Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. On June 1, thousands of people attended rallies throughout Croatia calling for education reform. The mobilization came one year after similar rallies drew tens of thousands into the streets. Yet little has been accomplished during that time, and pro-reform activists accuse the government of contravening the will of the people by undermining the reform effort. In an email interview, Marko Kovacic, project manager at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb who has previously served as research manager for the […]

The United Nations Security Council faces a prolonged crisis of confidence. Mounting tensions between the United States, Russia and China have stopped the council from taking serious action in response to crises in Syria, Ukraine and Burundi, among others. If those underlying tensions continue to worsen, the forum is likely to become ever more marginal to global affairs. The Security Council is a lot more active than it was in the worst days of the Cold War. In 1959, it mustered the will to pass just one resolution. It has churned out 20 in the first half of 2017. But […]

Last month, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus won the election to serve a five-year term as the director-general of the World Health Organization, beginning July 1. He may have one of the most unenviable jobs in the world. The World Health Organization does not enjoy the most stellar reputation these days, with its legitimacy and authority up for debate. Its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was widely and roundly criticized; no less than six high-level panels recommended substantial changes to how the WHO responds to crises and finances its operations. Member states have refused to […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. In the aftermath of the decision by five Arab nations to sever diplomatic ties with Qatar, African countries adopted positions ranging from unequivocally siding against Doha to calling for dialogue and an end to the feud. The West African nation of Mauritania, as well as Comoros, the island nation off the coast of East Africa, both announced they were breaking ties with Doha. “Qatar has developed a habit of questioning the principles on which common Arab action is based,” said […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the tensions between Qatar and its Persian Gulf neighbors, and the implications for the U.S. and the region. For the Report, Richard Gowan talks with Peter Dörrie about the damage Donald Trump’s assault on multilateralism is doing to the international system. If you’d like to sign up for the beta version of WPR’s Africa-only subscription, you can do so here. It’s free for the first two months. And if you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on […]

President Donald Trump’s protectionist “America First” trade policy has stoked significant fear about the prospect of a trade war. Although certain aspects of his trade agenda so far have temporarily eased the concerns of business leaders and policymakers, Trump’s decision last week to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement should generate renewed anxiety over the stability of the international trading system. As president, Trump has walked back some of his most aggressive campaign promises on trade, such as imposing a 45 percent tariff on all imports from China. However, in addition to exiting the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trump’s provocative […]

Kosovo is planning to hold snap parliamentary elections on Sunday, one month after Prime Minister Isa Mustafa lost a no-confidence motion. As Reuters notes, Kosovo has experienced considerable political turbulence in the past 18 months, with parliament being targeted by riots, tear gas and even a rocket-propelled grenade. In an email interview, Florian Bieber, professor of Southeast European history and politics at the University of Graz in Austria and coordinator of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, explains what the vote is expected to bring and how it might affect diplomatic initiatives such as ongoing talks with Serbia. WPR: […]

Americans generally don’t think much about where their nation’s military bases are located around the world, but they probably should. For most of the past century, a pillar of U.S. strategy has been to address threats and defeat enemies as far away from the homeland as possible. This makes security partnerships and forward presence important. And that requires bases. During the Cold War, stationing military forces abroad was a sign of commitment to allies, assuring them that America would be there if they were attacked. This helped deter aggressors. If deterrence failed, the thinking went, foreign bases would make it […]

On Jan. 13, 2017, as his term was winding down, former U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order announcing plans to revoke longtime sanctions imposed on Sudan. The order also called for a sanctions review by next month that would determine whether the government of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, had continued with what the order described as “positive actions,” including maintaining a cease-fire in conflict areas, improving access to humanitarian aid and cooperating with the U.S. to address regional conflicts and terrorism threats. As Sudan awaits the sanctions review, this week marked the six-year anniversary of the conflict in […]

Like the United States before it, China has grown past the narrow pursuit of short-term gains as its economic influence has expanded across the Eastern Hemisphere, if not the world, for most of this century. Emboldened by this growth, but also compelled to look for new markets to supplement its own cooling economy, China is now using this influence to build a global economic network for trade and development, with itself as the driver. The grand “One Belt, One Road” initiative, known as OBOR, which President Xi Jinping unveiled in 2013, has been touted as the blueprint for this new […]

Gubernatorial elections in three Mexican states last Sunday were supposed to show Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s viability as a candidate in next year’s presidential race. Instead they checked the ambitions of the brash left-leaning populist aiming to succeed outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto in 2018. Lopez Obrador’s party, the National Regeneration Movement, known as MORENA, lost in all three states. He’s now calling for a recount in the key race in Mexico state, the country’s most populous by a wide margin. Blaming tough election losses on fraud has been a familiar tactic for the fiery two-time presidential candidate who Mexicans […]

After a political shake-up last month, Austria is set to be Europe’s next battleground in the fight between mainstream politicians and far-right populists. On May 10, after months of political bickering and party infighting, Reinhold Mitterlehner stepped down as Austria’s vice chancellor and chairman of the center-right Austrian People’s Party, or OVP. That effectively ended Austria’s grand governing coalition between the OVP and the center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPO. A few days later, Chancellor Christian Kern, who leads the SPO, announced that Austria would hold snap parliamentary elections on Oct. 15. Aside from growing frictions within the ruling coalition, […]

The crisis in America’s foreign policy apparatus entered a stunning new phase this past week with President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, followed yesterday by his comments on Twitter essentially taking Saudi Arabia’s side against Qatar in an intra-Gulf dispute. In between, reports emerged that during his visit to Brussels two weeks ago, Trump removed a passage from his speech explicitly confirming his commitment to NATO’s collective defense clause, Article 5, without notifying his national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, all of whom had argued […]

U.S. President Donald Trump’s battle with the multilateral system just got real. For the first four months of his presidency, Trump fought a phony war with the United Nations and other international institutions. On the campaign trail and in the wake of his election victory, he had condemned the U.N. as lazy, impotent and anti-American. From its first week in office, his administration threatened major financial cuts to international institutions and aid projects. But there was more bark than bite. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., calmed foreign diplomats’ fears by taking a rational and collegial approach to […]

Demonstrations are continuing across Morocco in the wake of the arrest of a number of popular leaders of an emergent social justice movement. Despite the government crackdown, protests against corruption and unfair privilege—known as “hogra” in the local Darija dialect of Arabic—have steadily unfolded in the city of Al-Hoceima on the northern Mediterranean coast. Last week, they spread to the capital, Rabat, and the main commercial hub, Casablanca. Located in Morocco’s mountainous Rif region, Al-Hoceima has been at the center of the protest movement, known as al-Hirak al-Shaabi, or the Popular Movement, which has developed over the past seven months […]

This past week brought some further clarity to the underlying assumptions that drive U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. There’s now enough information to determine that the Trump team’s worldview is based on deeply held premises about the nasty, brutish nature of the human condition. He and his team are systematically walking away from the U.S. government’s decades-long emphasis on international cooperation and the architecture that supports it. The shift will have particularly dire consequences for the global community’s capacity to confront terrorism and climate change, with its impact on nuclear nonproliferation still an open question. In the aftermath of […]

Is there any reason to feel good about this year’s miserable British election campaign? The process has been messy, cantankerous and punctuated by appalling acts of terrorism. With the opposition Labour party unexpectedly gaining ground on the ruling Conservatives, it is possible that this Thursday’s poll will leave Great Britain looking even more confused, less united and less consequential on the global stage. Liberal internationalists should nonetheless take a soupcon of comfort from this rather poor exercise in democracy. Despite the storm of Brexit, the campaign has at least for now defused fears that the United Kingdom could renege on […]