Indian Strategic Studies

7 February 2026

Bangladesh And Sri Lanka Foil Indian Tycoon Adani’s Bid To Foist Unequal Deals – Analysis

Shiamak Ali

Bangladesh is home to the world’s 8th largest population– composing around 175 million people pressed into one of South Asia’s most dynamic developmental arcs. Meeting the power needs of such scale is not a peripheral challenge; it is resoundingly structural. Presently, Bangladesh ranks 32nd globally in total electricity consumption, yet that ranking obscures more than it reveals: since 2000, total electricity use in the country has expanded by roughly 550%, an almost unparalleled jump in demand and industrialization.

This surge is not a historical footnote. Rather, it reflects a nation still early in its economic ascent, with a rapidly growing population and abundant room to climb within the global developmental hierarchy. Far from plateauing, Bangladesh’s electricity demand appears set to accelerate, driven not by excess but by sheer necessity– as households urbanize, factories proliferate, and the power grid struggles to keep pace with ambitions that outstrip capacity.

The Long Game:Pakistan’s Military and the Collapse of the Hybrid Pretense

The story of how Pakistan’s army, with the tacit and often explicit support of imperial patrons in Washington, engineered this slow-motion coup spans generations. It involves billions in military aid funneled through cooperative dictators, systematic destruction of political alternatives, and the construction of an economic empire that dwarfs the official defense budget. And at the center of this moment in history stands one man whose refusal to play by the old rules has exposed the entire architecture of control: Imran Khan, languishing in Adiala Jail not for crimes committed but for the unforgivable sin of seeing through the establishment’s machinations and refusing to be their frontman.

This analysis draws on decades of observable patterns, connecting dots that reveal a consistent strategy. Khan came to power despite establishment resistance that deliberately weakened his mandate, but what the generals fatally miscalculated was that they were dealing with someone who actually believed in the reform agenda he campaigned on. They thought his charisma and popularity could provide perfect cover for business as usual if kept weak enough to control. Instead, they got a leader who recognized their game and chose resistance over complicity. And at the center of the current arrangement sits what can only be described as Pakistan Democratic Movement 2.0, a recycled coalition of the same old faces serving as little more than pencil pushers and rubber stamps for decisions made in GHQ.

Taiwan: Defense And Military Issues – Analysis

Caitlin Campbell

Taiwan (which formally calls itself the Republic of China, or ROC) is a self-governing democracy of 23.3 million people located across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China. The People’s Republic of China (PRC, or China) claims but has never controlled Taiwan. PRC leaders have stated their preference to unify peacefully with Taiwan, but have insisted on the right to use force to bring Taiwan under PRC control.

U.S. policy toward Taiwan has prioritized maintaining peace and stability across the Strait. For more than 75 years, the U.S. government has sought to strengthen Taiwan’s and its own ability to deter PRC military aggression. The PRC, for its part, has claimed the United States uses Taiwan as a “pawn” to “contain” China. Congress has long championed U.S.-Taiwan defense ties, and has authorized new programs and appropriated additional funds to support Taiwan’s defense since 2022. For more information on cross-Strait relations and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, see CRS In Focus IF10275, Taiwan: Background and U.S. Relations, by Susan V. Lawrence.

China’s Cheap Oil Strategy Is Becoming a Geopolitical Liability

Nik Foster

The U.S government’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last month is upending broader geopolitics as we know it. Informed by the second Trump administration’s focus on the Western Hemisphere, and codified in the November 2025 National Security Strategy, which calls for direct action against regimes Washington deems destabilizing or hostile to U.S. interests, the action signals that Venezuela’s future will likely be tied closely to the whims of Washington, D.C.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, as well as an abundance of gold, diamonds, and other natural resources. As Western sanctions on Venezuela have dramatically curtailed its oil exports to the United States and Europe, the country has found a reliable buyer for its crude oil in China, which has purchased up to 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports in recent years at discount rates.

Ruptures in China’s Leadership Could Be Due to Paranoia and Power Plays

Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

Since taking the reins of the world’s most populous superpower nearly 14 years ago, Xi Jinping has ravaged the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. He has taken down ruling officials, security chiefs and children of the party’s “red aristocracy.” But even by those standards, his latest purge was remarkable. The Chinese defense ministry’s announcement on Jan. 24 that the country’s top military leader, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and an associate, Gen. Liu Zhenli, were under investigation for “grave violations” startled officials and analysts in Washington. General Zhang is a venerated war veteran long believed to be loyal to Mr. Xi.

