Column Archive

Editor’s note: This will be the final appearance of Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “The New Rules” column at World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tom for the insightful, compelling analysis he has offered WPR readers each week for the past three years, as well as for the support he has shown for WPR over that time. We wish him continued success. Amid all our current fears regarding the global economy’s potential “double dip” back into deep recession, a longer-term question stands out: How can a supposedly declining America protect the golden goose that is globalization while […]

Vladimir Putin will be inaugurated to serve a third term as Russia’s president next month. The pomp and circumstance of the Kremlin ceremonies, however, won’t be able to hide the fact that, far from being a triumphal restoration of his rightful role, Putin’s return to the presidency is in fact a tacit admission of failure. Putin and his associates have not yet succeeded in achieving the truest mark of success for any political regime: the ability to pass the system intact to a next generation of leadership. The Putin system continues to depend on Putin personally for it to be […]

In the annals of “strange bedfellow” political encounters, the recent broadcast in which WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange interviewed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stands out as a remarkable episode. After all, who would have expected to see Assange — the master hacker, iconoclastic atheist and publicity-loving poster child for technological assaults on orthodoxy — crossing paths with Nasrallah — the reclusive leader, ancient-garb wearer and head of a theocratic organization based on centuries-old scriptures? On closer examination, however, the debut episode of Assange’s show, “The World Tomorrow,” on the Kremlin-funded RT network, which featured Nasrallah as its first guest, is less […]

With the world’s eyes again focused on Bahrain thanks to both a high-profile motor sports event as well as continued political strife, last week would have been a tough one in which to declare one’s support for the ruling regime. Yet that is exactly what Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations did, earning him much derision on blogs and social networking sites. On Twitter, Husain first praised Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid al-Khalifa, as “visionary” and then disparaged what he referred to in scare quotes as the “opposition,” as if the Shiite Bahrainis who have been protesting for greater […]

Earlier this month, the U.S. Army War College’s annual Strategy Conference sought to analyze how the U.S. military needs to adapt to an era of constrained resources and a changing global security environment, which includes the Arab Spring, the U.S. shift toward the Pacific, the effect of cyber warfare and the protracted global economic crisis. Titled the “Future of U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Austerity: Challenges and Opportunities,” the conference comes at a time when the U.S. is undertaking its fourth post-World War II defense drawdown, along the lines of those that occurred following the Korean War, the […]

There is a popular tendency to characterize globalization as an elite-based conspiracy or as something imposed by greedy outsiders upon unsuspecting native populations, hence the enduring belief in the possibility of its systemic reversal. In truth, the spread of modern globalization reflects a bottom-up demand function, not a top-down supply imposition. People simply crave connectivity — in all its physical and virtual forms — as well as the freedom of choice that it unleashes. This simple truth is worth remembering when we contemplate America’s global role in the decades ahead. Why? Time is most definitely on our side. Given enough […]

U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere has suffered a series of setbacks over the past month. The first, the Washington summit earlier this month between Presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, was simply lackluster. The second, last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, was an outright fiasco. Instead of laying out a common agenda for the hemisphere and rebuilding America’s leadership role in the region, the U.S. found itself isolated in a diplomatic corner over Cuba, to say nothing of the Secret Service prostitution scandal that soon overshadowed the proceedings. More generally, Obama’s Latin America policy […]

China’s astounding record of economic growth is shifting the global balance of power and, as a result, creating a new international environment in which Beijing faces enormous pressure from the West to play a constructive role on the world stage. Often, the U.S. and China stand on opposite sides of disputes involving third nations, prompting a curious diplomatic dance — one that will become a more prominent feature of international diplomacy in the years to come. Once an impoverished, inward-facing country, China has become a major trading partner to nations across the globe and a key force in world affairs, […]

