Diplomacy & Politics Archive

NO MORE DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON? — Sixty years ago, Spain’s state-run television inaugurated its transmissions with a bullfight. This month, in an indication of the social change Spain has undergone in the past 25 years, the official television network, TVE, canceled afternoon transmissions of the corrida — the bullfight — one of its highest rated summer shows. When bullfight fans protested, TVE said daytime broadcasts of the national sport contravened the law banning violent programs during children’s viewing hours. But TVE’s decision to grab the issue by the horns reflected the growing controversy over the future of the Spanish […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. CHINA’S ID PLAN — Beginning this month, the more than 12 million residents of the Chinese city Shenzen will be required to carry identity cards fitted with powerful computer chips including not only their names and address, as with previous identity cards, but also data on their work history, education, religion, ethnicity, police record and even personal reproductive medical history. Chinese authorities have ordered all large Chinese cities to phase in similar high-tech residency card […]

On Aug. 14, 165 million Pakistanis celebrated their country’s 60th anniversary as an independent nation state. The festivities were tempered, however, by the widespread realization that the country is experiencing its most serious political crisis since Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. The decision by Musharraf to dismiss Chief Supreme Court justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9 precipitated the situation. The president claimed he acted after learning of unspecified misconduct performed by Chaudhry. Most observers, however, view Musharraf’s move as an attempt to eliminate a potential impediment to his securing another five-year term as president. Musharraf assumed the presidency […]

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan — While seven political parties are campaigning to win seats in Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament, common Kazakhs remain largely indifferent to the election, believing the results aren’t likely to bring change from a government whose commitment to democracy is lately in doubt. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev dissolved the parliament’s lower house, the Mazhilis, June 20 and called for new elections. Ninety-eight deputies of the Mazhilis will be elected Aug. 18 in accordance with a system of party-list proportional representation that allocates seats among parties winning at least 7 percent of the vote. (The remaining nine seats of […]

According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, the dismal decline of America’s public image is not a sufficient reason for the State Department to take public diplomacy as seriously as it deserves. Well, to be precise, the report, titled “U.S. Public Diplomacy: Actions Needed to Improve Strategic Use and Coordination of Research” (pdf file), doesn’t use exactly those words. But here’s what it does say: The State Department’s “commitment to the development of a defined approach to thematic communications, centered on program-specific research, has been absent.” This is GAO-speak for the plain assessment that the U.S. government […]

On August 9, the Bush Administration issued its revised U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. The main innovation is the explicit use of enhanced “sticks and carrots” to change Afghans’ behavior. Protracted infighting within the administration in recent weeks about timing and tactics had twice delayed the new strategy’s publication. Despite the extra editing time, senior Democrats and Republicans in Congress called the revisions inadequate given the magnitude of the problem. Preliminary assessments of the data the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime plans to release next month indicate that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 15 percent during […]

DIPLOMATIC LUNCH — The French were elated by the success of the Bush-Sarkozy lunch at Kennebunkport, which Paris regards as the first in a sequence of meetings designed to establish a personal relationship between the two leaders. Sarkozy certainly, and Bush presumably, will be in New York for the opening of the U.N. National Assembly on Sept. 23, when U.N. ritual prescribes that they will sit together at lunch. An official visit to Washington by the French president will follow shortly afterwards, possibly by the end of that same month. The warming of U.S.-French relations is all the more satisfactory […]

On Monday, Presidents Bush and Karzai concluded their Camp David meeting with a press conference at which they stood united on every major issue. By Thursday, the bloom was off the rose: In a snub to both Bush and Karzai, Pakistan’s President Musharraf backed out of a tribal assembly that the United States had orchestrated, and a British commander made headlines when he said America’s counterinsurgency operations are undermining NATO’s efforts. Not once during their eight meetings over five years have the two presidents faced such challenges at home. Karzai finds his once-meteoric popularity waning in the face of his […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. OLYMPIC COUNTDOWN BRINGS CHINA CRITICISM — Condemnation of China’s human rights record rained down from all sides this week as Chinese authorities marked the one year countdown to the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Games with a lavish celebration. Amnesty International released a scathing report on the status of human rights in China Aug. 7, charging China has broken promises it made when bidding to host the games by increasing abuse and surveillance of political […]

In the long list of ominously difficult foreign policy choices facing America, the question of how to deal with Pakistan ranks near the top. As in the case of Iraq — the undisputed first item on that grim list — all the choices look bad. And, also as in Iraq, taking the wrong path could help unleash dangers that make today’s threats look tame by comparison. In all matters related to Pakistan, one fact looms large: Pakistan has nuclear weapons. With instability increasing there, policymakers cannot ignore the risk of a takeover by Islamic extremists. We don’t know how likely […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — August is celebration time in Southeast Asia, where Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia are donning their best dresses and marking their respective independence days. However, while parades snake through the streets, fireworks light up the night sky and politicians try to outdo each other with poignant speeches and lists of their countries’ achievements, unresolved problems and the emergence of new ones in the three countries are dampening the spirits of average citizens. Singapore’s Income Gap Behind Singapore’s glitz and gloss, the country’s long-term prosperity — and perhaps its social harmony — is threatened by an ever-widening wealth gap […]

To look at him, one would never suspect that Vladislav Surkov once worked as an agent for a crack special operations unit in the Red Army’s intelligence corps. A svelte, retiring figure, Surkov, 42, usually shies away from the public spotlight. When he does give interviews or make public appearances, therefore, it commonly occasions a media frenzy. Attempts to slice through the veil of mystery shrouding this high-placed presidential aide assume particular urgency because, by some estimates, Surkov is the second most influential person in Russian politics. Surkov came to the attention of casual Russia-watchers in the West following a […]

Editor’s Note: Over the last month, World Politics Review published Swiss journalist Kurt Pelda’s diary of his three-week trip, during late February and March, to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese region of Darfur. The diary originally appeared in German on the Web site of the Swiss newspaper the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and was published in WPR for the first time in English. Today we present Pelda’s epilogue to his diary, penned exclusively for WPR. In it, Pelda provides a penetrating analysis of the conflict’s causes, and of various proposals for its resolution. He also responds to criticism […]

‘FULL AND FRANK’ — While President Bush insisted that the change of leadership in Britain had not altered U.S.-British relations, Gordon Brown’s first official visit to Washington as prime minister somehow managed to place the partnership in a more distant, formal context. “Full and frank” — Brown’s description of his talks with Bush — recalls the Cold War, when it was diplospeak for “we disagreed,” and one step above “useful exchange of views.” We are a long way from Tony Blair’s warm, intense, and (at least in public) full endorsement of George Bush’s policies. European diplomats in Washington, briefed by […]

LONDON — Alighting from his vintage Rolls Royce limousine with a cursory nod to the mounted ceremonial guard that escorted him to the steps of Zimbabwe’s parliament July 26, Robert Mugabe was every inch the defiant and bombastic African leader, telling the West to “go hang” after imposing another round of travel restrictions and sanctions on his penurious country. Bearing with him a sheaf of economic bills to support the latest price-stabilization scheme for a country bare of virtually every necessity for daily life — from food to fuel to foreign exchange — the 83-year-old president railed against “Western detractors […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. BARBARIC VIOLENCE AGAINST CONGO WOMEN — A United Nations expert on violence against women reported July 27 that violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo is widespread and brutal to the point of incomprehension. Yakin Erturk said her investigations revealed massive incidents of torture, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced incestuous rape and women being forced to eat human excrement and flesh. Violence against women, Erturk said, is committed by armed groups, civilians, […]

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush are scheduled to meet this weekend at Camp David to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Two topics likely will dominate their conversation: the death of Afghan civilians from NATO military action and Afghanistan’s narcotics problem. The civilian casualty issue was an important agenda item at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting in June 2007. At the time, NATO leaders largely argued that civilian casualties were an inevitable characteristic of war. A joint press conference with Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak following the Ministerial meeting, […]