Column Archive

Something odd happened at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week: The Democratic Party seemingly became the party of the United States military. Speaker after speaker at the convention extolled the party’s support for the military and U.S. veterans, and lauded the foreign policy acumen and leadership of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, particularly in her support for the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. But perhaps the high point came on the third night of the convention when John Allen—a retired four-star general, former commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and former special presidential envoy to […]

Climate-driven migration will likely affect millions of people in the coming decades, adding to the displacement of millions from war and instability. States and international organizations will need to dedicate additional resources to climate migrants, but they can already begin by integrating support into essential resilience and adaptation responses currently underway. Climate change policies are beginning to confront the complex dynamics of populations living in areas that are no longer habitable due to sea-level rise, desertification or other effects. Politics and policy choices are starting to play out at various levels. And the migrants themselves are grappling with decisions at […]

The United Nations is constantly embroiled in brutal conflicts, but some do it vastly more political harm than others. The organization has never fully recovered from its failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica massacre in the 1990s. Now it faces simultaneous crises in South Sudan and Syria that may do it equally severe damage. In South Sudan, peacekeepers have been thrown off balance by an outburst of violence for the second time in three years. The U.N. mission (UNMISS) there was unable to stop the country collapsing into civil war in 2013, but managed to protect tens of […]