Indian Strategic Studies: 06/10/25

10 June 2025

India Must Disrupt Pakistan’s Strategy Of Deceptive Peace Before Retaliation – Analysis

Fair Observer, Srijan Sharma

The guns have fallen silent along the Line of Control (LoC) between Pakistani- and Indian-administered Kashmir. A fragile ceasefire is in place, but this calm is unlikely to last. Pakistan has a long history of breaking ceasefires and provoking conflict.

India’s recent military operation, Operation Sindoor, forced a temporary de-escalation and pushed Pakistan onto the defensive. Yet this tactical success should not breed complacency. The underlying tensions remain unresolved, and future flashpoints are all but inevitable. India must urgently move beyond reactive measures and prepare a calibrated, forward-looking strategy to address the next wave of threats before they emerge.

A history of deception and conflict

Pakistan’s obsession with India and extremist ideologies motivates its security apparatus to engage in misadventures. In past wars, from the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 to the Kargil War of 1999, Pakistan refused to learn lessons and instead instilled a false peace or escalated anti-India rhetoric. For decades, Indo-Pakistani relations operated in the shadows of calculated diplomacy. After 2016, Pakistan increased anti-India rhetoric and began using fundamentalist methods and terror networks.

Pakistan cannot match India’s firepower. Despite this, Pakistan takes the risk of limited fighting to counter India’s responses. When conflict crosses a threshold, Pakistan pushes back and initiates a brief diplomatic pause. Following the 2001 Agra Summit, India and Pakistan began a normalization process, which failed. Six months later, terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament. India launched Operation Parakram, leading to a standoff and a ceasefire in November 2003. Just two months after the ceasefire, terrorists attacked Jammu Railway Station, killing four soldiers and six civilians and injuring others.

In April 2005, India and Pakistan agreed to open the frontier dividing Kashmir. The same year, they launched a bus service across Kashmir. Two months later, five Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists attempted to attack Ram Janmabhoomi. Three months after that, Delhi experienced serial blasts. All of this occurred within five months of opening a major land route.

India: Navigating Privacy and Transparency in the Digital Age

Amit Upadhyay and Abhinav Mehrotra

India’s digital transition in recent decades has led to a blurring of boundaries between the public and private, with calls for increased privacy protection amid the need for transparency and accountability.

As digital governance continues to expand, personal data is becoming central to state and corporate functions. This has given rise to various legal and constitutional questions that revolve around preserving individual privacy without weakening public accountability.

To ensure the integrity and protection of personal data, the government is required to frame laws allowing individuals to protect their rights while allowing them access to various services such as healthcare, banking, education, and digital platforms offered by the public and private sectors.

However, in April, Indian opposition parties cried foul over the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP), seeking the repeal of a particular provision – Section 44(3) – claiming that it infringed on the Right to Information Act. The opposition’s contention was that the “surreptitious” passing of the Act in 2023 could potentially adversely impact press freedom and citizens’ right to information.

Personal data protection in India has been shaped by recent legislative developments.

The enactment of the DPDP Act was an essential step in this direction, as it established a comprehensive framework for data privacy. The law provides individuals the right to protect their personal data, with the necessity of using such data for lawful purposes such as governance, business operations, or for public interest including issuance of Aadhaar, subsidies, pensions etc.

India vs Pakistan: The battle for air superiority

As the dust settles over the India-Pakistan conflict—triggered by India’s missile strikes on nine terrorist hubs in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Punjab province in response to the Islamabad-sponsored terrorist attack in Pahalgam in April—it is time for a reckoning of how the two adversaries fared. Uniquely, over four intense,

dramatic days (May 7-10), the theatre of war was the skies on either side of the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border. Airpower was the key factor, manifested not in the dogfights of yore, but their modern equivalent, comprising precise strikes,

electronic warfare and smart coordination between aircraft, ground radars and airborne early warning and control system (AEW&CS)/ Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. Drones and missiles were used aplenty by Pakistan, and India’s multi-layered air defence (AD) system rose to the occasion like never before. According to the Indian Army, its air defence units neutralised nearly 800-900 Pakistani drones during Operation Sindoor.

If, early on May 7, the Pakistani air defence had no immediate answer to the loitering munitions/ kamikaze drones, and SCALP/ Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles and HAMMER bombs fired from the Rafales of the Indian Air Force (IAF) that destroyed the terrorist camps, the Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) J-10CEs, F-16s and JF-17 fighter jets did pose a threat. Indeed, Pakistan has claimed—without definitive proof or explicit acknowledgement from India—that several Indian jets were lost. Significantly, wary of each other’s missiles,

particularly those launched beyond visual range (BVR), both forces operated well within their respective air space. However, on May 8 and 10, after Indian missile and drone strikes took out vital Pakistani air defence radars in Lahore and Karachi—one precious PAF AWACS was reportedly lost too—its air defence systems were rendered toothless,

largely driving the PAF from the skies. So, after Pakistan targeted Indian air bases and military installations with drones and missiles on May 9 and 10—almost all of which were intercepted and shot to pieces—it was helpless before India’s retaliatory barrage of SCALP and BrahMos supersonic missiles, fired by aircraft and from the ground on eight Pakistani air bases, including the Nur Khan base near Rawalpindi, the general headquarters of the Pakistan army. Thus chastened, Pakistan is said to have called for a ceasefire.

India-EU deal holds key to a new world trade era

Brabim Karki

India and EU are locked in trade negotiations that could reset the global trade order. Image: X Screengrab

The European Union and India have reached consensus on almost half of the topics to be covered by a trade deal they hope to seal this year, according to a report.

The India-EU trade deal isn’t just about tariffs or trade quotas—it’s a cultural cage match between India’s vibrant, improvisational spirit and Europe’s love for order. And if resolved in a win-win deal, it could rewrite the rules of global trade.

This trade pact is more than a deal on goods; it’s a daring experiment in fusing two wildly different worldviews: India’s adaptive, sometimes chaotic economic approach—rooted in jugaad, the art of making do with what’s at hand—with Europe’s rigid, regulation-heavy ethos.

This tension isn’t necessarily a flaw; it’s the deal’s potential secret sauce. By forcing both sides to confront their blind spots, this agreement could birth a new trade model that values flexibility over cookie-cutter uniformity, giving India a chance to tilt the global economic balance more toward the Global South.

Trade deals sound like dusty policy papers, but they’re the arteries of the global economy, pumping goods, ideas, and power across borders. With world trade fracturing under US tariff threats and China’s constrictive supply chain grip, India and the EU are racing to secure their economic futures.

India, with its 1.4 billion people and roaring growth, is no longer a bit player. The EU, a trade giant, needs new partners as old alliances wobble. Recent reports peg the deal’s deadline for late 2025, but the real story is how this pact could redefine who sets the terms in a world where emerging powers are flexing their muscles.

Afghanistan: A Carrot in U.S. Talks with Russia and Iran

Matthew Mai

Four years ago, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Since the U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan and counterterrorism have rightly been deprioritized as foreign policy issues. However,

amid the Trump administration’s efforts to achieve a modus vivendi with Russia and Iran, cooperation on monitoring terrorist threats from Afghanistan could be another carrot Washington offers to both countries. U.S. security and prosperity are not affected by what happens in South-Central Asia. But unchecked terrorism in Afghanistan has much graver consequences for Russia and Iran.

The tragically executed withdrawal from Afghanistan should not obscure the long-term benefits of terminating U.S. involvement: the war was unwinnable for political and military reasons; a significant drain on U.S. military resources; and a humanitarian disaster for the Afghan people. Despite claims Afghanistan would become a haven for global terrorist organizations, the United States has not faced a serious threat to the homeland from groups operating in South-Central Asia.

By contrast, terrorism is a relevant security challenge for Russia and Iran that won’t be going away any time soon. ISIS-K, a South Asian affiliate of the Islamic State, is based out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its ranks include Chechens, Uzbeks,

Tajiks, Afghans, and Pakistanis, many of whom were previously members of other regionally based terrorist groups. ISIS-K’s grievances against Russia and Iran are largely motivated by the former’s wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya and the latter’s adherence to Shia Islam. Both countries also waged long military campaigns against ISIS in Syria (and in Iran’s case, Iraq).

The China Challenge in Critical Minerals: The Case for Asymmetric Resilience

Pascale Massot

China is the dominant player in global critical minerals supply chains, especially in the midstream segments. The country controls, on average, two-thirds of the production or refining of major critical minerals such as lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements and above 90 percent for the latter. In 2022, the United States was more than 50 percent import dependent on 51 mineral commodities. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), China was the leading supplier for 17 of these and ranked among the top three sources for 24.

The U.S. was caught “sleeping at the wheel” – and it was not alone. Western governments have found themselves staring at the China challenge from the vantage point of decades of open-market-driven minerals procurement policy. Since the last quarter of the 20th century and until very recently, the neoliberal globalization paradigm in the West left to market forces the task of fulfilling critical mineral security objectives. This led to decades of internationalization, financialization, and global supply chain reconfiguration to align with profit motive and shareholder value maximization. In parallel, labor, environmental, civil society, and indigenous rights considerations continued to improve, a positive development that has also compounded the delocalization incentives of mining and refining industries.

As geopolitical strategic competition with China heats up, the realization that this paradigm is ill adapted to the pursuit of economic security has set Western governments scrambling to put together a set of responses building on the de-risking agenda popularized by Ursula von der Leyen in 2023 (coined months prior by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz). In North America, this agenda has tended to focus on three legs: onshoring/friend-shoring, diversification, and reindustrialization.

Yet current policy discussions suffer from growing pains resulting from an incomplete paradigm shift away from a market-led approach, insufficient appreciation of the scale and nature of China’s dominance, overly ambitious and underfunded targets, underspecified end goals, and too narrow an understanding of what ultimately constitutes resource security.

The China Challenge in Critical Minerals: The Case for Asymmetric Resilience

Pascale Massot

China is the dominant player in global critical minerals supply chains, especially in the midstream segments. The country controls, on average, two-thirds of the production or refining of major critical minerals such as lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements and above 90 percent for the latter. In 2022,

the United States was more than 50 percent import dependent on 51 mineral commodities. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), China was the leading supplier for 17 of these and ranked among the top three sources for 24.

