Commonwealth Meeting in Rwanda Has a Long Agenda. Human Rights Isn’t on It.

A sum­mit of the orga­ni­za­tion that was born out of the embers of the British Empire is being held for the first time in the African coun­try, but dis­cus­sion of the host’s alleged abus­es is con­spic­u­ous­ly miss­ing. KIGALI, Rwan­da — Pres­i­dents, princes and prime min­is­ters from across the world gath­ered on Fri­day in Kigali, the…

U.S. Restraint Has Created an Unstable and Dangerous World

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion failed to deter Rus­sia from its sec­ond inva­sion of Ukraine. Like his pre­de­ces­sors in the White House, U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden went to great lengths to pla­cate and reas­sure Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in return for sta­ble rela­tions. Biden defied Con­gress when he refused to sanc­tion the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, unilaterally…

Biden’s Defense Chief Puts Alliances at Center Stage of U.S. Defense

Wel­come back to For­eign Pol­i­cy’s SitRep! Jack and Rob­bie here, chuck­ling at Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelenksy’s vis­i­ble dis­com­fort with French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron’s PDA dur­ing his vis­it to Kyiv, Ukraine’s cap­i­tal, today. Alright, back to work. Here’s what’s on tap for the day: U.S. Defense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin tries to walk and chew gum between deterring…

But CAN the United States defend Taiwan?

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has yet again stat­ed that if Chi­na attacked Tai­wan to reuni­fy what Bei­jing sees as a rene­gade province with the main­land, the Unit­ed States would come to Taiwan’s mil­i­tary defense. White House staff has again fol­lowed up these off-the-cuff pres­i­den­tial com­ments with a “clar­i­fi­ca­tion” that in fact, strate­gic ambi­gu­i­ty remains Amer­i­can pol­i­cy. Somewhat…

How Russia’s Wagner Group Is Expanding in Africa

Best known for its mer­ce­nar­ies, the Wag­n­er Group also mines dia­monds, spreads dis­in­for­ma­tion and props up auto­crats in an effort to grow Russia’s foot­print. Mer­ce­nar­ies are enjoy­ing a resur­gence in Africa, hired to fight in some of the continent’s most intractable con­flicts. Per­haps the most famous out­fit is the Wag­n­er Group, a neb­u­lous net­work that…

In Mali, a Massacre With a Russian Footprint

BAMAKO, Mali — On the last Sun­day in March before Ramadan, thou­sands of mer­chants and vil­lagers filled the mar­ket of Moura, in cen­tral Mali, trad­ing cat­tle in a vast pen and stock­ing up on spices and veg­eta­bles in the town’s sandy alleys. Sud­den­ly, five low-fly­­ing heli­copters thrummed over­head, some fir­ing weapons and draw­ing gun­fire in…

The Turkish gambit and the future of NATO

Ville Kor­pela is exec­u­tive direc­tor at the Impact Inno­va­tion Insti­tute. Diana Mjeshtri is a pol­i­cy ana­lyst at Impact Inno­va­tion Insti­tute. Both are mem­bers of the Coun­cilors Pro­gram at the Atlantic Coun­cil. We cur­rent­ly live in a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent and much more dan­ger­ous world than we did pri­or to Feb­ru­ary 24. Ever since the begin­ning of Russian…