Obama Affirms Relationship with Peru

U.S. President Barack Obama and Peruvian President Alan Garcia speak to the media after meeting in the Oval Office. The two discussed nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, and the state of democracy in Latin America. Garcia says that Latin America needs to focus on a modern democracy that embraces technology and investment.

After Mexican President Felipe Calderon won a highly controversial election by a razor-thin margin in 2006, he kicked off his presidency by declaring war on his country’s increasingly powerful and brutal drug cartels, deploying tens of thousands of troops across the country. Since Calderon’s much-publicized crackdown began however, the death toll from drug violence in Mexico has exploded, claiming roughly 23,000 lives — including cartel members, innocent civilians, police officers and soldiers — with 4,000 of those deaths coming in the first five months of this year alone. Over the past four years, Ciudad Juárez, a sprawling city of 1.3 […]

Mockus Experiment Too Risky for Colombia

In the midst of the latest Middle East crisis, not a lot of global attention was given to the outcome of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday. The results showed that the pre-election polls were completely wrong. Instead of a neck-and-neck race, Juan Manuel Santos, the heir-apparent to outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, received more than twice as many votes as his vaunted rival, Antanas Mockus, and fell just short of wrapping it up in the first round of voting. For what it’s worth, I never believed Mockus, the philosopher/mathematician, stood a chance. He was an innovative and creative executive as mayor […]

This World Politics Review special report is a compilation of WorldPolitics Review’s top articles on Russian foreign and defense policyfrom November 2009 through May 2010. Below are links to each article, which subscribers can read in full. Subscribers can also download a pdf version of the report. Not a subscriber? Subscribe now, or try our subscription service for free.Russia-Saudi Relations: The Kingdom and the BearBy Saurav JhaNovember 9, 2009 Ingushetia: Russia’s North Caucasus Policy at a Tipping PointBy Valery Dzutsev November 17, 2009 Global Insights: Mistral Talks Reveal Russian Shipbuilding MaladiesBy Richard Weitz December 1, 2009 Global Insights: Russian-Indian Strategic […]

Global Insider: Brazil’s Nuclear Program

After a 25-year hiatus, Brazil is resuming work on its third nuclear reactor. In an e-mail interview, Sean Burges, lecturer with the School of Politics and International Relations at Australian National University, discusses Brazil’s nuclear program. WPR: What is the current state of Brazil’s civil nuclear program, in terms of enrichment capability and IAEA inspections regimes? Sean Burges: Brazil has limited enrichment capacity and is currently pursuing the goal of self-sufficiency to meet the needs of the country’s small nuclear power sector. Brazil is resistant to any sort of IAEA inspection regime on its nuclear activities for three reasons. First, […]

WPR on France 24: The World Last Week

France 24 just posted last Friday’s panel discussion program, The World This Week, which I had the pleasure of participating in. The other panelists were Matthew Saltmarsh of the IHT, Paul Taylor of Reuters and Pierre Haski of Rue89.com. We discussed tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Europe’s ongoing economic woes, Jamaica’s unrest, and the Gulf oil spill. Part one is here. Part two is here. One thing I’dd to why the Gulf spill is not comparable to Katrina. In addition to resonating with the President George W. Bush’s troubled relationship with facts and credibility, Katrina also underlined the lack of […]

Last week, President Barack Obama released his first National Security Strategy. Analysts and observers have focused much of their attention so far on how the new NSS breaks from the one formulated by the Bush administration. By this argument, Obama’s NSS represents a new direction both by “counting more on U.S. allies” than former President George W. Bush did, and by repudiating Bush’s unilateralism. In reality, the document does neither of these things. To be precise, it uses words like “diplomacy” and “allies” at statistically the same rate as Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy and still claims that America “reserve[s] […]

The international crisis resulting from Israel’s interdiction yesterday of a humanitarian aid flotilla heading toward the blockaded Gaza Strip could have several consequences, few of them good for the United States, the Middle Eastern peace process, and many other parties. First, the crisis could disrupt the indirect peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians that only just resumed a few weeks ago, after roughly 17 months of false starts and frustrated expectations. Many observers have noted that the Gaza flotilla confronted the Israeli government with a no-win situation. The same could be said for the choices now facing the Obama White […]

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