As US reliability falters, Saudi Arabia turns to a nuclear-armed ally

Abbas Al Lawati

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After Pakistan’s first nuclear test in 1998 landed it under international sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the country turned for help to a longtime ally: Saudi Arabia.

Khalid Mahmood, then Pakistan’s ambassador to Riyadh, requested an urgent meeting with King Fahd bin Abdulaziz. The Saudi monarch objected to the test, but nevertheless pledged to “support you more than you expect,” according to Mahmood. The very next day, Pakistan was promised $3.4 billion in Saudi financial support, funds that helped Islamabad proceed with a second nuclear test, the ambassador said.

That moment helped shape Pakistan’s role, in the eyes of many, as a de facto nuclear shield for the kingdom.

So when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defense agreement on Wednesday, it reignited speculation over whether Riyadh might now formally fall under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella. “This is a comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means,” a Saudi official told Reuters.

The deal includes defense industry collaboration, technology transfer and military co-production, according to Jamal Al Harbi, the media attaché at the Saudi embassy in Islamabad. Writing in Arab News Pakistan, a Saudi state-linked outlet, he added that “capacity-building and training” were also part of the agreement.

While the senior Saudi official said the deal was “years” in the making, its timing – just a week after an unprecedented Israeli attack on neighboring Qatar, a staunch US ally – suggests that Riyadh is looking beyond Washington to bolster its defenses after decades of near-total reliance on American protection.

During Donald Trump’s first term, Gulf Arab states had hoped that he would be the US president who truly appreciated their security concerns and acted decisively to protect them. His first term initially seemed promising: he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, and his administration ordered the assassination of Iran’s powerful general Qassem Soleimani, a figure loathed by Gulf Arab governments.

Saudi-Pakistan defense pact more symbolism than substance

Andrew Korybko

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Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have announced a new mutual defense pact that is long on symbolism and short on substance. Image: X Screengrab

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA), which, according to a joint statement, “aims to develop aspects of defense cooperation between the two countries and strengthen joint deterrence against any aggression.”

The agreement goes on to state that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.” It doesn’t specify any duty to employ military force in their support, however, thus making it similar to NATO’s Article 5 in terms of strategic ambiguity.

Many observers believe that US ally Saudi Arabia was shaken by America’s inability or refusal to stop Israel’s bombing of Hamas targets in Qatar, despite hosting a major US airbase there.

Saudi Arabia is thus supposedly trying to deter Israel via closer ties with nuclear-armed Pakistan, a longtime military partner it has financially bailed out several times in the past.

The apparent quid pro quo is that Saudi Arabia would support Pakistan in any future clash with India, potentially by cutting off oil shipments until hostilities cease.

That’s a compelling explanation of their interests in the SMDA, but equally compelling is the argument that it’s mostly symbolic for soft power’s sake and thus not the game-changer many believe it could be.

For starters, aside from occasional fiery rhetoric, Pakistan has never credibly threatened Israel. It hasn’t used nuclear weapons even in conflicts with its nuclear-armed rival India — which it views as an existential threat — so it’s unlikely to do so against nuclear-armed Israel, even in a scenario where Israel bombs Saudi Arabia.

On that point, Israel and Saudi Arabia are actually quite close, despite their disagreements over Palestine. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia doesn’t host any Israeli-designated terrorist groups.

What China Doesn’t Want

David C. Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong, and Zenobia T. Chan

Sourec Link

It is now considered common knowledge in Washington policymaking circles that China aims to replace the United States as the dominant global superpower and to aggressively expand its territory. Democrats and Republicans alike have embraced this consensus. Elbridge Colby, who advises the Pentagon as President Donald Trump’s undersecretary of defense for policy, has written that if China took control of Taiwan it would serve as a steppingstone to extending its reach into the Philippines and Vietnam. Rush Doshi, the deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council under President Joe Biden and one of the

US and Chinese Satellites Track Each Other in Space: Photos

Ryan Chan

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The space race between the United States and China remains contested, with their satellites taking turns tracking each other in Earth's orbit, according to latest imagery.

"Satellite-to-satellite imaging is becoming increasingly common as space operations and technologies evolve," Maxar Technologies—a U.S. satellite imagery company whose satellite was captured in images by a Chinese counterpart—told Newsweek.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

Why It Matters

Space is part of the broader strategic competition between the U.S. and China, where both countries seek dominance. Following the establishment of the U.S. Space Force in 2019, the Chinese People's Liberation Army founded the Aerospace Force in 2024, tasked with integrating space-based surveillance, targeting and offensive capabilities.

U.S. and Chinese military and space operations have often been captured in satellite imagery in recent years, including American force deployments at strategic bases and China's reconnaissance satellite, providing the public with rare insight into sensitive and secretive activities and demonstrating both nations' space situational awareness.

What To Know

China's Chang Guang Satellite Technology shared images taken by its Jilin-1 satellites on September 8, showing a Maxar Technologies WorldView Legion 2 satellite. One of the WorldView Legion satellites also captured imagery of China's ShiJian-26 satellite in June.

