WPR Articles April 7, 2014 - April 11, 2014

Attacks on Rwanda’s Exiles Reveal Deeper Troubles for Kagame

By: Jon Rosen | Briefing

Twenty years after Rwanda’s genocide, the killing in South Africa of one opponent of President Paul Kagame and a break-in at the South Africa residence of another fit a pattern of attacks against Rwandan exiles and have exposed a sense of unease within Kagame’s government. It’s possible that cracks in his inner circle could foment more broad-based opposition and threaten the country’s post-genocide rebirth.

Hagel Emphasizes Nontraditional Threats in ASEAN Defense Meeting

By: Eric Auner | Trend Lines

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel hosted defense ministers from 10 ASEAN members last week. The informal meeting in Hawaii was the first of its kind, and came at a time when the United States is trying to build the partnerships necessary for its Asia rebalance strategy.

Global Insights: With Election, Afghanistan Strengthens Democratic Credentials

By: Richard Weitz | Column

The first round of Afghanistan's presidential election saw the country's political institutions perform much better than during the 2009 ballot, while the Afghan National Security Forces provided a relatively safe and secure electoral environment. The winners may not be clear until May, and a second round is likely. But already the results offer hope for Afghanistan's status as a functioning democracy.

Global Insider: With Air Force Arrests, Venezuela’s Maduro Puts Focus on Civil-Military Relations

By: The Editors | Trend Lines

Late last month, Venezuela’s government arrested three generals of the country’s air force, accusing them of plotting a coup. In an email interview, Harold Trinkunas, senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program, explained the state of Venezuela’s civil-military relations.

The Realist Prism: West’s Tactical Blunders on Ukraine Go Unquestioned

By: Nikolas Gvosdev | Column

A Communist Party deputy who was attacked earlier this week as he addressed Ukraine’s parliament raised some uncomfortable points that Western policymakers need to consider about their response to the crisis in Ukraine. By driving Ukraine’s elected president out of office, protesters created the conditions for other aggrieved parties in Ukraine—and Russia—to use similar tactics to advance their own interests.

