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Drones, particularly aerial drones (or what the U.S. military calls “unmanned aerial systems”), are all the rage in warfare. Hailed as the new wonder weapon of the 21st century, they are employed in combat by Ukraine and Russia, and by Israel and Hezbollah. Drones conduct surveillance missions (making it almost impossible for ground forces to advance undetected) and strike missions — either by doing an explosives-laden kamikaze dive at a target or by firing a missile or dropping a bomb. And drones are so cheap and widely available that any armed group in the world can now field its own air force — or its own navy. Ukraine, lacking a conventional navy of its own, used sea drones to disable at least a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and reopen the Black Sea to Ukrainian exports.

No one should shed any tears over the death of Hasan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, in an Israeli airstrike Friday. He was a terrorist kingpin with the deaths of countless innocents — including Israelis, Americans, Syrians and fellow Lebanese — on his hands. His demise was, as President Joe Biden said, “a measure of justice for his many victims.”

In his first-ever bid for political office, former actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966, defeating two-term incumbent Gov. Pat Brown in a landslide. There was good reason for Democrats to fear that a radical right-winger had taken control of what even then was the nation’s most populous state.

If you want to see how nations can stumble into wars without end, the ongoing (and rapidly escalating) conflict between Israel and Hezbollah provides a textbook example. Ever since Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon, has been showing support for its partners in the “axis of resistance” with relentless rocket and drone fire into northern Israel. About 60,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate their homes and still have not been able to come back, even with a new school year beginning. One particularly gruesome Hezbollah rocket attack killed 12 children in the Golan Heights.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is visiting the United States this week — culminating in a Thursday meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — with his country facing a crucial period in its battle to repel Russian invaders.

People have been waging organized warfare ever since the dawn of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia — mostly modern-day Iraq — more than 6,000 years ago. Never in that time, however, has any military force experienced what Hezbollah has seen during the past few days. On Tuesday, thousands of pagers used by the Lebanese terrorist organization exploded, killing at least 12 people and injuring nearly 3,000. On Wednesday, more electronic devices belonging to Hezbollah — this time, reportedly, including handheld radios, a.k.a. walkie-talkies — also exploded, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 300 others.

When it comes to the role of commander in chief, U.S. voters face a choice in November between someone who has done the job and someone who hasn’t. Normally this would be an area where experience trumps, so to speak, inexperience. But Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump showed why Harris is actually a much safer bet on national security policy. That’s the case even though Harris has been only an adviser, not the actual decision-maker — and, as far as an outsider can tell, not a particularly influential one.

Remember the Islamic State? The vicious terrorist group took advantage of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 to stage a major offensive across both countries. By the end of 2014, it controlled roughly 30 percent of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq and was carrying out horrifying massacres and atrocities. The Obama administration committed U.S. air power and advisers to help the Iraqi military and Syrian Democratic Forces (mainly Kurds) battle back. By 2019, ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed in a U.S. raid, its last redoubts had fallen and then-President Donald Trump claimed “100 percent” success in the anti-ISIS campaign.

Donald Trump’s far-right worldview has a lot of critics, many of them Republicans, who argue that Ronald Reagan would “roll over” or “turn over” in his grave if he could see what is happening to his old party. The Trump-dominated, populist-nationalist GOP is certainly very different from the conservative party that Reagan led in the 1980s, and Trump is a very different figure, in both outlook and personality, from Reagan. But it’s also true that, however much Trump has changed the Republican Party since 2016 (and the changes have been enormous), the roots of Trumpism can be traced back to Reagan—and, before him, to Barry Goldwater and even earlier figures on the American right. Uncomfortable as it is for many Reagan fans to admit, the 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways. These similarities are a reminder that Trump did not emerge from nowhere, and that ridding the Republican Party of his influence won’t be easy.

When Republicans strategize about how to deal with China today, many of them point to President Ronald Reagan’s confrontational approach toward the Soviet Union as a model to emulate. H. R. McMaster, who served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump, argued: “Reagan had a clear strategy for victory in the global contest with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s approach—applying intensive economic and military pressure to a superpower adversary—became foundational to American strategic thinking. It hastened the end of Soviet power and promoted a peaceful conclusion to the multi-decade Cold War.” A trio of conservative foreign policy experts—Randy Schriver, Dan Blumenthal, and Josh Young—made the case that the next president “should draw upon the example of former President Ronald Reagan in taking hold of China policy,” citing “the intent to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union” that “permeated” Reagan-era national security documents. And in Foreign Affairs, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and the former Republican representative Mike Gallagher cited Reagan to argue that “the United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it.”

