Indian Strategic Studies: 04/20/25

20 April 2025

Territorial Disputes no Longer Threaten Peace and Stability in Central Asia

Nurbek Bekmurzaev

On March 31, three Central Asian states entered a new era of regional cooperation by resolving their last remaining territorial dispute. The presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan met in the Tajik city of Khujand and signed the Agreement on the Junction Point of the State Borders of the Three Countries (President of Tajikistan, March 31). This was complemented by the Khujand Declaration of Eternal Friendship and the opening of a stele symbolizing friendship at the junction point of the three states’ borders (Asia-plus, April 1). This junction point lies at the intersection of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province, Uzbekistan’s Fergana Province, and Tajikistan’s Sughd Province, which are all part of the Fergana Valley, the most densely populated and violence-prone area of the region with scarce resources.

For decades, the Fergana Valley was forecasted to burst into an interstate conflict, largely due to long-standing territorial disputes that brought constant tension into the relations of Central Asian countries (see EDM, October 3, 2012, August 1, 2014, May 19, 2021, December 12, 2022). These gloomy projections can now be put to rest with the extinguishing of a potential interstate border conflict. The impact of this agreement will be felt beyond border communities and positively affect political, economic, and social development in the region.

Central Asia’s territorial disputes stem from the Soviet Union’s border delimitation practices (see EDM, March 12). The Soviet authorities undertook delimitation efforts in the region with the premise of living in one supra-state and without considering the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. The delimitation process was carried out with little consideration of the geographic and ethnic peculiarities, especially in the Fergana Valley. In this part of Central Asia, nomadic and sedentary populations of Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz peoples lived in close settlements and shared water and land resources.

Taiwan’s Whole-of-Society Defence Resilience Model and Beijing’s Grey Zone Aggression - Analysis

Professor Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann

Beijing considers Taiwan as a breakaway province and President Xi Jinping has made it the expressed national aim of reunification—peaceful or by military means. Stopping short of military force, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and its services have engaged in acts of sea cable cuttings; continuing PLA incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) by PLA aircraft; PLA Navy (PLAN) exercises using a combination of conventional and unconventional naval assets (such as maritime militia) as a show of force; to harass Taiwanese civilian shipping; and to highlight Beijing’s ability to control the water ways around Taiwan. Showcasing this ability is crucial for Beijing to signal that it can impose a full air and maritime quarantine of Taiwan and also can switch to full blockade if necessary.

Beijing’s recent two day military exercises around Taiwan, called Strait Thunder – 2025A, was intended as a show of force of Land, Air, and Sea capabilities and manoeuvres to demonstrate the PLA’s overall military strength and capabilities. The idea is to illustrate an overwhelming force that can annihilate the Taiwanese peoples’ will to resist an invasion by the PLA.

Trump 2.0’s focus on China and the region

The US under Donald Trump 2.0 is clearly strategically pivoting towards the region while reducing its focus on Eastern Europe, even withdrawing substantial numbers of troops. Trump’s National Defence Strategy may end the strategic ambiguity over Taiwan by including an explicit commitment towards maintaining the status quo of an independent and sovereign Taiwan. The denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan has become the Department of Defense’s “sole pacing scenario,” and is tied to the precondition of a strengthening of Taiwan’s resolve to defend itself as well as increase defence spending.

China Outlines What It Wants From The Trump Administration Before Negotiating Tariffs

Demian Bio

China has outlined the steps it wants from the Trump administration before engaging in tariff negotiations, including more respect from cabinet members, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Quoting a person familiar with Beijing, the outlet added that conditions also include a more consistent position from the administration and the willingness to address some of its concerns, including sanctions and Taiwan.

China also wants to see the appointment of a point person who has the support of President Donald Trump and can work on a deal that can later be signed by him and Xi Jinping.

So far no side has taken concrete steps toward formal negotiations, with both saying they are open for talks. Trump appears to prefer talking to Xi directly, while Beijing wants lower-level negotiations that lead to a meeting with a concrete outcome.

