Nuclear Nonproliferation

Three years after Obama finalized the Iran deal, President Trump withdrew the US, and today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new and very ambitious path forward.

The core problem with the Iran deal is not in its details, but rather in the nature of Iran.

Trump could have chosen the deal. He could have chosen retrenchment. But he could not choose both.

Headlines stressed French President Macron’s purportedly implied critique of Trump in his address to the United States Congress last week. But more significant is its continuity with the historical American-French friendship, however sometimes bumpy. Macron noted his speech was on the fifty-eighth anniversary of his predecessor President Charles de Gaulle’s 1960 address to the US Congress.

Keeping in mind North Korea’s record of dishonesty, President Trump would do well to keep the arrows of US force close at hand, even as he extends the olive branch of peaceful negotiation.

While realists and liberal internationalists typically argue about whether the goal of foreign policy should be to achieve pragmatic objectives or to support our fundamental beliefs about the value of human lives, adherents to either school likely would agree that working to end the scourge of the North Korean slave trade meets the threshold for action.

North Korea’s nuclear-weapons tests, missile launches, and threats to attack American territory are hostile acts. What is debatable is how the United States and allies should respond.

On Monday the Trump administration warned Iran it will likely face punishment for violating “the spirit” of the Iran Deal.

After North Korea’s successful ICBM test on July 4, does the Trump administration have any realistic policy options to deter the Kim Jong-un regime?