The 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, held in Koror, Palau, from August 31 to September 3, offered a revealing window into the limits of an increasingly ambitious external security agenda in the Pacific. The immediate subject was Australia’s expanding network of defense and security arrangements. The larger question, however, was what these arrangements mean as Washington intensifies its strategic competition with Beijing—and whether Australia is becoming an increasingly important vehicle for extending that competition into the Pacific. The Forum’s Leaders’ Communiqué and...

It must be said at the outset that what follows is necessarily speculative. There is no evidence that Washington has decided to back Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), much less that such a policy shift is imminent. But enough developments involving the RSF, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Somaliland, and the Red Sea make the possibility worth considering. The United States entered Sudan’s civil war with a fairly straightforward public position: both sides were responsible for atrocities, neither should win militarily, and the war should end through negotiation. Washington has sanctioned...

For decades, one of the keys to Washington’s power has been its ability to use favorably inclined allies as force multipliers. Now, facing its first peer competitor in generations, Washington has been busily alienating pretty much everyone it can. This alienation can be measured, and the results are striking. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes surveys track favorable views of the United States and China across dozens of countries. In 2023, the United States still held a clear edge. A median of about 59% of respondents across surveyed nations viewed America favorably, compared with just...

While the tenor of U.S.-China relations cooled somewhat from the hysteria of Donald Trump's first term and the Joe Biden years, recent events have made clear how thin that veneer of stability remains. President Trump’s May 2026 state visit to Beijing and the planned September 24 White House meeting with Xi Jinping briefly suggested a shift toward “strategic stability.” Reciprocal visits returned to the agenda, and open talk of full decoupling subsided. That moment already looks precarious. This week the Trump administration expanded its Iran-related sanctions campaign—“Operation Economic...

Mali remains in chaos. Al-Qaeda-linked militants and Tuareg separatists have recently demonstrated an ability to coordinate attacks against the Malian military, while the country’s Russian-backed junta struggles to maintain control over territory far beyond the capital. Violence has spread across the Sahel, and Mali remains one of the epicenters of the region’s seemingly endless war against jihadist insurgencies. Washington’s answer, as usual, is to ask what more it can do. That is the wrong question. The more important question is what Washington has already done. For all the attention...

Among the commentariat, America’s problem with “forever wars” is usually discussed as a failure of grand strategy. In this telling, presidents misjudge threats; generals overestimate what military power can accomplish; and policymakers confuse battlefield victories with political success. These explanations are all valid, but they miss something fundamental: the people making decisions about war face incentives that are often badly misaligned with the interests of the public. The United States does not need to assume that its presidents are uniquely reckless, its generals uniquely ambitious,...

For nearly twenty-five years, Washington has quietly expanded America’s Global War on Terror across Africa. Today, U.S. military activities stretch from the Horn of Africa through the Sahel to the Atlantic coast, encompassing intelligence bases, drone operations, special operations deployments, partner-force training, logistical support, surveillance missions, and recurring multinational exercises. Yet if the objective has been to produce a more secure region, the strategic picture is difficult to reconcile with the investment. To understand why, begin with a map. The central Sahel and Lake...