Column Archive

It may take years to unravel the tangled web surrounding “Project Opus,” the bungled 2019 mercenary operation to prop up Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar, which allegedly included efforts to deploy a special hit squad to Libya. Few observers tracking the burgeoning global market for privatized armies, however, were likely surprised by reports last week that U.N. investigators suspect the involvement of former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince. The recently leaked U.N. report makes only glancing mention of Prince’s alleged ties to the operation, but it marks the second time since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that Prince’s company, Hong Kong-based Frontier […]

Investors stampeded out of Brazil on Monday, tanking its markets, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s completely unexpected move to replace the head of the national oil company, Petrobras, with a retired general. Bolsonaro announced the decision Friday, and later declared he had plans to intervene in other firms. The huge market sell-offs, which also struck Brazil’s currency and sovereign bonds, reflected fears that Bolsonaro may be preparing to intervene much more aggressively in the economy, with the aim of boosting his sagging polls ahead of the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro is still the favorite to win, but the surprise popularity surge […]

“First thing I’m going to have to do, and I’m not joking,” candidate Joe Biden said last September in a campaign interview about America’s European allies. “If elected I’m going to … get on the phone with the heads of state and say America’s back, you can count on us.” In the end, he delivered his franchise tag line not by phone, but in a video address to a “special edition” of the Munich Security Conference during his first round of trans-Atlantic diplomacy last week. And he added a slight twist: “America is back. The trans-Atlantic alliance is back.” The […]

Perhaps we’ll never know if Facebook’s surprise decision to cut Australians off from all news sources on its platform was a carefully planned strategic move, or the result of a tantrum in Menlo Park. Either way, Australia woke up to a unilaterally imposed news blackout on Facebook last week that raises important policy questions about democracy, corporate power and access to information. There had been no prior warning from Facebook, no tests—just an algorithmic change. Not only were News Corp., ABC and other mainstream Australian media shuttered on Facebook’s News Feed, so were services that might not consider themselves to […]

This is shaping up to be a make-or-break year for international cooperation on biodiversity, though you might not know it. American news outlets have focused most if not all of their recent environmental reporting on climate change. On one level, of course, this makes sense. Climate change is the most daunting collective challenge that humanity has ever faced, and nations have fallen far behind the emissions reduction targets they set in Paris in 2015. Given these stakes, it’s certainly front-page news that President Joe Biden has called climate change a top-tier U.S. national security threat. What’s more, he has also […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnists Kate Jones and Emily Taylor are filling in for Candace Rondeaux this week. It’s been an astounding start to 2021 for Big Tech. Not only does the power of companies like Twitter and Facebook now extend to denying a platform to a sitting American president, but the market value of the top 30 U.S. tech companies is now the same as the annual GDP of Europe’s five largest economies. It all raises a familiar question: How long will tech giants be allowed to grow like this, seemingly unchecked and unaccountable? Fortunately, moves are already afoot on […]

It’s not often that a large refugee population is given unexpected reason to feel overjoyed. But that’s what happened last week in Colombia, when President Ivan Duque, standing alongside United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, announced that he would allow all Venezuelans living in the country as of Jan. 31 to obtain residency permits for 10 years. Their official status will grant them full rights to work, study, receive health care and enjoy other benefits available to Colombian citizens. The news came as a surprise, particularly because just a few weeks ago Duque had said undocumented Venezuelans would […]

Sometimes springtime comes and goes in a flash. That’s the way things felt early this month, when people who follow China were left agog at the extraordinary flourishing of discussion on Clubhouse, the young but fast-growing app that combines social media with audio chat. Though available in China since last spring, Clubhouse saw a spike in interest after a widely noted appearance by Elon Musk, a big celebrity in China, on Jan. 31. Still flying under the radar of authorities in Beijing, the app allowed Chinese users to join up with people from all over the world in mostly calm […]

