The power of pictures

By now everyone has seen it, right? The Obamas in the Oval Office, Barack in a djellabah and turban and his wife Michelle as a gun-toting Black-Panther. An approving Osama Bin Laden looks down on the couple’s fist bump as an American flag burns in the fireplace. The New Yorker’s cartoon has provoked outrage on the left and the right, with both presidential candidates condemning the depiction

“The connection was reset”: Google goes to war for the west

Internet users in China last night discovered that the domain Google.cn redirected to Google.com.hk, as the world’s largest search engine shut down its Chinese servers and redirected traffic to Hong Kong, where – crucially – the search engine results would be uncensored by Google themselves. Of course, users with IP addresses in mainland China attempting to search for material deemed ‘sensitive’ by the Chinese authorities would still be prevented from accessing information by the ‘Great Firewall’, with its tell-tale error message: ‘the connection was reset’

Strategic Flexibility: the Obama administration after Egypt

A month on from President Ben Ali’s ouster in Tunisia, a wave of protest has swept across the Arab world. With varying degrees of popular support, protests against ruling elites have sprung up in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iran, and of course Egypt, where weeks of protest culminated in the resignation of Hosni Mubarak

Donald Trump wins the presidential election, but what does this mean for American foreign policy?

Last night Donald Trump won the US presidential election in a shock upset, defying both the political establishment and the pollsters. Here, the US Centre’s Nicholas Kitchen reflects on what this means for American foreign policy, and global reactions to these developments

What would a Trump win mean for Europe and the rest of the world?

American elections are not won or lost on foreign policy issues. Yet, the foreign policy beliefs and strategic ideas of whoever moves into the White House next January will have repercussions which will be felt around the world for years to come. Nicholas Kitchen writes that Hillary Clinton is a liberal internationalist – the dominant strategic approach across post-War American Presidents. Donald Trump, on the other hand, represents long-banished ideas of American nationalism and isolationism, with a new twist – a focus not on maximising American security, but on maximising American power

Beyond ‘Butler Impact’: Global debate on drug policy proves research impact is more than just service delivery.

An expert report on the economics of drug policy has been written to help governments around the world limit the damage of drug trade. Nicholas Kitchen reflects on how to determine the impact of such an interdisciplinary and multifaceted academic coordination effort. As universities look for neat ways to codify impact, service delivery to the UK government has taken centre stage at the expense of other more complicated social processes. Prioritising this narrow form ‘butler impact’ has clear limitations

Might Assad want US Intervention in Syria?

By Dr Nicholas Kitchen, Research Officer in Global Power and the Gulf and Editor in Chief of LSE IDEAS

Understanding the end of the cold war

The end of the Cold War is arguably the most important event to hit the discipline of international relations since the first chair in the subject was created at Aberystwyth in 1919. Academics in the field almost universally failed to predict it and our theories didn’t appear to explain it, and this spawned both heated debate and new thinking within the field. What follows is a brief sketch with pointers to resources on the topic – some well known, others less so

Behind Donald Trump’s questioning of America’s foreign policy consensus is a revitalized debate about US leadership in the world.

As the 2016 Republican primary campaign has unfolded, Donald Trump’s foreign policy positions, which question US alliances and commitments overseas, have been met with concern and disbelief by many foreign policy commentators. Nicholas Kitchen writes that these reactions should be seen in the context of a US foreign policy establishment which sees the US still playing the role of actively promoting liberal values such as democracy and free trade across the world. He argues that Trump’s questioning of traditional US foreign policy may reflect an American public which has become tired of supporting US liberal hegemony, opening up the space for wider (and better informed) discussion about America’s role and international leadership