The U.S. was caught “sleeping at the wheel” – and it was not alone. Western governments have found themselves staring at the China challenge from the vantage point of decades of open-market-driven minerals procurement policy. Since the last quarter of the 20th century and until very recently, the neoliberal globalization paradigm in the West left to market forces the task of fulfilling critical mineral security objectives.

This led to decades of internationalization, financialization, and global supply chain reconfiguration to align with profit motive and shareholder value maximization. In parallel, labor, environmental, civil society, and indigenous rights considerations continued to improve, a positive development that has also compounded the delocalization incentives of mining and refining industries. [...]

China’s Gray-Zone Infrastructure Strategy on the Tibetan Plateau: Roads, Dams, and Digital Dominati

In the future . . .China’s use of critical infrastructure to control downstream water supply will threaten vital economic activities and life.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will leverage rail and road networks to strengthen its positions near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India. China’s military-civilian dual-use infrastructure will continue to encroach on disputed lands while posturing the country’s forces to project coercive power and gain an advantage in the next border clash.

Regional states will no longer harbor Tibetan refugee camps, while also adopting increasingly authoritarian practices made possible by surveillance systems exported by China.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is actively using diplomatic, intelligence, military, and economic tools to influence, deter, and compel countries to act in the PRC’s interest. These tools are derived from a combination of the hybrid strategy and gray-zone tactics that have defined Xi Jinping’s China.

The tactics cover operations ranging from corporate cyber theft to international development infrastructure projects.1 But while U.S. policymakers’ attention is fixed on great power competition, the PRC is also active in periphery zones and even within their own territory. In fact, the infrastructure the PRC seeks to export through Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) development projects emerged from efforts within China’s frontier.2

China is fundamentally redefining infrastructure as a tool of coercion. Under the guise of economic development and increasing connectivity,

the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is constructing a coercive architecture across the Tibetan Plateau. This includes dams that can choke water flow to downstream states, railways that enable rapid military mobilization, and digital networks that are already exporting surveillance and repressing dissent. These projects are not neutral investments. They are latent instruments of state power—dual-use nodes that allow Beijing to pressure neighbors without triggering open conflict. As infrastructure becomes a strategic enabler of compellence and deterrence,

the United States and its partners must reframe how they assess and respond to China’s actions. Failing to do so will leave the region vulnerable to incremental gains that add up to irreversible strategic shifts.

Israel claims laser weapon use in real combat. How do China’s compare on the world stage?

Israel on Wednesday announced that it used a lower-powered version of its laser defence system Iron Beam for the first time last year, intercepting dozens of aerial targets, including unmanned vehicles, that were launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In video footage reportedly taken in October and released by the Israeli defence ministry, what appears to be an Iron Beam laser can be seen targeting flying fixed-wing drones before shooting them from the sky.

It was Israel’s first known use of directed-energy weapons (DEWs) in real combat and the system is expected to enter service later this year.

As cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly challenging existing air defence systems, laser weapons might have an important role to play. They are well suited for anti-drone operations, while their weaknesses are less significant against small, slow and low-flying targets.

Many countries have been working on similar air defence laser weapons. German and British projects have been going on for years, while Russia and the US have deployed laser weapons in Ukraine and Iraq, respectively.

Turkey-made products are known to have operated in Libya, while India announced in April that its ambitious Surya directed-energy weapon would be ready by 2027.

China, a major global drone producer, is equally dedicated to the development of anti-drone weaponry.

While the People’s Liberation Army has not disclosed what systems it has been equipped with, some Chinese-made laser weapons – like Silent Hunter and Shennong Shield – have been seen in action overseas

Taiwan ready to test kamikaze sea drone designed to ‘support coastal assault operations’

Taiwan is planning to test a home-made kamikaze sea drone later this month as it seeks to boost its naval defences in the face of growing pressure from mainland China.

The vessel – developed under the code name “Kuai Chi Project” by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), Taiwan’s top weapons developer – will undergo combat capability evaluations later this month before further tests later this year, a military source said on Monday.

“If all goes according to plan, the boat will proceed to live combat testing during a precision missile drill in southern Taiwan this August,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The island’s defence ministry has allocated more than NT$800 million (US$25 million) for the project, commissioning NCSIST to lead development. Lungteh Shipbuilding Company was awarded the contract last year to construct three attack uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and one target boat.

NCSIST aims to complete all required testing by the end of this year, with mass production expected to begin in 2026. “Under the current plan, the army intends to acquire more than 200 of these vessels to support coastal assault operations,” the source said.

Procurement documents show that the attack vessel will measure under 10 metres (32.8 feet) in length, displace less than four tonnes when fully loaded, and have a draft of less than 0.5 metres.

Another China Is Possible

It has become a trope to lament and lambaste the wishful thinking that shaped U.S. policy toward China in the two decades after the Cold War. That policy rested on a prediction about China’s future:

that with economic growth and ongoing diplomatic, economic, and cultural engagement, both with the United States and the rest of the world, China would become more like the United States—more politically open at home and more accepting of the existing order abroad.

It is hard to deny that this prediction proved wrong. But Rana Mitter, the S. T. Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of the great historians of China, reminds readers that predictions about China almost always prove wrong. And as he writes in a new essay in Foreign Affairs,

it would be equally foolish to assume that China must remain on its current trajectory of more confrontation abroad and repression at home. “Another China remains possible,” Mitter argues. And how that China develops will be one of the most important factors in geopolitics for decades to come.

China Can’t Invade Taiwan So Easi

Brent M. Eastwood

Key Points – China’s potential military conquest of Taiwan, a core objective for President Xi Jinping, would involve immense challenges despite Beijing’s growing military might.

An invasion would likely start with a blockade and quarantine, followed by a complex amphibious assault.

However, Taiwan benefits from early warning (satellite detection of Chinese troop/ship movements), limited suitable landing beaches, difficult mountainous terrain favoring defenders, and its own missile/artillery capabilities.

While China could attempt a “shock and awe” bombardment of Taipei, the success of an invasion hinges on unpredictable factors: Taiwan’s will to resist, the effectiveness of its defenses, and crucially, whether the United States intervenes militarily.

Could China Conquer Taiwan?

The reunification of Taiwan is the most pressing geopolitical issue facing China. The Chinese government and its people are obsessed with Taiwan. President Xi Jinping thinks he will be judged by history on how he handles the future of the island nation.

His presidency is in the balance, and failure on the Taiwan issue is not an option. China believes that Taiwan is a renegade province that must be annexed and brought back into the fold. Xi prefers that unification be accomplished by political and diplomatic means, but he has not ruled out annexation by military force.

Blockade and Quarantine Could Come First

This could mean an initial blockade and quarantine to cut off food and energy supplies to Taiwan, followed by an amphibious attack to invade the island. Both moves are risky, especially if the United States decides to intervene. But China has the ships, airplanes, ballistic missiles, and ground forces to bring Taiwan to its knees, especially if the Americans stay out of the fight.

The Age of AI Drone Warfare Is Coming

The drone warfare between Ukraine and Russia offers sobering lessons for those relying on legacy weapons systems, and the looming integration of AI will make the current situation look quaint. Against this background, the Western defense establishment increasingly appears to be dangerously behind the curve.

SAN FRANCISCO – Ukraine’s June 1 assault on airbases across Russia has already ushered in a new conventional wisdom: the expensive, human-crewed weapons (tanks, planes, ships) that have long defined the world’s “advanced” militaries have been rendered obsolete by inexpensive drones. But this view is incomplete, and perhaps dangerously misleading. Today’s drone warfare offers sobering lessons that go far beyond the vulnerability of expensive legacy weapons; and the looming integration of AI into drone warfare will make the current situation look positively quaint.

Trump’s Unworkable Trade Formula

STEPHEN S. ROACH thinks pursuing a global minimum tariff while also penalizing China increases the risk of a global recession.

Consider the lessons of the Ukraine war so far. First, the impact of drones goes far beyond legacy weapons. Drones have indeed rendered tanks and armored personnel carriers extremely vulnerable, so Russian ground assaults now frequently use troops on foot, motorcycles, or all-terrain vehicles. But this hasn’t helped, because drones are terrifyingly effective against people as well. Casualties are as high as ever – but now, drones inflict over 70% of casualties on both sides.

Drones are also effective against almost everything else. Ukraine has used drones to destroy Russian targets as varied as weapons factories, moving trains, ammunition stores, oil refineries, ships, and ports. It could be worse; in fact, Ukraine has shown great restraint, considering Russia’s barbaric conduct. Airport terminals, train stations at rush hour, athletic and concert stadiums, pharmaceutical factories, hospitals, schools, nursing homes – all are equally vulnerable.

Two additional sobering lessons from Ukraine concern how drone warfare depends on its industrial base. First, speed and responsiveness are critical. Drone technology, weapons, and tactics now evolve at a blinding pace. A new drone will be useful for only 2-6 months. The other side develops countermeasures, requiring the development of new products, against which new countermeasures are developed, and so on.

Ron Paul: Can Trump And Musk Make Up? – OpEd

Ron Paul

Last week’s dramatic blowout between President Trump and his one-time top collaborator Elon Musk was shocking yet predictable. According to media reports, a cold war had been brewing between Musk’s people and Trump’s appointees and it was bound to break out into the open. It was only a matter of time.

On the campaign trail, Musk provided much energy and helped ramp up enthusiasm for Donald Trump. His support for Trump made him a lightning rod for Trump-haters and he saw his personal wealth take a hit for his troubles.

After Trump’s victory, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency project was truly revolutionary. Americans were able to see up close and in real time just how government operates. Not only did the billions and trillions of dollars spent by the federal government not achieve the stated goals, but much of the spending actually harmed the United States.

Americans were able to see that the “aid” they send overseas does not provide food and relief for those suffering through disasters but is actually used to create a global US empire encompassing everything from the media to military spending to non-profits.

Once USAID was targeted by DOGE, for example, we learned that 90 percent of the “independent” media in Ukraine was US government controlled. Other countries chimed in to say that much of their own “independent” media is propped up by the US government.

