Indian Strategic Studies: 05/22/25

22 May 2025

India and Pakistan reach ceasefire agreement, with US help. But all not quiet on the front.

John Mecklin

After days of cross-border military strikes against one another, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire Saturday, with Pakistan crediting the United States for its help in facilitating the agreement. After President Trump revealed the ceasefire on his social media site, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued this press statement:

Over the past 48 hours, Vice President Vance and I have engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, and National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Asim Malik.

I am pleased to announce the Governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.

We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace.

Saturday’s agreement followed four days of hostilities that included drone and artillery attacks from both countries. It was not clear that the ceasefire agreement had ended all military action; according to the New York Times, cross-border firing was reported “in some areas of the Indian part of Kashmir,” and a senior Indian official confirmed that there had also been firing along the boundary between India and Pakistan.

We thank President Trump for his leadership and proactive role for peace in the region .

Pakistan appreciates the United States for facilitating this outcome, which we have accepted in the interest of regional peace and stability.

We also thank Vice President JD Vance and…

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) May 10, 2025

The recent round of fighting between the two nuclear-armed adversaries began on Tuesday, when India—in what it code-named Operation Sindoor—fired missiles at multiple sites in Pakistan, claiming that those sites were “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.” The operation came in response to a deadly militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April that killed 26 tourists, all but one of whom was Indian. India blames Pakistan for the attack; the Pakistani government denies complicity.

Prospects for India–China relations

Antoine Levesques

Relations between India and China seem to be thawing since having reached a border agreement in late 2024. However, economic and security concerns suggest this might not continue without a more sustained dialogue.

Since a violent border clash in June 2020 across their disputed border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India and China have sought to stabilise their bilateral relationship. It took them over four years to reach a politically enabled agreement on patrolling arrangements, which has inaugurated a tactical thaw on what has nonetheless continued to be an increasingly militarised LAC, and a reactivation of meaningful diplomatic engagement.

However, as the two countries reach 75 years of diplomatic ties, a structural shift in what has nevertheless continued to be an increasingly competitive relationship is unlikely. Aside from their disputed border, Beijing’s political, economic and defence engagement in South Asia and Indian Ocean island states remains a key security concern for New Delhi. Yet, India cannot afford to forfeit its economic ties with China, if it is to maintain its current high level of economic growth.

Diplomatic thawThe India–China border agreement on 21 October 2024 resulted in a meeting, the first since 2019, between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit on 23 October. Their high-level political guidance provided the necessary impetus to finalise their militaries’ disengagement in Ladakh and restore regular, high-level dialogue on border management. A rebuilding of bilateral ties (which had been severed in 2020) followed.

Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi met in November 2024. They agreed to the resumption of a religious pilgrimage in Tibet (scheduled to resume in June 2025), data sharing on trans-border rivers, direct flights between India and China and media exchanges. The two countries’ defence ministers, Rajnath Singh and Admiral Dong Jun, also met in November 2024. In December, the empowered special representatives on the India–China boundary question – Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Wang – also met.

India–Pakistan drone and missile conflict: differing and disputed narratives

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury

India–Pakistan drone and missile conflict: differing and disputed narratives

The recent four-day conflict between India and Pakistan was the greatest military escalation between the two states in decades. This has ushered in new doctrines by both sides and there will need to be sustained work by the two countries and the international community to return to a stable environment.

The four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan from 7–10 May 2025 was their deadliest in decades. For the first time since the 1971 India–Pakistan War, India targeted Pakistan’s heartland province of Punjab, with Pakistan targeting India’s own Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat states, both with drones and missiles. The exchange of strikes against military installations in Rawalpindi (the headquarters of the Pakistan Army), Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan, and air bases in Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj in India threatened to escalate into a full-fledged war between the two nuclear-armed countries. The United States brokered a ceasefire on 10 May, which continues to hold for now.

India and Pakistan each claim to have successfully met their tactical and operational objectives. Yet both countries continue to propagate differing and disputed narratives of the conflict amid significant misinformation and disinformation campaigns by their media and governments. This has potentially laid the seeds for a ‘second phase’ of the conflict, amid a new assertive Indian counter-terrorism strategy and a more powerful Pakistani army chief. To ensure mutual stability and security, there needs to be sustained political and diplomatic effort by both countries – as well as the international community.

The Lessons of India’s Operation Sindoor

Kaush Arha, and James Himberger

The West won’t persuade India to share its view on Russian aggression if it continues to engage in false equivalencies between Pakistan’s terror attacks and India’s reprisals.

India, in the early hours of May 7, destroyed nine terrorist training facilities in Pakistan in response to a terror attack on April 22, killing twenty-six tourists in Pahalgam in India’s Jammu and Kashmir union territory. Subsequently, the two nations engaged in drone and missile exchanges with divergent claims of damage inflicted on the other. On May 10, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed a ceasefire agreement between the two nations.

