Diplomacy & Politics Archive

PRAGUE—A recently released biopic about the life of Vaclav Havel, the famed anti-communist dissident who became the Czech Republic’s first president, wasn’t well-received by local critics. The overwhelming consensus was that “Havel” simplifies history and focuses too much on its subject’s personal foibles, chiefly his notorious womanizing. Such criticisms aside, the film couldn’t have arrived in cinemas at a more fitting time. A revival of Havel’s legacy is underway among the Czech political class, as a signpost for what the country’s political ideals should be and why they have gone astray. When the president of the Senate, Milos Vystrcil, who […]

Until a couple weeks ago, Moria was the largest refugee camp in Europe. Situated on the Greek island of Lesbos, it housed roughly 13,000 people in facilities that were designed to hold 3,000. But starting on the evening of Sept. 8, a series of fires swept through Moria, reducing it to a smoldering ruin by the end of the week. Greek authorities have charged four young Afghan migrants with arson in connection with the fires. With nowhere else to go, thousands of Moria’s residents were left homeless, without access to basic services. Their plight casts a harsh and damning light […]

In July, jailed separatist leaders in Cameroon fighting for the creation of an independent state held their first formal talks with the government about ending the violence plaguing the country’s two Anglophone regions. While the origins of the conflict are in colonial-era divisions of territory, its proximate cause was protests in 2016 against the marginalization of Cameroon’s Anglophone minority, which makes up roughly 20 percent of the population in the majority French-speaking country. In the years since, the conflict has killed several thousand people and displaced nearly a million more. The recent talks with the government were led by the […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Edward Alden is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott. The World Trade Organization is dying. We’ll miss it when it’s gone, for many reasons. But one stands out in particular: The WTO helps keep national leaders from doing economically harmful things for domestic political reasons. Without that constraint, we can expect governments to take more and more actions that are politically popular but harmful to both their national economies and to the global economy. The decision last week by a WTO dispute settlement panel that ruled against the Trump administration’s tariffs on China is a sign […]

Like other world leaders, U.S. President Donald Trump is not traveling to New York for this week’s U.N. General Assembly due to the coronavirus pandemic, delivering a pre-recorded video address instead. But while the format may be peculiar, the substance of what he will say could be more familiar, and jarring. Trump has addressed the assembly three times since taking office, and he tends to repeat certain themes each year, often with one eye on his domestic audience. Here are five points to look out for in Tuesday’s speech. China: The president is almost certain to devote a significant chunk […]

The many ongoing challenges in Iraq—from political upheaval and COVID-19 to plummeting oil prices and the resurgence of the Islamic State—often overshadow the precarious state of the country’s water resources, even though water shortages are exacerbating many of those very issues. Studies have shown that equitable access to water is vital to supporting post-conflict recovery, sustainable development and lasting peace in Iraq, because water underpins public health, food production, agricultural livelihoods and power generation. But fresh water in Iraq is becoming scarcer, fueling more social tensions. Iraq’s population of 40 million is expected to double by 2050, while the impacts […]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allure to Israeli voters is perhaps best embodied in three election campaign posters that adorned the 15-story headquarters of his Likud party in Tel Aviv last year. Each depicted him alongside a major world leader: U.S. President Donald Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi, under the slogan: “Netanyahu: Another League.” The message: Netanyahu, and Netanyahu alone, makes Israel punch above its weight on the world stage. The normalization agreements Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain last week should have unambiguously reinforced this image. Even Netanyahu’s most dogged critics have difficulty faulting […]

The opening of the 75th United Nations General Assembly finds international cooperation in crisis and the U.N. in the crosshairs. Many critiques, especially from the United States, focus on the institution itself, as if it were somehow disembodied from the interests and policies of its major member states. The U.N.’s troubled anniversary is an opportune moment not only to reassess its strengths and weaknesses, but also to temper expectations of what multilateralism can possibly deliver when the U.N.’s leading members turn it into a geopolitical football—or are absent without leave. With these ends in mind, I offer the following 10 […]

