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Suicide car bombers attacked three churches in northern Nigeria over the weekend, killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens more. The attacks, for which Boko Haram has claimed responsibility, sparked reprisal killings, while also focusing international attention on the religious tensions in the West African country split between a Muslim-majority north and a Christian-majority south. Zachary Warner, a research analyst in Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, told Trend Lines that it is important to understand these attacks as part of a broader battle for control of the public space, which includes social practices, morality and governance, in northern Nigeria […]

Earlier this month, Leon Panetta became the first U.S. defense secretary to visit Vietnam’s Cam Rahn Bay deepwater port since the end of the Vietnam War. He attended a ceremony at the USNS Richard E. Byrd, a cargo ship operated by a mainly civilian crew under the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, which was undergoing repairs by Vietnamese workers. Speaking on the deck of the ship, Panetta called for more high-level exchanges between the U.S. and Vietnam, as well as enhanced defense cooperation. If Panetta chose to stop in Vietnam for a few days during his nine-day tour of Asia, it […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series that uses current trends in the Chinese political economy to forecast the outcomes and implications for China under the fifth generation of Communist Party leadership. Part I examines a best-case scenario. Part II will examine a worst-case scenario. SHANGHAI — As China approaches its once-a-decade senior leadership transition, structural weaknesses in the country’s economic model are becoming more apparent, even as the momentum surrounding progressive reforms appears to be incrementally increasing. A best-case scenario for China under the fifth-generation Communist Party leadership assumes a continuation of both trends, with the […]

Stratfor Vice President of Strategic Intelligence Reva Bhalla explains how the Egyptian political transition is affecting its relationship with Israel. World News Videos by NewsLook

Think tank analyst is one of those jobs that can be hard to explain to friends and relatives. Taken together, Washington’s many international affairs institutes could be described as the American foreign policy “industry.” This industry is sustained by a branch of American philanthropy that takes a keen interest in how the United States carries out its special global role. And the role of the analysts who work in this industry is to scrutinize the myriad official actions of the world’s governments, with an eye not only to explaining them, but to influencing them as well. As a matter of […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. In June 2012, Google’s acrimonious relationship with the People’s Republic of China took a couple of new turns. In order to assist Chinese users to access information freely from behind the controls of the Great Firewall of China, Google created a unique feature for its popular search engine: When users attempt to search for banned keywords, Google warns them that this might cause their Google connection to be interrupted and suggests alternative […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. Despite the amplified role of celebrities in global affairs, the notion that celebrities have assumed the role of diplomats is much contested. The classic definition of diplomats as agents of the state and the national interest would appear to exclude celebrities, just as it does all nonstate actors. This restrictive view, however, does not reflect the degree to which at least some top-tier celebrities have gained recognition as actors with an elevated […]

The United States military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across the African continent, according to an article in the Washington Post. The article explains that close to a dozen air bases have been set up over the past five years. The aircraft that fly in and out of these air bases are equipped with surveillance equipment and disguised as private planes. These operations will only intensify as the U.S. continues to fight a “growing shadow war” against militants in the region. Describing how the United States Africa Command, or Africom, has grown in size and scope in recent years, […]

Mauritania, and its periodic bouts of political instability, has important implications for the trajectory of secret U.S. military operations in Africa, as a recent article by Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post shows. American spy planes have flown out of Mauritania on and off for several years, but politics has sometimes constrained America’s role there. In 2008, for instance, a coup in Mauritania “forced Washington to suspend relations and end the surveillance,” Whitlock writes. Today, Mauritania’s potential significance to the U.S. military is increasing. In neighboring Mali, torn apart by a civil war since January, the Islamist group Ansar al […]

Nobody can predict how the coming week will unfold in the aftermath of Greece’s parliamentary elections. Nervousness in politics and markets has been increasing, and a Greek exit from the euro can no longer be excluded as a last resort. One thing is certain, however: Germany — the biggest contributor to the European Union’s rescue umbrella (the European Stability Mechanism) and thus the Greek debt — is losing patience. Germany is increasingly turning a deaf ear to calls that it do more, more quickly, to save the euro. This is especially the case for calls coming from London and Washington, […]

UN observers suspended their mission to Syria on Saturday, blaming intensifying violence as troops rained shells down on rebel bastions including Homs, where the opposition warned a massacre was imminent. World News Videos by NewsLook

Speaking at the Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum this week, Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group and author of the recently published “Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World,” argued that we are living through a period of “creative destruction” of the post-World War II global architecture. The problem, however, is that no single state currently possess the necessary preponderance of resources to be able to construct a new global system, as the U.S. was able to do in the aftermath of World War II. This is not to argue that the United States […]

The European Union decided earlier this month to reduce the size of the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) by 25-30 percent, while extending its mandate. In an email interview, Vedran Dzihic, a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, discussed the future of EULEX. WPR: What was the original size and scope of EULEX? Vedran Dzihic: According to the EU Council’s decision of Feb. 4, 2008, EULEX was originally designed to “monitor, mentor and advise” Kosovar institutions on all areas related to the wider rule of law. […]

China has taken an atypically strong stand in opposing efforts to force the Syrian government to end its brutal repression of anti-regime protesters. But China, unlike Russia, with which it has joined to block measures seeking to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office, is motivated primarily by principles rather than concrete strategic and economic interests in Syria. And China, unlike Russia, seems more open to changing its position. For the past two decades, Chinese leaders have typically opposed foreign military interventions seeking regime change. The Chinese government has traditionally sought to keep United Nations resolutions precisely worded to tightly […]

Since April, when two Tuareg rebel groups drove government forces out of northern Mali, the situation in the sparsely populated region has steadily worsened. The lightning advance of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA), which seeks independence for the Tuareg homeland, and Ansar Dine, which has an Islamist agenda, triggered a coup of disgruntled junior officers against President Amadou Toumai Touré, with the resulting political instability in Bamako leaving the army incapacitated and the rebels the effective rulers of roughly half the country’s territory. Though the two groups worked together to launch the rebellion, Ansar Dine […]

For the revolutionaries who launched the Egyptian uprising, and for voters anxious about their country’s future, the final hours leading up to this weekend’s runoff presidential election in Egypt have become a contest of fears. The euphoria of revolution, that feeling that anything was possible, has been replaced by a searing pressure: the need to decide which is the worse of two bad options. The first round of voting left Egyptians with the choice of Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmed Shafiq, a former general who played an important role in the regime that revolutionaries sought […]

The president of Cyprus and the head of the country’s central bank acknowledged earlier this month that Cyprus may need to seek a bailout from the European Union’s European Stability Fund due to Cypriot banks’ exposure to the Greek crisis. In an email interview, Farid Mirbagheri, a professor of international relations at the University of Nicosia, discussed Cyprus’ position in the European debt crisis. WPR: What are the scope and causes of Cyprus’ current economic difficulties? Farid Mirbagheri: The main issue has been exposure to the Greek crisis. Cypriot banks hold around €5 billion ($6.2 billion) of Greek sovereign debt […]