Indian Strategic Studies: 01/13/25

13 January 2025

Afghanistan Faces A Complex Set Of Challenges In 2025: Here’s What You Need To Know – Analysis

James Durso

The year just ended was a tumultuous one for Afghanistan, marked by many significant events that will continue to challenge the country in 2025.

ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) carried out at least 19 terrorist attacks, targeting Hazara and Shia civilians, Sufi adherents, foreign nationals and Taliban officials. One notable incident was the assassination of Khalil Rahman Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader and brother of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the Haqqani Network.

The United Nations (U.N.) reported rising insecurity in 2024, and recorded 8,650 security incidents between November 2023 and November 2024. The U.N. noted that 156 civilians were killed and 426 others injured, many of these incidents attributed to ISIS-K.

Hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalated, with Pakistan conducting airstrikes on Afghan territory in response to attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. The Afghan Taliban rounded out the year by attacking“several points” in Pakistan in retaliation for the strikes.

Why US sanctions against Pakistan’s ballistic missile program might backfire

Syed Ali Zia Jaffery

In December, the United States sanctioned four Pakistani entities involved in Pakistan’s ballistic missile program. According to the US State Department, this action was taken due to “the continuing proliferation threat of Pakistan’s long-range missile development.” While this is not the first round of sanctions on Pakistan’s ballistic missiles under the Biden administration, it is certainly more significant because it directly targets the National Defense Complex—Pakistan’s missile production facility sometimes called the National Development Complex.

Pakistan took strong exceptions to this new installment of US sanctions. Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs dubbed the decision “unfortunate and biased,” adding that it aims to “accentuate military asymmetries” affecting strategic stability in the region.

This war of words escalated after US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said that Pakistan’s development of long-range ballistic missiles raised “real questions” about its aims: “Pakistan has developed increasingly sophisticated missile technology, from long-range ballistic missile systems to equipment that would enable the testing of significantly larger rocket motors.” According to Finer, if such trends were to continue, “Pakistan will have the capability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.” Through these words, Finer became the first US official to label Pakistan’s ballistic missiles as potentially a direct threat to the United States. Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quick to give an official response, contending that such claims are “devoid of rationality.” The ministry added that “Pakistan’s strategic capabilities are meant to defend its sovereignty and preserve peace and stability in South Asia.”

The Undersea Cable War Hits Taiwan

Nick Thompson

Undersea cables have been dominating the headlines in recent months – specifically, repeated episodes in which damage has been done to this unseen yet critical element of global infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of miles of cables run along the sea floor, key pieces in networks of global communications and the world’s financial system, and in the Baltic Sea and most recently in the waters off Taiwan, undersea cables have been cut. It isn’t always clear whether the damage is accidental or intentional, but Chinese and Russian vessels have been accused in the latest incidents of damaging cables in apparent acts of sabotage.

The Cipher Brief turned to Nick Thompson, a former CIA paramilitary officer and expert on the subject, to assess the threat to undersea cables and what can be done to protect them. Thompson warned that as bad actors around the world increasingly turn to subterfuge and gray zone activity, the risks to undersea infrastructure will be heightened. “I think it’s widening from what we’ve seen traditionally, [with] Russia and China,” he said. “It’s probably going to take place in other areas around the globe.”

Thompson spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.

US considering ban on Chinese drones as international tensions grow

Justin Klawans

U.S. officials are considering ramping up defenses against one of China's most ubiquitous technologies: drones. The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced that it is exploring a rule that could restrict Chinese drones in the United States — or ban them entirely.

This new rule would "secure and safeguard the information and communication technology and services (ICTS) supply chain" for drones in the U.S., the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said in a press release. The bureau believes that foreign involvement in the drone supply chain "may offer our adversaries the ability to remotely access and manipulate these devices, exposing sensitive U.S. data."

The potential new rule comes at the behest of the Biden administration. However, with President Joe Biden having less than a month left in office, the decision on the Chinese drones will ultimately be made by President-elect Donald Trump.

How China Is Advancing in AI Despite U.S. Chip Restrictions

Harry Booth

In 2017, Beijing unveiled an ambitious roadmap to dominate artificial intelligence development, aiming to secure global leadership by 2030. By 2020, the plan called for “iconic advances” in AI to demonstrate its progress. Then in late 2022, OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT took the world by surprise—and caught China flat-footed.

