Indian Strategic Studies

30 January 2026

All eyes are on Trump’s reaction to the ‘mother of all deals’ between India and the EU

Holly Ellyatt

The ink is barely dry on the European Union and India’s historic trade deal but all eyes are now on how President Donald Trump will react to the free trade agreement that’s widely seen as a strategic hedge against the U.S.′ volatile trade policies and tariff threats. The deal, which was confirmed earlier Tuesday, has taken almost two decades to agree and will see the trading behemoths gradually cut tariffs to zero on the majority of each other’s imports, except on some key products and sectors.

Trump is yet to react publicly to the EU-India deal, which was announced in the early hours of Tuesday morning European time, but he and the White House are unlikely to be happy with the deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already criticized the EU for forging ahead with a trade agreement with India. “The U.S. has made much bigger sacrifices than Europeans have. We have put 25% tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. Guess what happened last week? The Europeans signed a trade deal with India,” Bessent told ABC News on Sunday.

An Unlikely Source of Crypto Innovation: Afghanistan

Aryn Baker

People in Halfaya, Syria, waiting to receive humanitarian aid. The funds were being distributed through HesabPay, a blockchain-based system developed in Afghanistan. The repressive Taliban government is suspicious of the internet. But a start-up in the country is building blockchain-based tools to transform humanitarian aid.

People in Halfaya, Syria, waiting to receive humanitarian aid. The funds were being distributed through HesabPay, a blockchain-based system developed in Afghanistan.Credit. At a bustling money changer in northwestern Syria, a 46-year-old farmer gripped a plastic card like a lifeline. She had never heard of cryptocurrency, but the card held $500 of it to help restart her farm after nearly 14 years of civil war.

What’s Going on with China’s PLA?

Anushka Saxena

The investigation into one of China’s top generals is the latest episode in Xi Jinping’s purge of the People’s Liberation Army. On January 20, 2026, at a high-level study session for China’s principal provincial and ministerial officials, there was a conspicuous empty chair. Official reporting surreptitiously noted that “both” Vice-Chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC) were in attendance, yet the footage told a different story. General Zhang Youxia, the second-in-command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was missing.

Four days later, the other shoe dropped. China’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed that Zhang, alongside CMC member and Chief of Joint Staff Liu Zhenli, had been placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law.” While Beijing is no stranger to either military corruption or political indiscipline, Zhang’s case is much more incendiary than business-as-usual. Since 2023, the PLA has been in a state of perpetual churn. What began in July 2023, when the CMC Equipment Development Department (EDD) called for whistleblowers to report corrupt procurement practices dating back to 2017, first resulted in the targeting of relatively replaceable officials—Defense Minister Li Shangfu and PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) Commander Li Yuchao. But the crisis soon metastasized—in late 2025, the purge swept through the so-called “Fujian gang.” These are officials like CMC vice chairman He Weidong and Admiral Miao Hua, who rose through the ranks of the erstwhile 31st Group Army in Fujian and the PLA Navy.

Xi has absolute control over China’s military. Now he wants more

Simone McCarthy

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s decision to place the country’s top-ranking general under investigation is a stunning move that leaves Xi virtually alone at the top of the military hierarchy – raising deep questions about the implications for the world’s largest armed forces, as well as Beijing’s ambitions to take control of Taiwan.

But the purge also makes one thing clear: Xi sees no target as too big to be taken down as he remakes the military according to his vision – and prioritizes loyalty over all else.

EMP Weapons Expose PRC Military Vulnerability

In a recent analysis published by The Jamestown Foundation titled “EMP Weapons Expose PRC Military Vulnerability,” Guermantes Lailari, Yu-cheng Chen, and Tin Pak assess how electromagnetic pulse weapons expose critical vulnerabilities in the People’s Liberation Army’s increasingly informatized force structure. The authors argue that EMP capabilities have moved “from theory to reality” and now provide a speed-of-light, non-kinetic “electronics-kill” option capable of disabling drone swarms, missiles, and command networks at scale.

Chinese military and state-affiliated scientists openly acknowledge doubts about the ability to fully harden systems against multi-vector EMP threats, even as the PLA deepens its dependence on integrated digital “kill webs.” In a Taiwan contingency, the authors conclude that EMP weapons could disrupt early PLA attack phases while also threatening civilian infrastructure that underwrites Chinese military power.

