Foreign Policy in Focus

Foreign Policy in Focus is a “Think Tank Without Walls” connecting the research and action of more than 600 scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. FPIF publishes timely commentaries on U.S. foreign policy, sharp analyses of global issues, and on-the-ground dispatches from around the world. We also are interested in pieces that explore the intersection of foreign policy and culture, and on dispatches from social movements involved in foreign policy.

Climate Crisis

‘Open Your Hearts’: The Movements Taking Climate Action Where Leaders and Media Won’t

By Donna Katzin and William Minter | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Media, politicians, and policymakers tend to focus on the most visible issues. The attention the war in Ukraine has received in the first half of 2022, for example, is unrivaled in the United States at least since the shock of 9/11 […]

National Security State

Supreme Court Expands Government Secrecy Powers in Torture-Related Case

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Robert Pallitto | – (Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The U.S. government doesn’t want to acknowledge a Polish torture site that everyone knows about. By Robert Pallitto | May 31, 2022 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled recently on the government’s use of the state secrets doctrine in an opinion that will make it […]

Climate Crisis

Green Energy as answer to Ukraine Crisis: Turning to Nuclear would make us hostage to Moscow’s Uranium

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Tatyana Novikova | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – In March 2022, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced several bills calling for a ban on Russian uranium as a way to cut off funds for the war in Ukraine and also boost domestic uranium production. Although environmentalists applaud the Russian uranium ban, they […]

Uncategorized

Muslims and the War on Terror: Two-Plus Decades of ‘Othering’

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Anoa J. Changa | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The phrase “War on Terror” invokes many different feelings and images depending upon one’s position in America and the world. While many understand it merely as a descriptor for a new frontier in American foreign policy and war, for others it has meant […]

Climate Crisis

Can we Afford a Fair Global Climate Transition?

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Tom Athanasiou | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – How to create the political backing for the international effort necessary to achieve a fair and rapid global climate transition, even though that support would be properly denominated not in billions of dollars but rather in trillions, or even as percentages of Gross […]

Left Politics

The Left has to Recognize Russian Imperialism in Ukraine or it is Trapped in Americocentrism

Foreign Policy in Focus

By David Ost | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – It is tough for leftists to be on the same side as the mainstream. We can easily feel at those times that we’re missing something, that we’re letting down the struggle, that by ganging up even on an admittedly bad actor we’re helping […]

Afghanistan

U.S. Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Be Deadlier Than 20 Years of War

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Mark Weisbrot | – (Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Originally published in Inside Sources. Economic sanctions have, in recent years, become one of the most important tools of U.S. foreign policy. There are currently more than 20 countries subjected to various sanctions from the U.S. government. But if more Americans knew how many […]

Bill of Rights

Gitmo’s Shameful Twentieth Anniversary

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Farrah Hassen | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The U.S. prison at the Guantánamo Bay naval base reached its shameful 20th anniversary of operations on January 11 — with a legacy marked by the detention of nearly 800 Muslim men and boys, the majority of them held without charge or trial for […]

al-Qaeda

Bin Laden and Trump: Two Bookends to America’s Imperial Decline

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – The end of 2021 and the beginning of a new year is a convenient time to take stock of the causes of America’s decline. This past year saw both Washington’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan after 20 years in the country that had served as the launching pad for its direct […]