Indian Strategic Studies

2 February 2026

India’s renewed focus on free-trade agreements

Viraj Solanki

New Delhi has been pursuing trade agreements with several partners, including the European Union – with which it signed a landmark deal on 27 January – the United Kingdom and the United States. This signifies a move towards a more open economy and will boost India’s chances of achieving its longer-term development goals, though structural changes will also be necessary.

In 2025, free-trade agreements (FTAs) became a significant part of India’s geo-economic toolkit. New Delhi concluded new trade agreements with the United Kingdom, Oman and New Zealand, and was in negotiations to sign 12 other new agreements. The latter included talks aimed at reaching a bilateral-trade agreement (BTA) with its largest export market, the United States, and the final stages of long-running negotiations with its largest trade partner, the European Union – which culminated in the signing of an ambitious FTA on 27 January 2026. India has also been in negotiations to update eight existing agreements.

Pakistan’s Middle East Balancing Act

Giorgio Cafiero

Pakistan must manage its new three-way defense agreement with Turkey and Saudi Arabia to avoid upsetting other Middle East actors like Iran and the UAE. Many recent reports have indicated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are increasingly serious about establishing a trilateral security framework centered on the Saudi-Pakistani Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA), signed in September 2025. Modeled loosely on collective-defense principles, the SMDA commits each party to treat an attack on the other as an attack on the rest, while remaining deliberately ambiguous about automatic military responses and the nuclear dimension.

What Is the Pakistani-Saudi-Turkish Trilateral Pact? Ankara’s possible accession would signal a serious effort to recalibrate regional security at a moment of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, when Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are increasingly concerned about a range of threats along their borders. Discussions about Turkey’s entry into this SMDA reflect a broader shift toward layered, flexible security architectures. The prospective framework also carries distinct commercial and industrial logic. Modern security cooperation in the region is increasingly expressed through procurement flows, co-production agreements, logistics access, and financing structures rather than headline treaty clauses alone.

Why EU-India Trade Deal Could Be Bad News for Bangladesh

Md Obaidullah

On January 27, 2026, India and the European Union concluded a historic free trade agreement (FTA). The deal, designed to slash tariffs across most goods and deepen cooperation in services, sustainability, and supply chains, was described by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the “mother of all deals.” For Bangladesh, however, this pact signals a looming structural crisis. Bangladesh’s primary export market is becoming significantly more competitive at the precise moment Dhaka is navigating its precarious post-Least Developed Country (LDC) transition.

While the agreement still requires legal scrubbing, translation, and formal ratification, the strategic direction is undeniable: the EU is preparing to treat India as its preferred economic partner in South Asia. The deal liberalizes trade coverage up to 99.3 percent for the EU and 96.6 percent for India. Critically, the EU will remove tariffs on 90 percent of Indian goods upon the deal’s entry into force, rising to 93 percent within seven years.

China’s Intervention and the Limits of Fatalism in Myanmar

Ye Myo Hein

Over the past year, the most consequential shift in Myanmar’s conflict has been China’s direct intervention. After avoiding overt intervention during the first three years following the 2021 coup, Beijing recalibrated its approach in late 2024, stepping in to prop up the faltering regime under the pretext of stability. This move has altered the conflict’s trajectory, pulling it back from what appeared to be a decisive phase into a prolonged and grinding war.

Alongside Beijing’s expanding role, a dangerous fatalism has taken hold. Many internationals now assume that Myanmar’s political future will ultimately be determined by Beijing; that the resistance will fail because China will not permit its victory; and that domestic actors therefore possess little meaningful agency over outcomes. This is a profound misreading of Myanmar. It underestimates the political aspirations of the population, the depth of determination that has sustained the Spring Revolution over five years, and the movement’s ability to dictate the course of the country’s future.

China executes 11 members of Myanmar scam mafia

Koh Eweand

China has executed 11 members of a notorious mafia family that ran scam centres in Myanmar along its north-eastern border, state media report. The Ming family members were sentenced in September for various crimes including homicide, illegal detention, fraud and operating gambling dens by a court in China's Zhejiang province.

The Mings were one of many clans that ran the town of Laukkaing, transforming an impoverished backwater town into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts. Their scam empire came crashing down in 2023, when they were detained and handed over to China by ethnic militias that had taken control of Laukkaing during an escalation in their conflict with Myanmar's army.

Effective Counters for a Manageable Chinese Threat to U.S. National Security

Ivan Eland

China has become the principal rival of the United States in the minds of the American foreign policy elite and the public. That assessment is fairly recent. From the American Revolution until the end of the 1800s, Britain was America’s perceived nemesis. Afterwards, Germany replaced Britain as a major European rival before and during the Twentieth Century’s two world wars, with Britain being a U.S. ally. During World War II, the communist Soviet Union joined Britain as a U.S. ally to combat Germany and its Axis partners, Italy and Japan. However, immediately after hostilities ended, the Allies’ three former foes joined the United States and Britain in countering the USSR during the more than four-decade-long Cold War.

In the late 1950s, the two communist powers—the Soviet Union and the more radical China—began feuding, and American President Richard Nixon took advantage of the turmoil in the early 1970s to make a major diplomatic overture to Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao died in 1976; China opened its economy to private and foreign businesses beginning in 1978, thereby becoming a less thoroughgoing communist country. Yet when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and it was clear that the Soviet enemy had been severely weakened, the United States began to look askance at even an economically reformed China. America’s suspicions were reinforced by the Chinese government’s armed suppression of a democracy movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that same year.

China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

Bill Gertz

The military has identified three “centers of gravity” under attack by the Chinese Communist Party with the goal of weakening and defeating the U.S., Inside the Ring has learned. A center of gravity refers to a military’s main sources of power, strength and will to act. The term originated with 19th century Prussian military theorist Gen. Carl von Clausewitz.

The first target of China’s potential whole-of-government attack on an American center of gravity would be U.S. political decision-making — the ability of civilian and military leaders to rapidly make decisions. The CCP organization behind targeting critical American decision-making is the United Front Work Department, a combination intelligence-gathering and influence unit with a budget estimated to be as high as $11 billion annually.

Inside China’s plans for ‘national total war,’ according to the Pentagon

Kyle Gunn

China’s military strategy for future conflicts has evolved into “national total war,” a whole-of-nation mobilization effort aimed squarely at overcoming “the strong enemy” it sees in the United States. That’s the conclusion of a recent Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military developments as the country’s leaders eye Taiwan and other regional ambitions.Pentagon planners say the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leaders envision future conflict not simply as a clash of armies and navies, but as a “clash of national systems” that integrates civilian and military power.

The report’s point is that China’s leadership and the PLA aren’t preparing for a future conflict that looks like a clean, military-only fight. The Pentagon argues that the PLA envisions its future “great power conflict” with the U.S. as a top-to-bottom fight using all of Chinese society, with traditional military combat backed by industrial and economic pressure, technology denial, and widespread social control.

The Missile Reality Check: Why War with Iran Could Break Israel’s Missile Shield

Brandon J. Weichert

Iran has the largest stockpile of ballistic missiles in the Middle East today. At a time when the Israel-American military alliance appears poised to enact what will likely be the apotheosis of their long-term campaign of regime change against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime in Tehran is sitting on the region’s largest missile arsenals.

It’s Hard to Imagine the Scale of Iran’s Missile Threat. And it isn’t only missiles that comprise this massive, relatively unused missile threat. This includes hypersonic weapons against which there are no known defenses. With the strike window on Iran now open, as the US maintains a growing armada off the coast of Iran, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his belief that Israel could take more than 700 missile strikes—if it meant the hated Islamic regime in Iran would be destroyed on the other end.

Adaptation and Collapse: Strategic Pragmatism and Systemic Rigidity in the Soviet and Chinese Revolutions

Chick Edmond

Revolutionary states have long sought to transform themselves into stable modernizers but rarely succeed. Why did China succeed and the Soviet Union fail? The key to answering this question is found in the capacity of each state's leadership to strategically adapt to changing conditions at home and abroad. The Chinese government demonstrated a capacity for ideological flexibility, for pragmatic domestic policy adjustment, and for international realignment, exemplified by the rapprochement with the United States during the early 1970s, which enabled sustainable modernization and globalization. In contrast, the Soviet Union maintained a rigid structure that constrained reform, and in many ways, contributed to its eventual collapse. A comparative case analysis using an integrated theoretical framework demonstrates how strategic adaptation and systemic rigidity reshaped the post-Cold War international order and continue to impact today's China-Russia relationships.

