Indian Strategic Studies

17 March 2025

Why worm poaching is threatening India's wetlands

Kamala Thiagarajan

Jyothi, 40, will never forget the day she almost died. The morning started off like any other at Pulicat Lake, part of one of three important wetlands that attracts monsoon rain clouds from October to December. Located on the east coast of India, 50km (30 miles) from the city of Chennai, Pulicat Lake is an enchanting lagoon, roughly half the size of the city of London. Pink flamingos dot its sandy banks. Migratory birds flock to its many islets in their thousands, while fishermen cast their nets into the glassy waters.

On that day in May 2022, Jyothi, who goes by only one name, had set off to work by 09:00 with 10 other women. Rain had soaked the mud paths, making the way treacherously slippery, but the women were adept at navigating the rough terrain. Their job was to wade ankle-deep in the marshy waters of the lagoon's inlets, hunting for fresh fish, shrimp and crab. Two to three kilos of catch, a good day's haul, could fetch ₹500 (£5/$6.25).

As Jyothi waded into the lagoon, she felt something close over her right foot. She slipped. Her head went under. Entangled in the roots and shrubs, she couldn't surface on her own. Terrified, gulping marshy water, she only avoided drowning thanks to the other women who pulled her to safety.

After she was back on the marshy banks, she looked closely at what had caused her to slip. It was a white bucket, the width of her foot. When she had accidentally stepped into it and lost her balance, she couldn't pry it off. Now she saw why it was there: shimmering inside were squiggling, translucent pink creatures known as bristle worms, or polychaetes.

Foreign Policy Attitudes of Indian Americans: 2024 Survey Results

Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, Annabel Richter, and Milan Vaishnav

Introduction

When it comes to voters exercising their franchise at the ballot box, there is no doubt that 2024 was a banner year. With the benefit of hindsight, it was not simply a year of critical elections but also one with a distinct, anti-incumbent tenor. According to the Financial Times, “the incumbent in every one of the 12 developed western countries that held national elections in 2024 lost vote share at the polls, the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of modern democracy.” The November U.S. election fits this pattern perfectly, with challenger and former president Donald Trump returning to power and Democratic candidate and sitting vice president Kamala Harris losing.

The developing world was not completely immune from the anti-incumbent backlash. In India, which held the world’s largest election in recorded history, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to power for a third consecutive term, albeit in a much weaker position than in the previous two elections. In contrast to the parliamentary majorities the BJP obtained in 2014 and 2019, the ruling party won 240 seats in 2024, comfortably making it the single largest party in the Lok Sabha but short of the 272 seats needed to form the government without the help of coalition allies.

These two developments took place against a backdrop of growing ties between the United States and India. The countries have built increasingly stronger linkages in areas including national security, energy cooperation, intelligence-sharing, and education over the past four years.

Chinese Volt Typhoon Hackers Infiltrated US Electric Utility for Nearly a Year

Waqas

Cybersecurity firm Dragos has revealed a prolonged cyber attack by the Chinese threat actor Volt Typhoon into the United States electric grid, specifically targeting the Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments (LELWD) in Massachusetts. This breach lasted over 300 days from February to November 2023.

The incident came to light just before Thanksgiving in 2023 when the FBI alerted LELWD to a potential compromise. Following investigations, with assistance from Dragos, revealed that the Volt Typhoon had infiltrated the utility’s systems as early as February 2023.

According to Dragos’s report, during this extensive period, the threat actors collected sensitive operational technology (OT) data, including information on energy grid operations, which could facilitate future disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure.

Volt Typhoon’s Modus Operandi

Volt Typhoon, also known as VOLTZITE, is a Chinese state-sponsored advanced persistent threat group active since at least mid-2021. The group focuses on cyber espionage, primarily targeting US critical infrastructure sectors such as telecommunications and energy. They employ sophisticated techniques to maintain persistent, long-term access to networks while evading detection.

Know Your Enemy: Essential Reading for Special Operations Professionals on the US-PRC Strategic Competition

Maurice "Duc" Duclos

Introduction

In today's complex geopolitical landscape, Special Operations Forces (SOF) professionals face unprecedented challenges in navigating the strategic competition between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). This competition extends far beyond conventional military domains into economic, technological, informational, and diplomatic spheres—precisely the arenas where SOF expertise in asymmetric approaches provides critical advantages.

However, understanding the PRC requires more than surface-level knowledge of its economic rise or military expansion. It demands a comprehensive grasp of China's historical context, strategic culture, governance philosophy, technological ambitions, and societal vulnerabilities. For SOF professionals operating in the gray zone between peace and war, this knowledge isn't academic—it's operational necessity.

