THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
“WISH FULFILLMENT” IN WORLD POLITICS
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A New U.S.-Colombia Deal for Security, Growth, and Migration
After Abelardo De La Espriella’s victory this past weekend, the United States and Colombia have an opportunity to reset one of the most important relationships in the western hemisphere. For more than two decades, the U.S.-Colombia partnership has been anchored by security cooperation and counter-narcotics efforts. A De La Espriella administration presents an opportunity to […]
Gaza’s Fate Hangs in the Balance in a Crucial Three-Day Meeting in Cyprus
The fate of 2.1 million people in Gaza hangs in the balance this week as key officials working for the Board of Peace meet in Cyprus starting Tuesday for three days to decide how to jump-start President Trump’s stalled twenty-point plan. Despite pledges of $17 billion and behind-the-scenes planning done by a small team of […]
The Perils of a DSA Foreign Policy
An avalanche rocked American politics last week. Across New York City, candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won closely-watched Democratic Party primary contests. Buoyed by the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a DSA member, they romped to victory over mainstream Democrats. This is bad news for New York City and New […]
Trump’s Iran Deal is Built to Fail
Neither side can make a credible commitment to honor promises It’s almost too on the nose: last Wednesday, a militarily victorious president of the United States signed a peace “deal”—negotiated in a vacuum, without consulting Congress, and without making any attempt to generate support from the American people—at Versailles. On his return to the United […]
When U.S. Foreign Policy Loses Its Doctrine
Foreign policy is ultimately built on two foundations: power and credibility. Power allows a state to act. Credibility determines whether others believe its actions will be sustained long enough to matter. When policy becomes dominated by short-term transactions rather than strategic doctrine, trust erodes and credibility declines. The transactional trap undermines trust and creates a […]
The Liberal Case for Censorship
Free speech is a practice with preconditions, and our adversaries have learned to dismantle them. Defending those conditions is the most liberal thing a democracy can do. In the fall of 2023, Israeli television broadcast footage of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. The videos showed emaciated, desperate, terrorized captives speaking directly to camera, […]
China's Quiet Contribution to the US-Iran Ceasefire
When US President Donald Trump publicly thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping in an interview with The New York Times for helping create the conditions that led to a ceasefire between the US and Iran, many observers were surprised. China and Iran have developed increasingly close economic and strategic ties over the past decade. Beijing has become Tehran’s largest trading […]
America at 250: The Responsibility to Lead
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, this historic moment offers an occasion for pride, gratitude, and reflection—not only for Americans, but for all those across the world who have been inspired by the American experiment and who continue to believe in the promise of freedom, opportunity, and human progress. For […]
FORTUNE FAVORS THE BRAVE AND THE BALTICS
NATO doesn’t face the threat of an attack from Russia. It’s already being attacked. Stymied in Ukraine, where Russian troops have failed to seize fresh territory over the past year, President Vladimir Putin is upping the pressure on Europe by flying drones through NATO member states to probe the readiness of America and its allies […]
ISRAEL’S GRAND STRATEGY – AND POLITICS? – AT AN INFLECTION POINT
Grand Strategy has been elegantly defined by John Lewis Gaddis and others as the dynamic relationship between national goals – which can aim high – and the constraint of resources, which are always finite. For the leaders of Israel in its younger years, essentially seeking the stability necessary for resurrecting an ancient but dispersed nation, […]
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP ROLE IN EUROPE IS NOT AN OPTION
In early July a major NATO conference will take place in Ankara, Turkey. It arrives right after America’s 250th anniversary celebrations and at a moment of rising tensions between America and Europe over a welter of geopolitical issues, including trade, immigration, the Middle East, Ukraine and Russia. Will President Donald Trump seize the moment to […]
How Israel Lost the U.S.-Iran War
It needs to shift gears promptly if it doesn’t want to lose the next one too Israelis were feeling like dreamers, to quote the Psalmist, at the start of the latest Iran campaign. It wasn’t just the devout among them who were waxing euphoric. Despite the peril of its predicament—scrambling for cover from incoming missiles and drones—the […]
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The Origins of the Third Reich
Götz Aly, “ Wie konnte das Geschehen. Deutschland 1933-1945 “ (How Could This Happen? Germany 1933-1945), S. Fischer, 2025 In 1936, the year of the Berlin Olympics, the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois traveled through Hitler’s Germany. Germany was not unfamiliar territory for him: four decades earlier, Du Bois had studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University […]
Partition and Its Discontents
Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern India, William Collins, 2025 The most sweeping revision of the world’s political map in all of history took place in the twentieth century, when the great Europe-based multinational empires that had dominated the planet dissolved and their constituent parts became independent states. The most […]
China and the United States: The Engineer and the Lawyer
Michael Mandelbaum examines some core differences between American and Chinese societies.
