History
-
Given the significance of the recent (April 12) Hungarian elections, I put together a quick analysis for the Foreign Policy Research Institute of their ramifications for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The piece went live today and can be accessed here. I will also be posting a second article—for the local papers—on this blog…
-
As the Persian Gulf war enters its second month, President Trump continues to frequently vacillate between threatening more “fire and brimstone” on the Iranians and proclaiming that the two sides are on the cusp of a major agreement to end the fighting. As of this writing (29 March), hostilities persist between the primary combatants in…
-
The American and Israeli joint strike against Iran, beginning with the 1 March assassination of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has plunged the entire Middle East into a violent vortex with seemingly no end on the horizon. The hostilities, called “A War Without Strategy” in the 7 March edition of the Economist, have…
-
While the Beatles feature in the title of this commentary, the lyrics from another British rock and roll band offer a practical framework as the warring sides in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe probe for an acceptable offramp after four years of bloodshed. You can’t always get what you want But if you try…
-
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…
-
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…
-
The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), the Philadelphia-based think tank for which I write periodically, yesterday published my latest analytic missive on political developments in the Czech Republic. For anyone interested, the article can be accessed here.
-
This is the final article in a four-part series on U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, the focus of which is to explain how America went from being the self-proclaimed “indispensable” leader of the free world in the 1990s to today’s more conflicted and introspective great power. Nine years ago, when Donald Trump was…
-
This is the third in 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. “I’ve come here to Cairo to…
-
“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…
Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog 