foreign affairs

More than three weeks after Cyclone Nargis, Burma's military junta has permitted a trickle of UN aid into the country -- but no relief supplies from the U.S., French, and U.K. warships that sit just off Burma's coast.

The warships in the Bay of Bengal have not been rendered useless. Their very presence has no doubt played a role in the junta's decision to let the UN operate in cyclone-ravaged areas to the degree that it has. From the junta's viewpoint, better a few UN helicopters and a modest number of international relief workers than a massive aid operation mounted by Western militaries, which would have embarrassed the junta and perhaps threatened its grip on power.

Burma's junta continues to obstruct aid and divert it from cyclone victims.

There's no excuse for the behavior of Burma's leaders, but history offers an explanation that goes beyond sheer autocratic barbarism. As friendly as the Burmese can be to Western tourists, they have reason to be suspicious about their neighbors and outside powers -- they have been sandwiched between empires in India and China; subjugated and exploited by Great Britain; devastated by Japan (and the Allies) during World War II; and vulnerable in the second half of the 20th century to meddling by Thailand, rogue Chinese nationalists, and other factions and interests. Hand in hand with that xenophobia goes a fierce pride: For much of their history they've been not just survivors, but builders of a Burmese empire that, at its zenith in the mid-11th century, controlled a large chunk of mainland Southeast Asia.

A cyclone hit Burma, killing at least 22,000 and leaving another 40,000 missing and presumed dead.

Will the Burma cyclone lead to political upheaval in one of the world's most oppressive regimes? The indirect impact of environmental crises on politics is well established. Water shortages, flooding, nutrient-poor soils, and deforestation have all put pressure on governments and provided the backdrop to ethnic conflict. But it's been speculated that as populations rise in environmentally, seismically, and climatically fragile zones, unexpected natural events may not only pressure regimes but topple them as well.

Congressional Democrats continue to hold up a free-trade deal with Colombia.

All the debate about Colombian free trade has obscured something important: Colombia is far safer now than it was five years ago. In fact, if Iraq were reclaiming terrorist-controlled areas as effectively as Colombia is, even the most die-hard opponents of the Iraq War would admit error. Colombia is, after Iraq and Afghanistan, our third-biggest nation-building project, and it is by far our most successful.

South African dockworkers refused to unload 3080 cases of weapons and ammunition from a Chinese vessel. The shipment was destined for Zimbabwe, possibly for use against opponents of President Robert Mugabe.

What could be more stirring than the sight of a few thousand Durban longshoremen standing up against one of Africa's great despots? Consider me duly stirred. But this triumph of organized labor in South Africa has a worrisome side as well.

Jimmy Carter's talks with Hamas trigger a feud with the State Department.

Is there any living ex-president you'd less want to be trapped with on a desert island than Jimmy Carter? Judged by that yardstick, his possible prosecution under the Logan Act for his latest act of freelance diplomacy in the Middle East -- as some have come close to suggesting -- seems like a great idea. But let's be serious: the best thing you could do with this 209-year-old statute is junk it.

Gen. David Petraeus was named the new head of United States Central Command, the military command unit that oversees Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petraeus's appointment as combatant commander of Central Command was set in motion several weeks ago, with the firing of then-combatant commander Adm. William Fallon. The administration let him go not for opposing a possible strike against Iran, as was widely speculated, but for arguing too often with Petraeus over troop levels in Iraq. Petraeus, who may be the most well-read analytical mind in the military, wanted to maintain troop levels, rather than reduce them for use in Afghanistan and for other contingencies -- to say nothing of relieving strains on the army. But Fallon and Pentagon generals wanted troop levels in Iraq to come down. Petraeus won the debate.

Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker returned to Congress for hearings on the state of Iraq.

Time was when members of Congress didn’t have to rely on just the media, fact-finding tours, or high-profile hearings to find out what was going on in a theater of war. Instead, our representatives could turn to trusted ex-comrades or relatives for an on-the-ground view. But that was in another, better United States. Fewer and fewer senators or representatives have any military experience and the connections that come with it. MORE

Having apparently lost Zimbabwe's presidential election, Robert Mugabe is said to be considering stepping down after 28 increasingly tyrannical years in office.

Now is the first time in nearly a decade when it would be only foolish and loopy, and not downright insane, to invest in the Zimbabwean dollar. When I visited in 2001, Zimbabwean currency was losing its value at catastrophic rates, which led to scenes of South Africans' rushing over the border to spend their rand on quick, absurdly cheap holidays in Zimbabwe. It was like Weimar Germany with elephants and baobabs, and even with its own homegrown "Hitler." If Mugabe leaves, will tourism recover? Will the farms (Zimbabwe's main foreign-exchange earner) produce more? They could hardly produce less.

The U.S. hatched plans to broadcast Azeri-language programming into Iran, starting later this year, as a way to fuel unrest among the country's Azerbaijani minority.

