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Ed Webb

Contain and Constrain Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ontain-and-constrain-iran.html

Iran nukes opinion IR foreignpolicy

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Even in slow motion, this is no game for amateurs
  • the big loser from the Arab Spring has been Iran because the uprisings are about accountability and representation, which is precisely what the Iranian Revolution denied its authors after promising freedom. Nobody finds inspiration in the Iranian model.
Ed Webb

Arms Trade Treaty Stalled on Final Day - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...reaty-urge-final-approval.html

arms trade UN regulation diplomacy idiocy US USA politics Russia China

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • In the final hours of negotiations, the United States, as well as Russia and China, all large weapons exporters, said more time was needed.
  • Fifty-one senators had urged the administration not to sign it in a letter sent Thursday. That letter sent an important signal of defeat because ratification requires 67 Senate votes. “As defenders of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, we write to express our grave concern about the dangers posed by the United Nations’ arms trade treaty,” the senators said in the letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Our country’s sovereignty and the constitutional protection of these individual freedoms must not be infringed.”
  • Galen Carey, vice president of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, criticized gun lobby members for disparaging the treaty, saying, “Those spreading misinformation about alleged links between this treaty and the Second Amendment should stop doing so.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The treaty would for the first time establish common international standards for authorizing international arms transfers, including basic regulations and approval protocols that would improve transparency and accountability. A prime purpose, according to the draft, is to “prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and their diversion to illegal and unauthorized end use.” It would also prohibit signatories from transferring conventional weapons that violate arms embargoes or enable those who commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Ed Webb

Uneasy Engagement - China Spreads Aid in Africa, With a Catch - Series - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...22namibia.html

China Africa aid development corruption

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Sep 09 - No Cached
  • From Pakistan to Angola to Kyrgyzstan, China is using its enormous pool of foreign currency savings to cement diplomatic alliances, secure access to natural resources and drum up business for its flagship companies. Foreign aid — typically cut-rate loans, sometimes bundled with more commercial lines of credit — is central to this effort.
  • Leaders of developing nations have embraced China’s sales pitch of easy credit, without Western-style demands for political or economic reform, for a host of unmet needs. The results can be clearly seen in new roads, power plants, and telecommunications networks across the African continent — more than 200 projects since 2001, many financed with preferential loans from the Chinese government’s Exim Bank.
  • “We know more about China’s military expenditures than we do about its foreign aid,” said David Shambaugh, an author and China scholar at George Washington University. “Foreign aid really is a glaring contradiction to the broader trend of China’s adherence to international norms. It is so strikingly opaque it really makes one wonder what they are trying to hide.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • China, which is not a member of the O.E.C.D., is operating under rules that the West has largely abandoned. It mixes aid and business in secret government-to-government agreements. It requires that foreign aid contracts be awarded to Chinese contractors it picks through a closed-door bidding process in Beijing. Its attempts to prevent corrupt practices by its companies overseas appear weak.
Ed Webb

Adopting China's Tactics in Currency Fight - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04currency.html

currency trade IR China USA diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • a growing number of countries are retreating from some free-market rules that have guided international trade in recent decades and have started playing by Chinese rules
  • President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who will take over leadership of the Group of 20 biggest economies, said over the weekend that he was pushing for a new system of coordinating global currencies as wealthy nations did in the 1970s, before a free market orthodoxy took hold.
  • Some economists argue that the standoff over China’s currency could herald a new era of protectionism reminiscent of the 1920s and ’30s, which they say they fear could undermine trade and make a weak recovery even weaker. But others argue that it was the free-market consensus of the 1980s and ’90s that weakened American competitiveness and was exploited by rising powers like China, calling for a more assertive policy to protect jobs, increase exports and keep industry at home.
Ed Webb

Britain and France Make a Deal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...09tue2.html

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • It makes sense for Britain and France to save money on marginally useful aircraft carriers and on the costs of maintaining nuclear weapons they do not really need.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 14 Nov 10
       
      Clearly, UK and France have made a different calculation: why? Prestige? Self-help? What do IR theories tell us here?
Ed Webb

China to Launch Space Station Module - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04space.html

China USA space competition empire technology military

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The Heavenly Palace, the first module in China’s permanent space station, will be launched next year, a senior aerospace official confirmed Wednesday.
  • a crew of three taikonauts
  • Aerospace experts and military officials say the Chinese military space program has made major advancements in recent years, notably when it tested an antisatellite system in 2007, using a ballistic missile to shoot down one of its own weather satellites 540 miles up
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Chinese Air Force, Gen. Xu Qiliang, appeared to have gone somewhat off-message when he said in November that international “military competition has shifted towards space.”
  • such expansion is a historical inevitability
  • space is a contested domain. It used to be looked at like a sanctuary. And clearly that’s not the case today
Arabica Robusta

Pro-Russian and Pro-Kiev Camps Dig In Amid Uneasy Calm in Eastern Ukraine - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-calm-in-eastern-ukraine.html

ukraine social movements us intervention russia

shared by Arabica Robusta on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • While the bloody events and clashes that left more than a hundred dead in Kiev a month ago have not been repeated in eastern cities like Kharkiv and Donetsk, occasional violence and a powerful propaganda war have created entrenched pro-Russian and pro-Western camps that scarcely existed before.
  • For the fledgling pro-Western central government in Kiev, which is warily keeping one eye toward a possible invasion from Russia, the growing rift among ordinary Ukrainians and among political elites has laid bare the difficulties of establishing political order even if the unsteady peace lasts.
Ed Webb

Senior Saudi prince says Trump shouldn't scrap Iran deal | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ction-saudi-iran-idUSKBN1361SS

KSA Saudi Iran US USA politics election foreignpolicy nukes proliferation

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • U.S. President-elect Donald Trump should not scrap a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers but should take the nation to task for its "destabilizing activities" in the Middle East, said a former senior Saudi official.
  • "I don't think he should scrap it. It's been worked on for many years and the general consensus in the world, not just the United States, is that it has achieved an objective, which is a 15-year hiatus in the program that Iran embarked on to develop nuclear weapons," Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to Washington and London said on Thursday.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 11 Nov 16
       
      Turki is a very powerful member of the Saudi royal family and widely listened to on security issues
  • would like to see if the deal could become a "stepping stone" to a more permanent program "to prevent proliferation through the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 11 Nov 16
       
      A long-term goal on which Saudi and Egypt agree, and they don't agree on much. Of course, a major target of this would be Israel.
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  • His views are described by insiders as often reflecting those of the kingdom's top princes and as influential in Riyadh foreign policy circles.
Ed Webb

Europeans agree defense plan after campaign swipes by Trump | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...us-eu-defence-idUSKBN1391HH

Europe EU NATO defense military US USA politics IR

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • The European Union on Monday agreed a defense plan that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's criticism of allies appeared to galvanize Europe into revamping its strategy.
  • "Europe needs to be able to act for its own security," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. "This will allow Europe to take a step towards its strategic autonomy,"
  • The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defense operations.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The EU has 17 military and civilian missions underway - many of them out of the classic European theater, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Mediterranean where it is seeking to stem migrant flows from Libya and uphold a U.N. arms embargo.
  • "Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defense spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting.The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries.
  • Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defense coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious.
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