Global Archive

If you want to predict the future of international cooperation, you shouldn’t focus on multilateral hubs like New York and Geneva over the next two weeks. Instead, concentrate on Florida, Texas and Missouri. These are some of the states up for grabs in next week’s U.S. midterm elections. The polls could further reshape American and non-American policymakers’ visions of the future of the global system. The U.S. Congress is one of the most significant players in multilateral affairs, for the simple reason that it signs off on an enormous chunk of international organizations’ budgets. Congress approved roughly $9 billion of […]

International NGOs can promote global policies that have far-reaching benefits. But will a growing political backlash limit their effectiveness? Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are an essential feature of global governance, participating in international summits and institutions as stakeholders and watchdogs. Yet, as fashionable as it is to assert the importance of these organizations in world politics, there isn’t anything new about the influence of NGOs. The International Committee of the Red Cross lobbied major governments to adopt the first Geneva Convention in 1864, leading to the development of international humanitarian law. And contrary to popular belief, the origins of the Internet […]

The political space for dialogue between Russia and the West has shrunk severely in recent years. It narrowed even further last week, with potentially disastrous consequences. United Nations officials signaled that the chances of a deal to end the Syrian war are lower than ever. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that there will be no progress toward ending the Ukrainian conflict until next year at the earliest. And Putin’s American counterpart, Donald Trump, announced that the U.S. will quit a crucial nuclear arms control agreement with Moscow. Any one of these developments would have been worrying in isolation. Combined, they […]

Explore how the global refugee crisis has transformed and continues to transform Europe. Download your FREE copy of The European Refugee Crisis: Current Policy Failures and Potential Solutions today. In the wake of the largest European refugee crisis since World War II, the influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East have had a profound impact across the EU, closing minds and borders. So far, the EU’s refugee policy has undermined norms and the EU itself. Tragically, its approach appears doomed to fail, as it ignores the push factors driving people to make the trip. Download The European Refugee […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Sarah Kreps is filling in for Steven Metz, who is out this week. In a speech last month on threats to the United States “in an age of disruption,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen outlined the top five areas of concern in the so-called threat landscape. Some were familiar, some new. But one in particular stood out. First, the “home game” and “away game,” as she put it, are no longer distinct. Enemies are not limited by geography in a borderless world, and the U.S. can no longer assume that fighting enemies “over there” means not […]

The World Trade Organization’s woes began long before Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s president, and many countries are to blame. The latest round of global trade negotiations has been stalled for a decade and there is still no clear way out of the impasse. India insists on resolving long-standing problems, such as trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, before the WTO can begin to negotiate any new issues. China has no interest in taking a leading role on many pressing issues, such as regulations on state-owned enterprises, which might impinge on its industrial policies. Both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump undermined […]

Will the next American ambassador to the United Nations know anything about Africa? The U.N. is embroiled in crises from the Middle East to North Korea. But roughly half of the Security Council’s resolutions and statements focus on African issues, and 80 percent of U.N. peacekeepers are deployed on the continent. Any ambassador to the U.N. should, therefore, have at least a passing interest in Africa. Both of the Obama administration’s representatives in New York, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, were established authorities on African affairs. Rice devoted a good part of her time at the U.N. to facilitating South […]

Was Donald Trump nasty or nice at the United Nations last week? The answer may depend on whether you listened to his comments from Beijing or Tehran. Diplomatic observers expected the American president to look tough at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Many predicted that he would strike an especially aggressive tone toward Iran. He didn’t disappoint them, using his U.N. appearance to celebrate his withdrawal from the “horrible” Iranian nuclear deal and attack Tehran’s “agenda of aggression and expansion” in the Middle East. Yet there was something formulaic about his rhetoric, and he made no startlingly […]