Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the abrupt firing of the U.S. State Department’s inspector general by President Donald Trump last week, and the allegations of misconduct by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that have since emerged. They also talk about a potentially game-changing proposal by France and Germany for the European Union to issue collective debt to finance post-pandemic economic recovery plans for its hardest-hit member states. Listen: Download: MP3 Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:The Future of Trump’s ‘America First’ Agenda […]

Months into the coronavirus pandemic, it has become clear that countries that recently dealt with other outbreaks of infectious diseases have been more successful in containing COVID-19. From East Asia and the Pacific to West and Central Africa, authorities have made good use of epidemiological expertise they acquired from tackling outbreaks of SARS, MERS, Swine flu and Ebola to quickly roll out containment measures. Yet even governments lacking such experience should have been able to foresee the destructive potential of COVID-19. President Donald Trump may insist that “there’s never been anything like this in history,” but the history of the […]

From the moment Chinese leaders belatedly recognized that a deadly new pathogen was spreading rapidly in the city of Wuhan and beyond, it became apparent that the coronavirus would play a defining role in shaping the image and power of China and its regime for years to come. Beijing has been working overtime ever since not just to contain the virus at home, but to shape the narrative of the pandemic there and abroad, seeking to portray China and its rulers as wise, efficient, powerful and generous. China’s ultimate goal is to emerge from this crisis as a more powerful […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Residents in the capital of this small, West African country rejoiced last weekend as their beloved corner bars, known as maquis, reopened seven weeks after the government had ordered them closed to curb the spread of COVID-19. In a maquis in the suburb of Wemtenga on Sunday evening, beer bottles clinked and chairs sidled closer together as patrons smoked and swayed to Ivorian music under drops of colored light pouring from a plastic disco ball. That same day, authorities had called on citizens to respect an earlier government order to wear masks—an edict that many Burkinabe, including those […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. In a speech Monday to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for international cooperation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular for greater support for the developing world. Xi’s remarks were a bold assertion of Chinese leadership at the WHO and in global efforts to contain the coronavirus, carefully designed to deflect international criticism of Beijing’s handling of the initial outbreak. At the annual meeting of […]

The global quest for a coronavirus vaccine is heating up. Moderna, a Masschusetts-based biotechnology company, announced promising results this week from a limited early trial of its vaccine candidate. And last Friday, President Donald Trump unveiled “Operation Warp Speed,” a new public-private partnership that aims to make a vaccine available in substantial quantities by the end of the year. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by Paul Offit, a physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, to discuss what it will take to safely manufacture—and fairly distribute—a […]

From the moment the novel coronavirus burst out of China and began to spread around the world, many commentators quickly took for granted that Africa would become the pandemic’s biggest and deadliest target. Yet the continent has so far dodged those dire predictions. In retrospect, few things were more predictable. For decades, the convention in Western media coverage has been to treat Africa with a casual scorn that plays up its problems—pretending wrongly, for example, that its wars are unusually brutal by the standards of our times, or that its politicians, sneeringly dismissed as “Big Men,” are uniquely power hungry […]

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to monopolize the attention of leaders around the world, some observers have concluded that China is attempting to exploit the crisis for geopolitical gain. From its disputed western border with India to the contested waters of the South China Sea, an increasingly common narrative is that Beijing has stepped up its assertive behavior against its neighbors to settle old scores. Targets of China’s recent provocations include Taiwan and Hong Kong—which Beijing would like to see integrated with the mainland—as well as Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Yet this narrative is exaggerated. The reality is that […]

In early March, Lombardy, Italy’s most prosperous region, was fast becoming the epicenter of a global pandemic. As the number of coronavirus cases spiked above 7,000, with more than 350 deaths, the Italian government moved to quarantine the worst-affected towns in Lombardy and the rest of northern Italy, a move that was almost unthinkable at the time, with police setting up checkpoints to control traffic in and out. Yet as the world focused on Italy’s north, Filippo Anelli, the president of the country’s national federation of doctors, saw another crisis coming. “If Lombardy has been brought to its knees,” he […]

