Event: Meet ChinaAmid

One of the greatest advantages the United States has over China has been its soft power—the ability to persuade other countries, particularly allies and partners, to go along with its wants without having to resort to coercion. For decades, other countries have made sacrifices on behalf of the United States because they believed they were better off working with Washington than Beijing in the long run. This was the ultimate win-win for the United States and its partners. Together, they prospered through collective defense, integrated markets, and coordinated action on common challenges, including dealing with China.U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to put an end to much of that cooperation. The United States, once the bedrock of the international system, is now a major source of geopolitical instability. Trump launched a global trade war, slapping tariffs indiscriminately on allies and adversaries alike and bullying longtime partners. He ordered the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, raising fears that sovereign rules no longer apply, and has repeatedly threatened to seize allied territories.These moves have caused many U.S. partners and allies to turn to China as an alternative. But China is not rushing to exploit the rupture in the United States’ relationships. Its approach hasn’t changed since Trump began his second term. Beijing is doing what it always has: trying to bring other countries in line with its own interests by deploying carrots and sticks. In fact, China is nearly as transactional as the Trump administration is. What sets Beijing apart, however, is its predictability, which offers countries a clear picture of how they might work with China even if it is less appealing than what the United States could offer. If the United States continues its capricious behavior toward the rest of the world, China won’t need to do anything differently…

new video loaded: Why U.S. Allies Are Lining Up to Meet ChinaAmid trade disputes with President Trump, leaders of major U.S. allies have been visiting China. Our foreign correspondent David Pierson describes what’s going on.By David Pierson, Leila Medina, Shawn Paik and James SurdamFebruary 26, 2026Watch Today’s VideosAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Ageing societies are increasingly turning to non-native soldiers to fight their wars. The world is rearming. In 2024, global military expenditure grew by its fastest rate since the end of the Cold War, reaching $2.7 trillion. That marked a 37 per cent increase since 2015. Against the background of Russian aggression in Ukraine, European countries have increased defence expenditure by 17 per cent since 2017. Germany alone boosted its defence spend by 28 per cent between 2023 and 2024. And it’s set to continue rising, too. Since these figures were finalised, the EU has published its ReArm Europe Plan 2030, and European NATO members have committed to spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035, up from roughly two per cent at the moment. In Asia, China has been increasing its defence spend by seven per cent annually for several years. After decades of pursuing a pacifist foreign policy, Japan increased its defence spending by more than 20 per cent in 2023. South Korea and Taiwan have been increasing their own defence budgets, too. Though all of these countries, excepting South Korea, are currently at peace, they all increasingly expect to fight a war in the near future. European leaders fear the war in Ukraine will engulf the rest of Europe, while China’s desire to extinguish Taiwanese independence is expected to draw in not only the US, but also Japan. Yet there is a problem here. While developed nations are investing in military hardware, they increasingly lack the manpower for any future, high-intensity conflict. They could employ conscription, but these are also ageing societies. They have shrinking youth cohorts – the very demographic historically relied on in high-intensity conflict. Enjoying spiked? Why not make an instant, one-off donation? We are funded by you. Thank you! At the margins…

In February 2025, when U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law prohibiting firms from engaging in bribery in overseas business, investors reacted immediately. Stock prices skyrocketed for firms currently or previously under investigation for violations of the FCPA. Within weeks, the average firm suspected or convicted of bribery gained $6.5 billion in market value—far more than it would have had to pay in a typical FCPA penalty.When the suspension ended and the law went back into force in June, many observers expected investors to pull out. If U.S. prosecutors again had the authority to enforce anticorruption rules, businesses potentially implicated in bribery investigations would no longer be good bets for growth. Yet this reversal never came. Investment in these firms continued to rise steadily through the remainder of 2025 and into early 2026. This boom was not shared equally, however. The FCPA applies to all firms, American and foreign, that are listed on U.S. stock exchanges or do business in the United States. Yet valuations rose almost exclusively for U.S.-based companies with past or ongoing FCPA investigations. Foreign firms subject to the FCPA that had comparable histories of suspected corruption saw very little increase in investment.One year after the FCPA was first suspended, the market divergence between U.S. and foreign firms suggests that investors are not simply responding to the likelihood that Washington is watering down its antibribery enforcement overall. Rather, they are expecting the law to be enforced selectively. Investors believe U.S. authorities will avoid punishing American firms for corruption but could use it to pressure their foreign competitors. If the markets are right, there has been a fundamental change in the function of one of the most important laws governing international commerce. Instead of operating as…

