In my old job at the US State Department, colleagues often asked me what was likely to happen in this or that situation. Often, there was no way of knowing, and I reminded questioners that …
Articles by: "Richard Haass"
The advantage historians have over journalists is that the passage of time offers them a perspective not available to those with immediate deadlines. But the year is about to end, which constitutes a firm deadline …
It is difficult to imagine the world without Henry Kissinger, not simply because he lived to be 100 years old, but because he occupied an influential—and sometimes dominant—place in American foreign policy and international relations …
Summits are by definition occasions of high politics and drama, so it comes as little surprise that the 15 November meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping generated immense global interest. …
The history of Israel has often been a history of conflict. A partial list includes the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that followed Israel’s birth, the Israeli–British–French attempt in 1956 to seize the Suez Canal and topple …
There’s an old Soviet joke in which a journalist asks the general secretary of the Communist party to assess the country’s economy. ‘Good’ is the short answer. The journalist implores the leader to elaborate so …
China’s economic reality, until recently, was nothing short of extraordinary. The nation’s annual economic output soared from under US$500 billion to US$18 trillion between 1992 and 2022, with years of double-digit growth pushing annual GDP …
The NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, promises to be anything but business as usual for the simple reason that it will be taking place against the backdrop of a European war that has been raging …
The leader of an authoritarian country with enormous energy reserves builds up his armed forces along the border of a weaker neighbour, one he claims has no right to exist as an independent country. He …
Religion and miracles often go hand in hand, so it should come as little surprise that Israel, which just marked its 75th birthday, is something of a miracle. In some ways, Israel’s very existence is …
One advantage that historians have over journalists concerns time, not so much in the sense that they are free from urgent deadlines, but that they have the deeper perspective conferred by the years—or decades—between events …
In the year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has evolved in ways few predicted. The conventional wisdom was that Russian forces would quickly overwhelm the overmatched Ukrainians and take possession …