Asia & the Pacific

Stephen Walt writes that it may seem harder to give thanks this year, but it's not impossible. He enumerates five things for which to be grateful, including that none of the outside parties in the Middle East seem inclined to expand the conflict beyond Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Stephen Walt analyzes how the war in Gaza will have widespread geopolitical effects.

Stephen Walt critiques Henry Kissinger's professional life by dividing it into three parts: as an academic at Harvard; as national security advisor and secretary of state; and as an author, pundit, and sage, much of it conducted as the head of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm he founded after leaving government.

Stephen Walt argues that prudent states should not assume that a norm against conquest will suffice to protect them; adequate hard power, shrewd diplomacy, and reliable allies are better—if still imperfect—guarantees.

 Stephen Walt decided to look back to see if 2022 had gone according to his expectations. In his last column of 2021, he had described "Biden’s 2022 Foreign-Policy To-Do List." What did he get right, what did he get wrong, and how well did the Biden administration perform?

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

Stephen Walt analyzes why self-imposed restraint will always be a contradiction in terms for Washington. Ideology, power, bureaucratic momentum, and other states' desires to use U.S. power for their own ends combine to create a powerful predisposition to do something and a concomitant inability to set clear priorities and stick to them when temptation arises.

Stephen M. Walt describes a "gnawing fear that we are living through a series of disruptions that are overwhelming our collective ability to respond." What does this mean for public confidence in the entire political system, and is there any cause for optimism?

Ivan Arreguin-Toft argues that non-material considerations like cyber power matter just as much as material ones in debates about U.S. retrenchment from the Middle East.

Stephen Walt explains the concept of the security dilemma and argues for leaders to consider whether a policy they believed was benign was unintentionally making others nervous, then to consider  whether the action in question could be modified in ways that alleviated (some of) those fears.