Diplomacy & Politics Archive

When the Chinese first learned that two Russian coast guard ships had sunk a Chinese-owned freighter on Feb. 15 in the Pacific Ocean, the incident must have aroused conflicting feelings regarding their sometimes overbearing neighbor. The freighter, the New Star, was registered with Sierra Leone and was using that country’s flag of convenience. The Hong Kong-based J-Rui Lucky Shipping Company owned the vessel. Ten of the 16 crew members were Chinese citizens, while six were from Indonesia, including the captain. Of the eight who died when the ship sank 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the port of Nakhodka, seven were […]

The Washington foreign policy community has a hot new buzzword: “Af-Pak,” an amalgamation of Afghanistan and Pakistan meant to denote the ongoing “two-front war” that Islamist militants are currently waging in both countries. Perhaps it is fitting that one of the most impenetrable foreign policy challenges of our time is symbolized by yet another impenetrable acronym. Not content to leave the field to the Bush administration’s clunky and ill-defined “GWOT” — that is, the “Global War on Terror” — the Obama administration has apparently adopted “Af-Pak” (or its variants, “Afpak” and “AFPAK”) as the acronym that will define a significant […]

The Pakistani Supreme Court ruling on Feb. 25, 2009, that effectively upheld a ban on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections could signal yet another sabotage of democracy in Pakistan. Sharif’s electoral ban quells any possibility that his PML (N) might mount a political challenge to President Asif Ali Zardari in the 2013 elections. The ruling also disqualifed Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz Sharif, from holding political office, and dissolved his government in Punjab. Zardari quickly imposed Governor’s Rule in Punjab for two months, despite the fact that Sharif’s PML (N) enjoys a majority in the provincial legislature. Zardari then […]

The African Union wants to be taken seriously. Its leaders seek the same respect accorded to its Western counterparts, particularly the European Union. And how better to earn that respect than to show that Africa can take care of its own? Hence the ASFAP doctrine — African Solutions for African Problems. As expressions of political egos go, the doctrine is a macho response to the bullies of the West. More broadly, it is meant to show the world that Africa is mature enough to unite and rally together. The Government of National Unity cobbled together in Kenya after the deadly […]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Zimbabwe’s national unity government got off to a bad start last month, raising doubts about its ability to usher in political stability and economic revival in the country. Most worrying is the infighting within President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, where hardliners led by the country’s joint chiefs of staff appear to be opposed to the deal brokered by the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) last year. The military and security chiefs had previously declared that they would not salute Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the mainstream formation of the splintered opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). […]

The war looks eerily familiar: beheadings, assassinations of police and public officials, terrorized businesspeople, extorted schoolteachers, and in five years more than 230 American civilians dead in the crossfire. All this could easily describe the battle in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but the reality is closer to home, where an increasingly gruesome and threatening war is threatening to boil over the United States’ southern border with Mexico. Summing up decades of policy, three former Latin American heads of state last week declared, “The war on drugs has failed.” Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of […]

Ever since men first put to sea, conflicts have swirled around narrow maritime passages known as choke points. A subset of the broader category of Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs), maritime choke points act as funnels drawing in shipping from surrounding seas. As critical pressure points in naval struggles for “command of the sea,” every navy seeks to secure them while denying their use to the enemy. Homer’s “Iliad” already detailed the epic struggle between Troy — situated on the Dardanelles, the ancient world’s leading choke point — and a coalition of Greek city states whose armies arrived by sea […]

Over the past two years, the Arctic Circle has been the object of both exciting and alarming speculation. The planting of the Russian flag on the North Pole sea floor led to stories of a race to claim its resources. The opening of the fabled Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route led to reports of shortened trade routes — saving thousands of miles and many days at sea — between Europe and the Far East. Government forecasts of large — if as-yet undiscovered — oil and gas reserves have given rise to concerns over sovereignty, security and sustainability throughout […]

For millennia, the Dead Sea has been fed by the sweet waters of the Jordan River while losing only pure water to relentless evaporation. The collected salts left behind have resulted in an inhospitably briny lake eight times saltier than the sea, topped by a thin layer of the Jordan’s relatively less-dense fresh water. The differing salinity levels between the river and the lake kept the Dead Sea in a perpetually layered state, even while the lake’s overall water level remained fairly constant, since evaporation from the lake’s surface occurs at roughly the rate of the natural flow of the […]