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President Barack Obama won fans in New Delhi last week with his call for India to take a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. But while the president explicitly endorsed India as an “emerged” power, his declaration contained an implicit challenge as well. Obama said that he wanted the U.S. to work with India on an “efficient, effective, credible and legitimate” U.N. Though phrased as diplomatic rhetoric, these words raised important questions that India’s leaders must answer. Can India capture a permanent seat on the Security Council simply because of its growing economic leverage and military clout? Or should […]

Heading into the G-20 summit in Seoul last week, tensions were visibly high between the U.S. and China, the world’s top-two economies. Washington’s demands that China allow its currency, the yuan, to appreciate were met with criticisms from Beijing about the Fed’s inflationary monetary policy. At the heart of the argument lay global current account imbalances, largely a consequence of the sizeable U.S. trade deficit with China. By the close of the summit, the U.S. delegation succeeded in getting the Chinese to acknowledge that these imbalances were problematic for the global economy, but failed in getting them to do anything […]

I had the pleasure of participating last Friday in France 24’s panel discussion program, The World This Week, along with the IHT’s Eric Pfanner, Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey and the AFP’s David Clarke. The topics were the G-20 summit, Ireland’s debt crisis, the newly formed Iraqi government and George W. Bush’s return to the spotlight. Part one can be found here. Part two can be found here.

By calling the Chinese out explicitly on their currency manipulation in his concluding address to the G-20 summit last week, President Barack Obama may have torpedoed his relationship with Beijing for the remainder of what China’s bosses most certainly now hope is his first and only term. Burdened by a Republican-controlled, Tea Party-infused House, and bathed in hypocrisy thanks to the Fed’s own, just-announced currency manipulation (aka, QE2), Obama seems not to recognize either the gravity of his nation’s long-term economic situation or the degree to which his own political fate now hinges on his administration’s increasingly stormy ties with […]

Egyptians like to say that their country is Umm al Dunya, or “the Mother of the World,” and that, as the crucible of a great civilization dating back 7,000 years, its natural place is among both regional and global powers. In many ways, the boast is entirely accurate. By dint of its history, geography, and demography, Egypt has played a central role in Middle East politics and security policy since World War I. Successive global powers such as Great Britain, the Soviet Union and, most recently, the United States have come to regard Egypt as an indispensable asset for achieving […]

As the current political narrative has it, President Barack Obama has been weakened by the midterm elections. So it should come as no surprise that his failure to sell Congress’ version of the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement is a reflection of Obama’s weakened position, rather than, say, a reflection of Congress’ unrealistic expectations of what trade concessions other countries are willing to make in the current dismal economic environment. The same latent theme runs through much of the coverage of Obama’s tepid performance at the G-20 summit, although it is not as pronounced. So be it, narratives are often […]

It is unfortunate that President Barack Obama’s visit to Asia as well as the G-20 summit in Seoul took place in the aftermath of what he himself termed a “shellacking” in the midterm elections — an electoral rebuke delivered in part because Americans believe that the Democrats have not delivered on their promises of economic security. The trip could have been used to project the message that the United States is prepared to take the lead in the global community of nations. As Secretary of State Clinton put it back in September, “[T]he United States can, must and will lead […]

There are no dramatic developments here, but it is another data point — similar to something I flagged earlier — in the EU’s ability to toughen up its soft power approach in order to more strategically defend its interests: Europe’s top trade official has signaled his intention to create a new retaliatory trade tool, amid ongoing complaints from European businesses that they are being excluded from Chinese public contracts. I think of the EU’s strategic potential in the same terms as YouTube and Twitter’s revenue potential: tons of upside if they only figure out how to “monetize” the connectivity they […]

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was sent to the Senate for consideration in May 2010, but its outlook is far from clear. To be ratified, the treaty mustachievetwo-thirds majorityapproval. But some treaty provisions, viewed by certain senators as restricting U.S. missile defense objectives, were already an obstacle to ratification six months ago. Even in its current configuration, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has demanded elimination of the treaty provisions related to missile defense and certain non-nuclear systems. Given Republican gains in the Senate following the midterm elections, these provisions will face even greater opposition come January. Removing […]

