National Security

AbstractA quarter century after the end of the Cold War the United States faces an international geopolitical landscape that many would have not imagined a generation ago. Today the U.S. faces a disordered world where revisionist powers such as...

Abstract Between 1904 and 1943, the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder developed and refined his influential geopolitical view of global politics based on an understanding of history in its geographical setting. The roots of Mackinder’s worldview reach back to...

A few months ago, I was at one of those boozy, early evening events that bind together professional life in Washington, D.C. I was there to meet a retired White House official who was holding court off to the...

No one would ever say that Henry Kissinger’s life has been shrouded in obscurity. From the late 1950s onward, he was a well-known public intellectual who shaped crucial debates about Cold War strategy. During his subsequent time as national security adviser...

At a time when the Republican party’s top-polling presidential contender has been a troll with a pompadour, thoughtful GOP foreign-policy alternatives have not received much attention. A new book published by the John Hay Initiative, Choosing to Lead, seeks...

ISIS is murdering and enslaving across Syria and Iraq. Russia is deploying dozens of aircraft to support the regime in Damascus. Huddled masses have been tempest-tossed into Europe. At the eye of the storm, Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a cynical, brutal,...

The debate over women in the infantry has heated up in recent weeks. Advocates of integration were thrilled recently when two female officers passed the rigorous Army Ranger course. But they suffered a setback when a nine-month, $36 million...

How does one fight a war for a buffer state? A war for the maintenance or reestablishment of a buffer state is a peculiar beast. It is not a war of conquest, because direct territorial control would undermine the...

U.S. grand strategy stands at a crossroads. Since World War II, America has pursued an ambitious and deeply engaged grand strategy meant to shape the global order—a grand strategy that, in many ways, has been profoundly productive for both...