U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Supporting Syria and the Region conference, London, Feb. 4, 2016 (U.N. photo Eskinder Debebe).

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, Ellen Laipson, president emeritus of the Stimson Center and a WPR weekly columnist, joins host Peter Dörrie for a discussion on current trends in the international system, including the changing roles of the United Nations, regional powers and the United States in crisis management and conflict resolution. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant WPR articles: For Gulf States, Forging National Identity Trumps Regional Integration In War Against the Islamic State, U.S. Values Must Not Be a Casualty U.N. Peacemakers Wind Up Tough Year With a Flurry of Progress Can Regional Powers Mediate the […]

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats, Washington, Feb. 9, 2016 (AP photo by Bill Clark).

On Feb. 7, much of America tuned in to watch the national sporting event of the year, the Super Bowl. Two days later, the country was treated to a different kind of annual ritual, what can be thought of as the Super Bowl of threat-mongering. Every year, in January or February, the nation’s top intelligence officials venture to Capitol Hill to brief Congress on the intelligence community’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment. And while the Super Bowl is a parade of expensive commercials, over-the-top musical performances and occasionally riveting football, the worldwide threat assessment is a procession of hyped-up threats, scary […]

U.S. President Barack Obama at the U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders summit, Rancho Mirage, Calif., Feb. 16, 2016 (AP photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais).

The growing closeness between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sends some very mixed messages. The California venue for last week’s first-ever U.S.-hosted summit with ASEAN heads of state—the Sunnylands Resort at Rancho Mirage—seemed to illustrate the essential confusion: Is the relationship bright and hopeful, or just illusory? Prior to the summit, U.S. State Department officials were at pains to declare that it was “not about China,” which became more difficult to maintain with the revelation, late in the summit’s proceedings, that Beijing had placed surface-to-air missiles on an island in the South China Sea. […]

Pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad at a checkpoint to the Hamidiyeh market, Damascus, Syria, Feb. 21, 2016 (AP photo by Hassan Ammar).

With Russian-backed Syrian forces close to encircling Aleppo, thereby cutting off supply lines for the rebels holding the key city, the Syrian civil war seems to have entered a new phase. Russia’s intervention has clearly reversed the course of the conflict, dimming prospects for meaningful compromise by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s newly ascendant regime in peace talks to end the fighting. Instead, the pro-regime coalition seems to have decided to win the war in western Syria on the ground, with the recently agreed cease-fire simply diplomatic cover for a slow consolidation of territorial control. Since Russia’s intervention last fall, critics […]

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter addresses U.S. troops at the Incirlik Air Base, Adana, Turkey, Dec. 15, 2015 (AP photo).

In the aftermath of the Cold War, two operations became seminal events for America’s armed forces: Operation Desert Storm and the peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia. The military’s leaders saw the war with Iraq as the model for their future, so they institutionalized it in what they called the “revolution in military affairs.” But, in fact, Yugoslavia was the true preview of 21st-century conflict. Now Syria has become Yugoslavia on steroids, the bloody paragon of this century’s wars. As in Yugoslavia, ethnic, sectarian, religious and regional hostility that the national government had long suppressed and kept in check were […]

President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro before a bilateral meeting, United Nations headquarters, New York, Sept. 29, 2015 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).

On Thursday, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will visit Cuba next month, the first trip there by an American president since 1928. Obama will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro and members of civil society, including dissidents who have criticized Cuba’s human rights record. U.S.-Cuba relations began to thaw in December 2014, when Obama and Castro announced the launch of a normalization process that would break decades of hostility. Last April, the Obama administration removed Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism List, and in July, the Cuban flag was raised over the embassy in Washington […]

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman as he is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican soldiers and marines, Mexico City, Mexico, Jan. 8, 2016 (AP photo by Marco Ugarter).

Six months after suffering one of the greatest embarrassments of his term, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto breathed a sigh of relief early last month. “Mission accomplished: we have him,” he announced on Twitter: Drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most wanted man, had been recaptured by Mexican marines in the state of Sinaloa. But the implications of El Chapo’s escape and arrest do not just end at the border. The episode has reinvigorated security cooperation between the United States and Mexico, while shining a light on the partnership’s economic benefits, as well. El Chapo’s brazen July 2015 escape […]

Presidential candidates before the CBS News Republican presidential debate, Feb. 13, 2016, Greenville, S.C. (AP photo by John Bazemore).