President Donald Trump is laying waste to the United States’ long-standing system of alliances. By extorting old friends for short-term gain, threatening to annex allied territory, and applying tariffs indiscriminately, he has squandered decades of cooperation that has served U.S. interests worldwide. When Trump eventually leaves office, the next president will have to decide whether to try to restore these ties. If that successor is a Democrat, the instinct may be to revive the alliance framework that existed during the Cold War. But that would be the wrong approach.The world has changed since Washington built most of its alliances. After World War II, the United States established an alliance system to contain communism in Asia and Europe. When the Soviet threat collapsed, many analysts assumed Washington would scale back its commitments in favor of greater independence. Instead, the United States maintained its obligations and, in Europe, even expanded them. That was easy to do in a world in which the United States had no peer competitor and the risk of having to fight on behalf of an ally was low.That world is gone. China now poses the first serious challenge to U.S. economic primacy in a century. In East Asia, its military capabilities rival those of the United States. Russia, meanwhile, has emerged from two decades of weakness to invade its neighbors and harass NATO members. And North Korea now has nuclear weapons that can strike the mainland United States.Washington therefore needs to reassess its alliances and recalibrate them to suit these new realities. It should judge its partners on whether they strengthen U.S. competitiveness with regard to China and on the low likelihood that they could involve the United States in a war that does not serve its interests. Some current U.S. allies pass this test, but not all…

As foreign policy luminaries rush to warn about the perils of a U.S. attack on Iran, there is widespread confidence in the White House that President Donald Trump can manage a strike’s fallout. This confidence reflects a years-long pattern that has shaped Trump’s thinking. Washington’s foreign policy establishment warns the president against some norm-breaking act. He ignores their advice and plows forward. And he faces no apparent repercussions. In 2018, when Trump broke with U.S. policy to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, I was serving in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Our own bureaucratic experts predicted that the move would prompt widespread protests and violence against U.S. personnel, and we set up task forces and evacuation plans for a doomsday that never came. This dynamic repeated itself last June, when Trump joined Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear program. Analysts warned that the decision would trigger a broader war and hasten Iran’s nuclear breakout. Once again, little happened. When the administration ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, pundits insisted that his country and even the region would plunge into chaos, but nothing of the sort has yet occurred.It is easy to see why Trump would believe that the warnings about another attack on Iran are overwrought and that he can repeat his formula of decisive action and a clean exit. But this time is different. I spent 18 years working on Iran in various U.S. government capacities, including as President Joe Biden’s Iran director and on Trump’s negotiating team in the spring and summer of 2025. From that experience, I can see that Trump fundamentally fails to grasp that Iranian weakness will not lead the country to capitulate at the negotiating table. On the contrary, Iran’s present fragility only narrows the space for meaningful…

For decades, U.S. allies operated within an international system built and maintained by the United States. Washington was committed to keeping global trade flowing, to the benefit of countries around the world. The multilateral institutions formed in the wake of World War II did not prevent war altogether, but they reinforced a norm against outright conquest. And the United States’ vested interest in its allies’ security offered assurance to Japan and other countries that they would be protected if conflict came to their shores.National security leaders around the world knew that this system was not guaranteed to last forever. Already, in the past several years, the outbreak of deadly wars in Europe and the Middle East, escalating Chinese military activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea, the reemergence of trade wars and breakdown of global governance, and the dizzying pace of change in modern warfare—especially when it comes to drones and artificial intelligence—all required countries to adjust their expectations. The world was becoming a more dangerous, more unpredictable place. Yet Japan and its partners believed that the rules-based international order, upheld at the initiative of the United States, was still the best remedy to these problems.But now, seismic changes in U.S. foreign policy are forcing Japan and other U.S. allies to undertake a more fundamental reassessment. “America first” policies introduced under the first Trump administration have become entrenched in the second, and Japan and other close partners have been startled by Washington’s tariff-based trade policy, demands that allies assume a greater share of security burdens, military operations in the Middle East and Venezuela, claims of ownership over Greenland, and withdrawal from UN agencies. They have been shocked, in other words, to see the United States undermining the very system it built. They relied on that system and on the…

