Indian Strategic Studies

17 December 2025

The imperial past of Indian geopolitics

Ved Shinde

‘Every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves,’ argued Lord Curzon, one of the few British viceroys in India to develop a lasting emotional attachment to the country. Curzon possessed a perceptive grasp of history and geography. It was geopolitics, for Curzon, that held the key to keeping India under British control.

In particular, having travelled across the larger Middle East in his formative years, Curzon understood the importance of the Persian Gulf for India’s westward security. Following in the footsteps of the Portuguese general Albuquerque, Curzon believed that a permanent British base in the Gulf could serve as a bridgehead to Bombay. The Persian Gulf is landlocked in all directions except the southeast. Mastery over the Gulf of Oman and the larger western Arabian Sea translated into control of the Persian Gulf. Geographically, Muscat is closer to Mumbai than Kolkata. If British ships could control the waterways of the Gulf, a seamless maritime highway would connect London’s interests in the larger Middle East to the Indian subcontinent. After all, other European powers had penetrated the East through the oceans. By the early twentieth century, when Curzon served in India as the Queen’s viceroy, Pax Britannica was writ large over the Persian Gulf. The cords of commerce connected the destinies of the Gulf sheikhdoms with the Indian subcontinent.

India: Leaning to One Side (Cautiously)

C. Raja Mohan

India’s fast-growing economy and expanding comprehensive national power make it more than a middle power; in fact, it has the potential to be a great power, albeit one facing significant constraints. As of early 2025, India’s aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) stands at just under $4 trillion in U.S. dollars and is growing at around 6% to 7% annually. It is on track to become the world’s third-largest economy by the end of the decade, but its low per capita GDP, at about $2,900, ranks 141st among about 190 countries. The vast divergence between India’s aggregate strength and per capita income is a result of its massive population of roughly 1.5 billion people. India’s challenges of nation-building are real and unlikely to disappear any time soon. Still, in global politics, aggregate size does matter, and it gives India a growing international salience. The strategic challenge for Delhi lies in leveraging its size to accelerate prosperity for its citizens amid intensifying competition between the world’s great powers.

Perceptions of India, both at home and abroad, began to change at the turn of the century as the country’s economic underperformance in the second half of the 20th century yielded higher growth rates generated by market reforms initiated in the early 1990s. The idea of India as a “developing” or “third-world” nation has given way to an image of a “rising India” that will inevitably take its “natural place” at the global high table. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has set itself an ambitious goal to become a “developed nation” by 2047 — the centennial year of India’s independence.1 Reaching a per capita income of $12,000 to $15,000 (the lower threshold for developed status) by 2047 will be a demanding job,2 given the objective constraints India faces. These include the unfinished tasks of nation-building, a federal polity, a political class wedded to welfarism, and entrenched resistance to economic reform. Still, the country’s aspiration and commitment to its goal are likely to drive continuing growth and reinforce India’s upward trajectory in the international system, even if change comes at a measured pace.

China’s 2026 stimulus plan isn’t exports, it’s economic reform

William Pesek

TOKYO — There’s little doubt that China’s export engine is working its magic to get Asia’s biggest economy across the finish line to 5% growth.

Clearly, China blowing past his tariffs in 2025 to rack up a record $1 trillion trade surplus wasn’t on Donald Trump’s bingo card. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s economy did it in just 11 months. That, while scoring yet another delay in trade deal talks – this one for 12 months. It means that the earliest the US president could hope for a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Xi is early 2027.

Yet, Xi’s Communist Party also knows that this same playbook won’t work in the 12 months ahead. Trump’s trade war is hitting US households hard, and demand from elsewhere is unlikely to enable China to export its way to 5% growth. This has Xi turning inward and relying on reforms to get households to deploy US$22 trillion in savings, which is key to ending deflation.

The Multipolar Mirage Why America and China Are the World’s Only Great Powers

Jennifer Lind

The churn of great-power politics shapes the world and touches, for good or ill, the lives of people everywhere. Wars among great powers have killed millions of people; victorious great powers have also set up international orders whose norms and rules affect global peace and prosperity. Great powers also intervene in other countries’ politics, covertly and overtly, sometimes violently. In other words, great powers matter.

Polarity—how many great powers there are—matters, too. Consider the past three decades of U.S.-led unipolarity. Freed from the constraining effects of a great-power rival, Washington deployed its forces around the world and conducted military actions in multiple countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia. The dangers of bipolarity, however, are different. Superpowers in a bipolar structure compete obsessively, creating spheres and buffers by cultivating protégés and installing puppets. Multipolarity, meanwhile, in which three or more great powers are present, is said to be the most prone to war because alliances are precarious and the fluidity of alignments makes the balance of power harder to estimate.

