U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner make a compelling case for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. The United States, they write, should abandon messianic liberal internationalism for the more realistic goal of an open world. Such a prudent policy has a lot to recommend it. It would also take America back to the future—to the grand strategy that President Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed during World War II. As I argued in my 2009 book “The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War,” it was […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion episode of the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein, managing editor Frederick Deknatel and associate editor Elliot Waldman talk about the challenges facing Sri Lanka in the wake of the Easter bombings and what that attack says about the evolving threat of terrorism. In light of the U.S. decision to stop issuing waivers for major importers of Iranian oil this week, the editors also analyze the Trump administration’s arbitrary and ultimately counterproductive use of sanctions against Iran. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can […]

A decade ago, President Barack Obama came into office promising a different kind of American foreign policy, having been elected on a platform of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, repairing America’s global image, and reviving American diplomacy and even restraint. Americans may have wanted their nation to adjust its global strategy, but for reasons that had more to do with domestic politics than world events, the debate over how to do so devolved into rancor and caricature under Obama. America was headed in the right direction until hyperpartisanship derailed everything, leaving the public convinced that something is wrong […]

History’s judgment of the Trump administration’s foreign policy is likely to be unkind, with the biggest question for now being whether it is the intended or unintended consequences that will warrant the most severe rebuke. There are plenty of examples of how the administration’s approach risks both catastrophic success and catastrophic failure, but its policy on Iran is particularly illustrative. The latest case in point is the announcement Monday that the U.S. would not extend the waivers it had granted to five major importers of Iranian crude after reimposing unilateral sanctions on Iran’s oil sector last year. The countries—China, India, […]

Until Jan. 23, 2017, the United States had a major free trade agreement with Japan and 10 other countries called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP, which had been signed just a few months earlier by President Barack Obama as his signature piece of trade policy. Trump was fulfilling one of his first campaign promises, having railed against the deal for years. At the signing of his Executive Order pulling the U.S. out of the TPP, Trump declared that it was a “great thing for the American worker, what […]

With each successive Earth Day, the scale of the global environmental crisis becomes more disheartening. So too does the collective failure to respond to the planet’s plight. Over the past year, scientists have issued dire warnings about global warming, mass extinction, the extent of plastic pollution and the death of the world’s oceans. Humanity is now deep in the Anthropocene, a new geologic era defined by the human transformation of the natural world, and the lights are blinking red. In a harrowing report last October, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, warned that even a 2 […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion episode of the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein, managing editor Frederick Deknatel and associate editor Elliot Waldman analyze the impact of the Mueller report and how it will affect Trump’s foreign policy agenda. They also discuss why the United States has been unable to mount an effective response to the “active measures” Russia has taken to interfere with U.S. elections. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. […]

During his presidential bid, Donald Trump hammered on about the threat posed to America by the self-styled Islamic State, and how he would defeat it. As an issue, it was perfect for him, since the Islamic State’s sociopathic brutality fueled fear and anger among his core supporters—emotions that candidate Trump was able to harness and use to his benefit. Although the Islamic State emerged from the insurgency in Iraq that was unleashed by the American invasion in 2003, the extremist group grew more powerful during President Barack Obama’s administration, so Trump could wield it as a political weapon against Obama […]

The Trump administration yesterday announced a number of new sanctions and restrictions on dealing with Cuba, including new limits on remittances and nonfamily travel to the island from the United States. In a reversal of more than two decades of U.S. policy, the administration also said it would allow Cuban Americans whose property was seized during the Cuban revolution to sue foreign companies operating on that property. A law passed in 1996 had originally allowed such claims, but that provision in the law had been waived by every president, until now. To understand the implications of this move, WPR spoke […]

U.S. foreign policy has often been likened to an oil tanker. It can shift course, but major changes in direction happen slowly, if ever. This is understandable, after all. America’s global partnerships have in most cases developed over generations, representing institutional investments and deep-rooted national interests. One prominent exception to this rule, however, is now taking place before our very eyes: the U.S. foreign policy consensus on China, which has shifted rapidly over the course of the past few years and continues to move. This change reflects the degree to which the assumptions that long guided Washington’s approach to China […]

Sudan has experienced more change in the past week than in the previous three decades under President Omar al-Bashir, who was deposed in a coup d’état on April 11 following four months of mass protests. Many Sudanese, however, have had little time to savor the euphoria of Bashir’s departure. Their most immediate task is to preserve and protect their revolution from the military leaders they fear will subvert it. Protesters have had some initial success, rejecting the self-appointed head of the new transitional military council, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who was considered unacceptably close to the old regime. […]

The reasons for U.S. involvement in the Middle East are becoming obsolete, but policy and strategy aren’t keeping pace. Find out more with your subscription to World Politics Review (WPR). The security environment in the Middle East may be the most complex on earth, with an intricate, volatile and sometimes shifting mixture of destabilizing forces and hostilities. There are deadly power struggles within and between nations. And behind it all is the Middle East’s massive oil production, on which the global economy depends. The United States first ventured into the Middle East early in the Cold War and has remained […]

In the aftermath of the failed summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi in February, the task of resuscitating talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program has fallen to the man who brokered Trump and Kim’s historic first meeting in June 2018: South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Moon’s willingness to again play the role of mediator is commendable, but he faces an uphill climb. The surprising breakdown of talks in Hanoi revealed nothing if not the extent to which the United States and North Korea misunderstand each other. U.S. negotiators understandably turned […]

Bemoaning the death of the “liberal international order” began as a cottage industry under President Barack Obama. It has gone to scale under President Donald Trump. The reason is obvious: The main threat to an open, rule-bound world order no longer comes from outside, but from within. The American foreign policy establishment is in full grief mode as the Trump administration dismantles the handiwork of its predecessors. Before mourning, though, it makes sense to confirm that the deceased was once actually alive. A year ago in Beijing, I encountered a Chinese scholar of revisionist bent. After several Americans lamented the […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion episode of the Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein, managing editor Frederick Deknatel and associate editor Elliot Waldman look at how Benjamin Netanyahu was able to win a historic fifth term as prime minister of Israel in elections that were held there this week. They assess what Netanyahu’s victory means for Israel’s policies in the region and its relationship with the United States. Other international news items this week that caught the editors’ eyes: Brexit’s delay, Bashir’s ouster in Sudan and South Korean President Moon’s visit to the White House. If you like what […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—In December, nearly 40 men stepped off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-chartered plane onto a humid tarmac on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the capital of their unfamiliar homeland. It was the first time many of them, who were born in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines to parents fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, and who grew up in the United States, had ever set foot in Cambodia. Others fled the country as children, with their only memories of Cambodia being the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. The overwhelming majority of these Cambodian deportees came to […]

In one of his latest displays of undiplomatic impulsiveness, President Donald Trump unexpectedly slammed the closest ally the United States has in Latin America, Colombian President Ivan Duque. The comments startled Duque and much of Colombia, highlighting the risks to politicians everywhere who align their fates too closely with a president like Trump, who is not only unpopular in their own countries, but who also has a penchant for mistreating Washington’s friends. The incident occurred on March 29 when Trump was on a visit to Lake Okeechobee in Florida with a group of Republican officials. Trump alluded to Duque, who […]