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For the first time, Saudi Arabia’s budget this year includes measures to gradually reduce subsidies on gasoline and other fuel, in response to declining oil revenue from the slump in global energy prices. The move, replicated in other Arab Gulf states, represents a fundamental challenge to the assumptions on which the region’s economy and political structure are based. Since the beginning of the year, millions of Saudis have found it more expensive to drive to and from work each day. To people living outside the Gulf, the burden may not seem onerous. The cost at the pumps of higher-grade gasoline […]

This week on the Trend Lines podcast, WPR Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein talks to host Peter Dörrie about the future of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers, President Barack Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation legacy, what declining oil prices mean for Equatorial Guinea’s stability, and other stories from around the world. For the Report, Abraham Newman joins us to explain the politics that led to the nullification of the Safe Harbor agreement between the United States and the European Union and how a new regime to protect digital privacy could be structured. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: What Does […]

Thanks in large part to Russia’s intervention, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has registered a series of important victories against its armed opposition and now seems to be encircling Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city. While the civil war is far from over, the conflict’s current trajectory suggests a regime military victory in the western half of the country. But the United States and other so-called Friends of Syria would do well to consider the implications of what it means to watch from the sidelines while the Russian air force obliterates the Syrian rebels. Set aside the moral stain of […]

The Syrian catastrophe has not reached bottom but continues to spiral into an ever-greater disaster. Every week brings new horrors and deeper damage to Syria itself and its entire region. This week a United Nations report on the conflict abandoned any attempt at diplomatic phrasing and accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “inhuman actions” and “extermination.” As former U.S. officials Nicholas Burns and James Jeffrey wrote, “The cancer of this war has metastasized into neighboring countries and the heart of Europe. It could destabilize the Middle East for a generation.” Only extremists gain from that. But tragically, […]

Editor’s note: This article is one of three briefings on China’s rise and its implications for U.S. regional and global interests, coinciding with an upcoming panel, in collaboration with WPR, at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 17-19 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The first, on China’s global economic ambitions, appeared Monday; the second, on China’s naval modernization, appeared Wednesday. The Internet revolution began in the 1990s, when China was still recovering from the damage done during Mao Zedong’s reign and the world was adjusting to the West’s post-Cold War pre-eminence. Under such circumstances, Chinese leaders saw the […]

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Africa’s longest-serving head of state, appears poised to formally extend his rule over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea later this year. The septuagenarian strongman has confirmed his intention to run in November’s presidential election, a contest no one expects him to lose, since the political opposition is marginalized and the state is firmly under the control of Obiang and his family. Though the election results already look certain, volatile energy revenues and Obiang’s ongoing efforts to position his son as the heir apparent threaten to jeopardize the regime’s future stability. The oil slump undermines Obiang’s long-established strategy of […]

Gui Minhai, by most accounts, appeared quite happy with his life as a writer and editor in Pattaya, a seedy seaside resort east of Bangkok. Born in China and holding a Swedish passport, he had been living in a condo and working on books for Mighty Current, a Hong Kong-based publishing house he founded that specialized in steamy—and possibly untrue—tell-alls about the private lives and political in-fighting of leaders of China’s Communist Party. He swam daily and apparently wrote at a desk overlooking the blue-green Gulf of Thailand. Then, last November, Gui suddenly vanished. Closed-circuit television recordings from his condo […]

When Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, presented a serious proposal to foreign bondholders last week, he took one more step along a path that leads away from the country’s dozen years of leftist populism at the hands of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner. In fact, Macri’s offer to creditors, whatever its ultimate fate, represents a blow to the very structure of Kirchnerismo, whose economic and foreign policies he is dismantling with breathtaking speed. Macri’s election in 2015, as is now evident, follows a global trend of dissatisfaction that favors candidates from outside […]

