Latest Archive

On March 10, at a regular session of the Joint Consultative Group of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, the Russian delegation declared that Moscow was suspending its further participation in the group’s meetings. With the declaration, Russia completed its de facto withdrawal from the most comprehensive conventional arms control treaty in history—one that took decades to negotiate and was a symbol of the end of the Cold War. But the effects of that withdrawal are mostly symbolic, since the treaty has been doubly overtaken by events: The Cold War is long over, and Russia already stopped complying with […]

In 2000, diplomats at the United Nations adopted eight development goals aimed at poverty reduction, education, nutrition, gender equality and safeguarding the environment in the world’s poorest countries. An impressive consortium of governments, multilateral organizations, philanthropic foundations, nongovernmental organizations and even celebrities answered the U.N.’s call to implement the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the past 15 years, partly due to the MDGs agenda, progress was made on a wide range of these development challenges: Extreme poverty was cut in half; deaths from malaria and tuberculosis were drastically reduced; millions of people gained access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight […]

Last week, former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed was convicted on terrorism charges. In an email interview, Maryiam Shiuna, the executive director of Transparency Maldives, discussed the impact of Nasheed’s conviction on the Maldives’ domestic and foreign policy. WPR: What is the background to the current case involving former President Mohamed Nasheed? Mariyam Shiuna: President Nasheed was elected following the historic presidential election in 2008—the country’s first free and fair election. Despite the gains following the democratic transition, authoritarian enclaves continued to exist within institutional frameworks, and Nasheed’s administration was faced with numerous economic, social and political challenges. Protests in January […]

Last week was an auspicious time for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to culminate his three-country tour around the Indian Ocean with the first visit by an Indian leader to Sri Lanka in three decades. Given the island nation’s shifting political landscape following the surprising defeat of its two-term president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in early January, the milestone represented by Modi’s visit Friday and Saturday was further amplified by the trip’s geopolitical importance. Under Rajapaksa’s leadership, Sri Lanka ended a civil war that lasted nearly three decades. But his rule was plagued by corruption, nepotism, the centralization of power and increasingly […]

The United States sent its European allies some stern signals about their obligations to the American-led international order last week. On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power visited Brussels, where she warned NATO members to halt their “dangerous” defense cuts and called on European powers to offer more troops to United Nations peace operations. Power argued that European armies, which currently provide less than 10 percent of all U.N. peacekeepers worldwide, could have a “momentum-shifting” impact on beleaguered blue helmet missions in trouble spots such as South Sudan. Instead, she underlined, “European countries have drawn back from peacekeeping,” […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atanbayev in St. Petersburg today, his first public appearance since March 5, when he held a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Moscow. Between then and now, Putin canceled several important meetings, including one intended to mend relations with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev and another with representatives of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia. Putin offered no explanation for his lengthiest absence since 2012, saying only, “It would be dull without gossip.” Atanbayev also made a point of telling the media that Putin had personally driven him […]

In the modern security environment, insurgency is the strategy of choice for violent extremists. Even so, the United States insists on clinging to an outdated concept of insurgency steeped more in the anti-colonial struggles of the Cold War than the fluid battlefields where movements like the self-declared Islamic State (IS), Boko Haram and the al-Qaida affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa lurk. During the Cold War, the most dangerous insurgencies blended a leftist ideology with nationalism. This combination gave revolutionary insurgency its reach, appealing to more supporters and recruits than either leftism or nationalism alone could have done. […]

In late February, after several years of negotiations, Israel and Jordan signed arguably their biggest bilateral agreement since their historic 1994 peace accord: a deal for shared management of fresh water. The landmark agreement calls for construction of a new desalination plant near Jordan’s Red Sea coast, which will distribute purified seawater to parched southern communities in both countries. Meanwhile, several hundred miles to the north, Israel will begin shipping water into Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, via a new cross-border pipeline from the Sea of Galilee, a fresh-water lake. Hailed as a triumph of […]

