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Early this year, as the world waited to see whether Gambia’s then-president, Yahya Jammeh, would accept his election defeat and leave office, observers questioned who could help him muster the firepower to mount a last stand. Though this debate turned out to be largely speculative, one of the most commonly cited possible reserves of support was the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), an insurgent group that has been active in southern Senegal for more than three decades. Allegations of ties between Jammeh and the rebels go back to the early days of Jammeh’s rule, which began with a […]

The challenge of writing about U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era is twofold. First, the United States does not have a foreign policy per se in the Trump era. Rather, it has a disparate collection of poorly coordinated and at times contradictory channels of communication and engagement with the world, some run through the White House, others by Cabinet officials and still others by faceless bureaucrats who are either improvising around the margins or working the clean-up crew. Looming over them all is the tragicomic figure of President Donald Trump himself, whose declarations, we are told, have little bearing […]

What a difference a few months can make in British politics. In early May, a confident Prime Minister Theresa May looked well on her way to securing a much bigger majority for her Conservative Party in the House of Commons on a platform of “strong and steady leadership” and a promise to deliver on Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party looked out of touch with the real concerns of most British people and seemed destined for electoral oblivion. So the shock result of a hung parliament after the U.K. general election on June 8 not only transformed the British political landscape, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on social welfare policies in various countries around the world. Food subsidies have long been a critical component of the social safety net in India. In 2017-2018, such subsidies will cost the government more than $20 billion. While some policymakers and experts have pushed for alternatives in promoting food security, proposed changes are highly contentious politically. In an email interview, Kavery Ganguly, an independent consultant on agriculture policy based in Mumbai, explains what the current system does well, where it could be improved and the obstacles to reform. WPR: […]

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, called them “starve, surrender and slaughter” tactics. Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called them a “war crime.” Sieges have been especially brutal on civilians in Syria’s civil war, yet they remain the Syrian government’s favorite strategy for retaking territory and purging key regions of the country of its opponents. In May, the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Stephen O’Brien, accused Bashar al-Assad’s government of exploiting civilian suffering as a “tactic of war.” The regime’s bloody, four-year campaign to recapture the battered city of Aleppo, which ended in a four-month siege […]

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been doing real diplomacy lately, from the G-20 summit to his personal mediation mission to the Persian Gulf. At the same time, there’s progress to report on his ambitious project to transform the State Department into a more focused and efficient institution. After a rocky start that saw him either sidelined by the White House or out of step with it on major issues, Tillerson has been looking more and more like a normal secretary of state in recent days. At the G-20 summit and the high-profile bilateral meetings that took place in […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. As people continue to migrate—and die—by crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat, it is time to reflect on what has gone wrong with the 2015 European Agenda on Migration. The agenda purports to be a comprehensive, multidimensional framework designed to address the crisis of increased precarious migration to Europe and associated fatalities at sea. It has led to the development and implementation of policies across a range of priority areas. Yet without […]

Italy’s center-right parties performed impressively in last month’s local elections, prompting former Prime Minister and Democratic Party head Matteo Renzi to acknowledge that the polls “could have gone better” for his center-left formation. But turnout was just 46 percent, according to Reuters, and there were questions as to whether the results are predictive of how the various parties will fare in next year’s general elections. In an email interview, Mark Gilbert, a professor of international history at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Europe, describes the factors that fueled the center-right’s success and the issues that are most important to Italian voters. WPR: […]

Diplomacy is a mendacious business. “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” one 17th-century wit supposedly quipped. Diplomats are still expected to massage, twist or conceal facts to suit their countries’ national interests. By contrast, international institutions are generally meant to make diplomacy a marginally more honest business by upholding higher standards of objectivity. Organizations like the United Nations and World Bank draw a lot of their credibility from the assumption that they tell the truth. In the last century, the League of Nations and then the U.N. pioneered the global […]

European progressives are feeling cautiously optimistic. Last year, in the shadow of the United Kingdom’s shock referendum vote for Brexit and then the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, many in Europe were fearful of a so-called contagion effect. With looming elections in the Netherlands and Austria, European leaders braced for their own populist backlash against liberalism, the European Union and international free trade. Inspired by Trump and against the backdrop of a pan-European refugee crisis, populist nationalists seemed poised to reimpose themselves onto the political agenda. Once again, a major crisis loomed on the horizon […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. This week’s African Union summit—which brought heads of state to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday and Tuesday—featured debate on how best to accomplish one of the main recommendations from its reform commission: curb the body’s reliance on outside donors. Julian Hattem reported for WPR in February that the African Union’s expenses are expected to total $439 million this year, of which just 26 percent will be covered by African nations, undercutting leaders’ claims that it pursues “African solutions to African […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and associate editor Karina Piser discuss Donald Trump’s second trip to Europe and his much-anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For the Report, David Hutt talks with Peter Dörrie about Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s tactics to hold onto power and the state of the country’s political opposition in advance of next year’s general elections. 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 […]

On June 20, Pakistani officials announced that an air force fighter had shot down an Iranian drone in Baluchistan province. The same day, Pentagon officials said an American fighter jet had shot down an Iranian-made drone that was approaching U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in southeastern Syria. The two incidents highlighted Iran’s increasing operational deployment of its drones. In an email interview, Ariane Tabatabai, visiting assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, describes the evolution of Iran’s drone program and its importance to the country’s defense sector. WPR: What progress has Iran […]

For millennia, the Nile River has served as the backbone of Egypt, the lifeblood of its people. Gradually, though, the land of the pharaohs is losing its grip. Late last month, Uganda hosted the first ever heads-of-state summit aimed at resolving disagreements over the waters of the Nile. But it produced no major breakthrough and appeared to be a flop. In coming months, the opening of a major dam in Ethiopia will truly test Egypt’s anxieties that countries upstream are refusing to bow to its demands. The dam’s opening will reveal just how much leverage Egypt has lost. Egypt has […]

Earlier this week North Korea tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile. While Pyongyang already has an extensive arsenal of medium-range missiles, most experts believed it would be several more years before it could field a weapon that could hit the United States. They were wrong. While the missile launch did not alter the essence of the U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis, it did add urgency. Now Americans must relearn the lexicon of nuclear strategy they largely forgot after the end of the Cold War and use it to understand North Korea’s intentions and objectives. Of the two adversaries, North Korea has […]

Last month, a militia that had been holding Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, announced he had been released in accordance with an amnesty law passed by a parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk. In response, Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, issued a statement calling for Gadhafi’s arrest so he could face crimes against humanity charges in The Hague. However, in a testament to the political and security factors that have dogged the court’s work in Libya for years, Gadhafi’s whereabouts are unknown, and he does not appear to […]

Belgrade, SERBIA—Nearly a decade after its disputed declaration of independence and on the heels of a snap election last month, Kosovo is sending mixed signals to the world. Where some see a radical leftist surge that will force Kosovo’s neighbors and the international community to take notice, others see a further fraying of the West’s influence. And while some see progress toward the creation of a more functional state, for others the result of the June 18 election fundamentally confirms the status quo, for better or worse. The left-wing Levizja Vetevendosje, or Movement for Self-Determination, emerged as the largest single […]