Although the 2012 presidential campaign’s focus has primarily been on the domestic economy, crises around the world could escalate and move foreign policy to the center of discussion.
AAM sits down with Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress to discuss foreign policy issues coming up in 2012, the Obama administration’s record and the Republican critique. Watch »
Excerpts from the interview
AAM: The focus for the next presidential election has been primarily on the domestic economy with international issues lagging far behind. Do you think this is good or bad news for Obama who receives much higher ratings for his handling of international affairs than on domestic issues?
BRIAN KATULIS: I think it’s good news for the country because it demonstrates that Pres. Obama has performed quite well on foreign policy and is perceived to have done a pretty good job on this. I think in terms of our national debate, it cuts both ways. On the positive side, I think we’re likely to have a less politicized election on national security than we did say in 2002, or 2004 or in 2006. Those were elections in which foreign policy issues like Iraq or the war on terror really became deeply partisan issues that were very divisive. I think we may avoid that though there will be politicking on this. Read more »
Italy is preparing for a slew of strikes from different professional groups angry over the government’s plans to liberalize services introduced by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Truckers are blocking roads throughout Italy and taxi drivers resumed a strike on Monday objecting to his ideas for economic reform. Lawyers, pharmacists, and railway workers are also set to strike the next few weeks over plans to reform labor rules and open national employment contracts. Monti wants to boost competition in the services sector and reduce privileges enjoyed by professional groups.
Italy is trying hard and fast to pick up the pieces of its crumbling economy. With 30 percent of its young people unemployed, no growth in the past decade, and a two-tiered labor market made up of those with lifetime jobs and those moving from contract to contract, the new technocrat government of Mario Monti has its work cut out for it.
Monti has promised Europe and Italians that he’ll liberalize the country’s economy. But the vested interests are many and nowhere as entrenched as in the country’s intricate system of “professioni.” These are medieval-like professional guilds and associations that protect the privileges of everyone from taxi drivers to pharmacists to lawyers. They keep out the competition and block young people from accessing them.
Megan Williams has this report some who have dared to take on the professional castes and who hope now more than ever that Italy’s new government will finally break their monopoly. Read more »
UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said, “India’s achievement is proof positive that we can eradicate polio even in the most challenging environments – in fact, it is only by targeting these areas that we can defeat this evil disease. We have the ability to protect every last person, especially children, from this entirely preventable disease – and because we can, we must finish the job of eradicating polio globally, once and for all.”
India will be removed from the list of just four countries where the disease remains endemic: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Polio was once a disease feared worldwide, striking suddenly and paralyzing mainly children for life. The World Health Organization launched a global campaign to eradicate polio in 1988.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Rotary International, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in partnership with national governments. Through the efforts of these organizations, since 1988, new cases of paralysis have dropped from 1,000 a day to fewer than 2,000 a year. Today, the Initiative has focused much of its attention on Northern Nigeria, where eradicating this disease has been extremely difficult.
For more background, listen to a report on how Muslim leaders first endangered, and then enlivened, the campaign to kick polio out of Nigeria.
The protests in Russia in December brought out an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people outraged by allegations of voter fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections. They are also calling for and end to Prime Minister Putin’s 12-year rule.
“His declarations are taking on more and more the tonality of a high moderator, who can, he thinks, still calm down the situation, which is headed otherwise to a complete split of society from the regime, and, correspondingly, towards profound political crisis,” Mr. Zubov [a historian who has studied Russian church-state relations] said.
In 2009, the Russian Orthodox Church elected an outspoken new leader, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, to succeed Patriarch Aleksy II, who led the church for nearly two decades in the post-Soviet era. Just like his predecessor, Patriarch Kirill is seen not only as the leader of Russia’s biggest church, but also a prominent political figure. Even though Russia is an officially secular state, TV channels often broadcasts Patriarch Kirill’s meetings with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev, who has promised his support to the church.
At a meeting with the Patriarch and Orthodox Bishops earlier this year, President Medvedev underscored the ties that exist between the government and Russia’s Orthodox faith.
Protests in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo by tgeasland (Flickr)
Non-traditional dating norms are being discussed for an increasing older group of unmarried youth in Morocco. From an al-Arabiya report:
“With the rise of single women and a remarkable delay in the marrying age, a prominent Moroccan sexologist suggested speed dating as a means of solving the problem and a prominent cleric argued there is nothing in Islam that prohibits such a practice provided that it is done in the right way.”
Youth in Morocco face dire employment prospects and that has huge implications for a treasured tradition – marriage and the role of the man as the breadwinner.
American University Professor Diane Singerman explains:
“Between the ages of 15 and 25 or 15 and 30, they are trying to become adults. And becoming an adult is very much associated with being married and setting up yourself as an independent householder. But until they solve the schooling dilemma and the job dilemma and the housing dilemma, which is part of getting married, they are in this adolescent limbo.”
On Sunday, several thousand Moroccans took to the streets in Casablanca and Rabat demanding deeper political reforms that stem from the “February 20 movement” – student protests calling for the ouster of the government for failing to address employment opportunities for university graduates among other grievances.
America Abroad traveled to Morocco to explore how economic conditions are causing a delay in marriage and shifts in social and sexual customs. Read more »
An Iraqi army soldier poses for a picture with his weapon during a mission in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, March 30, 2008. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Richard Del Vecchio) (www.army.mil)
Maliki said on Wednesday night that Iraq now had an army, one that was capable and able to “respond to any threat”. “It doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. But we are going to train, we are going to work. And we will protect Iraq.”
The next few months will be a crossroads for Iraq. The nation faces both near and long-term challenges to its stability. There are weak political institutions and a weaker economy, constitutional ambiguity, lingering sectarian tensions and persistent security threats. America Abroad zeros in on a couple of pieces of the complex puzzle that is Iraq today. Listen to Iraq, the Next Act.
The debt crisis started in Greece with the stunning admission by an incoming Greek government in 2010. Their national statistics office had simply lied about the size of Greece’s budget deficit, which in 2009 was a projected 3.75 per cent, but which turned out to be four times that just a year later. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have received bailouts and fears that Italy and Spain may default has left financial markets spinning.
America Abroad heads to front lines of the crisis – Italy and Greece – to ask, ‘How did we get here?’ and what needs to change to bring Europe back from the precipice? Read more.
Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo made his first appearance at The Hague to face trail at the International Criminal Court. He faces four counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and inhuman acts, during the country’s post-election violence after the presidential elections in which he refused to accept defeat. The power struggle that ensued killed 3,000 people and displaced more than a million. He is the first former head state to be tried.
Capturing and trying war criminals has never been an open and shut case. International justice is often slow, political, and loaded with objections. From Time: “The questions, raised by a few human-rights groups and by those who have long doubted the purpose of the court (including U.S. officials), revolve around the ICC’s ability to secure convictions, whether it can remain impartial in highly sensitive issues of war and politics, as well as over the qualifications of its judges; the U.S. has refused to sign the treaty governing the ICC.”
But while the politics of the day can make it seem like the court itself is on trial, the ICC still has a strong defense team who appeal to the notion that the courts existence is a sizable step forward for human rights and the global rule of law.
America Abroad interviewed Richard Goldstone, chief prosecutor of the UN tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to give some perspective on the reasoning behind creating an international criminal court and handing down international justice. From Judging the ICC:
“If you have a system of international criminal justice, there maybe a price to pay. And part of the price may be making some peace settlements in some areas more difficult. The ICC has been set up to investigate the worst most serious war crimes including genocide and crimes against humanity and only against those in high positions. It’s a small court with potentially a hugh canvas.
It’s a court of last resort – not first resort. The idea is that domestic courts should have the first option of investigating their own people – their own nationals. It’s only when national courts cannot or will not do that the international criminal court assumes jurisdiction.
There is a continuing tension between withdrawing impunity from the most serious war criminals on the one hand and interfering with the sovereignty of countries on the other. Many countries object to the International Criminal Court having jurisdiction over their national jurisdiction, second guessing decisions their military has taken. Powerful countries don’t like to be second guessed.
One can’t divorce international justice from politics. There can be a tension a between peace and justice. But you have to look at the bottom line and say, what kind of a world do we want? One with international justice? One where war criminals are going to be called into account? Are we a better world for having international criminal justice than we were without it? That’s the issue.”
As a foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, US News and World Report, and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour based in Paris, Edward Girardet first began covering Afghanistan several months prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979.
AAM sits down with Girardet, author of Killing the Cranes: A Reporters Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan, to discuss his new book and share his first-hand perspective on war in Afghanistan. Watch »
Excerpts from the interview
AAM: You first visited Afghanistan as a young reporter fascinated by resistance movements against foreign occupations. What keeps bringing you back to report on Afghanistan?
EDWARD GIRARDET: I think everyone that has been involved with Afghanistan, whether as a journalist or an aid worker throughout the ages–even in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s–keeps coming back. They develop a very close attachment to the country and the people because they’re a very independent minded people there. They are an infuriating people! The topography is extraordinary and we were very fortunate. I think the journalists and the aid workers that worked there in the 1980s, for example, could trek inside Afghanistan. We couldn’t go by vehicle so we went in by horses and by foot. You’d walk 700-800 miles through the mountains through 15,000-16,000 foot high mountain passes. So it was an amazing journey every time you went in. And of course you slept in villages, and you stayed in villages, and you met refugees, farmers, people along the way. They always, no matter how poor they were or how devastated by the war, managed to retain their dignity, and I think that’s what really, really impressed me. And, they talked to you on equal terms. So I think those are some of the attractions.
Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh has signed an agreement put forward by the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) to step down and transfer power to his vice president within 30 days. A unity government will be formed consisting of the opposition and two months after his resignation there will be a presidential election. The controversy behind the deal was immunity from Yemeni prosecution, something the opposition has repeatedly rejected. Al-Jazeera English reports from Sana’a, Yemen’s capital.
Saleh, the fourth leader ousted from power due to the Arab Spring revolts, is now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His resignation has put an end to the nine-month long uprising that has paralyzed the country and killed scores of demonstrators.
Yemen is a poor country that sits in a strategically important maritime crossing and is home to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). President Barack Obama has described AQAP as “al-Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate,” echoing an acknowledgment from U.S. counterterrorism officials that the threat from AQAP has supplanted that of the al-Qaeda core (NYT).
Although the 2012 presidential campaign’s focus has primarily been on the domestic economy, crises around the world could escalate and move foreign policy to the center of discussion.
