Indian Strategic Studies: 03/18/26

18 March 2026

What Does Pakistan Want in Afghanistan?

Zalmai Nishat, and Chris Blackburn

While global attention has focused on the escalating US and Israeli strikes against Iran since February 28, a parallel and largely overlooked confrontation has been unfolding between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The deterioration of relations between Islamabad and Kabul raises an important question: What is Pakistan’s long-term strategy toward Taliban-ruled Afghanistan? Afghanistan has endured overlapping political, economic, and humanitarian crises since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, and Pakistan’s choices will heavily influence whether the country remains trapped in instability or moves toward a more sustainable political settlement.

When the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, 2021, Pakistan’s political and military establishment openly welcomed their return. The following day, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that the Taliban had broken the “shackles of slavery,” framing their victory as both a geopolitical and cultural rejection of Western influence. “Breaking the shackles of the mind is more difficult,” he added while speaking at the launch of Pakistan’s “Single National Curriculum.” The remarks reflected a broader ideological narrative portraying Western cultural influence as a form of intellectual domination over Muslim societies.

Iran’s Tactical Blunder

Neville Teller

Justifiable though the February 28 US-Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran may have been on moral, humanitarian, strategic and political grounds, it was arguably not so strong in terms of international law. France has criticized it as illegal, while Spain has explicitly declared it a breach of that law.

Which international law is the action presumed to violate?

The UN Charter, binding on all member states, is generally regarded as the central component of international law. Article 2(4) bars a state from using force “against the territorial integrity or political independence” of another state, but elsewhere, the charter specifies two accepted routes to its legal application: Security Council authorization, and self-defense. The US-Israel strike did not receive Security Council authorization, and self-defense under Article 51 is permitted only “if an armed attack occurs.”

Israel’s Second War: The Fight Against Iran’s Proxy, Hezbollah

Ray Furlong

As the US-Israeli war with Iran continues, a second front against Hezbollah has led to the displacement of some 800,000 people fleeing deadly Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, while a succession of rocket and drone attacks has rained down on Israel. Hezbollah, regarded as a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States, is Iran’s strongest remaining proxy on Israel’s borders. It attacked Israel on March 2, after Israel began air strikes on Iran on February 28.

The response by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been massive — and the conflict with Hezbollah is an integral part of Israel’s wider war against Iran itself. “The campaign against Iran was meant to deal with our very existence in the region, and Hezbollah is part of that,” Sarit Zehavi, head of Alma, a think tank based in northern Israel, told RFE/RL on March 13. “We are under constant attacks 24/7 here.”

Trump Says US ‘Totally Obliterated’ Military Sites On Iran’s Kharg Island, Vows Navy Escorts ‘Will Happen Soon’ In Strait

US President Donald Trump said American forces have “totally obliterated” military sites on Iran’s strategic Kharg Island in “one of the most powerful bombing raids” in Middle East history and he said the US Navy would soon begin escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on social media. “Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island,” he added.

Kharg Island And The Limits Of Military Pressure On Iran

Dr. Sofey Saidi

In moments of geopolitical crisis, policymakers often search for a decisive pressure point that could alter the strategic balance. In the current confrontation with Iran, some strategists in Washington have begun discussing one such possibility: Kharg Island, the terminal through which most of Iran’s oil exports pass. The idea reflects a broader strategic question now emerging in policy debates: what is the real viability of military or economic pressure in shaping Iran’s political future?

Recent reports and policy discussions in Washington have raised the possibility that Kharg Island could become a focal point in any strategy designed to pressure the Iranian regime economically without expanding into a broader regional war.

Gulf War III is a Warning About the Effects of a ‘Taiwan Straits War I’

Dr Philip Shetler-Jones

The economic shock from what Niall Fergusson calls ‘Gulf War III’ is largely being transmitted through the medium of the global shipping industry. The proportion of the world’s fossil fuel sourced from the Persian Gulf is only part of the reason this war risks triggering a global recession. A less examined reason is the critical importance of major Asian economies (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) to global commerce, combined with their vulnerability to the breakdown in the international shipping network that carries their fuel but also the parts and products to assembly and markets. It is important to understand this fragility and consider ways to mitigate it in order to prepare for a similar crisis that could spread out from a possible conflict over Taiwan.

The economies of China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan account for over a quarter of nominal global GDP, and much more than that if measured in terms of purchasing power parity. All of them rely on maritime trade for a large portion of their energy supply and the transportation of industrial inputs and products. Their economies are linked to each other and those of nations across the region and the world by a dense and complicated supply chain network. If something happens to cause that network to break down or shipping to stop, the effect on the global economy would be comparable to what is taking place as a consequence of Gulf War III.

How the Iran War Puts Central Asia Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Eldar Mamedov

The drones that struck Azerbaijan on March 5 did more than wound four people. They shattered the illusion that Central Asia could sit out the Iran War—and exposed the limits of American influence in a region Washington thought it was winning. When allegedly Iranian UAVs hit Azerbaijan’s Nakhchevan exclave—targeting the international airport terminal, narrowly missing a nearby school—Baku’s response was swift and furious. President Ilham Aliyev called it a “terrorist act,” and vowed retaliation. Iran categorically denied it launched the strike, blaming Israel for an alleged “false flag” operation instead.

But the reaction in Central Asia was far more telling. And for American and Israeli strategists who had celebrated Kazakhstan’s entry into the Abraham Accords just months earlier, it carried an uncomfortable message. They had hoped that Kazakhstan would join in a new alliance of “moderate Muslim states” stretching from the Gulf to the Caspian, aligned with Israel and hostile to Iran. The reality has proved to be more complicated, however.

Four Strategic Patterns Now Visible in the Iran War

Robert A. Pape

Wars rarely unfold the way leaders expect.

They begin with plans for quick victories, decisive strikes, and controlled escalation. But once the shooting starts, wars develop their own momentum. Political pressures rise, adversaries adapt, and the logic of escalation begins to shape events in ways few decision-makers initially anticipate.

The early phase of the Iran war is already displaying several recurring strategic patterns that have appeared repeatedly across modern conflicts. These patterns do not predict every event. But they help explain why wars that begin with expectations of rapid success often expand into much larger and more dangerous confrontations.

Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute Over Autonomous Weapon Systems

Kelley M. Sayler

On February 27, 2026, President Donald J. Trump directed federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of [American AI company] Anthropic’s technology.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (who is now using “Secretary of War” as a “secondary title” under Executive Order (EO) 14347 dated September 5, 2025) subsequently directed the Department of Defense (DOD, now using “Department of War” as a secondary designation under EO 14347) to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security; barred defense contractors, suppliers, and partners from working with Anthropic; and described an up-to-six-month period of transition away from Anthropic products.

This designation follows a reportedly months-long dispute between DOD and Anthropic over DOD use of Anthropic products, including the company’s generative AI model, Claude. On March 9, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit regarding these directives. Some lawmakers have called for a resolution to the disagreement and for Congress to act to set rules for the department’s use of AI and/or autonomous weapon systems.

Ukraine’s Expertise In Countering Iranian-Designed Shahed Drones Attracting Growing International Demand

Can Kasapoğlu

The operational tempo moderated slightly across the battlespace last week, with Ukrainian reporting and open-source indicators suggesting that Ukraine and Russia waged roughly 100 to 150 combat engagements per day, down from the 200-plus daily engagements that characterized the previous several weeks. This reduction likely signals a temporary ease in the fighting rather than a structural shift in either side’s campaign.

Several sectors remained principal flashpoints. Kupiansk, Lyman, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Huliaipole, Pokrovsk, and Orikhiv continued to be the focus of most ground combat and probing attacks. These areas form the operational spine of the war’s eastern and southeastern fronts and will likely remain decisive terrain in the coming weeks. Kyiv suffered tactical-level losses in the Huliaipole sector—where Russia has deployed marine infantry and combat formations from the 68th Army Corps—and in Udachne.

Europe Chides US For Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions

EurActiv

(EurActiv) — uropean leaders have launched a rare rebuke of the United States’ decision to lift sanctions on Russian oil exports amid the ongoing war in the Middle East that has created havoc in global oil and gas markets. “We believe that easing sanctions now, for whatever reason, is the wrong thing to do,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on a visit to Norway on Friday.

Overnight, Washington moved to unleash around one day’s worth of global oil demand by lifting sanctions on seaborne Russian oil. The US has also given a waiver to Indian refiners to purchase sanctioned Russian oil since the Iran war began. This comes as the EU is attempting to convince its member countries, Hungary and Slovakia, to sign up to a 20th round of sanctions on Russia.

US Army officers say battlefield leaders facing new drone threats have another problem to deal with — it's information overload

Kelsey Baker

New information flows on modern battlefields can be overwhelming for commanders.

Army leaders warn of "cognitive overload" for commanders on the ground facing new and traditional threats. The battlefield is changing dramatically amid new drone and EW threats.

Amid an explosion in new kinds of battlefield tech, from all kinds of drones to the systems and sensors being built to defeat them, commanders at all levels are grappling with the growing challenge of information overload. As the Army absorbs lessons from Ukraine, "we're seeing a cognitive overload on the ground for commanders who have to fight both the ground fight and the air fight," said Maj. Andrew Kang, the fire support officer for the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, during a media roundtable last week.

Trump and Rubio’s Vision of War: The Art of Destroy and Deal

Edward Wong and Michael Crowley

Soon after President Trump joined Israel in launching a new war against Iran, an A.I. video featuring Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated online. Clad in a black turban and robe, he presides over an Iranian military parade, speaks at a mosque and gazes over the Tehran skyline. The caption: “Marco Rubio realizing he’s the new Supreme Leader of Iran.”

Though intended as satire, the video crystallizes a pivotal moment for Mr. Rubio.

Throughout his long political career, Mr. Rubio has advocated toppling governments hostile to the United States. He was once considered so ideologically out of step with Mr. Trump that many officials and politicians doubted he would last a year in the administration. But today, Mr. Rubio is at the helm of Mr. Trump’s aggressive campaigns to reshape the governments of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond.

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Adam T. Biggs

Military professionalism is a foundational component of an effective fighting force. Army doctrine describes the Army profession as a “trusted vocation of Soldiers and Army civilians whose collective expertise is the ethical design, generation, support, and application of landpower; serving under civilian authority; and entrusted to defend the Constitution and the rights and interests of the American people.”

Whereas the Army’s definition provides some context for military service as a profession, understanding how professionalism contributes to military success provides further depth. Doctrine and scholarly work have emphasized how professionalism allows a military to function optimally by exploring the respective roles of civilians and servicemembers in civil-military affairs. For example, professionalism directly contributes to mission success by creating disciplined initiative among personnel, though political scientists have long questioned how civilian authorities should interact with or govern the military forces protecting the population.

Pentagon AI chief praises Palantir tech for speeding battlefield strikes

O'Ryan Johnson

As the US continues its strikes on Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury, speakers at Palantir's AIPCON event on Thursday said the company’s Maven Smart System product has shortened the time it takes the Department of Defense to select and hit targets on the battlefield during the conflict.

“So we’ve gone from identifying the target to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target, all from one system. This is revolutionary,” said Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the DoD. “We were having this done in about eight or nine systems where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to our desired end state, in this case closing a kill chain.” Palantir’s chief commercial officer Ted Mabrey told the AIPCON audience that the analytics software company is supporting Operation Epic Fury.

The Asymmetry Trap: Why $20,000 Iranian Drones are Exhausting America’s Multi-Million Dollar Missile Reserves

Reuben Johnson

Defense expert Reuben F. Johnson evaluates the strategic “stress test” facing the U.S. military during the third week of Operation Epic Fury in Iran. -As of March 14, 2026, Iran’s use of low-cost Shahed drones and ballistic missiles has created a dangerous disparity, forcing the U.S. to use $3M–$12M interceptors against $20K targets.

-This report analyzes the 80% reduction in Iran’s conventional response alongside its successful strikes on UAE oil refineries and the deployment of mines in the Strait of Hormuz. -Johnson explores the munitions production lag, concluding that Tehran’s goal is “economic disruption” through $200-per-barrel oil.

Hegseth cranks up pressure on US war colleges

Alex Nitzberg

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that a task force will scrutinize Senior Service Colleges to ensure they provide quality education that is not tainted by wokeness.

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced a task force to evaluate senior service colleges to ensure they are not tainted by woke ideology and offer quality education.

"Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters," he asserted in a post on X.

"That’s why we are establishing a Task Force to evaluate our Senior Service Colleges and ensure the focus is where it belongs. No distractions. Just warfighting," the post adds. War Sec. Pete Hegseth arrives for the inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Conference at the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) headquarters in Doral, Florida, on March 5, 2026.

Editorial: U.S. will regret Hegseth's decision to end CMU military fellowship

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s move to end certain military fellowships at 21 disfavored universities, including Carnegie Mellon, will achieve the opposite of its purported intention.

He cites the need to train members of the Armed Forces to “think critically, free of bias or influence.” He asserts that the 21 elite institutions — which include Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — teach a “biased” perspective on the United States and its international affairs. The secretary says removing these schools and using others will improve the “readiness” of America’s military for battle, but it will not.

