United States

For Foreign Policy, CIC's James Traub breaks down what a Biden presidency would mean for U.S. foreign-policy and the Middle East.

"The Middle East would almost certainly be demoted under a President Biden—but how far? One senior advisor—who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the campaign—predicts that the Middle East would be “a distant fourth” in the order of priorities, after Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and Latin America."

In this Foreign Policy column, CIC senior fellow James Traub writes about what a Biden presidency could mean for neoliberalism as a dogma in foreign-policy.

"Some elements of a Biden foreign policy would almost certainly move left as a dependent variable of domestic policy. Biden uses the expression “a foreign policy for the middle class” to express the idea that trade and international economic policy must be guided by the benefits they will bring to average Americans—rather than to American multinationals."

CIC's Barnett Rubin was interviewed by PolitiFact about the participation of U.S. State Department officials in the 2020 presidential political campaign.

""The more that foreign policy is — and is seen to be — used for purely partisan objectives, the less other countries will believe that the policy will carry over to the next administration. If they do not like the policy, it encourages them to wait it out till the next election rather than to respond immediately"," Rubin told PolitiFact.

CIC's Barnett Rubin was interviewed by TOLOnews about former National Security Advisor John Bolton's new book, and what it reveals about President Trump's policy on Afghanistan.

"The main thing it shows is that President Trump doesn’t know anything about Afghanistan, he doesn’t care about Afghanistan. He just wants to get out of Afghanistan, but he wants to get out of Afghanistan in a way that is good for his reelection and that he doesn’t care about anything else at all," Rubin is quoted saying.

In a new column for Foreign Policy, CIC senior fellow James Traub writes about the post-pandemic struggle for global prestige and economic dominance, and argues that both the U.S. and China are losing the fight.

"If some model has emerged as the winner of this dreadful sweepstakes, it is not China’s authoritarian one but rather that of the democracies that share China’s 'Asian values' of collective discipline, deference to authority, and faith in the state," Traub said.