For example, an estimated 80% of all Russian banking assets came under U.S. sanctions. Although these sanctions have been effective in restricting Russia's access to Western markets and dealing substantial blows to its economy, Russia has still found ways to use former Soviet nations to circumvent them.
Read MoreThe easiest way to dismantle a constitutional settlement is to say you support it. Since taking office in February, Bangladesh's BNP has done exactly that with the July National Charter, praising its mandate while systematically declining to be bound by it. Voters endorsed the Charter in a referendum on the same day they gave the BNP a two-thirds majority, and the party has since used the second mandate to hollow out the first. The result is less a story of broken promises than of a government discovering which ones it can afford to keep.
Read MoreHe warned that "There is currently no possibility for a safe, dignified and sustainable return of Haitians who are abroad" and that "their country is much more dangerous than the one they fled".
The government cannot tell Americans that Haiti is too dangerous to visit and tell Haitians that it is safe enough to live in. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the U.S. positions itself as a defender of vulnerable people and endorses the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect. Meanwhile, the government sends people back to a country DHS itself calls too dangerous to visit.
Read MoreThe European Union is moving to expand its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) beyond the basic carbon-intensive materials initially covered by the policy. On September 15, the European Parliament adopted a new position on proposed changes that would expand CBAM’s scope to a wider range of downstream steel and aluminum products as a means of preventing companies from circumventing the mechanism.
Read MoreThe Vietnam War is remembered as one of the Cold War's most defining conflicts. Yet its devastating impact on neighboring Laos is often overlooked. More than 50 years later, unexploded bombs from the war continue to threaten Lao communities and hinder development. How did a formally neutral country become a central battlefield in a war it never joined?
Read MoreAs U.S. trade policy and political alliances become central to Brazil’s presidential race, the election raises a broader question: how can Brazil protect its sovereignty while navigating an increasingly turbulent relationship with Washington?
Read MoreThis competition among international organizations reveals as much about the multilateral system as it does about Libya: when mandates overlap, the system defaults to UN primacy rather than coordination, which risks crowding out the regional bodies it relies on for legitimacy, local knowledge, and burden-sharing.
Read MoreUzbekistan is building its first nuclear power plant, in partnership with Russia. The country is expanding its infrastructure and workforce locally while building foreign partnerships, hoping to negotiate better terms for the plant without fully breaking away from Russia.
Read MoreBritain’s downturn in the aftermath of Brexit should serve as a reminder that economic policy is never purely just economic, because when it affects someone’s money, it affects everyone’s.
Read MoreEurope will not tariff its way out of dependence on China. The real problem is production: a continent-sized market still thinks, invests, and manufactures through fragmented national systems.
Read MoreWhile the mechanisms and laws that the Russian government uses to control its citizens have changed, the underlying pattern has not. Some journalists now call Russia’s method of digital surveillance a “cyber gulag,” drawing a parallel between the function once served by the labor camps and online monitoring. Where dissidents once risked exposure by passing along a hard copy of a banned text, expressing a similar sentiment today can be as simple and easily traced as one Telegram post.
Read MoreNew Mongolian Prime Minister Uchral Nyam-Osor is the third to hold the title in two years. The first several months of his term have shown promise; however, he will have to continue an aggressive pursuit of reform in order to prove more successful than his predecessors.
Read MoreThe international community has, predictably, focused on the Franco-Senegalese bilateral drama—the base withdrawals, the contract reviews, the rhetorical volleys between Dakar and Paris. These are worth tracking. But the more consequential story is the quieter one: whether Senegal's internal democratic institutions survive the government whose resilience helped bring it to power.
Read MoreSweden and Finland have both abandoned the principle of neutrality with their bids to join NATO, but the political and economic costs of full membership are far greater for Sweden.
Read MoreEurope's securitized migration policies stem from post-Cold War defense industries' economic strategies, while its border externalization practices, including selling surveillance tech to authoritarian regimes, expose the profit-driven motives behind its migration management, challenging the prevailing "European liberal order" narrative.
Read MoreIn 2017, when the popular fitness app Strava released its Global Heatmap, at first, it seemed like a harmless engagement feature, perhaps a sort of Spotify Wrapped for runners. However, one observant Australian college student was the first to point out there might be more at play. Sure enough, analysts and academics soon confirmed that Strava’s gold mine of data posed an overlooked security risk, carrying implications far more consequential than exposing the most underrated running trail in town.
Read MoreThe 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz buried several Colombian communities beneath deadly volcanic mudflows, killing more than 25,000 people and exposing the catastrophic failures in the country’s disaster preparedness. Nearly 40 years later, what can the tragedy of the eruption and destruction of Armero still teach us about disaster risk management and the consequences of ignoring scientific warnings?
Read MoreNations can be ripened through democratic institutions or still be raw and vulnerable to the negative impacts of an autocratic regime. This article explores the rise and fall of Nicolás Maduro Moros, the collapse of a previously booming petro-state, and the human cost of authoritarianism and its impact on democracy. The article examines the current international and Venezuelan hope for democratic renewal in a country caught between crisis and change.
Read MoreThe Darién Gap has emerged as a popular route for migrants traveling to the United States, with hundreds of thousands women, men and children attempting to make the dangerous journey. With the intention of reducing migration, the U.S. has partnered with Latin American governments to establish policies that halt migration before migrants reach the U.S.-Mexico border. The question remains, are these policies actually reducing migration, or are they simply pushing migrants to take more dangerous paths?
Read MoreFacing increasing threats, Japan and Korea share significant interests. Yet, the two countries rarely cooperate with each other, with tense diplomatic relations at a stalemate. Many scholars have attributed this to the rocky history between Japan and Korea, specifically during the colonial period and World War II. Through the examination of Japanese nationalism focused on identity and collective memory, this paper argues that the failures to resolve the historical problems as a result of the humiliation to the Japanese identity impedes East Asian state cooperation, which eventually leads to perpetual reliance on the United States and attempts at rearming.
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