Darshana M. Baruah’s The Contest for the Indian Ocean and the Making of a New World Order

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Throughout history, the Indian Ocean has been an essential space for trade, commerce, and culture. In this book review roundtable on The Contest for the Indian Ocean and the Making of a New World Order, Frédéric Grare, Nilanthi Samaranayake, Isabelle Saint-Mézard, Pradeep Taneja, Sanjay Chaturvedi, and Darshana M. Baruah discuss this complex and diverse region, the role of small island agency, and the ocean’s potentiality as a geopolitical flashpoint.

Power Asymmetry and Competition in the Indo-Pacific: The Island States of the Indian Ocean Frédéric GrarePrioritizing the Indian Ocean in the Indo-Pacific Nilanthi Samaranayake The Agency of Island States in the Geopolitics of the Indian Ocean Isabelle Saint-Mézard The Island States Have Agency in the Contest for the Indian Ocean— Author’s Response: Reframing the Indian Ocean Debate Darshana M. Baruah Frédéric Grare is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Security College at the Australian National University (Australia). Nilanthi Samaranayake is an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington, D.C. (United States).

Isabelle Saint-Mézard is Professor at the French Institute of Geopolitics at Paris 8 University (France). She is also a Research Associate Fellow on South Asia at the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI). Her research interests include India’s foreign and defense policies, great-power competition in the Indian Ocean, and the strategic role of the Indian Ocean within the broader Indo-Pacific framework.

Pradeep Taneja is a Senior Lecturer in Asian politics, political economy, and international relations at the University of Melbourne (Australia). Sanjay Chaturvedi is Senior Vice President, Dean of the Faculty of International Studies, and the Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at South Asian University (India). Darshana M. Baruah is currently the Shangri La Dialogue Senior Fellow for Indo-Pacific Defence and Strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)–Asia (Singapore).

What Kind of Great Power Will India Be?

Ashley J. Tellis

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Ashley Tellis’s recent essay, “India’s Great-Power Delusions” (July/August 2025), offers a searing critique of the country’s strategic posture. Tellis argues that India overestimates its influence on the world stage while lacking the economic heft, military capacity, and alliances to back its great-power ambitions. He warns that India’s attachment to strategic autonomy and multipolarity risks making the country irrelevant in an era of intensifying bipolarity, when the competition between China and the United States will shape geopolitics.

This thesis is well supported by observable gaps in India’s capabilities, but it flattens the rationale behind New Delhi’s foreign policy orientation. A more nuanced critique would require understanding India not as a delusional power but as a liminal one—a state standing on a geopolitical threshold, deliberately navigating ambiguity to preserve flexibility and autonomy in a global order that is not simply cleaving in two but fracturing in more complicated ways.

India’s foreign policy is best understood through the lens of liminality, the condition of existing between worlds rather than in a fixed role or within a bloc. India is not a classic great power, but neither is it merely a regional actor. It is a titan in chrysalis, whose $4.1 trillion economy, rapidly expanding defense capacity, and influence among many countries of the so-called global South signal not delusion, but a conscious avoidance of rigid alignments. Tellis sees India’s pursuit of multipolarity as a strategic liability. Instead, it is a form of adaptive realism, an intentional pivoting strategy necessitated by geography, history, and structural constraints in the international system.

India’s geography alone justifies this cautious balancing act. Flanked by two nuclear adversaries—China to the north and Pakistan to the west—India cannot afford to align too closely with the United States without becoming more vulnerable to entanglement in great-power conflicts or retaliation from regional adversaries. Its borders are not buffered by oceans, as is the case for the United States; instead, they are live fault lines. This reality mandates engagement with rivals, particularly China. India’s relationship with China is a watchful one, marked by both détente and deterrence, a formula that seeks to manage competition without inviting conflict.

A Clash Over a Promotion Puts Hegseth at Odds With His Generals

Greg JaffeEric Schmitt, and Helene Cooper

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In the spring, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth decided not to promote a senior Army officer who had led troops over five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Mr. Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that the officer had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. When Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II was cleared of the allegations, Mr. Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to change course again early this month, the officials said. This time, Mr. Hegseth maintained that the senior officer was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom President Trump has accused of disloyalty.

Mr. Hegseth’s sudden reversal prompted a rare intervention from Gen. Dan Caine, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He urged Mr. Hegseth to reconsider, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations .Mr. Hegseth met with General Sims one final time but refused to budge. General Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesman, General Sims and General Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Hegseth’s role.

The standoff over his promotion reflects an ongoing clash between Mr. Hegseth’s highly partisan worldview, in which he has written that the Democratic Party “really does hate America,” and the longstanding tradition of an apolitical military that pledges an oath to the Constitution.Mr. Hegseth’s actions could shape the military’s top ranks for years to come. His insistence on absolute loyalty, backed with repeated threats of polygraphs, also creates uncertainty and mistrust that threaten to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of the force, officials said.

The tension between top military officers and their civilian leaders has been persistent since the earliest days of Mr. Trump’s second term, when senior administration officials ordered the removal of General Milley’s portrait from a Pentagon hallway. General Caine, who pressed Mr. Hegseth on General Sims’s behalf, got the job of Joint Chiefs chairman after Mr. Hegseth and President Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., his predecessor. Mr. Hegseth accused General Brown, who is Black, of prioritising diversity over the combat effectiveness of the force.

Taiwan’s Achilles’ Heel

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In May, Taiwan shuttered its last nuclear reactor, completing a process of denuclearization that had unfolded over four decades. In the mid-1980s, the island generated half its electric power from nuclear energy, an enterprise undertaken by the dictator Chiang Kai-shek in response to the oil shock of the 1970s. But once military rule ended, in 1987, antinuclear sentiment began to take hold. Taiwan’s early democratic activists feared that they could have a Chernobyl disaster of their own and associated nuclear power with Taiwan’s authoritarian past.

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan added to nuclear fears. In the following years, Taiwan’s government let licenses lapse for six functioning nuclear reactors—all with good track records—and halted the construction of two more. In doing so, they inadvertently undermined the island’s energy security. Today, the island imports 98 percent of its energy, in the form of oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and coal. This reliance on energy imports could easily be exploited, especially by China, which has its eyes on unifying with Taiwan. The Chinese navy and coast guard routinely rehearse cutting off the island’s ports, including from energy tankers.

Such a scenario would be a disaster not just for Taiwan but also for the United States. Taiwan supplies nearly all the advanced logic chips that U.S. technology firms use to power artificial intelligence. Chipmakers, both from Taiwan and elsewhere, are now trying to set up more advanced chip factories within the United States. But the trillions of dollars in capital and know-how already invested in Taiwan mean that, for the foreseeable future at least, the United States’ AI success or failure runs directly through the island.

Taiwan is, in some ways, already facing an energy crisis: Taiwan’s overtaxed electricity infrastructure is struggling to keep up with roaring AI chip production. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company alone now uses eight percent of Taiwan’s power, almost half the amount consumed by all the island’s homes. If the United States wants to ensure it has access to the leading AI chips—and if it wants to avoid a messy geopolitical crisis in which China holds Taiwan’s energy imports captive—it should shore up Taiwan’s energy security by helping to improve its energy storage and encouraging the island to embrace nuclear power.

Leadership Infighting Emerges in Chinese Military Mouthpiece

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In keeping with Mao Zedong’s famed maxim that “power comes out of the barrel of the gun,” the Chinese leader is normally the chairman of the Central Military Commission, comprising a handful of officials who control the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Currently that is President Xi Jinping, although over recent weeks the Chinese leader has disappeared and reappeared in public view, with many meetings chaired not by him but by subordinates, triggering fresh scrutiny over whether he may be forced to relinquish at least some of his power.

Those questions have triggered new analysis of a spate of articles on the front page of the print version of the PLA Daily, the military mouthpiece, explicitly talking of internal conflict within the top military leadership. A July 22 front page commentary by an unnamed commentator, for instance, even said major changes are occurring in the ruling Chinese Communist Party and PLA, announcing that “Currently, there are complex and deep changes in the global situation, the country, the party and military” and adding that “Our military faces complicated political challenges.”

Party members, especially cadres, must not be ambiguous in their stance, the commentary admonished, “and even more, not speak out of two mouths and be two-faced.” Cadres, it continued, must change their thinking and truly root out wrong thinking. They must strictly carry out the policies of the Central Military Commission chairman and struggle against all politically incorrect people. The prime responsibility of cadres is loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, it declared, which didn’t mention Xi.

A day before, a front-page commentary said the Central Military Commission recently issued new rules to “completely eliminate poisonous influences” and rectify political thinking. This by an unnamed commentator didn’t name anyone associated with the ‘poisonous influence’ or mention Xi, which raises the question whether the Communist leader or a rival faction is the source of poisonous influence.

Evolving Blue Economy Propels PRC Maritime Ambitions

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Beijing’s maritime strategy hinges on expanding what it calls the “blue economy,” which is increasingly integrated with broader strategic ambitions under the rubric of becoming a “strong sea power.”Central government policies and five-years plans call for deeper cross-regional integration to support the blue economy, which in 2024 accounted for nearly 8 percent of GDP. Recent initiatives include vast canals projects and creating a “National Maritime Economic Development Demonstrative Zone.”

Beijing sees the waters it claims—including disputed waters—as its “blue territory,” ripe for aquaculture, deep-sea mining, energy projects, and other technologically-advanced resource extraction.In June, a China Central Television (CCTV) documentary series titled “Walking to the Sea” (向海而行) highlighted developments in the economic aspects of the country’s maritime strategy. Jointly produced with the Ministry of Natural Resources, the series focuses on the “blue economy” (蓝色经济), and aims to make the country’s dream of becoming a “strong sea power” (海洋强国) tangible to ordinary people (Xinhua, November 17, 2012; CCTV, January 21. 

CCTV, June 8). But this framing also foregrounds an increasingly securitized approach to the maritime domain, which suggests tensions with neighboring states is set to continue to rise.Interest in the blue economy has been evident for over a decade. In 2011, the State Council announced the establishment of the “Shandong Peninsula Blue Economic Zone” (山东半岛蓝色经济区), aimed at building a world-class maritime economic development zone (NDRC, January 12, 2011). 

Later that year, the 12th Five-Year Plan identified the zone as a national development priority (Xinhua, March 16, 2011). By 2018, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Development and Reform Commission expanded the concept by designating 14 coastal areas as “Maritime Economic Development Demonstrative Zones” (海洋经济发展示范区), each with tailored industrial focuses (Ministry of Natural Resources [MNR], December 10, 2018).

Streets turn to rivers as deadly flooding inundates northern Beijing

Nectar Gan and Joyce Jiang

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Days of torrential rain have killed at least 30 people in the northern outskirts of Beijing, state media reported Tuesday, as China grapples with yet another deadly rainy season marked by extreme downpours, devastating floods and landslides.In recent days, intense rainstorms have battered much of northern China – a densely populated part of the country home to massive metropolises as well as agricultural heartlands.

