Departments

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foreign policy

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    1/15/2021

    Legacies of Cold War Liberalism

    by Michael Brenes and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins

    Two historians interrogate the origins of liberal intervention after World War II. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/7/2020

    What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America

    by Anne Applebaum

    "The images from Washington that are going out around the world are far more damaging to America’s reputation as a stable democracy than the images of young people protesting the Vietnam War several decades ago, and they are far more disturbing to outsiders than the riots and protests of last summer."

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    12/22/2020

    Biden Wants to Convene an International 'Summit for Democracy'. He Shouldn't

    by David Adler and Stephen Wertheim

    Joe Biden has proposed a summit of democratic nations; this would be an unfortunate exercise in dividing the world into camps of nations following the US and those opposed, without strict regard for whether those nations actually practice democracy. Instead, the authors argue, the US must lead by example: close tax shelters, put the wealthy under the rule of law, and help other nations to control their oligarchs. 

  • 12/13/2020

    Will Biden Shake Up a Century of US-Ireland Relations?

    by Mark Holan

    As the second Irish-American Catholic president, Joe Biden may be expected to sprinkle his speeches with lines from Seamus Heaney, but he's likely to tread a moderate path as issues like Brexit test the Irish-American relationship. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    11/18/2020

    The World Is Never Going Back to Normal

    by Anne Applebaum

    American allies can read the newspapers, and have adjusted their expectations of American leadership accordingly in the last four years. It's unlikely a Biden administration can restore American leadership. 

  • SOURCE: American Conservative
    11/11/2020

    The Origins Of U.S. Global Dominance

    by Daniel Larison

    A conservative historian reviews a new book on the history of American interventionism and advocates for reorganizing foreign policy without the imperative to dominate the world. 

  • SOURCE: London Review of Books
    11/1/2020

    Warfare State (Review Essay)

    by Thomas Meaney

    Two new books articulate a critique from a conservative perspective of American military intervention abroad. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    10/19/2020

    Why Is America the World’s Police? (Review)

    by Sam Lebovic

    A review of Stephen Wertheim's "Tomorrow, The World" concludes the new book shows how American military supremacy moved in a generation from a novel idea to embedded common sense, and demands rethinking the resources spent to maintain it. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/15/2020

    America Has No Reason to Be So Powerful

    by Stephen Wertheim

    "There was a time when Americans believed that armed dominance obstructed and corrupted genuine engagement in the world, far from being its foundation."

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    10/1/2020

    How Trump Brought Home the Endless War

    by Stephen Wertheim

    The Global War on Terror reconfigured American foreign policy around military force against abstract ideas and indeterminate enemies. The divisions of domestic politics set the stage for Donald Trump to move the war to the streets of the United States. 

  • SOURCE: New Statesman
    9/23/2020

    Would Biden or Trump End America's Forever Wars?

    Stephen Wertheim questions whether politicians will heed the overwhelming public desire to scale back military intervention and get the Pentagon's spending under control. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    9/18/2020

    The Endless Fantasy of American Power

    by Andrew Bacevich

    Neither Trump nor Biden seems prepared to do the necessary work of moving military power and force from the center of American foreign policy. The consequence will be further endless war at the expense of the global-scale policies needed to confront the most urgent threats.