Hugo Chavez multi-polar gambit risks popular support - National Geopolitics | Examiner.com - 0 views
Liu Xiaobo Nobel Prize emboldens Chinese police state - National Geopolitics | Examiner... - 0 views
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Certainly, the Chinese government sees the irony in blacking out media coverage of dissident Liu Xiaobo's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was earned protesting such police state repression. Even if self-aware, however, the vacuity of compunction in Beijing deafens, for China has only intensified its coercive censorship evidently emboldened by an act they esteem so utterly "obscene".
Foreign Policy: The Axis of Upheaval - 0 views
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Iran, meanwhile, continues to support both Hamas and its Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons program that Israelis legitimately see as a threat to their very existence.
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No one can say for sure what will happen next within Tehran’s complex political system, but it is likely that the radical faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically, however, Iran is in a hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even a purely Israeli air offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But with presidential elections in June, Ahmadinejad has little incentive to be moderate.
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The democratic governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere. Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break down amid escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial role. Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe for political stability.
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Foreign Policy: The Axis of Upheaval - 0 views
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The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval.
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The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval. This axis has at least nine members, and quite possibly more. What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day. Unfortunately, that same crisis is making it far from easy for the United States to respond to this new “grave and growing danger.”
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When Bush’s speechwriters coined the phrase “axis of evil” (originally “axis of hatred”), they were drawing a parallel with the World War II alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, formalized in the Tripartite Pact of September 1940. The axis of upheaval, by contrast, is more reminiscent of the decade before the outbreak of World War II, when the Great Depression unleashed a wave of global political crises.
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Ad of the Day: Coca-Cola Tries to 'Open Happiness' Between India and Pakistan | Adweek - 0 views
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Cola diplomacy runs the risk of coming across as painfully naive by oversimplifying a complex issue that's tangled up in a long history of imperialism, religious conflict and nuclear stand-off, to name a few factors. Coke frames this powder keg of a problem as, on some level, simply one of miscommunication—because that's small enough that the brand can then frame itself as the solution. Sure, more understanding and common ground isn't a bad thing, and Coke takes some pains to temper the portrayal of its own success, erring on the side of aspirational everyman/everywoman voiceover platitudes throughout the spot (e.g., "We are going to take minor steps so that we are going to solve bigger issues.") But really, what the brand is taking minor steps toward is selling more sugar water in a way that isn't explicitly about selling more sugar water, and has at least the veneer of a higher purpose.
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the social-media zeitgeist holds that doing good is good for business. Yes, a warm-and-fuzzy video like this has some entertainment value, and it's is certainly more palatable—and arguably more effective—than a hard-sell product spot. But doesn't distilling a geopolitical conflict into short-form branded content do more harm than good by trivializing it? Or if everyone just drank a Coke, would they really get along?
Georgia election on a knife edge as two visions collide | World news | The Guardian - 0 views
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The country is also at the heart of a strategic battle between Moscow and the west.
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Two geopolitical visions, Atlanticist and neo-Soviet, collide in a landscape of ancient villages, medieval towers and breathtaking mountains.
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Ivanishvili, whose $6.4bn (£4bn) fortune is put at half of Georgia's GDP
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Whatever euro's fate, Europe's reputation savaged | Reuters - 0 views
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Whether the euro lives or dies, the chaotic way Europe has tackled the crisis could undermine the region's geopolitical clout for years to come and leave it at a distinct disadvantage in a rapidly changing world.
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"The Europeans are completely consumed with a battle to save the euro zone," says Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. "It's a deep and ongoing crisis bigger than any they've experienced in decades... it's an environment where European leaders could hardly be expected to prioritise anything else."That could leave the continent being increasingly sidelined as emerging powers - not just the BRIC powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China but other states such as Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa - grow in importance.At the very least, it could undermine the ability of the continent's leaders to persuade the rest of the world to take them seriously on a range of issues, from trade to the importance of democracy and human rights."Europe probably isn't going to stop preaching to the rest of the world," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. "But it's much less likely that others are going to be inclined to listen."
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At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, European states suffered the indignity of being outside the room when the final deal was struck between the United States and emerging powers. In the aftermath of the euro zone crisis, it's a position European leaders may simply have to get used to.
