Articles by: "Richard N. Haass"
The world waits for no country

The United States finds itself confronting several daunting challenges simultaneously. There is the Covid-19 pandemic, which has already claimed nearly 120,000 American lives and shows little sign of abating in large swaths of the country. …

Deglobalisation and its discontents

Increasing global interconnection—growing cross-border flows of people, goods, energy, emails, television and radio signals, data, drugs, terrorists, weapons, carbon dioxide, food, dollars and, of course, viruses (both biological and software)—has been a defining feature of …

At war with a virus

US President Donald Trump has labelled himself a wartime president, and many other leaders around the world are using similar language. It’s a description that raises an obvious question: what do the history and nature …

How to leave Afghanistan

After nearly two decades, 2,400 American soldiers killed, another 20,000 wounded and as much as US$2 trillion spent, the United States is understandably eager to withdraw from Afghanistan. President Donald Trump wants to be able …

Trump’s Middle East mirage

Enough time has passed to read and digest all 180-plus pages of what the US government calls ‘Peace to prosperity: A vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people’. It’s also referred …

The post-American Middle East

It was 5 August 1990, just days after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had invaded and conquered all of Kuwait, and US President George H.W. Bush could not have been clearer as he spoke from the South …

The coming nuclear crises

Until just a few years ago, it looked as if the problem posed by nuclear weapons had been successfully managed, if not solved. American and Russian nuclear stockpiles had been reduced substantially from their Cold …

The high price of Trump’s great betrayal

There are several reasons why US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from northern Syria, and leave the region’s Kurds vulnerable to neighbouring Turkey’s military incursion, was a terrible one. The Kurdish forces …

Asia’s scary movie

History at any moment can be understood as a snapshot, telling us where we are, or as a moving picture, telling us not just where we are but where we have been and where we …

Taking on Tehran

US President Donald Trump’s administration has singled out Iran—even more than Russia, China or North Korea—with sustained pressure over the past two and a half years. The United States has withdrawn from the 2015 nuclear …