Ideas

Saudi Crown Prince: Iran's Supreme Leader 'Makes Hitler Look Good'

In a wide-ranging conversation, Prince Mohammed bin Salman also recognized the Jewish people’s right to “their own land.”

Ideas

How to Deal With Russian Information Warfare? Ask Sweden's Subhunters

Other nations can learn from the Swedes’ long experience with mysterious incidents followed by disinformation campaigns.

Ideas

Why the Marshall Plan Worked — and Why It Won’t in Today’s Warzones

A host of similar-sounding yet unworkable aid schemes are among the legacies of the one that launched 70 years ago Tuesday.

Ideas

The White House Doctor and the Dual-Officeholding Ban

Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson’s appointment reinvigorates the debate over the proper relationship between the military and the government.

Ideas

New Transgender Policy Is Grounded in Common Sense

It allows qualified individuals to serve, and excludes only those for whom the stresses of military life present unacceptable risk.

Ideas

A Deal with North Korea Won't Happen Without China

How Kim Jong-Un's surprise visit to Beijing underscores China’s influence.

Ideas

China Is Filling the Africa-Sized Gap in US Strategy

While U.S. troops fight terror groups, Beijing is locking up supplies of raw materials key to the future of defense.

Ideas

Putin Finally Went Too Far

The unified international response to the Skripal poisoning shows that the West will only suffer so much provocation.

Ideas

To Learn How to Protect America From Digital Threats, Look to Europe

European nations are charting the way, adopting whole-of-society methods for dealing with this new challenge.

Ideas

John Bolton Is Misunderstood

The actual track record of Trump’s next national-security adviser offers cause for cautious optimism.

Ideas

Arms Sales Decisions Shouldn’t Be About Jobs

Basic foreign policy principles should drive potential weapons exports, not pork-barrel politics.

Ideas

McMaster's Choice

Before he was the national-security adviser, he wrote a lacerating account of generals who failed in advising Lyndon Johnson. What will he say now that he is free to talk about Trump?

Ideas

John Bolton Will Not End Well

Wait until Trump starts working with this swamp veteran with bad press and Pentagon push-back who likes to name-drop Edmund Burke.

Ideas

Yemen Shows Why US Needs to Change Its Arms Sales Policy


A Senate resolution to reduce U.S. participation in Yemen's war failed, but policymakers seeking to reduce complicity in the humanitarian crisis have another option.

Ideas

What Were We Doing In Iraq Anyway?

Reflections on a war gone wrong.

Ideas

Five Myths About Pentagon Weapons Programs

As the service secretaries converge on Capitol Hill to talk acquisition reform, it’s important to sort fact from fiction.

Ideas

The Iraq War and the Inevitability of Ignorance

The U.S. is destined to keep overlearning the lessons of the last conflict.

Ideas

On Torture, America Must Reckon with More than Gina Haspel

From allies’ mistrust to the fate of the 9/11 detainees, the U.S. legacy of atrocity still corrodes national security.

Ideas

There Are More and More Threats that Militaries Can't Stop. People's Forces Can Help

Populations are not fragile flowers – far from it. Treating them as a national-security resource can boost a society's resiliency, and even its deterrence.

Ideas

Telling the Truth About CIA Torture

Trump’s nominee to lead the agency should answer a number of tough questions about her role in its now-defunct “enhanced interrogation” program.