Eric Edelman, who served as US ambassador to Turkey from 2003 to 2005, cited Giuliani's role as well as reports that Erdogan had personally mentioned the case with Tillerson and the Trump administration. "At a minimum," he said, those contacts give “the appearance that the Turkish government is engaged in hostage diplomacy.”

Congress has formed a new advisory committee of top defense thinkers, in order to provide a pathway forward for the Department of Defense…

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 established a Commission on the National Defense Strategy of The United States. 

The leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees have appointed members to a panel meant to make recommendations on the country’s national security strategy.

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments research fellow Katherine Blakeley noted that Congress has little time left to iron out a federal spending plan, with nominations and an ambitious GOP agenda that includes tax reform and a health care overhaul eating up the legislative calendar. 

During Donald Trump’s presidency and after, US foreign policy is likely to be wracked by crises.  From the instability and violence in Ukraine, to the unrelenting turmoil in the Middle East, to the provocations of an increasingly dangerous North Korea, to the dangers posed by a rising China in the South China Sea and elsewhere, American policymakers are currently facing crises more numerous and geopolitically significant than at any time in a generation.  Crises, however, are merely symptoms of deeper changes in the structure of global affairs.  And so for the United States to meet these challenges effectively, American officials will first need to come to grips with the fact that global politics are now changing in profound ways.  The fundamental fact of international politics today is that the post-Cold War era has ended, and the United States now confronts a more disordered, difficult, and contested global arena.