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For weeks, trade has taken a back seat to Black Lives Matter protests and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, however, trade was back on the front page with stunning charges from John Bolton, the former national security adviser, about an alleged attempt by President Donald Trump to manipulate U.S.-China trade negotiations for his personal political gain. This past week also saw U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer testifying before Congress about the Trump administration’s trade agenda, while both U.S. and European officials threatened an escalation in their dispute over digital services taxes. The overall message from all this was clear: […]

More than a year after the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir’s regime, the coronavirus pandemic is hitting Sudan’s still-fragile democratic transition. Differences between the civilian and military leaders in the transitional, power-sharing government are growing, as the military consolidates its authority due to restrictive security measures that went into effect in April, including a ban on public gatherings and protests around the country, with particularly harsh restrictions in effect in the capital, Khartoum. COVID-19 has also brought chaos to Sudan’s troubled economy, damaging the transitional government’s credibility and popularity. The road had not been smooth since last August, when Sudan’s […]

July 1 is an ominous day for Palestinians, when Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is set to leap forward into formal annexation. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held onto his office by forging a power-sharing agreement with his political rival, Benny Gantz, that gave him the authority he needed to deliver on his biggest campaign promise: unilaterally annexing Israel’s settlements in the West Bank as soon as next month. The plans for annexation prompted a reckoning in Ramallah, where President Mahmoud Abbas announced last month that the Palestinian Authority would no longer coordinate with Israel on security […]

Earlier this month, Germany announced that a landmark summit between the European Union and China, planned for September in Leipzig, would be postponed. It was initially slated to be the first-ever meeting between China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and all 27 of his counterparts from EU member states. Officials had hoped to make progress at the meeting on a key investment treaty, but have now decided to delay it, ostensibly due to travel difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Many analysts aren’t buying that excuse, though. Relations between Europe and China have deteriorated of late in part because of a disinformation […]

Seventy-five years ago this Friday, humanity accomplished something miraculous. On June 26, 1945, while World War II was still raging across the Pacific, 50 nations gathered at San Francisco’s Opera House to sign the Charter of the United Nations.* The culmination of years of planning, the new international organization was intended “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Although the United Nations would often fall short of that lofty goal, its creation was a monumental achievement, providing the foundation for a rules-based international order. The San Francisco conference had opened to great fanfare on April 25, 1945. Mindful […]

For the first time ever, the Russian government has publicly released a document laying out the logic and principles underpinning its approach to nuclear deterrence. Formally titled “Fundamentals of Russian State Nuclear Deterrence Policy,” the report was approved by President Vladimir Putin and posted on the government’s official information web portal on June 2. Previous iterations of Russia’s deterrence policy, such as the one associated with the updated military doctrine it unveiled in 2010, were alluded to in public, but never published. Why did Russia decide to publish its deterrence policy now? In part, it could be to dispel alleged […]

What a difference two years makes. The spring and summer of 2018 saw an extraordinary rapprochement between the two Koreas, as their leaders held successive face-to-face meetings, culminating in a landmark visit by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang. The flurry of diplomacy produced a number of joint declarations, agreements, hotlines and other confidence-building measures, including an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, just 6 miles into North Korean territory from the Demilitarized Zone. It was the first full-time communication channel and served as a de facto embassy between the two sides, which are technically still at war having not […]

One of India’s foreign policy success stories under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the country’s deepening relations with Gulf Arab states. Building on previous Indian governments’ engagement with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—namely Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—Modi has zeroed in on common economic and security interests to cement strong ties with GCC countries during his time in office. The coronavirus pandemic has been the biggest disruption in years to these partnerships. For starters, prominent voices in the Gulf have spoken out against rising Islamophobia in India and among some members of the […]

Afghanistan is still a long way from reaching a political settlement, but news this week that Afghan government negotiators will soon meet directly with Taliban leaders in Qatar is evidence that peace is possible. Or, at the very least, it may be one small step closer. The question now is whether a myopic focus on military issues will blind negotiators and stakeholders to the various pitfalls ahead on the long road to reconciliation. Getting this far this fast only a few months after the United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban is evidence that confidence-building measures are working. […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the deadly border clash between Indian and Chinese troops in a remote Himalayan mountain pass. With India and China seemingly torn between competition and cooperation, what factors will shape their choice to escalate or resolve this border dispute? Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:Can India and China Stand Down After Their Worst Border Clash in 45 Years?Xi and Modi Trade Confrontation for Comity at Another Informal SummitWhy Modi and Xi Made Nice at Asia’s Other […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Kenya won a surprisingly contentious race for a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council, defeating Djibouti in a run-off vote Thursday. Djibouti’s loss was an unlikely blow to China, which appeared to have encouraged Djibouti’s unprecedented candidacy in order to increase its influence on the Security Council. Africa is guaranteed three of the council’s 10 elected seats, which rotate every two years and supplement the five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. African countries […]

President Donald Trump has never been a fan of alliances. He has complained repeatedly in the past that U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia “don’t pay enough for their defense,” and has demanded that Japan and South Korea quadruple the amount of money they pay as a share of the cost of hosting U.S. military bases in their territory. More recently, Trump announced he was pulling 10,000 troops out of Germany, more than a quarter of its military presence in the country. The political scientist Mira Rapp-Hooper has just published a timely new book, “Shields of the Republic: The […]

It might seem like an all-too familiar story: With its economy cratered by civil war, and new pockets of anti-regime resistance, Syria is on the verge of state collapse. President Bashar al-Assad isn’t just on the back foot; he is weaker than ever. Is he about to fall? You might have read this before—back in 2015, perhaps, before Russia intervened to save Assad. Indeed, in May 2015, I wrote about just that, as Syria’s army showed more signs of fracturing and the economy sank further. The value of Syria’s currency that month had hit a record low against the U.S. […]

Voters in Serbia are set to go to the polls this Sunday for parliamentary elections that were originally scheduled for April, before the coronavirus pandemic forced their postponement. President Aleksandar Vucic’s government has generally fared well against the virus so far, recording over 12,500 confirmed cases and 257 deaths as of June 17. It eased lockdown restrictions back in early May, after imposing some of the most draconian containment measures in Europe. But Serbia’s success against COVID-19 belies a long-term political record that is far less impressive. Last month, in its annual “Nations in Transit” report, the democracy watchdog Freedom […]

Amid a storm of domestic crises, and with less than five months until Election Day, President Donald Trump suddenly faces the prospect of having his signature foreign policy initiative, once quietly stalled, unravel spectacularly. Trump took personal charge of the daunting North Korea file early on, all but proclaiming victory after a groundbreaking, made-for-TV meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Singapore two years ago, immediately after which he announced on Twitter: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” Back then, that sounded preposterously premature. Today, it brings faint echoes of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 declaration […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. A deadly clash Monday between hundreds of Chinese and Indian soldiers dramatically escalated a weeks-long standoff along the two countries’ disputed border in the Himalayas. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the fight with Chinese troops in the treacherous mountains of Ladakh—the first combat deaths along India’s border with China since 1975. New Delhi and Beijing both appear to want to avoid a war like the one they fought near this remote frontier in 1962, but the […]

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to pull nearly 10,000 American troops from Germany, more than a quarter of the U.S. military presence in the country. For anyone who’s been paying attention to Donald Trump’s rhetoric since he first ran for president, the news of the withdrawal is very much of a piece with his disdain for America’s overseas alliances. The president and his supporters often rail against close U.S. allies like South Korea, Japan and certain NATO countries for supposedly free-riding on Washington’s largesse. Today’s guest on Trend Lines has a new book out that investigates those claims and […]