Beijing’s “Robot Army” Isn’t Science Fiction. It’s Already Here.

Ryan Fedasiuk

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Failing to take the robotics race seriously means watching Beijing set the rules of the automated economy, and risks leaving American power to rust.

China commands two-thirds of global robotics patents. Its flagship robotics company is shipping humanoid robots at one-tenth the cost, and ten times the volume, of American alternatives. These are not the distant indicators that some commentators cite arguing that America “might fall behind” in a future robotics competition with China. They are urgent signs that Beijing is already succeeding in its quest to control the physical infrastructure of the automated economy. Time is running out to adjust course.

Why Robotics Matters to US National Security

Robotics is not merely about improving manufacturing efficiency or making another billion off of consumer gadgets. It stands to reshape the future architecture of economic and military power. Banks and market research groups project the market for the machines and related services will surge to $7 trillion by 2050, and envision a world populated by hundreds of millions of human-like robots. Demographic decline and major strides in AI are further accelerating demand for “embodied intelligence.” As it faces a dearth of physical laborers and the dawn of intelligence too cheap to meter, the key question now facing the United States is how to build a capable and modern manufacturing base. The answer lies in mobile platforms capable of rendering services in physical space.

China has figured this out. President Xi Jinping has made robotics a central pillar of the country’s economic growth model in the 2020s. China’s 14th Five-Year Plan lists “robotics and smart manufacturing” as a cornerstone of its industrial innovation, with China aiming to be a global innovation hub by 2025 and a world leader by 2035. Beijing is well on the way to achieving this objective; between 2013 and 2022, Chinese universities added over 7,500 new engineering majors, with nearly 100 focused specifically on robotics. China’s academic output is already surpassing American contributions at major robotics and computer vision conferences. Moreover, Chinese institutions hold more than 190,000 robot-related patents, two-thirds of the global total. The country is already home to more than half of the top humanoid robotics companies.

The Huawei Dilemma: Why Europe Needs Strong Intelligence Guardrails

Dr. Dave Venable, Mykola Volkivskyi

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OPINION — Spain's recent decision to award Huawei a contract worth €12.3 million to manage and store legally authorized wiretaps raises significant concerns about the country's commitment to digital sovereignty. This move jeopardizes Spain’s national security and undermines the trust that is essential for the intelligence-sharing frameworks of the European Union and NATO.

While Huawei has made considerable efforts to demonstrate technical compliance with European standards, the political reality is more complicated: any sensitive system it builds is, by default, subject to exploitation by Beijing. Huawei is subject to China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law and cannot credibly claim complete independence from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) security and intelligence apparatus. Despite this, Madrid’s procurement process proceeded as if the controversy around Huawei had no bearing on the domain of sensitive state surveillance networks.

This episode highlights the lack of clear institutional safeguards in Europe and among transatlantic allies for assessing foreign vendors in critical intelligence systems. While the EU’s 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox has guided member states regarding telecommunications infrastructure, there is no similar framework for the technologies that support law enforcement and intelligence operations. The result is fragmentation: some countries exclude Huawei on national security grounds, while others invite it to manage their surveillance backbones.

This divergence is not sustainable in an environment that requires intelligence sharing to stay ahead of adversaries.

Spain’s SITEL Contract is Effectively A Security Breach

Spain’s wiretap system, SITEL, functions as the core for Spanish law enforcement and intelligence wiretap activities, storing sensitive data about targets involved in terrorism, organized crime, and even foreign espionage.

Generating Jihad: How ISIS Could Use AI to Plan Its Next Attack

Tom O'Connor

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With artificial intelligence increasingly becoming a part of the everyday lives of Americans, so too are malicious actors seeking to exploit emerging AI technologies and applications in order to pursue harmful, even deadly agendas.

Among them is the Islamic State (ISIS), the militant group known for its tech-savvy online presence that has helped it recruit and maintain a global following despite battlefield losses. Such tactics have proven capable in the past of outpacing efforts by governments and companies to counter them, a risk compounded by the novel nature of recent AI breakthroughs.

Now, experts warn that AI in the hands of ISIS marks a new turning point at a time when the group and its acolytes are looking to mount an international comeback bolstered by cutting-edge developments in the digital realm.

From creating fake news anchors to sourcing supplies for new operations—and future threats not far in the horizon—"we've moved from the hypothetical into reality on the use of AI by extremist groups," Samuel Hunter, senior scientist and academic research director at the University of Omaha's National Counterterrorism Innovation Technology and Education Center of Excellence, told Newsweek.

As with the average user, ISIS appears to thus far largely be using AI to enhance the execution of traditional tasks. The most frequent form of this is the use of generative AI, or GenAI, to create and spread content at rapid speeds and through more enticing means.

