Japan and China Are Edging Dangerously Close to Conflict

Deng Yuwen

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On April 17, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Ikazuchi transited the Taiwan Strait. It was the second such passage by a Japanese warship in 10 months, yet Beijing’s response was far harsher this time. Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have degenerated sharply since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments last November that Japan could come to Taiwan’s defense if China attacked.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, and Eastern Theater Command all put out statements condemning Japan after the April transit, telling it to “step back from the brink” and warning it to “return from the wrong path,” while Jun Zhengping, a People’s Liberation Army-linked social media account, warned that Japan was playing with fire. At the same time, the Eastern Theater Command launched combat readiness patrols in the East China Sea and sent warships near Okinawa.

Sun Tzu’s Advice for Donald Trump

STEPHEN S. ROACH

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Amid a series of massive, illegal policy blunders, US President Donald Trump has set his sights on stabilizing relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping at their May summit. But it will probably go poorly because Trump is incapable of understanding the importance of strategy, a lesson that China's leaders have long grasped.

NEW HAVEN—Rumor has it that last year, US President Donald Trump delayed his so-called Liberation Day tariff announcement by a day, to April 2, because he didn’t want his unconstitutional trade “emergency” to come across as an April Fools’ Day hoax. This year, Trump defied the calendar with an address to the nation on April 1, touting yet another unconstitutional act—a war with Iran conducted without congressional approval.

The Staged Death of China’s Military-Civil Fusion

Ryan D. Martinson

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On March 13, 2026, China issued the outline for its 15th Five-Year Plan — a core document defining Chinese government policies into the next decade. In the hierarchy of Chinese sources, Five-Year Plan outlines rank among the most “authoritative” in that they are issued by the government, directly reflecting its will and aspirations. This places them in a special class that includes white papers, work reports, and, perhaps above all, the words of Xi Jinping. Among analysts of Chinese affairs, authoritative sources are generally regarded as the most valuable documents for deciphering Beijing’s intentions.

For years, MCF has been a major irritant in China-U.S. relations, given that it requires China-based companies, research organizations, and individuals – including those with substantial U.S. ties – to engage in activities that support China’s military development. This is the second consecutive Five-Year Plan outline with little or no reference to MCF, suggesting that Beijing has abandoned this controversial policy. If true, this could reflect an effort by China to dial down tensions with the United States – a rare good news story in an age of growing antagonism and rivalry.

Faisal Islam: Why the UAE's exit from Opec is a big deal

Faisal Islam

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It is a very big deal that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its abrupt exit from Opec, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The Emiratis were members even before they became a nation state in 1971. Opec is the organisation of mainly Gulf oil exporters, which for many decades controlled the price of crude oil by decreasing or increasing production and allocating quotas across its membership. It had a vital role in 1970s oil crises, which in turn transformed global energy policy.

While Opec production is dominated by Saudi Arabia, the UAE had the second highest spare production capacity. In other words, it was the second most important swing producer, capable of increasing production to help ease prices. Indeed it is precisely this that led to long-term reconsiderations of the UAE's position. Put simply, the UAE wanted to use the considerable capacity it has invested in.

Light speed weapons? Directed energy and the future of the ADF

Malcolm Davis

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Directed energy weapons (DEW), including high energy laser and high-power microwave weapons, are increasingly important in counter-drone tasks across air, sea and land. Technical challenges remain in optimising DEW technology as a viable military capability but DEW capabilities have the potential to create an inflection point in warfare as they offer virtually instantaneous effects at very low cost per shot compared with traditional missiles and, with a stable power source, they have effectively unlimited ‘magazines’.

US Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion show the need to invest in cheaper and more sustainable DEW capabilities which may not replace but will reduce reliance on expensive missile defence interceptors such as Patriot

Iran Is More Unified Than Ever

Ali Hashem

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TEHRAN—Many policymakers in Washington seem to believe Iran has lacked clear leadership during the war. Leading the way has been U.S. President Donald Trump, who argues that there is no one in Iran for the United States to negotiate a peace deal with. After the attack that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he even suggested that he should help choose Iran’s next leader.

The suggestion from the U.S. government is that Iran is divided, unstable, and without direction. Recent events in Tehran tell a different story.

The Jeddah Departure

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The Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah on Tuesday had been choreographed for weeks. Six heads of state, a single communique, an image of Arab unity in the face of an Iranian blockade entering its third month: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain arrived with pre-cleared talking points on the collective defense of the Arabian Peninsula. The United Arab Emirates arrived with a different script. Before the closing statement could be drafted, the Emirati delegation announced that effective May 1, after fifty-nine years of membership, the country would leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its expanded alliance, OPEC+, the coordinated framework that has bound Riyadh, Moscow, and Abu Dhabi to a shared production discipline since 2016. 

Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei described the move, in a measured statement read on Emirati state television, as “a sovereign national decision aligned with our evolving energy profile.” West Texas Intermediate crossed one hundred dollars a barrel within the hour, the first triple-digit print since April 10.

Why Iran Isn’t Blinking Yet

Keith Johnson

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The Trump administration believes that the two-week-old, semi-porous U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping will soon bring Tehran to its knees by forcing it to shut down oil wells as it runs out of storage space for crude it can no longer ship. That looming production shutdown, the administration believes, threatens Iran with permanent, severe damage to a major part of its economy, and explains why Washington appears content to wait for an Iranian surrender that has yet to materialize in the eight-week war.

Special Edition on Iran: Going Straight to the Strait

Richard Haass

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Iran has reportedly proposed to the United States that the two countries focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and postpone consideration of Iran’s nuclear program and other issues. The United States should accept this approach and suggest that these negotiations commence as quickly as possible.

Postponing discussion of the nuclear issue makes good sense. There are times when adding issues to a negotiation can create tradeoffs that make agreement less difficult. This is not one of those times. Previous negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have taken years. They are both highly technical and deeply contentious. The gap between the United States and Iran on the basic elements of any accord – what should be done with the nearly one thousand pounds of enriched uranium in Iran; whether Iran should have a right to enrich uranium and, if so, how much and to what level; what, if any, moratorium there should be on future enrichment and how long it should last; and what should be done regarding inspections – precludes any rapid agreement.

The shadow fleet is undermining the maritime order more brazenly than ever

Elisabeth Braw

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In 2026, the Baltic Sea countries, France, India, and others have inspected and detained more shadow-fleet vessels than in prior years. In response, Russian military vessels have begun escorting shadow vessels through the English Channel and Baltic Sea. Some Iranian shadow vessels have been able to sail despite the war in Iran and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. A not insignificant number have also managed to evade the United States’ blockade of Iranian ports.

Since the end of 2022, the shadow fleet—a large and growing group of ships that sail outside the official shipping system—has been in the news because of its role transporting sanctioned Russian oil. In March 2026, Iranian shadow vessels began attracting attention as well, as they have been able to keep sailing despite one and then two blockades amid the war in Iran.

Redefining Energy Security

RICHARD HAASS and CAROLYN KISSANE

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In the aftermath of COVID-19, firms shifted from a “just in time” model to a “just in case” approach that sought to strengthen resilience. With oil and gas infrastructure becoming a primary military target, energy systems must now undergo a similar transition.

NEW YORK—It is too soon to know when or how the war with Iran will end, or what its geopolitical or economic consequences will be. But one thing is already certain: What is meant by energy security must be rethought.

Has America Fought Well in the Iran War? With Mick Ryan

Mick Ryan

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Major General Mick Ryan, Australian Army (retired), Senior Fellow for Military Studies at the Lowy Institute, adjunct fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and author of the Futura Doctrina Substack joins the show to dissect the current state of the war in Iran. Is this conflict entering a postmortem phase, or are we still in the middle of it? How has America performed so far? How does this war connect to the Pacific theater? Are we adapting for a broader global conflict, and are our adversaries adapting as well?

Trump Is Dissatisfied With Iran’s Plan to Reopen Strait of Hormuz

Tyler Pager and Julian E. Barnes

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President Trump has told advisers he is not satisfied with Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, according to multiple people briefed on discussions in the White House Situation Room on Monday. The proposal also called on the United States to end its naval blockade but would have set aside questions about what to do with Iran’s nuclear program, according to U.S. and Iranian officials familiar with details of the negotiations.

Iran has repeatedly rejected American proposals to suspend its nuclear program and hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It is not clear precisely why Mr. Trump is not satisfied with the proposal, but he has repeatedly insisted that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. A U.S. official also said that accepting it could appear to deny Mr. Trump a victory.

