Ideas

How China Is Working to Quarantine the Truth About the Coronavirus

The authoritarian playbook — censor, distract, lie — is on full display.

Ideas

Overspending on the Pentagon Won’t Make Us Safer

We spend far more on the military than the countries we most fear, while shorting the things that would actually help us compete.

Ideas

How to Get the National Defense Strategy Out of Its Mideast Rut

We need less talk about why we need to leave, and more about why we need to compete elsewhere.

Ideas

As Coronavirus Spreads, China’s Military Is Largely MIA

The PLA’s anemic participation is odd given its past performance, planning, and pronouncements.

Ideas

Trump’s Bid to Go Big on Nuclear Arms Looks Like a Fizzle

Russia has no interest in negotiating from scratch. China has no interest in negotiating at all.

Ideas

Britain and America Have a China Problem

London’s and Washington’s differing assessments of Beijing’s rise point to deeper issues between the two countries.

Ideas

Today’s Arctic Diplomacy Can’t Handle Tomorrow’s Problems

A new forum is needed to address military and security issues in the region.

Ideas

Great Powers Must Talk to Each Other About AI

Even as they compete, major militaries have reason to cooperate: to avoid misunderstanding and to establish best practices and pragmatic parameters.

Ideas

2020 Dems Need To Get Up To Speed on Nuclear Weapons. Fast.

Front-runners have displayed key misunderstandings, while other candidates have shied away from the topic.

Ideas

While ‘Arctic Exceptionalism’ Melts Away, the US Isn't Sure What It Wants Next

Global competition is coming to the northern polar region. U.S. policymakers are not clear on a fundamental question about its future.

Policy

A Split-Screen Moment For Trump As Impeachment Trial Begins

The president is speaking at an economic forum as the Senate begins to debate whether to remove him from office.

Ideas

Sending Troops Back to the Middle East Won’t Stop Iran

Knee-jerk deployments only distract from the president’s bigger priorities: China and Russia.

Ideas

The Global Race for Big National-Security Ideas Is On

The United States faces genuinely new challenges—but tries to understand them using outmoded theories from a bygone era.

Ideas

Building Post-INF Missiles Would Be a Waste, or Worse

New U.S. intermediate-range ground-launched missiles would deliver more undesirable effects than tactical utility.

Ideas

What Motivates Chinese Peacekeeping?

China’s unusual status as a top contributor of both funds and troops to the UN's peacekeeping program has stirred suspicion.

Ideas

5G Is Where China and the West Finally Diverge

The rollout of speedy new cellular networks is a geopolitical turning point, but neither Trump nor the public yet recognizes this.

Ideas

What US Intelligence Thought 2020 Would Look Like

A 2004 National Intelligence Council report was eerily prescient in some ways, and totally off in others.

Ideas

A Bigger Foreign-Policy Mess Than Anyone Predicted

In the 2010s, global affairs turned out far worse than the most pessimistic scenario foretold by U.S. intelligence experts.

Ideas

Progress, Peril, Hope: The Nuclear Decade in Review

U.S. policies that restrained and shrank atomic arsenals have been abandoned. Yet there are hopeful trends as well.

Ideas

Best of 2019: Ideas

Revisit some of the best op-eds and commentary we had the privilege of publishing over the past year.