For much of the post–Cold War era, U.S. foreign policy has been treated as a stabilizing force in global affairs. Yet in recent years and increasingly under the Trump administration, that assumption is now harder to sustain.

Across multiple regions and administrations, a consistent pattern emerges: expanded military engagement, widening use of sanctions, and long-term consequences that extend far beyond immediate policy goals. What was often framed as order-building has, in practice, generated its own forms of instability.

Reporter Van Jackson argues that the issue is not isolated missteps, but a deeper structural reliance on force as the default instrument of global policy—and explores what a shift away from that approach would require.

U.S. extraterritorial claims to Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal foreshadow a grim future, but the deeds of US foreign policy consist of a growing list of already actualized nightmares. In the past 24 months, the U.S. has directly attacked or materially supported bombings in Ecuador, Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Yemen, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and the Caribbean. A blockade of Cuba—an act of war—continues to ripen the island nation for an invasion in search of a rationale that would square it with the “national interest.”

Van Jackson, co-host of The Un-Diplomatic Podcast, explores the costs of U.S. global power—and the case for change. Read the full feature here.

The call for a reformation in how the United States relates to the world–grounded in seeing American power unromantically, from the standpoint of its victims–tracks the story of my life. I spent six years in the US Air Force, five more working in Obama’s Pentagon, and several more embedded in DC’s national security think tank scene–an unlikely resume for an anti-militarist. Like many in Washington, I confused power with virtue. And because I believed us to be an exceptional nation, the violent contradictions of our policies were a blind spot. But once Trump 1.0 made me peer underneath the flag to see the harms we were doing in its name, I couldn’t unsee them.

Going into the 2020 presidential election, it became increasingly obvious that foreclosing on future Donald Trumps (or worse) would require a reformation in how the US relates to the world. I’ve spent the intervening years trying to figure out and explain how to do that. This particular piece relays what is to be done in a way that connects diagnosis, prescription, and (hopefully) the raising of consciousness all at once.

—Van Jackson

Why do groceries keep getting more expensive? Next week’s feature looks at how decades of consolidation transformed the grocery industry—and why critics say the problem is much bigger than inflation.