Asia & the Pacific

 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?

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published a document from the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs concerning nuclear problems and tensions in the time of COVID-19. The document has been co-signed by a large number of Pugwash colleagues and personalities.

Stephen Walt writes that arguments against U.S. offshore balancing misunderstand history. The strategy that worked against the Soviet Union can work against China.

Stephen Walt writes that several important events occurred in 2019, but few did anything to significantly alter global trends.

Stephen Walt asks what makes for a good ally? What are the qualities that make a foreign power an especially valuable partner and therefore justifies a U.S. security commitment? After all, not all allies are created equal, and the value of any commitment is likely to wax or wane over time.

President Donald Trump's manipulation of America's privileged international system will strengthen other countries' incentives to extricate themselves from US networks of interdependence in the long run. In the meantime, there will be costly damage to the international institutions that limit conflict and create global public goods.

Stephen Walt describes what a commonsense U.S. foreign policy would look like.