Emma Ashford
American foreign-policy scholar, senior fellow at the Stimson Center and a columnist for Foreign Policy; author of First Among Equals (2025) and Oil, the State, and War (2022), and writer of the newsletter What Is To Be Done?
Emma Ashford did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
-
Their wordsBut as I explore in the article, the structure of US policymaking incentivizes the use of force, while making it harder for presidents to retreat from their mistakes.
- 6 months earlier
-
Their wordsThere’s going to be some great studies written about this era, but one factor I think is currently underplayed is how much the United States, which was always assumed in such studies to be the firefighter for crisis in the Gulf, has instead become the arsonist.
↗Iran Week Twoemmamashford.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
-
Their wordsThus far, the central conclusion I am drawing from this war is the utter failure of the hawkish “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran.
↗Iran Week Twoemmamashford.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 days earlier
-
Their wordsOne thing is certain, however: as my colleague Kelly Grieco has pointed out, the cost asymmetry of intercepting cheap drones with exceedingly expensive interceptors does not favor the United States or its allies.
↗Last Ride of the Neoconservatives?emmamashford.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsIt seems very much as if the president has bitten off more than he can chew with this attack on Iran.
↗Last Ride of the Neoconservatives?emmamashford.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsThough the US has been going through a period of foreign policy recalibration, in part driven by the failures of regime change wars in the Middle East, Iran has long been the white whale of American liberal primacy.
↗Last Ride of the Neoconservatives?emmamashford.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 months earlier
-
Their wordsNow there is little doubt: the old world is dead. It is, I think, accurate to describe Donald Trump as the first post-unipolar president.
- 15 months earlier
-
Their wordsBut it is important to note that the one thing in this conflict that is not indivisible is territory.
↗Escalation is Not a Substitute for Strategyemmamashford.substack.com
- 7 months earlier
-
Their wordsIn prioritizing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is in practice deprioritizing the Indo-Pacific, perhaps the region with the most genuinely pressing security threats for the United States itself.
↗The Sources of American Exhaustionemmamashford.substack.com
- 7 months earlier
-
Their wordsIt should go without saying that we don’t want a major war with China. The costs would be immense, even if it didn’t go nuclear, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that the United States would win the conflict.