Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s second-round win in Brazil's presidential election was a stunning political comeback. Three weeks after trailing Flávio Bolsonaro by about 2.2 million votes in the first round, he won 51.79% of the vote and was about 4.3 million votes ahead. Lula picked up over 10 million votes between the two rounds, and Bolsonaro just under 4 million. Lula was the first candidate in Brazil's democratic history to finish second in the first round and still win the presidency. He also became the first person to be elected President of Brazil four times.

Today, the United States and its allies in East Asia often implicitly assume that a Taiwan contingency could be managed as the primary theater, while the Korean Peninsula could be dealt with as a secondary matter. This assumption, however, is increasingly difficult to sustain.

The experience of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) should be a warning for Venezuela’s opposition. Not because Syria and Venezuela are the same, but because they reveal how U.S. policy actually works when hard choices are made. In both cases, Washington has shown that it values stability and workable partners over past alliances or political sympathy. That logic matters far more than the specifics of either country.

Let me outline three possible scenarios for the post-Maduro era in Venezuela. I call them the “good,” the “bad,” and the “ugly.

The current negotiations and phone diplomacy have essentially boiled down to one key question: where Maduro will end up when he finally leaves power. Turkey has emerged as the most realistic destination for Maduro if he is pushed to leave power.

President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to designate several chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. The order is a reflection of sustained lobbying by the United Arab Emirates and Israel, with support from other Arab governments. While the designation reflects regional geopolitical pressures more than U.S. domestic concerns, it will nevertheless create complications for Turkey and Qatar, both of which maintain close ties with the movement.

This report focuses on Turkey's prominence as an emerging market for cocaine trafficking and organized crime in the last decade. Cocaine production in Latin America has dramatically increased since 2013, and Turkey’s status as an emerging market has attracted the attention of Latin American government officials on the front lines of the cocaine trade.