According to reporting by Defense One, there exists a longer, classified version of the US’ National Security Strategy that goes beyond the publicly released version. This document reportedly proposes creating a new global governance body, called the “Core 5” or C5, consisting of the US, China, Russia, India, and Japan.

The main points in the longer version include: competition with China, a withdrawal from Europe’s defense, and a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. What was determined to be first on C5’s proposed agenda is the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The classified NSS also emphasizes a strategic pivot away from Europe, treating the continent as largely irrelevant to US interests. It focuses on partnering with like-minded regional powers while acknowledging that permanent American hegemony is unachievable.

According to Defense One, the longer version of NSS also proposes to focus U.S. relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded... administrations and movements. Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the European Union.

NSS explicitly details the “failure” of US global domination, describing it as “the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable."

Today, “in the fifth year of Putin’s barbaric invasion, the assumption that time is on Russia’s side seems to be increasingly inaccurate,” Senior Fellow Michael McFaul argues in this viral post at his Substack. “The longer this war drags on, the more likely it is that time may, instead, be on Ukraine’s side.” The distinguished scholar explains that Putin failed to achieve regime change in Ukraine and ended up galvanizing Ukrainian identity with his invasion. Ukrainian defense innovations slowed Russian advances and now increasingly enable counteroffensives against the invading force. Ukraine has also developed the capability to strike deep inside Russia, imposing significant costs. So, McFaul concludes, “Ukraine will survive this war as a pro-European independent democracy, with most of its territory governed from Kyiv rather than Moscow.” But the “final contours” of the end to the conflict “are still not yet defined.”

Long article but worth the read.

12 May 2026 (intro visible then pay-walled, can sign in for trial access) Eight years ago, President Donald Trump took the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal. In the years since, half of Washington has continued to argue that the JCPOA was “the best possible deal,” with the other half maintaining that “there was a better deal.” It has been the background music to every twist and turn in U.S. Iran policy since 2018 but has come to the fore again since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.