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President Barack Obama’s long-awaited shift in strategy on the war in Afghanistan has received praise from European leaders, but getting more troops from them to help support the additional 30,000 U.S. forces now planned for deployment may prove more difficult. While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged 500 more troops in Afghanistan, and NATO promised at least 5,000 more, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview that he would send “not a single solider more.” However, the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior French official saying President Sarkozy may reconsider. Germany, which has 4,400 troops in Afghanistan, said it would be ready to do more police training but was reluctant to commit more troops. The deployment will bring the total number of American troops to 98,000, while Britain will now have about 10,000 soldiers in the region. U.S. officials have said they’re looking for an additional 5,000 to 7,000 troops from allies. The Taliban released a statement following President Obama’s announcement, saying the extra troops “will provoke stronger resistance and fighting. [The U.S. forces] will withdraw shamefully.”

In an apparent attempt to crack down on inflation and its small but growing free market economy, North Korea revalued its currency and froze all cash transactions. The move, the first in 17 years by North Korea, caused confusion within the country, according to reports. The official exchange rate between the old won and the new is now 100 to one. Some analysts see the burgeoning free market economy threatening Kim Jong-Il’s hold on power and that the aim of the revaluation is to redistribute wealth throughout the country—a single family will reportedly be allowed to hold no more than 150,000 new won (roughly $1100) in hard currency. According to reports, all cash enterprises and services have been suspended by the government. North Korea took tentative steps to liberalize its economy after a famine in the late 1990s. Since then, the black market economy has grown and illicit currency exchanges have profited. The move seems intended to wipe clean the fortunes of these underground entrepreneurs and reestablish a more “perfect” socialist state.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) began public hearings on the legality of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, which Pristina declared in February, 2008. Kosovo, which had been under a provisional UN administration since 1999, has been recognized as independent by 63 countries (including the United States) since its unilateral secession, and is expected to argue that it was never part of Serbia. “Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and that will remain the case, not only for the sake of Kosovo, but also for the sake of sustainable regional peace and security,” Kosovo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Skender Hyensi said on Tuesday. “We are certain the court will confirm the will of Kosovo’s people to be independent and free.” Serbia, however, has argued that Kosovo’s secession was a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and has claimed the move was ethnically motivated and thus illegal under international law. The UN General Assembly had asked the ICJ, which is the United Nations’ highest judicial body, for an advisory ruling on the matter at the request of Serbia. The ICJ will hear testimony from 29 countries over the next nine days before issuing its ruling. Though it will not be binding, the decision is expected to set a precedent for other secessionist movements around the world, such as in Chechnya and Basque Country in Spain.

In another jab at the United States and its Western allies, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would enrich its uranium itself rather than send it to Russia and France under a UN-brokered deal. The agreement was supposed to calm fears over Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon by offering Tehran the option of letting foreign countries (which already possess enrichment technology) process Iranian uranium. This would theoretically prevent Iran from developing its own indigenous capacity for enrichment, and would ensure that the uranium provided to Iran’s civil nuclear program would fall short of levels required for weapons production. But Iran has repeatedly been backing down from the UN deal. “The Iranian nation will produce 20 percent enriched uranium and anything it needs (itself),” President Ahmadinejad said. He also called the recent International Atomic Energy Agency censure of Iran’s secret construction of a second enrichment plant “illegal.” “The Zionist regime [Israel] and its backer [the United States] cannot do a damn thing to stop Iran’s nuclear work,” he said.

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission on Monday declared incumbent Hamid Karzai “the elected President of Afghanistan” for a second five-year term. The announcement comes one day after rival Abdullah Abdullah announced his withdrawal from a runoff planned for November 7. The second round balloting was canceled Monday morning after Abdullah withdrew. The number two finisher in the initial balloting on August 20 said he did not consider the Independent Election Commission to have been sufficiently reformed that a fair runoff could be guranteed, free from the widespread fraud that marked the first election round. The United States, Britain, and the United Nations each promptly issued congratulatory statements to President Karzai as the elected head of state, and others are expected to follow. Analysts believe, however, that American officials will continue to lead an intense diplomatic effort to reconcile the two candidates’ supporters and unify the country, perhaps through Karzai offering Abdullah a senior office in his administration. In a surprise visit to Kabul Monday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon exhorted Karzai to “move swiftly to form a government that is able to command the support of both the Afghan people and the international community.” Speaking at his home after the press conference, Dr. Abdullah rejected any suggestion of joining Karzai’s administration—he had formerly served as Karzai’s Foreign Minister but left after a bitter falling out—and said of his withdrawal, “I did it with a lot of pain, but at the same time with a lot of hope for the future.  Because this will not be the end of anything, this will be a new beginning.” President Obama is scheduled to lead two National Security Council meetings at the White House on Afghanistan this week as he further considers his administration’s policy and further troop commitments. These deliberations had been clouded by uncertainty over the Afghan administration that would emerge from the election process.

The Pakistani military announced Monday it has captured the towns of Kaniguram, Cheena, and Makeen, strategic Taliban strongholds in the South Waziristan region of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The military, which began its current offensive on October 17, has reportedly cleared the captured areas of all insurgents, mines, and improvised explosive devices. The Pakistani government is now offering rewards totaling $5 million for information leading to the capture of Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and 17 other Taliban leaders. Meanwhile, bombings continued to shake Pakistan on Monday, largely in response to the ongoing military offensive, as one bomb near military headquarters in Rawalpindi killed 30 people, including military officers and some civilians, in a crowded pedestrian area; and. Additionally, two suicide bombings at a security checkpoint in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural center, killed a policeman and injured 25 civilians. A series of ten bombings have killed more than 300 Pakistani civilians since mid-October.

North Korea again pressed the United States to open direct bilateral talks, warning that it was prepared to “go its own way” with its nuclear program should Washington remain unresponsive. “It’s time for the United States to make a decision,” an unidentified spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry told the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday. “We have made it clear that we are ready to take part in multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, depending on the results of talks with the United States . . . If the United States is not ready to sit down face-to-face with us for talks, we cannot but go on our own way,” he added. The statement follows a rare meeting between Ri Gun, North Korea’s deputy nuclear envoy, and Sung Kim, the American special envoy on the North’s nuclear disarmament, in New York and San Diego last week. After months of defiance, North Korea has recently signaled a willingness to return to disarmament negotiations. Last month, it reaffirmed its invitation for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, to visit Pyongyang. Leader Kim Jong-Il also told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month that his country would consider a return to multilateral negotiations, which stalled in April after Pyongyang quit the forum and later conducted nuclear and long-range missile tests. But the North maintained that any return to the six-party framework; which brings together envoys from North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea; depended on the progress of bilateral talks with Washington. to amend “hostile relations.” North Korea’s spokesman reiterated this on Monday, saying “the direct parties, which are the North and the United States, must first sit down and find a rational solution . . . [If the two countries] end the hostile relationship and build trust, there will be a meaningful step toward the denuclearizing of the Korean peninsula.” But whether this will be enough to convince the Obama administration to meet one-on-one is unclear; Washington has said it will only agree to direct talks as part of a resumption of the broader, six-party dialogue.

The UN suspended its support for army units operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, accusing the Congolese army of deliberately killing more than 60 civilians this year. After a tour of the region, UN peackeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the army had “clearly targeted” civilians, and that the United Nations mission in DR Congo (MONUC) would “immediately suspend its logistical and operational support to the army units implicated” in civilian killings between May and December. Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende objected to the decision, saying the investigation was still ongoing. “We are surprised that the United Nations has announced sanctions against these units even before the conclusion of their investigation,” he said on Monday, warning that a withdrawal of support could destabilize the army. MONUC has backed the Congolese army in its military operations against Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels since January, and has provided logistical assistance in the east since a joint Rwandan and Congolese military operation was launched against against the rebel group in March. But the operation has come under widespread criticism for human rights abuses. According to human rights groups, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed, more than 7,000 women and girls raped, and more than 900,000 people forced to flee their homes since operations began in January.

Delegates from 180 countries are gathered in Barcelona today for five days of negotiations toward drafting a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in advance of the symbolic Copenhagen Conference to be held December 7-18. The Barcelona preparatory round is aimed at reconciling an apparent impasse over the contentious issue of technology financing to developing nations. Strains were evident last week when the European Commission agreed that the cost of helping developing nations to reduce carbon emissions by 2020 would total about $150 billion, but talks became stalemated over the question of which nations would pay which proportion of those costs. Central and Eastern European nations, for example, which depend heavily on coal-fired power generation, warned they could not afford to pay in proportion to their emissions. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said that a full legally-binding treaty is unlikely at Copenhagen, but he noted that he was still convinced a political deal was possible. Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard noted wryly, “Failure is the only thing we can’t afford.”

