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1. Enhancing U.S. Support for Peace Operations in Africa

Author:
Paul D. Williams
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The number of UN peacekeepers is at a record high, with nearly 110,000 uniformed deployed "blue helmets" worldwide, most of them in Africa. But the status quo is "untenable," warns Paul D. Williams, author and associate professor of international affairs at George Washington University, in a new Council Special Report, Enhancing U.S. Support for Peace Operations in Africa. Unrealistic mandates, unsustainable supplies of personnel, hostile host governments, and mission creep have undermined peace operations, Williams writes. "Given the growing interest in fostering a stable and prosperous Africa, the United States should wield its political influence to address these challenges."
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Humanitarian Aid, War, Fragile/Failed State, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Africa's Turn

Author:
Macky Sall
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Since it gained independence from France in 1960, the West African country of Senegal has been a bastion of stability and democracy on a continent that has seen relatively little of either. During the presidency of Abdoulaye Wade (2000–2012), however, the Senegalese exception seemed under threat. The elderly Wade grew increasingly authoritarian and corrupt, and he managed to run for a third term even though the constitution prohibited him from doing so. But in March 2012, Senegalese voters dealt Wade a decisive defeat, electing the reformist candidate Macky Sall instead. Trained in France as a geological engineer, Sall had served in a number of government posts under Wade, including prime minister, before publicly breaking with him in 2007. In opposition, Sall created a new political party; served a second term as mayor of his hometown, Fatick; and organized an anti-Wade coalition. Sall spoke with Foreign Affairs senior editor Stuart Reid in Dakar in June, days before U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in Senegal for a state visit.
Topic:
Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

3. Zimbabwe: An Opportunity for Closer U.S.-South Africa Relations

Author:
John Campbell
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As Zimbabwe moves closer to elections, the prospect for political violence, even civil war, grows. President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are wrangling over a new constitution and the timing of upcoming elections. The eighty-eight-year-old Mugabe is suffering from cancer and wants elections soon to ensure his "liberation" legacy. At the same time, Mugabe-allied military factions, flush with off-the-books cash from Marange diamonds mined in the eastern part of the country, are mobilizing to stay in power when Mugabe dies. Political murder is on the upswing and Zimbabwe is as tense and divided now as it was during the run-up to the violent 2008 elections.
Topic:
Political Violence, Corruption, Democratization, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe

4. Cough It Up

Author:
Jack Chow, Shenglan Tang, and Enis Baris
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Yanzhong Huang (“The Sick Man of Asia,” November/December 2011) paints a troubling picture of a China that has rapidly industrialized yet lags in modernizing its health-care system. Yet in his cogent history of China's health policy, much of which centers on self-reliance, Huang puzzlingly omits China's success in winning nearly $1 billion in recent years from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. That the country's health officials have had to resort to tapping a fund ostensibly dedicated to helping the world's poorest countries speaks to their inability to persuade the government to pay for public health with its national coªers. Only when the incongruity of a financial giant getting grants at the expense of impoverished African countries was illuminated did China choose to stop taking Global Fund awards.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Africa, China, and Asia

5. Crisis in the Congo: CPA Contingency Planning

Author:
Joshua Marks
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) led by President Joseph Kabila faces the prospect of collapse. Popular disaffection has grown as a consequence of endemic corruption and a failure to provide broad and sustained economic growth. The possibility of widespread violence around national elections scheduled for November 2011 as well as the emergence of antigovernment movements in the Kivus, Bas Congo, Katanga, or Equateur provinces could precipitate a major political and humanitarian crisis with destabilizing consequences for the region. Having provided billions in foreign assistance and UN peacekeeping support to the DRC and eager to avoid another violent catastrophe in central Africa, the United States faces a looming foreign policy challenge.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, and Sanctions
Political Geography:
Africa and United States

6. South Africa's Land Reform

Author:
Bernadette Atuahene
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Under colonialism and apartheid, the ruling white minority stole vast amounts of land from black Africans in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Reclaiming this land became an important rallying cry for liberation movements in both countries; but in the years after white minority rule ended, it was extremely difficult for the new regimes to redistribute the land fairly and efficiently. In recent years, as the unaddressed land inequality in Zimbabwe became a pretext for President Robert Mugabe's demagoguery and led to Zimbabwe's demise, many observers have asked: Could South Africa be next? When Nelson Mandela took power in South Africa in 1994, 87 percent of the country's land was owned by whites, even though they represented less than ten percent of the population. Advised by the World Bank, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) aimed to redistribute 30 percent of the land from whites to blacks in the first five years of the new democracy. By 2010 -- 16 years later -- only eight percent had been reallocated. In failing to redistribute this land, the ANC has undermined a crucial aspect of the negotiated settlement to end apartheid, otherwise known as the liberation bargain. According to Section 25 of the new South African constitution, promulgated in 1994, existing property owners (who were primarily white) would receive valid legal title to property acquired under prior regimes, despite the potentially dubious circumstances of its acquisition. In exchange, blacks (in South Africa, considered to include people of mixed racial descent and Indians) were promised land reform. But the new government upheld only one side of the liberation bargain: South African whites kept their property, but blacks still have not received theirs. Political apartheid may have ended, but economic apartheid lives on.
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

7. Defending Democracy in Cote d'Ivoire

Author:
Thomas J. Bassett and Scott Straus
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In early April, in the final days of Côte d'Ivoire's torturous four-month-long political crisis, French and UN helicopters bombarded the presidential residence in Abidjan. This military operation sealed the fate of the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, paving the way for Alassane Ouattara, the widely recognized winner of the November 2010 presidential elections, to claim office. But the French and UN action had another effect: it triggered commentary and outrage about international interference -- in particular on the part of France -- in African affairs. Ivoirian newspapers backing Gbagbo fulminated about France's desire to retake its former colonies. The French press, meanwhile, obsessed about whether France's military intervention spelled a new era of Françafrique, the term, first introduced in the 1950s, for French interference in the internal affairs of its former African colonies. The New York Times ran a story about France's "long shadow" over its former colonies, and pundits around the world worried that these international actions could doom Ouattara's legitimacy. Such a Eurocentric focus, however, both mischaracterizes the internal dynamics of the conflict and misses the more significant diplomatic development -- namely, the role of African regional organizations. In the end, France and the UN did not win the war for Ouattara and his self-styled "Republican Forces." By the time France and the UN intervened, Ouattara's forces controlled 90 percent of the country and were on the verge of taking the commercial capital, Abidjan. International forces did manage to hasten Gbagbo's demise: in effect, accomplishing the inevitable and preventing a final attack on Abidjan, which would have resulted in a terrible humanitarian crisis.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and New York

8. The Settlement Obsession

Author:
Elliott Abrams
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Two recent books on the Israeli settlements explore their corrosive effect on Zionism and Israeli society. But despite the problems settlements cause, Washington should not overstate their importance for the peace process, argues a former U.S. deputy national security adviser.
Political Geography:
Africa and Israel

9. Africa Unleashed

Author:
Edward Miguel
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Steven Radelet's accessible new book argues that much of the credit for Africa's recent economic boom goes to its increasingly open political systems. But Radelet fails to answer the deeper question: why some countries have managed to develop successful democracies while others have tried but failed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Asia, and Liberia

10. Somalia: A New Approach

Author:
Bronwyn E. Bruton
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Somalia has been a failed state for the better part of two decades; bereft of central government, cantonized into clan fiefdoms, and wracked by deadly spasms of violence. Repeated efforts to create a viable national government have failed.1 For the United States, the principal concern, especially since 9/11, has been the fear that Somalia might become a safe haven for al-Qaeda to launch attacks in the region and even conceivably against the U.S. homeland. U.S. efforts to prevent that from happening, however, have been counterproductive, alienating large parts of the Somali population and polarizing Somalia's diverse Muslim community into “moderate” and “extremist” camps. Several indigenous militant Islamist groups have emerged and grown stronger in recent years. One coalition, headed by a radical youth militia known as the Shabaab, now controls most of southern Somalia and threatens the survival of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG)—the latest UN-brokered effort to establish a functioning authority in the capital city of Mogadishu.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

