Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has maintained a bipartisan consensus on New Zealand’s relationship with China, which was nurtured over decades by successive governments. In return for a lucrative trading relationship, criticism of China has remained muted. Yet Ardern has likely sensed that the public mood on China is hardening.
The Nicaraguan regime has a new target. Not content with jailing leading opposition figures, the regime has now taken aim at the Catholic Church. The message, it seems, is that there is room for only one church in this majority-Catholic country: the one that worships President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
During U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recent visit to the African continent, he unveiled a strategy document framing Washington’s new approach to relations with Africans. But the lofty ambition expressed in the document is unlikely to be realized, due to contradictions between Washington’s words and actions.
Since Brexit, the U.K. has worked to reenergize its ties with Israel, as part of its wider “Global Britain” ambitions. Last month, it launched negotiations to establish a new bilateral free trade agreement—the outcome of which will be shaped by the winner of the Conservative Party’s leadership race.
Papua New Guinea’s national elections were marred by violence and disenfranchisement, raising concerns about the state of the country’s democracy. Nevertheless, Prime Minister James Marape’s reelection is a sign of hope for the political system’s continuity. Now Marape’s task will be to meet the public’s high expectations.
Prospects for a prompt resolution of the protracted political conflict in Venezuela seem bleak. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the opportunities that may arise from recent political developments in the region, including a resurgent left no longer in thrall to Washington’s sterile “maximum pressure” campaign.
William Ruto was declared the victor in Kenya’s presidential election, which drew wide attention across the continent. His immediate task is to reunite the country after a long, divisive campaign, as national cohesion will key to tackling the country’s policy challenges and improving the quality of its political institutions.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who came into office seeking to do “less not more” in the Middle East, is increasingly using the focus on China as an excuse to again do more in the region. But using the “great power competition” frame to justify and shape U.S. engagement in the Middle East is unrealistic and likely counterproductive.
The latest conflict in the Gaza Strip has put the international spotlight on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or PIJ, the second-largest militant group in Gaza after Hamas. Despite the group’s losses in the fighting, the PIJ may have emerged politically strengthened and with its credibility as a resistance movement enhanced.
Because the Wagner Group has such an established reputation, many took claims made earlier this year that the group would deploy to Burkina Faso at face value. However, rumors about Wagner rarely square with reality. The actual evidence that the group will imminently deploy to Burkina Faso is far from conclusive.
In contrast to the reactions of some Western observers, Taiwan has remained remarkably unruffled by China’s reaction to Nancy Pelosi’s visit. From Taiwan’s point of view, China’s military display certainly represents a high-water mark in its pressure campaign, but part of a long pattern of behavior by Beijing.
As inflation rates spike and interest rates rise, many countries are facing looming sovereign debt crises. A mechanism like the G-20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, aimed at addressing what could become a global debt crisis, is becoming more important than ever—but to be effective it needs to address major shortcomings.
In these early days of the global monkeypox outbreak, it appears as though we have failed to take any lessons from earlier disease outbreaks, including the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This apparent inability or unwillingness to learn is startling, and runs the risk of weakening global health governance.
The outcome of Senegal’s legislative elections, in which President Macky Sall’s coalition lost its majority, potentially curb Sall’s rumored ambitions for a constitutionally prohibited third term. But the runup to the polls put the spotlight on the state of democracy in a West African country regarded as a regional outlier.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is using his visit to Africa to unveil Washington’s new approach to relations with the continent. That approach will be hampered by Washington’s deafness to long-standing complaints on a range of issues from many African countries, and its blindness to its own hypocrisy toward the continent.
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen will run for a second term in the country’s presidential election in October, after five years of leading the country through back-to-back crises. Scandal and tumult are now roiling other parts of the national government, and yet Austrian voters look set to reelect Van der Bellen.
For the eighth time in 11 years, voters have been called to the ballot box to weigh in on Tunisia’s future. Over the past decade, Tunisians have chosen new presidents, fresh parliaments and local representatives in peaceful elections. But last week’s referendum, which approved a new constitution, may bring an end to that civic process.