Column Archive

In a speech at last week’s annual conference of the Center for a New American Security, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Russia and China as presenting a common challenge to the U.S.-backed “global order,” a characterization that echoes that of various Western think tanks and scholars in recent months. Elaborating, Blinken said, “In both eastern Ukraine and the South China Sea, we’re witnessing efforts to unilaterally and coercively change the status quo . . .” The United States, he said, would counter by “seizing America’s unique capacity to mobilize against common threats and lead the international community to […]

Welcome to what could turn out to be the most important, and potentially the most destructive, week in international diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. In the next seven days, we are meant to reach three major turning points in global affairs. On Tuesday, major powers are meant to conclude an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. On the same day, Greece is supposed to make a 1.6 billion euro payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but may fail to do so. And on Sunday, Greek voters will vote in a referendum on the latest bailout […]

Even though the United States was founded on the idea that all people have inalienable rights, applying that principle to all Americans has been a long, still-incomplete struggle played out in multiple arenas, including the U.S. military. Over the past 75 years, the armed forces have been used to advance this cause several times. Presidents found the military a valuable tool in the expansion of rights and the construction of a more unified society because it could be ordered to accept change to an extent that the rest of society could not. The military also tended to judge its members […]

AMSTERDAM—Like much of Europe, the Dutch have been keeping a close eye on developments in Greece. As negotiators continue to meet in efforts to hammer out a deal that would avert a Greek default, experts warn that the consequences of failing to reach an agreement would range from very painful to catastrophic. Here in the Netherlands, the subject occupies private conversations, occasional streets protests and countless headlines. And yet, the dilemma of how or whether to give another lifeline to Greece is only a prelude to a more far-reaching and divisive political battle looming ahead. If Greece defaults and ultimately […]

There are so many depressing realities underscored by the tragic shooting deaths of nine African-American parishioners in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, it’s hard to know where to begin: from the seeming permanence of America’s glaring racial divide to the country’s inability to stanch the unceasing carnage of gun violence that is unlike that of any other country in the world. But here’s one that will be self-evident to most foreign policy observers: If the gunman in Charleston had been not white, but Arab, and if he had yelled “Allahu akbar,” rather than uttering racist statements, we wouldn’t be […]

At last week’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian and Greek officials negotiated a framework agreement for Greece’s participation in the Turkish Stream gas pipeline that, if realized, will transport Russian gas via the Black Sea and Turkey to European markets. The deal comes just a year after the European Union adopted a comprehensive strategy to enhance its energy security, with a key objective being to reduce the EU’s dependence on Russian energy sources. However, if the Russia-Greece deal and other developments of the past year are any indication, this campaign could take decades […]

Policy papers from the United Nations rarely make for scintillating reading. Last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released “Uniting Our Strengths for Peace,” a new report by an expert panel on the future of peace operations. Running to over 90 pages and full of familiar bromides such as “the universal legitimacy of the United Nations is one of its greatest strengths,” this does not at first glance seem like an exceptionally enticing text. On closer inspection, it proves to be a subtly subversive summary of what is wrong with peace operations, and indeed the entire U.N., today. Ban convened the panel […]

A recent memorandum by Undersecretary of State Richard Stengel painted an ominous picture of America’s failure to counter propaganda from the so-called Islamic State (IS). Across the board, the U.S. narrative is, as Stengel put it, “being trumped.” To a great extent this competition of narratives takes place on the Internet, particularly in social media. The Islamic State has made mistakes in that venue, but a number of indicators—its continued flow of recruits, the number of other extremist movements seeking to affiliate with it and its ability to inspire attacks in the West—demonstrate that the United States is losing on […]

Among the many questions left unanswered by the surprise results of Turkey’s recent parliamentary elections are whether and how the country’s foreign policy will change now that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has lost its ability to single-handedly control the legislature. On June 7, Turkish voters delivered a stunning blow to the AKP and its founder, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After having handed him more than a decade of landslide victories, voters denied Erdogan the two-thirds supermajority that would have opened the way for the AKP to rewrite the constitution without submitting it to a referendum, making Erdogan […]

