Americas

Sweden and America Link Arms on Development Assistance

By Mark Brzezinski and Bjorn Lyrvall

If we asked a random sample of people what the world of 2030 might look like, what sorts of answers would we get? Amid predictions of advances in medicine, transportation and communications technology, we would no doubt expect some dire hypothetical scenarios: If population growth continues at current rates, if the gap in income equality […]

NATO Ambassadors Confront Russian Diplomat in ‘Tense’ Meeting

By Anne Gearan and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

A NATO diplomat, describing the [NATO-Russia Council] session as “tense,” said alliance members one by one confronted Alexander V. Grushko, Russia’s representative to NATO, with charges that Moscow was violating international law in Crimea and concocting threats against ethnic Russians there to justify its actions.

Break Up in the Gulf

By Bilal Y. Saab

On March 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain announced that they had withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar, claiming that Doha had been violating a clause in the Gulf Cooperation Council charter banning interference in the domestic affairs of fellow GCC members. The decision, unprecedented in the GCC’s history, hints at significant […]

Venezuela’s Protests: Passing Phase or Profound Reform?

Since the beginning of late Hugo Chávez’s administration in 1998, the once stable democratic government in Venezuela has been consistently damaged by political repression, lack of strong freedom of expression, institutional ineffectiveness, and constant human right abuses that have left many calls for justice unanswered. Recently, internal turmoil in the country has elevated political divisions […]

Mexico: A Year of Transformation

By Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora

Anyone following recent events in Mexico knows that 2013 was a year of unprecedented reforms in my country. As part of a broad agreement between the three main political parties called the Pacto Por México, President Peña Nieto and the Mexican Congress were able to pass legislation that included reforms to energy, education, telecoms, transparency, […]

Analyzing the New Defense Agenda

On March 4, the US Department of Defense released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the blueprint for defense spending and defense strategy over the course of the next four years. All eyes in Washington DC and beyond were on the 2014 QDR, as it comes at the end of the war in Afghanistan, the rise […]

President Obama’s Foreign Policy is Based on Fantasy

By Editorial Board of the Washington Post

For five years, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality.