Usa

Donald Trump may have celebrated Team USA for winning the gold at the Olympics in hockey, but he was not in a puckish mood during his State of the Union speech. Instead, Trump stuck to his tried-and-true script of denouncing Democrats as “sick,” mocking concerns about affordability and cooing over Melania as a great new movie star. Far from nobody ever seeing anything like it, Trump delivered what everybody has already seen. Ever the salesman, he was not shy with the superlatives, declaring that America is the “hottest” country in the world – “bigger, better, richer, stronger than ever before.” If there was one thing that was longer than ever, it was Trump’s own address, which set a record length of 108 minutes.

As the world enters a new era of great power competition, countries are arming themselves at a rate unseen since the end of the Cold War. The war in Ukraine, China’s increasing belligerence and angst over rogue states like Iran and North Korea are driving defense spending and weapons purchases the world over. Amid all this, the United States does not have the luxury of being too picky as to who among its friends gets the weapons they need to defend themselves. Nor can Washington continue to avoid drastic reforms to its arms export controls to face the challenges of the twenty-first century. Standards are necessary — they are what should set America apart — but they must not become so onerous that the security of the US and its partners suffer.