Indian Strategic Studies

4 February 2026

Where Are America’s Aircraft Carriers Now?

Peter Suciu

Although the US Navy has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in active service, only around half are deployed at any given time—with the rest in port or undergoing maintenance. The United States Navy operates the largest fleet of nuclear-powered supercarriers in the world. With 11 in active service, the US Navy has more aircraft carriers than the navies of China, the UK, India, France, Italy, and Spain—combined!

Yet, the status and actual “availability” of the 10 Nimitz-class and one Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers are not as cut-and-dry as they seem. Rarely are more than five or six deployed at a time.

Here is the current status of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers: USS Nimitz (CVN-68)Commissioned: May 3, 1975

Current Status: In Port (Bremerton, Washington); preparing for decommissioningThe US Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) underway in the Red Sea in 2013. The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was deployed to the US 5th Fleet area of responsibility conducting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (Wikimedia Commons)

What Is an Illegal Military Order?

Michael O’Hanlon

Lost in the controversy last year between the six Democratic members of Congress and President Donald Trump over whether American troops should obey the president unconditionally is a key question: what exactly constitutes an illegal military order, and how can we expect uniformed military personnel to distinguish between legal and illegal orders?

For context, it may be helpful to begin with a story from President Trump’s first term. During the summer and fall of 2017, US-North Korea relations deteriorated badly after a series of North Korean missile and nuclear tests. At one point, Trump and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un, exchanged nuclear threats, with Trump famously pointing out that his nuclear button was the larger of the two. The United States sent additional munitions and other supplies to the Korean peninsula and sent three aircraft carriers to the region.

Maintaining the Space Edge: Strategic Reforms for U.S. Dominance in Low Earth Orbit

Taylar Rajic, Lauryn Williams, and Matt Pearl

In recent years, technological innovation has supplanted traditional factors, such as the size of military forces and regional hegemony, as the foundational element of national power—and therefore as the key determinant of great power competition. The emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), advanced robotics, and quantum computing has made technology a driver of economic growth and security, as well as a transformational element in the national security environment and the modern battlefield. It is no longer enough to lead in one of these technologies individually; rather, the United States, along with its allies and partners, needs a full stack—a complete set of technologies needed to build and deploy critical systems—that integrates and leverages multiple technologies together.

However, the United States cannot adequately leverage a full technology stack unless it has advanced, secure, and resilient digital infrastructure—the modern networks and computing facilities on which AI applications and other data ride. These networks underpin the modern financial system, economic growth, social services, access to information, education, public safety, and national security. In the United States and across many of its allies and partners, the private sector owns and controls most of this infrastructure. Leveraging industry is the right approach, as companies are in a better position than government to build, operate, and innovate quickly on digital infrastructure. For their part, policymakers must prioritize digital infrastructure innovation and engage on critical policy and regulatory issues to ensure that the United States and its allies and partners have a robust, dynamic, competitive, trusted, and secure digital ecosystem.

Trump’s Board of Peace Will Help Strong Countries Dominate Weak Ones

Dana El Kurd

The Trump administration recently declared that Phase 1 of the cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel was over and that the work of Phase 2 would begin. This came as a surprise to Palestinians, and to many observers of the region, given that none of the 20 points in the plan laid out at the beginning of the cease-fire had been realized on the ground—aside from the return of Israeli hostages.

For instance, Israel has allowed some aid in—but not at the levels required to offset hunger and malnutrition or to sustain reconstruction. Violence has not ended either; since the cease-fire was announced last October, more than 480 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 100 children, and thousands more injured in Israeli attacks. Most recently, three journalists were killed in what a relief group described as a targeted attack.

The Technocratic Turn That’s Giving Me Hope for Gaza

David Ignatius

The reason to take Gaza reconstruction seriously isn’t the glossy rendering of a future beachfront resort displayed last week at Davos, but a gray-haired Palestinian civil engineer named Ali Shaath, who will head the “technocratic committee” that next week will begin the long process of rebuilding what has been hell on earth.

“It’s my responsibility to turn this moment into action, to restore order, to rebuild institutions, and to create a future for the people of Gaza,” Shaath said in a video address to the Davos, Switzerland, rollout of the Board of Peace that will oversee the transition. He then switched to Arabic to address Gazan Palestinians: ”You have remained steadfast and preserved your families and your land,” he said, but now is the time “not for looking backward but moving forward.”

Will Human Rights Survive the Donald Trump Era?

