The opening line of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” retains its universality to this day. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”...
It has been exactly 15 years since the start of one of the most fateful episodes of the early 21st century: the Iraq War. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,...
Multipolarity is back, and with it strategic rivalry among the great powers. The re-emergence of China and the return of Russia to the forefront of global...
Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, famously said, “The most important thing is not to win, but to take part.” Now that North Korea...
In the summer of 2012, the international relations theorist Kenneth N. Waltz published an article titled “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” in which he argued...
In his famous “political trilemma of the world economy,” Harvard economist Dani Rodrik boldly claims that global economic integration, the nation-state and...
Germany and China are chief among the countries whose economic policies have drawn U.S. President Donald Trump’s ire. While the United States has the largest...
Few world regions are more culturally and politically complex than the Balkans. And there may be no clearer illustration of the region’s freighted past and...
Many people equate the European Union with Europe, overlooking a few nuances along the way. From a historical point of view, of course, it is clear that the...
As many analysts have observed, the Pax Americana of recent decades is on life support. After the first 150 days of Donald Trump’s “America First” – or, more...
Last week, the people of Iran decided to continue along the path toward openness. Fifty-seven percent of voters chose to elect the reformist President Hassan...
April 22, 2017 – International Earth Day – marked one year since the signing of the Paris climate agreement, which entered into force last November, and now...
While the European Union tries to weather a nationalist storm that threatens its core institutions, some of its most important strategic allies have injected...
The world needs the European Union now more than ever. Despite recent crises and the hard blow dealt by the Brexit vote, the EU may well be the world’s best...
It is unfortunate that so few international agreements have been reached in recent years. During a period when great-power competition has generally trumped...
As 2016 comes to an end, the outlook for 2017 is shrouded in uncertainty. Tensions in the Middle East are rising, and populist movements have appeared in...
Across the West, faith in international governance and economic globalization is declining. As Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential...
When problems accumulate, as in Europe – where the failed coup in Turkey comes hard on the heels of the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union...
Even amid the chaos and catastrophes caused by war, there are internationally recognized limits on combatants’ behavior. And yet recent deliberate attacks on...
Five years after the start of the so-called Arab Spring, the hope that initially characterized those revolutions has largely been dashed. In many cases, the...
Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia spiked earlier this month, with protesters storming the Saudi Embassy in Tehran after the execution of a Shiite shiekh...
As 2016 begins, new steps – albeit small and tentative – have been taken toward ending the war in Syria. The United Nations Security Council has adopted...
When it comes to climate change, the world has reached a point of no return. That may sound ominous, but it is precisely where we need to be: unable to...
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children seeking refuge from conflict has confronted the European Union with two stark realities.First,...
The successful outcome of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program provides a splendid validation for those who put their faith in diplomacy. The...