Geopolitics

• The Quiet Revolution: Latin America Moving Away from Washington’s Influence

  Perhaps the biggest foreign-policy story of the past decade, thoroughly overlooked by the American media after 9/11 and its subsequent monomaniacal focus on terrorism, security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the fact that Latin America has essentially moved away from Washington's influence. This quiet revolution from below, in rejecting the Monroe Doctrine, first enunciated in 1823 whereby the U.S. essentially barred European powers from influence in Latin America, has essentially for nearly 200 years served as an ideological platform for countless U.S. interventions south of the border but has yet to register on the radar the politicians in…

• The Rise of Vietnam

  After ten years of economic stagnation following the reunification of the country in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, the Communist Party of Vietnam adopted in 1986 a program of broad economic reforms known as the Doi Moi or “renovation.” It introduced new market rules were, opened up to a greater degree of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and improved the business climate. By and large, the “Doi Moi” reforms brought about profound changes in the Vietnamese “social fabric.” Nonetheless, even after this liberalization effort, the Vietnamese government still wields a great deal of control and influence exerts over major economic…

• China’s Ongoing Territorial Disputes

  While the West is pummeled by China’s rising economy, neighbors fear possible Beijing territorial claims. The dazzling rise of the Chinese economy over the last decade has been the 21st century’s greatest economic success story. While Western economies find their indigenous manufacturing industries being gutted by massive floods of cheap Chinese imports, China’s neighbors are looking worryingly at the possibility that Beijing might flex its growing military strength in contests over bilateral territorial disputes, which exist with nearly all of its neighbors, encompassing both land and maritime issues. The list of disagreements is extensive. Top of Beijing’s list is reincorporating…

• America: Why Aren’t You Protesting?

  As noted by Richard Heinberg on June 22nd, 2011, the media has lacked the ability to connect the economic situations in the Middle East and their uprisings to what is happening in Europe. I would avoid the word “Revolution” in the case of the Middle Eastern uprisings, seeing as no dramatic systemic changes have taken place, only the ousting of dictators. Same as I would avoid the words of social upheaval in the case of European protests, which have been quite calm and only demanding to maintain the social safety nets produced through years of labor struggle. Rather, the odd…

• Energy and Politics - The Love-Hate Relationship between Russia and Ukraine

  Russia and Ukraine resemble nothing so much as Siamese twins that have grown up, now detest each other, but share organs difficult, if not impossible, to separate. The two issues that unite and divide Russia and Ukraine are simple – energy and military issues. The former – Russia’s need of Ukraine’s Soviet-era skein of natural gas pipelines that supply Moscow’s most lucrative European markets. Military issues? One word – Sevastopol, the Black Sea’s finest natural harbor, now uneasily shared between the Ukrainian Navy and the Russian Federation’s remnants of the USSR’s Black Sea Fleet. Two decades after the implosion of the USSR, the two…

• Europe’s Ongoing Ambivalence Towards Turkish EU Membership

  Amidst the European Union’s many problems, from the tanking of the economies of a number of its poorer member states to trying to prop up the euro, an issue from its hoary past continues to gnaw at the fringes of its collective consciousness. Is Turkey a part of Europe or not, and if it is, should it receive EU membership? The issue has bedeviled EU-Turkish relations for decades, rooted as it is in centuries of mutual admiration, apprehension, and out and out fear. The question however is one that should occupy the best and brightest minds in Brussels however, as…

• Tajikistan, A Frail Nation-State Amidst the New Great Game

  The past two decades since the 1991 collapse of Communism have seen the Russian Federation and the U.S. involved in an updated version of the 19th century’s “Great Game’ for mastery in Eurasia over the debris field of the former USSR. Not surprisingly, Moscow regards its former colonial fiefdoms as part of its “near abroad,” a “Monroeskii Doktrin” variant of U.S. interest in Central and Latin American, where a priori interests rule. U.S. interests in the post-Soviet Eurasian space since 1991 have fixated first on the region’s immense but underdeveloped energy resources, while the post-9/11 environment added a second dimension…

• Short-Sighted U.S. Policy Towards Pakistan Imperils All of South Asia

  The U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense both contain some of Washington’s “best and brightest.” As massive bureaucracies, they also both contain a number of dimwitted people, who now ensconced in their well-paid bureaucratic sinecures, are solely concerned about moving up to the next pay grade, where the “Peter Principle” ultimately determines their ability to function. To use a grim, black humor metaphor, a number of these suits have now well and truly ‘drunk the Kool-Aid” as regards Pakistan. There is simply no other explanation for the implications of Washington’s potentially disastrous ratcheting up of its confrontations with…

• Africa Takes Tentative Steps Towards Establishing a Free Trade Zone

  Poor Africa – exploited in the 18th and 19th century by European colonialists intent on the Dark Continent’s riches of gold and salves, exploited in the late 20th century by their Chinese “brothers” – are they doomed forever to be under another’s domination? A possible step out of the overlordship of foreigners occurred recently, when last month African leaders, including Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni endorsed an agreement in Johannesburg South Africa to pave the way for discussions on the creation of a continental “Grand Free Trade Zone.” While such an agreement remains on paper, its potential is enormous, as Africa…

• America Serving India a Deadly Cocktail in Afghanistan

  President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will withdraw 10,000 U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of this year and complete withdrawal of all its soldiers in that country in a phased manner by 2014 is bad tidings for India and good news for Pakistan and the jihadists. The June 22 announcement is an implementation of Obama’s promises that he made while campaigning for presidential elections in 2008. It is understandable from the American points of view—economically and strategically. The U.S. has sunk a trillion dollar in the past decade in Afghanistan and it can ill afford this…