Foreign Policy In Focus

This is the second article in a two-part series. The first part, First Principles for a New Progressive Foreign Policy, can be found here. In this run-up to the 2026 mid-term elections, progressive movements and candidates remain caught up in the challenges of rising authoritarianism and militarism both at home and around the world.

In the first hours of the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran on February 28, 2026, a major strategic assumption was put to the test. If the head of the Islamic Republic were removed, would the regime itself collapse? The opening strikes killed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, along with a number of the country’s senior military and security commanders. Operationally, the attacks demonstrated that the attackers could reach the highest levels of Iran’s leadership.

Sometimes, a defeat can include many triumphs. This is the case of the Mexican government’s efforts to beat back a lawsuit by Legacy Vulcan. This company, the largest U.S. producer of crushed construction stone, sued in 2018 over Mexico’s closure of its limestone mining quarry in the Yucatan peninsula, over concerns that the extractive operation threatened local water quality.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now occupies a different position from the one he had at the Hanoi Summit with Donald Trump seven years ago. Between 2019 and 2026, in both efforts to arrange a summit, Trump used a similar political approach to engage. But Kim Jong Un was taking a practical and “national interest” approach. Their difference in approach has not changed. For example, Trump is thinking of a political spectacle that will benefit him.

Washington’s posture toward Beijing in recent years was defined by a formula of dealing “from a position of strength.” Yet, during the 2026 summit in Washington between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump, both nations formally inaugurated a brand-new strategic framework: a “constructive strategic stability relationship based on respect, fairness, and reciprocity.” This was not a subtle rephrasing; it was an explicit acknowledgement of geopolitical reality.

On September 15, the House of Representatives voted 220–204 for a resolution directing the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran. The vote placed lawmakers’ positions on continued involvement on the record ahead of November’s midterm elections. It also gave concrete form to the question behind the “alliance leash” metaphor: whether supporting an ally has displaced independent American judgment. The boundary should be clear.

On September 19, French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, France’s last remaining territory in North America. The tiny fishing archipelago is home to fewer than 6,000 people, all of them full French citizens, and it is relatively unknown even to those living in the Francophone parts of Canada.

Ask a Ukrainian soldier what he is fighting for, and NATO membership would certainly be on that list. But ask NATO, and the answer is far less straightforward and gets complicated quickly. This complication got a public airing last month when Ukraine’s former army chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, told a meeting room full of Ukrainian ambassadors that he no longer sees NATO membership as a realistic option.

The failure of diplomacy that is orphaning children by the thousands in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran just moved to center stage. As world leaders gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly’s opening days, the gathering didn’t split along the old lines of East and West. Rather, the representatives offered two competing answers to the same question: what do countries do when diplomacy stalls?

Somewhere in the briefing papers prepared for this week’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sits a request that quietly retires a decade of American strategy. Washington wants Beijing to lean on Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz. China buys more Iranian crude than any other country, which is exactly why its opinion is thought to carry weight in Tehran.