In his opening remarks at last Wednesday’s “Worldwide Threats Assessment” hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., announced what the focus of that day’s hearing, and by extension, what the greatest threat facing American national security was: The growing technological, economic and military power of China. The rest of the hearing demonstrated that a new bipartisan consensus has solidified in Washington: That we need to counter Beijing’s rise, and must do so quickly and aggressively.
In her opening statement, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines called China an “unparalleled priority for the intelligence community” that had become a “near-peer competitor challenging the United States in multiple areas, while pushing to revise global norms in ways that benefit the Chinese authoritarian system.”
The rest of the members of the spy community agreed. FBI Director Christopher Wray reassured Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that the bureau was committed to fighting back against Chinese disinformation campaigns looking to influence U.S. domestic politics. He noted that there is no country that “presents a more severe threat to our innovation, our economic security, and our democratic ideals. And the tools in their toolbox to influence our businesses, our academic institutions, our governments at all levels, are deep and wide and persistent.”
According to Wray, there are currently over 2,000 FBI investigations that tie back to the CCP, and they are opening new investigations into China every 10 hours. In the last few years, said the FBI director, economic espionage investigations have surged 1300 percent.
This testimony accompanied the insights from the 2021 Intelligence Community annual threat assessment, released on April 9, in which the first chapter was titled “China’s Push for Global Power.” Despite the fact that that it is practically impossible for Beijing’s nuclear arsenal to approach anything near the United States’ in the near future, the report contains a section on WMDs that notes “Beijing will continue the most rapid expansion and platform diversification of its nuclear arsenal in its history, intending to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile during the next decade.” Even if China were able to accomplish this goal, their nuclear weapons stockpile would represent roughly 17 percent of the American stockpile, according to recent estimates.
“We are basically asking the intel community to justify its own utility in facing future threats. No wonder their assessment is invariably hyped,” tweeted John Glaser, director of foreign policy at the Cato Institute. “Can we rely instead on a panel of experts whose jobs don’t incentivize threat inflation?”
China’s emergence was evidently the primary focus for the members of the Senate committee, as well. In fact, each of the first four Senators to speak, Warner, Rubio, Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., asked their first questions about China. Most of these senators were concerned with Beijing’s technological competition with the United States and the race to 5G, while Rubio raised questions about whether the coronavirus may have originated due to an accident in a lab in Wuhan.
As one of the last Senators to speak, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., offered a comprehensive overview of the coalescence that has taken place: “One of the things that’s new in the last 4-6 is that there is consensus, in your community and on this committee — in a bipartisan way — that there is an unparalleled, number one threat,” Sasse said. “The tech race with China is the biggest, existential national security threat we face.”
Sasse also argued that it should be a goal of both the Senate and the intelligence community to communicate to the American people that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are the “one, overarching national security threat we face.” As Sen. Warner remarked during opening statements, the United States must be “clear-eyed in assessing the threats posed by Xi Jinping.”
What this should mean is that we must acknowledge that China will continue to challenge the United States, while not overreacting to the nature of that threat. Yes, there is serious competition right now with China — primarily technological and economic. But the threat posed to the United States by Beijing today is not necessarily military in nature, and is certainly not existential.
The best way to compete with Beijing is by strengthening the American economy and promoting American manufacturing, through comprehensive industrial and trade policies, and by remaining diplomatically and economically engaged in East Asia. Attempting to launch a new Cold War by matching or exceeding Beijing’s every move will both not serve American interests and limit Washington’s ability to cooperate with the Chinese government on critical issues such as global health and climate change.
The hearing didn’t openly advocate for confrontation with China, and many of the issues raised by both the Senators and intelligence leaders were important ones that American leaders must grapple with. But Washington has a tendency to hype the threat presented by a coterie of foreign entities — whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, or Al-Qaeda — and the unique focus on China suggests that the national security establishment is ripe to repeat that mistake. If China is portrayed as an existential threat, many of its own actions, even in its own neighborhood, will be used as justification to perpetuate America’s entanglement in unnecessary military conflicts, arms racing, and more.
