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After Putin

Julian G. Waller — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

A specter is haunting Russia—the specter of succession. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is 73 years old, has built a powerful personalist regime, but one that has no real plan for what comes next. Putin will eventually leave office, whether by death, illness, or—against all observable inclinations—stepping aside. But what happens then is unclear. It could be a rushed passing of the guard, a chaotic power struggle among elites long denied the highest political offices, or continued decay under the gerontocracy that currently runs the country alongside Russia’s dictator.

Regime succession in Russia is therefore more than just a question of Putin himself. It is also about the eventual passing of an entire generation of elites who surround the Russian autocrat and still cling to most of the highest positions in the state. Many figures close enough to power to influence the choice of the next leader are as old as Putin is. Their own departure from the political scene is critical, because they still disproportionately control the institutions that determine who matters when succession eventually takes place.

Putin’s tight-knit network has helped him consolidate power and maintain regime stability. Yet the system that has kept these reliable allies in office has also excluded subsequent generations from participating in high politics, gaining trust from other power holders, and learning leadership skills that they would need to effectively govern in the future. By preventing natural generational turnover, Putin’s system has created such a blockage that much younger generations—including the relatives of current elites in Putin’s inner circle—may leapfrog officials currently in their 50s and 60s who picture themselves as the autocrat’s natural heirs. As Russia’s highest elites age alongside Putin, there is no guarantee they will be able to manage a succession process or prevent the long-delayed ambitions of their younger colleagues from escalating into internal conflict.

Russia’s succession process will flow through the country’s formally democratic constitutional architecture, which requires a transitional election within three months of the president leaving office. But the constitution does not determine who can position themselves to win that election or who will eventually emerge as Russia’s next leader. Instead, as was the case during the political transition in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin, the decisions and dealmaking of a small cohort of insiders will determine who takes charge.

What is distinct now is that many of the analogous power brokers and contenders for leadership today are significantly older than the candidates to succeed Stalin were, which suggests that they may not have the energy or lucidity to manage a contested succession. If Putin’s graying allies are still in place when he departs the presidency, they will have missed an opportunity to train a new elite generation and ensure a peaceful transition, just as Putin has missed an opportunity to groom his own successor.

RECIPE FOR SUCCESSION

Putin has consistently decided against designating a successor or institutionalizing a clear process for choosing one. United Russia, the country’s nominal ruling party, was never built to designate an heir; rather, it was meant to ensure that elections produced reliably pro-regime seat-fillers in institutions such as parliament. Russia’s constitution also excludes a position of vice president, which avoids forcing the leader to dub a chosen inheritor.

According to the constitution, if the presidential office becomes vacant, the prime minister will become acting president until an election is held. But Putin has carefully chosen prime ministers who do not have a strong power base and cannot overshadow him. This also means that they are not obvious successors. The current prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, for example, lacks his own network of loyal supporters, meaning that if he were to become acting president he would struggle to convert his position into a victory in a presidential election.

Putin’s only experiment in potential succession, when he endorsed Dmitry Medvedev to be president, also ended with Putin asserting his unrivaled power. In 2008, having reached the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms as president, Putin supported Medvedev as presidential candidate while he would serve as prime minister. This could have been a trial run for a more permanent handoff of power. During Medvedev’s term, however, Putin maintained significant power and then announced his return to the top role in 2011, ahead of the end of Medvedev’s four-year term. Putin’s move became known in Russia as “castling,” in reference to the chess move in which the king and a rook move past each other, and since then the Kremlin has gradually sidelined Medvedev.

Putin is surrounded by aging allies.

Putin’s effort to avoid clear succession plans at all costs is not foreordained. Many other personalist post-Soviet states have created institutional mechanisms for selecting new rulers or communicating clear expectations about who will take power after the current leader leaves. In Azerbaijan, for example, the former President Heydar Aliyev opted for a system of de facto hereditary succession: in 2003, his son, Ilham Aliyev succeeded him, and since then Ilham has installed his wife, Mehriban, in prominent roles (including as first vice president, which makes her the immediate successor to the presidency) and set up their three children as potential inheritors of the highest office by eliminating the age requirement for the presidency and giving them prominent public roles in politics, philanthropy, and culture. In Kazakhstan, in 2019, the former president Nursultan Nazarbayev engineered a controlled transition by passing on the presidency to the Senate speaker while maintaining his chairmanship of the country’s Security Council.

But Putin has sent no such signals. He has opted instead to stay enthroned as long as possible, surrounded by aging allies who are also firmly entrenched in their offices. Putin’s cohort of septuagenarian elites includes the heads of the security service (Alexander Bortnikov, age 74); the foreign intelligence agency (Sergei Naryshkin, age 71); the investigation bureau (Alexander Bastrykin, age 72); the national guard (Viktor Zolotov, age 72); the Security Council (Sergei Shoigu, age 71); and the military’s general staff (Valery Gerasimov, age 70). Other aides and crony capitalists in his circles are of a similar age.

Putin has done this because he relies on these close personal connections to maintain control over the political system. He trusts his allies to deal with problems in ways familiar to him—including by using hard power to get rid of anyone who might challenge his authority. When the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled against Putin, in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that then security council chief Nikolai Patrushev, age 75, orchestrated the plane crash that killed the rebel leader. Putin has also protected his direct allies while not extending any such shield to younger subordinates. Even when Putin purged Russia’s defense ministry for corruption, including much of Shoigu’s own personal network, Putin transferred Shoigu to a weighty role in the Security Council rather than disempower him.

THE STALIN SELECTORATE

This is not the first time Russia has stared down a succession crisis. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union struggled after Stalin died without having a clear leader to replace him. Although today’s Russia is a far cry from the pervasive Soviet party-state of the Stalin era, there are important echoes of this earlier era for what lies ahead. As before, there is likely to be a central role for the regime’s “selectorate”—that is, the small inner circle occupying central state offices who can compete for power and can influence the choice of the next leader.

The dynamics of how these elites emerge, coordinate, and fight remain critical to today’s succession questions. And despite the existence of a formal constitutional path for immediate, temporary succession, such rules only provide rules for the transition; they do not decide who will take over. It is the individuals in the selectorate who matter.

When Stalin died, in 1953, Georgy Malenkov, the chairman of the Council of Ministers (similar to a contemporary prime minister), was the formally appointed successor. Malenkov, however, had a weak power base. His time as undisputed master of the Soviet Union was brief, and he quickly ended up forming a de facto triumvirate with the spy chief and interior minister Lavrenty Beria and foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Three other important figures—Nikita Khrushchev, the Communist Party secretary; Kliment Voroshilov, the chairman of the Presidium (the Soviet Union’s equivalent to a head of state); and Georgy Zhukov, the deputy defense minister and a war hero—entered the ranks of the selectorate because their control over key institutions made them impossible to ignore. Internal fighting abounded. Within four months, the other members of the selectorate, worried that Beria was a threat, arrested him in a committee session and subsequently executed him.

Khrushchev gradually accumulated power through his control of the party’s membership rolls, which allowed him to fill party councils with loyalists and eventually control the political agenda and outmaneuver his competitors in the Soviet Union’s vast bureaucratic party apparatus. Yet because power consolidation took time, Khrushchev had to share power with Molotov, Malenkov, and others for years. It was not until 1957 that Khrushchev could use his control of subordinate committees and council bodies to fully capture power and take over leadership of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev’s victory ensured the superiority of party leaders relative to other figures in the state, cementing his own power and giving him control of the regime.

What emerged after Stalin’s death, therefore, was a years-long contest for power among figures who held senior positions. These figures held informal power from their networks within the Stalinist regime and proximity to Stalin himself, and they had formal power and authority because of their positions at the top of constitutionally privileged institutions. Although many individuals wanted to move up during the uncertain years of succession, only a subset of high-level political elites had the necessary informal ties and formal authority to be a part of the selectorate.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

In the post-Stalin scramble for power, Russia’s formal constitutional order served as the guidelines within which informal power politics played out. The same is likely to be the case with Putin’s succession. And similar figures to those contesting power after Stalin’s death will likely be the key players during the window between Putin’s departure from the political scene and the formal election to crown a new apex executive that follows. Those power players are the ones who have both institutional authority and strong personal networks, not merely one or the other.

The list of political figures who have both the power and authority to be part of the post-Putin selectorate is short. It includes the speakers of the lower and upper houses of parliament; the prime minister; the head of the Presidential Administration, equivalent to Putin’s chief of staff; the secretaries of the State and Security Councils; the head of the security service, known as the FSB; the minister of defense; and, although less likely, others including the minister of finance and the head of the constitutional court.

Negotiations to find a successor to Putin will be determined by which individuals hold these critical institutional positions at the time that succession becomes a live question. It is difficult to predict who, exactly, will enter the fray and who will stay quiet until Putin leaves office, but it is personnel decisions made far earlier that will shape who is even possibly in contention. Because Putin’s elderly allies still hold these offices today, they are already shaping the succession process by crowding out future contenders and may themselves still be in power when a transition occurs.

Even so, the comparatively young, who are motivated more by the prospect of becoming the next leader than by simply retaining their current privileges, will have the advantage. A current rumor among Russian journalists is that the 53-year-old State Council secretary and former Putin bodyguard Aleksei Dyumin could be a potential successor. The parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, age 62, could be, too, as could Mishustin, age 60. So might the 64-year-old first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, who serves as one of Putin’s domestic policy advisers and is understood to have a large personal network.

But after that, the selectorate ages considerably. Continued stagnation in the upper reaches of Putin’s regime has warped natural patterns of advancement in its lower rungs. Without room to advance, a generation of potential leaders in their 50s and 60s have been shunted into deputy positions, sidelined to less powerful gubernatorial roles, or stuck in ministries far removed from centers of power. A similar pattern exists in Russia’s military: the general staff officials running the war effort are old and protected from retirement, although many of the theater commanders on the ground are much younger.

The delay in natural progression is so severe that the children of Russia’s aging elites are being introduced below them in bureaucratic positions of their own, bypassing an intermediate generation. The son of the presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev, the son of the billionaire banker Yuri Kovalchuk, and a younger cousin of Putin, for instance, have all become ministers or deputy heads in their own right, rocketing into powerful positions without much prior preparation. This creates friction among members of Russia’s political class and may increase internal discontent as established officials are bypassed in the promotion process. Every year that Putin maintains a narrow gerontocracy at the top of Russia’s most powerful institutions, it increases the chances of intergenerational conflict.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

How a state allows rising generational cohorts to move up the political ladder is critical for ensuring regime stability. A gradual churn among the highest offices provides the most ambitious rising elites a reason to invest in the regime, to make friends and allies with longtime insiders, and to gain trust within the circle of those who influence decision making. But if younger officials are constantly kept on the sidelines, the system can become unsustainable. The old guard will become increasingly decrepit, which will lead to a rash of vacancies one way or another.

When these unplanned and relatively sudden transitions occur, they will elevate individuals who have never interacted with existing powerholders, have little shared trust, and have a fragile grip on the institutions they are supposed to control. Long-obstructed subordinates, lacking governing experience, will be thrust into these roles—or the sudden vacancy will spur a scramble among discontented insiders who will want to muscle each other out of the way. This is a recipe for potential chaos and could lead to dangerous missteps during the careful dance of coordinating a leadership transition.

In other words, the longer Russia’s gerontocratic elites sit atop the institutions that have political legitimacy, constitutional centrality, and access to resources and loyalists, the less likely an orderly transition to the next president will be. Those who think they are in pole position to manage the post-Putin future will be pressed by others who have waited far too long in the wings yet have never really gained the skills to rule a country.

Even if Putin remains healthy, each potential office change among his inner circle will become the target of many individuals vying for a single coveted position in a potential selectorate. With a generation warped by disappointment and frustration, the pressure is mounting to exploit any opening. Instead of clarity and stability, the future of Russian politics will reflect the consequences of the seemingly deathless regime that Putin has built.

China’s Legal Weapon

Mark Jia — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In May, China’s Ministry of Commerce took an unprecedented step: it ordered Chinese firms to disregard U.S. sanctions against five domestic refiners processing Iranian crude oil. Weeks later, China’s Ministry of Justice issued another first-of-its-kind order, declaring that the European Union’s antisubsidy probe into a Chinese security firm was an improper assertion of foreign jurisdiction.

These measures might seem like ordinary bureaucratic retaliation, the latest moves in a familiar cycle of sanctions, investigations, and countermeasures. But they are part of an important shift in the terms of global rivalry. Traditionally, assessments of a country’s ability to shape events beyond its borders have focused on its military strength, economic size, and cultural reach. Today, an understanding of national power must also include what countries can obtain through the law. Beijing’s recent moves to resist extraterritoriality flow directly from a strategic, state-led project to improve China’s legal power.

The United States led the construction of the postwar legal order, and for decades, it has had a disproportionate ability to shape global outcomes through legal instruments. In the early 2010s, for example, Washington leveraged various jurisdictional advantages to cut Iran off from oil markets and global banking, pressuring it into negotiations. The United States’ legal power has rested in part on wealth and military strength, but it has also depended on the capacity of American legal personnel, the credibility of U.S. legal institutions, and the jurisdictional control the United States has retained over key nodes of the global economy.

These advantages have not gone unnoticed in China. Over the past decade, Beijing has mobilized ministries, courts, law schools, and bar associations around a shared goal: enabling China to use the law more effectively beyond its borders. Beijing has invested in building a cadre of lawyers who understand foreign and international law. It has advised Chinese entities on how to defend themselves more effectively in foreign courts and international tribunals. It has promoted Chinese courts and arbitration bodies as alternatives to Western forums. It has expanded its use of sophisticated legal tools—including sanctions, blocking rules, export controls, and national security reviews—to police foreign actors’ conduct. And it has sought greater influence over global norms, from technical standards to rules governing sea-lanes.

China’s bid for legal power has enjoyed real success. Past a certain point, however, China will struggle. It is relatively easy to enact new laws and train better lawyers; it is harder to reproduce the institutional credibility and economic indispensability that made the United States a dominant legal force. But the United States cannot simply assume that its inherited advantages will endure. It must work to preserve the legal institutions, professional expertise, economic relationships, and international commitments from which U.S. legal power has long derived. If, instead, Washington dismantles the legal structures underpinning its power—as it has begun to in recent years—Beijing may be well positioned to step into the void.

BUILDING A CODE

Washington’s extraordinary legal power traces back to the central role the United States played in designing the post–World War II international order. Even before the war, the country had already developed a large legal profession, sophisticated corporate firms, and distinctive constitutional institutions, although European legal systems retained greater intellectual prestige. The United States’ wartime ascent allowed it to marshal those domestic capacities into building U.S.-centric international rules and institutions. Washington helped shape the UN Charter, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the Bretton Woods system, embedding U.S. influence into institutions governing international security, trade, and finance.

The United States continued to accumulate legal power over the second half of the twentieth century. Its law schools, law firms, and government agencies helped develop a pipeline of talented lawyers expert in national security law, cross-border disputes, and international law. Today, the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser employs roughly 200 attorneys—nearly three times the approximately 70 lawyers employed by its British counterpart—and divides them among more than 20 specialized units that handle treaty negotiations and cases before international tribunals. At the Justice Department, the Office of Foreign Litigation protects American interests in thousands of proceedings around the world. These and other offices have given Washington unusual capacity to advance its interests abroad, in both courts and diplomatic forums.

A combination of legal credibility and economic leverage has also cemented the United States’ global legal reach. Washington has built on these advantages over decades, applying antitrust law to foreign firms, prohibiting bribery abroad, and using sanctions and export controls to shape the behavior of overseas actors. The country has evolved a distinctive form of jurisdictional power—the ability to bring foreign actors and activities within the reach of U.S. law. Parties to legal disputes often choose U.S. courts because they regard them as sophisticated and impartial. Foreign firms, meanwhile, may come into U.S. jurisdiction if their transactions clear in dollars, their products incorporate U.S. software or components, they seek to acquire an American company, or their conduct affects U.S. markets. These connections give U.S. lawmakers, courts, and regulators substantial reach in fields as varied as sovereign debt and terrorism financing.

These same advantages have strengthened Washington’s ability to shape global legal norms. American approaches to commercial law and corporate compliance have spread widely, often because foreign firms voluntarily conform to preserve access to U.S. markets. Global banks, for example, have built extensive sanctions-screening systems around rules administered by the U.S. Treasury. The United States is not the world’s only hub of legal influence. English common law still governs substantial rules on cross-border finance, shipping, commercial contracts, and international arbitration. The European Union exercises great influence in fields such as data protection, competition, and food safety. But through legal talent, legal reputation, and economic dependencies, the United States has remained a focal point in global law.

LAW AND A NEW ORDER

As China emerged as a global power, its leaders began to see law as an instrument of statecraft and to recognize the country’s vulnerability to other countries’ legal power. Pressure applied by Washington through sanctions, export controls, and prosecutions targeting the Chinese corporations Huawei and ZTE only underscored the urgency of building China’s domestic legal power. As early as 2014, Beijing began to stress the necessity of “foreign-related legal work”; at the Communist Party’s 2019 Fourth Plenum, leaders made strengthening China’s legal power part of a broader plan to modernize China’s system of governance. In 2023, the party devoted a Politburo study session to “foreign-related rule of law.” At that meeting, Chinese leader Xi Jinping identified strengthening China’s legal capacities as a “long-term need” for advancing the goal of national rejuvenation.

Chinese officials condemn American legal hegemony while closely studying the institutions and techniques that sustain it. One top priority has been to cultivate legal talent. Before Xi came to power in 2012, China already had more law schools than the United States, but they were of uneven quality and lacked systematic approaches to teaching foreign law. Chinese law schools have since launched several dozen programs, institutes, and degrees dedicated to training lawyers in international law and the legal systems of other countries. In 2024, Beijing designated 51 university-led partnerships that bring together law schools, government agencies, courts, law firms, and arbitration bodies to train students for international and cross-border legal practice.

Since 2012, Beijing has added extraterritorial provisions to more than 20 laws.

The government itself has established a dedicated Foreign-Related Rule of Law Bureau in the Ministry of Justice, a specialized international commercial court, and nationally designated research centers. Scholars and practitioners now advise Chinese entities on responding promptly to foreign litigation, avoiding default judgments, and presenting Chinese legal positions through expert testimony and amicus briefs. China has also invested in narrative power—the capacity to present its conduct in legal terms that foreign audiences will find intelligible and persuasive. As the party secretary of a major Chinese law school wrote in the People’s Daily, “enhancing propaganda ability” is key to Chinese legal ambitions. Chinese law schools have accordingly placed greater weight on teaching Chinese students to argue using the vocabularies of foreign legal systems. One leading school’s course on U.S. foreign relations law examined students by asking them to develop arguments based on the U.S. Constitution against a hypothetical change in American policy toward Taiwan.

Beijing has become especially concerned with foreign laws that reach Chinese actors. In a 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Washington of constructing “a massive, mutually reinforcing and interlocking legal system for long-arm jurisdiction.” China’s 2021 blocking rules sought to protect Chinese citizens and firms by authorizing the Chinese government to forbid local parties from complying with particular foreign laws and official measures, and regulations issued in 2026 by the State Council, China’s cabinet, created a broader mechanism for prohibiting Chinese parties from complying with improper foreign assertions of jurisdiction. In May, for instance, Beijing barred Chinese parties from complying with U.S. sanctions levied against five refiners accused of purchasing Iranian oil and from assisting with the EU’s antisubsidy investigation into Nuctech, a Chinese security-equipment firm.

Other measures have extended Chinese law outward. Since 2012, Beijing has added extraterritorial provisions to more than 20 laws. The 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law, for instance, claims jurisdiction over certain national-security offenses committed abroad against Hong Kong. China has expanded its offensive legal arsenal to export controls, foreign investment and cybersecurity reviews, and entity list and licensing regimes and used those tools to freeze assets, prohibit transactions, or restrict access to strategically important materials such as rare earths. Chinese courts have also widened their reach over cross-border disputes, particularly in global patent litigation, by ordering parties not to pursue or enforce competing proceedings abroad.

Ultimately, Chinese leaders believe their country must become a more active participant in international rule-making and a leader in institutional reform. Party directives call for greater Chinese influence over rules governing the oceans, polar regions, cyberspace, outer space, nuclear safety, anticorruption efforts, climate change, and international finance. They also urge more Chinese representation within international organizations. At the World Trade Organization, China has become an active litigant and coalition organizer. Chinese institutions have also gained substantial influence in developing international technical standards in areas such as telecommunications, e-commerce, and emerging technologies—even as Beijing creates and promotes alternative bodies, most successfully the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which has developed into a major multilateral lender.

THE JURY IS OUT

China has not sought to emulate or disrupt every aspect of U.S. legal hegemony. It has concentrated on building a legal infrastructure that protects Chinese trade and investment and strengthens China’s capabilities in international rule-making. Its ambitions to export Chinese legal practices have been more selective, focusing on discrete tools and techniques—such as AI-assisted adjudication—rather than transplanting its legal practices wholesale.

These investments in legal power have paid real dividends. But China’s legal ambitions also have political limits. Beijing has tried to make its courts and arbitration bodies more attractive, creating specialized commercial courts and inviting foreign experts to participate in advisory roles in cross-border disputes. These reforms, however, remain embedded in a judiciary that is subordinate to Communist Party leadership. The China International Commercial Court, for example, is not a special island within China’s legal system; it is composed of Supreme People’s Court judges operating within the ordinary, party-led judicial hierarchy. To make Chinese legal institutions more appealing, Beijing would need to grant them genuine autonomy rather than merely expecting professionalism in routine cases. But as China’s 2018 detention of two Canadian citizens after Canada arrested a Huawei executive showed, the party readily interferes in the legal system when important interests are at stake.

The credibility of Chinese law is further undermined by Beijing’s messaging. Xi has stressed the importance of projecting an image of China as a rule-of-law country. Yet China increasingly uses the law to signal resolve and threaten retaliation. A legal system marketed as welcoming becomes less attractive when it is also advertised as a weapon of national struggle.

As China expands its legal power, the United States is willfully eroding its own.

And China’s legal ambitions face economic constraints. The global dominance of the dollar and the United States’ market size and technological leadership bring many outside actors within the reach of U.S. law. China has sought to build comparable leverage by promoting the renminbi in cross-border trade, developing alternative payment systems, and dominating critical supply chains. But financial market restrictions have kept the renminbi’s share of global foreign exchange reserves to low single-digit percentages.

China remains outflanked by the United States in many metrics of legal power. A Chinese sanction may bar companies’ access to China, but it generally cannot induce banks and companies around the world in the way a U.S. sanction can. As China’s own Ministry of Foreign Affairs lamented in 2023, the United States remains “the only sanctions superpower in the world.” Beijing has also struggled to make China a preferred forum for international disputes. The China International Commercial Court has handled less than 50 cases since its creation eight years ago. In 70 to 80 percent of the cases heard by the London Court of International Arbitration, both parties are foreign. By contrast, such cases make up less than two percent of the caseload of China’s leading commercial arbitration institution.

The United States still enjoys dominant legal power, and as things stand, China will be slow to catch up. But even as China seeks to grow its legal power, the United States is willfully eroding its own. The Trump administration’s attacks on judges and civil servants weaken confidence in U.S. legal institutions and the U.S. government’s capacity to pursue complex legal strategies beyond its borders. Washington is also surrendering influence in the forums in which global rules are made. After the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization and abandoned negotiations over a pandemic accord, the remaining WHO members adopted the agreement without Washington, and China pledged $500 million to help fill the resulting vacuum. The U.S. government’s aggressive use of export controls, technology restrictions, and financial chokepoints has encouraged other countries to reduce their exposure to U.S. jurisdiction.

If Washington continues to undercut its own advantages, China has established the foundations to provide at least some plausible replacements. Party supremacy may limit the credibility of Chinese courts, but it does not prevent China from winning cases abroad or from shaping global legal norms. China need not embrace a liberal rule of law to become a formidable legal power.

Why We Should Fight

Kori Schake — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In foreign policy, good ideas often emerge from bad decisions. Such was the case with the Powell Doctrine, a term typically associated with the American triumph over Iraq in the 1990–91 Gulf War. The doctrine did not, in fact, originate with its namesake, Colin Powell, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff helped make sure the United States went into the war with a coherent military strategy. And the doctrine’s roots lay not in a success in Iraq, but in a disaster in Lebanon.

In 1982, after Israel invaded the civil war–torn country, a rift opened inside the Reagan administration. On one side were Secretary of State George Shultz and civilian officials on the National Security Council, who backed the idea of contributing U.S. troops to a multinational force that would stabilize Lebanon. On the other side were Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and the generals on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were far less enthusiastic, fearing that an ill-defined mission would drag the United States into an escalatory spiral not unlike the one that had proved calamitous in Vietnam. The hawks won the debate, casting dovish concerns as reflecting a lack of faith in American military power that President Ronald Reagan had himself disparaged as “Vietnam syndrome.”

But it didn’t take long for Weinberger’s fears to be realized. Far from stabilizing Lebanon, the multinational forces soon became targets and combatants in the widening war. In October 1983, militants linked to Hezbollah used truck bombs to attack U.S. service members in a barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 of them. Inside the administration, the two camps once again split. This time, the doves prevailed. The United States refrained from hitting back against Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors, and in February 1984, Reagan withdrew American forces altogether.

Weinberger was determined to prevent a repeat of what he saw as an avoidable tragedy, especially as factions within the administration pushed for a more aggressive U.S. military response to Soviet-backed movements in Central America. He decided to give a major speech laying out his vision. For feedback on the draft, he turned to a young army major general who was serving as his principal military assistant: Powell, who later remarked that he had thought the Lebanon mission “never did serve a purpose” and was “goofy from the beginning.”

In his speech, delivered in November 1984, Weinberger declared that any plan to use military force should pass six tests. Vital national interests must be at stake. Washington must be willing to commit the resources it would take to achieve victory. Policymakers must have clearly defined political and military objectives. They must also be willing to continually reassess deployments and spending as conditions (and even their objectives) change. Policymakers must gain the support of the American people and Congress through candor and consultation. Finally, as Weinberger put it, “the commitment of U.S. forces to combat should be a last resort.” Reagan soon endorsed what became known as the Weinberger Doctrine, and later wrote in his memoir that its guidelines came to serve as a pillar of his administration’s foreign policy.

The doctrine faced its first real test in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and President George H. W. Bush had to decide whether to intervene militarily. By that time, Powell had risen to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once Bush decided to use force, Powell set about making sure the plan passed Weinberger’s tests—and that it met two other conditions that Powell added to his former boss’s list: a clear exit strategy and international support. Ideally, the exit strategy would be victory: the adversary conceding the political objectives for which the war was being fought. And because chance shapes outcomes in war to a high degree, ensuring victory requires a wide margin for error. Translated into military terms, that meant using what Powell termed “decisive force.” Powell’s public briefings during the war and the military’s success catapulted him to prominence; the Weinberger Doctrine was now the Powell Doctrine.

Powell’s formulation was designed to restrain civilian leaders from resorting to military force simply to “do something.” He wanted to ensure that military force was rarely employed and that when it was, it was part of a strategy that integrated other elements of national power. This line of thinking had its critics. Some complained that the criteria unduly restricted American power. Others objected to a military officer’s setting criteria for civilian superiors. But Powell was adamant about his right to set such parameters. As he put it in an essay in these pages in 1992, “We owe it to the men and women who go in harm’s way to make sure . . . that their lives are not squandered for unclear purposes.”

In the years after the Gulf War, Powell took a dim view of the Clinton administration’s drift toward intervention in the Balkans. Needling the general at a 1993 meeting about whether to intervene in Bosnia, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright grumbled, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Powell was aghast: “I thought I would have an aneurysm,” he later wrote. “American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.” But when he himself later served as secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, Powell played a consequential role in planning for and executing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which met his doctrine’s criteria. That he cautioned Bush about invading Iraq with a wry summary of the Powell Doctrine known as “the Pottery Barn rule”—you break it, you own it—does not exculpate Powell. In the end, he became a central player in the marginalization of his own ideas.

The Powell Doctrine remains the best way for U.S. presidents to decide why and how to go to war.

Yet even though the doctrine’s influence began to wane long ago, no administration ever truly repudiated it—at least until President Donald Trump’s second term. In late February, Trump launched a war on Iran without clearly delineated objectives, without consulting Congress or U.S. allies (other than Israel, Washington’s partner in the war), without obtaining an authorization for the use of military force, without exhausting diplomacy or economic coercion, and without an exit strategy.

The audacity of this approach led some to posit that Trump was pursuing a new American way of war, one that the analyst Richard Fontaine, writing in early March in Foreign Affairs, dubbed “the anti-Powell doctrine.” Fontaine contended that the military operations in Iran (along with the capture earlier this year of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a series of U.S. attacks on militants in Nigeria and Yemen in 2025) demonstrated a method that substitutes Trumpian ambiguity for Powell’s clarity and favors a Trumpian preference for flexibility over Powell’s demand for decisive force. Although Fontaine conceded that the results had been mixed, he concluded that “in some ways, the Trump response to the Powell Doctrine has served recent history better than a dogmatic application of the original.”

But barring a sudden and highly unlikely collapse of the Iranian regime, the course of the war has made clear the profound limitations and flaws of Trump’s approach. And virtually all of the war’s manifold failures flow from its inability to pass the tests that Weinberger introduced and that Powell fleshed out and put into practice. Powell wasn’t always right, and following his doctrine is no guarantor of success. But the doctrine remains the best way for American presidents to decide why and how to go to war, in the Middle East and elsewhere. And even in Iran, it is not too late for Powell’s precepts to help avert disaster.

WHAT’S THIS WAR GOOD FOR?

Like previous U.S. administrations, the Trump administration has made a reasonable case that it would be incredibly damaging to American security for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. And there is little doubt that by mid-2025, Iran was getting closer: on June 12 of that year, the International Atomic Energy Agency censured Tehran for failing to comply with its nonproliferation obligations. The next day, Israel launched a bombing campaign intended to set Iran back; nine days later, the United States joined in with a massive bombardment of three crucial Iranian nuclear facilities. The so-called 12-day war ended soon after, with a cease-fire. And although the war did not meet many of Powell’s standards—there was no congressional authorization or effort to build international or American public support, and diplomacy was ongoing, not exhausted—there was at least a clear objective, the commitment of decisive military force to achieve it, and an exit strategy.

But Trump’s decision to resume hostilities in February passed none of the Powell Doctrine’s tests. Consider, first, whether there were vital national security interests at stake, whether the administration clearly defined its objectives, and whether it was willing to commit the necessary resources. In rambling pre-taped remarks posted to social media just before 3 AM on February 28, Trump recited a litany of Iranian infractions and suggested a number of objectives. “The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests,” he said. “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. . . . We’re going to annihilate their navy. We’re going to ensure that . . . [Iran’s] terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces . . . and we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” Toward the end of his remarks, he addressed the Iranian people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

The sheer number of objectives obscured any sense of clarity. Moreover, many of those objectives were clearly unattainable with the resources the administration committed, especially given its self-imposed prohibition on deploying ground forces. Preventing the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon is surely a vital interest, and destroying Iran’s nuclear program is a clear objective that was plausibly attainable. But Trump had claimed after the 12-day war in 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely obliterated,” making it unclear why this new round of attacks was necessary, much less how a decapitation strike on Iran’s leadership related to the nuclear issue. Meanwhile, Iran’s conventional forces did not pose a serious threat to U.S. security, Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon had already been decimated by Israeli operations, and the Trump administration had already cut a deal with the Houthi militants in Yemen, ending U.S. operations against the group in exchange for its pledge to cease attacking American vessels in the Red Sea. Replacing Iran’s leadership could well be considered a vital national security interest, but Trump did not make that case. And the regime was at that point weaker than it had been in decades; just weeks earlier, water shortages and other economic deprivations had led to massive protests, which the leadership brutally suppressed by killing tens of thousands of ordinary Iranians.

An amphibious assault ship sailing in the Arabian Sea, May 2026 U.S. Navy / Reuters

According to news reports, Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Trump and other officials about the mismatch between the mission’s stated objectives and the resources at hand and had cautioned that the operation would be difficult without allied support. Caine described the goal of the 2026 operation as “to protect and defend ourselves, and together with our regional partners, prevent Iran from the ability to project power outside of its borders and be ready for follow-on actions as appropriate.” That is a far cry from a set of military objectives that might reasonably accomplish the president’s expansive goals—yet another mismatch, which represents a failure on the part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

The administration clearly had not thought through the potential consequences, since its planning did not seem to encompass Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an act fatal to U.S. success. That failure also prevented the United States and its allies from stockpiling fuel to mitigate economic disruptions. Although Washington anticipated attacks on Israel, American allies in the Gulf, and Turkey, U.S.-backed defenses against those strikes were inadequate. The administration does not appear to have factored in the price of the conflict in terms of depleted U.S. munitions and reduced military readiness—costs that it will take years to recover. Meanwhile, friends and foes alike were reminded that allies of the United States cannot be certain that their interests will be protected during a war or that Washington will even consult with them before deciding to use force.

Consider, also, the Powell Doctrine’s stipulation that military force should be a last resort. That was clearly not the case in February, since the attacks commenced while U.S. negotiations with Iran were still underway. The administration had apparently not yet used all of its coercive economic tools, either: around six weeks into the war, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to launch “the financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign, which presumably Washington could have conducted before it began dropping literal bombs.

TELL ME HOW THIS ENDS

The Powell Doctrine calls on policymakers to continually reassess their approach as conditions change. But it does not counsel careening wildly in policy and message on a near-daily basis, which is what the Trump administration has done during the Iran war. Within the span of a single day, Trump imposed and then repealed a 20 percent surcharge on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, undermining 250 years of U.S. commitment to the freedom of navigation. He has described Iran’s leaders as “very smart people” and then derided them as “scum.” Destroying Iran’s missile infrastructure was a primary objective until Trump reversed himself and said Iran deserved to have missiles. These reversals are not the result of careful reassessments: Trump is merely flailing for options that might avoid the humiliation of losing the war or the risk of escalating beyond standoff strikes.

The administration has also failed to build public and congressional support for the war, although it might be more accurate to say it neglected to even try. The results are unsurprising. According to a poll tracker maintained by the polling analyst Nate Silver, only 35 percent of Americans supported the war when it started, and 47 percent opposed it. By mid-July, support had fallen slightly, and opposition had risen to 58 percent.

Even in a GOP-controlled Congress, there has been remarkably little enthusiasm for the war. The Republicans who lead the two chambers have not held hearings to showcase the administration’s arguments; in fact, they have been reduced to practically pleading for information. Trump ultimately attained a war powers resolution from Congress, but it was the opposite of an authorization for the use of force: in June, both houses of Congress passed resolutions calling for an end to the war—the first time that has happened since the War Powers Act came into force in 1973. The next day, after Trump berated Republicans for allowing the measure to pass, the Senate rejected a nearly identical resolution, but the earlier rebuke was unmistakable.

