India’s Malacca Strait Move: Strategic Signal Or Regional Overreach? – Analysis

Dr Sandeep Bhardwaj

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India’s proposal to join the Malacca Strait Patrol made incremental progress last week after Singapore formally acknowledged it for the first time. However, the prospect of the Indian Navy patrolling the strait remains unlikely. New Delhi’s push to join the patrol is a signal to Beijing that the recent Sino-Indian thaw must not be mistaken for capitulation. The Malacca Strait Patrol issue also highlights the fact that the Southeast Asian countries are not always comfortable with India’s expanding security footprint in the region.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong visited New Delhi from 2 to 4 September 2025, during which he announced the Roadmap for a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Among numerous new goals and promises listed in the Joint Statement was a sentence reading “Singapore acknowledges with appreciation India’s interest in the Malacca Strait Patrol”. This is the first time India’s interest in joining the patrol has been officially recognised. India’s foreign ministry officials later explained that they hoped India would participate in the patrol or establish “some kind of coordination” with it.

An estimated quarter of all the world’s traded goods passes through Strait of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS). It is one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet and, therefore, strategically critical to several countries. The Malacca Strait Patrol (MSP) is a framework for the four littorals of the strait – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand – to cooperate to combat piracy in the critical waterway. It comprises coordinated sea patrols, combined maritime air patrols and intelligence exchange.

Over 55 per cent of India’s trade moves through the SOMS. India is also a neighbour to the strait as its territory in the Andaman Sea shares maritime borders with Thailand and Indonesia that run up to the mouth of the SOMS. India has offered to provide security to the sea lane since as early as 2004. However, the littorals have repeatedly turned down its offers.

In the recent years, India has considerably increased its naval presence in Southeast Asia through ship visits and bilateral or multilateral exercises. However, its role as a security provider around the SOMS remains limited. The Indian Navy conducts coordinated patrols (Corpats) with Thailand and Indonesian navies along their maritime boundaries. Although some Indian statements hint that the Corpats operate within the Malacca Strait, it is highly unlikely. In a coordinated patrol, navies remain on their own sides of the border and under separate commands. So, the Indian Navy likely operates only up to the mouth of the strait.

The Standard Operating Procedures for the India-Thailand and India-Indonesia Corpats were established in the early 2000s and apparently have not been refreshed since then. This suggests that maritime patrolling cooperation between India and its two neighbours has not qualitatively changed in the last two decades.

The EU’s New India Strategy Amid the China-US Rivalry

Kashish Parpiani

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This month, the European Union unveiled its new strategy to “reinforce prosperity and security” with India.

The Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council proposes structuring the India-EU cooperation agenda around five focus areas: prosperity and sustainability; technology and innovation; security and defense; connectivity and global issues; and enablers across pillars.

Moreover, it dispels any notion that the EU’s “Competiveness Compass” and India’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” focus are at odds. Instead, the EU Joint Communication on a New Strategic EU-India Agenda commits Europe’s regulatory expertise, single market access, and joint innovation to support India’s inclusive and sustainable growth.

The EU Joint Communication affirming Europe’s intent for deeper engagement with India comes amid ongoing India-EU trade negotiations for a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA). India’s Minister of Commerce Piyush Goyal recently said that it is important “not to let the search for a perfect deal become the enemy of progress,” adding that the direction of negotiations is “extremely positive.”

This sentiment was echoed by EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security (Interinstitutional Relations and Transparency) Maros Sefcovic, who said that India-EU trade negotiations have reached an unprecedented level of “seriousness, mutual trust, and shared ambition.” He even said that efforts are being “maximized to finalize the negotiations by the end of the year.”

This shared emphasis on conducting an FTA stems from the vast untapped potential of India-EU ties. In 2024, India-EU trade in goods reached 120 billion euros, making an increase of about 90 percent over the past decade. This was coupled with services trade rising to 60 billion euros. Around 6,000 European companies operate in India, and EU FDI in India reached 140 billion euros in 2023 – almost doubling over five years. Despite this encouraging trajectory, India accounts for just 2.5 percent of the EU’s total trade.

Pakistan’s Flooding Underscores Misplaced Priorities

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

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As Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a historic defense pact with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh on Wednesday, back home, Pakistan was reeling from the aftereffects of some of the worst flooding in the country’s history. The juxtaposition was inevitable, given Pakistan’s 20 percent increase in defense funding in July, in a budget where overall federal expenditure was slashed – just as floods were ravaging northern parts of the country.

The destruction has left over 2 million homeless, more than a thousand dead, and a significant percentage of Pakistan’s population, 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line, fighting for survival. This year’s crisis comes three years after at least 1,700 were killed, more than 30 million people affected, and up to 10 million acres of agricultural land destroyed in the 2022 floods that caused damages exceeding $15 billion. Pakistan continues to struggle to raise funds for disaster management.

Pakistan was listed as the most vulnerable country to environmental effects by the Climate Risk Index in 2022. The country experiences frequent floods, which this year were caused by excessive monsoon rains in both the northeastern and northwestern areas, as well as glaciers melting in the Gilgit-Baltistan region owing to rising temperatures. With over 13,000 glaciers, more than any place in the world outside the Earth’s polar regions, Pakistan is increasingly suffering from global warming.

As glacial ice melts, flooding is further aggravated by construction activities close to rivers in the region. The infrastructure around the rivers, such as barrages, dams, bridges over rivers, and the encroachment of land for agriculture, has been a major cause of flood devastation.

“We need a rethink on how we approach rivers. These floods were exacerbated by climate change; they weren’t caused by them,” environmental lawyer Ahmad Rafay Alam told The Diplomat.

While the government has been urged to discourage the misuse of land, real estate developers have been a major culprit. Housing societies near the Ravi River, for instance, have been seen submerged in floodwaters this year. “If you want to build near a river, at least take some of the profits from your investments and put them into securing your properties,” said Alam.

Hezbollah Is Bloodied but Far from Beaten

Michael Rubin

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Fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah carried out a training exercise in Aaramta village in the Jezzine District, southern Lebanon, on Sunday, May 21, 2023. The show of force came ahead of “Liberation Day,” the annual celebration of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon on May 25, 2000, and in the wake of a recent escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Gaza Strip.

Key Points and Summary – Hezbollah isn’t done. Despite leadership losses, its financing—diaspora-linked laundering and new backing from Turkey to offset Iran—remains resilient.

-Unless President Joseph Aoun disarms Hezbollah by year’s end, Lebanon could face a renewed insurgency: IEDs on LAF vehicles, sniper terror, and voter intimidation in the south.

Hezbollah Isn’t Finished: Why Lebanon Must Prep for Insurgency

In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to uproot Palestinian terror cells that had established themselves in the south of the country. Initially, Lebanese—both Christians and Shi’a—welcomed the Israelis with open arms; that honeymoon soon turned into a nightmare as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began training Lebanese Shi’a in guerilla tactics and bomb-making.

After a brief intra-Shi’a civil war in the early 1980s, Hezbollah consolidated control over Shi’i representation; anyone who challenged the group’s monopoly or called out their corruption and treason risked their lives.

Hezbollah played diplomats and American analysts in the intelligence community and think tank community for fools by reinventing themselves as a face of Lebanese nationalism. In reality, they were always a force that undercut Lebanese sovereignty for the sake of paymasters and sponsors more than 1,000 miles away.

Hezbollah restarted its war with Israel on October 8, 2023 as it sought to share Hamas’ glory and take advantage of Israel’s distraction. For the Iranian proxy group, it would be a fatal mistake.

Decoding Beijing’s ‘Colonization of the Mind’ Narrative

Shijie Wang

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A new report by the Xinhua Institute argues that U.S. “cognitive warfare” attempts to “colonize” the minds of people across the world, in particular in global south countries. American influence is framed as ideological infiltration designed to generate social conflicts, undermine stability, and even subvert regimes.

The consistency of messaging from the PRC indicates that attempts at reassurance from the United States will not be effective in shifting Beijing’s assumptions regarding U.S. intent.

Media outlets and prominent online commentators in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) often characterize negative domestic news stories as evidence of U.S. infiltration, accusing “foreign forces” while avoiding potential structural explanations for governance failures.

Beijing sees American cultural strength as one of five forms of hegemony to be eroded, along with political, military, technological, and economic hegemony. It believes it is succeeding in the first three, while it is making steady progress in the economic domain. This latest report represents a further step toward undermining U.S. soft power globally.

On September 7, the Xinhua Institute (新华社研究院), a think tank under Xinhua News Agency, released a report titled “Colonization of the Mind: The Means, Roots, and Global Perils of U.S. Cognitive Warfare” (思想殖民——美国认知战的手段、根源及国际危害). The report was distributed to participants at the 2025 Global South Media Think Tank High-Level Forum (全球南方媒体智库高端论坛) held in Kunming, Yunnan Province (Xinhua, September 8). It also gained traction on social media, where the term “colonization of the mind” saw a spike in exposure compared to other trending internet memes (see Figure 1). Most content related to the term originated from large accounts such as Xinhua News Agency and prominent “key opinion leaders” (KOLs), (see Figure 2).

As with many PRC narratives, the report underscores Beijing’s entrenched view of the United States, one that has proven resistant to external messaging. This consistency reflects not only a propaganda strategy but also a deeply held set of assumptions about U.S. intentions. The report reads less like an analytic study and more like a “tao zei xi wen” (讨贼檄文)—the proclamations common during China’s premodern civil wars that enumerated an enemy’s crimes while rallying support among one’s own forces. It contains three chapters, covering, respectively, the historical background of the so-called “colonization of the mind” worldwide, the methods of this form of influence, and the global harms that it causes . These are followed by a conclusion, in which the report shifts from a combative tone to one of lofty appeal, invoking Xi’s frame for a new world order, the “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), and calling for confident and equal “dialogue and mutual learning” (交流互鉴) (Xinhua, September 7).

Corruptible Connections: CCP Ties and Smart Device Dangers

Matthew Gabriel Cazel Brazil

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Smart home device manufacturers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) benefit from efforts by Beijing to export data infrastructure and governance standards along with “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices.

Manufacturers like Xiaomi, TCL, and Skyworth maintain strong links with the PRC government via internal Party-aligned structures, leadership by Party members, and participation in bidding for contracts from state-owned enterprises and military procurement.

PRC companies have shipped products overseas that have been assessed as having serious cybersecurity risks: a U.S. government agency found TCL smart TVs allowed unauthorized access to the devices’ data and media files, while users discovered Skyworth Group smart TVs were sending back data about other devices in users’ homes back to a Beijing-based company’s servers.

On September 8, the 2025 World Smart Industry Expo concluded in Chongqing. A sprawling event hosting over 600 companies from around the world, the venue comprised 130,000 square meters of indoor exhibition space, in addition to a large outdoor area for live demonstrations of drone hardware and other tech. It was a chance for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to flex its growing technological and industrial muscles to a global audience (World Internet Congress, September 9).

