The Foreign Affairs Interview
Foreign Affairs invites you to join its editor, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, as he talks to influential thinkers and policymakers about the forces shaping the world. Whether the topic is the war in Ukraine, the United States’ competition with China, or the future of globalization, Foreign Affairs’ weekly podcast offers the kind of authoritative commentary and analysis that you can find in the magazine and on the website.
Episodes
Russia’s Widening War on Europe: A Conversation With Julianne Smith
Since the start of the war in Ukraine almost five years ago, Russia has mounted ever more aggressive attacks in Europe, far from the battlefield. These attacks were long talked about as a form of “hybrid warfare.” But as Julianne Smith, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, notes in a new piece in Foreign Affairs, they have reached a level of risk and flagrancy where that label may no longer apply.
What America and China Fear Most About AI: A Conversation with Kyle Chan and Helen Toner
Over the course of just a few months, artificial intelligence has become one of the most central issues, and one of the most fraught issues, in the relationship between the United States and China. Policymakers in Washington and in Beijing simultaneously worry about which country’s tech sector has the advantage and wonder whether the search for advantage will itself lead to catastrophe for both co
Caught in the Middle of the Iran War: A Conversation With Anwar Gargash
By all accounts, Iran’s neighbors, even those long at odds with the Islamic Republic, opposed the U.S.-Israeli war that began on February 28. Yet it is those Middle Eastern states that have paid some of the highest costs in the months since. As their governments grapple with the consequences of a war that is still far from settled, they are also struggling to shape a new Middle Eastern order. But
How to Understand the New Age of War: A Conversation With Lawrence D. Freedman
By some measures, there is more war in the world today than at any point since World War II. Today’s wars have brought a level of destruction, disruption, and global risk that would have been hard to imagine not long ago, often in places where such combat seemed a thing of the past. Policymakers once again worry about nuclear use, and military planners once again contemplate war between great powe
The Iran Shock Is Not Over: A Conversation With Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan
When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz six months ago, the world seemed on the verge of an energy crisis that would upend economies, governments, and much else. It was, as Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff pointed out in Foreign Affairs at the time, the largest disruption of global energy flow in history.
The world’s ability to manage that disruption has been surprising—the crisis many expected h
What Does China Want? A Conversation With Jessica Chen Weiss
There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Wa
Afghanistan After America: A Conversation With Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith
Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy disc
Is a Post-American World Inevitable? A Conversation With Kurt Campbell, Rush Doshi, and Mark Leonard
Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term?
Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, two sen
From the Archive: How the Past Shadows China's Future: A Conversation With Odd Arne Westad
At the end of last year, editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historian Odd Arne Westad about China’s complicated past and how that history shapes the way Chinese leaders see their country’s place in the world today.
Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent of its ambitions, the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military st
Cyberwarfare in the AI Age: A Conversation With Jen Easterly
It’s been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor.” Since then, most people have become fairly inured to such a risk. That’s true even as there’s been a steady clip of cyberattacks on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming, and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every
The End of Free Trade: A Conversation With Robert E. Lighthizer
Almost no one in the last several decades has done more to change the American approach to trade than Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was the U.S. trade representative in President Donald Trump’s first term. In that role, he set out to reverse Washington’s long-standing commitment to a global trading system. It was a crusade—using tariffs, among other tools—that targeted China above all but also any
The Future of Palestine: A Conversation With Salam Fayyad
In the nine months since a cease-fire ended full-on war in Gaza, the world’s attention has in many ways moved on. That has been especially true since February, with the start of the war in Iran. But the situation in Gaza remains grim and unsettled, and the state of affairs in the West Bank has become increasingly fraught. Meanwhile, the way forward for Palestinian politics is murky, and the prospe
The End of American Military Dominance? A Conversation With Paul Scharre
The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre arg
What China Thinks It Can Gain From a Disordered World: A Conversation With Oriana Skylar Mastro
Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere,
The AI Race Nobody Can Win: A Conversation With Sebastian Mallaby
The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public.
Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemm
America, Iran, and a World in Turmoil: A Conversation With Ian Bremmer
The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old allian
Is the Iran War Coming to an End? A Conversation With Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr
The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just st
Is Cuba Next? A Conversation With Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Zuniga
U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban gove
Are America’s Allies Finally Learning to Deal With Trump? A Conversation With Philip H. Gordon and Mara Karlin
Six months ago, Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs about the plight of the United States’ allies in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. What was surprising, they argued, was not the administration’s cajoling and threats, or all the ways U.S. policy had called into question the basic principles of these relationships. The surprise was that allies were surprised b
How to Prevent the Next World War: A Conversation With Thant Myint-U
The world today is more dangerous and more violent than it’s been at any time since 1945. States everywhere have jettisoned commitments to cooperation and opted for aggression. The so-called rules-based order seems to have come apart. Yet the international body founded after World War II with the charge of preventing World War III finds itself increasingly on the margins.
In a recent essay in Fore
Does Trump Have a Strategy? A Conversation With A. Wess Mitchell
Both of Donald Trump’s presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. But how to discern a strategic logic behind Washington’s approach, and whether it’s even possible to do so, have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House.
A. Wess Mitchell helped shape these debates as assistant secretary of state in Trump’s
The View From the Front Row of the Trump-Xi Summit: A Conversation With Orville Schell
Orville Schell may be the United States’ greatest chronicler and observer of several decades of U.S.-Chinese relations. Foreign Affairs was extremely lucky to have him in Beijing this week for the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was not the first time Schell has had a front-row seat at a meeting of U.S. and Chinese leaders. Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke
When Two Superpowers Meet: A Conversation With Nicholas Burns
Not long ago, it was practically a truism to say that a hard line on China was the only real bipartisan position in American foreign policy. To the extent such a consensus ever existed, Donald Trump has upended it in his second term—leaving considerable uncertainty about just what he wants to achieve when he travels to China to meet with Xi Jinping this week, and what Xi hopes to achieve in return
Trump, Putin, and Genghis Khan: A Conversation With Fiona Hill
Fiona Hill has spent her career trying to understand—and, in one case, advise— leaders with grandiose ambitions, high risk tolerance, and an unshakeable sense of themselves as world-historic figures. She has been a close observer of Vladimir Putin for decades, as a scholar and a member of the U.S. intelligence community. In Donald Trump’s first term, she was a senior member of the National Securit
Learning to Live With a Nuclear North Korea: A Conversation With Victor Cha
For most of the past few decades, North Korea was considered a top challenge for American foreign policy. In the past few years, however, it has mostly receded from attention—not because the U.S. approach to the problem succeeded but because it so completely failed. U.S. policy insisted that North Korea could never become a nuclear power, yet North Korea’s program has accelerated year by year, thr
Is America Losing the High Ground? A Conversation With Jake Sullivan
It is an understatement to say that the United States finds itself at a particularly fraught geopolitical juncture. The outcome of the war in Iran is still uncertain. The war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Add to that U.S.-Chinese competition, overlapping planetary crises, a highly erratic hegemon—the list could go on.
Such an unstable world presents a formidable test for policymakers
How the Iran War Is Shaping a Post-American World: Conversations With Matias Spektor and Kishore Mahbubani
The shockwaves of the ongoing war in Iran are being felt far and wide. The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sparked a global energy crisis, one that could be accentuated by a U.S. naval blockade. Countries as disparate as Chile, South Korea, and Zambia have been forced to take extraordinary measures to deal with shortages and surging prices. But the war’s effects are not just material
Will the Cease-Fire With Iran Hold? A Conversation With Suzanne Maloney
On Tuesday night, as the world held its collective breath, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a temporary cease-fire with Iran, just hours after warning that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranian regime did not completely open the Strait of Hormuz. In exchange for a cessation of American and Israeli strikes, Iran has agreed to allow oil and other commodities to pass through the strait
America in a World of Upheaval: A Conversation With William J. Burns
In 2024, when he was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns wrote in an essay in Foreign Affairs about “the plastic moments that come along only a few times each century”—and argued that “the United States faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period.”
