Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the implications for U.S.-Saudi ties. For the Report, Anna-Catherine Brigida talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about the dangers facing Salvadorans deported by the U.S., many of whom are returning to a country they barely know. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview […]

CALGARY, Canada—After years of campaign promises, delays and contentious Senate debates, marijuana legalization is finally coming to Canada on Oct. 17. The milestone will make Canada the second country—and the largest—to legalize the drug for recreational use; Uruguay made the same move in 2013. It therefore offers unique opportunities for other countries to learn from the resulting triumphs and pitfalls. The Cannabis Act was originally tabled in the spring of 2017 with the goal of legalization by Canada Day—July 1—of this year. Demands for more research input and coordination with the various levels of government and industry stakeholders slowed the […]

Despite the U.S. military’s superiority, there are several reasons America could lose a future war: An enemy could exploit America's fraying security alliances or its domestic political rifts or develop a militarily decisive technology that the United States lacks. The critical question is how the United States would react. Last week, I argued that while the U.S. military, the Pentagon and most national security experts expect that the United States will always win the wars it is forced to fight, America could in fact lose one if an astute enemy capitalizes on the nation’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I sketched out […]

In Liberia, one of the surest signs that a news story has captured the attention of the general public is when someone starts singing about it on the radio. In August 2014, the Auto-Tune-heavy hit “Ebola in Town,” by Samuel “Shadow” Morgan and Edwin “D-12” Tweh, caught fire right around the time the World Health Organization began describing the West African epidemic as an international emergency. During the most recent presidential campaigns, in 2011 and 2017, the candidates’ catchiest theme songs saturated the airwaves as Election Day approached. Recently, to the consternation of President George Weah, a new topical jam […]

Much of the world’s waste used to wind up in China and Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam, but in recent years, they have all cracked down on imports of waste and recyclables. This has caused a major disruption in the global waste trade, leading to massive accumulations of plastic, cardboard and electronic waste in developed countries like the United States. According to Derek Kellenberg, an environmental economist at the University of Montana, this may be a turning point that forces the world’s major producers to finally reckon with the true social costs of waste. In an interview with […]

Ahead of Brazil’s elections last Sunday, the far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro was widely expected to finish first in a crowded field. With more than a dozen people running for the presidency, however, few thought he would come as close as he did to winning an outright majority in the first round. The final tally gave the controversial former army captain 46 percent of the vote, setting the stage for a runoff on Oct. 28 against Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party, whose preferred candidate, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is in prison and was barred from […]

In the wake of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the United States embarked on a two-pronged policy of sanctions and isolation to punish Moscow. At the time, some Russian analysts predicted it would be impossible to isolate Russia, and that those seeking to do so would only isolate themselves. That has proven to be right in more respects than those analysts and the Kremlin may have realized. While Russia has suffered significant economic harm from the U.S.-led international sanctions regime—a collapse in the ruble, near stagnant GDP growth, exclusion from international credit markets—it has nonetheless expanded its exports, deepened […]

Despite recent statements from President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, that things are back to “normal” after their response to what they described as an “attempted coup,” there is nothing normal about what’s happening in Nicaragua. Following the release of a United Nations report detailing the suppression and criminalization of protests that began in April, there have been further efforts to silence government critics. In late August, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a blistering report on the political violence in Nicaragua that has killed more than 300 people and […]

In a speech last week that seemed as much an effort to catch up to recent events as a formal declaration of policy, Vice President Mike Pence put Beijing on notice that “the United States of America has adopted a new approach to China.” The address, delivered at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, for the most part covered familiar ground in terms of American grievances with the bilateral relationship. Having spent the past 20 years seeking to invite China into the international order as a “responsible stakeholder,” the U.S. has now run out of patience over Beijing’s unfair […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series on immigration and integration policy around the world. Hundreds of Yemeni asylum-seekers found their way to the South Korean resort island of Jeju this summer, sparking protests in a country that does not have a long history of dealing with foreigners of different ethnicities. Over 700,000 South Koreans have since signed a petition calling on the government to limit the entry of asylum-seekers, forcing President Moon Jae-in’s administration to scramble in response to the backlash. In an interview with WPR, Darcie Draudt, a doctoral candidate in political science at Johns […]

Editor’s note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. When Meng Hongwei, China’s vice minister of public security, was elected president of Interpol in 2016, it was hailed in China as a sign of the country’s ability to lead international organizations. But in a dramatic turn of events late last week, his wife reported him missing to French authorities in Lyon—where Interpol has its headquarters—after not hearing from him since he traveled to China in late September. A text message with an ominous […]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s state visit to Berlin last month came at a turbulent time for both Turkey’s relationship with Germany and Erdogan’s personal relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. While the visit has been billed as a sign of rapprochement, the reality is that Germany and Turkey need each other and are willing to work together on a transactional basis despite persistent irritants in the bilateral relationship. In an email interview with WPR, Lisel Hintz, assistant professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, discusses the backdrop to Erdogan’s visit and how it […]

Editor’s Note: This story was a Finalist for a 2019 Livingston Award, for excellence in international reporting. In July 2019, it also received an Honorable Mention by the National Press Club for the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, which recognizes excellence in reporting on diplomatic and foreign policy issues. SAN SALVADOR—At around 2 a.m. on a Sunday this past May, Ricardo Canenguez sent his girlfriend, Damaris Perez, a text message with a license plate number. The plate belonged to the car of a police officer who, Canenguez said, had harassed him—and struck him—for no apparent reason while he […]

The disappearance of the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has focused much attention in Washington, D.C., where Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile, on the stream of bad news coming out of Saudi Arabia in recent months. Ever since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman returned from a month-long trip abroad in March and April, with stops in Egypt, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Spain, a succession of developments have cast serious doubt on the credibility of the reform narrative the crown prince and his entourage were so energetically pushing, to often eager applause. Given the opaque […]

The collapse of a dam this summer in southeastern Laos, which triggered massive flooding that killed dozens and displaced thousands of people, has brought a renewed focus on hydroelectric dams in mainland Southeast Asia. Proponents of hydroelectric dams argue they will bring benefits in the form of national revenue and power generation for local communities, but they also threaten the food security and livelihoods of millions of people in the riparian countries that make up the Lower Mekong region: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. In an email interview, Diana Suhardiman, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute’s office […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss rising tensions and the risk of conflict between the U.S. and China. For the Report, Emmanuel Freudenthal talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about why the situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone region is a greater threat to President Paul Biya’s grip on power than the country’s presidential election this Sunday. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The […]

As American power wanes in absolute and relative terms, the earnest officials who have designed and led U.S. foreign assistance programs are working hard to sustain and even strengthen this key component of America’s international engagement. It’s a daunting task, given the pressures to reduce funding, stop nation-building and comply with a commander-in-chief who devalues their work and has cut across the bow to eliminate categories of countries where needs and U.S. interests may be greatest. In June, officials from the Defense and State Departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, released their first-ever interagency Stabilization Assistance […]