Briefing Archive

Political observers throughout the Asia-Pacific will have their hands full for the next few months, as several of the region’s largest democracies are set to hold national elections between now and the end of May. But as officials from Mumbai to Manila prepare to tabulate the more than 750 million votes that are expected to be cast across the region, journalists, academics and civil society watchdogs are grappling with a different challenge: politically motivated disinformation, fake news articles, hoaxes and hate speech, spread online via social media and messaging apps. The problem is not new and is by now universally […]

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—In a landslide earlier this month, voters in El Salvador elected 37-year-old Nayib Bukele as the country’s next president. Bukele, who many observers described as a populist for his direct communication style and reliance on social media to connect with voters, defeated the two most powerful political parties on an anti-corruption platform that attacked the failures of 25 years of post-civil war governance. Bukele was also cast as a political outsider, although he was most recently mayor of San Salvador and, before that, the city of Nuevo Cuscatlan—and a member of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation […]

Business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month warned that China has overtaken the United States in the development of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, such as fifth-generation wireless or 5G. “There’s almost an endless stream of people who are showing up and developing new companies,” Blackstone’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman told one panel of his frequent trips to China. “The venture business there in AI-oriented companies is really exploding with growth.” The attention on China’s rapidly evolving tech sector has overshadowed another area of competition between Beijing and Washington, which may be moving more slowly but […]

The Togolese opposition’s decision to boycott recent legislative elections seemed to play into the hands of the ruling party. As Togo President Faure Gnassingbe, whose family has ruled for over five decades, maneuvers to strengthen his position, his challengers’ options appear to be shrinking. On a Saturday morning last month, opposition activists in Togo did what they’ve been doing with some regularity for the past year and a half: take to the streets to protest the continued rule of the Gnassingbe family, which has held power for just over five decades. But the turnout was a far cry from the […]

The latest United Nations climate talks held in Poland in December produced surprising progress toward developing the rulebook governing the Paris climate agreement. International negotiators added teeth to the accord by crafting a detailed system to catalogue national emissions, requiring new benchmarks for measuring and forecasting emissions, and mandating public multilateral and technical assessments. Nations will now have to uniformly track their emissions progress and expectations, with scrutiny from other governments and independent experts. But the next obstacle to climate action will be harder to overcome. There is no existing international financial institution capable of mobilizing enough money to finance […]

Weeks into Nicolas Maduro’s disputed second term as Venezuela’s president, his prospects for political survival appear more uncertain than ever. Many countries, including the United States and many South American and European countries, have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido, president of the National Assembly, as the legitimate interim president, as he declared himself last month. It is risky to predict the end date of a regime whose leadership has already weathered nearly six years of economic crisis, but if it is approaching, there should be plans for reviving the economy of an oil-rich but desperate nation. Guaido is already devising […]

He is often tagged as an aloof, slow-moving executive with a narrow and insular coterie of advisers, and he has fallen short of the promises that won him the presidency four years ago. Yet Muhammadu Buhari remains the front-runner in Nigeria’s presidential elections scheduled for Feb. 16, which will pit the incumbent against several challengers—the most prominent, by far, being former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who served in office from 1999 to 2007 and placed third in the 2007 election. Buhari is still the favorite because of his party’s continued strength in its strongholds in northern and southwestern Nigeria, along […]

After years of impoverishment, Guyana is suddenly on the verge of prosperity. Since 2015, a consortium led by Exxon Mobil has developed at least 10 deepwater oil wells off Guyana’s shores, with a combined productive capacity of around 750,000 barrels per day. Exploration is ongoing, with most experts anticipating the country’s oil reserves exceed the current estimate of 5 billion barrels. One way to grasp the magnitude of these discoveries is that in 10 years, Guyana, with a population of slightly less than 800,000, could pump nearly a barrel of oil per person each day—more production on a per capita […]

Shinzo Abe has already outperformed his five immediate predecessors, putting to rest the idea that a Japanese prime minister couldn’t stay in office for more than a year. Now, he is approaching a milestone. He will become the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s history if he remains in office until November. But Abe is looking beyond that, with a chance to serve out his current term as prime minister until 2021, since he was overwhelmingly re-elected last fall for a third and final term as president of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. The party can effectively determine the […]