Rebuilding American Alliances in a Changing Western World

 

A Strategy for Transatlantic Renewal, Strategic Diversification, and a Broader Five Eyes Partnership

Introduction: The Limits of Restoration

The next American president may inherit a foreign-policy challenge that cannot be resolved simply by changing the tone of American diplomacy. After years of political turbulence, disagreements over trade, disputes about defense commitments, and growing uncertainty about the reliability of American leadership, the relationships that once formed the foundation of the Western alliance may have undergone changes that cannot easily be reversed.

For much of the postwar era, American presidents could assume that the basic architecture of Western cooperation would endure regardless of temporary political disagreements. The United States and Western Europe shared a common strategic outlook, supported by NATO, deep economic integration, and a broad commitment to the institutions of the international order. Individual governments might disagree over particular policies, but the underlying alliance remained intact.

That assumption may no longer be sufficient. The political transformation of Europe, including the rise of the National Rally in France and Alternative for Germany (AfD), has introduced new uncertainties into the future of European integration and transatlantic cooperation. At the same time, the European Union has increasingly emphasized strategic autonomy, economic sovereignty, and the development of independent defense and technological capabilities. These developments reflect forces within European politics that extend beyond any single American administration.

From American Guarantee to Mutual Defense: Reinventing NATO for the Twenty-First Century

 An argument for transforming NATO from an alliance organized primarily around American protection of Europe into a genuinely reciprocal collective-defense partnership suited to a multipolar world.

Introduction: An Alliance Built for a World That No Longer Exists

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization stands among the most successful military alliances in modern history. Established in 1949 amid the devastation of the Second World War and the emergence of Soviet power, NATO helped preserve the independence of Western Europe, deter Soviet aggression, and establish the security conditions under which democratic institutions and economic prosperity could flourish. Its endurance beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union is itself evidence of its institutional strength and continuing strategic value.

Yet the geopolitical circumstances that produced NATO have changed profoundly, while the fundamental structure of its founding treaty remains largely intact.

When NATO was established, Western Europe faced the possibility of military domination by a Soviet Union possessing enormous conventional forces, extensive territorial control, and eventually a nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the United States itself. European economies were recovering from war, their military establishments were weakened, and their capacity to resist a sustained Soviet offensive without substantial American assistance was uncertain. The United States therefore assumed extraordinary responsibilities for European security, stationing troops across the continent, maintaining the capacity to reinforce them during a crisis, and extending its nuclear deterrent to allied countries.

This arrangement was not without benefits for the United States. Preventing Soviet domination of Western Europe was essential to preserving a favorable balance of power, protecting major trading partners, and preventing the industrial resources of Europe from falling under the control of a hostile superpower. Nevertheless, the alliance developed around an unmistakable asymmetry: the United States became the principal guarantor of European security, while European allies relied disproportionately upon American military capabilities and nuclear deterrence.

That bargain reflected the realities of the twentieth century. It should not automatically determine the responsibilities of the twenty-first.

The Globalization of Housing Demand

 

An Open World Governed by Local Institutions

How the post–Cold War international order transformed urban housing markets without transforming the institutions responsible for accommodating them

Introduction: The Unrecognized Consequence of an Open World

One of the most consequential yet insufficiently appreciated developments of the post–Cold War international order has been the globalization of demand for urban housing. Over the past several decades, the world has progressively reduced barriers to the movement of capital, goods, services, and, to varying degrees, people. This integration has generated enormous economic benefits, expanding opportunities for trade, investment, employment, education, and human mobility. It has also fundamentally transformed the economic geography of the world's most successful cities.

Yet the institutions responsible for governing these cities have not undergone a comparable transformation.

We have globalized demand for urban housing while leaving the supply of urban housing overwhelmingly local.

This asymmetry lies at the heart of an important structural problem confronting cities such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Toronto, and Sydney. Their housing markets increasingly respond to economic forces operating across national borders, while the production of housing remains constrained by municipal planning decisions, local political interests, national construction regulations, and geographically fixed infrastructure.

The Personalist Nuclear Dilemma: Why the New Cold War May Be More Unpredictable Than the First

 

The concentration of power in Russia and China, the erosion of institutional safeguards, and the growing danger of geopolitical miscalculation

Introduction: A Different Kind of Cold War

The first Cold War was dangerous because two ideological systems, backed by enormous nuclear arsenals, competed for global supremacy. The emerging Cold War may be dangerous for a different reason: the fate of international security is becoming increasingly dependent upon the judgment of a small number of individuals operating within political systems that have progressively weakened their own mechanisms of restraint, correction, and succession.