Bloomberg noted that while Beijing did not make specific references related to the respect it expects from the Trump administration, officials were particularly incensed by comments made by Vice President JD Vance, who earlier this month wondered "what has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America?"

Trump's Trade War Threatens To Derail U.S.-China Relations | Opinion

Daniel R. DePetris

When will President Donald Trump's trade war with China end? Will it end? And if it does, who's to say another American president at some time in the future won't initiate a new one? Policymakers, traders, business analysts, and prognosticators the world over are trying to answer all of these questions, a remarkably difficult task given the value Trump places on unpredictability. And, true to form, Trump's salvo of tariffs over the last several weeks—instituting a chaotic reciprocal tariff regime, only to walk it back for 90 days while increasing restrictions on Chinese exports—is the epitome of unpredictability.

Washington and Beijing are now staring at each other waiting for the other to blink. Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods are now at a whopping 145 percent. Despite carve-outs on certain high-tech products like iPhones as well as Trump's own confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping will eventually pick up the phone and make a call to deescalate the situation, Xi isn't in a talking mood right now. Rather than capitulate or beg for a negotiation, China is retaliating like it did in the past. U.S. goods into China are now slapped with a 125 percent levy; big U.S. companies are being put on Beijing's "entity list," limiting their access to certain Chinese products; and the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine is waging a war of words against the United States. On April 13, China suspended exports of some rare earth minerals, and two days later it paused the purchase of Boeing passenger aircraft.

How America Can Stay Ahead of China in the AI Race

Nikita Lalwani

In October 2022, the United States imposed sweeping restrictions on the export of advanced chips and chip-making equipment. The move, which followed steps taken in the first Trump administration to curtail China’s access to cutting-edge semiconductors, jump-started a comprehensive effort to cut China off from the world’s most powerful computer processors—the inputs required to develop and run sophisticated artificial intelligence systems that could be used to power autonomous weapons, conduct mass cyberattacks, and augment intelligence collection.

EU faces a choice deeper than America vs China

Peter Franklin

In the wake of Donald Trump’s hot-and-cold trade war, Europe has attempted to get closer to China. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez this week flew out to meet Xi Jinping in Beijing, while a visit by European Union leaders is on the cards for July. Last year the Europeans were still in defensive mode, slapping their own tariffs on Chinese vehicle imports — but now these could be negotiated away.

With transatlantic relations strained to breaking point, drawing closer to America’s greatest rival might therefore seem in order. While the move is understandable, the question remains as to whether it is smart. Oren Cass argued for the Financial Times yesterday that the new American worldview is not motivated by delusions of grandeur — in fact, quite the opposite. The unipolar world order was always a temporary phenomenon, and now it’s over. The US will have its sphere of influence, but other great powers — especially China — will have theirs, too. That’s why the European attempt to flirt with Xi to make Trump jealous won’t work. The new America isn’t looking for flattery: it’s asking its allies to pick a side.

That’s not a real choice, of course. Besides political or military considerations, American companies have roughly $4 trillion invested in Europe, while the figure for European organisations in the US is $3.4 trillion. These sums dwarf the continent’s limited stakes in China; so when America says that it wants a new relationship based on balanced trade, higher defence spending and a common front against Chinese influence, Europe needs to listen.

Taiwan: the sponge that soaks up Chinese power

Nathan Attrill

Taiwan has an inadvertent, rarely acknowledged role in global affairs: it’s a kind of sponge, soaking up much of China’s political, military and diplomatic efforts. Taiwan absorbs Chinese power of persuasion and coercion that won’t be directed elsewhere while the island remains free.

This means that supporting Taiwan is not merely a moral stance in favour of democracy; it is a strategic and economic necessity. Taiwan’s independence from China anchors the regional order—and maybe even the global order. While it remains separate from China, Beijing is delayed in shifting attention to new, potentially more dangerous fronts.

Every leader of the People’s Republic of China—from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping—has made ‘reunification’ a non-negotiable part of the party’s mission. Xi has tied Taiwan’s future directly to what he calls the ‘Chinese Dream’ of national rejuvenation. Unification is ‘essential’ to achieving China’s rise as a great power, he says. Party officials have referred to Xi Jinping as the ‘helmsman’ guiding China’s national rejuvenation.

