Diplomacy
Sudan Removed a Dictator. It Never Really Removed the System That Kept Him in Power.
Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan for thirty years, was removed from power after months of mass demonstrations. Images from Khartoum seemed to capture one of those rare moments when political history visibly changes direction:…
Poland Doesn’t Want to Leave the EU. It Wants to Decide Which EU Rules Apply.
Britain spent years arguing about whether membership of the European Union had taken too much sovereignty away from Parliament. Eventually, British voters chose to leave. Poland is now creating a different and potentially more difficult…
America Says Alliances Are Back. France Just Recalled Its Ambassador.
After four years in which Donald Trump repeatedly criticised NATO allies, questioned multilateral institutions and approached international relationships in unusually transactional terms, Biden has tried to present himself as almost the opposite. America would consult…
The Last American Soldier Has Left Afghanistan. So What Did Twenty Years Achieve?
There was no peace treaty. There was no victory parade. The government America spent twenty years supporting had already disappeared, the Taliban controlled Kabul, and the final days of the evacuation had been marked by…
The Taliban Won the War. Now It Has to Govern.
Afghanistan’s government disappeared with astonishing speed. President Ashraf Ghani fled. The Taliban occupied the presidential palace. Twenty years of American-backed government effectively ended. This week, the images have changed. The battlefield has been replaced by…
Kabul Has Fallen. Twenty Years of War Ended in a Week.
There will undoubtedly be an argument that America gave Afghanistan twenty years, enormous amounts of money and a military, and Afghans simply failed to use them. That explanation absolves the foreign power almost perfectly. It…
Five Provincial Capitals in Three Days. Afghanistan Is Starting to Look Very Different.
Last Sunday, I wrote that the Taliban was beginning to test whether Afghanistan’s government could defend major cities without large numbers of foreign troops. Seven days later, that test is already producing answers. And they…
America Is Leaving Afghanistan. The Taliban Isn’t Waiting.
In April, when President Biden announced that American troops would leave Afghanistan, I wrote that there would probably never be a perfect moment to withdraw. I still think that. But four months later, watching what…
Ethiopia Declared Victory. Seven Months Later, It Lost Mekelle.
For months, forces aligned with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had continued fighting the Ethiopian military and its allies despite the federal government’s capture of Mekelle last November. Recently, those Tigrayan forces launched a major…
Holding an Election Does Not Necessarily Make a Democracy
Abiy was not originally elected prime minister in a national election. He came to power in 2018 after years of anti-government protests forced a political transition within Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. He promised reform, released political…
You Don’t Have to Trust Someone to Talk to Them
After several hours, the two presidents emerged separately, held separate press conferences and acknowledged that they continued to disagree about almost everything that brought them there in the first place. Strangely, I think that may…
Can Governments Finally Catch Up With Global Companies?
But the agreement reached by the G7 this weekend could eventually change how some of the world’s largest companies are taxed and, more importantly, says something fascinating about a problem governments have created for themselves.
