Indian Strategic Studies: 05/08/25

8 May 2025

After Pahalgam: Is The Indus Waters Treaty Doomed? – Analysis

Amit Ranjan

On 22 April 2025, militants belonging to The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, killed 26 and injured about 17 tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). India responded with several strong measures against Pakistan, including the decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) “… in abeyance with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”.

Pakistan responded with its own measures against India. On India’s decision on the IWT, Pakistan countered, “…Water is a Vital National Interest of Pakistan, a lifeline for its 240 million people, and its availability will be safeguarded at all costs. Any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan as per the Indus Waters Treaty and the usurpation of the rights of lower riparian will be considered as an Act of War and responded with full force across the complete spectrum of National Power.”

Consequent to its decision, India is now not obliged to abide by the terms of the IWT – it can stop sharing water flow data with Pakistan, flush reservoirs and no longer be subject to hydro project design or operation-related restrictions. Annually, on an average, around 135 million acres feet (MAF) of water flow in the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. The IWT allows India to store 3.60 MAF (current capacity is around one MAF), develop 1.34 million acres of irrigation land in J&K and Ladakh (as of 2024, the total irrigated land was around 642,000 acres) and build run-of-river dams.

Trump Cannot Make a Deal with the Taliban for Bagram Air Base

Abdullah Khenjani

The abrupt collapse of the Afghan government on August 15, 2021, effectively concluded what many have described as the “longest war in American history.” Although this monumental event should have invited extensive debate on the strategic, moral, and logistical implications of the worst withdrawal, it instead prompted a curious U.S. silence. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. government minimized discussion of Afghanistan, and within weeks, most news outlets pivoted away from the country—reasoning that the United States had outstayed its welcome there to begin with. When questioned in a press conference, President Biden dismissed further comment on the subject, saying that he wanted to “talk about happy things” instead.

Four years later, President Donald Trump has breathed new life into the Afghanistan issue—criticizing Biden’s departure from the country and the ensuing Taliban takeover, and attempting to re-litigate some outstanding issues with the militant group. In particular, Trump has focused on two issues: the recovery from the Taliban of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment left behind in Afghanistan following the withdrawal, and the possibility of a continued U.S. presence at Bagram Air Base, the major airfield in northern Afghanistan. Trump has shown regret about the United States not securing a long-term U.S. presence at the base, which is fairly close to China’s western Xinjiang region and would allow the United States a base of operations from which to observe it.

China Learns Valuable Lessons About War With America: Analysts

Ryan Chan

Why It Matters

Under the orders of President Donald Trump, the U.S. military has been carrying out an air and naval campaign against the Houthis across western Yemen since March 15. The Pentagon has also enhanced its force posture in the Middle East, including by re-tasking an aircraft carrier group from the Pacific.

The U.S. Navy has played a central role in the airstrikes against the Houthis through the deployment of two naval strike groups led by the aircraft carriers USS Harry S. Truman and USS Carl Vinson. The Houthis have made several attempts to strike U.S. warships in the waters near Yemen with missiles and drones.

China has threatened to take self-ruled Taiwan by force. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 requires that the United States provide defensive arms to the island while maintaining its own capability to resist any attempt to change the cross-Taiwan Strait status quo by other than peaceful means.

Is It Too Late to Slow China’s AI Development?

Rishi Iyengar and Lili Pike

For a company worth nearly $3 trillion, facing an unexpected cost of a few billion dollars may sound relatively paltry. But U.S. chipmaker Nvidia’s announcement in a regulatory filing earlier this month that it expected to incur costs of up to $5.5 billion as a result of new U.S. export controls sent the company’s stock tumbling more than 6 percent the following day and caused a collective shiver throughout the semiconductor chip industry.

Nvidia’s hefty financial hit comes from a new Trump administration rule requiring the company to acquire a special license to sell its H20 chips in China, adding another hurdle in accessing one of the world’s biggest tech markets and the United States’ foremost competitor in the race for artificial intelligence.

Xi Can’t Trust His Own Military - Opinio

Phillip C. Saunders and Joel Wuthnow

President Xi Jinping of China is believed to have ordered his armed forces to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027, if necessary, raising the specter of a catastrophic military conflict in the next few years that would almost inevitably draw in the United States.

