When U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in Beijing this week, it will be a modern standoff with the unmistakable overtones of single combat. Summits are often less ...

MATTHEW SHARP is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked on nuclear issues at the State Department and at ...

For the Middle East, the war in Iran has been another tough lesson in how divisions and competition can yield brutal conflict. But for most of the world, the war has been a lesson in something else: ...

Since the Cold War ended, Russia has sought to shape Europe’s security architecture and impose its will on smaller neighbors. The Kremlin has also clashed with the United States and Europe at the ...

In recent years, speculation among analysts, experts, and scholars that America’s two key allies in the Indo-Pacific could finally pursue nuclear weapons has intensified. The eminent diplomat Henry ...

Washington’s war with Iran and the redeployment of U.S. defenses from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East have further raised concern that China could seize the island without having to fear a U.S.

But it is not the first time a group of like-minded countries have been at peace for an extended time period. From 1598 to 1894, most of East Asia—China, Japan, Korea, the Ryukyu Kingdom (now part of ...

Over the course of a four-day tour, he admired the Gulf capitals’ “gleaming marvels,” cheered on their ambitious modernization plans, and showcased over $3 trillion in pledged Gulf investment and ...

Yet that scene—a leader anxious about Washington, rushing to Beijing with a newfound urgency—has played out again and again since Trump’s return to the White House. In 2025, the leaders of Australia, ...

Rooting out corruption was an early focus of Xi’s tenure, but he has intensified the effort in recent years: in 2025, the party’s discipline-inspection authorities filed more than one million cases, ...

Over the past decade, China has been steadily reshaping the global nuclear order. According to U.S. government assessments, Beijing has almost tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads since 2019. It ...

Dueling blockades have kept 20 percent of the global oil supply, 20 percent of the global supply of liquefied natural gas, and critical commodities such as helium, aluminum, and urea trapped inside ...