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. 

Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, discusses why academics and policymakers so often disagree—and why that divide may be exaggerated by some.

With Hal Brands. In the seven decades since World War II, Americans have forgotten the risks of massive global calamity--and we may soon be reminded.  That's according to two foreign policy experts, who say the country needs to provide global leadership, or risk a dangerous collapse of international politics.

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.

After prolonged internal debate, the Donald Trump administration seems to be nearing a decision on how to proceed in America’s long war in Afghanistan. Trump’s military advisers -- along with his national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster -- are said to be pushing a plan to send several thousand additional troops into that conflict. Can this “mini-surge” succeed? It all depends on how success is defined. If the goal is to decisively turn the tide of the war and force the Taliban to make peace, then the answer will almost certainly be "no." Yet if the administration seeks more modest but still meaningful goals in Afghanistan, a mini-surge may do the trick.

In addition, some US think-tanks have backed a continued US troop presence in Iraq. A report by the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments called for the presence of 5,000-20,000 US troops in Post-ISIS Iraq to ensure that another ISIS-like insurgency does not emerge.