"As of now, the most common use cases by extremists such as the Islamic State have been propaganda development," Hunter said. "The Islamic State has historically been fairly adept and sophisticated on the digital front and it is not surprising to see them pioneering work with GenAI."

He calls the group's movement into video applications of this technology "novel and concerning."

The Return of ISIS

Caroline Rose and Colin P. Clarke

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Nine months after the longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled by a rebel offensive, Syria faces a litany of new challenges. The country, which is now being led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is contending with recurring violent sectarian clashes, successive Israeli strikes into Syrian territory, and internal disputes within the new government. Adding to the tumult is a resurgence of one of Syria’s most enduring challenges: the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Since the Assad regime was toppled in 2024, ISIS has waged a terror campaign throughout Syria, targeting the new Syrian government, as well as Christian, Shiite, and Kurdish minorities. At its apogee, in 2014, ISIS held roughly a third of the country. Although the group no longer controls any territory in Syria, and its numbers have dwindled from roughly 100,000 fighters to 2,500 fighters today, the group is taking advantage of Syria’s post-Assad chaos to rebuild and reconstitute, presenting fresh obstacles to the country’s long-sought stability.

The group’s targeting capabilities are proving more frequent, precise, and sophisticated than ever, targeting sites well beyond ISIS’s traditional spheres of operation. In June, for example, a suicide bomber linked to ISIS attacked a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, killing 25 and injuring 63. Two months later, the group launched more than two dozen attacks across northeastern Syria, relying on a combination of guerrilla tactics, including small arms fire, ambushes, assassinations, and improvised explosive devices targeting military checkpoints and government vehicles. Last year, ISIS took responsibility for 294 attacks in Syria, up from 121 in 2023; estimates by the United Nations and human rights groups are even higher.

Such attacks pose a blatant challenge to the new administration’s attempts to stabilize the country. Syria’s already fragile security situation is characterized by frequent clashes between Sunni, Alawite, and Druze communities. As the frequency of terrorist attacks increases, the new Syrian government risks squandering its political legitimacy by failing to protect the country’s minorities. The Syrian population, meanwhile, faces a real possibility of a large-scale terrorist resurgence.

Russian Drones Over Poland Aren’t a Probe, but a Signal

Sumantra Maitra

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After Russian drones infiltrated Polish airspace on September 9, Radosław Sikorski, Poland's Foreign Minister, told the Guardian, “Interestingly, they were all duds, which suggests to me that Russia tried to test us without starting a war.”

“The drones didn’t reach their targets and there was minor damage to property, nobody was hurt. If it happened in Ukraine, by Ukrainian definitions, that would be regarded as a 100 percent success,” he said.

No one likes speculating about war and peace. The fact is that a bunch of Russian drones went into Polish and Romanian airspace. Three of those over Poland were shot down, the country’s airspace was closed off for a while, and NATO air forces from the UK and Netherlands took part in intercepting Russian drones. Those over Romania turned back, escorted out by the Romanian air force back into Ukraine. There was talk of a NATO–Russia war. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the country was closer to military conflict “than at any time since the Second World War.” When President Donald Trump shrugged on camera and said it might have been a Russian mistake, Tusk instantly replied that it wasn't.

It was unlikely to be a mistake. But it wasn’t necessarily a provocation or a probe. While mistakes are definitely possible with primitive small units—they can be fried or jammed, their batteries can die, weather can affect their propellers or flight, or manual error or GPS or fiber optic cables can affect their flightpath—the enormous units that were used in the incursion over Poland signal sophistication. The fact that these were duds, or decoys, add a level of planning and intrigue on top of that. Expensive Russian drones won’t just hover miles behind the actual zone of conflict to “test” anything. Everyone knows in an actual NATO–Russia war, those drones will be accompanied by intense missile barrages overwhelming the surface missile batteries and air defences. A major NATO–Russia war would not involve any probing or anything at a localized scale; it would be amped up to 11 from the start. The “test” theory falls flat, given that for such a conflict there’s nothing to test.

5 Places World War III Could Start Right Now

Harry Kazianis

Sourec Link

Key Points and Summary – If World War III starts in 2025, odds are it begins in one of five places: the Taiwan Strait, NATO’s eastern front, the Israel–Iran theater, the Korean Peninsula, or the India–China Himalayas.

-Each flashpoint has its own fuse—unfinished wars, shifting deterrence, or alliance commitments that could drag in great powers quickly.

-The common thread is miscalculation under pressure: gray-zone tactics, drones and missiles, and crowded airspace where seconds matter.

-This op-ed maps the risks, why they’re worse now than a decade ago, and what practical steps—hard power, clear red lines, and real crisis channels—can keep the sparks from becoming a firestorm.

Five Places World War III Could Begin In 2025

I have been studying international affairs in global politics for a few decades now. The biggest fear I have is simple: where could the next great war start?

And to be clear, we are talking about World War III. While many say that such a conflict is impossible, the last twenty-five years of human history clearly prove that even the impossible is now truly possible.

