Archive for January, 2010

(PDF) – The index, which is compiled by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, evaluated a total of 6305 think tanks worldwide. Close to 400 organizations were nominated and ranked by a global panel of 300… »

On January 8th, Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías announced the devaluation of the Bolivarian Republic’s currency, the bolivar. In his address, Chávez distinguished between two classes of products, establishing separate exchange rates for “essential” and “non-essential” goods. This news prompted concern for inflation among Venezuelan citizens and followed other signs of trouble that have… »

(PDF) – Obama Administration Energy Diplomacy in Eurasia. A Conversation with Ambassador Richard L. Morningstar, Special Envoy for Eurasian… »

(PDF) – To what extent does Russia face the threat of Islamic radicalization? This article provides an assessment of the nature and severity of the threat and its changing dynamics from the Yeltsin to the Putin periods in post-Soviet Russia. It argues that, contrary to many accounts, the threat was at its greatest during the… »

For several years, suspicions have swirled about the nuclear intentions of Burma’s secretive military dictatorship. Burma is cooperating with North Korea on possible nuclear procurements and appears to be misleading overseas suppliers in obtaining top-of-the-line equipment. Certain equipment, which could be used in a nuclear or missile program, went to isolated Burmese manufacturing… »

Tajikistan’s civil war, which raged from 1992 until the summer of 1997, left at least 50,000 people dead, devastating the country’s economy and displacing more than 1.2 million of Tajikistan’s 7 million people. Ending the bloody conflict took three years of international mediation, involving the United Nations and regional states. Ultimately, it needed a leap… »

The past year has seen the killing-off of the tiny shoots of U.S.-India high-tech cooperation promised by former President George W. Bush. This is despite the eagerness of NASA for joint projects with India. The U.S. space agency is aware that it will continue to be commercially outclassed by the European Union unless it ties… »

Earthquakes triggered the deadliest disasters of the past decade and remain a major threat for millions of people worldwide who live in some of the world’s megacities, the United Nations said Thursday. A UN-backed study said nearly 60 percent of about 780,000 people killed by disasters in 2000 to 2009 died during earthquakes. But… »

The global recovery is off to a stronger start than anticipated earlier but is proceeding at different speeds in the various regions. Following the deepest global downturn in recent history, economic growth solidified and broadened to advanced economies in the second half of 2009. In 2010, world output is expected to rise by 4 percent…. »

Iran, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), ranks among the world’s top three holders of both proven oil and natural gas reserves Iran is OPEC’s second-largest producer and exporter after Saudi Arabia, and in 2008 was the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil globally after Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United… »

Hamas is claiming that one of its leaders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was killed by Israeli operatives in his hotel in Dubai on January 20 and threatening a response “in the appropriate place and time.” The story is all over the Arab media, in many cases as a red-bannered breaking news story. … »

Over the past several years, under the direction of former President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and his handpicked protege, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia may have re-emerged on the international scene with a vengeance. But behind all of the Kremlin’s contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a… »

In the wake of a recent controversy over the retreat of Himalayan glaciers in which the UN’s climate science body admitted that it was an error to assert that they would disappear by 2035, water availability has emerged as a key issue with even more… »

China is unnerving a lot of people. Its hackers have been launching cyber-attacks on companies, institutions, and web sites. It is refusing to be a responsible stakeholder in the international political system, cultivating, as it has been, good relations with some of the world’s most odious regimes. And, as I have been reporting for several… »

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says Moscow has agreed to sell Libya weapons in a $1.8 billion deal. Russia’s Interfax news agency had quoted a “military diplomatic source” as saying Libya was ready to buy about 20 fighter planes from Moscow, as well as air defense systems and several dozen… »

Millions in West Africa’s arid Sahel belt could face famine this year unless the world acts quickly to help, the European Union’s humanitarian aid arm said on Thursday. The warning came as Niger confirmed the veracity of a leaked government forecast that half its population will face food shortages this year after a dive in… »

The Obama administration plans to seek more than $5 billion in additional funding over five years for sustaining the U.S. nuclear complex and deterrent, starting with a $600 million increase in fiscal 2011, Vice President Joseph Biden wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary. The funding boost is necessary even as President Barack Obama pursues… »

The security service MI5 has accused China of bugging and burgling UK business executives and setting up “honeytraps” in a bid to blackmail them into betraying sensitive commercial secrets. A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have also approached UK businessmen at… »

Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi has failed in his bid to stay on as president of the African Union for another year. At the annual AU summit in Ethiopia, leaders from 53 African countries chose the president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, to take his… »

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military… »

The foreign policy of U.S. President Barack Obama can be assessed most usefully in two parts: first, his goals and decision-making system and, second, his policies and their implementation. Although one can speak with some confidence about the former, the latter is still an unfolding process – by Zbigniew… »

Amid continuing tensions between India and Pakistan, a number of civil society organizations held a three-day conference in New Delhi on January 10-12, 2010 to chalk out a roadmap for peace in South Asia. At the end of the conference, a declaration, titled “India Pakistan Conference: A Roadmap Towards Peace,” was issued, calling for resumption… »

(PDF) – The Secretary of Defense shall every four years, conduct a comprehensive examination (to be known as a “quadrennial defense review”) of the national defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program and policies of the United States with a view toward determining and expressing… »

Setting up overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun; on the contrary, it is our right. Bases established by other countries appear to be used to protect their overseas rights and interests. As long as the bases are set up in line with international laws and regulations, they are legal ones…. »

