The word “coup” is no longer merely small talk in Africa’s most populous country. After over two months without a president, compounded by a political stalemate, a religious crisis between Muslims and Christians in the city of Jos that claimed over 200 lives, and now the threat by militants to resume attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta, a growing number of Nigerians are asking openly if military intervention is necessary to get the country back on track.
The subject is hugging newspaper headlines and the military top brass has even admitted that it is aware of “tensions” within the services. For a country that marked its first civilian-to-civilian handover only three years ago, the open talk of a military coup is a serious matter, especially since each of the six successful coups in the past and the half dozen failed ones have left the country worse off. And, all this comes roughly eight months before Nigeria celebrates its fiftieth anniversary of independence from the United Kingdom.
In the desperate and embarrassing condition in which Nigeria has found itself in the months since President Umaru Yar’Adua was evacuated for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, it is easy to find excuses to justify desperate political remedies.
Some have argued, for instance, that the U.S. government’s brusque remonstrances to Nigerian security officials after the Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bomb a Northwest plane over Detroit might have been different had Yar’Adua been on his seat. It’s also fair to say that the power vacuum might have affected the handling of the religious crisis in Jos and encouraged militants in the Niger Delta to start attacking oil pipelines again.
So, it’s not surprising that people have asked: if politicians are determined to prolong the logjam, why not let the military end it with alacrity and then return to the barracks?
Last week, the United States welcomed the re-election of Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won the nationwide presidential election by an 18 percent margin over opposition leader General Sarath Fonseka.
In a statement issued after the final results were announced, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs P. J. Crowley commended the country for “the first nationwide election held in decades.” Despite cautious praise of the electoral process, what remains to be seen in this deeply divided nation is whether the second term policies of this administration will be truly “free and fair.”
Under the rule of President Rajapaksa (and his three brothers), the ruling party has been credited with ending the 30-year civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In the process of this brutal military campaign, it also earned widespread condemnation for its disregard for human rights norms, rampant corruption, and excessive militarization. Unfortunately, it is likely that the Rajapaksa regime will interpret the election results as a renewed mandate to reinforce its policies of the past.
Even more unfortunate, however, is the reality that Sri Lanka’s presidential system (which both candidates claimed they would abolish) provides virtually no checks and balances on the all but unrestricted power of the executive branch. Capitalizing on this power, the president has already declared that he will dissolve Parliament in an effort to secure a ruling coalition to reinforce his decisions.
While Rajapaksa’s leadership will now last for six more years, it is likely that severe internal and external challenges facing the regime will emerge in the very near future. Read the rest of this entry »
It was quite clear by the time President Obama got to the end of his State of the Union speech last night that it was very much—the state of America, not the state of the world. Barely 10 minutes—roughly 900 of 7,500 words—were devoted in his hour-long address to global issues, a passing nod, an odd rhetorical flourish, a vague threat to America’s enemies—North Korea and Iran, al-Qaeda and the Taliban (not even by name, in the latter’s case). Controlling global warming? Good. Withdrawal from Iraq? Leaving behind a democratic government? Well, we shall see in the wake of the coming elections.
Among the few accomplishments he cited? Thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan and a big multilateral conference opening in London today to prop up the government of President Hamid Karzai. But within hours, this latter president undercut Obama’s whole message, suggesting it would be five to ten years before his nation could stand on its own against its many enemies, foreign and domestic. No route home soon for those 30,000 additional men and women apparently.
So what was on the agenda of the American president, and what was not?
Certainly not the Middle East. Despite his stem-winding speech in Cairo nearly a year ago, and the appointment of a master envoy, George Mitchell, Israelis and Palestinians are as far apart as ever. “If we had anticipated some of [the] political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama admitted to Time’s Joe Klein last week.
A quick laughline over global warming. (“I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change….”) But no mention of the buzz-saw he walked into in Copenhagen which all but collapsed, leaving environmentalists puzzled at best, bitter at least.
Global trade? A pledge to double U.S. exports in the next five years—and move toward some Doha accord. Hardly a message many of America’s trading partners would like to hear. And especially those who were somehow left out of the message entirely:
“And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.” What happened to China? India? Brazil? Clearly straw men, purely passing cautionary tales: “China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting.” Look out America, the world is out there breathing down our backs, waiting to steal our first-place position:
“These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America. (Applause.)”
Nuclear disarmament? “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.” When? No deadline. When they’re finished.
And Iran? “As Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. (Applause.)” Which consequences, when and who will accompany us? Empty rhetoric does not go a very long way in Tehran or Qom.
