Indian Strategic Studies: February 2025

21 February 2025

As Trump meets with India’s Modi, Bangladesh demands attention

Brahma Chellaney

Bangladesh’s recent descent into lawlessness poses a foreign policy challenge for President Trump, especially because his predecessor supported last August’s regime change there.

The world’s most densely populated country (excluding microstates and mini-states) risks sliding into jihadist chaos, threatening regional and international security.

Bangladesh has also emerged as a sore point in U.S.-India relations, with the issue likely to figure in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s discussions with Trump at the White House this week. New Delhi is smarting from the overthrow of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s India-friendly government and the installation of a new military-chosen “interim” administration with ties to Islamists whom India sees as hostile.

The new regime is led by the 84-year-old Muhammad Yunus, who publicly lamented Trump’s 2016 election win as a “solar eclipse” and “black day.” Yunus received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize after former President Bill Clinton lobbied for him, a fact the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman acknowledged in his award ceremony speech.

India, the United States and the Future of the International Trade Order

Manjari Chatterjee Miller

Regardless of the party in power, successive U.S. administrations have agreed that China poses a threat to the United States-led order. Consequently, the United States has looked not just to its formal allies, but also to partners to shore up its global power. The United States’ partnership with India has been a significant part of this strategy. While U. S. overtures to India are long-standing—dating back to the George W. Bush administration—India, on the other hand, responded sporadically. It was really under the first Trump administration that the relationship took off, with India, often slow to commit, signing three defense agreements with the United States in just four years. The Biden administration continued to make this partnership even more central to its Indo-Pacific strategy, and its “friendshoring” agenda, reaching out to key partners and allies to divert important supply chains away from China. Given how complex and layered the U.S.-India partnership has become and the bipartisan support for continuing to develop it, President Trump is unlikely to deviate from the U.S. outreach to India. However, the United States still has a very tenuous grasp on India’s interests, particularly on where India stands with respect to the different norms underpinning the U.S.-created liberal international order. Without this understanding, it is futile to expect India to pose a true counterbalance to China. This is particularly the case with respect to the international trade order.

The rapid development of U.S.-India defense ties has sometimes obscured the fact that the bilateral trade relationship has been strained for a while. The United States objects to India’s protectionism, while India sees the United States as insufficiently accommodational of its position as a developing country. President Trump has invited Prime Minister Modi to visit Washington this week to meet with him. Top of the agenda will be the issue of bilateral trade. India has a $35 billion trade surplus with the United States, and President Trump has complained about the U.S. trade deficit with India and others. But, although tariffs are likely to be the looming issue given President Trump’s threats towards Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe, the U.S. administration also needs to understand where India stands on important norms in the international trade order. Particularly, if, as reports suggest, a trade deal is in the offing.

Trump retreat emboldens Putin and Xi. Australia must rethink its whole US relationship - Opinion

Mick Ryan

It has been a fascinating and disconcerting week for observers of the war in Ukraine. Comments by Donald Trump apparently left open the way for Russia to absorb Ukraine or, at a minimum, accepting a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. His phone call to Vladimir Putin conceded all of the Russian president’s key demands before negotiations start in Saudi Arabia. It appears Trump may repeat his disastrous Afghanistan agreement by leaving Ukraine and Europe out of key negotiations.

Not long afterwards, Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, issued stern statements about the US no longer being a guarantee for European security and that, even though Europe may be left out of negotiations, it would need to deploy troops as peacekeepers to Ukraine. Vice President J. D. Vance – while lecturing Europe on Friday that its greatest threat was from within rather than from Russia or China – has left open the possibility of more aid to Ukraine, including US troops, if Russia does not offer concessions.

Trump floated the idea of cutting a deal with China and Russia under which they and the US would all slice their defence budgets in half.

Add to all of this the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned it was time to create an “armed forces of Europe” because the US may no longer be counted on to support the continent.

There have been many interpretations of the behaviour of the new US administration in Europe and America. Perhaps the best description might be offered by Vladimir Lenin, who is reputed to have stated: “There are decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen.”

‘Salute and execute’: A new generation of military veterans takes center stage as Trump remakes US foreign policy

Katie Bo Lillis

At the start of his first term, President Donald Trump filled several top jobs with retired generals — high-ranking veterans who served in leadership positions during the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, a collection of grunts, foot soldiers and young officers who carried out rather than planned America’s so-called global war on terror (GWOT) are among Trump’s top advisers and officials.

Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were all low- to mid-ranking soldiers when they deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Only Waltz, a former Green Beret, is over 50.

Together, they form a key component of Trump’s national security team — and represent a generation of younger veterans that is often described as disillusioned, inherently skeptical of traditional institutions that many see as having failed them across years of inconclusive wars in the Middle East.

It’s a worldview that maps neatly onto Trump’s messaging, including his stated reluctance to using the American military abroad and his broader distrust of government agencies and the so-called deep state.

Neighboring Countries Should Be The Focus Of China’s Diplomacy – Analysis

Zhou Chao

For a long time, relations with the United States have always been a top priority in China’s diplomatic work. Relevant experts in the field have repeatedly pointed out that maintaining stable development of U.S.-China relations is one of the most important elements in China’s diplomatic strategy.

