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More than five years after declaring a cease-fire, the Basque separatist group ETA has announced plans to fully disarm by April 8. Founded in 1959, the group, whose name stands for “Basque Country and Freedom” in the Basque language, sought to create a homeland in the Basque region in northern Spain and southwestern France. Its campaign of violence, including bombings and assassinations, is blamed for more than 800 deaths. In an email interview, Rafael Leonisio, political scientist and editor of the 2016 book ETA’s Terrorist Campaign: From Violence to Politics, 1968-2015 (Extremism and Democracy), discusses the challenges facing the group […]

Here are two excerpts from relatively recent remarks by U.S. officials on United Nations peacekeeping. One is from the Obama administration. One is from a Trump appointee. Can you work out which is which? Exhibit A: “If you look at the peace missions in Africa, it has been devastating to see the sexual exploitation, the fraud, the abuse that’s happening. And we have to acknowledge that some countries are contributing troops because they are making money off that.” Exhibit B: “Examples abound of peacekeepers not fulfilling their rudimentary responsibilities, such as not responding when citizens only five miles away from […]

A political storm is brewing in Tokyo over revelations last month that officials permitted the sale of government-owned land at a much-reduced price to a right-wing nationalist school group, Moritomo Gakuen. The head of the foundation, Yasunori Kagoike, was allowed to purchase the two-acre plot of land in Osaka for about $1.2 million—a figure far below its assessed value of approximately $8.3 million. The scandal has since snowballed with the release of information that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife, Akie Abe, was an honorary principal of the planned elementary school in Osaka and allegations that she donated 1 million yen—about […]

When he was sworn in for a second seven-year term last September, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, renewed a call for all political actors “to sit together and find solutions” after an election season marred by protests, violence and mass arrests. Six months later, the oil-producing Central African nation is still waiting for that dialogue to happen, and there has been little sign of progress. Earlier this month, Bongo proposed a round of talks that would begin March 28. Almost immediately, Jean Ping, the president’s main rival in last year’s vote, said he would not participate, dismissing the idea as […]

Guest columnist Nikolas Gvosdev is filling in for Steven Metz this week. As the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump enters its third month in office, it is quite striking how conventional its approach to geopolitics has been in practice. Overblown fears that Trump, after his inauguration, would summon his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, to a secret conclave at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, roll out a map of the world, and start negotiating spheres of influence have not materialized. Instead, the United States has continued with its mission to reinforce the eastern flank of […]

In October 2014, Mozambique held its fifth consecutive general elections since ending its civil war in 1992. After violence returned in 2013 between the government and the former rebel group turned political party known as Renamo, the two sides agreed to a cease-fire that included a deal on administering elections and a commitment to work together to reduce barriers to Renamo’s full political and economic inclusion. Less than six months later, though, the cease-fire fell apart. Thousands were forced from their homes by the fighting. Death squads assassinated at least a dozen Renamo officials, and two sustained international peace efforts—one […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss Wednesday’s terror attack in London and whether anything can be done to mitigate the threat of self-radicalized extremists. For the Report, Michael Kofman talks with Peter Dörrie about Russia’s plans to expand its military while deploying modernized equipment. If you’d like to support our free podcast through patron pledges, Patreon is an online service that will allow you to do so. To find out about the benefits you can get through pledging as little as $1 per month, click through to WPR’s Trend Lines […]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with European Union leaders in Brussels this week, vowing to secure a free trade deal with the bloc as soon as possible. Negotiations over the deal began in 2013 and have run into a number of roadblocks. In an email interview, J. Berkshire Miller, a Tokyo-based international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses the challenges that remain to clinching the deal as well as what the two sides stand to gain. WPR: What is the current state of economic and political ties between Japan and EU countries, how have they been […]

Canada has long been viewed as a country that is open to migrants. But the reality is far more complex and is increasingly colored by events taking place south of the border. In particular, the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, which took effect in 2004 and requires asylum-seekers to apply for refuge in their first country of arrival, has cast some doubt on the narrative of Canadian tolerance. Over the past decade, Canadian authorities have denied entrance to thousands of migrants seeking asylum, many of them from African countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. In all likelihood, it […]

That high-level corruption is a serious problem in much of the world is no surprise. But when the Odebrecht case—a massive corruption scandal, possibly even the largest ever uncovered anywhere—burst onto the front pages of newspapers in nearly a dozen Latin American countries, it raised an important question: Is the uncovering and prosecution of major cases of graft a good sign or a bad one? Is it evidence that corruption is even more widespread than anyone knew and becoming worse? Or is it proof that the age of endemic corruption is coming to an end? The wrongdoing at Odebrecht, a […]

If you read a recent report by IHS Jane’s that Russia is cutting its defense budget by over 25 percent—supposedly the “largest cut to military expenditure in the country since the early 1990s”—then you might be given the impression that Moscow’s military is finally succumbing to economic woes. But reports of the death of Russia’s defense budget have been grossly exaggerated. Simply put, it’s not true. Not only did Jane’s get the story largely wrong about Russia’s defense budget, claiming that Russia’s defense budget would fall from 3.8 trillion rubles, or $65.4 billion, to 2.8 trillion, but deep reductions in […]

During one week in mid-February, Pakistan suffered a series of terrorist attacks in all four of its provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In all, 200 people were killed across the country in just seven days. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or JuA—a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP—claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks, while the TTP and the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed separate responsibility for others, including the Feb. 16 suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in Sehwan that killed 90 people. The multiple assaults perpetrated by different militants have raised concerns about […]

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump, like all of his recent predecessors, thinks America’s NATO allies have been free-riding on Washington’s largesse and should contribute more to their own security. In the familiar terms of NATO alliance management, that is understood to mean meeting the target of budgeting 2 percent of GDP for national defense. Set in 2006, that benchmark is currently met by only four other alliance members—one of them being tiny Estonia—with a fifth, France, falling just short. But last week, at a news conference following his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump went further than […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. Liberia’s plan to task independent operators with running some of its public schools has received extensive media attention over the past year. Not long after the plan was first unveiled, one outlet said it was an attempt to outsource the entire education sector, and a U.N. rapporteur accused Liberia of violating students’ right to education. In an email interview, Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who is helping to coordinate the randomized evaluation of the […]

One year ago, a series of terrorist attacks struck the Brussels international airport and a metro station, killing 35 and injuring hundreds. The incident occurred just months after Belgium was thrust into the center of discussions about the terror threat facing Europe, when it was revealed that a Belgian national had coordinated attacks on a concert hall and other sites in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds more. That man, 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among the many Belgian citizens who had gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with the so-called Islamic State, making Belgium Europe’s largest per capita […]

Kazakhstan’s parliament has approved reforms that would decentralize power in the Central Asian nation, potentially giving parliament and the Cabinet more control over key duties such as managing the economy. In an email interview, Marlene Laruelle, director of the Central Asia program at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, discusses what the reforms could mean for President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled since the fall of the Soviet Union. World Politics Review: What might the decision to devolve some presidential powers mean for Nazarbayev’s political future?Marlene Laruelle: Nazarbayev has announced political reforms at various points in […]

Intelligence controversies moved center stage in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s presidency and through its first months in office. As both president-elect and president, Trump accused the U.S. intelligence community, and the CIA in particular, of politicizing intelligence by leaking reports about investigations of contacts between his campaign advisers and Russian officials. Yet, Trump’s first appointment was a politician to head the Central Intelligence Agency—Mike Pompeo, a Republican congressman. Pompeo was clearly brainy enough for the job, having graduated first in his class at West Point and earned a law degree from Harvard University. Critics wondered, though, whether Pompeo, a […]