And before his peroration reaffirming America’s “ideals and values,” there was a final summary of his global agenda:
“That’s the leadership that we are providing—engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We’re working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. [The only suggestion in the speech that our economic melt-down, which we helped touch off, is a global problem needing global solutions.] We’re working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We’re helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease—a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad. As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores.”
Last week, I was asked on the PBS broadcast WorldFocus to sum up the president’s first year in international relations. He has, I replied, substantially improved our global image. We are, in many parts of the world, no longer a pariah nation. But concrete results, real accomplishments, changing the course of history or even peoples’ lives? Not much yet. As the anchor Martin Savidge observed, great progress in the most deeply divided regions, particularly the Middle East, is only rarely achieved without the undivided focus and attention of the president of the United States—a president who is now more than ever distracted by a packed domestic agenda.
Where the president has weighed in, it is only in the form of a quick fly-through in Copenhagen, a one-off speech in Cairo, a brief stopover in the chairman’s chair at a UN disarmament session. Then he’s gone. Whoosh. Another item on his daily agenda ticked off and then on to his next stop.
The world, led by Americans who are globally engaged, is still waiting for results, and focus. He has the innate talent, the prayers of the world, all the good will imaginable. Now, in his second year, the debut, as he so quite rightly observed, of a bright new decade, it is time to buckle down and deliver on at least a few of his brightest promises.
David A. Andelman is the editor of World Policy Journal and The World Policy Blog. A veteran domestic and foreign correspondent and editor of The New York Times, CBS News, and most recently Forbes.com, he is the author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.
For most of the world, the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed an amazing, unexpected new beginning. It was that, of course. But it was also an ending—the end of an unprecedented period of awakening and hope in East Germany.
At the time, I was living in West Berlin and working with members of a dissident East German environmental group. They were welcoming, curious, funny, and unabashedly nonconformist. Because they questioned official taboos and published “secret” information like the extent of pollution in East Germany, their telephones and homes were bugged, they couldn’t travel to the West, they were tailed and harassed and kept out of universities or fired from their jobs. Occasionally they went to jail. I admired the quiet courage that allowed them to place their security on the line for their beliefs—to risk the safe, if stifling, cocoon of socialism for a self-determined life.
Yet brave as they were, East Germany’s dissidents were a lonely handful with little influence. They couldn’t mobilize a whole country, like Poland’s Solidarity (a Polish trade union). East Germany’s government was rigidly ideological, and its people were traditionally obedient to authority. Plus, East Germany bordered on West Germany, which regularly siphoned off dissidents: East Germany could always banish uncomfortable critics to the West, which was more than happy to take them in. A few among the dissatisfied and frustrated were even permitted to emigrate. The small number of dissidents who preferred to stay and encourage change from within seemed like hopeless dreamers.
By the spring of 1989, Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev’s influence was being felt across Eastern Europe. In Poland, Solidarity took part in a round table with the government. Hungarians commemorated the anti-communist uprising of 1956. East Germans, too, were getting restless, but the ossified regime refused to budge. Local elections were rigged. Demonstrations in Leipzig, in the south, were broken up violently by the secret police. The government praised China’s handling of Tiananmen Square, suggesting it might do the same. Change seemed further away than ever; leaving the country, hard as it was for average East Germans, seemed the only option. In summer, East Germans looking for a way out began streaming toward Hungary. There and in Poland, freedom was in the air. An East German dissident friend and I watched a demonstration in Warsaw that was escorted by one small police car. He couldn’t imagine that happening in East Germany. Like many of his compatriots, he didn’t believe East Germans would ever rise up in protest.
The Hungarians opened their border with Austria in September, and East German refugees inundated West Germany. But the East German government just clamped down harder.
And then came October. East Germany prepared to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its founding on October 7, with Gorbachev expected as a guest. The regime went all out: a military parade, flags everywhere, a carnival atmosphere—a celebration of communism.
But that night it all changed. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in the center of town and surged outward, catalyzed by Gorbachev’s presence. I had come over to East Berlin to observe events and was sitting in a café with the same friend I’d been with in Warsaw. We watched in disbelief, tears in our eyes, as protesters passed us yelling “Join us!” and “We’re staying here!” It was a defiant cry: rather than going to the West, they would stay and change things. Suddenly that didn’t seem so hopeless. We heard reports of demonstrations in other cities as well. East Germans had risen up after all.
That night, we soon found out, many protesters were detained and beaten. But two days later, a demonstration by 70,000 people in Leipzig became the turning point. The government could have used force. Truckloads of police lined the side streets, and rumor had it that hospitals had been prepared for casualties. People were frightened. But they went out anyway in nonviolent protest, and the regime backed down. Instead of fighting that evening, the police and soldiers found themselves arguing politics with knots of demonstrators. Words had trumped guns.
