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Dirty Ratko’s Longterm Legacy
Don’t be fooled by the tightly cropped shots of Serbian nationalists protesting the extradition of fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for crimes against humanity committed by his Bosnian Serb troops during the wars of Yugoslav succession. The Serb internet is filled with [...]
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Good Reads, 5/26/11
First, on behalf of all my former Balkan War cohorts, and the many murdered people in Bosnia on all sides whom the world has largely forgotten by now, I’ll say this about today’s news: it’s a shame Ratko Mladic wasn’t ‘apprehended’ by Navy Seals. My friend Stewart Patrick on the G8′s surprising afterlife as the [...]
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A New Brave New World
No, it’s not that gloomy, but I couldn’t resist starting this new blog with that hackneyed headline. “Brave New World,” besides being a dystopian masterpiece, was the name of my old column on MSNBC.com, which ran from 1996 to 2004–a blog before the word existed. I’m happy to take up the cause one again for [...]
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Washington Prepares for a New Egypt
The resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will resonate across the Middle East but also in the capital of his most stalwart ally, the U.S., where policy makers are reassessing the “certainty” that Egypt will continue to act as a “moderating force” in the region. Having left the Soviet Union’s orbit in 1977 and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Egypt came to form the foundation of U.S. diplomacy in the region—a role that seemed so secure that its significance was widely overlooked.
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Political Upheaval in Egypt: The Outcomes
The direction of anti-government protests in Egypt, the calculus of the President Hosni Mubarak’s regime and the reaction of Egypt’s neighbors, backers and rivals all hang in the balance. No sure schematic shows the way forward, and it is clear neither the regime, nor the Army, nor the protesters themselves, possess a roadmap back to [...]
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Obama’s ‘Plan B’: In a Largely Domestic Speech, the World Loomed Large
It would be easy to view President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night as a domestic pitch—an agenda setting political address geared primarily to accelerate the resurrection of his popularity among the centrist “independent” voters whose support he will need if he is to win reelection in 2012.
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Germany: Largesse Oblige?
For Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, it is the best of times, and it is the worst of times. German employment last month reached a new post-unification high, and business confidence, export revenues and many other measures of economic vitality are all positive—for now. (RGE sees this growth tempering, however, and already Q3 GDP growth shows a severe slowdown). Nonetheless, Merkel has capitalized on Germany’s position as the only major developed country that is truly growing, seeing off challenges to her leadership of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) this autumn and facing down anger from populists over the increasing cost of bailing out EZ PIIGS, much of it borne by German taxpayers.
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Will the ‘Lame Duck’ Lay an Egg?
One of the oddest of the many oddities of U.S. democracy, the “lame duck” Congress has, in recent decades, turned into a desperate last attempt for an outgoing legislative majority to jam through pet legislation. However, as partisanship increasingly enforces discipline around parties’ bread-and-butter issues, these sessions—packed as they are with lawmakers heading out to pasture—can also provide brief, tantalizing moments of compromise, opening up the possibility of progress on key reform issues that wouldn’t stand a chance in the churning course of America’s perpetual campaign.
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Geopolitical Risks: The Not-So-Pacific Rim
While any region of the size and complexity of the Pacific Rim is bound to see flare ups of rivalry and conflict, the coastal zone stretching roughly from the Malacca Straits to the Korean Peninsula has proved particularly busy in the second half of 2010. Three major drivers explain the current volatility: China’s rise in [...]
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Handicapping the U.S. Midterms
In our primary scenario (55% probability), the GOP takes control of the House by a relatively small margin, with Democrats experiencing shifts in their own party that make defections to the GOP on important votes more likely. A second scenario (35% probability) has the Democrats retaining a thin majority in both chambers, again with a [...]