Foreign “journalists” paid by the US government are going to publish what the US government wants to be published. That is one reason Americans to this day are so ill-informed about Ukraine and what started the war. For example, how many Americans know that their own government staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that directly led to the disaster we have seen these past three years?

Tell Me How This Trade War Ends The Right Way to Build a New Global Economic Order

On April 2, a day he dubbed “Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced a sweeping new program of tariffs intended to rebalance U.S. trade. Trump’s tariff rates were shockingly high, triggering a stock market selloff and a flight away from U.S. assets, rare rebukes from some Republicans in Congress, and diplomatic outrage around the world. After a week of mounting backlash, the president announced a 90-day pause on most of the country-specific tariffs, leading foreign counterparts to scramble for deals that would allow them to escape the levies before the clock ran out. U.S. court rulings questioning the legality of the president’s tariffs have added further uncertainty.

The Trump administration’s trade policy chaos has already caused harm, slowing growth, raising prices, and sparking dire predictions about the fate of the world economy. Yet there is a kernel of truth in the president’s insistence that the international trade system needs a reset. Distrust of free trade has been rising in both political parties in the United States. Governments around the world are more and more willing to intervene in their economies to safeguard national interests. The U.S.-led global trading order, constructed over eight decades following World War II, has frayed.

What comes next is uncertain. But there is no going back to a time when the United States championed ever freer trade. Although many of the targets of Trump’s tariffs, including businesses and foreign states, may pine for such a world, structural geopolitical changes have made it untenable. Instead of trying to turn back time, these actors should push the administration to usher in the needed transformation of the global trading order.

Disruptive tariffs, then, can create an opportunity. And despite the president’s erratic behavior, the United States retains deep-rooted structural advantages that give it the power to lead a new trade effort. Many countries are dependent on the U.S. market, and few see China as a viable alternative. Most major economies will seek accommodation with the United States, even after being beaten up by heavy U.S. tariffs. Washington can therefore leverage its trade wars to achieve a productive restructuring of the international economic system.

The Ukrainians’ New Way of War

Christian Caryl

A pair of Ukrainian engineers quickly jury-rigged a solution. Today, the country is blanketed with a network of 9,500 microphones mounted on six-foot-tall poles. The microphones, which are attached to cell phones, track the Shaheds by sound (the propeller-driven drones have loud engines) and send that data to a central system that calculates their courses.

That information is then passed on to iPad-wielding soldiers in gun trucks that shoot down the slow-moving drones. Each sensor pole in the network costs less than $500—which makes the entire network, known as Sky Fortress, cheaper than a pair of Patriot missiles.

Christian Caryl is the former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. He has reported from more than 60 countries and is the author of Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century. X: @ccaryl

Read More On Russia | Science and Technology | Ukraine | Vladimir Putin | War | Weapons

The kings of the drone age Battlefields have a new ruler

It took Ukraine 18 months to plan Operation Spider Web, but just minutes for its swarm of cheap drones to send a $7 billion message to Russia and the world: war is entering a new epoch. An age of asymmetric power has arrived, and it is disordering traditional power dynamics everywhere, from how armies fight to how citizens relate to their rulers.

Last weekend, over 100 first-person view Ukrainian drones whacked four air bases across Russia — the furthest in Siberia — severely diminishing Russia’s offensive air capabilities. Zelensky’s message was clear: we can hit you wherever you are, with technology you can buy for thousands of dollars or less on the internet.

Yet if operation Spider Web was part MacGyver, it was also part le Carré. The Ukrainians had their drones smuggled on lorries well in advance of the strikes. The weapons were hidden in containers disguised as sheds, before being transported into Russia by lorry. These were then parked near the air bases, before Ukraine remotely opened their retractable roofs and launched their cargo to devastating effect.

Drones evoke a simple truth: hoard technology, especially military technology, and you centralise power. Disperse it and watch that power dissipate alongside it.

Historically, war was an intimate affair. For millennia, the only way to kill someone was if you could see them. That remained true even with the invention of gunpowder. Machine guns and howitzers can certainly fire further, but still require proximity. The basic dynamics were always the same: men and machines clashed on the ground. Success depended on outlasting or overpowering the enemy through force, numbers, or strategic positioning.

Trump’s anti-China drive in Middle East runs on guns and tech

Maria Papageorgiou

A street decorated with the flags of Saudi Arabia and the US ahead of Trump’s visit. Photo: Ali Haider / EPA via The Conversation

US President Donald Trump claimed he was able to secure deals totaling more than US$2 trillion for the US during his May tour of the Gulf states. Trump said, “there has never been anything like” the amount of jobs and money these agreements will bring to the US.

However, providing a lift for the US economy wasn’t the only thing on Trump’s mind. China’s influence in the wider Middle East region is growing fast – so much so that it was even able to mediate a detente between bitter regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023.

Trump’s attempt to strengthen ties with countries in the Middle East is probably also a deliberate attempt to contain China’s growing regional ambitions.

China has spent the past two decades building up its economic and political relations with the Middle East. In 2020, it replaced the EU as the largest trading partner to the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Bilateral trade between them was valued at over $161 billion.

