Transactional mirage: Why Pakistan’s Trump card isn’t paying off

Asia Times | Imran Khurshid

Islamabad expanded a high-stakes diplomatic effort to influence Washington by committing over $5 million to lobbying contracts, securing a $500 million mineral investment framework with U.S. Strategic Metals, and partnering with Trump-linked financial entities. These transactional maneuvers aimed to translate executive access into International Monetary Fund support and structural backing for Field Marshal Asim Munir.

However, the strategy yielded minimal economic rescue packages while exposing Pakistan to heightened scrutiny following shifts in United States congressional leadership. In contrast, New Delhi expanded an institutionalized defense cooperation framework and absorbed over $67.5 billion in American corporate investments, including major Amazon Web Services and Micron Technology deployments. Institutional alignment outlasts personal diplomacy. While Washington maintains tactical engagement with Islamabad over West Asian security, fundamental American posture remains anchored to long-term tech and defense integration with India. Consequently, Pakistan's reliance on elite commercial access faces growing structural friction in Washington.

The six strategic mistakes that led to US defeat in Afghanistan

Atlantic Council | Andrew L. Peek

The United States war in Afghanistan failed after two decades due to strategic miscalculations by Washington and its international allies despite initial swift tactical success against the Taliban in 2001. Early decisions to replace decentralised power structures with a centralised government under Hamid Karzai eroded local military resistance, creating friction across rural provinces.

This political restructuring created severe governance vulnerabilities that Taliban insurgents exploited as American attention diverted toward Iraq. Cross-border sanctuaries in Pakistan sustained insurgent forces, while American strikes inside Pakistani territory inflamed local resentment without eliminating high-level Taliban networks like the Haqqani network. Misdirected military resources further constrained coalition options. The 2010 surge under Operation Moshtarek targeted Helmand rather than securing major population centres around Kabul and Kandahar, failing to establish durable governance before strict eighteen-month withdrawal timelines took effect. Ultimately, high-tempo special operations capabilities could not overcome structural political flaws and persistent cross-border sanctuaries.

The Six Strategic Mistakes That Led to U, S, Defeat in Afghanistan

Real Clear Defense | Andrew L. Peek

United States forces launched operations in Afghanistan twenty-five years ago following the September 11 attacks, initially routing the Taliban regime in two months using a light-footprint strategy combining special operations teams and local militias. Strategic choices made by the international community and Washington subsequently undermined state-building efforts, transforming a brief intervention into a twenty-year conflict.

Washington attempted to construct a centralized state with a national army rather than working through traditional provincial power centers. The Bush administration diverted critical attention and resources to the Iraq war while the Taliban regrouped in Pakistan. Islamabad maintained sanctuaries and supported insurgent networks such as the Haqqani network while accepting American assistance. The intervention failed to establish durable population security before troop levels peaked under later administrations. Afghan institutions ultimately collapsed in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew.

Myanmar’s Civil War and the Neo-Authoritarian Bloc

E-International Relations | Gerard McDermott

General Min Aung Hlaing’s military junta in Myanmar has sustained its combat operations against opposition forces through critical military and diplomatic backing from Russia and China. Following the February 2021 coup, resistance groups under the National Unity Government launched Operation 1027 in October 2023, capturing over 200 outposts.

However, Moscow counterbalanced these insurgent advances by delivering sophisticated aircraft, combat drones, and over $400 million in arms. The junta subsequently stabilized its frontlines by enacting mandatory conscription, forcing more than 100,000 young men into active military service. Over three million civilians remain internally displaced. While Western nations reduced civil society funding in 2025 and ASEAN suffered diplomatic paralysis, Russia solidified its security partnership by signing a five-year military pact with Naypyidaw in February 2026. Deprived of foreign defensive arms, anti-junta forces rely on improvised 3D-printed weaponry and black-market procurement, leaving the resistance increasingly vulnerable to coordinated aerial counter-offensives across the hinterlands.