On May 12, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation and asserted, “If there is a terrorist attack on India, a fitting reply will be given…on our terms.” The hopefully short-lived conflict holds important lessons for India’s relations with the United States, the Quad, and the growing Indo-Mediterranean trade network.

Concerns of uncontrolled escalation between two nuclear-armed nations are real and sobering. However, an all-out war appears unlikely as India does not want it, and Pakistan cannot afford it. Much depends on Pakistan’s internal politics, which couples a weak and unpopular prime minister (Shehbaz Sharif) and a powerful chief of army staff (General Asim Munir), both of whom allegedly conspired to imprison former prime minister Imran Khan and prevent him from contesting the 2024 election. Pakistan’s economy is in the doldrums and received another IMF loan on May 9—its twenty-fifth, making it one of the organization’s largest debtors.

Between Identity and Territory: The Ethno-Political Conflict in Rakhine State

Mia Mahmudur Rahim

The conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—historically known as Arakan—is one of the most protracted and complex ethno-political crises in Southeast Asia. At its core lies a struggle between the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine (Arakanese) population and the stateless Muslim Rohingya minority, whose contested identity and historical presence in the region have sparked decades of tension, violence, and displacement. The Rakhine people, themselves a marginalized ethnic group within Myanmar, have long harbored grievances against the central government for political and economic neglect. This has fostered a strong regional nationalism, which views the Rohingya not only as religious outsiders but also as demographic and political threats. The Rohingya, on the other hand, claim deep historical roots in the region, yet have been systematically denied citizenship under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, rendering them one of the world’s largest stateless populations.

The conflict escalated dramatically in 2017 when Myanmar’s military launched a brutal crackdown in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). The operation led to mass atrocities, including killings, sexual violence, and the displacement of over 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh—actions widely condemned as ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide. While the international community has focused on the humanitarian crisis, the deeper ethno-political dynamics remain unresolved. The Rakhine nationalist movement, represented by groups like the Arakan Army, seeks greater autonomy or even independence, complicating the narrative that frames the Rohingya solely as victims. This dual marginalization—of both Rakhine and Rohingya—has created a volatile environment where identity, territory, and political power collide.

Efforts at reconciliation and repatriation have largely stalled. Myanmar’s military junta, which seized power in 2021, has shown little interest in addressing the root causes of the conflict. Meanwhile, the Rohingya remain in limbo, caught between statelessness and exile, while the Rakhine continue to push for self-determination.

China’s Expanding Influence in Bangladesh: Strategic Debt and Naval Ambitions

Charles Davis

Bangladesh appears to be yet another example of China’s economic coups. Leveraging debt may allow China to expand its naval presence into the Bay of Bengal and add another strategic port to China’s Blue Water Naval goals. It is also likely to elevate tensions with India.

Bangladesh’s Growing Reliance on China

In August 2022, Mustafa Kamal, then the finance minister for Bangladesh, warned developing countries about the risk of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) loans. He expressed deep concern over poor lending practices and overwhelming indebtedness. At the time of his interview, Bangladesh owed China USD 4 billion, which equated to roughly 6 percent of its foreign dept. Bangladesh’s dept to China has surged to USD 7 billion, nearly doubling in three years.

In January 2024, Bangladesh replaced Kamal with Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali. Abul Hassan has a long, and developed, relationship with China. Abul Hassan served as the Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Bangladesh in Beijing from 1983 to 1986 and led the way to China’s investment in the Barapukuria coal mine project. Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, has signaled a deepening alignment with Beijing.

Yunus met with President Xi Jinping on March 28, 2025 in an effort to reinforce its relationship with Communist China and likely to solidify an additional USD 5 billion soft loan from China, which would raise the dept to USD 12 billion.

Yunus is hopeful China will increase investments in Bangladesh to revive its economy, which is in disrepair due to both political and economic crises. He encouraged collaboration in infrastructure, renewable energy, and trade, highlighting Bangladesh’s potential as a manufacturing hub. Most importantly, he reminded Xi that his country’s strategic position provided opportunities for China to expand its influence and solidify presence in an area that is strategically important to the United States.

China’s Local Governments: Can they pull the weight of the country’s economy?

China’s economy has been undergoing a structural slowdown after witnessing four decades of near double-digit growth rates. For the third time in a row, China has set an annual growth target of around 5 per cent for 2025. And to a great extent, whether it achieves the target will be contingent on the performance of its local governments, which are responsible for around 88 per cent of the national expenditure.

However, their fiscal situation continues to worsen. Not only has their general budgetary revenue as a percentage of GDP dropped, revenue from sale of land use rights has also sharply declined. To further compound their misery, local government debt, including hidden debt, has soared to over 50 percent of GDP.

