People watch machinery used to dig in search or survivors at a collapsed illegal gold mine in Santander de Quilichao, southern Colombia, May 1, 2014 (AP Photo/Oswaldo Paez, El Pais).

The head of the United Nations refugee agency in Colombia recently told Reuters that illegal mining and drug-fueled gang violence will continue to displace citizens, even if a peace deal is signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In an email interview, Juan F. Vargas, a professor of economics at the University of Rosario in Bogota, discussed the impacts of illegal mining in Colombia. WPR: How widespread is illegal mining in Colombia, and who are the main groups profiting from it? Juan F. Vargas: Illegal mining is quite widespread in Colombia and is present along the Pacific coast […]

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, right, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speak at a press conference at the Pentagon on April 16, 2015 (Department of Defense photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Clydell Kinchen).

When the U.S. Department of Defense released its latest cyber strategy last week, it laid more than just another brick in the edifice of cybersecurity that the government has been building for decades. Coming just a few weeks after President Barack Obama’s Executive Order setting out a policy framework for sanctioning malicious cyber actors, the new strategy marks a significant evolution in Washington’s understanding and approach to providing security in the digital age. That’s because it comes with a warning to potential adversaries: The United States will no longer only be reactive in its cyber defenses, as the Pentagon will […]

Palestinian Hamas supporters protest an Egyptian court ruling that declared Hamas a terrorist organization, Gaza City, March 1, 2015 (AP photo by Khalil Hamra).

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Iran has transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas’ military wing over recent months in an effort to revive ties. In an email interview, Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, discussed Hamas’ internal divisions. WPR: What are the key areas of dissension between Hamas’ Gaza-based leadership and its foreign-based leadership? Nathan Thrall: Hamas’ primary challenge over the past several years has been navigating a rapidly changing regional landscape characterized by growing Sunni-Shiite sectarianism, as well as by intra-Sunni fighting. Hamas is a Sunni organization connected to the […]

U.S. President Barack Obama talks with National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice aboard Marine One en route to Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England following the NATO Summit in Wales, Sept. 5, 2014 (Official White House photo by Pete Souza).

This past weekend, I had the privilege of taking part in the Harvard Extension School’s Crisis Game, a Cold War-era nuclear simulation involving some 30 graduate students and led by my colleague Tom Nichols. What was fascinating to observe was how even the prospect of a theoretical nuclear exchange was still capable of forcing a high degree of seriousness and focus among the participants, as various courses of action were debated and evaluated. Indeed, some of the participants themselves raised the question of whether U.S. national security policy today lacks the gravitas it appeared to have 30 years ago, particularly […]

Nigerians protest against government corruption and the removal of a fuel subsidy, Lagos, Nigeria, Jan. 9, 2012 (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File).

I carry a plastic chair over to sit with Pastor Samuel Tewogbola outside his house in the southern Nigerian town of Igarra. The family goat wanders past us, nosing the earth. It’s November 2014, and I am doing preliminary research for a future book. Tewogbola is a fire-and-brimstone preacher—43 years in a hard-line Pentecostal church. When I arrived with my friend Esther, his daughter, he made us all kneel in his doorway while he intoned thanks to Jesus for our safe journey. We’re philosophizing, talking about what makes up good human character, and about money—how money is used to buy […]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry addresses the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), U.N. headquarters, New York, April 27, 2015 (U.N. photo by Loey Felipe).

The monthlong 2015 review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which began yesterday, will put a spotlight on a number of priority issues on the nonproliferation agenda. Of these, the potential deal between Iran and the P5+1—the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany—on Tehran’s nuclear program, which would bring Iran back into compliance with its NPT obligations, is likely to attract the most attention. However, the current arms control stalemate among the U.S., Russia and China, which has endured since the previous NPT review conference in 2010, will also shape the conference’s outcome. This stalemate results from […]

A Pakistani Honor Guard at the Army’s Martyr’s Monument, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Jan. 21, 2010 (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison).

Last week, Pakistan agreed to send ships to help enforce a U.N.-approved arms embargo against Houthi rebels in Yemen, but declined a request by Saudi Arabia to send attack aircraft or troops to join the Saudi-led coalition there. In an email interview, Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent security analyst in Pakistan, discussed Pakistan’s military capabilities. WPR: What are the Pakistani military’s size, training priorities, capabilities and operational strengths? Ayesha Siddiqa: The Pakistani military is a volunteer force and the seventh-largest military in the world. It is primarily dedicated to conventional warfighting. There are 617,000 active duty personnel in the Pakistani military, […]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko watches a military exercise of the Ukrainian armed forces in Mykolaiv region, Ukraine, April 25, 2015 (Presidential Press Service photo by Mykola Lazarenko via AP).

The average European leader probably lacks the number of brain cells required to process the sheer amount of bad news he or she currently receives on a daily basis. This is not because they are stupid, but because there is so much dire news to digest. In the past two weeks, over 1,000 migrants have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean; there has been fresh fighting in Ukraine; and the Greek government has careened toward total bankruptcy. The European Union has responded to this torrent of crises with a mixture of big talk, half-measures and fraying tempers. At a summit […]

People gather at the Place de Nation to ask for a civilian and democratic transition, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Nov. 2, 2014 (AP photo by Theo Renaut).

