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3 weeks ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Nathan Schoonover |Joshua Kurlantzick |Andrew F. Krepinevich |Mark Bell
In the 1990s, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, few in Washington were thinking about China as a potential future threat. During this “unipolar moment,” the conventional wisdom held that China would become a responsible stakeholder of the global community once it had become a fully integrated member. Inside the Pentagon, however, a group of analysts charged with assessing the strategic environment saw things differently.
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3 weeks ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Michelle Gavin |Joshua Kurlantzick |Julia Huesa |Mark Bell
Over the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency, it has become increasingly clear to European leaders that remaining reliant on the United States to underwrite the continent’s security would be a dangerous gamble.
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4 weeks ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Rebecca Patterson |Joshua Kurlantzick |Jude Blanchette |Thomas J. Bollyky
In 2018, Chinese leader Xi Jinping argued that the world was undergoing “profound changes unseen in a century,” a concept that has since become central to Beijing’s geopolitical worldview. The phrase evoked parallels to the dramatic global shifts that followed World War I, including the collapse of European empires and the reordering of international politics.
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4 weeks ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Rebecca Patterson |Joshua Kurlantzick |Alexander Vindman |Andrei Soldatov
President Donald Trump’s approach to Russia and Ukraine—deferring to Moscow, bullying Kyiv—may seem like a radical departure from precedent. In fact, it is only Trump’s extreme style of diplomacy that is novel, as exemplified by the public scolding he meted out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. No American president has ever so publicly taken Russia’s side against one of Washington’s European partners.
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1 month ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Joshua Kurlantzick |Linda Robinson |Christopher S. Chivvis |Daniel Byman
Even regional wars have geopolitical consequences, and when it comes to Russia’s war on Ukraine, the most important of these has been the formation of a loose entente among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Some U.S. national security experts have taken to calling this group “the axis of upheaval” or “the axis of autocracy,” warning that the United States must center this entente in its foreign policy and focus on containing or defeating it.
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2 months ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Elliott Abrams |Joshua Kurlantzick |Rebecca Patterson |Stephen Brooks
The geopolitical competition between China and the United States is the defining issue in international politics. It is a contest between the world’s largest economies. It pits two dramatically different political systems—one democratic, the other authoritarian—against each other. And it is taking place in almost every region. According to most American analysts, this competition will be close.
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2 months ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Elliott Abrams |Joshua Kurlantzick |Rebecca Patterson |Zachary Karabell
On February 11, U.S. President Donald Trump held one of the more unusual White House press conferences in recent memory. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about Trump, who was sitting, as expected, behind the storied Resolute desk in the Oval Office. Standing to his right, though, was Elon Musk, dressed in the typical Silicon Valley attire of a dark blazer over a T-shirt—as well as a black “Make America Great Again” hat—while his 4-year-old son, X, pranced around.
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2 months ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Elliott Abrams |Joshua Kurlantzick |Rebecca Patterson |Liana Fix
Germany’s once stable and drearily predictable politics are in disarray. At the end of last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government collapsed, triggering the country’s first early elections in 20 years. Then, in late January, Friedrich Merz, the head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the leading candidate for chancellor, pushed a hard-line motion tightening Germany’s immigration policies through parliament.
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2 months ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Abigail McGowan |Joshua Kurlantzick |Emma Ashford |Raphael Cohen
At last week’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels, newly minted U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that the position of the U.S. government was that Ukraine will not join NATO. Although greeted with horror by some in Washington and in European capitals, Hegseth’s remarks were in fact more a public statement of reality than a genuine change in policy.
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2 months ago | 
foreignaffairs.com | Abigail McGowan |Joshua Kurlantzick |Raphael Cohen |Elliott Abrams
As the war in Ukraine reaches its third anniversary, it has increasingly become defined by one particular kind of warfare: strategic bombing. Russia has incessantly targeted Ukraine’s energy grid and attacked population centers near the frontlines using Iskandermissiles and Shahed drones. Ukraine has aimed U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems and a plethora of domestically produced drones at Russian oil depots and weapons manufacturers.
