Globalaffairs

Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Soraya Carvajal Barona

The rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, 3 North American contractors, 11 soldiers and Columbian policemen who had been kidnapped by the Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, some of whom had been held for over ten years, marked a dramatic turn of events in the Columbian armed conflict. It also stirred political debate in the country and speculation of changes to the presidential candidates up for nomination in the 2010 elections.

The rescue mission, code named “Operation Jaque”, freed the hostages, who were crucial in order for the Farc to put pressure on the government for a prisoner exchange that would have freed around 45 kidnapped politicians, soldiers and policemen in exchange for 500 guerrilla members held in Columbian prisons. The operation revealed the weaknesses and internal conflict that are present within this armed group, and noted a point in favour of Álvaro Uribe’s government, and his policy on democratic security, that is praised by some and questioned by others.

It was Operation Jaque that combined Columbian, North American and Israeli military intelligence and made it possible to intercept and recreate the armed group’s communications, successfully reeling in the commanders of the force that held the hostages. It has generated diverse reactions that have ranged from celebration the Columbian government and the Armed Forces, calling it a triumph and saying it is evidence of the breaking down and near end of the guerrilla force; to those that talk of a payment of a 20 million dollar ransom to the two guerrilla warders; or of betrayal of the revolutionary promise made by them, which is how the Farc secretariat has classed the actions of these men.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Erin Fitzgerald and Sarah Yun

Since its inception in 1975 as a mechanism for coordinating the economic policies of the United States, Japan, West Germany, France, Britain and Italy - as well as Canada in 1976 and Russia in 1997 - the G8 has discussed issues from all aspects of international politics. At the 2008 Hokkaido Toyako Summit, the Japanese G8 Presidency attempted to streamline the process by releasing a single communiqué; yet even this document yielded 276 commitments. Given the vast dimensions of the Summit communiqué, it is difficult to assess the G8’s success in addressing the many issues mentioned in the document. However, to provide a snapshot of the G8 leaders’ performance at the Summit, it is useful to examine the G8 leaders’ actions on food security and Zimbabwe, the two issues they deemed important enough to merit separate statements.

Food Security

Historically, G8 discussions of food security have taken place under the umbrella of development. Yet, in the months leading up to the Summit, soaring food prices resulted in a global food crisis that received international attention. A number of international meetings within and outside of the G8 framework were held to discuss the issue: the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) High-Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome on 3-5 June 2008; the Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD) IV in Yokohama on 28-30 May 2008; the G8 Development Ministers’ Meeting on 5-6 April 2008; the G8 Finance Ministers’ Meeting on 13-14 June 2008; and the G8 Science and Technology Ministers’ Meeting on 15 June 2008.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Juan Luis Dorado Merchán

During the splendorous period of the Roman Empire, there were long periods of peace between all of its conquered territories, which were all taxed from Rome. It was called Pax Romana, a state that stuck to the borders of the Empire itself, a period of relative tranquillity.

Today, more than 20 centuries later, big world conflicts, diplomatic tensions and civil wars (some with foreign participation such as Iraq or Afghanistan) dominate the world scene. Also, there is once again a global power, but one that does not dominate by force; it exerts its great control through economy and business. We are talking about the United States of America.

This year, 2008, is the year of the electoral process in the American Empire. There are two gladiators in the arena, John McCain and Barack Obama. There is a clear favourite.

Obama is the favourite of the press, American voters who want change, and the governments of many countries who want to see radical change in their relations with Washington.

Barack Obama has just completed his first world tour. He visited Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as France, the United Kingdom and Germany. He wants to alter his relationship with Europe, and show that he does not waver when it comes to decisions about the last two conflicts that his nation has taken part in. But many question what is happening in America’s own back yard. What ideas does Obama have for Latin America?

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Rahul Amola

Elections in Zimbabwe became a worldwide spectacle when reports of Robert Mugabe, a candidate from the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and seeking his sixth term as president, using force to weaken his opponents in the presidential elections started making rounds.

