Julia E. Sweig, CFR’s director of Latin American studies, says ties between Washington and Havana may change, but the United States has been downplaying expectations of a breakthrough.  

Julia E. Sweig, the Council on Foreign Relations’ top Cuba expert, says there is considerable pressure from congressional Republicans to ease the U.S. trade embargo on Havana by opening up travel and…

Peter Steinfels, a prominent Catholic commentator and a former senior religion correspondent for the New York Times, says Pope John Paul II, who died April 2, will be remembered as “a giant historica…

The pope’s encyclical on the environment carries a profoundly religious message about care for the earth, wedded to a new call for activism, say religious scholars Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.

CFR’s Steven Simon says President Obama has asserted a new counterterrorism approach that balances aggressiveness on some fronts with a milder set of interrogation and detention policies.