Diplomacy & Politics Archive

When Cyril Ramaphosa became president of South Africa in February 2018, many South Africans saw it as a “new dawn” for their country. In the aftermath of Jacob Zuma’s corruption-plagued presidency, Ramaphosa seemed to offer the hope of competent leadership and accountable government. Commentators spoke of “Ramaphoria,” as the new president sought to revive the spirit of idealism that informed the early days of post-apartheid South Africa in the 1990s, and to engineer a definitive break with what he acknowledged were “nine wasted years” under Zuma. Ramaphosa promised more than just a change in the political atmospherics, however. His administration […]

California prides itself on being a national and global trendsetter. Unfortunately, the state is also setting the pace for climate change disasters, with searing heat and intense wildfires now regular features of its endless summer. Last Sunday, Aug. 16, the aptly named Furnace Creek ranger station in Death Valley posted the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth, when the thermometer hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit. That same weekend, lightning strikes north of Lake Tahoe set off the massive Loyalton Fire in desiccated Lassen and Sierra counties, producing a rare “fire tornado” as high winds whipped flames into a violent, all-consuming […]

The coronavirus pandemic will likely push Latin America into its worst-ever recession, with the region’s economy expected to shrink by more than 9 percent in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund. But in a part of the world with few economic bright spots, Chile is forecast to perform relatively well, with a 7.5 percent contraction this year and growth of 5 percent in 2021, which would be one of Latin America’s more vigorous economic recoveries. At first glance, this is surprising, as Chile is among the most open economies in the region and is sensitive to volatility in commodity […]

The surprise deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, in which they agreed to normalize diplomatic relations in exchange for Israel suspending its plans to annex parts of the West Bank, has not been well-received by Palestinians. The so-called “Abraham Accord” makes the UAE only the third country in the Arab world, after Egypt and Jordan, to recognize the state of Israel, and more could soon follow. Many Palestinians see it as a betrayal. “It is a stab in the back of the Palestinian people,” Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central committee, told WPR. He […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was forced from power in a military coup Tuesday, upending the political situation in Mali and, with the country at the epicenter of a fight against a growing Islamist insurgency, raising alarms about regional security. The coup unfolded rapidly as mutinying soldiers seized weapons from a garrison outside the capital, Bamako, then descended on the city, capturing Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse. Within hours, Keita appeared on state television to dissolve the government and announce his resignation. […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Justin Sherman is filling in for Candace Rondeaux this week. The long-awaited fifth and final report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on its investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, which was released earlier this week, is full of disturbing details. The heavily redacted, 966-page report includes revelations about even closer links between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian intelligence operatives than Robert Mueller found in his special counsel investigation. It also concludes that Russia’s interference operations are still active today, less than three months before Election Day. But it didn’t take long before […]

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, traveled to Bogota this week, ostensibly to announce up to $5 billion in financing under the White House’s new United States-Colombia Growth Initiative. The money had been pledged months ago by the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, and it is contingent on investment-worthy projects, in any case. But the timing of the visit was hardly a coincidence. One of the officials traveling with O’Brien was Mauricio Claver-Carone, the White House’s point man on Latin America, who is making an audacious bid to lead the Inter-American Development Bank, or IDB. In remarks following his […]

Belarus’ long-ruling dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, is resisting calls to step down amid a historic wave of antigovernment demonstrations and strikes. Throughout the momentous period of unrest, one of the big questions is how far Russian President Vladimir Putin would be willing to go to support his ally. Belarus is a strategically vital country for Russia, and is also a key concern for NATO, as it shares borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all members of the trans-Atlantic alliance. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, WPR columnist Candace Rondeaux joined Elliot Waldman to discuss some of the scenarios that could […]

The landmark agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that was announced unexpectedly last week, a prelude to normalized diplomatic relations, is by any measure a triumph for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But in the tumultuous, fractious landscape of Israeli politics, Netanyahu’s celebrations have been tempered by bitter recriminations at home, a reminder that in Israel, no win comes without wounds. In the deal, first made public by U.S. President Donald Trump, the United Arab Emirates agreed to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel in exchange for Israel’s suspension of plans to annex parts of the West Bank. The […]