After that, everything was different; now the East German air felt free, too, and a surge of hope gripped the country. No one spoke of leaving anymore. Everyone wanted to be part of the changes that were so obviously beginning. A public conversation emerged for the first time in decades. People found their voices, and everywhere they talked and talked. Taboos vanished. Discussions and events were too numerous to follow. Political groups sprang up like mushrooms, and government newspapers began hesitantly reporting on them. Non-government newspapers and magazines appeared. East Germans engaged in impassioned debates with government officials. They insisted that police officers who had beaten demonstrators be punished. They demanded the right to leave their country, and soon everyone knew it was just a matter of time before that would happen, too. The prime minister, Eric Honecker, and various Politburo members resigned.
And on November 4, the first-ever officially sanctioned demonstration, for freedom of speech, attracted nearly a million people to downtown East Berlin. Amid a sea of creative, funny, passionate signs and banners, East German artists, writers, and politicians spoke of their hope for a new beginning. No one talked about unifying with the West; perhaps naively, even many dissidents advocated building something new and indigenously East German, just as the Poles and Hungarians were doing in their countries. Hope, energy, enthusiasm, passion, the sense that anything was possible—that was October 1989, and a bit of November, in East Germany.
And then, around midnight on November 9, returning home from East Berlin after a day of translating for a foreign journalist, I found a line of East Germans waiting to cross to the West. The Wall had opened, more suddenly than anyone expected. The next day, hundreds of thousands of East Germans went shopping and sightseeing in West Germany and discovered that what they really wanted was to be able to afford normal things and live like normal people. For a time, euphoria was the predominant mood, but it didn’t take long before it waned. West Germans got annoyed at the influx from the East, and East Germans’ recently acquired confidence gave way to uncertainty. Anxiety and tension replaced relief and joy. No one knew what to expect. The assertive East German cry “We are the people!” changed to “We are one people!”; the dissidents’ hope of creating something new was overtaken by a more widespread wish for the security of tried and true West German prosperity. Unification a year later was the ultimate result. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the fact remains: when the wall came down, it spelled the end of a very special chapter in East German history, in which East Germans felt in control of their own destiny. October was over. A new period, dominated by West Germany, had begun.
Belinda Cooper, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-founder of its Citizenship and Security Program, is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Cooper, the editor ofWar Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, teaches and lectures on human rights, international law, and the “war on terror.”
The serious newspapers I read used to take me an hour to get through. These days it is fifteen minutes. Nothing much is happening, at least in foreign affairs.
Iraq has all but disappeared from the front page. Afghanistan and Pakistan still remain; but even so, investors continue to up their investments in Pakistan, presumably judging that the conflict is over-hyped. The argument with Iran over whether it is building nuclear weapons drags on, despite the forgotten report of the CIA two years ago that found that it probably was not. (Not to mention that the West and Russia look a bit silly when they turn a blind eye to Brazil for doing exactly the same as Iran.) More recently there’s Iran’s suggestion that it might ship some of its used uranium to Russia to be converted into fuel to provide medical isotopes, or else to import from Europe enriched uranium instead of manufacturing its own. So this conflict should now be relatively easy to wrap up.
What else is there? Georgia is out of the picture; Chechnya was long ago. The Russians and the Americans sweet talk each other. Now that Washington has decided to abandon its ill-judged anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, the Russians have switched off their angst and are happily agreeing to the first major nuclear arms cuts in nearly a decade.
China is now part of the “system.” The priorities are economic growth, dealing with financial imbalances, and, unfortunately, keeping the lid on dissent at home. It has made peaceful settlements of its border disputes with Laos, Russia, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and is working on its age old dispute of border demarcation with India. Its bitter clash with Taiwan, which commentators once called the most explosive issue on the map, is now quiescent. Japan and China are finally getting on fine.
Add to this that India’s reflexive anti-Americanism is dead and buried—thanks to President George W. Bush’s decision to lift the embargo on nuclear materials. North Korea is isolated, even from its old mentor China. Who on earth is it going to use its two or three nuclear weapons against? Read the rest of this entry »
Iran is “moving closer” to being able to build a nuclear bomb, U.S. envoy Glyn Davies said to the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog agency on Wednesday. Davies told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran, which insists its atomic program is for peaceful purposes, almost or already has enough low-enriched uranium to produce a bomb, which could be enriched to weapons-grade. “We have serious concerns that Iran is deliberately attempting, at a minimum, to preserve a nuclear weapons option,” Davies told the IAEA’s 35-nation governing board. This would be “a dangerous and destabilizing possible break-out capacity,” said Davies. Earlier this week, the IAEA reported that it was at a “stalemate” with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. “Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities or its work on heavy-water related projects as required by the Security Council,” agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday. While the Iranian nuclear program will be a priority when the UN General Assembly meets later this month, in a recent interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ElBaradei was quoted as saying that “in many ways, I think the [Iranian nuclear] threat has been hyped.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country is willing to cooperate on the “peaceful use” of nuclear energy, and this week handed over new proposals to the major powers working to resolve the dispute over its program. The proposals, which were given to the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany, include compromises on security, economic, and nuclear issues, according to Aliasghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA. However, Iran refuses to negotiate on what it sees as its right to develop nuclear technology.
