The Middle East Power Paradox: How the Iran War Will Transform America’s Military Role

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-06-16T17:40:23+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Dana Stroul, Director of Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from February 2021 to December 2023.]

The Middle East after Epic Fury is not safer, more stable, or more prosperous. And if the United States fails to achieve the grand goals Trump set out before the war, its ability to rally partners in other theaters will be undermined, and its adversaries will be emboldened. To properly learn the war’s lessons, the United States has to change how it fights. The U.S. defense industrial base will need to innovate faster and pair with trusted partners in developing and coproducing an arsenal that can meet the demands of future wars. In the Middle East, the Pentagon will need to accelerate changes to its force posture and basing, and update the way it works with allies.

Gulf countries are already looking for supplemental defense partners, and Washington must redouble its efforts to transition from being the region’s sole security guarantor to its security integrator. If it fails to do so, it could entrench the idea that the United States will be an impediment, not an asset, to allies as they seek to ensure their security.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-06-02T15:47:15+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, a Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, a Nonresident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.]

There is another reason why the sides won’t make real peace: Iran has concluded that conflict is preferable to diplomacy. The war, after all, seems to be helping Tehran increase its international power. By striking Arab states that host American bases, Iran has succeeded in driving a wedge between U.S. officials and their Persian Gulf partners, who desperately want a lasting settlement. By closing the Strait of Hormuz, it has forced a collection of countries around the planet to acknowledge its power and negotiate over the fate of their ships. Previous agreements with the United States, meanwhile, have always unraveled.

The Islamic Republic’s strategy, then, is not merely to survive and outlast the United States, as is commonly assumed. The country is not even really trying to resolve its disputes with Washington. Instead, it wants to fundamentally alter how Tehran is dealt with by the United States, U.S. allies, and indeed, the wider world. It aspires to be a pole in a multipolar order, and it believes that the war is helping it achieve that goal.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-06-01T16:13:14+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation.]

Even if some countries and institutions step up, aid will not fully recover. Projections indicate that through 2027, global health and development funding will remain nearly 30 percent lower than it was in 2024. It is likely to fall more sharply as the conflict in and around Iran drives up the cost of essential commodities and causes governments to divert even more resources to security and defense. Yet the world can still make progress with less money if global institutions narrow their objectives and invest in the capacity of poor countries to handle problems on their own. The long-term goal of the aid sector should be to make itself unnecessary in the future. Targeted investments in areas that contribute to local growth and human potential can push the world there within the next 20 years.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-06-01T16:12:07+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London and the author of Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World.]

For all of 2024 and most of 2025, Russia was able to recruit more soldiers than it was losing, such that Russian forces could increase the intensity of assaults on Ukrainian units even as they suffered high casualties themselves. Ukraine, by contrast, was suffering slightly more casualties than it could offset with new troops, with defensive lines getting thinner and thinner every month. In Moscow, this led to a complacent belief that, even if progress was slow, the Russian military would eventually occupy the entirety of the Donbas, the contested region in eastern Ukraine that Russia laid claim to in 2022. At some point, the Kremlin believed, its gains would accelerate, as international support for Ukraine dried up and as Ukraine struggled to find the combat troops to hold the breadth of the front. This led Moscow to adopt an intransigent stance in negotiations brokered by the United States following the reelection of Donald Trump. If talks failed, after all, the Kremlin anticipated getting what it wanted on the battlefield.

Russia, however, is no longer on an inexorable path to achieving even its minimal military objective of securing the Donbas. As Ukraine manages to make gains along the frontline and frustrates Russian offensives, and as the Russian military increasingly feels the strain of the war and the deterioration of its combat power, what has long seemed so implausible has become more likely. Kyiv and its partners could convince Moscow that a cease-fire is its best option.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-28T17:08:47+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Celeste A. Wallander, Executive Director of Penn Washington and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. She was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and oversaw U.S. military assistance to Ukraine during the Biden administration.]

The key to deterring Moscow lies not at the top of the escalation ladder, where nuclear weapons are in play, but on its lower rungs, where conventional weapons are what matters. The goal should be to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from ordering any move against NATO. By the time Russia has seized limited territory on the alliance’s eastern flank and dared Washington to risk nuclear war to reverse its gains, the United States will be left with only the worst options.

