“There cannot be a military solution to this crisis in Mali,” said Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at IPS. “The crisis has its roots in political and also economic processes.”
The extent and depth of Western sanctions on Iran reveal that they are geared toward inflicting economic hardships on ordinary Iranians in the hope of inciting public discontent and possible revolts. But whether these crippling sanctions will meet their ostensible political goal of changing Iran’s nuclear posture is a different story.
Conversation on the streets of Beirut since the bombing in October has a familiar vocabulary, one reminiscent of 2005 when Rafic Hariri was assassinated.
Having survived the announced end of the world on Dec. 21, we can now try to foretell our immediate future, based on geopolitical principles that will help us understand the overall shifts of global powers and assess the major risks and dangers. Looking at a map of the world, we can immediately see some hotspots lit up in red. Four of them represent high levels of danger: Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.
Thirty-eight years ago, just before Christmas, our lives as missionaries came to a sudden end when South Korea’s military dictator, Park Chung-hee, deported my husband, George Ogle, because he prayed in public for eight innocent men who had been falsely accused of having Communist ties, tortured to confess, and sentenced to death by secret military court.
Admittedly, Kerry has not always applied the lessons of Vietnam properly—witness his regrettable support for the Bush administration’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. But elsewhere, as in his efforts to ease the archaic U.S. blockade on Cuba, Kerry continues to promote engagement as the fundamental tool of foreign policy.
Running along the beachside route toward Kubagan, Yemen, there is a small flexible tube. It’s a garden hose running all the way from the next town, and it’s the only source of clean water the village has.
From drugs to drones, budgets to bases, and Syria to Sandy, FPIF continues to cover the human impacts of policy at home and abroad, always affording a special place to scholars and activists committed to changing it for the better. In that spirit, we’ve collected 16 of our biggest stories from 2012—those global vignettes that readers like you read, shared, and talked about the most.
A Lebanese Alawite family sits in their living room by a Christmas tree. The Alawite sect is a branch of Shi’a Islam found mostly in Syria. When asked about their Christmas tree, they replied “We obviously don’t believe in the same Christmas story, but its a fun holiday. Nice for the kids.”
This is the holiday season — a time for family gatherings, holiday cheer, and goodwill toward mankind. This is the season of peace — that perennial and elusive thing we talk about so much yet have so little. But who talks about Hiroshima in December?