Indian Strategic Studies: 10/27/25

27 October 2025

Why protest over China-backed Teesta plan in Bangladesh is a red flag for Delhi

Sushim Mukul

On the evening of October 19, hundreds of people formed a human chain near Chittagong University's Shaheed Minar. They held placards and mashaal torches in their hands as they marched to the Minar. They demanded an immediate implementation of the Teesta Master Plan and Bangladesh's "fair share" of Teesta water, reported news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS).

Reportedly organised by students from Rangpur division, slogans were raised against water injustice and India's alleged influence on Bangladesh's water policies. Speakers said the Teesta plan could transform northern Bangladesh by boosting agriculture, creating jobs, and driving national growth.

The rally ended with a call to "protect national interests and ensure water justice for Teesta-dependent regions" in Bangladesh, reported the BSS.

The protest in Chattogram on Sunday came after a wave of torchlight rallies across Northern Bangladesh on Thursday evening, where thousands gathered in five districts of the Rangpur division demanding the immediate implementation of the Teesta River Master Plan, reported the Dhaka Tribune.

The Teesta Master Plan, backed by China, is being seen in Bangladesh as a workaround to the long-stalled Teesta water-sharing deal with India. Experts, meanwhile, view the plan with concern, especially due to its proximity to the strategic Chicken's Neck and potential Chinese presence near the sensitive Siliguri Corridor, which is a 20-kilometre land route connecting the northeastern states to the rest of India.

WHY ARE TENSIONS RISING OVER TEESTA MASTER PLAN?

The demand now assumes importance because the Teesta Master Plan, a Chinese-backed initiative for river management, promises to address northern Bangladesh's water scarcity amid stalled water-sharing talks with India. With the 1996 Ganga Water Sharing Treaty nearing its expiry in 2026, the urgency to implement the unilateral plan near the strategic Chicken's Neck, with a third-party (China), the intense push for the plan's implementation raises concerns of being detrimental to India’s water security and regional cooperation.

How China's renewable push is India's strategic challenge Story

Pradip R. Sagar

China's ambitious plan to build the world's largest solar farm—spanning nearly 610 sq km across the Tibetan Plateau—has been celebrated globally as a monumental step in the fight against climate change. Beijing has projected it as proof of its leadership in renewable energy, positioning itself as the world's green powerhouse.

Yet, when viewed through the Indian lens, this colossal project on what is known as the 'roof of the world' reveals a more complex and unsettling picture, intertwining environmental disruption, strategic overreach and geopolitical implications.

The Tibetan Plateau is one of Earth's most-ecologically-sensitive regions. It acts as Asia's climate regulator and the source of major river systems, including the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra, which sustain millions of lives in India. The large-scale replacement of reflective desert terrain with dark solar panels threatens to upset this fragile equilibrium.

Studies suggest such solar installations can cause local warming spikes of 1-2 degrees Celsius, which may accelerate glacier melt, alter rainfall patterns and disturb wind flows. For India, any climatic disturbance on the Tibetan Plateau could directly affect the Himalayan water reserves that feed its rivers, threatening the water and food security of vast populations downstream. The Chinese project that the world hails as a green breakthrough could, in the long term, end up destabilising South Asia's environmental and hydrological balance.

China watchers believe that beneath the banner of clean energy lies a deeper strategic design. The solar project is not merely an ecological undertaking; it extends China's dual-use infrastructure network deep into the Tibetan Plateau, strengthening its military logistics, communication and surveillance capabilities. Roads, transmission corridors and supporting facilities built under the guise of renewable energy development enhance the People's Liberation Army's operational reach and situational awareness along sectors facing Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Ladakh.

Operation Sindoor Showed The IAF’s Strength, But Also Its Blind Spots

Swarajya Staff

In contemporary air operations, the strength of a force depends less on the quantity of aircraft and more on the integration of fighters, sensors, and command systems.

If one was scrolling through X or Twitter yesterday, it was impossible to miss the flood of citations for the gallantry awardees of Operation Sindoor. Yet, alongside the accolades, a parallel debate has been simmering, sparked by a critical piece from a naval veteran examining the performance of the IAF during the operation.

There is little doubt that the IAF delivered a devastating blow to Pakistan in Operation Sindoor. It obliterated the JeM and LeT mosque complexes in Bahawalpur and Muridkie, targets that had long stood as grim symbols of India’s inability to punish Pakistan’s military-jihad nexus. Nearly a dozen Pakistani airbases were hammered with pinpoint accuracy, while successive waves of Pakistani counterattacks were intercepted and neutralised by the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS).

Yet, as the post-Operation Sindoor euphoria begins to settle, the IAF faces some hard questions.

