Belfast police have been attacked by rioters throwing flaming petrol bombs and rocks ahead of the July 12 Orange Day parade. The parade commemorating the Battle of the Boyne traditionally sees Protestants participating in hundreds of Marches across Northern Ireland.
Ever since the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia has painstakingly cultivated its image as an emerging-market investor’s dream and a lonely bastion of Western-style modernity in the South Caucasus. But that image faces a credibility problem in light of Tbilisi’s continuing lack of political progress toward a truly liberal democracy. By allowing Georgia’s democratic development to remain at a standstill, President Mikheil Saakashvili risks damaging the country’s legitimacy, both domestically and with its partners in the West. When Georgian opposition leader and former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze and her supporters took to Tbilisi’s streets in May, the protestors’ rhetoric was rife […]
With a territory as large as France, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s 193rd independent country on July 9. But while the South Sudanese now have an independent state with vast natural resources, they have yet to build a nation out of some 50 different tribes with diverse languages, beliefs and other key characteristics. Many obstacles will impede progress toward this end, and the outcome depends primarily on the South Sudanese themselves. But the international community can make important contributions to help realize this goal. We in the United States know these challenges well. When Americans declared independence […]
Here lies the space shuttle. She kept the U.S. human spaceflight program alive after the euphoria of the Apollo missions. She led the way to reusable space flight. She provided jobs for armies of engineers and technicians. She also made human spaceflight seem routine — and in the end, that’s what killed her. But as with the retirement of the Apollo program — which was accompanied by less hand-wringing and fewer tears shed than that of the shuttle — it is time, not to mourn the shuttle’s passing, but to support the innovation that NASA and, more importantly, American industry […]
The sense of ideological triumphalism with which China recently celebrated the 90th anniversary of Communist Party rule echoed a flood of recent books and analyses in the West that have readily embraced that same sentiment. Nevertheless, there is a growing mountain of evidence that suggests China’s “unprecedented” economic accomplishments are far less impressive than popularly imagined. And with the region’s “demographic dividend” already shifting from China to both India and Southeast Asia, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Beijing — and the world — is just one financial crisis away from finding the “superiority” of state capitalism revealed […]
Since the 1980s, the Kurdish separatist group Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), labeled as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has been one of the main threats to Turkey’s domestic security. The PKK lost momentum after the group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in 1999. But since 2003, the turmoil resulting from military operations in Iraq has facilitated the creation of a new safe haven for PKK bases in the Qandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the past few years, clashes between Turkish security forces and PKK militants have been interrupted only by sporadic and […]
DENPASAR, Indonesia — The appointment by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of his own brother-in-law as the new chief of the army has highlighted a trend that sees Indonesia’s political leaders keen to maintain personal control of the security apparatus, while remaining averse to pushing for civilian democratic control. Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo, the younger brother of first lady Ani Yudhoyono, was sworn in on June 30. Now 56, Pramono graduated at the top of his class at the Indonesian military academy in 1980, and his background includes commanding the Siliwangi Military District in West Java as well as stints […]
Nearly five months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, thousands of Egyptians converged on Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to urge the nation’s new military rulers to speed up democratic reforms.
Thailand is set to have its first female Prime Minister in Yingluck Shinawatra, younger sister of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Her victory as leader of the opposition Pheu Thai party has raised hopes that women can play a larger role in the country’s male-dominated politics.
When the generals in Myanmar orchestrated their pseudo-democratic pageant last November, the exercise was labeled a “sham” by most of the world. Some in the West, however, speculated that despite the deeply flawed elections, the long-ruling junta might still redeem itself and allow real democratic progress in the wake of the polls. So far, however, the optimists are being proven spectacularly wrong. In the months since the vote, the country has marched in the direction of civil war and intensified oppression rather than toward democratic reconciliation and real reform. The election may, in fact, have made matters worse. Myanmar’s new […]
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is known for a ubiquitous and theatrical presence in his nation’s media. So his sudden extended absence for the past month initially created something of a vacuum. As the news broke that he was in a Cuban hospital under treatment for cancer, however, that vacuum was quickly filled by speculation over who might take charge of the nation’s decade-old socialist revolution should Chávez turn out to be gravely ill. According to Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, the sudden lack of leadership that became evident in the […]
The Republican Party’s increasing divisions on foreign policy have now moved beyond Tea Party-inspired financial grumbling to find their way into the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Could the party’s 2012 nomination turn on foreign policy? If so, it would echo the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, in which foreign policy played an unusually strong role: Barack Obama is president of the United States today in large part because he opposed the Iraq War in 2003, compared to Hillary Clinton, who had been in favor of the war. However, supporters of a noninterventionist turn in the GOP are likely to […]
In Senegal, popular anger over chronic electricity shortages and the autocratic behavior of octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade have produced several waves of protest since last summer. The same anger flared again on June 23, when protesters took to the streets to denounce Wade’s plans to amend the constitution and lower the threshold necessary to win in the first round of next February’s presidential election. Shaken, Wade backed down from what was widely perceived as a power grab. The protesters’ triumph does not mark the end of the conflict, however: Wade still intends to run for a third term, and protests […]
Several soldiers from Yemen’s elite Republican Guard, meant to be the most loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, say they have defected to the opposition.
President Hugo Chavez has told the Venezuelan people he will keep going in his fight against cancer.
The Communist Party of China is celebrating its 90th birthday with parties, ceremonies and a cinema propaganda campaign.
Amateur video shows Syrian protesters coming under attack by what appears to be plainclothes security forces. And while the Syrian army continues its tank-led assault in the region, the situation along the border with Turkey remains calm after Syrian troops shot dead 11 villagers.