U.S.–India AI and Emerging Technology Compact

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The global race for leadership in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is accelerating—and the choices democratic nations make now will shape the future technology order. At a pivotal moment for bilateral cooperation, the United States and India are moving from alignment in principle to coordination in practice.

This new report, produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project in partnership with ORF America, examines how the two countries can translate shared strategic interests into durable advantage. Drawing on insights from two Track 1.5 dialogues convened in Washington, D.C. and New Delhi, the report brings together perspectives from more than 150 leaders across government, industry, academia, and civil society.

Pakistan’s Place in China’s Eurasia Strategy

Aparna Pande, and Vinay Kaura

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Pakistan’s recent defense trade diplomacy is less about sales of fighter jets and more about consolidating the power of the Pakistani military establishment. Remarks from senior Pakistani leaders that defense sales will ensure Pakistan is no longer dependent on Bretton Woods institutions for economic stability may appear flippant to many. However, such views reflect a continuation of the past: internal military consolidation and external support to counter India.

Through defense sales, Pakistan’s military-intelligence nexus hopes to create a network of partners with vested interests in Pakistan’s survival. The network effect might appear negligible and may never happen. But Pakistan has long hoped for a grouping of Muslim-majority countries that would depend upon Pakistan for their security. During the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan’s first military dictator, Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan, harbored similarly grandiose ambitions. It appears that Pakistan’s second field marshal, current army chief, Asim Munir, is seeking to fulfil them.

China set to widen footprint in Bangladesh as India's ties decline

Tora Agarwala

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DHAKA, Feb 10 (Reuters) - China’s influence in Bangladesh, boosted by the 2024 ouster of New Delhi‑aligned leader Sheikh Hasina, is likely to deepen after this week's election, although politicians and analysts say India is too large a neighbour to be sidelined completely. Bangladesh votes on February 12 and the two frontrunner parties have historically had far cooler ties with India than Hasina did during her uninterrupted 15‑year rule from 2009. Her Awami League party is now banned and she is in self-imposed exile in New Delhi.

Meanwhile, China has stepped up its investment and diplomatic outreach in Dhaka, most recently signing a defence deal to build a drone factory near Bangladesh's border with India. Chinese Ambassador Yao Wen is often seen meeting Bangladeshi politicians, officials and journalists, according to the embassy's Facebook posts, discussing infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars and other cooperation between the two countries. “People in Bangladesh see India as complicit with Sheikh Hasina’s crimes,” said Humaiun Kobir, foreign affairs adviser to leading prime ministerial candidate Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

China’s Cautious Calculus On Trump’s Board Of Peace – Analysis

Antara Ghosal Singh

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United States President Donald Trump launched the Board of Peace (BoP) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2026. This prompted a measured response from China, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesperson Guo Jiakun merely acknowledging that China received an invitation to join the board.

However, Chinese analysts, citing international concerns, questioned whether the so-called ‘Peace Commission’ would become a “mechanism for the US to seize power”, using it to replace the United Nations and undermine the international order based on international law. Others dismissed the initiative, calling it an imperial project, a “small clique of Trump’s cronies”, a colonial solution, and a mechanism for “plundering” and “extortion”, as well as Trump’s retirement plan. Although the discourse in Beijing may sound similar in other global capitals, China’s concerns about Trump’s Board of Peace run deeper than many would imagine.

US Wins at Panama Canal—But China Eyes More Ports in Americas

Micah McCartney

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Panama’s move to void two longstanding port concessions flanking the Panama Canal was a blow to Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison and a win for U.S. efforts to check Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Yet as CK Hutchison seeks to sell its majority shares in dozens of other port projects worldwide, China's COSCO—the world's fourth-largest shipping company—hopes to fill the void. If the state-owned shipping giant succeeds, security risks for the U.S. could climb at other ports in Latin American and the Caribbean, according to recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Beyond Blocs Europe and China will not align nor compete, but selectively cooperate

Wang Huiyao

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It is no longer a China versus the West, nor the West versus the rest. In fact, we no longer live in a world of blocs at all. Instead, we are moving into a world of issues-based cooperation.