Much of the public debate has focused on whether India got its money’s worth from the Rafales. The fact that 36 Rafales equipped with Meteor missiles cannot tip the balance in beyond-visual-range air combat should not be difficult to grasp. Moreover, with China for help, Pakistan will almost always have access to countermeasures, such as PL-15–equipped J-10s in this case, capable of blunting, if not matching, India’s capabilities.

But IAF has only itself to blame for the questions over the Rafales. For years, the service presented the aircraft as a silver bullet that would decisively shift the balance. This reflects a deeper problem. The IAF has long suffered from a platform-centric mindset, believing that air superiority comes from acquiring the next aircraft rather than integrating all its assets into a single, intelligent network.

No aircraft, however advanced, can deliver its full potential without a robust digital backbone connecting it to other sensors, shooters, and command nodes.

One Meter CEP, Zero Reaction Time! Meet BrahMos 800 — A Missile Made In India & Feared In Pakistan: OP-ED

MJ Augustine Vinod

Imagine a thunderclap that travels three times the speed of sound. Now, imagine that a thunderclap can be directed with a surgeon’s precision, striking a target 800 km away before the enemy can even register the launch.

This is not science fiction; this is the reality of the extended-range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, India’s undisputed conventional ace.

The recent successful testing of the 800 km BrahMos variant is not merely an incremental upgrade to a successful weapon system. It is a tectonic shift in the geopolitical landscape of South Asia, an emphatic declaration of India’s indigenous technological prowess, and the establishment of a new, formidable deterrent posture.

But to truly understand the magnitude of this development, one must look back to the crucible of its combat debut: Operation Sindoor.

As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh so powerfully stated, “BrahMos is not just a missile, but it is a symbol of the country’s growing indigenous capabilities… Every inch of Pakistan is under the range of the BrahMos missile, and the whole country knows the power of it. Whatever happened during Operation Sindoor was only a trailer, my friend.”

That single, evocative phrase—”just a trailer“—captures the essence of India’s evolving military doctrine. The new 800-km BrahMos is a feature film that demands the world’s attention.

A Supersonic Legacy Forged in Fire: The BrahMos Philosophy

The name BrahMos itself is a powerful portmanteau, seamlessly blending the might of India’s Brahmaputra River and Russia’s Moskva River, symbolising a joint venture that has matured into a cornerstone of India’s strategic defense.

It represents the pinnacle of cruise missile technology: a long-range, ramjet-powered supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from land, sea, or air, offering unparalleled multi-platform versatility.

Army equips 380 infantry battalions with 'Ashney' drone platoons

The Indian Army is enhancing its combat readiness. Infantry battalions are now equipped with drone platoons featuring surveillance and armed drones. Elite commando units, known as Bhairav battalions, are being established for special operations. The Army is also procuring new battle carbines and upgrading anti-tank weapons. These advancements aim to bolster the force's capabilities along the northern and western frontiers.

Three hundred eighty infantry battalions of the Indian Army have been equipped with drone platoons while elite commando units are being raised as part of a modernisation drive to bolster the force's combat capabilities along the northern and western frontiers.

Lt Gen Ajay Kumar, the director general of infantry, said this while highlighting steps to enhance the strike capabilities of the infantry units.

The Army is also procuring 4.25 lakh battle carbines at a cost of Rs 2,770 crore as part of the infantry modernisation plan, he told reporters.

Lt Gen Kumar said each of the 380 infantry battalions now has an Ashney (fire) drone platoon that comprises at least four surveillance drones and six are of armed category.

The armed drones will include Kamikaze drones and precision ammunition dropping unmanned aerial vehicles, he said, explaining how the Army is initiating measures to boost the combat capabilities of the infantry battalions.

The Army has already raised five elite Bhairav batellions with nearly 250 soldiers each and it plans to have a total of 25 such battalions within next six months. These battalions are being raised for special operations and are likely to be a bridge between regular infantry and the elite para-special forces.

"Five battalions of Bhairav have already been raised. They have already been deployed in the area of intended operations and on the job training is going on from October 1," the director general said.

The New Supply Chain Insecurity

Shannon K. O’Neil

In a matter of months, the Trump administration has rewritten the rules of U.S. trade policy. It has imposed blanket tariffs on nearly every country, starting at ten percent and rising as high as 50 percent. Levies on a host of products, such as steel, aluminum, cars, and car parts, have raised these trade barriers even further. At an average effective rate of around 18 percent, U.S. import taxes are now the highest they have been in nearly a century.

“China beats you with trade, Russia beats you with war,” U.S. President Donald Trump mused in August, quoting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Protectionism is Trump’s answer to both challenges. He sees the revenue from tariffs as a way to win at the cash register; he sees the boost to the domestic production of military equipment and the minerals, materials, and technology that go into it as a path to dominating on the battlefield.

The administration’s levies will likely have some of their desired effects. They will fundamentally change the United States’ position in the world economy, untangling the country, at least in part, from global supply chains. Consumer goods companies will make more of their products in the United States to capture a slice of its consumer market, which is still the largest in the world. Suppliers of steel, aluminum, minerals, and other strategic materials will expand their U.S.-based operations to take advantage of rising domestic prices.

But the damage that tariffs will inflict will be far greater than the benefits they bring. Over the last 50 years, the United States’ integration into global supply chains has fueled economic growth. Detaching from these supply chains will raise costs and reduce quality, limiting growth and competitiveness. The U.S. defense industry will not be spared the effects of higher prices, lost suppliers, and dwindling foreign markets. Producing weapons and military equipment—and building new factories—in the United States will become more expensive. U.S. allies, eager to strengthen their own defense industries and mistrustful of trade with the United States, could choose to spend less on American weapons. Worryingly, U.S. companies face these threats to their business models just as Washington, contemplating a future of drone- and AI-driven warfare, needs their innovation more than ever.

China Against China

Jonathan A. Czin

Thirteen years after Xi Jinping ascended to the top of China’s leadership hierarchy, observers in Washington remain deeply confused about how to assess his rule. To some, Xi is the second coming of Mao, having accumulated near-total power and bent the state to his will; to others, Xi’s power is so tenuous that he is perpetually at risk of disgruntled elites ousting him in a coup. Xi’s China is either a formidable competitor with the intent, resources, and technological prowess to surpass the United States or an economic basket case on the verge of implosion. Depending on

Why leading Chinese scientist warned public against ‘hubris’ over country’s advances

Jane Cai

The Chinese people have been urged to stay “calm and objective” about the country’s advances in cutting-edge weapons by a veteran rocket scientist, who warned that “a lot of effort” was still needed.

An array of advanced rockets, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, featured in last month’s Victory Day parade in Beijing along with other hi-tech weapons. The spectacle generated considerable public enthusiasm.

In an interview for a popular video account, Zhao Ruian, 84, a former researcher with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, said the country had gained an advantage in some areas of aerospace technology but warned people not to let their expectations get too high.

“We’ve made strides, but overall, sustained effort is essential,” Zhao said in the video. “View progress calmly and objectively – our true breakthroughs lie [ahead] in 2050, not hubris today.”

While Zhao gave no explanation for the year, it echoes President Xi Jinping’s strategic objective of “building a world-class military by the middle of this century”.

The informal interview with the “Beijing Daming” vlog, which has around 2 million followers on the social media platform Douyin, was carried out in a park in the Chinese capital.

At the start, Zhao was asked to introduce himself and list some of his achievements.

He replied that he had set out a theoretical framework for missile defence systems such as the Golden Dome network in his 2008 book Space Weapon Orbital Design.

The Golden Dome is a proposed multilayer defence system for the United States, intended to detect and destroy various foreign threats – including ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles – before they launch or while in flight.

In May, President Donald Trump announced plans for the network, which would be a much larger and more comprehensive version of Israel’s Iron Dome system. However, so far no practical details of how it would work have been produced by the Pentagon or US defence contractors.

China accuses US of cyber breaches at national time centre

Liz Lee

The ministry said it found evidence tracing stolen data and credentials as far back as 2022, which were used to spy on the staff's mobile devices and network systems at the centre.

The U.S. intelligence agency had "exploited a vulnerability" in the messaging service of a foreign smartphone brand to access staff members' devices in 2022, the ministry said, without naming the brand.

The national time centre is a research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences that generates, maintains and broadcasts China's standard time.

The ministry's investigation also found that the United States launched attacks on the centre's internal network systems and attempted to attack the high-precision ground-based timing system in 2023 and 2024.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing did not address the accusations directly but said cyber actors based in China have compromised major U.S. and global telecommunications providers' networks to conduct broad significant cyber espionage campaigns.

"China is the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks," an embassy spokesperson told Reuters in an email.

China and the U.S. have increasingly traded accusations of cyberattacks in the past few years, each portraying the other as its primary cyber threat.

The latest accusations come amid renewed trade tensions over China's expanded rare earths export controls, and the U.S. threatening to further raise tariffs on Chinese goods.

China Has Another Lever to Pull in Showdown With Trump: Factory Lines

Alexandra Stevenson

With trade hostilities between the world’s two economic superpowers back on, China has sent the unmistakable message that it is ready to fight. A week ago, it invoked its grip over virtually the entire global supply of critical materials, breaking a delicate trade détente between the two countries.

Beijing feels it has another ace card: its booming factories. Even in the face of sky-high tariffs by President Trump, China’s manufacturing sector is helping to maintain growth and give the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, a stronger hand to face down the United States.

