How AI Can Repair US-India Relations

Bill Drexel

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In the wake of trade convulsions, an incendiary H-1B visa debate, and bitter diplomatic ruptures following lethal hostilities between India and Pakistan last spring, the United States and India are finally poised to turn over a new leaf in the coming weeks as a trade deal solidifies, reopening the door to much broader cooperation that both nations have sought for many years. But the basis of a rapprochement between the two behemoths is anything but clear, as two of the traditional pillars of closer US-India collaboration are beginning to look wobbly: high-skilled Indian immigration is increasingly under fire in the United States, and offshoring cheap manufacturing to Asia looks more unsustainable than ever before.

Finding new areas of robust cooperation for India and America is a daunting but necessary task as the two nations grapple with their strategic interdependence in the shadow of China’s growing heft and belligerence. Artificial intelligence looms large as the most obvious solution.

Momentum favors it. Recent trade agreements—including Technology Prosperity Deals signed with Japan, South Korea, and the UK this fall—have featured strong AI components, emphasizing coordination on AI exports, standards, and infrastructure development. India brings its own unique AI complementarities to the United States: a hunger to adapt and iterate on American breakthroughs for cost-effective applications, a massive talent pool, and a pressing need to attract greater American computing capabilities.

Pakistan’s “SMASH” Missile Might Be Hypersonic. Does It Matter?

Brandon J. Weichert

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Hypersonic weapons are alarming on their own—but there is little evidence that Pakistan has built the underlying technology that makes them truly lethal.

In November of this year, the Pakistani Navy staged what it called a “first at-sea launch” of its newest toy: the P-282 SMASH, a ship-launched anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) said to be able to strike targets at Mach 8. According to Islamabad, the system rides a “quasi-ballistic” trajectory—climbing into the sky, then plunging like a manmade meteor toward enemy ships while executing high-G terminal maneuvers.

The implication is obvious: Pakistan wants the world to believe it has entered the elite club of nations wielding hypersonic maritime killers. On paper, the SMASH missile adds a vertical “burst-strike” option to Pakistan’s naval arsenal—very different from the low-flying cruise missiles that dominate the region today. Pakistan claims the tested variant carries a range of roughly 350 kilometers and can attack both moving sea targets and fixed land sites.

If true, that would place a major new threat inside India’s maritime neighborhood.

But that’s the key word here—if. Because for all the noise around SMASH, almost none of Pakistan’s more sensational claims currently stand on independently verifiable ground.

Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics

Alicia R. Chen

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Earlier this year, after U.S. President Donald Trump effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral aid program, many observers raised fears that China would step in to fill the geopolitical vacuum. USAID, after all, had served as a key tool of U.S. diplomacy for more than six decades, and the American retreat has created an opportunity for China to expand its economic statecraft and win influence in many parts of the world.

Over the last two decades, China has vastly expanded the amount and types of foreign aid it administers. Between 2000 and 2023, only 17 countries in the world did not receive a loan or grant from the Chinese government or a Chinese state-owned institution. The Belt and Road Initiative, which was launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, has accounted for more than $1 trillion in total spending. This increasingly global footprint has piqued Western policymakers’ concerns about Beijing’s ambitions, but many observers still don’t fully comprehend Beijing’s strategy.

Japan Has Changed How the World Must Think About Taiwan

Mr. Singleton 

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A single word can crack the facade of a great power’s confidence.

That’s what happened last month when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan told lawmakers in Tokyo that a Chinese attack or blockade against Taiwan would constitute a threat to Japan’s “survival,” a term that, under Japanese law, would permit the country to deploy its military overseas.

Ms. Takaichi merely said aloud what has long been understood — that a crisis involving Taiwan would threaten Japan’s national security. But her comments were among the clearest public signals yet that Tokyo could help defend Taiwan from potential Chinese aggression.

Beijing reacted as if Ms. Takaichi, a conservative politician, had declared war. Chinese state media has portrayed her as reviving the militarist rhetoric used to justify Japan’s aggression during World War II, and a senior Chinese envoy posted what amounted to an online threat to behead Ms. Takaichi. China has halted some Japanese imports, discouraged Chinese tourism to Japan and stepped up coast guard patrols around islands claimed by both countries.

Beijing routinely lashes out at Tokyo because of lingering resentment over Japan’s wartime past, which included a brutal invasion and occupation of China. This time, however, the fury is rooted in something more dangerous: China’s growing anxiety that one of its bedrock goals — isolating Taiwan and forcing it to submit to unification on Chinese terms — is slipping away.

Chain of Command, American Values Guide US Military Profession

Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik,

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Lately, there’s been talk about soldiers not being bound to follow illegal orders. The talk mostly is among some academicians, media personalities and political leaders. It’s usually associated with one side of the political aisle trying to score points against the other. I don’t want to use this essay to engage in that kind of partisan political discussion. Rather, I’d like to point out two of the enduring and foundational aspects of our profession that are relevant to the current discussion.

First, military commanders in the chain of command, with advice from staff judge advocates, are responsible for ensuring their orders are legal. Putting the primary focus on soldiers, or any other service members for that matter, misses this essential point. Those lower along the chain of command must be able to trust that those at higher levels have done their jobs. And “higher levels” is a relative term. To some, “higher” may mean a company, battalion or brigade commander. To others, a division, corps or joint task force commander. And to still others, “higher levels” may mean a geographic combatant or service component commander.

