Coronavirus

The heart of U.S.-China conflict is in the realm of ideas. Democratic principles of liberty, pluralism and freedom are antithetical to China’s autocratic Communist state and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expanding cult of personality. Through its ubiquitous state surveillance and “Great Firewall” on online dissent, China seeks to deny its citizens freedom of expression and access to the outside world.

The World Bank named Harvard University professor Carmen Reinhart as its chief economist, tapping an expert in the history of debt and financial crises as the global economy suffers its deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Report by former members of President Obama's Committee of advisors on Science and Technology on recommendations for the national strategic pandemic stockpile.

Juliette Kayyem writes that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated trends that were already under way.

COVID-19 has made many things very, very difficult. But it has also made some good things better and others possible only now. We should find them, to help us get through this, and hold onto them, when this is all over. 

The U.S. approach toward China now relies on confrontation and accusation. Yet in diplomacy, as in war, the other side gets a vote. On May 22 China will convene two of its annual summits, the National People’s Congress and the Political Consultative Conference. The Communist Party will choreograph messages carefully: The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union casts a long shadow in Beijing, and Covid-19 came close to shaking the party’s legitimacy. In Chinese history, diseases, famines and other natural disasters have foretold the end of dynasties.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard University, discussed the effect the current pandemic has on the relationship between Europe and the United States with Atlantik-Brücke-Chairman Sigmar Gabriel.

The COVID-19 recovery response from the UK government should include increased and well-targeted R&D investments to foster the energy transition and a more sustainable economy.

President Trump is playing a tense poker game with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The stakes are America’s oil industry and the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

The 34-year-old prince and the president have been fast friends since Mr. Trump chose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip and received a lavish welcome. The president stood by the prince when he severed relations with Qatar, and again when he was accused of approving the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But now the prince is threatening America’s oil industry, U.S. national security and Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects.

Stephen Walt and Bruce Schneier are two of the ten leading global thinkers that Foreign Policy invited to each give their take on an expansion of government powers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.