This is perhaps clearest from the cavalcade of leaders who are visiting Beijing. Already, French President Emmanuel Macron, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, Taoiseach of Ireland Micheál Martin, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer have all visited China in recent months. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to begin his visit in February. Even U.S. President Donald Trump is set to visit in April.

Will the United States Attack Iran?

Ravi Agrawal

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Last month, after the United States toppled and captured the leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, there was an immediate expectation that the White House would try something similar in Iran. But President Donald Trump reportedly held back partly because he didn’t have enough military assets in the Middle East. That is now changing. In recent weeks, the Pentagon has stationed a carrier strike group and missile defense systems in the region, even as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran has ramped up.

Will Trump actually pull the trigger? To understand his motivations and constraints, I spoke with a leading Iran expert, Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on FP Live. Subscribers can watch the full conversation on the video box atop this page, or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.

How Russia Is Reshaping Command and Control for AI-Enabled Warfare

Kateryna Bondar

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This paper examines how Russia is transforming its command and control (C2) architecture under wartime pressure, how these changes shape the country’s incremental move toward battlefield-required software solutions, and what lessons U.S. policymakers can learn from Russia’s experiences. Focusing on both strategic ambitions and battlefield practice, the takeaways below summarize how automated C2 systems, unmanned platform management software, and emerging AI applications are being developed, adapted, and scaled within Russia’s military ecosystem.

Russia is no longer prioritizing the construction of a single, comprehensive automated C2 architecture comparable to Western joint concepts; instead, it is reallocating effort toward tactical, task-specific software, driven by battlefield necessity. Prolonged, high-intensity combat in Ukraine exposed the limits of centralized, system-wide C2 modernization and elevated the importance of accelerating the tactical kill chain. The emergence of systems such as the “Svod” Tactical Situational Awareness Complex and other integrated reconnaissance-strike tools reflects a pragmatic shift in which operational control of unmanned systems and real-time battlefield management now deliver greater military value than achieving end-to-end C2 integration.

Opinion | The Political Battle for AI in Space

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Elon Musk last week announced an ambitious goal of launching a million solar-powered AI data centers into orbit. It could be an innovative work-around to America’s permitting headaches and electric-power shortages that are slowing the AI buildout. But get this—some progressives want to make it harder to build in space.

“Space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Mr. Musk wrote after announcing SpaceX’s merger with xAI. “It’s always sunny in space!” Mr. Musk’s mission to launch solar-powered AI data centers in space involves significant technical challenges, but it’s not a journey to Mars. Other companies including Google have the same ambitions. So do the Chinese.

The EU’s secret weapon to shut out Chinese companies

Gregorio Sorgi

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BRUSSELS — The EU executive wants to cut Chinese firms out of lucrative EU public contracts at home and abroad by overhauling its budget rules, according to three European Commission officials.

In March, the Commission will lay out new instructions to impose additional security requirements on foreign companies bidding for public contracts, targeting Chinese firms in particular.

In the face of heightened geopolitical and trade tensions with the U.S. and China, Brussels is exploring measures that favor European businesses over foreign competitors. The rules would apply to its current and future €1.8 trillion long-term budget, which begins in 2028.

Russia’s Unspoken Condition for Ending the War Is Zelensky’s Resignation

Vladislav Gorin

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The resumption of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi has sparked renewed hopes for a resolution to the conflict. With both sides exhausted by four years of war, the main obstacle to a ceasefire appears to be a territorial dispute over a small part of the Donbas, the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk area. But while the territorial issue is admittedly important to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main condition, even if not formulated so explicitly in any of the draft agreements, remains nothing short of regime change in Kyiv.

The composition of the delegations in Abu Dhabi, as well as the absence of leaks that could undermine dialogue, create the impression that work on a peace agreement is genuinely progressing. The delegations are headed not by politicians or propagandists, but by representatives of the military intelligence services. On the Ukrainian side is Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of the Main Intelligence Directorate who was recently appointed head of the presidential administration. On the Russian side is Igor Kostyukov, head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff.

