Diplomacy & Crisis News

Ending more than a week of intense debate, the Senate voted on Tuesday to limit the federal government’s vast surveillance powers while keeping many powerful snooping programs intact -- a compromise meant to balance civil liberties concerns with the intelligence community’s insistence that it needs the tools to prevent future attacks against the United States.

President Barack Obama doubled down on criticisms of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with an Israeli television station.

A new report alleges Sudan is helping fuel a conflict that has helped spark a famine and a refugee crisis.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Michel Forst today criticized the “relentless prosecution and repression of prominent rights activists in Azerbaijan” and called for their immediate release – before the inaugural European Games begin in Baku on 12 June.

China’s citizens are skeptical, but American meteorologists find the official story plausible.

A charismatic new leader could help the Kurds to a breakthrough in Turkey’s parliamentary election. He's already giving headaches to President Erdogan.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today expressed his sadness over a ship accident that occurred last night in China, reportedly resulting in major casualties.

If the upcoming launch of the 2015 humanitarian response plan for Iraq by the United Nations and partners fails to raise the required $500 million, the people of the country, especially those internally displaced by fighting, will face even greater hardship, a World Health Organization (WHO) official warned today.

Amid a worsening crisis and growing number of hungry people in Yemen, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced today that it is scaling-up its operations to get emergency food aid to 2.5 million people by July.

To help mobilize needed resources “in the last mile of the response” against the Ebola outbreak and to start the affected West African countries on the path of early recovery, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced that he will convene an international conference next month.

More shipments of anthrax identified by the Pentagon.

The student was attempting a left-hand turn onto a ring road used for transporting tanks.

Marking 65 years since the inception of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called it more than just an agency but a “lifeline,” as he paid tribute to its staff especially those who have lost their lives trying to serve others.

Somalia must put in place a legal framework that guarantees freedom of expression in the country, as well as a moratorium on capital punishment, a United Nations independent expert recommended today, while commending progress accomplished so far.

Dominique David, rédacteur en chef de Politique étrangère, présente le numéro d’été de la revue, consacrée à la Russie.

Child abuse and violence is costing countries in East Asia and the Pacific around $209 billion a year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced today in the first costing of child maltreatment in the region, revealing that “inaction about violence results in serious economic costs to countries and communities.”

Le numéro d’été 2015 de Politique étrangère, consacré à la Russie, vient de paraître !

Comprendre la Russie d’aujourd’hui, c’est savoir qu’elle se définit d’abord dans l’action extérieure – ce qui peut être dangereux. Qu’elle a les moyens d’agir – énergie, armes… –, mais que ces moyens sont limités. Qu’elle connaît des difficultés économiques bien antérieures aux sanctions, que le régime se refuse à traiter… économiquement. Et que le raidissement du régime poutinien ne saurait garantir sa propre durée.

C’est autour de ces éléments de réflexion que s’organise le dossier de ce numéro de Politique étrangère, éléments fondamentaux pour identifier la nature même d’une Russie qui n’est ni le grand méchant loup, ni la douloureuse incomprise qu’on nous décrit ici ou là.

Cette livraison de Politique étrangère s’attache également aux chances de succès de la prochaine COP 21, ainsi qu’aux multiples abcès d’un Sud en feu : Syrie, Irak, Soudan du Sud, Nigeria – toutes géographies où c’est l’idée même d’État, au sens de la pensée occidentale, qui semble remise en cause.

Téléchargez le sommaire ici.

Téléchargez le dossier de presse ici.

Achetez le numéro 2/2015 de Politique étrangère ici.

Abonnez-vous à Politique étrangère ici.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter arrives at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue, or IISS, for the 14th Asia Security Summit, Friday, May 29, 2015, in Singapore. TPhoto: Wong Maye-E, AP

On Saturday in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the attendants at the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security forum, asserting China’s recent land reclamation in the South China Sea was “out of step” with international norms, and adding his opposition to “any further militarization” in the region. As a high-level Chinese military delegation looked on uncomfortably, Carter asked for “a peaceful resolution of all disputes” and called for  “an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation by all claimants.”

