Could India Revisit The 1959 Chinese Proposal To Settle The Border Dispute? – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

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Gen. M.M.Naravane, who served as India’s army chief from 2019 to 2022, has suggested that India and China consider the 1959 Chinese proposal to barter the disputed territories of Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh to end the 75-year-long boundary dispute between the two countries.

Because of the boundary dispute, India and China have not been able to have normal relations. Hence the need to find ways to bring the curtains down on the dispute, the General argues in his recent video interview to the New Delhi-based website The Print.

But India had rejected the Chinese proposal to barter Aksai Chin for Arunachal Pradesh in 1960 for good reasons argues historian Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, in his paper entitled, “A Missed Opportunity? The Nehru-Zhou Enlai Summit of 1960,” published by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in 2015.

Analysis: ISKP’s Exploitation of the Af-Pak Border War

Uma Miskinyar 

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Much of the current discussion treats the Iran–Israel–U.S war and the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict as separate crises, but along the Iran–Afghanistan–Pakistan corridor they are unfolding in the same strategic space. This article analyzes how that overlap is reshaping militant dynamics in Balochistan, focusing on the growing confrontation between ISKP and Baloch nationalist groups. It also assesses the implications for U.S. counterterrorism policy, particularly in tracking cross-border networks, digital recruitment, and declining intelligence visibility.

On the early morning of February 27, 2026, Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, declared what he termed “open war” between Pakistan and the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. The announcement formalized a week of cross-border strikes and escalating retaliation along the Durand Line, a boundary whose instability has long been sustained by overlapping insurgencies and unresolved sovereignty disputes. This escalation differs from previous cycles of Af-Pak tension; it is unfolding simultaneously with intensifying conflict involving Iran, producing a regional security environment defined not by a single crisis, but by concurrent shocks.

Strategic Implications of the Iran War

Paul J. Saunders, and Nikolas K. Gvosdev

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Over two months into the US-Israeli war with Iran, the conflict shows no signs of imminent resolution, with both sides convinced that time is on their side. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up the prices of oil and natural gas, but neither Washington nor Tehran appears ready to back down or make concessions, raising the possibility of a prolonged stalemate of “no war, no peace.” At the same time, the war’s immediate effects on the energy markets and US military posture will have repercussions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s plans for Taiwan, as well as President Donald Trump’s summit in Beijing later this month.

How long can each side endure this state of affairs, and what would it take to force a settlement and reopen the Strait of Hormuz? How does the war intersect with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine? And what lessons is China drawing as it watches another great power struggle to bring a middle power to heel?

Oil Tanker Hijacking Stokes Fears of New Disruption in Gulf Region

Pranav Baskar and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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Pirates from Somalia hijacked an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen on Saturday and have diverted it to Somalia’s waters, the authorities in Somalia said Sunday, the third such incident in recent weeks. The hijacking is an embarrassment for the government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and suggests a resurgence of piracy at a time when the Red Sea, which borders western Yemen, has become an even more critical route for global shipping, given the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the war in Iran.

Yemen’s Coast Guard said that unidentified people had boarded the ship, the Togo-flagged Eureka, on Saturday and directed it through the Yemeni part of the Gulf of Aden toward Somalia’s coast. Efforts to monitor and recover the vessel were underway, it added.

Avoiding the Knife Fight: Defeating Iran’s Strait Strategy

David Levy

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Iran has long prepared to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a major conflict with the United States, hoping to trigger an energy shock, draw US naval forces into a confined battlespace, and impose enough cost to weaken Washington’s will. The US has been fully cognizant of Tehran’s intent for decades and planned accordingly. In the recent conflict, rather than accept a direct fight inside the Strait on Iranian terms, Washington and Jerusalem widened the campaign, degraded Iran’s command structure, air defenses, naval forces, missile infrastructure, and supporting systems, and only then turned more directly to the Strait itself. Even so, reopening the waterway has proved difficult. 

The IRGC’s naval capacity, though significantly diminished, is still sufficient to threaten shipping through mines, small craft, and shore-based systems. As a result, the United States has shifted to a broader indirect approach that combines limited military operations in and around the Strait with strikes and threats of further strikes on vital targets, economic coercion, blockade measures, and a diplomatic alternative. Thus far, that approach appears to be working. Iran’s Strait strategy has not forced the United States into the kind of fight Tehran had spent decades anticipating.

The U.S. Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.

Tierney L. Cross

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On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about.

In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.

IRGC Announces New Maritime Control Zone In Strait Of Hormuz

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The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Monday announced a new maritime control zone in the Strait of Hormuz, reports Iranian media.

In an official statement, the IRGC said it has declared a new maritime control area in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, reports the Tasnim News Agency, which is closely aligned with the IRGC.

According to the statement, the new zone of “smart control” by the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz is defined as follows: “In the south: the line between Mount Mobarak in Iran and south of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates; In the west: the line between the end of Qeshm Island in Iran and Umm Al Quwain in the United Arab Emirates.”

The Real Center of Gravity in Tehran

Stephen D. Cook

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On April 22nd in these pages, I warned that ships and planes are tools of denial, not governance. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the theocratic regime it protects can absorb the loss of tankers, missiles, and oil revenue so long as they retain their most valuable resource: armed loyalists on the ground who control the Iranian people. That piece drew on twenty-five years in the U.S. Army, including combat tours as a Green Beret where I watched the same pattern play out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The speed with which the situation in the Gulf continues to evolve compels a follow-up.

We are still fighting the wrong war.

The United States continues to treat Iran as a conventional nation-state whose center of gravity can be found in the familiar pillars of national power: military, economic, information, and political. We impose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz believing the leadership values its economy. We prepare new precision strikes believing the regime values identified targets—missile sites, air defenses, nuclear facilities—the same way a Western government would. Both assumptions are flawed.

Tapping into America’s Distaste for Forever Wars: The Spread of Iranian Narratives on Bluesky

Jose M. Macias III and Nico Vacca

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The United States and Israel have made battlefield gains in their conflict against Iran, but the United States is struggling to counter Iranian propaganda. Operational successes have removed Iran’s authoritarian supreme leader, dismantled its defense leadership apparatus, and degraded its missile capabilities. However, the opportunity cost of military success for the United States is the loss of ground in the information war for the hearts and minds of American audiences and Western audiences more broadly. While Iran is losing on the battlefield, it is competing effectively in the information space through an aggressive, multiplatform disinformation campaign.

Analysis by the Futures Lab of more than 9,000 Bluesky Social posts finds that messages seemingly designed to exacerbate public divisions, which compose 23 percent of posts in the dataset, are the highest performing, averaging 150 reposts, 470 likes, and 28 replies per post. These same posts have been viewed by an estimated 293,666 users and are statistically significantly associated with a higher sharing volume, with an estimated 41 percent increase compared to other posts.

Have any lessons been learned from US failures in the Iran war?

Stephen Bryen

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While the US military has had many achievements in the Iran conflict, it’s been far from cost free. Iran conducted extensive retaliatory strikes targeting high-value US bases. According to international reports and satellite data, the damage to aircraft, radar, and communication systems throughout February and March was more significant than initially reported.

In all, 16 US military sites in eight countries across the Middle East were hit, and some of them sustained enough damage to be unusable.

Did the US learn any lessons as much from the failures as from the successes?

The US clearly made some major blunders, despite far superior air defenses and sophisticated command and control systems. Most spectacularly, the US lost two AWACS aircraft, one totally destroyed and the other possibly unrepairable, and three F-15 fighter jets, downed by “friendly” fire. The US also “missed” an Iranian jet that did substantial damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait.

Trump’s Project Freedom Isn’t Going to Open the Strait of Hormuz

Max Boot

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President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the United States would launch an operation to help tankers and cargo ships trapped in the Persian Gulf transit the waterway. Two U.S. destroyers entered the Persian Gulf on Monday, and two U.S.-flagged commercial ships exited it. Iran hit back by attacking commercial ships and targeting the United Arab Emirates with missiles and drones for the first time since the ceasefire began on April 8. Iranian forces also fired on U.S. warships, and U.S. forces responded by destroying six Iranian small boats.

Trying to open the Strait of Hormuz by force could reignite the wider conflict and expose U.S. warships to Iranian attacks in a narrow waterway with little time to react. All of this could quickly render “Project Freedom”—with its vague pledges of military help but no announcement of actual convoy operations—another improvised half-measure in a conflict that has lurched from misstep to misstep. As long as Iran remains capable of attacking commercial vessels, few shipping lines will risk running the gauntlet.

The End of America’s Soft Power

Stephen M. Walt

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One of the more striking features of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy—not the chosen ends, but its preferred means—is its absolute confidence in America’s hard power and its near-total disdain for what my late colleague Joseph Nye called “soft power.” Nye defined the latter as “the power of attraction,” as a nation’s ability to get others to do what it wanted because it possessed qualities that made others want to emulate it, associate with it, and follow its lead. States with a lot of hard power could compel others through force and intimidation or by offering aid or protection; states with an abundance of soft power enjoyed greater influence because others wanted to be like them, agreed with the principles they stood for, or viewed them as fashionable, successful, and even “hip.”

A good realist like me is hardly going to denigrate the importance of hard power; on the contrary, it’s hard to have lots of soft power without substantial hard power to back it up. But you can have plenty of hard power and little or no soft power, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia has shown.

