Domestic Politics Archive

Nick Clegg’s boyish good looks and silver tongue have been compared to former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair. But the more appropriate comparison is with U.S. President Barack Obama. For the unexpected surge in popularity of the neophyte leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats is proving to be transformative. British politics, it seems, will never be the same again. Until the first televised leaders’ debate in the current electoral season, Clegg’s party was unable to break through the 20 percent barrier in the polls. Within hours of that first debate, the Lib Dems had catapulted to more than 30 percent. And […]

The last few months have witnessed a resurgence in expert chatter on the possible demise of Kim Jong Il’s rule in North Korea. Growing evidence of regime frailty has focused attention on potential scenarios of endgame dynamics, most of which feature some combination of Kim striking out against the West, and China being forced to step in to prevent the dreaded refugee flow north. But while the nuclear issue remains a driver of Western policy toward North Korea, China’s current focus seems less ideological than predatory. Like a mafia don “busting out” a victimized business partner, Beijing now seems mainly […]

On May 9, voters in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) take to the polls to decide what in the past has typically been a quiet, local parliamentary election with little impact on the national agenda. This year, however, is different. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her center-right Christian Democratic Union-Free Democratic Party coalition government are in danger of losing the Bundestag, the upper house of the German government, in the elections. Plagued by infighting and the inability to agree on a comprehensive agenda, the coalition has stumbled through a number of domestic missteps, from an unpopular tax […]

Voters in Colombia are reluctantly preparing for life without the man they view as the nation’s savior. On May 30, they will go to the polls to elect a successor to President Alvaro Uribe, the leader they chose eight years ago in a bold break with tradition. It was a decision that paid off spectacularly for a country that stood perched on the brink of catastrophe. But Uribe’s success in tackling the nation’s problems and his resulting sky-high approval ratings created a dangerous challenge for the country’s democracy. Colombians pondered the prospect of granting their president an unprecedented third term. […]

The tragedy in Bangkok on Saturday, April 10, marked what is for now the low point of the ongoing political crisis that has plagued Thailand since mid-2005. The deadliest political violence the country has seen in almost 20 years claimed a total of 24 lives, including 18 protesters, 5 soldiers and a Japanese news cameraman, and injured more than 800 people. On the surface, the incident appeared to be a clash between the soldiers and the so-called “Red Shirt” protesters. In reality, however, Thailand’s political struggle is much more complex and involves multiple players, each with their own specific, and […]

On March 30, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak unveiled a new growth strategy designed to transform Malaysia into a high-income economy by 2020. But while the New Economic Model (NEM) contains much-needed reforms to boost Malaysia’s economy and political image in the face of dwindling foreign investment and rising competition, severe doubts remain about whether Najib can actually implement them. The NEM pledges to boost Malaysia’s per capita annual income from the present $7,000 to $15,000 through a raft of measures, including enhancing the role of the private sector, improving worker skills and productivity, and reducing the dependence on foreign […]

On April 16, a Chadian helicopter with at least three people aboard crashed in Adre, a town abutting the border with Sudan in the desert region shared by the two countries. One person died in the crash, while two were injured. The incident was an unwelcome reminder of five years of conflict between the two impoverished nations — even as that conflict finally shows signs of winding down. On April 17, the two countries re-opened their official border crossings. “Sudanese taxis are going back and forth and so are the people,” a government official in Adre told AFP. Until a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Last month’s terrorist bombings of the Moscow Metro along with other indicators of surging Islamic-inspired violence in southern Russia suggest that the Kremlin has yet to overcome longstanding Muslim hostility to Moscow’s control of the North Caucasus. Although the Russian federal government adopted a new strategy a year ago that might eventually overcome some persistent problems, the Moscow massacre risks triggering another wave of escalating reciprocal violence. Throughout the past year, the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia have experienced increasing terrorist violence (.pdf). In Chechnya, for example, the number of violent deaths nearly doubled in 2009 compared […]

The state of emergency declared in Bangkok late on Wednesday night has done little if anything to calm Thailand’s escalating political tensions. The Emergency Decree issued by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva gives security forces extended powers to clear thousands of anti-government demonstrators from the heart of Bangkok’s luxury retail district. The protesters had been camped out there, at a cost of up to $430 million in losses to the country’s economy. Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the decree was issued to “return normalcy” as well as “safety and security” to Bangkok. But it has so far failed to accomplish those […]

HONG KONG — China’s “One Country, Two Systems,” approach to the governance of Hong Kong has always made for an uneasy partnership. Now, as the People’s Republic continues its ongoing battle with Google over that company’s decision to reroute users to its uncensored Hong Kong site, Hong Kongers have reignited their fight for universal suffrage, once again testing the relationship. However, this time around, there may be more at stake for Beijing than just some disgruntled neighbors to the south. John Delury, associate director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, says that there are two different ways in which […]

Five years ago, in an essay in National Interest, Paul Saunders and I attempted to address the question of what victory in Iraq would look like. We concluded that success would include depriving al-Qaida of a base, closing Iraq’s borders to foreign fighters, and the emergence of a central government capable of ensuring some degree of stability, without repressive methods or too close an alignment with Iran. “Americans and others will recognize victory,” we wrote, “if we have managed to break the back of al-Qaida in Iraq and left in place an Iraqi government committed and able to prevent the […]

The Obama administration’s break with the policy of isolating the world’s worst regimes has just suffered another defeat. Efforts to alter the behavior of Iran and Syria through engagement have gone nowhere. Now, it seems clear that the change in policy has failed, as well, in Burma, the Asian country also known as Myanmar. On Monday, the National League for Democracy, Burma’s main opposition party, announced that it will not participate in an obviously rigged election that the ruling military has been preparing to stage this year. The elections would have marked a milestone in what the world has long […]