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After the Fall of Wall: A Report Card on Post-Cold War European Integration - SPIEGEL O... - 0 views
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When it comes to a common foreign policy, Europe's most tragic failure was its long hesitation to intervene in the former Yugoslavia, where the continent's first genocide since the Holocaust took place during the 1990s. It was only in 1995 that the European Union decided to intervene militarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- and then only under the leadership of the United States. The Europeans finally became more active in Kosovo in 1998-1999.
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the deficiencies of European foreign policy have also been exposed in the European Union's handling of the genocides in Africa, both in Rwanda in 1994 and in present-day Darfur. The European Union and its member states were very active in expanding the protection of international human rights; they have also given their support to the international principle of the "responsibility to protect," which offers protection from genocide and massive human rights violations to the populations of all countries. But, in the past 20 years, whenever these words had to be backed up with actions, Europe has been content to let other countries, especially the United States, take the lead.
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the era of "permissive consensus" has come to an end: In other words, most Europeans are no longer willing to passively and silently accept European unification. Underscoring that point are the French and Dutch rejections of the 2005 constitutional treaty and the Irish"no" to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
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France24 - Sarkozy backs 'viable' Palestinian state - 0 views
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed the creation of a "viable" Palestinian state on Monday but was cautious about repeating his foreign minister's support for possible recognition of a state before its borders were set.
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In a newspaper interview at the weekend, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that to break a stalemate in Middle East peacemaking, some countries might recognise a Palestinian state before its borders were fixed. "One can imagine a Palestinian state being rapidly declared and immediately recognised by the international community, even before negotiating its borders. I would be tempted by that," he told the Journal du Dimanche.
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Sarkozy said that Kouchner was thinking of possible ways to bring momentum to the peace process but that France's goal remained a functioning Palestinian state in clearly set borders. "In Bernard's comments, there was the thought that if we don't manage that, then when the time comes, in accord with our Palestinian friends, we might underline the idea of this state politically, to lift it up a notch in a way," he said. "But the objective is the idea of a Palestinian state in the frontiers of 1967, with an exchange of territory, just as we have said all along."
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Foreign Policy in Focus | Memo to the EU: What Next? - 0 views
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Modern grand strategy consists of four critical elements: a unifying, long-term vision of a country's global values and interests; an estimation of where that country is and wants to go in the world; an assessment of the country's potential and capacity to achieve those objectives; and a comprehensive plan to reach the destination set forth.
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Maximizing the advantages and capably advocating the shared interests, policies and values of one Europe in a competitive and heteropolar world will require that priority attention and adequate resources be directed towards: Nurturing policy capacity (development, analysis and implementation) in order to improve performance on issues such as Afghanistan Burnishing core professional skills (negotiation, languages, cross-cultural communication) through improved training and professional development Sharpening operational agility, flexibility and adaptability (continuous learning, empowerment, enabling tools), for instance, through better use of new media Establishing a representational footprint in the field that is keyed to receiving as well as sending state needs and circumstances Creating and connecting with wider networks, and; Mainstreaming public diplomacy and European brand management.
China to Seek 'Stability' in Tibet via Development - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The emphasis on economic development indicates that Chinese leaders still see the solution to the problem of Tibet as one of supplying creature comforts. If the region can develop fast enough, the reasoning goes, then Tibetans will buy into Chinese rule.
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A sign of the importance of the conference was the attendee list: besides Mr. Hu, it included Wen Jiabao, the prime minister; Xi Jinping, the vice president who is the favorite to succeed Mr. Hu; and Li Keqiang, Mr. Xi’s main rival for the top leadership position in China.
When Did the American Empire Start to Decline? | Stephen M. Walt - 0 views
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the Clinton administration entered office in 1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force units there on a permanent basis. We had backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades. With dual containment, however, the United States had committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this, as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.
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But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003.
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wrecking Iraq -- which is what we did -- destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and improved Iran's geopolitical position. The invasion of Iraq also diverted resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a formidable fighting force. Thus, Bush's decision to topple Saddam in 2003 led directly to two losing wars, not just one. And these wars were enormously expensive to boot. Combined with Bush's tax cuts and other fiscal irresponsibilities, this strategic incompetence caused the federal deficit to balloon to dangerous levels and helped bring about the fiscal impasse that we will be dealing with for years to come.
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