World News

For the past seven years, a jihadist insurgency has spread across northern and central Mali, causing widespread political and social instability. Coupled with a failing economy and the challenges of dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic, the deteriorating situation in the West African nation gave rise to mass protests. After weeks of marches through the capital, Bamako, during which protesters demanded that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta step down, soldiers arrested Keïta this week. He has since resigned. Bruce Whitehouse argues that after years of insecurity, corruption and a serious humanitarian crisis, this coup comes as no surprise. The protests emboldened the military to overthrow the government, but the future looks less certain.

Meanwhile, in the United States, presidential aspirant Joe Biden doesn’t really need the splashy virtual Democratic National Convention, now underway, to introduce his candidacy to the world. He was vice president for eight years and served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades. Yet his international agenda remains somewhat opaque. Diplomacy expert Klaus Larres of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill looks to the candidate’s long history to assess his likely foreign policy priorities.