With the central leadership’s crackdown on illegal debt, coupled with falling revenues, the fiscal space for the local governments has drastically reduced. However, their expenditure mandates continue to expand, thereby creating a structural fiscal imbalance. This has, in turn, severely limited the local governments’ ability to keep the economy running. Read the Issue Brief (PDF)

Nvidia: The AI chip giant caught between US and China

With the meteoric rise of Nvidia, chief executive Jensen Huang has been nicknamed a tech "rock star" and the 'Taylor Swift of tech'

Computer chip giant Nvidia has once again found itself at the centre of US-China tensions over trade and technology.

On Thursday Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang flew to Beijing to meet senior Chinese officials, just after the US imposed new export controls on its chips.

The California-based company will require licenses to export its H20 AI chip to China, a move which the US Commerce Department said was designed to safeguard "national and economic security". Nvidia said federal officials had told them the requirement will be in force for the "indefinite future".

But why is the company so pivotal in the race for AI supremacy between the US and China?

What is Nvidia?

Nvidia designs advanced chips, or semiconductors, that are used in generative artificial intelligence. Generative AI can produce new content from a user's prompt, like ChatGPT.

In recent years, a surge in global demand for AI chips led Nvidia to become one of the world's most valuable companies. In November, Nvidia briefly unseated Apple as the largest company in the world by market capitalisation.

Because its chips are seen as so essential to advancements in generative AI, successive US administrations have scrutinised Nvidia's relationship with China.

Washington hopes the new export controls will slow China's development of advanced AI chips - especially their use by the Chinese military - and secure an advantage in AI competition with Beijing.

The New Cold War with China

Daniel R. Green

The threat to the United States from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is multifaceted, long-term, and aggressive. Whether it’s from military modernization to economic coercion, cyber warfare to space competition, the PRC’s national security challenge is global, and it targets U.S. interests, values, security, and standing in the world.

While much of the focus of U.S. policymakers has been on the military threat from China, the communist country has also implemented a multi-pronged approach to weaken the United States economically, politically, culturally, and diplomatically. It is enlisting a whole-of-government strategy blending civil and military approaches with tactics short of war to expand its influence and improve its geopolitical position.

Their determined plan uses economics, media, education, politics, culture, diplomacy, and information, among many other approaches, in a highly integrated and orchestrated fashion. Its actions take place within the U.S. domestically, they seek to undermine the U.S. regionally and globally, while sowing doubt in the minds of U.S. allies.

In short, in many respects, the U.S. is involved in a Cold War with China, and it urgently needs to do more to stop their aggressive actions.

A central component of the Cold War with China are the efforts of its government to influence American public opinion and culture. The Chinese Government has a veritable army of anonymous social media accounts which it uses to not only present its views but to foment division among our people while silencing critics of its regime. It also distributes government-funded newspapers within the U.S., little more than propaganda broadsheets, and invests in key media infrastructure to not only support its views but to also mute criticisms of its policies.

Additionally, through massive state support, it also seeks to shape American culture through supporting select movies, such as the 2019 movie Midway, to create division between the alliance of the United States and Japan, as well as prompting the temporary removal of the flag of Taiwan from the jacket of the actor Tom Cruise in the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick. Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China uses all of its resources to challenge, coerce, silence, and divide opinions about its policies and actions. It uses cultural influence as much as any other capability at its disposal.

In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.

Kyle Chan

For years, theorists have posited the onset of a “Chinese century”: a world in which China finally harnesses its vast economic and technological potential to surpass the United States and reorient global power around a pole that runs through Beijing.

That century may already have dawned, and when historians look back they may very well pinpoint the early months of President Trump’s second term as the watershed moment when China pulled away and left the United States behind.

It doesn’t matter that Washington and Beijing have reached an inconclusive and temporary truce in Mr. Trump’s trade war. The U.S. president immediately claimed it as a win, but that only underlines the fundamental problem for the Trump administration and America: a shortsighted focus on inconsequential skirmishes as the larger war with China is being decisively lost.

Mr. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the pillars of American power and innovation. His tariffs are endangering U.S. companies’ access to global markets and supply chains. He is slashing public research funding and gutting our universities, pushing talented researchers to consider leaving for other countries. He wants to roll back programs for technologies like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing and is wiping out American soft power in large swaths of the globe.

China’s trajectory couldn’t be more different.

Revealed: China has secretly installed kill switches in solar panels sold to the West - which could see Beijing plunge its enemies into darkness in the event of WW3

DAVID AVERRE

Engineers have discovered 'kill switches' embedded in Chinese-manufactured parts on American solar farms, raising fears Beijing could manipulate supplies or 'physically destroy' grids across the US, UK and Europe.

Energy officials are assessing the risks posed by small communication devices in power inverters - an integral component of renewable energy systems that connects them to the power grid.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies using them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

But rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some solar power inverters by US experts who strip equipment hooked to grids to check for security issues, two sources told Reuters.

Using these devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts.