U.S. officials have been trying to sift through the murky waters of elite politics in Beijing to figure out why China’s leader took such a dramatic step. They say it is critical for the U.S. government to get a handle on Mr. Xi’s state of mind because his policies, like those of President Trump, affect everything from the global economy to the operations of one of the world’s most powerful militaries. But current and former U.S. officials say that no obvious reason has emerged behind Mr. Xi’s latest actions. The Chinese leader could be acting out of paranoia, defending himself against a real political challenge, or genuinely attempting to address high-level corruption in the People’s Liberation Army, they say.

As a parade of US allies rattled by Trump visit China, Beijing claims a win for its new world order

Simone McCarthy

As US President Donald Trump takes a sledgehammer to longstanding alliances with a volatile foreign policy that’s included threats to take control of Greenland and a spiraling feud with Canada, he’s also creating a significant opening for China. Look no further than the revolving door of Western leaders hosted by Xi Jinping in recent weeks aiming to reset relations or deepen cooperation with the world’s second-largest economy.

That procession includes the leaders of some of the US’ closest traditional allies: Britain’s Keir Starmer and Canada’s Mark Carney last month, as well as NATO ally Finland’s Petteri Orpo. French President Emmanuel Macron made a visit in December, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected soon. Viewed from Beijing, that list is a powerful sign that an era of talking about economic separation from China is waning, and Western leaders are finally seeing China as a reliable partner – in contrast to the US under Trump.

China’s Redlines Aren’t Where You Think They Are | USNI Proceedings

In China’s Redlines Aren’t Where You Think They Are, Lt. Col. Brian Kerg argues that U.S. planners consistently misread the sources of escalation risk in the Taiwan Strait. Drawing on the First, Second, and Third Taiwan Strait Crises, he shows that Chinese escalation has been driven by perceived threats to political narratives and objectives rather than by the mere presence or use of U.S. military power.

The article challenges assumptions that restraint preserves stability and instead identifies substantial maneuver space for U.S. naval and amphibious forces to deter aggression without crossing Beijing’s true redlines. Kerg concludes that stability depends on avoiding political challenges to the status quo while making any attack on Taiwan carry an unmistakable risk of war with the United States.

Machines in the Alleyways: China’s Bet on Autonomous Urban Warfare

Michael C. Loftus

Much of the public discussion on China’s development of autonomous weapons systems thus far has centered on the sea and air domains but have not grappled with how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could deploy these systems for urban warfare. This analysis of Chinese efforts to automate anti-submarine warfare, enable long-range missile targeting of U.S. carrier strike groups through satellite-based radar, and the Center of Naval Analyses’ recent report on drone swarms’ role in China’s counter-intervention strategy is absolutely essential. However, for any invasion of Taiwan to succeed, the PLA must win not just on solitary stretches of sea, but amid the clamor of crowded civilian streets.

Home to 23 million civilians, Taiwan is one of the most urbanized places on earth. In the north, nearly 10 million people live in the metropolitan belt stretching from Taipei through New Taipei City and Taoyuan. In the south, Kaohsiung anchors another dense urban sprawl. While there is no general consensus whether a PLA invasion would concentrate on either point, both strategies would require daunting urban warfare.

How might a functional ‘M12’ grouping of middle powers look like?

Gabriel Elefteriu

As world order frays and old alliances falter, the search is on for new solutions to stabilise the international system while preserving at least some of the principles and aspects of the outgoing dispensation that have served Western powers well since the Second World War. The problem facing statesmen today is not simply practical – that is, related to the changing balance of power, especially in military terms, and the emergence of Tripolarity. An additional and perhaps more important challenge is the intellectual, or even philosophical, foundations which should underlie the next iteration of a global political architecture for peace and security.

In the modern world, at least, any such “system” requires some legitimising and organising principle at its core, in order to be viable for any significant period of time. The post-Napoleonic Vienna system was grounded in the idea of sovereign equality and restoration or preservation of traditional monarchies. After the First World War “collective security” combined with national self-determination to provide a new basis for world order, which failed. The post-1945 world introduced the UN system as a source of legitimacy, with the special authority of the veto-wielding “permanent five” members of the UN Security Council. Of course, in practical terms stability derived not from P5 consensus but from containment and nuclear deterrence – but the UN and the “international community” were a crucial factor in the political and strategic calculations of the two superpowers in an age of acute ideological confrontation.

The new right: Anatomy of a global political revolution

Mark Leonard

“[Europe’s] economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure”, proclaimed the United States’ new National Security Strategy (NSS), published on December 4th 2025. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less,” the document added. “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies”.

It was quite unlike any past NSS—even the one published by Donald Trump’s first administration in 2017. Gone were the establishment American homilies to shared transatlantic values and interests, and the sanctity of the relationship with European allies. In their place was a brutal assault on the politics and culture of today’s Europe that implied that continued US investment in the continent’s security could be conditional on reversing this “civilisational erasure”. It also asserted that the second Trump administration would embrace “the growing influence of patriotic European parties”—seemingly a reference to the rise of the nationalist forces in much of Europe.

The future of world order

Francis J. Gavin

The contemporary world order is poorly suited to today's dynamic, changing international system, a disparity that lies at the heart of our current sense of crisis. What will the state of world order be 10, 15, 20 years from now? Any analysis of world order and its future is only as good as the underlying assumptions it is based upon. I offer five.

The first assumption involves defining terms clearly. ‘World order’ does not mean the same thing as the ‘international system’, though these terms are often used interchangeably. Nor is world order the same as ‘theories of international relations’. The international system describes how the world works: what are its features and characteristics, principal drivers, dangers, constraints, actors and opportunities that shape global affairs. Some suggest it is shaped by unchanging, structural and material forces, whereas others believe the international system shifts over time and can be altered through political interventions.

PLA Assessments on the Centrality of Space Power in Ukraine

Sunny Cheung

In December 2025, Beijing submitted its largest-ever coordinated filings for satellite spectrum and orbital slots to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Covering 203,000 satellites, the filings indicate plans to build extensive non-geostationary satellite constellations (Science and Technology Daily, January 11). The move came shortly after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee elevated commercial space to the status of a “strategic emerging industry” (战略性新兴产业) in its recommendations for the upcoming five-year plan. This designation will trigger a new wave of state support and private investment (Xinhua, October 28, 2025; China Brief, December 6, 2025).

Satellite constellations, like many space technologies, are dual-use. Researchers with ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are studying how such satellite systems have reshaped the battlefield during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (RAND, March 24, 2025; China Brief, April 11, 2025). Chinese military and defense-technology writers have treated the war as a stress test of modern space-enabled warfare, especially the fusion of military space assets with commercial satellites. Across dozens of Chinese-language analyses, a consistent picture emerges. Satellites are no longer a niche enabler sitting behind air, land, and maritime operations. They are increasingly framed as the “foundation” (底座) of combat power, supporting command and control (C2), precision strike, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), battlefield connectivity, and even the public information environment.

The Clash of Civilizations at 30

Graham McAleer

Huntington was right to highlight the West's civilizational achievement. About Samuel Huntington’s “seminal book,” Zbigniew Brzezinski says, “the sheer size of [the] book’s global readership testifies that it satisfied the widespread craving for a comprehensive understanding of our currently turbulent historical reality.” Published after the ideological wars of the twentieth century, Huntington’s 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order argued that moving forward, the central and most dangerous phenomenon in global affairs would be “conflict between groups from differing civilizations.” Despite the best-seller numbers, commentators from the left and the right reacted negatively. In The Nation, Edward Said rebuked “this belligerent kind of thought.” John Gray pointed out that history shows war happens more within civilizations than between them, citing the catastrophes of WW1, WW2, and the Cold War as examples.

Huntington is well able to blunt Said’s point, for his conflict claim had a corollary, that “an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war.” In fairness, Huntington, who died in 2008, was more interested in order than in war. Gray contends that the great twentieth century conflicts were resource wars, not disputes between value orders. Yet hierarchies of worth promoted by civilizations must shape how peoples value land. Huntington identified Sinic, Japanese, Orthodox, Christian West, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, African, and Latin civilizations. The list is obviously unstable, with all manner of overlaps, yet some such classification of order rings true, and this is why “big picture” philosophies of history work along these lines.

The US Is Not Built For War Or Peace

Jesse R. Humpal, Ph.D., Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, Ph.D.

A minor power outage in San Francisco offered a quiet preview of a strategic vulnerability hiding in plain sight. As traffic signals went dark, dozens of autonomous Waymo vehicles stalled, unable to read the roadway. With hazard lights blinking, they gridlocked intersections and slowed large parts of the city to a crawl until tow trucks arrived.

That episode is a stark warning for military logistics. The same cascading failure that paralyzed civilian mobility could halt the movement of forces from fort to port. Friction emerges not from a single event, but from interdependent systems degrading in unison. Yet, American policymakers assume the industrial base is resilient, when it is actually brittle, optimized for just-in-time supply chains and just-enough capacity. When shocks hit (e.g., pandemics, wars, political instability, cyber incidents, or weaponized supply chains), Washington responds with emergency authorities and surge funding, confusing endurance with readiness. A system that merely limps through disruption is optimized for continuity, not crisis.

The devil you know is better than the one you don’t: Proponents still fail to detail benefits of Beijing-led order

Stephen Kuper

As the United States continues to emphasise locking down the western hemisphere, Beijing continues to expand its reach across the Indo-Pacific, with some claiming a Chinese-led region is preferable to a pseudo-imperial US-led order, but what does that look like?

Since the end of the Second World War, Australia’s economic, political and strategic outlook has been shaped above all by two external relationships: its longstanding alliance with the United States and its increasingly consequential and complex relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Together, these relationships have underpinned Australia’s prosperity and security while also generating the central strategic tensions confronting the country today.

The Australia–United States relationship emerged directly from the experience of the Pacific War. The fall of Singapore and Britain’s inability to defend Australia decisively ended any lingering reliance on the United Kingdom as Australia’s principal security guarantor. In its place, Australia turned to the United States, a shift formalised in the 1951 ANZUS Treaty. Throughout the Cold War, this alliance was reinforced by shared democratic values, deepening intelligence cooperation, and Australia’s participation alongside the US in major conflicts, including Korea and Vietnam.

A New World Order? Careful What You Wish For

Shivshankar Menon

The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.

— Antonio Gramsci, at the end of WWI

What explains the persistent attraction of the idea of world order, even before technology and globalization made a truly global order possible in the late nineteenth century, and even now, when signs of its absence proliferate?

I speak here of a world order in both senses: as an attempt to order the known world, and as an ordering of international affairs on a global scale. The dictionary definition of world order is even more ambitious: “a system controlling events in the world, especially a set of arrangements established internationally for preserving global political stability.” A less lofty and more practical definition of the international order would be: the interconnected set of rules, norms, and institutions established by the great powers for managing conflict and cooperation.1 When that definition applies to the entire known world, such an order becomes a world order.

Red Sea To East Africa: China’s Infrastructure Power And The New Maritime Statecraft – Analysis

Akshan Ranjan and Khushnuma Alam

The Indian Ocean and Red Sea is subject to witness increasing intensified rivalry and owing to this Africa’s maritime topography has assumed increased strategic importance. The recent Chinese investments in ports across key nations of East Africa such as Tanzania, Kenya and Djibouti are often depicted as precursors to military installations abroad or covert power projection.

However, these concerns are justified but they risk neglecting a more consequential reality. Comparatively, a more subdued form of maritime statecraft is reflected by China’s outlook to African ports. Instead of depending totally upon the overt coercive forces China assembles its influence via integration of logistics, commercial connectivity and the development of the infrastructure. Countries of East Africa present an interesting case of China gaining strategic benefits that function below the threshold of formal securitisation process by integrating itself into Africa’s political economy of transportation and commerce, ultimately affecting and reshaping the larger maritime order.

Elizabeth Saunders’ “The Insiders’ Game”

Mara Karlin

Elizabeth Saunders’s The Insiders’ Game offers a rich perspective regarding how legislators, military leaders, and high-ranking civilian officials shape national security decision-making. Elizabeth Saunders’s recent book, The Insiders’ Game, offers a positive contribution to the literature on war-making. By exploring the role of democratic elites in shaping major decisions regarding war and peace—including the approach, the parameters, and the length of a conflict—Saunders underscores that more people are at the decision-making table than readers may have previously considered. She focuses on three groups—legislators, military leaders, and high-ranking civilian officials—and the book is particularly useful in outlining how and in what ways these cohorts shape decision-making by imposing resource or informational costs on leaders. Although Saunders’s book provides a broad and rich view of multiple cases, her book is particularly illuminating in how it treats these dynamics during the formation of US policy toward Lebanon in the 1980s, and in comparing different administrations’ approaches to strategy during America’s post-9/11 wars.1

How Insiders Shaped a Fuzzy Mission in Lebanon. The calamitous national security decision-making that characterized President Ronald Reagan’s approach to Lebanon in 1982–84 has been well recounted. Saunders’s book provides clarity about the impact of this dysfunctional process; as she compellingly argues, the elite debates in Reagan’s administration ultimately constrained the US mission in Lebanon.

Ukraine hails 'real results' after Musk restricts Russian Starlink use

Laura Gozzi

Elon Musk's efforts to stop Russia from using Starlink satellites for drone attacks have "delivered real results", a Ukrainian official said. Praising the SpaceX founder as "a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people", defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Musk had swiftly responded when he was told Russian drones with Starlink connectivity were operating in the country. The drones have been linked to a number of recent deadly attacks by Russia on Ukraine, including one on a moving passenger train which left six people dead.

"Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia have worked," Musk wrote on X. "Let us know if more needs to be done." Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX provide high-speed internet around the world. It has worked in Ukraine since the first days of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

What the West Got Wrong About Russian “Hybrid Warfare”: Understanding Russian Unconventional Activities Will Determine Future Strategies and the Resilience of Europe

Dr. Sascha Hach, Austin Wright

Alongside Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, non-military operations across Europe have also been on the rise, blending methods of espionage, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks and sabotage with other unconventional means of attack. These events have given new impetus to analyses on how to address the issue of ‘hybrid warfare’. The ongoing negotiations on a ceasefire and an end to the war have also raised the question of how Moscow’s employment of hybrid warfare can be curbed, or whether we must prepare for it to continue even after the fighting ends. In this context, it is important to understand the evolution of Russia’s unconventional methods of international interference and the conceptual reasoning behind them.

The Conceptual Rediscovery of Unconventional Warfare.During the Cold War the Soviet Union used “active measures” to pursue its political objectives: covert operations involving everything from disinformation and propaganda to agents of influence, subversion and sabotage, even kidnapping and assassinations. These actions, which coincided with an uptick in internal conflict across the globe, compelled Western strategists to grapple with the blurring of lines between military and civilian entities. Eventually, strategic theorist and defense analyst Frank Hoffman coined the term ‘hybrid warfare’, arguing that nations, not just rebel or terrorist groups, can combine irregular tactics and covert operations to achieve their goals both on and off the battlefield. While not the first to do so, Hoffman conceptually linked unconventional means with conventional practices of warfare in a way that came to dominate Western security conversations. This was especially the case during the War on Terror, when Hoffman’s model seemed to address the fluidity and interweaving of warfighting techniques that characterized political conflict the modern era. Consequently, this framework has been used to contextualize and interrogate Russia’s behavior towards the West with little consideration for Moscow’s own understanding of what can be achieved through covert measures below the threshold of war.

Assessing Developments in Anti-Technological Extremism with AI Data Centers

Jordyn Abrams

As AI develops, anti-technology extremism is evolving—making AI data centers symbolic, high-risk targets for ideologically diverse actors.

Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, may be seeing a resurgence in his ideology. However, this also may mean a resurgence in the violent methods he used to garner attention for his ideology. Kaczynski had an extremist, anti-technology ideology, solidified through his manifesto “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which was published in The Washington Post and The New York Times after he had threatened to continue his bombing campaign. The manifesto laid out Kaczynski’s ideology, in which he perceived technology as a “disaster for the human race” due to its psychological effects and its compulsion to lead an unfulfilling life. With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly being integrated into all aspects of society, similar sentiments to Kaczynski’s concerns, ranging from increasing loneliness to job loss, are echoed. Fueled by some of these fears, threats to physically damage AI infrastructure have proliferated online in the past year. Tech infrastructure has been targeted before, for example, when an anti-government extremist with hopes to “kill off about 70 percent of the internet” plotted to bomb an Amazon data center in Virginia in 2021. Similarly, in January 2026, a far-left group in Germany claimed responsibility for a suspected arson attack near a Tesla factory with broader goals related to the environment. In the latest evolution of anti-technological extremism, aligned with multiple political narratives, AI data centers may become the new targets for attacks.

