Kori Schake
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Kori Schake
@kschake.bsky.social

Leads AEI’s foreign and defense team, author of The State and the Soldier, contributing writer at The Atlantic. 2025-2026 Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. Californian. https://www.aei.org/profile/kori-schake/

Kori N. Schake is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high-level positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alexander Hamilton Society. Schake is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. .. more

Political science 84%
Economics 10%
Pinned
I just received my first copy of the book!

Reposted by Kori Schake

wapo.st/4q5tv2n

A great Virginian and American. RIP, Dr. West, with the thanks of a grateful nation. 
Mathematician Gladys West dies at 95. She was a hidden figure behind GPS.
Without the mathematical model that she helped refine, “the extraordinary positioning, navigation, and timing accuracy of GPS would be impossible to achieve.”
wapo.st

Reposted by Kori Schake

11/ The other Thucydides Trap in action. US hubris pushes our allies into the arms of the rising power. In other words, Athens beat itself and the US risks doing the same.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/w...
U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

The State Department announced a new, $6.7B weapons sale for Israel at 530 PM.

Due to family stuff, I hit publish on our story at 7:25.... having missed that at 7:14, the State Department announced a $9B deal to Saudi for Patriot missiles.

Please clap.

breakingdefense.com/2026/01/isra...
US clears $6.7B in new weapon sales to Israel, $9B in Patriot missiles for Saudi Arabia - Breaking Defense
The Trump administration has approved a potential sale of 30 AH-64E Apache helicopters and over 3,000 JLTV ground vehicles to Israel.
breakingdefense.com

"The day marked the first moment “they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people."
I’ve long admired Thomas Wentworth Higginson (abolitionist, associate of John Brown, commanded first all Black regiment in the Civil War, literary scholar and editor of Emily Dickinson, feminist, socialist). Someone just published it though! blog.oup.com/2025/02/thom...
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to ...
blog.oup.com

Reposted by Diane Marie Amann

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Values, Technology and Society
Art and the Transatlantic Exchange
Petroleum Engineering
Poetry Writing
Marxist Philosophy (I barely scraped out a C!)
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Sage, the Way, and Zen
Shakespeare
Religion and Modern Secularism
Creative Fiction Writing
International Political Economy

Pleasantly surprised how many of these classes proved useful later in life.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Urban politics
Urban sociology
Mid 20th century U.S. History
Gender and Politics
World History (I'm sorry for sleeping through this at 8am, but the prof was so nice in office hours, I will always pay that forward)

Reposted by Kori Schake

I’ve long admired Thomas Wentworth Higginson (abolitionist, associate of John Brown, commanded first all Black regiment in the Civil War, literary scholar and editor of Emily Dickinson, feminist, socialist). Someone just published it though! blog.oup.com/2025/02/thom...
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to ...
blog.oup.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Sage, the Way, and Zen
Shakespeare
Religion and Modern Secularism
Creative Fiction Writing
International Political Economy

Pleasantly surprised how many of these classes proved useful later in life.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Urban politics
Urban sociology
Mid 20th century U.S. History
Gender and Politics
World History (I'm sorry for sleeping through this at 8am, but the prof was so nice in office hours, I will always pay that forward)
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Calc II
Irish drama
Bertolt Brecht auf deutsch
Poetry writing
Race in America

Keep trying.
👀 Every Senate Democrat + Collins and Murkowski just voted for the Bernie Sanders amendment to repeal the $75 billion in additional ICE funding under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” The measure failed 49-51.
👀 Every Senate Democrat + Collins and Murkowski just voted for the Bernie Sanders amendment to repeal the $75 billion in additional ICE funding under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” The measure failed 49-51.

Reposted by Kori Schake

Traders are abuzz with talk of the “debasement trade”, a broad term for bets on the deterioration of American financial exceptionalism. If they are right, then the sell-off in the greenback has barely begun econ.st/4kcbL48

Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi

Reposted by Kori Schake

Beijing: “China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security, and opposes external interference. China resolutely opposes any actions and inhumane practices that deprive the Cuban people of their rights to subsistence and development.”

Reposted by Kori Schake

The 2026 NDS upends force planning. Homeland and Western Hemisphere first means fewer forward deployments, more reliance on surge forces. But surging depends on access from allies and a force built for China that may not fit new missions.

More on the Terminal: blinks.bloomberg.com/news/stories...

Reposted by Kori Schake

And so concludes another week w/ no news briefing at the Pentagon.

The last on-camera briefing was held for an alternative right-wing press corps nearly two months ago, on Dec. 2.

The press space has been mostly vacant since the traditional press corps departed in October.

And Mary Lincoln was the one who noticed General Grant didn’t drink when his wife was with him, recommending she be sent on campaign.
And with black abolitionists! She really gets a bad shake from some of these historians like Burlingame who basically concocted stuff about her!

