In-Depth Archive

After winning the October 2013 elections, the new Coalition government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott inherited the difficult task of readjusting Australia’s strategic and defense policy. Power shifts in Asia have already begun to challenge fundamental aspects of Australia’s strategic posture. The rise of China and the relative decline of the U.S. position in the Asia-Pacific region potentially put Australia in a difficult position: that of maintaining close relations with both its major ally, the United States, and its most important trading partner, China. If Sino-U.S. relations become even more competitive, Canberra could find itself between a rock and a […]

These should be salad days for the State Department. It is on its fifth in a string of “rock star” secretaries with world-class political skills and major public followings at home and abroad. The U.S. public has just told its representatives as decisively as at any time in the past half-century to pursue diplomatic, not military, solutions to world problems. As Hillary Clinton put it at the end of her tenure as secretary of state, “In today’s world, when we can be anywhere virtually, more than ever, people want us to actually show up.” But over that same period of […]

Diplomacy in the American political system is frequently described as the exclusive province of presidents. Thomas Jefferson, America’s first secretary of state, wrote in 1790, “The transaction of business with foreign nations is executive altogether. . . . Exceptions are to be strictly construed.” A decade later, John Marshall, who would go on to become the most influential chief justice in U.S. history, declared on the floor of the House of Representatives, “The president is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” Justice George Sutherland noted Marshall’s claim in United […]

By Sept. 10, 2001, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, was increasingly slouching toward irrelevance. Although USAID Administrator Brian Atwood had instituted important reforms during his tenure at the helm during the 1990s, the agency had been badly bloodied by a contentious political battle with the Republican-controlled Congress over whether it should be folded into the State Department. Remarkably, Atwood held both the State Department and Sen. Jesse Helms at bay when Congress tried to abolish USAID and place its remains in Foggy Bottom. But Atwood and the agency paid a steep price for their resistance, and angry […]

On Jan. 21, 2009, President Barack Obama pledged to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The announcement’s timing and setting highlighted its importance. On just his second day in office, and flanked by former generals and admirals, the president had made it a top priority to shut the U.S. prison that had become synonymous with human rights abuses and lawlessness. That same day, Obama issued an order banning torture and closing secret CIA “black sites” in an effort to align America’s fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups with due process and the rule of law. Obama […]

Introduction: A Climate of Fear Every democracy must wrestle with the dilemma of ensuring security for its citizens, while at the same time protecting their liberty and privacy. Since 1975, when the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, led by Sen. Frank Church, investigated media revelations about domestic spying by the CIA, the United States, more than any other nation in history, has been attempting to find an effective response to this dilemma: a workable equilibrium between the activities of secret agencies, on one hand, and the proper measures of accountability necessary to prevent them from overstepping the boundaries of law and […]

The term “shadow wars” aptly describes the U.S. approach to the war on terror. Policymakers perceive they are fighting an enemy composed of shadow and dust, one hidden in and facilitated by the dark underworld of global politics. But to prosecute this campaign, the U.S. has itself, to borrow a term from the writer J.R.R. Tolkien, “fallen into shadow”: Its moral high ground and once-principled politics have been replaced by a recourse to policies such as arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings that have tarnished its reputation and bolstered its enemies. The blowback from these policies demonstrates that a just […]