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https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/27/india-u-s-relations-between-courteous-acquaintance-and-civilizational-dissonance/

What remains to be seen is how soon the administration’s downsizing will realize the dramatic taxpayer savings Trump officials suggested.

Rubio, who is also the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, oversaw the dismantling of that agency earlier this year. A draft memo that was prepared for Rubio and signed in early June by nine State Department officials estimates that USAID’s shuttering will end up costing more than $6 billion in the near term as the federal government fends off lawsuits from contractors and former employees who say they were fired illegally.

The senior political appointee strongly disputed that figure, saying a later draft of the memo suggested costs of roughly $2 billion and calling that estimate a “worst-case scenario.”

What readers are saying

The comments express strong criticism of Marco Rubio and the Trump administration, particularly regarding the perceived dismantling of the State Department and other government agencies. Many commenters accuse Rubio of being a sycophant to Trump, compromising his integrity and... Show more

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By Adam Taylor

Adam Taylor writes about national security and foreign policy for The Washington Post.follow on X@mradamtaylor

By John Hudson

John Hudson is a reporter at The Washington Post covering the State Department and national security. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has reported from dozens of countries, including Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Belarus.follow on X@John_Hudson

By Hannah Natanson

Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering Trump's reshaping of the government and its effects. Reach her securely on Signal at 202-580-5477.follow on Xhannah_natanson

15. Hypermasculinity Is Driving U.S. Foreign Policy

I think it is these descriptors that cause problems. I recall a dozen years ago when "feminist foreign policy" was all the rage. Now we have hypermasculinity. Are these descriptions helpful or do they replace the intellectual rigor we need to develop foreign policy and national security strategy?

Why do we describe a military strike that was arguably necessary to defend the US and its allies as hyper masculine as if that is a bad thing? How would a feminist foreign policy better defend the US and Israel against Iran's nuclear threats?

So it is manhood that is the problem (the author's half hearted denial notwithstanding). It is these types of arguments that caused the Trump administration and its supporters to strike so hard against DEI.

And I would argue that both the anti-hypermasculinity arguments and anti-DEI arguments are actually the problems. Both are wrong and not wrong.

Excerpts:

Masculinity in itself is not the problem. When societies allow manhood to encompass a range of identities that break from the traditional script, it can even become a strength. Roles often associated with masculinity—such as the protector or provider—are valuable to society. But rather than being driven into wars of ego, men must root their leadership in care and cooperation.

Naming hypermasculinity as a governing logic is essential to understanding what’s driving today’s foreign policy—and what it may ultimately cost citizens of all countries, not just the United States. Policymakers have a choice: Remain in cycles of nationalism and emotional vengeance, or return to the fight for humanity’s future, together.

Hypermasculinity Is Driving U.S. Foreign Policy

Trump’s approach to Iran shows that America’s crisis of manhood has hit the global stage.

By Alice Lassman, a policy expert with a focus on gender and the global economy.

Foreign Policy · by Alice Lassman

June 27, 2025, 5:40 PM

Iran Conflict

Analysis and updates

In the days before the surprise U.S. attack on Iran, Politico reported that one man in the Defense Department was having an outsized say on Washington’s Iran strategy: Erik Kurilla, the hawkish U.S. Central Command leader known as “The Gorilla.” “He’s a big dude, he’s jacked, he’s exactly this ‘lethality’ look they’re going for,” said an anonymous former official. So long as military advisors “come across as tough and warfighters,” the source added, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “is easily persuaded to their point of view.”

Kurilla’s influence illustrates a broader truth about Washington’s current priorities: In President Donald Trump’s second term, hypermasculinity has become the governing logic of U.S. foreign policy. Masculinity in itself—associated with traits such as leadership, strength, and courage—is not harmful. But a brand of traditional masculinity defined by aggression, lack of emotional regulation, and poor impulse control is, and it has become a driving force in an administration that favors preemptive attacks in pursuit of national self-interest over U.S. values.

The U.S.-China tariff war—a symbolic contest grounded in masculine tropes of refusing to back down or betray weakness—exemplifies this dynamic. But its apex so far has been the Trump administration’s approach to the Iran conflict. As Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear program makes clear, hypermasculinity now directly shapes U.S. tactical moves, overriding considerations of diplomatic fallout or escalation risks.

World leaders have begun policing each other’s legitimacy based on how convincingly they perform their role as hard-line protectors of national interests. Consider Trump’s dismissal of Iran’s “very weak” retaliatory attack on Monday, or British politician-turned-academic Rory Stewart noting that “Iran’s legitimacy depends on trying to launch a backlash against the U.S.”

This logic isn’t new. Even more traditional negotiation tactics in U.S. history featured masculine rhetoric. (President John F. Kennedy famously bragged that he “cut [Nikita Khrushchev’s] balls off” during the Cuban missile crisis.) But its ubiquity might be. Today, foreign policy is increasingly turning into a zero-sum contest where leaders are incentivized to perform a brand of masculinity signaling dominance, control, and strength—or risk appearing weak.

In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower set out a moral architecture for U.S. foreign policy that prioritized diplomacy. Advocating for peace and cautioning against unnecessary entanglements, he opposed striking first and the notion of “preemptive wars.” In his 1961 farewell address, Eisenhower warned against the growing influence of the “military-industrial complex.”

That view is largely at odds with the Trump administration’s embrace of hypermasculinity. Once dominated by social elites, diplomacy tends to rely on a tight script of how to behave and act. As one scholar of early modern England has noted, that code is inherently removed from traditional displays of manliness through “physical prowess.” Historically, diplomacy relied on personal relationships and subtle negotiation, and since notions of masculinity varied from culture to culture, it was difficult to perform masculinity while conducting foreign policy.

Now, this approach—of tact, cooperation, and restraint—has been reframed as emasculating. One Trump administration official, speaking anonymously to NBC News, recently dismissed traditional diplomacy as a “game of telephone.” Diplomacy has also become increasingly public-facing. As Foreign Policy’s Ravi Agrawal has written, Trump has ushered in a reality TV presidency, one that upends the idea that diplomacy was never meant for public consumption.

Like reality TV, representing one’s nation-state has become highly personal. Stewart has argued that Trump’s diplomacy is driven by whatever makes him “look like the tough guy.” His administration is full of men who embody this ethos; just consider Hegseth boasting about the number of pushups he did the morning of his Senate confirmation hearing.

This foreign-policy turn has been partly fueled by the global trend of masculinity becoming increasingly important to political identity. Much has been written about the cultural reckoning around male resentment as men have fallen behind in education, struggled to adapt to the changing workforce, and experienced worsening mental health. Around the world, these disaffected young men are turning to the right.

Online ecosystems, or the so-called manosphere, have normalized gender hierarchies, bolstering narratives that men are victims of modernity, feminism, and softness. Misogynistic content is reaching boys at an unprecedented pace—according to the New York Times, after less than nine minutes of scrolling on TikTok. Societies’ failure to offer guidance on men’s role in society has left young males vulnerable to voices that shift the blame to women, with 60 percent of Gen Z men across 31 countries now believing gender equality has gone too far.

This manufactured outrage around male victimhood—the kind that has underpinned many mass shootings—has elevated emotion over ideology in politics. And the U.S. right seems to be appealing to those emotions. Conservative pundits have wagered that tariffs will fix the country’s so-called masculinity crisis. Meanwhile, in a now-deleted tweet from April, the U.S. Department of Labor shared a romanticized image of a return to manufacturing—artificial intelligence-generated white men in hard hats, with grime-covered faces—a future that even a commentator for the right-wing Cato Institute recognized as “neither preferable nor possible.”

When policymaking becomes rooted in alpha masculinity, leaders become further detached from any lived horrors of war. After the United States bombed Iran, Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, posted on X about the “different feel” in the West Wing, which he compared to a “sports team that won a major game or in business winning a major competitive contract”—two traditionally male-coded spaces driven by zero-sum decision-making. “You ‘strut’ differently,” he added, before calling Trump “Bad Ass” (shorthand for masculine legitimacy, militarism, and bravado).

Meanwhile, in the wake of the operation, Trump framed the United States as a winner whose “great American Warriors” will “never, ever fail,” while ignoring any potential human cost of the conflict’s fallout. This dissonance has long existed in foreign policy, where suffering is defensible in the name of statehood, but the Trump administration’s posturing essentially turns international crises into a locker-room spectacle.

