Column Archive

In last week’s column, I noted that some of the positions taken by President-elect Donald Trump during his bid for the White House, along with those of his key advisers like retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Stephen Bannon, reflect what has been called a “clash of civilizations” perspective. For those who subscribe to this framework, the U.S.-led and predominantly Christian West is under assault from Islam. The terrorism, violence and barbarity of organizations like the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaida are not simply malignancies within Islam but signs of the religion’s inherent incompatibility with Western culture. Many advocates of […]

For a few hours after a Turkish policeman walked into an art gallery in Ankara and shot dead Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, it was unclear how the event would affect ties between the two countries. Ambassador Andrey Karlov had come to the gallery to celebrate the opening of an exhibit of Turkish photographers, “Russia Through Turks’ Eyes,” that was intended to highlight Turkey and Russia’s strengthening relationship. The assassination turned the exhibit into a scene of carnage, but there was no immediate sign that it would harm bilateral ties. In fact, all signs suggest that it will do the opposite, […]

Yesterday China returned the U.S. Navy underwater drone it had seized last Friday in international waters in the South China Sea. The incident has been portrayed by critics of President Barack Obama as the latest illustration of how his purported weakness has emboldened America’s rivals and adversaries. But the seizure of the drone and the prompt resolution of the standoff through diplomatic channels actually illustrated the complexity of escalation when the costs of conflict are great and the threshold for acts of war murky. The narrative of Obama’s weakness has its roots in the early days of his presidency. His […]

Decoding the national security consequences of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed Cabinet is tricky. There’s a tendency to look for substantive connective tissue among the names, beyond loyalty to Trump. On climate change, skepticism dominates, with deeply disturbing implications. But on Russia, China, Iran and other major national security issues, expect policy battles within the Trump camp. Such diversity does not seem to trouble the president-elect, who thrives on keeping others guessing. With most of the Trump Cabinet and other senior national security positions now filled, some patterns of a new national security agenda can be discerned. The loyalists named […]

The United Nations is kind to losers. The defeated parties in many conflicts, large and small, frequently turn to the U.N. in the last resort to defend what remains of their positions. Palestinian leaders have turned to the General Assembly for decades to argue their case against Israel. In the wake of the Cold War, Russia clung onto its permanent seat in the Security Council as one last bastion of international influence. Moscow made the best use it could of the U.N. during its years of weakness, and Western powers often threw it a diplomatic bone or two. After bombing […]

The presidency of Donald Trump promises to shake up American politics and break with the past in many ways. In foreign and security policy, one big change that seems likely is a transformation of U.S. policy toward Russia, since President-elect Trump has indicated he will shift the currently adversarial relationship toward one of greater cooperation. At first glance this seems perplexing given that Republicans have always led the opposition to Russia, whether in containing Soviet communism during the Cold War or attempting to block Russian President Vladimir Putin’s more recent efforts to regain control over the independent nations that were […]

The Syrian civil war has undeniably reached a turning point. Syrian government forces and their allies have routed the rebels in the eastern side of the city of Aleppo, once the country’s largest and most thriving metropolis. Aleppo lies in ruins, its population terrified by a relentless assault by the Syrian army, with the support of Russia, Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah and other Shiite forces organized and backed by Iran. The eastern districts of Aleppo had been under rebel control since 2012. Their fall marks the most significant setback suffered by the forces seeking an end to the dictatorship of […]

Is Donald Trump crazy, or is he crazy like a fox? Is he singularly ill-suited for the presidency, or a deftly intuitive negotiator adept at throwing his adversaries off-balance? Is he genuinely clueless about the intricacies of U.S. foreign policy and the international order in which it operates, with no curiosity to learn about them? Or is he cleverly manipulating the widespread perception of his ignorance to his advantage? As with most things having to do with the U.S. president-elect’s foreign policy, these questions remain unanswerable. But in trying to answer them, we are left not only with uncertainty, but […]

