Trump’s South Korea Move Fuels Growing Fears of U.S. Retreat From Asia By Joshua Kurlantzick Boat Strikes in Ecuador: Is the U.S. Behind Attacks on Fishing Vessels? August 17, 2026 By Will Freeman Boat Strikes in Ecuador: Is the U.S. Behind Attacks on Fishing Vessels? By Will Freeman How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy: Ishaan Tharoor August 19, 2026 By Mariel Ferragamo and Ishaan Tharoor How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy: Ishaan Tharoor By Mariel Ferragamo and Ishaan Tharoor The U.S. Is Good at Building AI, but Bad at Using It August 17, 2026 The U.S. Is Good at Building AI, but Bad at Using It Is the Trump-Tinubu Collaboration Working? August 18, 2026 By Ebenezer Obadare Is the Trump-Tinubu Collaboration Working? By Ebenezer Obadare The U.S. Arsenal Can No Longer Deter China. Here’s What Should Change. Artificial Intelligence Out of Ammo: How to Rebuild the American Arsenal and Deter China The U.S. weapons arsenal has been depleted and no longer has the capacity to deter a Chinese attack against Taiwan. This new CFR report lays out a plan for the United States to reform its defense industrial base by focusing on the scaling of precise mass systems. Iran War’s Ripple Effect The U.S.-Led Middle East Order Is Over. The Mecca Agreement Proves It. Trump’s Iran Negotiations: Less Art of the Deal, More Art of Concealing Defeat Will Iran Turn Into a Forever War? How Does the Iran War End? Why China Isn’t Pushing Its Cleantech Advantage in the Hormuz Crisis Navigating the AI Moment The Latest in U.S.-China AI Competition CFR Surveyed 350 Experts About AI’s Future. Here Are the Takeaways. AI’s Economic Winners The U.S. Is About to Design an AI Regulator. Here’s How to Get It Right. Myths, Fables, and Hard Truths About AI Governance Around the World CFR analyses and explainers that address global issues and challenges. What Trump’s Executive Order Means for Childhood Vaccinations By Stephanie Psaki How Spain’s Migration Surge Tested EU Border Policy August 6, 2026 By Roxy Ekberg How Spain’s Migration Surge Tested EU Border Policy The Dollar Boomerang Threat: Washington’s Motivations to Support the Yen August 5, 2026 By Rebecca Patterson The Dollar Boomerang Threat: Washington’s Motivations to Support the Yen By Rebecca Patterson Leaders’ Medical Secrecy Harms Public Trust August 12, 2026 By Michelle Gavin Leaders’ Medical Secrecy Harms Public Trust By Michelle Gavin Why the U.S. Intervened to Prop Up Japan’s Yen August 4, 2026 By Brad W. Setser Why the U.S. Intervened to Prop Up Japan’s Yen By Brad W. Setser ASEAN, Still Toothless, Is Losing Its Faith in the U.S. August 4, 2026 By Joshua Kurlantzick ASEAN, Still Toothless, Is Losing Its Faith in the U.S. By Joshua Kurlantzick India’s Cockroach Party Protests Have a Powerful Precedent—and It Isn’t the Arab Spring July 31, 2026 By Sadanand Dhume India’s Cockroach Party Protests Have a Powerful Precedent—and It Isn’t the Arab Spring By Sadanand Dhume 250 Years of American Foreign Policy Lessons From 250 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy, With Robert Kagan Where Does American Strategy Go From Here? Americans Actually Support U.S. Global Leadership The 10 Best and 10 Worst U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions Council on Foreign Relations Congress Checks Out By Elliott Abrams Where Does American Strategy Go From Here? May 20, 2026 By Rebecca Lissner Where Does American Strategy Go From Here? By Rebecca Lissner The Coming AI Backlash May 20, 2026 By Chris McGuire The Coming AI Backlash By Chris McGuire Between Two Orders May 20, 2026 By Charles A. Kupchan Between Two Orders

By Charles A. Kupchan After Hegemony May 20, 2026 By Gideon Rose Starting From Scratch May 20, 2026 By Paul B. Stares Starting From Scratch By Paul B. Stares Overreach and Retrenchment May 20, 2026 By Stephen Sestanovich Overreach and Retrenchment By Stephen Sestanovich Every geopolitical event — a war, an election, a new tariff, a technological breakthrough — sends ripples through the global economy. On The Spillover , Sebastian Mallaby and Rebecca Patterson trace those ripples, examining how international developments shape markets, policy, finance, and the future of business. The U.S. Is Good at Building AI, but Bad at Using It China Is Quietly Winning the Iran War Energy Crisis Spillover Summer Reading: The Best Books on Forecasting, Silicon Valley, and the Future The Real AI Race Isn’t About Models. It’s About Compute. The AI Trilemma + Open-Weight Proliferation + the “Singularity Delusion” Rahm Emanuel Talks Israel, Midterm Elections, and the Democratic Party Crisis Response Playbooks The Wachenheim Center for Peace and Security has developed a set of Crisis Response Playbooks for U.S. policy planners when bandwidth is limited and decisions are consequential. Conflict-Driven Chokepoint Disruptions When armed conflict disrupts a critical maritime trade route, the United States can monitor, contain, or escalate the situation economically or militarily. Gray