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In one of the largest single-day movements of refugees since the Syrian crisis began, 11,000 Syrians fled into neighboring countries Friday, with 9,000 of them entering Turkey, according to the United Nations. The number of registered refugees who have fled from Syria to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq now totals 408,000, as reported by the New York Times, and many of them remain within the border areas, where links and tensions among Sunnis, Shiites and other groups are driving security concerns. Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Trend Lines that the influx […]

CARACAS — With campaigning for Venezuela’s December gubernatorial races now officially under way, the country’s political opposition finds itself in a tough spot. Still licking its wounds from its loss in October’s presidential election, the Democratic Unity Coalition (MUD) must get quickly off the mat to prove its credibility not only to a weary electorate but also to its own fractious members. In the wake of the presidential contest, the MUD leadership is doing everything it can to reassure the more than 6.5 million citizens who cast their ballots for opposition challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski of the coalition’s prospects in […]

Beginning in the 1970s, the United States dramatically improved what was already the top military in the world. Today the U.S. military remains among the best in history, perhaps the very best. But sustaining this quality is becoming increasingly difficult. Big problems are looming due to a wicked combination of economic and demographic trends. The most obvious and pressing problem is the military’s mounting personnel costs. The Pentagon’s personnel tab, which includes not only pay, but also health care and retirement benefits, has doubled over the past decade and now consumes about a third of the base defense budget. There […]

Ahead of a World Health Organization summit bringing 100 countries together for the first meeting of member states on falsely labeled medical products, a group of public health experts is calling for an international treaty on substandard and counterfeit medicines. Some countries have laws prohibiting the sale of fake medicines, but, as the BBC reports, the lack of an international treaty allows organized criminal networks to sell fake drugs out of countries with weak laws. There have been multiple instances of mass deaths due to fake drugs, including in 2008, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration documented 81 deaths […]

Nigeria is a diplomatic force within West Africa, a major participant in continental African politics and an important international actor. As the world’s seventh-most-populous country, its 14th-largest oil producer and home to Africa’s fifth-largest military, Nigeria possesses tremendous resources. Yet Nigeria’s internal security challenges and political dysfunction constrain its role on the regional, continental and world stages. Cyclical violence undermines the rule of law and entrenches intercommunal enmities. Pervasive corruption drains funding from services and infrastructure and saps public confidence in government. Policy implementation often proceeds haphazardly and generates backlash. Finally, “do-or-die” electoral politics, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo characterized […]

The main reason behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to remove Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has become clearer in recent days with the subsequent firing of Chief of Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov and other senior defense officials and military officers in Russia’s Ministry of Defense. Taken together, the dismissals suggest that the shakeup was not due primarily to sex scandals, corrupt practices or alienation of the officer corps, as has been claimed by various observers. Rather, the purge was the result of a power struggle over who should control the distribution of the $700 billion that Putin pledged […]

While Japan has backpedaled on its initial post-Fukushima plan to phase out nuclear energy entirely by 2040, it remains on the path to wean itself off atomic power in direct response to last year’s nuclear disaster. With public anti-nuclear fervor showing little sign of abating since March 2011, policymakers continue to be under attack for not moving aggressively enough to shut down reactors more quickly and permanently. Yet even the gradual phase-out of nuclear power could be fatal to Japan’s economic as well as political future, as the country grapples with regaining its foothold in the global economy. One major […]

A rare earth plant that is a joint venture between Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. and Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazatomprom opened in Kazakhstan last week. In an email interview, Timur Dadabaev, an expert on Central Asia at Tsukuba University in Japan, discussed Japanese relations with Central Asia. WPR: What is the recent history of Japan’s diplomatic and trade relations with Central Asia? Timur Dadabaev: Japanese engagement in Central Asia has evolved from former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1990s-era Eurasian diplomacy toward the formation of the current Central Asia Plus Japan (CAJ) initiative. Hashimoto’s policy of engagement was continued by his successor, Keizo […]

