Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Corridors of Power is written by veteran foreign affairs correspondent Roland Flamini and appears in World Politics Review every week by Sunday morning. Click here for the Corridors of Power archives. WHO OWES WHOM? — Invasions, as the Bush administration can attest, are costly undertakings. But in the case of Iraq, the United States is unlikely to follow the example of the Russian government, which has sent Afghanistan the bill for the 1979 Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation. Moscow is asking the Afghans to pay $9 billion it says Russia spent on “development” in Afghanistan in the infamous decade that […]

While the Bush administration’s efforts to contain Iran have found some resonance with the region’s Sunni Arab political establishment, a recent survey conducted in six Middle Eastern states reveals that the strategy to galvanize an anti-Iranian coalition has not made an impact on the climate of opinion formed in the Arab street. Pro-Western Sunni Arab regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, have raised concerns about an Iranian arc of influence stretching through Iraq and Syria to southern Lebanon, a development that, ironically, has been partially aided by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But the July-August 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah opened […]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — In the coffee shops and tea houses of this modernized, stylish city, the hushed talk is of a faltering economy, rising racial tensions, and the man Malaysians either love or loathe. Old political warhorse Mahathir Mohamad, now 81 and recovering from a recent heart attack, has yet again demonstrated his refusal to retire gracefully with the mantle of respected elder statesman. After antagonizing his anointed successor as prime minister on a range of issues — even accusing the Abdullah Badawi government of presiding over a police state — and recently wading in on the side of […]