Most Americans are not familiar with the Eurovision Song Contest. It is a festival of pop culture that pits entries from European countries against one another in a regional pop culture popularity contest. It is cheesy, but it is also becoming a solid...

Nation-states are sovereign entities. No state can legitimately coerce another state to take any actions that they don’t want to take. Or so all the textbooks say. They why are the UK and the other European Union (EU) states negotiating over Brexit...

It seems like an odd question: does it matter how a government kills its own people? The answer is on the minds of many as reaction to the most recent use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government has died down and the Syrian Civil War has returned...

Following the deaths of 87 people in a Syrian government attack that appears to have been conducted using sarin nerve gas, the United States launched an attack on the Syrian government airfield from which the attack came. This is the first time that the...

Everyone tried to put a good face on it, but the celebrations of the 60 th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome that created the organization that would become the European Union (EU) were marked by deep concerns about the future of the union...

Strangely, the terrorist campaign of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is largely seen as ancient history outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland in spite of having ended only two decades ago. A conflict that dragged on for decades has left lasting wounds...

The fight against the group that call itself the Islamic State (ISIS) is not known for sharing globally recognized values. Their actions in the past have shown a degree of brutality that has made it a byword for barbarism around the world. The violation...

A civil war followed the Arab Spring. A majority of the population is displaced from their homes. Regional powers have intervened to support opposing sides in the conflict. International NGO’s and the United Nations accuse all sides of human rights...

Saudi Arabia is often considered one of the world’s most conservative places. It is a theocratic monarchy in which a highly conservative form of Islam provides a foundation for the rule of an absolute ruler. We often hear about how Saudi Arabia...

During the Cold War, it was taken as a given that the Soviet Union would test any new American president. It was an effort to see how the new leader would react under stressful conditions. After the Cold War, the desire to test new leaders to measure...

Refugees have been much in the news in the past several years. More than 20 million people are displaced just in the Middle East and North Africa. Around the world, the total number of refugees is greater than those displaced in times of world war. International...

One of the central challenges of writing an international relations blog is that there is a strong sense of trying to keep things focused on the international system and events taking place outside the borders of the United States. It is easy to leave...

In a world where we often focus on what goes wrong, there are times when it is good to look at what goes right. Or at least, somewhat right. In a democracy, leaders are expected to give up power and leave office when they lose an election. In established...

Some things are so terrible that they leave a scar on the collective psyche. Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day set aside to remember such a thing. The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of people deemed undesirable by the Nazi government. It...

When we think of global governance, the most common thoughts that come to mind focus on organizations like the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, or the World Trade Organization. While large, formal organizations play a critical role...

Among the stranger bits of global governance is the fact that some areas of governance are dominated by non-governmental organizations. Among the most famous is the governance of world football, or soccer as we call it in the USA. The Fédération...

Being a blogger has a significant drawback. What you write gets recorded for posterity. So when you look back on writings a year ago and evaluate your predictions, it can be a humorous experience. Or a horrifying one. At the start of 2016 I made some...

It took only hours for the world to take a trip back in time. Barely had word of Vladimir Putin’s statement that Russia would “enhance” its nuclear arsenal reached the world news websites when President-Elect Donald Trump tweeted that...

The battle has raged for years and the former economic hub of Syria has been turned to rubble. After all this time and all this death, the fighting seems to have slogged to a bloody, but decisive end. The Syrian Army, backed by Russian troops and irregular...

Anyone who has followed the antics of American politics this year has probably gotten used to periodic furors over Donald Trump doing or saying something that is outlandish and unconventional. So when he takes a phone call from the leader of a country...

Two men you have probably never heard of died just over a week apart. Both men were 98 years old and both played a significant role in world food. The results of their efforts are among the clearest and simplest examples of how basic, daily items can...

The longest running conflict that you have never heard of looks likely to continue. In 1974 the island of Cyprus was divided when a coup backed by Greece led to an invasion by Turkey and the partition of the island into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish...

Fidel Castro was a controversial figure and raises heated discussions whenever people of different ideological leanings discuss his influence on the world. A key element of this controversy is his role on the world stage and how he is seen by people around...

This blog has noted the threat to the international system of legal responsibility for crimes against humanity from the withdrawal of countries from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC was created to provide international accountability for...

It was supposed to be a simple conference that focused on beginning the implementation of the Paris Agreement that emerged from the COP21 conference last year. One hundred and ninety-three countries signed the agreement and over a hundred have ratified...