Flights between Saudi Arabia and Qatar are resuming this week and the land border has reopened between the two countries—signs of a thaw in relations after three and half years of acrimony. Last week, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt agreed to end a travel and trade blockade they had imposed on Qatar in 2017. Those four countries, calling themselves the “anti-terror quartet,” had accused Qatar of supporting radical Islamist groups, among other charges. The crisis had divided the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, and the United States had lobbied extensively for an end to the blockade. But according to Sanam Vakil, the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House in London, there remains a lot of work to do for the GCC to rebuild trust and address the disputes that caused relations to break down in the first place. This week on Trend Lines, Vakil joins WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss the lingering divisions and mistrust among Gulf countries Relevant Articles on WPR: Are Saudi Arabia and Its Gulf Neighbors Close to Ending the Qatar Boycott? What Does Disarray in the Gulf Mean for the GCC? Qatar’s Exit From OPEC Could Exacerbate a Rift Among Its Members Turkey Rolls the Dice by Supporting Qatar in Its Feud With Saudi Arabia Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

Trend Lines

What the End of the Qatar Boycott Means for the Gulf

If the European Union were a country, it would have the second-largest GDP in the world, ahead of China and just behind the United States. But it has consistently struggled to leverage its economic heft into geopolitical clout, at times due to internal divisions among member states over strategic priorities, but also because of their reluctance to relinquish control over sensitive questions of foreign and defense policy to Brussels. The debate over whether the EU should embrace a global role, how it can do so and what role it should play if it does has taken on greater urgency in the context of an international landscape increasingly characterized by strategic competition, particularly between the U.S. and China, but also on Europe’s periphery—in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.   In today’s big picture Trend Lines interview, Dr. Nathalie Tocci joins WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein to discuss Europe’s role in an increasingly multipolar world. Dr. Tocci is the director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs and an honorary professor at the University of Tubingen in Germany. She is special adviser to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell. While serving in the same role under Borrell’s predecessor, Federica Mogherini, Dr. Tocci wrote the EU Global Strategy and worked on its implementation. Relevant Articles on WPR: For Macron, Being Right on European Strategic Autonomy Isn’t Enough In a Multipolar World, Will the EU Be Seated at the Table—or Served on It? Europe Wants ‘Strategic Autonomy,’ but That’s Much Easier Said Than Done From Naive to Realist? The EU’s Struggles With China Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

‘To Act Alone When Necessary’: Nathalie Tocci on European Strategic Autonomy

Nigeria’s ongoing battle with the violent extremist group Boko Haram took a worrying turn last month, when more than 300 young schoolboys were abducted from their boarding school in Katsina state, in northwestern Nigeria. Thankfully, the students were freed and reunited with their families a week later. But the attack carried chilling echoes of another mass abduction from 2014, when 276 female students were kidnapped from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok. More than 100 of those girls are still missing. While Boko Haram has taken credit for last month’s raid, experts and Nigerian officials say the true culprits were local “bandits” that have formed alliances with Boko Haram, which appears to be partnering with criminal gangs to expand its reach beyond its traditional base in the country’s northeast. This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman discusses the resurgence of Boko Haram with Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and a nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Follow him on Twitter @bulamabukarti. Relevant Articles on WPR: Another Mass Abduction in Nigeria Raises Fears of a Resurgent Boko Haram ‘Year of the Debacle’: How Nigeria Lost Its Way in the War Against Boko Haram In Partnering With Nigeria’s Abusive Military, the U.S. Is Giving Boko Haram a Lifeline How Counterinsurgency Campaigns Are Fueling Human Rights Abuses in the Sahel Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

