In Search of a China Strategy

Ryan Fedasiuk

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The world exhaled when President Trump and Xi Jinping struck their tactical détente in South Korea in October, slashing tariffs, pausing restrictions on exports, and reopening diplomatic channels. For the sixth time in as many months, Washington and Beijing both claimed victory, markets rallied, and pundits lauded efforts to “stabilize” the relationship.

Yet no amount of diplomatic choreography can substitute for an answer to the most essential question: What does the United States want from China?

It is the defining question of 21st-century geopolitics. Every other alliance, market, and security calculus orbits around it. The Biden administration maintained that US-China competition “is simply not going to resolve in a neat and decisive end state.” Trump has offered no clearer answer, oscillating between provocation and accommodation as different factions within his administration temporarily seize the reins of American foreign policy.

Friends are stepping up for Taiwan. Its opposition is signalling retreat

Thijs Stegeman

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As Japan weathers pressure from China after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last month that an attack on Taiwan would constitute a ‘survival-threatening situation’, Taiwan’s own opposition parties risk undermining that support.

Two weeks after Takaichi’s comments, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te proposed a T$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion), eight-year supplemental package that would raise defence spending to 3.3 percent of GDP. The money would accelerate the military’s transition towards a porcupine force centred on small, mobile and easily hidden equipment.

Yet opposition lawmakers blocked the plan. Cheng Li-wun, who was elected leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), in October, dismissed the proposal as ‘too high and too fast’.

This is despite the plan leaving out the large, expensive equipment that the opposition has long said would provoke China. The KMT had previously pledged to support higher defence spending.

History Shows How India Can Catch Up With China

Kishore Mahbubani

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If the 19th century was defined by European power, and the 20th century by the rise of the US, the 21st century is increasingly understood to be the “Asian Century” — one in which the global enter of gravity is shifting yet again. And if you accept that assertion, the next logical question is: Who will lead the Asian Century? The two natural candidates are the region’s historical powers, China and India, which were the world’s largest economies from 1 A.D. to 1820, before the rise of the industrial west. They are once again among the planet’s preeminent economies.

By most measures, China is currently outperforming India. Its $18.5 trillion GDP is more than four times larger than India’s, and it accounted for $6.64 trillion in global trade in 2023 — 11% of the global share, to India’s 2.7% ($1.64 trillion). Its military is mightier, and it has greater influence in international affairs. In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, an attempt to revive the ancient web of trade routes, known as the Silk Road, that connected the Middle Kingdom to all parts west.

The Arab Spring’s Painful Lessons

Alexander Langlois

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The Arab Spring carries multiple meanings for the many millions of people across the Middle East and North Africa, let alone the world. The widespread calls for civil liberties and democracy across the region certainly were divisive, with some defining the uprisings as imperialist plots while others viewed them as a long-anticipated moment for freedom fighters and democrats who had long suffered under some of the most autocratic rulers of the 20th century. But what did this moment of national and regional upheaval truly mean for the region, its autocrats, and the people stuck under their boots, and what does that mean for the future?

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi’s act of self-immolation in protest against the brutal Tunisian regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali unknowingly kicked off the region’s largest democracy wave since decolonization. Within a series of months, protests spread against autocratic regimes in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, shocking a world long accustomed to and benefitting from repression in that part of the world. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak regime, for example, was long viewed as a bulwark against the Arab street and the forces of Arab and Islamic nationalism that, for many in the West, posed a threat to their regional interestsnamely energy flows, Israeli security, and fighting violent extremism.

China’s AI has hacked the West

 keysby Geoffrey Cain

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The future that science fiction writers once warned about — autonomous systems deployed against the U.S. — arrived overnight. China has proven it can use artificial intelligence to hack into American companies and government agencies with the machine almost entirely in charge.

In November, Anthropic disrupted a Chinese espionage campaign. The difference this time: It used AI with little human oversight for 80 to 90 percent of the hacking. The 30 targets included technology corporations, banks, chemical companies and government agencies across multiple countries.

Anthropic called it “the first documented case of a cyberattack largely executed without human intervention at scale.” The AI stole credentials and siphoned data faster than any team of human hackers could.

This is the bill coming due. The West handed China the advantage, and now we will suffer.

1st Air-To-Air Kill For Russian Interceptor Drone? Analyzing If Geran-2 Really Shot Down Ukraine’s Mi-24 Chopper

Vijainder K Thakur

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A Russian Geran-2 drone may have scored its first air-to-air kill; however, the supporting evidence is largely circumstantial so far.

A Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter from the 12th Separate Army Aviation Brigade was lost in combat on December 17, 2025.

The specific location or area of operation has not been publicly disclosed. However, in recent months, Ukrainian combat helicopters have not been operating near the front, so the loss cannot be attributed to a ground-launched missile.

In fact, Ukrainian combat helicopters have been largely co-opted for counter-drone operations, making it more likely that the loss occurred during such operations.

Official Ukrainian sources admit the downing as a combat loss. While it is possible that the helicopter was brought down by a Geran-2 drone, either by ramming or by an air-to-air missile, other possibilities include controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) while positioning for an attack on a drone.

Russia Transitions to Nuclear Intimidation

Arseny Sivitsky and Alexander Taranov

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On November 5, during a special session of the Russian Security Council, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov justified preparations for potential nuclear tests, citing Moscow’s view that U.S. actions undermine strategic stability. The Kremlin emphasizes the need to maintain the ability to inflict “unacceptable damage” on adversaries under any conditions (President of Russia, November 5). Russian intelligence and military officials argue that uncertainty over U.S. intentions—reinforced by statements on potential U.S. nuclear tests—necessitates readiness for nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlyato preserve credible deterrence. The Kremlin blames the U.S. withdrawal from arms control agreements, the modernization of nuclear forces—Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), Columbia-class SSBNs, B-21 Raider bombers, Trident II missiles—the expansion of missile defenses, and the development of intermediate-range systems, such as the hypersonic “Dark Eagle,” planned for deployment in Europe. Regular U.S. strategic exercises reportedly include preemptive nuclear strike scenarios. Combined with forward deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and strategic offensive systems in Belarus and doctrinal revisions lowering the nuclear-use threshold, preparations for nuclear testing indicate Russia’s transition to offensive nuclear deterrence or nuclear intimidation.

The Gaza War: The Lament of the Foreign Journalists and Why Hamas Suddenly Wants Them There

Bassam Tawil

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Foreign journalists in Israel are upset. Israel has prevented them from entering the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, which began with the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. A spokesman for the Foreign Press Association in Israel recently urged authorities to "lift restrictions without delay, allowing all journalists to work securely and without fear or hesitation" in the Gaza Strip.

Before the war, the journalists now complaining that Israel is not allowing them to enter Gaza were able to visit there anytime they liked.

Mostly, however, the foreign journalists chose not to go there. Perhaps they did not think they could come back with an "interesting story," meaning one that could criticize Israel. Reminder: Israel fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Trump’s approach to Venezuela repeats the mistakes of the past

Austin Sarat

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Donald Trump seems determined to have a military confrontation with Venezuela. He has deployed a massive military arsenal in and around the Caribbean Sea and taken a series of provocative actions off the Venezuelan coast, justifying it as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

The Council on Foreign Relations says that deployment includes an “aircraft carrier, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious assault ships, and a special forces support ship. A variety of aircraft have also been active in the region, including bombers, fighters, drones, patrol planes, and support aircraft.” This is the largest display of American military might in the western hemisphere since we invaded Panama in 1989.

The president has refused to rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela. But so far, the administration has used its military assets to target boats allegedly carrying drugs, sought to close Venezuelan airspace, and, on 10 December, seized an oil tanker. How the seizure of an oil tanker helps stem the flow of drugs into the US is not obvious.

America Can’t Escape the Multipolar Order

Emma Ashford

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In the last decade, American foreign policymakers have been forced to reckon with a shifting global balance of power. Theorists have long argued over the shape of international order. But such questions now occupy practitioners, as well, as they grapple with the end of the unipolar moment that followed the Cold War and struggle to shape new strategies that account for new geopolitical realities.

Emma Ashford is a leading proponent of a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. In an essay for Foreign Affairs, as well as in her new book First Among Equals, she argues that American policymakers must, above all, get comfortable with the fact of a multipolar world. “Instead of artificially cleaving the world in two,” she writes, “the United States should choose to embrace multipolarity and craft strategy accordingly.”