Trump’s Trade Policy Is Teaching Partners Washington Can’t Be Trusted

Clark Packard

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U.S. President Donald Trump has again made aggressive tariff threats to a long-standing ally with strong economic ties to the United States. This time, he announced on social media that he would raise tariffs on a wide range of South Korean products to 25 percent—up from the 15 percent tariffs currently imposed under the administration’s novel use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The president’s justification, this time, was that the South Korean National Assembly has not yet ratified the framework the two governments announced last summer.

That Seoul will likely move quickly to pass implementing legislation misses the point. This episode is simply the latest illustration of the uncertainty-driven, ad hoc trade policy that has defined the Trump administration. This episode comes on the heels of the administration’s raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia last fall, where federal agents detained hundreds of South Korean employees who were in the country to help build an electric vehicle battery plant co-owned by Hyundai and LG—the kind of investment the administration claims it wants. Is it any wonder U.S. allies are learning that America’s trade commitments are temporary, reversible, and unsafe to rely on—and increasingly looking elsewhere as a backup policy?

State-sponsored hackers targeting defence sector employees, Google says

Aisha Down

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Defence companies, their hiring processes and their employees have become a key target of state-sponsored cyber-espionage campaigns, according to a report from Google released before the Munich Security Conference.

The report catalogues a “relentless barrage of cyber operations”, most by state-sponsored groups, against EU and US industrial supply chains. It suggests the range of targets for these hackers has grown to encompass the broader industrial base of the US and Europe –from German aerospace firms to UK carmakers.

State-linked hackers have long targeted the global defence industry, but Luke McNamara, an analyst for Google’s threat intelligence group, said they had seen more “personalised” and “direct to individual” targeting of employees.

Hamas Would Keep Some Arms Initially in Draft Gaza Plan, Officials Say

Adam Rasgon Natan Odenheimer and Abu Bakr Bashir

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The United States is demanding that Hamas surrender all weapons that are capable of striking Israel, but will allow the group to keep some small arms, at least initially, according to a draft plan, officials and people familiar with the proposal said. An American-led team, which includes Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law; Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy for peace missions; and Nickolay Mladenov, a former senior United Nations official, intends to share the document with Hamas within weeks.

The officials, including a regional diplomat, and people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the details. They cautioned that the details could still change and different drafts could yet emerge. Still, if the plan is presented to Hamas, it would represent a significant effort toward demilitarizing the armed group, a key element of Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza that formed the basis of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas after two years of war.

Georgia Faces OSCE Scrutiny Over Crackdown on Civil Society

Beka Chedia

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Twenty-four countries activated the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Moscow Mechanism on January 29 in response to the deteriorating human rights situation in Georgia.

Georgian officials have rejected international criticism and accelerated restrictive legislation on foreign funding, defining political activity to include journalism and online content, while imposing severe criminal penalties that threaten non-governmental organizations, media, experts, and ordinary citizens.

These measures are framed as protecting sovereignty and preventing foreign interference. They are expected to intensify scrutiny from the OSCE and European Union, deepen Georgia’s democratic backsliding, and increase risks of criminalizing civil society and independent political life.

Ukraine Responds to Russia’s Starlink Use

Yuri Lapaiev

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The Russian army uses Starlink for military purposes despite sanctions restrictions. There is evidence that Russia may have used Starlink to perpetrate drone attacks in Ukraine in January and February. Kyiv is coordinating with SpaceX to restrict Moscow’s use of Starlink. SpaceX imposed speed limits that disrupt fast-moving Russian drones, and, as a more thorough long-term solution, created a registration “white list” so that only verified terminals can operate in Ukraine.

Ukraine is currently dependent on a single private provider for essential military functions while Russia has the ability to bypass sanctions to obtain military equipment through using other countries as re-export hubs.

Under-fire Trump commerce secretary confirms he visited Epstein's island

Ana Faguy and Brandon Drenonon Capitol Hill

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US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed he visited Jeffrey Epstein's island in 2012, contradicting previous claims that he had cut ties with the sex offender years earlier, before he was convicted. "I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation," Lutnick testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. "My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies … We had lunch on the island. That is true. For an hour."

