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After two years of diplomatic deadlock, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed a new envoy for Western Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front, which represents the ethnic Sahrawi population of the territory. The recent designation of seasoned Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura marks a much-delayed and critical step forward in a standoff that, if left untreated, risks spreading instability elsewhere in the region.  The temperature has been rising of late in this often-overlooked conflict. In November 2020, fighting flared up between Morocco and the Polisario Front. A month later, President Donald Trump threw fuel on the […]

In remarks earlier this month that laid out her approach to negotiations with Beijing, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she intended to have “frank conversations” with her Chinese counterpart, but that “our objective is not to inflame trade tensions with China.” Tai went on to outline how the U.S. can sustain what she called “durable coexistence” with Beijing. This week on the Trend Lines podcast, Ali Wyne, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to unpack the Biden administration’s approach to trade talks with Beijing, and what it says about the broader state of play […]

The NATO defense ministers who met yesterday and today in Brussels had a long list of issues to discuss, from the alliance’s role in confronting a rising China to its plans for countering a resurgent Russia. But NATO is also confronting more fundamental questions about its identity that have taken on greater resonance in recent months. Prominent among those questions is what Europe can and should do for itself to provide for its security and defense. The idea of European strategic autonomy, or reduced dependence on the United States for security, is currently associated with French President Emmanuel Macron, one of its most […]

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin is not well-loved among Democrats in Washington these days, but for champions of a greener world economy, he is someone who needs to be understood. In fact, for anyone looking to forecast the outcomes of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, all you need to do is track Manchin’s moves and those of his political counterparts in the world’s top coal-producing democracies to understand the new politics of the green transition and energy nationalism.  At the moment, Manchin, a Democrat who represents the coal-producing state of West Virginia, is the main obstacle to a grinding push by […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which gives a rundown of the week’s top stories on WPR. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Last month, the surprise announcement by the U.S., U.K. and Australia of their trilateral AUKUS security partnership sent shockwaves across the Indo-Pacific and put China on notice that Washington was adding some bite to its “pivot to Asia.” This week, the shoe was on the other foot, as news broke that China reportedly […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. In Oct. 2020, Nigerians took to the streets in cities across the country during widespread protests against police brutality, popularly known as #EndSARS. The demonstrations, regarded by many as the most significant popular uprising since the country’s pro-democracy struggles of the 1990s, initially began as a campaign […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Europe Decoder, which includes a look at the week’s top stories from and about Europe. Subscribe to receive it by email every Thursday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your inbox. European Union leaders have converged on Brussels today for their quarterly European Council summit. Featuring prominently on the agenda are Europe’s soaring energy prices (more on that below) and a resurgent migration crisis. But the issue that is certain to dominate conversations in Brussels, despite the best efforts of European Council President Charles […]

North Korea has announced that it successfully tested a new, smaller submarine-launched ballistic missile, or SLBM, on Tuesday. State media claimed the missile—launched from the same submarine from which Pyongyang tested its first Pukguksong-1 SLBM in August 2016—has “advanced control guidance technologies, including flank mobility and gliding skip mobility,” designed to make it harder to track and intercept. The name of the submarine used for the launch—the “8.24 Yongung”—also seems noteworthy, as a reflection of the importance Pyongyang puts on this vessel: It means “hero” and apparently signifies the Aug. 24 date of the 2016 SLBM launch. The test is […]

In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Russian officials seemed to delight in pointing to the country’s relatively low COVID-19 death toll and highlighting what they portrayed as a disastrous response by the West. Russia developed the first coronavirus vaccine, and it reopened its economy before many others. Now, however, as global deaths due to COVID-19 reach their lowest levels in a year, the trend is going in the opposite direction in Russia. In fact, the pandemic response has all but gone off the rails, with a record number of deaths, hospitals straining to keep up and, astonishingly, less than one […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. GDP data released Monday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics confirmed that the country’s economic recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic is losing steam. The Chinese economy grew by just 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2021, compared with the same quarter last year. Although some […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—They have become known as the country’s “last guerrillas,” and their insurgency, one of the longest-running in the world, is often called Colombia’s “other war.” This month, The National Liberation Army, widely known by its Spanish initials ELN, vowed to take reprisals after government forces killed one of its top commanders, prompting security alerts and the deployment of Colombian troops to protect potential targets in the country’s major cities. Ogli Angel Padilla Romero, better known by his alias, Fabian, died in a hospital in the western city of Cali after being injured in a military air raid that targeted […]

In July, an obscure but important body called the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology announced the 77th launch of the Long March 2C orbital launch vehicle, a workhorse of China’s ballistic missile and space programs. Then, in late August, a little more than a month later, the academy announced the Long March’s 79th launch. At a minimum, for the specialists who monitor such things, the omission of a 78th launch seemed to portend something odd and potentially momentous. Now, nearly two months later, following a scoop by the Financial Times, the world found out that China has begun testing a […]

In a move that many observers have likened to the opening scene of a techno-thriller or science fiction novel, China reportedly tested an advanced hypersonic missile in August. Technically known as a Gliding Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or G-FOBS, the weapon is said to have missed its target by about two dozen miles, according to the Financial Times. It nonetheless represents a significant advance in China’s capabilities and could negatively affect regional stability by spurring an arms race in the Asia-Pacific.  The purpose of FOBS is to place a large payload—usually a nuclear warhead—into a low-Earth orbit, allowing it to […]

About a year ago, the South Korean pop band BTS got caught up in a low-grade, somewhat baffling international scandal. During a speech accepting an award for improving relations between South Korea and the U.S., the band’s leader Kim Namjoon, better known as RM, referenced the “history of pain shared by the two nations,” which fought together during the Korean War. It should have been a fairly benign statement, but it sparked a furor in China, where state media outlets fiercely condemned the band for failing to acknowledge Chinese casualties in the war and thereby betraying a “totally one-sided attitude […]

Earlier this month, senior U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators held a virtual round of talks to discuss concerns over the state of bilateral commercial ties. The meeting came after U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in public remarks that she would seek “frank conversations” with her Chinese counterpart “that will include discussion over China’s performance under the phase-one agreement,” which was negotiated under former President Donald Trump. The Chinese side said it pressed Tai to cancel the tariffs that were imposed by Trump and which so far remain in effect under President Joe Biden. The dynamic around these talks says a […]

Four years ago, at a Track II dialogue between German and American diplomats and analysts, a German colleague of mine explained his firm belief that his country—and, by extension, Europe as a whole—could use geoeconomic tools to regulate and blunt Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. Europe’s need for natural gas, he said, was balanced by Russia’s need to sell. A European strategy of energy diversification would therefore give the West leverage over Moscow, which would not want to risk its access to European markets by making bold political plays. The plan was for European governments to encourage gas utilities to shift from […]

Editor’s note: This is Emily Taylor’s final weekly column. We’d like to thank her for her engaging and compelling coverage of tech issues over the past seven months, and we’re thrilled that she will continue to be a regular WPR contributor. The world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 10, or Beethoven X, which was completed by artificial intelligence, came and went earlier this month with barely a ripple. At a technical level, the achievement is extraordinary, and the music that resulted from it is not bad. It even sounds a bit Beethovenish. Yet it left this listener rather cold. […]