Air denial is not air control, and the Air Force should not pretend it is

Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis

A recent argument in the defense press contends that the US Air Force is buying the wrong kind of airpower. Instead of prioritizing advanced fighters and high-end capabilities, the claim goes, the service should emphasize large numbers of drones and munitions that can deliver persistence in modern war. Mass and layered defenses, we are told, can deny adversaries freedom of action long enough to shape outcomes.

That prescription rests on a subtle but consequential reframing of the problem, shifting the objective of airpower from controlling the air and gaining strategic advantages by doing so to merely denying enemy access to it.

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans

Caroline Haskins

An ongoing and heated dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic is raising new questions about how the startup’s technology is actually used inside the US military. In late February, Anthropic refused to grant the government unconditional access to its Claude AI models, insisting the systems should not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon responded by labeling Anthropic's products a “supply-chain risk,” prompting the startup to file two lawsuits this week alleging illegal retaliation by the Trump administration and seeking to overturn the designation.

The clash, along with the rapidly escalating war in Iran, has drawn attention to Anthropic’s partnership with the military contractor Palantir, which announced in November 2024 that it would integrate Claude into the software it sells to US intelligence and defense agencies. Palantir says the Claude integration can help analysts uncover “data-driven insights,” identify patterns, and support making “informed decisions in time-sensitive situations.”

To Fight Iran’s Drones, U.S. Taps Ukraine’s Hard-Earned Knowledge

Michael Schwirtz

The Ukrainian drone operators were in the middle of fierce fighting when a white-haired American arrived at the front and began peppering them with questions. He wanted advice for producing battle drones like the ones Ukraine was then using, Sgt. Oleksandr Karpiuk, the commander of the drone unit, recalled.

On the advice of Sergeant Karpiuk and others, the tech billionaire shifted gears. Instead of creating a battle drone, he made Merops, an anti-drone system that has become critical to Ukraine’s defenses. The system, developed with the help of Ukrainian fighters, has used its small, cheap interceptor drones to take out thousands of long-range Russian attack drones, saving untold numbers of lives, officials and fighters said.

Pentagon, Anthropic, and the promise of Military AI

Zerodha

Our goal with The Daily Brief is to simplify the biggest stories in the Indian markets and help you understand what they mean. We won’t just tell you what happened, we’ll tell you why and how too. We do this show in both formats: video and audio. This piece curates the stories that we talk about.

Two years ago, Anthropic’s Claude became the first large language model (LLM) to operate inside the Pentagon’s classified networks. The government clearly wanted to embed it into its systems. It was fast-tracked through layers of security clearance that normally take years to navigate, and had quickly found itself working across the breadth of America’s government.

When Tools Become Agents: The Autonomous AI Governance Challenge

Jianli Yang

Autonomous or agentic artificial intelligence will create challenges for public trust in the technology. That is why building systems of accountability and safety is essential to AI’s future development. A recent research study titled Agents of Chaos provides one of the first empirical glimpses into the behavior of autonomous AI agents operating in a semi-realistic environment. The researchers deployed language-model-based agents with persistent memory, email accounts, Discord communication, file system access, and shell execution, then allowed 20 researchers to interact with them for two weeks in adversarial conditions.

The results were sobering. The agents exhibited numerous failures with real-world implications, including unauthorized disclosure of private information, noncompliance with strangers’ instructions, destructive system actions, denial-of-service conditions, and even the spread of false accusations among agents. These findings matter not merely because they reveal technical weaknesses in current AI systems. They illustrate a deeper shift: artificial intelligence is no longer merely a tool. It is becoming more like an agent.

Key questions of reliability and accountability emerge in military AI use in Iran

Ian Reynolds

With the help of artificial intelligence, the United States struck 1,000 Iranian targets in the first 24 hours of the war that began on February 28. America’s ongoing military campaign in Iran, along with recent operations that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, demonstrate the degree to which AI-enabled tools are now integrated into the practices of war. Despite the reported use of these tools, it’s unclear how they are evaluated for performance and reliability and the degree to which human judgment is retained or diminished.

This lack of clarity could introduce serious risks into military campaigns and lead to the prioritization of metrics, such as the speed of operational and tactical decision making, rather than achieving strategic and political goals.

These aren’t AI firms, they’re defense contractors. We can’t let them hide behind their models Avner Gvaryahu

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

Israel’s recent war in Gaza has been described as the first major “AI war” – the first war in which AI systems have played a central role in generating Israel’s list of purported Hamas and Islamic jihad militants to target. Systems that processed billions of data points to rank the probability that any given person in the territory was a combatant.