11. Renewed Conflict in Sudan

Author:
Katherine J. Almquist
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Sudan faces the prospect of renewed violence between north and south over the next twelve to eighteen months. Under the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended Sudan's bloody civil war, which claimed two million lives and displaced four million more, a referendum in southern Sudan must be held by January 2011 to determine whether it remains united with the north or secedes from it. Given that popular sentiment in the south overwhelmingly favors secession, two basic scenarios are conceivable: the south secedes peacefully through a credible referendum process, or the CPA collapses and the south fights for independence. There is no scenario in which the south remains peacefully united with the north beyond 2011. Further complicating prospects for averting renewed violence are the ongoing conflict in Darfur and potential conflicts in other marginalized areas of the north. The violent secession of the south would hinder efforts to resolve these conflicts, as well as increase the prospect for greater internecine fighting among historic rivals in the south. The resulting significant loss of life and widespread political unrest would threaten regional stability and challenge U.S. interests in Africa.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Islam, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Sudan

12. The Global Glass Ceiling

Author:
Isobel Coleman
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical levers of international development. When women are educated and can earn and control income, a number of good results follow: infant mortality declines, child health and nutrition improve, agricultural productivity rises, population growth slows, economies expand, and cycles of poverty are broken.
Topic:
Development and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Africa, South Asia, and Middle East

13. The New Energy Order

Author:
David G. Victor and Linda Yueh
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Growing demand for energy in developing countries and calls for greener energy worldwide are putting unprecedented pressure on the global energy system. Existing energy institutions are struggling to remain relevant. A new mechanism for cooperation is needed.
Political Geography:
Africa

14. Banned Aid

Author:
Jagdish Bhagwati
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues, the concept of foreign aid is flawed -- not just because corrupt dictators divert aid for nefarious or selfish purposes but also because even in reasonably democratic countries, aid creates perverse incentives and unintended consequences.
Political Geography:
Africa

15. The Better Half

Author:
Isobel Coleman
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Efforts to provide the world's women with economic and political power are more than just a worthy moral crusade: they represent perhaps the best strategy for pursuing development and stability across the globe.
Political Geography:
Africa and China

16. A Conversation with Henry Odein Ajumogobia

Author:
Henry Odein Ajumogobia
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Speaker: Henry Odein Ajumogobia, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Federal Republic of Nigeria Presider: Princeton N. Lyman, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Nigeria August 4, 2010 Guest Event: A Conversation with Henry Odein Ajumogobia Nigerian foreign minister Henry Odein Ajumogobia discusses the challenges and prospects of Nigeria at fifty and the strengthening of Nigeria's bilateral partnership with the United States.
Topic:
Oil and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Nigeria

17. The Fertile Continent

Author:
Roger Thurow
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
With one billion people already going hungry and the world's population rising, global food production must urgently be increased. The countries that managed such surges in the past -- Brazil, China, India, the United States -- cannot do so again. But Africa can -- if it finally uses the seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation methods common everywhere else.
Topic:
Agriculture
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, India, and Brazil

18. Manufacturing Insecurity

Author:
William Pfaff
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States has built a worldwide system of more than 1,000 military bases, stations, and outposts -- a system designed to enhance U.S. national security. It has actually done the opposite, provoking conflict and creating insecurity.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Iraq

19. Electoral Violence in Nigeria: CPA Contingency Planning

Author:
John Campbell
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Nigeria is a country of overlapping regional, religious, and ethnic divisions. Rifts between the North and the South of the country, ethnic groups, and Islam and Christianity often coincide and have sometimes resulted in sectarian violence. This has been the case particularly in its geographical center and in the Niger Delta region. In the Middle Belt, as the former is called, bouts of retributive bloodshed between Christian farmers and Muslim pastoralists erupt with some frequency. In the Niger Delta, an insurrection against the Abuja government has been raging for more than a decade over regional, ethnic, and environmental grievances. In all, credible observers ascribe over twelve thousand deaths since 1999 to ethnic, religious, and regional conflict in Nigeria.
Topic:
Political Violence, Democratization, Ethnic Conflict, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

20. Farm Futures: Bringing Agriculture Back to U.S. Foreign Policy

Author:
Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Hunger remains one of world's gravest humanitarian problems, but the United States has failed to prioritize food aid and agricultural development. Washington must put agriculture at the center of development aid -- and make it a key part of a new U.S. foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Washington, and Asia

