International Security

Recent anti-Trump rallies have been bigger than the anti-lockdown protests. Guess which ones got more media attention?

Official figures exclude thousands who have died during the pandemic. To draw the right lessons, the United States needs an accurate tally of the victims.

During times of crisis, the most effective leaders are those who can build solidarity by educating the public about its own interests. Sadly, in the case of COVID-19, the leaders of the world's two largest economies have gone in the opposite direction, all but ensuring that the crisis will deepen.

Nathaniel Moir reviews Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam by Ingo Trauschweizer.

Stephen Walt writes that arguments against U.S. offshore balancing misunderstand history. The strategy that worked against the Soviet Union can work against China.

Rachel Esplin Odell argues for a wiser and more conservative strategy that resists the temptation to exaggerate the challenge posed by China.

Edited by former Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) Associate Jon Wolfsthal and featuring papers authored by Wolfsthal and MTA Associate Nickolas Roth, this report from the American Nuclear Policy Initiative details the Trump administration's first three years of efforts on nuclear proliferation, strategic stability, nuclear modernization, Iran, and North Korea. The authors provide an objective summary of nuclear policy under the current administration and its record on protecting the United States and its allies against perhaps the greatest national security danger facing humanity.

An act of nuclear terrorism anywhere in the world would be a humanitarian, economic, and political catastrophe. This is why reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism has been a priority for every US president for more than two decades. The most effective strategy for reducing this risk is to keep weapons-usable nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists by strengthening security at nuclear facilities around the globe. While the Trump administration continues to move forward with this mission, it has decreased the US focus on the most effective strategies for accomplishing it. Greater resources and political attention to international initiatives are needed to ensure that nuclear terrorism risks continue to decline. This paper reviews the key factors impacting nuclear terrorism risks and analyzes how much progress the Trump administration has made reducing that risk.

Americans are not going to wait for sufficient testing. So what happens then? Juliette Kayyem describes "opening up" as a high-stakes version of a coloring book. States can use more and more crayons, but the goal is to avoid going over the edges.

Stephen Walt writes that even though Bernie Sanders is out of the presidential race, the time has come for many of the policies that he promoted: Universal Healthcare; Democratic Socialism; Income Redistribution; and Foreign Policy.