At the time, leading Chinese technology companies were still reeling from an 18-month government crackdown that shaved around $1 trillion off China's tech sector. It was almost a year before a handful of Chinese AI chatbots received government approval for public release. Some questioned whether China’s stance on censorship might hobble the country’s AI ambitions. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s export controls, unveiled just a month before ChatGPT’s debut, aimed to cut China off from the advanced semiconductors essential for training large-scale AI models. Without cutting-edge chips, Beijing’s goal of AI supremacy by 2030 appeared increasingly out of reach.

But fast forward to today, and a flurry of impressive Chinese releases suggests the U.S.’s AI lead has shrunk. In November, Alibaba and Chinese AI developer DeepSeek released reasoning models that, by some measures, rival OpenAI’s o1-preview. The same month, Chinese videogame juggernaut Tencent unveiled Hunyuan-Large, an open-source model that the company’s testing found outperformed top open-source models developed in the U.S. across several benchmarks. Then, in the final days of 2024, DeepSeek released DeepSeek-v3, which now ranks highest among open-source AI on a popular online leaderboard and holds its own against top performing closed systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The Syrian Kurds Are In Erdogan’s Crosshairs

Robert Ellis

The siege of Kobani from September 2014 until January 2015 and its heroic defense by Kurdish forces in northern Syria was the turning point in the war against the Islamic State. Now, with the fall of the Assad regime, Kobani will once again play a key role in preventing a resurgence of the infamous terrorist group.

At that time, it was a combination of coalition air strikes and U.S. air drops of weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies, together with reinforcements of Kurdish peshmerga from Iraq, that delivered the victory. This also led to the U.S. decision to arm and train Syrian opposition forces, which resulted in the formation of the Kurdish-led SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) and paved the way for the defeat of ISIS at Raqqa in October 2017.

At the height of the battle, French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy criticized Turkey for choosing the Islamic State over the Kurds and Turkish president Erdogan, “whose judgment has been clouded by his obsessional fear of seeing an embryonic Kurdish state created just outside his border.”

Lebanon Elects New President in Sign of Hezbollah’s Waning Influence

Stephen Kalin & Adam Chamseddine

Lebanon’s Parliament elected a U.S.-trained general as president, ending a two-year vacancy in a sign of Hezbollah’s waning influence following a bruising war with Israel and the weakening of the group’s Iranian patron.

After obstructing the election of any other candidate by withdrawing from a dozen previous sessions and thus depriving Parliament of quorum, Hezbollah and its allies voted in favor of Gen. Joseph Aoun as the country’s next president on Thursday, according to a Hezbollah lawmaker. Ninety-nine out of 128 members of Parliament voted for Aoun in the second round of voting, according to the Parliament speaker. In the first round, Hezbollah didn’t vote for Aoun, which it said was a message that its consent was still needed.

Aoun, who has headed the Lebanese military since 2017, takes power as the country looks to pick up the pieces from Israel’s intensive bombardment and invasion of parts of southern Lebanon that it launched in response to Hezbollah’s attacks.

“I pledge to execute my role as the head of the armed forces to insist on the right of the state to have a monopoly over weapons,” Aoun told Parliament upon being elected.

End of Year Review: the Middle East

Lawrence Freedman

In my self-assessment for 2024 on the Russo-Ukraine war I noted that this conflict had a settled structure which meant that far less had changed during 2024 than one might have expected. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, 2025 will start with a burst of diplomatic activity, yet the conflict’s structure sets the limits on future deals as it does on military breakthroughs.

By contrast, the situation in the Middle East has been much more dynamic, so it was a challenge to keep up with events never mind attempting to anticipate them in advance. The most radical shift was the weakening of the Iranian ‘axis of resistance’, culminating in the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, to the point that questions can now be raised about the future of the regime in Teheran. Given Hamas’s dependence on Iran’s support, and the battering it took from Israel, it also finished the year much weakened, with all its senior leadership having to be replaced, although it still held onto Israeli hostages and had not relinquished control of Gaza.

