State Department
America’s Ambassador to Ukraine Resigns
Brink did not have an easy job—serving as the link between the United States and Ukraine at a time of profound difficulty for the latter country.
Trim Embassies. Don’t Close Them.
U.S. embassies are indispensable and should be maintained wherever possible, but intelligently focused trimming is still possible. The Department of State is determining how to reduce American diplomatic and consular...
Strengthening Economic Statecraft with USAID Reform
With USAID now folded into the State Department, the Trump administration should focus on realigning U.S. global development aid toward strategic competition with China. With USAID now folded into the...
The Costs of Killing the Civil Service
Trump’s blitz against the independence of the civil service is undermining a core pillar of American democracy. President Donald Trump showed his admiration for Andrew Jackson when, eight years ago,...
Marco Rubio Reveals His Big Plans for the U.S. State Department
Like the Trump presidency, Rubio placed mass migration and border security at the top of his priorities list. Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed secretary of state, has assumed office with gusto, dispersing...
How To Save International Exchange Programs
President Trump and his choice to be the next Secretary of Education have indicated that dismantling the U.S. Department of Education remains a priority. They argue that much of what...
Identity Politics Is Holding Up Balkan Energy Development
Weeks before President Trump retakes the White House, an American ambassador is tanking a strategic gas pipeline that would increase U.S. natural gas exports to Europe. In the process, he...
Will Botched State Department Diplomacy Lead to a Third Congo War?
The deadliest conflict of the twenty-first century has not been in Ukraine, Gaza, Libya, Afghanistan, or Sudan but rather in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By some estimates, the Second...
March Is Women’s History Month, But Not in Iran
“Dear mothers, I’m a mother and my child is in a hospital bed…don’t send your children to school,” one parent in the Iranian city of Qom pleads. Iranian schoolgirls by the...
Terrorism Has Changed, America Must Too
The year 1997 saw Bill Clinton begin his second term as president of the United States, DVDs come into existence as a video format, Titanic premiered on movie screens, and...
Missing Piece: Biden’s Africa Summit Must Tackle Visa Delays
This week, President Joe Biden is hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the first gathering of African leaders and a U.S. president in Washington since 2014. The White House and the...
Is the U.S. Abdicating Global Leadership?
In March 2022, in his first State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called the current competition for global influence “the battle between democracy and autocracy.” Introducing the National...