The beginning of July brings several anniversaries of great moments in American foreign policy. July 4, 1821 saw Secretary of State John Quincy Adams deliver his famed Independence Day speech at the U.S. Capitol. Adams sought to respond to attacks from two sides: one, arguing that the United States had done little for the world, the other, […]
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Read along with our chapter leaders!
Rising leaders in the Society are gearing up for our first-ever summer leadership conference. They’ll come to Washington for two days to hear from top national-security thinkers, learn about career opportunities in foreign policy, network, and be trained in effective chapter leadership. To help them prepare for the conference, we’ve prepared a list of readings […]
2018 Essay Contest: Where Can America Do Less?
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has greatly expanded its role in international security. Major conflicts have been waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, and more. Defense guarantees have been extended to more than a dozen additional nations. The War on Terror, now in its seventeenth year, involves seventy-six countries. There are […]
Iran’s Protests: What Would John Quincy Adams Do?
Iran has been roiled by protests this week, with at least twenty dead and hundreds arrested. The protests took many analysts by surprise – they appear to center on young, working-class men, ethnic minorities like the Kurds, and rural people. As Gissou Nia writes in Politico, these are not the kind of folks to whom analysts are […]
Make 2018 count!
A new year has begun. How will you make 2018 matter? In international affairs, 2018 holds much peril. Senior officials repeatedly argue that North Korea cannot be deterred, hinting that war may be in the offing. We’ve got boots on the ground in Eastern Syria, in the middle of a tangle of competing factions. We […]
2017 JQA Society/National Interest Essay Contest
In the summer of 2017, we partnered with one of Washington’s top foreign-policy outlets to bring college students’ voices into our nation’s foreign policy conversation and to take a small step toward restoring a healthy, balanced civic debate on the proper scale of our nation’s ambitions and actions abroad. We received a deluge of excellent […]