Zone Attacks Against U.S. Allies and Partners When a U.S. partner state faces a hybrid attack by an unknown aggressor, the United States should draw on various available response options to protect its treaty commitments, credibility, and commercial interests. Coups and Other Irregular Leadership Changes When a coup occurs abroad, the early hours of the crisis are most crucial for preserving and promoting U.S. interests—whether countering terrorism, checking adversaries‘ regional influence, upholding human rights norms, or maintaining diplomatic and economic relationships. Policy planners should therefore prepare for the unexpected. Insurgency-Related Conflict Insurgency-related conflicts often start without warning and can last over a decade, making the pre-crisis and early crisis phases crucial for U.S. policymakers seeking to prevent national security threats and humanitarian disasters from emerging. Effective responses involve a complex set of legal authorities and international frameworks and require the sustained support of the American public and local communities. Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar: Pope Leo XIV and Human Dignity in the Age of AI 2026 International Affairs Fellowship (IAF) Summer Series: Multilateralism Under Pressure 2026 International Affairs Fellowship (IAF) Summer Series: U.S. Policy and the Indo-Pacific Prediction Markets and the Public Interest Shaping the Narrative: How Journalists Covered the Global War on Terror A Conversation With International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol CFR publishes reports and papers for the interested public, the academic community, and foreign policy experts. The Pharma Choke Point Executive Summary U.S. dependence on China for essential medicines is structural—deeper, broader, and more consequential than conventional market analyses suggest. That dependence began with generic medicines and their ingredients but is now growing in biologics manufacturing, first-in-human trials, and synthetic DNA. That dependence is not simply the result of market conditions but rather decades of […] Russian Annexation of Belarus Introduction Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has made a concerted effort to keep Belarus in its sphere of influence. Belarus’s political, economic, and military autonomy has ebbed and flowed over time, depending on geopolitical circumstances, Russia’s needs, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s political adroitness. Nevertheless, the present moment poses unique challenges for […] Washington's Growing Portfolio: Tracking U.S. Government Investments CFR’s U.S. Government Deal Tracker shows how the government is experimenting with new tools and financing structures to advance a range of strategic sectors, including critical minerals, energy, global logistics, manufacturing, telecommunications, and other technologies. By Jonathan E. Hillman Financing the Missing Middle A gap in private funding for companies and projects inhibits energy innovation in the United States. This “missing middle” slows or blocks technologies that could help the energy system become more secure, affordable, reliable, and sustainable from advancing through the demonstration and scale-up stages. Recent events have made the missing middle wider. After Khamenei: Planning for Iran’s Leadership Transition Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, recommends that the United States reconsider its assumptions around eventual leadership change in Tehran, revive regime accountability efforts, prepare for opportunistic escalation by proxy groups, and ready itself for renewed nuclear diplomacy. Preventing Renewed Conflict in Colombia CFR International Affairs Fellow in National Security Roxanna Vigil argues that the United States should engage early with Colombia’s next administration to signal support for full implementation of the 2016 Peace Accords and provide targeted assistance. Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance The United States cannot out-mine and out-process China. Instead, it should leapfrog China’s dominance by scaling disruptive innovation, recovery, and recycling. CFR in the News From Trade Giant to Strategic Actor: Rebuilding Europe’s Economic Statecraft Modern Diplomacy About “Chokepoints”: Politics and Sanctions (in Italian) As the UN Picks Its Tenth Chief, a Woman May Finally Break the Glass Ceiling The Christian Science Monitor At Ex-Premier’s Funeral, China’s Past Shadows Its Present The New York Times Zhu Rongji’s Death Adds New Dimension to China's High-Profile Remembrance of Jiang Zemin Channel News Asia Cook in The Wall Street Journal: "Trump's Threats Only Embolden the Iranians who Sense Further Weakness" The Wall Street Journal The U.S. Munitions Crisis Trump’s South Korea Move Fuels Growing Fears of U.S. Retreat From Asia Zambia’s Messy Election The 1953 Overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy: Ishaan Tharoor Global Debt Crises Foreshadow a Perilous Path for the United States