NEW YORK: Mention “proliferation” and most people will assume that you are talking about the spread of nuclear weapons. For good reason. Nine countries (China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States, and...
NEW YORK: US President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate this fall has transformed American politics. It caps a historic July in the United States, one defined by far-reaching Supreme...
NEW YORK: The first – and potentially only – debate between the 45th and 46th presidents of the United States constituted a clear win for Donald Trump, as far more viewers focused on Joe Biden’s apparent physical and mental...
NEW YORK: Three months ago, I wrote a column titled 'Will Ukraine Survive?' The answer (thankfully) for the next year is “yes,” owing to Ukraine’s willingness to fight and sacrifice and the resumption of substantial US...
Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a senior counsellor at Centerview Partners and the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin Press, 2023) and the weekly newsletter Home...
NEW YORK: In my old job at the US State Department, colleagues often asked me what was likely to happen in this or that situation. Often, there was no way of knowing, and I reminded questioners that I was Director of Policy Planning, not of...
NEW YORK: The advantage historians have over journalists is that the passage of time offers them a perspective not available to those with immediate deadlines. But the year is about to end, which constitutes a firm deadline if the goal is to put...
NEW YORK: It is difficult to imagine the world without Henry Kissinger, not simply because he lived to be 100 years old, but because he occupied an influential – and sometimes dominant – place in American foreign policy and...
NEW YORK: Summits are by definition occasions of high politics and drama, so it comes as little surprise that the November 15 meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping generated immense global interest. It was a useful...
NEW YORK: The history of Israel has often been a history of conflict. A partial list includes the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that followed Israel’s birth; the Israeli-British-French attempt in 1956 to seize the Suez Canal and topple Egypt’s...
NEW YORK: There is an old Soviet joke in which a journalist asks the General Secretary of the Communist Party to assess the country’s economy. “Good” is the short answer. The journalist implores the leader to elaborate so he can...
NEW YORK: The leader of an authoritarian country with enormous energy reserves builds up his armed forces along the border of a weaker neighbour, one he claims has no right to exist as an independent country. He then proceeds to launch an invasion...
NEW YORK: One advantage that historians have over journalists concerns time, not so much in the sense that they are free from urgent deadlines, but that they have the deeper perspective conferred by the years – or decades – between...
MUNICH: In the year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has evolved in ways few predicted. The conventional wisdom was that Russian forces would quickly overwhelm the overmatched Ukrainians and take possession of much...
NEW YORK: For more than three-quarters of a century, the United States has played an outsized, constructive role in the world. To be sure, there have been major errors, including the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War, but the US got it right far...
NEW YORK: The American baseball player Lawrence 'Yogi' Berra is widely quoted as observing, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Whether or not he actually said it, the point is valid....
NEW YORK : Midterm elections take place in the United States every four years, halfway into a president’s term and two years before the next presidential election. At stake is one-third of the Senate, the entire House of Representatives, some...
NEW YORK: Much of the foreign-policy conversation in the United States over the past two weeks has centred on whether US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ought to have visited Taiwan. Her backers point out that there was precedent for such a visit...
NEW YORK: It is often said that no one wins a war, just that some lose less than others. Russia’s war against Ukraine promises to be no exception. One clear loser is already evident: the planet. The war has become the international priority...
NEW YORK: Several recurring debates animate foreign policy. The most basic is how much foreign policy to have, or how to strike the right balance between addressing domestic issues and problems abroad – in extreme form a debate between...
NEW YORK: Amid more than two months of intense media focus on the war in Ukraine, one story was largely overlooked. In late April, the United States and Russia carried out an exchange of prisoners. Russia released an American (a former marine) whom...
NEW YORK – My book, A World in Disarray, was published five years ago this month. The book’s thesis was that the Cold War’s end did not usher in an era of greater stability, security, and peace, as many expected. Instead, what...
NEW YORK: Negotiations between Iran and the United States on Iran’s nuclear activities are set to resume on November 29. But while many will welcome this development, they should bear in mind that the talks are unlikely to succeed. And even...
NEW YORK: Colin Powell, former US national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and secretary of state, who died at the age of 84, was a quintessential American, the son of immigrants. He was forever upbeat, someone who advised...
NEW YORK – The report issued Friday by the US intelligence community on the murder of Saudi journalist and permanent US resident Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey mostly confirms what we already...
