How Modi outwitted Trump India is turning towards China

Wolfgang Munchau

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We could call it the Big Beautiful Blunder — the ultimate diplomatic error of modern American history. First, the Biden administration inadvertently drove China and Russia closer together through sanctions and tariffs. Now, the Trump administration is driving India and Indonesia deeper into the China-Russia bloc.

The Indians don’t complain as much about Donald Trump as the Europeans do; instead, they’ve treated his tariffs as a wake-up call to reduce their reliance on the US. I am writing this column from New Delhi, where I have met with senior Indian politicians and economists. The big theme here is India’s deeper integration into the Bric group and with the countries of South East Asia. (Brics stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but the group has recently expanded to include five other countries, including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.) This strategy is not entirely new: India was already doing business with Russia, which provides its oil and military hardware. And it will continue to do so. But the dial has certainly shifted.

Perhaps the most extraordinary shift is regarding India’s relationship with China. The two nations have long been engaged in a dispute over their unmarked border in the Himalayas. In 2020, 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died in clashes along the disputed border in the Galwan Valley in the northern-most part of India. Flights between the two countries were suspended when the Covid pandemic struck and were never resumed. Since then, relations appear to have improved. Last Thursday, India’s largest budget airline, IndiGo, announced it would restart daily flights between Kolkata and Guangzhou. During the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in early September, China’s president Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi started to patch up their relationship. They agreed to deescalate their border conflict, and to strengthen trade and investment ties. They both have more to gain from co-operation than from conflict.

For a long time, the joke among Western diplomats was that India’s role in the Brics was to keep a watchful eye on Russia and China, and make sure that the two were not getting too close. If that indeed was the plan, it has proven little more than Western wishful thinking. Together, the Brics’ economies are already larger than America’s, Europe’s and Japan’s combined, if you measure their economies in purchasing power as the World Bank does. According to that metric, China and India are the world’s largest and third-largest economies respectively. Each year, they are growing larger relative to the West. Two years ago, Modi set a target for India to achieve developed-nation status by 2047, the centenary of the country’s independence. To achieve it, India would need to grow by 8% every year. It’s not quite there yet — but it’s growing fast.

Pakistan’s Pasni Port Offered To Trump? – OpEd

Patial RC

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US President Donald Trump in search of ‘Critical Minerals’ and Military Basis-Field Marshal Asim Munir’s offers to President Trump to build a deep-water port at Pasni and a railway link into Pakistan’s mineral heartlands.

The idea is to entice American investors with access to so-called ‘Critical Minerals’ while quietly presenting Pasni Port as a counterweight to China’s Gwadar Port and India’s Chabahar Portin Iran attempting to “kill two birds with one stone?” Or was it President Trump’s idea whispered during the quite lunch now being parroted by his newly found friend Field Marshal Asim Munir in return for the White House lunch with President Trump!

Ties between Pakistan and the US have seen a drastic change in the last few months in the aftermath of the conflict with India following the Pahalgam terror attack. From signing cryptocurrency deals to crediting Trump for ending the conflict with India and proposing his name for the Nobel Peace Prize, Pakistani diplomacy has been in overdrive to curry favour with the White House.

In recent weeks, Islamabad has come out in support of Trump’s peace plan for Gaza. Last month, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, along with Field Marshal Asim Munir, met with Trump at the White House, where the Pakistani leadership handed over mineral samples to the US administration in a briefcase!

In reality, it is a desperate gamble by the Pak Military that risks angering China which also exposes Islamabad’s habitual duplicity in playing both sides of global rivalries. Field Marshal Asim Munir is forgetting Henry Kissinger’s warning –

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Munir’s Or US Officials Proposal

Munir’s proposal, shared by his advisers with US officials ahead of his September White House meeting with Donald Trump aims to convince Washington that Pasni Port could be a mineral Gateway.

The Case for an American Bagram Air Base

Natiq Malikzada

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In the end, the question that matters is not whether Bagram is valuable. It is. The right question is who President Trump should partner with to gain control over it.

President Donald Trump has long maintained that the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was one of the worst moments in American history. Millions of Americans remember the images from that period: panicked crowds surrounding Kabul’s airport, civilians desperately clinging to military planes, and the carnage at Abbey Gate, where a suicide bomber took the lives of 13 US servicemembers. These images are seared into the public’s conscience, and Trump’s cry for retribution has found widespread support across the United States.

During his recent state visit to the United Kingdom, Trump tied the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan to a demand for the Taliban government’s return of Bagram Air Base to the United States. The president observed that the base overlooked China’s western Xinjiang region—and the country’s nuclear program—and an American presence at the base was therefore invaluable. Trump had made similar remarks during his 2024 election campaign. In his more recent comments, however, he added a threat: if the Taliban would not hand Bagram Air Base over to the United States, “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!”

It is clear that the point of Trump’s request for the return of Bagram is not merely an attempt to relitigate the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Instead, an American presence at Bagram would fundamentally reframe America’s posture in Central and South Asia around a single asset that symbolizes American power. In that sense, Bagram is less about the internal politics of Afghanistan, and more about a forward air hub aimed at China, Iran, Russia, and Central Asia as a whole.

It is unclear what will happen if the Taliban dismisses Trump’s demands. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s comment on Truth Social referencing potential consequences if the group refused, its spokesperson called the idea “out of the question.” China, too, stressed respect for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and warned against steps that could destabilize the region. Russia and Iran have not issued any formal responses yet; however, given their hostility to the United States and the base’s location, both have strong incentives to support the Taliban’s refusal and to frame any US reentry to the region as a provocation.

