United States
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Strategic Stability
How will advances in artificial intelligence impact strategic stability? A growing number of studies and reports assessing the ways that advances in AI could influence global politics focus on the potential risks to strategic stability from integration of AI…
Strategic Stability and Its Limits: Reflections on Schelling
Emerging technologies possess the potential to transform military competition and the international system in an uncertain, potentially destabilizing fashion. Are there ways to capture the benefits of these new technologies without unleashing catastrophic…
Introduction: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Strategic Stability
Emerging technologies developed since the end of the Cold War—and their proliferation to new actors—call into question the prospects for strategic stability in the twenty-first century. Strategic stability exists when rivals are mutually deterred and lack…
Ensuring US Military Readiness in the Indo-Pacific
Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem argue that the United States can sustain conventional deterrence against China into the 2030s through targeted investments in logistics and the industrial base. They join our editors to discuss why a holistic view of the military…
US Military Primacy and Alliance Resilience
In 1956, the Suez Crisis revealed the limits of British power. Could a similar event hollow out the US alliance system today? Bence Nemeth applies his "five factor theory of defense cooperation" to answer this critical question.
Conventional Options Theory in the New Nuclear Era
Tyler Bowen from the US Naval War College joins us to discuss the logic of conventional coercion in nuclear crises. As the US faces nuclear-armed adversaries like Russia and China, understanding how to "thread the needle" between defense and escalation is…
Elizabeth Saunders’ “The Insiders’ Game”
Mara Karlin and Mathew Burrows review "The Insiders' Game," a book exploring how democratic elites—including legislators, military leaders, and civilian officials—constrain presidential decision-making in war.
The Arsenal of Democracy: Keeping China Deterred in an Age of Hard Choices
The margin of deterrence against China is rapidly shrinking, driven not by a failure of US technological innovation, but by the American and allied defense industrial base’s inability to field and sustain cutting-edge capabilities at scale, at speed, and…
The Art and Science of Grand Strategy
Marina Henke argues that grand strategy is more than just a list of goals—it is the art and science of allocating resources to achieve core objectives under conditions of uncertainty. We explore why so many governments struggle to prioritize, the dangers of…
Trade, Technology, & the US–Korea Alliance: A Conversation with Ambassador Kang
Sheena Chestnut Greitens sat down with Ambassador Kang Kyung-wha, the Republic of Korea’s ambassador to the United States. Recorded before a live audience at The University of Texas at Austin on December 3, the conversation explores the deepening alignment…
How a US “Suez Moment” Could Hollow the US Alliance System
This article contends that while the United States still fields potent military capabilities, the narrowing military balance with China means that a future Indo-Pacific clash in which Beijing gains a regional edge is no longer implausible. Using the 1956…
AI Policy & Hostage Recovery with the Former Deputy Assistant to the President
Dr. Joshua Geltzer, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, shares his extensive experience on two crucial topics: artificial intelligence in national security and the evolving policies surrounding hostage…