Diplomacy & Politics Archive

If someone had mentioned fentanyl to you 5 or 10 years ago, you might have scratched your head. But today, this synthetic opioid has become a household word in the worst sense imaginable. It’s cheap and easy to manufacture, while being 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. And it’s the most commonly identified drug in fatal overdoses in the United States. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by Ben Westhoff, a journalist who spent the past few years chronicling the rise of fentanyl for a new book, […]

If climate change is the most important matter of common concern around the world, what comes second? Perhaps nothing close. But by my lights, the usual looming questions—about the fate of American power and influence, Brexit, the related viability of the European Union, and the many uncertainties surrounding the rise of China—seem almost parochial in comparison to one that gets immeasurably less international attention: the future of employment in Africa, where unprecedented demographic transitions are underway. Based on current projections, the continent’s population of nearly 1.2 billion people will rise to 2.5 billion by the middle of this century—more than […]

“There was no order to kill, yet throughout the country protesters were shot in the head?” one activist in Baghdad exclaimed, incredulous. “How do you explain that?” A bloody crackdown on anti-government protests in Iraq has killed more than 275 demonstrators and wounded 11,000 people in recent weeks, and the death toll keeps rising. In the face of the government’s ruthlessness, the continued determination of protesters represents a turning point in Iraq’s post-2003 political order. Diverse segments of the Iraqi population—including elementary and middle-school students, oil workers in Iraq’s southern provinces and trade unions—have mobilized to join the young, mostly […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. In a raid last month in Katsina, the capital of Katsina state in northern Nigeria, police freed 67 men and boys from what news reports called an “Islamic school.” The captives, who ranged in age from 7 to 40 years old, had been held in degrading conditions that included being shackled at the feet and suffering regular beatings and abuse. Hundreds more had escaped from the center in the weeks preceding the raid. In September, a police raid in neighboring Kaduna […]

MOSCOW—In late September, some 25,000 people gathered in central Moscow to demand the release of political prisoners who were jailed during the wave of demonstrations that rocked the Russian capital this past summer. At their peak, the protests, demanding fair elections, had crackled with urgent energy. But the mood on this cold, rainy Sunday was more reflective, as participants assessed the movement’s accomplishments and laid out future plans. The speakers, who stood on a stage looking out over a street named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, included seasoned veterans like Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, and his political […]

The civilians who helped end the repressive regime of Sudan’s longtime president, Omar al-Bashir, are discovering that exercising power is often more difficult than attaining it. Barely three months after forming an uneasy transitional government with military and paramilitary leaders who tried to seize control for themselves, these revolutionaries have begun the task of undoing three decades of misrule. It is a race against time: Within three years, the transitional authorities face the challenge of instituting accountable, inclusive governance for the first time in Sudan’s history, while organizing elections and completing a democratic transfer of power. These challenges are compounded […]

For just the third time in modern American history, the U.S. House of Representatives is investigating whether a president should be removed from office. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has so far kept the impeachment inquiry narrowly focused on President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponents. But even as the House approved a resolution last week setting out the next steps in that inquiry, there have been reports of other instances in which Trump appears to be manipulating U.S. policy—in this case involving trade—to serve his narrow political interests, rather […]

After decades of American global engagement, the concept of “restraint” is having its moment, and understandably so. Thirty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Americans are weary of foreign misadventures, whether undertaken by neoconservatives or liberal interventionists, and they want more attention and resources devoted to challenges at home. The national security establishment may still endorse U.S. primacy, backed by a global network of alliances, the forward deployment of American troops, “onshore balancing” in Europe and Asia, and democracy promotion around the world. The public is more circumspect, preferring a restrained internationalism. Political leaders have begun to take […]

For the Latin American right, Chile is a model country that gives credibility to their pro-market policies and reassures citizens that these policies can be socially inclusive. Conservative leaders from Argentina’s outgoing, center-right president, Mauricio Macri, to Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, have lauded Chile as an example for their relatively closed economies to emulate. Yet the unexpected eruption of popular protests and the repressive security response that has cost the lives of at least 18 demonstrators have shaken the country’s image as a stable democracy, while raising questions about the downsides of those pro-market policies and the lingering legacy […]

A retired law professor with no prior experience in government won by a landslide in Tunisia’s presidential runoff in mid-October. Kais Saied’s victory, with more than 70 percent of the vote, was widely seen as a sign that the electorate is fed up with the country’s political establishment. In parliamentary elections held between the first and second round of the presidential race, no party won more than 19 percent of the vote. Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party, won a plurality of 52 seats but is likely to face difficulty assembling a coalition government in the 217-seat parliament. In an email […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Frederick Deknatel and Laura Weiss talk about the death of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the impact it might have on the group. They also discuss Argentina’s election results and their implications for the country’s deep economic crisis, as well as the new Brexit questions raised by the upcoming U.K. elections. 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 […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The space for dissent in John Magufuli’s Tanzania is closing rapidly. Amnesty International issued a report this week accusing Magufuli, who was elected president in 2015, of creating a “climate of mounting fear with growing restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.” Magufuli, who earned the popular nickname “the Bulldozer” from his time as minister of public works, was elected promising to reform Tanzania and end corruption. Instead, his administration has steadily trimmed the rights of opposition […]

Russia is launching one of the boldest experiments in the recent history of the internet, but perhaps not in the way it thinks. On Nov. 1, a strict new law meant to impose Russia’s own version of China’s “great firewall”—the autocratic gold standard for state control of cyberspace—officially takes effect. While the law’s details are sketchy, it aims to cut off Russia’s connections to the World Wide Web and replace them with its own tightly controlled “domestic internet.” Whether or not the Kremlin knows it, when the history of 21st-century cyberwars are written, this move could be seen in retrospect […]

There were no surprises in Argentina’s presidential election on Oct. 27, when leftist candidate Alberto Fernandez, with former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as his running mate, defeated the center-right incumbent Mauricio Macri. That outcome had been anticipated by primary elections—essentially a preview of the vote—held in August, when the Fernandez-Fernandez ticket trounced Macri as Argentina’s economy continued to deteriorate. The new administration will take office on Dec. 10. For Cristina Fernandez, this is all personal vindication. When her presidency ended in 2015, she left behind economic stagnation and a trail of corruption allegations. She attempted a political comeback in […]