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January 11, 2026 
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Was the Trump administration’s decision to abduct Venezuela’s president last weekend driven simply by the whims of the president? Or does it follow a theory of how international politics operates?
Stephen Miller, one of the president’s top aides, recently articulated a vision: “We live in a world,” he said, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Miller’s statement contained echoes of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Thucydides is often cited as one of the earliest representatives of “realism,” which is also a term that the Trump administration embraced in a recent document laying out its national security strategy. As Linda Kinstler writes in an essay this week, “The realist school of foreign policy is rooted in the belief that the world is fundamentally ungovernable and that politics comes down to power.”
But as one scholar told Kinstler, realism is a “mansion with many rooms.” The version that the Trump administration seems to be embracing is its most brutal, lawless and, potentially, self-destructive.
For this week’s cover story, our staff writer Sam Anderson profiles the hit show “The Pitt” and breaks down what makes it feel so different from other classic hospital dramas.
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| Photograph by Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York Times |
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