'That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,' one of the sources declared.

The discovery has raised fears Beijing may maintain the capability to wreak havoc on power grids across the Western world such is the reliance of renewable energy systems on Chinese-manufactured parts.

British solar panels use parts manufactured in a variety of countries, including China.

It is not known whether the Chinese 'killswitches' are present in any power converters installed on UK wind or solar farms.

But shadow energy minister Andrew Bowie yesterday called on Labour's Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband to carry out an 'immediate pause and review' of its efforts to transition to green power.

Electric Shock: The Chinese Threat To Europe’s Industrial Heartland – Analysis

Jakub Jakóbowski and Janka Oertel

For decades, the performance of Germany’s economy—Europe’s largest—has been fuelled by selling goods to China. This export-orientated approach was essential to the German industrial-led economic model. But those times are over and Berlin now faces a dilemma.

The world has been hit by two “China shocks” since the turn of the millennium. The first followed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, when Chinese-made consumer goods began to flood global markets and displaced manufacturing jobs, particularly in the US. Meanwhile, after the end of the cold war, central and eastern Europe provided a skill-rich, relatively low-wage neighbourhood that suddenly became available to the German economy. Thus, during the first China shock Germany benefited from deep integration with markets in central and eastern Europe—and from its complementarity with a Chinese economy to which high-quality German products and technology transfer were extremely valuable.

This time around, the second China shock is going to harm Germany and its neighbours, potentially very seriously. To compensate for low consumption at home and as part of its national security-driven economic dominance strategy, China engages in predatory trade practices. The colossal Chinese economy exports massive overcapacities of advanced manufactured goods to the world. But these goods are no longer the cheap electronics, washing machines and textiles of 25 years ago; complementarity is a thing of the past. Chinese goods now compete directly with Germany’s core industrial sectors. Current trends have the potential to dissolve Germany’s industrial backbone, including first and foremost its car industry.

Because of Germany’s deep integration with its neighbours, the ramifications of the second China shock will be widely felt. Direct trade between central and eastern Europe and China is comparatively low. But central and eastern European countries are wrapped tightly into German supply chains (and with each other). For years, these countries’ governments have been looking for a sweet spot: attaching themselves to competitive German global value chains, while cosying up to China for additional economic benefits. Yet central and eastern European leaders still fail to grasp that this China shock will be bruising for Germany—but fatal for them.

Trump Dumps Peace Talks

Mick Ryan

In a certain sense, Putin is even right — to end the war in Europe, we really do need to eliminate its “root causes.” It’s just that the true “root causes” aren’t the existence of Ukraine as a state and as identity, as Russian war propaganda insinuates, but rather the existence of modern Russia itself — a country where, under the complacent gaze of weak Western democracies, a fascist, oligarchic regime has flourished. Illia Ponomarenko, 20 May 2025

The U.S. President, Donald Trump, had another conversation with Russia’s president today. The two-hour conversation focused primarily on Ukraine peace negotiations but also covered other topics related to the America-Russia relationship. Trump posted a precis of his conversation with Putin on social media. Putin issued a media release through his official website. Trump’s statement was more specific about issues discussed, while Putin offered a more general description of the call.

Today’s discussion between Trump and Putin probably indicates that we are at the start of a new phase in the Ukraine War, and in negotiations over war termination. This is an initial assessment of what occurred in the phone call, the key topics discussed, and what it means for the trajectory of the war.

What Were the Key Topics?

The first, and most important topic (at least to most of us) was the peace process in Ukraine. Trump wrote that Russia and Ukraine (note Trump always preferences Russia over Ukraine when he writes about the two) will “immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire.” In his response to the phone call between Trump and Putin, and his call afterwards with Trump, the Ukrainian president describes how:

Ukraine is ready for direct negotiations with Russia in any format that brings results. Türkiye, the Vatican, Switzerland – we are considering all possible venues. It is not necessary to convince Ukraine, and our representatives are prepared to make real decisions in negotiations. What’s needed is a mirrored readiness from Russia to engage in meaningful talks.

Opinion – Reassessing Military Misconceptions in the American-Japanese Alliance

Julian McBride

The U.S.-Japanese alliance is one of today’s strongest treaty alliances, shielding threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. Nevertheless, this ironclad alliance is often put to question due to misconceptions about reciprocal defense between Tokyo and Washington. Combining two of the strongest economies, militaries, and soft powers in the world, the Japanese-American alliance has room to grow, even within political turbulence. Against the backdrop of Trump hinting that every U.S. ally should grow its defense apparatus, the POTUS expressed criticism in relation to Japan. On two occasions, President Trump stated that the American-Japanese alliance is “so one-sided.” Furthermore, the President said, “We pay hundreds of billions of dollars to defend them, but they don’t pay anything.” President Trump also told reporters that if America were attacked, Japan would not come to America’s aid. Overall, the President’s arguments ignore historical contexts that could cause a rift in one of the world’s steadfast alliances.

