Column Archive

In recent weeks, Iran has elevated its long-simmering tensions with the United States to a dangerous new level, shooting down a U.S. reconnaissance drone over the Gulf of Oman, apparently launching a series of attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and announcing that it will stop complying with some of the conditions in the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal that President Donald Trump earlier abandoned. Now, the U.S.-Iran standoff is dangerously close to becoming an outright confrontation. The timing of this escalation seems perplexing. Why would Iran go out of its way to provoke the United States when Trump […]

The results of Sunday’s rerun election for mayor of Istanbul sent headline writers and political commentators scrambling for the right description. One Turkish newspaper called the crushing defeat of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hand-picked candidate an “earthquake.” Another called it a “people’s victory.” Cumhuriyet, the main opposition daily, declared that “one-man rule” had been “thrashed.” Voters in Istanbul, the city where Erdogan was born and where he rose to power as mayor himself in the 1990s, turned firmly against him, setting the country’s political landscape in flux. The opposition is invigorated and Erdogan, who has become the most dominant figure […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Neil Bhatiya is filling in for Judah Grunstein this week. Escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf peaked last week when President Donald Trump abruptly canceled U.S. airstrikes against Iranian military assets, after Iran shot down an unmanned American surveillance drone over the Gulf of Oman. Trump’s ordering of military strikes, only to change his mind apparently at the last moment, has raised more questions about the administration’s strategy toward Iran and its ultimate goals. Trump’s decision to call off the airstrikes seemed to indicate that he doesn’t see a military solution to this growing crisis, even […]

If the U.S.-China trade war develops into a broader cold war, as some observers fear, it will be nothing like the actual Cold War. Between civil war in Russia after World War I, the Great Depression in the United States and then the cataclysm of World War II, America and the Soviet Union never had a chance to develop a significant economic relationship before things hardened into a stark East-West divide. When Washington adopted a containment strategy that blocked most trade with the Soviets, including technology transfers, it had relatively little impact on either economy. The situation with China today […]

This weekend, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe welcomes world leaders to Osaka for the annual summit of the Group of 20. This club of major economies has been at the forefront of global governance since November 2008, when U.S. President George W. Bush convened an emergency committee to help rescue a world plummeting into the financial and economic abyss. The G-20’s ambit has since broadened to encompass an ever-expanding range of global issues. The Osaka summit continues that trend. Japan set an ambitious agenda for its presidency of the G-20, which rotates every year. Major themes include removing structural impediments […]

Homeland security is a priority for every nation. Since some countries face the same threats and enemies for decades, or even centuries, their conceptualization of homeland security remains constant. The United States is different. As America’s role in the world and the challenges it faces have changed, Americans themselves have had to periodically reconceptualize homeland security. Another radical rethinking is underway again today, and much is at stake. In the first half of the 20th century, homeland security became more than just protecting the nation’s borders and ports, as Americans recognized that events far away had a direct effect on […]

In recent weeks, the Dominican Republic has found itself at the center of a human tragedy and public relations nightmare. Mounting reports of the unexplained deaths of tourists were interrupted briefly by news of the shooting of David Ortiz, a beloved and recently retired Dominican star of Major League Baseball, at a club in Santo Domingo. It added yet another black mark to a country whose economy has become increasingly dependent on attracting visitors. What toll will this all take on the economy, and on Dominican politics? It wasn’t very long ago that the Dominican Republic was riding a wave […]

In the first decades after the commencement of China’s economic reforms and “opening up,” which began at the end of the 1970s, one question loomed in the minds of Western heads of state and many professional China watchers: How long would it take, as capitalist production and consumerism took hold, for Western forms of law and government to follow? By the time the Soviet Union was dissolved, in 1991, this kind of evolution came to be seen as inevitable, and with the invention and near-universal adoption of the internet, a robust vehicle to help catalyze change in China seemed at […]

