Asia

  • One hundred days is traditionally viewed as an appropriate timeline in the United States for an initial analysis of the relative successes and failures of an incipient presidential administration. Given that April 30th represents the end of the embryonic stage of Trump 2.0, an evaluation of the primary foci of the president’s foreign policy is

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  • Autocrats Abound

    Poor man wanna be rich Rich man wanna be King And a King ain’t satisfied  ‘till he rules everything.  While these lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 hit Badlands were not penned as an overt political statement, they resonate loudly today with the growing number of entrenched autocrats across the globe. From the shores of the

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  • Praise in public, criticize in private has been a core precept of good management practices for years. Based on the scene in the White House Oval Office on 28 February, it is clear that neither President Trump nor Vice President Vance subscribe to that theory. Instead, they metaphorically body slammed — a la World Wrestling

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  • Who Needs One Hundred Days

    An incoming U.S. presidential administration is traditionally afforded one hundred days to plot the trajectory of its policies. With Trump 2.0, that conventional timeline has been shattered. In his first three weeks in office, the new president has careened from crisis to crisis like an energy drink-addled adolescent in a turbo-charged bumper car, stopping only

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  • The World Trump Inherits

    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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  • Democracy Draws in 2024

    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

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  • Fifty years ago this month Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace as President of the United States, before likely being impeached in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  The corruption at the highest level of the American government contributed to a nascent loss of trust by a significant portion of the populace in their elected leaders,

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  • This is the second in a series of Viewpoint articles focused on key foreign policy challenges for the next U.S. President. The articles will run between now and the general election on 5 November.  In an interview with NBC News in 1998, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the United States “the indispensable nation.”  The

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