Ideas

What Trump Got Right in Foreign Policy in 2017

For one thing, the Islamic State is largely defeated.

Ideas

The National Security Strategy Papers Over a Crisis

The NSS is a stunning repudiation of Trump, and Trump’s speech was a stunning repudiation of the NSS.

Ideas

Three Ways to Read Trump's National Security Strategy

Is it better approached as a sacred text, or examined like the scat of a shaggy, woodland beast?

Ideas

The Lessons of 'American War'

What holds a society together in the absence of common ideas?

Threats

What Putin Really Wants

Russia's strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He's really just a gambler who won big.

Ideas

What's Dangerous About Donald Trump's Foreign Policy?

His unorthodox approach has frightened some observers. But it’s his more conventional moves that have cost the most lives.

Ideas

Trump Isn't the Only Problem with Trump's Foreign Policy

America’s approach to the world is a complicated mess, for reasons that predate the current president.

Ideas

A Tale of Two Speeches

Sen. McCain and former President Bush called for Americans to rise to global leadership, and underscored the concrete benefits that have accrued from it. In normal times, this would be unexceptional.

Ideas

How Trump Is Ending the American Era

For all the visible damage the president has done to the nation’s global standing, things are much worse below the surface.

Ideas

Democracy Remains the Best Path to Security

The U.S. and its democratic partners must rebuild their foreign policies around a basic truth: societies that govern themselves democratically are safer, stronger and more secure.

Threats

Russia's Back-to-the-80s Foreign Policy

Moscow has reprised Cold War tactics against the United States. It’s worth remembering that they didn’t work out well for the Soviet Union last time.

Ideas

The Summer of Misreading Thucydides

There’s a delicious irony in the Trump team’s affection for the historian—who repeatedly shows how populists lead societies to ruin.

Ideas

Trump Gave the Military More Power, But Here’s What Really Concerns Us

A recent major conference on the civ-mil divide revealed a more nuanced picture of America and its armed forces.

Threats

If Trump Won’t Fight Climate Change, We Must — for the Troops’ Sake

As the Pentagon says, this ‘threat multiplier’ is making the work of our men and women in uniform around the world more difficult.

Threats

Trump’s Paris Decision Hurts More than the Climate

America’s withdrawal will leave the world hotter, more erratic, politically fractured, and facing toward Beijing.

Ideas

What Xi Jinping Wants

China's leader is determined to turn his country into 'the biggest player in the history of the world.' Can he do it while avoiding a dangerous collision with America?

Ideas

Foreign Leaders Have Realized Trump Is a Pushover

The president’s reported disclosure of classified information to Russia is only the latest example of the self-proclaimed great negotiator conceding to officials from overseas everything they want.

Threats

Rex Tillerson Spells Out US Foreign Policy

The Trump administration’s 'America First' agenda just became a little clearer.

Ideas

Who Is In Charge of US National Security?

The administration’s flip-flopping on North Korea is only the latest incident to raise this question.