Global swing states are nations that possess large and growing economies, occupy central positions in a region or stand at the hinge of multiple regions, and embrace democratic government at home. Increasingly active at the regional and global level, they desire changes to the existing international order but do not seek to scrap the interlocking […]
This past fall was not kind to U.S. President Barack Obama‘s foreign policy. It became increasingly clear that Afghan security forces were not going to be ready for the 2014 transition. The New York Times highlighted the administration’s failure to persuade the Iraqi government to allow a residual U.S. force to stay in the country, leaving Baghdad […]
One of the least controversial judgments about Barack Obama’s first term is that he has been a good foreign policy President. Certainly that’s what the American public believes. It has given him high marks on overseas affairs for much of his presidency, especially after the successful operation to kill Osama bin Laden. In the final […]
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Except for a small number of Native Americans, everyone is originally from somewhere else, and even recent immigrants can rise to top economic and political roles. President Franklin Roosevelt once famously addressed the Daughters of the American Revolution – a group that prided itself on the early […]
You hear it all of the time. The problem is that the government is borrowing from China to fund our stupid spending programs, or popular subsidies, or tax cuts. Mitt Romney (remember him?), in a presidential debate, defined his criterion for deciding whether spending is worthwhile thusly: “Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing from […]
In foreign affairs, the central challenge now facing President Barack Obama is how to regain some of the ground lost in recent years in shaping U.S. national security policy. Historically and politically, in America’s system of separation of powers, it is the president who has the greatest leeway for decisive action in foreign affairs. He […]
After a hard campaign against Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal has emerged as America’s next president in 2016. An essay from the future. The date is November 8th, 2016. Polling stations have closed and the outcome of the US presidential election is becoming increasingly clear: the first African-American president isn’t succeeded by the first female president, […]
Barack Obama has been reelected by concentrating on domestic issues. A look beyond US borders would have been unbearable to American voters anyways. That isn’t Obama’s fault: Foreign policy problems usually come with a long history, and we certainly can’t blame the president for not forecasting global turmoil. Yet we can admit that the global […]
It’s too bad that Mitt Romney didn’t win. If the Republicans had won, we could finally have known for sure that our suspicion of America‘s imminent demise is correct. “Four more years,” translated into the German viewpoint means little more than a “four-year reprieve.” For the über-watchful among us, the signs of the downfall are […]
It’s not the eco-nomy, stupid! That is the biggest takeaway from the recent presidential election in America. If anything, it was really about identity. As Barack Obama was not of the right colour, his opponents felt that his elevation in 2008 was because they had not stressed identity enough. They would have dearly liked to peel his skin off, […]
looking beyond borders 