America Invented the Battery, but China Controls the Factory

Real Clear Defense | William Crane, Peter Brown

EnerVenue abandoned plans for a $264 million factory in Shelbyville, Kentucky, opening its first commercial facility in Changzhou, China instead. The California battery startup relies on nickel-hydrogen technology developed at Stanford University using American research funds, which avoids lithium and cobalt. The new batteries last 30 years and withstand 30,000 charging cycles, offering backup power for electric grids, data centers, and military installations.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro questioned whether this move violates the Bayh-Dole Act regarding domestic manufacturing requirements for federally funded inventions. Decades of outsourcing left the United States without the factories, machine tools, and skilled workers needed to scale domestic production. Beijing maintains control over critical mineral processing and supply chains, leaving American manufacturers vulnerable. Alexander Hamilton warned against passive commerce in Federalist No. 11, while the 2025 National Security Strategy notes that globalization hollowed out domestic industrial capacity. Rebuilding this base requires streamlining permitting through the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act and ensuring long-term manufacturing competitiveness.

No Gas, No Chips: Mapping the Choke Points Behind Chip Manufacturing

American Enterprise Institute | Chris Miller, Carl Jackson

China controls 51 percent of global tungsten hexafluoride capacity and up to 75 percent of fluorinated gas production, creating acute supply vulnerabilities for the $1 trillion semiconductor industry. A disruption in specialty chemical supplies can halt leading-edge chip fabrication plants across Western nations. Specialty gases represent a $5 billion market.

Upstream mineral dependencies deepen this concentration, as China mines 60 percent of global fluorspar and controls key tungsten and germanium refining. Despite the US CHIPS Act allocating $38.2 billion to fabrication incentives, funding for materials and chemical supply chains remains severely constrained. Meanwhile, Beijing has expanded state-directed financing like the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund to integrate raw chemical production into its broader manufacturing strategy. Japanese suppliers faced severe cost spikes when Chinese processed tungsten shipments stopped in early 2026. Mitigating these choke points requires allied policies to diversify mineral sourcing, improve supply visibility, and shorten Beijing's coercive economic leverage.

The Midterms Just Made the World More Dangerous

Persuasion | Francis Fukuyama

Donald Trump faced a severe political setback following repudiation in the midterm election, sharply curtailing his domestic authority for the remainder of his term until 20 January 2029. This legislative constraint forces a trade-off between domestic policy ambitions and executive foreign policy initiatives where the US Constitution grants broader discretionary power.

The resulting shift in White House posture signals to foreign leaders Xi, Putin, and Kim that their window to act is closing. Rather than bowing to popular will, Trump doubled down on hardline personnel changes within his administration. He replaced Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with hardliner Stephen Miller. He also offered Ultimate Fighting Championship head Dana White the role of White House press secretary. Lame-duck presidents often pivot outward. With limited domestic leverage, executive authority moves toward international affairs. Authoritarian adversaries may consequently calculate that the remaining timeframe presents a volatile window for strategic action before a new administration assumes power.

What’s Worse: A Global Concert of Great Powers or War?

RealClearWorld | Francis P. Sempa

The Congress of Vienna established the Concert of Europe following Napoleonic conflicts that killed over three million combatants and one million civilians between 1792 and 1815. Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich and British diplomat Viscount Castlereagh pursued balance-of-power realism, prioritizing external state conduct and strategic equilibrium over ideological transformation.

Stability required restraining righteous power through calculated diplomatic statecraft rather than moralistic intervention. Parchment treaties depended entirely upon underlying force structures. Although domestic revolutions and strategic shifts eventually collapsed the system before World War I, its diplomatic framework successfully prevented major power conflict for nearly a century. Contemporary international order faces comparable friction among three primary powers: the United States, China, and Russia. Proposals for tri-power diplomatic summits draw sharp domestic criticism amidst ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and tensions across the western Pacific. Applying triangular realism reminiscent of President Richard Nixon's 1970s statecraft offers a potential mechanism to manage great-power rivalry and avert catastrophic global warfare.

Bookshelf: China’s epic campaign to steal America’s secrets

Aspistrategist.au | John West

China costs the US economy up to US$600 billion annually through intellectual property theft. David R Shedd and Andrew Badger examine this campaign in The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets. Industrial espionage drove China from a technological backwater to a dominant competitor. ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker shows China leading in 69 of 74 tracked technologies.

Beijing utilizes the Ministry of State Security alongside Article 7 of the National Intelligence Law to enforce military-civil fusion. Cases include former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists contributing to hypersonic development and data breaches at Equifax. The authors attribute Western vulnerability to post-9/11 strategic distraction and corporate dependency. Countering this requires abandoning a defensive posture for an existential mindset.

Will the Blue Wave Lower American Energy Prices?

Manual Input | Brenda Shaffer

American energy costs became a central focus of midterm elections as voters blamed current economic hardship on the Iran war and data center buildouts. Democratic politicians proposed exiting the Persian Gulf, promoting renewable energy through subsidies, restricting domestic fossil fuel production, and halting data center expansions to address the price surge.

Critics noted that reducing domestic oil and gas production while heavily subsidizing renewables typically increases electricity prices, pointing to high rates in the United Kingdom and Germany. Global diesel prices remained constrained by the Russia-Ukraine and Iran wars, alongside Chinese export limits designed to influence US politics. Western refining capacity has also declined over recent decades, leaving international markets vulnerable to supply shocks. Proposals to withdraw from the Gulf and restrict domestic extraction face skepticism regarding their actual capacity to lower energy bills.

A Recipe for Disaster in Taiwan

Foreign Affairs | Rebecca Lissner, Mira Rapp-Hooper

Chinese military modernization and diplomatic pressure campaigns against Taiwan risk a major great-power crisis if Beijing misjudges declining U.S. political and public support. The artificial intelligence boom and extensive semiconductor manufacturing make Taiwan indispensable to the global economy, rendering a Chinese blockade or quarantine economically catastrophic for the United States and the broader international system.

However, recent U.S. policy debates, a July 2026 Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey showing diminished public appetite for military intervention, and force readiness strains from Middle East conflicts complicate Washington deterrence posture. Despite these vulnerabilities, any aggressive action by Beijing would force a muscular American response due to the severe costs of economic inaction. American leaders must immediately update their deterrence strategy to counter non-invasion coercion before a potential window of maximum danger opens in late 2028.

Between Iran, Iraq and a hard place: Iraq’s prime minister weighs next moves - analysis

The Jerusalem Post | Seth J. Frantzman

Iraq closed the Mandali border crossing with Iran on 10 November 2026 under intense United States pressure to disrupt Tehran's regional land corridors. However, Baghdad simultaneously reopened the Sheeb crossing, illustrating Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi's precarious balancing act between Washington and Tehran. Iraqi forces face over 1,000 Iranian-backed attacks since February 2026.

Zaidi initially aimed to disarm aligned Shi'ite militias by September 2026 following US troop withdrawals, but recalcitrant groups forced an extension to June 2027. Kataib Hezbollah has intensified hostile rhetoric and stands suspected of targeting the Khor Mor gas field in the Kurdistan region to coerce the government. Iran continues installing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, including its ambassador, to solidify influence over parliament. Zaidi now deliberates launching an arrest campaign against militia leadership amidst persistent intimidation and economic sabotage. Baghdad faces a decisive crossroads. Failure to assert state authority risks turning Iraq into an unviable proxy battleground.

A Chief of Staff Who ‘Will Crack Skulls’

The Atlantic | Jonathan Lemire, Michael Scherer, Ashley Parker, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Vivian Salama

US President Donald Trump announced on 6 November 2026 that Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff following Republican midterm losses. The leadership change removes a key internal constraint on presidential decision-making, replacing Wiles’s risk-management approach with Miller’s aggressive policy acceleration. This shift follows widespread dissatisfaction within the administration regarding ongoing conflict in Iran, persistent domestic inflation, and political fallout from sweeping mass-deportation campaigns designed by Miller.

