Briefing Archive

LIMA, Peru—After little more than a year in office, Peru’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, faces an uphill battle to realize his agenda of ramping up economic growth in order to reduce poverty and follow through on other campaign promises. Can PPK, as he is known in Peru, deliver? Kuczynski has faced some unexpected challenges over the past year. His administration was forced to funnel approximately $6.2 billion of federal funds into reconstruction of areas devastated by El Nino-linked floods in March, which Kuczynski says reduced economic growth this year by 2 percent. The administration is also struggling to restart major […]

Earlier this summer, Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet in an attempt to repair the image of his suddenly beleaguered government, which has been hit by a series of corruption scandals. After four years of soaring, and seemingly unassailable, approval ratings, Abe has finally seen chinks in his armor, as questions even rise about his ability to serve out a third term as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. If Abe loses the grip on his own party, his goal of staying as prime minister through the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo—and becoming Japan’s longest-serving […]

Two years ago, Guatemalans succeeded in pushing then-President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxanna Baldetti out of office for corruption, thanks to the help of the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG. Through its investigations, which brought thousands of protesters out into the streets, the commission found that Perez Molina’s administration had led a high-level graft ring, taking bribes from international businesses rather than collecting taxes for the state. Both leaders are currently in prison. It was an unprecedented moment of accountability for a country that suffers from high rates of impunity. But it was just […]

From the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump had a clear and consistent culprit for many of America’s problems: China. As he pronounced from the lobby of Trump Tower when declaring his candidacy in 2015, the American dream was dead and China, a currency manipulator and intellectual property poacher, had killed it. It was a strange location for that statement, perhaps, since Trump Tower’s biggest office tenant is a major state-controlled Chinese bank. But then again, perhaps the irony suits. Despite overtures of collaboration with Beijing to counter North Korea, Trump has reinvigorated his China critique as president. Announcing […]

Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich’s visit to Washington in early August was just the latest sign of the remarkable progress made in security ties between the United States and Vietnam over the past decade. But it also underscored the limits of how much Hanoi is willing to cozy up to Washington today, and how unconvinced it remains of the Trump administration’s commitment to Asia. The trip exemplified Hanoi’s multidirectional foreign policy, which rests on maintaining strong relations with many outside partners to avoid dominance by any one, and of how that strategy is evolving to face the growing threat […]

Lately, it seems that every week Germany’s ties with Turkey hit another low point, and there are few signs of this trend reversing any time soon. The latest escalation came with the arrest last week of Dogan Akhanli, a Turkish-born German writer on vacation in Spain, following a warrant issued by Turkey. German officials decried the move as politically motivated and warned that the Turkish government may be using the multinational police organization Interpol to pursue political opponents abroad. Akhanli’s detention is the most recent in a string of arrests of German citizens both in Turkey and abroad. Since the […]

Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has run an erratic foreign policy, failing to deliver a clear and consistent message to allies and enemies alike. So, when the State Department decided to cut and withhold a combined $295 million in economic and military aid to Egypt last week, despite exceedingly warm relations between Trump and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, many were once again left scratching their heads. For nearly a year, Trump has been an ardent supporter of the regime in Cairo, ending an era of rough-and-tumble relations between Egypt and the Obama administration. Sisi, for his part, was […]