Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
We need an outcome where Australia gets the silent long-running submarines it needs; the United States, Britain and France get a strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific; and NATO Europe and the nuclear nonproliferation regime come away stronger.
By turning polls into rituals of anticipatory obedience, the Kremlin has disempowered and demotivated citizens
The AUKUS announcement was not a slight to France or Europe—or, for that matter, to Canada, Japan, or South Korea. It strengthens the hand of all democracies in the Indo-Pacific, including the democracies that aren’t part of the arrangement.
Still, these shifts would amount to a dramatic alteration in U.S. practice since the end of the Cold War. America would no longer see itself as “the cop walking a global beat,” as neoconservatives would have it, nor would it shrink its core interests to defense against threats from China and Russia, as some realists have proposed.
For 30 years, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has searched unsuccessfully for a purpose for its now unrivaled global power.
Despite increased threats to civil liberties, judicial independence, and civil society over the past decade, efforts to defend and rethink Europe’s democratic practices have also surged. To maintain this momentum and ultimately reverse democratic erosion, a more ambitious agenda of political reform is required.
We must keep a sharp eye on China’s nuclear deployments. But we have a long head start on them and can ensure that they do not surprise us in the nuclear space. If we fail to stay focused, we may find one day that they have achieved strategic superiority with entirely new military systems that we can neither defend against nor match.
America’s war in Afghanistan exhibits the danger of prolonging a combat mission past the point where its objective can be clearly defined and verifiably achieved, even when a record of success to date makes the cost of continuing into the future appear to be low.
But if the problem is more fundamental, and stems from the very constitution of the modern nation-state and its disregard for the integrity of robust civil society groups, rooted in a proper sense of the importance of individual and community, that’s a harder problem to solve. Maybe that’s why we ignore it — but we do so at our peril.
If anything, the trend seems to be more, not less, securitisation of communities within the US and elsewhere; and a continual dehumanisation of peoples in parts of the world that bear the impact, day in and day out, of the "war on terror". In many ways, I am forced to ask: isn’t what the terrorists wanted us to do?
With the Taliban’s return, India faces a real security threat. Rudra Chaudhuri writes how it also has the opportunity to pioneer an approach rooted in humanism.
What was defeated in Afghanistan was not just the most expensive and technologically advanced army in the world, but also two ideas that had deeply influenced the Western world. The first is that democracy can be exported, and the second is that the US military is the best in the world.
Biden is certainly no radical. But after decades of foreign policy radicalism that has created a string of disasters, his approach may at least begin to revitalize the United States’ role in the world.
The 1951 Refugee Convention is no longer suitable for today. Increased funding, strengthened enforcement mechanisms, and a new definition of refugee will help bring the global regime into the 21st century.
Clashing worldviews and the introduction of dangerous new technologies and techniques of asymmetric warfare have made the global security environment increasingly fraught. With the annual season for military exercises now upon us, policymakers must take steps to mitigate the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculations.
Tuesday’s protests across Brazil were a significant gamble by President Jair Bolsonaro. People showed up, but most wore black instead, in a sign of opposition — paving the way for Congress to get rid of him.
But it is finally possible to say, 20 years later, that 9/11 has shattered the U.S. pretension to global indispensability. Two decades more and the United States might yet become a nation among nations, no longer lording its power over others to get what it needs.
China’s party state is multiplying disciplinary and regulatory actions that amount to a top down shake up of China’s urban economy and society.
If China offers a model of economic prosperity under autocratic rule, can the U.S. counter with a more positive vision—one that also considers the young generation’s aspirations for justice, rule of law, and governance?
What's going on in Tunisia, the only surviving democracy from the Arab Spring?