Coverage of the expo in state media noted that “smart home” (智能居家) technologies were one of five main dedicated sections, along with autonomous networked electric vehicles (智能网联新能源汽车), digitized urban management systems (数字城市), low-altitude autonomous commercial drones (低空经济), and autonomous robots (智能机器) (Xinhua, September 9).

“Smart home” technologies, which include networked consumer-grade appliances under the umbrella of the “Internet of Things” (IoT), are rapidly becoming available in homes across the world. Beijing has spent years ensuring that these products are designed and manufactured in the PRC and then exported alongside data infrastructure and governance standards. Centrally directed efforts since 2009 to control end-product manufacturing, component supply chains, and technical standards point to ambitions to make dominance of the global IoT industry a national priority (China Brief, July 25, August 7).

China Has Weaponized Battery Production Against the United States

Elaine Dezenski, and Josh Birenbaum

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China has dominated the global battery supply chain through non-market practices, posing a threat to US economic and national security.

In the 1980s, a global competitor from Asia upended the American economy with a flood of small, cheap cars that blindsided America’s automakers, and an all-out trade war seemed inevitable.

“While sales of American-made cars have been slumping, Japanese-made Datsuns and Toyotas, Mazdas and Hondas have been streaming through US ports at the rate of some 6,000 vehicles a day,” Time magazine reported in 1981.

From Trade Rivalry to Systemic Threat

Today, the threat from the flood of cheap Chinese imports goes far beyond the United States automotive industry and is far more dangerous than the threat posed by cheap imports of the past. Unlike Japan in the 1980s, China is playing according to a wide range of non-market practices: intellectual property (IP) theft and forced knowledge transfer, monopolization and vertical integration, massive state subsidies and market protection, suppressed wages and forced labor, and global price manipulation and dumping. As the Trump Administration’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda explains, “technology and IP-intensive sectors are hardly the only ones that are threatened by China’s non-market behavior.”

Using these non-market methods, China has systematically cornered the technology at the heart of next-generation vehicles and mobility: lithium batteries. China’s advanced battery dominance was developed through decades of other non-market practices. Its battery bottleneck also represents a clear and present danger to the security of our military supply chains, the resilience of our core industries, and the efficient functioning of market economies around the globe.

According to the Department of Defense, advanced lithium batteries are “essential to thousands of military systems” from drones and lasers to handheld radios and night vision goggles. Batteries are at the heart of high tech, powering laptops and cell phones, and are vital for the power tools on construction sites. Large-scale battery systems are beginning to back up factories, homes, military bases, and entire electrical grids.

ISIS’s Transition and the Interplay of Online and Face-to-Face Recruitment

Suleyman Ozeren, Suat Cubukcu, Gokhan Aksu 

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The article explores how ISIS sustained its operational presence through a strategic blend of face-to-face and online recruitment, including prison radicalization, social media outreach, and the exploitation of local grievances. It highlights how ISIS adapted to territorial losses, with a focus on its expansion into new regions, particularly in Africa, through affiliates such as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Islamic State-Central Africa Province (ISCAP), ISIS-Mozambique, and ISIS in the Greater Sahara.

Introduction

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), represents a unique case study of how a terrorist organization can emerge, rapidly expand, suffers a territorial defeat, yet successfully reconstitute itself as a global extremist franchise. While ISIS built on the know-how and ideological foundation of al-Qaeda, it has proved far more successful in building a diverse recruitment and propaganda machine.

To understand the group’s trajectory, three main periods should be analyzed: its emergence, expansion, and enduring insurgency. In short, ISIS “emerged from the convulsions of the war in Iraq (2003-2011), the Arab revolutions (2010-present) and the civil war in Syria (2011-present)”.

ISIS’ global network of affiliates across various regions has contributed to the group’s resilience and solidified its status as the preeminent force in global jihadist terrorism. This article explores how ISIS strategically leveraged both offline and online recruitment methods to broaden its reach. It also investigates the emergence and recruitment activities of ISIS’ regional affiliates in Africa, with a focus on the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), ISIS-Mozambique, and ISIS in the Greater Sahara.

Overview of the Rise and Fall of ISIS

ISIS’s Transition and the Interplay of Online and Face-to-Face Recruitment

Suleyman Ozeren, Suat Cubukcu, Gokhan Aksu 

Source Link

The article explores how ISIS sustained its operational presence through a strategic blend of face-to-face and online recruitment, including prison radicalization, social media outreach, and the exploitation of local grievances. It highlights how ISIS adapted to territorial losses, with a focus on its expansion into new regions, particularly in Africa, through affiliates such as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Islamic State-Central Africa Province (ISCAP), ISIS-Mozambique, and ISIS in the Greater Sahara.

Introduction

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), represents a unique case study of how a terrorist organization can emerge, rapidly expand, suffers a territorial defeat, yet successfully reconstitute itself as a global extremist franchise. While ISIS built on the know-how and ideological foundation of al-Qaeda, it has proved far more successful in building a diverse recruitment and propaganda machine.

To understand the group’s trajectory, three main periods should be analyzed: its emergence, expansion, and enduring insurgency. In short, ISIS “emerged from the convulsions of the war in Iraq (2003-2011), the Arab revolutions (2010-present) and the civil war in Syria (2011-present)”.

ISIS’ global network of affiliates across various regions has contributed to the group’s resilience and solidified its status as the preeminent force in global jihadist terrorism. This article explores how ISIS strategically leveraged both offline and online recruitment methods to broaden its reach. It also investigates the emergence and recruitment activities of ISIS’ regional affiliates in Africa, with a focus on the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), ISIS-Mozambique, and ISIS in the Greater Sahara.

