President Trump’s conduct in office has been diminishing the moral capital of the United States for more than two years. The report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III released Thursday puts a little of that capital back in the bank.

In the rebalancing of Sino-American relations that’s underway, the usual roles are reversed: China’s normally deft President Xi Jinping appears to have badly overreached in seeking advantage. And President Trump, who often seems tone-deaf on foreign policy, is riding a bipartisan consensus that it’s time to push back against Beijing.

What does President Trump hope to accomplish with his policies towards Iran? And will he get what he wants by imposing ever-greater pressure on its regime? At this point, David Ignatius argues, it doesn't necessarily matter. Whether or not the sanctions against Iran are successful, the President's excessive focus on Iran may cost America its hard-won success elsewhere.

It has been nearly six months since Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, but the aftershocks continue. The U.S.-Saudi defense and intelligence partnership has been rocked. The future of the relationship is on hold, pending answers from Riyadh.

The Mueller report will have fiery consequences—of that, one can be sure. But it won't solve the larger cybersecurity dilemmas facing the American public, David Ignatius warns. And although the military recently began launching counteroffensives against cyber attacks, more steps are urgently needed from other sectors of American society.

This battle between past and future is the hidden drama within the gargantuan $750 billion fiscal 2020 defense budget proposal. Nearly everyone favors high-tech weapons to combat great-power adversaries in the new millennium, in principle. But meanwhile, the military-industrial-congressional complex, as John McCain termed it, keeps pumping vast sums to sustain legacy weapons systems.

The rupture between Turkey and the rest of the West is most clearly visible in its deteriorating relationship with the United States, David Ignatius argues. But Turkey's president is leading his country into harm's way, not away from it—an omen, perhaps, of what a post-American world order might look like.

The summit in Hanoi between the leaders of the United States and North Korea may have been a necessary evil, says David Ignatius. After seeing the failure of his highly personal style of diplomacy, President Trump may seek a more realistic strategy in the future.

Don't underestimate the power of the thought that counts, David Ignatius cautions. Although Americans may have many good reasons to doubt the prospects for the outcome of the second Trump-Kim summit, they shouldn't forget that diplomatic solutions often start small.

With little public fanfare, U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s new center for combating electronic attacks against the United States, has launched operations to deter and disrupt Russians who have been interfering with the U.S. political system.