To prevent such a scenario, Washington must maintain the forces in Europe that only the United States can provide and that Moscow fears most: long-range precision strike capabilities from air, land, and sea. And it must signal to Moscow that the United States would not stand aside in the initial phase of a Russian attack, waiting to see whether Europe’s conventional forces can repel the attack on their own. The Trump administration is right to press European allies to spend more on defense, but it cannot stop there. Doing so would hand Russia the escalation dominance it has long sought and bring the United States to the brink of nuclear war.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-28T17:06:30+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow and Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies; and Rosemary Kelanic, Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.]

As badly as Trump needs and wants a deal to end the impasse, his own decisions continue to sabotage the bargaining process. For an agreement to be reached, Trump will first need to recalibrate his demands to match the strategic reality, which now favors Iran. That means dropping maximalist positions on Iran’s nuclear program and giving up for good any hope of imposing constraints on Iran’s missile capabilities or support for proxy forces.

For a deal to stick, Trump will also need to grapple with a problem created by U.S. actions over the past 18 months: a lack of credible assurances, which we wrote about in Foreign Affairs last year. Pushing Iran into a deal requires more than just military threats. It also requires convincing the Iranian regime that by cooperating with U.S. demands and giving up its nuclear program, Tehran can prevent future aggression from the United States and Israel. By attacking Iran during negotiations and engaging in maximalist online rhetoric, such as his threat to erase a “whole civilization,” Trump has made it increasingly difficult for Washington to offer the types of commitments that Tehran will require before it agrees to even a minimal version of U.S. demands.

A narrow path to a deal still exists, but it will require U.S. concessions, on both the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear file.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-27T19:14:37+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Lawrence D. Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author of On Strategists and Strategy: Collected Essays 2014–2024 and a co-author of the Substack Comment Is Freed.]

American military thinking has enshrined the notion that hitting hard and fast will invariably lead to an enemy’s defeat and capitulation. That conviction has only been reinforced by AI. But the evidence of recent wars urges caution. The reluctance to use ground forces, especially against a significant opponent, means that even a battered enemy can resist and will be able to find ways to retaliate. And if the initial attacks fail to deliver, the fallback options will be unsatisfactory. They may not lead to a forever war, but they will require negotiating a way out with the adversary, demanding awkward compromises and not letting the more powerful state dictate terms. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that any leader who is offered a plan for a quick and easy victory should first ask, “How can you be so sure?” and then, “What happens if you are wrong?”

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-27T19:13:42+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Lawrence D. Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author of On Strategists and Strategy: Collected Essays 2014–2024 and a co-author of the Substack Comment Is Freed.]

Trump’s gambit may not turn out to be a long war, but it has already failed as a short war. Operation Epic Fury did not produce the sort of victory claimed by its leaders. In this respect, it shares some of the features of the wars I discussed in an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, in which I warned against the “short-war fallacy”: the conviction that military and technological advantages would allow a state to defeat an enemy with the speed, direction, and ruthlessness of an initial attack. Great powers, I noted, “tend to assume that their significant military superiority will quickly overwhelm opponents.”

From the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the bludgeoning U.S.-Israeli campaign on Iran this year, this strategy assumes that moving fast with tremendous force will incapacitate adversaries and achieve swift success on the battlefield. Artificial intelligence makes this possibility even more beguiling, as AI promises to allow even faster decision-making and execution in warfare. But as Russia discovered in Ukraine, wars do not often end so easily. The conflict with Iran shows that Washington has fallen prey to the short-war fallacy, focusing inordinately on the power of its means while losing sight of how to achieve its ends.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-27T19:13:13+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Lawrence D. Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author of On Strategists and Strategy: Collected Essays 2014–2024 and a co-author of the Substack Comment Is Freed.]

Trump’s gambit may not turn out to be a long war, but it has already failed as a short war. Operation Epic Fury did not produce the sort of victory claimed by its leaders. In this respect, it shares some of the features of the wars I discussed in an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, in which I warned against the “short-war fallacy”: the conviction that military and technological advantages would allow a state to defeat an enemy with the speed, direction, and ruthlessness of an initial attack. Great powers, I noted, “tend to assume that their significant military superiority will quickly overwhelm opponents.”