There, residents and their livelihoods have become increasingly vulnerable to worsening summer storms and floods, as well as scorching heatwaves and drought – posing a major challenge to the Chinese government as the climate crisis makes extreme weather more frequent and intense.The pounding rain intensified around the Chinese capital on Monday, killing 28 people in Miyun, an outlying mountainous suburb in the city’s northeast home to more than half a million people; another two were killed in Yanqing, also in the city’s north, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Footage circulating on social media shows brown floodwater sweeping through residential communities, washing away cars, knocking down electricity poles and turning streets into rivers in Miyun.Dozens of roads have been damaged, potentially complicating rescue efforts, and in more than 100 smaller, more rural villages, the downpours have also cut off electricity.More than 80,000 people have been relocated, including about 17,000 in Miyun, according to CCTV.

Some residents have described their horror on social media. A woman from a small town in Miyun wrote on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram, that she spent Monday night filled with “a pervasive sense of fear,” as a nearby river overflowed, gushing with trees, vehicles and construction debris.The place where I grew up was destroyed overnight. I never imagined that such devastation would occur even within the capital, Beijing,” she wrote.Firefighters arrived Tuesday morning for rescue, and telecommunication teams were still trying to recover phone signals in the remote area, she said.

Why China Won’t Stop the Fentanyl Trade

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The United States won’t be able to solve the fentanyl crisis without help from its greatest rival. China is the world’s largest supplier of the chemicals that drug smugglers use to produce the opioid, and the country’s regulators have proved that they can stem its spread on the black market—when they’re so inclined. But despite pressure from Washington, Chinese leaders have not done nearly as much as they could to crack down on the illicit-fentanyl trade. For Beijing, the opioid that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year is a source of political leverage that it won’t easily give up.

Chinese officials still decry the opium crisis that foreign traders seeded two centuries ago. The country’s long memory informs the regime’s regulation of domestic drug dealing and use, which it polices and prosecutes severely. But Beijing denies its role in the drug trade beyond its borders. As a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said in May, “Fentanyl is the U.S.’s problem, not China’s.”Now, President Donald Trump is making a renewed effort to hold China accountable. 

Earlier this year, he imposed tariffs in retaliation for the country’s refusal to act firmly to rein in the trade. At least for now, Beijing appears willing to strengthen controls. In late June, regulators announced new restrictions on two chemicals used in fentanyl production. But China’s record of cooperation has been erratic, fluctuating from moment to moment depending on the state of U.S.-China relations. And any further assistance likely won’t come cheap. Chinese leaders are well aware that fentanyl is a bigger problem for the United States than it is for China. Before entering any new agreement, they will withhold “cooperation as a piece of leverage” until they can extract “certain guarantees or the right price. 

Amanda Hsiao, a director in the China practice at the political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told me. In his first term, Trump had some success with getting Beijing to acquiesce. At the start of the fentanyl crisis, more than a decade ago, China was a major source of the finished drug entering the American black market. Then, in 2018, Trump imposed his first round of tariffs and threatened future ones, which probably influenced China’s decision the following year to restrict the production and export of fentanyl. The step effectively eradicated the import of Chinese-made fentanyl into the U.S., and showed that Beijing can suppress the illicit trade when it wants to.

Terminal Authority: Assessing the CCP’s Emerging Crisis of Political Succession

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Xi Jinping continues to dominate the Chinese Party-state system, based on an assessment of evidence from spring and summer 2025. Despite high-level purges, unusual military reshuffles, and persistent rumors of elite dissatisfaction, there is no visible indication that Xi’s personal authority has meaningfully eroded.Signs of rebalancing within the military-security apparatus add nuance to this assessment. Structural purges, which have halved the CMC’s size, likely constitute a systematic rebalancing of Xi’s patronage networks. While these actions do not yet amount to an overt power shift, they signal that the outwardly monolithic military-security apparatus Xi once relied upon is now visibly fractured and contested, even as he retains formal authority.

The possibility of fragmentation and realignment within the elite can no longer be ruled out, though no fixed timetable for such a transition exists. As Xi enters what is effectively the indefinite phase of his tenure, Party elites will increasingly maneuver around the unresolved question of succession. For now, Xi appears capable of dictating terms, but as time goes on, the system will only reduce his power to do so.Nobody knows what will happen when Xi Jinping passes from the scene. The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spent over twelve years at the apex of the Party-state system. 

This period has been transformational for the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for its place in the world, and for Xi personally. One of the most important changes has been the personalisation of the regime under Xi. But it will not last forever. It may not even last beyond the current decade. As he ages, certain questions are becoming more urgent. Is the mortality of the regime tied to the mortality of the man? Or will a successor emerge whom Xi—or the system he leads—can shepherd across the transition? Central to all of these questions is the nature of political power within the Chinese Party-state. 

While studying silence from the Party centre has left a void filled by rumours, a framework for understanding where power lies in the system and how it functions can provide tentative answers. Such a framework, like the one we provide in this article, should be based on the specific characteristics of the CCP, which mix qualities germane to Leninist political parties with those that are unique products of the CCP’s evolution. Over the course of its history, control over five areas within the CCP has been key to consolidating power. These include the military and the security services—sources of hard power—alongside the nomenklatura/cadre system, the propaganda system, and the Party elites.

Explainer | China is building the world’s biggest hydropower dam. Why is India worried?