The U.K. Pivot to AI Is Doomed From the Start

David Gerard

A government bureaucracy generates paperwork—and even more paperwork when it’s computerized. But human judgement is expensive. What if a computer could go through the paperwork instead?

The United Kingdom’s Labour government believes that this is not merely possible, but vital. The AI Opportunities Action Plan intends to spend billions of British pounds putting artificial intelligence into every corner of the public sector in the hope for unparalleled efficiency and to save a fortune in staffing costs. Tedious administrative paperwork will be passed to machines. Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised the plan will bring “a decade of national renewal.”

Is China really ‘ready for war’?

James Woudhuysen

Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports to America rose by 10 per cent last week, taking them to 20 per cent in about a month. His pretext was the inflow to the US of the drug, fentanyl, which the White House sees as China’s fault. The response from China’s embassy in Washington was swift. In a tweet, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spokesman dismissed fentanyl as a ‘flimsy excuse’ to raise tariffs, protested that Beijing had taken robust steps to assist the US in dealing with the issue, and signed off: ‘If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight until the end.’

The ‘any other type of war’ quip has raised more than a few eyebrows. At one level, China’s forthright stance is nothing new. In the face of Washington’s ‘pivot to Asia’ (really, its pivot against China) from the mid-2010s onwards, China has been fighting back, including by battling for territory in the South China Sea. And after Trump ramped up a trade war during his first term, China played tit-for-tat, responding to a 25 per cent US tariff on $34 billion of its products with an identical measure in 2018.

This time, however, the geopolitical context is different from Trump’s first term. Trump’s effective abandonment of Ukraine has weakened America’s relationship with its Western allies – it also suggests the US might not help Taiwan defend itself should China do what Russia did to Ukraine and invade. Meanwhile, Beijing has increased its power and influence in the Indo-Pacific and Latin America. As a result of perceived American weakness, and China’s growing strength, China’s leadership feels more confident than it did even just a few years ago.

Chinese Companies Rush to Put DeepSeek in Everything

Zeyi Yang

What do a mobile shooting game, a nuclear power plant, and a local Chinese government office have in common? In the past two months, they have all tried incorporating DeepSeek’s R1 artificial intelligence model into their businesses in an attempt to ride the wave of the homegrown tech company’s viral rise.

Ever since the Chinese AI startup became a global sensation, DeepSeek has dominated headlines in China—but the news has almost nothing to do with DeepSeek itself. Instead, companies across nearly every industry are racing to announce that they have found a way to include DeepSeek’s open source models in their corporate strategy. Some have found genuine uses for the domestic, affordable AI model with cutting-edge capabilities, while others are merely doing it for the publicity boost or to virtue-signal their national pride.

In recent weeks, over 20 Chinese automakers (and at least one bus maker) have said they are putting DeepSeek’s chatbot into their vehicles, according to local news reports. Some 30 medical and pharmaceutical companies said they are using DeepSeek in clinical diagnoses and research, among other applications. Dozens of banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms across the country also disclosed they are using DeepSeek to train customer service reps, design investment strategies, and handle similar kinds of tasks.

US agencies face Thursday deadline to submit mass layoff plans

Nathan Layne, Alexandra Alper and Daniel Wiessner

The potential scale of President Donald Trump's efforts to shrink the U.S. federal government could become clearer on Thursday, the deadline for government agencies to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

Trump's efforts to fire government workers, however, hit a legal snag on Thursday, with a California federal judge ordering six agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who had been dismissed in recent weeks.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that probationary workers, typically those with less than two years on the job, should be reinstated at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

His ruling does not affect the career federal employees set to be fired by agencies in plans to be submitted to the White House and the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday, the government's human resources department. That process could eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs.

Exclusive–Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Orders Force-Wide Review of Existing Fitness and Grooming Standards

Kristina Wong

“We must remain vigilant in maintaining the standards that enable the men and women of our military to protect the American people and our homeland as the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force,” Hegseth said in a March 12, 2025, memorandum ordering the review.

“Our adversaries are not growing weaker, and our tasks are not growing less challenging. This review will illuminate how the Department has maintained the level of standards required over the recent past and the trajectory of any change in those standards,” he added.

Hegseth directed the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD(P&R)) to gather the existing aforementioned standards set by each military branch, review them and how they have changed over the last decade, since January 1, 2015.

