Q & A Archive

Turkey’s deepening ties with China are worth paying attention to regardless of the academic reasoning used to justify them. But I thought Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s formulation was worth passing on. Referring to Francis Fukuyama’s famous “end of history” as a framework for understanding the end of the Cold War, Davutoglu instead referred to the Cold War and the colonial period that preceded it as historical anomalies, with Turkey’s foreign policy orientation now reflecting the ways in which history is undergoing a “normalization.” I’ve seen this same anomaly framework applied by French Gen. Vincent Desportes to Cold War approaches to […]

Back in February, in a series of posts written in the immediate aftermath of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty coming into effect, I argued that institutional power struggles would have as much, if not more impact on the shape of the post-Lisbon union than the personalities chosen to fill the president and foreign minister positions. In particular, I highlighted the EU Parliament’s enhanced oversight power under the treaty, and identified as a potential flashpoint the privacy vs. security trade-offs raised by many of the U.S.-EU counterterrorism agreements previously negotiated by the EU Commission. We already saw that play out over the […]

In the aftermath of a trilateral German-French-Russian heads of state meeting, John Vinocur (or a headline writer at the Herald Tribune) wonders whether the U.S. is losing Europe to Russia. There are a few problems with this way of addressing this issue, not least of which is the fact that Russia is in no way capable of providing the same kind of partnership to Europe that the U.S. does. It also confuses an effort to harmonize relations with an alignment, and ignores the point of such a harmonization, which is to mitigate the significant power that Russia already exercises within […]

The U.K. defense review is now available (.pdf), and to make a long story short, London — with a great deal of help from Washington — broke its military and is now looking at about a decade of shore leave. There are some parallels with France’s Defense White Paper from two years ago, with the major differences being that the French review took place before the pain of the financial crisis took hold, and without needing to absorb the toll of the Iraq War. But this is clearly a cautionary tale. The U.K. cuts now bring the British military’s force-projection […]

One of the pitfalls of the kind of quick analysis that goes into blog posts is that it’s possible, and sometimes even necessary, to click that “publish” button before an argument is fully formed or developed. In my case, when that happens, what’s often missing are the intermediate thought processes that lead from whatever triggers a post to its takeaway. In reading back over it, I think this post on Asian currency cooperation from yesterday is a good example of what I’m talking about. The Ulrich Volz article that triggered the post essentially argued that singling out the yuan exchange […]

Writing at the East Asia Forum, Ulrich Volz argues that instead of pressuring China to allow the yuan to appreciate, we should be encouraging a regional approach to East Asian currency exchange rates. The problem with leaning on any one currency with regard to the dollar, but in isolation to the others, is that it threatens the exchange-rate stability upon which the increasingly specialized intra-regional chain of production depends. A coordinated regional approach, by contrast, would stabilize intra-regional networks independently of the dollar, thereby allowing for greater flexibility of the whole vis à vis external markets. In other words, the […]

The EU makes for an easy target these days when it comes to being considered a strategic actor in global affairs. Many analysts, myself included, have a tendency to explain that by pointing to the union’s lack of security bona fides. But there’s more to it than just the question of how many divisions Europe has, to paraphrase Stalin, or of who to call when you want to call Europe, to quote Kissinger. EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy himself put it best when he observed, only half-jokingly, that the EU has plenty of strategic partnerships — now all it […]

Because of budgetary belt-tightening on both sides of the Channel, it’s become increasingly common to hear about the logic and necessity of defense cooperation between France and Britain. The fact that this has moved beyond the realm of wild speculation and is indeed considered imminent by most serious observers is a testament to the sea change that’s occurred, primarily in British defense thinking in a very short time. Consider that just last spring, when a U.K. Defense Ministry green paper even suggested the need for greater bilateral cooperation, it made headlines. Nevertheless, wild speculation has persisted about that cooperation, which […]

I’m presently putting together an upcoming feature issue on culture and international relations, of which one article will focus on culture as an instrument, and object, of national power — essentially a discussion of certain elements of soft power. So this article in Der Spiegel about how 1980s-era nightclubs catering to U.S. military personnel stationed in West Berlin and elsewhere in West Germany impacted West German culture — in this case, popular music — leaped out at me. It echoes an article I read several years ago about the way in which American GIs made a real cultural impact in […]

Just after posting this item on the implications of this year’s UNSC configuration, I read Michel Real’s contribution to the IFRI yearbook, “La Fin du Monde Unique.” Real’s article examines the way in which Russia and China have used the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to arrive at a modus vivendi in Central Asia, and what leaped out at me was his reference to the SCO as an “instrument of mutual neutralization.” That’s what I was driving at with the previous post, when I referred to both the absence of a unifying South-South agenda, and the possibility that a reactive anti-Westernism might […]

Recently, Brazil unilaterally expanded the offshore area in which drilling for crude oil and prospecting for other natural resources will require government approval. In an e-mail interview, Tulio Scovazzi, a professor of International Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca, explains the legality of Brazil’s offshore sovereignty claim. WPR: What is the basis for this claim, and what are the main factors driving it? Tulio Scovazzi: With this claim, Brazil reserves its right to examine requests for the authorization of scientific research activities carried out on the Brazilian continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast. The question is whether […]

I think it’s premature to compare China’s assurances that it will buy Greek government-issued bonds when they return to the market to the Marshall Plan, as Véronique Salz-Lozac’h does. But I agree that the Chinese commitment to Greece is very significant, for two reasons. First, it represents a bridgehead for China to develop closer bilateral ties on a win-win basis with EU member states. Given the tenor of EU-China relations at the moment, as well as the size advantage that China sacrifices when dealing with the bloc as a whole, that works to China’s benefit. Keep in mind, too, that […]

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defense Minister A.K. Antony in New Delhi last month while Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi visited Poland around the same time to meet with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. In an e-mail interview, Patryk Kugiel, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, explains the context for recent developments in Poland-South Asia relations. WPR: What have Poland’s ties with Asia in general and South Asia in particular been historically? Patryk Kugiel: Poland’s first links with South Asia date back to the 16th century, but significant […]

Ajai Shukla builds a strong case for why an immediate American withdrawal from Afghanistan would serve India’s interests, despite concerns in New Delhi to the contrary. The case rests on three major arguments. First, the vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal would splinter the insurgent factions, and set them at odds not only with each other but also with their Pakistani handlers. Second, the epicenter of terrorist safe havens is no longer Afghanistan, but Pakistan, and a U.S. withdrawal would free Washington’s hands to target them by removing its dependence on Pakistani supply routes for the war effort. And finally, […]

According to Sourabh Gupta, we’ve all been a bit quick to label China the neighborhood bully when it comes to the recent standoff over a Chinese trawler captain that Japan detained for fishing in coastal waters of the disputed Senkaku Island chain. The reason? The two countries already have in place coastal fisheries agreements that explicitly and wisely decouple fisheries disputes from any larger territorial disputes, for the express purpose of preventing them from triggering the kind of diplomatic incident that ultimately took place. And those agreements clearly give legal jurisdiction over any infractions off of the Senkaku Islands to […]

Citing a Der Spiegel interview with Condoleezza Rice on the first Bush administration’s insistence that a reunified Germany remain a full NATO member, Greg Scoblete makes a good point about the enduring rationale of the alliance: Whatever other rationales are offered up for why NATO remains relevant, it’s central, animating purpose is to keep America immersed in the affairs of Europe. Seen in this light, Europe’s collective decision to continue to sacrifice defense budgets on the altar of austerity is a feature, not a bug. The logic at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, in both Washington […]