Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Last week, President Barack Obama released his first National Security Strategy. Analysts and observers have focused much of their attention so far on how the new NSS breaks from the one formulated by the Bush administration. By this argument, Obama’s NSS represents a new direction both by “counting more on U.S. allies” than former President George W. Bush did, and by repudiating Bush’s unilateralism. In reality, the document does neither of these things. To be precise, it uses words like “diplomacy” and “allies” at statistically the same rate as Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy and still claims that America “reserve[s] […]

The international crisis resulting from Israel’s interdiction yesterday of a humanitarian aid flotilla heading toward the blockaded Gaza Strip could have several consequences, few of them good for the United States, the Middle Eastern peace process, and many other parties. First, the crisis could disrupt the indirect peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians that only just resumed a few weeks ago, after roughly 17 months of false starts and frustrated expectations. Many observers have noted that the Gaza flotilla confronted the Israeli government with a no-win situation. The same could be said for the choices now facing the Obama White […]

Iraq is moving toward a resolution of the messy political jockeying that followed its March 7 parliamentary elections. But despite some surprises, and the torturous process itself, the likely outcome remains a continuation of the status quo ante. The previous government was dominated by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the so-called Quartet Coalition, formed in 2007 after the collapse of Maliki’s initial coalition. It included Maliki’s own Shiite Islamist Dawa Party, rival Shiite Islamist party the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the two main Kurdish parties. Sunnis and secular Shiites were in the opposition. Shiite and Kurd leaders […]

The development of Asian regionalism has been slow, particularly in responding to regional conflicts and the development of a free-trade area. But that should not obscure key advances in regional cooperation. In an article published in the Winter 1993-94 issue of International Security, Aaron Friedberg, a professor at Princeton University, contrasted Europe's "thick alphabet soup" of institutions with Asia's "thin gruel." Some two decades later, no one would now describe Asia's institutional landscape as a thin gruel. It, too, is an alphabet soup of sorts, with names like ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), APT […]

East Asia in a ‘World of Regions’ East Asia has achieved one of the most profound economic transformations in recorded history. In 1960, the region accounted for only 4 percent of world gross domestic product, but by the 1990s, it had become one of three core economic regions — along with Europe and North America — that together dominated the global economy. East Asia has become the new workshop of the world, the location of fast-emerging markets, and a new financial power in the making. The region now accounts for slightly more than a quarter of world trade, production, new […]

In the 20 years since the end of the Cold War, discussions of Asia’s future regional politics have primarily focused on the prospects for greater political integration. Particular attention has been paid to whether Asia will or should develop stronger regional multilateral institutions and, if so, what form they might take. The reasons for this focus are clear. For some time, countries throughout Asia have enjoyed both remarkable economic growth and substantial political evolution at the national level, and there has been equally impressive progress toward regional integration in the economic sphere. But progress towards regional political integration has lagged […]