Articles
Securing the Panama Canal
The Panama Canal—the transoceanic waterway through which five percent of global commerce flows—is critical for U.S. national security.
September 8, 2026
Recorded at April 1, 2020.
Stephen A. Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Kotkin is one of the nation’s most compelling observers of foreign affairs, past and present, and is now working on the third and final volume of his definitive biography of Josef Stalin. From that perspective, Peter Robinson and Kotkin discuss Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, Kotkin’s thoughts on the Chinese leadership class and the advantages they may seek to exploit, and which country—China or the United States—will come to represent the more successful or compelling model to other nations.
To view the transcript of this conversation, click here.

Stephen Kotkin
Articles
The Panama Canal—the transoceanic waterway through which five percent of global commerce flows—is critical for U.S. national security.
September 8, 2026
Articles
The proliferation of land-based missiles, cheap drones, and integrated anti-access/area-denial networks has overturned centuries of assumptions about naval dominance, allowing regional powers—and their proxies—to hold critical maritime trade at risk. Traditional sea powers must adapt on two fronts: preventing chokepoint closures through deterrence by denial and mitigating them through resilience by design.
September 8, 2026
Articles
There is one sure-fire way to prevent adversaries and enemies from weaponizing chokepoints against the United States: Maintain an economy that does not require goods and commodities to pass through them.
September 8, 2026