Previously, China actively proposed building a new type of major-power relationship, reflecting its expectations for the development of the relations. According to the essence of this new type of major-power relationship, i.e., “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation”, China focuses on three main aspects in developing relations with the U.S.: First, strengthening strategic mutual trust, effectively managing differences, and ensuring no conflict and no confrontation; Second, enhancing exchanges at all levels to promote mutual respect between the two countries; Third, advancing pragmatic cooperation in various fields to continue achieving mutual benefits. China has consistently emphasized that the focus of its policy toward the U.S. should be on strengthening strategic mutual trust and effectively managing differences.

There is no doubt that the easing of U.S.-China relations and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries have been important external factors for the smooth advancement of China’s reform and opening-up efforts. With the support and recognition of the U.S. within certain limits, the global economic-technical-financial network controlled by the U.S. and the West eventually accepted China’s integration. Additionally, significant capital investment and technology transfer from the U.S. and the West have been crucial driving forces behind China’s rise in economy and technology.

Iran's abandoned bases in Syria: Years of military expansion lie in ruins

Nafiseh Kohnavard

Mouldy half-finished food on bunk beds, discarded military uniforms and abandoned weapons - these are the remnants of an abrupt retreat from this base that once belonged to Iran and its affiliated groups in Syria.

The scene tells a story of panic. The forces stationed here fled with little warning, leaving behind a decade-long presence that unravelled in mere weeks.

Iran was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most critical ally for more than 10 years. It deployed military advisers, mobilised foreign militias, and invested heavily in Syria's war.

Its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) built deep networks of underground bases, supplying arms and training to thousands of fighters. For Iran, this was also part of its "security belt" against Israel.

We are near Khan Shaykhun town in Idlib province. Before Assad's regime fell on 8 December, it was one of the key strategic locations for the IRGC and its allied groups.

From the main road, the entrance is barely visible, hidden behind piles of sand and rocks. A watchtower on a hilltop, still painted in the colours of the Iranian flag, overlooks the base.

Trump’s Ukraine Power Play Exposes EU Impotence

Mick Hume

Nobody knows exactly how President Donald Trump’s bid to end the war in Ukraine will work out, or whether he can fulfil his worthy ambition to save “millions of lives.” But here in Europe, one thing should be immediately clear. Trump’s direct overture to Russian President Vladimir Putin has exposed the irrelevance and impotence of the European Union, not only in wider global power politics, but in ending a bloody war on its own doorstep.

Trump’s call to Putin proposing that the two should work “very closely” together to achieve peace looks like an attempt to reassert America’s hegemony over international affairs. That will be tricky to achieve in an increasingly multi-polar world; as if to illustrate the point, when news broke of Trump’s overture to Putin, China was quick to throw its own hat in the ring as a potential peace-broker.

What Trump has already achieved, however, is to destroy the pretensions of the EU to be a major player. All of the big talk of Europe standing rock solid in support of Ukraine, and making no concessions to Putin’s Russia, has been revealed as empty political posturing.

As this truth dawned, there was an obvious sense of panic in Brussels, where a meeting of NATO defence ministers is being held this week. The Weimar Group, a defence association that includes the European Commission and leading EU members Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland, alongside the UK, issued a hurried statement.

‘Rules based international order’ is dead, 20th century never coming back

Anthony J. Constantini

For a moment last week, it appeared that European Union officials finally had realised that the 20th century was never coming back. At the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance delivered a stemwinder of a speech, castigating European states (and union officials) for various hypocrisies when it comes to the protection of democracy. His speech, though well-received on the American Right and by populist Europeans desperate for a MEGA (“Make Europe Great Again”) movement of their own, got a cold response in the hall, as slowly it dawned on Europeans that this second Trump administration would differ greatly from the first.

But that moment of realization lasted less than 24 hours. Later in the conference, two other Republicans spoke: Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican of South Carolina) and Senator Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi), both of whom delivered an essentially opposite message: all is well.

Wicker, the influential chairman of the Armed Services Committee, critiqued Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth for saying NATO membership was effectively off the table for Ukraine. Graham, elsewhere, went even further, insisting that, “Trump now sees Ukraine differently.”

Everything You Wanted to Know About Trump’s Tariffs but Were Afraid to Ask

Keith Johnson

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “tariff man,” campaigned on the promise of ratcheting import duties as high as 60 percent against all goods from China, and perhaps 20 percent on everything from everywhere else. And he might be able to do it—including by drawing on little-remembered authorities from the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, the previous nadir of U.S. trade policy.

Trump’s tariff plans are cheered by most of his economic advisers, who see them as a useful tool to rebalance an import-dependent U.S. economy. Most economists fear the inflationary impacts of sharply higher taxes on U.S. consumers and businesses, as well as the deliberate drag on economic growth that comes from making everything more expensive. Other countries are mostly confused, uncertain whether Trump’s tariff talk is just bluster to secure favorable trade deals for the United States, or if they’ll be more narrowly targeted or smaller than promised. Big economies, such as China and the European Union, are preparing their reprisals, just in case.

Putin's weak spot?