Just 14 days until Cards pitchers and catchers report 🙂 And Yadi’s in the clubhouse! Hope springs eternal…

Reposted by Kori Schake

And with black abolitionists! She really gets a bad shake from some of these historians like Burlingame who basically concocted stuff about her!
Pew has Trump's approval at 37%. And:

"Only about a quarter of Americans today (27%) say they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans, down from 35% when he returned to office last year. That change has come entirely among Republicans."

www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...
Confidence in Trump Dips, and Fewer Now Say They Support His Policies and Plans
Only 27% of Americans say they support all or most of Trump's policies – down since last year, with the change coming entirely among Republicans.
www.pewresearch.org

Reposted by Kori Schake

Trump: "I just spoke to the president of Venezuela and informed her that we're going to be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela. American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela and they will be safe there. It's under very strong control."
The 2026 National Defense Strategy “appears to have been drafted not by serious people but by Pentagon officials eager to curry favor with an imperious president and terrified of getting their talking points wrong,” Eliot Cohen argues.
Whatever This Is, It Is Not Strategy
Defending the nation will take more than sycophancy, slurs, and slop.
bit.ly

Reposted by Kori Schake

Opinion: Perhaps most troubling, the National Defense Strategy ties its framework explicitly to “President Trump’s vision,” mentioning him 47 times across 24 pages.
America can strike anywhere — but can it stay anywhere?
Opinion: Perhaps most troubling, the National Defense Strategy ties its framework explicitly to “President Trump’s vision,” mentioning him 47 times across 24 pages.
www.defensenews.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

"It is embarrassing enough that we now threaten ... our closest allies, or that we try to seize land from an ally that has fought on our behalf. But it is beyond shameful and despicable to denigrate and disrespect their sacrifice as Trump has done."

www.defenseone.com/ideas/2026/0...
Our allies passed your test, Mr. President. Would we?
A former U.S. infantryman responds to Trump’s amnesiac take on Afghanistan.
www.defenseone.com
Q: Can you be specific about how many ICE and CBP agents are currently operating in the state?

HOMAN: 3,000. There's been some rotations. They've been in theater a long time. Day after day, can't eat in restaurants, people spin on you, blowing whistles at you. But my main focus now is draw down
Yes it’s called a strategy of denial to deter China in the Pacific yes that’s why the priority is restoring the Monroe Doctrine but in Greenland yes where the only foreign base is already ours yes which is why we’re sending a carrier to the Middle East to bomb Iran yes. I am a strategist yes.
a man with glasses is covering his face with his hand .
ALT: a man with glasses is covering his face with his hand .
media.tenor.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Korean, Japanese, and Chinese yards have is that they are all supported by their home governments to the tune of billions annually. You’ll also need to rebuild the industrial support those yards need (steel doesn’t exactly grow on trees), so add a zero or two to your industrial price tag.

Reposted by Kori Schake

There are multiple declines that have been set in motion by the Trump presidency that will take years to fully manifest and will be too late to stop by the time people figure it out.

Trump pushing Canada to open up its auto market to Chinese EVs is one such example.
Canada Allowing the Import of Cheap Chinese EVs Has GM CEO Nervous: TDS
GM CEO Mary Barra sees Chinese EVs in Canada as a risk to North American auto manufacturing.
www.thedrive.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Assumption of the Virgin, by Guido Reno, 1598-99, 📸 by Jose Manuel Alvarez Rey

Reposted by Elizabeth Saunders

"I was in Afghanistan after 13 years of war—long after the exciting newness wore off and as domestic political opposition raged—and we still had Czech, Lithuanian, and Polish special forces, as well as conventional Australian, British, Bulgarian, Canadian, and Romanian units with us in Kandahar."
COMMENTARY: Our allies passed your test, Mr. President. Would we? | A former U.S. infantryman responds to Trump’s amnesiac take on Afghanistan.
Our allies passed your test, Mr. President. Would we?
A former U.S. infantryman responds to Trump’s amnesiac take on Afghanistan.
buff.ly

Reposted by Kori Schake

COMMENTARY: Our allies passed your test, Mr. President. Would we? | A former U.S. infantryman responds to Trump’s amnesiac take on Afghanistan.
Our allies passed your test, Mr. President. Would we?
A former U.S. infantryman responds to Trump’s amnesiac take on Afghanistan.
buff.ly

Reposted by Kori Schake

We got the former heads of international finance at both the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to write a guest post for @alphaville.ft.com about what Trump is doing to the dollar.

They were … unimpressed. www.ft.com/content/0933...
Termites are slowly feasting away at the foundations of the dollar’s dominance
Chomp chomp chomp
www.ft.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

ICYMI: There is no Iranian equivalent for Venezuela's Delcy Rodriguez, ready and willing to take over in Tehran and make a deal with the Trump administration

open.substack.com/pub/bobbygho...
There Is No Iranian Delcy Rodríguez
Regime decapitation in Tehran would likely produce a more hardline leadership—not a compliant successor
open.substack.com