Overview of the Rise and Fall of ISIS

ISIS initially emerged after the second US invasion of Iraq and rebranded itself multiple times. The institutional collapse in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, along with widespread discrimination against Sunni Arabs, and sectarian politics that further marginalized them, created the social-psychosocial and political conditions conducive to the emergence and empowerment of ISIS in Iraq.

Trump’s Boycott of the UN’s Human Rights Process Puts America Last, Not First

Catherine Powell, Beth Van Schaack, and Desirée Cormier Smith

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Catherine Powell, an adjunct senior fellow for women and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the former White House National Security Council human rights director. Desirée Cormier Smith is the former U.S. special representative for racial equity and justice. Beth Van Schaack is the former ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice.

In August, President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly withdrew from the United Nations’ signature human rights process: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). While this move didn’t make headlines in domestic media, it should have. The UPR offers an opportunity for all countries to take stock of their voluntary efforts to promote human rights in a periodic report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. It is an important mechanism that the United States helped to establish and has long backed, including when other states have threatened to withdraw from it.

With world leaders now gathering in New York for the annual UN General Assembly, this decision takes on new meaning. As the host nation, the United States holds an outsized leadership role and has—at least rhetorically—been supportive of the United Nations’ mission over the years. While pulling out of the UPR process may, at first, seem consistent with Trump’s “America First” agenda, the reality is that this withdrawal is not only bad for U.S. democracy and human thriving at home, but it also undermines U.S. interests and influence abroad. The United States had already pulled out of the UNHRC earlier this year. Autocratic regimes are now moving swiftly in a scramble for global influence to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s continued retreat.

To be sure, the United States has never been entirely consistent in its prioritization of human rights, which often took a back seat to other geopolitical concerns. However, these rights were at least carefully considered as diplomats crafted U.S. foreign policy. Although inspired to a certain degree by idealism, advancing human rights has also been motivated by pure self-interest as well. Experience shows that protecting and advancing human rights globally leads to greater stability and prosperity, opens markets for U.S. businesses, protects Americans abroad, and reduces migration pressures on those who might otherwise flee oppression or poverty. Furthermore, countries that respect human rights are better geopolitical allies and trading partners and do not resort to war to resolve disputes.

Trump Addresses the UN General Assembly

James M. Lindsay

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Six years after last speaking to the UN General Assembly, President Donald Trump took full advantage of his return to Turtle Bay today. Asked to speak for fifteen minutes, he addressed the gathering of world leaders for nearly an hour. Rather than sketching a vision of how the world might cooperate to meet the challenges it faces, Trump touted his accomplishments and aired his grievances. The result likely thrilled his supporters just as it antagonized his critics.

Much of Trump’s speech was familiar to anyone who has watched a MAGA rally. He frequently went off script. He boasted of his domestic policy successes, complained that he had been overlooked for the Nobel Prize, and bragged that the United States is “the hottest country in the world.” Former President Joe Biden served as a punching bag throughout the speech. Trump mentioned his predecessor directly or indirectly nine times, accusing him of leading “the most corrupt, incompetent administration in history.”

Biden was not the only target of Trump’s barbs. The United Nations was as well. Some of his complaints were minor: a broken escalator on his way to the speech and a malfunctioning teleprompter once he reached the dais. Some were historical: he lamented losing a contract decades ago to renovate UN headquarters and claimed he would have done a far better job than the winning contractor and would have given the building marble rather than terrazzo floors. And some were substantive: he argued that the United Nations is failing to live up to its “tremendous potential.” Anyone familiar with the United Nations sympathized when he dismissed its penchant for a “strongly worded letter” and “empty words” in place of effective action. He offered no practical solutions, however, for improving the organization’s operations.

Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet. Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.

Trump did not sugarcoat his case. He called “the crisis of uncontrolled migration” the “number one political issue of our time.” He argued that Europe is being “invaded” by migrants and that as the result of the failed experiment with open borders, “your countries are going to hell.” Likewise, he warned his fellow leaders that “if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

Why the US should stop protecting Israel’s nuclear weapons

Victor Gilinsky 

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Israeli Air Force F-15I and F-35I fighter jets fly alongside a US B-52 bomber during a joint exercise on March 4, 2025. It is unknown whether Israeli fighter jets are nuclear-capable. In the United States, both F-15s and F-35s are certified to carry non-strategic nuclear weapons. 

The pause in Israel’s war on Iran provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of the United States in what is essentially the protection of Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Washington’s unabashed protection of Israel’s nuclear goals is nearly unqualified. It goes against any consideration of US security interests and continues despite an increasingly aggressive and frightening Israeli stance. (Prime Minister Netanyahu recently referred to Israel as a “super-Sparta.”) The US public is catching on to Netanyahu’s overreach, but the administration is still locked in a tight embrace with Israel.

Israel’s nuclear proliferation. Of course, it is not in the United States’ interest for Iran to get nuclear weapons. But no more is it in the US security interest for Israel to continue to possess nuclear weapons, much less a powerful nuclear force that can potentially strike all of the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. That has become especially worrisome as political power in Israel has shifted to religiously inspired elements that favor uncompromising warfare to dominate the Middle East, even at the risk of catastrophe.

Israel has pushed so far beyond the limits of what is acceptable in warfare since October 2023, and so antagonized much of the world, that it could face a situation that threatens its exclusionist state. Would it use its nuclear weapons in extremis? The world—and Israel itself—would be better off if these weapons didn’t exist.

