President Joe Biden took office with an ambitious foreign policy agenda summed up by his favorite campaign tagline: “America is back.” Above all, that will mean repairing the damage done to America’s global standing by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
Over the past five years, Beijing has adopted a much more assertive military and diplomatic approach in Southeast Asia. While one could reasonably expect this to negatively affect China’s standing in the region, the opposite is the case. China’s influence in Southeast Asia has soared, largely at the expense of the United States.
A major theme of this year’s G-7 summit was the stated efforts by the rich, industrialized nations that make up the group to engage with the Global South. But that did not translate to substantive outcomes, as the Global South’s concerns took a back seat to the West’s geopolitical competition with an axis led by China and Russia.
Is Washington’s post-Cold War “unipolar moment” over? Some claim that multipolarity has been with us for some time. Others are not so sure, pointing to the United States’ continued economic and military dominance. But even if the U.S. remains the world’s predominant power, it may still well exist in a multipolar world.
Ghana’s latest IMF bailout was necessitated by a combination of global shocks and domestic factors, primarily a spending spree by President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration. Akufo-Addo campaigned for the presidency in 2016 on the promise of change. Seven years on, change has indeed come. But it has not been in the promised direction.
As U.S. officials focus on countering China and Russia, Washington’s policy community is taking a new look at U.S. relations with the Global South. The fact that these conversations are taking place is encouraging, but the questions they focus on also demonstrate how little U.S. leaders understand about the Global South.
In the Global South, the rush to create green economies risks leaving behind workers in the informal sector unless there are targeted efforts in education and job training—policies and talking points often left out of this new green rush. Chile, considered to be Latin America’s most developed economy, is a case in point.
In March, the U.S. announced its largest-ever commitment of funding to support foreign labor unions and the right to organize around the world. But while the initiative was framed as novel, the U.S. government has leaned on domestic labor unions as a means of achieving its national security goals since the late 1940s.
The International Committee of the Red Cross launched an initiative this spring to encourage players of first-person shooter video games to follow the rules of war, which serves their wider agenda of strengthening civil society’s commitment to the laws of armed conflict. The approach, though, has not been without controversy.
The U.N. recently projected that India will replace China as the world’s most-populous country this year, fueling discussion about whether India’s swelling population could create a “demographic dividend” that would allow it to surpass China economically as well. But India has a lot of ground to cover to meet those expectations.
Last month, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan gave a speech declaring that the neoliberal “Washington consensus” was officially dead. The Biden administration’s new policy approach is a bold departure from one that allowed far too many decisions to be determined solely by the market, but it has problems of its own.
The Biden administration’s policy approach to the Middle East has come under recent criticism, and its Indo-Pacific policy and its role in Africa are up for debate. But a key region seems to be flying under the radar: Latin America. What is U.S. policy toward its own neighborhood? Does the U.S. even have a policy toward the region?
A growing number of jurisdictions worldwide have recently moved toward some form of cannabis regulation. Moving away from prohibition makes sense, but cannabis legalization has not been without its challenges. One trend in particular gets little attention: the complicity of legal cannabis corporations in the illicit cannabis trade.
Resource extraction continues to be a major source of revenue for both developing countries and wealthier nations alike. But the windfalls don’t come without risks. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of fossil fuels is driving the development of renewable energy sources. But the transition is slow to develop.
The impacts of climate change are advancing faster than experts had previously predicted, and they are increasingly irreversible. But persistent climate skepticism from key global figures, motivated in part by national economic interests, is slowing diplomatic efforts to systematically address the drivers of climate change.
Over the past two decades, Chile has been a place where businesses can operate in a regulatory environment shaped by steady and fair rules, while Argentina’s extensive regulations on prices, taxes and capital controls have made business difficult. However, when it comes to the lithium industry, that narrative has just been flipped.
Three visits to Nairobi this week by major dignitaries is the latest indication of a recognition by global actors of Africa’s increasing importance in international affairs—and Kenya’s aspiration to be a major voice for Africa in global affairs. But Nairobi must now demonstrate its readiness to assume such a responsibility.