Africa
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At a recent speech in Detroit, President Trump summed up his first year in office thusly: “I told you we were going to do a lot of things, Nobody thought it was going to turn out like this. This has been crazy.” When it comes to Trump 2.0’s foreign policy over the past 12 months,…
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In a Mar-a-Lago press conference on the morning of January 3rd, President Trump stated that the United States would “run” Venezuela until a proper transition to a new government can occur. The president’s announcement came in the wake of a lightning U.S. military raid on Caracas, leading to the apprehension on drug-related charges of Venezuelan…
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It was a decidedly down year for democracy across the globe. From the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to the smouldering conflicts in south and southeast Asia to the coup-infected states of sub-Saharan Africa to America’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean, the putative gold standard of representative government took a beating over the past twelve months. …
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The world is brimming with crises. Leaders across the globe are burning the midnight oil, trying to find acceptable solutions to seemingly intractable strategic dilemmas, from the ongoing bloodshed in the historic lands of Kievan Rus to the unsettled prospects for a lasting peace in the Middle East to the dangerous sabre-rattling between Tokyo and…
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“This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” President George H.W. Bush made this statement 35 years ago, on August 5, 1990, a mere three days after Saddam Hussein had unleashed his massive army on Kuwait. The predmediated lightning strike by Baghdad’s forces quickly engulfed the small, Persian gulf state, sending oil prices skyward and…
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This is the first of a four-part series on U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, the focus of which will be to explain how America went from being the self-proclaimed “indispensable” leader of the free world in the 1990s to today’s more conflicted, hesitant, and introspective great power. America entered 2025 somewhat bruised…
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Listening to the recent comments of Donald Trump, one could assume that America’s most pressing foreign policy challenges reside in our geographic neighborhood. Canada as our 51st state, the “Gulf of America”, taking over Greenland, and China’s designs on the Panama Canal have been repeatedly highlighted by the incoming commander in chief. While the president-elect…
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The South Korean president, frustrated by an obstreperous, opposition-led legislature, declares martial law in an almost keystone-cops like attempt at dictatorial rule. The attempt falls apart immediately, resulting in nationwide demonstrations and the impeachment of the would-be tyrant. Meanwhile, in Romania, a key member of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European…
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This is the fifth in a series of articles on key foreign policy challenges for the next U.S. president. The articles will continue between now and the general election on 5 November 2024. While much of the bandwidth of the foreign policy community is understandably focused on China and Russia – the “main threats” to…
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This is the fourth in a series of articles on key foreign policy challenges for the next U.S. president. The articles will continue between now and the general election on 5 November 2024. In a 2023 essay in the journal Foreign Affairs, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. National Security Advisor, described America’s current relationship with China…
Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog 