Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In a country where political intrigue has often substituted for governance, Kenya’s two-year-old National Accord offered a pragmatic solution to ending post-election violence and restoring democratic rule. Now the possibility of a new constitution offers fresh hope that Kenya’s bumpy road back to democracy might get smoother. But as the country lurches toward constitutional reform, the tradition of “winner-take-all” politics — as well as the accompanying fears of “loser-lose-all” outcomes — is proving tough to leave behind. For Kenya, as with too many African countries, democracy is still thwarted by a zero-sum system that encourages bare-knuckle politics as well as […]

Introduction International support is capable of making the difference between the successful defense of democracy and its ignominious defeat. Indeed, the perceived probability of both support for democratically chosen leaders and opposition to their attackers can fundamentally shift the balance in the domestic struggle between them. Nevertheless, although changes to international law and international relations justify a greater international role in preventing and deterring coups and erosions, not all responsibility for protecting democracy should be assigned to the international community. Indeed, the first line of defense should be a democracy’s own domestic initiatives, with the main role of the international […]

In the early hours of June 28, 2009, military personnel arrested Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya at his home in Tegucigalpa. Clad in his nightgown, Zelaya was brought to the airport at gunpoint, where he was put on a plane bound for Costa Rica. His ouster capped months of conflict between Zelaya and nearly every other political actor and institution in Honduras, ranging from the Supreme Court to the country’s highest religious authority to the president’s own Liberal Party. Zelaya’s removal from power became the object of acute controversy and gave way to a complex political battle with hemisphere-wide implications. The […]

Russian officials have recently accused U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan of “conniving with drug producers” and urged the coalition to pursue aggressive aerial eradication operations against Afghanistan’s opium poppy crops. Despite having spent over $1 billion on counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan since 2002, including eradication efforts, the U.S. and the U.K. have failed to curb the illicit drug industry there. Moscow’s tough stance on narcotics stems from its own internal consumption levels, which have steadily reached epidemic proportions. According to 2008 records, up to 21 percent of the world’s production of illicit opiates ended up in Russia, resulting in […]

The most likely source of political and social unrest in the Middle East over the next 20 years is not warfare or military coups — it’s water. Military threats get all the press, but water is the real game-changer. It is no secret that the Middle East is water-starved. Of the 15 most water-poor countries in the world, 10 are in the Middle East. When King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud first brought geologists to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they were there to look for water, not oil. What they found changed the kingdom, and changed the region. Over the […]

Most people look back upon the 20th century as the deadliest in human history, with scholarly estimates suggesting that close to 200 million people died in all the wars, revolutions, genocides and totalitarian purges of those bloody decades. As a result, we regard the entire century as the age of total war, even though we have not experienced great-power war since 1945. Even more telling, state-based war almost completely disappeared as the century drew to a close, leaving us with primarily civil strife, failed states, and the transnational bad actors they both spawn. But instead of celebrating the peaking and […]

It has been a devastating few weeks for the global mining community. In late March, a flood in a coal mine in northern Shanxi province in China resulted in the deaths of more than 30 workers. Then last week, in West Virginia, an explosion at a coal mine killed nearly 30 miners. Both accidents revealed some of the safety hazards associated with mining. Meanwhile, as the United States was coping with its worst mining disaster in years, two nations in Latin America were dealing with mining tragedies of their own. Those tragedies, however, had little to do with the dangerous […]

NEW DELHI — Emerging differences within the Indian government regarding whether to adopt a more flexible approach to climate change negotiationscame to a boil recently, when the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, quit his post. Until now, Saran — who has been leading India’s negotiations at international forums, including Copenhagen — opposed efforts by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to soften India’s line on climate change methodology. Indian media have been highlighting the disagreements between Ramesh and Saran, which center around Ramesh’s attempts to update India’s basic principle of per capita emissions norms to define burden-sharing between […]

After months of speculation over whether Russia and China would come on board for a new round of sanctions against Iran, the parameters of a new United Nations Security Council resolution appear to be taking shape. Conversations between President Barack Obama and his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Dmitry Medvedev and Hu Jintao, at this week’s Nuclear Security Summit seem to have produced a consensus among the “permanent five” Security Council members. Two obstacles remain: the actual crafting of any resolution — and whether the final product will pass muster with the U.S. Congress. Up to now, the Obama administration has […]

