Governance

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War

From July 11-12, 2023, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania for one of the most significant NATO summits in history. This timely brief by Eric Rosenbach, Grace Jones, and Olivia Leiwant serves as a background piece on Ukraine’s history with NATO, potential future pathways for accession, and the operational impact Ukraine’s NATO membership could have on the alliance. 

Joseph Nye explores what a second Donald Trump presidency may mean for U.S. foreign policy and the world? While the man himself is unpredictable, his first term and his behavior since losing re-election in 2020 offer plenty of clues, none of which would be comforting to America's allies.

Joseph Nye argues that in the face of the threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea, Japan's self-defense depends more than ever on the strength of its alliances. By significantly increasing its own defense spending and pursuing closer military cooperation with the United States, the current government is moving in the right direction.

 Stephen Walt decided to look back to see if 2022 had gone according to his expectations. In his last column of 2021, he had described "Biden’s 2022 Foreign-Policy To-Do List." What did he get right, what did he get wrong, and how well did the Biden administration perform?

Stephen Walt argues that the true value of more diverse decision-making teams and more open political systems is not that they never make mistakes but rather that they make it more likely that policy blunders will be corrected once it is clear they are not working.

Stephen Walt writes that the world has returned to a state that realism explains best, one where great powers compete for power and influence and others adapt as best they can.

Charli Carpenter argues that the way to protect civilians from war crimes during ongoing war is not merely to threaten punishment for crimes sometime in the future but to put a stop to them now. And in Putin's case, this stopping power can come only from military force, not solely from judges.

Will China succeed in what some call its grand strategy of displacing American power? Whichever scenario emerges also depends on the strategy the US chooses in response, rites Joseph Nye.

Stephen Walt enumerates the challenges the U.S. president should prepare for in 2021.