The Middle East has also become an important partner to China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Massive infrastructure projects in the region, such as high-speed railway lines in Saudi Arabia, have provided lucrative opportunities for Chinese companies.

The total value of Chinese construction and investment deals in the Middle East reached $39 billion in 2024, the most of any region in the world. That year, the three countries with the highest volume of BRI-related construction contracts and investment were all in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UAE.a

Russia’s Use of the Instruments of Statecraft in the Indo-Pacifi

This report analyzes Russia’s use of diplomatic, military, and economic instruments of statecraft to advance its interests in the Indo-Pacific region and examines how China perceives it. As with all reports in this series, this one defines the Indo-Pacific region as the Area of Responsibility (AOR) of the US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). Within the AOR, it examines Russia’s activity in the subregions most significant for Russia’s strategic interests:

China, the Southeast Asia and South China Sea (SCS) region, India, and the Korean Peninsula.

Russia has utilized instruments of statecraft to maintain a two-level engagement pattern in the region—systemic balancing and regional hedging. At the level of systemic balancing, Russia unequivocally embraces China as an economic, military,

and political ally to balance the United States or the West more broadly. However, at the level of regional hedging, Russia diversifies its economic, political, and security bets by engaging with China’s actual or potential adversaries and avoids explicitly taking one side at the obvious expense of another in regional disputes: Moscow hedges its bets between different states, including China,

to maximize cooperation opportunities. This two-level engagement pattern does not undermine Russia’s systemic alignment with China, but it reduces Moscow’s dependence on Beijing and makes the regional aspects of China-Russia relations more complex.

The intensification of US-China rivalry and the deterioration of China’s relations with India, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian states are conducive to Russia maintaining this two-level pattern. The worsening US-China relations incentivize Beijing to consolidate its alignment with Russia. Simultaneously,

Beijing’s growing capabilities and aggressive pursuit of its territorial claims in the region make regional powers proactively seek closer ties with Moscow, recognizing that unequivocal alignment with the US will irreversibly antagonize China, which is not in their interests.

Ukraine's Drone Strike: Redefined Brinkmanship in Modern War

John Spencer & Vincent Viola

In the early hours of June 1, 2025, Ukraine launched a bold, coordinated drone assault deep into Russian territory, dubbed Operation Spider’s Web. The targets were not tactical vehicles or frontline troops, but the core of Russia’s long-range strike capability. Ukrainian sources estimate that around 40 aircraft were destroyed or disabled, including Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers, cornerstones of Moscow’s strategic air deterrent. Satellite imagery showed charred runways, cratered tarmacs, and entire hangars reduced to rubble. The operation reportedly cost Ukraine less than $2 million. The damage to Russia: potentially $7 billion, with some analysts estimating that 20 to 25 percent of its strategic bomber arsenal was eliminated in a single night.

It was one of the most audacious operations of the war. It was made possible because both President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Vladimir Putin command their militaries with near-total authority. Putin, as an autocrat, faces no democratic checks. Zelensky, while democratically elected, governs under martial law with centralized wartime powers. In this moment of existential conflict for Ukraine and high-stakes confrontation for Russia, both men are unbound by the usual constraints of democratic politics. Both possess the authority and the burden to make high-risk decisions that could reshape the trajectory of the war.

Zelensky’s decision to authorize this deep strike into Russian territory was one such decision. It was not just militarily significant. It was a signal, a strategic statement that Ukraine can reach the heart of Russian power on its own terms and with its own tools. It did not rely on NATO weapons or foreign advisors. It was Ukrainian-built, Ukrainian-planned, and Ukrainian-executed.

And it marked a turning point in the war’s political logic. Because more than anything else, this operation was an act of calculated brinkmanship.

The Theory of Brinkmanship

Brinkmanship, popularized during the Cold War, is the deliberate act of pushing a confrontation to the edge of disaster in order to compel an adversary to concede and secure a favorable political outcome. It evolved alongside nuclear deterrence theory, particularly the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which redefined war as a psychological contest of risk, nerve, and resolve. For the first time, entire populations began to grasp that war could reach them directly, and the potential cost was existential. This forced the average citizen to confront national security not as an abstract concern, but as a matter of survival.

The kings of the drone age Battlefields have a new ruler

It took Ukraine 18 months to plan Operation Spider Web, but just minutes for its swarm of cheap drones to send a $7 billion message to Russia and the world: war is entering a new epoch. An age of asymmetric power has arrived, and it is disordering traditional power dynamics everywhere, from how armies fight to how citizens relate to their rulers.

Last weekend, over 100 first-person view Ukrainian drones whacked four air bases across Russia — the furthest in Siberia — severely diminishing Russia’s offensive air capabilities. Zelensky’s message was clear: we can hit you wherever you are, with technology you can buy for thousands of dollars or less on the internet.

Yet if operation Spider Web was part MacGyver, it was also part le Carré. The Ukrainians had their drones smuggled on lorries well in advance of the strikes. The weapons were hidden in containers disguised as sheds, before being transported into Russia by lorry. These were then parked near the air bases, before Ukraine remotely opened their retractable roofs and launched their cargo to devastating effect.

