Economics & Business Archive

As international pressure builds on Saudi Arabia over the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul early last month, the costs for Riyadh continue to rise. The damage to the country’s image and reputation will haunt its political elite for years, especially now that the CIA has blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for having authorized the operation. The backlash was already visible in late October, when many Western political and business leaders at the last minute canceled their trips to Riyadh for the big-ticket Future Investment Initiative, the so-called Davos in the Desert. While […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. For much of this year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has tried to treat the Boko Haram insurgency and his upcoming re-election bid as two separate stories. As Obi Anyadike noted in an in-depth report for WPR last month, Buhari seemed to take his eye off the war in northeastern Nigeria, despite significant military setbacks, focusing instead on political jockeying in Abuja and elsewhere. One security analyst told Anyadike that the government’s priority was “regime security, not national security.” In […]

The United States obsesses about its global strategy more than any nation on earth. This fixation is reflected in the fact that Congress requires the executive branch to produce regular reports on its security strategy. A year ago, the Trump administration published its inaugural National Security Strategy. A few months later, the Pentagon released its National Defense Strategy to explain how U.S. military power would be used to implement the National Security Strategy. As it has in the past, Congress then created a bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission to assess the Pentagon’s strategy. This included an august team of top […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. As leaders from the Group of 20 begin their summit on Friday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, all eyes will be on President Xi Jinping of China and President Donald Trump of the United States, who have planned a much-anticipated face-to-face meeting over dinner Saturday night. The two leaders are embroiled in a damaging trade war, and the two countries’ broader bilateral relationship has deteriorated as well. Just last month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence laid out America’s “new approach […]

The new president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Solih, was sworn in earlier this month, only to find that the state coffers had been “looted” by his autocratic predecessor, Abdulla Yameen. Solih has pledged to rein in corruption and realign the small island nation’s foreign policy, moving away from Yameen’s reliance on China and cultivating closer ties with India. But according to David Brewster, a senior research fellow at the Australian National University’s National Security College, that won’t be easy. In an interview with WPR, he explains why. World Politics Review: What were the factors that propelled Solih to victory in […]

In the span of a year, the Central African Republic has gone from a country on the margins of international attention to a flashpoint. Russia’s expanding military presence and French attempts to retain influence over its former colony have ignited a competition for influence, threatening CAR’s already shaky peace process and its fledgling democratic government, which lacks much authority beyond the capital, Bangui. If Russia and France continue to recklessly prioritize their own interests, then CAR’s fragile security situation will only worsen. In late October, Moscow announced its second arms shipment to CAR and the deployment of 60 additional military […]

What price should workers in Cambodia and Myanmar, two of the poorest countries in the world, pay because of their governments’ severe violations of human rights? The European Union is currently grappling with this question. Under its Everything But Arms trade preference program, the EU provides duty-free, quota-free market access for all imports, except weapons, from states designated by the United Nations as “least developed countries.” On paper, eligible countries are supposed to respect democracy and human rights; in practice, many do not. In Cambodia, the government of longtime ruler Hun Sen has squelched democracy, while in Myanmar, the military […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. Over the past 30 years, as economies in the region developed and democratic gains were made, Latin America has undeniably seen major progress in the fight against hunger. Since 2000, the number of Latin Americans suffering from undernourishment has dropped from more than 60 million to 39 million. From Mexico to Argentina, leaders have felt optimistic. Compared to Africa and Asia, few places in the developing world were tackling food security and nutrition-related health risks with quite the same rigor and effectiveness. It was […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Chinese President Xi Jinping returned to Beijing on Wednesday following a two-day state visit to the Philippines, the last leg of an Asia-Pacific tour that also included stops in Papua New Guinea and Brunei. Despite decades of mistrust and maritime disputes between Manila and Beijing, the two countries heralded a new “golden period” in relations last year. Ahead of Xi’s visit, Philippine observers wondered what gifts the Chinese president might bear as part of his effort to draw the […]

Governing is always harder than being in the opposition. This is especially true when you’ve promised the moon to get yourself elected and dramatically raised voters’ expectations, as the populists in Italy’s self-styled “government of change” are quickly finding out. The two parties that performed best in general elections last March—the Five Star Movement, or M5S, and the Lega, or League—made bold campaign pledges to reduce poverty and slash taxes. The M5S, with over 30 percent of the vote, emerged as the largest party in parliament. The League, led by Matteo Salvini, was the largest party within the right-wing coalition […]

In a private milestone so quiet that even I missed it, last month marked my 10th anniversary overseeing WPR’s editorial content. A lot has changed since I first took the helm here. WPR’s team has grown, and our coverage of politics around the world has expanded and sharpened. Other things have remained the same, like our commitment to engaging with topics and trends, whether front-page news or off-the-radar developments, that are driving outcomes in countries big and small, powerful and less consequential. The world, too, has similarly changed in significant ways, but remained the same in others. Some of the […]

President Donald Trump is again sending mixed signals on an important policy. Earlier this month, his administration followed through on reimposing oil sanctions against Iran, though the immediate effect is on third parties doing business with Tehran. He then immediately waived the sanctions for six months for eight countries that are Iran’s major oil and gas customers, explaining the waivers by saying he did not want to roil oil markets. The administration did not, however, issue a waiver for the European Union, which played a key role in the United Nations sanctions that forced Iran to come to the negotiating […]

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry toured Central and Eastern Europe in mid-November, touting America’s credentials and warning countries against deepening their ties to Russia. The visit was part of a new push by the Trump administration in a region where energy is part of a wider geopolitical rivalry. Ostensibly arriving as a salesman for the U.S. liquified natural gas and nuclear industries, Perry signaled that Washington was ready to step up in a tussle that has long pitted Russia—with its vast gas resources and nuclear ties to former Soviet bloc countries—against the European Union. It’s a tussle that China is […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the political fallout from the draft Brexit agreement reached by the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May and the European Union. For the Report, Rik Rutten talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Denmark’s controversial so-called ghetto laws targeting heavily immigrant neighborhoods. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article […]

In a sign of rapidly changing geopolitical dynamics in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday voted unanimously to lift sanctions against Eritrea. The move comes amid a rapid thaw in Eritrea’s relations with neighboring Ethiopia and Somalia. The leaders of all three countries met for a rare summit in September, raising hopes for broader regional cooperation. In a further sign of detente, Somalia and Ethiopia advocated at the U.N. for the sanctions to be lifted, strengthening Eritrea’s case. The sanctions, which included an arms embargo, asset freeze and travel ban on Eritrean officials, were first […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. In the three years since John Magufuli became Tanzania’s president, he has shown little interest in responding to criticism, no matter its source. This is perhaps unsurprising for a man known as “The Bulldozer,” a nickname that dates back to his tenure as a hard-charging minister of public works. Magufuli’s administration has become notorious for restricting press freedom, creating an unsafe climate for opposition politicians and promoting regressive policies on women’s rights. He has also pursued populist economic policies […]

In early October, a court in Mozambique began trying 189 people accused of carrying out a spate of grisly attacks, some involving beheadings, in Cabo Delgado province, in the north of the country. The trial, the first of its kind, represents a rare opportunity to gather information on a security threat that continues to confound experts and government officials alike. Though the violence in Cabo Delgado, which has killed more than 100 people, first began getting serious attention more than a year ago, details about what’s driving it remain elusive. It has been attributed to a group commonly referred to […]