Miller’s elevation directly empowers hardline initiatives across the executive branch. Operational priorities include intensifying criminal leak investigations against government sources through the Department of Justice. While Wiles previously opposed aggressive measures against journalists, Miller actively advocated enforcing source-disclosure demands through executive arrests. A Justice Department spokesperson denied discussions of arrests, yet White House officials reaffirmed that unauthorized disclosures will face direct accountability. The appointment consolidates ideological alignment inside the Oval Office.

Georgia State Race Reversed After Votes Surface on Memory Card

Bloomberg | Aidan Williams

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has launched a formal investigation after several hundred uncounted memory card votes reversed a local election outcome in favour of a Republican candidate. The missing ballot memory card failed to upload to Seminole County’s election management system during the 3 November election proceedings.

State officials identified the uncounted votes after uncovering a clear discrepancy between physical voter check-in logs and final ballot tallies. Raffensperger previously resisted efforts by President Donald Trump to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results. Discrepancies were resolved. The discovery of omitted memory card data highlights operational vulnerabilities in local ballot aggregation systems across state jurisdictions. This failure underscores administrative challenges surrounding election infrastructure integrity and verification protocols. Immediate administrative audits corrected the vote totals, but procedural lapses undermine public trust in automated tabulation mechanisms. Subsequent inquiry aims to clarify systemic upload protocols to prevent future counting failures during competitive state races.

Three ways the new Congress can stop Trump’s war

The Hill | Gene Healy

Democratic voters swept Tuesday's midterm elections following public opposition to the unauthorized $50 billion conflict with Iran under Operation Epic Fury. Exit polling indicates 74 percent of voters viewed the military campaign as a major voting factor, while seven in ten electors urged Congress to prioritise halting hostilities.

The incoming 120th Congress retains distinct constitutional options to restrict executive war-making despite prior presidential defiance of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Defunding remains the most potent tool. By withholding additional appropriations or attaching legislative riders—statutory funding conditions—with fixed withdrawal deadlines, single-chamber majorities can effectively restrict funding to terminate operational capabilities. Alternatively, lawmakers can advance articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for conducting illegal hostilities, or initiate institutional House lawsuits in federal court to challenge executive overreach. Win or lose, structured legislative opposition maintains targeted public focus while steadily eroding executive latitude over unapproved overseas conflicts.

When Generals Wander Into the Swamp

The American Spectator | Gary Anderson

Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia faces military legal scrutiny after admitting to sharing classified notes with two journalists in unauthorized background interviews. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched decisive measures to discipline leakers and stop unsanctioned media disclosures across the Pentagon brass. Professional friction between career flag officers and political appointees frequently drives unauthorized background leaks to Beltway reporters.

Official resignations on principle remain rare across the armed forces since Lieutenant General Greg Newbold retired following disputes with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over Iraq War planning. Institutional restrictions at Marine Corps University now prohibit retired general officers from debating controversial operational policies on campus. Active-duty officers must resort to pseudonyms for professional military writing. Unauthorized leaks destroy institutional trust. Former Marine Corps Warfighting Lab chief of staff Gary Anderson asserts that senior commanders must abandon internal policy maneuvering and restore candor to rebuild warfighting focus.

Hegseth impeachment drama is first test of Trump’s eroded post-midterms power

MSN | Stephen Collinson

Republican Representative Thomas Massie plans to introduce articles of impeachment against US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week following a decisive midterm election defeat. The strategic turning point arrived as public dissatisfaction over the ongoing Iran war eroded executive authority and split congressional Republicans. In response, President Donald Trump appointed Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff to reinforce executive dominance rather than offer concessions.

