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Venezuela is spiraling out of control. Daily life is growing ever more dire for most of the population, and the prospects for political reconciliation and an end to the humanitarian emergency are looking increasingly dim under the leadership of President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. As the opposition struggles, so far unsuccessfully, to put an end to the crisis, the question arises: What can—or should—the international community do to help the Venezuelan people? On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council held a closed-door meeting on the matter, a sign that the issue’s importance on the […]

Islamist extremist groups that were once confined to slivers of territory in the most marginalized areas of West Africa are increasingly expanding their operational footprint in the region. Whether it is Boko Haram, which has rebranded itself as the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s West African affiliate, or the myriad al-Qaida offshoots that occupied northern Mali following a coup in 2012, insurgent operations are no longer confined by these groups’ countries of origin. The Islamic State’s West Africa Province, as Boko Haram now calls itself, has spread beyond its base in northeastern Nigeria into neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which all have […]

The world is currently trying to figure out what China might be doing, saying and thinking about North Korea. Observers looks for signs in Chinese state media that Beijing might finally cut Pyongyang off financially and politically. They scrutinize shipping traffic to parse whether the flow of oil and coal between North Korea and China might be diminishing, with potentially disastrous results for Kim Jong Un’s regime. With a new president in South Korea, debates will continue about how Seoul can convince China to use its leverage on Pyongyang to get it to freeze its nuclear weapons program. There should […]

Taiwan is like no other place on Earth. That’s not a line from a promotional video or tourist brochure. It’s a simple fact of history, politics and international relations. Taiwan, with its population of nearly 24 million, is a vibrant liberal democracy and a major node in global value chains. Without components designed in Taiwan and produced in Taiwanese-managed factories in China and Southeast Asia, many of the devices people use every day simply wouldn’t work. Taiwan is an indispensable part of 21st-century life. But it is not a member of the United Nations and only has diplomatic relations with […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative, also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Three years after the coup that brought the junta led by Gen. Prayuth Chan-och to power in Thailand, China remains a staunch ally, declining to weigh in on Thailand’s domestic affairs. In an email interview, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, associate professor of political science at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, describes the bilateral relationship as well as the role Thailand might play in China’s One Belt, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about NATO members’ contributions to and relationships with the alliance. Anti-NATO voices within Slovakia are becoming more vocal, spurred in part by the public’s susceptibility to pro-Russian propaganda and suspicions of the U.S. Yet Slovakia, a NATO member since 2004, remains a committed member of the alliance, and officials see clear benefits to the security assurance NATO provides as well as training that comes with participating in NATO missions. In an email interview, Dušan Fischer, an alumni scholar at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and […]

Since the beginning of April, Venezuela has witnessed sustained protests on a scale not seen since 2014, when 43 people died during anti-government unrest. The latest wave of protests, in which at least 42 people have died, was initially triggered by the Supreme Court’s attempts earlier this year to assume the powers of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. Although the move was revoked days after it was introduced, it served as a catalyst for protests over wider grievances, including shortages of basic goods, triple-figure inflation and increasingly undemocratic practices by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. Government attempts […]

If there is a prayer on the lips of international affairs columnists these days, it goes something like this: Please let there be something to write about other than Donald Trump this week, and if it has to be Trump, please let me publish it before the next news cycle makes whatever I’ve written irrelevant or obsolete. Having already settled on a Trump topic before the latest self-created crises to buffet the White House broke, suffice it to say I’m typing as fast as I can. As we now know because he himself admitted it, during his Oval Office meeting […]

From Jan. 19 to March 10, Nigeria’s 74-year-old president, Muhammadu Buhari, took an extended medical leave in London. After returning home, he remained weak; sometimes he missed Cabinet meetings and appeared gaunt in photographs. Then, last week, on May 7, he left again for London, framing the trip as a “follow-up” to his earlier leave. Unlike the late Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose prolonged incapacitation in 2009 and 2010 caused a constitutional crisis, Buhari has avoided short-term turmoil by formally designating his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, as acting president during his absences. Whereas Yar’Adua’s inner circle clung to power and […]

