Foreign Policy

Since first assuming office as general secretary in 2024, To Lam has moved swiftly to boost growth and cement his grip on power in Vietnam. foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/27/vietnam-to-lam-communist-party-growth-myanmar-election/

Overdetermined interventions have been a feature of U.S. foreign interference for well over a century.

World Brief: India and the European Union clinch a long-delayed free trade deal, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer courts greater Chinese investments, and the United States officially exits the Paris Agreement. foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/27/india-european-union-eu-free-trade-deal-trump-tariffs/

Amid China’s economic downturn, many young people are turning away from the rat race and rejecting conventional markers of success, writes @yuxin_gao.

Blaise Metreweli is revamping the legendary MI6 for an era of conflict in Europe.

After years of anti-corruption purges, China’s highest leaders are still falling in droves.

The tension between development and preservation has come to the surface in Baghdad, where new high-rise construction is reshaping the city’s landscape.

Instead of confronting Trump, many BRICS members and aspirants have facilitated Trump’s Board of Peace by either quietly joining or looking the other way.

Mikhail Zygar’s new book on the decline and demise of the Soviet Union, “The Dark Side of the Earth,” is filled with hundreds of vignettes drawn from late Soviet cultural and political life.

The response to the killings in Minneapolis by the Trump administration and its online supporters follows the authoritarian script to the letter, argues Marc Lynch.

More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, where cardiometabolic diseases are rising fast. FP Analytics’ latest brief supported by @NovartisFDN examines how AI can turn urban data into action on cardiometabolic health. Read more:

Kosovo offers a template for a possible way forward in Ukraine.

The Kosovo precedent could offer a way forward, but the biggest hurdle will be getting Russia and Ukraine onboard, writes Paul Hockenos.

The killings at Kent State in 1970 triggered national outrage over the war in Vietnam, Nixon, and the condition of U.S. democracy more broadly. In 2026, many of the same fears and anxieties have returned, writes columnist Julian E. Zelizer.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s killings in Minneapolis have brought back memories of government escalation.

A 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia offers a key to understanding how Trump’s adventurism plays out, writes columnist Howard W. French.

The Soviet precedent offers the surest key to understanding how a decadent superpower’s final years of domineering sway might play out, writes columnist @hofrench.

The hiatus between Israel and Iran is unlikely to last long, and there are good reasons to believe that the next round of attacks will be even bigger than before, writes Raphael S. Cohen.

What is driving U.S. behavior seems less a calculation of advantage than the cultivation of a particular look, writes Krzysztof Pelc.

World Brief: U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown faces a test in Minneapolis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says a U.S. security agreement for Kyiv is ready, and Myanmar’s military-backed party announces its election win.

The Trump administration’s modular form of narrative warfare has been adopted by authoritarian regimes across the world, writes Marc Lynch.

Saretta Morgan’s poems speak insistently and beautifully about life in the Southwest borderlands.

On World Cancer Day 2026, Foreign Policy and MSD Invents will host Evidence to Impact, a virtual dialogue focused on how data and lived experience can drive more effective and equitable cancer control policy. Bringing together researchers, advocates, and policymakers, the conversation will examine how evidence-based practices can strengthen National Cancer Control Plans, address persistent gaps in financing and access, and translate research into real-world impact for patients across regions and income levels. Register to join the virtual conversation.

Kosovo offers a template for a possible way forward in Ukraine.

Rejecting the extension of New START would place the United States in a more complex and uncertain strategic environment precisely when the risks of miscalculation are rising, argues Ariel Petrovics.

The killings at Kent State in 1970 triggered national outrage over the war in Vietnam, Nixon, and the condition of U.S. democracy more broadly. In 2026, many of the same fears and anxieties have returned, writes columnist @julianzelizer.

Economics columnist @adam_tooze discusses the anti-coercion instruments at Europe’s disposal.

A 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia offers a key to understanding how Trump’s adventurism plays out, writes columnist @hofrench.

Netanyahu’s deal with Tehran was more a tactical pause than a game-changer in the ongoing rivalry, writes Raphael S. Cohen.

The problem with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech is not that he is wrong. It is that he is late—and lateness shapes credibility, argues Alejandro Reyes.

Whatever challenges that the U.N. Security Council faces, Trump’s Board of Peace will not be able to replace it, argue Richard Gowan and Daniel Forti.

Trump’s Greenland spectacle has liberal-minded Americans rooting for Europe’s resiliency.

FP’s @AlexandraSSharp and @jchaltiwanger offer a deep dive on Trump’s proposed Golden Dome, including its purpose, expected capabilities, potential cost, development timeline, and possible risks.

Political actors and activist groups outside of Iran have little sway on the masses inside, writes columnist @anchalvohra.

Interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez may be better positioned than most to take advantage of the opportunity, but the record of her vice presidential peers suggests disappointment, writes Aaron Mannes.

The Trump administration is trying to revive the imagery of an older world: ownership, seizure, and territorial possession—moves that correspond to a material reality that no longer exists, writes Krzysztof Pelc.

Despite popular discontent, the power of the Iranian regime remains centralized, insulated, and defended by institutions whose survival depends on preserving the core.

Latin American countries are even more familiar than Canada with assertive U.S. behavior.

There is a growing sense among liberal-minded Americans that only Europe’s unflinching resolve will force the White House to take its commitment to international norms more seriously, writes @SuzanneNossel.

If New START collapses, the United States would face simultaneous uncertainty about both the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals, writes Ariel Petrovics.

The Canadian leader’s Davos speech is a masterclass in realism—and an overdue admission of hypocrisy, writes Alejandro Reyes.

As balance-of-threat theory predicts, we are now seeing former allies distancing themselves and making new arrangements with each other and potentially with some U.S. adversaries, writes columnist @stephenWalt.

Trump’s Board of Peace will deepen the fragmentation of the international system and further damage U.S. interests, write Richard Gowan and Daniel Forti.

An infrastructure project between Afghanistan, Iran, and India gets caught in Trump’s crosshairs—again.

While current U.S. missile defense capabilities are subject to vulnerabilities, there are doubts about whether Golden Dome is truly the solution, FP’s @AlexandraSSharp and @jchaltiwanger write.

Washington should have a considered assessment—not a hope—of who or what would succeed the Islamic Republic before it strives to undermine it as quickly as possible, argues Robert Ford.

Under Trump, U.S. power projection is unsettling Chinese assumptions and exposing how little influence Beijing wields when Washington decides to act, writes @CraigMSingleton.

As the United States blusters and threatens, European leaders are making tough choices.

Concerns over aesthetics, more than rational interest, are driving U.S. behavior.

There is, in fact, no rational reason why the United States needs to seize Greenland.

Most vice presidents flounder when the spotlight turns to them—a discouraging precedent for interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, writes Aaron Mannes.

The Iranian government has been deliberately engineered to deflect pressure, concentrate power, and shield its center from both society and its own institutions, writes Saeid Golkar.

The Canadian Prime Minister’s speech fails to admit that Canada itself has not always practiced the universalism it now calls for, writes Alejandro Reyes.

Trump’s Board of Peace is not a harmless vanity project but a threat to international cooperation, argue Richard Gowan and Daniel Forti.

Liberal U.S. politicians and foreign-policy experts are now openly pinning their hopes for the free world on a stiffening of the European spine.

Washington can intervene militarily, but any regime change strategy needs to start in Iran itself, writes columnist @anchalvohra.

Nearly one year on, the Golden Dome remains little more than a concept.

China does not aspire to write all the rules of the international system, but it does want the power to revise or veto rules that conflict with its interests, writes @JeremySFriedman.

A 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia offers a key to understanding how Trump’s adventurism plays out.

China is parsing what triggers U.S. action and what tempers it.

In the past few weeks, there has been plenty of evidence that European countries—including NATO members—are increasingly willing to put themselves in direct opposition to the Trump administration.

Washington’s record of failed intervention offers an obvious lesson. Trump should heed it.

Trump’s first presidency strained democratic norms, while his second has altered American governance more fundamentally, writes @areyeshk.

Since beginning his second term as president, Donald Trump has done just about everything balance-of-threat theory warns against—and with predictably negative results, writes columnist @stephenWalt.

World Brief: Abu Dhabi hosts Russia-Ukraine-U.S. peace talks, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi calls a snap election, and Canada-U.S. relations get a bit icier.

As so often happens with Trump, there is no policy logic here, no planning process, no coherent ideological background—just one man’s whim, writes columnist @ccaryl.

Recent reports suggest that hundreds of Africans have been lured to Russia under false job promises and subsequently sent to the front line in Ukraine after receiving only a few days of basic training.