Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Last month, the mayor of Colombia’s main port city, Buenaventura, was arrested on corruption charges. In an email interview, Elisabeth Ungar Bleier, the executive director of Transparencia Por Colombia, the Colombian chapter of Transparency International, discussed Colombia’s progress in the fight against corruption. WPR: How big an issue is corruption in Colombia, and in what areas is its impact most felt? Elisabeth Ungar Bleier: Corruption is a very big structural problem in Colombia. It permeates all levels […]

The Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan scored one of its biggest battlefield upsets last week when the group seized control of the northern city of Kunduz, in a sudden offensive that began on Sept. 28. The attack, coming just a day prior to the one-year anniversary of the formation of the embattled Afghan national unity government, was the first time a massed force of Taliban fighters has been able to seize control of a city of this size since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban from power in Kabul 14 years ago. While Afghan national security forces have since […]

Late last month, the pro-independence alliance Junts Pel Si, or Together For Yes, came in first place in regional elections in Catalonia, winning nearly 40 percent of the vote and 62 seats in the regional parliament. The other pro-independence party, Popular Unity Candidacy, known by its Catalan acronym, CUP, won 10 seats—a strong showing for the Catalan independence movement, but not enough for the pro-independence parties to win an overall majority of the votes, as they came in just shy with 48 percent. However, if Junts Pel Si and CUP form a coalition, they will have a majority of seats […]

Miguel Rodriguez can’t quite believe what he’s planning to do on Dec. 6. A father of six, the 47-year-old farmer in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua has voted for the late Hugo Chavez, or for Chavez’s followers and initiatives, in all 17 elections since Chavez was first elected president in 1998. But Rodriguez is breaking his streak this year, abandoning Chavez’s anointed successor, President Nicolas Maduro, and vowing to vote for Chavez’s opponents in the Dec. 6 congressional elections. “I believed in Chavez and the revolution,” says Rodriguez, looking over his fields, which now lay fallow. “But now there is […]

At last week’s United Nations General Assembly opening, many observers were keeping a close eye on how the key players spoke of the Iran nuclear agreement and its implications for regional security and even world peace. Strikingly, both the U.S. and Iranian leaders were positive but precise in discussing the deal, with neither allowing any excessive exuberance to color their remarks. Meanwhile, their mutual accusations about which of the two countries is the source of regional instability suggest that no conceptual breakthrough in relations is about to occur. Though Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama both spoke […]

Exactly a week after he was taken hostage by soldiers from Burkina Faso’s elite presidential guard during a short-lived coup led by Gen. Gilbert Diendere and other loyalists of former President Blaise Compaore, transitional President Michel Kafando officially returned to office on Sept. 23. He thanked international mediators from neighboring West African states, the African Union and the United Nations for helping to isolate the coup with their condemnations and threats of sanctions, and praised the loyalty of the regular armed forces. Kafando also highlighted a key factor that received only limited media attention during the week-long crisis: the “national […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the European refugee crisis and European Union member states’ approaches to addressing it. Last month, Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said that “accepting migrants escaping to save their lives is our duty.” In an email interview, Piotr Kazmierkiewicz, an expert at the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, discussed Poland’s migrant and refugee policy. WPR: How has Poland’s stance toward the European Union’s refugee relocation quota scheme changed over the past year? Piotr Kazmierkiewicz: Poland traditionally objected to any measures interfering with its sovereign decisions on border and […]

Recent armed clashes in Tajikistan have raised new questions about Central Asia’s stability, just as China is deepening its role in the region and tying it to signature trade and investment plans. Chinese leaders have touted the region as an essential part of Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a land- and sea-based infrastructure network to connect eastern China with Western Europe through what it calls the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. But China is not alone in Central Asia. Overlapping interests with Russia, the long-time kingmaker in a region that was part of the Soviet […]

