Indian Strategic Studies: 05/13/26

13 May 2026

Emerging From the “Zombie State” of Trade Agreements: The India-EU FTA

Vrinda Sahai and Nicolas Köhler-Suzuki

Nicolas Köhler-Suzuki: For most of the time, the honest answer to when this deal will happen was probably undetermined. The negotiations started in 2007 and for the best part of the decade, they were in what I would call a “zombie state.” What changed is that the world changed around both India and the EU, faster than anticipated. We must understand the three forces that converged almost simultaneously. The first and most obvious one is Trump. The United States slapped tariffs of up to 50 percent on Indian exports in mid-2025 - 25 percent reciprocal, 25 percent for Russian oil purchases.

The EU also got hit with 15 percent baseline tariffs even after a deal. Suddenly, both sides found themselves at the receiving end of American aggression and the political incentive was to show the world that you have other friends. The second force is China. For the EU, the exposure to China is structural—earths, technologies, battery components, pharmaceuticals. India can offer something that no other partner of a comparable scale can: a very large English-speaking economy with a young workforce and strong ambitions for manufacturing. For India, the calculation is similar but in reverse.

Xi’s Forever Purge The Real Goal Behind China’s “Self-Revolution”

Neil Thomas and Shengyu Wang

Since becoming China’s leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has carried out stunning assaults on both the Chinese Communist Party and its People’s Liberation Army, purging millions of cadres and even senior leaders who were once thought untouchable. Rooting out corruption was an early focus of Xi’s tenure, but he has intensified the effort in recent years: in 2025, the CCP’s “discipline inspection” authorities filed more than one million cases, an almost sevenfold increase from the year Xi took office. In January, Xi abruptly removed top generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, which hollowed out a Central Military Commission

Plug and Play À La PLA

Anushka Saxena

On May 6, 2026, the PLA Daily published an interesting article pertaining to the Eastern Theater Command Navy utilising “plug-and-play” (PaP) modular combat units (即插即用的模块化作战单元) for rehearsing integrated deployments and “systems-of-systems” operational tactics.

Across Chinese-language military press over the past 5 years, the idea of these “plug-and-play” (即插即用) modular combat units has moved from theory/ doctrine to a routine element of combat preparedness drills. In May 2020, a long PLA Daily article by Zhao Zhongqi and Nan Dangshe, “Building New-Type Precision Combat Units (打造新型精确作战单元)” likely delved for the first time into doctrinal commentary on how “foreign militaries” were implementing concepts like joint all-domain operations, joint all-domain command & control, and multi-domain operations. Unmistakably, this is a reference to the US’s JADO/ JADC2/ MDO doctrines.

The New Age of Supply Chain Warfare

Richard Weitz

The Strait of Hormuz crisis illustrates how America’s adversaries can abruptly manipulate supply chain dependencies as geopolitical weapons. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has boosted oil prices to heights not seen in years. Meanwhile, China has already primed future US chokepoints.

China’s leaders have become experts at supply chain warfare. They follow the master Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, who observed that the supreme art of war “consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” According to the congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “Beijing has shifted toward an explicit policy goal of establishing uncontestable dominance across global value chains, eliminating its own vulnerabilities while creating global dependencies on Chinese products.”

China’s War Wolves: From Commercial Tech to Combat Power

Craig Singleton, JackBurnham, Duncan Lazarow & Anika Iyer

China is not just modernizing its military. It is reimagining how future wars will be fought. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) embrace of “intelligentized warfare” (智能化战争) reflects a systematic effort to integrate artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and unmanned systems into frontline operations. Robotic quadrupeds — often described in Chinese reporting as “robotic wolves” — sit at the center of this shift. These robots are not propaganda props. They offer a clear window into how China is converting commercial innovation into combat power.

The PLA’s robotics strategy matters because Taiwan is the most plausible test case for many of these cutting-edge systems. A cross-strait conflict would force the PLA to confront its hardest operational problems: contested littorals, dense urban terrain, degraded communications environments, and the threat of high casualties in the opening phase of combat. Semi-autonomous and autonomous platforms could shape whether the PLA sustains operational momentum or stalls when it matters most.

Takaichi and Japan Resist Chinese Pressure

Matthew Fulco

Japanese Prime Minister Sane Takaichi is holding firm against Chinese diplomatic and economic pressure, bolstering her domestic popularity. Takaichi’s comments regarding Japan’s security in relation to a potential invasion of Taiwan and plans to reform Japan’s defense posture have triggered rare earth export restrictions and clampdowns on tourism from Beijing.

