Category: Analysis

Tunisia: populism and cronyism risk ‘slide toward authoritarian tendencies’

     

Tunisia’s hopeful transition to a democratic future faces a new challenge. Voters in the country have delivered a sharp rebuke to their political elite. In the first round of presidential… Read more »

Why the world needs the West: Democratic resilience & renewal

     

The main error of liberal internationalism is that its advocates have mistaken an aspiration for reality, and by so doing have gotten a basic chunk of causality exactly backwards, argues… Read more »

A strategy for democracies in a geopolitically competitive world

     

Russia and China increasingly are working to bring multilateral architectures into closer alignment with their own authoritarian norms, notes foreign policy analyst Will Moreland. Such a transformation is not in the interests… Read more »

A ‘confrontation of monumental proportions is coming’ in Hong Kong

     

The Sharp Sword stealth drones and the intercontinental ballistic missiles and the truck-borne monuments to the Communist struggle are ready. Flowers have been planted and red lanterns hung along all… Read more »

Political persecution & divided opposition gives Maduro the upper hand — as Venezuela’s people starve

     

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime has hunkered down, betting that it can outlast its domestic and foreign opponents. For the moment, at least, it seems to have the upper hand…. Read more »

Kremlin exporting ‘political technologists’: West confronts Russian (dis)information machine

     

Russians deserve to live in a free democracy and the the world must come to their defense, according to an open letter signed by prominent democracy advocates.* The violations of… Read more »

Resilient authoritarians: Are dictatorships better than democracies…..

     

…….at fighting climate change? Asian environmentalists as well as self-serving autocrats make the argument that a crisis as severe (if man-made) as rising temperatures can be mitigated only by the… Read more »

Women’s rights activist seeks ‘civil supremacy’ in Pakistan

     

A Pakistani human rights activist who spoke out against the army has fled the country after months in hiding. Gulalai Ismail (above, far right) is now in the US, having eluded… Read more »