Given the current Israeli government and the pro-Israel Trump US administration, Israel’s nuclear program seems unlikely to change. But conditions do change, events happen, and opportunities arise unexpectedly. Consider, for example, the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western capitals despite strong Israeli opposition, an event that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. The essential point is to clarify that it is in the US security interest for fewer countries to possess nuclear weapons and that those that do have nuclear weapons possess fewer of them. Israeli nuclear weapons should not be an exception to this principle.

Niall Ferguson: I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready for It.

Niall Ferguson

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Sir Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of 16 books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, and Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. He is a columnist for The Free Press. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of the Latin American fintech company Ualá, and a co-founding trustee of the new University of Austin.

Can Ukraine Really Win the War Against Russia?

Robert Farley

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Australia is sending 49 of its retired M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, a move that bolsters Kyiv's armored firepower but raises significant questions about survivability on the modern battlefield. While the donation is a welcome gesture, US officials have reportedly expressed private frustration, warning that Ukraine struggles to sustain the complex tanks and highlighting their vulnerability to cheap, top-attack FPV drones. The war in Ukraine has become a "drone war," where even advanced main battle tanks are at constant risk. The effectiveness of these donated Abrams will ultimately depend on Ukraine's ability to counter this pervasive threat.

Key Points and Summary – Dr. Robert Farley analyzes President Trump’s abrupt rhetorical shift on the Russia-Ukraine war—from casting Kyiv as weak to framing Russia as economically brittle and Ukraine as capable of recovery. Words matter: a tougher U.S. tone could dent Russian morale and bargaining leverage.

-Yet Farley warns that Washington may still push Europe to shoulder more costs while lacking the institutional muscle to escalate economic pressure.

Ukraine Tanks. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Battlefield realities remain stubborn for both sides.

–His bottom line: durable peace requires convincing Moscow it cannot achieve war aims—continuity of military and economic pressure, not mixed signals, is what shortens the conflict.

Ukraine War: What Happens Next?

President Trump surprised everyone yesterday with what looks like a dramatic about-face on the future of the Russia-Ukraine War.

After months of attempting to bring the war to a close by flattering Moscow’s strength and sense of purpose, Trump yesterday declared that the Russian economy was in crisis and that Ukraine stood a good chance of retaking the territory that it has lost thus far. So far, the change is only rhetorical, but rhetoric matters in war.

The Proliferation Problem Is Back

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Ernest J. Moniz, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan

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In 1964, China detonated a 22-kiloton nuclear device at a test site in the arid northwestern Xinjiang region—and the political fallout reached Washington. Worried about the prospect that many countries around the world would soon gain nuclear weapons, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson convened a committee of seasoned foreign policy leaders to advise him on what Washington should do to prevent proliferation. Led by the former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Roswell Gilpatric, the group asked what an increase in nuclear-armed states would mean for U.S. security, what assurances the United States could realistically offer states that decided to forgo nuclear weapons, and how far Washington should go to prevent more states from acquiring them.

The Gilpatric committee’s conclusion was unanimous: averting the spread of nuclear weapons to any state, friend or foe, should be a top national security priority. To achieve that end, the committee provided a policy blueprint that Washington then went about implementing. Acting on the group’s advice, U.S. officials began negotiating multilateral nonproliferation treaties and agreements, including, controversially, accords with the Soviet Union. The United States also developed measures to cajole and coerce other countries into remaining nonnuclear, including extending security assurances, supporting civilian scientific endeavors, and threatening to cut off military support and impose economic penalties on proliferating states. Thanks in large part to such initiatives, U.S. efforts to combat proliferation over the last 60 years have succeeded more often than they have failed. Only nine states possess nuclear weapons, and only North Korea has acquired them in the twenty-first century.

But the nuclear landscape is changing in ways that are bringing proliferation back to the fore. An increasingly powerful China is scaling up its nuclear arsenal. Russia has backstopped its war in Ukraine with threats of nuclear use. Iran’s nuclear program was set back by recent U.S. and Israeli attacks, but it was not destroyed. U.S. allies, worried about their security and unsure about Washington’s commitment to their defense, are also mulling going nuclear. And evolving technologies such as artificial intelligence are making it easier than ever for states to build the bomb. Against this backdrop, the Cold War–era tools and tactics that Washington has long relied on to manage proliferation challenges are eroding. The international treaties and regimes that govern nuclear issues, particularly the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), are badly frayed. Great-power cooperation on nuclear dangers has stalled.

In Abrupt Change, Trump Says Ukraine In ‘Position To Win’ War With Russia

RFE RL

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In an abrupt change showing his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said Ukraine could win back all of its territory from Russia with the help of its European allies.

Trump has previously said both sides would have to cede land to end the war. Russia currently controls around one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014.

After a speech at the UN General Assembly where he called on European allies during his address to immediately stop buying oil from Russia, Trump told reporters at the start of a meeting with Zelenskyy that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter the alliance’s airspace.

He followed that with comments in a social media post after the Zelenskyy meeting saying Russia has been fighting “aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.”

“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump wrote.

Zelenskyy noted the “big shift” in Trump’s comments while speaking alone at a news conference, adding that the US leader’s understanding of the situation on the ground in Ukraine is now much clearer.

“Trump had a relationship with Putin and he trusted him. Putin was telling Trump fairytales,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Trump as a “gamechanger.”

“I told Trump that Putin will not wait for the end of his war in Ukraine — he will try to find a weak spot in NATO and this is already happening…Putin will want to ‘exchange’ one war for another.”

