The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit founded in 1949 that works toward a free, just, and equitable society through dialogue, leadership, and action on challenges facing the United States and the world.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Deterrence Depends on Sustained Allied Capacity
Former U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel argues that China’s escalating coercion around Taiwan will test whether the United States can turn its alliances with Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan into a barrier to a quarantine or blockade. Alongside Anja Manuel and Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove, he contends that military arrangements remain substantial but deterrence is weakened by inadequate stockpiles, competing crises and doubts about U.S. political resolve. Their central claim is that allies can add capacity and coordinate more closely, but cannot replace sustained American leadership.
Israel’s War Has Made an Unchanged U.S. Aid Relationship Unsustainable
The panel’s central dispute was whether Washington can make its security relationship with Israel more conditional—or phase down aid—without sacrificing the leverage and regional influence that a deeper break could forfeit. Dan Shapiro argued for a managed transition that preserves Israel’s deterrence and U.S. influence; Dahlia Scheindlin saw conditionality as an increasingly durable political response to Israeli policy, prolonged war and civilian harm. Ted Deutch countered that aid policy cannot be serious if it treats Israel as solely responsible for a conflict in which Hamas and other regional actors retain agency.
Iran’s Military Losses Have Not Ended Its Leverage Over Hormuz
Former U.S. national security official Robert Greenway argues that U.S. military action has reduced Iran’s nuclear, missile and drone capabilities enough to justify eliminating its remaining ability to threaten regional trade and energy flows. Senator Chris Murphy counters that Tehran’s survival and continued leverage over the Strait of Hormuz have left Washington with a weaker hand in any future negotiation. Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour adds that a militarily diminished Iran may nonetheless emerge more confident that coercion works.
Safadi Says Regional Security Requires Palestinian Statehood and Sovereign Borders
Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi argues that the region’s wars cannot be contained through ceasefires or military arrangements alone: durable security requires respect for state sovereignty, lawful access to shipping and humanitarian aid, and a political path to Palestinian statehood. In a conversation moderated by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Safadi says Jordan supports diplomacy with Iran, a gradual restoration of Lebanon’s state control over weapons, and Gaza aid access independent of stalled governance plans, while warning that Israeli settlement expansion is closing off the two-state solution.
Türkiye’s S-400 Dispute Still Blocks a Deeper U.S. Defense Relationship
Akif Çağatay Kılıç, Türkiye’s chief adviser on national security and foreign policy, argues that Ankara’s geography requires it to keep working relationships open across rival blocs, from NATO and the EU to Russia, Ukraine and Iran. He presents Türkiye as a venue for diplomacy rather than a power able to dictate settlements, while acknowledging that its own defense ties with the United States remain constrained by the unresolved dispute over its Russian S-400 system and access to F-35 aircraft.
Military Leverage Alone Cannot Secure Lasting Political Outcomes
Former national security officials Stephen Hadley, Robert O’Brien and Michèle Flournoy, alongside AEI’s Marc Thiessen, disagreed over whether Trump’s use of military force, tariffs and allied pressure can produce arrangements that last beyond his presidency. Thiessen and O’Brien argued that coercion has forced overdue changes in allied defense spending and constrained adversaries; Flournoy and Hadley warned that military damage, strained alliances and inconsistent signals do not by themselves constitute strategy. Their central question was whether immediate leverage can be converted into durable deterrence, political settlements and institutions.
Democratic Transitions in the Americas Depend on Public Ownership
Democratic transitions in the Americas risk losing legitimacy when security-first or externally coordinated roadmaps lack credible evidence that power will change hands and domestic political ownership. Leopoldo López argued that Venezuela needs visible steps toward a credible election and the dismantling of repressive institutions; OAS secretary general Albert Ramdin backed country-specific pathways that extend beyond elections to durable governance. Former Haitian foreign minister Dominique Dupuy warned that Haiti’s prolonged interim rule shows how transition plans can perpetuate exclusion when the public remains outside the political process.
Tariff Access Is Becoming a Supply-Chain Security Test
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer argues that U.S. trade policy should use tariffs, market access and security conditions to redirect production toward the United States and North America while limiting exposure to China-linked supply chains. He describes a durable hierarchy of access—not a return to pre-tariff trade—in which companies can plan around known rates but must meet stricter origin, investment and export-control rules. China, in his account, is a commercial relationship to be bounded rather than reformed through negotiation.
Energy Security Is Shifting From Just-in-Time to Just-in-Case
Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency argues that energy security is shifting from a just-in-time model built around cheap supply to a more expensive “just in case” system of reserves, alternate routes, grids and trusted partners. Alongside Meghan O’Sullivan of Harvard and former U.S. deputy energy secretary Daniel Poneman, he contends that disruptions from Hormuz to mineral refining expose a wider set of dependencies: electricity and nuclear fuel, transmission capacity, processing and long-term finance. The central constraint, they argue, is not simply resource availability but the ability to build and sustain resilient supply systems.
Space Security Depends on Networks, Ground Systems and Supply Chains
Space has become a civilian and military dependency whose security architecture has not kept pace with the ways adversaries can disrupt it, argues Kari Bingen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The panel’s broader case is that securing space now means protecting an interconnected orbital and terrestrial system: proliferated constellations may make satellites harder to disable, but ground networks, terminals, data links and layered suppliers remain vulnerable to attack or compromise. As commercial activity expands, Heather Pringle of the Space Foundation argues, the rules and norms for managing this increasingly congested and contested domain have lagged behind.
Free Societies Must Adapt Without Abandoning Their Ideals
Anja Manuel, executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum, argued that rapid shifts in artificial intelligence, conflict and economic power require leaders to test “too hard, audacious” ideas rather than merely react to events. Opening the forum, she said adaptation must remain anchored in the ideals of free societies, as technology, wars and new growth centres reshape the international order.
The Security Forum Culminates Year-Round Work on U.S. Strategy
Nicholas Burns, co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group and former U.S. ambassador to China, framed the Aspen Security Forum as the annual culmination of work conducted throughout the year on foreign policy, defense, military affairs and homeland security. He said the group’s model links off-the-record discussions with U.S. military services, sustained homeland-security work and focused deliberation on U.S.-China relations and America’s wider position in East Asia.
The “Nones” Category Obscures Americans’ Spiritual and Moral Lives
Harvard’s Richard Parker and USC’s Diane Winston argue that journalists should not treat the 29% of Americans labeled religious “nones” as people without belief, moral commitments or sources of meaning. In a Faith Angle Forum discussion, Winston contends that the secular-sacred divide obscures how religion, politics, markets, culture and technology shape one another, while Parker warns that survey categories and polling trends cannot provide a full account of a person’s life. Their shared prescription is to report beyond affiliation labels without collapsing every cultural or political commitment into religion.
Political Neutrality Leaves Immigration Advocacy Threshold Unresolved
Latter-day Saint apostle Clark Gilbert argues that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should remain politically neutral on immigration while serving members affected by enforcement through legal aid, education, humanitarian assistance and local ministry. At the Faith Angle Forum, journalists pressed him on whether care within the existing system is enough when detention and deportation threaten congregations. Gilbert defended neutrality as protection against partisan capture but did not identify when public opposition to government policy would be required.
Partisan Identity Is Reshaping Religious Belief and Political Mobilization
University of Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell argues that religion and politics shape each other: partisan identity can drive changes in religious affiliation, moral judgment, and the meaning Americans attach to labels such as Christian or secular. In a Faith Angle Forum discussion with New York Times *Believing* newsletter writer Lauren Jackson, he says Republican appeals to threatened Christian identity remain potent but limited, while Jackson hears from religiously and politically unsettled readers seeking belonging, hope, and a public language that does not reduce faith to a voting bloc.
