National Security

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. The Royal Navy is set to take a leading role in a multinational “Hormuz Coalition” to reopen the Strait...

Introduction Amid the escalating Iran-US-Israel war, Iraq is increasingly becoming one of its central fronts, bringing back into sharp focus a chronic structural dilemma: the role of militias embedded within the state and the consequences of their conduct for...

After weeks of war, pressure is mounting on the Trump administration to deploy sea and ground forces on an open-ended mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway connecting Asia with the Arabian Sea. The options for...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. On the morning of April 14, 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate cruising through...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. For three decades, American grand strategy has rested on what Barry Posen termed “Command of the Commons”: an unrivaled...

  Following the 12-day war in late June 2025, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) immediately began a project to understand how the region has changed and what the military action could mean for future combat. The project and...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own.  A minor power outage in San Francisco offered a...

State of Play Northeast Syria, for long the most stable corner of the country, has been plunged into turmoil following a military campaign by the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Following days of fighting, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)...

The recent raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appears to have been a nearly flawlessly executed special operation. Conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) with interagency support, the raid demonstrated the professionalism and expertise of America’s...

After finishing my last article on the inability of the US Navy to build frigates, I was hopeful that I could have a bit of a break before the next crisis in American naval shipbuilding. If there were ever...