Unemployed Tunisians protest amid unrest that led to a nationwide curfew, Tunis, Jan. 22, 2016 (AP photo by Riadh Dridi).

Editor’s note: This will be Ellen Laipson’s final weekly column for World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ellen for the thoughtful and lucid analysis she has offered WPR readers each week for the past three years. Ellen will continue writing regular briefings for WPR. As my three years as a weekly columnist for World Politics Review come to an end, I’d like to reflect on the experience, from the practical challenges of being a columnist to the topics I’ve considered and returned to from time to time. Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein came up with the title […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, surrounded by other G-7 leaders, speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the G-7 summit, La Malbaie, Canada, June 9, 2018 (Photo by Jesco Denzel for German Federal Government via AP).

Should we really be shocked, or even mildly surprised, when an upstart American president upsets the Group of Seven industrialized nations and suggests non-Western powers should enter the club? President Donald Trump trashed this weekend’s G-7 summit by not only bad-mouthing his counterparts over trade, singling out the Canadian hosts for extra bile, but also arguing that Russia should rejoin the group just four years after it was expelled over the Ukrainian war. Other G-7 leaders were distinctly unamused. Trump’s behavior was crude even by his undiplomatic standards. Yet he was hardly the first U.S. leader to question the G-7’s […]

The scene after a driver mowed down people on a riverfront bike path, killing eight and injuring 12, New York City, Nov. 1, 2017 (AP photo by Mark Lennihan).

During a January talk in Israel, retired Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, warned that the world had entered an age of the “weaponization of everything.” What he meant was that weapons are no longer simply the traditional tools of war—guns, missiles, warplanes, naval ships and so forth—but everyday objects that can be adapted to damage, destroy or kill. Think, for instance, of the hijacked airliners in the Sept. 11 attacks, the increasingly common use of trucks and cars for terrorism, and the kinds of aggressive information warfare conducted through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns that exploit “fake news” and […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel listens to President Donald Trump talk during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Washington, April 27, 2018 (AP photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta).

Will Donald Trump turn out to be Europe’s best friend? Despite himself, Trump’s decision to pick an ill-conceived fight over trade with America’s closest allies could actually have a salutary effect on European solidarity. It will certainly boost the desire in Europe to distance itself from America and the dependent aspects of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Whether the Europeans will be able to follow through is another story. Trump’s trade war would seem to come at a bad time for the European Union. The incoming government in Italy is hostile to the EU’s fiscal rules and migrant policy. Spain is in […]

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