BRUSSELS—Given the mediatic mayhem the meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is causing, it is perhaps somewhat worthwhile to try and contextualize it. Let’s start by reading this statement from the U.S. presidency: “The joint communiqué which we have issued today summarizes the result of our talks. … But what we have said […]
International
Is Afghan Opium War a Path to Taliban Peace Talks?
Doubling down on a longtime policy of countering the opium trade in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan forces began conducting airstrikes against opium production facilities and insurgent funding sources in November. After years of back-to-back record-breaking poppy yields, the move represented a policy shift targeting terror groups and their revenue streams. Opium has long been the […]
Understanding Donald Trump’s Grand Global Strategy
President Trump is visiting Europe for a NATO summit and a one-on-one chat with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many Trump detractors are concerned that the U.S. President is overly lenient with Russia, given Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. His detractors are also concerned that Trump is far […]
Understanding N. Korea’s History is Crucial to Talks
On June 12, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea met in Singapore for a historic summit. During the meeting, the United States and North Korea established the diplomatic foundation for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The Singapore summit followed a year of intensified vitriol between the two […]
Trump’s Zero Tolerance Impacts Canadian Border
A significant amount of U.S. media and government attention is currently being paid to the immigration crisis along the southwest border. There is a violent drug war being fought in Mexico, and gang violence is overwhelming governments in Central America. Border Patrol apprehension numbers along the southern border are usually in the hundreds of thousands […]