On July 23, the Tianwen-1 spacecraft lifted off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island, in southern China, bound for Mars. If all goes according to plan, the probe is scheduled to reach the red planet in February 2021. That would make China just the third country in history to land on Mars, after the United States and the Soviet Union. While Tianwen-1 is focused on scientific exploration, the decision for any country to invest in such an ambitious endeavor is always deeply political. And while analysts often emphasize the security motives driving China’s pursuit of advanced space […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Guest contributor Yuan Ren wrote the lead story in China Note this week. President Donald Trump’s increasingly hawkish attempts to limit China’s influence in the United States broadened into cultural territory last week, when the State Department ordered the Washington headquarters of China’s state-funded Confucius Institutes to re-classify as a foreign mission in the U.S., much like its consulates and embassies. The Trump administration claimed that the government educational organization was under significant control of the Chinese Communist Party […]

For many Belarusians, Alexander Lukashenko is the only leader they’ve ever known. He has maintained a tight grip on the country since first becoming president in 1994, but Lukashenko now faces the greatest challenge yet to his rule. He claimed victory in a presidential election earlier this month that was widely decried as fraudulent, and took place amid a wave of pro-democracy protests across the country. The unrest has only grown after official election results showed Lukashenko winning around 80 percent of the vote. A bloody crackdown on protesters by security forces last week left at least two people dead […]

For most of the past decade, visions of the future of Hong Kong tended to fall into one of two starkly divided camps. The first, optimistic one held that the surprising resilience of Hong Kong’s civil society, including one example after another of massive and, until recently, overwhelmingly peaceful civil disobedience, would gradually bring Beijing around to the view that trying to impose tight controls over the city was not worth the devastating potential cost. Hong Kong, after all, had laid golden eggs for China for more than 20 years following Britain’s “handover” of the highly cosmopolitan and globalized outpost […]

The global economic map is reshuffling, and predictions abound on where the pieces will land. As companies scramble to protect themselves from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars, the growing technology rivalry between the United States and China, and the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, will the long-promised “reshoring” of manufacturing back to higher-wage countries finally take place? Will the U.S. and China “decouple” their economies, particularly for the technologies of the future? If so, how will Europe, Japan and others respond? For the moment, the big winner is uncertainty. We have moved from a world in which companies […]

The special protection that investors based in the United States have long enjoyed when they do business abroad seems to be on its way out, and it’s about time. Unlike other private parties, including workers and consumers, foreign investors have access to special arbitration arrangements to protect their businesses in partner countries that sign bilateral investment treaties or preferential trade agreements with the U.S. This mechanism, known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, has attracted increased scrutiny since the U.S. insisted on including an expanded version of it in the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s. Now, both […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Daleba Nahounou was a university student in Abidjan, the largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, when a disputed presidential election in 2010 sent rival militias onto the streets.* The ensuing months of violence claimed 3,000 lives across the country and led to an international war crimes tribunal. “It was tragic,” Nahounou, who now helps lead a civil society organization called the Coalition of the Indignant of Cote d’Ivoire, told World Politics Review. “We have the same feeling that it could happen today.” Tensions are high in the country after President Alassane Ouattara, the opposition candidate and eventual victor in […]

When the United Nations commemorates its 75th anniversary next month, it will be in a somber mood. Well before COVID-19 hit, the Trump administration’s “America First” policies had deprived the world body of its traditional leader, the United States, while rising geopolitical frictions had paralyzed the U.N. Security Council. The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced these dynamics, accentuating U.S. unilateralism and exacerbating an increasingly heated rivalry between the U.S. and China. Much of the U.N.’s productive work has been brought to a standstill. The Security Council dithered for months on a noncontroversial resolution to freeze violent conflict during the pandemic, thanks […]