But an ongoing purge by Mr. Xi of his top military ranks casts doubt on that deadline and, in the longer term, whether he can trust his generals to successfully wage war.

Over the past two years, two defense ministers and a host of senior People’s Liberation Army officers have been removed from their positions, including top leaders of the Rocket Force, which controls China’s nuclear weapons.

Heads continue to roll, including, according to recent reports, one of the highest-profile ousters yet: Gen. He Weidong, the country’s second-ranking officer, who reported directly to Mr. Xi and has been deeply involved in planning for a theoretical Taiwan invasion.

It is impossible to say for sure whether such dismissals are related to corruption — a stubborn and serious problem in the People’s Liberation Army — to ideological differences or to other reasons. But the tumult raises serious questions about the competence and reliability of Mr. Xi’s military commanders. This is likely to weaken his appetite for war, offering Taiwan and the United States time to strengthen their defenses.

My Take | Forget Mao, Clausewitz is a better guide to the real US-Chinese trade war

Alex Lo

Is a trade war a real war, or is it only a metaphor? Going by Chinese state media, the country is drawing inspiration from Mao Zedong’s series of speeches, collectively published as the famous On Protracted War.

In it, the Great Helmsman counsels against both optimism for a quick victory and defeatism. Rather, there is a need for a realistic assessment of the stages that must be reached before a decisive battle can be risked to achieve ultimate victory.

That, of course, means readying for a long drawn-out and arduous struggle – in his case, against the invading Japanese, and in our case, against Donald Trump and his trade warriors.

You can easily see why state-funded commentators love the Maoist rhetoric. After all, President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called on the party to relearn from Mao, but especially through On Protracted War, to find enlightenment and confidence on the way forward.

Beijing clearly wants to portray itself as standing firm and ready to fight to the end against Washington’s “bullying” tariff tactics.

But, instead of following Mao, the two sides may already be practising what the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz teaches in his classic On War.

One way to understand what is actually happening on the trade war front may be to recast the Prussian general’s famous but usually misunderstood statement as “war is negotiations by other means”.

Russia is Ready to Sacrifice Iran in Washington’s Nuclear Negotiations

Nuclear talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Trump administration took place on April 12th and 19th, in Oman and Italy respectively. U.S. President Donald Trump initially stated his optimism, widely reported in Iran, but talks have since been suspended. During his first term as president, he was a staunch opponent of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), viewing it as contrary to the national interests of the United States and Israel. Despite his ally, Israel, opposing any U.S. deal with Iran, Trump has indicated a willingness to negotiate with Tehran. The Trump administration even rejected an Israeli proposal for a joint air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

From the perspective of the administration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, the primary purpose of the negotiation with Washington is to prevent a joint attack by Washington and Tel Aviv on Iran's nuclear power plants and facilities. Trump threatened repeatedly that if Tehran was unwilling to negotiate, the U.S. would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, a policy that was welcomed by Israeli officials. The current administration in Tehran is also concerned with the impact of a large-scale aerial campaign against its continued tenure. This is telling, since Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, had also previously banned any negotiations with the Trump administration. Khamenei criticized Trump's aggressive rhetoric as counterproductive. He also warned that there would be a tough response to the U.S. if nuclear and military centers are bombed, although Iran’s weak strikes against Israel undermined this deterrent.

The Coming Clash Over Syria

David Makovsky and Simone Saidmehr

In December, a consortium of rebel factions led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham unexpectedly toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose family had ruled Syria for five decades. The new regime in Damascus inherited a country ruined by a 13-year civil war. HTS’s leader, Ahmed al-Shara, has taken charge of Syria, and foreign powers are hoping to steer his behavior. Two of the country’s neighbors, Israel and Turkey, have taken advantage of the power vacuum by establishing a presence there—and have already begun to butt heads.

