Stephen M. Walt
- Indexed articles, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 29, 2026
- Outlet visibility, for Foreign Policy
- Top 500K sites
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 6, 2026
Latest articles
Why Nobody Can End the War in Ukraine (opens the original)
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Understanding the conflict four years on. It’s been over a year since I wrote anything lengthy about the war in Ukraine, and I regret the omission. Other events have captured my attention, alas, even though the conflict is a continuing tragedy and is still casting a significant shadow over events elsewhere. Our fearless leader Ravi Agrawal’s recent account of his visit brought my attention back and led me to reflect on where the conflict is today and what might be done to bring it to an end afte
What Machiavelli Would Say About Trump (opens the original)
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Paul Krugman put up a nice post on his Substack last week, pointing out how other countries are rapidly losing their fear of U.S. President Donald Trump and starting to join forces and push back against his erratic and predatory approach to foreign policy. He’s right, but what caught my eye was when Krugman cited Niccolo Machiavelli’s dictum that to be a successful prince, “it is better to be feared than loved.” Ideally, a prince should seek to be both, but Machiavelli observes that this feat is
Top Signs You’re Heading for a Quagmire (opens the original)
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In a world where great-power competition is intensifying, a revealing test of foreign-policy acumen is a country’s ability to avoid costly conflicts or other endeavors that waste resources, divert attention, and ultimately leave them weaker rather than stronger. In other words: staying out of quagmires. Great powers are often happy to see their rivals stumble into strategic quicksand and may even try to encourage such developments, but wise leaders try to stay out of this kind of trouble. In rec
Welcome to the New Defense-Dominant World (opens the original)
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Get audio access with any FP subscription. Russia’s ill-advised invasion of Ukraine and the United States’ equally stupid war with Iran suggest that we have entered a new world of “defense dominance,” a world where larger and more powerful states find it hard to conquer territory or to get much weaker states to make big concessions. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres apparently thinks so, telling the Financial Times, “If you look at what happened in recent times, the capacity of s
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About IR Grad School (opens the original)
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Get audio access with any FP subscription. Are you thinking about going to graduate school to study international affairs? If so, this column is for you. I’m going to try to summarize my best advice on 1) how to think about this decision, and 2) how to maximize your chances of getting into the school(s) that you think you’d like to attend. But first, a few disclaimers. This is just one person’s opinion, and you may get different (and possibly even more useful) advice from others, including facul
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