Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs is a U.S. magazine that focuses on global relations and American foreign policy. It is produced by the Council on Foreign Relations, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership group and think tank dedicated to U.S. foreign policy and international issues. Established in 1922, the magazine is released in print every two months, and its website features new articles every day.

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An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence

2 days ago | foreignaffairs.com | Ken Opalo |Zeinab Badawi

It is a common practice to divide African history into three epochs: precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. Yet as the philosopher Olufemi Taiwo has convincingly argued, this approach is wrong on two counts. First, it compresses and misrepresents millennia of African history in the “precolonial” period and by so doing casts Africa as a land where nothing changed for vast stretches of time.
Russia’s Hidden Empire

1 week ago | foreignaffairs.com | Ray Takeyh |Alexander Cooley |Rose Gottemoeller |Michael A. McFaul

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many Western analysts and scholars who study post-Soviet countries expected those countries’ governments and publics to express solidarity with Ukraine and denounce Russian attempts to reclaim territory and deny Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Arms Control Is Not Dead Yet

1 week ago | foreignaffairs.com | Ray Takeyh |Elliott Abrams |Rose Gottemoeller |Lynn Kuok

Nearly every week since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has had something to say about controlling nuclear weapons. In comments to Fox News in March, for example, he referred to these weapons as “big monsters” and the world’s “greatest existential threat,” lamenting that the United States spends “all this money on something that, if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.” The president’s interest is fortuitous.
How America Can Stay Ahead of China in the AI Race

1 week ago | foreignaffairs.com | Ray Takeyh |Elliott Abrams |Nikita Lalwani |Lynn Kuok

In October 2022, the United States imposed sweeping restrictions on the export of advanced chips and chip-making equipment.
The Age of Forever Wars

1 week ago | foreignaffairs.com | Lawrence Freedman

In Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, the United States and its coalition allies unleashed massive land, air, and sea power. It was over in a matter of weeks. The contrast between the United States’ grueling and unsuccessful war in Vietnam and the Soviet Union’s in Afghanistan could not have been more stark, and the speedy victory even led to talk of a new era of warfare—a so-called revolution in military affairs.
Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose

2 weeks ago | foreignaffairs.com | Zongyuan Liu |Sheila Smith |Natalie Caloca |Adam Posen

“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with,” U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted in 2018, “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” This week, when the Trump administration imposed tariffs of more than 100 percent on U.S. imports from China, setting off a new and even more dangerous trade war, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a similar justification: “I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese...
The Forever War in Gaza

2 weeks ago | foreignaffairs.com | Amos Harel

Less than two months after he committed to a phased cease-fire with Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed his country’s war in the Gaza Strip. On March 18, Israeli air force jets attacked military sites, killing more than 400 Palestinians, including over 300 women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health—a devastating toll even by the war’s earlier standards.
China and Russia Will Not Be Split

2 weeks ago | foreignaffairs.com | Michael A. McFaul |Evan Medeiros

Many American foreign policymakers dream of being the next Henry Kissinger. Whether they admit it or not, they look to him as the model of shrewd calculation of national interests, geopolitical acumen, and devotion to diplomacy. He was a leader who struck grand bargains with global effects. And no diplomatic maneuver is more quintessentially Kissinger than the U.S. opening to China in 1972.
The Brewing Transatlantic Tech War

3 weeks ago | foreignaffairs.com | Michelle Gavin |Henry Farrell |Abraham L. Newman |Laura Gamboa

Technology companies such as Alphabet, Meta, and OpenAI need to wake up to an unpleasant reality. By getting close to U.S. President Donald Trump, they risk losing access to one of their biggest markets: Europe. Just a decade ago, these companies believed that information technology would limit the power of governments and liberalize the world.
The Pentagon’s Endangered Brain Trust

3 weeks ago | foreignaffairs.com | Nathan Schoonover |Joshua Kurlantzick |Andrew F. Krepinevich |Mark Bell

In the 1990s, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, few in Washington were thinking about China as a potential future threat. During this “unipolar moment,” the conventional wisdom held that China would become a responsible stakeholder of the global community once it had become a fully integrated member. Inside the Pentagon, however, a group of analysts charged with assessing the strategic environment saw things differently.