But before the Chinese delegation got too uncomfortable in their seats, he acknowledged the actions of the other claimants who have been busy constructing their own outposts in the South China Sea. (Vietnam currently has 48, the Philippines eight, Malaysia five and Taiwan one.) Despite their activity, Carter pointed out the Chinese have far exceeded the others in pace and scale, having reclaimed over 2,000 acres on five outposts within the last 18 months — more than all of the other claimants combined have done in their history.

The Chinese reaction to Carter’s speech was quick and pointed, with one Chinese military official saying his comments were “groundless and not constructive.” Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo of the Chinese Academy of Military Science added further, “Freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is not at all an issue because the freedom has never been affected.”

Colonel Zhao’s remarks are disingenuous, given freedom of navigation should include the right of foreign militaries to fly their aircraft over the South China Sea. Last week, the Chinese military ordered a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to “go now”— an obvious attempt by Beijing to impede freedom of navigation in the skies over the South China Sea.

Freedom of navigation should also include the right of Vietnamese fishermen to fish in traditional fishing grounds. Last month’s declaration of the municipal administration of Haikou in Hainan, China’s southernmost province, of an annual fishing ban would appear to hinder the freedom of navigation for Vietnamese fishermen. The affected area encompasses the Gulf of Tonkin, the Paracels island chain which China took from Vietnam in 1974, and the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef in the Spratly Islands China seized from the Philippines in 2012.

Colonel Zhao went even further, adding, “It is wrong to criticize China for affecting peace and stability through construction activities.”

Yet, his comments followed reports confirmed by the Pentagon that China had placed mobile artillery on one of its reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, causing John McCain, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee to call the action “disturbing and escalatory.” While the deployment of artillery is largely symbolic, given the Chinese navy’s more formidable presence in the waters (and all regional claimants except Brunei have military fortifications in the Spratly island chain), the move has focused international attention on Beijing’s motives in the region and precipitated the call for a halt to all militarization of the islands of the South China Sea.

Beijing’s escalation of land reclamation efforts on islands it controls, and the denial of actions taken to limit freedom of navigation have only motivated Southeast Asian nations with claims in the South China Sea to undertake joint military preparations while building up their own militaries and drawing military assistance from actors outside the region, such as the U.S. and Russia.

On Sunday, Carter visited the Vietnamese navy and coast guard and pledged $18 million toward the purchase of U.S. patrol boats. McCain had earlier proposed an amendment to the 2016 U.S. Defense Authorization Act entitled the East Sea Initiative. Under the amendment, the U.S. would provide assistance in training and equipping the armed forces of Southeast Asian countries in order to deal with territorial challenges.

What many of the delegates of the Shangri-La forum called for was immediate action by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations to agree on and adopt a “code of conduct” governing the disputed waters. Yet as Chinese dredgers are hard at work reclaiming land and increasing China’s de facto control, there is little incentive for Beijing to sign such a document.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is unlikely to remove its “pivot to Asia” anytime soon, and any further restriction on the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea by Beijing will likely be met with a challenge from Washington, as Defense Secretary Carter foreshadowed in his comments to the Shangri-La delegates, “Turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international air or maritime transit….There should be no mistake: the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as US forces do all around the world.”

Expect more turbulence in these waters in the coming months.

La stagnation économique de l'Union et son absence de vision diplomatique indépendante ne désarment pas les fédéralistes européens. Au contraire : moins leur projet rencontre l'assentiment populaire, plus ils s'acharnent à le faire avancer, subrepticement mais à marche forcée. / Europe, Économie, (...) / Europe, Économie, Monnaie, Politique, Groupe de pression, Fédéralisme - 2014/09

Loin de la guerre contre l’organisation de l’État islamique (EI), un autre conflit se joue au sein de la société kurde d’Irak. Cette dernière est divisée par une ligne générationnelle tracée par l’histoire du Kurdistan : alors que les plus de cinquante ans ont assisté à la création progressive d’une région autonome ou ont fait leurs armes dans la résistance contre le régime de Saddam Hussein (1979-2003), la majorité des jeunes nés dans les années 1990 a grandi, s’éduque et travaille au sein d’un Kurdistan déjà semi-souverain. Ils ne connaissent qu’une réalité structurée par leurs parents et coupée de l’extérieur, notamment du reste de l’Irak.