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In late March, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, became the first head of state from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to visit India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office last year. The visit came at a time when India is looking to renegotiate its long-term gas contracts with Qatar, given the opening up of other sources of supply around the world. Qatar is still India’s primary liquefied natural gas supplier and also hosts 600,000 Indian nationals, most of whom work as migrant laborers, which in recent years has led to India extending security guarantees to its […]

South Korean President Park Geun-hye left Thursday for Colombia, the first stop on her weeklong tour of Latin America, which includes stops in Peru, Chile and Brazil. In an email interview, Juan Felipe Lopez Aymes, a researcher at the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, discussed South Korea’s ties with Latin America. WPR: Who are South Korea’s main partners in Latin America, and what are the main areas of cooperation and investment? Juan Felipe Lopez Aymes: Trade and investment between South Korea and Latin America has increased in the past decade. Mexico is the […]

One of the most salient criticisms of U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent overtures to Iran and Cuba is that neither country, as a condition for engagement, has agreed to undertake fundamental reforms of their internal political systems or alter the general direction of their foreign policies. Indeed, the leaders of both countries have claimed victory in defying those types of demands. In theory, this need not be a setback. When Richard Nixon traveled to China in 1972, Mao Zedong did not repudiate his ideology, release any political prisoners or make any commitment to pursuing liberal political or economic reforms. Nixon, […]

The iconic 1957 Times headline “Heavy Fog in Channel – Continent Cut Off” once aptly captured the United Kingdom’s sense of its unique place in the world. In the British popular imagination, the U.K.’s cultural differences from the rest of Europe extend to its politics. Whereas politics on the continent is based on what Britons see as messy compromises, shifting alliances and hidden coalition deals sealed before the votes are even counted, British parliamentary democracy, embedded in a winner-take-all electoral system, rests on the clarity and legitimacy of a binary choice. When disgruntled, voters can simply “throw the bums out” […]

Last month, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini announced that the EU and Cuba had agreed to accelerate talks on establishing a cooperation agreement to normalize ties, which would hopefully be signed by the end of the year. Mogherini was in Havana for the third round of talks between the EU and Cuba since negotiations started up again in April 2014. The EU has tried several times in the past to negotiate a cooperation agreement with Cuba, first in 1995 and again in 2000, but talks have always failed. On the Cuban side, one of the biggest factors preventing […]

Like the United States, Russia has been pursuing its own more limited version of a Pacific pivot. Most often President Vladimir Putin has led this campaign, with frequent visits to the region, but Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took charge of the effort last week with a pair of two-day visits to Thailand and Vietnam. In its approach to Asia, Russia has strived to strengthen relations with China while also pursuing other partnerships to maximize Moscow’s bargaining leverage and hedge against problems in any one relationship. Russia has long-standing ties with India and has sought to improve relations with Japan, although […]

On March 30, Joan Kagezi, a senior Ugandan prosecutor, was assassinated in front of her children while on her way home from the grocery store in a Kampala suburb. Kagezi was one of the key prosecutors in the trial of 13 suspected members of the Somali militant group al-Shabab accused of perpetrating the July 2010 bombings in Kampala that killed 76 people watching a World Cup game. The start of the Kampala trial in the middle of March was a landmark in Uganda’s fight against terrorism. But now the Directorate of Public Prosecutions has lost one of its stars. With […]

The golden age of American economic primacy has ended. Two years ago, China surpassed the United States as the world’s top trading nation, and late last year it also surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power terms. China is an economic titan, but until recently, its impressive rise had not been accompanied by a vision to reshape the global economic order. However, this is beginning to change. Rather than accepting the status quo as given, Beijing is slowly working to revise foundational elements of the U.S.-led economic order. First, it has called into question the desirability […]

