Russia
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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,
-
Imagine a scenario in which the major powers of Europe and North America had come together in a political-military alliance in the early 1930s, pooling their diplomatic, economic, and defense resources to counter the rising menace of Nazi Germany. Under this storyline, it is highly unlikely that Hitler’s utopian plans for world domination would have
-
Two years ago Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the largest military conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. Unleashing the Red Army from three directions – the north (Belarus), south (Crimea), and east (Russia proper), Russia sought to quickly occupy Ukraine and incorporate it into a Soviet Union 2.0. The initial reactions
Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog 