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Russia’s April military build-up betrays its designs on European partners in Ukraine, and demonstrates a determination to continue its asymmetric assault on Ukraine and Eastern Europe at large. The time is now or never for European policymakers to decide how to respond to Russia’s continued expansionism.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the ineffectiveness of traditional multilateralism in addressing transnational challenges — where multilateral strategies fail, however, minilateralist policies may succeed.
Russia’s latest round of youth-driven protests are as much about the Russian economy as they are about Navalny and political freedoms. Putin’s social contract with the Russian public is fraying.
The success of 21st-century American statecraft will be defined by its ability to meet transnational challenges with a sustainable playbook that breaches the gap between domestic governance and foreign policy.
The resulting victory of Andrzej Duda is a harbinger for greater discord between Warsaw and Brussels, as the policy positions of the Law and Order Party under whose name he ran are likely to run afoul of Poland’s commitments to the respect for the rule of law, tolerance, and non-discrimination as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union.
On the 9th of February 2020, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, invaded the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly, backed up by armed military and police. “Now, I think it is very clear who has control of the situation," Bukele declared before praying. But he was not referring to God and it was not the introduction to the prayer. Behind the apparent act of faith lies a very real threat to those that would oppose his rule.
As political leaders around the world address the COVID-19 crisis, many have seen their approval ratings increase, in some cases dramatically so. What is at the root of this shift in popular support, how long will it last, and what might it mean for the upcoming U.S. presidential election?
In the last decade, we witnessed many stable Western democracies degenerate into populist rancor and anti-establishment upheaval. Yet, it is the capacity of the people to learn and adapt that has always proven Democracy’s ace. Perhaps now more than ever, Democracy needs a course-correct.
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 left Spain scrambling to reassemble a broken economy and combat soaring unemployment. European austerity measures and Catalonian dreams of independence have since occupied all of Madrid’s bandwidth and effectively back-seated Spanish foreign policy for over a decade. With the rise of Pedro Sánchez and the wounds of the financial crisis healing, Madrid has turned its attention back to Brussels, and is ready to assume the role of a leading power in Europe.
For the last two centuries, the United States’ has developed and adapted to the demands upon it economically and geopolitically. Yet the American system of governance consistently fails to address both age-old and emerging domestic policy concerns such as job replacement from automation & free trade, political redistricting, and congressional paralysis. Rather than the fault of any one President or party, this is the result of systemic failures in the American style of Democracy.
