Wess Mitchell Archives

July 8, 2025

The State Department Overhaul Is Long Overdue

Foreign Policy | The State Department is in urgent need of reform. Over the past three decades, it has expanded its remit into countless functions and causes that are well outside its core mission. This is not just an inefficient use of taxpayer resources.........
July 2, 2025

America is overextended. Here’s a better way forward.

Washington Post | “ The “simultaneity problem,” as it’s known in military circles, has been the most serious grand strategic challenge facing the United States for some time now.”........
June 23, 2025

Wess Mitchell Quoted in The New Yorker

The New Yorker | “I don’t share the fear of some Europeans that the United States is out to abandon them, but if that fear leads them to finally take defense more seriously, then maybe it’s not a bad thing. I’ve yet to see anything else that works.”........
May 1, 2025

The Return of Great-Power Diplomacy: How Strategic Dealmaking Can Fortify American Power

Foreign Affairs | After the end of the Cold War, the United States moved away from using negotiations to promote the national interest. .......
October 18, 2024

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

Internasjonalt Forum | Interview with Elbridge Colby: An exclusive interview that the head of the editorial committee, Ciwan Can, conducted with Elbridge Colby about how a possible victory for Donald Trump could affect the war in Ukraine and security in Europe. ........
September 23, 2024

CSDS Brussels: Roundtable

Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy | Dr. Mitchell spoke at the Brussels School of Governance about how great powers use diplomacy throughout history in a talk titled "Skillful Statecraft Across the Ages."....
September 17, 2024

How Biden Let Europe Slip Away

Wall Street Journal | On trade, defense and energy, Washington has failed to shore up the trans-Atlantic alliance.......
September 10, 2024

Interview: Asahi Shimbun

Asahi Shimbun | Wess Mitchell sits down with Kayoko Geji of Asahi Shimbun to discuss the war in Ukraine and the future of security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific theaters......
September 6, 2024

U.S. Strategy Should Be Europe First, Then Asia

Foreign Policy | Without a secure Europe, the United States risks becoming a hemispheric potentate on the margins of the world....
August 15, 2024

The Geopolitical Opportunity of Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive

Foreign Policy | Soil is the single most important leverage that Ukraine can amass, more valuable than sanctions relief or other economic incentives to Russia. ......