If anything, our track record in Libya is cause to never support rebel factions again. Overthrowing a tyrant like Qaddafi is something to be proud of, to be sure, but our work in Libya helped create a far larger mess.
Read MoreLegalization may or may not be the answer, but one has to admire President’s Mujica’s courage. Perhaps this will break the taboo on alternatives to prohibition and open up an intelligent debate.
Read More
The Olympics are not a reflection of who we are as global community. Instead, they have become the world’s most expensive cocktail party. So much for “sport at the service of mankind.”
Read MoreCertainly an organization representing a global unified body would have the most legitimacy. The UN was formed with the core principles of peace and security in mind, but a lack of unity of member states only allows magnifies the problems on the ground.
Read MoreThese “smart” sanctions have, in fact, done much to starve the very people they were supposed to protect.
Read More
The Nasa people, an indigenous group from the region whose numbers are up to 100,000, decided to take the matters into their own hands and rose against both the government and the leftist guerrillas.
Read MoreThink about the outcry for Romney to release his tax returns (the Obama campaign’s widest, and most effective avenue of attack) seen in a totally different light. Romney might still have something to hide, but looking at his record, it seems he just doesn’t like talking about himself.
Read More
Fighting has spread to Damascus, the capital, and to the largest city, Aleppo. This is not just sporadic gunfire, but real, bloody, daily fighting. Border crossing stations are being seized by the rebels, letting more lethal weapons seep through the porous Turkish border. Hundreds of defectors join the resistance every day. On all fronts, the rebels are advancing.
Read MoreDespite changing governance in the region, the United States will uphold its policies of the past three decades so long as it continues offering aid to the Egyptian military and the military respects its peace treaty with Israel.
Read More
This report seems to think—or wish—that legalizing the settlements makes them morally correct, too. But while land can be politicized and subjected to legal dispute, the Palestinian people should not be politicized and subjected to hardship because of legal minutia. And the hardships that Palestinians have to live through daily in the West Bank outweigh any legal conclusions. The law becomes less interesting when people are suffering.
Read MoreLugo failed to work hand in hand with a powerful Congress and his burdensome Liberal “allies” and managed to unite most of Paraguay’s political system against him. Though the proceedings for his impeachment were perfectly legal, they leave Paraguay’s democracy weakened, its leaders diplomatically isolated, and its poor unattended.
Read MoreStill battling the disdain for his Mormon faith from hardcore religious-right groups, Romney can benefit from getting on the good side of the Christian friends of the Holy Land.
Read MoreThe crux of Waltz’s argument is that “power begs to be balanced.” He suggests that “Israel’s nuclear monopoly has long fueled instability in the Middle East." I’m no fan of Israeli nukes, but I don’t think the warheads are the primary source of Israeli unpopularity.
Read MoreElections indicate a positive step in the transition away from authoritarianism and toward democracy, but they are not always a means of reassuring that a transitioning country is in optimum condition. Elections are a means, not an end, of the post-authoritarian transition process.
Read MoreWe may be collectively worried about the stability of Egypt’s fledgling democracy, but this is a normal and expected concern. It is part of the process of democratization. But it is a mistake to confuse our anxiety with a suggestion that the Egyptian revolution has failed.
Read MoreInternational soccer can lead to respect and admiration for all different members of one’s nation and national team. But there are two teams in every match. The other team and the individuals that comprise it are “them,” one’s team is “us.” When a member of the opposition does not match the vision of what “us” looks like, especially when “us” is nearly homogeneous, it is easy to consider him an enemy.
Read More
CPR’s Andrea S. Viejo had the opportunity to converse with Valeria Hamel, one of the student spokespeople of the #YoSoy132 student movement in Mexico advocating for freedom of the press. She gave us insight into the upbringing of this movement and what it was like to organize the first independent student run presidential debate in the history of Mexico.
Read More
It is the global community that needs to learn from Myanmar. Rather than attempting to wait out the gluttons of privilege, international sanctions ought to be relaxed to let the North Korean people eat and allow for some much needed foreign dollars to enter the country. And, maybe, with a little time, and a little help, North Koreans can have a Coke too.
Read More
Greece accuses the former Yugoslav province, which has been independent since 1991, of stealing its national heritage and misappropriating Hellenic heroes such as Philip and Alexander of Macedon for the purpose of tourism and national identity building. Stealing another country’s national heritage is a bad enough crime, say Greeks, but revising history is unacceptable.
Read MoreRevolutionary forces must recognize that the military has been in power since 1952, and the decisions of the SCAF over the year and a half “transitional” period have only tried to preserve the old order. The sad truth is that alliance between the people and the army was only a means for the SCAF to pursue its own agenda.
Read More