After a rare period of unity, Venezuela’s opposition recently splintered over a familiar issue: whether to contest an election. A coalition of parties aligned with opposition leader Juan Guaido plans to boycott legislative elections that are scheduled for December, on the grounds that they will be rigged. Henrique Capriles, another prominent opposition figure, heads a much smaller faction that recently announced it will participate in the vote if electoral conditions are improved. That move could play into the hands of Venezuela’s repressive president, Nicolas Maduro, who is hoping to win international recognition of the election even though it will be […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Human rights groups are demanding an independent investigation into apparent military abuses in Mozambique, after videos circulated recently showing men in state military uniforms executing a civilian and torturing suspected members of an Islamist militia in the country’s restive province of Cabo Delgado. There are fears that the images could stoke local grievances and generate support for the militants. Officials from Mozambique’s government have accused the militia of shooting the footage to undermine the military in Cabo Delgado. Fighting between the Islamist […]

The United States gets a lot right about its strategic approach to cyberspace, but the steady stream of reporting on the relentless wave of adversarial cyber campaigns waged by Russia, China and Iran against the U.S. show that it also still gets plenty of things wrong. Some in Washington may be comforted by the idea that the Pentagon will act as a “backstop” against foreign cyber campaigns aimed at influencing the upcoming elections. The fact that a militarized response seems to be the only arrow in America’s quiver, though, is seriously troubling. More than half a century after the Pentagon’s […]

Security forces killed 13 people during two days of violent protests against police brutality last week in Colombia’s capital, Bogota. Sixty-six civilians and nearly 200 police officers were wounded. More than 200 buses were vandalized, and 54 small police posts were destroyed. If those numbers described a battle during the country’s 50-year internal armed conflict with guerrilla groups, it would have been one of the bloodier ones. It was a jarring sight to behold in “post-conflict” Colombia, four years after the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, signed a peace accord […]

When officials from Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain joined President Donald Trump at the White House to sign landmark diplomatic agreements Tuesday, the event was loaded with domestic political ramifications for each country. But beyond that—and beyond the timing of the ceremony—the deals normalizing the UAE and Bahrain’s ties with Israel carry major regional implications. And, perhaps surprisingly, the presence of tiny Bahrain is a crucial element of their momentum. It’s no coincidence that the only top leaders at the White House ceremony for the so-called Abraham Accords were Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump, facing […]

Following months of anti-government protests and calls for his resignation, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali was overthrown in a coup last month. Since then, the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, a regional bloc of 15 countries that includes Mali, has been pressuring the ruling military junta to quickly hand power back to a civilian government. But last weekend, the junta defied ECOWAS by releasing a plan that would allow a military leader to oversee an 18-month transitional period before elections are held. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, WPR’s Elliot Waldman was joined by Alex […]

Since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom has been trying hard to figure out its new position on the global stage. Not without a certain degree of nostalgia, the ruling Conservative Party has put forward the idea of “global Britain,” reviving old imperial networks and repositioning London at their center. Arguably, nowhere are the contradictions of this idea more evident than in the U.K.’s ties with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. There, London is struggling—and often failing—to find an advantageous balance between projecting the gravity befitting a global power and retaining the favor of its autocratic partners […]

Editor’s Note: Lavender Au is China Note’s new lead writer, curating the week’s top news and expert analysis on China every Wednesday with WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm. More than 1,000 Chinese students and scholars have had their visas to the United States revoked recently under a new Trump administration program that claims to target security risks and guard against espionage. The affected students largely hail from China’s seven major national defense colleges, which are directly subordinate to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, receive funding from the military and work on military projects. But to call […]

After the unpopular president of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was ousted by the country’s military last month, the leaders of the coup promised to set up a transitional civilian government and eventually hold elections. That came as a relief to the crowds of anti-government protesters who had been in the streets for months, demanding Keita’s resignation. Since the coup, however, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. Following three days of talks with opposition groups and representatives from civil society, Mali’s ruling military junta recently released its blueprint for a transition plan back to civilian government. But the plan was […]