Bagram Air Base’s Strategic Location

Is Pakistan the Middle East’s New Security Provider?

Minna Jaffery-Lindemulder

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Pakistan is emerging as a new security guarantor in the Middle East, filling the security vacuum left behind by the Trump administration.

Israel’s attacks on Doha on September 9 signalled a change in the Israel-Gaza war–even US partners were not safe from Israel’s growing agenda. While the United States faced issues of credibility in the region, Pakistan was negotiating a new regional security guarantee with Saudi Arabia to ensure that there are other actors involved in defending the security of the Gulf States.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have long held close ties with one another, but have not agreed to a formal security defense pact until now. Pakistan has a long history of sending its troops to Saudi Arabia for training and combat, most notably in 1979 during the siege of Mecca. Islamabad has experience in extending its troops beyond its borders, making it a pragmatic choice for this kind of regional role.

Of course, an agreement of this magnitude could not have occurred without tacit approval from the Trump administration. With its America-First agenda, the United States’ current posture has demonstrated its lack of interest in remaining a regional watchdog, particularly given its strong support of Israel’s expansionary project.

Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff and Field Marshal Asim Munir were invited to the White House to celebrate their cooperation with the United States, signalling a warmer relationship than what has existed before. For Pakistan, this turn of events puts Islamabad in a position it has long wanted: an involved partner in the Muslim world, a military power that rivals India, and a recipient of American goodwill and weapons, via Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, Pakistan and the United States are expanding their partnership in mining critical minerals. Pakistan shipped its first batch of enriched rare earth minerals to the United States on October 2, the start of a longer-term memorandum of understanding with trade valued at $500 million. Islamabad is also hoping that Washington will invest in a new port at Pansi in the Gwadar district, which would give the United States easier access to the critical minerals needed for it to remain competitive in the semiconductor industry.

Authoritarian Legacy: Myanmar’s Military and the Failure of Professionalization

Tin Shine Aung 

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Since gaining independence in 1948, the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, has remained deeply embedded in the country’s social, economic, and political landscape. However, its presence in international headlines is rarely linked to national defense or public service. Instead, it is notorious for bombings, torture, mass killings, forced displacement, burning of civilian areas, and genocide – brutal acts inflicted upon the very people it once vowed to protect. For decades, the Tatmadaw has ruled through fear, violence, and repression, not only positioning itself as an entity above its civilians but also as a guardian of the people or protector of Buddhism in Myanmar.

It is essential to trace its ideological and historical roots to understand why the Myanmar military has become so powerful and deeply entrenched. The military’s foundation, deeply influenced by authoritarian and strongly nationalist ideologies, has made it an unreliable institution incapable of democratic reform.

The Historical Roots of Authoritarianism in the Tatmadaw

The roots of the Tatmadaw’s ideology can be traced to Burma’s struggle against British colonial rule when a group of nationalists known as the “Thirty Comrades” sought military training from the Imperial Japanese Army before World War II. Some of these individuals, such as Aung San, Ne Win, and Setkya, received specialized oppressive political indoctrination for future senior positions in the Burmese government under Japanese occupation. Among them, Aung San, who later became known as the father of modern Burma, and Ne Win, the architect of dictatorship in Myanmar, served as military chiefs and played crucial roles in Burma’s politics. This group formed the Burma Independence Army (BIA) with Japanese backing, fighting alongside Japanese forces against British rule.

While the BIA’s original motive was to achieve independence, its DNA was unexpectedly modified through imperial Japanese military training, embedding autocratic ideology and extreme militarism at its core. After Japan occupied Burma, the BIA was reorganized as the Burmese Defense Army (BDA) and later rebranded as the Burma National Army (BNA) under the State of Burma, a puppet regime controlled by Japan. However, as the war progressed, Aung San, who graduated from British education, and some of his allies recognized the true nature of imperial Japanese authoritarianism and turned against their former backers. They secretly formed the “Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League” (AFPFL) to lead an uprising against Japan. With support from the British and ethnic armed groups, the BNA played a crucial role in expelling Japanese forces from Burma.

Why is China funding the Russian War Machine?

Patrick Drennan

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For the first two years of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China presented itself as an independent arbiter. In 2023 it even proposed a 12-point peace plan that was mainly commerce-orientated. Practical goals such as protecting civilians and prisoners of war were included, although notably it does not criticize Russia’s unreasonable rationale for the invasion.

Now that plan is missing from official Chinese government websites and China unequivocally supports Russia economically, and with millions of dollars of military aid.

One example is Silva a Russian shell company, headquartered in Buryatia, Siberia. According to Politico it filed declarations in January 2025 detailing orders for 100,000 bulletproof vests and 100,000 helmets from manufacturer Shanghai H Win.

Chinese manufacturers providing Russia with dual-use (military and commercial) components has been critical in boosting Russia's military capabilities. In 2024, dual-use shipments from China to Russia surpassed US$4 billion according to Dr Daniel Balazs of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). These included optics, transmitters, engines, microcircuits, antennas, control boards, software and navigation systems.

While there are no examples of China supplying heavy weaponry like artillery, they have certainly provided essential laser guidance systems, ball bearings, and gunpowder.