The strength is on display in the city of Yiwu, home of the world’s biggest wholesale market, where sellers peddling toys, home electronics and drones are stuffed into complexes that span multiple city blocks. Last week, Yiwu unveiled another trade center, a facility the size of hundreds of football fields to house exporters and “showcase China’s hard-core manufacturing power to the world.”

Like many vendors in Yiwu, Gong Hao used to sell his plastic Hawaiian leis, party streamers and bunny ears to Americans. This year, he lost his U.S. customers but gained new buyers in Europe and Southeast Asia.

“American customers have little impact on us,” Mr. Gong said.

China’s factory prowess, helped by the government, is part of a tectonic shift taking place in the economy and hitting shores near and far as China sends more of what it makes to more places. Its trade surplus with the world this year — over $875 billion — is marching toward a record. Those exports accounted for as much as one third of China’s economic growth over the past year, a development that experts say will be hard to sustain.

What Does the Fall of He Weidong Mean for the PLA?

Zi Yang

Months after his disappearance from public view, news has finally surfaced regarding the fate of Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman He Weidong. On October 17, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that He – who has not been seen since March – had been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and stripped of his military ranks, ostensibly on corruption charges.

He’s downfall marks a major development in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) politics, as he is the first sitting CMC vice chairman with a professional military background to be purged since the Cultural Revolution.

Insights into PLA Politics

The PLA is, above all, a highly politicized institution; therefore, purges are not unexpected. However, the current scale and reach of ongoing purges within the PLA are definitely concerning.

Although the official justification often cites anti-corruption efforts, it is important to recognize that purges at the CMC level are rarely about corruption alone. Instead, political considerations are usually the dominant factor.

Long regarded by China watchers as a loyalist of Xi Jinping, He’s rise to the top mostly depended on Xi’s patronage. Consequently, his fall carries several significant implications.

The relationship between Xi and He dates back decades, when both served in the province of Fujian. Despite He’s elevation to the CMC vice chairmanship under Xi’s endorsement, they likely fell out due to a serious breakdown of trust. Xi may have come to perceive He as no longer a loyal subordinate, but as a potential threat. As a result, He was stripped of all power to ensure Xi’s personal and political security.

The Miseducation of Xi Jinping

Orville Schell

Given the flood of books on China that has poured forth in recent years, one might think the rest of the world would have figured out that provocative country by now. But much of China’s historical evolution continues to defy Western understanding, and many of its leaders remain tantalizing conundrums—few more so than Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the president of the People’s Republic of China. Having watched him up close on official trips, once in 2015 with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and once during U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2017 trip to China, I’ve encountered few leaders whose body language and facial expressions reveal so little about what’s going on inside their heads. With a Mona Lisa–like hint of a smile permanently etched on his face, Xi’s mien is hard to read.

Opacity may have been a skill Xi learned as a child, according to Joseph Torigian’s prodigiously researched epic The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. Torigian quotes the Chinese historian Gao Wenqian, who suggests that after watching his father’s fall from grace within the CCP, Xi learned the art of “forbearance and concealing his intentions, not revealing anything.” Xi Zhongxun, a close colleague of Mao Zedong’s, had been intensely loyal to both the party and its revolution, only to be repaid with political persecution, abuse, imprisonment, and domestic exile. This was the world in which Xi Jinping came of age.

As Torigian observes, the history of internal CCP dynamics confronts scholars, especially those not from China, with “one of the most difficult research targets in the world.” Not only do they have to contend with the formidable language barrier, but the CCP is so sensitive about having its dirty laundry aired in public that it goes to great lengths to distort its historical record with propaganda and to keep embarrassing documents off-limits. The result is an official history that is immaculately well scrubbed and ordered lest it reveal any fallibility.

But peek behind the veil, and a different reality reveals itself: a dog-eat-dog world of power struggles, artifice, hubris, treachery, and duplicity—yet also an enormous amount of sacrifice. By limning the life of Xi Zhongxun in such extraordinary detail, Torigian helps readers see behind the veil and understand the political crucibles in which father and son were “forged,” the term both use to describe how they were shaped by revolutionary hardship and struggle.

Military Upheaval in China Leaves Xi Support in Question

The purge last week of nine People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flag-rank officers leaves in question who controls China’s military and has observers watching whether it means Xi will lose some of his power during the 4th plenum in Beijing, starting today.

The conventional wisdom is that this is a housecleaning that increases Xi’s power and leaves him free to…

China’s Communist Party kicks off fourth plenum amid tightened security in Beijing

Yuanyue Dang

China’s ruling Communist Party kicked off a key four-day conclave on Monday that will determine the country’s development over the next five years.

The fourth plenum of the party’s Central Committee began on Monday morning, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, who is also the nation’s president, delivered a work report to the meeting and outlined the party’s proposals for the next five-year plan, which will be submitted for deliberation, a brief report said on Monday morning.

