Latest Archive

Today at WPR, we’re covering a series of wild new scandals rocking Colombia’s president and China’s charm offensive in Central Asia. In addition, we take a look at U.K. PM Rishi Sunak’s visit to Washington and the impact of Canada’s wildfires.

In his election victory last month, Turkish President Erdogan won an overwhelming majority among Turkish-German diaspora voters. That support, and the reaction to it among German media and political parties, highlights the growing role that Turkish-Germans and Kurdish-Germans have begun to play in German domestic politics.

South Africa’s stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that the country’s crisis of governance is not confined to the domestic scene. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s approach to the war has been afflicted by the same blend of ineffectual leadership and ideological grandstanding that characterizes his domestic performance.

Today at WPR, we’ve got stories on the cost of South Africa’s false neutrality on the war in Ukraine, Erdogan’s support among Turkish-Germans, and the problems with resettlement schemes for refugees and asylum-seekers.

The U.K. is the latest country in the Global North to prioritize resettlement schemes over accepting asylum-seekers who arrive at the border. In many ways, these approaches seem to criminalize vulnerable people. States can and should deal with the rising number of asylum-seekers making risky voyages in a more humane way.

Today at WPR, we’re covering former Pakistani PM Imran Khan’s standoff with the country’s military and a dangerous new development in Haiti’s ongoing crisis.

Ever since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise over two years ago, Haiti has been in the grips of a political and security crisis that has left much of the civilian population at the mercy of brutal, predatory gangs. Now, those gangs are themselves under assault from the latest armed group on the block: Bwa Kale.

For a moment in May, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan looked as if he was the country’s most powerful man. Having seemingly won his standoff with Pakistan’s military, Khan chided the generals, saying their coercion would achieve nothing. But for the generals, coercion achieved quite a bit. Khan’s moment on top was ephemeral.

Today at WPR, we’ve got stories on Lula’s dream of a Latin American currency and Spanish PM Sanchez’s surprise snap election announcement.

At a meeting of South America’s presidents last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for regional financial integration and some sort of mechanism to conduct trade without U.S. dollars. Judging by the number of times in recent months he has suggested something along these lines, it’s a topic on Lula’s mind.

Following his party’s poor performance in regional elections, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for a snap election on July 23. The surprise announcement left analysts debating whether Sanchez had made a clever strategic gamble or opened the door to the far right to enter government as part of a ruling coalition.

Of all the doomsday predictions about our planetary future from the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps none was so wrong as the fear about overpopulation. The reality has proven to be just as alarming, if for the opposite reason: In every region of the world except Africa, population levels have begun to level off due to declining birthrates.

Earlier this week, South Africa issued immunity to all foreign leaders attending the BRICS summit in August. Pretoria insisted it was a routine measure for international gatherings the country hosts. But many observers saw it as a way to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the summit despite an ICC arrest warrant.

This year’s G-7 summit made it clear the group views China and Russia as threats to the international order and offered insights into how the Western powers plan to counter them. It seems the G-7 approach has three facets: ignore Russian intimidation, economically decouple from China and court nations throughout the Global South.

Nearing the end of his first year in office, and facing local elections just around the corner, Colombian President Gustavo Petro can boast of few major political victories. His “Total Peace” plan for a country long wracked by conflict has suffered serious setbacks, and his most ambitious political reforms have been stymied.

Across developed countries, aging populations and slowing economic growth are rendering today’s retirement institutions unsustainable. As a result, working longer as societies age is both natural and necessary, meaning that what future generations may look back on as the “golden age” of retirement is now coming to an end.

Bank failures are back in the news, after three of the United States’ 30 largest banks collapsed in the past three months. These bank failures and the policy responses to date have taught us several important lessons about why such crises keep happening in the U.S. and how policymakers can act to break this self-destructive cycle.