Indian Strategic Studies

15 December 2025

India and the Indo-Pacific in Trump’s Second-term Strategy

Biyon Sony Joseph

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India signs the guest book in the Roosevelt Room before a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Feb. 13, 2025.Credit: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

The present Trump administration’s approach toward India and the Indo-Pacific reflects a marked departure from the strategic framing that characterized its first term (2017-2021). While New Delhi finds itself navigating an increasingly strained phase in bilateral relations with Washington, the release of the latest United States National Security Strategy offers important insights into how a second Trump presidency views the Indo-Pacific and the role India is expected to play within it. For India, the document carries both signals of continuity and indications of a broader strategic recalibration that could have significant implications for its regional ambitions.

During the first Trump administration, the Indo-Pacific occupied a central place in American strategic thinking. The 2017 National Security Strategy explicitly positioned the Free and Open Indo-Pacific as the cornerstone of U.S. engagement with Asia, underlining the region’s importance for maintaining a balance of power, securing vital sea lanes, and upholding a rules-based order. The new strategy, however, reflects a noticeable downgrading of regional priority. Although the Indo-Pacific continues to be identified as an area of core American interest, it no longer commands the same strategic prominence. Instead, the document makes it clear that the administration’s principal focus will be on the Western Hemisphere, reinforced by the articulation of a so-called Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Pakistan and Afghanistan: Can the ‘Mother of All Relations’ Be Fixed?

Touqir Hussain

Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, famously said that the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship is “the mother of all relations.” He may have been right. Otherwise how do you explain that Pakistan and the Taliban, whom Islamabad had nurtured for decades at the cost of much reputational damage, are now engaged in a deadly armed conflict?

After taking control of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban, Islamabad’s former proxies, were expected to provide Pakistan with so-called “strategic depth” against India. Instead they have come to be diplomatically closer to India than to Pakistan. And now Pakistan’s defense minister has been warning about an open war to obliterate the Taliban – threatening to change the very regime Pakistan helped to come to power in Afghanistan.

At the center of the dispute is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its sinister campaign of terrorism inside Pakistan. TTP attacks continues to cause heavy fatalities, specially among security forces. By all accounts, these attacks are being directed by TTP leaders and commanders based in Afghanistan. This has motivated Pakistan to conduct several rounds of strikes on Afghan soil, with the Taliban responding with military actions along the border.

Between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Trade War With No End in Sight

Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman

One of Peshawar’s largest markets in western Pakistan once bustled with thousands of Afghan-owned shops and carts, selling everything from deep-fried khajoor pastries to kitchen items and cricket gear.

But business has been cut by half, according to business owners, and the market’s alleys have become so sparse that shoppers can walk freely along its stalls without elbowing through crowds. And aid shipments urgently needed in Afghanistan are piling up at Pakistani ports.

“Afghans are afraid of going outside,” said Hameed Ullah Ayaz, an Afghan owner of 12 bakeries in Peshawar.

Amid the deepest erosion of relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan in decades, the Pakistani government has cut off cross-border trade. It is aiming to punish the Taliban administration for failing to rein in affiliated militants who attack Pakistan and find refuge on the other side of the border.

Trial Guidelines on Transportation Safety Services for Autonomous Vehicles

In order to guide the development of autonomous driving technology and standardize the application of autonomous vehicles (自动驾驶汽车) in the transportation services sector, these guidelines have been formulated in accordance with the Production Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Road Traffic Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Road Transport, and other relevant laws and regulations, as well as relevant provisions on road transport and urban passenger transport management.

These Guidelines apply to the use of autonomous vehicles on urban roads, highways, and other roads open to public motor vehicle traffic to engage in urban public bus and streetcar passenger transport, taxi passenger transport, road passenger transport operations, and road freight transport operations.

The Treason of the Populists

MICHAEL BURLEIGH

The modern media landscape has given far-right "thinkers" a salience beyond their wildest dreams, reflected in the new US National Security Strategy. But their pseudo-intellectualism will never pass as the real thing, and while they may court the working class, it is financiers and tech billionaires whose interests they serve.

LONDON – Until a few days ago, it had never crossed my mind that people across Europe – including Londoners like me – were living in a strife-afflicted hell hole, “suffocated” by regulations, stripped of political liberties, and bound for “civilizational erasure.” So, it was with some surprise that I read this assessment in the new US National Security Strategy – a document that echoes pseudo-intellectual propaganda more than resembling any serious foreign-policy analysis.

Beyond Multilateralism

JAVIER SOLANA and ANGEL SAZ-CARRANZA

Today’s geopolitical turmoil has undermined the multilateral institutions that have structured international relations since the end of World War II. To avoid a slide into global anarchy, we must begin complementing existing institutions with a patchwork of arrangements that are less formal, less universal, and less binding.

MADRID – The world is on the cusp of a profound geopolitical restructuring, as escalating great-power rivalries erode the multilateral structures that have supported the global order since the mid-20th century.

To prevent the international system from sliding into chaos and conflict, those unwilling to accept a world governed solely by raw power must find ways to reinforce today’s debilitated multilateral institutions through informal arrangements and bilateral agreements.

From the end of World War II to the early 2010s, multilateralism provided the framework for international cooperation. Though imperfect and often inconsistent, it was the most effective model of global governance ever created. But after more than a decade of continuous erosion, it is clear that the multilateral system as we know it can no longer facilitate collective action.

The future of the US surface fleet

The United States Navy faces an inflection point in the design and sustainment of its surface fleet, as delays, cancellations and industrial shortfalls collide with rising operational demands. Forthcoming budget choices, industrial timelines and early tests of new uncrewed vessels will shape whether the fleet can regain momentum by the late 2020s.

The abrupt curtailment of the Constellation-class frigate programme in November 2025, paired with mounting delays across American naval shipyards, has underscored the fragility of the United States’ surface-fleet plans. Because it takes many years and considerable funds to develop and produce warships, even compared to other defence-industrial projects, a navy is shaped by its need for sustained and broad political and economic mobilisation. A fleet is a country’s grand strategy made manifest in steel. Ships, in turn, remain in service for decades, and a fleet is slow to change. This shapes a country’s statecraft over the long term.

A fleet is a country’s grand strategy made manifest in steel.

The trajectory of the American sea services is at a malleable and uncertain point, as it was during the late Cold War. Maritime conflicts in the Red Sea and Black Sea in recent years have forced some reconsideration of the role of US naval forces. In addition, China is outpacing the US in the construction of high-end surface combatants and in the size and sophistication of its anti-ship-missile portfolio.

Venezuela Boatstrikes Raise Legal Problems for the Entire US Military

Ramon Marks

On September 2, Special Operations Command launched a drone strike against drug boat runners in the Caribbean. After two strikes, the boat was sunk with no survivors.

Before that attack was publicly reported, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and other members of Congress released a video on November 18, reminding service members that they are not obliged to execute “illegal orders.” At the time, it was unclear why the senator and his colleagues chose this particular moment to remind troops of that rule.

About 10 days later, the likely rationale became clearer: on November 28, The Washington Post broke the story about the September 2 attack. Citing unnamed sources, it alleged that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued orders to the Special Operations Command to “leave no survivors” during the attack.

The accusation was profoundly serious. If true, it meant that the secretary’s order was a war crime. The US Department of Defense Law of War manual, Section 5.4.7, could not be clearer: “[i]t is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors.” The Beltway hunt was on with Secretary Hegseth as the target.

America’s Fortress Renewed: A Constitutional Triumph in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS)

Donald Vandergriff

Over the past four days I have read and dissected every line of the Trump’s administration’s 33-page National Security Strategy released in November 2025. What follows is my unfiltered assessment, judged strictly against the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, the proven principles of Maneuver Warfare, and measured against the corrosive influence of Cultural Marxism on our culture, fighting power and the continuing evolution of the Generations of Modern War.

For more than thirty years I have championed Maneuver Warfare and Mission Command: doctrines that defeat enemies by outthinking and outmaneuvering them through decentralized initiative, tempo, and trust. Just as the Constitution distributes power while retaining accountability, these philosophies push decision-making downward, demanding that leaders at every level exercise bold judgment in pursuit of the commander’s intent—fully responsible for their actions, yet free to act, and obliged to empower those they lead.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America

George Friedman

The foundation of this strategy is that the United States’ priority must be its own national interests, namely its security and economic well-being. Therefore, the United States must maintain its position as the most powerful military and economic force in the world, while measuring its actions in both dimensions against those that are in its national interest.

Perhaps the most important element in the document is that, whereas after World War II there was a fundamental ideological component to U.S. foreign policy, that ideological perspective is not present here. The Cold War was built around ideology, a confrontation between liberal democracy and communism. From this concept flowed a strategic principle that the fundamental threat to the United States was the spread of communism, and the fundamental interest of the U.S. was to limit the spread of communism. Therefore, the United States needed to strengthen the economies of non-communist nations as well as help defend them with military aid and sometimes even direct intervention. Since communism was a global threat, the United States was compelled to confront it – and its foundational nation, the Soviet Union – anywhere in the world.

US Air Force wants AI to power high-speed wargaming

Michael Peck

Board game pieces are placed during a wargame exercise at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, Sept. 16, 2025. (Airman William Neal/U.S. Air Force)

The U.S. Air Force is turning to artificial intelligence to boost its wargames.

The Air Force wants a cloud-based, AI-powered “digital sandbox” as a hub to generate and run wargames at speeds of up 10,000 times faster than real time, according to a recent request for information.

The WarMatrix system aims to remedy some of the problems that have hampered defense wargaming for years, such as cumbersome, labor-intensive simulations.

“Currently, the DAF [Department of the Air Force] faces challenges including the inability to answer critical questions about capabilities, Courses of Action (COA) analysis, or costing, due to a reliance on disconnected, outdated, and vendor-locked tools,” according to the Air Force RFI, which was posted Nov. 23.

M1 Abrams Tank Armed With Switchblade Drones Tested By Army

Thomas Newdick, Tyler Rogoway

General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) has revealed more details of the ongoing efforts to arm M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks with the Switchblade series of loitering munitions, via a system known as Precision Effects & Reconnaissance, Canister-Housed (PERCH). After industry-funded trials, the company now hopes to win a U.S. Army contract for further tests of an improved version of the system.

GDLS also recently released a photo showing the launch of one of the loitering munitions from a pop-up canister mounted on the tank’s turret, where it replaces the standard loader sponson box.

These disclosures follow the demonstration of the PERCH system, which integrates the Switchblade 300 and Switchblade 600 loitering munitions into the M1A2 Abrams SEPv3, the latest variant of the tank in U.S. Army service. PERCH can also be integrated on Stryker 8×8 infantry carrier vehicles, and potentially other platforms. The launcher can hold three Switchblade 300s and one 600 at the same time.

The neocons were right

David Brooks

What comes after Donald Trump? What compelling social vision can replace MAGA’s offerings and reverse the tide of global populism? In considering these questions, I find myself returning to an unlikely group of 20th-century thinkers: the neoconservatives.

These days, when people hear the word neocons, they tend to think of Republicans who supported the Iraq War. But the notoriety the neocons attained for supporting that war has obscured their origins as a dissident faction within the American left, one that was staunchly anti-communist but mostly preoccupied with domestic policy.

Here’s why the original neocon thinkers—people such as Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—can be so helpful right now: They focused their attention on the bloody crossroads where morality and politics intersect. They saw politics through the lens of not only polling and social-science data, but also literature, philosophy, psychology, and theology. They asked the big questions—not just How can we win the next election? but How can we create a civilization to be proud of ? The moral and spiritual tenor of their political writings could be a tonic for a society in moral and spiritual crisis.

Can the West Bump Russia Out of Central Asia?

Giorgio Cafiero

Despite its focus on the war in Ukraine, Russia shows no signs of letting go of its legacy influence in Central Asia.

Embracing multi-vector foreign policies, Central Asian states have sought to balance external powers. While welcoming engagement from both the European Union and the United States, these former Soviet republics are navigating the geopolitical shifts caused by the Ukraine War as they seek to avoid overdependence on any single external power, particularly Russia and China.

Nonetheless, while regional governments seek greater autonomy from Moscow, they are not turning away from Russia entirely. In fact, Central Asian republics have deepened cooperation with Moscow in select areas in recent years. As a result, Western efforts to challenge Russia in the region will face significant challenges, even as Central Asian countries pursue a broader range of foreign policy options.

Central Asia’s ties to Russia are deeply rooted in the region’s Soviet past, with these nations maintaining strong connections in areas such as energy, trade, defense, and migration. With a military presence in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, Russia remains the primary security guarantor for the Central Asian republics. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—a military alliance that includes Russia and the Central Asian republics except Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—reinforces this influence.

Trump has declared civilisational war on Europe. It won’t be easy – but here’s how to fight back

Paul Taylor

Three decades after political philosopher Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History and the “universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”, the democratic model is under attack in many parts of the world, not least here in Europe. Populists bent on weakening the rule of law, rolling back human rights protections, subjugating the judiciary and cowing independent journalism are amplified by anything-goes social media algorithms that promote anger and polarisation over rational discourse.

They have now received a mandate from the Trump administration, which effectively declared civilisational war on the EU and its values in its National Security Strategy.

The growing failure, meanwhile, of our market democracies to deliver affordable housing, universal quality education and healthcare, and security of employment – what the economist Joseph Stiglitz calls the “inequality emergency” – is alienating many young and working-class people from democracy, fuelling the rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism.

The Time to End the War in Ukraine Is Now

Thomas Graham

Deep skepticism has surrounded U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to settle the Russia-Ukraine war. Ukraine, backed by Europe, has been clear that it is not prepared to accept terms that amount to surrender, while Russia has given no signal that it will back off its maximalist demands, which would end Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign, independent state. That, skeptics argue, leaves no ground for serious negotiations. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s evident refusal to make any substantive concessions at his talks with Trump’s envoys on December 2 only reinforces their doubts.

But the skeptics are wrong. The time is ripe for a resolution of the conflict in the coming months. The real question is whether the Trump administration can muster the skill, patience, and stamina to drive a diplomatic process to a successful conclusion.

The enemy within How Europe should respond to Trump's National Security Strategy

Lawrence Freedman

The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) has been poorly received in Europe. Two features have gone down particularly badly. First, it directly interferes in European affairs by explicitly siding with ‘Patriotic Parties’ and picking up on their themes of ‘civilisational erasure’. It is ‘more than plausible,’ the document says, ‘that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European’ (which we can assume to mean non-white). Here it recalls Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech last in February when he told an alarmed and high-level European audience that the biggest threat to their security was ‘from within’ – ‘the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.’ This is underscored by a stress on the restoration of America’s ‘spiritual and cultural health.’

Second, it fails to discuss Russia as an adversary that poses a direct threat to freedom in Europe and is currently waging an aggressive war against a sovereign country. Against all evidence, it claims that while the European people want peace yet their governments have subverted ‘democratic processes’ to prevent this. Yet it is Russia not Ukraine that has thwarted Trump’s desire to declare an early ceasefire. The document looks forward to ‘stabilising’ relations with Russian and to a peace deal for Ukraine without reference to its likely justice or durability. All this was noted cheerfully in the Kremlin, declaring that the US strategic vision is similar to Russia’s.

How long Britain could really fight for if war broke out tomorrow

Frank Gardner

Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine will soon enter its fifth year. Mysterious incidents of so-called "hybrid warfare" are mounting in Europe, increasing tensions. And in the UK, military chiefs have warned we must prepare for war if we want to avoid it. But if the unthinkable happened, and war with Russia broke out, could the UK fight for more than just a few weeks?

"We are not planning to go to war with Europe. But if Europe wants to, and starts, we are ready right now." So said Russian President Vladimir Putin on 2 December, accusing European countries of hindering US efforts to bring peace in Ukraine.

To be clear, it is extremely unlikely that the UK would ever find itself in a war with Russia on its own, unsupported by Nato allies.

But Putin's words were an uncomfortable reminder that a war between Russia and Nato countries, including the UK, was not as remote as people hoped.

How war could look in the tech-age

"Well that's odd. I've got no signal on my phone." "Me neither. I'm offline. What's going on?" That scenario, hypothetically, is just one way we could know that a war with Russia had begun, or was about to. (I should add that there can also be other, perfectly benign, reasons for a loss of signal.)

Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Next Chapter

Max Bergmann and Maria Snegovaya

The IssueWestern diplomatic efforts to negotiate a ceasefire with Moscow have repeatedly failed, showing that despite the immense costs Russia has borne since 2022, its goals in Ukraine remain largely unchanged.

Despite mounting economic, military-industrial, and demographic strains, the war remains sustainable for the Kremlin in the foreseeable future. Russia continues to believe it is winning the war of attrition and can eventually overpower and outlast Ukraine.

Where Now?

As of September 2025, Russia’s war in Ukraine has dragged on for three and a half years. Despite nine months of efforts by the United States to end the fighting, there remains no end in sight. There has been a flurry of activity, from talks in Saudi Arabia to Oval Office meetings, and even a summit in Anchorage between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Europeans have spent nearly a year talking among themselves about providing a peacekeeping force, whenever a ceasefire is reached. Yet despite all this diplomacy, multiple meetings, and countless statements, Russia continues to pummel Ukraine’s cities and engage in a brutal, months-long ground offensive.

How and Why Ukraine’s Military Is Going Digital

Kateryna Bondar

Three years into the largest war on European soil since World War II, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has become a testing ground for how modern military systems evolve under relentless pressure.

Though each side of the conflict draws on inherited Soviet-era defense structures, they have diverged in how they adapt to the demands of modern war. Both Russia and Ukraine now operate hybrid defense ecosystems shaped by a combination of legacy industrial capacity, newly emergent innovation, and the various pathways to integrating commercial technologies into military use. However, their approaches to institutional adaptation, technological integration, and the organization of warfighting capabilities differ substantially. These differences offer a valuable lens into how military governance systems evolve under the pressures of large-scale, high-tech warfare, and they provide lessons for peacetime militaries seeking to prepare for the future of conflict.

While Russia’s approach remains largely consistent with its Soviet-era centralized model familiar from Cold War military governance, Ukraine has followed a markedly different trajectory, which has emerged from a post-2014 development path and reflects a combination of centralized and decentralized models.

Air Superiority in the Twenty-First Century: Lessons from Iran and Ukraine

Alexander Palmer and Kendall Ward

Russia has not achieved air superiority over Ukraine in more than three years of fighting, but Israel seized air superiority over Iran in less than four days. Despite the vastly different circumstances and strategic objectives facing each nation’s forces, this CSIS comparison of the two campaigns holds lessons for countries seeking to achieve air superiority in modern conflicts—or to deny it to their adversaries. Israel succeeded where Russia failed by building and equipping an organization that fit an offensive air superiority doctrine, preparing the battlefield with special operations forces, and taking full advantage of its intelligence edge. Ukraine succeeded where Iran failed in taking advantage of dispersion and mobility to prevent its suppressed air defenses from being destroyed.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, its Aerospace Forces (VKS) and missile forces were considered likely to play a major role in forcing Ukraine’s rapid collapse.1 But as Russia’s offensive unraveled in early 2022, commentators declared Russia’s air force to be “missing” and its performance to be “perplexing.”2 In contrast, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) achieved air superiority over Iran in less than four days, an achievement made more impressive by the fact that Tehran is nearly 1,000 miles from Israel’s nearest airbase.

If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?

Jay Caspian Kang’s

Here’s a thought many of us have these days: if only we weren’t on our damn phones all the time, we would surely unlock a better self—one that went on hikes and talked more with our children and felt less rank jealousy about other people’s successes. It’s a nice idea; once a day, at least, I wonder what my life would be like if I smashed my phone into bits and never contacted AppleCare. Would I become a scratch golfer or one of those fathers who does thousand-piece puzzles with his children? Would I direct ambitious films that capture the Zeitgeist? Would I at least read more difficult novels?

The unrest about smartphones and social-media addiction has been growing for years and shows no signs of abating. I have felt the panic myself, and so, this past July, with a book deadline looming, I got off of social media. The break started with X, which was my biggest problem, but, by the end of August or so, Instagram, TikTok, and pretty much anything that allowed me to argue with strangers had been deleted from my phone. Before this, I was spending roughly ten hours a day looking at my phone or sitting at my desktop computer. I didn’t need that number to come down, but, when I checked my weekly status report, I wanted all the brightly colored little bars that track the number of hours I’d spent on time-wasting apps to be relocated to the word-processing app that I use to write my books.