The meeting, which will conclude on Thursday, is being attended by over 350 full and alternate members of the Central Committee, most of whom are provincial-level officials or executives of state-owned enterprises. The core agenda centres around formulating the blueprint for China’s next five-year plan amid intensifying competition with the United States.

Security in Beijing has been significantly tightened. On Monday morning, more traffic police officers than usual were on duty along the road leading to the Jingxi Hotel in west Beijing, a venue for previous Central Committee plenary sessions.

The South China Morning Post observed that a section of the road near the hotel entrance had been cordoned off and that multiple police vehicles had been stationed around the hotel.

Numerous “red armband” personnel – community volunteers who frequently assist in maintaining public order during major events – could be seen patrolling along Changan Avenue, where key political sites including Tiananmen Square, the Great Hall of the People and the Jingxi Hotel are located.

In China, a Forbidden Question Looms: Who Leads After Xi?

Chris Buckley

Behind closed doors in Beijing this week, China’s top officials are meeting to refine a plan to secure its strength in a turbulent world. But two great questions hang over the nation’s future, even if no one at the meeting dares raise it: How long will Xi Jinping rule, and who will replace him when he is gone?

Mr. Xi has led China for 13 years, amassing dominance to a degree unseen since Mao Zedong. He has shown no sign of wanting to step down. Yet his longevity at the top could, if mismanaged, sow the seeds of political turbulence: He has neither an heir apparent nor a clear timetable for designating one.

With each year that he stays in office, uncertainty deepens about who would step in if, say, his health failed, and whether the new leader would stick to or soften Mr. Xi’s hard-line course.

Mr. Xi faces a dilemma familiar to long-serving autocrats. Naming a successor risks creating a rival center of power and weakening his grip, but failing to settle on a leader-in-waiting could jeopardize his legacy and sow rifts in China’s political elite. And at 72, Mr. Xi will likely have to search for a potential heir among much younger officials, who must still prove themselves and win his trust.

If Mr. Xi eventually chooses a successor, loyalty to him and his agenda will almost surely be a paramount requirement. He has said that the Soviet Union made a fatal mistake by picking the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw its dissolution. On Friday, Mr. Xi made his intolerance for any disloyalty clear when the military announced that it had expelled nine senior officers, who face prosecution on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

“Xi almost surely realizes the importance of succession, but he also realizes that it’s incredibly difficult to signal a successor without undermining his own power,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “The immediate political and economic crises that he faces could end up continually outweighing the priority of getting around to executing a succession plan.”

Trump is trying to break China’s monopoly on rare earths, but can’t cut deals fast enough to catch up

John Liu

As Beijing weaponizes its dominance over rare earths supplies, US President Donald Trump is cutting deals to try to break the stranglehold. But his claim that America will have an abundance of the critical minerals in just one year’s time may be a fantasy.

“In about a year from now, we’ll have so much critical mineral and rare earths, and you won’t know what to do with them,” Trump said Monday, after unveiling a $8.5 billion agreement to help Australia develop rare earths projects and secure United States access to those elements.

China controls more than 90% of the global output of refined rare earths, which are used to power everything from iPhones to electric vehicles, and this near-monopoly has become one of its most potent tools in its trade war with the US.

Rare earths emerged as a major sticking point between China and the US earlier this year after Beijing imposed unprecedented export controls on the critical minerals, which led to shortages worldwide, disrupting supply chains.

China’s move this month to tighten control of even trace amounts of China-processed rare earths in other countries sent shockwaves through global manufacturing and prompted Trump to threaten 100% tariffs on Chinese goods –– adding fresh uncertainty to the already tumultuous relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

Under Monday’s deal, the US and Australian governments intend to invest, in the next six months, more than $3 billion in critical minerals projects, expected to yield a value of $53 billion, the White House said. It is unclear when production from the new projects will begin.

As part of the agreement, the Pentagon will also invest in the construction of a 100 metric ton-per-year advanced gallium refinery in Western Australia. And the Export-Import Bank of the United States is issuing letters of interest for over $2.2 billion in financing for critical mineral projects.

The deal has the potential to put Australia in an even more awkward position with its largest trading partner, China. While trying to keep Beijing on side, Canberra has also been bolstering defense ties with Washington amid China’s growing influence in Asia-Pacific.

‘He lost us’: Generals, senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated

Ben Wolfgang

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials.

Numerous high-ranking officers painted Mr. Hegseth’s Sept. 30 speech to hundreds of generals and admirals gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia as a turning point in how his leadership style, attitude and overall competency are viewed in the upper echelons of the U.S. armed forces.

“It was a massive waste of time. … If he ever had us, he lost us,” one current Army general told The Washington Times.