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump presents a dilemma for Joe Biden, who wants to make democracy promotion a central plank of his foreign policy. How can the United States claim to embody, much less promote, democratic values when one of its two major political parties is gripped by an emergent, homegrown fascism? Unless and until the Republican Party or its successor unequivocally repudiates the authoritarian cult of Trumpism and the conspiratorial mindset that fuels it, the United States will remain a house divided, lacking credibility to advance the cause of democracy and the institutions of free societies abroad. […]

If the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump achieves one thing, it will be a lasting historical memory of the moment that the Republican Party openly embraced political violence as its brand. As Democrats lay out their case that Trump was “singularly responsible” for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the “Grand Old Party” is on the verge of strangling American democracy. This is the part where I’m supposed to say that it’s simply too soon to tell how the trial verdict will play out. Only it’s not too soon. Since only six Republican senators voted Tuesday […]

Ecuador’s presidential election was supposed to be a competition between a leftist candidate in the mold of exiled former President Rafael Correa, and a traditional, center-right and pro-market alternative. But when the votes were counted after Sunday’s first round, voters had delivered a surprise. Ecuadorians could end up with a choice between two leftists, potentially signaling that the coronavirus pandemic has opened the door to a new “pink tide” in South America. The final outcome of the vote has not been decided and won’t be until the runoff on April 11. The only certainty is that no candidate earned enough […]

Among the images that circulated in the aftermath of last month’s Capitol insurrection, one video stood apart, an almost iconic representation of the mob unleashed. In it, an enraged supporter of Donald Trump wields a pole flying the American flag to repeatedly strike a police officer who, having been dragged down the stone steps of the Capitol, lies at the crowd’s feet. The video requires no deep analysis to identify the violence it portrays as a threat to liberal democracy. A very different video that began to go viral in late September is of another register altogether. In it, a […]

In his first foreign policy address as president, delivered last week at the State Department, Joe Biden drew the curtain on the disastrous Trump era, rededicating the United States to repairing its tattered alliances, reengaging the world and defending freedom. “We are ready to take up the mantle of global leadership yet again,” he declared. “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” The most novel aspect of Biden’s plainspoken speech was how he erased any clear distinction between foreign and domestic policy. The nation’s strength at home determines its success abroad—and vice versa. But […]

During his 21 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has made a number of strategic missteps, but few will prove more consequential for him, his inner circle or indeed Russia itself than the jailing this week of anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny. As evidenced by wave after wave of protests across Russia since Navalny’s arrest upon his return to Moscow last month, the Kremlin’s harsh response has only provoked more Russians to take to the streets. It has also united the United States and its NATO allies after years of policy disarray on dealing with Moscow. Yet even now that minds […]

When news started filtering out of Myanmar that the internet was dropping, troops were patrolling the streets of major cities, and Aung San Suu Kyi—the country’s civilian leader, who was once viewed in the West as a hero of democracy—had been taken into custody, the situation posed a quandary. Burma, as the country is also known, was in the midst of a coup. But how should the world respond? A decade ago, Suu Kyi was a shining star. But today, she is known as a defender of ethnic cleansing and perhaps even genocide. Should democracies forcefully demand her release, or […]

For anyone looking out on the world from the new Biden White House, America’s challenges can only seem extraordinarily daunting. Even if it could be taken in isolation, the public health crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic would gravely test any administration. But, of course, the coronavirus challenge cannot be resolved in isolation. Beyond its immediate public health dimensions, the pandemic has created an enormous economic crisis for a United States whose status as a global leader has never looked so compromised in the postwar period. For Washington, the pandemic has also spawned a fiscal crisis, with the Treasury […]

Last Wednesday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in December, unveiled the latest installment of its famous “Doomsday Clock,” which purports to measure how close the world is catastrophe. When it first appeared in 1947, at the dawn of the nuclear age, its hands were set at 7 minutes to midnight. In the intervening years, it’s moved both closer to and farther from that witching hour. The most comforting installment appeared in 1991, amid the sudden end of the Cold War, when the Clock was reset to a sanguine 17 minutes to midnight. That optimism […]