Column Archive

U.S. President Donald Trump, in words and action, favors bilateral relations as the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Special ties to some key countries and leaders will always be important, but his approach is downplaying the value of regional systems and multilateralism, and of their institutions. As a result, it will fall short in protecting American interests in an age of redistributed power and transnational threats. In his first month in office, Trump has held bilateral meetings with the leaders of the U.K., Canada, Japan and Israel, while having one with Mexico’s president canceled. Watching his strangely aggressive handshakes and […]

All bureaucracies need heroes. The employees of most large organizations spend their days taking notes and bickering over their vacation dates. They require a few exemplary individuals, past or present, to inspire them. Bankers laud the financial wizards who landed big deals. Lawyers lionize the legal eagles who won famous cases. The United Nations is no different. U.N. officials tend to be smart, highly educated and distinctly frustrated by the organization’s struggle to stay relevant on the world stage. Anyone who has encountered this admirably cosmopolitan tribe of officials knows that they are also collectively obsessed by their right to […]

The composition of a U.S. president’s national security team is always important, but it is particularly so for Donald Trump. Most recent U.S. presidents took office with some experience at policymaking and international affairs, and with ties to their party’s foreign and national security policy experts. Trump did not. This is one reason that getting his people in place is taking so long. Of the 549 senior government positions that require Senate confirmation, 14 of Trump’s nominees have been confirmed, and 20 are awaiting confirmation. No one has yet been named for the remaining 515 slots. That said, Trump did […]

One month into Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s much too early to expect a fully coherent “Trump doctrine” on foreign policy. But the clear outlines of the Trump administration’s modus operandi are emerging, and it looks unlike anything we have seen before. The new administration has put in place a two-track foreign policy approach to the principal issues on the global agenda. The two tracks are not parallel; if anything, they are perpendicular and contradictory. On one track, Trump makes vague policy pronouncements over Twitter, in speeches and at press conferences. The president often reverses course and contradicts himself. On the […]

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Europe over the weekend in an effort to reassure nervous allies about America’s commitment to NATO and the trans-Atlantic relationship. First in Munich, at the annual security conference there, and then in Brussels, Pence delivered a message more in line with what Europeans are used to hearing about the American approach to the alliance. Like U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, who preceded him last week in Brussels, Pence added a pinch of tough love to the healthy dose of soothing affection. Europeans will need to contribute more to their defense if they expect […]

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit last week to Kuwait and Oman was the latest sign of an improvement in the tone of Tehran’s relations with the Persian Gulf states, and in particular Saudi Arabia, this year. Perhaps the uncertainties around U.S. President Donald Trump’s intentions, as well as the recent thaw between Turkey and Russia, are factors. In any event, it underscores the strategic trend of greater regional ownership of local problems. Rouhani’s stopovers in Kuwait and Oman followed a number of developments in the Persian Gulf region since January that suggest that regional powers are seeking to step back […]

The conflict in Afghanistan played a surprisingly small role in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, possibly because none of the candidates had any new ideas on what to do about this long-festering problem. But there is an old aphorism sometimes attributed to Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and communist theorist, that goes, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” While Trotsky probably never uttered the phrase, there is something to it. It certainly applies to the conflict in Afghanistan: While the war was not a major topic in Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid, he […]

When Donald Trump shocked the world by winning the presidency of the United States, just a few months after British voters opted to leave the European Union, the rise of rightist, anti-establishment populists started to look like an inexorable trend across the West and elsewhere. To be sure, the twin successes of right-wing, anti-immigrant insurgencies did energize like-minded movements in other countries. And yet, they also triggered another reaction—a paradoxical, if not altogether unpredictable response. Trump’s win, and to a lesser extent Brexit, made tangible the threat of what had until recently been dismissed as a curious fringe phenomenon. By […]

