NEW in @ForeignAffairs: For this issue's cover, Kurt Campbell and I challenge the new fatalism about American alliances. We argue: 1️⃣ The alliances have weathered forgotten shocks at least this serious before, and today's are about Trump, not a permanent new politics. 2️⃣ The threats that built the alliances are intensifying and converging as China and Russia draw together. 3️⃣ Deep economic, technological, and military currents are pulling allies toward Washington faster than they can de-risk away. The new fatalism risks becoming self-fulfilling. Convinced the alliances cannot be saved, policymakers may stop trying to save them. But the question is not whether the alliances will endure but whether they can evolve into something new — platforms for building allied scale in a world where China, backed by Russia, outscales us all. We think they can. The United States will need to launch a presidential effort to rebuild and refashion the alliance system. It will need to credibly declare that the current damage is the product of personality not enduring policy, repudiate threats against Greenland, and start small with allies. That means modest, defined projects with ad hoc coalitions on the issues of greatest consensus (medicine, minerals, munitions). Quick wins build momentum for more ambitious efforts. And Biden projects like AUKUS and even Trump's effort on critical minerals provide a model. None of this is guaranteed, but neither is it implausible. The United States and its allies have agency. As attention turns to the world after Trump, the debate over the future needs more pragmatism and less despair. Thread below.