World Politics Review

Since he took office last month, President Joe Biden has moved quickly to overhaul Donald Trump's immigration policies. Among other measures, the new administration has moved to rebuild the U.S. refugee resettlement program, which had been gutted under Trump; ended the "safe third country" agreements that aimed to force asylum-seekers to first register their claims in other nations before travelin...

Around the world, the coronavirus pandemic has taken an especially high toll on women and girls. From public health to education to jobs and livelihoods, studies have revealed a gender disparity in the impact of COVID-19 that is particularly wide in lower- and middle-income countries. Yet for all the work that's been done, experts say there's still a lot they don't know about how these impacts are...

North Korea's ruling Workers' Party has had a busy start to the year. Earlier this month, the Eighth Party Congress was held in the capital, Pyongyang: Eight days of meetings, including a 9-hour work report read out by leader Kim Jong Un himself . Just a couple days after those sessions wrapped up, Kim oversaw a celebratory military parade, the second one since October, featuring a new missile des...

The storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., by pro-Trump insurrectionists earlier this month was both shocking and utterly unsurprising. After all, for anyone paying attention to the rioters' social media posts in the days and weeks leading up to the event, they made their intentions clear. A subset of the participants appeared to have technical training, and had laid meticulous plans well in...

Flights between Saudi Arabia and Qatar are resuming this week and the land border has reopened between the two countries—signs of a thaw in relations after three and half years of acrimony . Last week, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt agreed to end a travel and trade blockade they had imposed on Qatar in 2017. Those four countries, calling themselves the "anti-terror quart...

If the European Union were a country, it would have the second-largest GDP in the world, ahead of China and just behind the United States. But it has consistently struggled to leverage its economic heft into geopolitical clout, at times due to internal divisions among member states over strategic priorities, but also because of their reluctance to relinquish control over sensitive questions of for...

Nigeria's ongoing battle with the violent extremist group Boko Haram took a worrying turn last month, when more than 300 young schoolboys were abducted from their boarding school in Katsina state, in northwestern Nigeria. Thankfully, the students were freed and reunited with their families a week later . But the attack carried chilling echoes of another mass abduction from 2014, when 276 female st...

The U.S. military has played a prominent role in Donald Trump's presidency, at times serving as a prop to flatter his ego, at others as a tool for political gain, but also often as a punching bag to deflect blame. In the early days of his administration, Trump filled his Cabinet and White House staff with retired generals, only to successively fire them or watch them resign over policy differences...

Earlier this month, Timnit Gebru, the co-leader of a team of researchers at Google specializing in the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, was unceremoniously ousted from her position. Some of the circumstances that led to her departure are disputed, but Gebru—a Black woman in a field that is overwhelmingly white and male—claims she was forced out for drawing unwelcome attention to th...

In addition to its human toll, the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked economic havoc around the world. Entire economies ground to a virtual standstill as governments implemented strict lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus. The impact on individual countries has only been exacerbated by the disruptions to global trade caused by the pandemic, and uncertainty still surrounds the shape of the ec...

During his four years in office, President Donald Trump has worked methodically to tear up just about any foreign policy initiative or multilateral treaty that had Barack Obama's fingerprints on it, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to the policy of so-called "Strategic Patience" with North Korea. While President-elect Joe Biden is understandably promising a completely differe...

In contrast with Donald Trump's single-minded focus on immigration, President-elect Joe Biden has promised a return to a more conventional, multidimensional approach to the United States' relations with Mexico. But if President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's reluctance to congratulate Biden on his victory is any indication , a return to normalcy may not be what Mexico wants.   This week on Trend Li...

The usually warm relationship between the United States and Jordan has come under strain during President Donald Trump's time in office. Jordanian leaders have criticized many of Trump's policies in the region, especially his support for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his one-sided proposal for a peace deal between Israel and...

The U.S. military has played a prominent role in Donald Trump's presidency, at times serving as a prop to flatter his ego, at others as a tool for political gain, but also often as a punching bag to deflect blame. In the early days of his administration, Trump filled his Cabinet and White House staff with retired generals, only to successively fire them or watch them resign over policy differences...

In late September, the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly heated up. The six weeks of full-scale war that followed left thousands dead and tens of thousands more displaced. Unlike previous rounds of fighting that resulted in little exchange of territory, however, Azerbaijan's well-armed and well-prepared military was able to make sub...

Many aspects of our response to the coronavirus pandemic have relied on digital technology. Schools and workplaces are moving online, holding classes and meetings using virtual tools. Public health experts are using data analytics and contact tracing apps to slow the contagion. And in some cases, authoritarian governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to impose sweeping restrictions on their...

For nearly five months, Thailand has been in the throes of a historic pro-democracy uprising. Demonstrators have braved water cannons and arbitrary arrests to challenge the current government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of a 2014 coup who then headed the military junta that ruled Thailand until last year. The protest movement has also broken a longstanding taboo by demanding re...

Over the past four years, American politics have been consumed and subsumed by one man: Donald Trump. Since his election in 2016, Trump's disregard for convention has upended the norms of the U.S. presidency and undermined the separation of powers on which America's constitutional system depends. His iconoclastic approach to foreign policy has further frayed the global order the U.S. has historica...

This year's election season in the U.S. has been unusual in many ways, unfolding against the backdrop of a raging global pandemic, a historic economic recession and an incumbent president who is willing to discard America's democratic norms. But there is one thing that has become predictable about recent U.S. elections, and sadly, other polls around the world: the torrent of misinformation that in...

Despite President Vladimir Putin's efforts to project the image that Russia is a productive and internationally engaged great power, recent developments on the country's periphery suggest, if anything, a decline in the Kremlin's influence . In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko is clinging to power despite the regular chants from thousands of protesters demanding he resign. Intense fighting h...

Over the past two decades, perhaps no region of the world has seen such a dramatic reversal of fortune as South America. Beginning in 1999, a political shift to the left combined with an economic boom allowed governments across the continent to make dramatic inroads in the fight against poverty. The region's transformation was held up as a model of what governments can achieve when they make addre...

Late last month, President Donald Trump told Congress that his administration plans to further slash the ceiling for refugee admissions during the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, to 15,000 from an already historically low 18,000. The new limit is less than one-seventh the 110,000 slots that former President Barack Obama approved in 2016. As The New York Times put it , Trump has "virtually sealed...

Strategic autonomy has long been a recurring refrain for advocates of a more forceful European Union on the global stage. Upon taking office in December 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that hers would be a "geopolitical commission." The sense of urgency has only grown since then. Ongoing tensions with Russia over its role in Eastern Europe and new ones with Turke...

With every major religion in the world represented, and political systems that range from relatively open democracies to authoritarian one-party states, Southeast Asia is one of the most spectacularly diverse regions in the world. It stretches from the highlands of northern Myanmar to the beaches of southern Thailand and the Philippines, and includes low-income economies like Laos and Cambodia, as...

The U.K. this week recorded its highest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases so far, and its biggest one-day death toll since July. Today on Trend Lines, The Atlantic's Tom McTague joins WPR's Elliot Waldman to discuss the structural failures that undermined Britain's COVID-19 response. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you've read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsl...