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On Tuesday, Francois Hollande became the first French president in 12 years to visit Vietnam, a former French colony. Despite their troubled past marked by a nearly decade-long war that ended with France’s military defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954, relations between Paris and Hanoi have warmed during Hollande’s presidency, part of France’s deepening interest in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. By a number of measures, the visit was a productive one. Vietnam Airlines purchased 40 jets from France’s Airbus, totaling $6.5 billion in sales; low-cost private airline VietJet purchased 20 planes, totaling $2.39 billion; a regional […]

President Barack Obama has often been more upfront than past American presidents on what he thinks about the nature of ties with Saudi Arabia. Years before he came into office, he referred to Riyadh as one of America’s “so-called allies” in the Middle East. Last year, when asked by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull if the Saudis were America’s friends, Obama reportedly replied, “It’s complicated.” And he does little to hide his frustrations with the kingdom, whether over its export of Wahhabism around the world or its treatment of women at home, in interviews, as was the case with The […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on countries’ risk exposure, contribution and response to climate change. South Australia closed the state’s last coal-fired power plant in May, resulting in a massive increase in energy prices and prompting a backlash against the wind and solar energy sources that replaced it. The episode has raised questions about the viability of Australia’s renewable energy policy. In an email interview, Mark Howden, the director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, discusses Australia’s climate change policy. WPR: What is Australia’s risk exposure to climate change, what […]

The international headlines generated recently by the Philippines combative new president, Rodrigo Duterte—over extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers in the country and a slur directed at U.S. President Barack Obama this week—have overshadowed his efforts to seek peace with communist rebels to end one of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies. Just over two months after being inaugurated, Duterte opened a first round of official talks in Norway in late August. Although early overtures suggest a level of promise not seen for decades, it remains to be seen whether the government and rebels can succeed where past talks have failed and translate […]

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not exactly known for his subtlety. But even by Khamenei’s standards, his latest verbal onslaught against Iran’s principal rival state, Saudi Arabia, was little short of startling. It all but ensures that sectarian reconciliation in the Middle East will remain out of reach for the foreseeable future. As Muslim pilgrims from around the world prepared for the annual Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that begins on Sept. 11 this year, Khamenei unleashed a fury of invective against the Saudi rulers. He accused them, among other things, of murder, and exhorted “the world of […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the legal status and socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in a range of countries. Indigenous groups in Chile are calling for the release of Machi Francisca Linconao, a spiritual leader of the Mapuche people who has been imprisoned for arson since 2013 under the country’s controversial counterterrorism law and whose health is currently in decline. In an email interview, José Aylwin, the co-director of Observatorio Ciudadano, a Chilean human rights NGO, discusses indigenous rights in Chile. WPR: What is the legal status of Chile’s indigenous peoples, and what […]

Over the past week, Myanmar held its eagerly awaited national peace conference in Naypyidaw, with hundreds of the country’s ethnic armed groups gathering in the capital alongside the government, parliament, the powerful military and political parties. The conference was a centerpiece of the agenda of the new administration led by the once-opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). It was designed to be a kind of sequel to the Panglong Conference held in Myanmar in 1947, when NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, independence hero Aung San, presided over the last meeting that brought together the country’s numerous factions and […]

PARIS—I left Paris two weeks ago for my annual summer vacation, when bans on burkinis—or modest beach attire for Muslim women—had begun springing up in various seaside cities and towns across France. Though the bans have now been ruled illegal by the country’s highest administrative court, the burkinis were clearly stand-ins for immigration, particularly Muslim immigration, to France and its impact on French culture and identity. By coincidence, the complimentary copy of the International New York Times on my return flight home from Japan included an op-ed by Salvatore Settis on the ravages of mass tourism on Venice. The city […]

