Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Six separate terrorist attacks took place in Europe between late September and late November of last year—three in France, and one each in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. All six attacks were inspired by Salafi-jihadist ideology, which is, and will remain, a persistent terrorism threat to Europe and elsewhere in the West for the foreseeable future. Among the incidents in France was a stabbing attack outside the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which has published caricatures of religious figures, including the prophet Muhammad, and where al-Qaida-affiliated gunmen killed 12 staff members in 2015. Weeks later, a middle […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnists Kate Jones and Emily Taylor are filling in for Candace Rondeaux this week. It’s been an astounding start to 2021 for Big Tech. Not only does the power of companies like Twitter and Facebook now extend to denying a platform to a sitting American president, but the market value of the top 30 U.S. tech companies is now the same as the annual GDP of Europe’s five largest economies. It all raises a familiar question: How long will tech giants be allowed to grow like this, seemingly unchecked and unaccountable? Fortunately, moves are already afoot on […]

After Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term last August in an election that was widely decried as rigged, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand his resignation. Rather than capitulate or compromise, Lukashenko unleashed a reign of terror that has included arbitrary arrests, torture, psychological abuse and other ill-treatment of protesters. That is one of the main factors that has allowed the aging dictator to remain in power despite the unrest, says Dan Peleschuk, a freelance journalist who himself was imprisoned for two days in Minsk last summer while attempting to cover the protests. […]

When Myanmar’s military overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, one resident of Yangon, the country’s largest city, was initially indifferent. A 34-year-old professional translator, he had lost faith in Myanmar’s public and its political classes long ago, he told me in a recent phone conversation. Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, seemed too willing to compromise with the military and make progress in half measures, as evidenced by the country’s flagging, decade-long transition to democracy. But then, something unexpected happened: The people of Myanmar began to […]

It’s not often that a large refugee population is given unexpected reason to feel overjoyed. But that’s what happened last week in Colombia, when President Ivan Duque, standing alongside United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, announced that he would allow all Venezuelans living in the country as of Jan. 31 to obtain residency permits for 10 years. Their official status will grant them full rights to work, study, receive health care and enjoy other benefits available to Colombian citizens. The news came as a surprise, particularly because just a few weeks ago Duque had said undocumented Venezuelans would […]

The government of Paraguay has in recent months come under criticism for its fumbling response to a long-running dispute over the Marina Cue Reserve, a plot of land in the rural district of Curuguaty. While currently state-owned, over 150 poor families claim the land belonged to them before it was forcibly taken decades ago by a powerful associate of the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled the country from 1954 to 1989. And while President Mario Abdo Benitez and members of Congress have expressed some interest in helping the families, handing over the land is not so simple. In December, Abdo […]

Voters in Niger will return to the polls this Sunday for a runoff election that will determine outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou’s successor. The subsequent transition will mark the first time in the country’s history that one elected president replaces another. Beyond being a milestone for its democracy, this vote also holds real significance for Niger’s troubled neighborhood, an arid region just below the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel, where political and security conditions have deteriorated in recent years. To Niger’s west, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali was ousted in a coup last August, the second in less than […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. As China moved to block Clubhouse last Monday evening, a sense of impending doom spread among Chinese users on the audio-chat application that caught fire in the country this month. Moderators in group chats scrambled to let mainland Chinese speakers take to the podium, giving them a last chance to comment before they lose access to the app. The ban hardly came as […]

Just over six months ago, Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, was declared the winner of a presidential election. Like others before it, the outcome of the Aug. 9 vote was not in question—official results showed Lukashenko winning just over 80 percent of the ballots despite widespread reports of voter fraud and the violent suppression of opposition supporters. What happened next, though, was unprecedented. In the weeks and months after the rigged election, huge masses of people took to the streets of Minsk and other cities across Belarus to demand Lukashenko’s resignation, as well as the release of all […]

Sometimes springtime comes and goes in a flash. That’s the way things felt early this month, when people who follow China were left agog at the extraordinary flourishing of discussion on Clubhouse, the young but fast-growing app that combines social media with audio chat. Though available in China since last spring, Clubhouse saw a spike in interest after a widely noted appearance by Elon Musk, a big celebrity in China, on Jan. 31. Still flying under the radar of authorities in Beijing, the app allowed Chinese users to join up with people from all over the world in mostly calm […]

Today, the United States’ relations with Central Europe are at an inflection point. Much of the recent media coverage in the region has focused on how Washington’s influence might wane if President Joe Biden picks a fight with the governments of Hungary and Poland, whose leaders had cultivated close ties with Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. On the campaign trail, Biden bemoaned the recent trajectory of democratic decline and the erosion of checks and balances on executive power in those countries. Meanwhile, illiberal leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski are suspicious of Biden’s pledges to make human rights […]

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump presents a dilemma for Joe Biden, who wants to make democracy promotion a central plank of his foreign policy. How can the United States claim to embody, much less promote, democratic values when one of its two major political parties is gripped by an emergent, homegrown fascism? Unless and until the Republican Party or its successor unequivocally repudiates the authoritarian cult of Trumpism and the conspiratorial mindset that fuels it, the United States will remain a house divided, lacking credibility to advance the cause of democracy and the institutions of free societies abroad. […]

The emergence of a dynamic young leader galvanized the Venezuelan opposition two years ago. Juan Guaido united disparate opposition parties and won recognition as the country’s legitimate president from Donald Trump’s administration and dozens of other governments. His colleagues and the U.S. officials who backed him insisted that a campaign of “maximum pressure”—entailing biting sanctions, international isolation and even veiled threats of military action—would force an end to President Nicolas Maduro’s “usurpation” of power and restore democracy to Venezuela. That was a miscalculation. Maduro, who cleaned up in elections last December that the opposition called a sham, looks more entrenched […]

Harun Abu Aram was shot in the neck on the first day of the New Year. In a confrontation captured on film, the 24-year-old Palestinian, along with several other men, can be seen tussling with Israeli soldiers who had been trying to seize a village generator in the West Bank’s South Hebron hills—before a single shot rings out. Over a month later, Abu Aram remains in critical condition in a Hebron hospital, paralyzed from the neck down. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Israeli Defense Forces claimed that there had been a “violent disturbance” involving “around 150 Palestinians” who […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. COVID-19 vaccination campaigns across Africa suffered a potentially serious blow after new research showed that a vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca offered only minimal protection against mild and moderate infections caused by the more contagious coronavirus variant that was first detected in South Africa. The new strain has fueled a second wave of infections in the country and has been detected in at least 30 other […]

President Joe Biden inherited an immigration system in shambles. After four years of efforts by Donald Trump’s administration to put up as many barriers as possible for migrants and asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States, Biden’s team must now reopen America’s doors while avoiding a political backlash in Washington. The new administration has also pledged to work closely with Central American leaders to address the root causes of the migrant crisis, though that will be a longer-term undertaking. This week on the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s Elliot Waldman was joined by Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin […]

If the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump achieves one thing, it will be a lasting historical memory of the moment that the Republican Party openly embraced political violence as its brand. As Democrats lay out their case that Trump was “singularly responsible” for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the “Grand Old Party” is on the verge of strangling American democracy. This is the part where I’m supposed to say that it’s simply too soon to tell how the trial verdict will play out. Only it’s not too soon. Since only six Republican senators voted Tuesday […]