The past decade has deeply affected Turkish perceptions of Iran. Despite Iran swinging toward greater authoritarianism, worsening domestic human rights and bellicose rhetoric, Turks no longer view Iran as a direct security threat, but rather as a regional partner whose victimisation by the Western-led international community could be detrimental to Turkish interests.
While the western world is likely to turn inward as its middle-classes attempt to cope with the economic squeeze, the new middle-classes in the global south are less predictable and more likely to be a force for instability. The ability of governments in the global south to respond to the changing demands of their constituents and provide competent economic governance will profoundly influence the future, both domestically and globally.
The 1995 Srebrenica genocide was a shameful event in modern European politics. The Srebrenica Resolution, adopted in January 2009 by the European Parliament, represents a significant ‘normative’ initiative that once again has proved the relevance and effectiveness of the European Union as an appreciable normative power in international politics.
Advancing human rights to the level of global justice requires more than the current circus of councils, commissions, and committees with tedious documents deliberated in lengthy meetings. Coming closer to people in their daily pursuit of liberties and livelihoods is the most productive perspective for progress in the 21st century.
While Lisbon may narrow the material differences between small and large states in terms of involvement, it is likely to sustain the differences between states in terms of influence. A strengthened global EU presence will primarily favor the large states given their more extended capacities to cope with the EU’s expanding role in matters of foreign policy.
The recent visit of the Chief of the Chinese Army’s General Staff Chen Bingde to Russia underscored the two states willingness to maintain their military contacts despite Russia’s fears of the rapidly growing power of its Eastern neighbor. Both nations wish to preserve trust amidst competing interests. Suspicions on the Russian side will not go away and pose challenges to closer security ties.
Washington’s emphasis on multilateral diplomacy underlines the point that ASEAN as a whole as well as other states have significant interests in the Sea that go beyond the territorial disputes between five states and China.
Southeast Asia and the South China Sea are now clearly major theaters of rivalry between the US and China, and once again, a cockpit of major international rivalries. ASEAN’s members are squarely in the middle of this rivalry. Meanwhile Russia is trying to run a bluff on China, which will probably only provoke Chinese and Asian mistrust despite the mutual professions of an identity of interest with China.
In the struggle for public justice, international human rights provide not just legal resources as based on positive law, but also political means anchored in public legitimacy. Additionally, human rights function not merely to protect people with regard to the freedoms and entitlements they have already acquired, but in their emancipatory struggles for socio-political transformation as well.
The international community watched with muted anger Friday afternoon as Texas executed Mexican national Humberto Leal Garcia after the Supreme Court refused to stay his sentence. Little doubt remains that in doing so, the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and this is not the first such occurrence.
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