Diplomacy & Politics Archive

European decision-makers are accustomed to appearing weak. Their collective economic, political and military weight has plummeted in recent years. But they like to think that they retain moral authority. Europe’s governments claim to be virtuous on a wide range of issues. The United Kingdom and the Nordic countries are committed to international aid. Germany is standing up for personal privacy in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. France has shrugged off accusations of neocolonialism to intervene in benighted ex-colonies such as the Central African Republic (CAR). Europe may not be a great power, but it wants to do the […]

The death in October of Zambian President Michael Sata has brought internal rivalries to a boiling point not only in his ruling Patriotic Front (PF), but also in the main opposition parties. The infighting, which has already seen some political heavyweights switching parties in order to satisfy their ambitions, complicates efforts to predict the outcome of Zambia’s presidential election on Jan. 20. Amid all the mud-slinging and legal challenges, there has so far been little time for policy discussion in Africa’s second-largest copper producer. Instead, voters are witnessing an unedifying spectacle of name-calling, scheming and internecine squabbling. Sata’s long battle […]

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi celebrated the accomplishments of his few, tumultuous months in office. A recent oil-sharing deal between the central government and Iraq’s Kurds, along with purges of corrupt officers from an army routed by militants of the so-called Islamic State (IS) last summer, have brought Abadi some good press recently. Meanwhile, the fight against IS goes on, with Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announcing yesterday that U.S.-led airstrikes had killed three senior IS leaders in Iraq in recent weeks. Abadi, who last […]

Following the 9/11 attacks, U.S. national security strategy focused with laser-like intensity on militant organizations that supported transnational terrorism, particularly al-Qaida. While it was never proven that al-Qaida’s sanctuary in Afghanistan was essential for the attacks, the connection between foreign sanctuary and terrorism became so deeply etched in the American psyche that eradicating militant sanctuaries, both real and theoretical, became an inextricable part of stopping transnational terrorism. Thus began what became known as the Global War on Terrorism. As the United States and its allies pummeled al-Qaida in the ensuing years, support for transnational terrorism shifted from that organization’s core […]

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s recent remarks about the prevalence of corruption in some powerful Iranian institutions suggest that his relations with the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are entering a new and potentially tense phase. On Dec. 7, addressing a conference on bureaucratic efficiency and anti-corruption policies, Rouhani argued that when a single public organization possesses guns, newspapers, websites and power, it is unlikely to remain free of corruption. While he did not name any specific organization, many observers have interpreted his comments as an implicit reference to and criticism of the IRGC. Conservative media outlets affiliated with the Revolutionary […]

The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir’s phased voting process for local elections continued over the weekend. In an email interview, Sten Widmalm, professor at Uppsala University in Sweden and author of “Kashmir in Comparative Perspective,” discussed politics in Kashmir. WPR: What are the major issues driving Jammu and Kashmir’s elections, and what is at stake in terms of local and national politics? Sten Widmalm: The election campaigns focus intensely on the failures of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (NC) party, which currently has the most seats in the state assembly, and the Indian National Congress, which was in […]

On Dec. 20, Mexico will reach its cutoff for the approval of legislation related to President Enrique Pena Nieto’s sweeping energy reforms. Yet while the focus is on Mexico’s oil and gas sector, this deadline is likely to come and go without any serious debate on the future of renewable energy. With its abundance of wind, solar and geothermal resources, the renewables industry should thrive in Mexico. Indeed, many hoped Pena Nieto’s reforms would catalyze it. Instead, Mexico risks missing an opportunity to make good on its commitment to a clean energy future and to tackling and adapting to climate […]

In the short time since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May, he has revolutionized his country’s foreign relations. Modi has defied conventional wisdom, upended national traditions and launched a peripatetic campaign of rebuilding India’s ties to other nations. The hallmark of India’s foreign policy under Modi is the pursuit of tangible, preferably signed results. Its motivating objective is fomenting investment and economic growth. Ideological concerns have been relegated far down the priority list. Modi’s international relations early in his term are reminiscent of Turkey’s old “Zero Problems” formula from a few years ago, a philosophy that collapsed […]