The Quantico speech — described by other sources as “embarrassing” and theatrical to a degree that “is below our institution” — seemed to crystallize beliefs about Mr. Hegseth that had taken root among some senior officers, including the view that the secretary operates with a junior officer’s mentality that has led him to micromanage policies about issues such as military facial hair standards and press access to the Pentagon, sometimes at the expense of the much broader portfolio of a typical defense secretary.

“Mainly what I see from him are not serious things,” a current senior officer said. “It’s, ’Why did this service member tweet this?’ Or internal politics and drama. That’s mostly what I see.”

Mr. Hegseth clearly does not care about such criticism. At Quantico, he told any officer who disagreed with his priorities and his laserlike focus on a return to what he calls the military’s “warrior ethos” to resign.

Some analysts are quick to point out that military recruiting has surged since Mr. Hegseth took his post earlier this year. Supporters cite that as clear evidence that Mr. Hegseth’s approach is resonating with at least a subsection of young Americans and in the process is strengthening the armed forces. Separately, some defense industry sources stress that the Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth’s leadership is driving the development and fielding of small tactical drones in huge numbers, among other successes.

Wake-up call: Enduring Russian war effort reveals limitations of US, Western power

Stephen Kuper

Despite what we have been told, America’s power has its limits and Russia’s enduring war effort against Ukraine has served to reinforce this, but it also provides an opportunity to be clear-eyed about the multipolar future.

Full disclosure, I have no doubt that this is going to upset some people; I am not trying to be needlessly provocative, rather I am trying to open up the conversation.

Over the weekend, while watching an interview with an Australian organising a pro-Ukraine march, I was confronted by his narrative that can be best summarised as, “Russia is on the verge of collapse, the Russian people are close to having enough of Putin and throwing him out, their economy is breaking” or perhaps, “We have them on the ropes”, the Ukrainians just require the tools “to finish the job”.

Now yes, this fits with the enduring narrative that has permeated the West’s public consciousness since the failure of Russia’s airborne-led initial invasion in early 2022.

But something didn’t quite “gel” for me.

Following a sip of my coffee and finally relenting to my toddler son’s repeated requests to watch him jump on his new trampoline, it hit me: wasn’t Putin’s Russia also positioning itself to directly assault Europe, crush NATO and conquer the continent in a way that Stalin could only dream of?

How could these two diametrically opposed, seemingly contradictory realities be simultaneously true? Surely this wasn’t a case of Schrodinger’s Russia?

Then the reality really hit me. This wasn’t so much about Russia and whether or not it was on the verge of collapse, or whether the hordes of Russia were going to storm through the Fulda or Suwalki Gap in a daring surprise attack taking the Western allies by force.

This was actually about the very real limitations of the United States and broader Western allies under the auspice of NATO and similar organisations when it came to actually affecting the decision making of a committed, adversary that ranked somewhere above a lower-tier middle power.

Russia isn’t Libya, Serbia or Syria

The Cracks in Russia’s War Economy

Alexandra Prokopenko

To sustain its war against Ukraine, Russia militarized its economy. Although—contrary to popular belief abroad—the Russian economy is not on a full wartime footing, the Kremlin has both splurged on weapons factories and begun trading more with China to evade Western sanctions. Over the past three years, the Russian economy has outperformed most forecasts thanks to extravagant government spending, high prices for commodities that Russia exports, and skilled economic management.

There are now two views of Russia’s economy. One, touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is that the Russian economy has proved surprisingly resilient and is strong

Wake-up call: Enduring Russian war effort reveals limitations of US, Western power

Stephen Kuper

Despite what we have been told, America’s power has its limits and Russia’s enduring war effort against Ukraine has served to reinforce this, but it also provides an opportunity to be clear-eyed about the multipolar future.

Full disclosure, I have no doubt that this is going to upset some people; I am not trying to be needlessly provocative, rather I am trying to open up the conversation.

Over the weekend, while watching an interview with an Australian organising a pro-Ukraine march, I was confronted by his narrative that can be best summarised as, “Russia is on the verge of collapse, the Russian people are close to having enough of Putin and throwing him out, their economy is breaking” or perhaps, “We have them on the ropes”, the Ukrainians just require the tools “to finish the job”.

Now yes, this fits with the enduring narrative that has permeated the West’s public consciousness since the failure of Russia’s airborne-led initial invasion in early 2022.

But something didn’t quite “gel” for me.

Following a sip of my coffee and finally relenting to my toddler son’s repeated requests to watch him jump on his new trampoline, it hit me: wasn’t Putin’s Russia also positioning itself to directly assault Europe, crush NATO and conquer the continent in a way that Stalin could only dream of?

How could these two diametrically opposed, seemingly contradictory realities be simultaneously true? Surely this wasn’t a case of Schrodinger’s Russia?