Philippe Bolopion

Human rights are never ensured. The freedoms we hold dear were won—piece by piece—after the catastrophes of the 20th century, when governments accepted, however imperfectly, that state power should be constrained by law, institutions, and a shared baseline of human dignity. Today, that architecture is buckling. Under relentless pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, and long undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based order that helped make human rights enforceable is fraying fast.

Can human rights survive without the rules that established them? They can, but not by clinging to a collapsing status quo. They will survive only if we build something new: a durable human rights alliance that defends core norms (even when a superpower defects), and makes repression costly.

It is now 85 seconds to midnight: 2026 Doomsday Clock Statement

John Mecklin

Record-breaking climate trends continued in 2024 and 2025. Globally averaged temperature in 2024 was at the warmest level in 175 years of record-keeping. Likewise, atmospheric carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas most responsible for human-caused climate change—reached a new high of 152 percent of 1750 levels. The oceans continue to absorb about 90 percent of the heat added by climate change, and globally averaged sea surface temperatures are the warmest in the modern satellite and buoy record. The Conejeres Glacier in Colombia was declared extinct, and all glaciers in Venezuela have joined a long list of glaciers that are endangered or have disappeared. With the addition of freshwater from melting glaciers and thermal expansion, global averaged sea level rise reached the highest level in the satellite record of sea level, which began in 1993.

The hydrologic cycle, energized by the warm temperatures, became erratic, with deluges and droughts hopscotching around the globe. Large swaths of Peru, the Amazon, southern Africa, and northwest Africa experienced droughts, while the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southeast Brazil received record rainfall, and extensive floods occurred in Congo River Basin. Parts of Asia and Central Europe were also wetter than normal while Canada experienced both its hottest and driest year on record. “An estimated 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than 5 billion by 2050,” according to the UN, and the world is falling far short of the UN Sustainable Development Goal set for water and sanitation.

East Asia Semiconductors Will Decide The Next US-China Arms Race – Analysis

Anna Matilde Bassoli and Savannah Taylor

As US-China competition grows, emerging military technologies could shift the balance of power. Underlining this rivalry are semiconductors, without which neither side can truly master modern warfare. Whoever secures the most resilient supply chain will prevail in this race to become the next superpower.

The global semiconductor industry is geographically concentrated in East Asia, with Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan leading in manufacturing, although the United States and the EU also hold significant stakes. Amid China’s continuous pressure on Taiwan and a trade war that is reshaping the industry, the United States is pushing to boost domestic production and kick the ladder out from under China. Yet these efforts actually risk boosting China’s standing instead of damaging it.

Why the Golden Dome Doesn’t Need Greenland

William D. Hartung

One of President Donald Trump’s latest arguments for annexing Greenland is that it is essential to plans for a leak-proof Golden Dome missile defense system. Earlier this month, the president said, “[a]ll we want from Denmark, for national and international security, [is] to keep our very energetic and dangerous potential enemies at bay [with] this land on which we’re going to build the greatest Golden Dome ever built.” The overarching problem is that strong evidence suggests that a flawless Golden Done system is physically impossible if it includes a commitment to block an ICBM attack. Such an attack could involve large numbers of warheads traveling at 15,000 miles an hour, embedded in untold numbers of decoys indistinguishable from actual warheads.

Since Ronald Reagan announced a similar goal in his 1983 Star Wars speech, the Pentagon has not even conducted a realistic test under such a scenario, much less built a system to carry it out. As Dr. Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out, “Trump’s space-based interceptor shield is nothing but fool’s gold—shiny, but ultimately worthless.” Whether a part of the Golden Dome is based in Greenland or not, it will not work as advertised. If the president or the Pentagon secretly harbor more modest goals for the program, they should come clean and subject them to public and Congressional debate. Whatever form the Golden Dome ultimately takes, the administration has not made clear why having radars or interceptors in Greenland would make it any more effective.

Why NATO Won’t Collapse

Ramon Marks

NATO Europeans are reluctantly facing the fact that they must assume, after more than 75 years, the primary responsibility for their own defense under the NATO framework. They can no longer expect the United States to remain their overarching protector. The controversy over Greenland has even heightened concern that the United States may withdraw from the NATO alliance altogether.