EMP weapons deliver pulses of radiation that induce electrical charges in conductive materials, which can disable or destroy electronic systems… non-nuclear EMPs are more targeted, with a narrower range, and focus on specific frequency bands… EMP weapons are rapidly moving from theory to reality… the importance of EMP weapons as a speed-of-light, non-kinetic “electronics-kill” (以电能为主要“弹药”) option… vulnerabilities to EMPs continue to grow.

How Iran Crushed a Citizen Uprising With Lethal Force

Parin Behrooz

In Tehran, the capital of Iran, security forces opened fire at protesters from the roof of a police station. In Karaj, they fired live rounds into a march, shooting one person in the head. In Isfahan, young men barricaded themselves in an alley as gunfire and explosions rang out.

Scattered protests had percolated since late December, starting with a strike in Tehran’s bazaar and fueled by a plunging economy. But by early January, Iranians had revolted en masse, and the security forces began to crack down with deadly force.

Security forces cracked down on demonstrators across Iran in the first weeks of January.

It was not just the protests unnerving the regime. President Trump encouraged the demonstrators and threatened military intervention. In many places, riots flared in parallel with peaceful protests; government buildings, commercial properties, mosques and police stations were set on fire.

Troop Casualties in Ukraine War Near 2 Million, Study Finds

Helene Cooper

The number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or missing during nearly four years of war is on track to reach two million by this spring, according to a new study, a stunning toll as Russia’s assault on its neighbor grinds on.

The study, published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that nearly 1.2 million Russian troops and close to 600,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed or wounded or were missing. That would put the overall casualty figure for both countries combined at almost 1.8 million. For the entirety of the war, casualty figures have been difficult to ascertain because Russia is believed to routinely undercount its dead and injured, and Ukraine does not disclose official figures. The study relied on American and British government estimates, among other sources.

Top 5 highlights from the US National Defense Strategy

Richard Thomas

The recently released US National Defense Strategy, coupled with the comments made by President Donald Trump in Davos, added further structure to an emerging New World Order as Washington detaches from generational commitments. In loose terms, this means removing as much conventional US military capacity as is possible from Europe, turning its Nato members into customers and recipients of American products and intelligence, less so strategic partners. The US pivot is both inward – to secure what it considers to be threats in its own borders – and also ensuring American hegemony over its near abroad. The wider international pivot will see an increasing focus on China and ensuring access to the markets in the Indo-Pacific.

“Crafting a defence strategy requires setting priorities. When reading the 2026 National Defense Strategy, it is clear that the administration views the Nato alliance as a relatively low priority,” warned Fox Walker, defence analyst at intelligence firm GlobalData, in a prescient instance of analytical foreshadowing. Here are the Top 5 highlights from the National Defense Strategy, and some of the possible implications.

Forget Greenland — securing Diego Garcia should come first

Grant Newsham

The focus and the fuss have been on Greenland. US President Donald Trump now says a framework is in place for a deal that suits US interests to control this piece of strategic territory. Meanwhile, Trump is paying attention to a bigger disaster headed America’s way in the Indian Ocean – in a place even less known to Americans than is Greenland.

The British government is rushing through a treaty to transfer sovereignty, spelled ownership, over the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, a small island nation on the western edge of the Indian Ocean. Why does it matter? America’s only military base in the Indian Ocean sits on the island of Diego Garcia in the Chagos archipelago. The US military operates from Diego Garcia under a 1966 agreement with the United Kingdom.

The Dubai Talks on the Ukraine War

George Friedman

Representatives from the United States, Russia and Ukraine held talks over the weekend in Dubai on ending the war in Ukraine. There’s evidence to suggest the meeting was considered important. Among the American representatives was Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who tends to be invited to negotiations of significance. Much more important, this was the first time since the war began that representatives from all three nations had convened for an official visit.

Yet, in the past, any optimism over the war’s conclusion had been quickly dispelled, so optimism this time around should be tempered, maybe even banished. The primary obstacle to a settlement has been Russia’s unwillingness to end the war based on the reality on the ground – that is, to accept peace based on the (small) amount of territory it has captured. A settlement based on that reality would necessarily mean that all of Russia’s sacrifices – financial, economic and human – would be for very little. Making peace on that basis would undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s credibility.