In my own analyses of the situation during 2024 I focused at first largely on the violence in Gaza while seeking to put that in a wider Middle Eastern context, noting the importance of Saudi Arabia as well as Iran. But Turkey did not get a mention, and while it now seems obvious that a combination of Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine and the steady degradation of Hizballah in Lebanon would affect Assad’s position in Syria, I didn’t pick up on that. Even if I had I don’t think I would have predicted just how rapid his fall would be, although this is an important reminder that regimes that appear to be stable on the surface can turn out to be very brittle. By way of mitigation, Assad himself had clearly not noticed the vulnerability of his regime.

The Iran Opportunity

Richard Haass

It is hard to think of a country that has lost as much influence in as short a time as has Iran. Until recently, it was arguably the most important regional actor in the Middle East, more influential than Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey. Yet in a matter of months, the edifice of Iranian influence has come crashing down. Iran is weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades, likely since its decadelong war with Iraq or even since the 1979 revolution.

This weakness has reopened the debate about how the United States and its partners should approach

Trump Administration’s Counterterrorism Policy Should Begin at Golan Heights

Christopher Costa

We’ve seen all this before, the U.S. mission in Syria is not mission complete – it was not in 2018 – and it’s not done today. Syria remains an unfinished mosaic.

But a small U.S. presence in northeast Syria remains a strategic hedge against a resurgent ISIS and the center of gravity for maintaining much-needed pressure on a temporarily weakened Iran.

The Golan Heights is an apt metaphor for the transformation of the terrorism threat over the course of the last 8 years. U.S. policymakers will benefit from reconsidering Syria from atop the Golan plateau in the southwest corner of Syria to the plains below, as far as the eyes can see. From those heights looking downward – and considering Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Lebanon, and against Iran throughout the broader region – Syria should remain a U.S. counterterrorism priority against jihadists and a field of rival competition among powers, great and emerging.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – a former Al Qaeda affiliate – Turkey, ISIS, competing Islamists, Syrian opposition groups, and Kurds, are all scrambling for greater influence in Syria. Until Assad fled Damascus, Russia sought greater influence there, while Iran dreamed of regional hegemony that now seems to be slipping away quicker than the mullahs in Tehran can react.

Ukraine Military Situation: Russia Advancing Particularly In Kurakhove And Toretsk- Analysis

Can Kasapoğlu

1. Assad’s Fall Disrupts Russian Submarine Deployments in the Mediterranean

Bashar al-Assad’s fall from power in Syria marks another setback for Russia’s overseas military posture. After the regime’s collapse, the Russian Navy’s last Improved Kilo–class submarine in the Mediterranean Sea departed the Soviet-remnant Tartous naval base. On January 2, the Portuguese Navy spotted the Novorossiysk sailing through Gibraltar en route to the Baltics.

Since 2013 the Russian Black Sea Fleet has rotated its Improved Kilos to the Tartous base. In 2015 Russian submarines launched Kalibr naval cruise missiles at targets in Syria, a milestone for Moscow’s nonnuclear long-range strike prowess. And in 2017 Jens Stoltenberg, then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s secretary general, warned that Russian submarine activity in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean was at its highest level since the Cold War.

The Black Sea Fleet has six Improved Kilo–class submarines, four of which remain in the Black Sea. The Ukrainian military has repeatedly struck and disabled one, the Rostov-on-Don, with Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Along with the Novorossiysk, the Krasnodar is forward deployed to the Baltic Sea.

Urgent Defense Recommendations for the Trump Administration

Brent Ramsey

President-elect Trump has made recent statements in favor of the need for a much stronger Navy. Here are recommendations for things he must consider.

Provide full support to the Commission on the Future of the Navy. It is urgent to establish a current baseline requirement for the Navy to know what the mission is, what deficiencies we have, and what needs to be done to field the Navy needed to defend the nation. The Commission is to “undertake a comprehensive study of the structure of the Navy and policy assumptions related to the size and force mixture of the Navy, in order— (I) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of ships; and (II) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of naval aviation.” The Navy of 2025 is significantly smaller than it has been since the beginning of WWII at approximately 296 combat force ships. In contrast, at the end of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan the Navy had 592 combat force ships. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has massively increased the size of its People’s Liberation Army Navy to the extent that it now is larger than our Navy.

