The TV show "Diplomat" on Netflix is a political drama that features references to Russia's war in Ukraine.

In modeling the foreign policy dynamics depicted in “The Diplomat” on the dynamics of the real world, the popular new Netflix political drama inadvertently ends up doing as much educating as entertaining. That can be a problem for a series that has neither the capacity nor the narrative requirement for nuanced explanations of these issues.

Russia's war in Ukraine could be prolonged after Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group led a mutiny against Putin.

While we are still learning the details of last weekend’s mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, there is understandable hope that the chaos in Russia might hasten the end of the war in Ukraine. But it is just as likely, perhaps more so, that the Wagner mutiny created conditions that could actually prolong the war.

AMLO's successor and Morena's candidate in Mexico's presidential elections will be chosen soon.

Mexico’s presidential election is still a year away. But the likely winner of the 2024 contest is being chosen now, as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Morena party begins choosing its candidate. Morena has become such a juggernaut that there’s only a vanishing chance its rivals will defeat the party’s standard-bearer next year.

France's strategy in the Sahel region of West Africa involves Mali and Niger.

Two factors will have significant implications for the future of France’s military intervention in the Sahel and the region’s fight against violent Islamist extremists: Niger’s emerging role as the linchpin of France’s reconfigured strategy and the diplomatic tensions that have emerged in recent years between Niger and Mali.

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The following is an edited transcript of a June 2019 conversation then-WPR editor Elliot Waldman had with Mark Galeotti about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The two discussed all things Vladimir Putin: his strengths; his foibles; and whether he’s actually the geostrategic chess master that many Western commentators have made him out to be.

After Yevgency Prigozhin's Wagner group led a mutiny against Putin, Russia's war in Ukraine remains a big question mark.

The short-lived Wagner mutiny in Russia last weekend may not demonstrate that President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power has been weakened. But it does demonstrate that the power of the Russian state he is gripping has been weakened and is an indication of how Putin’s regime is stoking dangerous tensions within Russia’s elite.

In Germany, Chancellor Scholz and his coalition are preparing a new foreign policy and bigger defense budget.

Germany’s recently released National Security Strategy serves as a roadmap for the so-called Zeitenwende, or turning point, in Berlin’s national security posture following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the painstaking effort that went into preparing it brought to light the challenges Germany faces in developing a “strategic culture.”

In Indonesia, Jokowi will leave office after next year's elections without having made many political or economic reforms.

Unable to run in next year’s election due to the constitutional two-term limit, Indonesian President Joko Widodo will leave behind a complex legacy. Jokowi took office as a scrappy outsider to national politics pledging progressive reform. He leaves as an entrenched insider who rarely delivered on those initial promises.

The US has spearheaded UN Security Council reform.

The Biden administration’s proposal for U.N. Security Council reform looks likely to protect the veto power of the council’s five permanent members, signaling a lack of true commitment to meaningful reform and a balanced international system. But Global South countries are not waiting for Washington to strengthen multilateralism.

China has partnered with numerous Middle East countries to invest into renewable energies amid the fight against climate change.

In recent years, the GCC member states have made efforts to shift toward renewable energies, while turning to China as a key partner in doing so. But while that partnership has proved fruitful in terms of investments in renewables, it has also paradoxically alleviated the pressure the GCC countries feel to abandon hydrocarbons.

In Peru, the combination of a political crisis and a dengue outbreak is creating chaos in the country.

Like all public health crises, Peru’s worst-ever dengue fever outbreak has political roots and implications. The ongoing crisis following former President Pedro Castillo’s ouster last year is affecting the government’s and region’s responses to the outbreak. And the outcome could determine the fate of current President Dina Boluarte.

Guatemala might be holding general elections on June 25, but it is rapidly losing its claim to be a democracy. A cohort of predatory factions has been jointly coopting independent institutions and pushing opponents into exile or jail since 2019, leading many Guatemalans to view the election as a pointless farce.

Some argue that Silicon Valley tech companies will soon have more power than sovereign nations.

Who rules the world? In discussions of international politics, the focus is often on states. With the rise of Big Tech, though, some observers have argued that the future of global power will be a story of corporations, not countries. But claims that corporations will dominate the world and surpass states in power are overblown.

The conflict, crisis, and civil war in Sudan is the result of a failed democratic transition.

The current conflict in Sudan between the armed forces and the RSF paramilitary group is a security and humanitarian crisis. But more importantly, it is a political crisis, one that grows out of the failure to build a sustainable democratic transition after the removal of former dictator Omar al-Bashir from power in April 2019.

Venezuela's Maduro is currently being courted by various autocracies like Russia, China, and Iran.

In the faceoff between liberal democracies and autocracies, the competing camps are enlisting backers across the globe, and Latin America has become an important battleground. Venezuela has emerged as the epicenter of activity for the anti-Western front, as highlighted by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Caracas last week.

In Austria, the Freedom Party, of FPO, have shaken up politics with a far-right cause.

For anyone analyzing Austrian politics during the 1990s, there was no escaping the steady rise of Jorg Haider. The speed with which his vicious targeting of minorities drew support from working-class and lower-middle-class voters upended Austrian politics, presaging an electoral realignment that then unfolded across Europe.

In Myanmar, a civil war erupted following a military coup in 2021.

Almost two and a half years since the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta is losing control of much of the country. Having already lost large swathes of territory to ethnic militias and People’s Defense Militias, it now faces threats even in the biggest cities, where it had until recently maintained a degree of brutal control.

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