Wess Mitchell Archives

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

The Marathon Initiative | The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan.........
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

Wess Mitchell Interviewed in Asahi Shimbun

Asahi Shimbun | Wess Mitchell is interviewed by Kayoko Geji of Asahi Shimbun about 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 | Ukrainian offensives onto Russian soil, such as the one currently underway in the Kursk region, present an opportunity to end the war more quickly as part of a wider strategy of sequencing the United States’ geopolitical challenges.......
February 20, 2024

China’s “New” Diplomacy: Opportunities for American Statecraft

The Marathon Initiative | The People’s Republic of China has embarked on an ambitious diplomatic campaign to increase its influence in strategically-vital regions and burnish its credentials as a great power of global reach.…......
February 12, 2024

5 Rules for Superpowers Facing Multiple Conflicts

Foreign Policy | Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan are part of an unstable frontier—and require a more principled U.S. strategy......
November 16, 2023

America Is a Heartbeat Away From a War It Could Lose

Foreign Policy | Global war is neither a theoretical contingency nor the fever dream of hawks and militarists.....