If that claim seemed bold at the time, events in the past co
Are Europe and the United States Finally Heading For Divorce? A Conversation With Nathalie Tocci and Matthias Matthijs
Just a few weeks after its opening salvos, the war in Iran is already going global. Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, stranding oil tankers and causing energy prices to skyrocket. Donald Trump has asked European partners to help restore freedom of navigation. So far, they have largely rebuffed his requests for military assistance. But as the economic pain mounts, their resolve will
How Strong Are Iran’s Strongmen? A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin
When the United States and Israel launched a joint war on Iran two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians to rise up and rid themselves of their tyrannical rulers. He seemed buoyed by his success in swiftly removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. But the war in Iran has not progressed as smoothly as Trump might have liked. The authoritarian regime that runs the Islam
Iran’s Tenacious Regime and the Future of the Gulf: Conversations With Afshon Ostovar and Sanam Vakil
For about two weeks, U.S. and Israeli forces have bombarded Iran. They have targeted Iranian military and nuclear sites. They have slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials. They have even sunk an Iranian vessel deep in the Indian Ocean. Iran has responded by hurling missiles and drones at targets in the Gulf, Israel, and elsewhere in what has become a surprisingly broad an
America’s War of Choice on Iran: Conversations With Nate Swanson and Richard Haass
Over the weekend, U.S. and Israeli forces struck hundreds of sites across Iran and killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Large crowds of Iranians took to the streets, some to mourn, others to celebrate. The Islamic Republic has retaliated and launched strikes of its own across the Middle East.
Much about the joint U.S.-Israeli operation remains unclear—was it meant to eliminate Iran’
America the Predatory Hegemon: A Conversation With Stephen M. Walt
President Donald Trump wields American power like few leaders in U.S. history ever have. By imposing tariffs, threatening territorial conquest, and ordering military intervention, he deploys the United States’ strength to assert dominance over friends and foes alike.
Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, describes this uniquely Trumpian grand strategy as “predatory hegem
Bonus: Is There an Endgame in Ukraine? A Conversation With Michael Kofman
February 24 marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After Moscow’s initial onslaught, Ukrainian counteroffensives, and slow Russian gains since, the war has settled into a brutal pattern of attrition, adaptation, and endurance. Ukrainian cities are rationing electricity, as the Ukrainian military struggles to muster the manpower and munitions needed to gain a decis
Can America’s Allies Survive the Transatlantic Rupture? A Conversation With Chrystia Freeland
A year into Donald Trump’s second term, the United States’ allies on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have recognized that they need a new strategy for this age of rupture, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it. Trump’s grab for Greenland, his tit-for-tat tariffs on Canada, his approach in Ukraine—all have opened up rifts between the United States and many of its closest partners.
Chr
The Myths and Realities of Global Migration: A Conversation With Amy Pope
In 2024, there were more than 300 million migrants across the world—double the number there were in 1990. Many of those had been displaced by conflict or climate change; many were simply looking for jobs and a better life. But the national and multilateral systems designed to manage these flows have proved grossly inadequate, helping set off political convulsions not just in the United States and
How to Navigate the Shifting International Order: A Conversation With Finnish President Alexander Stubb
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney may have made headlines when he described a “rupture” in global order in a speech at Davos last month. But long before that, policymakers and analysts had already been grappling with this unsettled—and unsettling—era in global politics. And the challenge has of course been especially great for American allies facing a very different Washington.