Furthermore, Trump’s attitude reduces foreign policy—and governance more broadly—to clear, winnable outcomes. This sidelines the complexity of peacebuilding, denigrating the hard-won consensus that defined 20th-century diplomacy. For peace to be lasting, it needs to be rooted in efforts for dialogue and mutual understanding.

This crisis of manhood isn’t just limited to the United States. Trump is merely a particularly salient expression of a broader shift, as young men around the world look to leaders who will reflect their anger and disaffection back to them: Argentine President Javier Milei, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. In contrast, a figure such as former U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris is dismissed as someone whom these men would, in Trump’s words, “walk all over.”

The repercussions are serious in this moment of polycrisis. From climate change to AI to migration, cross-border challenges that demand collective solutions are instead being met with competition and isolationism. Around the world, voters increasingly feel that the social contract is fraying—that despite their personal sacrifices, societies’ failure to act leaves the future looking bleak. As trust in governments’ capacity to deliver change erodes, the logic of “payback and vengeance”—against elites, women, immigrants, and the international system—gains ground.

At this critical tipping point for AI regulation and climate action, this masculine logic narrows policy imagination, making states more susceptible to interconnected risk. As a doctrine of dominance, masculinity will indeed create some winners, but at the expense of under-equipping institutions for long-term threats. Its logic allows people to believe that individual leaders can manage crises under the current system—for instance, with silver-bullet techno-fixes. This enables a select few to profit from short-term solutions without overhauling the systems that caused them.

Masculinity in itself is not the problem. When societies allow manhood to encompass a range of identities that break from the traditional script, it can even become a strength. Roles often associated with masculinity—such as the protector or provider—are valuable to society. But rather than being driven into wars of ego, men must root their leadership in care and cooperation.

Naming hypermasculinity as a governing logic is essential to understanding what’s driving today’s foreign policy—and what it may ultimately cost citizens of all countries, not just the United States. Policymakers have a choice: Remain in cycles of nationalism and emotional vengeance, or return to the fight for humanity’s future, together.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage. Read more here.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.

Foreign Policy · by Alice Lassman

16. India-U.S. Relations: Between Courteous Acquaintance and Civilizational Dissonance

A friend and colleague from India I was with this past week was very proud of the fact that the Prime Minister rejected the POTUS' invitation to visit saying he was too busy. And in discussions with him it was clear that he strongly believes this from the author: India "sees itself as a civilizational state—an ancient, enduring entity with its own norms, systems, and path to modernity."

Excerpts:

India-U.S. ties today are pragmatic, valuable, and occasionally warm—but they are not and may never be intimate. This is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be managed. The United States must learn to engage India as a sovereign civilization with its own logic. And India must remain clear-eyed about the terms of engagement in a world where even friends act in self-interest.

Call it “strategic acquaintance”, not “alliance”. That, too, can be a foundation for peace, prosperity, and mutual respect—if built with open eyes.

India-U.S. Relations: Between Courteous Acquaintance and Civilizational Dissonance

by Ajay Jha

06.27.2025 at 06:00am

In the realm of international diplomacy, India and the United States are often described as natural partners. Yet, beneath the photo-ops and defense agreements lies a complex reality: this is not a relationship of equals in cultural perception or mutual understanding. Rather, it is a courteous acquaintance often marred by deep civilizational dissonance and misaligned expectations.

The Illusion of Natural Alliance

In Washington’s strategic calculus, India is often viewed through the lens of utility: a counterweight to China, a lucrative defense market, and a potential ideological ally. From this vantage, the U.S. finds it frustrating when New Delhi does not toe the line—be it on Russia, Iran, or global trade rules. But India does not see itself as a junior partner in any Western coalition. It sees itself as a civilizational state—an ancient, enduring entity with its own norms, systems, and path to modernity.

Civilizational Memory vs. Modern Superpower

India’s worldview is shaped not merely by the last 75 years of independence, but by thousands of years of philosophical, cultural, and social evolution. Baked into Indian Statecraft are concepts like dharma, which emphasizes moral duty and balance. There is also pluralism, and relational diplomacy, which emphasizes mutual respect and strategic autonomy. This contrasts sharply with America’s liberal-internationalist worldview, rooted in Enlightenment values such as liberty and free markets. Included is missionary zeal, and a tendency to universalize one’s experience.

This civilizational self-awareness makes India uniquely resistant to pressure. When the U.S. imposes moral lectures or sanctions threats (as with CAATSA over Russian defense deals), India sees not principled diplomacy but a form of modern-day imperial overreach.

The Big Brother Problem

What grates most in New Delhi is the periodic American tendency to act as the elder statesman—or worse, the global policeman. Whether it is U.S. commentary on India’s domestic laws (CAA, Article 370), religious freedom, or press liberties, the reaction in India is often one of sovereign indignation. Indian policymakers, irrespective of party affiliation, bristle at what they see as selective scrutiny and moral exceptionalism.

To many Indian observers, America’s credibility on these issues is undermined by its historical support for authoritarian regimes, drone warfare, and its transactional dealings with Pakistan—even in the aftermath of terrorism against India, such as the in the Kargil War and 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The Diaspora Disconnect

It is often assumed that the four-million-strong Indian American community serves as a bridge between the two nations. In reality, this community is increasingly bifurcated. While many have risen to positions of influence, a significant segment of Indian society views elite Indian Americans as more aligned with Western liberalism than with Indian national interests. This cultural distance limits the diaspora’s effectiveness as a trust-building force.

Mutual Utility, Not Mutual Trust

The India-U.S. partnership works best when both sides are realistic about its limits. Defense cooperation, trade, and strategic alignment on China are all promising areas. But India does not seek to replace China in a U.S.-led order; it seeks its own multipolar vision of global governance. It wants respect, not patronage.

As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has often emphasized, India will do what is in India’s interest, and expects partners to understand that as the basis of engagement.

Conclusion: A Relationship of Balance, Not Bonding

India-U.S. ties today are pragmatic, valuable, and occasionally warm—but they are not and may never be intimate. This is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be managed. The United States must learn to engage India as a sovereign civilization with its own logic. And India must remain clear-eyed about the terms of engagement in a world where even friends act in self-interest.

Call it “strategic acquaintance”, not “alliance”. That, too, can be a foundation for peace, prosperity, and mutual respect—if built with open eyes.

Tags: India, India-US Relations, US-China Rivalry

About The Author

Ajay Jha
Ajay Kumar Jha is an insightful commentator and writer on strategic affairs, developmental policy, and the evolving technology landscape, with a sharp focus on the telecom sector. Drawing on over two decades of leadership experience across Global Telecom, IT, and Strategy Consulting in India and Africa, he brings a rare blend of operational depth and strategic vision to his analysis. Ajay writes with clarity and conviction on themes such as digital transformation, 5G, AI, IoT integration, and the critical intersections between technology and socio-economic development. His work often explores how infrastructure, policy, and innovation can be aligned to drive inclusive growth and national competitiveness. Known for his grounded insights and actionable foresight, Ajay bridges the gap between boardroom strategy and on-the-ground realities. He is passionate about shaping public discourse on tech-enabled development, telecom reforms, and India's journey toward a digitally empowered future.

17. Centcom leader highlights need for more tech that can target underground sites

Centcom leader highlights need for more tech that can target underground sites

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper testified to lawmakers just a couple of days after U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, that featured the first-ever combat employment of "massive ordnance penetrator" weapons.

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · June 24, 2025

The officer picked by President Donald Trump to be the next commander of U.S. Central Command suggested to lawmakers Tuesday that the American military needs more sensors and weapons that can detect and attack underground targets.

The comments by Vice Adm. Brad Cooper — the current deputy commander of Centcom, who’s been nominated for the top job and promotion to four-star — came just a couple of days after U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure that featured the first-ever combat employment of “massive ordnance penetrator” bombs.

The Air Force dropped 14 of the so-called MOP weapons from B-2 Spirit stealth bombers during the mission, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer.

It’s unclear how many MOPs or other so-called bunker-buster weapons the Pentagon still has in its arsenal in the wake of the operation. The Defense Department typically does not publicly disclose specific numbers for its munition stockpiles.

