RealClearWorld Articles

In late October, President Trump declared on social media that he had ordered the Pentagon “to start testing our nuclear weapons,” thereby ending the voluntary moratorium imposed by the Bush Sr. administration in 1992. The president portrayed his decision as a response to “other countries’ testing programs” and singled out Russia and China, which he later claimed had conducted small-scale underground detonations covertly. One month later, and the administration has yet to take concrete steps forward. However, the resumption of America’s nuclear testing...

Hezbollah’s efforts to regenerate have seemingly reached a critical juncture. In one of the most escalatory actions since the ceasefire took effect in Lebanon last November, Israel eliminated Hezbollah’s de facto military chief of staff Haitham Ali Tabatabai on November 23. Israel and Hezbollah may be closer to war than at any point over the last twelve months. Another round of fighting is not in Israel's or Lebanon’s interest. Nor is it in the interest of Lebanon’s Gulf benefactors, most of whom have grown particularly disillusioned after receiving no return on their...

Iranians have long been called the “French of the Middle East,” a nation with a deep political temperament and a history of dramatic shifts. In the last century alone, Iran witnessed two major revolutions: the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which set the country on a path toward modern statehood, and the 1979 upheaval, which overturned many of those early achievements. Since then, Iran has experienced a steady rhythm of unrest — from the protests of the mid-1990s to the nationwide movements of 2009, 2017, 2019, and the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising. What sets these...

While Russian troops advance across Ukrainian fields, Moscow is assaulting Europe from within, waging a parallel war across the continent’s infrastructure, politics, and public discourse. This is not a conflict contained to the Donbas or Southern Ukraine. It is a two-front campaign designed to stretch Western unity to the breaking point. Russia is not waiting for a future conflict with the West. It is already waging one. Moscow has unleashed a blended campaign of hybrid and conventional warfare designed to weaken, divide, and reshape Europe’s security order. What Russia...

If the Maduro regime were to fall tomorrow, the immediate applause in Washington would be for the restoration of democracy. But in Houston, the reaction would be a scramble for logistics. For over a decade, the United States has celebrated its status as an energy superpower, largely thanks to the shale revolution. Yet, beneath this "energy dominance" lies a persistent structural vulnerability: a mismatch between what we produce and what we process. We are drowning in light, sweet crude from the Permian Basin, while our massive Gulf Coast refinery complex, engineered decades ago, is starving...

A U.S.-supported regime change in Venezuela feels increasingly inevitable, and it will most likely end in disaster for both the United States and the Venezuelan people.  After rounds of deep sanctions, suffocating diplomatic and economic pressure, and two pretend presidents, the U.S. “Maximum Pressure Campaign” has escalated into something far more dangerous than when it arguably began in 2014. Already, a Naval Carrier Strike Group is posted on Venezuela’s coast, and B-52s have carried out 22 known strikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean,...

China doesn’t need Americans to trust artificial intelligence. Its government can mandate adoption. The United States cannot. Yet some in Washington now argue that the only way to beat China is to weaken the very protections that allow Americans to trust, and therefore, use AI in the first place. This past summer, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to bar states from regulating AI in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, voting 99–1 against national preemption without federal standards. Senators recognized exactly what such a move would mean: letting some of...

For years, Vladimir Putin has been stealing Ukrainian children as a weapon of war. The horrifying practice isn’t just meant to inflict psychological terror, however. As Russia’s invasion continues to cost it tens of thousands of soldiers every month, the aggressor state is training many of its stolen Ukrainian children to fight against their motherland. These crimes call out for justice, and any deal to end the war must include accountability for those involved. Russia started targeting children soon after it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Although its...

President Trump made a personal commitment on November 19 to work on ending the war in Sudan and has since reiterated his aim to end the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in several public appearances and in his recently released National Security Strategy. The level of suffering in Sudan is staggering, with over 12 million people displaced and 21 million facing extreme hunger. The suffering will only grow without urgent effort, as another major armed showdown is looming in central Sudan, while a genocide is simultaneously unfolding in western Sudan—with the paramilitary Rapid...

