Foreign Policy In Focus

6 days ago | fpif.org | John Feffer

Among the Trump administration’s many disturbing shifts in foreign policy, one of its more shameful moves has been to use foreign aid as a tool for advancing U.S. national power. Rather than claiming that foreign aid stems from a genuine concern for the well-being of humanity, as previous administrations have done, the Trump administration has determined that U.S. assistance should be used to increase the power of the United States, if it is to be used at all.

1 week ago | fpif.org | John Feffer

Maybe you remember an incident like this from your schooldays. Someone in your class has done something wrong, like pass around a caricature of the principal, and the teacher decides to punish the whole class by taking away your recess. Maybe this is done to force the culprit to confess, or to pressure you and your classmates to point the finger. It’s a clever method of drafting students to help police the classroom. Such tactics of collective punishment have fallen out of favor for obvious reasons.

1 week ago | fpif.org | John Feffer

The Bandung Conference in April 1955 has achieved the status of a mythical moment in the history of the Global South.

1 week ago | fpif.org | John Feffer

On the plane to Hanoi in December of 2015, I opened my morning copy of the New York Times to find an article by Dave Philipps: “After 60 Years, B-52’s Still Dominate the U.S. Fleet.” The piece stuck with me. For the next two weeks as I traveled through north Vietnam I tried to unravel the U.S. attitudes it reveals towards the people of this country and what they call “the American war.”It ends by quoting a former South Vietnamese Navy officer, Phuoc Luong.

1 week ago | fpif.org | John Feffer

Yes, give us human beings credit. In our relatively brief history, it’s no small thing to have come up with two different ways of thoroughly devastating Planet Earth and its inhabitants. One of them, of course, is the long-term, slow-motion version of planetary destruction that we’ve come to call climate change. And yes, we can already feel it. In recent years, this planet has set record after record when it comes to heat, the last 10 years being the hottest in human history.