Jackson Diehl (Continuación)

MundoOriente Próximo

Israel's new battle with Hamas in Gaza means that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be remembered for fighting two bloody and wasteful mini-wars in less than three years in power. The first one, in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, punished but failed to defeat or even permanently injure Hezbollah, which is politically and militarily stronger today than it was before Olmert took office. This one will probably have about the same effect on Hamas, which almost certainly will still control Gaza, and retain the capacity to strike Israel, when Olmert leaves office in a few months.

The saddest aspect of all this is that Olmert, a former hard-line believer in a "greater Israel," was more committed than any previous Israeli prime minister to ending the country's conflicts with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoInternacionalOrden Mundial

At a checkpoint in this rocky region, Russian troops can be seen digging trenches, piling sandbags and stringing fences -- the beginning of what could become a fortified frontier. Before August, Akhalgori was undisputed Georgian territory, populated entirely by ethnic Georgians. Now it is occupied by Russia and its puppet government in the neighboring self-declared republic of South Ossetia.

This means endless opportunities for trouble -- and an easy way for Vladimir Putin to test a new American president. The day I visited the checkpoint, several Georgian policemen were killed nearby by a roadside bomb. Last week, when the Georgian and Polish presidents arrived at the spot, shots were fired near their motorcade.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

This is a column about a country that has scarcely been mentioned in the presidential campaign, that has disappeared from the American press and that has essentially been forgotten by Washington -- which is the oddest part of the story. After all, two decades ago Nicaragua and its president, Daniel Ortega, inspired fierce passions here: Democrats and Republicans spent most of a decade bitterly debating whether to fund an armed opposition movement against his Sandinista regime, and senior Reagan administration officials broke the law in order to do so.

Ortega hasn't changed much. Back as Nicaraguan president since 2006, he is denouncing the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The Read-Only Version, by Anne Applebaum.

Having just had the surreal experience of watching snippets of the Biden-Palin debate on a BlackBerry while sitting in a car traveling between Nagoyo and Kyoto (don't ask), I thought it worth pointing out, belatedly, how different the vice-presidential debate seems when watched and when read.

I saw the transcript first, before I'd seen those snippets or read much commentary, and I therefore thought Palin had had a disastrous night.

For one, she kept contradicting herself, not least about the role of "government." On the one hand, she declared that "we need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in chage of our investments."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Amid the din of the financial crisis and the presidential campaign, the Bush administration's attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal has quietly expired. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's 16 trips to the region over the past 21 months; last year's Annapolis peace conference; months of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams -- all have sunk under the weight of the corruption charges against departing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the competition of crises from Georgia to Pakistan.

Nor is the peace process likely to revive anytime soon. The winner of last week's party primary election to replace Olmert, Tzipi Livni, will probably be mired in efforts to form a new government for weeks or even months.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso

The crisis in Georgia had settled by late last week into a test of wills over the survival of Mikheil Saakashvili's pro-Western government. Russia's president called Saakashvili "a political corpse" and said Moscow will no longer deal with him, while the Bush administration rushed him a $1 billion package of aid, delivered in person by Vice President Cheney. U.S. officials portray the rescue of the 40-year-old president as the best way to punish Vladimir Putin's regime for its reckless invasion of its neighbor last month. After all, there's little doubt that Saakashvili's ouster has been a prime Kremlin objective.

The irony is that, beneath that overweening campaign to contain Russian belligerence, American officials are still seething at Saakashvili.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

Defenders of Hugo Chávez like to argue that there is no alternative to the Venezuelan caudillo other than the feckless and unpopular politicians who preceded him in the 1990s. The simple refutation of that canard is Leopoldo López, the 37-year-old mayor of central Caracas, whose boyish good looks only underscore the fact that he represents a fresh generation.

López, a hyperarticulate graduate of Kenyon College and Harvard, is a pragmatic center-leftist, like most of the presidents elected in South America since the turn of the century. He won his last election in the Caracas district of Chacao with 80 percent of the vote.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

It's easy to imagine the gloating smirk on the face of Pervez Musharraf. The autocratic ruler of Pakistan from October 1999 until February 2008 still sits in the sprawling home reserved for the country's army commander, though he gave up the post last year. He is still president, though he has lost much of his power to an elected civilian government. For years, Musharraf resisted pressure from Washington to allow this return to democracy, arguing that only he could serve as a reliable partner in the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Now he might point to democracy's result: a fractious parliamentary coalition all but paralyzed by byzantine political struggles; rebellious lawyers and judges, who last week marched on the capital; and soaring food prices and power shortages, which threaten to trigger mass unrest.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Though it may be losing the battle in Congress over free trade with Colombia, the Bush administration is close to recording a major success in Colombia itself. Thanks in part to billions of dollars in U.S. aid and training for the Colombian army, the FARC terrorist group -- which has ravaged Colombia's countryside for four decades -- is close to collapse. Since March it has lost three of its top seven commanders, including legendary leader Manuel Marulanda. Laptops containing its most sensitive secrets have been seized by the Colombian government, and foot soldiers are deserting in droves.

Yet this achievement has come at painful costs -- some of which are shamefully little known to Americans.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

Last Tuesday, Israel faced the fallout from a Palestinian family of five perishing in the Gaza Strip during an Israeli strike against militants firing rockets at an Israeli town. On Wednesday, the Bush administration woke to a front-page picture in The Post of a 2-year-old Iraqi boy killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad aimed at Shiite militiamen launching rockets at the city's Green Zone. The similarity of these tragic and politically costly episodes was anything but a coincidence.