Due to worldwide commitments and shortfalls due to maintenance and industrial capacity, the US is now able to keep only 50-70 ships in the 7th Fleet of INDOPACOM versus the PRC’s 400 ships. The PRC has made clear its intent to dominate the INDO Pacific including all its neighbors including Taiwan and treaty allies like Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. It is expected that the Commission will strongly recommend a much larger Navy. The latest Congressional Research Service Report on the growth of the PLAN can be found at the link. The Trump Administration quickly must propose, and the Congress must fund a large increase in shipbuilding funds for combatants to build the ships the nation urgently needs.

How the US sanctioned itself in Ukraine

DAVID P. GOLDMAN

Surging US Treasury yields are the main driver of global markets, depressing stock prices, pushing up the US dollar exchange rate, and threatening homebuilding and other rate-dependent economic activity in the United States. As rates rise, moreover, the US Treasury deficit – already above 6% of GDP – will increase. Interest payments on the federal debt rose to $1 trillion from $400 billion in 2021, adding to the blowout federal borrowing requirement of $1.8 trillion.

Foreign central banks meanwhile have cut their holdings of US government debt, adding to upward pressure on yields – by a painful 0.8 percentage points, according to my calculation. The seizure of Russian foreign exchange reserves in 2022 led central banks to shift out of dollar assets. The reserve seizure probably did more damage to the US economy than to Russia’s.

The Federal Reserve caused most of the rate surge by raising the rate at which it charges banks for overnight money, to be sure. But a significant increment in the so-called real yield of Treasury bonds – in this case, the interest rate on inflation-indexed Treasuries (TIPS) – is due to reduced purchases of US debt by foreign central banks. Roughly 80 basis points (8/10ths of a percentage point) are explained by reduced foreign central bank holdings of US government debt.

The walls have eyes: How Trump plans to supercharge border security with tech

Petra Molnar

In December 2024, president-elect Donald J. Trump was named Time’s Person of the Year. Immigration ran like a current through his interview for the magazine, and Trump reiterated his goals again: “Whatever it takes to get them out. I don't care. Honestly, whatever it takes to get them out... I won it in 2016 on the border, and I fixed the border, and it was really fixed, and they came in and they just dislodged everything that I did… I consider it an invasion of our country.”

Borders are both real and artificial. They are what historian Sheila McManus calls an “accumulation of terrible ideas,” created through colonialism, imperial fantasies, apartheid, and the daily practice of exclusion. Today, there are millions of people on the move because of conflict, instability, and climate change, as well as for economic reasons. But politicians and the media often talk about the people crossing borders—whether by force or by choice—in apocalyptic terms, as a “flood” or “wave” or, according to president-elect Trump, “rapists” or “vermin,” terms that are underscored by xenophobia and racism.

In recent years a technological frontier has emerged to control migration through tightening of borders and inland surveillance. Some of the control methods are old. Passports and physical border walls have always been used to separate and exclude people, but new technologies are making their way into immigration, deportation, and refugee processing, at a faster rate than ever before. Decisions such as whether to grant a visa or deport or detain someone, which would otherwise be made by administrative tribunals, immigration officers, or border agents, are now made by machines through algorithms. Enforcement agencies like Europe’s Frontex, for example, use predictive analytics, which call on large datasets to forecast human behavior, in this case to project where people may be crossing borders.

How to Enable an Effective Future Ukrainian Deterrent

Fabian Hoffmann

How should Ukraine shape its future deterrence strategy to prevent a follow-on war with Russia? Some may argue that it is premature to raise this question while the Russian invasion, which began in February 2022, continues with no end in sight.

While focusing on the current war is crucial, there are two reasons why thinking ahead is necessary. First, Ukraine cannot afford to focus solely on the present. Little would be gained by avoiding defeat now if it remains unprepared for a future confrontation with Russia.

Second, several analysts have already offered their views on what Ukraine needs to secure lasting peace. Not all these analyses are conceptually or empirically sound, making it important to challenge them where necessary.

A case in point is a recent article by Samuel Charap in Foreign Affairs, outlining a roadmap for a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine. This article addresses two interconnected arguments from Charap’s piece that are conceptually and empirically flawed: (1) that Ukraine should prioritize defensive over offensive capabilities to establish a “stable” deterrence relationship with Russia, and (2) that a stable deterrence relationship, one that minimizes escalation risks, is necessarily the best approach.

