Seven months of often bitter fighting and up to 30,000 casualties notwithstanding, Libya’s civil war to end the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi was relatively easy for its regional and international stakeholder — at least it was when compared with the challenge of responding the increasingly bloody standoff in Syria. As the Arab League …
They’re Not Occupying Brasília: Why Things Feel Tudo Bem (Alright) In South America
In America, the Great Recession has moved protesters to occupy Wall Street. In Europe the debt crisis has incited them to tear up any street. So where in the Western world can you find a modicum of national confidence these days? South American way, amigo, to once obscure capitals like Brasília, where President Dilma Rousseff, the …
Straight Out of Cairo: Tahrir Square Shows Solidarity with Occupy Oakland
This past Wednesday, walking home from dinner, I stumbled into a couple hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters noisily charging through Soho in solidarity with the throngs at Occupy Oakland who had been tear-gassed by police the day before. They were marching in the middle of the street, chanting and singing and disrupting traffic …
Palestinian U.N. Recognition Bid Gets Balkanized
Everyone talks about the United States using its Security Council veto to stop the Palestinian application for UN membership, but there’s another calculation driving the most intense diplomacy now bubbling around the UN bid: If the Palestinian bid doesn’t get nine votes from other members of the Security Council, Washington won’t have …
London Protestors 1 God 0: Anti-Capitalism Camp Scores PR Victory Against St Paul’s
The Church of England has had 468 years to work on its public relations strategy. The Occupy London protestors camped around St Paul’s Cathedral have had rather less time to perfect theirs. And when the two movements first collided on Oct. 15, it looked like experience would triumph over greenhorn enthusiasm. After the protestors’ …
Sarkozy Uses Europe’s Debt Crisis To Signal Re-Election Bid
Given the enormous stakes involved in it, one would have thought the big news Thursday was the accord hammered out earlier in the day by European Union leaders to deal with the euro zone’s monstrous debt crisis. One would have thought so, but one was wrong.
The real news Thursday was French President Nicolas Sarkozy revealing …
China and India at War: Study Contemplates Conflict Between Asian Giants
There are plenty of reasons why China and India won’t go to war. The two Asian giants hope to reach $100 billion in annual bilateral trade by 2015. Peace and stability are watchwords for both nations’ rise on the world stage. Yet tensions between the neighbors seem inescapable: they face each other across a heavily militarized nearly …
Game of Thrones: Why the Saudi Succession Spells Instability in the Long Term
The death of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Sultan on Saturday came as no surprise. For years the 86-year-old Saudi defense minister and brother to the king had been ailing, and in fact had been undergoing treatment for cancer in the United States when he died. The appointment of another brother, Prince Nayef, 78, as King Abdullah’s …
Outsider Odds: Ireland’s Herman Cain No Longer a Cert for the Presidency
Until three days before the Oct. 27 ballot for the Irish presidency, Sean Gallagher’s 20-point lead looked unassailable. Then scandal blemished his campaign. It wasn’t your usual tawdry tale of a candidate who couldn’t keep it zipped—slacks or unwise opinions. Nor was it about venality in any direct sense. Gallagher doesn’t stand …
EU Debt Deal: Déjà Vu All Over Again?
Let’s be fair: the 4 AM announcement Thursday by European Union leaders of a new and urgently needed package of measures to confront the euro zone debt crisis is a significant break-through that may eventually represent the corner being turned in the seemingly endless drama. And because the accord pledges massive sums of money to …
Haunted by the Ghosts of Afghanistan, Libya Asks NATO to Stay On
The request by Libya’s Transitional National Council for NATO to continue its military mission in the country despite the overthrow and slaying of Col. Muammar Gaddafi is a reminder that Libya may have some things in common with Afghanistan circa January 2002. There, the Taliban had been routed and driven out of power by a …
Gaddafi Now Dead, Has Third World Solidarity Died with Him?
One of the more farcical moments in a reign steeped in the bizarre, Muammar Gaddafi’s 2008 coronation as the “king of kings” of Africa was an elaborate ceremony attended by a couple hundred African royals. From a mock throne, wielding a gleaming scepter, Gaddafi urged greater African unity, calling on the formation of a “United …
U.S. Iraq Withdrawal a Gift to Iran? No, the U.S. Iraq Invasion Was the Gift to Iran
Outlandish posturing on foreign policy matters is par for the course in a U.S. electoral season, but the claim that President Barack Obama will deliver Iraq on a plate to Iran by honoring the U.S. treaty obligation to withdraw American troops by New Year’s Day is worth closer scrutiny. It might be said that Obama’s critics, many of whom …