In 1958, a novel describing the failures of American foreign policy made a splash. The problem, it said, was that Americans knew nothing and cared less about people in other countries. That book was The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick…
President Joe Biden took what is acclaimed to be a brave step: denouncing the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire against its ethnic Armenian population. Some 1.5 million people likely perished. Biden said, “Each year on this day, we remember…
Editor’s note: This column was originally published on April 20, 2021. President Biden’s recent decision to withdraw all remaining 2,500 American troops from Afghanistan by September 11 entails much more risk than reward. The reward is principally political: on September…
Although the U.S. has been involved in multiple endless wars, none of them have posed an existential threat. That’s because none of them have been against a serious military power, one with well-trained conventional forces and extensive nuclear weapons, like…
A major emphasis of President Joe Biden’s anti-China strategy is building a coalition with allied states. The idea makes sense, in theory, anyway. Indeed, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to do the same. They pressed…
Most presidents’ approach to foreign policy is labeled their “doctrine.” President Biden’s Thursday speech at the State Department was the preview of a “Biden Doctrine,” which the president painted as an admixture of virtue signaling, liberal talking points, and signals…
Sometimes the people you help the most are the most ungrateful. During World War II Americans left the security of their own continent and helped save Western Europe from both Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. In doing…
President Trump formally exited the 1992 “Open Skies” treaty with Russia yesterday on the ground that Russia wasn’t performing its obligations under that agreement. The treaty allowed each nation to fly reconnaissance aircraft over the other to inspect weapon systems….
Due to the irrational impulses Donald Trump brought out in his opponents, a sensible, moderate, pragmatic record in foreign policy is in danger of being jettisoned simply because he initiated it. Yet the consequences of such knee-jerk rejection will be…
