Week: Our Perspectives

Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers

New Zealand as a US Partner in the Pacific?

The Obamas and the Keys
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama pose for a photo during a reception at the Metropolitan Museum in New York with John Key, and his wife, Mrs. Bronagh Key. Photo: Lawrence Jackson/Wikimedia Commons

The once frosty relationship between the United States and New Zealand is warming rapidly. In its ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific, Washington has rediscovered New Zealand as a potential strategic partner. An ever-closer relationship would boost US influence in the South Pacific and may help draw it further into regional governance and trade. However, Wellington’s other regional interests are likely to limit the amount of strategic cooperation that it is willing to pursue.

Then and Now

The Australian, New Zealand, United States Treaty (ANZUS) underpinned the post-war strategic relationship between the US and New Zealand. However, from the mid-1980s this relationship turned sour after New Zealand barred a US ship from visiting on grounds that it did not comply with the country’s nuclear-free arrangements. The ensuing diplomatic furor led to the US suspending its ANZUS obligations to New Zealand, restricting intelligence sharing and placing a ban on its navy from visiting American ports.

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India Gears up for a Heavyweight Clash at the Next General Election

Voter reads an election pamphlet
Voter reads an election pamphlet. Photo: Al Jazeera English/flickr.

India’s next general election, scheduled for 2014 at the latest, is already shaping up to be one of the most anticipated in decades. Over recent weeks, the two main parties – the ruling Congress and opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – have hinted at who might lead them once campaigning officially starts. Although the two likely contenders are not household names outside India, both Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi are heavyweights on the domestic political stage.

The two men are as different as can be. Rahul Gandhi is the youthful upstart without much experience, but who holds the backing of a powerful political family. Narendra Modi is possibly India’s most divisive political figure – adored by many for overseeing unprecedented economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, but equally reviled for his alleged involvement in the worst communal riots in India’s recent history.

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The China-Japan Tango, Talks, and Time

Japanese Anti-China protests. Photo: Al Jazeera/flickr

Professor Dong Wang (“China-Japan Relations-Now What?”) is to be applauded for distilling a number of frictions bedeviling the China-Japan relationship, identifying root causes of these frictions, and making a number of policy proposals. Even so, other issues require consideration if Sino-Japanese relations are to be put on a sounder footing, a goal to which all should aspire given the fallout of a true bilateral deep freeze or, worse, militarized conflict. First, policymakers in both countries need to understand that “their” tango includes more countries than just themselves. Second, they need to appreciate that talks are insufficient and may even be counterproductive. Third, they need to strive for more wide-ranging and creative options to deal with the history (time) problem.

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Categories
Regional Stability

Time to Deal with the Epidemic of Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean

Police take a suspected drug trafficker off a helicopter in Hermosillo in the state of Sonora. Photo: Knight Foundation/flickr

The daily bloodshed on the United States’ doorstep is the clearest sign that something is rotten in the neighborhood. Headless torsos swinging from lampposts in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico contrast all too sharply with the clean streets of El Paso just across the border, ranked one of the safest city’s in the United States. But Mexico is not alone in experiencing alarming rates of violence. Taken together, the Americas are home to 14 percent of the world’s population, but more than 31 percent of its homicides according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

A ruthless epidemic of violence is afflicting many states and cities in Central and South America and the Caribbean. The region’s homicide rate is more than double the global average. And in contrast to other parts of the world, whether North America, Western Europe, Africa, or Asia, the patient is getting sicker. Six of the top ten most violent countries in the world are in Latin America and the Caribbean, with most of the victims consisting of young men under 30-years of age. Violence against women is also intensifying. And for youth living in low-income settings, there is a 1 in 50 chance that they will be killed before they reach their 31st birthday.

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Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in the Caucasus

President of the Republic of Armenia visiting troops in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Photo: Republic of Armenia/Wikimedia Commons

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, conflicts ranging from Chechnya’s fight for independence to the ‘frozen’ Nagorno-Karabakh dispute have attracted the attention of scholars to the Caucasus region. Indeed, Russia’s rekindled presence in the region, Georgia’s disputes with the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the latest status of Nagorno-Karabakh provided the basis for the latest “Evening Talk” staged by our parent organization, the Center for Security Studies. The event, which was entitled Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in the Caucasus, brought together different experts to discuss the future trajectory of security in the region. In the following podcast, Oxford University’s Professor Neil Macfarlane explains, among other things, why Georgia will not be reclaiming the breakaway republics any time soon, and lays out the prospects for improved dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

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