This is a guest post by Patrick Frost, a Senior Blogger at FPA: In the past couple days, the world’s great powers have been busy courting and challenging the Middle East’s prospective regional power, Iran. To most people’s surprise, the leaders of Turkey and Brazil reached an agreement with Tehran to transport and hold about […]
Will the departure of U.S. forces derail recent development success? Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Kurdish population faced policies of genocide, forced assimilation, and ethnic cleansing. That changed after 2003 when Kurds emerged as a leading democratic force in the new Iraq. For several years, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has been a model of successful […]
As the New York Times reported earlier this week, the Hold-Build part of Clear-Hold-Build is not going so well for the U.S. in Marja. The local population has not been cooperating with the U.S. effort to capture Taliban forces out of fear of being on the receiving end of the Taliban’s vengeance. As a result, […]
China owed the world one on Iran, for reasons explored in a previous post, and today it delivered, joining the United States, Russia, France and the UK in agreeing to draft sanctions. If adopted by the full UN Security Council, the sanctions will authorize members to board ships entering or leaving Iran, to search for […]
After apparent heavy behind the scenes maneuverings, the Iranian nuclear situation heated up again this week. Both the United States and Iran came up with separate announcements presenting new actions/solutions designed to end the nuclear standoff. Yesterday Iran announced it had signed an agreement brokered by Brazil and Turkey. According to the BBC news the […]
In 1976, Robert Jervis, quoting Ernest May, wrote this: “General Marshall, while Chief of Staff, opposed the State Department’s idea of using aid to promote reforms in the Chinese government. Then, when he became Secretary of State, he defended this very idea against challenges by the new chiefs of Staff. In “1910, Winston Churchill, as […]
As the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference draws to a close in New York, what’s remarkable is how little attention the meeting has got in the world press. Except for fleeting attention to the idea of making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free-zone, which Egypt has been promoting as leader of the “group of 77” nonaligned […]
Blogs have been buzzing for the past week about Yedioth Ahronth’s report on Richard Goldstone’s actions as an apartheid-era South African judge. He sentenced at least 28 black men to death (though not all of them were executed, as their sentences had not been carried out by 1995, when the death penalty was abolished in […]
We are a people who don’t have money, food or clothes. But we are sleeping on gold. ~ Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, former Afghan minister of mines. Afghanistan is the second most corrupt nation in the world and its people are the poorest outside of Africa. Developing a legitimate economy, effective government, and safety for its […]
The debate over Justice Goldstone continues – The Atlantic correspondent Jefferey Goldberg and Jonathan Chait at The New Republic both recently wrote about Goldstone’s time as a judge in apartheid South Africa. Sasha Polakow-Suransky again draws attention to Israel’s own involvement with the apartheid regime, which involved several decades of arms business. *********** Hizbul Islam […]
The Elena Kagan nomination has re-un-corked discussion about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Kagan, while serving as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS), wrote an email criticizing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, calling it “repugnant.” You can read the full text of the letter here. As Kagan explains in the letter, HLS has a policy that requires […]
My fellow FPA blogger Rob Grace asks why I think Iran is determined to develop nuclear weaponry, and whether it might not just be shooting for breakout capacity—the ability to build an atomic bomb quickly, perhaps upon giving sudden notice of NPT termination. Good questions. In November 2003, the IAEA reported that over two decades […]
The Middle East Channel at Foreign Policy has an interesting story on Israel’s escalating attacks on South African judge Richard Goldstone, written by Foreign Affairs senior editor Sasha Polakow-Suransky. Goldstone was the leader of a UN report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the January 2009 clash […]
Previous posts this week have drawn attention to the big issue hanging over the Nuclear Nonproliferation review conference this week in New York–whether China will support stronger sanctions against Iran—and to China’s indebtedness to all those who have nonproliferation at heart. But why is it important to slow Iran’s nuclear program? Can sanctions actually work? […]
How unwieldy Europe is to manage! How difficult it is for EU institutions to act… Bruce Kasman, Chief Economist of JPM, whom I remember from my years at the New York Federal Reserve in the early 90s where he was an international economist, said this morning in a conference call that the main risk to […]