Ned Temko

London

International Affairs Columnist at The Christian Science Monitor

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Articles

Trump hopes to buy rare earths from Africa even as he cuts aid

2 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

Africa is becoming both a target and a test of President Donald Trump’s root-and-branch remake of America’s foreign policy. The targeting has felt relentless to many African leaders: He gutted development aid on the day he returned to the White House; in April, he announced steep tariffs on their exports to the United States; and, just last week, he imposed a travel ban aimed primarily at African countries. But why a test?
Trump’s pivot to Asia is a turn away from Europe

3 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

The full scale of Donald Trump’s ambition to remake U.S. foreign policy – and redefine America’s approach to the world – has become clearer in the past few days, with the rollout of his version of an Obama-era initiative dubbed the “pivot to Asia.”It builds on one of the few remaining areas of bipartisan consensus in Washington – countering the rising economic clout, military strength, and geopolitical ambitions of China.
War in Gaza asks Israelis what kind of state they want

4 weeks ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

A “diplomatic tsunami” is how one Israeli newspaper has dubbed intensifying criticism from Israel’s Western allies of its latest military attacks – and the dire humanitarian crisis – in Gaza. But this international anger, contrasting sharply with the sympathy that most of the world offered Israel after Hamas murdered and abducted hundreds of civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, may be diverting attention from an even greater impact of the war in Gaza.
President Trump, Pope Leo: 2 Americans, 2 worldviews

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

This is the story, unimaginable only a couple of weeks ago, of two men born a few years apart midway through the last century, suddenly sharing the international stage as the most powerful Americans on Earth. In background, experience, and demeanor, President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born leader of the Catholic Church, could hardly be more different.
US allies reconsider their pledge not to build nuclear weapons

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

The American atomic bombs that ended World War II 80 summers ago snuffed out tens of thousands of lives in an instant. They blighted countless others. But they also left behind a more hopeful legacy: a collective determination by world powers to avoid the use of nuclear weapons forever, and to tightly limit their possession. Today, that achievement is coming under strain as never before.
Centrists’ only weapon against the far right: Good government

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

A “hinge moment of history.”That is how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described the dramatic shift in world politics that helped him win his come-from-behind election victory last week. Yet he could also have been describing three other democratic elections that have followed in quick succession in the past few days: in Britain, Australia, and Romania. They are all part of a battle over the future shape of democracy worldwide, framed by two key questions.
Trump bids farewell to US global role, focuses on national interests

1 month ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

If there were job ads inviting nation states to apply for work, it is not hard to guess which post would top the world’s search list, 100 days into Donald Trump’s second presidential term. “Help wanted,” the ad would read. “Leader of the free world.”President Trump has delivered a series of hammer blows to an international order that America largely built, buttressed, and led in the decades after World War II.
Trump finds global peacemaking more complex than he had thought

2 months ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

It was a tantalizing promise, delivered with Donald Trump’s trademark panache: As dealmaker in chief, he would quickly end world conflicts that had defied his predecessors and their nattily dressed legions of career diplomats. Nearly 100 days into his second term as president, though, he is facing serious complications as he tries to unravel three major crises: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and Iran’s accelerating progress toward nuclear weapons.
Slapped with tariffs, some US trade partners lean toward Beijing

2 months ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

So much is changing, so jarringly, in America’s relations with China that it’s easy to overlook another equally dramatic diplomatic shift that could well decide how and when their tariff war ends. It involves relations not with America’s main rival power, but with its friends.
On tariffs, Trump moves forward, and back. What does it herald for trade?

2 months ago | csmonitor.com | Ned Temko

Only one tumultuous week elapsed between President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on the White House lawn and a sudden change of course. But the question now preoccupying U.S. trading partners worldwide, despite huge relief over the 90-day “pause” announced Wednesday, is whether he has changed his mind. Not about tariffs, clearly his geopolitical instrument of choice. Nor about America’s main trade nemesis under successive administrations: China.