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Articles by Michael Froman
In These Midterms, Foreign Policy Mattered
It has often been said that foreign policy issues will not win you an election, but they sure can lose you one. More often than not, foreign policy is irrelevant to election outcomes, particularly midterms. Not this week. Here at CFR, we are often pressed to explain “why it matters.” Why should foreign policy matter to the American public, particularly when they have more immediate issues to worry about, including making ends meet?
The Demise of Democracy Isn’t Here Yet
The fate of democracy around the world is the subject of much debate. There are disturbing data points, particularly around press freedom, which are setting off alarms. There are worrying illiberal and authoritarian turns, concerns about election administration and integrity, and pockets of anxiety about the peaceful transfer of power. That said, there are also some notable positive data points which should not be overlooked. Just look at the developments of the last few weeks.
Will Europe’s Protests Mark a Turning Point?
Greetings from Europe (or, at least, London), where the mood, like the weather, has turned decidedly foul in recent days. Top of mind are the protests in France, which could well be the canary in the coal mine of a broader political and economic crisis in the works. France, of course, has a long tradition of taking to the streets, from farmers to the Yellow Vests. But what we have witnessed in recent weeks seems to be of a categorically different character.
The China Price
In 1971, as the international monetary system was on the brink of collapse, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Connally told a group of worried European finance ministers that the dollar was “our currency, but your problem.” The dollar had become that system’s official reserve currency in 1944, under the Bretton Woods agreement, making signatories subject to the whims of U.S. monetary policy. Even after Bretton Woods collapsed and many currencies floated freely, the dollar continued to dominate.
Who Killed the Global Economy?
In “The Next Global Economic Crisis Could Be Made in China” (September/October 2026), Michael Froman raises an alarm that China has “outgrown” its export-led model for economic growth. He argues that Beijing’s practice of flooding global markets with heavily subsidized exports will cause a rise in protectionism, followed by a possible collapse of China’s export growth and a material slowdown in the Chinese economy, with a cascade of adverse effects on the rest of the world.
Iran, Iran war, Congress, deliberative war, asymmetric war
IRAN WARThe Victory of Asymmetry in the Iran War Published 19 October 2026 If the goal of Operation Epic Fury was to prevent Iran from projecting power beyond its borders, it might well have had the opposite effect. In the day-to-day of the Iran war, it’s natural to feel a touch of whiplash. Are we on the verge of agreement or at the dawn of escalation? Is Iran on the edge of collapse, or is it expanding the conflict?
Iran, Iran war, Congress, deliberative war, asymmetric war
IRAN WARThe Victory of Asymmetry in the Iran War Published 17 October 2026 If the goal of Operation Epic Fury was to prevent Iran from projecting power beyond its borders, it might well have had the opposite effect. In the day-to-day of the Iran war, it’s natural to feel a touch of whiplash. Are we on the verge of agreement or at the dawn of escalation? Is Iran on the edge of collapse, or is it expanding the conflict?
The Victory of Asymmetry in the Iran War
In the day-to-day of the Iran war, it’s natural to feel a touch of whiplash. Are we on the verge of agreement or at the dawn of escalation? Is Iran on the edge of collapse, or is it expanding the conflict? Will the Strait of Hormuz return to the status quo ante, or will tolling and periodic attacks on shipping be the new normal? These are important issues but there are larger, more fundamental strategic shifts underway as well.
Commentary: America is risking its biggest asset
NEW YORK: Earlier in the 21st century, nations embraced the idea that global economic integration was in everyone’s best interests. Today, there’s been a darker shift, with countries including the United States choosing to weaponise the interdependence of the global economy against one another, using whatever unique assets they control as a source of leverage. The United States’ most potent version of this strategic tool, known as a choke point, is control over the US dollar.
Trading Places: The U.S. and Europe on China and Russia
For years, the United States pressed Europe to join it in taking a harder position on defending itself against Russia and protecting itself against China. Europe resisted, insisting it could navigate a middle ground between the United States on one hand and Russia and China on the other. How times have changed. Now, Europe is lecturing the United States on the threat Russia poses, while Washington is less committed to Ukraine’s defense and confronting Russian aggression.