New US Army software predicts ammo and fuel needs for however an enemy might fight

Chris Panella

A new combat tool is helping the US Army predict what ammo, fuel, and supplies it'll need by gaming out how enemies might attack. The change is speeding up and breaking down barriers within the logistics chain, with real-time data helping troops, commanders, and sustainment planners predict what's needed so that they don't get left waiting around for days only to find they're facing a critical supply shortage.

Logistics is a central focus of the Army's broader push to modernize how it fights and sustains forces, and the effort is unfolding through the Next Generation Command and Control system, or NGC2. The system is being built through a series of exercises and tests, with each iteration pulling in more weapons, vehicles, sensors, and data streams to expand what it can do. At an exercise happening right now at Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army and a team of industry partners, including Anduril, are expanding NGC2 to make supply chain data more accessible and predictive when it comes to what soldiers need to fight.

Consolidation Is Not Flattening: Why the “Department of War” Needs a JSOC Model

Stephen D. Cook

Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to trim 20% of the four-star ranks is a necessary first step, but it risks becoming another exercise in "reorganizing the deck chairs" if the underlying architecture of the Generating Force isn’t fundamentally dismantled. In the Operating Force, specifically within organizations like JSOC, we have already proven that flattening works. When an O-6 commander reports directly to an O-9 to achieve strategic effects, the "flash to bang" is instantaneous. Yet, in the Generating Force—the massive machine responsible for training, equipping, and sustaining the military—we’re doubling down on Consolidation instead of Flattening.

The Consolidation Trap: T2COM and PAEs. The recent standing up of T2COM (Transformation and Training Command) and the transition to Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) are touted as revolutionary. In reality, they are "Ghost Echelons." By merging disparate commands into "super-portfolios," we aren't removing layers; we’re merely hiding the same number of flag officer staffs under a single roof.

War Injuries: Seeing Beyond Weapons and Doctrines

Daniel Ekwall, Anders Jonsson, Jan-Olof Svärd

War injuries are more than collateral damage; they are historical markers that reveal how wars are fought, the weapons used, and the doctrines that shape them. From Napoleonic amputations to traumatic brain injuries in modern conflicts, and the collapse of the “Golden Hour” in Ukraine, these wounds testify to the evolving interplay between weapons, protection, and human vulnerability. They underscore that the true story of war is written not in triumph but in the visible and invisible scars that demand care long after the guns fall silent.

Every battlefield tells a story written in flesh and bone instead of in thunderous speeches and compelling narrative of righteousness. War injuries are more than collateral damage; they are the silent memory of conflict. They tell the story of how the war was fought and with which weapons. All changes in warfare will be found in changes in war injuries. From shattered limbs on Napoleonic fields to traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in asymmetric wars, wounds reveal the evolution of warfare itself. Each scar is both a marker of progress and a reminder of its human cost.

Why Are American Allies Shelving the Purchase of American Jets and Missiles?

Patrick Drennan

While many nations have committed to buying American jet fighters like the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning, its price ($US100 million per unit), high maintenance and operational costs ($6.6million per year), including the cost of its missiles, have seen many American allies look for alternatives. So, considering the approximate unit price in U.S. dollars, who are the main competitors?

The French Dassault Rafale-F4 jet fighter sells for $250 million each and costs about $3.5 million per year to maintain. The Eurofighter Typhoon, representing the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain, costs about $120 million per plane, and also about $3.5 million per year to operate (based on a 2023 fleet of 137 aircraft and a 2024 parliamentary report). Since Sweden joined NATO in March 2024 it has raced to develop its Gripen E-series jet fighters to be compatible with organizational standards. While lacking the stealth of the F-35, its PS-05/A pulse-doppler radar may give it an edge in complex combat scenarios. While the Gripen sells for about $85 million per unit, it has significantly lower flight costs than its competitors (about $7,500 per hour) It can land on motorways, and a small ground crew can refuel and re-arm the aircraft in under 20 minutes.

6 February 2026

India’s Failure Against PLA In Ladakh in 2020 Was Due To Political Indecision, Says Ex-Army Chief Gen. Naravane – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

In his yet unpublished book entitled Four Stars of Destiny, India’s former army chief, Gen. M.M.Naravane blames the highest echelons of the country’s political leadership for the setbacks suffered by the Indian army in the Ladakh sector of the Sino-Indian border in 2020-21. Naravane was army chief between December 2019 and April 2022, a period that was one of the most consequential in recent military history, after the 1962 border war.

