Carnegie Connects

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2022 may well be the most crucial year in America's history, Boston College American historian Heather Cox Richardson argues. A surging pandemic; runaway inflation; the tribalization of American politics, a battle over voting rights, and upcoming midterms presage a tumultuous year ahead. How will the Biden administration deal with these challenges? Aaron David Miller sits down with Professor Richa...

Perhaps no question figures more centrally in the Biden administration’s foreign policy than what to do about China. Indeed, no other nation impacts America’s security, economy, and politics as vitally. How should the United States deal with a rising China. And what does China want from the United States? Is there an approach that can create a sustainable balance of interest? Or is the future goin...

This week the Biden Administration will host the Summit for Democracy at a pivotal time for democracies around the world. Democracy has been in global decline for over a decade and is on track to sustain the worrying trend this year—given coups and power grabs Tunisia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Can Biden’s summit be a fruitful convening given democracy’s downturn? Is dividing dictatorships...

Today, the United States faces a seemingly impossible set of global challenges: a dwindling clock on climate change; persistent nuclear proliferation; and democracies under threat from populism and authoritarianism. At home, the situation is no less challenging as inflation, white nationalist extremism, political polarization, and an unending pandemic cloud the future. Rarely has the Republic seem...

The recent Taliban military and political takeover of Afghanistan brought an end to two decades of U.S. efforts to transform the country into a democratic, pro-Western polity and to prevent it from again becoming a sanctuary for terror attacks. Why did those efforts fail? What was it about the country and its neighbors that U.S. policymakers failed to understand? And how does Washington hope to pr...

As the coronavirus' delta variant recedes and new U.S. COVID-19 cases decline by more than a third, it is possible to imagine—at least in the United States—a more normal future beyond the pandemic. Vaccine resistance and the politicization of public health remain serious problems, and failure to prioritize and accomplish rapid, global vaccination will ensure a resurgence of the pandemic. But vacci...

The Islamic Republic of Iran represents one of the greatest challenges in the Middle East and beyond for the Biden administration. As the United States approaches the prospect of a seventh round of negotiations in Vienna over the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), what are the chances for success? Is the agreement still viable? If not, is a broader framework realistic? And if...

Professor, author, diplomat, and businesswoman, Madeleine K. Albright served as America’s sixty-fourth secretary of state from 1997–2001 and, at the time, was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. Please join us as Aaron David Miller sits down with Secretary Albright for a conversation on America’s foreign policy, politics, and the current domestic and external challenge...

James A. Baker, III, occupies a unique place in the history of American foreign policy and politics. He is the only person to serve as Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and White House Chief of Staff (twice). He also led five presidential campaigns. Please join us as Aaron David Miller sits down with America’s 61st Secretary of State for a discussion of U.S. foreign policy, domestic p...

A pandemic by definition is a threat to global public health, and yet when it comes to production and distribution of vaccines, the world is reacting with national, not international, priorities in mind. Aside from the moral hazard of an approach based on every country for itself, there are compelling public health, economic, and political reasons for adopting a global view of the problem and solu...

With the release of the incriminating U.S. intelligence report on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Biden—in a sharp break with the Trump administration—has clearly outlined his intention to recalibrate the U.S.-Saudi relationship to ensure it advances U.S. interests and values.  Are the administration’s initial steps sufficient to rebalance the relationship? Or does more n...

The storming of the U.S. Capitol shocked those in the United States and around the world, but the ideological roots of the right-wing groups leading the attack that day reside deep in the nation’s soil. It comes as no surprise that law enforcement has identified domestic extremism as the gravest internal security threat to the United States, but who are these groups; what are their origins and obj...