Articles

China’s Environmental Threat to Antarctica

December 1, 2021 Alexander B. Gray The Wall Street Journal

While much of the world was focused on the recent climate summit in Scotland, China had its eye on a very different environmental issue. For the fifth year in a row, China, with Russian assistance, used an international forum to prevent the establishment of new marine protected areas along the coast of Antarctica. Beijing is increasingly interested in the southern continent, and for all the wrong reasons.

Tehran sets the table in Vienna

November 30, 2021 Ilan I. Berman Washington Examiner

What precisely does the Biden administration want to accomplish in its diplomacy with Iran? With new talks over Iran's nuclear program now underway in Vienna, it’s a question worth asking.

Iran, Like China, Isn’t a Responsible Stakeholder

November 26, 2021 Ilan I. Berman Newsweek

In a much-publicized address in 2005, then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick laid out the prevailing wisdom in Washington regarding the proper way to approach the People's Republic of China (PRC). "Chinese leaders have decided that their success depends on being networked with the modern world," Zoellick argued before the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. As a result, he contended, the U.S. needed to make every effort to turn the PRC into a "responsible stakeholder" on the world stage.

Egypt’s Biggest Worry Is Its Population

October 27, 2021 Ilan I. Berman Al-Hurra Digital

Today, the Egyptian state faces no shortage of strategic threats, ranging from instability emanating from the ongoing crisis next door in Libya to an escalating conflict with nearby Ethiopia over access to the Nile. Yet its biggest long-term challenge is a distinctly domestic one: the quickening pace of its own population.

Is a sanctions rethink in the works?

October 21, 2021 Lawrence J. Haas The Hill

The Biden administration’s announcement that it will limit economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy could prove significant, since it follows two decades in which policymakers of both parties dramatically increased the use of sanctions against governments, individuals, and entities that they considered bad actors.

What Morocco’s Elections Mean

September 27, 2021 Ilan I. Berman Al-Hurra Digital

When Moroccans went to the polls earlier this month to elect a new parliament, the result was a massive repudiation of Islamism – and a resounding affirmation of the North African nation's current geopolitical trajectory.

Biden is losing Latin America

September 24, 2021 David Wilezol Washington Examiner

[T]here’s another, less-recognized setback happening for the United States far south of the Rio Grande or the Sonora Desert: crumbling relationships with Latin American countries.