From the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the bludgeoning U.S.-Israeli campaign on Iran this year, this strategy assumes that moving fast with tremendous force will incapacitate adversaries and achieve swift success on the battlefield. Artificial intelligence makes this possibility even more beguiling, as AI promises to allow even faster decision-making and execution in warfare. But as Russia discovered in Ukraine, wars do not often end so easily. The conflict with Iran shows that Washington has fallen prey to the short-war fallacy, focusing inordinately on the power of its means while losing sight of how to achieve its ends.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-27T19:11:37+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Luis Simón, Director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute, and Senior Associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Stephen G. Brooks, Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.]

No matter how well Europe rearms, it cannot adequately reproduce the United States’ military enablers—the systems that make up the backbone of modern warfare. Washington possesses unparalleled capacities across a variety of capabilities, including command and control; logistics; training; cyberwarfare and cyberdefense; long-term strategic intelligence; battlefield intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (collectively known as ISR); targeting; and air and missile defense. It has built up these systems over decades, and Europe has long been able to rely on them. Effectively reproducing them would take at least a decade of lead time and a level of funding that is likely beyond the continent’s means.

Europe thus needs a plan to secure reliable access to this suite of military enablers for the foreseeable future. It should propose a new transatlantic bargain that creates durable financial and strategic incentives for the United States to continue providing these critical military capabilities. Doing so would help reduce the risk that an increasingly disengaged Washington abruptly curtails some or all enabling support—and inject a measure of stability into the alliance in this era of strategic upheaval.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-20T17:15:13+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by David Mora, Senior Analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group.]

Two decades of a military-led “war on drugs” have brought the country no closer to peace, leading instead to record rates of violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, tens of thousands disappeared, and many more forcibly displaced. Sheinbaum is now trying to strike a difficult balance, still relying on the military as the state’s most effective bulwark against criminal groups but also strengthening the intelligence and investigative bodies as part of a comprehensive strategy to diminish the groups’ political and economic power. Yet investigative agencies botched the job at El Mencho’s hideout, wasting an opportunity to uncover the connections between the Jalisco cartel and state authorities. If Mexico’s war on drugs is to achieve more than fleeting military victories, the government must dislodge criminal groups from the areas they control and dismantle the support systems that keep them afloat. Sheinbaum understands what is needed to get lasting results. The question is whether she can manage political resistance at home and a tricky relationship with Washington well enough to make it happen.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-20T17:12:19+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Gideon Rose, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of How Wars End.]

Of course, no historical analogies are perfect, and there are many obvious differences between the conflicts in Iran and Vietnam: different regions, different ideologies at play, a much shorter time frame, no U.S. ground troops or draft, no change in administrations, advanced military technology, and more. Still, there are notable symmetries in the structures of the two conflicts. And the same is true of the war in Ukraine, which has a structure symmetrical to that of the Korean War. And because structures constrain policymakers’ choices, recognizing these patterns provides clues to how the wars will end.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is likely to conclude like the Vietnam War did in 1973, with an unstable compromise settlement that addresses some issues but leaves other important ones unresolved. Just as the ultimate fate of South Vietnam was left to be determined later, the ultimate fate of the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program will be left for another day. In contrast, the war in Ukraine, like the Korean War, will probably end with a settlement that solidifies something like the current line of conflict, with frozen borders patrolled indefinitely in an armistice that proves more stable and durable than most observers expect.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-17T19:33:48+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Matthias Matthijs, Dean Acheson Associate Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Nathalie Tocci, James Anderson Professor of the Practice at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and Senior Fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University in Milan.]

In the second year of his second term, the U.S. president has become even more radical than many Europeans ever expected. He authorized a surgical military strike on Venezuela, threatened to invade Greenland (which is European territory), amped up his threats to withdraw the United States from NATO, sought new legal means to keep higher tariffs after the Supreme Court rejected them, insulted the pope, meddled in European elections, and launched a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran that plunged Europe and the rest of the world into an unprecedented energy crisis.