Could the U.S. Navy Fleet of the Mid-21st Century Include Large Uncrewed Vehicles?

Scott Savitz & Amanda Perez

The maturation of uncrewed-vehicle technologies across multiple domains creates an opportunity to potentially revise the U.S. Navy's force structure in the coming decades. The goal would be to use these technologies to increase the fleet’s capabilities, capacity, survivability, and resilience in the face of near-peer competitors employing large numbers of precision weapons. In this paper, the authors briefly analyze ways in which the Navy's fleet could gradually be reshaped through the incorporation of uncrewed vehicles, thereby enhancing its ability to achieve its operational and strategic goals at acceptable risks and costs.

This paper was intended to provide some ideas for further analysis as part of much larger studies. The authors begin by considering what missions the Navy may need to achieve in the middle of the 21st century and beyond. Next, they analyze how the capabilities of uncrewed vehicles might help to gradually reshape the fleet structure to address those threats, taking into account the various advantages and disadvantages associated with uncrewed vehicles. Finally, the authors observe lessons from past naval technological transitions, notably the need for gradualism, to help inform potential adjustments as the Navy's force structure incorporates the capabilities of uncrewed vehicles.

Elon Musk’s Quest for Domination Has Gone Global

Vittoria Elliott

During the US elections, centibillionaire and X owner Elon Musk became a central figure in right-wing and Republican politics, helping to propel former president Donald Trump back into the White House. But now it seems like he’s just getting started. In the months since Trump’s victory, Musk has begun to wade into politics in Europe, starting firestorms in the UK and announcing that he’ll be hosting an X Spaces discussion with Alice Weidel, the head of the German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), ahead of Germany’s elections in February.

“We should understand Musk as a sort of international far-right leader,” says João Vieira Magalhaes, assistant professor of media, politics, and democracy at the University of Groningen. “He is an articulator of a truly international far-right movement, which of course, already exists, but in a way that's way more fragmented.”

Through X, and his own larger-than-life celebrity presence, Musk is bringing together and boosting the far right across the globe.

During the US elections, Musk emerged as one of Trump’s most important allies. Not only did he help support and fund Trump’s campaign via the America PAC and appear on the campaign trail with the former president, he also used his ownership of X to elevate the campaign’s talking points. After gutting Twitter’s trust and safety teams and allowing previously banned figures back on the platform, research indicated that engagement on X with posts from Musk and other conservative voices were boosted after after Musk publicly endorsed Trump to favor conservative voices and deprioritize critics—what Magalhaes calls “illiberal content moderation.” “He is signaling to whoever wants to listen that this is the space for this kind of political actor,” he says.

Why Gaza Is Israel’s Forever War - Analysis

David E. Rosenberg

Not many Israelis are looking forward to another year of war in Gaza. The army brass and the majority of Israelis support a deal to free the 100 or so hostages still held by Hamas in exchange for ending the conflict. But the decision-makers oppose such an agreement, and that includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his acolytes, and—more importantly—leaders of the messianic far right. This group represents a small minority of voters but one that quite literally calls the shots in today’s Israel. If they have their way, which is probable, the war will never really end. Rather, it will morph into a violent occupation, accompanied by Jewish settlement and eventually annexation.

For months, the fighting in Gaza has been eclipsed by more dramatic events on Israel’s other fronts—the operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon that forced the militant group to accept a cease-fire, the tit-for-tat attacks with Iran, and the sudden collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Nevertheless, the war in Gaza is grinding on.

Palestinian military and civilian deaths have increased by another 3,900 over the past three months, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The brunt of the fighting since October 2023 has occurred in the north and especially in the Jabalia refugee camp, which has been frightfully destructive—even according to the high bar set by Israeli operations in Gaza. The north’s prewar population of around 1.5 million has been reduced to one-fifth of that, mainly through forced evacuation. Those who remain are being driven out by a scorched-earth policy that approximates the harsh measures contained in the so-called “generals’ plan” devised by reservist officers, which aim to clear north Gaza of its inhabitants and declare it a military exclusion zone.