Lawrence Freedman

Following a call this week between Presidents Trump and Putin negotiations on ending the Russo-Ukraine war are set to begin. Trump’s olive branch to Putin has been greeted with dismay by Ukraine’s supporters. Russia is no longer being treated as a pariah but as a potential partner for peace despite having engaged in cruel aggression. Ukraine’s future is being treated as matter for Moscow and Washington, and it has already been told that it cannot expect to regain all lost territory, and that the US does not expect to be part of any eventual security guarantees to deter Russia returning for more.

I have argued in a piece for the Financial Times that concern about these developments does not mean that Putin will get a deal that allows him to achieve, through negotiations, what he has yet to achieve through military action. His basic problem is that he is being offered what is for him a draw though he still wants and needs a victory. As I outlined in an earlier post there remains a significant divergence between the American approach and Russian aspirations.

A serious, conspicuous, negotiating process, as opposed to back door discussions through intermediaries, has its first impact in adding urgency. Military efforts are likely to be stepped up to improve bargaining positions. As the negotiating window might not stay open for ever a realistic assessment is needed about not only what might be achieved in talks but also what happens if the talks fail. In this case that means assessing how Trump may respond to the side he blames for thwarting his peace-making aspirations.

Zelensky Says Ukraine Unlikely to Survive Its War Without U.S. Support

Yonette Joseph

President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an excerpt from an NBC interview published Friday night that Ukraine had a low chance of surviving Russia’s assault without U.S. support.

In the excerpt from “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” Mr. Zelensky said: “Probably it will be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance — low chance to survive without support of the United States.”

The full interview is set to be broadcast on Sunday, according to NBC.

His comments were aired on the first day of the Munich Security Conference, where hundreds of anxious European diplomats and others gathered expecting to hear Vice President JD Vance speak about President Trump’s strategy to broker peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

But Mr. Vance mentioned Ukraine only in passing and offered no road map for negotiations or even any strategic vision of what Europe should look like after the most devastating ground war being waged on the continent in 80 years. Instead, he urged European nations to stop isolating their far-right parties, saying the biggest security threat was the suppression of free speech.

All the President’s Sock Puppets

Daniel Richman

Every occupying force knows the tactic: If you want to cow a large population, pick one of its most respected citizens and demand he debase himself and pledge fealty. If he refuses, execute him and move on to the next one. This is how the Trump Justice Department thinks it will bring U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country under its control, starting last week with the Southern District of New York. Firing or demanding the resignation of a previous administration’s top prosecutors has become standard. After all, elections matter, and a new president should be free to set new priorities.

But the Trump Justice Department’s twisted loyalty game is something new, dangerous and self-defeating. And this round probably won’t be the last.

In instructing the Southern District to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, found a useful loyalty test. In his letter to Danielle Sassoon, the interim Southern District U.S. attorney, Mr. Bove gave two transparently inappropriate reasons: a baseless claim that the prosecution was politicized, which her powerful resignation letter demolished, and a barely concealed suggestion that a dismissal would provide leverage over Mr. Adams and ensure his cooperation in the administration’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. As Hagan Scotten, who led the Adams prosecution and has also resigned, nicely put it, “No system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”

DOGE or be DOGE’d: The Army needs to preemptively start cutting

John Ferrari

The Army currently appears to be holding the weakest hand in the Pentagon budget deliberation process. Just look at the Senate, which is recommending an add of $150B to defense, with priorities listed as growing the Navy and strengthening the shipbuilding industrial base; building an integrated air and missile defense for the Homeland, and investments in the nuclear enterprise.

There is only one plus up for the Army: maintaining military readiness. Additionally, the incoming administration has questioned the need for forward deployed troops in Europe, which historically has been a major rationale for the size and structure of the Army. With two strikes against it, the Army is now going to be entering the woodchipper called DOGE and its slash first, fix later philosophy.

It may be best for the Army to move first and make the difficult choices on its own. Specifically, with little new money coming into the Army, the best deal the Army can hope for is to keep its own savings. The only way to do this is to ask the Secretary of Defense to let the Army DOGE-itself before Elon Musk and his crew can get the knives out.

Zelenskyy calls for ‘armed forces of Europe’ as EU leaders bristle at new US policies on Ukraine

JAMEY KEATEN, SUSIE BLANN AND EMMA BURROWS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that the time has come for the creation of an “armed forces of Europe,” because the U.S. may no longer be counted on to support the continent.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hit back at Americans for meddling in his country’s election after U.S. Vice President JD Vance scolded European leaders over their approach to democracy and met with the leader of a German far-right party.

Forceful speeches from Zelenskyy and Scholz on Day 2 of the Munich Security Conference underlined the impact of a blizzard of decisions by U.S. President Donald Trump that show a rapidly growing chasm in trans-Atlantic ties.

European leaders are reeling after Trump’s decision to upend years of U.S. policy by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia on Saturday all but ruled out that Europeans would be included in any Ukraine peace talks.

The Indispensable Role of Exercises in National Preparedness

Shawn P. Creamer

The United States is unprepared to fight another major power or a coalition of powers in a multiyear, multi-theater war by the end of this decade.[1] Despite numerous warning signs, the U.S. government has not fully recognized the gravity of the threat it faces. The risk of major-power rivalry escalating into a war is already high and continues to increase as autocrats disproportionately become stronger and more capable over time relative to the United States and the West. Absent a serious, disciplined, and resourced program of national revitalization, rearmament, and emergency preparedness, the options for the United States and its allies to achieve a favorable outcome will be low. This is due to the simple fact that our adversaries are vigorously preparing and, as a result, will be better positioned for a protracted war that lasts beyond one year.

