China’s rise over the past twenty years is the most consequential foreign policy challenge Washington has faced this century. Trade wars, diplomatic standoffs, and aggressive military posturing in the Indo-Pacific all point to intensifying economic and ideological conflict not seen since the Cold War. Naturally, it is tempting to look to that period of geopolitical...
As Russia menaced Ukraine last year, I was learning about a time when Moscow was much more powerful than it is now. Taking a course on the Soviet Union was my attempt to understand the country Winston Churchill once called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” [1] The seminar spanned the Second...
“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” [1] Thucydides’ famous observation on great power conflict over two millennia ago remains true today. The spectacular rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) alarms the United States – and thereby Western society as whole –...
1957 was a year of panic. Upon hearing the news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched both Sputnik and the R-7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, American citizens, military planners, and policymakers looked to the sky with fear. Both launches were the first of their kind, the heavens had become a battleground, and Americans felt exposed...
The decades following the collapse of the Berlin Wall have been described as a “holiday from history,” in which the recurring perils of world war, social crisis, and ideological extremes were mastered by bonds of peaceful progress. [1] In recent years, however, history has returned with almost biblical vengeance in the form of wars, plagues,...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