Below, I have done my best to identify five places where I think World War III could occur. Clearly, five places are pretty limiting, and I did not rank them; I will let you, the reader, do that. Let the debate begin…

The Taiwan Strait And The First Island Chain

U.S. defense in free fall

Harlan Ullman

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Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Make no mistake. Despite allocating nearly $1 trillion for the Pentagon next year and the presence of a motivated military and civilian workforce, the department is in free fall. How can this be? After all, the United States is supposed to have the most powerful military in the world armed with the best weapons.

Suspend disbelief and consider the reasons for this assessment. First, for 20 years, the Pentagon was engaged in waging endless wars that could not be won by military force alone.

Nation building in Afghanistan and imposing a democracy in Iraq after invading to destroy non-existent weapons of mass destruction squandered trillions of dollars and countless amounts of blood, not only American.

Worse, these diversions allowed adversaries and enemies to evolve. Today, the combination of China, Russia, Iraq and North Korea, plus non-government actors, poses challenges and dangers that the United States and its allies have not been able to confront or contain effectively.

Second, for a decade or more, the Defense Department has operated under a continuing resolution because Congress has been incapable of passing a budget on time. In business terms, that cuts buying power by 10% to 15% a year. And it makes long-range planning impossible, further deteriorating the effectiveness and efficiency in operating the Pentagon.

Third, the Pentagon is infected with a costs cancer. Uncontrolled annual real cost growth, above inflation, is 5-7% a year for every item -- from people to pencils to precision weapons.

About half that goes to covering people in general. Even though recruitment is strong, services are offering early retirement and early buyouts to reduce personnel costs for senior people. The reality is that on the current course, at the end of the Trump administration in 2029, the forces will be quantitatively smaller in number.

Space is the new frontier of war, officials say in change of tone

Rudy Ruitenberg

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PARIS — Space has become a war-fighting domain, an assessment that calls for doctrinal changes and the ability to intervene there more quickly, space-force leaders from several NATO countries said at the Space Defense and Security Summit here on Tuesday.

“The rule-based international order in space is nearly over,” said Brig. Gen. Jürgen Schrödl, a division head with responsibility for space at the German Ministry of Defence’s strategy and operations department. “We have to accept that space is a tested domain, is a war-fighting domain, is becoming a war-fighting domain.”

The language is a step up from more diplomatic assessments at the summit last year, when military space leaders discussed growing threats to in-orbit assets, without going as far as describing space as a potential war zone or battlefield.

Global governments in the past two years spent more of their space budgets on defense than on civil space, according to data from summit organizer Novaspace.

Of the $73.1 billion in global government spending on space defense and security in 2024, more than a third was classified, the consultancy says.

“What you see is that it is now the military domain that is leading,” Hermann Ludwig Moeller, director of the European Space Policy Institute, told Defense News at the conference. “This is really clear compared to last year, the language and what is behind the language has shifted.”

More than 200 anti-satellite weapons now circle Earth in different orbits, said Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner, commander of 3 Canadian Space Division. While he didn’t provide details on their nature, he said that is a “shocking number of capabilities” to threaten allied space capabilities including satellite comms to Earth observation.

While hostile action in space is not new, “things are accelerating very fast,” said Maj. Gen. Vincent Chusseau, commander of French Space Command since August. “Space is a really full operational domain, we talk about war fighting in space.”

What Happened to “the West”?

Stewart Patrick

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It has become commonplace to speak of living in a “post-Western world.” Commentators typically invoke the phrase to herald the emergence of non-Western powers—most obviously China, but also Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and the Gulf states, among others. But alongside the “rise of the rest,” something equally profound is occurring: the demise of “the West” itself as a coherent and meaningful geopolitical entity. The West, as understood as a unified political, economic, and security community, has been on the ropes for some time. Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president could deliver the knockout blow.

Since the end of World War II, a tight-knit club of economically advanced democracies has anchored the liberal, rules-based international system. The group’s solidarity was rooted not only in shared threat perceptions but also in a common commitment to an open world based on free societies and liberal commerce—and the collective willingness to defend that order. The core members of this cohort included the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom, the members of the European Union, and several allies in the Asia-Pacific, such as the former British dominions of Australia and New Zealand, as well as Japan and South Korea, which became integrated into the postwar U.S. alliance system and adopted the liberal principles of democratic governance and market economics. The West formed the core of the so-called free world during the Cold War. But the West outlasted that bipolar conflict and even expanded its boundaries to include a number of former Soviet bloc countries and some former Soviet republics through the expansion of NATO and the European Union.

Over the past 80 years, Western countries have created numerous institutions to advance their common purposes, most prominently NATO, the G-7, the EU, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Equally important, these countries have coordinated policy stances within more encompassing multilateral frameworks, such as the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization, and the G-20.

The Robot Medics of Ukraine’s Frontline

David Kirichenko 

Sourec Link

The Russia-Ukraine war has evolved into a technological arms race, with uncrewed machines playing a central role across every domain of combat. The skies are now filled with aerial drones, and their kill zone continues to expand in all directions. Drones have revolutionized warfare on land and at sea as well. The latest development is the use of ground robots and their incipient transformation of frontline medicine.

