Briefing Archive

An armed standoff and the eruption of protests in July may be Armenia’s most serious political crisis since 2008, when thousands took to the streets against alleged voter fraud in the presidential election that year. Last month’s unrest, which marked the country’s fourth summer in a row of turmoil, has exposed the cross-cutting, often contradictory fissures within Armenian politics and society. But this time, it also potentially represents a turning point for Armenia’s frustrated population. With internal crises looming over both state legitimacy and settlement talks with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia is as divided as ever […]

South Africa’s local government elections on Aug. 3 delivered the strongest rebuke to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in its 22 years in power, raising important questions about its longevity as a dominant party. The ANC’s ability to routinely secure more than 60 percent of the vote in elections since 1994 had given it an aura of invincibility that overawed its opponents. Although the opposition was able to establish some provincial and local enclaves around the country, it could not pose a credible threat to the ANC’s national dominance. Last week’s municipal elections punctured that aura. For the first […]

Zambia goes to the polls tomorrow, Aug. 11, in an increasingly tense climate marked by protests, violence and the government’s targeted attacks on the opposition. The crackdown launched by President Edgar Lungu is a worrying trend toward further democratic backsliding in the long-stable country. Lungu was elected in January 2015 following the death of his predecessor, Michael Sata. For many Zambians, Lungu’s admittedly short time in office has left much to be desired, particularly on the the economy. Lungu and his party, the Patriotic Front, are facing mounting criticism from the country’s main opposition movement, the United Party for National […]

After nearly a decade of deliberations and vehement debate, India’s parliament finally passed a unified goods and services tax earlier this month, marking the first significant economic reform under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While correctly heralded as a major achievement that overhauls India’s convoluted tax system, the passage of this legislation nevertheless underscores how little Modi’s government has actually accomplished in its attempts to transform India’s economy. Modi’s failure to implement a sweeping reform agenda seems like a paradox. After all, he swept into power in 2014 with the promise of reviving India’s faltering economy, putting an end to corruption, […]

In what could be described as a self-inflicted wound, Thais voted Sunday to accept an undemocratic constitution in a nationwide referendum. According to the preliminary count collected by the Election Commission, based on 94 percent of the votes cast, 61.4 percent of Thais were in favor of the constitution, while 38.6 percent rejected it. A significant shift in the results isn’t expected with the final, official tally on Aug. 10. When it is enacted, whether in weeks or months, the constitution will be Thailand’s 20th in 84 years—the last was dissolved in May 2014 following the military coup that ousted […]

On Jan. 14, comedian Jimmy Morales was inaugurated as president of Guatemala, unexpectedly sweeping to power after successfully tapping into the public’s repudiation of the political establishment to win the country’s election last fall. Running under the slogan “neither corrupt nor a thief,” Morales was able to appeal to a citizenry that, following revelations of massive corruption scandals, had taken to the streets to demand greater government accountability and forced the resignation of then-President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti. Voters were willing to overlook Morales’ lack of concrete policy proposals, handing him a landslide victory over former […]

Last month, Greek lawmakers approved significant changes to the country’s electoral system that were proposed by the ruling, left-wing Syriza party, in what it called an attempt to make the electoral system more democratic. The law gets rid of a 50-seat bonus that is given to the party that receives the most votes, reduces the voting age from 18 to 17, and reduces the electoral threshold for a political party to enter parliament. The law passed by a majority in the 300-seat parliament, but because it received less than the 200 votes needed for the reforms to go into effect […]

U.S. President Barack Obama has promised to continue his push for Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), despite firm opposition to the free trade agreement from both of the major candidates for president, including his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. “Right now, I’m the president and I think I’ve got the better argument,” he told reporters following a meeting Tuesday with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong. But what are the actual arguments about the TPP? For all the heated debate over the deal, which would free up trade among the United States, Japan and 10 other Pacific […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—July’s NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, brought the alliance’s leaders to a country where the perceived threat of Russian aggression is particularly acute. It was appropriate, then, that they agreed to beef up NATO’s presence in Central and Eastern Europe, something that Poland and some of its regional partners have been calling for since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Four battalion-sized battlegroups—fully armed and equipped, with troops from leading NATO members, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and, most importantly, the United States—will deploy on a rotational basis to Poland and the three Baltic […]

On June 18, Mexico officially completed an eight-year transition toward a new justice system, replacing an outdated inquisitorial system, in which the court acts as investigator, with an adversarial one, in which the court is mainly an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense. Under the old system, court cases were mostly conducted on paper, rather than in oral arguments, and convictions were often based on confessions and little else. Now, oral trials will be open to the public, and they will be based on testimony, cross-examinations and a greater reliance on evidence. Expectations for the new system vary […]

Last month, as an attempted military putsch was put down in Turkey, posters lining streets across Pakistan beckoned the country’s popular army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, to take over in a coup. The posters have since been taken down, and the man responsible for them arrested. But the question still remains: Is the Pakistani military poised to take over? The last time Pakistan experienced a coup, in October 1999, the context was markedly different from today. At the time, Pakistan was reeling economically, in part due to U.S. sanctions over the country’s May 1998 nuclear tests. Civil-military relations had gone […]

A bloody summer, with attacks from Orlando to Nice to Bangladesh, has left many wondering what compels an individual, whether a low-level criminal with a history of domestic violence or a student at an elite private school, to massacre civilians in the name of the so-called Islamic State or another extremist group. Even more confounding is how to stop them. That question isn’t new, or unique to the rise of the Islamic State. For years, governments, analysts and observers have worked to understand the drivers of radicalization and how best to block the road to extremism, particularly among youth. In […]

In the early hours of June 27, four suicide bombers detonated their explosive belts in the sleepy Lebanese town of al-Qaa, which lies just a few kilometers from the Syrian frontier. Another four attackers would strike later in the evening, with the two attacks killing five and wounding scores more. In the context of spillover from the Syrian civil war, the violence itself was not an anomaly. Lebanon has been on high alert for retaliatory terrorist activity ever since 2013, when Hezbollah leader Sayed Hasan Nasrallah publicly announced the party’s fighters were active in Syria alongside longtime ally President Bashar […]

Shock waves from Venezuela’s precipitous economic collapse have finally reached Cuba. They are forcing drastic cuts in energy consumption, slashing economic growth from 4 percent last year to just 1 percent in 2016, and raising fears of another “Special Period”—the catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s that followed the collapse of Cuba’s previous patron, the Soviet Union. Cuba’s predicament was foreshadowed by the plunging price of oil on the world market and Venezuela’s declining production, down 12 percent in the past year alone. Nevertheless, for several years Venezuela continued to meet its obligation to ship some 80,000 to 90,000 barrels […]