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On the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau, China envisions a future powered by the roaring waters of the Yarlung Tsangpo, also known as the Brahmaputra. The river will be the site of a mega dam – the world’s most ambitious to date – that promises to bring clean energy, jobs, infrastructure and prosperity to the region.Construction on the world’s largest hydropower dam began on Saturday, according to Premier Li Qiang, who called it the “project of the century”.

But the project is not just about electricity and economic benefits – the stakes are far higher. Regional security, ecological stability and the future of one of Asia’s great rivers all hang in the balance.China breaks ground on world’s largest hydropower dam in TibetHow big is the mega dam?The dam will be situated in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo, where a section drops 2,000 metres (6,562 feet) over a 50km (31 miles) stretch, creating immense hydropower potential. The dam is reportedly located in Medog, a remote county in the city of Nyingchi in the Tibet autonomous region.

When completed, the project will overtake the Three Gorges Dam as the world’s largest hydropower dam. It could generate three times more energy with five cascade hydropower stations – an estimated annual capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, more than Britain’s total annual power output.It is estimated to cost around 1.2 trillion yuan (US$167 billion), dwarfing many of the biggest infrastructure undertakings in modern history at around five times the cost of the Three Gorges Dam and even more expensive than the International Space Station.

The project was first announced in 2020 under China’s five-year plan as part of a broader strategy to exploit the hydropower potential of the Tibetan Plateau, with feasibility studies dating back to the 1980s. Beijing authorised the dam’s construction in December 2024.China is the world’s top hydropower producer, but it “is fast running out of rivers to dam”, which makes the Yarlung Tsangpo “the final frontier” for large-scale expansion, according to Trivium China, a China-focused research firm.

From Agniveer To Anti-Drone Specialist — How India Can Use Its ‘Military Resources’ To Fight UAV Menace: OPED

Dr. Sanket Kulkarni

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The Russia-Ukraine war has provided interesting insights into the nature of drone warfare. The targets selected by each side for drone strikes included several civilian installations, critical infrastructure, and public areas with the intent to cause psychological pressure on the civilian population and cripple the other side’s war-fighting ability.

During the conflict between India and Pakistan in May 2025, it was reported in the media that Pakistan launched over 600 drones to target Indian cities and several military & civilian installations.While India emerged successful in warding off the drone threat, it needs to maintain continued vigilance against future unauthorized drone operations emanating from some of its acrimonious neighbours.

The delicate nature of South Asian geopolitics and the deepening military technology cooperation among India’s adversaries necessitate expanding the coverage of the anti-drone ecosystem, both within the country and at its borders.There is an urgent need to create a framework for the deployment of anti-drone systems in key civilian areas. Recently, the State of Louisiana in the United States has notified a law through which the local law enforcement units are empowered to mitigate rogue drone threats.

Operating Anti-Drone Units In Civilian Areas

Entities in both the public and private sectors have been quick to recognize the need for anti-drone systems in the country. Some private sector entities have also teamed up with domestic & foreign players for offering anti-drone solutions.However, the availability of appropriate anti-drone solutions is just one aspect. There is also a need to create capable human resources who are well-versed in understanding the dynamics of the larger air defence ecosystem and able to handle the complex nature of the anti-drone kill chain.

Public Not Yet Taking China Cyber Threat Seriously, McMaster tells Congressional Field Hearing

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Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — The federal government must warn the American public about the cyber threat posed by China, and the assembled experts of the Hoover Institution can help share the message, Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster told a panel of lawmakers on May 28. Alongside three cybersecurity experts, McMaster testified before three members of the US House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection on Wednesday at a special field hearing at the Hoover Institution’s offices on the Stanford University campus.

The hearing, entitled “Innovation Nation: Leveraging Technology to Secure Cyberspace and Streamline Compliance,” was planned for leading cyber and national security experts to brief lawmakers on how the private and public sectors can collaborate to improve US cybersecurity.In it, McMaster warned representatives Mark Green, Andrew Garbarino, and Eric Swalwell that the American public does not yet comprehend why Chinese-aligned hacking groups are intruding into American 5G networks or the phone accounts of presidential candidates.

“We haven’t really taken this to the American people to explain the gravity of it and say why China is in our systems,” McMaster said. “They are preparing for war—the Chinese Communist Party is preparing for war—in a number of ways.”In 2024, a hacking group dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” believed to be connected to China’s Ministry of State Security, infiltrated the networks of several leading wireless service providers and reportedly accessed the metadata of phones used by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the staff of Kamala Harris during the presidential election campaign.

“They literally have a kill switch on the system right now,” Rep. Green said of the intrusion.McMaster told Green that Hoover has a number of programs that address cybersecurity, including the Technology Policy Accelerator, which explores the geopolitical implications of emerging technology, as well as Tech Track 2, which is designed to foster deeper cooperation between US government leaders, tech executives, and distinguished academics on urgent national security challenges.

Building Taiwan's Resilience

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China’s increased military threats and intimidation activities against Taiwan and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have prompted Taiwan’s government and civil society to strengthen the country’s resilience. Although Taiwan has a rich history of volunteerism and ample experience with disaster response, the efforts to build the nation’s civilian resilience against a potential wartime scenario are still in their initial stages. In this report, the authors consider aspects of Taiwan’s civilian resilience preparedness efforts that are particularly pertinent to building resilience against potential acts of war, which could range from a military blockade to kinetic strikes and even invasion.

