Informing U.S. engagement with the world

When armed conflict disrupts a critical maritime trade route, the United States can monitor, contain, or escalate the situation economically or militarily.

When a U.S. partner state faces a hybrid attack by an unknown aggressor, the United States should draw on various available response options to protect its treaty commitments, credibility, and commercial interests.

When a coup occurs abroad, the early hours of the crisis are most crucial for preserving and promoting U.S. interests—whether countering terrorism, checking adversaries’ regional influence, upholding human rights norms, or maintaining diplomatic and economic relationships. Policy planners should therefore prepare for the unexpected.

Insurgency-related conflicts often start without warning and can last over a decade, making the pre-crisis and early crisis phases crucial for U.S. policymakers seeking to prevent national security threats and humanitarian disasters from emerging. Effective responses involve a complex set of legal authorities and international frameworks and require the sustained support of the American public and local communities.

Executive Summary The United States is increasingly ill-equipped to deter or defeat Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific, particularly a potential invasion or blockade of Taiwan. The U.S. military no longer possesses the requisite quantity of warfighting systems—nor the industrial capacity to produce them at scale—needed to counter the People’s Liberation Army’s burgeoning arsenal. To […]

Executive Summary U.S. dependence on China for essential medicines is structural—deeper, broader, and more consequential than conventional market analyses suggest. That dependence began with generic medicines and their ingredients but is now growing in biologics manufacturing, first-in-human trials, and synthetic DNA. That dependence is not simply the result of market conditions but rather decades of […]

Introduction Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has made a concerted effort to keep Belarus in its sphere of influence. Belarus’s political, economic, and military autonomy has ebbed and flowed over time, depending on geopolitical circumstances, Russia’s needs, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s political adroitness. Nevertheless, the present moment poses unique challenges for […]

CFR’s U.S. Government Deal Tracker shows how the government is experimenting with new tools and financing structures to advance a range of strategic sectors, including critical minerals, energy, global logistics, manufacturing, telecommunications, and other technologies.

A gap in private funding for companies and projects inhibits energy innovation in the United States. This “missing middle” slows or blocks technologies that could help the energy system become more secure, affordable, reliable, and sustainable from advancing through the demonstration and scale-up stages. Recent events have made the missing middle wider.

Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, recommends that the United States reconsider its assumptions around eventual leadership change in Tehran, revive regime accountability efforts, prepare for opportunistic escalation by proxy groups, and ready itself for renewed nuclear diplomacy.

CFR International Affairs Fellow in National Security Roxanna Vigil argues that the United States should engage early with Colombia’s next administration to signal support for full implementation of the 2016 Peace Accords and provide targeted assistance.