One prominent casualty of Russia’s war against Ukraine is the idea that the US can safely reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its foreign policy. This idea has influenced President Joe Biden’s administration in its early thinking on foreign policy; it builds on a longer post-Cold War trend of…

Suppose Russia succeeds in toppling the Ukrainian government or seizing much of the country. Moscow’s slow start notwithstanding, this could well happen: The balance of combat power is likely to favor Russian President Vladimir Putin as the war rolls on. So what happens then? One option being…

Every era has a figure who strips away its pleasant illusions about where the world is headed. This is what makes Vladimir Putin the most important person of the still-young 21st century. Over the past week — and over the past generation — Putin has done more than any other person to remind us…

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a lamentable but localized crisis, whose consequences will be felt only by people far away. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has created perhaps the gravest security crisis of this century, one that will have profound…

“Will Russia invade Ukraine?” has become the biggest guessing game in Washington. Most US officials apparently think the answer is “yes” — and soon, as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned on Friday. Russia continues to deny any intention to invade. Yet if Russian President Vladimir…

History is a powerful weapon: Just ask Vladimir Putin, who is using it as part of his escalating campaign to undermine an independent Ukraine. And Putin isn’t the only leader who is invoking — and abusing — the past as a means of asserting global influence. Geopolitical authority often begins with…

As vice president in January 2017, Joe Biden gave a speech endorsing the idea of a “world without nuclear weapons.” Last year, he took office pledging to reduce America’s reliance on those weapons — perhaps with a promise that Washington would never use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, or…

Inflation isn’t just a domestic problem. Sure, year-on-year inflation hitting 7%, the highest rate in four decades, is threatening to derail Joe Biden’s presidency. As my Bloomberg colleague John Authers has written, the inflationary trend appears broad and durable. Yet now as before, inflation…

For most Westerners, the news that Russia has sent troops to quell a popular uprising in Kazakhstan may seem like a minor event in a far corner of the world. But seen in the context of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule, and of his coercion of Ukraine, it takes on a more sinister significance…

Nature and geopolitics can interact in nasty ways. The historian Geoffrey Parker has argued that changing weather patterns drove war, revolution and upheaval during a long global crisis in the 17th century. More recently, climate change has opened new trade routes, resources and rivalries in the…