Foreign Affairs

The best soldiers know how to think for themselves.

Congress must lead to compete with Beijing.

Iran and the last gasp of a failed order.

Why Washington still risks losing the tech race.

Preparing for a world of synthetic pathogens.

The case against pessimism and the path to a new allied order.

Learning to live in a post-American world.

The real history of Beijing’s rare-earth dominance.

A quarter century before 9/11, an upsurge in global terrorism prompted the historian David Fromkin to examine its purpose and method. Terrorism was a strategy of the weak, Fromkin wrote in these pages, but modern technology had enabled it “to enter the political arena on a new scale.” And its surprising success seemed to be due, in large part, “to a miscomprehension of the strategy by its opponents.”

How to make government work again.

What the youngest continent stands to gain from growing old.

How Washington’s fear of Chinese investment hurts American competitiveness.

Hormuz and the new geography of energy power.

How to support the movement resisting the Taliban’s extremism.

Decades of hard-won mediation experience point the way.

How overcapacity ends.

Why high productivity could still lead to a crash.

The perverse incentives for presidents to use military force.

How fragile states can fortify themselves.

How Beijing turned its food insecurity into geopolitical leverage.