Lawful, but Enormously Destructive
Trump’s purge of the Pentagon leadership will have long-lasting and damaging consequences.
Eliot A. Cohen
Eliot Cohen is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall, and co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast. Cohen is also the author of Supreme Command, Conquered Into Liberty, The Big Stick, and other works on military history and national-security policy. He created the strategic-studies program at Johns Hopkins SAIS and served as the school’s ninth dean. He has also served as the counselor of the Department of State and in other positions in the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community.
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The Trump administration’s Ukraine policy is liable to end in disaster.
Evelyn Hockstein / AFP / Getty Listen Closely to What Hegseth Is Saying
The defense secretary is signaling a major shift.
Guy Peterson / Panos Pictures / Redux American History Is Key to Understanding Trump
The best analogies to understand the U.S. president can be found right in the United States.
Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Source: Getty. Trump Can’t Escape the Laws of Political Gravity
Sooner or later, nature will catch up to the president.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Scott Olson / Getty. The U.S. Needs Soldiers, Not Warriors
Pete Hegseth has vowed to bring a warrior culture back to the Department of Defense. It’s a terrible idea.
Hilary Swift / The New York Times / Redux Drop the Outrage Over Trump’s Foreign-Policy Bluster
The way to deal with the bombast is by turning it against a leader who leads a movement that is actually deeply divided.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Sarah Meyssonnier / Pool / AFP / Getty. The Solzhenitsyn Test
Lying is a prerequisite for securing a Trump appointment.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty. How to Navigate the Era of Trump
Advice from the friends who sit on my bookshelves.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans How Trump Could End the War in Ukraine
What matters most is Ukraine’s genuine independence, its security, and its reconstruction.
Viacheslav Mavrychev / Suspilne Ukraine / Getty