Then the reality really hit me. This wasn’t so much about Russia and whether or not it was on the verge of collapse, or whether the hordes of Russia were going to storm through the Fulda or Suwalki Gap in a daring surprise attack taking the Western allies by force.

This was actually about the very real limitations of the United States and broader Western allies under the auspice of NATO and similar organisations when it came to actually affecting the decision making of a committed, adversary that ranked somewhere above a lower-tier middle power.

Senior German General Says Europe Must Do All It Can to Help Ukraine

Steven Erlanger

As President Trump prepares to meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in the coming weeks to discuss a possible cease-fire, a senior German general warned that if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine democracy in Europe would be at risk.

“The only reason for Putin to stop is if he is stopped,” said Lt. Gen. Alexander Sollfrank, and that requires pressure. The stakes in Ukraine are fundamental, he said, “if we want to keep our peace and our freedom, and we want to keep our political systems, our democracies, our pluralism, federal structures and everything that we have.”

General Sollfrank is the commander of the German Army’s joint force command — its operational forces in the field — and Germany has been Ukraine’s biggest backer in Europe. He had a similar job at NATO and earlier fought in Afghanistan as commander of a rapid-reaction force that saw serious action. He spoke in an interview last week at his Berlin headquarters.

As Mr. Trump tries again to wrangle Mr. Putin into a cease-fire in Ukraine that Russia does not want without significant Ukrainian concessions of territory, General Sollfrank said that the accomplishments of the postwar world were at risk if Russia prevailed in Ukraine.

The period since the end of World War II has seen the triumph in Germany and more broadly in Central and Eastern Europe of law over power, he said. “If Russia is successful, then these achievements of law, of right over might, are over,” he said. “We should support Ukraine with everything they need,” he said, “with everything they require to reduce the Russian pressure.”

This Weekend’s Violence in Gaza Shows How Fragile the Cease-Fire Really Is

David M. Halbfinger

Ten days into a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, relief is giving way to grim acknowledgments of the truce’s tenuousness, and of the need for continued outside intervention to keep it alive, let alone to make further progress.

A new round of violence on Sunday showed just how arduous the road to a broader agreement in Gaza will be between the two sides, which have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another was wounded when Palestinian militants launched an anti-tank missile at an army vehicle, the Israeli military said. The attack took place in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on the Israeli-held eastern side of the cease-fire line. Israel called it a blatant violation of the agreement’s terms. Hamas officials were quick to disavow the attack.

Israel responded quickly, with a punishing bombardment of what it described as Hamas installations, and Gaza officials said that 44 Palestinians were killed across the territory on Sunday. Israel said it was cutting off the supply of humanitarian aid to the devastated territory indefinitely, but later tempered that, saying that aid deliveries would be paused only until the bombardment was over. (By Monday afternoon, the flow of aid was back to normal, relief agencies said.)

Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, demanded an immediate, open-ended resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas. “War!” he wrote in a one-word post on X.

But the short-lived, if intense, Israeli military response, and the walk-back of the threat to shut off the flow of aid into Gaza, suggested the restraining influence of U.S. officials, analysts said.

National Security Strategy 2025

Command of His Majesty

National Security is the first responsibility of any government, that never changes. But as the world changes, the way we discharge that responsibility must change with it. And the world has changed. Russian aggression menaces our continent. Strategic competition is intensifying. Extremist ideologies are on the rise. Technology is transforming the nature of both war and domestic security. Hostile state activity takes place on British soil. It is an era of radical uncertainty, and we must navigate it with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest. That is what keeping the British people safe demands. This document sets out our strategy. We are guided by our values and our history.

The United Kingdom is a founding member of NATO and I am immensely proud that it was a Labour government that played a role in its creation. We are a champion of collective security on our continent and beyond. Together with our allies, we have shown that strength remains the only effective response towards tyrants like Putin. And we stand unashamedly for freedom, democracy and internationalism.

In a world where these values come under attack, our resolve is even more important. Cooperation is in the national interest; our alliances must be deepened. This is why I have been so determined to repair the United Kingdom’s international standing. Our reputation as a stable partner was damaged by the previous government’s chaos.

We have restored it because it is essential for our national security. Yet from that great post-war period, we should also now recall three lessons that are fundamental to our national security today. First, that foreign policy should answer directly to the concerns of working people.

After all, the challenges we face already impact their lives. Wars drive up their bills. Cyber-attacks undermine their public services. Criminals smuggle illegal migrants across our borders. The lesson is clear: delivering my Plan for Change requires us to bring foreign and domestic policy together.

Second, that collective security, led by NATO, remains the cornerstone of our strategy. Our alliances remain robust, but for both their ongoing health and our own national interest we must now increase the sovereign strengths that underpin our national security.

Third, that nations are strongest when they are bound together by a shared purpose. One look at the world today shows the security challenges we face demand nothing less than national unity.

