Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Recent signs of increased economic cooperation in the Levant, especially among Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, are sparking hope that past failed efforts to establish a regional free trade agreement may soon be revived. A bilateral trade deal between Jordan and Iraq signed in February, as well as a trilateral leaders’ summit held in Egypt earlier this year, suggest that these countries are looking to diversify their economic portfolios, deepen regional cooperation and get a leg up on post-ISIS reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Syria. However, a number of obstacles remain before these recent developments could conceivably catalyze the resurrection of […]

In late September, El Nuevo Diario, Nicaragua’s second-largest newspaper by circulation, announced that it would shut down after nearly 40 years in print due to “economic, technical and logistical difficulties.” “We didn’t know anything. It took us by surprise,” Eliud Garmendia, a journalist with El Nuevo Diario, told the Nicaraguan online news outlet Confidencial. The paper’s closure, while sudden, was not entirely unexpected. For months, the Nicaraguan government has refused to release vital supplies like paper and ink from the state customs agency, forcing El Nuevo Diario to stop printing on weekends and reduce its page-count, according to Lori Hanson, […]

When wildfires started raging out of control in the Amazon in September, the entire world took notice of Brazil and the refusal of its far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, to accept international assistance to put out the blazes. But a similar disaster may end up having a greater political impact in neighboring Bolivia, where fires have consumed some 10 million acres in the past few months. Socialist President Evo Morales’ tepid response has infuriated Bolivians, just days before a controversial presidential election. The magnitude of the anger became palpable Friday, when Bolivians turned out in huge numbers to protest against Morales’ […]

Hundreds of thousands of Bolivians marched Friday to protest President Evo Morales’ handling of forest fires that had been burning out of control for weeks. A similar situation in Brazil raised international pressure on that country’s controversial far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Morales has so far escaped international scrutiny over the issue, even as it has begun take on more prominence in the run-up to elections on Oct. 20. The protests in Bolivia’s largest city, Santa Cruz, followed Morales’ appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in late September, where he assured his global counterparts that his government would fulfill its […]

When the Chinese Communist Party recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of its rule, it predictably pulled out all the stops. These included stepped up censorship of already tightly controlled domestic media for weeks before the event, extraordinary security measures in Beijing designed to prevent even the slightest disturbance, and the largest military parade in the country’s history. Responses to China’s celebrations have been equally predictable, too, and although they fall into two broad and opposing camps, there is no real contradiction between them. On one hand, some observers focus on China’s achievements since the early 1980s, starting with the rapid […]

With every day, a new thread seems to emerge in the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, which centers on Trump’s efforts to pressure the government of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, the former vice president and now Democratic presidential candidate. According to multiple whistleblowers and a released rough transcript of a July 25 phone call, Trump urged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Biden. The request put Zelensky in a tough position, caught between his need for American support to fight a war in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists, and his desire to avoid […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Last Friday, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, provoked a fierce backlash from China when he tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. The since-deleted tweet led to a number of Chinese companies pausing their ties with the NBA, which initially expressed regret for the statement but has since offered a stronger defense of Morey’s statement. China is the NBA’s largest overseas market, so NBA officials have scrambled to contain the fallout. But the situation […]

A left-leaning anti-establishment party scored an upset victory in parliamentary elections in Kosovo last weekend, as voters strongly rebuked the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, which had been in power since the country declared independence in 2008. The left-wing Albanian nationalist Self-Determination Movement, or Vetevendosje, took a plurality of 26 percent, and the more mainstream Democratic League of Kosovo finished a close second. Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti, a former political dissident, will now try to form a coalition government, but how exactly he will do so is unclear, says Aleksandar Kocic, a Serbian-born journalist and lecturer in journalism […]

Russian border guards have escalated a crackdown on North Korean squid poachers in recent weeks, detaining dozens of fishing vessels and hundreds of crew members for illegally fishing inside Russia’s exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan. Moscow had previously ignored North Korean incursions into its waters, but the increasing scale of the problem and a mounting domestic outcry finally prompted authorities to take action. In an email interview with WPR, Artyom Lukin, a scholar specializing in Russia’s ties with East Asia at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia, explains the timing behind Russia’s clampdown and how […]

On the morning of June 24, 2016, Britons woke up to a new reality—and to what, for many of them, surely felt like a new and unfamiliar country. A day earlier, 52 percent of the U.K. electorate had unexpectedly voted to leave the European Union in a historic referendum, a result that had blindsided most experts. The newspaper headlines that morning reflected the general mood, which could be best described as shellshock. “Brexit Earthquake,” declared The Times of London, succinctly capturing the emotional state of most Remain voters. “Britain breaks with Europe,” was the Financial Times’ more sober take, but […]

Venezuela’s economic collapse and Washington’s new sanctions on companies shipping Venezuelan oil to Cuba have plunged the island nation into its most severe energy crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. In response, Havana is looking to its old ally Russia to plug the hole in energy supplies left by the decline in Venezuelan shipments. But the crisis is hampering plans to implement economic reforms that Havana hopes will respond to popular demands for economic liberalization while retaining the Communist Party’s political dominance. Visiting Cuba last week, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev promised that Russia would […]

The U.S. announced last week that it will begin imposing new tariffs on $7.5 billion in imports from the European Union on Oct. 18. Unless there is a quick settlement to an underlying dispute over plane-manufacturing subsidies, which seems unlikely given that it has dragged on for 15 years, American lovers of single-malt scotch, French wine and cheese, Spanish olive oil and English wool sweaters had better stock up on these and other items imported from Europe. Yet these tariffs aren’t like the others imposed so far under President Donald Trump, and it is premature to assume they signal the […]

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s unique and often unstable tripartite presidency missed its deadline to form part of its national government in early September, almost a year after general elections, amid continued disagreements on whether to proceed with long-in-the-works plans to join NATO. With its leaders deadlocked, the country’s path toward both the Western military alliance and membership in the European Union is as uncertain as ever. Twenty-five years after the end of the brutal war that killed over 100,000 people and left millions displaced, Bosnia’s dysfunctional political system continues to hamper its long recovery. The country is still reliant on international […]

It’s easy to take for granted, in this globalized era, that all peoples and nations use a common standard to tell the time. But it wasn’t always this way. Not until the late 19th century did the world finally synchronize its watches. This milestone in multilateral cooperation occurred at a pivotal if unsung gathering, the International Meridian Conference, which convened in Washington, D.C., in October 1884, 135 years ago this month. President Chester A. Arthur had invited the world’s 26 “civilized”—that is, independent—nations to resolve a dilemma that increasingly bedeviled international commerce and communication: namely, the absence of any agreed […]

Three years ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin barely registered a blip on Google trends in English or Russian. Today, the Kremlin-connected businessman better known as “Putin’s chef” is persona non grata in many places around the world, including the United States, where the Treasury Department leveled another round of sanctions against Prigozhin this week for his role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Although Prigozhin’s close ties to President Vladimir Putin have long been known to Russian observers, stretching back to their younger days in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, the Kremlin insider was virtually unknown in the United […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Frederick Deknatel and Laura Weiss talk about the recent protests in Egypt and what the government crackdown against them says about President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s hold on power. They also discuss the background of Peru’s constitutional crisis and the contradictions on display during the 70th anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic of China. 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 […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. With Zambia’s National Assembly set to debate changes to the country’s constitution, President Edgar Lungu appears to be consolidating his party’s power ahead of his 2021 reelection campaign. The proposed changes would give the president unprecedented authority to remove members of the judiciary, eliminate restrictions on his ability to appoint ministers and strip the National Assembly of many of its oversight responsibilities, including fiscal controls. The amendments would also grant the parliamentary body new control over its size, which may give Lungu’s […]