Effectively efforts to reduce economic dependence on the People’s Republic of China following previous coercive actions are mitigating Beijing’s latest moves. Takaichi’s government is deepening security partnerships, including with the Philippines, the United States, and France.

Trump’s China Trap

Michael Kovrig

In January, after weeks of threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to annex Canada as the “51st state,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, radiating cordiality toward the leaders of a country he had called Canada’s greatest geopolitical threat less than a year earlier. In a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, he said that “the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order.” It was not a great moment for the United States. Yet that scene—a leader anxious about Washington, rushing to Beijing with a newfound urgency—has played out again and again since Trump’s return to the White House.

In 2025, the leaders of Australia, France, Georgia, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, and the European Union all traveled to China. In January, the pace of visits accelerated, with the leaders of Finland, Ireland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom arriving in quick succession, followed in February by Uruguay’s president and Germany’s chancellor. In April, Spain’s prime minister cemented the pattern with his fourth visit in four years.

Fallow farms, more coal burning and copper shortages – how this El Nino could affect China

Mia Nurmamat

A strong El Nino expected later this year, together with the fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran, may threaten China’s agricultural security as the country’s traditional small-scale farming system lacks sufficient capacity to cope with extreme weather shocks, analysts have warned.

The climate phenomenon also risked disrupting China’s supply of critical commodities, such as copper – essential for renewable energy systems – potentially forcing the energy-intensive economy to lean more heavily on coal, they said.

Iran’s New Oil Weapon

Gregory Brew

Despite a fragile cease-fire between the United States and Iran, the global economic crisis sparked by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues unabated. Dueling blockades have kept 20 percent of the global oil supply, 20 percent of the global supply of liquefied natural gas, and critical commodities such as helium, aluminum, and urea trapped inside the Persian Gulf, unable to reach markets. U.S. efforts to evacuate ships from the strait have been met with a renewed barrage of Iranian missiles and drones, and very few ships have managed to get through.

The economic impacts of this crisis have already begun to crystallize: shortages of fuels and other products in East Asia and Australia, skyrocketing jet fuel prices, and a drop in the global demand for oil for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In the United States, gasoline has exceeded $4 a gallon and could break $5 by the end of May. Should the strait remain closed, these economic pressures will worsen, causing rising inflation and slowing GDP growth.

Why Iran will not fracture along ethnic lines

Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Tanya Goudsouzian

In the aftermath of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a military parade in Baku, steeped in triumphalism, triggered controversy in Iran when a nationalist poem referencing the Aras River and the idea of ‘South Azerbaijan’ was performed and broadcast. In Iran, it was widely seen as hinting at territorial claims on its northern provinces and infuriated officials, who quickly condemned it as a challenge to Iranian sovereignty. Public reaction, including among Iranian Azeris, rejected the notion that a shared language or culture with Azerbaijan could constitute grounds for irredentist political aspirations. Rather than stirring cross-border solidarity, the stunt backfired and reinforced a sense of Iranian national identity.

A recurring blind spot in how Iran is read from the outside is the tendency to treat ethnic identity as a set of ready-made political blocs waiting to be activated. In reality, these identities are embedded within a national framework forged through centuries of state formation, shared religion, and extensive social mixing.

The Saboteur Within

Salahuddin Ayyubi did not march on Jerusalem the day he decided to take it back. He spent the better part of two decades doing something far harder: unifying the Muslim world from within. He …

Two Wars Later, Iran’s Nuclear Question Is Still on the Table

Jane Darby Menton and Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

The Nuclear Policy Program aims to reduce the risk of nuclear war. Our experts diagnose acute risks stemming from technical and geopolitical developments, generate pragmatic solutions, and use our global network to advance risk-reduction policies. Our work covers deterrence, disarmament, arms control, nonproliferation, and nuclear energy.

How did the United States and Iran view Iran’s nuclear program before the latest war?

Jane Darby Menton: For decades, diplomatic overtures and coercive measures have failed to durably resolve the United States’ concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. During President Barack Obama’s administration, multilateral negotiations yielded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed verifiable limits on the program in exchange for sanctions relief. Yet this deal proved ephemeral when the first Trump administration abandoned it in 2018 (though Iran was complying at the time). Despite Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran used the intervening years to advance its nuclear knowledge and expertise and amass sizable stockpiles of enriched uranium.

On Superpower Suicide And the recovery of justice

Timothy Snyder

The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.

On April 20th I was asked to speak in New York about ethics and power. My thinking, which I expressed in a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this little video, and in the media, was that our utterly unethical war was also utterly self-destructive. The war, a catastrophe in itself, suggests the guiding principle of Trump foreign policy: superpower suicide. The term was since come into more general use, and readers have been asking me to spell it out.

Drone Hide And Seek: FPVs Are Changing The Rules Of Urban Warfare

David Hambling

It is a military axiom that whatever new technology comes along, the “Poor Bloody Infantry” still need to take and hold ground. Even in the drone-saturated battlefields of Ukraine where drone-on-drone combat is increasingly common, human fighters are a crucial element.

However, the rules are subtly shifting. Before, there was literally no alternative to sending foot soldiers in first to buildings and trenches. Now the situation has altered. Soldiers still go in, but an increasing number of videos from Ukraine show the drones going in first.

Piloting an FPV around the inside of a building, as in the famous 2021 “Bowling Alley” video, may be routine in the movie world, but in the war zone in 2022 it was a stunt for elite pilots only. Now increasing numbers of videos show FPVs searching through buildings and trenches and locating and engaging the enemy.

Strategic Snapshot: Russia Cracks Down on Internet

Russia has been severely cracking down on Internet access for its population over the past few months. This is a continuation of a trend of information control that Russia has been using for years. Russia has long been banning hundreds of sites, including independent media, human rights groups, and even major global platforms, and trying to create a sovereign internet to isolate its domestic internet from global networks, all under the pretext of national security. The Kremlin’s goal with internet restrictions is to essentially control what the Russian people see, say, and believe.

The current restrictions are the continuation of this information control. The Kremlin has instituted widespread internet shutdowns and blockages across Russia, claiming that this is in an effort to defend against Ukrainian drone attacks and “terrorist” communications from Ukraine. These outages, however, have even been occurring in Russia’s Far East and Siberia, regions further from the Ukrainian border than drones can reach. Some of Russia’s border regions have even used Telegram channels in the past as methods to warn civilians about drone attacks, something that is made near impossible due to the blockages.

Modern warfare is outpacing military training

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced a reckoning across modern militaries. The character of war is shifting at a pace that legacy training systems cannot match. Dispersion, specialisation, and speed now define the battlefield. Small, agile units equipped with drones, sensors, and precision fires routinely deliver effects that once required brigades. Yet many armed forces still train as if mass and heavy armour were the decisive factors.

The gap between how wars are fought and how warfighters are prepared is widening, and the consequences are becoming harder to ignore.

A recent Wall Street Journal commentary by Jillian Kay Melchior captured this tension vividly. During a major alliance exercise in Estonia in May 2025, a small opposing force of Ukrainian soldiers, battle-hardened and fluent in drone-enabled tactics, neutralised the equivalent of two NATO battalions in a single day.

The Economist: Russia Wants to Supply Iran With Fiber-Optic FPV Drones

Anzhelika Kalchenko

Russia is considering supplying Iran with fiber-optic FPV drones to bolster its military capabilities. According to the publication, this involves specific military aid, which may include the transfer of technologies and unmanned systems already in use by Russian forces. One of the key areas cited is fiber-optic FPV drones, which are less vulnerable to electronic warfare due to the absence of a radio control channel.

Such systems are actively used by Russian forces in the war against Ukraine, particularly for precision strikes in complex conditions of electronic warfare.Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the signing of a strategic partnership agreement. Photo credits: Reuters

How Ukraine Turned Its Defense Into A System Of Battlefield Control

Vikram Mittal

In the early stages of the 2022 invasion, the defensive positions and obstacle belts built by Ukrainian military engineers played a key role in stopping the Russian advance toward Kyiv. Ukrainian engineers continued to improve their defensive network as the war shifted into a war of attrition, with Russian forces using both conventional tactics and new technologies to push their lines forward. These defenses have evolved further in response to the Russian military shifting its approach from one centered on armor and artillery to an increased reliance on drones and dismounted infantry. As a result of these changing battlefield dynamics, Ukraine now fields a complex, deep defensive network that integrates traditional measures with new tactics and technologies.

Ukraine’s Current Defense

In a recent interview at the Combat Engineer and Logistics 2026 forum, Brigadier General Vasyl Syrotenko, Chief of the Engineer Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Support Command, described the current state of Ukraine’s defensive system. He explained that it has evolved from a traditional layered structure into a “resilient defense” built through continuous adaptation. The current scheme is designed not only to hold ground but also to shape the battlefield and create favorable conditions for Ukrainian forces.

International cyber attack disrupts swathe of universities and schools

Brandon Drenonand

A cyber attack hit several universities and schools in the US, Canada and Australia, causing chaos, confusion and major disruptions amid the high stakes end-of-year season. The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack, which caused the academic software Canvas used by thousands of schools and universities to go offline this week.

By late Thursday, the company Instructure, which owns Canvas, posted an update on its website saying that Canvas was "available for most users", but some universities were still reporting outages on Friday. The cyber attacks targeted universities and schools across the globe, affecting an estimated 9,000 institutions.

How the Abraham Accords Fueled a New Era of Conflict

Matthew Duss

On Sept. 15, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump presided over the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Speaking on the White House lawn, amid a lavish signing ceremony, Trump announced “the dawn of a new Middle East” saying that “these agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region—something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age.”

If Trump can sometimes be overly effusive in evaluating the impact of his own achievements, this time, he was not alone. Many mainstream foreign-policy commentators were quick to praise the Abraham Accords, which were subsequently expanded to include Morocco and Sudan, as one of the few unambiguously good foreign-policy achievements of Trump’s first term. Longtime Democratic Middle East hand Dennis Ross wrote that normalization was an “unexpectedly positive move” that represented an “important contribution to peace-building between Arabs and Israelis.”

Why Iran Isn’t Blinking Yet

Keith Johnson

In a way, the impasse between the United States and Iran over the still-closed Strait of Hormuz boils down to storage.

The Trump administration believes that the two-week-old, semi-porous U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping will soon bring Tehran to its knees by forcing it to shut down oil wells as it runs out of storage space for crude it can no longer ship. That looming production shutdown, the administration believes, threatens Iran with permanent, severe damage to a major part of its economy, and explains why Washington appears content to wait for an Iranian surrender that has yet to materialize in the eight-week war.

Interactive Map: Transportation, Communication, and Energy Infrastructure in the Middle East

Galia Lavi, Udi Dekel, Michael Ofer

The integrated map offers a broad, clear, and accessible visual overview of the current state and plans for transportation, communication, and energy infrastructure in the Middle East. At a time when regional infrastructure is becoming a central factor in shaping economic, political, and security relations, the map enables a rapid understanding of the complex network of connections spanning across the region.

By integrating multiple layers of information, users can focus on each domain separately or explore interactions among them, including land and maritime transport routes, communication lines, and digital infrastructure, as well as energy transmission networks for oil, gas, and renewable energy. The map highlights not only what currently exists in practice, but also initiatives in planning, projects under development, and future opportunities for regional cooperation.

How China Is Winning the Global AI Race

Agathe Demarais

Which artificial intelligence model is the most popular these days? Ask anyone in America or Europe, and you’ll probably hear about the respective merits of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. All wrong. Over the past two weeks, the most widely used AI in the world was one that few Westerners had ever heard of: Kimi K2.6, an open-source Chinese model that topped the OpenRouter leaderboard.

This ranking highlights how Western policymakers and CEOs could be fixating on the wrong race as they focus on semiconductor benchmarks and the question of which AI model is the most advanced. China, meanwhile, is quietly building something different: an ecosystem of open-source models that are both cheap and good enough for most use cases. By the time Western capitals notice, Chinese AI models may well have become global standards and prove hard to displace—even by more advanced technology.

Robot wars - what an operation in Ukraine tells us about the battlefield of the near future

Joe Tidy

The battlefield in Ukraine could soon feature more robot than human soldiers - that is the startling claim made by a Ukrainian-British military start-up. The BBC visited UFORCE at its London premises, which are unbranded and discreet, a measure the company says is intended to protect it from potential Russian sabotage.

I wanted to know more about the company because of its involvement in what Ukraine says was an unprecedented military operation: enemy territory being seized using only robots and drones. The claim was made by Ukraine's President Zelensky in a video last month highlighting Ukraine's newly developed robotic weapons.

Drone warfare is making traditional infantry obsolete

Ben Obese-Jecty

The war in Ukraine has been fought for just over four years, but in that short time the evolution of the nature of warfare has been generational.

Before the conflict, the principles of fighting as an infantry platoon had not changed significantly since the Second World War. Indeed, the wider concept of manoeuvre warfare, in which infantry work in tandem with air, tanks and artillery to punch through enemy weak spots, was broadly set in stone for just as long.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw tactical tweaks made to counter theatre-specific threats, particularly from improvised explosive devices, but these changes were refinements to patrolling techniques developed by the British Army over several decades in Northern Ireland. They were modifications to match the threat. The core principles and tactics of fighting when under fire remained unchanged.

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