Democracy & Governance Archives - Page 193 of 362

Needed: A Coherent U.S. Strategy for India

by Colin Geraghty | May 5, 2010

Many foreign-policy analysts linked to the second Bush administration believe that the elevated and energized partnership with India he and his advisors brought about may be his greatest and most enduring legacy. The significant effort they put in to revitalizing the relationship undoubtedly deserves to be acknowledged for what it is, an important redefinition – but that failed to create the political, institutional framework necessary to sustain the considerable momentum generated by the civil nuclear cooperation deal. Moreover, the redefinition came about as a result of a “de-hyphenated policy,” that is to say a, delinking of India & Pakistan in U.S. foreign policy (i.e., building relations with India and relations with Pakistan rather than an India-Pakistan approach).

Of Donors and Disasters

by Salvador Sarmiento | Apr 26, 2010

When representatives from 136 countries attended the high-level International Donors’ Conference in New York on March 31, it looked like good news for Haiti. The conference, co-hosted by the United States and the UN, garnered commitments of large sums from donors and called for coordination with the Haitian Government, charged with leading the efforts. In total, donor states publicly pledged over $9.5 billion to be disbursed over 10 years.

Nuclear Follies

by John Feffer | Apr 20, 2010

If the Russian army makes the bold decision to invade Germany, we can just nuke those damn communist soldiers into oblivion with the 200 tactical nuclear weapons we deploy in Europe. Oh, they’re not communists any longer? Oh, Germany and Russia have excellent relations at the moment? Oh, the Cold War has been over for two decades?

Russian Threats, American Missiles, and Bulgaria’s Choice

by Alexander Atanasov | Apr 20, 2010

President Barack Obama decided to cancel the plans for missile defense based in the Czech Republic and Poland this past October. Washington has since worked on an alternative that Obama calls a “stronger, smarter and swifter defense” that “best responds to the threats we face.” The new system is built around sea-and-land-based SM-3 missile interceptors.

The Really Really Long War

by John Feffer | Apr 13, 2010

Let’s imagine that the Cold War was a detour. The entire 20th century, in fact, was a detour. Since conflicts among the 20th-century ideologies (liberalism, communism, fascism) cost humanity so dearly, it’s hard to conceive of World War II and the clashes that followed as sideshows. And yet many people have begun to do just that. They view the period we find ourselves in right now — the so-called post-Cold War era — as a return to a much earlier time and a much earlier confrontation. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t discrete battles against a tyrant (Saddam Hussein) or a tyrannical group (the Taliban). They fit together with Turkey’s resurgence, the swell of Muslim immigration to Europe, and Israel’s settlement policy to form part of a much larger struggle.

Europe’s Islamophobia

by Jeanne Kay | Apr 9, 2010

When the Swiss voted last year to prohibit future construction of minarets on their soil, political commentators in neighboring European countries were quick to express their moral outrage. “The vote of shame,” headlined Liberation in France. Belgium’s Le Soir deemed targeting the towers in order to aim at the population below them to be “hypocritical and fallacious.” The London Times predicted “international embarrassment” for Switzerland.

No Tea Parties for Bibi

by Leon Hadar | Apr 7, 2010

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington shortly after President Barack Obama’s victory on healthcare reform had both symbolic significance and practical implications for the Likud leader. Obama’s win was interpreted as Netanyahu’s loss, reflecting the zero-sum nature of the diplomatic clash between the rightwing Israeli leader and the liberal occupant of the White House.

NATO Goes Anti-Nuclear?

by Alice Slater | Mar 9, 2010

President Obama’s call for a nuclear-weapons-free world in Prague last April unleashed a great outpouring of support from international allies and grassroots activists demanding a process to actually eliminate nuclear weapons. One recent and unexpected initiative has come from America’s NATO allies. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway have called on NATO to review its nuclear policy and remove all U.S. nuclear weapons currently on European soil under NATO’s “nuclear sharing” policy. Despite U.S. insistence on strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapons states, several hundred U.S. nuclear bombs are housed in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

Memo to the EU: What Next?

by Daryl Copeland | Feb 16, 2010

The Treaty of Lisbon, finally entering into force in late 2009, heralds a new, more advanced phase of the continuing European integration process. The treaty creates the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to which a much-expanded European diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service, will report.

Canada’s Prime Minister Goes Rogue

by Patrick Guyer | Feb 15, 2010

While Canada opens its doors to Olympians and the world, its own opposition parties are locked out of Parliament.