Rachel Marsden
12/21/2010

When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi won a confidence vote last week by a mere three votes, it proved that in politics you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be better than the other guy. And in Italy right now that’s a pretty low bar. The only people in Italian politics who are worse than the prime minister are everyone else. Unless the various opposition parties are able to find an actual issue or reform on which they profoundly disagree with Berlusconi, and so can mount a campaign on substantive issues, then they’re just wasting everyone’s time. Marsden notes that the socialist left hasn’t done much better: the traditional left-wing approach of doling out favors to their constituents is no longer viable.

Marsden is an international political and communications strategist and writer who teaches at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.

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Anne Applebaum
12/21/2010

In Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko was “elected” to a fourth term as president after a violent crackdown by his regime. The violence, says Applebaum, was evidence of Lukashenko’s weakness. Truly popular leaders do not need to resort to bloodshed and beatings to intimidate their opponents and shut down communication. Lukashenko rejected a deal with the European Union that involved Belarus receiving, among other things, more open borders in exchange for free elections. He did, however, sign an oil deal with Moscow. This represents the decline of the West. The United States and Europe are “out of money and out of ideas” and can not offer any “carrots” as attractive as Russian oil.

Applebaum is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on foreign affairs.

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Jackson Diehl
12/20/2010

Leopoldo Lopez, an optimistic political challenger of Hugo Chavez, is well aware of the regime’s unhesitating manipulation of elections: Lopez was once banned from the gubernatorial ballot by government fiat. Nonetheless, he remains hopeful that Venezuelans are mobilizing to unseat Chavez in 2012. A major key to the opposition’s electoral success is support from the United States. But Lopez does not see “a clear policy” from the Obama administration that indicates a focus on a democratic transition in Venezuela. Diehl says this will have to change if the opposition is to continue having hope of voting out Chavez and ushering in democracy.

Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Post. He is an editorial writer specializing in foreign affairs.

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Nicholas D. Kristof
12/16/2010

Kristof looks at the heroic life of Dr. Hawa Abdi of Somalia, who has confronted armed militias there and forced them to back down. Today she runs a camp and hospital that serves 90,000 displaced people. She provides them with food and water and trains the people whose roots are in herding to farm and fish. She also runs a school, literacy and health classes for women, and a small jail for men who beat their wives. Kristof says she is an example of the tolerant and peace-loving side of Islam and what people can do when they tap into courage, compassion, and tolerance.

Kristof is a New York Times columnist.

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Thomas L. Friedman
12/15/2010

We have only one America so we have to make this work. If it fails, our children will grow up in a different world and we will not like who picks up the pieces. Friedman looks at the role of China in the future–a country that tried to intimidate its trading partners from sending representatives to attend the Nobel award ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall after it rejected the Nobel Peace Prize given to one of its citizens, a democracy advocate who has been imprisoned. On the other end of the spectrum, Friedman wonders what the world would be like if individuals feel empowered to change the world by dumping state secrets at any time. He says a stable world requires that we get the best from both extremes while limiting the worst; it will require smart legal and technological responses. That job requires a strong America.

Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

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Jamie F. Metzl
12/9/2010

Wherever human rights are massively abused today, China is the main protector of the abusing government, writes Metzl. Beijing is promoting a world-wide rejection of postwar international norms. This is in part because China’s concept of sovereignty stands in sharp contrast to the norms of the human rights system. And China’s rise poses challenges to the international community’s ability to effectively confront rights abusers. Metzl concludes that those unlucky souls around the world who find their rights massively abused by their own governments can, thanks largely to China, expect little or no help from foreign states.

Metzl, the executive vice president of Asia Society, served in the State Department during the Clinton administration and as a United Nations human rights officer in Cambodia.

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Ian Holliday
11/19/2010

Aung San Suu Kyi’s release has generated important political possibilities for Burma, says Holliday. Beyond Burma’s borders, key powers are generally supportive of change. China seeks above all a stable, prosperous, and friendly Burma, and has long urged military rulers to embrace national reconciliation and incremental reform. India has no problem with this agenda. The US wants faster progress but is pushing too hard after many years of policy failure. The odds therefore remain stacked against Ms. Suu Kyi. However, by signaling that talks are now possible without preconditions and that sanctions may be debated, she has created an important political opening. For generals keen to settle a fractious nation and bring in Burma from the cold, the offer placed on the table could be enticing.

Holliday is dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.

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Rob Bovett
11/16/2010

The best way to end methamphetamine production is to require a prescription for pseudoephedrine, a nasal decongestant found in some cold and allergy medicines and a main ingredient in meth. Oregon did so four years ago and has virtually eliminated meth labs there while also showing the steepest crime decline in the 50 states. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has proposed legislation to require prescriptions for products with pseudoephedrine across the nation, and Bovett says Congress should enact it without delay.

Bovett, the district attorney for Lincoln County, Ore., was the primary author of Oregon’s anti-methamphetamine laws.

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Bjorn Lomborg
11/12/2010

The upcoming climate summit in Cancun promises more proposals that ignore economic reality, writes Lomborg. World-wide public spending on research and development for clean energy technologies is a paltry $2 billion a year. Increasing this to $100 billion a year could be a game-changer. Not only would it be almost twice as cheap as the $180 billion a year cost of fully implementing Kyoto, but the effect of this kind of spending would be hundreds of times greater. Lomborg argues that this should not be our only response to global warming. We should also invest considerably more in adaptation to global warming’s effects and research geo-engineering technologies as a potential backstop.

Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus, a think tank, and author of “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” (Knopf, 2007). His new film, “Cool It,” opens in US theaters nationwide today.

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