President Donald Trump likes trade wars because he thinks they are “easy to win,” as he infamously put it, and because he thinks they will help improve the trade balance. Trump claims past American presidents have been weak, allowing other countries to take advantage of the United States in trade negotiations. As evidence, he points to the large American trade deficit. But any economist worth her salt will tell you that the deficit doesn’t reflect what Trump thinks it does. Instead, it simply reflects the propensity of Americans to spend more than they save and invest. Trump is wrong about […]

Eleven months ago, with little fanfare, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed a High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, co-chaired by Melinda Gates of the eponymous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Guterres assigned the group of 22 luminaries a daunting task: to figure out how to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms to humanity posed by the digital revolution. Last week, the panel delivered its conclusions in a report on “The Age of Digital Interdependence.” Unfortunately, the panel’s findings are apt to fall on deaf ears as the world grows more divided […]

Every expert on transnational jihadism knew that eradicating the Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq would not lead to the end of this brutal, malignant movement. Since it had become as much an ideology and a brand as an actual organization, holding physical territory and establishing a proto-state were important but not vital for the Islamic State, at least in the near term. In response to its battlefield defeats in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has been dispersing, keeping its brand alive with hopes that someday it can take another shot at creating a state. For now, […]

Last year, Nicaragua looked like it might slide into civil war. Facing mass protests, President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, responded with repression and violence that only added fury to demonstrators’ demands. One year later, it is clear the two have survived the greatest challenge so far to their move to remain in power indefinitely. But their legitimacy is shattered, the country’s economy is in shambles, and the worst may be yet to come. If all goes according to Ortega’s plan, the protests that started in April 2018 will formally come to an end within a […]

Can the norms and institutions of liberal democracy still effectively arbitrate the issues driving debate in Western democracies? The ideological movements roiling politics throughout Europe and the United States have been seen as a popular backlash against the elite technocratic policy consensus of Third Way globalization. But in some ways, they portend a new form of contesting politics that is fundamentally incompatible with the premises on which liberal democracy is based. These movements may be working within the system to achieve their aims for now, but in the long run, the battles they seek to join could represent existential threats […]

Almost every week of late, it seems something new, startling and historically unusual is happening in U.S. trade policy. President Donald Trump’s actions are undermining the credibility of American negotiators, increasing uncertainty for traders and investors, domestic and foreign, and potentially threatening to throw the economy into recession. This is all happening in part because Trump refuses to acknowledge that Americans pay the tariffs he likes so much, and also because he still doesn’t understand how global supply chains work. With so many head-spinning developments this spring, it can help to step back and take stock of where things stand, […]

Last week, President Donald Trump joined world leaders to commemorate Operation Overlord, history’s most ambitious amphibious invasion and a portent of the extensive U.S. international engagement that was to come in the wake of World War II. The pageantry of the event, which marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and the poignancy of the Normandy landings’ last surviving veterans, could not conceal the brutal truth: The ties that have bound the United States to its European partners in the decades since that war are badly frayed. For the first time in the postwar era, an American president has repeatedly undermined […]

As military leaders advance in rank and take on more responsibility, they learn the importance of what is known as command climate, or the culture of an organization and its core values. Since commanders cannot personally oversee every detail of a large and complex organization, they must establish an effective command climate to assure that subordinates do what the leader wants, even when she or he is not present. Command climate is not just an extension of the leader; it is what makes an organization reflect its leader’s priorities, values and attributes. While it is most associated with the U.S. […]

Only one thing is clear in Israel’s suddenly chaotic politics. On July 16, Benjamin Netanyahu will become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. But two months later, he may be on his way out of office. Unprecedented political developments are roiling Israel after Netanyahu was surprisingly unable to form a governing coalition despite another election win in April. A rerun of the vote is set for Sept. 17, and Netanyahu’s fate could look very different by then. It is as intriguing of a domestic political reality as Israel has ever seen, with multiple moving parts and scenarios to contemplate. […]