United States Archive

In this week’s episode, the second of two special editions of Trend Lines, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, examine the various ways of trying to assess Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy, and how the prism that is used influences the conclusions that are drawn. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: The Foreign Policy Legacy of Barack Obama Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. Listeners of the Trend Lines […]

Human rights organizations have become alarmed that, according to documents leaked to Reuters, U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order suspending Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. The rule requires companies to disclose whether their products contain the so-called 3TG conflict minerals—gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin—seen as critical drivers of the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Advocates of the rule, which went into effect in 2014, contend that conflict minerals, which the U.N. has called the “engine of the conflict” in Congo, provide hundreds of millions of dollars to armed groups, which […]

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump took intransigent stands on several prominent issues, notably immigration and trade. But he also said he was “totally flexible on very, very many issues,” leaving considerable ambiguity about where he would take the United States on a range of domestic and foreign policies. He was silent, for example, on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for counterterrorism. He did say in November 2015 that he “would bomb the hell out of” the self-proclaimed Islamic State, but the U.S.-led coalition has done plenty of that. Since it began hitting targets in Iraq and […]

Are Antonio Guterres and Nikki Haley set to be New York’s new power couple? The future of the United Nations may rest on the duo’s personal and political chemistry. Guterres has only been U.N. secretary-general since the start of the year, and Haley began work as U.S. representative to the U.N. last week. But diplomats are watching both of them like hawks—and like what they see so far. Guterres is a bundle of energy, intent on energizing the U.N. Secretariat after an era of enforced lethargy under Ban Ki-moon. Haley is a voice of calm, signaling to her foreign counterparts […]

No matter whether President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries is called a “temporary suspension” or, as Trump himself labeled it, a “ban,” it has caused furor both inside the United States and abroad. Even putting aside the morality of the policy, its hard-to-understand inclusion of some predominantly Muslim nations but not others, and the bizarre way it was developed and rolled out, it is having a major effect on America’s global security, much of it negative. While the entry ban might be good domestic politics for Trump, it defies the time-tested […]

The Trump administration has signaled that it is likely to scale back traditional U.S. development assistance programs in sub-Saharan Africa and favor more commercial engagement with the continent. That shift was evident in a four-page list of questions distributed to the State Department last month before Donald Trump’s inauguration. The questions relayed skepticism from the Trump transition team about some U.S. aid programs and security policies in Africa, while asking, for example, “How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we losing out to the Chinese?” Paradoxically, such a shift could be healthy for America’s relationship with […]

In this week’s episode, the first of two special editions of Trend Lines, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, take a detailed look at former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy by examining some of his successes and failures over his eight years in office. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. Listeners of the Trend Lines podcast who […]

When Barack Obama became president of the United States in 2009, few would have guessed that he would be followed by an administration touting nationalism and protectionism. Yet eight years later, with Donald Trump as president, the United States appears to be abandoning Obama’s vision of America as a global partner and the leader of the liberal international order. What happened? World Politics Review has compiled 24 articles that trace Obama’s foreign policy legacy and what it means for the Trump era. The following 24 articles are free to nonsubscribers until Feb. 16. Where It All Began Sworn in during […]

Last week, when tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto, boiled over, Latin American leaders followed the news with great interest. As they strategized about the way forward under the new U.S. administration, the signals from Washington confirmed their fears that the Trump administration will unleash new headwinds for a region where many countries are facing mounting difficulties. The spectacle of watching a fellow Latin American nation berated and, in many people’s opinion, insulted by the man in the White House produced a wave of diplomatic reactions. But more than anything, it spurred a […]

Is the United States ripe for a Color Revolution? Is it already in the midst of one? If so, who are the democratic revolutionaries and who the illegitimate usurpers? Back in September, when I wrote about eroding faith in government undermining political legitimacy in the U.S., I said that a broader unraveling was unlikely. At the time, police killings of black Americans had triggered protests in many cities across the country, but those demonstrations had remained largely peaceful. The demonstrations that sprung up spontaneously over the weekend at a number of American airports to protest President Donald Trump’s entry ban […]

The massacre at a Quebec City mosque on Sunday has taken a backseat to a news cycle dominated on the other side of the border by the turbulent start of Donald Trump’s presidency. The shooting, which killed six worshippers and injured 19 more, followed the implementation of Trump’s executive order to bar individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. In response to Trump’s travel ban, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media on Saturday to declare that Canada’s arms were open to any rejected refugees unable to enter the United States. The following evening, 27-year-old Alexandre […]