Drones evoke a simple truth: hoard technology, especially military technology, and you centralise power. Disperse it and watch that power dissipate alongside it.

Historically, war was an intimate affair. For millennia, the only way to kill someone was if you could see them. That remained true even with the invention of gunpowder. Machine guns and howitzers can certainly fire further, but still require proximity. The basic dynamics were always the same: men and machines clashed on the ground. Success depended on outlasting or overpowering the enemy through force, numbers, or strategic positioning.

Who Gets the Guns in Lebanon?

In late February, Nawaf Salam, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, travelled to the country’s south to survey the devastation w

rought by the recent war between Hezbollah and Israel. It was Salam’s second day on the job. He pledged to rebuild the area, which had incurred billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Salam also promised to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, as a means to assert the state’s authority in a place that for years had been under the sway of Hezbollah.

The people of the south had messages for the Prime Minister, too. During a walk through the city of Nabatieh, a man carrying a toddler pushed through Salam’s thick security cordon. “The first word that should be said is ‘thank you’ to the resistance,” he yelled, referring to Hezbollah. Salam had earlier lauded the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL,

the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed along the border with Israel, the man noted approvingly, but not “the blood of the martyrs of the resistance. Are you afraid of America? Afraid that the U.S. Ambassador will be upset with you?” Salam did not respond.

In November, 2024, after thirteen months of war that killed more than four thousand Lebanese and a hundred and twenty Israelis, Hezbollah and Israel reached a ceasefire. (Decades-old hostilities between the two foes had reignited on October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah attacked Israel a day after Hamas’s surprise offensive from Gaza.) But Israeli forces continue to occupy five hilltops in southern Lebanon, in violation of the agreement.

In the border village of Khiam, near Tallet al-Hamames, one of the hilltops, a man in a black baseball cap, standing inches from the Prime Minister, suggested that the state was powerless to recover the territory through negotiations, which “never produce results.” Instead, he said, “we will reclaim our land through resistance.”

Lebanon: Six months after a ceasefire with Israel, a low-intensity war is ongoing

Laure Stephan (Beirut (Lebanon) correspondent)

Lebanon should be in a post-conflict phase, six months after the asymmetric war between Israel and Hezbollah officially ended. Yet that is far from the case, as illustrated by mounting concerns over security for the municipal elections due to be held in the south of the country on Saturday, May 24. On Thursday night, the Israeli army shelled the region, ahead of a vote that Hezbollah hopes will serve to show it has popular support.

The end to hostilities, as provided for by the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on November 27, 2024, has been one-sided: Israel has continued to resort to violence, most often through drone strikes and artillery fire. From Lebanon, only three incidents involving rockets fired at Israel or the disputed Shebaa Farms area have occurred since the truce started. Of those three, Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for one, conducted in December 2024.

The Israeli army's stated strategy has been to destroy the capabilities of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement. It has continued to eliminate its fighters, after having decapitated its leadership in the recent war. Yet civilians have also been killed or

America’s Electric Vehicle Surrender If Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passes, the entire supply chain could be ceded to China.

Narayan Subramanian,

The year is 2030 and about half of all cars sold in the world are electric. Thanks to new battery and charging technologies, electric vehicles (EVs) are cheaper than anticipated and the fear of range-anxiety is immaterial. Barring a few competitors in South Korea and Europe, this market belongs entirely to China.

Such a scenario is increasingly a base case. Already in 2025, the majority of Chinese EVs are cheaper than their fossil equivalents and are flooding the world with low-cost exports, including in emerging markets from Ethiopia to Brazil. Alongside producing over 60 percent of the world’s EVs and 80 percent of its batteries, Chinese companies have unveiled new breakthroughs that will solidify their dominance in automobile markets: EVs that charge in five minutes, batteries that don’t require any costly critical minerals, and a luxury EV that can drive for 14 hours on a single charge.

These are tectonic shifts in one of the most politically and economically vital manufacturing sectors across developed nations.

Notably, the United States is missing from the picture—but ongoing negotiations among Republican lawmakers on the heels of the House reconciliation bill passed last month will decide whether this becomes reality. There has been much attention paid on the energy front to the bill’s changes in tax incentives for clean electricity projects. Equally consequential, but receiving far less attention, are the provisions that would disrupt the emerging industrial base for electric vehicles, batteries, and critical minerals.

Narayan Subramanian is an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia Climate School and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously served as the director for energy transition at the White House National Security Council and as an advisor to the secretary of energy in the Biden administration.

Milo McBride is a fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was previously an analyst at Eurasia Group and adjunct professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Read More On Energy and the Environment | U.S.-China Competition | United States

The Ukrainians’ New Way of War The audacious drone attack deep into Russia’s rear fits a larger pattern of wartime innovation

Christian Caryl,

In the fall of 2022, Kyiv faced a difficult problem. The Russians were bombarding Ukrainian cities with swarms of Iranian Shahed drones. The challenge was spotting them, since their low altitude, small size, and stealthy design made them hard to follow on radar.

A pair of Ukrainian engineers quickly jury-rigged a solution. Today, the country is blanketed with a network of 9,500 microphones mounted on six-foot-tall poles.

The microphones, which are attached to cell phones, track the Shaheds by sound (the propeller-driven drones have loud engines) and send that data to a central system that calculates their courses. That information is then passed on to iPad-wielding soldiers in gun trucks that shoot down the slow-moving drones. Each sensor pole in the network costs less than $500—which makes the entire network, known as Sky Fortress, cheaper than a pair of Patriot missiles.

Book Review | Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century (Second Edition)

Amos Fox

As odd as it might seem, a good deal of change has visited international affairs since Anthony King published the first edition of Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century in 2021. King, Director of the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute, has revisited the subject of urban warfare at the most appropriate time. In the period between 2021 and the publication of King’s second edition of Urban Warfare,

the United States ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan, Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel and Hamas went to war in Gaza again, Iran escalated its wars in the Middle East via its proxy networks, Bashar Al-Assad fell from power in Syria, India and Pakistan went to blows, and the list goes on.

Considering these conflicts, King’s original thesis – i.e., that urban warfare is a defining feature of 21st century armed conflict – has been all but confirmed by the conflicts that have unfolded in the interval between 2021 and today. As a result, the publication of King’s second edition of Urban Warfare is both timely and needed. However, and perhaps more importantly, Urban Warfare is foundational reading for anyone interested in – or required to be knowledgeable about – the study of armed conflict, the relationship between force structure and military operations, and the relationship that exists between geography, strategy, and military operations.

Summary

In a reorientation toward the conflicts that have occurred since the publication of Urban Warfare’s first edition, King examines his original thesis against the Russia-Ukraine War’s post-2022 phase and the Israel-Hamas Conflict, among others. In doing so, King provides three primary arguments. First, warfare in urban environments is becoming more frequent and increasingly prevalent in war. During much of the 20th century,

land armies were large and when they fought, they fought across vast fronts in which urban areas were often minor considerations to much grander military operations. King takes the time to highlight several exceptions to this general rule, to include battles like World War II’s Stalingrad or the post-Soviet era battles of Grozny.

The Big Question Over Fighter-Like Drones

Bill Sweetman

The concept of fighter-like drones, called collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs), holds much promise to air forces, notably to the US Air Force as it contemplates war with China. But maintaining CCAs in operation isn’t looking cheap and simple.

Air forces may instead drift towards getting some CCA effects with expendable drones that can be treated much like rounds of ammunition.

The Royal Australian Air Force has been working for more than six years with Boeing on a CCA design, the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, but the US Air Force, having started from behind, is now well on its way to launching large-scale production of similar aircraft.

The test aircraft for Increment 1 of the USAF’s CCA program, the General Atomics YFQ-42A and Anduril YFQ-44A, are starting their ground tests and are expected to fly this summer. From what we know, their principal mission is demonstrating the use of CCAs to carry air-to-air missiles and engage targets that are tracked and identified by pilots in crewed aircraft.

Supporters say simulations and wargames have shown the value of CCAs, which look like small fighters and are faster and more manoeuvrable than other drones. Part of their value is to put more missile shots in the air, from more places and closer to the enemy. They would present the enemy with a denser mass of threats and targets and increase confusion, reducing losses among crewed aircraft.

Speaking at an 8 May Mitchell Institute webinar, USAF Director of Force Design Major General Joe Kunkel said the service planned to buy 1,000 CCAs. ‘We’ll see sizable investment in the 2026 budget and pretty heavy investment in the FYDP,’ the future year defense plan, he said.

The webinar was the launch of a new Mitchell study, based on a tabletop exercise last year that focused on sustainment of a CCA force in the Western Pacific and was premised on the force mixes that emerged from a 2023 wargame.

Brain control warfare: China’s bleeding-edge strategy for winning without firing a shot

Bill Gertz

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared that subduing your enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. China is closer to realizing that goal through new weaponry and capabilities that Beijing calls cognitive warfare.

China’s most recent experience with large-scale war was more than 70 years ago in Korea. Waves of troops were sent into battle against better-armed U.S. and allied forces. The result was a slaughter. The People’s Liberation Army lost 400,000 to 1 million soldiers.

The PLA is no longer planning human wave military attacks. Instead, many of its researchers are working on advanced warfare capabilities that combine high-technology hardware with biotechnology research focused on the human brain.

The goal, driven by the ideology of Chinese-style Marxism-Leninism, is nothing less than world domination and a global populace under the control of China’s communist regime, said analysts and specialists who have studied Beijing’s leaders.

Cognitive warfare experts interviewed for this report cited evidence that China has embraced the development and eventual use of weapons designed to affect the mind. Potential targets range from troops and commanders of adversarial militaries to entire civilian populations.

Most details of the work on Chinese cognitive warfare are closely guarded U.S. government secrets, but clues first surfaced officially in December 2021, when the Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security announced sanctions against the PLA’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 related Chinese research institutes.

Commerce banned U.S. companies from doing business with the labs, which were working on biotechnology, including “purported brain-control weaponry,” on behalf of the Chinese military.

That unspecified effort triggered national security sanctions.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)