Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Last month, a remarkable transformation occurred in the controversial Nabucco gas pipeline project — or at any rate in the public perception of the project in the English-speaking world. As recently as last fall, in fact, there was barely any public perception of the Nabucco project in the English-speaking world because there was barely any coverage of the project in the English language media. (For a rare exception, see “Iran-Turkey Gas Deal Gives New Hope for EU Nabucco Pipeline” on World Politics Review.) In the central European press, on the other hand, the project was widely heralded as a crucial […]

KATMANDU, Nepal — The founder of modern Nepal, King Prithvi Narayan Shah, famously described the country as “a yam between two boulders” — China and India. Now, as the biggest protests in 20 years unfold in the Chinese-controlled Tibetan Autonomous Region, China appears to be leaning on Nepal to quash protests in Katmandu and to clear Everest during the Olympic torch rally in May. Nepal is home to at least 20,000 Tibetan refugees and each year a further 2,000-3,000 Tibetans make the dangerous journey across the Himalayas to Nepal, en route to the home-in-exile of the Dalai Lama in Dharamasala, […]

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Since independence, Malaysia has been the kind of feeble democracy where elections have been held regularly, but where it is usually quite clear beforehand who will win — and win big. However, the latest vote, on March 8, surprised everyone, with the opposition gaining 37 percent of parliament’s 220 seats and winning control of five of the federation’s 13 states — namely Kelantan, Perak, Kedah, Penang and Selangor. After the previous election, held in 2004, the opposition controlled only Kelantan and had just 9 percent of the seats in parliament. Anwar Ibrahim, the de facto leader of […]

Today (March 19), Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili will meet with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House. The two heads of state will make an appropriately supportive mutual statement, particularly since the visit will mark Saakashvili’s first visit to the United States since his reelection in January. Nevertheless, the display of close presidential ties may not prove sufficient to restore Saakashvili’s luster as the leading democrat in the Caucasus, ensure Georgia’s territorial integrity, or enable Georgia to enter NATO — the most immediate mutual foreign policy objective of the two governments. In early January 2008, Mikhail Saakashvili won […]

GOING FISHING IN MALTA AND SPAIN — This item must be prefaced with a reminder that in the 2004 U.S. presidential election 55.3 percent of Americans voted, and thatwas the highest voter turnout in a decade. In Europe, there were two general elections Sunday in which voter turnout was an issue. In Spain, the experts were predicting that the lower the turnout, the worse Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s chances of re-election would be. A low turnout was reckoned as anything below 70 percent. In the event, however, 74 percent of Spaniards did their civic duty, and Zapatero […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — Earlier this month, 1,000 people from around the world gathered at a World Health Organization-sponsored forum here to discuss what’s increasingly being seen as a global crisis: the acute shortage of health care workers. The WHO estimates that more than four million health care workers are needed in the 57 countries it defines as grossly understaffed (fewer than 2.3 doctors, nurses and midwives per 100,000 people). Thirty-six of the 57 worst-hit countries are in Africa (Malawi has around 265 doctors for 12 million people; Zambia has about 650 for the same population). But when it comes to […]

The states parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention held two important meetings in 2007. First, national biological warfare experts met for several days in mid-August to exchange ideas about how best to counter this threat. Second, the states parties held their annual week-long gathering in December. Both of these sessions were remarkably non-confrontational as compared with previous years, suggesting that new political dynamics are now shaping the international politics of biological warfare and terrorism. The December 2006 Sixth Review Conference of the BTWC directed the member governments to focus on two main issues this year: (1) strengthening national […]

On March 4, Azerbaijan’s breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh became a scene of one of the most controversial attacks there since a May 1994 ceasefire, which established a no war, no peace situation in the region. The conflict started in 1988, when the predominantly Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh stated its intention to secede from Azerbaijan. The resulting war caused severe casualties and massive population displacement on both sides. Azerbaijan lost control over the majority of Nagorno-Karabakh’s territory and the adjacent seven regions. Although the Nagorno-Karabakh republic currently enjoys de-facto independence, no country has recognized it as an independent entity. Despite decade-long […]