The just-released 2026 National Defense Strategy, however, points to the opposite: the United States is not abandoning NATO. Roughly 80,000 US troops are based in Europe, and there is no indication that bases will be closed or that personnel and supplies will be returned to the United States. Ironically, the biggest military base in Germany is still American, not German. US forces remain fully engaged with European allies, whether conducting joint infantry maneuvers and operations in Poland and Latvia, or conducting sorties with NATO allies’ warships in the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean. The United States has not gone quiet in NATO.

If NATO Dies, Long Live NEATO

Nathan Decety

The current American administration says it hopes to save Europe from itself, from the risk that mass immigration will cause “civilizational erasure.” Its initial intention was to support MAGA-inclined parties across Europe, but that idea may not survive the current political weather — President Trump’s nationalism, seen in statements suggesting European NATO troops had “stayed a little back from the front lines” in Afghanistan, clashes with the populist right’s need to appear patriotic, and has caused a significant backlash.

An alternative perspective, which now seems to be gathering impetus on both sides of the Atlantic, is that Europe must disentangle much of its security apparatus from America’s. The current administration no longer sees Europe as a value-adding contributors to its diplomatic and military power. It will now leave Europe mostly to fend for itself (some key enablers will remain) while maneuvering to take European territories. The continent needs to wake up.

PRC Targets NATO Frontline States - Jamestown

Anna J. Davis

Source Link

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is expanding its presence along the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) frontline through technology access, influence networks, and dual‑use infrastructure, creating openings that could weaken alliance cohesion and expose vulnerabilities in Europe’s defense posture.

NATO frontline states are responding to PRC‑linked cyber intrusions, surveillance‑capable consumer technologies, and intelligence‑driven infrastructure projects by tightening controls on data flows, restricting PRC technology in critical systems, and issuing broader security warnings to protect transatlantic defense networks.

The PRC cooperates with Russia, when convenient, in subversive activities against sensitive domains across NATO’s frontline. Ultimately, however, the PRC is not reliant on Russia to exploit NATO vulnerabilities and place sustained pressure on the infrastructure and information systems that underpin coordination across the Atlantic.

Pentagon Defends Restrictions on Media Outlets

Erik Wemple

In a court filing late Friday, the Pentagon defended the restrictions it imposed on media organizations in October, calling them a reasonable initiative to balance national security with media access. The filing came in response to a lawsuit filed in December by The New York Times. The purpose of the policy “is to secure the Pentagon and stop activity that could compromise national security,” the filing said, adding that the policy outlined “explicit and clear standards for conduct” at the Pentagon.

The rules require reporters to sign a 21-page form that sets restrictions on journalistic activities, including requests for story tips and inquiries to Pentagon sources. Reporters who don’t comply can lose their press passes. The restrictions replaced a far more streamlined set of rules.

In its complaint, The Times argued that the Pentagon policy violated the First Amendment rights of journalists, curbing their ability to “do what journalists have always done — ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.” The newspaper also contended that the restrictions violated journalists’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process, because they granted the department “unfettered” discretion to revoke journalists’ press passes — even when they’re engaged in lawful news gathering activities.

Pentagon’s new ‘non-kinetic effects cell’ bolsters Gen. Caine’s goal to better integrate cyber into U.S. military operations

Jon Harper

Better weaving cyber capabilities into American military operations has been a priority for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine. A new team has been set up at the Pentagon to do just that. Caine, the U.S. military’s top officer who was picked for the job by President Donald Trump, has highlighted the important role that digital tools played recently in major operations, like Operation Absolute Resolve and last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer in Venezuela and Iran, respectively.

During a Jan. 3 press briefing about the special operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Caine noted that as commandos approached Venezuela’s shores in helicopters, the U.S. “began layering different effects” provided by U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command and other partners to “create a pathway” for them. “The word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission, an extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western Hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise. Failure of one component of this well-oiled machine would have endangered the entire mission,” Caine said.

Why the Army Needs Deception Groups

Benjamin Jensen

Next Army is a collaborative series by CSIS Futures Lab and the Modern War Institute launched in honor of the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday and the Army Transformation Initiative. The commentaries explore how emerging technologies, organizational reforms, and major shifts in the strategic environment will shape the force of 2040 and beyond.

To survive on the modern battlefield, the U.S. Army needs to revive the use of “ghost armies”—deception units that support large-scale combined arms maneuver. The dual trends of low-cost persistent surveillance (i.e., the transparent battlefield) and precision mass mean that wherever the Army fights, ground units will be targeted by cheap drones and missile salvos. This combination of continuous fires and intelligence make it difficult both to deploy the force and conduct large-scale ground offensive campaigns. Yet, by integrating deception, the Army can disorient the enemy, sow doubt in their sensors, and reduce the efficacy of their fires.