Inherent Responsibility

Commanders at each level have inherent responsibilities for those they command. Some of these responsibilities are tactical and operational—to place their units, and the men and women in them, in the best position relative to the enemy to increase the probability of success. Other responsibilities are logistical—to ensure the arms, ammunition, supplies and equipment needed for mission success either are on hand or within supporting distance to units in the fight. Still others are protective—to make certain both the battle and campaign areas, as well as lines of communication, are protected from enemy interference.

How To Break China’s Grip on the Batteries Powering Our Military

Samm Gillard & Drew Ronneberg

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It’s tough medicine but Congress must use the pending defense policy bill to bar the Department of War from using lithium-ion cells in its weapon systems that are supplied by Beijing.

When China temporarily halted the supply of lithium-ion battery cells to Pentagon drone maker Skydio last year, co-founder and CEO Adam Bry called it “a clarifying moment.”

“If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours,” he remarked at the time.

The company was forced to take the “drastic step” of rationing batteries from three to one per drone, while it is still searching for alternative suppliers.

Yet this unique vulnerability is far greater than many realize or are willing to admit. Countless other specialized U.S. military systems, including handheld radios, autonomous submersibles, and next generation platforms like directed energy weapons, rely on lithium-ion batteries and related materials.

As the Department of Defense warned in its landmark Lithium Battery Strategy, it is similarly dependent on a variety of Chinese battery components and materials like graphite anodes, electrolyte salts, as well as other key ingredients such as the metals nickel and cobalt.

The Limits of U.S. Export Controls on China

Daniel Bob

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In an era defined by a Trump trade regime marked by the highest tariffs in decades—and the greatest policy volatility in modern history—the Supreme Court is poised to rule on the legality of those tariffs. That decision will shape the future of American trade authority. It also presents an opportunity to take a broader, overdue look at U.S. trade policy as a whole. Any such reassessment must include a clear-eyed evaluation of export controls, which now span the globe but fall most heavily on China. Beijing’s technological, industrial, and military progress—combined with its expanding economic weight—poses the most comprehensive challenge to U.S. power since the United States emerged from World War II as the dominant global actor.

Washington’s reflexive answer to China’s rise has been export controls targeting chips, software, next-generation tools, and other cutting-edge technologies that underpin U.S. strategic and economic advantages. The impulse is understandable: safeguarding technological leadership is central to both national security and long-term prosperity. Yet instinct is not strategy. Broad, blunt restrictions on U.S. firms selling to China risk imposing costs that exceed their benefits. A more calibrated and adaptive approach is needed—one that protects critical advantages without undermining the innovative ecosystem on which American power ultimately depends.

The India Trump Made

James Crabtree and Rudra Chaudhuri

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Over the last decade, India has drawn ever closer to the United States, tentatively aligning itself with Washington as it continues to eschew formal alliances. This approach has paid off, securing U.S. investment, defense cooperation, and technological exchange, as well as the sense that the friendship between the world’s two largest democracies would only grow. Indian policymakers were mostly untroubled when Donald Trump returned to the White House this year. They assumed that Washington valued the partnership and that ties would only grow stronger, not least because of the apparent chemistry between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the president’s first term.

But now, India must reassess its American gamble. Since the summer, Trump has departed from the policy of recent U.S. administrations and sought to pressure India. He increased tariffs to 50 percent on India in August, ostensibly as a penalty for its ongoing purchases of Russian oil. And he agreed to a raft of deals with India’s neighbor and rival, Pakistan, irking Indian officials. In apparent response, Modi attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin in September 2025, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping; his presence made it seem as if India were aligning with U.S. competitors. Putin will be visiting New Delhi this week, where his meeting with Modi risks giving the same impression.

Three Months, Two Thousand Meters: A Snapshot of the War in Ukraine

Gil Barndollar 

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After the global success of his 2023 film 20 Days in Mariupol, Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov returned to his country’s front lines to tell a new story. As Ukraine began its heavily telegraphed 2023 counteroffensive, Chernov’s roaming eye alighted on a single platoon from 3rd Assault Brigade, which had been tasked with liberating the ruined village of Andriivka.

To the poor bloody infantry tasked with executing their piece of a much larger operation, the mission was simple: Take ground. Ground is what Chernov gives his viewers from the opening frame, as a high-explosive shell lands just yards from a pair of soldiers in a trench, showering the camera lens in dirt. Their comrades pile in and out of armored personnel carriers, then advance on foot through shell-churned mud one minute, dense brush the next. Though fighting on his native soil, one Ukrainian soldier says, “It’s like landing on a planet where everything is trying to kill you.”

Unmanned systems provide some of the most stunning visuals in the film. A vast cemetery, flags flying over every grave, shifts to a forest of spectral trees, filmed from a drone’s thermal camera. Early on, slow-scrolling drone footage of the forested battlefield lays it out as a green carpet to the objective. Choppier drone videos from later in the battle show only stumps and shell holes, and the soldiers crawling between them.

