Diplomacy & Politics Archive

On May 16, Nicolas Sarkozy marked his second anniversary as the president of France. Despite having done much of what he promised to do when the French elected him with just over 53 percent of the vote, polls show that nearly 70 percent now disapprove of the results. Circumstances have not helped: The worst economic downturn since the Depression has overwhelmed a program of cautious reforms that was never as bold or ambitious as the candidate claimed. Yet most people in France expect Sarkozy not only to ride out the storm, but to win re-election in 2012. Such a double […]

More so than that of other countries, the foreign policy pursued by the Federal Republic of Germany displays deep historical fractures and discontinuities. This reflects the country’s profound identity crisis in the aftermath of the twin disasters of National Socialism and the Second World War. The failure of German hegemonism and power politics after 1870-71, culminating in the unique crimes of the National Socialist dictatorship, underscored the country’s need for a radical break with its old nationalist and militaristic past, and resulted in a renunciation of traditional power politics. Key features of German foreign policy since 1945 include a culture […]

Germany’s policy of engagement and partnership with Russia is rooted in the German experience within Europe. If economic interdependence and integration could transform Germany after both World War II and the Cold War, so German thinking goes, then it might also transform Russia. Nevertheless, nearly 20 years after the end of the Cold War, Germany’s efforts — as well as those of Europe and the U.S. — to transform and integrate Russia have failed. Over the past decade, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has forcefully rejected integration with the West, predicating its desire for a return to great power status on expanded […]

When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, the event’s historic significance was immediately obvious. A divided Germany had been both the linchpin of the agreements sealed at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July of 1945, respectively, and the central fault line of the divided European continent they created. In what amounted to a recasting of some 300 years of European history, post-War European affairs were conducted under the umbrella of opposing blocs, and peace was based on nuclear deterrence. With the Wall gone, the Cold War political order was swept away. Less than one year later, a reunified […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Over 400 members of Colombia’s armed forces have been detained for allegedly taking part in extrajudicial killings of civilians in the last two years, according to the country’s attorney general’s office. An ongoing probe into human rights abuses in the Colombian army, known locally as the “false positives” scandal, continues to unfold following the recent arrests of more military personnel. The arrests involve charges that security forces murdered civilians and then passed them off as guerrillas killed in combat in order to inflate rebel body counts. Offers of work were used to lure the young and poor […]

NAIROBI, Kenya — A power struggle pitting President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga has raised tensions within Kenya’s national unity government, formed in April 2008 following the previous year’s violently disputed presidential election between the two. In a sign of worsening relations, Odinga has called for fresh national elections, with Kibaki holding firm to polling in 2012, as constitutionally mandated. Adding to the tensions is the infighting surrounding Kibaki’s anticipated retirement in 2012, following his second five-year term in office, the maximum permitted. Already, eight people have shown interest in leading the country, with Uhuru Kenyatta, scion of […]

MARDAN, Pakistan — Zeeshan Khan, a 17-year-old engineering student, says he knows who Pakistanis blame for what has become the largest migration in their country’s history. “These people are coming due to the bombing,” he said, gesturing to the thousands of refugees milling around the Mardan refugee camp. “Due to the jet artillery, the F-16s, the heavy weapons. All our houses are destroyed.” More than 900,000 people have left their homes in and around Swat valley in the last few weeks, adding to a total of 1.4 million people displaced so far by fighting between the Pakistani Army and militants. […]

Will President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court alter American foreign policy? It’s a question not many have bothered asking. Instead, the lion’s share of speculation about Obama’s pick has focused on the wealth of women candidates available and the hot-button domestic issues — like abortion, gay marriage and gun rights — likely to face the court in coming years. Obama himself explained early on that he is less interested in a candidate’s devotion to abstract legal theories and more in a justice who thinks about “[h]ow our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.” Finally, the Supreme […]