The intensity of this focus is obvious. The Chinese armed forces have made preparing for an invasion and occupation of Taiwan their top strategic priority, developing a vast arsenal of missiles, air and naval forces designed to overwhelm the island’s defences and deter US intervention.

Are US and China really in a Thucydides Trap?

Andrew Latham

The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China.

Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Financial Times article and later developed in his 2017 book “Destined for War” — the phrase refers to a line from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote in his “History of the Peloponnesian War,” “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

At first glance, this provides a compelling and conveniently packaged analogy: Rising powers provoke anxiety in established ones, leading to conflict. In today’s context, the implication seems clear – China’s rise is bound to provoke a collision with the United States, just as Athens once did with Sparta.

But this framing risks flattening the complexity of Thucydides’ work and distorting its deeper philosophical message. Thucydides wasn’t articulating a deterministic law of geopolitics. He was writing a tragedy.

Tariff War With China Risks Slide Into Armed Conflict Over Taiwan | Opinion

Mark Cancian

The Trump administration seeks to make the defense of Taiwan a central element of its Pacific strategy, but its trade policies are making that defense more difficult and conflict more likely. Coupled with its undisguised contempt for allies and partners, it is its own worst enemy.

President Donald Trump has frequently discussed a Pacific strategy, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reportedly made the defense of Taiwan a key mission in his Interim National Security Guidance. Although classified, the guidance reportedly states, "China is the Department's sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department's sole pacing scenario."

In this, Trump and Hegseth continue a bipartisan policy that has been in place since Mao and his People's Liberation Army drove the Nationalists off the mainland in 1949. Its importance has increased dramatically in the 21st century. Previously, China focused on having a large army while leaving its air and naval forces weak. Experts derided a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as "a million man swim." That changed in the 21st century as China undertook an extraordinary military buildup. For example, its Navy went from 140 obsolescent ships in 2003 to 234 modern ships today. Its rhetoric has also turned nationalist and has been increasingly insistent about reuniting Taiwan with the mainland. President Xi Jinping even appears to have set a deadline of 2027 for China's military to be ready for such an operation.

The Art of Not Dealing: China’s 3-Ring Strategy for a Prolonged Trade War

Lizzi C. Lee

As the China-U.S. tariff war enters yet another phase of escalation, with Trump 2.0 proposing new hikes that push the effective U.S. tariff burden on Chinese goods to a staggering 145 percent and Beijing responding by raising its tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent, Chinese policymakers have shed any lingering illusions of an imminent thaw. The headlines may center on retaliatory tariffs and shipping slowdowns, but beneath the surface, a more consequential shift is unfolding: a long-term strategic recalibration aimed not at out-escalating Washington, but at enduring it.

In addition to matching Washington blow-for-blow, China is moving cautiously yet deliberately to manage exposure, mitigate damage, and reposition itself globally. This emerging strategy is organized into three concentric layers of response. At its core is an all-out push to stabilize the domestic economy. The middle ring focuses on placing targeted pressure back on the United States, measured and mindful of cost-benefit tradeoffs. The outermost circle turns to the broader world, where China is working to counter diplomatic isolation and carve out space in an increasingly polarized global order.

Bolstering China’s Economy

The most immediate priority is internal resilience. Chinese policymakers are under no illusion that the tariff escalation will subside anytime soon. Accordingly, they’ve doubled down on their ongoing pivot toward internal demand – now elevated from an economic goal to a strategic imperative. The long-discussed, intermittently pursued shift toward domestic consumption is no longer optional: it has become the only viable hedge against external coercion, and the system is mobilizing to match.

Viral Videos, Trade Tensions Drive U.S. Shoppers to Chinese App

Jiahui Huang

The popularity of a Chinese e-commerce app has surged in the U.S., driven by a spate of viral TikTok videos amid a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

DHgate, a Beijing-based online platform for cross-border commerce, became the second-most popular app on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. on Wednesday, followed by ChatGPT.