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East's innumerable satellite television networks.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

It's well known that the run-up in oil prices in recent years has had the unpleasant consequence of enlivening autocrats in oil-producing countries, from Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hugo Chávez. Now the latest swing in global commodities seems to be triggering a reverse effect: As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering.

Oddly, one of them is Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Seven years ago George W. Bush's incoming foreign policy team blamed the Clinton administration for an eleventh-hour rush for a Middle East peace agreement that ended with the explosion of the second Palestinian intifada. Now, with less than 10 months remaining in office, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are engaged in a similar last-minute push -- yet they don't seem to recognize the growing risk that their initiative, too, will end with another Israeli-Palestinian war.

Rice visited Jerusalem again last week to press for visible Israeli fulfillment of commitments made at last year's Annapolis conference, and she appeared to win some incremental steps, such as the dismantlement of a few dozen of the several hundred military roadblocks in the West Bank.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , , ,

Latin American nations and the Bush administration spent the past week loudly arguing over what censure, if any, Colombia should face for a bombing raid that killed one of the top leaders of the FARC terrorist group at a jungle camp in Ecuador. More quietly, they are just beginning to consider a far more serious and potentially explosive question: What to do about the revelation that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez forged a strategic alliance with the FARC aimed at Colombia's democratic government.

First reports of the documents recovered from laptops at the FARC camp spoke of promises by Chávez to deliver up to $300 million to a group renowned for kidnapping, drug trafficking and massacres of civilians; they also showed that Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was prepared to remove from his own army officers who objected to the FARC's Ecuadoran bases.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

Dmitry Medvedev, the man Vladimir Putin has appointed to be elected as Russia's president next Sunday, is so slavishly devoted to his patron that he has begun imitating his physical quirks. That includes "how he lays his hands on the table or how he stresses key words in speeches," not to mention walking with "fast and abrupt steps," according to the Reuters journalist Oleg Shchedrov.

Medvedev presumably won't be exercising his power as president to dismiss the prime minister -- the position Putin is about to assume -- anytime soon. Yet the diminutive 42-year-old former law professor has been making some interesting statements the past couple of weeks.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

Is Hugo Chávez crashing?

It's hard to believe that a strongman who commands more than $40 billion in annual petroleum revenue, who has been granted the right to rule by decree by a rubber-stamp parliament, who controls his country's courts and television media, and who has recently spent billions on new weapons for his army could have much to worry about. Yet as Venezuela's president held a parade to celebrate the 16th anniversary of his unsuccessful military coup against a former democratic government last week, his own nine-year-old administration was struggling to pull out of a tailspin.

The trouble began in early December when Venezuelan voters rejected a new constitution that would have turned Venezuela into a socialist state along the lines of the Cuban model and made Chávez its de facto president-for-life.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

It is less than a month until Pakistan is due to hold a parliamentary election that could stabilize the country after months of political turmoil and terrorist violence, or plunge it deeper into chaos. So naturally some of the country's leading civilian politicians were busy campaigning last week -- in Washington.

A senior delegation from the Pakistan People's Party, headed until her assassination Dec. 27 by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and Imran Khan, the former cricket star who now leads his own small centrist party, made the rounds of congressional offices, think tanks and the media to argue a couple of basic points: first, that the election should go forward, despite indications that President Pervez Musharraf is maneuvering to postpone it once again; and second, that the Bush administration's simultaneous public support for Musharraf and for a free and fair election is a contradiction -- one that could touch off Pakistan's implosion if it is not resolved before Election Day.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropa,

Turkish President Abdullah Gul came and went last week without attracting much attention, which is not unusual for a friendly head of state visiting Washington. But Gul's visit to the White House for lunch with President Bush -- and even his failure to prompt any headlines -- marked a dramatic turnaround in one of the most important U.S. foreign relationships, and a quiet success by an outgoing administration in cleaning up one of its own messes.

By now Americans are painfully aware of the country's drastic loss of standing around the world during George W. Bush's presidency. But a comeback of sorts is underway as the administration winds down, and Turkey is a big part of it.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

For five years Washington-based officials and pundits have repeatedly made the mistake of predicting that the next six or 12 months in Iraq would be decisive. Under the hardheaded leadership of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker such talk has been banned: "Nobody says anything about turning a corner, seeing lights at the end of tunnels, any of those phrases," Petraeus recently declared.

Yet, for once, saying that the next six to 12 months will win or lose the war just might be right.

That's not because Iraqis have suddenly developed the capacity to meet the unrealistic timelines drawn up in Washington ever since 2003 -- when the Pentagon planned to reduce U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas TecnologíasMundoOriente Próximo, ,

Is the cause of liberal democracy in the Arab Middle East dead? It would be easy to jump to such a conclusion in Washington, given the Bush administration's shameless retreat from its "freedom agenda" and the recent campaigns by Arab autocrats to crush liberal politicians, journalists and civic activists. But it's also easy to overlook the fact that the Middle East's movement for human rights and democracy originated not in the White House but in capitals such as Cairo, Beirut and Amman. There, it is still alive, well -- and even growing.

I was reminded of this when seven Egyptian civil society activists toured Washington in advance of a meeting last week with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Watching the handshakes and arm-clutches of Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas at the Annapolis meeting last week, and listening to their sometimes soaring rhetoric about a Middle East peace, it was easy to forget that Israel is at war with the winners of the last Palestinian general election, that rockets fired by Palestinians are detonating in southern Israel nearly every day and that 1.5 million people of the future Palestinian state are living under what amounts to an Israeli military siege. The makers of the latest Middle East peace process would love to forget about the Gaza Strip -- at least for the next year, while they try to agree on settlement terms.…  Seguir leyendo »