President Alex
Is China Leaving the United States Behind? A Conversation With Jonathan A. Czin
One of the big surprises of Donald Trump’s second term has been the change in his approach to China. His first term marked the start of what seemed to be a hard-line consensus in Washington. But in the past year, the drivers of Trump’s policy have been much harder to decipher—including for Chinese policymakers. Beijing was prepared to respond forcefully to tough U.S. measures, as it has, most prom
The Erosion of the Sources of American Economic Power: A Conversation With Lael Brainard
In the past year, Donald Trump has upended the global trading system and used American economic power like no president in recent memory. He’s imposed tariffs to force other countries to fall into line on commercial issues and geopolitical disputes—like this week’s threats against NATO partners over Greenland. He’s called into question the role of the dollar. And at home, he’s attacked the indepen
What Kind of Change Is Coming to Iran? A Conversation With Karim Sadjadpour
At the end of December, protests erupted across Iran. The government has since cracked down hard with potentially thousands of Iranians killed. It now seems possible that the United States might intervene. Via social media, U.S. President Donald Trump has told Iranian protesters that “help is on the way.” We do not know yet what, if anything, Washington will do. But the repressive regime of Ayatol
What Comes Next in Venezuela: Conversations With Phil Gunson and Juan S. Gonzalez
It was just a few days ago that, after months of saber-rattling by the Trump administration, U.S. forces raided Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro. Already, Trump has suggested that the United States could “run” the country and has demanded a huge stake in Venezuela’s vast oil resources. Maduro, meanwhile, sits in a New York jail, awaiting his next court date in March.
But much rema
How the Past Shadows China’s Future: A Conversation With Odd Arne Westad
The biggest questions in U.S. foreign policy today tend to be about China. Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent of its ambitions, the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military strength. Underlying these arguments is a widespread sense that where Beijing once seemed likely to slot comfortably into a U.S.-led international
How Liberal Democracy Can Survive an Age of Spiraling Crises: A Conversation With Daron Acemoglu
The world has reached various inflection points, or so we are often told. Advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence, promises to transform our way of life. In geopolitics, the growing competition between China and the United States heralds an uncertain new era. And within many democracies, the old assumptions that undergirded politics are in doubt; liberalism appears to be in disarray a
The Fear and Weakness at the Heart of Trump’s Strategy: A Conversation With Kori Schake
Last week, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy. Such documents are usually fairly staid exercises in lofty rhetoric. Not this one. It harshly rebukes the strategies of prior administrations, highlighting what Trump’s team sees as the failures of traditional foreign policy elites. It pointedly criticizes Washington’s traditional allies in Europe and fixates on security
America Can’t Escape the Multipolar Order: A Conversation With Emma Ashford
In the last decade, American foreign policymakers have been forced to reckon with a shifting global balance of power. Theorists have long argued over the shape of international order. But such questions now occupy practitioners, as well, as they grapple with the end of the unipolar moment that followed the Cold War and struggle to shape new strategies that account for new geopolitical realities.
E
The Limits of the American Way of AI: A Conversation With Ben Buchanan
In the last few years, artificial intelligence has become a central focus of geopolitical competition, and especially of U.S.-Chinese rivalry. For much of that time, the United States, or at least U.S. companies, seemed to have the advantage. But Ben Buchanan, a leading scholar of technology who crafted the Biden administration’s AI strategy, worries that the United States’ AI superiority isn’t ne
The Age-Old Contest Between Land and Sea: A Conversation With S. C. M. Paine
Members of the foreign policy world have talked a lot about great-power competition over the last decade. But no one can entirely agree on the contours of today’s competition. Whether it’s a battle of autocracies and democracies. Or revisionists and status quo powers. Or whether, as the realists would argue, it’s just states doing what states do.
