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Foreign Policy •

Why 9/11 Baffles Us 25 Years Later

The era of 9/11 began with one misbegotten U.S. war of choice in the Middle East, in Iraq. We are marking its 25th anniversary with another misbegotten U.S. war of choice in the Middle East, in Iran. In between, we’re not quite sure what we have learned, other than Americans never seem to get regime change right, whether we send in troops or not. And Washington still finds itself mired in a region that successive presidents have said they want to distance themselves from.Twenty-five years on, it...
Foreign Policy •

A Cabinet Full of Roy Cohns

Roy Marcus Cohn was the kingmaker from hell. An odious man born of an odious mother—Dora Cohn was “mean, vicious, ugly, and foul-mouthed,” one family member said—Cohn was an only child spoiled shamelessly by his doting heiress mom. Dora created “a person who was totally free of the rules that you and I or most people go by,” one of Cohn’s law partners later said.To understand the differences between Donald Trump’s somewhat restrained first term and the outrageous abuses of his second, you need t...
Foreign Policy •

The U.S. at 250: Terminally Ill or Just Very Sick?

Welcome to FP Free Week. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, our entire site is completely unlocked this week only. Enjoy the article.And much is still going right on the 250th anniversary of what the nation’s first president, George Washington, called the “great experiment” of the United States of America. The country is still the dominant power on Earth. It enjoys a world-beating economy led by tech and financial sectors that continue to eclipse the rest of the planet, though they have also...
Foreign Policy •

How the Iran War Reshaped the Global Landscape of Power 

Their unprovoked and failed war against Iran has likely set in motion a sea change in global power balances—a shift that will leave both the United States and Israel relatively weaker in the months and years to come.The geopolitical disaster authored by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done far more than squander the dominant position both nations were in just three and a half months ago.Their unprovoked and failed war against Iran has likely set in m...
Foreign Policy •

Why the U.S. Is Headed for a Long War With Iran

But Rezaei, like other senior Iranian officials, once entertained the possibility of compromise with Washington. Indeed, he openly promoted it. Nearly two decades ago, during a 2007 reporting trip to Iran, I received a surprise invitation from Rezaei to meet him at his summer villa on the Caspian Sea, about 150 miles north of Tehran.His features seemingly frozen in a perpetual frown, Mohsen Rezaei is one of the new hard-line faces of the Iranian regime. A former commander of the Islamic Revoluti...
Foreign Policy •

Iran Is Calling the Shots Now

But the pressure that Tehran is applying to Donald Trump suddenly feels very much like what flummoxed LBJ in Vietnam. Specifically, it resembles the winning strategy so doggedly pursued by Ho Chi Minh, the iconic North Vietnamese leader.No, Iran is not yet “another Vietnam.” There are no U.S. ground forces taking unsustainable casualties, no headlines tallying the week’s dead, no massive anti-war protests in U.S. streets. And of course, rather than a beaten-down Lyndon Baines Johnson, the curren...
Foreign Policy •

The One Thing That Terrifies Donald Trump

But we have enough data points by now—after more than a year of bellicose ultimatums and outright war—to know that Trump is quite frightened of one force beyond his control: the markets. Trump’s abrupt retreat on Tuesday from his bloodthirsty (and increasingly desperate) threats to destroy Iranian “civilization” following Tehran’s oil-spiking shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz—and his apparent acceptance of terms that favor Iran—is only the latest proof of that.Donald Trump likes to project an aur...
Foreign Policy •

After the Nation-State

The problem, however, is that the nation-state is badly broken and no longer working for average people around the world.No one has done more than Donald Trump to assert the “primacy of nations” in today’s world, to quote his National Security Strategy. And the U.S. president has many nationalist fellow travelers in high places who also preach a fierce, almost religious, devotion to the nation-state—including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, an...
Foreign Policy •

So This, Finally, Is the ‘Trump Doctrine’

In fact, there is evidence that Trump does. And we’re missing the point when we focus separately on his various acts of aggression toward Iran, Venezuela, or Greenland, or on Trump’s previous pledge to his MAGA base that he wouldn’t start foreign wars.Has there ever been more confusion about what a U.S. president is up to? In the days since Donald Trump launched his war of choice against Iran on Feb. 28, it’s been impossible to get a straight answer out of him or his team about what his goal is....
Foreign Policy •

Why No One Is Pushing Back on Trump’s Iran Threats

Bush, mind you, was a staunch unilateralist who had little affection for the U.N., or Europe, or NATO. (“Preserve the myth, and laugh,” one Bush official said then of the trans-Atlantic alliance.) But Bush felt compelled to invoke international law and win over skeptics at home and abroad—who were strident, and often eloquent, in their opposition to his “preemptive” Iraq war.How much difference nearly a quarter century can make. Twenty-three years ago, then-U.S. President George W. Bush repeated...
Foreign Policy •

No, the International Community Isn’t Dead Yet

But there’s a larger lesson to be found in the extraordinary spectacle of the usually fractious Europeans standing united against the man whom many now see as the mad king of Washington—and in the sudden revolt of global markets against Trump’s behavior. The markets have since stabilized, but “Sell America” sentiment persists, an ever-present threat hovering over Trump’s “A+++++” economy.The newest conventional wisdom among the commentariat is to lament the passing of our “rules-based internatio...
Foreign Policy •

The Wobbling of King Trump

From the triumphal arches of Constantine and Titus to the soaring St. Peter’s Basilica to the stunning Medici palaces of Florence, one sees a clear through line: a parade of giant egos down the centuries. For princes of the past—even many popes—self-glorification was the norm.For an American, touring the grandiose monuments of ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy—as I did recently—is an oddly relatable experience these days.For an American, touring the grandiose monuments of ancient Rome and Renai...
Foreign Policy •

Why the Democrats Are So Lost

“Every day gets better for us,” chortled Schumer, apparently full of vim that he wasn’t swiftly surrendering to President Donald Trump as he did to avoid a shutdown in March.As the two-week standoff over the U.S. government shutdown dragged on—imperiling hundreds of federal programs that the Democratic Party has created over the past century—the nation’s top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggested at one point that he’s fairly satisfied with his party’s progress.As the two-week...
POLITICO •

The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think

“Admittedly, such a suggestion will generate comparisons to Dr. Strangelove’s doomsday machine, WarGames’ War Operation Plan Response, and the Terminator’s Skynet, but the prophetic imagery of these science fiction films is quickly becoming reality,” wrote Lowther and his co-author, Curtis McGiffen.What’s more, there is evidence that Russia is maintaining its own “dead hand,” a system called “Perimeter” that was developed during the Cold War and can automatically launch long-range nuclear missil...
POLITICO •

How Did the World’s Most Sophisticated Military Fall So Far Behind With Drone Warfare?

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a drone demonstration at the Pentagon on July 10, 2025. The event was hosted to demonstrate the Trump administration's initiative on Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance. | Lance Cpl. Isaac Llanez Delgado/U.S. Marine CorpsBy Michael Hirsh08/27/2025 05:00 AM EDTMichael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor for POLITICO Magazine.When the Pentagon announced a “joint interagency...
POLITICO •

The US Military Debates Possible Deployment on US Soil Under Trump

Two National Guardsmen stand guard outside a burning donut shop at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992. The National Guard was called in to aid police during the second day of rioting in the city. | Mark Elias/APBy Michael Hirsh01/12/2025 03:00 PM ESTMichael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor for POLITICO Magazine.The last time an American president deployed the U.S. mili...