After two months of post-election turmoil, which claimed up to 1,500 lives and displaced more than half a million people, Kenya is slowly recovering from civil strife. A power-sharing deal between erstwhile rivals President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga seems to have pulled the east African country from the brink of a civil war. The United States and other donors are sinking millions of dollars into the implementation of the deal, which will make Odinga an executive prime minister and give him two deputies. But the heart-on-the-sleeve moments that greeted the deal — especially from Odinga’s side — […]

BEDDAWI, Lebanon — Nael Abu Siam is struggling to keep reality at bay for his children. Ten months ago, his home was destroyed in a conflict between Lebanese soldiers and radical Islamic militants at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. “First I told them that nothing has changed, just that we change houses to repair the first one,” said the 40-year Palestinian refugee. But as the months have gone by, the pretext has become more difficult to sustain. The members of the Siam family are among 33,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes by the conflict at Nahr […]

OBSERVERS QUIT SRI LANKA MISSION — A group of 11 international observers assigned to oversee a Sri Lanka presidential inquiry into 16 human rights cases resigned en masse March 6, citing undue government interference in the process, on the same day Human Rights Watch released a scathing report branding Sri Lanka as the disappearance capital of the world. “The proceeding of inquiry and investigations have fallen far short of the transparency and compliance with basic international norms and standards pertaining to investigations and inquiries,” the panel said in a statement released to the press. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa invited […]

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Although it has received much less attention than the violence in Belgrade following Kosovo’s declaration of independence last month, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia’s neighbor to the west, has also seen violence in the wake of the Kosovo declaration. In recent weeks, up to 10,000 protestors in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the majority-Serb Bosnian province of Republika Srpska, have stormed the streets and attacked the U.S. Consulate and other foreign diplomatic missions. The Banja Luka rioters demand that Republika Srpska (RS) be allowed to secede. Observers insist that the Banja Luka protestors are […]

TENSION IN THE ANDES — It was inevitable that the Organization of American States would express its strong disapproval of Colombia’s incursion into Ecuador to take out FARC leader Raúl Reyes. The South American continent is a patchwork of contiguous countries, and the idea of troops trespassing in and out of countries at will raises serious issues of sovereignty. Brazil, for example, borders no less than 10 other countries; Bolivia has five immediate neighbors, and virtually every other country has a minimum of three. There was, however, no question of going so far as condemning the Colombians, because everyone (with […]

The news of Venezuelan tanks and troops massing along the border with Colombia must have old Latin revolutionaries sighing with nostalgia. It is as if the old days of idealistic dreams, when every bearded university student was a would-be Ché Guevara, had never left; as if someone had conjured back those old days filled with utopian possibilities. You have to hand it to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, a character straight out of a García Márquez novel. Chávez would not countenance a hundred years of revolutionary solitude. Instead, the man with the power to stop the clock and wind it back […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The death of FARC commander Raúl Reyes is being seen here as a significant turning point in Colombia’s internal armed conflict with Latin America’s oldest insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. While the killing of Reyes on Ecuadorian soil has sparked a diplomatic crisis between Colombia and its neighbors, it is the impact of his death on the country’s conflict that will be noted in the annals of Colombian history. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was elected to power with a mandate to crush the rebels. For the last six years, the government’s counterinsurgency campaign, bankrolled largely […]

The line of those waiting patiently for the demise of Fidel Castro was a long one. For nearly 50 years the queue included foreign exiles, eager businessmen, American politicians, and numerous Cuban dissidents. Yet when the moment finally arrived late last month, it wasn’t nearly the historic, providential occasion most had envisioned. Rather than go out with a bang — which very nearly happened at the height of the Cold War — Castro chose instead to slip quietly from view, the world’s most infamous, and recently bedridden, autocrat leaving his followers with nothing but the vague plea that he wished […]

BRUSSELS — NATO and European Union officials in Brussels met the landslide election victory of former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, with ambivalence this week. Officials of both bodies expressed little optimism that a change of leadership will bring any great change in the direction of Russia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. Medvedev won more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating three candidates who had no chance to confront Medvedev in debates and had little realistic chance of victory after Putin named his successor. According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, 64 percent of eligible voters participated in […]