Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Even in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic and a mismanaged economic austerity package, former President Rafael Correa’s bitter legacy of corruption and authoritarianism outweighed the promise of a return to the lavish social spending of the left-wing populist’s time in power. That appears to be the takeaway from the surprise victory of conservative banker Guillermo Lasso, 65, in Ecuador’s hard-fought presidential runoff election on April 11. With the Andean nation’s economic model at stake—not to mention its free press and arguably its democracy—Lasso overturned a 13-point loss in the February first round to defeat Correa’s protégé, Andres Arauz, 52.4 […]

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, President Joe Biden discussed the two leaders’ intent to “pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues,” according to a White House statement. Specifically, Biden said he hopes to build on the U.S. and Russia’s recent agreement on a five-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which is the last remaining nuclear arms control deal between the two countries. According to Sarah Bidgood, the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation […]

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. Benin, Chad and Djibouti held presidential elections over the weekend, although opposition leaders in all three countries, as well as outside observers, said the outcomes were predetermined. Not surprisingly, early returns have the incumbents easily winning all three contests. In Benin, the run-up to Sunday’s vote was marred by violent protests and accusations that President Patrice Talon was undermining what has been one of West Africa’s most stable […]

Right after last month’s general election in Israel, the fourth in two years, the remnants of the country’s center-left parties were unofficially absorbed into a newly formed political concoction called the “change bloc.” In politics, the term “change” is usually invoked to suggest a difference in policies or convictions from the status quo, but in this case, it refers to a single event: ending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year rule. To achieve this goal, the change bloc brought together politicians so ideologically distant from one another that it is hard to imagine them forming a book club, let alone a […]

A dozen years ago, when Peruvians were heading to the polls for a presidential runoff election, the acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who had himself once tried his hand at politics, famously likened the choice voters faced between the two remaining candidates to that between AIDS and cancer. Since then, Peruvians have seen their political system careen off the rails, culminating in last weekend’s first-round presidential election, the outcome of which sent financial markets tumbling and left the country in shock. A mind-boggling 18 candidates were on the ballot, ensuring a thoroughly fragmented vote and an unpredictable result. But even […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Bangladesh last month may not have led to any big-ticket announcements, but it was high on symbolism. Modi was honored as the chief guest during celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence on March 26, as well as the birth centenary celebrations of the country’s founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Both Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sheikh Hasina, Rahman’s daughter, used the visit as an opportunity to commemorate India’s role in supporting Bangladesh’s war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971 and highlight the deep cultural and historical linkages between the two countries. […]

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. On Monday, China’s People Liberation Army flew 25 aircraft, including fighter jets and bombers, through Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, marking the largest such incursion since the self-ruled democracy began making its data on them public last September. Taiwan has continued to monitor the movements of the Chinese aircraft, transmit radio warnings to them and track them with its missile defense systems. But […]

One of President Joe Biden’s first actions after taking office in January was to agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin on extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Better known as New START, it is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow, verifiably limiting each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems. The renewal of New START was widely welcomed by experts, given its important role in limiting the number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world. In a phone call this week, Biden and Putin discussed their intent […]

For anyone interested in understanding the global economy of the recent past or in projecting the shape of things to come in world affairs in the near future, there are few fundamentals that condition the lives of nations more powerfully than population dynamics. The past 50 years have served up this lesson repeatedly, most recently with the rise of China. Riding on the back of a dramatic bulge in the number of freshly educated young people who teemed onto the workshop floors of the innumerable industries that were just then being thrown together, China turned itself into the so-called factory […]

Water, an essential resource to sustain human life, not to mention agriculture and many other economic activities, has long been in short supply across the Middle East—the driest region in the world. But now, population growth, rapid urbanization, economic development and climate change are putting new pressure on the water supply. In light of these trends, Middle Eastern nations are looking to new technologies and regional partnerships that might help them adapt to a new era of severe water scarcity. According to the World Bank, the Middle East and North Africa region is experiencing population growth at a rate of […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—In his last visit to Colombia as U.S. vice president in December 2016, Joe Biden praised then-President Juan Manuel Santos for the historic peace accord reached that year with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—the country’s largest guerrilla group, better known as the FARC—which ended the longest-running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. More than four years later, the Andean nation is at risk of losing most of the security gains from the hard-won peace agreement, with violence escalating to levels last seen before the peace talks. Now that Biden is back in office as president, he must pay […]

Every four years, the U.S. intelligence community, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, publishes its Global Trends report looking ahead 20 years into the future. As efforts to identify far-horizon threats today, the reports usually make for fairly gloomy reading. This year’s “Global Trends 2040” report is no exception. It describes the ongoing pandemic as “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political and security implications that will ripple for years to come.” Worse still, it warns of “more intense and cascading global challenges” ahead. Though he is not cited […]

In July 2018, Leo Hernandez, a 23-year-old law student at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, joined millions of other millennial and Generation Z voters in helping Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador secure a landslide victory in Mexico’s presidential election. Hernandez was excited about the possibility of helping to elect the country’s first leftist president in recent history. And given his plans to return to his home city of Tijuana after graduation, he was particularly attracted to the attention Lopez Obrador was paying to state-level politics. “He was moving away from acting like Mexico City was the only place that matters,” […]

In the introduction to her 2013 book, “Policing Protest,” the Italian scholar Donatella della Porta described the stereotypical image of a British policeman as a “friendly bobby giving directions to a foreign tourist.” That amiable, unarmed, neighborly figure, she noted, was emblematic of a traditional policing style in the United Kingdom that had once been seen as a model by many agencies elsewhere in Europe. Today, the prevalent image of British security forces could not be more different. On March 12, a London Metropolitan Police officer was charged for the kidnap and murder of 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard, an […]

Some things haven’t changed in seven years. One of the first pieces I wrote for WPR was on the prospects for transitional justice in Syria someday, roughly three years into a civil war that still hasn’t ended today. The news hook back then was the appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee of a former Syrian military photographer, hidden under a blue hoodie and identified only as “Caesar.” He had defected from the regime and smuggled a trove of roughly 55,000 photographs out of Syria, documenting the deaths of some 11,000 prisoners killed in Bashar al-Assad’s jails—many showing signs of […]

Over the past two years, an extraordinary global campaign has emerged to protect 30 percent of Earth’s total surface from human exploitation by 2030. The members of this so-called 30×30 coalition, which now includes scores of governments, understand that climate change is only one half of the planet’s environmental crisis. The Paris Agreement, while imperative to curb greenhouse gas emissions, will do little by itself to save the planet’s collapsing biodiversity or preserve the massive ecosystems upon which humanity depends—and which we are fast degrading. In April 2019, a group of 19 prominent scientists ignited international interest in the 30×30 […]

In the days after Myanmar’s military staged a coup on Feb. 1, it likely hoped to consolidate power with minimal bloodshed. Having overthrown the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known in Myanmar, set out to create a managed democracy like neighboring Thailand’s, with an electoral system that guarantees victory for military-aligned parties and their allies. The coup leader, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, probably hoped that neighboring states and possibly even the world’s leading democracies would eventually recognize Myanmar’s new government. Indeed, as protests erupted across the country in the coup’s […]