The review will also look at why those standards changed and the impact of those changes.

Will the US collapse like the Soviet Union did? - Opinion

James Krapfl

“You’re next,” said a Russian historian I interviewed in 1993 about the Soviet Union’s collapse in late 1991. I was an American student in St Petersburg, and he was referring to the United States.

His argument was informed by a pseudo-scientific demographic theory that would eventually find favour in the Kremlin, but more remarkable to me then was the hopefulness with which he spoke.

If this man is still alive, he must be feeling vindicated. America’s current retreat from its engagements around the world — from gutting USAID to abandoning European allies — constitutes a surrender of power comparable in living memory only to Mikhail Gorbachev’s unilateral withdrawals from Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and elsewhere between 1988 and 1991 — right before the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Accompanying both foreign policy about-faces, we can’t miss profound shifts in the two states’ ideological foundations.

Destabilizing master signifiers

Gorbachev justified his “restructuring” or perestroika by invoking the Soviet Union’s founding father, Vladimir Lenin. He did so, however, by observing that the historical Lenin had pragmatically modified policies according to circumstances. That called into question the mythological Lenin — an infallible hero whose virtues could not be questioned.

Peace talks are in parallel universe, say Ukraine front-line troops

Jonathan Beale

While Moscow considers a temporary ceasefire, its military machine continues to press its advantage on the front line. Diplomatic negotiations can be slow and difficult. But on the battlefield, they can be measured in lost lives.

At a military hospital in eastern Ukraine, the injured arrive by ambulance in waves. Here, there's an obvious disconnect between diplomacy taking place, far from the fighting, and the brutality of battle – where human bodies are still being smashed, shredded and scarred by bombs and bullets.

We watch another two dozen injured Ukrainian soldiers being loaded on to a bus to be taken to a hospital in Dnipro – some walking wounded, others carried on stretchers. The bus is fitted out with medical equipment to monitor the injured as they're driven fast over potholed roads.

The men on board are the less severely wounded. Most have been hit by shrapnel. The cause is often what's now the most prolific and feared weapon on the front line – drones.

None of those we talked to believe this war will be ending any time soon. Thirty-year-old Maksym is on a stretcher with an IV drip to relieve some of the pain from several shrapnel wounds across his body. He says he'd heard the talk of a temporary 30-day ceasefire, but adds: "I consider Putin a murderer and murderers don't agree so easily."

Advertisement

What I learnt about the future of war in Ukraine this week

Mick Ryan

We are ushered into a room in the Kyiv area. A long table dominates the room. On one side of the table is a single nameplate with my name on it. On the other side, the entire length of the table has an extended line of nameplates. In the very centre is the name of the man I have come to see. Budanov.

Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov is the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. He has been in this position for almost five years and has a reputation for creative, outside-the-box thinking and daring strike operations in occupied territories and deep inside Russia. He is also well known for his courage and has been wounded several times on operations.

The door opens and Budanov appears, accompanied by his deputy, Major General Vadym Skibitskyi. We shake hands and then take our places on our respective sides of the conference table. To break the ice, I offer to Budanov that, given the number of Ukrainian intelligence officers on the other side of the table, perhaps I am the one being interrogated. He smiles, and I then congratulate him on the previous evening’s drone attack on Moscow, the largest single mass drone attack in history.

America’s Eroding Airpower

Stacie L. Pettyjohn

For more than 80 years, a cornerstone of the United States’ military strength has been its unparalleled ability to project power through the air. Washington has the most sophisticated fleet of combat aircraft in the world. Because these planes can be refueled by the country’s many tankers, they have global reach. From domestic bases, stealthy bombers can fly through heavily defended airspace unmolested and destroy multiple targets in one mission. American short-range fighter aircraft can drop bombs and take out enemy planes and surface-to-air missiles.

The Incoherent Case for Tariffs

Chad P. Bown and Douglas A. Irwin

Less than two months into his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has made good—with startling intensity—on his campaign promise to impose tariffs. On inauguration day, he issued the America First Trade Policy Memorandum to review U.S. trade policy with an eye toward a new tariff regime. Over the first two weeks of February, he set in motion new duties covering nearly half a trillion dollars of U.S. imports. On March 4, he doubled the size of his already significant February tariff increase on China. Over this period, he has also announced, suspended, announced again, and

Trump Threatens France With 200% Wine and Champagne Tariffs

Shane Croucher

President Donald Trump threatened to put a 200 percent tariff on all alcoholic products coming out of the European Union, including French wine and Champagne, as he takes the transatlantic trade war up a notch.