Why I Declined Brigade Command

Matt Jamison

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Last year I published an article in which I studied what I referred to as the “Battalion Command Crisis within the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery.” I completed my own battalion command in June 2023 and loved it. The job was the highlight of my career, and my departure was truly bittersweet. To this day, I can honestly say that I would happily do it all over again. After successfully completing what was then known as the Colonel’s Command Assessment Program (CCAP) last year, I deferred competing for brigade command. This year I declined entirely. In this article, I will explain why.

When I decided to make the Army a career, my general vision of what success looked like was twenty years of service and a successful battalion command. As I approached battalion command, I never thought about retiring at its conclusion. My career had been a success by any measure and battalion command was no different. I was a first-time select for Senior Service College and knew that I wanted to get my family back to the Washington, D.C. area and take a specific job that would be available at the Pentagon. I had never been certain that I would enjoy brigade command – the transition to organizational leadership might remove much of what I enjoyed as a direct leader – but I had always taken the next hard job.

Poll finds increasing support for international engagement, Golden Dome spending

Ashley Roque

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WASHINGTON — As defense leaders head to Reagan National Defense Forum to mingle with Trump administration officials, a new poll finds growing bipartisan support for NATO, sending weapons to Ukraine and Golden Dome spending.

“American people continue to favor peace through strength and active U.S. engagement in the world,” a summary of the poll said. “Majorities want the United States to take the lead in international affairs, believe American military superiority is essential, and support a force sized to deter and, if necessary, win conflicts against more than one major adversary at a time.”

Each year the Ronald Reagan Institute releases its defense and national security poll before high-level officials, lawmakers and defense contractors descend on Simi Valley, Calif., for the weekend forum. This time around, pollsters conducted the survey ahead of the release of a new National Defense Strategy and at a time when the Trump administration is withdrawing from the world stage, striking vessels in the Caribbean and deploying the National Guard to cities around the country.

A bipartisan survey of more than 2,500 people showed that participants are mixed on some of those moves. For example, 64 percent of respondents said the US should be more engaged in international events, up 7 percent from this time last year.

This year has also marked some ups and downs for US support for NATO and the ongoing war in Ukraine; including a 28-point peace plan for Kyiv that caught allies and partners by surprise.

Japan’s Sanae Takaichi moves to ease weeks of tensions with China over the Taiwan Strait

Liu ZhenandZhuang Pinghui

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After weeks of turmoil in relations with China, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has sought to dial down tensions with Beijing over a hypothetical conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Responding to a lawmaker’s question on Wednesday, Takaichi told the Japanese parliament that Tokyo’s position on the island remained unchanged and referred to a 1972 commitment that led to the normalisation of ties between Beijing and Tokyo.

“The Japanese government’s basic position regarding Taiwan remains as stated in the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communique, and there has been no change to this position,” Takaichi said.

According to the 1972 communique, “the government of the People’s Republic of China reiterates that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China” and the Japanese government “fully understands and respects this stand”.

The communique also says Japan “firmly maintains its stand under Article 8 of the Potsdam Declaration”. Along with the Cairo Declaration of November 1943, which stipulates that Japan return territory seized from China during war, the two documents are often cited by Beijing as legal treaties supporting Taiwan as a part of China.

Takaichi’s comments on Wednesday come nearly a month after she told the parliament that an attack on Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” – one that could allow Tokyo to engage in military action.

Her statement on November 7 was the most explicit by a sitting Japanese prime minister on how Tokyo might respond to a Taiwan contingency and marked a departure from the country’s long-held strategic ambiguity over the issue. She later said the remarks were “hypothetical”.

A Bad Deal Is Worse Than No Deal

Sergey Radchenko

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In August, U.S. President Donald Trump was disappointed when a meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to produce a breakthrough in ending the war in Ukraine. “We didn’t get there,” Trump acknowledged at the time. Putin had evinced little interest in ceding ground on his maximalist demands, making a peace deal look remote, but the entirely predictable failure of the Alaska misadventure evidently did not deter Trump from trying again. In November, a 28-point peace plan—which media reports suggest was put together by both Russian and American officials—sent Kyiv and Ukraine’s European allies into conniptions because it largely reflected Russian positions on territory and Ukraine’s future. In tough negotiations with the United States, the Ukrainians successfully pushed back against many of these Russian-leaning positions, arriving at a new plan that Putin has yet to agree to.

Amid this pageantry of proposal and negotiation, Trump remains committed to chasing a fantasy. The U.S. president is seemingly unwilling to accept that his Russian counterpart does not want to end the war without securing Ukraine’s complete surrender. Trump continues to believe that, if only provided with sufficient inducements or threatened with new sanctions, Putin will trade his long-term goals for a reasonable settlement that will preserve a truncated but basically independent Ukraine, one able to defend itself against further Russian encroachment.

Impatient for deliverables, Trump has so far failed to develop a consistent, professional process for attaining them. His approach to peacemaking has suffered from an improbable degree of improvisation, exclusion of regional expertise, and consequentially, shallowness and flights of fancy. The 28-point plan was no exception: produced without consulting European allies and delivered in haste to the weary Ukrainians, it was riddled with inconsistencies and outright errors, and had to be walked back almost at once, undermining the credibility of the entire effort. The leak of transcripts that show Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff advising the Russians about the right way to talk to the U.S. president highlights mind-boggling lapses of judgment among key officials entrusted with looking after American national interests.

