Daniel DePetris

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune and a foreign affairs writer for Newsweek.

How May, Macron and Merkel failed to tame Trump

To conclude that relations between the United States and the Europeans are in quite a chaotic and unpredictable state is like saying German Chancellor Angela Merkel misses the good old days of Barack Obama and John Kerry. It’s so obvious that it doesn’t need repeating. There are a whole slew of foreign policy and economic

Why Spain could be the populists’ next battleground

When Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, refused to let the rescue ship Aquarius – which was carrying 629 men, women, and children – land, the European Union was presented with yet another migration emergency. The vessel was stranded for days in the Mediterranean looking for a place to dock, with an EU-wide solution nowhere to

Will Trump prove his critics wrong over North Korea?

Donald Trump means different things to different people. To his core supporters, he’s the man who will make America great again.  To his diehard opponents, he is a dangerous juvenile with authoritarian tendencies. Ultimately, these descriptions are secondary to how Trump sees himself: a tough, dealmaking Svengali who has the experience and power of persuasion

Syrians are paying a heavy price for the UN’s incompetence

The United Nations Security Council has major responsibility in its job description: to maintain international peace and security. It is spelled out in Article 24 of the U.N. Charter, a tall task in normal circumstances but one that nonetheless underscores the core of the council’s very existence. Without it, the Security Council might as well be simply

Mitt Romney is back. Will he be a thorn in Trump’s side?

One of President Donald Trump’s chief political foils in the Republican Party — a party that increasingly resembles a Trump fan club more than a group of partisan but independent thinkers — is about to storm the national scene and send a jolt of energy to the dwindling and listless #NeverTrump movement. Mitt Romney, the former Governor

Mike Pence missed a diplomatic opportunity at the Winter Olympics

The opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea was a miraculous site.  The lights.  The fireworks.  The dancing.  The choreography.  It was everything we have come to expect from a world-class Olympic Games, a coordinated and ritzy show on behalf the entire planet. The Games in Pyeongchang, however, do stand out

The GOP is now the Party of Trump

There was a time not so long ago when the political establishment of the Republican Party – the Mitt Romneys, Paul Ryans, and Lindsey Grahams of the world – were strong Donald Trump antagonists.  Trump would utter a racially charged remark about a Mexican-American district court judge being biased against him because he was Mexican,

Trump’s State of the Union address will change very little

Donald Trump had a lot to prove during his first ever State of the Union address this week. He had to demonstrate to the millions of Americans watching on television that he could deliver a semi-unifying and presidential speech and stay in one place for more than an hour without diverging into tangents. He had to show

US shutdown: how the ‘Common Sense Coalition’ saved the day

Compared to previous instances in US history when political paralysis and dysfunction shut down Washington for weeks at a time, the three-day government shutdown that ended on Monday was a rather mundane and unremarkable occurrence.  Indeed, unlike the 21-day saga in 1995-1996 between President Bill Clinton and House Republicans or the 16-day clash between House