An elderly patient receives a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic at Orange Farm, near Johannesburg, South Africa, June 3, 2021 (AP photo by Denis Farrell).
By the late 1990s, an HIV diagnosis was no longer considered a death sentence in the wealthy countries of the Global North. Advances in medical technology had brought new drugs onto the market that could reverse the disease’s progression. However, those life-saving drugs were priced out of the reach of most patients across the Global South, where millions of people continued to die unnecessarily. There are echoes now of that earlier era, as those same regions are largely going without COVID-19 vaccines—even as wealthier countries move on to administer booster shots for their populations. In response to the disparity in [...]
John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, speaks with Alok Sharma, president of the COP26 summit, during a stock-taking plenary session at the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 13, 2021 (AP photo Alberto Pezzali).
As former U.S. President Barack Obama once mused, there are times in global diplomacy, as in baseball, when “hitting singles” is adequate. This month’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow was not one of those moments. With the fate of the planet on the line, world leaders should have been swinging for the fences. Instead, they played small ball, chalking up only incremental gains rather than the historic breakthrough the occasion demanded.  Going into the Glasgow summit, the United Nations Environment Program had delivered some blunt news: The world’s emissions reduction pledges before COP26 accounted for only one-seventh of the reduction actually needed to [...]
A military band performs during the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival in Red Square, Moscow, Aug. 31, 2021 (AP photo by Pavel Golovkin).
Russian President Vladimir Putin is often said to be “playing a weak hand well.” But according to Kathryn Stoner, a Russia expert at Stanford University, this conventional analysis is incomplete. She argues that not only does Moscow hold better cards than many Western observers might think, it is also more willing to play them, even the risky ones. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Stoner sat down with WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss her recently published book, “Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order.” Listen to the full conversation here: If you like what you [...]
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