Foreign Policy In Focus

For years, Washington treated economic sanctions as the Goldilocks instrument of foreign policy: tougher than diplomacy, safer than war, and cheap enough to impose without asking much of the American public. That formula is beginning to break down. Sanctions can still inflict severe damage, but their repeated use is also changing the financial landscape on which their power d...

Last week, on July 13, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “whole-of-government” campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Co...

On Tuesday, as American aircraft struck Iran for a tenth consecutive night, Iran’s interior minister Eskandar Momeni flew to Islamabad. He was carrying a direct message from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. When he arrived, he sat down with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim...

Last month, thousands of migrants across South Africa packed their belongings and left their homes. Parents withdrew children from school, shopkeepers shuttered businesses, employers advised workers to stay away, and families dispersed across provincial borders in search of temporary refuge.

The immediate trigger was not a government order or judicial directive but an ...

The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get rid of what it considers to be “undesirable” people.

The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is se...