Turkey has emerged as the dominant military power in Syria. Since 2019, HTS has held Idlib in Syria’s northwest, and for years, Ankara indirectly assisted it by operating a buffer zone in northern Syria that protected the group from Assad’s forces. Now Turkey wants even more influence in Syria so it can quash Kurds’ hope for autonomy, which flourished in the chaos of the civil war, and engineer the return of the three million Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

Yet Israel wants more influence in Syria, too. Although it signed a U.S.-brokered disengagement agreement with Syria in 1974 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Assad aligned closely in recent decades with Iran, Israel’s chief adversary. Under his rule, Syria served as a critical corridor for the flow of Iranian rockets and other weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, aggravating tensions with Israel.

SOF-Peculiar—Day One at the Edge of Defense

Chad Williamson

If there was a single word that defined the opening day of SOF Week 2025 in Tampa, it wasn’t one that the average American keeps in their vocabulary. It was SOF-Peculiar—a term that sounds like a Pentagon punchline but is actually a legal authority and a worldview. It’s how the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) navigates the defense bureaucracy—not around it, but through it, with speed, trust, and an unapologetic devotion to mission.

Day One wasn’t about tech demos or defense deals. It was about people. Specifically, it was about a community of warfighters, innovators, and industry leaders coming together to ask a single, foundational question—What does it take to build the warfighting capability of today while cultivating our capacity for tomorrow?

To listen closely inside the JW Marriott Tampa Bay Ballroom—amidst suits, uniforms, and small business founders trying to crack the code of procurement—was to hear a different language emerge. One of partnership, experimentation, and human-centered design.

Mr. William “Bill” Innes, Deputy Director of Acquisition at SOF Acquisition Technology, and Logistics (AT&L), kicked off the day with clarity and candor. His message—USSOCOM was born out of failure—specifically, the 1980 Desert One disaster, known as Operation Eagle Claw. That failure didn’t just catalyze the creation of SOCOM, it cemented a core lesson, that the best of each service does not always make the best team. And so, SOCOM’s unique acquisition authority was born—not just to procure, but to connect, to adapt, and to think deliberately and creatively when required.

The Battle for Pentagon Acquisition Policy: Tradition Versus New-and-Cheaper

Bill Sweetman

An upcoming battle over defence acquisition will have repercussions for U.S. military posture, particularly in the Pacific.

The weapons that get bought in larger or smaller quantities, or are launched or cancelled, will indicate whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will strengthen long-range deterrent forces, order a retreat under his Golden Dome missile-defence system, or spend four years trying to blend incompatible visions of industrial and technological strategy.

It’s a battle between, on one hand, tech-industry advocates of radical, cheaper approaches to defence acquisition and, on the other, traditional political and industry forces that want more of the same—but with an important new emphasis on long range for facing China.

Executive orders (EOs) have become so frequent that they barely register in the news cycle before the next wave hits. An April 9 order on ‘modernizing defense acquisition’ deserves more attention than it has got.

It was warmly welcomed by Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, leading prophet of the tech sector push. ‘This is a Defense Reformation two-fer, right off the bat,’ Sankar wrote in an email. The order directs the Pentagon to buy commercial solutions, if available, and defines them as products developed with private investment.

Will Merz spring Germany into action?

John Kampfner

Germany is good at doing things slowly.

Six months ago, the country’s last government collapsed, as small-time politicians with big egos could no longer abide each other. Since then, we saw Germany hold a general election, U.S. President Donald Trump come to power and the world plunged into mayhem. In Berlin, however, things have carried on pretty much as normal.

The outgoing cabinet continued to run the place in its usual fashion, competently but with little sense of purpose. The economy stuttered on. And political parties did what political parties do — connive against each other.

But finally, a new administration is set to launch today. So, will things now change?

According to Friedrich Merz, the Federal Republic’s 10th chancellor, his first 100 days in office will be like no other. Germany, he said, will be turbocharged into activity. And from within the ranks of his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), which was not necessarily brimming with talent, he has been able to produce some surprising yet sensible ministerial choices.

The delicious media meltdown over Reform’s success

Brendan O'Neill

The BBC’s mask didn’t so much slip on Friday as completely disintegrate. When Andrea Jenkyns, formerly of the Conservative Party, was elected the Reform UK mayor for Greater Lincolnshire, the Beeb put out one of the weirdest and most telling tweets of recent times. Jenkyns’s victory marks ‘a return to politics for the former Greggs worker and Miss UK finalist’, it said. Greggs worker? Heaven forfend! You could almost hear the sloshing of spilt macchiatos as the Oxbridge tits of the BBC’s social-media team clocked that someone who once served sausage rolls to the hard-up was now a mayor.

