India and EU announce 'mother of all trade deals'

Abhishek Dey, Arunoday Mukharji, and Jessica Parker

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The European Union and India have announced a landmark trade deal after nearly two decades of on-off talks, as both sides aim to deepen ties amid tensions with the US. "We did it, we delivered the mother of all deals," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a media briefing in Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the pact "historic".

It will allow free trade of goods between the bloc of 27 European states and the world's most populous country, which together make up nearly 25% of global gross domestic product and a market of two billion people. The deal will see a number of huge tariff cuts across a range of goods and services, and a joint security partnership.

Pakistan: Balochistan Bleeds

Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

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On January 25, 2026, Security Forces (SFs) killed three terrorists during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Panjgur District of Balochistan. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), “On January 25 (Sunday), security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in Panjgur District of Balochistan, on [the] reported presence of terrorists belonging to Indian proxy, Fitna al Hindustan.” However, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed that 12 SFs personnel were killed and six others injured during clashes in the area.

On January 19, 2026, five terrorists were killed in an intelligence based operation (IBO) by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) in the Dasht area of Mastung District in Balochistan. According to a CTD spokesperson, around seven other terrorists managed to escape, taking advantage of darkness and the nearby mountainous terrain.

That Isn’t Signaling. China’s Military Is Seriously Rehearsing Around Taiwan

Nathan Attrill

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Analysing China’s military activity around Taiwan often invites a simple question: what triggered it? Analysts tend to assume that spikes in aircraft sorties, naval deployments or coast guard operations must be a reaction to something political in Taiwan, U.S. actions in the region or other international events. But a close examination of 2025 data complicates this assumption. Domestic rhythms inside China—holiday cycles, political security priorities, command availability—shape operational tempo more reliably than events in Taipei or Washington.

Put simply, the scale and persistence of Chinese military activity around Taiwan look less like signalling and more like systematic preparation for the use of force, conducted on Beijing’s own timetable. A review of military coercion data compiled throughout 2025 for ASPI’s State of the Strait—a weekly newsletter tracking Beijing’s coercion of Taiwan—highlights several striking patterns. First, true absences of Chinese military activity around Taiwan are vanishingly rare. Across the entire year, there were only two days—12 and 13 November—when no Chinese military air or maritime assets were detected around Taiwan. This underscores how deeply normalised Chinese military presence has become. Activity levels may rise or fall, but presence itself is now continuous.

A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?

Yun Sun

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In 2021, U.S. Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, then the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that Beijing had set a serious goal of controlling Taiwan before 2027. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then,” he warned. “And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

This prediction, which gained so much attention in Washington that it came to be known as the Davidson Window, quickly spurred action. Within the year, Congress authorized $7.1 billion for the newly created Pacific Deterrence Initiative, designed to boost the United States’ capability to deter Chinese military adventurism, and the policy community scrambled to develop strategies to counter Chinese military threats. The U.S. government offered so much diplomatic, political, economic, and security support to Taiwan that some veteran Taiwan watchers began to remind U.S. policymakers of the importance of reassuring China that the United States doesn’t support Taiwan independence.

As Generals Fall, Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Eating Itself

Deng Yuwen

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Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of the most powerful military leaders in China, are now officially in custody. Rumors have buzzed in the Chinese diaspora for days, but the speed still comes as a shock; usually there’s a far longer gap between the detention of leaders and the official announcement of their fate.

The crux of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political language is not what it says, but when it says it—and to whom. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mouthpieces have accused Zhang and Liu of having “seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the [Central Military Commission] CMC chairman” and threatening “the Party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces.” These charges have little directly to do with corruption in the conventional sense, nor are they just about the military. They are political accusations, virtually identical to those leveled at former CMC Vice Chair He Weidong, who was purged last year.

