Latest Archive

KAMPALA, Uganda — When Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni seized power 25 years ago, he brought order to a nation that was reeling from two decades of crisis. After the terror-filled reigns of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, Museveni ushered in an era of relative prosperity. The West was quick to brand Uganda a rare “African success.” Praised for tackling HIV/AIDS, promoting women’s rights and pursuing growth through the Washington Consensus of fiscal discipline and free markets, Museveni gained acclaim as a “New African Leader”: a bush soldier turned democrat, poised to steer his continent in a new direction. But in […]

Burma’s opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is calling for Western countries to end sanctions against the country’s military regime. She says the sanctions have hurt ordinary Burmese, as about a third of the country’s 50 million people live below the poverty line. Burma’s National League for Democracy’s party says it wants to talk with Western nations about cutting back sanctions against the military ruled state.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos recently submitted his country’s application to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In an e-mail interview, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, discussed the prospect of Colombia’s OECD membership. WPR: What are the benefits and responsibilities of OECD membership? Michael Shifter: The OECD is a privileged club: In Latin America, only Chile and Mexico are currently members.Membership is a measure of a certain level of economic development and acommitment to sound policies and good-governance practices.OECD membersare expectedto make important policy decisions in accordance with the highest standards and to coordinate economic […]

Observers of the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the Arab world have focused with great excitement on the role played by new media, suggesting the events demonstrate the power of social networks to build a revolution. The rebellion, they say, was a uniquely 21st-century product of Twitter, Facebook and even Wikileaks. The reality, however, is much more complex. Many factors came into play to unleash the chain reaction that came crashing into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Some of those factors are as new as the iPhone, others as old as the slingshot. But what made the long-simmering popular […]

For the third year running, China’s upcoming National People’s Congress will be dominated by political maneuvering and speculation over the 2012 leadership transition. With jockeying for post-2012 power an increasing focus of attention, the outgoing Hu-Wen administration has lost influence, effectively putting the government on lockdown at a time of critical economic and social change. As a result, Beijing has opted to flood the economy with new credit rather than engage necessary structural reforms, creating an increasing disparity between the country’s halting social progress and the image portrayed in government propaganda. Since Deng Xiaoping’s oft-cited instruction that China’s process of […]

Russia and Turkey recently held the first meeting of the Russia-Turkey Joint Strategic Planning Group. The high-level coordination follows the signing of border-cooperation agreements in January. In an e-mail interview, Jenia Ustinova, associate for Russia and Eurasia at Eurasia Group, discussed Russia-Turkey relations. WPR: Historically, what has been the nature of Russia-Turkey relations? Jenia Ustinova: Russia and Turkey are not what one would call traditional allies — in centuries past the Russian and Ottoman empires have often been at odds with each other, competing — at time through armed conflict — for territory, power and influence in the region. During […]

A spate of car bombs in northern Iraq have killed at least 7 people and wounded some 80 others. This video shows graphic footage of one of the attacks, which happened in the country’s northern city of Kirkuk. Two car bombs were aimed at police patrols while a third device exploded outside a building that houses the Kurdish security forces. No group has so far claimed responsibility.

One simple rule of revolution is that regimes fall when their security services refuse to fire on protesters, while uprisings often falter when security forces do go ahead and shoot. The situation in Egypt remains fluid, but thus far the Egyptian army has not violently put down the protest movement. Why? The answer is complicated. Mark Thompson argued at Time’s Swampland blog that the exposure of Egyptian military officers to norms of professionalism and civilian control in the United States may have been determinative in the Egyptian army’s decision not to crush the anti-Mubarak protests. Thompson’s argument draws on several […]

A few news items highlight a point I’ve been periodically raising over the past year, namely that Africa, as the region of the world with the most strategic upside, deserves more and better-conceived U.S. attention. We already know about China’s strategic inroads into Africa’s resource and infrastructure markets. That has driven what is to my mind perhaps the most under-appreciated story of the past few years: India’s push to play catch-up in Africa. That has taken the form of investments in resources and manufacturing infrastructure, but also mobile phone markets and consumer goods. At the same time, the European Commission, […]

