United States of America
Despite polarized domestic politics and social tensions, the United States remains a major player in international relations, on the economic, military and diplomatic levels.
Related Subjects
Trump and the Republican Party: electoral defeat, ideological victory?
During Donald Trump’s four-year term, many new Republican candidates have been elected to Congress. Often backed by the former president from the GOP’s primaries, they were chosen for their devotion towards him and their support for his policies : moral conservatism and laissez-faire attitudes towards fiscal and environmental issues are old Republican tenets taken over by Trump, while nativist and economic nationalism (based on anti-immigration and protectionist policies respectively), as well as the portrayal of White people without college degree as an oppressed minority are fresh precepts brought forward by the former populist President.
Americans First: The Biden Administration’s Geopolitics
The Biden administration’s geopolitics is beginning to be noticed. It aims to build on a reconciled nation willing to see its foreign policy objectives as a defense of its own interests.
The China dilemma from Trump to Biden: one consensus and three worldviews
The United States underwent a fundamental transformation in its stance on China during the Trump presidency.
How Can American Democracy Be Fixed?
The end of the Trump presidency has demonstrated both the strength of institutions and their weakness.
From the Digital Levy to the Taxation of Multinationals: Joe Biden's Tax Revolution
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is conducting important negotiations this spring to reform international taxation.
The US Mineral Independance Strategy : An All-Out Mobilization
The Trump administration has been very actively designing and implementing a new strategy for reliable supply of critical minerals which aims at reducing the country’s vulnerabilities and becoming a leader in this field.
Why Should NATO Care About China? A Japanese Perspective
When we look back and think about some of the decisive moments in the West’s attitude towards China, it is rather symbolic that all goes back to Tiananmen Square, 1989.
Towards the Second Crusade?
Europeans first grew aware of a possible pandemic exactly one year ago. The wave is here. It has submerged the world, claiming many lives and causing tremendous collateral damage.
Guerres invisibles - Nos prochains défis géopolitiques
What are the next geopolitical challenges of the century? The global pandemic has altered the equilibrium between Asia and the West and sealed the rift between China and the United States, accentuating the world’s shift towards the East. On this polarized chessboard, two fault lines converge: environmental degradation and technological propagation where the main strategic and economic rivalries are now being played out.
Europe in the World: for a Modest and Effective Reform
This sad year ends with a pandemic that continues in full swing over a large part of the planet, especially in the United States and Europe, with no other reassuring prospect than that of one or more vaccines, which is already a lot. But that’s not the subject I want to focus on in this eighth letter, the last one for 2020. Internationally, two other facts have dominated the scene in recent months.
Why Hillary?
Hillary Clinton has been enthroned as the presumptive next President of the United States - by the celebrity mongers, by the trendy Hollywood set, by the media, by the pundits, by the big donors, by Congressional Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer and by the Las Vegas odds-makers. The crystallization of a consensus three years before the event is as intriguing as the questions about what sort of president she would make.
Accountability: "Missing In Action"
Accountability is on the endangered species list. No - not the word. Indeed, “accountability” reverberates around the electronic ether almost as frequently as “thwarking.” It is the reality of persons, especially public persons, taking responsibility for acts of malfeasance in ways that entail exemplary punishment and personal costs.
The Return of Robert Gates
The memoirs of public men are exercises in self-promotion and self-justification. They are designed to etch a portrait of the (wo)man that will live across time. It's the legacy thing. These days, that legacy pertains also to the "here and now" since memoirs are not necessarily the conclusion of a career but rather the curtain-raising on its next act.
Obama announces "Opportunity Ladder"
There are moments in life when you receive an unmistakable sign that the game is over. That it’s time to fold your tent, to pull up stakes, to pack it in, to furl the flag, to trim the sails, to let go of a lost cause. At best, to wait for next year. In the extreme, to write it off permanently. And if one chooses to breast the tide, to do so stoically.
How to Misread Polls
Poll numbers are the life blood of politics these days. Anything expressed in digits has a claim to truth that assertions without digits cannot make. They inspire confidence - especially among those aspiring to public office - that they actually understand what public sentiment is.
Is Omar Sy an Uncle Tom? Race relations in America and France as seen through "Les Intouchables"
The Intouchables tells the story of a young Senegalese immigrant named Driss, who has been hired to be the caretaker of Philippe, a rich tetraplegic. The feel-good comedy has been a smashing success in France and across the world, grossing over $350m worldwide. While reviews of the film both in France and abroad have been mostly positive, there is a contingent of American critics that thinks that The Intouchables highlights racial stereotypes.
One Year Into the Obama Administration, What Has Really Changed?
The U.S. Oil and Gas Boom
A funny thing happened in the last few years when no one was paying attention. J.R. Ewing, the legendary Texas oilman, and his wife Sue Ellen sold Southfork, their ranch near Dallas, and moved to a new home in Pennsylvania (Northfork?). JR immediately began buying subsurface mineral rights for acres of land above the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the Appalachian Basin. Cliff Barnes, J.R.'s nemesis, sold all his Texas properties and moved to North Dakota, where he started leasing mineral rights to acreage above the Bakken shale play.
Strategic Stability in the Cold War: Lessons for Continuing Challenges
During the Cold War, the phrase “strategic stability” gained currency both as a foreign policy objective and as an apt way of describing the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union never actually went to war.
‘‘I'm Not a Feminist, But…'', a Comparative Analysis of the Women's Movement in the United States and France
The emergence of a feminist thought in the 18th century gave rise to steady and regular exchanges between French philosophers and American activists. They illustrate in a very particular sector the wealth of the relation between both countries. This dialogue continues on renewed bases today: both in universities (with the exploration of the concept of gender) and in the militant world (with the defense of precise and limited causes).
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