U.S. slams Vietnam over jailing of rights activists
The US has condemned Vietnam for jailing six human rights activists to long prison terms, and urged the country “to release all prisoners of conscience immediately,” the FT reports: On… Read more »
Is EU ‘enabling’ Hungary’s authoritarian kleptocracy?
Hungary is no longer a democracy, says Nóra Köves, an activist with the pro-democracy Eötvös Károly Institute. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Not, I think, any more. We are heading to… Read more »
How to Counter Political Warfare
Liberal democracies like the United States and its allies needs to improve the ways they combat adversaries that use political warfare, according to a new RAND report that discusses how… Read more »
Troll state: Russia’s disinformation campaign ‘follows familiar script’
OUTGOING NATIONAL security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday became the latest senior Trump administration official to publicly warn that Western governments, including his own, are not doing enough to deter Russia’s “sustained… Read more »
‘Democracy’ still matters in ‘illiberal’ regimes
Plenty of critics have adopted “illiberal democracy” as a description not just of Hungary, but of redesigned political systems in countries as different as Poland and Turkey. Yet “illiberal democracy”… Read more »
The issue poisoning democratic politics
In many Western democracies, the rise of populism has coincided with the collapse of traditional center-left parties, as working-class voters shift their allegiance, argues William A. Galston, senior fellow in… Read more »
West needs ‘strategic confidence’ to confront revisionist powers
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, in his last public remarks as national security adviser, strongly denounced Russia for its increased aggression around the world and declared: “We have failed to impose… Read more »
Hungary decaying into ‘Führer democracy’
This Sunday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is set to win another term in national elections, giving him a fresh mandate to advance his project of building what he calls… Read more »
Democratization is among ‘Armenia’s New Challenges’
The U.S. has little leverage to influence developments in Armenia’s shifting political and security landscape, according to experts on the post-Soviet space, Eurasianet’s Grigor Atanesian reports. The current geopolitical shift… Read more »
Vietnam: drop charges against human rights defenders
Vietnam’s Communist authorities must drop all charges against human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, his assistant Le Thu Ha, and seven other members of the Brotherhood for Democracy and immediately… Read more »