Recent Posts

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 4, 2025

US President Donald Trump ordered a pause on US military aid to Ukraine on March 3, suspending the delivery of critical warfighting materiel. An anonymous White House official told the Wall Street Journal on March 3 that the United States is “pausing and reviewing” military aid to Ukraine until Trump …

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Europe’s Critical Choices: Securing Ukraine Without Trump

To secure Ukraine and the continent, European countries must take action that Trump and Putin cannot ignore. This will require making three crucial but divisive choices on how to deploy financial and military capabilities. There is little more U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration could do to signal that …

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Trump’s China policy: A complete unknown?

Past and present policies indicate the president could be militarily hawkish or purely transactional, depending on the moment Only one month in, the foreign policy moves of the Trump Administration in Europe, the Middle East, and North America indicate that radical, tumultuous change, marked most notably by major reversals in …

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In Syria, Moving Forward Means Looking Back

How Reparations for Assad’s Victims Can Bring Stability to a Broken Country In the months since the militant opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stunned the world by bringing down the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in early December 2024, Syria has faced many pressing concerns. The country is ravaged and war-torn. …

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The Case for Partition in Western Sahara

Since 1991, the United Nations has led a series of fruitless efforts to resolve the standoff over Western Sahara. A swath of desert about the size of the entire United Kingdom, Western Sahara is claimed both by the Polisario Front—a rebel group that the UN recognizes as the legitimate representative …

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The Coming Age of Territorial Expansion

Climate Change Will Fuel Contests—and Maybe Wars—for Land and Resources Since the mid-twentieth century, the power dynamics and system of alliances that made up the postwar global order provided a strong check on campaigns to conquer and acquire territory—an otherwise enduring feature of human history. But rather than marking a …

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The art of the transatlantic deal

Introduction With the February 10 executive order renewing and enhancing US tariffs on steel and aluminum,1 President Donald Trump has given shape to his vision of the United States in the global economy. It is a vision of economic security based on walling off the United States from free flows …

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