The authors define civilian resilience as civilian society’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, mitigate, and survive an act of war and rebuild following the end of hostilities. They apply an analytical framework based on seven thematic resilience areas (psychological resilience and societal cohesion, health and welfare, critical infrastructure and vital services, continuity of government and governance, transportation and mobility, food and water, and external networks) to evaluate Taiwan’s civilian resilience, its strengths and vulnerabilities, and how Taiwan could improve its civilian resilience capabilities. 

Drawing on their review of open-source primary and secondary sources and more than 40 interviews with government officials, subject-matter experts, civic leaders, and others from Taiwan, the United States, and Europe, the authors identify key areas in which the United States and the international community could further assist Taiwan’s civilian resilience preparations.Taiwan’s government and civil society have initiated various resilience preparedness initiatives, which are supplemented by Taiwan’s rich history of volunteerism and ample experience with disaster response. Taiwan has solid foundations for further resilience-building, such as a well-developed health care system, a proactive civil society, and existing disaster management infrastructure.

Taiwan’s resilience-building efforts are complicated by the absence of consensus among Taiwan’s political elites and within society over the China threat and how to meet it, a deep-seated reluctance to contemplate readying the society for the possibility of a large-scale conflict, and a lack of common understanding of the value of preparedness for war.Integration of civilian response with military scenarios in exercises is relatively recent. During a conflict, however, Taiwan’s society might be required to hold out longer without assistance, and key infrastructure nodes might be purposefully targeted. A resilient society and infrastructure may offer Taiwan’s decisionmakers more strategic options.

In conversation with Elisabeth Kendall on what the Houthis really want

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Few analysts or commentators have a more intimate knowledge of Yemen and the Middle East than Elisabeth Kendall. The distinguished academic – whose expertise includes militant jihadist movements, Arabic poetry, and Yemen’s civil war – has previously worked with the Office of the United Nations Envoy to Yemen, and has advised parts of NATO, the British Army, and the United States military. She is currently Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, and chairs a grassroots NGO in east Yemen.

Elisabeth Kendall (EK) – Some really major things have changed in the region since 7 October. But would I say that it has been fundamentally reshaped? I think that is less clear just now, because there are so many persistent, intractable issues that haven’t changed. But let’s start first with what has changed. I think that one of the big ones is the tumbling of Iran’s longest-standing proxies. 

This is a really big deal. For years, everyone has been focused on what the Iranian regime might do if one were to go in hard against it, via its proxies. And now, look: Iran has been significantly degraded militarily and reputationally, indeed humiliated, and at the same time its most immediate retaliatory levers have been all but incapacitated. We’ve witnessed the decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the decapitation of Hamas in Gaza, the weakening of the Shia militias in Iraq, and, of course, we’ve seen the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

Although this last one wasn’t necessarily a direct consequence of Israel’s actions, the toppling of that regime weakens Iran massively, not just because Assad was a useful ally, but because it takes away Iran’s window on the Mediterranean; it takes away key smuggling routes. This means that it is going to be much more difficult for the Islamic Republic to rebuild or re-arm either Hezbollah or Hamas. Of course, we’ve also got new governments in both Lebanon and in Syria – they are quite fragile, but taking root. These are all really big changes.

From Georgia to Ukraine: Seventeen Years of Russian Cyber Capabilities at War

Ketevan Chincharadze 

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In August 2008, as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia’s Tskhinvali Region, not self-proclaimed South Ossetia, Georgian government websites were under cyber siege. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, defaced portals, and data theft disrupted communications as Georgian officials tried to urgently reach Western leaders, some on vacation, others attending the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

For the first time in history, a state had unleashed coordinated cyberattacks along with military operations. In post-Soviet, developing Georgia, with limited digital infrastructure and nascent social media, the attacks received little public attention and had minimal impact on combat operations. Seventeen years later, however, technological advancement and growing digital dependency have dramatically amplified the scale of cyber threats. The ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates this trend.

In the weeks leading up to the Russo-Georgian War, Russian hackers attacked Georgia’s digital ecosystem to sow chaos within the Georgian government and society as Russian troops were amassing along the northern border. This marked the dawn of modern hybrid or gray zone warfare, which blends conventional military force with unconventional tactics, such as cyberattacks.

In July 2008, millions of DDoS requests overwhelmed Georgian websites in an attempt to disable both government and civilian servers. Close to the invasion, hackers began using techniques such as SQL injections, a more advanced assault, which enables attackers to bypass website protections and directly penetrate servers with malicious queries. Numerous websites were defaced, and some even used photo manipulations to compare Georgia’s then president Mikheil Saakashvili to Adolf Hitler.

The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks

Tom Nichols

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Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: think tanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defence Department announcement, because they promote “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.”

This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalisation the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defence. 

For good measure, the Defence Department spokesperson Sean Parnell invoked the current holy words of the Hegseth Pentagon: The Aspen forum, he said, did not align with the department’s efforts to “increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalise the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.”

The Aspen gathering is not exactly a secret nest of Communists. This year’s roster of speakers included former CIA Director Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper—a Trump appointee—and a representative from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s office, among many others. John Phelan, the current Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, were set to attend as well.

How Russia Fights

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This project began as the vision of General Christopher Cavoli when he was the Commanding General, U.S. Army Europe and Africa (CG, USAREUR-AF). He realized that the U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) assigned to the European theater lacked the detailed understanding of the Russian Federation Armed Forces (RF AF) required to advise him and other senior warfighters. During the period from 1991 to 2014, when the United States considered Russia to be a strategic partner, FAO training had shifted its focus away from Russian military capabilities. 

