President Vladimir Putin of Russia gestures that he can’t hear reporters as President Donald Trump looks on after both leaders left their aircraft to meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD Russia has launched a new and dangerous campaign of provocation against NATO. Over the past six weeks, it has sent drones over Poland and Romania and flown fighter jets into Estonia. Russ

My keyboard, so used to criticisms of President Donald Trump, is shocked as I hammer out this column. But Trump genuinely deserves great credit for (belatedly) ramming through the Gaza Strip ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees. Bravo, Mr. President. Yet what lies ahead is more prayer than plan, and to make this a lasting peace it would help if we all discarded the Manichaean paradigm of good versus evil that many Westerners apply to Israelis and Palestinians (whil

Crowds gather as a helicopter carrying hostages freed from captivity by Hamas in Gaza arrives at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. With Hamas freeing the last 20 living Israeli hostages and Israel releasing some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, President Trump proclaimed an ‘end’ to the war, but big questions about Gaza’s future remain. (Amit Elkayam/The New York Times) By BRET STEPHENS Though it seems absurd in retrospect, there were many in Ha

A supporter of President-elect Joe Biden raises the flag at a rally in Wilmington, Del., Saturday Oct. 7, 2020. (Damon Winter/The New York Times) By ROSS DOUTHAT When Donald Trump was first elected president, foreign policy seemed like the zone of greatest danger, the place where a political novice promising to remake the world order was most likely to blunder into true catastrophe. Instead, Trump’s first-term foreign policy was broadly successful, with more stability, fewer

New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks about the new government shutdown at a press conference at Battery Park in New York, Oct. 1, 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy were not given notice that a Trump-allied prosecutor in Virginia planned to indict James, New York’s attorney general, for bank fraud on Thursday, Oct. 11, according to people familiar with the matter. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times) By THE EDITORIAL BOARD President Donald Trump is once

Opposition leader María Corina Machado greets supporters during a rally in Guanare, Venezuela, July 17, 2024. The Norwegian Nobel...

ICE agents, in conjunction with local authorities, detain a person during immigration raids in Denver on Feb. 5, 2025. (Chet Strange/The...

By BRET STEPHENS If the war in the Gaza Strip ends this week — not a sure thing — it will be followed by a long battle about its lessons....