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This week, India hosted representatives of 54 African countries for the third India-Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi, with security, investment and U.N. reform on the agenda. In an email interview, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, the chief executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, discussed India’s Africa outreach. WPR: How has India’s economic engagement in Africa expanded in recent years, and in what sectors and countries has India invested the most? Elizabeth Sidiropulos: Indian companies have been present on the continent for many decades, particularly in East Africa where, historically, there has been a large Indian diaspora. However, the relationship […]

Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party won an absolute majority in both chambers of parliament in elections last Sunday, marking the first time in 26 years of democratic rule that one party will form a government. Law and Justice, also known by its acronym PiS, broke through that glass ceiling with more than 37 percent of votes. It won the plurality of votes in all categories of the electorate, by reaching out to better-educated urban voters and making advances in the western provinces of the country for the first time. After being in opposition for eight years, Law and Justice […]

The U.S. military is increasingly ill-suited for today’s complex, interconnected and transparent security environment. It was designed to fight major wars against the military forces of other nations, yet never does so. Despite the best intentions of its architects, the U.S. military is a “kluge”—a combination of sometimes compatible, sometimes mismatched parts cobbled together. It works, but not as effectively or efficiently as it should. The United States could gain much from reorganizing its military to better reflect today’s security environment but this is easier said than done. The obstacles to deep change are powerful: There is so much tradition, […]

Turks will head to the polls again this Sunday, Nov. 1, to vote for a new parliament, after negotiations to form a coalition government failed following an inconclusive election in June. The vote comes amid considerable unrest in Turkey: In July, a two-year cease-fire agreement between the government and the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) collapsed, while a cell of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in southeastern Turkey has attacked several targets near the Syrian border and, recently, deeper in Turkey, including two suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people in Ankara earlier this month. Despite this unrest, opinions polls […]

Russia began its military intervention in Syria a month ago, initially declaring that its aim was to take on the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But instead, it immediately started targeting groups that pose the most threat to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, mainly the Islamist coalition of rebel and jihadi groups known as Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, which includes the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s Syrian branch, as well as more moderate groups backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and even the United States. Russia hopes to consolidate the territory controlled by Assad’s forces, which have also launched an offensive on rebel groups […]

Although far removed from Australia’s traditional areas of interest in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, the Middle East continues to be a focus of Australian foreign policy and military strategy. But its own security interests in the region have nearly always been defined in terms of its security relationship with the United States. One of only four countries to have participated in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Australia was more recently among the first countries to follow Washington’s lead in offering renewed military assistance to Iraq after the fall of Mosul to the self-proclaimed Islamic State in June […]

Latin America is reaching a quiet but remarkable turning point, one that, though occurring without much fanfare, has significant historical resonance. This past weekend, voters in several Latin American countries participated in national and local elections, and the process unfolded for the most part peacefully. That in itself is an achievement. But what is most noteworthy is that the outcomes of the elections were decided by the actual votes cast, and by extension the voters, rather than by fraud or violence. That, of course, is how democracy is supposed to work, but it is not always the case. When viewed […]

The longtime president of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, is now eligible to run for a third consecutive term, after voters overwhelmingly approved amendments to the constitution in a referendum last Sunday, according to the official results announced Tuesday. The opposition, which has protested 72-year-old Sassou’s attempt to retain power since he announced his intentions in May, urged voters to boycott the referendum and called for civil disobedience. The government issued a ban on public gatherings, but protests ensued. Tens of thousands of demonstrators were met with a violent government crackdown. According to government officials, clashes between police […]

In a surprise last week, Canada’s Liberal Party won an overall majority in the federal election, gaining a clear mandate to form a new government led by party leader Justin Trudeau, the new prime minister-designate. Voters’ predominant concerns were the economy and moving on politically from Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper—not national security or foreign policy. However, Trudeau, Harper and the New Democratic Party’s Thomas Mulcair still clashed on a number of issues throughout the campaign related to Canada’s national and international security policies, including how to tackle terrorism, the refugee crisis and drug policy. Will Trudeau now follow through […]

Americans often take for granted that events that mark U.S. history are as indelibly imprinted in people’s memories around the world as they are in the U.S. For those of a certain generation, the assassination of John F. Kennedy is one such event. For younger Americans, it’s the attacks of Sept. 11. But at times, the reverse is also true, when historical events that occur elsewhere in the world become indelibly imprinted on American minds. That is the case for me and Nov. 4, 1995: the day Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv. I can still […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. A prolonged commodities slump has caused Indonesia’s economy to slow drastically. Last year, Indonesia saw its slowest growth rate since 2002; the currency lost 11 percent of its value; and trade levels were at their lowest since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. In an email interview, Arianto Patunru, a fellow in the Arndt-Corden department of economics at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, discussed Indonesia’s economy and its dependence on commodities […]

During the early decades of the nuclear age, a debate developed on the general utility of force. In the new and dramatically altered conditions of that period, in which a third world war could have meant the obliteration of great cities and civilization, it was hard to see what political purposes could possibly be achieved by launching an aggressive war. But by the same token there were also horrendous risks in a defensive war if that required resort to the most destructive weapons available. The dominant response, at least when it came to war among the great powers, was to […]

Developments over the past year in Syria and Iraq suggest many parallels between the two countries. From the separatism of the Kurds and the fight against the self-declared Islamic State to the expansion of Russia’s presence and influence, the two states seem to be following similar trajectories. But a closer look suggests quite distinct realities. Syria clearly seems to be headed toward implosion, even if the bigger picture of chaos obscures at least one smaller one that could inspire optimism for the future. By contrast, Iraq’s narrative today is not one-dimensional—in fact, the signs point in many directions: The country […]

On Oct. 11, Guinea’s president, Alpha Conde, comfortably won re-election in a poll nevertheless marred by deadly clashes between government and opposition supporters ahead of the vote. Official results, announced six days later, showed him taking nearly 58 percent of the vote, with overall turnout at around 66 percent. As in 2010, Conde faced off against Cellou Dalein Diallo, who was Guinea’s prime minister from 2004 to 2006, with another six candidates also participating. Conde’s first-round majority means there will be no second-round run-off ballot. In a year featuring as many as a dozen important elections in Africa, Guinea belongs […]

Do Europeans still make good peacemakers? Europe’s militaries have been in long-term decline since the end of the Cold War. But the continent’s diplomats and politicians retain a prominent role in international crisis management. This is nowhere more obvious than in the Middle East and North Africa. The United Nations currently has seven top-level envoys working on conflicts in the region. Five of them are Europeans. The U.N. has, for example, decided that a German official will replace a Spanish diplomat as its envoy on Libya. Staffan de Mistura, who holds double Italian-Swedish nationality, still has the ugly task of […]

On Sept. 28, in the village of Dadri in the state of Uttar Pradesh, barely 50 miles from India’s capital of New Delhi, a Hindu mob beat a Muslim laborer, Mohammed Akhlaq, to death. The mob had attacked Akhlaq at home in the belief that he had slaughtered a cow to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid. The horrific absurdity of the crime was further accentuated when subsequent forensic examination of the meat taken from Akhlaq’s refrigerator demonstrated that it was actually mutton. The killing generated understandable anger and profound dismay within India’s vast civil society. However, it took a […]

Maldivian Vice President Ahmed Adheeb was arrested Saturday in connection with a speedboat explosion targeting President Abdulla Yameen on Sept. 28. In an email interview, Fathima Musthaq, a doctoral student at Indiana University, discussed politics in the Maldives. WPR: How common is political violence in the Maldives, and what does the attempt on President Abdulla Yameen’s life reflect about the island’s political environment? Fathima Musthaq: Violence as a means of intimidation has become commonplace. The explosion on the president’s speedboat on Sept. 28 is the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks in the country. Just three weeks before […]