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Earlier this month, Senegal’s foreign minister announced that the country was sending 2,100 troops to Saudi Arabia to participate in the coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen. In an email interview, Alex Thurston, a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University, discussed Senegal-Saudi ties. WPR: How extensive are bilateral ties between Senegal and Saudi Arabia, and what has been their trajectory in recent years? Alex Thurston: Senegal and Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations in 1961, following Senegal’s independence the previous year. The bilateral relationship has been strong. Senegal joined the Saudi-backed Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 1969, the year of […]

In the run-up to the June 30 deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran, alarmists in Washington, Tel Aviv and elsewhere are again warning of an imminent race to nuclear weapons capabilities in the Middle East—one that will occur in the guise of peaceful nuclear programs, as countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey all rush to construct their first nuclear power plants. But the logic of chain-reaction proliferation in the Middle East is critically flawed. Equally flawed are assumptions that the region’s nuclear power aspirants are anywhere near having operational programs. Ambitious rhetoric aside, including Saudi Arabia’s […]

Among the many challenges facing President Barack Obama and U.S. officials meeting with Gulf Arab leaders this week, one has abruptly climbed to near the top of the agenda: taking the measure of the rising star of the Saudi firmament, King Salman’s son Prince Mohammed bin Salman. When the delegates from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—which comprises Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman—gather at the presidential retreat of Camp David for the already troubled summit, U.S. officials will channel a significant portion of their energy toward Prince Mohammed. They will be hoping to develop ties […]

Burundi is in the midst of a deepening political crisis that has many observers worried about the prospects of mass violence. Dozens of people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have fled in recent weeks. On Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Godefroid Niyombare launched a coup attempt against President Pierre Nkurunziza. World Politics Review partnered with the Global Dispatches podcast to produce this interview with WPR contributor Jonathan W. Rosen on the situation in the East African country. Rosen, speaking from Kigali, Rwanda, where he is reporting on the evolving situation, is interviewed by Global Dispatches host Mark Leon […]

In the first few months of 2014, people around the world were united in their condemnation of India’s Supreme Court. At the end of 2013, in a case that became known simply as Koushal, the court refused to strike down Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era provision banning “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The court argued it was the job of Parliament, not judges, to repeal controversial laws and, in doing so, effectively recriminalized non-heterosexual sex. The decision rolled back decades of small but hard-fought gains by India’s legally, socially and culturally marginalized lesbian, gay, […]

It’s kind of a tough week to start a new column on U.S. foreign policy. There’s just not much going on these days. The Iran nuclear debate has moved to the back burner as the P5+1 and Tehran try to hammer out the final details of a nuclear pact. The U.S. war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) is continuing apace, but with no horrifying images of American journalists being beheaded, it’s an issue that has largely fallen off the front pages. For about two days people were once again talking about drones and targeted killings, after an American unmanned […]

Last month, India announced plans to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France, though a final deal has yet to be signed. In an email interview, Iskander Rehman, a nonresident fellow in the South Asia Program at the Atlantic Council, discussed India’s air force. WPR: What are the current size, capabilities and combat readiness of the Indian air force? Iskander Rehman: On paper, the Indian air force is a large, well-balanced and modern service, whose fighter pilots are considered to be some of the most-capable and well-trained in the world. Recently, however, concerns have grown over the air force’s continued […]

Japan’s postwar constitution, promulgated in 1947 under U.S. occupation, has shaped the country’s international role ever since. But now that may be changing. Since assuming office for the second time in December 2012, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has implemented a rapid succession of security policy reforms. Abe’s efforts to refocus Japan’s attention on its defense needs and adopt policies that have long been seen as taboo have drawn global attention. Japan’s immediate neighbors have decried these reforms, citing their still sensitive World War II-era memories of a very different Japanese military. South Korea has been especially critical of Abe’s […]

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany is how much Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized their two countries’ historical and other ties. Although Russian and Chinese officials no longer profess ideological solidarity based on a shared Marxist-Leninist ideology, their statements have displayed a remarkable harmony of ideas and expression. In practice, their political systems also more closely resemble each other, exposing shared vulnerabilities. Chinese presidents had attended Victory Day parades in 2005 and 2010, but this […]

