North America Archive

As the Republican candidates in the presidential race work to define themselves and stand out from the crowded competition for the party nomination, many claim to be the heir of GOP icon Ronald Reagan. This makes sense given Reagan’s enduring popularity. This is particularly true for national security policy, where Reagan is considered a great success who revived American influence and paved the way for the end of the Cold War. But while claiming Reagan’s mantle, none of the candidates seem interested in actually emulating his strategy. One of the keys to Reagan’s success was lavishing resources on the U.S. […]

Last week marked the formal implementation of the agreement signed last summer by Iran and the international community to roll back Tehran’s nuclear program. Although the news did not create as much of a fuss as the actual signing of the agreement in July, in the larger context of international relations, it’s still a pretty big deal. The agreement is a critical step forward for nuclear nonproliferation efforts and for the upholding of global norms and the will of the international community. It’s a victory for the notion that intractable international issues can be resolved via diplomacy and negotiations, rather […]

Paul Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is none too impressed with President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail gun violence in America by tightening purchasing requirements through executive order. In an interview with Katie Couric of Yahoo News, Ryan complained that “a week [when] we . . . talk about gun control is a week we’re not talking about our failure to confront [the self-described Islamic State] fully, the failure to take care of the threat that’s on our doorstep.” To call the Islamic State, rather than guns, “the threat that’s on our doorstep” is rather extraordinary, […]

Wherever you look these days, unhappy regional powers and even some weak states are demonstrating a startling degree of contempt for the supposed masters of the international system. In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have precipitated a crisis with Iran that threatens to wreck the U.S. opening to Tehran, while North Korea has infuriated China with its so-called hydrogen bomb test. In Africa, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, once a darling of aid donors, has declared that he will run for a third term in office, having already revised the country’s constitution to eliminate its erstwhile […]

For decades, American security strategy in the Persian Gulf has been built on a partnership with Saudi Arabia. But despite this relationship’s importance, it was always peculiar and tense, pairing a democratic global power with a secular approach to foreign policy on one hand with a stridently conservative authoritarian regime on the other. Given the Saudi regime’s internal repression and international support for a brand of Islam that sometimes provides an ideological gateway to violent extremism, few Americans felt any affinity for the desert kingdom. The relationship was seen as unpleasant but necessary to stabilize global oil prices and prevent […]

For a presidential lame duck, Barack Obama had a pretty good year in 2015, and nowhere more so than on foreign policy. The historic, multilateral deal with Iran to limit and ensure transparent oversight of its nuclear fuel enrichment program was the president’s highpoint, the culmination of a six-year strategy to isolate Iran, diplomatically and economically, and force the country to the table to negotiate. The agreement provides a huge boost to global nonproliferation efforts and represents the realization of Obama’s oft-stated goal to dramatically reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. The Iran nuclear agreement, however, may in time be […]