As India tries to stem the flow of citizens joining the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the state of Kerala, on the southern coast, has emerged as an area of special concern. According to government statistics, more citizens have been arrested for Islamic State ties in Kerala than in any other state. In an email interview, Animesh Roul, executive director of the New Delhi-based Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, describes what could be making Kerala—and India more generally—fertile ground for Islamic State recruiters, and how the government is trying to crack down on the problem. WPR: How widespread is […]

Uganda has been celebrated for its progressive approach toward refugees. But its open-door policy is being tested by the ongoing flood of arrivals from neighboring South Sudan. The conflict in South Sudan has been raging for more than three years, but it has proliferated after a tentative peace deal collapsed in July 2016. Since then, more than 841,000 South Sudanese have fled the country, raising the total number of refugees to nearly 1.7 million, according to the United Nations. Roughly half of them have headed to Uganda. Listen to Andrew Green discuss this piece on WPR’s Trend Lines Podcast: On […]

U.S. President Donald Trump’s first overseas trip will begin in Saudi Arabia and Israel, two countries whose leaders have vocally welcomed Trump’s shift in approach to the region compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama. But the new president’s unpredictable nature means that neither country can take anything for granted during his visit. The White House has previewed the president’s trip, which will also take him to Italy for the G-7 Summit in Sicily and a meeting with the Pope, and Brussels for the NATO Summit. Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, briefed the press Friday, outlining an ambitious […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. When she was inaugurated for her second term in 2014, Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, declared, “Chile has a single enemy and that is inequality and only together can we overcome it.” Despite a struggling economy, she has pursued multiple initiatives intended to achieve that goal, notably education and tax reform. In an email interview, Daniel Hojman, associate professor of economics at the University of Chile, explains how inequality has evolved and whether the issue will be central […]

Last month in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama—the Christian and ethnically Chinese governor of Jakarta popularly known as Ahok—lost his re-election bid. The election was ugly, as Ahok was simultaneously on trial for blasphemy and the target of a perceived smear campaign by hard-line Islamists. Ahok’s defeat in the runoff by Anies Baswedan, a former education minister, was followed last week by the court handing him a two-year jail sentence, which has sparked fears about the growth of religious radicalism in Indonesia. But the blasphemy conviction has also prompted questions about the re-election prospects of Indonesian […]

Can Antonio Guterres save the United Nations from the tyranny of overinflated expectations? The U.N. secretary-general, who has been on the job for four months, seems clear about the limitations of his post. When the Security Council selected Guterres for the job last October, he declared that the Syrian war would be his top priority. But speaking in London last week, he implied he could not do much about it. Peace will only be possible, Guterres noted, “when all the parties in the conflict understand and believe they cannot win the war.” This is not exactly a revelation: U.N. officials […]

In recent years, Russia has learned how to punch above its weight in the global security system, exercising influence out of proportion to its actual political, economic and military strength. It has done this through ruthless skill and willingness to adopt almost any method that advances its interests while limiting the risk. Moscow has developed—even mastered—what national security experts call “gray zone” methods based on slowly emerging aggression that combines a wide array of techniques. These include conventional military intimidation, cyberattacks, economic warfare, political-psychological operations by Moscow’s extensive army of online trolls, and alliances with political and criminal proxies of […]

On April 27, in his Independence Day address to the nation, Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma, gave the clearest and most public assertion yet of his intention to leave office in March 2018. “My fellow citizens,” he declared, “in just a little over a year, my tenure will come to an end and I will graciously hand over power to my successor in a democratic transition.” Having served two terms as leader, Koroma is constitutionally ineligible to stand for a third. Despite his public remarks to the contrary, there remains a degree of skepticism in Sierra Leone that the […]