Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Mexico is not known for its start-up ventures, whether in legitimate business or in organized crime. What Telmex and Televisa are to the world of legal commerce — unrepentant monopolists or oligopolists, ruthlessly opposed to new players in their respective industries — the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas are to the nation’s underworld. Yet that appears to be changing, at least in the criminal realm. The past 12 months in Mexico have been marked by a more significant upsurge of previously unknown groups than at any point in recent history. Among the new gangs: the Resistance, the New Generation Jalisco […]

The Obama administration’s reaction to the dramatic events in Egypt has inspired many analogies in recent days. Its initial caution and clumsiness, followed by its conviction to “be on the right side of history,” reminded optimists of the Bush administration’s reaction in 1989 to the uprisings in Eastern Europe, for example, and pessimists of the Carter administration’s reaction a decade earlier to Iran’s revolution. The Obama administration’s air of ambivalence, however, evokes a perennial condition of international relations. Accustomed as most of us are to power hierarchies, we often overlook how difficult and complex actual relations can be between big […]

Although even the immediate outcome of the unrest in Egypt remains uncertain, its potential ramifications beyond the country’s borders are worth assessing, considering Egypt’s importance to regional and world politics. Considered an international center of Islamic culture and teaching, Egypt is perhaps the most influential Arab country, with the largest Muslim population in the Middle East and one of the strongest militaries in the Arab world. It has contributed to foreign stability operations, most notably in the First Gulf War, and has important intelligence assets in the world’s various Islamist movements, including reported informants within al-Qaida. Egypt also enjoys considerable […]

Looking down from the hilltops of Bogotá’s southern rim, a sea of shingled rooftops and cinderblock huts stretches toward the horizon. These ever-expanding slums are home to tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Colombians who have fled their homes elsewhere in the country to escape the country’s long-running armed conflict. Here, Lady Carabali, a mother of five, lives in a damp, ramshackle home made from pieces of wood and scrap metal, with no running water or electricity. She was driven from her small farm on the Pacific coast by paramilitary violence more than a decade ago. Each day, […]

One need not venture far into the world of refugee assistance to encounter a maxim whose air of axiomatic truth can be a conversation-stopper, and whose terms, like sacred postulates of the refugee-response system, are rarely unpacked: The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has the refugee-protection mandate. But several issues within that black box are worth illuminating. Namely, what does “refugee protection” mean? What is the nature of the “mandate”? And is it true that UNHCR is its unique possessor? While this might seem like a dry line of inquiry, like so much else these days, […]

One of the most complex and difficult humanitarian problems confronting the international community today is that of protracted refugee situations. These are refugee situations that have moved beyond the emergency phase, but where solutions in the foreseeable future do not exist. Many of the refugees left behind in these situations have to live under terrible conditions, warehoused in camps or stuck in shanty towns, exposed to dangers, and with restrictions placed upon their rights and freedoms. I first became aware of the significance and dimensions of the contemporary problem of prolonged exile in 2001, after a brief visit to the […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on the fall of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s government. Part I examined the domestic factors leading to the government’s collapse. Part II examines the impact of the EU/IMF bailout on Ireland and the European Union. After almost half a year of lurching from crisis to crisis, the government of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen finally fell last week. His fate was effectively sealed at the end of last year by Ireland’s $100 billion bailout by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund, the only question being […]

Footage has emerged of a gang of Muslim men beating to death three members of the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia. The attack has been condemned by rights groups and the government, but some say a 3-year-old law banning Ahmadis from spreading their faith incited the violence.

While there remains a ton of things that can go wrong with the unfolding revolution in Egypt, there’s a strong case to be made that America, despite its low popular standing there, has been handed a gift horse whose mouth, as the axiom puts it, is best left unexamined. Because most of America’s concerns center on security issues, I’ll frame the argument for why this is the case in tactical, operational and strategic terms, and then finish on the most relevant grand strategic note — namely, the new Axis of Good that may result. Concerning President Hosni Mubarak’s conditional offer […]

Over the course of the two-week-old protests in Egypt, the American media has been consumed with debate over how the U.S. government should react. An emerging consensus across the political spectrum argues that President Barack Obama should support the protesters’ demand that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resign immediately. This view was prominently expressed in an open letter to Obama by dozens of well-known scholars of Middle East politics, who advised him to essentially abandon 30 years of strong support for the Mubarak regime by throwing in America’s lot with the protest movement. Such a step would not clearly serve American […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on the fall of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s government. Part I examines the domestic factors leading to the government’s collapse. Part II will examine the impact of the EU/IMF bailout on Ireland and the European Union. DUBLIN — After months of lurching from crisis to crisis, the government of Ireland’s lame-duck Prime Minister Brian Cowen finally came to an end Tuesday, with new elections to be held Feb. 25. Whatever happens Cowen will not be returning as prime minister — he will not contest the election after having been […]

According to official media, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has said his government will lift the national state of emergency imposed for the past 19 years in the very near future.

There’s no way to predict what will unfold in Egypt in the days and weeks ahead. Will protests continue until President Hosni Mubarak is overthrown? Will the military and security services initiate a full-scale crackdown in the name of restoring law and order? What will instability in the largest country in the Arab world portend for the Middle East as a whole? The U.S. national security establishment, of necessity, is in reactive mode right now as it assesses these questions. However, to the extent that Washington can shape the situation, what are some of the lessons from other “regime changes” […]

Not since the 1960s has the idea of a common Arab identity seemed more real. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolts were quickly defined as Arab uprisings; sure enough, these historic events have already reverberated in Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia. But Tunisia and Egypt can also be described as African countries, and not just because of their geographic location. The nations of North Africa have been imagined as African by some of the region’s political and intellectual luminaries. Even Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s leader from 1956 to 1970 and an eloquent paladin of pan-Arabism, invoked the African element […]

Who cares about the United Nations Security Council? Over the past year, major powers have certainly been taking the council increasingly seriously. U.N. experts who argue that the council’s credibility rests on its appeal to big players in the global system were comforted by Germany, India and South Africa’s successful campaigns for two-year seats on the council last year. But some poor, weak governments have decided to defy it, with a series of African leaders, in particular, showing contempt for the council’s authority. In January 2010, President Idriss Déby of Chad insisted that the U.N. withdraw peacekeepers charged with protecting […]

The Egyptian army has started arresting anti-government protesters in the center of Cairo. It marks a change of approach by the military, which previously wasn’t intervening in clashes between supporters of President Mubarak and anti-government demonstrators. Five people are reported to have been killed in a morning gunfight in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. That follows a day of heavy violence in which hundreds were injured. The country’s braced for more trouble as it enters its tenth day of unrest.

The uprising in Egypt has framed a dilemma in the starkest of terms: Does the West want true democracy in the Middle East, even if it brings the possibility of some rather frightening scenarios? A democratic Egypt could blossom into an open, pluralistic society, with equality for all religions and between men and women, continuing good relations with the West and enduring peace with Israel. But it could also follow a path similar to Iran’s after the overthrow of the shah, with the popular movement hijacked by a well-organized militant religious movement, leading to decades of oppression and strife — […]