Clashes between the opposition and security forces continued for a second day in Guinea’s capital. In an email interview, Mohamed Saliou Camara, a professor of history and international relations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, discussed domestic politics in Guinea. WPR: What have been the major issues of contention between the government and the opposition during Guinea’s political transition back to democracy, and where do they stand in the run-up to this year’s presidential election? Mohamed Saliou Camara: Two of the major issues of contention between President Alpha Conde’s government and the opposition are national dialogue and political inclusion. Guinea returned to […]

When Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House in late March, he suggested that “one day we’ll see an Afghan woman president.” His remarks came only a few days after a scene of horror had unfolded in Kabul. A 27-year-old Afghan woman and theology student named Farkhunda had been tortured in an ordeal that lasted for two hours. Hundreds of people watched, including the police, who stood by without intervening. The enraged crowd accused her—falsely, as it turned out—of having burned a Quran. They ultimately set her on fire and tossed her […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Sarah Hearn is filling in for Richard Gowan, who is on vacation this week. At the end of March, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a new report about international aid and development, co-authored by myself and several colleagues at New York University’s Center for International Cooperation. The report, titled “States of Fragility 2015: Meeting Post-2015 Ambitions,” comes ahead of the United Nations Summit on the Post-2015 Development Agenda in September this year, which will adopt a new set of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when […]

Earlier this month, Pakistan approved a deal to buy eight Chinese submarines, in what would be China’s largest-ever arms deal. In an email interview, Joseph E. Lin, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed China’s defense exports. WPR: What are China’s main defense exports, and who are the biggest buyers of Chinese defense equipment? Joseph E. Lin: In the past, China’s primary defense exports were a combination of small arms and light armored vehicles, sold mostly to countries in Africa or the Middle East. In recent years, however, there has been a qualitative shift in […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of $20 million in financing for private investment in Caribbean clean energy projects at a meeting yesterday with the region’s leaders in Kingston, Jamaica, comes at a good time: After a lost decade, during which easy access to cheap Venezuelan oil undermined incentives to seek alternative sources, the Caribbean now faces long-deferred decisions on how it sources and uses energy. The slump in global oil prices has hit Venezuela’s economy hard, threatening its Petrocaribe trade program, established by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005 to sell subsidized oil and diesel to the group’s […]

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a diplomatic framework designed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Opposition to the negotiations in Washington, which was intense all along, exploded, soon collapsing into near-hysteria. Critics compared the framework to the 1938 Munich agreement—the widely accepted gold standard for weakness and appeasement. Opposition to the Iran framework agreement has many sources. One of the most important is that, after several decades with no major arms control agreements, the American public and its elected representatives no longer understand the complex and often counterintuitive logic of arms control. Paradoxically, the more hostile and […]

This week, the United States found itself in a brief and unusual diplomatic spat with its normally quiet NATO ally, the Czech Republic. The U.S. ambassador in Prague, Andrew Schapiro, criticized Czech President Milos Zeman for saying he would attend the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. The mainly ceremonial president’s announcement infuriated not only the U.S., but many Czechs, including Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, since it came despite the European Union’s ongoing sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Today, Zeman changed course, announcing that he would not be […]

Gabon hardly ever makes headlines outside of the French-language press, so it’s little surprise that the storm brewing over this small, oil-rich country on the west coast of Central Africa for the past few months has received little attention. Yet all indicators point to political turbulence ahead in the run-up to Gabon’s next presidential election, which is scheduled for mid-2016, given a series of protests and strikes, including a teachers’ union strike that has paralyzed Gabon’s education system since February. The growing social unrest has affected Gabon’s economy, with its health, petroleum and telecommunications sectors all feeling the impact; in […]

The Summit of the Americas, opening in Panama on Friday, was where U.S. President Barack Obama planned to mark a turning point in U.S. relations with Latin America, highlighting a tangible example of his foreign policy legacy. Obama had hoped to bask in the triumph of his new Cuba policy. Instead, the event is likely to prove much more diplomatically ambiguous and challenging, both for the United States and the almost three-dozen hemispheric leaders attending the forum. Undoubtedly, the main event, the one garnering the most headlines and the most indelible images, will be the one that brings together Obama […]