Central to the Powell Doctrine is a commitment to victory. As a policy tool, that commitment provides clarifying focus and a way to determine when to stop an operation. As a moral tool, it keeps faith with the people doing the fighting and underscores the solemn costs of the operation. In 2025, the Trump administration seemed committed to victory, defined as the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. But the mission in June 2025 was halted in advance of battle damage assessments and was not restarted after those assessments concluded that the program had set back the Iranian program by only a year or two. This year, the military campaign had barely commenced before the administration started skating backward from its stated objectives: far from demanding regime change, Trump was soon praising Iran’s leaders and defending the regime’s retention of long-range missiles. In June, he signed a memorandum of understanding that essentially conceded to every Iranian demand. The poorly worded document left ample room for noncompliance, and the 60-day cease-fire it had established broke down after a few weeks.

The sheer number of U.S. objectives in Iran obscured any sense of clarity.

Related to the lack of commitment to victory is the lack of an exit strategy, one of the ideas Powell developed that went beyond the initial Weinberger Doctrine. After the collapse of the cease-fire, U.S. targeting expanded to encompass civilian infrastructure, precipitating escalating Iranian attacks on energy and desalination facilities in other countries in the region. At the time of this writing, both sides appear to be ramping up their attacks in an effort to shape potential negotiations. But it’s hard to see how any of this will shift the underlying dynamic of the war. If Trump has an exit strategy, it is regime collapse, which is unlikely at this point.

Powell’s other innovation was to insist on the importance of international support. In deciding to go to war against Iran, Trump didn’t bother to consult with U.S. allies—including those who would bear the brunt of any Iranian retaliation. When some of those allies predictably expressed reservations, denied U.S. forces the use of their bases, or declined to volunteer to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz after Iran effectively closed it, Trump fulminated against them and sought to punish them by cutting off trade and threatening to withdraw U.S. troops stationed in their countries or to close U.S. bases located there. What support there was for the war among the Gulf Arab states shriveled when the Trump administration declined to retaliate for Iranian attacks on civilian targets in those countries. For them, hosting U.S. bases has proved to be more of a risk factor than a security guarantee.

Iran, for its part, has successfully weathered the most damaging military attacks the United States and Israel could impose. The succession process that followed the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei only reinforced the power of the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, making it more difficult to negotiate an end to the war. And Iran has now proved its previously hypothetical ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. The lesson that U.S. rivals are likely to take from the war is that the brilliance of the American military is largely irrelevant.

Warfare, of course, is complicated and contingent, and it is impossible to be certain that things would have gone much better if the president had followed the precepts of the Powell Doctrine. What is not contestable is that ignoring those standards left the operation vulnerable to many different forms of failure. Far from discovering a new way of war, Trump has merely discovered new ways to lose.

CONGRESSIONAL IRRESOLUTION

It seems extremely unlikely that the Trump administration will be chastened by its failure in Iran. Shamelessness has been central to Trump’s business and political success, and his reaction to setbacks is to deny objective facts and construct fantasies of achievement. The rigors of war do not seem to have persuaded him of the need for a more coherent process of policy formulation and assessment; he continues to blurt out his every whim, and a cabinet of sycophants and amplifiers is unlikely to impose discipline on an undisciplined principal. Nor can the two parts of the government that have apparently provided solid strategic judgments—the CIA and the military—salvage the process. They are advisory bodies, not policy actors, and Trump repudiates or ignores their counsel whenever it conflicts with his claims or preferences.

At the time of this writing, Iran’s government remains unyielding in its demands, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in firm control of the country, and Trump appears unwilling to escalate U.S. military action in a way that would fundamentally alter the dynamic. For the foreseeable future, the administration will likely continue to carry on sporadic standoff strikes of tactical brilliance and strategic irrelevance and pursue negotiations aimed at restoring a cease-fire—all while hoping, almost surely in vain, that the Iranian regime will collapse or be overthrown. The precise outcome is impossible to predict, but it will almost certainly leave the United States politically and militarily weaker and less trusted as a security partner.

Adherence to the Powell Doctrine could have prevented those losses. It could also help Trump chart a way out of the extended purgatory his conduct of the war has produced. At one extreme, he could use it to justify accepting a loss. Acknowledging the lack of public or international support for and the mounting costs of the war, Trump could camouflage defeat by making the case that he achieved his most important objectives: the practical destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and the significant degradation of its conventional military.

Powell at a Gulf War briefing, January 1991 Mike Theiler / Reuters

Alternatively, the president could start over and build a plan consistent with the doctrine’s outlines. He could start by recognizing the national security imperative of maintaining freedom of navigation and obtain congressional authorization to use force to restore it in the Strait of Hormuz. The administration would have to reliably convey to the Iranians that its primary objective is opening the strait and that to achieve that goal, the United States would lift sanctions on Iran and refrain from using force against the country for anything other than its nuclear program. Meanwhile, the administration could offer incentives to other countries to participate in a flotilla that would monitor the strait and demonstrate to commercial shippers that they could expect safe passage through it. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program should proceed, but on a separate track.

Left to its own devices, the Trump administration is highly unlikely to put forward such a plan. The only thing that might force it to do so is pressure from Congress. Wistful appeals to congressional action should be accompanied by the desolate strains of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique: in Trump’s second term, instead of fulfilling its constitutional obligations, the Republican-controlled Congress has been negligent. It has confirmed dangerously unqualified appointees, passed budget legislation using so-called reconciliation (which requires only a simple majority instead of 60 votes) rather than through regular order, assented to war in the absence of any request for congressional authorization, and allowed the executive branch to divert some appropriated funds while failing to spend others.

There are reasons, however, that Congress may yet assert its authority. The GOP would like to retain control of both houses, and Trump’s foundering policies and staggering corruption are so deeply unpopular that barring a change of course, Republicans are likely to surrender their slim majority in the House of Representatives and could even lose their more comfortable Senate majority. Some evidence that the party is aware of this reality is apparent in recent votes in which Congress proposed an end to the war in Iran, enacted restrictions on the Defense Department’s ability to withdraw troops from overseas deployments, and forced the White House to withdraw a record number of nominees from consideration for confirmation.

The only thing that might force Trump to change course is pressure from Congress.

Going forward, Congress could pass resolutions outlining alternative strategies and regularly drag cabinet officials up to Capitol Hill to testify on the conduct of the war. More consequentially, Congress could legislate the redeployment of forces currently assigned to the conflict and reject the removal of forces from Asia or Europe for use in the Iran operation. Such a move would likely be found unconstitutional. But taken together, such actions would increase the political price the president would pay for continuing to wage war in a reckless manner.

Congress’s strongest form of leverage over the executive branch is the power of the purse. On July 21, Hegseth claimed the war had so far cost $37.5 billion—although the defense budgeting expert Elaine McCusker believes the true figure is probably over $50 billion—and the administration has submitted a poorly justified supplemental spending request for an additional $88 billion. Congress should stipulate that it will not authorize any further funding until the administration presents a plan that would pass the Powell Doctrine’s tests.

In his 1995 memoir, My American Journey, Powell wrote: “Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in [the Vietnam War], vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.” That is precisely the kind of warfare that Trump has undertaken. And so far, Congress has quietly acquiesced. It can, however, still change course. A true victory in Iran is unlikely. But a cataclysmic defeat is not yet inevitable.

America Must Let Go of the Middle East

Michael Fuchs — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The war with Iran is an epic disaster. The United States and Israel launched an unnecessary campaign that has violated international law, killed at least 1,700 Iranian civilians (including 307 children), caused widespread damage to civilian infrastructure, and deepened regional turmoil. Iran’s retaliation has killed 18 U.S. troops and injured more than 600 on bases in neighboring countries, and people around the world are still reeling from the spike in energy prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

This war is the latest consequence of a series of U.S. policy choices over the last 35 years that have made the United States less safe and intensified conflict across the Middle East. Those failures stem from the U.S. military presence in the region, which has fed Washington’s mistaken belief that it must continually launch wars and intervene in ongoing conflicts to advance U.S. security. Welcoming American bases and troops onto their territory has also made host countries more vulnerable, exposing them to direct attacks from Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

For decades, the United States has acted as though its military presence in the Middle East were essential to American strategic interests and regional security. It has sought to protect partners such as Israel and the Gulf states, check Iran and other adversaries, and combat terrorism. In practice, the U.S. military posture has contributed to instability and destruction. Nowhere is this clearer than in the campaign against Iran; the war has generated the very dangers it was meant to prevent.

It is long past time for the United States to withdraw its forces from the Middle East, stop arming governments that violate U.S. and international law, and end its role as guarantor of regional order. Doing so would free Washington to concentrate on higher-priority objectives, including deterring great-power war in Asia and Europe.

BLOOD AND TREASURE

Although the United States has long been engaged in the Middle East, the Gulf War of 1990–91 cemented the U.S. military role in the region. What started as the high point of post–Cold War American power—organizing an international coalition to end Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait—turned into a decades-long obligation. Successive administrations have kept tens of thousands of personnel in the region, believing that a standing force would protect the free flow of energy, support Israel, combat terrorist groups, and deter Iran. Currently, about 2,000 troops are stationed in Iraq; 2,300 in Saudi Arabia; 3,500 in the United Arab Emirates; 4,000 in Jordan; 8,000 in Bahrain; 10,000 in Qatar; and 13,000 in Kuwait. The precise numbers and locations have ebbed and flowed over the years, but that presence has remained enormous, sprawling, and deeply embedded.

Yet a military footprint can itself become a liability, exposing host countries to reprisal and drawing the United States into local conflicts. With bases scattered across the region, threats to American interests are constant, and each one becomes a new argument for enlarging the footprint. The United States’ occupation of Iraq after the 2003 invasion, for instance, not only mired U.S. forces in a long and bloody conflict but also made them vulnerable to Iranian-backed militias, prompting retaliatory U.S. operations in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan spilled into Pakistan, where the United States carried out hundreds of drone strikes against militants attacking American troops across the border. After largely extricating itself from Iraq in 2011, the United States had to send troops back in 2014 to fight the Islamic State, or ISIS, which emerged from the post-invasion chaos.

The cost has been steep. The United States spent $8 trillion fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters as part of its post-9/11 “war on terror.” According to research at Brown University, roughly three million Americans served in those conflicts, in which more than 15,000 service members and contractors were killed and 1.8 million troops were disabled. People across the region have suffered—and continue to suffer—the consequences. More than 940,000 have died from direct violence, including 432,000 civilians; 3.6 million died from the indirect effects of state collapse in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen; and 38 million have been displaced. But numbers alone cannot convey the human toll, as seen through the eyes of children who have lost their parents, families who have lost their homes, and a generation whose chance at a normal life has been stolen by constant conflict. And the absence of accountability for the policies and actions that have driven it is striking.

The remains of a U.S. soldier killed in Jordan being transferred, Dover, Delaware, July 2026 Evan Vucci / Reuters

The United States also contributed directly to violence and repression perpetrated by other countries, as the stationing of U.S. troops across the Middle East reinforced Washington’s impulse to work closely with abusive governments that often had regional agendas of their own. It propped up autocratic governments such as Egypt’s, sustained Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen, and enabled the role of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Sudan’s civil war, where United Nations investigators documented acts amounting to genocide. Such partnerships stoked popular anger at the governments of those countries and the United States.

The U.S. relationship with Israel exemplifies how deep security relationships, combined with permanent basing, can produce disastrous results. Since the slow collapse of the Oslo negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the 1990s, U.S. support has morphed into a blank check for one Israeli government after another. Those governments have eroded the prospects of peace with the Palestinians through creeping annexation and systematic repression in the West Bank. Over the past few years, that backing has enabled Israel to carry out what a UN fact-finding mission concluded was genocide in Gaza, a finding echoed by a number of Israeli scholars and civil society groups. Then, in February 2026, the United States joined Israel in launching an illegal war on Iran.

THE WAY OUT

Both Democratic and Republican presidents bear responsibility for the harm done by the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. That presence has implicated the United States in serious violations of international humanitarian law. Washington should correct course, beginning with a withdrawal of forces as soon as there is a stable cease-fire with Iran.

U.S. leaders now face a series of decisions with lasting consequences, including whether to rebuild bases damaged during the Iran war and sell new weapons to regional partners. Some defense analysts have argued for retaining a smaller military footprint—and, according to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is considering it—but a partial retreat would still leave the United States exposed to perennial risk in the region. In the last five months, Iran has destroyed or damaged buildings and equipment on at least 15 U.S. military sites. Even if the United States consolidated its troops into one or two bases, they would remain a prime target for Iran and its proxies, so significant resources would be needed for force protection. Without a full withdrawal, Washington will feel compelled to continue shoring up support for U.S. personnel and partners, and the United States will keep being drawn into conflicts.

Pulling all U.S. troops out of the Middle East does not require ending all cooperation with partners in the region. Security assistance could still proceed in some countries, such as Lebanon, where U.S. support for the Lebanese armed forces can strengthen state capacity and reinforce the role of official institutions in safeguarding Lebanese sovereignty. But it is in Washington’s interest to ensure that its assistance and arms sales comply with U.S. law, which mandates a halt to such aid when recipients commit gross human rights violations, as Israel has in Gaza. By suspending any security aid and arms exports that violate U.S. and international law, Washington can reduce the risk that its support will encourage other countries’ reckless policies and draw the United States deeper into regional crises.

As it draws down its troop presence in the region, the United States can and should ramp up its diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian efforts to support human rights and the peaceful resolution of disputes. As part of this effort, it should increase humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians while backing economic integration projects that could foster stability and prosperity, such as new pipelines that route energy exports around the Strait of Hormuz. It should also use the drawdown to make clear that Washington will curtail aid to countries such as the UAE and Israel until they improve their human rights records and end their destabilizing regional policies. The United States cannot force these governments to reform, but it can refuse to provide the equipment and financing that enable their repression or aggression.

Although it is unlikely that the current administration would pursue this approach, decisions in Congress can shape future U.S. policy in the region. Lawmakers can push the United States toward a drawdown by limiting the amount of funding the Pentagon receives to replenish munitions and refurbish bases, and by attaching conditions to those funds.

THE FEARS AND THE FACTS

Some will argue that withdrawing the U.S. military from the Middle East carries serious risks. Those risks are real but manageable. Start with energy markets and the fear of disruption to oil and gas exports if the United States retreats. For years, Washington assumed that the U.S. presence in the region upheld freedom of navigation. Yet it was the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran that closed the Strait of Hormuz—and the U.S. military was unable to forcibly reopen it, casting doubt on the efficacy of stationing the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. However the standoff in the strait is resolved, Iran and the Gulf states share an interest in keeping energy flowing, even as states spar over whether they can impose fees. Moreover, with the United States now a major energy producer, the renewable sector growing worldwide, and producers exploring ways to bypass the strait, a more diversified global supply makes further disruptions to shipping less threatening.

The Trump administration and its supporters in Congress also make the case that American military power is necessary to contain Iran, which has destabilized its neighbors. But the current war has shown that the United States could not protect its partners in the Gulf from Iranian attacks. The Gulf states need to create new security arrangements with one another—arrangements that do not rely on Washington, although Washington can still provide economic and diplomatic support. There is no guarantee that new arrangements would be better, but the current U.S.-backed system is not working. The United States would no longer be fueling instability, at least, in a new order led by regional players. And such a framework may offer a more durable path to stability if it prioritizes regional diplomacy, dialogue, and de-escalation with Iran. Over time, Middle Eastern countries could grow less reliant on external military guarantees.

Countering terrorism is not made easier by a prolonged U.S. troop presence, either. Since 9/11, the terror threat has pushed policymakers to lean on the American military. Yet the United States’ use of drone strikes that killed enormous numbers of civilians, together with its multiple invasions, likely fueled more attacks on U.S. personnel by terrorist groups. Withdrawing U.S. forces now would not mean giving up the ability to counter terrorism. Intelligence sharing with regional governments and NATO allies, along with advanced technology that allows surveillance from ever greater distances, could enable Washington to monitor threats. As a last resort, U.S. leaders could send forces back for a specific mission if a crisis threatening the United States erupted.

Then there is the question of Israel’s security. A nuclear weapons state with the most advanced military in the region, Israel is more than capable of defending itself. In fact, the U.S. presence has emboldened Israel to adopt policies that have intensified the threats against it. Washington can break that cycle by making military aid conditional on Israel’s ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories, pursuing peace with the Palestinians, and halting its military campaigns in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. These steps would reduce the dangers that Israel creates for itself, lowering the overall risk that could accompany the loss of a U.S. backstop.

Finally, skeptics of retrenchment from the Middle East worry that withdrawal—especially so soon after the United States’ failures in Iran—would signal weakness to U.S. adversaries. Washington does face a formidable challenge in deterring China and Russia as each presses its claims closer to home. But if the United States stays bogged down in the Middle East, it will have more difficulty working with its Asian and European allies to counter Beijing’s or Moscow’s moves elsewhere. And there is little risk that either would replace the U.S. position in the region. China remains deeply cautious about using its military beyond its immediate periphery, and Russia’s footprint in the Middle East has only shrunk since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A PUBLIC RECKONING

After decades of almost continuous war in the Middle East, Americans are weary of foreign entanglements. A recent poll by the Searchlight Institute found that 62 percent prefer staying “out of wars as much as possible,” while 33 percent favor using “military force when it benefits the country.” An entire generation has never known peacetime, and majorities of young Americans—including more than half of Republicans aged 18 to 44—oppose the 2026 war with Iran. This was the first war in the era of modern polling that the public opposed from the start, when support is usually highest.

Yet amid this public reckoning with the United States’ role in the world, American leaders are out of step with their constituents. U.S. President Donald Trump won two elections by lambasting candidates he blamed for endless wars in the Middle East, then started one himself. When individuals and institutions have spoken out against policy toward Israel, the president has wielded the power of the state to attack them, withholding funding from universities and deporting and jailing protesters. And at a time when Americans’ top concern is affording the necessities of daily life, the Pentagon budget has reached an all-time high of roughly $1 trillion in 2026, and the administration is seeking a further 50 percent increase in 2027.

The United States still has an important role to play in global security: its military presence and security guarantees in Europe and Asia help prevent great-power war. But the way Washington is playing its security role in the Middle East is hurting far more than it is helping. Changing course will not be easy, but it is necessary. Decades of ill-conceived wars and entanglements have cost too many lives and too much treasure while adding little to U.S. security and drawing Washington’s attention away from pressing challenges in Asia and Europe. It is time for the United States military to leave.

The Right Way to Balance Trade

Lori Wallach — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The architects of the neoliberal economic order promised that it would usher in a new age of global wealth, economic security, and democracy. Yet over the past 30 years, the system established by the World Trade Organization and free-trade agreements has led to the opposite. Economic inequality and insecurity have worsened in most countries, with dangerous effects on democratic rule. Monopolistic and multinational megacorporations have concentrated the production of key goods and services in too few locations, creating vulnerabilities in the world’s most important supply chains.

Now, two forces are colliding to finish off this trade system entirely. China’s $1 trillion-plus annual trade surpluses, built on mercantilist policies unaddressed by the neoliberal regime, are forcing deindustrialization and creating political shocks in both developed and developing countries. And U.S. President Donald Trump’s chaotic and often misdirected tariffs have neither delivered the promised American manufacturing renaissance nor coalesced into an effective new model for trade other countries might adopt.

Neither the neoliberal order nor Trump’s second-term pandemonium offers a way forward. But a new approach could yet capture the considerable benefits of trade—if the rules were designed explicitly to promote balanced trade, fair and competitive markets, and a floor of labor and environmental standards. It will not happen under the current administration. But the U.S. global trade deficit will outlast Trump’s presidency, and so will Washington’s leverage over countries reliant on access to the U.S. market. The next administration should use this leverage to build a fairer and more flexible trade paradigm, one that will unshackle countries and better enable them to address the most pressing economic, social, and climate challenges of the twenty-first century.

THE PURPOSE OF A SYSTEM IS WHAT IT DOES

The trade regime that began in the early 1990s was designed for (and often by) large retailers, low-wage-seeking manufacturers, and the world’s largest pharmaceutical, financial, and agribusiness companies. Although branded by its proponents as “free trade,” the regime implemented by the World Trade Organization and free-trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement in fact represented a radical departure from earlier pacts. Whereas postwar agreements such as the global General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were limited to setting tariff and quota levels for trade in goods and forbidding discriminatory treatment based on a good’s national origin, the WTO, NAFTA, and other agreements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century were far more expansive, requiring signatory countries to conform their domestic policies to one-size-fits-all rules governing service-sector regulation, intellectual property, government procurement, food and product safety, and other policies unrelated to trade.

They also required countries to adopt pro-monopoly policies. The WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, along with the rules of many free-trade agreements, forbids signatory countries from regulating companies based on firm size or the number of services any one firm is allowed to offer. The WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights requires what many economists dub classic rent-seeking monopoly licensing by mandating that countries provide 20-year monopoly patents on medicines. Intellectual property chapters in free-trade agreements include yet more protections that empower pharmaceutical corporations to charge higher prices. The WTO’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Technical Barriers to Trade chapters cap countries’ ability to enact or maintain strong environmental and food safety standards. Most recently, pacts including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement have added “digital trade” rules that undercut the ability of countries to enforce their own laws regulating Big Tech competition, data privacy and security, and AI oversight.

The WTO and free-trade agreements also ban most capital controls and other forms of financial regulation that could help counter financialization and rebalance trade. Procurement chapters forbid preferential treatment for domestically-made goods, an industrial policy used in many countries to reinvest tax dollars locally and spur demand to expand domestic production capacity. By contrast, most free-trade agreements include extraordinary privileges and rights for foreign investors and establish extrajudicial investor-state tribunals that can order governments to compensate investors if changes in domestic policies conflict with their expectations. In effect, countries are punished for seeking to raise wages or standards and rewarded for lowering their standards to attract foreign investment.

This global trade architecture was sold as more efficient, promising lower prices for consumers. But what really lowered consumer prices were labor abuses, lax environmental regulations that permitted the dumping of toxins into the air and water, and trade-distorting mercantilist tools the system failed to prohibit, including currency manipulation and massive multilayered subsidies.

DELAYED FUSE

A few governments navigated these rules—and more important, the gaps between them—to generate huge chronic global trade surpluses. China has led the field. Beijing has devalued its currency, propped up the dollar’s value by holding excessive reserves, used forced labor, suppressed wages, repressed consumption, pushed its citizens to save excessively by providing a weak social safety net, and heavily subsidized the production of goods. As of 2025, China’s trade surplus stood at $1.2 trillion, the world’s largest.

U.S. presidents in both parties championed the global commerce regime that made China’s surplus possible. President Bill Clinton advanced WTO negotiations, pushed the pact through Congress in 1994, and convinced Congress to greenlight China’s entry into the WTO in 2000. The following year, President George W. Bush signed the proclamation that finalized China’s WTO admission; pushed through Congress free-trade agreements or permanent “most favored nation status” determinations for a dozen countries including Singapore and Vietnam, which China was already using as export platforms into the United States; and rejected numerous petitions for trade relief as Chinese imports began to flatten U.S. manufacturers.

As critics at the time predicted, the U.S. trade deficit exploded, reaching a high of $960 billion in 2022. This deficit contributed to the shuttering of 70,000 American factories from the mid-1990s to 2023 and the loss of at least five million manufacturing jobs between China’s admission to the WTO in 2001 and 2020, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Meanwhile, as the dollars spent by U.S. wholesalers, retailers, and ultimately consumers to buy imports sloshed back into the U.S. economy, foreign firms and oligarchs, sovereign wealth funds, and state-owned enterprises seeking high returns channeled them into high-yield speculative financial instruments, hedge funds, buy-and-hold real estate speculation, and other nonproductive investments. The result was less financing available for the real economy and a sharp increase in politically destabilizing income inequality.

Presidents in both parties championed the commerce regime that made China’s surplus possible.

For years, U.S. policymakers largely ignored both these dynamics and the simmering discontent they were breeding within parts of the American workforce until the rage of those suffering culminated in Trump’s first election. The supply shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic then revealed what U.S. military planners and critics of neoliberalism alike had long warned: the United States had become dangerously reliant on other countries for essential goods.

Today, world trade has become so imbalanced and production so concentrated that fewer than 20 economies, mainly in Asia and Europe, have large chronic trade surpluses that do not rely on exports of oil or other natural resources. China’s surplus is by far the largest, but Beijing is not alone: over the past decade, Germany’s average current-account surplus has been the equivalent of seven percent of GDP, the Netherlands 7.7 percent, and Switzerland’s 6.3 percent. Japan and South Korea’s trade surpluses stand at 3.6 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. Taiwan’s has averaged 13.4 percent.

Governments have built these surpluses by deploying policies designed to boost industrial capacity and exports. South Korea has regularly devalued the won. Taiwan provides various subsidies and intervenes in currency markets to keep the Taiwan dollar from appreciating. Germany gains a currency advantage by trading in euros rather than what would be a stronger national currency and has suppressed wage levels through labor law changes that expanded low-wage employment and rolled back workers’ rights. All of these governments’ policies have allowed firms to overproduce goods and sell them at artificially reduced prices—prices with which unsubsidized firms in target countries cannot compete—while making imports artificially expensive.

On the other side of the ledger, more countries have joined the United States in having chronic global trade deficits in the past decade. Large middle-income countries face deindustrialization pressures and have enacted tariffs against Chinese imports. Brazil, India, and Turkey, for example, have levied tariffs on a number of Chinese imports, including steel, chemicals, furniture, plastics, electric vehicles, and industrial machinery.

In the European Union, a flood of Chinese imports redirected by U.S. tariffs is creating a wave of deindustrialization, job loss, and political turmoil. Even Germany, which has the world’s second-largest chronic global trade surplus, is now losing 10,000 industrial jobs per month because its companies cannot compete with the Chinese goods whose low prices are made possible by government subsidies.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

As fewer countries and their workers, consumers, and businesses benefit from the current trade regime, more may be willing to consider change. To provide economic security to more people, post-neoliberal trade arrangements must be designed to prioritize balanced trade, establish a floor of labor, environmental, and antimonopoly standards, and give participating countries the freedom to manage their domestic economies as they please by ending the one-size-fits-all nontrade rules imposed by neoliberal trade agreements. Countries willing to accept such terms would agree to impose lower tariffs on one another and high external tariffs on imports from nonparticipating countries.

Balanced trade would not mean that each participating country must have equal exports and imports with every other participant, but that overall trade within the group is balanced. (Making this determination based on multiyear averages would allow for some year-to-year variation.) Some exceptions related to natural resource exports and flexibility for developing countries would be allowed, provided that their exports do not generate destabilizing imbalances. Developing countries would qualify based on not on the nebulous self-designation process allowed under the WTO, but on objective criteria such as World Bank income classification or weight in global trade.

If destabilizing surpluses were to arise, governments of other participating countries would be required to raise tariffs on the goods of countries that fail to allow their currencies to appreciate or take other actions to balance trade. Given the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency, for the United States to do its part within such arrangements, Washington would likely have to use tools on the capital account side of the ledger, such as capital controls on some foreign inflows, to achieve and sustain balance.

Although it is unlikely that Beijing would commit to such terms, other countries could still use this approach to reduce the global imbalances that China’s surplus causes. If Chinese goods faced significantly higher tariffs in many countries, Beijing might have no choice but to accommodate more domestic consumption to sustain its economy. Such a correction would benefit workers not just in countries that have been flooded with Chinese imports or whose exports have been squeezed out of third markets; as a surprisingly candid declaration from the June 2026 G-7 summit affirmed, extreme trade imbalances harm workers in deficit and surplus countries alike.

BLOC PARTY

This web of arrangements would in some ways resemble a customs union. But it would differ in one critical respect. Whereas customs union members enjoy duty-free trade within the bloc and levy a shared external tariff on those outside it, under a post-neoliberal paradigm countries would be able to set their own tariff rates that apply to fellow participants, giving them the flexibility to enact industrial policies. They would collectively negotiate a maximum trade-weighted internal tariff rate and a top rate to which all participants would be bound. But below the caps, countries would be free to adjust their current WTO tariff commitments and to employ tariff-rate quotas, which reserve a portion of domestic markets behind a higher tariff to create demand for domestic production, in order to promote growth in specific industries.

Arrangements must also incorporate nondiscrimination principles. Among participating countries, tariffs would apply on a most-favored-nation basis, meaning the same rate would apply to all. Participating countries would be required to apply the national treatment principle, which subjects foreign goods, firms, and services to the same regulatory standards as domestic ones.

As under the WTO, not all subsidies would be banned under these arrangements. But unlike the WTO’s cumbersome redress rules, with their lengthy timelines and methodological limitations, post-neoliberal trade arrangements would allow participants to quickly and effectively countervail against subsidies that harm their domestic industries, so that remedies come in time to save those industries.

To prevent goods from outside the bloc from leaking in and undercutting members’ efforts to lift wages and increase domestic manufacturing capacity, it is essential that rule following be rewarded, with participating countries enforcing strict rules of origin. Any new entrants willing to accept the terms would be allowed to participate, as long as they unwound existing free-trade pacts with countries outside the bloc to avoid leakages, a tall order for some countries but a necessary step to ensure balanced trade.

BEYOND BALANCE

If they are to address the harms caused by three decades of neoliberal trade policy, countries will need to do more than just balance trade. To benefit workers, build fair markets in which small businesses can thrive, and allow countries to fight climate change, post-neoliberal trade arrangements must require participants to enforce, as a baseline, the standards established by the International Labor Organization and major multilateral environmental agreements. Banning child and forced labor, prohibiting the dumping of pollutants, and guaranteeing the right to organize independent unions would counter the race-to-the-bottom practices rampant in the current system.

When past trade pacts have included enforceable labor and environmental standards, governments would face fines if they did not follow the relevant rules. This effectively allowed those governments to absorb the cost of the violations as part of their “low-road” strategies to attract foreign investment. A new paradigm must go further to ensure that standards are effectively enforced in letter and in spirit. Existing mechanisms could serve as models. Through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s Rapid Response Mechanism, for example, individual firms can face fines, tariffs, or a loss of market access if they violate labor rules. Enforcement on a global scale would be more difficult than it is among three neighboring countries, but new arrangements could still establish a standardized review process and penalty guidelines to allow individual countries to impose pre-agreed sanctions on firms found to be in violation.

Finally, post-neoliberal trade arrangements must contain antimonopoly rules to support well-functioning markets. These could include enforceable prohibitions on discriminatory pricing and cartelization abuses and rules to prevent corporate concentration. Many countries already have similar competition laws on the books. Although the WTO has imposed anti-antitrust rules, a model for a multilateral antimonopoly framework does exist: the International Trade Organization, the trade body originally proposed at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1945 but never implemented, included a Restrictive Business Practices chapter.

AFTER THE CHAOS

The Trump administration’s haphazard policies have done significant damage to the global perception of the United States as a reliable partner. But the next U.S. administration could nonetheless be well positioned to build transformational new trade arrangements. After all, when Trump leaves office, Washington will still have the world’s largest trade deficit. And as long as much of the world relies on selling to the U.S. market, Washington will have significant leverage to reshape the global economic order.

A new U.S. administration could use that leverage first to lay the groundwork for balanced-trade, fair-market arrangements in the Americas and Africa, where trade is already relatively balanced. Then, it could expand the project to Europe and Asia, where several countries have chronic trade surpluses. Large economies suffering from chronic trade deficits, such as the United Kingdom, would likely be keen to sign on, but even those with large chronic surpluses (such as Germany) and those that rely on mercantilist trade practices (such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) might be persuaded if they saw this initiative as an opportunity to counter China’s predatory trade practices—and if they faced higher tariffs should they decline to join.

Growing bipartisan opposition to the old trade regime could make selling this approach in the United States easier politically than it might have been a generation ago, despite the opposition it is sure to face from the oligarchs and monopolists benefiting from the status quo and from politicians hoping to exploit Trump’s tariff malpractice to revive the existing order. And across much of the world, the experience of neoliberalism’s failure and of Trump’s tariff chaos could be enough to convince policymakers that a new approach is necessary. If U.S. leaders and their global counterparts take the right lessons from the present crisis, the next trade order could benefit far more people than the one that came before.

How the Axis of Resistance Recovered

Peter Salisbury, Wolf-Christian Paes, Henry Thompson — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As the United States’ five-month-old war with Iran continues to evolve, Tehran’s ability to continue punishing the United States and its allies has come as a surprise to many strategists and analysts. For months, the United States and Israel have intermittently pummeled the country with air strikes, decapitating much of its senior leadership. Yet Iran and its regional allies have proved remarkably dogged: Hezbollah remains a threat despite Israel’s blistering campaign in southern Lebanon, Iran-backed Iraqi militias have attacked Gulf oil and gas infrastructure, and the Houthis in Yemen have restarted their campaign against commercial ships in the Red Sea.

In fact, the resilience of both the Islamic Republic and its partners despite years of apparent setbacks points to an underlying flaw in the thinking that led to the conflict. In launching the campaign against Iran in late February, the United States and Israel were drawing on a theory pushed by American regime-change advocates and Israeli strategists for years: by targeting the Islamic Republic’s economy, its leadership, weapons facilities, and central supply lines with military force and economic sanctions, Washington could fatally undermine the Iranian regime. In doing so, it would also deal a decisive blow to the regime’s allies. Sever the head of the octopus in Tehran, the theory went, and the axis groups—the octopus’s many arms—would shrivel and die, too.

Two decades ago, a military campaign motivated by the so-called octopus doctrine might have worked. At that point, the relationship between Iran and its allies was less complex, with arms, technology, and know-how all routed through Tehran. But the axis is no longer organized as a simple system with easily identifiable points of failure. Today, it more closely resembles a densely interconnected, self-reproducing web, in which knowledge, resources, and even decision-making can be pooled in many different places at the same time. When a leader is killed, a manufacturing site or warehouse is bombed, or a supply line is cut off, the various groups that are involved adapt, quickly replacing the slain leader, filling in technical knowledge gaps needed to build weapons, and reconstituting supply lines via alternative routes. It is this increasingly sophisticated and flexible structure that has allowed Iran’s allies to adapt in the years since Hamas’s October 7 attacks. Even after Israel’s devastation of Hamas and Hezbollah during the war in Gaza and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria—and even after the massive U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran this spring—the axis has remained largely intact.

As a result, Washington can no longer fall back on its go-to toolkit of escalating political pressure, sanctions, and military strikes. Outright defeat of Iran and the axis groups is likely out of reach, but limiting the threat they pose is still possible. Doing so will require the United States to develop a more comprehensive regional strategy aimed at addressing the complex international military, financial, and knowledge networks that now sustains Iranian power. Washington must now consider containing and potentially striking deals with Iran and its most powerful nonstate allies. And it must do whatever is necessary to limit the spread of the low-cost technology employed in the weapons systems designed by Iran and used by the axis, including engaging with China. This approach may not be satisfying to those American leaders who demand a resounding victory in the Middle East. But it stands a much better chance of success than the current strategy of attacking Iran over and over again and hoping that the Islamic Republic and its network of allies will eventually collapse.

UPSKILLING THE AXIS

Twenty years ago, the groups now known as the “axis of resistance” were mostly local insurgents using the tactics and technology of twentieth-century guerrillas. Under Iran’s tutelage, Hezbollah had emerged as a force in Lebanese politics and a powerful adversary to Israel, whose 2006 invasion it repelled using a stock of rudimentary short-range rockets and Iranian-made drones. Along with Iran, it also offered support to Hamas, which did not yet control Gaza. The Houthis were at the time a small insurgency hiding out in caves in northern Yemen, still a few years away from receiving meaningful support from Tehran. Iranian and Hezbollah operatives had just begun training Iraqi Shiite groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, teaching them how to organize insurgent cells, use small arms such as AK-47s and rocket launchers, and build roadside bombs.

In the decades since, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has developed a strategy for bringing these and other groups’ capabilities into the twenty-first century. Would-be axis members first receive basic training, both in Iran and, increasingly, territory controlled by other axis groups. Groups that prove themselves on the battlefield are given more advanced weapons, including one-way attack drones that are cruder than the Shahed-136s Iran itself uses but nonetheless able to strike targets far from their headquarters. Since at least 2025, for example, Tehran has provided Islamic Resistance in Iraq groups with a steady supply of the Shahed-101 and Shahed-107 drones used to target U.S. military bases and Gulf state infrastructure over the past six months. A small number of trusted groups are taught to build their own weapons, primarily drones, from parts they import themselves. Today, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis can all build and field their own one-way attack drones, firing them at targets up to 1,600 miles away.

By carefully honing their organizational capabilities, the IRGC has transformed these groups from cell-based insurgents into highly capable organizations. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have assembled their own rosters of smugglers, businesspeople, traders, and engineers to procure and build weaponry. Although these groups may appear to outsiders as only loosely intertwined, they have over time come to perform the functions of the military-industrial bases of rich, powerful states.

Washington can no longer fall back on political pressure, sanctions, and military strikes.

The IRGC has also subcontracted training to axis groups. Through this process, the groups have built direct connections to one another and to other powerful state and nonstate actors. In 2010, for example, all documented drone training for Hezbollah took place in Iran and was led by Iranian instructors. By 2015, Hezbollah had begun hosting training courses for other groups, such as Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias. According to a forthcoming Century International report, as of 2026, the Houthis were teaching the Somali al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab how to fly basic drones at training sites in Yemen, and, alongside IRGC operatives, may be tutoring Sudanese Islamist factions on how to build one-way attack drones at sites in Sudan.

For a number of years, IRGC capacity building appeared to be paying off. Between 2011 and 2023, Hezbollah played a growing role in propping up the Iranian-allied Assad regime in Syria’s civil war, building a substantial footprint at military bases across the country alongside the IRGC and enjoying a constant flow of arms and other material support from Iran. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq helped push back the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Iraq and Syria and established a powerful presence within the Iraqi state security apparatus. The Houthis seized control of northwestern Yemen, and Hamas’s military and political grip on Gaza strengthened.

Then came October 7. Hamas’s attack on Israel had enormous repercussions for Iran’s allies around the region, and, ultimately, Iran itself. Hamas was decimated, along with much of Gaza, by the Israeli response. In September 2024, Israel launched strikes on Beirut that killed Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and much of the organization’s senior command. Later that year, as Iran and Hezbollah decreased their support and focused on their own survival, a rebel offensive caused the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Then, during the 12-day war in June 2025, the United States and Israel launched waves of attacks on Iran that leaders in both countries claimed had obliterated the Islamic Republic’s air defenses and its ability to launch missile and drone attacks. Months later, an Israeli strike killed a number of senior Houthi leaders in Yemen, including the top commander of the group’s drone and missile programs. Israeli officials, along with some U.S. officials, were confident that Iran and its regional allies were in terminal decline.

Yet less than a year later, they appear to have reconstituted themselves. Iran launched a huge campaign of drone and missile strikes on Gulf infrastructure and U.S. military installations across the Middle East in response to Operation Epic Fury. Iraqi militias have launched hundreds of drone and missile strikes against U.S. military bases in Iraq and Jordan, along with waves of attacks on the Gulf states. Hezbollah has mounted a stiffer-than-anticipated defense of southern Lebanon after the Israeli ground invasion in March. And a year after the Houthis agreed to end targeting of American commercial ships—a move the Trump administration took as a sign the group had been defeated—they have resumed attacks on vessels passing through the Red Sea, imposing a de facto blockade on Saudi ports along the waterway. They have also targeted Saudi energy infrastructure for the first time since the UN-brokered truce brought the Yemeni civil war to a halt in 2022.

SELF-ASSEMBLY LINE

American and Israeli predictions of Iranian and axis defeat missed an important shift in the way the IRGC and its allies organize their military and organizational capabilities. Whereas military and technological know-how were once concentrated within the IRGC, they have since become embedded across a much more diffuse, interconnected ecosystem. Even in early 2025, after the setbacks in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and after the Trump administration designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, Iran and axis groups were able to quickly rebuild themselves and their arsenals by tapping into the diversified knowledge bases and supply lines they had developed over the last 15 years.

The clearest evidence of that shift is in how several of Iran’s proxy groups now arm themselves. When, in 2024, we started investigating how Houthis arm themselves, American and European officials repeatedly told us that the main source of the group’s arsenal was weapons smuggled from Iran into Yemen on traditional wooden sailing vessels known as dhows. But by that point, the Houthis had already begun building their own weapons, using supply chains as complex as the local and global trade routes that crisscross the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

American and Israeli officials had similarly assumed that most of Hezbollah’s arms came from Iran, and that the collapse of the Assad regime would cut off an important weapons supply line. But Hezbollah, like the Houthis, had built alternative supply chains. The 2024 arrest of a Hezbollah operative found to have been using a mass of shell companies in Spain and Germany to re-export drone parts to Lebanon should have sounded alarms in Washington and Israel that the group’s procurement structures were changing: months before the collapse of the Assad regime, the operative was attempting to transport as many as 2,000 engines—enough to reconstitute Hezbollah’s estimated pre-2023 drone fleet.

Iran and its allies still smuggle the old-fashioned way, too.

These new supply lines, in which parts travel separately across the globe and are assembled near the point of use, are also useful in neutralizing another important U.S. strategy for countering Iran and its proxies: sanctions and terrorism designations, which threaten punitive action against individuals suspected of working with designated groups. At the turn of this century, these tools were useful for combating arms proliferation because the United States and its allies controlled most of the exports, trade routes, and financial networks needed to buy and move arms and advanced manufactured goods.

Until the mid-2010s, the United States and its allies were able to throttle Iran’s drone program by targeting individuals and companies suspected of supplying parts to Tehran. In 2009, for example, German authorities arrested a group of Iranian businessmen who were trying to ship drone engines to Iran by claiming they were Jet Ski engines. But Chinese manufacturers now produce the intermediate goods needed to build drones at increasing scale and shrinking cost. China does not restrict the sale of many of the parts used to make weaponized drones because, Beijing claims, they are made for civilian use. In many cases, it refuses to take its own punitive measures against Chinese firms that have been sanctioned by the United States for selling them for this reason. Today, Chinese and Iranian copies of those purported Jet Ski engines are powering the Russian and Iranian drone campaigns in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Using Chinese commercial websites such as Alibaba, Iran and axis groups can build the Ababil-T, historically the workhorse drone of the axis fleet, from readily available Chinese-origin parts for about $1,500. All Hezbollah needs to obtain and retrofit the first-person drones it has been using to target the Israel Defense Forces since early 2026 is a credit card, access to YouTube instructional videos, and a bit of manufacturing acumen.

The chokepoints that matter for drone proliferation are not under U.S. control.

The sheer volume of global trade makes it nearly impossible for even well-resourced states to track these shipments from China. In most cases, parts are bought by anonymous shell companies, often registered in so-called secrecy jurisdictions—places where local laws allow companies to be incorporated without publicly disclosing their ownership structures—and transported in some of the five million to six million shipping containers that navigate the high seas daily. The containers are dropped off and collected at trade hubs that prioritize ease of doing business over screening cargo or sanctions compliance. When shell companies are sanctioned, their owners simply shut them down and register new ones.

Iran and its allies still smuggle the old-fashioned way, too. Tehran has a long track record of shipping arms to allied groups by sea, both through smugglers in small boats and with its own fleet of container ships. More recently, it has worked with a tangle of dodgy international businessmen to build a “shadow fleet” of vessels even harder for Western authorities to track. For example, one network of cargo ships regularly switches off its on-board automatic identification systems in the Gulf of Oman before going on so-called dark runs to the Iranian port of Shahid Rajaee, turning the systems back on only after the ships have cleared the Strait of Hormuz. Many of these ships transported unidentified cargo to Syria before the collapse of the Assad regime and continue to carry shipments to Houthi-controlled ports in Yemen. The ships are connected, through shell companies, to a single Syrian businessman who has been repeatedly sanctioned for moving oil and money for Iran and Hezbollah.

Iranian state-owned ships, meanwhile, have recently returned to the Mediterranean after avoiding the region between 2023 and 2025, docking regularly at Libyan ports. Israeli and Libyan researchers have concluded that Iranian materiel is now being transported from Libya to Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, Sudan, and potentially Gaza. And even under the new Shara government in Syria, which has pledged to prevent arms transfers, cross-border smuggling into Lebanon is still happening via Syrian roads and ports. Put together, these continually evolving supply lines and relationships have helped transform Iran’s network of regional allies into a complex and highly adaptive web of actors.

DEAL WITH IT

The new reality of the axis requires a new strategy. A more promising approach to blunting the threat posed by Iran and its allies must first acknowledge that relying on military force and economic warfare alone will only lead to repeated cycles of conflict that could drag the United States into yet another open-ended war in the Middle East.

Washington should instead prioritize some combination of continued disruption of axis commercial and financial networks, splitting from the axis groups not yet fully embedded in the ecosystem, such as the groups in the Horn of Africa the Houthis are recruiting, and engaging politically with more established groups, particularly as they take on governance in the territory they hold. Deals would not necessarily resemble bilateral agreements like the U.S.-Houthi truce. Instead, they should take the form of structured agreements, aimed at brokering lasting country-level political settlements across the region, accompanied by U.S.-Iranian diplomacy.

Alternatively, Washington could throw caution to the wind and adopt the IRGC’s playbook, building its own array of state and nonstate actors to fight against the axis on the United States’ behalf. But training groups to develop and use their own weapons would be an arduous undertaking, and it would come with serious risks. Given the United States’ spotty record building up allied states’ conventional forces and its tendency to discard state and nonstate allies as soon as they no longer serve Washington’s purposes, attempting to do so again could have catastrophic consequences.

However it decides to deal with the axis, Washington will struggle to rein in the spread of advanced weapons that can be built from commercially available parts on its own. The United States may still be the world’s most advanced economy but the chokepoints that matter for drone proliferation are not under its control. China, for now, has little reason to help Washington curb purchases of drone parts by armed groups. But Beijing is worried about the threat drones pose to its own domestic security, and entrepôts such as the United Arab Emirates that have long looked the other way may be changing their own thinking after weathering waves of Shahed-136s earlier this year. A multilateral initiative to improve tracking of dual-use components and agreed-on penalties for their transfer to nonstate armed groups could constrain armed groups’ ability to build large drone arsenals in the future.

The right approach will combine all these efforts, eschewing the sort of totalizing theory of the case that has failed in the past. What Washington cannot do is turn back time. Hoping for the collapse of Iran and its allies around the region will not be enough to destroy this still potent network. New ideas are needed.

America’s Superintelligence Dilemma

Hal Brands — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For years, experts have predicted that artificial intelligence would revolutionize world politics. History may record 2026 as the moment the revolution arrived. From the start of this year, continuous developments have underscored the possibilities and perils of the AI era, from the use of AI in U.S. military interventions to the emergence of AI cyberweapons that can significantly outperform human operators. “Loss of control” episodes—cases in which AI models escape human control and supervision—have become more common. U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, tout the American lead at the frontier of AI development, even as they worry about what dangers lurk over the horizon.

Some experts believe that humanity is within striking distance of artificial general intelligence: technology capable of performing a wide array of tasks as well as or better than humans. There is growing speculation that artificial superintelligence, or ASI—a slippery concept, loosely defined as AI models that vastly exceed human capabilities across all tasks and domains—could arrive within a few years. Today’s top AI models, by contrast, surpass human capabilities only in narrow areas such as mathematics and data processing and lag human capabilities in areas such as common sense and deep reasoning. The emergence of ASI might bring breakneck economic and scientific progress or unlock game-changing military advances that upend the global balance of power. But it could also fundamentally shift the relationship between machines and humanity, perhaps, in the most dire scenarios, allowing near-omnipotent systems to eradicate their human creators.

Much of this is hypothetical. It’s still uncertain whether ASI is possible, when it might be developed, or whether it could be kept aligned with the flourishing of humanity. These uncertainties dominate discussions of any policy response. But because the implications of ASI would be seismic, it is important to assess how the United States might approach the technology and how different ASI strategies would affect Washington’s engagement with the world.

One option is to pursue supremacy by sprinting toward ASI while holding rivals back. This strategy rests on the belief that the greatest danger to the United States is not uncontrollable ASI technology but a rival controlling that technology. Another option is shared development, in which the United States seeks to responsibly unlock the benefits of ASI for humanity—and tamp down the dangerous dynamics of a race to build it—by developing it within a safety-conscious consortium of states. A third option is suppression: the United States would forgo development of ASI and stop anyone else from building it on the basis that superintelligence is just too dangerous to be unleashed on the world.

Each of these options prioritizes different aspects of the ASI challenge—the quest for geopolitical advantage, the need to safely develop a revolutionary technology, the importance of minimizing existential dangers. Yet each also contains serious risks or flaws and requires making potentially irrevocable bets on a currently unknowable future. If the underlying premise driving a particular strategy proves wrong, that strategy could fail in catastrophic ways. It would thus be a mistake for U.S. leaders to fully embrace any of these options right now. The best near-term option is prudent hedging, to position the United States to take advantage of a variety of possible futures while informing its ability, eventually, to make a clearer choice.

RISKS AND REWARDS

The urgency of the ASI debate flows from surging achievements and expectations. Top AI models have become increasingly adept at solving complex problems across a growing number of domains. Some show superhuman capabilities in areas such as cyberwarfare. Leading experts speculate about a coming “intelligence explosion”—the point at which AI becomes capable of rapidly and continually improving itself. The widely read AI 2027 scenario—a 2025 forecast, developed by the nonprofit AI Futures Project, that depicts step by step how a fast takeoff could unfold—hypothesizes that ASI could emerge in this decade. Likewise, Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, has written that “humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power.”

If ASI does materialize, the impacts could be epochal. ASI optimists predict that it could conquer climate change by unlocking new carbon-capture technologies or cure cancer by resolving the mysteries of human biology. ASI-enabled breakthroughs in propulsion could allow deep-space travel and planetary colonization. Yet this tremendous economic and scientific promise exists alongside potentially epic disruptions. ASI might empower bad actors by enabling devastating cyberattacks and bioweapons; usher in the automation of military decision-making, causing wars to become faster and less controllable; or unlock wonder-weapons, such as sensors that render the oceans effectively transparent. It could transform the balance of power by lending a massive military advantage to countries that achieve ASI first. There’s no guarantee that these advantages would fall to democratic societies. Amodei warns that ASI could cause a “totalitarian nightmare” by enabling all-encompassing surveillance and automating repression.

The gravest risk is that superintelligence could enslave or exterminate humanity. ASI might help the human race destroy itself by helping nihilists unleash novel pandemics or cause automated “flash wars” that result in nuclear catastrophe. Or perhaps a technology smarter than its creators will ultimately come to view them as threats to be eliminated or resources to be exploited. Some AI executives put this “probability of doom” as high as 25 or even 50 percent.

None of this forecasting is certain. Some experts doubt that ASI is technically possible or argue that material impediments, such as limitations on computing power (or “compute”) and electricity, could forestall its arrival. Others question whether ASI will produce lasting, first-mover advantages, believing that its economic and military benefits, like those of most prior technologies, will accrue in gradual and uneven ways. Leading observers also disagree on the possibility of alignment—the question of whether ASI can be controlled and made supportive of human flourishing. Yann LeCun, who served as chief AI scientist at Meta, puts the probability of doom at just 0.01 percent. These uncertainties cannot be resolved with the information now available, yet they weigh heavily in debates about how the United States should proceed.

FIRST ON TOP

One potential option is to pursue ASI supremacy—to ensure that superintelligence emerges first, and exclusively, in the United States. This strategy uses ASI to support democratic values and U.S. primacy. It holds that dominance is the path to safety with respect to geopolitical challenges and existential risks.

The logic supporting such a course is threefold. To start, ASI supremacy is indispensable because of the revolutionary gains it offers. The United States cannot maintain global primacy or uphold world order if a tyrannical rival dominates the most crucial technology, and freedom may be extinguished if superintelligence is harnessed by repressive, neototalitarian states. Additionally, supremacy is essential because the potential for recursive self-improvement—the ability of advanced AI models to almost perpetually improve themselves—means that an early lead compounds exponentially. Finally, American hegemony is the best protection against both geopolitical disaster and rogue ASI. Keeping ASI aligned with human flourishing will become harder, perhaps impossible, if the technology spreads to rogue or irresponsible actors. But if ASI emerges exclusively in the United States, Washington can ensure it develops under prudent safeguards and compatible with democratic values.

In practice, seeking ASI supremacy means racing and restricting. The U.S. government would help frontier labs race toward ASI through measures ranging from massive data center buildouts to stronger cyberdefenses and protections against sabotage or other physical attacks. Washington would also need to mandate heavy investments in safety research while creating a domestic compute governance regime that ensures only reliable developers can build frontier AI models. Meanwhile, the United States would deny China the compute needed to power advanced AI models through strict semiconductor export controls and other restrictive measures. If necessary, it could even use cyberattacks, sabotage, or direct strikes against China’s AI infrastructure to disrupt Beijing’s progress. Accelerating U.S. innovation and impeding adversaries would become the foremost mission of the national security state.

Supremacy envisions unilateral advantage, but it can work only with multilateral consent. The United States can’t speed ahead without help from allies and partners that already occupy vital nodes in the global AI ecosystem—Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and others. The United States also can’t suppress Chinese capabilities if those allies flout U.S. export controls. The quest for supremacy thus requires involving key allies in ASI development, or at least sharing the benefits through military alliances and technology-diffusion arrangements. Just as the United States’ atomic monopoly helped underpin the creation of the modern international order in the wake of World War II, an ASI supremacy strategy would perpetuate U.S. primacy and the dominance of democratic values in the decades ahead.

If ASI does materialize, the impacts could be epochal.

But Washington cannot discount the risks. Such a strategy presumes that ASI is achievable, will be geopolitically transformative, and can be aligned with human flourishing. None of these are sure bets. If ASI is an illusion, or simply produces limited advantages, then the United States may squander vast resources pursuing supremacy over it. And if ASI turns rogue, the consequences could be catastrophic. Ideally, a supremacy strategy hedges against these negative outcomes by both reducing the number of firms working on superintelligence and promoting robust safety procedures. But the competitive logic of the strategy—the urge to beat China—could undermine that effort by pushing firms to innovate faster than safety protocols can keep up.

Beijing is also unlikely to stand idly by as Washington seeks ASI supremacy. Semiconductor export controls have helped the United States build a huge compute edge, but an all-out ASI push could bring an equivalent all-out Chinese circumvention effort—through smuggling, investments in algorithmic efficiency, and intensified efforts to steal U.S. breakthroughs. Or perhaps China’s answer would be even more explosive. If Beijing concludes that Washington is racing toward ASI dominance, it might tighten rare-earth exports to hobble U.S. innovation or strike Taiwan to deny U.S. access to cutting-edge chips.

Finally, the domestic and international politics of supremacy present immense challenges. American voters might reject a push for ASI dominance if the resulting pain—job displacement, safety concerns—arrives faster than the gains. ASI supremacy also requires allies to place enormous trust in the United States as they help it develop groundbreaking capabilities that could be used for good or ill. But today, even close allies are seeking to slash their dependence on a superpower that seems less reliable and more predatory than before.

HANGING TOGETHER

Washington’s second option is to pursue shared development, in which the United States strives for superintelligence through a collective project involving allies and rivals. Shared development has its own threefold logic, beginning with teamwork: developing ASI will likely require the collective wisdom of researchers from around the world. Next is legitimacy: because ASI implicates the fate of humanity, its development must be undertaken by an inclusive coalition. The last element is safety: the dangers posed by ASI may reside less in the technology itself than in the prospect of a bitter race to acquire it. Removing the race dynamics would allow a revolutionary technology to be developed more responsibly, bringing shared uplift rather than suicidal harm.

The shared development strategy involves erecting a global architecture for ASI development. An international oversight board would decide how far and fast to push technological innovation. Multilateral bodies would govern frontier compute, pursue joint safety research, and test new models. Countries that joined this consortium would receive privileged access to ASI research, whereas those that pursued individual projects would face isolation and penalties.

Critically, shared development demands Chinese participation. No global safety regime is credible if China’s impressive AI capabilities are excluded, and only China’s involvement can tamp down the dangerous dynamics of a race. Shared development would thus entail sweeping shifts in U.S. geopolitical strategy, from a focus on great-power rivalry toward an emphasis on deep, sensitive cooperation with Beijing. It might have to accept tradeoffs against its old priorities, such as protecting Taiwan or maintaining tech primacy, to secure Chinese participation. The implications would also be profound for the private sector. U.S. firms that have invested billions of dollars in proprietary research would be compelled to collaborate with global competitors and made subject to global oversight.

Some AI executives put the “probability of doom” as high as 25 or even 50 percent.

In theory, shared development offers the benefits of ASI while mitigating the dangers. In practice, there are likely to be problems. Building international regimes is slow work, and institutional progress may lag behind technological progress. It took years to create the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its supporting institutions. Today, ASI innovation could easily outpace governance, especially if breakthroughs unfold rapidly. Insisting on global consensus could cause paralysis as ASI models surge ahead.

Shared development also surrenders U.S. advantages. The United States would have to share the breakthroughs and limit the capabilities of its AI firms, forgoing any hope of asymmetric gains vis-à-vis China. That might be a reasonable sacrifice if shared development transcends great-power rivalry. But genuine Chinese participation seems unlikely. The United States has long sought Chinese cooperation on transnational challenges and risk-reduction measures, and Beijing has long demanded geopolitical concessions in return. Additionally, Beijing has never shown much willingness to permit the monitoring or intrusive inspections that shared development would require. Neototalitarian regimes don’t typically sincerely surrender sovereignty to global bodies unless they plan to deceive and defect.

Indeed, shared development would likely suffer from a built-in asymmetry: secretive autocracies would find it easier to cheat than transparent democracies. China could sign up for shared development to gain insights about U.S. research and then defect, sprinting unilaterally when the moment seems right. The ultimate risk, then, is that shared development would still end in an ASI race while also fatally compromising Washington’s ability to win.

LIMITED EDITION

A final option is suppression: ensuring that no country crosses the ASI threshold, including the United States. The rationale for this option is that it is existentially reckless to run any risk of ASI catastrophe, and impossible to bring that risk down to zero. How can humanity can ever be sure it can retain control over something with intelligence that dwarfs its own? Moreover, voluntary restraint won’t suffice. Nihilists or terrorists may seek ASI precisely because they desire catastrophe; in a competitive world, states may face irresistible temptations to seek a decisive advantage. Suppression thus seeks multilateral cooperation in halting ASI development but ultimately rests on the U.S. government’s ability to thwart such innovation at home and abroad.

This strategy would require the U.S. government to set strict boundaries on domestic ASI research and development, regulating the availability of compute for AI labs to keep them short of perilous thresholds and closely monitoring leading firms. The United States would also need to lead the creation of a multilateral regime to expand these restrictions globally, enlisting like-minded states to share intelligence and punish violators. But because the temptations to defect from this system would be great and summoning broad cooperation takes time, the United States would have to assume much of the suppression burden, applying harsh penalties such as sanctions, cyberattacks, or military action to hold violators back.

Suppression optimizes for safety, and if alignment cannot be ensured, suppression is the only safe option. If, alternatively, alignment is possible with sufficient investments in safety, suppression could buy time for those investments to mature. Yet this strategy might not work.

ASI’s uncertainties cannot be resolved with the information now available.

Humanity has an imperfect record of restricting dangerous military technologies, such as nuclear weapons. Suppression regimes have sometimes delayed, but never halted, the spread of general-purpose technologies with broad economic benefits. Proponents argue that the centrality of compute creates a technological chokepoint that Washington can regulate. But with more efficient algorithms or other innovations, compute could cease to be a binding constraint. And if some foreign actor does develop ASI, the United States could easily find itself on the wrong side of the superintelligence revolution.

Pursuing suppression could also change the nature of U.S. power, globally and domestically. Suppression is not a peaceful strategy; it might require using intrusive, even kinetic measures against violators. And because the costs of being late to halt violators are prohibitive, Washington would presumably err on the side of early action. Without a global consensus on ASI abstention, suppression could thus bring unending U.S. interventions into other countries’ affairs. It could also distort the United States’ own social compact: indefinite prohibitions on innovation and intrusive domestic surveillance could deform the relationship between American society and the state.

Not least of all, suppression brings high costs in terms of benefits not realized. Innovation always offers rewards as well as risks. Untold millions died in accidents, wars, and other byproducts of the Industrial Revolution. Nuclear weapons pose existential dangers to humanity but also delivered great geopolitical gains for the United States in World War II and the Cold War. Suppression may offer some protection from existential dangers but only by sacrificing all the gains—economic productivity breakthroughs, novel solutions to hunger and disease—that ASI might bring.

DON’T CHOOSE, WISELY

The strategies of supremacy, shared development, and suppression are all imperfect options. Each requires a coherence and ruthlessness in its purpose that the U.S. government might find hard to achieve. Yet the key problem is even more fundamental. Each of these strategies gambles on guesses—about the pace of innovation, the prospects for global cooperation, or the feasibility of getting ASI to serve human well-being. If these guesses are wrong, the costs could be extreme. Under these circumstances, U.S. policymakers can’t responsibly commit to any of these strategies. The better approach is a hedging strategy meant to mitigate the perils of a premature choice while positioning the United States more advantageously for an eventual one.

That means, for a start, deferring policy moves with high costs or irreversible consequences. An all-out campaign to cripple Chinese AI infrastructure would position Washington well for supremacy but renders impossible shared development. Strict, unilateral limits on frontier AI development would support suppression but undermine the U.S. ability to compete in any eventual ASI race. Washington should instead choose actions now that preserve, rather than foreclose, future choice.

To that end, the United States should defend the leverage and flexibility a frontier lead provides. Technological advantage is of benefit whether Washington is surging to superintelligence or negotiating the terms of shared development. Taking that route demands policies, such as securing semiconductor supply chains or expanding the energy grid, that facilitate AI development, as well as using government capabilities to protect frontier labs from theft or sabotage. Maintaining a tech advantage also means employing and incrementally strengthening semiconductor export controls while doing the planning and intelligence work that might one day inform a harder-edged approach to restraining Beijing.

Beijing is unlikely to stand idly by as Washington seeks ASI supremacy.

Washington must also boost its commitments to safety research and establishing prudent guardrails. Because the question of whether ASI can truly be aligned with human flourishing is so pivotal, intensified safety research is a precondition to making an informed decision. Likewise, taking steps to limit accidents or malign uses, such as restricting early release of advanced models capable of designing bioweapons, can reduce the risk of incidents that might narrow the space for later choice.

Developing contingency plans and decision triggers is, likewise, important. The U.S. government should game out foreseeable scenarios, such as extreme loss-of-control events or a breakthrough to recursive self-improvement, to understand the responses they require and their long-term implications. Washington should consider what a Manhattan Project effort for ASI would require, following a surprising leap in Chinese AI capabilities, or what sort of stringent regulatory regime would be needed to respond to a major ASI catastrophe.

It is equally critical to invest in institutions that support multiple strategies and information that helps select among them. Each of these strategies envisions some sort of domestic regulatory regime for compute, whether to simulate innovation or monitor and slow it. Thus, the U.S. government, perhaps under the leadership of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, should consider the contours, costs, and benefits of various such regimes and what new or expanded institutional capacity might be required to implement them. Similarly, investing in better informational awareness regarding Chinese views of ASI, the properties of leading models, or the state of safety research is essential.

Humanity has an imperfect record of restricting dangerous military technologies.

Under any strategy, of course, Washington will need the support of democratic allies. Gratuitous disruptions to U.S. alliances now reduce Washington’s global reach on ASI issues in the future. But there’s also a case for cautiously engaging China on AI safety, as long as preemptive U.S. concessions on other technological or geopolitical priorities aren’t the price. Such a dialogue might one day create a forum for U.S.-Chinese cooperation if some unexpected AI shock shifts great-power incentives. At the very least, it can inform U.S. policies by offering insight into China’s calculus.

Finally, the United States must build its resilience against worst-case outcomes. RAND analysts have devised a “rideout strategy” meant to help the United States adapt and recover in the face of an adversary’s AI breakthrough while limiting vulnerability in the interim—for example, by hardening nuclear command-and-control infrastructure. Such preparations will give Washington time to consider how to best approach ASI by providing insurance against a scenario in which the United States comes in second in a race.

A hedging strategy does come with drawbacks. ASI technology could advance so rapidly that hedging is overtaken by events. Implementing politically or bureaucratically challenging policies is made even harder by the absence of the focus and urgency that comes with a clear-cut goal. If uncertainty becomes endemic because key questions about ASI cannot be resolved, hedging could feel like treading water. If hedging devolves into drift, it could weaken the United States’ ability to face a variety of ASI scenarios. But for now, the alternatives to hedging are dangerous, half-informed gambles. When the stakes are so high and uncertainty is so pervasive, a strategy of smart, active hedging may be the strongest bet.

The War China Might Choose

Eugene Gholz, Kerby Davis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Analysts generally organize the options for a Chinese military move against Taiwan into three categories: an invasion to seize direct control of the island; a “joint firepower strike” that would bomb Taiwan’s cities and political institutions, terrorizing Taiwanese civilians into surrender; and a maritime blockade to starve Taiwan into submission. All these missions are complex, high-cost gambles for China that would consume large quantities of military assets and result in immense casualties and property damage. A blockade would add the risk of directly attacking third parties—specifically, cargo ships from other countries—making it more likely that China would also have to fight international powers, including the United States. Nevertheless, many analysts think that a blockade is the most tempting scenario of the three for Beijing, because it would avoid sending Chinese forces up against Taiwan’s prepared defenses and would capitalize on what Chinese leaders consider Taiwan’s vulnerabilities, including the island’s extreme dependence on international trade. Still, a traditional blockade risks escalation and imposes extensive military costs on China.

But China has an underexamined option, one that could generate the effects of a traditional blockade with a lower cost for Beijing. A “blockade by fire”—a missile strike campaign directed specifically against Taiwan’s port infrastructure—would minimize the risks that China would face. This kind of strike would not focus major combat operations in the heart of Taiwan’s cities, as in the case of an invasion or a joint firepower strike. Nor would it put third-party ships at risk, as with a traditional blockade. And because a blockade by fire would use only a small number of missiles aimed at a narrow set of targets in Taiwanese ports, it would avoid the need to enforce a cordon around the island and would not expose China’s navy to defensive missile fire from Taiwan. Under a blockade by fire, international commercial ships would still be free to sail around the island, meaning that other East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea could continue the bulk of their trade essentially undisturbed. Ships could even sail to Taiwan, but they would be unable to load and unload cargo in the heavily damaged ports. Simulation models of attacks like this suggest that China could substantially interrupt Taiwan’s trade and keep it suppressed for an extended period, using only a few hundred ballistic missiles.

Global trade would have to adjust to any type of blockade against Taiwan. In fact, the indirect economic pain to other countries from a blockade by fire would be the same as that of a traditional blockade scenario. The key difference is that a blockade by fire would not involve direct Chinese attacks on non-Taiwanese ships. The destruction would be limited to Taiwanese assets, helping Beijing maintain its argument that the operation was strictly an internal matter and ensuring that international powers couldn’t claim a greater need to intervene.

Overall, a blockade by fire would make efficient use of China’s military assets. Given the limited number of targets, the Chinese military would be able to reserve the bulk of its capabilities, including the majority of its missile arsenal, to deter the United States and other countries from coming to Taiwan’s aid. Intervention is always possible, but a blockade by fire minimizes this risk compared to alternatives. Taiwan, and its international partners, should prepare for such a strategy. Investing in responses to China’s traditional threats is important, but will not be enough. The island should prepare its ports and its people for the supply disruptions of a potential blockade by fire.

BLOCK AID

Any move that Beijing may make against Taiwan, traditional blockade or otherwise, is fraught with risk. If they decide on conflict, Chinese leaders have strong incentives to find military strategies that minimize backlash, and although a traditional blockade is seen as less escalatory than an invasion, it still presents challenges for Beijing. To enforce a traditional blockade, China would likely need to fire its weapons. Although China’s maritime militia fleet regularly harasses other countries’ small and vulnerable fishing boats, the container ships and bulk carriers responsible for Taiwan’s commerce dwarf any Chinese militia vessel. Giant cargo carriers would have little reason to comply with Chinese requests to divert their course. Mariners follow the “law of gross tonnage”: small ships give way. In fact, it is in their interest to do so, because the hulking commercial ships will hardly notice them in a collision. Just as the U.S. Navy was forced to open fire periodically to maintain its blockade against Iran, China would likely have to fire on any determined ships headed for Taiwanese ports in order to actually stop them. China would thus have the last clear chance to back down from all-out warfare. As the American economist Thomas Schelling argued decades ago, the country with the final opportunity to avoid escalation often loses in a crisis.

In attempting a traditional blockade, China would have already chosen to fight a war against Taiwan. Any blockade is by definition an act of war. But the actions necessary to enforce a traditional blockade risk expanding the war beyond Taiwan, because the threats against non-Taiwanese vessels would not only pressure the United States and others to intervene to protect their shipping but also give them discrete targets against which to retaliate. It is easier for outside powers, notably the United States, to intervene against a traditional blockade than against other military coercion because they could do so in a limited way, focusing only on China’s aggressor ships. The intervenors could do this even if they would be unwilling to escalate to direct strikes against the Chinese mainland. Thus, a traditional blockade would inevitably create a hot conflict, and one that makes it relatively easy for China’s opponents to respond.

