India-UK FTA: Whiskey, sarees and Jaguars

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After three and a half years of negotiations, India and the UK concluded a historic free trade agreement (FTA) on May 6. Under this deal, India will reduce tariffs on 90 per cent of tariff lines, with 64 per cent eligible for immediate tariff-free imports from the UK. On the other hand, India’s exports will benet from the elimination of 99 per cent of the UK’s import duties. The UK-India FTA has come at a strategically benecial time for both countries. At a time when the world is succumbing to protectionism and tariff wars, this comes with a unique opportunity to reform and reset its trade ecosystem, positioning India as a India is the UK’s 12th largest trading partner, while the UK ranks as India’s 16th largest trading partner, with total trade amounting to $56.7 billion in 2024, 60 per cent of which is in services. Alongside the FTA, India and the UK have agreed to negotiate a Double Contribution Convention Pact, which would exempt Indian professionals on short-term assignments in the UK from contributing to social security schemes in the host country. 

They and their employers can continue with social security schemes run by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in India while working abroad. This will boost job opportunities for Indian professionals in the UK by reducing the additional cost of £500 per employee per year for employers. India is expected to benet from the elimination of tariffs on 99% of goods. Indian exports in sectors such as textiles, leather, footwear, auto parts, and gems and jewellery are expected to benet from duty-free access to the UK’s markets. Previously, textiles and apparel exports faced a 12% duty in the UK, whereas India’s competitors, Bangladesh and Vietnam, enjoyed duty-free access. While this FTA will create a more level playing eld for Indian exports, India must enhance its competitiveness in this sector to compete with Bangladesh (which holds a 15 per cent share in the UK’s textiles and clothing imports) and Vietnam.

From missiles to ceasefire: how India and Pakistan pulled back from the brink

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Indian surface-to-air missiles were already soaring towards Pakistan’s most significant military bases when the first call came from the US.

It was 4am in Islamabad and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and recently appointed US national security adviser, was on the line to the man everyone knew was calling the shots in Pakistan: army chief Gen Asim Munir.

It was the beginning of eight hours of negotiations, mediated by the US, that finally secured a fragile ceasefire between India and Pakistan at midday on Saturday, according to two Pakistan security and intelligence officials who spoke to the Guardian. The agreement was first publicly announced by Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform, although Pakistan said the US president never personally made any calls to their side during the negotiations.

When India first launched missiles at Pakistan early on Wednesday, as retribution for a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April that killed 26 people, the US showed little interest in getting involved.

The US had already said India had “the right to defend itself” after the Kashmir attack, and India framed its strikes on Pakistan as solely hitting “terrorist camps” that threatened its national security, rather than any civilian or military targets.

Asked in the Oval office that day about the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, Trump said dismissively: “They’ve been fighting for a long time. I just hope it ends very quickly.”

Speaking on Thursday, his vice-president, JD Vance, said simply it was “none of our business”.

But by late Friday night, as both sides escalated the conflict, it was made clear to the Trump administration that leaving the two nuclear armed countries to their own devices posed a danger not just to the region but to the world – and that the only third party mediator acceptable to both sides was the US, as it has historically been over decades. In particular, the US began to fear the escalation towards a nuclear threat was becoming a very real possibility.

China’s Thinking on Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor

Eerishika Pankaj and Omkar Bhole

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On April 22, militants gunned down 25 Indian civilians and one Nepali in Kashmir. The attack was claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), which India considers to be a proxy of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), before the TRF reversed course and denied responsibility.

On May 7, 2025, India responded with Operation Sindoor, a series of coordinated military strikes targeting terrorist infrastructure within Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Later on the same day, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called India’s military operation “regrettable.” That calibrated diplomatic rebuke served to signal China’s continued strategic hedging between counterterrorism discourse and its enduring “all weather” alliance with “iron-clad” friend Pakistan.

China’s response cast a shadow over its self-ascribed role as a leader of the Global South as well as an aspiring peace-broker in regional conflicts. By characterizing India’s counterterrorism operation as “regrettable” – while remaining silent on the massacre of Indian civilians in a terrorist attack on Indian soil – China revealed the asymmetries in its normative commitments. Diplomatically shielding Pakistan not only undermines its credibility as an impartial negotiator but also exposes the limits of China’s “neutrality” in South Asian crises – a pattern increasingly at odds with its declared ambitions for global leadership and conflict mediation.

To understand the layered nature of China’s response, it is critical to look beyond the statements made by the Foreign Ministry and instead examine the broader ecosystem shaping Beijing’s regional posture. From diplomatic engagements with Islamabad – such as Wang Yi’s call with Pakistan’s foreign minister calling for “impartial investigation” on the terror attack and the Chinese ambassador’s meeting with Pakistan’s prime minister reaffirming the latter’s “legitimate security concerns” – to the strategic framing of events in Chinese state media, and the silences and tactical narratives circulating on social platforms, China’s handling of the Pahalgam killings and Operation Sindoor reveal the contours of a complex balancing act. This act is not merely rhetorical, but instead reflects a deeper strategic calculation, wherein Beijing seeks to protect its stake in Pakistan while managing regional optics.

