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LIPJAN, Kosovo—On a Thursday morning in March, Yasemin Karabina and her husband, Yusuf Karabina, both Turkish nationals, awoke at the usual time and headed to work in this town 10 miles south of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. Yasemin taught Turkish to high school students at Mehmet Akif College, while Yusuf served as deputy director of the Gulistan Educational Institution, which is in the same building. The couple, who have been married for more than 20 years, were in the habit of driving to and from work together. Their teenage son, a student at Mehmet Akif College, rode along in the back […]

In the largest Russian military exercise since the height of the Cold War, Moscow this week is deploying 300,000 troops, 900 tanks and 1,000 aircraft in central and eastern Russia. The military demonstration, called “Vostok 2018,” or East Exercise 2018, is expected to last from Sept. 11 to 15. This year, for the first time ever, Chinese military forces will participate, sending 3,200 troops and 30 aircraft over the border into eastern Russia. Similar Cold War-era drills only included states that were part of the Soviet sphere. The Vostok exercise highlights two important, seemingly contradictory things about the relationship between […]

A little more than two years since a bare majority of British voters opted to leave the European Union, and just over six months before it happens, negotiators are still trying to determine what the post-Brexit relationship will look like. As of March 29, 2019, the United Kingdom will no longer be part of the EU and, while the parties have agreed on a 21-month transition period, time is running out. The U.K. needs to find a way to maintain free trade in goods and services with what is by far its largest trading partner, in order to avoid large […]

The resignation last spring of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who faced impeachment on charges of corruption, brought to power an unlikely figure: Martin Vizcarra, a former governor of the remote region of Moquegua in southern Peru. Vizcarra had been serving concurrently as vice president and ambassador to Canada when he was called back to assume the nation’s highest office. His attempts to tackle systemic corruption in Peru, including calling for a national referendum on several key reforms, have led to a standoff with the country’s Congress, which is controlled by the opposition Popular Force party. In an email interview, […]

MEDELLIN, Colombia—China has quickly established an extensive track record of using infrastructure spending, on everything from stadiums to ports, to secure resources and bolster trade across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Security and space industry analysts now say 2018 has already been a banner year for another part of China’s soft power outreach, as it has sold satellites and support systems to Nigeria, Cambodia and Pakistan. China’s space ambitions are closely tied to its Belt and Road Initiative. By the end of the year, it is expected that a basic system of 18 Chinese BeiDou-3 global positioning satellites will serve […]

Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the “war on terror” is still stumbling along. From the Sahel to the Philippines, governments and international coalitions continue to battle jihadi groups. In an era of mounting international competition, political leaders, generals and spies continue to agree that transnational terrorism is a common threat. Global organizations like the United Nations cannot insulate themselves from this tendency. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made consolidating the institution’s counterterrorist activities a priority. Last week, World Politics Review ran a trenchant piece by Larry Attree and Jordan Street of Saferworld, warning that […]

Will Nguyen doesn’t remember much of what happened immediately after he was beaten by police officers at a mass demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest metropolis. A fellow protester tipped him off that he was about to be arrested, but before he could escape into the crowd, half a dozen plainclothes officers descended on him, beating him with fists and clubs. What happened next is fuzzy. Video subsequently posted online shows him being dragged to a police truck, where he had a bag placed over his head before being taken to jail, but Nguyen doesn’t remember that. “When […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Kicking off the latest iteration of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday pledged $60 billion for various projects in Africa, a sum that included $20 billion in credit lines along with $15 billion in “grants, interest-free loans and concessional loans,” according to The Associated Press. The announcement wasn’t especially remarkable, given that China pledged the same amount during the last summit, in 2015. Yet this year’s forum coincided with an intensifying debate […]

On Aug. 12, leaders of the five Caspian Sea littoral states—Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—gathered in the Kazakh port city of Aktau to sign the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The agreement ended decades of uncertainty over the Caspian Sea’s status, clarifying the boundaries between each party’s territorial waters. And while the agreement left open the key question of ownership over the rich oil and gas deposits lying under the Caspian’s seabed, it provides a framework for these five countries to work out arrangements for joint exploration and drilling, as well as long-stalled pipeline projects. […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the battle for Idlib in Syria and the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats’ surge ahead of Sweden’s upcoming parliamentary elections. For the Report, Malia Politzer talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Spain’s approach to an influx of African migrants under new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. 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 […]

It is often hard to figure out precisely what President Donald Trump’s security strategy is. He seldom talks about U.S. national interests and priorities other than trade. His broad regional policies are vague or missing altogether. This is particularly true for Africa. Nearly halfway through his term, Trump has made no speeches on Africa, has not visited the continent, and was slow to appoint an assistant secretary of state for African affairs, America’s key policy coordinator for that part of the world. All this suggests that after 50 years of modest involvement in African security, the United States may be […]

From Bosnia to Rwanda, United Nations peacekeepers have always faced tough choices that come with operating in complex, dangerous environments. Today, the climate is no less challenging. Record fatalities and injuries for U.N. personnel have increased pressure from some quarters to embolden U.N. peacekeeping and political missions with stronger, more aggressive mandates. But recent decisions made by the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, such as a mandate to support a regional, non-U.N. counterterrorism unit in Mali, the G5 Sahel Joint Force, risk plunging blue helmets into the quicksand of unwinnable wars. This short-term thinking poses considerable long-term risks […]

Peru’s Martin Vizcarra traveled one of the more unlikely paths to the presidency. When he assumed office suddenly and unexpectedly last March, more than 80 percent of Peruvians said they did not recognize his name. As he approaches six months in power, the soft-spoken accidental president is hitting his stride, leading some skeptics to think he has a chance, though no guarantee, of actually completing the three years left in the term of the president he replaced. Some Peruvians now say there’s even a possibility that he will do more than keep the seat warm for his successor, and may […]

What a difference a year makes. Last October, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a major policy speech on U.S.-India ties and the critical role India would play in the Trump administration’s new Indo-Pacific strategy. A month later in Vietnam, at the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, President Donald Trump championed India’s role in the region—even though it’s not a member of APEC—signaling that he was serious about accelerating strategic cooperation with India. But now, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis in New Delhi this week for high-level talks with their Indian […]

Although the Islamic State continues to carry out sporadic attacks in parts of Iraq, the focus across the country has largely turned to post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. Harsh sentences are being meted out to suspected Islamic State militants and their collaborators. The Associated Press reported in March that 19,000 people have been detained or imprisoned on suspicion of connections to the extremist group. Of those, 3,000 have been sentenced to death. Meanwhile, a growing backlog of cases and a dearth of available evidence have stymied efforts to compensate victims. In an email interview, Ali Al-Mawlawi, head of research at the […]

Last Friday, the day before voters in Mauritania went to the polls for parliamentary, regional and local elections, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he would be “closely following developments” in the West African country. In particular, he called on “all parties” to “allow for the participation of all interested stakeholders.” By that point, however, this wish was already out of reach. That’s because in early August, Biram Dah Abeid, a prominent opposition politician, was arrested at his home by police officers who reportedly said they were executing “an order that came from above.” Abeid remains […]

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. Signs of improved ties between China and Japan have rekindled hopes of swift progress toward establishing the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, which would be the world’s largest free trade deal if it ever comes to fruition. China initially unveiled the agreement as a rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from after taking office. Japan led the efforts to salvage and revise the TPP without the […]