Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In the last week of 2015, the United States received a late Christmas present from the governments of Japan and South Korea. The deal reached by Tokyo and Seoul to resolve their differences over the painful issue of Korea’s so-called comfort women—Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II—helped to remove one of the psychological obstacles to strengthening Washington’s strategic alliances in Asia. Only days later, North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon, which served to highlight the common threats and shared interests linking the U.S. and its allies. Now the U.S., South Korea and Japan are […]

Paul Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is none too impressed with President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail gun violence in America by tightening purchasing requirements through executive order. In an interview with Katie Couric of Yahoo News, Ryan complained that “a week [when] we . . . talk about gun control is a week we’re not talking about our failure to confront [the self-described Islamic State] fully, the failure to take care of the threat that’s on our doorstep.” To call the Islamic State, rather than guns, “the threat that’s on our doorstep” is rather extraordinary, […]

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, Slovakia filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice against the European Union’s plan to redistribute 120,000 refugees across all 28 member states. In an email interview, Katarina Lezova, a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, discussed Slovakia’s response to the refugee crisis. WPR: How affected has Slovakia been by the refugee crisis in Europe? Katarina Lezova: Slovakia has not been greatly affected by the crisis, especially in comparison to […]

In a scene from a compelling documentary called “Dreaming of Denmark,” two teenagers sit on a snowy European slope, chatting in Danish. When one of them, Mussa, describes himself as Danish, the other, his Afghan friend named Wasi, reminds him he’s Ethiopian. “Oh, yeah,” Mussa says, giggling. He had just obtained his Danish passport, after three years of living in a shelter for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Denmark, and was clearly well on his way to building a life in his new homeland. The scene was filmed in 2014, but couldn’t be more relevant today. The question on the minds […]

Zimbabwe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, held its annual conference at Victoria Falls on Dec. 11 and 12, an event preceded by meetings of the party’s politburo and central committee. Although these gatherings were ostensibly exercises to take stock of the party’s work over the past year, in reality they were dominated by a single issue: the question of who will succeed 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s succession has become the elephant in the room of Zimbabwean politics, an issue that everyone is invited to ignore while simultaneously discussing little else. The succession question defines the country’s domestic scene and continues to […]

As the Saudi-Iran crisis lumbers along, featuring new mutual recriminations and a Saudi campaign to line up Muslim support over the past week, two regional states have offered to mediate. Turkey and Iraq are well-positioned, in different but complementary ways, to engage both parties and try to defuse the situation. But their current leaders, no matter how well-intentioned, are unlikely to influence Saudi or Iranian behavior, unless Riyadh and Tehran decide they need to start looking for a way out of their standoff. The crisis provoked by the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2 has not […]

Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, inherits a host of problems and points of friction at home and abroad from his predecessors, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and, before that, her late husband, Nestor Kirchner. But in contrast to the daunting domestic economic issues his new administration faces—just 0.4 percent economic growth in 2015 and an economy projected to shrink by 0.7 percent in 2016, on top of inflation estimated at 20 percent—the international hangover of nearly 13 years of Kirchner governments looks relatively easy to fix. International spats were an extension of the angry, polarizing rhetoric and policies of Kirchnerismo that […]

Wherever you look these days, unhappy regional powers and even some weak states are demonstrating a startling degree of contempt for the supposed masters of the international system. In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have precipitated a crisis with Iran that threatens to wreck the U.S. opening to Tehran, while North Korea has infuriated China with its so-called hydrogen bomb test. In Africa, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, once a darling of aid donors, has declared that he will run for a third term in office, having already revised the country’s constitution to eliminate its erstwhile […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the South China Sea territorial disputes and the various claimant countries’ approaches to addressing them. Last November, Malaysia’s deputy prime minister spoke out against China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and questioned Beijing’s historical claims to the region. In an email interview, Prashanth Parameswaran, an associate editor at The Diplomat, discussed Malaysia’s defense of its South China Sea claims. WPR: What are Malaysia’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and with what other countries do they overlap or conflict? Prashanth Parameswaran: Within the South China […]

This week on the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and host Peter Dörrie discuss China’s infrastructure schemes in Southeast Asia, Poland’s right-wing government and presidents-for-life in Rwanda and Burundi. In the Report, Nate Schenkkan explains the Turkish government’s long war against the media and freedom of expression. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles from WPR: China’s Grand Plans in Southeast Asia on Track With Thai Rail Deal Constitutional Crisis Veers Poland Into Uncharted Territory U.S. Offers Mild Rebuke of Kagame’s Bid to Hold Onto Power in Rwanda African Union Intervention Could Do More Harm Than Good […]

For decades, American security strategy in the Persian Gulf has been built on a partnership with Saudi Arabia. But despite this relationship’s importance, it was always peculiar and tense, pairing a democratic global power with a secular approach to foreign policy on one hand with a stridently conservative authoritarian regime on the other. Given the Saudi regime’s internal repression and international support for a brand of Islam that sometimes provides an ideological gateway to violent extremism, few Americans felt any affinity for the desert kingdom. The relationship was seen as unpleasant but necessary to stabilize global oil prices and prevent […]

Has Poland gone from European poster child to enfant terrible in one year? The new conservative government’s moves to stack the constitutional court and tighten its control of the media have worried Poland’s allies in the European Union and the United States and brought tens of thousands of Poles onto the streets to protest. Some have even warned of a serious threat to Poland’s democracy, two and a half decades after communism fell. In response, the recently elected government of the Law and Justice party, known in Polish as the PiS, points to its democratic mandate and the unconstitutional behavior […]

“You requested me to lead the country again after 2017,” President Paul Kagame told Rwandans in a televised address on Jan. 1. “I can only accept. But I don’t think what we need is an eternal leader.” Kagame’s presidency was originally limited to two terms, but in a referendum last month, Rwandans voted to amend the constitution to allow him to run again—and potentially stay in power until 2034. He is now allowed to seek another seven-year term in 2017, and two five-year terms after that. The referendum drew criticism from Western powers, since a disconcerting 98 percent of voters […]

From a multinational military intervention in Yemen’s civil war to ties with the United States, the countries of the Persian Gulf have adopted a more pro-active approach to regional issues in the aftermath of the Iran nuclear deal. This collection of analysis from WPR provides insight into Gulf countries’ domestic politics, the Yemen war and relations with Washington. The articles linked below are free for nonsubscribers until Jan. 21. The Domestic and Regional Policy Outlook Nimr Execution Is Latest Unforced Error for Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 people, including Shiite cleric and opposition figure Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, got […]

Venezuela’s opposition officially assumed control of the country’s legislature Tuesday for the first time since the charismatic socialist Hugo Chavez took power 17 years ago. The congressional swearing-in ceremony was gripping and suspenseful, but also a shambolic, sweltering and chaotic exercise, a fitting start to what promises to be an even more contentious era in Venezuela’s already turbulent political saga. The uncertainty in the air was accompanied by a sense of foreboding mixed with excitement. Competing street demonstrations and political battles that raged outside and inside the parliament building made it abundantly clear that neither side has any intention of […]

For several regional observers and much of the media, the string of conservative electoral victories from Argentina to Venezuela late last year was the last nail in the coffin of Latin America’s left. With Brazil’s leftist government floundering and other signs of discontent among its neighbors, leftism’s appeal appears to be on the decline in the region. But despite setbacks, it’s too soon to declare the left dead in Latin America, given the perseverance of more mainstream leftist governments and ongoing socio-political and economic realities in a region still defined by huge inequality. Admittedly, 2015 did not end well for […]

For a presidential lame duck, Barack Obama had a pretty good year in 2015, and nowhere more so than on foreign policy. The historic, multilateral deal with Iran to limit and ensure transparent oversight of its nuclear fuel enrichment program was the president’s highpoint, the culmination of a six-year strategy to isolate Iran, diplomatically and economically, and force the country to the table to negotiate. The agreement provides a huge boost to global nonproliferation efforts and represents the realization of Obama’s oft-stated goal to dramatically reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. The Iran nuclear agreement, however, may in time be […]