The Armed Conflict Survey 2025: Editor’s Introduction

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The Armed Conflict Survey 2025 reveals escalating global violence, fractured geopolitics and worsening humanitarian crises. Trump’s 2025 return to office intensified great-power tensions and further weakened multilateralism. Conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar persisted, with the new Israel–Iran war flashpoint emerging and global violent-event fatalities rising 23% to nearly 240,000.

The Armed Conflict Survey 2025 captures an increasingly complex world marked by persistent and protracted conflicts, deepening geopolitical divisions, weakening global governance structures and escalating humanitarian needs. The return of United States President Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 has amplified ongoing trends in great-power rivalry while further eroding multilateral economic and trade norms and introducing greater unpredictability in US foreign policy – particularly regarding its commitment to upholding the rules-based international order, whose relevance and legitimacy have been called into question of late.

The number of active armed conflicts worldwide, and their average duration, remain among the highest in decades.1 The reporting period (1 July 2024–30 June 2025) of The Armed Conflict Survey 2025 saw little to no progress in achieving durable peace in Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan or Ukraine – arguably the most defining conflicts of recent decades in terms of geopolitical significance and human impact. The repercussions of the Israel–Hamas war have only intensified, both regionally and internationally, as illustrated by the brief Israel–Iran war in June 2025, which also featured direct military intervention by the US. Organised violence and crime have remained rife globally, particularly in the Americas. Nowhere is this more evident than in Haiti, where armed gangs have effectively taken control of large parts of the country, further eroding what remained of state authority.

Better know a non-nuke: Germany

Alexander K. Bollfrass

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West Germany’s renunciation of nuclear weapons shaped NATO strategy and global non-proliferation norms. This episode explores how Germany balanced deterrence, dependence and diplomacy in the nuclear age.

In this episode of The Arms Control Primer, host Dr Alexander Bollfrass is joined by Prof Marina Henke of the Hertie School and Dr Andreas Lutsch of the Bundesnachrichtendienst’s Federal University. Together, they examine Germany’s post-war nuclear trajectory, from early ambitions and NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements to accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and today’s renewed debate over deterrence in Europe amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Dr Alexander Bollfrass is the Head of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control, focusing on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction and related delivery systems, as well as risk reduction and arms control. 

Prof Marina Henke is a Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School in Berlin. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at Northwestern University, and a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She holds a PhD in Politics and Public Policy from Princeton University, and published a book titled “Constructing Allied Cooperation” with Cornell University Press in 2019. Her research interests include grand strategy, nuclear security and European security and defence policy.

Ukraine’s AI-Driven Sky Sentinel Turret Is Rewriting Air Defense as We Know It

Brandon J. Weichert

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Ukraine has successfully developed an AI-driven anti-drone gun—the next step in the race between drone and anti-drone warfare, and one that other nations are certain to copy.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has become the world’s most important laboratory for modern warfare. From long-range drones to cheap loitering munitions to satellite-guided artillery, nearly every destructive innovation of the twenty-first century has found its way into the conflict—and has been made all the more lethal as a result.

But now, Ukraine is quietly introducing something even more transformative: autonomous, AI-guided air-defense (AD) turrets capable of automatically detecting, tracking, and killing incoming aerial threats.

The Rise of Autonomous Air Defense

Ukraine’s “Sky Sentinel” system is the first autonomous air defense system to enter active combat use in the European theater. It is unlikely to be the last.

Developed by Ukrainian engineers and funded in part by UNITED24 and volunteers, Sky Sentinel represents a profound shift in how modern armies can defend themselves. During early combat testing, the turret reportedly destroyed six Shahed-136 drones, proving that machine-gun-based, AI-guided systems can do real work against the cheap, mass-produced threats that have been tormenting Ukrainian cities for nearly two years.

How the United States Can Beat China’s A2/AD Network

Harrison Kass

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China’s A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) network is a layered defensive system of long-range missiles, radars, air defenses, cyber and electronic warfare tools, aircraft, ships, and submarines. All of these systems are designed with one purpose in mind: to keep US forces as far away from China as possible.

With the A2/AD network in place, any potential US military intervention in the region near Taiwan or the First Island Chain would become slower and more difficult—and more politically risky. Critically, China’s defense network doesn’t need to be perfect—it only needs to be strong enough to raise the stakes sufficiently to discourage the United States from entering a conflict. The result has been arguably the most challenging operational environment that US forces have encountered since the end of World War II.

The strategic stakes are high. If the US cannot penetrate or operate around A2/AD, then China gains de facto control over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and much of the Indo-Pacific, placing US allies in the region (Japan, Korea, Philippines, Australia) in a compromised security position. Accordingly, the United States is doing its best to develop countermeasures to the network in order to maintain Asia’s post-World War II security architecture.

America Is Dragging the M1 Abrams Tank Through the Mud

Brandon J. Weichert

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The US Army is conducting a series of tank exercises near Poland’s border with Russia. Why?

The US Army’s M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank (MBT) is the crown jewel of Western armor. With the Ukraine War grinding on, and fears that the conflict could spill beyond Ukraine’s borders, American forces are now pushing their iconic tanks through some of the most unforgiving terrain in Europe: Poland’s late-autumn mud.