Oil demand has fallen precipitously in recent months due to lockdowns and other measures that governments around the world have undertaken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Energy Agency reckons that oil demand will fall by a record 9.3 million barrels per day in 2020, erasing nearly a decade of growth. With the crisis having rattled oil markets that were already struggling to adapt to structural challenges on both the demand and supply side, the world should brace for the geopolitical impacts of historically low demand for oil. It will take years before demand returns to pre-coronavirus levels […]

On the heels of Sen. Josh Hawley’s call in an op-ed to abolish the World Trade Organization, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also took to the opinion pages of The New York Times to declare the end of “the era of offshoring.” President Donald Trump’s aggressively unilateral trade policies, naturally, got most of the credit. As with Hawley’s fuzzy plan for a club of “free nations” aligned against China, it’s not quite clear whether Lighthizer thinks protectionism should still be part of the plan to “Bring the jobs back to America.” But with the United States potentially on the brink […]

Far from being a “great equalizer,” the coronavirus pandemic “is reinforcing the brutal inequality that separates the world’s privileged and marginalized communities,” WPR columnist Stewart Patrick wrote recently. Consider the indigenous people of South America, whose populations were decimated long ago by the arrival of European colonizers who introduced new and deadly pathogens to the continent. In an email interview with WPR, Rosaleen Howard, chair of Hispanic Studies at Newcastle University, explains how centuries of exploitation and neglect have left these indigenous communities especially vulnerable to COVID-19. World Politics Review: What kinds of unique challenges are indigenous communities in South […]

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam—As countries around the world debate how quickly they should reopen their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic, Vietnam is largely ahead of the curve. A national social distancing campaign that shut down non-essential businesses ended on April 22, and life has returned to a striking normalcy. Restaurants, bars, cinemas, barbers and other shops have reopened, though karaoke parlors and nightclubs are still closed. Sporting events and festivals are now allowed to resume as well, with the country’s top soccer league scheduled to hit the pitch next month. Domestic tourism is slowly picking up, as authorities ease […]

The twin global emergencies of COVID-19 and climate change are forcing the U.S. foreign policy establishment to reassess its traditional conceptions of national security. According to a still dominant paradigm, the gravest dangers the United States faces emanate from adversaries with sufficient military capabilities to attack the nation and its allies or, at a minimum, thwart its political and economic objectives. These threat perceptions expanded dramatically following 9/11. After a handful of jihadists armed with boxcutters inflicted a grievous wound on the U.S. homeland, transnational terrorists joined geopolitical rivals and rogue states in the pantheon of security threats. But the […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the problems around the world—from Syria’s civil war to human rights abuses in China—that are being overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and risk deteriorating further. They still must be addressed somehow whenever this crisis is over. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:Is All Hope Lost for a Global Cease-Fire Resolution at the U.N.?As COVID-19 Hits Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Military Seek an Electoral EdgeThe ‘Swedish Model’ Is a Failure, Not a PanaceaThe […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. COVID-19 has reached a camp for internally displaced people outside South Sudan’s capital, Juba, raising alarm that the virus could spread quickly among the thousands living there in crowded conditions. The positive diagnosis of two COVID-19 patients this week is a worst-case scenario for health experts in South Sudan, who warn that sick patients could quickly overwhelm the camp, which has few supplies or health facilities. The country’s already limited health infrastructure was gutted during its recent civil war; there aren’t even […]

When members of the World Health Organization convene via video conference next week for the 73rd annual World Health Assembly, they will largely focus on the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. But despite earning plaudits for its success in containing its COVID-19 outbreak, Taiwan will not be dialing in. China has long pressured other states to exclude Taiwan from the WHO, along with other United Nations bodies, because it considers Taiwan to be a rebellious province of China rather than a sovereign nation. Beijing did allow Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer during a […]