At the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership reshuffle currently taking place in Beijing, outgoing party General Secretary and Chinese President Hu Jintao warned party cadres that the CCP’s very survival depended on its ability to rein in corruption. But on the party’s “core interest” of Taiwan, Hu displayed noticeably less urgency. Hu’s approach to Taiwan policy, which has combined opposition to independence with an outreach to all sectors of the island’s civil society, led to spectacularly improved ties between the former arch enemies. In his address to the party congress last week, Hu reiterated calls for peaceful unification, military confidence […]

If the U.S. presidential election had only been about the economy, Barack Obama would not have been re-elected. The U.S. federal government runs a $16 trillion deficit, a historical peak of sovereign debt whose only precedent dates back to World War II. And with 23 million Americans unemployed, the unemployment rate has not decreased dramatically since the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, with regard to the policy issues raised by the crisis itself, there has been little follow through on the numerous decisions taken by the G-20 to better contain and control financial markets. To the contrary, financial […]

Editor’s note: This is a response to WPR’s Global Insider interview with Alan D. Hemmings, “Marine Reserve Failure Undermines Antarctic Treaty States’ Credibility.” Characterizing the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) as a “failure” due to its inability to agree on marine reserves in the Antarctic is unnecessarily alarmist and a misrepresentation of the enduring robustness of this group of decision-makers. While there is a need for Antarctic marine protections, the existing process is working. The CCAMLR’s members are bound by obligations contained within the international Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and […]

Having won re-election, President Barack Obama now faces the daunting task of reinvigorating American foreign policy. There are reasons to be optimistic. As he turns his sights to his second term, the president has the benefit of four years of executive experience and is buoyed by the political capital that comes of even the most modest electoral victories. Both could translate into a more determined hand at the helm of the ship of state, even if domestic challenges will necessarily receive the lion’s share of the president’s attention. But for the Obama administration to solidify what has to date been […]

President Barack Obama will visit Myanmar later this month, the White House announced Thursday, in a trip meant to underscore the U.S. foreign policy shift toward the Asia-Pacific. Obama is scheduled to meet with Myanmarese President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the two key figures at the center of Myanmar’s dramatic re-emergence into the international community, before continuing on to Cambodia and Thailand. Two experts told Trend Lines that the visit could be a catalyst for continued reforms in a country still early in its democratic transition. “This is a symbolic visit to reinforce the message […]

Over the next several weeks, the parameters of President Barack Obama’s second-term national security and foreign policy team will begin to take shape. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are expected to tender their resignations and retire from the administration. The new occupants of these posts, in turn, will change the composition of both departments through their appointments to senior policy positions. There has also been talk about a shake-up in the White House staff, as the president gears up to meet the challenges that were deferred or ignored due to the exigencies of […]

In the aftermath of the U.S. elections, a central question regarding the West’s standoff with Iran remains crucial: How serious are U.S. and Israeli leaders who assert their determination to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? The looming question, hovering for years over the diplomatic impasse, is whether the U.S. and Israel have been bluffing when they suggest they might attack Iran if it does not desist from its nuclear ambitions. Is the mantra “all options are on the table” coming from Washington an effort to exert psychological pressure on the Iranian regime, or is it a statement of […]

On Tuesday, a Chinese court sentenced four members of a Myanmar drug gang to death for hijacking two Chinese cargo boats and kidnapping and killing 13 Chinese crewmembers on the Mekong River last year. The defendants, including two other gang members who received lesser sentences, were charged with “intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and ship hijacking,” as reported by the Associated Press. Richard P. Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the court decision raises more questions than it answers, especially about the nine Thai soldiers who were also accused of involvement in the attack […]

Sergei Shoigu officially took over as Russia’s new defense minister yesterday, but the reasons for the sudden dismissal of his predecessor, Anatoliy Serdyukov, remain uncertain. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that he dismissed Serdyukov to allow authorities to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in the Defense Ministry. Serdyukov, who has cracked down on corruption within the armed forces, is accused of allowing his key subordinates and family members to enrich themselves in more sophisticated ways, such as by selling off valuable Defense Ministry properties at below market prices to friendly buyers in return for kickbacks. But Russian and Western media […]