A Better Greenland Deal

Sumantra Maitra and Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media that he and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had hammered out the “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.” The announcement came as a surprise, given Trump’s recent claims that he intended to “take control” of the island without close consultations with Europe. As recently as early January, Trump had threatened to seize Greenland “the hard way,” implying an openness to using military force after U.S. troops seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Then, in mid-January, he threatened massive tariffs on European countries that sought to block his takeover and embarrassed European leaders by publicly releasing their toadying text messages and posting an AI-generated image of him raising an American flag in Greenland. But at Davos, Trump appeared to take a military seizure off the table and put tariffs on pause after what he described as “satisfactory” talks with Rutte.

Little is yet known about this potential deal. But it is in the United States’ national interest to have a larger presence in Greenland—and that is in Denmark and Greenland’s interest, too. Much has been made in the press about the cooperation that already exists among all three, and over decades, there have been no better allies for the United States than Greenland and Denmark when it comes to ensuring Arctic security. Competition is rapidly ramping up in the region among major powers, however, and a broader deal is needed to secure U.S. and European interests there. Trump will also feel a need to claim that his Greenland push has been victorious, meaning that Greenland, Denmark, and other European allies have an incentive to make sure he can declare a major “win” for the United States.

The World-Minus-One Moment

Amitav Acharya

In his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has led a sustained assault on the foundations of the global order. He has nakedly flouted international law, wrecked the system of global trade with unilateral tariffs on scores of countries, and withdrawn the United States from important multilateral bodies.

The United States hasn’t always been an ideal champion of international cooperation. It tended toward isolationism when it was a rising power and unilateralism when it became a superpower. But Trump’s approach to reshaping the world order offers a new and dangerous mix of isolationism and aggrandizement. He is contemptuous of multilateralism and fixated by the raw exercise of power. So are his supporters. This likely means that whatever happens in Washington, Trumpism will outlive a president who turns 80 this year.

Canada's deal with China signals it is serious about shift from US

Nadine Yousif

Prime Minister Mark Carney's new approach to Canada's foreign policy can perhaps be distilled in one line: "We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be." That was his response when asked about the deal struck with China on Friday, despite concerns over its human rights record and nearly a year after he called China "the biggest security threat" facing Canada.

The deal will see Canada ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles that it imposed in tandem with the US in 2024. In exchange, China will lower retaliatory tariffs on key Canadian agricultural products. Experts told the BBC the move represents a significant shift in Canada's policy on China, one that is shaped by ongoing uncertainty with the US, its largest trade partner. "The prime minister is saying, essentially, that Canada has agency too, and that it's not going to just sit and wait for the United States," said Eric Miller, a Washington DC based trade adviser and president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group.

Was the Intervention in Venezuela a War?

Rand Paul

Iwent to a secure room to read the classified arguments presented by the President’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for why the invasion of Caracas, the capture of Nicholas Maduro early this month, and the ongoing blockade of Venezuela is not a war. Whether or not we are at war, and whether or not the Constitution authorizes ONLY Congress to initiate war, would seem to be questions that the public should be privy to. But the powers that be classified these legal apologies for war to prevent open and public debate.

Just minutes later at the GOP caucus lunch, an assistant attorney general presented the OLC’s rationale for why the invasion and extrajudicial rendition of Maduro was not a war. To my astonishment, virtually all the contents of the “classified” OLC memo that I’d been told not to discuss were then discussed in a non-classified briefing. I thanked him for his extensive discussion of the “classified” document, as his public remarks allow me to publicly comment on his remarks. So much for the ridiculous over-classification racket.

'TIDALWAVE': Landmark Report Exposes Vulnerabilities in a U.S.-China Conflict

TIDALWAVE is a progressive Artificial Intelligence–enabled model and computer simulation to simulate a protracted conflict between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). TIDALWAVE identifies gaps and deficiencies and corresponding solutions to resolve anticipated shortfalls in our ability to project and sustain the joint force and to exploit adversary vulnerabilities in order to deplete their ability to conduct military operations. The project examines both U.S. and PRC systems anticipated to have the greatest impact on the conflict: fuel and ammunition. Our ultimate aim is to guide national deliberations on how best to deter a war, and project and sustain U.S. and allied forces in a protracted conflict if required, resolve existing deficiencies, and exploit adversary weaknesses.

Trump, Interventions, and Regimes to Topple - First Things

Hadley Arkes

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that if even a portion of the air support used in the military operation in Venezuela had been provided at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis—which nearly brought the world to the edge of nuclear war—might have been averted. And averted at the same time would have been the oppressive regime in Cuba, which destroyed a once vibrant economy and spread its malign influence through the hemisphere—and beyond. Could it really have fallen to Donald Trump, of all people, to complete the work that John F. Kennedy left undone, or bungled?

Henry Taylor, in his classic work The Statesman, observed that “it sometimes happens that he who would not hurt a fly will hurt a nation.” Kennedy, with all his study of international politics, was perhaps overly cautious in that first test of his power. Trump, serenely detached from reading serious books of any kind, has not had the slightest qualm or hesitation in flexing his power. His vice is that he wants it clear to all who can see that good things spring from his touch and his will alone. He produces wreckage wherever he goes, and yet his swashbuckling use of power may indeed rid us of the regimes in Iran and Venezuela—maybe even Cuba, as the last shoe to fall. Through his swagger and confidence, he may find himself ironically resolving unfinished business left by four or more of his predecessors.

The Personalist Global Order

Seva Gunitsky and Semuhi Sinanoglu

In the end, it may have been the dancing. “He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance,” said U.S. President Donald Trump in a January 6 speech, explaining why he had ordered the American military to fly into Caracas in the dead of night, seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and bring them to the United States to face criminal charges. Trump had other reasons, too. Maduro, he said, was a drug trafficker. He led a repressive authoritarian government. He was reluctant to give U.S. companies preferential access to Venezuelan oil. But few experts believe that Caracas plays a significant role in the drug trade, and Trump has left the remainder of Venezuela’s violent regime nearly intact. And while the White House certainly wants Venezuelan oil, Maduro had already offered Trump nearly unlimited access to his country’s crude after months of pressure.

But Maduro kept on dancing. At rallies in Caracas, he jerked his arms back and forth in a slightly more acrobatic version of Trump’s own moves. And for the White House, that seems to have been too much. Maduro’s “regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks helped persuade some on the Trump team that the Venezuelan president was mocking them,” The New York Times reported the day after the extraction. “So the White House decided to follow through on its military threats.”

Top Ukrainian drone commander says elite pilots hitting Russian troops at extreme close range

Matthew Loh

The leader of Ukraine's special drone branch said his operators are striking advancing Russian infantry at extreme close range, providing rare insight into how some of the country's best pilots are fighting.

Maj. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, the commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, wrote in a statement on Sunday that his pilots have, over the last month, been engaging enemy troops at an average strike depth of 1.44 km, or 0.89 miles, from the line of contact.

That's a roughly 10-minute brisk walk for the average person.

"This figure fluctuates, but: We are literally working under our feet," Madyar wrote.

His remarks reflect how top Ukrainian commanders in some areas have been prioritizing their limited resources. Using elite strike crews for short-range suppression could also be a sign of heightened pressure on Ukrainian lines.

How the old and new US defense strategies differ on traditional priorities

2022: “The United States derives immense benefit from a stable, peaceful, and democratic Western Hemisphere that reduces security threats to the homeland. To prevent distant threats from becoming a challenge at home, the Department will continue to partner with countries in the region to build capability and promote security and stability.

“As in all regions, the Department will work collaboratively, seeking to understand our partners’ security needs and areas of mutual concern.”

2026: “We will actively and fearlessly defend America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. We will guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland. We will provide President Trump with credible military options to use against narco-terrorists wherever they may be. We will engage in good faith with our neighbors, from Canada to our partners in Central and South America, but we will ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests. And where they do not, we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action that concretely advances U.S. interests.”

Niall Ferguson: The Arrogance of Trump’s

Niall Ferguson

I never cease to be amazed by the high conviction of so many journalists and academic commentators in their judgments on President Donald Trump. This has been especially striking during and after the Davos World Economic Forum. The impressive thing is that the same people rush to condemn Trump (and his defenders) in just the same way as they have been doing for 10 years. They remain unshakably convinced of their own superior intelligence.

Three things are especially striking. First, they never look back and ask: “How good were my previous judgments of Trump? How did I do last year? Did I anticipate how much Trump would achieve in the first 100 days? Did I wrongly predict that his tariffs would crater the economy and cause inflation? Did I fail to anticipate the air strikes on Fordow? Did I fail to foresee the deal that got the Israeli hostages out of Gaza?” And so on.

