Security

No major power has absorbed losses on this scale since 1945. Russia has bought with them less than 1.5 percent of Ukraine, and this spring its army began giving ground back.

The Trump administration has invested billions to break China's grip on critical minerals. Analysts say a policy contradiction is undermining the effort.

Ten days after a US-Iran deal, two tanker attacks have exposed the gap between market confidence and operational reality.

Iran has threatened to attack or tax the undersea cables running through the Strait of Hormuz. No body of international law has the tools to stop it.

Delcy Rodríguez's 90-day mandate expired in April. No elections have been called, and her hold on power rests on US backing.

Beijing has sent no ships into combat, lost no soldiers, and taken no side. It is also emerging from six weeks of war as one of its principal beneficiaries.

In six weeks of war in the Gulf, the US and its allies burned through more Patriot interceptors than the West produces in a year. Russia is seeking to take advantage of resulting supply shortfalls in Ukraine, whose government depends on those same missiles for its defense.

The Iraq war remains the standard against which US military adventurism gets measured. The Iran war may be on course to surpass it — not in US casualties, but in the breadth of its global consequences.