America’s Economic Edge Requires Hard Choices on Deficits, Housing, and Allies
Former Federal Reserve vice-chair Roger W. Ferguson Jr., in conversation with Piper Sandler chief global economist Nancy Lazar for the Hurst Lecture Series, argues that the US economy remains fundamentally strong but increasingly dependent on difficult political choices. Ferguson points to AI investment, deep capital markets, Fed credibility and the dollar as enduring advantages, while warning that deficits, housing shortages, immigration policy, inflation’s aftereffects and fraying alliances threaten the system that supports them. His confidence is conditional: the US can correct course, but only if policymakers accept costs voters have largely resisted.
Israeli-Palestinian Artists Keep a Shared Jerusalem Space Open Through War
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Feel Beit co-directors Riman Barakat and Karen Brunwasser present their Jerusalem cultural center as a test of Israeli-Palestinian partnership under war, not apart from it. They argue that the center has survived since October 7 because it does not ask artists or audiences to mute their identities or grief, but uses music, performance and conversation to keep a shared civic space open when politics and violence are pulling it apart.
Adobe and Robotics Recast Ancient Craft as Future Infrastructure
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, artists Beatriz Cortez and Ronald Rael argue that ancient technologies should be treated not as primitive artifacts but as active systems of intelligence. Through Cortez’s work with migration, steel, plants, and Indigenous temporalities, and Rael’s experiments with adobe, robotics, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, they make the case that innovation depends less on leaving ancestral knowledge behind than on bringing it into contact with contemporary tools.
Liberal Education Is a Condition of the American Republic
Shilo Brooks, president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, argues that America’s 250th anniversary should be treated as a test of civic formation, not an exercise in commemoration. In a conversation with the Aspen Institute’s Todd Breyfogle, Brooks makes the case that self-government depends on liberal education: citizens reading seriously, examining their own false convictions, practicing moderation, and learning to argue without contempt. His warning is that civic ignorance is not just an educational failure but a constitutional problem for a republic in which the people are meant to rule.
Weak Voting Protections Keep American Election Law on the Battlefield
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, election-law scholars and political practitioners argued that the immediate danger for 2026 is less a miscounted Election Day than a close election whose count is challenged, delayed or delegitimized afterward. Rick Hasen, Benjamin Ginsberg, Sarah Isgur and Janai Nelson largely trusted local administrators to count ballots, but split over what makes elections legitimate: administrative competence, equal access to the franchise, limits on federal and judicial power, stronger parties, or a constitutional right to vote.
AI Growth Depends on Power, Permitting, and Broader Ownership
BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink used an Aspen Ideas Festival conversation with Fareed Zakaria to argue that AI can sustain a new phase of U.S. growth only if the country builds the physical infrastructure behind it. Fink’s case was that power grids, data centers, skilled labor, faster permitting and deeper capital markets matter as much as algorithms — and that the political test is whether more households can own a share of the gains rather than watch them accrue to a narrow set of companies and investors.
A Passionate Life Requires Educated Desire, Not Measurable Intelligence
In an Aspen Ideas Festival talk, David Brooks argues that a passionate life is not a matter of intensity or youth but of forming desire around what is worth loving. Brooks sets that view against institutions — schools, meritocracy and AI among them — that define people too narrowly by intelligence, measurement and efficiency. His answer is a humanist one: people remain capable of growth at any age when curiosity, beauty, work, responsibility and love continue to enlarge them.
The Dinner Party Recasts Women’s Art as Monumental History
Artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain argues that Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is an essential American artwork because it makes women’s histories visible at monumental scale. In her reflection for the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s Art of America series, Shlain presents the installation as a feminist reclamation that uses forms long associated with women’s art to assert that women helped create the country’s history.
Muhammad Ali Made Media Mastery Part of the Fight Itself
Composer and conductor Teddy Abrams argues that Muhammad Ali’s first fight against Sonny Liston became an American cultural event before Ali entered the ring. In the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s Art of America series, Abrams frames Ali’s media campaign against the favored Liston as psychological theater that turned sport, news, performance, and public identity into one event. For Abrams, Ali’s significance lies in how he used attention itself as a medium, becoming a figure that American culture both made possible and needed.