Indian Strategic Studies

6 May 2026

The Limits of Pakistan’s New Counterterrorism Doctrine Against the TTP

Bantirani Patro

That cross-border air strikes have become an integral part of Pakistan’s counter-insurgency playbook is clear from the number of such attacks that have taken place in recent years. The most recent was in late February 2026, in which multiple Afghan cities, including Kabul and Kandahar, were attacked, resulting in intense border skirmishes between the Taliban and Pakistani forces that continued into the month of March. As both sides battled each other, the Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared an “open war” on Afghanistan.

Yet the Pakistan Army’s approach to countering the group within its own territory has garnered comparatively less attention. This is equally important, if not as sensational, due to the lack of an overt regional aspect. Alongside air strikes designed to penalize the Afghan Taliban for their continued support of the Pakistani Taliban, Pakistan has concurrently pursued security operations at home to contain the group’s activities. This piece clinically examines these small-scale operations and argues that they have laid bare Pakistan’s interprovincial tensions – which will encumber concrete action against the TTP – and that they are, by themselves, insufficient to counter militancy.

The Qabza State In Force Land, Power, and the Clearance of Islamabad

Yasmeen Bibi is a widow who works as a domestic helper in Islamabad. The first house the state demolished was in Saidpur Village, in the Margalla foothills, where her family had lived for decades. Sh…

New Tanks Mark PLA Army’s Integration of System Warfare at the Tactical Level

Joaquin Camarena

The MBT instructors’ comments indicate that the 112th HCAB will play a significant role in developing the doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to employ the ZTZ-99B effectively during military operations. Furthermore, the unit will serve as a test bed to develop the necessary TTPs for the ZTZ-99B to operate alongside the new Type-100 tank and the Type-100 infantry support vehicle (ISV). Ding and Guo’s statements further indicate that the 112th HCAB will receive the ZTZ-99B after the Chinese New Year, likely in March or April 2026.

Previously a part of the 112th Mechanized Infantry Division (the unit initially tasked with fielding the PLAA’s first batches of digitized mechanized platforms and developing TTPs for the army to carry out informationized combat operations in the early 2010s), the 112th HCAB appears once again to be a test bed for new capabilities. Brigade leadership must develop new doctrine and TTPs for the ZTZ-99B MBT to address differences from its predecessor: the ZTZ-99A. For instance, the ZTZ-99B will act as a node within the brigade’s battlefield information network that would quickly analyze and share data it gathers with other armored vehicles, dismounted infantry, or other units. This data-sharing node capability—a significant improvement over the ZTZ-99A that lacks the man-machine-environment, communications, and information systems—enables the ZTZ-99B to operate effectively with the Type-100 tank and the Type-100 ISV. The Type-100 armored vehicles would conduct battlefield reconnaissance and transmit the information gathered to the ZTZ-99B for dissemination to other units. The new vehicles, however, could also act as information-sharing nodes enhancing the situational awareness of tactical units.

Strategic Spaces of the Sino-Nepali Borderlands: Making and Breaking Trans-Himalayan Trade Relations

Galen Murton

Chinese infrastructure investment and development in Nepal are critical to the territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and strategically extend the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into sensitive spaces of South Asia. While trade flows and investment patterns across the China-Nepal borderlands reflect asymmetrical power relations between Beijing and Kathmandu, a grounded, geographic review of the region reveals three key observations: a historical linkage between border resolutions and Chinese-facilitated infrastructure development in Nepal, an ongoing “corridorization” of Nepal that is both real and imagined, and a persistent oscillation of border openings and closings that challenges the mobility practices of local populations and yet also escapes the PRC’s enhanced controls. Attention to the Himalayan region, much like borderlands elsewhere in Asia, reinforces the adage to look to the margins to see the state in new and often overlooked ways, as “borders offer unique vantage points to produce decentered accounts of the state and denaturalized narratives of nationalist projects.”1

China’s “Fake” De-Dollarization

Brad W. Setser

That is the last disclosed data point, but careful analysis of the U.S. Treasury’s data essentially rules out a significant rise in the dollar share of China’s formal reserves. The U.S. data is consistent with either a bit of a fall or very aggressive use of non-U.S. custodians over the last five years.