In the aftermath of Imperial Japan’s unconditional surrender, the United States government outlined Tokyo’s constitution, which led to decades of pacifism. In the new American-drafted constitution, Article 9 states that the country cannot have a full-standing military, which is the reason why Tokyo calls their army the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). Despite its defensive operational nature, the JSDF consistently ranks in the top 20 armies by firepower amongst all nations. Additionally, Japan’s navy plays a crucial role in the First Island Chain strategy to contain Chinese naval movements in East Asia.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States hosted permanent military bases in Japan to grow relations with Tokyo, enhance its defense, promote democratic reforms, and maintain a foothold in the Indo-Pacific region. Though Washington pays billions to logistically preserve and strengthen its forces in the Pacific Fleet, the Tokyo government pays for hosting American military bases. Before a 2022 agreement renewal, the Japanese parliament allotted 201.7 billion yen for American military bases. With the renewed agreement, there has been an increase of 250 to 299 billion yen, which equates to 2.6 billion USD. Tokyo also contributes to joint JSDF-U.S. forces training exercises, which take place throughout the Japanese archipelago.

The Arc of Eurasian Crisis: The Russia-Iran Relationship, Military Power, and Multipolarity

Harry Halem

It has become conventional wisdom, both in policy establishments and the international relations academic community, to endorse the emergence of “multipolarity” between 2020 and 2025. The combination of COVID-19, political volatility in the US, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the Iran-Israel rivalry cum Middle East crisis are all produced as proof. Yet instead, the key conclusion from the previous five years, and in fact, the last 20 years of international politics, is not multipolarity through American decline per se, but a transformation in the relationship between Russia and its neighbours, whether those be adversaries like Ukraine, or partners like Iran. This stems from a collapse in Russia’s relative power, even as Iran comes under extreme pressure.

International relations debate has quickly accepted the concept of “multipolarity”, almost as rapidly as it accepted American hegemony under the “unipolar moment” 35 years ago. Yet the differences between these situations could not be starker. In 1991, the United States had outlasted its greatest geopolitical rival, the USSR, both by exploiting the fragmentation of the communist bloc after the Sino-Soviet split and through a large-scale military buildup that leveraged new technologies and operational concepts. The Soviet Union shattered, with Belarus and Ukraine splitting from the Russian-dominated Soviet empire. The Balts escaped Moscow’s grip as well. Farther west, the small nations of Eastern Europe, for whose liberty the UK entered the Second World War a half-century earlier, were also liberated from geopolitical domination. The same year the USSR dissolved, the United States ejected Iraq from Kuwait with only 292 combat deaths, nearly half of which came from friendly fire. American power was undeniable, hence the intellectual attraction of unipolarity is clearly explicable.

By contrast, the birth of multipolarity lacks comparable evidence. Long-range trends — ranging from the US share of global manufacturing to US relative economic size, productivity, and the relative rate of dollarisation in international trade — provide evidence of a shifting balance of power. Yet there is little indication of true multipolarity. Russia began its attempt to conquer Ukraine outright in February 2022, staging a lightning offensive meant to stun Ukraine into submission and shock the US and Europe enough to keep Ukraine isolated. Three years later, Russia has lost nearly a million military casualties killed or wounded. Its real inflation rate is likely significantly higher than an already high public figure of 10%. The Russian labour market remains tight, given emigration and war deaths. Russia lacks access to international financial institutions and is heavily reliant on Chinese financial and technological assistance to sustain its war effort and economy. Most critically, Russia is spending between 30 and 40% of its annual budget on military items. The broader Russian economy has been retooled for war, meaning the actual defence spending proportion may be even higher. All this is to conquer Ukraine, a country a fraction of Russia’s territorial extent, population, and economic product.

Russian nuclear weapons, 2025

Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight

Russia is in the late stages of a multi-decade-long modernization program to replace all of its Soviet-era nuclear-capable systems with newer versions. However, this program is facing significant challenges that will further delay the entry into force of these newer systems. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that Russia now possesses approximately 4,309 nuclear warheads for its strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces. Although the number of Russian strategic launchers is not expected to change significantly in the foreseeable future, the number of warheads assigned to them might increase. The significant increase in non-strategic nuclear weapons that the Pentagon predicted five years ago has so far not materialized. A nuclear weapons storage site in Belarus appears to be nearing completion. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, associate director Matt Korda, and senior research associates Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight.

This article is freely available in PDF format in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ digital magazine (published by Taylor & Francis) at this link. To cite this article, please use the following citation, adapted to the appropriate citation style: Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight, Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2025, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 81:3, 208-237, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2025.2494386

Russia is nearing the completion of a decades-long effort to replace all of its strategic and non-strategic nuclear-capable systems with newer versions. But despite Moscow’s continued rhetorical emphasis on its nuclear forces, commercial satellite imagery and other open sources indicate that elements of Russia’s nuclear modernization are proceeding much more slowly than planned: Upgrades to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers face significant delays, and the “significant” increase of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons that US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) predicted five years ago has yet to materialize (Richard 2020, 5).

Elon Musk Was Donald Trump’s Useful Idiot

Gideon Lichfield

Late last month, a chastened-looking Musk admitted that DOGE has been “not as effective as I’d like.” The quasi-agency claims that it has so far saved the U.S. government $170 billion, mostly by firing employees, repealing regulations, and canceling contracts and grants. But it hasn’t provided evidence for—or has greatly exaggerated—most of these savings. In reality, DOGE’s slapdash approach to slashing government will, by one estimate, cost taxpayers an additional $135 billion this year. And actual federal spending has been rising since President Donald Trump took office.

The Inequality Myth Western Societies Are Growing More Equal, Not Less

Daniel Waldenstrom

Spend a few minutes browsing political commentary or scrolling social media and you will discover a seemingly settled truth: inequality in the West is soaring, the middle class is being hollowed out, and democracies stand on the brink of oligarchy. The idea is seductive because it fits everyday anxieties in many Western countries—housing has grown increasingly unaffordable, billionaire wealth mushrooms unfathomably, and the pandemic exposed yawning gaps in social safety nets. Yet the most influential claims about inequality rest on selective readings of history and partial measurements of living standards. When the full balance sheet of modern economies is tallied—including taxes, transfers, pension entitlements, homeownership, and the fact that people move through income brackets across their lives—the story looks markedly different. Western societies are not nearly as unequal as many believe them to be.

This is not a call for complacency. Concentrated economic power can distort markets and politics; pockets of deep poverty persist in rich countries; and in the United States, the top of the distribution has indeed sprinted ahead of the rest. But focusing only on the eye-catching fortunes of tech founders or hedge-fund managers obscures a quieter, broader transformation: households across the income spectrum now own capital on a scale unimaginable to earlier generations, and basic measures of well-being in Western societies—including life expectancy, educational attainment, and consumption possibilities—have improved for nearly everyone.

Getting the facts right matters because bad diagnosis breeds bad prescriptions. If governments assume that capitalism is inexorably recreating the disparities of the Gilded Age, they will reach for wealth confiscations, price controls, or ever-larger public sectors funded by fragile tax bases. If, instead, the evidence shows that free-market economies have enriched middle classes by expanding asset ownership, that entrepreneurs’ fortunes are associated with advances shared with the broader public, and that much of the post-1980 rise in recorded inequality reflects methodological quirks, then a different agenda follows: states should encourage ambition, protect competition, widen access to wealth-building, and ensure that public services complement—not smother—private prosperity. In short, before treating inequality as an existential crisis, it is worth double-checking the thermometer.

Defending Europe Without the United States: Costs and Consequences

Ben Barry

The IISS has conducted an independent, open-source assessment of the financial costs and defence industrial requirements for NATO-Europe to defend against a future Russian threat without the United States. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, its hybrid war against European states, and demands by the Trump administration for European defence autonomy make it imperative for European decision-makers to consider the military, financial and defence industrial investments needed to reduce dependencies on the US and, in extremis, to prepare for a NATO without any US role.

The objective of the study is to inform European policymakers’ thinking about the military, financial and defence industrial implications of closing key military gaps.

To inform the European defence policy debate, the study assumes that by mid-2025 the war in Ukraine has ended with a ceasefire agreement and that the US government has indicated that it will begin the process of withdrawing from NATO. Declaring its need to prioritise the Indo-Pacific theatre, the US also commences to remove equipment, stocks, supplies and military personnel from Europe. The IISS does not assume this scenario to be inevitable, but it is a helpful construct to clarify policy and capability decisions for European governments today.

Against this background, the study first assesses Russia’s ability to reconstitute its forces after the fighting in Ukraine ends. Our assessment is that challenges notwithstanding, Russia could be in a position to pose a significant military challenge to NATO allies, particularly the Baltic states, as early as 2027. By then, Russia’s ground forces could mirror its February 2022 active equipment holdings through a combination of refurbishment and the production of new systems. Moreover, its air and maritime forces have been largely unaffected by the war.

Consequently, were US forces to disengage from the European theatre from mid-2025, Europe’s window of vulnerability would open quickly. Not only would European allies need to replace major US military platforms and manpower – the latter estimated at 128,000 troops – but also address shortfalls in space and all-domain intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. They would also need to replace the significant US contribution to NATO’s command and control arrangements and fill many senior military positions in NATO organisations currently occupied by US personnel.

Book Review | The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace

Ciprian Clipa

The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace. By Oscar Jonsson. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1626167339. Maps. Photographs. Glossary. Notes. Sources Cited. Index. Pp. vii, 208. $26.14.

Oscar Jonsson’s The Russian Understanding of War is a well-timed and thought-provoking explanation of how Russian military thinking has developed to integrate non-military state tools—such as information warfare and ideological subversion—into its understanding of war. By systematically exploring this evolution from the Soviet period to today, Jonsson presents a convincing case: Russia no longer sees war solely in terms of armed conflict but views nonviolent actions as part of a continuous spectrum of conflict. This book is a must-read for policymakers, academics, and armed forces members struggling with today’s geopolitical conflicts and the challenges of so-called hybrid warfare.

Oscar Jonsson, a Swedish security analyst and political scientist, presents in this book the core question of whether Russia’s understanding of the nature of war has evolved to incorporate nonmilitary tools into its conception of warfare. Jonsson’s methodology examines Russian military writing, security policy documents, and public declarations of high-level officials, such as General Valery Gerasimov. The book is chronological in format, starting with the Soviet inheritance and concludes with extensive discussions of information warfare and the Color Revolutions. Throughout, Jonsson’s core argument is that Russia’s concept of war has extended beyond traditional armed conflict to include nonmilitary tools, such as propaganda, cyber operations, and political subversion, as essential components of warfare.

The book’s fresh approach is among its strongest points. Instead of merely analyzing Russia’s military capabilities or official doctrine, Jonsson aims to understand how the Russian thinkers themselves frame the nature of war. This closes an important gap in the literature and introduces a new analytical lens to the subject. The depth of Jonsson’s research is matched by its specificity; he relies extensively on Russian primary materials, everything from military journals and doctrinal texts to speeches, many of which remain untranslated or underutilized in Western scholarship.

Japan not rushing into a bad trade deal with Trum

Scott Foster

Japan’s senior trade officials skipped the APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade meetings held last week on South Korea’s Jeju Island.

Neither Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yoji Muto nor Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s top trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa attended the event, missing an opportunity to talk with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Masaki Ogushi, a member of Akazawa’s negotiating team, represented Japan in their stead.

Unlike the UK, Japan is in no hurry to reach a disadvantageous or incomplete trade deal with US President Donald Trump, particularly with elections to the upper house of Japan’s national assembly coming up in July. And unlike the South Koreans, the Japanese are not seeking a low-key compromise.

The impact of 25% tariffs on autos and auto parts on the Japanese economy is simply too great, and America’s renewed assault on Japan’s rice farmers is too sensitive to tolerate.

Ishiba already leads a minority government, his Liberal Democratic Party having lost its majority in the lower house last October. Now he must either stand up for Japan or risk losing the party’s majority in the upper house as well.

Akazawa is expected to visit Washington, DC, for a third round of formal negotiations later this month, perhaps within the coming week. While Ogushi was in South Korea, he met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa to discuss strategy. After that meeting, he told the press, “My focus is on our national interests, to protect what needs to be protected and to say what needs to be said.”

Established in 1989 at the suggestion of Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) describes itself as “a cooperative, multilateral economic and trade forum.” Its 21 members include most of the economic entities around the Pacific Ocean.

The People’s Republic of China, Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong are all members. In an unusual recognition of geographic reality, the Russian Federation is also a member. North Korea is not.

Why Did the Houthis Agree to Peace with America?

James Holmes

In a narrow, partial sense, air power unaccompanied by a ground offensive may have nudged Houthi calculations toward an outcome agreeable to Washington.

In light of the Houthis’ much-touted agreement to stop assailing shipping traversing the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and Gulf of Aden, an aviator friend writes to ask whether air power proved decisive in the irregular naval war against the Yemeni rebels.

To which I boldly say: maybe.

Prompting this exchange, of course, was my late March TNI column siding with Admiral J. C. Wylie, who proclaimed that air power and other “cumulative,” scattershot forms of warfare never decide armed strife on their own. Wylie opines that control—generally speaking, control of key terrain or something on the Earth’s surface—is the purpose of military strategy. Bombarding something from the air is not the same as controlling it. Ground forces, on the other hand, can impose permanent, suffocating control. Ergo, air and missile forces are the “supporting” arm of ground might in any campaign. They’re an enabler, not an end in themselves.

Wylie’s proverbial “man on the scene with a gun”—a soldier or Marine bestriding terra firma while toting heavy firepower—is the “supported” arm. The soldier is the agent of physical control, and thus the final arbiter of martial success. In other words, air power is important, but insufficient to yield victory and enforce the postwar peace. No land power, no durable results.

The Houthi Ceasefire Is Not Peace

Two points. First, to gauge whether some operation or campaign was decisive, it’s helpful to define what decisive means. As with so many terms in the realm of warlike affairs, there is no universally agreed-upon definition of the word. The definition we commonly use in the hallowed halls of Newport comes from Carl von Clausewitz, the military sage of nineteenth-century Prussia. Reading between the lines a tad, Clausewitz defines a strategic attack that leads “directly to peace” as a decisive undertaking.