“As we’ve seen throughout the region, groups are going underground, [such as] Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis,” Cooper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing Tuesday. “This is a serious issue that we will have to look at in the future.”

Nation-state and non-state actors have built bunkers, tunnels and other underground facilities to make their personnel and systems more difficult to locate and target.

“I think in the Central Command, and I think we would have to anticipate in the future, globally, you’re going to see threats begin to go underground, whether we’re talking about Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iranians, other adversaries are clearly watching and see where they can gain advantage. In my current capacity, I have visited on multiple occasions the subterranean commando unit in Israel that goes after this problem set. I think, as we look to the future, and if confirmed, I think we need to focus on two areas — sensors and munitions. And if confirmed, I would advocate for both of those,” Cooper said.

(MOP graphic courtesy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies)

Lawmakers and Pentagon officials in recent years have been beating the drum about the need to increase U.S. production of a variety of munitions and other systems as observers have watched forces expend large numbers of missiles and drones in places like Ukraine and the Middle East.

Cooper on Tuesday said he welcomed ideas like the FORGED Act and other measures that could help the Defense Department cut through red tape and bring new technologies into its arsenal.

Another concern raised by lawmakers during the hearing was the growing threat posed by adversaries’ unmanned aerial systems. American troops have come under attack from enemy drones in recent years, including at Tower 22 in Jordan. The weapons have also played a huge role in the Ukraine-Russia war and the recent Israel-Iran war.

Counter-drone capabilities are in high demand, especially in places like the Centcom region.

“I do agree that the nature and the character of warfare is changing before our very eyes, and this is why I think the important work of this committee, whether it’s the FORGED Act or anything associated with it, where you can accelerate the delivery of counter-UAS systems or other warfighting tools into the hands of the warfighters, forward — those are all value added and needed imminently,” Cooper said.

“If I look back specifically toward the Tower 22 incident in the ensuing now 17 or 18 months, we’ve made considerable improvements across the board — layered defense, employing both kinetic capability and non-kinetic capability. We really are leaps and bounds ahead of where we were before. Having said that, I would never be satisfied that we have the maximum readiness. I’ll never be satisfied that we have enough to protect our men and women in uniform. And if confirmed, I would focus on this every single day,” he added.

During his previous assignment as commander of Naval Forces Central Command and 5th Fleet, Cooper oversaw Task Force 59, which focuses on combining AI, uncrewed systems — including commercially owned platforms — and other digital and communications tools to boost the command’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in the Middle East.

In written responses to lawmakers’ advance policy questions ahead of his confirmation hearing, Cooper said that, if confirmed as Centcom commander, he would launch new initiatives to advance U.S. military “overmatch” through the employment of cutting-edge technologies, including AI-enabled unmanned platforms and digital integration.

“In my own experience, having commanded the Navy’s first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force, I’m very familiar with the capabilities that exist in America’s elite tech sector. I believe that we need to leverage that tech sector to maximum capability and deliver capability in the very near term, because we could do more,” he told lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing.

Cooper’s selection to command Centcom is unlikely to face major political opposition in the Senate, and his nomination is expected to be confirmed.

Written by Jon Harper

Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) @Jon_Harper_

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · June 24, 2025

18. War 4.0: Armed Conflict in an Age of Speed, Uncertainty and Transformation

A view from Australia.

Publication date:

Apr 2025

The 208 page report can be downloaded in PDF at this link: https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n13514/pdf/book.pdf

https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n13514/html/cover.xhtml?referer=&page=0#

War 4.0

press.anu.edu.au

Armed Conflict in an Age of Speed, Uncertainty and Transformation

https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n13514/html/cover.xhtml?referer=&page=0#

Edited by: Deane-Peter Baker, Mark HilbornePlease read Conditions of use before downloading the formats.

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Description

This volume explores the impact of technology and new domains on future warfare. It identifies several themes, and highlights the increasing complexity of the security environment and the uncertainty of future war. The sense of time and speed has been, and is being, compressed by developments in quantum technologies, the cyber domain, artificial intelligence, the increased capabilities of sensors and data collection, as well as new propulsion technologies such as hypersonic designs. Concepts regarding the shape and extent of the battlefield are challenged by the notion of hybrid war and sub-threshold tactics, as well as new domains in which competition is increasing, such as space. Further challenging the shape of the battlefield is the increased development of remote and autonomous warfare. Commercial developments will affect how military production is owned and managed, and how military forces are composed.

Thus, a confluence of new technologies exists, combining to create the potential of fundamental transformation at many levels. This wave of technological change has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), characterised by an exponential rather than a linear rate of change, generated by convergence and complementarity of emerging technology domains. These may not affect the fundamental Clausewitzian nature of war, but they will likely affect its character. From a military perspective, the key will be the impact on the speed of operations and on the shape of the operational domain—the factors of time and space. The combination of these shifts will increasingly affect the perception of states and the degree of certainty in approaching and engaging in conflict.

Details

ISBN (print):

9781760466817

ISBN (online):

9781760466824

Publication date:

Apr 2025

Imprint:

ANU Press

DOI:

http://doi.org/10.22459/W4.2025

Disciplines:

Countries:

World

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War 4.0 »

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Preliminary Pages (PDF, 118 KB)
Introduction (PDF, 105 KB) – Deane-Peter Baker and David Pfotenhauer
Conclusion (PDF, 114 KB) – Mark Hilborne
Index (PDF, 91 KB)

19. 'Not something to celebrate': As it turns 80 and faces dwindling global clout, can the UN survive？

What does the future hold for the UN?

Can the UN evolve and adapt to survive?

I wonder if our current administration will evict the UN from New York City?

'Not something to celebrate': As it turns 80 and faces dwindling global clout, can the UN survive？

By EDITH M. LEDERER

Updated 11:42 AM EDT, June 25, 2025

AP · by EDITH M. LEDERER · June 25, 2025

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations, a collaborative global dream built into reality out of the ashes of World War II, marks its 80th anniversary this month. There’s little to celebrate.

Its clout on the world stage is diminished. Facing major funding cuts from the United States and others, it has been forced to shed jobs and start tackling long-delayed reforms. Its longtime credo of “multilateralism” is under siege. Its most powerful body, the Security Council, has been blocked from taking action to end the two major wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

And as the latest conflict between Israel, Iran and the United States flared, it watched from the sidelines.

Four generations after its founding, as it tries to chart a new path for its future, a question hangs over the institution and the nearly 150,000 people it employs and oversees: Can the United Nations remain relevant in an increasingly contentious and fragmented world?

With its dream of collaboration drifting, can it even survive?

An act of optimism created it

When the United Nations was born in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, the overriding goal of the 50 participants who signed the U.N. Charter was stated in its first words: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded that same theme: “Eight decades later, one can draw a direct line between the creation of the United Nations and the prevention of a third world war.”

There has been no such war — thus far. But conflicts still rage.

They continue not only in Gaza and Ukraine but Sudan, eastern Congo, Haiti and Myanmar – to name a few – and, most recently, Iran and Israel. The needs of tens of millions of people caught up in fighting and trapped in poverty have increased even as rich donor nations, not just the United States, are reducing their aid budgets.

The U.N. General Assembly is planning a commemoration on the 80th anniversary on June 26. This week an exhibition on the San Francisco meeting opened at U.N. headquarters with a rare centerpiece — the original U.N. Charter, on loan from the U.S. National Archives in Washington.

But the mood in the halls of the U.N. headquarters in New York is grim.

Diplomats are anxious about the immediate future, especially the outcome expected in August of a U.S. review of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions ordered by President Donald Trump. And U.N. staff here and in more than 60 offices, agencies and operations that get money from its regular operating budget are facing 20% job cuts, part of Guterres’ reform effort and reaction to already announced Trump funding cuts.

“It’s not something to celebrate,” Kazakhstan’s U.N. Ambassador Kairat Umarov said of the upcoming anniversary.

“This should be united nations — not disunited,” he said. “Collectively, we can do a lot,” but today “we cannot agree on many things, so we agree to disagree.”