Preparedness is achieved through the development of a coherent strategy, followed by detailed planning, which in turn identifies resourcing for the strategy to be realized. Disciplined follow-through is essential. Exercises are a critical component in the process of building preparedness. As the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) explained: “To simply write a plan on a piece of paper and then not test it, in my judgement, is worse than having no plan at all, because it beguiles people into believing that something is there, and it isn’t.”[2]

What the Pentagon might learn from Ukraine about fielding new tech

Jon Schmid and Erik E. Mueller

During the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have fielded a high volume of new weapons technology that has been invaluable in collecting intelligence, enabling drone strikes, and guiding removal of landmines.

This came as something of a surprise. And Ukraine’s success may have lessons to offer the U.S. Department of Defense as the government explores new avenues for efficiency.

Before the war, Ukraine’s military acquisition system was slow, opaque, and dominated by a state-owned enterprise, UkrOboronProm (literally, Ukraine Defense Industry). As late as 2021, experts predicted UkrOboronProm’s imminent collapse.

Once the war began, Ukraine abandoned this old system and embraced commercial technology. The Ukrainians have purchased drones on the commercial market and affixed them with explosives to target Russian forces. In one example, Ukraine used Soviet-era RKG-3 anti-tank hand grenades, which traditionally required the user to be close to the tank to employ. But by using domestically developed drones, Ukrainians could drop RKG-3 grenades modified with tail-fins onto Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.

Putin’s Worst Nightmare? NATO Is Stronger Than Ever

James Jay Carafano

To begin with, NATO is in better shape today than the alliance was for most of the Cold War. Europeans need to stop fretting about the ability of the transatlantic community to defend itself and start getting serious about how to retain a political-military advantage over Putin’s Russia as we progress into the 21st century.

God is on the Side of the Biggest Battalions

The value of military power is always relative to that of the enemy. Today, NATO is in better shape than during the Cold War when the alliance spent way more on defense and fielded massed armies that would have cowed Napoleon. NATO is better off because the coalition faces a Russia that is worse off.

In contrast to the Cold War, when NATO’s frontline was in the middle of Germany in the heart of Western Europe, today’s alliance has way more strategic depth, and NATO deep strike assets are much closer to ranging far deeper into Russian territory. Rather than being able to start a war on the midfield line, like the Soviets, Putin would have to invade Europe from his own endzone.

Putin faces a much broader front than during the Cold War. With the addition of Sweden and Finland, Russia has another thousand miles of flank that the Motherland cannot ignore.

America Opens the Door to Its Adversaries

Kori Schake

During Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, both Democrats and Republicans, repeatedly asked the soon-to-be director of national intelligence whether Edward Snowden was a traitor for releasing thousands of classified documents that revealed clandestine U.S. sources and methods. And repeatedly Gabbard declined to condemn Snowden beyond the tepid acknowledgment that he’d broken the law. Even at that, she praised him for exposing a secret program.

All nine Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, and every Republican senator except Mitch McConnell, nonetheless voted to confirm her to lead America’s 18 intelligence agencies. Among her responsibilities, she will be delivering a daily brief to the president that curates analysis of the country’s most urgent problems.

Gabbard has hardly demonstrated the judgment necessary for the task. In 2013, overwhelming evidence, including expert U.S.-intelligence analysis, showed that the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his people. Gabbard was unwilling to believe it, perhaps because the conclusion did not accord with her preconceived ideas about the Syrian civil conflict. This is the stance of someone likely to either miss or reject warnings of emergent threats. And it’s not the only sign that the Trump administration is putting American security at risk.

JD Vance’s full speech on the fall of Europe

One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. And, you know, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now. But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.

And I want to say that I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack.The first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife, actually, who’s here with me today, on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people.

I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.

JD Vance’s Munich speech laid bare the collapse of the transatlantic alliance

Patrick Wintour

Since 1963, the Munich Security Conference has seen many consequential speeches, notably Vladimir Putin announcing in 2007 that Russia would never accept a subordinate role in the new world order. But Friday’s speech by JD Vance, the US vice-president, has the potential to be the most consequential – the moment the world order against which Putin railed fell apart.

Sometimes, even in this digital age, speeches can act as clarifiers. Yes, the 22 minutes were full of laughable hypocrisy, distorted portraits of European democracy and insensitivity to Europe’s trauma with fascism, but for what it said about the chasm in values between most in Europe and the Trump administration, it was hard to overlook.

The shock was in part because the conference traditionally tends to talk about the polarisation of populism, as opposed to invite a populist to speak. The organisers had expected a dissertation on Ukraine, but instead got the full populist pulpit, and therefore something more significant.

The speech signalled that the pre-existing dispute between Europe and the US was no longer to do with the sharing of the military burdens, or the nature of the future security threat posed by Russia, but something more fundamental about society.

Is this the end of NATO?

Jamie Dettmer

U.S. President Donald Trump is a longtime fan of Winston Churchill. But what would Britain’s iconic wartime leader make of the Munich Security Conference in 2025?