On a day when many who have been pushing for a more humble American foreign policy celebrated the announcement of a September withdrawal from Afghanistan, the agreement about the next threat to be dealt with was loud and clear.
Joe Biden’s speech on Wednesday signaled a potential new way of thinking about the United States’ role in the world. The reaction to the attacks on 9/11 led to a two-decade long fixation on the threat of terrorism which prompted a warped and ultimately catatstrophic “Global War on Terror” which is only now winding down. If this inflated threat is only replaced by over the top concern over China — as last week’s hearing indicates — Beijing will now play the role of bogeyman to justify an overly militarized foreign policy.
Blaise Malley is a freelance writer and a former Responsible Statecraft reporter. He is currently a MA candidate at New York University. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
CIA Director William Burns testifies alongside Director Avril Haines of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing about worldwide threats, April 14, 2021. Saul Loeb/Pool via REUTERS
At the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned Europe not to back away from one of the West’s most basic democratic values: free speech.
“In Washington there is a new sheriff in town," he said, "and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Vance continued, “Dismissing people, dismissing their concerns… shutting down media, shutting down elections… protects nothing. It is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”
He added, “If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people.”
Vance had just joined Donald Trump in running a successful 2024 presidential campaign that championed free speech and condemned the Biden administration for its censorship efforts.
On March 8, barely three weeks after Vance’s Munich speech, Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and sent to a detention center in Louisiana to be deported. He is a legal resident married to an American woman who is pregnant.
Khalil was not charged with a crime. President Trump praised the arrest, saying that Khalil had engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” that his administration would not tolerate.
“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country,” Trump added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department has revoked more than 300 student visas. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas," he said.
When Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested this week, a video showed “masked, plain-clothes officers handcuffing and leading her to an unmarked car.”
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Ozturk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
"A visa is a privilege not a right," she added.
Yet, like the case of Khalil, no one knows what, if any charges she is facing. A judge ruled that she could not be removed from Massachusetts but the feds took her to the same Louisiana detention center anyway. Reports presume that it was an op-ed that Oztruk wrote last year with two other students criticizing the Israel war in Gaza that brought on the heat.
When asked about Oztruk, however, Rubio said no one should get a visa if they come to the United States to join protest movements that result in vandalism and “raising a ruckus” on campus. He would not say if Ozturk was being singled out for those activities.
The administration argues that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 gives the government the right to revoke the green card of “[a]n alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Without issuing evidence that Khalil and Ozturk’s presence here in the U.S. would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” (the statute says the administration has to notify Congress with their justifications, have they?) we can assume that they are being used as examples in order to chill speech more broadly.
The administration appears to be hiding behind this rarely used statute, but what the rest of us are taking away from all this is that the administration believes our First Amendment protections end at criticizing Israel’s government.
“One reason the actions against Khalil should give MAGA pause is that the administration seems to be acting on behalf of Israel, not the American people,” wrote Andrew Day for the American Conservative, who warned Trump supporters that “the precedent could enable a future Democratic president to target conservatives.”
Categorizing pro-Palestinian protesters as “pro-terrorist,” “pro-Hamas,” or “anti-Semitic” could feasibly be true in some of these cases, and yet, if these people are not actually committing crimes, their speech should be Constitutionally protected.
The Nazi marchers that the Americans Civil Liberties Union so famously defended in Skokie, Illinois, in 1978 were definitely anti-Semitic.
And the courts determined they had a right to speak.
It might be cliché to say that the entire point of free speech is to protect the speech we hate, but apparently it's a trope the Trump administration hasn’t heard enough.
Those cheering Trump’s rounding up of pro-Palestinian protesters might argue that supporting Israel and opposing Hamas has greater value than free speech, or even that those targeted are actual terrorists, putting them in a separate category.
But we can rationalize similar free speech exceptions about all sorts of positions.
In his Munich speech, Vance cited the prosecution of Briton Adam Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist and army veteran who Vance said had been charged with the “heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.”
