Presidential elections next May in the Philippines could prove pivotal to both the country’s democracy and alliance with the United States. By extension, the election could influence President Biden’s foreign policy goals of strengthening human rights and countering China’s great power ambitions. Incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte has decided not to seek the vice presidency, giving...
China’s prodigious economic growth has been a defining feature of the twenty-first century. Troubles inside one of the country’s (and the world’s) largest property developers, however, expose potentially serious weaknesses in the Chinese juggernaut. Last week, China Evergrande Group, a development conglomerate saddled with over $300 billion in debt, failed to make a $83 million...
The prospect of returning to a prolonged period of successful American leadership in the world remains uncertain—regardless of the fact that America can correctly be considered “back” to playing its historical role. Long-overdue arguments are rightfully being debated within the foreign policy community about how to reframe what an active and engaged U.S. foreign policy...
Last week, the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia announced the formation of AUKUS, a trilateral security agreement to bolster allied interests in the Indo-Pacific, a region key to Washington’s grand strategy. AUKUS’s first initiative is to develop nuclear submarines for Australia, to be provided by American and British companies. The deployment of Australian nuclear...
On September 1, President Biden welcomed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to the White House. It was Zelensky’s first visit to the White House since taking office in 2019. Ukraine gained its independence following the Soviet Union’s dissolution, but has struggled to consolidate its democracy and stabilize its economy since then. It has suffered a...
On September 2, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met with opposition leaders in Mexico City with the aim to ease the nation’s ongoing political and economic crisis. Each side brought its own goals to the negotiating table, with the hope that this set of talks would succeed where others have failed. The opposition hopes to advance...
Review of The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press (Cornell University Press, 2020) The defining characteristics of the nuclear age are terror and peace.” [1] For Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, international relations scholars at Georgetown and Dartmouth, respectively, this is the defining paradox...
Review of Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law by Bruce Ackerman (Harvard, 2019). Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now. That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often...
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This Henry Kissinger quote is a perennial favorite of American realists, informing decades of American grand strategy. In recent years, from threatening to withdraw from NATO to praising Kim Jung-Un in search of a blockbuster nuclear deal, the Trump Administration ruthlessly implemented this adage, with the...
Events in Afghanistan have overshadowed most other developments in U.S. foreign policy, including Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent travel to Singapore and Vietnam. Yet, combined with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visits to these two countries and the Philippines in July, the Vice President’s trip signals renewed American engagement in Southeast Asia. Home to almost...