On the morning of Oct. 30, 2014, throngs of protesters overwhelmed security forces in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, and burned the National Assembly building, physically preventing deputies from voting to further extend President Blaise Compaore’s tenure. That “popular insurrection,” as almost everyone in Burkina Faso now calls it, continued into the next day, driving the authoritarian president out of the country after 27 years in power. Just over five months later, on April 7, under an interim government and with the assembly building still out of use, a new set of parliamentary deputies, including many former protesters, met in temporary […]

A man holds a poster reading “We Stand against Xenophobia” during a protest against recent attacks on immigrants, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 23, 2015 (AP photo by Themba Hadebe).

Last week, a wave of xenophobic violence struck two of South Africa’s largest cities, Johannesburg and Durban. Mobs torched foreign-owned shops and killed seven people in the country’s worst attacks against foreigners since 2008, when over 60 people were killed in similar incidents. The localized unrest quickly became a regional crisis, as multiple African governments issued angry statements on behalf of their citizens, millions of whom have migrated to South Africa in search of economic opportunity since the end of apartheid. South African President Jacob Zuma has been scrambling to respond; so far he has deployed the army to quell […]

Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters regain control of the northern neighborhoods, after overnight heavy clashes with Islamic State group militants, Ramadi, Iraq, April 23, 2015 (AP photo).

When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his strategy for countering the so-called Islamic State (IS) last September, it was met with an immediate volley of criticism, most of it asserting that the president’s approach was too timid. Incensed by IS’ horrors, the critics called for large-scale American military action. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, demanded that the Obama administration “destroy” IS within 90 days. When told by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this was impossible, Cruz issued a press release saying the general was wrong. Now that the 2016 presidential race has kicked off, […]

Yemeni women pray during a rally marking the third anniversary of the revolution, Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 7, 2014 (AP photo by Hani Mohammed).

When Kawkab Althaibani demonstrated in Change Square in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, during the 2011 protests against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, her heart, she recalls, “was full of hope.” Today, six weeks after Houthi militias surrounded her house in Sanaa looking for her husband, an outspoken critic of the group, she is in Istanbul, where she fled the insecurity of Yemen’s civil war to seek asylum for her and her family. Althaibani is just one of many Yemeni women who once believed that the 2011 uprising was the harbinger of a more moderate, more inclusive and peaceful Yemen. Despite violence from […]

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj shakes hands with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, New Delhi, India, April 13, 2015 (AP photo by Manish Swarup).

Last week, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong was in New Delhi for talks with Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj on North Korea’s nuclear program and to request additional humanitarian assistance. In an email interview, Ankit Panda, an associate editor at The Diplomat, discussed India’s ties with North Korea. WPR: How extensive are India’s ties with North Korea, and what are the main areas of cooperation? Ankit Panda: India and North Korea do not have the closest relationship by any means, though New Delhi remains a reliable partner and an important source of exports and aid for Pyongyang. India […]

Angolans at the beach in front of the capital skyline, marked by new construction, Luanda, Angola, March 8, 2010 (photo by Flickr user mp3ief, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

Forty years after its independence from Portugal and 13 years since the end of the civil war that immediately followed, Angola has made great progress in consolidating peace and stability, but continues to face many challenges. Foremost among them is managing an economic crisis, exacerbated by staggering inequality, while avoiding the potential social and political fallout it could generate. The country’s political landscape could also prove perilous: The ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), faces both a determined opposition and a potential internal battle over who will succeed longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The […]

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida during the 7th trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting, Seoul, South Korea, March 21, 2015 (AP photo by Ahn Young-joon).

Foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea gathered in Seoul last month to discuss ways to restore trilateral diplomacy in the triangle of Northeast Asia. This was the first high-level trilateral meeting in nearly three years, the chasm between all three countries fueled in large part by the toxic state of bilateral relations between Tokyo and Beijing over their territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Compounding tensions are long-standing, historical grievances around World War II and the perception, widely held in Seoul and Beijing, that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bent on revising the traditional narrative of […]

Meeting of NATO defense ministers, NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 5, 2015 (NATO photo).

Whether it was the deaths in the Mediterranean Sea of hundreds of migrants and asylum-seekers desperate to enter European territory or the latest atrocities carried out by the Islamic State in their Libyan enclave, this week’s headlines could not have come at a worse time for the leadership of the North Atlantic alliance. Over the past year, NATO finally seemed on the verge of rediscovering a common purpose after two decades of trying out for different roles—a return to its original task of putting a brake on the westward spread of Russian influence and control from the Eurasian core into […]

Martin Anderson, a Ghanaian national who is on death row after being convicted of drug offenses, is escorted by armed police officers at South Jakarta district court, Jakarta, Indonesia, March 19, 2015 (AP photo by Tatan Syuflana).

Indonesia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the final appeals of two prisoners from France and Ghana currently on death row for drug smuggling. In an email interview, Gloria Lai, a senior policy officer at the International Drug Policy Consortium, discussed Indonesia’s zero-tolerance approach to drugs. WPR: What factors are pushing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to continue Indonesia’s strict anti-drug policies? Gloria Lai: When Indonesia passed new drug laws in 2009, introducing measures to divert people who use drugs away from prison and toward drug treatment programs, the government showed signs of shifting toward a health-based approach to drug use. However, […]

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