To enforce a traditional blockade, China would likely need to fire its weapons.

A blockade by fire, however, would accomplish the goal of a traditional blockade without these drawbacks. In our research, we ran a series of simulations that modeled Taiwanese port operations, how Chinese missile attacks might inhibit them, and what Taiwan might do to defend them. The results suggest that China would need to fire fewer than 500 missiles over 100 days to reduce Taiwan’s imports to 15 percent of their average peacetime level. Beijing would not need to actively track and intercept commercial ships traveling to Taiwan, making direct confrontation with outside powers less likely. China could also be confident that few international ships would be accidentally hit while docked and that few missiles would land outside Taiwan’s ports, where they could hurt civilians. For all these reasons, a blockade by fire might be more acceptable to Chinese leaders than other military options against Taiwan.

Although a blockade by fire involves a missile strike campaign, it is not simply an alternative form of joint firepower strike. The key difference is the type of target being attacked. Under a blockade by fire, as with a traditional blockade, the damage to Taiwan occurs through increasing supply shortages and rising prices, not conflagrations in Taiwan’s major cities. A blockade of any type would give Taiwan the chance to acquiesce before it suffered high costs. Unlike a firepower strike’s irreversibility—destroyed buildings, decapitated government institutions, and dead civilians—a blockade by fire would allow Taiwan’s people and leaders to see the suffering coming before it fully hit. China might even promise to rapidly bring aid to Taiwan if it agrees to Beijing’s stipulations, providing further incentive for Taiwan to capitulate quickly.

ADAPT AND SURVIVE

To deter a blockade by fire, Taiwan’s most obvious move would be to bulk up its missile defenses. But while some missile defense is surely a component of Taiwan’s best response, making it the centerpiece would be a losing strategy. Modern missile defense systems are increasingly effective, but they are also enormously expensive. Each interceptor missile costs somewhat more than each ballistic missile that it is designed to intercept, and the defending force often needs to fire more than one interceptor at each incoming missile to create a high chance of interception. Taiwan would wind up on the losing side of a spending race with China over short-range ballistic missiles. And even if the United States were to support Taiwanese defense efforts, the two would still struggle to keep up with Chinese capabilities.

Taiwan would similarly struggle if it tried to deter a blockade by fire by threatening China’s ports with reciprocal short-range ballistic missile strikes. Unlike Taiwan, China has many domestic resources to draw on, land borders across which it can bring imports even if its seaborne trade is disrupted, and ports that are out of Taiwan’s missile range. Any Chinese threat to hurt Taiwan therefore outpaces what Taiwan could threaten in response. Taiwan’s allies could attack Chinese ports that are out of Taiwan’s range, but that would be a dramatic escalation against a nuclear-armed power and would still not address China’s resources advantage.

Taiwan’s best hope, then, for deterring and defending itself from a blockade by fire would be to prepare to survive one. Taiwan should stockpile essential items, including the parts and materials needed to repair port infrastructure. Taiwan and its willing partners should also conduct exercises that specifically focus on preparing the island’s ports to operate under crisis conditions and to practice mitigating and repairing damage. These exercises should take cues from other countries that have faced aerial attacks on their port infrastructure, such as Germany and the United Kingdom in World War II, North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and Ukraine in its war with Russia. Taiwan and its partners could also build or subsidize a reserve of roll-on, roll-off cargo vessels—ships with built-in ramps that allow wheeled vehicles to drive cargo directly between the vessel and the port. These ships can continue to load and unload even without the dedicated port infrastructure, such as cranes, that is needed for modern container shipping. Although these vessels are less efficient than container ships and bulk carriers, they could play a valuable role in getting essential supplies into Taiwan in the case of a blockade by fire.

OUTSIDE THE BOX

Ultimately, the greatest inhibitor of a Chinese blockade by fire is that blockades of any kind are hard. Historical experience—including during both world wars, Cuba’s long history under U.S. embargo, and more contemporary conflicts in Ukraine and the Red Sea—suggests that target economies adjust. They find ways to trade in spite of blockades, and they draw on domestic resources that they would not use in normal times but that can help under duress. These adjustments add to the fact that while blockades can impose privation, modern governments and their nationalist populations can accept a lot of suffering before considering major political concessions. Even absent Chinese aggression, people in Taiwan increasingly identify as Taiwanese and do not seem inclined to repeat Hong Kong’s experience of acquiescing to Chinese rule. Most Taiwanese prefer the status quo, and a Chinese military move might compound Taiwanese resistance by stirring a nationalist backlash.

Nevertheless, Chinese leaders are subject to their own political pressures, and they may view China’s military buildup and modernization optimistically. Leaders who come to believe they can succeed with an attack, whether through innovation or perceived military might, sometimes decide to go for it. Or they may fatalistically roll the dice in a moment of stress. Because a blockade by fire lowers the military and political risks inherent in taking action against Taiwan, there is a strong possibility that Beijing would reach for this option if Chinese leaders deemed military action necessary.

Taiwan of course needs traditional defenses. Notably, a robust force of mobile land-based antiship and surface-to-air missiles would help Taiwan against both a Chinese invasion and a traditional blockade. But analysts also need to expand their vision of creative strategies that China could use to coerce Taiwan. To maintain deterrence against a blockade by fire, Taiwan and those hoping to help it need to first acknowledge such an option and then dynamically adapt the island’s defenses to deter and survive this alternative approach.

The New Forever Wars

Dafna H. Rand — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As the United States’ quagmire in Iran makes clear, wars are almost always much harder to stop than they are to start. Over the past 80 years, less than 20 percent of the roughly 300 wars tracked by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program ended in a clear victory by one side. A slightly smaller percentage ended in negotiated settlement; more than 60 percent had no formal ending. And the longer a conflict continues, the harder it becomes to broker a settlement. In wars fought between 1945 and 1989, another study found, mediation succeeded 37 percent of the time when it began within the first one to three months of fighting but only 19 percent of the time when negotiations began a year or more into a war.

The United States’ two-decade war in Afghanistan and decade-plus fighting wars in Iraq were no exception. In the wake of those conflicts, Washington has tried to avoid getting ensnared in so-called endless wars by avoiding deploying boots on the ground. In some cases, that means the United States relies primarily on airpower, as it has in Iran—an approach that comes with its own military challenges. But in many others, instead of participating directly, the United States is equipping close allies to fight shared threats and joint adversaries. Between 2010 and 2025, Washington more than tripled its annual security assistance for allies, from $15 billion to $46 billion, and increased its intelligence support and arms sales.

The United States has backed several of its partners’ wars in recent years. In 2015, Washington began coordinating U.S. intelligence and military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen. Since 2022, it has supported Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. And the United States has aided Israel throughout the war in Gaza following Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023. In all three campaigns, Washington supplied or sold the overwhelming share of the military hardware, intelligence support, training, and diplomatic backing. Yet its efforts had mixed results. The United States’ support greatly enhanced the military prospects of allies, but in every case, Washington found itself unable to shape how these wars were fought, and more critically, when and how they might end.

Supporting an ally’s war effort is often in the United States’ interest. But if Washington wants to participate in conflicts from afar, it needs a better strategy for maintaining influence over the primary combatants. It needs to enter with a clear idea of the war’s aims and how to achieve them. It needs to secure its partner’s commitment to the same objectives, to be honest with that partner about how far U.S. backing will go, and to set up mechanisms to ensure that the partner’s military adheres to American standards of conduct in battle. Ultimately, continuing to support allies’ wars without a shared strategy and without clear conditions for aid will not deliver the United States the advantages it seeks. It will only lead to more tension with close allies and more conflicts that don’t end.

THE LEVERAGE TRAP

Together with my colleagues at the Brookings Institution, I spent the past year interviewing more than 30 senior American officials, reviewing hundreds of public statements and documents, and consulting foreign officials to put together a comprehensive picture of how Washington engaged its partners during recent conflicts abroad and how those American efforts were received. What we found was that the United States tends to encounter many of the same problems when it supports its allies’ wars, even when the specifics of each situation vary quite a lot.

At the start of a conflict, Washington has much more power to shape a partner’s decisions than it does later in the war. When allies come under attack, they feel stunned and insecure, and they tend to seek Washington’s support in the belief that they will need U.S. military power to win their fight. Yet the U.S. government consistently fails to use its leverage early on. By the time it tries to push its partners to change operational designs, adjust tactics to minimize civilian harm, or come to the negotiating table, its influence has already eroded.

This failure can partly be attributed to the enormous political and moral pressure Washington feels to offer unconditional support when a close ally is attacked, as Ukraine was in 2022 or Israel was in 2023. Demanding strategic concessions from a beleaguered ally can feel like a betrayal. But holding back defers crucial conversations about goals, methods, and the limits of American aid.

Wars are almost always much harder to stop than they are to start.

Consider Ukraine. A few months into the war, the Biden administration publicly tied Ukrainian battlefield gains in May 2022 to the objective of improving Ukraine’s negotiating position with Russia, implying that Washington might expect Kyiv to start discussing peace terms before it could regain all of its land. But it is not clear that Ukrainian leaders understood or accepted the American strategy. As one U.S. official recalled, “It’s not that we didn’t take the time to think through the mission’s objectives—we did.” But Washington “recognized from the start” that its objectives of ensuring that Ukraine remained a viable sovereign state, maintaining NATO unity, and avoiding a U.S.-Russian war “were perhaps not the same objectives Ukraine had.” As a result, U.S. officials felt reluctant to push Ukraine toward diplomatic negotiations, especially while the Ukrainian military was advancing and congressional support for providing security assistance remained high.

Hard conversations with allies were also missing in the early days of the conflicts in the Gaza Strip and Yemen. The United States did not demand in the weeks after October 7 that Israel develop a “day after” plan for governance in Gaza once the Israeli military had sufficiently degraded Hamas—or even agree on what degrading Hamas meant. Had it done so, Washington could have had much more influence over how Israel prosecuted the war, insisting that non-Hamas security and political forces be allowed to start operating in Gaza once Israeli forces had eliminated large numbers of Hamas leaders in certain areas. Instead, as the war went on, the gap widened between the United States’ aim to prepare for post-Hamas governance in Gaza and Israel’s aim to destroy Hamas and prepare for military reoccupation.

Similarly, at the outset of the conflict in Yemen in 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates promised the Obama administration that it would be over in six weeks. U.S. officials did not insist on seeing its partners’ plans for negotiating with the Houthis, particularly how they would handle the Houthis’ demand for inclusion in Yemen’s government. Washington spent most of the first few years of the conflict ramping up its support for the Saudi-led coalition rather than pushing for negotiations that could address the war’s political roots. One exception was a brief window at the end of the Obama administration, but at that point the parties simply stalled until the Trump administration took office. The Biden administration was also able to broker a cease-fire that lasted until October 7, 2023, but the war subsequently resumed. The Houthis are now stronger than they have ever been.

A NARROW WINDOW

U.S. public and political support for aiding a partner’s fight also diminishes over time. Some of this erosion is a result of general war fatigue (and fatigue with providing foreign assistance), but support can decline more quickly if Americans consider the partner’s conduct in war unjust. In Yemen, for instance, bipartisan congressional support for the Saudi-led coalition collapsed within a year of the conflict’s start. During that time, depending on the source of the tally, anywhere from 3,000 to 9,000 civilians were killed, and by most estimates, over 60 percent of these deaths—as well as significant destruction of civilian infrastructure such as roads and factories—could be directly attributed to air attacks the U.S. military was supporting. By 2016, senators from both parties were publicly questioning why the United States was supporting these airstrikes. In 2019, Congress passed a war powers resolution directing the president to prevent U.S. forces from providing any type of logistical support for the bombing campaign, including aerial refueling and intelligence sharing. (President Donald Trump vetoed it, and Congress did not override the veto.)

In Israel’s case, American political and public support started off extremely high but soon began to drop sharply. A Gallup poll in the fall of 2023 found that 50 percent of Americans approved of Israel’s military campaign and 45 percent disapproved; some polls found even higher levels of approval. Yet civilian casualties in Gaza and Israel’s destruction of infrastructure and restriction of humanitarian aid quickly raised concerns. The Biden administration was able to change Israel’s conduct only on limited occasions, and it focused most intensely on improving humanitarian conditions, not on trying to reduce the civilian harm of Israeli military operations. During the first weeks after the October 7 attacks, for instance, it persuaded Israel to reverse a decision to cut off Gaza’s water, electricity, and Internet access, and in April 2024, after Israeli forces killed humanitarian workers from the U.S. food relief organization World Central Kitchen, U.S. President Joe Biden angrily called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and secured a temporary lifting of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid. It was not enough to halt the decline in American approval of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. According to Gallup polling, 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the military operations in the fall of 2024, and 60 percent disapproved a year later.

Support for Ukraine has followed a different pattern. The conduct of the Ukrainian military has never been seriously contested, and most Americans agree that Moscow is the aggressor and that Kyiv is fighting a just war with important geopolitical consequences. Even so, the protracted congressional debate over a supplemental funding bill from September 2023 through April 2024 showed how support can slip. After Trump, the Republican presidential candidate by March 2024, questioned the amount of aid being sent to Ukraine, many Republicans in Congress wavered, catching Biden administration officials off guard. But as one official put it, “Ukraine fatigue” had already set in across segments of the Republican Party—Trump had merely activated it.

In every conflict, U.S. policymakers have a short window of opportunity before domestic approval for supporting a foreign war begins to shrink. As public backing wanes, it becomes increasingly difficult to pass bills in Congress that provide an ally with security or economic aid. The president begins to face pressure from the electorate to display less public support for the ally, which harms Washington’s relationship with the partner it is trying to both assist and influence.

MINDS OF THEIR OWN

Another factor limiting the United States’ influence over the course of an ally’s war is the partner’s ability to withstand American pressure. Strong foreign leaders often use congressional relationships, public diplomacy, and media access to resist Washington’s demands. Netanyahu has a long history of employing such tactics and did so again during the Gaza war. In 2024, he launched a public relations campaign to criticize Biden for holding up weapons transfers to Israel—even though the only delay involved the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration deemed too large to be used in a place as densely populated as Gaza. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has displayed similar skill. Zelensky’s direct appeals to Congress for specific weapons pressured the White House to approve these transfers in the first years of the war, as did his criticism of the Biden administration’s delays in delivering more advanced systems. Worried about feeding Zelensky’s narrative that Washington was not bold enough in its support, some American officials hesitated to push Kyiv toward negotiations or to apply pressure when the U.S. military disagreed with Ukraine’s operational plans.

By acting too timidly around its allies, Washington has at times missed opportunities to change their behavior. When the bill for supplemental aid to Ukraine faced headwinds in late 2023 and 2024, Biden might have seized on the occasion to speak frankly with Zelensky about the limits of American support and the urgency of exploring negotiations while public backing in the United States remained strong. The Biden administration could have sent more technical experts and midlevel diplomatic staff members to Israel to convey concern about Israel’s rules of engagement as early as late 2023, when it was clear that the two countries were not on the same page about Israel’s choice of targets, choice of weapons, and approach to its first two major offensives, in Gaza City and Khan Younis. Later efforts of this kind appeared to work, as when the Pentagon persuaded the Israeli military to use limited strikes that led to less immediate civilian harm during the May 2024 offensive in Rafah or when the U.S. secretaries of state and defense sent a letter in October 2024 insisting that Israel lower its impediments to the delivery of humanitarian aid. Had Washington used similar tactics sooner, it might have had greater success at protecting civilians, ensuring that humanitarian access remained open, and pushing Israel toward operational strategies that would have limited civilian harm and been more effective against Hamas.

MISSED CHANCES

Part of the problem, however, is the structure of the U.S. government itself. Maintaining a coherent strategy across a sprawling national security bureaucracy becomes more difficult over the course of a long conflict. The president and his senior advisers often have an endgame in mind when Washington decides to support a partner’s war effort, but the task of building that partner’s military capacity and translating lofty political goals into a diplomatic strategy falls to bureaucrats much further down the chain of command. If these people are not given direct access to a partner country, they are not able to impart the United States’ objectives or learn more about the partner’s aims through the day-to-day practices of training and advising. U.S. allies can thus get their requests for military aid filled from afar, avoiding the forms of contact that would give the United States influence over their operational strategies and political goals.

During the war in Ukraine, for example, officials at the U.S. European Command, the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and the State Department have focused primarily on giving Ukrainians what they need to win on the battlefield. Meanwhile, without a large American diplomatic and military presence inside Ukraine, Pentagon and White House officials were sometimes left in the dark about Kyiv’s strategic and tactical plans. And the United States itself did not begin to seriously deliberate the terms on which the war might end—especially the scope of the bilateral security guarantees Washington might provide Ukraine—until 2024. In part, this was because there were serious disagreements within the government about whether the United States should push Ukraine toward negotiations at all.

By acting too timidly around its allies, Washington has missed opportunities.

Ultimately, it is up to policymakers to make use of the bureaucratic expertise and legal tools available to them to put pressure on foreign partners. During the war in Gaza, midlevel experts in humanitarian law and operational planners raised objections to Israel’s conduct, but they generally were not given access to the small circle of senior U.S. officials that made sensitive decisions about policy toward Israel. Key decision-makers did not make sufficient use of the extensive expertise across the Defense Department to guide the Israeli military on how to make gains against Hamas while minimizing civilian harm in Gaza’s dense urban environments. And the Biden administration did not invoke the Leahy Laws, statutes that forbid the United States from helping foreign security units that violate human rights, or Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which bans security assistance to a partner blocking access to U.S. humanitarian aid, to pressure Israel. The administration therefore left on the table some of the tools that could have helped it compel its partner to behave differently in combat.

Washington’s failure to pull all the levers at its disposal may also have led to missed opportunities for peace. In 2024, for instance, the Biden administration delegated the task of getting Hamas to agree to a cease-fire and hostage release deal to its Arab allies rather than pressuring the group itself. It also largely avoided public criticism of the Israeli government when its partner rejected the same deal, in the belief that any American rebuke would harden Hamas’s position and make it more difficult to reach an agreement in the end. Netanyahu and Hamas’s leadership remained intransigent, and the war continued into 2025. The United States should never have felt the need to choose between pressuring its ally to end a war and pressuring its ally to improve its conduct during the war. Both are important and can be done at the same time.

The Trump administration did apply more pressure on Israel to agree to a cease-fire in October 2025, ending major combat. But its failure earlier that year to continue pressing Israel to allow access for humanitarian workers and supplies enabled near-famine conditions in parts of Gaza, and its more recent failure to press Israel for a workable postwar plan has allowed Israel to occupy up to 70 percent of Gaza without making any meaningful progress toward a stable political arrangement. Once again, not applying pressure meant the United States lost control.

In Ukraine, Washington may have waited too long to devise a strategy for ending the war. At first, many U.S. officials were so focused on ensuring that weapons deliveries to Kyiv would not trigger nuclear escalation that they lost sight of the need to put Ukraine in a strong negotiating position. Others were hesitant to press Ukraine to make a deal, uncertain that they could accurately judge the country’s military prospects after underestimating its ability to hold back a much larger, more powerful Russian army in the early weeks of the war. But some officials believe Kyiv could have negotiated a peace agreement in mid-2022 if Washington had pushed its ally harder to engage in negotiations after the success of its Kherson and Kharkiv counteroffensives. The conditions for decisive action were there: Congress still staunchly supported Ukraine, and Europe and the United States shared a strong commitment to the war effort and to NATO unity. Today, Ukraine’s recent military success may yet prove that trying to win on the battlefield, however long it takes, was the right strategy, but Washington is likely to have less influence over any negotiations than it would have had four years ago. The United States’ standing with its European allies has eroded substantially since Trump returned to office, and many of them will not want to see Washington, with its questionable support for NATO and European security, dictate the terms of peace.

GETTING BACK IN THE GAME

If Washington wants a say in how and when allies’ wars are resolved, it needs to find ways to work more productively with them while they are fighting. The most important lesson is both the simplest and the most difficult: American policymakers must use their leverage at the beginning of a conflict rather than wait for an opportunity that may never come. They should demand that a partner agree to a joint strategic plan as a condition of U.S. support, however difficult it may be to reach a consensus on war aims, postwar plans, and benchmarks for success. To formalize this joint plan, one U.S. official we interviewed proposed requesting that allies sign a written agreement reviewed every three to six months that lays out the terms of American support and the mutual obligations of both parties.

Another key to success is conditioning American security assistance on a partner’s adherence to the laws of armed conflict. When the United States knows that it will likely have concerns about a partner’s conduct—as when a war involves urban combat or the partner is fighting a nonstate group, such as Hamas or the Houthis, that itself abuses the laws of war—Washington should establish mechanisms as early as possible to adjudicate potential violations of the terms it sets. A standing review committee made up of lawyers and military experts should be insulated from political pressures and empowered to approve or deny security assistance based on clear benchmarks, including a partner’s meeting U.S. standards for military accountability and humanitarian access as established by the Leahy Law and the Foreign Assistance Act. These expectations should be conveyed to American partners at the start of the war.

U.S. policymakers must use their leverage at the beginning of a conflict.

The United States must also negotiate with the adversaries its partners are fighting. This is not a betrayal of American allies, but an essential part of making a settlement possible. U.S. partners are almost never able to end a conflict unilaterally. Washington’s tendency to focus on influencing its partner’s decisions while delegating engagement with the adversary to intermediaries—such as Qatar in the case of Hamas—ensures that U.S. leaders lack a clear picture of what it will take to successfully negotiate an end to war.

Finally, it is essential that the United States minimize conflict and confusion among its own government branches, departments, and agencies. When partners receive conflicting signals from different American officials, it is easier for them to play one U.S. agency off another. They learn to shop for the message they prefer and ignore ones they dislike. All levels of the U.S. government should be communicating and following one coherent strategy, from the president down.

For the foreseeable future, the United States is likely to remain heavily involved in its allies’ conflicts. Some partners may resist U.S. guidance on how and when to wage war, how to observe the laws of armed conflict, and which political outcomes best serve their security and Washington’s. Others, having witnessed the frictions that have emerged between Washington and its allies in recent years, are already following Israel’s and Ukraine’s examples in building up their own defense industrial bases to reduce their dependence on U.S. assistance. Yet in the end, when U.S. allies are faced with the prospect of war, many of them will still turn to the United States for the first-class military equipment and security, intelligence, and diplomatic support no other partner can offer. It will be up to Washington to ensure that when it decides to support a partner at war, it does so with a clear understanding of what leverage the United States has and how it can best use that leverage to keep its partner on a path that leads to the war’s end, on the best possible terms.

China’s Quiet Quest to Dominate Latin America

Natalia Cote-Muñoz — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For years, U.S. officials have fretted about Chinese megaprojects in Latin America. Successive administrations have, for example, sounded the alarm about Peru’s Chancay Port, which is controlled and operated by a Chinese shipping giant, and about the Chinese-built Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, in Ecuador. In response, Washington has issued diplomatic condemnations against Latin American officials, revoked visas, and even threatened to use force against the region’s governments.

It is easy to see why the United States is so worried about major infrastructure being built and operated by China. In the eyes of many U.S. officials, these projects are a way for Beijing to accumulate leverage over Latin American governments—a concern that Washington has voiced since 2017, when the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy warned that China sought to “pull the region into its orbit through state-led investments and loans.”

But Washington is stressing about yesterday’s challenge. Beijing is no longer betting on multibillion-dollar megaprojects to improve its position in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, it is embedding itself in the region by fostering smaller, quieter endeavors, often at the municipal or provincial level. Chinese firms are developing lithium projects in multiple Argentine provinces. They operate every power distributor serving the Peruvian city of Lima. And they are providing gear to Latin American police officers in many municipalities across the region, as well as installing surveillance camera systems.

Individually, these actions might seem superficial. But in aggregate, they are making recipient states dependent on China. Beijing’s security provisions, for example, mean that plenty of Latin American cities and provinces now effectively rely on China for their law enforcement and emergency response infrastructure, and, in Lima’s case, electricity infrastructure. It is a dependence that many national politicians never intended and may not even have seen coming. They may not be aware of the potential risks associated with this level and type of dependence and may not be prepared to manage the potential fallout.

These endeavors are not unique to Latin America. China is engaged in similar efforts in other parts of the developing world, as well. They are, after all, much cheaper than many of its earlier initiatives—and more difficult to identify. Beijing, in other words, is pioneering a kind of statecraft that privileges quiet, subnational capture over big, flashy projects.

SMALL BUT BEAUTIFUL

During much of the 2010s, Beijing poured billions of dollars into in Latin American infrastructure, such as ports, massive dams, and even a transcontinental railway meant to link Peru’s Pacific coast to Brazil’s Atlantic. (The railway was never constructed, but versions of it are still under discussion.) These investments came as part of China’s famous Belt and Road Initiative, in which it has spent enormous sums on megaprojects across the global South. In doing so, China hoped it could secure commodity supplies, open markets for Chinese firms, and then convert its economic weight into diplomatic alignment—including convincing countries that still recognized Taiwan to switch recognition to the mainland.

But starting in the early 2020s, China changed course, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Big projects, it concluded, cost too much at a moment when the Chinese domestic economy was under strain, and drew too much geopolitical backlash. Instead, it opted to focus on what it calls “small but beautiful” endeavors. These are investments that do not have an imposing physical presence and are typically aimed at smaller national and subnational systems. Beijing itself applies this label narrowly: its 2025 white paper on Latin America reserves the term for small poverty-reduction projects. But the phrase is a useful lens for this newer kind of Chinese statecraft—one of bottom-up investments that compound into interdependence and leverage.

To see how important this model has become, simply follow the money—or at least the parts that can be counted. Traditional Belt and Road loans to the region have faded from nearly $25 billion in 2010 to an average of $1.3 billion a year. But judging by estimates that track deals firm by firm, Chinese companies still invested $8.5 billion in Latin America in 2024, down just a tenth from the year before—and that figure is likely an undercount. The difference is that this money now flows through commercial transactions rather than through sovereign loans from Beijing. Much of it manifests in Chinese firms acquiring existing assets, such as power distributors and mines rather than the Chinese government spending on new megaproject construction. Other times, it still manifests as new hardware, but of a much smaller kind, such as policing gear. Because these deals are for items that investment statistics do not usually capture—equipment sales, training programs, donations, and maintenance contracts are procurement, not investment—they attract less notice. They are sometimes shrouded in confidentiality clauses, and often surface only when a local journalist finds the contract.

Chinese firms have provided thousands of electric buses for cities in South America.

The Chinese government is still involved in this ecosystem, including, sometimes, through top-down directives. But its role can be more oblique. It often subsidizes its firms at home, which then go on to sell their wares to Latin American governments at low costs. As such sales and contracts pile up, China comes to recognize that the accumulated deals are strategic assets. Eventually, Beijing folds various commercial projects within a country into formal cooperation agreements with that state’s government. For example, in Argentina’s lithium-rich Jujuy Province, a research exchange between the two countries’ geological agencies grew into an explicit state partnership focused on surveying the province’s salt flats. Eventually, a Chinese company took a majority stake in a local lithium project.

China has worked its way into all sorts of local systems to build up its influence. Chinese firms, for example, have provided thousands of electric buses across cities in South America—a necessary addition in one of the world’s most urbanized regions. Chinese-made trains carry commuters on all three of Buenos Aires’s main electric rail lines. And perhaps most notably, China has been involved in providing internal security assistance. Safety is a major political issue in Latin America, where the homicide rate is around 20 per 100,000—three times the global average. Cartel and gang violence, cargo theft, and ransomware attacks loom large for most citizens, and so politicians repeatedly promise more action. China has offered itself as an affordable supplier of policing equipment.

Recipient countries often start by acquiring rudimentary provisions—donated anti-riot gear and armored vehicles for Bolivia’s armed forces, donated motorcycles for Caribbean police—each deal meeting the needs of officials short on equipment and under pressure to be seen as stopping crime. Eventually, the relationship progresses to more sophisticated items. In April 2025, for example, Rio de Janeiro’s governor flew to China and signed deals with the Chinese surveillance technology companies Hikvision and Dahua for more than 27,000 body and vehicle cameras. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from the U.S. city of El Paso, local officials bought 1,000 facial-recognition cameras from the same two vendors (both of which were then on the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s prohibited list). By 2018, 62 percent of Argentina’s surveillance equipment imports came from China, compared with just five percent from the United States. Today, at least 35 Latin American cities use Chinese surveillance systems.

Beijing can make investments almost undetected.

Once these deals are made, cooperation accelerates. Sometimes, it reaches the highest levels of government. Consider, for example, the development of ECU-911—Ecuador’s nationwide emergency response system. The project began in 2011, when Ecuador’s government contracted with CEIEC, a Chinese state-owned defense-electronics company, to create a surveillance network running on Huawei cameras. A $240 million China Development Bank loan financed the system, secured not by sovereign collateral but by an oil sales contract committing PetroEcuador, Ecuador’s state oil company, to ship 72,000 barrels a day to PetroChina over the system’s operating life. In time, the project eventually attracted high-level attention from Beijing. In 2016, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Ecuador, where he personally inaugurated a joint security laboratory at ECU-911’s headquarters. Beijing followed up by donating 10,000 AK-47s to the Ecuadorean armed forces. By early 2018, Chinese facial-recognition technology was in use at ECU-911 sites. And in 2024, Ecuador’s independent municipal and private cameras were routed into the network. What began as one contract became the backbone of Ecuador’s domestic security apparatus.

Finally, China has been training Latin America’s law enforcement officials. Argentine, Brazilian, Cuban, and Panamanian delegations have all studied at the China Criminal Investigation Police University in Shenyang. In September 2024, China’s public-security minister signed a training agreement with Nicaragua’s police director covering narcotics, cybercrime, and terrorism; previously, China had given Nicaragua equipment for riot control. The United States still trains more Latin American police officers than does Beijing. But unlike Washington’s courses, China’s are bundled with cameras, platforms, and judicial exchanges that make the rest of its architecture stick.

Most important for China, these initiatives attract relatively little attention. Most projects, after all, start small—a municipal equipment contract, a provincial memorandum, a maintenance agreement. They are, relatedly, relatively inexpensive for China. A camera contract, for example, costs a fraction of what a dam costs, in addition to earning little attention. As a result, a country’s national politicians may not even be aware that cities are steadily handing over more and more services to Chinese businesses. U.S. officials might not realize it, either. Beijing can thus make investment after investment almost undetected until, suddenly, it has built much of a state’s critical security infrastructure.

DURABLE BY DESIGN

Once China’s interlocking systems are in place, they are difficult to remove. This is deliberate. Over the course of its engagement with Latin America’s fickle democracies, Beijing learned that it needed a strategy that outlasts political cycles, as this one can. Once a city’s law-enforcement infrastructure is mostly made in China, its police and prosecutors have studied in Shenyang, and its courts have signed a cooperation framework with Beijing—as Venezuela’s did in 2023—the relationship acquires institutional memory and interpersonal ties. By cutting deals with regional officials, for instance, China builds durable political relationships that can quickly grow more valuable, should these politicians win higher office.

Moving away from Chinese systems is also financially difficult for recipients. A Latin American municipality that has inked multiple contracts with China and wants to diversify could probably find affordable, non-Chinese contractors for specific needs, like anti-riot equipment. But it is hard to move off integrated systems. It is also hard to find alternative suppliers for slightly more sophisticated items. China, for example, builds the world’s most economical and widely adopted surveillance systems. In the countries where it sells them, Chinese companies often drive domestic competitors out of business, thanks to generous government subsidies. Chinese cameras are, in turn, often impossible to service without continued Chinese assistance because most camera designs that the country produces are proprietary. Replacing them is extremely expensive and difficult. That means that when the cameras break, cities have to seek assistance from Chinese businesses. There is a reason why a 2020 study was unable to locate a single government that adopted a Chinese surveillance and policing platform and then completely got rid of it. Governments were more likely to restrict specific features than to rip the systems out.

As a result, many Latin American countries are highly vulnerable to economic coercion. If a state takes a position contrary to Beijing’s interests, China can tighten the screws on it by withholding spare parts, software updates, and technicians, turning a commercial partnership into a tool of leverage. Even without coercion, depending on China has frustrated many regional politicians. Ecuador provides a case in point. ECU-911 never measurably reduced crime; in fact, homicides in Ecuador rose from about 1,000 in 2016 to over 4,800 in 2022. The system also proved fragile. By 2022, roughly 1,100 of its 6,500 cameras were offline. Today, it barely functions, and Ecuadorian officials have grown unhappy with it. But the country has no alternative, and replacing the current system with a new one would be prohibitively costly and inconvenient. As a result, ECU-911 limps on, leaving the country reliant on Beijing for help managing its faltering emergency response mechanism. The same lock-in has already played out in telecommunications. The 4G networks of three of Brazil’s four major carriers, for example, were built by and are still serviced by Huawei, which made it impossible for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ban the company from 5G networks, despite his best efforts.

But for other officials, the trade is well worth it, given the lack of timely alternatives. In fact, many regional leaders actively seek out Chinese systems, which provide pragmatic solutions to their countries’ security and governance challenges. They also offer up solutions for regional politicians so quickly that it overwhelms more careful responses. Some Latin American states even make preemptive political concessions to China in the apparent hope of quickly acquiring its goods. In March 2023, for instance, Honduras broke off formal relations with Taiwan and established ties with Beijing. Three months later, it signed 17 cooperation agreements with China, including one for smart city work, and it expressed support for China’s Global Security Initiative (a framework designed to help contest the U.S.-led international order). Within a year, Honduras’s 911 system awarded an uncompetitive contract for a Chinese video-management system, and the country installed 3,500 Huawei-made cameras.

The result is a sovereignty question that is uncomfortably familiar to the region: What happens when local and national governments work against their own citizens for the benefit of foreign actors? Often, the answer is that the foreign interests win. When indigenous populations blockaded Argentina’s salt flats over the environmental impact of Chinese-backed lithium projects (and over not being consulted before the deal took effect), Jujuy’s governor fast-tracked a constitutional reform to ban road blockades. According to human rights groups, provincial police also assaulted and illegally detained protesters.

BOTTOM UP

Beijing’s efforts in Latin America have created risks that no one is properly accounting for. By building governance systems on Chinese systems, the region is trading short-term affordability for dependence—and, with it, Chinese leverage over its decisions.

But for China, the results are clear. Beijing has gained new influence in Latin America. It now has standing relationships in its municipal, provincial, and national governments, including nearly 180 sister-city agreements with 17 Latin American countries. China’s strategy also has no single point of failure. It bypasses the high-visibility sectors, such as ports, where it is most exposed to pushback, and instead embeds itself in the everyday needs of mayors, governors, provincial agencies, and low-profile central government departments.

