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On Feb. 21, voters went to the polls for the first round of Niger’s presidential election. Like many other West African states, Niger has a two-round system, in which the election goes to a run-off if no candidate wins an absolute majority. Niger faces just such a scenario: According to official results, incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou, who took office in 2011, scored 48.4 percent of the votes. In the second round, scheduled for March 20, Issoufou will face the former speaker of the National Assembly, Hama Amadou, who won 17.8 percent in the first round. Despite the vulnerability that incumbents […]

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran two major articles looking at Hillary Clinton’s role in the Obama administration’s deliberations over whether or not to intervene in the Libyan civil war in 2011. They offer what is, at times, a damning critique that portrays Clinton, then the U.S. secretary of state, as eager to get involved in Libya, but less interested in what might come after the U.S. intervention. A deeper look at the articles, however, suggests a greater indictment of President Barack Obama for his willingness to get involved in Libya but not to see the mission through. […]

“We’re all in this together,” said Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s veteran oil minister, at an oil conference in Houston last week. The oil market “could drown in oversupply,” as the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in January, and global prices are at their lowest level since 2003, so all petrostates are bleeding. Venezuela is on the brink of bankruptcy; Russia’s economy is expected to shrink for the second year in a row; and Nigeria and Azerbaijan are seeking emergency loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The economic hardship experienced by its members makes one wonder why […]

Last week, Chinese engineers broke ground on what press accounts styled “China’s first overseas naval base” in Djibouti. That is a big deal. Djibouti lies in East Africa along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the waterway that connects the western Indian Ocean with the Red Sea. It also adjoins the patrol grounds for the Gulf of Aden counterpiracy mission, in which China’s navy has taken part since 2009. In short, it occupies strategic real estate. China, however, will not be the lone occupant of the seaport. Djibouti is also home to other foreign logistics hubs: The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force operates […]

Every year in February, the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies present Congress with an unclassified threat assessment. The quality of the document this year is uneven, and it’s clear that intelligence leaders remain conflicted about how much of their knowledge belongs in the public domain. But the annual ritual has some value in pushing the intelligence bureaucracy to clarify its thinking on key issues, and can set a framework for a productive partnership with policymakers. Last week, WPR columnist Michael Cohen argued that the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, as the report and accompanying congressional testimony is known, amounts to fear-mongering […]