Two of the most ambitious revolutions of the twentieth century were undertaken by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC), both of which sought to establish new forms of socialist modernity based on centralized authority, ideological mobilization, and rapid industrialization. Yet, by the end of the Cold War, the two revolutions had ended in starkly different ways. The Soviet Union collapsed due to internal stagnation and external pressure, while China successfully emerged as a major player in the global economy despite facing numerous challenges throughout its early years.

No, the International Community Isn’t Dead Yet

Michael Hirsh

The newest conventional wisdom among the commentariat is to lament the passing of our “rules-based international order”—especially in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s plundering raid through Davos, Switzerland, when the U.S. president nearly upended NATO in pursuit of what he called a “piece of ice,” or Greenland.

But there’s a larger lesson to be found in the extraordinary spectacle of the usually fractious Europeans standing united against the man whom many now see as the mad king of Washington—and in the sudden revolt of global markets against Trump’s behavior. The markets have since stabilized, but “Sell America” sentiment persists, an ever-present threat hovering over Trump’s “A+++++” economy.

The World Will Come to Miss Western Hypocrisy

Matias Spektor

This month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos and delivered a blunt verdict on the international order. For decades, he argued, Western countries prospered by invoking a rules-based system that they knew was hypocritical. They cited liberal ideals while routinely exempting themselves from adhering to them, championed free trade while enforcing it selectively, and spoke the language of international law and human rights while applying those principles unevenly to friends and rivals. “We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Carney acknowledged. This system was tolerable because it provided stability and because American power, despite its double standards, supplied the public goods that other Western countries depended on. But, in Carney’s words, “this bargain no longer works.”

This “rupture” in the international system, as Carney called it, stems from the collapse of that bargain. Powerful countries—namely the United States under President Donald Trump—are abandoning not only the rules that sustained the international order but also the pretense that their actions are and should be guided by principle. Carney is right that something fundamental has shifted. But in calling for middle and emerging powers to stop paying lip service to a broken system, he underestimates what else vanishes when pretense disappears.

When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Dies Quietly

Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel, Daniel Thilo, and Jonas R. Kunst

Imagine you’re doomscrolling through your social media feed. A political controversy breaks—and within minutes, it feels like a tidal wave of commentary. Thousands of “ordinary people” pile on, repeating a theme, sharing links, and “liking” each other’s posts while drowning out dissent.

You start to wonder: Am I out of touch? Is this what people really think? Now imagine that wave wasn’t a wave of people at all. That’s one of the central risks we outline in our new Science Policy Forum article on malicious AI swarms—coordinated fleets of AI agents that can imitate authentic social opinions and actions at scale.

Why is this dangerous for democracy? No democracy can guarantee perfect truth, but democratic deliberation depends on something more fragile: the independence of voices. The “wisdom of crowds” works only if the crowd is made of distinct individuals; when one actor can speak through thousands of masks—and create the illusion of grassroots agreement—that independence collapses into synthetic consensus.

The End of Western Decoupling From China

Wang Wen

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to China this week brought the next round of pragmatic cooperation between the more than 50 leading British companies accompanying him and China. More than that, it also signified the end of Western attempts to decouple from China. January 2026 is thus destined to be written into history books as a turning point in global geopolitics.

This is the first visit to China by a British prime minister in eight years. Two weeks ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also visited China – the first such trip in nine years. In 2018, Canada, at the behest of the United States, detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the airport, plunging Sino-Canadian relations into a deep freeze. A few months later, then-British Prime Minister Theresa May ended her term, and Sino-British relations ended their “golden age” and plunged into an “ice age.”

The Complicated Politics of Trump’s New AI Executive Order

Vikram Venkatram, Mina Narayanan, and Jessica Ji

The Trump administration has released an executive order (EO) aiming to preempt states’ ability to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). The order challenges the constitutionality of states’ AI laws, withholds federal funds from states deemed to have onerous AI regulatory regimes, facilitates the drafting of national AI standards, and directs the creation of a federal AI policy framework that could eventually become law. It could chill state AI regulatory activity while simultaneously provoking an onslaught of legal challenges from states and intense bipartisan backlash, dimming the prospect of turning a preemptive national policy framework into federal law.

