There are three main reasons intervention is currently untenable: the fragmented and Islamic nature of the opposition, the Syrian regime’s backers, and the war-weary, insolvent West.
If North Koreans simply knew more about the world outside – or received more accurate information about their own society – they would transform their country. This is an operating assumption behind much of the policy thinking in Washington and Seoul. Both governments pour money into radio stations that beam information into North Korea. Civil society activists, perhaps impatient with the incremental pace of government policy, try to get information into the notoriously isolated country by any means possible, from floating balloons over the border to crossing into the country to proselytize in person.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s first woman president, has been praised internationally for her efforts to address war crimes from the country’s civil war and for negotiating significant debt relief, even winning the Noble Peace Prize as a result. However, a briefing held last Thursday by IPS’ Foreign Policy in Focus coinciding with Sirleaf’s recent visit to the United States drew attention to areas that Sirleaf has failed to adequately address. The event was well attended, with more people than could fit into our conference room.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), lost Mexico’s presidency by only .56 of a percentage point in 2006. Fraud was widely suspected. Until recently, the media had anointed Enrique Pena Nieto, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as the certain winner in the July 1 election.
In the past month a student movement has arisen that has cast doubt on this electoral outcome.
Haitian President Michel Martelly finds himself in an increasingly difficult position on the military question. In mid-May, several former army officers met with Martelly and urged him to uphold his presidential campaign promise that, if elected, he would reintroduce the army.
But this is one pledge the Haitian president should renege on.
The Neturei Karta sect is opposed to the Jewish state.
Today human rights is the dominant language for justice claimsof both social movements and states. It is the banner under which utopian projects seek audibility on the global stageand foreign policy initiatives strive for global legitimacy. With human rights invoked by boththose who captain the ships of globalization, and those who contest its terms and trajectory, internal tensions and contradictions have moved to the forefront.
The power of the military in Egypt is so strong that many Egyptians, as well as observers around the world, feared that the country’s first-ever presidential vote would result in a stolen election. Instead, the persistently peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir Square received news of a landmark victory for this 7,000-year-old civilization: Egypt finally has a democratically elected, civilian leader.
Growing conflicts over who owns water and how to manage it are emerging all over the world. Although debates at the UN and among civil society have moved toward the recognition of water as a basic human right, the United States still lags behind. Washington has instead largely supported private-sector approaches that will likely exacerbate conflicts over water resources. What is perhaps new is that the U.S. intelligence community is also looking at water as a potential national security concern.
If rebels knew how to behave in advance, the process of providing them with aid would be expedited.