Aid and Development Archive

The bitter Arab rivalry in the Persian Gulf is reshaping traditional spheres of influence and exacerbating fault lines farther south, in the Horn of Africa, the continent’s most volatile region. The spat between fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which began a year ago when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led an embargo of neighboring Qatar that shows no sign of ending, has sparked frantic diplomatic and economic activity across the Red Sea, with serious security consequences. Thrust center-stage into these changing political geographies is Somalia, among the world’s poorest and most conflict-prone countries. The fragile nation, […]

They may be far from East Asia, but Central America and the Caribbean have become important battlegrounds as Taiwan tries to stave off further international isolation. The regions occupy a disproportionately large place in Taiwan’s foreign relations, home to 13 of its 32 technical missions, and 10 of its 18 embassies—more than Asia and Africa combined. Yet in the past year, China has pulled away two of Taiwan’s oldest allies there, Panama and most recently the Dominican Republic, which severed its diplomatic ties to Taiwan this spring, enticed by some $3 billion in Chinese incentives, according to Taipei. Panama’s decision […]

What many have long viewed as one of the most ridiculous disputes in international politics may finally come to an end, thanks to an agreement reached last week. Following months of quiet negotiations with neighboring Greece, Macedonia announced it will change its name. If all goes to plan, by the end of the year, the country will cease to be the Republic of Macedonia or the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as it is officially known at the United Nations. Instead, it will become the Republic of North Macedonia. The name issue emerged with the collapse of Yugoslavia in the […]

Since his elevation to the presidency following the November 2017 military intervention that removed Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler Robert Mugabe from power, Emmerson Mnangagwa has embarked upon a global charm offensive. This has been designed to restore the country’s reputation, which was badly battered by the turmoil triggered by Mugabe’s violent land seizures; repression of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC; and a series of rigged elections. In stark contrast to the belligerent anti-imperialist rhetoric of Mugabe, Mnangagwa has adopted the vocabulary of “reform” while seeking to build bridges to previous adversaries such as Britain and […]

Last month, Pakistan made one of the most important political moves in its 70-year history. Parliament passed legislation, officially the 25th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which paves the way for the merger of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas with the neighboring province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. On May 31, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain signed the bill into law. Pakistan’s tribal belt will now come under the writ of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial government. North Waziristan, South Waziristan and the rest of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies will become districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. No longer will they be loosely administered by national government representatives known as political […]

As the Caribbean prepares to face another hurricane season, its islands are still confronting the toll of last year’s disasters. Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which tore through the Caribbean last September, led to many deaths, possibly up to 5,000 in Puerto Rico alone, and caused upwards of $100 billion in damage. In the typical way of natural disasters, many islands were spared, while others nearby were devastated. Although much of the attention has focused on the plight of Puerto Rico, other severely affected islands include Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Dominica, Antigua and […]

Let’s get this out of the way up top: The outcome of yesterday’s summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is preferable to nuclear war. That’s a pretty low bar, of course, but lowering the bar increasingly seems like Trump’s one area of expertise. In any event, we can all be glad that he—and Kim—cleared it. After that, the verdict is less forgiving for Trump. When stripped of all its smoke and mirrors, its oddball pageantry and puffery, the summit delivered a boilerplate document rehashing previous talking points on both sides, with no new […]

With well over a trillion dollars at stake, the next European Union budget has the potential either to strengthen a detente between Poland and Brussels, or become another issue dividing the bloc’s west and east. Further division would undermine Poland’s new prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose supposedly technocratic approach has held out the promise of better ties with the EU. Last month, Poland’s minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymanski, called EU plans to link the bloc’s central budgetary payments to the rule of law in member states a “massive power grab.” Earlier in May, the European Commission, the EU’s executive […]

In the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on May 27, Gustavo Petro, the ex-mayor of Bogota, won 25 percent of the votes cast, setting the stage for him to face off against Ivan Duque, a senator and former official of the Inter-American Development Bank who secured 39 percent. Their respective results make Duque—who is running as the candidate of the Democratic Center, the right-wing party that is most critical of the 2016 peace agreement with FARC guerrillas—the clear favorite to win in the June 17 runoff. But despite the fact that Petro can all but rule out taking office […]

Birthday parties can be moments for both celebration and introspection. While it may be fun to mark life’s milestones, they can inspire soul-searching about the meaning of aging. There were understandably mixed feelings at the United Nations last week, as the organization marked peacekeeping’s 70th birthday. The Security Council sent military observers to the Middle East in 1948 to supervise the end of the first Arab-Israeli war. Pedants can debate whether this represented the birth of peacekeeping—the interwar League of Nations had deployed multinational forces—but it was the first of over 70 U.N. missions that have become the organization’s trademark. […]

The European Commission recently announced that it would step up its efforts to fight disinformation online. Despite the prior reluctance of several commissioners to name any specific foreign governments, the newly published policy document, called a Communication, singles out Russia for practicing information warfare and aims to establish what it calls “a European approach” to tackle these and other forms of hybrid interference. This new approach will focus on improving transparency, promoting media diversity, fostering credible sources of information and devising long-term solutions to tackle disinformation in Europe. The announcement comes at a time when the European Union’s existing in-house […]