Amid the fanfare surrounding BRICS’ expansion last month, the longstanding tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter’s mega-dam project on the Nile went largely unnoticed. In offering both countries membership, BRICS has absorbed a complex regional conflict, raising questions over its potential to shape global affairs.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used the recent G-20 Summit to announce that his key focus for Brazil’s G-20 presidency, which begins in December, will be ending global hunger by 2030. Unfortunately, Lula’s other comments at the summit ensured that nobody paid attention to or cared about his agenda for the coming year.
For the current GOP candidates, calls for the U.S. to invade Mexico have the twin benefits of making them look tough while also potentially appealing to Republican voters in the Trump faction. But these calls also betray three sad truths about U.S. foreign policy generally, and Republican foreign policy in particular.
The first Africa Climate Summit concluded with significant momentum for the continent’s approach to climate diplomacy. For many observers, though, these achievements were overshadowed by concerns over the endorsement of market-based schemes like carbon credits as a way out of the continent’s climate finance quandary.
Ahead of next week’s SDG Summit, the outlook for realizing the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is discouraging. Recent cascading crises threaten to reverse the progress made on several goals. They have also exacerbated one of the most significant challenges to realizing the SDGs: financing gaps.
Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Georgia applied for membership in the EU. But it’s becoming increasingly unclear whether the current government under the Georgia Dream party is genuinely interested in joining the bloc. Some argue that, to the contrary, the party is intent on putting Georgia fully in Russia’s orbit.
With China’s economy slowing rapidly, many analysts around the world worry that a continued contraction in Chinese growth could potentially have an adverse global impact. Without China acting as the global engine of growth, they say, growth around the world could stall. But the story is more complicated than that.
The vicious debate around claims that Hubert Aiwanger—the leader of the Freie Wahler party and deputy head of the Bavarian government—circulated antisemitic pamphlets as a high schooler almost 35 years ago illustrates how shallowly tensions over historical memory are buried in Germany and how quickly they can resurface.
Even as regular climate diplomacy has resumed between the U.S. and China, officials and observers of both countries have become markedly more pessimistic about the feasibility of carving out a separate lane for climate progress amid rising tensions. That may imperil our chances of a timely energy transition.
Last week’s ASEAN Summit comes at a time of rising geopolitical tensions in the region, including between member states and China. Nevertheless, paralyzed by its commitment to unanimity-based decision-making, ASEAN is either unwilling or unable to check Beijing’s worst instincts. The result is a deepening fragmentation within the bloc.
At last month’s BRICS summit, the government of Argentina promised to join the organization, which hopes to de-dollarize the global economy. That same week, however, Argentine voters made it clear that come October, they’ll elect a president who opposes joining BRICS and will increase the use of the dollar at home.
One hundred days into his term, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu—who won a disputed presidential contest in February—has mostly lived up to expectations, with few surprises. That might be because, amid a struggling economy and pervasive insecurity, not many Nigerians had high hopes for his presidency to begin with.
As temperatures rise due to global warming, it’s all too easy to see the policy worlds of climate and health as separate and even competing sectors. But climate and health cannot be separated from each other. Only by bringing together sharp political and research minds in both sectors will we be able to weather the storms ahead.
Rumors of a conspiracy behind the April 2019 Easter Bombings in Sri Lanka have swirled since the attacks took place, even after the Islamic State took responsibility. Now, a documentary claiming that people close to Sri Lanka’s powerful Rajapaksa family were involved in the bombings is turning up the temperature on the accusations.
Depictions of Niger, Sudan and other African states as mere backdrops to geopolitical conflicts between distant outsiders neglect the role played by regional institutions, neighboring states and nonstate actors, while distracting from wider regional trends that will ultimately have a global impact of their own.
The global spread of Italian food and wine as well as the popularity of Italy as a tourism destination—alongside the depiction of all three in popular culture—have helped establish the country as a “soft superpower.” Now a force largely outside of Rome’s control is threatening all three sectors: the climate crisis.
Two tourists were shot dead by the Algerian coast guard last week after mistakenly straying into Algerian waters while jet-skiing off the coast of Morocco. The incident highlights the potential for unintended escalation between the two neighbors and historical rivals, whose diplomatic ties have been severed since August 2021.