Argument

A new game meant to help the U.S. government write the 2018 National Defense Strategy shows what happens when resources and commitments collide.

To succeed, the protesters will have to overcome old regional and class divides—and new ones, along generational lines.

Bring people together around protecting democracy instead.

New Delhi is set to take on a greater role in Afghanistan’s peace process.

U.S. diplomacy has failed. African diplomacy can’t afford to.

Congressional action has typically left big tech firms intact, instead mandating that they improve access for all consumers. Washington should stick to that model.

China would be a tougher, longer-lasting opponent than the Soviet Union.

Pacifist injunctions obliterate the history of, and need for, armed protection.

The Querdenker protests against coronavirus prevention measures sweeping the country’s cities show that free speech is alive and well.

U.S. political parties have reshuffled every few decades, and 2020 may be the year they do it again.

For decades, U.S. strategists were thinking short-term. Its leaders should start taking an infinite perspective.

The continent's pop culture market is booming, just as U.S.-Chinese competition is heating up.

The conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has already started. It’s just happening in cyberspace.

The best way to advance U.S. interests isn’t to chastise the United Nations—it’s to participate actively in its proceedings.

The choice is simple: accept devastating wildfires, extreme weather, species loss, and disease outbreaks or secure a sustainable future at a fraction of the cost.

It doesn’t matter whether Bush or Trump was worse when the problems are the same.

No matter the president, Washington won’t stand for Brasilia’s growing ties with Beijing.

Scotland, six years after its last crack at independence, is hankering to be a “global good gal,” charting its own foreign-policy course independent of London.

Washington’s reliance on sanctions and maximum pressure will make it harder to strike a new deal constraining Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

In Tanzania and elsewhere, the pandemic and creeping authoritarianism are colliding, making both problems far worse.

Hezbollah’s dominance has deprived non-Shiite Lebanese of a voice in their own country. It is time to reconsider a century of consociational democracy and return to a form of federalism.

Retaining the U.S. advantage needs funding, not xenophobia.

Today’s ally can become tomorrow’s enemy, as Israel’s history of friendship with pre-revolutionary Iran and pre-Erdogan Turkey illustrates.

The inequalities of the past can’t set the rules of the present.

Jared Kushner cited Lewis Carroll’s classic as the key to understanding Trump. He’s right—just not in the way he thinks.

Maximum pressure has not destroyed the Iranian economy, and Tehran is now sharing its lessons in resilience with Nicolás Maduro’s beleaguered regime in Caracas.

The public can handle disasters better than lying leaders can.

The world has been surprised by the Netherlands’ growing hardline record in Brussels. It shouldn’t be.

The German chancellor has put future deals over moral values, but she’s not alone.

One was a patrician governor; the other a middle-class Joe steeped in the Senate. But their fates may be intertwined.

Targeted responses can achieve more than blanket bans.

Abe’s right-hand man taking power could mean a return to the days of short-lived premierships.

Despite a major crackdown, the uncertainty around the border won’t let militant republicanism go away.

The Abraham Accord is threatening decades of foreign-policy planning in Tehran.

France’s unilateralism and the United States’ wavering are destabilizing the Sahel—and creating an opening for Russia and China.

The cost of doing business with Beijing has risen sharply and swiftly.

The region doesn’t have a seat at the geopolitical table, but at least it’s off the menu.

From arms deals to occupation in Kashmir and the West Bank, Modi and Netanyahu increasingly share the same ethnonationalist worldview.

Border tensions among Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus are about to boil over—but there’s a simple solution.