Why Does the US Army Have an Air Wing?

Harrison Kass

Most of the US Army’s planes were spun off into the Air Force in 1947, but it continues to operate a handful of fixed-wing aircraft for logistics and ISR purposes. The US Army is synonymous with helicopters—but the service also operates a modest fixed-wing fleet. These aircraft are not geared for air superiority or strike missions—the Army long ago relegated those tasks to the US Air Force, spun off from the Army in 1947—but instead support command, logistics, intelligence, and mobility. Indeed, in an Air Force-dominated fixed-wing ecosystem, the Army stubbornly clings to a small fleet.

Before 1947, the US Army Air Forces controlled most of America’s military aviation. The creation of the US Air Force separated roles, with the Air Force taking on combat air power and strategic lift and the Army keeping organic aviation for ground forces. The Army also retained a fleet of fixed-wing aircraft for missions the helicopter couldn’t efficiently perform. Said succinctly, Army aircraft are tactical enablers, not independent combat assets—focused on supporting commanders on the ground, operating from austere or short runways, and facilitating rapid point-to-point movement. Specifically, the Army has utility and transport aircraft, (formerly) tactical airlift, and ISR aircraft.

EMP Weapons Expose PRC Military Vulnerability

Guermantes Lailari, Yu-cheng Chen, and Tin Pak

The Jiutian (九天) unmanned aerial system (UAS), the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) newest drone, made its first flight in December 2025. Capable of carrying a 6,000-kilogram payload, it was tested releasing 100 smaller loitering drones (Xinhua; CCTV, December 11, 2025). Akin to the rest of the PLA’s drone fleet, however, it remains to be seen whether it can withstand electromagnetic pulses (EMP) to counter it.

EMP weapons deliver pulses of radiation that induce electrical charges in conductive materials, which can disable or destroy electronic systems. While EMPs can be produced via nuclear or non-nuclear methods, non-nuclear EMPs are more targeted, with a narrower range, and focus on specific frequency bands. A recent article in PLA Daily notes that EMP weapons are rapidly moving from theory to reality, citing recent tests of prototype microwave-based counter-UAS systems and overseas trials that disabled large drone groups (PLA Daily, November 28, 2025). The article underscores the importance of EMP weapons as a speed-of-light, non-kinetic “electronics-kill” (以电能为主要“弹药”) option that can scale against drone swarms and other electronics-dependent targets. As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to electrify its civilian infrastructure, and the PLA continues to “informatize” (信息化) its operations, vulnerabilities to EMPs continue to grow (PLA Daily, May 2, 2024).

U.S. Allies Play Risky Game With Tilt to China

Matthew Tostevin

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s mission to China this week earned a five percent reduction in tariffs on scotch whisky exports and a stiff warning from U.S. President Donald Trump.

"Very dangerous," was the way Trump put it.

But Starmer was only the latest NATO ally leader to pay a visit to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Many pillars of the West are seeking to balance their global relationships because of the unpredictability of a U.S. president who has challenged longstanding norms, started tariff wars with both friends and adversaries, and threatened to take over Greenland and maybe Canada. Starmer’s pilgrimage to Beijing followed visits by France’s president and Canada’s prime minister. Germany’s chancellor is due there next month. Trump himself is also visiting in April.

3 February 2026

India’s Quiet Bet On The Gulf After Gaza – Analysis

Shaunak Nath

In the past year, the war in Gaza has pushed many governments to take clear public positions, often framing foreign policy as a question of moral alignment. India has responded differently. New Delhi has condemned civilian casualties, maintained its relationship with Israel, and continued diplomatic engagement with Gulf countries, while avoiding strong public statements that would place it firmly one either side of the conflict.

This restrained approach has drawn mixed reactions. Some observers see it as excessive caution, while others interpret it as deliberately ambiguous. India has neither stepped back from Israel nor openly aligned itself with Arab positions. Instead, it has limited its public messaging as tensions spread across the Middle East and begin to affect the wider region.

Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder: The $30 Million Fighter Jet Rewriting the Arms Market

Brandon J. Weichert

Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder (or FC-1 Xiaolong) is a lightweight, affordable, single-engine, multirole combat aircraft that was jointly developed by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and China’s Chengdu Aircraft Corporation. This bird is meant for maneuverability, and it features an advanced avionics suite to ensure that capability.

The plane also comes with highly effective beyond-visual-range (BVR) missile capabilities. There are currently three iterations of this plane (with the Block III being the most advanced and recent). More importantly, however, the JF-17 is combat tested and has a demonstrated success against advanced Western-made warplanes. That’s because the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) utilized these warplanes in their recent war with neighboring India.

Justice Mission–2025: The Narrative Battle Inside China’s Latest Taiwan Exercise

Jonathan Walberg

When the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command launched its Justice Mission–2025 exercises around Taiwan on December 29th, the visible indicators were familiar: joint air and naval maneuvers,[1] expanded operating zones, and calibrated signaling toward Taipei and external actors.[2] What distinguished this iteration was not just the scale or geometry of the activity, but the depth and coherence of the narrative campaign that unfolded alongside it.

Rather than treating messaging as post hoc propaganda, Beijing used Justice Mission–2025 to actively storyboard a theory of coercion in real time. A coordinated series of posters released through PLA and affiliated channels visually depicted how Beijing intends to punish pro-independence forces; why such punishment is legitimate, and why resistance is futile. In the days immediately following the exercise, Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) press conferences reinforced and formalized those same narrative frames through authoritative political language.

Tokyo Has Stepped Up on China—Now It’s Washington’s Turn

Mike Kuiken and Randy Schriver

In November, soon after taking office, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese assault on Taiwan could constitute an existential threat to Japan and could warrant a military response. To China, which sees any commitment to supporting Taiwan as a provocation, these were fighting words. In response, Beijing stepped up military exercises near Japan, halted the imports of Japanese seafood, banned exports of dual-use goods—products that can be used for civilian and military purposes—to Japan, and advised its citizens not to travel there.

Takaichi’s comments are all the more worrying for China because Japan is undergoing a profound shift. Over the past four years, Tokyo has prepared itself to counter China’s coercive behavior by splurging on its armed forces, protecting its supply chains, and becoming more assertive in its neighborhood.

China counting how many missiles it needs to win a Taiwan war

Gabriel Honrada

As modern warfare shifts toward attrition, China’s push for cheaper munitions raises a sharper question: can its missile industry sustain the scale and tempo a Taiwan war would demand?

This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China should consider adopting low-cost guided munitions to prepare for future large-scale drone and attrition warfare, according to an analysis in a Chinese military magazine that examines the US’s efforts to cut the soaring costs of modern conflict.

The article, published this month in Ordnance Science and Technology and cited by SCMP, says the US has found it financially unsustainable to counter low-cost threats with expensive precision weapons, pointing to US operations in the Red Sea, where missiles costing more than US$2.5 million each were used to intercept Houthi drones worth under $2,000, driving total costs to about $1 billion in 2023.

The Limits of the China–Russia Strategic Partnership in Military Space Cooperation

Tahir Azad

China and Russia are increasingly portraying their relationship as a stabilizing “strategic partnership”, defined by mutual resistance to US hegemony, and what both characterize as Western-led containment. This alignment is especially appealing in space because it is both symbolic and strategic, and it can be used for both military and civilian purposes. For example, satellites support precision strikes, intelligence, communications, missile warnings, and the resilience of command-and-control. They are also allowing civilians to navigate, monitor disasters, and provide commercial services. The official language stresses working together for a long time on lunar and deep-space exploration and getting China’s BeiDou and Russia’s GLONASS navigation systems to work better together.

However, the same things that make space cooperation useful also make it risky. Military space capabilities are an important part of national security. They make countries more vulnerable to spying, technology leaks, operational dependence, and strategic weakness. So, China and Russia still work together a lot in military space, but only in certain areas. This is because of ongoing problems like differences in capacity and sanctions exposure, different strategic priorities, competition between bureaucracies and industries, and a long-standing lack of trust over the most sensitive technologies and operational concepts.

Japan Can’t Go It Alone: Tokyo Has Stepped Up on China—Now It’s Washington’s Turn

Dan Blumenthal, Mike Kuiken, and Randy Schriver

In November, soon after taking office, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese assault on Taiwan could constitute an existential threat to Japan and could warrant a military response. To China, which sees any commitment to supporting Taiwan as a provocation, these were fighting words. In response, Beijing stepped up military exercises near Japan, halted the imports of Japanese seafood, banned exports of dual-use goods—products that can be used for civilian and military purposes—to Japan, and advised its citizens not to travel there.

Fighting with Live Data

Victory in modern warfare requires commanders to make better decisions faster than their adversaries. The news drives this home every day, whether it be from Ukraine, the Red Sea, Gaza, Iraq, or Syria. We exist in an age where accelerated data and platform development are integral to our warfighting capabilities. Achieving Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2)—the Department of War’s (DOW) current mission command approach for achieving decision dominance—requires adapting new technologies and synchronizing systems to provide, exploit, and visualize the right data rapidly.1 Critical to enabling CJADC2 is the ability to manipulate and utilize a variety of data sources to develop tools that support the commander’s data-driven decision cycle.2 The importance of this effort only grows as DOW establishes a foundation upon which to build future artificial intelligence/machine learning tools.

Even given this imperative, the Army has struggled with how best to leverage access to live datasets; new and emerging data-centric platforms; and a growing talent base of officers, warrant officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers to solve its most challenging operational problems. Current efforts associated with “transformation in contact” and the Army transformation initiative will not just rely on the integration of new technologies and data streams but will ultimately require a data-centric foundation to enable true continuous transformation.3 Understanding how best to build an enduring data-development capability within our formations while sustaining the unique manpower and skills required to employ this capability will remain one of the Army’s chief concerns over the next decade.

Why Economic Pain Won’t Stop Russia’s War

Dr Richard Connolly

One of the enduring beliefs of liberal internationalism is that economic pressure can substitute for military force. Sanctions, trade restrictions and financial isolation are supposed to raise the costs of aggression to such an extent that governments eventually revise their aims. This faith has been widely applied to Russia’s war against Ukraine. As Russia’s economy shows signs of strain – slowing growth, persistent inflation, high interest rates and deteriorating investment prospects – hopes periodically re-emerge that economic pain will compel Moscow to change course.

History, however, offers limited comfort for this view. Wars are rarely abandoned because they become expensive. They are more often terminated when states are defeated militarily, when ruling coalitions fracture, or when regimes themselves collapse. Economic pressure, where it matters, tends to operate through these channels rather than through persuasion alone. The experience of Russia today fits this broader pattern. Its economy is under strain, but that strain is unlikely to prove decisive.

Naval Leaders Need to Think Fast, Slow, and Augmented

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman

This is an age of potentially disruptive technologies. The emerging revolution centered around artificial intelligence (AI) could restore the U.S. competitive edge in naval warfighting. Yet victory will not be gained solely by investing in AI or another advanced technology. Success in future conflicts will not be driven by exquisite platforms or AI systems. Instead, victory will be the product of an effective nexus between human minds and machines.

Human-machine teaming is the future. While totally autonomous systems may be needed in some contexts, intensive and interactive human-machine teaming is more powerful—and more likely—as Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov has argued.1 While chess programming models have long surpassed human capabilities, the conduct of war is significantly more complicated and requires judgments that should not be ceded to machines. The history of technology should shape a clear understanding that the higher realms of leadership in war, such as making strategy, are going to be subject to an “indelibly human element.”2 The goal should be to make sure the contributions humans make in war are as timely and creative as needed.

Data Defeat: What if the Army’s New Command-and-Control Tools Overwhelm Company Commanders at the Tactical Edge?

C. Wayne Culbreth

On the approaches to Pokrovsk in late 2025, the battlefield looked nothing like the doctrinal diagrams in most command-post exercises. Reuters described stretches of eastern Ukraine as a “drone-infested” twenty-kilometer kill zone, where small Russian assault groups creep forward under constant observation from Ukrainian quadcopters and first-person-view strike drones, and any movement risks immediate detection and fire. Inside Pokrovsk itself, Ukrainian defenders told reporters that drones alone could not hold the city: They could see Russian forces infiltrating block by block, but still lacked the infantry and the command bandwidth to turn that visibility into coherent, timely action.

That is the world US Army company commanders are preparing for. At the same time, Army formations, like the 4th Infantry Division through its Ivy Sting exercises, are fielding the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototype—a unified data and software ecosystem that ties together fires, intelligence, movement and maneuver, logistics, and airspace management. NGC2 and related efforts like TITAN, data fabrics, and division-wide kill webs are doing exactly what they are supposed to do at the enterprise level: collapsing sensor-to-shooter timelines and giving commanders access to more data than ever before.