To address this training gap, GEN Cavoli convened a team of retired Russian-speaking Army FAOs, with a combined total of more than 200 years’ experience working the Russian problem set. We named ourselves “the Troika,” a Russian word rich in history and symbolism. GEN Cavoli directed us to create a training course for FAOs focused on the RF AF at the operational and tactical levels. This course became the Russian Way of War (RWOW) Flagship.

After a successful pilot course in January 2021, GEN Cavoli tasked us to develop a one-day version of RWOW for his senior leaders, and a one-week version for staff officers, NCOs, and civilians, which we did. When Russia launched its “Special Military Operation” (SMO) against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Troika watched with rapt attention. We had just completed a flagship course, and our FAO students had planned a notional Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of a course exercise. 

Our curriculum was based on Russian taktika (doctrine), theory, professional military journals, exercises, and case studies of recent Russian operations in Chechnya, Ukraine, and Syria. We were anxious to see how well our curriculum held up in a real large-scale Russian combat operation. In fact, it held up quite well. Many of our assumptions turned out to be correct. But there were some surprises, and some things we had overlooked.

Pentagon thrown into confusion over think tank ban

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A wide swath of Defence Department officials fear that new rules banning employees from participating in think tank and research events — a key way the Pentagon delivers its message and solicits feedback — will leave the military muzzled and further isolated from allies. The move, according to more than a dozen officials and think tank leaders, hampers the department’s ability to make its case both in Washington policy circles and to allies struggling to understand how they fit into President Donald Trump’s worldview. That’s particularly important now as the Pentagon assesses whether to end decades of U.S. policy and remove thousands of troops stationed abroad.

The DOD can’t tell its message,” said Becca Wasser, a former Army official, now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a national security think tank. “They can’t tell the critical points they want the general public to know. This is essentially shooting themselves in the foot.”The Pentagon said it made the move to avoid lending the department’s name to organizations and events that run counter to Trump’s values. But it caused chaos throughout the department, according to the officials, who like others, were granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

The decision came a week after Defense Department officials pulled out of the high-profile Aspen Security Forum citing “the evil of globalism.”The officials and experts warned cutting off employees’ access to such venues, which include major global conferences, gives the appearance of partisanship to the Pentagon, an institution intended as largely apolitical. The decision follows other seemingly political moves by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, including firing top generals and numerous admirals, and attacking the “left-wing” media.

Top leaders are clearing most of their public speaking engagements to comply with the rules, even if they’re not sure it applies to them, according to the officials.Two of the defense officials said that they were still awaiting guidance from Hegseth’s office about how the new policy will work. Another said they have yet to see any orders at all.I am standing by and updating my X every hour on the hour,” said the official, who was desperately looking for clearer details about what the rules mean.

The New Model of Privateering

Enrique Zelaya 

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The maritime domain has always held strategic and economic significance in regional security, but recent actions of both state and non-state actors are creating instability. The Yemen-based Houthi rebels have attacked merchant shipping vessels in the Red Sea through piracy, disrupting international trade for more than 44 countries. Additionally, China’s irregular fishing fleet, which doubles as paramilitary units, dubbed “little blue men” by the Philippines, seeks to advance China’s territorial claims in disputed areas of the South China Sea. 

This gray zone aggression by state and non-state actors disrupts regional security through armed coercion that falls below the threshold of outright warfare. To maintain a competitive advantage, U.S. strategic planners should develop irregular strategies to deter state and non-state actors’ armed coercion tactics within the maritime domain.The reintroduction of privateering offers a compelling approach to today’s maritime domain challenges by helping the United States regain economic competitiveness and by creating regionally strategic security dilemmas for its adversaries. 

This essay explores a new model of privateering, defined by the time-chartering of civilian vessels for sealift capability operating under the direct command structure of the U.S. government. This will enable the monitoring, detection, and interdiction of illicit maritime threats. This essay will also highlight how the new model of privateering provides a viable legal means of countering threats from state actors like China, as well as non-state entities such as transnational criminal organizations and violent extremist organizations.

The purpose of this new model of privateering is to provide offensive options to safeguard U.S. interests and enhance maritime domain awareness to enable regional security. This essay will define traditional maritime privateering and examine historical examples. It will also examine current laws against privateering, and modern applications that enable strategic advantage. Grounded in this analysis, it will provide a new U.S. military maritime concept to safeguard U.S. interests in an increasingly contested maritime environment.

From Georgia to Ukraine: Seventeen Years of Russian Cyber Capabilities at War

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In August 2008, as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia’s Tskhinvali Region, not self-proclaimed South Ossetia, Georgian government websites were under cyber siege. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, defaced portals, and data theft disrupted communications as Georgian officials tried to urgently reach Western leaders, some on vacation, others attending the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

For the first time in history, a state had unleashed coordinated cyberattacks along with military operations. In post-Soviet, developing Georgia, with limited digital infrastructure and nascent social media, the attacks received little public attention and had minimal impact on combat operations. Seventeen years later, however, technological advancement and growing digital dependency have dramatically amplified the scale of cyber threats. The ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates this trend.

In the weeks leading up to the Russo-Georgian War, Russian hackers attacked Georgia’s digital ecosystem to sow chaos within the Georgian government and society as Russian troops were amassing along the northern border. This marked the dawn of modern hybrid or gray zone warfare, which blends conventional military force with unconventional tactics, such as cyberattacks.

In July 2008, millions of DDoS requests overwhelmed Georgian websites in an attempt to disable both government and civilian servers. Close to the invasion, hackers began using techniques such as SQL injections, a more advanced assault, which enables attackers to bypass website protections and directly penetrate servers with malicious queries.