Why Russia Isn’t Doomed

Mathew Burrows and Collin Meisel

Red Cell

Most forecasts of Russia’s Future project the same scene: Russia is caught in endless conflict with the West or will soon be absorbed by China. However, Russia has other options created by the shift of economic power from Europe to Asia, the curtailment of Western ties owing to the Ukraine War, climate change, the opening of the Arctic, and its own renewable energy potential. Publics and governments in Asia and the Global South also welcome a stronger Russia.

Its former Cold War superpower status will never return. However, with new sources of power and resilience, along with its status as a nuclear-armed great power, Russia could continue to play an outsized role in global politics. “Green shoots,” which many ignore, are sprouting that augur a very different Russia.

The Pivot to the East

Despite Russian president Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine and NATO, the Russian President clings to a longstanding belief in the country’s Eurasian destiny. According to Canadian scholar Paul Robinson, “from the second half of the 19th century, Russian artists and intellectuals increasingly stressed the Asian roots of much of Russian culture. The recourse in Russian conservative thought has been particularly strong when ties with Western Europe came under pressure.”

Europe Battles to Win Favor in Central Asia

Emil Avdaliani

April’s inaugural Central Asia-EU Summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, was the first of its kind for the two sides and was seen as a means to elevate the bloc’s influence in the region. Amid growing great power competition over Eurasian connectivity, Brussels was looking to secure a more solid footing.

The most tangible outcome was the EU’s €12bn ($13.6bn) assistance package, which is intended to support the expansion of commercial routes, the mining sector, and digital connectivity across Central Asia. Specifics around how the funds will be distributed, or how they are linked to the €10bn in development aid pledged at the 2024 Global Gateway Investors Forum, are sparse.

What is known so far is that out of the €12bn, €3bn will be directed to the transport sector, €6.4bn to energy projects, and €100m for the development of satellite Internet. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) also has a pipeline of €7bn–€8bn worth of projects planned through 2027, though no details were released.

Central Asia, which includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, is vital for the EU as a key partner in the development of the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (or middle corridor) in competition with China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative.

The imperative of augmenting US theater nuclear forces

Greg Weaver

The problem

The United States and its allies and partners face an impending change in the threats posed by nuclear-armed adversaries: a strategic environment marked by two nuclear peer major powers. Russia, long a nuclear peer of the United States, will likely emerge from the war in Ukraine—regardless of how it ends—even more reliant on its nuclear forces, which are already the largest in the world. Meanwhile, China is undertaking the largest nuclear force buildup since the Cold War. That buildup will increase the size of Beijing’s nuclear forces by roughly seven and a half times since 2018, positioning China as a nuclear peer of the United States by 2035.1

Meanwhile, North Korea continues to expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal. Although the North Korean threat has been somewhat constrained by the quality of its ballistic missile systems—particularly its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—technical assistance from Russia, in exchange for Kim Jong Un’s material support for the war in Ukraine, could rapidly enhance North Korean capabilities. Finally, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East could prompt Iran to choose to acquire its own nuclear arsenal, presenting a wholly new challenge.

How Bibi Buggered On to Victory

Edward N. Luttwak

When you’ve worked long enough in the field of strategy, you eventually come to the depressing realization that victory in any major war is not won by some brilliant strategy, feats of generalship, or even superior technology. Rather, it’s won by sheer tenacity.

Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940. In June of that year, Germany appeared unstoppable. Paris and the entirety of Western Europe had fallen. The Luftwaffe was grinding down the grossly outnumbered British pilots, and German invasion barges were being assembled in Belgian ports. Even then, with Britain desperate for U.S. support, the American national debate on interventionism, prompted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, continued to break decisively in favor of the isolationists.

Exploring an accommodation with Germany appeared as the eminently reasonable and prudent course of action because of Herr Hitler’s generous offer to leave Britain and its vast empire intact. When British parliamentarians pressed Churchill to explain his plan, he confessed to his intimates that he had no plan at all. He was determined to just keep buggering on.

