Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has maintained a bipartisan consensus on New Zealand’s relationship with China, which was nurtured over decades by successive governments. In return for a lucrative trading relationship, criticism of China has remained muted. Yet Ardern has likely sensed that the public mood on China is hardening.
The great environmental benefit of electric vehicles, no matter where they are produced or driven, is that they generate zero tailpipe emissions. That’s a huge plus, given that transportation accounts for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and about 8 percent in China. But the environmental news isn’t all good.
During U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recent visit to the African continent, he unveiled a strategy document framing Washington’s new approach to relations with Africans. But the lofty ambition expressed in the document is unlikely to be realized, due to contradictions between Washington’s words and actions.
Since Brexit, the U.K. has worked to reenergize its ties with Israel, as part of its wider “Global Britain” ambitions. Last month, it launched negotiations to establish a new bilateral free trade agreement—the outcome of which will be shaped by the winner of the Conservative Party’s leadership race.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended life as we know it with its devastating effects on health and domestic economies, but also multilateral trade, cooperation and aid. Among the victims of COVID-19 might be the multilateral system that has helped to ensure peace and coordinate global responses to challenges that cut across borders.
Last week, Kigali played host to the second Kigali Global Dialogue, which brought together more than 150 people from 45 countries to ponder solutions to critical issues the world faces. For countries in the Global South, the conference sought to ponder how they can navigate development challenges amid great-power competition.
As energy supplies from Russia to Germany dwindle because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Germans are grappling with the prospect of an unprecedented energy crisis that could last months, as well as with the implications it could have for food supply shortages, droughts and security concerns.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who came into office seeking to do “less not more” in the Middle East, is increasingly using the focus on China as an excuse to again do more in the region. But using the “great power competition” frame to justify and shape U.S. engagement in the Middle East is unrealistic and likely counterproductive.
In March, environmentalists launched an unprecedented legal case charging French oil giant TotalEnergies with greenwashing. Despite marketing itself as a green company, TotalEnergies has invested heavily in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, an infamous project in Uganda that’s come to symbolize Western hypocrisy.
This week, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, into law. The act, which aims to transition the U.S. power sector to using 100 percent renewables by 2035, represents the biggest commitment to climate policy in U.S. history. But the IRA is a game-changer not just in size, but also in scope.
The first 100 days of any administration should always be a moment for optimism. So, even if Colombia’s political system is doomed to hit gridlock later in his term, the country’s new president, Gustavo Petro, still has a few months to check a few agenda items off his list and start their implementation.
Antony Blinken was in Africa this week for a three-country tour, where he unveiled the Biden administration’s new approach for deepening ties with African nations. The strategy seems to hit all the right notes. But to implement it, the U.S. will have to break long-established habits in its relations with the continent.
As inflation rates spike and interest rates rise, many countries are facing looming sovereign debt crises. A mechanism like the G-20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, aimed at addressing what could become a global debt crisis, is becoming more important than ever—but to be effective it needs to address major shortcomings.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is using his visit to Africa to unveil Washington’s new approach to relations with the continent. That approach will be hampered by Washington’s deafness to long-standing complaints on a range of issues from many African countries, and its blindness to its own hypocrisy toward the continent.
The first ship exporting grain from Ukraine since February left Odessa’s port this week thanks to a deal brokered by Turkey and the U.N. The agreement aims to ease the global food crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but there are doubts as to whether it will hold for long enough to make a difference.
In response to Nancy Pelosi’s visit this week to Taiwan, China has applied an expanded political, military and economic coercion toolkit to punish Taipei. That points to Beijing’s desire to increase the cost on Taiwan for attempting to expand its international space and further solidify the U.S.-Taiwan bilateral relationship.
The remarkable developments in Sri Lanka, in which a monthslong citizen mobilization led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation last month, would have been unthinkable until recently. But while Rajapaksa’s resignation realized part of the protesters’ demands, there is still a long way to go for systemic change.