Iran, The Unitary State

To see Tehran as helplessly riven with antagonistic factions is misguided. Under concerted pressure from Trump, the separate parts of Iran’s regime have closed ranks. Western policymakers must accept the reality that Iran conducts its security policy as a unified state actor. Read Here – Foreign Affairs

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China Is Waging A Silent Media War For Global Influence

Beijing is expanding its ability to influence societies around the world through its exercise of soft power. This is best exemplified by its Belt and Road Initiative, but there is another, more stealthy effort occurring along-side it that has potentially profound implications for Chinese foreign policy—Beijing’s growing influence in the Western press. China’s state-run media […]

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Mike Pompeo Is Bigger Than The Pentagon — For Now

In the nine months since Jim Mattis resigned as defense secretary, one man has become the public leader of President Trump’s national security policy: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In the absence of a confirmed leader at the Pentagon, Pompeo had been unusually visible in public scenes — and decisions — typically associated with the secretary […]

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How John Bolton Broke The National Security Council

Mr. Bolton’s legacy is not of destruction overseas, but dysfunction in Washington. To pursue his own policy agenda and serve an erratic president, in just 17 months Mr. Bolton effectively destroyed the National Security Council system, the intricate structure that governed American foreign policy since the end of World War II. Mr. Bolton’s most lasting […]

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What Can We Learn From Mugabe’s Descent Into Tyranny?

Authoritarianism – from Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who died last week, to the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos – always goes wrong. The list of failures is long, including China’s Mao Zedong, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. George Orwell’s prescient warnings in Animal Farm are confirmed again and again. The intriguing question is why so many both inside and […]

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Great-Power Competition Is Washington’s Top Priority

For all the acrimony in Washington today, the city’s foreign policy establishment is settling on a rare bipartisan consensus: that the world has entered a new era of great-power competition. The struggle between the United States and other great powers, the emerging consensus holds, will fundamentally shape geopolitics going forward, for good or ill. Read […]

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