Worldcrunch
-Analysis- WASHINGTON — The nomination of Mike Pompeo to be the next secretary of state signals President Donald Trump’s determination to quit the landmark Iran nuclear deal, which could cause it to unravel, according to national security and arms-control experts. If Pompeo is confirmed, Trump will have at his side an adviser who is equally […]
WASHINGTON — For the moment, at least, it appears to be a clear-cut victory — the biggest foreign policy win of his young administration. President Donald Trump has brought his arch-nemesis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man,” to the table to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal. Optimists declared a major breakthrough. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction. But in the afterglow of the surprise announcement — […]
-OpEd- PARIS — At the Beauval Zoo in central France, visitors line up every day for a chance to glimpse at His Majesty Yuan Meng. The animal’s birth, on Aug. 4, 2017, was followed by 26 million people on social media. Baptized with great pomp and circumstance by French First Lady Brigitte Macron in a […]
The old, retired cardinal has had enough. He does not like what the Vatican is doing in China. He takes a plane and asks to be received by the pope. But instead of bringing it to an end, the encounter between the two men escalates the tensions around the Vatican’s pending agreement with China, a […]
FORT POLK — In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the U.S. Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself. Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The U.S. military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape societies with U.S. firepower. For the military, the […]
-Analysis- By the end of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, people will wonder: Was there anything he did not say? Any line he did not cross? As a lifelong businessman, he has declared war early and often on diplomatic niceties, proud to speak “like the people.” The problem is that he is a person who speaks […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Compete, don’t kill. The idea that peace might be achieved through sporting is an old paradox. Pitting athletes and countries against each other in a non-lethal — and cathartic — demonstration of skills, is at the very core of the Olympic ideal, going all the way back to ancient Greece. The timing […]
Is the American in good faith? Why now? What’s next? Questions pile up in the wake of a decision that reverses 70 years of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.
With each passing day, war with North Korea seems to draw closer. Kim Jong Un continues to test his arsenal; Donald Trump issues new threats and nicknames his nemesis “Rocket Man“; Kim responds in kind, saying the U.S. president’s speech yesterday at the United Nations was “the sound of a dog barking.” Some say the […]
-OpEd- WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump appears to have found himself a new national security adviser. His name is Barack Obama. Recent days have brought evidence of two foreign policy successes for the Trump administration: On Friday, a top State Department official who has served in the Obama and Trump administrations announced that gains against the so-called Islamic State have picked up sharply and that the militants have lost 78% of their territory in Iraq and 58% in Syria. The Washington Post“s headline (which the White House circulated in an email): “Under Trump, gains against ISIS have dramatically accelerated.” Then, […]
The record-breaking transfer of the Brazilian superstar to French club PSG is part of much bigger plans by Qatar, which owns the Parisian club.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has done his best to stay close to the president, but that doesn’t translate into influence over American diplomacy.
The great powers seem to be spurning multilateralism and resorting once more to force as a means of pursuing national interests.
The ruins left behind by President Donald Trump’s first foreign trip don’t look anything like the archeological wonders in Taormina, Sicily, site of this past weekend’s G7 summit. The rubble left in Trump’s path can be reassembled in brutal words of German, French, Italian, English and other languages spoken and written in different European and […]
-Analysis- Donald Trump is not afraid of flying. Since taking office, he’s made it a habit to board Air Force One for back-and-forth weekend visits to his Mar-a-Lago Florida golf resort. But today, four months into his presidency, he takes off for his first overseas trip, with six international flights scheduled over eight days and […]
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with U.S. President Donald Trump, mutual objectives may be overshadowed by the Kurdish question.
-Analysis- Some new presidents wait three months until they make their first overseas trip. Not Emmanuel Macron. Following in the footsteps of his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the freshly-elected, 39-year-old French president headed to Berlin today, just 24 hours after his inauguration. A stronger, more united Europe sits at the top of Macron’s […]
-Analysis- Having spent his whole life running a family business, Donald Trump is still adjusting to the strategic art of control required to effectively run the White House — and help lead the world. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, making him the shortest serving director since the 1920s. Comey had orbited in […]
-Analysis- Fox News opted for the verb “slam” to describe the first significant comments about Iran from new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Tillerson slams Iran nuclear deal as “failed approach,”” the conservative network headlined its story yesterday, following Tillerson’s remarks about the 2015 nuclear accord inked by President Obama. But there is another […]
The New Times The past ten days have taken the U.S.-Russia relationship to a new low, as Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “collided in Syria,” this week’s Russian magazine The New Times reports. After months of accusations that Trump and Putin were in cahoots, tensions between Washington and Moscow are suddenly running high, one […]
-Analysis- “The DPRK North Korea is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.” Coming in response to the U.S. deployment of a navy battle group to the Korean Peninsula, this chilling statement from the North Korean foreign ministry suggests that Donald Trump’s muscle-flexing has only raised the stakes in what […]
Brexit could isolate Britain in its dispute with Argentina over the Falklands, though leaders in Buenos Aires need to think and speak clearly, or risk keep the status quo.
