International attorney and Corporate Foreign Policy founder Robert Amsterdam took to the podium on Wednesday, February 3rd at the CATO Institute in Washington DC to discuss in brief the role of the ‘reset‘ button in contemporary U.S.-Russia relations and the precedent it sets by both besmirching rule of law at home and abroad and indeed by belittling the value of human rights in foreign policy.
Power and the titles that accompany it are difficult to let go of, even within the ranks of established international and geopolitical communities. Mugabe has had a stranglehold on power for decades, even when it hinders progress for a Zimbabwe he claims to love. Omar Bongo rather silently ran Gabon for nearly the same amount of time. Manuel Zelaya was caught red-handed, attempting to prolong his tenure as President of Honduras. Hugo Chavez will not leave Miraflores Palace without a fight, even while the foundations of his regime crumble around him. The African Union has recently followed suit, electing a new president, ending a bid by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to stay on as president of the organization for another year.
Leaders from 53 African countries chose Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika as the organization’s new leader during an annual summit Sunday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Winning hearts and minds will clearly be on the agenda for Mr. Mutharika. He has allowed the Chinese government to attempt similar in his country for the last ten years.
ENI SpA’s chief executive said yesterday that the Italian energy company will pull out of Iran after current contracts to develop two gas fields there run out, amidst international pressure to isolate the country over its highly controversial nuclear program.
Paolo Scaroni also said the company plans to raise around euro1.5 billion from selling off shares in three gas pipelines in order to settle a European Union antitrust dispute.
He told reporters that the company won’t prolong contracts it signed in 2001 to develop two Iranian gas fields. Iran has the world’s second largest gas resources after Russia and has resisted global pressure - including U.S. sanctions - over its program to enrich uranium. Iran says its program is peaceful but the U.S. says it suspects Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons.
“We will continue to abstain in the future,” Scaroni told reporters.
Marifeli Pérez-Stable is vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC and a professor of sociology at Miami’s Florida International University. Dr. Pérez-Stable chaired the Task Force on Memory, Truth, and Justice which published the report, ‘Cuban National Reconciliation‘, in April 2003. On both the website of the Inter-American Dialogue and indeed below excepted from the Miami Herald, Ms. Pérez-Stable has comprised an intriguing report on the shifting faces behind Latin American politics.
“On Jan. 17, Chileans elected Sebastián Piñera their president, the first time in 52 years that a conservative won at the polls. It’s tempting to cast his victory as Right versus Left and a bad omen for the Latin American Left. Rather, his election represents democracy’s normal course: sooner or later incumbent parties lose.
At home, Piñera is unlikely to stray far from Michelle Bachelet’s social policies. Abroad, he’ll veer in a different direction. Bolivia’s demand for sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean won’t get his consideration.
Neither will he have much forbearance for Hugo Chávez and his allies. Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe finally has a friend in South America. Let’s hope he has the good sense of bypassing reelection.”
Lifting the many sanctions burdening Zimbabwe is clearly essential for the nation’s growth. Importers would be able to re-develop their once bountiful export market, private enterprise would be promoted to flourish, the agricultural and mining sectors can regroup and work diligently without threat of corruption and communities can be given the resources to fight the devastating impact of a cholera that has never been fully ‘arrested‘.
Indeed, with a functioning government, led by Prime Minister and Movement for Democratic Change member Morgan Tsvangirai, such suprisingly-attainable feats could be possible. Just read Vijay Mahajans ’Africa Rising‘ for more on the ample investment opportunities in the region, opportunities China may be the first to claim (such is their geopolitical strategy, one Mr. Obama has made the choice to ignore).
However, such opportunity is time and again stifled, and unfortunately the reasoning not only makes sense but depicts that vicious cycle claiming Zimbabwean potential. This time, House of Commons International Development Committee Chairman Malcolm Bruce yesterday stated that Britain has made clear that the key to lifting sanctions is for ‘those blocking progress in Zimbabwe‘ to honor their commitments.
One can decipher the coding behind the sentence how they wish. This blogger believes a Mugabe-led unity government doesn’t reflect the electoral vote, and BLOCKS PROGRESS IN ZIMBABWE.
Washington Examiner Columnist, Vice President at the Cato Institute and author of “The Cult of the Presidency“ Gene Healy clearly despises rhetoric.