The decision by French authorities to arrest Pavel Durov, the billionaire, Russian-born founder of the Telegram social media app, has sent his fellow tech bros into a predictable frenzy. X owner Elon Musk posted “#FreePavel” and warned of a near future in Europe where “you’re being executed for liking a meme.” Tech investor David Sacks suggested it was all part of a plot to shut down popular social media sites, beginning with TikTok (whose Chinese owners will have to sell or stop operating the app in the United States under a newly passed U.S. law). Chris Pavlovski, chief executive of the video-sharing platform Rumble, wrote that France had “crossed a red line” and added, “Rumble will not stand for this behavior and will use every legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right.”

For those of us old enough to have memories of Ronald Reagan, it is startling to realize that as many years have passed since the end of his presidency as between his inauguration and the end of World War II. Much has been obscured in the intervening 35 years about who he was, what he believed and how he accomplished so much. Reagan is frequently cited but often misunderstood. He is a convenient talking point for Republicans and Democrats alike, but his actual record has receded into the mists of time — obscured by a political mythology that grows stronger with every year.

When Ukrainian forces launched their surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6, the widespread expectation was that this was merely a fast in-and-out operation, akin to the cavalry raids undertaken by both Confederate and Union forces behind enemy lines during the Civil War. More than two weeks later, it is now clear that Ukraine is attempting something much more ambitious: As Ukrainian leaders have explained, their forces are bent on occupying Russian territory indefinitely to create “a buffer zone” against Russian attacks and a bargaining chip for use in any future negotiations.

In economics, “moral hazard” is a term for what happens when one party has an incentive to engage in risky behavior because some other actor will protect it from the consequences of its own actions. We are now seeing how moral hazard works in the Israel-U.S. alliance as the Middle East stands poised on the brink of a major conflict between Israel and Iran.

As the war in Ukraine settled into a stalemate, two assumptions became prevalent among analysts: First, that it is nearly impossible to achieve any surprise on a battlefield blanketed by drones. Second, that it is nearly impossible to mount fast-moving offensive operations, given the extensive defenses erected by both sides. Ukraine has challenged both assumptions over the past few days with its surprise, lightning-fast thrust into Russia’s Kursk region — an area familiar to military historians as the site, during World War II, of the biggest tank battle in history.

Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is now nearly 10 months old and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, its war against Hezbollah is escalating: After a Hezbollah rocket struck a soccer field on Sunday in the Golan Heights, killing 12 children, Israel responded on Tuesday with an airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Israel is also being blamed by Iran, the chief supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah, for the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which was announced early Wednesday; the mullahs vow revenge. A larger regional conflict could break out at any moment.

We don’t yet know what will happen in the wake of Sunday’s stolen election in Venezuela, but we can already be relatively certain of one thing: U.S. policy toward that country has been a dismal, bipartisan failure. And, sad to say, there isn’t a more-promising approach on the horizon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington to address a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday for the fourth time — the most of any foreign leader — at a particularly fraught moment for his embattled country.

After learning of Abraham Lincoln’s murder in 1865, future British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli remarked: “Assassination has never changed the history of the world.” It was true that the most famous political assassination to date, that of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., did not change the course of history. By appointing himself dictator, Caesar had already destroyed the Roman Republic. His death would merely lead to a new line of emperors beginning with his distant relative Augustus.

There was absolutely nothing surprising about the outcome of the British general election on Thursday: As expected, the Labour Party won in a landslide, capturing 412 seats to the Conservative Party’s 121. By contrast, the French legislative election on Sunday was a shocker: After finishing first in the initial round of voting, the far-right National Rally plummeted to third, winning 143 seats, behind the left-wing New Popular Front (181 seats) and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition (more than 160). No party has won an absolute majority in the National Assembly. France might now face a period of political paralysis, but that’s better than the Marine Le Pen-led right-wing alternative.