Boko Haram’s Worrying Expansion

The U.S. military has played a prominent role in Donald Trump’s presidency, at times serving as a prop to flatter his ego, at others as a tool for political gain, but also often as a punching bag to deflect blame. In the early days of his administration, Trump filled his Cabinet and White House staff with retired generals, only to successively fire them or watch them resign over policy differences. Later, his repeated pardons of U.S. soldiers convicted by military courts of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan drove a wedge between himself and a military leadership committed to upholding discipline and the international laws of war. Most recently, his attempt to deploy the military to quell protests against racism and police brutality in cities across the U.S. ultimately led to the firing of his third defense secretary, Mark Esper.  It is perhaps no surprise that Trump’s disregard for norms and the rule of law would extend to his approach to the military, with serious implications for the relationship between the military and the civilian leadership at the top of the chain of command. This week on Trend Lines, Risa Brooks joins WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein for a discussion on the damage Trump’s presidency has done to civil-military relations and what it will take to repair them. Dr. Brooks is the Allis Chalmers associate professor of political science at Marquette University, a nonresident senior associate in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and an adjunct scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute. Relevant Articles on WPR: The Many Questions Trump’s Pardons Raise About Civil-Military Relations Could America’s Senior Military Leaders Ever Revolt Against Trump? America’s Political Turmoil Is Threatening the Norms of Civil-Military Relations Is There Trouble Brewing for Civil-Military Relations in the U.S.? U.S. Civil-Military Relations’ Neglected Component: Congress Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

Rerun: How Trump Damaged U.S. Civil-Military Relations—and How to Repair Them

Earlier this month, Timnit Gebru, the co-leader of a team of researchers at Google specializing in the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, was unceremoniously ousted from her position. Some of the circumstances that led to her departure are disputed, but Gebru—a Black woman in a field that is overwhelmingly white and male—claims she was forced out for drawing unwelcome attention to the lack of diversity in Google’s workforce. She also claims she was “silenced” for her refusal to retract a paper that she had co-authored on ethical problems associated with certain types of AI models that are central to Google’s business. The episode has sparked a fierce backlash across Silicon Valley and beyond, including among current and former Google employees. This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by Karen Hao, the senior AI reporter for MIT Technology Review, to discuss the reaction to Gebru’s dismissal and the troubling issues she has raised around the ethical implications of recent advances in AI. To learn more about this topic, check out Karen’s weekly newsletter, The Algorithm, and the podcast she co-produces, In Machines We Trust. Relevant Articles on WPR:   It Will Take More Than an Antitrust Case to Fix the Problems of Big Tech The Troubling Rise of Facial Recognition Technology in Democracies Are Governments Sacrificing Privacy to Fight the Coronavirus Pandemic? Can New Norms of Behavior Extend the Rules-Based Order Into Cyberspace? Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

A Scandal at Google and the Future of AI

In addition to its human toll, the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked economic havoc around the world. Entire economies ground to a virtual standstill as governments implemented strict lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus. The impact on individual countries has only been exacerbated by the disruptions to global trade caused by the pandemic, and uncertainty still surrounds the shape of the economic recovery that will come in its aftermath.  But even before the pandemic, the developed economies of Western democracies faced structural obstacles to growth that have called into question their models of governance, even as China’s high-growth development path offers a competitive alternative.  For this week’s big picture Trend Lines interview, Dr. Dambisa Moyo joins WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein for a look at the challenges facing the developed economies, and how the pandemic will affect them and the global economy more broadly. Dr. Moyo holds a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University and a master’s degree from Harvard University. She worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs for nearly a decade, and she is the author of four New York Times bestselling books, most recently, “Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth—and How to Fix It,” published in 2018. Her upcoming book, “How Boards Work—and How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World,” is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2021.   Relevant Articles on WPR: Governments Acted Fast to Save the Economy. Now Too Many Have Pandemic Fatigue How the Pandemic Is Accelerating a ‘Splintering of the Internet’ Zambia’s Looming Default Is Only the Start of a Global Reckoning With Debt Trump’s Trade Wars, and Now COVID-19, Are Unraveling Trade as We Know It Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

‘They’ve Got to Be Visionary’: Dambisa Moyo on Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery

During his four years in office, President Donald Trump has worked methodically to tear up just about any foreign policy initiative or multilateral treaty that had Barack Obama’s fingerprints on it, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to the policy of so-called “Strategic Patience” with North Korea. While President-elect Joe Biden is understandably promising a completely different approach in some areas, there are some aspects of his presidency that are worth preserving and building on.  This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by Emma Ashford for a conversation about what to keep and what to throw out from Trump’s foreign policy. Ashford is a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, as well as a columnist for Foreign Policy. Relevant Articles on WPR:   What to Keep From Trump’s Foreign Policy After He’s Gone Can Biden Really Bring America ‘Back’ After Trump? Why Trump’s Trade Agenda Is Here to Stay How Biden Should Approach U.S.-Mexico Relations Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