When a democratically elected president is forcibly removed from power and sentenced to prison less than two years later, the optics alone are troubling. Thus, when Egypt’s former President Mohammed Morsi was sentenced to 20 years in prison last month, along with dozens of other former Morsi regime officials, some of whom received the death penalty, Egyptian and international legal experts rightfully questioned the impartiality of the judges presiding over the cases. Such concerns are corroborated by the recent sentencing of deposed President Hosni Mubarak to a mere three years in prison—roughly equivalent to his time already served—for embezzling over […]

Earlier this month, Azerbaijan’s separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region held parliamentary elections, which were denounced by Azerbaijan, the European Union and the United States. In an email interview, Laurence Broers, editor of Caucasus Survey and a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, discussed governance in Nagorno-Karabakh. WPR: What are the dominant political parties in Nagorno-Karabakh, and are their platforms locally determined or driven by broader Armenian political trends? Laurence Broers: Political parties in Nagorno-Karabakh show many of the same features as those across the wider region: Hard to distinguish ideologically, they are instead personality-driven and […]

Last week, the United Nations was thrust back into the center of international crisis management in the Arab world. In Geneva, U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura kicked off new consultations on the Syrian conflict. In New York, European diplomats worked on a Security Council resolution authorizing military measures against people-smugglers in Libya. Yemen’s government-in-exile called on the council to authorize a full-scale intervention by ground forces in its country to defeat the Houthi rebel group, which has endured six weeks of Saudi-led airstrikes. Does all this activity imply that the U.N. is still a useful mechanism for debating war and […]

After a steady decline in Islamist extremism in Southeast Asia over the past decade, during which the region shed its post-9/11 image as a possible second front for al-Qaida, the rise of the self-declared Islamic State (IS) has some governments fearing a new threat. In response, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in particular are acting individually, bilaterally and regionally to stem recruitment, radicalization and the flow of foreign fighters. Over 500 young Southeast Asians are returning home after fighting for IS, as many did during the Afghan mujahedeen’s jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Given that over […]

Last week, Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, replaced Crown Prince Muqrin—who had been chosen by Salman’s predecessor, the late King Abdullah—with 55-year-old Mohamed bin Nayef as next in line to the throne. He also installed his own 29-year-old son, Mohamed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince. The royal shuffle was presented by palace loyalists as an attempt to stabilize Saudi succession for the next few decades, consolidate power and inject what King Salman seems to believe is a greater sense of stability in the kingdom’s internal affairs. But it also marks an important shift in the monarchy’s trajectory. Although […]

Today none of America’s adversaries is close to matching the U.S. military’s capabilities, but U.S. defense leaders, both uniformed and civilian, worry that others are using advances in force-multiplying technologies to catch up. Should these opponents ever come to believe they’ve forged ahead in this race for cutting-edge capabilities, they might be tempted to resort to armed aggression, unleashing a war that would otherwise have been deterred. After all, strategic superiority is not simply a matter of who has the most troops and weapons, who spends the most on defense and who has today’s most advanced technologies. It is also […]

Canadian politics rarely draws international interest, unless a certain colorful former Toronto mayor is involved. But a snap election in the energy-rich province of Alberta this week shocked Canada and made headlines around the world. The Progressive Conservative (PC) party, which has held continuous control of the province since 1971, lost in a stunning upset to the left-of-center Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP). NDP leader Rachel Notley is set to be the premier—the equivalent of governor—of the heartland of Canadian conservatism and the home province of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose ruling Conservative Party faces tough federal elections this fall. […]

With no more elections to contest and no hope of cooperation from a Republican-controlled Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama enters his lame-duck period in office liberated from the domestic political considerations that might have constrained his foreign policy to date. As Nikolas Gvosdev suggested in his WPR column yesterday, Obama seems poised to “go transformational.” To get a sense of what that transformation might or should look like, it helps first to understand what he has tried so far. As Gvosdev noted, Obama’s first term was marked by policy tensions between the irreconcilable positions held by rival factions of his […]