The Diminishing Returns of Choke-Point Diplomacy
AIPEI, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Eswatini’s king pledged on Friday to strengthen his country’s “enduring friendship” with Taiwan, during a return visit to …
The Diminishing Returns of Choke-Point Diplomacy
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The Diminishing Returns of Choke-Point Diplomacy Oct. 9, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET Credit...Benny Douet Mr. Froman is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Earlier in the 21st century, nations embraced the idea that global economic integration was in everyone’s best interests.
Lessons From Anniversaries: October 7, Three Years On
As we approach the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, I find myself reflecting on the other profound and somber anniversary that the United States just marked: twenty-five years since the events of 9/11. Last month, I wrote that that anniversary presented an opportunity to “consider what became of us and the world—and the role of the U.S. in the world—in the two-and-a-half decades that followed.” The same is also true of next week’s anniversary.
Much Ado About Nothing
Two major diplomatic events this week—the UN General Assembly and the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping—brought thousands of diplomats and dignitaries, hundreds of hours of meetings and conversation, and countless pages of opinions and analyses to New York and Washington. What did we get from all of it—besides a lot of traffic? The General Assembly and the U.S.-China summit came at a moment of particular international volatility.
It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Parallels of AI and Globalization
The slow-burning crisis over the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) reached a fever pitch this past week after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for the leading labs to pace the frontier of AI development. Not since OpenAI’s rollout of ChatGPT in late 2022 has a single piece of AI news so dominated the headlines and escaped out of the Bay Area technological bubble.
Lessons From 9/11 and Its Aftermath
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, we are faced with an opportunity to mourn with the families who lost loved ones that day, but also to consider what became of us and the world—and the role of the U.S. in the world—in the two-and-a-half decades that followed. For those of us who lived through the attacks, anniversaries have a way of collapsing time.
Horse Wrestling and Hegemony: Why Central Asia’s Nomad Games Matter This Year
August is supposed to be the month when the world slows down. Not this year. And so The World This Week is back from vacation a week early. In just the last few weeks, the United States has paused and resumed its military operations against Iran; U.S.-Canada tensions spiked after trade talks collapsed; U.S. government debt tipped over the $40 trillion mark, sending bond yields to their highest level since 2008; and we all learned a lot more about AI agents jumping out of sandboxes and going rogue.
The Next Global Economic Crisis Could Be Made in China
There has been no shortage of complaints about Chinese overcapacity in recent years. Beijing’s commitment to driving exports and widening its trade surplus, by any means necessary, has undermined the manufacturing aspirations of advanced economies such as the United States and those in Europe, as well as developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There is more of a global consensus about the nature of the challenge than ever before, but it has had little effect on Chinese policy.
The Next Global Economic Crisis Could Be Made in China
There has been no shortage of complaints about Chinese overcapacity in recent years. Beijing’s commitment to driving exports and widening its trade surplus, by any means necessary, has undermined the manufacturing aspirations of advanced economies such as the United States and those in Europe, as well as developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There is more of a global consensus about the nature of the challenge than ever before, but it has had little effect on Chinese policy.
The Latest in U.S.-China AI Competition
The World This Week istaking a brief hiatusuntil after Labor Day. Until then, enjoy my deep dive interview with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Chris McGuire on the latest developments in the U.S.-China competition to lead in artificial intelligence (AI). MICHAEL FROMAN: Chris, there’s a new model in town. On July 16, the Chinese firm Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, and on Monday it posted the model’s weights for anyone to access.
How Does the Iran War End?
Much of the commentary on the war in Iran has focused on whether the mounting costs of Operation Epic Fury are worth it. The most common question I hear now, though, is how does this all end? The choice now before President Donald Trump may be to pick between the lesser of three unattractive options: a dramatic escalation, a conciliatory deescalation, and a continuation of today’s messy stalemate. The first approach would be to shoot our way out.
China’s Transnational Repression Is Being Met With a Deafening Silence
This article was originally published in World Politics Review. Joshua Kurlantzick’s research includes the militarization of politics in Asia and around the world, China’s relations with Southeast Asia and other developing regions, the rise of global populism and populism in Asia, and global democratic regression.
