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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?

While the threat of "resource wars" over possession of oil reserves is often exaggerated, between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars since 1973 have been connected to one or more of eight distinct oil-related causal mechanisms. Understanding these mechanisms can help policymakers design grand strategy and allocate military resources.

Two assumptions dominate current debates on US foreign policy toward Pakistan. First, Pakistan shares a robust "all-weather" friendship with China centered on core national interests. Second, Pakistan's ability to turn to China in times of need insulates it from US pressure and renders hardline US policies counterproductive. Both of these assumptions are mistaken.

"Our crystal ball is not clear enough to predict with confidence whether the global nuclear future will be characterized by peace and prosperity or by conflict and destruction. But we do believe that the choices made in the coming few years will be crucial in determining whether the world can have more nuclear power without more nuclear weapons dangers in the future."

"Keeping nuclear weapons and the difficult-to-manufacture materials needed to make them out of terrorist hands is critical to U.S. and world security — and to the future of nuclear energy as well. In the aftermath of a terrorist nuclear attack, there would be no chance of convincing governments, utilities, and publics to build nuclear reactors on the scale required for nuclear energy to make any significant contribution to coping with climate change."

Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) special issue of Dædalus have one simple and clear answer to these questions: It depends.

This article was prepared for a Council on Foreign Relations/International Institute for Strategic Studies Symposium on Iraq's Impact on the Future of US Foreign and Defence Policy, with generous support from Rita E. Hauser.

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As with most of the other states of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the democratization of Azerbaijan has not progressed as Washington had hoped it would when the Soviet Union first began to dissolve. During the past six months, President Aliyev has been incapacitated by failing health. The problems that emerged as a result of his illness demonstrated that Azerbaijan has not yet succeeded in building government institutions that are sufficiently independent of the leadership. Hence, if the elections are not conducted in a fair and free manner, foreign disappointment with the government may increase."

"The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon triggered the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy."