Indian Strategic Studies

13 December 2025

Identity Erasure And China’s Colonial Boarding Schools In Tibet

Janhavi Pande

Tibet has seen sweeping ‘reforms’ in education since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in China. Besides fostering a general sense of legitimacy for the Communist Party among young Tibetans, Beijing is now looking to assimilate them into Chinese society. This goal of achieving ‘ethnic unity’ has resulted in the closure of many Tibetan schools, in favour of Tibetans being inducted into militarised boarding schools.

The recent closure of a popular Tibetan school in Qinghai drew widespread criticism from Tibetan exiles, and according to the Human Rights Watch, at least five schools in eastern Tibet have been shut down since 2021. Parents in these regions must now compulsorily turn to China’s state-run boarding schools for Tibetan children. The curriculum in these schools, which largely excludes the teaching and learning of the Tibetan language, religion, and culture is intended to lead these children into becoming more Chinese and less Tibetan in terms of their identity and cultural orientation.

While the PRC’s repressive policies in Xinjiang have rightfully drawn attention and concern from the international community, their attempts to weaponise education by using it as a tool of identity erasure in Tibet must be viewed with equal consternation.

China and India’s National Strategy and Competition in Cislunar Space

Namrata Goswami

The Moon is increasingly seen as a hub for future industrial activities, infrastructure, and strategic leverage. Both countries have clear ambitions for lunar exploration and development, including crewed missions by 2030 (China) and 2040 (India), but their approaches differ in speed, scope, institutional setup, and technological readiness.

Overall, the paths of China and India in space show how Asian space powers are fundamentally transforming the global distribution of capabilities and influence in cislunar space. Any analysis of the Moon and cislunar space that does not consider the future implications of China and India’s lunar programs is severely limited in its impact and ability to provide a deeper understanding of why the Moon is becoming a key asset and contributor to space power.

China: Long-term Cislunar Strategy

China’s cislunar strategy is characterized by its organized structure and consistent strategic emphasis. Officially announced in 2004, China’s early Chang’e missions focused on orbital reconnaissance, while later missions, beginning with Chang’e 3, featured deliberate surface landings, rover operations, sample return, and far-side exploration. The Chang’e-4 landing on the Moon’s far side in 2019 demonstrated China’s skill in precision landing, autonomous navigation, and long-distance communications via a relay satellite (Queqiao), establishing a unique operational foothold. The Chang’e-5 sample-return mission in 2020 further showcased China’s capacity to perform technically complex maneuvers, including soft landing, automated drilling, ascent from the lunar surface, and orbital rendezvous, demonstrating all the essential components required for future crewed activity.

China’s Accommodation of Taliban 2.0

M. Ramin Mansoori

China has become a global power, but there is too little debate about how this has happened and what it means. Many argue that China exports its developmental model and imposes it on other countries. But Chinese players also extend their influence by working through local actors and institutions while adapting and assimilating local and traditional forms, norms, and practices.

Carnegie has launched an innovative body of research on Chinese engagement strategies in seven regions of the world—Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, the Pacific, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through a mix of research and strategic convening, this project explores these complex dynamics, including the ways Chinese firms are adapting to local labor laws in Latin America, Chinese banks and funds are exploring traditional Islamic financial and credit products in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and Chinese actors are helping local workers upgrade their skills in Central Asia. These adaptive Chinese strategies that accommodate and work within local realities are largely ignored by Western policymakers.

Ultimately, the project aims to significantly broaden understanding and debate about China’s role in the world and to generate innovative policy ideas. These could enable local players to better channel Chinese energies to support their societies and economies; provide lessons for Western engagement around the world, especially in developing countries; help China’s own policy community learn from the diversity of Chinese experiences; and potentially reduce frictions.

China’s Weaponization of Global Cyber Supply Chains

Peter Dohr

The Chinese Communist Party fuses military and civilian cyber capabilities with coercive influence over private firms to embed vulnerabilities, preposition access, and compromise foreign technological infrastructure.

As global interdependence deepens and digital technologies permeate society, the security of supply chains has emerged as a critical domain of strategic competition. The diffusion of globally sourced components into critical systems extends cyber conflict beyond post-deployment breaches; today, the battle begins before a device first powers on. China’s malign actors can embed vulnerabilities, conceal them through global assembly, and remotely activate them without warning. Visibility into these threats is central to national defense in the digital era.

This challenge is most acute in the intensifying technological rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leverages a uniquely far-reaching capacity to exploit global supply chains through a fusion of military doctrine, intelligence strategy, and party-state control over nominally private firms. Beijing can preposition access points, latent vulnerabilities, and disruptive capabilities within the technological infrastructure of its geopolitical competitors.

Iran's Regime Is on Its Knees — Why for God's Sake Revive It?

Majid Rafizadeh

The European Union is reportedly preparing to sit down with Iran to negotiate on its nuclear program -- again. Even Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- the UN's nuclear watchdog -- seems interested in engaging Iran in "diplomacy" again.

Iran's regime, not surprisingly, appears more than happy to accept these overtures. On the surface, this international charm offensive may appear to be a constructive effort toward dialogue, but a dryer analysis suggests that such negotiations risk handing a monumental victory to a vicious regime that is vulnerable and weak -- and rabidly opportunistic. By offering Iran another platform for legitimacy, the EU and the UN are shoring up a monumentally brutal regime at a time when, for the West's own good, it should be applying pressure, not extending a hand.

Iran's nuclear program was, after half a century of international procrastination, finally damaged in a significant way by strikes carried out by Israel and the United States. The damage has left the regime not much to offer in return for concessions, although the only concession called for is to stop building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. In a normal negotiation, a party with strong assets might offer something other than what the other party wants, in exchange for sanctions relief, but this is not Iran's situation at the time.

China’s security chief hints at US decline, says tech theft is a major concern

William Zheng

China’s top espionage official has identified Taiwanese independence, technology theft, subversion and the defence of strategically important sea lanes as top priorities for the next five years.

State Security Minister Chen Yixin identified the issues as his main priorities in an article published in Study Times, the mouthpiece of the Central Party School, which is used for ideological and administrative training.

In his assessment of international affairs, Chen noted the decline of a “unipolar hegemony”, an obvious but indirect reference to the United States.

He linked his assessment to a major policy meeting in October that set out the Communist Party’s latest five-year plan for the economy.

Without naming the United States, he said “unipolar hegemony” was becoming “increasingly unsustainable” as a result of “accelerating democratic transformation, economic decline, and social fragmentation domestically”, and the “collapse of credibility, the decay of hegemony, and the shattering of its legacy internationally”.

But he warned that the external risks faced by China were increasing as “unilateralism and protectionism and the threats of hegemonism and power politics are increasing on the rise”.

In the article, Chen vowed to “strengthen bottom-line thinking and preparation for extreme scenarios”.

US foreign policy is simply a racket but no one dares defy Trump

MATTHEW SYED

I planned this to be a “balanced” column about the US national security strategy (NSS) released by the White House on Friday, which warned of the “civilisational erasure” of Europe. The document said that Europe had failed to invest in defence, left our borders wide open and become strangulated by regulation. All too true. The document also had sections on the Indo-Pacific, Asia and the global south. An opportunity, then, to examine the Trump doctrine and to grasp its logic.

But perhaps I can be honest: as I typed the opening paragraphs, I started to feel my willpower draining away. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something inside (sanity? scruples?) stayed my hand. For when you look at Trump’s foreign policy, it is impossible to offer a “balanced” perspective, since it doesn’t pretend to balance, or logic, or even the national interest. Instead, it is foreign policy that can only be conceptualised as a kind of personal extortion racket.

You may remember that in the build-up to the inauguration the president-elect launched a cryptocurrency through his company World Liberty Financial (WLF), effectively giving rich people (and poorer ones) the opportunity to hand over billions of dollars to the Trump organisation without scrutiny. You might also remember the dinner at the White House for those who had made the biggest donations, not to mention the private members’ club called Executive Branch set up by the Trump and Witkoff families with founding memberships selling for $500,000 a pop.

Now look at Trump’s foreign policy. I was astounded after returning from a trip to Vietnam this year to see that Trump had imposed a 46 per cent tariff on one of its most important allies in the region, effectively pushing this fast-growing nation into the orbit of China. Not long afterwards, Reuters reported the Trump Organisation and “partners in Vietnam” had secured investments worth billions of dollars in golf courses, hotels and other property. The tariff rate was slashed by more than a half.

US defence chief touts ‘flexible realism’ with China ahead of strategy document

Seong Hyeon Choi

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth sent out a message of peace, dialogue and “flexible realism” with China in a weekend speech that offered a brief preview of the forthcoming national defence strategy.

In his keynote address at the annual Reagan National Defence Forum on Saturday, Hegseth said Washington was committed to putting “America first” and avoiding involvement in foreign entanglements as it prioritised domestic security.

Yet, in drawing comparisons between the Trump administration’s military strategies and those of former Republican president Ronald Reagan, Hegseth said Donald Trump was “hell-bent” on “maintaining and accelerating the most powerful military the world has ever seen”.

Hegseth highlighted four distinct “lines of effort” to achieve America’s goals: defending the US homeland and its hemisphere; deterring China through strength rather than force; increasing burden-sharing between the US and its allies and partners; and supercharging America’s defence industrial base.

New US Security Strategy aligns with Russia's vision, Moscow says

Rachel Muller-Heyndyk

Putin and Trump last met in August for a summit as a US base in Alaska

Russia has welcomed Donald Trump's new US National Security Strategy, calling it "largely consistent" with Moscow's vision.

The 33-page document, unveiled by the US administration last week, suggests Europe is facing "civilisational erasure" and does not cast Russia as a threat to the US.

Combatting foreign influence, ending mass migration, and rejecting the EU's perceived practice of "censorship" are mentioned as other priorities in the report.

Several EU officials and analysts had pushed back on the strategy, questioning its focus on freedom of expression and likening it to language used by the Kremlin.

"The adjustments we're seeing... are largely consistent with our vision," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published by Russia's state news agency TASS on Sunday.

"We consider this a positive step," he said, adding that Moscow would continue to analyse the document before drawing strong conclusions.

The strategy adopts a softer language towards Russia, which EU officials worry could weaken its response to Moscow in ending the war.

In the document, the EU is blamed for blocking US efforts to end the conflict and says that the US must "re-establish strategic stability to Russia" which would "stabilise European economies".

It appears to endorse efforts to influence policy on the continent, noting that US policy should prioritise "resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations".

Niall Ferguson: The Truth About Trump's National Security Strategy

Niall Ferguson

The good Old Scots word stramash is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “an uproar, state of noise and confusion; a ‘row.’ ” I was reminded of it as I read the media coverage of President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), a 33-page document released last week to lay out his administration’s foreign policy priorities—”a road map,” according to the president’s own introduction, “to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”

Unlike, say, Europe. The most eye-catching feature of the document was its highly critical references to this country’s European allies. Their military spending was “insufficient.” Their economies were afflicted by “stagnation” and “decline.” They even faced the prospect of “civilizational erasure.”

Cue the media outrage. “A new White House policy document formalizes President Trump’s long-held contempt for Europe’s leaders,” said a piece in The New York Times. Jason Horowitz wrote, “Hostility [to Europe] is official White House policy.” Horowitz’s argument featured learned authorities: “[It] is very similar to language which you’ll find in the analogous Russian national security document,” observed the historian Timothy D. Snyder, formerly of Yale, conjuring up visions of the president furtively employing Google Translate while surfing Kremlin websites.

Superpower Competition: The Missing Chapter in Trump’s Security Strategy

David E. Sanger

The last time President Trump issued a national security strategy, eight years ago, it heralded a return to superpower competition, describing China and Russia as “revisionist” powers seeking to upend American dominance around the world.

“China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” he wrote in a document that reflected the influence of his advisers in his first term. “They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”

Eight years later, that diagnosis seems truer than ever. The two U.S. rivals have deepened, and occasionally exaggerated, their “partnership without limits.” China’s nuclear force has more than doubled since the 2017 strategy was published; its military runs exercises encircling Taiwan; and its cyber attackers have drilled into American telecommunications, corporate and government infrastructure. Russia has engaged in a nearly four-year-long war in Ukraine and a shadow war against U.S. allies across Europe.

The National Security Strategy: The Good, the Not So Great, and the Alarm Bells

Emily Harding

This National Security Strategy (NSS) marks an ideological and substantive shift in U.S. foreign policy. The administration is attempting to define a new “America First” foreign policy doctrine that is deeply pragmatic, and perhaps short-sighted. For example, the democracy agenda is clearly over. Foreign policy choices will be made based on what makes the United States more powerful and prosperous. That’s fair, and clearly what the American people voted for, but today’s self-interested choices may lead to a far lonelier, weaker, more fractured future. This is a truly pivotal moment in the way the world works.

This NSS is a real, painful, shocking wake-up call for Europe. It is a moment of cavernous divergence between Europe’s view of itself and Trump’s vision for Europe. If Europe had any doubt that the Trump administration is fully committed to a tough love strategy, it now knows for sure. The administration is asking—demanding, really—that Europe polices its own part of the world and, most importantly, pays for it itself. The most worrying parts of the strategy are the ones that chastise Europe for losing its European character. The sentiment behind the words seems to stoke fear of migrants and an adherence to an idealized, old-world Europe that is questionable at best. Modern Europe is vibrant, evolving, and—largely—pretty happy. The majority of Europe’s reaction to this NSS is likely to be the same aghast shock as met Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech.

China will love two parts of this strategy and hate the rest. Beijing will love the explicit declaration that the U.S. preference is noninterference in other nations’ affairs and the clear statement about respecting states’ sovereignty. That may assuage Chinese fears that the United States seeks to undermine regime stability. They will hate the calls for them to get out of Latin America and the robust approach to deterrence, both necessary and excellent policy positions. Overall, the Pacific section is strong.

How to Save the U.S. Army

Andrew Latham

The U.S. Army is misaligned with a battlefield transformed by drones, AI, and precision fires. Commanders now face total surveillance, compressed decision cycles, and logistics that are directly targeted.

-To stay relevant, the Army must treat AI as foundational to command-and-control, disperse and harden headquarters and supply nodes, and train units to fight under constant observation and degraded communications.

-Sustainment must become agile, predictive, and survivable under fire. Looking at Russia, China, and Iran, the author concludes that redesigning how the Army commands, maneuvers, and sustains is more urgent than buying the next marquee platform.

Drones, AI and Total Surveillance: Why the U.S. Army Must Reinvent Itself

The U.S. Army’s structure and organization are in a period of transition—one defined less by routine modernization cycles and more by combat experience and the unvarnished realities of modern land warfare.

US Opportunity in Armenia—Why TRIPP Could Be the Pivot Point

Julian Setian

For the first time in a generation, there is reason to believe the United States and Armenia may be on the cusp of building a genuine strategic partnership. The TRIPP initiative (Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity)—does more than calm tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan: It reflects a fundamental shift in Washington’s posture toward Armenia, one that increasingly views the country as a plausible partner for meaningful security and economic cooperation.

The new dynamic is subtle but unmistakable. While formal guardrails are still emerging, U.S. officials have begun encouraging Yerevan to purchase American equipment, technology and training. This is more than a bureaucratic formality. It is a deliberate, calibrated test—an invitation for Armenia to take the first steps toward a long-term security cooperation relationship with the United States.

Trump’s new doctrine confirms it. Ready or not, Europe is on its own

Georg Riekeles and Varg Folkman

Europe is on a trajectory towards nothing less than “civilisational erasure”, the Trump administration claims in its extraordinary new National Security Strategy, a document that blames European integration and “activities of the European Union that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” for some of the continent’s deepest problems.

Everybody should have seen it coming after Washington’s humiliating 28-point plan for Ukraine. JD Vance’s shocking Munich speech in February, in which he suggested that Europe’s democracies were not worth defending was an early red flag. But the new words still land as a shock. The security document is the clearest signal yet of how brutally and transactionally Washington wants to engage with the continent. It marks another phase in Trump’s attempt to reshape Europe in his ideological image while at the same time abandoning it militarily. US policy, the paper says, should enable Europe to “take primary responsibility for its own defence”.

Withdrawing US troops from Europe has been a particularly adamant demand of the Maga right. Figures such as Steve Bannon openly argue for “hemispheric defence” – defending the Americas, not Europe. On his War Room podcast, Bannon said plainly that: “We’re a Pacific nation … the pivot, the strategic heartland of America, is actually the Pacific.”

Trump’s Power Paradox

Michael Kimmage

In his first term as U.S. president and on the campaign trail for reelection in 2024, a variety of Donald Trump’s instincts were visible. One was an appreciation of power for its own sake. For Trump, it is power, not principles, that makes the world go round. Another was Trump’s view of prosperity as a talismanic organizing principle of foreign policy. “We are going to make America wealthy again,” Trump vowed in 2016. “You have to be wealthy in order to be great.” A third instinct was the close alignment of politics with personality. “Only I can fix it,” Trump declared at the 2016 Republican nominating convention.

Trump’s new National Security Strategy, which was published late last week, synthesizes and formalizes these three instincts, presenting them as the necessary drivers of international order. The NSS points to “the character of our nation, upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built,” entrusting the protection of this character to the president himself and his “team,” who in his first term “successfully marshaled America’s great strengths to correct course and begin ushering in a new golden age for our country.” It is Trump’s personality, power, and supporters that have enabled this golden age.

Are We at War with Russia? How Warden’s Rings Map Russia’s Hybrid Strategy

Calvin Bailey

Russia’s hybrid campaign against Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine shows that war in the 2020s is not defined by the moment tanks cross borders. Conflict today is a continuum, one in which hostile states use non-kinetic, unattributable means to degrade the ability of an adversary to function long before conventional forces engage. The West still tends to treat these actions as ‘pre-war’, or something separate from conflict itself. They are not. They are part of an escalatory strategy aimed at undermining and degrading our deterrence logic. This makes it difficult to ascertain where Europe is on the ‘spectrum of conflict’ with Russia. We may not be exchanging fire, but our infrastructure, airspace and people are still subject to Russian aggression.

To understand where we are, we must understand who Russia targets and why. Revisiting a model developed for an earlier era is helpful: John Warden’s ‘Five Rings’, first outlined in The Enemy as a System. Originally conceived for air campaigns against industrial states, Warden’s framework argued that a state could be paralysed by striking at the system that sustains it: leadership, organic essentials, infrastructure, population and, lastly, its fielded forces. Warden proposed delivering this effect through long-range precision strike, bypassing armies to attack the core. This doctrine has been central to how the US has waged war through its overwhelming airpower advantage.

Countering the Digital Silk Road

Vivek Chilukuri and Ruby Scanlon

The year 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Digital Silk Road (DSR), China’s effort to strengthen its global ties and influence through technology. In the decade since the initiative’s launch, technology has moved to the center of emerging market priorities, China’s domestic and foreign policy, and the U.S.-China competition. Rapid digitalization, spurred by emerging market policies seeking to harness technology’s potential, has led to surging global demand for the connective infrastructure and cutting-edge services that will power the modern world. But even as technology vaults to the top of government and corporate agendas, the DSR’s origins, goals, and tools remain obscured, complicating U.S. and allied efforts to assess its effectiveness and mobilize a response.

Those seeking official strategies and plans behind the DSR will be disappointed. Its nature is amorphous, expanding alongside Beijing’s growing interest in strategic technologies and receding as commercial and political interests require. Ten years after its inception, the Digital Silk Road is, paradoxically, at once less visible and more ubiquitous than ever. Launched in 2015 as the digital arm of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the DSR grew into its own effort as technology leadership became increasingly important to Beijing. Rising backlash against the BRI and the DSR abroad, however, made formal affiliation with a state-led initiative a liability, and Chinese officials and companies now rarely tout official linkages. Domestic economic headwinds and fiscal pressures also caused Beijing to retrench from the earlier years of massive state-backed infrastructure projects in favor of a “small yet smart” approach that emphasized technology as a low-cost, high-impact avenue of continued developmental support. At home, Beijing embraced technology as a path to economic diversification, development, and security consistent with the Made in China 2025 initiative. Private and semiprivate companies—Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, and Tencent—led the way, with considerable success. Huawei is now the world’s top provider of telecommunications equipment and operates in over 170 countries.

From Intelligence Gathering to Financial Gain: Countering DPRK Cyber Operations

Dr. Julie Kim

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has developed aggressive cyber operations that have evolved into serious global security threats. North Korea’s early cyberattacks were primarily politically motivated, focusing on collecting intelligence and gaining insight into how its adversaries operate. Key targets included government officials, academics, journalists, and North Korean defectors. In addition, the DPRK has targeted the defence industry to gain access to sensitive information on weapons development, with particular focus on technologies related to satellites and semiconductors.

The scope of these operations shifted dramatically toward financial gain after the United Nations adopted successive sanctions in response to its nuclear tests. Despite multiple sanctions and international efforts, North Korea continues to fund its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs through illicit cyber activities. This includes payments remitted by overseas information technology (IT) workers. A significant portion of financial theft is believed to support its nuclear and missile development programs. In fact, a former White House official claimed that about half of North Korea’s missile program is funded by cyberattacks and cryptocurrency theft. Thus, DPRK cyber operations are not only a cyber security issue, but also a direct threat to broader military and defence security.

Steps toward AI governance in the military domain

Melanie W. Sisson, Colin Kahl, Sun Chenghao, and Xiao Qian

Rapid advances in the sophistication and functionality of military platforms enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) make it necessary and urgent to minimize the likelihood that states will use them in ways that cause harm to civilians. Of particular concern is the possibility that AI-powered military capabilities might cause harm to whole societies and put in question the survival of the human species.

China and the United States are the leaders of AI development and diffusion, and so their governments have a special responsibility to seek to prevent uses of AI in the military domain from harming civilians. They can achieve this together by pursuing mechanisms believed to reduce the likelihood that AI-powered military crises will occur. This is the goal of governance regimes. The United States and China can also seek to protect civilians in an AI-powered military crisis by implementing mechanisms believed to reduce the consequences of those crises, if they do occur. This is the goal of preparedness regimes (Figure 1).

When Do Cyber Campaigns Cross a Line?

Tom Uren

When Do Cyber Campaigns Cross a Line?

A new paper from the Germany-based think tank Interface has attempted to define the threshold at which peacetime state cyber operations become irresponsible. The author thinks that more concrete definitions of responsible behavior would help guide states and prevent dangerous conduct. It's a commendable effort, but we don't think the architects of cyber operations really care about norms, and a German think tank writing down its preferred rules on a piece of paper won't make any difference to state behavior.

Governments do, however, care about potential political costs and the risk of retaliation. One of the paper's goals is to provide a framework that makes it easier for victim states to flag irresponsible operations and respond appropriately. The paper defines seven principles-based "red flags" and gives examples of some real-world cyber operations that might have raised these flags.

The first red flag, "causing physical harm, injury or death" is pretty straightforward. It's a threshold that states have observed, and the paper does not list any cyber operations that it thinks have crossed the line. The most interesting red flag is "lacking or losing operational control." The author argues that maintaining effective operational control "is essential," because risks increase when operations spiral out of control.

Trump’s United States of the Americas

RICHARD HAASS

NEW YORK – National security strategies, released from time to time by every US administration, often say little and are quickly forgotten. The latest one, however, issued by the Trump administration late last week, is the exception. It is must reading, for it previews the biggest redirection of US foreign policy since the dawn of the Cold War 80 years ago.

Make Russia Pay for Its War on Ukraine

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ & ANDREW KOSENKO explain why it is in Europe's interest to mobilize frozen Russian assets to ensure Ukraine's survival.

What leaps out is the prioritization of economic and commercial interests. The document speaks of reducing America’s trade imbalances, increasing commerce, securing supply chains, and reindustrializing the country. Allies are considered allies only so long as they assume a much larger share of the defense burden. Geoeconomics has superseded geopolitics. Investment is in; assistance is out. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are in; wind, solar, and other renewables are out – along with climate change concerns.

12 December 2025

India's Cautious Stance toward the Securitization of the Quad

Rohan Mukherjee

Even as the Quad has gained increasing strategic significance in the Indo-Pacific, India remains hesitant to embrace it for greater security cooperation. Are there discrepancies between India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific and that of its Quad counterparts. If so, what is driving these differences?

Much depends on what we mean by “security cooperation.” If this means a treaty alliance, then India is unlikely to embrace it. If we mean more robust cooperation on security issues, then India has supported this vision of the Quad since at least 2020, when the border standoff between India and China began in Ladakh. How firmly New Delhi pursues such cooperation is probably where the difference lies between India, on the one hand, and the United States and its treaty allies, Japan and Australia, on the other. It is noticeable that India became more active in the Quad and supportive of its security objectives after relations with China soured in 2020. Now that diplomacy between Beijing and New Delhi has yielded some agreement on a disengagement process, there will be less incentive for India to aggressively counter China, especially given the importance of bilateral trade.

Crises May Now Drive Japan’s Relations With China

Sheila A. Smith

Crises are not new to the Japan-China relationship, but their impact only grows. There is little reason to hope for a quick resolution to the current one. The last crisis was long-lasting, begun by a drunken fishing trawler captain and ended with an awkward handshake between Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014. There is much to fear in that today’s crisis will escalate further. This crisis pits Japan’s security goals against China’s longstanding desire to reclaim full control over Taiwan. Finding an exit from these tensions will, at the very least, take time.

Diplomatic crises often change the stakes for each, and for the Japanese, the consequences of this crisis are multifaceted. Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, was the initial focal point. As the Washington Post editorial board aptly noted, she said the “quiet part out loud” when she responded to an opposition party lawmaker’s question in the Diet, acknowledging that China’s use of force against Taiwan could be seen to threaten Japan’s survival. In official Japanese government speak, that means that Japan might have to order its Self-Defense Forces to respond with others.

Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics

Alicia R. Chen

Earlier this year, after U.S. President Donald Trump effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral aid program, many observers raised fears that China would step in to fill the geopolitical vacuum. USAID, after all, had served as a key tool of U.S. diplomacy for more than six decades, and the American retreat has created an opportunity for China to expand its economic statecraft and win influence in many parts of the world.

Pressure points: Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait

Pressure Points part 2 explores Beijing’s growing use of military coercion against Taiwan, detailing events around Asia’s most volatile flashpoint. The analysis draws on open-source data, satellite imagery, military imagery, governmental reporting and other resources to deliver an accurate and comprehensive picture of China’s approach.

It examines how Beijing frames its claim to Taiwan, the coercive and military tools it increasingly wields to enforce that claim, how Taipei is responding to mounting pressure, and how other governments are managing the growing risk of confrontation. It also details potential scenarios that President Xi may pursue to forcibly unify Taiwan. The result is a concise and interactive account of one of the Indo-Pacific’s most consequential strategic landscapes.

