Democracies should ask themselves whether forming another elite club, such as a T-10 alliance, is the best way to counter authoritarian countries’ technological expansion.
Thomas Peter/Reuters
To counter Chinese and Russian visions for the global internet, the United States and its allies should form a digital trade zone, a bloc of like-minded democracies that cooperates on cyber issues and through which digital trade flows freely.
Iran
Iranian Defense Ministry/WANA/Reuters
The assassination of scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will intensify debate in Tehran over whether to reengage in the nuclear deal with the Biden administration.
Climate Change
The Brazilian Amazon is burning, threatening the world’s largest repository of biodiversity. If the fires are not controlled soon, they could release a “climate bomb” of stored carbon that would accelerate climate change.
The Amazon rainforest absorbs more greenhouse gases than any other tropical forest. But in Brazil, deforestation has claimed nearly a fifth of its tree cover, which threatens biodiversity and contributes to climate change.
Coronavirus
The search to find a vaccine for the new coronavirus is well underway. Governments and researchers are aiming to provide billions of people with immunity in eighteen months or less, which would be unprecedented.
COVID-19 cases are surging across the United States, forcing Americans to weigh the risks of gathering for the Thanksgiving holiday. How have other countries handled holidays amid the pandemic?
Security Alliances
In this special Transition 2021 series of The President’s Inbox, James M. Lindsay sits down each week with experts to discuss the challenges facing the incoming Biden administration. This week, CFR’s Senior Fellow for Europe, Matthias Matthijs, and Senior Fellow for Japan studies, Sheila A. Smith, assess the prospects for repairing America’s relations with allies in Europe and Asia.
Experts from leading global think tanks welcome the prospect of a Biden administration restoring long-standing U.S. alliances and commitments to multilateral institutions. But they anticipate a rocky path toward better global cooperation.
Transition 2021
The United States can only promote human rights abroad if it begins from a position of humility, acknowledging that the struggle to make America a more perfect union is ongoing.
Tony Blinken discusses multilateral diplomacy and U.S. global leadership.
Events
Panelists discuss the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela as the country continues to face high rates of poverty, unemployment, and even starvation. A La Calle (“To the Street”) is a firsthand account of the extraordinary efforts of ordinary Venezuelans to reclaim their democracy from the Nicolás Maduro administration. Working with a network of clandestine camera crews, the filmmakers spent three years recording exclusive interviews with key opposition figures as well as a host of everyday citizens to document the efforts of Venezuela’s opposition movement.
Panelists discuss the multiple challenges facing Europe today, including the public health and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, Brexit, continued threats of nationalism, Russian influence, and relations with the United States.
Public Health Threats and Pandemics
The coronavirus pandemic has not been an advertisement for the healthy effects of democracy. There have been some notable success stories among democracies, but it is also true that nine out of the ten nations with the highest cumulative COVID-19 cases are democracies. One possibility is that the mechanisms that ordinarily produce better health in democracies—accountability through free and fair elections and freedom of expression—may not function to produce the same result in a pandemic. In this Council on Foreign Relations roundtable, Drs. John Gerring and Ilona Kickbusch discuss this possibility and their work from a new BMJ series on democracy and health.
Adam Segal discusses the evolution of China's technology policy and how it has changed the U.S.-China relationship.
The CFR Master Class Series is a biweekly 45-minute session hosted by Vice President and Deputy Director for Studies Shannon O’Neil in which a CFR fellow will take a step back from the news and discuss the fundamentals essential to understanding a given country, region of the world, or issue pertaining to U.S. foreign policy or international relations.
Expert Spotlight
Stewart M. Patrick
James H. Binger Senior Fellow in Global Governance and Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program
Global Governance Diplomacy and International Institutions International Organizations
Explainers
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Food and Water Security
Rising Hunger: Facing a Food-Insecure World
Global food insecurity has surged amid the coronavirus pandemic, threatening to worsen humanitarian crises and spur further mass migration.
China
China’s Approach to Global Governance
Learn about China's evolving approach to global governance and how it has shifted strategy under President Xi Jinping related to trade, the belt and road initiative, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Public Health Threats and Pandemics
The Coronavirus Pandemic, With Tom Bollyky
Thomas J. Bollyky, director of CFR’s Global Health program and senior fellow for global health, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the World Health Organization’s newly declared pandemic, COVID-19.
United States
How Police Compare in Different Democracies
Killings by U.S. officers in 2020 have sparked widespread calls for police reform and an end to systemic racism. Here’s how U.S. policing compares with other countries’ approaches.
Global
Women’s Power Index
Find out where women around the world wield political power—and why it matters.
Featured Publications
CFR Senior Fellow Yanzhong Huang discusses how China’s environmental crisis is undermining public health and becoming an Achilles heel in its reemergence as a global power.
The definitive account of how regime change in the Middle East has proven so tempting to American policymakers for decades—and why it always seems to go wrong.
Charles A. Kupchan mines the nation’s past to uncover the ideological and political roots of ongoing changes in U.S. foreign policy, including the sources of Donald J. Trump's “America First” doctrine.