Column Archive

Quietly but steadily, the most important environmental treaty that most people have never heard of is taking shape. Late last month, a United Nations committee released the draft text of a new, legally binding international convention to protect the “marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.” The so-called BBNJ treaty will promote the “conservation and sustainable use” of marine resources and living organisms in the high seas, an expanse encompassing 50 percent of the planet’s surface and all the water below. The high seas are the quintessential global commons. Lying beyond any nation’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, which extends […]

The best that can be said about President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. national security and foreign policy is that it has avoided outright catastrophe—at least so far. Trump did finish the job of helping local allies in Iraq and Syria destroy the self-styled Islamic State’s “caliphate.” But in every other part of the world, the United States is in a worse position than when he took office, less influential and less respected nearly everywhere. Most of America’s security partnerships have eroded; some are close to collapse. China and Russia are more assertive and less constrained than they were a […]

As the 17th-century poet John Donne wrote in those immortal lines, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Don’t be alarmed. This is not a column about poetry, or metaphysics, but about how the world economy has churned and woven its way, however unsteadily, toward closer and closer ties between different countries and regions, and thus toward greater integration overall. These processes are generally called globalization, lending to a sense that this is something relatively new, but in fact, it has been going on in one […]

One of President Donald Trump’s top trade priorities upon entering office was renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. Renegotiations eventually went through, despite some typical threats and taunts from Trump along the way about tearing up or withdrawing from the existing deal. Along with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump signed the revised pact, now dubbed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, more than seven months ago. Mexico’s Congress ratified the deal in June—by an overwhelming vote of 114-4—while Canada has taken steps to do so before its parliamentary elections this fall. But […]

Disturbing scenes emanating from detention centers along the southern U.S. border have underscored the Trump administration’s indifference to the suffering of strangers, even young children seeking asylum. Unfortunately, the current administration in Washington is far from alone in scorning those seeking refuge in foreign lands. The world is in the midst of a global crisis of displacement, one that is testing both established humanitarian principles and the will of wealthy countries to ease the plight of those affected. This calamity shows no signs of abating. The world is utterly failing to assist and protect those most in need. Late last […]