Correspondence about the visit was included in Epstein documents released by the US Department of Justice. Some lawmakers have called on Lutnick to resign, but on Tuesday the White House said he had the full support of US President Donald Trump.

She’s one of the world’s most powerful conservative leaders

Jessie Yeung, Hanako Montgomery

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It was a risky gamble to call a snap election – her career was on the line. But now Japan’s Sanae Takaichi is basking in the strongest majority for a Japanese government in more than 70 years. Here’s how this unapologetic conservative, who Trump has lavished praise on, pulled it off.

In the four months since becoming leader, she had skyrocketed in popularity, galvanized typically-disengaged young voters, and given a fresh new face to the country’s political landscape, which for decades was dominated by older men. This mass appeal translated to a landslide victory on Sunday, securing Takaichi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a historic two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of parliament – the first time a single party has done so since World War ii.

Challenges Overshadow Hope in Gaza

Aaron David Miller

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Whether or not they’re prepared to admit it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump will be forced to conclude that the current and future prospects for Gaza are bleak when they meet at the White House this week. While the horrors of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the ferocious war that Israel waged in response are probably over, the sheer recalcitrance of both Hamas and Israel ensure that demilitarization and successful governance are unlikely to be realized. Focused U.S. leadership might improve matters. But as we look ahead into 2026, chances are Gaza will remain divided, dysfunctional, and sporadically violent.

The good news is that the large-scale war we have watched for two years has ended and is unlikely to resume. Pressure from the Trump administration, Israel’s failure to accomplish its military goals, election year politics, and the exhaustion and dislocation caused by the extended deployment of reservists has diminished that possibility. Still, there are credible reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has plans for a major operation to destroy Hamas in the roughly half of Gaza under its control. And we cannot rule it out.

AI ‘fundamentally changing’ adversary behavior, leading to force generation reforms: Official

Mark Pomerleau

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WASHINGTON — Fears over how adversary nations use artificial intelligence is one of the aspects driving a Defense Department overhaul of how it provides and trains its cyber warriors, a top Pentagon official told Breaking Defense.

“The other thing that we’re seeing over the last few years is the importance of how technology is shaping this domain and how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing how our adversaries are behaving in the space and how the domain is operated,” Katherine Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy said in one of her first interviews since taking office Feb. 3.

“Making sure that we can have the right training at the speed of the domain is becoming something that we need to address, so that we can move at the speed of the domain and not the speed of traditional training and force generation models.”

Drones And Cyber: The Transformation Of Warfare In The Twenty-First Century

Rimsha Malik

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When war is mentioned in the minds of people, they tend to imagine armies in uniforms, front lines, and decisive battles. However, this is hardly how modern warfare appears. Modern war can be conducted in various forms, including a distant attack on a city’s power grid using a computer, a mercenary group acquiring military assets in a failed nation, or an anonymous, undercover cyber attack. No statements or armies on the march, but the consequences can be felt: institutions are undermined, infrastructure is destroyed, and civilians are victims. The war of the present day has shifted out of the battlefield and is conducted via networks, proxies and deniability.

In this article, I will discuss the transforming nature of warfare and why our international institutions and legal frameworks are struggling to keep pace. In order to see how war is changing, we have to first look at the structure we inherited which still has an implication on international law, military organization, and world political norms. Closest to this classical conception is the work of Carl von Clausewitz, who viewed war as a political instrument that is used when diplomacy has failed. According to this model, war is a state-centered rational action that is directed to attain specific political objectives.

What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either

Gideon Lewis-Kraus

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Alarge language model is nothing more than a monumental pile of small numbers. It converts words into numbers, runs those numbers through a numerical pinball game, and turns the resulting numbers back into words. Similar piles are part of the furniture of everyday life. Meteorologists use them to predict the weather. Epidemiologists use them to predict the paths of diseases. Among regular people, they do not usually inspire intense feelings. But when these A.I. systems began to predict the path of a sentence—that is, to talk—the reaction was widespread delirium. As a cognitive scientist wrote recently, “For hurricanes or pandemics, this is as rigorous as science gets; for sequences of words, everyone seems to lose their mind.”

