The Americas Archive

As the World Health Organization agonizes over whether or not to declare the H1N1 flu virus an official pandemic, I can’t help but think of the American national security establishment’s continuing struggle over the definition of threat in a post-9/11 world. In both instances, we see institutions with worldwide responsibilities coming to grips with an increasingly interconnected global landscape. And although that global landscape, according to all the available data, suffers less catastrophe, it nonetheless appears to present far greater potential for such catastrophes to unfold with seemingly uncontrollable consequences. By “less catastrophe,” I mean that in a world of […]

In his comprehensively titled tome, “Diplomacy,” legendary U.S. statesman Henry Kissinger laid out the two competing schools of thought that have guided American foreign policy in its rise to power. The first was realist, embodied by Theodore Roosevelt, based on power and obsessed with the zero-sum game that guides the core of international relations. The second, touted by Woodrow Wilson, was idealist, based on cooperation and unflinching in its belief in the power of ideas. To Kissinger’s consternation, though he believed that realism was the right way through which to view the world, he says that it was actually Wilson’s […]

I’m not the only one who sees a short expiration date on our NATO allies’ commitment to Afghanistan now that the war has been “Americanized.” Here’s Jari Lindholm: I’m no apologist for ISAF ineptitude, but let’s be honest: for eightyears, Europeans have been covering America’s ass in the north. Whathappens when they pull out is anybody’s guess. Make no mistake, though:now that they’ve been handed an excuse on a silver platter, they will leave. Lindholm leaves some room open for the French to stay, and I’d go as far as to say it’s unlikely they’ll leave. There hasn’t really been […]

Yesterday afternoon, the stage was set: President Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a Muslim, had traveled to Cairo to give his long-awaited speech to the Islamic world, in an effort to repair the damage done to America’s image in the region by recent U.S. foreign policy. Judging by U.S. reactions, the speech was a huge success. But will the other half of the equation, the president’s Arab and Muslim target audience, follow the White House’s carefully crafted script? Though it is still too early to say with certainty, the U.S. could be in for a disappointment. To understand more […]

Great Michael Wolff piece (via Laura Rozen) on the Obama administration’s vice-like grip on image control and media management in general. I’ve noticed the same thing in trying to find open source White House photos of the president to accompany WPR articles. There’s almost nothing available outside of the carefully stage-managed “slide shows.” (Does no one else remember that slide shows were once code for boring presentations that primarily interested the person who insisted on subjecting unsuspecting guests to them? Does no one else agree that that has not changed just because they’re now delivered over the internet?) I never […]

Watching President Obama’s speech yesterday was both a moving but also a frankly discomforting experience. The fact that he was speaking in Egypt and said absolutely nothing supportive or reassuring to the Egyptian people who have been suffering for decades under Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial whims and repression suggests Obama may have good manners but is still not willing to say “in public” what he undoubtedly knows in private. If anything Obama’s presence and demeanor in Cairo will likely reinforce Mubarak’s legitimacy and undermine Obama’s message that America now stands for change. What’s new about America’s self-serving support for […]

When Air Force One landed in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula yesterday with President Barack Obama aboard, my mind traveled back to Nov. 4, last year. On the day Obama was elected president of the United States, I was in Amman, Jordan, listening to jaded Arab men declare that nothing would change in the Middle East, no matter who lived in the White House. Fast forward exactly seven months later, and the Arab world is abuzz with excitement. President Obama has traveled to the Middle East to prove my Jordanian interlocutors wrong, and to demonstrate that the relationship between […]

When U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo tomorrow, they may want to focus some attention on the most enduring but unexamined component of the U.S.-Egypt relationship: military cooperation. Over the past 30 years, military cooperation has yielded great benefits for both countries. But that cooperation now shows signs of strain, and a course correction is in order. Operationally, the U.S. enjoys privileged access to Egypt’s air space and waterways. That meant expedited permission for more than 35,000 over-flights and 850 naval transits from 2001 to 2005. Strategically, Egypt has largely supported — or else […]

