Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Last week, Abdulla Aripov, the prime minister of Uzbekistan, and Emomali Rahmon, the president of Tajikistan, agreed to allow their citizens to visit each other’s countries without a visa for up to 30 days, removing restrictions put in place between the adversarial regimes back in 2001. The move is the latest sign that Uzbekistan, one of the world’s most closed countries, is slowly opening up. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has spearheaded this opening since he replaced Islam Karimov, who ruled the country for 27 years before he died in September 2016. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about corruption in various countries around the world. On Jan. 8, a major corruption trial began in Vietnam that could result in the first-ever conviction of a former member of the powerful Politburo of the Communist Party, Dinh La Thang. The trial is part of a wider crackdown on corruption that has swept up nearly two dozen former officials at Vietnam’s state energy company, PetroVietnam, among other state-owned enterprises. In an email interview, Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia, discusses […]

Sebastian Pinera put in an underwhelming performance in the first round of Chile’s presidential elections on Nov. 19, winning just 36.6 percent of the vote. Most polls had predicted that the conservative billionaire and former president, running for the center-right Chile Vamos coalition, would take over 40 percent of the vote, and even pass the 50-percent threshold necessary to win outright and return straight to the Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, which he left in 2014. Yet following a bitter campaign, Pinera romped to victory on Dec. 22 by a wide, 9-point margin over his second-round opponent, Alejandro Guillier, who failed […]

Coming up on the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president, a number of weighty international issues loom on the near horizon. Asia is on edge over signs the United States might initiate a nuclear war with North Korea and a trade war with China. The Middle East risks going completely off the rails after Trump’s reversal of decades-long U.S. policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict and his threatened reversal of the nuclear deal with Iran. Alarms are sounding in Europe over a paradigmatic shift in relations with Washington that poses an existential threat to the idea of a […]

At the end of December, Libya’s prime minister in Tripoli, Fayez Serraj, announced that Libyan families displaced from the town of Tawergha since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011 could return home. The people of Tawergha allegedly fought on the side of deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Their return to Tawergha, in western Libya, will mark one of the first successful reconciliation efforts between embattled communities in the country. In an email interview, Jalel Harchaoui, a doctoral candidate in geopolitics at Paris 8 University focusing on Libya, discusses the ongoing obstacles to communal reconciliation. WPR: What has […]

UVIRA, Democratic Republic of Congo—When the rebels attacked, some of them arrived on motorized wooden boats, toting rocket-propelled grenades. Others streamed down the lush hills that surround this city, perched on the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa’s second-largest lake. Civilians fled in their wake. Members of the group, called the National People’s Coalition for the Sovereignty of Congo, had one simple aim, according to Alemasi Musoshi, a 26-year-old rebel who took part in the attack on Uvira last September. “All we ask is for Kabila to leave power,” he says. Congo’s embattled president, Joseph Kabila, has managed, despite […]

On Dec. 7, French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Qatar for a short yet very profitable visit. It took place in the wake of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s own trip to Paris in September. During his eight-hour stay in Doha, Macron visited al-Udeid Air Base—the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East—where France also has a contingent of soldiers. He was then received at Sheikh Tamim’s administrative office, the Emiri Diwan, to discuss several matters of bilateral interest, as well as the diplomatic standoff in the Gulf, before flying back to Paris. Macron and Sheikh […]

When U.S President Donald Trump announced that he was canceling his trip to the United Kingdom, the public explanation was his disinterest in presiding over the opening of the mammoth new American Embassy, one of the ceremonial events planned for the visit. But it could also be seen as an unexpected gesture of consideration for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who had extended the official invitation from the queen to visit before a series of awkward incidents in the bilateral relationship. Ever since the two leaders held hands outside the Oval Office barely a week after Trump’s inauguration a year […]

In late November, the U.S. State Department gave its seal of approval for the sale of advanced Javelin anti-tank missiles to Georgia. Long coveted by the aspiring NATO member, the weapons appear to offer a boon to Tbilisi’s defense capabilities. Yet any added military value is still modest compared to the overwhelming military superiority of Russia, Georgia’s chief external threat. Since fighting a brief war with Russia in 2008, Georgia has faced a security dilemma in how it should deal with Moscow, balancing diplomacy and talks with military reforms and defense spending. How Georgia deploys the new weapons—and how that […]

