Hal Brands

The US is getting out of Afghanistan, but it is unlikely to get out — and stay out — of the Middle East. For the past decade, three presidents have tried to downsize the American presence in the region; for generations, the Middle East has been a strategic morass. But the US seems stuck there,…

What difference could a few thousand US troops possibly make to the outcome of a decades-long war in a broken country? That question constituted President Joe Biden’s central argument for withdrawing from the conflict in Afghanistan. Now, unfortunately, we have our answer. Those troops were the…

Joe Biden has promised to make his presidency an era of democratic multilateralism. The world’s democracies, he argues, must come together to deal with a surging authoritarian challenge. Yet the fate of two big-ticket policy initiatives is showing how hard it is to rally global democratic…

What would it sound like if a country were getting ready to shatter the long period of great-power peace humanity has enjoyed since 1945? It might sound a lot like the ominous noises coming from Beijing today. Recent pronouncements by the Chinese Communist Party have had a distinctly martial…

What do rocket strikes by Shiite militias in Iraq, ransomware attacks on targets in the US, and Russia’s use of mercenaries on battlefields in the Middle East have in common? They are part of a trend in which America’s rivals are using nonstate actors and quasi-deniable means to put pressure on its…

This month marked the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, a centennial that President Xi Jinping celebrated by promising that China’s enemies will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” It also marks the 50th anniversary of a more hopeful moment in Sino-American…

Another limited war, another unsatisfying outcome. The US is on the brink of withdrawing from Afghanistan, just shy of 20 years after it invaded that country, and well short of any desired resolution. At best, America will leave behind a mess; at worst, withdrawal may precipitate strategic setbacks…

For reasons of geography, culture and commerce, no region of the world matters more to the US than Latin America. But because the US has long been such a dominant presence there, the region receives comparatively little attention from Washington — until something goes seriously wrong. That’s why…

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan this summer will bring an end to a supposedly “endless war.” It will also mark the close of a golden age for America’s special operations forces. The global war on terrorism put the special operations forces, or SOF in military jargon, at the forefront of…

In its contest with China, America has a geographical problem: Its most powerful block of allies, the NATO countries, are on the other side of the world. That has led to a transatlantic awkwardness in dealing with China, and it’s triggering debate on how European countries can best defend the…