Domestic Politics Archive

With the U.S. expanding the role of CIA operatives and possibly private security contractors in Mexico’s drug war, there were reports this week that both countries are intent on circumventing Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating inside the country. That Mexican President Felipe Calderón would openly embrace such a strategy is “not entirely surprising,” says Hal Brands, a historian at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, who notes that Mexican laws have long left the country in an awkward position when it comes to seeking security assistance from its northern neighbor. “The problem is that […]

Last Thursday will likely be remembered as a low point for Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. Police clashed with students during an unauthorized protest, inviting unflattering, if exaggerated, comparisons to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The same day, the Center for Public Studies — known by its Spanish acronym, CEP — released a poll finding that Piñera’s popularity had dropped to just 26 percent, the lowest level of any Chilean president since the return to democracy in 1990. The two events were hardly coincidental. Like his predecessor, former President Michelle Bachelet, who faced student protests of similar magnitude in 2006, […]

LIMA, Peru — During Peru’s recent presidential election campaign, a chorus of politicians and pundits warned that a victory by leftist candidate Ollanta Humala would put the country on the same track as Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez. But since winning the second-round run-off on June 5 and being sworn in as Peru’s new president July 28, Humala has surprised critics and supporters alike by the moderation of his rhetoric and quality of his cabinet. Humala, a 49-year-old retired lieutenant colonel, is the first leftist to be elected president of Peru in two decades, but he did so by promising […]

This month’s debt-ceiling deal in Washington did little to quell the growing chorus of complaints around the world concerning America’s continued inability to live within its means. As those complaints invariably translate into corporate hedging, government self-defense strategies, credit rating drops — Standard and Poor’s is already in the bag — and market short-selling, the U.S. will most assuredly be made to feel the world’s mounting angst. This is both right and good, even as it is unlikely to change our path anytime soon: Until some internal political rebalancing occurs, America will invariably stick to its current cluster of painfully […]

As massive protests shook Iran in June 2009 following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s widely contested re-election, Arab leaders around the region watched the unfolding events with a mix of wariness and satisfaction. Unnerved by the Obama administration’s overtures of rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, many had a keen sense that Iran would emerge from the crisis weakened and more isolated internationally. They were largely correct. Some two years later, it is the Iranians who are closely following the slew of uprisings — and violent crackdowns — that have rocked the Arab world. While initially reticent to weigh in, Tehran could not […]

While Washington lawmakers congratulate themselves for avoiding a default on U.S. government obligations by raising the debt ceiling at the proverbial 11th hour, and the halls of the Capitol ring with praise that the “system worked as intended,” the view from outside the Beltway is not so sanguine. Certainly, the U.S. has not fallen into the morass that bedeviled 18th-century Poland, where with a single negative vote, any member of the assembly could force its dissolution — and the nullification of all legislation passed during that session. But the inability of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the president […]

The new Middle East is very much a work in progress, but there is little question that the latest developments in that pivotal part of the world are making the stirring picture of freedom, democracy and secularism that so many had envisioned in the early days of the Arab Spring look more like a glassy mirage masking anti-liberal, anti-Western sentiment. As spring has given way to a boiling summer, most of the region’s revolutions have either stalled or moved in a direction that bears little resemblance to what progressive forces had initially hoped for. Not only have Arab liberals experienced […]

BEIJING — China’s social contract revolves around the Communist Party delivering the benefits of modernization to the country’s citizenry, and not, as Western observers might hope, around the transition to multi-party democracy. Consequently, technocratic failure presents the greatest risk to the party’s domestic credibility, something emphatically highlighted by the ongoing wave of public anger over the Wenzhou high-speed rail crash. Moreover, unlike recent high-profile political cases, the Wenzhou crash might very well turn out to be the moment China’s emerging public sphere came of age. Beyond loss of life, perhaps the most profound source of public anger regarding the crash […]

Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, has appeared in a Cairo court to face trial on charges of conspiring to kill anti-government protesters and corruption.

Weeks after the Malaysian government cracked down on pro-reform protesters gathered under the banner of the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, or Bersih, uncertainty is still thick in Kuala Lumpur. Bersih, which literally means “clean” in Malay, estimates that 50,000 people showed up at the July 9 rally to protest in favor of electoral reforms, clean politics and anti-corruption measures as stated in an 8-point manifesto. The police, who fired tear gas and water cannons at the demonstrators, claim that only a few thousand were present. In the end, some 1,700 people were arrested, while several were injured, and […]

The new debt ceiling deal between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans included one major Republican concession: deep cuts in defense. The first set of defense budget cuts will amount to $350 billion over 10 years, but the deal includes a triggering mechanism that may tack on another $500 billion or so in the same time period. After a decade of war and more than a decade of sustained defense budget growth, this would represent a major shift in how the United States spends money on its military. In one sense, the decision to cut the defense budget makes a […]

Shelling by Syrian tanks in the city of Hama has seen scores of anti-government protesters killed.

Friday’s mass resignation by Turkey’s top general, Isik Kosaner, and the commanders of the country’s army, navy and air force was a clear sign that the long-running battle between the military and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been decisively won by the government and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the neutralization of the Turkish military as a political force will also bring with it greater pressure on the increasingly powerful AKP, which must now demonstrate that it can continue Turkey’s democratization process — particularly the drafting of a new, civilian-minded constitution — in an inclusive manner. […]

The Western news media has made much over the recent decision by Egypt’s transitional government to ban foreign election monitors from the country’s upcoming parliamentary polls. The more important story, however, has been buried: The transitional regime, which includes no women, has scrapped quotas for women in the national legislature, while retaining them for farmers and workers. In the previous legislature, Egypt’s mandatory quota system allowed women to hold approximately 13 percent of the seats — 64 out of 445. Now, the only protection for women will apply to the half of the new parliament’s seats that will be elected […]