It was undiluted class snobbery. It was a sly jeer designed to get the Beeb’s more middle-class readership chortling with gleeful derision at the thought of such riff-raff-coded people now running the country. I was just a ‘Saturday kid’ at Greggs, when ‘I was 16’, protested Jenkyns. Others pointed out that she’s since been a Conservative MP and even a minister in both Boris Johnson’s and Liz Truss’s governments. Doesn’t matter, guys. Thirty-five years ago she heated up Cornish pasties for hungry working-class people and in the eyes of the BBC that makes her a strange and possibly unsuitable person for high politics.

The Beeb deleted the tweet. Maybe someone’s knuckles were rapped. But we could all see what was happening here. For the benefit of non-British readers, Greggs is a bakery that serves piping-hot pastries and sweet treats. It is especially popular on high streets in ‘left behind’ towns. And it has become shorthand among the chattering classes who can’t quite bring themselves to say ‘oik’ anymore. Make no mistake – when the Beeb said ‘former Greggs worker’, rather than ‘former minister’, it was implying that Jenkyns has rubbed shoulders with wrong’uns; with the little folk who not only voted for Brexit but, worse, also prefer a Greggs chicken bake to a salmon and spinach brioche roll from Benugo.

Israel has no choice but to take control of Gaza and at last destroy Hamas

Israel has called up tens of thousands of reservists in advance of plans to capture — and this time hold — all of the Gaza Strip, should Hamas refuse to agree to a cease-fire by May 16.

The escalation is understandable; indeed, almost inescapable: What other choice does Israel have?

Hamas won’t agree to any serious deal short of a permanent end to the war that allows it to survive and maintain its death-grip on Gaza — which it has vowed time and again to use to stage more Oct. 7, 2023-style attacks on the Jewish state.

So Israel can’t permanently halt the war with Hamas in control of Gaza, yet no other nation has offered a realistic plan to end the Hamas threat, nor to govern Gaza.

So Jerusalem is giving Hamas one last chance to agree to permanently surrender control of the strip, or to get a temporary cease-fire if it frees the last hostages, including an American, Edan Alexander.

Tipping points: South Sudan on the brink of collapse?

Daniel Watson

In recent months, concerns about the viability of South Sudan’s transitional government have soared, following the dismissal of numerous powerful military and security elites and the arrest in March of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army–In Opposition’s (SPLM/A–IO) leader, Riek Machar. These events were precipitated by brewing tensions within the ruling regime of President Salva Kiir – including the removal of its powerful spy chief last October, which sparked clashes in the capital, Juba – as well as intensifying conflict between the government and its partner in peace, the SPLM/A–IO, especially in Upper Nile state (see Map 1). Provisions of the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) are being unpicked, while the SPLM/A–IO is fragmenting. Although South Sudan is no stranger to crisis, the severity of the current situation raises doubts about the longevity of a regime previously thought capable of withstanding intensive instability. Fears that the war in neighbouring Sudan is seeping into South Sudan via Upper Nile are also mounting.

The making of a military stateWhen South Sudan gained independence in 2011, the country that emerged had suffered two grinding civil wars (from 1955–72 and 1983–2005) and carried with it the resulting scars of immense suffering and societal upheaval. Several insidious problems had also gestated in these periods, and cast long shadows over the new state. These included a dangerously enlarged military sector, stretched unevenly across the country. After 2005, oil revenues facilitated the rapid growth of the military, which absorbed militias and rebel factions, becoming more fragmented in the process.

Trump's new nationalism

Zachary Basu

President Trump's grand economic vision relies on a simple tradeoff: that Americans will accept short-term personal sacrifice — higher prices, fewer options, slimmer profits — in service of long-term national strength.

Why it matters: Trump is breaking sharply from free-market orthodoxy in his second term, blending bursts of anti-capitalism with a top-down, nationalist agenda for American dominance.

