Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Eight policemen are killed and 15 injured in a suicide bomb attack in Russia’s restive Ingushetia, hours after a shooting in a mosque in neighboring Dagestan. Sunita Rappai reports. World News Videos by NewsLook

The Obama administration took office in 2009 with high hopes that it would be able to break the diplomatic stalemate over Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Now, as the Obama team finishes its fourth summer with no resolution to the nuclear imbroglio in sight, it is a good time to take stock of its efforts. Obama’s national security team wanted to break out of what it saw as a binary choice between having to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or using force to end the Iranian nuclear program. The possibility of a third way beckoned: duplicating the terms of […]

An ongoing standoff in Kenya’s Coast province between the central government and the secessionist Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) could make the region a flashpoint for next year’s elections. Formed in 1999 to address the region’s marginalization, the MRC was designated by the government as an organized criminal group in 2010. Claiming this action unconstitutional, the MRC filed a case with the High Court in Mombasa, which last month ruled in the MRC’s favor. Nevertheless, the MRC has maintained its threats to boycott and otherwise disrupt Kenya’s March 2013 presidential and parliamentary elections if its demands are not met. The polls […]

In the space of a few short days, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has pulled off a lightning-swift realignment of the country’s political map. On Aug. 12, Morsi assumed powers as vast as those of his predecessor, the deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak. And, incredibly, he did it without immediately triggering either street protests or a countermove by Egypt’s erstwhile all-powerful military. The curiously quiet reaction — a nonreaction, really — from the military suggests the soft coup did not happen in a vacuum: Morsi probably laid the groundwork within some sectors of the armed forces. But if that may explain the […]

After a visit to Beijing earlier this week by Chang Song Taek, a high-ranking North Korean official seen as a key influence on his nephew and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, China and North Korea announced that they had signed a number of agreements to enhance economic cooperation. According to the BBC, the two countries signed deals on the development of two special economic zones as well as on electricity supply and agricultural cooperation. For Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the deals reflect the fact that China […]

Stratfor Africa analyst Mark Schroeder discusses how the upcoming democratic elections in Angola will be dominated by the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Video News by NewsLook

In early July, Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), assembled Syrian Kurdish leaders in Irbil, Iraq, to broker a deal to unite Kurdish groups against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. By the end of the conference, the Supreme Kurdish National Council was born to represent Kurds in a post-Bashar al-Assad Syria. Turkey, which did not participate in the conference, initially welcomed the Kurdish unity: With the fall of Assad as the group’s primary goal, one that Turkey shares, unified Kurdish opposition would only hasten the end of the Syrian regime. However, Turkey’s perception of […]

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited France last month in an effort to improve the two countries’ strained bilateral relationship. In an email interview, Dorothée Schmid, head of the Turkey program at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), discussed France-Turkey relations. WPR: What explains the deterioration of Franco-Turkish relations over the past several years? Dorothée Schmid: Three main issues became contentious between France and Turkey over the past decade. In chronological order, the recognition of the Armenian genocide came first: The French Parliament passed a bill in 2001 officially calling the events of 1915 a genocide, triggering an immediate […]

Japan-South Korea relations appear to have reached their nadir with the unprecedented visit of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to the disputed Dokdo islets last week. Lee’s visit represents a dramatic escalation in the territorial dispute with Japan, which also claims sovereignty over the atoll, known in Japan as Takeshima. The visit marks the first time a South Korean head of state has made an official visit, a redline that had not been breached up until this point in order to avoid provoking a diplomatic crisis with Japan. Lee toured the atoll’s largest island, met with coast guard officials stationed […]

The murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese Communist Party leader Bo Xilai, came to a conclusion last week. According to reports, Gu, a prominent Chinese lawyer, confessed to the murder of Neil Heywood, a longtime family friend and business associate. François Godement, a professor of political science at Sciences Po in Paris and a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the case, which was over in less than seven hours, reflects how controlled the Chinese justice system continues to be. “Very often in China you are judged by a particular court not […]

Editor’s note: Ulrike Guérot is on a two-week break. Guest columnist Richard Gowan will be writing the Continentalist while she is gone. The Syrian civil war is becoming simultaneously more brutal and more confusing. As the battle for Aleppo has dragged on and diplomatic efforts to forge a peace deal have been derailed, it has been hard to assess whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime are close to collapse or able to sustain a protracted war. Yet there is a growing sense that, if and when Assad falls, some sort of international peacekeeping force will likely be needed […]

For 20 years, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been the undisputed ruler of Ethiopia. Zenawi was the leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which in concert with its sister rebel group from Eritrea toppled the Moscow-aligned dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. He led his country in the 1998-2000 war against his former Eritrean allies and oversaw multiple Ethiopian military interventions into neighboring Somalia. An active and outspoken leader, Zenawi is also credited with a pragmatic approach to economic development despite his Marxist roots, resulting in an average of 9 percent GDP growth over the past 10 years. […]

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi ordered several high-ranking military officials to retire on Sunday. World News Videos by NewsLook

Another version of the “Gratitude Doctrine” is emerging in U.S. foreign policy circles, this time with regard to Syria. As Liz Sly of the Washington Post recently reported, the United States is increasingly viewed by Syria’s rebels “with suspicion and resentment for its failure to offer little more than verbal encouragement to the revolutionaries.” This has led some U.S. observers to argue that if Washington does not do more to help the Syrian opposition in its fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it runs the risk that any new government that comes to power in Damascus after Assad’s fall will […]

Recent high-level visits by Russian officials to Islamabad and an upcoming trip by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first-ever by a Russian head of state since Pakistan’s independence, are highlighting Russia’s efforts to bolster strategic ties with the South Asian country. While looking to secure its near abroad in advance of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2014, Russia is also moving to deepen its geo-economic ties with South Asia as a whole, with Pakistan serving as a gateway for energy trade to the entire subcontinent. For Pakistan, Russia can not only help the civilian government in Islamabad […]

Several European Union countries recently asked the European Commission to consider sanctions against Iceland for allegedly exceeding its fishing quota for mackerel. In an email interview, Eirikur Bergmann, an associate professor of political science at Bifrost University in Iceland, discussed the mackerel dispute between the EU and Iceland. WPR: What is the background of the current fishing dispute between Iceland and the European Union? Eirikur Bergmann: Backed by France, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, the European Union is considering sanctions against Iceland and the Faroe Islands for overfishing of mackerel, a pelagic fish stock in the North Atlantic. Mackerel has an […]

Nearly two weeks of continuous rain have caused floods to sweep through Manila as well as nearby areas, killing at least 23 people so far and affecting nearly 2 million. The deadly floods in the Philippine capital are the latest in a series of flooding-related disasters to strike the region. Last month, the heaviest rainfall to hit Beijing, China, in six decades forced the evacuation of 650,000 people from their homes, while three months of heavy rains in Bangkok, Thailand, last year claimed at least 500 lives. According to Edward Blakely, honorary professor of urban policy at the University of […]