The move comes as states develop legislation to address AI risks salient for many voters: child safety, mental health, labor and economic concerns, and energy demands, to name a few. At least twice, policymakers have tried and failed to enact a moratorium that would condition states’ access to federal funds on not enforcing AI legislation (or bar states from enforcing AI laws through other means) for a predetermined number of years. The new executive order goes even further by directing a task force to challenge state AI laws and to facilitate the creation of a national AI framework. The EO appears to be the administration’s attempt to overcome strong opposition from stakeholders across party lines to preempting state AI legislation—opposition that appears to reflect shared prioritization of and demand for AI governance.

Fears of the Dollar’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Milton Ezrati

The dollar cannot lose its status as a global reserve currency unless another currency gains global usage. Fears of the US dollar’s fall from international dominance arise with some frequency these days. Sometimes they emerge out of exaggerated notions of Chinese economic and financial power. Sometimes they reflect concerns about the hollowing out of America’s economy and the nation’s chronic trade deficits. Most recently, dollar fears have sprung from otherwise legitimate concerns about the increasing burden of public debt.

These matters are not unrelated, but the dollar’s role as the primary vehicle of international exchange and store of wealth, what bankers and economists refer to as the “global reserve,” is more complex than such easy links imply. Should the dollar lose its global status, it would occur more slowly than these fears suggest, and if it does, it will not happen for some time. The world simply has no alternative.

New constraints in the global copper market

The global supply of refined copper is likely to be constrained in 2026 and beyond by a combination of disruptions and strategic stockpiling by the United States. Market tightness is being shaped by a convergence of supply-chain frictions, policy choices and accelerating demand from electricity grids, defence production and the construction of infrastructure related to artificial intelligence (AI).

Copper is an essential input for both traditional manufacturing and construction as well as the green-energy and digital industries. Consequently, its supply–demand balance is important for the global economy. Subdued global economic activity has placed limits on overall copper demand for now, but usage is growing rapidly in the renewable-energy, electric-vehicle (EV) and AI sectors. On the supply side, copper mining faces challenges in the form of resource nationalism, environmental regulation, adverse weather and public opposition. Due to these factors, it is likely that the market will move into a structural deficit in the 2030s. Lessons from the past suggest that, rather than derailing the green transition or AI roll-out, high prices will incentivise greater recycling, and technological breakthroughs will likely reduce the quantities of metal needed.

US critical-minerals diplomacy: from America-First deals to Pax Silica

Dr Maria Shagina

President Donald Trump has turned the United States’ critical-minerals policy into a three-pronged, state-capitalist strategy: faster permitting at home, equity-style deals and price floors for strategic producers, and a new wave of bilateral pacts backed by public finance. Washington is now trying to weld these tools into a ‘coalition of capabilities’ – but the model’s success will hinge on implementation.

Since January 2025, US President Donald Trump has adopted a forceful, state-capitalist approach – greater government interventions in corporate decision-making: accelerating permit approvals, brokering private capital and deploying public financial institutions as strategic instruments. China’s export controls and licensing restrictions, issued in April 2025, furthered the shift towards state capitalism, as American public investment in critical-mineral supply chains surged.

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.

Lawless Seas, Contested Shores - Piracy, Smuggling and the Scramble for Port Access in the Horn of Africa

Wolf-Christian Paes

This report examines different expressions of maritime insecurity in the Horn of Africa region and considers the influence of external actors and key non-state armed groups over this domain. After an overview of some of the key land-based political and security challenges confronting Somalia, the report analyses the resurgence of piracy in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean since late 2023, the smuggling of munitions, components and dual-use items between the Horn of Africa and Yemen, and the evolving competition over ports and foreign military bases across the region.

Somalia has been the site of a protracted security and governance crisis since the shattering of its state institutions in the final years of the Cold War. This crisis has reverberated within the Horn of Africa, but also across the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. The shards of the Somali state have been gradually pieced back together, with a fragmented (but internationally supported) federal state nominally in charge of southern and northeastern areas of the country, and a breakaway Republic of Somaliland more effectively projecting power over Somalia’s northwest, while seeking international recognition. These successor states have been locked into an uneasy coexistence, as the federal government in Mogadishu – with the assistance of regional and international militaries – attempts to stave off jihadist insurgents, notably al-Shabaab.

