The Foreign Affairs Interview

By some measures, there is more war in the world today than at any point since World War II. Today’s wars have brought a level of destruction, disruption, and global risk that would have been hard to imagine not long ago, often in places where such combat seemed a thing of the past. Policymakers once again worry about nuclear use, and military planners once again contemplate war between great powers, including the United Stat...

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz six months ago, the world seemed on the verge of an energy crisis that would upend economies, governments, and much else. It was, as Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff pointed out in Foreign Affairs at the time, the largest disruption of global energy flow in history.

The world’s ability to manage that disruption has been surprising—the crisis many expected has not come. But ...

There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month.

Ma...

Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the ...

Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term?

Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, two senior officials in the Biden administ...

At the end of last year, editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historian Odd Arne Westad about China’s complicated past and how that history shapes the way Chinese leaders see their country’s place in the world today. 

Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent of its ambitions, the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military strength. Unde...

It’s been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor.” Since then, most people have become fairly inured to such a risk. That’s true even as there’s been a steady clip of cyberattacks on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming, and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every...

Almost no one in the last several decades has done more to change the American approach to trade than Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was the U.S. trade representative in President Donald Trump’s first term. In that role, he set out to reverse Washington’s long-standing commitment to a global trading system. It was a crusade—using tariffs, among other tools—that targeted China above all but also any other coun...

In the nine months since a cease-fire ended full-on war in Gaza, the world’s attention has in many ways moved on. That has been especially true since February, with the start of the war in Iran. But the situation in Gaza remains grim and unsettled, and the state of affairs in the West Bank has become increasingly fraught. Meanwhile, the way forward for Palestinian politics is murky, and the prospect of any durable resolution ...

The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be. ...

Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere, with effects on American powe...

The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public.

Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent e...

The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments f...

The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways i...

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban government’s own fail...

Six months ago, Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs about the plight of the United States’ allies in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. What was surprising, they argued, was not the administration’s cajoling and threats, or all the ways U.S. policy had called into question the basic principles of these relationships. The surprise was that allies were surprised by these moves in ...

The world today is more dangerous and more violent than it’s been at any time since 1945. States everywhere have jettisoned commitments to cooperation and opted for aggression. The so-called rules-based order seems to have come apart. Yet the international body founded after World War II with the charge of preventing World War III finds itself increasingly on the margins.

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the historian an...

Both of Donald Trump’s presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. But how to discern a strategic logic behind Washington’s approach, and whether it’s even possible to do so, have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House.

A. Wess Mitchell helped shape these debates as assistant secretary of state in Trump’s first term,...

Orville Schell may be the United States’ greatest chronicler and observer of several decades of U.S.-Chinese relations. Foreign Affairs was extremely lucky to have him in Beijing this week for the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was not the first time Schell has had a front-row seat at a meeting of U.S. and Chinese leaders. Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to him on Friday, May 15, ab...