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The Russian government’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has recently risen in prominence as a concern in Washington and European capitals. What was originally an arms control issue for the United States has escalated into a major defense and security problem for all of NATO. Russia’s strategic modernization, nuclear saber-rattling and aggressive bomber patrols throughout the trans-Atlantic region have compounded the alarm over Moscow’s violation of the treaty as well as Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine. Moscow’s disregard for long-standing laws, borders and agreements demands a major re-evaluation of Russian goals and strategy. The U.S. and […]

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto hosted his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, in Mexico City late last month, where the two leaders signed an economic accord aimed at doubling trade volumes by 2025. They also talked about Brazil’s scandal-ridden state-owned oil giant Petrobras partnering with the Mexican oil company Pemex, as Mexico’s liberalized energy market opens up to joint ventures. Pena Nieto and Rousseff, who have a history of cool personal ties, finally seemed to be coming together. But when it came to speaking about the state of relations between their two countries, they were not on the same page. Pena […]

Last month, the foreign ministers of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia met in Seoul for the fifth round of so-called MIKTA foreign ministerial meeting. In an email interview, Günther Maihold, the Guillermo and Alejandro de Humboldt chair at the College of Mexico, discussed the MIKTA grouping. WPR: What was the impetus behind the creation of the MIKTA grouping, and what are the main areas of cooperation between the MIKTA countries? Günther Maihold: When the foreign ministers of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25, 2013 and […]

A series of bombings allegedly carried out by Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria during the final weekend of May, just as newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari was being sworn into office, were a grim reminder of the pressing security challenge the jihadi group still poses to Nigeria and its neighbors. Yet the attacks should not obscure the magnitude of Boko Haram’s recent defeats. Over the course of a few months, Boko Haram has reportedly lost nearly all of the over 18,000 square miles in northeastern Nigeria that it controlled in early January 2015. While reliable data on Boko Haram casualties […]

Do peacekeepers do more harm than good? An appalling abuse scandal has come to overshadow the two parallel peace operations, led by France and the United Nations, currently based in the Central African Republic (CAR). There is credible evidence that French troops made local children commit sex acts as entertainment. The U.N. appears to have, at the very best, mishandled its investigation of these crimes. To make matters worse, the U.N. announced last week that it is investigating further claims of abuse by its one of its own personnel in CAR. There are also claims that African peacekeepers were responsible […]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, elected last year after his pro-Russian predecessor Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in the Maidan uprising, delivered his first annual message to Parliament yesterday. In it, he denounced the country’s pervasive corruption and called for significant reforms, while also accusing Russia of violating the Minsk agreement that established a cease-fire in embattled eastern Ukraine in February. Poroshenko, a billionaire whose business history drew suspicion from the U.S. State Department before he took office, may seem to be an unlikely reformer. His recent battles with Ukraine’s powerful oligarchs are ostensibly about establishing the rule of law, both to […]

A popular revolution against a corrupt, authoritarian government; a new battleground between Russia and the West; an attempted coup by barely-reconstructed communists against a democratically elected government; the latest failure by a flailing, out-of-touch European Union. These are just some of the narratives swirling around Macedonia, where an apparent government wire-tapping scandal has set off a months-long political crisis. In recent weeks, the situation has even acquired an ethnic tinge, deeply unwelcome in a country that fought a brief war against ethnic Albanian insurgents in 2001. This week brought some respite, with an EU-brokered deal to hold early elections by […]

It’s not hard to understand what motivates local Iraqis and Syrians to fight for the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS). Most believe they are defending their community, Sunni Arabs, against repression from the Alawite-dominated Syrian dictatorship or the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. But the motives of the estimated 20,000 foreign fighters that have joined IS are more complex, tied to deep psychological factors that make them less amenable to political solutions and more difficult to address. Every insurgent movement includes people with diverse motives. Yet the counterinsurgency doctrine of the United States and its NATO partners gravitates to political and economic grievances, […]