More significantly, drones are critical on the Ukraine battlefield. China is the major supplier to Russia of military surveillance and attack drones, initially the Mavic series from DJI. From 2022 to 2023 Chinese firms sold $12 million (U.S.) worth of drones and spare parts to Russia. Currently, the Russian V2U strike drones, which have artificial intelligence capabilities, are entirely made up of Chinese components.

In return, Russia shares its expertise with China in submarine technology, missile systems, and advanced radar. Ironically, China takes these systems, reverse-engineers them and produces jets and jet engines that are superior to their Russian counterparts. As Russian military equipment losses grow, and they no longer have the technology to replace them, they will be forced to buy more military materiel from China.

Civilian Tech Is Powering China’s Military

Cole McFaul

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China is a dominant player in emerging technologies. It is a renewable energy superpower, controls the global commercial drone market, and has installed more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined. At the same time, it is pouring resources into outcompeting the United States in artificial intelligence.

But Beijing is not only interested in mastering civilian technologies. It also seeks to develop the world’s premier military capabilities by integrating its civilian commercial ecosystem and defense industrial base. This strategy, known as military-civil fusion, draws inspiration from Washington’s ability to leverage commercial innovation for battlefield advantage, in areas such as satellite imagery, microelectronics, and, more recently, AI-enabled decision support systems.

Who’s Winning Yemen’s War? No One

Joshua Yaphe

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Over a decade into Yemen’s civil war, one expert explains why neither side can win—and how China, the US, and Gulf rivals are shaping the conflict.

The war in Yemen is now over a decade old, with no signs of resolution on the horizon. Israeli airstrikes last month decimated the senior ranks of the government in Sana’a, prompting the Houthis to appoint an almost entirely new cabinet. At the same time, in-fighting within the internationally recognized Yemeni government has forced a showdown within the Presidential Leadership Council over decision-making and legitimacy. Both sides are struggling to hold themselves together.

In this episode of Divergences, Khaldoon Bakahail, a strategic advisor with the Geneva Center for Security Sector Governance and a long-time expert on Yemeni political-military affairs, surveys the many issues that have led to the current stalemate and stagnation of the conflict. “The situation in Yemen,” he says, “is a kind of stalemate at this point. Both the internationally recognized government in Aden and the so-called Houthi government in Sana’a are facing massive challenges—politically, militarily, and moreover on the economic side at this moment.”

He argues that neither side will simply disappear. “There will be no easy military solution to the conflict in Yemen,” he says. “The analysis that the Houthis will just suddenly vanish and disappear and that continuous airstrikes will take them out of power—I don’t see this happening. Neither will the internationally recognized government be kicked out totally, given the backers supporting it, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

That support, Bakahail explains, has allowed the Yemeni government to remain symbolically present with the international community amid what he calls “a policy of no policy” from Washington. “The ongoing ‘no policy’ in Yemen is causing more harm, I believe, to US national security interests than it is helping,” he says, warning that America’s diplomatic absence “only helps to distract the national security interests of the Americans … and definitely this will help the Russians and the Chinese. When you are not there, people will fill the vacuum.”

Bakahail also points to Beijing’s careful balancing act. “The Chinese are very smart playing their cards,” he notes. “They are still pursuing their neutrality, opening channels with all parties to the conflict—the Houthis, the government of Yemen—and balancing their strategic relations with the Gulf countries.”

Inside Europe's crash effort to create a 'drone wall'

PATRICK TUCKER

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TALLIN, Estonia—As Russian drone incursions across Europe spike, the European Union committed Wednesday to one of the most ambitious multi-nation defense projects in history: a Europe-wide “drone wall.”

Envisioned as a network of new sensors, artificial intelligence software, jammers, cheap missiles, and more to thwart small-drone attacks, the concept is still in its infancy. But dozens of Estonian defense tech startups gave Defense One a glimpse of how autonomous vehicles, inexpensive short-range missiles, hunter drones and AI concepts are laying the groundwork to defeat drone swarms. And nearly all of them highlighted work with Ukrainian front-line commanders as part of their development process.

The drone wall’s first bricks

Estonia, a country of about 1.3 million people that shares a 183-mile border with Russia, has taken €2.66 billion in funds from the European Union to help support companies working on drone defeat. But Estonia is also one of the fastest-growing startup and tech centers in Europe, with a focus on areas such as autonomy, advanced materials, and artificial intelligence—and it’s one of Ukraine’s most active tech-sharing partners.

In August, the Estonian government awarded €300,000 to three companies as part of an ongoing effort to develop drone wall solutions. One of those is DefSecIntel, which specializes in border security, including sensors, sensor-fusion software and drones.

During a tour of one of the company’s factories here last week, Jaanus Tamm, the founder and CEO of the 7-year-old startup, told reporters that DefSecIntel has partnered with Ukraine to help the country defend itself from Russian attacks—and the partnership has given the company frontline insight into drone threats.

DefSecIntel’s drone wall strategy relies on fast-moving, highly maneuverable sensors mounted on trucks, other drones, and even manned and unmanned boats. Those moving sensors would be joined by new, drone-specific detection technologies such as acoustic sensors that can remain fixed.

The Russia–Ukraine war has entered a new phase

Nigel Gould-Davies

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Western officials are reportedly puzzled by the sudden wave of Russian drone and fighter incursions into their airspace. They should not be. Russia’s actions are the logical result of four wider developments that are reshaping its calculus. The first three are policy choices of America, Europe and China. The fourth is Russia’s own deteriorating domestic condition. Russia’s response has ushered in a new and more dangerous phase of its war in Ukraine.