The project also provides policy recommendations for governments, especially regional militaries and likeminded nations. These recommendations center on improving transparency of operations, enhancing multi-national coordination among like-minded states, strengthening resilience (military and civilian) in Taiwan, and maintaining sustained commitment in the face of persistent Chinese pressure.

Views of China across the Global South: The Rule and the Exceptions

Ken Ishii

From the colonial “scramble for Africa” to Cold War coups and proxy conflicts backed by the United States and Soviet Union, the developing world was frequently an arena for competition among rival great powers in the 20th century. In today’s world of geopolitical flux, however, many countries in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America hold greater agency, increased state capacity, growing populations, and generally positive economic prospects. In a context of sharpening geopolitical divides, the societies of the Global South are likely to significantly influence the outcome of the current strategic competition. The emerging views regarding China in the Global South are relevant to understanding many countries’ foreign policies, investment regimes, trade policies, soft power initiatives, and approaches to educational or cultural exchanges.

It is not news that China is more popular in the Global South than in the West. But contrary to common assumptions — and previous research — Global Public Opinion on China’s (GPOC’s) data show the world is by no means neatly divided along North-South lines. As the previous paper in this series noted, on a population basis, the negative-leaning views of India’s 1.4 billion people offset the strongly positive views that prevail in more than 50 countries in Africa. Which regions and countries drive the overall positive view of China, and which cut against the general tendency? What have been the trends over time? How has the COVID pandemic’s legacy played out in the developing world? This GPOC brief offers a closer look at the significant variations in views of China across the Global South.

Trump reveals what he wants for the world

Nahal Toosi

President Donald Trump intends for the U.S. to keep a bigger military presence in the Western Hemisphere going forward to battle migration, drugs and the rise of adversarial powers in the region, according to his new National Security Strategy.

The 33-page document is a rare formal explanation of Trump’s foreign policy worldview by his administration. Such strategies, which presidents typically release once each term, can help shape how parts of the U.S. government allocate budgets and set policy priorities.

The Trump National Security Strategy, which the White House quietly released Thursday, has some brutal words for Europe, suggesting it is in civilizational decline, and pays relatively little attention to the Middle East and Africa.

It has an unusually heavy focus on the Western Hemisphere that it casts as largely about protecting the U.S. homeland. It says “border security is the primary element of national security” and makes veiled references to China’s efforts to gain footholds in America’s backyard.

“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the document states. “The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence — from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”

The awful arithmetic of our wars

Peter W. Singer

At the lowest point of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln characterized the core factor between victory and defeat as finding a general who understood the “awful arithmetic” of war. War is a contest of blood and treasure; each can, and must, ultimately be counted and measured. It has been the same for every conflict before and after.

Yet this arithmetic is constantly changing, and never faster than right now. If the United States cannot update its calculations to properly reflect our new era, our failure will not just cost us blood and treasure, but will drive us toward defeat.

Cost imposition has long been a tenet of U.S. strategy. During the Cold War, the U.S. launched expensive programs such as stealth and Star Wars not just for their tactical value, but to send a strategic signal to the Kremlin: neither your economy nor your war machine can keep up. Gorbachev, persuaded, gave up the decades-long competition with the U.S.

The very same concept of cost imposition was also elemental to the most celebrated operations of the past year. In Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine used inexpensive drones, reportedly costing less than $500 each, to damage strategic bombers worth many millions of dollars, degrading Russia’s long-range strike capabilities for years to come. Similarly, in Operation Rising Lion, cheap Israeli drones took out Iranian surface-to-air missiles and radars, paving the way for the destruction of command and nuclear facilities worth tens of billions of dollars. In each, the tactical became the strategic through new operational concepts that leveraged the new math of new technologies.

Opinion | Trump’s closure of Voice of America is coming back to bite him

President Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out anything when it comes to removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. Yet he is missing an important tool from the arsenal: the Voice of America.

Since Trump’s March executive order dismantling the news agency, most of VOA’s 1,300 staff members and contractors have been fired or placed on administrative leave, its website has been frozen and the 83-year-old broadcaster has gone dark for the first time since its founding during World War II.

Before being shuttered, VOA’s weekly Spanish-language audience in Latin America was more than 100 million people, according to an audience survey released in January by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That’s especially important in Venezuela, where the regime of Nicolás Maduro has closed most independent media outlets and continues to harass journalists. Around eight journalists are in prison. Many more have fled.

Until Trump’s edict, the broadcaster focused on communicating U.S. foreign policy to Venezuelans, including letting audiences hear unfiltered news conferences, briefings and congressional hearings focused on Maduro’s political repression, corruption, economic mismanagement and, yes, Maduro’s drug trafficking ties

Trump to Close Voice of America’s Overseas Offices and Radio Stations

Minho Kim

The Trump administration last week told lawmakers that it would further shrink the broadcasting capacity of Voice of America despite a judge’s order to maintain robust news operations at the federally funded news group, which provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedoms.