The Forces of Scarcity Hitting Asia May Soon Spread Across the World

Damien Cave

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When the war in Iran started on Feb. 28, Asia expected to see serious, gradual impacts from losing access to a huge portion of the world’s oil and gas. But the conflict’s economic and social impacts have hit the region harder and faster than officials and experts expected. Many countries across the Asia-Pacific are experiencing sudden jolts of disruption that they are struggling to manage, with some comparing the crisis’s breakdowns and scope to the Covid pandemic.

Even if there is a peace deal soon, the future of this industrious region that has driven global economic growth for decades will likely include months of canceled flights, surging food prices, factory pauses, delayed shipments and empty shelves for products long considered quick and easy to buy worldwide: plastic bags, instant noodles, vaccines, syringes, lipstick, microchips and sportswear.

Google staff urge chief executive to block US military AI use

Stephen Morris

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More than 560 Google employees have signed an open letter to chief executive Sundar Pichai urging him to refuse to let the US government use its AI technology for classified military operations. “We want to see AI benefit humanity, not being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways,” read the letter, which was sent to Pichai on Monday. “This includes lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, but extends beyond.” 

“The only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads,” it continued. “Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them.” Big tech companies are under pressure to take a stance on military and intelligence use of their AI products after a clash between the Pentagon and AI start-up Anthropic.

AI Ambitions in a Thirsty Region: Water, Data Centers, and South Asia’s Digital Future

Farwa Aamer

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South Asia’s push into artificial intelligence (AI) comes with both promise and pressure. In a region already facing chronic water stress, the rapid technological expansion and the rise of AI data centers risk adding new strain to limited resources if growth is not carefully managed. The challenge for South Asia is not whether to pursue AI-led development, but how to do so in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

This paper argues that water must be treated as a central consideration in digital infrastructure planning. Practical steps are well within reach: adopting more water-efficient cooling technologies, siting data centers with local water conditions in mind, and better aligning energy and water policies to reduce overall resource use. At the same time, stronger regional cooperation on shared water systems and more meaningful engagement with local communities will all be essential to avoiding competition and conflict and ensuring more equitable outcomes.

America Is Fighting the Wrong Drone War

Javid Ahmad

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OPINION – For two decades, U.S. drones hunting terrorists across the mountains of South Asia were the symbol of American military power: precise, lethal, and unmatched. That era is now over. Drones are no longer exquisite tools of counterterrorism and have evolved into something far more common and destabilizing: cheap, expendable, and mass-produced tools of attrition. Despite pioneering the technology, the United States is now poorly positioned for the version that matters most. Critical mass is being replaced by a strategy of 'death by a thousand cuts,' as quantity assumes a quality all of its own.

From Ukraine to the Persian Gulf, and increasingly along America’s own borders, expendable drones are reshaping battlefields and quickly rewriting how modern wars are waged. These platforms aren’t winning wars outright, but they are doing something just as important: straining defenses, exhausting budgets, and outlasting the very systems that were designed to counter them. Right now, the United States is least prepared for that reality, and its adversaries know it.

Fusion on paper or in practice? Making the cloud work for ISR and NATO

Martin Zuber and Trey Herr

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NATO’s eastern flank faces a transformed operational environment defined by persistent hybrid threats that expose critical gaps in intelligence fusion and response timelines. Airspace incursions, undersea-cable sabotage, cyber intrusions, information campaigns, and targeted GPS jamming are not just isolated events, but elements of a sustained Russian strategy to probe defenses, test resolve, and impose continuous strain on a NATO systems architecture designed for episodic crises rather than persistent, multi-domain competition below the threshold of armed conflict.

The Alliance’s core challenge is not sensing capacity. NATO and its members field capable Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms across all domains. The problem lies in speed, integration, and trust. Data remains fragmented across national systems, shared selectively, and processed through architectures ill-suited for today’s tempo of operations. Without corresponding investments in shared infrastructure, paired with clear standards, adopting emerging technologies and modernizing systems risk amplifying friction rather than reducing it.

Choke Points and the Future of Naval Power

Gary Anderson

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Choke points were a key for the United States in bottling up the Russian navy in the event of conflict, but since the end of the Cold War, freedom of navigation had been assumed. All that changed during the Iran conflict. Both sides have closed the Straits of Hormuz using military means. Petroleum and natural gas products bound for Europe and China can’t get out, but Iran also can’t export those products due to the American naval blockade. Other than Iran, the nation that has been most hurt by the two blockades has been China. 

We should be sending her a clear message: invade Taiwan, and we can do it again both in the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea. That alone would virtually ensure a cut-off of 90 percent of China’s oil and natural gas imports, a crippling blow to her military as well as her civilian economy. That is real deterrence.

As Cease-Fire With Iran Wavers, US Expands Its Military Footprint – Analysis

Frud Bezhan

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As its cease-fire with Iran falters, the United States is significantly expanding its military capabilities in the Middle East, giving Washington the option of escalating the two-month-long conflict. The US military deployed a third aircraft carrier strike group with thousands of elite troops to the region on April 24, marking the largest buildup since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In force since April 8, the truce paused a costly war that has rattled international energy markets and upended the global economy. But Washington and Tehran have accused each other of violating the cease-fire and attempts to negotiate an end to the war are deadlocked.

India: Adaptive Extremism

Afsara Shaheen

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Islamist terrorism in India in 2026 remained contained at the operational level outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), but persistent patterns of radicalisation, transnational linkages, and evolving recruitment strategies underline a resilient and adaptive threat. The current trajectory reflects a shift from large-scale coordinated attacks to decentralised modules, lone actors, and digitally facilitated ideological mobilisation, even as security agencies sustain high levels of disruption and interdiction.

The Trump administration’s view of the US–India relationship

Viraj Solanki

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The Trump administration has a positive outlook regarding its relationship with India following a challenging year, during which the United States imposed 50% tariffs on India in mid-2025, and claimed to have brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025, which impacted bilateral trade and political trust.

The Trump administration’s relationship with India is more interest-based and transactional than the US–India relationship under the Joe Biden administration, when the focus was more on shared democratic values. The countries’ main shared areas of interest are countering China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific; defence and security; trade and investment; technology and people-to-people ties. The key question for the Trump administration is what it gets out of its relationship with India, including how bilateral cooperation will lead to increased opportunities, deals and market access for US businesses in India, and enhance the US economy.

What China’s New County Reveals About Its Afghanistan Policy

Philip Acey

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For much of the modern era, Central Asia – including Afghanistan and China’s western Xinjiang province – has been treated as a geopolitical periphery. Long viewed as an isolated buffer zone shaped by conflict, “otherness,” and great power competition, this perception is now shifting. Geopolitical realignments, economic and security necessity, as well as regional initiatives are repositioning Central Asia as an emerging hub of trade and cooperation.

That background helps explain China’s establishment of Cenling County in March 2026 along its border with Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. While some analyses emphasized the security implications of this move, this framing overlooks the broader strategic context.

Is China Winning the 2nd Space Race?

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It’s 2041 and at the Artemis Base Camp on the rim of the Shackleton Crater, an American space mining engineer and his Japanese colleague are sipping coffee, scowling at the latest headline: Elsewhere in the Aitken Basin, the Chinese have found yet another rich deposit of Helium-3, not far from their International Lunar Research Station, the one they constructed with the Russians in 2036.

This hasn’t happened yet, but it’s not science fiction. It’s the genuine ambition of the United States and China — among others — to establish a permanent presence on the moon with the explicit mission of mining – and exploiting – lunar resources.

Taiwan Fears It’ll Be ‘On the Menu’ at Trump-Xi SummitDeputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu comments in an interview

Jenny Leonard, Yian Lee, and Miaojung Lin

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A senior Taiwanese official expressed concern that President Donald Trump might make concessions on the self-governed island in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding Taiwan was working hard to prevent such a scenario.

“What we are the most afraid is to put Taiwan on the menu of the talk between Xi Jinping and President Trump,” Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu said Friday in an English-language interview with Bloomberg News. “We worry, and we need to avoid that it happens.”

War Without a Theory of Victory: How the United States Lost the Strategic Thread in Iran

Joe Funderburke 

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Fifty days into the US war with Iran, a pattern has emerged that is both familiar and alarming: tactical military success has not produced strategic coherence, and the absence of a credible theory of victory has left the United States reactive, economically exposed, and diplomatically isolated. United States entered the Iran conflict without a defined political end-state. The national security interagency process was structurally marginalized in the lead-up to and execution of the campaign. The resulting deficit is now visible in the oscillating ceasefire negotiations, the unresolved Strait of Hormuz crisis, and the absence of any articulated framework for translating battlefield gains into lasting strategic outcomes. Corrective action is both necessary and still possible, but it requires restoring the interagency function that sound strategy demands.

The Gap Between Striking and Winning

On February 28, 2026, United States and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, striking nuclear infrastructure, missile production facilities, and regime leadership targets across Iran. The operation was tactically impressive and militarily significant. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Nuclear enrichment facilities were damaged or destroyed. Iran’s conventional military capacity was substantially degraded.

The Kurds: Realism Over Separatism

Pasar Sherko Abdullah

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The Kurdish people are the world’s largest stateless nation. The geography of Kurdistan was first partitioned by the Treaty of Amasya (1555) between the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. The region under Iranian control is known as East Kurdistan (Rojhelat).

In the early 20th century, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the aftermath of World War I further divided Ottoman-held Kurdish lands among Turkey, Iraq, and Syria—creating North (Bakur), South (Bashur), and West (Rojava) Kurdistan, respectively. Together, these parts constitute what is historically known as “Greater Kurdistan.”

War Without a Theory of Victory: How the United States Lost the Strategic Thread in Iran

Joe Funderburke

Source Link

Fifty days into the US war with Iran, a pattern has emerged that is both familiar and alarming: tactical military success has not produced strategic coherence, and the absence of a credible theory of victory has left the United States reactive, economically exposed, and diplomatically isolated. United States entered the Iran conflict without a defined political end-state. The national security interagency process was structurally marginalized in the lead-up to and execution of the campaign. The resulting deficit is now visible in the oscillating ceasefire negotiations, the unresolved Strait of Hormuz crisis, and the absence of any articulated framework for translating battlefield gains into lasting strategic outcomes. Corrective action is both necessary and still possible, but it requires restoring the interagency function that sound strategy demands.

The Gap Between Striking and Winning

On February 28, 2026, United States and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, striking nuclear infrastructure, missile production facilities, and regime leadership targets across Iran. The operation was tactically impressive and militarily significant. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Nuclear enrichment facilities were damaged or destroyed. Iran’s conventional military capacity was substantially degraded.

Iranian HEMP Is an Existential Threat

Stephen Chill

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The dominant view in Washington policy circles holds Iran poses no existential threat to the United States. This consensus, however, widely held, is dangerously wrong. In 2024 and into 2025 both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed that Iran was close to having enough enriched uranium to make over ten nuclear warheads.[i] [ii] The question is not whether Iran could build a weapon, but what it would do with one.

Officials and analysts who dismiss an Iranian existential threat are picturing the wrong attack entirely. They picture warheads landing on American cities, a picture requiring Iran to build, miniaturize, and deliver a substantial arsenal against the most heavily defended airspace on earth. City-killing is not the only way to destroy a country, and a nuclear weapon need not land to be catastrophic.

The Cost of the Iran War for the United States: A Strategic Blunder in Five Dimensions

Tahir Azad

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When President Donald Trump declared from the West Wing on April 6, 2026, that Iran had been “militarily defeated,” he repeated a line he had already delivered on March 17, March 24 and March 26. Each declaration of victory was contradicted within hours by the next missile launch, the next shipping disruption, and the next emergency request to Congress for replenishment. On April 21, hours before a two-week ceasefire was to expire, the president extended the truce at the request of Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, while insisting that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in force. Israel absorbed direct missile strikes on its mainland. For the United States, the cost has proven catastrophic across five dimensions: military, financial, regional, diplomatic, global, and reputational. The pattern that emerges is not a list of isolated setbacks. It is the outline of a great power that has begun to discover the limits of its own power.

Military Costs: The Arsenal of Democracy Runs Dry

The most uncomfortable truth for the Pentagon is that the United States has quietly cannibalized its own deterrent posture to sustain this war. A CSIS analysis by Mark Cancian and Chris Park estimates that more than 150 THAAD interceptors were expended during the earlier twelve-day war of June 2025, with no new deliveries scheduled until April 2027. The current conflict, Operation Epic Fury, has accelerated that depletion.

