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 ...

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 ...

Yet over the past 30 years, the system established by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free-trade agreements has led to the opposite. Economic inequality and insecurity have worsened in most ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Chinese navy, too, maintained at least 190 vessels operating around the island monthly. After a brief and unexplained drop in early 2026, air and naval activities have been escalating again. And ...

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 ...

By most accounts, China has the upper hand in its growing economic confrontation with the United States. In April 2025, after Washington levied heavy tariffs on China, Beijing res ...

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 ...