R. Berg & H. Montealegre, RCW
The tragic events that unfolded in January at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., has given rise to elegies of American soft power. The shining example of American democracy has been extinguished, so the argument goes, the insurrection marking the
Sarah O'Connor, Financial Times
Businesses and governments should take the lead in rooting out abuses.
Kalev Leetaru, RealClearPolitics
Television news programming in the US has long relied on Google Earth to show viewers where a particular location is when covering events in the rest of the world. The timeline below shows the total seconds per month since July 2010 in which the credit line "Google Earth" appeared somewhere in the...
Benjamin Moscovici, Der Spiegel
Buildings are going up everywhere in Hargeisa. Large villas are being built on the outskirts of the city, while hotels, office towers and bank buildings are taking shape in the city center. Government spending is relatively clear and transparent, and there are regular democratic elections. So far, when the opposition has won, the transfer of power has been smooth.
Erin O'Toole, National Post
Tremendous opportunity awaits Canada in the Indo-Pacific, but Justin Trudeau has failed to nurture those relationships.
Reuben Brigety, Foreign Affairs
When the United States looks abroad to assess the risk of conflict, it relies on a host of tools to understand other countries' social and political divisions and how likely they are to result in unrest or violence. These techniques reflect decades of research, in both government and academia, into the root causes of civil disorder and state failure. The idea is that by better understanding those causes, policymakers can prevent conflict before it breaks out or... Читать дальше...
Richard Haass, Project Syndicate
President Joe Biden's administration appears determined to separate America's relationship with the Kingdom from the relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But this separation will likely prove impossible to sustain.
Fred Kaplan, Slate
He probably doesn't want to pull all the troops out. He definitely doesn't want to send more in. There may not be a third choice.
Sam Rainsy, The Diplomat
The creation of a cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers to establish a Japanese version of the Magnitsky Act creates the opportunity for an Asian response to the human rights violations in Cambodia. Those involved include former Defense Minister Nakatani Gen of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Yamao Shiori of the opposition Democratic Party for the People, as well as members from ruling coalition partner Komeito and the opposition Nippon Ishin party.
Shannon Stirone, The Atlantic
There's no place like home—unless you're Elon Musk. A prototype of SpaceX's Starship, which may someday send humans to Mars, is, according to Musk, likely to launch soon, possibly within the coming days. But what motivates Musk? Why bother with Mars? A video clip from an interview Musk gave in 2019 seems to sum up Musk's vision—and everything that's wrong with it.
Dov Zakheim, National Interest
Margaret Macmillan's War: How Conflict Shaped Us delivers a valuable investigation into how men and women think about war.
Robbie Gramer & Jack Detsch, FP
Democrats in Congress signaled they were uneasy with the move and are demanding answers from the White House.
David Martin, CBS News
The U.S. airstrike against Iranian-backed militias Thursday night was the latest chapter in the poisonous relationship with Iran President Biden inherited from the Trump administration. Thirteen months ago the two countries came perilously close to war. It began with an American drone strike which killed Iran's most powerful general and ended with an Iranian ballistic missile attack against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Americans. Читать дальше...
Niall Ferguson with Bush Center
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. The historian has written extensively on issues related to immigration and national identity. The author of 16 books, he is...
S. Rademaker, RCW
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden will find that Iran is not the only constraint on its options as it seeks a negotiated return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The administration will also find its hands tied by a nearly forgotten law enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2015: the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA.
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
A few months ago, there were rumors of a massacre of hundreds at the Church of Our Lady Mary Zion in Axum, in northern Ethiopia. It is an area rocked by the Tigray war, which involves the communists of Ethiopia, the Eritrean defense forces, and ethno-nationalist movements. It is a very confusing conflict for those not schooled in the last 40 years of Ethiopian politics. And...
Dexter Filkins, New Yorker
On the night of August 14th, Fawzia Koofi was on her way home to Kabul from the funeral of family friends. Koofi, forty-five, is one of Afghanistan's leading advocates for women's rights—a former parliament member who, in the twenty years since the United States and its allies toppled the Taliban, has carried on a ferocious public fight to reverse a history of oppression. She and her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Shuhra, were riding in an armored...
Hal Brands, Bloomberg
A new global rivalry, between America and China, is remaking supply chains, reshaping the world's strategic geography, and raising the specter of a devastating great-power war. As during the Cold War, countries from Oceania to Latin America are being pressured to pick sides, insulate themselves from competitive pressures, or otherwise find protection in a fragmenting world.