Newsletter Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. The usual rush by an outgoing administration in Washington to tie up loose ends at the end of its term is, not surprisingly, taking on a different tone with President Donald Trump. In the Middle East, the Trump administration is racing to seal last-minute diplomatic deals and lock in its so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. When the huge Pacific Rim trade deal formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership was first proposed, many Chinese observers saw it as a U.S. attempt to economically contain and exclude China. They worried that, with a new, American-led trade bloc surrounding China, Chinese exports would become less attractive throughout Asia. Because of the TPP’s rigorous terms as a high-standard trade deal, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. Plainclothes security agents showed up at a beach resort in the Sinai last week, looking for Karim Ennarah, the director of the criminal justice unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based NGO. Egyptian state security officers had apparently looked for Ennarah at his home in Cairo the day before, only to learn he […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. The decades-long dispute between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in the region of Western Sahara is threatening to erupt into a full-blown war. Frustrated by the lack of international attention to its cause and angered by a recent Moroccan military operation in a United Nations-monitored buffer zone, the Polisario Front broke a three-decade-long cease-fire agreement last weekend. U.N. officials are scrambling to restore the broken deal, as […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. Sealed at a virtual signing ceremony Sunday, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, now the world’s largest trading bloc, has been eight years in the making. It encompasses the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—and five of their major trading partners, in Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. Nov. 13 marked a grim milestone in Syria: 50 years since Hafez al-Assad, then a young Alawite air force officer from the coastal hills outside Latakia, seized power in a bloodless coup. At the time, it was just the latest in a string of coups and countercoups in Damascus—starting with the Arab world’s first military putsch […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. With the conflict between Ethiopian troops and forces from the northern Tigray region rapidly escalating this week, more than 14,500 refugees from the region have flooded into neighboring Sudan. United Nations officials are now warning of a looming humanitarian crisis. But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is resisting international calls for de-escalation and negotiation until leaders of the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, have been captured […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. Although Chinese leader Xi Jinping still has not yet issued a statement or called to congratulate Joe Biden on his election win over Donald Trump, prominent commentators in China are already discussing what his presidency means for U.S.-China relations. Trump is still mounting dubious legal challenges to the election’s outcome, and has now embarked on a purge of the Pentagon, getting […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. One of the few countries that waited a conspicuously long time to congratulate Joe Biden on his election win over Donald Trump was Saudi Arabia. King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, finally issued a statement, via the Saudi state news agency, applauding President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, more than 24 […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Africa Watch by email every week. Ethiopia’s military declared it has “entered into a war” with leaders of the northern Tigray region Thursday, escalating a conflict that could tear apart Africa’s second-most populous country and destabilize the Horn of Africa. Troops from across the country are reportedly massing at the border of Tigray in response to what Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said was a deadly attack this week on a federal military camp, which […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. Last week, the Communist Party’s Central Committee held one of the most important events on China’s political calendar, meeting for its fifth plenum. From Oct. 26 to 29, the conclave of senior party officials discussed the blueprint of the country’s 14th five-year plan and set out long-range objectives for 2035. Those who are tracking policy aims that have been set out […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. I watched Barack Obama win America’s presidency from Damascus. I still remember when the race was called, on whatever international news network was carried on satellite TV in Syria, sometime in the middle of the night. Seven months later, Obama traveled to Cairo, to give a major speech to the Arab world. Although its promise of […]