PRESS ROOM

This is the fifth entry in a series examining actions during the first 100 days of the new Trump administration and their possible implications on the arms trade, security assistance and weapons use in the future... READ MORE »

It would be difficult, inside or outside the Beltway, to find someone who doesn’t think that U.S. foreign assistance needs to be reformed... READ MORE »

The Trump administration’s steady stream of assaults on diplomacy has become a raging river. It started during the campaign, with Trump’s tirades against the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, and various trade agreements... READ MORE »

When President Trump submitted his preliminary budget request for 2018, which outlined foreign aid and diplomacy cuts of nearly one-third, the rebuke was fast and furious. Members of Congress declared the president’s budget “dead on arrival.” Hearings on the budget produced “near consensus” against the cuts. Not just liberal Democrats and humanitarian do-gooders, but military leaders, Republican national security experts, right-leaning editorial boards, faith leaders, and conservative columnists proclaimed the importance of development assistance and, as one pundit put it, the “amorality and stupidity of eviscerating foreign-aid spending.”... READ MORE »

Archie Brown’s review of Robert Service’s excellent The End of the Cold War, 1985–1991 [NYR, March 23] falsely diminishes Eduard Shevardnadze’s contribution to improved Soviet–American relations and the cold war’s sudden end... READ MORE »

Donald Trump bombed a Syrian government air base just a couple of weeks after releasing his budget plan for next year. The budget—with its call for a massive escalation in Pentagon spending, to be paid for with funds stolen from programs that fulfill urgent human needs—was met with outrage. But Trump’s illegal cruise-missile strike, ostensibly in response to a chemical-weapons attack on a Syrian town in Idlib Province, largely knocked the budget outrage off the agenda... READ MORE »

When Donald Trump wanted to “do something” about the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Syria, he had the U.S. Navy lob 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield (cost: $89 million)... READ MORE »

The April 27 editorial “How to make progress in Afghanistan” urged the Trump administration to send additional U.S. trainers and Special Operations forces to Afghanistan and allow “American planes and drones to operate with the same freedom against the enemy that they have in Iraq and Syria.”... READ MORE »

It comes as little surprise that the Trump Administration is preparing plans to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), whose mission is to “end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies.” Trump’s xenophobic, “America First” rhetoric leaves little room for enlightened engagement with the world, and his budget targets development for disabling cuts... READ MORE »

In his April 19 op-ed, “From Truman to Trump,” David Ignatius unconvincingly argued that President Trump should emulate the qualities of President Harry S. Truman. Mr. Ignatius argued that Mr. Trump’s flip-flops in foreign policy and national security suggest he has “shown a flexibility and pragmatism” and cited China, Russia and its president, Vladi­mir Putin , and what Mr. Ignatius called “mundane issues, such as the Export-Import Bank.”... READ MORE »

Is there a new Trump doctrine in the making, or has the President simply found a formula for distracting the public and the media from his troubles at home: from allegations of collusion with Russia during the 2016 election to his failure at pushing through his most cherished domestic initiatives... READ MORE »

The simple fact is that Britain has greatly benefited from its membership of the EU, not least in having a strong voice in European decision-making that now will be absent (“This is no friendly divorce, but a long, bitter schism”, Niall Ferguson, Comment, last week). The cost, in my opinion as a former US diplomat who served in EU and Nato missions, will be considerable... READ MORE »