How much danger does this pose to us? Ukrainians’ courage and conviction constantly amazes Americans watching the awful news from that nation. We should take their inspiration to heart. Not only will watching become more painful, but we will feel our own repercussions. Some are scarier, and closer to reality, than we might think. […]
The stark choice facing the Ukrainian leadership is even bleaker than many in the West might recognize. The alternative is not only and not so much between a self-sacrificing war, on the one side, and denigrating peace-deal with Russia, on the other. Instead, Kyiv’s possible partial satisfaction of Moscow’s appetite entails secondary domestic and foreign dangers that could turn out to be, in their sum, larger than the hazards of a new armed escalation today.
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 […]
Here comes a senior American commentator working at a leading Washington think-tank, publishing in one of the most influential US political magazines, and repeating exactly those talking points that the Kremlin has been spreading to justify its thinly veiled hybrid war against Ukraine for seven years now. This not enough, Carpenter uses the Kremlin’s favorite narratives to unapologetically call for an end of US support for Ukraine. What more could Moscow hope for?
Prominently written on history’s ‘gate of shame’ are these haunting words: Hubris never had a worse enemy than itself; you may ask these specialists: Hitler, Pharaoh, or perhaps Lucifer. So, the extreme arrogance and the above-all-laws attitude expressed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his apartheid regime committed war crimes and crimes against humanity […]
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 […]
It has been 60 years since the Italian Somaliland and the British Somaliland became independent from their respective colonial powers to form a union that miserably failed 30 years later. After a long ever-morphing saga of blood, destruction, and loss of identity Soomaalinimo (Somaliness), these two political entities, legally known as Somalia, have just concluded […]
The ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong put the question directly to Americans: just how important is freedom to us? There can be no mistake that the demonstrators aim for democratic rule, that they have reason to expect it, and that China denies it to them. The formal structure of the Hong Kong government, […]
Naturally broken nations like Somalia that require intervention from the international community require a safe area where diplomats and other officials representing key governments and organizations could be hosted. Hence Somalia’s heavily guarded “Green Zone”, or Halane as it is commonly known. As a compound dominated by African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) soldiers, mostly […]
We have not yet begun to fight! The Trump Administration’s August 5 designation of China as a currency manipulator marks a new crossing of policy lanes in US-China relations. In the many facets of that relationship and the rising tension between the two, America needs a clear understanding of our objectives and priorities. Followers of […]
The U.S. must engage in more long-term, strategic thinking in order to compete effectively in the new great power competition with both China and Russia.
Despite the 18,000faithful who gathered recently in Washington, D.C. to pledge their unwavering support to Israel, AIPAC finds itself in a Dickensian moment of history that could be described as ‘It was the winter of gloating; it was the spring of scrutiny’. AIPAC’s guests of honor may vary in faith and political affiliation; they may […]
What Exactly Does It Stand For? Foreign policy, a nation’s collective conduct, best attains its interests if it correlates means to ends. To make the correlation, even to know its ends, a nation needs to know its identity. Attaining this knowledge raises great complexities. On May 8, a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on […]
On April 18, Foreign Affairs released an article by former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, or “P”, William Burns, on how to save the Department of State. That evening, the Foreign Policy Association hosted a lecture by his predecessor as “P”, Nicholas Burns entitled “The State of the Department of State.” The Burnses are unrelated except by […]
