08 Feb 2010
World Politics Review
Many Hondurans as well as outside observers of the country's political
crisis breathed a sigh of relief when Profirio Lobo Sosa was sworn in
as president on Jan. 27. The new Honduran government is now delicately engaging regional
governments, while forging a new path that it hopes will lead the
nation away from the debacle that characterized the nation's politics
in the latter half of 2009.
By Andreas Umland
05 Feb 2010 |
World Politics Review
With Ukraine set to vote in the second round of its presidential
election on Sunday, both candidates have promised closer
ties with Russia. Most observers identify popular disillusionment with
democracy as the reason for this dramatic shift since the 2004 Orange Revolution. But the country's semi-presidential political system is a rarely acknowledged cause of Ukraine's democratic impasse.
By Andrea Bonzanni
05 Feb 2010 |
World Politics Review
In a two-round bidding procedure that concluded in mid-December, Iraq signed oil contracts that, if well-managed, could pay for the country's
post-war reconstruction. However, Iraq's dramatic comeback
as the world's second-largest oil producer is upsetting other market
players -- in particular within OPEC, of which Iraq is still
technically a member -- and could exacerbate broader regional tensions.
By Lauren Gelfand
04 Feb 2010 |
World Politics Review
When Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua left the country in
November 2009 to seek treatment for a heart ailment, few anticipated
that both he and Africa's most populous country would end up on life
support. The leadership crisis resulting from Yar'Adua's failure to
constitutionally hand over power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has had more than just
political implications for Nigeria.
By David Francis
02 Feb 2010 |
World Politics Review
BONN, Germany -- Since forming a coalition government with the conservative Free Democratic Party, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union have been pulled toward more fiscally conservative policies. The pragmatic Merkel, who was often accused of leaning too far to the
left in her previous coalition,
is now being accused of swaying too far to
the right.
By Jamsheed K. Choksy
01 Feb 2010 |
World Politics Review
A number of recent moves suggest that Iran's mullahs and secular leaders are bridging their recent differences, even if their reconciliation is a begrudging one. These developments are not wholly unexpected. Although the shift will result in a
short-term loss of leadership figures for the opposition, the Green
Movement's desire for sweeping change has now become mainstream.
By Balint Szlanko
28 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Since 2006, Garmsir district in the southern-central part of Helmand -- Afghanistan's most war-torn province and home to a massive, opium-fed insurgency -- has been Taliban country. But that is changing, thanks to the recent influx of thousands
of U.S. Marines that allowed coalition forces to fight a proper counterinsurgency campaign here for the first time.
By Fabio Scarpello
27 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
DENPASAR, Indonesia -- Under the leadership of President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, U.S.-Indonesia ties have progressively strengthened since he
first took office in 2004. President Barack Obama and Yudhoyono are working toward a "comprehensive partnership" that goes beyond cooperation on solely security concerns, but questions remain about whether it will have any
real effect on the ground.
By Jon B. Alterman
26 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
The United States is grappling with a plan of action as deterioration in Yemen continues. With wealthy GCC allies having shared interest in Yemen's success, the U.S. would do well to take a quiet leadership position, orchestrating funding and action from Yemen's neighbors instead of footing yet another bill in the name of global stability.
By Nicolas Nagle
25 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
The newly elected government
of socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou faces massive pressure
from EU member states to tackle its budget deficit and growing public
debt. Brussels fears that the Greek economy's continued slide could
create a contagion effect across the eurozone and pose a threat to the
stability of the common currency.
By Daniel McDowell
22 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
A G-7 meeting in Canada next month looks increasingly likely to be a forum for discussing
remedies for global currency imbalances, with a focus on China's undervalued yuan. But instead of trying to influence China's exchange rate through tough talk and diplomacy, a better strategy might be simply to do nothing, because Beijing will probably decide to revalue the yuan on its
own.
By Andrea Bonzanni
21 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
Turkey continues to work along different tracks in its strategy to
become the "gas hub" of Europe, as demonstrated by the official visit
to Ankara of Azerbaijan's foreign minister in late
December. The visit should set to rest speculation about
Turkey's waning political support for the Nabucco pipeline, as well as
Ankara's supposed reorientation toward Russia.
By Michael Kugelman and Susan L. Levenstein
20 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
The
apparent unwillingness of governments to confront climate change at Copenhagen reflects an essential truth about
public policy: The immediate always trumps the distant. Another vivid illustration of this mindset is the acquisition by foreign governments of vast tracts of farmland across the developing world in the name of food security.
By John Lee
19 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
Russia has always been a critical component in the Eurasian balance of power, but the 21st century
seems to be leaving Moscow behind. Still, even as
economic and political power shifts to Asia,
aging and forgotten Russia will not disappear from the Eurasian
equation. A game-changing great-power rivalry could be brewing -- not
between Russia and the West, but between Russia and China.
By Roque Planas
15 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
Chile has not voted a right-wing president into office since Jorge
Alessandri campaigned and won as an independent, center-right candidate
in March 1958. But Sebastián Piñera may well break that
precedent on Jan. 17. With the governing Concertación coalition facing divisions on the left, Piñera's centrism has found a friendly reception among an electorate looking for change.
By Mayank Bubna and Raj Shukla
14 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
NEW DELHI -- Fly three hours in just about any direction from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, and you're likely to land in a zone of
either ongoing or recently resolved armed conflict. What might be surprising, though, is that those odds are
not diminished if you travel by road within India.
By John Perra
14 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
India continues to burnish its international image with initiatives
like Brand India, a public-private campaign whose aim is to build positive perceptions of India. But as even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently acknowledged, the country's economic success co-exists with its persistently high rates
for hunger, malnutrition, and income poverty.
By Sanjay Upadhya
13 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
Bereft of an ally since the collapse of monarchical rule in Nepal
nearly four years ago, China has been struggling to secure its place in
the buffer state, wedged between China's volatile Tibet region and its
regional rival, India. Hardly a month goes by now without a high-level
Chinese delegation arriving in Kathmandu seeking assurances on its
security interests.
By Lauren Gelfand
13 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
On Jan. 9, North and South Sudan marked the fifth anniversary of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement that brought an end to Africa's longest
civil war. But as the two
sides proceed toward a referendum over Southern independence, long-simmering ethnic tensions
in the South are boiling into unrest.
By Soeren Kern
12 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
MADRID -- Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has announced several priorities for Spain's six-month presidency of the European Union, which
began on Jan. 1. But during a period that will test how well the EU's
new institutional architecture works in practice, Spain's role at the
helm of the union is unclear and its leadership has been seriously
questioned.
By Masoud Shafaee
12 Jan 2010 |
World Politics Review
For the past seven months, countless parallels have been drawn between
the current uprising gripping Iran and the events that ultimately led
to the demise of the Pahlavi monarchy some 30 years ago. Whether or not
the comparisons are accurate, one irony that cannot be escaped is that
the regime is facing increasingly vocal dissent from the very clerical
class that brought it to power.