"The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Wednesday morning.

"If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES.

"This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S."

Why it Matters

The U.S. is one of the largest importers of European wine and spirits and so the relationship is useful leverage for Trump in trade negotiations.

France, in particular, benefits from strong wine exports to the U.S. Its industry took a big knock in sales during Trump's first term when he imposed tariffs.

Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

Russia grinds forward in the east

In eastern Ukraine, Moscow's war machine has been churning mile by mile through the wide open fields of the Donbas, enveloping and overwhelming villages and towns.

Russian attacks have intensified in recent days, hitting the Donetsk Region harder, but also Kharkiv and Odesa.

Russia's biggest advantage is manpower and it has shown a willingness to throw soldiers at Ukrainian positions to gain a few metres at a time. Ukrainian military intelligence says about 620,000 Russian soldiers are operating in Ukraine and Kursk, according to experts at the Institute for the Study of War.

They also expect Russian forces to focus on seizing frontline Ukrainian towns and cities over the winter. The Russian recently took the town of Kurakhove and have continued advancing to the north east, towards the city of Pokrovsk, where they have been met by Ukrainian forces.

Anti-personnel mines: the false promise of security through exceptionalism in war

Cordula Droege & Maya Brehm

In this post, ICRC Chief Legal Officer Cordula Droege and ICRC Legal Adviser Maya Brehm caution that recent challenges to the APMBC mirror broader threats to the life-saving protections of international humanitarian law (IHL). They argue that justifications for using anti-personnel mines (APM) tend to be divorced from battlefield realities and overlook the appalling impacts of these treacherous weapons. The authors also show how efforts to circumvent or abandon the APMBC challenge fundamental precepts of IHL and undermine the international rule of law. The post concludes with a call to reinforce humanitarian norms as essential safeguards for upholding humanity in war.

Against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine international armed conflict, debate has intensified in some states over potential withdrawal from landmark humanitarian treaties, including the APMBC. These discussions follow Lithuania’s unprecedented withdrawal from the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) last September, which took effect this month. Equally unprecedented was the United States’ announcement last fall of plans to transfer APM to Ukraine, reigniting controversy over the utility, acceptability, and legality of these weapons thought to have been relegated to the past.

To protect civilians and other victims of war – in Europe and beyond – it is critical to reinforce the humanitarian motivations behind treaties such as the APMBC and reject the notion that respect for IHL can be subordinated to security or defence considerations, however exceptional the circumstances.

State Commissions Have Probed Israel’s Worst Security Failures—But Not Oct. 7

David E. Rosenberg

For the residents of Nahal Oz, there can be little doubt that the Israeli military failed miserably in protecting the country on Oct. 7, 2023. For at least seven hours, they were undefended, at the mercy of Hamas militants engaged in acts of murder and sexual violence on the kibbutz and across a wide swath of Israel’s western Negev region.

According to an investigation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released on March 4, the first wave of 180 Hamas members entered Nahal Oz at 6:30 a.m. under cover of rocket fire. The only resistance they met was from 11 border guards who happened to be stationed there. Further waves of attacks followed at 10 and 11 a.m. The first significant amount of troops only reached the kibbutz at 1:15 p.m., long after the worst of the Hamas attack was over. Fifteen people from Nahal Oz were killed that day, and eight others were kidnapped, one of whom was subsequently killed in captivity. Two are still being held hostage in Gaza.

Trump’s Metal Tariffs Intensify His Global Trade War

Keith Johnson

U.S. President Donald Trump’s bigger and more expansive tariffs on steel and aluminum imports went into effect Wednesday, adding to the woes of U.S. businesses and consumers already struggling with rising prices for inputs and raw materials, falling consumer confidence, and signs of an incipient, self-inflicted recession.

While the tariffs aren’t as draconian as those Trump threatened for a few hours on Tuesday, which caused U.S. stock markets to drop again, they were enough to intensify the global trade war that Trump has promised to accelerate even further. The tariffs target all imports of steel and aluminum—and products derived from both—with 25 percent import duties. And, in a shift from his first term, Trump has said he won’t make exceptions for any countries.

Europe’s Looming Guns vs. Butter Decision

Anchal Vohra

Europeans were barely getting their head around spending NATO’s official target of 2 percent of their GDP toward defense when U.S. President Donald Trump upped his ask to 5 percent. That caused some panic, but it was also easy to dismiss that demand as simply impossible. For that same reason, NATO chief Mark Rutte’s declaration that Europeans may soon need to spend up to 4 percent triggered even deeper disquiet across the continent.