The Vanguard State: How Ukraine is Redefining the Character of War

Casey Christie

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Ukraine is no longer fighting simply as the overmatched side adapting under pressure; it is now shaping the character of modern warfare. Through the ruthless and effective integration of robotic systems across land, air, and sea, it has transitioned from a recipient of aid to a global laboratory for 21st-century combat.

What began as improvised drone use in the early phases of the war has matured into something far more deliberate and dangerous. Ukraine has not simply adopted robotic warfare - it has mastered its doctrine. We are now seeing credible reports of Ukrainian units using unmanned ground systems to probe, fix, and even clear Russian positions before a single soldier steps forward. These are not theoretical trials; these are frontline realities where machines absorb the first contact, drawing fire and shaping the battlefield to reduce the cost in Ukrainian lives.

Trump’s Tragedy of Errors

Joseph E. Stiglitz

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Regardless of how long US President Donald Trump’s ill-advised war and today’s stagflationary conditions last, the long-run consequences will be profound. Fancying himself an absolute monarch, Trump has broken something he cannot fix and unleashed forces he cannot control.

NEW YORK—It is true, as Alexander Pope once said, that to err is human. But while everyone is fallible, some humans are more prone to error than others. That is a justification for democracy—for subjecting decisions that affect large numbers of people to deliberative processes that include checks and balances. The history of authoritarian and absolutist political rule is rife with figures whose mistakes proved calamitous not just for themselves but for the societies they ruled.

Pentagon tech chief says Anthropic is still blacklisted, but Mythos is a separate issue

Ashley Capoot

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Department of Defense CTO Emil Michael on Friday said Anthropic is still a supply chain risk, but that Mythos, the company’s artificial intelligence model with advanced cyber capabilities, is a “separate national security moment.”

“I think the Mythos issue that’s being dealt with government-wide, not just at Department War, is a separate national security moment where we have to make sure that our networks are hardened up, because that model has capabilities that are particular to finding cyber vulnerabilities and patching them,” Michael told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.

Zelenskyy has no cards to play against Russia or the West

Leonid Ragozin

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s artistic skills have earned him the reputation of a public relations genius acknowledged by both friends and foes. United States President Donald Trump, who has openly attacked him in public, famously called the Ukrainian leader “the greatest salesman on Earth”. A much more sympathetic voice, New York Times columnist David French, has recently portrayed Zelenskyy as “the new leader of free world”.

But Zelenskyy’s PR genius can do very little when it comes to changing the dynamics of the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine war. In recent weeks, his administration and allies have tried hard to create the impression that the war might be approaching a turning point. But realities on the ground tell a different story.

U.S. War in Iran Leaves Ukraine’s Air Defense in Limbo

Sam Skove

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Ukraine and its partners in Europe are holding their breath and waiting to learn just how the war in Iran may affect U.S. military aid—and especially the delivery of the powerful Patriot air defense missiles that Kyiv has relied on to blunt the devastating impact of Russian ballistic missiles.

“Everything will depend on the situation around Iran,” said one European diplomat, who—like others quoted for this story—was not authorized to speak publicly.

Redefining Energy Security

Richard Haass and Carolyn Kissane

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In the aftermath of COVID-19, firms shifted from a “just in time” model to a “just in case” approach that sought to strengthen resilience. With oil and gas infrastructure becoming a primary military target, energy systems must now undergo a similar transition.

NEW YORK—It is too soon to know when or how the war with Iran will end, or what its geopolitical or economic consequences will be. But one thing is already certain: What is meant by energy security must be rethought.

This Energy Crisis Is Undoing the Last Ones

Giuliana Chamedes

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The standard story of the post-World War II international economic order is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Traditional accounts tell us that the alliance between Western Europe and the United States was consolidated immediately after World War II, as a result of the Bretton Woods order, which pegged global currencies to the U.S. dollar and stabilized global economic governance via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They explain that the partnership was further strengthened by the conclusion of the Marshall Plan at the start of the Cold War and, in 1957, with the founding of the European Economic Community.

In reality, it was the three major oil shocks of the postwar period—in 1956, 1973, and 1978-79—that helped confirm the alliance between Western Europe and the United States, laying the foundation for today’s political and economic order. They also explain its fragility.

How the US Army is readying for a cyberspace fight against enemy AI hackers

Chris Panella

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The communications and data networks essential to the US Army's operations across the Asia-Pacific region were probed by a new kind of adversary: an enemy AI trying to confuse and ensnare soldiers.