ALLFARE: CHINA’S WHOLE-OF-NATION STRATEGY

Michael Margolius 

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Current paradigms of understanding the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) actions against the West typically use the DIME framework or even the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)’s own “Three Warfares.” However, these frameworks that bin actions into discrete categories fail to encapsulate the totality of the PRCs activities targeting the west. While the United States hesitates to admit its “competition” with the PRC is conflict, the PRC appears to leverage all forms of warfare short of kinetic operations in daily affairs. To analyze how states exert their influence, scholars often compartmentalize actions into rigid analytical frameworks, which obscures the holistic scope of the challenge. By decomposing actions and analyzing them through the common frameworks, analysts fail to appreciate the interconnectedness across all elements of national power, particularly clandestine and sub-state illicit activities. These disadvantages call for a new model of analysis.

Adopting the concept of “allfare,” which captures every potential vector of malign action, provides a better appreciation for the strategic scope of PRC activities. Allfare encourages perceptions of linkages and cross-organizational intentions across the entire network, including official party and state instruments, proxies, and even seemingly disparate criminal actors. This last element, the illicit actors that ultimately advance CCP interests are entirely absent from traditional analytical frameworks. These activities are, at minimum, accepted by the party, and are very probably intentionally exploited. Since 2015, U.S. national security strategies have identified a rising Communist China as a threat to the liberal international order and continued American influence, yet policymakers still fail to grasp the broader whole-of-society grey-zone warfare the CCP conducts against the United States. Though they call for countering Chinese actions, the PRC continues their malign actions with no symmetrical or discernable asymmetrical response.. Allfare provides that aperture to see and then effectively defend against these multifaceted threat vectors. Through both planned and opportunistic actions, the CCP is waging Allfare against the West. Some examples include saber-rattling and confronting ships in the international waters of the South China Sea, inciting anti-Western sentiment through pervasive presence in citizen’s social and digital lives, confounding Western initiatives through vetoes and legal maneuvering in international organizations, cyber-attacks, tolerance of narcotics production for distribution to the West, and positioning for irregular warfare.

Who is more advanced in cyber warfare: US cyber units vs Iranian hackers?

Ilma Athar Ali

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The Power Imbalance. The United States is widely considered a 'Tier One' cyber power, possessing global reach and vast resources that few nations can match. In contrast, Iran operates as a 'Tier Two' power, using aggressive and unpredictable tactics to level the playing field. This creates a classic conflict of conventional superiority versus asymmetric guerrilla warfare in the digital domain.

US Financial Dominance. The US Department of Defence allocates billions annually to cyber operations, with the FY2024 budget requesting over $13.5 billion for cyberspace activities alone. This massive funding allows for cutting-edge research, custom tool development, and the recruitment of elite talent. Iran’s military budget is a fraction of this, necessitating a low-cost, high-impact approach to its operations.

Niall Ferguson: How Trump Won Davos

Niall Ferguson

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That was one of the better jokes made at the president’s expense this week. And it aligns with a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark.

On Thursday, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen thanked her British counterpart Keir Starmer for his “very strong support to the Kingdom of Denmark.” It had, she said, “been quite a difficult time for us.” But she was grateful “to know that [we] have good friends, strong allies, and that Europeans stand together, don’t get divided, and stick to our, as you said, our common values.” Starmer cooed back in that strangulated voice of his: “We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.”

Dispatch From Davos: The Geopolitics of the New Realism

Michael Froman

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Greetings from beautiful Davos, Switzerland—the Mecca of globalism—where the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting is just wrapping up. This year’s Davos theme was “The Spirit of Dialogue,” but in retrospect, it might have been better described as “The Reality of Monologue.” President Donald Trump didn’t just steal the show; he was the show.

Every year, commentators try to assess the zeitgeist of Davos. My take is that people were on edge most of the week. The anxiety leading up to Trump’s speech on Wednesday was palpable, though his remarks produced a collective, if cautious, sigh of relief, particularly among the Europeans. And there were glimmers of optimism, particularly around artificial intelligence (AI). Witness the humanoid and canine-like robots walking along the Promenade. But unlike prior years when the focus was very much on the opportunity of technology, there was at least as much attention this year on geopolitical risk.

