Column Archive

AMSTERDAM—Little doubt remains by now that Brexit, the British voters’ decision to pull their country out of the European Union, will have a detrimental impact on the United Kingdom’s economic fortunes. The country will experience an economic contraction, and it is quite likely that a loss of global influence will also ensue. In fact, the U.K. itself may ultimately come apart, as Scotland and Northern Ireland, both of which opposed Brexit, ponder a separate future. The reverberations from the vote, however, extend far beyond the British Isles. If resentment over the impact of globalization was one of the motivating forces […]

In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the debate among U.S. foreign policy pundits has taken a predictable and customary turn: looking for who is to blame. Also predictable, but customary, are the usual suspects on parade. Not surprisingly, for many the culprit is ultimately to be found, not in London or Brussels, but in Washington. After that, the partisan divide makes the trail harder to follow. But if partisan politics in Washington makes agreeing on a single culprit impossible, there is bipartisan consensus on at least one thing: Just about everything that happens in the world is determined in […]

The Brexit bombshell is bad news for the Middle East region on a number of scores, in particular what it says about Western attitudes toward migrants and Muslims, and about loss of support for economic integration, a big idea that would improve prospects for the Arab world. The shock waves after the U.K. referendum are being felt in the Middle East, but so far the reactions are fairly superficial and self-interested. Judging from comments on Twitter and other social media quoted by Arab media, the focus for many in the Arab world has been on the weakness of the major […]

When there is a major crisis in the international system, it is often followed by a host of small crises that pop up in its wake and start escalating out of control. The 2008 financial crisis set the stage for the current rash of conflicts and confrontations in the Arab world, Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union could have a similar effect. The 2008 recession emboldened China and Russia to challenge the U.S., contributed to economic fragility in the Arab world, and discouraged Western policymakers from investing heavily in international conflict management. Relatively light-footprint options, […]

To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, the United States may not be at the beginning of the end of its presidential campaign, but it is at the end of the beginning. After a long, tumultuous series of primaries and caucuses, the two major parties have settled on their presumptive nominees, to be confirmed at each party’s convention this summer. Now American voters must look “under the hood” of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, exploring both candidates’ policies and inclinations in detail, before making their choice in November. Thus far, foreign and security policy have received more attention than is […]

It wasn’t exactly Gen. Douglas MacArthur vowing, “I shall return.” But when former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon announced on May 20 that he was stepping down from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and taking a temporary leave from politics after losing his post in the Cabinet, he added a caveat laced with more than a little bravado: “I have no intention of [permanently] leaving public life,” he declared. And in case his former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, missed the thrust of the promise, Yaalon added, “I will return as a candidate for national leadership.” With that, the former chief […]

Last week, New York Times reporter Mark Landler compared the foreign policy statements of a candidate for president, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with those of the actual U.S. president, Barack Obama, in regard to the Orlando terrorist attack. His conclusion, which unsurprisingly matches that of his most recent book on the allegedly contrasting foreign policy perspectives of Clinton and Obama, is that Clinton has shown herself to be the more hawkish of the two. Clinton, he argues, is more solicitous of military force and harsher in characterizing the terrorist threat facing America. It’s the kind of comparison that immediately […]

One of the secondary effects of the terrible shooting in Orlando, Florida, has been to relaunch the debate on whether public officials have misidentified the terrorist threat at home by failing to call it “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism.” At another point along the spectrum of Islamic political activism is Tunisia’s Ennahda party. Often described as a “moderate Islamist” party, its leaders recently decided to separate Ennahda’s political and religious activities, going so far as to ban party leaders from preaching in mosques or holding positions in religious associations. That raises the question of whether a party whose followers would […]

China is becoming an important military player in Africa. It has sent combat troops to bolster the United Nations operation in South Sudan, is opening a naval station in Djibouti, and has promised to invest in African Union peace operations. Is this evidence of Beijing’s creeping bid for superpower status, as pessimistic Western observers fear, or a positive sign that it is can contribute more to global stability? As Mathieu Duchatel, Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and I argue in a new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), it would be odd if China did not take a greater […]

