Briefing Archive

The United States has mostly avoided in Africa the costly mistakes it made in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that is to continue, a good understanding of internal developments and issues in African countries will be crucial. Until now, the United States’ primary concern in Mali has been the jihadist insurgency in the northern and central parts of the country. A secondary priority was the promotion of democracy, which translated into an emphasis on regular, credible elections. With the military coup this summer—Mali’s second in less than a decade—and with mounting attacks by jihadists, that policy is not working. The current […]

PRAGUE—Last month, a Slovakian tycoon accused of masterminding the assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018—a murder that profoundly transformed Slovakian politics—was acquitted by a special criminal court in Bratislava, the capital. The surprising verdict in what Michal Vasecka, a sociologist at the Bratislava Policy Institute, calls “the most followed trial in the history of Slovakia,” has been met with “anger and disbelief,” he says. Many Slovaks see the acquittal of Marian Kocner as a major setback in the government’s campaign to rid the small Central European nation of its endemic corruption. “It seems that the apparent plotters of […]

Italy’s largest opposition party, the populist and far-right League, turned in a poor showing in regional and local elections last month. While its center-right coalition prevailed in three of the seven regional governorships that were up for grabs, the League’s candidate lost in traditionally leftist Tuscany, despite predictions of victory by its leader, Matteo Salvini. Overall, there was no clear winner in last month’s elections, but the center-left Democratic Party, or PD, performed well, as did the neo-fascist Brothers of Italy, which took control of the central Marche region. Salvini, a former deputy prime minister and interior minister who was […]

At a jubilant rally one recent evening in the town of Geita, in northwestern Tanzania, Tundu Lissu sang along to Bob Marley’s “One Love” as he looked out on the sun setting over a sea of cheering supporters. The opposition firebrand is running to replace incumbent President John Magufuli in a general election later this month; he has been on the campaign trail since late August, drawing massive crowds at each stop. “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve looked people in the eye,” Lissu told World Politics Review in an interview. “Everywhere I’ve gone, people are so happy. It’s unbelievable, and it’s […]

For nearly 75 years, the United States and Mexico have transferred giant quantities of water to each other each year as part of a system set up to ensure the equitable sharing of water sheds that straddle their border. The terms and obligations are clearly laid out in a treaty the two sides signed in 1944: The U.S. sends 489 billion gallons of water southward via the Colorado River, and Mexico allocates 114 billion gallons northward, from the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. To deal with the technical aspects of this water exchange and settle any issues, the two […]

BEIRUT—With yet another failed attempt to form a government and no replacement in sight, Lebanon’s future is looking a lot like its bleak past. The prime minister-designate, Mustapha Adib, resigned in late September after nearly a month of fruitless talks to create a Cabinet of technocrats. French President Emmanuel Macron had publicly backed that process, which came on the heels of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s resignation following the Aug. 4 port explosion that devastated parts of Beirut.* Nonetheless, Lebanon’s politicians are still mired in a dispute over control of the powerful Finance Ministry, as the economy collapses and the social […]

The Mediterranean Sea is still the principal corridor for migrants trying to enter the European Union, and Italy is in effect its front door. Hundreds of thousands of people have attempted this risky maritime route, often paying a deadly toll, including well before the migrant and refugee crisis of 2015. Between 1993 and 2018, around 27,000 people drowned at sea in the Mediterranean. But war, desperation and the hope for a better future keep pushing migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and further afield, to embark on this perilous voyage. The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t deterred them, […]

Latin America and Japan are often thought of as only loosely connected, through a patchwork of free trade agreements and people-to-people ties. But this summer, Chile finalized a deal that indicates a significant convergence of geostrategic interests between Japan and the Americas. After much deliberation, Chile chose an undersea route, backed by Japan, for the first direct fiber-optic cable link between South America and the Asia-Pacific. The Japanese proposal traverses 13,000 kilometers from Chile across the Pacific Ocean—more than 8,000 miles—eventually connecting with existing undersea cables between Japan and Oceania. The new trans-Pacific route would utilize a link between Japan […]

The recent bombshell report from The New York Times—which obtained more than two decades’ worth of President Donald Trump’s tax returns, including from the first two years of his presidency—offered a number of remarkable details, from how little Trump has paid in income taxes to the staggering $421 million in debt that he has personally guaranteed. Yet perhaps the most concerning revelations from the Times’ report centered on a topic long central to Trump’s rise, and to his presidency: foreign money. The tax returns didn’t reveal any new information about potential financing from Russia, a question that has long stalked […]

Political scientist Ian Bremmer remarked in a Twitter post in July that the relationship between the United States and China has “way too much (mostly economic) interdependence” for there to be a new Cold War. Instead, he posited, “It’s a failed marriage with the family still living together. How the kids turn out is an open question.” The “kids” in this analogy are the small and mid-sized open economies of the Asia-Pacific—countries that depend as much on the U.S. for technology and national security as they do on China to buy their exports. A prime example is New Zealand, which […]

The historically close relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia hit a snag recently over differences in how to address India’s decision last year to revoke the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state that is also claimed by Pakistan. Pakistani officials had repeatedly urged Saudi Arabia to convene a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, to discuss Kashmir, to no avail. Finally, in early August, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing Riyadh. Appearing on a TV talk show, he threatened to “call a meeting of the Islamic countries […]