The U.S.-Saudi romance is back. That’s at least the story in most reports about the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) to the White House, and the one the White House is selling: where Trump set aside concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, especially the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and put U.S. interests first to get a series of lucrative cooperative deals with the Saudis. But the new deal with Saudi Arabia is essentially the old one, and MBS is a sideshow. The new initiatives are mostly press releases...

As the United States redefines its leadership in space through public–private partnerships and allied collaboration, Poland is emerging as a young but increasingly capable partner. Poland grows in importance in the space sector, illustrated by the fact that the European Space Agency plans to open an office in Poland, with the announcement expected later this week. Previously focused on European frameworks, Poland has spent the past decade building from scratch the institutions, infrastructure and political will needed to work with the United States on the next frontier of strategic...

We have entered into an era where the most dangerous explosion is not the one that destroys the buildings or kills hundreds of people, but the one that detonates into the billions of minds with no time. It is now everywhere, in everyone’s access. This is terrifying but a new reality: generative AI has not just entered our live but dangerously reshaped them. AI is making its way dangerously in every aspect of life. Every technology has both good and bad impacts on people, but whenever technologies have been indulged in the defense field; their effects have automatically become...

In an era defined by a Trump trade regime marked by the highest tariffs in decades—and the greatest policy volatility in modern history—the Supreme Court is poised to rule on the legality of those tariffs. That decision will shape the future of American trade authority. It also presents an opportunity to take a broader, overdue look at U.S. trade policy as a whole. Any such reassessment must include a clear-eyed evaluation of export controls, which now span the globe but fall most heavily on China. Beijing’s technological, industrial, and military progress—combined...

The U.S. is pursuing a failed negotiating strategy to end Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. We are negotiating with ourselves without a plan B. We are letting President Putin sit in judgment while the U.S. scrambles to come up with a deal he will accept without any meaningful concessions by Russia. President Putin is an autocrat in total control. He is clearly willing to pay the price in dead and wounded and damage to the Russian economy to achieve his objectives in Ukraine. He is confident he can wait for the U.S. and the Europeans to eventually give in to his demands. We are...

When President Donald Trump recently condemned the “mass slaughter” of Christians in Nigeria and declared that the U.S. might act if that violence continues, the U.S.-Nigerian diaspora felt a mixture of relief that the world's attention was finally on this crisis, and frustration that it took this long. And most importantly, the diaspora wondered: what will come next/how can Trump and the global community turn words into impactful actions?  Several years ago, we worked to start an organization dedicated to bringing attention of the Nigerian genocide by Jihadist groups...

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its fourth winter, it is evolving from the "war of attrition" phase described in military literature into a sharp new era dominated by diplomatic impositions. The doctrine of Ukraine's victory at all costs that prevailed in the Western bloc during the war's early years has given way to a Trump administration-centered realistic and coercive peace agenda. While the current situation on the ground presents a picture where neither Kyiv nor Moscow can achieve a final and decisive military victory, the 28-point peace plan leaked and brought to the table by...

Ecuadorians just delivered a decisive public rebuke to president Daniel Noboa. His latest referenda, pitched as a cure-all for the country’s spiraling security and economic crises, failed. That blow came despite Noboa’s well-cultivated climate of fear, militarization, and state pressure.  Noboa’s project has become increasingly authoritarian, hollowing out institutions, cracking down on civil society, empowering the security forces to do basically anything they want in the name of fighting a “war on gangs,” and deepening inequality to grotesque levels,...

The recent U.S. maritime strikes against Venezuelan drug boats under Operation Southern Spear have drawn familiar outrage from elites in academia and the media. These critics insist that if the Venezuelan drug boats are legitimate military targets, President Trump needs congressional authorization to strike them. And if they’re merely criminal enterprises, President Trump should respond with law enforcement, not missiles. The concern is not limited to Washington: the United...

Washington’s decision to support South Korea’s pursuit of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) is more than the fulfillment of a long-standing ROK Navy wish. It could reshape the ROK–U.S. alliance at both strategic and operational levels. Managed well, the project may sharpen deterrence against North Korea, bind Seoul more deeply into U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, and generate a new layer of industrial interdependence. Managed poorly, it risks overstretching shipbuilding capacity, accelerating arms racing, complicating non-proliferation norms, and creating friction over costs,...