How Computer Warfare Is Becoming Part of the Pentagon’s Arsenal

Julian E. Barnes and Adam Sella

The United States used cyberweapons in Venezuela to take power offline, turn off radar and disrupt hand-held radios, all to help U.S. military forces slip into the country unnoticed early this month, according to American officials. It was part of a renewed effort to integrate computer warfare into real-world operations. The military has often used cyberweapons in discrete operations — like damaging Iran’s nuclear centrifuges by altering their functioning or taking a Russian troll farm offline — but the Pentagon has been working to find new ways to fuse computer network warfare with the rest of the military arsenal.

The Pentagon tested the approach in Venezuela and during strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year. In an interview, Katherine E. Sutton, the Pentagon’s top cyberpolicy official, declined to discuss Venezuela or other recent operations, but said the military was focused on how to integrate cybereffects into broader military operations. She said those capabilities had been used alongside traditional military power to “successfully layer multiple effects” on the battlefield.

When Automation Accelerates War, Identity Determines Victory - Modern War Institute

Jerae Perez

The pace of modernization is accelerating faster than doctrine, training cycles, and human adaptation can keep up. This gap is widening at the exact moment when the Army is pushing toward a future of distributed, AI-enabled formations.

Autonomous systems are advancing quickly. AI-enabled tools accelerate sensor fusion, compress timelines, and extend the reach of tactical formations. Project Convergence, Indo-Pacific exercises, and recent modernization experiments show a battlefield that is more saturated with data, more contested in the electromagnetic spectrum, and increasingly dependent on effective human-machine teaming.

Yet technology continues to outpace the Army’s ability to prepare the humans responsible for interpreting and acting within these systems. Contemporary work on cognitive warfare argues that the modern battlefield extends into the human mind, where contests over identity and resolve begin long before physical first contact. That idea becomes even more consequential as soldiers enter environments shaped by automation and accelerated decision cycles.

Russia’s new jet-powered Gerans

Fabian Hinz

The debut of Russia’s jet-powered Geran-5 highlights both the growing requirement for speed in deep strike offence–defence dynamics and a wider shift towards the development of low-cost cruise missiles.

On 11 January 2026, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence and Defence (GUR) published details of Russia’s use of a further jet-powered variant of the Geran one-way attack uninhabited aerial vehicle (OWA UAV), designated Geran-5. Imagery of debris recovered in Ukraine indicates that the system has a new aerodynamic layout resembling a cruise missile. At the same time, both GUR claims and photos of the wreckage suggest that the Geran-5 retains some internal commonality with the standard Geran-2 variant. Further details were provided by what appears to be a Ukrainian government document detailing the Geran developments. According to the document, the Geran-5 is equipped with a 200 kilogram-thrust turbojet engine, which GUR identifies as being of Chinese origin. The system is reportedly capable of achieving a maximum range of 950 kilometres and a top speed of 600 km/h while retaining the Geran-2’s 90 kg payload.

Retired Admiral Urges India’s Turn to Mahan—So Should We

Francis P. Sempa

There was a time in the late 19th-early 20th centuries that the navies of all the great powers paid homage to the writings of American naval historian and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had dutifully served aboard Union ships during the American Civil War but whose fame and lasting influence derived from his books and articles written between 1880 and 1914. Much of what Mahan wrote about is, of course, dated and not relevant to 21st century naval warfare. But Mahan was more than a historian of naval warfare. He was also a geopolitical theorist whose global worldview remains relevant to 21st century world politics.

The key to Mahan’s worldview was geography. He understood that geography provided nations with opportunities and constraints and, therefore, greatly impacted a nation’s national security interests. Mahan understood that the United States, like Great Britain, is effectively an insular power with lengthy seaboards along the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Caribbean Sea, and no continental rivals. He also understood that sea power in its broadest sense is essential to U.S. security and prosperity because of our geographic location.

New Faster, Lighter More Lethal Army M1E3 Tank Brings New Combat Tactics

Kris Osborn

Faster, lighter, more fuel efficient, AI-enabled, built for manned-unmanned teaming and armed with an entire generation of new weapons….are merely a few of the attributes woven into the U.S. Army’s just released M1E3 pre-prototype tank.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George oversaw the service’s unveiling of an early prototype of the new tank, an effort which appears as an ambitious and potentially very promising effort to merge high-powered anti-armor lethality with range, agility, less weight, drone-controlling technology and a suite of advanced networking technologies. The question has always been that reducing armor weight to gain speed and mobility may decrease the tank’s overall survivability, something which may no longer be the case. Details regarding survivability elements of the new tank are not likely to be available for security reasons, yet it is a reasonable assumption that Army weapons developers have incorporated lessons learned from Ukraine and made adaptations to enhance mobility and expeditionary operations without compromising survivability.

