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Friday, July 1, 2011

WPR Weekly Article Alert -- July 1, 2011

World Politics Review

WPR Article 25 Jun 2011 - 01 Jul 2011

To Help Pakistan, Undo South Asia's Economic Partition

By: Neil Padukone | Briefing
The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has raised uncomfortable questions about both Islamabad's relationship with terrorism and Washington's relationship with Islamabad. Instead of aggravating these problems with more military aid, Washington should encourage structural change in Pakistan's economy, by reintegrating the region and economically undoing the partition of the subcontinent.

Can R2P Survive the Pressures of Politics and War?

By: Heather Hurlburt | Feature
The invocation of the responsibility to protect in the Libya case has had a range of political consequences. Two contradictory consequences in particular need to be identified and understood. First, the attention given to Libya gave a needed boost to what had been languishing R2P efforts in Côte d'Ivoire. Second, the political fallout from Libya could make it less likely that such an operation be repeated in the future.

Over the Horizon: Libya, Airpower and Executive War Powers

By: Robert Farley | Column
To the list of airpower's attractions we may now have to add legal impunity: The Obama administration is essentially claiming that because the Libya intervention involves minimal to no threat of harm to U.S. military personnel, it is not a "war" in the sense envisioned by the War Powers Resolution. The notion that war carried out from a "safe" distance faces no legal constraints is both appalling and insulting.

Arab Spring Exposes Turkey's Western Moorings

By: Michael Cecire | Briefing
Against the backdrop of the Middle East's ongoing upheaval, especially the violence in neighboring Syria, Turkey's once-vaunted "zero problems" foreign policy strategy now looks severely outdated. Though Turkey will continue to seek a balanced, multivector foreign policy, the liabilities of its strategy, as illustrated in Syria, have laid bare Ankara's continued Western moorings.

Le Roy's Departure a Loss for the U.N.

By: Richard Gowan | Briefing
This week, Alain Le Roy, U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, announced that he will stand down in August. Known for his healthy distaste for the U.N.'s bureaucratic politics, the former French diplomat will have served for three years. Over that time, he has helped navigate U.N. operations through tough times, from a disaster in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to an unlikely success in Côte d'Ivoire.

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Corruption, Slowed Growth Tarnish India's Global Image

By: Neeta Lal | Briefing
Against the backdrop of a sputtering economy and a spate of scandals battering India's global image, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is in Washington today. The visit -- touted as a damage-control and public relations initiative -- will see the senior minister meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and industry leaders to reinforce the message that India remains an attractive investment destination.

The New Rules: Making Syria's Assad Next Domino to Fall

By: Thomas P.M. Barnett | Column
While the Obama administration has rightly committed to participating in NATO's Libyan operation, it allows misapprehensions about what Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's fall would mean for the Middle East to prevent America from doing more to expedite a capitulation in Damascus. The primary culprit: the notion that the status quo in Syria and, by extension, Lebanon is better served by Assad remaining in power.  

R2P: The Limits of Fear

By: Nikolas Gvosdev | Feature
Despite all the favorable rhetoric regarding the responsibility to protect, governments continue to hesitate to embrace the doctrine. Some experts have argued that the intervention in Libya earlier this year is a sign that this hesitation is giving way to a new willingness to act on the part of the international community. I do not share this optimistic assessment.

China Looks Beyond Natural Resources in Latin America

By: Iain Mills | Briefing
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's recent three-country tour of Latin America was aimed at addressing concerns over the asymmetric and one-dimensional nature of China's relations in the region, which generally conform to the classic center-periphery model. Xi's visit outlined a blueprint for how China's incoming leadership intends to deepen its international relations and consolidate recent economic foreign policy gains.

The IEA's Strategic Reserve Blunder

By: Matthew Hulbert | Briefing
With OPEC unable to agree on a price target at its latest meeting, the International Energy Agency (IEA) decided to release 60 million barrels of strategic reserves. As a result, markets have little idea how to set prices. The IEA is playing a dangerous game in seeking to influence short-term sentiment by putting more oil on the market when supplies are not tight enough to justify such a move.

Global Insights: Japan Doubles Down on U.S. Alliance

By: Richard Weitz | Column
The triple catastrophe represented by Japan's March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency has thus far had two main effects on Japan's national security policies. First, it has focused attention toward domestic disaster relief operations. Second, it has reinforced the Japanese-U.S. alliance. Given the increased salience of external threats, Japan's domestic preoccupation may prove to be of short duration.

R2P: Liberalizing War

By: Robert Jackson | Feature
By advocating an international responsibility to protect civilian populations from all who might threaten or harm them from within their own countries, including their governments, R2P proponents assert what amounts to a revision of the U.N. Charter at its most vital war-authorizing point. It is worth examining the assumptions of the doctrine, however, and the consequences of applying it in practice.

In Libya, Political Will Catches Up With New R2P Norm

By: Thomas G. Weiss | Feature
With the exception of Raphael Lemkin's efforts that resulted in the 1948 Genocide Convention, no idea has moved faster than the responsibility to protect in the international normative arena. "A blink of the eye in the history of ideas," concluded Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and past president of the International Crisis Group. What happened to the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty?

Overreach Could Mean the End of R2P

By: Daniel Larison | Feature
The ongoing U.S. and NATO military intervention against the Libyan government has become the first test case for the responsibility to protect doctrine since U.N. member states approved it in 2005. However, the manner in which the doctrine was used to authorize and carry out collective action against Moammar Gadhafi's regime has undermined the integrity and credibility of the doctrine in the future.

For Lagarde, the Promise and Peril of IMF Continuity

By: Martin S. Edwards | Briefing
Many observers stressed the need for a non-European at the head of the IMF in order to relegitimize the fund. Now that French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has been named managing director, how she handles the fund's day-to-day operations will determine whether it slides into irrelevance. Maintaining some continuity with the Strauss-Kahn era, while breaking with it on Greece, may boost the IMF's legitimacy.

Mexico State Vote an Indicator for 2012 Presidential Race

By: Patrick Corcoran | Briefing
Mexico's next major political milestone, the 2012 presidential election, is still off on the horizon, but for the impatient, Sunday's gubernatorial contest in Mexico state offers a sneak preview of what to expect a year from now. The closely watched race's biggest winner will likely be a man who is not even running: Enrique Peña Nieto, the presumptive favorite to succeed Felipe Calderón as president next year.

World Citizen: Israel and Turkey Try to Mend Frayed Ties

By: Frida Ghitis | Column
For decades, Turkey was one of the few Muslim nations that had good relations with Israel, but the relationship has deteriorated over the past few years. Now, with politicians in both countries having scored points over the rift, calculations on both sides point to the benefits of rapprochement. As a result, Israel and Turkey are working quietly to mend a relationship that was once a mainstay of East-West diplomacy.

Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal Shifts Into High Gear

By: Luke Hunt | Briefing
A U.N.-backed court in Cambodia has begun its initial hearings into war crimes allegations with mixed success and predictions of a long road ahead for a tribunal described as more complex than the Nuremberg trials. Its importance was underscored by the United States ambassador at large for war crime issues, Stephen Rapp, who called the Khmer Rouge tribunal "the most important trial in the world."

The Realist Prism: U.S.-Russia Reset on Display in Afghanistan

By: Nikolas Gvosdev | Column
Instead of pursuing grandiose schemes for a U.S.-Russia strategic partnership, the Obama and Medvedev administrations have focused efforts on small-scale projects, to build up the habits of cooperation between the two countries. Ironically, Afghanistan, which two decades ago was one of the Cold War's principal geopolitical battlefields, is now one of the areas where the "reset" is showing the most concrete results.
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