F. Gregory Gause III | May/June 2018 Issue | Foreign Affairs It is not often that a Ritz-Carlton becomes a detention facility. But last November, when a large slice of the Saudi elite was arrested on accusations of corruption, the luxury hotel in Riyadh became a gilded prison for hundreds of princes, billionaires, and high-ranking government officials. Behind this … [Read more...]
The Next Arab Uprising: The Collapse of Authoritarianism in the Middle East
Marwan Muasher | November/December 2018 Issue | Foreign Affairs Two perfect storms have struck the Arab world in the past decade. In 2011, in what was at first optimistically called “the Arab Spring,” popular uprisings unseated autocrats across the region. Hopes ran high that these peaceful protest movements would usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. But … [Read more...]
Venezuela’s Suicide: Lessons From a Failed State
Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro | November/December 2018 Issue | Foreign Affairs Consider two Latin American countries. The first is one of the region’s oldest and strongest democracies. It boasts a stronger social safety net than any of its neighbors and is making progress on its promise to deliver free health care and higher education to all its citizens. It is a model … [Read more...]
IPCC says limiting global warming to 1.5 °C will require drastic action
Jeff Tollefson | 08 October 2018 | Nature Humanity has a limited window in which it can hope to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to climate report. Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels would be a herculean task, involving rapid, dramatic changes in how governments, industries and societies function, according to the … [Read more...]
Showdown: SA takes on the US for cheaper drugs
Laura Lopez Gonzalez | 28 Sep 2018 | Mail & Guardian When the US went to bat for Big Pharma in the fight against this killer disease, South Africa wasn’t having any of it. Here’s what happened next. Graveyard cough, white plague, consumption. A killer by any name, TB has stalked the human race for aeons, lurking in crowded tenements or following miners deep … [Read more...]
Beyond the Red Sea: A new driving force in the politics of the Horn
Alex DeWaal | July 11, 2018 | World Peace Foundation This essay was published by African Arguments on July 11, 2018, and is the first part of The Thin Red Line, an African Arguments series focusing on dynamics around the Red Sea. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 transformed the Red Sea. Overnight, it turned from being a mere strip of water into a vital artery in … [Read more...]
Can Ethiopia’s Reforms Succeed?
Michael Woldemariam | September 10, 2018 | Foreign Affairs What Abiy's Plans Mean for the Country and the Region Ethiopia is on the move. The resignation of beleaguered Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in February ushered in the most significant reordering of political power in the country since 1991, when youthful guerrillas toppled the long-serving Marxist strongman … [Read more...]
Chinese Aid and Investment Are Good for Africa
J. Peter Pham, Abdoul Salam Bello, Boubacar-Sid Barry | August 31, 2018 | Foreign Policy Increased interest in the continent’s real estate and resources will enhance the bargaining power of governments there—but they need to bargain for the right things. Next week, [read this week] presidents and ministers from across Africa will make their way to Beijing for the seventh … [Read more...]
The Rise of the Cyber-Mercenaries: What happens when private firms have cyberweapons as powerful as those owned by governments?
Neri Zilber Illustration by Oliver Munday | August 31, 2018 | Foreign Policy The first text message showed up on Ahmed Mansoor’s phone at 9:38 on a sweltering August morning in 2016. “New secrets about torture of Emiratis in state prisons,” it read, somewhat cryptically, in Arabic. A hyperlink followed the words. Something about the number and the message, and a similar one … [Read more...]
When China Rules the Web
Adam Segal | September/October 2018 Issue | Foreign Affairs Technology in Service of the State For almost five decades, the United States has guided the growth of the Internet. From its origins as a small Pentagon program to its status as a global platform that connects more than half of the world’s population and tens of billions of devices, the Internet has long been … [Read more...]