Global Commons | Council on Foreign Relations

World Health Organization (WHO)

What Does the World Health Organization Do?

Since its postwar founding, the UN agency has garnered both praise and criticism for its response to international public health crises, including the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

Backgrounder by CFR.org Editors January 29, 2021
Russia

Russia

There is no country quite like Russia. Despite having a relatively small economy, it has been able to maintain global influence through a range of unconventional tactics. How has Vladimir Putin played his country’s weak hand so effectively? And what is his goal?

Podcast with Gabrielle Sierra, Jill Dougherty, Stephen Sestanovich and Angela Stent January 19, 2021 Why It Matters
China

China’s Starring Role in Hollywood

What does it take to make a Hollywood blockbuster? Movie stars? A great script? How about approval from the Chinese government? In this episode, two guests explore the surprising role of Chinese censorship and oversight in the production of U.S. films and ask what’s at stake as their presence increases.

Podcast with Gabrielle Sierra, Aynne Kokas and James Tager January 6, 2021 Why It Matters

2020 in Review

Ten Good Foreign Policy News Stories in 2020

Two thousand twenty will go down in the books as a very tough year. It’s of no comfort that historians say it ranks just eighth in terms of the most stressful years in U.S. history. Our lives were di…

Blog Post by James M. Lindsay December 30, 2020 The Water's Edge
Pharmaceuticals and Vaccines

COVID-19: Why Vaccination Coverage Is Important

Vaccines are a major public health success story, but the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the many challenges involved in getting a vaccine to everyone who needs it.

In Brief by Claire Felter December 22, 2020
Global

Five Foreign Policy Stories to Watch in 2021

Blog Post by James M. Lindsay December 21, 2020 The Water's Edge
2020 in Review

Ten Most Significant World Events in 2020

Four years ago stories appeared asking whether 2016 was the worst year ever. Well, 2020 has 2016 beat. You would have to go back to 1968 to find a year filled with as much turmoil. Yes, the past twel…

Blog Post by James M. Lindsay December 17, 2020 The Water's Edge
Space

Biden Will Have to Confront a New and Perhaps More Dangerous Space Race

The cooperative vision of space is under stress. Biden should commit the United States to forge new norms and rules of collective security to manage the shared risks and advance the common purposes of all peace-loving nations.

Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick December 14, 2020 The Internationalist
Global Governance

The State of Global Governance: A Conversation With Richard Haass and the Council of Councils

Richard N. Haass, Sunjoy Joshi, and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos discuss the mounting challenges to global governance and their implications for international cooperation, including rising climate concerns, economic volatility, and increasing great power tensions amid a global pandemic. The Council of Councils (CoC) is an international initiative created by the Council on Foreign Relations to connect leading foreign policy institutes from around the world in a dialogue on issues of global governance and multilateral cooperation. The CoC is composed of twenty-eight major policy institutes from some of the world’s most influential countries. It is designed to facilitate candid, not-for-attribution dialogue and consensus-building among influential opinion leaders from both established and emerging nations, with the ultimate purpose of injecting the conclusions of its deliberations into high-level foreign policy circles within members' countries.

Virtual Event by Richard N. Haass, Sunjoy Joshi and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos November 9, 2020
Global

Season Three Trailer

What happens when the world runs out of fish? Does TikTok actually present a national security risk? Will Africa's population boom change the world as we know it? In season three, Why It Matters explores a new series of challenges that are gathering on the horizon.

Podcast with Gabrielle Sierra October 14, 2020 Why It Matters
Space

The White House Adopts Cybersecurity Policy for Activities in Outer Space

The Trump administration's newly issued directive on cybersecurity policy for outer space is another small step towards taking cyber threats to U.S. space systems seriously.

Blog Post by David P. Fidler September 23, 2020 Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program
World Trade Organization (WTO)

What Is Next for the WTO?

Speakers discuss the future of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including what role the WTO can play in a COVID-19 world, who could be the next Director-General, and what changes to expect from the WTO moving forward.

Virtual Event by Peter Draper, Jennifer Hillman and Mark Wu September 22, 2020 Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies
United Nations

The UN Security Council

The UN Security Council is the premier global body for maintaining international peace and security, but it faces steady calls for reform to better meet twenty-first-century challenges.

Backgrounder by CFR Staff September 16, 2020
United Nations

The Role of the UN General Assembly

The UN General Assembly hosts a much-watched debate of world leaders each year but has struggled to make its work more substantive. For the first time in the assembly’s seventy-five-year history, leaders of member states will not gather in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Backgrounder by CFR Staff August 25, 2020
Coronavirus

Which Countries Are Requiring Face Masks?

As the pandemic continues, more than half of the world’s countries are mandating the wearing of face masks in public. Is it helping to slow the spread of COVID-19?

In Brief by Claire Felter and Nathalie Bussemaker August 4, 2020