For about four years now, since Russia’s occupation of Crimea and China’s launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, there has been much speculation about whether another Cold War between East and West is coming. In the last month alone, headlines have proclaimed that “The New Cold War Is Here,” heralded “Putin’s New Cold War,” and warned that […]
One inconvenient feature of the global trading system is that efforts to protect the jobs of voting workers in one country risk affecting jobs, and perhaps votes, in another. Thus President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported aluminium and steel, offered with the rationale that American metalworkers had been losing jobs to foreign competition, alarmed […]
Russia’s agenda is straightforward: to assert its influence at the expense of Washington and the rules-based international system. The Kremlin’s toolkit includes: leveraging economic and business ties, exerting political influence, harnessing the information space, and forging or deepening military ties with key countries. Where the United States and its allies have pulled back or failed […]
Last week, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would be slapping steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminium set off fears of a global trade war. But in reality, the international trading system has been unraveling for some time. After taking a quick glance at the World Trade Organization today, one might be excused for […]
The Balkans have recently seen a spike in Chinese investment activity similar to that being witnessed across Central Asia and Central and South America. While concerns about the geopolitical implications of this new trend are legitimate, all strategic calculations need to take into account the kind of influence an investment portfolio can buy, as well […]
China’s trillion-dollar signature foreign-policy project, the Belt and Road Initiative, is often lampooned as just a fuzzy concept with little to show for it on the ground. But in bustling ports from Singapore to the North Sea, state-owned Chinese firms are turning the idea into a reality with a series of aggressive acquisitions that are […]
The natural question is then: Why China? Why should China be that external actor? The reason is that China supplies some critical, missing input. That input is deep pockets — someone has to pay a large initial cost to jump-start the building of the infrastructure network, and the actor needs to be able to absorb […]
Barack Obama’s foreign policy was characterised as leading from behind. Trump’s doctrine may come to be understood as retreating from the front. Trump has severed American commitments that he considers risky, costly, or politically unappealing. In his first week in office, he tried to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, arguing that they pose a […]
Helmut Kohl (b. 1930) oversaw the reunification of Germany…Kohl’s tenure as chancellor—second in length only to that of Otto von Bismarck—ended in 1998 when the Social Democratic Party defeated the CDU. When Kohl passed, he was given an “EU state funeral,” a testament to his commitment not just to a united Germany, but to a united Europe as well. Read […]
When President Trump took office on January 20, his supporters hoped he’d keep his campaign promises to get tough with China on trade and push it to deal more forcefully with North Korea; renegotiate or pull out of NAFTA; withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal; and dismantle the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, critics in the US […]
looking beyond borders 