Last week’s local elections mark the firmest confirmation yet that the ruling Conservative Party is on track to be decimated in U.K. general elections later this year. Many observers blame the party’s decline on its failure to boost public services and economic growth. But it is also the product of deeper structural factors.
Most commentary about the movie, “Civil War,” focuses on its political realism, or lack thereof, and ignores what it teaches audiences about the role of the media as both observers and participants in conflicts. Here are some things the film gets right and wrong about civil wars and war reporting, based on political science.
Last month, Colombia announced it will apply for BRICS membership, and Argentina formally requested to become one of NATO’s global partners. Ten years ago, both of those statements would have sounded absurd. But while they are a sign of Latin America’s changing diplomatic alliances, it would be a mistake to read too much into them.
NATO’s intervention in Kosovo just over 25 years ago was based on ideas like “Responsibility to Protect,” which would come to serve as a guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy for more than a decade. But on a road paved with good intentions, “Responsibility to Protect” was always bound to do harm as well as good.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Europe is coming at a rather awkward time. European police and intelligence agencies have recently uncovered an astonishing number of alleged Chinese spies in a tidal wave of counterespionage activity in recent weeks, underscoring the sheer breadth of Beijing’s intelligence operations.
For almost 15 years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a fixture of EU politics, while leading a populist onslaught against liberalism at home. But even as Orban attracts fawning admiration from other anti-liberal populists in Europe and the United States, cracks are beginning to show in his own power base in Hungary.