Russia’s Hidden Empire

Alexander Cooley

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many Western analysts and scholars who study post-Soviet countries expected those countries’ governments and publics to express solidarity with Ukraine and denounce Russian attempts to reclaim territory and deny Ukraine’s sovereignty. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the post-Soviet states have sought to consolidate their independence, forging links with the West and other regional players while remaining mindful of the need to manage their relations with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has since 1999 made reestablishing influence over Russia’s “near abroad” a strategic priority in his bid to justify his great-power aspirations.

Putin began his tenure by waging an aggressive military campaign to bring Chechnya back under Moscow’s control. And over the course of the next decade, he intensified his attempts to curb Western influence across the post-Soviet space, opposing the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Central Asia and the so-called color revolutions that brought more Western-friendly governments into power in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. The Kremlin justified its 2008 war with Georgia as an effort to protect Russia’s “privileged” sphere of influence in the “near abroad.” Moscow’s strategic priority to blunt Western influence in its region has now culminated in its “special military operation” in Ukraine and a three-year standoff with the West over Ukraine’s future.

It Was Never the End of History, But the Beginning of the Clash of Civilizations - Opinion

Ali Omar Forozish

When Francis Fukuyama proclaimed “the end of history” in 1989, he did so with the conviction that liberal democracy had triumphed as the ultimate form of governance. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the seemingly unstoppable march of globalization painted a picture of a world where ideological struggles were over. However, history did not end—it simply took a different turn. Instead of a universal order dominated by liberal democracy, we have entered an era that Samuel Huntington foresaw in his seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

The current global conflicts, from Ukraine to Gaza, from the South China Sea to tensions in the Mediterranean, are not merely geopolitical disputes. They are manifestations of deeper civilizational fault lines. The West’s long-standing dominance is being challenged, not just by rival states but by alternative worldviews, historical grievances, and divergent cultural identities. The so-called “Second Cold War” framework oversimplifies these tensions as merely a revival of U.S.-Soviet-style rivalry. In reality, what we are witnessing is not Cold War 2.0 but a multipolar clash of civilizations, in which Western Judeo-Christian civilization, Chinese Confucianism, Islamic resurgence, and Russian Eurasianism are competing to shape the future.

To frame the present era as a Second Cold War is to impose a misleading historical analogy on a world that has fundamentally changed. The original Cold War was defined by a clear ideological divide between two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. The current global order is far more fragmented. While the U.S. and its allies remain dominant in many respects, they are not facing a singular ideological rival but rather a constellation of competing powers. Russia is not the Soviet Union, nor is China a communist revolutionary state seeking to spread an alternative economic model globally.

The White House pressed for fast negotiations with its shock and awe tariffs. Now it can’t drum up enough interest from a ‘first mover’

Eleanor Pringle

In the days after President Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, members of his administration said phones had been ringing off the hook as world leaders lined up to cut new deals.

But the rhetoric out of Trump’s cabinet has begun to change since Trump put a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs on April 9, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now drumming up pressure to push at least a single agreement through.

Nearly two weeks have passed since the “Liberation Day” announcement and more than 75 countries have reportedly contacted the White House to come to new terms.

Foreign leaders have made it clear they want to negotiate with Uncle Sam, with the EU going as far as saying it wants zero trade barriers between the nations.

Trade negotiations are no small undertaking, with billions of dollars of goods and services on the line and potential regulatory changes also an option. But while the Trump administration made it clear it wants to act quickly, not a single deal has yet to be signed even with Canada and Mexico, who were first subjected to tariff threats back in January.

The New Adaptation War

Mick Ryan

Over the past three years, both sides in the Ukraine war have learned and adapted. Both sides have learned to learn more quickly and to proliferate lessons into their military and industrial systems. In the past six months the adaptation battle has intensified. It has technical dimensions, but also organisational and doctrinal aspects as well. Ukraine’s adaptive stance is driven by an existential threat that is not apparent to western nations not currently at war. Russia too is now learning and adapting quickly. Where they aren’t innovative, they are fast followers.

Adaptation, in technology and tactics, is now moving at a speed that is probably incomprehensible to western politicians and defence bureaucrats.

