Domestic Politics Archive

Cambodia will hold local elections Sunday, but the political opposition has already taken a beating in a campaign that is viewed as a precursor to the country’s 2018 general elections. Twelve political parties are technically in the race, with nearly 90,000 candidates competing to represent 1,646 communes, or clusters of villages, across Cambodia. However, the election is mainly a contest between the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which Prime Minister Hun Sen has led for three decades, and the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the country’s main opposition group. Instead of being an indicator of a thriving democracy, observers say […]

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe staked his line in the sand on his controversial plans to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution by 2020. The timing of Abe’s announcement, on Japan’s Constitution Day, was no coincidence, as this year marked the 70th anniversary of the country’s charter, which was enacted during the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War II. Abe’s push for constitutional change is divisive in Japan since it focuses on a clause in Article 9 that “renounces war” completely as a means to settle international disputes. Specifically, Abe wants to include a reference to Japan’s military, known […]

The death this past week of former National Security Adviser and foreign policy intellectual Zbigniew Brzezinski calls to mind two thoughts: how rare the gift of strategic thinking, which Brzezinski possessed, truly is; and how great a contribution foreign-born intellectuals have made to U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II era. The foreign policy community lost one of the rare big thinkers with the death of Brzezinski at age 89 this past week. He was a commanding figure, always assessing the crises of the day with a long-term view of strategic interests. He served a Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, […]

Earlier this month, Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, gathered his Cabinet to the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia to mark the end of his first year in office. He toasted progress on his reform agenda, while stumping for still more austerity. Federal spending on social programs had been capped for 20 years, and the airline and oil industries opened to more foreign investment, but the real prize awaited. Congress was advancing toward the approval of the top item on Temer’s agenda, the most ambitious pension reform since Brazil’s dictatorship ended in 1985. Given the positive impact that a cut to benefits […]

In late April, Stephen Dhieu Dau, South Sudan’s finance minister, visited his counterpart in Turkey to sign a trade and cooperation agreement. As the young country’s civil war drags on and relations with the U.S. and other traditional backers remain tense, South Sudan’s officials are pursuing ties with new diplomatic partners. In an email interview, Brian Adeba, associate director of policy at the Enough Project, describes that outreach and explains why the U.S. is still in a position to exert pressure on South Sudan’s government. WPR: How have relations between South Sudan and its traditional backers, especially the United States, […]

Late last month, residents of Guinea’s northeast Siguiri region filed a complaint describing how they were thrown off their land to make room for an open-pit oxide gold mine controlled by AngloGold Ashanti, a Johannesburg-based mining company. The evictions were violent, according to the complainants and an organization advocating on their behalf. “Hundreds of families were forced off their land by the country’s most feared military unit,” says David Pred, managing director of Inclusive Development International. “They were not allowed to say no or to negotiate. Those who resisted were imprisoned and shot. Their homes were burned and their businesses […]

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? John Kerry, at the time a decorated but unknown veteran of the Vietnam War testifying before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, famously posed this piercing question while calling for an end to the war in April 1971. The circumstances are vastly different, and my intention is not to draw a parallel between the war Kerry and so many other Americans opposed and the senseless violence we see in various parts of the world today. But I could not help think of Kerry’s question when […]

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration navigates the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, along with ongoing tensions with North Korea, China and Russia, it is doing so with a Cabinet largely composed of active and retired military generals. While the presence of an active-duty general at the helm of the National Security Council is not unprecedented, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, isn’t the sole appointee with a military background; two recently retired Marines, James Mattis and John Kelly, are serving as secretary of defense and director of the Department of Homeland Security, respectively. That Kelly and Mattis […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about NATO members’ contributions to and relationships with the alliance. The Balkan nation of Macedonia has been waiting for years to join NATO, yet the hurdles to this goal seem only to multiply. In addition to objections and conditions from some NATO members, including Greece, Macedonia is also facing the possibility that its ongoing internal political crisis will prevent the process from moving ahead. In an email interview, Stojan Slaveski, a professor and security expert at the European University of the Republic of Macedonia in Skopje, explains how these […]

Vietnam’s campaign against corruption notched a significant victory earlier this month with the removal of a top Politburo official for “very serious mistakes and violations” while he was chair of PetroVietnam, the state-owned oil and gas company. But analysts say that there is a more complicated story behind the rare Politburo sacking—just the fourth in Vietnam’s history and the first for corruption—that involves personal and factional maneuverings at the top levels of the ruling Communist Party. Dinh La Thang, once a rising star in Vietnam’s government, was dismissed from the 19-member Politburo, Vietnam’s top decision-making body, on May 7. Three […]

On May 11, Hubert Minnis, a physician and former health minister, was sworn in as prime minister of the Bahamas, having led his Free National Movement political party to victory in the May 10 general election. He replaces Perry Christie, who had served for two nonconsecutive terms. In an email interview, Larry Smith, a columnist for The Nassau Tribune who operates the Bahama Pundit blog, describes the issues that animated the campaign as well as the challenges Minnis faces now that he’s in office. WPR: What were the main issues of the campaign, and how did Hubert Minnis’s message compare […]

During the campaign for this month’s presidential election, Emmanuel Macron, who was elected on May 7, was labeled an “extreme centrist” for his “neither-left-nor-right” paradigm. Establishing his En Marche party in 2016, he pledged to break from the political establishment, offering a platform to simultaneously boost France’s economy and maintain its social security net while strengthening the European Union. But many were skeptical, pointing to his role as economy minister during Francois Hollande’s unpopular administration, his degrees from elite institutions and, most nefariously, his background in investment banking. So when he announced the members of his Cabinet on Wednesday, many […]

On the morning of May 5, Boko Haram militants attacked a Chadian military post in the Lake Chad region near the border with northeast Nigeria, where the extremist group is based. Nine soldiers were killed, the latest casualties suffered by Chad’s military as it responds to a crisis that, on Chadian territory alone, has left hundreds dead and displaced more than 100,000. The following day, in the capital, N’Djamena, the Chadian Convention for the Defense of Human Rights reported that Maounde Decladore, one of its activists, had been arrested. Decladore is also a spokesman for the group “It Must Change,” […]

Taiwan is like no other place on Earth. That’s not a line from a promotional video or tourist brochure. It’s a simple fact of history, politics and international relations. Taiwan, with its population of nearly 24 million, is a vibrant liberal democracy and a major node in global value chains. Without components designed in Taiwan and produced in Taiwanese-managed factories in China and Southeast Asia, many of the devices people use every day simply wouldn’t work. Taiwan is an indispensable part of 21st-century life. But it is not a member of the United Nations and only has diplomatic relations with […]

Venezuela is spiraling out of control. Daily life is growing ever more dire for most of the population, and the prospects for political reconciliation and an end to the humanitarian emergency are looking increasingly dim under the leadership of President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. As the opposition struggles, so far unsuccessfully, to put an end to the crisis, the question arises: What can—or should—the international community do to help the Venezuelan people? On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council held a closed-door meeting on the matter, a sign that the issue’s importance on the […]

Since the beginning of April, Venezuela has witnessed sustained protests on a scale not seen since 2014, when 43 people died during anti-government unrest. The latest wave of protests, in which at least 42 people have died, was initially triggered by the Supreme Court’s attempts earlier this year to assume the powers of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. Although the move was revoked days after it was introduced, it served as a catalyst for protests over wider grievances, including shortages of basic goods, triple-figure inflation and increasingly undemocratic practices by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. Government attempts […]

From Jan. 19 to March 10, Nigeria’s 74-year-old president, Muhammadu Buhari, took an extended medical leave in London. After returning home, he remained weak; sometimes he missed Cabinet meetings and appeared gaunt in photographs. Then, last week, on May 7, he left again for London, framing the trip as a “follow-up” to his earlier leave. Unlike the late Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose prolonged incapacitation in 2009 and 2010 caused a constitutional crisis, Buhari has avoided short-term turmoil by formally designating his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, as acting president during his absences. Whereas Yar’Adua’s inner circle clung to power and […]