US National Security Strategy: Africa Debuts as a Global Player

Cherkaoui Roudani

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Without doubt, the publication of the 2025 US National Security Strategy signals more than a policy shift; it marks a profound reorientation in Washington’s doctrine of power for the twenty-first century. Security is no longer understood through the lens of military predominance alone. It is increasingly defined by the ability to govern strategic flows, from logistics corridors, and maritime chokepoints to critical minerals, digital infrastructures, and resilient industrial ecosystems. The grammar of power has therefore changed, moving from territorial control to the mastery of circulation.

This new understanding reflects a contemporary reading of Hamiltonian industrialism, which roots national strength in productive capacity and infrastructural depth, and it draws inspiration from a renewed Monroe logic that insists on the stabilization of one’s strategic environment against disruptive external pressures. In this emerging doctrinal landscape, the international system is shaped less by physical expansion than by the sovereignty of value chains and the connective architectures that sustain them. Within this transformed horizon, Africa no longer appears as a peripheral frontier. It assumes the position of an essential center of gravity in global geoeconomics and a decisive arena where the future balance of power will be organized.

The Sydney Hanukkah Attack Didn’t Come out of Nowhere

Aviva Klompas

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It was inevitable. The warning signs were unmistakable. The Jewish families who gathered at Bondi Beach in Sydney to celebrate Hanukkah were targeted for doing exactly what the holiday represents: showing up openly as Jews.

To be clear, they were not caught in a geopolitical dispute. This was not the result of a policy disagreement or a misunderstanding about Israel. It was the endpoint of a worldview that denies Jewish legitimacy, strips Jews of moral standing and treats Jewish presence itself as provocation.

Members of the public lay flowers at a memorial at Bondi Pavilion in the wake of a mass shooting at Bondi Beach, on December 15, 2025 in Sydney, Austr...Read More

The attack was also not sudden or inexplicable. It was the foreseeable result of a sustained failure to take antisemitism seriously before it turned lethal.

For years, Jewish communities in Australia and across the West warned that antisemitism was no longer confined to the fringes. They pointed to rhetoric calling for “intifada” and “resistance,” to protests outside synagogues, to vandalism and arson, to harassment of Jewish students on campus and to marches through Jewish neighborhoods. These were not isolated incidents, but a pattern of escalation.

Ghost Busters: Options for Breaking Russia’s Shadow Fleet

Benjamin Jensen and Jose M. Macias III

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Victory in Ukraine will prove elusive without finding ways to counter Russia’s use of illicit maritime trade to sustain its war economy. That is, Ukraine and its Western backers need to resurrect the idea of commerce raiding and broad-based economic war to bust the ghost fleet and impose costs on Putin’s war machine. In the twenty-first century, states can conduct commerce raiding without ever firing a shot, effectively using open-source intelligence to support diplomacy, lawfare, and sanctions designed to attack a rival state’s economy. By finding ways to aggregate open-source data, the United States can support broader international efforts to restrict Russian illicit maritime trade.

Ghost Ships: How Putin Finances His War

Since sanctions limited oil exports in late 2022, Russia has purchased an illicit fleet estimated to range from 155 tankers and 435 total vessels, when support ships are included, to as high as 591 ships. This shadow fleet—or ghost fleet, as it is colloquially known—transports an estimated 3.7 million barrels per day, representing 65 percent of Russia’s seaborne oil trade, and generates an estimated $87 to $100 billion in revenue per year. To put that in perspective, revenue from this illicit trade network has matched, if not exceeded, the total value of economic and military assistance provided to Ukraine since the start of the war.

Why Taiwan’s Status Can’t Stay “Undetermined”

Paul Heer

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The recent escalation of tensions between Japan and China has revived and intensified a perennial debate on the international legal status of Taiwan. Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi drew a vociferous response from Beijing when she said publicly in early November that a Chinese use of force against Taiwan could be deemed “a situation that threatens Japan’s survival,” implying that it might lead to Japanese military intervention.

The Chinese have since demanded that she retract her statements, insisting that the Taiwan issue is an internal Chinese affair in which no foreign country can interfere, and that Takaichi has violated prior Japanese acceptance of the idea that Taiwan is part of China. Chinese president Xi Jinping, in a subsequent conversation with President Donald Trump—no doubt aimed at getting Trump to press Takaichi to retreat—stated that “Taiwan’s return to China [after the defeat of Japan in World War II] is an integral part of the post-war international order.”

The Russia-North Korea Alliance Might Be Destined to Fade

Robert E. Kelly

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Key Points and Summary – Russia’s reliance on North Korea is one of the clearest side-stories of the Ukraine war—and it will matter as President Donald Trump pushes for an endgame.

-Facing high artillery burn rates and political limits on mass mobilization, Vladimir Putin needed ammunition and manpower without risking backlash at home.

North Korea Soldiers. Image Credit: KCNA/North Korean State Media.

-Kim Jong Un could supply both, selling shells and exporting soldiers for hard currency.

-In return, Pyongyang likely sought food, banking access to blunt sanctions, and discreet help improving missile testing, guidance, and re-entry.

-Yet this partnership looks transactional rather than durable and may fade as the war’s pressure eases for both sides.

Washington Is Betting on Syria Again

Islomkhon Gafarov & Jamoliddin Rozimurodov

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On December 5, the White House released the new US National Security Strategy, which marked a serious shift in Washington’s foreign policy priorities and principles. One of the key principles declared in the document is the concept of “flexible realism.” According to this approach, the United States intends to pursue a more pragmatic policy, abandoning the previous practice of forcibly imposing democracy and ideological projects.

The strategy explicitly states the intention to support constructive relations with various countries “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” Basically, Washington acknowledges the civilizational diversity of the modern world and signals its willingness to accept countries as they are, even if their political system or values differ from Western standards. This shift signifies a rejection of the neoconservative approach of past decades, when the spread of democracy was regarded as a justification for intervention. Now the strategy places US national interests and stability at the forefront, proclaiming a “predisposition to non-intervention” in the internal affairs of other countries.

Trump’s Gaza peace plan is ambition without strategy

Leon Hadar

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President Trump’s twenty-point Gaza peace plan deserves credit for what it has achieved: halting active hostilities after two devastating years of war and securing the return of hostages. These are not trivial accomplishments.

But as Washington prepares to move the agreement into its second phase, we must ask whether this represents genuine strategic realism or merely another exercise in Middle Eastern magical thinking.

The plan’s architecture is comprehensive on paper—immediate ceasefire, demilitarization of Gaza, deployment of an international stabilization force, transitional governance by Palestinian technocrats, large-scale reconstruction and a conditional pathway toward Palestinian statehood.

It checks all the boxes that peace plans are supposed to check. The problem is that checking boxes is not the same as having a coherent strategy for implementation.

US sees Europe as a continent that opposes everything they hold dear

Henry Olsen

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently declared that the “Pax Americana” in which the United States guaranteed European security is over. He’s right, but he’s wrong to declare that it’s possible for Europe to defend its own interests because there is no European political entity capable of doing so.

The “Pax Americana” that Merz rightly says will not return arose for two reasons: America’s economic dominance and a combination of shared interests and values between it and the rest of the world. Neither fact still applies.

America once stood alone at the top of global GDP table. In 1960, for example, its GDP was as large as the next seven nations combined. This supremacy lasted throughout the Cold War. Even as late as 1980, the US -produced more than or roughly as much as the next two nations combined even on a PPP basis.

A New Kind of War Has Come for NATO—And Russia Has the Upper Hand

Tom O'Connor

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While peace in Ukraine remains an elusive prospect, signs of progress from the White House's diplomatic initiatives already have officials discussing what a postwar security landscape may look like when the guns quiet in Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II.

Far from ushering in a new era of stability and calm, however, the next chapter for the continent is likely to be dominated by a new kind of battle already taking place on several unconventional fronts, from unmarked drones and hard-to-trace cyberattacks piercing through NATO defensive lines to rising popularity of political parties sympathetic to Moscow, driven in part by discontent over mass migration, some of it emanating from the border with Belarus.

In each case, European leaders have identified a concerted campaign by Russia and its allies to pressure the trans-Atlantic bloc from within. Yet experts with ties to NATO and the European Union also argue that, in each theater of the emerging bout, NATO's collective defense, rooted in Article 5, has demonstrated major vulnerabilities that may only incentivize rather than deter enemy action.

Silicon Valley Wants Disaster Bunkers. Norway Wants ‘Preparedness Friends.’

Elisabeth Braw

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These days, we’re all worried about various crises, from a collapsing climate to the fear of an emergent Skynet. In the United States, tech billionaires have concluded that building bunkers and saving themselves is the way to go. In Norway, by contrast, the government is encouraging people to make “preparedness friends.” Would you rather face war, climate disaster, intelligent robots in an underground fortress, or be supported by fellow human beings? Plan accordingly.

The United States has a long tradition of doomsday preppers, usually right-wingers who believe the apocalypse is around the corner and that only those with a sufficient supply of guns, gold, and canned food will survive. During the Cold War, the fear was of nuclear war. Today, many American billionaires have convinced themselves that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is around the corner and that humanity might not survive.

Germany Loves to Hate Friedrich Merz

John Kampfner

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Watching Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz in London on another mercy mission to shore up Ukraine from the pincer attack of Moscow and Washington, it was intriguing to watch their body language for answers to the following question: Between the British prime minister, French president, and German chancellor, which one is in the gravest danger? Or, to put it another way: Whose country is in a worse state?

Many Germans have no doubt—Merz has been in office for seven months, but the “Berlin bubble” wrote him off long ago. Indeed, almost nobody that I talk to has ever had a good word to say about him and are delighted that their dismissiveness has become self-fulfilling. Here, after all, was a man who initially couldn’t even get the endorsement of parliament that had previously been considered a foregone conclusion.

U.S. Strategists Keep Getting France’s Defeat Wrong

Alan Allport

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The United States, according to the New York Times, has a Maginot Line problem. In the first in a series of articles castigating the 21st century U.S. military for allegedly failing to adapt to modern military technology, the editorial board raises the specter of Monsieur Maginot’s infamous namesake fortification.

“It is an ancient and familiar pattern,” the editorial board laments. The French in 1940, ensconced safely—so they thought—behind their elaborate frontier wall, utterly failed, unlike the Germans, to pay attention to the new verities of armored warfare and airpower and paid the penalty in a catastrophic six-week defeat. The image of overconfident security is easy to grasp. The problem is that it has little to do with what really happened in 1940.

Trump’s AI Mineral Hunt Goes Global

Christina Lu

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In its hunt for critical minerals, the Trump administration is increasingly looking abroad to shore up supply chain security for the raw materials underpinning many of the world’s most powerful technologies.

From China to Ukraine to Greenland, key chapters of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in recent months have revolved around critical minerals—a set of 60 or so minerals that the U.S. Geological Survey has deemed essential to U.S. national and economic security. They include rare earths, 17 metallic elements that are not actually that rare but have been at the forefront of Washington’s trade war with Beijing.

Ten Pivotal Cases for Global Democracy

Thomas Carothers and McKenzie Carrier

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The Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program is a leading source of independent policy research, writing, and outreach on global democracy, conflict, and governance. It analyzes and seeks to improve international efforts to reduce democratic backsliding, mitigate conflict and violence, overcome political polarization, promote gender equality, and advance pro-democratic uses of new technologies.Learn More

During the past several years, the trajectory of global democracy has been hovering uncertainly between two paths. On one side, many countries continue to backslide. At the same time, a small but growing number appear to have started on paths of potential democratic recovery and renewal.

Looking at the world in late 2025, we see this uneasy dualism embodied in ten pivotal cases. In the first group, five democracies are facing serious new pressures, including political tremors and troubling signs of erosion. The five countries in the second group have recently experienced or are in the thick of significant anti-authoritarian or pro-democratic ferment—some of which has led to meaningful political openings, and some resulting in a political standoff between the contending sides but where opposition continues to grow against anti-democratic leadership.

Trump’s National Security Strategy Needs Bipartisanship

Brian Chow

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Since Trump’s second term began in January, he has issued an executive order to build a “Golden Dome for America,” a multi-layered missile defense shield against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” He has issued another order to rename the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” its name until 1947, projecting a “peace through strength” approach to international relations. Moreover, under Trump’s repeated prodding, NATO finally agreed for each member to commit 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) annually to defense by 2035—a commitment that, once completed, will nearly double the alliance’s annual defense contribution.

These are all defensible steps that, in Trump’s view, strengthen US national security. Yet the president has persistently been pessimistic about the possibility of bipartisan support for his initiatives. Accordingly, he has implemented them through brute force: using presidential authority to issue executive orders without waiting for Congress to pass laws supporting his agenda, and relying on the Republican majority in both chambers to shoot down prospective challenges.

