Blogs

Seventy-six years ago today (May 15, 1937), Madeleine Albright was born in Prague to Jewish parents Josef and Anna Korbel. Forced into exile by Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, Albright spent the war years in England. Upon her family’s return to Prague, Albright’s father was appointed ambassador to then communist Yugoslavia; after the 1948 communist take over in Czechoslovakia, the family relocated to the United States. Informed by her upbringing in war-torn and ideologically divided Europe, Albright would emerge as the highest ranking woman ever in US government and play a major role in the construction of US foreign policy. full story »

 
GERB, the party of Bulgaria’s ousted prime minister Boyko Borisov, secured a slim victory at the 2013 snap parliamentary elections Sunday night. Although for the first time in Bulgaria’s modern history a party repeats its electoral success in a second consecutive vote, Mr. Borisov and his political cohort have more to worry about than to celebrate. Winning 97 out of the 240 seats in the National Assembly, GERB fell quite short of obtaining the 121 legislative seats requisite for a parliamentary majority. Thus, Mr. Borisov will now have to turn to the other three parties, which entered parliament, so as to form either a coalition or a minority government with enough political support. 
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Perhaps this is nothing more than a sort of self-indulgence, but I generally think we do a pretty good job here on the HIR blog. However, this week, I must say we have been remiss, forgetting to note VE-Day, let alone dedicate a post to it. It ill behooves us, both as students of international politics and history, and as Americans, to not mark such a day. full story »

In Norway, the maximum prison sentence is 21 years. This fact, startling to many, came to light a few years ago after Anders Breivik massacred 77 in the usually peaceful country. Though Breivik’s sentence eventually included a clause enabling jailers to extend his sentence as long as he was deemed a “threat to society,” the fact that his case was the exception to the rule marks Norway’s body of law as vastly different from many nations, especially the United States. A recent piece in the Guardian explored the actual Norwegian prison system, which seems cushy compared to our own. This cushiness, though, has led to some of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. The question of how best to deal with prisoners is one that affects every country, and one well worth considering in terms of human dignity, but also in terms of the practical considerations of inequality and crime.

Soaring globalization that began during the 1990s brought about many advantages, among them access to information, material goods, and technology. However, the transnational dialogue that developed in response to these changing international dynamics has failed to adequately address and combat another product of globalization: the expansion of human trafficking. Many women—take the example of now 35-year-old Nita from Kosovo—report being forced to have sex every night of the week with as many as ten men in a given day. The use of (forced) child labor and the spread of child pornography are on the rise.

Late last week, the Israeli Defense Forces fired missiles against suspicious vehicles on Syrian territory, allegedly carrying munitions to the paramilitary wing of Hezbollah - Israel’s most bitter and aggressive enemy in the region. During the unexpected airstrike, one of the Israeli rockets razed to the ground a Syrian research center. Although still unclear whether Tel Aviv officials actually targeted the center actuated by some doubts about its illicit functioning for terrorist purposes, the incident elicited a vehement reaction from the government of al-Asad, Syria’s troubled president.

Ali al-Khawahir is a 24-year-old Saudi. Ten years ago, when he was 14, Ali stabbed a friend of his during a quarrel the two were having. Unfortunately for Ali’s friend – and as we will see Ali too – Ali stabbed him in the spine which left the friend paralyzed. This tragic but otherwise unimportant event matters to us because this week a Saudi court ordered that Ali be surgically paralyzed as punishment for his crime, committed ten years ago.

The perversity of the ruling, so apparent that is hardly need be explained, highlights the injustice of the Saudi legal system, and gives us cause to pause for a brief second and evaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia. full story »

When police caught Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a genuine discussion took place about whether to treat him as a citizen (which he is) or as an enemy combatant. Just a day before the attack, an op-ed in the New York Times from a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay called attention to the horrific way the US treats those we have deemed too dangerous to try in court and too much of a risk to release to their home countries. What do these cases have in common? They both underscore the disturbing ability of the US government to pick and choose those to whom it affords rights.

Consumed by stories of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—or even allusions to an “Israeli Apartheid State”—policymakers and the media neglect the majority of Palestinians living not in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, but as second class citizens (or not citizens at all) in Arab states. Whereas roughly 3.9 million Palestinians are living in the West Bank and Gaza, 4.6 million live as stateless refugees in surrounding Arab countries. The clash between Israelis and Palestinians must not be used by world leaders as a scapegoat to explain and ensconce broader and more complex obstacles to Middle Eastern peace. The daily tribulations of the majority of Palestinians are ignored on the world stage. full story »

The Obama Administration has faced difficult and complicated issues in determining how the United States should respond to the vicious civil war that has engulfed Syria for more than two years.  Few governments on the planet are less deserving of US support than the secular Ba’athist regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. In addition to the brutal and ongoing atrocities it has committed against its own citizens, apparently including the use of chemical weapons, the Assad regime has actively facilitated Iran’s efforts to train and arm the terrorist group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Yet the main opposition to the Assad regime—a loose coalition of Sunni factions known as the Free Syrian Army—has increasingly come to be dominated by militant jihadists.