Ukraine’s learning system, which is not always fully joined up from the tactical to strategic levels, offers lessons on how western militaries might improve and speed up their learning and adaptation processes and cultures. On the other hand, Russia has learned to learn better and faster as the war has progressed. This makes it a more dangerous adversary for Ukraine, as well as a much more capable and dangerous military to threaten Europe.

Perhaps the most important feature of the interactive adaptation struggle is that it can no longer be described purely as an adaptation battle. While there are important issues to research and analyse from the battlefield and at the strategic levels of war, there is now an important international dimension. Ukraine is sharing lessons with its partners and Russia has fostered the development of an active learning community with Iran, North Korea and China.

Operation Opera Redux? Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Preventive War Paradox

Patrick Sullivan

On June 7, 1981, the Israeli Air Force conducted an airstrike against the Osirak nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center in southeastern Baghdad. Although Iraq claimed the reactor—purchased from France in 1976—only served scientific purposes, the Israelis were convinced that it supported a secret nuclear weapons development program and thus justified the attack as an act of self-defense. Israel further justified the attack as needing to occur before the reactor achieved criticality, as destruction past this point could induce a nuclear meltdown.

Measured against Israel’s justification, Operation Opera was successful: The Israeli F-16s destroyed the Osirak reactor and other facilities in Tuwaitha, along with any proximate weapons development program tied to them. Measured against the broader goal of enhancing Israel’s regional security over a longer time scale, however, Operation Opera could be considered a strategic failure. Much of the international community—including the United States—condemned the airstrike as an unprovoked and unjustified act of aggression, thereby damaging Israel’s political standing among both allies and neutral states. Additionally, evidence that became available after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 shows that the Israeli airstrike actually compelled Saddam Hussein to undertake “a nuclear weapons program where one did not previously exist.” Saddam committed to a tenfold increase in scientists and money at Tuwaitha, and by 1987 had begun weaponization of fissile material for bomb production. Had Saddam not given cause for an American-led coalition to attack Tuwaitha again during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, this program may in fact have produced an Iraqi nuclear deterrent—precisely the outcome the Israelis thought they had thwarted with Operation Opera.

Nuclear Deterrence vs Nuclear Warfighting: Is There a Difference and Does it Matter?

Admiral Charles Richard, USN (Ret.), Hon. Franklin C. Miller & Robert Peters

Introduction

Nuclear weapons are having a “moment.”

Russia is threatening nuclear strikes on the West for its support to Ukraine.[1] China is the fastest growing nuclear power on the planet.[2] North Korea continues to expand and advance its nuclear and missile programs. And there is active discussion about the nature of—and what to do about—Iran’s nuclear weapon program.[3] Meanwhile, the United States, facing major industrial base issues, is modernizing its strategic deterrent at what seems to many to be a glacial pace.[4]

All of this may seem of a piece; that all the nuclear powers or nuclear aspirants are updating their arsenals. However, there are significant differences between what the United States is doing and what its potential enemies are doing. Specifically, while the United States is focused on modernizing an arsenal that is designed to deter strategic attack, America’s adversaries are quietly fielding and expanding nuclear arsenals that are not only designed to deter a strategic attack on their homelands but also are optimized for nuclear warfighting in military theaters of operation. Conversely, this is an area the United States has neglected since the Cold War ended decades ago.

No man’s airspace: Why our skies aren’t ready for the space boom - Opinion

Mathew Lewallen

On a clear evening this January, flights out of Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale suddenly ground to a halt. The culprit wasn’t weather or a software glitch — it was a rocket launch. SpaceX’s Starship, the largest spacecraft ever built, had lifted off from Texas and exploded mid-flight, raining 100 tons of debris at over 13,250 miles per hour over the Caribbean. The FAA swiftly issued an unprecedented order: a temporary freeze on air traffic at four major Florida airports. Then another Starship exploded on its next test launch in March. According to FAA data reported by Reuters, the disruption affected about 240 flights with delays averaging 28 minutes, forcing 28 of those aircraft to divert, and left 40 airborne flights in holding patterns. Passengers as far away as Philadelphia felt the shockwave in scheduling. It was a dramatic wake-up call that our airspace is no longer the exclusive domain of airplanes. Rockets have arrived, and the system isn’t ready. These incidents aren’t a fluke — they’re a glimpse into what happens when rockets and airplanes share the same sky.

