Diplomacy and International Politics

A long-awaited US probe on Russian election meddling has divided Washington but on one point virtually all US policymakers are clear -- there will be no reconciliation with Moscow.

President Trump is off the hook. Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t. That seems a fair, concise reading of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, at least as summarized Sunday by Attorney General William Barr. Understandably, the first half of this formulation is getting the most attention right now, but the second half is equally important for America’s leaders and citizens to keep in mind in the months ahead.

With little public fanfare, U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s new center for combating electronic attacks against the United States, has launched operations to deter and disrupt Russians who have been interfering with the U.S. political system.

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

Will protests at home hurt French President Macron's efforts to be seen as a leader of the West? Former U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns digs in.

Where does the late George H.W. Bush rank in the history of the American presidency? Historical judgments are best left to historians who can appraise a president most accurately, often decades after his death.

George H.W. Bush's administration was evidence of what the establishment was capable of. I worked on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff during the last two years of the late President George H.W. Bush’s administration. It was my first job in government and an extraordinary period in world history. As I came on board at Foggy Bottom, Bush had just facilitated Germany’s unification. The international coalition that he’d mobilized was in the process of evicting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. In a few months’ time, Bush would help manage the peaceful unraveling of the Soviet Union and the launch of historic peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors via the Madrid process.

President Donald Trump, convinced that he alone can break stalemates with adversarial counterparts on trade and security, will put his theory to the test in Argentina this week. Global markets and foreign capitals are eyeing him anxiously.