…three factors are key: establishing common policy ground, forging trusting and respectful personal relationships, and managing leaders’ respective domestic politics. These “three P’s,” other differences among the cases notwithstanding, provide a strategic framework crucial to successful summit diplomacy. While neither Trump’s nor Kim’s record inspires much confidence that these lessons will be drawn, it’d be in their interest – and […]
February brings the most significant series of tests yet of whether President Trump can transform his disruptive U.S. foreign policy into concrete outcomes. The four to watch most closely are: negotiating a trade deal with China, denuclearising North Korea, rallying an international community to contain Iran, and democratising Venezuela. Read Here – CNBC
At the midpoint of Donald Trump’s first term, historians have struggled to detect the kind of virtues that offset his predecessors’ vices: the infectious optimism of Reagan; the inspirational rhetoric of JFK; the legislative smarts of LBJ; or the governing pragmatism of Nixon. So rather than being viewed as the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan or […]
It has become a commonplace to describe the foreign policy of U.S. President Donald Trump as unpredictable. But doing so mischaracterizes the man and the policy. In fact, although Trump’s actions may often be shocking, they are rarely surprising. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
The longest federal government shutdown on record lasted twenty-one days. There’s talk of this one lasting “months or even years.” That almost certainly won’t happen—the current partial shutdown would go from annoying headline to political crisis long before then—but it’s a sign we are in uncharted territory. Read Here – The National Interest
In the battle between Donald Trump’s gut and contradictory evidence, it’s a safe bet which will win the president’s favor. Days after major newspapers reported on a CIA assessment claiming that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the president declared his fulsome support for Saudi Arabia. Read Here – […]
As if one wasn’t enough, there will be two Trump presidencies starting from January. With the Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, the White House will find it more difficult than ever to pursue a productive domestic agenda. Tax cuts, immigration reforms, border security, changes to healthcare—none of this will happen under divided […]
The United States has spent nearly $6 trillion on wars that directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 people since the 9/11 attacks of 2001. Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include: 370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, […]
In unrelenting rain, more than sixty world leaders—Presidents and Prime Ministers, kings and princes, from a third of all the nations on Earth—shared big black umbrellas as they marched together down the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, on Sunday. They gathered to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War, […]
It is possible to think two things at once: that U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been “bad,” which many think it has been, and that it has offered a somewhat coherent alternative for how the United States should conduct itself beyond its borders. This suggests that the casual and smug dismissals of Trump, […]
looking beyond borders 