Trump’s No Hypocrite: And That’s Bad News for the International Order – with Martha Finnemore

U.S. President Donald Trump can be accused of having many faults, but hypocrisy is not one of them. To be sure, Trump is wildly inconsistent. His critics have found great sport digging up old tweets in which he condemns political rivals for doing something that he himself blithely does today. But hypocrisy requires a minimal degree of self-awareness. It also requires clear understanding of both one’s own interests and of public norms that may frustrate self-dealing. Repeated gaffes and insults suggest that Trump has no such knowledge. Far from being a Machiavellian schemer, he seems unable to recognize

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The New Age of Protectionism – with Abraham Newman

Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned of an impending “coronavirus vaccine war” that pits the United Kingdom against Europe. Days earlier, the EU had introduced measures that would halt AstraZeneca vaccine shipments to countries such as the United Kingdom that refuse to export vaccines themselves. “Zero” doses will move across the English Channel ...
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EssayPublic Writing

The Weaponized World Economy: Cover story for Foreign Affairs

When Washington announced a “framework deal” with China in June, it marked a silent shifting of gears in the global political economy. This was not the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imagined epoch of “liberation” under unilateral American greatness or a return to the Biden administration’s dream of managed great-power rivalry. Instead, it was ...
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