Deteriorating conditions, growing disquiet

Firstly, United States President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 initially raised Kremlin hopes that his stated goal of ending the war quickly could be used to engineer a decisive shift in favour of Russia and a split in transatlantic relations. Despite intensive diplomatic efforts, culminating in the Alaska summit in August 2025, Russia has failed to achieve this. Although America made unilateral concessions – abandoning demands for an immediate ceasefire and dropping threats of new sanctions – it has not decisively broken with Ukraine or Europe. Trump has uttered harsh words about Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time and continues to provide weapons – now sold, not given – to Ukraine. Nine months of turbulent diplomacy have realised neither Russia’s greatest hopes nor Europe’s deepest fears.

Secondly, Europe is stepping up. At the June 2025 NATO summit, member states agreed to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035. Since Europe’s total GDP is ten times larger than Russia’s, this represents a huge increase in military capability. The EU is also intensifying pressure on Russia’s economy. So far this year, it has adopted four new sanctions packages – the fastest rate since 2022 – and is close to agreeing a fifth. This will be the 19th such package since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most significantly, the EU is now working on an ambitious plan to provide a €140 billion reparation loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian Central Bank assets. If agreed, this will keep Ukraine afloat and enable it to fight for the next two to three years, while alleviating the burden of support on European taxpayers.

Thirdly, China has tilted more decisively towards Russia. In 2024, NATO designated it a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war due to its sale of military and dual-use goods and complicity in massive sanctions evasion. Last month, Beijing finally agreed to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. Russia had been begging it to do so for years. When completed, it will more than double Russia’s pipeline gas exports to China.

How Top Arms Exporters Have Responded To War In Gaza – Analysis

Zain Hussain

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Following the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which around 1200 Israelis were killed, Israel launched an intensive military campaign in Gaza, with the stated aims of destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and bringing home 251 hostages taken during the incursion. This military campaign has continued, with little interruption, for the past two years.

As of 28 September 2025, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reports a cumulative total of over 66 000 direct conflict-related Palestinian fatalities in Gaza since 7 October 2023, as well as 369 verified deaths from malnutrition. The Israeli campaign has included airstrikes and ground assaults that have damaged or destroyed hospitals, schools and emergency shelters, as well as strikes or attacks on personnel and facilities of United Nations and other humanitarian actors.

A negotiated bilateral ceasefire came into effect between Hamas and Israel on 19 January 2025, part of a planned process supposed to result in the return of all remaining Israeli hostages and an end to the war. The ceasefire collapsed on 18 March, when Israel launched extensive airstrikes into Gaza.

On 16 May 2025 Israel launched Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a major escalation of its military offensive in Gaza with the stated aims of defeating Hamas, destroying its military and governmental capabilities, and increasing pressure for the release of the remaining hostages. On 8 August 2025 it was announced that the Israeli Security Cabinet had approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal for the Israel Defense Forces to take control of Gaza City in a ground assault, which eventually began on 16 September.

The high death toll and the level of destruction in Gaza have aroused growing international concern and calls from states and international organizations for Israel to adopt a less aggressive strategy, lift restrictions on humanitarian access to Gaza, and end the conflict.

Following Israel’s announcement of the planned takeover of Gaza City, the foreign ministers of Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom, along with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, published a joint statement ‘strongly rejecting’ the decision and arguing that the plan risked ‘violating international humanitarian law’.

Vandergriff's work again mentioned by Mac Owens in his latest analysis of Pete Hegseth's Quantico Speech

Donald Vandergriff

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The latest article by Mackubin Owens in the Washington Examiner is titled “Trump and Hegseth seek a stop to identity politics undercutting military effectiveness.” It matches the provided text excerpt and was published on October 3, 2025. You can read it here:

Your incisive analysis of Secretary Pete Hegseth’s address to the nation’s senior officers at Quantico captures the essence of a pivotal moment in American military history—one that demands not just attention, but action. In an era where our armed forces grapple with the shadows of past failures, from the quagmires of Vietnam and Afghanistan to the creeping complacency of bureaucratic excess, your piece shines a clear light on the unyielding truth: true military excellence springs from warfighting primacy, not from the distractions of identity politics or institutional bloat.

Secretary of War Hegseth’s words, as you so aptly unpack them, are a clarion call to reclaim the “functional imperative” that Samuel Huntington so prophetically described—a military forged in trust, cohesion, and unrelenting lethality, unencumbered by the divisive sirens of DEI mandates that erode standards and invite mediocrity.

What strikes me most in your essay is the unflinching honesty about accountability’s long absence from our officer corps. You’ve nailed it: the proliferation of four-star billets, the reluctance to relieve underperformers, and the elevation of HR checklists over battle-tested leadership have left us top-heavy and tactically adrift. Hegseth’s commitment to slashing that overhead by 20% isn’t mere rhetoric; it’s a surgical strike against the rot I’ve spent decades documenting and combating.

And your reminder of historical precedents—from Marshall’s pre-WWII purges to Jefferson’s ideological realignments—grounds this reform in the resilient DNA of our republic. Far from politicization, this is restoration: civilians charting policy, officers executing with loyalty to the Constitution and the mission, not to fleeting ideologies.

Critics may decry it as a “chilling effect,” but as you observe, the real chill has been the one settling over our ranks as we’ve prioritized optics over outcomes. Hegseth gets it, as do you: identity politics doesn’t unite; it fractures. It whispers that excellence is secondary to equity, allowing adversaries like China and Russia to outpace us while we chase shadows.