When the Gulf Cooperation Council states and their Western defense partners meet, the demand for changes in regional security cooperation and threat management has long come from the outsiders. The Western partners, the U.S. in particular, continue to call for more defense modernization and more integration of effort among these rich oil states. But the Gulf states are clearly not ready to take ownership of regional security, nor do they take the initiative for improving it. The mood on the Arab side of the Gulf is one of worry. The six GCC countries—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, […]

This may be one of the last times I write about Ban Ki-moon, a thought that makes me unexpectedly melancholic. The United Nations secretary-general will hand over his duties to Antonio Guterres at the end of the month, after 10 years in office. Over that time, I estimate that I have written about 50,000 to 60,000 words about Ban’s performance, in addition to more general pieces on U.N. diplomacy. Quite a few of those words have been unkind: I have frequently criticized Ban for being too cautious, too hidebound by protocol and too slow to grasp many of the U.N.’s […]

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, it was hard to get a firm grasp on Donald Trump’s intended national security policy. His own lack of experience and his campaign’s scarcity of advisers steeped in defense issues led candidate Trump to rely on broad themes and searing criticism of the policies of the Obama administration—and by extension Hillary Clinton’s likely approach to the world. Now, with only weeks until Trump takes office, he has much of the senior echelon of his national security team in place and is beginning to flesh out his policy. As the Trump strategy emerges, the tensions […]

Brazil, the embattled South American nation that has seen its fortunes rise and fall dramatically in the past few years, is once again looking like a country that foreshadows major global trends. This time, it is flashing warning signs about the coming battles in the worldwide campaign against corruption. For the past few years, Brazil has been in the news for its successes in rooting out embezzlement and bribery schemes involving the country’s industrial giants and its political class. But last week, Brazil’s corruption-plagued Chamber of Deputies took a controversial late-night vote. Rewriting an anti-corruption bill into one that would […]

The next time they meet, Matteo Renzi, the soon-to-be former Italian premier, and Francois Hollande, the lame duck French president, will probably take a moment to console each other for their recent misfortunes. Afterward, they might spend some time trying to figure out where things all went wrong. Both entered office with the intention of bolstering the European Union’s fraying solidarity in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis that threatened to sink the euro and the union itself in 2009. Both were vocal advocates for a stimulus-driven response to the EU-wide economic stagnation that followed. Both are now political […]

The buzz in foreign policy circles this week has been over President-elect Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, which overturned decades of protocol governing official U.S. contact with the government of Taiwan. It seems that the conversation was not a casual faux pas, but a purposeful decision by the Trump transition team. Now diplomats in Beijing and Washington have to cope with the fallout. But if the essential function of diplomacy has lost some of its sheen in Washington, it is not only the result of Trump’s iconoclastic approach. Traditional diplomacy has also been weakened by competition […]

Donald Trump has a striking knack for simplifying complex international problems. For years, for example, scholars have debated whether China will be a constructive or disruptive global power. Many have argued that it could take decades to find out. Thanks to Trump, we could know the answer in just a few months. In recent days, Trump has managed to antagonize Beijing by speaking with Taiwan’s president, and doubled down on his provocation by calling out China’s economic policy and military posture on Twitter. This should not come as an utter surprise: The president-elect was frequently critical of China on the […]

Appointing military flag officers to civilian roles in a presidential administration is an American tradition. Beginning with Brent Scowcroft in the Gerald Ford administration, several national security advisers have been uniformed officers, and the Central Intelligence Agency has often been led by one, beginning with Adm. Sidney Souers, its first head. Three of the five Directors of National Intelligence, a position created in 2005, have been retired flag officers. Military men have also held Cabinet positions: George Marshall was both secretary of state and secretary of defense; Alexander Haig and Colin Powell both served as secretary of state. Placing a […]

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he vowed that immediately after taking office he would travel to a Muslim-majority country and deliver a major address to Muslims and Arabs as part of a determined effort to improve relations. After all, anti-American sentiment had risen sharply in much of the Middle East during the administration of his predecessor, George W. Bush. In contrast, President-elect Donald Trump campaigned this year on a promise to get tough on Muslims. His announcement that he would impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” until we “figure out […]