By Camila Manrique, Spring 2026 Marcellus Policy Fellow In early September of 2025, the United States embarked on a campaign of gunboat diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere, one that would culminate in the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces on January 3rd, 2026. The Trump administration designated transnational criminal organizations as foreign […]
Category: News and Events
Infrastructure Integration and the Limits of US Development Competition with China
By Taylor Coplen, Spring 2026 Marcellus Policy Fellow The rise of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has created a perceived need for the United States to offer a more serious answer to Chinese infrastructure finance. Current U.S. strategy increasingly centers on the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) as a more investment-oriented tool for […]
The Eighty Year Subsidy: The Case for Burden Shifting in NATO
By Matthew MacKenzie, Spring 2026 Marcellus Policy Fellow Transatlantic policymakers have long debated Europe’s security dependence on the United States through the wrong framework. Washington has measured allied commitment through burden sharing: defense spending levels, GDP benchmarks, and cost distribution. The deeper problem is structural. Europe remains dependent because Washington organizes, enables, and underwrites European […]
Rethinking US Sanctions in the Americas: Humanitarian and Strategic Implications (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Sana Motorwala, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow Both Cuba and Venezuela have been at the forefront of Latin American foreign policy, especially with recent tensions that have increasingly characterized Cuba and Venezuela as “countries of concern.” They have both been positioned as countries antithetical to the United States, with their communist and socialist systems […]
Our Spring 2026 Marcellus Policy Fellows
After a highly competitive selection process, the John Quincy Adams Society is pleased to announce its Spring 2026 cohort of Marcellus Policy Fellows. This is the Society’s twelfth cohort of fellows. The Fellows will spend the next eleven weeks learning from top experts on foreign policy as they develop a think tank style policy analysis […]
Chinese Reluctance to Invade Taiwan and its Policy Implications (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Luke R. Thompson, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow In American foreign policy circles, it is common to hear it suggested that 2027 is the year that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is either planning or will be ready to invade Taiwan (the Republic of China, or ROC). Such pronouncements are accompanied by significant […]
Strategic Regionalism and Economic Realism: What NATO Should Learn from the Success of the Bucharest Nine (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Anthony J. Tokarz, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow As the Ukraine war enters its fifth year, Russia’s growing momentum requires a reevaluation of transatlantic security. While both American and European leaders had hoped that the war would weaken Russia, the first four years of the conflict suggest that it has weakened Europe’s North Atlantic […]
Securing US AI Supply Chains: Policy Reforms for Responsible Data Annotation in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Rameen Sajjad, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow American technology companies face growing criticism for extracting data and digital labor particularly through data annotation from developing nations in Africa and Asia. The extraction is done without equitable compensation or adequate regulatory oversight. This unregulated resource extraction model is characterized by scholars as digital colonialism, which […]
Clearing Muddled Waters: How Understanding Provincial Actors Could Prevent Future US-China Conflict in the South China Sea (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Drake Tien, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow Since becoming a standalone province in 1988, Hainan Island has played an outsized role in China’s strategic goals and operations in the South China Sea (SCS). This includes administrative oversight of the controversial Sansha City, hosting the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) nuclear submarine fleet at Yuli […]
Electronic Warfare and Crisis Stability in the US-China Gray-Zone Competition (Marcellus Policy Analysis)
By Selena Lin, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow As the strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, military interaction increasingly occurs below the threshold of armed conflict through persistent gray-zone activities. Among the most consequential of these activities is the use of electronic warfare (EW) to degrade sensing, navigation, and communication systems. This […]