Why Is the US Army Practicing Tank Maneuvers in Poland?

This isn’t a stunt. It’s a deliberate test—and a tactically valuable one—of how America’s premier heavy armor operates under the exact conditions US troops would face if war spread across NATO’s eastern flank.

At Poland’s Bemowo Piski Training Area and several other sites, Abrams crews are maneuvering through deep mud, waterlogged trenches, and soaked soil that sucks at a 70-ton tank like quicksand. US armor and support units were transported by rail across Poland, then dispersed to simulate wartime movement—a full-spectrum test not only of the machines themselves, but of the logistics network required to keep them alive.

Strategy Needs a Comeback

John Reid

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The Lesson-Learned from Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine moves towards a potential negotiated settlement, the next step for military and policy leaders is to catalogue “lessons learned,” with an eye towards competition with China. There is already no shortage of published “lessons learned” from the conflict, and they are predictable: drones are the future, the battlefield is transparent, and the grey zone is where conflict is won or lost. Missing from the discussion is the most important and overlooked lesson learned for the United States (“U.S.”) after being caught surprised by Russia’s unprovoked invasion: strategy needs a comeback. Indeed, the shortcomings of prior U.S. strategy in Ukraine must be utilized as a charrette to engage in better competition with China.

It is too soon to judge President Trump’s efforts towards peace in Ukraine (indeed, the terms are presently being negotiated). But for the prior administration, the war in Ukraine laid bare U.S. strategic shortcomings and offers invaluable lessons for the next conflict. As the U.S. drafts a new National Security Strategy and plots the best course of action towards China in the Indo-Pacific, Ukraine serves as an invaluable strategy exercise. For U.S. strategists, the Ukraine conflict demonstrates three vital needs: 1) the need to understand strategy as distinct from political aims; 2) an appreciation of how human nature drives conflict; and 3) a better understanding of an opponent’s center of gravity. Each of these lessons from Ukraine are fundamentals of strategy. But in a world of liberal democratic theory, it is easy to lose sight of essential strategy truisms.

Lebanon 2.0—Shepherding the Path to Peace

Lynn Zovighian

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“The Middle East needs new approaches … I ask the international community once again to spare no effort in promoting processes of dialogue and reconciliation.” This was Pope Leo XIV’s call to action during his homily at Mass in Beirut near the site of the Beirut port explosion. Lebanon welcomed Pope Leo on his first apostolic journey—a feat that some doubted would materialize amid Israel’s renewed military campaign in Lebanon and widespread skepticism about Lebanon’s ability to disarm Hezbollah.

A New Brand for Global Reckoning?

Under the banner “Blessed are the peacemakers!” the papal visit produced historic moments. Pope Leo greeted Lebanon’s youth from a golf cart rather than the bullet-proof popemobile. Diverse faith groups, including churches with fewer than 10,000 members in the country, united in a call for co-existence and peace. Lebanon’s global brand of insecurity and conflict gave way to something different: credibility, respect and leadership.

Trump’s Middle East Order

Ray Takeyh

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The Middle East is a place that most American presidents want to avoid. Yet inevitably, they find themselves mired in its quarrels. Despite periodic calls for a pivot toward other geostrategic challenges, the perception that its core interests are at stake in the region has kept the United States from leaving. The oil depositories of the Persian Gulf remain vital to the global economy. A menacing Iran sits near the nuclear threshold. The Arab world’s political dysfunction has produced generations of militants and terrorists, a collection of whom attacked the United States in 2001, resulting in the worst mass-casualty event it had suffered on its homeland since Pearl Harbor.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, U.S. presidents have tried to solve the Middle East’s conundrums through armed invasions, diplomacy, and limited humanitarian interventions. All have failed. Some of these efforts spawned even more pernicious phenomena. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, gave rise to a new legion of terrorists. The limited 2011 military foray into Libya resulted in chaos across a large swath of North Africa. And yet administration after administration has remained, in some way, enchanted with the idea of imposing a regional vision.

A new tripolar world order is emerging without Europe

Gabriel Elefteriu

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Europe has had a good run. It has been at the top of world affairs for half a millennium, since the great age of exploration connected all continents and first gave man a global perspective. The great European empires – initially Portuguese, then Spanish, British, French – dominated much of the planet for some 350 years. The places that lay beyond European control were either inward-facing civilisations like China and Japan, or regional powers without truly global ambitions like the Ottomans, Russia and the United States in its first century of independence.

But over the past 150 years, Europe’s collective weight in the global balance of power has been on a declining path. Two world wars, the loss of empire, the rise of new players with global reach – first America, then the Soviets and now China – have seen Old Europe give up its primacy in international affairs but nonetheless retain a seat at the top geopolitical table.

Since 1945, however, Europe’s influence and status have been entwined with and increasingly dependent on American power, as part of what we have come to call “the West”. The transatlantic relationship became so close, complex and deeply rooted in the consciousness and political culture of both Europe and the United States, that trying to assess European power independently of American power – i.e. to disentangle them – had become conceptually impossible. This has served to conceal the underlying erosion of Europe’s real standing in global affairs.