It’s hard to blame them. Language is, or rather was, our special thing. It separated us from the beasts. We weren’t prepared for the arrival of talking machines. Ellie Pavlick, a computer scientist at Brown, has drawn up a taxonomy of our most common responses. There are the “fanboys,” who man the hype wires. They believe that large language models are intelligent, maybe even conscious, and prophesy that, before long, they will become superintelligent. The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has described A.I. as “our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone—we are literally making sand think.” The fanboys’ deflationary counterparts are the “curmudgeons,” who claim that there’s no there there, and that only a blockhead would mistake a parlor trick for the soul of the new machine. In the recent book “The AI Con,” the linguist Emily Bender and the sociologist Alex Hanna belittle L.L.M.s as “mathy maths,” “stochastic parrots,” and “a racist pile of linear algebra.”

Which countries are best-placed to resist state-supported cyber-attacks? A government advisor explains

Gerald Mako

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In April 2007, the Baltic nation of Estonia woke up to one of the world’s first major cyber-attacks on civil society carried out by a state. A series of massive “distributed denial of service” assaults – floods of fake traffic from networked computers – targeted government websites, banks, media outlets and online services for weeks, slowing or shutting them down.

These cyber-attacks followed Estonia’s decision to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial and war graves from the centre of the capital city, Tallinn, to a military cemetery.

Amplified by false reports in Russian media, this sparked nights of protest and rioting among Russian-speakers in Tallinn – and cyber chaos throughout the country. Though the cyber-attack was never officially sanctioned by the Kremlin, the “faceless perpetrators” were later shown to have Russian connections.

Ascend the Cognitive Hierarchy—Don’t Waste Time in the Data Layer

James Mingus and Zak Daker

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When our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, the US special operations community immediately began to plan for operations in Afghanistan. They quickly identified hundreds of information gaps, many of which were general and fundamental: Where exactly was Afghanistan? What languages do they speak? How tall are the mountains? How many rivers do they have? Information on the region was sparse and spread across multiple formats and sources, and teams spent days just gathering data, with no chance to even begin to address the more complex, nuanced understanding the mission required. We headed off to combat with only a rudimentary understanding of the operational environment. This experience highlights a critical challenge facing today’s military leaders—the tendency to become mired in raw data rather than ascending to higher levels of cognitive understanding. In an era of great power competition and rapidly evolving threats, this challenge has become existential. Residing in the data layer cedes initiative and decision space and could cost us the fight. Leaders must leverage new technology and artificial intelligence to automate foundational tasks to turn data into knowledge and quickly create shared understanding to achieve decision dominance.

US containerized drone swarms no silver bullet vs China

Gabriel Honrada

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As the US races to deploy containerized drone swarms as a key future warfare element, the effort reveals questions about whether drones are a real revolution or a workaround for institutional limits.

This month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that the US military has launched a formal effort to solicit industry proposals for containerized systems capable of storing, launching, recovering and servicing large numbers of drones on both land and sea, as part of a broader push to expand its uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) inventory.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has outlined a project called the Containerized Autonomous Drone Delivery System (CADDS), aiming to replace manual launch and recovery with automated, rapid deployment of large quantities of UAS in contested environments.

U.S.-India and EU-India Trade Agreements: Who Won?

William Alan Reinsch

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Credit for this week’s column idea goes to John Magnus of TradeWins LLC, a long-time trade consultant with an impressive ability to think outside the box. He reminded me that the virtual back-to-back announcements of the European Union–India and the United States–India trade agreements present an unusual opportunity to compare the two and draw conclusions about how well each party did and what that says about their respective strategies.

Of course, the now usual caveats apply. The full facts on both agreements are not yet available. The U.S.-India agreement will change depending on Trump’s feelings about India from week to week, as we have seen happen with other agreements like those with the United Kingdom, European Union, and South Korea. Finally, there is the all-important implementation question. How much of what has been agreed to will be done; how much will be ignored; and how much will be slow-rolled?

Afghanistan: Unending Desolation – Analysis

Sanchita Bhattacharya

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Afghanistan remains trapped in a deep and layered crisis, marked by persistent armed resistance, extremist violence, political fragility, the collapse of law and order, and systematic institutional repression. Nearly four years after the Taliban re-captured Kabul on August 15, 2021, their military victory has failed to translate into legitimacy, recovery, or social stability.

On July 8, 2025, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants of arrest against Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani. The warrants relate to the crime against humanity of persecution under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute, specifically on gender grounds against women, girls, and other affected persons. The Taliban, however, rejected the move outright, declaring that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) does not recognize the ICC and dismissing the warrants as baseless.

Why Xi Jinping has been purging China’s military leadership, and what may come next

Dean Cheng

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Since 2023, the senior leadership of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been decimated. The most recent casualty is Zhang Youxia, one of the two vice chairmen of the PLA’s Central Military Commission (CMC), and therefore one of the two most senior uniformed members of the Chinese security establishment.

Zhang’s removal follows the relief of Gen. Li Yuchao of the PLA Rocket Force in 2023, defense minister (Li Shangfu) in 2024, the other vice chairman (He Weidong) and the head of the Political Work Department (Miao Hua) in 2025, and the head of the Joint Staff Department (Liu Zhenli) alongside Zhang in the current cycle. Those roles have yet to be formally filled, leaving only two official members of the CMC: Xi Jinping, as chairman, and Gen. Zhang Shengmin, head of the CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection (CMCCDI) who has also been promoted to vice chairman.

CHINA'S UNDERWATER DATA CENTER IS DOING A LOT MORE THAN JUST COMPUTING

EMMA STREET 

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The high water demand of data centers causes significant problems. Large volumes of often potable, drinking-quality water are used for cooling, putting pressure on local water supplies and competing with households and agriculture. One way around this is to do what China has done — place data centers in a location where they're literally surrounded by non-potable water — the ocean. There have been several experimental underwater projects — like Microsoft's Project Natick, which concluded in 2020 — but currently, the only operational, commercial underwater data center in the world is in Hainan Province in China.

Over the past few months, this data center has begun operating as a large-scale artificial-intelligence computing facility, like DC's "AI Alley". Sealed inside steel capsules placed on the seabed near Lingshui, rows of servers now perform the same kinds of tasks as those in conventional data centers — processing data, running cloud services, and training AI systems — but are cooled naturally by surrounding seawater rather than by energy-intensive air-conditioning. This recent shift toward high-density AI computing marks the most advanced stage of a project that aims to combine computing power with lower energy use and a smaller land footprint.

Beijing’s Growth Model Is Still Broken

Dinny McMahon

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When China’s property market collapsed in 2021, its leaders scrambled to find a new driver of economic growth to replace housing construction. More investment in infrastructure, which had powered much of the country’s boom for decades, wasn’t an option: the population was peaking, and a collapse in land sales meant that local authorities lacked the funds to spend on new airports and eight-lane highways. Nor could Beijing rely on more exports. China was already the world’s biggest exporter, and with labor and land costs rising the world’s factory no longer had as significant a cost advantage for cheap goods.

That left consumption. Economists have long noted that household consumption in China contributes relatively little to economic activity compared with other countries. In 2024, according to World Bank data, consumption was only 40 percent of China’s GDP, about 20 percentage points below the global average. A policy focused on lifting household spending to the level of South Korea (48 percent) or Japan (55 percent in 2022) could drive growth for decades.

Is China Really Changing Its Approach to the Yellow Sea?

Sang Hun Seok

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One of the notable achievements of South Korea President Lee Jae Myung’s state visit to Beijing in January 2026 was an understanding reached regarding Chinese maritime platforms in the Yellow Sea. Lee revealed that an understanding had been reached to relocate the Atlantic Amsterdam, a massive management platform located within the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ), a maritime area jointly managed by China and South Korea pending future boundary delimitation under a 2001 agreement. Less than a month after the summit in Beijing, the platform was confirmed to have been relocated to Weihai, a major port in Shandong province.

