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Jessica T. Mathews

Jessica T. Mathews was President of the Carnegie ­Endowment for International Peace from 1997 until 2015 and is now a Distinguished Fellow there. She has served in the State ­Department and on the National Security Council staff in the White House.
 (February 2017)

IN THE REVIEW

What Trump Is Throwing Out the Window

The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies

by Michael T. Flynn and Michael Ledeen

The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force

by Eliot A. Cohen
What Donald Trump has done is to take the few things on which neocons, realists, and liberal internationalists agree and throw them out the window. These are fundamentals of American foreign policy, taken as givens by both parties for the seven decades since the close of World War II. They include, first, the recognition of the immense value to the security of the United States provided by its allies and worldwide military and political alliances.

On the Election—IV

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the second presidential debate, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, October 9, 2016

Hillary Clinton has been attacked so many times that survival has made her overly cautious. You could wish for her to be brave, like Angela Merkel. But think of the hours Clinton has endured before congressional committees, getting grilled, being held to a higher standard, having to prove herself in interviews, while once again by comparison a white guy gets a free ride.

The Death of Our Treaties

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., to speak against President Obama’s policy on Iran’s nuclear program before a joint session of Congress, March 2015

The Constitution gives control over matters of war and peace to the president and Congress, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, as a “joint possession.” This pretty much guarantees continuing strife between the two branches. Yet after two centuries of a seesawing contest for primacy, lines have been crossed in …

What Foreign Policy for the US?

Afghan National Army soldiers on patrol with US Marines in Narang village, Kunar province, Afghanistan, 2005; photograph by Stephen Dupont from his book Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars 1993–2012, to be published this month by Steidl

Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World

by Ian Bremmer

The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts

by Dominic Tierney
“The incoherence in American foreign policy has been growing for twenty-five years,” asserts Ian Bremmer. That’s a considerable overstatement, and from an expert in the field, but there is no question that, at home and abroad, American policies (from long before the current administration) evoke widespread angst, uncertainty, and criticism.

The New Deal

US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Lausanne, Switzerland, March 2015

The weeks ahead are of enormous consequence to US national security, not only with respect to Iran, but to our long-term ability to frame and execute a coherent foreign policy not determined solely by partisan motives.

The Road from Westphalia

Henry Kissinger meeting with Zhou Enlai during his secret trip to China, July 1971

World Order

by Henry Kissinger

America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Social Disorder

by Bret Stephens
Almost from the beginning of its history, America has struggled to find a balance in its foreign policy between narrowly promoting its own security and idealistically serving the interests of others; between, as we’ve tended to see it in shorthand, Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick and the ideals of Woodrow Wilson. Just as consistently, the US has gone through periods of embracing a leading international role for itself and times when Americans have done all they could to turn their backs on the rest of the world.

Is There an Answer for Syria?

The front line in the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood of Aleppo, October 2012

The drastic shift in priorities for every country in the Middle East occasioned by the frighteningly rapid rise of ISIS over the past several months may have made it possible to reexamine deeply buried core assumptions.