Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In a sign of rapidly changing geopolitical dynamics in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday voted unanimously to lift sanctions against Eritrea. The move comes amid a rapid thaw in Eritrea’s relations with neighboring Ethiopia and Somalia. The leaders of all three countries met for a rare summit in September, raising hopes for broader regional cooperation. In a further sign of detente, Somalia and Ethiopia advocated at the U.N. for the sanctions to be lifted, strengthening Eritrea’s case. The sanctions, which included an arms embargo, asset freeze and travel ban on Eritrean officials, were first […]

World leaders gathered in Singapore this week for the 13th annual East Asia Summit, the premier meeting for regional heads of state to discuss political and security issues. It comes amid rising tensions between Asia’s two largest powerbrokers, the United States and China. Their standoff has left Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a position to take the lead as the advocate for maintaining and even expanding a multilateral order in the region. His full-court press, at a time of trade wars and rising nationalism, is a litmus test for international rules and free markets. The Abe administration continues to […]

Warfare has always been both physical and psychological. As combatants attempt to injure, incapacitate or kill enemy fighters, they also try to weaken the will of their adversaries and anyone who might support them. Throughout history, warriors relied on ferociousness for that, intimidating their enemies by the way they looked or the horrible actions they took. In the modern era, militaries turned to communication technology and psychology. Soldiers were trained to craft and transmit messages and propaganda, while psychological operations became a particular military specialization. Over time, the U.S. military got quite good at this. Psychological operators dealt with adversaries […]

For decades, Latin America looked like one of the great success stories of democratization. One after another, countries that had been ruled by dictatorships broke the shackles of military rule and embraced free elections. Strong majorities across the region consistently agreed that democracy was the best system of government. But that progress masked the shallow roots of Latin American democracy. Today, even if military coups seem safely relegated to the past and Marxist insurgencies have been soundly defeated, the future of democracy in the region is far from assured. That’s the conclusion of an alarming new report by the respected […]

In early October, a court in Mozambique began trying 189 people accused of carrying out a spate of grisly attacks, some involving beheadings, in Cabo Delgado province, in the north of the country. The trial, the first of its kind, represents a rare opportunity to gather information on a security threat that continues to confound experts and government officials alike. Though the violence in Cabo Delgado, which has killed more than 100 people, first began getting serious attention more than a year ago, details about what’s driving it remain elusive. It has been attributed to a group commonly referred to […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region are in Singapore this week to kick off a series of summit meetings. In the absence of any major breakthroughs on trade or security, the focus is on the competition for influence between the United States and China—a narrative driven by dueling op-eds from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. “Our nation’s security and prosperity depend on this vital region, and the United States will continue to ensure that […]

Japan’s relations with its neighbors have long been haunted by residual acrimony over atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the Empire of Japan during World War II. Politicians in China and South Korea maintain that Japan never properly atoned for its imperial transgressions, rankling Japanese officials. Those historical issues returned to center stage in recent weeks, due to a long-running case before the South Korean Supreme Court in which four Korean men sought damages from a major Japanese steelmaker that forced them to work without pay during World War II. On Oct. 30, the court ruled that the defendant, […]

For British Prime Minister Theresa May, each hurdle cleared on the road to Brexit only seems to make the going tougher. During an emergency meeting on Wednesday, May’s Cabinet approved a draft agreement on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, a day after May announced that she had reached a draft deal with European negotiators. But she’s not out of the woods yet. The deal must still be approved by the British Parliament, as well as by the European Council of EU heads of state and the European Parliament. For May, whose political future hangs in the balance, the greatest […]

Tunisia’s prime minister, Youssef Chahed, announced several changes to his Cabinet last week in a bid to shore up support for his government amid a parallel political and economic crisis. The changes were approved in a parliamentary vote that the ruling Nidaa Tounes party boycotted, laying bare the deepening divisions within the Tunisian government. In an email interview with WPR, Sharan Grewal, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, discusses the latest developments in Tunis and what to expect from the newly approved Cabinet. World Politics Review: What prompted Prime Minister Chahed to reshuffle […]

A narco boss bribes multiple justice ministers from prison and luxuriates in a VIP cell. A senator is recorded boasting about buying off judges, but is still re-elected thanks to a closed party list system. Taxpayers foot the bill for medical insurance covering liposuction and implants for low-level public employees. These are just some of the many embarrassing episodes in the past two years alone in Paraguay, a country notorious for its culture of public malfeasance and long faithful to the words of its late dictator Alfredo Stroessner that “corruption is the price of peace.” In Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption […]

PARIS—In many ways, Emmanuel Macron is an unconventional French president. Young, independent and a political novice, he entered the Elysee Palace as a disrupter rather than a defender of the status quo. But if there is one thing that puts him in the mainstream of French presidents, it is his defense of the European Union anchored in a liberal multilateral order. And if there is one thing that puts him squarely in the grand tradition of French diplomacy more broadly, it is his love and talent for political theater. Both were on display this weekend, when Macron took advantage of […]

Trade policy had a high profile in the run-up to last week’s midterm elections in the United States. With a blue wave in the House of Representatives and in many states, even as Republicans added to their majority in the Senate, two obvious questions arise. Did the widening trade war with China, and the narrower disputes with Europe and others over steel and aluminum, influence the outcome? And how will Democratic control of the House of Representatives affect U.S. trade policy for at least the next two years? On the first question, it is difficult to detect a clear pattern […]

Late last week, the Trump administration declared in a proclamation that it would deny asylum applications to anyone who entered the country through illegal ports of entry, even though it has been clear for months that asylum-seekers are being denied access at official ports of entry. It was the latest attempt by the administration to discourage migrants, primarily from Central America, from coming to the United States. In the recent pre-election fervor, President Donald Trump likened the caravan of Central Americans, which is slowly making its way north from Honduras and into southern Mexico, to an invasion. Yet the latest […]

AARHUS, Denmark—To headmaster Karen Jessen, the school she runs embodies the best of Denmark. Sitting on the western edge of Aarhus, the country’s second-largest city, the school, known as Sødalskolen, or “Lake Valley School,” serves students from the ages of 6 to 16 from two starkly different neighborhoods. To the west of the school is Brabrand, a sprawling district of semi-detached and standalone homes belonging to a mostly white and affluent Danish population. And to the north is Gellerup, an area dominated by social housing in which up to 80 percent of the population are of non-Danish descent and incomes […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. On Friday, Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet was denied entry into Hong Kong, only a month after authorities there declined to renew his work visa, ostensibly in retaliation for Mallet’s involvement in hosting an event that featured a political activist who supports Hong Kong’s independence from China. In an interview with WPR, Cedric Alviani, the East Asia bureau chief for Reporters Without Borders, known as RSF, explains why journalists and observers are increasingly concerned about a push by Chinese […]

Violent protests swept across Pakistan earlier this month in response to the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent eight years on death row for blasphemy. The multi-day protests, organized by the hard-line Islamist political party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, or TLP, subsided only after the government agreed to prevent Bibi from leaving the country. In an interview with WPR, Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., discusses Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws and the impact of the Bibi case on […]

Peace is complicated. That is the overriding, if unintended, message of this week’s Paris Peace Forum, a new multilateral conclave initiated by the French government to commemorate the end of World War I. The organizers claim that the event is based on the “simple idea” that “international cooperation is key to tackling global challenges and ensuring durable peace.” That is pretty much where the simplicity ends, however. Over 100 groups from around the world are in Paris to present their ideas about peace to 2,500 participants. Their approaches to the issue are, to put it mildly, eclectic. One organization hopes […]