Rethinking American-Chinese Competition in the Global South

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Imagine a world where China buys all the mines in Africa, further solidifying its dominance over the production of rare earth minerals. Imagine if the entire Global South’s telecommunication networks were controlled by Huawei, subsea fiber-optic cables are nearly exclusively built or repaired by China’s HMN Technologies. Imagine the bulk of maritime trade passes through […]

The Future of the US-China Relationship

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The US-China relationship faces certain tension and rising competition over the next four years. While it is impossible in general to predict specific new administration policies, there are likely to be wide swings between efforts to engage China and seek compromise, with efforts to compete, confront, or even contain Beijing. President Trump will be surrounded by […]

Mr. President, Lead the Way Forward

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After four intense years, enduring threats to his life and navigating countless battles, President Donald Trump has achieved what many deemed impossible: he has triumphed once again. The American people have renewed their trust in his leadership, driven by a shared belief in a brighter tomorrow and the enduring promise of the American Dream.  As […]

Trump Returns

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Donald Trump’s victory by an unassailable margin has shocked America’s bicoastal liberal intelligentsia. A majority of media pundits, whether talking heads or press columnists, could not imagine that the former and now future president could do anything more than eke out a narrow electoral victory. They simply could not comprehend how Americans other than Trump’s […]

Closing Arguments in the American Presidential Campaign

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It would be hard to think of a starker contrast than that between the two candidates on foreign policy. One refers to America as a “garbage can for the world.” The other says that “the American dream belongs to all of us.” One is calling for a massive increase in tariffs, while the other dismisses them […]

America the Unprepared

The principal product of Washington D.C. is words. They come in three different kinds of packages: memoranda, by which government departments and organizations communicate internally; op-ed articles, by which these various groups communicate with each other and the public; and reports, usually compiled under the auspices of people with expertise in the subject being addressed. […]

A Guide to Harris’ Foreign Policy

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How will Kamala Harris conduct foreign policy if she becomes president in January 2025? Would she hew to traditional Democratic Party stands on dealing with authoritarian regimes, climate change and foreign alliances? Or will she veer off in unpredictable directions? One obvious place to try and answer this question might be to explore Harris’ own […]

Trump, The Survivor

Photo credit: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid.

The image of former president Donald J. Trump, at the age of seventy-eight, wrestling with the Secret Service to stand upright and pump his fist in the air and shout, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” has resonated throughout the world. Bloodied but undefeated, he resembled a roaring lion to his supporters. Republican pollster Frank Luntz predicts that […]

Ghosts at the Banquet: The Washington NATO Summit

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The Vilnius NATO summit of 2023 was stalked by a spectre. How would the allies deal with Ukraine’s NATO aspirations while its vaunted counter-offensive had gotten off to a sputtering start, amidst nuclear saber rattling by Vladimir Putin and his henchmen, eliciting in turn a focus on “escalation management” by Joe Biden’s national security team. […]

The Biden-Trump Debate and Foreign Policy

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Looking like a figure out of Madame Tussauds wax museum as he gazed vacantly into the distance, the 81-year-old Joe Biden delivered a widely panned performance in the debate on June 27. A confrontation that was supposed to quell doubts about his fitness for the presidency only succeeded in amplifying them.  As Biden resists numerous calls […]