So, China has de-dollarized? Not exactly.

The big fall in the dollar share of China reserves (from 79 to 59 percent) occurred between 2005 and 2012 (though China only disclosed the 2015 number) and during that period China’s toal reserves went from $800 to close to well over $3 trillion and its actual dollars continued to rise.

The Strange Case of Lebanon’s 'Ceasefire'

Guy P. Nohra

If you follow the Middle East, you have likely heard about Lebanon’s “ceasefire” with Israel.

Think about that for a moment. A country whose army, the Lebanese Armed Forces, has not been in direct military combat with Israel since 1948 is now negotiating a ceasefire and engaging in peace talks. To the untrained eye, this sounds like progress. The Lebanese people have suffered continuously since the civil war began in 1975. War, corruption, economic collapse—just about every hardship imaginable has touched the country.

So any mention of peace is naturally welcomed. But this is not what it seems. This is a shadow peace. The actual fighting is not between Lebanon and Israel. It is between Israel and a non-state actor: Hezbollah.

Can Space Be Disrupted Like the Strait of Hormuz?

Clayton Swope

During the conflict in the Middle East, Iran has exploited its location next to a transit corridor vital to international commerce and energy markets, effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz to international maritime traffic. To achieve this feat, Iran neither established sea control nor air superiority over the strait; instead, it applied a relatively small amount of force—and the threat of using more—to achieve its goals. A nation applying this playbook to outer space could produce equally consequential results. Similar to transit rights through the strait, all nations have the right to freely use space—a right that is perhaps taken for granted. Unlike the Strait of Hormuz, all countries border space and, with the right technology, can threaten it. Nearly 80 percent of all operational satellites orbit less than 800 km from the Earth’s surface, a distance within reach of many ballistic missiles. The fact that space is under threat has been known for years. The lesson on display in the Strait of Hormuz is that disruption can be achieved and sustained without having domain superiority, and that, once disrupted, it is hard to return things to the old normal.

Although the Strait of Hormuz is located in the territorial waters of both Oman and Iran, it is recognized under customary international law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as an international strait, which means ships from any nation are guaranteed the right of transit passage. All nations enjoy similar rights to send spacecraft through outer space.

On Islands, Straits, and Strategy: The United States, Iran, and the Islands of the Persian Gulf

Jacob Stoil

There are three strategic rationales for seizing one or more islands, along with critical risks in the tactical and narrative spaces that warrant substantial consideration. The first reason for seizing one or more islands is to influence Iran toward ceasefire negotiations or to trade for concessions during negotiations. In such a case, the ideal territory to seize would be relatively easy to take and hold and valuable to Iran.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz provides a second rationale. The positions of the islands mean that whoever controls the islands around the strait can interdict anyone attempting to close or cross through the strait. Iran uses several island positions to reinforce its defensive and blocking positions around the strait. It does this by positioning military systems (such as small boats and weapons systems integral to closing the straits), together with garrisons and surveillance and targeting systems on some of the islands astride and proximate to the shipping routes.

The Chokepoint Doctrine

The Strait of Hormuz runs twenty-one miles at its narrowest, and through it, before February 2026, moved approximately 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil, 20 percent of its liquefied natural gas,…

Disappearing Gulf Capital: The Iran War Risk Wall Street Isn’t Watching

Rebecca Patterson

Economic concerns about the spillovers from the Iran war have focused on the global flow and availability of critical materials. There is, however, another, much less appreciated war risk for the United States: the supply of dollars from the Gulf, especially to capital-hungry U.S. tech firms and their financial intermediaries.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies—including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—have dramatically grown and transformed their sovereign wealth fund (SWF) vehicles over the last decade, as part of efforts to diversify away from volatile energy-price cycles. Today, the region hosts some of the world’s largest SWFs, with around a dozen sovereign funds (led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE) managing somewhere between $4 –$6 trillion in assets, according to estimates from SWF trackers and the International Monetary Fund.

