Economics & Business Archive

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought some clarity to regional realignments and strategic partnerships in the Middle East, with the changing relationship between the United States and the oil-producing members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular coming into sharp focus. War has a tendency to cause states to pay closer attention to and accelerate policy decisions on issues that they might otherwise prefer to defer action on or to leave ambiguous or unresolved. But after more than a week of fighting in Ukraine, one thing has become clear: Washington’s partners in the Middle East are increasingly confident about […]

In recent weeks, there has been much speculation about the depth of China and Russia’s strategic alignment. Since early February, when the two sides released a joint statement during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the argument that Moscow and Beijing are not merely aligned but in an overt alliance against the U.S. and the West more broadly has gained traction. However, on closer examination, China’s actions in the leadup to and immediate aftermath of the invasion paint a mixed picture as to the extent of the bilateral relationship. There is […]

The European Union has spent much of the past decade divided and impotent, as it flailed its way through a series of seemingly never-ending crises. But Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine last week appears to have reenergized the bloc, leading to the emergence of a newly assertive EU bound together by a common enemy. European politics suddenly appear to have become the art of endless possibility, and regardless of how the war in Ukraine eventually plays out, the ripple effects of the past week’s events are likely to have a profoundly transformative impact on the continent. Few countries, however, are […]

Just over a week since it began, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resembles a tale of two wars. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the past week can hardly have been reassuring. Between the poor performance of the Russian military on the ground and the existential shock of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, it seems to be proof that he suffered from a severe case of war optimism. For the West, the story is quite the reverse. Despite the outrage over Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets, the surprisingly tenacious fight put up by Ukraine’s outgunned military has become a cause […]

With less than a week before voting on March 9, the race for who will become South Korea’s next president is unusually close. After a brief campaign season marked by mudslinging and endless scandals, the choice between the two leading candidates—Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party, and Yoon Suk Yeol of the conservative People Power Party—will likely be decided by a highly unpredictable bloc: young voters. Whoever wins will replace President Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party, who, after running a hopeful campaign in 2017 promising to tackle corruption and inequality, is ending his five-year term with a relatively […]

Today, the Ukrainian people are fighting—quite literally—for their right to determine their own fate, independently and democratically. It was not so long ago that millions of people in multiple nations of the Middle East and North Africa rose up to fight for democracy at home in a wave of revolutions that, while markedly different from the events, circumstances and challenges in Ukraine, involved a quest to secure some of the rights that Ukrainians are today battling to preserve. At the time, these uprisings, known as the Arab Spring, inspired high expectations. Then, they derailed into tragedy. Back in 2011, observers […]

The early results are in and could hardly be clearer: The much-dreaded Russian version of a shock-and-awe campaign to subdue Ukraine has failed. No one knows exactly what will happen next, but the Ukrainian people have just offered a robust rebuttal to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that they are not members of a real nation. As the entire world has now seen from the first days of the conflict, their patriotism and valor in standing up to a far larger and better-armed Russian adversary caused the invaders to bog down and lose momentum. Most observers, not least Putin himself, […]

Almost 6,500 miles separate Caracas from Kyiv, but the protracted political crisis in Venezuela, with its attendant humanitarian emergency, is not immune to spillover from the war in Ukraine. As if Venezuela’s challenges were not already sufficiently hard to resolve, the progressive build-up of geopolitical tensions over recent years has produced a fresh layer of complexity, highlighted as never before by Moscow’s threat to expand its presence in the Americas in retaliation for NATO moves in Europe. But can foreign powers, despite their deepening adversarial stance elsewhere, somehow harness their efforts to facilitate a solution in Venezuela? In January, as […]