A point which emerges from Naravane’s account is that unlike the People’ Liberation Army (PLA) of China, the leadership of the Indian army is not an integrated military-political institution. China’s political leadership is represented at the very top of the PLA, providing the strategic thinking. China’s top leadership is part of the over-arching Central Military Commission, the head of which is none other than President Xi Jinping. But in India, the military and political leaderships are not intertwined in the same way. The two are distinct entities with the political leadership having the final say in matters of war and peace. Therefore, the PLA in Ladakh, as elsewhere, was better equipped to quickly tackle tactical and strategic challenges, as compared to the Indian army which lacked such a well-integrated back up.

Disinformation and deepfakes: Improving crisis communications in India and Pakistan

Qamar Shahzad Rajoka

The four-day military crisis between India and Pakistan in May 2025 became even more dangerous when both countries integrated disinformation and fake images into their conventional warfighting. The speedy generation of false information and realistic deepfakes, aided by AI, made it difficult to verify what was really happening during the crisis. Even reputable journalists, government officials, and politicians were misled by fabricated content shared as authentic battlefield footage.

Such material might not trigger a crisis, but it can dangerously intensify one. The type of synthetic data that was unleashed during the May 2025 crisis poses two big challenges in South Asia: strategic confusion and the danger of reading the other side wrong. Fortunately, there are several policies that can help counter viral disinformation within the nuclear dyad of India and Pakistan. The 2025 crisis. Disinformation spreads faster than correct information. That makes it extremely hard to verify narratives emerging on social media. Respected figures who have many followers on social media can unwittingly spread fake news to large audiences who accept the information as truth.

The S-500 Factor: India’s Missile Defence Ambitions and the New Asian Security Dilemma

Tahir Azad

India is steadily modernizing its military capabilities and expanding its air defense network, entering a potentially transformative phase. After buying advanced fighter jets and multi-layer missile defense systems such as the S-400 missile system, India is once again focusing on the Russian S-500 missile system, which is at the top of the list for air and missile defense. The timing is important because the renewed push comes at a time when strategic competition is getting worse in Asia, threats from both conventional and non-conventional weapons are rising, and the global order is changing quickly. Vladimir Putin’s visit to India in 2025 has given this goal more energy by starting up talks again about buying high-end weapons and making weapons together.

This paper examines the potential benefits for India regarding a prospective S-500 acquisition, its integration into India’s overarching military modernization efforts, the anticipated responses from regional powers—particularly Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China—and the apprehension with which the United States is monitoring this strategic realignment.

Sri Lanka: Managed Stability – Analysis

Afsara Shaheen

Sri Lanka entered 2026 with a security environment that remained broadly stable but layered with unresolved structural vulnerabilities rooted in post-war reconciliation failures, persistent diaspora activism, narcotics trafficking, and evolving regional security dynamics. While the country continued to record an absence of terrorism-linked fatalities, sustaining its position among the lowest-risk nations globally, the year nonetheless underscored the paradox of “negative peace” – the absence of violence without the resolution of underlying political and ethnic contestations. The National People’s Power (NPP) Government, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, inherited a security architecture shaped by long-standing counterterrorism frameworks, and largely opted for continuity rather than rupture, particularly in matters related to proscription regimes and intelligence-led policing.

A defining development shaping the 2026 security narrative was the January 13 decision of the NPP Government to issue an extraordinary gazette extending the long-standing ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and multiple Tamil diaspora organisations and individuals. By reissuing and updating the May 2025 proscription list, the Government reaffirmed its position that overseas Tamil political and advocacy bodies continued to pose security risks through alleged terrorism-related activities. Organisations such as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC), World Tamil Movement (WTM), Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), World Tamil Relief Fund (WTRF), National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT), and Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) remained blacklisted, with updated identification details and new reference numbers issued for 2026. Although no substantive new allegations were introduced, the continuation of this sweeping proscription regime reinforced the securitised lens through which the Sri Lankan State continues to view diaspora mobilisation more than 15 years after the end of the civil war. Originally introduced in 2014 under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the proscription framework continues to criminalise contact with listed entities, constraining political engagement and perpetuating mistrust between the State and Tamil communities abroad.

Xi’s military purge is not really about corruption

Kerry Brown

Zhang Youxia, a top military general and vice-chairman of the body in overall command of China’s military forces, was removed from office on January 23. His departure means all but one of the seven members of the central military commission (CMC), which is chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, have lost their positions in the last three years. Xi has an established record of purging senior officials. Back at the dawn of his tenure as head of the Chinese Communist Party in the early 2010s, there was a series of high-level fallings. Bo Xilai, a fellow Politburo member who was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges, was perhaps the most commented on.

But even Zhou Yongkang, a former senior party leader, was taken in under corruption charges in 2013 and expelled from the party. The slogan used by party leadership at the time was that even tigers needed to be afraid, not just flies. There were no exceptions when it came to party loyalty – no one was exempt and no one was safe.

China aggression renews question of whether Trump would defend Taiwan with US military

George Headley

WASHINGTON – In a two-day operation in December, dozens of Chinese ships and aircraft surrounded Taiwan in what looked like a rehearsal for a blockade. Taiwan’s military counted 90 aircraft sorties that crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait on Dec. 29. Four amphibious assault ship formations were detected in international waters and 19 Chinese ships entered the island’s 24-mile buffer zone.

The exercise continued the next day with more incursions by air and sea. Ten long-range rockets landed within 24 miles of the coast – the closest live projectiles China had ever fired, according to the Global Taiwan Institute. “Justice Mission 2025” was one of China’s largest exercises ever around Taiwan, and the biggest since 2022, when it lashed out after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the self-governing island in 25 years.

China’s Disappearing Generals

Amy Chang Chien, Agnes Chang and Chris Buckley

Feb. 3, 2026China’s military leadership stood before the nation in March 2023, an image of unity behind Xi Jinping. After nearly a decade in power, Mr. Xi had installed the high command that he wanted: loyalists hand-picked to make the People’s Liberation Army a world-class force.

But not even Mr. Xi’s loyalists have been spared from his sweeping campaign to clean up the military — with purges that are ostensibly focused on corruption but are also about fealty to him. One by one, members of the Central Military Commission have been dismissed and put under investigation. The latest was Gen. Zhang Youxia, Mr. Xi’s top general.

Beyond Deterrence: How China Turned Taiwan Into a Governance Testbed

Erika Lafrennie

Taiwan dominates American strategic thinking as the ultimate deterrence problem. Pentagon war games model invasion scenarios. Think tanks debate force ratios. Analysts calculate escalation ladders. The conversation assumes deterrence is being tested.

That assumption is wrong—not because deterrence is failing, but because it was never the organizing logic shaping outcomes in Taiwan. Taiwan is not where deterrence is being tested. Taiwan is where governance competition is being made visible. This is not a war plan or a Taiwan policy piece. It is a close examination of how modern power actually operates. The conflict most analysts fear is already happening.

How Trump is giving China a chance to reshape global order

Yuchen Li

In January, the same month the United States announced its withdrawal from 66 multilateral organizations, China hosted leaders from Canada, Finland and Britain. "The international order is under great strain," Chinese leader Xi Jinping told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for efforts to "build an equal and orderly multipolar world," as the two met in Beijing on January 29. The message is not new in China's diplomatic rhetoric but has become more pronounced amid US disengagement from multilateral institutions.

The US is notably abandoning many initiatives focusing on climate change, labor and migration — areas President Donald Trump has characterized as "woke" initiatives "contrary to the interests" of the country. At the same time, China remains a member of most of these multilateral organizations and is gaining broader global recognition. A recent international survey found that respondents across 21 countries, including 10 European Union member states, expect China's global influence to grow over the next decade, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.

North America’s top computer vision scientist Liang Jie returns to China

Shi Huang

Twenty years ago, technologies developed by Liang Jie at Microsoft were incorporated into products like the Windows Media Video Player and Blu-ray discs used by millions worldwide. A decade on, while a professor in Canada, Liang ventured into entrepreneurship, developing an intelligent sensor system for elderly care to address global population ageing. Today, he brings his top-tier expertise in image and video compression back to China.

According to the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo (EIT), he joined the university in January as a chair professor at its School of Electronic Science and Technology. Liang was admitted to the special programme for gifted students at Xian Jiaotong University in 1988, transferring to the electrical engineering programme in 1989.

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