S. C. M. Paine, a longtime professor of strategy a
The Strength of Trump’s Foreign Policy: A Conversation With Robert O’Brien
Robert O’Brien served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021. O’Brien’s predecessors in that position left the administration to become some of the most vociferous critics of their former boss. O’Brien, in contrast, remained a staunch defender of Trump’s foreign policy through the Biden administration and into Trump’s second term. And perhaps as a result, he can help make so
Xi Jinping’s World of Treachery and Sacrifice: A Conversation With Orville Schell
Last week’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping may have brought a respite in the trade war. But it hardly touched the more fundamental drivers of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, a rivalry that has come to shape more and more dimensions of geopolitics, the global economy, and beyond.
Few have spent as much time observing and chronicling the interactions between Washington and Beijing as Orville Sche
The Crack-Up of American Democracy: A Conversation With Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar
If one thing can be said to characterize the first months of Donald Trump’s second term, it is his expansive and often norm-breaking use of presidential power, both abroad and at home. There are the lethal strikes on boats alleged to be smuggling drugs; the range of tariffs he’s imposed; the way he’s gone after enemies, withheld funds, and restructured the federal workforce; the list could go on.
America’s Two-State Delusion: A Conversation With Robert Malley
With a cease-fire in place in Gaza after two years of war, Donald Trump has proclaimed the arrival of peace in the Middle East. At the moment, however, it’s not even clear if the cease-fire itself will hold, let alone whether there’s a viable path to a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Few are more familiar with the elusiveness of peace in that conflict than Robert Malley. He
Will the War in Gaza Really End? A Conversation With Shira Efron, Khaled Elgindy, and Daniel Shapiro
The world has watched as a cease-fire has tentatively taken effect in Gaza. All the surviving Israeli hostages are home and many Palestinian prisoners and detainees have been released. Israeli forces have pulled back within Gaza, and much-needed humanitarian aid is rushing in. Phase One of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan seems to be working. But what happens next is more uncertain. At the time of thi
The Reeducation of Russia’s Military: A Conversation With Dara Massicot
Ever since Russia started its war in Ukraine, assessments of its military power have vacillated wildly. First, Russian forces were supposed to overrun Ukraine and crush any resistance in a matter of days. Then, they were thought to be so weak that a Ukrainian counteroffensive or a new capability might cause them to collapse altogether. Now, with the war in its fourth year, and Donald Trump’s retur
Xi Jinping's Successor and the Future of China: A Conversation With Tyler Jost and Daniel Mattingly
When Xi Jinping took over the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he began a new chapter in China’s history—one that would come to be defined above all by his grip on power. Xi overhauled not only the CCP but also China’s economy, military, and role in the world. Yet no matter how secure his power may be—and no matter his recent hot-mic musings about living to 150—what comes after Xi, and how it come
Poland’s View From the Frontline of Europe: A Conversation With Radek Sikorski
In early September, around 20 Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace. NATO and Polish forces scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down, but not before several had traveled hundreds of miles into Polish territory.
To Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, the incursion was not just a test of NATO’s resolve. It was a reminder of the precarious position of the alliance’s frontline states as the w
Is America Ready for the Age of Cyber Warfare? A Conversation With Anne Neuberger
In 2024, the U.S. government discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated a huge swath of the American telecommunications system—and remained there for years. That attack came to be known as Salt Typhoon. China has not only managed to steal the data and surveil the communications of hundreds of millions of Americans. It also embedded itself in the United States’ most important infrastructure, gi
The World That Tariffs Will Make: A Conversation With Michael Froman
Donald Trump has been railing against the global economic order from the start of his political career. But in his second term as president, he has turned that critique into blistering action. In just five months, the trade war that started with his April tariffs has completely reshaped the global economy—and struck at the very heart of the trade system that emerged after the end of the Cold War.
