Diplomacy & Politics Archive

The past year has been a perfect storm for America’s shale gas companies, on both the domestic and international fronts. Record-setting levels of American gas production and consumption in 2019 masked the fact that the industry was already under siege, as years of insufficient returns pushed investors away from financing new drilling and exploration. Meanwhile, newly commissioned projects aimed at exporting liquified natural gas, or LNG, faced headwinds on international markets due to a global supply glut. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, as it further depressed domestic and international demand for natural gas. The collapse in oil prices as […]

At 8:07 a.m. on July 14, Daniel Lewis Lee was pronounced dead after being injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. It marked the first time in 17 years that the U.S. government had carried out a federal death sentence, and was followed in quick succession by two more federal executions in the subsequent days. They took place almost a year after Attorney General William Barr announced that the Trump administration planned to restart capital punishment. Following a protracted legal battle and stays of execution by lower court judges, the Supreme Court vacated those orders last month, removing the final […]

There are many templates for achieving transitional justice, the broader purpose of which is to help a society reckon with a legacy of human rights abuses in the aftermath of dictatorship or conflict. These efforts might take the form of a criminal trial, a truth commission or a reparations program, in an effort to document horrific violations—and reckon with them. The specific goals of transitional justice have evolved over time. Early initiatives emphasized criminal justice, with the most well-known example being the post-World War II trials of German and Japanese war criminals. More recently, however, the purpose of transitional justice […]

In the week and a half since the catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port, Lebanon’s Cabinet announced that it would resign, countries like France and the United States have promised to help rebuild, the Lebanese have seethed—and no one has been held accountable, except for a few port officials. “My government did this,” reads graffiti on a wall near the port, against a backdrop of the destruction. “You literally blew us up,” reads another message, spray-painted on a storefront nearby. At least 171 people were killed in the explosion, and thousands more were wounded. While the full cause of the blast […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. An emergency cleanup operation has pumped the remaining oil from a Japanese ship that ran aground off Mauritius late last month, but the island nation is just beginning to grapple with the environmental and economic costs of the 1,000 tons of fuel that spilled off its coast. The MV Wakashio, which was en route from Singapore to Brazil, went off course and struck a coral reef about a mile southeast of Mauritius. The ship’s hull began to split open as it was […]

America needs a lot of things right now. It desperately needs leaders who can unify, not divide, its citizenry. It needs Congress to pass some form of pandemic relief bill, and it needed it yesterday. It needs a reprieve from the unrelenting toll taken on its soul by the coronavirus, a broken public health system, dysfunctional policing and entrenched inequality. Contrary, however, to the views espoused by some national security elites this week, what America does not need is for its military to solve the problem of President Donald Trump. It is hard to know what exactly was in the […]

Following the resignation of Elyes Fakhfakh as prime minister of Tunisia in mid-July, amid corruption allegations and after just five months in office, President Kais Saied designated one of his own advisers, Hichem Mechichi, as the new prime minister. Mechichi has until Aug. 25 to form a government that can win parliamentary approval. Should he fail, Saied has the constitutional right to call for new elections—an arduous task, particularly as Tunisia struggles with a deepening economic crisis and a spike in COVID-19 cases triggered by reopening the country’s borders in late June. Before he even takes office, Mechichi faces several […]

The news came unexpectedly last week, sending shockwaves across the country. Colombia’s powerful former president, Alvaro Uribe, was ordered by its Supreme Court to be put under house arrest. Colombians were in disbelief. It’s impossible to overstate the magnitude of Uribe’s role in the country’s politics over the past two decades. To some, he is a hero who saved the nation; to others, a murderous villain who trampled human rights. But everyone agrees, Uribe was and still is an outsized political force in Colombia. He seemed untouchable. Now, his detention creates two major tests for Colombia and its institutions. First, […]

ADDU, Maldives—Visitors are slowly returning to the famous beach resorts of this island nation in the Indian Ocean after it reopened its borders last month, having largely contained its initial wave of COVID-19. While it failed to avoid the virus entirely, the Maldives has registered a relatively small caseload of around 5,300, including 21 deaths, confined largely to its crowded capital, Male. In recent days, however, community transmission across the atolls has increased at an alarming pace. Around a third of the country’s estimated 550,000-strong population live in Male, on one of the most densely populated islands on the planet, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar this week became the highest-level American official to visit Taiwan since 1979, when Washington severed official diplomatic ties with Taipei. The optics of the trip were questionable, as it came amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province that should be brought under its control, by force if necessary. Nevertheless, the visit was a boost for Taiwan, as it deals with constant anxiety over Chinese aggression. […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Steven Metz is filling in for Judah Grunstein this week. The Department of Homeland Security was created quickly in the traumatic year after the 9/11 attacks—a time when a fearful American public was desperate for anything that might make them safer. While the idea of an overarching organization to coordinate defending the U.S. homeland had floated around Washington for several years, 9/11 energized it. In November 2002, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act, combining 22 disparate federal departments and agencies linked only by their broad remit to deal with homeland security. Like many other actions undertaken […]

Amid its struggles with the public health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, the United Arab Emirates announced a wide-ranging restructuring of federal government agencies and senior personnel last month. The UAE’s prime minister and vice president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who rules the emirate of Dubai, detailed the shake-up in a series of tweets, saying it was intended to craft an “agile government quick in solidifying the achievement of our nation.” Previous government reshuffles in the small but wealthy Gulf nation were notable for their public relations aspects, such as the creation in 2016 of two […]

Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is testing and revealing the limits of state authority. Simultaneously elevated and enfeebled, the nation-state has been the principal organizing unit behind the global crisis response. But often, it has lacked the legitimacy and authority it needs to manage the pandemic in the territories it purports to govern. In disputed territories and conflict zones, on remote isles in archipelagos, in favelas and urban settlements, citizens may look to the state for protection. But there at the margins, where the world’s most vulnerable populations often live, communities are instead enduring the pandemic without help from, […]

However one judges the results, there is no question that President Donald Trump has taken American trade policy in a very different direction than his predecessors going back decades. He has rejected multilateralism and severely weakened the World Trade Organization, while embracing the use of tariffs against allies and adversaries alike. Biden has been clear that, if elected, he would restore a more multilateral approach, especially with respect to challenging Chinese trade practices. He has also assured union supporters that he would put the interests of American workers at the core of his trade policy. Beyond those broad principles, however, […]

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,600, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,400. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at around $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet despite some initial missteps, they have all largely suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. Vietnam, a country of roughly 95 million people, has reported […]

In mid-July, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked by a small group of hackers, apparently led by a teenager in central Florida. They were able to take over some of the social media service’s most prominent handles—including those of Kanye West, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—and use them to scam hundreds of people out of a combined $118,000 in bitcoin. It was the biggest security breach in Twitter’s history, and a stunning embarrassment for the company. The hack also entailed a high level of risk to users’ personal security. According to Twitter, the hackers were able to not only send […]

The Trump administration’s strategy of applying “maximum pressure” on Iran has succeeded in inflicting unprecedented economic pain on the country, particularly since the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and subsequently reimposed punishing sanctions. Yet, despite the resulting political pressures that have mounted in Iran, the strategy has failed to meet its ostensible goal of bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table to agree to a far more comprehensive deal. Nor has it persuaded Iran to significantly alter its regional behavior, particularly its support for proxies that are hostile to the U.S. and Washington’s partners in […]