How Artificial Intelligence Could Reshape Four Essential Competitions in Future Warfare

Zachary Burdette, Dwight Phillips, Jacob L. Heim, Edward Geist

How will advances in artificial intelligence (AI) shape the future of war? There is a growing belief among some policymakers and analysts that AI will transform the future of war, but researchers are still in the early stages of understanding how AI will actually change warfighting.

In this report, the authors offer a conceptual framework and preliminary assessment to help set the terms for a more systematic debate about AI’s military implications. The authors use the framework to evaluate how AI could affect four “building block” competitions in military affairs: (1) quantity versus quality, (2) hiding versus finding, (3) centralized versus decentralized command and control (C2), and (4) cyber offense versus cyber defense. Their findings suggest that the U.S. military might need to change important aspects of how it traditionally operates in order to exploit AI’s potential.

Achieving Cognitive Overmatch Through Human-AI Teaming: How AI Supported Feedback Enhances Student-Centric Results and Empowers Instructors

Thomas A. Crowson, Richard A. McConnell, Forrest A. Woolley

In the bustling corridors of military educational institutions, faculty members often find themselves racing against time, juggling multiple responsibilities while striving to grade hundreds of papers each week. The sheer volume of work can overwhelm even the most dedicated instructors, leading to diminished feedback quality and mounting frustration. Then, the worst-case scenario occurred: a government shutdown abruptly removed civilian faculty from the equation. What could have become a crisis instead became a crucible for innovation. Uniformed educators rose to the challenge, not only maintaining throughput but increasing it—while enhancing the quality of feedback—with fewer personnel.

This remarkable transformation underscores the power of emerging technologies in reshaping education. By leveraging human–artificial intelligence (AI) teaming and data-driven tools, military institutions are redefining instructional effectiveness, fostering deeper learning, and preparing leaders for the complexities of modern warfare.

Eurasia Review Interviews: Disinformation, Platforms, And Cognitive Security In The Algorithmic Age

Aritra Banerjee

Disinformation is no longer best understood as a sequence of viral falsehoods or episodic campaigns. It now operates as a persistent feature of the digital information environment, shaped as much by platform architectures, data access regimes, and automated systems as by state intent.

In this conversation, Yuliia Dukach reflects on how contemporary influence operations function in practice: how enduring narratives attach themselves to events, how social platforms condition behavioural impact, and how generative AI is transforming the scale and economics of information manipulation without altering its strategic objectives.

Wargames Keep Warning Us About Congested Logistics—It’s Time to Take Action

Katherine Welch

After examining more than a hundred wargames and tabletop exercises, the conclusion is unavoidable: The US joint force has a logistics problem. And it does not stem from a lack of effort, insight, or participation. Rather, the real problem is that the board has not moved. Despite repeated play, the joint force’s game pieces—force design choices, posture decisions, assumptions about operational feasibility, and risk decisions—remain largely unchanged, even as wargames have begun to advance the decomposition of contested environments and illuminate the real-world logistics challenges US forces will face under congested and contested conditions.

Across the Department of Defense, industry, interagency partners, and allied and partner nations, logistics is routinely described as decisive, and just as routinely treated as secondary. As the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has observed, contested logistics is among the “key capability areas” that are inherently joint, multidomain, and multitheater. This emphasis reflects a broader continuity in senior military leadership: The previous chairman similarly underscored that “all our operations are underwritten by logistics,” explicitly linking sustainment to deterrence and strategic effect. Wargames repeatedly surface the same vulnerabilities, creating a set of well-established known knowns about logistics in contested conditions. Yet those insights rarely translate into changed assumptions, altered force design, or binding institutional decisions. The result is a cycle of activity without progress because we keep rediscovering logistics vulnerabilities instead of converting them into operational advantage.