Will commercial oil production (due to begin later this year) build or break the back of Ghana’s democracy? This may seem an unnecessarily inflammatory question, but history demonstrates that healthy caution is necessary in managing oil revenues. Ghana, however, has made history by hosting a series of free and fair elections in recent years. Twice… »

On January 27 in Moscow, Belarus accepted a drastic reduction in its traditional oil subsidy from Russia. The Russian government imposed this outcome through halting oil supplies to Belarus by pipeline almost completely since mid-January. The supply flow should now be restored, but at a far higher price, likely to set the stage for Russian… »

China warned on Saturday that Washington’s announcement of arms sales to Taiwan would seriously damage cooperation between the two global power. Beijing has not said how it may retaliate. Here are some of the steps it could… »

A number of experts believe that the Antarctic Treaty’s years are numbered, regardless of its having been recently renewed for another 50… »

The past year has seen a significant improvement in Syria’s regional and international standing; it managed to extricate itself from its isolation internationally and in the Arab world, and to position itself as an influential regional force. By the end of 2009, the Syrian regime had become self-confident and certain of the effectiveness of its… »

The Iraqi Ministry of Oil on Thursday signed a final contract with a consortium led by Russia’s Gazprom to develop Wassit’s Badra oilfield as part of the second oil licensing… »

Russia’s state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport reported that Venezuela is one of the main importers of Russian weapons together with India, Algeria, China, Malaysia and… »

Military seeks to beef up intelligence gathering in the face of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear… »

China has agreed to join an international naval operation to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia.
China has been focusing on protecting its own shipping in the area, but it will now join the naval forces of the US, Nato and the European Union. This grouping, the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (Shade), protects a… »

An Iranian crackdown on smuggling along the Iraqi border has uncovered fissures and confusion in Baghdad’s policy towards perceived threats to its… »

Relations between the EU and Nato are to be included in the new strategic concept for the military alliance currently being developed by a group of experts led by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright. She’s has been appointed to chair an expert panel tasked to advise Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Ramussen on… »

In recent years, U.S. commanders of the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command have been unanimous in stating that CFC could defeat a North Korean invasion. Nevertheless, they have also expressed concern about the catastrophic damage that North Korea could do to the ROK before losing, for example from the 13,000 North Korean artillery pieces that could… »

At a meeting, President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared to disagree over whether Russia is democratic enough, with an eye on the freewheeling politics of their neighbor,… »

The United States Senate approved legislation on Thursday that would let President Obama impose sanctions on Iran’s gasoline suppliers and penalize some of Tehran’s elites, a move aimed at pressing Tehran to give up its nuclear program. The sanctions would include the denial of loans and other assistance from American financial institutions to companies that… »

Burdened with a prediction made by the U.S. National Intelligence Council in 2005 of the “outright collapse of Nigeria as a nation-state within the next 15 years,” the country has been leaderless for the past several months, as its President, Umaru Yar’Adua, left the country unexpectedly to seek treatment for a medical condition. Since that… »

The money had travelled a long way through multiple layers of officialdom: The National Centre for Human Rights paid for the training sessions with a US$13,000 (Dh48,000) grant from Freedom House, an American non-governmental organisation (NGO) that helps distribute programming funds on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development (USAid). But recent policy… »

Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy this month to discuss peace terms. Regional commanders on the Taliban’s leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and it took place in Dubai on 8… »

What Washington has failed to fully recognize is that the world that created “rogue states” is gone. The term became popular in the 1980s, mainly in the United States, to describe minor dictatorships threatening to the Cold War order. Then, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the main challenge to American dominance came from… »

Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. The Russians made a “top-level approach” to the Chinese “that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force… »

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday unveiled a long-term, non-military strategy to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan that calls for sending more civilian experts to the region. More than a month after the Obama administration announced a military surge for Afghanistan, the new civilian strategy outlines plans to rebuild the Afghan farm sector, improve… »

Last month marked a turning point in the United States-Iraq relationship. American influence is waning, while Iraq is taking steps to get on its feet economically. We suffered no combat deaths in December, and continue to reduce our presence, expecting to withdraw all combat troops by August. And Iraq concluded a major round of production… »

Europe boasts of its efforts to foil the Iranian nuclear program, but in reality has been trading with the Islamic Republic in the amount of some €65 billion (roughly $91 billion) in the past three years. The leading countries in trade with Iran include Spain, France, Italy, Holland and Belgium, a document obtained by Ynet… »

The United States is now in its ninth year of fighting Muslim extremists around the world. People sometimes wonder whether America has learned anything during this painful time, or whether we are condemned to keep digging deeper holes for ourselves. there’s a growing recognition, especially within the U.S. military, that America has to get out… »

Yemen and its foreign partners have agreed to work together to fight the threat of al-Qaeda. Yemen’s Prime Minister Ali Mujawar welcomed the international support, but said it was “unacceptable” to portray Yemen as a failed state and warned against any violations of its… »

The Obama administration is preparing a new arms package for Taiwan. Ironically, selling weapons to Taipei may be the best way for Washington to get out from the middle of one of the world’s potentially most volatile relationships, between China and Taiwan. Relations between China and Taiwan are improving. Yet the former continues to point… »

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters his country was close to agreement with the United States on extending the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, better known as START I, which expired in early December. Whatever one thinks of the proposed arrangement, there is a fundamental problem: China will not be a party to the deal…. »