Russia
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While much of President Trump’s attention since his return to power has been focused on perceived threats in this hemisphere, the Russia/Ukraine war grinds on in a bloody dance of incremental yet inexorable Russian advances in the east and persistent drone and missile attacks by both sides. Many believe that the combatant countries may be…
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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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While some of you probably will not find this of interest, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based foreign policy think tank, has published another article of mine on the Czech Republic. The quick summary is that as parliamentary elections await in the second half of 2025 the country runs the risk of joining Hungary…
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There are certain events in the foreign policy realm that simply take the breath away. The scenes from Damascus, Syria on the 8th of December, signalling the fitting end to a half century of brutal familial dictatorship in the heart of the Middle East, fall into the breathtaking category. Fourteen years after the start of…
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Thirty-five years ago the iron curtain collapsed. So ended a brief but tragic period in the European story first defined by Winston Churchill in a 1946 speech; “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” As communist regimes fell from Budapest to Berlin to Prague…
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This is the sixth, and penultimate, 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. The focus of this series of articles has been on specific foreign policy challenges – China, Russia, the Middle East,…
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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 third article in a series on key foreign policy challenges for the next U.S. president. The series will continue between now and the elections on 5 November. In his influential 1992 work – The End of History and the Last Man, on the logical progression of social and governmental structures to the…
Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog 