Indian Strategic Studies: 10/12/25

12 October 2025

How Cultural Heritage Is Being Attacked – and Protected – in Myanmar’s Civil War

Jonathan Jordan

The attack on the Gokteik Viaduct in Shan State, Myanmar, on August 24 may not resonate with many, being not particularly well-known outside of Myanmar. Yet the structure carries significant weight in the country’s history.

At the time of its construction 124 years ago, the viaduct was a marvel of logistics and engineering skill, and the longest railway trestle bridge in the world. An attempt to connect colonial Yangon with Kunming, China, the 102-meter-tall structure played witness to significant events in the recent history of Myanmar, including the nineteenth-century power plays between the British and the French in the Shan hills, and the dueling strategic objectives of Britain and Japan during the Second World War. It has seen the rise and fall of Burmese Communists, the Chinese Kuomintang, and Shan and Kachin revolutionary groups. The military junta, which seized power in an attempted military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, has accused the Ta-ang National Liberation Army of last month’s damage to the viaduct.

Myanmar’s cultural heritage, despite being less well known, is comparable to those of neighboring Thailand and Cambodia. The Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is said to predate both Bangkok’s Wat Arun and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. Two sites in Myanmar have thus far officially been inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: a collection of three of the Pyu City States, whose people were among the first inhabitants of the region; and Bagan, which was the capital of the first unified kingdom that would later become Myanmar. Other sites, including the city of Mrauk-U, Inle Lake, and Shwedagon Pagoda, are on the tentative list and under consideration for inscription by the World Heritage Committee. As of July 2025, UNESCO has inscribed 1,248 sites across 170 countries, in an attempt to preserve and protect our shared heritage.

Heritage sites can contribute significantly to a nation’s economy through the tourism sector, but they are also an important source of historical knowledge and cultural identity. Beyond the architecture, these sites enshrine the beliefs, memories, and legacy of communities. They act as bridges connecting present locations to a people’s past and future, providing a sense of belonging and harboring lessons learned from history. The destruction of cultural heritage and representative sites, therefore, can have significant impacts on cultural memory and social cohesion.

Sir Creek Comes Alive From Slumber – OpEd

M.K. Bhadrakumar

In the Jean-Jacques Annaud film based on William Craig’s 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, Nikita Khrushchev, immediately after arriving in Stalingrad front as the new principal commissar, deputed by Joseph Stalin to boost Soviet morale after the defeat in the Second Battle of Kharkov at the hands of the Sixth Army of the Wehrmacht during the German summer offensive of 1942, took a meeting of the commanders of the Red Army formations comprising the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th Armies to apprise them of Stalin’s famous Order No 227 dated July 2 instructing the defence of Stalingrad at all costs.

The English actor and film director Bob Hoskins in the role of Khrushchev threatened the commanders, per the film, that Stalingradwas not like any other city in the USSR, for, it bore ‘the name of the boss’. The Southwestern Command of the Indian Army headquartered in Jaipur will not face such a predicament, as Sir Creek, the 96-km estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea and the westernmost point in Gujarat bordering Pakistan which is witnessing tensions lately, is named after an obscure British representative of the colonial era.

However, it is crucial to know as a tidal wave of ‘cultural nationalism’ is sweeping India that the original name of Sir Creek was Banganga in Sanskrit. Legend says Vaishno Devi created the tributary with an arrow and bathed in it, washing her hair, hence the river is also known as Bal Ganga — bal meaning ‘hair’ in Hindi.

Over the period between 1970s to 1990s when I handled Pakistan affairs in the MEA in different capacities during my three assignments at headquarters, the greatest pleasure was always in the access they gave to the fabulous archival materials that have never seen the light of day (and probably never will) stored in the vaults of South Block, which would punctuate the largely unproductive, frustrating and unremittingly tense routine in the IPA Division. I was always intrigued by the Sir Creek issue, which fitted the description of a low-hanging fruit in the deeply troubled India-Pakistan relationship, forever ripe for plucking but forever left untouched for some mystical reasons that was impossible to fathom at my level.

Trump’s Approach to Taiwan Is Taking Shape

Emery Yuhang Lai

On March 4, 2025, Elbridge Colby, the incoming undersecretary of defense for policy, made some comments on Taiwan that raised eyebrows. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Colby asserted that “Taiwan’s fall will be a disaster for American interests,” and that “Taiwan is very important,” but added that “it is not an existential interest” for the United States.

It was not the first time Colby had expressed such a point of view, and he clearly ruffled the feathers of those in Washington who are at pains to “explain to the American people why Taiwan matters and why they should care about its fate.”

Colby was labelled an isolationist due to his position on U.S. support for Ukraine, and he could easily be tarred with the same brush when it comes to Taiwan. However, his position on Taiwan aligns in general with many conservatives who self-identify as “restrainers,” believing that U.S. resources are limited and not everything is a vital U.S. interest. In that context, Colby’s position – and Trump’s changing policy toward Taiwan in general – needs to be situated in a recent debate on whether defending Taiwan is a vital U.S. interest.

For those who lobby the U.S. to play a more proactive role in Taiwan’s defense against China, an unambiguous promise to come to Taiwan’s rescue is necessary. According to this line of thinking, Washington needs a policy of “strategic clarity” rather than the anachronistic “strategic ambiguity.” Proponents argue that Taiwan is worth defending because of its strategically important location, because it serves as a model democracy, and because it is an economic powerhouse capable of producing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.

However, none of these arguments strikes restrainers in Washington as reasonable enough to justify a clear-cut military commitment to the defense of Taiwan. They recognize its importance but warn that Taiwan is also dangerous as a “tinderbox” and a “flashpoint” in East Asia. Therefore, they prefer to enhance Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, to turn it into a “porcupine” able to deter China on its own.

The Chinese robots are coming

Selina Xu and Helen Zhang

Selina Xu leads China and AI research in the office of former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. Helen Zhang is deputy chief of staff and director of research and projects there. Schmidt invests in a variety of emerging technologies, including in the robotics industry.

Robot dogs. Humanoid helpers. Entirely automated dark factories without human workers. These might seem straight out of a sci-fi novel, but they are arriving full force in China as we speak. After years of patient investment, China is on the cusp of a robotics revolution.

Taiwan’s Plan for Peace Through Strength

Lin Fei-fan

In July 2025, Taiwan conducted one of its most extensive military exercises in decades. This time, however, the training did not occur in isolated training grounds but in the heart of Taiwan’s cities. Tanks moved through urban streets, more than 20,000 reservists were mobilized, soldiers transported weapons via underground metro systems, and simulated strikes targeted critical infrastructure, including the river crossings that link Taipei’s urban core. As part of the exercise, planners tested civilian agencies under extreme contingency scenarios while air-raid alerts emptied the streets. Underground parking lots and metro stations served as bomb shelters, and schools and civic centers became relief shelters and emergency medical hubs. The exercise also mobilized nongovernmental organizations and fire and police agencies to support material distribution logistics and community protection efforts. The government even released updated civil defense instructions, providing the public with air-raid sheltering and safety guidelines.

The exercise, in other words, extended far beyond the armed forces and reflected Taiwan’s deepening belief that effective deterrence against China relies not only on military modernization but also on societal resilience—the ability of Taiwan’s people to withstand the most extreme scenarios or to resist an invasion. Although it was the first time the Taiwanese people witnessed such a large-scale exercise in their own neighborhoods, the public did not panic but instead expressed strong support for these realistic training and preparedness efforts.

Since 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has made no secret of his ambitions to annex Taiwan, by force if necessary, and to seek Indo-Pacific dominance. The Chinese Communist Party has framed these objectives as essential to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and has targeted Taiwan with escalating military pressure and hybrid operations across multiple domains. From near-daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone to large-scale kinetic drills, cyberattacks, and disinformation operations, Beijing has pursued a campaign designed not simply to intimidate but to erode Taiwan’s confidence and capacity to resist.

Cold War Statecraft for the 2020s

Steven Weber

The United States and China are firmly locked in a cold war struggle whose outcome will be the most important determinant of peace, prosperity, and quality of life in international politics over the next decade.

That view enjoys nearly unanimous agreement—in Beijing and Washington, among Democrats and Republicans, and around the world in Brussels, Delhi, and Abu Dhabi, where leaders increasingly frame choices and consider options with an eye toward how they should position their nations within this new bipolar power contest.

This piece is the first in a series that will propose a strategy for the United States to conduct and win the modern Cold War. That strategy will include a general set of principles and consistent, specific tactics for grappling with critical issues, including technology and artificial intelligence, Taiwan and territorial conflict, and the flow of goods, ideas, and money.

This strategy will build on the unprecedented (and unexpected ) success of 1980s Cold War statecraft. That extraordinary victory was conceived and executed by a set of courageous leaders and advisers who could not have known in advance that the risks they took would play out in success

The 1980s analogy, like all historical cases, isn’t perfect. China is not Russia, 2025 is not 1985, the Sino-American relationship is more deeply interdependent economically than the U.S.-Soviet relationship ever was, and Trump and Xi are not Reagan and Gorbachev. Consider that agreed. But though history doesn’t repeat, it often rhymes. There is a credible and workable center-right inspired Cold War statecraft theory and strategy waiting for America—if we have the courage and discipline to embrace and execute on it.

How we got here.

That we’d end up in a Sino-American Cold War was nearly inevitable, though that wasn’t the conventional wisdom a few decades ago. During the 1990s, Democrats held the view that intentional efforts to incorporate a fast-emerging China as a great power into an American-led world order of open trade through WTO membership and relaxation of certain technology export controls would prompt a detente or even an alignment of sorts. They predicted that we’d see a gradual political liberalization in China, a softening of major security issues in the Pacific, and a relationship that at its best might come to resemble that between the U.S. and the European Union.

China sanctions US defence firms, chip data provider in latest curbs

Ji Siqi, Sylvia Ma

Beijing has announced sanctions on a slew of Western companies and institutions in the defence and intelligence sectors – including a leading semiconductor data analysis provider – marking its latest salvo amid ongoing trade tensions with the United States.

Fourteen entities, mostly headquartered in the US, were added to Beijing’s unreliable entity list on Thursday, banning them from trade and investment in China, according to a statement from the Ministry of Commerce.

Among the companies on the list is TechInsights, a Canada-based firm specialising in semiconductor intelligence, reverse engineering and market analysis.

Organisations and individuals in China are also prohibited from engaging in transactions, cooperation or other activities with the sanctioned entities, particularly data sharing and providing sensitive information to them, the statement said.

The move came after the ministry imposed a raft of new export controls on rare earth materials and related technologies on Thursday morning – ahead of an anticipated meeting between President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Donald Trump in late October.

Xu Tianchen, senior China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said Beijing’s move could be seen as a way to gain leverage ahead of the coming meeting.

In a separate statement on Thursday, a commerce ministry spokesperson said the impacted entities “have engaged in so-called military-technical cooperation with Taiwan, made malicious remarks about China and assisted foreign governments in suppressing Chinese companies”.

“[These actions] have severely undermined China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests,” the spokesperson said, adding the measures target only a “very small number of foreign entities that endanger China’s national security, and law-abiding foreign entities have nothing to worry about”.

China says unnamed foreign groups are using its rare earth exports for military purposes

Alcott Wei

China accused unnamed foreign organisations and individuals of processing its rare earths for military purposes as it announced further export controls on Thursday.

The new curbs announced by the Ministry of Commerce will ban the provision of technology and services for mining and processing the minerals without permission.

China is the world’s leading producer of rare earth elements, which are crucial to the production of a wide range of products, from electric vehicles to spacecraft, especially in the military sector.

“Some overseas organisations and individuals are directly processing rare earth items originating in China and then transferring or providing them to relevant organisations and individuals,” the ministry said.

“The items were directly or indirectly used in sensitive areas such as military operations, causing significant damage or potential threats to China’s national security and interests.”

Beijing introduced the first controls on the export of specific minerals in July 2023 – again banning their export without permission – and has steadily expanded the number of rare earths subject to these controls since then.

But the new controls are the first time that these curbs have been expanded to the technology used to mine or process the minerals.

In July, the Ministry of State Security warned that contractors in countries that could not produce or purify rare earths themselves were using spies to smuggle the minerals abroad using forged labels or by misreporting ingredients.

Taiwan readies 'porcupine strategy' to fend off Chinese invasion - as Xi Jinping draws up WW3 battle-lines

Dan McDonald

Taiwan is said to be preparing to unleash a unique military tactic to protect itself against the threat of a Chinese invasion.

The Taiwanese "porcupine strategy" is carefully designed to warn off Xi Jinping's People's Liberation Army (PLA) from attempting to take over the sovereign state.

Top military expert Philip Ingram has revealed the key components behind the strategy - which would likely unfold in the event of an invasion.

Mr Ingram told The Sun's Battle Plans Exposed: "Taiwan's military posture is built around a core strategic principle known as the porcupine strategy or asymmetric defence."

The Taiwanese 'porcupine strategy' is carefully designed to warn off Xi Jinping's CCP-controlled forces |

The military intelligence maestro described how the strategy is not designed to defeat the PLA "in a conventional war, but to make an invasion so difficult, so costly and so bloody that Beijing is deterred from ever attempting it".

Taiwan's armed forces would bring in the Air Force, Navy and weaponry to turn the island nation into an impenetrable fortress.

Mr Ingram explained: "The Air Force is the first line of defence tasked with contesting air superiority over the Taiwan Strait, and against initial waves of missile strikes.

"The backbone of the fighter fleet is the recently upgraded F-16 Vipers, one of the most advanced fourth generation fleets in the world.

How to Secure the Red Sea

Bridget Toomey, and Eric Navarro

Supporting and training the Yemeni Coast Guard is a low-cost way to undermine Houthi threats to the Red Sea.

Speaking at the UN last month, Yemeni president Rashid al-Alimi called for an international coalition to counter the Houthis in his address to the United Nations General Assembly. A multilateral effort to counter Houthi weapons smuggling would be a great starting point for such an effort. Luckily, one was recently announced, and the United States should support it.

On September 16, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia launched the Yemen Maritime Security Partnership (YMSP) to develop Yemen’s Coast Guard and support it in protecting maritime trade, counter smuggling, and combating piracy off Yemen’s shores. The YMSP conference was attended by representatives from 30 countries and five international organizations, including the United States. It received millions of dollars in initial pledges, with the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia each pledging $4 million, and another €2 million from the European Union.

The United Kingdom has previously undertaken substantial efforts to support Yemen’s Coast Guard, and Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Nations, and other countries have also contributed in the past. Despite this support, Maj. Gen. Khalid al-Qamali, head of Yemen’s Coast Guard Authority, insists the force still lacks the resources necessary to meet its mission requirements. This new initiative should build upon earlier efforts to transform local counter-smuggling and counter-piracy efforts in Yemen.

To address this shortfall, the United States should increase its financial, material, and military support of the UK- and Saudi-led YMSP. The financial piece is straightforward. For a relatively small amount of money, compared to the annual US military budget, the United States can significantly enhance Yemeni capabilities. Supplies of more advanced weapons or sensors could achieve the same effect, extending the coast guard’s range, enhancing interoperability with coalition forces, and increasing lethality against Houthi forces.

Militarily, the United States could offer a series of Theater Security Cooperation engagements that upgrade the level of training for the Yemeni forces. Even more impactful, the United States could increase its intelligence sharing and potential logistics support to the coast guard, thereby improving its ability to identify targets and conduct continuous operations.

Israel and Hamas Agree to ‘First Phase’ of a Peace Deal. Here’s What We Know

Callum Sutherland, Gemma Fox and Miranda Jeyaretnam

President Donald Trump’s first indication that a peace deal between Israel and Hamas had been reached came in the middle of an “Antifa roundtable” at the White House.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio passed a note to the President, which appeared to say, “Very close. We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first,” before whispering something in Trump’s ear.

“Yeah, I was just given a note by the Secretary of State saying that we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East, and they’re going to need me pretty quickly,” Trump said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Donald Trump during a roundtable on Antifa at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025. Francis Chung—Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Israel and Hamas agreed to the “first phase” of Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social shortly after, hailing what he called a “strong” and “durable” peace after more than two years of conflict.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” Trump wrote. “This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace. All Parties will be treated fairly!”

The peace deal, which has seen world leaders laud Trump for leading the proposal, comes just one day before the Nobel Peace Prize recipient is announced.

Trump has received backing from a number of leaders to receive the award, most notably from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Washington, D.C. in July.

“Retweet if you believe Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” posted the President’s son Eric on X Wednesday night following the agreement announcement.

What is ‘hybrid warfare’ — which Russia is accused of waging against Europe

Holly Ellyatt

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin attends a flag-raising ceremony for the latest Project 955A (Borey-A) strategic nuclear-powered submarine Knyaz Pozharsky in Severodvinsk on July 24, 2025.

Alexander Kazakov | Afp | Getty Images

Europe has to confront the reality of the “hybrid warfare” being waged against it, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, telling EU lawmakers that a series of incidents was “not random harassment” but part of a concerted campaign to unsettle and weaken the bloc.

Recent drone and airspace incursions, cyberattacks and election interference were just a few incidents that von der Leyen cited as instances of hybrid warfare against Europe.

“In just the past two weeks, MiG fighters have violated Estonia’s airspace, and drones have flown over critical sites in Belgium, Poland, Romania, Denmark and Germany. Flights have been grounded, jets scrambled, and countermeasures deployed to ensure the safety of our citizens,” von der Leyen said Wednesday during a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

“Make no mistake. This is part of a worrying pattern of growing threats. Across our Union, undersea cables have been cut, airports and logistics hubs paralysed by cyberattacks, and elections targeted by malign influence campaigns,” von der Leyen said, adding emphatically: “This is hybrid warfare, and we have to take it very seriously.”

While she did not blame all those incidents directly on Moscow, von der Leyen said it was evident that “Russia wants to sow division.”

Moscow has long been accused of being behind a multitude of “hybrid” attacks against its European neighbors but has repeatedly denied those accusations. CNBC contacted the Kremlin for a response to von der Leyen’s latest remarks and is awaiting a response.

What is hybrid warfare?

Goodbye is the hardest part: why is ending violence so difficult for non-state armed groups?

For groups involved in long-running non-international armed conflicts, the decision to end the use of violence poses significant challenges – even when it is no longer recognized to be an “effective” means of achieving organizational objectives.

In this post, independent researcher Dr Thomas Evans argues that exploring the cultural perspectives, influences, and identities within non-state armed groups and their members is vital to understanding the continued usage of, and disengagement from, political violence.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ICRC.

From Islamist groups in south Thailand, to the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in eastern India, despite seemingly little chance of organizational objectives being achieved through violent means, non-state armed groups often find it difficult to give up the gun. Even in instances where groups do leave violence behind, there remains the strong risk of organizational splinters, with those opposed to the decision forming new groups which may continue to use armed action.

To unpack the challenges of, and solutions for, disengagement among non-state armed groups, we must consider the cultural influences which underpin how members understand themselves and their organizations.

Leaving violence behind

In the past decade, the world has witnessed a remarkably sudden end to a number of long-running, seemingly intractable, non-international armed conflicts.

In 2017, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (FARC-EP) ceased over 53 years of armed action against the Colombian State – reforming as the political party Commons. Just one year later, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) disbanded after almost 60 years of violence against the Spanish State in its efforts to create an independent Basque country. The same year, Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH), a post-conflict armed group active in Northern Ireland since 2009, enacted its own ceasefire. While, most recently, on 12th May 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced that it was in the process of formally disbanding its organizational structures – ending a conflict against the Turkish State it has been engaged in for 47 years.

Inside the room where Nobel Peace Prize is decided – but will Trump get his wish?

Mark Lowen

Every year since 1901 they have come together in secret, neither disclosing when they deliberate, nor allowing journalists to see their final meeting – until now.

The Norwegian Nobel committee members – the guardians of the world's most prestigious award – will announce on Friday who they will honour with the Nobel Peace Prize.

And the BBC, along with Norway's national broadcaster, gained access as they gathered to make their choice.

It is the first time in the award's 125-year history that the media have been allowed a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process.

The five members and the secretary meet in the Committee room of Oslo's Nobel institute, adorned with the same chandelier and oak furniture since the first prize.

Across the walls are framed pictures of every peace laureate, with a space at the end for a photograph of this year's winner.

Beneath a portrait of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and patron of the prizes, the committee convenes on Monday morning, four days before announcing the winner.

They share coffee and pleasantries and then open proceedings; the finale of a months-long selection process.

"We discuss, we argue, there is a high temperature," the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, tells me, "but also, of course, we are civilised, and we try to make a consensus-based decision every year."

They read aloud the criteria for the prize enshrined in Nobel's will from 1895; that it be awarded to whoever has done the most for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, or for holding or promoting peace congresses.

win.

Scientist Who Was Offline 'Living His Best Life' Stunned by Nobel Prize Win

Louise Matsakis

When Fred Ramsdell, 64, was named a Nobel Prize winner earlier this week, he was deep in the Wyoming mountains, blissfully offline and surrounded by fresh snow. The next day, as he was wrapping up a three-week backpacking trip with his wife, her phone began to light up with hundreds of messages about the good news: Ramsdell, along with Mary E. Brunkow and Shimon Sakaguchi, had won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries that reshaped immunology.

Ramsdell tells WIRED he was completely unaware that the Nobel Prizes were being announced, let alone that the Nobel committee was trying to get in touch with him. Sonoma Biotherapeutics, the biotechnology firm he co-founded, told reporters that Ramsdell was “was living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip.”

When the news finally reached him, Ramsdell says he was shocked. He knew that the work he and his colleagues did constituted a major breakthrough, but he had already received another Swedish award for it, and thus assumed a Nobel was out of the question.

Ramsdell and his other co-winners uncovered how the body’s immune system learns to spare its own tissues, a process called peripheral immune tolerance. Part of their work involved a peculiar strain of flaky-skinned mice at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, descendants of a World War II–era radiation experiment.

These “scurfy” mice were born with a fatal mutation that unleashed their immune systems against their own organs. In the 1990s, Ramsdell and Brunkow, who were working at a Seattle biotech company, identified the gene responsible—a breakthrough that paved the way for today’s generation of cell therapies that target cancer as well as other diseases by retraining immune cells rather than destroying them. WIRED spoke to Ramsdell on Tuesday, soon after he was informed about his Nobel win.

Trump’s Misrule of Law

IAN AYRES, JACOB SLAUGHTER, TIMOTHY SNYDER, AZIZ HUQ, MICHAEL BURLEIGH, RUTI TEITEL

Insisting that cities governed by the Democratic Party are plagued by violent crime and harbor illegal immigrants, Donald Trump has deployed National Guard soldiers to Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, and Washington, DC – despite opposition from courts and state officials. Now, he has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act – an 1807 law that authorizes the president to deploy military forces within the United States to suppress domestic rebellion – and called for the arrest of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Ian Ayres and Jacob Slaughter of Yale Law School make one thing clear: Trump’s claim that Democratic cities are “hotbeds of crime” is not supported by the data. Of America’s 50 most dangerous metropolitan areas, 40 – including the top 17 – are in states that Trump won in 2024. If “federal crime fighting followed data rather than politics,” National Guard troops would be heading to the “Republican-led metropolitan areas of Shreveport, Louisiana (20.5 murders per 100,000); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (18.7 murders); Mobile, Alabama (17.6 murders); and Rocky Mount, North Carolina (15.6 murders).”

The University of Toronto’s Timothy Snyder puts it plainly. Not only are the deployjments “obviously illegal and designed to intimidate”; they are also the “political equivalent of a lit fuse,” as they create the “statistical likelihood of an incident that can be used to manufacture some greater crisis.” Preventing Trump from “using the US government and armed forces to establish a dictatorship at home” will require powerful resistance, and America’s federalist system may be democracy’s best hope.

But according to Aziz Huq of the University of Chicago Law School, it is precisely a “failure of federalism” that has enabled Trump’s militarization of American cities in the first place, with “every lever of federal power” being turned into an “instrument of political repression against non-aligned states.” The “breakdown of American federalism” arises from another “structural failure of American constitutionalism”: as “partisan-aligned majorities” in Congress and on the Supreme Court have “abdicated their constitutional responsibilities,” the separation of powers has effectively collapsed.

Protracted conflicts: the challenges and shortcomings of current conflict resolution approaches

Benjamin Petrini

More than 150 peace processes produced roughly 1,800 peace agreements worldwide between 1990 and 2020 – calling into question United States President Donald Trump’s assertion at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025 that he had ‘ended seven “un-endable” wars’. Peace processes often involve both high-level inter-state negotiations and sub-national or localised peace initiatives – with the two levels requiring integration, or at least some tight connections. Mediating between war parties to achieve peace necessitates buy-in and legitimacy, as well as patience and a vision on how peace will be implemented and become sustainable.

Nonetheless, some recent peace processes, such as the US-mediated Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)–Rwanda peace deal of June 2025, display significant gaps in implementation, reveal a negotiating approach that is hardly conducive to solving complex armed conflicts, and even face questions about credibility. On paper, inter-state agreements aimed at resolving intra-state conflicts, such as the DRC–Rwanda deal, are beneficial because they may end external support to conflict parties, resolve underlying enmities, or address regional security concerns. However, in this case, opaque commercial interests appear to overshadow the promotion of peaceful outcomes in eastern DRC, whilst aspirational and unrealistic commitments clash with the harsh reality on the battlefield.

Peace processes aimed at resolving complex intra-state conflicts have been undergoing significant changes for a decade or more, in parallel with the progressive decline of the liberal peace paradigm, as well as shifts in the landscape of armed conflicts.

A proliferation of armed conflicts

Armed conflicts have greatly expanded in numbers since 2016: 61 state-based conflicts (i.e., where at least one party is a state) took place globally in 2024, representing the highest number since 1946. Most of these armed conflicts are intra-state in nature, but they increasingly feature the direct participation of third-party states – a trend driving the internationalisation of civil wars and presenting greater challenges to resolve them.

America’s New Age of Political Violence

Robert A. Pape

The United States is in the grip of an era of violent populism. Threats and acts of political violence have been on the rise for roughly a decade, affecting a wide variety of victims, including Republican Representative Steve Scalise, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and U.S. President Donald Trump. In September 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that Americans must be prepared for an even more “extraordinary period of unrest” involving “serious political assassination attempts, political riots, and other instances of collective, group, and individual violence.” Sadly, this prediction has been borne out in 2025. An arsonist attempted to burn down Pennsylvania Governor Joshua Shapiro’s home (while he and his family were inside), an assassin killed Minnesota House Representative Melissa Hortman—and in September, a shooter murdered the commentator and activist Charlie Kirk in the most significant assassination in the United States since the 1960s.

Kirk’s death, in particular, has prompted bitter arguments among partisans about which political “side”—the left or the right—is to blame for the turn toward political violence. The truth is that neither is most responsible. Because it is notoriously difficult to assemble a comprehensive list of incidents of political violence and then accurately categorize them by their ideological motivation, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a University of Chicago research center I run, studied threats to members of Congress prosecuted by the Department of Justice. By focusing on a discrete, well-defined group of potential targets, this study largely avoids the subjectivity that muddies much research on political violence. We determined that, since 2017, the total number of threats to lawmakers has risen markedly, and Democratic and Republican members have been equally targeted.

This finding supports other research that shows that political violence in the United States now stems from both the left and the right, a rare and unusually dangerous phenomenon. Left to its own momentum, political violence is likely to escalate further, with major consequences for American liberal democracy: it drives fear in communities and among leaders who perceive themselves to be under threat and, in turn, a willingness to accept constraints on civil liberties or wield government power to suppress the danger. That only increases the likelihood that the legitimacy of future elections will be questioned. But the broad nature of the threat also suggests that if political leaders join forces to condemn political violence, they could push back the tide.

HE SAID, SHE SAID

Not Just Desert Storm and the Yom Kippur War: Why the Iran-Iraq War Should Inform US Military Thinking about Large-Scale Combat Operations

Harrison Morgan

Across an eight-year war and a thousand-mile front, Iran and Iraq mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops, fought with thousands of tanks and artillery pieces, and flew hundreds of combat aircraft and helicopters—an archetypal crucible of large-scale combat that killed roughly half a million people and scarred cities on both sides. The war began in September 1980, when Baghdad abrogated the 1975 Algiers Agreement and invaded after months of border clashes, betting that Iran’s postrevolution turmoil would yield quick concessions. By 1987, Iraq fielded about 800,000 troops, more than 4,500 tanks, and over 500 fighters, while Iran mustered roughly 850,000 troops, about 1,000 tanks, and only dozens of serviceable fighters. The 1988 campaign—culminating in Iraq’s swift recapture of the al-Faw Peninsula with an assault force of roughly 100,000 and heavy armor—set the conditions for Tehran’s acceptance of a ceasefire under UN Security Council Resolution 598. Yet despite its scale, the war remains relatively underrepresented among studies of large-scale combat operations (LSCO), particularly when compared with the 1973 Yom Kippur War or 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. It should not be. This war demonstrated how internal political dynamics, external alignments, and wartime finance determine how states mobilize and employ forces, how they escalate, and how they assess and posture after the guns fall silent. Iraq’s leadership, backed by supportive foreign governments and ample foreign loans, built a quality-first force with foreign equipment, training, and advisers; Iran, short on credit but rich in people, mobilized through parallel revolutionary institutions that converted manpower into endurance. The same three forces also shape today’s wars: They help explain why Russia and Ukraine mobilize and escalate so differently, and they offer the right lens for thinking about the next large-scale war—whether in Europe or the Indo-Pacific.

Mobilization and Employment: How Politics and Credit Shape the Ways States Fight

A personalist autocrat who rose by purge, Saddam Hussein launched a war of choice in September 1980 and then managed it to project strength without losing domestic control. He avoided a hasty, society-wide call-up and staged mobilization—about 30,000 conscripts a year from an annual cohort of around 135,000 until 1985, then roughly 70,000 a year through the war’s end. Simultaneously, he financed modernization on credit. After Iranian strikes destroyed Iraq’s oil terminals at Mina al-Bakr and Khor al-Amaya, Iraqi oil revenue fell from around $26 billion in 1980 to $7 billion in 1983. However, Gulf monarchies and the Soviet Union filled Iraq’s wartime funding gap with roughly $110 billion in loans and supplier credits—nearly three-quarters of Iraq’s war financing—letting Baghdad buy at scale: T-72 tanks and BMP infantry fighting vehicles; MiG and Su strike fighters; a helicopter fleet that dwarfed Iran’s; and the training, spares, and advisers to keep them combat-ready. On the ground, Iraq fought mostly on the defensive for much of the war behind layered, combined-arms belts east of Basra—minefields, wire, berms, and water obstacles tied to radar-guided artillery, attack helicopters, and chemical fires that bled repeated Iranian assaults at Shalamcheh and across the Basra approaches. By 1988, the compounding effects of Iraq’s maturing force, its sustained credit-backed kit and training, and Iran’s mounting casualties and revenue strain flipped the ledger. In the Tawakalna offensive of 1988, Iraq retook the critical al-Faw Peninsula in thirty-six hours, shattered Iranian lodgments along the southern front, and recovered all Iraqi territory, setting the conditions for Tehran’s acceptance of a ceasefire. According to most scholarly estimates, Iran’s losses exceeded Iraq’s—often cited as approximately 500,000 Iranian dead versus 180,000 Iraqi dead, with total wounded well above one million—underscoring how Baghdad’s credit-enabled, quality-first approach paired with defense in depth could impose attrition until conditions favored decisive counteroffensives.

America’s New Age of Political Violence

Robert A. Pape

The United States is in the grip of an era of violent populism. Threats and acts of political violence have been on the rise for roughly a decade, affecting a wide variety of victims, including Republican Representative Steve Scalise, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and U.S. President Donald Trump. In September 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that Americans must be prepared for an even more “extraordinary period of unrest” involving “serious political assassination attempts, political riots, and other instances of collective, group, and individual violence.” Sadly, this prediction has been borne out in 2025. An arsonist attempted to burn down Pennsylvania Governor Joshua Shapiro’s home (while he and his family were inside), an assassin killed Minnesota House Representative Melissa Hortman—and in September, a shooter murdered the commentator and activist Charlie Kirk in the most significant assassination in the United States since the 1960s.

Kirk’s death, in particular, has prompted bitter arguments among partisans about which political “side”—the left or the right—is to blame for the turn toward political violence. The truth is that neither is most responsible. Because it is notoriously difficult to assemble a comprehensive list of incidents of political violence and then accurately categorize them by their ideological motivation, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a University of Chicago research center I run, studied threats to members of Congress prosecuted by the Department of Justice. By focusing on a discrete, well-defined group of potential targets, this study largely avoids the subjectivity that muddies much research on political violence. We determined that, since 2017, the total number of threats to lawmakers has risen markedly, and Democratic and Republican members have been equally targeted.

This finding supports other research that shows that political violence in the United States now stems from both the left and the right, a rare and unusually dangerous phenomenon. Left to its own momentum, political violence is likely to escalate further, with major consequences for American liberal democracy: it drives fear in communities and among leaders who perceive themselves to be under threat and, in turn, a willingness to accept constraints on civil liberties or wield government power to suppress the danger. That only increases the likelihood that the legitimacy of future elections will be questioned. But the broad nature of the threat also suggests that if political leaders join forces to condemn political violence, they could push back the tide.

HE SAID, SHE SAID

Putin Is Escalating His War. If You Are Surprised, You Have Not Been Paying Attention.

Radosław Sikorski

There is a saying that each U.S. administration discovers Russia anew. Almost every president in recent decades has entered the White House hoping for a fresh start, but the result has always been the same: The more that’s offered to Moscow, the more it demands.

In the early hours of Sept. 10, more than 20 drones launched from Russia violated Poland’s airspace. NATO jets were scrambled to shoot them down. These drones did not veer off course. They did not drift into a NATO country by mistake. My government is certain that it was a provocation orchestrated by the Russian regime. Just over a week later, three Russian fighter jets violated Estonian air space for around 12 minutes.

These and other incidents are yet more proof that the Kremlin is not interested in peace but in escalation. If you are surprised by that, you have not been paying attention.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has tried every diplomatic avenue to achieve peace in Ukraine. He created the position of special envoy for peace missions and nominated to the post someone acceptable to the Kremlin; American diplomats have met their Russian counterparts on neutral ground, and the special envoy has visited Moscow several times; Mr. Trump has personally and publicly asked President Vladimir Putin of Russia to “STOP!” the war in Ukraine, and when Mr. Putin ignored the request, Mr. Trump offered to meet him one on one in Alaska.

But the arithmetic of war speaks for itself: Russia is not looking for an offramp. Its military spending for 2025 is estimated to reach 15.5 trillion rubles, around $190 billion, up 3.4 percent from 2024. Spending on defense and security in 2026 is projected to consume roughly 40 percent of Russia’s entire budget.

And this April — three months after the new U.S. administration took office — Ukrainian officials said that Russia was planning to increase its troop presence in Ukraine by 150,000 by year’s end. Russian bombs have never stopped pounding Ukrainian cities. Now come the brazen incursions into NATO airspace. These incursions are not a sideshow; they are another rung up the ladder of escalation.

U.S. Spacepower: Shield & Sword

Joseph L. Puntoriero

Space is no longer a sanctuary but a contested domain where the United States must achieve local, time-bound control of key orbital inclinations and celestial lines of communication. This article proposes an operational framework that integrates a shield and sword approach – layered resilience, active/passive satellite self-protection, and guardian-escort constellations paired with agile co-orbital and non-kinetic counterspace options – to enable deterrence by denial and punishment while managing escalation, debris, and attribution risks. Furthermore, grounding in the theories presented by Corbett and Clausewitz translates theory into practical guidance, enabling campaigns to be conducted effectively in orbit without ceding strategic initiative.

Introduction

The transition of space from a sanctuary to a contested domain marks a pivotal shift in global security dynamics. Orbital regimes – Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) – and the vast expanses of inter-celestial space are now arenas of strategic competition. The rapid proliferation of space-faring nations, commercial entities, and dual-use technologies compressed strategic maneuver space in orbit and intensified competition for control over critical orbital regimes. Nations like China and Russia are rapidly advancing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, co-orbital systems, and cyber capabilities, challenging the United States’ dominance. Sustained strategic advantage for the United States in the emerging era of space warfare will depend on the urgent development, integration, and perfection of offensive and defensive satellite capabilities capable of asserting control and proactive denial in contested orbital regimes and inter-celestial space. These systems must be paired with resilient force composition, intelligent redundancy, and tailored doctrine to ensure deterrence stability, safeguard critical assets, and shape the norms of engagement before adversaries dictate them.

The United States has long recognized the strategic importance of space and thus attempted to guide the global community in establishing global norms. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) established the principle that space should be used for peaceful purposes, prohibiting the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit. However, the OST did not prevent the development of conventional military capabilities in space, nor did it define “peaceful” in a way that precluded military uses. The United States and the Soviet Union both pushed this boundary during the Cold War. Each country conducted rudimentary ASAT testing, including co-orbital interceptors that approached targets to disable or destroy them. These tests demonstrated that space could be contested, but technological limitations and the desire to avoid debris-generating incidents dissuaded significant advancements. Today, technological advancements, integration of space into joint force operations, and the rise of peer competitors have removed many of these constraints, creating a need to establish control in localized orbital slots and defend them.

America’s Second Civil War: The 4th and 5th Generation Siege on Our Constitutional Republic

Donald Vandergriff

As a retired enlisted Marine, Army Major and lifelong student of warfare’s evolution, I’ve spent decades dissecting how conflicts morph from battlefield clashes to shadowy battles for the soul of a nation. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 was a brutal affair of massed infantry, cannon fire, and state armies—a classic second-generation war, where lines were drawn, uniforms donned, and victory measured in acres of blood-soaked earth.

This is America’s second civil war, a insidious 4th and 5th generation warfare (4GW/5GW) campaign that pits cultural saboteurs against the Judeo-Christian foundations of our Constitutional Republic. It began not with musket shots, but with the quiet docking of a ship in New York Harbor in 1933, carrying the exiles of the Frankfurt School to Columbia University.

Their mission?

A calculated “long march through the institutions” to erode Western culture from within, one classroom, one headline, one policy at a time.

This isn’t hyperbole; it’s the distilled essence of my analyses on Substack, where I’ve chronicled how Democratic elites and their cultural Marxist allies wield 4GW tactics—non-kinetic, decentralized assaults on legitimacy, identity, and cohesion—to fracture the body politic.

William S. Lind, the godfather of 4GW theory (along with retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson) and a frequent contributor to Traditional Right, warned us of this in his seminal works like On War, a collection of columns from the Iraq debacle onward. Lind described 4GW as warfare by non-state actors who collapse states through cultural subversion, not conquest—precisely the playbook unfolding here.

In my own posts, such as “4th Generation Warfare: The Insidious Evolution of Far-Left Strategies in American Politics”, by (Donald E. Vandergriff, 27 August 2025). I detailed how this war exploits divisions via relentless propaganda, turning neighbors into enemies without firing a shot. Lind echoes this in his Traditional Right essays, like “The View from Olympus” (June 13, 2025), where he laments the military’s drift into ideological quicksand, mirroring the societal rot he first diagnosed in the 1980s.

Beyond FPVs: Learning the Lessons of the Ukraine War—All of Them

Sam Scanlon

The war in Ukraine has produced a steady stream of striking images and tactical innovations that have baited the US defense community into simple conclusions: Either Ukraine is a crystal ball for the future of warfare or its experience is so theater- or country-specific that it has no bearing on US strategy and modernization efforts. What is missing in much of the debate is critical thinking anchored in doctrine, operational understanding, realities of the current state of American equipment, and strategic context. Far too often, the conversation begins and ends with first-person-view (FPV) drones, and the larger lessons get lost. FPVs matter and have a role to play, but they should not dominate how defense leaders and the policymaking community should think about this war. To understand Ukraine’s relevance for US strategy, we need to widen the aperture—looking beyond FPVs to the other innovations across air, land, and sea that the United States can adapt for defense modernization to counter threats around the globe—in the many theaters where it has interests and where US forces might find themselves actively engaged. While there are vast potential lessons learned from Ukraine, hardware implementation is an area that offers the promise of particularly quick wins for the United States.

Ukraine’s maritime story during the war is the most visible example of necessity forcing creative adaptation. Kyiv has weaponized the littoral in ways Western navies rarely imagined before the war. Small unmanned surface vessels (USVs)—Magura is the most well-known producer—have gone beyond kamikaze boat missions to perform surveillance, logistics, and even antiair missions in the Black Sea. In early May 2025, Ukrainian forces shocked the world when the Magura USVs armed with repurposed air-to-air missiles shot down two Su-30 fighters, marking the first reported instance of uncrewed surface drones downing manned military aircraft in combat. That event did not happen in a doctrinal vacuum: It was the result of integrating the latest innovative technology with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance tools, weapons platforms, and distributed operators into a coherent maritime concept of operations. The point for US planners is not to simply import Magura USVs—even though a US-listed company, Red Cat Holdings, has agreed to a coproduction deal—but to recognize what low-cost, networked surface systems change about naval campaigning. In the Indo-Pacific—where geography rewards dispersion and the tyranny of distance strains centralized defenses—attritable USVs can extend sensor nets, complicate enemy targeting, impose costs on high-value surface and air platforms, and even, as Magura proved, provide deadly surface-to-air attacks in contested environments. In South America, the same platforms can fuse maritime security and defense missions: persistent interdiction of illicit traffic, protection of coastal infrastructure, and low-risk presence operations without sending major surface combatants to every flashpoint. The lesson of the Black Sea is doctrinal: When inexpensive platforms can force a peer navy to alter operations, they become a lever of deterrence and maneuver rather than a sideshow. The United States is slowly learning this, but more investment, education, and doctrine creation are needed to fully operationalize the lesson.

Walk, Talk, And Think: How Walking Conversations Can Restore Authentic Learning In The Age Of AI – OpEd

Martina Moneke

As AI takes over essay writing, one-hour walk-and-talk conversations with instructors allow students to demonstrate a proper understanding through reflection, dialogue, and engagement with nature.

The rise of generative AI in education presents both an opportunity and a profound challenge. Tools like ChatGPT can produce polished essays, research summaries, and analytical responses in seconds; however, they cannot determine whether a student genuinely understands the material. Increasingly, instructors are faced with work that reads well on paper but masks shallow comprehension. Traditional detection methods—plagiarism checkers, stylometric analysis, and instructor intuition—are reactive and imperfect, often consuming significant faculty time while failing to capture the nuances of student understanding. In this context, the question arises: how can educators ensure that students are genuinely learning, thinking critically, and engaging with ideas?

One human-centered solution is surprisingly simple: students should have a one-hour, one-on-one conversation with their instructor about a key course topic. Ideally, this conversation should take place while walking, preferably in a natural or restorative environment. Real-time conversation cannot be outsourced to AI. Unlike written assignments, which can be generated or heavily edited by software, a live discussion allows instructors to probe reasoning, request clarifications, and evaluate the depth of understanding. Students must think on their feet, make connections between ideas, and articulate insights spontaneously—tasks that generative AI cannot reliably perform.

These conversations also restore a sense of relationality and trust in education. Traditional grading systems often reduce students to numbers and assignments, creating a transactional relationship with learning. The one-on-one, walk-based conversation emphasizes human engagement, accountability, and shared intellectual exploration. It reminds students that learning is a relational, ethical, and reflective process. Walking in conversation is not merely symbolic—it is a practice rooted in neuroscience, environmental psychology, and a centuries-long intellectual tradition.

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