The South African Development Community (SADC)called for an end to international sanctions on Zimbabwe as it concluded this week’s summit. The regional bloc, whose leaders met for two days in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, noted progress by Zimbabwe’s government in implementing the terms of a power-sharing agreement, which was set out last September in the wake of violently disputed election results. It urged the international community to unconditionally lift all sanctions against Zimbabwe, rejecting a proposal by Zimbabwe’s prime minister and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to condition their removal upon the results of a special assessment meeting. “Considering the positive evolution of the situation, considering the progress that has been made, we believe it is now high time that the sanctions are lifted,” said incoming SADC Chairman and Congolese President Joseph Kabila. This call, explained Deputy President of South Africa Kgalema Motlanthe, “is meant to attract the necessary investment into Zimbabwe so that their economic recovery plan can take effect.” However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has countered that it is too soon to remove the sanctions, which are intended to pressure President Robert Mugabe’s government to honor its democratic obligations. Doing so now will benefit the very people they were meant to punish, says HRW’s Georgette Gagnon: “The levers of power are still very much in the hands of the oppressors…. [Mugabe] has managed to persuade SADC to call for the end to sanctions without making any significant improvement in the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.”
Before leaving for a trip to Russia, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez suggested that Belarus should form a “union” with his country. “We need to create a new union of republics,” Chavez said. “This will not be a union of Soviet or socialist republics. It will be free republics with their own systems, but united in a union.” Both Belarus and Venezuela are wary of Western influence within their countries. Chavez was in Belarus meeting with his counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, before he was scheduled to meet with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin Thursday. Chavez and the Russian leaders are expected to discuss deals on Russian arms and military vehicles. Venezuela has become a leading buyer of Russian arms, purchasing more than $4 billion worth of Russian weapons since 2005. The talks may also focus on joint plans to develop a large oil field in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region. A number of Russian oil companies plan to work with Petroleos, a Venezuelan national oil company, to develop the site, which could potentially hold 1.2 trillion barrels of crude.
South Korean officials are accusing the North of intentionally floodingthe southern side of the demilitarized zone, in a deluge that swept away six people on Sunday. “I think the North did it intentionally,” South Korea’s unification minister told the Korea Times. North Korean officials admitted that they had released the water, which amounted to millions of cubic meters from the North’s Hwanggang Dam, but said they did it only to offset rising waters on its side. South Korean officials have demanded an apology, noting there had been no recent heavy rain in the North that would explain such a surge. The current row between the two countries comes after a number of signs of easing tensions between the two countries, which included easing restrictions on cross-border traffic last month.
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh urged Hillary Clinton to back off on climate change mandates when the two met in New Delhi last month.
“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have amongst the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Ramesh brazenly told the secretary of state.
Not quite the Bollywood ending Mrs. Clinton was expecting. Certainly not the ending desired by scientists and policymakers as they look ahead to December’s Climate Conference in Copenhagen as a last-chance-dance for a meaningful international accord.
But Bret Stephens, the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, sees the Clinton-Ramesh exchange as a perfect outcome for an unsuspecting group: the billions of humans living on less than $2 a day. “The poor told the warming alarmists to get lost,” he writes in his August 4 Wall Street Journal column, describing Ramesh’s shut down of Clinton, whose climate policy, Stephens believes, will threaten India’s access to the free market.
The confused situation in Honduras, where elected president Manuel Zelaya has been shown the door by the army and the supreme court, and in Iran, where thousands in the street protest an election they view as bogus, are not especially easy to solve with the simple shout: “Obey the rules of democracy.” To many across the developing world, it seems that the West once again is being holier than thou. But is democracy such an intrinsic wonder?
“Democracy,” wrote historian Norman Davies, in his monumental study Europe, “has few values of its own: it is as good or bad as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany in 1933-4 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters.”
