With Troop Pledge, New Demands on Afghans President Obama’s commitment Tuesday night to redouble America’s campaign in Afghanistan left unanswered what is perhaps the most decisive question of all: will the Afghans step up too?
In ordering the accelerated deployment of 30,000 fresh American troops to the country,...
World Citizen: The Middle East's Latin America Battles Middle Eastern diplomacy has intensified enormously in recent months, but don't expect to see peace break out any time soon as a result of that new burst of activity. That's because the latest wave of diplomacy has surfaced in a most unlikely place: South America.
In November alone, Brazil is...
G20: Cementing a Southern Alliance (...) Major developing countries are again preparing to stand together on critical issues at the G20 heads of government meeting in Pittsburgh Sep 24-25.
But Southern solidarity may need to move beyond the strategic common front presented at such summits to include a strengthening of...
Time to Stop Meddling in Somalia Recently, U.S. policy in Somalia hit a new low, with the shipment of 40 tons of arms to a government on the verge of overthrow, if not nervous collapse. Worse still, last Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the president of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG),...
Clinton in Africa: Does Washington Really Care? Speaking in Accra, Ghana, last month, President Barack Obama declared, "The 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra, as well." (...)
On the heels of Obama's trip to Ghana, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...
Obama Restores U.S. Intl Image to Pre-Bush Era President Barack Obama has restored Washington's image virtually everywhere around the world close to the levels it enjoyed before former President George W. Bush took power in 2001, according to a major new international survey released here Thursday by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP)....
The Fall of U.S. Hegemony in Latin America It is no secret that U.S. interaction with Latin America during George Bush’s presidency has been largely unremarkable. While Latin America has not been a main foreign policy focus for American presidents since the end of the Cold War, President Bush entered the White House with plans to...
Africa Policy: Don't Expect a Revolution Barack Obama may differ little from George Bush in his approach to Africa
It might seem obvious that American policy towards Africa would change under America’s first African-American president. But while the new man seems set to break with his predecessor in many other foreign-policy...
The Meeting of Sergey Lavrov and Hillary Clinton in Geneva (...) Russian-American relations, having undergone an acute crisis in the past year as the result of many years of stagnation, have begun a revival. (...) The meeting between Clinton and Lavrov in Geneva [on March 6, 2009] represents serious negotiations, which should set the stage for the...
Chávez Decisively Wins Bid to End Term Limits President Hugo Chávez handily won a referendum on Sunday that will end presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election indefinitely and injecting fresh vibrancy into his socialist-inspired revolution.
(...)The vote opens the way not only for Mr. Chávez to run for a...
Obama and the Balkans: What Kind of Multilateralism? (...) As unpleasant as it may be for Europe to hear, the stabilization of the Balkans during its painful transition in the 1990s was made possible by the United States. Although America initially stayed out of the conflicts that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the fighting ultimately...
Obama to Seek Global Re-engagement, But How Much? (...) Obama has repeatedly stressed the importance of multilateralism and diplomatic re-engagement with the world, including long-time U.S. adversaries such as Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, as a contrast to the unilateralist and militarised approach of the incumbent, President George W. Bush....
Towards a Second Cold War? (...) In August 2008 during the Georgia-Ossetia-Russia war[,] George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other dignitaries solemnly invoked the sanctity of the United Nations, warning that Russia could be excluded from international institutions “by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent...
South American Union Will Also Have Common Currency Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently revealed that the South American countries are planning for a common currency as part of the integration of the individual countries into the Union of South American Nations. This integration is patterned after the formation of the European...
Brazil Proposes Latin American Alliance Regional giant Brazil is the driving force behind a proposed new South American defense grouping that threatens to exclude the United States from regional military planning at a time of growing tensions between Washington and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The creation of a South...
