Asia’s four pillars of stability, bulwarks of a highly successful regional system crafted and fostered by America, are all crumbling. The region’s future will be shaped and defined by the struggle to replace those pillars.
The price America pays in blood for its overseas initiatives rarely gets mentioned in political debates surrounding such policies, but it deserves more attention.
Some Westerners are puzzled that Iran’s foreign policy remains as bellicose today as it was in the time of Ayatollah Khomeini. But history shows that the regime’s foreign policy is designed to maintain its ideological identity.
The GOP candidate both faces a puzzle and represents one. The puzzle he faces concerns the domestic political forces driving his party’s foreign-policy outlook. Meanwhile, his own foreign-policy views are equally difficult to decipher.
The president gets solid marks for his handling of a host of tactical challenges. But his Afghan policy proved disjointed, he lacks a clear strategic framework and he has failed to put U.S. economic power at the core of his foreign policy.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading foreign-policy expert, discussed with TNI his recent book and his views on America’s world posture. He speculates on U.S. decline, the 2012 presidential campaign and more.
Major developments in the oil sector are decisively undermining the once-defining role of the Middle East in the global energy market. The region’s potency in global affairs is on the wane, making Obama’s pivot to East Asia well-timed.
War is costly. Nation building is costlier. And nation-building projects almost never succeed, as this analysis demonstrates.
An intense security competition is under way in East Asia. Beijing and Washington must take care to ensure that this competition does not give way to entrenched bloody-mindedness or even outright violence.
The National Interest stands for realism in U.S. international relations, a conviction that foreign policy should be based upon real-world considerations—forces, pressures and passions emanating from factors of culture and geography.
