Current strategic shifts prioritize kinetic action over institutional reconstruction, dismantling the essential mechanisms for democratic transition. The systematic targeting of dual-use infrastructure and the marginalization of civil society create a stabilization vacuum. Recovery necessitates revitalizing multilateral aid, protecting humanitarian law, and restoring technical assistance to prevent perpetual instability.
It is never too early to think about what happens when a war ends. A vital part of policy planning, from the earliest stages of a conflict, is to determine not only the policy goals, but also what can be done to alleviate suffering and rebuild civilian and economic infrastructure—systems essential to ensuring a country is prosperous, democratic, rights-respecting, and on the road to stable and peaceful participation in the international community. The recent removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the war in Iran, and reports that the Cuban regime is teetering on the brink, while President Donald Trump declares it “next,” have laid bare the importance of this planning, the breadth and depth of the needs that arise, and the necessity of foreign policy tools that can address them. This Experts React aims to examine the specific gaps and needs that arise from these military conflicts and explore how they can or should be addressed, from the pre-planning stage through the period after guns are silenced.
Who Listens to Civil Society?
Andrew Friedman, Director and Senior Fellow, Human Rights Initiative
Moving from military action to democracy and prosperity requires partnership with individuals who have been working for democracy and prosperity over the long term. Civil society organizations, together with individuals on the ground in neighborhoods and communities, are best positioned to understand what is necessary to pursue lasting peace, economic growth, and democratic accountability. The ad hoc approaches to transition in Venezuela and attempted regime change in Iran have laid bare the U.S. government’s lack of partnership with civil society actors, a traditional strength of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and multiple now-eliminated or disempowered offices of the Department of State.
Post-Maduro Venezuela has demonstrated the depth of this gap. After installing Delcy Rodríguez as acting president of Venezuela, the Trump administration claimed that María Corina Machado lacked adequate backing in the country, a view disputed by both voters and activists from the country. The continuity of the regime has not paused the transition but allowed for a continuous crackdown on groups that would be best equipped to play a role in the transition. A recent UN report gets to the heart of the problem, observing that “repressive state machinery . . . remains operational” and has led to “the ongoing harassment of opposition figures and journalists,” including the arrest of at least 87 human rights defenders.
Iran tells a similar story. It was just a few months ago when Iranians took to the streets en masse and saw, once again, the full repressive power of the state, with estimated deaths ranging from 6,000 to 30,000. With these memories still fresh, since the U.S. and Israel bombing campaign began, the government of Iran has begun its aggressive crackdown on dissent anew.
Questions about what the future holds are particularly distressing for activists, placing them between a rock and a hard place, with a seeming opening to expand their work but a simultaneous concern that if things do not ultimately change, they will be caught in a crackdown. Greater understanding of and consultation with civil society may not change the prosecution of a war or military action. It may not be the deciding vote for or against a bombing campaign. However, when attempting to get past the military campaign into a new era, it is vital. Reinvigorating these relationships for the long term, along with having stable, empowered parts of the U.S. government that hold them, ensures that even when the United States does not know a clear road forward, it has partners that have been considering possible paths for years.
What Does the U.S. Post-Conflict Strategy Look Like in an Era of Foreign Assistance Retrenchment?
Enoh T. Ebong, President, Global Development Department
In notable successes in post-conflict situations, the United States approached efforts in a coordinated, sustained, and properly sequenced manner, both within the U.S. government and across international partners. This approach prioritizes peace, stability, and economic development, with commercial outcomes coming after humanitarian emergencies such as refugee flows and the settlement of forcibly displaced persons.
For example, in Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia (specifically, Aceh), Mozambique, and Rwanda, various U.S. agencies and programs—including the White House, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement and Bureau of Energy Resources, USAID, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Peace Corps, Feed the Future, the President’s Malaria Initiative, Support for Eastern European Democracies (SEED) Act funds, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now the DFC)—worked together with international partners and regional and multilateral organizations to enable sustainable peace, security, and development in these countries, which, in large part, persists today.
But the Trump administration has eliminated some of these instruments and significantly reduced funding for others. No coordinated package of diplomatic engagement, civilian reconstruction capacity, and multilateral burden-sharing is being deployed in Venezuela in anything like the manner the historical record suggests is necessary. Furthermore, the institutional capacity to deploy such packages has been deliberately dismantled.