In April, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort sailed from Virginia with 900 doctors, nurses, engineers and civilian volunteers aboard. Comfort’s mission: to deliver humanitarian aid to seven Latin American countries over a four-month period, “building relations with many countries, and strengthening already-strong bonds,” in the words of mission commander Bob Lineberry, a Navy captain. In the first two months of their tour, Comfort’s staff treated 29,000 patients, including performing more than 500 surgeries. They also helped rebuild hospitals and conducted medical training with local health professionals. Operation Continuing Promise is aimed at reinforcing existing U.S. ties with Antigua, Colombia, […]

Despite being a lifelong camper, a one-time vegetarian and a dedicated, if lazy, supporter of environmental causes, I’ve also always been a GM man. (With the exception of the ’72 Dodge Dart that I owned for the three weeks it took me to find my beloved ’81 Oldsmobile Delta 88, nicknamed “The Penthouse.”) So obviously, the recent news has been tough. Still, I don’t think anything could be more emblematic of the shift in global geopolitics than Hummer going Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Hummer fan. In fact, the only thing I find more ridiculous than a […]

President Barack Obama’s historic address to the Muslim world in Cairo tomorrow offers a prime opportunity to outline a new U.S. vision for democracy and human rights in the region. To accomplish this goal, Obama must firmly reject the notion that safeguarding America’s strategic interests in the Middle East somehow runs counter to the goal of advancing political reform. Instead he must craft a balanced message that recognizes that reform is synonymous with U.S. interests in the region. Unfortunately, if early signs are any indication, the president seems to be striking the wrong balance. The delayed appointments of key democracy […]

Countries of South America’s Southern Cone are experiencing a growing drug scourge among their young people. World Politics Review contributing editor and freelance journalist Guy Taylor reports from Uruguay and Argentina, where health officials cited a 200 percent increase during recent years in the number of young people addicted to the new smoke-able cocaine product known by the street-name “Paco.” Taylor also blogged for WPR while reporting in Argentina in 2007.

I’ve mentioned before that of the European partners, France might be the most resistant to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with Iran. The concern, as far as I can tell, is in part ideological, because I really do believe that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is sincerely convinced of the need to keep Iran from even approaching a nuclear weapons capacity. But more than anything, the concern is one of harmonization. The French have been spearheading the European effort to hold the line since the December 2007 NIE, and if the U.S. entrance into the negotiations were somehow parallel to […]

Following years of frustrating carrot-and-stick diplomacy, the debate over how to solve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program is nearing its end. Neither coercive diplomacy, whether direct or indirect, nor deterrent threats of military attack are likely to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. To the contrary, a world in which Iran is a nuclear power is becoming a growing likelihood, one that by pessimistic forecasts may be upon us by 2012-2013. President Barack Obama’s efforts to engage Iran’s leadership suggest optimism about the possibility of altering Tehran’s behavior peacefully before it crosses the nuclear threshhold. As noted in […]

In its annual State of the World’s Human Rights report released May 28, Amnesty International emphasized the relationship between economic injustice and human rights, and argued that the decreasing focus on rights, both in principle and in practice, highlights the need for a new approach to the issues. In order to truly — and finally — end the cycle of global rights abuse, AI argues, the world must adopt an approach based on multilateral, multi-stakeholder collaborations that end impunity and the enrichment of the few at the expense of many. AI’s Secretary General Irene Khan sought to rouse action in […]

South Korea’s entry last week into the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) in response to a North Korean nuclear weapon test represented a long-sought objective of PSI proponents. For years, the Republic of Korea (ROK) government had delayed joining the program due to fears about how North Korea might respond. It took Pyongyang’s May 25 test detonation of a nuclear device to prompt the South Korean government to commit to membership. The PSI is a voluntary coalition of national governments that agree to collaborate against the illicit transfer of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their means of delivery (which in […]

As an addendum to last week’s post on the difficulties in gauging the intentions of other states, I found myself thinking over the weekend that President Barack Obama’s public diplomacy campaign towards the Muslim world is an illustration of how it is sometimes just as difficult to project one’s own intentions to other states. That difficulty obviously grows out of — and subsequently feeds off of — any divergence between strategic communcation on the one hand, and the reality of national policy as experienced by policy actors and citizens abroad on the other. Not only that, though, some of the […]