Last week, officials in Gong’an county in China’s Hubei province were forced to withdraw an order issued in March requiring civil servants to smoke at least 230,000 packs of locally produced cigarettes each year, or else face a fine if they failed to meet their targets. The order was withdrawn not due to intervention from the central government in Beijing, but rather due to overwhelming public outrage, demonstrating how so often in China, the farcical corruption of many local officials is held in check only by the decency and common sense of ordinary citizens. Although this short drama was absurd […]

SKOPJE, Macedonia — On May 1, the European Union celebrated the fifth anniversary of its “big bang,” the massive wave of enlargement in 2004 that saw it accept 10 new members — eight former communist countries from Eastern Europe, plus Malta and Cyprus. When Romania and Bulgaria joined two and a half years later, in 2007, the EU counted 27 member states, almost half a billion people and 30 percent of the world’s GDP. In the years since, the EU’s enlargement policy has been considered an unequivocal success. It has brought jobs and growth to the new member states, and […]

When President Barack Obama finally announced the location of his much-heralded speech to the Muslim world, the news came as a surprise. As a candidate, Obama had promised to give such an address during his first 100 days in office, as part of an urgent campaign to repair relations between the United States and Muslims. Observers wondered where Obama would go for the potentially historic occasion. Many believed the U.S. president would choose a democratic, Muslim-majority country for the event. Favorites included Jakarta, where Obama lived as a child. Turkey, a U.S. ally, also seemed like a good choice. Even […]

A fresh round of fighting near the town of Abeche, in eastern Chad, has claimed the lives of 225 rebels and 22 government troops, according to the Chadian government. The violence is a fixture of life in this dusty desert outpost just 50 miles from Sudan’s embattled Darfur province, and has complicated delicate efforts by regional and world bodies to build a framework for a lasting peace, as well as to care for hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons. “A column of mercenaries in the pay of the regime in Khartoum, comprising more than 400 heavily armed […]

BARCELONA, Spain — As the once-vibrant Spanish economy plunges deeper into recession, the government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is struggling to staunch the country’s skyrocketing jobless rate. And among the first casualties is Spain’s famously lenient immigration policy. With employers shedding jobs at a record pace, Spain’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled over the past year to 17.4 percent, the highest in the European Union. More than 4 million Spanish workers are now unemployed, and that number is expected to reach 5 million by 2010 (.pdf). One million Spanish families now have no source of income, […]

At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration’s Middle East policies. Yet in shunning the Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a regime they deem inimical to their interests, the Saudis — along with other Sunni Arab regimes — appear to have internalized the core foreign policy impulse of the Bush administration. This myopic approach has had the perverse effect of amplifying Iran’s already outsized influence in Iraq and throughout the region. It has also fueled Iraqi suspicions about the intentions of its Sunni Arab neighbors, […]

On the face of it, the case for firing the Nepalese Army chief, Gen. Rukmangad Katuwal, was fairly straightforward. Katuwal had ignored an executive directive on inducting former Maoist guerrillas into Nepal’s armed forces, as per the November 2006 peace treaty that ended a bloody insurgency dating back nearly a decade. As if that weren’t enough, he was also rumored to be planning a coup against the civilian government. But instead, it was Maoist Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal — commonly known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda — who ended up resigning, after Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav overruled […]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s political legacy is inextricably linked to that of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, in ways that go beyond mere political lineage. After then-President Putin endorsed Medvedev to succeed him in December 2007, Medvedev announced his intention, if elected, to name Putin as prime minister. With their slogan, “Together we will win,” the two reassured voters that they would continue the popular policies of Putin’s presidency. With the backing of Putin and his allies, and with the government restricting the activities of opposition candidates, Medvedev easily won the March 2008 presidential elections with more than 70 percent of […]

The world continues to hold its breath over a swine flu that, while perhaps slowing, is still likely to kill in the low hundreds and remains balanced on the edge of a true pandemic. Although only a mere 2-3,000 cases have — so far — been recorded worldwide (80 percent of them in co-sources Mexico and America), this variant of H1N1 influenza penetrated dozens of nations and all mass-populated regions of the globe in a matter of days — a truly humbling reminder of how globalization enhances mankind’s epidemiological interdependency. Has the media overreacted? It’s possible that round-the-clock coverage in […]