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On March 2, the European Union announced that the Russian state-sponsored channels Sputnik and RT would be banned from broadcasting within the union, citing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin’s “systematic, international campaign of disinformation, information manipulation and distortion of facts.” And British media regulator Ofcom announced today that it was taking RT off the air after an investigation found it was “not fit and proper to hold a license in the UK.” The dangers of the propaganda spouted by RT and Sputnik are considerable. These outlets sow divisions, cleave societies, threaten free and fair elections—and, now, shield […]

Diplomats in Brussels breathed a sigh of relief yesterday following the safe return of three leaders from the European Union’s eastern bloc who made a surprise visit to Ukraine earlier this week. The prime ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday evening. Their visit was cheered across Europe as a brave gesture of support and solidarity for Ukraine. But for EU diplomats, the unilateral initiative was nonetheless alarming news that does not bode well for the continental and trans-Atlantic unity on display within the EU and NATO since Russia’s invasion three weeks […]

Over the past decade or so, the Kremlin has endeavored to exploit Latin America’s internal divisions and its differences with the United States with the purpose of building a beachhead of diplomatic and strategic support in a region geographically close to the U.S. The success of that project is now being put to the test in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Three weeks into the ensuing war, there is little evidence that Moscow’s efforts to woo Latin America have yielded any significant benefits. In fact, if anything, they look like a failure. The Kremlin has spent billions of dollars […]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which pits two of the world’s major wheat and corn producers against one another, has deep implications for several grain-importing countries. Grain prices had already risen steadily over the past year due to pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and increasing energy prices. The war further pushed these prices to an all-time high in February, seriously rattling an already shaky global food system. While some commentators are calling for trade measures that would facilitate alternate sources of grain exports to make up for the shortfalls, what is really needed is a major rethink of the conventional food security […]

Although widely overlooked outside the country, Malaysia recently experienced what is arguably the biggest shake-up to its electoral politics since the country’s independence from Britain in 1957, thanks to a law passed in 2019 that took effect on Dec. 15. The legislation, which lowers the voting age from 21 to 18, will see 5.8 million new voters added to the electorate ahead of the next general election in 2023. Perhaps even more importantly, it represents a rare and encouraging victory on the part of Malaysian progressives, who have had very few wins to celebrate in recent years. The campaign to lower […]

As the war in Ukraine rages on and China faces growing pressure to end its diplomatic tap dance around the conflict, Beijing is increasingly shifting its attention toward providing humanitarian aid and brokering peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. But although Chinese officials continue to insist on Beijing’s neutrality on what it describes as “the Ukraine crisis,” China’s refusal to take a side may come at a high cost. At the moment, Western observers are even worried that China might begin to actively back Russia in the conflict. Russia has already turned to China for military hardware and aid in […]

For reasons that readers of this column will certainly be aware of, the world seems consumed with Ukraine right now. In the face of what one Chinese scholar recently called the most important conflict since World War II, other important issues have been falling off the radar, starting with what has the ominous appearance of a mounting crisis of COVID-19 infections in China itself, after two years of success in containing the virus. The rest of the world is not standing still because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, of course, whatever appearance the headlines may give. Just beneath the surface, […]

On the night of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, South African Defense Minister Thandi Modise attended a reception at the Russian Embassy in Pretoria, held in honor of the Russian armed forces. Four days later, officials from the ruling African National Congress, or ANC, celebrated 30 years of Russian-South African friendship over drinks at a reception held at the Russian consulate in Cape Town. Though both episodes are shocking, neither should come as a surprise. South Africa’s foreign policy has been on a long, downward ethical trajectory since the Mandela era, when the promotion of democracy and human rights were […]

A dozen ballistic missiles struck Iraq’s northern city of Erbil on Sunday, with some reports suggesting that several landed near the U.S. consulate building in the city. The missile attack left residents of the city terrified, with many posting videos online showing several large explosions and some saying that the blasts shook their homes. Amid speculation of Iranian involvement, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps quickly claimed responsibility for the missile strike. This latest round of what some observers describe as Iran’s “messaging by missile” marks a dangerous escalation in the Middle East. Iran has built up a long track record […]

Last month, Kirstie Allsopp—who hosts the popular British reality TV show, “Location, Location, Location”—sparked debate when she claimed that many more young people would be able to afford to buy a house if they made financial sacrifices, like foregoing Netflix, store-bought coffees or even a university degree. Allsopp insisted that “we’ve fallen into a trap of saying it’s impossible” to own property at a young age, “but there are loads of people who can do it and don’t.” Some people agreed, arguing that they, like Allsopp, had indeed been able to buy a house, in part by making “enormous sacrifices” to do […]

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, social media feeds have brimmed with portrayals of Ukrainian women’s remarkable spirit of resistance. In one widely shared video, a woman confronts a Russian soldier occupying her city, telling him to put sunflower seeds in his pockets so that when he dies on Ukrainian soil his grave will sprout the national flower. In a similarly widely shared tweet, a female parliamentarian described how her weekend gardening plans were scuttled by the need to learn how to handle a gun. Yet, as women’s contributions to the war effort have gone viral, much of the response, including […]

In late February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released its most recent report, summing up the latest research on how climate change is affecting ecosystems as well as the effectiveness of the various climate adaptation measures governments across the world have enacted so far. On the latter score, the report concludes that the current pace of adaption is insufficient and finds that the measures being implemented are not holistic enough to address the major climate challenges the world faces. According to the report, some of climate change’s impacts on the natural world and human societies are now considered […]

Almost exactly 75 years ago, on March 12, 1947, then-President Harry S. Truman, alarmed by Soviet aggression in the Eastern Mediterranean and its efforts to undermine war-ravaged democracies in Western Europe, announced a dramatic reorientation of the United States’ national security policy. Addressing a joint session of Congress, he committed the U.S. to a new global mission to contain the Soviet Union by “support[ing] free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” The speech set off a 15-week frenzy of diplomatic activity that culminated on June 5 with the proposal of the Marshall Plan. This new grand strategy—now known as […]

In the 1980s, when Afghanistan was embroiled in a war between Soviet forces propping up a client government in Kabul and the CIA-assisted mujahedeen insurgency, the country became a hotbed of global jihadism, as radical Islamist fighters, most infamously Osama Bin Laden, flocked there to wage armed struggle against the communists. Several billions of dollars worth of covert U.S military assistance went to training and arming the Islamist guerilla fighters, including with Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which greatly hampered Soviet air power. What the U.S government couldn’t know at the time was how the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan would go […]

With the war in Ukraine having entered its third week, the initial euphoric triumphalism that I warned against last week over the West’s surprisingly cohesive and robust response to the Russian invasion seems to be giving way to a grim resignation. Despite the Russian military’s initial ineptness, it seems to have regrouped, with its inexorable advance now marked by the indiscriminate targeting of Ukraine’s civilian population. And although Europe and the U.S. have mobilized to impose punishing economic sanctions on Russia and deliver military assistance to Ukraine, they have drawn a clear line against participating directly in the conflict. War […]

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the reaction it has drawn from the United States and the European Union, has been described by many observers as having “revitalized the liberal international order,” as Kori Schake of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute wrote in The Atlantic. Ivo Daalder, the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, tweeted that “the West isn’t weak, divided or declining after all.” Other commentators have drawn similar conclusions following the stronger-than-expected response on both sides of the Atlantic to Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. But many observers outside the core countries of the […]

One of my greatest regrets in life is that I never got to meet Paul Farmer. The closest I came was in 2015, when Grinnell College, my alma mater in Iowa, invited me to participate in a symposium on global health at which Farmer was to be the keynote speaker. Unfortunately, my presentation was scheduled a week before Farmer’s, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t wait for a week among the cornfields to see him. A physician and anthropologist who co-founded the global health and social justice organization Partners in Health, or PIH, Farmer died unexpectedly on Feb. 21 in Butaro, Rwanda. He […]