China Coast Guard Increasingly Assertive

Ying Lu Lin & Tzu-Hao Liao

The China Coast Guard (CCG) led three intensive incursions into waters around the island of Kinmen in November. This marked a sharp escalation in operational assertiveness after a period of relative calm in October. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) reported on November 20 that the 12th Patrol District from its Kinmen–Matsu–Penghu Branch detected a CCG vessel operating with its automatic identification system (AIS) disabled. This usually indicates hostile intent (CGA, November 20). The CGA responded by dispatching patrol ships to intercept the vessels. An hour later, four CCG vessels entered Kinmen waters from two directions, approaching from the southwest of Lieyu Township and the southeast of Liaoluo Bay in column formations. [1] The CGA deployed four patrol vessels to prevent the CCG ships from advancing deeper until the ships eventually withdrew.

These incursions reflect a broader shift in CCG tactics around Taiwan. Earlier operations typically employed “single-file” penetrations, but November’s actions featured east–west converging formations, testing Taiwan’s responsiveness to more complex maneuvers. By leveraging numerical superiority and larger-tonnage hulls, the CCG aims to impose continuous pressure on Taiwan’s offshore islands and to create conditions for isolating and encircling these outposts.

Taiwan Invokes National Security Law to Protect TSMC Trade Secrets

Meaghan Tobin and Xinyun Wu

In July, the Taiwanese engineer Wei-Jen Lo left his job after 21 years at the world’s leading computer chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He soon started work at one of TSMC’s rivals: Intel, the struggling Silicon Valley chip maker that the Trump administration has wagered $8.9 billion to transform into the U.S. national champion.

Intel said that Mr. Lo’s decision to hop from one job to another was routine in a competitive industry. But in Taiwan, government prosecutors saw it as a potential threat to national security and started an investigation. Late last month, officials raided Mr. Lo’s homes in Taipei and Hsinchu, the heart of Taiwan’s chip industry, where they took computers and flash drives. A court also approved the seizure of Mr. Lo’s stocks and real estate.

The case is part of a new push by Taiwanese prosecutors to protect the trade secrets of the island’s world-beating chip makers. Taiwan is the source of most of the world’s advanced computer chips, which are essential to virtually everything from iPhones to cars. But as countries try to boost their domestic chip makers, the authorities in Taiwan are taking a stronger hand in protecting its prized technology.

Iran’s Water Crisis: A National Security Imperative

Scott N. Romaniuk & Erzsébet N. Rózsa & László Csicsmann

Drought cycles are becoming more frequent and severe; this past autumn marked one of the driest periods in the last 20 years in contemporary Iranian history. For decades, national development policies assumed that engineering and extraction could overcome environmental limits. Today, those limits are reasserting themselves, and shortages are moving from rural peripheries into major cities, placing pressure on a political system already managing numerous economic, social, and national security challenges. Rising scarcity underscores the multifaceted ways in which water intersects with livelihoods, public trust, and national security, creating pressures that extend from rural communities to urban centers and shaping Iran’s domestic and regional policies.

These long-term pressures are not solely the product of climate variability. They reflect cumulative policy decisions, infrastructure choices, and social priorities that have consistently prioritized water-intensive agriculture, urban expansion, and industrial development. Iran’s national security is no longer defined solely by armies, weapons, or borders—it now hinges on something far more fundamental: water. Understanding these drivers is crucial to grasping how the country arrived at its current crisis, where domestic vulnerabilities intertwine with mounting regional tensions over shared water resources.

South Korea as a Rising Defence Exporter: Challenges and Opportunities

Dr Chung Min Lee

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, South Korea has emerged as one of the key sources of military equipment for NATO’s European members. South Korea deserves credit for building up its defence industries for the past half-century, and especially since the 2010s, but it faces an expanded threat envelope. How South Korea is going to meet an ever-growing menu of defence threats, and growing pressure from the US to assume a greater role in co-defending the First Island Chains, remains to be seen, but partnering with NATO will offer key dividends.

Direct European military assistance to South Korea in the event of a major conflict or even war is not impossible, but it is less likely given South Korea’s alliance with the US and its own increasingly sophisticated military arsenal. Nor is South Korea going to play a central role in helping to revitalise European defence modernisation. But at the margins, South Korean firms can play a key role in boosting European defence capabilities through joint R&D, European-based manufacturing of mid- to high-level weapons systems, and strengthening military supply chains.

If Trump Wants a “Golden Dome,” He Needs Elon Musk

Brandon J. Weichert

Elon Musk is set to win a massive $2 billion contract from the United States Department of Defense to build out the orbital sensor network that will form the backbone of the proposed Golden Dome national missile defense system. Consisting of more than 600 satellites, the satellite component of the Golden Dome will be the eyes and ears for the system. Placed in orbit, these systems will do more than detect and track incoming ballistic missiles. They will be used to identify and alert American defense planners to any potential hypersonic weapons and even drone swarms.

No One Comes Close to SpaceX’s Satellite Capabilities

Initially, the Trump administration was attacked by the Democratic Party in Congress for handing the massive contract over to Musk. After all, Musk is a special adviser to the president. SpaceX, Musk’s firm, winning that contract would appear to be political cronyism. In July, shortly after the Trump administration announced the Golden Dome, it made it clear that it was looking at multiple potential contractors to build the satellite sensing network that would undergird the Golden Dome system, not just Musk. At that time, both Trump and Musk had a falling-out that made it easier for the Trump White House to make clear their intention to look elsewhere for the satellites of the proposed Golden Dome system.

Why Russia is So Resilient

Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov

Putin’s system is often described as a hierarchy of power, a so-called power vertical, with direct centralized control flowing downwards from the Kremlin. In fact, the real operation of the system is more complicated.

While maintaining political control, the Kremlin delegates substantial authority to lower tiers of government. This delegation is an important source of Russia’s flexibility in times of war against Ukraine.

For many experts and practitioners, Russia’s remarkable resilience during the war with Ukraine came as a big surprise. The unprecedented wave of nearly 24,000 economic sanctions was expected to cripple the Russian economy by making it the most-embargoed country in the world. Instead, Russia’s businesses quickly spun around: trade with China, India, and the so-called Global South replaced closed Western channels, with natural resources providing the foundation for these new partnerships.

Passive Aggressive Reconsidering the Relevance of Passive Defenses in Major War

Michael J. Lostumbo, Karl P. Mueller, Mark Hvizda, James Bonomo, William Kim

The Joint Staff asked RAND to develop a new framework around passive defenses and suggest ways that the Joint Staff could assess those capabilities to determine whether such capabilities can contribute to achieving national-level goals of deterring major conflict in the Pacific and in Europe or to prevailing in major conflicts if deterrence fails.

The authors reviewed guidance documents and U.S. military doctrine to identify key national goals and the military approach to meeting those goals, as well as definitions and concepts related to passive defenses. They considered recent conflicts involving the U.S. military for examples of situations in which defenses were particularly important. Using those assessments, they developed a framework to better understand the value of passive defenses to the modern U.S. military.

Google asks UK experts to find uses for its powerful quantum tech

Chris Vallance

Google has announced plans to team up with the UK to invite researchers to come up with uses for the tech giant's state-of-the-art quantum chip Willow. It is one of several firms competing to develop a powerful quantum computer - which is seen as an exciting new frontier in the future of computing. Researchers hope they will be able to crack problems in fields such as chemistry and medicine which are impossible for current computers to solve.

Professor Paul Stevenson of the University of Surrey - who had no involvement with the agreement - told the BBC it was "great news for UK researchers". The collaboration between Google and the UK's national lab for quantum computing means more researchers will get access to the technology. "The new ability to access Google's Willow processor, through open competition, puts UK researchers in an enviable position," said Prof Stevenson.

MoD to unify all intelligence units under single command

Tabby Wilson

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will unify all of its intelligence services under a single organisation, as part of its strategy to combat "escalating threats" from adversaries of the UK.Units from the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, UK Space Command, and Permanent Joint Headquarters will join to form the Military Intelligence Services (MIS).

The reform will speed up how information is "gathered, analysed and shared" across the military, after hostile intelligence activity against the MoD rose more than 50% in the past year, the ministry said. The launch of the MIS follows recommendations from the Strategic Defence Review, a major review of the armed forces that was published in June.

The MIS will be established alongside a new Defence Counter-Intelligence Unit, consolidating counter-intelligence professionals in one unit to "disrupt and deter hostile activity more effectively".Their work will be supported by a new Defence Intelligence Academy, offering specialised training in key intelligence disciplines. Defence Secretary John Healey said the overhaul will put Britain at the "leading edge of military innovation".

Another way to get supplies past the enemy: ghost-fleet tactics | The Strategist

Andrew Rolander

The solution to maritime logistics challenges may not be a purely military one but, rather, one pulled from the playbook used by ghost fleets, smugglers and other illicit networks.

Mobility, sustainment and logistics are the heartbeat of warfare because they are among the most important core functions that enable and empower operations, combat or otherwise. In other words, these functions help convert a nation’s resources into kinetic combat power. A military cannot fight effectively without the ability to move forces and maintain continuous resupply in an operational theatre. But in any war the unexpected and the overlooked can be relied on to assert themselves in ways that challenge commanders to think creatively about complex problems. In a future Indo-Pacific war, how can the United States military and its partners execute effective logistics in an environment which will almost certainly be contested from garrison to combat?

It doesn’t matter how excellent one’s weapon systems are if they are unavailable for operations where they are needed most critically. At 165 million square kilometres, the Pacific Ocean is larger than all the planet’s land mass. Logistics challenges in the Pacific theatre are already daunting even before the shooting starts.

Ghost fleet tactics offer solutions to these challenges. These fleets, deployed by countries such as China and Russia, employ deceptive practices to operate covertly, making it challenging to track their activities and ensure accountability. These vessels often disable or falsify signals from their automatic identification systems, avoiding detection and obscuring their locations and movements.

The Price of American Authoritarianism

Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt

When Donald Trump won reelection in November 2024, much of the American establishment responded with a shrug. After all, Trump had been democratically elected, even winning the popular vote. And democracy had survived the chaos of his first term, including the shocking events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Surely, then, it would survive a second Trump presidency.

That was not the case. In Trump’s second term, the United States has descended into competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics and tilt the playing field against their opposition. Competitive authoritarian regimes emerged in the early twenty-first century in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and Narendra Modi’s India. Not only did the United States follow a similar path under Trump in 2025, but its authoritarian turn was faster and farther-reaching than those that occurred in the first year of these other regimes.

The game, however, is far from up. The fact that the United States has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism does not mean that its democratic decline has reached a point of no return. Trump’s authoritarian offensive is now unmistakable, but it is reversible.

The Death of the Triangular Patrol Base? - Modern War Institute

Charlie Phelps and Benny Jenness

Three dozen silhouettes glided silently through the dense pine forests. The platoon’s tactical movement was flawless, executed according to doctrine and in a manner honed by countless repetitions in training. Dusk was settling over the border region the platoon’s battalion—part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade—had recently occupied. For weeks, geopolitical pressure had mounted after a series of hostile cross-border air incursions, unattributed drone overflights, acts of sabotage, and cyberattacks on communications infrastructure. A NATO member had invoked Article 4, and US forces forward deployed to reassure allies and deter further escalation. That deterrent was failing. The previous night, a border guard post had been destroyed by a long-range loitering munition launched from across the frontier. The attack left little room for debate in Brussels. By morning, Article 5 was invoked, and the Sky Soldiers of the 173rd Airborne were directed to prepare for possible contact along an exposed eastern corridor.

The platoon leader received orders to establish a patrol base roughly three kilometers from the demarcation line. The intent was simple: Consolidate the platoon, conduct maintenance, and prepare reconnaissance teams for forward observation along likely avenues of approach. The platoon leadership knew the US Army Ranger Handbook like the backs of their hands and had rehearsed the steps of patrol base occupation dozens of times to include execution at the Joint Multinational Training Center a few months ago. The soldiers could establish a patrol base with the same tactical excellence with which had moved through the forest. Even here, on NATO’s eastern frontier, the platoon’s standard operating procedure remained unchanged. The patrol base would be triangular. The perimeter would be oriented outward along interlocking fields of fire. Security priorities were unaltered, the internal layout unchanged, and at the apexes critical weapons evenly distributed. The patrol base would have passed scrutiny from even the toughest Ranger instructor at Camp Darby.

Europe’s Positional Defense Opportunity - Modern War Institute

Sandor Fabian

As a result of the increasing fear of a potential Russian aggression against Europe and mounting US pressure on European countries to take more responsibility for their own defense, NATO members recently agreed to more than double their defense spending target from 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent by 2035. In addition NATO regional defense plans have been revised and many European countries have invested large sums of money to boost the production capabilities of their defense industries. Unfortunately, instead of delivering relevant, realistic, and meaningful defense capabilities these developments only feed into the potentially lethal illusion of many smaller European countries that they can have a realistic chance of defending themselves against a numerically and technologically superior enemy fighting on its own terms. In reality, in their current form small European countries’ militaries are dysfunctional and, in case of a war with Russia, likely irrelevant. It is time to completely rethink European countries’ approach to defense and, in turn, pursue profound changes for NATO.

The Enduring Paradigm of Combined Arms Maneuver Warfare

While many will argue that warfare has undergone several phases of evolution since the end of World War II, the truth is we still live in the fundamental paradigm of combined arms maneuver warfare created during that war. In the postwar decades, both the US and Soviet defense establishments were organized, trained, and equipped to fight large-scale combat operations. This remains true today for both the United States and Russia, as heir to Soviet strategic thinking, and the defense industries in both countries are designed to support such a way of warfighting. During the Cold War, this paradigm did not stay isolated within the borders of the two superpowers; rather, it was exported to allies and partners on both sides and shining buzzwords such as standardization, interoperability, and integration have been spearheading alliance dynamics ever since. US and Soviet allies were directed to follow the warfighting doctrine of their sponsors, to send their personnel to military schools in the United States or the Soviet Union to get indoctrinated, and to buy the military hardware produced by the sponsors’ defense industrial base. However, regardless of such mimicking efforts, it was an open secret that frontline countries’ militaries were never expected to survive the first couple days of a confrontation and any war would ultimately be fought between US and Russian forces. It sounds cynical to acknowledge, but this calculus is still true for small Eastern European countries today in case of a war with Russia.

U.S. Steps Up Campaign Against Maduro in Seizing Tanker Off Venezuela

Tyler PagerEric Schmitt and Nicholas Nehamas

President Trump announced the seizure at the White House on Wednesday, without giving details on the operation.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, a dramatic escalation in President Trump’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela.

Speaking at the White House before an event on a new luxury visa program, Mr. Trump announced the operation and said it was “a large tanker, very large,” adding, without elaboration, that “other things are happening.”

When asked about the ship’s oil, Mr. Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.” He declined to say who owned the tanker. “It was seized for a very good reason,” he added.

Three U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a law enforcement operation, said the ship was carrying Venezuelan oil. They said there was no resistance from the crew and no casualties.

Pentagon formalizes conventional forces' role in irregular warfare, but will it stick? - Breaking Defense

Mark Pomerleau

At the end of September, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby signed off on an updated Department of Defense Instruction for Irregular Warfare, stating that irregular warfare “is a joint force activity conducted by conventional forces and special operations forces.”

The dry language, experts told Breaking Defense, amounts to the formalization of a push the military has been attempting, with limited success, for years.

“It’s not like irregular warfare has been completely ignored by elements of the US [Defense] Department outside of the special operations community. But I think this is helpful as a directive in bringing the applicability of irregular warfare outside of just the special operations community and highlighting its importance in competition for the department at a much bigger level,” Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Breaking Defense.

“When I look at irregular warfare and its utility, for it to be effective, including during the Cold War, it had to be much bigger than just a special operations activity,” said Jones, who previously served in special operations roles. “It really needs to leverage the full conventional might of the US military, as well as the capabilities across other government agencies.”

However, Jones and some former servicemembers with intelligence or irregular warfare experience warned that the “instruction” still may not be enough.

Strategic Depth Reimagined: Expanding Decision Time in 21st Century War

Daniel McCauley

Strategic depth has traditionally described a state’s ability to trade space for time—to absorb, adapt, and recover before vital centers are threatened. Strategic depth may be defined as the spatial, temporal, and cognitive distance that enables a nation or commander to absorb shocks, mobilize, and adapt before decisive outcomes occur. It represents the freedom to think and act over time, creating conditions to maintain initiative even under pressure.

At its core, strategic depth is about time, which is the most valuable currency in warfare. Commanders historically traded space for time to delay adversaries by accelerating their own tempo to seize the initiative. Mastering tempo, changing the pace to create time for decision, remains a critical component of strategy.

Yet in the twenty-first century, technological acceleration has collapsed the boundaries that once protected states and commanders from immediate danger. Precision-guided munitions, long-range drones, space-based reconnaissance, and cyber operations have eroded both physical and temporal buffers, making the battlespace continuous and persistent. The outcome is a radical compression of time and space, forcing leaders to make strategic decisions at tactical or operational tempo—often within minutes or hours.

Irregular Warfare at Sea: How Russia’s Shadow Fleet Undermines Maritime Security

Andrew Rolander

The fusion of legitimate state power and organized criminal activity in the maritime domain creates a potent blend of hybrid threat activity and irregular warfare challenges that is as dangerous for those targeted as it is deniable for those who undertake it. In the liminal space between war and peace, these activities challenge the rules-based international system in ways engineered to erode trust in institutions and sow confusion among targeted nations. The criminal nature of the activity exploits loopholes in legal prosecution. The criminal nature of the activity deliberately exploits loopholes in maritime legal frameworks, effectively preventing definitive attribution of illegal activity to a state actor. This operational methodology insulates the government behind the activity from any diplomatic, legal, or military response, making existing national and international deterrence and response mechanisms paralyzed and inadequate.