“A nation on the verge of ceding its sovereignty to a neo-fascist dictator, getting in bed with Vladimir Putin,” Sen. John McCain called it, addressing the United States Senate earlier this month. McCain was talking about a NATO ally, a European Union member state and an enthusiastic member both of President George W. Bush’s Coalition of the Willing in Iraq and the international force in Afghanistan: Hungary. What has gone wrong? Most of Hungary’s growing band of international critics lay the blame squarely at the door of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. A former liberal opponent of communism, Orban now stands […]

The center-right opposition coalition Alliance Lepep won a landslide victory in Mauritius’ general election earlier this month. In an email interview, Roukaya Kasenally, director of programs and knowledge management at the African Media Initiative, discussed Mauritian politics. WPR: What were the major issues driving the recent election campaign, and what explains the outcome? Roukaya Kasenally: This general election was very much monopolized by personality politics, where both coalitions emphasized the faults and failings of the key contending leaders—former Primer Minister Paul Berenger of the Militant Mauritian Movement (MMM), outgoing Labour Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam and former President Anerood Jugnauth of […]

The dramatic fall in global energy prices over the past several months provides the United States with a window of opportunity to push new solutions to several pressing domestic and foreign policy challenges—if Washington is focused and prepared to act quickly. I proposed one such solution several weeks ago: a reverse-windfall tax to set a “price floor” on domestic energy consumption. Doing so would take advantage of falling prices at the pump to raise funds to sustain the infrastructure that has been constructed over the past decade in the North American nonconventional energy fields, without damaging the U.S. economic recovery. […]

Last week, the French Senate voted to recognize Palestine as a state, following a similar vote by the French National Assembly the week before. With the symbolic measure, which only recommends that the French government recognize Palestine, the French lawmakers join their counterparts in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, all of whom passed similar nonbinding resolutions in recent weeks. Sweden has gone even further, with the government officially recognizing Palestine, a move which caused Israel to withdraw its ambassador. The recent groundswell of support in Europe for a Palestinian state comes as European relations with Israel are at […]

Young people and youthful energy propelled the Arab uprisings that began in 2010. And while the cohesion and impact of vaguely defined “youth” movements have been overstated, they remain the most important potential source of change—the Arab world’s best hope. The small vanguard that drove the original uprisings is growing more organized and more ideologically sophisticated even as, for the time being, it has lost political ground. Egypt has always set regional trends in political thought. Its Tahrir Square uprising raised expectations for democratic transitions throughout the region, although the other Arab revolts brought wildly divergent results, especially for youth. […]

On Dec. 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin became the latest suitor to court Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi on the latter’s home territory. He follows Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and precedes U.S. President Barack Obama, who will travel to India next month for the country’s Republic Day celebrations. Unlike some Indian leaders, Modi does not have any ideological attachment to Russia. However, while New Delhi has ended its Cold War-era alignment with Moscow, India and Russia still share many overlapping interests. India is counting on Moscow to help secure New Delhi’s full membership in […]

Zimbabwe has been a de facto one-party state since the mid-1980s, despite the formal trappings of a multiparty system and a series of fraudulent elections. Real politics, in terms of decision-making and genuine contests for power, is inevitably confined within the ruling party, ZANU-PF. The sole exception to this was the government of the national unity period between 2009 and 2013, although even then, the hegemony of ZANU-PF and President Robert Mugabe remained largely intact despite convincing electoral defeats in 2008. However, because the party is in thrall to Mugabe—and given his frequent assertions of what amounts to a divine […]

International crisis management does not evolve in a linear or rational fashion. It develops in fits and starts, almost always in response to specific shocks. Just as the Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica massacre reshaped United Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s, forcing the U.N. to professionalize its management systems and start thinking systematically about protecting civilians, 9/11 led NATO to shift from regional stabilization in the Balkans to long-range expeditionary warfare in Afghanistan. Had U.N. or NATO officials known at the time that, by adapting to these events, they were heading for the quagmires of Darfur and Helmand respectively, they might […]

After months of wrangling with the Obama administration over its release, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 500-page executive summary of its voluminous report on CIA torture practices against suspected terrorists is a searing document that excoriates the CIA for engaging in brutal “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the agency’s euphemism for torture. Not surprisingly, the report has been roundly criticized as either factually wrong or partisan by leaders in President George W. Bush’s administration, under which the torturing took place, as well as by the CIA’s senior management team and their retired counterparts from the Bush years. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the […]