Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In a sharp rebuke to the United Nations, Kenya has started the process of pulling its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. To make matters worse, Kenya is simultaneously disengaging from peace efforts in South Sudan, where a 15-month-old agreement to bring together warring parties was already on the verge of collapse. The moves by Kenya, which has been a key regional force in pushing for South Sudanese stability, could cement its failure. Kenya’s moves come in response to the firing of Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, the Kenyan commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in […]

Standing at about 6 feet tall, Chinese President Xi Jinping cuts an imposing figure, especially compared to the famously diminutive Deng Xiaoping, the transformative leader who, after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, guided China through monumental reforms from 1978 until his formal retirement in 1989. Xi’s baritone and precise Mandarin, surprisingly uncommon for former top Chinese leaders, projects added self-assuredness and gravitas. This aura of confidence seems only appropriate for someone of Xi’s political stock: a princeling descended from communist revolutionaries who were present at the creation of modern China under Mao. Perhaps that is why many commentators have deigned […]

Zimbabwe is quickly moving toward becoming a cashless society as the country runs out of U.S. dollars, which the country has used as its currency since 2009. To counter the cash crisis, the government plans to introduce bond notes that will be exchangeable with the U.S. dollar, but many Zimbabweans suspect the government of trying to reintroduce a local currency. In an email interview, Knox Chitiyo, as associate fellow at Chatham House, discusses Zimbabwe’s cash crisis. WPR: How severe is Zimbabwe’s cash crisis, what factors have contributed to it, and what impact is it having? Knox Chitiyo: Zimbabwe’s current cash […]

A recent call for a vote of no confidence in Chad’s government over its management of the country’s oil wealth shows the level of anger among Chadians as they grapple with one of the most serious economic crises in years. Chad, which depends on oil for more than 70 percent of government revenue, has been brought to its knees by the dramatic fall in the world price of a barrel of oil since 2014. Having registered 6.9 percent annual growth in 2014, Chad’s economy is expected to contract by 1.1 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, with […]

When U.S. voters chose Donald Trump to be their president, they entrusted him among other things to handle what two months ago I characterized as the top three threats that currently require international cooperation: climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Expect the new president to sound a lot different on these issues than President Barack Obama. On terrorism and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, the changes may be more rhetorical than real. On climate change, if the U.S. walks away from its leadership role, the consequences will be grave. As a candidate, Trump expressed strong views on each of […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. Last month, tens of thousands of women marched in Buenos Aires to protest violence against women in Argentina, after several particularly brutal cases came to light there. In an email interview, Jennifer M. Piscopo, an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College and the Peggy Rockefeller visiting scholar at Harvard University, discusses women’s rights in Argentina. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and gender equality in Argentina? Jennifer M. Piscopo: Argentina […]

Now that the initial shock of Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election victory has begun to fade, it is possible to think more clearly about the implications of his presidency. For those who believe in an America committed to its highest values of inclusiveness, pluralism and equality under the rule of law, and embedded in a rules-based, liberal global order, the task is twofold. First, vigilance and scrutiny with regard to Trump’s administration at home and abroad, to prevent the most worrisome instincts he displayed during the election campaign from installing themselves durably in the American body politic and damaging America’s […]

The timing of Donald Trump’s stunning upset to become the president-elect of the United States couldn’t have come at a more inauspicious moment for global efforts to blunt climate change. As the election returns were pouring in last week, across the Atlantic in Marrakech, Morocco, representatives from nearly 200 nations gathered at the beginning of a major conference following up last December’s historic global climate accord signed in Paris. The Paris Agreement for the first time committed the U.S. and 192 countries to an ambitious international regime to curb global emissions, aiming to cap global temperature rises by the end […]

