Timothy Naftali

1 month ago | foreignaffairs.com | Diana Roy |Joshua Kurlantzick |Timothy Naftali |L. Rafael Reif

In a little more than 100 days, Donald Trump has set about dismantling much of the international order that has prevailed since World War II. That’s true of traditional U.S. approaches to trade, to conflict, alliances, international organizations, and more. But as much as we focus on Trump, Michael Beckley argues that much of this change in U.S. foreign policy has deeper roots, going to the very nature of American power.

1 month ago | foreignaffairs.com | Timothy Naftali

A U.S. president was trying to end an exceptionally violent war between Russia and its neighbor. He also had clear preferences on which side he admired more. “I like the Russians,” the president wrote. But the American people favored the other side, and, as a result, he noted, Washington needed to be “scrupulous in its impartiality between the combatants.” The president was Theodore Roosevelt, and the war was between Russia and Japan.

Dec 1, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Timothy Naftali |Joshua Kurlantzick |Michelle G. Kurilla |Richard N. Haass

After more than six decades on the world’s stage, during which he both brilliantly persuaded and deceived the powerful and created state-to-state relationships that survive him, Henry Kissinger now belongs to the history he helped make. The only American official ever to have held all of the levers of foreign-policy making—for two years he served simultaneously as national security adviser and secretary of state—he has no peers in the history of U.S. foreign relations in the superpower era.

Nov 17, 2023 | wsj.com | Timothy Naftali

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, remains America’s ur-conspiracy—a source of continuing skepticism about the possibility of official truth for both the left and the right. Sixty years later, it’s time to acknowledge that a major reason for this enduring suspicion is Kennedy himself.

Aug 18, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Tim Naftali |Timothy Naftali |Elliott Abrams |Joshua Kurlantzick

“The game of politics is not a branch of the Sunday school business.” Such was the characterization of “Blind Boss” Buckley, the head of the Democratic political machine in San Francisco at the dawn of the twentieth century. American politics have long had the reputation of being ruthless, but until now, they had never involved a conspiracy directed from the White House to overturn the results of a presidential election.