Briefing Archive

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia—Last Sunday’s local and regional elections in Bolivia were President Luis Arce’s first political test since he took office in November. Official results are still being tabulated, as the process was delayed by a cyberattack this week on the electoral commission’s website, which authorities said came from outside the country. But exit polls, which have proven reliable in the past, indicate mixed results for Arce’s political party, the Movement for Socialism. Known in Bolivia as the MAS, the party won governorships in three states, and will head to a second-round runoff in four others. Only in the county’s […]

If President Ivan Duque has his way, Colombia will soon resume aerial fumigation of coca plantations for the first time in over five years. It paused the spraying in 2015 due to growing health and environmental concerns over the herbicide glyphosate, which the World Health Organization classifies as a likely carcinogen. Colombian courts have subsequently set strict conditions for future fumigation. But Duque argues that booming coca crops since then are responsible for rising levels of cocaine trafficking, spurring conflict between armed groups, massacres of civilians, forced displacement and the widespread assassination of local activists and human rights defenders. The […]

Along the waters of Pangong Lake, high up in the Himalayas, there was a slackening of shoulders and a collective sigh of relief on Feb. 11. After nine months of tense military confrontation, which included the first deadly clash in decades between Indian and Chinese troops along their disputed border, the two sides began withdrawing from their positions on the southern and northern banks of the lake as part of a phased, synchronized military disengagement. By mitigating the risk of another skirmish or accident, the move has brought Beijing and New Delhi back from the brink in their border standoff. […]

The World Trade Organization made history last month when its members chose Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as director-general, the first woman and first African to hold that position. A former Nigerian finance minister and senior World Bank official, Okonjo-Iweala enjoyed near-unanimous support, but her candidacy had been stalled by opposition from the Trump administration. One of President Joe Biden’s early actions after taking office in January, however, was to reverse Donald Trump’s veto and join the consensus behind her appointment. That, along with Biden’s overall preference for multilateral cooperation over unilateralism, opens space for the WTO to get out of the cul […]

Over the course of three days in Laos in mid-January, more than 750 senior members of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party convened in the capital, Vientiane, to elect its political leaders for the next five years. The delegates to the 11th National Congress chose incumbent Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith to replace the retiring Bounnhang Vorachit as the party’s secretary general—the most powerful position in Laos’ communist system. If recent precedent is upheld, this paves the way for Sisoulith to also be confirmed as president when a nominally new National Assembly meets later this month. Elections for the assembly were […]

In late February, police raided the party headquarters of the opposition United National Movement in Tbilisi, Georgia, to arrest its chairman, Nika Melia. The raid and arrest, which were live-streamed and video-recorded by observers, have thrown the country deep into political crisis. Given Melia’s longstanding role as a thorn in the side of the ruling Georgian Dream party, his detention appears to be a politically motivated show of force to intimidate the government’s critics. The move provoked outrage in Georgia, the European Union and the United States, where members of the U.S. Congress and human rights organizations have expressed concern. […]

As expected, voters in El Salvador turned out overwhelmingly for President Nayib Bukele’s party in legislative and municipal elections last Sunday. Preliminary results suggested the Nuevas Ideas party, or New Ideas, had attained a two-thirds majority in the 84-seat Legislative Assembly, enough to pass laws and make key appointments without the support of other parties. While it remains uncertain whether Bukele and his allies will win the 63-seat supermajority that would allow them to limit certain constitutional rights of citizens, the vote is nonetheless transformative, paving the way for Bukele to govern with near-total control. In addition to the legislative […]

MADRID—Last month’s election in Catalonia underlined the deep and longstanding divisions in the region over whether to seek independence from the rest of Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party may have won the most votes, but separatist parties together won the most seats in the regional Parliament and are poised to form a government. However, the record-low voter turnout of just over 53 percent raises questions about how much of a mandate the new Catalan government will have. The rift between separatists and unionists has dominated both Catalan and Spanish politics for a decade, and the regional polls […]

Italy fell into a political crisis in late-January, when, following disagreements in the coalition then headed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a small but crucial part of the government withdrew its support. Without the backing of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva party, Conte no longer had the required majority in Parliament. Given the dire straits of Italy’s health system and economy due to the coronavirus pandemic, the unexpected move raised concerns over the country’s ability to effectively continue its vaccination campaign and lay the foundations for economic recovery. Those fears were alleviated on Feb. 18, when Mario Draghi, […]

After nearly a decade of conflict, the extensive damage inflicted on Syria’s environment is emerging as another devastating, if less visible, tragedy of its civil war. Polluted soil and contaminated water are exacerbating the already severe suffering of Syrian civilians, undermining their ability to meet their basic needs and jeopardizing the country’s postwar future. While the war in Syria is far from over, the steep environmental toll will pose significant challenges to the country’s recovery when the fighting does eventually stop. Syrian and international experts are warning that the environmental impacts of war must be addressed with urgency—or the damage […]

In mid-February, Sudan summoned home its ambassador to Ethiopia amid an escalating dispute over a stretch of agricultural land along the two countries’ border. Both sides have accused each other of seizing territory by force, and Sudanese authorities have reported at least a dozen deaths, including some soldiers, due to incursions by Ethiopian militias. There is now an uncomfortably high possibility of an open military conflict between the two neighbors, both of which have grappled with domestic unrest in recent months and are going through their own delicate political transitions. Such a border war would be a serious threat to […]

2020 was the year that Vietnam gained widespread recognition as a substantial player in the global economy and as a model “developmental state.” The world noticed because Vietnam effectively contained COVID-19 even while the disease wreaked havoc on the populations and economies of much wealthier nations. International media outlets normally pay Vietnam scant attention; the war that ravaged it ended nearly half a century ago, and the one-party regime in Hanoi discourages investigative reporting. However, its strikingly successful mobilization against the pandemic has prompted a spate of essays hailing Vietnam’s “breakout moment.” As Richard Heydarian wrote recently in Nikkei Asia, […]