Iran appears to be stalling a UN-drafted deal on its nuclear program, failing to accept the terms of the agreement as Friday’s deadline loomed. The deal, which International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei announced earlier this week, followed days of talks between the UN, Iran, and three interlocutors—Russia, France, and the United States. It arranged for Iran to export roughly 70 percent of its uranium to Russia and France for enrichment, which would greatly ease international concerns about its nuclear program by reducing its stockpile below the threshold needed to produce a weapon. But Iranian state television reported that though it hasn’t rejected the plan outright, the government preferred to buy fuel from foreign suppliers for its nuclear reactor, which has been producing medical isotopes for the last few decades. The report quoted an unnamed source close to Iran’s negotiation team saying, “Iran is interested in buying fuel for the Tehran research reactor within the framework of a clear proposal…. We are waiting for the other party’s constructive and trust-building response.” Such a move would not only fail to reduce Iran’s stock of nuclear material, but would also require waiving UN sanctions that currently bar Iran from making these types of purchases. As of this writing, Tehran had not yet offered an official decision on the IAEA’s deal, but French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that “via the indications we are receiving, matters are not very positive.” Iran’s rejection of the deal would certainly come as a disappointment to the United States, Russia, and France, which all had endorsed the plan by Friday, and might make future negotiations more difficult, reported the BBC from Vienna.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday it’s “largest ever” operation against a drug cartel. More than 3,000 Justice Department agents have been involved in the ongoing Project Coronado, which has led to the arrests of almost 1,200 people in the last four years. The target is La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel and criminal organization accused of murdering Mexican anti-narcotic officials and of trafficking large amounts of illicit drugs and weapons into the United States. In a two-day raid announced yesterday, the Justice Department seized $3.4 million in cash, 144 weapons, more than 100 vehicles, and stashes of methamphetamines, cocaine, and marijuana. Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister, said the operation “is a very clear example of how co-operation [in the fight against drugs] has deepened. It is the result not only of the transfer of equipment but also of collaboration in general.” A grand jury in New York has indicted the alleged leaders of La Familia on charges of conspiracy to import cocaine and methamphetamines.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) inaugurated its first human rights commission on Friday, hailing it as a milestone for the regional bloc as it opened a three-day summit in Thailand. “The issue of human rights is not about condemnation, but about awareness, empowerment and improvement,” said Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. “We shall not only demonstrate to the world that human rights is a priority but also show them realistic and constructive ways to deal with it,” he continued. According to a statement distributed by the Thai government, the commission would “promote and protect human rights by promoting public awareness and education,” but it will have no power to investigate governments or impose sanctions. This has raised concerns among some human rights activists, who called the body toothless and questioned its credibility, especially when “civil society” representatives from several countries were rejected by their governments at the meetings. “The commission has not been designed to be effective and impartial,” said Debbie Stothard, a human rights activist from Malaysia. Southeast Asia’s human rights record is blemished at best—Myanmar’s military government is currently detaining more than 2,000 political prisoners, including opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; Cambodia’s parliament passed a law this week barring demonstrations of more than 200 people; Malaysia, which maintains tight controls on its media outlets, also detains people it deems a threat to national security without trial; and in southern Thailand, an ongoing military offensive against an Islamic separatist insurgency has drawn criticism from organizations like Human Rights Watch for its brutal policing tactics.

Meanwhile, the UN envoy to North Korea called that nation’s human rights situation “abysmal,” saying that about one third of its people are needlessly going hungry. In a report to a meeting of UN members, envoy Vitit Muntarbhorn said, “the human rights situation in the country remains abysmal owing to the repressive nature of the power base: at once cloistered, controlled and callous.” Though North Korea is “endowed with vast mineral resources controlled by the authorities,” millions still live in “abject poverty and suffer the prolonged deprivations linked with shortage of food and other necessities…. The exploitation of the ordinary people has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite,” he continued. But Pak Tok-hun, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the UN, said the report was “full of distortion, lies, falsity, devised by hostile forces.” Fresh UN sanctions were imposed on North Korea this year in response to its nuclear program, and international aid reaching the country fell significantly. Because of this shortfall, the UN’s World Food Program has been able to support fewer than 2 million people; earlier this year, it was feeding nearly 6 million.