What’s Worth Salvaging From Trump’s Foreign Policy

In contrast with Donald Trump’s single-minded focus on immigration, President-elect Joe Biden has promised a return to a more conventional, multidimensional approach to the United States’ relations with Mexico. But if President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s reluctance to congratulate Biden on his victory is any indication, a return to normalcy may not be what Mexico wants.   This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by Duncan Wood, the director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, to discuss the challenges ahead for U.S.-Mexico ties and how Biden might be able to use some of Trump’s aggressive tactics to steer the relationship in a beneficial direction. Relevant Articles on WPR: Mexico’s Water Dispute With the U.S. Is a Symptom of Its Governance Crisis In Mexico, Corruption Scandals Leave No Politician Untouched—Not Even AMLO How Biden Would Change U.S. Policy in Latin America Will AMLO’s Popularity in Mexico Survive COVID-19? Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

The Future of U.S.-Mexico Ties Under Biden

The usually warm relationship between the United States and Jordan has come under strain during President Donald Trump’s time in office. Jordanian leaders have criticized many of Trump’s policies in the region, especially his support for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his one-sided proposal for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. It was no surprise, then, that Jordan’s King Abdullah II was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden for his victory over Trump in last month’s presidential election. And in a phone conversation with Abdullah last week, his first with an Arab leader, Biden told the king that he hopes to cooperate on pursuing “a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” It remains unclear, though, just how much of a priority that will be for Biden as he enters office with a herculean to-do list. This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman was joined by Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Jordan who’s now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They discussed the implications of Biden’s presidency for Jordan, for the Israelis and Palestinians, and for U.S. policy toward the Middle East writ large.  Relevant Articles on WPR: Israel-Gulf Normalization Sends Palestinians Back to the Drawing Board Is Jordan on the Verge of an Economic Reckoning? ‘The Path of Negotiations Has Failed.’ Where Annexation Leaves Palestinians Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Will Doom Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

Why Jordan Is Relieved to See Trump Go

How Trump Damaged U.S. Civil-Military Relations—and How to Repair Them

In late September, the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly heated up. The six weeks of full-scale war that followed left thousands dead and tens of thousands more displaced. Unlike previous rounds of fighting that resulted in little exchange of territory, however, Azerbaijan’s well-armed and well-prepared military was able to make substantial gains on the battlefield, with significant support from neighboring Turkey. Just as Azerbaijani forces looked poised to advance deep into Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia brokered a deal between the two sides to bring the fighting to an end last week, under terms that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called “unbelievably painful.” The agreement requires Armenia to relinquish much of the territory it controlled in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, and for Moscow to dispatch 2,000 peacekeepers to the region. According to Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow and the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, the deal is a win for the Kremlin, which has successfully reasserted its influence in the South Caucasus, independent of Western powers. But will the peace hold? Gabuev joins WPR’s Elliot Waldman on the Trend Lines podcast this week to discuss the aftermath of the recent fighting and the outlook for Nagorno-Karabakh. Relevant Articles on WPR: Can Russia Steer the Endgame in Nagorno-Karabakh to Its Advantage? How Russia’s Putin Is Viewing the Crises in His Backyard Why the Long Conflict Over Nagorno-Karabakh Could Heat Up Again Despite High-Level Diplomacy, Old Obstacles Still Block Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

How Russia and Turkey Won the Nagorno-Karabakh War

Many aspects of our response to the coronavirus pandemic have relied on digital technology. Schools and workplaces are moving online, holding classes and meetings using virtual tools. Public health experts are using data analytics and contact tracing apps to slow the contagion. And in some cases, authoritarian governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to impose sweeping restrictions on their citizens that limit their scope for protests and other forms of criticism. According to researchers at the watchdog group Freedom House, the implications of the pandemic for digital rights worldwide are bleak. The organization released a new report last month as part of an annual series looking at online freedoms, to document what it calls, “The Pandemic’s Digital Shadow.” This week on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by one of the report’s co-authors, Adrian Shahbaz, to discuss COVID-19’s indelible impacts on our online lives. Shahbaz is the director for technology and democracy at Freedom House. Relevant Articles on WPR: Are Governments Sacrificing Privacy to Fight the Coronavirus Pandemic? Across Central Asia, Police States Expand Under the Cover of COVID-19 Tech Giants Aren’t Doing Enough to Combat Misinformation About COVID-19 Amid China’s Coronavirus Lockdown, ‘People Don’t Believe in Government Anymore’ Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

The Pandemic’s Overlooked Impact on Digital Rights

For nearly five months, Thailand has been in the throes of a historic pro-democracy uprising. Demonstrators have braved water cannons and arbitrary arrests to challenge the current government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of a 2014 coup who then headed the military junta that ruled Thailand until last year. The protest movement has also broken a longstanding taboo by demanding reforms of Thailand’s monarchy, which is protected by one of the world’s harshest lèse-majesté laws. Thailand’s king addressed the protests for the first time in rare public comments over the weekend, suggesting he may be open to compromise with the demonstrators. Meanwhile, as with all political unrest in Thailand, the ever-present possibility that the military will step in hangs over the protest movement. Today on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman discusses the latest developments from the Thai protests with Tyrell Haberkorn, a professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a 2020 Guggenheim fellow. Relevant Articles on WPR: Why Thailand’s Protesters Are Up in Arms Against the Monarchy Why Thailand’s Leaderless Protests May Have Already Succeeded Why the Thai King’s Power Grab Could Backfire Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

Thailand’s Pro-Democracy Protesters Aren’t Backing Down

Over the past four years, American politics have been consumed and subsumed by one man: Donald Trump. Since his election in 2016, Trump’s disregard for convention has upended the norms of the U.S. presidency and undermined the separation of powers on which America’s constitutional system depends. His iconoclastic approach to foreign policy has further frayed the global order the U.S. has historically used to advance its interests, while raising questions about America’s commitment and dependability as an ally. Long-standing political partisanship and divisions within the U.S. have become particularly acute in the runup to next week’s election, amid heightened anxiety over the potential for tampering and manipulation of the outcome. In today’s big picture Trend Lines interview, Edward Luce joins WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, to discuss the impact of Trump’s four years in office, the atmosphere surrounding next week’s election and what’s at stake for America and the world. Luce is a columnist and the U.S. national editor for the Financial Times, and has long been a highly regarded observer of American politics, which he has been covering for FT since 2006. Relevant Articles on WPR: Trump Is a Bad Joke That America Has Played on Itself—and the World What to Keep From Trump’s Foreign Policy After He’s Gone Even If Biden Wins, America May Still Be Crippled by Trump What a Biden Win Would Mean for the Future of Multilateralism Biden’s Blind Spots on Foreign Policy Would Cripple America After Trump Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

‘Reality Is Catching Up’: Edward Luce on Trump, the Election and What Comes After

This year’s election season in the U.S. has been unusual in many ways, unfolding against the backdrop of a raging global pandemic, a historic economic recession and an incumbent president who is willing to discard America’s democratic norms. But there is one thing that has become predictable about recent U.S. elections, and sadly, other polls around the world: the torrent of misinformation that inevitably seems to accompany them. At the same time, the modalities of how misinformation spreads aren’t necessarily consistent across elections. According to Shelby Grossman, a political scientist and research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, foreign influence operations are becoming more sophisticated, and the unintentional spread of misinformation can be just as pernicious. She joins WPR’s Elliot Waldman on the Trend Lines podcast this week to break down the latest trends in online misinformation and some of the things voters should watch out for on Election Day and thereafter. Relevant Articles on WPR: There’s No Denying Russia’s Election Interference, Unless You’re Trump Tech Giants Aren’t Doing Enough to Combat Misinformation About COVID-19 The Sorry State of U.S. Election Security Makes Foreign Interference Inevitable Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie. To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com.

How to Guard Against Election-Related Misinformation

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