Two-thirds of NATO allies upped their individual NATO spending to 2 percent of their GDP just last year, partly hoping it would assuage Trump. Total defense expenditure of member states rose by more than 30 percent between 2021 and 2024, collectively reaching an estimated 326 billion euros (around $340 billion). Last year, Germany crossed the 2 percent mark for the first time, Italy languished at 1.49 percent, Canada was at 1.37 percent, Belgium was at 1.3 percent, and Spain was at the bottom with 1.28 percent. France and the United Kingdom, the more defense-savvy powers of the continent, were at 206 and 2.3 percent, respectively. Even the United States itself was below Trump’s (and Rutte’s) mark at 3.38 percent.

Why John Mearsheimer Thinks Donald Trump Is Right on Ukraine

Isaac Chotiner

Just over three years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and perhaps the most prominent “realist” foreign-policy scholar of his generation, made clear that he believed the blame for Russia’s attack lay most prominently with the United States. This was not exactly a surprise. Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine, Mearsheimer has been arguing that the U.S. and much of Europe are the main cause of Russian aggression in the region, largely because NATO has continued to expand eastward across the Continent. (Since the end of the Cold War, sixteen countries have joined the alliance.) Mearsheimer and I talked twice in 2022 after Russia’s invasion; both times, he castigated Western policy and defended Vladimir Putin from charges of imperialism and lying about his war aims. (That year, Mearsheimer visited Viktor Orbán, the autocratic Hungarian leader who has been sympathetic to Putin’s narratives about the war.)

When Joe Biden was President, and support for Ukraine was very strong in the U.S., Mearsheimer seemed like the odd man out. Now Donald Trump is back in power, and he has wooed Russia, stopped arming Ukraine, and publicly scolded Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s President, during a meeting in the Oval Office. Trump’s admiration for Putin hardly seems to fit into any grand geostrategic theory; nevertheless, Trump has been talking about the conflict in language that mirrors that of Mearsheimer, who is a strong critic of liberal internationalism, and is someone who believes it is natural for regional hegemons to exert dominance in their spheres of influence.

Mearsheimer and I recently spoke again by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why he thinks Ukraine should not get any security guarantees as part of a peace deal, whether he was wrong about Russia’s intentions prior to 2022, and why he still thinks Putin is misunderstood.

Wary Markets Rebound as Europe and Canada Retaliate Against Trump Tariffs

Isabella Kwai, Jeanna Smialek, Colby Smith and Ana Swanson

Global trade worries deepened on Wednesday as the European Union and Canada announced billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports after President Trump’s across-the-board levies on steel and aluminum imports took effect. Economists worry that the trade fight instigated by Mr. Trump will over time dent economic growth and lift U.S. consumer prices, which rose slightly less than analysts expected in February, according to inflation data released Wednesday.

Mr. Trump has appeared undeterred by the uncertainty and fear that his tariffs, targeted at friends and foes alike, have injected into the global economy. In remarks at the White House, he talked about the so-called reciprocal tariffs he planned to put on other countries in April, and said of the new E.U. retaliation on Wednesday, “Of course I’m going to respond.”

Data showing cooler-than-expected inflation helped stocks rebound, rolling back some losses from recent days. But while the S&P 500 index finished up 0.5 percent for the day, trade tensions and lingering uncertainty continued to weigh on investors and governments.

Russian Intelligence Strategizes to Keep Georgian Dream in Power

Beka Chedia

On February 27, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported that EU leadership intends to maintain its influence, or what the SVR deems “subversive actions,” in Georgia at any cost. The SVR claimed that the European Union allocated 50,000 euros ($54,586) for this purpose and plans to pay anti-government protesters 120 euros ($130) per day. According to Russian intelligence, if the Georgian government attempts to block these funding channels, the European Union will deliver cash to Georgia with the help of EU-country embassies in Armenia (RIA Novosti, February 27). The EU ambassador to Georgia Paweł Herczyński called these accusations “an outrageous lie that has nothing to do with reality” (Netgazeti.ge, February 28). The EU Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Anouar El Anouni, called this a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at manipulation and sowing distrust (Interpressnews.ge, February 28).

