Column Archive

Calling someone or something “primitive” is not normally meant as a compliment. But I have just learned that I may be a “primitive multilateralist.” It is a badge that I wear proudly. This weekend, Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper published a smart think piece on the process that led to the 1919 Versailles Treaty and the end of World War I. There will certainly be many more articles in this vein to mark the ill-fated agreement’s 100th anniversary this year. A lot of pundits will note that the Paris Peace Conference gave birth to modern multilateral diplomacy through the creation […]

During the Cold War, America’s global strategy was based on two pillars: leadership and security partnerships. First applied only to Europe, this strategy later expanded to the Pacific and, by the 1970s, to the Middle East, which became and remain the most important regions in American foreign policy. Global leadership placed economic and military burdens on the United States, but most Americans believed that the benefits justified the costs. While there were always debates over precisely how and where to implement the strategy, there was broad agreement on the two core pillars. The political right and left, Republicans and Democrats, […]

One of the most dramatic political pivots of 2018 occurred in Ethiopia, where the sudden rise of 42-year-old Abiy Ahmed as prime minister ushered in a series of head-spinning reforms in a country long ruled by a deeply repressive regime. There is now the very real possibility that Ethiopia could make a lasting shift to democracy. There are so many positive signs so far that most Ethiopians at home and abroad seem gripped by a sense of euphoria. But not all is well in Ethiopia. Abiy faces a number of significant obstacles to his goal of bringing a free, peaceful […]

Editor’s note: Editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein’s column will be back next week. An estimated 4 million children have been born in Syria since 2011, according to UNICEF, which means that half of the children in Syria today have grown up only knowing war. “Every 8-year-old in Syria has been growing up amidst danger, destruction and death,” Henrietta Fore, the executive director of UNICEF, said after a five-day visit to the country in mid-December. Since the government first crushed a popular uprising and precipitated the civil war that still shows little sign of ending, a third of the schools in Syria have […]