Critics on the left and right warn of an emerging "MAGA Maoism" — a movement that demands ideological purity, glorifies economic sacrifice, and embraces state power as a means to reshape society.

Trump's strongman instincts — and his deep skepticism of cultural elites and bureaucrats — have only intensified the provocative comparisons to China's revolutionary leader.

What they're saying: "MAGA Maoism is spreading through the populist right," former congressional speechwriter Rotimi Adeoye wrote for The Washington Post last month.

James Surowiecki, the first journalist to deduce that the White House used trade deficits to calculate its reciprocal tariffs, argued Monday that Trumpism is "becoming perversely, farcically Maoist."
Drew Pavlou, an Australian anti-communism activist, wrote on Substack that "the entire world is now held hostage to Trump and his primitive, strangely Maoist worldview."

Hypersonic Weapons: Are We Entering a New Era of Vulnerability?

Brandon Toliver

The advent of hypersonic weapons, with their unparalleled speed and maneuverability, ignited a global debate about the future of strategic security. Some argue these weapons unwittingly ushered in an era where traditional defenses are rendered obsolete, leaving nations exposed to swift and devastating attacks. The emergence of hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCM) prompts a fundamental reassessment of assumptions about deterrence and defense.

Hypersonic weapons, capable of exceeding Mach 5 with unpredictable flight paths, shatter the bedrock principles of conventional missile defense. Their ability to glide and maneuver within the atmosphere allows them to evade radar detection and interceptor systems, compressing warning times to mere minutes. This drastic reduction in reaction time amplifies the risk of miscalculations and accidental escalation, particularly in moments of crisis.

The global balance of power is being fundamentally altered, not merely adjusted, by the aggressive pursuit of maneuverable hypersonic weapon capabilities. China’s DF-17 hypersonic missile, coupled with its reported testing of a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) with a hypersonic payload, demonstrates a clear intent to achieve global strike capabilities with minimal warning. Russia’s deployment of the Avangard HGV on its SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles and the operational status of the Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missile further highlight the growing proliferation of these advanced weapons. North Korea’s claim of successful hypersonic missile tests, while requiring verification, signal a potential integration of these weapons into its theater nuclear strategy, adding another layer of complexity to regional security.

‘Capturing’ Gaza could backfire spectacularly

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel’s cabinet has given a green light an audacious plan to retake Gaza, signalling a serious shift in its approach to the war on the Hamas-controlled enclave. Approved on 5 May, the operation aims to seize the entire Strip, hold key territories, and maintain a long-term military presence – a stark departure from the hit-and-retreat tactics of the past.

With a timeline pegged to begin after Donald Trump’s regional visit from 13-16 May, the IDF are mobilising tens of thousands of reservists for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls an ‘intensive’ campaign. But this high-stakes strategy, driven by the twin goals of crushing Hamas and freeing hostages, is fraught with risks and riddled with contradictions.

According to Netanyahu, the plan’s primary aim is to throttle Hamas into submission. By capturing swathes of Gaza, expanding buffer zones, and blocking Hamas’s access to humanitarian aid distribution, Israel seeks to dismantle the group’s grip on Gaza.

Netanyahu, supported by far-right allies like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, is intent on destroying Hamas’s military and governing power. This stance creates tension between the coalition government and with the IDF and most of the public, who demand that hostages should be freed first, before Hamas is hammered.

Europe? What’s That?

George Friedman

Europe has become a lightning rod in the United States lately, particularly with regard to the U.S.’ desire to stop guaranteeing European security. It’s become vogue to ask how Europe will respond to this or that event in the world. But those very events raise an important question: What is Europe?

Crucially, Europe is not a country. It is a continent containing, according to the United Nations, some 44 countries. They have different languages, cultures and histories, which include wars with neighbors and mutual loathing. I was born in Hungary and brought to the United States as a young child. My first language was Hungarian, which was all that was spoken at home. I learned English later. I don’t speak a word of Polish, Russian, Slovak or Romanian, all languages spoken in neighboring countries to Hungary. (I do speak some German, though badly.) My parents did not trust Hungary’s neighbors. My mother still lamented the Trianon pact, the post-World War I treaty that gave Transylvania to Romania. When a cousin married a Romanian, the rancor of Trianon followed us to the Bronx.

