Domestic Politics Archive

NAIROBI, Kenya — Throughout his time in Kenya, U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger has been known for his expansive and delighted presence at any number of cultural events and festivals, especially those that featured dancing, and his fondness for vanilla lattes from the local Starbucks equivalent, Java House, just a stone’s throw from his office. However, he has also been known for his blunt assessment of the country’s government and political elites, particularly in the aftermath of the country’s 2007 post-election violence. Ranneberger’s departure from Nairobi has been expected for months. Now, the very Kenyan politicians Ranneberger has long targeted are […]

What happens when a country without an army discovers that soldiers from a neighboring state have marched into its territory and raised their own flag? That’s exactly what the government of Costa Rica, which has no military forces, charges Nicaragua has done, accusing its neighbor of invading its land and destroying its forests. Nicaragua, not surprisingly, sees things differently. If the events unfolding today in Central America had taken place a quarter of a century ago, there is a good chance that the sound of gunfire would now be ringing out amid the angry charges and countercharges. After all, during […]

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW, is getting its third shot at ratification after lying dormant in U.S. Senate subcommittees for the past 30 years. With the Obama administration’s support and a Democratic majority in the Senate, the timing for what’s known as the Women’s Treaty could be right. But even in the best of circumstances, CEDAW will still be up against tough odds. “It’s well known world-wide there’s a tremendous amount of obstructionism going on in the U.S., and today, regrettably, this convention is not at the top of the list […]

U.S. President Barack Obama made a splash in India by announcing that Washington will back New Delhi’s bid for a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council. It was a major policy shift that India has long clamored for and that the U.S. has long been reluctant to offer. As such, it warmed the hearts of Indian policymakers who have often viewed American support for the Security Council bid as a litmus test of the burgeoning U.S.-India partnership. But in backing India’s claim, Obama also raised some uncomfortable issues for Indian policymakers, making clear that Washington expects a […]

The global financial crisis was a true system perturbation, revealing the gap between widely perceived risk and actual underlying risk in the world’s increasingly integrated financial system. As with any such vertical shock, the resulting horizontal waves continue to be felt long after the initial blow. When gaps in capabilities and rule-sets were subsequently discovered, the world’s major economies effected changes, like shifting economic oversight from the G-7 to the expanded G-20 and updating the Basel banking accord. In a world without true global government, these surges of great-power cooperation constitute a critical reassurance function, letting us know that an […]

After more than 26 years of autocratic rule, a tumultuous and at times brutally violent post-coup era, and a fraught electoral period, the people of Guinea were entitled to some time to celebrate the fact that a civilian had finally been elected president. But in an indication of the deep-seated animosity, fears and mistrust that have led the bauxite-rich West African nation to the brink of disaster time and time again, the Nov. 15 announcement that veteran opposition leader Alpha Condé had won the second-round run-off election was accompanied by ethnic riots, mass arrests and killings at the hand of […]

It is very likely that come the end of November, after a busy month traveling to Asia and Europe, President Barack Obama will have emerged with few decisive victories to burnish his image after the “shellacking” he took in the midterm elections. Instead, Obama and his team will have to adjust to some hard realities. Though the new Congress will not be seated until January 2011, we are already seeing changes in the political climate in Washington that will test the administration’s ability to show, both to Americans and to other governments, that the executive branch is still in the […]

BEIJING — The 16th Asian Games, now underway in Guangzhou, China, are the latest in a long line of massive, intensively promoted “mega-events” organized by the Chinese state to showcase national development and achievement. These mega-events have few proven grassroots benefits, however, and are no replacement for the substantive, fundamental reforms the Chinese government itself admits are necessary to modernize the country. Moreover, this obsession with mega-events may be damaging to long-term development, and ultimately risks widening the gulf between the experiences of ordinary Chinese and the flag-waving, mixed-market utopia portrayed in state propaganda. Since May 2008, eight distinct events […]