For Ukraine, unmanned systems have become a necessity in fighting a larger and better‑resourced enemy. With no sign of the war ending anytime soon, and with Russia willing to expend seemingly endless numbers of people, Kyiv is turning to technology to help ease the pressure on its mobilization effort and to preserve the lives of its soldiers.

Ukrainian soldiers often have to stay on the frontlines for weeks at a time. In one recent case, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) rescued three wounded Ukrainian soldiers who had been stranded near the front for more than a month—that is, stranded with their wounds for more than a month.

Colonel Kostiantyn Humeniuk, the chief surgeon of the Medical Forces of Ukraine, said, “As of today, the war has fundamentally changed because our enemy uses modern unmanned aerial vehicles.” He added, “On the battlefield, armored vehicles are almost absent…So we are faced with a modern war where drones are the main type of weapon. Today, in the theatre of war, almost all the injuries we see among our service members are drone-related injuries.”

According to Humeniuk, the biggest challenge is that they’ve lost the “golden hour”—the period in which medical attention has a higher chance of saving someone suffering traumatic injury. The army can no longer evacuate wounded from combat zones quickly. “That’s the most serious problem. Evacuating a wounded soldier from the battlefield using any kind of armored vehicle, medical or otherwise, is practically impossible,” Humeniuk said. “Drones have shown that they are low-visibility. They don’t make much noise and are almost unnoticeable on the battlefield.”

Trump’s Path to the Nobel Peace Prize: An Israel–Palestine Deal

Abdullah Hayek

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If Trump can succeed in finally bringing the Israel-Palestine conflict to an end, it will cement his legacy as one of the world’s greatest peacemakers.

In his second inauguration speech, President Donald Trump cast himself as a global peacemaker. Since January 2025, he has boasted of stopping or cooling six wars, remarking, “I’ve stopped six wars—I’m averaging about a war a month.” The president’s allies, both at home and abroad, now argue that such efforts alone warrant Nobel recognition. Yet while these ceasefires and accords are impressive, one conflict towers above them all: the century-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

If Trump can deliver a credible peace between Israelis and Palestinians, he will not only join the ranks of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as architects of Middle East peace, but may eclipse them altogether, securing the Nobel Peace Prize and reshaping the regional order.

Trump’s Mediation Has Ended Many Global Conflicts

Trump’s claim of mediating six conflicts reflects both ambition and uneven achievement. In June 2025, after Israel’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites triggered a massive Iranian retaliation, Trump escalated with US bunker-buster strikes, pushing both sides under US and Qatari mediation to accept the first direct truce in their 46-year enmity.

Later that month, Trump presided over a Washington agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, a war that has killed six million since the 1990s, hailing it as “a glorious triumph,” though experts warn the ceasefire remains fragile.

In July, as Cambodia and Thailand’s border dispute erupted into clashes that killed dozens and displaced 300,000, Trump threatened to suspend trade talks unless fighting stopped; within days, both governments agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire over disputed temple lands.

In South Asia, when Kashmir flared in May, Pakistan publicly thanked Trump for mediating a ceasefire with India—though New Delhi dismissed his role, insisting the truce came from direct military channels. Whatever the case, the violence subsided.

After Charlie Kirk’s killing, an expert in political violence explains how to stop it

Matt Field 

Source Link

Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago, has been studying political violence for 30 years. He says he’s advised every White House since 9/11 as well as the US military on various topics, including, for example, how to respond to the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s. That’s all to say Pape has firm ideas about what causes political tensions to boil over. There’s one central factor, he says, that is responsible for the increasingly violent tenor of US politics, most recently evidenced by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s on-stage assassination: massive demographic change. Since 1990, the United States has gone from being about 76 percent white to 58 percent white, and in 15 years, give or take, Pape says, whites will be in the minority.

Such demographic shifts can change the trajectories of political parties. It’s even possible that they have destabilized governments for centuries, playing a role in civil wars, revolutions, or rebellions throughout history. As Columbia University sociology professor Yao Lu puts it, tension over immigration has exacerbated political polarization in the United States and elsewhere, “giving rise to surging nativism and a democratic decline.” The arrival of newcomers can lead to a backlash against a supposed economic and cultural threat. (Think of the rise in the fortunes of the KKK in the 1920s or the era’s notorious Palmer raids to clamp down on dissent—which came on the heels of a decades-long massive surge in immigration to the United States.)

“That’s why immigration became Trump’s number one issue almost overnight,” Pape says.

But while the population shift in the country “is the big, big thing that’s radicalizing our politics,” Pape thinks that there’s something else that will need to be dealt with first—highlighted by the aftermath of Kirk’s murder.

Left to its own, Pape says, the emotion created by startling acts of political violence—such as terrorist attacks, for example—can grow and push a society in previously unimaginable directions, a cycle that has happened in other times or other countries.

The Kirk assassination “was done politically to wound a community,” Pape says. When a community faces a terrorist attack or political violence, “what you see is that they have initial emotions of sorrow and fear that morph into anger—and that can morph into very large support for political violence.”

Europe Prepares for War

Tom Nagorski

Sourec Link

Tom Nagorski is Senior Contributing Editor with The Cipher Brief. He previously served as Global Editor for Grid and as ABC News Managing Editor for International Coverage as well as Senior Broadcast Producer for World News Tonight.

DEEP DIVE – From large-scale military drills to increased defense spending to the continent’s easternmost nations fortifying their borders with Russia, Europe is preparing for war.

Under pressure from the U.S. and threats from Russia, most NATO member nations have pledged to spend 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense and individual nations and smaller regional blocs are taking measures of their own: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are building a network of physical barriers as part of a “Baltic Defense Line”; the Nordic nations are implementing a “total defense” strategy; and the European Union (EU) has launched a Black Sea strategy to bolster regional defense and infrastructure in Southern Europe.

It’s all part of a paradigm shift in European defense policy that Lt. Gen. Sean Clancy, head of the EU’s military committee, calls a “global reset” driven by the heightened threat from Russia, and a fear that Europe’s stalwart defender for eight decades – the United States – may pull away from the continent.

Can the West Really Stop Russia’s War in Ukraine? A View from the Frontlines.

Glenn Corn

Source Link

EXPERT Q&A — Russia has not slowed its assaults on Ukraine, ceaselessly raining missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities while pushing forward - albeit slowly - on the frontlines. Former Senior CIA Officer Glenn Corn got a firsthand account of how Ukraine is faring under fire, telling The Cipher Brief about the resilience of the Ukrainians, the sabre-rattling from Russia aimed at dissuading Western support, and what Kyiv is seeking from the U.S. and Europe.

Cipher Brief CEO and Publisher Suzanne Kelly spoke with Corn from Ukraine, for an on-the-ground picture of the challenges, opportunities and immediate actions needed to counter Russia’s invasion. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Cipher Brief: Russia’s attacks have really been intensifying against Ukrainian cities. You've witnessed that. What has this latest barrage been like from your perspective on the ground?

Corn: We were woken up in the morning about 6:00 AM by strikes inside of Kyiv by the Russians, including one strike which damaged the Council of Ministers building downtown. I think the Russians are claiming that was not deliberate, which is interesting. It tells me something when the Russians are very quick to say that they were not behind something, because that tells me they're worried about the response.

The Cipher Brief: We've seen heavy missile attacks in civilian areas before, so this is not entirely new. But it has been stepped up. It was a bit like this when we were there with you a few months ago. Is it wearing on people differently now?

Corn: The Ukrainians are incredibly resilient, and honestly, I'm not seeing that they're cowered by these attacks. I'm sure people are upset, and I think just days ago, the Russians hit a group of pensioners that were at a post office to get their pension checks and killed a group of civilians - 20-plus. People respond to that. They're angry about that. The main thing I'm hearing and seeing though is that they're waiting for the Western response. What is the West going to do? We've given Putin a chance to negotiate a ceasefire, a way out of this disastrous war, and he's not taking it. In fact, he's doubling down and people here are asking, "When is the West, including the United States, or maybe led by the United States, going to respond?" And I think many Americans are probably asking the same question.

The Biggest Threat to the Dollar Is Coming From Inside the White House

Keith Johnson

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The U.S. dollar, for all the incessant handwringing over its imminent demise as the global reserve currency, remains clearly ensconced on its throne. But that could start to change as soon as Wednesday, with a much-watched meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The latest Dollar Dominance Monitor, compiled by the Atlantic Council, shows that the U.S. dollar still has no rival for any of the central attributes of a reserve currency: The dollar is still the most used currency in central bank reserves, still the top money used for export invoices, and still overwhelmingly dominates foreign-exchange transactions. Most international debt is still dollar-denominated, as are most sales of vital commodities such as oil.

Europe’s Delayed Reckoning With Russia

Veronica Anghel and Sergey Radchenko

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In the early hours of September 10, Polish and NATO forces shot down several of the 19 Russian drones estimated to have crossed into Polish airspace—an unprecedented incursion that caused consternation and alarm throughout Europe. Russia denied responsibility, implying that the drones had simply lost their way; NATO and European officials suggested the violation was intentional. Whatever the case, the clash marked the first time that NATO engaged enemies in allied territory. A few days later, another Russian drone moved into NATO airspace, this time over Romania, although the Romanians took no action and the drone eventually crossed into Ukraine. These events underline what remains a daunting prospect for Europeans: the possibility that the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine will spill over into a broader war between Europe and Russia.