Kari Lake, a Trump ally who leads the broadcaster’s parent agency, wrote in a Nov. 25 notice to Congress reviewed by The New York Times that the administration intended to close its six overseas news bureaus and four overseas marketing offices, including in Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan; Nairobi, Kenya; and Prague, Czech Republic.

The plans are part of the Trump administration’s broader, monthslong effort to shutter federally funded news groups. President Trump first moved to shut down Voice of America in March, and has also targeted other broadcasters, such as Radio Free Asia.

The campaign has met resistance from courts and even from some Republican members of Congress, who believe V.O.A.’s reporting helps counter misinformation and propaganda campaigns from American adversaries like China and Russia.

The expected closures appear to contradict a federal judge’s order from April, which required Trump officials to resume operations at V.O.A. so that it would “fulfill its statutory mandate” to serve “as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

Does Europe Finally Realize It’s Alone?

Nathalie Tocci

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.

The Army's $15 Billion Turnover Crisis: Why Half Our Captains Quit

The U.S. Army invests between $600,000 and $1 million to produce an experienced captain. Then 54% separate before making major.

That's not a retention problem. That's a replacement crisis. We're spending $10 billion annually not to retain talent but to constantly churn out replacements for officers who leave the moment their service obligations end.

Of the 13,000 officers commissioned each year, only 46% stay long enough to be considered for promotion to O-4. The other 54% serve their initial commitment and walk. West Point graduates who cost $500,000 to produce serve an average of 11.8 years and leave. ROTC officers who cost $168,000 serve 12.6 years and leave. Neither group sticks around.

This isn't about money alone. It's about a lieutenant who spent $500,000 of taxpayer investment at West Point, led soldiers in combat, and discovers his battalion commander is toxic. It's about a cyber officer who took three years and $500,000 to train, then got forced into a command track that ignores her technical expertise. It's about a captain who got branched Infantry when he wanted Signal, served his five years exactly, and left for Google.

We know why they're leaving. We've known for years. Leadership quality matters more than anything else, but we don't hold commanders accountable for driving out talent. Branch assignments ignore preferences and talents, creating resentment from day one. Technical experts get forced into command tracks. And junior officers have zero control over their careers, their assignments, or their futures.

Are We at War with Russia? How Warden’s Rings Map Russia’s Hybrid Strategy

Calvin Bailey

Russia’s hybrid campaign against Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine shows that war in the 2020s is not defined by the moment tanks cross borders. Conflict today is a continuum, one in which hostile states use non-kinetic, unattributable means to degrade the ability of an adversary to function long before conventional forces engage. The West still tends to treat these actions as ‘pre-war’, or something separate from conflict itself. They are not. They are part of an escalatory strategy aimed at undermining and degrading our deterrence logic. This makes it difficult to ascertain where Europe is on the ‘spectrum of conflict’ with Russia. We may not be exchanging fire, but our infrastructure, airspace and people are still subject to Russian aggression.

To understand where we are, we must understand who Russia targets and why. Revisiting a model developed for an earlier era is helpful: John Warden’s ‘Five Rings’, first outlined in The Enemy as a System. Originally conceived for air campaigns against industrial states, Warden’s framework argued that a state could be paralysed by striking at the system that sustains it: leadership, organic essentials, infrastructure, population and, lastly, its fielded forces. Warden proposed delivering this effect through long-range precision strike, bypassing armies to attack the core. This doctrine has been central to how the US has waged war through its overwhelming airpower advantage.

In major restructure, Army stands up new Western Hemisphere Command

Patty Nieberg

In a major shake-up of how the Army divides up the world, the service announced Friday the activation of the Western Hemisphere Command, shuffling three commands under a single four-star general.

Gen. Joseph Ryan will be the first commander of the Army Western Hemisphere Command, which the Army is referring to as USAWHC. Ryan will take over from his role as the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Training at the Pentagon.

USAWHC will be tasked with the defense of U.S. territory, supporting humanitarian assistance and relief missions for natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes in both the continental U.S., its neighbors and countries in South America.

“This reform modernizes the Army’s command structure, reduces overhead, eliminates duplication, and puts more soldiers in operational formations where they can directly contribute to warfighting readiness. It’s based on threat, strategy, and the need to prioritize the homeland and the need to treat the homeland as a priority theater,” said Col. Mike Burns, a spokesperson for the USAWHC.

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