History

Foreign Policy readers were particularly drawn to stories about China’s shifting role in the world; the rise of cryptocurrencies; former U.S. President Donald Trump’s legacy and the challenges that remain for his successor, Joe Biden; and the state of global democracy. Here are 10 of our most read stories this year, as measured by website traffic.

2021 was the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but plenty of other shocking events grabbed the world’s attention: the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, power grabs from Myanmar to Mali, and the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul.

2021 was the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but plenty of other shocking events grabbed the world’s attention: the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, power grabs from Myanmar to Mali, and the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul.

Foreign Policy readers were particularly drawn to stories about China’s shifting role in the world; the rise of cryptocurrencies; former U.S. President Donald Trump’s legacy and the challenges that remain for his successor, Joe Biden; and the state of global democracy. Here are 10 of our most read stories this year, as measured by website traffic.

by Derek Grossman, July 21

On Aug. 15, Kabul fell to the Taliban—the conclusion of a military offensive that had begun in May amid the planned withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan. Weeks earlier, defense analyst Derek Grossman seemed to see the writing on the wall, arguing that China was “starting off on exactly the right foot with the Taliban should the group regain control over Afghanistan.”

Although Beijing has not yet recognized the Taliban government, it has stepped up its engagement with the regime—which Grossman argues could have consequences for the balance of power in the region. “[T]he nature of China-Taliban ties will be geostrategically significant,” he writes. “A sustained positive relationship may further enable Beijing to make broad economic and security inroads into Afghanistan and Central Asia.”

by Laurie Garrett, Feb. 18

The United States started off 2021 amid its worst COVID-19 wave since the pandemic began. Writing a month after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, FP’s Laurie Garrett argues that his predecessor Donald Trump is responsible for the “national horror” that at its peak saw more than 300,000 new cases in 24 hours, leveling the hypothetical charge of “pandemicide.”

“By the time the election took place, Trump had ignored the pandemic, not attending a single COVID-19 White House meeting for at least five months, since late May,” Garrett writes. “During a period when experts inside his government warned that holiday travel and interactions over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s could lead to massive spread of the virus, and states clamored for aid to disseminate vaccines, Trump was mum.”

by Robert Barnett, May 7

In a Foreign Policy exclusive, Robert Barnett reports on Chinese encroachment in northern Bhutan, where Beijing has begun building villages in an effort to secure Tibet’s borderlands. It is planting settlers, security personnel, and military infrastructure—all unnoticed by the rest of the world. Barnett, an expert on modern Tibet, and four researchers mapped China’s claims and expansion in Bhutan based on a combination of official reports, media reports, and open-source data—documenting big changes in a sacred valley.

“It is hard to fathom China’s rationale for its shift from nibbling at a neighbor’s territory to swallowing portions of it wholesale,” he writes. “In the past, annexation has not worked well for China as a solution for territorial disputes, especially when deep-seated cultural and religious values are at stake.”

by David Gerard, Feb. 11

Investors and mainstream companies have taken an interest in cryptocurrency this year, raising questions about regulation in Washington and beyond. In February, as Bitcoin prices surged, David Gerard, the author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, focused on an odd beneficiary of the surge: Dogecoin, which was promoted heavily by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “Dogecoin was originally a joke cryptocurrency,” Gerard writes—but as with other cryptocurrencies, people hoped for an opportunity to get rich with it.

Gerard uses Dogecoin to explain why cryptocurrencies are so prone to manipulation and price pumping. “The only way to make money from a cryptocurrency is to sell it to someone else for more money, and the only way they can make money is to sell it on for even more,” he writes. “It’s a hot potato with a price tag.”

by Hasan Ismaik, Aug. 16

On July 25, Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the country’s prime minister and suspended parliament for 30 days in what some observers described as a coup. But Saied said his actions were within the bounds of the constitution, which allows for such measures in the event of “imminent danger.” Hasan Ismaik, a Jordanian entrepreneur and writer, argues that Saied’s move wasn’t that of a power-hungry president but an attempt to protect Tunisia’s democracy from anti-reformists in parliament.

Tunisia’s pro-democracy revolution kicked off the Arab Spring more than a decade ago, and Ismaik argues that its democracy is still in progress. “[B]uilding democracies that survive the test of time … will be fruitless unless the people of the region understand democratic philosophy and how to safeguard their right to choose a government that truly represents them,” he writes.

by Paul Musgrave, Nov. 27

In a deep-dive feature story, political science professor Paul Musgrave gets to the bottom of an internet legend: the idea that PepsiCo Inc. once possessed the sixth-largest navy fleet in the world. Executive Donald Kendall oversaw the company’s acquisition of submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer from the Soviet Union in 1989—but Musgrave explains that the legend of its strength is largely false. “The Pepsi navy no more conferred military power than a rusting Model T could have been a Formula 1 contender,” he writes.