Moscow’s evident determination to keep fighting in Ukraine has fueled mounting anxiety among European leaders. Since Donald Trump’s return to office, they have twisted themselves into diplomatic contortions to implore, indulge, and flatter the American president in the hopes of sustaining the White House’s engagement with the war in Ukraine and of keeping Russia at bay. Yet it was Russian President Vladimir Putin—the “ogre at the door,” as French President Emmanuel Macron once called him—who strolled down a red carpet, to Trump’s applause, before a bilateral summit in Alaska in August. The Europeans, who weren’t invited, turned to damage control. The following week, European leaders flew to Washington alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to offer him support and show a united front against Russia. Trump treated his guests as he might contestants on The Apprentice: at once effusive, then dismissive, and always uncommitted. By the dismally low standards of current transatlantic relations, the meeting was a success only for ending without incident.

The latest round of U.S.-Russian pageantry was another reminder of what has long been clear: Europe’s security is being decided elsewhere. Caught between a revisionist Kremlin and an indifferent White House, Europe is consistently outmaneuvered and often marginalized. The European Union’s failure to shape global geopolitical outcomes stems from its own foreign policy incoherence, including a historic overreliance on the United States and an inability to develop a consistent strategy for dealing with Russia, its key adversary.

Netanyahu and an Israel Without Restraint

Roger Cohen

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Before the war in Gaza began almost two years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was not known as a risk taker. His rhetoric was bold, his deeds less so. Now, however, by sending the Israeli military into Gaza City, he appears to have dispensed with constraints.

The operation, which he says is necessary to defeat Hamas but is certain to increase Israel’s isolation as international anger mounts, has already killed many Palestinians and sent hundreds of thousands into flight southward. It risks the lives of the estimated 20 living Israeli hostages. It renders any cease-fire unimaginable for the moment. It has been questioned even by the military’s chief of staff.

To all this, Mr. Netanyahu’s response seems to be: Bring it on.

This week, he suggested that Israel should become a “super Sparta,” apparently meaning that the ancient Greek city-state that rose through discipline to become a great military power should inspire the country. Speaking at an economic conference hosted by the Finance Ministry, he said Israel might have to confront “isolation” through “autarky,” or economic self-sufficiency.

“He’s lost it,” Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said. “There are no more red lines.”

Vilified by the hostages’ anguished families, confronted by large street protests, fiercely criticized by alienated European allies for the bombardment of Gaza that has taken tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, Mr. Netanyahu only becomes more defiant.

Dispatch from Wiesbaden: Building Readiness in the Face of Russian Aggression

Chase Metcalf and John Nagl 

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The headquarters of US Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF) is at Clay Kaserne in western Germany, not far from Frankfurt and situated near the mighty Rhine River. The area has changed hands often; during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland after World War I, it was controlled by the French Army and then became the headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine from 1925 to 1930. Wiesbaden, the city that houses Clay Kaserne, was not bombed as heavily as Frankfurt by the Allies during World War II—largely because it was not a major industrial center—and has had a continuous US presence since 1945.

Today USAREUR-AF has responsibility for oversight of Army operations across two continents with a population of more than two billion people. Increasingly, it also has responsibility for preparing to fight a war against a Russia that three years ago violated the most basic principle of international law—the inviolability of borders—by invading Ukraine. Those brave souls in the invaded country are now fighting the biggest war in Europe since World War II.

The objectives of Russia’s imperial President Vladimir Putin do not stop in Ukraine, which shares its western borders with NATO members Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Putin has been clear that he wishes to restore the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states. He is resorting to sabotage against Western targets to try to convince NATO not to resist and building relationships with North Korea, China, and Iran to further his geopolitical ambitions.

Europe is waking up to the Russian threat and during our recent visit to USAREUR-AF, we saw signs that NATO is, as well. Though USAREUR-AF is technically an American headquarters it is inextricably linked with NATO through its role as a combined joint force land component command headquarters operating as a single team alongside NATO’s Allied Land Command. This makes it an ideal place to gain a nuanced sense of both USAREUR-AF’s and NATO’s priorities—an opportunity we recently had. As part of a small team of active duty and retired military officers from the United States Army War College, we recently taught some fifty staff officers from the headquarters something of the role their unit plays in peace and war.

The Lies America Tells Itself About the Middle East

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley

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On any given day during the long war in Gaza, a Biden administration official could be expected to assert any of the following: a cease-fire was around the corner, the United States was working tirelessly to achieve one, it cared equally about the Israelis and the Palestinians, a historic Saudi-Israeli normalization deal was at hand, and all this was bound up with an irreversible path to Palestinian statehood.

Not one of those pronouncements bore even a loose resemblance to the truth. Talks about a cease-fire dragged on, and when they fitfully bore fruit, the resulting understandings quickly fell apart. The United States refrained from doing the one thing—conditioning or halting the military aid to Israel that kept the fire from ceasing—that might have made it happen. Taking that step was also the one thing that might have demonstrated, beyond platitudes, a U.S. commitment to protecting both Israeli and Palestinian lives. Saudi Arabia kept repeating that normalization with Israel depended on progress toward a Palestinian state, and the Israeli government consistently ruled such progress out. The more time went on, the more U.S. statements were exposed as empty words, met with disbelief or indifference. That did not stop them from being made. Did U.S. policymakers believe what they said? If not, why did they keep saying it? And if they did, how could they ignore so much contrary evidence staring them in the face?