IMF Prepares For Global Run On US Dollar

Thomas Moller-Nielsen

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(EurActiv) — The International Monetary Fund is preparing for the possibility of a rapid sell-off of US dollar-denominated assets, its managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said on Monday. “At the Fund, one muscle that we are building is our ability to hypothetically present scenarios of unthinkable events and then figure out what to do,” Georgieva said at an event hosted by Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank.

Asked whether the scenarios include a potential run on dollar assets, Georgieva said the Fund runs “all kinds of scenarios” and that it was examining the issue as part of its ongoing analysis. Her comments come as Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence and the rule of law have sparked deep investor unease about the status of the dollar, which has dominated global finance since the end of the Second World War.

Likelihood Of US Strikes On Iran ‘Very High’ Amid Military Buildup, Drills

Kian Sharifi

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The United States is deploying jet fighters, air defenses, and an air carrier with thousands of troops to the Middle East, in a move that has heightened tensions with Iran and increased the likelihood of military action, experts say.

US President Donald Trump threatened military strikes against Iran after the authorities killed thousands of people in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. Trump recently backed away, although he has not ruled out an attack on the Islamic republic.

Experts say the military buildup along with planned US naval exercises in the region increases the pressure on Iran and provides more offensive military options if Washington chooses to attack Iran.

Ore And Order: Russia’s Rare-Earth Strategy For The Ukraine Talk

Kirill Shamiev

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In May 2025, when US and Ukraine discussed the “minerals-for-aid” deal, Moscow pointed out the obvious: Russia’s rare-earth reserves dwarf Ukraine’s. By December, elements of that argument had crept into US president Donald Trump’s peace plan, which included major American investments in Russia’s rare-earth and energy sectors. With Europe signalling a possible thaw in talks with Russia—Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni recently joined French president Emmanuel Macron’s call to reopen diplomacy with Vladimir Putin—Moscow smells an opening to press the same leverage.

At the heart of the strategy is Russia’s Angara–Yenisei Valley, a planned $9.2bn Siberian processing hub overseen by Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, former minister of defence and a figure close to Putin. With this project, Russia hopes to raise its global supply share of rare earths from 1.3% today to 10% by 2030.

2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy

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President Trump in his first term and since reentering office in January 2025 has rebuilt the American military to be the world’s absolute best—its most formidable fighting force. But it is essential to emphasize how much of an achievement this has been.

The fact is that President Trump took office in January 2025 to one of the most dangerous security environments in our nation’s history. At home, America’s borders were overrun, narcoterrorists and other enemies grew more powerful throughout the Western Hemisphere, and U.S. access to key terrain like the Panama Canal and Greenland was increasingly in doubt. Meanwhile in Europe, where President Trump had previously led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to begin taking their defenses seriously, the last administration effectively encouraged them to free-ride, leaving the Alliance unable to deter or respond effectively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the Middle East, Israel showed that it was able and willing to defend itself after the barbaric attacks of October 7th—in short, that it is a model ally. Yet rather than empower Israel, the last administration tied its hands. All the while, China and its military grew more powerful in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s largest and most dynamic market area, with significant implications for Americans’ own security, freedom, and prosperity.

Why the US Army must focus on winning the first battle of the next war

Daniel P. Driscoll

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Cold, calculating, and ruthless adversaries do not hesitate. Hot, searing shrapnel and bullets do not discriminate. War is the most ruthless, utilitarian endeavor in humanity: either you are ready, or you aren’t. Either you come home, or you don’t. That is the ultimate measure of readiness, and that is why our soldiers train so hard.

Our president and secretary of war understand that wars are won before they are fought. The first battle of the next war began last April when President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unleashed sweeping reforms to modernize our military. The Army heard that order loud and clear, and we’ve been battling complacency, calcification and decades of contorted decision-making ever since.

Drones caused 3 out of every 4 Ukraine war casualties, Latvian spies say

Eva Hartog

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Drones are responsible for between 70 and 80 percent of those injured or killed on both sides of the war in Ukraine, according to a new report by a key Latvian intelligence service.

“This makes the war more dynamic at the tactical level, but reduces the chance of either side making a strategic breakthrough,” reads the report by Latvia’s Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), published Monday. As a result, the decisive factors in determining the outcome of the war are Western military and political support, the authors concluded.