Why the Strong Lose and the Weak Become Strong

Scott Atran

Contemporary warfare’s emphasis on destruction capacity and cost imposition rests on a fundamental misreading of what sustains the will to fight. Drawing on behavioral and brain research and historical cases, it shows that “devoted actors” whose personal and collective identity is fused with sacred values will sustain extreme sacrifice and mobilize broader populations. As a result, they can blunt coercion and sometimes reverse asymmetries of power. The Revolutionary Guard’s cohesion, forged in the Iran–Iraq War, and Hamas’s sustained popular base despite military attrition, both illustrate why strategies of overwhelming force tend to fortify rather than fracture resistance; and why the decisive variable in protracted conflict often is not the scale of violence applied but—similar to Britain and Russia in the early stages of World War II and later with Vietnam and Afghanistan—the depth of commitment sustained and the tactical and strategic creativity that commitment engenders.

The early course of the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran reflects a recurring strategic illusion: that superiority in destructive capacity can be converted into rapid political collapse. Instead, initial operational success widened the conflict, hardened resistance, and drawn the attackers into a longer and more uncertain struggle.

Chernobyl Is Still a Current Event, Forty Years Later

Corey Hinderstein

On April 26, 1986, a routine safety exercise at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s Unit 4 in Soviet Ukraine ended in the most consequential nuclear accident of the atomic age. Forty years later, huge swaths of land remain uninhabitable, and thousands of people are still dealing with long-term health effects. Nearly a trillion dollars has been spent on remediation and compensation, and public opinion around the world remains sharply divided on the value of nuclear power as a clean energy source to combat the climate crisis. These political and physical effects demonstrate that the Chernobyl accident is not yet history and is still a current event.

Multiple external investigations in the immediate aftermath and the following years attempted to identify the accident’s root causes. They found that the accident resulted from technical overconfidence, lack of information sharing, and the inability of contrary views to be heard within the Soviet Union’s oversight and regulatory system.

China and America Are Courting Nuclear Catastrophe

Tong Zhao

Over the past decade, China has been steadily reshaping the global nuclear order. According to U.S. government assessments, Beijing has almost tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads since 2019. It has rapidly increased its nuclear capabilities on land, in the air, and at sea. It has significantly expanded its infrastructure for the research, development, and assembly of nuclear warheads. And Beijing shows no intention of slowing down. In mid-March, the country announced that it would “strengthen and enlarge” its strategic deterrence capabilities, reaffirming its commitment to qualitatively and quantitatively enhance its nuclear arsenal.

American officials have certainly taken notice. They worry that the bipolar nuclear world—where almost all the globe’s warheads are controlled by either Moscow or Washington—is being replaced by a tripolar one. In response, they are trying to strengthen Washington’s own nuclear stockpile while attempting to negotiate with Beijing.

Masters of Mayhem: A Landmark Study in the Birth of Modern Unconventional Warfare

James Stejskal

Stejskal brings unique credibility to this historical analysis. As a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer who served thirty-five years as a "Green Beret" and CIA case officer, he understands unconventional warfare not merely as an academic concept but as a lived reality[2].

His career included two tours with the elite Special Forces Berlin unit during the Cold War, where he conducted clandestine operations behind potential Warsaw Pact lines, and later service with the CIA in numerous high-risk environments worldwide[3]. This operational background allows Stejskal to read the historical record with an expert's eye, recognizing in the actions of Lawrence, Stewart Newcombe, Pierce Joyce, and their Arab allies the fundamental principles that would later underpin British SAS operations, American Special Forces doctrine, and modern counterinsurgency campaigns.

How the War Saved the Iranian Regime

Danny Citrinowicz

In early February, according to The New York Times and other outlets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced U.S. President Donald Trump that airstrikes could help catalyze an anti-regime rebellion within Iran. But after the Israeli and U.S. militaries launched a war on the Islamic Republic at the end of the month, eliminating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other key regime figures, the Islamic Republic did not collapse. Instead, internal pressure appears to have consolidated it around hard-line elements.

The Real Threat to Taiwan America Is Preparing for the Wrong Kind of Crisis

Eyck Freymann

It begins not with missiles but with cutter ships. One morning, dozens of Chinese coast guard vessels start conducting “routine customs inspections” of merchant ships approaching Taiwan’s major ports. Chinese civil aviation authorities begin to demand manifests from flights entering and leaving Taiwan. Beijing insists it is merely asserting existing Chinese customs law, which claims the right to regulate the flow of people and goods in and out of “Taiwan Province.”

Immediately, nearly all airlines and shipping companies decide to comply. These private operators have no interest in seeing their ships or aircraft seized, detained, or worse. Nor do

Hitting Where it Hurts: Deep Strikes, Oil Infrastructure, and Kyiv’s Theory of Victory

Jefferson Burges and John Nagl

With the Russian-Ukrainian War now well into its fifth year, the ground war remains characteristically intense. Both sides have experienced significant losses in personnel and equipment. And yet, the front line has seen relatively minor adjustments. In November 2023, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then serving as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, described how the war had become a positional-centric form of warfare. The war’s new character, including a host of unmanned systems, has limited the ability to execute large-scale maneuver. And attritional warfare based on limited maneuver and fought along a relatively static line of contact tends to favor the side with more resources—in this case, Russia.

Recent estimates put total Russian casualties for the year 2025 at 416,570. Despite these losses, Russia has continued to regenerate its combat power. Through 2025, Russia could still recruit 35,000 people per month, principally through financial incentives of around 2 million rubles ($24,612). Ukraine’s capability to inflict significant casualties is impressive, but it has resulted in no change to the Russian will or ability to wage war.

Let Iran Defeat Itself America Should End the War but Keep Up the Pressure

Richard Nephew

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States was at war with Iran, he called on the country’s people to rise in revolt. “When we are finished, take over your government,” Trump said on February 28. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.” But in the days after, his administration backed away from calls for regime change. “This is not a so-called regime change war,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on March 2. Vice President JD Vance reinforced this message: “Whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it’s incidental to

Selective Virtue: Anthropic, the Pentagon, and the Contradictions of AI Governance in Wartime

Scott Rutter

Anthropic presents itself as a company that takes the risks of artificial intelligence seriously, but its record does not support that claim. The company occupies a position of fundamental ethical contradiction: its CEO has publicly and specifically predicted that AI will eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, drive unemployment to 20 percent, and cause an “unusually painful” shock to society, yet Anthropic continues to build, deploy, and profit from the technology responsible for that harm at maximum commercial speed.

At the same time, when the Department of War demanded unrestricted use of that same technology for autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance, Anthropic refused, sued the federal government, and positioned itself as an ethical actor. A company cannot credibly claim moral authority over the military uses of its technology while simultaneously accelerating the civilian displacement it has already predicted and quantified. The virtue is selective. The contradiction is structural.

Sabotage from Afar: How Undeclared Drone Armies Prolong War and Derail Peace

Zaid Al-Ali

The covert deployment of advanced drones to countries in conflict by third-party states is intensifying modern warfare and undermining international peace-making in ways that are not yet fully understood. It is now well established that they can be mass-produced by middle powers such as Türkiye and Iran and deployed in swarms. What is less appreciated is how third-party states can now deploy drone armies to engage in warfare in other countries without publicly disclosing their involvement, and in ways that can delay peace negotiations for years at a time.

Historically, third‑party states have often supported warring factions abroad—whether by deploying full ground armies, conducting traditional air force bombing campaigns, or carrying out covert air and ground operations. Drones represent a distinct class of weaponry that is giving third‑party states, including middle powers such as Türkiye, Iran, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, the ability to sustain direct involvement in multiple distant conflicts at the same time. Their lethality is the result of several factors. Many models are powered by artificial intelligence, which means that they can operate fully autonomously and in coordinated swarming tactics. But it is their low cost, the ease with which they can be transferred to local allies, and their ability to be deployed from afar that is making this particular technology so impactful.

Microsoft, Amazon Hand Pentagon More Control Over AI Systems

Katrina Manson

The Pentagon has struck agreements with more technology companies for expanded use of advanced artificial intelligence tools on classified military networks, according to a Defense Department statement and two defense officials briefed on the matter.

Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp., Reflection AI Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have all newly struck agreements with the US Defense Department “for lawful operational use,” according to the statement. The officials asked not to be named to discuss internal discussions. On Friday, the Pentagon posted on X that Oracle Corp. had also joined the roster of technology companies that had agreed to deploy their AI tools on classified networks.

Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass

Jasmine Sun

Most people I know in the A.I. industry think the median person is screwed, and they have no idea what to do about it. I live in San Francisco, among the young researchers earning million-dollar salaries and the start-up founders competing to build the next unicorn. While Silicon Valley has long warned about the risk of rogue A.I., it has recently woken up to a more mundane nightmare: one in which many ordinary people lose their economic leverage as their jobs are automated away.

Whether you talk with engineers, venture capitalists, founders or managers, or with doomers, accelerationists, lefties or libertarians, the so-called San Francisco consensus on the impact of A.I. for workers is bleak. Many are convinced that advanced A.I. will soon surpass human capabilities. This would produce tremendous growth and scientific achievement, but it would also displace millions of jobs as fewer humans are needed to make the economy run. The technology will depress economic mobility and exacerbate inequality, while ferrying power and wealth to the A.I. companies and the existing owners of capital.

The US Army War College Tested Four AI Systems on Its Capstone Exam. They All Passed.

This latest US Army War College report finds that all four commercial AI systems they tested in early 2026 passed the rigorous USAWC oral comprehensive examination. The authors designed “MilBench,” a domain-specific benchmark that applied the War College’s standard capstone assessment to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok in conversational mode.

Three faculty panels administered the examination, scoring Claude at a mean GPA of 3.98 (A) and placing ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini in a statistically indistinguishable B+ cluster. The multi-turn dialogue format exposed performance patterns, including brevity, sycophancy under pressure, and degradation over time, that static benchmarks fail to surface. The authors argue that the results shown below challenge the Department of War’s evaluation of commercial AI for strategic applications and call for domain-specific, dialogue-based assessment standards.

The Grievance Economy

Frederick Gregory, Wesley Winkler

Last month, Jack Dorsey, as CEO of Block, announced layoffs of nearly 40% of the workforce, citing AI as the reason. IBM, UPS, and Klarna had already done the same. Last week, President Trump ordered federal agencies to cease business with Anthropic after a dispute with the Pentagon, where the AI company insisted on restrictions preventing their products’ use in mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapon systems. Corporate leaders made unilateral decisions about AI deployment. A president used an executive directive to punish an AI company for insisting on restrictions. Neither decision was governed by law, regulation, or democratic process. They exposed a deeper problem: the institutions that might constrain such decisions are absent or unwilling to act.

When power over AI deployment is exercised without institutional guardrails, and millions face economic displacement from decisions they cannot appeal, the breeding ground for radicalization forms. Not violent extremism necessarily, but despondency and hopelessness transforming into the conviction that the system is rigged. That conviction becomes the justification for justice taken into one’s own hands. It manifests as withdrawal from civic participation, deepening distrust of institutions, and a generation disengaging from the very mechanisms that might address their grievance.

Reid Hoffman Thinks Doctors Should Ask AI for a Second Opinion

David Cox

Following a three-decade career at the helm of some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies—cofounding LinkedIn and sitting on the boards of PayPal and OpenAI—Reid Hoffman recently turned his attention to health care.

Hoffman’s startup, Manas AI, is building an AI engine that aims to fast-track the traditionally slow process of drug discovery for various cancers. Inspired by a dinner with renowned cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee, the company’s cofounder and CEO, its mission statement is to “shift drug discovery from a decade-long process to one that takes a few years.”

5 May 2026

India’s Demographic Dividend Is a Test of Governance

Apoorva Jadhav

The demographic dividend is the potential economic growth a country can enjoy as a result of shifts in its population’s age structure. India often finds itself at the center of discussions about this concept. Much of the contemporary discourse around India’s rise as a major global economic power rests on the assumption that a youthful population will translate into sustained economic growth. The logic is straightforward: a smaller share of dependents (in India’s case, mostly children) relative to the working age population enables greater investment per child, particularly in healthcare, nutrition, education, and skills. Better-equipped workers are, in turn, more productive, boosting per capita income. In addition, women are more likely to enter the labor force, raising household incomes and overall growth.

For many decades, optimism about India’s demographic boon was well-founded. But that optimism is now under strain. There is a growing realization, supported by a mounting body of research, that reaping the demographic dividend depends on a conducive policy environment that prioritizes good healthcare, quality education, decent employment opportunities, and gender empowerment.

The Indus Waters Treaty: A Year After The Pahalgam Terror Attack – Analysis

Dr Amit Ranjan

A year after the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) was placed in “abeyance” by India following the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025 which killed 26 people, New Delhi and Islamabad continue to hold divergent interpretations of the agreement. For India, the treaty remains in abeyance; for Pakistan, it is still “fully operational and effective”.

On 30 January 2026, speaking at an ‘Arria-formula’ meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, stated that India’s position on the IWT constitutes “a serious violation of international legal obligations, with far-reaching humanitarian, environmental, and peace and security implications”. In turn, India reiterated its stand that water issues cannot be insulated from cross-border terrorism.

How the Dreams of Bangladesh’s Student Protestors Died Young

Aaisha Sabir

When Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India on August 5, 2024, Dhaka’s streets filled with ordinary young people, students mostly, but also workers and families. These were people who, after weeks of protesting against Hasina’s authoritarian rule, did not want just one political party to replace another. They didn’t want a new leader doing the same old things. They had stopped accepting corrupt governance. They wanted something entirely different. What they wanted was something more fundamental: the freedom to speak without fear, jobs based on merit and talent rather than a reserved quota system, and a government that could actually be held accountable.

Eighteen months later, in April this year, I returned to Dhaka to look for those youngsters who had brought down the Hasina regime. I tracked down the students who had organized the protests, who faced police bullets, lathi (baton) charges, and tear gas.

Afghanistan Surrending Its Mineral Wealth to China

Javed Noorani , Lynne O'Donnell

Afghanistan is giving away its mineral wealth. Through a pattern of deals that export value at the point of extraction, the country is surrendering control over what could – and should – be its greatest hope for a stable and prosperous future.

This is not accidental. Nor is it the inevitable result of geography, decades of war, or even the nature of Taliban rule. It is the outcome of contracts that prioritise immediate cash over long-term management. Raw ore is being shipped out as Afghanistan signs away its most valuable assets on terms that lock in its own irrelevance.

Middle East Crisis As Catalyst: Pakistan In The Shadow Of Sino-US Competition – OpEd

Dr. Sujit Kumar Datta

The recent Middle East crisis has highlighted the region’s security instability, but also the opportunity for middle powers to play a role. In this respect, Pakistan is an interesting case, as it sits in between the new Cold War between China and the US, and can play the game. Crises are not only a time bomb for the region, but also an opportunity to boost Pakistan’s position and prove its diplomatic, domestic, and geopolitical agility.

Pakistani foreign policy has always been a juggle. It is, of course, China’s “all-weather” ally, with strong economic, military, and infrastructural ties, such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It is a new – but also renewed – friend of the US, particularly in the areas of security and terrorism. This is Pakistan’s greatest wartime weapon. The Middle East conflagration the US and Iran have given Pakistan an opportunity for “mediation diplomacy”. Pakistan’s geopolitical and geo-strategic position vis-à-vis Iran and Saudi Arabia makes the situation interesting. It has an open and disputed border with Iran and a military alliance with Saudi Arabia. It is a sensitive time for diplomacy and restraint.

Pakistan Moves Toward a Sea-Denial Strategy

Abdul Moiz Khan

The Pakistan Navy has recently undertaken a series of missile tests from different platforms to augment its operational strike capabilities. These latest developments include the testing of an indigenously developed anti-ship version of the Taimoor air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), an indigenously developed ship-launched anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), and the LY-80 (N) surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. These capabilities point toward the operationalization of the Pakistan Navy’s sea-denial naval strategy – one that prioritizes precision strike capabilities. The goal is to neutralize an adversary fleet’s capabilities to impose a naval blockade while keeping enemy vessels far away from Pakistan’s waters.

On April 21, Pakistan Navy tested the Taimoor ALCM, capable of striking targets at a range of 600 km. The missile has been described as a precision-strike, stand-off weapon system that is capable of engaging targets at both land and sea. The new weapon system provides the Pakistan Navy with an air-launched anti-ship strike capability, in addition to the existing ship-launched and submarine-launched anti-ship missiles. The induction of this latest stand-off weapon would increase Islamabad’s operational flexibility, and enable it to strike the Indian naval fleet at extended ranges.

A Legacy of Duplicity: Tracing Pakistan’s Double Cross From 9/11 to the Trump Era

For decades, the geopolitical alliance between the United States and Pakistan has been characterized by a profound and dangerous paradox: a public marriage of strategic necessity masking a private reality of calculated betrayal. This complex dynamic traces its roots to the 1980s, when Washington and Islamabad collaborated to arm the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, effectively institutionalizing terrorist proxies as a lethal extension of Pakistani foreign policy. This analysis covers Pakistan’s double cross of United States after 9/11 where it has regularly abetted terrorist groups networks from Al Qaeda to other terrorist groups against India committing one of the most dastardly attacks on Mumbai 26/11 in the year 2008.

The historical timeline of events of Pakistan’s double cross, details of its sponsorship of terrorism from 9/11 to 26/11 attacks (2001-08) in Part 1 to 9 this article are based on the groundbreaking investigative reporting of the late Syed Saleem Shahzad. His seminal 2011 book, “Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11”, remains an indispensable primary source for understanding of Pakistan’s double cross and sponsorship of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

Energy Dominance: How the Iran War Reveals America’s Strategic Position

Arthur Michelino

The Strait of Hormuz is the point at which approximately one fifth of the world’s traded oil passes through a corridor 21 nautical miles wide, flanked on one side by Iran and the other by Oman. For 70 years, the implicit guarantee that this passage would remain open rested on a single assumption, namely that the United States had both the interest and the willingness to maintain it. The Iran war has exposed what this assumption had long kept from view, that Washington’s willingness to maintain the guarantee has always been contingent on its own stake in the system it is guaranteeing.

On 20 April, Trump posted that Iranian leadership had “forced hundreds of Ships toward the United States, mostly Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to get their Oil.” The formulation is analytically significant beyond its rhetorical register. It frames the near closure of a critical energy chokepoint as a condition generating commercial advantage for US producers, one whose resolution is incidental to that advantage. The structural question that formulation raises is how Washington arrived at a position where the disruption of a waterway carrying one fifth of global oil trade could be read as an outcome consistent with its strategic interests. The answer lies in the doctrine that preceded the war, not in the war itself.

How Iran’s Regime Stays in Control

Ilan Berman

In the conversation about Iran’s future, it’s the dog that isn’t barking. More than two months into the US conflict with the Islamic Republic, Operation Epic Fury didn’t deliver the regime change in Tehran that many initially anticipated. While there are growing signs that the country has transitioned into something that, despite theocratic window-dressing, closely resembles a military dictatorship, it’s also apparent that Washington hasn’t achieved a fundamental change in its behavior—at least not yet.

All eyes are now understandably on the sporadic diplomatic contacts between Washington and Tehran, as well as the punishing economic effects of the US blockade, which is already reshaping Iran’s oil sector. But the internal political balance in Iran may prove even more decisive, as it will help determine whether the regime’s remaining leadership can maintain its grip on power.

The Permanent Emergency – OpEd

Claudio Grass

Unlike the centuries that came before it, full of great and truly important ideological and philosophical clashes, full of historical shifts in the trajectory of Western thought, values identity and culture, the story of our time will most likely not feature any grand battles of ideas or any defining crescendos that will captivate the imagination and inspire future students of history. It will be written in a dry, bureaucratic language and it simply consist of a series of “temporary” emergency measures. This is how our remaining liberties and with them, our Western civilization, will end: “not with a bang, but with a whimper”, as T.S. Elliot would put it.

To the casual observer, the shift toward authoritarianism in the Western world feels like a series of unfortunate accidents. A pandemic here, an unnecessary war with Russia there, a geopolitical energy crisis after that. But to those who maintain a healthy skepticism of state power, a much more deliberate pattern emerges.

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