Late August means back to school. Parents know it, kids know it, you know it and so do I. In a modern and rapidly evolving world we know that there is much to learn.The skills we develop during the first few years of school -reading and basic arithmetic- are important parts of everyday life. In […]
With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the United Kingdom now has its first King since George VI more than seven decades ago. Saturday September 10, 2022 is recorded in history as the day Prince Charles was proclaimed as King Charles III. Aside from the challenge of having to (ceremonially) lead a country that is […]
In his famous 19th century work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “… a democracy is unable to regulate the details of an important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out its execution in the persistence of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy, and it will not […]
At the outset of 2022, Russia has troops massed on the Ukraine border and China has heightened aerial testing of Taiwan’s defenses. While Russia and China may be coordinating their challenges, each has its own interest in reducing U.S. influence. China claims Taiwan and Russia aims to exclude the West from Ukraine. America, or […]
U.S. President Joseph Biden’s debut speech at the seventy-sixth session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adamantly declared to the world that U.S. leadership is “back at the table in international forums.” Ushering the world into “a new era of relentless diplomacy,” President Biden firmly confirmed to the world that such leadership will seek neither […]
U.S. foreign policy thinkers say that foreign policy starts at home. So what drives U.S. policy today? Domestic division is a major theme throughout U.S. history. But in the 21st Century, politics has evolved from two-party competition to intransigent bipolar confrontation. A zero-sum trench war inexorably sucks in resources and emotional energy. As one business […]
There are two aspects of the theory of just war, jus ad bellum, or the justice of any given war, and jus in bello, referring to just conduct in the waging of war. There may be an overlooked analogy for American diplomacy. In the late 1990s I heard a Brazilian ambassador address an American lunch […]
To many Americans, foreign policy discourse comes in broad themes punctuated by very specific issues. China policy may well form the largest of those themes, and reasonably so. China could pose a threat to displace America’s international system, arguably the only one. News and commentary focus heavily on China’s actions and their rulers’ intent: whether […]
Not long before President-elect Biden started naming his cabinet, two sets of recommendations to reform the Department of State were published, one from the Council on Foreign Relations, one from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School. The Economist noted their rich menu of proposals. Secretary of State – designate Blinken will do well to implement a […]
Once the Kremlin is persuaded that Joe Biden will become the US’s next president, it may go for the jugular. Already today, not election manipulation, but triggering civil conflicts in the United States could be the main aim of Moscow’s mingling in American domestic affairs.
In 2016, the United States faced a wide range of serious foreign policy questions. The United States had not readjusted key frameworks for ten or twenty years or more. Candidate Trump used populist rhetoric, pledging to “build a wall” to restrict immigration and to “drain the swamp” of Washington’s elite, globalist ecosystem. Claiming to be […]
The unusual news that Taiwan’s legislature passed a bipartisan bill asking the foreign ministry to seek formal relations with the US puts a clear point on the latest round of China-Taiwan tensions. It also puts a distinct strain on the old US approach of “strategic ambiguity” around Taiwan. Regardless of the outcome of […]
“Korean Dream” stories of first-generation Vietnamese policewomen reveal that South Korea is indeed a mature democracy that cherishes multiculturalism and aims to protect the most vulnerable ethnic minorities. In South Korea, multiculturalism is not merely a symbolic recognition of the resource-abundant and high-status middle class immigrants’ bourgeois glory. Its “true guardians” defend it by realistically […]
ASEAN(Association of Southeast Asian Nations)’s long-term susceptibility to the multidimensional Thucydides Trap between Washington and Beijing has turned the region into a theater of (soft power) competition between the two superpowers. Reflecting the many-faceted volatility of the region’s geostrategic landscape, the fundamentals of the U.S.’ strategic approach to ASEAN should gravitate more towards cultural initiatives […]