Trump’s New Tariffs: What to Know
In February, when the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), some celebrated the decision as a check on the president’s penchant for tariffs. Such celebrations were premature at best. At the time, I wrote that the court’s decision was likely to be a brief reprieve, and that we should expect the global economy to be defined by higher tariffs than existed prior to Trump.
Trump, Ukraine, and the NATO Summit: A Love Story
As Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?
Después de la guerra comercial: cómo rehacer las reglas desde las ruinas del sistema basado en normas
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Myths, Fables, and Hard Truths About AI Governance
This newsletter was written without any assistance from the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model, Anthropic’s “Claude Fable 5”—not that I had any choice in the matter. Greetings from Silicon Valley, where all the talk is about Mythos and the relationship between regulation and innovation.
How Ukraine’s Drone Innovation Reversed Russia’s Momentum
Michael C. Horowitz previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities and director of the Emerging Capabilities Policy Office. He is the director of Perry World House and Richard Perry professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin Dumbacher most recently served in the Department of Defense in the Office of the Under Secretary for Policy’s force development and emerging capabilities office.
Why the Real Path Out of AI Uncertainty and Poverty Is Smart Job Creation
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain errors. Welcome to this special taping live of the spillover. I’m your host, Sebastian Mallaby. We’re going to do this podcast from the Council on Foreign Relations office. And before we start, I want to give thanks to the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and to Steve Freidheim, who made this particular symposium possible.
Trump’s Iran Deal Reopens the Strait. Much Remains to Be Done.
On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines.
The Limitations of Hard Power in Iran
The temptation for a great power to embrace the “iron laws of the world,” as a White House senior advisor once put it, and pursue a strategy of might makes right can be seductive. Indeed, geopolitics today is increasingly defined by a more unilateral and kinetic brand of foreign policy.
A Turning Point in Ukraine
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives acted contrary to the wishes of its leadership and President Donald Trump to pass legislation providing support for Ukraine. And yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy published an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin calling for a meeting between the two leaders and a full ceasefire during subsequent peace negotiations.
Evaluating Trump’s Trade Policy on Trump’s Criteria Original
We are a third of the way through President Donald Trump’s second term. I thought it might be useful to assess how one of the administration’s major policies—its trade policy—is performing vis-à-vis its stated goals. CFR’s Washington office has the distinct privilege of being a stone’s throw from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, although we resist throwing stones.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: The Future of U.S. Strategy
Well, this job is never boring, that’s for sure. Just take a look at some of the major world events of the past week: Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing for a two-day summit on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to China, raising questionsabout where the United States stands in the context of the “friendship without limits” between China and Russia.
Beyond Taiwan, a ‘Decent Peace’ at the Trump-Xi Summit
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping just wrapped up their long-awaited summit. Expectations were low—and met. We are, officially, “not fighting,” which is better than the alternative, but the form and substance of the meeting merit a close read. If the summit was short on major concrete deliverables—at least as far as we know at this point—it was long on protocol, pomp, and circumstance.
Pretense of solving major China-US issues has gone
American President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in Beijing this week for a highly anticipated summit, the first of four potential meetings over the next year. It is unclear what the scope of discussion will be and what will come out of this meeting. But that is all well and good. The world is a safer place when its two largest economies and most powerful countries are on speaking terms.
What to Expect Ahead of Next Week’s Trump-Xi Summit
Next week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in Beijing for a highly anticipated summit, the first of four potential meetings over the next year. It is unclear what the scope of discussion will be and what will come out of this meeting. But that is all well and good. The world is a safer place when its two largest economies and most powerful countries are on speaking terms.
What Is the Future of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade?
Greetings from Mountain View, California, where a group of CFR members and I spent two days doing a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, the potential upsides—and risks—associated with their deployment, and the status of the U.S.-China technology competition. More to come on all that.
Trump Extended the Iran War Ceasefire. Now What?
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump indefinitely extended the United States’ ceasefire with Iran, citing internal divisions in the country. So what’s the latest? For now, peace talks have stalled as there is little overlap between the United States and Iran’s demands. Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remains at a screeching halt. Iran has seized two ships near the strait, while the United States continues to enforce a blockade of Iranian ports, directing more than thirty vessels to turn around.