Members of Congress vow not to split Cyber Command, NSA

Mark Pomerleau

Renewed calls for severing the so-called dual-hat relationship between the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command received cold water on Capitol Hill Friday.

Since Cybercom was created a decade ago, it has been co-located with NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland, and shared a leader. At the time, this made sense to help the nascent command grow, relying on the personnel, expertise and infrastructure of the high-tech intelligence agency. The arrangement was initially expected to be temporary.

Severing the dual-hat has been one of the most hotly contested issues in cyber policy. Proponents believe the military can benefit from the unique intelligence insights and resources of NSA, leading to faster decision-making and operational outcomes. Opponents argue the roles of NSA director and Cybercom commander are too powerful for one person to hold and relying on the intelligence community’s tools — which are meant to stay undetected — for military activities poses risks to such espionage activity.

At the end of the first Trump administration, officials made a last ditch effort to sever the dual-hat, but it ultimately was not brought to fruition. Press reports prior to Trump’s inauguration for his second term indicated the administration wanted to end the dual-hat relationship.

There “is renewed speculation about the separation of the ‘dual-hat’ relationship between Cybecom and NSA, a construct that proves its value to our national security every minute of every day. This issue has been studied exhaustively but somehow there are still those who believe they know better,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems, said in opening remarks during a hearing Friday. “I’ve spoken to my colleagues on this panel and our friends in the Senate, and on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, the Armed Services Committees are strongly opposed to ending the dual-hat relationship. I want to take this opportunity to make very clear to the Department’s leadership that if they believe they have allies on this issue who sit on the Pentagon’s congressional oversight panels, they do not.”

Changing How We Educate Soldiers, Leaders Opinion

Over the past several months, the Soldiers, NCOs, and officers of 51st Expeditionary Signal Battalion – Enhanced (ESB-E) have had the distinct privilege to put the Scalable Network Node (SNN) into system in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Area of Operation, being the first ESB-E to deploy as a battalion under hostile conditions, supporting critical air defense and logistics operations across Southwest Asia.

For many Soldiers, it is their first time in austere environments meeting challenges and overcoming them with skill and gravitas. However, it is not just the Soldiers and leaders of the 51st being tested. This deployment is the first time that the SNNs have faced such a demanding environment, with over 30 nodes actively supporting users across an entire combatant command. The SNNs have been put to the test, facing soaring temperatures and harsh wind and sandstorms. In this process, the Soldiers and leaders of the 51st have learned a truly significant amount about these new systems. They’ve developed crucial tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) and built critical experiences to share with the signal community while providing invaluable feedback to the multiple fielding projects that have fed into the conversion to an ESB-E.

Out of the many lessons learned from the deployment, perhaps the most important lesson learned is the importance of both institutional and unit investments into the education of our junior Soldiers and officers. The signal community must heavily invest in the education of our junior Soldiers, NCOs, and officers; particularly senior NCOs and junior officers at the company level. While it is true that these populations will not necessarily be directly behind the keyboard troubleshooting outages, platoon and company-level leaders, without complete understanding of their equipment, often result in the inability to fully approach the complexities of networking and the ways in which these systems function. An informed, technically adept company-level leader is better able to plan missions and talk to their supported customers, serving as the critical interface point between the teams that they lead and the customers who are often not signal-inclined or technically savvy.

Can You Pass the Army’s New Fitness Test?

Erik Vance

On June 1, the Army will adopt new fitness standards for soldiers in combat roles. Many of the updates to the test are relatively minor, though the minimum requirement in some events, like the two-mile run, will change more substantially. The most significant shift is that the new standards will be the same for men and women.

Even if you have no ambitions to join the military, the test can be an excellent gauge of overall fitness, experts said, because it balances strength, speed, endurance and core stability.

“There’s a lot of people that do it just for general fitness,” said Josh Bryant, a private consultant who designed a course used by the International Sports Sciences Association to train soldiers, police officers and firefighters. “Whoever designed it did a good job of it,” he said.

Here’s what’s in the test, and what it takes to pass each event.

What is the Army Fitness Test?

The test has existed in some form for more than a century. The latest version has five events: deadlifts, push-ups, planks, a two-mile run and the sprint-drag-carry, a shuttle run involving sleds and kettle bells. These exercises represent a well-rounded mix of functional exercises — for both soldiers and civilians, fitness experts said.

The minimum performances listed below reflect the new standards for a passing score for 30-year-old combat soldiers. They could also be good targets for someone just trying to get in better shape, Mr. Bryant said. For more of a challenge, try to beat the Army’s overall average scores, based on a report by Military.com. (In order to pass the actual test, which is graded based on age, soldiers must score above the minimum in each event and excel in at least one. They also perform all five exercises in a row with minimal rest.)

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