How Long-Range Weapons Could Upend Modern Warfare

James Holmes

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Long-range weapons will not totally reshape war as we know it—but they could blur the difference between offensive and defensive operations.

The character of warfare feels increasingly elastic. Countervailing factors are stretching and compressing distance at the same time. For one, military technology is galloping along. Sensor, computer, and weapons technology is drastically boosting the reach, precision, speed, and evasiveness of guided missiles. Uncrewed and often autonomous vehicles prowl the skies, the sea surface, and the depths. Novel implements like artificial intelligence promise to further alter the face of warfare. Meanwhile, space forces maintain sleepless overwatch over the battlespace, helping armed forces detect, track, and target their foes at extreme ranges.

In other words, technology is stretching precision-weapons range to its utmost. In fact, the US Air Force and Space Force prophesy that the day is not far distant when armed forces and societies will enjoy no safe refuge from attack—anywhere on the planet.

At the same time, the availability of precision technology is democratizing long-range strike warfare. Not that many years ago, the US military enjoyed a near-monopoly on long-range strikes. US fighting forces could roam Eurasian environs with impunity, intervening in the rimlands wherever policymakers in Washington decreed. American forces could wage “standoff” warfare—firing their weapons from beyond their opponent’s reach, rather than venturing into harm’s way. Standoff warfare safeguards platforms such as warships and warplanes—not to mention their human crews—while still letting them visit destruction on the foe. Range curbs risk.

Cheap, Small, Long-Range: The Missile’s Impossible Triangle

In recent years, however, the proliferation of precision-strike technology has largely nullified the US standoff advantage. Proliferation has empowered a widening circle of combatants—the standout being China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—to engage antagonists such as US joint forces from beyond the reach of their weaponry. Having belatedly awoken to this danger, the Pentagon and defense-industrial complex are working feverishly to boost the range of America’s precision arms, along with firing platforms that carry them. If successful they will restore some semblance of martial parity in the Indo-Pacific and other embattled theaters.

Israel bombing Qatar crosses a line the US can’t ignore

Abdullah Hayek

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On September 9, 2025, explosions ripped through Doha in an unprecedented Israeli strike that aimed to kill Hamas leaders sheltering in Qatar. For decades, Israel has pursued its enemies abroad, from Amman to Dubai to Tehran. But bombing the capital of a U.S. major non-NATO ally is a reckless escalation that undermines American interests, destabilizes the Middle East, and crosses a line that Washington cannot allow to be blurred.

Qatar is not Gaza, Lebanon, or even Iran. It is home to Al-Udeid Air Base, where 10,000 U.S. troops project American power across the region. It is a country that just signed more than $1.2 trillion in commercial and defense deals with Washington. To see its sovereignty shredded by an ostensible U.S. partner is an outrage, unnecessary and unwarranted, that should provoke a sharp course correction in U.S. policy toward Israel.

The scale of the diplomatic rupture was immediate. Qatar condemned the strike as “a cowardly Israeli attack” and “a blatant violation of all international laws and norms,” warning it endangered Qatari civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unapologetic. “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” he declared, emphasizing the operation was wholly “independent.”

According to reports, Washington received only a few minutes’ notice before missiles slammed into Doha. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the attack “a flagrant violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity” and urged parties to seek a ceasefire, not destroy it. The symbolism was stark: Israel carried out an airstrike in the capital of a U.S.-designated ally, as if to prove it can act wherever it pleases regardless of American interests or international law.

That arrogance has real consequences. The Hamas delegation targeted in Doha was not plotting attacks in secret. Al Jazeera reported that the officials were in Qatar to discuss a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal intended to halt nearly two years of war in Gaza. Targeting them mid-negotiation sent a clear message: Israel prioritizes retribution over diplomacy.

The results were predictable. The fragile talks collapsed, hostage negotiations were frozen, and the prospect of ending a conflict that has already killed more than 64,000 Palestinians and left Gaza in ruins evaporated overnight.

How Ukraine Gamified Drone Warfare

Simon Shuster

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One afternoon this spring, Mykhailo Fedorov, a minister in the wartime government of Ukraine, turned up the volume on his laptop and played a video to illustrate his latest innovation. Its purpose, he explained, was to make the experience of combat feel more like a video game to Ukrainian troops—or as he put it, “to gamify” the war.

The clip showed a series of aerial strikes, each filmed from the vantage of a combat drone. One of them, apparently flying by night, had used its thermal-imaging camera to detect an enemy soldier in what looked like a field or forest. It was difficult to tell, because the background was dark and the figure in the frame resembled a white blob more than a human being. The Russian soldier seemed to freeze in place as the drone hovered. Then it dropped its explosive charge, and a shower of sparks burst outward from the spot where the man had been. “That’s six points,” Fedorov told me. “It used to be only four.”

A few weeks earlier, Fedorov had tweaked the algorithm he controls to increase the number of points the Ukrainian military’s drone units receive for killing a Russian soldier. The result of the change, he said, had been astonishing: “The kill count doubled in a month.”

At 34, Fedorov is one of the youngest members of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war council, a square-jawed fitness enthusiast who likes to wear a black baseball cap over his crew cut. His office in central Kyiv feels as if it might be a frat house at MIT, with free weights and other workout gear surrounding the minister’s desk. On the day I visited, small drones stood on the shelves in various stages of assembly, their colorful wires and circuit boards exposed.