21. Africa's Capitalist Revolution

Author:
Ethan B. Kapstein
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In one of the great ironies of history, Africa may well emerge from the current global recession as the only region in the world that remains committed to global capitalism. While the tired industrialized nations of the West are nationalizing their banks and engaging in various forms of protectionism, Africa remains open for business -- promoting trade, foreign direct investment, and domestic entrepreneurship. Analysts in the industrialized countries are concerned that foreign aid flows to Africa might drop because of the recession, but Africans themselves are much more worried about rising barriers to their exports and diminishing private investment from abroad, which could impede the continuation of the impressive economic progress the continent has made over the past decade. It is still a well-kept secret that the African continent has been in the midst of a profound economic transformation. Since 2004, economic growth has boomed at an average level of six percent annually, on par with Latin America. This rate will undoubtedly decline as a result of the global financial crisis, but the International Monetary Fund still projects growth of around 1.5 percent for this year and four percent for 2010 throughout Africa -- a relatively healthy figure by today's depressing standards. International trade now accounts for nearly 60 percent of Africa's GDP (far above the level for Latin America), and foreign direct investment in Africa has more than doubled since 1998, to over $15 billion per year. Overall, private-sector investment constitutes more than 20 percent of GDP. Furthermore, since 1990, the number of countries with stock markets in sub-Saharan Africa has tripled and the capitalization of those exchanges has risen from virtually nothing to $245 billion (that is, outside of South Africa, which has long had an active stock exchange). These "frontier" markets have, until recently, given investors huge returns compared to those found in other emerging economies.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Africa and Latin America

22. Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta

Author:
Judith Burdin Asuni
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
When a group of Western oil workers was kidnapped in the Niger Delta in January 2006, the immediate hike in prices at gas stations around the world served as a timely reminder of the importance of this unstable region to international oil supplies. A previously unknown group announced it was holding the workers. It called itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and quickly sparked panic within the oil industry with a second set of kidnappings and a series of attacks on oil facilities. Anxiety reached new heights when, in an email sent to journalists, MEND claimed responsibility for an attack on an offshore facility, Bonga, in mid-2008. The installation, located a full seventy-five miles from the mainland, had previously been considered too ambitious a target for the militants. By the summer of 2008, oil was trading at $147 a barrel and oil production in the Delta was down by a quarter. Who was this mysterious group, whose members—armed with little more than a few AK-47s and speedboats—were able to massively disrupt oil supplies and wreak havoc on world commodity prices? Where did it come from, and what does it want? Is it a coherent group with clearly defined aims and political ambitions? Or is it merely a disparate ragtag of disillusioned youths, with powerful backers, intent on little more than petty criminality?
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, Corruption, Crime, and Oil
Political Geography:
Africa

23. China and India Go to Africa: New Deals in the Developing World

Author:
Harry G. Broadman
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Economic activity between Africa and Asia, especially China and India, is booming like never before. If the problems and imbalances this sometimes creates are managed well, this expanding engagement could be an unprecedented opportunity for Africa's growth and for its integration into the global economy.
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, and Asia

24. Planning for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe

Author:
Michelle D. Gavin
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Over the past decade, the refusal of President Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ruling party to tolerate challenges to their power has led them to systematically dismantle the most effective workings of Zimbabwe's economic and political systems, replacing these with structures of corruption, patronage, and repression. The resulting 80 percent unemployment rate, hyperinflation, and severe food, fuel, and power shortages have created a national climate of desperation and instability. Meanwhile, often-violent repression has left the opposition divided and eroded public confidence in mechanisms to effect peaceful political change.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil War, and Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Zimbabwe

25. Toward an Angola Strategy

Author:
Vincent A. Mai, Frank G. Wisner, William L. Nash, and ArthurMark Rubin
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Outside the continent's crisis areas, few African countries are more important to U.S. interests than Angola. The second-largest oil producer in Africa, Angola's success or failure in transitioning from nearly thirty years of war toward peace and democracy has implications for the stability of the U.S. oil supply as well as the stability of central and southern Africa. Consequently, the United States has an interest in helping Angola address its numerous and significant national challenges.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Angola

26. Nigeria: Elections and Continuing Challenges

Author:
Robert I. Rotberg
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Nigeria's vital importance for Africa's political development, for U.S. and European interests, and for world order cannot be exaggerated. Nigeria's sheer aggregate numbers—possibly as many as 150 million of the full continent's 800 million—and its proportionate weight in sub-Saharan Africa' s troubled affairs, make the country's continuing evolution from military dictatorship to stable, sustained democracy critical.
Topic:
Democratization and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Nigeria

