After three failed efforts last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov tomorrow in perhaps a final attempt to peaceably resolve a military standoff between Russia and Ukraine. The alternatives hazard violence and political upheaval on a scale unseen since the Cold War. In 2014, Ukrainian president and Russian...
By virtually any measure, American domestic politics are at their most polarized point in decades. Members of Congress are increasingly unwilling to compromise, the national media landscape is fractured, and public opinion is fragmented. Recent scholarship suggests that foreign policy issues have taken on a similar polarized character.[1] However, a select few issues, such as...
This past week, amidst an ongoing humanitarian crisis on the Belarus-Poland border, Russia began massing troops opposite war-torn eastern Ukraine. Over a hundred thousand Russian soldiers have now been deployed to the Ukrainian frontier. Capturing Western anxiety over Russia’s seemingly belligerent intentions, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has cautioned treaty members that they should “prepare...
Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s autocratic leader, is causing a humanitarian crisis on the Belarus-Poland border that appears to be retaliation for sanctions imposed by the European Union on his country this spring. Lukashenko’s regime faced international backlash for forcefully suppressing demonstrations following disputed elections last year. After months of deliberation, the EU imposed sanctions on the...
Review of JFK: Volume 1: 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2020). In February 1951, a thirty-three-year-old Congressman named Jack Kennedy appeared before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations. Handsome, articulate, and reputed as an emerging authority on American foreign policy, he had just returned from a five-week tour of Europe, and by the...
Fiji, Barbados, and Antigua and Barbuda seldom take the limelight in international politics. Yet, facing potential catastrophe, these island states were center stage at the COP26 summit, imploring the world’s wealthiest nations to address the perils of climate change. With scientific consensus projecting a worldwide increase in heatwaves, water shortages, crop failure, and flooding if...
The real reward for a loan shark is what the victim will have to cough up once they realize they cannot pay up what they owe. China is a seasoned loan shark. One instance where the gravity of the nation’s Belt and Road Initiative: the infamous international lending program focused on cultivating political influence within...
It has become fashionable to call for diplomacy separate from military action. During the 2020 Democratic primaries a number of candidates overwhelmingly endorsed “diplomacy” as an alternative to force. Candidate Donald Trump, too, called for restraint in use of force and expressed a preference for “negotiation,” bragging about his deal making skills and claiming that...
In a break from tradition, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) denied Myanmar’s military junta representation at its annual summit later this month. ASEAN appears to be pressuring Myanmar’s regime, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, to cooperate with neighbors in resolving its almost year-long political crisis. Hlaing’s came to power via military coup...
There is a reason that Alexander Hamilton was known for both economic and foreign policy; the two are connected by a common question: Compared to what? Thomas Sowell has popularized thinking of “compared to what?” as the fundamental economic Rorschach because it prompts people to think about trade-offs. All too often in economic policy discussions,...