Criminal activities like these, especially in the maritime domain, mask far more malign intentions to intentionally destabilize with paramilitary activity. The recent Eagle S incident in the Baltic Sea that involved a vessel suspected of having ties to Russia’s Shadow Fleet and maritime sabotage activity provides a real-world example of this convergence, highlighting the legal and attributional challenges faced by nations seeking to defend the rule of law and maritime security. Beyond the specific circumstances of the Eagle S incident, the case raises unique questions about the vulnerability of critical maritime infrastructure, the effectiveness of existing legal mechanisms, and the broader strategic implications for NATO of Russia’s Shadow Fleet in the Baltic Sea region.

Air and Missile Defense and Point Defense in Near-Peer Conflict: A Joint Doctrine and ACE Imperative

Christian Bills

In the age of low-cost, long-range one-way-attack drones (OWA), stealthy cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and hypersonic weapons, the role of defensive operations has changed. As military leaders look to address these challenges, the question becomes: how do we provide effective air and missile defense (AMD)? No service branch can do it alone. The only effective and actionable plan to provide AMD or Point Defense (PD) is to leverage all our Joint capabilities. We do not achieve this, as our grandfathers did in WWII, via land seizure and overwhelming force. We are now dependent on being a leaner and more flexible force that can operate and execute on a more rapid timeline.

The only current option for this is a scheme of maneuver centered around Agile Combat Employment (ACE). This offers decentralized execution and empowers leaders at the lowest level. If the Air Force is to execute AMD and PD against a near-peer adversary, it will depend on the ACE scheme of maneuver and the support of the Joint Force. To understand this strategy, we will review three topic areas: AMD Asset Costs vs Adversary Weapons; How ACE affects air/missile defense and point defense; and the Air Force as a joint force doctrine driver, not a sole user.

Emerging economies and the future of global digital governance: Digital Public Infrastructure

Wakana Asano

Global debates on digital governance are often portrayed as a contest among the United States, China and the European Union. While the two great powers compete over the cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), data and telecommunications, the EU projects regulatory power through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the 2024 EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act. This framing, however, overlooks a quieter transformation taking place elsewhere. Emerging economies, especially middle-income countries with large populations and consequently with increasing economic weight, are no longer passive adopters of rules, but are developing unique governance frameworks of their own with both commonalities and differences from other countries. These frameworks are cementing digital policy as part of sovereignty, inclusion and developmental priorities. Cyber geopolitics, from data localisation and critical-infrastructure projection to information warfare, now shapes how emerging economies design and secure their national interests.

Four cases, India, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa, illustrate this shift. With large populations and economies, each country is a significant regional player, shaping trends in technology adoption and its associated norms. Their experience illustrates a broader trend in which emerging economies are increasingly influencing the future of global digital governance. This article is the first of a two-part series examining how emerging economies are shaping global digital governance.

Manipulating Minds Security Implications of AI-Induced Psychosis

Elina Treyger, Joseph Matveyenko, Lynsay Ayer

Reports of artificial intelligence–induced psychosis (AIP) suggest that large language models (LLMs) and future artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems might be capable of inducing or amplifying delusions or psychotic episodes in human users. To date, AIP has been discussed primarily as a public or mental health concern.

In this report, the authors examine the scope of this phenomenon and whether and how LLMs—and, eventually, AGI—could create significant national security threats. Can this capability be weaponized to induce psychosis at scale or in target groups? What kind of damage might that cause? The authors assess which targets might be most vulnerable, the potential scope of harm, and how adversaries might exploit this capability against key individuals, groups, or populations.

The Drone Supply Chain War: Identifying the Chokepoints to Making a Drone

Macdonald Amoah, Morgan Bazilian, Jahara Matisek, and Katrina Schweiker

Every drone involved in the war in Ukraine depends on China. From palm-sized quadcopters guiding artillery to long-range loitering munitions, nearly every unmanned system on both sides contains materials and components that originate in Chinese factories and refineries. Carbon fiber, rare-earth magnets, lithium-ion cells, and gallium-nitride chips are critical nodes in the Chinese supply chain underpinning the architecture of modern drone warfare.

Most policymakers and military leaders tend to focus on higher-order hardware and software, from airframes to autonomy, AI, and ethics, but miss the underlying chemistry and metallurgy. The ability to sustain mass production of drones requires access to specialized composites, alloys, and semiconductors. In this sense, supply chain competition translates into a geopolitical battle for the raw materials needed to employ drones at scale.

16 December 2025

Why We Still Don’t Know Who the Rich Are in India

Soumyajit Bhar

India knows how to count the poor. From ration cards to multi-decade surveys such as the National Sample Survey, there are sophisticated systems to track deprivation – who’s getting by, who’s falling behind, who needs support.