Therefore, it is no longer enough merely to manage risks or react to new circumstances. We must also now mobilise every element of society towards a collective national effort.

Should We Look on New Technologies with Awe and Dread

One of the most famous cuts in cinema history, from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” perfectly captures a concept known as the technological sublime. First, we see an angry ape bludgeoning one of his fellows to death with a scavenged bone; he’s only just discovered that bones can be used this way, and he hurls his weapon into the air in celebration. We follow the bone upward as it tumbles against the unpolluted blue sky. Then, suddenly, we cut to outer space, millions of years in the ape’s future. The bone has been replaced by an elegant satellite, floating past the curve of the Earth. Over the next few minutes, as a ship docks with a space station, we see just how far humanity has come.

If you’ve encountered any science fiction, you’ve experienced the technological sublime—the feeling of awe, braided with dread, that can emerge in response to the engulfing possibilities of technology’s progress. Maybe you’ve gaped at the sprawling cyber-cityscapes of “Blade Runner,” or at the impossibly tall, leaflike alien ships in “Arrival.” In the cascading green code of “The Matrix,” you might have sensed a promise of revelation—or perhaps Ava, the uncannily beautiful android played by Alicia Vikander in “Ex Machina,” has induced some idea of what it might mean to be more than human. In all of these cases, technology feels big, strange, relentless, but also mind-expanding and appealing—a bracing wave that will sweep you up.

These are fantasies about an as-yet-unrealized future. But the technological sublime exists in our world, too. Decades ago, when I was in elementary school, we watched the space shuttle take off from Cape Canaveral, agog at the power of its rockets even on our classroom’s small TV. Today, crowds gather to witness towering SpaceX boosters return to Earth, where they’re caught by giant mechanical arms. Rocketry comes across as futuristic, but actually the modern version of it is a hundred years old—and so, when we thrill to it, we thrill not to a fantasy but to a fact of life. When I walk to The New Yorker’s offices, in One World Trade Center, I often crane my head to trace the building’s facets as they flow upward to its spire. Such architecture evokes a city of the future, but it exists in the here and now, and the innovations that make it possible—steel skeletons and curtain walls, H.V.A.C. systems and elevators—stretch back to the nineteenth century. We live, and have lived for a long time, in a high-tech age.

“The sublime” is an old concept. It denotes, at minimum, an especially transporting kind of aesthetic experience, perhaps the highest kind. The writer of “On the Sublime,” a two-thousand-year-old Greek text, associated it with an immortal literary greatness—the sort conjured by a phrase like “Let there be light.” In the eighteenth century, the concept took a turn, when philosophers connected it to the natural world. In a seminal treatise, “A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” Edmund Burke distinguished between two kinds of aesthetic experience: a pleasing, unintimidating sort of beauty (think of a flower, or a poem), and a scarier kind of beauty, which we might face when we stand before a roaring waterfall or an endless expanse of desert. The waterfall and the desert dwarf us; they’re indifferent to us; they could kill us. Yet we find them sublime, as long as we can appreciate their power from a safe remove. The experience of sublimity, Burke wrote, is “not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror.” The sublime invokes in us “astonishment,” he went on, and also “awe, reverence, and respect.”

Artillery Shell Detonated Over Interstate 5 During Marines’ Celebration, California Officials Say

John Ismay, Laurel Rosenhall and Zolan Kanno-Youngs

A 155-millimeter shell fired during a live-fire demonstration for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton on Saturday prematurely detonated, dropping fragments of the shell on a California Highway Patrol vehicle and motorcycle that were part of Vice President JD Vance’s protective detail, according to a patrol report.

No officers were hurt in the mishap, which dropped shrapnel onto the vehicles parked on a ramp to a major freeway that had been ordered closed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The governor had objected to the plan to fire over the freeway, Interstate 5, and ordered a 17-mile stretch closed — against the guidance of military officials, who had said it was safe for it to remain open.

According to the patrol report, one officer described what sounded like pebbles hitting his motorcycle and the area around him, and two others saw a two-inch piece of shrapnel hit the hood of their patrol vehicle, leaving a small dent. The report says shrapnel was also found on the road near the motorcycle.

Mr. Newsom had warned that the Marine Corps’ plans to fire artillery shells over Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main north-south artery, could pose hazards for motorists on the stretch between Los Angeles and San Diego. The closure he ordered on Saturday caused significant backups on the portion of the interstate, which is used by approximately 80,000 people daily.

“We love our Marines and owe a debt of gratitude to Camp Pendleton, but next time, the vice president and the White House shouldn’t be so reckless with people’s lives for their vanity projects,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times.

Lt. Col. Lindsay Pirek, a spokeswoman for the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, said the Corps was aware of the report of a possible airborne detonation, and an investigation was underway.

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