Guinea’s Junta President Col. Mamady Doumbouya, center, after a meeting with an ECOWAS delegation in Conakry, Guinea, Sept. 10, 2021 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).

For the past decade and more, the U.S. and other international actors have prioritized a narrowly defined form of stability over democratic accountability in their diplomatic, development and security engagement in West Africa. The only problem is that this approach is not working. West African countries enjoy neither the stability their international partners seek, nor the democracy their citizens desire.  Why, then, is the United States and the rest of the “international community” unwilling or unable to make a course correction in their West Africa engagement? To begin to answer that question, a bit of historical background is necessary. Beginning […]

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, smiles as she leaves her home in Vancouver, Canada, Sept. 24, 2021 (AP photo by Darryl Dyck).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wedenesday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. More than 100 million viewers tuned in Saturday to a live state television broadcast of the moment Meng Wanzhou touched down in Shenzhen, where the Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s headquarters is located. After having spent the past three years under house arrest in Canada, Meng—the company’s chief […]

John Ruggie when he was special representative for economy and human rights of the U.N. secretary-general, Berlin, Germany, June 20, 2007 (DPA photo by Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert via AP Images).

On Sept. 16, on the eve of the opening of this year’s United Nations General Assembly, John Ruggie passed away. A giant in the study and practice of world politics, Ruggie’s writings left a lasting impression on a generation of colleagues and students, and his contributions to multilateral cooperation as a U.N. official will reverberate for many more. In a half-century career straddling academia and policymaking, Ruggie enriched our collective understanding of the normative sinews of world order and the endless possibilities of international cooperation.  It is rare for academics to have a direct policy impact, but Ruggie certainly did. […]

Myanmar nationals living in Thailand protest against the military coup in front of the United Nations building in Bangkok, Thailand, March 7, 2021 (AP photo by Nava Sangthong).

In the run-up to this year’s high-level meetings of the United Nations General Assembly, there were almost too many issues to address: a global pandemic, climate change, renewed and continuing conflicts and great power competition, to name a few. But when it came to the crisis in Myanmar, attention focused on a single question: Who should represent the country in New York? The answer would determine how much the international community can do to help Myanmar, a country now teetering on the edge of civil war, in the months ahead. The turmoil began on Feb. 1, when Myanmar’s military, known […]

Turkish security forces apprehend a group of migrants in an operation aimed at stemming the recent influx of migration, in Van, Turkey, Aug. 21, 2021 (AP photo by Emrah Gurel).

In July, British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that the U.K. had agreed to pay France roughly $72 million to fund border personnel and equipment that would be used to stop asylum-seekers from crossing the English Channel. The deal came amid a dramatic rise in the number of channel crossings. In the first half of 2021, more than 8,000 asylum-seekers completed the voyage to land on England’s southern shore. The deal with France was controversial, including within Patel’s own Conservative Party. Noting that this was the second such payment to France in the past year, Tim Loughton, a leading Conservative […]

President Joe Biden delivers an address in the State Dining Room at the White House, Sept. 9, 2021 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).

President Joe Biden’s administration has come under heavy criticism, both domestically and from overseas, over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan by American and NATO forces. Since Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, Biden’s approval rating has dipped nearly five points, to 45 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of opinion polls. And Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, bluntly criticized the U.S. earlier this week for making “very few—if any—consultations with their European partners” regarding plans for the exit from Afghanistan. The fallout from this crisis will follow Biden to United Nations headquarters in New York later […]

U.N. headquarters in New York, Sept. 23, 2020 (AP photo by Mary Altaffer).

The 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly will kick off next week in New York, and over the course of the following week, the assembly will host speeches from leaders and representatives of U.N. member states. The highlight will be U.S. President Joe Biden’s first address to the U.N. since taking office in January, but as with previous years’ diplomatic confabs, there will be plenty of developments to keep an eye on. This week on Trend Lines, Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at the International Crisis Group and a former WPR columnist, joins Elliot Waldman to preview Biden’s […]

A protester from the Uyghur community living in Turkey holds a placard during a protest in Istanbul, March 25, 2021 (AP photo by Emrah Gurel).

There is extensive evidence that the Chinese government is violating the human rights of ethnic Uyghurs, and that these violations include crimes against humanity and genocide. Satellite imagery, testimonials, demographic data and photographs substantiate the extensive allegations against China, which include the use of mass surveillance technologies throughout Xinjiang province, the arbitrary detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, the torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, the separation of children from their parents, systematic sterilization, rape, forced labor and organ harvesting. While survivors, relatives and diaspora communities have long sought to draw attention to the systematic […]