Diplomacy & Politics Archive

While Congress debates new online privacy rules and the European Union slaps ever more fines on tech giants, another government has been increasing the pressure on Silicon Valley: Russia. Over the past year or so, Moscow has employed ever more punitive measures against Western technology companies in order to force them to bend to its wide-ranging demands on issues like content censorship, local data storage and market practices. The latest development came last Friday when, in response to pressure from the Russian government, Apple and Google removed an app from its online stores that was meant to encourage users to […]

Last September, the United Nations marked its 75th anniversary in somber style, against the backdrop of a once-in-a-century pandemic, a deepening climate crisis, geopolitical tensions and antipathy from its most powerful member. A year on, the United States has returned—for the most part—to the multilateral fold. Otherwise, much remains the same. COVID-19 continues its rampage; global warming and biodiversity loss proceed apace; and great power competition stymies international cooperation. Into this maelstrom steps U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. As world leaders gather in person and virtually for this week’s annual opening of the U.N. General Assembly, Guterres will seek their support […]

After a military retreat by Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front last week in the Panjshir Valley, the group’s head of foreign relations, Ali Nazary, appeared in Washington last Friday to vow that it would continue holding out against the Taliban and to seek military assistance for doing so. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that the NRF has hired lobbyist Robert Stryk to seek military and financial support for their ongoing fight against the Taliban.  The NRF has made similar entreaties to the U.K. and France, as well as other countries closer to Afghanistan. They are one of only several militant groups with the potential to muster an […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox.  British American Tobacco, one of the United Kingdom’s largest companies, has been accused of paying bribes to the notoriously corrupt former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. The allegations come amid a number of other reports of Western multinational corporations allegedly engaging in questionable conduct on the African […]

Following the coup that took place in Myanmar in early February, a video was posted online and quickly went viral. Filmed in the capital, Naypyidaw, it showed a fitness instructor performing aerobics to a bouncy dance tune as a military convoy passed behind her, on its way to parliament to oust the elected government. “As it isn’t uncommon for Nay Pyi Taw to have an official convoy, I thought it was normal so I continued,” the instructor, Khing Hnin Wai, wrote in a subsequent Facebook post. More than six months later, on Aug. 10, a parody video spread widely on social networks […]

Almost everything about the conventional narrative of the history of Europe’s Age of Exploration and Empire is wrong, particularly where it concerns the role of Africa and Africans. Africa was a central focus of the early period of European exploration in the late 15th century and continued to be central to the plantation economies established in the European colonies of the Americas. And without the labor of enslaved Africans, none of those economies would have been as profitable, or as transformational, as they were. Howard French joined WPR’s Judah Grunstein this week on Trend Lines to discuss his fifth and […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox.   According to the latest opinion surveys ahead of a general election in Germany scheduled for Sept. 26, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, is on course for its worst performance in the party’s history. Together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, or CSU, […]

For much of the Syrian civil war, the southern city of Deraa and the surrounding Houran Plains, an agricultural region near the Jordanian border, were divided between government forces and armed rebels. Fighting raged back and forth, killing thousands. It was not until Russia backed a government offensive in 2018 that the situation changed in earnest. That year, Moscow brokered a series of agreements with rebel factions that brought the area back under loose government control.  This summer, fighting returned to Deraa—the epicenter of the initial 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that sparked the civil war—when government forces moved to […]

The Nicaraguan regime appears to be extending its intensifying wave of repression beyond the country’s borders. Last Saturday, the exiled Nicaraguan pro-democracy activist Joao Maldonado, 34, was nearly killed when a man on a motorcycle fired multiple rounds into the car he was riding in Costa Rica, striking him in the chest and other parts of his body. Maldonado remains in critical condition in a San Jose hospital. And although no perpetrator has been identified, suspicions have fallen on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose transformation from independence hero to brutal dictator shows no sign of abating. Maldonado is a well-known leader of the opposition […]

To many people who follow events in China closely, two announcements made in the past month by the Chinese government seemed like reasonably foreseeable developments, if not entirely predictable in their timing or details. In the first, Beijing said that it was committed to combating the grueling common workplace culture known as 996, which stands for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Placing such heavy demands of self-sacrifice for the benefit of corporations was unhealthy for society, the state concluded, in a belated judgment that follows more than a generation of high-speed growth characterized by utter domination […]

Canadian voters will go to the polls next Monday for the second time in less than two years. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called this snap election last month in the hopes that his Liberal Party might capitalize on Canada’s pandemic-era trend of rewarding political incumbents and retake the parliamentary majority in the 338-seat House of Commons that it lost in 2019. However, current polling suggests the party may have miscalculated, and that another minority government may be the best outcome it can hope for.  Every Canadian election is effectively a referendum on whether the Liberals are fit to govern. The […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox.  Approximately 100 disgruntled investors gathered at the headquarters of the troubled property developer China Evergrande Group in the southern city of Shenzhen on Monday to demand repayment of loans and other financial products.  Reuters’ David Kirton captured the chaotic scenes that erupted as Evergrande employees tried to placate the […]

The history of Europe’s Age of Exploration and Empire usually follows a familiar narrative. Starting in the late 15th century, European explorers set out to find maritime trade routes to the lucrative spice and textile markets of Asia. Happening by chance upon the “New World” of the Americas, they quickly established colonies whose wealth, mainly in the form of gold and silver, combined with advances in military technology, propelled what would become known as the West to centuries of global dominance that has only begun to wane today. In this narrative, Africa and Africans are all but invisible, except as […]

It’s almost hard to believe that Germany is currently in the middle of a national election. Although the campaign season is in its heiße Phase, or “hot phase,” reminders of the looming vote are rare and subtle: unobtrusive posters and billboards of candidates and a few lingering canvassers. Even in normal times, Germany has strict laws on how and when a party can campaign—but the coronavirus pandemic has reduced the volume even more, moving much of the voter outreach online. The calm even prompted one German newspaper, Die Welt, to run a headline asking, “Is this the most boring federal election […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Kate Jones is filling in this week for Emily Taylor. Ask just about any parent about the impact of technology on their children and they’ll tell you they’re worried, even if most find it near-impossible to identify all the risks, let alone work out how to protect tech-savvy children from them. Online concerns for children include the impact of social media on their mental health; the risks of online grooming of minors by sexual predators; the effect that widespread exposure to pornography has on them; the collection and retention of large amounts of their personal data; and the amount of […]

In the wake of the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan amid the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces and their allies, China has rhetorically seized upon America’s failures. The official Xinhua news agency lambasted the United States as “the world’s largest exporter of unrest,” arguing that “its hegemonic policies” have led to far too many human tragedies, and that the fall of Kabul marked the collapse of America’s international image and credibility.  Beijing also appears to be extending an enthusiastic hand to the Taliban. In late July, several of the group’s leaders visited China and met directly with Foreign Minister […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. The long-suffering people of Lebanon might finally have some good news on the horizon. A new government finally has been formed and, critically, the International Monetary Fund will replenish Lebanon’s nearly empty foreign reserves on Thursday, depositing $1.13 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, in […]