17 Posts Found

There is more than one way to get a rogue state to change its ways.

Author: Robeert S. Litwak | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy

A prominent historian ponders the long-term legacy of the elusive Bush Doctrine.

Author: John Lewis Gaddis | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, History, Politics & Public Policy

Third World poverty may often be a contributing factor in terrorism, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause, argues Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University […] “Economic development in an area where the political and religious impulses remain unresolved could serve to improve the resource base for terrorism rather than undercut it.”

[…]‌

Terrorism is … [ Read more ]

Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2002) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Terrorism

A veteran American negotiator derives seven rules of the road from his decades of experience in Arab-Israeli peace talks.

Author: Aaron David Miller | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Spring2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy

America’s national security structure is designed to confront the challenges of the last century rather than our own.

Author: John A. Nagl | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Winter2009) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Military | War | Peace

The search is on for graceful strategies for exiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Apart from victory, history suggests, there are none.

Author: David M. Edelstein | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2009) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Military | War | Peace

A foreign policy expert warns that the troop surge in Iraq, while yielding short-term gains, may endanger Iraqis later on.

Author: Steven Simon | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Military | War | Peace

The rapid expansion of relief efforts since the end of the Cold War has produced a surprising result: a series of difficult moral questions about the humanitarian enterprise.

Author: G. Pascal Zachary | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Life & Society, Philanthropy, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

The Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie once observed that there are “two Americas” — one at home and one abroad. The first is the America of Hollywood, work-in-progress democracy, civil rights movements and Ellis Island. The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures. The rest of the world knows both Americas. But as … [ Read more ]

Author: Suzy Hansen | Source: The Washington Post (September 8, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

We can identify four “turnings” that each last about 20 years — the length of a generation. Think of these as recurring seasons, starting with spring and ending with winter. In every turning, a new generation is born and each older generation ages into its next phase of life.

Author: Neil Howe | Source: The Washington Post (February 24, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, History, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

Rex Tillerson may have represented the last gasp of a certain kind of moderate Republican thinking about the world.

Author: Peter Beinart | Source: The Atlantic (March 15, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Politics & Public Policy

The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage. Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it?

Author: Molly K. McKew | Source: Politico (January 1, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy

Last week, six top State Department officials were suddenly discharged by the White House—an Undersecretary, an acting Undersecretary, and four Assistant Secretaries—without notice and without even a nominee selected to replace them. Tom Countryman, who served the nation for 35 years and at the time as Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, was in Amman booked to fly to an international meeting … [ Read more ]

Authors: Ryan Goodman, Tom Countryman | Source: Just Security (February 3, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy

Theories of international relations
Of the large range of theories that have emerged on how states get along with each other, or not as the case may be, I will draw, in simplified terms, on two leading schools today: liberalism and structural realism.

1. Liberalism
   The basic notion in liberalism is that conflict tends to occur where states have diverging interests. Where these interests are non-trivial, sometimes such

… [ Read more ]

Author: Michael A. Witt | Source: Insead Knowledge (January 2, 2017) | Subjects: Excerpts, Foreign Policy, History, International, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

In a Pakistani religious school called the Haqqania madrasa, Osama bin Laden is a hero, the Taliban’s leaders are famous alumni and the next generation of mujahedeen is being militantly groomed. (NOTE: written in 2000, before 9/11 occurred).

Author: Jeffrey Goldberg | Source: The New York Times (June 25, 2000) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Religion

Will General Stanley McChrystal be our deus ex machina in Afghanistan? Or just the latest commander to succumb to the impersonal forces of history and geography?

Author: Robert D. Kaplan | Source: The Atlantic (April2010) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Military | War | Peace

As the president wrestles with policy decisions about Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere, pundits try to pigeonhole him: Is he a realist or an idealist? But the best American foreign policy has always been both, mixing moral aspiration with unsentimental prudence. Obama’s most useful model may be a predecessor who was a realist wrongly pegged as an idealist – Woodrow Wilson

Author: David M. Kennedy | Source: The Atlantic (January2010) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Foreign Policy, History, Politics & Public Policy