When one thinks of Zimbabwe, the concept of “free and fair elections” is not the first to come to mind. And yet, like many post-Cold War authoritarian states, elections are nevertheless organized and manipulated to produce something ad...
State repression, whether or not it’s outwardly aggressive, invites backlash. So how does the Chinese state maintain control during disruptive periods of intense urbanization, even as heavy consequences impact society? This week Departures i...
War doesn’t always look like it used to, with just tanks, missiles, ships, and planes. It also takes place online, and observers in the West are becoming increasingly aware of the need to increase cyber defense capacities as authoritarian st...
Often dismissed as the edge of the Russian or Chinese empires, Central Asia hosts a complex history that informs on present day atrocities including the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and the Uyghur concentration camps in China. It is through these ...
We can all agree that the global world order has become rather disorderly. We also seem to have trouble coming up with consistent and convincing explanations of what brought about this disorder, pointing uselessly at shocks such as the passage of ...
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it intervened in Syria in 2015 to shore up the beleaguered regime of their ally, Bashar al-Assad. How did this experience inform upon Vladimir Putin’s catastrophic decision to invade and attempt regime change o...
We last checked in with former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev about a month ago, as the Russian military began its invasion of Ukraine. Now, with things looking much different and many things not going to plan, we check back in for Dispatch #2 fr...
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world, holding the largest deposits of critical minerals which will be key to the coming industrial transformation. But it is also a nation that is well into its thir...
Ilya Ponomarev is one man who knows the costs of crossing Vladimir Putin. In 2014, he was the only member of the Russian Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea, and then was forced into political exile, eventually becoming an entrepreneur...
During one specific week in December in 1941, a series of events and calculations led to Adolf Hitler’s disastrous decision to declare war on the United States, putting the conflict on the eventual path toward the outcome we now regard with ...
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