It wasn’t long ago that both heads of state and prominent policymakers could speak seriously about a world without nuclear weapons. But in the course of just a few years, nuclear concerns have come back in force. Arms control has broken down almost entirely. China has started a massive expansion of its arsenal, putting basic assumptions about deterrence in doubt. Vladimir Putin has threatened nuclear use in Ukraine—threats that were taken very seriously by American officials. And proliferation risks have grown, with regard to both American adversaries like Iran and American allies in Europe and Asia who may no longer trust security commitments from the United States.

Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi until recently oversaw nuclear policy in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council. In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, they call the situation nothing short of a “Category 5 hurricane.” And for the United States, that means putting nuclear strategy back at the center of foreign policy.

Editor-at-large Hugh Eakin spoke with Narang and Vaddi about this changing nuclear landscape and what the United States must do to survive this new nuclear age.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

For all its promise of disruption, Donald Trump’s first term as president transformed American foreign policy less than most critics feared and some supporters hoped. Alliances held up, the rules-based order largely endured, and American global leadership appeared resilient. When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he could proclaim “America is back” and proceed with a foreign policy that was in many ways quite traditional.

But Trump’s second term has been different. In just a few months, he has broken with decades of precedent on everything from trade to alliances. And as Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper argue in a new Foreign Affairs essay, this time there will be no going back. Trump’s presidency will fundamentally change American leadership and global order.

As senior officials on Biden’s National Security Council, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper helped chart the way forward after Trump’s first term. They argue that the task now is to understand and, in a few regards, learn from the consequences of Trump’s disruption. Contending with the world after Trump will be a tall order. But they also see it as an opportunity: a clean slate on which to write the future of American foreign policy.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

For years, U.S. presidents have complained that European governments spend far too little on their militaries, leaving the United States to pick up a disproportionate share of the tab for the transatlantic alliance. But in the past few years, Europe’s defense spending has exploded.

At the NATO summit last week, U.S. allies committed to spending five percent of GDP on defense. That’s far more than the two percent target U.S. policymakers long called for. It’s even more than the United States itself spends on defense—the result of both escalating pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump and escalating threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But Celeste Wallander, until recently the top defense official overseeing U.S. policy toward Europe and Russia, warns in a new Foreign Affairs essay that this transformation will have more complicated consequences than most Americans expect. A more capable Europe will also mean a more independent Europe, more willing to defy U.S. priorities and make demands for cooperation.

Wallander has been a key player in the transatlantic alliance as a top official on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon, including as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs during the Biden administration. She is now executive director of Penn Washington and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. The United States, in her view, will have to take a very different approach to the transatlantic alliance—at a time when it’s as vital as ever, in Ukraine and beyond.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.