This is just one of the SVR’s claims that indicate Russia’s involvement in Georgia’s internal politics, markedly the preservation of the ruling Georgian Dream party. The SVR has accused the United States of attempting to organize a revolution in Georgia on multiple occasions, although this time, both Russia and the Georgian government have chosen the European Union as their main target (TASS, July 9, 2024). Georgia’s ruling elite, in tandem with Russian intelligence, has crossed the red lines of diplomatic etiquette toward the European Union, accusing Herczyński of collusion with a mythical deep state. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said Herczyński is “complicit in violence” (Civil Georgia, February 25). Additionally, Georgia’s ruling elite is irritated by Herczyński holding meetings with representatives of the cultural sphere and with the country’s youth who have been involved in the more than three-month-long anti-government protests (see EDM, December 6, 2024; Facebook.com/EUinGeorgia, February 13).

Putin's Dilemma

Lawrence Freedman

In my post of 4 March I noted that one reason for President Trump’s anger against President Zelensky was that he believed that the Ukrainian president had no interest in a ceasefire but just wanted to use American support to keep on fighting. I noted:

‘It is part of the craziness of this situation that the side with least interest in a ceasefire is the Russians, as they have pointed out at every opportunity. Russian wants to pin down the peace deal before agreeing a ceasefire.’

I continued:

‘This is why it makes so much sense for Zelensky to agree an immediate truce, whatever his misgivings, because that puts the question back to Putin.’

Well now we will find out, because this is what happened at yesterday’s talks between the American and Ukrainian teams at Jeddah.

The US proposed, and Ukraine accepted, that there should be an ‘immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire that will be extendable by mutual agreement of both parties, and is subject to acceptance and implementation by Russia.’ The Ukrainians had suggested a more partial ceasefire covering just the air and maritime domains, which the Russians had already rejected, but this proposal goes further and covers the front-lines on the ground as well.

The PLAN’s Tasman Sea Drill: A Military Response to AUKUS

Ying Yu Lin & Thomas He

On February 21–22, 2025, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) task force conducted a live-fire drill in the Tasman Sea, South Pacific Ocean, catching both Australia and New Zealand off guard (The Sydney Morning Herald, February 21). The drills complied with international law, but they further strained relations with Australia and New Zealand, both of whom are cooperating closely with the United States in the Pacific. They also fueled anxieties over the intentions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), indcating the need for a careful assessment of Beijing’s intentions to avoid miscalculations in regional security policy.

PLAN Declines Customary Notification for Drills

Australia’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) first confirmed the presence of a PLAN task group in the South Pacific on February 13, consisting of the Hengyang frigate (衡阳号导弹护卫舰), Zunyi destroyer (遵义号驱逐舰), and Weishanhu replenishment vessel (微山湖号综合补给舰), which had entered the region from Southeast Asian waters (MOD, February 13). Six days later, the task group was operating 150 nautical miles east of Sydney (Financial Times, February 19). On February 21, the situation escalated when the PLAN conducted a live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea without providing the customary 12–24-hour advance notice to regional governments. Instead, civilian aircraft overflying the area were instructed to vacate the airspace (ABC News, February 21; The Guardian, February 26). Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she would raise concerns at the G20 meeting, though PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) merely urged Australia to “manage differences properly” (妥善处理差异分歧) (MFA, February 22).

16 March 2025

Between Critical Raw Materials And Oil, Kazakhstan Is Becoming A Regional Partner – OpEd

Derya Soysal

Critical raw materials play a crucial role in the production of low-carbon energy. This is why the EU is turning towards the use of these minerals and thus importing them from producing countries. Among other things, it is clear that the EU is seeking to find new partners producing raw minerals, among which is Kazakhstan. Moreover, at the end of 2024, in Brussels, several events, round tables, discussions, and meetings have facilitated bilateral exchanges between the EU and Kazakhstan regarding cooperation in terms of raw minerals.

Currently, Kazakhstan, as the world’s largest producer of uranium for commercial use and as a country with a positive image in the fight against nuclear weapons proliferation is experiencing remarkable economic growth and is increasingly getting closer to the European Union.

Furthermore, Kazakh Ministry of Industry and Construction has announced new projects for exploring and extracting rare and rare-earth metals, reported Kazinform. The country has signed strategic agreements with big powers such as the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and China to develop its rare and rare-earth mining and production sector. Moreover, German company HMS Bergbau AG is conducting geological exploration at the Akhmetkino lithium deposit, with an estimated investment of $8 million. The ministry of Industry and Construction in Kazakhstan estimates that the total investment could reach $500 million if reserves are confirmed according to Astana Times.

Japan Appoints First Chief of New Joint Operations Command

Takahashi Kosuke

As the world faces the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II, Japan now has a new joint operations commander who has the authority to unify the three branches of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from peacetime to times of emergency – especially with a Taiwan contingency in mind.

At a Cabinet meeting on March 11, the Japanese government appointed Lieutenant General Nagumo Kenichiro, vice chief of staff at the Joint Staff of the JSDF, as the first head of the Joint Operations Command.

This new joint operations command is set to be launched on March 24 at the Defense Ministry’s headquarters in Tokyo with a staff of about 240 personnel, a spokesperson at Japan’s Joint Staff told The Diplomat on March 12.

The appointment came after the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program, both approved by the National Security Council and the Cabinet in December 2022, called for reinforcing effectiveness of the joint operational posture of the three JSDF services.

“A Permanent Joint Headquarters will be established in order to build a system capable of seamlessly conducting cross-domain operations at all stages from peacetime to contingency, with the aim of strengthening the effectiveness of joint operations among each SDF service,” the Defense Buildup Program stated.

The Case for a Taiwan-US Semiconductor Agreement

Ching-Fu Lin and Han-Wei Liu

On March 3, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced, together with U.S. President Donald Trump, its decision to invest massively in the United States. Per TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, this investment will direct $100 billion to the construction of three new fabrication facilities featuring the company’s most advanced process nodes, two advanced packaging plants, and a research and development center in Arizona. The construction process will take place over the coming years, reportedly to counter potential tariffs, ranging from 25 to 100 percent, that the Trump administration might impose on Taiwan. The investment plan will bring TSMC’s critical semiconductor production closer to the company’s U.S. clients.

Commenting on the agreement, Trump declared, “We must be able to build the chips and semiconductors that we need right here. It’s a matter of national security for us.”

This Taiwan-U.S. investment plan aligns with the broader U.S. industrial policy objectives of reshoring vital supply chains and reducing dependency on semiconductor chokepoint economies in Asia. These objectives are especially relevant to Taiwan, given its dominant position in the semiconductor field and escalating tensions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Forceful Taiwan Reunification

Suyash Desai

For nearly a century, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan have largely avoided direct military confrontations across the Taiwan Strait. However, there have been four notable exceptions: the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954–55, 1958, 1995–96, and most recently, 2022–23. In the first three instances, the status quo was primarily restored following the crisis. However, recent events suggest worrying trends highlighting that Beijing is preparing for a forceful reunification with Taiwan.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping has already made reunification with Taiwan a part of his signature China Dream, announced during the 19th Party Congress meeting in 2017. However, this was not the first time Taiwan was featured prominently in speeches by top Chinese leaders. As political scientist Ketian Zhang highlights in her book China’s Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion, annexing Taiwan is considered a core interest of China, with official references to its significance appearing regularly since 2003. The most recent instance was Xi Jinping’s New Year’s speech on December 31, 2024, where he declared, “No one can stop the historical trend of reunification of the motherland” (誰也不能充實祖國統一的歷史大勢).

The US dividing Russia from China? Forget about it

Glenn Chafetz

The Trump administration’s effort to divide Russia from China is doomed to fail. This means that the United States is destroying security relationships based on a delusion.

To succeed, Russia would need to overcome more than a century of hostility and distrust. Both Russia and the US would have to reorient their relationships with allies and adversaries; and the US would need to replace China’s economic support to Russia. Russia would also have to be sure that the US would fully abandon its commitment to democracy and human rights for the long term. None of this will happen.

Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said at the Munich Security Conference on 15 February that the US would try to break Putin’s alliances, including those with China, Iran and North Korea.

Just nine days later Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping explicitly reaffirmed their ‘no-limits partnership’. That should have come as no surprise: the new US policy does nothing to change the reasons underlying Moscow’s political alignment with Beijing.

These reasons include: a shared commitment to autocracy and opposition to democracy; more than a century of distrust and conflict with the US; historical commitments to partners such as North Korea, Iran and Cuba; and Russia’s economic dependence on China.

Trump must tread lightly with Arab leaders in peace talks

Shady ElGhazaly Harb

If the primary goal of the Trump administration is to quickly address issues in the Middle East and prevent further wars and instability, placing additional pressure on Arab countries might actually backfire.

While these regimes may not fear being overthrown through elections, they have unspoken concerns that are deeply rooted in their history and collective psyche. These fears arise from past experiences in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when tensions escalate beyond their limits. Resuming the war in Gaza, displacing Palestinian people, or annexing land in the West Bank could significantly destabilize these regimes and threaten their hold on power.