He sat with his back to the camera, a black scarf over his head hiding his identity. In a 47-minute televised interview with Al-Jazeera recorded in “liberated territory” in northern Syria, the leader of the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, said his group has no plans to attack the West. Its focus is toppling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The choreographed media campaign by the Nusra Front and its leader, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammed al-Golani, capped the group’s rise as one the most powerful of Syria’s rebel factions. Nusra fighters played a key role in […]

When U.S. prosecutors unveiled a stack of corruption indictments against individuals involved with FIFA, the world’s governing body for soccer, they unwittingly added fuel to a potentially transformative movement that is emerging with astonishing force in Latin America. Throughout the continent, powerful men and women who had grown accustomed to operating with impunity in gray areas of the law are suddenly finding themselves on the defensive. They now face a day of reckoning, as mass movements demand an end to graft, corruption and favoritism benefiting top government officials as well as their friends, families and supporters. Against this backdrop, Washington’s […]

Late last month, Japan hosted the 7th Pacific Islanders Leaders Meeting (PALM) in Fukushima prefecture. The PALM meeting represents the foundation of Japan’s engagement with states from the South Pacific, and has traditionally been a forum dominated by Tokyo’s provision of overseas development assistance to the region. But Japan’s relationship with many of those island states is deepening, as Tokyo looks to incorporate more political and security cooperation amid growing regional competition from China. This year’s PALM meeting was attended by the Forum Island Countries (FIC)—Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the South China Sea territorial disputes and the various claimant countries’ approaches to addressing them. China’s increased pace of island-building in the disputed South China Sea has angered many of its neighbors, but China insists that its land-reclamation activities are no cause for concern. In an email interview, Mira Rapp-Hooper, a fellow with the Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the director of its Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, discussed China’s rights under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. WPR: What […]

An epidemic of hysteria swept through Washington earlier this week, and politicians from across the political spectrum were all showing symptoms. Not surprisingly, the subject was domestic surveillance and the National Security Agency (NSA), a topic for which over-the-top rhetoric has practically become derigueur in the two years since NSA contractor Edward Snowden absconded with digital reams of highly classified NSA materials and turned them over to reporters. On one side of this week’s histrionics were the usual threat-mongers, hand-wringers and scare merchants: Republican homeland security hawks like Sens. Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. With the […]

Over the past month, as many as 8,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh found themselves adrift at sea off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia without adequate water, shelter and food. They were primarily Rohingya refugees seeking asylum from persecution in Myanmar and impoverished Bangladeshis searching for economic opportunities. The plight of these men, women and children was the result of a short-lived but dramatic crackdown by Southeast Asian states in early May on the movement of refugees and migrants into their territory by smuggling networks. That resulted in what one observer from the International Organization for Migration described […]

Officials from 20 countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition against the so-called Islamic State (IS) met in Paris today to discuss their strategy against the insurgent group. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that air strikes and support to Iraqi forces are the right course of action against IS, though Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called IS’ advance in his country a “failure” of the international community. Abadi has faced criticism since assuming office last September that he has not done enough to facilitate Sunni-Shiite reconciliation in Iraq. Iraq’s Sunnis find themselves in a difficult situation—“ground zero in […]

As expected, the recently completed Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was much more contentious than the previous five-year review held in 2010. At that time, the Obama administration’s push to re-energize bilateral arms control initiatives with Russia and shore up the global nonproliferation regime resulted in a generally successful 2010 conference. However, since then great power tensions have grown, and, besides the Iran nuclear talks, progress toward meeting the Action Plan adopted at the 2010 Review Conference has generally been seen as incomplete. As a result, at this year’s review, fundamental differences among the participants regarding the […]

Burundi’s army has been at the center of attention in light of the country’s ongoing political crisis, particularly after Gen. Godefroid Niyombare’s coup attempt last month. But the failed coup was not the only reason for that focus. The army is a key player in Burundi’s politics, as its existence and ethnically balanced composition represent one of the most successful results of the Arusha peace agreement that formally ended Burundi’s civil war in 2000. Despite the many reservations raised against the accord when it was signed, its detailed provisions for ethnic power-sharing in all state institutions, including the military, have […]