A few weeks ago, in discussing how Hezbollah might respond to an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, I mentioned that both the United States and Hezbollah are more or less held hostage to the drama unfolding between their respective allies. For the United States, part of that dynamic includes the uncertainty it faces concerning whether or not Israel will in fact strike Iran’s nuclear program and, if so, when. The United States is Israel’s closest ally in the world. The United States has provided Israel an average of $3 billion in grants, almost all of it military aid (.pdf), […]

As NATO member states prepare for next month’s heads-of-state summit in Chicago, the alliance faces a number of difficult decisions on a variety of issues that will determine its deterrence and defense posture moving forward. And while NATO is often stymied by internal divisions among its members, in this case the major obstacle to any bold policy shifts is disagreement with a nonmember: Russia. As a result, NATO is likely to endorse current policies, unless Russia significantly alters its negotiating position on these issues. At the last NATO heads-of-state summit in November 2010 in Lisbon, faced with the question of […]

International relations experts are pretty much down on everything nowadays. America, we are told, is incapable of global leadership: too discredited overseas, too few resources back home, too little will — period. For a brief moment there, while China held up the global economy during the recent financial crisis, much credence was given to the notion that we were on the verge of a Chinese century. But that popular vision has also waned surprisingly quickly, and now the conventional wisdom centers on China’s great weaknesses, challenges and overall brittleness. Amazingly, where we spoke of a U.S.-China “G-2” arrangement just a […]

The debate over whether or not the United States is in decline is more than just a parlor game among pundits and academics, as the answer to that question informs starkly different policy choices for the country. For significant portions of the anti-interventionist left and right — the latter represented by the small but vocal constituency of GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul — a United States that is in decline ought to cut back on its engagements abroad and avoid playing the role of the world’s policeman, and instead focus on rebuilding America’s domestic institutions, particularly its economy. While […]

Turkey’s gradual transition to democracy under the rule of a moderate Islamist party has prompted much praise, along with a concerted effort — particularly by Ankara — to promote the Turkish model as a template for the post-Arab Uprising states. Indeed, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has achieved much since ascending to power a decade ago. Democratic plaudits, however, miss a gaping crack in the democratic structure the AKP has built: the government’s frontal assault against freedom of the press. Turkey has become one of the world’s top violators of press freedom. The most recent ranking from Reporters Without […]

A few months ago, I penned an essay for a WPR feature issue on counterinsurgency arguing that the U.S. Army was adrift as it transitioned out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In terms of the Army’s direction, that remains the case: While the U.S. Navy and Air Force have already crafted a narrative for how they can help the United States meet the security challenges of the 21st century, the Army is still pining for the days when the Soviet Union and its armies, poised to storm across the Fulda Gap, presented an intellectually simpler problem to solve. […]

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in March 2003, one of the new department’s primary goals was to enhance U.S. cybersecurity. But after several years passed without major DHS initiatives in this area, observers concluded that the department was insufficiently prepared or resourced to address cyber emergencies. Indeed, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the influential think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cybersecurity recommended that the next occupant of the White House formally revoke DHS’ limited authority to coordinate cybersecurity because the department, having never had authority over the U.S. military, intelligence community […]

Writing in Foreign Affairs this month, Henry Kissinger opined that, when it comes to the future of Sino-American relations, “conflict is a choice, not a necessity.” Those are some serious words from one of history’s all-time realists, but more important than his analysis is the fact that he even felt the need to issue that public statement regarding these two ultimately codependent superpowers. A trusted part-time adviser to President Barack Obama, Kissinger knows he has the president’s ear on China, the target of this administration’s recently announced strategic military “pivot” toward East Asia. The codependency at work here isn’t the […]

Mitt Romney’s recently described Russia as the “No. 1 geopolitical foe” of the United States, arguing that Moscow consistently “lines up” with America’s adversaries. But does the claim stand up to closer scrutiny? After all, Moscow has not extended material and financial support to the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguably the greatest challenges to the United States, even though there are ample geopolitical justifications to try and bog Washington down in multiple Middle Eastern quagmires, thereby deflecting American attention from Eurasia. Nor does Russia reflexively block any and all U.S. priorities, as the Soviet Union routinely did during the […]