In-Depth Archive

I carry a plastic chair over to sit with Pastor Samuel Tewogbola outside his house in the southern Nigerian town of Igarra. The family goat wanders past us, nosing the earth. It’s November 2014, and I am doing preliminary research for a future book. Tewogbola is a fire-and-brimstone preacher—43 years in a hard-line Pentecostal church. When I arrived with my friend Esther, his daughter, he made us all kneel in his doorway while he intoned thanks to Jesus for our safe journey. We’re philosophizing, talking about what makes up good human character, and about money—how money is used to buy […]

Forty years after its independence from Portugal and 13 years since the end of the civil war that immediately followed, Angola has made great progress in consolidating peace and stability, but continues to face many challenges. Foremost among them is managing an economic crisis, exacerbated by staggering inequality, while avoiding the potential social and political fallout it could generate. The country’s political landscape could also prove perilous: The ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), faces both a determined opposition and a potential internal battle over who will succeed longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The […]

The recent framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China—removed a major hurdle toward resolving the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program. Though a final deal between Iran and the West before the self-imposed June 30 deadline is far from guaranteed, it cannot be excluded and now seems more reachable than ever before. But would such an agreement also bring about a broader rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran? And what changes to Iran’s regional policy can be expected if a nuclear deal is reached and sanctions on the Islamic Republic are […]

The golden age of American economic primacy has ended. Two years ago, China surpassed the United States as the world’s top trading nation, and late last year it also surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power terms. China is an economic titan, but until recently, its impressive rise had not been accompanied by a vision to reshape the global economic order. However, this is beginning to change. Rather than accepting the status quo as given, Beijing is slowly working to revise foundational elements of the U.S.-led economic order. First, it has called into question the desirability […]

Russia’s military has experienced a remarkable recovery during the past decade. This is most evident in the success of Russia’s swift occupation of Crimea last year and ongoing support for separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Equally impressive, if less visible, is the rebound of the country’s military-industrial complex, referred to by the Russian initials VPK, which suffered heavily from the break-up of the Soviet Union’s integrated defense industries and the Russian government’s budgetary difficulties during the 1990s. In its worst years, under former President Boris Yeltsin, the VPK was unable to manufacture more than a few weapons systems each year. […]