Weekly Review Archive

Much of what we do at WPR from week to week and year to year is to keep tabs on the many mundane stories around the world so that we can inform you about the trends and developments that gradually and in combination shape history. But on occasion, we find ourselves face to face with moments that make history, suddenly and singly. The war in Ukraine is one of those moments. As I wrote Thursday as the first Russian attacks began, we will look back on it as a “before and after” event, one that will have enormous implications for […]

The latest developments in Ukraine indicate that Russia is now in the final stages of preparing the groundwork for an invasion. Having spent weeks dismissing Western warnings of imminent war as mere hysteria, the Kremlin and its proxies in eastern Ukraine have begun spreading patently false accusations of genocide in Donbass at the hands of the Ukrainian military, while calling for mass evacuations of civilians to Russia. It suggests a chilling coda is close at hand to the months of debates among Western policymakers and analysts over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was intent on invading Ukraine, whether he was […]

This year’s Winter Olympics, which got underway in China on Friday, offer a fascinating prism through which to view the current geopolitical landscape, as well as to contrast it on multiple levels with the recent and more distant past. Most immediately, this year’s affair offers a benchmark against which to measure China’s advances in power and influence since the last time it hosted the Games just 14 years ago. The 2008 Summer Games were in many ways China’s “coming out party,” a chance to demonstrate its domestic transformation and modernized infrastructure to a global audience that still largely saw it […]