Little wonder, then, that China runs the same model in other regions. In the Pakistani city of Lahore, the Punjab Safe Cities Authority installed Huawei-built command centers and 10,000 surveillance cameras on an $84.7 million contract. Kenya’s surveillance system runs on Chinese technology. China’s Ministry of Public Security has signed policing or security agreements with some 74 countries—featuring more than 200 deals in all. It has verifiably trained more than 12,000 foreign officers since 2000. Even in the United States, China made subnational inroads—namely, by selling port cranes to local authorities and operators—for years before the federal government moved to stop it.

In Chinese statecraft, doctrine does not always precede action. It can also follow the country’s choices, legitimizing and scaling what began as experiments. China’s first two Latin America policy papers, in 2008 and 2016, treated regional security as a sidebar to deals on trade and Taiwan. But its most recent one, published in December 2025, made security cooperation a central component. It did this because Chinese contracts and programs focused on Latin American policing and security were already functioning.

Because China’s doctrine ratified practice, the United States has been caught behind. To this day, it remains focused on guarding against a Chinese playbook based on building big, noticeable assets—ports, 5G networks, space infrastructure—rather than Chinese deals with municipal procurement offices and police academies. If the United States is serious about curbing Chinese influence in its hemisphere, it needs to pivot. It must figure out how to supply these actors with durable, effective solutions to their problems. Otherwise, China will remain the partner of choice for many in Latin America.

The Looming Nuclear Crisis in the Gulf

Yoel Guzansky — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Since its announcement on July 22, the U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement has alarmed nonproliferation experts. The 30-year deal would open the way for U.S. companies to develop the kingdom’s nuclear infrastructure, but it could also allow Saudi Arabia to pursue nuclear enrichment on its own soil. Although the agreement is still under congressional review, it has already created fears that it will weaken the U.S. “gold standard”—the strict requirements Washington holds nuclear partners to—and thus encourage other Middle Eastern states to demand similar capabilities.

Adding to the uncertainties, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a day after the announcement that the terms of the deal were “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords and insisted that “there will be no enrichment.” Neither of these conditions was apparently in the original announcement. Meanwhile, reports of confidential side letters to the deal have raised additional questions. Without knowing their contents, it is impossible to assess the agreement’s true implications.

Regardless of what conditions are present, however, the deal makes one thing absolutely clear: the central question is no longer whether Saudi Arabia will advance along the nuclear path but how its pursuit of nuclear power can be managed without igniting a nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia is already in the final stages of completing an Argentine-designed low-power research reactor, and it has reportedly received bids from China’s National Nuclear Corporation, France’s EDF, Russia’s Rosatom, and South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corporation to build two nuclear power plants. Although the kingdom has deliberately delayed making a final decision on those bids while negotiating with the United States, Saudi officials are determined to go ahead with their nuclear program as soon as possible.

This need not end in crisis. Rather than helping Riyadh make enrichment a national project and allowing it to go it alone on nuclear power, the Trump administration has another, better option: the United States should build a regional uranium enrichment framework through the establishment of a regional nuclear fuel bank on Saudi soil. Not only would such a mechanism reduce the risk of proliferation; it would also offer significant geopolitical and economic advantages, both to the United States and to the region. If Washington fails to explore this alternative, it could find itself facilitating the emergence of multiple national enrichment programs across the Middle East, driving a regional nuclear competition that will be far more difficult to contain than it is to prevent.

RELAXING ON RIYADH

Nuclear nonproliferation experts have reason to take Saudi intentions seriously. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman warned that if Iran went nuclear, Saudi Arabia would follow suit. Then, in September 2025, Saudi Arabia entered a mutual defense agreement with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Although that agreement did not mention nuclear weapons, it has reinforced the strategic ambiguity surrounding the Pakistani-Saudi relationship and serves as a reminder that Riyadh has alternative security options should it lose confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

Moreover, the United States has appeared to soften its position on Saudi nuclearization over time. In earlier years, Washington insisted that Saudi Arabia permanently forgo enrichment. Under the Biden administration, however, the United States considered building a U.S.-owned and -operated enrichment plant on Saudi soil as part of a broader Saudi normalization deal with Israel. Although the negotiations were interrupted by the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and never produced a final agreement, the Trump administration now seems to have gone further.

Along with opening the way to Saudi enrichment, the July agreement does not require Saudi Arabia to adopt the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol, which grants the IAEA expanded inspection and verification powers to ensure that nuclear materials and activities remain exclusively peaceful. Given the lack of Saudi transparency on nuclear issues, the construction of an enrichment facility in the kingdom thus carries the risk that the facility could be nationalized or diverted for military use during a crisis.

As of now, the Trump agreement is better understood as a framework than a final settlement. It leaves unresolved the central question of Saudi enrichment and nonproliferation requirements, and it has already triggered a new political battle in Washington over the future of U.S. nonproliferation policy. As a result, the deal is unlikely to be implemented in its current form without further negotiations or congressional scrutiny.

SOVEREIGNTY, WITH SAFEGUARDS

To understand why the United States needs to consider a different arrangement with Saudi Arabia, it is crucial to recognize that the question of enrichment remains central to the negotiations. The evolution of the Trump administration’s public messaging illustrates this. Following Prince Mohammed’s November 2025 visit to Washington, Energy Secretary Chris Wright insisted that the agreement “is not about enrichment.” Yet the July 2026 framework appears to leave open the possibility of a future Saudi enrichment capability. Whether this reflects a substantive policy change or simply contradictory signals, it underscores the lack of clarity surrounding one of the agreement’s most consequential provisions.

For Riyadh, civilian nuclear power is not merely a response to future energy demands or a component of climate policy. It is part of what it sees as a broader argument about sovereignty, status, and strategic balance. These issues directly shape how Saudi Arabia defines its willingness to commit to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime. The central distinguishing feature of the Saudi model is its refusal to relinquish sensitive components of the nuclear fuel cycle—above all, uranium enrichment—to multinational ownership or control. The kingdom is insisting that enrichment remain a sovereign national capability rather than part of a multilateral, IAEA-supervised fuel-cycle arrangement. Saudi logic is thus rooted in keeping its nuclear options open and securing its future freedom of action.

At the same time, Riyadh’s parallel dialogues with other potential nuclear partners, including China, has resulted in years of inconclusive negotiations, regulatory ambiguity, and continued uncertainty over whether Saudi Arabia ultimately seeks a conventional civilian nuclear program or one that preserves sovereign control over the full nuclear fuel cycle. The Saudi demand for a U.S. agreement that recognizes its right to enrichment is therefore not merely a technical issue but also an expression of deeper tensions in its relationship with Washington—tensions between its U.S. security dependence and its aspirations for strategic autonomy as a hedge against Iran.

The United States thus faces a dilemma. On the one hand, granting tacit approval to Saudi enrichment capabilities could set off a wave of regional proliferation should other states demand the same “right.” The United Arab Emirates, for example, might consider itself no longer bound by its own previous commitments to the United States. If Saudi Arabia were to eventually decide to pursue a military nuclear capability, the civilian nuclear project under development today could provide a shortened pathway. On the other hand, Washington has a strong interest in preventing China from getting access to the Saudi nuclear domain.

Equally important, however, is comprehensive international supervision of all Saudi nuclear-related activities. The kingdom must be persuaded to accept the full scope of IAEA safeguards, including the intrusive inspections required by the Additional Protocol. None of this is guaranteed in the current framework of the U.S.-Saudi deal.

POWER WITHOUT PROLIFERATION

One way to satisfy Riyadh’s quest for nuclear power that avoids most of these risks is to establish a regional nuclear fuel bank on Saudi soil. Such a project could be led by the United States and would be owned and managed by the IAEA. It would be designed to serve all Middle Eastern states that are parties to the NPT, including Iran. There is already a successful example of such a facility; in Kazakhstan, a fuel bank controlled by the IAEA supplies low-enriched uranium for civilian use.

A regional fuel bank offers many advantages. For Saudi Arabia, hosting the bank on its own soil could bring it the international prestige it craves but in a multilateral framework. It would also curb the appetite of states such as Egypt, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates for independent nuclear development, thereby lowering the danger of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. As the exclusive supplier of enriched uranium, the regional fuel bank would impose de facto limitations on their nuclear programs, yet by its existence, it would also lower their potential opposition to Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program.

At the same time, such a framework would deepen U.S. oversight of Saudi nuclear activities and help block potential Chinese penetration into the sector. IAEA ownership and supervision would also build international confidence in the peaceful nature of the program. And significant U.S. involvement in the construction and operation of the facility would provide Washington with sustained insight into Saudi nuclear activities, making deception more difficult.

Establishing a regional fuel bank would not reduce the threat from Iran itself, nor would it eliminate Saudi incentives to hedge if Iran eventually acquired nuclear weapons. But it would make it easier for Saudi Arabia to meet its civilian nuclear needs without developing a domestic enrichment capability, thereby making any future regional nuclear competition less likely. At the same time, guaranteed access to nuclear fuel under IAEA oversight would reduce the rationale for Saudi Arabia—and other regional states—to pursue domestic enrichment capabilities in response to Iran’s advancing nuclear program. In the long term, this framework could eventually provide a diplomatic model for addressing Iran’s own nuclear program, offering guaranteed access to reactor fuel under international auspices.

Such a project is not without risks. It could encourage states that might otherwise abstain from nuclear development to reconsider. Nevertheless, the drawbacks are relatively limited compared with the dangers posed by Saudi Arabia operating a fully autonomous nuclear fuel cycle, including a nationally controlled enrichment facility. Moreover, the volatile regional context underscores the need for innovative risk management. The Middle East is already experiencing a low-intensity nuclear competition, at least in its civilian dimension, and the challenge facing policymakers is how to slow and manage this trend. The real choice is not between enrichment and no enrichment but between a proliferation-prone national enrichment program and a multilateral, IAEA-supervised fuel-cycle arrangement that minimizes regional incentives for a nuclear arms race.

THE NUCLEAR THREAT IS GREATER

Today, the question is no longer whether Saudi Arabia will eventually be permitted to enrich uranium but under what conditions, under whose control, and with what implications for the global nonproliferation regime. As of now, the July framework seems unlikely to survive in its current form. Congress, for example, could insist on stronger nonproliferation conditions, such as an explicit prohibition on enrichment; the adoption of the IAEA Additional Protocol; or tighter safeguards. Saudi Arabia might well reject those additional conditions, particularly if they limit its sovereign control over the fuel cycle.

Trump’s declared requirement that Saudi Arabia also normalize relations with Israel could itself derail the agreement. In both Israel and the United States, there is little appetite to give Saudi Arabia sensitive nuclear capabilities without a major strategic payoff. But Riyadh may continue to insist that meaningful progress must be made on the Palestinian issue before any normalization can happen. Whatever the outcome, any relaxation of the traditional U.S. standard should be accompanied by equally strong nonproliferation safeguards.

A better way out of the current situation is to reframe enrichment not as a national right but as a regional, internationally controlled service. Such an approach would transform nuclear enrichment from a concession into a conditional reward. It would align American nonproliferation interests with Israeli security concerns and give Saudi Arabia a clear strategic choice: nuclear legitimacy and international status in exchange for transparency, restraint, and regional integration. If Saudi Arabia were to accept a regional fuel bank in lieu of a sovereign enrichment capability, that arrangement need not be conditioned on immediate normalization with Israel. Instead, it could become part of a broader, phased regional process in which progress on civilian nuclear cooperation, regional security, and normalization reinforce one another over time. In the larger strategic picture, nonproliferation is more important than normalization.

The Ambiguity Spiral in Iran

Erik Lin-Greenberg — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Ambiguity—vague language, mixed messaging, frequent policy shifts—has been a hallmark of the United States’ approach to the war in Iran. From almost the moment the conflict began, U.S. President Donald Trump has vacillated over its purpose, what risks he might be willing to take, and what the United States would consider victory. He has threatened to destroy Iranian civilization, then promptly signed a cease-fire agreement. He has floated the possibility of taking Kharg Island, the hub of Iran’s oil industry, only to quickly walk it back. And he has discussed imposing a 20 percent toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, only to declare that the waterway must be free to everyone.

In some cases, ambiguity can help countries settle wars. Leaders, for example, can leverage uncertainty to de-escalate a conflict or reach a stable peace agreement by letting both sides claim victory. If governments avoid drawing clear redlines, they can avoid pressure to escalate in response to attacks, creating space to cool tensions.

But Washington’s mixed messaging about the war in Iran has done more harm than good. Trump’s spectrum of threats, for example, prompted Tehran to see the war in existential terms and maximally fight back. The lack of clarity over the status of the Strait of Hormuz made the June memorandum of understanding negotiated by the two countries impossibly frail. To reach a more durable truce, the Trump administration needs to be clearer about its goals and more consistent in pursuing them. Otherwise, Iran and the United States will continue to get their wires crossed—and the next cease-fire could again collapse.

CAN’T GET A READ

When coercing a rival, a government must decide how to convey intent, capabilities, and redlines. One option is to be clear: explicitly and consistently defining a goal, identifying consequences for noncompliance, and articulating what the other side can count on if demands are met. Such clarity can let a rival state know what is at stake and encourage it to limit its response. But too much of it can do the opposite. If the rival knows just how far it can go toward a threshold without triggering retaliation, it will often escalate all the way to that point.

The other option is to be vague. Yet this can also have mixed consequences. If a state does not know how its adversary will respond to a certain action, it might hold back for fear of triggering painful counterattacks. But too many mixed signals can throw off an opponent’s risk calculus, giving rise to misunderstandings that can produce or worsen a crisis.

This is what happened with the United States’ Operation Epic Fury—its military operation against Iran. Trump has variously said, at different times, that the goal of the campaign is to degrade Iran’s missile capabilities and navy, prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, and end Iran’s support of its regional proxy network. On the first day of the conflict, he even suggested he wanted to dismantle the Islamic Republic. (On February 28, Trump encouraged Iranians to “take over” their government, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has carried out military strikes alongside Trump, echoed that sentiment.) Other Trump administration officials, meanwhile, avoided explicit mention of a political transformation for Iran, focusing on narrower military objectives.

For Iran, this mixed messaging was the opposite of reassuring. Uncertain of U.S. intentions, its officials assumed the worst—particularly given that airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the conflict’s opening hours. The country thus escalated massively, unleashing thousands of missiles and drones at infrastructure and U.S. military bases across the Middle East. If the United States had been clear from the outset that it was not gunning for regime change, Iran might have responded with more restraint and the conflict might have stayed more limited, as it had after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran in June 2025.

Ambiguity has not only ramped up the conflict. It has also undermined efforts at ending it. The June memorandum of understanding was meant to pause fighting, open the Strait of Hormuz, and start a 60-day period for further negotiations. But it failed, in part because of its unclear wording. The memorandum obliged Iran to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels.” The Americans interpreted this clause to mean that Iran would let all traffic through, as it did before the war. The Iranians, on the other hand, took it as a confirmation that they had authority over the waterway and only needed to open parts of it. (Iran wants shipping to pass through the part of the strait closest to its territory). At the end of June, Iran began shooting at commercial vessels for taking what it deemed to be unauthorized routes through the channel. As these attacks unfolded, Iran’s deputy foreign minister took to social media to announce that safe passage was “not guaranteed under vague arrangements.” The United States interpreted these strikes as violations of the cease-fire, so it responded by firing at Iran. A similar tit for tat played out in mid-July, resulting in the fighting that continues today.

FOG OF WAR

Although all conflicts are confusing and chaotic to some degree—hence the term “fog of war”—the one in Iran seems particularly ambiguous. Much of this ambiguity stems not from a calculated strategy to leverage obscurity for military or political gain, but from Washington’s struggle to settle on a desired end state. Deliberate ambiguity increases uncertainty by keeping opponents guessing. But when a country is ambiguous about its direction because of internal indecision, it tends to routinely back down from threats only to reissue them, eroding its credibility instead of merely throwing off opponents.

Still, the Trump administration is not fully to blame for the United States’ ambiguous posture. There are factors outside its control that undercut the White House’s ability to send clear and credible signals to Iran. Weak domestic support for the war, for example, makes it harder to convincingly threaten Tehran. According to July polling by The Washington Post and Ipsos, 68 percent of Americans believe that the war is “not worth fighting.” Tehran is well aware of this fact, which functions as a caveat to all of Trump’s statements. Even when the president makes seemingly clear and direct threats, Iranian officials cannot be sure he will follow through, given his domestic political constraints. Iran, in turn, may feel emboldened to brush off the administration’s threats and demands.

The United States’ relationship with its partners in the region also clouds its messaging and invites escalation. American armed forces launched the war alongside Israel, which has different interests, redlines, and objectives. In April, for example, Washington and Tehran signed a two-week cease-fire to stop the fighting, but Israel’s obligations under the pact were unclear. The Iranians said the deal required Israel to halt attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon; Israel argued that operations in Lebanon fell outside the pact’s remit. Washington backed its ally, and Israel ramped up strikes on Hezbollah targets. Tehran in turn accused American leaders of “oath-breaking” and likely concluded that the United States was not a credible negotiating partner because it could not stop its regional ally. Iran retaliated with missile attacks on Israel weeks later.

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF PEACE

Although ambiguity has been an escalatory force in the war with Iran, that does not mean it always worsens conflict. At times, it provides policymakers with room to maneuver, to downplay hostility, or to exaggerate their own accomplishments. Indeed, U.S. officials have, on occasion, leveraged ambiguity to achieve this very effect. Weeks after the April cease-fire was signed, Tehran launched drones and missiles at American warships in the Strait of Hormuz. This could easily have triggered a descent back into full-scale conflict. Yet because the exact terms of the April cease-fire were never publicly released, Trump was able to downplay the incident. The president told reporters that Iran had merely “trifled with us,” insisting the truce remained intact. When the United States launched retaliatory strikes, Trump soft-pedaled their significance, referring to them as “just a love tap.” Central Command similarly announced that it did “not seek escalation.” Iran appeared to accept that narrative and held off on more strikes.

Moreover, whether intentional or the result of incoherent policy, ambiguity can allow both Washington and Tehran to claim wins. For instance, because the Trump administration has offered a variety of aims for its war, it was able to claim it had successfully achieved several core objectives upon signing the June memorandum—destroying Iran’s missile capacity, degrading its navy, and limiting the reach of Tehran’s proxies—even though the military campaign had failed to compel Iran to change regimes or abandon its nuclear pursuits. Iranian leaders, for their part, could declare that they succeeded by virtue of staying in power, inflicting damage on U.S. and Gulf infrastructure, and demonstrating their chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz.

Since the conflict began, Trump has vacillated over its purpose.

These mutual declarations of victory ultimately could not save the memorandum. But similar assertions have de-escalated past crises. When Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024, Israel highlighted its success at defending its territory before retaliating with precision strikes against Iranian military targets. Iran’s government and media glossed over the damage caused by Israeli attacks and focused public attention on the fact that it had directly struck Israel for the first time. The lack of a clear outcome meant both sides could claim success, averting escalation.

A deliberate degree of ambiguity could also help end this conflict. If American and Iranian leaders keep their redlines vague when dealing with low-level military interactions, they will create off-ramps. But on the whole, the best way for the United States to settle the war with Iran is to be clearer about its objectives. The goals of Iran’s regime are evident: to maintain its grip on power at home, deter future attacks from its enemies, keep control over the Strait of Hormuz, secure release of frozen funds, and gain relief from sanctions. If Washington can sharpen its demands and communicate them consistently, both sides will be better able to focus negotiations and develop more viable plans for implementation—leading to a more durable agreement.

Why a Weaker Russia Keeps Fighting

Alexander Gabuev, Alexandra Prokopenko, Tatiana Stanovaya — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At the end of June, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an interview in which he declared, once again, that Russia would win its war against Ukraine. The Russian army, he said, was advancing along the roughly 800-mile frontline and occupying more Ukrainian land every day. Kyiv, by contrast, was flailing. He acknowledged that the Ukrainian drone strikes torching Russian oil refineries and other critical infrastructure deep behind the frontlines were “creating problems.” But Russians would adapt and persevere. “These terrorist attacks have no impact whatsoever on the situation,” he said.

If this were 20 months ago, Putin’s confidence would have been warranted. At the time, recently elected U.S. President Donald Trump was praising Moscow and criticizing Kyiv. Russian troops were making slow but steady gains on the battlefield. Putin could thus follow three strategies, as we argued in a March 2025 Foreign Affairs essay. Under Plan A, the Kremlin would work with the White House to make Kyiv accept a deal written in Moscow. Under Plan B, Putin would simply hold out until Trump pulled U.S. support for Ukraine, allowing Russian troops to roll to victory. Failing that, Putin could pivot to Plan C: continuing to fight and ultimately prevailing on the battlefield.

Today, however, Russia’s position has deteriorated. Plan A—winning over Trump—failed; Putin didn’t even mention the U.S. president in his recent interview. Plan B also went awry. Although the White House stopped providing Ukraine with many types of assistance, the United States has continued to supply vital intelligence to Kyiv and enforce sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, Kyiv has been able to turn to its European backers to make up for the lost aid. In fact, Ukraine is now better positioned militarily than it was last year. Russia, by contrast, is losing more soldiers than it can recruit and stalling out on the battlefield. Its economy is facing increasing trouble. Thus, Plan C, in which Russia would win by outlasting Ukraine, is also not working.

But that does not mean Putin will change course. Russia’s problems are real, but the country is nonetheless capable of sustaining the conflict. Its economy remains functional enough, and it has the manpower and weaponry needed to keep battling. Moscow is also devising new ways to regain the initiative. The Kremlin’s insistence on continuing to fight will make life worse for Russians, and so there are elites in Moscow calling for a negotiated resolution. But there is no indication that Putin is listening. The war, then, is almost certain to drag on.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

When Trump took office in 2025, the Kremlin believed it could achieve a diplomatic coup. During the 2024 campaign, Trump had pledged to end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours.” Upon taking office, he moved to pressure Ukraine’s leaders to accede to some of Russia’s demands. In February 2025, he insisted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agree to an immediate cease-fire with Russia and insinuated that Kyiv was responsible for the war. When Zelensky refused, Trump temporarily suspended intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine. Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference in which he declared that the United States was pulling back from Europe. And in August 2025, Trump and Putin held an amiable summit in Alaska. Afterward, the U.S. president said, again, that Zelensky was the reason the conflict wasn’t finished.

The trajectory of the Russian economy and the dynamics of the battlefield further boosted Putin’s confidence. In 2024, Russia’s GDP grew by 4.3 percent, fueled by military production and domestic consumption. Inflation was high but manageable. The Russian armed forces were recruiting more men than they were losing, whereas the Ukrainian army was losing more soldiers than it was gaining. The creeping occupation of the Donbas was costing Russia tens of thousands of troops, but these losses were tolerated as the country continued to advance. In 2024, Putin captured around 1,600 square miles of Ukrainian territory. Russia was producing nearly as many drones as Ukraine and using them in increasingly creative ways. It was producing far more traditional weapons, such as artillery shells and missiles, than was Ukraine or its Western partners. From the Kremlin’s viewpoint, a Russian victory was inevitable.

But not for the first time, Putin’s complacency led to overconfidence. He continued to push for conditions that Trump either could not accept or could not deliver—including that Kyiv surrender parts of the Donbas it still controlled and sign away much of its sovereignty. Trump’s two main envoys to Moscow, his friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, were amateurs in international diplomacy and proved unable to start a proper negotiating process. In Moscow, attitudes toward both men soured. Plan A failed.

For a time, Putin could still hope that Plan B, in which Trump would simply wash his hands of Ukraine, would succeed. In March 2025, Trump permanently stopped supplying Ukraine with free U.S. weapons, dealing a blow to Kyiv. By July 2025, he had zeroed out American financial assistance to the country. But smart diplomacy by Ukrainian officials and their European allies ultimately persuaded Trump to keep sharing intelligence with Kyiv and to continue selling weapons to Ukraine via a program paid for by Europe. The Europeans also stepped in to provide Ukraine with the financial assistance Washington had yanked, and they turned the continent into the secure rear of Ukraine’s defense industrial base—providing money, technology, and safe locations in EU territory for Ukraine to manufacture its own drones and missiles. At the same time, Trump grew frustrated with Putin over Russia’s failure to entertain any concessions. He kept existing sanctions against Russia in place and even blacklisted the Kremlin’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, putting pressure on Putin’s war chest.

LOSING BATTLES

With the failure of Plans A and B, Putin proceeded to Plan C—winning the war on the battlefield. Yet this plan is beginning to falter, as well. The war effort itself is clearly floundering: in 2025, the Russian army captured more than 1,600 square miles of Ukrainian territory (at a tremendously high cost in terms of casualties), but in the first half of this year, it advanced, at most, around 250 square miles. That is, in part, because Ukraine has built additional lines of defense with fortifications and minefields. It is also because Ukrainians have been able to expand what analysts call the “kill zone,” or the area along the frontlines where Russian soldiers are almost immediately detected by Ukraine’s drones and then hit.

The result has been even greater Russian fatalities. Although public data is unavailable, according to the Carnegie Endowment military analyst Michael Kofman, the number of Russian soldiers killed each month has almost certainly risen dramatically over the last 18 months. Taken together, the number of Russian troops either killed or grievously wounded each month sits at roughly 30,000. Meanwhile, the number of troops who join each month has fallen to 27,000—the result of dwindling sign-up bonuses in some Russian regions and a growing awareness of the death count. Moscow’s ability to decisively breach the Ukrainian frontline is increasingly in doubt.

The Kremlin is facing other troubles, too. Ukraine has carried out a highly successful midrange strike campaign that has disrupted Russian logistics and supply lines, further slowing the Russian military’s advance. Kyiv has scaled up its long-range strike campaign, hitting military production facilities and civilian infrastructure deep inside Russia, including oil ports and refineries. Thanks to these attacks, about one-third of Russian oil-refining capacity is offline, causing gasoline shortages, fuel rationing, and long lines at the pumps that lasted from June until late July, and that will likely return when Ukraine restarts these strikes. In July, Ukraine started blowing up warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, making the war top of mind for ordinary consumers and affecting the thousands of Russian small and medium businesses that sell via the retail firm. Kyiv has also intensified efforts to isolate Crimea by targeting fuel supply routes and power generation facilities in the occupied peninsula. And Ukrainian drones are attacking Russian oil tankers and cargo vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in an attempt to stop the country’s maritime oil and grain exports.

Kyiv’s campaign is damaging Russia’s economy. The official 2026 forecast for Russian GDP growth is a meager 0.4 percent. Inflation is on the rise. To avoid even higher prices, the country’s central bank is keeping the interest rate at 14 percent. But this punishing figure makes credit prohibitively expensive for many businesses. Most worrying of all for the Kremlin, the budget deficit has swelled by $73 billion in the first six months of 2026, far exceeding the $48.5 billion it had anticipated for the entire year. Trump’s war against Iran has increased Russian oil revenues, but these inflows are not nearly enough to produce a cash cushion, and the monetary reserves Russia accumulated from decades of commodities exports, including from the war-induced commodities price boom in 2022, are gone. In order to finance its growing war bill, the Kremlin has to keep cutting nonmilitary expenditures and borrow domestically, right as Russian bond buyers are requesting higher risk premiums.

Thanks to these troubles, the Kremlin is losing support at home. The economic difficulties, energy blackouts, Internet restrictions, and general wartime fatigue have pushed Putin’s approval ratings from around 80 percent at the beginning of the year to 66 percent in mid-July. All available polling data indicates that the public mood in Russia is growing more uncertain and anxious. The country is becoming less and less convinced that its soldiers can win and that Putin has a realistic plan.

PLAN D

Given all these failures, Western governments might think that Putin would be willing to consider a meaningful settlement. But sadly, there is little to suggest this is the case. In fact, in all his recent public appearances, Putin has indicated that his war aims haven’t changed at all. “Unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield, our adversaries are resorting to outright terrorist methods against our people,” he declared on July 27. “But the people of Russia can never be broken.”

Unfortunately, Putin still has the power to back up such statements. The Russian economy may be struggling, but it is not on the verge of collapse. Moscow can keep paying for the war by forcing businesses to absorb the cost of drone attacks rather than spending on better drone defenses or compensating damaged firms. It can make regional governments absorb rising defense costs via smaller budgets, and it can compel households to absorb war costs in the form of higher inflation. The Kremlin can cut more civilian expenditures from the national budget, too. Right now, Russia is spending eight percent of its GDP on defense—a high figure—but far less than what the Soviet Union or the United States spent during World War II, or the nearly 40 percent Ukraine is spending right now.

These policies will make Russians angrier and poorer. But the Kremlin is insulated from mounting dissatisfaction. The regime has sophisticated tools of repression, including blanket censorship laws, AI-powered surveillance tools, and expanded law enforcement agencies, that can contain any outbursts. Public frustration with the economy might also be offset by a growing rally-around-the-flag effect. As Ukrainian attacks intensify and affect more people, ordinary Russians may well conclude that the war against Kyiv is a war for national survival, just as Putin has long suggested. Polling by the independent Levada Center shows that support for the actions of the Russian armed forces sits above 65 percent nationwide, with less than 25 percent of the population opposed. But in Russian regions bordering Ukraine, which started to face Kyiv’s retaliatory strikes earlier than the rest of the country, support for the war is even higher.

Putin is not ready to crawl out of the hole he is now in.

Moscow, of course, could have wide domestic backing and a stable economy and still be forced to settle if its military starts to fall apart. But the Kremlin has ways to maintain its strengths on the battlefield. Moscow continues to increase its production of glide bombs, which threaten Ukrainian military positions and terrorize cities close to the frontline—including regional capitals such as Zaporizhzhia or Sumy. Russia has also doubled its production of ballistic missiles from prewar levels, just as Ukraine has run low on high-quality interceptors (a shortage exacerbated by Washington’s decision to go to war against Iran and, thus, no longer sell Patriots to Ukraine), which gives Putin an opportunity to bombard Ukrainian cities with missiles carrying much bigger payloads than drones. This will be particularly devastating during the winter, when Ukraine will most be in need of electricity, and when Russia can cause the most harm. The Kremlin has also started to systematically target Ukrainian ports and ships in the Black Sea in hopes of degrading the infrastructure that supports the country’s agricultural exports. Putin believes that if he inflicts enough terror on Ukrainian civilians, he can compel a new, massive wave of migrants to flee the country for Europe ahead of regional elections in Germany and a presidential election in France, bolstering anti-Ukraine, far-right parties in both places and pushing the continent away from Kyiv.

Should this bombing campaign alone not be enough to turn the tide and force Kyiv to accept Putin’s demands, the Kremlin can increase the pressure by mobilizing more men. Putin has mobilized the country once, in late 2022, when he conscripted people from across the country’s provinces. This succeeded at generating hundreds of thousands of new troops, but it led to a temporary drop in Putin’s approval rating and an exodus of hundreds of thousands of military-age men. In response, he switched to using cash incentives. But now that this system is reaching its limits, the regime is preparing to switch back to conscription—this time relying on electronic draft notices that are quieter and can be sent out year-round to thousands of potential conscripts. These conscripts, unlike the ones of 2022, would be blocked at the border if they tried to leave Russia. The country’s law enforcement agencies could also use digital surveillance cameras and facial recognition tools to search for draft dodgers and threaten them with a (newly introduced) two-year prison sentence. The mobilization will almost certainly cause some renewed discontent, but the process will be far less flashy than in 2022, when Putin went on national TV and announced a mobilization, and will thus attract less attention. The Kremlin is also likely to make sure that the mobilization effort largely skips over the capital and other large cities, and instead focuses on poorer areas.

Moscow can also further increase the pressure on Europe. It could carry out more hybrid attacks, or deniable military operations that fall short of outright warfare but still damage or threaten a target. Throughout the previous four years, Russia has, for example, sent drones and clandestine operatives to disrupt European defense production facilities, military bases, and transport infrastructure. (It denies responsibility for all these attacks.) But it could expand its list of targets in hopes of further disrupting life for ordinary Europeans, including by damaging commercial warehouses with cheap drones.

BITTER END

Not everyone in the Russian establishment wants to continue the war, let alone escalate it. Among the country’s elite, one can now find voices calling for genuine negotiations. ln May, for example, Russia’s flagship foreign affairs journal published an article by Vasily Kashin, a prominent, pragmatic but nationalistic military analyst, that made the case for freezing the conflict. Russia, Kashin argued, could not achieve more on the battlefield in the short to medium term, and the costs of prolonged war were starting to outstrip strategic benefits. Given the journal’s prominence, Kashin’s article was almost certainly previewed and green-lighted by officials in the Kremlin, likely as a way of giving voice to the pragmatists in the Russian security establishment. Likewise, on June 30, the CEO of Russia’s largest bank (and a longtime Putin lieutenant) suggested that it was time to wrap up the conflict. “I don’t think there is a single person in the country who has any concerns other than the swiftest conclusion of the hostilities,” he said.

But this option is currently of no interest to Putin. Although he tolerates cautious calls for peace and sometimes sends signals that he is interested in a settlement, too, Putin’s actions suggest that he is not ready to crawl out of the hole he is now in. In fact, he seems to want to keep digging. As long as Putin is convinced that he has an advantage over Ukraine with the destructiveness of his ballistic missiles and that Ukraine is vulnerable because of its lack of interceptors, he is likely to keep trying to wear Ukraine down—no matter the damage to his country. He views uncoordinated calls from Americans and Europeans for talks or for a cease-fire as a ploy to buy Ukraine more time. “We know that the West continues to pursue Russia’s strategic defeat,” he said in the June 28 interview. “Why are they calling for a cease-fire and peace negotiations? . . . If Ukraine is, as they claim, capturing more and more territory . . . then Western leaders simply need to wait. Russia’s strategic defeat would, it would seem, come about of its own accord.”

Ukraine and its allies need to prepare for a long and bumpy road. Kyiv may be in the best position in the war since late 2022, but the Kremlin believes it will crush the will of Ukraine and its friends this winter. Russia may be struggling, but Putin has not exhausted his options. He still wants to fight for as long as possible.

The New Old Middle East

F. Gregory Gause III — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In many ways, the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the war in Gaza that preceded it seem transformative. After decades of shadow warfare, Iran and Israel have now attacked each other’s homelands directly. And Israel and the United States have joined forces in a genuinely novel way to wage war against Iran. The Islamic Republic has lost its supreme leader of 36 years and much of its defense infrastructure. The Gulf states, once largely able to stay out of harm’s way, have seen their energy facilities, airports, and hotels go up in flames. Hezbollah has dragged Lebanon, which was just starting to recover from its last war, back into conflict. The Assad regime, which had ruled Syria for nearly half a century, was swept away when its partners in Beirut and Tehran were battered and unable to offer any help. Israel, for its part, has flattened Gaza, tiptoed toward annexing the West Bank, reoccupied parts of southern Lebanon, and extended its control of Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights.

