Column Archive

The U.S. military doesn’t spend much time thinking about how America could lose a war. Neither do America’s political leaders and security experts. Whether described in operational plans, strategic wargames or even fiction, the pattern mirrors the Civil War or World War II: Things are hairy at first and defeat even seems possible since an aggressor struck first, but then the United States gets serious, turns the tide and fights its way to victory. In the collective American memory, armed conflicts that have not followed this script—Vietnam, Korea—are largely forgotten or attributed to political ineptitude. Victory is still considered the […]

History has indelibly branded the Balkans as the battleground of empires, a fault line where great powers clash. That pattern came into full view again this weekend, when Macedonians voted in a referendum on whether or not to change their country’s name in order to ease its accession into the European Union and NATO, a question that has drawn the interest and involvement of Russia. The referendum yielded a head-snapping outcome. First, the returns showed overwhelming approval, with some 90 percent voting to change the country’s name. But then the tally showed that voter turnout was just 36 percent, well […]

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 based on his celebrity status and his reputation as a maverick businessman, vowing to run the country as he ran his real estate empire. The renegotiation of the trade deal with Mexico and Canada formerly known as NAFTA, announced this weekend, is the latest example of how in one striking way, he has been true to his word. The problem is that Trump was a more successful self-promoter than businessman, and the results are on display in the trade deal as well as other aspects of his foreign policy. Early in his […]

Deadlines can be useful in negotiations since they often force sides to act. If there is a difference in the intensity of interest in reaching an agreement, however, leverage shifts to the party less desperate to get a deal. That is evident in the now-successful effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada clearly wanted to remain part of the deal. But up to the end, Canadian negotiators behaved as though the deadline was not as hard as their American counterparts insisted. President Donald Trump seemed to badly want an agreement that he could tout as a win […]

Was Donald Trump nasty or nice at the United Nations last week? The answer may depend on whether you listened to his comments from Beijing or Tehran. Diplomatic observers expected the American president to look tough at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Many predicted that he would strike an especially aggressive tone toward Iran. He didn’t disappoint them, using his U.N. appearance to celebrate his withdrawal from the “horrible” Iranian nuclear deal and attack Tehran’s “agenda of aggression and expansion” in the Middle East. Yet there was something formulaic about his rhetoric, and he made no startlingly […]