For more than a decade, Venezuela has had the world’s worst-performing economy. Misguided policies pursued by the country’s strongman, Nicolás Maduro, and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, stifled growth and productivity, while punitive U.S. sanctions severely damaged the economy by severing its links to global trade and financial markets. As a result, the country’s GDP shrank by over 70 percent between 2012 and 2020—the largest economic contraction ever documented in a country not at war.But now that Maduro is gone—snatched from Caracas in a controversial overnight American military operation of disputed legality—and sanctions have been eased, Venezuela has an opportunity to bounce back. In fact, given the economy’s high dependence on oil revenue, some kind of recovery is all but certain. U.S. President Donald Trump has allowed Venezuela to begin selling its oil in global markets. As export revenues increase, living standards should rise, and poverty rates should decrease. If Venezuela returns to its pre-crisis oil output, its per capita income could triple over the course of the next decade. Under the right conditions, the country could become the fastest-growing economy in the region.Yet it is one thing for the economy to undergo a mechanical rebound. It is quite another to build the foundations for sustained and equitable growth. To attract the long-term inflows of capital that Venezuela needs to rebuild its economy, the government in Caracas must credibly commit to a stable set of rules governing private investment. But the interim authorities now running the country are not well positioned to do so. These officials, including the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, were appointed by Maduro and are unpopular. Investors know that these authorities could well lose power if elections are held in Venezuela and that any commitments they made could easily be undone.Some might argue that this means the Trump…

Over the past two decades, China has transformed from a strategically weak energy power, dependent on imports of oil and gas, into the world leader in clean energy. Today, China produces the most wind turbines and solar panels, controls nearly every stage of global battery supply chains, exports electric vehicles at prices Western automakers struggle to match, and builds nuclear reactors at a breakneck pace. Even though none of these technologies were discovered in China and none of these industries originated there, the country has become the market maker and dominant player for each one. In other words, by commanding the systems that electrify modern economies, China is on its way toward achieving energy dominance.U.S. President Donald Trump does not see it that way. He instead defines energy dominance more narrowly, in terms of fossil fuel production. Steeped in the oil crises of the 1970s and inspired by the U.S. shale revolution in the first decade of this century—which made the United States the world’s largest oil and gas producer—the president has focused on increasing oil, natural gas, and coal production at home and in the Western hemisphere, as the U.S. foray into Venezuela this January illustrated. Trump established the National Energy Dominance Council by executive order in February 2025 to expand the domestic fossil fuel industry and parse which clean technologies to stick with and which to drop.But this is an outdated conception. Global demand for electricity is rising and will likely accelerate as economies electrify transport, industry, and households. Artificial intelligence and machine learning—plus the data centers and advanced manufacturing that drive it—are making modern economies increasingly energy intensive. Military systems, meanwhile, are shifting from fuel-guzzling fighter jets and aircraft carriers to battery-powered drones and undersea vehicles, as well as into data-heavy cyberwarfare. Global demand for oil continues…

In August 2025, residents of Washington, D.C., awoke to a sight familiar in much of Latin America but rare in the United States: uniformed military troops patrolling city streets as part of a federally directed campaign against crime. Although violent crime in the country’s capital had fallen that January to its lowest point in over 30 years, on August 11 President Donald Trump signed an executive order that declared a “crime emergency” in the city, arguing that extraordinary measures were necessary to restore control. But the subsequent deployment of the National Guard—a military reserve force that can serve at both the state and federal levels in response to domestic crises or international conflict—signaled something beyond a wish to address a public safety concern. It represented a transformation in how the United States governs itself.What unfolded in Washington was not an isolated episode. Over the course of Trump’s second term, his administration has sent or attempted to send units of the National Guard to major U.S. cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, and Portland, framing each case as a response to crime, unrest, or threats to public order. Together, these cases mark the gradual erosion of the long-standing boundary between civilian policing and military force.For American observers, such a shift may feel unprecedented. In Latin America, however, it is a well-worn path. Across the region, politicians have deployed the armed forces to fight crime, promising that their presence will produce swift improvements in public safety and restore order. These policies often begin as temporary responses to emergencies, but they rarely remain so. Instead, military involvement in domestic law enforcement becomes normalized, power concentrates in the executive, civilian institutions weaken, and civil liberties erode. Democratic institutions hollow out, slowly but surely.The United States has long resisted this temptation. The separation…

