The Abe-Obama Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Is in Trouble
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, until recently background noise for many Americans, is about to become another field of battle in Washington. As of last week, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe concluded an unusually long state visit, we’re on notice: This…
How Obama Lost Friends in Europe and Influence Globally
Bad comes to worse in the Obama administration’s ties with Europe. Obama’s trans-Atlantic crisis is less dramatic than his other foreign policy failures: Syria, Egypt, the Mideast, China. But the implications of this debacle could prove profoundly significant—politically and diplomatically,…
Japan and China Vie for 21st Century Dominance
A specter haunts the great powers of East Asia. It is the specter of ethnic chauvinism and a recrudescent nationalism one would have thought a thing of the past. With this comes the possibility of irrational conflict, and for the…
How the White House Is Blowing Off Europe
The Obama administration needs to declare a “pivot to Europe” policy, and quickly. Not that the famous pivot to Asia has amounted to much: It drifts somewhere in the Pacific like a dead fish. But relations between the U.S. and…
How Secret How Secret Global Trade Talks Can Destroy the InternetGlobal Trade Talks Can Destroy the Internet
Talks on the two biggest trade agreements in history are reaching critical stages, and none of us knows anything about them. Like it or not, this is ignorance by design: Months of negotiations across both oceans have proceeded in secret,…
I want American foreign policy to fail
Drones, wiretapping foreign leaders, NSA out of control: Change will only come when our foreign policy truly fails It is difficult, and it will never be any other, to be an American and write in an American publication that the…
Washington’s Mess Damages U.S. Global Standing
Nobody will ever put up a neon sign or a billboard announcing that the U.S. has taken another step toward decline in its global position. Neither is American decline inevitable, as the so-called “declinists” habitually assert. It is not. Decline…
How the Spooks Will Sink the Trade Pact with Europe
It is supposed to be the largest trade agreement ever forged between two countries. But the Trans–Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership never looked promising. And now that the US and Europe have completed a first round of talks, it is…
Is North Korea Done With Its March Madness?
Another wacky, worrisome week passes on the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong–un, North Korea’s intensely unpredictable leader, has threatened to attack the “U.S. mainland” with nuclear-tipped missiles. He has declared a state of “all-out war” with South Korea. On Saturday, Pyongyang…
The U.S.- Europe Trade Agreement That’s Going Nowhere
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants it. So do British Prime Minister David Cameron and dozens of prominent business leaders. And Washington sources tell me President Obama will back the idea when he delivers his State of the Union speech on February…
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