How much worse can things get in Egypt? The fallout from the likely bombing of a Russian passenger jet, which exploded above the Sinai Peninsula late last month, has crippled Egypt’s long-suffering tourism industry, with Russia banning all flights to Egypt for the next several months—peak tourism season for Russians. The U.K. and Ireland have suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort in the southern Sinai from where the Russian plane took off. Its airport, which had once been praised for its security upgrades after a series of deadly bombings across the seaside town in 2005, is now [...]
This past Sunday, Myanmar’s people voted in their first true national elections in 25 years. The last national elections, in 1990, were essentially annulled by the junta that ruled Myanmar from 1962 until launching a transition to civilian rule in 2011. Unlike in 1990, this time many of Myanmar’s people believed that the election results would be upheld, leading to the country’s first democratically elected government in five decades. On election day, the mood in many towns and cities was exuberant, and voters came to the polls in huge numbers—according to one estimate by election officials, some 80 percent of [...]
As Russian warplanes continue to attack targets in Syria, the apparent decisiveness of Moscow’s actions, at least in the view of some observers, has obscured an important reality: the poor readiness of Russia’s accident-prone military, which could increase the risk of an error with significant political or military consequences. The United States and Russia have been engaged in so-called deconfliction talks to prevent accidental contact or clashes between American and Russian jets in the skies above Syria. But as a reportedly errant cruise missile strike in the early days of Russia’s intervention showed, along with Russian planes consistently breaching Turkish [...]
