Foreign Affairs

The Department of Defense is in trouble. During U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, media attention has focused on military parades, high-profile firings, and lectures about haircuts. But since the 1980s, a less acknowledged but just as worrisome development has been progressively undermining the U.S. military: defense acquisition remains stubbornly slow and wildly over budget.

Six months ago, the United States provoked a transatlantic crisis over Greenland.

In 2025, Chinese leader Xi Jinping tried to capitalize on U.S. belligerence toward Europe by promoting China as the responsible great-power alternative.

In his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has outlined grand diplomatic ambitions. He has promised to bring peace to Ukraine and Gaza, sought to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, pursued dozens of new trade deals, demanded cooperation on migration and drug trafficking from Latin American states, and pushed U.S. partners to provide more for their own defense. To achieve these goals, Trump has often attempted coercion.

Play Listen to the Episode 00:00 / 00:00 MP3 Close audio player The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be.

Through much of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as the United States’ popularity around the world has ebbed and flowed, the country has been able to fall back on a baseline of international support established in the previous century. There have been moments when the United States’ global image declined substantially, such as during the unpopular military interventions of President George W.

Following the back-to-back state visits to China in May by U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, many U.S. and European commentators noted that the summit meetings yielded little of real substance. But from a Chinese perspective, that didn’t matter. What mattered were the visuals, broadcast in the Chinese state media: like the emperors of old, Chinese leader Xi Jinping was receiving tribute missions from the most important foreign potentates.

On the traffic-snarled streets of Hanoi, taxi drivers taking a break between rides watch Chinese microdramas—feature-length stories divided into addictive 90-second clips—on their phones. Some commuters zip past on Chinese-made Yadea scooters, while others sit comfortably removed from the noise, dust, and tropical heat in any one of half a dozen new Chinese electric vehicle brands.

To recall the last negotiated peace with Russia is to tell a depressing tale. Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2014, annexing Crimea and then moving regular and irregular forces into the Donbas, in the country’s east. After months of war and intense interference in domestic Ukrainian affairs, Moscow signed a series of cease-fire agreements in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in September 2014 and February 2015. Russia retained and militarized the territory it had taken in Ukraine.

The U.S.-Iranian relationship is worse than ever before. Over the last four months, the American and Israeli militaries have waged full-scale war against the Islamic Republic, including by assassinating much of its political and military leadership. Iran has retaliated by attacking U.S. military bases, infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, and Israel. The two sides struck a cease-fire deal in early April, and in June they signed a memorandum of understanding designed to end the conflict.