This paper argues that Lebanon has stumbled from one political crisis into another in recent times, and is in danger of becoming a victim of power-hungry foreign actors who seek economic, strategic and political gains by controlling the country.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly deploying coercive diplomacy against foreign governments and companies. This report tracks the CCP’s use of coercive diplomacy over the past 10 years, recording 152 cases of coercive diplomacy affecting 27 countries, as well as the European Union.

Concerns over India’s economic dependence on China have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent India-China border tensions. This has caused India to push towards a decoupling from China in critical sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and electronics.

China is often said to be pursuing ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: luring poor, developing countries into agreeing unsustainable loans to pursue infrastructure projects so that, when they experience financial difficulty, Beijing can seize the asset, thereby extending its strategic or military reach. This paper demonstrates that the evidence for such views is limited.

In the past year 80 countries recorded deteriorations in peacefulness, while 81 recorded improvements according to the fourteenth edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness.