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If everything goes to plan, U.S. President Joe Biden will hold his first video summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, according to multiple news reports this week. Though the meeting has yet to be officially confirmed, it suggests that Washington and Beijing have managed to reach some sort of modus vivendi, at least on how to manage bilateral relations more productively. If it takes place, the summit would follow closely on the heels of an—admittedly detail-free—agreement to cooperate on climate action announced at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Although previous meetings between high-level representatives of the Biden […]

More than 130 people have been reported killed after a fuel tanker hit a large truck and exploded Nov. 5 in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. The tragedy occurred in the city’s densely populated Wellington district. The victims included motorbike drivers who reportedly rushed toward the scene to collect leaking fuel, which they presumably hoped to either use or sell, as well as roadside traders and commuters trapped in vehicles along the busy intersection. Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition, and posters of the dead and missing have been stuck on walls and buildings around the site of the […]

Last week, the U.S. Department of Defense released a one-page summary of its findings from an investigation into a drone strike in Kabul that killed a family of 10 during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. U.S. military officials had received intelligence that a specific car had visited a “suspected” Islamic State safehouse and loaded what “appeared to be” explosives into its trunk.  After the vehicle was destroyed with explosives in the driveway of the house, it was determined that the driver was actually Zemari Ahmadi, an electrical engineer who worked for a U.S. aid organization. Ahmadi was killed in the […]

In 2018, opposition candidate Peter Marki-Zay’s surprise victory in a mayoral by-election in the small town of Hodmezovasarhely pushed Hungary’s opposition into a half-hearted bid to cooperate in that year’s parliamentary vote. However, the effort never got off the ground, leaving Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party to stroll to yet another two-thirds supermajority. Now, with months to go before the next elections, a diverse slate of six opposition parties insist that this time, they’re determined to unite in a bid to finally defeat Orban’s illiberal regime, which has ruled the country since 2010. Last month, the United Opposition selected […]

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne concluded a four-day tour of Southeast Asia this week, visiting Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. The trip was widely seen as an effort by the Australian government to allay concerns in some nearby countries over the recently announced AUKUS defense pact, which calls for Australia to deploy nuclear-propelled submarines with assistance from the United States and United Kingdom. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Susannah Patton, a research fellow in the Foreign Policy and Defense Program at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Center, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to talk about the wide […]

There is growing frustration across Europe with the European Union’s slow reaction to what the bloc’s leaders are calling “hybrid warfare” at its eastern border with Belarus. But fraught relations with Poland, the member country most affected by the crisis, are complicating a collective response.

In the leadup to Nov. 7’s sham election in Nicaragua, incumbent President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on the opposition and imprisonment of his most viable challengers garnered a good deal of attention. But the Nicaraguan election was only the first in a series of crucial political contests taking place in the region this month. By the time December begins, the path ahead for nearly half a dozen Latin American countries may well have been redrawn. Beyond Nicaragua’s widely criticized parody of democracy, the continent will see pivotal presidential elections in Chile and Honduras, the winners of which could take these countries in […]

Following the intense pro-democracy protests that rocked Eswatini over the summer, international interest in the small southern African nation has waned. But for proponents of democratic reforms in the continent’s last absolute monarchy—formerly known as Swaziland—the fight is far from over. In mid-October, demonstrations once again intensified, partly to demand the release of two pro-democracy lawmakers who have been detained since July. Security forces loyal to King Mswati III responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, resulting in at least one death and 80 injuries. All told, dozens of people have been killed since protests first began in response to […]

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne is finishing up a four-nation tour of Southeast Asia this week, having begun her trip in Malaysia before moving on to Cambodia, Vietnam and finally Indonesia. A main goal of the visit is to conduct follow-up talks after Canberra agreed in late October on a new “comprehensive strategic partnership” with the main regional bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Another prominent item on Payne’s agenda is to seek understanding from ASEAN members for Australia’s three-way defense partnership with the U.S. and the U.K., which was just announced in September. Known as AUKUS, the pact […]

The sixth plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Central Committee began Monday, with nearly 400 members of the country’s top governing body—including party secretaries, governors, heads of state-owned entities and generals of the People’s Liberation Army—meeting behind closed doors for the start of the four-day gathering. Each central committee holds seven such plenary sessions during its five-year term, and the sixth one traditionally focuses on ideology and party-building. This year’s gathering, however, holds special significance, as delegates are expected to pass a key “historical resolution” on the party’s achievements for only the third time since its founding in […]

The standard, “flirting with apocalypse” narrative that dominates U.S. media coverage and political debates regarding climate change goes something like this: China, which is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, and India, which is lightly industrialized and still quite substantially poor, currently represent the biggest threats to saving the environment. The supposedly more altruistic West, by contrast, is prepared to make huge investments to forestall disaster. People who cling to this all-too-easy framing correctly say that if the world’s two most-populous countries do not radically constrain their carbon output, nothing the United States or Europe can do, including rapidly attaining net-zero […]

In a brazen attack on Sudan’s democratic aspirations, the country’s military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, overthrew the civilian government on Oct. 25. The coup ended a fragile power-sharing agreement between security officers and a civilian coalition known as the Forces for Freedom and Change, or FFC. The two sides had been on a collision course since they formed an interim government in August 2019, which was meant to pave the way to democratic elections following the ouster of dictator Omar al-Bashir earlier that year.  Under the transitional charter governing the partnership, the 11-member Sovereign Council was supposed to serve as the […]

Tensions within NATO over the past two decades have led some to assert that the old military alliances of the 20th century are a thing of the past. Soon, the argument goes, they will give way to looser, ad hoc groupings like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States; the AUKUS security pact among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States; or other “coalitions of the willing” formed to address specific concerns, like those that intervened in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. To be sure, the past 30 years have punched some […]

On Oct. 27, Rishi Sunak, the U.K.’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced the government’s education budget, including additional spending earmarked to help students overcome the disruptions introduced by the coronavirus pandemic. Though billed as a boost to education expenditures, as Sunak himself admitted, the government’s current plans would only return per pupil spending—which was cut drastically as part of broader budgetary austerity imposed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis—to 2010 levels by 2024. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson told the Financial Times, Sunak’s spending plan reflects the “remarkable lack of priority” given to education […]

After the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August, the world watched in horror as Afghans tried to escape the new regime by boarding evacuation flights at the Kabul airport—crossing gunfire, braving suicide bombs and slogging through sewage ditches to do so, and even clinging to airplane landing gear when they failed to board the flights themselves. The horror was compounded by a widely felt sense that international policymakers were unprepared, and that the nightmare scenario unfolding could have been prevented, or at least mitigated.  This winter, however, an even worse catastrophe could unfold: Afghanistan’s economy is in ruins, and […]

Editor’s note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. Iraq faces a deadly dilemma: make a deal with the militias that appear to be behind an assassination attempt on the life of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, or face off against them in a fight that is sure to leave the Iraqi state and people worse off. Sunday morning’s drone […]

Africa’s leaders and policymakers have long identified connectivity, tourism and, more broadly, mobility—human, capital and otherwise—as key to the continent’s economic structural transformation. For example, the African Union’s Agenda 2063, through seven key aspirations, has identified several programs and initiatives promoting connectivity and mobility as central to accelerating shared growth and development in Africa, as well as to forging a common identity.  Among its flagship projects intended to realize this ambition, the bloc has identified the need for an integrated high-speed train network connecting the continent’s capitals and commercial centers; a continent-wide free trade area, known today as the African […]