After the recent midterm elections, Americans are breathing a sigh of relief that social-media-fuelled threats of violence against voters and election officials didn’t materialise. It’s a disturbing sign of the times that a peaceful vote …
In July, CIA Director William Burns gave a 45-minute interview at the Aspen Security Forum. Only at the very end, following questions about the Russia–Ukraine war, China, Taiwan, Iran and Afghanistan, was Burns asked what …
In the wake of the Cold War, as globalisation gathered speed, commentator Thomas Friedman observed that no two countries with a McDonald’s franchise had ever gone to war with each other. This led him to …
In Ukraine today and in many other conflicts around the world, the digital domain has become a battleground for cyberattacks and information warfare. Even in normal daily life, digital platforms can endanger citizens and democracies …
I first met Madeleine Albright in 1988, when I was a very junior staffer on Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign and she was one of his foreign-policy advisers, alongside Harvard professor Joseph S. Nye, …
The anniversary of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol has come and gone, and many Americans are deeply depressed that the country’s political divide has only deepened. Though most Republican Party leaders …
The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and the ongoing negotiations over US President Joe Biden’s social infrastructure bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, share an important feature. At the heart of …
September marked a new year in the Jewish calendar, for schools in the northern hemisphere, and in the realm of diplomacy, with the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. New years are duly …
In 1965, at the height of the Cold War, the comedy series Get Smart premiered on US television. The popular show featured the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, who represented the American counterespionage agency CONTROL …
The liberal international order remains trapped in the 20th century. As autocracies like China and Russia increasingly develop spheres of cooperation, the United States is responding by building or strengthening regional groupings of its own, …
The Sino-American relationship is at its lowest point in decades. Following last month’s bilateral summit in Alaska—the first high-level talks since President Joe Biden took office—it is far from clear whether the new US administration …
America and China should cooperate in space. Although the United States can no longer take its extraterrestrial dominance for granted, it remains the leading player, while China’s space capabilities are growing fast. Most important, both …