U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

Editor’s note: This will be the final appearance of Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “The New Rules” column at World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tom for the insightful, compelling analysis he has offered WPR readers each week for the past three years, as well as for the support he has shown for WPR over that time. We wish him continued success. Amid all our current fears regarding the global economy’s potential “double dip” back into deep recession, a longer-term question stands out: How can a supposedly declining America protect the golden goose that is globalization while […]

As U.S. President Barack Obama vies for a second term in office and Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin struggles to reassert his authority at the outset of his third, the so-called Magnitsky bill currently under debate in the U.S. Congress could define U.S.-Russia relations for the next decade. Simply put, if and when the Magnitsky bill passes, Obama will have to sign it. To do otherwise would be electoral suicide. Similarly, Putin and the Russian elite will have to respond in kind. To do otherwise risks their continued authority, which for many members of the Russian elite could amount to actual […]

With the world’s eyes again focused on Bahrain thanks to both a high-profile motor sports event as well as continued political strife, last week would have been a tough one in which to declare one’s support for the ruling regime. Yet that is exactly what Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations did, earning him much derision on blogs and social networking sites. On Twitter, Husain first praised Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid al-Khalifa, as “visionary” and then disparaged what he referred to in scare quotes as the “opposition,” as if the Shiite Bahrainis who have been protesting for greater […]

Earlier this month, the U.S. Army War College’s annual Strategy Conference sought to analyze how the U.S. military needs to adapt to an era of constrained resources and a changing global security environment, which includes the Arab Spring, the U.S. shift toward the Pacific, the effect of cyber warfare and the protracted global economic crisis. Titled the “Future of U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Austerity: Challenges and Opportunities,” the conference comes at a time when the U.S. is undertaking its fourth post-World War II defense drawdown, along the lines of those that occurred following the Korean War, the […]

U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere has suffered a series of setbacks over the past month. The first, the Washington summit earlier this month between Presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, was simply lackluster. The second, last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, was an outright fiasco. Instead of laying out a common agenda for the hemisphere and rebuilding America’s leadership role in the region, the U.S. found itself isolated in a diplomatic corner over Cuba, to say nothing of the Secret Service prostitution scandal that soon overshadowed the proceedings. More generally, Obama’s Latin America policy […]

China’s astounding record of economic growth is shifting the global balance of power and, as a result, creating a new international environment in which Beijing faces enormous pressure from the West to play a constructive role on the world stage. Often, the U.S. and China stand on opposite sides of disputes involving third nations, prompting a curious diplomatic dance — one that will become a more prominent feature of international diplomacy in the years to come. Once an impoverished, inward-facing country, China has become a major trading partner to nations across the globe and a key force in world affairs, […]

International relations experts are pretty much down on everything nowadays. America, we are told, is incapable of global leadership: too discredited overseas, too few resources back home, too little will — period. For a brief moment there, while China held up the global economy during the recent financial crisis, much credence was given to the notion that we were on the verge of a Chinese century. But that popular vision has also waned surprisingly quickly, and now the conventional wisdom centers on China’s great weaknesses, challenges and overall brittleness. Amazingly, where we spoke of a U.S.-China “G-2” arrangement just a […]

The debate over whether or not the United States is in decline is more than just a parlor game among pundits and academics, as the answer to that question informs starkly different policy choices for the country. For significant portions of the anti-interventionist left and right — the latter represented by the small but vocal constituency of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul — a United States that is in decline ought to cut back on its engagements abroad and avoid playing the role of the world’s policeman, and instead focus on rebuilding America’s domestic institutions, particularly its economy. While […]

CARTAGENA, Colombia — The Organization of American States prides itself on being the world’s oldest regional organization. Yet, as its members prepare for the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, its relevance in today’s world, especially amid Latin America’s recent wave of regionalism, will be called into question. The OAS remains the best-organized and most inclusive body in the Western Hemisphere, and apart from bilateral relationships, it is considered the prominent link between the United States and Latin America. Nevertheless, the region’s increasingly diversified global engagement and a growing sense of autonomy among Latin American nations […]

Writing in Foreign Affairs this month, Henry Kissinger opined that, when it comes to the future of Sino-American relations, “conflict is a choice, not a necessity.” Those are some serious words from one of history’s all-time realists, but more important than his analysis is the fact that he even felt the need to issue that public statement regarding these two ultimately codependent superpowers. A trusted part-time adviser to President Barack Obama, Kissinger knows he has the president’s ear on China, the target of this administration’s recently announced strategic military “pivot” toward East Asia. The codependency at work here isn’t the […]

One of the principal challenges for U.S. policy toward Russia is the desire to balance the promotion of human rights with other American interests, such as security and trade. Advancing these pragmatic interests is often assumed to require shelving human rights issues. This problem is at the center of the so-called Magnitsky Act, which will come before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee later this month. This bill, however, takes a misguided approach to striking this balance, addressing an individual case rather than underlying problems, and creating confrontation where none need exist. The act seeks to punish those Russian officials responsible […]

Mitt Romney’s recently described Russia as the “No. 1 geopolitical foe” of the United States, arguing that Moscow consistently “lines up” with America’s adversaries. But does the claim stand up to closer scrutiny? After all, Moscow has not extended material and financial support to the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguably the greatest challenges to the United States, even though there are ample geopolitical justifications to try and bog Washington down in multiple Middle Eastern quagmires, thereby deflecting American attention from Eurasia. Nor does Russia reflexively block any and all U.S. priorities, as the Soviet Union routinely did during the […]

Since at least 2003, Americans have overestimated our influence in Iraq. Although the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime paved the way for both a bloody civil war and a new form of government, the key actors in Iraq were and remain the Iraqi people themselves. Most recently, GOP critics of the Obama administration have been quick to fault the White House for withdrawing U.S. troops at the end of 2011. But the incessant, myopic focus of many Republicans on America’s military means is wrong-headed and ignores where the administration has actually fallen short in Iraq. The […]

The civil war in Syria is now more than a year old, with estimates putting the civilian death toll at the hands of the Syrian army at 9,000 people in the past 13 months. As the slaughter continues, President Barack Obama has offered little more than promises of nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition and intonations about establishing “a process” to transition to a “legitimate government.” Inaction in the face of such butchery is easy to criticize, of course, and America cannot intervene everywhere. Nonetheless, Obama’s inaction in the face of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutality is especially glaring in […]

Given this administration’s resurging plans for regional missile defense schemes in both Europe and Asia, President Barack Obama’s recent open-mike admission to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have more freedom in his national security decision-making once he wins re-election is not a comforting thought. For a guy who promises “a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama seems awfully intent on incentivizing both Russia and China to field some more. With regard to Europe, America’s case for even limited missile defense is weak. We are told it is all about Iran and has nothing to do with Russia. But if […]