TURKEY: Peace May Come to Pass in 2010 With newfound liberties for the Kurdish minority and the government’s ‘Democratic Opening’ initiative, the prospects for peace in 2010 are brighter than they have been in the last 25 years. The fly in the ointment is the ban in December of the pro-Kurd,...
MEXICO: A Tough Year Ahead Steep price hikes for goods and services and higher taxes foreshadow a new year fraught with economic difficulties for most Mexicans.
Mexicans faced New Year announcements of price rises for gasoline and other fuels, natural gas, electricity, fees for procedures at...
Egypt's House of the Rising Son It is a strange kind of republic in which presidents serve for life. It is an even stranger one in which rulers inherit power from their fathers.(…) The dissolution of the Egyp¬tian monarchy in 1952 marked a turning point in Egyptian politics, ushering in military...
China Helps the Powerful in Namibia BEIJING — Like parents everywhere, mothers and fathers in Namibia, an impoverished southern African nation, worry about college costs and opportunities for their children. The Chinese government has stepped forward to help — for a select and powerful few.
So...
Why Obama needs to play his cards right with India What should we make of the kerfuffle over the Indian Prime Minister's state visit to Washington today? Manmohan Singh's summit with President Obama, scheduled in part to offset the president's unfortunate decision not to visit India on his first Asian tour, has been plagued...
From Dayton to Butmir: The Future of Bosnia Last month, two rounds of high-level meetings on the future of Bosnia took place at the military base of Butmir, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. The meetings recalled similar talks held almost 15 years ago, at another military base in Dayton, Ohio. Those talks ended Bosnia's...
Global Insights: Mistral Talks Reveal Russian Shipbuilding Maladies During his sojourn in Paris last Friday and Saturday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his entourage of Russian economics ministers and business executives signed a number of important commercial agreements with their French counterparts. These two-dozen deals will...
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...
Afghan Strategy Will Contain Messages to Several Audiences WASHINGTON—In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long...
Chilcot inquiry told UK did not consider Iraq regime change before 9/11 British officials decided not to get involved in talk about regime change in Iraq in 2001 even though some parts of the new Bush administration began to discuss the possibility two years before the invasion, the opening hearing of the UK inquiry into the war heard today....