A new EU–India calculus

Laraveys Mahmoudi

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For the first time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are set to be chief guests at India’s 2026 Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi on 26 January. Building on the February 2025 milestone visit of the College of Commissioners to India, the European Union and India launched a Joint Communication outlining a ‘New Strategic EU–India Agenda’ in September 2025. This new agenda aims to render engagement more cohesive and actionable and elevate cooperation to a more strategic level than had previously been achieved. Although this reflects recognition of India as a strategic partner, the EU must decide whether to leverage its own concerns more assertively and push for closer alignment on values and foreign policy or to consolidate practical cooperation by remaining quiet on areas of contention amidst India facing sustained pressure from the United States.

India’s relations with the EU, including its earlier iterations, date back to the early 1960s, culminating in the launch of a formal Strategic Partnership at their fifth bilateral summit in 2004. This framework, later refined through the 2005 Joint Action Plan, was built on democratic rhetoric and an ambition to enhance cooperation across trade, investment and institutional dialogue. However, many of these aspirations remained unrealised throughout the 2010s, and the partnership frequently fell short of its stated potential. Trade negotiations highlight this uneven trajectory. Discussions on a free-trade agreement (FTA) began in 2007 but stalled in 2013, only regaining momentum nearly a decade later. Revival of negotiations in 2022 coincided with India’s growing emphasis on economic liberalisation and the EU’s pursuit of resilient supply chains and expanded market access. Since then, negotiations have proceeded in parallel with discussions on an Investment Protection Agreement, aimed at securing fair conditions for investors, and a Geographical Indications Agreement, focused on intellectual property protection of distinctive regional goods, both of which have yet to be concluded.

South Asian States Seek Cooperation—Without India

Sumit Ganguly

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On a visit this month to Dhaka, Bangladesh, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar reiterated his government’s interest in forging a new regional organization that included Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan. The idea was first discussed during a trilateral meeting in Kunming, China, in June. If it materialized, the proposed grouping would sidestep the all-but-moribund South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

The brainchild of former Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman, SAARC was created in Dhaka in 1985 with the aim of fostering regional cooperation. The organization was partly styled after the successful Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Its original members were Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; Afghanistan joined in 2007.

Pakistan’s IMF Program is Buying Time. Markets Want To Know What Comes Next.

Amer Kayani

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Pakistan has just cleared another International Monetary Fund (IMF) review, and on paper the news looks good. Growth is back, inflation has come down from painful highs, and the country has even posted its first current account surplus in 14 years. But for ordinary Pakistanis and a global audience, the real question is not “Is the crisis over?” but “Can this fragile stability last, and will it ever translate into better lives?”

Over the past few years, Pakistan has lurched from one near‑crisis to another. Foreign exchange reserves fell to dangerously low levels, inflation surged, and there were real fears of default. The latest IMF report marks a turning point of sorts. It says the economy grew by about 3 percent in the last fiscal year, with a slightly higher rate expected next year if current policies continue. Inflation, which had been near 30 percent, has dropped sharply, even though recent floods have pushed food prices up again.

A Red Banner Year for the PLA

Sam Roggeveen

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For most of my career, first as an analyst in Australia’s intelligence community and then in the world of think tanks, I have watched and written about the modernisation of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). On every step of that journey, China has offered surprises. In fact, my experience in both the intelligence community (which, it should be emphasised, is now 17 years past) and open-source PLA analysis is that the pace of change and scale of ambition are generally underestimated.

But even by that standard, 2025 has been a year of major revelations. In fact, I cannot recall a more dramatic year in my time as a PLA watcher.

If we cheat slightly by starting our survey in the final days of December 2024 rather than on 1 January 2025, then we can include the first photographic evidence that China has not one but two “sixth generation” fighter programs underway. These aircraft promise to outperform fifth generation fighters like the American F-35, the leading Western design now being procured by the United States, Australia and other Western partners. As 2025 progressed, higher quality images of the prototypes emerged, including this one of a tailless stealth fighter unofficially designated as the J-50.

What Happens to China’s Surplus Men?

Drew Gorman

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When you’ve had no luck in the dating department, a makeover is an easy place to start. The trouble is, you don’t always know what needs to change. For Chinese bachelors Zhou, Wu, and Li, dating coach Hao has a blunt answer: everything.

Violet Du Feng’s documentary The Dating Game, now in theaters in New York City, follows these men’s attempts to reboot their dating lives in the wake of China’s former one-child policy. A long-standing preference for sons created one of the world’s starkest gender imbalances. “We have no women,” Hao says. Indeed, in 2015, the year the policy ended, about 116 boys were born for every 100 girls in China—likely condemning almost one in five boys to a lifetime of singledom.

