In The News

Trump Blames Cohen Hearing for Summit Result: Fox

Edmund DeMarche March 4, 2019
Donald Trump in a tweet blamed the House of Representatives Oversight Committee for failure of the summit with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un. During the daylong hearing, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen who soon heads to prison for lying to Congress described Trump as a con and cheater, detailing manipulations of property values and a pattern of lies. As candidate and president, Trump...

South America and Venezuela: Foreign Affairs

Oliver Stuenkel March 3, 2019
Since the wave of democratization in the 1980s swept the continent, South America has strengthened intraregional connections in an effort to reject foreign intervention, especially from the United States and the West. Brazil led the charge in ensuring that its neighboring countries would not resort to authoritarian governance. For some time, multinational organizations, created to bring about...

Turning to Asia: Al-Ahram

Abdel-Moneim Said February 28, 2019
Populism divides democracies of the West, leading to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and election of Donald Trump. Such trends also hamper relations with the Middle East. An example of such difficulties includes a February conference in Warsaw on Iranian aggression and working around US withdrawal from a nuclear agreement with Iran. “Washington’s poor coordination with friends and allies...

Nigeria's Buhari Wins Reelection: AFP

Emmanuel Akinwotu, Ola Awoniyi and Chris Stein February 27, 2019
After a delayed election, Nigeria reelected Muhammadu Buhari, 76, as president. “The former military ruler was first elected as civilian president of Africa’s most populous nation and leading oil producer in 2015,” reports Agence France-Presse. At that time, he was also the first opposition candidate in Nigeria to defeat an incumbent. “To win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of votes...

Showdown Over Aid for Venezuela: New York Times

Nicholas Casey, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Ernesto Londoño February 23, 2019
Venezuelans have suffered for years from shortages of food and other necessities due to economic mismanagement by the regime led by Nicolás Maduro since 2013. More than 10 percent of the country’s population has already fled, the violence exacerbating a refugee crisis International aid supplies are waiting near the border in Brazil and Colombia. Opposition leader and head of the country’s...

Age of Uneasy Peace: Foreign Affairs

Yan Xuetong February 16, 2019
US Vice President Mike Pence’s 2018 speech at the Hudson Institute, stopping short at inaugurating a new Cold War, bluntly enumerated China’s encroachment on US interests. His words illustrated the Trump administration’s perception of the rising power in the East, one determined to replace the United States in the global order. Yan Xuetong writes in Foreign Affairs that China does not seek an...

Brexit Hell: The Atlantic

Yasmeen Serhan February 14, 2019
Britons cast their fateful votes two and a half years ago, narrowly deciding in favor of withdrawing from the European Union. What followed has been a string of broken promises, failed agreements, no-confidence votes and cabinet resignations. Prime Minister Theresa May has defied tradition by clinging to her position despite no-confidence votes from the opposition and her own party. She keeps the...