Asia and the European Union held their biannual interregional gathering, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), in Brussels last month. In an e-mail interview, Jonas Parello-Plesner, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, discussed relations between Asia and the EU. WPR: What are the major issues and obstacles driving economic relations between the two regions? Jonas Parello-Plesner: The main driver of cooperation is economic. Asia and particularly China are Europe’s largest trading partners, with the two regions intertwined as part of the global supply chain. That is illustrated by the biannual ASEM summit, which unites 49 countries and 60 […]

A few days after the discovery of an al-Qaida plot to ship bombs disguised as printer cartridges from Yemen to the United States, a powerful explosion shook the ground in Gaza City. The blast ripped apart a brand new car, just imported into Gaza, as it drove near police headquarters in the coastal strip’s largest city. After some initial confusion about what had happened, Israeli officials took responsibility for the blast, saying its security forces had killed a top terrorist on the verge of carrying out a massive operation. Most of the Israeli and international media accepted that version of […]

One of my father’s favorite expressions is that character equals destiny. Nowhere did that seem more evident than in the run-up to today’s G-20 summit, which resembled a classical Greek tragedy: The audience sees the obvious resolution to the crisis, but the actors — prisoners of their character, and thus their destiny — plow onward to their fate. So despite the need for a harmonious summit to fend off the gathering currency wars, the U.S. Fed chose last week to announce its quantitative easing policy, promptly denounced by just about all of the U.S. interlocutors at the G-20 forum. But […]

In the run-up to NATO’s heads of state summit later this month in Lisbon, much of the discussion has focused on questions of the alliance’s relevance and identity, with particular attention paid to the alliance’s new Strategic Concept to be rolled out in Lisbon. But a more practical issue that will be discussed at the summit is whether to make comprehensive ballistic missile defense (BMD) an alliance-wide mission. Despite a lack of enthusiasm in Turkey and continuing discontent in Russia and perhaps some other non-NATO countries, NATO governments generally support the Obama administration’s phased adaptive approach to European missile defense. […]

Argentina recently announced that it will relaunch its uranium-enrichment program, as part of the country’s ongoing return to nuclear power. In an e-mail interview, W. Alejandro Sanchez, a research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, discussed the history and significance of Argentina’s nuclear program. WPR: What is the historical context of Argentina’s nuclear program? W. Alejandro Sanchez: Argentina’s nuclear program dates back to its last military government (1976-1983). At the time there were reports that Buenos Aires was aggressively pushing for a nuclear program with the goal of building nuclear weapons. In part, this was a response to interstate […]

Turkey has become increasingly assertive in the Western Balkans in recent years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying only last week that his country would be happy to mediate in bilateral talks between Kosovo and Serbia. While Turkish involvement in the region is welcomed in many quarters, some say Ankara may be overplaying its hand. Turkey’s ambitious vision for the region, which the Turkish Ottoman empire held sway over for centuries, is no secret. “The Ottoman centuries of the Balkans were success stories,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on a visit to Sarajevo in October last year. “Now […]

For all their inflamed partisan passions and heated rhetoric, the 2010 midterm elections were conducted in a virtual foreign policy vacuum. In stark contrast to every election since 2002, national security played almost no role in either the Republican or Democratic national campaigns, with both parties preferring to argue about domestic issues such as the economy, unemployment, and government spending. The Republicans won soundly, taking control of the House of Representatives, and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate. But the domestic focus of this election means the new Republican representatives and senators will come to power with a fundamentally […]

U.S. and Taiwanese officials announced last month that the two will resume suspended free trade talks as early as this year. In an e-mail interview, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, discusses the current state of U.S.-Taiwan trade relations. WPR: What have been the obstacles holding up this deal? Rupert Hammond-Chambers: Talks on the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) between the U.S. and Taiwan had been on hold for three years prior to the Sept. 29 announcement. The impasse was primarily due to disagreements over U.S. beef exports. It was the second time in a decade that […]