GenAI.mil Is Live. Now Comes the Hard Part: Building the Digital NCO Corps.

Ben Van Roo

For the first time, thousands of service members can talk to frontier‑scale models first Gemini, then Claude, Grok, and possbily ChatGPT on government networks, at the IL5 classification levels. Years of policy work, security engineering, and infrastructure building just turned into a login screen and a prompt box.

We’ve already seen a preview of what happens next. When the Air Force rolled out NIPRGPT on NIPRNet, tens of thousands of airmen, guardians, and civilians piled in almost immediately. What started as an “experimental bridge” to generative AI quickly turned into an everyday tool for search, drafting, coding, and analysis.

GenAI.mil takes that same pattern and extends it across the force. We should absolutely celebrate that. It will raise the AI IQ of the institution, normalize responsible experimentation, and surface creative use cases from the bottom up.

The Mechanisms of AI Harm: Lessons Learned from AI Incidents

Mia Hoffmann

As artificial intelligence systems are deployed and affect more aspects of daily life, effective risk mitigation becomes imperative to prevent harm. This report analyzes AI incidents to improve our understanding of how risks from AI materialize in practice. By identifying six mechanisms of harm, it sheds light on the different pathways to harm, and on the variety of mitigation strategies needed to address them.Download Full Report

With recent advancements in artificial intelligence—particularly, powerful generative models—private and public sector actors have heralded the benefits of incorporating AI more prominently into our daily lives. Frequently cited benefits include increased productivity, efficiency, and personalization. However, the harm caused by AI remains to be more fully understood. As a result of wider AI deployment and use, the number of AI harm incidents has surged in recent years, suggesting that current approaches to harm prevention may be falling short. This report argues that this is due to a limited understanding of how AI risks materialize in practice. Leveraging AI incident reports from the AI Incident Database, it analyzes how AI deployment results in harm and identifies six key mechanisms that describe this process (Table 1).

Drones as First Responders

Tom ChristoffQuin Patterson

The use of drones by hobbyists and professionals alike has steadily grown in recent years, with 822,039 drones registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as of July 2025 (Federal Aviation Administration, n.d.). What was once considered military technology is now used daily by civilians throughout the United States. Over the past decade, law enforcement agencies across the nation have also begun exploring drones’ capacity to aid in calls for service, help find lost persons, track suspects, and document evidence at a scene. In large part, this increase in drone use is because of the wide range of tools and software with which a drone can be equipped, including optical cameras (4K, visual, thermal, hyperspectral), light detection and ranging, radio frequency identification sensors, Wi-Fi sensors, microphones, biometric sensors, Global Positioning System (GPS), and odor detectors. These tools provide law enforcement with a substantial range of information, including imagery (visual, thermal, infrared), audio, telemetry, location, identity, and behavioral information.

Because drones are a relatively new tool for law enforcement, a basic understanding of them is necessary for any agency considering drone use. Within this document, we discuss critical topics surrounding drones in law enforcement—including their history, financial costs, benefits, legal and ethical factors, and policy implications—to provide background and insights for law enforcement agencies in their pursuit of drones as a tool for first response.

14 December 2025

The Human Cost of the Largest Electoral Roll Revision Exercise in the World

Kavita Chowdhury

Krishnanagar Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra led a protest march against SIR and the death of local BLO Rinku Tarafdar in Krishnanagar.Credit: Special arrangement

On a ruled sheet of paper torn out from a school exercise book, a note, neatly written in blue ink, in Bengali held an ominous message: “I cannot bear this inhuman workload any longer.”

Rinku Tarafdar, the Booth Level Officer (BLO) in electoral booth no 201, Chapra in Krishnanagar Assembly Constituency in West Bengal, died by suicide on November 21. The 51-year-old schoolteacher’s two-page suicide note made it clear what had caused her death.

“I hold the Election Commission responsible for my current distress,” she wrote, adding, “I am not affiliated to any political party.”