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

Yu Jie

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When historians look back on the early 21st century, they may conclude that the United States taught China more by example than through lectures about trade practices or political systems.

In October, the Chinese leadership released its recommendations for the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, which will cover 2026 to 2030. The document outlined not just where the leadership intends to steer the world’s second-largest economy, but also how it wants to project China’s power globally. Without explicitly mentioning the United States, Beijing’s political blueprint reveals the leadership’s intense focus on addressing technological chokepoints and its concerns about the extent of the country’s dependence on overseas suppliers for high-end technologies.

China Bets on Unmanned Stealth Bombers

Olli Pekka Suorsa

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China recently unveiled two large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), which have been unofficially designated as the “WZ-X” and “GJ-X” by China military watchers. The UAVs’ intended roles could include strategic reconnaissance and strike, offering Beijing unprecedented options in the coming decade.

China has accelerated development and testing of a growing number of advanced tailless flying wing-type UAVs, such as the Hongdu GJ-11 and its naval version, the GJ-21, as well as CASC CH-7. This trend is instructive of Chinese industry’s advances in autonomy and aeronautical design. More than that, it offers critical insights into the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) vision of its future airpower strategy.

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

Nathalie Tocci

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Europeans lulled themselves into the belief that U.S. President Donald Trump is unpredictable and inconsistent but ultimately manageable. This is strangely reassuring, but wrong. From U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech denigrating Europe at the Munich Security Conference in February to the new U.S. National Security Strategy that was released on Dec. 4, the Trump administration has long had a clear and consistent vision for Europe: one that prioritizes U.S.-Russia ties and seeks to divide and conquer the continent, with much of the dirty work carried out by nationalist, far-right European forces that now enjoy backing from both Moscow and Washington. It is long past time for Europe to realize that, when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war and the continent’s security, it is, at best, alone. At worst, it now faces two adversaries: Russia in the east and Trump’s United States in the west.

Every time Trump or members of his administration have lashed out at Europe, including Ukraine, Europeans have absorbed the blow with a forced smile and bent over backwards to flatter the White House. They believe this is a clever ploy, playing on Trump’s perceived incoherence and vanity to bring him back into the transatlantic fold. Yet each time Trump has turned his narrow attention to the Ukraine war, he has sided with Russia—from the Oval Office trap set for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, to the red carpet laid out for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, to the 28-point “peace plan” that was likely written in Moscow. On every occasion, Europeans have taken the hit, busying themselves with keeping Washington engaged and salvaging what remains of the transatlantic bond. Europeans have turned so many cheeks to Trump that one wonders if they have any left at all.

Putin Has Already Won

Michael Hirsh

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For a guy who’s lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers and barely moved his front lines forward in a war that’s already lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, Vladimir Putin is looking pretty smug and self-satisfied these days.

It has become commonplace for Western strategists to say that, no matter what he tries now, the Russian dictator will come out of his Ukraine adventure a loser. In nearly four years of horrific bloodshed, Putin has captured barely 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and failed completely in his goal of denying Ukrainians the right to statehood. Meanwhile, NATO has grown, bulking up its defenses and adding Finland and Sweden to its formidable front line.

Michael Hirsh is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the author of two books: Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street and At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. X: @michaelphirsh

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What Trump’s National Security Strategy Gets Right

Rebeccah Heinrichs

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The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is, in many ways, unlike any in U.S. history. Most strategy documents of this kind articulate the threats that the United States’ adversaries pose to Washington and its allies, and they explain how officials can respond to these challenges. But this one seems kinder to the United States’ foes than to its friends. It rebukes Europe in an astonishingly blunt fashion, arguing that some of the continent’s domestic policies are damaging democracy and risking “civilizational erasure.” It says remarkably little, by contrast, about the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. As a result, the response to the NSS among Washington’s traditional foreign policy elite has been overwhelmingly angry—and panicked.

But anxious analysts should take a breath. Dig a little deeper, and the new document, almost certainly written by many hands, is more complex than it appears at first glance. In fact, it reflects more continuity with the last several strategies than its most attention-grabbing passages suggest. The strategy does not call for the United States to abandon Europe or its other traditional allies. It does not open the door to Chinese expansionism. And it does not indicate that Washington is preparing to withdraw from much of the world. Quite the contrary: it suggests that the United States still has globe-spanning shared interests with its historical allies, and that the country is planning to expand its geographical interests.