To many Americans, it feels as if the world is becoming a more violent place. Besieged nightly with video of conflicts across the Afghanistan, Nigeria, the Middle East and Ukraine, it would be easy to…
- Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - Newark
Afghan, Syrian and Eritrean refugees keep arriving on Europe’s shores, reputedly at an increasing rate. They attempt to traverse the Mediterranean by land and sea, presumably hastened by Putin’s bombing…
Globalization first became a bedrock of our vocabulary in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Cold War. Proponents of globalization then argued that everything would change – and for the better. There would…
Much of the conventional wisdom among academics over the last decade or so has focused on the convergent trends in European government policies toward both migrants and asylum seekers. Spurred on by European…
Opponents and proponents of the Iran nuclear agreement are mostly taking predictable positions. But what if they operated behind a ‘veil of ignorance’?
The recent revelations about the savage treatment of Yazidi women at the hands of Islamic State, or ISIS, fighters is the latest in a shocking set of disclosures regarding the group’s behavior. It sadly…
In an all-out promotional blitz, John Kerry spoke at a hastily arranged Q&A July 24 to a Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Five days later, he faced two less restrained audiences, testifying…
Lord Palmerston, Britain’s 19th-century prime minister, was reputedly the first person to have coined the phrase that Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests. Many…
So, after five years of interminable rounds of negotiating and posturing, Greece’s status in the eurozone appears to have reached the endgame. It may be premature to pronounce the matter in any way settled…
On the face of it, Iraq and the US Federal Reserve share little. One is a country plagued by division, war and mayhem since the US invasion of 2003. It is a brutal world where there are no friends, few…
Events in Washington this week on the proposed historic 12-member Trans-Pacific trade agreement have had all the key elements of a Shakespearean tragedy. A resolute, noble and well-intentioned ruler (played…
I have lived in the US for over three decades. And I have never seen soccer – that is, real “football” – dominate the front pages of US newspapers for so many days and with so many stories. In that sense…
Washington is in the midst of a heated debate over President Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. It certainly has created some unorthodox political bedfellows. The president is…
The British election has come and gone, and the results have confounded the expectations of most pollsters. Words such as “historic,” “extraordinary” and “political earthquake” have been used to describe…
German philosopher Jurgen Habermas once famously pronounced the European Union a force for good: A model for what he described as a “cosmopolitan world order.” The Nobel committee agreed and in 2012 awarded…
It’s hard to believe, but the 2016 US presidential election process has begun in earnest. Two major candidates, Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton, recently announced they are running. And now Marco Rubio.
The creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is a blow against US influence in global financial markets.
The announcement that an agreement has been reached by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany) and Iran has been met with equal degrees of enthusiasm, surprise and incredulity…
Imagine that the elected leader of a foreign country did this to a democratically elected ally: Implied that its president was a racist Implied its government’s policies were effectively racist Demanded…
George W Bush had a very successful foreign policy. Those are words you don’t often read unedited in that order. But, yes, I wrote them. No, I am not joining the ranks of the neo-conservatives who popped…
This week’s open declaration of hostility by 47 Republican senators to any US agreement with Iran has generated much handwringing about the state of American domestic politics. The tone and manner of their…
Scholars weigh in on the Israeli Prime Minister’s warning that current negotiations are “paving the way” to an Iranian bomb.
Last week the race for the Republic presidential nomination was kicked off in earnest by the Conservative Political Action’s annual Conference. Yes, they all, predictably, want to “save our country” from…
President Obama’s publication of his 2015 National Security Strategy on February 6th is the kind of event that generates great heat and discussion among a relatively small group of policymakers, pundits…
In his recent budget announcement, President Obama staked out a negotiating position with Congressional Republicans by offering a sense of symmetry: a 7% increase in the military budget to balance out…
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