Rupture in the India-U.S. Relationship: An Indian Perspective

Sanjay Pulipaka and Cauvery Ganapathy

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In recent months, India-United States relations have experienced considerable strain. The U.S. President has imposed reciprocal tariffs as well as additional tariffs on India for its Russian oil imports. These abrupt actions have disrupted a bilateral partnership that, over nearly two decades, had grown into one of the world’s most consequential, built on convergences in economic, defense, and technological cooperation as well as shared interests in maintaining a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region. However, in President Trump’s second term, longstanding areas of divergence have intensified, testing the resilience of the partnership. Yet, at an institutional level, both foreign policy establishments appear to be committed to overcoming the breach. This paper critically evaluates the emerging cleavages, and assesses the inherent strategic value each partner brings to the bilateral. It also considers potential recalibrations, grounded in the capacity of two mature democracies to navigate the differences in strategic perception and sustain long-term cooperation.

The United States Needs Data Centers, and Data Centers Need Energy, but That Is Not Necessarily a Problem

Robin Gaster

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The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) also implies rapid growth of electricity demand, for the first time in several decades. Previously, growing electrification had been roughly matched by growing efficiency, leaving demand flat. That is now changing, quite rapidly. OpenAI and the other AI companies are seeking out sources that can provide multiple gigawatts of energy, so they certainly believe demand is growing. Beyond data centers, more electric vehicles (EVs) and the electrification of homes and industries add to demand as well.

Supply is another matter. It takes time to add generating capacity to the grid, and more time to develop the transmission lines to move electricity to where it’s needed. That in part is why huge new AI campuses are being designed: AI companies can then control their own energy generation (“behind the meter”) and don’t have to worry as much about transmission.

But all that new capacity is some years away. Manufacturers have a five-year backlog for gas turbines. Solar is quicker to build but harder to permit, and locations are usually not that close to demand so transmission is needed. New-build nuclear is at least a decade away. And while we strongly support data centers bringing their own energy supplies “behind the meter,” even that will take considerable time.

Data centers therefore seek electricity from the existing grid. And the grid has a fundamental dilemma. In the early 20th century, the U.S. grid emerged from a period of competition into geographically separated monopolies. It made no sense to build separate competing wires everywhere, and electricity companies quickly became vertically integrated, managing electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. Those monopolies were closely regulated and not just for price (“rates”); the utilities needed permission to add capacity because that meant adding cost, for example.

A Navy of Necessity: Ukraine’s Unmanned Surface Vessels at War

Thane C. Clare

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Ukraine stood on a strategic precipice in 2022. With its navy eliminated in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was left with a shoreline vulnerable to amphibious assault and its vital maritime commerce exposed to interdiction by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Yet by mid-2023, Ukraine had forced the Russian navy into a defensive posture and resumed seaborne grain exports.

This stunning reversal was the result of a Ukrainian sea denial campaign executed with improvised unmanned surface vessels (USVs)—the first large-scale wartime employment of USVs. In A Navy of Necessity, CSBA Senior Fellow Dr. Thane Clare argues that Ukraine’s ability to turn the tables on Russia’s fleet was founded on a minimum viable warfare approach: fielding a sea denial capability quickly enough to prevent strategic failure, even if that capability was not yet robust enough to overcome all potential countermeasures.

Dr. Clare highlights four major themes that emerged from the campaign: USVs’ critical contribution to sea denial, their role as range extenders for Ukraine’s anti-ship capability, the evolution of their cross-domaincapabilities from anti-ship to anti-air and beyond, and the measure–countermeasure competition with Russia. The report closes with considerations for U.S. and allied planners, outlining the possibilities and limitations of USV employment in other wartime scenarios.

India's Supreme Court upholds rights of poorest - but language reveals 'bias', study says

Soutik Biswas

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India's Supreme Court prides itself on defending the rights of Dalits - historically the country's most oppressed citizens.

But a new study argues that the court's own language has frequently reflected the caste hierarchies it aims to erase. About 160 million Indians are Dalits, once called "untouchables", yet many remain trapped in menial jobs and shut out of social and economic opportunity.

For much of independent India's history, the country's top judges have struggled to speak about Dalits in ways that recognise dignity rather than reinforce stigma, the study found. That tension - between progressive legal outcomes and regressive language - is the central paradox documented in a sweeping review of 75 years of judgments of the top court.

The University of Melbourne-funded research, conducted in partnership with the Supreme Court, offers a rare internal reckoning for one of the world's most powerful judiciaries.

The study examines "constitution bench" rulings - decided by five or more judges - from 1950 to 2025. These rulings are especially important because they set legal precedents, are taught in law schools, invoked in courtrooms and cited by later benches.

Anchoring The Indo–Pacific: How India’s Andaman Transhipment Hub Redefines Supply Chain

Ruben Nag

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India’s journey toward supply-chain independence has always had a strange blind spot: the sea. For a country that stretches across 7,500 kilometres of coastline, far too much of its cargo still makes a courtesy call to someone else’s port.

A recent technical paper on Nicobar’s bunkering potential puts numbers to something everyone quietly knew — India has been sailing past its own advantage for decades. And when the government finally acknowledged the dormant potential of the islands in its official announcement, it wasn’t a revelation; it was an overdue admission. The real inflection point came earlier, when the Andamans were reimagined not as a distant archipelago but as an unclaimed economic orbit. The early blueprint from NITI Aayog treated the islands the way companies treat underperforming assets — underutilised, badly positioned in national priorities, yet sitting on a geography the world would kill for. Subsequent legal assessments, like those unpacked in policy analyses, merely confirmed what the map had always implied: India had left strategic value lying on the table.