The winding story shows how interactions between governments make up just a small part of international relations; much of it is instead steered by business interests. “Had events unfolded the way Kendall hoped and [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev planned, the 1990s might have been a decade of democratization and economic growth for a strengthening Soviet Union,” Musgrave writes.

by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, Sept. 24

As the U.S.-China rivalry appears to grow ever more intractable, political scientists Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argue that the “deadly trap” threatening to ensnare both great powers is not China’s rise—but its potential decline. “[G]reat powers that had been growing dramatically faster than the world average and then suffered a severe, prolonged slowdown … usually don’t fade away quietly,” they write. “Rather, they become brash and aggressive.”

What does this mean for the United States? China could act boldly or even erratically with respect to critical technologies, supply chains and infrastructure projects, and the issue of Taiwan. “Welcome to geopolitics in the age of a peaking China: a country that already has the ability to violently challenge the existing order and one that will probably run faster and push harder as it loses confidence that time is on its side,” Brands and Beckley write.

by Kelly Bjorklund, Jan. 11

Just before a mob inspired by then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, writer and activist Kelly Bjorklund interviewed Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. The conversation spanned Trump’s foreign policy, the state of the world in 2021, and the challenges President-elect Joe Biden would face in office. Tillerson was frank about the difficulty of balancing national security objectives with Trump’s priorities: “His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited,” he told Foreign Policy.

The former top U.S. diplomat ultimately took a dim view of Trump’s legacy on the eve of his departure from the White House. “Nothing worked out. We squandered the best opportunity we had on North Korea,” Tillerson said. “With Putin, we didn’t get anything done. We’re nowhere with China on national security. We’re in a worse place today than we were before he came in, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

by Elisabeth Braw, June 9

The saga of the Ever Given—the container ship that became stuck in the Suez Canal in March—briefly captured the world’s attention. But months later, the ship and its crew remained in limbo, seized by the Egyptian authorities until a deal could be reached on compensation demanded by the Suez Canal Authority. Their fate was not unusual for an abandoned freighter, FP’s Elisabeth Braw writes; ships and their crews have been stranded for years in situations that don’t generally make headlines.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has at times exacerbated seafarers’ struggles. “[W]hen the world’s shipping companies can no longer recruit enough seafarers, we’ll find out how absolutely vital they are to our daily lives,” Braw concludes.

by Richard Aboulafia, June 30

As China has risen on the world stage, many observers assumed that its growth as a combat air power would follow. But there’s just one problem, air industry expert Richard Aboulafia argues: Beijing hasn’t been able to expand sales of its fighter jets beyond a small core market. “This feeble sales record has nothing to do with the aircraft themselves,” he writes. “The best explanation of this failure is China’s foreign policy.”

Aboulafia argues that tensions with the Philippines in the South China Sea have gotten in the way of potential acquisitions, and similar patterns have played out with some of China’s other neighbors. The disconnect advantages the United States. “While Beijing struggles to find any takers, Washington’s military export standing is poised for further growth,” he writes.

The senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations, said that the buildup fits the pattern of Chinese regional aggression seen elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region, such as in the Philippines, where Chinese coast guard vessels moved to block Philippine supply boats in November. But there’s optimism among experts and officials that India will be able to stand its ground against the People’s Liberation Army. New Delhi has put up more diplomatic and military resistance than China’s antagonists in other territorial incursions, such as in the South China Sea, experts said.

The U.S. Defense Department is newly concerned about China’s further military buildup near the demarcation line across its Himalayan border with India, a senior defense official told Foreign Policy, after Beijing deployed long-range strategic bombers to the area last month in another apparent warning to New Delhi.

Update, Dec. 17, 2021: This story has been updated to provide additional satellite imagery of the Chinese military buildup near the Indian border.

The U.S. Defense Department is newly concerned about China’s further military buildup near the demarcation line across its Himalayan border with India, a senior defense official told Foreign Policy, after Beijing deployed long-range strategic bombers to the area last month in another apparent warning to New Delhi.

The senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations, said that the buildup fits the pattern of Chinese regional aggression seen elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region, such as in the Philippines, where Chinese coast guard vessels moved to block Philippine supply boats in November. But there’s optimism among experts and officials that India will be able to stand its ground against the People’s Liberation Army. New Delhi has put up more diplomatic and military resistance than China’s antagonists in other territorial incursions, such as in the South China Sea, experts said.

“It’s just clear that [China has] become more assertive all across their territorial fault lines,” said Jeff Smith, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. “Arguably India is the one where they’ve met the most resistance. The Indians will not be cowed, coerced, or intimidated.”

Smith said that China has become more aggressive in the border region since armed Indian troops with bulldozers successfully forced a halt in the construction of a road near the Chinese-Indian-Bhutanese border at Doklam in 2017, a situation that embarrassed Chinese officials. “That has only further fed this sort of aggressive, nationalist inclination to double down and harden their positions,” Smith said.