Mexico is not known for its start-up ventures, whether in legitimate business or in organized crime. What Telmex and Televisa are to the world of legal commerce — unrepentant monopolists or oligopolists, ruthlessly opposed to new players in their respective industries — the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas are to the nation’s underworld. Yet that appears to be changing, at least in the criminal realm. The past 12 months in Mexico have been marked by a more significant upsurge of previously unknown groups than at any point in recent history. Among the new gangs: the Resistance, the New Generation Jalisco […]

I never really understood at the time why so many observers ridiculed French President Nicolas Sarkozy for his efforts to launch the Union for the Mediterranean. Clearly, it was an ambitious project. If the global economic crisis hadn’t finished it off, the complicated politics of the region probably would have. But in light of the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, where the uprisings have been driven as much by frustrated economic aspirations as by repressed political aspirations, it’s hard not to see Sarkozy’s emphasis on economic development of the southern Mediterranean — as a pre-emptive effort to prevent inflows […]

A thought has been burning a hole in my head over the past few days — namely, that any meaningful Egyptian transition to democracy will almost certainly involve some form of a truth and reconciliation process. This issue has already arisen in Tunisia, where Le Figaro reports that the country’s national archivists spontaneously undertook to safeguard the regime’s files once it became clear former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali would be ousted from power. Despite their efforts, however, the most compromising documents had already disappeared. The thing is, Egypt has been a central player in just about every major American […]

The Obama administration’s reaction to the dramatic events in Egypt has inspired many analogies in recent days. Its initial caution and clumsiness, followed by its conviction to “be on the right side of history,” reminded optimists of the Bush administration’s reaction in 1989 to the uprisings in Eastern Europe, for example, and pessimists of the Carter administration’s reaction a decade earlier to Iran’s revolution. The Obama administration’s air of ambivalence, however, evokes a perennial condition of international relations. Accustomed as most of us are to power hierarchies, we often overlook how difficult and complex actual relations can be between big […]

Although even the immediate outcome of the unrest in Egypt remains uncertain, its potential ramifications beyond the country’s borders are worth assessing, considering Egypt’s importance to regional and world politics. Considered an international center of Islamic culture and teaching, Egypt is perhaps the most influential Arab country, with the largest Muslim population in the Middle East and one of the strongest militaries in the Arab world. It has contributed to foreign stability operations, most notably in the First Gulf War, and has important intelligence assets in the world’s various Islamist movements, including reported informants within al-Qaida. Egypt also enjoys considerable […]

One need not venture far into the world of refugee assistance to encounter a maxim whose air of axiomatic truth can be a conversation-stopper, and whose terms, like sacred postulates of the refugee-response system, are rarely unpacked: The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has the refugee-protection mandate. But several issues within that black box are worth illuminating. Namely, what does “refugee protection” mean? What is the nature of the “mandate”? And is it true that UNHCR is its unique possessor? While this might seem like a dry line of inquiry, like so much else these days, […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on the fall of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s government. Part I examined the domestic factors leading to the government’s collapse. Part II examines the impact of the EU/IMF bailout on Ireland and the European Union. After almost half a year of lurching from crisis to crisis, the government of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen finally fell last week. His fate was effectively sealed at the end of last year by Ireland’s $100 billion bailout by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund, the only question being […]

One of the most complex and difficult humanitarian problems confronting the international community today is that of protracted refugee situations. These are refugee situations that have moved beyond the emergency phase, but where solutions in the foreseeable future do not exist. Many of the refugees left behind in these situations have to live under terrible conditions, warehoused in camps or stuck in shanty towns, exposed to dangers, and with restrictions placed upon their rights and freedoms. I first became aware of the significance and dimensions of the contemporary problem of prolonged exile in 2001, after a brief visit to the […]