Can Israel Save Itself? A Conversation With Ami Ayalon
It has been almost two years since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza. Those many months of combat have left Hamas severely weakened, with its leadership eviscerated and its military capabilities crippled. But as the war enters a new phase, with Israeli troops pushing into Gaza City, the central question of the war’s endgame remains unsettled. Israeli leaders have
The Rise of the Economic Security State: A Conversation With Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
For decades, the United States has used its position at the center of global financial, commercial, and technological networks to punish adversaries and pressure allies, exploiting what the political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman call “weaponized interdependence.” Lacking any alternatives, the rest of the world has had no choice but to rely on American payment systems, American techn
Why Is America Going It Alone? A Conversation With Margaret MacMillan
During his second term, Donald Trump has railed against the United States’ closest allies. He has imposed tariffs, threatened to upend security commitments, and openly challenged the borders of Canada, Panama, and Greenland.
Historians often look to the past for insight about the present and future. But although alliances have collapsed for many reasons over past centuries, Margaret MacMillan argu
Best of: Is the World Ready for the Population Bust? A Conversation With Nicholas Eberstadt
In an episode released in January 2025, Senior Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with the political economist Nicholas Eberstadt about the global crash in fertility rates and the looming prospect of depopulation.
Over the past century, the world’s population has exploded—surging from around one and a half billion people in 1900 to roughly eight billion today. But according to Eberstadt, that chapter of
Best Of: What Drives Putin and Xi: A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell
In 2023, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historians Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell about what drives Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin and how they are (and are not) like Mao and Stalin.
Xi and Putin loom over geopolitics in a way that few leaders have in decades. Not even Mao and Stalin drove global events the way Xi and Putin do today. Who they are, how they v
The Uncertain Future of U.S. Relations With India: A Conversation With Ashley J. Tellis, Nirupama Rao, and Dhruva Jaishankar
In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the scholar and former U.S. official Ashley J. Tellis makes a provocative argument about India’s foreign policy. In a piece titled “India’s Great-Power Delusions,” Tellis argues that Indian policymakers have their priorities wrong. Instead of pushing for what they call “multipolarity” in the international system, Indian leaders should align more closely with t
Joseph Nye and the End of the American Century: A Conversation With Robert Keohane
For decades, Joseph Nye was one of the true giants of American foreign policy. His career, in government and in the academy, spanned epochs, and his body of work as a scholar of international relations remains unparalleled.
Nye, who passed away at the age of 88 in May, served in the Carter and Clinton administrations and headed the Harvard Kennedy School for nearly two decades. But he may be bes
The Coming Nuclear Hurricane: A Conversation With Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi
It wasn’t long ago that both heads of state and prominent policymakers could speak seriously about a world without nuclear weapons. But in the course of just a few years, nuclear concerns have come back in force. Arms control has broken down almost entirely. China has started a massive expansion of its arsenal, putting basic assumptions about deterrence in doubt. Vladimir Putin has threatened nucl
Preparing for the World After Trump: A Conversation With Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper
For all its promise of disruption, Donald Trump’s first term as president transformed American foreign policy less than most critics feared and some supporters hoped. Alliances held up, the rules-based order largely endured, and American global leadership appeared resilient. When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he could proclaim “America is back” and proceed with a foreign policy that was
What a Stronger Europe Means for America: A Conversation With Celeste Wallander
For years, U.S. presidents have complained that European governments spend far too little on their militaries, leaving the United States to pick up a disproportionate share of the tab for the transatlantic alliance. But in the past few years, Europe’s defense spending has exploded.
At the NATO summit last week, U.S. allies committed to spending five percent of GDP on defense. That’s far more than
How Weak Is Iran? A Conversation With Eric Edelman, Suzanne Maloney, and Andrew P. Miller
Donald Trump pledged not to entangle the United States in wars in the Middle East. But last weekend, he joined Israel’s air campaign against Iran, bombing three nuclear sites before claiming that Iranian facilities targeted by U.S. aircraft and missiles had been “obliterated.” Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. bases in the region just before Washington announced a cease-fire.
But key quest
Iran, Israel, and the Middle East in Tumult: A Conversation With Philip Gordon
Less than a week ago, on June 12, Israel launched a barrage of attacks against Iran, targeting nuclear sites, missile depots, and military and political leaders. Since then, the two countries have exchanged a series of attacks.