In the last couple of months, Indian officials have noted that China has kept a large number of troops on its side of the border and held more exercises, creating concerns that Beijing could act again. Indian officials and experts also note that China has a significant advantage in infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control, as the de facto border is known, establishing small airports, landing strips, and heated accommodations in the area. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has also signaled his commitment to the area with a recent visit to Tibet, a move that New Delhi saw as a signal to the Tibetan government not to side with India.

But India has important practical advantages, officials said, including more experience fighting in high altitude. New Delhi has sought to use geography and acclimatization as an asymmetric counteradvantage to Beijing’s military might, taking peaks near lakes, while in certain instances the People’s Liberation Army has been forced to pull back ground units or bring in oxygen tents.

The buildup in and of itself creates a dilemma for the Biden administration, as does the timing, with Russia currently amassing as many as 115,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. While American officials have insisted that they will not provide more military aid to Kyiv unless the Russians launch an invasion, another flash point—on top of China’s pressure campaign on Taiwan—risks splitting the Biden’s administration’s attention.

The United States supported India “quickly and robustly” during a melee in May 2020, the senior defense official said, a moment that saw Chinese and Indian troops engaged in intense hand-to-hand combat after Beijing objected to Indian road construction near the disputed Aksai Chin region, a territory that both sides have contested dating back to the 1960s, when the two countries actually went to war.

American officials credited the standoff with drawing India closer to the United States, after years of courtship that spanned multiple U.S. administrations. It’s not clear whether the State Department or Pentagon are considering sending more weapons or equipment to India, but the senior defense official said that Washington is “engaging at all levels” with New Delhi. And the United States has become much more responsive at sharing intelligence detailing Chinese movements with India, an Indian official told Foreign Policy, speaking on condition of anonymity to detail China’s military buildup.

Even as they hope for diplomacy to resolve the situation, some in Congress see the crisis as another opportunity for the United States to deepen ties with India.

“The uptick in Chinese aggression in India’s Ladakh region underscores why security cooperation with India is so vital to both countries’ national interests,” Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who serves as a senior member of the foreign affairs committee and co-chairs the House India Caucus, told Foreign Policy in an emailed statement. “Given that India is a natural American partner with which we share a unique bond based on common democratic values, it is critical that we deepen our existing defense and security engagement with India as it faces escalating Chinese aggression. ​​In light of past, and possible future Chinese aggression in the Ladakh region, I know India appreciates U.S. support.”

India has traditionally turned its security focus toward Pakistan, but over the past two U.S. administrations, Indian officials have been increasingly aware of the threat posed by China—and experts see China’s position hardening in the border region.

“What is clear is that Beijing’s decisions must have been made at the highest levels for political and strategic, not just tactical, reasons,” former Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this month. “This makes the dispute harder to settle. China previously described the boundary disagreement as a product of history, leaving room for give, take, and negotiation. Sovereignty, by contrast, is sacred and inviolable.”

Bhutan, where China has been building roads into the border area, has also stopped speaking to India before consulting with China. Indian officials worry that China is trying to build more roads into the Siliguri corridor, known as the Chicken Neck, a connecting line between northeast India and the rest of the country.

Still, both sides are worried about losing perceived advantages along the border, the Defense Department reported last month, and diplomatic talks have mostly hit a standstill. India has demanded a return to the status quo ante as of April 2020, while China has gotten more aggressive with territorial claims, including in east Bhutan, as Foreign Policy first reported earlier this year. Satellite imagery detected China building a second village in Arunachal Pradesh, in November. Open-source intelligence accounts on social media have also detailed China’s construction of new runways and its rotation of helicopters and bombers through the disputed Aksai Chin region, which is also claimed by India.

Dense snows in the Himalayas during the winter would prove difficult terrain for launching another forward effort, especially in Ladakh, where Chinese and Indian troops sparred last year. But the violence along the Line of Actual Control last year has taught the Indian military never to let its guard down, the Indian official said, citing China’s protests of renewed Indian infrastructure and its ability to mobilize tanks in a matter of hours. The situation has left New Delhi in a Catch-22, the official said: It has to invest considerable attention on the border issue so as not to be seen as weak, but is also wary of escalating against superior Chinese military forces.

Chinese intentions in the region have been clouded by a lack of understanding of the military and political leadership driving deployments on the ground. In the last year alone, China’s Western Theater Command, which is responsible for the disputed border region, has undergone three leadership changes. But both Indian and Chinese officials seem to be coming to a consensus that the relationship, which was once characterized by informal summits between Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enjoyed strong personal chemistry, is never going to be the same.

“At least some in Chinese leadership have concluded that it is inevitable that India will move closer to the West,” said Smith, the Heritage Foundation’s Asia expert. “They think that they were handling India with kid gloves and being extra sensitive to its interests, and it acted against them anyway. So why even pretend to be friendly anymore?”