Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Among the many glaring pieces of unfinished business on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy ledger is Venezuela, where his campaign of “maximum pressure” on President Nicolas Maduro has failed. Venezuelans are preparing to mark the anniversary this month of a policy to oust Maduro that Trump launched with great fanfare and to high expectations nearly a year ago, when he declared Maduro’s presidency “illegitimate” and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate, interim president. At the time, Trump vowed to restore Venezuelan democracy, declaring that “all options are on the table.” Yet in a sign of where things now […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. As tensions rise between the United States and Iran, China is urging both countries to exercise restraint while it carefully avoids words or actions that could be construed as taking sides. Beijing’s measured response to this escalating confrontation is a sign of its delicate diplomatic balancing act in a region where it has considerable economic interests. After Iran launched a missile strike early Wednesday against two military bases in Iraq hosting U.S. troops, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called […]

Nearly a week after the United States military assassinated Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who headed the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Baghdad, a huge rift has opened up in the U.S. relationship with Iraq. A high-ranking Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was also killed in the U.S. strike, angering many Iraqis. And on Sunday, the Iraqi parliament passed a nonbinding resolution urging the government to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, although the Trump administration insists it plans to stay. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by […]

Just over a year ago, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s political fortunes were stuck in a downward spiral. She resigned as leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, after it suffered a historic rout in local elections in 2018, losing 16 out of 22 key municipal and county-level leadership races. In the weeks following that drubbing, her approval rating dropped to an all-time low of 24 percent. It looked as though Taiwan’s first female president would also be the first to serve only a single term in office. Who could have predicted then that Tsai would “rise from the […]

Reactions in the United States to the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani have tended to fall into three broad categories. Those who support the strike argue that it eliminated a uniquely irreplaceable figure advancing Iran’s regional influence, while also reestablishing deterrence against Tehran. Those who oppose it fall into two groups. Some warn that by killing Soleimani, the U.S. took a step up the escalation ladder that will inevitably lead to open conflict with Iran. Others say that even short of causing all-out war, the strike was ill-advised because its strategic costs outweigh its benefits. The first argument […]

When President Donald Trump signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act last month, he brought into existence the United States Space Force, the sixth branch of the country’s military. The name likely appeals to Trump for the same reasons that it appalls others: It is attention-grabbing and frames the issue of space in terms of American military dominance. At least initially, the new Space Force represents only a modest organizational change, one that is essentially neutral in terms of personnel and budgetary impact. A skeptical Congress appropriated only $40 million of its $738 billion military budget for the new endeavor. […]

The day after the U.S. House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump last month, it voted overwhelmingly to approve his top trade priority: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The new trade deal will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, in effect since 1994 and reviled in equal measure by Trump and many Democrats. Both Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hailed the amended agreement—approved by 385 members of the House, with just 41 opposed—as a victory, and claimed credit for getting it done. Yet while there is much in the USMCA […]

The 25th anniversary of the landmark peace treaty between Jordan and Israel came and went without celebration among Jordanians last fall. They did cheer, however, when the Jordanian government refused to renew annexes to the treaty that allowed Israel to lease and farm fertile lands in the Jordan Valley. While Israelis were disappointed by the move, which followed through on a previous announcement, Jordanians welcomed the return of their country’s flag and sovereignty to the territories of Baqura and al-Ghamr. A cold peace, as King Abdullah II has often put it, is getting colder. Relations between Jordan and Israel have […]

Hailed as the model for resolving long-running separatist insurgencies in Southeast Asia, the 2005 agreement that ended a nearly 30-year civil war in Indonesia’s Aceh province, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, is showing its cracks. Under the peace deal, Aceh was granted more political autonomy as the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, known in Indonesian as the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM, laid down their arms. Since then, the province has held several democratic elections, while its economy has grown at an annual clip of 5 percent over the past decade. But while the deal has provided […]

Given the magnitude of the shared global challenges humanity confronts today, from climate change to nuclear proliferation, the world desperately needs a quiet phase of international comity, enlightened leadership and steady cooperation. Alas, the Boring ‘20s are not on the cards. The new decade seems poised to be as volatile and divisive as the Roaring ‘20s a century ago. Indeed, the historical parallels are dramatic and disturbing. Now, as then, the forces of chaos and division include populist nationalism, authoritarian politics, nativist intolerance, political extremism, technological disruption, economic inequality, geopolitical competition and American solipsism. In the 1920s, the leading world […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Freddy Deknatel talk about the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and its impact on Iran’s regional influence operations. They also discuss the potential for escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict and the implications for U.S. ties with Iraq. 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 […]

WINDHOEK, Namibia—In an era of political flux around the world, Namibia has long been an outpost of stubborn consistency. The ruling SWAPO Party has won every election since the country’s independence in 1990. Generally, the only matter for political debate was which opposition party would out-perform the others. That changed in the most recent general election in November. Dogged by an economic downturn and a damaging corruption scandal, SWAPO faced its first serious political challenge in 30 years, while President Hage Geingob’s bid for a second five-year term was nearly derailed by a surge in support for an outsider candidate. […]

Saudi Arabia and its allies began the Qatar blockade in 2017 in an attempt to reorient Doha's foreign policy away from countries seen as inimical to Saudi interests. With Saudi leadership now facing several crises and increasingly willing to compromise, the two sides are inching closer to a resolution. Saudi Arabia and Qatar appear to be closer to resolving a diplomatic feud that has isolated Doha from its neighbors since 2017, although wide gaps still remain. In an attempt to break the impasse, which has sharply divided the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia recently invited Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim […]

PRAGUE—With its foggily lit Gothic alleyways, Prague has long had the image of a hotbed of international espionage. A recent report by the Czech Republic’s national intelligence agency, the Security Information Service, or BIS, does little to dispel that narrative. It cautions that Russia and China are steadily increasing their efforts to sow division and win influence in this small country in the heart of Eastern Europe, which is a member of the European Union and NATO. Both Moscow and Beijing are widely suspected of seeking to provoke instability across the West, but in few countries are these tussles playing […]

The most serious problems facing the world have been making headlines for years or even decades now, from climate change to nuclear proliferation. They defy easy solutions, and like it or not, they’ll still be hanging around in 2020. Will this finally be the year that things start to turn around? Or will the world just keep kicking the apocalypse can down the road? And what about other issues that have been pushed to the forefront as a result of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, like trade wars that threaten the global economy? For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s […]

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis will return next week with her weekly Thursday column. Since the end of the Cold War, American relations with Africa have been characterized by a single, powerful trend: disengagement. Its direction has been so constant that it is tempting to think of it as a fixed given, but that would be a mistake. In reality, over the past three decades, this troubling trend has only accelerated. As the civilian bureaucracies that are supposed to lead American foreign policy have steadily disengaged from Africa, they have been eclipsed by the Pentagon. Of course, every few years Washington […]