U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

WASHINGTON – It remains unclear whether Congress will support the Bush administration’s request for an initial $550 million to help Mexico and other Latin American countries beef up their law enforcement and militaries in the fight against drug cartels and other organized crime. The proposed aid package, known as the “Merida Initiative,” has been hailed by the White House and Mexican President Felipe Calderón as “a new paradigm” of strengthened law enforcement and counternarcotics relations between the United States and Mexico. However, the initiative has no shortage of skeptics here and in Mexico, where, according to one Democratic staffer with […]

This past Sunday, Russians went to the polls to vote in national parliamentary elections. The result was hardly in doubt — the United Russia Party of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin swept to victory. Equally predictable was the reaction of most Western media to this largely foreordained result. We are told that Putin is reviving the Soviet Union and that he has been busy building a cult of personality while crushing all political opposition. More importantly, we are told that Putin is reigniting the Cold War rivalry between Russia and the United States. This is the message that we constantly read […]

Nigeria’s recent decision to affirm the handover of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon belies a Washington theory about Nigeria and American national security. The theory goes like this: Nigeria is on the verge of collapsing into civil war. The poor, marginalized, radicalized Muslim north will rise against the Christian south and a great conflagration will ensue. Twenty percent of Africa’s population will be consumed in the fire, and America’s access to the flow of oil in the Niger Delta will disappear. Official Washington believes that we must prepare now for the inevitable. But mere war is far too simplistic an […]