International Law Archive

Find out how the aftermath of the refugee crisis is still upending politics across Europe—when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). As the nationalist, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats claimed their best result yet in Sweden’s parliamentary elections in September, the nation’s newspapers went bold with their headlines. “Chaos,” read the front pages, in all caps, of the two largest tabloids. Dagens Industri, a financial newspaper, called the outcome “a political earthquake.” But the subject of their worry was not the rise of the Sweden Democrats, the latest party to surf Europe’s anti-establishment populist wave. Instead, it was the utter fragmentation […]

What happened in the multilateral system in 2018? Looking back over the year, it is possible to identify three strategic trends and a last-minute political surprise that may resonate in the future. The big trends in multilateralism included a hardening of the Trump administration’s opposition to international cooperation, a concomitant increase in China’s efforts to influence bodies like the United Nations, and worrying signs of European splits over the value of internationalism. The surprise was an unexpected, and arguably almost accidental, revitalization of humanitarian politics over Yemen. Let’s start with the trends. By the end of 2017, it was clear […]

In December 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Japan and got a lavish welcome. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received Putin at a hot springs resort in his ancestral hometown of Nagato, in southwestern Yamaguchi prefecture. He referred to Putin by his first name in public appearances, a rare personal touch in the formal world of Japanese diplomacy. During the run-up to the visit, Japanese officials even reached out to the Kremlin with an offer for a dog, a prized Akita breed, intended as a male companion to Yume, the female Akita that was sent to Putin as a Japanese gift […]

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo caused a minor rumpus last week with a speech in Brussels attacking multilateral institutions. His list of complaints about entities such as the United Nations and European Union was long and often quite vague, but his core point was that too many diplomats and international officials have come to see “multilateralism as an end unto itself.” “The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are,” Pompeo continued. “The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done.” The secretary of state is hardly the first American politician to dismiss international organizations as […]

Armed drones may not be the killer robots some people fear, but drone weaponry is proliferating faster than international norms governing its use. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). In a move meant to break with his predecessor, President Donald Trump announced new export policies for U.S. armed drones in April. In presenting Trump’s policy shift, Peter Navarro, assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, said it “will level the playing field by enabling U.S. firms to increase their direct sales to authorized allies and partners.” The media reaction was hyperbolic, with one […]

George Herbert Walker Bush grasped the importance of the United Nations like no other American president before or since. The 41st occupant of the White House, who died last week, was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the early 1970s. Yet his main contribution to the institution came at the end of the Cold War. Throughout his single term in office, Bush grappled with the dilemma of how to dismantle the Soviet Union’s empire without sparking a disastrous bust-up with Moscow. He relied on the U.N. to pull off this geopolitical conjuring trick, turning to the Security Council to resolve […]