“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Those are the words Churchill thundered when then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain left this Bavarian city 87 years ago, clutching a piece of paper that turned out to be meaningless.

Would that be Churchill’s reaction to Trump’s drive to end the war in Ukraine, with terms that Kyiv and its European allies fear will be favorable to Moscow and only mean another bigger war down the road?

The word “appeasement” is on European lips here, and for the more historically sensitive — like Britain’s former Defense Minister Ben Wallace — the echo of Munich circa 1938 seems an obvious reference point.

As they gathered for the summit today, European officials were still reeling from the readout of Trump’s 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as U.S. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth’s mid-week remarks in Brussels. For former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, the most overlooked and chilling line that came from Hegseth was his warning that “realities” will prevent the U.S. from being Europe’s security guarantor.

Hegseth to Europe: Don’t Look to America for Leadership

Giselle Donnelly

FOR MORE THAN FOUR CENTURIES, the principal geopolitical concern of Americans has been the European great-power balance. The Jamestown colony was sited to defend against the threat of Spanish raiders. Throughout the eighteenth century, settlers on the frontier demanded the conquest of Canada—or “New France,” as it was known in Paris. In many ways, America’s formative military experience was not the revolution of 1775–1783 but the French and Indian War of 1754–1763, part of the worldwide Seven Years’ War between the United Kingdom and France over colonial dominance. Twice in the twentieth century, American soldiers crossed the Atlantic to beat back German bids for European hegemony. From 1945 to 1991, the United States led a coalition of freedom-loving allies to contain and then to liberate the Soviet Empire. The result has been an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and liberty.

The long peace is on the verge of ending. Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group—the American-led consortium of 57 countries and the European Union cooperating to provide the Ukrainian military with weaponry and logistics support—new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth basically told the Europeans, We’re outta here!

The headlines focused on what Hegseth described as his “realistic assessment of the battlefield” in Ukraine. In practice that meant throwing Kyiv’s principal war aims—restoration of its 2014 borders and a quick path to NATO membership—in the trash. “Chasing this illusory goal,” declared Hegseth, “will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.” So much for the secretary’s vaunted “warrior ethos” or for striking a hard bargain in any negotiations with Russia; the Trump administration is Vladimir Putin’s most valuable asset.

What Gazans Want

Scott Atran and Ángel Gómez

In the weeks since Israel’s fragile January 19 cease-fire and hostages-for-prisoners deal with Hamas, the issue of what should happen to Gaza and its 2.1 million inhabitants has come starkly into view. The war has reduced much of Gaza to ruins, with its schools, hospitals, civilian infrastructure and ecology now largely destroyed and a huge portion of its population lacking adequate shelter. The constant threat of the cease-fire’s breakdown has fueled its own daily dread of further devastation. Even as U.S. President Donald Trump has floated chimerical ideas about an eventual U.S. “takeover” of Gaza and the permanent relocation of its population, external powers have made little progress on formulating a strategy for governance and security in the territory now.

Strangely absent from this debate are Gazans themselves. It is reasonable to assume that more than 15 months of pulverizing conflict have changed the perceptions of ordinary civilians in the territory about what they want for their future, how they see their land, who they think should be their rulers, and what they consider to be the most plausible pathways to peace. Given the extraordinary price they have paid for Hamas’s actions on October 7, 2023, Gazans might be expected to reject the group and favor a different leadership. Similarly, outside observers might anticipate that after so much hardship, Gazans would be more prepared to compromise on larger political aspirations in favor of more urgent human needs.

How Much Time Does it Take for Hackers to Crack My Password?

Lance Whitney

Hackers can crack weak passwords in seconds, while strong ones may take years. Learn about the time to crack your password and boost security.

Security experts advise creating strong, complex passwords to protect our online accounts and data from savvy cybercriminals. And “complex” typically means using lowercase and uppercase characters, numbers, and even special symbols. But, complexity by itself can still open your password to cracking if it doesn’t contain enough characters, according to research by security firm Hive Systems.

In this article, we look into how long it would take for hackers to crack different types of passwords and what you can do to make them more secure.

How long does it take to crack a password?

In their 2024 Hive Systems Password Table report, Hive found that a complex, eight-character password that contains numbers, symbols, and both upper and lowercase letters will take seven years to crack — if an attacker were to use a top-of-the-line 12 x RTX 4090 graphics card.

In comparison, a five-character password with only upper and lowercase letters can be cracked in two minutes. Further, Hive says that a four-character password with only lowercase letters can be hacked instantly, while a five-character password with both upper and lowercase letters can be hacked in three seconds.

Space as a Gray Zone: The Future of Orbital Warfare

Alan T. Dugge

For as long as humans have waged war, controlling the high ground has meant controlling the fight. From ancient hilltop fortresses to the elevated positions that dictated victory in modern battles, elevation offered a point from which to project power and subdue adversaries. But what happens when the high ground isn’t a mountain or a ridge but an orbit thousands of miles above Earth?

