Diplomacy & Crisis News

Security across the volatile Darfur region of Sudan has deteriorated since last week’s military takeover in Khartoum, the UN Security Council heard on Wednesday, but the peacekeeping mission in Darfur has “remained vigilant” in the face of rising violence. 

La démission récente de Mme Frédérique Bredin de son mandat de députée - socialiste - pour travailler au service du groupe Hachette-Lagardère n'est que l'illustration la plus récente de la privatisation des élites politiques françaises. Cette évolution est encouragée par l'acharnement de Sciences-Po, (...) / France, Éducation, Entreprise, Fonction publique, Libéralisme, Service public, Université - 2000/11

Torture is likely still widespread in Afghanistan’s State-run prisons for detainees linked to ongoing conflict there, the UN said on Wednesday, while also noting an “encouraging reduction” in the level of abuse since 2016. 

A “toxic flood of electric and electronic waste” that is growing by the day across the world, should be urgently converted into a source of decent work, that can also protect populations from its harmful effects, the United Nations labour agency said on Wednesday. 

Alors que les rapports de forces ne laissent aucun espace aux demandes de dialogue des populations locales, non seulement les efforts de Pékin ne suffisent pas à enrayer le nationalisme ouïgour, mais cette répression sans nuances ne fait que renforcer la montée en puissance d'un islam identitaire « (...) / Chine, Minorité nationale - 2002/02 Engagements

Du 27 au 29 avril dernier s'est tenu à Philadelphie le sommet des présidents pour l'avenir de l'Amérique. La grand-messe, présidée par le général Colin Powell, héros de la guerre du Golfe — et sans doute l'homme politique le plus populaire du pays — réunissait une brochette de célébrités. Aux côtés du (...) / États-Unis, États-Unis (affaires intérieures), Capitalisme, Finance, Fiscalité, Inégalités, Pauvreté - 1997/12

A Border Patrol agent guards detainees at a holding facility near the border. (Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

The southern border has been in the news again, and once again the Trump administration in speaking in terms of crisis. The number of migrant families arriving from Central America has spiked in the early months of 2019, leading the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to declare that his agency is at the “breaking point.” Here are a few quick comments on the situation.

First, the recent twist in the migration trend line—assuming that it is not a blip and perhaps even if it is—further undermines longstanding Republican assumptions concerning the forces that drive migration. The underlying assumption is that lenient U.S. border policy encourages people to come and that tougher treatment will deter them. Migration trends have not followed that pattern. Illegal crossings at the southern border peaked back in 2000, when 1.6 million were apprehended. The accumulated illegal population peaked back in 2007, at about 12.5 million, and has fallen off since. During the Obama administration, when Republicans continuously accused the president of leaving the border open and allowing masses of illegal immigrants to enter, more people were leaving than entering. This was true during Obama’s first term, when he deported unprecedented numbers of undocumented immigrants (a policy that had no effect on Republican rhetoric or willingness to cooperate on border issues), and it was true during his second term when he cut back on that. When Trump was running for office and complaining about the numbers of illegal aliens entering the country, the actual number was at a 45 year low. After more than two years of Trump’s “get tough” policies, the number is on the rise again. In the meantime, the nature of the migrant flow has changed from young Mexican men to Central American families. To the best of my knowledge, no one has explained what changes in U.S. border policy led young Mexican men to stop coming and Central American families to start. The root causes of the current migration wave most likely involve rampant violence, unemployment, poverty, and especially these days, rust fungus (which attacks coffee crops), drought, and famine in parts of Central America. Whatever is driving migration, it is not U.S. border policy.

Second, if CBP is facing a breaking point, it is a direct consequence of Trump administration policy. The administration opted to treat all people crossing the border without authorization as criminals and to detain and try them. Although administration officials constantly claim that they are only following the law and have no choice in the matter, this is not required by the law, no previous administration—Democratic or Republican—has done it, and detainees released with an ankle bracelet do show up for court hearings. (By the way, crossing the border without authorization is a misdemeanor. When the defendants are tried and convicted, the most common sentence is time served and a $10 fine.) The policy’s deterrent effect can be divined from the previous paragraph. It is the administration’s decision of what to do with the migrants, not their raw numbers, that has overwhelmed CBP.

Third, the administration’s proposed remedies do not address the problems at hand. The failure of the “get tough” policy to deter migration has already been noted. President Trump’s most famous proposal, of course, is to build a wall along the border. This, however, will have little impact on the recent waves of Central American migrants, who have not been sneaking in but presenting themselves to the Border Patrol and requesting asylum. (Incidentally, a recent Republican proposal has been to insist that asylum seekers apply from their home countries, but that is not a legal option. Asylum must be requested on U.S. territory, regardless of whether the asylum seeker entered the country legally, generally within one year of arrival.) Likewise, most illegal drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry hidden in cars or trucks, so a wall between ports of entry would not even pose a minor inconvenience. Trump’s most recent proposals—closing the border with Mexico (our third largest trading partner) to all traffic and cutting off foreign aid that was intended to address the root sources of migration in Central America (announced one day after signing a memorandum of cooperation with those same countries)—will only create new problems. As always with this administration, the latest proposals lack meaningful details and whether they will actually be carried out is anyone’s guess.

Finally, the U.S. economy could probably use these people. The argument for keeping them out has never made much sense. Given low birth rates and the retirement of the Baby Boom generation, the native-born working-age population with nonimmigrant parents in the United States is shrinking after growing for decades. The Pew Research Center has projected that between 2015 and 2035, it will shrink by 8.2 million. Fortunately, the United States attracts millions of working-age people who are eager to take jobs. Unfortunately, many Americans think the number of jobs is fixed, so that more jobs for immigrants means fewer for native-born Americans. Well, between 1970 and 2010, the U.S. population increased by about 105 million (from 203 million to 308 million). If the number of jobs were fixed, there would be a lot more unemployed people around than there are now. At the moment, there are more job openings than there are unemployed people. Growth is the natural order, and growth requires people. The appropriate solution to the illegal immigration issue is not to throw them out, but to devise legal ways to bring them in.

The post Quick Takeaways from the Latest Border “Crisis” appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Fervent admirateur de la société grecque, Pierre de Coubertin avait souhaité, en proposant la rénovation des Jeux olympiques, intégrer le sport dans une perspective plus globale, éducatrice et humaniste. Le sport n'était pas, selon lui, une fin en soi, mais un moyen au service d'une idée élevée : la (...) / Loisirs, Société, Sport, Drogue - 1992/08

Les élections municipales en Algérie, prévues pour mars, ont été repoussées à juin prochain. Cela devrait permettre aux nombreux partis qui fleurissent depuis l'adoption de la nouvelle Constitution, de renforcer leurs structures démocratiques et d'affiner leurs programmes pour répondre à l'attente des (...) / Algérie, Parti politique, Politique - 1990/03

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a foreign policy community in possession of great power must be in want of peace of mind. Climate change, the Middle East, terrorism, trade, nonproliferation—there is never a shortage of issues and areas for those who work in international relations to fret about. If you were to flip through the back issues of Foreign Affairs, you would find very few essays proclaiming that policymakers had permanently sorted out a problem. Even after the Cold War ended peacefully, these pages were full of heated debate about civilizations clashing.

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For U.S. intelligence agencies, the twenty-first century began with a shock, when 19 al Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes and perpetrated the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. In the wake of the attack, the intelligence community mobilized with one overriding goal: preventing another 9/11. The CIA, the National Security Agency, and the 15 other components of the U.S. intelligence community restructured, reformed, and retooled. Congress appropriated billions of dollars to support the transformation.

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Over the last four years, I helped lead the global response to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS)—an effort that succeeded in destroying an ISIS “caliphate” in the heart of the Middle East that had served as a magnet for foreign jihadists and a base for launching terrorist attacks around the world. Working as a special envoy for U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, I helped establish a coalition that was the largest of its kind in history: 75 countries and four international organizations, their cooperation built on a foundation of U.S. leadership and consistency across U.S. administrations. Indeed, the strategy to destroy the ISIS caliphate was developed under Obama and then carried forward, with minor modifications, under Trump; throughout, it focused on enabling local fighters to reclaim their cities from ISIS and then establish the conditions for displaced people to return.

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Democracy’s global travails continue to mount. What looked as recently as a decade ago to be real democratic progress in countries as diverse as Brazil, Hungary, South Africa, and Turkey has been either reversed by illiberal strongmen or unsettled by revelations of systemic corruption. Some of the most stirring recent political openings, such as those in Egypt and Myanmar, have slammed shut. The United States and several long-standing democracies in western Europe are struggling with serious democratic challenges, especially the rise of illiberal populist forces.

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These are dangerous times: war in Syria and Yemen, bloody repression in Venezuela, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Yet by some measures, the world is safer than ever before. The rate of violent death has been falling, albeit unevenly, for decades, even centuries. Fewer people are killed on the battlefield, on the streets, and in homes. Led by the psychologist Steven Pinker, who has collected reams of evidence demonstrating that humanity has slowly but surely grown more peaceable, a new group of thinkers is urging policymakers and the public to consider not just what the world is doing wrong in terms of violence but also what it is doing right.

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http://www.quiz-maker.com/QJLE189

The post Foreign Policy Quiz appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

L'attaque du 11 septembre vient de clore une période durant laquelle les Etats-Unis perfectionnaient leur approche de la « guerre à zéro mort », qui promettait de réduire au minimum les pertes de vies américaines dans les conflits futurs — tout en infligeant des dommages maximaux à l'ennemi. Le (...) / États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Conflit, Défense, Géopolitique, Stratégie, Terrorisme - 2001/10 Effet boomerang

Prenant habilement appui sur l'indignation que suscite la corruption, la diplomatie américaine la canalise au service des intérêts de ses grands groupes nationaux en désarmant leurs concurrents commerciaux, mais en utilisant contre eux les moyens de pression dont elle est la seule à disposer. (...) / États-Unis, Intégration régionale, Criminalité financière, Commerce international, Entreprise, Finance, Corruption - 2001/05

Alors que, depuis bientôt quarante ans, il a été scientifiquement démontré que l'amiante est cancérigène, et que ses victimes se comptent par milliers, l'Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) est en train d'instruire une plainte du Canada - pays qui exporte 99 % de la production de cette fibre (...) / Commerce international, Désinformation, Industrie, Libéralisme, Santé - 2000/06

Mitrovica vit, depuis le début février, à l'heure des affrontements entre les Serbes et les Albanais. Et le contingent français de la KFOR y est pris pour cible. Cette explosion annonce-t-elle le dernier acte de huit mois de « contre-épuration ethnique » au Kosovo ? Huit mois après l'entrée des (...) / Kosovo, République fédérale de Yougoslavie 1992-2003, Nationalisme, Guerre du Kosovo 1999, Crime de guerre - 2000/03

Richard Holbrooke helped normalize U.S. relations with China; served as U.S. ambassador to a newly reunified Germany and then to the United Nations; and, most famously, negotiated the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. But he began and ended his career struggling with how to resolve two American wars: first in Vietnam, then in Afghanistan.