27. Somalia's Future

Author:
Jennifer Cooke and David Henek
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
On January 17, 2007, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in collaboration with the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center, hosted a major conference in Washington, D.C., entitled "Somalia's Future: Options for Diplomacy, Assistance, and Peace Operations." The conference brought together expert observers from Mogadishu, senior U.S. policymakers, representatives from humanitarian assistance organizations, and regional analysts to convey to a U.S. audience the current situation in Somalia and to lay out the challenges facing the United States and the broader international community.
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Somalia

28. Darfur and Beyond: What is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities

Author:
Lee Feinstein
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The killing and destruction of national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups is a historical reality. So, too, is the dependable failure of the rest of the world to do much about it. Slow-motion ethnic cleansing in western Sudan is the most recent case of a state supporting mass atrocity and the rest of the world avoiding efforts to end the killing. Preventing and stopping such mass atrocities faces four reinforcing problems.
Topic:
Genocide, Human Rights, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Africa and Sudan

29. Avoiding Conflict in the Horn of Africa: U.S. Policy Toward Ethiopia and Eritrea

Author:
Terrance Lyons
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In 2006, the Horn of Africa witnessed major escalations in several conflicts, a marked deterioration of governance in critical states, and a general unraveling of U.S. foreign policy toward the strategically located region. The U.S.-brokered Algiers Agreement to end the 1998–2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea is at a crossroads. Ethiopia has resisted implementing the decisions made by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission (EEBC), Eritrea has imposed unilateral restrictions on the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), and both states have rejected the EEBC's plans to demarcate the border unilaterally. In Sudan, implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement remains incomplete, and the violence in Darfur continues to rage and spill into Chad. In Somalia, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has failed to establish itself outside of Baidoa and its rival, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), has seized control of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia. The rapid rise of the UIC in mid-2006 in particular amplified prospects for regional conflict as Ethiopia and Eritrea sent significant military support to the opposing sides. On December 6, 2006, the UN Security SudanCouncil unanimously endorsed Resolution 1725, a plan supported by Washington to deploy African troops to prop up the authorities in Baidoa. The Islamic Courts have stated that this intervention will be regarded as an invading force and will escalate, rather than reduce, the conflict.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, United States, Washington, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea

30. Freedom, Prosperity, and Security

Author:
J. Brian Atwood, Robert S. Browne, and Princeton N. Lyman
Publication Date:
05-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States will host the G8 Summit at Sea Island, Georgia, in June 2004. Many urgent and critical international issues need to be discussed at the summit, especially developments in the Middle East and in the worldwide war on terrorism. It will be important, however, that the summit also maintain the momentum of the past three years in the G8-Africa partnership. This will reinforce the work of African leaders who are championing democracy, human rights, and good governance. Africa, moreover, figures prominently in the three global issues the United States has selected for the summit: freedom, security, and prosperity.
Topic:
Security and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Middle East, Georgia, and Island

31. The United States and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration

Author:
Robert A. Manning and J. Robert Kerrey
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Southeast Asia presents the United States with both an important challenge and an opportunity. American leadership and enlightened action in Southeast Asia in the critical period ahead will almost certainly help stabilize a region undergoing troubling political and economic turbulence. Absent our leadership, democratizing states may founder and economic conditions in a majority of the region's countries will likely worsen. It is in the interest of the people of the United States that we choose the first course. The July 1997 collapse of the Thai baht, which triggered a regional crisis that threatened to destabilize world financial markets, was a chilling reminder of Southeast Asia's importance; the 1999 East Timor crisis is another tragic event that caught the United States unprepared. The 1990–91 Cambodia peace process, on the other hand, was a sterling example of how American leadership can make a difference. We believe the new administration has an opportunity for a fresh start to shape a coherent, proactive approach to the region. As Secretary of State Colin Powell prepares for his visit to the area during the July meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and as the administration considers President Bush's first trip to Asia for the October summit of the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group (APEC) in Shanghai, this is a timely moment to review the situation in Southeast Asia.
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Southeast Asia