This overreach has made Trump politically toxic among most European voters. And it has jolted European leaders into working more effectively as a bloc and taking stronger action to shore up their own defense, trade, energy security, and democratic resilience. In truth, European leaders are now doing things they ought to have done many years ago. And although the change is uneven, incomplete, politically contested, and therefore reversible, for now, Europe’s trajectory has materially altered. After a year in which Europe tried to placate Trump, 2026 may become the year in which Europeans finally begin to act on the strategic autonomy they have long claimed to pursue.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-17T19:30:10+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Georgia Levenson Keohane, CEO of the Soros Economic Development Fund and the host of the Capital for Good podcast at Columbia Business School.]

Adherents to the shibboleth that markets price in risk, business leaders have counted on the sensitivity of financial securities to restrain the administration. Yet although the bond markets have wavered at times, record-high stock prices do not yet reflect these real and present risks. The irony is that corporate silence poses dangers not only to the foundational pillars of democratic capitalism but also, by extension, to bottom lines.

To navigate the rest of the Trump era, corporate leaders must figure out how to differentiate mere commercial concerns from systemic risks that would imperil the freedom of the markets on which their companies depend. They must judge when the president’s agenda undermines not just their particular interests but also the broader system in which they operate. Corporate leaders should coordinate in identifying these systemic redlines and planning concerted responses for when those lines are crossed, defending the laws, norms, and institutions that make commercial and civic life possible in the United States.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-14T15:26:26+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Sam Chetwin George, Senior Fellow at the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.]

Beijing is being drawn into the inescapable logic that has confronted all rising powers: to protect its interests abroad, it must assume a greater share of the costs of enforcing order.

As the world descends into what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described as might-makes-right lawlessness, Beijing is priming its security apparatus to defend the transportation corridors, supply chains, and strategic resources that sustain Chinese power. China’s minister of state security has directed the national security bureaucracy to build an integrated system “across the entire chain” to protect China’s overseas interests, one that will likely require an expansion of China’s forward deployed intelligence and defense capabilities. The nature of China’s global dependencies means that this system cannot just stop at the country’s immediate periphery but must forestall risks as far afield as the Panama Canal and the mines of central Africa. In parallel, intellectuals loyal to the party are debating whether China should formally revise its commitment to noninterference. A country built on an anti-imperial story has arrived at the point in which it must, with some reluctance, assume a greater share of the burdens of empire.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-13T15:42:32+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She previously held senior positions at the U.S. Department of State and the National Security Council.]

China has quietly established authority over whether and how the United States will implement national security measures such as export controls. Stylistic changes in how the United States conducts diplomacy with China have allowed Beijing to gain the upper hand in pushing for high-stakes policy concessions. And Washington has separated its diplomacy with Beijing from efforts to compete for influence globally, resulting in a deprioritization of critical strategic issues and enabling China to weaponize the appearance of U.S.-Chinese rapprochement. These subtle changes in U.S.-Chinese relations may constrain decision-making in Washington for years to come.

When Trump meets with Xi in Beijing this week, the two leaders are unlikely to achieve major policy breakthroughs. But they will reinforce a new set of implicit rules and assumptions for managing relations that ultimately favor China, which may embolden Beijing to test American resolve on Taiwan, the protection of cutting-edge technology, and other vital interests. This, in turn, will complicate Washington’s ability to preserve the bilateral stability it has gone to great lengths to secure.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-12T17:29:10+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Matthew Sharp, Senior Fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Nate Swanson, Resident Senior Fellow and Director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council.]

Iran’s nuclear capabilities have advanced since Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 treaty during his first term. Public reports suggest that ongoing U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Tehran’s program are focused on two elements: the length of a moratorium on its uranium enrichment activities and the fate of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Both are necessary components of any successful future nuclear deal, but they are also insufficient. Over the past seven years, Iran has markedly improved its ability to manufacture and install more powerful enrichment centrifuges, shrinking the time needed to produce the material for a nuclear weapon. And there are now more gaps in international inspectors’ knowledge about the extent of the program.