Trudeau’s Long Premiership Was Hollow at the Core - Analysis

Justin Ling

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, dean of the G-7, has outlived a lot.

His tenure has coincided with the terms of two French presidents; four U.S. administrations; and a list of prime ministers—four in Japan, five in Italy, and a whopping six in the United Kingdom.

At his peak, Trudeau was hailed as the poster boy for a new global liberalism: hip, cosmopolitan, progressive, and a man fit for our current challenges. At his lowest, he has been skewered as patient zero of neoliberalism, a hollow and elitist system of politics that was long on rhetoric and light on deliverables.

Trudeau now sets off on his long goodbye. He announced on Jan. 6 that he would resign as the leader of his Liberal Party and, by extension, as prime minister—but not before his party picks a replacement. To buy his party some time, Trudeau has shut down Parliament, setting its return for late March.

Canada is set to host the G-7 summit in June, and it is far from clear who will be leading the country then. Will it be someone carrying the baton for Trudeau’s liberalism? Will it be Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who has fashioned his reactionary populist politics to reject everything that Trudeau represents?

The Palisades Were Waiting to Burn

Zoë Schlanger

As Santa Ana winds whipped sheets of embers over the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California last night, the palm trees along the beach in the Pacific Palisades ignited like torches scaled for gods. The high school was burning. Soon, the grounds around the Getty Villa were too. The climate scientist Daniel Swain went live on his YouTube channel, warning that this fire would get worse before it got better. The winds, already screaming, would speed up. Tens of thousands of people were fleeing as he spoke. Sunset Boulevard was backed up; ash rained down on drivers as they exited their cars to escape on foot. A bulldozer parted the sea of abandoned cars to let emergency vehicles pass.

The hills were ready to burn. It’s January, well past the time of year when fire season in Southern California is supposed to end. But in this part of the semi-arid chaparral called Los Angeles, fire season can now be any time.

Drought had begun to bear down by the time the fires started. A wetter season is supposed to begin around October, but no meaningful amount of rain has fallen since May. Then came a record-breaking hot summer. The land was now drier than in almost any year since recordkeeping began. Grasses and sagebrush that had previously greened in spring rains dried to a crisp and stayed that way, a perfect buffet of fuel for a blaze to feast on. As The Atlantic wrote last summer, California’s fire luck of the past two years had run out. “You’d have to go to the late 1800s to see this dry of a start to the rainy season,” Glen MacDonald, a geography professor at UCLA, told me.

Trump’s Greenland and Panama Canal Threats Are a Throwback to an Old, Misguided Foreign Policy

Stewart Patrick

At a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump once again vowed to push U.S. foreign policy back to the future. Trump reiterated his desire to reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, by military means if necessary; make Canada the fifty-first U.S. state; and annex Greenland for “national security purposes.” Such approaches would be startling departures from the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism—but with deep roots in U.S. foreign policy.

Trump’s determination to treat the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence signals a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the strategy first introduced by President James Monroe in 1823 that shaped U.S. foreign policy decisively through the early twentieth century and subsequently during the Cold War. Trump’s remarks suggest that unchallenged hemispheric dominance will be at the core of his “America First” approach for the same two motives driving the Monroe Doctrine: to prevent outside powers from meddling and mitigate perceived chaos in the region. Resurrecting this tradition, however, would be both risky and counterproductive to U.S. foreign policy and the global order.

Both Shield and Sword

Two hundred years ago, as rebellions against Spanish colonial rule rocked Latin America, U.S. leaders worried that other European powers might fill the vacuum. To preempt this outcome, Monroe conjured an “American system” in which European powers were forbidden to meddle. He declared that the Western hemisphere would be off limits and put the imperial powers on notice: “We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and security.”

L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5°C of Warming

Jeffrey Kluger

There are many ways of framing the scale of the dislocation in Los Angeles this week. As the ferocious ring of five wildfires roared across the region in a multi-day blaze that began Jan. 7., some 180,000 residents were forced to evacuate their homes—the equivalent of pitching the entire population of Little Rock, Ark., out into the streets or filling Los Angeles’s massive So-Fi stadium to more than double its capacity and not letting anyone go home again.

