Guatemala might be holding general elections on June 25, but it is rapidly losing its claim to be a democracy. A cohort of predatory factions has been jointly coopting independent institutions and pushing opponents into exile or jail since 2019, leading many Guatemalans to view the election as a pointless farce.
Who rules the world? In discussions of international politics, the focus is often on states. With the rise of Big Tech, though, some observers have argued that the future of global power will be a story of corporations, not countries. But claims that corporations will dominate the world and surpass states in power are overblown.
Today at WPR, we’re covering the conflict in Sudan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Latin America.
The current conflict in Sudan between the armed forces and the RSF paramilitary group is a security and humanitarian crisis. But more importantly, it is a political crisis, one that grows out of the failure to build a sustainable democratic transition after the removal of former dictator Omar al-Bashir from power in April 2019.
In the faceoff between liberal democracies and autocracies, the competing camps are enlisting backers across the globe, and Latin America has become an important battleground. Venezuela has emerged as the epicenter of activity for the anti-Western front, as highlighted by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Caracas last week.
Today at WPR, we’re covering why Myanmar’s military junta is losing control of the country and how Austria’s far-right foreshadows populist movements across Europe.
For anyone analyzing Austrian politics during the 1990s, there was no escaping the steady rise of Jorg Haider. The speed with which his vicious targeting of minorities drew support from working-class and lower-middle-class voters upended Austrian politics, presaging an electoral realignment that then unfolded across Europe.
Almost two and a half years since the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta is losing control of much of the country. Having already lost large swathes of territory to ethnic militias and People’s Defense Militias, it now faces threats even in the biggest cities, where it had until recently maintained a degree of brutal control.
Today at WPR, we’ve got stories on how Spain’s upcoming elections could affect its stance on the war in Ukraine, and why it won’t be easy to hold Russia accountable for the recent destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine.
With Spain set to take over the European Union’s rotating presidency on July 1, and snap parliamentary elections scheduled for three weeks later, the country’s position on the war in Ukraine has become more relevant—and more contentious, with both sides of the political spectrum facing internal divisions over the issue.
Ukraine has called for an ICC investigation into the bursting of the Kakhovka dam as an act of “ecocide.” But if the ICC does frame the intentional breaching of the dam as an attack on the natural environment rather than on civilians, the relevant rules of international law would not make such a prosecution a simple matter.
Today at WPR, we’re covering Guatemala’s upcoming presidential election and the lack of accountability for U.N. peacekeepers’ failure to protect civilians in South Sudan.
In Guatemala’s upcoming presidential election, change is not on the ballot. President Alejandro Giammattei cannot run for reelection, and the candidate for his conservative Vamos party won’t win. But while Giammattei’s party might be unable to hold onto power, it has prevented any candidates who threaten the status quo from winning.
In recent years, civilians in South Sudan have been the victims of attacks by both rebels and government forces, and the U.N. mission has a poor record of protecting them from this violence. To change this, the international community needs to hold the mission’s civilian and military leadership accountable for their failures.
Today at WPR, we’ve got stories on Benin’s counterproductive approach to countering violent jihadists and the potential global consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine.
Since 2021, Benin has been battling a violent jihadist insurgency in the north of the country, fueled by a complex mix of political marginalization, religious ideology and intercommunal conflicts. Unfortunately, in doing so, it is repeating the same mistakes made over the past decade by its West African neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso.
What happens in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. That is the essence of an argument commonly made for why the U.S. must support Kyiv in resisting Russian aggression: A failure to stop Russia will give other powers the impression that they can pursue their interests with aggressive impunity. But is that really the case?