A civil-military relations crisis in the U.S. is actually the latest in a recent series of similar crises affecting the world’s major powers, including Russia and China. That raises the question: Is this simply a random series of unconnected events that all just happen to center around defense ministers? Or is there a deeper cause?
Evo Morales declared he would run in Bolivia’s next presidential election as the candidate for the ruling MAS party—two years before the ballot and before MAS had even held its primary. It is the latest gambit in Morales’ increasingly bitter struggle with President Luis Arce, as both seek to lead the party into the 2025 election.
No one paying attention would disagree with Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s assessment that the “war on drugs” has failed miserably. But highlighting the failure of previous strategies to tackle drug trafficking does nothing to protect the embattled Petro from what has happened to Colombia’s cocaine trade since he took office.
Several recent articles have questioned the validity of the concept of the “Global South” and even call for the retirement of the term altogether. But instead of dismissing the term, it’s important to clarify what the Global South is and is not, and to demonstrate the shortcomings of the most widely used arguments against the concept.
At a far-right conference in Budapest this month, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni delivered a speech bashing a supposedly “woke” left. But the pro-European Meloni showed more caution in discussing the EU with the famously Euroskeptic Viktor Orban, hinting at divisions between right-wing movements often viewed as natural allies.
Robert Fico, the highly controversial three-time former prime minister who opposes military support to Ukraine, looks set to win Slovakia’s parliamentary elections on Sept. 30. He has pledged to reverse the EU and NATO member state’s political direction, after years of deep reforms designed to realign Slovakia with the EU mainstream.
Kyiv’s reaction to a recent report showing that an errant Ukrainian missile was likely responsible for a deadly strike on a Ukrainian town highlighted its defensiveness in response to human rights critiques of its war effort. While this is unsurprising and even understandable, it is not actually needed and may hurt more than it helps.
Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden met with his counterparts from the five states of Central Asia in the first-ever leaders’ summit of the so-called C5+1 format. The meeting is a step in the right direction when it comes to U.S. policy toward an increasingly strategic region, but one that Washington has historically neglected.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s international agenda in the month of September has been emblematic of his foreign policy across his entire five years in office: ineffective, inconsistent and often invisible. That lack of focus is why AMLO has seen many of his foreign policy sorties simply fall to the wayside.
For Washington and Brussels, the IMEC trade corridor linking India, the Gulf and Europe is an effort to mold the resulting partnerships in line with Western interests. However, for India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, their participation in the project does not reflect a desire to choose sides amid an era of great power competition.
Despite being in the midst of its rainy season, Panama is experiencing one of its driest periods on record. The lack of rainfall means that the Panama Canal—a vital conduit for global maritime trade—is facing severe challenges, with the implications extending beyond Panama’s borders to affect international trade and global supply chains.
Earlier this year, the global economy experienced an important milestone that, though it went largely unnoticed, scholars may look back on as a marker of the beginning of a new era, with economic but also geopolitical significance: For the first four months of 2023, Mexico surpassed China as the top trade partner of the United States.
For a political movement whose demise has been predicted so often, social democracy’s survival has at times seemed to defy logic. But recent electoral successes of center-left parties in Germany and Spain along with the Labour Party’s resurgence in the U.K. indicate that reports of social democracy’s death might be exaggerated.
With less than a year to go until South Africa’s next national election, several opposition parties have joined forces, hammering out a preelection coalition agreement in an attempt to unseat the ruling ANC. But despite the ANC’s slipping popularity, the opposition has struggled to make significant inroads into its electoral majority.
In 2021, Xi Jinping called for “Common Prosperity” as a new key goal of Chinese-style modernization. Observers speculated he was launching a populist, left-wing agenda that would spread wealth in China more equitably. But Common Prosperity was never intended to be a Robin Hood-like intervention to take from the rich to help the poor.
Last week, Armenia held joint military exercises with U.S. troops for the first time. Remarkable in and of themselves, the exercises were even more noteworthy because they followed a series of other recent developments that have underscored the degree to which Armenia’s relations with Russia have deteriorated in recent years.
Amid the fanfare surrounding BRICS’ expansion last month, the longstanding tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter’s mega-dam project on the Nile went largely unnoticed. In offering both countries membership, BRICS has absorbed a complex regional conflict, raising questions over its potential to shape global affairs.