United States Archive

From the moment President Joe Biden announced in April that the United States would withdraw all its military forces from Afghanistan within a few months, the level of violence there intensified, negotiations sputtered and the prospects for the Afghan people—especially Afghan women—became grim. The seeming rashness of the decision and lack of planning to handle obvious major contingencies were serious missteps for a president that has so far made mostly thoughtful, carefully calibrated moves. This is not to suggest that U.S. forces should stay in Afghanistan forever. To be sure, Afghanistan is the land of no easy solutions, and Biden […]

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest, highly anticipated report on the state of Earth’s climate. The report, which updates the previous effort from eight years ago, represents the collective assessment by several hundred scientists from around the world of efforts to keep global temperatures from rising to levels that would trigger catastrophic changes in Earth’s environment and weather conditions. Spoiler alert: It’s bad. The report rules out any possibility of preventing the 1.5-degrees-Celsius rise in global temperatures that was the most ambitious target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. That threshold will be reached by […]

2020 will forever be known as the plague year, but it was also a year of increased hunger around the world. That’s according to a multiagency United Nations report released last month, which found that the number of undernourished people in the world rose by 118 million, to a total of about 768 million—nearly one-tenth of the global population. Much of that increase was due to COVID-19, a crisis that “continues to expose weaknesses in our food systems,” the report warned. Today on Trend Lines, Julie Howard, a senior adviser to the global food security program at the Center for […]

During the 17 days of the just-completed Tokyo Olympics, many American publications eschewed counting medals in ways that emphasized the winning of gold, preferring a broader tabulation that emphasized total medals won. In this manner, the United States was able to maintain a healthy lead over its biggest rival, China, throughout the Games. In the final day or two, though, when the United States eked out the slimmest of leads over China in gold medals won as well, the emphasis in many newspaper reports suddenly shifted. Team USA had won the Summer Games by this narrower measure, and suddenly it […]

Last Friday, Apple announced that it was implementing measures to combat the distribution of child sexual abuse media, or CSAM, on its services. Apple, the company that famously defied the FBI by refusing to provide technical assistance in hacking its own iPhones after a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, surprised commentators in both the tech and human rights communities with this announcement, and there was a predictable torrent of criticism from both ends of the policy spectrum. The electronic distribution of child abuse images has been a perennial and unsolved issue for more than 20 years. The growing popularity […]

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, one of the signal moral advances in human history. Negotiated in the wake of World War II and initially limited to Europe, the treaty established the first binding legal protections for individuals forced to flee their countries. These rights and responsibilities, which were made universal in the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967, remain a cornerstone of the global humanitarian regime. The convention is, however, showing its age. Many governments are failing to fulfil their legal obligations under it, and the convention does little to […]

This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which uses relevant WPR coverage to provide background and context to the week’s top stories. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox.  It’s perhaps a sign of the times that a visit to Hungary by an American television personality known for his provocations on race and immigration has generated international news coverage. But the visit by Tucker Carlson—whose Fox News program has become a clearinghouse of far-right talking points, and misinformation, in the U.S.—has highlighted […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Nikolas Gvosdev is filling in for Charli Carpenter. History does not repeat itself, as Mark Twain remarked, but it does rhyme. And when it comes to its policies on Russia, climate and energy, the Biden team is dealing with Obama-era echoes. Seven years ago, in my then-weekly column for WPR, I called attention to the internal tensions in the Obama administration’s climate, energy and geopolitical priorities. Back then, the United States was trying to square several irreconcilable circles. One had to do with reducing Russia’s global influence by constraining its sales of energy. Another was putting […]

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is only one of many pathogens that originated among animals before spreading to humans. In fact, scientists are discovering more of these types of pathogens every year, largely as a result of global climate change and habitat destruction caused by humans. Deborah Kochevar is the director of a project called STOP Spillover, which aims to better understand and prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases among humans. She joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman on the Trend Lines podcast this week to discuss her work. Listen to the full conversation here: If you like what you hear, […]

In recent decades, scientists have identified dozens of new, potentially deadly pathogens that originated among other animal species but have the capacity to infect humans. SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is one such zoonotic virus, and humankind’s vulnerability to them is increasing as a result of population growth, globalization, climate change and other processes. A recently launched project called STOP Spillover aims to anticipate and address the threats posed by zoonotic pathogens. This week on Trend Lines, the director of STOP Spillover, Deborah Kochevar, joins WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss some of the latest interventions that are being devised […]

On Sunday July 11, Cuba was rocked by an unprecedented public display of opposition as thousands of people joined nationwide demonstrations against the government. The largely spontaneous outbursts underscored the depth of Cuba’s social and economic crisis and pose a huge challenge to President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the ruling Communist Party. They have also forced the issue of Cuba to the top of U.S. President Joe Biden’s agenda.  The first demonstration began that morning in a park outside the Catholic Church of San Antonio de los Banos, a small town on the outskirts of Havana. By prior arrangement, several dozen […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Richard Gowan is filling in for Stewart Patrick, who will return Aug. 9. At the end of this week, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will be in Tokyo, leading the U.S. delegation at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics. At first glance, Olympic sports and U.N. committee meetings may not seem to have much in common. But the ambassador may see some parallels between the Games and the political developments in Turtle Bay. U.N. officials like to praise the Olympics as a model of international cooperation. Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon […]