Year-End Foreign Policy Predictions

2023-11-15

Last week, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not seek reelection in 2024. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Manchin explained his reasons for leaving. He starts with a relatively noncontroversial assessment of the problems facing America—rising costs, dangerous drugs crossing the border, a large national debt, unsafe communities, and foreign wars that threaten to pull the United States in.
After some platitudes about these not being “Republican or Democratic challenges” but “American challenges,” Manchin concludes:
There are enough votes in Congress to solve or at least make headway against every one of these problems. A genuine commitment to legislating would put America on firmer footing for the next 20 years. But the Democratic and Republican machines have no interest in

2023-11-14

We hear plenty about threats to American democracy: Donald Trump’s a threat, the Republican party is a threat, and any number of other people or political parties are threats. Now it’s ExxonMobil’s purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources.
Jeff D. Colgan, a professor of political science and the director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, wrote in an easily missed piece entitled “Exxon Mobil’s Pioneer Acquisition Is a Direct Threat to Democracy” for the New York Times, “The democratic argument against the proposed deal is simple. In politics, concentrated interests, like rich corporations, have powerful advantages over diffuse interests, like voters, that can distort outcomes and thwart progress.”
Dr. Colgan’s argument is, of course, all about climate legislation. A bigger