Five Paths to Global Respect
Regardless of who wins the election, the next President will be sworn in during an unprecedented set of national crises, taking office in the wake of the worst economic downturn since the Great...
View ArticleReengaging With the World
Throughout his campaign, then former Vice President Joe Biden vowed to “Build Back Better.” Among the foreign policy community, Biden’s promise embodied the hope of a return to a pre-Trump world and a...
View ArticleGood Neighbors At Last?
Joe Biden faces a daunting combination of challenges and constraints. His top priorities must be domestic: to reduce the country’s painful polarization, firm up his base of support, defeat the pandemic...
View ArticleBuilding Back Better (Than Expected)
From the laudably bold COVID relief package to the unforced error of resisting executive action to forgive crushing student loan debt, there is a direct through-line from the personnel that President...
View ArticleGetting North Korea Back to the Table
President Joe Biden inherited a greater North Korea challenge than his predecessors. Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile capabilities are significantly more advanced than any American administration...
View ArticleSoutheast Asia: China’s Long Shadow
EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY” read the t-shirt worn by 19-year-old Ma Kyal Sin, also known as “Angel,” in Mandalay, Myanmar, on March 3, 2021. Hundreds of thousands of mostly young Burmese had thronged the...
View ArticleChina: Two Key Questions
The interim National Security Strategic Guidance (NSSG) issued by the Biden Administration in early March 2021 articulated a central role for democracy and democratic values in guiding and shaping...
View Article‘There Isn’t a Vaccine to Buy’
When the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines began this spring, many Americans anticipated a “post-pandemic” summer. Yet the United States’s failure to reach 70 percent vaccinated by July 4th, an uptick in...
View ArticleThe Forever Wars
Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump By Spencer Ackerman • Viking • 2021 • 448 pages • $30 Shortly before midnight on May 1, 2011, President Obama made an unusual,...
View ArticleThe United States, China, and Democracy
How to respond to the rise of China is one of the central questions of U.S. foreign policy in this century. Some analysts see China displacing the United States as the world’s leading power by the...
View ArticleThe American Role: Partners, Not Lecturers
Rising authoritarianism and ethnonationalism at home and abroad underscore both the value and vulnerability of open, inclusive democracies. While cracks in the glass of our own democratic house...
View ArticleWhere Are the Techno-Democracies?
The Chinese government’s ambition to use technology for social control and governance has been increasingly clear. As these technologies have matured, and as the Chinese government’s abuses have...
View ArticleA Helsinki Moment for a New Democracy Strategy
Russia’s war against Ukraine has awoken much of Europe and Anglo-Saxon democracies to the threat of growing autocracy and galvanized a new moral clarity and solidarity. Some democracy enthusiasts...
View ArticleThe Future of Global Democracy
We’ve all become accustomed to essays and op-eds considering the future of democracy, written from 30,000 feet and with too few specifics and too many generalities. But democracy as practiced, lived,...
View ArticleThe Unraisable Issue
We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel by Eric Alterman • Basic Books • 2022 • 512 pages • $35 On the day I sat down to write this review, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
View ArticleBeyond TikTok
Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World by Joshua Kurlantzick • Oxford University Press • 2022 • 560 pages • $30 Lawmakers in the United States and...
View ArticleThe Un-Statesman
I want to begin by saying something nice about Mike Pompeo: He has an absolutely gorgeous singing voice, a great booming baritone issuing from his barrel chest. I know this because he sat behind me and...
View ArticleWar Powers: We Must Do Better Than the Current Monarchism
American presidents have gathered too much power to take the country into war. Toward the end of the Trump Administration, a movement to transfer some of that power back to Congress appeared to be...
View ArticleClash of Identities
Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew by Avi Shlaim • Oneworld Publications • 2023 • 336 pages • $30 In his 1979 book, The Question of Palestine, the academic, literary critic, and Palestinian-American...
View ArticleThe Arab World Blame Game
What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East by Fawaz A. Gerges • Yale University Press • 2024 • 336 pages • $28 The 2010 Arab Spring was a moment of real hope for...
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