India: Adaptive Extremism – Analysis

Afsara Shaheen

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Islamist terrorism in India in 2026 remained contained at the operational level outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), but persistent patterns of radicalisation, transnational linkages, and evolving recruitment strategies underline a resilient and adaptive threat. The current trajectory reflects a shift from large-scale coordinated attacks to decentralised modules, lone actors, and digitally facilitated ideological mobilisation, even as security agencies sustain high levels of disruption and interdiction.

On April 22, 2026, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court sentenced seven accused, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives such as ‘mastermind’ T. Naseer, to varying terms of rigorous imprisonment in the 2023 Bengaluru prison radicalisation case, highlighting the persistence of organised radical networks even within correctional institutions.

The Trump administration’s view of the US–India relationship

Viraj Solanki

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The Trump administration has a positive outlook regarding its relationship with India following a challenging year, during which the United States imposed 50% tariffs on India in mid-2025, and claimed to have brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025, which impacted bilateral trade and political trust.

The Trump administration’s relationship with India is more interest-based and transactional than the US–India relationship under the Joe Biden administration, when the focus was more on shared democratic values. The countries’ main shared areas of interest are countering China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific; defence and security; trade and investment; technology and people-to-people ties. The key question for the Trump administration is what it gets out of its relationship with India, including how bilateral cooperation will lead to increased opportunities, deals and market access for US businesses in India, and enhance the US economy.

What China’s New County Reveals About Its Afghanistan Policy

Philip Acey

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For much of the modern era, Central Asia – including Afghanistan and China’s western Xinjiang province – has been treated as a geopolitical periphery. Long viewed as an isolated buffer zone shaped by conflict, “otherness,” and great power competition, this perception is now shifting. Geopolitical realignments, economic and security necessity, as well as regional initiatives are repositioning Central Asia as an emerging hub of trade and cooperation.

That background helps explain China’s establishment of Cenling County in March 2026 along its border with Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. While some analyses emphasized the security implications of this move, this framing overlooks the broader strategic context.

Is China Winning the 2nd Space Race?

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It’s 2041 and at the Artemis Base Camp on the rim of the Shackleton Crater, an American space mining engineer and his Japanese colleague are sipping coffee, scowling at the latest headline: Elsewhere in the Aitken Basin, the Chinese have found yet another rich deposit of Helium-3, not far from their International Lunar Research Station, the one they constructed with the Russians in 2036.

This hasn’t happened yet, but it’s not science fiction. It’s the genuine ambition of the United States and China — among others — to establish a permanent presence on the moon with the explicit mission of mining – and exploiting – lunar resources.

Taiwan Fears It’ll Be ‘On the Menu’ at Trump-Xi SummitDeputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu comments in an interview

Jenny Leonard, Yian Lee, and Miaojung Lin

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A senior Taiwanese official expressed concern that President Donald Trump might make concessions on the self-governed island in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding Taiwan was working hard to prevent such a scenario.

“What we are the most afraid is to put Taiwan on the menu of the talk between Xi Jinping and President Trump,” Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu said Friday in an English-language interview with Bloomberg News. “We worry, and we need to avoid that it happens.”

War Without a Theory of Victory: How the United States Lost the Strategic Thread in Iran

Joe Funderburke 

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Fifty days into the US war with Iran, a pattern has emerged that is both familiar and alarming: tactical military success has not produced strategic coherence, and the absence of a credible theory of victory has left the United States reactive, economically exposed, and diplomatically isolated. United States entered the Iran conflict without a defined political end-state. The national security interagency process was structurally marginalized in the lead-up to and execution of the campaign. The resulting deficit is now visible in the oscillating ceasefire negotiations, the unresolved Strait of Hormuz crisis, and the absence of any articulated framework for translating battlefield gains into lasting strategic outcomes. Corrective action is both necessary and still possible, but it requires restoring the interagency function that sound strategy demands.

The Gap Between Striking and Winning

On February 28, 2026, United States and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, striking nuclear infrastructure, missile production facilities, and regime leadership targets across Iran. The operation was tactically impressive and militarily significant. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Nuclear enrichment facilities were damaged or destroyed. Iran’s conventional military capacity was substantially degraded.

The Kurds: Realism Over Separatism

Pasar Sherko Abdullah

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The Kurdish people are the world’s largest stateless nation. The geography of Kurdistan was first partitioned by the Treaty of Amasya (1555) between the Safavid and Ottoman Empires. The region under Iranian control is known as East Kurdistan (Rojhelat).

