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Pakistani authorities announced last week that they had arrested 44 people affiliated with violent extremist groups. Among those taken into custody, according to Pakistan’s interior minister, were two relatives of the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attack in Kashmir last month that killed 40 members of India’s security forces. But it is too early to know whether this means Islamabad is finally taking meaningful steps to crack down on the militant organizations it has long harbored, cautions Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson […]

Germany’s Green party had a weak showing in federal elections in 2017, causing analysts to largely write it off as a political force. But the past two years have seen an abrupt turnaround in the party’s fortunes. Buoyed by widespread concern about the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, as well as broader upheaval that has undermined the traditional mainstream parties, the Greens are now in the No. 2 position in national polls, and they are expected to perform well in the European Parliament elections in May. As journalist Andrew Green writes in this week’s in-depth report, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Just two years ago, on the heels of Donald Trump’s election, the European Union was playing up China’s potential as a partner that could help preserve the global order. But a new strategy paper from the European Commission, released on Tuesday, moves to recalibrate the EU’s approach toward China, calling it an “economic competitor” and a “systemic rival.” The paper, which comes ahead of a planned series of high-level meetings between European and Chinese leaders, notes Beijing’s failure to […]

French President Emmanuel Macron called for reconciliation with Italy last week, after a heated diplomatic spat briefly led France to recall its ambassador from Rome for the first time since World War II. While the temperature has since come down a bit, the war of words reflects a larger battle being waged between members of the European Union over issues like immigration and fiscal policy, says Jan Zielonka, a professor of European politics at the University of Oxford and the author of “Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat.” In an interview with WPR, he discusses the EU-wide political implications of France […]

STUTTGART—It is readily apparent that the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, nestled between France and Switzerland, is the heart of Germany’s automobile industry, with the wealth to show for it. A giant Mercedes Benz logo revolves atop the central train station’s clock tower in Stuttgart, the state capital, dwarfing rows of high-end stores and banks. For nearly six decades, the conservative Christian Democrats, or CDU, a natural fit for the affluent state, dominated its politics. But that changed in 2011, when environmental concerns—related to both the local ramifications of plans to overhaul Stuttgart’s train station and the global repercussions of the […]

In its early days, the international trade regime that the United States and its allies created after World War II counted relatively few less-developed countries as members. For the first few decades, developing country members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade Organization, remained mostly small in economic size, unimportant in trade and participated little in multilateral trade negotiations. In the 1960s and 1970s, developed countries unilaterally extended preferential market access to poorer countries to spur economic growth and development. As the “newly industrializing countries” of Asia, followed by Brazil, India, Mexico, South […]

At an investment conference in London on the last day of February, Jordan got what appeared to be a much-needed financial boost, with promises of assistance and loans totaling $2 billion. But for a nation whose economic challenges are likely to only intensify, with debt amounting to around 95 percent of its gross domestic product, the pledges were really just a drop in the bucket. Jordan has built a decades-old reputation as a kingdom of calm in an otherwise restive region. But its long reliance on that image of stability, underwritten by external support, may also be its undoing. Its […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. The first documented slaying of a journalist this year took place in Ghana when Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a member of the highly regarded investigative outlet Tiger Eye P.I., was gunned down near his family home in Accra on Jan. 16. Police believe he was assassinated for his journalistic work. In an interview with WPR, Vivian Affoah, a program manager at the Media Foundation for West Africa in Accra, discusses Hussein-Suale’s case, the obstacles that Ghanaian journalists face in their work […]

The shallow waters of the Gulf of Kutch, an inlet of the Arabian Sea along the northwestern coast of India, are ideal for fishing, with coral reefs and mangrove forests that provide breeding grounds for a diverse array of marine life. On the gulf’s northern coast, near the town of Mundra, the gently sloping seabed and calm tides make it easy to catch local delicacies like prawns, pomfret and a type of lizardfish known colloquially as “Bombay duck.” The Waghers, a Muslim minority group, have fished these waters for generations. They maintain permanent inland villages, but from September until May, […]

Editor’s note: This will be Richard Gowan’s final weekly column for World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Richard for the keen analysis, luculent prose and delightful wit he has offered WPR readers each week for the past six years. We wish Richard the best of luck at International Crisis Group and look forward to his periodic contributions to WPR in the future. If you want to write seriously about politics, you need to know how to get things wrong. Political analysts are generally praised for getting things right. They win kudos by surveying current affairs […]

MERIDA, Mexico—When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected president of Mexico last July, his victory was seen as a break with the stagnant and corrupt two-party system that had dominated high-level Mexican politics for nearly 90 years. Most observers expected AMLO—as the veteran leftist is known in Mexico—and his Morena party to shake up Mexican politics through populist policies, such as a rejection of the free-market consensus that had taken hold in Mexico City in recent years. Domestically, AMLO has indeed been extremely active since taking office, tackling issues as diverse as gas theft and nursery school funding. On foreign […]

The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled last week that the United Kingdom must cede control over the Chagos Islands, an Indian Ocean archipelago that was separated from Mauritius several years before Mauritius gained independence in 1968. The 13-1 verdict, while nonbinding, was an embarrassing defeat for the U.K. and a victory for many Chagossians who have sought to return to their homeland since being expelled in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for a U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. In an interview with WPR, Marko Milanovic, a professor of public international law […]

There has been much to criticize about President Donald Trump’s handling of America’s national security, including his recent declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. But while that declaration might be misguided, Trump has been right about one thing: The United States has never developed an effective strategy for the actual security challenges south of the border. Since the United States became a global power in the 20th century, it has used a sequenced method for addressing emerging threats—first building an understanding of them, then developing a working consensus among security experts and political leaders, and then relying […]

Last month, a bipartisan group of senators reintroduced a bill designed to expand the range of coercive measures the United States can impose on Russia for its broad range of malign activity, from election interference to ongoing intervention in Ukraine. The updated version of the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, or DASKA, contains an array of new measures, including ones targeting the Russian energy and banking sectors. Among the most notable are congressional efforts to expand financial transparency, which would put the U.S. in a much better position not only to counter dirty Russian money flowing through the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Just a month ago, officials in and beyond the Central African Republic were celebrating the signing of a peace deal between the government and 14 armed groups. Though the talks that led to the deal were hardly the first attempt at ending a conflict that dates back to 2012, Marcel Plichta noted in a recent briefing for WPR that the text included “significant concessions made on all sides” and was the first “to emerge from direct dialogue among all […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss challenges facing China and what they mean for relations with the U.S., against the backdrop of the Chinese Communist Party’s annual National People’s Congress, which is taking place this week. For the Report, Shira Rubin talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about how Israel’s New Right party could jeopardize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election prospects. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis […]

Ahead of the elections held late last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, outgoing President Joseph Kabila sat down with the managing editor of Jeune Afrique for one of several interviews he granted to international outlets during his final weeks in office. At the time, many analysts expected the presidential vote to be rigged in favor of the ruling party’s candidate, and speculated that Kabila, who had been in office for 18 years, would continue to rule from the shadows rather than truly ceding control. Asked about his plans, Kabila told Jeune Afrique that the winner of the election […]