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President Trump sent U.S. troops to the border with Mexico to supplement the work of authorities there. President Biden pledges a new approach as pressures mount along the boundary.
About the Expert
Expert Bio
Stewart M. Patrick is James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His areas of expertise include multilateral cooperation on global issues; U.S. policy toward international institutions, including the United Nations; the challenges posed by fragile and post–conflict states; and the challenges to international environmental cooperation posed by climate change and biodiversity loss. Patrick is the author of The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World, as well as Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security. He also writes the blog, The Internationalist.
From 2005 to April 2008, he was research fellow at the Center for Global Development. He directed the center's research and policy engagement on the intersection between security and development, with a particular focus on the relationship between weak states and transnational threats and on the policy challenges of building effective institutions of governance in fragile settings. He also taught at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
From September 2002 to January 2005, Patrick served on the secretary of state's policy planning staff, with lead staff responsibility for U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and a range of global and transnational issues, including refugees and migration, international law enforcement, and global health affairs. He joined the staff as an international affairs fellow at CFR.
Prior to government service, Patrick was from 1997 to 2002 a researcher at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, where he ran two multi-scholar research programs on post-conflict reconstruction and on multilateralism and U.S. foreign policy.
Patrick graduated from Stanford University and received two master’s degrees and his doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of five books. He has also authored numerous articles and chapters on the subjects of multilateral cooperation, state-building, and U.S. foreign policy.
Patrick lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He has three children.
Affiliations:
- World Politics Review, columnist
Featured
Stewart Patrick argues that the United States can protect its sovereignty while advancing American interests in a global age. He clarifies what is at stake in the sovereignty debate, arguing that the nation must make "sovereignty bargains" to achieve its aims in a complex world.
Climate change and the environment feature prominently in 2019's global summit lineup.
Current Projects
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After the Trump administration's four years of abandoning and undermining the legacy of U.S. commitment to democracy, U.S. President Joe Biden is seeking to steer the country—and the world—down a different course.
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As oil rigs and coal plants churn on, national emissions targets grow increasingly disingenuous and infeasible. To prevent the worst implications of the climate crisis, it is time to target the supply side of the world's dirty fuel addiction.
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The planet is on fire, the pandemic smolders on, and the global recovery is faltering. The G20 was created for just such challenges, and the Rome summit offers it a chance to rise to the occasion.
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United Nations General Assembly
U.S. President Joe Biden made his first address before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 21, 2021. His message, both to his domestic and foreign audiences, was clear: The United States is back and at the ready. -
Biden faces a dual challenge at the UN General Assembly. He must convince the world that the U.S. is committed to multilateralism while persuading the American public that the UN can be an indispensable institution.
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After 9/11, the United States' foreign policy and security apparatuses adopted a new threat perception, one focused on failed and fragile states. The result: two decades of costly distractions.
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Finding themselves in an evermore interdependent global reality, countries have increasingly espoused their devotion to common goals and values. Their actions, however, speak louder than their words.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly hindered many countries' efforts to advance sustainable development. Unabated climate change, however, poses an even greater threat.
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The most sobering message in the IPCC report is that we are on a course to transform the planet profoundly, even if we alter our ways.
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Uneven national compliance, large-scale human displacement, and climate migration threaten the UN Refugee Convention. It needs to be updated or at least supplemented.
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The dawn of a new space age is upon us. It warrants taking a step back to ask more fundamental, long-term questions, namely: Just what is humanity hoping to accomplish in space?
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When it comes to climate change diplomacy, the European Union is the world’s heavy hitter. But will the world follow its lead?
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Turning the world’s pious words into concrete actions to end modern slavery will require focused attention from world leaders, generous resources from wealthy governments, and an end to impunity for perpetrators.
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Diplomacy and International Institutions
The New Atlantic Charter seeks to rally the West at a time of global crisis. Whether it has a similar, enduring influence is likely to depend more on domestic U.S. political developments than on global geopolitical trends. -
Diplomacy and International Institutions
Is America back and able to make the West once again the core of an open, rules-based world order? Biden and his counterparts have an opportunity to prove skeptics wrong this week. -
The debate between going it alone versus working with others has ended. The debate over alternative forms of multilateralism has just begun.
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COVID-19 has been a pandemic of inequalities and inequities. A new report offers useful recommendations going forward but offers too few details and no roadmap on how to achieve them.
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We have entered a new era of infectious disease. The path to global health security begins with protecting nature.
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Collapsing biodiversity is a major ecological emergency. In the wake of Earth Day, it’s worth stepping back to consider the financial value of biodiversity's ecosystem services.
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Biden’s Earth Day summit leaves important, lingering questions, the most important of these being the feasibility and credibility of his plans.
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For multilateralism to be credible, the Biden administration will need to reconsolidate a U.S. political consensus on global engagement and persuade foreign partners of America’s global staying power.
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In the next 40 years, institutions at all levels could struggle to adapt to abrupt demographic shifts, economic turbulence, runaway climate change, and technological innovation.
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To preserve a stable biosphere, scientists believe humanity must protect 30 percent of the Earth by 2030, and ideally half of the planet by midcentury.
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A global concert of major powers has undeniable attraction as a potential deus ex machina in our age of global turbulence. But its elegant simplicity is a mirage.