29 January 2026

India and EU announce 'mother of all trade deals'

Abhishek Dey, Arunoday Mukharji, and Jessica Parker

The European Union and India have announced a landmark trade deal after nearly two decades of on-off talks, as both sides aim to deepen ties amid tensions with the US. "We did it, we delivered the mother of all deals," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a media briefing in Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the pact "historic".

It will allow free trade of goods between the bloc of 27 European states and the world's most populous country, which together make up nearly 25% of global gross domestic product and a market of two billion people. The deal will see a number of huge tariff cuts across a range of goods and services, and a joint security partnership.

Pakistan: Balochistan Bleeds

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

On January 25, 2026, Security Forces (SFs) killed three terrorists during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Panjgur District of Balochistan. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), “On January 25 (Sunday), security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in Panjgur District of Balochistan, on [the] reported presence of terrorists belonging to Indian proxy, Fitna al Hindustan.” However, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed that 12 SFs personnel were killed and six others injured during clashes in the area.

On January 19, 2026, five terrorists were killed in an intelligence based operation (IBO) by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) in the Dasht area of Mastung District in Balochistan. According to a CTD spokesperson, around seven other terrorists managed to escape, taking advantage of darkness and the nearby mountainous terrain.

That Isn’t Signaling. China’s Military Is Seriously Rehearsing Around Taiwan

Nathan Attrill

Analysing China’s military activity around Taiwan often invites a simple question: what triggered it? Analysts tend to assume that spikes in aircraft sorties, naval deployments or coast guard operations must be a reaction to something political in Taiwan, U.S. actions in the region or other international events. But a close examination of 2025 data complicates this assumption. Domestic rhythms inside China—holiday cycles, political security priorities, command availability—shape operational tempo more reliably than events in Taipei or Washington.

Put simply, the scale and persistence of Chinese military activity around Taiwan look less like signalling and more like systematic preparation for the use of force, conducted on Beijing’s own timetable. A review of military coercion data compiled throughout 2025 for ASPI’s State of the Strait—a weekly newsletter tracking Beijing’s coercion of Taiwan—highlights several striking patterns. First, true absences of Chinese military activity around Taiwan are vanishingly rare. Across the entire year, there were only two days—12 and 13 November—when no Chinese military air or maritime assets were detected around Taiwan. This underscores how deeply normalised Chinese military presence has become. Activity levels may rise or fall, but presence itself is now continuous.

A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?

Yun Sun

In 2021, U.S. Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, then the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that Beijing had set a serious goal of controlling Taiwan before 2027. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then,” he warned. “And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

This prediction, which gained so much attention in Washington that it came to be known as the Davidson Window, quickly spurred action. Within the year, Congress authorized $7.1 billion for the newly created Pacific Deterrence Initiative, designed to boost the United States’ capability to deter Chinese military adventurism, and the policy community scrambled to develop strategies to counter Chinese military threats. The U.S. government offered so much diplomatic, political, economic, and security support to Taiwan that some veteran Taiwan watchers began to remind U.S. policymakers of the importance of reassuring China that the United States doesn’t support Taiwan independence.

As Generals Fall, Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Eating Itself

Deng Yuwen

Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of the most powerful military leaders in China, are now officially in custody. Rumors have buzzed in the Chinese diaspora for days, but the speed still comes as a shock; usually there’s a far longer gap between the detention of leaders and the official announcement of their fate.

The crux of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political language is not what it says, but when it says it—and to whom. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mouthpieces have accused Zhang and Liu of having “seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the [Central Military Commission] CMC chairman” and threatening “the Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.” These charges have little directly to do with corruption in the conventional sense, nor are they just about the military. They are political accusations, virtually identical to those leveled at former CMC Vice Chair He Weidong, who was purged last year.

ALLFARE: CHINA’S WHOLE-OF-NATION STRATEGY

Michael Margolius

Current paradigms of understanding the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) actions against the West typically use the DIME framework or even the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)’s own “Three Warfares.” However, these frameworks that bin actions into discrete categories fail to encapsulate the totality of the PRCs activities targeting the west. While the United States hesitates to admit its “competition” with the PRC is conflict, the PRC appears to leverage all forms of warfare short of kinetic operations in daily affairs. To analyze how states exert their influence, scholars often compartmentalize actions into rigid analytical frameworks, which obscures the holistic scope of the challenge. By decomposing actions and analyzing them through the common frameworks, analysts fail to appreciate the interconnectedness across all elements of national power, particularly clandestine and sub-state illicit activities. These disadvantages call for a new model of analysis.

