Resources Archive

Russia’s assertive approach to reclaiming a sphere of interest in the post-Soviet space has highlighted the security dilemmas facing Eurasian countries that find themselves outside of any regional military alliance. Although recent attention has focused on Georgia and Ukraine, the Caspian littoral countries have for several years considered themselves vulnerable to renewed Russian assertiveness and have complained about declining U.S. and European engagement in their region. In response to these challenges, as well as in pursuit of new opportunities for regional energy cooperation, Azerbaijan has partnered with Turkey and, at various times, Georgia, Iran and Turkmenistan in recent years to […]

Last week, Jordan signed a $10 billion deal with Russia to build its first nuclear power plant. In an email interview, David Schenker, director of the program on Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, discussed Jordan’s nuclear energy policy. WPR: What are Jordan’s current power needs, how does it meet them, and how are they projected to change moving forward? David Schenker: Jordan has 3,380-megawatts (MW) of installed electricity-generation capacity—by comparison, Israel has 14,000-MW—but will need to boost this number significantly to meet growing domestic requirements. Rapid increases in the kingdom’s population—including 1 million Syrian refugees—as […]

On Monday in Khartoum, the leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed an initial accord on mutual water rights to the Nile River, removing another obstacle to Ethiopia’s massive Grand Renaissance Dam, which has been a source of tension with its neighbors since construction began just 10 miles from Sudan’s border in 2011. But the agreement is about a lot more than water. It may signal a seismic shift in the politics of northeastern Africa and could lead to a new axis of cooperation to manage, if not resolve, conflicts in one of the world’s most turbulent regions. The accord’s […]

Last year, Laos announced it would go ahead with the second of two massive, controversial dams on the Lower Mekong River, over the strong objections of its downstream neighbors, Vietnam and Cambodia. Despite the contentious decisions to build the Xayaburi and Don Sahong dams, however, the widespread and well-founded fear that a series of dams along the Mekong is fated to destroy a uniquely productive ecosystem may be overly pessimistic—not because the impact of the dams themselves has diminished, but because there are more reasons to doubt whether all of them will actually be built at all. Up to 11 […]

The U.S. Department of the Interior is due to decide this week if Royal Dutch Shell can restart drilling for oil off the coast of Alaska after it was forced to shut down operations in 2012 over safety and environmental concerns. In an email interview, Robert Huebert, an associate professor at the University of Calgary, discussed Arctic drilling amid the slump in global oil prices. WPR: Who are the main parties interested in exploring Arctic hydrocarbon resources, and what projects are currently underway? Robert Huebert: Hydrocarbon development and exploration is occurring in the northern land and maritime regions of Canada, […]

In 2000, diplomats at the United Nations adopted eight development goals aimed at poverty reduction, education, nutrition, gender equality and safeguarding the environment in the world’s poorest countries. An impressive consortium of governments, multilateral organizations, philanthropic foundations, nongovernmental organizations and even celebrities answered the U.N.’s call to implement the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the past 15 years, partly due to the MDGs agenda, progress was made on a wide range of these development challenges: Extreme poverty was cut in half; deaths from malaria and tuberculosis were drastically reduced; millions of people gained access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight […]

Anyone trying to understand Latin American politics should pay close attention to urban areas. Of the 600 million people in the southern part of the Americas, 80 percent now live in cities. However, old narratives die hard, which explains why English-speaking articles about Latin America still disproportionately focus on rural issues, peasant struggles, land reform and related topics. Of course, these issues remain relevant, because land ownership, rural or urban, is still a major source of conflict. But it is clear that urban issues will increasingly dominate the region’s political future. Take for instance Venezuela, the most polarized—not to say […]

A little over a year ago, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, weighed in on the most pressing political challenge facing Astana at the time: whether or not to change the country’s name. Before any consensus could be reached, however, unidentified men cropped up in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, saying little and admitting less. Twelve months later, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and amid an intermittent war in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and the central government in Kiev, it’s clear that the status quo ante will not return. In just a year, Kazakhstan’s geopolitical environs have shifted more rapidly than at any […]