The world is discovering that Iran and the Houthis do not need to control the world’s oil fields to exercise enormous influence over the global economy; they only need to control, or constrain access to, the narrow waterways through which that oil must pass. A War That Has Reached the Energy Arteries The Strait of […]

The Pentagon’s extraordinary use of polygraph tests on senior military personnel is not merely a hunt for leakers; it is a warning that loyalty to the president may increasingly matter more than loyalty to the institution, accelerating the ultimate American downfall. When Loyalty Becomes the Test There is nothing inherently unusual about a US administration […]

America might still be the world’s most powerful country economically, but by turning trade into a weapon, Washington may be accelerating the very redistribution of global influence it fears the most. The trajectory of power The most important shift in the US-China competition may not be the size of either economy today, but the direction […]

Washington is changing some of its most reliable military partnerships in the Middle East because it believes states, markets, and diplomacy can deliver what American troops and Kurdish proxies increasingly cannot. The End of the Post-ISIS* Bargain The juxtaposition could hardly be more striking. On August 24, the United States removed Syria from its list […]