The U.N. definition of Europe stretches from Iceland to Russia, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. But when we speak of Europe today, we speak of the part of the peninsula that juts out of Europe’s mainland and the countries that are members of political and economic structures developed after World War II, namely NATO and the European Union. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, that part of Europe was the dividing line drawn between the Soviet army and Anglo-American armies, the former occupying the east and the latter occupying the west. When the Soviet Union fell, so did the dividing line, and the countries previously occupied by Russia became part of what I would call the American zone.

Europe Needs a New Way to Cooperate

Sophia Besch and Richard Youngs

Europe is facing a transformative moment. Both Russian aggression and the Trump administration’s political and economic antiliberalism are threatening the continent’s cohesion and stability. In response, Europe is considering quick fixes, such as gathering more money for defense—through spending by individual countries and loans from the European Union—and forming smaller coalitions of states to bring together like-minded governments. These patches will help Europe muddle through immediate turmoil but will not solve the continent’s most fundamental political and security challenges. Instead, European governments must design a new regional order through which they can achieve a more secure Europe.

The two main alliances of European states, the European Union and NATO, are too often paralyzed. The EU has struggled to implement much-needed reforms and is hobbled by growing differences among its member states. NATO, for its part, has relied on the United States to organize European security as the alliance’s first among equals. An effective security and defense policy depends on a shared sense of political community, which a successive string of crises—including the eurozone financial crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—has depleted. Without the disciplining power of U.S. leadership, Europeans must agree among themselves on exactly what they are defending and why.

America’s Coming Brain Drain

L. Rafael Reif

In June 2024, at a national science and technology conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the high-tech sector had become “the frontline and main battlefield of international competition, profoundly reshaping the global order and the pattern of development.” He is, of course, absolutely right. The United States and China compete for economic, military, and diplomatic dominance through the development of new technologies, including those with both military and civilian applications.

China is an increasingly formidable rival on this front. Since announcing the “Made in China 2025” plan in 2015, Beijing has invested in a whole-of-government focus on advancing critical emerging technologies. Now, China is giving the United States a run for its money. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Tesla in sales of battery electric vehicles. In addition to being bigger than Tesla, BYD is arguably more inventive, with vehicles that can slide sideways into parking spots and float during emergencies, and chargers that can replenish up to 250 miles of range in a mere five minutes—several times faster than Tesla superchargers. The state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China also intends to rival U.S. leaders in the aerospace manufacturing field; this March, the company released plans for a long-range supersonic jet that produces supersonic booms no louder than a hairdryer. Also in March, Beijing sent quantum-encrypted images to South Africa using a small, cheap satellite—an enormous advance in quantum communications. Chinese biotech companies are competing with their U.S. counterparts in creating new drugs. And as the energy demands of artificial intelligence make fusion power—a potentially massive source of carbon-free electricity—even more desirable, China has more new public fusion projects, fusion patents, and fusion Ph.D.s than any other country.

Pursuing Stable Coexistence: A Reorientation of U.S. Policy Toward North Korea

Frank Aum and Ankit Panda

Introduction

In October 2019, North Korea broke off working-level talks with the United States, ushering in more than five years of complete diplomatic disengagement between Washington and Pyongyang.2 That breakdown followed the collapse of the historic second U.S.–North Korea leader-level summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019, where the two sides disagreed on the right balance of sanctions relief for disarmament measures.

Since then, despite the lack of engagement, the salience of North Korea for U.S. interests in Northeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific region, and globally has only increased. Pyongyang now stands unquestionably as the third nuclear-armed adversary of the United States, fielding an increasingly capable nuclear force that poses a threat to U.S. and allied territory alike. In 2021, North Korea articulated explicit plans, for the first time, to develop and field tactical nuclear weapons designed to hold at risk South Korean and Japanese targets.3 Kim has also taken some geopolitical initiative as the great power competition between the United States, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other, has intensified. Nowhere is this seen more acutely than in the strategic partnership Kim has forged with Russian President Vladimir Putin; Kim has reportedly sent up to 14,000 North Korean forces to fight alongside Russians troops against Ukraine.4 In another expression of his confidence as a fully consolidated North Korean leader, Kim took what is arguably his most significant decision since inheriting leadership from his father: he formally turned his back on Pyongyang’s decades-long goal of seeking unification with South Korea. North Korea now treats South Korea as a distinct state and the “principal enemy.”5 Against this backdrop, little has changed concerning the lot of North Korea’s 26 million citizens, who largely continue to suffer under a regime indifferent to their welfare.