How the US funded Israel’s wars on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran

Justin Salhani

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Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle East without the United States’s significant financial backing of more than $21bn since October 2023, according to a pair of new reports.

The reports, which were released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found that: without US weapons and money, Israel wouldn’t have been able to sustain its genocidal war on Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen.

The report’s findings are also backed up by analysts who said Israel’s wars in Gaza and in the wider region could not have continued without US financial and diplomatic support.

“US support for Israel at all levels is indispensable to the prosecution of Israel’s war both in Gaza and across the region,” Omar H Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Israel’s war on Gaza alone has killed at least 67,160 people and wounded another 169,679 since October 2023.

Thousands are still believed to be under the Gaza Strip’s ruins, while Israel has killed dozens in strikes on Yemen and killed more than 1,000 people when it attacked Iran in June.

“Given the scale of current and future spending, it is clear the [Israeli army] could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza or escalated their military activities throughout the region without US financing, weapons, and political support,” read the report – US Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023–September 2025 – by William D Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Hartung’s report was jointly released by the Costs of War and the Quincy Institute, which describes itself as promoting “ideas that move US foreign policy away from endless war, toward military restraint and diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace”.

Israel’s Defense Strategy, Two Years After October 7

Shai Feldman

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October 7, 2025, marks two years since Hamas’ horrific attack on Israel’s southern communities that left 1,200 Israelis dead and some 251 Israelis taken hostage. This is an appropriate moment to explore what led to that event and especially how the evolution of Israel’s national security policy during the years prior to October 7 may have contributed to the horrific surprise that it suffered that day. No less important is an examination of the parameters and characteristics of the Gaza war that followed and whether a real opportunity exists to bring that terrible war to an end.

Israel, as is well known, does not have a formal process of articulating its defense strategy. It has no equivalents to the US Quadrennial Defense Review, the DOD’s Roles and Missions report, or the Annual Message of the Secretary of Defense to the US Congress. In the absence of such documents, Israeli strategy must be deduced from numerous, sometimes haphazard statements made by its leaders and senior defense officials, and more often from actions already taken.

As Israel’s first defense strategy was formulated during the country’s early years, it was largely informed by the experiences of Israeli leaders and members of its elite who survived the Second World War and the 1948 War of Independence. Not surprisingly, the basic assumption that guided these leaders was that their embryonic country was confronted by numerous adversaries who sought its destruction. Surrounded by hostile Sunni Arab states, Israel adopted a strategy to withstand these challenges by developing and maintaining a qualitative edge in as many facets of national defense as possible.

One corollary of this perspective was that the country’s numerical inferiority would mean the Israeli state would have to be proactive and avert threats before they materialized. Consequently, in the early 1950s, its defense forces pursued a highly aggressive “active deterrence” retaliation-centered posture against Palestinian terrorists (the Fedayeen) who infiltrated Israel from Egypt and Jordan. It also adopted “preventive wars” and “preemptive wars” as two offensive principles of its national defense strategy, launching such wars in 1956 and 1967, respectively.

Israel’s triumph in 1967 and its ability to withstand the serious challenges presented by Egypt’s conduct in the 1970 War of Attrition and its surprise launching of the 1973 October War, persuaded President Anwar Sadat that the conflict with Israel could not be resolved militarily. Thus, in November 1977, he launched his historic peace initiative, becoming the first Arab leader to travel to Jerusalem since independence. With the strongest and most populous Arab state removing itself any potential Arab coalition, many Israelis now concluded that they no longer faced existential threats. Indeed, some now went so far as to attempt more ambitious objectives.

Israel’s Forgotten Army

Jacob Siegel

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“It was absolutely abysmal. I mean, it was shocking the equipment that we were given.”

Eitan was 27 years old on Oct. 7 when he got the alert. (Soldiers who are identified by their first names only have had their names changed.) He had finished his active military time in 2022 after serving in one of the IDF’s elite commando units. Out of the army, Eitan was studying for a master’s in business. Like most able-bodied Israelis of fighting age, he continued his military service as a reservist. In his part-time unit, he joined what is known in Hebrew as miluim, the term used for the IDF’s reserve forces that have historically functioned as the backbone of Israel’s people’s army. Miluimniks, who have already gone through training and served in a regular unit, provide a standing reserve that can be called on to plug gaps in the nation’s defense or rapidly built out to augment the army’s order of battle in the event of war. That, in any case, was the longstanding theory of Israel’s strategic concept as a small country surrounded by hostile powers.

The IDF’s problem was that its leaders had spent decades under the illusion that ground wars requiring mass mobilizations, which are the miluim’s raison d’être, were a thing of the past. In ideal circumstances, a reserve force will still operate at a level of funding and equipment below its active-duty counterparts. But in Israel, where the reserves were no longer seen as vital to the military’s offensive capabilities, the situation had moved past nonideal to dangerously unprepared.

Eitan, serving in the reserve component of a special operations unit, should have had better gear than most. Yet, even for the elite commandos of miluim, the initial supply situation was dismal. “It was vests and helmets that we wouldn’t have been given in basic training, let alone when we were combat soldiers. Uniforms falling apart, all of the Velcro ripped and destroyed. The zippers didn’t work. Helmets from the 1980s when my dad was in the army. The guns were mostly old surplus and we didn’t have ceramic vests.” To the best of his knowledge, Eitan told me, no one in his battalion had ceramic vests when the war started.