During a visit by Bhutan’s foreign minister to Beijing last month, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said that his government hoped to establish official diplomatic relations with its neighbor and work to solve their long-running border dispute. In an email interview, Tilak Jha, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, discusses China’s outreach to South Asia. WPR: How extensive are China’s ties across South Asia, and how does China’s South Asia outreach fit with its broader foreign policy? Tilak Jha: Beijing’s South Asia policy has two major aims, reinforced by the region’s role in China’s ambitious infrastructure and integration initiative […]

This is it. As of Aug. 24, after 52 years of fighting and four years of negotiating, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have a peace accord. The FARC will cease to be one of the hemisphere’s largest generators of violence and will transition into a peaceful political movement. Already, the past 13 months have been the least violent period in Colombia since the conflict with the FARC began in 1964. And at midnight on Aug. 29, the government and the leftist guerrillas made it permanent, calling a definitive halt to all hostilities. The […]

Iran has had the chance to change how it engages with the outside world as a result of the nuclear agreement it signed with world powers a year ago, and also as a key player in the crises that haunt the Middle East. But there’s little sign that Tehran wants to take a new tack in its relations with the West or with its neighbors, and political forces in the U.S. also appear uninterested in prospects for normalization with Iran. Instead, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seems bent on ensuring that the nuclear agreement signed in July 2015 does […]

Trade is essential to every economy in the world. But policies to further liberalize trade are under attack. Both U.S. presidential candidates oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, though Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has supported it in the past. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has threatened to withdraw from the World Trade Organization and impose steep tariffs on imports from China and Mexico if they do not comply with his demands. In June, a majority in the United Kingdom—albeit a slim one—voted to leave the European Union, the world’s […]

Last week, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May reiterated that “Brexit means Brexit,” her formula for insisting that she will respect the outcome of the referendum in favor of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Her comments came as the Cabinet met to discuss Brexit strategy and the need to find a “unique” deal for the U.K. as it negotiates its EU exit, a proposition that is proving to be easier said than done. The outcome of the June referendum, in which 52 percent of Britons voted in favor of leaving the EU, prompted fears that the U.K.’s economy would collapse, […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on countries’ risk exposure, contribution and response to climate change. An epic heat wave engulfed the Middle East this summer, with temperatures reaching as high as 129 degrees Fahrenheit in Kuwait in July, and climate experts warn the region could become too hot for human survival. In an email interview, Mohamed Abdel Raouf, a research fellow at the Gulf Research Center, discusses climate change’s impact on the Gulf. WPR: What are the Gulf countries’ risk exposure to climate change, what effects of climate change are already apparent, and what […]

In this week’s episode, WPR’s senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, and host Peter Dörrie discuss the moral case against celebrating world peace, ethnic protests in Ethiopia, and post-Cold War threats to democracy. For the report, David Hutt joins us to talk about the debate in Malaysia over a bill to introduce strict Islamic codes and the challenges of managing the country’s diversity. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: The Moral Case Against Celebrating World Peace Ethiopia’s Regime Prioritizes Power Over Reform as Ethnic Protests Continue The West Faces a New Cold War With Democracy Under Threat Again […]

As if there were any doubt, it is increasingly clear that Venezuela’s profound political and economic crisis is not confined to its borders. The repercussions of the country’s humanitarian disaster and creeping authoritarianism are spreading throughout Latin America, posing tough choices for its neighbors and straining hemispheric relations. How best to deal with the Venezuela question is also making it even more difficult to set common policies to address the region’s economic stagnation. Nowhere is this problem clearer than in Mercosur, the Common Market of the South, an integration mechanism founded in 1991 by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, which […]

One of the most momentous decisions the United States made after 9/11 was to go on the offensive against violent extremists, seeking to cut them off at their source. This was to be done by helping governments in the Islamic world provide prosperity, security, justice and a sense of national identity. While sound in theory, this forced the U.S. to work with deeply flawed partners and repeatedly crashed against three problems. First, extremists, appropriating or misappropriating religious themes and local grievances, are often deeply ingrained in the societies where they operate, whether by ethnicity, clan, tribe or religion. Second, political […]