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Lebanon’s parliamentary elections produced some heartening news for critics of the political establishment, with protest candidates performing better than expected in Sunday’s polls. Initial results show that no fewer than 10 anti-establishment candidates won seats in parliament. This wouldn’t be enough to create a sizable counter-establishment bloc in the 128-seat parliament, but it would be enough to give a real platform to many dissenting views. Hezbollah and its allies, which are collectively known as the March 8 bloc, lost ground, winning at least 61 seats, compared to 71 in the previous elections. Some of the candidates who won seats as independents will ally with […]

Last month, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, celebrated his 48th birthday with a series of public parties. The events were widely viewed as the thinly veiled launch of a political project that would see Muhoozi succeed his father. The move follows years of similar, albeit more subtle, maneuvers—particularly Muhoozi’s rapid rise through the ranks of the country’s military; the apparent purge of potential contenders within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party; increased public appearances; and, more recently, his flurry of meetings with various diplomats and heads of state. It is not yet clear what is prompting the apparent acceleration of the […]

By any definition, Libya is a so-called fragile state and a high-priority challenge for international security. Since 2011, it has been wracked by repeated cycles of internal division and proxy warfare. It is a key node of arms smuggling and human trafficking, and a feeder of violence, conflict and human suffering across North Africa and down to the Sahel and the broader West Africa region. In recognition of these challenges, the U.S. recently named it one of the priority countries for the Global Fragility Act, or GFA, a 2019 law designed to change the way the U.S. government approaches conflict-prevention and peacebuilding […]

Somali lawmakers elected Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as the country’s next president yesterday in a vote broadcast live on national television, bringing a conclusion to a dramatic, long-delayed presidential election that threatened to exacerbate socio-political tensions in the country. Mohamud, who previously served as Somalia’s president between 2012 and 2017, beat out 36 candidates, including incumbent President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. Farmaajo, as Mohamed is known, conceded defeat, paving the way for Mohamud to be sworn in immediately. The poll was conducted in a tent on the premises of Mogadishu’s heavily guarded airport complex, amid a lockdown and curfew imposed on the city by […]

Pledging to “take our country back to freedom,” businessman and political insurgent Robert Golob reveled in his victory over populist, conservative Prime Minister Janez Jansa in Slovenia’s parliamentary election on April 24. Jansa, a close ally of Hungary’s authoritarian premier, Viktor Orban, is a controversial figure who has previously been embroiled in corruption scandals and more recently accused of attacks on the free media and independent institutions. Golob’s victory may give hope to liberals across Central and Eastern Europe that right-wing strongmen can be defeated, and many EU leaders will be relieved that Jansa is out. But Golob is just the […]

International security is inherently a secretive business. Governments and militaries like to hide their capabilities and plans from their rivals. Yet in the post-Cold War years, states began to become more transparent about their military postures, aiming to create a new sense of international cooperation and openness. This process has now gone into reverse, with post-Cold War transparency arrangements in sharp decline. With the war in Ukraine signaling a new era of great power conflict and mistrust, can international organizations like the United Nations do anything to maintain some transparency over security affairs between states? The idea that multilateral bodies […]

Kenya’s largest trade union federation hailed an executive order issued earlier this month by President Uhuru Kenyatta that increased the monthly minimum wage by 12 percent. The Central Organization of Trade Unions called the directive “a great win for Kenyans” during a period of economic hardship brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, high inflation and a rise in fuel prices. Kenyatta made the announcement during a Labor Day celebration on May 1, saying that higher wages would cushion workers against the erosion of their purchasing power and enhance Kenya’s economic productivity. He further described the increase as “an appreciation to workers for […]

While Europe gets ready to tune into this year’s Eurovision Song Contest taking place Saturday in Turin, Italy, European Union officials in Brussels are engaged in a competition of their own: to spin the outcome of the recently concluded Conference on the Future of Europe that EU leaders say will shape the future of the 27-member union. The conference, which had been running for the past year, consisted of citizens’ groups that contributed policy proposals for reforming the EU, which were presented to EU leaders at its close on Monday. The brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron, who conceived of […]

Australians will head to the polls next week to elect a new government, with the prospects looking dire for the coalition of the Liberal and National parties that has been in power since 2013. During this time, internal divisions within the Liberal Party has led to Australia having had three different prime ministers. Although Prime Minister Scott Morrison has managed to make it through a full three-year term since winning the last elections in 2019, it would be a mistake to conclude that the party has overcome its constant in-fighting. In fact, this election represents the biggest existential threat the Liberal Party […]

Twenty years ago, the firebrand mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, led his party to a landslide victory in a parliamentary election that would transform Turkish politics. What followed were two decades of uninterrupted control of the government by the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which set out to prove that an Islamist party was not a threat, but could in fact move the country forward. Soon after winning in 2002, the government launched one of its most intriguing plans: a new policy branded “zero problems with neighbors,” introduced by Ahmet Davutoglu, an obscure academic then serving as the government’s […]

John Lee, Hong Kong’s former security chief, was confirmed as the city’s next chief executive with 99 percent of the votes from last Sunday’s election. Lee, a career police officer who rose to the highest echelons of the Hong Kong government ran unopposed in what critics call a “political farce.” As a hardliner approved by pro-China elites to carry out the orders of Beijing, Lee is expected to continue the assaults on political freedoms and civil liberties that have progressively eliminated space for dissent in Hong Kong, threatening its reputation as an international hub for commerce. Sunday’s polls marked the first chief executive “elections” […]

The spate of military takeovers and attempted coups across Africa over the past two years has led to speculation in some quarters about a generalized “return to military rule” or “coup contagion” on the continent. In August 2020, a group of Malian officers led by Col. Assimi Goita overthrew the government of former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. A little over nine months later, Goita also deposed the transitional government the interim junta had selected to steer the country back toward a democratically elected civilian government. In Guinea and Sudan, the army toppled civilian leaders last year, while Chad’s armed forces […]

On a warm summer evening in July 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin, together with the German chancellor and French president at the time, Gerhard Schroder and Jacques Chirac, looked on as a lavish fireworks display entertained a vast crowd in the Baltic city of Kaliningrad. In commemoration of the 750-year anniversary of the founding of what had once been the Prussian city of Konigsberg, the Russian government that had inherited Kaliningrad after its conquest by the Soviet Union during World War II had put on elaborate festivities to celebrate its complex history.  For Putin, Kaliningrad was of both personal and […]

The war in Ukraine has exacerbated Europe’s energy crisis, leaving the European Union desperately seeking alternative sources of supply to reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Among the states in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the EU has turned to in efforts to diversify its energy supplies Algeria has been identified as a promising source of additional supplies of natural gas. But diplomatic obstacles and production limitations, as well as Algiers’ commercial links to Moscow, mean that expectations management are in order when it comes to Algeria being a cure for Europe’s energy woes. Among the […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—Sinn Fein’s historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections last week, which made it the largest party in the state’s devolved parliament, is significant in numerous ways. For the first time in Northern Ireland’s 101-year history, a nationalist party is now dominant in a state that was specifically designed to ensure a pro-Union majority. But Sinn Fein is not simply a nationalist party. Having originated as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, or IRA—the foremost paramilitary in the Northern Ireland conflict—it is a republican party that once supported armed struggle and vowed to destroy the very state […]

The challenges we face today are incomparable to those of yesterday. More than ever before, we face threats restricted not just to distinct parts of the world or to particular populations, but to the globe’s collective existence. Global warming is heating up the planet—our shared home—to dangerous levels; apocalyptic nuclear warfare has become an ever-looming possibility; and new technologies, like AI voice cloning, increasingly have the potential to upend life as we know it. Unprecedented challenges call for unprecedented leadership. The world needs policymakers and leaders who can be flexible, incorporating new research and adapting to new crises as they emerge; […]

On the morning of April 1, seven children were playing in the lush wheat fields of Afghanistan’s Marjah district, in the southern Helmand province, by tossing around a metal object. Moments later, it exploded. The blast claimed five of their lives, including the youngest in the group, a 5-year-old boy. “My daughter has not only lost her three sons, but also her senses,” Haji Abdul Salam, a 55-year-old farmer who lost two children and three grandchildren in the explosion, tells me at his home while attending to visitors there for the funeral. “She neither sleeps nor eats.” But Salam is […]