This news proved to be just the tip of the iceberg. Later the opposition leaders, independent candidate Simba Makoni and Movement for Democratic Change candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, accused him of adding ghost voters to the electoral roll. These allegations come after an order for 9 million ballot papers was made, whereas only 5.9 million people were eligible to vote. Critics also point out that the majority of polling stations were positioned in Mugabe’s strongholds.

Amidst all this, on March 31st 2008, the MDC claimed a substantial victory. However on April 1st 2008, it was announced by the Mugabe campaign that, while Morgan Tsvangirai has defeated Robert Mugabe, he did not have enough votes for an all out victory. On April 2nd 2008, it was announced that Tsvangirai received 49% of the votes to Mugabe’s 42% with more votes to be counted. On April 3rd 2008, it was announced that Mugabe’s party; ZANU-PF; lost control of the parliament, the first time in 28 years. This result was contested and verified by a drawn out recount.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Glen Ruffle

June 13th: remember the date. For it was on that day that the only people allowed to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (which is over ninety percent identical to the Constitutional Treaty rejected by the French and Dutch voters), voted no. And by voting no, they legally killed the treaty.

What has happened since then has revealed far more than we would have thought. It looks increasingly as though there is a new global trend emerging, one where direct forms of democracy are becoming yesterday’s answer to politics. The Irish no vote has, in short, shown us a new world order.

There have been many attempts at explaining the Irish No vote. President Sarkozy of France blamed the EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson; whilst French Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet blamed American Neo-Conservatives, though was unable to offer any reasoning for that accusation.

Undoubtedly there was also much confusion and fear: Irish MEPs complained that ‘no’ campaigners were spreading lies about the Lisbon Treaty enforcing abortion on the Catholic Irish. Yet polling results do show some basic uncomfortable facts: the No side was just more convincing.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Mazen Raydan

In June 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced to the world the term “New Middle East”. In fact, it was clear, that the Americans, after the demise of the Soviet Union, have to recon figurate the Middle East, in a way that suits the American era.

In fact, this project reminds a big deal of the Eurasian Balkan’s project discussed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book the “Grand Chessboard”, a book, described as a “blueprint for world dictatorship” by former German Defense and NATO official.

In order not to end up discussing Brzezinski’s book, I will stop on mentioning some quotes, which may help understand U.S strategy in the region, especially written by one of America’s important foreign advisors.

Brzezinski was a national security adviser for Jimmy Carter (1977-81), Associate of Henry Kissinger, member of Ronald’s Reagan Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force in 1988.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Neha Rajan

Peace is a mysterious phenomenon, for many a time it is achieved through unrefined tributaries – uproar, belligerency, violence. For it has been a relatively constant trend throughout history that some carnage, few instances of unjust policy or unwarranted despotism have been indispensable to the path to peace. Take the 1857 Indian uprising against the British. British reconnaissance of the Indian subcontinent led to hasty interventions, such as the ploys to overtly spread Christianity and to westernize the country. Ominous became the mantra ‘Sab laal ho gaya hai’ (Everything has become Red), a tune that sang lyrically of an upcoming revolt. The revolutionist tendency blossomed again in 1979 during the Nicaraguan liberation, but its success was conceived in much domestic violence. Well publicized and recognized are the aforementioned revolutions, but an oppressed counterpart remains relatively in the dark.

The counterpart’s overruling military has essentially continued imperial Britain’s reign from the 1800s, furiously, and quite blindly, wreaking overindulged calamity. Under false pretext, the military regime commits atrocity on a scale of epic magnitudes. Yet, it is not common knowledge that innocent villagers from Ho Pong had suffered death in a fiery inferno, that in the seemingly passive hills of Nam Zarng gunshots and the sickening cracking of bones would occur in relative oblivion, or that a camp at Kho Lam was ruthlessly bombed by troops in February 1997. We have here a country whose breathing is uncertain, a country who begs to be not a victim of salutary neglect. This sad story is of Burma, a Burma that has been forgotten.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Héctor Felipe Balbontin Cruz

They keep fire in cages, as if it might otherwise fly away, kept alive as they don’t know how to recreate it, how to substitute it. It is a special, rare resource.