Philip Gordon is the Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar at the Brookings Institution and a longtime observer and analyst of the Middle East, and his writing has appeared in Foreign
What Trump Gets Wrong About the Global Economy: A Conversation With Adam Posen
U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted during his first term, “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.” But the record of the trade war that Trump started with his so-called Liberation Day tariffs in early April suggests that things are a bit more complicated.
In an essay for Foreign Affairs appropriately titled, “Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose,” the economist Adam Posen argues that the United S
Another China Is Possible: A Conversation With Rana Mitter
It has become a trope to lament and lambast the wishful thinking that shaped U.S. policy toward China in the two decades after the Cold War. That policy rested on a prediction about China’s future: that with economic growth and ongoing diplomatic, economic, and cultural engagement—with the United States and the rest of the world—China would become more like the United States—more politically open
Sudan’s Intractable War: A Conversation With Mai Hassan and Ahmed Kodouda
The war in Sudan gets only a fraction of the attention that conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and potential conflicts elsewhere get. But after two years of fighting, it has created the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded. And as the two sides in the conflict, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, vie for control of the country and its resources, there is little hope of a conclu
Can Trump Remake the Middle East? A Conversation With Dana Stroul
Donald Trump just finished his first tour of the Middle East since returning to the White House. The region has changed a lot since he was last there as president. There’s been Hamas’s attack on Israel, the ensuing Israeli retaliation, the weakening of Iran and its proxies, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Trump used the visit to announce flashy deals with Gulf leaders and to commit to l
Has the United States Gone Rogue? A Conversation With Michael Beckley
In a little more than 100 days, Donald Trump has set about dismantling much of the international order that has prevailed since World War II. That’s true of traditional U.S. approaches to trade, to conflict, alliances, international organizations, and more.
But as much as we focus on Trump, Michael Beckley argues that much of this change in U.S. foreign policy has deeper roots, going to the very n
Understanding How Trump Sees the World: A Conversation With Nadia Schadlow
Donald Trump’s first National Security Strategy, released at the end of 2017, announced the start of a new era for American foreign policy—one that put great-power competition at its center and focused especially on intensifying rivalry with China. For all the dissension and turbulence in American politics since then, that framework for American foreign policy has proved remarkably durable.
Nadia
Planning for a Post-American Future in Ukraine: A Conversation With Jack Watling
Donald Trump famously promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to the White House. But he is just over 100 days into his presidency, and the war is certainly not over.
With Kyiv opposed to territorial concessions, and with Russia’s military campaign showing no signs of slowing down, the Trump administration has threatened to walk away from the conflict if both sides don’t ag
Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Fix Global Trade: Conversations With Kimberly Clausing and Michael Pettis
Donald Trump’s embrace of tariffs should come as no surprise. For decades, he has claimed that other countries are ripping Americans off—and promised to use tariffs to remake a global trade system that, in his view, has been deeply unfair to the United States. But almost no one anticipated a trade and tariff policy as extreme and erratic as the one the world has seen since Trump proclaimed “Libera
Why America Shouldn’t Underestimate Chinese Power: A Conversation With Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi
For years in U.S. foreign policy circles, discussions of China focused on its growing wealth, power, and ambition, and the fear that it would supplant the United States.
But a few years ago, the conversation took a sharp turn. Rather than fixating on China’s rise, most analysis began to focus on the country’s stagnation and even decline. There were good reasons for this: disappointing post-COVID e
How Latin America Can Survive an Age of Turmoil: A Conversation With Brian Winter
For decades, it has been a trope of foreign policy commentary in the United States that Washington does not pay enough attention to its own hemisphere. But the Trump administration seems to be bucking this trend—though not exactly in the way those complaining about neglect might have wanted.
President Donald Trump’s campaign spent a lot of time focusing on immigration and fentanyl coming from Lati
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