In this new theater, the rules of conflict aren’t just rewritten, they’re reimagined. There are no trenches to dig, no skies to dominate. Only the silent vacuum of space, where satellites drift like pieces on a multidimensional chessboard of extraordinarily vast proportions. Here, war might never be declared, but nation-states could still lose or win through actions so subtle they go unnoticed by the billions below. This is the paradox of orbital warfare: capability measured not in firepower, but in strategy, finesse, and control over the unseen.

The Evolving Nature of Space Conflict

Space has always been about vantage points. From the moment we entered the space age, we extended our reach beyond Earth’s surface and transformed the vastness of space into a new domain for military operations. At first, it was about watching, listening, and staying ready. But as our dependence on space grew, so too did the risks.

20 February 2025

What’s Driving China’s Controversial Mega-Dam in Tibet?

Genevieve Donnellon-May and Mark Wang

On December 25, 2024, Chinese state media Xinhua reported that the country had officially approved the construction of what will be the world largest hydro-dam with annual capacity of 60 gigawatts (GW), or 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. The planned site is on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in the Tibet Autonomous Region, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

With recent estimates suggest that the new hydropower dam’s cost to potentially exceed 1 trillion yuan ($137 billion), the planned hydropower dam is expected to surpass the country’s famous Three Gorges Dam as the largest – and most expensive – in the world. The Three Gorges dam cost 254.2 billion yuan and generates 88.2 billion kilowatt-hours annually.

The Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina), in partnership with the Tibet Autonomous Region government, is expected to oversee the project. When the proposal was unveiled in late 2020, Yan Zhiyong, chairman of PowerChina, hailed it as an “historic opportunity for the Chinese hydropower industry.”

Chinese officials and media have declared that the day will be a “people-centric project aimed at enriching the people and promoting Tibet’s development.” The hydropower dam’s construction is expected to boost rapid growth in local industries (such as logistics) and also create local employment opportunities.

In India, however, the prospect of a major dam in Tibet has raised both environmental and geopolitical concerns. The Yarlung Tsangpo River flows into India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra, and then on to Bangladesh, where its known as the Jamuna.

Geonomics, Not Geopolitics is Driving Pakistan’s Courting of Bangladesh

Abdul Basit

The recent regime change in Bangladesh has triggered a Pakistan-Bangladesh rapprochement.

Since Muhammad Yunus took charge as leader of Bangladesh’s interim government on August 8, several high-level meetings have been held between Bangladesh and Pakistan, paving the way for new linkages and closer cooperation.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has met Yunus twice since the regime change in Dhaka — on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in the U.S. and the D-8 Summit in Egypt in September and December 2024, respectively. During the D-8 meeting, Yunus urged Sharif to settle the issues of 1971. “The issues have kept coming again and again. Let’s settle those issues for us to move forward. It would be nice to (settle issues) once and for all for the future generations,” Yunus said. Yunus was referring to a longstanding Bangladeshi demand for an official apology from Pakistan for the genocide committed during the 1971 war.

Pakistan has long maintained that the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh tripartite agreement of 1974 settled these issues. In Cairo, Sharif agreed to look into “other outstanding issues.”

Bilateral relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh have been troubled since the 1971 Liberation War, and particularly frosty during periods of Awami League rule in Bangladesh. Since the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5 last year, relations have thawed. And following the Sharif-Yunus meetings, Pakistan and Bangladesh have moved swiftly to improve ties.

Breaking The Cycle Of Old Politics In Sri Lanka – Analysis

Neil DeVotta

Sri Lanka’s 2024 elections have ushered in a seismic shift, with Anura Kumara Dissanayake (often known by his initials ‘AKD’) of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) becoming president in September 2024 and the JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) alliance winning a parliamentary supermajority in November 2024. The two elections represent a political realignment, empowering a new class of elites while marginalising long-dominant politicians.

The Marxist-Leninist JVP was responsible for two bloody insurrections in 1971 and 1987-89 that killed tens of thousands of Sri Lankans. This violent past was long an electoral albatross, but creating the NPP alliance with twenty other groups helped transform the JVP into a more conventional left-leaning party.

AKD’s winning personality and articulate, rational discourse held sway over now former Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa in the presential election. Educated professionals who contested for the NPP in the parliamentary election further softened the JVP’s prior radical image. The splintered opposition also helped.

But the main reason for AKD’s and the NPP’s victories was the island’s bankruptcy. The alliance effectively linked the resulting economic crisis to the corruption, nepotism and impunity of previous regimes and promised more accountable and transparent governance.

Systemic change requires that Sri Lanka’s political structure and political culture must now be transformed. The NPP has promised a new constitution, which could appreciably change the political system. But transforming the political culture would require weakening ethnocracy in ways that may sideline powerful constituencies like the military and Buddhist clergy. A new political culture would also require accountability for crimes committed by security personnel — often hailed as war heroes —against Tamils, journalists and detractors of the former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family.

Blackout Nation: How Myanmar’s Energy Crisis Is Crippling Lives – Analysis

Htet Khaing Min

In Myanmar, darkness no longer just falls after sunset—it has become an everyday reality, an uninvited guest that lingers well beyond nightfall.

Key Takeaways:Severe Power Shortages Cripple Myanmar – Blackouts for up to 20 hours disrupt businesses, healthcare, and daily life, worsening economic hardships.

