When Donald Trump delivered his first and only major foreign policy address of the 2016 campaign on April 27 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, he indicated that it was time for a fundamental change in America’s approach to both its allies and adversaries. Now that the 2020 presidential campaign has begun in earnest, it’s worth […]
U.S. President Donald Trump often portrays himself as breaking with the basic pattern of recent American foreign policy. Many of his detractors also see him that way. In truth, Trump has carried forward and even intensified the post–Cold War agenda of his predecessors: spare no expense for military hegemony, and find little to spare for […]
Trump has shown great restraint in the Middle East. He did not fire back after the September attacks on Saudi oil facilities. He has given measured, proportional responses, similar to Reagan’s restraint when Iran took out an American warship in 1988. And despite a publicly confrontational posture, he has minimised the risk of escalation. Read […]
Apart from declaring several times that, in his view, America’s prestige around the world was higher than ever, Trump spent relatively little time in his 78-minute speech on foreign policy—no doubt with an eye toward his reelection campaign, which will depend largely on the performance of the U.S. economy. Trump didn’t mention Ukraine at all—though […]
India today is not only on a path toward becoming an authoritarian, Hindu majoritarian state, but its economic engine is also sputtering, and its military will remain ill-equipped to balance China. Rather than serving as an ally or vital strategic partner, India may end up becoming a liability for the United States. As India chooses […]
The Brexit campaign was transformed from a fringe eccentricity into a mass movement by a handful of people who decided to make it into an argument about identity. Now Brexit itself has created a whole new set of questions about identity. The next political projects, whatever they are going to be, will take off by […]
To understand why, Europeans and Americans need to address three elephants crowding the room of European security — some familiar, some less so. As so often with indoor pachyderms, they irritate, as they confront us with our inability to address them and our tendency to tiptoe around them. The three European security elephants will resonate […]
Historians who study impeachment tend to treat it as a domestic political affair: the bloody combat of partisan politics taken to its extreme, threatening the very survival of a presidency. But when the commander in chief must fight for his political life, the repercussions inevitably ripple around the world. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
Welcome to the age of great-power competition. Much more than a geopolitical bumper sticker, this label describes the foundation of what has become the free world’s new grand strategy, not just for the United States, but for many of our friends, partners and allies as well. It is a competition without precedent. One aspect of […]
The current White House runs a foreign policy with irreconcilable objectives, no internal coherence, and no pretense of gaming out critical decisions before they are taken. Maximalist objectives are set with little thought to what might be required to achieve them. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
looking beyond borders 