CIAO DATE: 02/2008
Volume: 24, Issue: 2
Summer 2007
Buying Time in Afghanistan (PDF)
Carl Robichaud
Afghanistan is increasingly seen as Iraq in slow motion. It is not. The headlines of car bombs and casualty tolls echo each other, but mask deep differences in each society and in the dynamics of each insurgency. As Iraq has descended into civil war, Afghanistan's center has held. The government remains weak, but power holders and the public show no appetite for a return to internecine fighting. The insurgency remains solvent because of safe havens across the border in Pakistan, but has been unable to expand upon its toehold in Afghanistan or offer a compelling alternative to the status quo.
Iraq's Oil Law: Parsing the Fine Print (PDF)
Kamil Mahdi
In May 2007, a draft Oil and Gas Law was sent by the Iraqi cabinet to Parliament, and according to government plans, it was to have been passed into law by the end of May. The law faces strong popular, technocratic, and political resistance—indeed in early June, the new Iraqi military was in the southern oilfields with a warrant to arrest leaders of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions who oppose core sections of the law and who demand that no law is passed without consultation with civil society and themselves as principal elements within it. Parliament subsequently went into summer recess without considering the draft.
An American in Paris? A Guided Tour of Sarkoland
Mira Kamdar
The boundless jubilation on this side of the Atlantic over the recent election of Nicholas Sarkozy as the new president of France says more about the American malaise than it does about the French. True, a record number of voters turned out to help Sarkozy handily beat his opponent, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent in the second round of the presidential election in May. But, the legislative elections held about one month later demonstrate that French voters may be more wary of Sarkozy than are American observers. Though Sarkozy's party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), maintained a solid majority in the National Assembly, it unexpectedly lost 45 seats. The Socialists, still in the minority, picked up 36 seats. This still leaves the UMP with 314 out of a total of 577 seats, versus the Socialist's 185, and Sarkozy has underlined the fact that he considers himself to have no less of a strong mandate for this disappointing result. However, the legislative elections did produce one major casualty for Sarkozy: the man he had named to run the ambitiously titled new Ministry of Environment, Transportation and Energy, Alain Juppe, lost his seat in Bordeaux and had to resign his post. Sarkozy was forced, under the rules of France's democracy, to dissolve his brand new government and reshuffle his cabinet. This cast an embarrassing shadow over what might otherwise have been a thorough rout, and gave hope to France's Left that not all had been lost.
Italy: red, black, and blue
Mark Gilbert
Back in the pre-history of the early Cold War, Italy's politics used to be bitterly divided along ideological lines. On the one side, there were the Christian Democrats, strong from the support of the Catholic Church, and its centrist allies. On the other side, there were the Communists. When the Cold War ended, the party system collapsed, but the hope was raised that Italy might become a "normal country."
A Balkan divorce that works? Montenegro's hopeful first year
Paul Hockenos, Jenni Winterhagen
Among old Balkan hands, it is said tongue-in-cheek that the surest way to start a war in former Yugoslavia is to hold a referendum on independence. Indeed, in Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia, armed conflict did follow popular votes and declarations of statehood in the early 1990s. But Montenegro, a mountainous republic of just 630,000 in the western Balkans, was and remains different, for a variety of reasons. One year after its declaration of independence, it boasts stability and macroeconomic growth. Yet the question of exactly what kind of democracy Montenegro will be still looms large. The newly independent country is in the process of making critical choices with implications that will impact its political culture for decades to come.
The politics of national security: an unabashed liberal view
Todd Gitlin
Is there any question about whether the United States must protect itself against mass murderers who devoutly believe that brutality is their ticket to paradise? The question is silly, or worse. When addressed strictly to progressives, it amounts to a calumny. Why should such a question be asked of liberals alone, and not of the conservatives who ignored warnings when the al-Qaeda plot to massacre thousands was well underway and the country's defenses were down?
Red world, Blue world
Joshua Brook
Since the 2000 presidential election, political scientists, commentators, and intellectuals have seized on the "red state"/"blue state" divide to explain American politics. The United States is described as a single country with two distinct cultures. Red Americans tend to oppose abortion, regard homosexuality as moral deviance, respect the military, and look kindly on public displays of religious faith. Blue Americans, on the other hand, support environmentalism, abortion rights, gender equality, and gay rights, while opposing militarism and overt displays of patriotism and religious zeal.
U.S. Small Arms Policy: Having it Both Ways
Susan Waltz
Does United States policy indeed represent the gold standard for export controls on small arms, as often asserted? Recent events suggest that it is time for a fresh look at this common claim.
Rethinking the "Third World": Talking with Lakhdar Brahimi
Forrest D. Colburn
Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi has a distinguished history in the politics of what has long been known as the "Third World," most of which were once beleaguered colonies of Europe. After the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955--the first coming together of the non-aligned movement--Lakhdar was sent to Indonesia by the National Liberation Front of Algeria to open its first office in Asia.
Terrorism and Heroism: The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Milan Hauner
Sixty-five years ago, on May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi viceroy of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was assassinated in broad daylight in a Prague suburb by Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, two Czechoslovak paratroopers dressed as civilians. Although the assassination had been carefully prepared months in advance, many things went wrong.
A Very British Coup: How Reza Shah Won and Lost His Throne
Shareen Blair Brysac
Tehran, April 25, 1926. The Persian capital is bathed in sun and carpets--Kermans, Kashans, Kashmars--cluster edge to edge, covering balconies and windows. Red, white, and green bunting stretches across the streets and hundreds of pictures of the new monarch, Reza Khan Pahlavi, a former Persian Cossack colonel, hang from scaffolding as he makes his way through a triumphal arch and lines of soldiers to his coronation in his glass carriage a la Cinderella drawn by six horses. Waiting for him in the Gulistan Palace is an Armenian priest smothered in purple velvet, a Turcoman wearing a tunic of rose-red silk, his head wrapped in a great lambswool busby, an assortment of Kurds in fringed silk turbans, Bakhtiari tribesmen sporting black felt hats, and bearded Shiite mullahs in long robes and gigantic turbans.
Brown's Britannia, Warts and All (PDF)
Karl E. Meyer
To escape New York's summer heat, my wife and I fled to the United Kingdom, only to plunge from the griddle into the washbasin. "Water levels still rising as thousands hit by worst floods in modern British history," headlined The Guardian (July 24). As if to make American visitors feel right at home, the adjoining headline elaborated: "Ministers warned three years ago over flood defense failings." Think of it: here is a country not unused to rain and yet its officials were caught by surprise when a 3-inch surge occurring within 60 minutes turned the Midlands into a lake, leaving as many as 350,000 homes without power and/or water. Yet, in shades of FEMA, Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor government had failed to act on reports in 2004 and 2005 that spoke firmly of the need to overhaul obsolete flood defenses, integrate emergency responses, and coordinate information services.