More Central African Republic a Crisis Too Far for Chad’s Regional Security Ambitions By: Celeste Hicks | Briefing With Chad’s April 3 announcement that it would pull its peacekeepers out of the CAR, the country finally seemed to be bending to widespread criticism of the actions of its soldiers. Things had deteriorated for Chad’s armed forces since last year, when their role in support of France’s Operation Serval in Mali was widely praised. The CAR may have forced Chad to recognize the limits of its regional ambitions. Full-Spectrum Diplomacy: The Myth of American Decline By: Heather Hurlburt | Column Instead of trying to cram the lessons learned from a stay in Israel-Palestine into a 1,000-word column, I’ll turn a regional lens on another source of full employment for foreign policy pundits these days: the twin tropes of American decline and American essentialism. Or, as expressed by liberals and conservatives alike, “America can no longer do as much as it did before,” and “America needs to do more.” Global Insider: After Winning Big, Serbia’s Progressives May Take on Political Risks—and Rewards—Alone By: The Editors | Trend Lines Last month, Serbia held parliamentary elections in which the conservative and pro-EU Progressive party won a decisive majority in the legislature. In an email interview, Marlene Spoerri, U.N. officer at Independent Diplomat who has done research on democracy promotion and post-conflict statebuilding in the Western Balkans, explained what led to the victory and what comes next. Cultivating Equality: Land Reform's Potential and Challenges By: Klaus Deininger | Feature The original rationale for redistributive land reform is that, at low levels of capital intensity, large farms operated by wage labor will be less efficient than small owner-operated ones. Colonial powers had often tried to restrict access to land to ensure a supply of cheap labor, despite the associated economic cost. Land reform is an effort to rectify this historical injustice and reverse the pattern whereby high inequality of land is associated with low agricultural productivity and overall economic growth. Political Economy: Conditioning Markets to Reduce Income Inequality By: Nathan Kelly | Feature Although income inequality cannot be completely controlled, policymakers have a variety of tools at their disposal to produce changes in how the economic pie is divided. Those that most readily come to mind fall into the category of explicit redistribution, which can be controversial. But a second set of tools, rather than explicitly redistributing income within a society, focuses on creating an economic context in which growth can occur and in which that growth can be distributed more equally. Renewed Push, Public Weariness Puts Closing Gitmo Within Obama’s Reach By: Ken Gude | Briefing Advocates working to end a sad chapter in American history were given new hope last year when President Barack Obama renewed his push to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The diminished risks of closing the prison, combined with public war-weariness, mean that what seemed a hopeless and nearly forgotten project for Obama a year ago—closing Guantanamo by the end of his administration—now seems achievable. Women's Work: The Impact of Trade on Gender Equality By: Marzia Fontana | Feature Since the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, many governments and international development institutions have expressed their commitment toward gender equality goals. Most development actors and policymakers, however, remain focused on a narrow interpretation of women’s empowerment as a means to achieve poverty reduction and GDP growth. Less attention is paid to the ways in which economic development can be planned to help women. Global Insider: Cooperation with Pacific Island Countries Fundamental to Australian Maritime Security Strategy By: The Editors | Trend Lines Australia has provided ships to the international search effort for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which is taking place in part in Australia’s vast maritime domain. In an email interview, Sam Bateman, professorial research fellow at the Australian National Center for Ocean Resources at the University of Wollongong in Australia and senior fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, explained how Australia secures these waters. Strategic Horizons: Amid Debate, U.S. Shares Drone Approach With Partners By: Steven Metz | Briefing While Americans debate when and where the U.S. should use drones to strike at insurgents and terrorists who cannot be reached by other means, they may be overlooking an important trend: the move to supply a targeted killing capability to allied nations. The decision to provide technology and advice to Colombia and Yemen is only the beginning, as more states will field drones with or without American help. Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement Chooses Democracy Over China Trade Pact By: Joel Atkinson | Briefing On March 19, students occupied Taiwan’s legislature to protest the KMT government’s handling of a services trade agreement with China. The movement ultimately won support for a compromise that would see the services pact, and any future agreements with China, undergo more thorough—and public—scrutiny. The dramatic events are forcing a rethink about the very nature of the China-Taiwan relationship. Hungary Risks Putinization, Isolation After Orban Re-Election By: Andrew MacDowall | Briefing “The outcome of the elections is an obvious, unambiguous mandate for us to continue what we have begun.” So said Hungary’s populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban after his Fidesz party trounced the left-liberal opposition in an April poll that also saw the vote share of the far right top 20 percent. The continuation might entail more of Orban’s centralizing and nationalist policies, as well a tilt toward Russia. World Citizen: For Israel-Palestine, a Weak Peace Process is Better Than None By: Frida Ghitis | Column From the start of John Kerry’s push for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, hopes for success were dim. Kerry declared confidently he expected a comprehensive deal within nine months. Everyone else responded to his optimism with little more than a benign smile. Eight months later, what the parties have reached instead of an agreement is a deep impasse. The inevitable question arises: What’s next? NSA Leaks Fallout Will Fade Faster Than Hit to U.S. Pride By: James Andrew Lewis | Briefing Americans are having a hard time coming to terms with the effect of Snowden’s leaks and the damage they have done to America’s status in the world. In part, U.S. leaders do not want to admit that the leaks were merely the final straw for the growing discontent with American global leadership that predated Snowden and has many causes. The unipolar moment was never popular—the leaks confirm that it is over. U.S. Failure to Clarify Interests in Cyberspace Weakens Deterrence By: Eric Sterner | Briefing Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Gen. Keith Alexander expressed misgivings about America’s deterrent posture in cyberspace, raising concerns about the lack of a threshold that, when crossed by cyberattackers, would prompt a U.S. response. Though the U.S. possesses deterrent capabilities and has used them in other domains, deterrence in cyberspace is more challenging.