Tom Malinowski

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de septiembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg shake hands after a joint press conference in Kyiv on April 20. Roman Pilipey/Getty Images

EuropaInternacionalOTAN, , ,

Twenty-five years ago, as a State Department speechwriter, I worked with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to secure ratification by the U.S. Senate of NATO’s first enlargement since the 1950s. Like all of us who advised Albright, I felt passionately that bringing Central Europe’s new democracies into NATO was morally right and in America’s interest. But we also believed it was vital to set the highest possible bar for aspiring members. The United States insisted on admitting only Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to NATO during that round—rejecting calls by some European allies to add more countries.

“NATO is a military alliance, not a social club”, Albright told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.…  Seguir leyendo »

Internacional

When Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev in February, the Ukrainian leader left behind a spectacular Swiss chalet-style mansion, a golf course, dozens of antique cars and a private zoo boasting $10,000 nameplates for the animal pens. Even the Ukrainian public, painfully familiar with the corruption of its leaders, was shocked. Yanukovych had managed to keep the chalet hidden because it was owned not by him but by an anonymous shell company registered in Britain. Other corrupt leaders have used the same trick to hide billions of dollars offshore, including through companies registered in the United States.

The rise and fall of Ukraine’s top kleptocrat teaches us a couple of things about corruption.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaMundoOriente Próximo, , ,

Four days after the Tunisian people overthrew their dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the Swiss government ordered its banks to seize Ben Ali's suspiciously acquired funds. A few days after that, the European Union froze Ben Ali's assets in Europe.

This month, the same day that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was deposed, the Swiss government asked its banks to identify and block any assets belonging to Mubarak, who reportedly accumulated a multibillion-dollar fortune over his 30-year reign even though his presidential salary was about $800 a month. Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey said: "It cannot be that right at our door some people embezzle state funds and put them into their own pocket."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

"If you had to choose between saving a girl's life or enabling her to go to school, which would you do first?" This was Afghan President Hamid Karzai's reply when I asked him last month if the rights of Afghan women might be sacrificed for a peace settlement with the Taliban.

While real peace talks may not begin for a long time, it was clear to me on a recent trip to Kabul that the political and intellectual groundwork is being laid for "reconciliation" with insurgents. Karzai seems tired of the war's carnage and uncertain of the international community's staying power.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

In 1988, the people of Burma launched a nonviolent struggle for democracy and were met with gunfire. I was working for Sen. Pat Moynihan, about the only prominent American to notice then what was happening in that isolated country. One day, after the Senate passed its first-ever resolution on Burma, a photo arrived in our office showing a column of Burmese marching with a banner reading: "Thank you Senator Moynihan." We were proud but profoundly sad. We knew that our meager words could not keep those brave people from being killed or their movement from being crushed.

Today, Burma's military dictators have again met demands for human rights, this time from Buddhist monks, with force.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

As an Irish American politician, the late, great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan felt he had a duty to speak out against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. He considered IRA members to be nothing more than murderers. From time to time, some of his constituents who sympathized with the IRA would complain. "There is a war in Northern Ireland," they pleaded. "The IRA are not terrorists; they are soldiers."

For as long as there has been terrorism, terrorists have justified their actions by calling themselves warriors. A glance at the names such groups give themselves reveals how central warfare is to their self-image: the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Lord's Resistance Army, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using "alternative" interrogation procedures -- which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the "cold cell," in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.

Bush insists that these techniques are not torture -- after all, they don't involve pulling out fingernails or applying electric shocks. He even says that he "would hope" the standards he's proposing are adopted by other countries. But before he again invites America's enemies to use such "alternative" methods on captured Americans, he might benefit from knowing a bit of their historical origins and from hearing accounts of those who have experienced them.…  Seguir leyendo »