The Case for Upending World Trade

Peter E. Harrell

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Over the course of a year, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has become the most disruptive force in global trade since the 1930s. But the destruction of the post–Cold War trade order—a rules-based international trading system that sought to set economic principles for participating governments—provides a necessary opportunity to correct an overly rigid attitude toward trade.

Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, U.S. presidents generally supported free trade and encouraged other countries to lower trade barriers with initiatives such as the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which encouraged countries mostly outside the Soviet bloc to mutually reduce their tariffs. But U.S. administrations balanced this preference with pragmatism, taking a flexible approach to policy that considered distinct challenges discretely. When necessary, U.S. presidents were willing to use tools such as tariffs, sector-specific deals for politically-sensitive products such as textiles, and hard-nosed negotiations to tackle discrete trade tensions. The idea that strictly governing international trade with a set of universal rules would deliver economic and geopolitical benefits to all countries is historically abnormal.

The Trump Administration Is Publishing a Stream of Nazi Propaganda

Ali Breland

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The U.S. Labor Department is embracing Nazi slogans and tropes, the Pentagon’s research office is deploying neo-Nazi graphic elements in its social-media feeds, and the Department of Homeland Security recently posted lyrics mimicking a popular song by a band with ties to an ethno-nationalist social club.

The official social-media channels of the Trump administration have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery. The leaders of these departments so far refuse to answer questions about their social-media strategies, but the trend is impossible to miss: Across the federal government, officials are advocating for a radical new understanding of the American idea, one rooted not in the vision of the Founders, but in the ideologies of European fascists.

The Great Divorce

Eliot A. Cohen

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Initially it was a rescue, and then a romance. But then Sam seemed to undergo a personality change. He became abusive when Europa ignored his demands and even threatened violence. After 80 years, Europa had had enough. They would keep the marriage together for form’s sake, but it was effectively over. At least she got to keep Greenland.

This is more or less the story one hears in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgraceful, absurd, and failed attempt to grab Greenland by economic coercion and the menace of lethal force. There may have been grains of truth in his complaints—Denmark’s neglect of the island, America’s long-standing interest in acquiring it, the implications of new sea lanes as its ice melts, the rising importance of security in the Arctic—but nothing excuses Trump’s behavior or language. Nor that of his lieutenants, including the normally buttoned-down Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who have been almost as loutish as their boss.

Frigid Kyiv Kindles a High-Tech Plan to Keep Russia at Bay

David Ignatius

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KYIV—It’s a bitterly cold Saturday night here, the temperature 10 degrees Fahrenheit and falling, and a few pedestrians are skittering down the icy sidewalks to get inside before the midnight curfew. Because the heat is out in some homes in the wake of savage Russian bombing of power facilities this month, they may have to visit one of the hundreds of warming centers in the city to get through the night.

This grim winter scene is a snapshot of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal strategy for victory. By pounding Ukraine’s sources of power and heat, he hopes to freeze the country into submission. President Donald Trump sometimes talks as if he agrees with Putin that Russian victory in this bloodbath is inevitable—and that Kyiv must give up territory in a peace deal.

Can China Replace an Absent America in the Climate Fight?

Kelly Sims Gallagher

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When U.S. President Donald Trump decided in 2025 to withdraw, again, from the Paris Agreement on climate change, it was not a surprise to anyone. What’s more surprising is China’s decision to stay in when it has every excuse to walk away. After all, the United States is the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and remains the second-largest emitter today after China. In the alternate history in which China had withdrawn, members of Congress would certainly have called for the United States to do the same.

So why does China stay in? And could it step up, even, now that the United States has abdicated global leadership on reducing carbon emissions?