By the time night fell on Oct. 7, 2023, Eitan had joined up with his reserve unit and was fighting the remnants of the Hamas raiding party that had infiltrated into southern Israel that morning, breaching the security fence, overwhelming border defenses, and killing nearly 1,200 people, including women and children sheltering in their homes, before carrying some 250 hostages back into Gaza. For three days Eitan and the other special operations veterans in his unit engaged in nearly continuous battle. The first real rest he remembers getting came on Oct. 10 when his battalion took over an evacuated school.

For Israel, After the Gaza War Comes Politics

Elliott Abrams

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It will not remain true for another year, however. The latest date for the next election is October 2026—and it could come much sooner. The electoral timetable and the possibility of an end to the Gaza war mean the political stasis of the Jewish year 5785 (October 2024 to October 2025) will end. And that in turn will likely mean the return of the older battles that the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war pushed aside. “judicial reform,” meaning the role and power of the Israeli Supreme Court, and the struggle over drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military. To these will be added the “blame game” over which leaders are to be held responsible for the security failures of October 7, 2023.

The Haredi Community and the Draft

The war has deepened divisions over that latter issue, and it will be central to the next election. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox groups have long been exempt from conscription under a deal made at Israel’s founding by the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. At the time, the number of young men exempted, ostensibly so that they could continue to study Torah full-time, was derisory and militarily irrelevant: 400 students in 1948. Today, due to the enormous demographic growth of the ultra-Orthodox—known as the Haredi community­­­—sixty-three thousand young men are exempted.

The strain of the Gaza war on Israel’s mostly reserve army has proved the need for a larger force, so the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) needs those recruits—or some of them. For most Israelis, who have watched their family members called into reserve duty again and again, those exemptions are unfair and should come to an end. Some studies suggest that about a quarter of the Haredi youth are, in fact, surreptitiously employed, not studying.

The resentment at their failure to serve has exploded in the last two years, and the Supreme Court has struck down several legislative compromises that maintained most of those exemptions. Meanwhile, divisions are developing in the Haredi camp, with growing support for some form of service. This is all part of the broader issue of the Haredi role in Israeli life as that community grows—now about 14 percent of the population and likely to hit 20 percent by 2065.

Pete Hegseth, Populist Piper

Yvonne Chiu

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During Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent remarks to America’s generals in Virginia, they behaved admirably. But his speech was not really aimed at them.

On Tuesday, military watchers all over America breathed a collective sigh of relief that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s conclave of the flags entailed neither purge nor Struggle Session Thunderdome. The extended public shaming over physical standards, however, obscures the attempt to erode American military professionalism and change the nature of the US military.

Reassuringly and unsurprisingly, the general and flag officers (GOFOs) behaved as their profession demands—with attentive silence—to the furious onslaught of partisan propagandizing from both Hegseth and President Donald Trump.

That suits Hegseth just fine, because he does not need them to misbehave. In live-streaming the speeches, Trump and Hegseth were speaking to the US military at large—and laid bare their own shortcomings for foreign allies and adversaries alike, musing about reviving the battleship and gilding official stationery, or daring enemies to “FAFO” and telling GOFOs to “move out and draw fire.” Both speakers, however, have made it clear that they are more concerned about combating “the enemy from within” than without.

Hegseth highlighted a cornucopia of policy changes to make the US military more “lethal”—some helpful, others gratuitous culture warring, some that will make it “less capable and less lethal.” By redefining the terms “toxic,” “bullying,” and “hazing,” the secretary is shifting the baseline for US military professionalism—and also making it harder to report and punish bad and ineffective leaders. Exclusivity of the wrong kind makes a military less capable, and harsh training of the wrong kind makes it less lethal. Hegseth’s speech was a slew of contradictions; in his telling, one should not “be reckless or violate the law,” but should at the same time throw out all the “stupid rules of engagement,” all while being “constitutional.” If nothing else, this administration has an admirable ability to live with cognitive dissonance.

A Snapback Solution for Ukraine

Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro

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In their discussions about ending the war in Ukraine, Americans and Europeans are increasingly focused on providing Kyiv with security guarantees. After over a decade of conflict with Russia, including four years of all-out war, Ukraine understandably does not trust Moscow to abide by any cease-fire. Before Kyiv signs one, it wants assurances from its key partners that if Russia attacks again, Ukraine will not be left to fend for itself.

To meet this demand, some allies have suggested giving Ukraine assurances modeled on NATO’s Article 5, which declares that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. Others have recommended stationing European troops in the country as a way to give such assurances teeth. But these proposals lack credibility. NATO allies have steadfastly refused to intervene directly in the current war, so any promise they make to fight Russia in a new one is simply not believable. The Kremlin knows this better than anyone, and such bluffs will not deter it.

American and European leaders can provide Ukraine with a real postwar guarantee. But to do so, they will have to stick to promises that are credible. And that means committing to a more intense version of their current behavior in the event that Russia violates a cease-fire deal. In other words, should Moscow attack Ukraine again, the country’s allies would reimpose sanctions on Russia, provide new financial support to Kyiv, and offer Ukraine military assistance that goes beyond what they would offer in peacetime. The United States and its allies would codify these pledges into law and create mechanisms that activate them if Russia attacks.

