This week will mark two significant anniversaries of world-changing events.  The D-Day invasion of the allies on June 6, 1944 to free Europe from the Nazis was a peak of the American Century, for at the point of victory over national socialism followed by the defeat of Japanese militarism, the United States stood unchallenged as […]

It is pretty clear to me from a distance and with minimal insight that the overthrow of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, thought by many to be imminent a few months ago, has become a very remote proposition.  It seems that everyone who can leave has already left. So what next?  Do we simply continue […]

The media and many other observers can’t abide a foreign policy “summit” without an “agreement”, as though the absence of one is a failure of the effort.  Not so, as proven many times, most notably with Reagan at Reykjavik with Gorbachev.  Likewise, I believe the recent meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un of […]

As always with President Trump, if you don’t like one of his announced decisions, wait a couple of news cycles and he will have rethought, regrouped, and often changed course.  And this now appears to be the case with his surprise announcement that all U. S. troops will immediately be pulled out of Syria, so […]

Last May I wrote of the importance of transformational leadership in negotiating the long-term strategic relationship between the U. S. and China in order to avoid what Graham Allison has named the “Thucydides Trap” in his compelling book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?. In October at the Hudson Institute, Vice […]

After what I considered a pretty good appearance with the NATO member leaders, in which in his own inimitable way he publicly scolded them, with primary focus on Germany, for their failure to meet their agreed funding commitments and their intimidation by Russia, both of which are demonstrably true, President Trump then proceeded to have […]

After three attempts, Mexico has now decisively given Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) a chance to install his brand of populist nationalism and take on Donald Trump in what may be the highest stakes yet, at least in this century, in the relationship between our two countries.  AMLO comes into office as President with a […]

I don’t like the message coming from the President in recent days that he wants to remove U. S. troops from Syria, as he says, “very quickly” and that he has already frozen $200 million in State Department funds dedicated to recovery efforts there.  Of course, with Trump one can never tell which provocative tweets […]

Good for President Trump in defying what was probably the majority of opinion among his advisors in his foreign policy administration in his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  After all, at least his last three predecessors have made the commitment to do so, but he is the only one who made good […]

Anti-government protests in Iran are now a week old and showing no signs of abating.  This will no doubt get very ugly when the crackdown by the mullahs comes, which it certainly will.  So what are we learning about the assumptions about Iran and policies applied by the Obama administration and their results and future […]