In the early 20th century, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the aftermath of World War I further divided Ottoman-held Kurdish lands among Turkey, Iraq, and Syria—creating North (Bakur), South (Bashur), and West (Rojava) Kurdistan, respectively. Together, these parts constitute what is historically known as “Greater Kurdistan.”

War Without a Theory of Victory: How the United States Lost the Strategic Thread in Iran

Joe Funderburke

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Fifty days into the US war with Iran, a pattern has emerged that is both familiar and alarming: tactical military success has not produced strategic coherence, and the absence of a credible theory of victory has left the United States reactive, economically exposed, and diplomatically isolated. United States entered the Iran conflict without a defined political end-state. The national security interagency process was structurally marginalized in the lead-up to and execution of the campaign. The resulting deficit is now visible in the oscillating ceasefire negotiations, the unresolved Strait of Hormuz crisis, and the absence of any articulated framework for translating battlefield gains into lasting strategic outcomes. Corrective action is both necessary and still possible, but it requires restoring the interagency function that sound strategy demands.

The Gap Between Striking and Winning

On February 28, 2026, United States and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, striking nuclear infrastructure, missile production facilities, and regime leadership targets across Iran. The operation was tactically impressive and militarily significant. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Nuclear enrichment facilities were damaged or destroyed. Iran’s conventional military capacity was substantially degraded.

Iranian HEMP Is an Existential Threat

Stephen Chill

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The dominant view in Washington policy circles holds Iran poses no existential threat to the United States. This consensus, however, widely held, is dangerously wrong. In 2024 and into 2025 both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed that Iran was close to having enough enriched uranium to make over ten nuclear warheads.[i] [ii] The question is not whether Iran could build a weapon, but what it would do with one.

Officials and analysts who dismiss an Iranian existential threat are picturing the wrong attack entirely. They picture warheads landing on American cities, a picture requiring Iran to build, miniaturize, and deliver a substantial arsenal against the most heavily defended airspace on earth. City-killing is not the only way to destroy a country, and a nuclear weapon need not land to be catastrophic.

The Cost of the Iran War for the United States: A Strategic Blunder in Five Dimensions

Tahir Azad

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When President Donald Trump declared from the West Wing on April 6, 2026, that Iran had been “militarily defeated,” he repeated a line he had already delivered on March 17, March 24 and March 26. Each declaration of victory was contradicted within hours by the next missile launch, the next shipping disruption, and the next emergency request to Congress for replenishment. On April 21, hours before a two-week ceasefire was to expire, the president extended the truce at the request of Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, while insisting that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in force. Israel absorbed direct missile strikes on its mainland. For the United States, the cost has proven catastrophic across five dimensions: military, financial, regional, diplomatic, global, and reputational. The pattern that emerges is not a list of isolated setbacks. It is the outline of a great power that has begun to discover the limits of its own power.

Military Costs: The Arsenal of Democracy Runs Dry

The most uncomfortable truth for the Pentagon is that the United States has quietly cannibalized its own deterrent posture to sustain this war. A CSIS analysis by Mark Cancian and Chris Park estimates that more than 150 THAAD interceptors were expended during the earlier twelve-day war of June 2025, with no new deliveries scheduled until April 2027. The current conflict, Operation Epic Fury, has accelerated that depletion.

Detecting A ‘Dirty Bomb’: How Europeans Can Combat Radiological Threats – Analysis

Jacek Siewiera

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Earlier this month, reports emerged of drones allegedly carrying radioactive materials in central London. The incident is a timely reminder of the need for European states to guard against such threats—both for the harm these could cause but also for the psychological effect they can have on states and societies.

Great uncertainty—to put it lightly—remains around the future of Iran’s nuclear programme and its stockpiled fissile material. Debate has always focused on the prospect of a nuclear bomb. But especially in such a period of convulsive change, the same material could be used for other deadly purposes. The last official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessments indicated that, as of June 2025, Iran held approximately 440kg of uranium-235 enriched up to 60%, alongside further quantities of lower enriched uranium.

Nepal’s Remittance Reckoning: The Gen Z Mandate Meets the Gulf Crisis

Soumya Bhowmick

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Nepal’s new government took office at a moment when the country faces both political transformation and economic fragility. Nepal is not in outright crisis – yet – but the risks are real. The Shah government carries a historic democratic mandate while simultaneously confronting an external shock originating in West Asia that threatens the remittance mechanism sustaining its balance of payments.

In September 2025, youth-led protests toppled Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and set Nepal on the path to fresh elections. The administration of Balendra “Balen” Shah was sworn in late March 2026 as the country’s 47th and youngest prime minister. Shah barely settled into office before colliding with a severe disruption to the remittance economy on which Nepal depends more than almost any other nation in the world.