Chinese officials on Friday celebrated the launching of ChiNext, China’s growth enterprise market (GEM), which seeks to attract investment to its emerging entrepreneurial sector. The launch emphasizes China’s ongoing experiment with privatization and innovation as a means of creating jobs and stimulating robust economic growth—heralding a growing focus on smaller enterprise. He Chengying, a development manager with Guosen Securities, noted that ChiNext “is especially necessary to help the small and medium-sized enterprises to raise funds after the global financial crisis. The time is ripe to launch the new board.” China’s other two stock exchanges, in Shanghai and Shenzhen, are dominated by state-owned enterprises, mostly large, industrial firms. The first group of 28 GEM firms will debut October 30 and include sectors of innovative energy and materials, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and modern service industries. The initial public offerings (IPOs) raised a combined $2.3 billion, though some analysts remarked that the stocks are overvalued and might precipitate speculation and market manipulation—ills that have plagued some Western economies and which China has sought to avoid.

Meanwhile, the U.S. congressional advisory panel, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, reported Thursday that Chinese cyberspying, apparently supported by the government in Beijing, has successfully penetrated several U.S. “high technology development” firms, a move likely intended to steal intellectual property and assess its competitors. The Commission did not, however, publicly name the firms or provide a damage assessment. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington flatly denied the accusation.

Let’s exaggerate. Iran has been singled out for persecution over its alleged nuclear bomb making program because in 1979 its Revolutionary Guards took the staff of the U.S. embassy hostage, causing outrage in America with even the esteemed Walter Cronkite ratcheting up the tension, putting up on the screen, as he read the nightly news, the number of days they had been incarcerated. The sitting president, Jimmy Carter, was deposed, tarred with the brush of utter failure.

Something of an exaggeration that this was the sole or even the most important factor in building a pro bomb lobby in Iran. Still it has a grain of truth: Iran has been singled out unfairly. The West and Russia are engaged in discriminating against it.

Brazil has had a nuclear enrichment program for decades (including a large ultracentrifuge enrichment plant, several laboratory-scale facilities, a reprocessing facility to make plutonium, and a missile program). In the 1980s it built two nuclear devices. Three years ago I asked the chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Brasilia if Washington was worried about Brazil. “Not at all,” he replied. “In the early 1990s Brazil dismantled its nuclear weapons program, and Argentina, its supposed enemy, has done the same.” “But,” I insisted, “Brazil still has its enrichment program and a reprocessing facility”. “We have no worries about Brazil,” he answered. “We see eye to eye.” However, Brazil still resists, in part, the probing eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog.

In 1979 the attitude of the Carter administration toward Pakistan, then attempting to build its own bomb, was almost as harsh as is the attitude of the United States toward Iran today. All American military aid was suspended, even though the Taliban were a lurking potential threat. However, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December of that year, Carter persuaded Congress to restart a large-scale arms program. For the next decade, in return for Pakistan’s help building up the anti-Soviet mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan (who later went to work for Osama bin Laden), Washington turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s effort to build nuclear weapons.

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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 flooding the 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.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula daSilva will unveil a sweeping reform of the country’s oil and natural gas industries today. The proposal is expected to introduce a new regulatory framework for the exploration and development of recently discovered offshore oil deposits in Brazil’s pre-salt fairway. This so-called “pre-salt” area, below a thick layer of salt formations and more than 13,000 feet below the sea bed, is estimated to hold as much as 50 billion barrels of oil and is the deepest oil reservoir Brazil has found (thus far, its oil discoveries have all been post-salt, or above the salt layer). The legislation will delineate exactly who may operate in the still-unleased blocks in the pre-salt area. Government-run Petrobras will likely be given rights to operate in the region, plus a minimum ownership stake of about 30 percent in each block. A new state-controlled company, Petrosal, will be created to manage the new assets and determine how royalties from the deposits will be distributed. The legislation is not, however, expected to change the existing legal framework for exploration and development outside the pre-salt area. “The government has proposed a model that may complicate an already successful system,” said Andrew Derman of Thomson & Knight, which represents many oil and natural gas companies that operate in Brazil. “However, the oil and gas industry successfully works in a variety of contractual systems worldwide and will adapt to the regulatory environment.” The reforms are a part of President daSilva’s effort to use the new found oil wealth to ease poverty and improve education and technology in Brazil, but a quick passage of the legislation is unlikely. “The proposed legislation will receive a great deal of Congressional scrutiny and the ensuring debate could be protracted,” explained Alexandre Chequer, also of Thomson and Knight.

