Diplomacy & Politics Archive

During a recent online debate hosted by the Warsaw-based publication Visegrad Insight, a Polish opposition figure commented that in the country’s presidential election, “Poles will have a choice to make between two models of society”—“a European Poland and a Poland that looks at the United States.” This remark encapsulates an increasingly common understanding of the dynamics at play in the election, which goes to a second and final round this Sunday. The conservative incumbent, Andrzej Duda of the ruling Law and Justice party, or PiS, will face off against his liberal challenger, Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who came in second […]

From the moment Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced plans for his first state visit to the United States, where he would meet with President Donald Trump at the White House, the news was greeted with a mixture of revulsion and astonishment. At home and abroad, critics and observers marveled at a decision to undertake a diplomatic mission so rife with potential to cause damage to Mexico and such negligible upside. The lone voices of support maintained that the lopsided odds belied the finely honed political instincts of AMLO, as Mexico’s president is widely known. Dismissing his critics, the […]

Russia’s Arctic region is experiencing one of the hottest summers on record, and it is only early July. The mercury hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of northern Russia last week, more than 30 degrees above the average for this time of year, and meteorologists are forecasting more blistering heat in the days and weeks ahead. At first glance, the heat wave might look like great news for Russia’s giant oil and natural gas companies. The higher temperatures will accelerate the melting of permafrost in the Arctic, making it easier to extract the rich deposits of natural resources buried underneath […]

Editor’s Note: In accordance with a recent change in policy by the Japanese government, WPR is changing its style to render Japanese names in English with the family name first. Hence, in this article and in others, the Japanese prime minister’s name will appear as Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe. Just over a week after China’s decision to impose a sweeping new security law on Hong Kong, the scale of the fallout is coming into full view. As WPR columnist Howard French wrote this week, “the law sharply curtails what was left of Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, which was promised […]

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, “Our knowledge of what we’re able to do as [election] observers is evolving as our knowledge of the virus evolves,” says David Carroll, director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center. Carroll, who has participated in dozens of independent election observation missions around the world, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman on the Trend Lines podcast this week to talk about how democracies are adjusting to COVID-19 in the way they administer elections, and how the pandemic is changing the facts on the ground for observers. Listen to the full conversation here: And if you like what […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Chinese police on Monday detained prominent legal scholar Xu Zhangrun, one of the few academics in China who still dared to openly criticize Xi Jinping’s leadership. Xu’s arrest is further evidence that under Xi, times have changed for well-known intellectuals who were once spared detention for airing measured grievances about the government. Xu first drew widespread attention in 2018 when he denounced Xi’s hard-line policies in an essay that The New York Times described as a “rare rebuke” of […]

The coronavirus pandemic has created a vexing challenge for democratic societies: How to safely hold free and fair elections. Some countries that saw early success in containing the spread of COVID-19, like South Korea, have been able to hold national elections safely, while a slew of others have been forced to postpone their votes. The pandemic has also changed the facts on the ground for independent election observers. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by David Carroll, director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center. He has participated in dozens of observation missions […]

With the unrelenting news of soaring coronavirus cases in the United States, and the historic push to address long-ignored questions of racial and social justice, one of this era’s most consequential issues has received less attention, but it will soon stand out again. How should the United States and the West more broadly respond to the continuing rise of China? Consider some major developments in recent weeks, starting with the imposition by Beijing of a new security law on Hong Kong. The law sharply curtails what was left of Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, which was promised to last for 50 […]

Around the world, the blunt measures imposed by central governments to fight the COVID-19 pandemic are causing widespread economic hardship. In its latest report on the state of the global economy, the International Monetary Fund forecasts that most advanced and emerging economies will experience their worst downturns since the Great Depression, as global GDP is set to contract by an estimated 4.9 percent this year. The recovery will not come fast, it warns, with growth expected to be sluggish in 2021. Mexico is no exception, but its economic troubles predate the pandemic. And while most countries are crafting policies to […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Neil Bhatiya is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott this week. Last week, the presidency of the Financial Action Task Force, the global intergovernmental standard-setter for combatting illicit financial threats, passed from China to Germany. The presidency of the FATF is an important platform for countries to highlight critical threats to the global financial system. Among Germany’s incoming priorities for its two-year term is a focus on the illicit financial flows behind many crimes related to the environment. Such a campaign is an overdue step to combat a lucrative but not widely understood criminal enterprise, one […]

Had Scott Morrison traveled to New Delhi as planned in January, it would have been the fourth such trip by an Australian prime minister in a decade, a testament to the considerable effort successive governments in Canberra have made to build a viable strategic partnership with India. But a bushfire crisis at home, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, forced Morrison and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, to settle for a virtual summit on June 4. If the two leaders were disappointed by this outcome, they certainly did not show it. Both took to social media to make a show […]

In that foreign country that was our world before the pandemic, the so-called “sharing economy” was in full bloom. Uber and its ride-sharing competitors dominated point-to-point ground transportation. Airbnb was beating the world’s largest hotel brands in rooms rented and consumer spending. New startups were applying digital matching services to facilitate everything from food delivery to toilet rentals. And the phenomenon was global: China and India had their own ride-sharing giants, Didi Chuxing and Ola, while companies around the world—Comparto Mi Maleta in Chile, Sharemac in Germany, Gojek in Indonesia, Stashbee in the U.K. and Lynk in Kenya—connected consumers to […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnists Louise Riis Andersen and Richard Gowan are filling in for Stewart Patrick this week. Since it began to spread rapidly earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic has had a visible impact on United Nations peacekeeping operations. Peacekeepers have practiced social distancing, minimized interactions with local populations and tried to help fragile states handle the disease. Yet the long-term economic and political consequences for peacekeeping look like they will be more severe. COVID-19 has the potential to increase instability in fragile states, including those where the Blue Helmets are deployed, just as Security Council members and the […]

India and China’s ties took a dangerous turn with the fatal clash last month at their disputed border in the Himalayas. Despite being the first time in 45 years that blood was spilled between the two rivals, the incident, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed alongside an undisclosed number of Chinese casualties, is unlikely to go down as an aberration. It should be seen instead as a critical inflection point between Asia’s two premier powers. The path ahead in their relationship will be as rocky and treacherous as the site of last month’s confrontation: a sheer cliff at an […]

Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president of the Philippines in May 2016 defied the country’s political history. He was the first candidate from the troubled southern island of Mindanao to ascend to the presidency, and the first to be elected while serving as a local politician. This foul-mouthed, unfashionably attired mayor of Davao City, a thousand kilometers away from “imperial Manila,” easily defeated the runner-up, Manuel “Mar” Roxas, a wealthy, American-educated scion of a once-powerful political dynasty, by more than 15 percentage points. Over the next two years, as his single, six-year presidential term draws to a close, Duterte has another […]

In the past month, the mass protests for racial justice that were prompted by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 have spread rapidly around the world. From the United Kingdom to Senegal to Japan, millions of people have taken to the streets to demand that the U.S. finally address its racial inequalities and the violent behavior of its police—and to decry local manifestations of injustice closer to home. By now, this pattern looks familiar. Protests in Tunisia in 2010 and 2011, prompted by the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, set off a wave […]

Michael Pack, the new head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is coming under scrutiny for purging the directors and advisory boards of several U.S. government-funded media outlets. A conservative documentary filmmaker, Pack was confirmed by the Senate last month after being nominated for the position by President Donald Trump in 2018. One of Pack’s first moves after taking office was to fire or demote the chiefs of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Network and the Open Technology Fund. The directors of Voice of America, USAGM’s flagship global news network, had already resigned following his confirmation. […]