All Commentaries
Continuing Storm: The U.S. Role in the Middle East
This Special Report is from Global Focus: U.S. Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Millennium, the new Foreign Policy In Focus book that features major foreign policy analysts charting the dimensions of U.S. foreign policy. Also included are provocative essays on U.S. policy in all major global regions and a comprehensive reform agenda. Global Focus is available from St. Martin’s Press.
The Global Sustainable Development Resolution
Women and the U.S. Military in East Asia
Organizations in East Asia and the United States as well as international networks are developing alternatives to militarized security that address the security of women, children, and the physical environment.
Human Rights and U.S. Policy
World Bank’s Environmental Reform Agenda
NATO at 50
Key Points
Reconfiguring Mexico Policy
Key Points
War in the Congo
Congo is being torn apart by a stalemated war, and the stability of the entire Central African region is endangered. This war flows from the failure of President Laurent Kabila—whose rise to power in 1997 depended on support from Rwanda and Uganda—to consolidate power and to satisfy the expectations of his backers, both Congolese and foreign. Background factors influencing the outbreak of the war and the course it is taking include resources (land and minerals) on the one hand and the logic of “the enemy of the enemy is my friend” on the other.
Military Strategy Under Review
Environment and Security Policy
U.S. foreign policy and national security policies have significant domestic and international environmental impacts, and the increasingly precarious state of the global environment presents important new challenges to U.S. national interests. Day-to-day military operations, together with arms production, testing, deployment, and trade, are resource intensive and ecologically damaging. Although such activities are subject to growing environment-related legal and political constraints, most peacetime military activities and foreign operations are still not subjected to rigorous periodic environmental assessment.