Things are often not what they appear to be in world politics. Over the past few days I have been posting brief snippets of information about the French intervention in Mali and the spillover of that operation into Algeria. I never suspected that there was any US involvement in Mali. A financial blog, however, named Zero Hedge, has unearthed some information which raises some questions about US operations in Mali. The blog references articles in Bloomberg and The Washington Post, both highly reputable news organizations. The inferences from that information, however, is all speculation. I will try to follow this trail and see if I can find any corroborating sources. In the meantime, we should keep a closer eye on Mali.
Preliminary results from the Israeli election suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu will win a third term. But the actual likely coalitions in the Parliament are cloudy. Some early reports suggest that Netanyahu’s party will actually lose a considerable number of seats in the Knesset to both more centrist and more rightist parties. We will have more solid information over the next few days, but it seems as if Israel’s foreign policy could become more hawkish over the next few months.
The South China Sea is potentially a huge oil reserve, but there are six countries that claim parts of the sea as part of their national territory. The contested claims have led to several naval engagements over the last few years, and the Philippines has decided to bring China to court. In this case, the court is a tribunal set up under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It is not clear that China will allow itself to be judged by the tribunal–its response to the case will be interesting to analyze.
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