India Faces Down New Security Calculus

Sushant Singh

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The announcement of a comprehensive defense pact between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia last month represents more than another bilateral agreement in a complex regional security matrix.

The deal is framed as a response to mounting insecurity in the Gulf amid Israel’s unrestrained military posturing across Lebanon, Syria, and the broader Middle East. But beneath the surface, the implications of the new defense pact are more expansive. It alters Pakistan’s strategic standing and deepens Riyadh’s defense entanglement with Islamabad—and it fundamentally complicates India’s policy in its backyard.

Can Indian Americans Shape US Foreign Policy Toward India?

Akhilesh Pillalamarri

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Shashi Tharoor, a prominent Indian member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, belonging to the opposition Indian National Congress, recently penned an article asking why Indian Americans do not do more to influence United States lawmakers and government officials on matters concerning India. Tharoor noted that the American government, under President Donald Trump, has recently “mounted a series of policy assaults on India,” such as tariffs of 50 percent on goods from India and a $100,000 payment for any new H-1B visa petitions.

Why have India-U.S. relations suddenly nosedived, and what, if anything, can Indian Americans do about this? While the proximate cause seems to be the divergent views India and the U.S. had on Trump’s role in mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025, there are two larger factors to consider.

The first of these is the evolving American perception of geopolitical and strategic considerations in Asia under the Trump administration. The second is American attitudes toward Indian Americans and Indian culture in general.

Any successful bilateral relationship between two countries will generally be built on the basis of at least there being cordial people-to-people ties or geopolitical alignment on the world stage. A particularly warm relationship, such as that between the United States and the United Kingdom, lies at the convergence of both friendly people-to-people ties and common geopolitical goals. Until quite recently, it looked like the Indo-American relationship also had both elements going for it. In an ideal world, the U.S. and India would have excellent relations, shaped by similar geopolitical interests and democratic political systems. The Indian American community would serve as a bridge between the two countries, facilitating cultural exchanges, trade, diplomacy, and military ties.

But it would be hard for anyone — whether of Indian origin or not — to sell a pro-India policy to an administration, such as the Trump administration, that looks at the world in transactional terms. If every country is a player to engage in deals with, a rival to punish, or a friend to reward based on the issue at hand, then India is not particularly special in the eyes of the United States. In this view, China is no longer a systemic geopolitical and ideological nemesis but just another competitor. There is no use in favoring India to balance against China. On top of this, Pakistan is no worse a choice to transact with than India, and may even be less “difficult” to deal with, if the establishment there rolls out the red carpet for the Trump administration.

Opinion | 'Pasni' Offer Proves Pak Can Betray Anyone - Even China - For A Deal

Imran Khurshid

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China has consistently supported Pakistan - diplomatically, economically, and militarily - even during Islamabad's periods of isolation. Yet, despite this "iron brotherhood", Pakistan's recent moves show that loyalty in Islamabad is negotiable.

Pakistan's reported proposal to grant the United States a development and management role at Pasni Port, as revealed by the Financial Times, marks one of the most consequential geopolitical developments in recent years. Situated along the Arabian Sea, just 70 miles from China-operated Gwadar Port, 100 miles from Iran, and approximately 178 miles from India's Chabahar Port, Pasni's geostrategic position places it at the intersection of major regional rivalries involving China, India, Iran, the United States, and other key actors such as Saudi Arabia and Gulf investors. The port's location also has implications for Afghanistan, Central Asia, and broader maritime security in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

The development follows the meeting between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Army Chief General Asim Munir, and US President Donald Trump on September 25, 2025, signaling a potential new phase in US-Pakistan geostrategic engagement. The proposal, which had already been floated and discussed with US officials prior to the meeting, is part of Islamabad's broader attempt to diversify its foreign partnerships, move beyond exclusive dependence on Beijing, and attract US, Iranian, and Saudi investments amid its deepening economic challenges. While the plan is significant, it remains exploratory, with no formal agreement yet confirmed by either Pakistan or the US. However, if this proposal were to materialise, it would constitute a geopolitical earthquake, reshaping power dynamics in this region and carrying implications beyond it.

The New Strategic Pivot

The blueprint envisions transforming Pasni - currently a modest fishing town - into a strategic logistics and mineral export hub. The project will link the port to Balochistan's vast mineral reserves, including the Reko Diq copper and gold mines, through a new railway network. Estimated to cost $1.2 billion, the project is expected to be financed through a combination of Pakistani federal funds and US-backed development finance.

Opinion | Pakistan's Jihad Factories May Soon Be Getting A 'Saudi' Lifeline

Aishwaria Sonavane

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For years, Riyadh has financially backed clerical groups and madrassas promoting the Salafi and Wahhabi schools of thought in Pakistan. If the new deal expands such patronage, it may solidify the framework on which the military-jihad complex relies.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) at the Royal Court in Al-Yamamah Palace, Riyadh, on September 17. Under this pact, any aggression against either country will be treated as aggression against both, thereby spectacularly formalising and consolidating a military partnership that has spanned decades.

The details remain opaque; however, the agreement essentially consolidates what has long been an informal practice between the two nations. Pakistan has historically maintained close ties with Saudi Arabia, mainly rooted in the Islamist orientation enshrined in Article 40 of the Pakistani Constitution and sustained by decades of financial support by the Kingdom.

The Really Awkward Timing

The timing of the deal gains high notability given its arrival just days after an Israeli strike on Doha, Qatar, a Gulf neighbour of Saudi Arabia. It further follows the brief military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May, following the terror attack in Kashmir. On the face of it, the deal signals the emergence of a new security architecture linking the Indian subcontinent with West Asia. From Riyadh's perspective, the pact reflects diminishing confidence in the US as the security guarantor of the Gulf region. In that light, aligning with nuclear-armed Pakistan offers the Kingdom an added layer of deterrence and an ally with military capabilities. This is particularly considering the limited military capability in Saudi Arabia despite its strong financial resources.

With Pakistan emerging as an active security player in West Asia, New Delhi will now have to recalibrate its strategic calculations. India's key concern is how Pakistan might leverage Saudi resources - financial aid, oil facilities, and diplomatic support - to advance its hostile designs. This piece focuses specifically on how the deal strengthens Pakistan's military-jihadi complex (MJC).

What The Military-Jihad Complex Really Is

China steps up control of rare-earth exports citing ‘national security’ concerns

Helen Davidson

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China has increased restrictions on exports of rare earths and related technologies as Beijing tightened its grip on the products that are critical for use in smartphones and fighter jets.

China’s commerce ministry announced the restrictions on Thursday, arguing damage had been caused to its “national security” from exports of the technologies – both directly or indirectly – to foreign military.

The restrictions require government permission for the export of technology used to mine, process or recycle rare-earth minerals or make magnets from it, which could have dual use. The ministry noted that permission may not be granted.

The new rules come amid tense US-China trade talks, and weeks before an expected meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Apec summit in South Korea.

Rare earths and rare-earth magnets are used in products ranging from consumer electronics and cars to jet engines and radar systems. China controls about 70% of the world’s rare-earth mining and almost all of its separation and processing and magnet manufacturing.

The restrictions also ban Chinese nationals and Chinese companies from assisting in the same processes overseas. Foreign manufacturers using Chinese machinery or components overseas are now expected to seek permission, although it was unclear how that would be enforced.

Companies hoping to export items that have even small traces of Chinese-sourced rare-earths elements must get ministry approval. Those with previously issued export licences for potential dual-use items were encouraged to “proactively present” the licences for inspection.

Most of the new rules, which took immediate effect on Thursday and expand on export restrictions first announced in April, make clear that Beijing is targeting particular industries. The announcement specified that overseas defence users would not be granted licences, the ministry said, while applications related to advanced semiconductors would only be approved on a case-by-case basis.

Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai says US-China AI competition is not ‘winner takes all’

Xinmei Shen

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China-US competition in artificial intelligence should not be viewed as a winner-takes-all race; rather, it is a marathon where the technology is adopted in different ways in work and life, according to Joe Tsai, the chairman of Alibaba Group Holding.

“When it comes to AI, there’s no such thing as winning the race. I think it’s a long marathon,” Tsai, also chairman of the South China Morning Post, said at an event hosted by the American podcast All-In last month. The video and audio of the event were published on Wednesday. Alibaba owns the Post.

Tsai said the winner in AI should not be defined as “who comes up with the strongest AI model”, but on “who can adopt it faster”. China’s path of developing cost-effective open-source AI models was “conducive to faster adoption” compared with the US approach of pouring tens of billions of dollars into developing trillion-parameter models, according to Tsai.

“I’m not saying China technologically is winning the model war, but in terms of the actual application and also people benefiting from AI, it has made a lot of development,” Tsai said. He cited a survey that showed the percentage of Chinese businesses using AI had increased to 50 per cent this year from 8 per cent last year.

His comments come as American and Chinese tech giants are spending huge amounts on AI infrastructure and computing resources.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said last month that the Hangzhou-based company plans to increase its capital expenditure on AI infrastructure from the original 380 billion yuan (US$53 billion) over the next three years, as it aims to become “the world’s leading full-stack AI service provider”.

The popular All-In podcast, hosted by US tech industry veterans, has US competition with China as a recurring theme. Tsai, one of Alibaba’s co-founders alongside Jack Ma, said he disagrees with the narrative that the US and China are heading towards existential rivalry.

Meanwhile, Tsai said that the adoption of AI had boosted efficiency at Alibaba, with about 30 per cent of the code written within the conglomerate being done by AI.

How China is challenging Nvidia's AI chip dominance

Osmond Chia

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Jensen Huang, the boss of Silicon Valley-based Nvidia, has warned China is "nanoseconds behind" the US in chips

The US has dominated the global technology market for decades. But China wants to change that.

The world's second largest economy is pouring huge amounts of money into artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Crucially, Beijing is also investing heavily to produce the high-end chips that power these cutting-edge technologies.

Last month, Jensen Huang - the boss of Silicon Valley-based AI chip giant Nvidia - warned that China was just "nanoseconds behind" the US in chip development.

So can Beijing match American technology and break its reliance on imported high-end chips?

After DeepSeek

China's DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the tech world in 2024 when it launched a rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The announcement by a relatively unknown startup was impressive for a number of reasons, not least because the company said it cost much less to train than leading AI models.

It was said to have been created using far fewer high-end chips than its rivals, and its launch temporarily sank Silicon Valley-based Nvidia's market value.

And momentum in China's tech sector has continued. This year, some of the country's big tech firms have made it clear that they aim to take on Nvidia and become the main advanced chip suppliers for local companies.

In September, Chinese state media said a new chip announced by Alibaba can match the performance of Nvidia's H20 semiconductors while using less energy. H20s are scaled-down processors made for the Chinese market under US export rules.

China’s jobless youth aren’t happy with a plan to attract foreign professionals with a new ‘K-visa’

Simone McCarthy

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A new visa category launched by the Chinese government to attract young science and technology professionals is causing fervent backlash in China, where well-educated young people are already struggling to find work.

The new “K-visa,” launched October 1, has been touted by Chinese officials as a boon for the country’s development – and widely seen as a part of Beijing’s bid to gain an edge in its technology rivalry with the US as President Donald Trump pushes to slash federal funding for research and tightens restrictions on international students and workers.

But many voices across China have made clear they have a different view.

Discussion of the K-visa category has dominated social media in recent days, where top-trending hashtags related to the visa have reached roughly half a billion views in the space of two days.

Many voices pointed to deep-seated challenges faced by young jobseekers in China, where youth unemployment hovers close to 19% and a record 12.2 million new college graduates are competing for jobs in a tough economy.

“There are so many (master’s degree holders) here struggling to find jobs, and you are looking to bring in more talent (from overseas)?” read one comment on social media that garnered thousands of likes.

Some commentators reflected nationalist and xenophobic views within the country, with one wondering about the “endless consequences” of potentially expanding immigration. Nationalism has thrived under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, including on China’s tightly regulated social media platforms where moderate voices have been marginalized and online discourse can turn ugly when discussing foreigners.

Other commentators questioned whether applicants would be held to high enough standards.

‘As Long as it Takes': What does it mean to commit to Ukraine’s security?

Lawrence Freedman

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Any long war leads to innovations in military technology and tactics and shakes up the established political order. The war in Ukraine is no exception. There has been much commentary on what it means for the character of modern war, especially because of the saturation of the front-lines with cheap and expendable drones. But there has been less on its impact on the conceptual framework with which we think about questions of alliance and security guarantees.

In 2008 the door was opened to eventual NATO membership for Ukraine though without any mechanism to allow it to walk through the door. Yet the possibility that one day Ukraine might join the alliance was used by Moscow to justify the invasion and occupation of its neighbour, and some in the West believe it had a point. Because Moscow has put so much stress on this issue it is now taken for granted, including by Ukraine, that when and if a peace deal is agreed to end this war, NATO membership will be precluded.

This has left Kyiv and its supporters scrambling around to find an acceptable alternative that will guarantee Ukraine’s security should there be a deal. One problem is that the old model of NATO, the model Ukraine wanted to join, has been subverted if not quite done away with by Donald Trump. In this post I will assess the impact on both our thinking and practice of this combination of the US administration’s expectation that European countries will do more to look after not only their own security but also Ukraine’s, and the persistent challenge posed by Russian aggression.

Backing Ukraine

When Russia annexed Crimea and carved out enclaves in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO countries backed Ukraine, with sanctions against Russia and some arms supplies, though these were limited in both numbers and type. Western countries sought to show their displeasure with Rusia while limiting their own liabilities. That remained the case even after the full-scale invasion of February 2022. The sanctions became more severe and more weapons were delivered, but liabilities were kept limited. The weapons supplied were notionally defensive. Putin made sure, when he announced the ‘special military operation’ that any direct engagement by NATO troops would involve the highest risks:

Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan in full

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US President Donald Trump says Israel and Hamas have "signed off on the first phase" of his 20-point Gaza peace plan, in a major step towards a permanent end to two years of war.

He unveiled the plan at the White House on 29 September alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Israel accepted the terms.

On 3 October, Hamas said it agreed to return all 48 remaining hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and Gaza detainees, and to the idea of handing over the governance of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats.

But the group did not mention other elements, most notably the requirement that it disarm.

Once the ceasefire takes effect, US, Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators will attempt to get both sides to agree what Trump called a "strong, durable, and everlasting peace".

Here is the full text of the president's plan, as provided by the White House:

1. Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.

2. Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.

3. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

4. Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

5. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after 7 October 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

A Gaza ceasefire deal could be Trump’s biggest diplomatic achievement – but the devil is in the detail

Andrew Roth

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For Donald Trump, a peace deal – or even a durable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – could be the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.

The details and sequencing of a deal to end Israel’s war in Gaza remain murky but the statement of purpose by both Israel and Hamas is meaningful. In agreeing to a deal with political backing from Arab states and other regional powers, this is the best chance for an end to the war since a ceasefire broke down in March, returning Gaza to a grinding war that has left nearly 68,000 people dead, most of them civilians.

Since March there have been rumblings of a deal but nothing that has come this close. The first phase of the peace plan, as Trump called it in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, is straightforward: the return of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a limited withdrawal by the Israeli military. But finding all the hostages, and managing an Israeli withdrawal, could be complicated.

In keeping with the tone of Trump’s presidency, hopes are expressed in hyperbole, with the president saying: “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!”

There is so much left to be discussed. The 20-point peace plan proposed by the administration attempts to thread the needle between creating the conditions for a ceasefire and negotiating a lasting end to the war; the hard questions of Hamas’s future and whether the militant group will disarm, along with Israel’s vision for the future of Gaza, remain to be hammered out.

And we have been here before: the Trump administration was in a hurry to negotiate an end to the Gaza war even before the inauguration, and a hastily organised ceasefire in January broke down over the sequencing of the release of the hostages still held in Gaza.

Peace in the Middle East — or constructive ambiguity in reverse

Natan Sachs

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After two terrible years — beginning on the horrific morning of October 7, 2023 — there is now a chance this war could end, at least temporarily. Hostages could return home, aid could flow into Gaza, reconstruction efforts could start to take shape, and lives and societies could start to mend.

This chance exists not because the 20-point proposal released by the United States on September 29, 2025, is a model of diplomatic detail or nuance. It exists because its patron, President Donald Trump, appears determined not to take “no” for an answer — meaning he is willing to interpret almost any answer as a “yes,” regardless of its content or intent. If, in the past, negotiators crafted vague bridging proposals to allow both sides to say “yes,” now the parties are crafting vague “yes, but” responses to allow the US administration to claim, and perhaps even produce, a success: a partial, messy, disingenuous one, yet nonetheless vital end to this historic round of violence.

Constructive ambiguity has long had pride of place in Middle East diplomacy. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, for example — the “land for peace” resolution after the 1967 war — was designed to let each side read its own meaning into the text. It demanded that Arab states accept Israel’s right to “live in peace,” with “respect for [...] the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every State,” and called on Israel to withdraw from territory it had occupied. Yet while the English version required withdrawal “from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” the French version said “des territoires” (“from the territories”). Each side could thus decide for itself whether the resolution meant full withdrawal, as the Arab states held, or a one of negotiated scope, as Israel insisted.

The Trump administration’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war flips that formula. Its 20 points are sweeping and bold: all Israeli hostages, living and deceased, are to be released “within 72 hours,” along with 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences for murder. “Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty,” while others will be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. Aid will flow freely to address the humanitarian crisis. An international authority and security force will govern and rebuild Gaza as Israel withdraws. “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone…” and so on.

The Biggest Hurdles to the Next Phase of Trump’s Gaza Deal

John Haltiwanger

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Israel and Hamas on Wednesday reached an agreement to advance an initial phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which will see all of the remaining hostages in the coastal enclave released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, as well as the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops.

Israelis and Palestinians are cautiously celebrating the deal, which paves the way for a cease-fire and further negotiations that could bring a permanent end to the two-year war. Even after Trump announced the agreement, Israeli Defense Forces reportedly continued to conduct strikes in Gaza, a sign of Israel’s readiness to continue the war against Hamas if negotiations fall through in the days ahead.

The “Yes, But” Problem With the Gaza Peace Plan

Aaron David Miller, Natan Sachs, and Khalil Shikaki

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The American Statecraft Program develops and advances ideas for a more disciplined U.S. foreign policy aligned with American values and cognizant of the limits of American power in a more competitive world.Learn More

On Thursday, Israel and Hamas announced that they had agreed to a ceasefire—the first phase of a twenty-point peace plan that includes the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

On this week’s episode of Carnegie Connects, Aaron David Miller spoke with Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, about the stakes of the peace deal and obstacles to implementation . Excerpts from their conversation, which have been edited for clarity, are below. Watch the full discussion here.

Aaron David Miller: To what degree has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal travails and obsession with remaining in power shaped his decisionmaking in Gaza?

Natan Sachs: That’s a great question, and it’s difficult to answer for two reasons.

One, it very much depends on your worldview. So if you’re not a fan of Netanyahu—and I plead guilty to that—then you tend to see him more as motivated by bad reasons. If you are a fan of him, you dismiss it offhand. Two, we’re trying to go into the head of one person, and it’s harder than many of us—myself included—sometimes pretend.

I do have a slightly contrarian view here. I think that Netanyahu suffers from a very severe malady that has warped his decisionmaking—the malady of someone who’s been in power for a very, very long time and is genuinely sure that he has no replacement. Netanyahu truly believes he has no suitable replacement. And as we know, the graveyard is full of people who have no suitable replacements. This has led to the political crisis that we’ve seen for years on end. In the context of this war, I think even more so.

The Army’s Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

Greg Jaffe

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The U.S. Army soldier steered the drone deep into enemy territory where it spotted about two dozen enemy vehicles hiding beneath a canopy of trees.

Col. Joshua Glonek recalled the jolt of excitement that ran through his staff at the drone’s discovery, followed by hushed chatter in the small, dark tent where his team was preparing for what came next.

His 3,500-soldier brigade was in the last hours of an 11-day training center battle against a similarly sized force. Such exercises — the closest thing the Army has these days to actual combat — happen many times a year.

But this one was different.

The rapid proliferation of deadly drones in places like Ukraine had set off a growing sense of alarm among the Army’s top leaders.

