U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

It is time to start making serious plans to reconstruct U.S. diplomacy once the Trump era ends. The U.S. president has only been in office for six months. If he can shake off the specter of impeachment, Donald Trump will direct American foreign policy until 2021 or 2025. But it is now utterly clear that he will leave the international system, at the very best, in disarray. The only really intriguing question about his remaining time in the White House is whether or not the U.S. will enter into a major war due to his miscalculations. If Trump has followed […]

Late last month, the Trump administration approved its first package of arms sales to Taiwan. For Taipei, this welcome news was long overdue, but not nearly enough to stop its slide toward international isolation. Taiwan recently lost Panama, one of its few remaining diplomatic allies, to China, when the Panamanian government severed its diplomatic ties to Taipei and officially recognized Beijing instead. The tiny African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe made the same decision in late December. Other countries are likely to follow Panama, as China continues to woo Taiwan’s remaining friends with economic incentives. China still views […]

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos traveled to Havana this month for a visit that regional outlets described as focused on economic cooperation. In addition, Santos again thanked Cuban President Raul Castro for having hosted the talks that led to a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In an email interview, Adam Isacson, a senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, explains how the talks led to warmer ties between Bogota and Havana, and how this could pose trouble for U.S.-Colombia relations given the Trump administration’s Cuba policy. WPR: Historically, what […]

For many of the United States’ friends and allies, the Trump administration’s foreign policy has been the source of confusion and anxiety. Nowhere is that sentiment more acute than in Eastern Europe, the region that endured decades of Soviet domination and strived since the end of the Cold War to come under the West’s protective umbrella. It is there, in the territories closest to Russia, where President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform Washington’s relationship with Moscow is most worrisome, particularly during a time when Russia is flexing its military muscle beyond its borders with increasing brazenness. In an effort to […]

Relations between the United States and Turkey are continuing down a turbulent path. In the most recent incident, on July 18, Turkey’s state news agency, Anadolu, published in both Turkish and English sensitive information about the U.S. military footprint in northern Syria. Anadolu’s report included the troop levels and precise locations of 10 American military bases stretching across the Kurdish-controlled regions of Syria. Although the news agency claims the information was discovered through regular reporting by its journalists in Syria, Washington clearly believes the Turkish government was behind the leak. “We would be very concerned if officials from a NATO […]

At the end of 2015, South American political and economic prospects were promising. Just 18 months later and the situation has been upended, leaving a region whose future is not nearly as bright as it once appeared to be. SANTIAGO, Chile—Imagine an Obama administration official looking out at the world from the vantage point of December 2015. The Middle East is engulfed in bloody conflict and crackdowns on domestic dissent. Africa is muddling through a humbling correction to the “success story” narrative that had been used to portray the continent’s preceding decade of dynamic growth and democratic progress. Asia is […]

Tunisia is a paradox. It is the Arab Spring’s one fragile success story, still committed to a democratic path. It is also the largest recruiting ground for Islamist terrorist groups, revealing deep fault lines in the country’s efforts to provide its citizens with more political and economic opportunity. The Trump administration is currently sending mixed signals in terms of its approach to the country, highlighting the key role Congress can play in ensuring a balanced and productive policy. Tunisia—small, relatively homogeneous and endowed with strong human development indicators rather than natural resources—is the last Arab Spring country standing. It has […]

If you want a catchphrase to summarize the Trump administration’s first six months of dealing with the United Nations, the best option is probably, “It could be a lot worse.” U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently attacked the U.N. since taking office. The president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord at the start of June marked a major escalation in his offensive on multilateralism. Yet Turtle Bay is not in ruins, in part because, on a day-to-day basis, the U.S. is a more flexible player at the U.N. than its leader’s rhetoric suggests. American diplomats have taken […]

With less than two weeks left before Venezuelans vote on a constitution-drafting constituent assembly, the Trump administration jumped into the fray, threatening to impose economic sanctions if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro moves to rewrite the constitution to his liking. With that, Washington took a step down a path filled with landmines. The Trump administration is not wrong to exert pressure on the increasingly undemocratic Venezuelan regime. The Venezuelan people deserve international support. But in seeking to influence events in Venezuela, Washington should maneuver very carefully. The key to successful outside support is preventing Maduro from successfully framing this conflict as […]

Over the past 25 years, three explanatory models of the future of international relations have emerged to dominate how American foreign policy analysts see the post-Cold War world. All have been influential in debates over that time, serving as prisms that helped simplify the complexity of the world’s great challenges to make them more manageable. But if some of their conclusions and predictions have been borne out, important aspects of all of them have been debunked by events. Now we find ourselves in a hybrid world that has visible traits of all of these models, but bears little resemblance to […]

Who would you nominate as the most consequential figure in international diplomacy in 2017 so far? There are quite a few credible candidates. Donald “Slayer” Trump has made quite an impact since becoming U.S. president in January. German Chancellor Angela “Status Quo” Merkel still weighs in as the most serious defender of liberal internationalism. Her French counterpart, Emmanuel “Daft Punk” Macron, sure has the makings of a global superstar. Yet there is an argument that the most influential diplomat this year has actually been an old-time favorite who has ostensibly left the geopolitical stage: Barack Obama. Since ceding the White […]

Earlier this week Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared Mosul freed from the forces of the self-styled Islamic State, the result of the longest and most destructive urban battle of the 21st century. Elsewhere in Iraq, the Islamic State is close to losing most of the territory it once controlled. Across the border in Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are driving the group out of its stronghold in Raqqa. Soon it may lose Deir Ezzor, the last urban center it controls. While this is all good news, the Islamic State is far from eradicated. Many of its foreign fighters […]

The challenge of writing about U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era is twofold. First, the United States does not have a foreign policy per se in the Trump era. Rather, it has a disparate collection of poorly coordinated and at times contradictory channels of communication and engagement with the world, some run through the White House, others by Cabinet officials and still others by faceless bureaucrats who are either improvising around the margins or working the clean-up crew. Looming over them all is the tragicomic figure of President Donald Trump himself, whose declarations, we are told, have little bearing […]

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been doing real diplomacy lately, from the G-20 summit to his personal mediation mission to the Persian Gulf. At the same time, there’s progress to report on his ambitious project to transform the State Department into a more focused and efficient institution. After a rocky start that saw him either sidelined by the White House or out of step with it on major issues, Tillerson has been looking more and more like a normal secretary of state in recent days. At the G-20 summit and the high-profile bilateral meetings that took place in […]

Earlier this week North Korea tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile. While Pyongyang already has an extensive arsenal of medium-range missiles, most experts believed it would be several more years before it could field a weapon that could hit the United States. They were wrong. While the missile launch did not alter the essence of the U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis, it did add urgency. Now Americans must relearn the lexicon of nuclear strategy they largely forgot after the end of the Cold War and use it to understand North Korea’s intentions and objectives. Of the two adversaries, North Korea has […]