News of this enfilade of Turkic vibes arrived just as Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) was holding a Washington hearing on the status of Iran's Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, and Baluchis. All these minorities have some grievances against the ayatollahs, but only the Azerbaijanis have yet to resist Tehran in any meaningful way. Not coincidentally, they're also the largest and most powerful minority in Iran: they make up a third of the country's population, and they are the only ethnic minority that could bring down the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately for the U.S., the Azeris really like Iran's current government. Azerbaijanis are more religious than average (Tabriz is a city of mosques), disproportionately approve of theocratic rule, and wield enough clout that other more secular groups -- such as the Kurds -- have complained that Iran is ruled by a "Turkish government." MORE

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deepens a diplomatic rift by skipping Argentina on her trip to Latin America.

The "carnal relations" that former Argentine foreign minister Guido di Tella helped to inaugurate between his country and the United States in the 1990s have long since cooled. Condi can't be bothered to give new President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner a peck on the cheek, much less do the tango -- just as President Bush didn't drop by to see outgoing President Nestor Kirchner on his trip to the region last year. It's easy to blame the break-up on the Kirchners' anti-American rhetoric and their embrace of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But that ignores the ripple effect of the Bush administration's decision seven years ago to pull the plug on an International Monetary Fund rescue package for Argentina, prompting the country to default on its debts and paving the path to power for the Kirchners. MORE

Japanese prosecutors have dropped charges against a U.S. Marine accused of rape in Okinawa.

John McCain and others often cite U.S. bases in Korea and Japan as a model for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. This rape case, which the Japanese authorities dropped because the family of the 14-year-old junior high student didn't want to pursue charges, is a reminder of one of the less savory dividends of U.S. bases in your backyard. U.S. military personnel have been raping Okinawans for the last 60-plus years. (For an early account, see this 1949 report by Time's Japan correspondent; Chalmers Johnson gives a detailed, and depressing, update in the Okinawa chapter of Blowback.) MORE

Defense Secretary Robert Gates returned mostly empty-handed from India, with India's ruling coalition still sitting on a landmark bilateral deal on civilian nuclear cooperation.

Gates's setback says more about the frailties of Indian coalition politics than about a cooling of bilateral ties. The U.S. and India are much cuddlier strategically than during my days as a foreign service officer in Bombay in the late 1980s, when the CIA station chief had to use a rickety sailboat from the Royal Bombay Yacht Club to snoop on India's western fleet (or maybe that was just his excuse to go sailing on Uncle Sam's dime). From 2006 to 2007, U.S. military assistance to India more than quadrupled to more than $1 billion (up from near zero in my day), the Indians recently agreed to buy six C-130 cargo planes, and the U.S. may win a $10 billion deal to supply fighter jets. (Last year, India was -- after China -- the world's second biggest buyer of military hardware, mostly from Russia and Israel.) And Indians feel a lot warmer toward the United States than your average Pakistani, despite billions in assistance over the years to that putative "ally." MORE

The New York Philharmonic played a concert in Pyongyang, as the largest American group to visit North Korea since the war.

Politically, the concert flopped. Kim Jong Il, who invited the New York players last August, failed to appear, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed any temptation to get "carried away with what listening to Dvorak is going to do in North Korea." In the midst of a two-month stalemate over delayed nuclear disarmament, the Philharmonic’s performance could provide little more than a soothing distraction.  

The only unambiguous winner was the orchestra itself. Splashed across the front pages of national newspapers, the Philharmonic reclaimed a cultural authority for classical music belied by its graying, shrinking audience. As American orchestras struggle to stay afloat here, North Korean artists enjoy generous government subsidies in return for their service as professional glorifiers of Kim Jong Il and the Juche Idea. Fortunately, the popularity of classical music outside America is growing, particularly in China. But for home-grown fans and performers, the question is: will America preserve its Western cultural patrimony, with the goodwill it buys, or abandon it to the East?

The resignation of veteran dictator Fidel Castro provides an opportunity for a much-needed shift in U.S. policy, but will anyone seize the moment?

El Jefe's departure from power on his own terms almost twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall is perhaps the starkest reminder yet of what a dismal failure America's Cuba policy has been. Despite (or more plausibly in part because of) the unremitting hostility of the superpower next door, Castro succeeded in creating the world's most successful Communist regime. New waves of non-Cuban leftists have been growing disillusioned with the dictator for decades, but U.S. policy has allowed the regime to invariably maintain a hefty focus on America's persecution of him and the people he governs, rather than his persecution of the domestic opposition. Meanwhile, substantial portions of U.S. policy remain formally tied not to improvements in the Cuban human rights situation, but the Miami exile Community's quixotic efforts to secure the return of property acquired during the previous dictatorship and confiscated in the late 1950s.