The firestorm of controversy battering the Catholic Church shows no sign of dying down, as the institution and its leaders continue to endure scorching new accusations of pedophile priests abusing young children, and of Vatican officials covering up their actions. Amid all the fury, the Vatican made a bold move: In a reversal of a decades-old pronouncement, the church forgave the Beatles for having deemed themselves more popular than Jesus. Reading praise of the Beatles’ music in the church’s official L’Osservatore Romano, one could almost hear the sound of the Vatican fiddling as it burned. Perhaps the piece by Vallini […]

TBILISI, Georgia — Despite disagreeing over whether France should sell four Mistral-classamphibious vessels to Russia, most Western defense analysts seem tobelieve that the deal will not only happen, but is an item of overblownconcern. However, prevailing opinion in Washington and Brussels standsin sharp contrast to Eastern European capitals, where unease over thesale remains strong and is rooted in very different assumptions overMoscow’s intentions. Many in the West simply do not believethe vessels would significantly alter the balance of power in theregion, pointing to the relatively minor combat capability they wouldadd compared to existing capabilities in Russia’s fleet. Proponents andthose indifferent […]

The 16th summit of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) ended in Hanoi last Friday with a pledge to broaden implementation of the bloc’s cooperation pacts over the next five years, a move expected to provide a significant boost to regional economies. As the leaders signed off on the pledge, free trade across much of Southeast Asia was marking its first 100 days. Implemented on Jan. 1, the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) is off to a promising start, although it has also won its fair share of critics in recent months. AFTA’s initial target was to eliminate import […]

The assault on Somalia’s radio stations came from three directions. On April 3, the Islamic armed group Hizbul Islam threatened to shut down FM radio stations in the areas it controls in the country’s south. The group accused the stations of playing music it deemed “un-Islamic.” “You have only 10 days to prepare for new programs to substitute for those evil voices to which you are accustomed,” Hizbul Islam spokesman Moalim Hashi said. Then on April 9, al-Shabab, a rival Islamic group and the major power throughout much of southern Somalia, targeted the BBC’s radio broadcasts. For a decade the […]

Kyrgyzstan will certainly be discussed in various side meetings during today’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. When the issue is raised, the United States must be careful not to engage in any backroom deals over the country’s fate. Such an approach would damage the U.S. position in the region, while at best creating only the illusion of stability in Kyrgyzstan and more generally in Central Asia. Both Russia and the U.S. have a real stake in the outcome of the current political standoff in the Kyrgyz Republic. The U.S. transit center at Manas Airport is the major military transfer point […]

Less than a week after a small, provincial protest snowballed into a national revolution, Kyrgyzstan sits in a holding pattern. While opposition leaders now apparently occupy all the key offices in the capital, Bishkek, the country’s incumbent president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has refused to step down, and is said to be gathering supporters in his native Jalal-abad in the south. After having spoken cordially with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as with Russian diplomats, Roza Otunbayeva, leader of the interim coalition, has assumed an air of legitimacy that will be hard for Bakiyev to displace. Nevertheless, though Bakiyev […]

Today’s Nuclear Security Summit is the largest gathering of world leaders in Washington ever hosted by an American president. Despite the importance of this event, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to skip the meeting. His move highlights the problems the world’s leaders confront in preventing the feared wave of nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East. Until last week, Netanyahu had indicated that he planned to attend the summit in order to bolster efforts to prevent Tehran from using its civilian nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapons capacity. In addition to the formal sessions occurring yesterday and today, […]

In Egypt, political opposition has reached a fever pitch as concerns surrounding the twilight of the Mubarak regime mount. In early March, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Germany, where a team of surgeons removed his failing gall-bladder along with a benign growth. Three weeks later, the president was back on Egyptian soil to resume his recuperation in the coastal city of Sharm-el-Sheik. That the deeply insular leader would announce his poor health was sufficient cause for concern. But if his homecoming ended wild speculation surrounding the president’s condition, Egyptians are now faced with the impending likelihood of life after […]