The fourth arm of defence

Duncan Weldon

In September 1938, at the time of the Sudetenland crisis and the Munich Agreement, Britain had undergone a war scare. That autumn, the last-minute preparations for war had thrown light on a wide range of military shortcomings. Of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) 26 fighter squadrons available for home defence, only six had been equipped with the most modern fighters. A shortage of parts meant that only around half of the RAF’s bombers were ready to fly. The Royal Navy lacked enough smaller escort vessels and minesweepers to protect convoys and keep the sea-lanes clear. The British Army was revealed to have only around one third of the number of searchlights and anti-air guns considered necessary to protect London.

Over the course of 1939, however, confidence had grown. While not all of the previous faults had been rectified, a great many had. By the time of the declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, the RAF had 39 operational fighter squadrons, 26 of those equipped with the most modern aircraft – the Spitfires and Hurricanes that would prove their worth the following summer, during the Battle of Britain. The radar system of early warning stations along the coast was up and running, giving air defence a further crucial boost. The Army, which in September 1938 had only hoped to be able to send two divisions – around 40,000 men – to France was able to have more than 150,000 soldiers and 20,000 vehicles across the Channel by the beginning of October 1939.

1 February 2026

India’s strategic autonomy has become a liability

Maqbool Shah

India’s long-cherished doctrine of strategic autonomy, once a badge of post-colonial independence, is steadily mutating from a source of flexibility into a condition of strategic drift. What was designed to preserve room for maneuver is now generating accumulating costs—economic, military and diplomatic—without producing commensurate leverage in return. In a world that is rapidly polarizing, this imbalance is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Strategic autonomy originated in the Nehruvian era as non-alignment, a pragmatic attempt to avoid entanglement in Cold War blocs while extracting developmental assistance from both. In its contemporary form, it has been rebranded as “multi-alignment”: deepening defense and technological ties with the United States and its partners, maintaining legacy military and energy links with Russia and sustaining substantial economic engagement with China.

The Other India-EU Deal

Sumit Ganguly

On Jan. 27, after two decades of intense negotiations, India concluded a major free trade pact with the European Union that will end tariffs on nearly all traded goods. Much media commentary, understandably, has focused on the economic significance of this accord.

However, another deal signed the same day has been almost completely eclipsed in the process: the Security and Defence Partnership. Under this agreement, the EU and India will enhance cooperation in the areas of maritime security, counterterrorism, and cyberdefense.

Sumit Ganguly is a columnist at Foreign Policy and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he directs the Huntington Program on Strengthening U.S.-India Relations.

Afghanistan and Pakistan Square Off

Michael Kugelman

The most worrisome flash point in South Asia today lies not between the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan but to the west, along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A simmering conflict between these two neighbors now threatens to explode—with damaging consequences for the wider region.

For nearly 20 years, Pakistan has suffered numerous attacks from terrorists belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group that aims to overthrow Pakistan’s government and turn the country into an Islamist emirate. Islamabad blames the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for harboring TTP militants and allowing them to launch attacks on Pakistan from Afghan territory. Terrorist violence has spiked in Pakistan since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, with militants often targeting security forces near the border.

Look Northward, Pakistan

Benazir Samad

In the mountainous northern regions of Pakistan, South Asia feels a world away. In Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan, which share strong cultural ties with Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan region and Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province, some residents add ethnic identifiers such as “Tajik,” “Pamiri,” or “Badakhshani” to their names. While these identifiers don’t appear on official documents, they serve as markers of ancestry and cultural belonging. They also reveal an unofficial truth: Pakistan is far closer to Central Asia than it often cares to admit.

Since its founding in 1947, Pakistan has defined itself almost exclusively through a South Asian lens. Its economy, national security priorities, and even pop culture have been oriented eastward. However, by sidelining its deep cultural and historical links to Central Asia, Pakistan has limited its foreign-policy horizons. It is long past time for Pakistan to embrace the strategic benefits of these shared ties.

Purges, Training Reform Affected Pressure on Taiwan in 2025

K. Tristan Tang

According to data released by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft sorties and naval vessel deployments around Taiwan reached new record highs in 2025. At first glance, this suggests an intensification of gray-zone pressure compared with 2024. Closer examination of disaggregated data, however, shows that the growth rate of aircraft and naval activity in 2025 was lower than the increase observed in 2024. Aircraft and naval activity in the second half of 2025 was also generally lower than in the first half, which contrasts with patterns seen in previous years.