In the nearly four years since Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has repeatedly confounded expectations. A conflict that many analysts anticipated would be short and devastating for Kyiv has proved prolonged and costly for both sides. Ukraine’s ability to defend its territory, innovate militarily, and rally the United States, European countries, and others to its cause has far exceeded most projections. Russia, for its part, has underperformed militarily but regenerated its forces, improved its tactics over time, and sustained its economy at levels that have surprised even the keenest observers. As the largest land war in Europe since World War II rages on, and with the shape of any future peace or even cease-fire still uncertain, more surprises surely lie ahead.Already, militaries around the world are looking to Ukraine’s battlefields, seeing in the cutting-edge technologies and tactics new lessons for the future of warfare. Less considered, however, are the strategic lessons of the war, the first since the fall of the Soviet Union in which two major nuclear powers have found themselves on opposing sides of high-stakes hostilities, even if only indirectly. Although the United States is not a combatant, Washington and Moscow are deeply engaged in shaping the trajectory of the conflict and, by extension, the evolving nature of escalation, deterrence, and warfighting in the twenty-first century.Washington should not wait until the war’s resolution to conduct a comprehensive assessment. It can already take away four important lessons. First, the risk of an adversary using nuclear weapons is real and cannot be dismissed. Second, even under the nuclear shadow, protracted and highly destructive conventional war remains possible. Third, escalation thresholds are not fixed in advance; they emerge through ongoing contestation and tacit bargaining during war. And last, friction with allies and partners, particularly over questions of risk…

The pivot to Asia has failed. A decade and a half ago, in 2011, President Barack Obama committed to rebalancing U.S. strategy and resources to focus on the Asia-Pacific. “Let there be no doubt,” he pledged on a visit to Australia, “The United States of America is all in.” Although the phrasing changed and policymakers and politicians argued about the tactical details, Obama’s successors affirmed the logic behind the pivot, which soon became the core bipartisan assumption of American strategy. In speech after speech, U.S. officials emphasized that the only way to prevent China from dominating Asia was for the United States and its allies and partners to make a major investment in the region’s political, economic, and military stability.Yet nearly 15 years later, U.S. leaders have still not matched their words with action. American promises to foster greater prosperity and better governance now elicit eye rolls throughout Asia. A perpetually distracted United States neglects much of Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Few today are asking when the pivot will come. Instead, the question in regional capitals is how far the United States will pull back.With the United States facing divisions at home and distractions abroad, it has become clear that deep engagement across all of Asia is no longer realistic. Yet the assumptions behind the pivot have persisted, as have the calls to finally give the effort priority. The problem is that having a strategy that cannot be executed in the foreseeable future creates dangers of its own. During World War II, the political commentator Walter Lippmann wrote that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power” and warned that not doing so “leads to disaster.” Today, Washington has a “Lippmann gap”…

In his essay “The West’s Last Chance” (January/February 2026), Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, correctly divines the future trajectory of world order. “The global South,” he writes, “will decide whether geopolitics in the next era leans toward cooperation, fragmentation, or domination.” He’s also right in asserting that “this is the last chance for Western countries to convince the rest of the world that they are capable of dialogue rather than monologue.” Yet to have a dialogue, one must listen. The sad truth is that the West does not seem willing to listen to the global South.The countries of the global South do not all share the dominant Western perspectives about world order. Stubb emphasizes the challenges posed by China and Russia. But many of the 3.3 billion Asians who are not Chinese, along with many of the approximately 1.5 billion people who live in Africa and the over 660 million who live in Latin America, view China and Russia differently. Western policymakers rarely try to understand why. China and Russia may loom menacingly in Western imaginations, but people in the global South do not think of them in that way—nor should they be expected to. Indeed, the rest of the world has had as much, perhaps more, to fear from the West in recent history as it has from the West’s autocratic competitors. To his credit, Stubb urges the governments of Western countries to take the demands and interests of the global South seriously. But engaging with the global South is not just an exercise in listening. It also requires Western governments to reassess their own positions and approaches to a world they have long taken for granted.HIGH HORSESConsider, for instance, the war in Ukraine. Many countries in the global South have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It…