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I was hoping that Bob Woodward’s new book would help me understand the strategy behind President Donald Trump’s trade policy. But like much of the rest of Washington, I found the “revelations” in the book, in a sense, shocking but not surprising. On trade policy, it largely confirmed what we already knew—the president just doesn’t like trade and will not listen to anything that contradicts his long-held views. Beyond the broad distrust of trade and trade agreements, specific policy decisions were disturbingly random, often depending on nothing more than who had last managed to catch the president’s ear. So, the […]

Can the U.S. and its main geopolitical rivals bury their differences? World leaders are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly this week. The main question on everyone’s mind is what President Donald Trump will say. Last year, Trump struck a bellicose note during his first U.N. appearance. He effectively promised to rip up the Iranian nuclear deal, a pledge he has since kept, and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea unless it gave up its own nuclear ambitions. Trump’s speech presaged a rough year in U.N. diplomacy, as the Security Council has since then hobbled from dispute […]

When Malcolm Turnbull was ousted as Australia’s prime minister last month, replaced by the country’s treasurer, Scott Morrison, Australians welcomed their seventh prime minister in just 11 years. Turnbull was the fourth prime minister to be removed from office by their own party since 2010 through what is known in Australia as “spills”—cutthroat internal party ballots to remove the leadership without a general election. Turnbull had been one of the leaders of a previous revolt within the governing Liberal Party against then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott that led to Abbott’s ouster in 2015. Turnbull now appears to have played a role […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the latest escalation in the U.S.-China trade war and new developments in North Korean nuclear diplomacy. For the Report, Michael Semple talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and life on the ground in territories under their control. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. “It took me by surprise, but I hope this is the start of the opening of the political space in Rwanda.” That was Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, a Rwandan opposition politician who was incarcerated for six years before her surprise release over the weekend. More than 2,100 other people were also freed in a move for which the government provided little explanation. Ingabire returned to Rwanda from the Netherlands in 2010 and announced her plan to challenge President Paul Kagame […]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is close to military victory over the rebels that he has been fighting since 2011. The largest remaining area of opposition control is Idlib province, and the regime is gearing up to retake it. Turkey and Russia developed a cease-fire plan last week to try and prevent further large-scale fighting, but it may not work. The future looks grim for the people of Idlib. Like Assad’s other offensives, if this one takes place it will be brutal, with civilians suffering as much as rebel fighters. And if past patterns hold, Syrian government forces will use whatever […]

RAMALLAH—“We lose Trump’s money, but we preserve our dignity,” Ahmed, 19, told me at Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah when I asked him how he felt about President Donald Trump’s recent decision to halt all U.S. funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that provides food, education and health care to the more than 5 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Created in 1949, UNRWA has been a lifeline for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel. Last year, the United States provided about […]

Several years ago, in a speech marking his final International Women’s Day as Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete demonstrated how he had cultivated a reputation as a champion of women’s rights. At a rally in the town of Morogoro, outside the capital Dar es Salaam, Kikwete touted a record that included appointing more women to government posts, expanding economic opportunities for women and investing in improvements to maternal and reproductive health. Just as importantly, his words suggested these were causes in which he felt personally invested. “I am proud to have created an enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment that has […]

Last week, at a meeting on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, in far eastern Russia, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to improve their long-strained bilateral relationship. It was their seventh meeting since late 2012, though each one has been on the sidelines of international gatherings, rather than full-fledged bilateral visits. The reason is that, up until recently, China has been hesitant to court Japan and restore traditional high-level exchanges through state visits, especially since their relations fell off a cliff seven years ago due to tensions […]

AMSTERDAM—If you think the annual rundown of a government’s policy plans has to be a droll, soporific affair, perhaps you should look at the Netherlands. Its version of the State of the Union is a carnival of color, pageantry and whimsy, cleverly concealing the arcane necessity of a national budget, and the delicate state of negotiations over politically charged policy choices. Tuesday was Prinsjesdag in the Netherlands—the Princes’ Day, also known as Budget Day. It happens every year on the third Tuesday in September, when the Dutch monarch, now King Willem-Alexander, formally opens the new parliamentary year, reading a speech […]

Is it already too late to save the liberal international order? That’s what Thomas Wright argues in a recent article in The Atlantic. It’s hard to argue with his reasoning. Clearly, the hoped-for convergence among the world’s great powers around universally accepted rules of the road for the international system has not materialized. In hindsight, it’s probably also true that the challenge—primarily from Russia and China—to the liberal elements of the liberal international order was inevitable. Rather than continue struggling to impose those ideals on a resistant world, Wright argues, the U.S. should seek to defend them at home and […]

GUATEMALA CITY—It looked like a modern-day re-enactment of the 1982 photograph of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt and other military officers at a press conference following their coup. On Aug. 31, military, police and special forces officers lined up several rows deep behind Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, who announced the government’s decision not to renew the mandate of a United Nations-backed anti-corruption body, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. Although it has been widely praised internationally for exposing deep-seated networks of corruption within the highest levels of the Guatemalan government, bringing down several politicians […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor, Benjamin Wilhelm, curates the top news and analysis from China written by the experts who follow it. A report that China is nearing an agreement with the Vatican on Catholic bishop appointments has raised eyebrows given the Communist Party’s ongoing crackdown on religion. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that momentum is building for an agreement between China and the Vatican that would see Beijing recognize the pope’s authority over the Catholic Church in China. In return, Pope Francis would recognize seven excommunicated Chinese bishops who were appointed by the […]

Last week, Denmark reached an agreement with the government of Greenland, which is an autonomous Danish territory, to fund improvements to airports on the island. The project aroused controversy when a Chinese company expressed interest and was pre-qualified to participate, a concerning development for Danish and American officials. While Denmark’s $559 million deal decreases the chances of Chinese involvement, it came at a steep political price, as it led the pro-independence Naleraq party to break away from Greenland’s ruling coalition, depriving it of its majority in Greenland’s Parliament. In an email interview, Ulrik Pram Gad, a professor of Arctic politics […]

The Afghan Taliban are experiencing a revival. Today, they find themselves in control of much of the territory they claimed before 9/11, a new version of the Islamic Emirate that the U.S. intended to eliminate. Instead of focusing on public statements, policymakers trying to assess the Taliban’s motives must closely examine what life in Taliban-controlled territory looks like. In 1992, after groups of guerrilla fighters known as mujahideen succeeded in toppling Afghanistan’s communist government, which had been backed by the Soviet Union, they quickly turned on each other, kicking off a civil war. In response, a group of young clerics […]

More than two years after narrowly approving a referendum to leave the European Union, the British are discovering that asserting national sovereignty is less straightforward than the proponents of Brexit promised. Leaders of the “Leave” campaign in 2016 painted the issue in black and white. Britain had subordinated its sovereignty to Brussels, not least its authority to control its own borders. A fully independent Britain would regain those rights, while also negotiating a favorable, bespoke trade agreement with the EU’s remaining 27 members. With only seven months left before the deadline to leave the EU, it is clear that this […]

Despite hopes that the negotiations to salvage the North American Free Trade Agreement will conclude with some degree of success, the other fronts in U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars continue to escalate. The looming tariffs on another $200 billion in U.S. imports from China will carry high costs for American consumers and exporters, much higher than the first round of tit-for-tat tariffs on $50 billion in trade with China this summer. Yet it is the political and institutional implications of potential tariffs on $200 billion in automobile imports later this year that raise even bigger questions. For many consumers, […]