Fall 2021

Foreign Policy Magazine

Magazine of global politics, economics and ideas.

Foreign Policy Magazine1 min read
Foreign Policy
Ann McDaniel CEO, THE FP GROUP Ravi Agrawal EDITOR IN CHIEF EXECUTIVE EDITOR Amelia Lester EXECUTIVE EDITOR, PODCASTS Dan Ephron CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lori Kelley DEPUTY EDITORS Cameron Abadi, James Palmer, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Stefan Theil, Jennifer
Foreign Policy Magazine1 min readInternational Relations
Fostering Peace and Cooperation in Cyberspace
Leading thinkers in government, academia, and industry discuss how the international community can secure and defend cyberspace. As cyberspace has become the modern domain of human productivity, it has also become a place of conflict and risk. Cybera
Foreign Policy Magazine1 min read
Featured Contributors
Chibuihe Obi Achimba is a Nigerian writer and activist whose writing has been published in the New York Times and the Harvard Review. He is the founding editor of Dgëku, a literary magazine for queer Africans. Emily Ding is a freelance journalist bas
Foreign Policy Magazine3 min readInternational Relations
From The Editor
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TROUBLED BY the phrase “war on terror,” partly because it revolves around an amorphous enemy. Twenty years after 9/11, it is now clear that the global war on terrorism, by its very formulation, was not only unwinnable but was also
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min readInternational Relations
America Isn’t Exceptional Anymore
As the last U.S. soldier pulled out of Afghanistan in the dead of night on Aug. 30 and the Taliban walked into Hamid Karzai International Airport, many in the Arab world were looking on and wondering if similar scenes would one day be seen at Baghdad
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min readInternational Relations
Now the U.S. Must Help the Afghans Left Behind
After the Taliban entered Kabul on Aug. 15, the United States focused on evacuating Americans and vulnerable Afghans, and more than 100,000 were flown out of Afghanistan in a historic effort. Many more Afghan allies remain in the country, at risk of
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min readInternational Relations
The Left Needs More Than Anti-Interventionism
The speed with which the United States withdrew from Afghanistan was matched only by the speed of the Taliban’s accession to power. Images of Kabul’s swift fall, rife with scenes of desperate Afghans attempting to flee, left the world scrambling to m
Foreign Policy Magazine5 min read
Don’t Abandon Afghanistan’s Economy, Too
As soon as Western powers pulled out of Afghanistan, they began to ask themselves what their remaining sources of leverage over the Taliban were. In forums such as the G-7 meeting chaired by the United Kingdom, conversations rapidly turned to the pos
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min readCrime & Violence
Malaysia’s Citizenship Laws Are Sexist
When Josil Murray, a Malaysian conservation consultant based in Thailand, became pregnant with her first child last year, she tried to make plans to return to her home country. Unlike Malaysian men, Malaysian women do not automatically pass on their
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min read
The World Doesn’t Want Beijing’s Fighter Jets
Fighter jet exports represent a unique combination of hard and soft power. If a country can sell fighter jets abroad, that means it can attract customers for sophisticated weapons that can sell for upwards of $100 million, which in turn proves that t
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min readInternational Relations
The Clash of Ideas With China Is Inevitable
As rancorous U.S.-China talks this summer demonstrated, tensions between the two superpowers have continued to escalate. Beijing has declared that the relationship “is now in a stalemate and faces serious difficulties.” U.S. President Joe Biden has i
Foreign Policy Magazine5 min readGender Studies
Ghana’s Anti-Gay Bill Will Destroy Lives
Stories coming out of Africa about the LGBTQ community fill me with dread. I read them with bated breath, certain the most recent one will be far worse than the last. I was kidnapped and tortured in my home country of Nigeria for being gay. Reading t
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min readCrime & Violence
Zuma’s Arrest Was a Victory for Rule of Law
Just before midnight on July 7, a previously unthinkable event took place in South Africa. Former President Jacob Zuma was taken into custody by South African police at his rural homestead in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, and transported to a prison within
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min read
Haiti’s Official Language Shouldn’t Be French
People often ask me why Haitians struggle economically and politically, with conditions worsening since the approval of Haiti’s new constitution in 1987. There are lots of reasons for Haitians’ struggles, but language policy represents an underlying
Foreign Policy Magazine6 min readWorld
European Values Are Strengthening
When Spain applied for membership in the European Community in 1961, France and Germany did not initially object. Spain, of course, was an outright dictatorship at the time. But these were the early days of the European Community, a predecessor to th
Foreign Policy Magazine5 min readInternational Relations
The Balkans Don’t Believe the EU Anymore
In the Western Balkans, a region that is best known for generating intractable-seeming crises, good news often goes underappreciated. On July 29 in Skopje, North Macedonia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and Nor
Foreign Policy Magazine8 min read
Float, Move, and Fight
The 21st century has not been kind to the U.S. Navy’s vast surface fleet. In an effort to leap ahead of other navies through revolutionary designs and technologies, the Navy has instead fallen significantly behind, accepting into service ships that s
Foreign Policy Magazine9 min readInternational Relations
Sea Power Makes Great Powers
THE NUMBER OF SHIPS A COUNTRY POSSESSES has never been the sole measure of its power at sea. Other factors, of course, play a role: The types of ships it has—submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers—the manner in which they are deployed, the sophist
Foreign Policy Magazine7 min read
Lost At Sea
On stuck sideways in the Suez Canal for nearly a week, the megafreighter Ever Given was unmoored. With that, the world’s attention, rapt for days by global shipping, turned elsewhere. That’s a shame because the Ever Given and its crew didn’t get to t
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min readCrime & Violence
State of Emergency
For 21 months between 1975 and 1977, then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a nationwide state of emergency, all but suspending civil rights and liberties. The move followed Gandhi’s conviction in a lower court for misuse of public resour
Foreign Policy Magazine7 min read
Private Finance, Public Power
Brown Brothers Harriman has never ranked among the flashier or more famous of U.S. financial institutions. But then, neither has it ever ranked among the more notorious or infamous. Formed in a merger between its two namesakes in 1931, with roots in
Foreign Policy Magazine11 min readPolitical Ideologies
America, Indicted
It’s striking that two grimly titled but very different new books about America’s decline—Last Best Hope by George Packer and After the Apocalypse by Andrew Bacevich—both invoke a little-remembered 1940 jeremiad by the French historian Marc Bloch cal
Foreign Policy Magazine1 min readWorld
World of Books
Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Oxford University Press Shifts and even crises abound in the history of the transatlantic relationship. Still, the West endures. Conflicts, rather than undermining the relationship, illustrate its resilience. In Pax Transatlantica
Foreign Policy Magazine1 min readInternet & Web
Help Your Global Team Navigate the World… From Home
While many of us have been stuck at home, fast-changing international relationships have been roiling governments, corporations, and multilaterals. Almost every institution has been and continues to be impacted by ever-shifting global dynamics. Give
Foreign Policy Magazine2 min read
What In The World?
1. Which of these is a real comment made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during the COVID-19 pandemic? a. “Go to the streets, OK? What pandemic?” b. “The blame for the global coronavirus pandemic has a name and surname: the Chinese Communist Pa
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min read
Goals In Place, But Time’s Running Out
In July, the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province experienced what some meteorologists have labeled a once-in-a-thousand-years event. In just over four days, the city nearly exceeded its annual average rainfall, and the resulting flood displaced milli
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min readWorld
Certainty, Amid Uncertainties
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the restoration of China’s lawful seat at the United Nations. The People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 in the Cold War era. On Nov 15, 1949, Zhou Enlai, then Chinese premier and minister of foreign af
Foreign Policy Magazine4 min readWorld
Help On The Farm for Friends In Need
The annual rainy season in Southeast Asia used to be a miserable experience for Mao Tith and his family, with the hut they lived in, built from bamboo with a thatched roof of palm leaves, barely offering protection from torrential downpours. However,
Foreign Policy Magazine2 min readWorld
Farming Out Expertise Yields Rich Catch In Africa
He Wang, a fisheries expert from Hunan province in China, has spent most of the past 18 years in Ethiopia passing on the best methods for farming freshwater fish. He, a senior researcher in fishery sciences with the Hunan Fisheries Science Institute

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