Domestic Politics Archive

Earlier this year, as the coronavirus seemed to abruptly explode out of China and engulf the globe, Chinese authorities launched a propaganda campaign to try to turn the pandemic into a political win for Beijing. Months later, as governments around the world still struggle to contain COVID-19, with new waves and spikes from India to Europe to the United States, the time has come to take a tally of China’s efforts. The results are stark, showing some gains for the Chinese regime but also some major failures in the one area where Beijing had hoped to leverage the pandemic to […]

Late last month, President Donald Trump told Congress that his administration plans to further slash the ceiling for refugee admissions during the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, to 15,000 from an already historically low 18,000. The new limit is less than one-seventh the 110,000 slots that former President Barack Obama approved in 2016. As The New York Times put it, Trump has “virtually sealed off a pathway for the persecuted into the country and obliterated the once-robust American reputation as a sanctuary for the oppressed.” This comes as the number of refugees worldwide continues to grow. According to […]

The normalization agreements that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed with Israel last month were billed by President Donald Trump as marking “the dawn of a new Middle East.” In reality, though, the so-called Abraham Accords merely formalize and bring into the open the pragmatic working relationships with Israel that the UAE and Bahrain have built over the past decade, based in part on both Gulf countries’ desire to reinforce their images as modern states that embrace principles of interfaith dialogue. Some other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-country regional bloc, have also cultivated unofficial ties with […]

Since World Politics Review began publishing 14 years ago, we have refrained from political endorsements. This is in keeping with our mission, which states that we are “unbeholden to any partisan affiliation or party allegiance.” At the same time, nonpartisan does not mean disinterested. Over the past 14 years, we have published articles defending and supporting the foreign policy decisions of Republican and Democratic administrations alike. But in so doing, we have always referred to a certain vision of international politics and global order as our standard for judgment. As our mission statement also puts it, WPR seeks to strike […]

On university and college campuses, it’s been a back-to-school season like none other. COVID-19 outbreaks have forced entire residence halls and sports teams to quarantine, and, for some institutions, could prompt a premature end to the semester. Other campuses are ghost towns, as instruction has moved completely online. The pandemic has transformed teaching and learning, how research is conducted⎯the very rhythms of campus life. The contagion’s impact on international education has been especially acute. With closed borders, shuttered consulates and airline restrictions, study abroad and foreign exchange programs have been canceled, while the United States is all but off-limits for […]

The United States has mostly avoided in Africa the costly mistakes it made in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that is to continue, a good understanding of internal developments and issues in African countries will be crucial. Until now, the United States’ primary concern in Mali has been the jihadist insurgency in the northern and central parts of the country. A secondary priority was the promotion of democracy, which translated into an emphasis on regular, credible elections. With the military coup this summer—Mali’s second in less than a decade—and with mounting attacks by jihadists, that policy is not working. The current […]

PRAGUE—Last month, a Slovakian tycoon accused of masterminding the assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018—a murder that profoundly transformed Slovakian politics—was acquitted by a special criminal court in Bratislava, the capital. The surprising verdict in what Michal Vasecka, a sociologist at the Bratislava Policy Institute, calls “the most followed trial in the history of Slovakia,” has been met with “anger and disbelief,” he says. Many Slovaks see the acquittal of Marian Kocner as a major setback in the government’s campaign to rid the small Central European nation of its endemic corruption. “It seems that the apparent plotters of […]

The White House coronavirus cluster underscores a reality that no amount of happy talk can overcome. After more than nine months, 36 million cases and more than 1 million deaths worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging. The infection rate in the United States and Europe is increasing, and a vaccine will not be widely available until well into 2021. It is not too early, however, to begin preparing for the next pandemic—and there will be a next one. Although it has become commonplace to describe COVID-19 as a once-in-a-century event, another pandemic could in fact be imminent. More than […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Ethiopian lawmakers voted to sever ties with leaders of the northern Tigray region this week in a move that one Tigrayan official called “tantamount to a declaration of war.” The decision by the upper house of Ethiopia’s national parliament, the House of Federation, is the most severe in a series of tit-for-tat provocations between Tigrayan leaders and federal officials and puts Tigray at risk of losing up to $281 million in federal budget subsidies. Tensions between the two sides arose early in […]

Italy’s largest opposition party, the populist and far-right League, turned in a poor showing in regional and local elections last month. While its center-right coalition prevailed in three of the seven regional governorships that were up for grabs, the League’s candidate lost in traditionally leftist Tuscany, despite predictions of victory by its leader, Matteo Salvini. Overall, there was no clear winner in last month’s elections, but the center-left Democratic Party, or PD, performed well, as did the neo-fascist Brothers of Italy, which took control of the central Marche region. Salvini, a former deputy prime minister and interior minister who was […]

At a jubilant rally one recent evening in the town of Geita, in northwestern Tanzania, Tundu Lissu sang along to Bob Marley’s “One Love” as he looked out on the sun setting over a sea of cheering supporters. The opposition firebrand is running to replace incumbent President John Magufuli in a general election later this month; he has been on the campaign trail since late August, drawing massive crowds at each stop. “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve looked people in the eye,” Lissu told World Politics Review in an interview. “Everywhere I’ve gone, people are so happy. It’s unbelievable, and it’s […]

From the start of the 2016 election campaign, it was all too clear that a Donald Trump presidency would bring dramatic and destabilizing changes to U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Candidate Trump publicly pummeled the region, fulminating about “rapists” and drug traffickers crossing from Mexico, and vowing to build a wall to keep Central American migrants from “invading” the United States. The rhetoric was jarring in itself, but it was even more startling because it represented such a sharp departure from President Barack Obama’s administration, when even the most critical measures or sanctions came wrapped in diplomatic language. […]

All the interruptions, taunts and empty bombast from President Donald Trump during his first debate with Joe Biden left little room for actual discussion of major issues, from the coronavirus pandemic to U.S. foreign policy. Lost especially amid all the noise was climate change, which looms as an existential threat to life in this century. Climate change was only briefly mentioned in last month’s debate, when it was peculiarly framed. For a challenge this important, the battle lines were oddly drawn around questions of extremism. Trump, as unserious as ever, boasted vaguely about the quality of America’s “beautiful” and “crystal […]

For nearly 75 years, the United States and Mexico have transferred giant quantities of water to each other each year as part of a system set up to ensure the equitable sharing of water sheds that straddle their border. The terms and obligations are clearly laid out in a treaty the two sides signed in 1944: The U.S. sends 489 billion gallons of water southward via the Colorado River, and Mexico allocates 114 billion gallons northward, from the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. To deal with the technical aspects of this water exchange and settle any issues, the two […]

Editor’s Note: WPR has agreed to publish this article anonymously due to the hostile environment in Kashmir toward independent reporting. SRINAGAR, India—In July, I joined a group of young men plodding glumly through verdant paddy fields in Bijbehara, a picturesque town tucked inside a network of lofty mountains in the Kashmir Valley. It was the middle of the monsoon season. One of the men was recounting a midnight raid conducted by the Indian Army in a nearby village, Arwani, in August last year. “They were bloodthirsty,” he said, in a wobbling voice. “We live in the shadow of violence,” another […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Edward Alden is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott, who will return next week. The latest opinion polls in the United States show former Vice President Joe Biden with what looks like a commanding lead over a COVID-stricken President Donald Trump, less than a month away from the presidential election on Nov. 3. If Biden can sustain that lead and win a decisive victory, the country would avoid the damage of a long and contested ballot count that would leave America even more internally divided. For much of the rest of the world, it would rekindle […]

BEIRUT—With yet another failed attempt to form a government and no replacement in sight, Lebanon’s future is looking a lot like its bleak past. The prime minister-designate, Mustapha Adib, resigned in late September after nearly a month of fruitless talks to create a Cabinet of technocrats. French President Emmanuel Macron had publicly backed that process, which came on the heels of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s resignation following the Aug. 4 port explosion that devastated parts of Beirut.* Nonetheless, Lebanon’s politicians are still mired in a dispute over control of the powerful Finance Ministry, as the economy collapses and the social […]