Hamas says Gaza talks pointless while Israel continues 'starvation war'

David Gritten

A senior Hamas official has said the armed group is not interested in further talks on a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal while Israel continues what he called its "starvation war".

Israel cut off all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza nine weeks ago and later resumed its military offensive, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas to release hostages.

But Bassem Naim said there was "no point in any negotiations" while the blockade remained in place.

His comments came after Israel's security cabinet approved an expanded offensive which could see the forced displacement of most of Gaza's 2.1 million population and occupation of all of the Palestinian territory indefinitely.

Israel also intends to replace the current aid delivery and distribution system with one channelled through private companies and military hubs.

The UN's humanitarian office has rejected that idea, saying it does not live up to fundamental humanitarian principles and "appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaponize the aid".

How Russia took record losses in Ukraine in 2024

Olga Ivshina

Last year was the deadliest for Russian forces since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine: at least 45,287 people were killed.

This is almost three times more than in the first year of the invasion and significantly exceeds the losses of 2023, when the longest and deadliest battle of the war was taking place in Bakhmut.

At the start of the war, losses happened in waves during battles for key locations, but 2024 saw a month-on-month increase in the death toll as the front line slowly edged forward, enabling us to estimate that Russia lost at least 27 lives for every square kilometre of Ukrainian territory captured.

The BBC Russian Service, in collaboration with independent media outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, has processed open source data from Russian cemeteries, military memorials and obituaries.

So far, we have identified the names of 106,745 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The true number is clearly much higher. Military experts estimate our number may cover between 45% and 65% of deaths, which would mean 164,223 to 237,211 people.

Undersea Cable Control: The Information Dimension

Richard Dunley

Sabotage operations conducted against cables and pipelines in European waters, which are generally attributed to Russia, have made marine infrastructure attacks a hot topic over the past couple of years. At the same time, we have seen a growth of attacks on cables connecting Taiwan and its outlying islands, blame for which is commonly attributed to the People’s Republic of China.

While this surge of attacks has ensured that marine infrastructure has become somewhat less “invisible” than it has traditionally been, efforts to target this infrastructure are not new. Most of the time, we view efforts to interfere with cables through two lenses. It is either an effort to tap an adversary’s cables for eavesdropping, like the Cold War-era Operation Ivy Bells, or it is an effort of sabotage, aimed at disrupting communication for military advantage or to undermine civil society.

Yet examples from the First and Second World Wars suggests other impacts can be arguably even more significant in shaping the information environment.

In both conflicts, Anglo-American dominance at sea enabled the Allies to protect their own submarine communications infrastructure and destroy that of their adversaries. This ability in turn forced global communications onto Allied-controlled infrastructure. The control of this global infrastructure gave the Allies a critical advantage.

Hegseth Directs 20% Cut to Top Military Leadership Positions

Tara Copp

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday directed the active duty military to shed 20% of its four-star general officers as the Trump administration moves forward with deep cuts that it says will promote efficiency but that critics worry could result in a more politicized force.

Hegseth also told the National Guard to shed 20% of its top positions and directed the military to cut an additional 10% of its general and flag officers across the force, which could include any one-star or above or officer of equivalent Navy rank.

The cuts are on top of more than a half-dozen top general officers that President Donald Trump or Hegseth have fired since January, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. They also have fired the only two women serving as four-star officers, as well as a disproportionate number of other senior female officers.

In the earlier rounds of firing, Hegseth said the eliminations were “a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.”

As Pentagon chief, Hegseth has touted his efforts to root out any programming or leadership that endorses diversity in the ranks, tried to terminate transgender service members and begun sweeping changes to enforce a uniform fitness standard for combat positions.

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