French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during a press conference ahead of a meeting of G5 Sahel heads of state, Nouakchott, Mauritania, July 2, 2018 (AP photo by Ludovic Marin).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.It’s been a rough few weeks for the G5 Sahel Joint Force, a counterterrorism initiative involving five West African countries that launched its first deployments last November. A series of recent setbacks have exposed indiscipline within the force’s ranks, the severity of the security challenges it faces and a lack of political will to ensure it succeeds. First, the U.N. mission in Mali, where the G5 Sahel is headquartered, reported last week that Malian members of the force “summarily and/or […]

Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses a crowd celebrating Hungary’s national day, Budapest, March 15, 2018 (MTI photo by Tamas Soki via AP).

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the resurgence of nationalism in global politics, the factors driving it and the implications for the liberal policy consensus in international affairs that dominated the preceding two decades. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article every day of the week, plus three more complimentary articles in our weekly roundup every Friday. […]

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s president-elect, delivers his victory speech in Mexico City’s main square, the Zocalo, July 1, 2018 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).

The result was almost inevitable, yet Mexico still awoke with a sense of uncertainty Monday as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist and long-time critic of the country’s political establishment, finally captured the presidency in a landslide victory. AMLO, as he is better known in Mexico, fulfilled poll predictions by sweeping aside his rivals, Jose Antonio Meade of the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and Ricardo Anaya of the Citizens Front alliance, winning 53 percent of the vote. His Together We’ll Make History coalition captured majorities in both houses of Congress. His victory had appeared a mere formality […]

President Donald Trump and John Bolton, the national security adviser, in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Washington, April 9, 2018 (AP photo by Susan Walsh).

Recent American history is full of mistakes in security policy, and yet for some reason, policymakers in Washington are chronically bad at learning from them. Too often, the United States is burned by a deeply flawed policy in some part of the world and resists repeating it for a few years, only to later try the same thing somewhere else. This propensity to forget strategic lessons may be infecting the Trump administration today. Take the belief that second-tier adversaries can be cowed into submission by economic sanctions and the threat or actual use of U.S. military power, even when they […]

Young supporters of Imran Khan, head of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, during a campaign rally in Karachi, Pakistan, July 3, 2018 (AP photo by Shakil Adil).

Driving past the presidential palace in Islamabad these days, one is confronted by the sight of cargo containers haphazardly lying around its perimeter, looking like a child’s forgotten toy blocks. But the containers, which the government uses as barricades against street protesters and other security threats, have a more serious message. They are a sign of a nation braced for unrest as political factions vie for primacy in the run-up to Pakistan’s general elections on July 25. Pakistan’s restive capital is used to political demonstrations and even large-scale riots, many of which have recently been driven by youth organizations asserting […]

President Donald Trump shares the stage with Pete Stauber, right, a Republican congressional candidate, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, left, during a rally in Duluth, Minn., June 20, 2018 (AP photo by Susan Walsh).

To whatever extent it is possible to become accustomed to the president of a major liberal democracy continuously lying, day after day, the world has grown more or less used to President Donald Trump’s practice of incessantly spraying his unique stream of falsehoods across social media, political rallies and assorted public events. Editors at major media organizations have grappled with the complications of deciding whether or when to label the president’s untruths as “lies,” noting that a lie requires a conscious intention to deceive and knowledge that a statement is incorrect—and it is not always clear that is the case […]

French President Emmanuel Macron is welcomed at the airport on Ouvea Island, New Caledonia, May 5, 2018 (AP photo by Theo Rouby).

NOUMEA, NEW CALEDONIA—In early May, French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in the tropical archipelago of New Caledonia following a two-day visit to Australia, the islands’ closest major neighbor, some 750 miles west across the South Pacific. Macron was more than 10,000 miles from the Elysee Palace in Paris. Famed for its diving sites along an expansive barrier reef, New Caledonia is a French overseas territory that has enjoyed a special, semi-autonomous status for the past two decades, with certain powers gradually being transferred from France to local officials. Yet Paris retains control over critical governance areas such as foreign […]

Mamuka Bakhtadze, the new prime minister of Georgia, at a news conference in Tbilisi, June 14, 2018 (Sputnik photo via AP).

In mid-June, Georgia’s former finance minister, Mamuka Bakhtadze, was quickly confirmed as its new prime minister following the resignation of Giorgi Kvirikashvili amid a cloud of party infighting and swelling street protests. Following a swift confirmation by parliament, Bakhtadze announced plans to shrink the size of the Georgian government, while simultaneously pursuing more robust social welfare reforms. Internationally, the new government has vowed to maintain the country’s longstanding pro-Western policies, though broader strategic conditions continue to complicate Tbilisi’s persistent Euro-Atlantic ambitions. Kvirikashvili departed from the premiership last month almost as abruptly as he found himself catapulted to the leadership in […]

President Donald Trump meets with members of Congress to discuss trade issues in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Washington, Feb. 13, 2018 (AP photo by Olivier Douliery).

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate trade, and for more than a century it did so with gusto. Then, grasping for ways to escape the Great Depression and reverse the downward economic spiral that followed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which passed in 1930, Congress delegated some of its trade power to the executive branch. In subsequent decades, Congress provided additional authorities allowing the president to control trade policy. Now, however, with concerns about President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policy moves—imposing a range of tariffs on close allies and rivals alike, and threatening more—there are calls to […]

A supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during celebrations outside the ruling party headquarters, Istanbul, June 24, 2018 (AP photo by Emrah Gurel).

In the end, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan easily defeated his electoral challengers last week, winning re-election outright in the first round of voting on June 24. By taking nearly 53 percent of the vote, he even narrowly bested his performance in the 2014 presidential elections, when Erdogan was seeking the newly empowered office of the presidency after more than a decade as Turkey’s prime minister. Perhaps even more impressive, his electoral alliance—made up of his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the hard-right Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP—managed to win a majority in Parliament, defying many predictions as […]

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras holds a tie at the end of a speech to lawmakers from his left-led governing coalition, Athens, Greece, June 22, 2018 (AP photo by Petros Giannakouris).

On June 22, Greece reached an agreement with its eurozone partners to formally exit from the latest of a series of bailout programs that have provided an economic lifeline to Athens throughout its debt crisis, but at the cost of eight years of brutal austerity. To celebrate the deal, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras finally donned a tie, something he had pledged in 2015 not to do unless Greece was granted debt relief. In an email interview, Angelos Chryssogelos—a teaching fellow in politics at the Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London, and associate fellow of the Europe […]

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow, June 21, 2018 (Photo by Dmitry Lebedev for Sipa via AP).

In a period of heightened tensions at the United Nations and other multilateral organizations, diplomats are spending a lot of time arguing about truth and facts. Last week, representatives to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, debated a British motion that the body should not merely probe technical aspects of incidents involving chemical weapons use but also identify perpetrators. The proposal passed with support from three-quarters of the organization’s members. But Russia resisted the idea, and powers including China and India also opposed it. Moscow does not want international investigators blaming its allies in Syria for […]

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