What the Israel-Iran conflict revealed about wartime cyber operations

Nikita Shah

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The recent war between Iran and Israel will be remembered for what the world witnessed—from the direct, large-scale military strikes by both countries (and the United States), to a major shift in regional power dynamics, to the substantial damage done to the Iranian nuclear program, with still-unknown consequences.

But it should also be remembered for what it did not witness: While the conflict featured apparent cyber activities that ranged from low-level hacktivism to attacks on financial institutions, the impact of these activities were markedly limited. This is notable given speculation early in the conflict about how cyber would feature in the fight, and the fact that Iran and Israel both possess considerable prowess in the cyber domain.

Cyber activities have become a permanent feature of contemporary conflict, though their shape, form, and impact is ill-understood. As the below four examples from the Israel-Iran conflict demonstrate, such activities appear to offer an incremental edge in warfare, rather than a revolutionary one.On both sides, the Israel-Iran war produced a clear burst of hacktivism, or cyber attacks by politically motivated actors to further social or political objectives. 

Estimates range from at least thirty-five distinct pro-Iran groups joining the conflict, to more than one hundred different hacktivist groups declaring themselves involved. Attacks included the hacking of Iranian state television to display footage of anti-regime protests and calls for a public uprising against the Iranian regime. Meanwhile, 40 percent of all distributed denial-of-service attacks conducted during the conflict were directed at Israel.

To Put Iran on Ice, the U.S. Must Freeze Out China

Robert Harward & Yoni Tobin

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Iran, known as the head of the octopus for its terrorism proliferation, may be getting a lifeline from the country known as the dragon—China. Beijing has reportedly offered Iran air defense assets and fighter jets—if true, a clear effort to deter future U.S. or Israeli action against Iran. Chinese denials carry little weight. The United States must prevent China from bailing Iran out, including by enforcing sanctions on Iran-China oil trade and threatening consequences if Beijing restores Iran’s air defences. The U.S. military’s successful operation against three Iranian nuclear sites displayed American willingness to boldly strike adversaries’ strategic assets, bolstering deterrence against the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea axis. Yet, truly advancing U.S. 

strategic aims requires weakening the growing ties between Washington’s enemies.By resuscitating Iran’s debilitated air defenses, China could insulate Iran from future strikes and change the U.S. and Israeli cost calculus. Reportedly, China is considering supplying Iran its J-10C fighters, China’s version of the F-16, and potentially its HQ-9 air defenses — a similar system to the Russian S-300s that formed Iran’s air defense backbone before Israel eliminated them. The HQ-9 bears similarities to the U.S. Patriot system and helped Pakistan significantly in its May skirmish with India.

Strategic cooperation of this sort is not hypothetical. Prior to the war, China helped Iran gear up to attack Israel, supplying Iran in February with ammonium perchlorate for missile propellant. Despite the combustible mix exploding inside Iran in April, killing dozens, Iran re-ordered ammonium perchlorate from China in June—enough to make propellant for 800 ballistic missiles.Showcasing the close bilateral relationship, two days after the war’s end, Iran’s defense minister flew to China for a meeting of the Russian- and Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) bloc—of which Iran is a member. Iran’s foreign minister then traveled to China for an SCO meeting on July 15.

During the war, China continued filling the regime’s coffers, as Iran exported a record 1.8 million barrels of oil to China daily at the war’s peak. Tehran needs this trade far more than Beijing does—China imports just 14 percent of its oil from Iran, while Iran exports 90 percent of its oil to China—but by keeping Iran cash-liquid, China puts a thorn in the side of America and its partners. This illicit commerce reaps Iran some $70 billion annually, helping it skirt Western sanctions and fund its destabilizing aggression.

Pro-Ukrainian Hackers Claim Cyberattack as Aeroflot Grounds Flights

Ivan Nechepurenko

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Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship airline, said it had canceled more than 50 round-trip flights on Monday, citing a failure of its information systems after a shadowy pro-Ukrainian hacking group claimed it had conducted a devastating cyberattack against the carrier.Russian prosecutors confirmed that the airline disruption was a result of hacking and opened a criminal investigation. The Kremlin called the situation “worrying.”

Over the past months, Ukraine and groups that back it have made an effort to disrupt everyday life in Russia.Ukrainian drones have targeted areas around Russian airports, wreaking havoc in terminals during the high vacation season. The attacks and airport closures have become near-daily occurrences in major Russian cities, causing hundreds of flight delays, cancellations and diversions, and affecting thousands of travelers.

Aeroflot said on Monday that it had to cancel dozens of flights out of Sheremetyevo International Airport, near Moscow. Most were to fly within Russia but some international ones were also canceled, the airline said, adding that it had to make “forced adjustments to the flight schedule, including partial fight cancellations.” 56 of its 260 scheduled round-trip flights had been canceled.

The company also said that its ticket refund function was not available because the hack caused its information systems to fail. As of Monday evening, personal account access on Aeroflot’s website remained restricted.Last week, more than 50 passenger trains south of central Russia were delayed after a drone attack hit a major station, Russian Railways company said in a statement. And on Thursday, drones attacked the Russian resort town of Sochi on the Black Sea, killing two and forcing hotels to evacuate their guests.

The Geopolitics of Drugs

George Friedman

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Last month, President Donald Trump declared – not for the first time – the drug cartels in Latin America to be international terrorists. And to some extent, they are operating as they do through the use of terror. But they are not religious or even ideological. Their goal is to make money and to use that money to protect their positions of power. Terrorism is merely an adjunct to this goal. To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, some of the best minds of my generation have been destroyed by drugs, so I have no moral objection to destroying the organisations that traffic them. 

