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President Barack Obama’s delayed visit to East Asia—finally carried out this month after domestic politics forced him to skip key summits last fall—was supposed to highlight America’s seriousness about rebalancing its foreign policy attention to the Asia-Pacific region. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, spoiled the narrative, as the ongoing crisis in Ukraine continues to suck up most of the oxygen of the U.S. foreign policy process. Unlike earlier Obama peregrinations overseas, this trip did not generate blockbuster headlines or do much to burnish U.S. global leadership. Some pundits are already writing off the entire “pivot” to Asia as a failed […]

Over decades of authoritarian rule in Egypt, and into the recent years of upheaval, one segment of the state enjoyed a reputation for maintaining a considerable degree of independence. In contrast to much of the governing structure, the Egyptian judiciary was willing to challenge the powerful. Its decisions were guided to a large extent by the concept of rule of law. All that is now a thing of the past. On Monday, an Egyptian judge in the governorate of Minya sentenced to death 680 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the group’s top leader. It was a jaw-dropping verdict, reached […]

In mid-April, unions across Argentina called a general strike in protest of high inflation and taxes, bringing the country to a standstill for 24 hours. In an email interview, Maria Victoria Murillo, a political science professor at Columbia University who has researched labor politics in Latin America, explained the role of labor unions in Argentine politics. WPR: What has been the recent trajectory of labor unions’ role in Argentina’s politics? Maria Victoria Murillo: Labor unions have always been crucial actors of Argentine politics since the emergence of Peronism—the vaguely defined populist ideology of former Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron—in the […]

China and Russia have launched a global campaign to regulate content on the Internet that, if successful, would slowly destroy cyberspace as a means of self-expression, freedom and unregulated speech. While they are still far from achieving their goals, Moscow and Beijing sense an opportunity in the outraged reaction to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks to change the global conversation and continue nudging stakeholders in the direction of censorship as the universal default norm. The Russian and Chinese governments already heavily regulate the Internet at home, but they are increasingly seeking to use international forums, organizations and […]