American Diplomacy--March April 2017.

• Author: Clack, George

"The Twilight of the Liberal World Order"

In recent years, the liberal world order that has held sway over international affairs for the past seven decades has been fragmenting under the pressure of systemic economic stresses, growing tribalism and nationalism, and a general loss of confidence in established international and national institutions. The incoming U.S. administration faces a grave challenge in determining whether it wishes to continue to uphold this liberal order, or whether it is willing to accept the consequences that may result if it chooses to abandon America's key role as a guarantor of the system it helped to found and sustain. By Robert Kagan, Brookings Big Ideas for America. Kagan is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post. His most recent book is The World America Made (2012).

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-twilight-of-the-liberal-world-order/?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=41517002

"Out with Globalization, In with Tillerson"

Incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson needs to realize that the Obama administration's emphasis on "soft power" is not necessarily smart thinking. "It makes sense," writes the author, " to first organize the State Department to deal with the top issues of hard-core diplomacy: returning peace and stability to regions of the world critical to U.S. interests. Secretary Tillerson should start by dismantling all the infrastructure created over the last eight years and pushing resources back into the regional desks, overseen by responsible, competent political appointees." By James Jay Carafano, the National Interest. A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank's research on foreign relations and national security issues.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/out-globalization-tillerson-19381?page=2

"How To Build an Autocracy"

The preconditions are present in the United States today. Here's the playbook Donald Trump could use to set the country down a path to illiberalism. It's been developed by Hungary's Victor Orban, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and South Africa's Jacob Zuma. By David Frum, the Atlantic. Frum is a senior editor at the Atlantic, a commentator with CNN, and a former speechwriter for George W. Bush. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

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