On October 5, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan activated the Makkah Pact, taking their new alliance to war for the first time, and potentially revealing the future of American power in the Middle East: Washington provides the security umbrella while regional partners increasingly do the fighting. From treaty to military alliance Only two months after […]

Donald Trump tried to use America’s economic weight to force China to bend, only to discover that Beijing has built an economic weapon of its own that Washington cannot tackle. China Finds America’s Chokepoint For years, the central assumption underlying Washington’s economic confrontation with Beijing was that interdependence gave the United States more leverage than […]

The problem with American peacemaking is no longer simply that Washington cannot stop today’s wars; it is that the power expected to end them is increasingly a participant in them. From Mediator to Participant Donald Trump arrived at the UN General Assembly with two unresolved wars dominating his agenda. He is meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr […]

The West may have pushed Russia out of its orbit, but it cannot push Russia out of the world. Russia’s Diplomatic Blitz Over the past two weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin has staged a remarkable diplomatic blitz. Across three major gatherings in Bishkek, Vladivostok and New Delhi, as well as during Vietnamese leader To Lam’s […]

Europe is getting tougher on Israel in rhetoric and sanctions, but its latest measures may be designed to create political distance from Israel without creating enough economic pain to make Israel change course in the West Bank or anywhere in Palestinian territories. The Arithmetic of Punishment On September 8, Britain, France, Canada and a group […]

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 […]