Over the past 3½ years of war, drones have done more than any other weapons to help Ukraine defend itself. They now account for about two-thirds of battlefield deaths in a war of attrition that has, by U.S. estimates, killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of troops. Ukraine has deployed drones by the millions, turning what began as a battle of tanks and artillery into a high-tech proving ground for the world’s deadliest gadgets. Fedorov, the country’s Minister of Digital Transformation, has played a key role in shaping the strategy. His latest scheme, known as the Army of Drones bonus program, brings elements of Roblox and Fortnite to both the blood-soaked realm of real-life combat and the arid one of weapons acquisition.

As the U.S. Pulls Back From the U.N., Rivals Stand to Gain

Mara Hvistendahl

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This year, while reporting in Geneva, I heard about a revealing meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council that took place in the city this spring.

The meeting, an annual closed-door retreat of ambassadors, was held against the backdrop of President Trump’s threats to slash American funding for the United Nations. According to two diplomats who attended, as the group discussed how to save money, the ambassadors of China and Cuba had a suggestion: What if the council limited inquiries into, say, government-sanctioned abuses like torture, war crimes, and jailing of dissidents?

Diplomats told me this wasn’t the only time in recent months that representatives of those countries cited American funding cuts to justify what seem like convenient changes to how the U.N. conducts business. China and Cuba, along with other countries like Iran, Russia and Venezuela, have repeatedly suggested scaling back human rights investigations.

The United States has always been the U.N.’s largest financial contributor. But since taking office, Trump has upended its operations by withdrawing from the Human Rights Council and other agencies, and freezing funding for others. Officials are bracing for more cuts.

I’ve spent the past three months talking to diplomats and U.N. officials and reviewing documents, trying to understand the consequences of this pullback. What I’ve found: The Trump administration’s retreat is emboldening authoritarian nations to reshape the U.N. to their advantage.

Money problems

The U.N. has long had money issues, and the Trump administration’s retreat has made its cash crunch worse. As a result, U.N. leaders are looking to save money everywhere: by relocating positions to cities less expensive than New York or Geneva, ending some leases early, and even potentially cutting rations to peacekeeping troops.

Donald Trump’s Tariffs Are Nothing But a Giant Mistake

Bruce Klingner

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United States President Donald Trump touts his trade deals as victories against foreign countries, but it will ultimately be American businesses and consumers who pay the price. Trump’s tariffs are capricious protectionist measures ostensibly imposed to retaliate against other nations’ trade barriers, but were instead based on US trade deficits. Moreover, the US has now weaponized economic penalties to remedy non-economic issues such as immigration, drug trafficking, and election results.

The Truth About Tariffs

Despite President Trump’s repeated claims, foreign businesses and governments do not pay for tariffs on goods imported into the United States. Instead, it is the American importing firm that pays the tariff, which in turn decides to either absorb the additional cost as reduced profit or pass it along to American consumers as increased prices. So, every increased tariff imposed by the Trump administration is a tax on the American people, perhaps the most significant tax increase in history.

In addition, American firms manufacturing goods in the United States will now be paying significantly higher prices—up to 50 percent more—for some metals and components necessary for making their products. This, in turn, will raise the prices that US consumers will have to pay for American-made products. US car manufacturers are complaining that, because of Trump’s tariffs, they are now more disadvantaged against foreign competitors than before the tariffs.

Tariffs Go Against Existing “Deals” and Agreements

The US tariffs on South Korea violate the 2012 South Korea-US (KORUS) free trade agreement that the first Trump administration renegotiated in 2018, and which Trump hailed at the time as “a great deal for American and Korean workers.” Trump’s tariffs also violate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which the first Trump administration renegotiated and he hailed as a “wonderful new trade deal” that “greatly opens markets to our farmers and manufacturers [and] reduces trade barriers to the US”

The risks in the protocol connecting AI to the digital world

Abi Olvera 

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While working on a research paper, I decided to test one of the leading AI assistants and asked Anthropic’s Claude to analyze hundreds of emails and build a spreadsheet of recent Nobel Prize-winners. Claude delivered, referencing websites, organizing data, and catching some, though not all, of its own errors.

Then I asked the app to schedule a simple dinner gathering between several colleagues.

It botched the start time twice.

This is generative AI in 2025—systems that can synthesize information across websites, email, and spreadsheets with sophistication but trip up with something as simple as calendar event start times. Nonetheless, it represents a huge advance: The ability to connect AI systems directly to one’s online life wasn’t possible until several months ago. To get AI assistants to interact with other web services, like reading an email inbox, most users needed a third-party program or browser specific to their use-case. Now, Claude and other AI models can connect directly with email providers to read and respond to messages, set up calendar events, and create and edit spreadsheets. Claude can even connect with popular task and project management systems like Asana and Notion, as well as payment processing tools like Stripe. This allows AI “chatbots” to become “AI agents,” or models that interact with the real world and can carry out tasks.

What enabled these integrations was the development of a framework called model context protocol (MCP)—a small technical standard that has quietly become the invisible infrastructure connecting AI to the rest of our digital world. But this protocol wasn’t built for what it’s doing now. It was designed for a very narrow and basic purpose: letting Claude’s desktop app connect to local files and simple tools. Its widespread adoption introduces some opportunities, like accelerating cybersecurity agents, but also some privacy and security challenges. The tech industry and open-source community are driving efforts to solve these issues, though the pace of adoption makes keeping up difficult.

The Five Vehicles of Irregular Warfare

Jeremiah "Lumpy" Lumbaca 

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Innovations in five areas are transforming the character and nature of irregular warfare (IW). Described herein as “vehicles,” these enablers are influencing outcomes from Ukraine to Taiwan and the Middle East. The vehicles are space, drones, artificial intelligence (AI), unconventional maritime operations, and global supply chains.

