Diplomacy & Politics Archive

From Jan. 19 to March 10, Nigeria’s 74-year-old president, Muhammadu Buhari, took an extended medical leave in London. After returning home, he remained weak; sometimes he missed Cabinet meetings and appeared gaunt in photographs. Then, last week, on May 7, he left again for London, framing the trip as a “follow-up” to his earlier leave. Unlike the late Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose prolonged incapacitation in 2009 and 2010 caused a constitutional crisis, Buhari has avoided short-term turmoil by formally designating his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, as acting president during his absences. Whereas Yar’Adua’s inner circle clung to power and […]

U.S. President Donald Trump’s first overseas trip will begin in Saudi Arabia and Israel, two countries whose leaders have vocally welcomed Trump’s shift in approach to the region compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama. But the new president’s unpredictable nature means that neither country can take anything for granted during his visit. The White House has previewed the president’s trip, which will also take him to Italy for the G-7 Summit in Sicily and a meeting with the Pope, and Brussels for the NATO Summit. Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, briefed the press Friday, outlining an ambitious […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. When she was inaugurated for her second term in 2014, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, declared, “Chile has a single enemy and that is inequality and only together can we overcome it.” Despite a struggling economy, she has pursued multiple initiatives intended to achieve that goal, notably education and tax reform. In an email interview, Daniel Hojman, associate professor of economics at the University of Chile, explains how inequality has evolved and whether the issue will be central […]

Last month in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama—the Christian and ethnically Chinese governor of Jakarta popularly known as Ahok—lost his re-election bid. The election was ugly, as Ahok was simultaneously on trial for blasphemy and the target of a perceived smear campaign by hard-line Islamists. Ahok’s defeat in the runoff by Anies Baswedan, a former education minister, was followed last week by the court handing him a two-year jail sentence, which has sparked fears about the growth of religious radicalism in Indonesia. But the blasphemy conviction has also prompted questions about the re-election prospects of Indonesian […]

Can Antonio Guterres save the United Nations from the tyranny of overinflated expectations? The U.N. secretary-general, who has been on the job for four months, seems clear about the limitations of his post. When the Security Council selected Guterres for the job last October, he declared that the Syrian war would be his top priority. But speaking in London last week, he implied he could not do much about it. Peace will only be possible, Guterres noted, “when all the parties in the conflict understand and believe they cannot win the war.” This is not exactly a revelation: U.N. officials […]

Echoing the symbolic spark of the 2011 uprising, a Tunisian vendor set himself on fire on Wednesday in the town of Tebourba outside Tunis, after police had instructed him to close his fruit stand. Riots ensued, and a crowd of young men clashed with police as the vendor was hospitalized for treatment. The incident took place at a tense moment in Tunisia’s stumbling democratic transition, which entered its seventh year in January. Protests over economic marginalization have multiplied across the south of the country, and on Tuesday, Chafik Sarsar, the head of the country’s electoral commission, resigned—refusing, he said, to […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s decision to remove his army chief, Gen. Paul Malong, risked aggravating a civil war that has already killed tens of thousands and created conditions that the U.N. has warned could result in genocide. Malong’s dismissal was announced Tuesday. Reuters noted that it came “after a slew of resignations by senior generals alleging tribal bias and war crimes.” A presidential spokesman initially denied there was a feud between Malong and Kiir, and Malong himself vowed not […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the upcoming summit for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, and how China is positioning itself to take advantage of the United States’ shifting approaches to international trade and global engagement. For the Report, Richard A. Bitzinger talks with Peter Dörrie about China’s naval buildup and global security ambitions. If you’d like to support our free podcast through patron pledges, Patreon is an online service that will allow you to do so. To find out about the benefits you can get through pledging as […]

On April 27, in his Independence Day address to the nation, Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma, gave the clearest and most public assertion yet of his intention to leave office in March 2018. “My fellow citizens,” he declared, “in just a little over a year, my tenure will come to an end and I will graciously hand over power to my successor in a democratic transition.” Having served two terms as leader, Koroma is constitutionally ineligible to stand for a third. Despite his public remarks to the contrary, there remains a degree of skepticism in Sierra Leone that the […]

In recent years, Russia has learned how to punch above its weight in the global security system, exercising influence out of proportion to its actual political, economic and military strength. It has done this through ruthless skill and willingness to adopt almost any method that advances its interests while limiting the risk. Moscow has developed—even mastered—what national security experts call “gray zone” methods based on slowly emerging aggression that combines a wide array of techniques. These include conventional military intimidation, cyberattacks, economic warfare, political-psychological operations by Moscow’s extensive army of online trolls, and alliances with political and criminal proxies of […]

Earlier this week, Pentagon officials confirmed that Abdul Hasib Logari, the leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, had been killed in a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in eastern Afghanistan on April 27. That operation, in which two U.S. Army Rangers were also killed, followed an airstrike by U.S. forces in Afghanistan that dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or “MOAB,” on an Islamic State tunnel complex. The bomb is one of the largest conventional weapons in the U.S. arsenal and represented a dramatic escalation of American operations against the Islamic State affiliate, known as the Khorasan Province. […]

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are nothing new, but in recent days the level of acrimony has been increasing exponentially. Amid a shifting geopolitical landscape, the two countries have been sounding downright menacing toward one another, dispensing with the diplomatic practice of veiling their threats and creating new dangers in an already tumultuous region. Two questions arise: Why is the hostility worsening? And which of the two countries is growing stronger relative to the other? The latest round of public fulminations burst on the airwaves last week, when the powerful Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave a […]

Patience is in short supply in Guinea-Bissau these days. More than a year and a half has passed since President Jose Mario Vaz dismissed the government of Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, precipitating an extended political crisis. Four new prime ministers have been appointed since then, but the parliament has not been meeting, meaning one of the world’s least-developed and most chronically unstable countries—with a ranking of 178 out of 188 on the United Nation’s Human Development Index—has been unable to pass laws or a budget. Last September, politicians agreed to a six-point roadmap out of the crisis. The following […]

While most of the Middle East is imploding from civil wars, terrorism, despotism and sectarianism, Iran will hold its 12th presidential election next week, on May 19. Despite the absence of palpable public enthusiasm, the election will have a profound impact on the fate of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and seven global powers; on Iran’s relations with the United States; and on the ailing Iranian economy. Looming large on the horizon, too, is the sensitive issue of who could succeed the 78-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose health is rumored to be poor, since the president […]

Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France’s presidential election capped a surprise-filled campaign that upended the country’s political landscape. This has been most widely noted with regard to France’s established political parties, the Socialist Party on the left and the Republicans on the right, neither of whose candidates made it to the second-round of voting last Sunday. But the campaign signaled not just a remaking of the party landscape, but also a generational transition in French politics, one that goes beyond Macron’s youth. At 39, he is the youngest elected president of France and among the youngest heads of state of any […]

With the self-proclaimed Islamic State increasingly out of the headlines and on the back foot in Syria and Iraq, the damage wrought by the extremist group on cultural sites in both countries is no longer a consistent source of international outrage, like it was two years ago. Yet the destruction of heritage goes on. In January, for example, evidence emerged that Islamic State militants had wrecked more of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, demolishing the façade of the 2nd-century Roman theater, where the group had previously staged mass executions, and blowing up the Tetrapylon, whose monumental columns once anchored […]

The drought affecting the Horn of Africa has aggravated conflicts over land use in northern Kenya this year, leading to dozens of deaths. Since March, security forces have been trying to evict herders who have occupied ranches and conservancies. The situation briefly received global attention last month when Kuki Gallmann, a celebrated conservationist and author, was shot during an altercation with armed herders. In an email interview, Murithi Mutiga, Horn of Africa senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, describes the recent history of resource conflict in the area and what role politics might be playing in the violence this […]