World Politics Review

05/29/2026

The Strait of Hormuz has dominated headlines as an energy chokepoint, but the current disruption to maritime traffic through the strait is producing consequences that extend far beyond the price of crude oil.

Roughly one-third of the world’s fertilizer supply passes through the strait, and the U.N.’s food agency has warned of dire consequences to global food security from the disruption. The worst, analysts warn, may still be ahead.

In his latest analysis for World Politics Review, Luca Mattei writes that the countries most exposed to the Strait of Hormuz shock may not be those facing immediate shortages today, but those where delayed fertilizer arrivals erode agricultural yield potential over the coming months.

Read more at the link in bio.

05/29/2026

The Strait of Hormuz has long been treated primarily as an energy chokepoint, but the most consequential effects of the current disruption have been felt far beyond the price of crude oil.

Roughly one-third of the world’s fertilizer supply passes through the strait, and even if a deal to reopen the strait is reached soon, the system will take months to normalize. The most significant food security effects may not appear in today’s commodity prices, but in harvest outcomes of the next agricultural cycle.

In his latest analysis for World Politics Review, Luca Mattei argues that the Hormuz disruption should be understood as a transmission event with delayed geopolitical consequences—and that the worst impacts are yet to come.

Read Luca’s analysis here:

Disruptions to global fertilizer supply due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are rippling through commodity markets, with the worst impacts yet to come.

05/29/2026

Last week, Secretary of State Rubio acknowledged that Washington has backed away from mediating peace talks in Ukraine, marking the quiet end of a diplomatic initiative that was once a priority for Trump.

In his latest column for WPR, Paul Poast writes that there is a lesson that can be drawn from the year-long saga of U.S. efforts to broker a peace deal in Ukraine: the dangers of working with amateurs.

At every level, he writes, the Trump administration is filled with people who are simply in over their heads. The consequences would be comical if they were not so tragic.

Read more in Paul’s column here:

Making bad decisions is not the exclusive domain of amateurs. But the Trump team’s buffoonery would be comical if the consequences were not so tragic.

05/29/2026

A year ago, India and Pakistan fought a four-day war, the first large-scale air war between nuclear-armed rivals. The conflict began with Indian strikes on jihadist infrastructure inside Pakistan and escalated to exchanges of ballistic missiles and major strikes on Pakistani airbases.

The anniversary offers a sobering ledger. Militarily, India demonstrated the ability to achieve air superiority despite Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence. Strategically, however, the war did nothing to change Pakistan’s calculus on providing sanctuary to anti-India jihadist groups.

Since the conflict, both sides have restructured their militaries in ways that compress decision-making and reduce the space for restraint. India is building the capacity to strike faster and deeper, while Pakistan is concentrating nuclear and military decision-making in fewer hands.

In his latest analysis for WPR, Siddhant Kishore assesses how both sides have adapted in the year since the conflict.

05/28/2026

Colombians go to the polls on May 31 to elect a new president, and the campaign has been defined by a level of political violence that has left the country deeply unsettled.

The violence has thrown into sharp relief the central question of this election: what to do about the armed groups that dominate parts of Colombia. President Petro's “Total Peace” program—a policy of seeking negotiated peace with guerrillas and criminal organizations—has stalled.

Now, voters face a stark choice: continue down the path of negotiation, or back a hardline challenger who has promised to declare “all-out war, without truce or negotiation, against narcoterrorism.”

Reporting from Cali, Oliver Lawson examines what is at stake in Colombia’s presidential election for World Politics Review.

05/28/2026

How is it possible that the U.S. and Israel, but especially the U.S., went to war against Iran without a clear plan for preventing something Tehran had over many years clearly telegraphed it would do?

In her weekly column for WPR, Frida Ghitis examines the foundational error of the war:

The U.S. went to war against Iran without a clear plan for preventing something Tehran had over many years clearly telegraphed it would do.

05/28/2026

One year after India and Pakistan fought a four-day war, the risk of renewed conflict between the two neighbors remains high. Operation Sindoor demonstrated India’s ability to achieve air superiority despite Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence, but did nothing to change Pakistan’s calculus on providing sanctuary to anti-India jihadist groups.

In his latest analysis for World Politics Review, Siddhant Kishore examines how both sides have restructured militarily since the conflict—and why those changes are making the next crisis more dangerous.

Read Siddhant’s analysis here:

One year after India and Pakistan fought a four-day war, the risk of renewed conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors remains high.

05/28/2026

Colombians go to the polls on May 31 to elect a new president, and the campaign has been defined by a level of political violence that has left the country deeply unsettled.

The violence has thrown into sharp relief the central question of this election: what to do about the armed groups that dominate parts of Colombia.

President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” program—a policy of seeking negotiated peace with guerrillas and criminal organizations—has stalled. Now, voters face a stark choice: continue down the path of negotiation, or back a hardline challenger who has promised to declare “all-out war, without truce or negotiation, against narcoterrorism.”

Oliver Lawson reports from Cali in a new analysis for World Politics Review:

Colombians will go to the polls on May 31 to elect a new president in a contest defined by rampant political violence and a spree of bombing attacks.

05/27/2026

Until last week, the changes in the Trump administration’s approach to the trans-Atlantic alliance remained mostly rhetorical: impolite speeches, hostile strategy documents, threats that were later walked back.

Now, European NATO members have finally been confronted in concrete terms with what defending the continent will look like without full buy-in from America.

In her latest column for WPR, Ulrike Franke writes that the reported changes represent a fundamental challenge to NATO’s entire model for European defense, and a warning Europe cannot afford to ignore.

Read Ulrike’s column here:

Reported reductions in key U.S. military capabilities mean Europe must be ready to defend the continent alone.

05/26/2026

President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the EU’s approach to managing migration, casting Europe as a cautionary tale of what happens when a region fails to control its borders.

Yet for all that hostility, the Trump administration appears to be adopting one of Europe’s most prominent migration strategies: externalization. That is, stemming the flow of immigration before migrants even reach the border of their destination country.

The resemblance is real, but so are the differences. The EU has spent the past decade building institutionalized offshore arrangements focused primarily on deterrence and the offshoring of asylum processing. The Trump administration has embraced the same outward-looking logic, but applied it more directly to deportation.

During Trump’s second term, 27 agreements have been signed with states willing to receive migrants who are not their own nationals, with plans for an additional 54. The model is improvised, bilateral and transactional—and, like Europe’s, it is already running into legal and operational constraints.

In a new analysis for World Politics Review, Gaia Mastrosanti examines how Trump is borrowing from the European playbook, and where the two models diverge.