Soon after 9/11, President George W. Bush recognized that the United States needed Pakistan’s cooperation to eradicate the training camps in Afghanistan where al-Qaida planned the attacks. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared that his nation was a full partner in the new “war on terror.” A few years later, Bush designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally. Since 2002, Pakistan has received more than $33 billion in economic and security assistance from the United States, while the American military greatly expanded cooperation with its Pakistani counterpart. But this was always a deeply troubled partnership. Pakistan, especially the politically dominant Pakistani military, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Nearly seven years to the day after Tunisia’s so-called Jasmine Revolution forced the departure of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country was once again rocked by widespread protests this week—this time sparked by austerity measures including price and tax increases. According to the BBC, protests had occurred in at least 10 locations, including Tunis, the capital, as of Thursday. Hundreds of people were arrested; 50 police officers were injured; the army was deployed in some places; […]

Courts and legislatures have taken decisive steps to protect LGBT rights in Latin America. But there is a stark difference between the law and day-to-day realities. On Tuesday, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights urged Latin American countries to legalize same-sex marriages and unions, responding to a 2016 petition by Costa Rica’s president, Luis Guillermo Solis, who has championed gay rights. The decision, one of the most sweeping court statements on same-sex marriage in history, appeared to be the latest sign that Latin America is becoming one of the safest regions in the world for LGBT people, at least legally. […]

The Trump administration’s decision to end immigration protections for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans living in the United States will have a crushing impact on the lives of people who have called America their home for more than a decade, if not longer. But the reverberations of the move to end the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will also have a devastating effect on El Salvador, the tiny Central American country that has struggled to stay afloat in relentlessly stormy socioeconomic and geopolitical conditions. The end of TPS could even gradually turn El Salvador into a failed […]

For well over a year, information coming out of the Republic of Congo’s southeastern Pool region, though limited, has pointed to a brutal armed conflict with grave humanitarian consequences. In its crackdown on the Ntsiloulou rebel group, also known as the “Ninjas,” the government of President Denis Sassou Nguesso has been accused of carrying out torture, mass evictions, arbitrary arrests and even aerial bombardments against civilians. Grisly violence has also been attributed to the rebels, including attacks on rail lines connecting the region to the rest of the country. The conflict in Pool started immediately after Sassou Nguesso was named […]

Much has been made of French President Emmanuel Macron’s flair for public diplomacy, from his handling of U.S. President Donald Trump to his efforts to take the lead in global diplomacy on climate change. The latest illustration is his visit this week to China, where he lived up to expectations: In a French version of China’s celebrated “panda diplomacy,” Macron offered Chinese President Xi Jinping a prized horse from France’s Republican Guard as a gift. In his speech in Xian upon his arrival, Macron offered China shared leadership on climate change diplomacy and requested Beijing’s help in efforts to stabilize […]

The popular demonstrations that erupted in Iran in late December, the largest since the Green Movement protests in 2009, have created a pretext for the Trump administration to renege on the nuclear deal, which it has tried to nix throughout its first year in office. But breaking the 2015 agreement by piling on sanctions pressure would likely have only a minor economic effect on Tehran, especially in the short term, while undermining the very protesters the administration has vocally supported. The threat of new U.S. sanctions would also limit American leverage in pursuing regional stability and nonproliferation. Media coverage has […]

The momentum has tapered off in the remarkable weeklong protests across Iran. But if it seems that the regime has prevailed, despite its legitimacy eroding a bit, do the demonstrations have a deeper meaning and long-term foreign policy consequences? Will policies in Tehran and Washington change? Most outside observers, even those at opposite sides of the ideological spectrum on Iran, agree on the basic facts. These protests, which broke out in the northeastern city of Mashad on Dec. 28, were triggered by economic distress. But as they spread to dozens of locales across the country, they took on a direct […]