The distinction is fundamental. During the twentieth century, the principal danger arose from a confrontation between competing political and economic systems: American liberal democracy and capitalism on one side, Soviet communism on the other. Each claimed a measure of universal legitimacy, each organized alliances around its ideological commitments, and each developed military capabilities sufficient to destroy the other. Nuclear deterrence ultimately prevented direct superpower war, but the stability of that deterrence was repeatedly tested by ideological competition, proxy conflicts, technological developments, and miscalculation.

The emerging confrontation between the United States and its allies, Russia, and China is different. Ideology remains important, but neither Russia nor China is engaged in precisely the same universal ideological struggle that characterized the Soviet-American rivalry. Russia seeks to revise the European security order and restore its influence over neighboring states. China seeks regional preeminence, greater international influence, and an international environment more accommodating to its political system and national interests. Both oppose important aspects of American power, but their ambitions, economic structures, and strategic priorities differ.

The Economic Foundations of American Power: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

 

Why the United States must prioritize economic strength as the foundation of national security, geopolitical influence, and enduring global leadership

Introduction: The Foundations of National Power

The United States confronts a strategic challenge that will define its position in the twenty-first century. The international system is entering an era of renewed great-power competition, characterized by China's emergence as a peer economic competitor, Russia's determination to revise the European security order, accelerating technological change, and growing uncertainty about the durability of the institutions that have sustained American leadership since the Second World War. In responding to these challenges, American policymakers have understandably emphasized military modernization, alliance commitments, technological competition, and the preservation of a favorable balance of power. Yet these priorities, however important, risk obscuring a more fundamental principle: the ultimate foundation of national power is economic strength.

Military capabilities protect national interests, diplomacy advances them, and alliances multiply a country's influence. But economic strength supplies the resources that make all three possible. A nation cannot indefinitely sustain military superiority, diplomatic influence, or extensive international commitments if the productive capacity of its economy fails to keep pace with its ambitions. The ability to generate wealth, develop new technologies, attract human talent, finance public institutions, and adapt to changing circumstances ultimately determines the range of strategic choices available to a country.

The central objective of American grand strategy should therefore be neither the permanent containment of China nor the indefinite military management of the international system. It should be the preservation and expansion of the United States' economic foundations of power. Rather than defining American success primarily through the weakening of geopolitical competitors, the United States should seek to prevail through the continuous strengthening of its own economy, institutions, and productive capabilities.

The Strategic Dividend of China’s Economic Constraints

 

How the United States Can Preserve Its Economic and Technological Advantage in an Era of Chinese Structural Slowdown

Introduction: The Opportunity Hidden Within China’s Rise

For much of the past three decades, American strategic thinking has been shaped by the assumption that China’s economic rise would continue inexorably, eventually producing a country whose economic power would equal or surpass that of the United States. China’s enormous population, extraordinary manufacturing expansion, high savings rate, and increasingly sophisticated technological capabilities appeared to provide the foundations for a durable shift in global economic power.

That assumption deserves reconsideration.

China remains an economic superpower, an indispensable manufacturing center, and a formidable technological competitor. Yet the conditions that enabled its extraordinary rise are changing. The country now confronts a convergence of structural challenges: demographic aging and population decline, a prolonged property-sector adjustment, substantial accumulated debt, insufficient household consumption, diminishing returns on investment, and the natural deceleration that accompanies economic development.

These difficulties are compounded by a political transformation under Xi Jinping. By concentrating authority, strengthening Communist Party control over economic activity, and subordinating certain market objectives to political security, Xi may be weakening the very institutional dynamism China needs to overcome its structural economic constraints.

The Lost Strategic Triangle

 

Why the United States Must Reconsider the Russia–China Partnership

The strategic failure of post-Cold War American diplomacy and the case for a new policy of geopolitical differentiation

Introduction: The Strategic Consequences of an Unnecessary Alignment

One of the most consequential developments in international relations since the end of the Cold War has been the emergence of an increasingly close strategic partnership between Russia and China. Two powers that spent much of the twentieth century divided by ideological rivalry, territorial disputes, and competing geopolitical ambitions have developed a relationship grounded in their shared opposition to American predominance. Their cooperation now extends across energy, trade, technology, military affairs, and international diplomacy. Although they have not established a formal military alliance, their partnership has fundamentally complicated the strategic environment confronting the United States.

This development represents a significant failure of American grand strategy. The United States emerged from the Cold War in an extraordinarily advantageous position. The Soviet Union had collapsed, Russia was economically weakened and searching for a new political identity, and China was still primarily concerned with domestic development and integration into the international economy. For the first time in decades, Washington possessed an opportunity to establish constructive, differentiated relationships with both countries while preserving its own strategic advantages.