In a recent article for Defense One, national security expert Stephen Biddle argued that much of the debate on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan focuses on the wrong thing—the timetable for withdrawal—rather than on America’s ultimate strategic goals. The real objective, Biddle wrote, “is to end the war on terms Americans and Afghans can live with. But calendar deadlines and fixed withdrawal schedules make this almost impossible.” The only alternative to the collapse of the Afghan government and a likely victory by the Taliban, Biddle continued, is a negotiated settlement. This conclusion is solidly grounded in the long, bloody history of […]

When Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, delivered her first speech after the weekend massacre at an Orlando LGBT nightclub, she listed a predictable collection of problems contributing to the killings, from the availability of assault rifles in the U.S. to the proliferation of extremist ideologies emanating from the Middle East. Then she delivered a surprisingly blunt message to America’s Arab allies: It is “long past time,” she declared, for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations, as well as from “supporting radical schools and mosques” that send young people into extremism. The […]

In the immediate hours after Omar Mateen, an American citizen of Afghan descent, committed the worst mass shooting in American history in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the focus of media coverage turned to where it usually does when the killer is Muslim: terrorism. Certainly, Mateen gave plenty of reason to link his crime to the self-declared Islamic State and jihadi terrorism, in general. He literally called 911 while the massacre was underway to pledge his allegiance to the group and rail against U.S. bombing attacks in Iraq and Syria. Here was, seemingly, a clear-cut case of the so-called […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington last week was striking in its normalcy. In contrast to the drama of the early years of the transformation in this bilateral relationship, it’s become commonplace to see Indian and American leaders praise the partnership and work through often tedious bilateral issues. The strategic trajectory is becoming clear: Cooperation is growing on managing the global commons and ensuring a peaceful Asia. Over the past two decades during which the relationship between the world’s two most-populous democracies has been transformed, references to their shared values have been abundant. In the past, however, invoking […]

United Nations officials currently find themselves in a position similar to that of members of a religious cult who, having expected the messiah to appear in the near future, begin to grasp that there is no savior after all. For almost a decade, they have labored unhappily under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. They believe that he is too cautious and too loyal to the U.S. and other big powers. But with Ban leaving office at the end of this year, U.N. staffers have hoped and prayed that a far more decisive and independent leader will take his place in 2017. Their […]

“Fifteen years after a drone first fired missiles in combat,” journalist Josh Smith recently wrote from Afghanistan, “the U.S. military’s drone program has expanded far beyond specific strikes to become an everyday part of the war machine.” Important as this is, it is only a first step in a much bigger process. As a report co-authored in January 2014 by Robert Work and Shawn Brimley put it, “a move to an entirely new war-fighting regime in which unmanned and autonomous systems play central roles” has begun. Where this ultimately will lead is unclear. Work, who went to become the deputy […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Washington during what seems like exuberant times for the Indian economy. Just days before Modi landed, New Delhi unveiled dazzling new economic figures: The headlines boasted that India now has the fastest economic growth of any of the world’s major economies. And the timing could not be better. Not only do the stellar numbers easily surpass those of perennial rival China, they also come at a time when other large economies are having trouble revving up growth. The global economy has always relied on at least one major engine pushing forward with enough […]

Last week, Hillary Clinton delivered perhaps the best political speech of her life. Over the span of nearly 40 minutes in San Diego, California, before a partisan crowd, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination proceeded to take her GOP counterpart, Donald Trump, to the proverbial woodshed. “Incoherent,” “bizarre,” “unprepared,” “temperamentally unfit,” and “thin-skinned” were just some of the words she used to describe him. She mocked his lack of foreign policy knowledge, highlighted his bigotry and misogyny, and suggested he is psychologically unstable and too “dangerous” to be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. It was a rhetorical evisceration […]