North America Archive

This is a toss-off from the McCain post I’m working up, but I couldn’t resist. Here’s John McCain, running down the list of the world’s prominent democracies: Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. Notice anyone missing? As in, a pretty large democracy, about as close to the territorial United States as you can get? What can Canada do to catch a […]

One of the most complex issues related to the “Global War on Terror” that has confronted policy makers, military commanders, legal advisors, and even federal courts has been determining where the “battlefield” in this war starts and ends. This is not surprising. The characterization of the struggle against international terrorism as a “war” by the United States had the effect of forcing the proverbial square peg into the round hole. The law that had evolved up to Sept. 11, 2001 to regulate “war” had simply not addressed a military struggle between the armed forces of a nation-state and operatives of […]

TORRÉON, Mexico — The Merida Initiative is a billion-dollar anti-drug aid package that only a kindergarten teacher could love: The results are not important, just the mere idea that the United States and Mexico are cooperating makes it worthwhile. The focus on the two countries overcoming their prickly past and learning to play nice ignores the fact that their interests in the war on drugs are not the same. What solves Mexican problems won’t necessarily work on American ones, and what works for Washington could make things a lot worse south of the Rio Grande. The increased commitment and cooperation […]

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — On rare occasions, the wasteland that is North American television surprises. During a recent dreary, winter morning, an arts channel broadcast a Senegalese movie that depicted life in the lesser corners of Dakar. A female vendor took her abused friend and daughter into her care, and then she fell in love with a corrupt but amiable policeman. Not much happened, and, if it did, this writer missed it because of a scheduled flight out of town. Nevertheless, the Senegalese movie provided an antidote to the conventional portrayal of Africa in a spate of popular Western movies. […]

MIAMI — Cuban President Raúl Castro was conspicuously quiet during the recent tensions between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador in the wake of Colombian troops’ crossing into Ecuador to kill a leftist rebel leader. Other than a phone call to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Castro made no attempt to sound off against Bogotá’s decision to violate Ecuador’s sovereignty. Havana’s silence was surprising to some, considering the communist island’s historical ties with Colombia’s leading rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. FARC leader Raúl Reyes was killed during the March 1 assault on his jungle camp in Ecuador, about […]

The harsh words and hard feelings that chilled transatlantic relations in January, when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the mistake of stating the obvious about NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, will not be on the agenda during NATO’s Bucharest Summit the first week of April. But the source of Gates’ frustration that, in his words, most of the allies “are not trained in counterinsurgency” or doing enough in Afghanistan, should dominate the agenda — and so should the solution. In many ways, NATO’s necessary but nettlesome mission in Afghanistan is a microcosm of its post-Cold War shortcomings: Every member recognizes […]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is in trouble. The rising cost of high-tech jets and the people to fly and maintain them threatens to put the service “out of business,” in the words of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. He said last fall that he was worried the military couldn’t buy enough planes, fast enough, to replace 30-year-old F-15s and 50-year-old tankers before they started falling out of the sky. Wynne’s statement proved eerily prescient: In November an Air Guard F-15 manufactured in 1980 disintegrated in mid-air, nearly killing the pilot and resulting in a prolonged grounding for most […]

On March 6, President George W. Bush delivered a major speech on homeland security to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The President thanked DHS employees for their hard work and recounted some of the department’s recent achievements. Bush also warned against complacency: “We must also remember that the danger to our country has not passed. Since the attacks of 9/11, the terrorists have tried to strike our homeland again and again.” In an op-ed published on the same day, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, the former and current DHS secretary, also claimed that during […]

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Despite a number of significant steps to increase security along the U.S.-Mexican border in recent years, violence along the frontier is growing as Mexican drug cartels increase their involvement in human and drug smuggling into the United States. Meanwhile, a Bush administration initiative to provide significant law enforcement aid to Mexico is stalled in Congress amid old questions about the best way to fight the drug war. Since 2001, the Bush administration has increased the number of border patrol agents from 9,000 to 15,000, with another 3,000 to be added by the time Bush leaves office. […]

The line of those waiting patiently for the demise of Fidel Castro was a long one. For nearly 50 years the queue included foreign exiles, eager businessmen, American politicians, and numerous Cuban dissidents. Yet when the moment finally arrived late last month, it wasn’t nearly the historic, providential occasion most had envisioned. Rather than go out with a bang — which very nearly happened at the height of the Cold War — Castro chose instead to slip quietly from view, the world’s most infamous, and recently bedridden, autocrat leaving his followers with nothing but the vague plea that he wished […]

The formal acceptance of the new U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter Bertholf, slated for last week, was supposed to be good news for the nation’s troubled fifth military service. Instead, the 5,000-ton ship — the largest and potentially most powerful vessel in Coast Guard history — has become another chapter in the mounting scandal surrounding the service’s $25-billion Deepwater modernization program. Deepwater, launched in 2002, aims to build new ships and airplanes and connect them all with a secure, electronic command-and-control network using common components. In recent years, the 50,000-strong Coast Guard has been buffeted by a rapidly aging […]

A quick word on the EADS tanker contract that’s getting so much blog attention. (Kevin here, Art here, Danger Room here and here.) Some mention was made of EADS’ promise to build the aircraft in Alabama as a way to placate Congress. It’s important, though, to point out that as early as last December, EADS was floating suggestions of outsourcing operations to Alabama as a way of counteracting the collapse of the dollar to third-world currency status correction in the dollar’s exchange value. So while the move might make for some good Stateside p.r., it makes for some even better […]