IW is about people, cognition, incentives, coercion, assurance, and legitimacy. The five vehicles don’t change any of that. Instead, these vehicles should be thought of as the most important tools used to promote or “deliver” Irregular Warfare. They are deeply interconnected, with their interdependencies amplifying their collective impact, necessitating new approaches for strategists and policymakers. Each section of this article outlines how one vehicle relies on one or more of the others.

The Space Vehicle

Space has become a critical vehicle for Irregular Warfare primarily because of the democratization of technologies associated with it. Commercial satellite imagery, with resolutions as fine as 30 centimeters from providers like Planet Labs, enables non-state actors and smaller powers to access advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Low-earth-orbit satellite constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink with over 6,000 satellites, facilitate coordination in contested environments like eastern Ukraine, where reliable connectivity enables real-time tactical adjustments.

Space-based navigation systems, including GPS and Galileo, supercharge the precision of drone and maritime operations, enabling strikes within meters of intended targets, like was recently seen in Operation Spider’s Web. However, while space assets enable hybrid conflict, they are also vulnerable to it themselves. Portable jammers costing less than $1,000 can disrupt satellite communications, while ground-based lasers can temporarily blind optical sensors, as seen in reported incidents targeting U.S. satellites. Cyberattacks on ground stations, such as the 2022 attack on Viasat’s KA-SAT network, can disable entire satellite networks. These actions, often difficult to attribute, degrade capabilities without triggering overt conflict. Non-state actors leverage dual-use technologies, such as 3U CubeSats weighing under 4 kilograms, for ISR or electronic warfare, integrating space-based systems with terrestrial operations to create asymmetric advantages. The interdependence of drones, AI, and unconventional maritime operations underscores the strategic importance of space in irregular competition.

The Drones Vehicle

Cyber-Warfare – Command-and-Control Analogue

Samantha O'Driscoll 

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Many news agencies have debated whether the breach on the SolarWinds platform was a new way of a state-actors attacking systems. Yet, it was instead the exploitation of existing vulnerabilities. Indeed, Coalition forces in Operation Desert Storm achieved the same effect of disrupting Saddam’s command-and-control structure through a vulnerability in the way they directed the war-fighting effort in Kuwait. In the aftermath of the 2007 Estonian Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), NATO analysts concluded “it was highly likely that a key objective of the attack was to test and demonstrate cyber capabilities, with the outcome of sowing confusion and uncertainty.” This conclusion, and many other examples like it, led policy makers to focus on the question of whether cyber-warfare/digital warfare is a new warfighting domain – however, with that question came a challenge to define what that meant. Their framing was:

Cyberspace is contested at all times as malign actors increasingly seek to destabilise the Alliance by employing malicious cyber activities and campaigns. Potential adversaries seek to degrade our critical infrastructure, interfere with our government services, extract intelligence, steal intellectual property and impede our military activities. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has highlighted the extent to which cyber activities are a feature of modern conflict.

Although NATO framed an inconsistent connection between existing methods of warfare, such as command-and-control (C2W), it makes it harder for policy makers to determine if an incident is a criminal act or an act of war.

Even by NATO’s own admission it recognizes that cyber-attacks are going to be “a major component of conventional warfare”:

In the summer of 2008, the conflict between Russia and Georgia demonstrated that cyber-attacks have the potential to become a major component of conventional warfare.

Indeed, during the COVID Pandemic under the threat of increased cyber-attacks the Australian 2020 Cyber Security Strategy adopted similar language which begins to describe an adversarial benefiting effect:

‘AI +’ Initiatives Multiply After Years of Experimentation

Arran Hope

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Executive Summary:By 2035, artificial intelligence (AI) will underpin practically all sectors of the economy and society, according to recent plans from policy planners in Beijing.

The upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan could become the first to include “AI+” as a major policy initiative.

Development of the “AI+” formulation is a good example of Beijing’s approach to policymaking, with almost a decade of local experimentation preceding its appearance in central-level policies.

Experts caution that current “AI+X” approaches remain superficial and that AI diffusion could be hampered by short-changed local governments, a weak domestic venture capital sector, and the complexity of the integrating the technology throughout the economy.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is officially moving to the center of the national stage in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the words of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), it “is the core engine of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation” (新一轮科技革命和产业变革的核心引擎) and is “reshaping the way economic development and social life operate” (重塑经济发展与社会生活的运作方式) (NDRC, August 26). This description appears in an explainer released in late August alongside the “Opinion on Deepening Implementation of the ‘AI+’ Action Plan” (关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见), a landmark document from the State Council that signals the Party-state’s intentions for the direction of development policies over the next decade (State Council, August 26). By 2035, the “Opinion” states that the country will have “fully entered a new stage of development based on an intelligent economy and society” (国全面步入智能经济和智能社会发展新阶段). That, at least, is the plan.

Six Areas of Focus for AI-Driven Development

The core of the “Opinion” sketches out six priority areas, appending them with the “AI+” moniker. These include science and technology (科学技术), industrial development (产业发展), improving consumption quality (消费提质), people’s welfare (民生福祉), governance capacity (治理能力), and global cooperation (全球合作) (CCTV, August 27). Despite being highlighted as key areas of focus, they nevertheless encompass an enormous section of the economy and society. Specific sub-topics within these areas proposed for deeper integration with AI range from “revolutionizing research methodologies in philosophy and the social sciences” (创新哲学社会科学研究方法) to the “intelligent upgrading of agriculture” (农业数智化转型升级) to others as vague as simply creating a “better quality of life” (更有品质的美好生活).