The United States hasn’t had a coherent strategic vision for a generation, and it shows. The absence of an overarching strategic concept has produced little but short-sighted moves that have left the country less secure, less prosperous, and less relevant.
President Donald Trump has made a string of abrupt decisions—banning TikTok, withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, and cutting American forces in Germany, are only the most recent examples. The Trump administration is by no means uniquely guilty of fixating on the short term; American leaders have failed the marshmallow test of great-power competition for decades. [Read more]