Adopting the concept of “allfare,” which captures every potential vector of malign action, provides a better appreciation for the strategic scope of PRC activities. Allfare encourages perceptions of linkages and cross-organizational intentions across the entire network, including official party and state instruments, proxies, and even seemingly disparate criminal actors. This last element, the illicit actors that ultimately advance CCP interests are entirely absent from traditional analytical frameworks. These activities are, at minimum, accepted by the party, and are very probably intentionally exploited. Since 2015, U.S. national security strategies have identified a rising Communist China as a threat to the liberal international order and continued American influence, yet policymakers still fail to grasp the broader whole-of-society grey-zone warfare the CCP conducts against the United States. Though they call for countering Chinese actions, the PRC continues their malign actions with no symmetrical or discernable asymmetrical response.. Allfare provides that aperture to see and then effectively defend against these multifaceted threat vectors. Through both planned and opportunistic actions, the CCP is waging Allfare against the West. Some examples include saber-rattling and confronting ships in the international waters of the South China Sea, inciting anti-Western sentiment through pervasive presence in citizen’s social and digital lives, confounding Western initiatives through vetoes and legal maneuvering in international organizations, cyber-attacks, tolerance of narcotics production for distribution to the West, and positioning for irregular warfare.

Who is more advanced in cyber warfare: US cyber units vs Iranian hackers?

Ilma Athar Ali

The Power Imbalance. The United States is widely considered a 'Tier One' cyber power, possessing global reach and vast resources that few nations can match. In contrast, Iran operates as a 'Tier Two' power, using aggressive and unpredictable tactics to level the playing field. This creates a classic conflict of conventional superiority versus asymmetric guerrilla warfare in the digital domain.

US Financial Dominance. The US Department of Defence allocates billions annually to cyber operations, with the FY2024 budget requesting over $13.5 billion for cyberspace activities alone. This massive funding allows for cutting-edge research, custom tool development, and the recruitment of elite talent. Iran’s military budget is a fraction of this, necessitating a low-cost, high-impact approach to its operations.

Niall Ferguson: How Trump Won Davos

Niall Ferguson

That was one of the better jokes made at the president’s expense this week. And it aligns with a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark.

On Thursday, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen thanked her British counterpart Keir Starmer for his “very strong support to the Kingdom of Denmark.” It had, she said, “been quite a difficult time for us.” But she was grateful “to know that [we] have good friends, strong allies, and that Europeans stand together, don’t get divided, and stick to our, as you said, our common values.” Starmer cooed back in that strangulated voice of his: “We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.”

Dispatch From Davos: The Geopolitics of the New Realism

Michael Froman

Greetings from beautiful Davos, Switzerland—the Mecca of globalism—where the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting is just wrapping up. This year’s Davos theme was “The Spirit of Dialogue,” but in retrospect, it might have been better described as “The Reality of Monologue.” President Donald Trump didn’t just steal the show; he was the show.

Every year, commentators try to assess the zeitgeist of Davos. My take is that people were on edge most of the week. The anxiety leading up to Trump’s speech on Wednesday was palpable, though his remarks produced a collective, if cautious, sigh of relief, particularly among the Europeans. And there were glimmers of optimism, particularly around artificial intelligence (AI). Witness the humanoid and canine-like robots walking along the Promenade. But unlike prior years when the focus was very much on the opportunity of technology, there was at least as much attention this year on geopolitical risk.

IMF Prepares For Global Run On US Dollar

Thomas Moller-Nielsen

(EurActiv) — The International Monetary Fund is preparing for the possibility of a rapid sell-off of US dollar-denominated assets, its managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said on Monday. “At the Fund, one muscle that we are building is our ability to hypothetically present scenarios of unthinkable events and then figure out what to do,” Georgieva said at an event hosted by Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank.

Asked whether the scenarios include a potential run on dollar assets, Georgieva said the Fund runs “all kinds of scenarios” and that it was examining the issue as part of its ongoing analysis. Her comments come as Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence and the rule of law have sparked deep investor unease about the status of the dollar, which has dominated global finance since the end of the Second World War.

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