China has spent decades making inroads in Latin America. Will the ‘Donroe doctrine’ push it out?

Simone McCarthy

As the dust cleared around the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise military strike earlier this month, US officials left little question that they had another target too: China.

A longtime friend to the government in Caracas, China has for years pumped money into the oil fields and infrastructure of the South American country. Maduro’s ouster is a blow to that partnership that could leave Chinese banks facing billions in unpaid Venezuelan debt.

But viewed from Beijing, the stakes are much higher than that. The shake-up was also the loudest warning shot yet of a deeper campaign for the Trump administration: to root out China’s influence across Latin America.

Is Trump's foreign policy really realist?

Leon Hadar

Trump’s second-term foreign policy presents a complex picture when evaluated against classical realist principles. While certain elements align with realist thinking—particularly its emphasis on power politics and national interest—others reveal significant departures from the restraint and prudence that define the realist tradition.

The administration’s explicit embrace of spheres of influence represents perhaps the clearest realist turn in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The 2025 National Security Strategy openly acknowledges “the outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations” as “a timeless truth” and rejects “global domination” in favor of “global and regional balances of power.”

This fundamentally realist worldview breaks decisively with the post-Cold War liberal internationalist consensus that sought to export democracy and integrate rising powers into a rules-based international order. Instead, Trump’s strategy accepts the world as it is—a competitive arena where great powers inevitably dominate their regions.

As Washington unsettles its partners, Beijing is reaping diplomatic gains, without backing down on human rights, trade or security.

David Pierson and Berry Wang

When President Trump upended global trade with his “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, China could have seized the moment to win over bewildered U.S. allies and partners with a charm offensive. Instead, it did the opposite. Beijing threatened countries that dared to cooperate with the Trump administration in restricting trade with China. And when China unveiled a plan to choke exports of its critical supplies of rare earths, it targeted the world, not just the United States.

It was a high-stakes gamble by President Xi Jinping of China. Rather than provide relief to spurned American allies, Beijing wanted to compound their dilemma, analysts say, so that countries unnerved by Washington would learn that crossing China also carried economic pain. The calculation was that those countries would eventually seek closer ties to China to hedge against the United States, and that when they did so, they would be more accommodating of Beijing’s interests.

The Maduro Operation: Five Insights On Power And International Relations

Ernesto Talvi

A turning point in the Venezuelan crisis was reached on 3 January 2026. The US operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro not only abruptly altered Venezuela’s internal political balance; it also sharply exposed some of the structural tensions that now run through the international system.

Beyond the valid and necessary normative debate on the legality and legitimacy of intervention, this article proposes a deliberately analytical exercise. Based on this episode, five key insights are offered that aim to understand not so much how international actors should behave, but how they are actually behaving. In other words, it is an analysis of the reality, rather than the ideal, of international relations in a context of competition between blocs.

We’ve Probably Just Seen the USAF’s Secret Electromagnetic Attacker

Bill Sweetman

Another element in the U.S. Air Force’s plans for long-range operations, essential for Asia-Pacific deterrence, may have emerged from under cover of secrecy.

It looks like we’ve just got a good view of a shadowy uncrewed aircraft designed to fly far and slip into an enemy’s defended zone, undetected until it starts jamming radars. Quite likely, it would carry missiles to knock out radars.

Put another way, the evidence adds up to an electromagnetic attack aircraft—like the Boeing EA-18G Growler but highly stealthy and uncrewed. Northrop Grumman or, more likely, Boeing would seem to be the prime contractor. And the evidence suggests that the aircraft is not new: it was glimpsed a decade ago and was an active program in 2010, so either development has been in fits and starts or the type is operational.

Here’s what military equipment the US has positioned in the Middle East as Trump considers an Iran strike

Haley Britzky, Avery Schmitz, Brad Lendon

As President Donald Trump considers a major strike on Iran after discussions about limiting that nation’s nuclear program and ballistic missile production haven’t progressed, the US military has accelerated a weekslong buildup of military hardware in the Middle East, open-source data shows.

That includes near-constant surveillance flights and dozens of C-17 and C-5 military planes dropping off loads of cargo at US bases across the region.

The arrival of the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, now in the northern Arabian Sea, represents the most substantial shift in military positioning. The group includes the USS Abraham Lincoln along with three guided-missile destroyers and the carrier air wing which includes squadrons of F/A-18E Super Hornet fighters, F-35C Lightning II fighters, and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets.

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