BLOs like Tarafdar, namely government school teachers and government employees, have been appointed by the Election Commission of India (EC) to carry out the mammoth Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

India has 960 million registered voters – more than any other country in the world. The SIR exercise has been rolled out across 12 states covering 510 million voters, making it the largest electoral roll revision in history. Aimed at retaining genuine voters on the electoral rolls, the SIR has run into much controversy, especially in crucial election bound states like West Bengal.

Rethinking Terrorism After Afghanistan: India and the Politics of Recognition

Aswathy Chandragiri

The first official visit by a Taliban leader, Afghan Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, to New Delhi, signalled India’s cautious re-engagement with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan. The visit has signified an important shift in India’s foreign policy dealing with Afghanistan and has generated diverse reactions across political and academic circles. While this initiative enjoys considerable support, others remain cautious about a deeper engagement. The primary reason for this hesitation lies in the fact that Afghanistan does not function as a conventional nation state. The Taliban regime currently exercise authority and administer large swathes of territory, yet their legitimacy remains contested because they have historically been perceived as an insurgent group with terrorist affiliations.

This historical perception, however, raises many critical questions. As the Taliban increasingly undertakes functions of governance, does its conduct continue to embody the practices of terror that once defined it? In the light of events that took place after the withdrawal of U.S. forces, where does one place a regime that came to power using brutal force? Does engaging with this regime help the Afghan people, or does it deepen the suffering of those already oppressed?

Leadership Turmoil Impacts Eastern Theater Command Readiness

Zi Yang

Tensions between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan have risen dramatically after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on how Japan might react to an attack on Taiwan. Responding to a question at a budget committee meeting on November 7, Takaichi said that a Taiwan contingency involving the use of force could constitute an “existential risk” for Japan (Nikkei, November 7). [1] This comment was met with threats from online PRC commentators. Most notably, the PRC’s consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian (薛剣), inflamed the situation by posting on the social media platform X to say that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off” (UDN, November 10). [2]

The PRC government subsequently discouraged its citizens from visiting Japan and deployed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ships to waters south of Japan’s Kyushu Island (South China Morning Post [SCMP], November 14). The PLA’s theater commands have also mobilized, producing bellicose videos with the goal of intimidation (Sina, November 19).

How China Wins the Future

Elizabeth Economy

When the Chinese cargo ship Istanbul Bridge docked at the British port of Felixstowe on October 13, 2025, the arrival might have appeared unremarkable. The United Kingdom is China’s third-largest export market, and boats travel between the two countries all year.

What was remarkable about the Bridge was the route it had taken—it was the first major Chinese cargo ship to travel directly to Europe via the Arctic Ocean. The trip took 20 days, weeks faster than the traditional routes through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope. Beijing hailed the journey as a geostrategic breakthrough and a contribution to supply chain stability. Yet the more important message was unstated: the extent of China’s economic and security ambitions in a new realm of global power.

China Could Knock Out America in Space, CSIS Warns

Brandon J. Weichert

Experts warned in a congressional hearing last week that China was trying to build a “vertically integrated space ecosystem” to displace America’s prime position in orbit.

On December 4, a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, which is part of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, was held. That meeting involved experts, such as Clayton Swope, the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In that ignored meeting, Swope outlined how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was rapidly advancing toward a significant space program—with a comprehensive grand strategy for space dominance.

According to Swope, the PRC is building a “vertically integrated space ecosystem” that is meant to both rival the capabilities of the United States and outpace the Americans with a whole-of-society approach to space in China.

You Don’t Beat China by Letting Big Tech Run Wild

Autumn Dorsey

China doesn’t need Americans to trust artificial intelligence. Its government can mandate adoption. The United States cannot. Yet some in Washington now argue that the only way to beat China is to weaken the very protections that allow Americans to trust, and therefore, use AI in the first place.

This past summer, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to bar states from regulating AI in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, voting 99–1 against national preemption without federal standards. Senators recognized exactly what such a move would mean: letting some of the biggest technology companies run wild. Now, Washington is debating whether to revive this idea.

A national AI preemption without federal standards gives us the worst of both worlds. It allows AI companies to escape accountability for the harms that they have caused while actively hurting U.S. AI competitiveness. We’ve already seen what this kind of hands-off policy looks like. Section 230 effectively left social media companies unaccountable for the damage their platforms inflicted. Now, some want to repeat this mistake with AI, just as public concern about AI risks is starting to reach new heights.