Detecting A ‘Dirty Bomb’: How Europeans Can Combat Radiological Threats – Analysis

Jacek Siewiera

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Earlier this month, reports emerged of drones allegedly carrying radioactive materials in central London. The incident is a timely reminder of the need for European states to guard against such threats—both for the harm these could cause but also for the psychological effect they can have on states and societies.

Great uncertainty—to put it lightly—remains around the future of Iran’s nuclear programme and its stockpiled fissile material. Debate has always focused on the prospect of a nuclear bomb. But especially in such a period of convulsive change, the same material could be used for other deadly purposes. The last official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessments indicated that, as of June 2025, Iran held approximately 440kg of uranium-235 enriched up to 60%, alongside further quantities of lower enriched uranium.

Nepal’s Remittance Reckoning: The Gen Z Mandate Meets the Gulf Crisis

Soumya Bhowmick

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Nepal’s new government took office at a moment when the country faces both political transformation and economic fragility. Nepal is not in outright crisis – yet – but the risks are real. The Shah government carries a historic democratic mandate while simultaneously confronting an external shock originating in West Asia that threatens the remittance mechanism sustaining its balance of payments.

In September 2025, youth-led protests toppled Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and set Nepal on the path to fresh elections. The administration of Balendra “Balen” Shah was sworn in late March 2026 as the country’s 47th and youngest prime minister. Shah barely settled into office before colliding with a severe disruption to the remittance economy on which Nepal depends more than almost any other nation in the world.

Three Narratives of Victory in One War

Abdulwajid Soroush

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On February 28, the United States and Israel launched large-scale strikes against Iran’s military and nuclear facilities in an operation introduced under the names Epic Wrath and Lion’s Roar. On the first day of the war, Donald Trump described it as a “short-term excursion” that would end quickly. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared at his first press conference that “This is not Iraq. This is not endless.” Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also reassured America’s G7 partners that the operation would be over “in weeks, not months.” Yet after forty days of fighting, the war culminated in a two-week ceasefire on April 9, 2026, with Islamabad hosting talks between Iran and the United States.

Once the ceasefire was announced, all three principal actors claimed victory. The White House described the two-week ceasefire with Iran as a win for the United States. In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the ceasefire and, by declaring that “Iran is weaker than ever, and Israel has never been stronger” implicitly framed the outcome as an Israeli victory.

Trade Offensive – OpEd

Mark Nayler

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Despite US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s warning that anyone seeking stronger trade ties with Beijing would be “cutting their own throat,” Donald Trump’s weaponized tariffs are causing many countries to seek closer relations with China. There has been a barrage of diplomacy in the first few months of 2026, especially from European leaders concerned about the effects of Chinese competitiveness on domestic industries. French president Emmanuel Macron, who visited Xi Jinping last December, said that European trade and industry faced a “life-or-death moment,” and that its future depended on more balanced trade relations with the world’s largest manufacturing country.

The latest European leader to visit Beijing, between April 11 and 15, was Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish premier’s meeting with Xi Jinping was the fourth in as many years—and trade was top of the agenda. In 2025, exports from Madrid to Beijing exceeded imports by €40 billion, a deficit described by Sánchez as “unsustainable.” His visit was part of a broader strategy to reduce the EU’s €360 billion trade deficit with China. Although the two leaders apparently agreed on measures to improve Madrid’s imbalanced relationship with Beijing, no concrete details have been released.

Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute over Autonomous Weapon Systems: Potential Issues for Congress

Sayler, Kelley M.

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On February 27, 2026, President Donald J. Trump directed federal agencies to "IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of [American AI company] Anthropic's technology." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (who is now using "Secretary of War" as a "secondary title" under Executive Order (E.O.) 14347 dated September 5, 2025) subsequently directed the Department of Defense (DOD, now using "Department of War" as a secondary designation under E.O. 14347) to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security; bar defense contractors, suppliers, and partners from working with Anthropic; and describe an up-to-six-month period of transition away from Anthropic products. 

This designation follows a reportedly months-long dispute between DOD and Anthropic over DOD use of Anthropic products, including Claude, the company's generative AI model. On March 9, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging these directives. While the district court issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Anthropic on March 26, the court of appeals denied Anthropic's motion for a stay on April 8, thus undoing the lower court's injunction.