It is traditional to theorize about an Administration's foreign policy on human rights in terms of liberalism v. realism, with a dash of constructivism thrown in. This essay charts a different course. It notes three general benchmarks for discussing an Administration and its foreign policy on...

Most accounts of U.S. foreign policy change tend to be unsystematic in their characterizations of what the policy is at a given time and regarding a specific issue or country. A basic reason for this is that specific sequences of actions are glossed over. We propose an alternative,...

Why is expansionism absent from the Obama foreign policy agenda? The question seems bizarre precisely because expansionism is so completely absent from US policy discussions. In the modern world, the lack of great-power expansionism in the international system may be overdetermined, but the...

China's ascent is often discussed in economic or geo-strategic terms. Yet little attention is paid to the ways in which China's growing assertiveness in international relations will lead to novel challenges for human rights. Chinese foreign policy has an increasingly pronounced effect on a...