Over the past few months, Iran has been working with China on a sweeping long-term political, economic, and security agreement that would facilitate hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in the Iranian economy. It is also pursuing a long-term partnership with Russia. Politicians in Tehran see the agreements as a necessary means of combating U.S. […]
Nobody can pretend to know how President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis will unfold, but some fallout for U.S. national security will be impossible to avoid. What sort of distortions will the illness introduce to foreign policy? That’s harder to say. The Trump administration, after all, has had no baseline of normalcy from which to estimate […]
What kind of superpower will China be? That’s the question of the 21st century. According to American leaders such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, China will be a rapacious authoritarian nightmare, intent on destroying democracy itself. Beijing, needless to say, doesn’t quite agree. Read Here | The Atlantic
What would a second Trump term look like for America and East Asia? Second presidential terms usually range from lackluster to disastrous. Bill Clinton’s second term was mired in scandal. George W. Bush saw his popularity plunge into the thirties amid failure in Iraq and a financial crisis. Barack Obama oversaw prolonged economic stagnation that […]
Estimating the long-term effect of the current pandemic is not an exact prediction of the future, but an exercise in weighing probabilities and adjusting current policies. When envisioning the international order in 2030, five scenarios stand out. Read Here | Project Syndicate
Church adherents pose no inherent threat to liberal democracy. The problem in the US is that people in the highest positions of authority, Catholic and Protestant alike, are pushing at the barriers between church and state, erected so carefully by America’s founders to ensure that the people, not God, would govern. Read Here | Project […]
The best explanation for why stock markets remain so bullish despite a massive recession is that major publicly traded companies have not borne the brunt of the pandemic’s economic fallout. But having been spared by the virus, they could soon find themselves squarely in the sights of a populist backlash. Read Here | Project Syndicate
The value of alliances in geopolitical competition between states has been frequently noted in the past few years. It turns out alliances are just as important to often-stateless militant groups. The difference between a terrorist group with ideologically aligned allies and a terrorist group without them can mean the difference between survival and defeat—as the […]
At 7 p.m. local time on Oct. 2, 1990, East Germany’s national anthem was played as the country’s women’s handball team squared off against West Germany. They won 24-20. But at midnight, their country was no more: Germany was reunited. Prior to that event, world leaders had so feared German reunification that it nearly didn’t […]
In just a few months, the United Kingdom’s overall policy toward China has changed dramatically. Until recently, Downing Street was famously defining itself as “China’s best partner in the West” and was committed to intensifying its proclaimed “golden era” of relations with Beijing. Read Here | The Diplomat
looking beyond borders 