In Sunday’s elections, a record high turnout of Japanese voters overwhelmingly elected the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), ending nearly 45 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In a dramatic reversal, the DPJ opposition increased its seats in the Lower House from 112 to 308, while the LDP lost 181 of its previous 300 seats. (Upper House elections take place in July and an election for Prime Minister in September.) Some consider the vote primarily a response to domestic Japanese economic trends. The ruling LDP commanded a strong reputation of developing the Japanese economy after World War II, but the economy weakened during the recession of the 1990s and that weakness has continued into the present global economic slowdown. The result has been high unemployment, falling wages, and a public debt nearing 200% of GDP. Japan’s foreign policy under the DPJ is uncertain. Chinese officials, still nursing deep resentments over Japan’s invasion of China and other Asian countries between 1937 and 1945 that has isolated Japan within its own region, await a formal apology from the Japanese government before pursuing closer relations. The DPJ may is also likely to reevaluate the LDP’s strong ties with the United States–particularly whether to evict 50,000 Americans from a U.S. military base at Okinawa.

For more on Japan’s political struggles, see Why Japan Can’t Lead by Aurelia George Mulgan (World Policy Journal, Summer 2009).

NASA has launched the U.S. shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station, carrying food and equipment to the orbital outpost in its 30th maintenance flight. After nearly two full days of traveling, it arrived at the ISS on Sunday night with more than seven tons of gear to unload, including a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment, and a treadmill (named after television personality Stephen Colbert) to maintain the astronauts’ health. “The entire rendezvous and docking was smooth as silk,” said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias. The mission also includes three spacewalks to prepare the space station for full-time science operations. The first, scheduled for Tuesday, will be to retrieve several experiments to be brought back to earth for analysis, as well as to install a new tank of ammonia coolant. Discovery will spend a total of 13 days in space and is due to return to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 10.

Nearly 60 percent of black and African people living in the Russian capital of Moscow have been victims of racially motivated violence, says a new study published by the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (MPC), an interdenominational Christian congregation ministering to Moscow’s foreign communities. According to the report, Africans living or working in the city are essentially “under siege,” living in constant fear of attack and avoiding crowded places and public transportation. Of the 200 people surveyed, about a quarter said they had been attacked multiple times, and some 80 percent had experienced verbal abuse. The number of assaults actually decreased since the MPC’s last survey in 2002, but many of the attacks remain premeditated and extremely violent. One Nigerian man interviewed by the BBC said he was shot after having been stabbed multiple times in the back, and another man claimed an attacker tried to remove his scalp. At least one dozen immigrants have been killed and hundreds more injured in racially driven attacks this year alone. Meanwhile, Joachim Crima, a 37-year-old native of Guinea-Bissau aiming to become Russia’s first black elected official, may have competition from a builder of Ghanian descent. Crima, who is running for district chief in the Russian region of Volograd, has been dubbed the “Volgograd Obama” by media outlets and is the first black person to ever be a candidate for office in Russia. His newest competitor, Filipp Kondratyev, whose father is from Ghana and whose mother is Russian, registered last week for the October 11 polls. Kondratyev’s spokesman denied that his candidacy was put forth in an effort to take votes away from Crima.

North Korea’s efforts to restructure its foreign trade provoked conflicting international responses as it opened its border with South Korea but was caught shipping banned weapons to Iran. South Korea announced that regular traffic of goods and personnel will resume on Tuesday across a heavily fortified stretch of the border that the North had closed in December–the latest in a recent series of conciliatory gestures from North Korea to both South Korea and the United States. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades—all embargoed by the United Nations, and disguised as oil—manufactured in North Korea and en route to Iran. The United Nations has imposed heavy sanctions on both Iran and North Korea, though the U.N. has not yet commented publicly on the weapons seizure. The seizure is also a positive signal from the U.A.E., an import-export hub for Iran and several other Middle East nations, which has been accused of allowing questionable shipments to transit through its ports.

BANGKOK—In a field cut off from the rest of Thailand by a muddy mountain pass, 1,000 people have been living under thin tarps for the past six weeks, having fled landmines and shelling in their native Myanmar.  The tarps and wood platforms do not protect them from monsoon rains or the mosquitoes that spread malaria around their makeshift villages.

Factions of the Karen people have fought for greater autonomy from the country formerly known as Burma for 60 years, but the Karen villagers I spoke with just seem to be caught in the crossfire.

In the last few months, the world has turned its focus to the secretive, military-ruled state.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced concern over Myanmar-North Korea military links at the July Asean Regional Forum.  The state show trial of pro-democracy leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi attracted international media coverage, brought UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Burma and garnered a new release of the U2 song dedicated to the world’s best known prisoner of conscience. In an apparent gesture to this global clamor, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of the Burmese opposition was given what for the junta was a slap on the wrist—another 18 months of detention where she has already spent half of her adult life under house arrest.

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John Delury’s article “North Korea: 20 Years of Solitude” appeared in the winter “Dear Mr. President” issue of World Policy Journal. His grade for the new administration’s first 100 days follows this update.

President Barack Obama’s policy team is making inroads on a less hostile, more direct relationship with states like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. The manifestations may look ad hoc—a friendly video message; conference sideline handshakes; partial lifting of travel restrictions; dispatch of envoys to a rarely-visited foreign capital. But the sum total indicates a new spirit animating American foreign policy toward troublesome, alienated, or “rogue” countries. A kind of axis of engagement seems to be taking shape.

There is one noticeable exception: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), a spoke in the wheel of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.” One hundred days into the Obama Age, it hardly feels like the beginning of a new era in U.S.-North Korea relations. Considering the extremely narrow channels of communication between the two countries, there is ample room for misunderstanding, conflict, and perception gap, even in so short a time. Foreign policy elites in Washington and Pyongyang may be telling themselves very different stories of what’s happened since January.

How would North Korea’s ruling elite evaluate Obama’s first 100 days, and what questions are they asking themselves about this new American leader?

Transition politics and envoy diplomacy in the early days of the Obama administration may have sent Pyongyang the signal that any new departure in U.S.-North Korea relations, for better or worse, will come at North Korea’s initiative. In fact, day one of the Obama era was a disappointment for the DPRK since the president’s inauguration team snubbed an unusual North Korean request to send an envoy to the inauguration ceremony. The rejection barely made headlines and it seemed prudent at the time for a young progressive president to not appear coddling of tyrants.

But in retrospect, the White House may have squandered an easy opportunity to give face to Pyongyang, opening the door for engagement and respect, without giving anything concrete away. Pyongyang showed initiative in wanting to send an emissary to witness the historic moment of Obama’s inauguration; Obama’s team may have mistaken this opportunity for one of many to come, rather than for the litmus test that—in the eyes of Pyongyang—they failed.

From Pyongyang’s perspective, the second negative indicator was the relative delay in appointing a special representative on the North Korean issue.

Two days after inauguration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden personally announced, with great fanfare, the appointment of a special envoy for Middle East peace and special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan. But a special representative for North Korean policy was not announced for another month, during which time North Korea experts warned of the importance of staying ahead of North Korea diplomatically, and obviating Pyongyang’s need for attention-grabbing brinkmanship.

The appointment of Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, a highly-respected diplomat who had recently traveled to Pyongyang, was itself second-guessed, even in South Korea, for the fact that he was keeping his day job as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. At the time of his appointment as Af-Pak rep, Richard Holbrooke was serving as chairman of the Asia Society—where I work—and it would have been inconceivable that he carry on in that capacity. The delayed appointment of a half-time envoy to North Korea must have had a deflating effect for anyone high-up in Pyongyang who hoped for “change.”

The third sign to Pyongyang that there was nothing terribly new in Obama’s approach to the peninsula was Clinton’s Asian tour.

The Secretary sent well-crafted, friendly, and respectful bilateral messages in Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing. East Asia lauded her trip as a resounding success. But one casualty of her astute bilateralism was the message received in Pyongyang. Clinton met with the families of abductees in Japan and ruminated on the death of Kim Jong Il with reporters on her flight to Seoul—stepping on two “third rails” of North Korean diplomacy. Emphasizing the importance of Japan and South Korea—both of whose governments are locked in hostility with North Korea—Clinton’s trip did little to assuage North Korean insecurities, or generate optimism about a new relationship with the United States.

Yet, Washington, already suffering Pyongyang fatigue from the back and forth of the Six Party Talks, tells a very different story. The North Koreans just don’t seem ready to be engaged. If this were a schoolyard fight, the State Department spokesman would be forgiven for crying out—“but he started it!”

Not long into the new president’s term, satellite imagery detected suspicious activity at the rocket launch site on North Korea’s northwest coast. Pyongyang announced plans on February 24 to launch a satellite rocket, which three of the six parties immediately pre-condemned as a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution banning the DPRK from activities related to its ballistic missile program.

Three weeks later, Pyongyang announced it had taken legal steps to make its satellite launch fully compliant with international laws and norms governing the use of space (I argued that Obama cut his losses, defuse the tension, and not let the launch derail peninsula diplomacy).

Washington tried to stay cool, even as its main allies in the region, Tokyo and Seoul, threatened to punish North Korea for a launch. In the immediate lead-up to the launch, Obama’s deputies offered carrots and sticks—National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair called for “international opprobrium,” while Bosworth held out the bait of “direct talks” if Pyongyang would call off their launch at the last minute.

Of course, the North Korean government went ahead with its launch, timed to tear at the coattails of Obama’s Prague speech on nuclear arms control. The president cited North Korea’s actions as evidence of the need for an enhanced non-proliferation regime:

“Just this morning, we were reminded again of why we need a new and more rigorous approach to address this threat. North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action—not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response—(applause)—now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that’s why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”

The president’s language indicates that he gets what the North Koreans are after—security and respect. But it’s too bad Obama’s attention was drawn to North Korea in the context of missile and nukes, reinforcing the narrow definition of the problem, which virtually ensures there will be no solution (standing “shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans” is a sure way to ensure anything but their changing course).

Obama has a rather unique intuition about conflict resolution, a subtle grasp of the ways history and ideology can imprison individuals and communities in mutual contempt, whereas recognizing the validity of conflicting values can lead to reconciliation and progress. Those instincts would serve him well if applied to the deep sources of conflict on the Korean peninsula. But with the domestic economy teetering and the Taliban on the outskirts of Islamabad, Obama probably just wishes Pyongyang could hang tight for a bit.

He might also be calculating that it would be prudent to focus his engagement capital on those “pariah” states that are somewhat less provocative. Does trying to bring North Korea into the unofficial “Axis of Engagement” jeopardize efforts elsewhere, leaving Obama open to attack for being too soft? Where is the domestic constituency in the United States that would support forward-looking American initiative? Why antagonize Tokyo and Seoul with proactive engagement toward the DPRK, when Pyongyang seems to be flouting UN authority? And is there anyone in Pyongyang capable of requiting American engagement, or is a sickly Kim Jong Il increasingly captive to a hard-line military oligarchy with no interest in economic and political opening?

These are among the questions Obama is likely asking himself, in so far as he has time and inclination to mull over the Korean peninsula at all.

The central argument of my World Policy Journal “Letter to the President” was that Obama should focus on finding a proactive and creative way to solve the underlying problem with North Korea: its isolation—political, economic, and cultural—from so much of the world community, and its abnormal and antagonistic relations with the United States. He and Clinton certainly have the requisite talent and knowledge on their foreign policy team to devise a comprehensive strategy of engagement but the mission needs to be defined as such.

American foreign policy has the great capacity to initiate a change of course and transform its relationship with an adversary. To wait for Pyongyang to initiate the change is futile, dangerous and tragic. It’s up to Obama to turn things around.

For his first 100 days, he deserves a grade of…

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The legacy of policy missteps on Pyongyang is long and tortured. Behind all the disturbing failures of President Bush’s North Korea policy—including the inability to prevent North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006 and the removal of Pyongyang from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008—run two themes that President Obama would do well to avoid.

Bush turned to engagement policy based on the false expectation that North Korea would eventually give up its nuclear program and weapons, when, in fact, Pyongyang was using negotiations as a deception strategy to gain time to pursue its nuclear ambitions. In the meantime, it extracted economic gains and other benefits, such as a peace treaty, to make the dictatorship more secure.

Second, despite his occasional use of tough verbiage, Bush was never able to translate his words into effective action due to fear of the North’s constant threats of war. Whenever Bush tried to exert serious (non-military) pressure, Pyongyang blocked it by invoking military brinkmanship, often calling Bush’s attempt a “declaration of war.” Each time Bush retreated, Washington encouraged the North to repeat the same scare tactics.

These two strategies—a diplomatic delaying game and military brinkmanship—have been the backbone of North Korea’s success in manipulating and weakening the U.S. government’s efforts.

