Governance

Mariana Budjeryn reflects on the tenth anniversary of her native Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity.

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

Opportunistic repression arises when states use crises to suppress the political opposition. An examination of the relationship between COVID-19 shutdown policies and state violence against civilians in Africa, including and a subnational case study of Uganda, tests this theory.

Jacqueline Hazelton writes that regimes battling a counterinsurgency often depend on corruption to stay in power.

Winning hearts and minds doesn't defeat insurgent groups, author Jacqueline Hazelton argues. So why does the United States still rely on counterinsurgency?

Ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa are torn between two visions of progress: a democratic one that seeks to replace the leaders who dominate the region, and an ostensibly modernizing one that seeks to replace the people who inhabit it. Though the latter project is currently ascendant, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. Arab publics may be ambivalent about democracy, but the region retains considerable democratic potential.

The Security and Global Health Project is proud to present a weekly web series with Security Mom Juliette Kayyem and Medicine Mom Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux. Each week, our experts will answer your questions from quarantine and give you advice on staying sane and sanitary in a global crisis. We hope you'll join our Moms every Tuesday, and if you have a question that you want answered, tweet with #QuestionsFromQuarantine.

American presidents customarily leave office when voters reject them. Czars, emperors, and would-be prime ministers for life do whatever they can to hold on to power.

Fueled by aggressive rhetoric from both capitals, Indian and Chinese ground forces engaged in a standoff between June and August 2017. The Doklam crisis, as it became known, stimulated introspection among officials and experts in both states about the future of their relationship. Politically, both strategic communities largely concluded that the peaceful resolution of border disputes is now less likely, forecasting more rivalry than cooperation. Militarily, Indian discussions on the strength of its military position against China in their disputed ground frontier areas have converged on the view that China holds the conventional and nuclear edge over India in this domain.

Based on our analysis of data on the location and capabilities of Indian and Chinese strategic forces and related military units, we conclude that this assessment of the balance of forces may be mistaken and a poor guide for Indian security and procurement policies. We recommend that instead of investing in new nuclear weapons platforms that our analysis suggests are not likely to be required to deter China, New Delhi should improve the survivability of its existing forces and fill the gap in global arms control leadership with an initiative on restraint and transparency.

Lawmakers released documents and messages this week that appear to show associates of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer surveilling the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch, amid a campaign to oust her from her job. They are the latest documents at the center of the impeachment investigation into Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential rival.