President Donald Trump’s recent two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded much as anticipated. In an article written ahead of the trip, I noted that expectations for substantive breakthroughs in the fraught Sino-American relationship were likely to be disappointed. The events of the visit bore this out. While the tone was notably, and welcomely, warmer than in recent years and both sides touted “fantastic trade deals,” the core structural tensions—trade imbalances, technology restrictions, Taiwan, and regional security—remain largely unaddressed. What emerged was...

When President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing yesterday for his summit with Xi Jinping, much of the American foreign policy establishment framed the meeting through the familiar lens of “great power competition.” Analysts will scrutinize every handshake, communiqué, and trade announcement for signs that Washington is either “standing up” to China or “conceding” ground to its principal rival. But the more important reality is that the summit will likely underscore just how much the balance of leverage has shifted over the past several years—and how little appetite Beijing has for rescuing...

In 2011, the world welcomed its newest country. Fifteen years later, South Sudan is less a symbol of self-determination than a case study in state failure. Its politics remain dominated by factional strongmen, its economy is almost entirely dependent on oil, and the threat of renewed large-scale violence never quite recedes. For most Americans, it barely registers—just another distant tragedy filed away under “Africa.” But South Sudan did not simply emerge from the mists of post-colonial history. It was, in no small part, a project of Washington. That fact alone should invite scrutiny,...

For decades Washington has advertised its air and naval supremacy as the indispensable guarantor of global order. Recent events have shown this to be little but increasingly expensive theater. The 2026 Iran War has paused not with Iranian capitulation but in a cascade of humiliations that have permanently altered the strategic landscape. Washington’s vaunted power-projection capabilities proved unable to shield even its own forward bases, depleted critical munitions stockpiles, and ultimately ceded effective control of the Strait of Hormuz to Tehran. These lessons will not be lost on Beijing...

For anyone who has been paying attention to the metastasizing national debt and the fiscal recklessness that has defined Washington for the past two decades, the latest proposal from the Trump administration can be met only by a mixture of disgust and grim predictability. Indeed, at a time of record debt and deficits the White House has floated a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a proposal more likely than not to find its way into the next National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It is a prospect that should terrify every American taxpayer. For context, the most recent...