I again had the pleasure last Friday of appearing on France 24’s panel discussion week-in-review program, The World This Week. The other panelists were Tom Redubrun of the IHT, Stefan de Vries of RTL, and Laura Dagg of Toute l’Europe. Topics included the Iraqi elections, the Greek debt crisis, and U.S.-Turkey relations in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide bill. Part one can be found here. Part two can be found here.
As the push for a new round of sanctions against Iran falters, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the Obama administration’s game plan on Iran policy was long on tactics and short on strategy. We’ve heard a bit about how U.N sanctions are up against a “bad UNSC,” which currently includes Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon as non-permanent members. But that should come as no surprise, and the same goes for those three countries’ predictable resistance to getting vocally on board for stiff sanctions. Now comes word that the administration is trying to carve out an exemption for China in unilateral U.S. […]
Turkey’s decision to recall its ambassador in Washington for discussions following yesterday’s passage of the Armenian Genocide bill by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is understandably getting quite a bit of attention. But in what is likely to be the overlooked counterbalance to that decision, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said today that Ankara remained determined to normalize relations with Armenia, although he acknowledged that parliamentary ratification of recently signed protocols was not guaranteed. The recall of the ambassador signals Turkey’s willingness to flex its diplomatic muscles, which the Obama administration currently has need of in addressing Iran’s nuclear […]
The Nobel Women’s Initiative and the Women’s League for Burma organized the quasi-legal International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma this week, to raise awareness of how that country’s military regime uses systematic violence against women to maintain its grip on power. In addition to the unprecedented event, the group visited the United Nations to push for legal accountability for the country’s ruling junta. Campaigners want to see the military rulers brought before the International Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity. “Your searing testimonies of unimaginable brutalities, including sexual violence, break the silence on behalf of […]
In EU news, the turf wars over the formation of the EU’s External Affairs Service don’t show any sign of abating. British Foreign Minister David Miliband has now been drawn into the fray, due to a letter he co-signed urging Catherine Ashton to beware the European Commission’s power grab. The letter’s tone has also been construed as further evidence of widespread disappointment with Ashton’s performance to date. Meanwhile, in addition to member states facing off against the commission, the EU Parliament has now expressed its desire for greater involvement in the EAS’ formation and orientation. None of this strikes me […]
This Leila Fadel article about tensions among Iraq’s Kurds highlights how our contingency planning in Iraq takes Kurdish solidarity and stability for granted. In fact, both are pretty recent developments, and, counterintuitively, could be undermined by further stabilization of Iraq’s national political landscape. For all its stability, Iraq’s Kurdish region has made little progress in terms of democratic governance or rule of law. So as stability becomes more nationally widespread, and therefore less locally urgent, and as the Kurds begin to pursue their interests within the context of Iraq’s national politics, as opposed to in opposition to Baghdad, internal faultlines […]
In answer to an inquiry from a reader, my take on the Greece crisis is that the politics vs. economics dilemma is pretty thorny for everyone involved. (See Nicolas Nagle’s WPR briefing today for a great background on that.) But the stakes are too high to let Greece or the euro fail, and so eventually, everyone is going to have to bite at least part of the bullet to seal a deal. Everything going on right now is brinksmanship, with everyone trying to get the best deal possible for their particular interests. But a neglected part of the story here […]
To the extent that Gazprom represents a Russian tool for waging politics by other means, the emerging shift in European attitudes toward the company’s Nord Stream and South Stream pipeline projects signals that when it comes to energy security, the EU has adopted an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. Yesterday, during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Paris, French energy giant GDF Suez announced it would be taking a 9 percent stake in the Nord Stream project in order to secure increased Russian deliveries from 2015. And today, the EU’s energy commissioner said that the South Stream […]
I’ve mentioned on a few occasions now the dramatic difference between European and American public opinion on the security vs. privacy balance. The latest example comes from Germany, where the constitutional court struck down a law requiring telecom companies to save customer phone and internet data for six months, due to privacy concerns. What’s interesting here is that the national law that was struck down was mandated by an EU directive that allowed for saving the data for up to 24 months. The assumption is that the U.S. gets better data-sharing deals in Europe on a bilateral level than EU-wide, […]
At an event last week at New York University, four men who know the Taliban better than most Westerners shared their perceptions of the group behind the insurgency fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan. What emerged was a portrait of shadowy figures, little understood by even those who have had close contact with the group. With “reintegration” now the “buzzword du jour” and calls for a negotiated settlement to the war gaining momentum, we have yet to understand just who it is we will be negotiating with. “We still understand very little about the Taliban,” said Alex Strick van Linschoten, echoing […]
The time has come for the private sector and its activist stakeholders to move from “name and shame” to “know and show,” says United Nations Special Representative on Business and Human Rights John Ruggie. Ruggie is working to define roles and recommend operational parameters for his 3-pillar approach to business and human rights. The Harvard professor will present his final findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011. Many expect the council to formalize his recommendations and finally set an international standard for businesses in relations to human rights. “It’s a game changer,” Ruggie told a gathering of […]
It would be hard, under any circumstances, not to see this as a pretty significant development: The leader of anal-Qaida-linked Chinese militant group has been killed in a U.S. drone attack inPakistan’s restive tribal region, an official said on Monday. AbdulHaq al-Turkistani, the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, and twocomrades died when a missile fired from a CIA-operated pilotless aircraft strucka vehicle in North Waziristan district Feb. 15. . . . Al-Turkistani hails from Uighur in China’s eastern province ofXinjiang. But in the current context of strained U.S.-China relations, as well as the need for China’s UNSC vote […]
Two noteworthy outcomes of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Paris: Russia and France confirmed previous reports that the sale of a Mistral-class vessel now involves four ships, with negotiations now focused on where they will be built. (France wants at least two of the vessels built in its shipyards, and specified that it will deliver them without weapons systems.) And as if by coincidence, Medvedev flirted even further with the idea of new sanctions against Iran. There are three things to keep in mind here. First, despite the bad messaging the sale of the Mistral sends to Eastern Europe, […]
I’ve noted on a few occasions here on the blog the lack of fiction, as opposed to non-fiction memoirs, to have emerged from America’s current wars. Soon after the last time I did so, I received an e-mail from Luke Larson, a veteran of two tours in Iraq, to inform me that he had in fact written a novel based on his experiences there. I took Larson up on his offer to send a copy, and the book, “Senator’s Son,” arrived on Friday. I gave the first few pages a glance the following morning to get a feel for it, […]