The Collapse of al-Assad’s Syria, One Year On

Alessandro Bruno

When Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, walked into the Oval Office this past November, the symbolism was impossible to miss. It marked the first time since 1946 that a Syrian head of state had been welcomed to the White House. Yet this president began his public career not as a diplomat or reformer, but as the emir of al-Nusra Front—al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch—and later as leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Julani’s trajectory from Camp Bucca detainee alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to rebel commander, to de facto leader after Assad’s flight in December 2024, and finally to President of Syria’s interim government in January 2025 is often presented as an astonishing twist of Middle Eastern fate.

It is nothing of the sort.

It is the predictable outcome of a decade-long policy architecture that many analysts, including this author, warned about in real time: a regime-change strategy that leveraged jihadist networks, hollowed out the Syrian state, and made balkanization a feature rather than a bug of Western policy. When I wrote on the day Damascus fell that “the collapse has come as part of a long-term Western project that pursued this goal at all costs, even that of supporting organizations formally recognized as terrorist groups,” I was not engaging in hyperbole.

The Long War: Fourteen Years of Methodical Destruction

War Without End: Russia’s Shadow Warfare

Sam Greene, Andrei Soldatov, and Irina Borogan

Severed cables. Disrupted aviation. Arson. Sabotage. Assassination. Infiltration. Attacks designed to distract, to confuse, and to dismay an adversary – but not to provoke a response. Such is shadow warfare, causing damage and costing lives but operating below the traditional threshold of war.

Shadow War as System, Not Strategy

Even as Ukraine continues to suffer under wave after wave of bombardment and an ever deepening occupation of its eastern and southern territory, Europe as a whole is under a sustained assault of a different kind. Earlier this year, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) launched a major new project—Defend, Deny, Deter: Countering Russia’s Shadow Warfare—to help lay the groundwork for a new transatlantic approach to deterrence.

Prepared, Not Paralyzed

Janet Egan, Spencer Michaels and Caleb Withers

The Trump administration has embraced a pro-innovation approach to artificial intelligence (AI) policy. Its AI Action Plan, released July 2025, underscores the private sector’s central role in advancing AI breakthroughs and positioning the United States as the world’s leading AI power.1 At the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance cautioned that an overly restrictive approach to AI development “would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations.”2

Yet this emphasis on innovation does not diminish the government’s critical role in ensuring national security. On the contrary, AI advances will yield significant threats alongside unprecedented potential in this domain. Experts warn of advanced AI introducing more autonomous cyber weapons, bestowing a broader pool of actors with the know-how to develop biological weapons, and potentially malfunctioning in ways that cause massive damage.3 Private and public sector leaders alike have echoed these concerns.4 The urgent task for policymakers is to ensure that the federal government can anticipate and manage the national security implications of AI with advanced capabilities—without resorting to blunt, ill-targeted, or burdensome regulation that would undermine America’s innovative edge. In other words, the government must prepare at once for potential risks from rapidly advancing AI without imposing onerous regulations that unduly stifle the technology’s vast potential for good.

European leaders walk tightrope between backing Ukraine and keeping US on board

Katya Adler

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has met key European allies as he faces US pressure to reach a swift peace deal with Russia.

In London, Zelensky held talks with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The meeting came amid US efforts to get Moscow and Kyiv to sign up - quickly - to a plan to end the war in Ukraine.

For Kyiv, the crucial, thorny issues are the question of ceding territory to Russia as part of any peace deal and obtaining strong security guarantees to ensure that Moscow respects an eventual agreement.

Ahead of the meeting in London, Starmer insisted - as he often has in the past - that Ukraine needed "hard-edged security guarantees". He has also repeatedly said that Kyiv must determine its own future, not have conditions imposed on it.

The big names Starmer hosted in London discussed hugely significant issues - not only for Ukraine's future, but for the security of the continent as a whole.

There's concern that if Russia is "rewarded" by being given Ukrainian territory as part of a peace deal, it could feel emboldened to attack other European countries in the future.

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)