Gas Dependency and Infrastructure Damage – Failing gas plants, stalled solar projects, and grid attacks force reliance on costly alternatives.

Urgent Reforms Needed – Expanding renewables, repairing infrastructure, and improving governance are crucial for energy stability.

As the country grapples with one of its most severe power shortages in decades, the lights of progress have flickered and dimmed under the shadow of the military junta’s regime. With rolling blackouts, widespread infrastructure damage, and a fractured power grid, Myanmar’s citizens find themselves in the dark—literally and figuratively. Widespread socio-economic challenges, including higher household expenses, job losses, business closures, disruptions in education and healthcare, rising poverty, and long-term economic and environmental damage, are growing due to persistent power shortages. This article examines the causes and far-reaching consequences of Myanmar’s energy crisis, offering insights into the political, social, and economic toll it continues to exact on the nation.

The Risk of a Taiwan Invasion Is Rising Fast

Indicators an Invasion Is Unlikely in the Short Term

There are several elements of China’s behavior that support our assessment that a Taiwan invasion is unlikely before 2027. These include China’s almost certain continuing preference for “peaceful reunification”, indicators that it very likely continues to pursue a dual-track approach to Taiwan, economic challenges that very likely take priority given China’s other ambitions, shortfalls in PLA capability, and limited indication that China has begun mobilizing its populace to brace for wartime hardship. Additionally, public opinion polling results in Taiwan since 2020 likely suggest to China’s leadership that its coercive strategy is working to deter independence in the short term. In totality, we assess that — absent a specific catalyst that leads to war (such as if Taiwan declares formal independence or China assesses foreign military interference in Taiwan) — the CCP leadership is very likely, in the short term, to remain focused on improving domestic conditions and strengthening preparations for navigating tensions with the US, a potential invasion, or other conflict with a foreign power (for example, over the South China Sea).

Deterring Chinese aggression takes real-time intelligence

Scott D. Berrier

To advance peace through strength, the US military must be capable of denying the People’s Republic of China (PRC) any chance of taking Taiwan by force. This will take more than military modernization. The Trump administration needs to transform the Intelligence Community’s (IC) early-warning capabilities. It’s time to inject unprecedented speed and efficiency into this national mission with a clear goal: attaining real-time awareness across all domains—space, cyberspace, sea, land, and air. Creating this capability is crucial for gathering intelligence against hard targets, understanding emerging events, anticipating the future, and maintaining decision advantage. It’s a tall order, but it’s achievable with the president’s leadership and industry’s cutting-edge tech.

A conflict with the PRC over Taiwan is neither imminent nor inevitable. The PRC has a strategy for annexing Taiwan without an invasion—and it’s in use right now. This strategy has more to do with cyber power than firepower. But the Joint Force and the IC must be prepared for all potential futures—including the risk that the PRC might one day try to blockade or invade Taiwan, sparking a global security crisis.

In fighting AI chip trade war with China, there’s one big mistake U.S. can’t afford to make

Trevor Laurence Jockims

The U.S. government’s effort to curtail AI development in China through tightened controls of chip exports, including restrictions on the most advanced offerings from Nvidia, didn’t stop DeepSeek from creating its generative AI app efficiently, and at a level that rivals the best the U.S. has to offer from companies such as OpenAI.

While the details on just how DeepSeek did it remain incomplete, and its success doesn’t mean export controls don’t have a place in markets and national security policy, it does show that a focus on stopping the competition can’t keep pace with innovation. Now, the debate is underway over just how far the U.S. government should go in the future in blocking access to U.S. chip technology.

President Biden’s Department of Commerce issued its rules to “regulate the global diffusion” of AI chips and models in the administration’s waning days. The rules already have been heavily criticized by tech companies, including Nvidia, as well as policy experts. A Brookings analysis argues the the AI diffusion rules seek to create “a centrally planned global computing economy.”

“A decade from now, we will look back and recognize how quixotic it was for the U.S. government of the mid-2020s to attempt to limit the ability of people in 150 countries to perform fast multiplications,” wrote John Villasenor, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and professor of electrical engineering, law, public policy, and management at UCLA.

China’s Salt Typhoon hackers targeting Cisco devices used by telcos, universities

Jonathan Greig

China’s Salt Typhoon campaign to breach telecommunications companies has continued through the new year despite efforts by governments to stop the hackers, researchers said Thursday.

Recorded Future’s Insikt Group identified a campaign in December and January that involved attempts to compromise more than 1,000 Cisco network devices globally, many of which are associated with telecommunications providers. The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.

Among the targeted organizations was a South African telecom, as well as a U.S.-based affiliate of a UK telecommunications company.

“The group likely compiled a list of target devices based on their association with telecommunications providers' networks,” the researchers said.

Insikt Group observed seven total compromised Cisco network devices communicating with Salt Typhoon infrastructure — including those connected to telecommunications companies in the U.S. and South Africa, as well as others in Italy and Thailand.

Will Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Be Its Last?

Akbar Ganji

For years, Iran watchers have been spreading rumors about the demise of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. When the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts pushed back a major 2024 meeting from September to November, some theorized that Khamenei was ailing. When Khamenei spent time at that meeting detailing how to choose his successor, others asserted that his end was near. And whenever Khamenei disappears for too long, people speculate that the supreme leader has already died.

