Editor’s note: Catherine Cheney is reporting on German policymaking this week as part of the German-American Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Capital Program, which is funded by the German Foreign Office. BERLIN — Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany announced an expensive and accelerated departure away from nuclear technology and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar. The latest step in that transition came yesterday, when the German parliament passed legislation to help prevent blackouts as the country’s reliance on renewables grows. Experts told Trend Lines that Fukushima confirmed Germans’ worries about nuclear energy, forcing the government to rapidly […]

BEIJING — After much fanfare and stagecraft, China’s leadership transition, the most prolonged and pored-over in more than 30 years, ultimately ended with a distinct sense of anticlimax. The seven men who will rule China are, as reported by the South China Morning Post two weeks before the event, largely older, conservative cadres. Their identical suits and coiffures, as well as their stiff demeanor amid the stifling Stalinist décor, underscored the apparent dislocation between them and the society they have been anointed to lead. This is a group unlikely to implement the kind of accelerated reforms to China’s politics, economy […]

Editor’s note: Catherine Cheney is reporting on German policymaking this week as part of the German-American Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Capital Program, which is funded by the German Foreign Office. BERLIN — After talks lasting more than 10 hours Tuesday, eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement on a bailout deal for the heavily indebted Greek economy this week, agreeing to cut Athens’ debts by $51 billion in return for austerity measures. Other steps to reduce the Greek debt to 124 percent of its gross domestic product by 2020 include cutting the interest rates on loans to the country and helping it […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is battling an angry middle class, disgruntled unions and the country’s biggest media group. But despite growing social unrest and her own falling popularity ratings, the defiant Kirchner has vowed not to diverge from her left-wing model. Hundreds of thousands of Argentines protested across the country on Nov. 8 against what they view as Kirchner’s creeping authoritarianism. The mass demonstration, dubbed 8N, was followed by the nation’s first general strike in more than a decade on Nov. 20. Media conglomerate Clarín, meanwhile, is refusing to adhere to an anti-monopoly law […]

The leaders of the Pacific Alliance, comprised of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, held a summit meeting earlier this month to consider membership applications from Panama and Costa Rica and to ratify observer status in the trade group for four other countries. In an email interview, Gian Luca Gardini, a lecturer in international relations and Latin American politics at the University of Bath, discussed the Pacific Alliance’s trajectory. WPR: What are the main priorities for the Pacific Alliance in terms of trade and integration, and how successful has it been so far? Gian Luca Gardini: The Pacific Alliance has three […]

When Air Force One touched down at Yangon’s Mingaladon Airport on Nov. 19, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Myanmar. Though the visit only lasted six hours and was bookended by longer stops in Thailand and Cambodia, it was critical not only for maintaining Myanmar’s momentum toward reform but also for solidifying its place in the U.S. regional strategy in Asia. Despite the symbolism, the Obama administration insisted that the president’s visit was not intended as a premature “victory lap” to celebrate Myanmar’s reforms, as critics claimed it risked being perceived, but only to sustain a […]

Turkmenistan announced earlier this month that it would begin production on its Galkynysh gas field, the world’s second-biggest, next year. In an email interview, Luca Anceschi, a lecturer at La Trobe University and the author of “Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy: Positive Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Turkmen Regime,” discussed Turkmenistan’s energy sector. WPR: What is the state of Turkmenistan’s energy sector in terms of outputs, estimated reserves and infrastructure? Luca Anceschi: Natural gas represents the core of the Turkmenistani energy sector. At the end of 2011, Turkmenistani gas reserves were estimated at approximately 8.4 trillion cubic meters, or 11.5 percent […]

China’s restriction of global access to its deposits of rare earth elements starting in 2010 changed the status of these materials in the global economy, creating new diplomatic alliances across Asia and increasing the importance of mining in trade agreements. A series of trade agreements in Central and Southeast Asia, announced over the past month, reveal the ways manufacturers and mining conglomerates are coping with potential shortages two years after China’s rare earth consolidation. Nevertheless, difficulties inherent to extraction and processing mean that delays will hamper access to new sources of rare earth supplies even when supported by strong investments. […]

Czech Prime Minister Czech Petr Necas announced plans earlier this month to significantly increase Czech nuclear power production by building new reactors at existing nuclear plants. In an email interview, Andrej Nosko, a doctoral student at Central European University, discussed the Czech energy sector. WPR: What is the breakdown of Czech energy consumption, in terms of fuel types and sources? Andrej Nosko: The majority of Czech final energy consumption is comprised of domestic solid fuels (12 percent), imported petroleum and products (26 percent), gases (26 percent) and electricity (19 percent). Electricity is generated mostly by coal-powered plants, which rely heavily […]

In the early 1970s, demographers began to spot a new pattern of human behavior that they had never seen before. In 1970, when Sweden, Finland and Denmark conducted their annual tallies of births and deaths for the previous year, the numbers suggested that young adults were having so few children that they would not succeed in replacing their generation. This finding contradicted all reigning theories of human population. Until then, demographers, as well as thinking people in general, had always believed that human beings would inevitably produce more than enough children to sustain the population — at least until plague, […]

Last week saw the largest general strikes to date against austerity policies in Southern Europe. In Portugal, Spain and Greece, but also in Belgium, public services were shut down for a whole day, with hospitals and airports closed, and street traffic almost nonexistent. Public mobilization was most impressive in Athens, Barcelona and Madrid, but a few cities in France also saw public demonstrations, especially of young people, against both cuts in social welfare and retirement benefits and tax increases. Without a doubt, the past three years of crisis and economic retraction has produced awful social distortions in Southern Europe, and […]

Nigeria is a diplomatic force within West Africa, a major participant in continental African politics and an important international actor. As the world’s seventh-most-populous country, its 14th-largest oil producer and home to Africa’s fifth-largest military, Nigeria possesses tremendous resources. Yet Nigeria’s internal security challenges and political dysfunction constrain its role on the regional, continental and world stages. Cyclical violence undermines the rule of law and entrenches intercommunal enmities. Pervasive corruption drains funding from services and infrastructure and saps public confidence in government. Policy implementation often proceeds haphazardly and generates backlash. Finally, “do-or-die” electoral politics, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo characterized […]

While Japan has backpedaled on its initial post-Fukushima plan to phase out nuclear energy entirely by 2040, it remains on the path to wean itself off atomic power in direct response to last year’s nuclear disaster. With public anti-nuclear fervor showing little sign of abating since March 2011, policymakers continue to be under attack for not moving aggressively enough to shut down reactors more quickly and permanently. Yet even the gradual phase-out of nuclear power could be fatal to Japan’s economic as well as political future, as the country grapples with regaining its foothold in the global economy. One major […]

A rare earth plant that is a joint venture between Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. and Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazatomprom opened in Kazakhstan last week. In an email interview, Timur Dadabaev, an expert on Central Asia at Tsukuba University in Japan, discussed Japanese relations with Central Asia. WPR: What is the recent history of Japan’s diplomatic and trade relations with Central Asia? Timur Dadabaev: Japanese engagement in Central Asia has evolved from former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1990s-era Eurasian diplomacy toward the formation of the current Central Asia Plus Japan (CAJ) initiative. Hashimoto’s policy of engagement was continued by his successor, Keizo […]

At the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership reshuffle currently taking place in Beijing, outgoing party General Secretary and Chinese President Hu Jintao warned party cadres that the CCP’s very survival depended on its ability to rein in corruption. But on the party’s “core interest” of Taiwan, Hu displayed noticeably less urgency. Hu’s approach to Taiwan policy, which has combined opposition to independence with an outreach to all sectors of the island’s civil society, led to spectacularly improved ties between the former arch enemies. In his address to the party congress last week, Hu reiterated calls for peaceful unification, military confidence […]

If the U.S. presidential election had only been about the economy, Barack Obama would not have been re-elected. The U.S. federal government runs a $16 trillion deficit, a historical peak of sovereign debt whose only precedent dates back to World War II. And with 23 million Americans unemployed, the unemployment rate has not decreased dramatically since the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, with regard to the policy issues raised by the crisis itself, there has been little follow through on the numerous decisions taken by the G-20 to better contain and control financial markets. To the contrary, financial […]

On Tuesday, a Chinese court sentenced four members of a Myanmar drug gang to death for hijacking two Chinese cargo boats and kidnapping and killing 13 Chinese crewmembers on the Mekong River last year. The defendants, including two other gang members who received lesser sentences, were charged with “intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and ship hijacking,” as reported by the Associated Press. Richard P. Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the court decision raises more questions than it answers, especially about the nine Thai soldiers who were also accused of involvement in the attack […]

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