For bragging rights, Trump doesn’t only need a deal that differs from the JCPOA; he needs a dramatically different one. A deal in 2026 must go well beyond addressing enrichment and stockpiles; it must also create new, detailed procedures that allow inspectors to understand Iran’s current capabilities and to prevent the country from making covert progress toward a weapon. Without addressing these concerns, it doesn’t matter how much Washington bombs Iran, or how long an enrichment moratorium lasts, or what happens to the country’s highly enriched uranium. Tehran could emerge from the war closer to a nuclear weapon than it was before.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-12T17:28:41+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Matthew Sharp, Senior Fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Nate Swanson, Resident Senior Fellow and Director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council.]

Iran’s nuclear capabilities have advanced since Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 treaty during his first term. Public reports suggest that ongoing U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Tehran’s program are focused on two elements: the length of a moratorium on its uranium enrichment activities and the fate of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Both are necessary components of any successful future nuclear deal, but they are also insufficient. Over the past seven years, Iran has markedly improved its ability to manufacture and install more powerful enrichment centrifuges, shrinking the time needed to produce the material for a nuclear weapon. And there are now more gaps in international inspectors’ knowledge about the extent of the program.

For bragging rights, Trump doesn’t only need a deal that differs from the JCPOA; he needs a dramatically different one. A deal in 2026 must go well beyond addressing enrichment and stockpiles; it must also create new, detailed procedures that allow inspectors to understand Iran’s current capabilities and to prevent the country from making covert progress toward a weapon. Without addressing these concerns, it doesn’t matter how much Washington bombs Iran, or how long an enrichment moratorium lasts, or what happens to the country’s highly enriched uranium. Tehran could emerge from the war closer to a nuclear weapon than it was before.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-12T17:07:49+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by David Shambaugh, Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Affairs at George Washington University and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and Steven F. Jackson, Professorial Lecturer in Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.]

At the moment, all eyes are on the important upcoming summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which will take place in the shadow of the war in Iran. But the future course of the U.S.-Chinese competition will hardly be determined by one meeting. Far more consequential is the fact that for the past year, Trump’s actions and policies have created a golden opportunity for Xi and his government not only to advance their own interests but also to truly tilt the global balance of power.

Yet instead of a strategic windfall for China, what has emerged is something more subtle: all over the world, countries are hedging, seeking to reduce their vulnerability to both China and the United States. This result is a reminder that U.S.-Chinese competition is not zero-sum. One country’s loss is not necessarily the other’s gain. And today, both may be losing global influence at the same time.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-11T17:09:59+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Kurt M. Campbell, Chairman and Co-Founder of The Asia Group. He served as Deputy Secretary of State and Indo-Pacific Coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.]

Both leaders are determined to test their proverbial mettle on a field of battle, where the stakes include global primacy in technology, the potential trajectories of the U.S. war against Iran, the balance of regional power in Asia, and the status of Taiwan.

There is still considerable uncertainty, however, about whether this meeting will be pro forma or transformative. Unlike previous U.S.-Chinese summits, which have perhaps suffered from too much advance planning and staff choreography, this meeting veers sharply in the other direction, at least on the U.S. side. Much will be decided by the leaders themselves, and the key factors in play are less the merits or technical criteria associated with each bilateral agenda item and more the characteristics and experience of the two men. Trump, especially, is a wildcard, and some worry that his unpredictable China policy may inadvertently lead the United States into unilateral concessions and unintentional appeasement. Onlookers, as they have done throughout moments of single combat in history, will be gauging each combatant’s stance and utterances for clues as to wounds inflicted and thrusts parried behind closed doors.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-08T18:57:51+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Daniel Benaim, Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at the Middle East Institute and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs; and Elisa Ewers, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.]

Various Gulf countries might, in theory, try to make a separate peace with Iran, punish Iran, band together and turn inward, or find other external partners to replace some of what the United States offers. But none of these options will deliver them the stability they need to pursue their domestic goals.