His article, recently published in the Examiner, opens by emphasizing the repetitiveness with which Obama deals with each administrative failure - by pushing the charm offensive. However, unlike Healy’s many counterparts at the Examiner, his is a more geopolitically robust opinion, shedding light on a regime which wrote the book, almost literally, on propaganda posing as admiration, censorship as a manipulative tool to besmirch free speech, and a ‘comic dystopian novel‘ which happens to be very real and indeed is ‘no laughing matter‘.
You could almost hear a collective groan go up when Barack Obama announced that he planned to deal with his recent setbacks by ’speaking directly to the American people.’ After 158 interviews and 411 speeches in 2009, who’s clamoring to hear more from a president whose microphone addiction rivals Bill Clinton’s?
If you think we’ve got it bad, pity the Venezuelans, whose strongman president, Hugo Chavez, rules the airwaves with his own talk show. ‘Hello, President!’ airs Sundays, sometimes for up to eight hours, and it features Chavez singing, insulting his enemies, giving shout-outs to Fidel Castro, and even, on one occasion, describing a gut-wrenching bout of diarrhea he’d had while filming the show.
Corruption runs rampant in China. Though millions of Chinese citizens have little to no access to the internet, government dealings with the various forms of mafia go without saying. It is in this climate that the beginning of perhaps the most intriguing chapter in China’s most sweeping crackdown on corruption in recent history takes place. The trial of the most senior official implicated in an intricate web of mafia-style gangs that terrorized the central city of Chongqing has indeed begun.
Wen Qiang, the former director of the Chongqing Justice Bureau is accused of colluding with the municipality’s mafia dons, protecting a system of organized crime, money laundering and taking up to $2.63 million in bribes. He has also been charged with raping a female college student on several occasions and luring women into prostitution.
So far, local authorities have detained almost 1,200 people in the sweep, and prosecuted 12 high-ranking officials, including Wen, according to China’s state-run media.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is pressing the world to end sanctions on his country as it climbs out of political and economic abyss, however wherever he goes the shadow of Robert Mugabe follows. Now, the Prime Minister seeks support from the booming China, a nation more than willing to forgo human rights abuses and indeed a corruption that even Tsvangirai can’t control for the sake of its own growth.
Both Tsvangirai and Mugabe will soon have been in an uneasy “inclusive government” for an entire year. The relationship remains difficult, Tsvangiraistated on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos where he tried to convince global leaders to take a new look at the African nation.
“How do you deal with a president who was determined to see your destruction? How do you deal with the level of acrimony that existed between us?” said the prime minister.
Tsvangirai and the veteran president, who is the subject of a western travel ban and asset freeze, now meet every Monday and then go to the regular cabinet meeting.
Free and fair elections are a pillar for tangible change in government. Many have long strived to see the fruition of democracy in all of its values reach contemporary Latin America, more recently in the Arcadia Foundation taking to task the former Honduran government of dubious dealings and questionable practices. Their anti-corruption campaigns shone a spotlight on ‘sweetheart‘ deals and abuses of power within the higher echelons of the Zelaya government, and today we are seeing the fruits of the labor from both their team and those who understood likewise and wished for greater transparency and less corruption-susceptible enactors of rule of law. Today, Porfirio Lobo assumes the presidency of Honduras, the result of democratic elections in the region.
This is quite an interesting little comment buried down in a Financial Times article today, about how the Chinese authorities are raising a lot of international concerns (including inside Brazil, the other titan of the BRIC grouping) by artificially keeping their currency undervalued and failing to allow for the development of what could become one of the world’s most desired consumer markets. Americans and Europeans are looking to save in 2010 following the crisis, while China has pumped more than $500 billion into increasing its industrial capacity. That’s quite a lot of cheap exports thrown out there in a market which may feature lower demand … can we guess what is going to happen if changes aren’t made soon? U.S. economic power is not totally erased quite yet.
“If they curb domestic demand that means we’re right back to where we started from, which is export-led growth with a dose of inflation,” Mr Dumas says.
“It’s the Chinese gaining world share by mauling the exporters of Japan and Germany.”
The concerns about China’s growth model extend to the inside of the emerging-market camp as well. Brazil’s manufacturers have been complaining bitterly that, with the Brazilian real pushed up by the soaring prices of Brazil’s commodity exports, Chinese manufactures have been driving them out of their home market, let alone third markets abroad.