This is obviously a diplomatic gesture meant to signal the continuing thaw between Seoul and Beijing. Yet, while the South Korean presidential office welcomed it as “meaningful progress,” the relocation may be less a conclusion than a recalibration of the current status quo. Playing devil’s advocate, we must consider the potential strategic calculations that might have influenced Beijing’s calculus.

Inside China’s Rerouted Supply Chains

Hannah Pedone

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Morale was low in a WeChat group of roughly 250 Chinese manufacturers and e-commerce sellers late last April, when combined tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States sat at 145 percent. “This is it. The U.S.-China relationship is over,” said one member in the Chinese messaging app. “If only Kissinger were alive,” said another.

By September 2025, exporters in the group were feeling the effects of the highest statutory tariff rates on U.S. imports in over 100 years. The share of U.S. imports originating from China had plunged from a 2017 high of 22 percent to just 9 percent by July 2025, a low not seen since China’s accession year to the World Trade Organization a quarter of a century earlier.

Iran’s Nuclear Program And UN Sanctions Reimposition – Analysis

Paul K. Kerr

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UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015), which the council adopted on July 20, 2015, implements the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and contains other provisions concerning Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran’s development of missiles, and arms transfers to and from Iran. In August 2020, the United States invoked the resolution’s “snapback” mechanism, which requires the Security Council to reimpose UN sanctions lifted pursuant to Resolution 2231 and the JCPOA. (See CRS Report R40094, Iran’s Nuclear Program: Tehran’s Compliance with International Obligations, by Paul K. Kerr.) Although that effort failed, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK) (collectively known as the “E3”) on August 28, 2025, invoked the snapback mechanism, which resulted in the sanctions’ reimposition on September 27, 2025.

Resolution 2231 stipulates that the council, which has been seized of the “Iranian nuclear issue” since 2006, was to end its consideration of the matter on October 18, 2025. The resolution’s snapback mechanism would then have ceased to be operational. The 2025 invocation of snapback not only reimposes previously terminated sanctions but also extends them, and Iran’s nuclear program as a subject of Security Council consideration, indefinitely.

Europe Needs an Army

Max Bergmann

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The transatlantic alliance is on the ropes. Since the end of World War II, American power has underwritten European unification and integration—arguably Washington’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment. But the Trump administration has made clear that the United States is no longer interested in acting as Europe’s security guarantor. It has threatened to seize the territory of a NATO member, reduced funding to Ukraine, aggressively imposed tariffs on European allies, and, in its 2025 National Security Strategy, called for “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory.” The message could not be clearer: the continent can no longer rely on the United States to defend it. For the first time in eight decades, Europe stands alone.

European states now find themselves vulnerable to Russian aggression. Should Moscow turn its attention beyond Ukraine and rebuild its war machine, it could quickly threaten eastern Europe. Such a danger should spur European leaders to embark on a bold new course of action to solidify their defenses. But there has been no such revolution in European military affairs.

Ukraine Seeks a War Plan Beyond Killing as Many Russian Soldiers as Possible

Anastasiia Malenko and Marcus Walker

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NOVOMYKOLAIVKA, Ukraine—In this corner of southeast Ukraine, Russian forces are pummeling rear areas with drone attacks, seeking to sap the strength of Ukrainian defenders by cutting their supply lines. Snow-covered roads are littered with burned-out pickup trucks. As the conflict nears the four-year mark, Russia’s increasingly effective use of drones is helping its forces maintain a grinding, slow-motion advance. It is weakening Ukraine’s hand at the negotiating table, where it is under pressure to cede strategically vital territory. Russia’s battlefield drone strategy is focused on a medium range of about 12 to 50 miles. Priority targets include Ukrainian drone operators as well as logistics. 

In contrast, Ukraine’s approach is still largely about inflicting maximum casualties on Russian infantry when they enter a kill zone beginning about 12 miles from the front line. Ukraine is betting on doing more of the same this year. The goal is to kill 50,000 Russian soldiers a month, up from 35,000 in December, new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said recently.