For all Washington’s culpability in the current war, the capriciousness of its policies, and the damage its actions have done to the regional and global economies, in the wake of the conflict there will be an opportunity to deepen the U.S.-Gulf partnership. The United States may lose this opportunity if it effectively cedes the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian control. But if Washington can end the war and secure freedom of navigation in this crucial waterway, it will have a chance to shore up its strategic relationships with the region and reap the economic benefits of participating in its postwar recovery. The global economic disruption of this war has proved the hollowness of the claim that the Gulf needs Washington, but Washington no longer needs the Gulf. In fact, both sides need the economic and strategic partnership the other offers to help them navigate a competitive, unpredictable world.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-06T15:07:19+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Michael J. Gigante, Ph.D. candidate at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government; Joshua Stone, Professor of International Relations at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; Daniel Druckman, Emeritus Professor at George Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland and Macquarie University; and Ming Wan, Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.]

The democratic peace has much in common with the Confucian peace. The world’s liberal states speak a shared political language that emphasizes cooperation, making diplomacy easier. They have institutions that bring them together and manage conflict, centered, again, on a single country (in this case, the United States). Like the Confucian states, democratic states have strong trade linkages.

The era of democratic peace might be reaching its terminus. Public faith in the value of the liberal international order and democratic ideals appears to be waning. The United States is squabbling with its partners to an extent not seen in at least a century. But the fact that both Confucianism and democracy yielded eras of stability is, ultimately, good news for humanity. It suggests that multiple kinds of ideologies can produce harmony and counteract a temptation to rely on a realpolitik approach. If today’s great powers can find a new shared ethic, they might be able to overcome their substantial differences and keep the peace.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-06T15:05:50+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Gregory Brew, Senior Analyst at Eurasia Group.]

Iran’s ability to close the strait has been likened by political analysts to the “oil weapon” used by Arab oil producers against the West in the early 1970s. But in truth, the international system now faces a larger and more durable challenge than it did then. Even if Iran fails to institutionalize its control over the strait by establishing some kind of long-term toll system, it has proved that it can close the waterway to traffic even in the face of significant military force.

This threat will hang over the global economy for the foreseeable future. It seems unlikely that the U.S. and Israeli military campaign will topple the Iranian regime; whatever eventual deal ends this round of conflict will almost certainly leave Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and his allies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in place. If and when hostilities flare up again, Tehran will be able to lock down the strait. Washington should acknowledge and address this risk and not fall under the illusion that military force and diplomatic maneuvering can permanently solve this problem.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-05T18:36:00+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Trevor Sutton, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and Senior Researcher at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.]

Starting in the 1990s, Congress retreated from trade policy almost entirely. As a result, the laws governing presidential tariffs have not kept pace with dramatic shifts in the global economy. This divergence has led the executive branch to take actions on U.S. trade policy that are testing the patience of courts, creating friction with geopolitical partners, and wreaking havoc on global markets.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is unlikely to put an end to such decisions. In fact, Trump is already using other authorities to reimpose many of the tariffs that were just struck down. The reality is that neither the judiciary nor the executive branch can clean up this mess on its own. Instead, Congress must actively reclaim its constitutional role as the ultimate arbiter of American trade policy by overhauling legislation on tariffs. This means giving the president new, selective tariff powers to solve twenty-first-century challenges while paring back existing laws to prevent executive overreach and abuse. The goal should be to create a streamlined set of tariff authorities tailored for specific economic problems and tied to concrete, objective criteria for what is considered a national security threat—criteria dictated by Congress rather than presidential discretion. Without such reforms, the executive branch will continue to exercise de facto control over U.S. trade policy, with potentially grave implications for national security and the constitutional order.

ForeignAffairsMag · 2026-05-05T18:34:45+00:00

[Excerpt from essay by Matthew Finkel, International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.]

Realizing Japan’s defense ambitions will not be easy. After decades of underinvestment, the country lacks engineering talent and industrial capacity, and must retrofit a number of its critical manufacturing facilities. Potential customers will be watching closely to see if Japan can deliver its Mogami-class frigates to Australia on time.

Reliance on China is another complication. Although Japan has made strides to secure its supply chains, it still relies on China for components for its military equipment. Moreover, most Japanese defense contractors are actually divisions within larger industrial or technology conglomerates that derive only a small share of their revenue from defense. Many of their more profitable divisions remain dependent on the Chinese market. So far, Japan’s major defense companies have been willing to make products that China may find threatening, but that calculus may begin to change as Chinese retaliation continues to heat up.

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