Writing this week in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria argued that the United States needs to adopt a “hedge” strategy with regard to China, nudging the PRC toward assuming a cooperative, responsible role in the international order, while at the same time preparing for the possibility of an aggressive China bent on regional domination. Zakaria’s argument echoed language in both the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (.pdf) and the 2010 QDR (.pdf), which took ambiguous stances on the future U.S.-China relationship. Those documents similarly suggested that China faced a choice over whether to become a constructive member of the international community, […]

On Nov. 12, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the formation of a new coalition government in Baghdad, calling it “a milestone in the emergence of the new Iraq and . . . a testament to the determination of the Iraqi people to build their own democracy . . . ” President Barack Obama offered a similar greeting from Seoul, where he was attending the G-20 economic summit. The new Iraqi government, should it hold, will be welcomed throughout the country as well as by its foreign partners. Its members’ immediate challenge will be to finalize the details of their […]

JUBA, Sudan — Almost a month ago, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Southern Sudan’s ruling party, convened all of the South’s registered political parties for a conference designed to promote Southern unity ahead of the region’s looming self-determination vote, scheduled for Jan. 9. The vast majority of Southern Sudanese favor secession, and politicians as well as everyday citizens seem to agree on the need for consensus during the South’s “Final Walk to Freedom,” as a billboard in the Southern capital of Juba calls the countdown to the referendum. However, despite the conference’s goal, persistent rifts among the South’s political […]

It is unfortunate that President Barack Obama’s visit to Asia as well as the G-20 summit in Seoul took place in the aftermath of what he himself termed a “shellacking” in the midterm elections — an electoral rebuke delivered in part because Americans believe that the Democrats have not delivered on their promises of economic security. The trip could have been used to project the message that the United States is prepared to take the lead in the global community of nations. As Secretary of State Clinton put it back in September, “[T]he United States can, must and will lead […]

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was sent to the Senate for consideration in May 2010, but its outlook is far from clear. To be ratified, the treaty mustachievetwo-thirds majorityapproval. But some treaty provisions, viewed by certain senators as restricting U.S. missile defense objectives, were already an obstacle to ratification six months ago. Even in its current configuration, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has demanded elimination of the treaty provisions related to missile defense and certain non-nuclear systems. Given Republican gains in the Senate following the midterm elections, these provisions will face even greater opposition come January. Removing […]

For all their inflamed partisan passions and heated rhetoric, the 2010 midterm elections were conducted in a virtual foreign policy vacuum. In stark contrast to every election since 2002, national security played almost no role in either the Republican or Democratic national campaigns, with both parties preferring to argue about domestic issues such as the economy, unemployment, and government spending. The Republicans won soundly, taking control of the House of Representatives, and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate. But the domestic focus of this election means the new Republican representatives and senators will come to power with a fundamentally […]

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Barack Obama again sounded the theme of bipartisan cooperation, speaking of the need to find “common ground” and calling on both Democrats and Republicans to unite around solving the country’s pressing challenges. In theory, bipartisanship is a golden rule when it comes to foreign policy, where politics is supposed to stop at the water’s edge. That notion was first articulated by a Republican, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who at the outset of the Cold War, under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman, argued that America’s position in the world would be weakened […]

On the same day that voters in the United States went to the polls to throw a punch into the gut of the political establishment, some 5,000 miles away, police in Greece had their hands full with a series of bombs mailed to foreign embassies. Greek investigators say the bombs, 11 of them in all, were probably the work of militant activists who, in their own violent way and to a much greater degree, also aimed to overturn the political and economic order. In recent months, angry efforts to take on the system have gained steam throughout the developed world […]

To trace the deterioration of Côte d’Ivoire from 2002, when a civil war pitted north against south, through Oct. 31, 2010, when ballots were cast in a presidential election five years overdue, one only needs to look at the dance trends that came and went during that time in the nightclubs, living rooms and village squares around the nation. First there was 2002’s “Coupé-Décalé,” which roughly translates to “Cut and Run.” Then in 2004, the theme was “Abidjan Est Gâté” (“Abidjan Is Ruined”), a lament about the fate of the economic capital, Abidjan. In 2006, people flapped and squawked their […]