Will US troops have to go to war for Mohammed bin Salman? (VIDEO) | Responsible Statecraft

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Analysis | Video Section

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Even as the war in Gaza rages on and the death toll surpasses 35,000, the Biden administration appears set on pursuing its vision of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that it sees as the path to peace in the Middle East.

But, the agreement that the administration is selling as a peace agreement that will put Palestine on the path to statehood and fundamentally transform the region ultimately amounts to a U.S. war obligation for Saudi Arabia that would also give Mohammed bin Salman nuclear technology.

As the Gaza War demonstrates, the Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and other Arab states — did not help bring peace to the Middle East. But instead of pushing for a ceasefire that could end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and limit the chances of a wider regional conflagration, Biden is pushing to continue the legacy of the Abraham Accords in a move that only increases the likelihood of American troops being sent to fight another war.

Learn more in this new video by the Quincy Institute’s Khody Akhavi:

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Why is Joe Biden determined to put American soldiers on the line for Saudi Arabia's defense? US officials keep pushing the idea ...

Biden's Saudi War Obligation

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Analysis | Video Section

nuclear weapons

Top image credit: rawf8 via shutterstock.com

What will happen when there are no guardrails on nuclear weapons?

The New START Treaty — the last arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia — is set to expire next week, unless President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin make a last minute decision to renew it. Letting the treaty expire would increase the risk of nuclear conflict and open the door to an accelerated nuclear arms race. A coalition of arms control and disarmament groups is pushing Congress and the president to pledge to continue to observe the New START limits on deployed, strategic nuclear weapons by the US and Russia.

New START matters. The treaty, which entered into force on February 5, 2011 after a successful effort by the Obama administration to win over enough Republican senators to achieve the required two-thirds majority to ratify the deal, capped deployed warheads to 1,550 for each side, and established verification procedures to ensure that both sides abided by the pact. New START was far from perfect, but it did put much needed guardrails on nuclear development that reduced the prospect of an all-out arms race.

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Trump Hegseth Rubio

Top image credit: President Donald Trump, joined by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, announces plans for a “Golden Fleet” of new U.S. Navy battleships, Monday, December 22, 2025, at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Trump's realist defense strategy with interventionist asterisks

Washington Politics

The Trump administration has released its National Defense Strategy, a document that in many ways marks a sharp break from the interventionist orthodoxies of the past 35 years, but possesses clear militaristic impulses in its own right.

Rhetorically quite compatible with realism and restraint, the report envisages a more focused U.S. grand strategy, shedding force posture dominance in all major theaters for a more concentrated role in the Western Hemisphere and Indo-Pacific. At the same time however, it retains a rather status quo Republican view of the Middle East, painting Iran as an intransigent aggressor and Israel as a model ally. Its muscular approach to the Western Hemisphere also may lend itself to the very interventionism that the report ostensibly opposes.

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