U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

In the run-up to NATO’s heads of state summit later this month in Lisbon, much of the discussion has focused on questions of the alliance’s relevance and identity, with particular attention paid to the alliance’s new Strategic Concept to be rolled out in Lisbon. But a more practical issue that will be discussed at the summit is whether to make comprehensive ballistic missile defense (BMD) an alliance-wide mission. Despite a lack of enthusiasm in Turkey and continuing discontent in Russia and perhaps some other non-NATO countries, NATO governments generally support the Obama administration’s phased adaptive approach to European missile defense. […]

For all their inflamed partisan passions and heated rhetoric, the 2010 midterm elections were conducted in a virtual foreign policy vacuum. In stark contrast to every election since 2002, national security played almost no role in either the Republican or Democratic national campaigns, with both parties preferring to argue about domestic issues such as the economy, unemployment, and government spending. The Republicans won soundly, taking control of the House of Representatives, and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate. But the domestic focus of this election means the new Republican representatives and senators will come to power with a fundamentally […]

Before President Barack Obama embarked on his 10-day Asian trip, his longest overseas visit since taking office, he highlighted the tour’s economic objectives. But given that government leaders generally exert more control over political-military decisions than over economic trends, the strategic goals of Obama’s trip are perhaps more important and certainly worth examining. Obama has already completed the first and longest leg of his trip in India. Some Indian leaders who place great stock on status and symbolism grumble that despite enthusiastic rhetoric, the Obama White House has effectively downgraded the U.S.-Indian partnership compared to his predecessor. Unlike the Bush […]

South Korea is set to host the G-20 leaders’ summit in Seoul on Thursday and Friday, the fifth such gathering since the onset of the global financial crisis. While past summits have focused on coordinated stimulus, global financial regulation and reform of the major international financial institutions, this week’s meeting is gearing up to be known as the “trade and currency summit.” It is also likely to be more tense and contentious than any of its predecessors, whether leaders admit it publicly or not. This is especially true when it comes to the ongoing economic prize-fight between the G-20’s two […]

Judging from the accounts of virtually every pundit, the Chinese emerged as the foreign threat of choice in the just-concluded U.S. elections, with the breakthrough “Chinese Professor” ad being compared by the always-calm James Fallows to such incendiary hall-of-famers as “Daisy Girl” (1964) and “Willie Horton” (1988). I’m with Fallows: The exceedingly clever ad represents a crystallizing moment in our increasingly contentious relationship with China, elevating the Chinese far beyond Iran’s mullahs and Osama Bin Laden as the pre-eminent fear-driven threat dynamic motivating calls to get our house in order. The ad portrays a high-tech college lecture hall in Beijing, […]

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Barack Obama again sounded the theme of bipartisan cooperation, speaking of the need to find “common ground” and calling on both Democrats and Republicans to unite around solving the country’s pressing challenges. In theory, bipartisanship is a golden rule when it comes to foreign policy, where politics is supposed to stop at the water’s edge. That notion was first articulated by a Republican, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who at the outset of the Cold War, under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman, argued that America’s position in the world would be weakened […]