Analysis & Opinions

It was the Intelligence Communities job to provide information and the president’s job to use the information to further the nation’s interests and to protect the capabilities that created such advantage. The only duty to national security that Trump retained upon leaving office was the lifelong responsibility not to disclose the information. He’s now being held accountable for his alleged failure to do so, as our system demands.

This year’s heads of state meeting for the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan demonstrated the agility of this body. The G7 leaders represent the powerhouse industrial democracies who are pulling their resources to maintain global economic stability and prosperity—and, this time, global security. In the course of 72 hours, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the invited delegations took significant steps on some of the most pressing issues facing the world—from delivering F-16 aircraft to Ukraine to bolstering relations between Seoul and Tokyo and countering China’s economic coercion.

The war itself has exposed the current limitations of the United Nations system, especially when facing mighty Security Council member-states with intractable political grievances.

Nathaniel L. Moir explains why, given the U.S. military’s recent prioritization of large-scale combat operations, Howard University Professor and former French Resistance fighter Bernard Fall's thoughts about a similar prioritization of conventional warfare in Vietnam seem prescient. 

Stephen Walt analyzes why China's foreign-policy reset will—or won't—work out.

Stephen Walt's argument tries to answer the following question: What impact will the decisions taken at the recent Party Congress have on the balance of power and U.S.-China competition? From a U.S. perspective, was what just took place in Beijing good news or not?

Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzes the West's information technology asymmetry of capability, which has given way to asymmetry of vulnerability. While democracies worldwide remain threatened, they also contain the means to restore themselves.

Stephen M. Walt describes a "gnawing fear that we are living through a series of disruptions that are overwhelming our collective ability to respond." What does this mean for public confidence in the entire political system, and is there any cause for optimism?

China believes that the U.S.’s longtime One China policy is evolving into a One China, One Taiwan policy. That’s not an accurate reading of the American view on Taiwan, argues Kevin Rudd, but it explains why China is now signaling more clearly than ever its willingness to attack. I have long argued that the geopolitical disaster of a war between the U.S. and China need not be inevitable. That remains my view, Rudd writes—if both sides adopt some basic strategic guardrails. But for the foreseeable future, it’s time for all of us to fasten our seat belts.

The recent tripartite summit among the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey yielded few tangible results, but it underscored both the growing strength of ties between Moscow and Tehran and the tricky balancing act all three countries must maintain in cooperating amid their competing interests and security concerns.