The Nazis, in three out of the five elections they contested, increased both their popular vote and their election of deputies. In time, they became the largest party in the Reichstag. Despite the party’s street violence and the murders of its opponents, the then-chancellor, Franz von Papen, decided to make Hitler chancellor and himself his deputy. Two years later, Hitler called a plebiscite to approve his elevation to the new position of Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor. He gained 90 percent of the vote—a democratic means to facist ends.
Maybe Berthold Brecht was right. We have to change the people.
Democracy was a Greek idea. But it did not last and was forgotten for some 2,000 years, until Enlightenment thinkers resurrected the idea, blending their classical knowledge with a romanticized image of ancient Athens.
But not all were so taken by these new thoughts. De Tocqueville wrote about “the tyranny of the majority.” Edmund Burke called the democracy of the French Revolution “the most shameless thing in the world.” Read the rest of this entry »
This past month, two resource-rich countries saw political protests turn deadly as the people tried to reign in the autocratic dictates of an incumbent government. One country was, of course, Iran—where every day it seems the government strangles a little more life out of the people’s protests.
With 24/7 news coverage of that disastrous election, you might be forgiven for not having heard about what happened in Peru, where for a change, the people won.
Beginning in 2008, Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, issued a series of executive decrees to open up 210,000 square miles of the Amazon region, including some land legally protected, to foreign oil, gas, logging, and agribusiness investment.
Garcia aimed to develop a multi-billion dollar industry to aid Peru’s growth (not in itself a bad thing) and saw the fertile and resource-rich Amazon as a golden opportunity, simply too good to waste. The president oversaw the signings of dozens of contracts with a wide variety of foreign officials and companies.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see why Garcia underestimated the vociferousness of his opposition. The Amazonian region is home to only 330,000 indigenous people (roughly 1 percent of Peru’s population) arrayed in some 60 tribes. In general, these Amazonians live in remote areas, speak different dialects, are much poorer than the national average, and lack political or social cohesion.
But this time around, the indigenous people were organized and determined. They had spent years getting ready for Garcia’s assault on their native land. Decades of negative experiences with oil extraction companies had forced them to come together, and to plan ahead. Past protests had not been taken seriously by Peruvian elites and legislative leaders, who merely ignored their claims or temporarily suspended action until the furor died down. Then, as always, they returned to business as usual. Read the rest of this entry »
The ongoing crisis in Honduras, stemming from the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, does not lend itself to many obvious solutions acceptable to both sides. A second-best solution may be all that the new mediator, former Nobel Peace Prize winner and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, might be able to achieve.
Thursday’s separate meetings of Arias with Zelaya and then the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, indicated possible common ground, but also no immediate solutions. Neither met his interlocutor, though the talks will continue.
Thus far, the United States has backed the Arias mediation, which has bought Washington time before it may have to cut its military assistance to Honduras, which U.S. law mandates once a democratic government has been removed extra-constitutionally. The history of U.S. military cooperation with the government and military of Honduras has remained extensive, since the 1980s, when Honduras hosted the U.S.-backed Contra rebels, who were attempting to undermine the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.
Not surprisingly, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to have persuaded Zelaya, after their Tuesday meeting in Washington, to negotiate, rather than rush right back to Honduras to attempt to take power. On Sunday, July 5, Zelaya had unsuccessfully attempted to land his airplane in the capital, Tegulcigalpa. The Honduran army, though, blocked the air strip, while also killing at least one protestor that had gathered in solidarity to receive Zelaya at the airport.
With elections scheduled for later this year, the simplest procedure might simply be to let the voters decide between the two presidential claimants. The problem here, though, is that the Honduran Supreme Court has already ruled that Zelaya is ineligible to compete under the existing, single term-limit system. Indeed, his desire to run again for office was exactly what spurred the apparent coup in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
The word “coup” is no longer merely small talk in Africa’s most populous country. After over two months without a president, compounded by a political stalemate, a religious crisis between Muslims and Christians in the city of Jos that claimed over 200 lives, and now the threat by militants to resume attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta, a growing number of Nigerians are asking openly if military intervention is necessary to get the country back on track.
It was quite clear by the time President Obama got to the end of his State of the Union speech last night that it was very much—the state of America, not the state of the world. Barely 10 minutes—roughly 900 of 7,500 words—were devoted in his hour-long address to global issues, a passing nod, an odd rhetorical flourish, a vague threat to America’s enemies—North Korea and Iran, al-Qaeda and the Taliban (not even by name, in the latter’s case). Controlling global warming? Good. Withdrawal from Iraq? Leaving behind a democratic government? Well, we shall see in the wake of the coming elections.
The ongoing crisis in Honduras, stemming from the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, does not lend itself to many obvious solutions acceptable to both sides. A second-best solution may be all that the new mediator, former Nobel Peace Prize winner and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, might be able to achieve.