Diplomacy and International Politics

Russia was absent from Africa for two decades while the European Union, the US and China expanded their relations with the rising states of the continent. Russia’s trade has remained small, in 2018 about $ 17 billion for all of Africa compared with the EU’s $ 156 billion with sub-Saharan Africa alone. But Russia’s posture in Africa is beginning to pivot to the continent.

In the eyes of Mike Pompeo, the day was shaping up to be one of his most commanding displays of diplomacy since becoming secretary of state. Months of planning had finally yielded a meeting among reluctant European officials, Arab leaders and the Israeli prime minister to strategize over confronting Iran.

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.