All Commentaries
U-20: Will the Global Economy Resurface?
The Group of 20 (G20) is making a big show of getting together to come to grips with the global economic crisis. But here’s the problem with the upcoming summit in London on April 2: It’s all show. What the show masks is a very deep worry and fear among the global elite that it really doesn’t know the direction in which the world economy is heading and the measures needed to stabilize it.
Planning for Failure in Afghanistan
It’s official. President Barack Obama now fully owns the war in Afghanistan. Standing alongside his military advisors and in front of the Washington press corps, he outlined a plan with “a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” While the goal and the five objectives to meet this goal are clear, they’re also unattainable and will likely result in the U.S. (and NATO) being trapped in the region for decades to come.
A New U.S. Relationship with Libya?
Following decades of conflict, Libya and the United States took major steps to improve their bilateral relationship in the closing months of the Bush administration. In September 2008, Condoleezza Rice visited Libya, the first secretary of State to do so since John Foster Dulles in 1953. In November, two weeks after Libya contributed $1.5 billion to a newly created Humanitarian Settlement Fund intended to resolve outstanding lawsuits by American victims of Libyan terrorism, President George W. Bush telephoned the Libyan leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, and voiced his satisfaction with the settlement. In December 2008, Gene A. Cretz took up his position as U.S. ambassador to Libya, the first since 1972.
Empire Roundtable
We asked our senior analysts at Foreign Policy In Focus to weigh in on the future course of American foreign policy. This is the question they responded to: “The enormous challenges facing us — economic crisis, climate crisis, nuclear proliferation — require unprecedented global cooperation. Will President Barack Obama draw down the American empire in order to meet these challenges? Or will he do what he can to maintain empire in a different form?”
Trouble in Paradise
Madagascar, a tourist paradise of beaches and exotic animals, is home to one of the most uninterrupted cycles of coups and crises in Africa.
Democracy hasn’t settled easily on the world’s fourth largest island. Like so many other African nations still struggling still with their colonial past, Madagascar was left by France in 1960 ill-equipped for free and fair elections. It experienced political upheaval for much of the post-colonial period. In 2002, the United States recognized the current president — the country’s sixth — after he grabbed power in a coup that left dozens of Malagasy dead. That coup, and the creation of Marc Ravalomanana’s government, was the fifth political crisis to successfully unseat a president in 30 years.
On January 26, this cycle of political upheaval began again. Andry Rajoelina, the ousted mayor of the capital city, accused Ravalomanana of leading a dictatorship. Soon after that came protests, marches, and bloodshed. On March 17, days after Rajoelina burst into the unoccupied presidential palace with gunshots and mortar fire, Ravalomanana handed power over to the military.
On Trial 60 Years Later
The deliberations that took place in Tokyo after World War II, which led to 25 guilty verdicts and the execution of seven Japanese, helped shape the international law around war crimes.
Progress on Cluster Bombs
Good news is in short supply. The economy remains bleak. The war in Iraq entered its seventh year last week, and violence reaches new pinnacles in Afghanistan. But there is one bright light amid all this gloom. Real progress is being made to ban
Naval Gazing
Let’s say that China sends a ship 75 miles off San Diego to do a little surveillance. Those are international waters, after all, and Beijing is interested in the latest developments in our submarine warfare capabilities at Naval Base Point Loma. And it wants to do some reconnaissance for its own expanding fleet of subs. Want to bet that the United States dispatches a ship to tell the Chinese to back off?
Strategic Dialogue: Responsibility to Protect
As part of our Empire Strategic Focus, Foreign Policy In Focus asked several experts to weigh in on whether Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is an important step forward for the international system or a step backward to great power intervention, and how should the Obama administration approach this doctrine. Shaun Randol strongly embraced the new principle, Trevor Keck and Bridget Moix emphasized the preventative aspects of R2P, and Kevin Fake and Steven Funk offered a skeptical appraisal. In this dialogue, they take the conversation one step further.
R2P: Disciplining the Mice, Freeing the Lions
“The mice would be disciplined and the lions would be free,” said a Mexican delegate to the proceedings that created the UN charter in 1945. He astutely predicted the double standards that would govern the application of international law.