India-Pakistan Military Crisis: A Testing Ground for Chinese Military Hardware

Shaheer Ahmad

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On May 7, the Indian military launched a series of strikes from standoff ranges against multiple targets in Punjab and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, called “Operation Sindoor.” In response, Pakistan claimed to have retaliated by shooting down five Indian jets, including top-of-the-line French-manufactured Rafale aircraft. Later, the acknowledgement by French and American officials about the downing of the Rafale confirmed the first combat kill of the French-made aircraft. Likewise, the Pakistani military said it had intercepted 77 kamikaze drones, mainly of Israeli origin.

The intense aerial exchange between the regional rivals marked the first use in combat of several Chinese weapons systems purchased by Pakistan. And despite the fog of war, the previously untested inventory appears to be effective.

Pakistan mainly relied on Chinese combat planes such as J-10C and JF-17 Thunder aircraft and air defense systems, including the HQ-9, to shoot down Indian fighter jets and incoming drones. This reflects the significant presence of Chinese military hardware in Pakistan’s military arsenal. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China accounted for nearly 82 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports between 2019-2023. Owing to this robust bilateral defense trade, Pakistan’s claim of shooting down Indian fighter aircraft, including its most advanced jet, with Chinese assets became a trending topic for Chinese policymakers and social media. Reportedly, the shares of AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Co., the manufacturer of J-10C aircraft, saw a sharp hike of 20 percent amid the India-Pakistan clashes.

India and Pakistan Agree to Ceasefire

Elizabeth Roche

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After four days of escalating military exchanges involving drones, loitering munitions, missiles, artillery, and fighter aircraft that set off international alarm bells, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire on May 10. Though tenuous, it seemed to be holding a day later.

The cessation of hostilities has shifted the focus to what India achieved with its military strikes, codenamed Operation Sindoor, which began on May 7 when India struck nine terrorist training camps and launch pads inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in retaliation for the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam in India’s Jammu and Kashmir that left 26 people dead.

Unnamed sources quoted by several news organizations on Sunday said that India’s goal was to ensure that Pakistan and the terrorist groups it nurtured received the message that “no place is safe” for them if they target India or Indian interests. The Indian military would target any part of Pakistani territory, hitting “targets that are identified with their security establishment.” That message, they said, had been sent successfully to Pakistan and the international community.

According to these sources, India has set a “new normal” in its response to terrorism by raising costs for the perpetrators and their supporters.

In retaliation for India’s military strikes, Pakistan focused its attacks on Indian military bases. But this only triggered stronger responses from India, the reports quoting unnamed sources said.

“The actions taken by India are aimed at creating and setting a new normal in the relationship. It is not business as usual. Pakistan and the world will have to get used to this new normal because India has had enough,” a report in the Hindustan Times said, quoting an anonymous source.

Despite the ceasefire, there is no let-up on the measures India announced in the immediate aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, which included suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty.

India-Pakistan: The Taint Of Ambiguity – OpEd

Ajai Sahni

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The long nights of ‘vengeance’ are over. It is time to ask, what has been achieved? Frenetic campaigns of falsehoods have enabled both sides to claim that they have engineered a notable victory. The whole truth, partly protected by legitimate interests of state, partly by vested partisan political interests, will never be known. But much can be measured in falsehoods as well.

The first truth that emerges through the noise is that the clear victory the Indian leadership sought has been tainted with ambiguity. Another is the tragic reality that domestic politics invariably trumps national security on both sides of the border.

Operation Sindoor was not a strategic imperative, nor was it timed for maximal strategic impact. It was a response to an orchestrated, partisan political campaign to whip up public sentiments, and was timed to meet partisan political, and not maximal strategic, objectives. For all the talk of “a compulsion to prevent, deter, and to pre-empt” attacks in India by Pakistan-based terrorist groups, the Operation simply had no potential to secure these objectives, and it was timed to a political calendar – the imperatives of being seen to have done ‘something big’, rather than doing something effective to secure these declared goals – that saw the launch of the coordinated strikes after a fortnight of media and public frenzy, and a succession of threats from the highest offices of the land. The result was, the Operation was initiated at a time when the Pakistani forces were on the highest levels of alert, dramatically escalating the risks for the attacking force.

Nevertheless, at the tactical and operational levels, Operation Sindoor did secure most of its objectives. At the tactical level, the delivery of nine precision strikes on widely dispersed selected targets deep inside Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Pakistani Punjab – including one at Bahawalpur, over a hundred kilometres from the International Border, that killed at least three prominent Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists, and another two of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) at Muridke, both in Punjab, was a signal military achievement. India claimed at least 100 terrorists killed; Pakistan insisted that just 31 ‘civilians’ had been killed in the first strikes.

