On July 16, the State Department released the Draft Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights. The report, as Walter Russell Mead notes, is “a thoughtful and carefully reasoned document that may serve as an important landmark.” Given the Commission’s charge, though, it should be titled “A Comprehensive Review of U.S. Human Rights Policy,” as […]
The U.S.’ great power competition with China is intensifying on a number of fronts simultaneously, namely trade, security, and human rights. Current U.S. pressure on China through the Hong Kong protests actually manages to intertwine all three areas concurrently. However, as with the origins of current U.S.-Russian tensions being traced back decades to several factors, […]
Secretary of State Pompeo’s July 8 announcement of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Rebuild the State Department, illustrate the domination of foreign policy discourse by politics. The political process chooses ultimate policymakers, so politics has a proper and large role. However, foreign policy is what a nation does as a […]
Think tanks, academics, now even the politicians, often call America a “creedal nation.” Most bend the idea to serve partisan arguments. But it has an independent meaning which should inform our discourse and underpin foreign policy, and not be used for polarizing politics. The Declaration of Independence’s “self evident” truths inspire the titles of books that […]
The U.S. must engage in more long-term, strategic thinking in order to compete effectively in the new great power competition with both China and Russia.
What Exactly Does It Stand For? Foreign policy, a nation’s collective conduct, best attains its interests if it correlates means to ends. To make the correlation, even to know its ends, a nation needs to know its identity. Attaining this knowledge raises great complexities. On May 8, a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on […]
On April 18, Foreign Affairs released an article by former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, or “P”, William Burns, on how to save the Department of State. That evening, the Foreign Policy Association hosted a lecture by his predecessor as “P”, Nicholas Burns entitled “The State of the Department of State.” The Burnses are unrelated except by […]
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