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This graphic shows the key technological innovations of the last two hundred years and forecasts that the 21st century will be shaped by biotechnology. Revisit Claudia Otto and Oliver Thränert’s CSS Analysis to see what this means for the Biological Weapons Convention. For more CSS charts, maps and graphics, click here.
This article was originally published by the Lowy Institute on 17 September 2018.
Key Findings
This article was originally published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) on 14 August 2018.
It seems to be an article of faith among many members of the U.S. foreign policy community that, whenever Donald Trump—and his administration—leaves office, a subsequent president (whether a Democrat or a non-Trumpist Republican) will push a reset button that will return the United States to its position in world affairs that it occupied in 2008 or 2016. They take reassurance in the assumption, however, that Trump’s presidency can only represent a brief aberration and that, as Lawrence Freedman notes, “When Trump ceases to be President, things should return to normal.”
This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 6 August 2018.
In the spring of 2014, before Donald Trump’s presidency was even a rumor, I began an article about the sources of U.S. grand strategy. By “grand strategy,” I mean a state’s way of orchestrating means and ends to achieve security over the long haul. I argued that the habitual ideas and pervasive influence of the U.S. foreign policy establishment make the fundamentals of American statecraft hard to change. What former advisor Ben Rhodes called the “Blob” and what former National Security Council official Michael Anton called the “priesthood” defines and dominates the ecosystem in which foreign policy is made. It exerts its influence through its expertise and its advantageous structural position as a “revolving door” between government, academia, think tanks, foundations, and corporations, reinforced by the feedback loop of allies’ demands for American patronage. In turn, the establishment successfully advances the view that the only prudent and legitimate grand strategy for the United States is “primacy,” the pursuit and sustainment of unrivalled dominance.
This article was originally published by ETH Zurich’s Zukunftsblog on 11 May 2018. It is also available in German.
Safeguarding both humanitarian traditions and the interests of the domestic pharmaceutical industry creates tension in the Swiss health-related foreign policy, says Ursula Jasper.