In what promises to be the first major test of the Obama administration, Pyongyang is gearing up for the test launch of a long-range rocket scheduled to go off sometime between April 4 and April 8. Although Pyongyang claims it is a communications satellite, both U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources believe it to be a disguised test launch of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile that could potentially reach Alaska, Hawaii, and the west coast of the United States.

The action, if successful, would be a crucial milestone for North Korea’s military advancement and substantially raise its offensive capability, its proliferation potential, and its leverage for future dealings with adversaries. The United States is very anxious to avert this provocative action, as are South Korea and Japan. But President Obama has said very little about North Korea, in relation to the missile launch or anything else. In fact, other top officials in the administration have not been of much help either.

Secretary of State Clinton initially described the North’s missile test as “unhelpful.” She later said the rocket launch would “violate the UN Security Council resolution 1718,” but failed to specify how the North will be penalized if it violates the decree. Asked what the United States might do if the missile launch takes place, she said, “I don’t want to talk about the hypothetical. We are still working to try to dissuade the North Koreans.”

The Obama administration’s special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, has used equally hollow turns of phrase: “We hope North Korea refrains from the provocation of firing a missile, and…if that [launch] does happen, then obviously we’ll have to…decide how to respond.”

Only belatedly, in late March, after the rocket was mounted on the launch pad, did representatives of the United States, South Korea, and Japan get together to issue a warning about bringing the matter to the UN Security Council. Yet they refrained from mentioning any strong, specific penalties.

Pyongyang, of course, quickly reacted by warning that a UN action to punish North Korea will be regarded as a “blatant hostile act.” Further, they warned, should Washington bring the matter to the Security Council it will cause the Six-Party Talks to break down, critically hurting the process of denuclearization. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan hinted that North Korea might resort to a second nuclear test in response to a UN sanction.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Japanese defense departments have been talking about plans to shoot down the missile. But, when there’s still time to issue a stiff warning in order to block the missile launch, planning such an attack—however defensive in nature—is more likely to provoke and encourage North Korea to carry out the test. (Fortunately, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has backed away in recent interviews from U.S. plans to shoot down the North Korean missile.)

The stakes are high: a missile launch would highlight Washington’s weakness. The Obama administration seems unwilling to exert strong pressure on Pyongyang against the launch because of its desire to continue the nuclear talks (with the lingering expectation that negotiation might succeed somehow) and perhaps also due to fear of violent reactions from the North Korean regime. These are the exactly same reasons that informed the failed policies of the Bush era.

In the long run, Obama’s approach, which emphasizes more engagement with, and acceptance of, Pyongyang than the policies pursued by Bush, is likely to grant even more precious time to the North.

In the end, the Obama administration may be writing the final chapter of America’s failed North Korea policy by bringing about a devastating U.S. surrender: abandoning the denuclearization effort, accepting the monstrous tyranny as a member of the world nuclear club, and opening the gateway for the North to take over the South. Read the rest of this entry »

One small step forward by North Korea and the United States; one large step for mankind. The political fight to persuade North Korea to halt its nuclear bomb making activities seems at last, in the dying days of the Bush presidency, to be entering a serious phase.

Washington has finally bowed to the North Korean request to remove it from the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism—which will enable the renegade state to become eligible for international loans and sundry other economic benefits—in return for Pyongyang agreeing to re-allow inspections to verify a North Korean promise to freeze its nuclear activities, as it undertook last year and then withdrew from.

After nine years of erratic U.S. policies—met by equally erratic and bellicose North Korean ones—the negotiations have ended up almost where they started following the highly fruitful diplomacy of the Clinton administration that transformed Pyongyang from total intransigence to a willing and helpful negotiating partner. Indeed, by some counts, this was the Clinton administration’s only substantial and productive foreign policy success. (That said, a Republican majority in Congress during the Clinton years torpedoed commitments made by his administration, diluting the real benefits.)

During the Bush administration, North Korea has tripled the amount of nuclear weapons’ material it has in store. Worse, it has exploded a nuclear bomb and probably has enough material to produce half a dozen more.

This must count as one of President George W. Bush’s worst foreign policy feats. A record of commitments made in tense but productive negotiations were not honored. Bush called the regime “evil” and then offered aid. It refused to negotiate over financial issues (notably money laundering by Banco Delta Asia) then returned the funds it had impounded. Read the rest of this entry »