Diplomacy & Politics Archive

MADRID, Spain — FRIENDS AT LAST: Every Wednesday, a large crowd gathers at noon on the edge of the parade ground of the Royal Palace in Madrid to watch the ceremonial changing of the guard. Started a year or so ago, the ceremony involves all the traditional elements of military choreography — colorful uniforms, a band, cavalry, and even two horse-drawn field artillery pieces. Unlike at Buckingham Palace, where a similar drill has been carried out every day for centuries, the guard does not have the symbolic duty of protecting the Spanish monarch: Spain’s king and queen live some distance […]

Citing national security concerns and a need to crack down on drug trafficking, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, with the support of leading lawmakers, dispatched federal agents and security forces to take over major seaports and airstrips in four Venezuelan states last week. Chávez opponents blasted the move as a bid to tighten political control amid plunging oil prices, which have softened the OPEC nation’s economy. Three of the ports are in states governed by opposition politicians, and Chávez has suggested that anyone who interferes could face prison. The true motives of the controversial Venezuelan leader may be as varied and […]

Anyone who hoped President Barack Obama would return to Washington with a suitcase full of gifts from his mostly European tour will find the souvenirs largely disappointing. While Obama managed to bring back some important achievements, most of them came in the form of warm feelings. Those are hard to gift-wrap. Following his maiden overseas voyage as U.S. president, Obama arrived home to find the same urgent crises he had left behind, compounded by new foreign policy challenges that had arisen during his absence. Making matters worse, the trip itself, while undeniable fruitful, produced few tangible results. When viewed through […]

A fight is brewing in the U.S. military between manpower and technology. With the economy cratering and defense budgets flattening, we can no longer afford both large armies meant to pacify hostile populations, and legions of high-end air and naval platforms that fulfill our technological dreams. Because of the powerful political backing those high-end platforms enjoy, this budget conflict might spark a broad backlash to our recent fascination with wars of occupation. Our fetish for counterinsurgency campaigns has now made us a land power. We reacted to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by expanding the ground services, even as […]

Recurring efforts by Armenian-Americans to secure official U.S. condemnation of the Armenian genocide have often been portrayed by opponents as “counterproductive” to U.S.-Turkey, as well as Turkey-Armenia, relations. But the campaign to pass a non-binding congressional resolution has actually helped focus these relations by catalyzing Armenian-Turkish dialogue, advancing democratic debate inside Turkey and, perhaps most counterintuitively, helping navigate the U.S.-Turkish partnership through a troubled stretch. An Ancient Relationship Separated by religion and language, for almost a thousand years Armenians and Turks shared one homeland — a large area known alternately as Eastern Turkey and Western Armenia. It was never a […]

Last November, in the restive tribal region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, an American Predator drone circled several thousand feet above the village of Ali Khel. Firing one of its Hellfire missiles, the drone destroyed a compound that was reportedly occupied by two senior al-Qaida officials: Abu Zubair Al Masri, an explosives expert from Egypt, and Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani linked to a 2006 plot to bomb London Heathrow airport. Both Al Masri and Rauf died in the blast, according to intelligence officials quoted by press reports. The attack was just one of scores of air strikes conducted by robotic […]

ISTANBUL, Turkey — President Barack Obama ended his recent European tour in Turkey with perhaps his most challenging mission: to repair and reinvigorate the frayed U.S.-Turkish strategic alliance. He left the country with what appears to be a solid new foundation on which to do so, but significant challenges remain ahead. The last eight years certainly have not been kind to the U.S.-Turkey relationship. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 exposed a deep rift between the two countries. Ankara’s opposition to the war culminated in the Turkish Parliament voting down a motion that would have allowed American troops to […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Among heads of state who gathered in London last week for the G-20 summit, few are attempting to leverage the global financial crisis for personal survival as much as Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. With her presidency in turmoil and support as low as 29 percent, Fernandez de Kirchner recently made a last-minute proposal — rubber stamped by Argentina’s Congress — to move up this year’s legislative elections by four months. She claimed that the global financial crisis justified shortening the electoral process to give Argentines fewer distractions. But the move was widely viewed here […]

