World Politics Review

World Politics Review In-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs. interests. We are likewise unbeholden to any partisan affiliation or party allegiance.

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World Politics Review publishes in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs to help our readers identify and make sense of the events and trends shaping our world. Guided by a commitment to integrity, quality and intellectual honesty, we serve as a forum for creative ideas about how to tackle the world’s most important challenges. OUR APPROACH
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Geopolitical tensions between Brazil and the U.S. have surged in recent weeks across a range of different issues. Amid h...
07/28/2025

Geopolitical tensions between Brazil and the U.S. have surged in recent weeks across a range of different issues. Amid his efforts to rewrite the rules of U.S. trade policy, President Donald Trump threatened 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods beginning on Aug. 1. But while the move is partially driven by Trump’s desire to negotiate new tariff rates on many countries as part of his global trade war, it is also driven by political reasons that are specific to Brazil.

Personalities play a role as well. Both Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are old and stubborn men who dislike ever giving the appearance of losing or backing down. They also don’t like or trust each other. However, the fight goes beyond personalities and the specifics of Trump versus Lula. As columnist James Bosworth writes, it’s part of a longstanding and longer-term contest for regional influence between the U.S. and Brazil.

Trump and Lula’s spat is just the latest in a long battle for regional influence between the U.S. and Brazil. The next battleground may be over the U.S. dollar.

In late June, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hosted Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National A...
07/28/2025

In late June, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hosted Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National Army, and Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto president and head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, in the coastal city of el-Alamein. The meeting was an attempt to mediate the growing tensions between the two men, both of whom Cairo has long provided with material and political support.

The carefully stage-managed photographs released by the Egyptian presidency afterward were intended to portray an image of Egyptian leadership, with Sisi as the indispensable arbiter of regional stability. The reality, however, was a frantic attempt at damage control, as behind closed doors, the meeting was a disaster.

As a result, far from brokering peace between two of Cairo’s major clients, the tense summit laid bare the growing precariousness of Sisi’s regional policy. The very alliances he cultivated to secure Egypt’s periphery are now fueling instability on its borders, entangling him in a web of contradictory commitments, Elfadil Ibrahim writes.

Shifting political loyalties in Libya are combining with Sudan’s civil war to unravel the networks underpinning Egypt’s regional influence.

The EU chose to take some economic hits in order to avert what could have quickly escalated into a tit-for-tat trade war...
07/28/2025

The EU chose to take some economic hits in order to avert what could have quickly escalated into a tit-for-tat trade war. That may not work out as hoped.

Read more in today’s Daily Review:

The EU chose to take some economic hits in order to avert what could have quickly escalated into a tit-for-tat trade war. That may not work out as hoped.

Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday that France will recognize the state of Palestine, a symbolically important gesture ...
07/25/2025

Emmanuel Macron announced yesterday that France will recognize the state of Palestine, a symbolically important gesture at a time when Israel is under increasing pressure for its starvation of Gaza.

Read more in today’s Daily Review:

France will recognize the state of Palestine, a symbolically important gesture at a time when Israel is under increasing pressure for its starvation of Gaza.

What started with the robbery of a green-grocer in southern Syria on July 13 quickly escalated into large-scale clashes ...
07/24/2025

What started with the robbery of a green-grocer in southern Syria on July 13 quickly escalated into large-scale clashes involving two ethnic armed groups and two state militaries that left hundreds dead. The still-smoldering violence underscores just how fragile Syria remains more than seven months after rebel forces overthrew the Assad dictatorship that had subjugated the country for more than half a century.

Last week’s clashes between Syrian Druze and Sunni Bedouins, which drew in Syrian government forces and Israel’s military, were not the first instance of intercommunal clashes in post-Assad Syria. But they served as an urgent reminder that the country could still unravel. And even if Syria doesn’t split up or spiral into a renewed civil war, its vulnerabilities make it a tempting target for outsiders, a magnet for proxy wars in a Middle East that is in the midst of a major realignment, columnist Frida Ghitis writes.

Recent violence between Druze and Bedouins is a reminder of how elusive the goal of a cohesive Syria remains, and how easily it could slip out of reach.

In brokering the recently signed peace treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the administration of...
07/24/2025

In brokering the recently signed peace treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump promised to once and for all bring peace to a region consumed by more than three decades of some of history’s bloodiest wars and violence. Building on this momentum, Trump’s envoy participated in parallel talks mediated by Qatar between Congo and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebellion, which culminated in the signing of a preliminary agreement for a permanent ceasefire in eastern Congo.

While Trump has all but proclaimed a historic peace, the war has raged on, deepening a humanitarian catastrophe worsened by the impact of U.S. funding cuts to international aid. These contradictions have fueled skepticism among observers about whether these diplomatic breakthroughs will deliver on the ambitious promises made to the people of the region, Mohamed Keita writes.

The U.S.-brokered deal represents a diplomatic breakthrough. But observers are skeptical it will deliver on its ambitious promises.

Forces from Thailand and Cambodia clashed in several areas along their shared border today, following nearly two months ...
07/24/2025

Forces from Thailand and Cambodia clashed in several areas along their shared border today, following nearly two months of escalating tensions.

Read more in today’s Daily Review:

Forces from Thailand and Cambodia clashed in several areas along their shared border today, following nearly two months of escalating tensions.

Anyone who works on the U.N. or multilateral affairs more generally deserves a very long summer vacation this year. The ...
07/16/2025

Anyone who works on the U.N. or multilateral affairs more generally deserves a very long summer vacation this year. The past six months have wreaked havoc on the U.N. system, as the Trump administration has created enormous financial and political disruption. Many international officials will be heading to the beach unsure of whether they will have jobs by the end of the year due to U.S. funding cuts.

Under the circumstances, most multilateralists are likely to pack some light, escapist novels to while away their breaks. But for those who want to situate their current plight in its historical context, or draw lessons from past periods of diplomatic disruption, Richard Gowan runs down some useful reads for the summer:

This year’s summer reading list is for multilateralists who want to learn from past periods of diplomatic disruption.

The European Union has long prided itself on being the most progressive region in the world in terms of economic equalit...
07/16/2025

The European Union has long prided itself on being the most progressive region in the world in terms of economic equality. To back up this claim, European politicians routinely point to the role the EU has played in significantly reducing the wealth divide between richer and poorer member states over the past two decades. A more holistic examination of recent data, however, reveals a far less rosy reality.

Higher levels of growth have indeed helped less economically developed Eastern and Central European countries reduce the wealth gap with their richer Western neighbors. But trends among individual member states tell a very different story, John Boyce writes, with important economic and political implications.

Fueled by rentier capitalism, the EU is facing a rapidly growing wealth divide. Familiar remedies are unlikely to solve the problem.

Lingering disputes had already created a dilemma for the EU over how to handle trade with China. Trump’s return has only...
07/16/2025

Lingering disputes had already created a dilemma for the EU over how to handle trade with China. Trump’s return has only made it more complicated.

Read more in today’s Daily Review:

Lingering disputes had already created a dilemma for the EU over how to handle trade with China. Trump’s return has only made it more complicated.

Although the Iran-Israel war has come to a pause for now, regional tensions remain in its wake. A key nation at risk is ...
07/15/2025

Although the Iran-Israel war has come to a pause for now, regional tensions remain in its wake. A key nation at risk is Yemen, which faces the danger of quietly slipping back into violent chaos or hardening into de facto fragmentation.

Global attention paid to Yemen had waned since April 2022, when a United Nations-brokered ceasefire turned its brutal civil war into a frozen conflict of neither war nor peace. While the ceasefire between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognized government has held for now, the appearance of calm hides the fact that Yemen’s statehood is increasingly fractured across political, economic and geographic lines.

As Jonathan Fenton-Harvey writes, the country now risks sliding back into conflict or hardening into permanent fragmentation.

A ceasefire brokered in 2022 is still holding, but Yemen increasingly risks sliding back into conflict or hardening into permanent fragmentation.

Thirty years ago last week, Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the U.N.-sponsored “safe area” of Srebr...
07/15/2025

Thirty years ago last week, Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the U.N.-sponsored “safe area” of Srebrenica, a Bosniak Muslim village in the former Yugoslavia. Mladic’s forces loaded the women and smaller children onto buses for deportation and rounded up the men and older boys for ex*****on. In an act that would later be recognized as a genocide, nearly 8,000 male civilians were then killed over the course of several days, marking the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

The horrific events of 30 years ago were commemorated in gatherings across Bosnia-Herzegovina last week, in an effort to keep alive the many lessons of the Bosnian War: the perils of murderous ethno-nationalism, the failures of non-intervention and the lasting social implications of the massacre, both for survivors and society at large.

Looking at the rest of the global headlines these days, one may understandably wonder whether the world has learned anything from the memory of Srebrenica. But as columnist Charli Carpenter writes, the truth is that the international community has learned many lessons from the atrocities committed 30 years ago in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The international community learned from the atrocities committed 30 years ago in Bosnia’s civil war, even if it hasn’t always applied those lessons.

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