Foreign Policy

Tatiana Stanovaya is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the founder and CEO of the political analysis firm R.Politik. She previously led the analysis department of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based political consulting firm. Ramachandra Guha is a biographer and historian of modern India. He is the author of books including India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, which received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing. Farzaneh Milani is a professor of Iranian literature and women and gender studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of, most recently, The Literary Biography of Forugh Farrokhzad With Unpublished Letters, written in Persian. Lee Hsi-min is a former chief of the general staff of the Taiwanese armed forces and a retired admiral.…

FOR MUCH OF THE LAST YEAR, FOREIGN POLICY’s reporters and analysts have been trying to make sense of Russia’s war in Ukraine. But remember the adage that generals always fight the last war? Of late, we at FP have been wondering: What can this war teach the world going forward? Of course, Moscow isn’t done inflicting its horrors, and Kyiv isn’t done fighting back. But there’s little doubt that policymakers in Beijing, for example, are closely observing the war to inform their military strategies for the future. One could also argue, as countries in the global south sometimes do, that the war in Ukraine is hardly the only impactful conflict. There’s merit to that argument. But it’s also true that no other war in recent memory has drawn in so many…

On Oct. 6, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council rejected a resolution to hold a debate on China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang. The vote was spurred by a meticulous report published five weeks earlier by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which detailed Chinese state-directed persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities and concluded that such violations “may constitute … crimes against humanity.” The resolution—which failed by 19 votes to 17, with 11 abstentions—represented the first formal attempt at the Human Rights Council to hold China accountable for its massive and ongoing human rights abuses. The council’s failure to carry out its most basic function as the premier U.N. venue for the promotion and protection of human rights stands as an indictment of the council…

The United States has waged low-grade economic warfare against China for at least four years now—firing volley after volley of tariffs, export controls, investment blocks, visa limits, and much more. But Washington’s endgame for this conflict has always been hazy. Does it seek to compel specific changes in Beijing’s behavior or to challenge the Chinese system itself? To protect core security interests or to retain hegemony by any means? To strengthen the United States or to hobble its chief rival? Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s scattershot regulation and erratic public statements offered little clarity to allies, adversaries, and companies around the world. Joe Biden’s actions as president have been more systematic, but long-term U.S. goals remain hidden beneath bureaucratic opacity and cautious platitudes. Last October, however, a dense regulatory filing from…

Pakistani politics have always revolved around the country’s military. Civilian politicians compete for support while criticizing—or seeking covert help from—a ubiquitous security establishment. Since his ouster as prime minister in April 2022, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has become the latest to challenge this system. But Khan’s polarizing rhetoric is only adding to Pakistan’s chaos—not marking the advent of a revolution. The government elected after Khan’s removal via a no-confidence vote initially tolerated the former prime minister’s attacks on generals, judges, and political rivals in addition to his conspiracy theories about his ouster being the result of a U.S.-backed plot. Unlike previous civilian leaders who fell afoul of the military, Khan was not immediately arrested, charged with corruption, or disqualified from future elections by judicial fiat. But now, Khan and his close aides…

A new quad is coalescing in the Indo-Pacific, and it is likely to have an even greater impact than the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a grouping that brings together Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The new alignment is coming about as Japan increasingly aligns its security interests with those of Australia, Britain, and the United States against the growth of China’s influence and power. The prospect of adding Japan to the Australia-United Kingdom-United States defense cooperation pact, established in 2021 and known as AUKUS—which would turn the group into JAUKUS—could transform security cooperation among liberal democracies in the Indo-Pacific in a way that no other previous alliance or quasi-alliance has managed. Such a partnership was not preordained. Indeed, reports in April 2022 that Japan was quietly being asked about joining…