But destroying terror organisations is not easy, especially when they are so enormously wealthy. But wealth is just one aspect of their power. The others are based on fundamental elements of human nature: fear and greed. The combination of the two factors makes drug cartels far more powerful than ideologically motivated groups. Those groups can kill; drug cartels can kill, but they can also lavishly reward. Ideology is a powerful force, but nothing near the power of greed and fear, which creates a compelling defensive system.

The only way to destroy the cartels is to cut off the flow of money that buys loyalty in their countries and elsewhere. And the flow of money rests on the vast demand throughout the world – particularly in the United States – for the drugs they traffic, which create a loyal and desperate customer base. Demand, as much as greed, is the foundation of their ability to move their wares across borders. The fear of their ruthlessness and the prospect of earning money can and do shatter border control policies.

Thus, the only way to destroy the cartels is to dramatically lower the price of drugs. Admittedly, there have been many unsuccessful attempts to reduce demand. I have no doubt I could quickly find a source for any narcotic if I wanted to. The idea that we can stop the flow of drugs into the United States while prices and demand are so high is an illusion that has failed for decades.There is a precedent for this in another substance: alcohol. Its effects can be as addictive and devastating as any narcotic. In an attempt to undermine its influence in society, the U.S. outlawed the sale and production of alcoholic products in the 1920s. 

Wargaming is having its ‘Moneyball’ moment

Andrew Mara, Kelly Diaz and Kevin Mather

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Twenty years ago, an explosion occurred in professional baseball as traditional baseball scouts — relying on decades of personal experience — collided with data scientists bringing new approaches and technology into the evaluation of baseball players. There were raucous debates on which approach would reign supreme: human expertise or numbers and statistics? We now know that neither approach would win out; the best baseball teams across the major leagues rely on a mix of human expertise and advanced statistics to provide the most complete assessment of talent.

Fast forward to today, and a similar tension has formed in the field of defence wargaming, where traditional wargamers — relying on years of expertise and bespoke game designs — are coming to grips with rapid advances in modelling and simulation and artificial intelligence. At the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, we have been living and breathing that tension as we have worked to incorporate generative AI and modelling and simulation into defence wargaming. The results of that work? We don’t think we need a 20-year debate. Just like in baseball, the future of wargaming lies in a marriage of modelling and simulation, human expertise and AI.

To understand why wargaming is having its “Moneyball” moment, you have to first unpack what makes traditional wargaming so valuable. Wargaming is fundamentally about human decision-making, but its magic is in the experiential learning opportunities the games provide. War is never simple. There is no “all-seeing eye” that provides perfect information. Hence, wargaming explores how humans make decisions in imperfect scenarios and how other humans respond to those decisions. Armies of psychologists have spent entire careers attempting to understand human decision-making. It’s not easy to boil down to numbers and equations. 

Wargames have served as an indispensable tool in this exploration. They provide a way to exercise the decision-making process, explore why choices were made and determine what the implications might be. However, being human-centric isn’t always efficient. Wargames often require months of planning by experienced wargamers who deeply understand the defense issues at play. They also require human players with the expertise to emulate the various parties in a conflict. All this means wargames are often hosted on an annual cycle and can only explore a small number of the potential scenarios a national security leader might encounter.

After all, how many people could plausibly play the role of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?

But with the advent of generative AI, we now have the ability to ask a computer to harness human language and, at a minimum, plausibly approximate human conversation and decision-making. That opens an opportunity to merge technology and wargaming in a way that hasn’t previously been possible — meaning we can bring wargaming to a wider audience over a broader set of possible scenarios.

Combine AI and physics-based modeling and simulation, which can traceably adjudicate how interactions between military platforms will play out (think whether or not an F-35 will be detected), and suddenly you can run wargames with a much smaller number of human players across a much larger number of scenarios. Because the artifacts of these games are captured digitally, you can then rapidly conduct assessments of exactly what happened and why it happened — which is incredibly labor-intensive in traditional wargaming.

While AI skeptics may rightfully point out that the future of AI has been overhyped for literally decades, we are no longer talking about the future of AI. It is a valuable addition to the wargaming toolkit right now — today. We know this because, with AI tools and a modeling and simulation backbone, we are building new scenarios in just days with a mix of AI and human players to explore numerous iterations, branches and variations of a conflict.

Are those AI players infallible? Far from it. But the ability to rapidly iterate the game — you can rewind and replay any move in a matter of seconds — allows you to explore a range of human and AI behaviors and begin to see the breadth of possible outcomes in any military scenario. And when you find that scenario that is critically important for human decision-makers to consider? That is when traditional wargaming really shines. Let national security leaders have that discussion and debate so that they can apply human judgment to the most consequential and important decisions.

The future of wargaming isn’t about traditionalists versus technologists. It’s about traditionalists and technologists working together, just like it was and is in professional baseball. We don’t need 20 years of debate to arrive at that conclusion.

Andrew Mara is the head of the National Security Analysis Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) where he leads the analytic team assessing the capabilities needed to solve the most pressing national security challenges; Kelly Diaz leads the Advanced Concepts and Capabilities program at APL, which aims to address complex national security challenges and inform strategic decision-making through innovative and data-driven approaches; Kevin Mather leads a team of analysts at APL in the development of advanced modeling and simulation analysis tools, including advanced framework for simulation, integration and modeling (AFSIM) and AI techniques to support complex national security analysis and decision-making.