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In their compelling new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine,” retired Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts write: “There are currently five widely recognized dominions of warfare — land, sea, air, cyber and space — but it appears that a sixth should be added, namely information, which is more important now than ever before.” Indeed it is, and nothing better illustrates their point than the current Israel-Hamas war — and in particular, the controversy over the explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The horrific attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 (“Black Sabbath,” Israelis are calling it) resulted in 1,400 dead Israelis, 3,900 wounded and 199 taken hostage. Such mass-casualty attacks were once rare in the history of terrorism. Since Sept. 11, 2001, however, they have become disturbingly commonplace.

Tyrants and terrorists often underestimate the fighting capacity of liberal democracies, mistaking the pursuit of commerce for a lack of martial virtues and political divisions for lack of unity. Napoleon derided England as a “nation of shopkeepers” before losing to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Hitler thought the United States was “a decayed country,” “half Judaized and half Negrified,” before U.S. bombers reduced his cities to rubble and U.S. armies defeated his legions on D-Day and at the Battle of the Bulge. Osama bin Laden thought America was a “weak horse” before SEAL Team Six finished him off. So, too, Hamas has now made a grave miscalculation with its horrific and barbaric assault on Israel, which resulted in the worst one-day loss of life for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hezbollah will be making a similar mistake if it enters the war now.

Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas fighters into Israel is a grim reminder that, in the Middle East, war-fighting usually takes precedence over peacemaking. It is hard to imagine the Saudi-Israeli peace talks making much progress as Israel reels from the worst surprise attack it has suffered since the 1973 Yom Kippur War — and as it mobilizes for what is likely to be its largest ground assault into the Gaza Strip since Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Indeed, though we don’t know for sure why Hamas chose to strike exactly now, this could well be part of a larger attempt by Iran and its proxies — including Hamas — to prevent a historic reconciliation between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

In a statement released to CNN, John Kelly, a retired Marine general who lost his own son in combat in Afghanistan, not only wrote of Trump’s disdain for wounded and fallen veterans but also described Trump as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. … A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

The good news is that Congress, at the last minute, averted a government shutdown, at least for now. The bad news is that billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine were stripped from the continuing resolution as a sop to House Republicans who want to cut off the embattled democracy altogether.

Trying to understand MAGA foreign policy is a lot like banging your head against a wall: The pain only goes away when you stop.


The MAGA wing of the Republican Party increasingly wants to cut off aid to Ukraine (nearly half of House Republicans voted on Wednesday to do just that). They claim that we will be drawn into the Ukraine war ourselves, even though not a single U.S. soldier has been put in harm’s way. Yet many of the very same politicians appear eager to draw the United States into a bloody war with our southern neighbor — thus sending into battle the same armed forces that they routinely denigrate as a bunch of “woke” “losers.”

If Western allies fail to send Ukraine the weapons it needs, the odds increase of the war dragging on indefinitely, at a terrible cost to both Ukraine and Russia and a growing risk to the wider world.

I fear for America’s future and hence the world’s — more so now than ever. I had relaxed a bit after the last two national elections, which had seemed to signal a return to normalcy. Donald Trump was decisively defeated in 2020 and, in 2022, most of his fellow election deniers also lost in their bids to take over the election machinery of swing states.

The war in Ukraine — Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945 — features a bewildering combination of old and new technologies and tactics. The artillery duels, minefields and trench warfare are straight out of World War I, and yet much of the Ukrainian artillery fire is now being spotted by drones and adjusted on tablet computers linked via satellite to the internet. It sometimes feels like a mash-up of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Blade Runner.”

President Biden’s first visit to Vietnam on Sunday will mark another significant advance for U.S. national security interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Already, the administration has signed a deal to help Australia produce nuclear submarines, expanded U.S. military access in the Philippines, deepened U.S. relations with India, and brought South Korea and Japan together in a new trilateral relationship. Now, following his attendance at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, Biden is unveiling a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will expand economic and security cooperation with Hanoi. That’s a remarkable achievement given Vietnam’s long-standing ties to Moscow and Beijing, and one that will help counter China’s worrisome influence in the region.

Some U.S. military officials appear astonished that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made a rapid breakthrough — and, through anonymous quotes to the news media, they are laying the blame on the Ukrainian military. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Arnold, by contrast, isn’t the least bit surprised at the slow pace of the advance — and he’s blaming the Americans, not the Ukrainians.

Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow, once unthinkable, have now become routine. The Russian capital region was targeted for six straight days recently, and while the drones haven’t caused much damage, they disrupted flight operations at airports and have helped to bring the war home. Also this month, other suspected Ukrainian drones destroyed a Russian bomber at an air base south of St. Petersburg and struck a railway station in the Kursk region of western Russia. The Kremlin’s response appeared to be limited to expressions of outrage.

The most fitting epitaph for Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin was delivered by the shotgun-wielding hit man Omar Little on “The Wire”: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” There’s still much we don’t know for certain (and might never know), but that pearl of wisdom was confirmed by Prigozhin’s apparent death Wednesday after a private plane he was on reportedly crashed north of Moscow.

For the past decade, Americans have been transfixed by the specter of a rising China. We’ve worried that the Chinese economy would destroy American jobs and that the Chinese military would draw the United States into a war over Taiwan. Now comes evidence that China’s economy is stagnating — and those problems are unlikely to go away, because China’s population is rapidly aging and declining. The “Chinese century” might be over before it has begun.

It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Friday’s summit at Camp David among President Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. This represents another major step toward the establishment of a new trilateral alliance that could help all three nations cope with the growing threats from North Korea and China in a world destabilized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

There is something thrilling about seeing former president Donald Trump arraigned in court: It shows that no one is above the law. There are many countries where such a spectacle would be unthinkable — where heads of state can never be removed from office, much less prosecuted, no matter how many laws they break.

I came of age on stories of hard-working kibbutzim turning desert soil green and heroic Israeli soldiers rescuing hostages at Entebbe....Yet, while I retain affection for Israel, I often feel as if I do not recognize what it has become. This is a familiar feeling for me, since I am similarly befuddled by modern America: How did we turn into a land of book banners and covid deniers? Both Israel and the United States have been disfigured by the rise of populist rabble-rousers who have tapped into ugly and unsavory prejudices.

Even before Donald Trump was elected president, I wrote that he was America’s No. 1 security threat. Today, I am convinced that Israel’s No. 1 security threat comes from its Trump-like prime minister: Benjamin Netanyahu.

If you want to know the differences on national security between Democrats and MAGA Republicans, it all boils down to one word: Helsinki.