Global Archive

What should international peacemakers read this summer? There are lots of new studies of conflict out there, but I would start with the classic folk story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Most readers will be familiar with the tale, in which the young girl Goldilocks stumbles into a bear’s house while the bears are out and finds three bowls of porridge on the breakfast table. One is too hot, and another too cold. But the third is “just right,” so she eats it. This leaves the bears quite miffed upon their return. Academics often refer to a “Goldilocks Principle” to […]

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that if elected, he might withdraw the United States from NATO largely because, in his words, the other member states “aren’t paying their bills.” At the time, this didn’t receive as much attention as Trump’s other statements on the campaign trail. Candidate Trump said so many peculiar, often offensive things that this one got lost in the shuffle, and few people at the time thought that he stood a chance of winning the election anyway. Even his supporters assumed that if he did, he would temper his more extreme positions once […]

Among the European countries that watched with great concern when President Donald Trump failed to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, and when he lambasted NATO and the European Union earlier in his trip to the continent, was Macedonia. The Balkan nation of 2 million people has been trying for years to gain entrance into NATO, to the great irritation of Russia. One could excuse the Macedonians for feeling a sense of confusion about what the future holds. The country has had much to celebrate in recent weeks, but also a great deal to worry about. During […]

The Finnish government took a significant gamble when it agreed to host today’s Helsinki summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The Russian president’s meeting with his American counterpart threw U.S. and European analysts into a panic. Even relatively optimistic commentators predicted that the event would be a waste of time. Pessimists feared Putin would use it to extract major concessions from Trump on Syria or Ukraine. Finland has risked being associated with a debacle over which, despite being a good host, it has no substantive control. Why has it done so? Many observers have assumed that the Finns simply […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the NATO summit and the implications of U.S. President Donald Trump’s disruptive approach to the alliance. For the Report, Nanjala Nyabola talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu’s struggle to get her internationally acclaimed film, “Rafiki”—a love story between two women—screened in her native country, and the social and legal implications for Kenya’s film industry and creative community. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our […]

Can big ideas, big data and even bigger academic books save the global system? It is now conventional wisdom that international institutions are facing an almost existential crisis. The U.S. president regularly disparages multilateral mechanisms. China and Russia want to roll back many liberal norms. This is a bleak scenario for academics and pundits who believe in international cooperation. Under the circumstances, bright scholars of foreign policy would seem well advised to study realpolitik and interstate war, not how countries can get along better. Yet counterintuitively, the current political crisis in global cooperation is coinciding with a small surge in […]

In a period of heightened tensions at the United Nations and other multilateral organizations, diplomats are spending a lot of time arguing about truth and facts. Last week, representatives to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, debated a British motion that the body should not merely probe technical aspects of incidents involving chemical weapons use but also identify perpetrators. The proposal passed with support from three-quarters of the organization’s members. But Russia resisted the idea, and powers including China and India also opposed it. Moscow does not want international investigators blaming its allies in Syria for […]