Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a heavily orchestrated ‘Belt and Road’ forum in Beijing. The two-day event attracted 29 heads of state, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and 1,200 delegates from over 100 …
Articles by: "Joseph S. Nye Jr."
Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and its suspected hacking of French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign servers, should surprise no one, given President Vladimir Putin’s (mis)understanding of soft power. Before his re-election in …
I frequently travel overseas, and invariably my foreign friends ask, with varying degrees of bewilderment: What in the world is going on in your country? Here is what I say. First, do not misinterpret the …
A series of episodes in recent years—including Russia’s cyber interventions to skew the United States’ 2016 presidential election toward Donald Trump, the anonymous cyber-attacks that disrupted Ukraine’s electricity system in 2015, and the ‘Stuxnet’ virus …
President Donald Trump’s critics have consistently underestimated his political communication skills, perhaps because he is so different from predecessors such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Both FDR and Reagan, after all, were known …
As US President-elect Donald Trump prepares his administration’s policy toward China, he should be wary of two major traps that history has set for him. The ‘Thucydides Trap,’ cited by Chinese President Xi Jinping, refers …
In early November, US President Barack Obama reportedly contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin personally to warn against cyber attacks aimed at the American presidential election. The previous month, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, …
During his campaign, US President-elect Donald Trump questioned the alliances and institutions that undergird the liberal world order, but he spelled out few specific policies. Perhaps the most important question raised by his victory is …
In many Western democracies, this is a year of revolt against elites. The success of the Brexit campaign in Britain, Donald Trump’s unexpected capture of the Republican Party in the United States, and populist parties’ …
Last month, 50 former national security officials who had served at high levels in Republican administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush published a letter saying they wouldn’t vote for their party’s presidential nominee, …
Who owns the Internet? The answer is no one and everyone. The Internet is a network of networks. Each of the separate networks belongs to different companies and organisations, and they rely on physical servers …
This election season has been marked by frequent charges of dishonesty. During Britain’s ‘Brexit’ debate, each side charged the other with distorting the truth, though the speed with which the ‘Leave’ camp has been disowning …