Only when the plans for Galathea Bay surfaced did the conversation finally shift from “what if” to “why not.” Commentaries, including economic retrospectives, compared the scale to global mega-ports, while strategic columns such as naval-focused reports pointed out that its proximity to chokepoints wasn’t a coincidence it was the whole point. But the most important shift wasn’t in the analysis; it was in the attitude. As one sharp economic review in a national commentary observed indirectly, India has finally stopped looking at the Andamans as an obligation and started looking at them as leverage. That psychological shift matters more than any feasibility report. Sometimes, a nation doesn’t gain power by expanding outward — it gains power by noticing what was always under its feet.

The Great Energy Transformation in China

Ligang Song, Yixiao Zhou 

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In 2020, China started the drive to commence a reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060, setting in motion a transition to a green, sustainable and clean economy. China has ambitiously developed clean energy alternatives to coal. This transformation encompasses multifaceted strategies ranging from investment in renewable energy and the development of low-emission technologies to more stringent policy regulations on emissions. Renewable energy sources like hydroelectric power, wind, solar and biomass have received substantial attention and investment, with China emerging as a global leader in renewable energy capacity.

In the technology space, China’s transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) has catalysed the development of a robust EV market, fostering innovation in battery technology and charging infrastructure. China has now become the largest exporter of EVs in the world market. These developments have the potential to materially help curb the world’s carbon footprint and mitigate environmental degradation.

Nevertheless, challenges persist domestically, including the need for grid modernisation to accommodate intermittent renewable energy sources and addressing the socio-economic impacts on coal-dependent regions. In the international market, China’s efforts towards a cleaner and more sustainable energy landscape have helped position it as a leader in sustainable economic development. This could enhance trade of green products, the development of global renewable energy and international investments in energy transformation. However, global trade and investment in green technologies and products are faced with rising geopolitical tensions and trade protectionism. This book discusses China’s achievements in its transition towards renewable energies and identifies new opportunities and challenges for deepening energy transformation in China.

China vs. Korea: Who Is Winning the Battery Battle in Hungary?

Viktor Eszterhai and Zoltán Vörös

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Hungary has become one of the clearest windows into the unstoppable advance of Chinese competitiveness in the global battery industry. What began as a Korean-led success story is now transforming into a live demonstration of how quickly – and how decisively – Chinese firms can reshape high-tech markets. Billions in new investments, massive gigafactory projects, and rapid technological expansion are redefining the balance of power in Europe’s EV sector.

For Hungary, this shift is both a monumental opportunity and a growing economic risk. The country set out to build a world-class battery hub, hoping the sector would become a new engine of growth. Instead, the landscape now shows a more complex reality: Chinese capacity is surging, while the Korean pioneers who first anchored the industry are seeing production fall, utilization drop, and orders slip away.

With a long-standing automotive industry accounting for a third of industrial output, the government views the shift to electric vehicles not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to secure and modernize its critical car manufacturing base. Batteries are seen as indispensable to this future, and Hungary aims to become a leading European hub for EV production and the full associated supply chain. To achieve this, the country is localizing every part of the battery ecosystem – cathodes, anodes, separators, and assembly lines – while actively inviting global technology leaders to establish operations on Hungarian soil.

5 Chinese Workers Killed in 2 Attacks in Tajikistan Along Afghan Border

Catherine Putz

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China’s embassy in Tajikistan has urged Chinese businesses and workers to evacuate the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border areas where several Chinese citizens were killed in what Tajik authorities say were a pair of cross-border attacks in late November.

Three Chinese citizens were killed in an attack on November 26. According to Tajikistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the attack originated in Afghanistan and targeted a Shohin SM compound in the Shamsiddin Shohin district in Khatlon Region along the Afghan-Tajik border. Shohin SM is a private gold-mining company, one of many Chinese enterprises operating in Tajikistan.

The attack was carried out, the ministry said, “using firearms and a drone equipped with a missile.” The ministry blamed “criminal groups” located in Afghanistan, without naming any specific group.

Other reports, such as Reuters, referred to drones dropping grenades.

In Afghanistan, Taliban authorities condemned the attack. Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal said that an initial assessment initiated that “this incident involves elements that are trying to create chaos, instability, and distrust between countries in the region,” according to the Associated Press.

Is China preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait?

Rafael Pinto Borges

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Something may be afoot in the Far East. As tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait and Beijing launches an unprecedented media campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, of course the question is not whether China maintains an interest in achieving reunification with Formosa—this has been an explicit strategic aim of the People’s Republic since 1949, when, at the end of the country’s Civil War, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek withdrew what was left of his battered forces across the strait. Instead, what has long mattered is whether the political and military developments in Beijing are shifting the likelihood, timing, or shape of a possible conflict. The internal changes unfolding within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may offer in this regard important clues.