Senior Army officials were relying on Colonel Glonek and his troops to catch up to America’s adversaries. It was their job to figure out which drones the Army should buy and how it should fight with them.

US Stock Market Crash Coming? JPMorgan Chase CEO Issues Urgent Warning

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Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has raised serious concerns about the future of the US stock market, according to the BBC. Speaking about growing financial risks, Dimon said he is "far more worried than others" about the likelihood of a significant market correction.

According to Dimon, the chances of a stock market crash are higher than many investors currently believe. He suggested that such a correction could happen within the next six months to two years, urging caution amid growing economic uncertainties.

Dimon, who leads America's largest bank, told the BBC that the US had become a "less reliable" partner on the world stage. He cautioned he was still "a little worried" about inflation in the US, but insisted he thought the Federal Reserve would remain independent, despite repeated attacks by the Trump administration on its chair Jerome Powell.

Dimon noted that several factors are contributing to the current atmosphere of uncertainty, including geopolitical tensions, increased government spending, and global remilitarisation, as per the BBC.

"All these things cause a lot of issues that we don't know how to answer," he said. "So I say the level of uncertainty should be higher in most people's minds than what I would call normal."

Much of the rapid growth in the stock market in recent years has been driven by investment in AI.

On Wednesday, the Bank of England drew a comparison with the dot-com boom (and subsequent bust) of the late 1990s and warned that the value of AI tech companies "appears stretched" with a rising risk of a "sharp correction".

"The way I look at it is, AI is real, AI in total will pay off," he said.

"Just like cars in total paid off, and TVs in total paid off, but most people involved in them didn't do well."

Europe worries it’s already at war — and America hasn’t noticed

Stephen Collinson

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“We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s warning last month might lack the fateful portents of Sir Edward Grey’s lament on the eve of World War I that “the lamps are going out all over Europe.” But they signaled a page of history turning amid a flurry of airspace incursions in NATO nations by suspected Russian drones and warplanes, alongside other threatening seaborne and cyber activity.

For 80 years Europe considered its peace inviolate. Now, it can no longer be sure. The buzz phrase for a new age of uncertainty is the “gray zone” — a state in which nothing is black or white; neither fully at war nor at peace.

Merz is not alone in his concern. Former NATO chief George Robertson, co-author of a British government defense review, bemoaned recent cyberattacks and warned civilian infrastructure was unprepared. “Can we imagine that it is just all coincidence that these things are happening, the sabotage is happening all across Europe?” Robertson said at a speaking event last week.

“We’ve got to worry about the gray-zone attacks. It’ll be too late if the lights go out,” Robertson continued. He asked his audience in idyllic Wigtown, in southwest Scotland, a world away from Ukraine’s war: “Have you all got torches with live batteries in every room in your house? Have you got candles?”

Drone sightings, which closed mainland European airports and led to NATO jets being scrambled, exposed Europe’s lack of readiness after decades of strategic slumber and cast doubt on whether governments weakened by populist uproar can muster the political will to rearm.

And there’s never been more uncertainty about the strength of US security guarantees to NATO partners. President Donald Trump claims, ad nauseam, that the Ukraine war would never have begun had he been president. But the new alarm is on his watch. Has his ambivalence toward the Western alliance, confusion about his red lines, and psychodrama of flattery and rejection with President Vladimir Putin opened the way to dangerous Russian adventurism?

Is the U.S.-Israel Gaza Peace Plan a Deal or a Distraction?

Zaha Hassan

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The Middle East Program in Washington combines in-depth regional knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to provide deeply informed recommendations. With expertise in the Gulf, North Africa, Iran, and Israel/Palestine, we examine crosscutting themes of political, economic, and social change in both English and Arabic.Learn More

As the war in Gaza enters its third year, the United Nations marked its eightieth anniversary by hosting a conference on the two-state solution. The New York meeting—officially known as the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution—aimed to build momentum for collective and individual state actions in support of both a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian self-determination. A slew of countries recognized Palestinian statehood before and during the UN conference—nearly 160 states now recognize Palestine, including four of the five permanent members of the Security Council—and others announced various economic sanctions and restrictions on arms transfers to Israel. In addition, right before the conference, a UN commission confirmed that Israel is responsible for an ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Days later, however, international attention shifted to a new twenty-point peace plan for Gaza, announced jointly by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Washington. The UN secretary general and most Arab countries, including the Palestinian Authority, welcomed the president’s efforts without embracing the plans specific terms.