All these changes are real and important, and they have caused millions of people to suffer. Yet overall, the Middle East emerging out of this upheaval looks a lot like the one that existed before it. Outsiders continue to play their balance-of-power games within the borders of weak Arab states, the Iranian-Israeli conflict endures, the Palestinian question remains unresolved, and the United States lacks the capacity or the will to impose order but is still too involved in the region to leave.

The cease-fire signed by Iran and the United States in June 2026 captures the Trump administration’s failure to fundamentally alter the region. After suffering a series of blows between 2023 and 2025, Tehran has affirmed its power by exercising a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and assaulting its Gulf neighbors. The prewar regime in Tehran is largely intact and is now dominated by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are just as committed as their predecessors to opposing Israel and meddling in weak Arab states. The U.S.-Israeli war that began in February 2026 was meant to sap Iran’s power, if not to eliminate its regime. Instead, it has given the Islamic Republic a new lease on life.

Despite two and a half years of fighting and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, mostly Palestinians, the situation in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is largely the same as it was before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. Hamas has been defanged, but Israel’s extraordinary use of force has not solved the fundamental problems at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although some Israeli officials favor the total expulsion of the Palestinians and the annexation of their territories, that has not occurred and will not occur any time soon. In the absence of a political settlement that involves some kind of Palestinian self-determination, the basic shape of the conflict remains the same. Israel shows no signs of contemplating the kind of compromises that might lead to such a settlement, and the United States has been reluctant to lean on Israel to make concessions.

The United States and Israel cannot bomb their way to a better region. A truly changed Middle East, one that could be the basis for a more stable regional order, would be defined by stronger central governments in Arab states such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Today, those places are plagued by civil war or domestic unrest, and the region will remain volatile as long as those governments are not able to police their borders and prevent nonstate actors in their territories from pursuing their own foreign and military policies. Weak states, after all, cannot make durable peace.

A transformed Middle East would also see an end to the efforts of regional and outside powers, most notably but not exclusively Iran, to encourage or fund militias. It would include a diplomatic process, broadly supported internationally and accepted regionally, focused on working toward a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would ensure Israel’s security and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. And it might involve genuine regime change in Iran, carried out by the Iranians themselves and resulting in a government that respects its neighbors’ sovereignty and drops the ideological crusade against Israel.

The regional war that began in 2023 did not move the Middle East closer to that kind of transformation. At the time of this writing, Iran and the United States were alternating between negotiating and fighting each other, but neither was willing to escalate in a way that would change the fundamentals of the situation they’ve been in since February. Tehran will not allow free and unfettered shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, give up its nuclear program, or abandon its regional proxies. Washington seems unlikely to send troops to Iran, a prerequisite for externally imposed regime change. Unless the government in Tehran collapses by other means and is replaced by something radically different—an outcome that seems even less probable now than it did before the war started—then no matter how long the war goes on or how it eventually ends, the drama and bloodshed of the past years will amount to little more than sound and fury. And because there has been no meaningful change to the essential dynamics and interests of the Middle East, even if a more sustainable cease-fire is achieved, the countdown to the next war will have already begun.

STILL GOT IT

Between October 7, 2023, and February 28, 2026, Iran suffered so many blows that it began to look like a paper tiger. Its nuclear infrastructure was reduced to rubble by Israeli and U.S. strikes in June 2025. Israel disrupted Iran from within, killing generals and nuclear scientists on Iranian soil and assassinating the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran itself. Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria in December 2024 severed Iran’s land bridge to Lebanon. Israel devastated Iran’s most powerful proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Persistent economic problems triggered a wave of protests against the Iranian regime in December 2025 that the regime brutally suppressed. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the regime’s security forces killed at least 7,000 protesters; other organizations put that number in the tens of thousands. Iran’s apparent weakness undoubtedly tempted U.S. President Donald Trump into thinking that more strikes could lead to regime change. When he launched attacks in conjunction with Israel on February 28 of this year, he urged Iranians to “take over” their government.

Yet Iran emerged victorious from this latest round of fighting. Of course, the country is still plagued by the same economic problems and social discontent that drove Iranians into the streets in December. But by defying a U.S.-Israeli onslaught and discovering its leverage over world energy markets, the Iranian regime has regained prominence. It will certainly continue with the fundamental elements of its regional policy of the past 47 years: opposition to Israel, resistance to American power, and involvement in the politics of weak Arab states. And it will have every incentive to do whatever it can to develop nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent to future attacks from Israel and the United States.

Iran’s allies, although weakened, still wield significant influence across the Arab world. In Iraq’s elections in November 2025, Shiite parties aligned with Iran and the Iraqi militias it backs performed well. In February, March, and April of this year, those militias lobbed missiles at U.S. bases in the region. The new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, like its predecessors, has filled impor-tant positions with many of Iran’s local allies.

Weak states cannot make durable peace.

Israeli assaults on Hezbollah between 2023 and 2025 opened a brief window for the historically weak Lebanese government to assert itself. Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian and former general whose election had been blocked for years by Hezbollah, was chosen as president by Lebanon’s parliament in January 2025. Lebanon subsequently made some progress on implementing the 2024 cease-fire agreement with Israel: Hezbollah, for example, had mostly withdrawn from the Lebanese border with Israel by the end of 2025.

But the task of restoring the state’s primacy in Lebanon remained unfinished business as Hezbollah joined in Iran’s retaliatory strikes in response to the 2026 U.S.-Israeli campaign. Israel, in turn, launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and an air campaign across the entire country, killing over 4,200 people and displacing one million others. Although Hezbollah is Israel’s stated target, the victim of the campaign is more likely to be the new Lebanese government, which condemned Hezbollah’s attack and offered to negotiate with Israel. Hezbollah has survived more than 40 years of conflict with Israel, including this latest assault. The Lebanese government, however, is likely to be discredited because it was unable to prevent yet another enormous disruption to the lives of ordinary people.

The Houthis, Iran’s ally in Yemen, snarled global shipping, ostensibly in solidarity with the Palestinians, in the Bab el Mandeb Strait between 2023 and 2025 but stayed above the fray in the first half of 2026, despite the attacks on Iran. The lull came from the group’s budding relationship with Saudi Arabia. Between 2022 and July 2026, the Houthis maintained a cease-fire with their neighbor, and during that time Riyadh paid the salaries of Yemeni civil servants, many of whom work under Houthi control. The Houthis remain ideologically and politically committed to Tehran and now seem to be reengaging in the fight in support of their ally. At the time of this writing, the Houthis had declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, the effect of which on energy flows in the Red Sea is uncertain but unlikely to be good. Some kind of Yemeni political settlement would advance security in the Middle East, but the more likely outcome of recent events is for the Houthis to rejoin the regional conflict.

SHEIKH DOWN

From 2023 to 2025, the Gulf Arab countries were largely bystanders in the regional war. Qatar had hosted Hamas leaders and provided funding to the organization, with Israeli and U.S. approval, for a number of years. But no other Gulf state was particularly upset to see Hamas and Hezbollah weakened. The ferocity of the Israeli campaign in Gaza did, however, raise the salience of the Palestinian issue among Arab populations, making any overt support for Israel a risky proposition. As Iran became more vulnerable, Gulf leaders grew more worried that Israel would try to assert regional military dominance. Those fears were exacerbated in September 2025, when Israel struck a residence in Qatar in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hamas officials who were there to negotiate a U.S.-backed proposal.

For years, the Gulf countries have favored stability in their neighborhood so they can focus on attracting the tourism, trade, and foreign investment needed to reduce their extreme reliance on energy exports. War is bad for business, which is why Gulf governments kept a low profile during the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025 and lobbied the United States against attacking Iran in early 2026.

This restraint didn’t help the Gulf countries with Iran. When Israel and the United States began their war against Iran in February 2026, it was the Gulf that bore the brunt of Tehran’s retaliation. As these countries were battered, their mindsets began to shift. At the beginning of the conflict, Gulf leaders seemed annoyed with the United States for putting them in the cross hairs of Iranian retaliation. But eventually, many Gulf elites came around to the opinion that the United States should continue the war until Iran loses the ability to threaten its neighbors. They were disappointed on both ends of the conflict.

A portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, July 2026 Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters

Mixed feelings are a common feature of alliances between a weak country and a strong one. Weaker partners often fear both entrapment in wars that the stronger partner initiates and abandonment by the strong partner in the face of their common enemy. The Gulf states offer textbook examples of this dynamic. The memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States in June 2026, for example, raised fears of desertion because it neglected to mention the Gulf states or address Iranian missile and drone capabilities. All the Gulf states, however, supported the memorandum because they worried that further U.S. escalation would lead to renewed Iranian attacks on their territories. Their fears were realized when the cease-fire broke down.

Yet despite their frustration, the Gulf countries are unlikely to distance themselves from the United States any time soon. American technology and training underpin Gulf air defenses, which proved quite successful in fending off Iranian drones and missiles. Moreover, the Gulf states have no other security guarantor to which they can turn. China has shown no desire to play that kind of role and does not have the power projection capabilities it would need to do so. Russia has taken Iran’s side and is busy with its own war in Ukraine. And European countries and regional powers such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey cannot match the United States in terms of fighting capability.

What has changed over the past three years is the Gulf’s view of Israel. For years, Gulf countries had been slowly starting to embrace Israel as a potential ally against Iran. Even Saudi Arabia was considering warmer ties. But that trend has now reversed, and momentum for expanding the Abraham Accords—a series of agreements in 2020 that normalized relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries—has stalled. The Gaza war has made it more politically risky for Arab leaders to openly work with Israel. Israel’s strike against Qatar and its pursuit of war against Iran have led Gulf leaders to doubt that Israel cares about their security at all. The only Gulf state that has recommitted to its relationship with Israel is the United Arab Emirates, which already had the strongest ties with Israel.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR

By the end of 2025, Israel rightly considered itself the victor of the regional wars. But the country has been unable to achieve its ambitious goal of bringing down the Iranian regime. The June 2026 U.S.-Iranian cease-fire left the Islamic Republic in power with enough military assets to assert itself across the broader region and without a concrete obligation to give up its nuclear program. Moreover, Washington agreed to Tehran’s demand that the cease-fire also apply in Lebanon, where Israel was continuing its assault on Hezbollah. Even when Israel did come out on top in the wars of the past three years, it showed no interest in converting its victories into diplomatic initiatives. Israel has decided to play regional disruptor, confident that its military prowess is enough to protect it indefinitely. That is a questionable bet, given that its hard power was similarly impressive before October 7.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been crystal clear that it will not accept a role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, making a solution to post-Hamas governance there nearly impossible to achieve. Violence continues in Gaza itself. Israeli forces have killed over 1,000 Palestinians since the cease-fire went into effect in October 2025. The international force that Trump’s 20-point peace plan proposed to provide security in Gaza has yet to materialize. The plan calls for a committee of Palestinian technocrats to administer Gaza; as of July 2026, Israel had not allowed them to enter the territory. Hamas refuses to disarm, despite its commitment to do so in the October 2025 truce, and Israeli forces still occupy about 70 percent of the enclave. The Gaza cease-fire looks more like a respite in the conflict than an end to it. There is certainly no hint of a long-term political solution that could change the current dynamic.

Other countries are hesitant to get involved in Gaza, either as security forces or development partners, without a reputable Palestinian partner with whom they can work. The Palestinian Authority, for all its faults, is the only plausible option. But far from encouraging the PA to play a role in Gaza, Israel is undercutting its administrative functions in the West Bank. During 2025, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israel approved 54 new settlements there—the highest yearly number since the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, a series of agreements meant to lead to a two-state solution. In February 2026, the government adopted new legislation making it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land in the West Bank, a step that Palestinians say violates the Oslo accords and accelerates what they see as the momentum toward annexation. The current Israeli government prioritizes territorial expansion and the weakening of Palestinian institutions over any possibility of stable governance in the West Bank and Gaza.

Iranian and Israeli leaders are now even more set in their beliefs.

Netanyahu believes that Israel is safer when its neighbors are weak and divided. But he misses the fact that Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, two consolidated states that can control their borders and prevent the rise of violent nonstate actors in their territory, have been the enduring pillars of Israel’s security for decades. Rather than embrace the prospect of a cooperative Lebanese government willing to work against Hezbollah, Israel renewed its war in Lebanon in 2026. In Syria, Israel captured a so-called buffer zone, encouraged Syrian Druze to resist the new government, armed Druze militias, and struck Syrian army positions—including the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense—in the name of protecting the Druze.

Netanyahu obstructs state-building efforts in Lebanon and Syria in spite of U.S. efforts to support the new governments in Beirut and Damascus. Although Washington has admonished Israel on this score, Israeli policy has not substantially changed. Only when Israel’s hubris led it to bomb Qatar in September 2025 did Trump bring Netanyahu to heel, forcing him to apologize publicly to the emir of Qatar and finally pressuring him to accept a cease-fire in Gaza. Washington needs to similarly pressure Israel to allow the new governments in Beirut and Damascus to reassert their control within their borders and build stronger state institutions.

By far the most significant geopolitical change brought about by the past three years of war was the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the establishment of a new government led by Ahmed al-Shara, who was once a member of al-Qaeda. Since taking Syria’s capital, Shara has cultivated support from the United States, Turkey, the EU, and the Arab world, distancing Syria from the Iranian alliance that the Assad regime had maintained since the 1980s. These changes have also considerably reduced Iran’s ability to affect Lebanese politics and threaten Israel from Syrian territory, a real blow to Tehran’s regional influence.

Shara has said all the right things since coming to power, pledging a tolerant, consultative, and eventually democratic regime. His reassuring words aside, Syria remains deeply divided and traumatized after 14 years of brutal civil war. The forces allied with the new government have clashed with the Alawite minority in the west, the Druze in the south, and the Kurds in the northeast. Syria continues to be a weak state. In the absence of effective central government control, the country will remain a plaything for the stronger states in its neighborhood, as it was during the civil war. If Syria’s weakness lures Iran, Israel, Turkey, or the Gulf states back into another round of civil war, the chances for regional stability could vanish.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

The prospects for a new Middle East are dim. Iran and Israel—the two countries that have instigated much of the region’s strife in recent decades—are as powerful as ever, and their leaders seem even more set in their beliefs than they were before 2023. Many Arab countries still suffer from the political vacuums that lead to civil war, attract meddlesome outside intervention, and become breeding grounds for armed groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that narrow the already slim prospects for peace.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it is not in the business of building states in the Middle East—a laudable position, given the failures of U.S. efforts to do so in Afghanistan and Iraq. Still, Trump clearly understands that the Middle East will become more stable only if weak Arab states get their acts together. He has lifted sanctions on Syria and embraced its new president. In February 2026, the United States handed over the base it had maintained for years at al-Tanf to the Syrian military, ending a U.S. presence in Syria that dated to 2014. American diplomats worked to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Syria and, before the latest round of fighting, tried to nudge the Lebanese government to take a stiffer stance toward Hezbollah. In June 2026, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a deal, brokered by the United States, that commits Israel to begin handing over control of certain parts of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese armed forces. If the United States tries more forcefully to roll back Israeli interference in Lebanon and Syria, while supporting those governments’ efforts to suppress armed nonstate actors within their borders, the prospects for a more stable region would improve.

How the Trump administration deals with an empowered and ambitious Iranian regime will determine whether the 2026 war is simply another data point in the decades of conflict between the two countries or the beginning of an effort to halt the region’s downward spiral. Any progress toward regional stability will require the United States to keep up its military power in the Gulf. Washington must maintain the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the 5,000 to 10,000 troops deployed in Kuwait, and access to bases in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Without a U.S. military foothold, Iran can threaten military action against its neighbors at will. The American military presence also reassures the Gulf states of Washington’s commitment to their security after the damage they sustained. That reassurance is necessary to prevent them from simply succumbing out of fear to Iranian pressure on issues such as oil policy and relations with Israel.

The stage is set for the next conflagration.

But what would really calm the region is a diplomatic effort to reach a sustainable modus vivendi with Tehran. Oman’s foreign minister indicated that just before the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran began in February, Iranian diplomats had floated a deal under which they would never stockpile enriched uranium. Given that Iran has emerged in a stronger position since February, such a proposal might now seem unrealistic. But the Iranian government is so desperate for sanctions relief that the United States should still use it as a starting point for new nuclear negotiations. Even though American leverage in these talks is not what the Trump administration had hoped it would be, it is worth the effort to keep Iran at the table. The alternative strategy, regime change through war, has clearly failed.

Separately, the United States should lead a multilateral effort with other concerned countries, such as China, India, and the United Kingdom, along with European, Gulf, and Southeast Asian states, to design a framework for managing the Strait of Hormuz. The international conventions governing the Suez Canal and the Turkish Straits could provide some guidance for such an effort, as could the system for maintaining the Strait of Malacca, under which a private foundation collects voluntary contributions to fund hydrographic surveys, navigational infrastructure, and wreck removal. The global economy relies on free and safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and most countries agree that it should remain permanently toll-free. Although Trump is allergic to multilateral diplomacy, he should leverage the weight of these other countries in negotiations with Iran and spread the responsibility for keeping the waterway open.

An even more transformative U.S. policy would require grasping the nettle of the Palestinian issue. The October 7 attack demonstrated once again that as long as Palestinian self-determination remains unrealized, Palestinian refusal to accept the status quo can blow up the Middle East. A truly stable region requires satisfying the basic Palestinian right to self-determination while also ensuring Israeli security. But no U.S. government has been willing to use the leverage on Israel that would be necessary to make a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict possible. Without that willingness, any hope for true, long-term stability in the Middle East is a fantasy. The region’s players have not changed: an emboldened Iran with scores to settle, Iranian proxies that are down but not out, and an Israel that instead of compromising has come to accept a state of near-permanent war. The stage is set for the next conflagration.

The Next Phase of China’s Minority Crackdown

James Leibold, Tenzin Dorjee — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

When the People’s Republic of China was founded, in 1949, it was explicitly a multinational state. Although Han Chinese make up more than 90 percent of the country’s population, China’s constitution and subsequent laws grant minority nationalities autonomy in specific regions and promise them collective agency as “masters of their own homes.” For decades, the party-state’s official bargain—honored unevenly and often violated—was that national unity would be best secured by recognizing difference and granting minorities limited territorial, linguistic, and political autonomy within China, rather than by forcing them to be absorbed into Han culture.

As of July 1, however, national integration through forced cultural assimilation is the law of the land. The constitution still defines the country as a multinational state, but the passage of the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress marks a decisive turn away from the promise of territorial autonomy. It codifies the coercive project to create a Chinese national community in which minority peoples can exist only insofar as they serve Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s vision of China—a vision rooted in the belief that commonality is better than diversity and that national cohesion requires a single shared Chinese cultural and linguistic identity.

The new ethnic unity law did not introduce the policy of assimilation; for more than a decade, Xi has been replacing minority-language education with Mandarin Chinese instruction, increasing the party’s control over religion, and recasting minority histories as strands of one continuous Chinese civilization. But this approach is now consolidated in national legislation enacted by the full National People’s Congress, signaling that Beijing regards it as a matter of fundamental state importance and enshrining it with the highest legal authority. And the law distributes responsibility for implementing these policies across all levels of the state and throughout society.

Beijing’s campaign of cultural dispossession will now become more deeply embedded in bureaucratic practices and institutional structures, which are difficult to dislodge or change. Even if a more liberal leader were to one day succeed Xi, reviving autonomy would require a complete bureaucratic, political, and cultural overhaul. For the foreseeable future, therefore, Beijing has closed the door on peaceful coexistence, locking itself instead into a more hostile and zero-sum relationship with the minority groups whose cultures and languages it once accommodated.

ASSIMILATION NATION

China’s official policy, inspired by the Soviet model of national-territorial autonomy, recognizes 56 formally equal nationalities within the country. Its constitution promises to protect the rights and interests of all minority nationalities and grants them territorial autonomy in areas where they live in concentrated communities. A 1984 law formalized the protections and accommodations granted to minority groups as part of this territorial autonomy. In areas as varied as Xinjiang in the far northwest and Yunnan in the country’s southwest, minority groups were entitled to use their own languages as the medium of instruction in schools and maintain their own traditions, cultures, and religious practices. Even when these protections were violated, the law maintained the principle of collective rights for China’s non-Han nationalities.

But Xi began systematically dismantling the foundations of this system soon after he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. His move to dismantle territorial autonomy is often explained as a response to episodes of unrest that broke out in minority regions shortly before he took power. In 2008, protests that began in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, escalated into a full-blown uprising across the plateau. And in 2009, a Uyghur protest in Urumqi, in Xinjiang, descended into rioting and retaliatory violence that killed nearly 200 people, according to official figures.

The roots of Xi’s campaign, however, go back much further. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s prompted some leading Chinese scholars and officials to reconsider granting territorial autonomy to minority nationalities. Starting around the first decade of the twenty-first century, advocates of a so-called second-generation ethnic policy argued that China’s Soviet-inspired approach had hardened ethnic boundaries and created the conditions for separatism. They warned that minority groups’ distinct identities, institutions, and languages were impeding China’s attempt to construct a cohesive nation. Although the situation in Beijing is fundamentally different than it was in Moscow—China’s autonomous regions are much more tightly controlled by the central government and possess neither sovereignty nor a legal route to independence, as federal republics in the Soviet Union did—these powerful voices warned that even limited autonomy was dangerous. China’s existing policy, they argued, was putting it at risk of sharing the fate of the Soviet Union, which had disintegrated along the borders of its nationality-based republics.

Beijing has closed the door on peaceful coexistence.

Xi’s nation-building project has grown out of their radical thesis. Xi has insisted on dismantling and weakening the minority languages, religious institutions, and historical memories that might sustain any claims to collective self-rule. He has sought to remake the inner life of China’s non-Han peoples so that claims to distinct political identity become harder to imagine, mobilize, or transmit. The Mongolian scholar Uradyn Bulag has called this “politicide”—the destruction of a people’s capacity to understand itself and act as a distinct political community.

This campaign of assimilation has ensnared all minority groups, but it has especially targeted the three nationalities most culturally distinct from the Han majority: Mongols, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. Starting in 2017, authorities in Xinjiang detained an estimated one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in political reeducation camps. Beijing has placed nearly a million Tibetan children in state-run boarding schools, including preschools, where separation from their families and education predominantly conducted in Mandarin weaken the intergenerational transmission of culture. And in 2020, when Inner Mongolia required key school subjects to be taught in Mandarin, Mongolian students and parents organized boycotts and demonstrations; party authorities responded by detaining protesters, pressuring families to send their children back to school, punishing teachers, and purging Mongolian officials from party leadership positions.

The effects of these efforts are visible. The nationalist newspaper Global Times reported as early as 2016 that some Tibetan children were losing the ability to converse easily with parents and grandparents, and videos shared over social media in recent months show children struggling to pronounce their own names in Tibetan. For Beijing, such episodes suggest that forced assimilation is working as intended. In the logic of Xi and his intellectual forebears, the erasure of distinct cultural and linguistic identities will make it harder for a territorially based separatist movement to gain traction.

LEGALLY BOUND

But until July 1, these assimilationist policies had a problem: they violated legal promises that the state had made to its citizens. Xi has now narrowed this inconvenient gap between law and policy. He did not repeal the existing framework guaranteeing autonomy, which formally remains in place. Instead, he imposed a new statutory framework that institutionalizes cultural assimilation, emptying autonomy of any substantive meaning.

The new ethnic unity law makes Mandarin Chinese the basic language of education and official life across China. It says that museums, heritage sites, public buildings, and place names are required to display “shared Chinese cultural symbols,” and requires state officials to use new technologies, including artificial intelligence, to promote a standardized image of the Chinese nation. Even family life is drawn into the project: parents and guardians of minority children are told to educate them to love the party, the motherland, and the Chinese nation. Those who violate the law, including individuals and organizations outside China, are said to be creating “ethnic division” and may face administrative penalties, detention, or even criminal prosecution.

The law presents itself as a measure to strengthen national cohesion. At its heart is one of Xi’s signature formulations: “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.” In English, the phrase sounds benign—a type of civic nationalism with Chinese characteristics. But in Chinese, the wording carries a far more assertive and directional connotation: “forging” is the same word used to describe casting molten ore into unbreakable iron. In Xi’s usage, the goal is not only to encourage loyalty to the party-state but also to mold individual consciousness itself. It is, in the official language of the party, the forging and casting of souls—that is, the remaking of habits, attachments, and historical memories that national minorities in China rely on to understand who they are and where they belong.

The stakes of the law can be understood through the political theorist Will Kymlicka’s distinction between colonized national minorities and immigrant communities. In many liberal societies, immigrants seek equal citizenship, protection from discrimination, and accommodation of distinct cultural or religious practices. National minorities, by contrast, were involuntarily incorporated into new states. They ground their claims to collective continuity and self-government in ancestral territory, language, and inherited institutions. Their demand is not only to be included as individuals but also to preserve and transmit their collective identity across generations.

Many Mongols, Tibetans, and Uyghurs are not willing to trade partial assimilation for equal opportunity. These groups’ repeated street demonstrations—even in the face of harsh state retaliation—have made it clear that what they want, at a minimum, is some level of genuine autonomy in China or a way to preserve their unique cultures. What the new law enforces, under the guise of civic inclusion, is a requirement that they become part of a single, party-defined Chinese identity. It sends the message that the languages, histories, and identities of China’s non-Han citizens will not be tolerated unless they can be folded into a single Chinese national story.

THE DOWNSIDE OF UNITY

The law does not prohibit diversity, and officials are likely to welcome ethnic costumes, food, and music—at least where they can be packaged and commercialized as colorful performances for Han tourists and party officials, or displayed as evidence of China’s supposedly harmonious pluralism. But this is diversity reduced to spectacle. It will be carefully curated and mostly detached from the communities that produce it. If it challenges Han Chinese norms, suggests a distinct collective identity, or supports claims to meaningful self-rule, it will not be tolerated.

Minority communities that seek to maintain their culture will be pushed toward a double life of public conformity and private preservation. Language instruction, religious practice, and historical memory are likely to retreat further into homes, rely more on informal networks, and increasingly center on diaspora institutions based outside mainland China, widening the gap between official performances of unity and experiences of coercion.

Xi may believe that the new law will secure political stability for generations by reducing the possibility of separatism. But turning the project of cultural homogenization into law may end up backfiring. For decades, prominent figures such as the Dalai Lama, the Han writer Wang Lixiong, and the Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti occupied a shrinking political middle ground between assimilation and independence. They argued, in different ways, that meaningful autonomy, not independence, offered a realistic path to interethnic reconciliation. With enough autonomy, they believed, minority groups could coexist peacefully with the Chinese state without sacrificing their culture or challenging Beijing’s authority.

Xi has sought to remake the inner life of China’s non-Han peoples.

By formally hollowing out the autonomy it once promised, Beijing is closing off the possibility of such a settlement. The party claims exclusive authority to select and recognize the successor to the Dalai Lama; Wang’s work is barred from publication in China, and he has been prevented from leaving the country since 2015; and Tohti is serving a life sentence in a Chinese prison on trumped-up charges of separatism.

Rather than ensure stability, a program of coercive integration can harden political claims that survive beyond the state’s reach. In the late Soviet Union, for example, backlash against Russification helped fuel national mobilization, especially in the Baltic republics, where reform movements eventually became independence movements. And in Yugoslavia, the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s move to dismantle Kosovo’s autonomy, in 1989, became a symbol of Serbian centralization and helped destroy confidence in the federal compact that promised cultural and linguistic accommodation.

China’s far greater coercive capacity makes comparable mobilization inside the country unlikely, at least for now. But as Beijing eliminates the possibility of meaningful autonomy for minority nationalities inside China, demands for independence are likely to grow among Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur activists in exile. On July 2, one day after China’s new law took effect, Tibetan independence activist Lobga Rangzen set himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in New York to protest Chinese rule over Tibet. A single tragic act does not make a trend, but the self-immolation captures the polarizing effect of destroying the middle ground between assimilation and separation. By dismantling autonomy, Xi may find that his only option for preserving national unity is a state of permanent coercion.

Beijing’s Next Play for the South China Sea

Lynn Kuok — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In April 2025, Chinese coast guard personnel stepped onto Sandy Cay, an uninhabited sandbar in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and unfurled the Chinese flag. In much of the world, this act passed almost unnoticed. But as China’s first formal, on-the-ground assertion of sovereignty over an unoccupied land feature in more than a decade, it signaled a broader shift in Beijing’s quest for control: China is again contesting disputed land features, after years in which disputes over rights at sea have been the primary source of conflict.

Beijing’s targeting of unoccupied features, which is not limited to Sandy Cay, reflects an important change since its last major island-building campaign. Between late 2013 and 2015, when the bulk of that work took place, China dredged sand and coral to enlarge seven features it already occupied, later constructing military and civilian facilities on them. By extending its activities to uninhabited features, Beijing is straining a 2002 nonbinding commitment it made with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) not to inhabit them. Meanwhile, Beijing continues to challenge its neighbors’ exercise of sovereign rights at sea, interfering with fishing and offshore energy activity and conducting unauthorized marine surveys in their exclusive economic zones.

Beijing’s methods have been shifting, too, with high-intensity incidents becoming less frequent, although clashes this month suggest that the decline may not endure. Between February 2023 and July 2024, Chinese coast guard and maritime militia vessels often used military-grade lasers and water cannons, carried out dangerous maneuvers, and rammed vessels to obstruct Philippine resupply missions, patrols, and fishing. The lull through the first half of this year may partly have reflected Manila’s decision, as chair of ASEAN, to moderate its policy of “radical transparency,” the systematic public exposure of unlawful and coercive Chinese acts at sea. The broader easing, however, likely reflected Beijing’s choice to reduce head-on confrontations, even as it advanced its claims through large-scale infrastructure projects and quieter activities such as conducting marine scientific research, symbolically asserting sovereignty over land, and placing temporary floating structures at or near disputed features.

Individually, China’s quieter acts might seem inconsequential. Collectively, they could alter the strategic landscape. They complicate the calculus of coastal states, which may judge any single Chinese move to be too minor to justify a response that risks escalation. That concern weighs especially heavily as these states face the fallout from the war in the Middle East and sweeping U.S. tariffs, pressures that may force many of them to recalibrate their relationships with Beijing. China’s strategy of consolidating and normalizing control at sea and on land threatens to erode the regional order and weaken the rule of law. Its quieter measures also threaten a key element of U.S. regional strategy. Washington has relied on exposing Beijing’s unlawful and coercive conduct to rally allies and partners behind efforts to uphold the law of the sea and sustain U.S. regional influence. If allies and partners grow less willing or able to push back against China’s advances, that strategy will falter.

DEFIANCE AT SEA

The contest in the South China Sea spans decades. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a naturally formed area of land that remains above water at high tide is an island and is entitled to a territorial sea extending up to 12 nautical miles. If it can sustain human habitation or economic life of its own, it may also generate an exclusive economic zone extending up to 200 nautical miles; rocks that cannot do so may generate a territorial sea but not an exclusive economic zone. High-tide features can be subject to independent sovereignty claims even if they are located in another country’s maritime zones. But low-tide elevations—features only exposed at low tide—and fully submerged features lying beyond a territorial sea cannot be claimed as sovereign territory; if they lie within the exclusive economic zone or continental shelf of a coastal state, that state enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over them. Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam each claim some or all of the features in the South China Sea. Together with Indonesia, these claimants also assert sovereign rights and jurisdiction in their exclusive economic zones, which overlap with China’s maritime claims. (Jakarta denies it has a dispute with China.) China, the United States, and other naval powers remain at odds over passage rights and freedoms of the seas.

Ten years ago, a tribunal in The Hague handed the Philippines a sweeping legal victory. Convened to hear a case the Philippines brought under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the tribunal rejected any Chinese claim to historic rights within the “nine-dash line”—a U-shaped demarcation that encompasses much of the South China Sea but for which Beijing has never provided coordinates. It also clarified the maritime entitlements of the Spratly features, Scarborough Shoal (an atoll west of the Philippine main island of Luzon), and Reed Bank (a submerged atoll within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone), finding that none of these features generates an exclusive economic zone. The high-tide features are at most entitled to a territorial sea. Reed Bank forms part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

Although legally binding only on the Philippines and China, the ruling strengthened the position of other Southeast Asian coastal states by affirming that neither China’s historic rights claim nor any exclusive economic zone extending from the features the tribunal examined could override their sovereign rights in their own exclusive economic zones. The tribunal did not decide on sovereignty over contested land features because it lacked the jurisdiction to do so.

China immediately rejected the decision but paused conduct most obviously inconsistent with it: interfering with its neighbors’ resource rights and driving non-Chinese fishermen from Scarborough Shoal. Once international attention waned, however, China’s transgressions began anew.

Disputes over sovereign rights and jurisdiction at sea have been the primary source of conflict since. Beijing initially sought to deter coastal states from exercising their rights, most notably warning Hanoi against drilling for oil and gas in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in 2017 and 2018. Washington looked away. Beijing then went further, dispatching vessels into its neighbors’ exclusive economic zones to conduct seismic surveys.

Beijing continues to challenge its neighbors’ exercise of sovereign rights at sea.

Offshore energy sites became recurring flash points. In 2019, a Chinese survey vessel accompanied by the Chinese coast guard triggered a months-long standoff with Vietnamese coast guard and fisheries surveillance vessels at Vanguard Bank, a submerged feature, after zigzagging through Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in a pattern consistent with surveying. For weeks in 2020, Chinese vessels shadowed the West Capella, a drillship contracted by Malaysia’s state-owned energy company. China also maintains a presence around Reed Bank, where Manila is pursuing energy development. Fishing has generated similar friction, particularly at Scarborough Shoal, despite the tribunal’s finding that fishermen from China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam enjoy traditional fishing rights there.

Encounters at sea escalated sharply starting in early 2023, particularly around Second Thomas Shoal, a low-tide elevation in the Philippine exclusive economic zone, where the tribunal had affirmed the Philippines’ sovereign rights and jurisdiction. In 1999, Manila had deliberately grounded a Philippine naval vessel, the BRP Sierra Madre, at the shoal to forestall Chinese occupation. A small contingent of Philippine marines has remained on board ever since, dependent on periodic resupply missions. Because the ship remains in commission, an armed attack on it or its personnel could invoke U.S. commitments under the 1951 U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty. Chinese attempts to block these missions have resulted in high-intensity clashes with the Philippines, although the clashes became less frequent after Manila and Beijing reached a provisional arrangement in July 2024. As of March, Manila reported that 13 resupply and rotation missions had proceeded without “untoward incidents.” Even so, risks remain, partly because the two sides disagree about the arrangement’s scope. This month, Philippine authorities said that Chinese coast guard personnel struck a Filipino sailor with a wooden baton during a close encounter between Chinese and Philippine vessels.

