realism

It’s true that democracy, globalism, and free trade are under assault, but they may prove stronger than the forces arrayed against them in the 2020s.

Neither Trump nor the international relations experts who cheered his choice to withdraw U.S. troops have wrestled adequately with the costs of departure.

A new think tank funded by George Soros and Charles Koch wants to end American interventionism, but shows no understanding of what motivates it.

Why most Americans are right about foreign policy, and David Brooks is wrong.

The EU has committed to outsourcing its dirty work to authoritarians in the Middle East and Africa—and to confusing dependence for maturity.

From Europe to Iran to North Korea, the world doesn't make sense anymore — unless you put all your illusions aside.

America finally has a president who grasps the basic logic of offshore balancing in the Middle East.

The world’s best national security minds know to study every aspect of foreign policy. That’s not enough.

Even the most rational leaders are influenced by the power of collective memory.

Whatever you want to call the Obama foreign policy, it has not been a calculated attempt to contain the rise of hegemonic threats.

It’s not just the U.S. presidential platforms that will shape global politics in the years ahead -- it’s Americans’ theories of how the world works.

The Republican presidential nominee is a fan of military interventions — as long as they don’t cost anything.

Michael Mandelbaum’s latest tome of hardball IR theory is stuck in Westphalia. Realist or not, President Obama isn't buying it.

If he had been, he might have avoided some of his biggest foreign-policy mistakes.

When it comes to geopolitics, the Donald’s worldview is fantasy and folly — not realism.

The president loves Reinhold Niebuhr. That’s not a doctrine; that’s a problem.

Has American fiction lost its political edge?

TV news, think-tank pundits, and politicians all want you to see threats around every corner. Don't fall for it.