Earlier this week, during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched on a topic that was easily overlooked amid his claims about Ukrainian and Syrian sovereignty. “Contrary to the policy of exclusiveness, Russia proposes harmonizing original economic projects,” Putin intoned, citing “plans to interconnect the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and China’s initiative of the Silk Road Economic Belt.” Putin promptly turned to other topics, letting any further details about linking the troubled Kremlin-backed EEU—made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia—with one of the two principal components of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious […]

The United Nations was stuffed to the gills with world leaders last week, but the real action was elsewhere. While presidents and prime ministers addressed the U.N. General Assembly, three crises escalated dramatically. In Syria, Russian warplanes launched their first strikes on rebel positions. In Afghanistan, the Taliban temporarily seized the northern city of Kunduz, the first major urban center to fall under their control since 2001. In the Central African Republic (CAR), U.N. peacekeepers fought with militias in the capital, Bangui, in an outbreak of violence that forced 40,000 civilians to flee. Each of these crises has the potential […]

Portugal goes to the polls Sunday, but with high voter apathy, turnout is expected to be at its lowest since the country transitioned back to democracy in the 1970s . In an email interview, Thomas Bruneau, the vice president of Global Academic Professionals and professor emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School, discussed Portuguese politics and what is at stake in Sunday’s election. WPR: What is current public opinion in Portugal toward austerity, and how will this affect Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s bid for re-election? Thomas Bruneau: Public opinion in Portugal toward austerity, which has resulted in unemployment, reduced pensions […]

Security experts often disagree when ranking America’s security challenges, but most believe that the top three are violent Islamic extremism, Russia and China. These adversaries or potential adversaries have radically different capabilities and goals, but share one characteristic: All seem to be beating the United States on what can be called “the battlefield of perception.” Unconstrained by democracy and driven by a fierce pursuit of power, they adroitly craft and disseminate narratives to weaken and delegitimize the existing international order and undercut American will, thus seeking to counterbalance the U.S. advantage in military and economic power. They consider belief and […]

On Oct. 20, 2014, Joko Widodo, popularly referred to as Jokowi, was sworn in as Indonesia’s new president—a champion of the people and pin-up for clean, open and efficient governance. What a difference a year can make. Over his first year in office, the limits to Jokowi’s power, political agenda and capacity to manage complex relationships have been repeatedly exposed. Powerful political oligarchs, an entrenched and entitled bureaucracy, an army eager to reinvigorate its relevance and a corruption-riddled justice sector—to name a few—were always going to present significant challenges to Jokowi’s presidency, and they didn’t delay. One of the most […]

On Monday, as U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders spoke loftily about diplomacy and international cooperation at the United Nations General Assembly, a picture of chaos and destruction materialized thousands of miles away, in Afghanistan, a country whose future depends to a large degree on decisions taken by the people giving speeches this week in New York. As the U.N. gathering got underway, Taliban fighters rolled into Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, and, in a manner reminiscent of last year’s fall of Mosul, Iraq, to the self-declared Islamic State, they took control without much resistance. It was […]

This week saw big news for foreign military engagement in the Syrian civil war: On Sunday, France launched its first round of air strikes against Islamic State targets, after years of reticence toward any military involvement in Syria. And on Wednesday, Russian aircraft dropped bombs against Syrian opposition fighters—after asserting it would target the Islamic State. That same day, France announced the opening of an unprecedented inquiry into crimes against humanity under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. France began an air-strike campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq last year but refused to engage in Syria, arguing that strikes there could […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to use military force in pursuit of national interests in Ukraine and Syria has led some U.S. observers to warn that Russia is now the primary threat to U.S. national security. But Russia’s high-profile, decade-long military modernization program has so far shown mixed results, even as its involvement in Ukraine and Syria has created serious challenges, but no decisive outcome as yet. In the meantime, U.S.-Russia relations have been largely deadlocked as a result. All of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers until Oct. 15. Russia’s Military Modernization In the past few years, […]