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Russia’s aggressive behavior in Georgia will have implications throughout the Caspian Sea Region, forcing Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to rethink their strategic priorities with the West. Russia has reasserted itself as the dominant player in the region and revealed how difficult it is for the U.S. to maintain a strategic position around the Caspian.
Russia’s response to Georgia’s large-scale military operation in South Ossetia transformed the conflict from a regional dispute over an obscure ethnic group into an emerging international crisis between Russia and the West. While Georgia may have succeeded in causing Russia to move in with heavy forces, the United States and Europe need to pause and think before following Saakashvili's script.
Despite the collapse of the Doha trade talks this week, the global food crisis is creating the basis for longer term progress on a new agricultural trade regime. Key differences over agriculture as well as manufacturing and services trade seemingly stymied a final deal, but progress on farm talks bodes well for an eventual pact that better reflects the needs of developing countries and the poor.
John McCain continues to rely on neoconservative foreign policy advisers and he still thinks U.S. foreign policy should focus on transforming rogue states and autocracies into democracies that live under the shadow of American power. But such a plan would create gratuitous tensions with countries like Russia and China.
Despite President Bush’s 2001 commitment to supply Taiwan with U.S. military equipment for its self defense, the administration froze the final part of the arms deal last week. The deal should move forward, not only to support a democratic ally whose leader is committed to improving cross-straits relations, but also as a pragmatic step toward balancing China’s military build-up.
Decision time has arrived on the controversial nuclear cooperation proposal that was first proposed by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005. Because the NSG and IAEA traditionally operate by consensus, any one of a number of states can act to block or modify the ill-conceived arrangement. They have good reason and a responsibility to do so.
The Bush administration's Freedom Agenda - an undertaking rich in rhetoric and bombast and poor on substance - has been an unqualified disaster. It has not helped bring about change in the region, but it has undermined American credibility. Yet the next administration in the United States must not succumb to the temptation to simply dismiss the idea of democracy promotion in the Middle East.
Robert Kagan believes a war is coming. Not necessarily one with guns and bombs, but his new book argues that a fundamental global divide is emerging between liberal democracies and autocratic governments—namely Russia and China. He and presidential hopeful John McCain call for a League of Democracies, which the Republican candidate has pledged to pursue if he wins the November election. NEWSWEEK's Christopher Werth spoke with Kagan about the ascendancy of great-power competition.
America has elected a president from a once-marginalized social group before. But the country has rejected such a candidate, too. Barack Obama represents a social group that was once on the margins of American politics, but now aspires to put one of its own in the highest office. This has happened once before in U.S. politics: when American Catholics saw one of their own nominated to be president.
Low minimum wages may be partially to blame for the growth of inequality in Mexico throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. Minimum wages play an important role in wage-setting for low-income workers, including those in the informal sector. Government policies aiming to mitigate minimum wage’s negative impacts on employment may have pernicious consequences for income inequality.
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