President Enrique Peña Nieto has mounted an assault against Mexico’s entrenched monopolies over the past two months. He first took on the teachers union, then the telecoms, explaining his aim was to “transform the country, not just to run it.” Where’s this going? As noted by the Financial Times, the reform offensive “could ultimately even shake up […]
The eurozone crisis is back on the international agenda with a very serious crisis unfolding in Cyprus right now. Some Wall Street investors might argue just in time to pull the rising U.S. stock market indices — the Dow Jones hit an all-time high recently — down for a better entry point in order […]
by S.N. Sangmpam One item that dominated American politics after President Obama’s re-election was the opposition by Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., as Obama’s presumptive nominee for Secretary of State. They opposed her on the ground that she misled the public about the attack […]
Porteños (Argentines from the capital city Buenos Aires) will get quite a self-esteem boost today, March 19 when the Vatican inaugurates Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. There has been no news in Buenos Aires for the last five days that has not focused on the Pope. […]
[Atlantic-Community.org] Last week Atlantic Community, “The Open Think Tank on Foreign Policy,” hosted a theme week of articles from various observers on global affairs to discuss the theme of “Security in the Sahel.” My contribution was “A Fight Club Approach to Policy in the Sahel” in which I questioned whether or not it even makes […]
Each week, the editors at the Foreign Policy Association provide a roundup of their favorite must-read pieces from around the web. This week: Iraq, the Putin Doctrine, Hugo Chavez’s polarizing politics, the weakening two state solution, and much more.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Pope from outside of Europe for nearly a millennium, reflecting the reality of a church that has the majority of its followers in Latin America and the strong connection with society and social justice that churches have had in the developing world. Pope Francis I is a native of […]
In late 2012, vulture funds came to light with the bold seizure of an Argentine naval vessel, the ARA Libertad, in the Ghana port city of Tema. After two-and-a-half months under the control of the U.S.-based vulture fund NML capital — run by billionaire Paul Singer — the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in […]
Since before the 2006 election of President Felipe Calderon, Elba Esther Gordillo has been someone who could wag a finger and move Mexico’s most powerful politicians into line. These include former President Calderon himself. Gordillo is head of the Mexican teachers union, the largest union in Latin America at 1.4 million members. Historically a member […]
Among the more important questions to surface in the wake of Hugo Chávez’s death on March 5: Will chavismo survive? The answer, usually given in the affirmative, frequently invokes a previous era of Latin American history. For example, a column on the London Review of Book’s website, “Chavez Hasta Siempre,” draws a parallel to Che […]
[The Star] There is little doubting that the Kenyan elections just passed went a whole lot better than the last ones, in 2007, that resulted in widespread violence and chaos. December 2007 and January 2008 saw bloodshed that some observers chalked up to simple tribal and ethnic clashes. But that simplistic assessment reduced complex political […]
The debt crisis in Europe, anemic economic growth in the U.S., an uncertain future for NATO’s mission in Afghanistan with the year 2014 drawing closer, and growing cyber security challenges facing Western governments and multi-national corporations are some of the key challenges that deserve serious debate and attention by the public and policy makers. Both […]
Prompted by the release of the Hollywood film “Zero Dark Thirty,” the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington think tank, hosted a panel a few weeks back on the subject of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs). The panelists were three high-ranking officials of the Central Intelligence Agency from the administration of George W. Bush. Gen. Michael […]
If it were easy to do, an American president would have long ago shepherded Israelis and Palestinians into the negotiated two-state peace agreement that both peoples and their neighbors so clearly need — a peace that would greatly enhance U.S. interests.
In the kaleidoscopic world of power politics in Asia, the United States’ pivot to that region may yield the unintentional consequences of fostering closer strategic ties between the two Asian giants — China and India – which could result in a strategic alliance ostensibly hostile to Western interests in the region. Analysts will be quick […]