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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
WWE comes to the Oval Office
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Ukraine: Difficult Negotiations Ahead
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Czech Republic Politics
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Drama in Syria
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Viewpoint: Remembering Halcyon Days
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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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Trump 2.0 and Foreign Policy
Now that the dust has settled from the general elections with the Glover Cleveland-like return of former President Trump to the White House, we can step back and ponder what this dramatic shift in America’s leadership means for our place in the world. While much will be written in the coming two months about border
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Key Foreign Policy Challenges – the Homefront
This is the seventh and final piece in a series of articles on key foreign policy challenges for the next U.S. president. This series of articles, which began in June, has figuratively spanned the globe from Beijing to Lagos to Moscow to Tel Aviv to Mexico City and beyond in an attempt to present some
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