Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Two weeks of strikes, protests and roadblocks ended in rural Colombia two weeks ago after peasant farmers and indigenous groups reached an agreement with the Colombian government to include them in future rulings on mining and other issues in the country’s rural areas. More than 30,000 members of indigenous and peasant groups across the countryside initially joined the agrarian strike on May 30, which affected 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments, or regions. Three protesters were killed in clashes with riot police, and some 100 people were injured. “The government was responsible for the signing of agreements, which are viable and […]

Nigeria’s currency, the naira, lost 30 percent of its value after the Central Bank of Nigeria abandoned its peg to the dollar on June 20. The bank’s move was a substantial but long-overdue shift after a year of haphazard and detrimental economic policy under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. It took 16 months for the bank to abandon its peg, which had exacerbated negative external economic factors, including depressed global oil prices, and helped move the country toward a recession. The lag in policy change is indicative of a slow, centralized and politicized decision-making process under Buhari. The abandoning […]

It wasn’t exactly Gen. Douglas MacArthur vowing, “I shall return.” But when former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon announced on May 20 that he was stepping down from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and taking a temporary leave from politics after losing his post in the Cabinet, he added a caveat laced with more than a little bravado: “I have no intention of [permanently] leaving public life,” he declared. And in case his former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, missed the thrust of the promise, Yaalon added, “I will return as a candidate for national leadership.” With that, the former chief […]

Earlier this month, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee went on a six-day tour of Africa, visiting Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Namibia, where he announced new grant assistance and lines of credit as well as expanded scholarship opportunities. In an email interview, Amanda Lucey, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, discusses India’s outreach to Africa. WPR: How extensive are India’s political and economic ties with Africa, and what sectors are the main focus of India’s outreach to the continent? Amanda Lucey: India has long-standing ties with Africa, stemming from a shared history of colonization, ancient trade ties […]

Earlier this month, the German parliament voted to recognize the 1915 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, a motion that passed with support from all parties in the parliament. Turkey, unsurprisingly, was furious about the vote, and immediately recalled its ambassador in Berlin. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on a visit to Kenya at the time, said “the decision will seriously impact Turkish-German relations.” Erdogan also took aim at German parliamentarians of Turkish origin, saying they should have blood tests to prove their Turkish identity since “their blood is impure,” statements that infuriated the Turkish community in Germany. […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. South Africa announced that its economy had shrunk by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016, bringing the country even closer to recession. In an email interview, Ross Harvey, a senior researcher at the South African Institution of International Affairs, discusses the role of the mining sector for South Africa’s economy and the effects of the current commodities slump. WPR: How important are commodities for South Africa’s economy, and what impact have falling commodities prices had […]

Last week, New York Times reporter Mark Landler compared the foreign policy statements of a candidate for president, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with those of the actual U.S. president, Barack Obama, in regard to the Orlando terrorist attack. His conclusion, which unsurprisingly matches that of his most recent book on the allegedly contrasting foreign policy perspectives of Clinton and Obama, is that Clinton has shown herself to be the more hawkish of the two. Clinton, he argues, is more solicitous of military force and harsher in characterizing the terrorist threat facing America. It’s the kind of comparison that immediately […]

There is a crackdown underway in Iran. But it is no longer just a crackdown on dissent. Rather it is an attempt to crush views or expressions that depart from the insular and rigid worldview of an increasingly small band of hard-liners. It is not opposition parties, secularists or even reformists that are the latest targets of repression, but longtime insiders and scions of the Islamic Republic; a conservative and clerically vetted president and his administration; and revered cultural figures whose music, art and writings have long been the pride of Iranians. These are the new targets of repression, and […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—The perceived threat of millions of immigrants from the western Balkans and Turkey, and the status of citizens from Central Europe living in the United Kingdom, have become touchstone issues in the British referendum on whether or not to stay in the EU. But little attention has been paid the other way, to the impact of a potential Brexit on Central and Eastern Europe, a region extending from Poland, the union’s sixth-most-populous member, to Kosovo, which has its own distant aspirations of membership. As polling in the U.K. has showed more support for the “leave” vote, discomfort has grown […]

One of the secondary effects of the terrible shooting in Orlando, Florida, has been to relaunch the debate on whether public officials have misidentified the terrorist threat at home by failing to call it “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism.” At another point along the spectrum of Islamic political activism is Tunisia’s Ennahda party. Often described as a “moderate Islamist” party, its leaders recently decided to separate Ennahda’s political and religious activities, going so far as to ban party leaders from preaching in mosques or holding positions in religious associations. That raises the question of whether a party whose followers would […]

When Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Beijing in late June, he can rightfully take some satisfaction in his rapport with his host and Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping. While Moscow’s relations with other strategically important countries are troubled, there has been a remarkable strengthening of Russian-Chinese security, economic and ideological ties since Putin took charge of the Kremlin in 1999. Since then, Russia and China have cooperated more to promote common regional interests; their bilateral defense relationship has evolved to become more institutionalized and better integrated; and China has become Russia’s leading national trade partner and gateway to other […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa defended his legacy last month in his last state of the nation address, saying that the current recession is the result of a perfect storm of falling oil prices and a strengthening U.S. dollar. In an email interview, Diego Grijalva, a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco of Quito, discusses Ecuador’s economy in the wake of the commodities bust. WPR: How important are commodities for Ecuador’s economy, and what impact […]

In his defiant speech to Syria’s parliament earlier this month, President Bashar al-Assad, as he always has, cast all of Syria’s rebels as terrorists. “Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we are going to liberate each and every inch of Syria from their hands,” he said. The speech struck a decidedly different chord from Assad’s last national address, in July 2015, when he admitted that his army was tired, running out of soldiers, and had given up territory. A little over a month after that speech, Russia intervened in Syria, propping up Assad through airstrikes […]

On Friday, the aid group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF, announced that it will no longer take money from the European Union or any of its member states, in a denunciation of the union’s “intensifying attempts to push people and their suffering away from European shores.” In 2015, the group received about $42 million from member states and nearly $21 million from the EU itself. The move is a response to a deal between the EU and Turkey, in which Turkey agreed to take back all migrants, including Syrian refugees, who arrived on Greek islands, in […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has a bone to pick with Taiwan’s new president, Tsai Ying-wen, who took office late last month. Xi and other top Chinese leaders believed they had pushed forward unification with Taiwan during the presidency of Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou of the long-time ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Although Ma failed to go nearly as far as they would’ve liked, at least in Beijing’s view, some tangible progress was made. Now, Xi doesn’t want to see those gains lost with a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president in power. Chinese officials correctly perceive that a DPP administration will […]

China is becoming an important military player in Africa. It has sent combat troops to bolster the United Nations operation in South Sudan, is opening a naval station in Djibouti, and has promised to invest in African Union peace operations. Is this evidence of Beijing’s creeping bid for superpower status, as pessimistic Western observers fear, or a positive sign that it is can contribute more to global stability? As Mathieu Duchatel, Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and I argue in a new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), it would be odd if China did not take a greater […]

A series of gruesome attacks on bloggers in Bangladesh has shocked the country and the world. But they are only one element in a years-long cycle of mounting violence. Large-scale political repression has created a climate of injustice that extremist groups have easily exploited in their war against secularists and liberal thinkers. Unfortunately, political violence is nothing new in Bangladesh. Much of it is the result of the unrelenting, intense rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the governing Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and […]