Americas

March 1, 2010

NATO and “Strategic Reassurance” of Central Europe

Writing on RealClearWorld, A. Wess Mitchell and Robert Kron of the Center for European Policy Analysis argue that NATO giving Central Europe the cold shoulder will have far-reaching costs, and that measures of reassurance must be made. First, it f...
February 26, 2010

Lots of Russian Guns in Latin America

Sometime in early 2010 it was made official:  Russia officially became the largest supplier of arms to Latin America.  Maybe that’s because the U.S. started getting more picky about their arms customers.  Here goes a brief not...
February 15, 2010

The Failure of the Russia Reset

Michael Weiss has an interesting comment on the Obama administration’s reset diplomacy posted over at Pajamas Media. “Reset” in hindsight has claimed one extraordinary achievement for the administration: it has wiped out what onc...
January 27, 2010

How the Scott Brown Upset May Change U.S.-Russia Relations

Writing in the Moscow Times today, David Firestein of the EastWest Institute argues that the Democrat’s loss of the Massachusetts senatorial seat to Republican Scott Brown will make 2010 a very tough year for President Barack Obama to pursue...
January 18, 2010

McCain’s Connection to Yanukovych

Though Sen. John McCain was recently in Georgia to receive an award for his outspoken support both during and after the 2008 Russian invasion, his reputation in Ukraine might be a bit tarnished among the pro-democracy liberals once Viktor Yanukovy...
January 13, 2010

Praying for Haiti

As I am sure all of you know, it has been a very terrible day for the country of Haiti, where thousands are believed to have been killed in an earthquake in Port-au-Prince.  I urge all readers to consider donating to the emergency relief effo...
January 13, 2010

How a pro-Obama diplomat discusses Russia

From an interview with Madeleine Albright in the FT: FT: Secretary Albright, you are now a business woman as well as everything else. What parts of the world are your clients most interested in right now as business opportunities? MA: Well, we are...
January 12, 2010

Nudging toward Democracy Promotion

Below is from a Wall Street Journal editorial, one of many, about the new 2009 Freedom in the World report by Freedom House.  They see Obama’s “principled pragamaticism” as a major weakness which contributed to the trend obs...
January 8, 2010

There’s No Refund on the Russia Reset

So what is the conventional thinking behind the new U.S. administration pursuing the “reset” of relations with Russia?  We are likely to hear well-intentioned words about opening up a new chapter in bilateral relations, and improv...
January 6, 2010

Hugo Chávez’s Attempted Murder of a Judge

In almost any other country in the world, it would be a scandalous outrage and national obsession.  In Venezuela, where the speed of absurdist political theater zips along a such a fast pace – from war with Colombia to an attack on golf...