Philippine officials say that Beijing is making greater use of research vessels to advance its claims, citing an unauthorized Chinese survey at Reed Bank in May. China also deploys research vessels in Malaysian and Vietnamese exclusive economic zones. According to Philippine authorities, these vessels increasingly operate in its exclusive economic zone without coast guard or maritime militia escorts and typically withdraw when challenged.

THE CONTEST FOR LAND

While China continues to press its claims at sea, it is also renewing its focus on disputed land features, including unoccupied ones. In October 2025, China began large-scale dredging to expand Antelope Reef in the Paracel Islands, which lies roughly 215 nautical miles east of the central Vietnamese coast. In its natural state, the reef consisted of sand patches and minor coral cays above water at high tide. Before major dredging, it already hosted a small Chinese outpost. The latest work—China’s first significant island-building campaign in about a decade—is much more extensive. Satellite imagery suggests the reef is on track to become China’s largest military outpost in the South China Sea. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, it could accommodate a runway, harbor, missile facilities, underground storage, and surveillance and electronic warfare systems. This would extend Chinese sensing capabilities closer to Vietnam, add capacity and redundancy for China’s naval and air operations, and allow Beijing to expand its civilian presence in the Paracels.

China’s recent activities on land extend beyond large-scale reclamation and infrastructure construction. The Sandy Cay landing involved only a Chinese flag held up for the cameras. But Beijing’s actions there have strategic significance: the sandbar lies barely two nautical miles from the Philippine-occupied Thitu Island, so the two land features’ 12-nautical-mile territorial seas overlap almost entirely. By staking a claim to Sandy Cay, China narrows the Philippines’ operational space around a major Philippine outpost and lays the groundwork for future legal challenges. Beijing could, for example, object to Philippine patrols and other activities around Thitu Island on the basis of its claim to waters around Sandy Cay.

China has also sought to consolidate its administrative control at Scarborough Shoal, access to which it has controlled since 2012 without occupying the feature. In September 2025, Beijing approved the creation of a national nature reserve there. This seemingly innocuous measure asserted China’s jurisdiction and allowed Beijing to present fishing restrictions as law enforcement against environmental harm. At the end of May, China deployed a floating structure at the shoal that Philippine officials said was manned. Beijing claimed it was for research. After Manila demanded its removal, a Chinese research vessel towed it away. This month, Chinese coast guard vessels confronted Philippine government vessels delivering fuel and food to Filipino fishermen at the shoal. According to Philippine officials, Chinese ships fired a water cannon and conducted a dangerous maneuver against two Philippine vessels.

The Philippines has been at the forefront of resistance to Chinese pressure.

China maintains it is free to act on features over which it claims sovereignty. Because sovereignty in these cases is unresolved—unlike sovereign rights and jurisdiction over water, which the Hague tribunal clarified—most of Beijing’s moves on land fall into a legal gray zone. (Some might breach environmental obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.) This leaves governments fewer clear legal grounds to challenge China’s activities on land than they have to challenge its activities at sea.

For almost a quarter of a century, claimant states fortified features they already occupied but stopped short of inhabiting unoccupied ones—conduct that China and ASEAN members expressly singled out for “self-restraint” in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, a nonbinding political agreement. But Beijing’s recent activities, designed to normalize China’s presence and edge toward occupation, are undermining that norm.

These developments carry real risks. Philippine officials are rightly concerned that Beijing seeks a sustained presence on unoccupied land features to pave the way for eventual occupation. If China were to occupy and militarize Scarborough Shoal, that base, together with bases in the Paracels and Spratlys, would strengthen Beijing’s ability to monitor maritime and air activity and project power across the sea. Such an outpost would also extend Chinese sensor and strike capabilities closer to the Luzon Strait, a strategic waterway between the Philippines and Taiwan, and place Manila well within striking range.

China’s actions could also prompt other claimants to take similar steps, potentially leading to confrontations with Beijing and with one another. All this could further weaken the prospects for a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, a more detailed and potentially binding set of rules that China and ASEAN members have pursued for decades. Even if a final deal is unlikely, the polite fiction that the parties are near one has afforded some stability.

THE COST OF RESISTANCE

China’s moves are difficult to counter. Large-scale island-building and violent clashes at sea command international attention and demand a response. A flag raising or a temporary floating structure on a small, obscure feature is easily overlooked or dismissed. The Sandy Cay episode elicited only a minor response from Washington: the White House merely said that reports of a Chinese seizure were “deeply concerning if true.” Even when such acts are detected, governments may conclude that they are too minor to warrant a response, or that responding risks provoking escalation with China. The uncertain legality of China’s acts may further dissuade them from reacting. Beijing may thus alter the status quo through actions carefully chosen to avoid the pushback that has followed its more dramatic or clearly unlawful conduct at sea.

So far, the Philippines has been at the forefront of resistance to Chinese pressure. Recently describing itself as the “guardian of the freedom of the seas,” Manila has committed to safeguarding the legal and physical infrastructure that enables the world “to sail, to trade, and to prosper.” It has deepened its network of security partnerships, including with the United States. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited Manila soon after his appointment, and the Trump administration exempted roughly $336 million earmarked for modernizing the Philippines’ military from a broader freeze on foreign aid. Late last year, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation authorizing up to $2.5 billion in grants through 2030 for Manila to acquire U.S.-made defense equipment, and in June Washington approved a $60 million grant program to modernize the Philippines’ energy sector and support economic development. Military assistance can boost Philippine surveillance and operational capacity and help sustain patrols and resupply missions, while energy aid can address vulnerabilities Beijing could exploit to limit Manila’s ability to push back.

Beyond the United States, the Philippines has expanded joint maritime patrols with Australia and increased defense cooperation with Japan. Manila and Tokyo have also recently announced negotiations to delimit their overlapping exclusive economic zones, as required under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The area in question overlaps with an exclusive economic zone extending eastward from Taiwan. Beijing denounced the talks and dispatched coast guard vessels on what it called “law enforcement patrols” to reinforce its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan and the maritime rights flowing from it. Even negotiations undertaken to fulfill international legal obligations can trigger Chinese countermeasures and raise the costs of cooperation for countries in the region.

UNDER PRESSURE

Southeast Asian states determined to curb China’s worst impulses may nonetheless find it necessary to adopt a more pragmatic approach to South China Sea disputes. The region’s stability and development have depended in part on maintaining workable relations with China. Severe external shocks, foremost among them the Iran war and U.S. tariffs, and domestic political strains could make some kind of rapprochement with Beijing increasingly difficult to avoid.

Even the Philippines may seek accommodation. Within Southeast Asia, it is among the hardest hit by the Iran war’s economic fallout. It sources roughly 98 percent of its crude oil imports from the Middle East. Of the three million Southeast Asians who live or work in that region, an estimated 2.4 million are Filipinos. Disruptions to energy supplies and uncertainty over remittance flows are compounding the effects of U.S. tariffs, and President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., faces public pressure after corruption-related failures in flood-control infrastructure contributed to hundreds of deaths in 2025. Early in his six-year term, which began in 2022, Marcos told Beijing that maritime disputes were not the “sum” of the bilateral relationship. In March, he said that the Iran war could provide the “impetus” for an agreement with Beijing on oil and gas development. Days later, his government restarted high-level talks with China on energy cooperation and maritime de-escalation.

Countering China’s strategy requires more than conventional naval power.

Still, energy cooperation between China and the Philippines remains fraught. Previous talks in 2018 and 2019 collapsed over Philippine constitutional constraints and China’s refusal to acknowledge Philippine sovereign rights in any final agreement. Today, the Philippine defense establishment and the public remain deeply suspicious of Beijing, and any perception that Marcos is striking a deal with China could further erode his political standing. Continued Chinese operations on and around Philippine-claimed land features or within the Philippine exclusive economic zone could quickly derail negotiations.

Yet if Manila and Beijing can overcome those complications and there is a sustained reduction in head-on confrontations—something the clashes in late July show is far from assured—a quiet rapprochement could emerge. It need not entail abandoning Philippine claims. In practice, Manila might make greater efforts to avoid clashes at sea, rely less on public exposure of Chinese actions, and place greater emphasis on stabilizing relations with Beijing.

A Philippine adjustment along these lines could make it harder for the United States and other countries to confront expansive Chinese claims. The Philippines’ legal challenge and highly visible clashes with China have lent force to Washington’s argument that Beijing flouts international law and that there is regional demand for U.S. support in countering its actions. If Manila steps back, Washington may find it harder to mobilize coordinated responses to Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea and beyond.

HOLDING THE LINE

After a decade in which Chinese pressure focused on encroaching on other countries’ rights at sea, Beijing is again extending the contest to land, including unoccupied features. In both domains, China’s aim is the same: the steady accumulation of advantage rather than a single decisive victory. By combining quieter tactics with more confrontational moves at sea and operating, often unnoticed, within legal gray zones on land, Beijing is betting that it can gradually normalize its control across the South China Sea.

Countering this strategy requires more than conventional naval power. U.S. naval strength remains important for deterrence and for responding if armed force is used, but the U.S. Coast Guard is better suited to gray-zone encounters: it can patrol alongside regional coast guards in a law enforcement capacity, and it can respond to China’s coast guard and maritime militia with less risk of escalation than a naval deployment. Continuing to expand the Coast Guard’s regional role would help allies and partners more effectively monitor and document Chinese activities.

Washington should respond consistently and promptly to both China’s large-scale construction and its quieter efforts to assert sovereignty. It joined Manila in rejecting Beijing’s declaration of a national nature reserve at Scarborough Shoal, but it expressed only vague concern over the Sandy Cay landing and made no public response to the Antelope Reef reclamation. Washington should reiterate that Beijing must honor its 2002 commitment not to inhabit currently uninhabited disputed features. It should also emphasize relevant legal principles and norms: that claimants should refrain from making irreversible changes to features, which aggravate disputes and complicate any future settlement; that reclamation cannot alter a feature’s legal status or create new maritime entitlements; and that acts of physical control, construction, flag raising, and unilateral administration generally will not strengthen a claimant’s legal position. None of this requires Washington to abandon its long-standing neutrality on competing sovereignty claims.

Where appropriate, Washington should reinforce its public statements with targeted economic measures and support for claimants pursuing legal action against unlawful Chinese conduct. Such measures may not significantly weaken entrenched Chinese control over features such as Antelope Reef, but they can impede the normalization of China’s activities, raise the costs to Beijing of further consolidating control, and deter similar moves elsewhere. A particular priority is preventing Beijing from reclaiming and establishing a permanent outpost at Scarborough Shoal. Washington and Manila should agree in advance to a graduated diplomatic, economic, and operational response to any such attempt.

These efforts depend on Washington’s credibility. Countries in the region must trust the United States to act dependably, to counter China without needless escalation, and to observe the international law it invokes. Washington must deepen its economic and diplomatic engagement across Southeast Asia and correct course on policies in the region and beyond that constrain its partners’ ability to resist Beijing. Above all, the United States and its allies and partners must see China’s advances at sea and on land for what they are and respond before the cumulative effects of individually minor acts harden into a new regional order.

America’s Surprising Energy Advantage

Joseph E. Aldy, Motoy Kuno-Lewis, Dustin Tingley — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The clean energy transition has entered a new phase. Ambitious net-zero emission pledges made over the past decade have fallen glaringly short of their goals. But the rise of artificial intelligence—and the proliferation of data centers to power it—has created an insatiable demand for power. As a result, more and more countries and corporations are intent on increasing their energy supplies and pivoting to alternative, more reliable sources.

Beijing is currently winning the race to provide such power. Affordable, Chinese-made solar panels form the backbone of renewable energy infrastructure across continents. Chinese-produced turbines are central to wind energy everywhere, and Chinese firms dominate the global battery market. Washington, by contrast, has redoubled its efforts to produce and use pricey fossil fuels—even though most of the world is pivoting away from them.

As a result of these trends, Beijing might soon dominate the global energy system. Yet Washington still has a chance to win this competition. China may lead in solar and wind power and in battery manufacturing, but the United States has the upper hand in two other essential technologies: enhanced geothermal and new nuclear energy. These may indeed be more valuable than solar and wind power because they draw from clean energy sources that do not depend on the weather. Washington, however, will have to coordinate with large technology firms and its many foreign partners if it wants to export its geothermal and nuclear capabilities to the wider world—or indeed power its own AI sector. Otherwise, Beijing will keep pulling ahead.

ELECTRIC SLIDE

Global demand for energy is surging. Developing countries are electrifying more and more of their towns and cities, electric vehicles are entering new markets, and data centers are proliferating. The world’s electricity needs are expected to increase by three-quarters over the next 25 years. This demand shock has shifted the impetus for the energy transition. Clean energy may no longer simply be a climate imperative in many countries; it has become the key to economic growth and global technological advancement.

As a result, power generation has become an increasingly important geopolitical issue—one that Beijing is trying to use to its advantage. For more than two decades, China has lavishly supported its burgeoning clean technology sectors by exempting key clean energy inputs from import taxes, requiring a portion of inputs to be sourced domestically, and providing funding to local manufacturers and research institutions for R & D and commercialization. These measures have helped China become the world’s dominant supplier of clean intermittent energy—that is, energy from inconstant and unpredictable sources, such as wind and solar. In 2024, for instance, Chinese companies exported $28 billion worth of solar panels. One of China’s largest solar companies, JinkoSolar, has created more than 20 overseas subsidiaries, which demonstrates China’s growing influence over clean energy infrastructure across the developing world. These policies also laid the groundwork for China’s success in the supply chains needed for clean energy, including the mining and refinement of critical minerals. This, in turn, has given Beijing substantial international leverage. In fact, Chinese officials forced the Trump administration to lift U.S. tariffs on Chinese products by threatening to cut the United States off from critical minerals.

The United States still has its own energy exports—namely, oil and gas. These have undergirded global industrial development since the end of World War II and traditionally endowed Washington with unmatched influence over global energy markets. But such leverage is fading as the fossil fuel industry faces structural limits. Much of the world’s remaining hydrocarbon wealth sits under state-controlled reserves that U.S. firms cannot access. Countries and corporations are also looking into alternative sources of energy, which are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels and are often less vulnerable to blockades like the one now choking off the Strait of Hormuz. The Philippines and Saudi Arabia, for instance, have made clean energy central to their development strategies. Large tech companies have committed to sourcing clean power for their data centers: Google has promised to power its data centers using 100 percent clean energy by 2030, and Meta matches its data centers’ electricity use with renewable energy.

The United States thus needs a new strategy for managing China’s clean energy leadership. It has several options. The first is to compete with China directly, which is what the Biden administration attempted to do by subsidizing solar panels and electric vehicles as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. This option will not work, however, because the low price points at which China sells its intermittent energy infrastructure would be impossible to beat absent extraordinary U.S. government subsidies. Alternatively, Washington could triple its commitment to fossil fuels via looser regulations and make hydrocarbon exports cheaper and more appealing in the international market. This is, in fact, the Trump administration’s approach. It has focused on expanding output in coal, natural gas, and oil by opening access to federal lands for new mining and brokering liquefied natural gas agreements with Asian and European partners. Fossil fuels will remain a critical part of the global energy mix moving forward, but the Trump administration’s strategy is unlikely to succeed on its own. The simple fact is that the electricity systems of the future will depend less on hydrocarbons and more on renewables and nuclear energy. Regardless of what some leaders in Washington think about the changing climate, clean power is what other governments and corporations want.

GOT THE POWER

There is a more promising option for the United States—investing in clean, firm power, specifically geothermal and nuclear. Like solar and wind power, these sources are effectively limitless. But unlike them, geothermal and nuclear power do not depend on weather or other variable factors. They can thus be deployed around the clock.

Consider, first, geothermal power, which comes from heat emanating from deep under the earth’s surface. Such a steady power source would make any country’s energy grids—including the United States’—more reliable and resilient against spikes in electricity demand. Recent innovations have made geothermal plants easier than ever to install. Once, geothermal deployment depended on natural geological formations at shallow depths, which limited most viable sites to areas near the Ring of Fire, the 25,000-mile string of volcanoes surrounding the Pacific Ocean. But over the past decade, new innovations have made it possible to reach the requisite heat or create geothermal reservoirs much closer to the surface, making geothermal power available across most of the world. Drilling remains expensive, but the costs have been nearly halved since the early 2020s. Within the United States, they have continued to plummet thanks to the Department of Energy’s FORGE project, a field laboratory in Utah for developing, testing, and improving new geothermal technology.

China is well positioned to be the world’s new energy superpower.

The United States is already a world leader in geothermal power, and there is good reason to believe it can further its position in the months and years ahead. Decades of U.S. innovation in the oil and gas sector have generated a base of physical capital, supply chains, and technical capability that readily transfers to geothermal energy production. Oil rigs, wells, and drilling and fracking equipment can all be repurposed for geothermal power generation and offset the overhead costs of drilling. American oil and gas workers, for their part, already have the requisite skills in subsurface drilling and borehole development.

Washington is not quite as dominant when it comes to nuclear power. The United States still leads in the operation of advanced large nuclear reactors, but China is quickly closing the gap. The United States has 94 operational nuclear plants but no new ones under construction. China operates 60 reactors today and has 37 under construction. Russia, too, is expanding its nuclear plants; it has 34 large reactors in operation and five under construction. Beijing and Moscow both view nuclear power as a geostrategic opportunity and subsidize deployment using below-market loans, state credits, and subsidies. In ten years, China has been able to halve the construction costs for traditional nuclear plants.

But the United States is still in a good place, mostly thanks to its investment in small modular reactors. These could change the economics of nuclear deployment. Whereas it can take over a decade and cost more than $10 billion for the United States to construct a traditional reactor, small reactors have standardized designs that are cheaper and quicker to build. They generate up to 350 megawatts of power per unit, about a third of the capacity of a traditional nuclear reactor, but their smaller size and lower upfront costs make them more appealing to customers hesitant to go all-in on nuclear megaprojects. And right now, American companies account for nearly a third of publicly available small modular reactor designs, or more than China and Russia combined. The U.S. venture ecosystem has produced a cohort of well-funded startups dedicated to advanced small modular reactor development, including Kairos Power, TerraPower, and X-energy.

CHAIN REACTION

Washington is well positioned to provide the world with geothermal and nuclear power. But it cannot win the race to lead these technologies on its own. Instead, the future of U.S. energy security requires a coordinated international strategy that supports innovation, streamlines supply chains, and builds demand for geothermal and nuclear power around the planet.

This is no easy task. Nuclear supply chains, for example, are highly vulnerable to chokepoints. Right now, the United States imports 99 percent of its uranium. Only six countries are responsible for enriching the vast majority of the world’s uranium, and nearly half that enrichment takes place in Russia. A small set of firms in China, Japan, and Russia manufacture the parts used to build nuclear reactors.

These technologies also face demand-side troubles. Although small modular reactors are much cheaper than large reactors, manufacturers need to demonstrate to investors that they can drive down costs per unit even more to offset the lower relative power output. Novel geothermal systems face a similar challenge: high upfront drilling costs, uncertainty over whether a drilling project will yield a geothermal reservoir, and deployment timelines ranging from seven to ten years all dissuade private investment.

The world’s electricity needs are expected to increase by three-quarters over the next 25 years

But there are clear ways to address these problems. The United States should secure long-term procurement commitments from allied governments for small modular nuclear reactors; this would support investment in new capacity and curb U.S. reliance on enriched uranium from Russia. These procurement commitments could include a tiered pricing system, with a customer paying higher prices for initial small modular reactors followed by lower prices for the reactors it acquires later. Such tiering would limit risk for customers and provide greater certainty about the scope and value of the small modular market for manufacturers. These efforts could also engage major corporations, such as Amazon, Google, and Meta, which have all begun entering into long-term agreements with small modular manufacturers. The United States and its partners should also jointly invest in protecting their production systems. The Sapporo 5 partnership—in which Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States have agreed to spend $4 billion on uranium sourcing and enrichment to decrease Russian influence over nuclear fuel supply chains—offers a natural platform to build on.

The United States should also set up a buyers’ consortium among electricity consumers, such as utility companies and tech firms, and countries interested in developing new energy sources. This would signal that there is strong demand for nuclear and geothermal technologies and would, in turn, help geothermal and nuclear operators develop optimal production processes through repeated exports. The result would be lower costs and greater U.S. influence abroad. To make this buyers’ consortium more enticing, the United States could also subsidize the export of new technologies through collaborations with multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, which has committed to advancing both small nuclear reactors and geothermal energy, and through its own Development Finance Corporation.

Washington will also need international cooperation to make sure its nuclear and geothermal energy can reach foreign markets. International geothermal deployment often requires approvals from multiple authorities, including central governments and their environmental and water regulators. The result can be disjointed rules and competing priorities that lead to lengthy and uncertain permitting processes. American nuclear reactor sales, too, must clear host country licensing requirements and U.S. regulations regarding nuclear nonproliferation and technology exports. If the United States does not have a bilateral nuclear agreement already in place with a potential recipient, it needs to negotiate one before it can sell nuclear technology. These agreements, known as 123 agreements, facilitate nuclear collaboration but include strict safeguards and take 400 days on average to negotiate. The precise licensing pathways for small modular reactors are still under development, and regulations remain country specific.

Clean power is what governments and corporations want.

But Washington has institutions that can help streamline this process. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy, for example, should convene with existing, global standard-setting organizations to create a simplified regulatory framework that governments can adopt or refer to when engaging with American nuclear exporters. The State Department, in partnership with the Department of Energy, could standardize 123 packages and create export-control exemptions when selling small reactors to important allies. In partnership with the Treasury Department, the State Department could also pursue a mix of bilateral and multilateral agreements designed to help countries more easily buy U.S. geothermal technology. These deals could mirror similar existing agreements for liquefied natural gas exports. Washington might also consider creating an alternative forum to the International Geothermal Commission for Standards, which is chaired by a Chinese oil and gas company, to harmonize international standards in a way friendly to American businesses.

Finally, the United States should partner directly with U.S. multinational technology companies to strengthen its geothermal and nuclear sectors. These firms drive much of the demand for clean energy in the United States, specifically to support their AI operations. As they build more data centers inside and outside U.S. borders, they will increasingly be able to influence energy markets elsewhere. A handful of American tech giants are building billion-dollar data centers globally, and they contributed to more than a fifth of global greenfield investments—investments in a foreign country for a new project—in 2025. The U.S. government must work with these tech companies to support American clean energy and to shape global energy policy in Washington’s favor. A potential model to follow would be the Stargate Project. Announced in 2025, this joint venture among American, Emirati, and Japanese firms plans to invest $500 billion toward AI infrastructure over four years. To do so, Stargate has tasked the U.S. tech firm OpenAI with negotiating agreements for new data centers and energy sources with countries keen to develop their AI capabilities. The first international agreement to come out of Stargate pairs the construction of a large data center campus in Abu Dhabi, powered by local nuclear and solar energy sources, with Emirati investment in new data centers in the United States that will be equally as large and powerful. Future agreements could also bundle in American energy providers.

POWER PLAYERS

The world’s energy system is changing, and the United States must decide if it wishes to lead it. The previous order was built in large part on American oil and gas, which fueled industrial economies. But today, energy markets are more diversified and centered on clean power. China dominates the supply of intermittent power—solar and wind—and batteries and is thus well positioned to be the world’s new energy superpower. But intermittent power has its drawbacks, and the world would be better suited if clean, firm energy were powering the AI boom.

The United States has what it takes to control this sector. Its oil and gas industries have the knowledge and physical capital to lead in next-generation geothermal. It is home to an innovation ecosystem that has produced the world’s most diverse set of small modular nuclear reactors. It has powerful partnerships with allied countries that can coordinate deployment, development finance institutions that can structure deals and supplement private capital investment, and multinational corporations that want more clean, domestic power. The United States, in other words, has the tools it needs for energy dominance. The question is whether it will use them.

How to Reindustrialize America

Jake Sullivan — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For more than a century, America’s unmatched ability to invent, build, and diffuse technology underwrote its prosperity and power. That foundation is now under strain in a new era of state-driven competition. The economists David Autor and David Dorn have warned of a “second China shock,” not of cheap exports, but of technological primacy. Beijing is vying for global leadership across the frontier of advanced industries, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, aerospace, next-generation energy, and biotechnology.

It has done so by constructing a vast, decentralized system of state-backed innovation finance, channeling subsidized capital into priority high-tech sectors and encouraging firms to compete ruthlessly for scale. The result is a market systematically tilted by state intervention, one in which Chinese firms can overbuild capacity and flood markets before American and allied competitors can scale up production. China’s strategy has created a technology ecosystem that now rivals—and in some areas surpasses—that of the United States.

Beijing has also used this approach to take control of critical supply chains, exploiting that control to pressure its geopolitical rivals. In 2010, China cut rare-earth exports to Japan during a diplomatic dispute over islands in the East China Sea. Fifteen years later, during a trade war with the United States, it restricted these inputs to gain the upper hand, leading U.S. President Donald Trump to scale back triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods. For China, industrial capacity has become a tool of coercion as well as competitiveness.

At the same time China was building its industrial strength, the United States was allowing much of its productive base to migrate abroad. For a few decades, that shift appeared to carry few strategic costs. America remained the world’s leading center of research and invention even as manufacturing employment fell and supply chains stretched across continents. But the costs of separating innovation from production are now too great to ignore. As factories have moved offshore, the United States has lost much of its skilled workforce and the expertise to build at speed and scale. If it does not change course, the country could cede its technological edge, and, in time, its broader global leadership, to China.

To avoid eroding what Alexander Hamilton called “the essentials of national supply,” the United States must revive the ecosystems that allow complex, high-value manufacturing to flourish. Simply put, America must get better at making what it designs.

But Washington should not aim to copy Beijing’s state-backed playbook wholesale. After all, the United States has plenty of advantages over China, including its entrepreneurs, universities, and capital markets, which are the deepest in the world. But those markets optimize for efficiency, not resilience or security. The challenge, then, is to turn capital into capability, to channel investment toward the industries that anchor modern national strength and economic vitality: advanced computing, biotechnology, robotics, critical minerals, pharmaceutical precursors, advanced manufacturing, and the electric-energy backbone. And the solution is an ambitious national strategic investment enterprise, headlined by a federal Strategic Investment Fund.

FOUNDER FATHERS

Since its founding, the United States has treated finance as an instrument of sovereignty. In his 1791 Report on Manufactures to Congress, Hamilton made the case that economic independence was inseparable from political independence. The young republic, he argued, had to use public credit to nurture productive industry and national strength. Hamilton envisioned a pragmatic model of state-enabled capitalism, in which loans and “bounties” encouraged “infant manufactures,” tariffs protected strategic sectors, and public institutions channeled capital toward long-term national aims. Whenever the United States has faced existential tests, its leaders have returned to Hamilton’s logic.

When credit markets froze during the Great Depression and World War II, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), created in 1932, filled the gap and served as a strategic investor, financing banks, utilities, housing, and manufacturing, earning returns and restoring confidence in U.S. markets. Its wartime subsidiary, the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC), built more than 2,000 factories and shipyards, eventually transferring them to private operators, creating the foundations for America’s postwar dominance in steel, aviation, and chemicals.

The DPC ceased operations with the end of the war and the RFC wound down in 1957, but with their independent balance sheets and professional business management, they modeled what a responsible public investment apparatus could look like. They showed that effectively deployed public capital can be used to invest in important industries private capital is either unwilling or unable to finance by itself.

Washington should not aim to copy Beijing’s state-backed playbook wholesale.

During the Cold War, Washington built a constellation of new institutions that linked scientific ambition to strategic purpose as it sought advantage over the Soviet Union. The founding of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the national laboratories reflected a recognition by Washington that geopolitical competition required sustained public investment.

The approach worked. Early defense- and space-related procurement of semiconductors provided the demand that, over time, made the technology cheaper and more efficient to produce. The U.S. Air Force’s Minuteman program and NASA’s Apollo missions bought thousands of chips when no private buyer would. As government demand grew and costs fell, a full commercial American semiconductor ecosystem took shape. Fairchild was founded in 1957, followed by Intel and AMD in the 1960s and Micron in the 1970s. Existing tech companies such as Texas Instruments and Motorola expanded their semiconductor businesses to include military and commercial applications.

By the mid-1970s, however, the broader political and economic consensus supporting an expansive federal role in industrial development began to weaken. Inflation, energy shocks, and their attendant fiscal strain eroded public confidence in the government’s ability to play a constructive role in the economy. A new consensus took hold in Washington that markets, more agile and disciplined than public bureaucracies, were the only real tool to allocate capital effectively.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Washington’s remit narrowed from investor to regulator. Where it once helped build industries, it now confined itself to setting the rules of market competition through antitrust and disclosure regulations. Agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and DARPA remained formidable through the market liberalization of the Reagan years and the fiscal discipline and global integration of the Clinton administration, but the connective tissue between research, finance, and production atrophied. In the first three decades of the twenty-first century, it has only started to recover.

INVESTMENT WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

A generation after the first China shock hollowed out America’s manufacturing base, a second one is underway. In the twenty-first century, Beijing has made technological leadership a national project, mobilizing finance, procurement, and policy to pursue commanding positions in frontier industries.

China has built a comprehensive system of state-guided investment that blends central strategy with decentralized experimentation. Provinces, cities, and national ministries have created more than 1,700 “guidance funds,” raising nearly $700 billion in capital. With the support of government-provided land and permits, these professionally managed, profit-seeking vehicles direct equity into priority sectors. The approach has generated immense duplication and waste, but it has also produced national champions able to globally dominate their industries, such as the battery manufacturer CATL, the solar technology producer LONGi, the drone producer DJI, and telecommunications giant Huawei. At the same time, China is converting the knowledge generated in the manufacture of these products into gains at the innovation frontier, including in industries the United States has traditionally dominated, such as biotechnology.

The Chinese system extends beyond financing supply. It also creates demand. National and municipal authorities have created new markets through a blend of subsidies, procurement, and regulation. Take Shenzhen’s promotion of electric vehicles. By mandating the electrification of its bus and taxi fleets, the city gave BYD, then an emerging EV maker, guaranteed demand, stable cash flow, and real-world feedback that private markets could not provide on their own. An industrial EV commons soon bloomed. Battery and electronics suppliers clustered around BYD, city and grid companies built charging and testing infrastructure, and local universities produced a steady pipeline of EV engineers and technicians. BYD has since surpassed Tesla in global unit sales, and China has overtaken Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.

Beijing has embraced a lesson the United States, during its competition with the Soviet Union, understood well: technological leadership depends not only on invention, but also on industrial power. China has adapted that logic to its own political system, replacing the U.S. public investment–private enterprise partnership with its party-state capitalist model.

BRAWN DRAIN

For much of the twentieth century, the United States, blessed with vast natural resources, built the world’s most formidable industrial base, its “arsenal of democracy.” But recent crises have exposed how thin the nation’s capacity to build has become. The world relies on Taiwan for production of the most advanced chips, a single and fragile point of failure. In pharmaceuticals, nearly 700 U.S.-approved medicines, including critical drugs such as antibiotics, depend on at least one chemical produced solely in China. China also dominates rare-earth and graphite refining, essential for the magnets and batteries that power defense and clean energy systems. A scarcity of American dry docks limits naval readiness, and a dependence on imported power transformers has slowed upgrades to the national power grid and left it vulnerable to prolonged outages.

While China builds tightly clustered ecosystems where suppliers, materials, and manufacturing move seamlessly from design to mass production, the United States has allowed its “electric tech stack”—the linked supply chains for critical minerals, batteries, power electronics, and chips—to drift offshore, weakening industrial learning and depth.

MIT’s Task Force on Production in the Innovation Economy has demonstrated that in complex, high-value industries, innovation depends on proximity between design and production. When manufacturing migrates abroad, the feedback loops between engineers and factory floors break down and innovation suffers. Reindustrialization, done right, is a precondition for renewing the United States’ inventive edge and the foundation of its strategic strength.

CAPITAL CONSTRAINTS

The United States commands the world’s most sophisticated capital markets, but they are optimized for fields in which revenue can be easily underwritten and risk can be diversified, where feedback is quick and failure is relatively inexpensive. The investments required for American reindustrialization, however, do not necessarily fit that mold. Three main financial hurdles stand in the way.

First, some strategic industrial sectors depend on conditions that private markets cannot reliably provide or price. Nuclear plants, semiconductor fabs, shipyards, transformer factories, and rare-earth refineries require considerable upfront capital, decades-long horizons for return on investment, policy stability, and confidence in long-term demand. A shift in tariffs, procurement rules, grid standards, or commodity prices can erase returns overnight. The rational response for investors is to wait and see before committing to large outlays of capital. From each investor’s standpoint, that caution is prudent, but at the societal level, it leads to underinvestment. Government policy can change that equation. When the state provides some certainty with long-term offtake contracts, stable regulations, or guaranteed price floors, it gives investors the predictability they need, and private capital follows.

Next, research by the Production in the Innovation Economy Task Force has shown that the United States faces a financing gap in the “scale up” stage between venture funding and public markets, when promising technologies must move from prototype to production. Large multinationals can draw on internal cash flow to bridge that gap, but both main-street manufacturers (the majority of American manufacturing) and advanced-manufacturing startups cannot. The local banks that once financed smaller regional producers have disappeared, and venture investors tend to avoid factory capital, which they see as asset heavy and too slow to yield venture-level returns. The result is a structural shortfall in financing that can carry companies through the long, risky, and capital-intensive scale-up phase.

Finally, markets fail to value positive externalities, the spillovers that result when private investments create social or strategic benefits that cannot be fully captured by the investor. Strategic physical industries, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy, semiconductors, and robotics, create learning-by-doing, supplier networks, and engineering capabilities that strengthen the broader manufacturing ecosystem but do not always generate financial returns for a single firm.

At a rare-earth magnet manufacturing facility in Sumter, South Carolina, July 2026 Sam Wolfe / Reuters

The course of American manufacturing illustrates this dynamic. Once production ecosystems fragment, they are exceedingly hard to rebuild. U.S. shipbuilding, for example, collapsed after the 1980s, when government subsidies were withdrawn, erasing supplier depth and design expertise. From the 1980s onward, the offshoring of U.S. transformer or machine-tool manufacturing reduced procurement costs for downstream firms in the short run but wiped out the domestic base of engineers and component makers. Each firm’s offshoring decision might have made sense in isolation, but collectively they weakened the nation’s process knowledge and with it its productive core.