Incidents like this highlight a growing tension in the skies. Private spaceflight is booming. Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are launching rockets at a cadence unimaginable a decade ago. In 2025, the FAA expects up to 172 commercial space launches — a number expected to more than double by 2028. Each launch forces air traffic controllers to carve out huge chunks of restricted airspace, often for hours, to ensure no aircraft strays near a rocket’s path. Even when missions go perfectly, these precautionary no-fly zones can disrupt hundreds of airline flights and congest the busy highways in the sky. During one routine Delta II rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, for example, 56 flights had to be rerouted roughly 65 nautical miles each — adding over 3,600 miles of total detours. What used to be an occasional NASA shuttle launch is now weekly private missions, and what was once a minor nuisance for air travel could soon become a major choke point. The convergence of air traffic and space traffic is creating a new kind of traffic jam, and it’s one with high stakes for safety and commerce alike.

Chip War and the Battle for Technological Sovereignty: A Hybrid Warfare Perspective

Robert Redding

Semiconductors as a Hybrid Warfare Battleground

In the CORE framework, hybrid threats are defined as multi-domain strategies that exploit systemic vulnerabilities to undermine democratic institutions, economic stability, and national security. Miller’s analysis of the global semiconductor supply chain perfectly aligns with this concept. The world’s reliance on a handful of key players—such as Taiwan’s TSMC, the U.S.’s Intel, and the Netherlands’ ASML—exposes critical infrastructure to potential disruption from adversarial state and non-state actors.

One of the book’s key takeaways is that microchip supply chains are not merely an economic concern but a central pillar of national security. The U.S.-China rivalry over semiconductor dominance exemplifies how economic interdependencies can be weaponized. This is a classic case of economic hybrid warfare, where states use trade restrictions, technological embargoes, and cyber espionage to exert pressure on adversaries. The U.S. export bans on advanced chips and fabrication equipment to China, coupled with China’s retaliatory measures, fit within the broader spectrum of hybrid threats outlined in CORE.

A Comparative Analysis of the Impact and Use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) by Terrorist Groups

Mahmut Cengiz

Terrorist attacks result in the deaths of more than 20,000 people every year. Terrorist groups, which are rarely random or senseless in their actions, tend to use strategic weapons that cause more casualties and increase their notoriety. Although terrorist organizations use various types of weapons, they often prefer improvised explosive devices (IEDs) due to their accessibility and ease of creation. IEDs can be strategically placed or affixed to targeted equipment with minimal effort.

An IED is a homemade explosive device designed to inflict damage, cause disruption, or instill fear. These devices are employed by a variety of actors, including criminals, terrorists, insurgents, vandals, and suicide bombers. The design and potential impact of IEDs can vary significantly, ranging from simple pipe bombs to more sophisticated devices capable of causing extensive damage and loss of life. IEDs can be deployed in several ways, including being carried by an individual, planted in a vehicle, sent via a package, or concealed along roadways. The term “IED,” commonly referred to as roadside bombs, became widely recognized during the Iraq War, which began in 2003.

Pentagon Review of Close Combat Training Standards Is Long Overdue

Elaine Donnelly

Ten years have passed since the Department of Defense initiated a social experiment with women in the military. Pentagon officials promised that female trainees headed for previously all-male combat arms units would have to meet the exact same standards as men. Has the experiment played out as promised?

We are about to find out. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s March 30 Memorandum calls for a 60-day review to achieve high, uncompromised standards in combat arms units such as the infantry, Special Operations, and other occupations with extraordinary physical demands.

Thanks to a series of Executive Orders that President Donald Trump has issued since January, Hegseth’s 6-month implementation period should proceed without equivocation or distractions related to percentage-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas. Wrote Hegseth, “[I]t is essential to identify which positions require heightened entry-level and sustained physical fitness.”

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