Ideas

A 3-Percent Solution for NATO

The alliance should up its members’ spending goals — and count much-needed resiliency investment toward the total.

Ideas

NATO’s Newest Threat Is Coming From Inside the House

Worry less about the gaps between NATO leaders, and more about the gap between those leaders and the national security community.

Ideas

Three Tweaks to Foster Innovative Defense Products

Even the Pentagon can’t lavish billionaire-level cash on every promising tech startup — but it can make several moves that help.

Ideas

America's Rivalry With China Is Nothing Like the Cold War

In today’s circumstances, Cold War–era policies are not only unnecessary, but likely to catalyze a destructive spiral of heightening tensions that would make the world a more dangerous place.

Ideas

The Surest Way to Lose to China Is to Disparage Expertise

In this new era of great power competition, we are not investing enough in area specialists.

Ideas

Declaring Mexican Drug Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Is a Bad Old Idea

Trump and Obama policymakers rejected it because it brings no new tools to bear — and quite a few drawbacks.

Ideas

The War-Crimes President

When violence is directed at those Trump’s supporters hate and fear, they see such excesses not as crimes but as virtues.

Ideas

NATO Should End its Open-Door Policy

Enlarging the alliance has caused more problems than it has solved.

Ideas

A Veteran’s Thanksgiving Pledge

I want to help rebuild an America that is worth the sacrifices of so many.

Ideas

Russia’s Military Is Writing an Armed-Robot Playbook

The new tactics and operating concepts will draw on three years of Syrian operations.

Ideas

The US Navy Needs Offensive Undersea Drones

The maritime domain has yet to see the kind of explosive innovation that UAVs have brought to land warfare.

Ideas

How Trump Turned the Military Against Itself

The president’s repeated interference in a Navy SEAL’s case shows that he cares about only one kind of military discipline: obedience to Trump.

Ideas

Loosening Firearms Exports Will Tear at a Larger Arms-Control Fabric

But Congress still has time to block the Trump administration’s proposed changes.

Ideas

As the Rich Get Richer, the Ambassadors Get Worse

Gordon Sondland embodies an age-old problem—one that the flood of donor money into American politics is only exacerbating.

Ideas

Russia’s AI Quest is State-Driven — Even More than China’s. Can It Work?

Handicaps: weak private sector, Soviet-style bureaucracy. Helps: Great STEM education — and history.

Ideas

Foreign Policy Isn't Just Up To Trump

The president’s defenders argue that U.S. foreign policy is whatever he says it is. Trouble is, that’s not what the Constitution says.

Ideas

Don’t Demand Protection Money from Japan. Do Ask Tokyo to Rethink Its Defenses

A well-fortified Japan could take the lead in its own security, with U.S. forces acting as a backstop rather than the primary combatants.

Ideas

America Hasn’t Always Supported Ukraine Like This

For a policy that’s purportedly a pillar of the decades-old international order, military aid to Ukraine is pretty new.

Ideas

'Some of You on this Committee Appear to Believe' That Russia Didn't Meddle in 2016

In testimony, a former senior director for European and Russian affairs on Trump's National Security Council tells lawmakers to stop spreading Moscow's lies.