It appears increasingly likely that U.S. military involvement against the self-declared Islamic State’s growing foothold in Libya is a matter not of “if,” but of “when.” Over the past several months, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has taken advantage of the ongoing civil war in Libya and the lack of a central government to expand its operations there. The group now controls the city of Sirte and, according to recent U.S intelligence estimates, has more than 5,000 fighters in the country, some of whom have been sent from Iraq and Syria to provide guidance but also to keep […]

Editor’s note: This article is one of three briefings on China’s rise and its implications for U.S. regional and global interests, coinciding with an upcoming panel, in collaboration with WPR, at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs on Feb. 17-19 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The first, on China’s global economic ambitions, appeared Monday; the third, on China’s cyber strategy, will appear Friday. The past two years have seen impressive advances in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s capabilities. In 2015, China revealed that it had begun building its second aircraft carrier and that it had begun its first submarine […]

To advocates, they are 90,000 tons of American sovereignty, deployable anywhere on the globe to project power decisively and at will. In crises, presidents ask, Where are the aircraft carriers? But to critics, they are hugely expensive and increasingly vulnerable monuments to a naval age gone by. They represent the past, not the future, of naval power. Recently, this debate flared up again in the United States as prospective adversaries, like Russia and China, build long-range weapons and create anti-access and area-denial environments. Does the U.S. need aircraft carriers, and, if so, how many? The answer, not surprisingly, is complicated. […]

Depending on whom you talk to and what month it is, the United States and the European Union are either on the brink of a digital trade war or reaching a historic e-commerce deal. EU-U.S. cooperation over the trans-Atlantic digital economy seemed to first fall apart in October 2015, when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down a critical data-sharing deal known as the Safe Harbor Agreement. In doing so, Europe’s highest court put major companies such as Facebook and IBM at risk of breaching EU privacy law by simply conducting their day-to-day business operations. National data-privacy authorities have […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the potential impact on members’ economies. To be included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was formally signed last week and now faces national ratification among member states, Vietnam accepted a side agreement outlining various compliance measures for the deal’s labor rights standards. In an email interview, Adam Fforde, professorial fellow at Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, in Melbourne, Australia, discusses the TPP’s likely impact on Vietnam’s political economy. WPR: What are the expected economic benefits for Vietnam from the TPP, and […]

British Prime Minister David Cameron has been on an offensive since the Paris attacks in November to counter any perception that the United Kingdom is shrinking in its international ambitions. Central to his position is an unambiguous commitment to maintain a U.K. defense budget of 2 percent of GDP and direct new spending to counter the threat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. However, uncertainty over the U.K.’s relations with the European Union, with a British vote on whether or not to stay in the union expected this June, could derail his campaign. Cameron committed an additional 12 billion pounds (about […]

This week, world leaders are gathering in Dubai for the fourth World Government Summit. It’s a bit surreal to talk about world government these days, given the recent setback to the United Nations’ efforts to get Syria peace talks off the ground, and the undeniable failures of governments across the Arab world to provide stability and a modicum of freedom to their citizens. Clearly, too, the summit is part of the United Arab Emirates’ relentless pursuit of its global brand. But it is also about the UAE’s desire to set a more positive agenda for the Arab world. The gathering […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s commitment to preventing and rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons was clear from the first days of his administration, when he pledged in Prague in April 2009 “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The historic vow shattered precedent, seized international attention and helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize later that year. Yet as he prepares to leave office seven years later, it appears that with the exception of a fledgling nuclear deal with Iran, Obama will leave an arms control legacy that is arguably little better than that […]

Is it time for Ban Ki-moon to quit? This is not an obvious moment for United Nations secretary-general to do so. His second term is set to finish at the end of this year anyway. The race to replace him is heating up, with a posse of politicians from Eastern Europe jostling for the lead. Ban is not very secretly planning to run for the presidency of South Korea next year, and there has been speculation that he could leave New York early to campaign. But for now, U.N. officials and diplomats seem to think he’ll last the course. Having […]