Sri Lanka: Resilience Amid Threats – Analysis

Afsara Shaheen

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In 2024, Sri Lanka’s security landscape remained relatively stable but complex, shaped by a mix of domestic challenges and volatile regional dynamics. While the threat of large-scale terrorism has significantly reduced since the end of the civil war in 2009, concerns persist around sporadic incidents of religious and ethnic tensions, particularly involving extremist elements across communities. No terrorism-linked fatality was recorded in Sri Lanka in 2024.

As of May 2025, Sri Lanka continued to maintain a stable security environment, with no terrorist attacks reported in recent years. According to a report released on March 5, 2025, the country has been recognized for its low terrorism impact, ranking 100th out of 163 countries, with a score of zero in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, placing it among the safest nations globally in terms of terrorist threats.

On May 3, 2025, Sri Lankan authorities conducted a security sweep in Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport on a flight arriving from Chennai in India, after receiving a tip-off about a suspect linked to the Pahalgam terrorist attack in India. The aircraft was thoroughly searched, and no arrests were made. Nevertheless, the Sri Lankan government reiterated its commitment to national security, emphasizing that it will not allow any faction to use the country’s airspace or territory to attack another nation.

Six terrorists were arrested in five separate incidents in 2024, including:

November 30: A British Tamil citizen was arrested on arrival at Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport, for suspected links with fundraising for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

June 15: An accomplice linked with four suspected Islamic State (IS) operatives arrested in India, was arrested during an operation conducted by the Special Task Force (STF) near the Orugodawatta bridge at Wellampitiya in the Colombo District of the Western Province.

May 31: The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) of the Sri Lanka Police arrested a wanted suspect, Osman Pushparaja Gerard, in a joint operation conducted in Colombo City. Gerard was suspected to have coordinated the movement of four suspected IS operatives from Sri Lanka to India.

May 29: The Sri Lankan Police arrested two suspected IS operatives in the Bangadeniya area of Chilaw City in the Puttalam District of the North Western Province.

What Should Be Said About China

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In March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA). For the first time, the ATA identified the People’s Republic of China as the most capable threat actor that now confronts the United States. The reasons for ranking China as the top threat—militarily, economically, diplomatically, and informationally—are made clear in Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, a crisply written new book by US Senator Tom Cotton.

Cotton’s slim volume is a very readable and clear-eyed look at China’s capabilities, actions, and intent to challenge the US. Intended for a general audience, the book reflects Cotton’s keen understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) decades-long plan to undermine US global leadership and the insights about China’s leadership he has gained from serving as a member, and now chairman, of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, Cotton pulls no punches and calls out the media conventions, ideological leanings, commercial interests, and diplomatic niceties that preclude our leaders saying that China is an “evil empire,” waging economic war on the world, preparing for armed conflict, infiltrating US society and government, and targeting American children. He makes the case for each of these “unsaid” six things and concludes with the sobering assessment that Beijing could win the struggle for global supremacy—another unpleasant truth that goes unsaid.

Evil, Intention, and Infiltration

Much of what Cotton has written in this book could be dismissed by some readers as hyperbole. But his sharp, short arguments—written clearly and succinctly—are well-reasoned and supported by salient facts. His claim that China is an evil empire, for example, is buttressed when he describes ways the CCP built a “dystopian police state to monitor, manipulate and master its people.” He cites forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations that were used to enforce the party’s One Child Policy; the suppression of religious freedom, and Christianity and the Falun Gong movement in particular; the genocidal campaigns against the people of Tibet and Chinese Uyghurs; and a social-credit score that measures the average Chinese citizen’s political reliability and determines access to everything from education to housing.

Countering China’s space stalkers: helping turn Competitive Endurance from theory into practice

Brian G. Chow

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On April 17, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations of the Space Force, released his third major statement on Competitive Endurance — a strategic framework designed to guide the U.S. Space Force in achieving space superiority. Titled Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners, this new document builds upon Gen. Saltzman’s 2023 keynote and his 2024 white paper, cementing Competitive Endurance as a foundational theory for U.S. military space power.

The question now is whether Gen. Saltzman should immediately begin applying all three Competitive Endurance documents to address specific space-based threats. Doing so would accelerate the shift from theory to practice, enabling the Space Force to develop operational plans, relevant capabilities and actionable responses tailored to real-world space threats.

To assess the practical utility of Competitive Endurance, it is essential to first apply the framework to specific threats — one at a time. Two key questions guide this approach:Can the framework be applied to a specific space threat to generate countermeasures more quickly, more cost-effectively, or both, compared to traditional ad hoc methods?

Can the process of applying the framework to individual threats also serve to refine and improve the overall theory — effectively using each application as a form of iterative training?

To explore both questions, I focus on a particularly urgent and illustrative case: China’s so-called “space stalkers” — dual-use spacecraft designed to shadow, disrupt or disable U.S. satellites. I selected this threat for two reasons. First, I have spent over a decade analyzing its evolution and the counterstrategies necessary to mitigate it. This depth of study allows me to critically evaluate whether Competitive Endurance offers a faster, more effective pathway to solutions.

China’s silent siege of the UN: how its NGO army hijacked and outsmarted a West obsessed with Russia

Konstantinos Bogdanos

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That happened last Friday. And it was no mere ceremony: it was a gauntlet thrown down at the West’s feet.

By obsessing over isolating Russia, we elevate China to the role of global chessmaster, a superpower set to challenge Europe and America in markets, tech, and battlefields. And where we really hand China the chessboard is at the UN.

Beijing’s strategy is surgical. From the UN’s Human Rights Council to the Economic and Social Council, China is orchestrating a takeover, not just with its diplomats, but through NGOs posing as independent voices.

These are not earnest activists, but CCP puppets. Often they are tied to state-backed think tanks, ones with opaque funding and an admirable ability to secure UN consultative status faster than you can say “Uyghur genocide”.

These groups swamp UN processes with reports praising China’s “progress” in Tibet or “stability” in Xinjiang. It is narrative warfare, won by sheer volume. Meanwhile, authentic NGOs–those bold enough to expose Beijing’s abuses–drown in red tape.

Europe, with its commitment to free expression, should be showing some sensitivity. Instead, our diplomats sip espressos with them in Geneva and enjoy cocktails together in New York.

It gets nastier. These NGOs do not just speak. They intimidate. Tibetan activists, Uyghur advocates, Hong Kong democrats, and Falun Gong members are heckled, smeared, photographed, even physically barred at UN events.

This is not advocacy. It is state-sponsored bullying, draped in the UN’s sanctimonious neutrality. And while we sever ties with Russia, China’s NGOs are silencing dissent in plain view, eroding the very civic freedoms Europe claims to uphold.

Trump risks driving Europe into China’s embrace. Xi Jinping will be delighted

Orville Schell

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How does Xi Jinping view the circus Donald Trump is ring-mastering in Washington? There is no denying that the new president has created an opportunity for Xi to drive a wedge into the flank of the battered transatlantic alliance. China’s special representative to the EU optimistically described Trump’s treatment of Europeans as so “appalling” that it was likely to make them more willing to recognise Beijing’s approach to “peace, friendship, goodwill and win-win cooperation”.

It was only a few months ago that Xi deserved his reputation as the world’s disruptor-in-chief. Beijing was (and still is) encroaching in the South China Sea, stepping up its incursions in Taiwan, and jousting with Japan over claims to the Senkaku Islands. But since Trump’s election, Xi has begun to look comparatively restrained, like the steadier player in US-China relations. His foreign minister, Wang Yi, went as far to describe China as an anchor in an increasingly uncertain world.

As Trump’s manic tariff war continues to blow the global economy into uncharted waters (the US and China have now agreed a 90-day pause to their intransigent trade war), Xi’s restraint is being tested. After all, like Trump, he is by nature a retaliatory leader. “We are not afraid of provocations. We don’t back down,” the Chinese foreign affairs ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, declared recently on X. Then she did something truly striking: she linked a clip of Mao Zedong giving a speech during the early 1950s, when the People’s Liberation Army was battling American GIs in the Korean war. “We will never yield … We’ll fight until we completely triumph”, Mao declares in the clip. The message was clear: Xi Jinping will not bend to Trump’s belligerence.

The wealthier and more powerful China has become, the more Xi has come to view diplomatic concessions as signs of weakness. He is now just as unlikely as Mao was to make compromises that would maintain peace. That said, Chinese leaders still find Trump hard to read. But here Xi has an incomparable advantage over other mystified global politicians. He already knows what happens when an erratic despot is allowed to override checks and balances, demolish opposition, silence the media, attack his rivals and unleash disorder. He experienced this very phenomena under Chairman Mao.

How the Oct. 7 Attack on Israel Sank the Palestinian Cause

Aaron David Miller

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In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, one could be forgiven for believing that the Palestinian issue had finally moved to the top of the international agenda. Much of the support and sympathy for the roughly 1,200 Israelis killed and 251 taken hostage would give way to a rising chorus of anger and outrage, as Israel’s air and ground campaign resulted in more than 52,000 Palestinian deaths and a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Any doubt that Palestine was now front and center would quickly fade as the Israel-Hamas war threatened to morph into regional confrontation, including strikes by Iran and Israel on each other’s territory. Indeed, by the end of 2023, as the international community found its pro-Palestinian voice and campuses across the United States exploded with protests and demonstrations not seen on any foreign-policy issue since the Vietnam War, it seemed as if the Palestinians’ moment had finally come and that the issue could no longer be denied. How could it?

Looking back, 18 months later—as U.S. President Donald Trump embarks on his first trip to the Middle East—it seems clear that rather than ensuring the centrality of the Palestinian issue, Oct. 7 has produced its eclipse. A combination of factors have pushed the Palestinians and their politics pretty far down the list of regional or international priorities: the fecklessness of the international community, the Biden and now Trump administrations’ preternatural support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the unwillingness of key Arab states to exact any serious price from Israel (and Washington for its enabling policies), and the utter dysfunction and chaos of the Palestinian national movement. After Oct. 7 and the human misery and suffering it wrought, it’s hard to know precisely what might reenergize the Palestinian issue, let alone create a pathway for a conflict-ending solution. A West Bank intifada? New Israeli and Palestinian leadership? A peace plan from an unpredictable U.S. president looking for a Nobel Peace Prize? Regardless, the paradox of Oct. 7 is clear. On one hand, it demonstrated with a terrifying clarity that the only conceivable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a negotiated separation; on the other, it has made the attainment of anything remotely resembling a two-state outcome galactically more difficult.

Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia

Helene Cooper, Greg Jaffe, Jonathan Swan, Eric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman

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When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.

By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.

But the results were not there. The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.

The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.

It did not help that two $67 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America’s flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea.

Why Trump and the Saudis Are Cozying Up

Ian Bremmer

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On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump will open the first multicountry foreign trip of his second term with a stop in Saudi Arabia, underscoring that ties with Riyadh remain a Trump priority. (He’ll also visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.) While a hoped-for diplomatic breakthrough normalizing Saudi-Israeli relations will have to wait—at least until the Gaza war ends—plenty of other opportunities will allow Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, to leave their meeting claiming diplomatic victory.

The Saudi need for a U.S. security guarantee is less urgent than during Trump’s first term. Iran, still the Saudis’ main regional rival, is now far weaker after Israel’s battering of its allies Hamas and Hezbollah and the ouster of Tehran-aligned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. It’s also unlikely Trump could deliver the two-thirds Senate super-majority needed for a formal defense treaty.

But even without the Israeli piece of the diplomatic puzzle, Trump intends to offer a new level of defense cooperation, including a public pledge to defend the kingdom if attacked by Iran or its remaining allies. That list may no longer include the Houthis. On May 6, Trump announced a surprise cease-fire with the Yemeni rebels, ending U.S. airstrikes in exchange for a halt to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. The deal, which notably excluded Israel, was brokered by Oman and lets Trump claim a win that reduces immediate threats to Saudi oil infrastructure ahead of his visit.

The kingdom is also seeking access to cutting-edge U.S. technologies, like advanced semiconductors for its expanding tech and AI sectors—an area in which it lags behind the neighboring UAE. To secure that access, Washington will insist that Riyadh curtail high-level tech cooperation with China.

Mineral Spoils In Ukraine: A Poor Foundation For Peace And Recovery – Analysis

Dr Jiayi Zhou and Dr Artem Gergun

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The signing of the minerals deal between the United States and Ukraine on 30 April is one of several headline stories about the Russian war in Ukraine. The agreement and its demands, a precondition for continued US support for Ukraine, would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. While substantially improved from its earliest iterations, the profit-sharing deal overrides Ukrainian domestic legislation without offering any formal security guarantees in return. The agreement also comes at a time when the USA is pressuring Ukraine to cede territory while considering economic concessions to Russia in its attempts to secure a peace deal. This now represents a new geopolitical reality and baseline, for Ukraine’s advancement towards either a negotiated peace or a continued fight against Russian aggression.

The minerals deal’s underlying logic—that economic incentives create political stakes in peace and development—is a sensible one in theory. The deal could make it easier for Ukraine to access international capital markets and help it to attract much-needed post-war reconstruction and industrial projects. An active and long-term US stake in the safety and profitability of Ukrainian economic assets may also serve as a low-level deterrent to Russia. Indeed, the impetus for the deal first came from Ukraine, which for several years had been making overtures to Western investors and partners, advertising its subsoil wealth and the potential economic payout of partnership.

However, as this essay argues, the deal is also predicated on several flawed assumptions and short-sighted ideas. First of all, it is far from clear that Ukraine’s minerals sector has any significant level of revenue windfall potential. The deal may amount to very little financially, for all the diplomatic bluster during its months-long negotiation. Second, Russia is actively blocking access to significant mineral resources in the occupied territories, while subsuming these subsoil resources, as well as related industries and even export facilities, into its own economic networks. On these issues, as in the wider peace talks, the USA has been placing pressure on the wrong counterpart. Finally, implementation of the minerals deal is likely to focus on hydrocarbons and resource extractivism as opposed to sustainable value chains—and risks making Ukraine less, rather than more, resilient in environmental, economic and even social terms.

Why Marx is back in fashion Tycoons, tariffs, and empire all over agai

Ben Burgis

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Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been tearing across the United States with their “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies. This framing pairs condemnation of the Trump administration with a broader critique of inequality — a potent mix. Yet it isn’t without its critics. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) has criticized the turn of phrase, warning that ordinary Americans don’t know what “oligarchy” means. Trump’s critics, Slotkin says, should stick to the slogan “No Kings.”

Progressives arguing over whether we should only be talking about democracy and “kings” or the oligarchic power of the super-rich — that’s a stark reminder that our century is growing to resemble the 19th: a world of hyper-exploitation and overweening tycoons; trade protectionism and blatant imperial land grabs; constitutional instability and simmering class conflict. There is no better guide to such a juncture than the 19th century’s greatest dissident thinker, Karl Marx.

Marx’s value as a Virgil-like guide to the darker depths of our condition is highlighted by a pair of recent books: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold, which explores the role of republicanism in shaping Marx’s thought, and Capital’s Grave by Jodi Dean, which seeks to update Marx for a world that Dean thinks is starting to look less like the classical industrial capitalism he wrote about than a kind of high-tech feudalism. Though varying wildly in both style and substance, both books remind us that 19th-century debates about economic inequality remain all too relevant to 2025.

Polls suggest that Slotkin is, in fact, wrong about the limits of the public’s vocabulary. But the issue in dispute between her and Sanders and AOC goes deeper than semantics. Slotkin evidently wants to stick to what 19th-century radicals called the “political question” of democracy and authoritarianism, rather than broaching the “social question” of economic power and hierarchy.

Neocentaur: A Model for Cognitive Evolution Across the Levels of War

William J. Barry and Blair Wilcox

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The US Army is at an inflection point. Geostrategic and technological shifts are requiring rapid adaptation. On May 1, the secretary of the Army and the Army chief of staff published a letter to the force recognizing several initiatives to deliver warfighting capabilities, optimize force structure, and eliminate waste. Among the guidance to increase warfighting lethality, the Army’s seniormost civilian and uniformed leaders noted the requirement to shift toward capability-based portfolios that integrate AI into command-and-control nodes to accelerate decision-making and preserve the initiative. At the US Army War College, new approaches to AI capabilities are both a concept and a reality. The neocentaur model, which describes human-hybrid intelligence across the levels of war, has been tested in the classroom and in strategic wargaming. Furthermore, our ongoing research presents a technical solution, presenting deterministic AI capabilities that are more suitable for military use when lives are on the line. To maintain military superiority, the United States must adopt a human-hybrid approach—the neocentaur model—that leverages deterministic models, rather than purely generative, to mitigate the risks of cognitive atrophy and formulaic decision-making.

The Problem: Machine limitations and Military Decision-Making

Current research on the impacts of generative AI and critical thinking should cause military leaders some pause. Cognitive off-loading to autonomous agents, for example, may deprive staff officers of the “routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared.” Survey research of 319 “knowledge workers” funded by Microsoft determined that generative AI solutions reinforce shifts in critical thinking away “from information gathering to information verification,” “from problem-solving to AI response integration,” and “from task execution to task stewardship.” Generative AI course-of-action development tools, for example, appealing in their ability to reduce cognitive load on a staff and potentially free manpower, may have unintended consequences. To be fair, the thinking required to edit a 70 percent solution from a generative AI course-of-action tool may require some degree of creativity. However, the automation bias inherent in human psychology will likely accept machine solutions, particularly under the duress of combat operations. This concept is further reinforced by David Hume’s hypothesis that people favor what is already established, “imbu[ing] the status quo with an unearned quality of goodness, in the absence of deliberative thought.” What was intended, therefore, as a tool to augment human intellect begins, instead, to direct human cognition. This automation bias, or natural proclivity for a minotaur relationship—call it a minotaur drift—is a persistent threat with generative AI solutions. It must be recognized and avoided at the strategic level and permitted at the operational and tactical level only by deliberate fiat.

EXCLUSIVE: US loosens some rules for offensive counterspace ops, wargaming

Theresa Hitchens

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WASHINGTON — When the Space Force recently put out a forward-leaning “warfighting” framework, it included an unusually blunt warning for military commanders: ensure the rules of engagement for space operations aren’t too restrictive, or the US will be at a severe disadvantage in the heavens.

That warning was public, but Breaking Defense has learned it comes amid a parallel push by the Space Force and US Space Command (SPACECOM) over the last several years to gain more military decision-making control over the use of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons — decision-making authority that has historically been closely held by the president and/or the secretary of defense.

While delegation of presidential authority with regard to space weapons is obscured by deep secrecy and classification, discussions by Breaking Defense with more than a dozen sources — including former Pentagon and US government civilian officials, retired and current military officials and outside space experts — have revealed that gradual but ground-breaking shifts in military freedom to prosecute war in the heavens have begun to take place in response to growing threats from Russia and, in particular China.

“We have made some changes that delegated some authorities down to Space Command commander under certain circumstances,” a former senior Space Force official said. “But in my view, not enough.”

For example, over the last decade there has been a gradual loosening of the reins on case-by-case determinations about the use of some types of temporary or reversible counterspace actions, such as jamming or lazing, according to a handful of sources. However, these sources did not indicate that there has been any relaxation of the requirement for approval by the president and/or the secretary of defense for a kinetic attack to destroy an enemy satellite.

The Five Keys of Donald Trump’s Grand Strategy

Arthur Herman

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President Trump is focusing U.S. grand strategy around the world’s five major waterways and maritime chokepoints.

President Trump’s campaign to end Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea highlights an issue every American grand strategist needs to focus on, in and out of the administration: which superpower will ultimately control the key strategic choke points for world maritime trade, the United States or China?

This issue was underlined a week earlier when President Trump began pressing for giving American ships free access to the Suez Canal as well as the Panama Canal—a move that infuriated the usual critics. They were quick to accuse him of arrogance and overreach, not to mention historical ignorance, since, unlike the Panama Canal, the United States played neither a role in building nor owning the Suez.

On the contrary, I would argue Trump’s Suez démarche reveals a shrewd grasp of grand strategic planning. The United States must have ready access to both maritime chokepoints for its commercial vessels and also its navy, both in order to protect U.S. trade and to stay ahead of our global competition with China.

In fact, Trump’s thinking is reminiscent of British first sea lord John “Jackie” Fisher’s list of “five strategic keys,” which he and the Royal Navy secured in the years before World War I, from the Dover Strait and Gibraltar to Suez, Singapore, and the Cape of Good Hope.

Today, some of Fisher’s keys (e.g., Dover and Gibraltar) may be less valuable than others (e.g., Suez and Singapore). However, thinking strategically about who controls access to the world’s most important shipping passages is still crucial—especially since last month, the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated seaborne trade accounts for 80 percent of global trade by volume.

Maintaining American Military Primacy Without Breaking the Bank

Joshua Thibert

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Maintaining the United States’ position as the world’s premier military force will push the defense budget beyond the trillion-dollar mark. To ensure the long-term sustainability of the world’s most advanced military while maintaining readiness and effectiveness, the US must rethink its approach to defense funding. Prioritizing the right investments in new capabilities, while leveraging advanced technologies to enhance existing systems, can reduce costs and preserve a decisive edge. This approach strengthens deterrence and ensures the US can rapidly dominate any conflict, regardless of the operational environment.

Shifting to upgrading existing airframes with advanced technology rather than developing entirely new 6th-generation aircraft could offer significant long-term benefits. This approach results in substantial cost savings by avoiding the massive research and development expenses associated with new platforms while leveraging existing maintenance infrastructure. Additionally, integrating advanced technologies into proven airframes allows for faster deployment, reducing development cycles from decades to just a few years. Reliability would also improve, as these upgraded aircraft are built on battle-tested designs, avoiding the risks of unproven platforms and costly performance shortfalls.

Another key advantage is the ability to adopt modular and open-architecture upgrades, which enable rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI), sensor fusion, hypersonic weapons, and advanced stealth coatings without requiring entirely new aircraft designs. This incremental innovation approach ensures continuous modernization without the financial and operational burdens of a generational shift. Furthermore, sustaining production of existing airframes stabilizes the industrial base and supply chain, preserving skilled labor and reducing reliance on experimental manufacturing techniques. However, this approach does come with trade-offs.

While upgraded airframes can incorporate many next-generation technologies, they may struggle to compete with emerging peer threats, such as China’s J-20B and a future J-31, which are designed from the ground up with advanced stealth and next-generation propulsion. Despite these limitations, prioritizing enhancements to proven aircraft, while strategically investing in select next-generation platforms, could provide a cost-effective, lower-risk approach to maintaining American air superiority in the evolving global security landscape.

Fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU accession helps no one — least of all Ukraine

Mat Whatley

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Mat Whatley is a former U.K. army officer, who was head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Donetsk, Ukraine, and a senior manager with the EU Monitoring Mission to Georgia in the Caucasus. He’s the managing director at Okapi Train.

U.S. President Donald Trump has forced a binary choice on Ukraine’s supporters.

His aggressive push to end the war, at the cost of major Ukrainian concessions, has fueled instability in Kyiv. And in response, Europe has hardened its support, spurring unrealistic policymaking that leaves little room for nuance in the gulf between Brussels and the White House.

As a result, many within the bloc are now calling for Ukraine’s accession to be radically fast-tracked, following the European Council’s 2022 decision to grant it candidate status. Moreover, anyone who subjects these promises to even the mildest scrutiny now risks being accused of failing to take Russia’s aggression seriously, or even of aiding Moscow.

However, admitting Ukraine into the EU presents an immense challenge — one that would fully reshape the bloc’s budgetary structure and risk unity, given the country would immediately become the largest recipient of EU funds.

These concerns were widespread within the bloc’s establishment not that long ago. It was in 2023 that former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker remarked Ukraine wasn’t ready for accession due to rule-of-law and corruption challenges, saying: “Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society.”

And despite much reform, this problem stubbornly persists. A 2024 poll by the country’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention found that 90 percent of Ukrainians believe corruption is still widespread, with most saying it’s getting worse. More Ukrainians now view corruption as a greater threat than Russia’s military aggression.

Biased AI Models Are Increasing Political Polarizatio

Sinan Ulgen

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Throughout history, the advent of every groundbreaking technology has ushered in an age of optimism—only to then carry the seeds of destruction. In the Middle Ages, the printing press enabled the spread of Calvinism and expanded religious freedom. Yet these deepening religious cleavages also led to the Thirty Years’ War, one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts, which depopulated vast swaths of the continent.

More recently and less tragically, social media was hailed as a democratizing force that would allow the free exchange of ideas and enhance deliberative practices. Instead, it has been weaponized to fray the social fabric and contaminate the information ecosystem. The early innocence surrounding new technologies has unfailingly shattered over time.

Gloomy Outlook for World Trade

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The World Trade Organization has released a report titled World Trade Outlook and Statistics, highlighting two negative trends: falling trade volumes and growing uncertainty in trade policies. The slowdown in global trade, evident over the past two years, is largely due to structural market factors. Key contributors to the weak trade performance in 2025 include slowing growth in major economies following a prolonged post-lockdown recovery, stagnating export volumes and reduced demand from major buyers.

The WTO projects a sharper decline ahead, citing heightened protectionism among major trading powers. In particular, the trade conflict between the United States and China threatens to shift trade flows and deepen uncertainty. While the effect of tariffs varies by region, they remain a major drag on global trade and have prompted the WTO to lower its baseline forecasts. The WTO emphasizes that, due to heightened uncertainty, all forecasts should be interpreted with greater caution than usual.

The Post-World War II System Was Always Fragil

Julian E. Zelizer

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Torn strips of paper frame a historic image of the three World War II leaders.Robert Hopkins's iconic photo of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945 is seen through torn strips of paper on an advertisement in Moscow on June 19, 2020. Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

It has been 80 years since World War II ended. That historic moment brought celebration, euphoria, and collective relief. The devastating war was finally over; fascism, it seemed, had been defeated. The mood in the United States was perhaps best captured by the iconic photograph of a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a woman in New York City’s Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945, after the news broke that Japan had surrendered.

But it didn’t take long for Americans to realize that international threats were far from over. In the aftermath of World War II, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States quickly took hold. With the advent of atomic and nuclear weapons, the stakes of avoiding a full-scale confrontation increased dramatically.

On Some Capital Issues About Warfare – Analysis

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

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War and Capabilities

The destiny of warfare depends very much on actors’ relative capabilities. By definition, different capabilities are the means of the actor in international relations (IR) to achieve certain goals. Some of those capabilities can be tangible and, in principle, easy to measure, but others (such as morale or leadership) can be very intangible and, therefore, can only be estimated in practice.

Concerning global politics, IR, and warfare, there are at least five tangible capabilities of the actor (in principle, of the nation-state) that can be measured and consequently be known:The capability of the military power. It is directly connected with the questions of the size and capability of the actor’s armed forces and the quantity and quality of weapons possessed. Logically, the greater the military capability of an actor on these dimensions, there is and greater the accumulated power and, therefore, the real chances to win the war. Nevertheless, in practice, usually, it is not common for one actor is rank high on all of these dimensions of military capability, as, for instance, the state can possess more advanced weaponry and, therefore, reduce the size of its army regarding manpower.

Resources of economic power. In this respect, several issues are important to be known, like the actor’s GDP/GNP, how much the state is industrialized, the level of technological development, or what is the structure of the actor’s economy.

Resources of natural wealth. In this respect, the focal question is: Does the actor have enough natural resources to support its military and economic capabilities and designs in IR?

Demographic development. Here, the most important issue is how large the population of the actor as a large population is usually contributes to a larger military and labor force. However, at the same time, it is of extreme importance to take into consideration the structure of the population’s age, sex, health, or education. It is significant to know are there is enough labor force and people to serve the army. Another important question is can the people of the actor use modern skillful technology. Finally, the interrelations between the people and state authority are as well as of extreme importance as it is very important to know are the citizens politically support the government or do some social, confessional, or interethnic strifes are threatening internal homogeneity and political unity.