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Donald Trump’s second-term relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky got off to a disastrous start. On Feb. 19, 2025, the U.S. president blasted the courageous Ukrainian leader as a “modestly successful comedian” and a “Dictator without Elections” who “has done a terrible job.” Nine days later, Trump berated Zelensky in the Oval Office for not ending the war that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin had started. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump told him before temporarily suspending U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

As President Donald Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they are also working with the Kremlin to sell $20 billion in international assets owned by the Russian oil company Lukoil to a group of investors that includes their own business partners.

Boy, that went south fast.

It wasn’t long ago that President Trump was actually complimenting President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and promising to let Ukraine build its own Patriot missiles. In fact, the Patriot decision was conveyed by Trump to Zelensky just two weeks ago on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

I supported the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, convinced that it would lead to greater democratization in the Middle East. We all know how that worked out. Since then, I don’t have a lot of certainties about the world in general, and the Middle East in particular. I’m not even sure what to make of the removal last week of the last U.S. troops from Iraq —1,500 personnel in all, out of the more than 1.5 million who served during a deployment lasting more than 23 years. Instead of hot takes, what I have are memories, concerns and uncertainties.

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has dragged into its eighth month. But lately there has been some good news for the United States: More oil is getting out of the Middle East, at least more non-Iranian oil, than at any point since the United States and Israel launched the conflict on February 28.

In one respect, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a game changer. But in another way it wasn’t. By sinking or damaging the U.S. Navy’s battleships on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese forced the United States to rely instead on aircraft carriers. But neither the Pearl Harbor attack nor even the attack nine hours later on Clark Field in the Philippines — which devastated Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s air force on the ground — shook the U.S. military’s reliance on bases within the enemy’s strike range. Indeed, much of the Pacific campaign that followed consisted of landings by U.S. soldiers and Marines to secure island bases to enable air attacks on Japan.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been notable for some head-spinning changes in U.S. foreign policy. Who could have predicted that Trump would launch a cold war with Canada and a love-in with the Chavista regime in Venezuela?

Donald Trump is a master at creating crises and then resolving them by claiming he won a massive victory when the status quo barely changed.

There is no moral comparison between Ukraine and Iran: The former is a liberal democracy, the latter a vicious dictatorship whose rulers kill their own people to stay in power. But in purely military terms, there are a number of parallels between the wars they are fighting against much larger adversaries — Russia and the United States.

With the regular churn and chaos of the Trump administration, it’s easy to overlook the drama unfolding over at the Pentagon. Last week, Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the Army and a close ally of Vice President JD Vance, resigned. His departure crowns several months of turnover at the highest levels of the military. I talked to two of my colleagues who follow the military closely — Max Boot and Ted Johnson — to talk about what’s going on. — Damir Marusic

The Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin probably did not utter the maxim often attributed to him: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” But it’s an accurate description of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s methodology.

It was obvious from the start that appointing Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News weekend host — as secretary of defense was a spectacularly bad idea: He was, by far, the least qualified person ever to lead the Pentagon. So, too, was it obvious that Hegseth’s decision to fire more than two dozen senior officers and to block the promotions of at least 45 officers — for reasons he never explained — was a spectacularly bad idea that would deny the armed forces the veteran, apolitical leadership they need.

Whatever else you may say about him, President Donald Trump is a consummate salesman. As former House speaker Newt Gingrich once noted to me, the former real estate tycoon did a brilliant job with his campaign slogan: It wasn’t “Trump for President”; it was “Make America Great Again.” Despite his outsize ego, he kept the focus on the country, not on his own ambition. But Trump’s normally deft marketing touch has deserted him during his second term.

As a defense hawk, I’ve long been in favor of more military spending — up to and including when the defense budget hit $1 trillion this year. But I’m experiencing real sticker shock at the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion request for next year. In inflation-adjusted terms, that 50 percent increase would result in the largest defense budget ever — exceeding even the World War II peak.

The unnecessary war with Iran continues to drag on, with no end in sight, more than five months after it started. There are many reasons for this quagmire, but a significant part of the explanation is President Donald Trump’s schizophrenic approach. He veers between conciliation and confrontation, alternatingly praising Iranian leaders as “very rational people” and denouncing them as “scum” — with metronomic regularity.

Israel is the mouse that roared. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depends on US support for his country’s security and his political survival—Israel couldn’t attack Iran without the US military protecting it against Iranian missiles and drones—but he also feels free to ignore President Trump’s demands whenever he fears that going along with Trump would create a political problem for him at home.

I have great respect for Andrew Sullivan as a writer and thinker, and I agree with many of his views. In particular, I agree with him that “the cult of Trump and the cult of Woke” are both an abomination—the former a manifestation of the far-right, the latter a manifestation of the far left. Where he’s lost me is by engaging in what looks like moral equivalence by suggesting, as he does in his latest Weekly Dish, that these twin cults are an equal danger to the republic.

There are many appalling spectacles in Washington these days but, for sheer grotesquerie, it is hard to beat yesterday’s Senate hearings in which one Republican senator after another competed to see who could make the most far-fetched and offensive allegations against Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is either the luckiest or the shrewdest member of the Trump Cabinet — maybe both. His good fortune has been that President Donald Trump has handed the most intractable diplomatic problems — ending the U.S.-Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars — to someone else: special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and, in the case of Iran, Rubio’s presumed rival for the 2028 Republican nomination, Vice President JD Vance. Neither set of negotiations is showing much progress, but Rubio has escaped the fallout.

Last week, a Blue Angels jet buzzed a crowded beach in Pensacola, Florida. Typically the Navy’s elite flight-demonstration squadron does not fly lower than 500 feet over people on the ground. In this case, the jet was probably less than 100 feet from the beachgoers.