The falsehoods served as cover for a policy that enabled Israel’s ferocious attacks on Gaza and hailed the most modest, fleeting improvement in the situation in the Palestinian enclave as the product of American humanitarianism and resolve. Israel’s brutality worsened under the Trump administration, but those earlier falsehoods had paved the way. They helped normalize Israel’s indiscriminate killings; its targeting of hospitals, schools, and mosques; its use of access to food as a weapon of war; and its continued reliance on American weapons. They laid the ground and there was no turning back.

The deceit was not new. Its roots stretch back well before the war in Gaza and extend well beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It became a habit. For decades, the United States dissembled about its stance toward the conflict, posing as a mediator when it was an outright partisan. It dissembled when it helped put together a “peace process” that did far more to perpetuate and solidify the status quo than to upend it. It dissembled when it portrayed its broader Middle East policy as promoting democracy and human rights. It dissembled when it claimed success even as its efforts yielded serial disaster.

The Value of Integrated Air and Space Operations: Multidomain Solutions

Douglas A. Birkey and Charles Galbreath

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America faces the most severe security environment seen since World War II, and U.S. military leaders are working aggressively to develop new strategies, operational concepts, and technologies in response. As these efforts advance, it is imperative that new ideas and concepts be validated, designed with ample resilience and be flexible enough to adjust to dynamic operations.

Part of our military’s job is to make the job of adversaries harder, presenting dilemmas that ultimately deter them from risking conflict. Possessing capabilities in multiple domains enhances deterrence by ensuring adversaries have no easy switch to counter U.S. forces. Yet budget pressures increasingly push leaders toward single-domain solutions, a risk that is especially great as some missions move from air to space. It is time to reassess these in favor of the multi-domain approach.

Make no mistake: The growth of space-based technology is among the most transformative developments in the modern era. The integration of space capabilities into joint operations over the past three decades has made the United States military more lethal, effective, and efficient. Continued transformation opportunities remain, especially in command and control (C2); intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); and electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO).

Missions that previously took days to execute when relying on airborne solutions can now be accomplished almost instantaneously from space. This includes operating over some of the most heavily defended regions on the globe—zones that would be off-limits for nearly any other military technology.

This is why so many missions have migrated to space. In the wake of the Cold War, ISR aircraft like the famed SR-71 retired in 1990 were replaced by satellites in orbit; more recently, Air Force leaders retired the E-8 JSTARS, betting that a space-based ground-moving target indicator battle management solution could replace it. More mission migration from air to space is in the works.

Rethinking Counterinsurgency: A Police-Centered Approach

Matt Rowe 

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U.S. COIN doctrine, with its detailed field manuals and interagency frameworks, remains caught up in its reliance on building national armies—often exacerbated by misalignment between military and civilian efforts and the neglect of law enforcement resources. U.S. civilian agencies like the Department of State, Department of Justice, and others are often poorly structured or insufficiently resourced to sustain long-term stabilization operations. As a result, military-led nation-building frequently proceeds without the cultural insight or political sensitivity required for lasting success.

The “Green Zone” in Baghdad is emblematic of this failure. It was a fortified sanctuary for international personnel that reinforced physical and psychological separation from the Iraqi people.

As Rep Dennis Kucinich pointed out during a House sub-committee meeting on winning the hearts and minds in Iraq, “The perceived dissonance between American rhetoric and actions breeds mistrust at home and in Iraq about why we are there and how long we will stay…when we forget why we are there, when we forget it is their revolution not ours, we allow ourselves to be portrayed as arrogant agents of empire rather than as trustees of noble ideals.”

Rather than fostering legitimacy, the Green Zone signaled occupation and reinforced insurgent narratives of Western weakness and decadence. It implied that U.S. and staff hid safely behind the “wall” enjoying their typical decadent luxuries regularly shipped in from the West. Meanwhile, their military lackeys and highly paid mercenary contractors persecuted the God-fearing Iraqi people over access to oil.

At the more local level, while working in Iraq, my colleague was approached by a tribal elder who needed a village irrigation canal repaired. The elder pointed out that a new power plant was being built nearby and that the bulldozer required for the repair work sat idle most of the time. Recognizing an opportunity to build goodwill and strengthen local relationships, my colleague attempted to secure permission and funds to use the equipment—but was ultimately unsuccessful. Contractors and untrained Department of State personnel failed to grasp the significance of the canal to the village’s survival and the strategic value of responding to the elder’s request. This reflects a broader, longstanding weakness in U.S. COIN strategy: a lack of local context and the inability to recognize small, practical projects as valuable counterinsurgency opportunities.