Is the United States a rogue state? Is it a failed or failing state? The answer, of course, is no, or at least not yet. But the hyperbole is intentional, meant to underscore how each day of Donald Trump’s presidency brings us deeper into the realm of the unimaginable. As I filed this column, the latest scandal to engulf the administration is the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn less than a month after inauguration day. According to the White House’s own account, Flynn’s misdeed was not to have discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Moscow’s ambassador to the […]

MARRAKECH, Morocco—Tensions among governments over how to prevent terrorism are evident, from the confusion over U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to clamp down on migration to disputes between neighbors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa over border controls. But the will to cooperate is strong. The challenges center around mismatches in legal authorities and capabilities, and the ever-changing nature of the enemy. Both trends were on display at the annual Marrakech Security Forum this past week, where security officials and experts from Arab, African and European countries gathered to discuss the obstacles they face, but also the progress they’ve […]

Antonio Guterres has a personnel problem. Last week, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, nixed the U.N. secretary-general’s nomination of a new envoy to Libya. Guterres had proposed the respected former Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, for the job. On Friday, Haley released a terse statement saying that she was “disappointed” by the choice, and citing it as a symptom of the U.N.’s bias against Israel. The U.S. maneuver is simultaneously tokenistic, destructive and liable to backfire. The Bush and Obama administrations invested a great deal in Fayyad as one of the few Palestinian politicians they […]

Upon moving into the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump could have opted for a cautious approach, carefully learning the ropes while building political alliances and public support. Instead he has taken the opposite tack, rapidly staking out ambitious, even revolutionary positions. Among these were draft executive orders to drastically reduce American involvement in the United Nations and other international organizations, and withdraw from some multinational treaties. If implemented, these policies will signal a fundamental shift in the world role the United States has played for the past 75 years. They would be revolutionary indeed. While Trump did not often […]

The turmoil that greeted U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order banning most travel from several Muslim-majority countries and his plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico understandably focused global attention on the Trump administration’s migration policies. But the fact is that developments in the United States are not occurring in a vacuum. The issue of how to regulate the flow of human beings seeking to resettle from one country to another is climbing on the global agenda, with potentially harmful implications on a number of important fronts. Restricting immigration has always been the subject of bitter, emotional […]

The French presidential campaign was already off to a surprising start, with dark-horse candidates having won both of the major parties’ primaries. It was thrown into further disarray two weeks ago by the scandal engulfing conservative Republican party candidate and erstwhile frontrunner, Francois Fillon, who is accused of paying his wife hundreds of thousands of euros in salary while he was a member of Parliament for work she never performed. Fillon has denied any wrongdoing and refused to bow out, but his candidacy, based in part on his reputation as a clean politician, has taken a severe hit. The scandal […]

Some of the most compelling dramas about the effects of globalization are playing out in the Mediterranean basin today. This is understandable given the region’s position, where the worlds of the North and South intersect, quite tragically in recent years. But three distinct zones of the Mediterranean show quite different coping mechanisms with respect to three major global challenges: migration, terrorism and economic interdependence. Throughout history, the Mediterranean has been a crossroad of cultural interaction between great empires and civilizations. Resources, people and ideas have moved from South to North, and back again, creating the great multicultural cities of Venice […]

Are Antonio Guterres and Nikki Haley set to be New York’s new power couple? The future of the United Nations may rest on the duo’s personal and political chemistry. Guterres has only been U.N. secretary-general since the start of the year, and Haley began work as U.S. representative to the U.N. last week. But diplomats are watching both of them like hawks—and like what they see so far. Guterres is a bundle of energy, intent on energizing the U.N. Secretariat after an era of enforced lethargy under Ban Ki-moon. Haley is a voice of calm, signaling to her foreign counterparts […]

No matter whether President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries is called a “temporary suspension” or, as Trump himself labeled it, a “ban,” it has caused furor both inside the United States and abroad. Even putting aside the morality of the policy, its hard-to-understand inclusion of some predominantly Muslim nations but not others, and the bizarre way it was developed and rolled out, it is having a major effect on America’s global security, much of it negative. While the entry ban might be good domestic politics for Trump, it defies the time-tested […]