Comparative advantage is the economic principle that a country, firm, or individual should specialize in producing the goods or services they can make at the lowest opportunity cost, even if others are absolutely more efficient at producing everything. At the national level, this means countries export the goods for which
We have come to expect strategic incoherence bordering on malfeasance from the Trump administration, but we are entering a period in which four interacting geopolitical risks threaten to upset an increasingly precarious equilibrium. The first is the continuing conflict with Iran, which has given Tehran considerable leverage. Iran is now
Three recent developments illustrate the consequences of declining confidence in the United States as the principal guarantor of the postwar security order. Under President Trump, American credibility has deteriorated as alliances have been treated transactionally, diplomacy has become inconsistent, and the war with Iran has consumed significant stocks of critical
Conservatives have come a long way since William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in National Review’s inaugural issue that the magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” At its
The proposition that Ukraine should exchange territory for peace is untenable unless the remaining Ukrainian state receives binding and credible guarantees that it will be defended. Political assurances, commitments to consult, and promises of future arms deliveries are insufficient. Ukraine has already experienced the limitations of such assurances. Any viable
Canada cannot rapidly or painlessly decouple from the United States. Nor should it. The two economies are deeply integrated, the United States remains Canada’s largest export market, and geography gives American buyers an enormous structural advantage. A sudden rupture would hurt Canada more severely than it would hurt the
While conventional national-security coverage focuses heavily on overt threats such as nuclear weapons, carrier groups, and high-level intellectual-property theft, there is a quieter structural vulnerability within the United States that could have catastrophic consequences: long procurement delays for large power transformers and the country’s heavy dependence
I’m growing increasingly frustrated with how Hollywood treats female superheroes. They create uninteresting characters with little to motivate them beyond trauma and resentment. Men are allowed to be optimistic and undamaged. A girl clearly cannot be strong and inspiring without being damaged in some way. The contrast between Supergirl
In the 2010s, Russian diplomats and GRU-linked personnel were reported to have maintained contacts with the Hungarian National Front, Magyar Nemzeti Arcvonal, or MNA, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group based around Bőny. On 26 October 2016, the group’s leader, István Győrkös, shot and killed Péter Pálvölgyi, an officer
Why the War No Longer Serves Russia, and Why Escalation Risk Is Rising Executive Summary * The war increasingly appears to be a negative-value proposition for Russia as a state. The costs in manpower, equipment, fiscal stability, demographics, energy infrastructure, and geopolitical position are now far greater than any plausible
The concepts of conservatism and liberalism are increasingly outmoded in today’s politics. One side now professes belief in a kind of ethnonationalist, big-government, protectionist, America First ideology. The other too often pushes social and economic ideologies that focus excessively on group claims, redistribution, and suspicion of wealth creation.
Reform, elite capture, and the erosion of republican equilibria Core thesis: The Gracchi brothers correctly identified a substantive crisis in the Roman Republic, but they misdiagnosed the level at which the crisis had to be solved. Land reform was necessary, yet by the late second century BCE institutional rigidity and