A changing world accommodated a changing UN

In a different world of land-line telephones, radios and propeller planes, the U.N. Charter was signed by just 50 nations — mainly from Latin America and Europe, with half a dozen from the Mideast, and just a few from Asia and Africa.

Over the decades, its membership has nearly quadrupled to 193 member nations, with 54 African countries now the largest bloc followed by the 54 from Asia and the Pacific. And the world has changed dramatically with the advent of computers and satellites, becoming what the late former Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a “global village.”

The U.N. system has also expanded enormously from its origins, which focused on peace and security, economic and social issues, justice and trusteeships for colonies.

Today, the map of the U.N. system looks like a multi-headed octopus with many tentacles — and miniature tentacles sprouting from those. In 2023, its secretariat and numerous funds, agencies and entities dealing with everything from children and refugees to peacekeeping and human rights had over 133,000 staff worldwide.

Kishore Mahbubani, who served twice as Singapore’s U.N. ambassador, credited the United Nations with thus far preventing World War III. While there are still wars, deaths have continued a long-term decline “and the world is still, overall, a much more peaceful place,” he said.

“And many small states still live in peace, not having to worry about the neighbors occupying them,” said Mahbubani, a respected geopolitical analyst.

Mahbubani and others also point to successes in the 71 U.N. peacekeeping operations since 1948, including in Angola, Cambodia, Sierra Leone (which is currently a member of the Security Council) and Liberia (which will join in January).

There is also wide praise for specialized U.N. agencies, especially those dealing with hunger, refugees and children as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N’s nuclear watchdog, and the International Telecommunications Union. Among numerous responsibilities, it allocates the global radio spectrum and satellite orbits and brings digital connectivity to millions.

As Guterres told the Security Council earlier this year, “The United Nations remains the essential, one-of-a-kind meeting ground to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.”

What actually gets done at the UN?

Every September, world leaders get a global platform at the General Assembly. And every day their ambassadors and diplomats meet to debate issues from conflicts to climate change to the fight for gender equality and quality education. Sometimes, such talks produce little or no results. At others, achievements get overlooked or ignored by the broader world community, far from the hubs of diplomacy.

And the Security Council is the only place where Russia and Ukraine regularly face off over the ongoing war following Russia’s 2022 invasion — and where the Palestinian and Israeli ambassadors frequently confront each other.

Despite its successes and achievements over past decades, Singapore’s Mahbubani called the U.N. today “a very sad place,” lamenting that Guterres had failed “to inspire humanity” as the late Pope Francis did. “But,” Mahbubani said, “it should celebrate the fact it is alive and not dead.”

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who was national security adviser during Trump’s first term, was also critical of the state of the U.N. in 2025. “It’s probably in the worst shape it’s been in since it was founded,” said Bolton, now an outspoken Trump critic.

He pointed to gridlock in the Security Council on key issues. He blames rising international tensions that divide the council’s five veto-wielding powers – with Russia and China facing off against U.S., Britain and France on many global challenges.

Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said the United Nations has bounced from crisis to crisis since the 1990s. With the gloomy geopolitical picture and U.S. funding cuts impacting humanitarian operations, he said this “is not just another blow-up that will blow over.”

“Everyone seems to be resigned to the fact that you’re going to have a smaller U.N. in a few years’ time,” Gowan said. “And that is partially because virtually every member state has other priorities.”

What happens in the UN’s next chapter?

Guterres has launched several major reform efforts, getting approval from U.N. member nations last September for a “Pact for the Future” – a blueprint to bring the world together to tackle 21st-century challenges. Gowan said Guterres’ successor, who will be elected next year and take over in 2027, will have to shrink the organization. But many cuts, consolidations and changes will require approval of the divided U.N. membership. Possible radical reforms include merging U.N. aid and development agencies to avoid duplication.

Don’t forget, says Gowan, that a huge amount of diplomatic business — much of it having nothing to do with the United Nations — gets done because it is in New York, a place to have those conversations.

“If you were to close the U.N., there would also be a lot of intelligence people and spies who would be deeply disappointed. Because it’s a wonderful place to cultivate your contacts,” Gowan said. “Americans may not realize that having the U.N. in New York is a bonanza for us spying on other nations. So we shouldn’t let that go.”

Ian Bremmer, who heads the Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting firm, said the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the United Nations — which the United States conceived in 1945 — will make China more important. With Trump exiting from the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA and cutting humanitarian funding, he said, China will become “the most influential and the most deep-pocketed” in those agencies.

Bremmer, who calls himself a close adviser to Guterres, insisted the United Nations remains relevant — “with no caveats.”

“It’s a relatively poorly resourced organization. It has no military capabilities. It has no autonomous foreign policy,” Bremmer said. “But its legitimacy and its credibility in speaking for 8 billion people on this little planet of ours is unique.”

He added: “The important thing is that as long as the great powers decide not to leave the United Nations, every day that they stay is a vote of confidence in the U.N.”

Expansion of the U.N. Security Council is probably the most fertile area for potential change. Decades of discussions have failed to agree on how to enlarge the 15-member council to reflect the global realities of the 21st century, though there is wide agreement that Africa and Latin America deserve permanent seats.

Singapore’s Mahbubani said he believes the United Nations “will definitely survive.” The “genius” of its founders, he said, was to give the big powers after World War II a veto in the Security Council, preventing the global body from dying as its predecessor, the League of Nations, did. That survival, Mahbubani believes, will continue: “It will,” he said, “outlast us all.”

___

Edith M. Lederer, chief correspondent at the United Nations, has been covering international affairs for more than half a century.

AP · by EDITH M. LEDERER · June 25, 2025

20. Scoop: Trump to limit sharing classified info with Congress after leak on Iran bombing damage

A knee jerk reaction or necessary?

While the adversarial relationship between congress and the executive is necessary for checks and balances and separation of powers, leaks of classified information are not part of the checks and balances. All members of the government have the responsibility to safeguard classified information.

Scoop: Trump to limit sharing classified info with Congress after leak on Iran bombing damage

Axios · by Marc Caputo · June 25, 2025

The Trump administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress after someone leaked an internal assessment suggesting that Saturday's bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities weren't as successful as President Trump claimed, four sources tell Axios.

The FBI also is investigating the leak, the sources said.

Why it matters: The leaking of the preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency's "Battle Damage Assessment" outraged Trump and top U.S. officials, who said it was incomplete and that its release was aimed at undercutting Trump's claims that Iran's nuclear sites had been "obliterated."

"We are declaring a war on leakers," a senior White House official said Wednesday.
"The FBI is investigating the leak," the source said. "The intelligence community is figuring out how to tighten up their processes so we don't have 'Deep State' actors leaking parts of intel analysis that have 'low confidence' to the media."

Zoom in: The administration sources say they're planning to limit posting on CAPNET, a system the administration uses to share classified information with Congress.

The DIA's assessment on the Iran bombings was put on CAPNET late Monday. The next afternoon, CNN and then the New York Times reported snippets of the assessment.
The early media reports indicated that Iran's nuclear program had been set back only by a matter of months, instead of being "obliterated."

Zoom out: Democrats in Congress already were upset at the administration for refusing to brief some members before the bombings, and the White House's plans to further restrict the sharing of classified information are likely to provoke a fresh round of criticism.

Administration officials are unmoved, however.
"Go figure: Almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks," an administration source said. "There's no reason to do this again."

Between the lines: The sources who spoke with Axios said they couldn't disclose more details of the DIA assessment, but emphasized three aspects of the report:

It was put together in the 24 hours after the bombings and was based on a review of satellite photos and not on-the-ground witnesses to the damage.
It was just one early "snapshot" of information from only one of the 18 agencies in the intelligence community.
The report self-acknowledged the "low confidence" of the assessment, which was to be used as a tool to guide whether the administration wanted to bomb the facilities again.

Then there's the early assessment by Israeli intelligence services, who said the U.S. and Israeli strikes caused "very significant" damage.

The big picture: Since his first run for president in 2016, when his campaign was investigated for its ties to Russia, Trump has been deeply suspicious of the intelligence community. Tuesday's disclosures only increased that sense of paranoia.

"Trump knows the IC [intelligence community] has spooks who hate his guts," one adviser said.

What they're saying: At a NATO press conference in Europe on Wednesday, Trump criticized the coverage of the DIA leak, as did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

They said the U.S. hit Iran's three nuclear sites with so many Tomahawk missiles and massive bunker-busting bombs that the country's program was set back significantly, echoing the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"All this stuff about the intelligence: This is what a leaker is telling you the intelligence says," Rubio said.
"That's the game these people play. They read it and then they go out and characterize it the way they want to characterize it."

Axios · by Marc Caputo · June 25, 2025

21. Absent at the Creation? American Strategy and the Delusion of a Post-Trump Restoration

We cannot go backwards. This is true for both MAGA supporters and anti-MAGA people.

I think the author has characterized the present well- The Trump administration has decided to wipe the slate clean. So where do we go from here?

I do recommend Acehson's book. I found its decision making descriptions surrounding the Korean War most useful.

Excerpts:

Foreign policy analysts often refer to Present at the Creation, a book by former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, when discussing the extraordinary global order-building effort undertaken by the United States after World War II. Explaining the title, Acheson noted that in the immediate postwar world, the Truman administration’s task was “just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process.”

Acheson’s creation, of course, survived remarkably well. It was refashioned and embellished many times over and persisted after the end of the Cold War, which it helped win. Because history at that moment broke in Washington’s favor, it produced a world in which American policymakers saw few constraints and many opportunities. The alliances and institutions that survived the midcentury competition between East and West appeared too healthy and American power too strong to warrant a post–Cold War overhaul.

The picture is completely different today. As new technologies, new rising powers, and long-standing tensions combine to form fresh chaos, the Trump administration has decided to wipe the slate clean. The world’s opinion of the United States and receptivity to its desire to assume a refashioned leadership role are themselves new variables. Although global demand for American power has proved resilient before, there are no guarantees that an American president of either party come 2029 will be able to shape patterns of trust and cooperation the same way presidents have in the past. The world, meanwhile, continues to churn, as allies, partners, and adversaries make consequential decisions that will constrain the choices available to the next U.S. president. Washington needs a strategy fashioned for this post-primacy reality. To deflect this task would be to miss an exceptionally rare chance not only to be present at the creation of a new order but to be prepared for it.

Absent at the Creation?

Foreign Affairs · by More by Rebecca Lissner · June 24, 2025

American Strategy and the Delusion of a Post-Trump Restoration

July/August 2025 Published on June 24, 2025

Joe Gough

REBECCA LISSNER is a Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Adviser to the Vice President during the Biden administration.

MIRA RAPP-HOOPER is a Partner at The Asia Group and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She was Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania and Director for Indo-Pacific Strategy at the U.S. National Security Council during the Biden administration.

They are the authors of An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order.

More by Mira Rapp-Hooper

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In Donald Trump’s first go-round as U.S. president, his heterodox approach seemed to portend a dramatic transformation in American foreign policy and potentially even the end of the rules-based international order. And yet for the most part, prevailing institutions, groupings, and rules endured. Washington’s alliances held fast, U.S. adversaries advanced their interests in real but limited ways, and American power proved resilient. As a result, the Biden administration was able to renew traditional elements of American influence and restore key fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy, such as active global leadership, alliances and partnerships, and the defense of an open, rules-based international order.

But when Trump leaves office in January 2029, there will be no going back. Trump’s reelection dashed the view that his first presidency was a mere aberration, and his second administration’s early, seismic actions on global trade, skepticism toward allies, and affection for erstwhile adversaries have already changed the United States’ role and image in the world. Some may argue that it is too soon to plan the next administration’s foreign policy because no one knows what further disruptions are coming. But thinking of the future of American foreign policy solely in terms of the post-Trump inheritance runs the risk of being overly reactive or reflexively restorationist. One notable lesson from the early months of Trump’s second term has been the scope and scale of policy change that is possible in a very short period. The next president should enter office with a clear and constructive vision for the future of American foreign policy and move to realize it with the same alacrity the Trump administration has displayed in its first 100 days. It is not too soon to start debating the contours of that vision.

To begin, the United States needs what accountants refer to as a “zero based” review of its foreign policy: a clean slate from which to reevaluate and justify its long-held interests, values, and policies. Four years from now, many of the familiar pillars of U.S. grand strategy—from alliances to multilateral organizations to global treaties—will likely be transformed beyond recognition. What’s more, the world these tools were intended to help manage will have changed profoundly. No new president, whether a Democrat, a more traditional Republican, or a Trump disciple, will have the option of returning to the familiar approaches of the post–Cold War era. Starting from a zero base will guard against the tendency to default to old structures and concepts that might no longer reflect the United States’ vital interests and geopolitical context or the needs and preferences of the American people.

Trump has exposed the growing cracks in the U.S.-led international order. But he is not interested in fixing them—quite the opposite. By the time his second term is over, that old order will be irreparably broken. Whoever follows Trump will have to reckon with a complex, multipolar international order and decide what role the United States should play in it.

BACK TO NORMAL?

During his first term, Trump’s animosity toward international trade, opposition to multilateralism, and deep skepticism of alliances signaled an end to the rules-based international order. His unorthodox policy views had a magnifying effect on major global trends that had been well underway before Trump was elected, including the global diffusion of power, rapid and disruptive technological change, and political polarization and policy volatility. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 2019, we argued that the United States would have to tend to an international order that was badly in need of renovation, including in the domains of critical and emerging technologies and through new forms of order building in the Indo-Pacific.

But to a degree that surprised us even after we joined the Biden administration, American power and global leadership proved highly resilient once Trump departed the scene. When President Joe Biden told the world “America is back,” the world largely believed him. Relieved that the Trump era appeared to have passed, U.S. allies and partners aligned more closely with the United States. Growing coordination between China and Russia helped the Biden team rally Washington’s closest partners in both Asia and Europe. The U.S.-led response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the United States’ unparalleled ability to provide decisive military and intelligence assistance while isolating Russia from the global financial system.

Meanwhile, the combination of China’s coercive “wolf warrior” diplomacy, draconian COVID-19 pandemic response, and worsening economic slowdown highlighted the benefits of aligning with the United States and diminished the appeal of hedging strategies that courted closer economic and technological ties with Beijing. The impressive post-COVID economic recovery in the United States—the strongest among advanced industrialized economies—underscored continued U.S. power, and allies and partners embraced Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy by aligning their own foreign policies with the United States and one another, spending more on defense, and pushing back against Beijing’s aggressive actions from Taiwan to the South China Sea.

For at least the first two years of the Biden administration, American politics appeared to have moved past Trump, creating space for some notable areas of bipartisanship. Trump’s decisive loss in 2020, the outrage at his attempts to overturn the result and at the ensuing insurrection, and the strong performance by Democrats in the 2022 midterms all seemed to indicate that Trumpism had run its course. Although partisan polarization remained as acute as ever, the passage of major legislation such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act suggested that Congress was not only able to function but also finally ready to make much-needed generational investments in U.S. competitiveness that could modernize the country’s global role.

Biden tweaked, but did not overhaul, America’s role in the world.

On the biggest foreign policy challenges the Biden administration faced, Republican members of Congress often pushed for sharper versions of the administration’s preferred policy, such as advocating more aggressive support for Ukraine. Indo-Pacific policy was remarkably bipartisan, and a solid consensus formed around central tenets of Biden’s China policy, which itself reflected some continuity with Trump’s first-term approach. Taken together, these dynamics made the Biden presidency feel like a return to normalcy—a restoration, not an interregnum.

Yet the immediate success of this approach reduced the urgency within the administration to more fundamentally remake U.S. grand strategy for a new era. The war in Ukraine in particular appeared to reinforce the centrality of traditional foreign policy constructs by positioning the United States as the leader of a coalition—centered on its NATO allies—to defend the free world against the threat of Russian aggression. In areas in which the Biden administration recognized that reforms were needed—to modernize alliances, create new multilateral configurations, and attempt to build a post-neoliberal approach to international economics—the changes were evolutionary and in some cases incomplete. For instance, the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and reduce the United States’ global counterterrorism footprint was bold and necessary, and it could have set the stage for a new era of strategic discipline. But despite defining China as the most consequential challenge for the United States and elevating the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater of competition, the Biden administration was consumed, from 2023 onward, by the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East, precluding military posture changes and readiness investments that would have better aligned U.S. assets with U.S. strategy.

The risks of metastasizing instability in Europe and the Middle East, threats to Israel and close allies in NATO, and domestic political pressures diverted attention from long-term strategic adjustments to immediate crisis management. In short, the allies’ and partners’ warm reception of the American return, coupled with challenging conflicts, meant that in the time it had, the Biden administration prioritized foreign policy restoration over reinvention.

FOOL ME ONCE

No responsible analyst can claim to predict what will happen over the course of the first year of the new Trump administration—let alone all four. But the haphazard rollout of unprecedented global tariffs in April and the White House’s goal of reshaping the postwar order indicate that upheaval is not just incidental but a central policy objective. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was explicit on this point in his confirmation hearing: “The post-war global order is not just obsolete,” he told Congress, “it is now a weapon being used against us.”

Although the secretary’s characterization is extreme, it contains a kernel of truth: as the United States and the world have transformed, the liberal international order has not kept pace. Thanks to early moves by the Trump administration and dramatic shifts in economic, military, and technological power, the United States no longer has the option of returning to the international order and grand strategy it has known since the Cold War, perhaps even World War II. Trump’s foreign policy is hastening the arrival of a multipolar world by unleashing and accelerating forces that will be difficult to reverse. Trade policies intended to punish China may well advantage Beijing and diminish the United States. As allies and partners grow more capable of self-defense, they will also become more autonomous. Already faltering multilateral institutions will further diminish in capacity. Threats to invade allies will undermine international norms of sovereignty and nonaggression. And great-power competitors will seize diplomatic ground the Trump administration freely cedes.

These trends converge most clearly in trade and economic policy. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in April was expected to target China, a great-power competitor with whom the United States has a large trade deficit by dint of China’s role as a manufacturing powerhouse that sends American consumers inexpensive goods. The 125 percent tariff that was levied outstripped even the most extreme forecasts and led to a monthlong trade war that roiled the global economy. Although a truce was reached in Geneva, it is a fragile one that could easily be broken by new U.S. sectoral tariffs. And in exchange for the upheaval, the United States extracted no concessions from Beijing.

Meanwhile, close U.S. allies and partners in Asia, including Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, were not spared from Trump’s crippling tariffs. These countries are also manufacturing giants and were critical partners in U.S.-led efforts to break China’s monopoly on global manufacturing. Many U.S. companies and partners are in the midst of moving their supply chains out of China to push back against the rising power’s coercive economic efforts. Now, even if these partners manage to negotiate lower rates for themselves, the Trump administration’s ten percent baseline tariff, should it stand, may make such an undertaking prohibitively expensive. Should these allies ultimately face tariff levels that are similar to China’s, the “China plus one” strategies pursued by many companies to diversify manufacturing to countries other than China will be infeasible. And regardless of what tariff levels land, including as court proceedings play out in the United States, the shock of being economically kneecapped by a close ally has made many Indo-Pacific states rethink their reliance on the United States as a guardian of an open international economic order.

Shipping containers from China at a port in San Pedro, California, May 2025 Mike Blake / Reuters

The Chinese government clearly intends to use the U.S.-led turmoil to its advantage. Throughout the standoff, official statements from Beijing projected confidence in the resilience of the Chinese economy, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping toured the Southeast Asian countries hit the hardest by U.S. tariffs, promising close partnerships and portraying China as the defender of the international order. That the United States folded so quickly has almost certainly validated Beijing’s approach. Beyond its trade policy, the Trump administration has given little indication of its broader strategy toward China or the rest of the Indo-Pacific, creating ample incentive for even close allies to resume hedging and for Beijing to gain ground.

Indeed, Trump’s hard protectionist turn strikes at the heart of the U.S. alliance system, which has historically paired strategic alignment and security guarantees with privileged access to American markets, resulting in impressive development curves for many American allies. The trade deficits that Trump abhors were a predictable and benign byproduct of this arrangement, particularly because the United States exports services that do not figure in these tallies to many of its closest partners. After 1945, the United States assumed global security and economic leadership because it believed that both served Washington’s best interests. Redefining these interests is not simply a U.S. policy matter; it means the postwar international order is less appealing to the countries that accepted American leadership as the price for a system that enabled their own security and prosperity.

Trump’s erratic approach to trade is converging with other economic and technological policies to undermine the United States’ preeminent role. The American economy still has unmatched capacity for resilience and growth. But assuming that some tariffs will remain, many analysts have projected that the United States will likely enter a recession before year’s end, if it is not already in one. Bond market volatility is also calling the dollar’s primacy into question, and the United States’ global credit rating has slid. Coupled with acute uncertainty, rising prices, and supply shortages, the American economy is wobblier than at any point since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technologically, the United States can continue to lead in AI and other critical sectors, but it faces more challenges to its innovation edge than at any time since the Cold War. Sectoral tariffs may make it more challenging for the Trump administration to invest in domestic manufacturing, including in critical technologies such as semiconductors, since the levies would increase the costs of imported components and make U.S.-manufactured chips less globally competitive. The administration’s rescission of Biden’s rules on AI chip exports, meanwhile, may make it easier for exquisite technologies to wind up in competitors’ hands. And the administration’s turn away from investments in clean energy technologies increases the likelihood that China could come to dominate that sector while cuts to education and basic research funding undermine long-term U.S. competitiveness overall.

Trump’s protectionist turn strikes at the heart of the U.S. alliance system.

These shifts will impose compounding geopolitical costs on the United States. Although it’s difficult to know how much ground China or Russia may gain, it already appears likely that U.S. partners from Southeast Asia to Europe will hedge in China’s direction. As revisionist authoritarian states such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia continue deepening their cooperation, the United States is inching further back from its role as the leader of a coalition of advanced industrial democracies. This is not an accident. In stark contrast with his first term, in which many senior officials steered the administration to focus on great-power competition, Trump appears to be pursuing a transactional approach to geopolitics based on dealmaking with other major powers. His early desire to coerce Ukraine into an unfavorable deal with Russia, for instance, and signs that he could seek an accommodation with China have raised fears that the United States will recede to the Western Hemisphere and leave Europe and Asia to Russia and China, respectively.

Whether Trump will commit to a spheres-of-influence approach is uncertain. But the question of which countries Washington views as adversaries and allies and why is very much open, particularly as the world watches Trump’s assault on democratic norms and institutions at home. Partners will be hard-pressed to escape the conclusion that Washington has completely redefined its self-interests, even if the nature of its desired leadership role is not yet clear.

All of this will accelerate a profound global reordering. Some global rules, institutions, alliances, and groupings will withstand the test. But even as familiar structures remain, their roles, missions, and contexts may shift beyond recognition, and global perceptions of the United States will be forever altered. The post-Trump world will present both an opportunity and an epochal challenge: the need to build a new American strategy that goes beyond merely reacting to Trump and also avoids reverting to decades of postwar policy thinking.

Since the global financial crisis and the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been clear that the United States is overstretched. But the temptation to tweak the United States’ role in the world rather than overhaul it has carried the day in the last two Democratic administrations. After Trump’s second term, the impulse to merely repair and restore traditional American leadership will seem quaint at best. The next administration will inherit something closer to a grand strategic tabula rasa than policymakers have seen since the end of World War II.

ZEROING OUT

In accounting, zero-based budget exercises begin with clean financial slates in order to justify every expense and allocate resources efficiently to meet strategic goals. In foreign policy, strategists should use this moment to zero out their assumptions about the U.S. role in the world rather than accept inherited premises. In bucking conventional foreign policy wisdom, the Trump administration has conducted a version of this exercise—one guided by impulse instead of analysis and strategy. The next administration can and must do better, taking advantage of an American foreign policy “Overton window” that has been blown wide open.

Such a review must start by taking stock of the conditions that best assure the security and prosperity of the American people. American grand strategists, for instance, have long defined U.S. interests in terms of preventing a hostile power from dominating Eurasia. But this construct implicitly favors military calculations and neglects the power and influence that come from dominating technological ecosystems, such as AI, clean tech, and quantum computing—the advantages of which may prove more consequential than securing particular geographies over the coming decades. Revising this assumption could reorient American strategy, centering technology cooperation with allies and partners and elevating the importance of Africa and Southeast Asia as regions whose demographics create opportunities for rapid growth in their digital economies. It could also put a premium on new tools of economic statecraft, such as revamped development finance and a U.S. government strategic investment fund, that enable Washington to help finance other countries’ purchase of U.S. technology and infrastructure.

