Word: washington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iran experts say Tehran's broad interests in Afghanistan are the same as Washington's. The Islamic Republic doesn't want to see a return to chaos on its eastern flank, which would probably lead to a massive refugee influx. As a Shi'ite state, it would see the return to power of militant Sunni hard-liners as a setback. And Iran, which faces a drug-addiction problem of alarming proportions, shares the U.S. desire to curtail Afghanistan's opium trade. If anything, "Tehran stands to lose much more than Washington if Afghanistan reverts back to an al-Qaeda-infested...
...Despite its discord with Washington, Tehran has built progressively stronger economic and political ties with Afghanistan, not only with its historical allies among the country's ethnic minorities - the fellow-Shi'ite Hazaras and the Uzbeks and Tajiks - but also with the government of President Hamid Karzai. Still, some U.S. officials charge that the Iranians are hedging their bets and also building bridges to some elements of the Taliban despite their longtime enmity toward the movement. (Iran came close to war with the Taliban in 1998, when the movement murdered nine Iranian diplomats after capturing the northern city of Mazar...
...many countries, economic reform can be a good thing. Even draconian changes to paper currency can help governments draw a line between "bad economic policies of the past, often after taming a hyperinflation," says Marcus Noland, an economist at Washington's Peterson Institute of International Economics. However, this being North Korea, one of the most repressive and impoverished nations in the world, that's not the case. The government announced that it would limit the amount an individual can exchange to just 100,000 won - or less than $40 at black-market exchange rates - and any amount above that threshold...
...Honduras debacle is just the latest example of Obama's actions failing his words in Latin America. He wowed the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad last spring with soaring pledges to drop Washington's heavy-handed double standards in the region. He won kudos for acknowledging that the drug war is as much about U.S. consumption as it is about Latin corruption. But the cheers have since turned to chagrin on numerous fronts. Obama is loath to offend supporters of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba; yet even Latin leaders who scorn the Castros shake their heads at Obama...
...that it's the only thing, muffling the harder message that real democracy is what happens after elections. Critics may call Chávez an authoritarian Castro wannabe. Yet he's remained in power for 10 years, and may well last another 10, in part because he's exploited Washington's election obsession. He's been cleanly voted in three times and that's helped him retain a democratic legitimacy despite his hegemonic power inside Venezuela. Valenzuela insists that the recent Honduran election doesn't whitewash the coup; but Amselem recently told the OAS he thought it would...