The Hamas-Israel War: An Early Assessment

Robert Satloff

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Three months after Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, the strategic outcome of the war remains uncertain. Both sides can point to meaningful achievements, but neither can claim decisive victory. Whereas Israel gained the release of its remaining hostages and a Gaza buffer zone to prevent future attacks, Hamas still controls nearly half the territory while its longtime patrons, Qatar and Turkey, have attained unprecedented standing in Washington. Uncertainty now looms as President Trump prepares to announce the transition to “phase two” of the ceasefire, which will see a raft of hopeful initiatives crash into the reality of a Gaza divided between Israeli and Hamas zones of control, without any agreed path toward disarming the terrorist group—the necessary precondition for any real progress toward full implementation of the ceasefire.

In this timely and provocative Policy Note, Washington Institute Executive Director Robert Satloff explains that several factors could shake up the status quo in Gaza. These include President Trump’s impatience for results, discontent from the Qatari and Turkish ceasefire guarantors, and Israeli unease at its enemy’s stubborn survival. While outlining the potential for a total breakdown of the ceasefire and return to full-scale hostilities, Satloff also argues that Jerusalem has a powerful interest in preventing a situation in which the White House is forced to choose between Israel and the ceasefire’s guarantors—and offers ways to avoid that deeply problematic scenario.

The World Is Hedging Its Bets

Hal Brands

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There are moments when you can feel the geopolitical tectonics shifting below your feet. Such a moment is upon us as the second year of Donald Trump’s presidency begins. The world Trump inherited was based, to a remarkable degree, on US commitment and power. That power surely persists one year later. But as we’ve seen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, global confidence in US leadership is ebbing at an increasing rate. 

In November, I wrote about the “great global hedge” that was happening as countries pursued new capabilities and combinations to protect themselves. In 2026, that process will accelerate, as countries race to reduce reliance on a seemingly out-of-control America — and even US allies search for ways of deterring US power.

The Arctic is a Strategic Distraction

T.X. Hammes

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Over the past five years, numerous articles have called for increased U.S. defense resources focused on the Arctic. This is a strategic mistake, a distraction. This article will outline the reasons proponents feel the high north has increased value, examine the actual strategic value of each, and show that none is sufficient to divert scarce resources from higher value theaters. Strategy should serve as an appetite suppressant to keep the nation from committing to peripheral missions at the expense of critical ones.1

The 2024 Department of Defense (DOD) Arctic Strategy was justifiably “prudent and measured,” limiting DOD actions to enhancing domain awareness, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. It planned to work with Allies and partners to uphold deterrence and homeland defense.2 The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy did not mention the Arctic.3 In contrast, proponents agitate for the United States to dedicate increased defense assets to maintain access to its vast natural resources, exploit the increased economic and shipping opportunities, and provide for national defense.

The US AI Acceleration Plan Vs China’s Diffusion Model

Shannon Vaughn

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The latest US Artificial Intelligence Strategy is a meaningful policy shift and should not be treated as just another vision document. It is an attempt to rewire how the Department of War builds, plans, tests, accredits, and scales capability around a single premise: in the AI era, the side that learns and fields the fastest wins.

From the perspective of US-China competition, the significance is not simply that Washington wants more AI. It is that the department is now treating AI adoption as an operational race in which the decisive variable is diffusion—how quickly a promising capability moves from experiment to trusted, fielded use across the services, commands, and enabling enterprise that actually fights.

A Human-Centric Framework: Employment Principles for Lethal Autonomous Weapons

Brennan Deveraux

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This monograph challenges the Department of War to reframe the conversation about humans’ involvement in lethal autonomous weapons systems by codifying a human-centric framework built on the employment pillars of certification, authority, restriction, and accountability. Although an ample body of literature discusses lethal autonomous weapon systems, this monograph takes a novel approach by proposing a theoretical framework and applying it to historical and hypothetical practical scenarios involving weapons with autonomous characteristics. In terms of methodology, the monograph relies heavily on primary sources, including UN documents and Department of War publications, which are augmented by secondary sources from experts in the field and creative speculation about the characteristics of future warfare. The study’s conclusions will help US military and policy practitioners manage and integrate lethal autonomous weapon systems. This study is designed to spark a necessary and likely uncomfortable conversation about when relying on lethal machines is appropriate. The monograph provides tangible recommendations to help shape future policy decisions about developing and employing lethal autonomous weapon systems.