Geopolitics compounds these market failures. Chinese state-backed interventions into these industries crowd American and allied producers out of markets, even when those producers are technological leaders. As one innovative U.S. manufacturing CEO told me, raising U.S. capital for his first-of-a-kind technology was a series of near-death experiences—one that was quickly undercut by a flood of copycat Chinese competitors propped up by state subsidies, free land, and guaranteed buyers.

Yet the hurdle for American industry is as much a fragmented state at home as it is a subsidized rival abroad. In sectors such as nuclear energy or mineral processing, the hindrance is often not just a lack of capital but the prohibitive “soft costs” and uncertainty of a disjointed permitting and regulatory landscape, as well. Navigating this bureaucracy exhausts years of capital, creating no tangible value along the way. And inconsistent and slow government procurement fails to provide the stable demand necessary for firms to reach scale.

Washington’s public investment, then, must be paired with a new policy approach. It does not need to match Beijing dollar for dollar. But it must correct a structural imbalance between its financial depth and its productive capacity that markets alone cannot.

CONNECT THE DOTS

The United States still operates the world’s most powerful early-stage innovation system. DARPA, the national laboratories, and the Defense Innovation Unit continue to support breakthrough technologies. The Defense Production Act and the Office of Strategic Capital provide targeted loans and guarantees in critical security areas. But without a shared framework to coordinate the core instruments of economic statecraft, individual investments are blunted by procedural friction and institutional misalignment.

Because the United States lacks such a framework dictating which industries are strategically vital and what baseline domestic or allied capacity is required, federal action has been reactive and crisis driven. The first Trump administration used emergency authorities to secure personal protective equipment and medical supplies under COVID; the Biden administration made targeted interventions to sustain munitions and solid-rocket-motor production after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and both the Biden and second Trump administrations invoked the Defense Production Act to support rare-earth processing and permanent magnet capacity as Chinese export threats mounted. As long as Washington lacks a comprehensive strategy, actions will remain episodic and narrow, vulnerable to reversal across administrations.

Even where priorities are clear, the United States lacks an institution capable of synchronizing investment, demand-side commitments, regulation, and trade policy behind shared objectives. Previous administrations have assembled deals by combining authorities across different agencies. In recent years, rare-earth and battery-materials investments have moved forward without appropriated long-term procurement or market-stabilization mechanisms; CHIPS Act incentives have been negotiated project by project with uneven integration of trade defenses or downstream demand; and efforts to rebuild shipbuilding and transformer capacity continue to run up against onerous federal, state, and local permitting and regulatory processes.

America must get better at making what it designs.

The United States also lacks a permanent public investor embedded in capital markets that can partner directly with private funds, banks, and institutional investors. Strategic investments are negotiated agency by agency through bespoke programs that sit outside normal deal flow, limiting the government’s ability to price risk, mobilize large pools of private capital, or scale proven structures across sectors. Without a professional, repeatable coinvestment platform, public support too often serves as a substitute for private finance rather than as a catalyst for it.

Finally, the United States has no institutional vehicle to align its strategic investments with allies. Instead, administrations have in recent years shoehorned ad hoc investment “funds” into trade deals with allies such as Japan and South Korea. Without a way to coordinate investment, shared procurement, and trade and industrial policy, allies fragment markets and duplicate subsidies; they cannot provide the scale and staying power needed to compete with China’s state-backed system.

Several allied governments have already begun addressing these institutional gaps. In 2024, the United Kingdom launched a $37 billion National Wealth Fund to “crowd in” private capital for strategic infrastructure and energy security. That same year, Australia launched Future Made in Australia, a $16 billion initiative anchored by $9.5 billion in production tax credits for hydrogen and critical mineral refining, paired with a centralized investment-coordination framework. The United States should work with—and learn from—these and other allies.

HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA

Throughout its history, the United States built institutions that channeled capital toward a national strategy. Resurrecting that tradition today would mean establishing a new kind of public investor: a U.S. Strategic Investment Fund (SIF), a federally chartered, market-facing public investor with its own balance sheet, designed to invest alongside private capital in strategically critical industries, both mature and emerging, where markets alone have proven insufficient.

The SIF would launch with $50 billion—comparable to the CHIPS and Science Act but with a broader mandate—and scale over time as it proves its ability to invest prudently and mobilize private capital. The fund would deploy a variety of securities to partner with companies, with a primary focus on attractive financing and credit guarantees, as well as convertible debt and other equity-like securities for investment flexibility and upside for taxpayers. An initial capitalization of $50 billion would be large enough to support a diversified portfolio yet limited enough to allow Congress to evaluate the model before any expansion. Loans and guarantees would stretch each public dollar and crowd in private capital, and convertible and equity-like instruments could give taxpayers a share of upside when investments succeed.

The fund would build on recent initiatives to invest in American industrial competitiveness at home and abroad, including the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital and Economic Defense Unit, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, the Development Finance Corporation, and the CHIPS and Science Act, as well as ad hoc capital interventions from Departments of Commerce and Energy. Rather than replace these efforts, it would effectively unite the nation’s investment, trade, procurement, and regulatory tools within a single framework of economic statecraft.

To create a coherent strategic finance strategy, a cabinet-level Strategic Investment Council would coordinate investments with federal procurement, targeted tariffs, tax incentives, regulatory processes, credit programs, and other policy tools. Chaired by the Treasury Department, the council would include the heads of the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, and State, as well as the U.S. Trade Representative. Its central task would be to align the nation’s policy and investment levers.

The council would also organize multiyear purchasing commitments from the Department of Defense and other major agencies for critical assets such as shipbuilding, grid transformers, and long-duration energy storage, providing the predictable demand and cash flows private investors need to underwrite projects that would be otherwise unfinanceable. And it would assist priority projects by streamlining permitting and resolving interagency bottlenecks.

A BYD electric vehicle at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing, April 2026 Xiaoyu Yin / Reuters

The SIF would be governed by a professional board of independent directors drawn from finance, industry, and labor, with a minority of ex officio members from Treasury, Commerce, Defense, and Energy providing oversight. In the spirit of the RFC, an experienced private-sector chief executive would be confirmed by the Senate and serve a fixed term, accountable to Congress and the public. The goal would be to build in as many guardrails against abuse as possible.

To maintain focus, the SIF would lead a systematic and transparent process to identify the sectors that require a baseline of manufacturing capacity in the United States and among trusted allies. It would seek to answer the questions facing American reindustrialization posed by the economic historian Chris Miller, including: whether a given product could be monopolized and used for geopolitical leverage; whether U.S. manufacturing capacity is ready to withstand a crisis; and whether preserving today’s manufacturing ecosystem in a given sector is necessary to develop tomorrow’s.

The fund’s investment approach would recognize that different sectors require different kinds of support. For capital-intensive industries such as shipbuilding and basic battery cells, which are essentially mature and competitively undifferentiated, and in which scale, learning curves, and foreign subsidies define competitiveness, the SIF would help reestablish a base level of foundational capacity. It could pursue joint ventures with trusted and cutting-edge allied firms and pair investment with policy tools: targeted tariffs to counter distortions, multiyear procurement and offtake agreements to create predictable demand, guarantees to unlock private financing, and time-limited tax credits to move plants down the cost curve. Once U.S. capacity grows, the fund could then step back as commercial capital takes over.

Innovation-led sectors, such as advanced robotics, next-generation nuclear power, energy storage, biotech, and advanced materials, present a different challenge. In these industries, firms can differentiate themselves through technological innovation, but many remain stuck in the chasm between prototype and production. Here, flexible public capital has the highest leverage. The SIF would bridge the scale-up gap by providing attractive financing, coordinating demand signals, and helping commercially viable technologies reach production scale in the United States.

The fund’s reach would not stop at U.S. firms. Taking cues from the CHIPS Act’s funding of the Taiwanese semiconductor fab TSMC and the Korean electronics company Samsung, the SIF could support trusted foreign partners building industrial capacity in the United States through joint ventures, the construction of new facilities, and technology partnerships. Such investments would accelerate the transfer of cutting-edge know-how, diversify supply chains, and embed allied firms in the U.S. industrial base, particularly for industries such as shipbuilding, where foreign producers (often with the help of subsidies) have driven scale and cost efficiencies. Finally, the SIF would serve as a platform for allied investment coordination. By aligning resources and policies in areas of common interest, allies could approach China’s scale without replicating its model.

FUND-AMENTAL DISAGREEMENTS

Opponents of a sovereign investment fund might object on the grounds that it could become a tool of corruption through which presidents could reward cronies or enrich themselves. Their concern is valid. A public investor empowered to direct large sums toward individual firms could become a vehicle for favoritism. But that risk is not unique to a strategic investment fund; it is in the nature of executive power itself. Any institution with real financial power can be steered toward self-dealing or political reward if a president chooses to do so. The fund’s design, then, should prioritize managing that risk by structuring it to preserve as much political independence as possible. Leadership would serve under a majority-independent board, separating political direction from day-to-day investment decisions. A professional staff would operate under published criteria. Every transaction would be disclosed, audited, and bound by portfolio-level return targets that enforce financial discipline.

Others might frame public investment in emerging technology and strategically important but not yet profitable industries as a potential boondoggle that could cost taxpayers billions. The price of rebuilding national capacity, they would argue, outweighs the hard-to-quantify benefits. For more than a decade after Solyndra, the solar panel company subsidized by the Obama administration, fell into bankruptcy, this fear of failure has chilled public investment. But today’s geopolitical environment demands a different mindset. Competing with China requires accepting that some unsuccessful ventures will be inevitable. As with any fund, some investments will fail. Any given investment may be criticized in isolation, but if decisions are made by an independent board and guided by transparent criteria, they can withstand partisan swings. Broad bipartisan support for the fund’s creation and continued existence will be essential.

Still others opposed to government intervention in markets might criticize the SIF for picking winners and crowding out private investment. Indeed, industrial policy requires humility, and markets remain the best engine for allocating capital and determining which firms succeed. But the fund would specifically target sectors that private investors have proved unable to finance, investing across those sectors in ways that seek to preserve competition and market discipline. Crucially, the fund’s capital would be structured largely as risk-absorbing financing designed to unlock private investment, not replace it. By offering flexible terms and sending stable demand signals, the fund would in fact lower risks that currently deter institutional investors from entering strategic industries.

Those more amenable to public strategic finance in principle might point out that several mechanisms to encourage reindustrialization already exist: tax credits, which mobilize private investment in sectors such as renewable energy, and tariffs, which protect domestic industries from foreign distortion. Both are valuable instruments, but neither supplies the transaction-level coordination or tailored risk-sharing that difficult projects often require. Tax credits lower expected costs across a market but are not always sufficient to convince investors to assume the risks that come with first-of-a-kind technology: uncertain demand, permitting delays, inadequate infrastructure, or absence of financing. Tariffs can counter foreign distortion and create breathing room, but on their own, they cannot create the scale or technological edge needed for long-term competitiveness. And if they are overused, they can shelter domestic incumbents without spurring new investment or innovation.

These instruments would still play an important complementary role to the SIF. Tax credits would continue to create marketwide incentives for investment and allow the fund to operate more selectively and patiently, intervening only at the adventurous margin where private capital remains hesitant despite available incentives. Targeted tariffs, particularly against China, would counter unfair practices and level the playing field for domestic industries. The fund would then lower the cost of building new capacity and help firms innovate and compete. Used together, they address both sides of the problem, countering subsidies while rebuilding the productive strength to compete globally.

REINDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

For more than two centuries, the United States has shaped its financial institutions to meet the strategic demands of the era. Hamilton’s Treasury built national credit in the young republic. The RFC built industrial scale during the nation’s economic nadir. The innovation agencies built America’s technological leadership as it emerged from World War II. Each moment required the same act of imagination: treating capital as a tool of national purpose and industrial power.

That imagination is sorely needed today. China’s rise has forced Washington to answer whether open, market-based democracies can still mobilize capital to serve national ends. The United States still commands the world’s deepest markets and its most capable entrepreneurs. What it lacks are modern instruments to align them with long-term national aims. A strategic investment fund would ensure that the future is not only imagined in America, but made in America, too.

The Hidden Path to Regime Change in Iran

Nader Hashemi — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

With the prospects for diplomacy between the United States and Iran uncertain, it may seem premature to contemplate the postwar future. After all, following the June 17 memorandum of understanding, the war between the two sides escalated again, leaving the document in tatters. Both sides began launching major strikes, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran was once again in a “full-scale war.” On July 27, after a two-week bombing campaign, the Trump administration announced a cease-fire and Iran responded in kind, but a resumption of military hostilities remained high.

But regardless of the course of fighting, the endgame is unlikely to change. According to a new intelligence assessment reported in The Washington Post, Iran is “unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of U.S. military strikes.” An unavoidable reality thus confronts the United States and its allies: that they will not topple the Islamic Republic.

Given that the regime will very likely survive the war, the urgent question is what a grand bargain to end the conflict will mean for the future of Iranian politics. A commonly held view is that reaching a new deal will simply entrench the existing hard-line leadership. But this overlooks important dynamics at play inside the country. In fact, a deal would significantly increase the prospects for democracy in Iran. These effects would not be seen immediately or felt in the short term, but under the right circumstances they are likely to appear in the near future. The crucial question, then, becomes how best to set the postwar conditions under which democratic forces have more, rather than less, potential to grow.

FLAWS OF WAR

It is clear that a diplomatic conclusion of the war with Iran, should it happen, will involve some kind of grand bargain. The broad contours of such a deal will likely approximate the terms outlined in the June memorandum. Of course, getting a deal that sticks will not be easy, and key parts of it will likely be deferred to future negotiations. Low-level hostilities may continue for some time to come. This time around, once a cease-fire is reached, it will be essential to institute a deconfliction mechanism to prevent further rounds of escalation and a return to war.

But the deal will have some provisions that take effect immediately, and so it will affect Iranian politics—and in an overall positive direction. More generally, democratization in Iran is fundamentally incompatible with crippling sanctions and war. The expansion of poverty and economic misery fueled by Western sanctions and the bombing of civilian infrastructure during the war have served to strengthen the state while weakening society. Put simply, it is impossible to mobilize for political change while people are starving and bombs are falling. The idea that impoverishing Iran economically and punishing it militarily will produce a popular uprising was always a fanciful notion. The war has proved that point.

The Islamic Republic faces a crisis of legitimacy. Although the war has produced a surge of nationalism and temporarily reaffirmed the leadership’s legitimacy, the core grievances that produced deep discontent and massive public protests in January remain. This is especially true of Iran’s very large urban youth population. A future Iran that no longer faces war or the threat of war and for which economic misery can no longer be blamed on foreign sanctions will inevitably bring into focus the regime’s accountability for the country’s ills, its extreme disconnect from the will of the people, and its pervasive corruption.

It is impossible to mobilize for political change while people are starving and bombs are falling.

This analysis may come as a surprise for U.S. policymakers, who have long argued that economic strangulation backed by military pressure will create a democratic opening. Much of this misunderstanding reflects the official war rationales offered by Israel and the United States. Both governments have paid lip service to the idea that military intervention can produce regime change. During the 12-day war in June 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Iranian people that Israel was “clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom.” In January, when the country was engulfed in protests, Trump encouraged Iranians to “keep protesting, take over your institutions” and assured them that “help is on the way.” After the 2026 war began, Netanyahu wrote, “We are waging a historic war for liberty,” and Trump told Iranians as the bombs began to fall that “the hour of your freedom is at hand.”

But the ferocious bombing campaign has had the opposite effect. The regime has survived the assassination of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior political and military officials. It has also consolidated power internally, weathered an expanding economic crisis, and, by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, fought Israel and the United States to a draw. Iranians have not taken to the streets, as Trump called on them to do. The attack on schools, mostly notably the girls’ school in Minab on the first day of the war, plus attacks on universities, hospitals, and on cultural heritage sites, quickly drove an outpouring of Iranian patriotism.

This response could be seen in the six-day funeral ceremony for Khamenei, in early July. No doubt the regime drew on its core supporters, but given the size of the crowds reported by foreign journalists on the ground, it seems likely that the public turnout was much higher than anticipated. Many Iranians who were on the fence seem to have sided with the political status quo as a result of the war, confirming the political scientist Robert Pape’s thesis that regime change operations conducted via external bombings rarely succeed.

RECIPE FOR REVOLUTION

If external bombardment has failed to bring about political change in Iran, the country’s internal conditions present a very different picture. Although there is no single magic formula, there is broad agreement among scholars about the political factors that enhance the prospects for democratization. What is often overlooked about Iran is that many of these conditions already exist.

Generally, high levels of socioeconomic development and a sizable middle class are crucial. There needs to be a coherent administrative state. Civil society needs to support independent civic organizations that can make demands on the state and help foster accountability. There needs to be a political culture that includes adherence to basic norms and rules. National unity is required; countries that have secessionist movements or deeply unresolved territorial issues are less likely to make a successful shift to democracy. Finally, a diversified economy is also significant, since reliance on a few national resources allow authoritarian regimes to wield far-reaching control over the economy and sustain patronage networks.

Over the past 25 years, Iran has met five of these six preconditions. On socioeconomic development, Iranian society scores high, with adult literacy at around 90 percent and urbanization at 78 percent. And although the share of the population that is middle class has fallen from its 2012 peak of two-thirds, there is no reason that this number cannot rise again. Iran has a functional administrative state, and in the past, during reformist presidencies, it has seen civil society expand.

Moreover, Iranian political culture has historically been infused by democratic sentiment. There is a tradition of democratic struggle going back to the 1905 Constitutional Revolution, and fighting for political accountability has been a key part of modern Iranian history. In addition, unlike some of its neighbors, Iran does not face ethnic cleavages or sectarian fragmentation that could break the country apart. The country does have deep minority grievances, but it is ultimately united by a strong sense of national identity that dates back well over a century.

Many of the conditions for democratization already exist in Iran.

Historically, the one major precondition that Iran does not meet is having a diversified economy. The country’s long dependence on oil has led to a patronage system that reinforces authoritarianism by allowing the state to dominate the economy. This situation, however, is not static. Because of sanctions, Iran has begun to export industrial metals, petrochemicals, and agricultural products, and is no longer a pure oil rentier state. Nonetheless, large parts of its economy are controlled by regime-loyalist networks that are deeply embedded in and benefit the ruling elite. This more complicated economic model does have the potential of creating new political openings, particularly in the aftermath of a diplomatic settlement, when sanctions are lifted and Iran’s economy is incorporated into the global economy.

In addition to these internal factors, scholars of democratization note that a country’s international context matters. A stable global and regional environment enhances the possibility of political change; war or the threat of war severely undermines it. The latter, by shifting the center of gravity of politics away from internal accountability and toward external threats, allows an autocratic leadership to leverage national security concerns as a pretext for maintaining state control. On top of this, the regime can instrumentalize patriotism to crush dissent.

For much of the last quarter century, democratization in Iran has been hobbled by an inhospitable international environment. In 2015, however, the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States under President Barack Obama provided a rare moment of hope. Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was embraced not only by many world leaders but also by Iranian civil society and democracy activists. For them, the JCPOA held the promise of creating better internal and external conditions to fight for democracy. The threat of external war had finally been removed, and certain sanctions were lifted. The possibility of Iran’s deeper integration into the global community loomed on the horizon, and a profound chasm emerged among Iran’s ruling elites about the future of the Islamic Republic.

But this picture radically changed when Donald Trump tore up the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed devastating sanctions, despite Iran’s adherence to the terms of the deal. The result was that Iranian democrats were demoralized while hard-liners reveled in an “I told you so” moment. The United States, they claimed, could never be trusted. The consequences for a political opening in Iran were catastrophic. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA also created a direct pathway to the recent war with Iran. During his first term, the United States and Iran nearly went to war on three separate occasions. Since the beginning of his second term, 18 months ago, the president has taken the United States to war against Iran twice.

THE WAR AT HOME

Because of the war, Iranian reformers will have to overcome very significant obstacles to democratization. The cohesion of the ruling elite has been strengthened and hard-liners have asserted control, including through a smooth leadership succession to Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei’s son and the preferred candidate of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The war has also narrowed the space for more pragmatic leaders who might have emerged in peacetime. Moreover, Iran’s armed forces have stayed loyal to the regime. Despite the assassination of several layers of the senior IRGC leadership, the regime has managed to survive and effectively fight back via the use of drone and missile technology. Domestically, the regime has rallied its core supporters, who have occupied public spaces in major Iranian cities, deterring any opposition to the regime from expressing itself.

The absence of an effective, unified, and cohesive opposition has reinforced the existing structure of the Islamic Republic. Following the January massacres of protesters by security forces and the trauma of the war, regime opponents remain deeply divided and disorganized. These divisions are not insurmountable. On one level, the Iranian opposition faces many of the same challenges as democratic opposition movements in other countries, including how to create a strategy for political change and a shared vision for a democratic future that can mobilize a broad-based coalition of supporters. But Iranians are also contending with one of the most repressive regimes in the world. According to human rights groups, the Islamic Republic of Iran executes more people per capita than any other country, including 1,500 in 2025 and another 370 in the first six months of 2026. The war has further facilitated the repression.

A critical additional issue is how to reclaim the struggle for democracy from Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah. Although he has been the most prominent opposition figure outside Iran, the depth of his support within the country itself is unknown—and likely smaller than he claims it to be. His loyalty to his father’s repressive rule and his ties to Israel and Saudi Arabia also raise serious questions about his democratic credibility. A core challenge for democrats within Iran is how to create an alternative leadership that has organic links to society and can also inspire nonviolent resistance.

The war has produced two moral redlines for the opposition going forward: it will not compromise its democratic demands with the regime and it will be steadfastly opposed to foreign military intervention. Before the war, elements of Iran’s domestic opposition expressed sympathy for external military pressure on Iran, especially in the aftermath of January massacres. That ship has now sailed. Anyone who supports either of these approaches going forward will lack credibility among a large segment of Iranians, both domestically and abroad. Nonetheless, the United States and its Western allies can still adopt policy measures that indirectly support Iranian democrats.

FROM STABILITY TO OPPORTUNITY

There is at least one new factor in a successful postwar bargain that could significantly enhance Iran’s long-term democratic prospects: a changed international context. To begin with, this means removing the threat of war. Getting back to an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program that approximates the JCPOA will be essential in this regard. One of benefits of the June memorandum of understanding is that it opened the way to such a deal. While the current escalation has rendered this document dormant, it could still prove a useful framework for de-escalation and conflict resolution.

Thus far, most of the Western debate about a new deal has focused on containing the security threats that flow from Iranian nuclear enrichment. But a durable diplomatic agreement could also create a much better environment for Iranian democratization. Crucial here is the question of sanctions: new research suggests that the effects of existing sanctions on potential political change in Iran have been catastrophic. The World Bank and the UN Development Program estimate that Iran’s poverty rate could be as high as 40 percent; the war has doubtless pushed that figure even higher. According to a 2025 study in the European Journal of Political Economy, U.S. sanctions have had “devastating and measurable cost on the social fabric” of Iran. This sledgehammer approach, the authors argue, “constitutes a major strategic failure for the West.”

Looking ahead, any future sanctions on Iran must be guided by the goal of setting the conditions for democratization. Broad-based sanctions that hollow out the middle class should be repealed. Sanctions on Iranian leaders who have command-and-control responsibility for human rights violations, on the other hand, should be strengthened. Magnitsky-style sanctions—targeted, globally applicable punitive measures against individuals, such as travel bans and the freezing of assets—against top Iranian officials should remain in place. At the same time, promoting de-escalation between Iran and its neighbors in the Gulf can also advance democratization by creating a more stable international environment. A new Persian Gulf security architecture that includes Iran and its Arab neighbors would be a positive move in this direction. U.S. Vice President JD Vance hinted at this when he said that sticking to the diplomatic track based on the memorandum of understanding is “going to transform the entire region.”

ON BORROWED TIME

Democratization in Iran requires stability. Foreign military intervention, crippling economic sanctions, and threats of war undermine the country’s potential to change. The war has demonstrated that the Islamic Republic is not on the verge of collapse and that its leaders are not going to surrender to the demands of the Trump administration. Given the almost certain perseverance of the Islamic Republic at the end of the war, the more important question is how a postwar settlement can support the internal forces pushing for change.

Although this war has extended the shelf life of the Islamic Republic, the regime continues to live on borrowed time. The internal crisis of legitimacy is deep and the desire for structural political change is widespread, especially among young people, who constitute roughly 70 percent of the population. In the case of the June 2025 war, it took only six months before political demands resurfaced in the form of national protests over a sagging economy and political repression. When the fog of this war finally recedes, demands for accountability, transparency and representation will resurface.

Inevitably, the current war will come to an end, and when it does, Iranians will begin to heal and the struggle for democracy will again reassert itself. The road will be long and arduous, and there is no guarantee that the opposition will triumph. But it is crucial to understand that many of the internal preconditions for democratization are already in place, and that by changing the international context, an effective deal to end the war would significantly enhance the chances of success, not immediately but eventually.

Can Renewables Industrialize Africa?

Mohamed Adow — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The war on Iran, launched in late February by the United States and Israel, is doing more than rattling oil markets. It is accelerating a determination among African countries to reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels and to turn toward renewable power. Africa has extraordinary solar, wind, and geothermal resources, but until the early 2010s, much of this potential had gone untapped. Most African states had long generated electricity from fossil fuels and hydropower, because these technologies were already well established, whereas solar and wind were the new, expensive kids on the block.

That calculus began to change around 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the vulnerability of fossil fuel dependence. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of imported diesel and other fuels surged, with import bills rising by more than 35 percent in many countries over the course of a year, squeezing public finances and raising electricity bills for homes and businesses. The recent instability across the Middle East is only reinforcing that sense of vulnerability. And so African countries are now leaning toward the “electro-state” development model advanced by China, in which abundant, low-cost electricity from renewables underpins industrialization and economic growth. China is electrifying Africa through large-scale investment in renewable power generation, building electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure, and making electrified transport more accessible by financing electric-vehicle assembly lines, battery-swapping networks, and charging infrastructure.

Africa is now at the center of the world’s clean energy push, no longer at its periphery. And by embedding itself deeply into Africa’s energy infrastructure, China is positioning itself as a long-term strategic partner for industrializing the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent. The United States under President Donald Trump, however, simply appears not to understand the appeal of renewables on the continent. (For instance, Washington has approved a $4.7 billion U.S. export-import bank loan to try to revive a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique.) The truth is that infrastructure creates path dependence: countries tend to build future systems around the technologies, financing structures, and supply chains they already have.

If the United States cedes a role in Africa’s clean energy transition to China, it risks losing more than commercial opportunities. Beijing would deepen its diplomatic influence both in Africa and worldwide, shape the standards and supply chains underpinning the global energy transition, and strengthen its access to critical minerals essential for low-carbon technologies. And many African governments now prioritizing renewable energy are likely to view external partners that continue to emphasize fossil-fuel investments with growing skepticism. Rather than pushing hydrocarbons, the United States should partner with African countries on clean energy in ways that align with those countries’ development priorities. Doing so would not only expand Africa’s access to reliable and affordable energy; it would shore up American economic and geopolitical interests.

HERE COMES THE SUN

Nearly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity in their homes, roughly 80 percent of the world’s unelectrified population. Throughout much of the twentieth century, electrification relied on large, centralized fossil fuel and hydropower plants designed to serve cities, mines, and industry. Dispersed rural populations remained beyond the reach of these expensive transmission networks, leaving the continent with the world’s largest electricity access gap despite decades of investments in infrastructure.

But over the past 15 years, Africa’s energy transition began to accelerate as renewable sources became far cheaper. In 2024 alone, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that Africa would attract around $110 billion in total energy investments, of which nearly $40 billion would go to clean energy, almost double the proportion of the total directed toward renewables in 2020.

The driver of this pivot is economic. Worldwide, solar costs have fallen by roughly 90 percent since 2010, while battery prices have dropped by 93 percent over the same period. In Africa, decentralized renewable systems are now simply proving faster and cheaper to deploy than fossil fuel infrastructure. Rooftop solar, battery storage, and other such installations can bring electricity to rural communities in the space of months rather than the years it can take to expand the high-voltage transmission and distribution networks that carry power from a national grid’s large, centralized generating stations.

The continent also has especially abundant wind, solar, and geothermal resources. According to the IEA, Africa contains roughly 60 percent of the world’s best solar resources; its untapped onshore wind potential could hypothetically support the whole continent’s annual electricity demand. The East African Rift System, stretching north from Mozambique to Djibouti, has at least 15 gigawatts of untapped geothermal potential. Only one gigawatt has been developed so far. But renewable power capacity has grown steadily in recent years, and data shows that the continent added roughly 26 gigawatts of renewable power capacity in the ten years between 2013 and 2023, with solar accounting for the fastest growth.

In countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa, both governments and businesses are increasingly adopting solar not just to blunt the impact of climate change but also because it provides more reliable electricity than overstretched national grids and generators. In Nairobi, for instance, where around two-thirds of businesses own diesel backup generators to cope with power outages, many firms are now installing rooftop solar and battery storage.

RENEWING A CONTINENT

Chinese manufacturers are substantially powering Africa’s turn toward renewables. A clear signal of Africa’s increasing reliance on China to help it turn away from fossil fuels can be found buried in China’s customs data. Ember, an energy think tank, found that Africa’s imports of solar panels surged by 60 percent between mid-2024 and mid-2025, and that these panels’ destinations extended far beyond early adopters such as South Africa. In that same time frame, Algeria’s imports soared more than 3,000 percent and Botswana’s rose by 700 percent; Angola, Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Liberia all more than tripled their imports. The scale and speed of the increase suggest a potential tipping point: solar is shifting from a peripheral, largely donor-supported technology into core infrastructure for growth and energy security.

China itself recognized early that dependence on imported fossil fuels represented a strategic vulnerability. Its domestic deployment of renewables has been staggering. Its cumulative solar capacity now exceeds 1.2 terawatts, and its combined wind and solar installations are approaching two terawatts, constituting nearly half of global installed renewable capacity. That domestic strategy shift helps explain why China has emerged as the dominant force in global clean energy manufacturing. It controls major parts of the supply chains for solar panels, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and batteries, as well as the processing of the critical minerals—including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare-earth elements—that underpin the clean energy transition.

Crucially, China is exporting not just products but also energy systems. A 2024 analysis by the International Monetary Fund shows that, through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has become one of Africa’s largest infrastructure financiers: between 2000 and 2023, its lenders provided roughly $182 billion in loans to African governments and state-owned entities, with substantial funds directed toward energy, transport, mining, and telecommunications infrastructure. Energy has been central to this engagement, with Chinese banks and companies supporting projects such as Uganda’s Karuma Hydropower Plant and Zambia’s Kafue Gorge Lower Hydropower Project.

At the same time, Chinese firms are constructing solar parks in Egypt, electricity transmission lines in East Africa, hydropower facilities in Angola, and electric rail systems in Nigeria. These efforts are an important addition to the continent’s energy transition, as the IEA estimates that achieving universal electricity access in Africa will require a mix of grid expansion and decentralized solutions.

GREEN PATH DEPENDENCE

These projects are reshaping development choices across the continent. African governments with hydrocarbon reserves will, of course, continue exploiting oil and gas in the near term, despite research showing that such exploitation often leaves their populations poorer. But a growing number of governments are adopting policies that put them on an electro-state trajectory, in which electricity, rather than imported fuels, powers the economy. Ethiopia, for instance, has banned imports of internal combustion engine vehicles as part of a broader push to electrify transport. In May, Kenyan President William Ruto announced the waiver of import taxes for the first 100,000 electric cars brought into the country. (Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Uganda, and Zimbabwe have also introduced their own renewable energy tax incentives, such as VAT waivers, import-duty exemptions, and tax breaks for clean energy developers.) Electric vehicle uptake in Africa remains relatively low, but sales more than doubled in 2024, to nearly 11,000 vehicles; the shift is more visible in buses and commercial fleets.

A broad shift is underway in how Africa conceptualizes energy security. Morocco, for instance, is positioning itself as a major renewable export hub through large-scale projects such as the Noor Ouarzazate solar complex, a 580-megawatt facility designed to supply electricity to more than a million people and to support the country’s goal of generating 52 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030. Rabat is also expanding its renewable power and green hydrogen partnerships with European partners. Egypt, meanwhile, has embarked on utility-scale solar development at the Chinese-built Benban Solar Park and unveiled a national green hydrogen strategy that aims to attract up to $40 billion in investment and ultimately produce millions of tons of green hydrogen annually.

In South Africa, reforms allowing for private power generation, including the removal of licensing requirements for embedded generation (small- and medium-scale power generated close to where it is consumed) up to 100 megawatts, have accelerated a boom in rooftop solar and private renewable investment. Nigeria has introduced regulations that allow households and businesses to feed excess solar power they generate back into the national grid for a credit on their electricity bills.

Africa cannot be powered entirely by renewables overnight. But it is speeding through a hybrid transition in which cities such as Lagos see more and more rooftop solar, battery-backed businesses, and cleaner industrial power alongside continued investment in national grids, and in which industrial zones increasingly rely on renewable electricity to support manufacturing, logistics, and green industries. The main constraint is not the potential in renewable energy sources on the continent but financing, transmission infrastructure, and the institutional capacity to integrate new sources of power. 

MISSING THE FOREST

Washington has not grasped Africa’s new energy reality. Trump’s energy dominance agenda treats oil and gas not merely as commodities but as an ideological crusade. During his second term, his administration has frenetically promoted more drilling and sought to dismantle support for clean energy development at home and abroad. And it has explicitly framed African energy policy through the lens of geopolitical competition, urging greater development of the continent’s oil and gas resources as a means of boosting U.S. investment and countering China’s influence.

In Africa, however, the petrostate pathway increasingly looks like a trap, particularly for countries betting on expanding their oil and gas exports. Countries such as Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda are investing heavily in new fossil-fuel projects or export infrastructure hoping to generate future revenues. Yet these investments face weakening long-term demand, price volatility, and the possibility that they will become stranded assets before they earn an adequate return.

Many other African states are already acutely exposed to swings in global oil and gas prices. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many energy-importing African economies faced acute balance-of-payments pressures as the cost of fuel, food, and fertilizer prices surged simultaneously. Throughout 2022 and 2023, Ethiopia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and others experienced inflation rates above 20 percent, with Ghana’s climbing to a staggering 54 percent.

The electro-state model offers African countries speedier rollouts, lower long-term energy costs, and insulation from oil-price shocks. Of course, too heavy a reliance on Chinese financing, technology, and supply chains could create its own dependencies, limiting local industrial development and leaving countries exposed to shifts in Beijing’s priorities or global commodity markets. The challenge for African governments is not to replace one form of dependence with another. It must use foreign investment to expand domestic capacity, building up local manufacturing and strengthening regional power networks. Sub-Saharan Africa is already the world’s leading market for pay-as-you-go solar. If its transition is managed well, it could soon lead the clean energy transition in many more ways than that.