Putting The Past Into Practice: Lessons On The Innovation Pipeline

Peter Newell

The misidentification of friendly forces has always been a problem on the battlefield. In the Gulf War up to 17% of US casualties were the result of friendly fire. In the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom 6 Soldiers were killed and 25 others were wounded in action in a single friendly fire incident. In 2004, Ranger Pat Tillman lost his life in a friendly fire incident.

While battlefield tracking technology (Blue Force Tracking or BFT) improved in the years between the Gulf War and OIF, the technology was bulky, power hungry and unsuitable for dismounted operations. By 2010, the BFT network provided real-time locations of vehicles, planes and helicopters, but not for individual dismounts. In a rugged environment like Afghanistan, dismounted Soldiers were ubiquitous and increasingly at risk of being targeted accidentally by their brothers in arms.

This was not a new problem to the Army. In fact they had a requirement and program of record working on a solution called the Objective Control Unit (OCU). Unfortunately the Army had been working on the OCU for over 10 years and had yet to deploy a solution. Meanwhile the iPhone and its Android partner from Google had taken the world by storm.

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JD Vance attacks Europe over free speech and migration

Emily Atkinson

US Vice-President JD Vance has launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but "from within".

It had been expected that Vance would use his speech at the Munich Security Conference to address possible talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Instead, he spent the majority accusing European governments - including the UK's - of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.

The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was "not acceptable".

Vance repeated the Trump administration's line that Europe must "step up in a big way to provide for its own defence".

The Ukraine war was mentioned, with Vance saying he hoped a "reasonable settlement" could be reached, after US President Donald Trump's surprise announcement earlier this week that he and Russia's Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin peace talks.

But Vance's address otherwise focused on culture-war issues and key themes of Trump's campaign for the US presidency - a departure from the usual security and defence discussions at the annual conference.

Ukraine, NATO, and War Termination

Eric Ciaramella and Eric Green

Introduction

President Donald Trump has signaled that one of his priorities in office will be to end Russia’s war against Ukraine by bringing Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table. His administration faces two interrelated challenges. First, it needs to stop the war on terms that advance U.S. interests and protect Ukrainian sovereignty. Second, it needs to ensure that an eventual cessation of hostilities holds and that Russia is deterred from attacking Ukraine in the future.

Russia will have few incentives to negotiate in good faith if Ukraine is unable to reverse current battlefield trends. For well over a year, Russia’s advantages in manpower and air assets have allowed it to push Ukrainian forces back at an accelerating rate, albeit at great cost to Russia. As a result, Moscow is likely to continue to press its advantage—even while negotiating—until Ukraine is able to stabilize the front lines.

Even if Ukraine manages to blunt Russia’s ongoing offensive, Trump has inherited a Western strategy that has not defined an end state or the methods to achieve it. Training and equipping Ukraine and raising the costs on Russia through sanctions and export controls are necessary measures, but not sufficient to achieve peace. For a cease-fire or armistice to endure, two elements are critical. Ukraine needs to possess the capabilities to prevent Russia from achieving its objectives on the battlefield. That goal will require an expansion of Ukraine’s defense industrial base, predictable supplies of weapons and training from foreign partners, and a sustainable model to finance and staff the armed forces. Russia also needs to understand that the consequences of a repeat invasion would be catastrophic—far beyond the costs it has incurred since 2022. As such, true war termination will require the United States and Europe to provide Ukraine with a credible postwar security guarantee.

The United States and its allies must be ready to deter a two-front war and nuclear attacks in East Asia

Markus Garlauskas

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

The geography of East Asia is a key potential variable increasing both the probability and impact of a US conflict with the PRC or North Korea expanding to simultaneous conflicts with both—particularly given the increasing ranges of modern sensors and weapons systems.

THE DIAGNOSIS

The risk of conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or North Korea—especially the potential for simultaneous escalation involving both—poses a serious threat to the United States and its interests. This threat is heightened by the possibility of either adversary resorting to limited nuclear attacks.

A two-front war in Asia could unfold even without close cooperation between Beijing and Pyongyang. Dysfunctional coordination or misunderstandings could just as easily lead to conflict. Furthermore, with both China and North Korea developing greater incentives and capabilities for limited nuclear attacks, the risk of a nuclear war in East Asia is rising.

Deep-seated organizational and cognitive biases have been obstructing the ability of the United States and its allies to anticipate simultaneous conflicts with China and North Korea. Such biases also impede their preparations to manage such escalation and to counter limited nuclear attacks.

US politicians furious at UK demand for encrypted Apple data

Graham Fraser

Two US lawmakers have strongly condemned what they call the UK's "dangerous" and "shortsighted" request to be able to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide in its cloud service.

Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Andy Biggs have written to national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard saying the demand threatens the privacy and security of the US.

They urge her to give the UK an ultimatum: "Back down from this dangerous attack on US cybersecurity, or face serious consequences."

The BBC has contacted the UK government for comment.

"While the UK has been a trusted ally, the US government must not permit what is effectively a foreign cyberattack waged through political means", the US politicians wrote.

If the UK does not back down Ms Gabbard should "reevaluate US-UK cybersecurity arrangements and programs as well as US intelligence sharing", they suggest.