That's what Army leaders, guided by top US AI companies, saw in a new series of tabletop exercises as they prepare for a new era of AI-augmented cyber operations, and how to effectively defend themselves. It's the latest example of how the Army is embracing artificial intelligence at all levels of warfighting — and the latest acknowledgement that the challenges of future warfare may be too fast for humans to tackle alone.

Drone warfare in Ukraine: Martian drones, swarms and mesh technology

Olena Kryzhanivska

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Ukraine has hinted at potential breakthroughs in AI-driven defence technologies—but what might those actually look like? This week, I spoke with a leading Ukrainian developer of collaborative autonomy software, Swarmer, and reviewed several interviews to assess how close we are to seeing it on the battlefield. There is clear progress—but no one is willing to predict when this shift will fully materialize.

On Saturday, I’ll release the second edition of my 2-page weekly brief on drones in Ukraine and Russia. I plan to continue publishing it even during weeks of reduced availability, when I’m unable to release the full Drone Warfare in Ukraine edition.

Ukraine Bets on AI

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In a Hurriyet Daily News piece titled “Ukraine bets on battlefield AI amid weapons autonomy race,” two vital points are made clear about Ukraine’s use of AI.

First, AI is becoming a survival tool, not an enhancement. Ukraine is using it to compress decision cycles, sustain operations under heavy electronic warfare, and offset Russia’s advantages in mass. Autonomy at the edge keeps systems functioning when humans are jammed or delayed.

Second, the shift is about scale and integration rather than singular breakthroughs. A large domestic tech base is producing drones, interceptors, and unmanned ground systems that are already routine in logistics and combat.

The AI Battlespace: Artificial Intelligence, Civil Stability, and the Weaponization of Trust

Captain Scott Pleasants

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Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the operational environment across military, cyber, and civil domains. While AI technologies provide significant advantages in data analysis, automation, and decision support, they also introduce new vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit. This article examines how artificial intelligence may be weaponized to manipulate trusted information systems, accelerate cyber operations, and destabilize civilian infrastructure. Drawing on recent cyber incidents—including attacks on critical infrastructure, supply chains, and national energy systems—the article highlights how AI-enabled threats could affect governance, public trust, and stability operations. 

Particular attention is given to the implications for Civil Affairs forces, which operate at the intersection of governance, infrastructure, and civilian populations. The article also explores how disaster response and humanitarian environments may be exploited through AI-driven disinformation and cyber disruption. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in operational systems, preparing a workforce capable of critically evaluating and securely employing AI technologies will become an essential component of national security.

New Report Shows How AI Gives Cybersecurity Competitive Advantage

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Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping cybersecurity and is the biggest driver of change in the field, according to a new World Economic Forum report. Some 94% of cyber leaders identify AI as a defining force and 77% of organizations already use it in their cyber operations.

The AI and Cyber: Empowering Defenders report, developed in collaboration with KPMG, highlights measurable gains in cost reduction, response speed and resilience. While threat actors increasingly weaponize AI to automate deception, generate malware and scale attacks at machine speed, the report indicates that organizations deploying AI strategically are achieving significant advantages. Organizations that extensively leverage AI in security reduce average breach costs by up to $1.9 million and shorten breach lifecycles by approximately 80 days.

The U.S. Wants to Break China’s Drone Dominance. Here’s Where It Will Struggle.

Josh Chin

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With drones revolutionizing the battlefield in Ukraine, Iran and beyond, the U.S. is striving to dominate this latest evolution in military technology the way it has with previous wartime innovations. There is just one problem: China got there first.

Teardowns of drones recovered in Ukraine hint at the extent of China’s stranglehold on production. A recent dissection of a Russian first-person-view, or FPV, quadcopter by the Bulava unit of Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade found numerous parts manufactured at least partially in China: batteries, motors and an unmarked central “brain” chip that Bulava traced to a Chinese supplier. Like Bulava’s own similar drones, the Russian version couldn’t have been built without China’s supply chain, according to the unit’s chief drone specialist.

April 2026 Issue

Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Joe Decie, Devorah Margolin, Alexandre Rodde, David Mcilhatton, John Cuddihy, Shannen Benton

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In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to how violent non-state actors are using artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve their goals and how AI is being utilized for counterterrorism. Far less attention has been paid, however, to how AI itself—as a “whole-of-society transformative technology”—could change the landscape of political violence in much more fundamental ways. In our cover article this month, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage argues that “AI is reordering labor markets, institutional authority, and the relational worlds in which people live, generating preconditions for political violence independently of whether violent actors adopt the technology themselves.” Using a framework he developed centered on three grievance domains—economic order, state and institutional power, and social and personal fabric—Veilleux-Lepage “considers how violence arising from these grievances may materialize, including through targets and actor types that lie largely outside current counterterrorism monitoring.”