Over the past year, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to have fired a large number of high-ranking generals and admirals, including figures responsible for the nation’s rocket forces, equipment procurement, and theatre-level operations. It is significant that these were not mid-tier officers; several sat at the uppermost levels of China’s military hierarchy. The current purge is exceptional in that it is targeting particularly big fish: He Weidong, China’s second-highest-ranking general was publicly expelled from the Communist Party; the same occurred to Admiral Miao Hua, until recently the People’s Liberation Army top political officer. His eviction marks the first time since the Cultural Revolution that a sitting commander of the Party’s Central Military Commission – China’s supreme military leadership organ – faces such opprobrium.

From crisis to recovery: managing the environmental impacts of armed conflict

James Dayani, Fruzsina Straus and Atila Uras

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The environmental toll of armed conflict is neither insignificant nor fleeting: it contaminates water, soil, and air, erodes ecosystems, undermines livelihoods, and burdens public health long after the fighting stops. The damage both mirrors and magnifies humanitarian crises, from Gaza’s mountains of debris to Ukraine’s flood-borne pollutants, to Sudan’s industrial contamination. Compounded by the impacts of the climate crisis, these environmental challenges only deepen the vulnerabilities of those affected by conflict. Understanding and addressing the interwoven impacts of conflict and the environment is essential for global climate, nature, pollution and sustainable development efforts, and to ensure that people can live and thrive in a healthy, secure and resilient environment.

In this post, part of the War, Law and the Environment series, the UNEP Disasters and Conflicts Branch reflects on its decades of work helping countries address these challenges, charting a path from emergency response to long-term recovery. Through science-based assessments, practical guidance, and strategic partnerships, UNEP is equipping states to address the toxic legacies of war, restore ecosystems, and build resilience into the reconstruction process. Recent UN resolutions, including UNEA’s 2024 consensus decision, underscore growing political recognition that protecting the environment in armed conflict is integral to peace and recovery. What emerges is a vision of environmental response not as an afterthought to war, but as a cornerstone of recovery, and an entry point to build back greener, fairer, and stronger in the shadow of destruction.

The Legal Consequences of Pete Hegseth’s “Kill Them All” Order

Erika Santelices 

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Last week, the Washington Post reported that, in early September, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the military to kill everyone on board a boat in the Caribbean suspected of carrying drugs. After an initial strike on the boat, two men were still alive; a second missile was launched to comply with Hegseth’s order. In the past three months, similar strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific have killed more than eighty people; the Post report was only the most disturbing example in a campaign that many legal experts and government officials believe to be unlawful. (On Sunday, President Trump said that Hegseth told him he had not given such an order.) This past weekend, the Republican heads of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, in a rare break from Trump, joined the ranking Democrats on the committees in calling for further investigation of the September attack.

To talk about the Trump Administration’s strikes, I called Todd Huntley, the director of the National Security Law program at Georgetown University Law Center. Huntley previously served as a judge advocate in the Navy for more than two decades. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the apparent illegality of what has been reported about this attack, the similarities and differences between this strike and the worst parts of America’s drone wars, and, more broadly, what the Trump Administration wants to do to the culture of the U.S. military.

Romania No Longer Turns Blind Eye to Russia’s Airspace Violations

George Visan

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Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed Romania into an unintended victim of drone warfare. Russian and occasionally Ukrainian drones and aircraft have strayed into Romania’s airspace. On November 17, a drone incident involved a Russian drone hitting a liquified-natural gas (LNG) carrier anchored in the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail during a nighttime raid, which led Romanian authorities to evacuate two villages close to the river to protect the local population from a potential catastrophic explosion (Mediafax, November 17). Previously, a Russian drone crashed in the Danube Delta, on Romanian territory (MApN.ro, November 11).

Russia is using these repeated violations of Romanian airspace and sovereignty to avoid Ukrainian air defenses and test Bucharest’s willingness to stand up for itself on the Eastern Flank and on the Black Sea. At stake are both Romania’s credibility on the Eastern Flank before its allies and Russia, and public perception of the country’s ability to defend itself. Romanian policymakers have slowly realized that Russian incursions must be stopped, which may involve the use of force.

Putin Puts Ethnic Russians at Center of Nationality Policy

Paul Goble

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Moscow’s formal nationality policy has, up to now, focused on the non-Russians living within the borders of Russia rather than on the ethnic Russian majority. Some ethnic Russian nationalists have long complained about this policy, even when the Russian government pursued intensive linguistic Russianization and cultural and political Russification campaigns (see EDM, June 24). Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has changed this long-held policy. In the new nationality strategy paper he signed on November 25, which sets out his goals for the next decade, Putin has put ethnic Russians at the center of the country’s nationality policy (Government of Russia, November 25). The new strategy demands that non-Russians identify as civic Russians, a group Putin defines exclusively in terms of ethnic Russian values (Readovka; Vzglyad; Meduza, November 26). On the one hand, this will please many ethnic Russian nationalist groups and encourage them to become even more aggressive (see EDM, October 15, 2024). On the other hand, it will anger many non-Russians, who will view this as a further attack on their national institutions, leaving their cultures as little more than folkloric groups (The Moscow Times, May 11). This sets the stage for a new era of tension and clashes between the two groups, one that will ultimately threaten both ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike. Putin will be able to manage this tension only by increasing repression, and in the short term, he will need to create a new bureaucratic structure to manage the situation.