Realism and Restraint
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
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Key Points and Summary – The recent NATO summit in The Hague, where European allies agreed to a new 5% of GDP defense spending...
The Trump administration made the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire its priority foreign policy initiative shortly after the inauguration. Setting aside Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric that he...
The strain in US-European relations under the second Trump administration stems primarily from a deepening ideological divide, not just policy disputes over trade or...
Since the ill-fated Oval Office meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, the headlines have been dominated by pronouncements about the end of NATO, the...
PUBLISHED on August 8, 2025, 02:19 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Navy is facing a critical readiness crisis, with...
The Komsomolets is a classic example of a "system accident," where the catastrophe was not caused by a single failure but by the unforeseen...
The Akula-Class Submarine: Everything You Always Wanted to Know In the clandestine, high-stakes undersea chess match of the Cold War, the sudden appearance of...
Key Points and Summary – As Russia escalates its drone war on Ukraine, deploying massive swarms of increasingly sophisticated Shahed-type drones, Kyiv is fighting...
The global financial and technological order is changing rapidly, and the U.S. must be at the center of these changes. As China aggressively pushes...
It is in the DNA of Star Wars to borrow from other genres. Indeed, George Lucas built his science fiction universe around the visual...
Key Points – Canada’s re-evaluation of its 88-unit F-35 fighter deal, driven by political tensions with the US, faces significant practical hurdles if Ottawa...
Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU)—collectively known as the Union—took power after securing the largest block...
In October 2024, Iran threatened to abandon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and pursue a nuclear weapon if attacked by Israel. If history and...
In the wake of Israel’s first rounds of its preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, aptly named “Operation Rising Lion,” commentators rushed to...
Europe’s increasingly stodgy and intolerant political establishment continues to celebrate an unexpected electoral triumph in Romania. It was a badly needed victory for the...
With nukes off the table, Putin has invested in the rapid production of drones to carry out mass conventional attacks.
Summary and Key Points: -North Korea’s deployment of 15,000 troops to support Russia in Ukraine offers critical battlefield experience that could significantly enhance its...
Summary and Key Points: North Korea has faced catastrophic losses among its troops fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine, with nearly 50 percent casualties reported....
North Korea and the Change Question: More than two decades ago, a defense and foreign affairs writer could visit China and not be constantly...
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is meeting with important allies during his Indo-Pacific trip, with one notable exception: South Korea, at a time of...
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
The hospital at which I work offered antibody serology tests to all medical staff last Wednesday. The test detects IgG, the immunoglobulin that appears in...
In a post last month, we raised concerns about the unforeseen and underappreciated costs of expanding export controls on U.S. technology. Either those concerns fell on...