American grand strategists also need to ask whether the country still benefits from being the preponderant provider of global public goods, such as freedom of navigation. Defending the global commons—particularly shipping lanes—has been a guiding principle for the U.S. military in the post–Cold War world, whether countering piracy in the Horn of Africa, defending against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, or conducting freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea. A zero-based review could help prioritize these missions, assessing whether the United States has sufficient capacity for the most taxing contingencies and identifying areas in which other countries could accept greater responsibility.

A zero-based review could also consider the appropriate place for values in American foreign policy. American grand strategy has long been oriented around the country’s identity as a democracy. But is the spread or at least the defense of democracy still in the national interest? What role should democracy and human rights play in shaping Washington’s global objectives and identifying its partners? A review might suggest a more modest emphasis on values as a matter of both rhetoric and substance and reckon with diminished American moral authority as a result of democratic challenges at home and perceptions of hypocrisy abroad. Such an approach might center international partnerships on shared principles rather than shared values, expanding the role for nondemocracies in U.S. coalitions. It could call for greater restraint in the use of sanctions to performatively punish countries for their internal conduct—especially if those sanctions compromise the United States’ ability to cooperate on areas of mutual interest. And it could create space for expanded diplomatic engagement with countries whose values the United States finds repugnant.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a NATO meeting in Brussels, June 2025 Yves Herman / Reuters

Finally, a zero-based review must account for newfound constraints on American power and allow for tradeoffs demanded by a more multipolar world. Multipolarity, after all, does not imply equipoise. This version of it will be complex, with significant power wielded by the United States and China but with major roles for other players, including an increasingly autonomous Europe, a recalcitrant Russia, and an ever more powerful India. It will require a realistic assessment of American capabilities—acknowledging, for example, that the U.S. military already faces a readiness crisis, the cost of servicing the U.S. debt already exceeds spending on defense and Medicare, and Trump’s cuts have already slashed the capacity of the federal workforce, including diplomats and development experts. In a more multipolar world that no longer presumes consistent American leadership, the exercise of influence over newer forms of international order could prove more taxing. With more limited capabilities, strategists will want to work with, rather than resist or reshape, the major geopolitical changes that are already underway.

Consider how policymakers might choose to approach the U.S. alliance system in a post-Trump world. The next several years could witness a crisis that tests alliances in Europe and Asia, as the United States continues to press partners to spend more on defense and threatens to pull back its commitments—and perhaps even does so. American unpredictability is already inspiring allies to take steps to invest in their own self-defense individually and through new collective arrangements and could result in some allies seeking nuclear capabilities.

Rather than reflexively aiming to reverse these trends, zeroing out decades-old assumptions could yield a fresh approach. New alliance bargains could prioritize countries with which the United States has the greatest strategic alignment and focus on domains that benefit the American people while dispensing with the separation of security, economic, and technological cooperation that has traditionally characterized U.S. partnerships. Alliances have long focused on nuclear and high-end conventional deterrence, but they could be recentered on economic and technological cooperation. New negotiated arrangements could include the harmonization of industrial policy; cooperation on vital supply chains, such as critical minerals and semiconductors; the alignment of climate and tax policy; and frameworks for collaboration on frontier technologies, such as AI, including aligned tech regulations and standards. Refashioning alliances in this way, moreover, will bring them into domains that manifestly benefit everyday Americans and better align them with the requirements of long-term competition with China.

These changes could also transform the United States from a wholesale security provider to something more like a security enabler, with allies assuming more responsibility for conventional deterrence and the United States supporting them with weapons sales and coproduction, technology sharing and innovation partnerships, intelligence collaboration, and operational integration. With European allies in particular, there could be an opportunity to strike a new bargain that accelerates investments in independent European self-defense, focuses allies squarely on the Russian threat, and reassesses the U.S. military posture on the continent. If smaller configurations of European defenses are layered atop NATO, the United States could explore new alliance approaches that leverage those efforts.

Post-Trump planners might be able to better align grand strategy with public perceptions.

Such shifts would allow Washington to update its global force posture without hasty changes that surprise allies and create security gaps leading to deterrence failures. The United States could concentrate its military presence in a relatively small number of frontline allies, prioritizing Asia but including Europe, and it could focus on partners whose threat perceptions and capabilities are most closely aligned, such as Japan, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, and the Baltic states. Within other alliances, the United States could then pay more attention to the areas of cooperation that benefit it most, such as technology cooperation and defense coproduction.

Without a zero-based review, strategists risk succumbing to restorationist tendencies that will leave the United States unequipped to meet the moment. In the wake of Trump’s disruptive presidency, for instance, policymakers might choose to recommit to all treaty allies in Europe and Asia equally, particularly if Russia continues to threaten eastern Europe and Chinese-Russian cooperation increases. But in a world in which a smaller subset of European allies have supercharged their own defenses, an undifferentiated return to NATO risks perpetuating age-old frustrations about allied defense spending and burden sharing. A return to business as usual for NATO would also make it difficult to deal with the reality that some NATO allies will have warmed to China and others to Russia as hedges during the Trump years. What’s more, it would fail to account for increased European capability and autonomy, and it would risk a recommitment of resources to the continent that the United States cannot afford.

A zero-based review would also create an opportunity to account for the American people’s foreign policy preferences, when they are discernible, and free strategists from imagined political constraints. Foreign policy practitioners and thinkers often discount the role of public opinion in foreign policy, arguing that the American people’s preferences need not constrain the options available to policymakers. But this moment of profound change is occurring precisely because of a widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. Many Americans, for instance, believe that the faraway military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were a mistake. Nearly every year since 2004, a majority of Americans have reported that they are dissatisfied with the country’s role in the world. Although the public does not have clearly formed consensus views on many issues, post-Trump planners have an opportunity to better align grand strategy with public perceptions, which in turn should make public support for U.S. foreign policy more stable over time and across parties.

A zero-based review should also embed the new political openings that the second Trump administration will have enabled. In the past, U.S. presidents on a bipartisan basis have winced at foreign policies that might be seen as controversial within and across parties, including initiatives to negotiate with adversaries such as Iran or North Korea or the fundamental necessity of pressing allies to increase burden sharing. With the Trump team dispensing with all policy assumptions and conventions, more options will be available to whoever comes next.

BEGIN AGAIN

Foreign policy analysts often refer to Present at the Creation, a book by former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, when discussing the extraordinary global order-building effort undertaken by the United States after World War II. Explaining the title, Acheson noted that in the immediate postwar world, the Truman administration’s task was “just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process.”

Acheson’s creation, of course, survived remarkably well. It was refashioned and embellished many times over and persisted after the end of the Cold War, which it helped win. Because history at that moment broke in Washington’s favor, it produced a world in which American policymakers saw few constraints and many opportunities. The alliances and institutions that survived the midcentury competition between East and West appeared too healthy and American power too strong to warrant a post–Cold War overhaul.

The picture is completely different today. As new technologies, new rising powers, and long-standing tensions combine to form fresh chaos, the Trump administration has decided to wipe the slate clean. The world’s opinion of the United States and receptivity to its desire to assume a refashioned leadership role are themselves new variables. Although global demand for American power has proved resilient before, there are no guarantees that an American president of either party come 2029 will be able to shape patterns of trust and cooperation the same way presidents have in the past. The world, meanwhile, continues to churn, as allies, partners, and adversaries make consequential decisions that will constrain the choices available to the next U.S. president. Washington needs a strategy fashioned for this post-primacy reality. To deflect this task would be to miss an exceptionally rare chance not only to be present at the creation of a new order but to be prepared for it.

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Foreign Affairs · by More by Rebecca Lissner · June 24, 2025

22. Bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East

Never give up the high ground. Although I am biased toward Korea and Asia, I do not think we should bring US troops home from the MIddle East. We have to deal with the world as it really is and not as we would wish it to be. We cannot disengage from the Middle East (or anywhere in the world) and to argue that we should do so I think is folly (and dangerous for US national security).

Bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East

The Iran strike showed that our massive gulf footprint is more liability than asset.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/28/iran-strike-american-military-vulnerability/

June 28, 2025 at 6:30 a.m. EDTToday at 6:30 a.m. EDT

5 min

C-17s are parked on the tarmac of the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Aug. 31, 2021. (Lorenzo Tugnoli/For The Washington Post)

By Dan Caldwell and Jennifer Kavanagh

Dan Caldwell is a former senior adviser at the Defense Department and a veteran of the Iraq War. Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities.

On June 21, B-2 bombers launched from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri flew 37 hours round trip to attack Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow and Natanz, while 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from a submarine in the Persian Gulf at Natanz and Isfahan. These strikes were supported by dozens of aerial refuelers, reconnaissance aircraft and fighter jets that escorted the bombers into Iran.

The conversation moves fast. Keep up with the Prompt newsletter.

Look closely, and you’ll notice something peculiar: Many of the aircraft involved in the operation do not appear to have taken off from the large U.S. air bases in the Middle East — or, if they did, that fact has been carefully concealed. Whether this reflects a choice made to spare gulf state partners’ ties with Iran or because these states denied the United States permission to use bases on their territory, the implication is the same. When the president decided it was time for the United States to act against Iran, the 40,000 troops and billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware that Washington keeps parked in the Middle East were of limited use.

Worse, these forces ultimately proved to be a vulnerability when, 36 hours later, Iran retaliated by launching missiles at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. While the incoming missiles were intercepted and no soldiers were harmed, most of the aircraft were moved out of al-Udeid, and ships stationed at the U.S. naval station in Bahrain were sent out to sea to keep them safe.

Following Opinions on the news

Following

For the White House and the Pentagon, this reality should be a wake-up call. U.S. military forces in the Middle East bring more risks than benefits, and it’s time to get most of them out for good.

For decades, the United States has kept tens of thousands of military personnel in the Middle East, spread across bases in the Persian Gulf region and the Levant. The size of the U.S. military footprint has changed over time, swelling during the 1991 Gulf War and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There has never been a serious attempt to draw down, however. U.S. soldiers, aircraft and warships have become a regional fixture.

Proponents of keeping these forces in the Middle East argue that their presence provides the United States significant benefits in suppressing regional crises and bolstering our allies’ security. But realizing these benefits requires that the United States has liberal permissions from host countries to use bases on their territory to conduct offensive operations.

Opinions about the Middle East

Trump risks blinding himself by politicizing Iran intelligence

Why it matters whether Iran’s nuclear program was really obliterated

The pen is still mightier than the bunker buster

Why Trump was confident that Iran was building a bomb

On Trump and Iran: But then what?

George F. Will

Trump’s Iran strike was clear and bold. The aftermath could be far messier.

Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.

U.S. bombs have fallen. What comes next?

Matthew Duss and Sohrab Ahmari

Trump is in danger of repeating Bush’s Middle East mistakes

June 21, 2025

MAGA voters back Trump on Iran and reject isolationism

Trump needs creativity to resolve the Iran crisis. The two-week pause is a ...

Israel is succeeding but will it overreach?

Netanyahu chose this conflict. Israel should finish the job itself.

War with Iran? Let’s run it up the flagpole!

Dana Milbank

I hate Khamenei’s regime. But I love Iran even more.

Arash Azizi

June 19, 2025

The first step to saving Gaza is seeing Hamas for what it is

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Why Israel would benefit from defeating Iran on its own

Jason Willick

Israel cleared the way, but only Trump can end Iran’s nuclear program

The risks and benefits of bombing Fordow. Spoiler alert: It’s a close call.

This is not always the case. U.S. military commanders in the region often face limits on what they can do and where their personnel, planes and ships can operate. Operation Midnight Hammer would not be the first time that such restrictions impeded U.S. forces in the Middle East. Turkey, for example, initially did not allow the United States to use its airspace or bases for operations during the 2003 Iraq War, forcing significant alterations to war plans.

Sustaining U.S. forces in the Middle East is costly, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year during peacetime. Some of these costs would be incurred even if the same forces were located in the United States. But not all. U.S. personnel in the Middle East require more extensive defenses than do those based at home, including hardened facilities and advanced air defenses, to protect them from drone and missile attacks.

Indeed, the biggest downside to having 40,000 U.S. forces in the region is that they end up being vulnerable targets for state and non-state adversaries. This was true well before the events of the past week. Both the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut or the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia left Americans dead.

The current U.S. military posture in the Middle East brings serious costs, risks and burdens, and the benefits are overstated. The Pentagon can fix this imbalance by bringing many U.S. forces home from the Middle East and rebalancing the remaining forces across the region.

The top priority should be moving those forces in the most exposed locations. The Trump administration has already indicated it intends to draw down forces in Syria but should not stop before reaching zero. The administration should also recommit to plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces in Iraq. It should also close bases most proximate to Iran’s missiles and drones, including those in Kuwait.

Remaining forces in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia can be concentrated at a smaller number of more secure facilities, such as Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh. Rotational airpower and naval power that surged to the region after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the start of the Iran-Israel War can also be withdrawn once the situation stabilizes.

The “12 Day War” fortunately did not cost any American lives, but it highlighted our vulnerabilities in the region and underlined how our existing force posture was superfluous to achieving our aims. The war’s end provides an opportunity for the United States to do what it has tried and failed to do for the better part of a decade: rationalize and downscale its presence in the Middle East. We should not miss this opportunity to act.

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23. Why it matters whether Iran’s nuclear program was really obliterated

What if we had some patience and were not beholden to the 24 hour news cycle?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/27/iran-airstrikes-nuclear-program-fordow-uranium-diplomacy/

Why it matters whether Iran’s nuclear program was really obliterated

Trump needs to negotiate with Tehran. How that goes will depend on what the U.S. attack accomplished.

June 27, 2025 at 3:28 p.m. EDTYesterday at 3:28 p.m. EDT

4 min

709

A woman holding an Iranian flag sits on a wall near a destroyed vehicle in Tehran on Monday. (AFP/Getty Images)

Destroyed, degraded or undiminished: What word best describes the state of Iran’s nuclear program after the U.S. struck three uranium enrichment facilities? This question, which has roiled Washington over the past week, is not a merely semantic one. The outcome of the conflict with Iran depends on its answer.

The conversation moves fast. Keep up with the Prompt newsletter.

If the U.S. strike “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as President Donald Trump insists, the United States will have shown that it can destroy at will the regime’s capability of producing nuclear weapons. Diplomacy would still be needed so the United States could avoid having to regularly bomb Iran to prevent it from reconstituting its nuclear program. But Iran would have to come to the table with concessions, including renouncing its nuclear ambitions.

If the U.S. strike resulted in less than total obliteration, though, Iran might sense that it is able to defend its nuclear program against overwhelming American firepower. The amount of damage the United States managed to inflict would determine the degree to which the regime feels capable of resisting American attempts to tame it. Diplomacy could be a necessity, not just a best choice, and negotiations might be more difficult for Trump.

Opinions about the Middle East

Trump risks blinding himself by politicizing Iran intelligence

Dan Caldwell and Jennifer Kavanagh

Bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East

June 28, 2025

The pen is still mightier than the bunker buster

Why Trump was confident that Iran was building a bomb

On Trump and Iran: But then what?

George F. Will

Trump’s Iran strike was clear and bold. The aftermath could be far messier.

Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.

U.S. bombs have fallen. What comes next?

Matthew Duss and Sohrab Ahmari

Trump is in danger of repeating Bush’s Middle East mistakes

June 21, 2025

MAGA voters back Trump on Iran and reject isolationism

Trump needs creativity to resolve the Iran crisis. The two-week pause is a ...

Israel is succeeding but will it overreach?

Netanyahu chose this conflict. Israel should finish the job itself.

War with Iran? Let’s run it up the flagpole!

Dana Milbank

I hate Khamenei’s regime. But I love Iran even more.

Arash Azizi

June 19, 2025

The first step to saving Gaza is seeing Hamas for what it is

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Why Israel would benefit from defeating Iran on its own

Jason Willick

Israel cleared the way, but only Trump can end Iran’s nuclear program

The risks and benefits of bombing Fordow. Spoiler alert: It’s a close call.