Heidi Stewart, chief executive of Bpas, the UK’s leading abortion provider, said of Vance’s comments, “Bpas ... will always remain proud to stand against misogynistic and anti-democratic interference with British women’s reproductive rights by foreign extremists, whether they are the vice-president of the US or not.”
Someday, “foreign extremist” JD Vance could be considered a “threat” to U.S. foreign policy by another administration. Then what happens?
Vance’s broader point was that people of different views should be able to express them in Western democracies.
And he was right. The first time.
He told European countries last month that their greatest threats weren’t from Russia or China, but their retreat from some of their “most fundamental values,” that the United States has historically shared with them, with freedom of expression seeming to top his list.
“What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance warned.
European leaders met this week at the behest of French President Emmanuel Macron, who wants to solidify a plan to send troops to Ukraine as a security package. However, the meetings emerged, according to the Wall Street Journal, “without a public commitment from other European countries to send troops.”
France and the United Kingdom have been pushing for troops on the ground in Ukraine, and other countries, like Sweden, Denmark, and Australia, have indicated a willingness to do so as well. The main hurdle appears to be that most are apparently unwilling to send their armed forces to Ukraine without the protection of the United States.
“My wish is that the Americans are engaged at our side, but we have to be prepared for a situation in which they maybe don’t join in,” Macron said.
Another European diplomat said, "when Ukraine was in a better position, the idea of sending troops appealed. But now, with the situation on the ground and the U.S administration as it is, it's not very sexy.”
European countries did agree this week to provide more aid and training for Ukraine. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom also agreed to send a team to Ukraine to analyze how many troops would be needed for a hypothetical European force.
Meanwhile, after negotiations earlier in the week, U.S. and Russian leaders agreed on an expanded ceasefire deal focused on the Black Sea. The Kremlin clarified that accepting an agreement would hinge on the relaxation of sanctions on the agricultural bank, Rosselkhozbank.
The U.S. did not explicitly promise to lift sanctions but that it would “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
European leaders balked at the idea of lifting sanctions. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said doing so would be “a serious mistake.” Additionally, U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer said, “now is not the time for lifting sanctions.”
“Moscow has shown every indication of driving a hard bargain in the talks conducted thus far, not to mention that much of the subject matter is innately technical and simply does not lend itself to swift resolution,” said the Quincy Institute’s Mark Episkopos. “There have been signs in prior weeks of a slow convergence between U.S. and Russian positions… However, Kyiv, flanked by some of its European partners, has voiced deep-seated reservations about possible concessions and other terms of a potential peace settlement.”
Episkopos added, “these concerns and the way they’re being raised speak to a larger lack of buy-in that, if left unsquared, will complicate efforts to get a peace deal past the finish line.”
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journalreported that President Trump said that the Kremlin may be “dragging its feet” on the Black Sea ceasefire deal. “I’ve done it over the years. You know, I don’t want to sign a contract. I want to sort of stay in the game, but maybe I don’t want to do it quite—I’m not sure,” he said, referring to his previous experience in real estate.
Russia’s mission to the United Nations accused Ukraine of sabotage. In a statement to the Security Council, UN Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy said, “Kiev continues to plan and carry out strikes against Russia's energy infrastructure, thus trying to hoodwink both us and the United States.”
According to CNN, South Korean officials claim that North Korea sent an additional 3,000 soldiers to Russia in January and February. Pyongyang also sent “220 pieces of 170-millimeter self-propelled howitzers and 240-millimeter multiple rocket launchers,” and that further aid was likely to increase depending on the situation.
The European Commission advised EU citizens to have at least 72 hours of food and supplies in reserve. CNN outlined the new document released on Wednesday, which cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, geopolitical tensions, and other concerns.
U.S. State Department news:
During a State Department briefing this week, a reporter asked spokesperson Tammy Bruce if the Trump administration agreed that Putin had legitimate claims to Crimea or other regions annexed by Russia, referencing comments made by envoy Steve Witkoff. Bruce said she did not want to speculate on the topic but promised that the president was “singularly focused” on bringing peace to the conflict.
