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Proponents of a U.S. grand strategy of “restraint” are perhaps most well-known for advocating the end of America’s “forever wars” and reducing the country’s military footprint in the Middle East and Afghanistan. But the so-called restrainers have also questioned the rationale for maintaining the United States’ extensive networks of alliances in Europe and East Asia, and particularly the presence of forward-deployed American troops in those regions. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, WPR’s Elliot Waldman was joined by Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, for a critical look at the ideas and assumptions underpinning restraint. Listen […]

Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshide at a news conference in Tokyo, May 7, 2021 (AP photo by Hiro Komae).

Speaking at the opening of a new parliamentary session in mid-January, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide vowed that this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo would be “proof of humanity’s victory against the coronavirus.” Nearly six months later, Suga’s promise has yet to materialize. Authorities this week extended states of emergency in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s two largest cities, in light of COVID-19 caseloads that, while down significantly from their May highs, remain elevated. The country’s health care system is under severe strain, and the government’s vaccine rollout is proceeding at a painfully slow pace. While Japan controlled the […]

A man holds a poster that says “Danger!” in Spanish, during a protest against the presidential candidacy of Keiko Fujimori, in Lima, Peru, May 22, 2021 (AP photo by Martin Mejia).

Less than one week before a pivotal election in Peru, authorities released a revised count of the pandemic death toll in the South American country. It’s no secret that COVID-19 has devastated Peru, but the figures, nonetheless, were breathtaking. The government put the true number of deaths at 180,764, three times higher than earlier estimates. Other countries will likely recalculate their earlier numbers, as well. But for now, Peru holds the painful distinction of having the world’s highest pandemic death toll by population. Confirmation of just how catastrophic the pandemic has been for Peru helps explain the similarly disastrous political […]

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, center, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiadis, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Athens, Jan. 2, 2020 (AP photo).

Developments in the Eastern Mediterranean region are unfolding at a breakneck pace. Blink an eye and one is bound to miss a new multilateral initiative, an impressive military exercise or even the creation of an international organization. Greece is very much in the middle of this diplomatic and military frenzy, so understanding Greek foreign policy can provide penetrating insights into developments in the region. Athens views the Eastern Mediterranean as a source of turbulence and instability—a transit route for waves of refugees, bordered by war-torn states like Libya and Syria, and with the potential for jihadist terrorist attacks. The recent […]

The USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Groups sail together in formation, in the South China Sea, July 6, 2020 (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jason Tarleton for U.S. Navy via AP Images).

Over the past decade or so, a school of thought known as “restraint” has been steadily gaining currency in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. While the idea encompasses a wide range of views and assumptions, proponents of restraint generally argue that in the wake of the Cold War, America overcommitted to its global responsibilities and stretched itself too thin, undertaking ill-conceived and costly military adventures while underwriting the security of allies in Europe and East Asia at a time when the strategic rationale of those alliances was hard to justify. The so-called restrainers have been increasingly visible lately in media […]

Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan, China, Feb. 3, 2021 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Once dismissed by mainstream media as a conspiracy theory, the so-called lab leak hypothesis of the coronavirus’s origins is now making a comeback. The suggestion that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan—whether intentionally or accidentally—has gained […]

Herero women sit in a mile-long queue of voters in Katutura, Namibia, Nov. 7, 1989 (AP photo by Billy Paddock).

A decade ago, while researching a book about Chinese migration to Africa, I made an extended stay in Namibia, then one of a small number of African countries I had never visited in a lifetime of writing about the continent. To get to know the place as well as I could, I rented a car and drove with my brother, James, throughout much of the country, a land more than twice the size of Germany. The reference here is appropriate, because it was Germany, a relative latecomer to European imperialism in Africa, that colonized Namibia toward the close of the […]

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Oct. 20, 2016 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. was peeved at Beijing. It was early May, and hundreds of Chinese vessels had been regularly intruding into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where the Chinese government has made expansive maritime territorial claims. After lodging numerous complaints through formal diplomatic channels to no avail, Locsin took to Twitter and unleashed an expletive-filled tirade. “China, my friend, how politely can I put it?” he wrote. “Let me see… O…GET THE [F**K] OUT.” (Locsin didn’t bother with the asterisks.) It was not only Philippine officials and diplomats who were angry at […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in Menlo Park, Calif., Sept. 27, 2015.

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Kate Jones is filling in for Emily Taylor, who will be back next week. Around the world these days, social media’s impact on societies is creating understandable tensions. The way in which social media shapes the public conversation has an unpleasant underbelly, exposing and arguably fostering hate and division, while fueling an explosion of objectionable images ranging from child abuse to revenge porn. The risk is that these tensions will become an excuse for restricting freedom of expression, transforming social media from being platforms that enable limitless voices to reach limitless audiences into platforms that allow […]

Women who lost family members at Srebrenica watch a TV broadcast of the sentencing of Radovan Karadzic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in Tuzla, Bosnia, March, 24, 2016 (AP photo by Amel Emric).

Editor’s Note: This article contains descriptions of wartime violence and rape. PRISTINA—It’s a cold morning in Rance, a mountainous village east of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, and Isak Asllani is preparing to pay tribute at a memorial for his fallen family and friends. It is a painful ritual he carries out every Feb. 17 to mark the anniversary of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, and the end of decades of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Asllani was 40 years old in May 1998, when he decided to join the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian, separatist guerilla group that fought […]

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, center, with Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, president of the Sudanese Transitional Council, at the Khartoum airport in Sudan, May 4, 2021 (AP photo by Marwan Ali).

In early May, when Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki visited Sudan, the official objective of the trip was to strengthen bilateral ties within a regional framework. The visit nevertheless raised eyebrows. It came on the heels of Eritrea’s military participation in Ethiopia’s civil war in Tigray region, and also at a time of rising tensions between Ethiopia and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and a border dispute involving areas near Tigray, among other issues. Unofficially, local observers have suggested that Eritrea may seek a role in mediating between Ethiopia and Sudan. Whatever the actual purpose of Isaias’ visit, it […]

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