But when it comes to the rich – or even just the securely well-off – we’re oddly clueless.

This isn’t just a data oversight. It’s a conceptual blind spot in how India thinks about economic life. In a country where inequality is widening and wealth is concentrating, we still don’t have a clear picture of who’s doing well, how they live, and what that means for the rest of society.

What people own – and what that ownership says about their place in the social and economic hierarchy – is one of the most revealing indicators we have. Research by this author suggests a way to access and use that information.

The Rich Are Hiding in Plain Sight

Affluence is everywhere – in the high-rise towers of Gurugram, the global luxury brands in Delhi’s malls, the soaring numbers of Indians flying business class, sending their kids abroad, or buying second homes. India has more than 1.4 million dollar-millionaires, according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2023 – and yet, India doesn’t have reliable public data on what they earn or consume.

A Whole New Ballgame: India Has a New Security Paradigm

Dr. Lauren Dagan Amos and John Spencer

For nearly a decade, India has been shedding the vocabulary of strategic restraint. The cycle of responses to major Pakistan-based terrorist attacks, including Uri in 2016, Balakot in 2019, and Pahalgam in 2025, made clear that predictable retaliation had not deterred cross-border terrorism. In fact, it enabled it. Restraint, once thought to be stabilizing, had become strategically dangerous. Predictability gave militant groups the space and time to prepare for new attacks. Eventually, Delhi’s belief that terrorism could be contained below the threshold of interstate conflict collapsed. As was made clear in Operation Sindoor, India has crossed a doctrinal threshold. It no longer responds to terrorism with calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices. It is building a new operating logic rooted in coercive clarity and a willingness to act first when its citizens are threatened.

Indian strategic restraint was designed to prevent escalation with Pakistan. In practice, it did the opposite. Terror groups backed by Pakistan’s security agencies exploited the firebreak between terrorism and state aggression on the assumption that India would avoid decisive retaliation or cross-border action. Limited responses produced predictable patterns, and predictability invited more violence.

Trump’s Pivot to Pakistan

Rishi Iyengar

Even in an administration that has been full of surprises, Donald Trump’s pivot to Pakistan has stood out.

The U.S. president has developed a close relationship with senior Pakistani leadership, including the country’s powerful military chief, Asim Munir—whom he hosted at the White House in June and again in September—and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whom he has met three times this year.

China Bets on Unmanned Stealth Bombers

Olli Pekka Suorsa

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.

China has worked on a next-generation manned bomber, known as the H-20, to replace the venerable H-6 fleet for a long time. Despite occasional rumors surfacing about the type’s imminent release over the years, no official or leaked (real) images of the actual design have emerged to date. Most recently, a video showing an alleged first flight of the H-20 made the rounds in social media but was quickly proven fake.

To China's war planners, AI is just another thing to deceive

TYE GRAHAM and PETER W. SINGER

A mask of darkness had fallen over the Gobi Desert training grounds at Zhurihe when the Blue Force unleashed a withering strike intended to wipe Red Force artillery off the map. Plumes rose from “destroyed” batteries as the seemingly successful fire plan took out its targets in waves. But it had all been a trap.

When Blue began to shift positions to avoid counter-battery fire, exercise control called a halt—and revealed that, far from defeating the enemy, more than half of Blue’s fire units had already been destroyed. After the exercise, the Red commander explained the ruse: he had salted the range with decoy guns and what he called “professional stand-ins,” the signatures of units and troops, which not only tricked Blue’s sensors and AI-assisted targeting into shooting at phantoms, but also revealed their own firing points. It was just one example of how China’s military is building for a battlefield where humans and AI seek not just to fight, but fool each other.

Vietnam Tries to Escape the U.S.-China Trap

Derek Grossman

Amid the drumbeat of war and conflict, it’s easy to overlook more subtle geopolitical shifts. One such shift occurred in November, when Vietnam elevated its partnerships with Algeria, Kuwait, and South Africa following visits by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the three countries. At first glance, this may seem like a nothingburger: After all, Hanoi has been upgrading partnerships with various countries and maintains many such partnerships around the world.

However, Vietnam’s latest moves are different due to the current geopolitical climate and Hanoi’s changing foreign-policy priorities. For one, it seeks to lessen its overdependence on economic and security collaboration with China and the United States. And next month, the Communist Party of Vietnam will hold its quinquennial national congress to determine potential changes to the national leadership and approve plans for all areas of statecraft over the next five years. On foreign policy, the party has adopted a new slogan—“core, frequent”—to describe the critical role of diplomacy in continuously advancing Vietnam’s interests as a rising middle power. Put another way, Vietnam’s national security greatly and perhaps existentially depends on effective diplomacy, especially as intensifying U.S.-China competition threatens to destabilize the region and endanger Hanoi’s national interests.