Attorney General Todd Blanche subsequently warned incoming House Oversight Committee ranking member Robert Garcia against launching broad congressional investigations. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal issued strict compliance deadlines for executive misconduct inquiries ahead of the 11 December federal funding deadline. Legislative friction threatens critical defense spending bills. Senate conviction remains mathematically unlikely. Nevertheless, the impending House vote exposes severe structural friction within the Republican coalition while testing executive resilience against expanding legislative oversight across the defense establishment.

Jihad in the Balkans: A Persistent Terrorist Threat in Europe

RealClearWorld | Dragan Šutanovac

Serbian security authorities identified an Islamic State sympathizer following a recent assault on a police officer guarding the Israeli embassy in Belgrade. This incident marked the second violent attack targeting the facility within two years, following a June 2024 crossbow assault on a Serbian gendarmerie officer. Rooted in the 1992–1995 Bosnian conflict, regional extremist infrastructure traces back to foreign mujahideen formations like the El Mujahid unit and Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence networks operating within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Security forces previously dismantled armed cells in Serbia's Sandžak region in 2007. Recruitment surged during the rise of the Islamic State. Kosovo and Bosnia subsequently produced roughly 1,000 foreign fighters, representing Europe's highest per-capita mobilization to Middle Eastern battlefields. Regional enforcement institutions now confront ongoing online radicalisation and returning combatants, requiring operational coordination among Western Balkan security apparatuses, European allies, and the United States to interdict cross-border logistical networks.

Europe’s Sanctions on Russia: Riddled With Loopholes

CEPA | Miro Sedlák

The European Union approved its largest-ever military-industrial sanctions package in October 2026, designating 826 Russian companies and 743 executives connected to Iskander ballistic missile manufacturing. Despite these expanded listings, structural exemptions and national vetoes severely undermine practical implementation across member states. Member states routinely leverage unanimity requirements to protect specific domestic industries, with Slovakia purchasing €229m in crude and €161m in pipeline gas in September 2026 while Greece secured LNG shipping allowances.

National enforcement remains highly uneven. Russian defense contractors continue acquiring Western microelectronics through third-country shell companies to produce an estimated 700 Iskander missiles annually. While French naval interdictions off Réunion demonstrate that active maritime enforcement can suppress shadow fleet operations, the Council of the European Union recently missed its deadline to ban LNG tanker sales. This growing friction between ambitious EU policy declarations and permissive national implementation ensures Moscow retains critical revenues and technology for its war economy.

Peace won't come until Putin sees too high a price for warring on

New York Post

Russian forces initiated another phase of aerial bombardment targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and energy networks ahead of peace talks scheduled in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. Despite Washington waiving Graham Act sanctions and suspending diesel restrictions on Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected negotiated terms short of Kyiv's full surrender.

Moscow continues to sustain severe battlefield losses, incurring an estimated 390,000 casualties while failing to secure significant territorial advances across Ukraine. Russian economic strain is intensifying rapidly. Concurrently, Moscow is expanding strategic alignment with Tehran to prolong regional conflicts and maintaining joint counter-space research with China to target US satellite systems. Diplomatic efforts face ongoing resistance as Moscow calculates that prolonged warfare will yield political concessions from Western partners. Consequently, sustained Western economic sanctions and military assistance remain crucial to shifting Putin's strategic calculus and establishing conditions for a sovereign, secure Ukrainian state within the broader European security landscape.

The Luxury of Children

Foreign Affairs | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde

Global fertility rates dropped below the replacement threshold of approximately 2.2 children per woman in 2025, pushing humanity toward a population peak around 2055. Higher-income households and wealthy nations now maintain higher fertility than poorer peers, reversing centuries-old demographic patterns across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development states.