These guarantees, of course, fall short of an Article 5–like pledge. But if combined with peacetime measures that strengthen the Ukrainian military (which will remain Kyiv’s primary source of deterrence), they will still affect the Kremlin’s calculus. The United States and Europe, then, can help ensure that any renewed aggression is prohibitively costly for Russia, even without directly intervening.

Ukraine’s Drone War Is Crippling Russia’s Oil Lifeline

David Kirichenko and Alexander Motyl

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Key Points and Summary – In year four of Russia’s war, Ukraine has flipped the battlefield by striking Russia’s oil network with drones and missiles, idling refineries and triggering rationing, black markets, and fuel station closures.

-Analysts estimate billions in lost refining margins as Moscow raises taxes, trims its 2026 defense budget, and battles inflation and soaring mortgage delinquencies—classic stagflation.

-Washington is deepening support with targeting intelligence and potential Tomahawks while Kyiv scales domestic long-range weapons.

-These pressures expose Kremlin brittleness: mounting casualties, economic decay, and elite frustration raise risks of shocks, a coup, or abrupt leadership change.

-Inside Russia, anger grows.

Russia’s Ukriane War Takes a Nasty Turn for Moscow

It’s now year four of Russia’s war in Ukraine. What was supposed to be a “special military operation” lasting a few weeks has turned into Ukraine’s own special oil operation – one that is steadily eroding Russia’s ability to finance its war. That Donald Trump has gone from telling Volodymyr Zelensky he “had no cards” to now saying Ukraine can take back all its territory suggests that Washington is seeing damning intelligence about the state of Russia. More importantly, it shows how Ukraine has only grown stronger technologically.

Vladimir Putin has long dreamed of restoring the Russian Empire’s greatness and the Soviet Union’s world-power status. What Putin forgets to say is that both empires collapsed and, as his critics insist, that the Russian Federation increasingly resembles the USSR just before its demise. Ironically, Ukrainian drones have reinforced that comparison by forcing Russians back to fuel lines, illegal markets, coupons, and rations, as if it were 1991 all over again.

Many gas stations across Russia are closing or operating at reduced capacity as the government imposes price caps that make margins untenable. Fuel is increasingly being diverted to black markets, where prices in some areas reportedly reach the equivalent of $9 per gallon. “Ukrainian strikes highlight vulnerabilities in Russia’s economy and military, undermining propaganda claims of success and fueling public dissatisfaction,” said Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.

June Israel vs. October Israel

Jordan Chandler Hirsch

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This distinction isn’t the result of confusion about what month it is on the calendar. It points to two fundamentally different Israels—call them “June Israel” and “October Israel”—that have alternated throughout the nation’s young history. The Israel that laid waste to Iran’s nuclear program this past June—that stunned Hezbollah, that decimated Hamas, that rewrote Middle Eastern order—operates according to entirely different principles than the Israel that Hamas devastated on that Black Saturday two years ago.

To understand where Israel is heading requires tracing how these two Israels have manifested over time and how the latest advent of a “June Israel” moment is poised to change Jerusalem’s relationship with friend and foe alike for years to come.

On June 7, 1981, a squadron of F-15s and F-16s took off from Israel’s Negev desert. Flying low over Jordanian and Saudi airspace to avoid radar detection—so low, in fact, that Jordan’s King Hussein reportedly spotted their markings from his yacht in the Red Sea—they snaked into Iraq and swooped down on their target: the nuclear reactor at Osirak. In less than two minutes, they obliterated the facility, racing home without a single loss. Israel faced global condemnation but gained regional respect: It meant what it said about preventing nuclear-armed threats.

Nineteen years later, on Oct. 12, 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, took a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah, home of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Detained by PA security, they were held in a police station that was soon overrun by a mob, which beat, stabbed, and ultimately lynched them. A Palestinian, Aziz Salha—eliminated by the IDF in Gaza 24 years later—appeared at the window, waving his blood-soaked hands in ecstasy before an undulating crowd, which proceeded to mutilate the soldiers’ bodies and parade them around the town square. Israelis reeled in the wake of the murder, their faith in the peace process with the Palestinians fatally undermined.

June Israel is proactive, daring, devastatingly competent; October Israel is complacent, risk-averse, subject to surprise.

Israeli-Palestinian peace isn’t a naive ideal. Here’s why I have cautious hope

Jeremy Ben-Ami

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Two years after the horrors of 7 October, few names evoke the tragedy more than Kfar Aza, a small, bucolic kibbutz less than two miles from Gaza that came under brutal attack that day.

For years, I visited Kfar Aza with groups of policymakers and American guests on trips designed to help them understand what life on the border meant and what a path toward conflict resolution might entail.

One of our occasional hosts in the town was Ofir Libstein, the head of the regional council – basically the mayor of the area. Ofir firmly believed that Israel’s long-term security depended on a future for his Palestinian neighbors in Gaza as well. He was an activist and a public voice for the idea that stability for his region and constituents depended on achieving peace.

On 7 October 2023, he fought to defend his community and was among the first to die. In all, 62 residents of Kfar Aza were killed that day; 19 were taken hostage, including twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, who remain in Gaza to this day.

When I last visited the kibbutz this summer, I met one of Ofir’s close friends, a man my age who survived by clinging to his safe-room door handle for hours while his neighbors were massacred. Despite everything, he told me peace must still be the path forward – that Palestinians in Gaza must be given something to live for. His words, and his refusal to surrender hope, moved me to tears.

