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 ...

RICHARD FEINBERG is Professor Emeritus in the Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego and a Distinguished Fellow at Florida International University.

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 ...

The conflict in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has provided extraordinary lessons about the future of war. The enormous impact of cheap, remotely piloted unmanned systems—on the ground, in the air, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...