As part of hitting the “reset button,” the Obama administration has decided to focus its Russia policy for now on the urgent need to replace an expiring Russian-American nuclear arms control treaty. The approach represents a reversal of the Bush administration’s stated goal of collaborating with Moscow on a broad range of issues, and also contrasts with the posture the Obama White House has adopted toward China. Unresolved Russian-American differences concerning strategic offensive arms control could impede this focused effort. And past experience makes evident that unrelated issues might easily disrupt the strategic arms control dialogue. The two strategic arms […]

NEW DELHI, India — A series of brazen infiltration attempts by militant groups in Indian Kashmir have resulted in fierce gun battles with security forces, and threaten to exacerbate already tense relations between India and Pakistan. The skirmishes come amid fears of militant attacks on prominent political leaders as the campaign for India’s parliamentary elections gets under way. A five-day gun battle in north Kashmir’s Kupwara region left 17 militants as well as eight Indian Army commandos dead in the last week of March. The militants were part of an unusually large group of 25 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) […]

Andrew Bast’s accompanying interview with Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF and currently a professor atMIT and editor of the Baseline Scenario blog, can be found here. Low expectations preceded last Thursday’s G-20 summit in London, but by day’s end a curious consensus had emerged. Prior to the summit, a rift had emerged between the United States, which was pushing for more economic stimulus, and the Europeans, who urged stricter regulation reforms. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had even threatened to walk out were he not satisfied with the measures taken. (Asked about it upon landing in London, he […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s debut NATO summit at the Franco-German border over the weekend was a triumph of style over substance. Although allies put on a public face of unity, they were unable to agree on any of the major problems facing trans-Atlantic security. As NATO marks its 60th birthday, the alliance is mired in a profound identity crisis offering little reason to celebrate. The summit was dominated by the problem of Afghanistan and what to do about it. European allies heaped praise on Obama’s new Afghan strategy, which sets benchmarks for progress in fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in […]

STRASBOURG, France — It’s a virtual certainty that the concerto played by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter at NATO’s 60th anniversary dinner Friday night wasn’t chosen because of its nickname. Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 is known as the “Turkish Concerto” because the composer used oriental themes in the final movement. But as it happened, the one discordant note in an otherwise harmonious summit was the down-to-the-wire threat by NATO member Turkey to veto the nomination of former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance’s new secretary general. It took frantic, behind-the-scenes efforts, which delayed the start of the Saturday […]

Perhaps the most significant development coming out of last week’s G-20 summit meeting in London is the news that the world’s leading economies will triple the International Monetary Fund’s lending powers to some $750 billion. The massive investment raises an immediate question: How is influence shifting within the workings of the Fund? To tease out the nuances of these developments, WPR columnist Andrew Bast spoke with Simon Johnson, chief economist of the IMF in 2007 and 2008, and currently a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Many consider Johnson’s blog, The Baseline Scenario, a must-read on the global […]

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Not very long ago, one of Malik Naeem’s favorite pastimes was an afternoon jaunt to McDonald’s with his granddaughters for french fries and a tour of the playground. Islamabad, the Pakistani capital where Naeem lives with his family, seemed sheltered from far-off concerns about growing militancy and insecurity along the Afghan border. That changed in an instant last September, when militants attacked the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, just a few seconds’ drive from the Pakistani Parliament and Supreme Court buildings. The high-profile attack on a popular public establishment in a heavily guarded area meant that no place […]

LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown might have been excused for savoring the sweetest moment of his political career yesterday evening. By the time the final slaps on the back had been delivered and the G-20 world leaders had left London, Brown’s stock had never been higher. It had been his crisis summit. And at first glance, it was a success, as summits go. For 24 hours, Brown had enjoyed what for him has become the unusual comfort of high praise, luxuriating in the warm words of fellow leaders. And none were warmer than those of the undoubted superstar […]

The 2012 London Olympics may still be several years away, but yesterday, the city played host to a different type of games altogether — the G-20 summit on the global economic crisis. This time, the competitors were not the world’s premier athletes but rather political leaders representing the world’s most powerful economies. By the end of the conference, though, no single country emerged atop the podium. Instead, the clearest winner appears to be the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which received another boost in its quest to reassert itself as the protector of global economic stability. Still, if the world’s rising […]