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On June 21, the United States and China held their first-ever Diplomatic and Security Dialogue in Washington. The dialogue, co-chaired on the American side by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, is a new iteration of engagement that evolved from the April meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago. Along with other newly created discussions on trade and law enforcement issues, the dialogue is aimed at narrowing the focus of the former U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which met annually during the Obama administration. Unfortunately, when it comes to […]

The world’s newest mega-dock opened last month in Djibouti, the strategic real estate agent to world powers that is leasing access to the highest bidder. In a move to widen its African investment portfolio, China fronted the $590 million needed for the 1,700-acre Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port, the first of four docks and other infrastructure projects in Africa that are central to China’s grandiose Maritime Silk Road master plan. This comes as Djibouti gets more crowded. The small, strategically located country in the Horn of Africa already hosts U.S., French and Japanese military bases and will soon add a Saudi military […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part column. The first part can be found here. America’s military involvement in Syria topped this week’s headlines, but North Korea remains the most dangerous security problem the United States faces. Pyongyang has not engaged in any outright military provocations for a few weeks. But the death of Otto Warmbier, an American student arrested in Pyongyang a year ago and returned last week in an unexplained comatose state, has amplified anger against the bizarre Kim Jong Un regime and led to calls for expanded sanctions against it. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald […]

Finland’s government, led by Prime Minister Juha Sipila, survived a no-confidence vote this week. The government’s future seemed in doubt last week following a leadership change within the Finns Party, but it was saved when over half of the Euroskeptic party’s lawmakers formed a breakaway faction that will serve in the ruling coalition. In an email interview, Ilkka Ruostetsaari, professor of political science at Finland’s University of Tampere, describes the dynamics at work and how Finnish populists’ are struggling against being coopted by the political establishment. WPR: What were the factors that led to the resignation of Foreign Minister Timo […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the next phase of Syria’s civil war and the succession shake-up in Saudi Arabia. For the Report, Linus Unah talks with Peter Dörrie about how competition for resources is fueling violence between Fulani herders and farming communities in Nigeria, a situation the U.N. warns could “spin out of control.” If you’d like to sign up for the beta version of WPR’s Africa-only subscription, you can do so here. It’s free for the first two months. And if you like what you hear on Trend […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The United Nations used World Refugee Day to launch an appeal for $8 billion to address South Sudan’s refugee crisis, as news from inside South Sudan indicated there was no sign it would be letting up anytime soon. At a summit on Friday in Uganda that authorities hoped would raise $2 billion, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres praised that country’s “exemplary refugee policy,” under which refugees enjoy freedom of movement and are permitted to work. However, Uganda is currently hosting nearly […]

Mali’s capital, Bamako, experienced two disruptions last weekend: a protest against a proposed constitutional referendum on Saturday, followed by a terrorist attack on Sunday. The attack, claimed by the extremist alliance Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, killed five people at a resort on the city’s outskirts and, naturally, grabbed international headlines. But the protest, and the events that gave rise to it, reveal more about how the country is being governed and the challenges it faces two years after the signing of a landmark peace deal. For weeks, frustration has been growing with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s determination to hold the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is the first in an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. In late May, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage in the country’s civil code was unconstitutional. As Buzzfeed reports, the ruling says that permitting same-sex marriage would contribute to a “stable society.” It ordered the government to change the law within two years, making it likely that Taiwan will become the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. In an email interview, Jens Damm, associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies […]

After the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, many analysts expected that relations between the European Union and China would enter a honeymoon phase. Facing a protectionist and potentially destabilizing period in U.S. foreign policy, Europe and China would necessarily have to cooperate more closely on issues ranging from climate change to trade, in order to head off threats to the very future of globalization. The recent EU-China summit, taking place the day after Trump’s announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, would have been the natural occasion to showcase this new alignment, which would represent […]

On Saturday, June 17, the upscale Centro Andino shopping center in the Colombian capital, Bogota, was teeming with families, mostly women and children shopping the day before Father’s Day. At about 4 p.m., a powerful bomb went off in the women’s bathroom. The explosion killed three people, including a French woman, and injured 11 others. It also laid bare the obstacles along Colombia’s path to a sustainable peace. The immediate question, and one that authorities have not been able to answer, is who built and planted the bomb. But as investigators run down the clues and explore various theories, the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about NATO members’ contributions to and relationships with the alliance. While Greece continues to be one of only five NATO countries meeting the alliance goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, economic contractions in recent years have meant that the amount of real investment has decreased considerably. However, because of long-running security concerns such as the perceived threat posed by Turkey and new challenges like the migration crisis, the portion of the budget going to defense is expected to remain relatively high. In an email interview, Dr. Thanos […]

In July, according to spokespeople for Thailand’s government, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha will come to Washington for a White House visit. It promises to be a substantial diplomatic and reputational boost for both Prayuth, who led the coup in May 2014 that deposed Thailand’s most recent elected government, and the junta running Thailand, which remains a U.S. treaty ally. Former President Barack Obama did not offer Prayuth a White House invitation, although Obama did meet with him as part of a summit in California of Southeast Asian leaders in February 2016. The Thai junta repeatedly expressed anger at the Obama […]

As the fight against the so-called Islamic State approaches its endgame, the United States seems to be stumbling its way up the escalation ladder in Syria. Repeated U.S. airstrikes against Syrian forces and allied militias in southeastern Syria had already caused alarm that the U.S. might be drawn deeper into the country’s civil war. The downing of a Syrian warplane by a U.S. fighter jet over the weekend punctuated those concerns. In response, Russia announced it would suspend the use of a communication channel to “deconflict” air operations over Syria—that is, avoid unintended confrontations between Russian and American jets—although the […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Argentina and Mexico earlier this month in advance of the G-20 summit meeting scheduled to take place in Hamburg in July. While discussing trade and investment between Latin America and Europe, she also offered a subtle rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump, extolling the virtues of the Paris climate agreement and cooperation in an “interconnected world.” In an email interview, Dr. Claudia Zilla, head of research for the Americas at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, discusses Germany’s current engagement with Latin America and the areas in which it could deepen. […]

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a bill imposing new sanctions on Iran and Russia. Even if the bill makes it through the legislative process to become law, it should not derail the 2015 agreement that curtails Iran’s nuclear activities. But more intangible factors, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent comments on the Iranian regime, could do harm to the agreement’s durability. The sustainability of the Iran nuclear agreement, one of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements, has been in doubt since Donald Trump’s presidential election. On the campaign, Trump mocked the agreement and suggested that he […]

“Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” President Donald Trump told a cheering crowd of Cuban exiles in Miami on June 16. That declaration was not quite true, since there was no single deal to cancel. President Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba included a series of bilateral agreements on issues of mutual interest and five packages of regulatory changes to the U.S. embargo that Obama made unilaterally in order to boost travel and trade. Trump’s new policy, embodied in a Presidential Memorandum, partially closes two holes that Obama punched in the embargo. First, Trump’s […]

KADUNA, Nigeria—The funeral took place on a sunny, late March morning in Goska, a village in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state. Against the backdrop of mud homes covered with corrugated zinc roofing, people bustled down the single dusty road that runs through the town to a patch of land next to a church. Hundreds formed a crowd around a brown casket to bury 50-year-old Gideon Morik, a community leader who died on March 16. One of Gideon’s solemn-faced wives made her way silently to the center of the field. She dabbed her face with a handkerchief as she placed a vase […]