After the WTO: The Case for Managed Trade
When U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sat down with his Chinese counterparts in Paris last month, he wasn’t there to relitigate China’s economic trajectory. He was there to lay the foundation for a new trading order and institutionalize a realistic approach to confronting China’s distorted economic system. Greer proposed a “Board of Trade,” a mechanism through which Washington and Beijing will identify, sector by sector, the terms of bilateral trade.
Iran, the Global Economy, and the Case Against Complacency
Every spring, central bank governors and finance ministers from around the world gather in Washington for the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to discuss the state of the global economy, macroeconomic coordination, and financial sector management. The topic dominating discussions this year is the war in Iran—and the ensuing economic fallout.
Was the Iran War Worth It?
This week, President Donald Trump declared victory in Iran, and, on Wednesday, after the announcement of a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, he heralded a “big day for World Peace!” People are now asking whether the war was worth it. The truth is that it’s simply too soon to tell. The success or failure of the war to advance the United States’ national interest hinges as much on what happens next as it does on what happened over the course of the past forty-one days.
Taking Stock of the War in Iran
President Donald Trump delivered an important address to the nation this week about the status of the war with Iran. Now, a month into this phase of the conflict, I thought it would be useful to take stock of the United States’ progress toward achieving its initial military objectives, the state of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and the potential economic consequences, particularly as it relates to the Strait of Hormuz. The damage to Iran’s military capabilities is unquestionable.
Coalitions of the Willing and the Strait of Hormuz
As the war in Iran enters its third week, the most pressing challenge facing the United States is opening the Strait of Hormuz. In an effort to get maritime cargo moving again, President Donald Trump earlier this week called on NATO and other allies, as well as China, to help the United States secure the waterway. The initial response was not positive. Asian and European partners said something to the effect that this wasn’t their war.
President’s Message
In that context, now is not the time for incrementalism or business as usual at the Council. It is time to meet the moment and treat the rupture of the existing order both as a challenge and as an opportunity. Nostalgia is not a strategy; nor is hope.
Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and an Unprecedented Energy Crunch
We are in the midst of what could be an unprecedented and escalating global energy crisis. Many are asking when it might end. On one hand, it could conceivably end any time President Donald Trump declares victory with respect to the core military objectives. On the other hand, Iran has a vote on when the conflict ends.
What’s Next for the War in Iran?
What’s that famous line of Michael Corleone’s in The Godfather Part III about the mafia? “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” That’s the Middle East. President Barack Obama sought to pivot to Asia from Iraq and Afghanistan (not Europe, as our insecure transatlantic allies feared). President Donald Trump recently announced that the Western Hemisphere is our top priority. But the Middle East always seems to have something else in mind.
The AI Sovereignty Paradox at Home and Abroad
This is the tale of two cities—Washington and New Delhi—where the issues of sovereignty and artificial intelligence (AI) have recently come to a head. First, Washington. Under the second Trump administration, the United States has sought, through a laissez-faire regulatory approach, to ensure that privately owned U.S. firms build the most powerful AI systems in the world. In many respects, this approach is working as designed.
After the Supreme Court Ruling, What Is Next for Trump’s Tariffs?
This morning, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision and declared that President Donald Trump did not have the power to issue tariffs by way of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The 6-3 decision was based on an analysis that taxation is clearly the authority of the Congress, that IEEPA doesn’t mention the word “tariffs,” and that no previous president has used IEEPA to impose tariffs.
Dispatch from Munich: The Future of Transatlantic Relations
Over the last three days, I joined heads of state, foreign ministers, military officers, intelligence officials, businesspeople, journalists, and foreign policy scholars in Bavaria for the 62nd Munich Security Conference (MSC). Rather than wait until Friday, I thought I’d share some early impressions. Security is the operative word at this confab. There are special entrances and exits to conference halls for the considerable number of participants who carry firearms.
A Fork in the Road at the Munich Security Conference
Greetings from the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the 62nd Munich Security Conference—also known as “Davos with guns”—is well underway. I just published a guest essay in the New York Times that reflects on why this year’s conference has arrived at a pivotal moment. Last year, there was uncertainty about the United States’ longtime role as Europe’s security guarantor, and Ukraine was the dominant topic of discussion.
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