Category: United States

Written by lookingbeyondborders

Questionable Alliances: Why America Needs to Reexamine Its International Relationships

Modern circumstances continue to bear out the prescience of America’s founders. Especially George Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances.” In contrast, U.S. policymakers today treat military allies like Facebook friends, the more the merrier, something to brag about. However, most of Washington’s existing alliances are harmful, expensive commitments with  little relevance to American security. Read Here […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

Trump Revs Up The Battle Over Immigration

The heart of the proposal is a turnaround on who the United States accepts as legal immigrants. Currently, two-thirds of new immigrants are granted stay because of some kind of familiar connection already living in the United States; immigration enthusiasts refer to this as family reunification, while immigration restrictionists refer to it as chain migration. […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

For Trump, Morning in America never seems to dawn

The economic news is impressive: the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 and 3.2 percent economic growth in the first quarter. For President Trump, it raises the possibility of running an upbeat, Morning in America-style reelection campaign, like Ronald Reagan did in 1984. Except for one thing: Trump is congenitally unable to keep it sunny, or […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

Standing Up For Realism

Realism, long associated with authoritarian European statesmen such as Otto von Bismarck and Klemens von Metternich, has been consistently portrayed as antithetical to American democratic traditions. During the Cold War, statesmen such as Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski were depicted as amoral or even harbouring, in the case of the latter, loyalties to Poland rather than […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

Has Biden’s Moment Finally Arrived?

The waiting, wondering, and vacillating are over: Joe Biden is getting into the presidential race, and he has every intention of fighting like hell to kick Donald Trump off the White House grounds. In a three-minute video announcing his candidacy, the former vice president was emphatic and determined—so much so that you could be forgiven […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

Richard Holbrooke and the Decline Of American Power

One of the most celebrated diplomats of his generation, Richard Holbrooke helped normalise U.S. relations with China; served as U.S. ambassador to a newly reunified Germany and then to the United Nations; and, most famously, negotiated the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. But he began and ended his career struggling […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

The Lost Art Of American Diplomacy

Diplomacy may be one of the world’s oldest professions, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. It’s mostly a quiet endeavour, less swaggering than unrelenting, oftentimes operating in back channels, out of sight and out of mind. U.S. President Donald Trump’s disdain for professional diplomacy and its practitioners—along with his penchant for improvisational flirtations […]

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Written by lookingbeyondborders

Is America Becoming Trump’s Banana Republic?

The Trump show is endlessly distracting in a way that would be familiar to any connoisseur of the Latin-American strongman. The Wednesday-afternoon Oval Office appearance alone had enough fodder for countless talk-show segments: Trump grounds the airplanes! Trump lies about building the wall! Trump lies about being vindicated in the special-counsel probe —even when a […]

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