When the Ulam lose the fire that they were feeding day and night, desperation falls on them. “The Quest for Fire” by J.H.Rosney 1981, set in 80,000 B.C.

82,008 years after the fire crisis, a petrol crisis is emerging; desperation is falling upon 21st Century mankind. The European winter is very harsh without heating; food is rare as transport is delayed; unemployment is high as factories have to close; only war machinery is maintained; news shown at certain times of the day tells of nuclear threats, terrorism, tidal waves, natural disasters, hunger, meteors and comets that are falling from the skies, of the urban tribes that fight for drugs, the most religious survive the fear by drinking their tears because water is running short.

Fact or fiction?

In the European edition of Deutsche Welle on the 14th of July 2008, in an article entitled “World financial crisis: the worst is yet to come,” it says:
“Banks going bankrupt, rescue operations, crisis meetings, Europe cannot ignore the serious problem of the North American economy.”

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Roger Casas

Whatever happens during the celebration of the Beijing Olympic games, efforts on the part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to organize “the best games in history” as a means to promote the international image of the People´s Republic of China (PRC) and its current emergence as a world economic power, have been at least partially thwarted by several organizational as well as political problems. A few days before the start of the games, drastic regulations concerning the use of private cars within the city or the closure of contaminating factories had failed to get rid of the pollution haze which usually clouds the city. On the other hand, the CCP has failed to fulfil its promises of political openness and of lifting freedom of expression during the games; arrests of activists critical of the regime have continued unabated during the last months (famous dissident Hu Jia was sentenced to 3 years and a half in prison for “promoting the subversion of state power and the socialist system”), and only after foreign correspondents to the games complained were restrictions to access to the internet within the Olympic village lifted –while the local population and journalists can still only reach the web through the “firewall” censoring access to several sensitive pages.

But the problems the Chinese state had to confront this year have not been limited to those related to the organization of the event itself. Ethnic riots in Tibet last spring, as well as the recent attacks allegedly carried out by Islamic activists in Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces have resulted in a direct and unexpected challenge to the PCC´s political legitimacy within the PRC –a challenge conveniently upheld by those opponents of the regime outside the country.

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Issue 10/August-September 2008
By Daniil Gorbatenko

During the recent months the world has witnessed the repressive potential of the Robert Mugabe’s regime at full work as its campaign of violence and intimidation all but forced the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw from the presidential election runoff, which he would almost certainly have won if the election had been anything close to free and fair. Despite outside pressure to postpone the runoff, the regime proceeded with the vote which gave an easy “victory” to Mugabe. The only positive development in the Zimbabwean election crisis was the unprecedented reaction by African states, such as Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya and even Angola and prominent figures such as Nelson Mandela, who roundly condemned the Zimbabwean regime’s treatment of opposition and refused to confer legitimacy on Mugabe. However, so far the momentum was not strengthened by the recent resolution of the African Union adopted at its latest summit in Sharm El Sheikh. Instead of outright rejecting Mugabe’s claims for legitimacy and declaring the results of the runoff null and void, the AU in the resolution called on ZANU-PF and opposition Movement for Democratic Change to seek a negotiated settlement of the crisis [1]. Meanwhile, the government-sponsored campaign of violence in Zimbabwe has not faded as one may have expected it to after reaching its goal, making it impossible for the opposition MDC to even sit at the negotiation table with ZANU-PF [2].

So is there a light in the end of the tunnel and is the end itself in sight? The analysis below shows that there are effectively at least five scenarios of how events would unfold in Zimbabwe in the foreseeable future. The scenarios are briefly analyzed in the order from best-case scenario to the worst.

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