The EU’s Burgeoning Defence Role and its Impact on Third-country Market Access

Tim Lawrenson

Europe’s defence landscape is shifting as the EU expands its financial tools and industrial ambitions. While NATO remains the continent’s core security guarantor, rising national spending and stricter EU-participation rules are reshaping access, influence and opportunities for partners in Europe’s evolving defence market.

NATO remains Europe’s primary security provider, and its regional plans and capability targets have set strenuous objectives for its European members. However, its role in the continent’s defence market is limited. The European Union, by contrast, has become an increasingly significant actor, particularly since it set up instruments offering financial support to EU industry and member states for capability development and procurement programmes. Having had no dedicated defence budget before 2014, the EU allocated EUR591 million in the 2014–20 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) rising to EUR11.37 billion for 2021–27. In 2025 the European Commission proposed a EUR131bn budget for defence and space for the 2028–34 MFF.

Having initially focused on supporting defence research and development, the Commission recently expanded its purview to encompass procurement and industrial capacity with a series of instruments, the most significant of which is the EUR150bn Security Action for Europe (SAFE), adopted by EU member states in May 2025. The growing budget, broader mandate and proliferation of instruments will give the EU greater influence over the evolution of the defence market in Europe.

Exploring Opportunities for European Rearmament Through Ukraine’s Experience and Indo-Pacific Partnerships

As the war in Ukraine redefines the requirements of modern industrial warfare, this report analyses how Kyiv has maintained and scaled defence production through sectoral restructuring, battlefield-driven innovation and flexible sourcing. It explores the growing relevance of Indo-Pacific partners and the broader implications for Europe’s resilience, supply chains and defence-industrial planning.

The war in Ukraine has become the most significant real-world case demonstrating how modern states can generate, scale and adapt defence-industrial capacity during a prolonged period of high-intensity warfare. Ukraine’s ability to sustain and expand output under wartime conditions reflects three overlapping developments: the restructuring of its domestic defence sector, the rapid adaptation and diversification of supply chains, and the emergence of new industrial partnerships beyond Europe. Ukraine has shifted toward more resilient sourcing arrangements and global technology markets, as reliance on Russian and Chinese-origin components became untenable. Within this environment, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have become indirect but strategically relevant contributors, while China remains both a critical supplier and a mounting geopolitical constraint.

U.S. Army unveils lean Mobile Brigade Combat Team built for modern warfare.

The U.S. Army is moving toward a new Mobile Brigade Combat Team that cuts brigade manning to about 1,900 troops while packing in more sensors, drones, and precision weapons, according to a new Congressional Research Service note based on Army data. The design is meant to help light infantry survive and win in drone-saturated, electronically contested battles similar to Ukraine, trading sheer numbers for speed, dispersion and precision fires.

The U.S. Army is preparing to replace traditional Infantry Brigade Combat Teams with a lighter, more technically dense Mobile Brigade Combat Team built around mobility vehicles, organic drones and long-range precision strike, according to a December 9 Congressional Research Service note drawing on official Army force design data. The future MBCT trims brigade strength to roughly 1,900 soldiers, less than half the manpower of a current IBCT, while adding layers of small UAS, loitering munitions, electronic warfare, and mobile command nodes designed to maneuver and survive under constant observation and long-range fire.

The reduction in organizational size is the first major shift. The MBCT will consist of approximately 1,900 soldiers, compared with 4,500 in a traditional Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT). The Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) is the standard infantry brigade designed for sustained operations in low-intensity environments. The new format redistributes essential functions to prioritize mobility, autonomy and the ability to disperse, while retaining a core of fires, logistics, communications, medical support and information advantage. This reduction does not imply a loss of capability; instead, it reflects a technological densification intended to replace mass with speed and precision.

Turkey’s Second Act

Ekrem Imamoglu

As the Turkish Republic enters its second century, the world around it has become more complicated and less forgiving than ever before. The order that anchored global politics for decades is giving way to new centers of power, and crises are extending across borders. Populist threats to democracy and energy, climate, migration, and security challenges are intertwining in ways that test the capacity of governments everywhere.

For Turkey, a country that sits on two continents and near several conflicts, meeting the moment requires a steady hand: stability and freedom at home, and clear direction in its dealings abroad. But that is not what the Turkish government is delivering. The institutions that once made Turkey a confident democracy and a trusted partner have been weakened. The justice system no longer acts independently. Bureaucracy has lost its competence and diplomacy its discipline.

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