What Emma Ashford thinks about America
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.
5 dated positions, 2023 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Emma Ashford has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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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
- 8 days earlier
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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
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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
- 2 years earlier
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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
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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.