Three Narratives of Victory in One War

Abdulwajid Soroush

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On February 28, the United States and Israel launched large-scale strikes against Iran’s military and nuclear facilities in an operation introduced under the names Epic Wrath and Lion’s Roar. On the first day of the war, Donald Trump described it as a “short-term excursion” that would end quickly. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared at his first press conference that “This is not Iraq. This is not endless.” Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also reassured America’s G7 partners that the operation would be over “in weeks, not months.” Yet after forty days of fighting, the war culminated in a two-week ceasefire on April 9, 2026, with Islamabad hosting talks between Iran and the United States.

Once the ceasefire was announced, all three principal actors claimed victory. The White House described the two-week ceasefire with Iran as a win for the United States. In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the ceasefire and, by declaring that “Iran is weaker than ever, and Israel has never been stronger” implicitly framed the outcome as an Israeli victory.

Trade Offensive – OpEd

Mark Nayler

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Despite US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s warning that anyone seeking stronger trade ties with Beijing would be “cutting their own throat,” Donald Trump’s weaponized tariffs are causing many countries to seek closer relations with China. There has been a barrage of diplomacy in the first few months of 2026, especially from European leaders concerned about the effects of Chinese competitiveness on domestic industries. French president Emmanuel Macron, who visited Xi Jinping last December, said that European trade and industry faced a “life-or-death moment,” and that its future depended on more balanced trade relations with the world’s largest manufacturing country.

The latest European leader to visit Beijing, between April 11 and 15, was Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish premier’s meeting with Xi Jinping was the fourth in as many years—and trade was top of the agenda. In 2025, exports from Madrid to Beijing exceeded imports by €40 billion, a deficit described by Sánchez as “unsustainable.” His visit was part of a broader strategy to reduce the EU’s €360 billion trade deficit with China. Although the two leaders apparently agreed on measures to improve Madrid’s imbalanced relationship with Beijing, no concrete details have been released.

Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute over Autonomous Weapon Systems: Potential Issues for Congress

Sayler, Kelley M.

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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 (E.O.) 14347 dated September 5, 2025) subsequently directed the Department of Defense (DOD, now using "Department of War" as a secondary designation under E.O. 14347) to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security; bar defense contractors, suppliers, and partners from working with Anthropic; and describe 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 Claude, the company's generative AI model. 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 challenging these directives. While the district court issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Anthropic on March 26, the court of appeals denied Anthropic's motion for a stay on April 8, thus undoing the lower court's injunction.

5 ways the Iran war shows NATO is not ready to fight Russia

Victor Jack

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BRUSSELS — NATO has stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, but the conflict has nevertheless exposed cracks in the alliance’s defenses that would see it struggle if Russia attacks.

“The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are not separate phenomena; there is much to learn from both in thinking about the wars of tomorrow,” Gen. Dominique Tardif, France’s deputy air force chief, said. “These combined lessons should lead us to a better understanding of how to direct capability development.”

From Ballistics to Cruise: Türkiye’s Missile Developments

Sıtkı Egeli

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Spurred by regional threats and the goal of defence-industrial autonomy, Türkiye has and continues to develop a broad and increasingly capable missile portfolio spanning ballistic and cruise designs, transforming its guided-weapons sector in the process.

Regional missile threats and a desire for defence-industrial autonomy have motivated Ankara to build a broad portfolio of ballistic and cruise missiles. During the Cold War, Türkiye’s status as a NATO frontier state bordering the Soviet Union made it a theatre for potential ballistic-missile exchanges. Rather than pursuing indigenous missiles, Türkiye relied on NATO’s collective defence, nuclear guarantees from the United States and the deterrent value of its air power.

UK and US always find ways to come together, King Charles to tell Congress

Jamie Grierson

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King Charles is expected to allude to recent strains between the UK and US in a rare address by a monarch to the US Congress as he will underline that “time and again our two countries have always found ways to come together”.

The king’s remarks in a speech to both houses on Tuesday will come after Donald Trump has threatened to tear up a trade deal signed by the UK and US, mocked the Royal Navy and insulted the UK prime minister. Trump’s anger with the UK and Keir Starmer is largely driven by the latter’s refusal to take part in the US and Israeli offensive against Iran, which continues to destabilise the global economy.

