Eliot A. Cohen

Western leaders do themselves no good when they avoid confronting hard necessities.

Iran’s attack on Israel is just one campaign in a much larger conflict.

If the United States does nothing, the coming seasons will be even bleaker—and not just in Kyiv.

His excoriating critique of Western liberalism is more relevant than ever.

Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhny had the second-most-difficult job in the world. His boss has the most difficult one.

America’s segmented, limited, and naive policy approach toward Iran continues to fail. The U.S. needs to try something new.

The U.S. knows how to put an end to attacks on shipping.

No state is immune from the horrors that have befallen Israel.

President Claudine Gay is in a tough spot. The Harvard Corporation deserves to be in a much tougher spot.

The ideals I’m celebrating this Thanksgiving

If we wish to understand the war’s likely course, we must ask how both sides conceive their objectives and the broadest ways in which they intend to use force to achieve them.

Don’t bar the bard.

We are in the fight of our lives.

The IDF has a record of exceptionally rapid recovery, and it is already adapting.

On a recent visit, a series of conversations brought home to me just how pernicious our falsehoods have been.

Why have the experts been so persistently wrong?

Allies can be exasperating. But try being invaded by your neighbor and lectured by everyone else.

Making strategy by dubious analogy is a bad idea.

The president has no business running for office at age 80.

Putin may be as uncertain as the rest of us about what just happened.

The Biden administration undermines its cause with strategically witless statements.

Anything less will encourage Russian imperialism and embolden autocrats around the world.

Supporting and arming Ukraine, and accelerating the collapse of the Russian military, is the most realistic way to end the conflict.

The president’s visit to Ukraine was a gut punch to the Russian leader.

It is in the differences from past wars that insight into today’s battles lies.

Any result other than a victory for Kyiv will make the world a more dangerous place for all of us.

Russia’s war on Ukraine need not end in negotiation.

Wars are won by deeds—but also by persuasive moral arguments.

The attack on the crucial link between Russia and Crimea matters less for its tactical significance and more for what it says about the course of the war.

Yielding to Putin’s blackmail would be folly.

The West faces a simple choice: reduce aid to Ukraine and deliver Russia a victory, or else finish the job it has begun.

Why the U.S. adversary is a lot like Al Capone

It is up to liberal democracies to support a country that is fighting for all who share its values.

There will be no return to normalcy or status quo ante.

The United States and its allies can tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.

The West must do what it takes to help Ukraine prevail.

America has become too accustomed to thinking of its side as stymied, ineffective, or incompetent.

As the leader of NATO and of the free world, the United States needs to think much bigger than it has thus far.

The U.S.-led coalition of liberal-democratic states should pursue three objectives.

Why did so many observers misjudge Putin and Zelensky?