Throughout the Arab world, the Palestinian cause has been used to justify governmental failures and domestic repression, particularly while the conflict remains frozen. This narrative enables leaders to attribute their shortcomings to alleged “Zionist conspiracies.” Notably, brutal dictatorships, such as those led by Saddam Hussein and the Assad dynasty, have positioned themselves as the ultimate defenders of the Palestinian cause and as protectors of the Arab world against perceived Zionist expansionism. Consequently, maintaining a frozen conflict has become convenient for Arab leaders, serving as a foundation for their legitimacy and monopolization of power.

North Sea tanker collision - what we know so far

George Wright

One crew member is missing, presumed dead, while more than 30 people have been rescued after a cargo ship, the Solong, struck an oil tanker, the Stena Immaculate, in the North Sea off the east coast of England on Monday.

It is unclear how much fuel has been released into the sea, but early assessments suggest the impact is limited, with some fuel having burned off and evaporated.

The Solong was still on fire on Wednesday, while the fire on the Stena Immaculate has been extinguished, according to the ship's co-owner. Despite initial fears of potentially devastating environmental damage, air quality tests have registered no toxins so far.

A 59-year-old Russian national - who, according to the Solong's owners, is the ship's captain - was arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter on Tuesday.

How did the crash happen?

The Portuguese-flagged Solong struck the larger oil tanker in waters off Hull just before 10:00 on Monday.

The Stena Immaculate had been anchored there after making its way to Hull from a Greek port. The US-flagged ship had been transporting jet fuel for the US military.

What’s so special about Ukraine’s minerals? A geologist explains

Munira Raji

Ukraine’s minerals have become central to global geopolitics, with the US president, Donald Trump, seeking a deal with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to access them. But what are these minerals exactly and why are they so sought after?

Ukraine is often recognised for its vast agricultural lands and industrial heritage, but beneath its surface lies one of the world’s most remarkable geological formations, the “Ukrainian Shield”.

This massive, exposed crystalline rock formed over 2.5 billion years ago, stretches across much of Ukraine. It represents one of Earth’s oldest and most stable continental blocks. The formation has undergone multiple episodes of mountain building, the formation and movement of magma and other change throughout time.

These geological processes created favourable geological conditions for forming several mineral deposits including lithium, graphite, manganese, titanium and rare earth elements. All these are now critical for modern industries and the global green energy transition.

Ukraine has deposits containing 22 of 34 critical minerals identified by the European Union as essential for energy security. This positions Ukraine among the world’s most resource-rich nations.

Fight Club: Are Israel and Ukraine’s Wars the Same—or Worlds Apart?

Eli Lake and Michael Brendan Dougherty

In May of last year, then-senator J.D. Vance delivered a speech on foreign policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. A politician’s speech at a Washington think tank conference is usually best ignored—and, at the time, there was little reason to pay special attention to this one.

But nine months on, Vance’s remarks look less like obscure Beltway pablum, and more like the blueprint for the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Vance drew a distinction between perhaps the two most important conflicts in the world, arguing that support for Israel was in the U.S. national interest, but backing the fight for Ukraine was not. “It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are exactly the same,” he remarked. “They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets.”

This distinction is now on full display, with President Donald Trump and Vance tearing into Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, while doubling down on the U.S. commitment to Israel.

But is it coherent to back Israel while opposing aid to Ukraine? Are these two conflicts fundamentally different—or are both about a democracy’s right to defend its sovereignty against existential threats? If Israel is worthy of continued U.S. support against Hamas and Iran, why not Ukraine against Russia?

Why Tariffs Are Good

Michael Lind

Donald Trump is back—and so is the tariff. “It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” the president quipped before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday—so beautiful that he referenced tariffs 17 more times in his address. In the short time since his second inauguration on January 20, Trump has imposed—and sometimes walked back or temporarily suspended—tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and declared a policy of tit-for-tat “reciprocity” or retaliation for any foreign tariffs on American exports that are higher than U.S. tariffs on imports. And he has justified tariffs with multiple rationales, ranging from protecting or reshoring defense-critical American industries to pressuring America’s neighbors to take action to reduce the cross-border flow of illegal immigrants and drugs like fentanyl. In fact, he told members of Congress, tariffs were “about protecting the soul of our country.”

The chaotic and inconsistent nature of Trump’s second-term policy to date can be criticized. But when it comes to tariffs as a tool of economic statecraft in general, the gap between establishment rhetoric and actual government practice is big enough to drive a Chinese EV through.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)