This shift may reflect a reduced emphasis on gray-zone coercion against Taiwan following the purge of the former Central Military Commission (CMC) second vice chairman He Weidong (何卫东), as well as the PLA’s increased focus on exploring new models of joint operations training. This training emphasis likely redirected resources and forces toward joint training areas located farther from Taiwan, thereby reducing the intensity of PLA air and naval activity in Taiwan’s immediate vicinity.

The demise of Zhang Youxia hits different

Drew Thompson

I was genuinely surprised and frankly shocked by the announcement on Saturday that Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia is under investigation and presumably detained. I should not have been surprised. Hundreds of senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers have been investigated, detained and imprisoned since Xi came to power in 2012.

Corruption is endemic in the PLA giving Xi Jinping a perpetual and universal anti-corruption tool to purge politically suspect officers from the ranks. I have been hearing rumors since 2023 that he was being investigated, but I always assumed and even hoped that he would escape Xi’s endless purges. For five years Zhang was in charge of the PLA’s procurement enterprise which involves large budgets and presumably large kickbacks. PLA officers reportedly pay superiors for promotions with variable pricing depending on the rank and potential profitability of the position. Zhang’s predecessor and successor were both punished for corruption.

China has purged its highest-ranked military general. Why?

Zhang Youxia

The senior ranks of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) are in tatters. The weekend purging of China's top general, Zhang Youxia, and another senior military officer, Gen Liu Zhenli, has left serious questions about what triggered the elite power struggles unfolding in the country - and what this means for China's warfighting capacity, whether it be any ambition to take Taiwan by force or engage in another major regional conflict.

Zhang, 75, was vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) - the Communist Party group headed by the country's leader Xi Jinping, which controls the armed forces. The CMC, usually made up of around seven people, has now been whittled down to just two members - Xi and Gen Zhang Shengmin. All others have been taken down in the "anti-corruption" crackdown following previous waves of detention.

Saudi, Israeli officials visit D.C. to talk possible U.S. strikes on Iran

Barak Ravid

The Trump administration is hosting senior defense and intelligence officials from Israel and Saudi Arabia for talks on Iran this week as President Trump considers military strikes, two U.S. officials and two other sources with knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump has ordered a U.S. military buildup in the Gulf to prepare for potential military action. Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region have been on high alert for days in anticipation of a U.S. strike.

Between the lines: The Israelis came to D.C. to share intelligence on possible targets inside Iran.The Saudis, meanwhile, are highly concerned about a potential regional war and are trying to help broker a diplomatic solution.

White House officials say Trump still hasn't made a final decision. While he threatened Iran again on Wednesday with strikes that "will be far worse" than last time, his aides claim he's still willing to explore diplomacy.

Ukraine says more than 80% of enemy targets now destroyed by drones

Rudy Ruitenberg

PARIS — Ukraine says drones now account for more than 80% of enemy targets destroyed as the country’s fight against Russia’s invasion approaches the five-year mark, with most of the drones manufactured locally.

Ukrainian forces recorded 819,737 video-confirmed drone hits in 2025, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday, at an event to award the most effective drone units. Almost a third of the drone strikes targeted enemy personnel, according to data tied to the armed forces’ internal bonus system that awards points for confirmed hits.

“We clearly record every single hit,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the event, in comments in Ukrainian translated by the president’s office. “We also have points awarded for every hit. Our bonus-based electronic points system is working to scale up the results our defense.”

US military used new 'non-kinetic' cell to guide cyber ops during Maduro capture

DAVID DIMOLFETTA

A new “non-kinetic effects cell” has helped push cyber operations to the forefront of specialized U.S. military missions such as the capture of Venezuela's leader in the capital of Caracas, a top official told lawmakers Wednesday.

The cell is “designed to integrate, coordinate and synchronize all of our non-kinetics into the planning, and then, of course, the execution of any operation globally,” Joint Staff Deputy Director for Global Operations Brig. Gen. R. Ryan Messer told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity panel.

Non-kinetic effects are military actions—think cyber operations, electronic warfare and influence campaigns—that influence or disrupt an adversary’s systems without using physical force or causing direct destruction. The operation that apprehended Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro included cyber effects that targeted radar, internet, and the city’s power grid, causing a temporary blackout.

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