Venezuela president Hugo Chavez.

Although it is difficult to predict the precise course of Venezuela’s current leadership transition, it is almost certain that President Hugo Chavez will pass away within the coming weeks or months. His departure will impact not only Venezuela, but also the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the regional bloc that Chavez founded to promote his vision of Bolivarian socialism. While conventional wisdom assumes these impacts will be mostly negative, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, another outcome is possible: A rejuvenated ALBA could take shape, one centered on a new coalition of pragmatists and restructured around economic […]

On Monday, 100 mutinous soldiers seized Eritrea’s Ministry of Information and forced state television to broadcast their list of demands. Loyal government troops quickly put an end to what some are calling a failed coup attempt, but two Eritrea experts who spoke with Trend Lines said the challenge to Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, who has made the country one of the most isolated and oppressive in the world, is far from over. “This is a reflection of the depth and breadth of dissatisfaction in the society over the continuing failure to take the country beyond the war footing it went […]

After decades of condemning parliamentary politics, Salafis have created political parties for the first time in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, even as Salafis in Morocco and Gaza attempt to do the same. Salafi political parties are not unprecedented in the Arab world — Bahrain and Kuwait have had Salafi political blocs for many years, and there was a Salafi-dominated party briefly in Algeria in the early 1990s that successfully contested parliamentary elections until the Algerian government cancelled the poll results. But the phenomenon is unusual. Before the Arab Spring, the majority of Salafis, or Sunni Muslim puritans, condemned parliaments […]

Europe has consistently struggled to escape fully from the shadows of fascism and far-right politics. At various points since 1945, and despite continual attempts to forge European unity, mainstream political elites have been faced with a revival of public support for politicians or parties that are associated with fascism, anti-democratic ideas and prejudice. Whether expressed in strong performances by right-wing extremist parties at elections or periodic surges in levels of racially motivated violence, the landscape of postwar European politics has never truly been “far-right free.” Far from being ephemeral, the far right in postwar Europe has proved to be remarkably […]

Global Insights: World Might Not Play Along With Obama’s ‘Team of Friends’

President Barack Obama begins his second term with a new national security team in the making. It now looks like most if not all his key nominees will secure Senate confirmation in coming months, with Sen. John Kerry at State, former Sen. Chuck Hagel at Defense and White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan at the CIA. Though some have described Obama’s new “team of friends” as representing an inward-looking impulse, world events may not permit that. As in his first term, Obama will probably again face a gap between his preferred goals and strategies — focusing on Asia and rebuilding […]

Marine Le Pen, center, far-right National Front candidate for France’s 2012 presidential election,  with her father Jean Marie Le Pen, right, after her speech during the traditional May Day march in Paris, May 1, 2012 (AP photo by Francois Mori).

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. Political extremism has, in many places, become a kind of new normal. In most democratic political systems, whether firmly established or still early in their consolidations, we find parties deemed “extremist” by the mainstream that routinely enjoy sustained electoral success. These political parties espouse rejectionist philosophies, proffer illiberal policies and promote intolerance of targeted groups. They typically do this, however, while playing within the rules of the democratic game. Putatively extremist parties […]

Last week, outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta came to Europe to say “goodbye and good luck.” The U.S. is switching its strategic focus to the Pacific; in the future, Europeans will have to do more fending for themselves. The coincidental eruption of the Mali crisis underlined Panetta’s point. The U.S. found itself legally precluded from intervening because of the overthrow of the democratic government by the Malian army in March. So in this North African crisis, the U.S. would not even “lead from behind” as it had in Libya. Any intervention in Mali was strictly up to the Europeans. […]

A Vietnamese court has convicted 14 bloggers and activists on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. In an email interview, Vietnam expert Adam Fforde, a professor at Victoria University’s Center for Strategic Economic Studies and honorary principal fellow at University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute, discussed the significance of the convictions and how they fit into the broader state of civil liberties in Vietnam. WPR: What is the overall state of civil liberties in Vietnam? Adam Fforde: The state of civil liberties in Vietnam has two very different aspects. On the one hand, since the de-Stalinization of the late-1980s, Vietnamese […]

Editor’s note: This report was originally published on Oct. 30, 2012, and updated with new material on Jan. 21, 2013. France’s sudden military intervention in Mali has put the country’s twin crises at the top of the international agenda. A loose coalition of Tuareg nationalists, Islamic militias and transnational criminal networks has split the country in half, with a military-led coup government in Bamako seemingly incapable of crafting a decisive response. Meanwhile, the spillover is increasingly threatening regional stability. Updated to include new developments, this WPR special report reviews the conflict in Mali and the crisis in the Sahel. Mali […]

American and Russian leaders cannot agree on much these days. Yet pressing problems such as Syria’s civil war, Iran’s nuclear program and post-withdrawal Afghanistan demand U.S.-Russia cooperation. Liberals in both countries attribute the relationship’s difficulties to the erosion of democracy in Russia, their logic being that a convergence on basic political values would enable greater cooperation. Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama’s “reset” policy toward Moscow proceeds from a different premise, namely that America and Russia can find areas for cooperation despite disagreements on democracy and human rights because, on some issues, self-interest unites them. Thus the reset involves better communication, […]

France has been at war in Mali for just more than a week, and though you might not know it from much of the media coverage, France is winning. This fact has been overlooked in a good deal of commentary on the fighting for three reasons. First, the Islamist rebels the French set out to fight have proved surprisingly resourceful. Second, the Malian army has turned out to be hopeless. Finally, the seizure and murder of Western oil workers in Algeria by a group associated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has shown that the Islamists have some strategic depth. […]

As China prepares to complete its leadership transition with the handover of the presidency in March, activists are seeing positive signs about government HIV/AIDS policy, with incoming Premier Li Keqiang prominently endorsing grassroots treatment efforts. In an email interview, Jia Ping, the founder and chief executive officer of the China Global Fund Watch Initiative, discussed China’s HIV/AIDS policies. WPR: How have China’s efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS evolved in recent years? Jia Ping: China has made some progress but not enough. The government has begun to pay attention to marginalized groups. The number of nongovernmental organizations is increasing; there is an […]

In a recent WPR feature essay on economic integration and security competition in Asia, Amitav Acharya used our article in Foreign Policy, “A Tale of Two Asias,” as a conceptual framework for thinking about the future of this dynamic and important region. But his piece, “Why Two Asias May be Better Than None,” misunderstands or fails to address many of our key arguments. On some points, we agree with Acharya. For example, he notes that Japan “started the process” of economic integration in Asia, or what we call “Economic Asia,” and “still plays a vital role in it.” We made […]

We are rapidly approaching the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. For some politicians, their initial stance on the war is something they might prefer to overlook. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if, during their nomination hearings, either Secretary of State-designate John Kerry or Secretary of Defense-designate Chuck Hagel is asked whether they still stand by their yea vote in October 2002 to give President George W. Bush the authorization to pursue military action against Saddam Hussein. For others, the inevitable retrospectives will fall into one of several predictable categories. Some will attempt to […]

Since the election of reformist President Benigno Aquino, the Philippine economy has been on an unprecedented upswing, defying almost all earlier forecasts. Today, the country is among the fastest-growing economies in the world, expected to grow by up to 8 percent this year. No wonder the Philippines is seen as the next Asian tiger economy and is expected to attain a much-coveted “investment grade” rating this year. The emerging consensus among experts is that the increasingly positive economic outlook is a result, first, of the Aquino administration’s good governance agenda focused on tough anti-corruption reforms and, second, of the larger […]

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s efforts to portray an image of moderation for himself, for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Egypt under the Brotherhood’s rule threaten to come undone once again. This time, the curtain has been drawn back by a spate of video clips of the former Muslim Brotherhood leader making bluntly anti-Semitic statements. The statements cannot be dismissed as old rants from an over-enthusiastic young radical. They are recent, dating to just a few months before the January 2011 uprising that ultimately brought Morsi and his political allies in the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. If Morsi wants […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — On Wednesday evening, hours before she flew to Havana to symbolically visit regional ally Hugo Chávez, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner was in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires province, to celebrate the return of the naval ship Libertad. The ship had been impounded in Ghana at the request of NML Capital — an unpaid creditor from Argentina’s $100 billion default in 2002. The frigate’s homecoming, facilitated by an international maritime court ruling, was a victory for Kirchner’s self-proclaimed “national and popular” project. Her government refuses to pay so-called vulture funds such as NML, which bought up debt […]

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