Foreign Affairs

Tehran’s fight for great-power status in the post-American Middle East.

Robert Zoellick, an expert on the global economy who served as U.S. trade representative and World Bank president, makes the authoritative case that President Donald Trump’s antagonism toward Canada and Mexico is destroying an economic and security partnership that that enables the United States to project power globally.

America should spy on foreign companies to help its own.

A failing peace process leads to only one outcome.

Who will benefit from the continent's investment boom?

Julianne Smith, who represented the United States at NATO during the Biden administration, argues that Russian hybrid warfare in Europe is escalating quickly, and NATO is not doing enough to deter it. Putin is attempting to discourage support for Ukraine and undermine faith in Article 5, and NATO is responding with an outdated playbook.

Conflicts in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa have become inseparable.

The dangerous idea driving today’s wars of choice.

America isn’t ready for the next wave of foreign influence operations.

Demographic decline, political paralysis, and the fate of great powers.

Reckoning with the country’s real crisis.

A new majority—even in Gaza—support compromise with Israel.

How technology empowers—and imperils—dictators.

Tehran’s strategy to drive America out of the Middle East.

Over the last half millennium, societies around the globe competed to divide up the world’s land. Nearly every square inch of soil outside Antarctica is now owned and tucked within national borders. But the oceans have largely been spared that fate. There were times throughout history when countries tried to gate and regulate the seas, but they were too vast to be controlled for long periods. During the Cold War, as technology made it far easier to imagine partitioning the world’s waterways and seabeds, great powers avoided an unrestrained race to grab the oceans. Most governments agreed to deal with them through a patchwork of treaties and multilateral bodies that sought to guarantee freedom of navigation in international waters and assign coastal seabeds to adjacent littoral states.

Why the region must brace for a new wave of turbulence.

What Kyiv needs to survive.

Why America and Iran fight on without victory.

America and its allies must scale together for a new era of war.

But Washington risks missing out.