Egypt’s general-turned-strongman, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, was the first foreign leader to call Donald Trump and congratulate him on his surprising election as president of the United States. Read into that what you will. Back in September, Trump met with el-Sisi in New York during the United Nations General Assembly and didn’t bring up Egypt’s grim human rights record in the three-plus years that el-Sisi has been in power. In her own meeting with Egypt’s president, Hillary Clinton did. Under el-Sisi, tens of thousands of political dissidents and regime opponents have been thrown in Egyptian jails. According to the Trump campaign’s readout […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the global implications of Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the United States presidential election. For the Report, Andrew Green joins Peter Dörrie to talk about the forgotten conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: What Does Trump’s Election Victory Mean? Learning to Live With Uncertainty What Does the Presidential Election Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy? As Renzi’s Referendum Gamble Approaches, Italy Could Be the EU’s Next Headache Delays Are the Least of Somalia’s Election Troubles Darfur’s Conflict […]

Over the past month, the situation in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which has been extremely volatile since an eruption of violence in the early 2010s, has deteriorated once again. Following an attack on police outposts near the border with Bangladesh in early October, which killed at least nine policemen, Rakhine has been on edge. Some human rights groups have reported that the security forces and police, as well as individuals, are striking back at the state’s ethnic Rohingya, since militant Rohingya Muslims were believed to be behind the killings of the police. Although the security forces, which are dominated by […]

In the most shocking political upset in American history, Donald Trump has won the presidency. Now there are major questions about whether someone who has never held elected office or exercised leadership in a system based on consensus-building and a division of power can learn to do so on the job, at a time when so much is at stake. Trump’s learning curve will be particularly crucial in the realm of national security strategy, where the president faces fewer checks and balances, and where mistakes can have a cost in blood and even precipitate outright disaster. It is hard to […]

Donald Trump’s surprise presidential election victory was a result, in part, of his success tapping into growing populist sentiment across much of the United States. That follows a global trend that has seen populist leaders come to power in Latin America, Europe and Asia. For all the attention on populism, though, what is it? Jan-Werner Müller explained it this way in a December 2014 article for WPR on the threat populism poses to liberal democracy: Contrary to conventional wisdom, populism is not simply a matter of irresponsible policies or appeals to the downtrodden. Populism is an anti-elitist but, crucially, also […]

On Dec. 4, Italians will head to the polls to vote on a series of changes to the country’s institutional framework, specifically the Senate, the upper house of the Italian Parliament. On paper, it is a referendum on amending the constitution. But there is far more than that at stake, for Italy and the European Union. The Italian government of Prime Minister Mateo Renzi took office in 2014, tasked with reviving a stagnant economy and streamlining Italy’s bureaucracy. Renzi promised much-needed reforms aimed at making Italy a more governable country by substantially reducing the scope and power of the Senate […]

Historians and politicians will mine the astonishing 2016 U.S. election for years to come, drawing countless lessons about voter dissatisfaction, political acrimony and resistance to social change, among many other mostly domestic problems brought to the surface by the tumultuous campaign. But one of the unexpected mileposts marked by America’s electoral exercise this year lies in the use of a new weapon in global power politics: weaponized social media as an aggressive tool of foreign policy. If war is politics by other means, as the 19th-century military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz famously said, the U.S. election demonstrated that in the […]

Does Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States signal an existential crisis for the liberal internationalist global order? Will it usher in a period of heightened barriers to trade and dialogue, with one-sided ultimatums replacing diplomatic negotiations and compromise? Will the U.S.-backed security architectures in Europe and Asia crumble into the kind of epochal chaos currently on display in the Middle East? It is easy at times like these to fall prey to panic and despair—to believe, in essence, one’s own campaign rhetoric. But while all of the above scenarios remain possible, for now they are off in […]

The small developing nations dotting the Caribbean have recently become sites for massive amounts of foreign aid from China. Large Chinese-built infrastructure projects and millions in investments have taken their place next to sun-splashed tourists, sprawling resorts and bustling cruise ports. Earlier this year, thousands of Chinese workers flocked to Jamaica to complete a $730 million mega-highway that cuts through the heart of the island, shaving hours off typical tourist commutes. In Barbados, Chinese officials have pledged tens of millions of dollars to restore gymnasiums, renovate historic sites, and dock a goodwill hospital ship in the capital, Bridgetown, to provide […]