Publications

May 27, 2025

The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact: America Needs a New Asian Alliance to Counter China

Foreign Affairs | The time has come for the United States to build a collective defense pact in Asia. For decades, such a pact was neither possible nor necessary. Today, in the face of a growing threat from China, it is both viable and essential..........
May 1, 2025

The Return of Great-Power Diplomacy: How Strategic Dealmaking Can Fortify American Power

Foreign Affairs | After the end of the Cold War, the United States moved away from using negotiations to promote the national interest. .......
April 22, 2025

Europe Still Lives in a Security Utopia

Foreign Policy | Europe needs a Walter Lippmann — the famous American journalist who, in 1943, argued that a gap between foreign commitments and capacity creates an “insolvent” foreign policy......
November 20, 2024

The Greater Gunbelt: The Next Defense Industrial Coalition

American Compass | It has become clear that the current DIB is ill-equipped to produce materiel adequate to achieve plausible mission objectives in any one theater America is currently engaged in, let alone all three ........
October 22, 2024

Allied Burden Sharing: The United States Shoulders an Unsustainable Weight [A Marathon Initiative Infographics Series]

The Marathon Initiative | America’s allies are heavily reliant on the United States for security. These dependencies belie the potential power of our partners – and America’s growing fiscal constraints........
October 18, 2024

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

The Marathon Initiative | The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan.........
September 24, 2024

Competition and Constraint: Toward a Balanced American Security Strategy

The Marathon Initiative | Washington cannot shrink from great-power competition where U.S. security is threatened, but nor can it form a strategy on the assumption that it possesses unlimited resources to compete, .......
September 17, 2024

How Biden Let Europe Slip Away

Wall Street Journal | On trade, defense and energy, Washington has failed to shore up the trans-Atlantic alliance.......
September 6, 2024

U.S. Strategy Should Be Europe First, Then Asia

Foreign Policy | Without a secure Europe, the United States risks becoming a hemispheric potentate on the margins of the world....
September 2, 2024

The U.S. and Taiwan Must Change Course

The Wall Street Journal | "Elbridge Colby responds on the defense of Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.".....