Another reporter asked how the administration was planning on ensuring trust between the United States and Ukraine. Bruce replied, "this isn’t about trust or if—who you’re dealing with and whether or not you like them or you don’t or what that dynamic is.”
keep readingShow less
Top image credit: Andrew Harnik / Shutterstock.com
In recent weeks, many of the same neoconservative voices who pushed the U.S. into Iraq are calling for strikes on Iran. Groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy are once again promoting confrontation, claiming there may never be a better time to act. But this is a dangerous illusion that risks derailing what Donald Trump himself says he wants: a deal, not another disastrous war in the Middle East.
A war with Iran wouldn’t just risk another endless conflict. It would blow up Trump’s broader agenda at home and abroad.
A major conflict would drain U.S. resources and attention, distracting from domestic priorities and weakening America’s leverage on every front: China, Russia, Europe, and trade. Europe could seize the moment to prolong support for the war in Ukraine and resist Trump’s push to reset transatlantic ties. Trade partners like Mexico, Canada, India, and others could take advantage of America’s preoccupation to extract lop-sided concessions. And a unilateral strike would likely fracture the international community.
Russia and China, despite their own misgivings about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, would point to U.S. aggression as the real threat, undermining American credibility at the United Nations and beyond.
And the most dangerous consequence? A strike could backfire and push Iran to do exactly what Trump says he wants to prevent: build a bomb. Iran is already enriching uranium near weapons-grade. If it withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the last threads of international oversight would disappear. An attack would likely galvanize even more hardline elements in Iran and provide the political justification to sprint for a nuclear weapon.
Trump could go down in history, not as the president who solved the Iran crisis, but as the one under whose watch Iran finally became a nuclear weapons state. That’s not the legacy he wants, or one the country can afford.
Raising alarms, Trump recently declared, “Something will happen to Iran soon.” But he also made clear, “Hopefully, we can have a peace deal. I’m not speaking out of strength or weakness, I’m just saying I’d rather see a peace deal than the other.” These are not the words of a warmonger. They are the words of a negotiator, someone who still sees the value in diplomacy.
Trump is not alone. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, his foreign policy envoy Steven Witkoff offered a notably more restrained perspective on Iran than is typical from the foreign policy establishment. Witkoff emphasized pragmatism, verification, mutual respect, and, most importantly, avoiding conflict. His remarks reflected a grounded approach rooted in a clear understanding of both American interests and the region’s complex dynamics.
The problem is that many of the loudest voices shaping Iran policy — inside and outside the government — are actively working to sabotage any realistic path to diplomacy. They talk about wanting a “deal,” but what they’re actually demanding is Iran’s surrender: zero uranium enrichment, dismantling its nuclear program, cutting ties with all its regional allies, and fundamentally changing its foreign policy. No Iranian government — pragmatist or hardliner — could accept such terms. Even Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly elected president who ran on a platform of diplomacy and engagement, would have no political space to agree to that kind of ultimatum.
Let’s be clear: if you’re pushing for such maximalist demands under the guise of wanting a deal, you’re not working for peace. You’re laying the groundwork for war.
Iran is a complicated actor with a complicated history. But the lessons of the past decade are clear: when the U.S. engages Iran through diplomacy, it gets results. When it relies solely on pressure, it inches closer to conflict.
The point of pressure has always been to create leverage, not to impose costs for their own sake. That leverage now exists. The question is what to do with it.
The 2015 nuclear deal was far from perfect for any side, but it did succeed in placing tight constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and subjected it to unprecedented international inspections. The aim of withdrawing from that deal was to compel Iran to accept stronger terms. That hasn’t happened.
Instead, the result has been several years of Iranian nuclear expansion, regional instability, and growing alignment between Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing. Iran is now enriching uranium to 60% — dangerously close to weapons-grade — and stockpiling far more than before. Meanwhile, the international consensus that once backed U.S. efforts has frayed.