Modern economic structures drive this divergence by transforming child-rearing from an economic asset into an expensive luxury good. Raising children requires decades of costly formal education, professional credentialing, and domestic services that lower-income households cannot easily afford. Children generate no household income. In Mexico, where per capita income is 28 percent of United States levels, fertility fell to 1.2 children per woman in 2024, well below the 1.57 rate recorded for non-Hispanic white American women. As fertility rates continue plunging worldwide, this widening demographic inequality threatens to exacerbate structural economic fractures and international geopolitical tensions across developing regions.

The New Epicenter of Global Terror

Foreign Affairs | Eghosa E. Osaghae

African nations now account for over 50 percent of global terrorism-related deaths, becoming the primary operational sanctuary for violent extremist organisations including Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Shabab, and ISIS affiliates. In 2023, the Sahel region recorded 4,043 terrorism deaths, marking a 17 percent increase since 2017 while Middle Eastern attacks fell by 93 percent.

State failure, youth unemployment averaging 18 percent, and unmonitored desert geographies have enabled non-state armed groups to establish parallel governance structures across Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These violent extremist networks sustain their operations through illicit mining of critical rare earth minerals, transnational smuggling, and human trafficking, exploiting power vacuums across ungoverned territories. Foreign geopolitical competition between major powers further weakens multilateral counterterrorism coordination on the continent. The threat is escalating rapidly. Without robust institutional capacity to secure borders and manage natural resources, African jihadi movements risk expanding their reach into broader international security spheres.

Hot fridges, a fake nuclear alert and a $6bn heist: are we in the foothills of a hacking epidemic?

The Guardian | Dan Milmo, Aisha Down

Hackers compromised commercial refrigeration control systems across eight European nations in November 2026 by exploiting internet-connected management software and unpatched legacy hardware. The intrusions caused storage temperatures in retail and agricultural facilities to spike up to 50°C, threatening perishable food stocks and creating severe fire hazards. This operational mechanism relies on remote access to obsolete operating platforms with published default passwords.

Cyber actors simultaneously targeted Ukraine’s Air Alert emergency application with false nuclear strike notifications and executed a $6.3 billion cryptocurrency theft from Binance. Basic operational security lapses enabled the cooling breaches. UK National Cyber Security Centre officials assess that artificial intelligence models like Anthropic's Mythos accelerate technical vulnerability discovery, while hostile state actors leverage grey-zone hybrid warfare against civilian infrastructure. Former cybersecurity leadership noted that while total attack volume is increasing, these disruption tactics mirror historical campaigns such as the 2017 NotPetya malware strikes.

The Future of Space Power Depends on Integration

Real Clear Defense | Damian DiPippa

Military planners once treated space as a supportive enabler rather than the core arena of conflict. Current operations in the Middle East demonstrate that military advantage now relies on an integrated space architecture linking sensors, decision-makers, and warfighters. Modern warfare demands a digital backbone spanning from orbit to the tactical edge to coordinate long-range precision strikes and missile defenses.

Acquisition strategies historically prioritized individual platforms over cohesive operational ecosystems. Upcoming defense frameworks like the Golden Dome highlight the necessity of fusing hundreds of commercial and government capabilities. Software-defined systems and open architectures must replace closed proprietary platforms to maintain speed. Integrating existing innovations faster than adversaries determines future tactical superiority.

Space Force faces $1B headache: Incompatible laser links threaten Golden Dome network

Breaking Defense | Shareese Woods

The Space Force faces a $1 billion hurdle to connect disparate military satellite constellations due to incompatible optical communications standards. A newly restructured network relies on SpaceX to build a central data backbone using proprietary laser links known as Plasers. However, these terminals cannot directly exchange data with missile warning constellations fielded by the Space Development Agency and Space Systems Command.

To bridge the gap, the service is exploring a constellation of 12 to 13 translator satellites called Space Exchange Points. These intermediary spacecraft will carry multiple terminal types and software routers to route communications across low and medium Earth orbits. The technical mismatch stems from fragmented acquisition decisions made before the administration prioritized the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. Officials are also evaluating a future waveform standard that could allow direct low-to-medium Earth orbit laser data transmission without translators.