The Disposable Oligarchs Why Wealthy Elites Come to Regret Their Bargains With Authoritarians

Christopher Hartwell and Tricia D. Olsen

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The attendees at U.S. President Donald Trump’s second inauguration included a typical cast of government officials, legislators, and cabinet nominees. What was not so typical was the crew of billionaires who also attended—and took center stage. The Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and the Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk were all seated one row behind Trump’s children and in front of many of his cabinet nominees, including Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Kristi Noem. To many, the billionaires’ prominent placement—and the overtures they seemed to

How North Korea Won The Strange Triumph of Kim Jong Un

Jung H. Pak

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The 75th anniversary of the Korean Workers Party in October 2020 was not the festive affair that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wanted it to be. Despite the fireworks, military flyover, and procession of new intercontinental missiles, Kim appeared to wipe away tears when he approached the lectern and apologized to the crowd: “My efforts and sincerity have not been sufficient enough to rid our people of the difficulties in their lives.” The COVID-19 pandemic had been tough for most countries, but it seemed especially portentous for North Korea, which was largely food-insecure, home to a notoriously dilapidated public health-care

Technology Theft: How American Tech Keeps Showing Up In China – OpEd

Dave Patterson

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On Wednesday, April 22, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony on the topic “Stealth Stealing: China’s Ongoing Theft of US Innovation.” Witnesses included Mark Cohen, Senior Fellow at the University of Akron Law School’s Intellectual Property Institute; Tom Lyons, Co-Founder of the 2430 Group; and Helen Toner, Interim Executive Director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. The issues included blatant theft of US technology and intellectual property, as well as intense competition with China for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence. And this theft by the CCP is nothing new.

China and the Wholesale Theft of American Technology

Senator Tillis (R-NC), serving as chairman, opened the hearing, explaining:

Mr. Lyons, in his opening statement, offered a troubling observation. “What we’ve seen has been alarming. American firms are not competing against Chinese rivals in any normal sense. They are competing against the largest intelligence apparatus in the world. One whose mission includes putting American companies out of business,” Lyons said.

China has ‘deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns’ to steal US AI models, White House says

EDWARD GRAHAM and DAVID DIMOLFETTA

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The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Thursday accused China and other foreign entities of engaging in “deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems,” and said that the Trump administration will be taking steps to safeguard domestic artificial intelligence products.

In a memo to federal agencies, the White House office warned that these distillation campaigns — in which an attacker sends a deluge of requests to an AI model to train a knockoff version of it — are allowing bad actors to steal proprietary information from U.S. companies.

Irregular Warfare: If We Ever Stop Arguing About IW, Then IW Will Be Dead

David Maxwell 

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Irregular warfare (IW) refuses to sit still. It shifts with politics, adapts to technology, and lives in the human domain where definition is always contested. That is why the argument matters. If we ever stop arguing about irregular warfare, then irregular warfare will be dead. Not because it disappears, but because we will have turned it into a static concept, disconnected from strategy and stripped of utility.

This tension sits at the heart of the problem. Practitioners want clarity. Policymakers want clean definitions. Bureaucracies demand terms that can be codified, resourced, and measured. Yet as LTG Mike Nagata observed on a recent Irregular Warfare Institute podcast, “So long as we can’t settle on a definition of the term, the likelihood we’re going to make this a useful instrument for national security purposes, or frankly, for any other purpose, is pretty low.” He is right. But he is also incomplete. The failure to settle the definition is not only a weakness. It is also a source of strength. The debate itself forces rigor. It exposes assumptions. It sharpens thinking.

The Staged Death of China’s Military-Civil Fusion

Ryan D. Martinson

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On March 13, 2026, China issued the outline for its 15th Five-Year Plan — a core document defining Chinese government policies into the next decade. In the hierarchy of Chinese sources, Five-Year Plan outlines rank among the most “authoritative” in that they are issued by the government, directly reflecting its will and aspirations. This places them in a special class that includes white papers, work reports, and, perhaps above all, the words of Xi Jinping. Among analysts of Chinese affairs, authoritative sources are generally regarded as the most valuable documents for deciphering Beijing’s intentions.

For years, MCF has been a major irritant in China-U.S. relations, given that it requires China-based companies, research organizations, and individuals – including those with substantial U.S. ties – to engage in activities that support China’s military development. This is the second consecutive Five-Year Plan outline with little or no reference to MCF, suggesting that Beijing has abandoned this controversial policy. If true, this could reflect an effort by China to dial down tensions with the United States – a rare good news story in an age of growing antagonism and rivalry.

Q&A with Robert D. Kaplan

Christopher Booth

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Editor’s Note: This article is presented in a question-and-answer format, with the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s Maritime Program (facilitated by Christopher Booth) interviewing Robert D. Kaplan. This piece has been edited for clarity and readability, as spoken language differs from how text is read on the page.

“Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty-four books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including: China Whisperers, Waste Land, The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. For three decades, he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He is a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U. S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers.’”