United States Archive

The war in Ukraine might be distant from the African continent, but its effects are proving to be far-reaching. From skyrocketing fuel prices to disruptions in food supply chains, Africans are feeling the real-life consequences of a conflict many of them regard as peripheral to their concerns and believe has little to do with them. But in addition to exacerbating the myriad difficulties African populations are grappling with, the war is also threatening to hobble the international collaborations their governments are trying to develop to address those challenges. That dynamic was on display at last week’s eighth annual high-level dialogue between the […]

Almost exactly 75 years ago, on March 12, 1947, then-President Harry S. Truman, alarmed by Soviet aggression in the Eastern Mediterranean and its efforts to undermine war-ravaged democracies in Western Europe, announced a dramatic reorientation of the United States’ national security policy. Addressing a joint session of Congress, he committed the U.S. to a new global mission to contain the Soviet Union by “support[ing] free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” The speech set off a 15-week frenzy of diplomatic activity that culminated on June 5 with the proposal of the Marshall Plan. This new grand strategy—now known as […]

In the 1980s, when Afghanistan was embroiled in a war between Soviet forces propping up a client government in Kabul and the CIA-assisted mujahedeen insurgency, the country became a hotbed of global jihadism, as radical Islamist fighters, most infamously Osama Bin Laden, flocked there to wage armed struggle against the communists. Several billions of dollars worth of covert U.S military assistance went to training and arming the Islamist guerilla fighters, including with Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which greatly hampered Soviet air power. What the U.S government couldn’t know at the time was how the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan would go […]

One of my greatest regrets in life is that I never got to meet Paul Farmer. The closest I came was in 2015, when Grinnell College, my alma mater in Iowa, invited me to participate in a symposium on global health at which Farmer was to be the keynote speaker. Unfortunately, my presentation was scheduled a week before Farmer’s, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t wait for a week among the cornfields to see him. A physician and anthropologist who co-founded the global health and social justice organization Partners in Health, or PIH, Farmer died unexpectedly on Feb. 21 in Butaro, Rwanda. He […]

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India—which is currently a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council—has drawn scrutiny for having abstained multiple times on votes in the Security Council, U.N. General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Council on resolutions criticizing the Russian aggression. Instead, the Indian Mission at the United Nations issued a nuanced statement calling for an “immediate cessation of violence” in Ukraine, without publicly condemning Russia’s actions—a move that pleased neither its Western partners nor Russia. The Russian-Ukraine war puts India in a difficult position. On the one hand, India wants to avoid antagonizing the U.S., a long-time […]

Russia has a long history of using disinformation and propaganda to advance its interests, and the war in Ukraine is no exception. Washington has so far reacted effectively, but the next phase of the conflict will bring new challenges, and the U.S. government and U.S. technology companies will need to push back on Russian tactics in ways that affirm democratic principles. For months preceding the invasion, the Kremlin deployed a concerted propaganda campaign designed to lay the groundwork for justifying it. This campaign included a deliberate effort to cast Ukrainians as Nazis and the perpetrators of genocide against Russian speakers […]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought some clarity to regional realignments and strategic partnerships in the Middle East, with the changing relationship between the United States and the oil-producing members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular coming into sharp focus. War has a tendency to cause states to pay closer attention to and accelerate policy decisions on issues that they might otherwise prefer to defer action on or to leave ambiguous or unresolved. But after more than a week of fighting in Ukraine, one thing has become clear: Washington’s partners in the Middle East are increasingly confident about […]

Just three months into 2022, North Korea has already engaged in an intensive series of missile tests, including two more last week, that have advanced the country’s development of hypersonic glide vehicles, a rail-based missile regiment, cruise missiles and even missile technology claimed to be related to reconnaissance satellite development. This pace of testing, reminiscent of 2017, raises questions about the country’s motivations and messaging. Some observers have suggested that North Korea simply wants attention or is attempting to raise the stakes ahead of a new “charm offensive” toward the United States. But the broader security context in which this […]

While the world remains fixated on the horrific human and political consequences of the conflict in Ukraine, there has been an undercurrent of discourse comparing the extreme attention to this conflict to the intermittent and waning interest over the past few years in civilian suffering and acts of aggression in places like Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia or Somalia. More could and should have been done in those other conflicts. But there are significant reasons for acute attention to the Ukraine crisis, which might be seen as a war within a larger war—and one that is sure to have ripple effects […]

Just over a week since it began, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resembles a tale of two wars. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the past week can hardly have been reassuring. Between the poor performance of the Russian military on the ground and the existential shock of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, it seems to be proof that he suffered from a severe case of war optimism. For the West, the story is quite the reverse. Despite the outrage over Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets, the surprisingly tenacious fight put up by Ukraine’s outgunned military has become a cause […]

The early results are in and could hardly be clearer: The much-dreaded Russian version of a shock-and-awe campaign to subdue Ukraine has failed. No one knows exactly what will happen next, but the Ukrainian people have just offered a robust rebuttal to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that they are not members of a real nation. As the entire world has now seen from the first days of the conflict, their patriotism and valor in standing up to a far larger and better-armed Russian adversary caused the invaders to bog down and lose momentum. Most observers, not least Putin himself, […]

The United States is currently faced with multiple international crises that are occupying much of Washington’s attention, but it should not lose sight of events in Sudan. Since last October’s military coup, millions of people across the country have taken to the streets week after week to show their determination to get Sudan back on the path toward democracy. The U.S. reacted swiftly after the military takeover with words of support for a return to civilian rule and blocks on bilateral aid to the coup regime. But these necessary steps have not changed the calculations of Sudan’s military leaders, and the country […]

Almost 6,500 miles separate Caracas from Kyiv, but the protracted political crisis in Venezuela, with its attendant humanitarian emergency, is not immune to spillover from the war in Ukraine. As if Venezuela’s challenges were not already sufficiently hard to resolve, the progressive build-up of geopolitical tensions over recent years has produced a fresh layer of complexity, highlighted as never before by Moscow’s threat to expand its presence in the Americas in retaliation for NATO moves in Europe. But can foreign powers, despite their deepening adversarial stance elsewhere, somehow harness their efforts to facilitate a solution in Venezuela? In January, as […]

Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last week, comparisons to the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq have inevitably and understandably emerged. After all, at transformative moments in world history like the one we’re currently witnessing, analysts naturally draw historical analogies to make sense of contemporary events, mining the past in search of patterns and causal connections that bear some resemblance to what is unfolding today. And while no two situations are ever exactly alike, the comparison to Iraq in 2003 is particularly important, since it has considerable bearing on whether and how the United […]

“We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war … do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.” These words, from the preamble of the United Nations’ founding charter, capture the ambition, far-sightedness and optimism of the leaders who founded the organization in 1945. But today, they ring a little hollow. On Feb. 24, after years of tension and months of anxiety, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With social media users sharing an almost blow-by-blow account of the conflict online, the world has looked on in horror as […]