World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Newly elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has decided to keep the oil portfolio for himself rather than allocate it to someone else.  Buhari has served on the Petroleum Trust Fund and was the oil minister in the 1970s, and he takes the role of oil in the Nigerian economy very seriously.  Buhari is not a strong supporter of Western conceptions of human rights, but he has a reputation for financial rectitude.  The move is a very hopeful sign that perhaps Nigeria’s incredible riches will be used to serve the interests of the people as a whole.

Dominic Tierney has written a fascinating essay entitled “Why Has America Stopped Winning Wars?”  The question resonates strongly with those of us who grew up in the Cold War:  the major wars of that period, such as Korea and Vietnam, proved to be inconclusive in the traditional sense of winning a war.  Tierney’s argument is best captured in this passage:

“In Korea, the United States spent two years negotiating a truce, even as brutal attritional fighting continued. In Vietnam, peace talks lasted for five years, with little to show for them. It took 21 days to capture Baghdad in 2003 and 3,174 days to leave. U.S. forces seized Kabul in November 2001—and they’re still there.”

It is a question that Americans need to consider more thoughtfully as conflicts around the world threaten to involve American interests.

There have been a very large number of popular protests in Africa since 2011–virtually every country on the continent has experienced some level of political dissent and some of those protests have been quite violent.  In many respects the discontent mirrors the same issues as reflected in the Arab Spring and the protests in Europe.  The rate of economic change in many African states is quite high, and it seems clear that in many countries citizens are demanding much more of their governments than has been the case in the past.