Twenty-five years ago, while living in Israel and studying Hebrew, I befriended a classmate named Abed, an optometrist from Gaza City. He invited me to his family’s home for dinner one weekend. Conversation was halting, limited by language, but the message conveyed by all I met was a desire for nothing more than to live normal lives, to raise families, work and coexist.

Over the years, friends, colleagues and I have heard similar stories from Palestinians in Gaza – teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs who remembered the days when there was interconnection between Gaza and Israeli border communities, when small but real human connections were possible.

A Snapback Solution for Ukraine

Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro

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In their discussions about ending the war in Ukraine, Americans and Europeans are increasingly focused on providing Kyiv with security guarantees. After over a decade of conflict with Russia, including four years of all-out war, Ukraine understandably does not trust Moscow to abide by any cease-fire. Before Kyiv signs one, it wants assurances from its key partners that if Russia attacks again, Ukraine will not be left to fend for itself.

To meet this demand, some allies have suggested giving Ukraine assurances modeled on NATO’s Article 5, which declares that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. Others have recommended stationing European troops in the country as a way to give such assurances teeth. But these proposals lack credibility. NATO allies have steadfastly refused to intervene directly in the current war, so any promise they make to fight Russia in a new one is simply not believable. The Kremlin knows this better than anyone, and such bluffs will not deter it.

American and European leaders can provide Ukraine with a real postwar guarantee. But to do so, they will have to stick to promises that are credible. And that means committing to a more intense version of their current behavior in the event that Russia violates a cease-fire deal. In other words, should Moscow attack Ukraine again, the country’s allies would reimpose sanctions on Russia, provide new financial support to Kyiv, and offer Ukraine military assistance that goes beyond what they would offer in peacetime. The United States and its allies would codify these pledges into law and create mechanisms that activate them if Russia attacks.

These guarantees, of course, fall short of an Article 5–like pledge. But if combined with peacetime measures that strengthen the Ukrainian military (which will remain Kyiv’s primary source of deterrence), they will still affect the Kremlin’s calculus. The United States and Europe, then, can help ensure that any renewed aggression is prohibitively costly for Russia, even without directly intervening.

IJ Infinity Group

Military Strategy Magazine, v. 10, no. 2, Spring 2025 

Civil War Comes to the West, Part II: Strategic Realities

Strategy for a Complex Age: To Frame or Solve?

Political Obedience as a Military Strategic Asset: From Cyrus to the 2023 War in Gaza

A New Fight: Deception, Adaptation, and Regeneration

Distributed Maritime Operations, Logistics, Industry, and American Strategy in Asia

Multi-Dimensional Game-Theory Analysis of North Korean Nuclear Threat

Towards Multilateral Policy on Autonomous Weapon Systems

Dr Alexander Blanchard and Netta Goussac

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This report examines possible directions for multilateral policy on autonomous weapon systems (AWS)—weapons capable of selecting and applying force to targets without human intervention. Over a decade of deliberations on AWS has yielded limited progress, with states divided on definitions, regulatory approaches and pathways for action. The resulting landscape is one of institutional complexity, political sensitivity and growing urgency. While the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal AWS—convened under the auspices of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons—remains the predominant forum for discussion and action, new processes and hybrid approaches are gaining traction, demanding a nuanced approach.

The choices made in the coming years will shape not only the governance of AWS, but also the broader trajectory of military artificial intelligence regulation. In 2026, states will decide on the future of efforts to regulate these weapons at the conclusion of the current mandate of the GGE. This report aims to equip policymakers with a structured and realistic overview of possible next steps to assist them to advance multilateral policy efforts.

It’s Time to Rewire the Pentagon for Modern Warfare

Bob Carey

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The United States has been fighting tomorrow’s battles with yesterday’s playbook for decades. While America has long been accused of “planning to fight the last war,” nowhere is that seen more than in the arcane policies of military procurement and the ever-changing landscape of artificial intelligence (AI).

With the rapid development of AI the U.S. must prioritize modernizing its outdated systems more than ever.

In July, President Trump released an Executive Order that outlines a plan for strengthening America’s position in the AI race. The Executive Order will require technology companies to develop AI models that are unbiased and consistently produce reliable results. I agree with President Trump and believe this is an important step toward ensuring AI platforms operate at the highest possible level, particular in the defense world.

While we observe warfare revolutionized with drones, precise electronic warfare, and 3D printing, the Pentagon bureaucracy clings desperately to an old procurement system which takes the military decades to deploy new weapon systems. Specifically, this is seen in the Pentagon’s decades-old “requirements approval” process, “lovingly” referred to in the Pentagon as the JCIDS process, upon which tens of thousands of military positions and civil service jobs are dependent to feed the monster of the acquisition bureaucracy, and like most long-term bureaucratic structures, is now simply a chokepoint for innovation rather than a process to fully vet military procurement requirements.

Take the example of the F-35 Lightning II jet, with a first prototype flown in October 2002, the first production airplane flown more than six years later in December 2006, but still not entering operational service until 2015 for the Marines, 2016 for the Air Force, and 2019 for the Navy, fifteen to nineteen years after first flight. Even in 2006, the Government Accountability Office warned about this byzantine procurement process: “the JSF program continues to be risky… [it] has already encountered increases to estimated development costs, delays to planned deliveries, and reductions in the planned number of JSF to be procured that have eroded DOD’s buying power.” Meanwhile, the cost of the F-35 skyrocketed from $89 million per copy in 2010 to $304 million per copy, a 366% increase for a system that took 15 years to field.