Last month, India signed a nuclear energy deal with Sri Lanka. In an email interview, Saurav Jha, an independent energy consultant in India, discussed India’s civilian nuclear export industry. WPR: What is the extent (expertise, dollar value, market access) of India’s civil nuclear export industry, and how has that evolved since the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal? Saurav Jha: There are no Indian exports of nuclear power-generating equipment to any country at the moment, aside from a few components. The highest-value nuclear-related export by India currently is heavy water—India is the world’s top producer—to countries such as South Korea and the […]

After last month’s election in Lesotho produced no clear winner, the opposition Democratic Congress formed a coalition with six smaller parties. In an email interview, Dimpho Motsamai, a policy analyst and researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, discussed Lesotho’s election. WPR: What are the political implications of the indecisive election outcome, both for the incoming government and Lesotho more broadly? Dimpho Motsamai: Lesotho’s government is formed on a constitutional requirement of a party winning 50 percent plus 1 of a total of 120 seats in the House of Assembly. The constitution also demands that a government […]

Of the 10 countries with the highest homicide rates, eight are in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region is likewise home to 34 of the world’s 50 most violent cities. The social and economic impacts of those levels of crime are massive, and, as a result, governments and private sectors in Mexico, Brazil and, more recently, Guatemala and El Salvador are looking for new solutions. They have sought advice from two familiar sources in American policing: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton. Giuliani, and even more so Bratton, are […]

SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates—Demands for democratic reform in the Arab world over the past five years have met with a range of responses. In most of the countries where a wave of uprisings toppled regimes beginning in December 2010, the process and its aftermath proved traumatic. In some cases it has been devastating. The segment of the Arab world that survived the fury of pro-democracy revolts most effectively was the one ruled by monarchs, whether kings, princes or emirs. These countries have been mostly able to withstand the winds of revolution, at times by accommodating demands for democracy with modest […]

More than ever, Iraq’s Sunnis remain ground zero in the struggle that is being waged against the so-called Islamic State (IS). Recent military successes by the international coalition formed by the United States last summer to counter the jihadis through the intercession of local fighters—particularly Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish militias—make it clear that the war’s outcome will in large part be determined on the battlefield. But any defeat of IS, which arose and has been fed principally by the failure of political powers to grasp the scale of the problem in time, must include a political component addressing Sunni grievances […]

On Monday, 47 GOP senators published an open letter warning Iran’s leadership that any deal on Tehran’s nuclear program concluded solely on the basis of U.S. President Barack Obama’s executive authority would remain vulnerable to being reversed by future congressional and presidential action. While impolitic and a breach of the long-standing protocol that the White House is the primary American interlocutor with foreign governments, the letter starkly and bluntly lays out a series of constitutional and political arguments to make its case. What impact will the letter have on the down-to-the-wire negotiations to reach a substantive political accord with Iran […]

Last week, the European Union launched a review of its European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), its instrument for engaging with non-member states along the bloc’s edge from Eastern Europe to North Africa. Announced by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the commissioner responsible for ENP and enlargement negotiations, Johannes Hahn, the consultation process will review the ENP’s underlying principles and scope as well as the tools at its disposal. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had promised a review of the policy within his first year in office. The ENP, established in 2004, governs the EU’s relations with 16 countries […]

Since taking office in 2011 after decades of iron-fisted military rule, Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has faced the challenge of opening up a country long closed to the outside world and delivering on the promise of domestic reform. But it faces major security obstacles, too, in the long-running ethnic rebellions on its borders with India and China, one of which escalated last month in clashes that killed more than 50 Myanmarese troops and 70 Kokang rebels in northern Myanmar. The Kokang and other ethnic rebels have fought for greater autonomy, federalism or control over natural resources in their corners of Myanmar […]

The Ninth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which begins next month, promises to be much more contentious than the previous 5-year review conference held in 2010. However, with a good game plan both before and during the conference, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration can limit the damage to U.S. interests and the nonproliferation regime. Such a game plan should include reaffirming Washington’s commitment to eventual nuclear disarmament; highlighting the United States’ NPT-related achievements in some areas, even if admittedly limited; focusing attention on long-term future possibilities rather than past failures; blaming the relevant responsible actors for missed […]