-Analysis- For the longest time, Donald Trump has disparaged U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, mocked his rival’s strategy in Syria, and unequivocally stated that America’s enemy in the country was terror group ISIS, not President Bashar al-Assad. Then on Friday, with little warning, Trump, as U.S. president, launched airstrikes against Syria, the first […]
-Analysis- A planned visit by the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan spiritual leader, to a remote corner of northeast India could just have escalated tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors India and China. The Asian nations share a disputed 3,500-km border. China claims ownership of about 90,000 square meters of land run by India, which it calls South […]
-Analysis- Donald Trump is already discovering the old dictum that presidents are elected on domestic policy but eventually take refuge in foreign policy. With his own Republican party bickering and blocking his healthcare proposal in Congress, Trump turns this week to welcoming foreign leaders with whom he can attempt his powers of persuasion on a […]
-Analysis- It was just a passing reference at Monday’s White House briefing: Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioned that U.S. President Donald Trump had called to congratulate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his party’s recent victory in state assembly elections. After all, the Indian leader had plenty to celebrate. His Bharatiya Janata Party was able […]
The new U.S. president might want to think twice about taking a business-world approach to international affairs.
-Analysis- Will the world’s oldest conflict ever be resolved? There have been a few fleeting occasions over the past 25 years when both Israelis and Palestinians appeared eager to negotiate, and a solution seemed within reach. Alas these are now mere memories — so distant that their effects have largely worn off. Perhaps there has […]
-Analysis- BERLIN — On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump released a joint statement regarding their first phone call earlier that day. The statement about their 45-minute conversation noted — in the neutral tone common to all statements of this kind — that a wide range of topics were discussed: NATO, […]
After the fall of Aleppo, various alliances of convenience will be put to the test, as the scenario suddenly gets more complicated for both Damascus and Moscow.
PARIS — I first heard the news with a text message from my son late last Friday night: Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen had spoken by telephone with Donald Trump. I cannot describe the joy I felt. This was the best piece of news for Taiwan in more than 30 years, even eclipsing for me the […]
Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist who died in 2012, wrote more than a decade ago of a U.S. president who, through punitive measures, would almost shut Mexico down and accidentally revive the art of letter-writing.
President Obama was, on many levels, a major disappointment. But his legacy is one of grace and integrity in a political world that grows uglier by the day.
The failure of the Western allies to weigh on the situation in Syria is a humanitarian disaster. It’s also a sign for Putin that he can also have his way elsewhere.
SPOTLIGHT: ON PUPPETS AND PUTIN There was a third politician on stage at last night’s final U.S. presidential debate: Vladimir Putin.The two candidates have taken very different approaches to the prospect of dealing with the mercurial Russian leader, with Hillary Clinton painting Putin as an avowed enemy of American democracy and Donald Trump saying he’d […]
Le Figaro — Oct. 12, 2016 “Paris-Moscow: the big chill” writes French daily Le Figaro on its front page Wednesday a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin postponed his planned visit to Paris next week, amid rising tensions between Russia and France over the Syrian conflict. Tensions between French President François Hollande and Putin have […]
Amid extraordinarily high tensions on the Korean peninsula, Switzerland managed to get diplomats from Pyongyang to sit down with counterparts from Seoul.
A reviled U.S. presidential candidate visiting a very unpopular Mexican president. How did Donald Trump’s flash visit Wednesday to Mexico City look to the people and press south of the border? After the Republican nominee’s diatribes and insults against Mexicans and vows to build a “huge” wall, what was President Enrique Peña Nieto seeking by […]
Aleksei Arbatov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, analyzes Kremlin’s foreign policy and offers an inside look at where international relations are headed.
MOSCOW — Russia is increasingly deporting U.S. citizens on its soil in recent years. Americans living in Russia have also seen a sharp spike in the number of residence permits that have been revoked since the start of this year, signaling a deterioration in relations between the two former Cold War foes. Russian authorities say […]