Q & A Archive

The recent revelation that the Drug Enforcement Administration is operating several militarized commando squads in Latin America signals an apparent U.S. eagerness to begin using covert counternarcotics strategies honed in Afghanistan over the past decade in the Western Hemisphere. The DEA’s so-called FAST team program — Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Teams — was reportedly created during the Bush administration to investigate Taliban-linked drug traffickers in Afghanistan. While their deployment now to Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Belize signals a new development, in some ways it actually represents a return to the program’s historical roots, which can be traced back to […]

A hostage situation at Venezuela’s Tocuyito prison ended last month when authorities agreed to transfer hundreds of prisoners to another facility. In an email interview, Chris Birkbeck, a specialist in criminal justice in Latin America at the University of Salford, discussed South America’s prison systems. WPR: Broadly speaking, what are the major problems facing the prison systems in South America? Chris Birkbeck: The biggest problem is the lack of control over inmates inside each establishment. Internal, often coercive, control is in the hands of prisoners, in some cases with the tacit recognition of the administration, but it is often contested […]

The recent arrival of a Chinese navy hospital ship carrying doctors and medical supplies to treat the needy in Jamaica flew mainly below the radar of mainstream American media. But the People’s Liberation Army’s “Peace Ark” mission highlights the delicate balance China is seeking to strike as it tries to show off its growing global military capability and boost its influence in regions once exclusively dominated by the U.S. military, without triggering suspicion and alarm in Washington and elsewhere. “In some sense this underscores that you can’t put China in just a regional category any longer,” says Jonathan D. Pollack, […]

With Israel, the U.S. and Great Britain ramping up psy-ops against Tehran in the form of leaked strike planning, the IAEA is set to release its latest and most unambiguous report on the Iranian nuclear program to date. According to advanced word, the IAEA report offers new and convincing evidence of Iranian weaponization intentions. It is a mistake to dismiss such intelligence out of hand, as has become the habit in the post-Iraq WMD environment. After all, despite serious doubts at the time, the consensus of serious observers seems to be that the Syrian site attacked by Israel in 2007 […]

Thailand’s worst flood crisis in decades has spawned a political battle now threatening the fragile government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who came to power this summer as the nation’s first female prime minister. Prior to the flooding, Yingluck’s election appeared to represent a long-awaited respite from the paralysis that has defined Thai politics in recent years — a paralysis that often resulted in violent clashes between the “Red Shirt” supporters of Yingluck’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and nationalist “Yellow Shirts” in central Bangkok. However, the natural disaster, and particularly the fight over how best to respond to […]

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou recently said that he would not conduct peace talks with mainland China without first holding a referendum. In an email interview, Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, reviewed the status of peace talks between China and Taiwan. WPR: What is the recent trajectory of cross-Strait relations, in terms of attitudes toward a final peace settlement? Richard Bush: Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and his armies were defeated on the Chinese mainland and retreated to Taiwan, the China-Taiwan relationship has been fraught with a degree […]

After a campaign plagued by corruption allegations and violence — 41 candidates were murdered during recent months — the outcome of Colombia’s municipal elections last weekend paints the picture of a nation polarized between left-leaning pragmatists in urban centers and conservative elites clinging to countryside power. Perhaps most striking was the rise of Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerilla, who was elected mayor of Bogota after running on an outspokenly “anti-corruption” platform. Petro’s victory, which comes on the heels of an intense public-works corruption scandal that landed the Colombian capital’s former mayor, Samuel Moreno, in jail in September, is particularly […]

The recent emergence of former TV presenter and democracy activist Buthaina Kemal as an outspoken female candidate for the Egyptian presidency is triggering discussion among international observers about the status of women in the nation’s political future. According to Valerie M. Hudson, a World Politics Review contributor and political scientist at Brigham Young University in Utah, Kemal’s candidacy is a vital pronouncement that “women do not intend to be kicked to the side of the road in Egyptian politics.” While her chances of winning may be minuscule, the very fact that Kemal is running represents “a push-back against a male […]

The number of pirate attacks off the coasts of Benin and Nigeria has reportedly dropped recently due to joint patrols by the two countries. In an email interview, Martin N. Murphy, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Ansari Africa Center, discussed West African piracy.* WPR: What is the recent history of piracy off West Africa? Martin N. Murphy: Piracy has been a serious problem off Nigeria since the 1970s. Back then it was concentrated around the port of Lagos, where ships often sat at anchor for months waiting to unload. This came to an abrupt end in 1981 when the […]