Global Archive

2016’s turmoil and unpredictability carried over into 2017—a year marked by a continued backlash against refugees and migrants in Europe, deeper fault lines in the Middle East between regional rivals, and hardening nationalist attitudes from the United States to China. Here at World Politics Review, we looked for the trend lines behind the headlines, and we hope our 10 most-read articles of 2017 reflect that kind of coverage, as well as the diverse interests of our readers. The list below is based on unique page views. Where will we find the stories of 2018? 1. Why Once-Welcoming Countries in Scandinavia […]

In a special episode of our Trend Lines podcast, we look back on 2017 through three of our most popular Report interviews. They take us from the state of the liberal world order in the Trump era, to the not-so-United Kingdom after Brexit, to the Horn of Africa, where the ongoing political standoff in the Persian Gulf is spilling over. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on WPR, please think about supporting our work by subscribing. We’re currently offering a 25 percent discount on the first year of an annual subscription […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, take a look at some of the top international affairs stories of 2017. For the Report, WPR columnist Richard Gowan joins Peter Dörrie to explain why 2017 was a year of living dangerously for the United Nations and discuss the year ahead for U.N. diplomacy. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on WPR, please think about supporting our work by subscribing. We’re currently offering a 25 percent discount on the first […]

One year ago, the United Nations appeared to be poised between a moment of renewal and a total meltdown. An energetic new secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, promised to revitalize the organization after a decade of drift under Ban Ki-moon. The former Portuguese prime minister talked about a “surge of diplomacy” and the need to prevent looming conflicts. Listen to Richard Gowan discuss this article on WPR’s Trend Lines Podcast. His audio starts at 29:32: Yet he seemed doomed to run headlong into opposition from the administration of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. The president-elect had repeatedly belittled and dismissed the U.N., […]

It is the season for columnists to nominate their words, songs and people of the year. Here are mine. My word of the year is “defeat,” with a special nod to its derivative form “defeatist.” My song is “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by the Rolling Stones. And my people of 2017 are British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. I acknowledge that these are not immediately obvious choices. “Defeat” is not exactly a novel word or concept, to start with. Its first known use in English was in the 15th century. “You […]

In late November, the United Nations undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jean-Pierre La Croix, asked Brazil to contribute troops to the U.N. mission in the Central African Republic. This week, Brazil reportedly agreed to that request. Though it has traditionally eschewed military interventionism, Brazil has assumed an increasingly prominent role in peacekeeping missions in recent years. In an email interview, Kai Michael Kenkel, an associate professor at the Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, discusses Brazil’s engagement in peacekeeping operations and how this plays politically at home. WPR: What is the recent history of […]

The aftermath of Monday’s terrorist attack in New York was a case of both good news and bad news. That the city essentially shrugged off an attempted suicide bombing in the subway that only seriously injured the bomber himself demonstrated a salutary resilience and sangfroid, as defeating terrorism requires in part a refusal to be terrorized. That the attack was so rudimentary and amateurish is a testament to the broad success of American and European approaches to counterterrorism that make more sophisticated attacks prohibitively difficult to mount. But the fact that such attacks don’t generate much surprise anymore—whether in New […]

It’s now well understood that many governments see their cyber capabilities as a tool to influence, coerce, deter and disrupt their enemies and rivals. Societies and states today are almost totally dependent on cyberspace to communicate, conduct routine but essential transactions, store information and make critical decisions about policy matters, from the mundane to the strategic. Yet it’s hard for people without deep technical understanding of the technology—your columnist included—to know where to fit these cyber realities into familiar categories for the conduct of national security and international relations. There’s also a risk of discussing openly how to respond to […]

The United Nations is a slow, imperfect and often unsuccessful peacemaker. We should celebrate that. Last week, U.N. officials were grappling with three crises that have each been on the organization’s agenda for over half a century. On Tuesday, Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman flew to North Korea to call for “open channels” of diplomatic communication with Pyongyang to avoid a nuclear confrontation. His visit came just over 70 years after the U.N. General Assembly first set up an international commission to facilitate the reunification of the northern and southern halves of the country, a dream that remains as […]

Progress in reducing the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction is never linear. But these days, there seem to be more steps backward than forward. From the failure to stop North Korea from becoming the world’s ninth nuclear power to the tragically incomplete diplomatic work to rid Syria of chemical weapons, the efforts to advance global norms to reduce the threats from weapons of mass destruction are falling short. Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which advocated for the new nuclear disarmament treaty that 122 countries voted for at the United […]

Is Germany about to retreat from the world? Berlin has become an essential advocate for liberal internationalism in recent years. But it may turn inward again. Germany has long been a payer rather than a player at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. While disbursing large quantities in foreign aid, and cautiously experimenting with stabilization missions in the Balkans and Afghanistan, Berlin generally avoided taking a real leadership role in global affairs. The priority for Berlin was always Europe, and that remains the case. But as Germany has become more powerful within the European Union, it has discovered that […]

Despite many years of effort by the United States and its NATO allies to stem opium production in Afghanistan, this year saw a record crop. Drug production is an integral component of Afghanistan’s complex and seemingly intractable problems. Not only does opium directly support the Taliban, which taxes its manufacture and transportation, it also undercuts broader attempts to stem corruption and expand the legal Afghan economy. As often happens in today’s interconnected security environment, Afghanistan’s security issues are not contained within its borders. The transportation of Afghan opium funds extremists across Central Asia and threatens governments in that part of […]