Now is the time to cash in on current U.S. pressure. Not by continuing on an escalatory path that leads to war, but by using the leverage that’s been built to strike a better deal — one that delivers strong constraints, more transparency, and greater long-term security for the United States.
Against this backdrop, hawkish voices are once again pushing the illusion that striking Iran would be quick and effective. A recentreport from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) claims Israel’s alleged deep intelligence reach and risk tolerance make a “preventive strike” against Iran potentially “much more successful” than past American efforts, like when the U.S. attacked nuclear targets in Iraq in 1991 and 1993. But this dangerously downplays the risks. Even Trump’s allies are urging caution.
Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, rightly cautioned last October that “America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct” from Israel’s — and made clear that avoiding war with Iran is in the U.S. interest. He warned such a conflict would be “massively expensive” and a “huge distraction of resources.” The reality is that a strike might at best delay Iran’s program while likely sparking a regional war, endangering U.S. troops, and pushing Iran to weaponize.
Indeed, even the same WINEP report that touts the feasibility of a strike quietly acknowledges the scale of what it would entail: “an open-ended, multiyear campaign to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities, influence its nuclear proliferation calculus, and shape its political and military responses.” In other words, this wouldn’t be a quick, surgical strike; it would be the beginning of another endless war in the Middle East.
Such a conflict would also carry steep economic costs, from skyrocketing oil prices to instability across the Middle East. And it would almost certainly backfire politically: Americans are war-weary, and polls show overwhelming support for diplomacy over conflict.
What’s needed now is a pragmatic strategy to de-escalate and reengage — one that offers Iran credible incentives in exchange for verifiable nuclear limits but doesn’t require dismantling its entire program.
The Iranian leadership has shown a consistent pattern in its dealings with the United States: pressure is met with pressure, while concessions are met with reciprocal steps. History has made clear that what moves the needle is not ultimatums, but a formula grounded in mutual respect, trust-building, and incremental, verifiable actions. Witkoff’s recent interview signaled a welcome openness to serious diplomacy, but rhetoric alone is not enough. To resonate in Tehran, it must be paired with credible, calibrated actions.
Modest, realistic steps — such as allowing a limited release of Iran’s frozen assets for humanitarian purposes or reviving President Emmanuel Macron’s 2019proposal for a credit line backed by future oil revenues — would not require lifting core U.S. sanctions. Yet they could offer enough tangible benefit to bring Iran to the table. These measures should be linked to parallel Iranian concessions, such as slowing the accumulation of highly enriched uranium and enhancing IAEA access.
Another option is a negotiated “pause:” a fixed-duration agreement where the U.S. freezes further escalation of sanctions and refrains from imposing new pressure, while Iran halts key elements of its nuclear expansion. This mutual freeze could serve as a time-bound window for more comprehensive talks — buying time, lowering tensions, and creating space for diplomacy to succeed.
Critics will claim this approach "rewards bad behavior." But the real question isn't about rewarding anyone, it's about results. What actually reduces the risk of Iran getting a nuclear weapon or dragging the U.S. into another endless war? The record speaks for itself: pressure detached from feasible diplomatic outcomes hasn’t delivered results. In fact, pressure for its own sake has backfired — driving Iran’s nuclear program forward and repeatedly bringing the U.S. to the brink of conflict.
Some will say Iran cannot be trusted. That’s precisely why inspections and verification are essential. When a deal was in place, international inspectors had access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the program was significantly constrained. Military strikes, by contrast, would likely end all transparency and push Iran to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, eliminating the last tools for monitoring and oversight.
There’s no perfect deal. But the smart play is a deal that contains Iran’s nuclear program, avoids a war, and keeps the U.S. in the driver’s seat. That should be the goal of any serious policy, not wishful thinking or ideological crusades.
President Trump has always seen himself as a dealmaker. Now’s the moment to make one that matters. He should empower voices in his camp — like Steven Witkoff — who understand that diplomacy isn’t weakness, it’s strategy. Rejecting the tired playbook of regime change and endless escalation would show real leadership.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.