An iconic cover illustration of the New Yorker magazine once purported to show the stereotypical Manhattan resident’s view of the world: Looking west from 9th Avenue, half the page consists of a relatively detailed rendering of the city’s buildings and streets leading up to the Hudson River. Beyond that, a small patch of land, featureless but for several cartoonish mountains and place names, passes for America. Faintly visible in the distance beyond the Pacific Ocean are landmasses helpfully labeled as China, Japan and Russia. If one were to draw a similar cartoon illustration to represent how this year’s U.S. presidential […]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a 23-nation conference on fighting the Islamic State in Libya, Rome, Italy, Feb. 2, 2016 (AP photo by Andrew Medichini).

It appears increasingly likely that U.S. military involvement against the self-declared Islamic State’s growing foothold in Libya is a matter not of “if,” but of “when.” Over the past several months, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has taken advantage of the ongoing civil war in Libya and the lack of a central government to expand its operations there. The group now controls the city of Sirte and, according to recent U.S intelligence estimates, has more than 5,000 fighters in the country, some of whom have been sent from Iraq and Syria to provide guidance but also to keep […]

U.S. President Barack Obama after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize from Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009 (AP photo by Susan Walsh).

U.S. President Barack Obama’s commitment to preventing and rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons was clear from the first days of his administration, when he pledged in Prague in April 2009 “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The historic vow shattered precedent, seized international attention and helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize later that year. Yet as he prepares to leave office seven years later, it appears that with the exception of a fledgling nuclear deal with Iran, Obama will leave an arms control legacy that is arguably little better than that […]

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz during a campaign event, Portsmouth, N.H., Feb. 4, 2016, (AP photo by David Goldman).

The 2016 presidential campaign has not yet reached peak intensity, but one thing is already clear: The American public is angry and dissatisfied. As Marc Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post, the big loser in this week’s Iowa caucuses was the political establishment. But although signs of unease in the electorate are stark, it is not yet clear how far this will go. While most of the anger and dissatisfaction focuses on domestic issues, it is also spilling over to national security policy. Support is weakening for the foundational ideas of American strategy that emerged after the 9/11 attacks. As […]

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Charleston, S.C., Jan. 17, 2016 (AP photo by Mic Smith).

It’s sometimes said that in the United States, Democrats are from Venus and Republicans are from Mars. Rarely has that seemed truer than this presidential cycle, an election in which both parties seem to be operating in completely different realities when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Consider the recent polls asking voters of each party what issue is most important to them this election season. According to the most recent NBC poll, a third of GOP voters pick terrorism as their biggest concern. Next is jobs and the economy. A New York Times poll of Republican voters […]

A biometric kiosk at the Otay Mesa port of entry from Mexico into the United States, San Diego, Calif., Dec. 10, 2015 (AP photo by Denis Poroy).

Since November, the U.S. government, with a big assist from Congress, has been narrowing the eligibility for citizens of 38 countries to enter the U.S. without visas. The constant adjustments to the rules say a lot about the U.S. government’s preoccupation with terrorism over other policy interests, its inability to anticipate secondary effects of new policies, and America’s deep ambivalence about dual citizenship. In a rare instance of executive and congressional cooperation, both branches of the U.S. government have been working to prevent any misuse of the established visa-waiver program by terrorists. Congress created the program nearly 30 years ago, […]

The leaders of the five BRICS countries at the 6th BRICS Summit, Fortaleza, Brazil, July 15, 2014 (South Africa GCIS photo, CC BY-ND 2.0).

Assessments of the largest emerging economies—China, India and Brazil—and their global influence have been as volatile as each of their stock markets. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the buoyancy of their economies supported both a global recovery and their status as the rising powers of the 21st century. Now, the boom decade after 2001 seems a distant memory. As China’s economy slows from supercharged to respectable growth and rebalancing curbs its demand for commodities, growth in commodity-producing countries, Brazil among them, has slumped. Even India, which surpassed China’s growth rate for the first time in 2015, […]