Their unequivocal endorsement would have been problematic. The UN and the conference aim to advance Palestinian sovereignty consistent with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion and international law. In contrast, the U.S. plan reframes the problem as Palestinian radicalization, which it says requires a third party to take over the management of affairs in Gaza, at least for an indeterminate transitional period, until Palestinian institutional reform is possible. If a permanent ceasefire and the two-state solution are to have a chance, the UN and key stakeholders will have to work with the United States to significantly revise the plan toward greater alignment with international law. Failure to do so will prolong the suffering in Gaza, condemn the region to further conflict and instability, and indefinitely preoccupy the United States and other stakeholders with the Middle East.

Two Years After Oct. 7, a Trail of What-Ifs

Steven A. Cook

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Let’s imagine for a moment a counterhistorical regarding the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. What if Israel had responded with a fierce but limited war in Gaza, prioritized the release of Israeli hostages, and continued pursuing a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia that had been on the table since well before the Hamas attack? How would Israel have fared, and how many Palestinian lives would have been spared? What would the region look like today?

Instead, Israel made a series of quick decisions that set its trajectory, as did other players in the region as well as then-U.S. President Joe Biden. This is what social scientists call “path dependencies”—the process by which decisions shape subsequent decisions. In poetry, of course, it sounds more elegant. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, // I doubted if I should ever come back,” Robert Frost wrote in his classic poem “The Road Not Taken.”

The 6 Lessons Israel Overlearned After Oct. 7

Daniel Byman

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The Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel were a strategic shock of historic proportions. As with other cataclysmic events like 9/11, they generated immediate lessons on the dangers of terrorism, the challenges facing intelligence services, and the costs of complacency. Israeli leaders, reeling from the trauma, launched wide-ranging operations not only in Gaza but also against targets in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Yemen. For many Israelis, Oct. 7 seemed to confirm hard truths about the nature of their enemies and the perfidiousness of supposed friends. Yet in practice, these lessons were only partially correct—and in several cases dangerously incomplete.

Not accommodating terrorists seems like an obvious lesson, but when you live in the Middle East, where governments like Iran and Syria have supported terrorism and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah controlled territory, working with extremist groups and their supporters seems like a necessary evil. Before Oct. 7, Israel relied on a mix of coercion and inducements to manage Hamas, convinced that material incentives and pressure had created a pragmatic governing partner in Gaza. In Lebanon, Israel focused mostly on deterrence to counter Hezbollah, using the threat of punishment to dissuade the group from launching attacks. Oct. 7 shattered the assumption that you could manage terrorists, reinforcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate with Hamas and driving all-out campaigns against Hezbollah, Iran, and military targets in Syria.

Two Ways Oct. 7 Changed Israel and One Way It Didn’t

David E. Rosenberg

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The one thing that everyone could be sure of as the events of Oct. 7, 2023, unfolded was that Israel would emerge from the Hamas attack a changed country. It was not just the immediate trauma of the roughly 1,200 dead and 250 hostages, but also how much it upset the assumptions that Israelis had made in the years before—that the country was more safe and secure than any time in its history, that the Arab world was slowly accepting the inevitability of a predominantly Jewish state and prepared to push aside concerns about the future of Palestinians, and that Israel’s high-tech prowess could not just generate prosperity but also ensure security as well.

A final reckoning on such a cataclysmic event will take years to emerge. In the meanwhile, the most dire predictions—Israel becoming ensnared in prolonged, deadly, and destructive wars with Hezbollah and Iran; a tanking economy; and a deep crisis of confidence—have failed to materialize. The conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran ended in Israel’s favor with relatively little collateral damage. Economic growth has slowed, but Israel has absorbed the shock better than many expected. Trust in the military and many of the country’s key institutions has not declined significantly, if at all.

Who Holds the High Cards in Sino-American Supply Chain Poker?

Graham Allison

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“You don’t have the cards,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during their meeting at the White House in February, trying to make him understand that Ukraine could not win in negotiations with Russia what it had lost on the battlefield. “They’re playing with a pair of twos,” Bessent told the press before his first face-to-face negotiations with his Chinese counterpart Vice Premier He Lifeng—attempting to unsettle his opponent.

What We Do and Don’t Know About Trump’s Israel-Hamas Deal

John Haltiwanger

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There is new hope for a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel that could see all of the remaining hostages in Gaza returned and potentially lead to long-term peace. But a lot remains up in the air, and there are major gaps between both sides on key issues.

Why a US Return to Bagram Is Not a Good Idea

Edris Tajik

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U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Ricky Bryant is last in line to board a C-130H2 Hercules aircraft at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, for a flight to Forward Operations Base Salearno, Afghanistan, on March 8, 2006.

In early July 2021, Afghanistan’s national forces entered Bagram air base only to find it abandoned. Their American counterparts had left in the middle of the night without a word, walking away from what had been their largest installation in Afghanistan during the war on terror, complete with runways, barracks, and even American chains like Burger King and Pizza Hut. Built by the Soviets during the Cold War, Bagram had grown into a sprawling symbol of U.S. power in the country and in the region.

A month later, the Taliban seized it, along with the rest of Afghanistan.

In the past few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has called for retaking the base, citing its strategic location and insisting that “we should have never given it up.” His remarks have prompted many in Washington to voice support for the idea.

A return to Bagram appears attractive, at least on paper. From there, the United States could monitor China, track Russian activity in Central Asia, watch Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, and launch operations against extremists, particularly the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). This combination makes Bagram look like an indispensable asset. It is hardly surprising, then, that Trump warned the Taliban that “bad things” could happen if they refused to give back Bagram, and equally unsurprising that many have argued in favor of the idea.

However, while the opportunities appear tempting, the risks for the U.S. are far greater. Despite the common perception that reclaiming Bagram would bolster U.S. interests and security, in reality a U.S. takeover would do the opposite. Retaking the base by force is nearly impossible, and securing it through a deal with the Taliban would not make the United States safer or protect its interests in the region but would instead fuel terrorism and escalate tensions with regional powers. A negotiated return could serve to legitimize the rule of an oppressive regime and the purported benefits rely on hollow promises of access to Afghanistan’s rare earth wealth.

Army sunsets Futures Command, activates Transformation, Training Command

Carley Welch

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WASHINGTON — The Army has officially deactivated Army Futures Command after seven years in service and will combine it, along with the also-deactivated Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), into a new organization dubbed the Transformation and Training Command, or T2COM.

“The deactivation ceremony for the Army Futures Command took place Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, at 7:45 a.m. at the LBJ Auditorium on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas,” a spokesperson from T2COM told Breaking Defense today. “The event marked the end of the command’s seven-year history and was followed by the activation of the Transformation and Training Command.”

The combination of the two organizations is part of the service’s sprawling Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) effort announced in May. ATI aims to cut the number of general officer billets and restructure the service’s offices responsible for crafting requirements and buying weapons. The idea is to build a “leaner, more lethal force,” according to Secretary Pete Hegseth’s memo announcing the initiative.

AFC was stood up in 2018 in Austin, Texas, under the first Trump administration with a four-star general at the helm. It was created in an attempt to speed up the requirements process and break down bureaucratic processes to get tech and weapons into the hands of soldiers quicker. At the time, part of TRADOC’s mandate was redirected towards AFC, with the new command assuming responsibility for shepherding in new weapon requirements.

“Some of this is back to the future, for example, AFC mostly came from TRADOC and so putting it back makes sense,” John Ferrari, a senior nonresident fellow at AEI and retired Army Maj. Gen., told Breaking Defense before the ATI initiative was announced.

“Additionally, AFC was premised on devolving to its acquisition authority and that did [not] happen, so it is a brave leader who says we tried it and it is not delivering results we expected and admits that out loud.”

Before it was sunset, AFC was headed by Gen. James Rainey and TRADOC was headed by Gen. Gary Brito, both of who retired with the activation of T2COM.