World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Clemens Wergin is the Washington bureau chief for the German newspaper group Die Welt and he has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times on American attitudes toward the US role in world affairs.  He questions whether the US has the will to actively manage global affairs.  He uses an interesting phrase to describe the US role after World War II–the leader of an “empire by consent.”   He laments the possible loss of the elite consensus in the US about how to protect American interests defined in terms of the global interest.

Ukraine has destroyed a number of vehicles in the Russian aid convoy as they crossed into Ukrainian territory.  The Ukrainian government claimed that a number of Russian military vehicles preceded the aid convoy and were destroyed by artillery fire.   The aid has not entered Ukrainian territory because the International Red Cross has not yet finalized the terms by which it can enter Ukrainian territory and the terms of its distribution.  The Russian Foreign Ministry denied that any Russian vehicles entered Ukrainian territory and dismissed the claims as fantasy.

There have been reports of escalating violence in the northwest province of Xinjiang in China.  The largest ethnic group in the province, the Uighurs, are growing increasingly restless under the control of the Beijing central government which is dominated primarily by ethnic Han Chinese.  The Uighurs believe (as do the Tibetans) that their cultural identity is being lost and that they are being exploited in an essentially colonialist relationship.   The relationship falls into a classic dependency framework, and it is unlikely that the Beijing government will change its policies as long as it feels threatened by the non-Han identity of the Uighurs.