Equally important is building on and harnessing existing processes and local capacities, which is more likely to result in successful, self-sustaining recovery efforts. In the end, private sector investment will be attracted to a post-conflict situation in which recovery includes managing inflation while attaining growth, using aid efficiently and effectively, and building a reasonable environment for investment, while attaining reasonable fiscal autonomy. The approach to recovery has, so far, not been to understand or harness these processes, nor build up and coordinate across the capacities of the U.S. government, but instead to cajole private sector actors to enter the fray.
So, what can be done?
Now is the time to assess the tools that do exist and think about how the United States starts to build capacity to help accomplish stated U.S. government objectives and support post-conflict or crisis-affected countries like Venezuela. For example, consistent with its development mandate, the U.S. International Development Corporation could increase its investments in projects that contribute to post-transition transformation. A related approach would be to examine the authorities of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency to see if they can be expanded to bring projects further over the finish line into the DFC’s pipeline post-feasibility study. Providing viability gap financing for strategically important projects that carry too much risk for development finance institutions—or offering some leeway in the agency’s export promotion mandate when there is a national security imperative—would allow the U.S. Trade and Development Agency to catalyze investments by the DFC and others in challenging environments, including those that hold commercial promise.
Transparency as a Tool for Companies in Post-Conflict Contexts
Brad Brooks-Rubin, Senior Associate (Non-Resident), Human Rights Initiative and Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business
As sanctions and other tools of economic leverage are increasingly referred to as “economic warfare,” the United States needs to think more clearly about the strategies and off-ramps it uses to transition from periods of strong sanctions to climates of more open and responsible investment. This need is even more pronounced in post-conflict situations or following kinetic actions like those taken in Venezuela, where a U.S. administration is seeking to encourage investment and demonstrate economic results quickly.
Companies, and the broader financial systems they rely on, need stability, predictability, and continuity in order to function effectively; all of which are usually in short supply in the aftermath of a conflict or other disruption that leads to major governmental change. Similarly, the U.S. government and taxpayers, as well as affected populations and new governments, also are often seeking to understand what companies are doing, who they are working with, and whether U.S. (and, where possible, local) interests are truly being advanced.
For companies seeking (or being exhorted) to invest and operate in post-conflict environments, finding that stability and predictability can be challenging, and typically begins with extensive due diligence. Even when those strong sanctions are eased or fully removed, the question of “can we do this” simply evolves into “should we do this”—a question that can be much more complicated for a company to answer.
In the 2010s, in the context of the transition in Myanmar, the U.S. government developed a mechanism called the Responsible Investment Reporting Requirements that sought to build on precisely that due diligence that companies already undertake and use it as a tool to satisfy government and public interests in transparency and market needs for predictability. The reporting also allowed companies the opportunity to explain to all stakeholders what they sought to do, how, and with which partners. There certainly were aspects that did not work as well as they could have, but the concept of public-facing due diligence reporting that was provided to the U.S. government was generally welcomed (one major company even filed a report when it believed it did not have to do so, a rarity in the field of corporate reporting).
Moving to a more consistent and regularized deployment of Responsible Investment Reporting Requirements as a component of post-conflict economic strategy can help ensure that the end of economic warfare transitions to a peaceful and profitable future. The time for thinking through these concerns is not while the bombs are falling, but in the planning stages.
President Trump Threatens War Crimes
Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director, Global Health Policy Center, and Leonard Rubenstein, Senior Associate (Non-Resident), Global Health Policy Center
President Trump crossed a historical threshold on Easter Sunday, April 5, by explicitly threatening actions that would constitute war crimes against Iranian civilians and civilian infrastructure, and later threatening to eradicate a “whole civilization.” These statements marked an unprecedented embrace of threats of war crimes as a political instrument by a U.S. president, at a moment when international humanitarian law is already under strain, and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran could at any moment steeply escalate. They expose profound—and widening—gaps in the capacity of U.S. institutions to respond.
This shift is unlikely to meet significant resistance—overt or otherwise—from the U.S. military, despite its record in recent decades of adherence to rules designed to protect civilian populations in conflict. Institutional constraints on response are already evident. The president’s remarks follow Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s denigration of the Geneva Conventions and firing of senior members of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. They also come amid reductions in staff in the DOD Civilian Protection Center, which is responsible for implementing the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Plan. No less tragic, it also comes on the heels of the swiftest and most far-reaching purge of senior U.S. military ranks seen in U.S. history—on par with, or exceeding, the purge President Xi is carrying out among China’s military leadership.
President Trump has now cast the United States as an outlier and a threat to international humanitarian law at a time of growing impunity for violations and bad faith reinterpretations that undermine its core principles. In doing so, Trump sides with Iran and Russia and invites other rogue states to follow. In the process, U.S. moral authority evaporates. Few meaningful counter pressures appear to be at play.
When hospitals and medical research institutions like the Pasteur Institute in Tehran are attacked, as happened on April 2, it matters less and less who is to blame—Israel or the United States—than that they demonstrate open contempt for the law.
Whether or not Trump follows through on his threat to Iran, what may likely follow in conflicts throughout the world are attacks on water and desalination plants, universities, hospitals and clinics, residential neighborhoods, public transport, and fertilizer and other industries essential to food security.
So what next?
U.S. leaders of very different stripes should step forward to oppose assaults on civilians and the complete unraveling of U.S. commitments to their protection in wartime, as well as urgently press for restoring U.S. respect for international humanitarian law at the Department of Defense. More needs to be heard from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, including senators like Lindsey Graham, who started his career as a judge advocate general and has been a vocal defender of international humanitarian law when under threat in Ukraine and elsewhere; faith leaders, including Pope Leo XIV; foreign policy and security experts; and retired senior U.S. military officers.
At the international level, a broader coalition of states is urgently needed that fills the void and resists the United States’ descent into war crimes as policy. One promising path: Brazil, China, France, Jordan, Kazakhstan, and South Africa have joined the International Committee of the Red Cross in launching an initiative to galvanize political commitments to international humanitarian law. That should now be turned into intensified, overt pressure upon the United States to reverse course and loud calls for those U.S. leaders and institutions appalled by what is unfolding to voice their objections.
The War with Iran Demonstrates the Importance of Diplomatic and Humanitarian Planning
Will Todman, Chief of Staff, Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department; and Senior Fellow, Middle East Program
The Trump administration’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury while U.S. diplomatic and humanitarian capacity in the Middle East was diminished has compounded the region’s instability and limited the United States’ ability to manage the fallout.
First, a reduced U.S. diplomatic presence weakened the administration’s ability to coordinate its response and manage the conflict’s consequences. Only three of the nine countries that Iran struck on February 28 had U.S. ambassadors in place, and the administration had not nominated a candidate for the Department of State’s top Middle East–focused role. While the White House has favored centralized decisionmaking and touted the element of surprise in its military operation, the lack of senior diplomatic officials focused on the Middle East reduced the flow of regional expertise and dissenting views. In addition to the U.S. intelligence community, Gulf partners and regional experts had warned of the risks of escalation. However, the lack of empowered and informed U.S. diplomats in the region made it less likely that those concerns reached senior decisionmakers and also hindered coordination with allies and partners once the conflict began.
Second, the diminished diplomatic footprint put U.S. officials and citizens at greater risk. Rather than proactively evacuating personnel and issuing early travel warnings, the Department of State waited until the third day of Iranian attacks to urge all Americans in 14 Middle Eastern countries to “DEPART NOW” via commercial flights in a social media post. By then, airspace closures and transportation disruptions made departure difficult or impossible. With diminished consular capacity and an apparent failure to implement contingency plans immediately, many Americans were left stranded in active conflict zones.
Third, aid cuts and the lack of humanitarian planning have allowed crises to deepen. Now in its second month, the conflict has displaced millions, disrupted aid flows, and exacerbated global food insecurity as energy and fertilizer prices rise. But despite announcing the creation of the Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response within the Department of State, as of early April, the administration has yet to articulate a coherent humanitarian strategy and continues to cut foreign aid. The administration’s FY 2027 budget includes additional reductions of $2 billion in humanitarian assistance and $2.7 billion in funding for the United Nations and international organizations. Early mitigation steps to stem the humanitarian fallout of the war with Iran, such as prepositioning supplies, securing aid corridors, or coordinating with international organizations, would have strengthened humanitarian systems that instead became overwhelmed.
Taken together, these gaps reveal that launching a major conflict without sufficient diplomatic and humanitarian infrastructure not only intensifies immediate risks but also undermines the United States’ ability to shape outcomes in its aftermath.
After Maduro: Is a Stable and Democratic Venezuela Possible
Juliana Rubio, Associate Director, Americas Program
The Trump administration’s ultimate goals in Venezuela have ranged from gaining more access to oil to disrupting drug trafficking from South America, reducing Venezuelan migration, and even bringing democracy back to the country. To date, the administration has focused on economic recovery, mainly issuing licenses for firms to operate in certain sectors. While there have been some small steps toward political opening and improved human rights, like the reopening of Vente, the main opposition party’s headquarters, and the passing of the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence, clear actions from the Trump administration that would support a democratic transition remain hard to find.
The sobering reality is that if the goal is to curb migration, reduce drug trafficking, and restore stability in Venezuela, rebuilding institutions and democracy is imperative. The current regime’s mismanagement of the country created the deep economic crisis that has forced many Venezuelans to leave, while the regime’s persecution of dissent has also forced many to flee. On the other hand, drug trafficking has become an increasingly serious problem in Venezuela in recent years, mainly because of government corruption and the growth of armed groups. As long as the same autocratic regime remains in place, those underlying drivers are unlikely to disappear.
To bring back stability and prosperity, it is imperative to first hold free and fair elections. This will require not relying on the politicized National Electoral Council, guaranteeing voter access and ensuring there is no voter suppression, allowing opposition candidates to have a fair chance, and curtailing the violent actions of groups such as colectivos—pro-regime armed groups.
After a new democratic leadership is in place, Venezuela will require years of sustained U.S. support. This includes the kind of work USAID and the Department of State have historically done on issues such as the rule of law, justice-sector reform, and anti-corruption, as in Guatemala; strengthening civil society, as in Mexico; and transitional justice efforts aimed at establishing special justice systems and other accountability and reparation measures, like in Colombia.
Yet, even if Washington were serious about rebuilding democracy, it isn’t clear how it would do so in practice. Since Trump took office, key institutions that traditionally supported democracy have been dismantled or severely underfunded. While some funding is being restored through the FY 2026 National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, the question remains: Can programs be effectively implemented given how underfunded and understaffed many of the organizations that traditionally carried out this work have become?
Post-Conflict Stability Starts with Food and Water Security
Emma Curtis, Research Associate, Global Food and Water Security Program, and Caitlin Welsh, Director, Global Food and Water Security Program
Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba all entered 2026 with major challenges to their food and water systems. Iran’s agriculture sector suffered from sanctions-driven import restrictions and a historic drought; a heavily subsidized water sector had disincentivized water conservation in agriculture, and high dependence on desalination left the country’s water supply vulnerable. In Venezuela, a confluence of poor macroeconomic conditions, weak governance, and weather drove severe increases in food insecurity and water insecurity throughout 2025. Per the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, 45 percent of Venezuelans faced moderate or severe water insecurity in 2025, the highest prevalence measured across countries in the Western hemisphere last year. Cuba, meanwhile, has faced acute food shortages compounded by an energy crisis and an intensifying U.S. blockade, conditions which also have deepened the country’s worsening levels of water insecurity.
U.S. policy has, in each case this year, exacerbated food and water insecurity through economic pressure and military campaigns, raising questions about the Trump administration’s willingness to engage in post-conflict recovery once ongoing campaigns have concluded. Food security and water security are critical for human health and economic growth, and the absence of these conditions can lead to economic stagnation, social unrest, and political instability. Post-conflict stabilization cannot begin without first creating the conditions for the provision of food and water security.
The lesson of recent years—that globalized food systems carry serious single-point-of-failure risks—underlines the need to move beyond emergency aid and instead improve each country’s structural capacity to support domestic food and water security. Important steps will include rebuilding food and water infrastructure, recovering the agricultural labor force, and supporting domestic policy that reduces vulnerabilities to global market shocks. Such policies would address farm-level needs like resources for improving crop diversification and fertilizer use efficiency; strengthen governance and capacity building for water infrastructure to ensure the delivery of adequate amounts of safe, potable water and effective wastewater management; and emphasize the needs of cities and towns, which are home to the greatest number of food- and water-insecure people in many countries.
Whether the Trump administration is prepared to support reconstruction efforts remains an open question. The consequences of inaction to secure food and water grow as norms regarding their protection erode. Recent strikes on U.S. allies’ infrastructure in the Middle East, including a desalination facility in Kuwait, serve as a reminder that post-conflict recovery efforts will extend beyond any single country. The scale of reconstruction required by these concurrent conflicts demands involvement from multilateral institutions like the UN World Food Programme, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, which have decades of experience coordinating food and water reconstruction in post-conflict settings. There is also a domestic political tension to navigate: Investing in food and water security abroad could be a difficult sell while U.S. farmers are themselves contending with the impacts of market instability and high input costs, and U.S. consumers are likely to face higher food prices. But post-conflict assistance structured around technical expertise, trade relationships, and capacity-building need not come at the expense of U.S. farmers and consumers.
The immediate humanitarian picture demands near-term attention alongside longer-term reconstruction planning. The war in Iran has ripple effects across global agricultural markets, which will affect future growing seasons for farmers around the world. U.S. post-conflict strategy will need to reckon with the unfolding reality of the need for long-term support for food and water security in countries the United States is trying to remake, alongside the wide-ranging humanitarian impacts of ongoing military campaigns.
Disrupted Health Systems Demand Rebuilding Humanitarian Partnerships
Michaela Simoneau, Fellow, Global Health Policy Center, and Sophia Hirshfield, Research Associate, Global Health Policy Center
The first few months of U.S. foreign policy in 2026 have been defined by efforts to achieve regime change, from military interventions in Iran and Venezuela to energy blockades in Cuba. These actions have all impeded the functionality of healthcare systems to various degrees by disrupting service delivery, critical supply chains, and the healthcare workforce. Humanitarian solutions will never be sufficient without resolving the underlying political drivers of conflict. Even so, the United States has untapped opportunities to leverage key humanitarian tools to assuage the most devastating health outcomes in each of these crises.
Venezuela has suffered from a deteriorating healthcare system for the past several decades due to underinvestment, mismanagement of resources, and economic collapse. Following the recent U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro, the United States airlifted priority medical supplies to Venezuela as part of its plan to stabilize the country. But air drops are an expensive and unsustainable remedy to a chronic problem.
Cuba had been praised for its prevention-centered primary care system, though it has suffered from steady decay under the U.S. sanctions regime. The recent U.S. oil blockade and resulting energy shortages have further obstructed hospitals, clinics, and ambulances from receiving the supplies and resources needed to provide both routine and life-saving care.
Prior to recent U.S.-Israeli attacks, Iran’s relatively stable health system demonstrated considerable ability to respond in the face of crisis, yet also suffered from medical supply shortages due to sanctions. The onset of kinetic conflict has led to the destruction of critical health infrastructure, disruptions in medical supply chains, and significant strain on healthcare workers.
The United States has limited options to be a constructive humanitarian player after having been involved in each of these situations, even if and as political agreements are reached and countries are able to look toward reconstruction. Despite massive cuts to U.S. and global humanitarian spending, the United States can still use its influence to mitigate these and future politically driven humanitarian shocks.
Following the dissolution of USAID, the U.S. government has recognized the need for some continued capability for emergency assistance, and it recently established the Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response at the U.S. Department of State. While the scope of the bureau remains undefined, it can be expected to have some budget for bilateral programming and input into the $2 billion commitment to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This bureau could be highly valuable in consolidating U.S. government decisionmaking over humanitarian action and reestablishing local partnerships and contracts that can be flexed—even and especially in the absence of formal diplomatic relations or deployed U.S. personnel—to pivot to emerging crisis needs. The Department of State Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy has already begun to test a revised “America First” approach to delivering aid, partnering closely with the Global Fund to implement its bilateral health MOUs. That complementary bilateral and multilateral model could be replicated.
The United States can also invest in regional initiatives to achieve health system resilience, particularly given the November 2025 National Security Strategy’sfocus on the Western Hemisphere. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) have long benefitted from U.S. leadership and have various emergency financing facilities—such as the PAHO Revolving Funds and IADB Immediate Response Facility for Emergencies—that could help soften workforce, supply, and inflationary disruptions. The United States should strengthen these partnerships as critical regional backstops to prevent avoidable suffering.