Articles by: "Christopher R. Hill"
From pivot to stumble in Asia

US President Donald Trump blew off two multilateral summits in Asia this month. Given his soggy and sulking performance that week in Paris, during the international commemoration of the centenary of the end of World …

Trump’s floundering North Korea strategy

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ This aphorism, often attributed to Albert Einstein, seems to be the inspiration for US President Donald Trump’s North Korea policy. Trump’s …

Reclaiming American internationalism

To watch the debate play out in America’s news media, it would seem that the opposite of ‘America First’ is American interventionism: a chronic penchant for leaping, to no apparent end, into wars of choice …

Putin overplays his hand

The Kremlin’s foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on the assumption that all countries are as corruptible as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This was evident most recently in Russia’s alleged efforts to undermine an agreement between …

Trump’s immigration trap

Donald Trump’s presidency reminds me of nothing so much as the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. At the height of the violence, a Serb friend said to me, ‘I don’t like [Slobodan] Milošević. I …

The despot and the diplomat

Back in 2005, when I was the United States’ lead negotiator at the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, I looked at the instructions I received for my first meeting, a Chinese-hosted banquet that …

North Korean action for US words?

Just days ago, the planned summit in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong‑un seemed to be hanging by a thread. Talks are still on track, but the North Koreans have …

What to expect from the Trump–Kim summit

Since the 27 April summit between South Korean President Moon Jae‑in and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong‑un, US President Donald Trump has sought, unsurprisingly, to portray himself as the mastermind behind inter-Korean diplomacy. But, despite …

Trump’s new national security team

US President Donald Trump’s recent cabinet shakeup—with former CIA Director Mike Pompeo replacing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and foreign-policy hardliner John Bolton replacing H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser—represents a significant shift in …

What does the US want in Syria?

Given that most of the Middle East is now in a state of turmoil, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should be commended for keeping the Syrian conflict in mind during his recent trip to …