Trend Lines Podcast
1) Ethiopia, Eritrea and Tigray Are Back on a War Footing
What do you think of the audio versions of articles, read by an AI-generated voice, that we've been featuring on this podcast feed of late? Our publisher wants your comments. Listen to the episode to ...Show More
2) Regional Divisions Are Fraying West Africa's Security Cooperation
In January, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger officially withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, having already established the Alliance of Sahel States, or AES, as an alter...Show More
3) The Global Order Got Over COVID-19 Pretty Quickly
Five years ago last week, the world shut down. The coronavirus that caused COVID-19 had first emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. By March 2020, it had become a global pandemic leading to mass ...Show More
4) Lebanon's Postwar Reconstruction Is at a Standstill
NABATIEH, Lebanon - After more than a year of tit-for-tat airstrikes and several months of higher-intensity combat, the devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel ended with a ceasefire in late Nove...Show More
5) For Xi, Boosting China's Domestic Consumption Means Working Harder
The meetings last week of China's National People's Congress, or NPC, and the Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC, ended with commitments to maintain economic...Show More
6) In Foreign Policy, Being Smart Is a Pretty High Bar
A couple decades ago, "smart power" was all the rage in U.S. foreign policy discussions, largely in response to the perceived foolishness of the administration of then-U.S. President George W. Bush fo...Show More
7) France's Reset With New Caledonia Could Hit Some Roadblocks
France has restarted negotiations toward defining its future relationship with New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the southwest Pacific that is home to about 293,000 people. The move ends n...Show More
8) MBS' Domestic Agenda Is Also Driving Saudi Arabia's Diplomatic Blitz
Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a diplomatic blitz. From hosting yesterday's talks between Washington and Kyiv over the war in Ukraine to positioning the kingdom as central to the "day after" plans f...Show More
9) The War in Ukraine Is Changing How We Think of Drones and UAVs
The war in Ukraine has led to a fundamental shift in public perceptions of the military utility of drones. Until now, most people saw drones either as a more or less harmless toy with certain implicat...Show More
10) Turkey’s Contentious Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics
Turkey is nominally a close military and political ally of the United States and other NATO countries, as well as an important economic partner to the European Union. But reading headlines in recent m...Show More