The Southern California blaze was a special kind of hell. At least 10 people lost their lives and officials expect more deaths to come to light before the multiple infernos are tamed. Thousands of homes and a sprawl of entire neighborhoods were transformed into outdoor charnel houses. Nursing home residents in Altadena, Calif., were evacuated into the night—riding in wheelchairs and pushing walkers, many in their night clothes, as a stinging snow of orange embers descended around them. Fire fighters watched helplessly as houses burned, their hoses at the ready but the hydrants to which they were connected producing no water or merely a low-pressure trickle.

“Wildfires do not care about jurisdictional boundaries,” said Kathryn Barger, the chair of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, at a Jan. 9 news conference. Meanwhile, the sextet of localized blazes—the Palisades fire, the Eaton fire, the Hurst fire, the Sunset fire, the Lidia fire, and the Kenneth fire—blurred in the public mind and in the sprawl of destruction into one great undifferentiated inferno.

The Sullivan-Waltz channel

ROBBIE GRAMER

Shortly before the Biden administration clinched a 60-day ceasefire deal in Lebanon in late November, national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN called Rep. MIKE WALTZ (R-Fla.) to update him on the plans — and give the incoming Trump administration time to process and react to the developments before they were made public.

It was the start of a formidable working relationship between JOE BIDEN’s national security adviser and DONALD TRUMP’s incoming one — one of the most significant channels of communication between the two camps during the fast-moving transition period.

There’s no love lost between their two bosses, but Sullivan and Waltz have developed a cordial working relationship — and kept their conversations hermetically sealed off from politics — according to three administration officials and two Trump transition officials. All officials were granted anonymity to discuss internal transition matters.

That’s no small feat given the hyper-partisan cloud of acrimony descending on Washington as Trump prepares to take office.

The two check in regularly and have done multiple in-person deep dives on national security issues for an hour or more with one another, according to one administration official and one Trump transition official.

New POTUS, New Policies: A Forecast of Five Futures for the Russia-Ukraine War - Opinion

Chase Metcalf & Michael Posey

Introduction

The American people recently re-elected former President Donald J. Trump. President-elect Trump’s return to the Oval Office will likely change the future of the Russia-Ukraine War. In June 2024, President-elect Trump said, “I would tell Zelensky no more — you got to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot.” Using President-elect Trump’s quote alongside an “Ends-Ways-Means” formulation for strategy, we forecasted five future scenarios we believe could come to fruition during the next few years. We applied Art Lykke’s strategy model, which seeks to employ a risk-informed balance of ends (objectives), ways (concepts), and means (resources) that further a nation’s interests. In crafting our forecasts, we take the perspective of Ukraine for the End-Ways-Means strategy formulation.

Also inherent in the President-elect’s quote is the notion that Kyiv and Moscow have agency in the outcome but not the decision by the United States. President Zelensky’s response to the future POTUS plan was, “I believe that President Trump really wants a quick decision” to end the conflict, Zelensky remarked, but he added, “It doesn’t mean that it will happen this way.” He stressed that a peace process must be just and not risk leaving Ukraine vulnerable. Knowing that other actors have agency, we argue that the United States can influence the outcome but not impose a solution. Based on President Zelensky’s “Victory Plan,” we will assume Ukraine’s current ends remain the liberation of all occupied Ukrainian territory and the ability to ensure Ukraine’s future security.

Moral Responsibility In The Age Of Machine Warfare – OpEd

Rafael Hernandez de Santiago

In the artificial glow of Techville’s neon lights, the city gleams like a polished machine — a utopia of innovation, efficiency and wealth. Yet beneath its metallic sheen, the cracks of its ideals grow wider, exposing the fragile, chaotic reality of ethics in modern warfare.

Techville, a self-proclaimed beacon of progress, finds itself grappling with questions it can no longer ignore: What happens when the tools of tomorrow clash with the morality of humanity? How does one create coexistence in a world teetering on the brink of its own destruction?

The irony is inescapable. A city built on the promise of a brighter future now finds itself manufacturing instruments of destruction.

Samir’s story, though fictional, echoes across the globe — a child in the crosshairs of conflict, caught between the ambition of advanced weaponry and the simplicity of a wooden toy carved by his father. His life is a stark reminder that the cost of progress is often paid in innocence.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)