Sometimes what a politician says matters less than what he or she doesn’t say. Case in point: Hillary Clinton’s big presidential announcement speech this past weekend. Clinton had a lot to say about income inequality and the need to rebalance an economy in which a privileged few accrue enormous benefits, while the many make do with meager crumbs. She had detailed policy proposals on early childhood education, infrastructure, voting rights and strengthening the social safety net. But in a more than 4,000-word speech, she spent all of 325 words on foreign policy. While she went into full wonk mode on […]

Russia has been skillfully using its ground forces to support pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine and keep NATO guessing over Russian intentions in that country, the Baltic states and Moldova. In addition, Moscow’s air force has for the first time since the Cold War sustained a high tempo of operations in NATO’s vicinity for more than a year. But the revival of the Russian navy has been another key element of Moscow’s use of military force to press its great power status. Naval considerations were actually a major factor driving Moscow’s insistence on maintaining control over Crimea. The naval base at […]

The world is finally waking up to the fact that the international humanitarian system is falling apart. European nations are bickering over how to handle Syrian refugees, while Southeast Asian nations grapple with the outflow of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar. Liberal commentators see parallels with the flight of Jews from Germany in the 1930s. “It is clear that the United States and other developed countries must find more room for refugees,” The New York Times editorialized this weekend, adding that United Nations agencies that help those who are suffering should be “amply funded.” U.N. officials reading these lines are likely […]

Editor’s note: World Politics Review partnered with the Global Dispatches podcast and its host, Mark Leon Goldberg, to present an interview with WPR columnist Steven Metz on the evolving U.S. strategy against the so-called Islamic State. Critics claim that U.S. President Barack Obama is not “aiming for decisive victory” against the so-called Islamic State (IS), but simply trying to contain the conflict and turn it over to his successor. This charge may be true, but the widespread assumption that it is an error says more about the condition of America’s discourse on global security than about the wisdom of Obama’s […]

Among the many challenges Saudi Arabia has faced in recent months, one has come as a particularly unexpected disappointment: the cooling of relations between the desert kingdom and one of the main recipients of its largesse, Pakistan. For decades Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have enjoyed a robust friendship with significant strategic and financial ramifications. But suddenly, Islamabad appears to feel much less warmly disposed toward its wealthy Arab friend. The change came as a blast of cold air in April, when the Pakistani parliament voted unanimously to rebuff a Saudi request for troops and equipment to help its war against […]

Last week, the U.S. Congress passed the first major revisions to the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities since revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden brought its domestic data-gathering operations to light in June 2013. Snowden, who has been indicted for leaking the classified information, quickly took to the opinion pages of The New York Times for a victory lap. Calling Congress’s actions “a historic victory for the rights of every citizen,” Snowden declared that the end to the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA “is only the latest product of a change in global awareness” about mass […]

The Russian government’s violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has recently risen in prominence as a concern in Washington and European capitals. What was originally an arms control issue for the United States has escalated into a major defense and security problem for all of NATO. Russia’s strategic modernization, nuclear saber-rattling and aggressive bomber patrols throughout the trans-Atlantic region have compounded the alarm over Moscow’s violation of the treaty as well as Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine. Moscow’s disregard for long-standing laws, borders and agreements demands a major re-evaluation of Russian goals and strategy. The U.S. and […]

Do peacekeepers do more harm than good? An appalling abuse scandal has come to overshadow the two parallel peace operations, led by France and the United Nations, currently based in the Central African Republic (CAR). There is credible evidence that French troops made local children commit sex acts as entertainment. The U.N. appears to have, at the very best, mishandled its investigation of these crimes. To make matters worse, the U.N. announced last week that it is investigating further claims of abuse by its one of its own personnel in CAR. There are also claims that African peacekeepers were responsible […]