Diplomacy and International Politics

The following is an event write-up about the recent Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship (PETR) seminar on “France’s Global Role in a Changing World Order” co-moderated by Natalie Colbert, Executive Director of the Belfer Center, and Svenja Kirsch, Fellow with PETR, on April 19, 2023.

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook from Harvard Kennedy School criticizes the course of the debate. In terms of content, she sees Biden ahead.

It was the first TV duel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Many topics were up for debate, but there were fewer concrete discussions because the US president barely allowed his political opponent to speak. When Joe Biden commented on his content, Trump confronted Biden with his family history.

The US has many problems, including Donald Trump, says political scientist Cathryn Clüver-Ashbrook. If Joe Biden wins the election, he'll have to fix a lot first.

The US is facing a presidential election, the outcome of which will not necessarily be accepted by the current president. The corona pandemic is hitting the USA as hard as few other countries worldwide, also because of government decisions. Racism is more pronounced than it used to be, and environmental and climate protection provisions are being withdrawn.

Donald Trump officially runs as the U.S. Republican candidate for a second term in the White House. His nomination speech was primarily about presence. With this, he not only wants to clearly distinguish himself from the Democrats in terms of content, he also made his supposed power clear visually.

Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook discusses the Democratic National Convention and whether the virtual format worked for the party and was able to sufficiently motivate the party's base and undecided voters on Tagesthemen, one of Germany's main daily television news magazines.

Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook discusses the impact the debate around the US Postal Service could have on mail-in ballots come November and reflects on the messaging of the Democratic Party in the opening days of their virtual convention in conversation for Profil magazine's "Super Tuesday," podcast. (In German)

Ever since the World Health Organization declared Europe the new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic on March 13, China has seized the opportunity to provide relief to some of the worst-hit European countries as part of a concerted PR offensive aiming at polishing up the Communist Party’s image internationally and — above all — domestically. Although China’s aid offers have generally been welcomed by those leaders struggling to contain the outbreak, it is still far too early to conclude that Beijing is actually winning over any European hearts and minds. 

In recent years the crisis of the transatlantic relationship and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become a common theme in media, and various scholars have frequently questioned the futures of both entities. Not only are the new sovereigntist and populist trends within the NATO members calling the relevance of the transatlantic relationship into question, but some have found a reason to identify a crisis in the transatlantic relationship from the rise of global actors and the emergence of China as a great power in particular. China’s economic recovery after its “century of humiliation” is reshaping the international geopolitics and shifting the economic epicenter of the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

Europeans awoke on Thursday morning to news that President Donald Trump had announced the suspension of “all travel from Europe to the United States.” Blaming the European Union (EU) for failing “to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China,” Trump suggested “a large number of new [coronavirus] clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”