Israel Fuels Three Emergencies as Its Furious Allies Bail Out | The Realist Case for Global Rules | Africans Are Building Putin’s Suicide Drones | European Trend Report on Terrorism 2025, and more

href=”https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2024/12/martial-law-south-korea-overturned-what-happened?lang=en” target=”_blank” title=”martial-law decree”>martial-law decree in December 2024, which he issued in an attempt to break a parliamentary deadlock. After massive street protests and an extended Constitutional Court review, Yoon’s impeachment was finalized in early April but left in its wake deep partisan cleavages.

Trump Administration Targets Brazilian Judge for ‘Censorship’  (Jack Nicas, New York Times)
A new State Department policy to restrict visas from foreign officials who censor voices online appears written for a specific Brazilian Supreme Court justice.

Africans Are Building Putin’s Suicide Drones  (Economist)
Russia is luring young African women to make weapons to attack Ukraine.

How Trump Is Helping Washington’s Foes in Africa  (Nosmot Gbadamosi, Foreign Policy)
Ramaphosa’s treatment at the White House cemented that the U.S. is writing itself out of the continent’s future.

Trump Showed Images of ‘Genocide’ in South Africa. One Was from the War in Congo.  (Lynsey Chutel and Monika Cvorak, New York Times)
During a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, President Trump presented images, videos and news clippings that he said were evidence of genocide in South Africa. Fact-checking debunks the claims.

Trump Softens on Putin as Russia’s Military Edge Weakens, Officials Say  (Karen DeYoung, Catherine Belton and Mary Ilyushina, Washington Post)
Moscow’s advantage on the Ukraine battlefield is waning, experts say. But President Donald Trump seems disinclined to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin to engage in ceasefire talks.

Russian Mercenary and Paramilitary Groups in Africa  (RAND)
Since 2018, Russian private military contractors or mercenaries have proliferated across Africa. The largest mercenary outfit is the Wagner Group, which was led by Yevgeny Prigozhin until his death in 2023. Russian mercenaries serve as an important mechanism by which Moscow seeks to reduce its growing international economic and political isolation. Mercenaries help accomplish this by expanding Russia’s global footprint and influence at a relatively low cost. The authors describe how Russia’s armed presence in Africa has changed from mid-2023 to September 2024. The authors identify where Russian mercenaries have presences in Africa, what types of activities they perform, and the resulting implications of mercenaries’ use for African governments, economies, and civilian populations. The authors also examine how publics in countries where these mercenaries are present—and publics in neighboring countries—feel about and discuss Russian mercenaries and Russia itself.

We Can No Longer Dismiss Trump’s Blatant Racism  (Howard W. French, Foreign Policy)
The meeting with Ramaphosa marked a reversion to the open racism of U.S. presidents long past.

Trump’s False Fantasy About Afrikaner Land  (Michael Albertus, Foreign Policy)
The U.S. president is fixated on an expropriation policy that isn’t as radical as he thinks.

Mexico Battles the MAGA Movement Over Organized Crime  (Economist)
To keep America at bay Claudia Sheinbaum takes on Mexico’s gangsters.

Germany Deploys Permanent Troops to Another Country for the First Time Since World War II  (AP / CNN)
Chancellor Friedrich Merz inaugurated a groundbreaking German brigade in Lithuania that is meant to help protect NATO’s eastern flank and declared Thursday that “the security of our Baltic allies is also our security” as worries about Russian aggression persist. He said Berlin’s strengthening of its own military sends a signal to its allies to invest in security.