Indian Strategic Studies

1 February 2026

Saudi, Israeli officials visit D.C. to talk possible U.S. strikes on Iran

Barak Ravid

The Trump administration is hosting senior defense and intelligence officials from Israel and Saudi Arabia for talks on Iran this week as President Trump considers military strikes, two U.S. officials and two other sources with knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump has ordered a U.S. military buildup in the Gulf to prepare for potential military action. Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region have been on high alert for days in anticipation of a U.S. strike.

Between the lines: The Israelis came to D.C. to share intelligence on possible targets inside Iran.The Saudis, meanwhile, are highly concerned about a potential regional war and are trying to help broker a diplomatic solution.

White House officials say Trump still hasn't made a final decision. While he threatened Iran again on Wednesday with strikes that "will be far worse" than last time, his aides claim he's still willing to explore diplomacy.

Ukraine says more than 80% of enemy targets now destroyed by drones

Rudy Ruitenberg

PARIS — Ukraine says drones now account for more than 80% of enemy targets destroyed as the country’s fight against Russia’s invasion approaches the five-year mark, with most of the drones manufactured locally.

Ukrainian forces recorded 819,737 video-confirmed drone hits in 2025, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday, at an event to award the most effective drone units. Almost a third of the drone strikes targeted enemy personnel, according to data tied to the armed forces’ internal bonus system that awards points for confirmed hits.

“We clearly record every single hit,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the event, in comments in Ukrainian translated by the president’s office. “We also have points awarded for every hit. Our bonus-based electronic points system is working to scale up the results our defense.”

US military used new 'non-kinetic' cell to guide cyber ops during Maduro capture

DAVID DIMOLFETTA

A new “non-kinetic effects cell” has helped push cyber operations to the forefront of specialized U.S. military missions such as the capture of Venezuela's leader in the capital of Caracas, a top official told lawmakers Wednesday.

The cell is “designed to integrate, coordinate and synchronize all of our non-kinetics into the planning, and then, of course, the execution of any operation globally,” Joint Staff Deputy Director for Global Operations Brig. Gen. R. Ryan Messer told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity panel.

Non-kinetic effects are military actions—think cyber operations, electronic warfare and influence campaigns—that influence or disrupt an adversary’s systems without using physical force or causing direct destruction. The operation that apprehended Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro included cyber effects that targeted radar, internet, and the city’s power grid, causing a temporary blackout.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy by the Numbers: Radical Changes, Moderate Changes, and Some Continuities

Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park

The Trump administration presents its new National Defense Strategy (NDS) as a break from previous strategies, including that of the first Trump administration. Out are Russia, Europe, and climate change. In are hemispheric security, “warrior ethos,” and burden shifting. Many changes are indeed substantial, even radical, and reportedly received pushback from military leaders during the drafting process. Others, however, may not be as significant as they first appear, and there is some continuity with previous strategy documents. The document also constitutes a different reading experience, departing from the analytic tone of previous strategy documents and often adopting the tone of a political rally.

Summary of the 2026 NDS

Approach: The 2026 NDS covers the same topics as the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and does so in a similar way. It is not an implementation document but, in effect, a second policy document. The Department of Defense (DOD; this white paper uses the name Department of Defense because that continues to be the agency’s legal name) was apparently reluctant to get ahead of the president in any realm. As evidence of this, the president’s name or a reference to him appears 47 times.

Why the Army Needs Deception Groups

Benjamin Jensen

Next Army is a collaborative series by CSIS Futures Lab and the Modern War Institute launched in honor of the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday and the Army Transformation Initiative. The commentaries explore how emerging technologies, organizational reforms, and major shifts in the strategic environment will shape the force of 2040 and beyond.

To survive on the modern battlefield, the U.S. Army needs to revive the use of “ghost armies”—deception units that support large-scale combined arms maneuver. The dual trends of low-cost persistent surveillance (i.e., the transparent battlefield) and precision mass mean that wherever the Army fights, ground units will be targeted by cheap drones and missile salvos. This combination of continuous fires and intelligence make it difficult both to deploy the force and conduct large-scale ground offensive campaigns. Yet, by integrating deception, the Army can disorient the enemy, sow doubt in their sensors, and reduce the efficacy of their fires.

America Revived

Robert D. Blackwill

The United States faces the most dangerous international circumstances since the end of World War II, and perhaps in its history. An ever more formidable, authoritarian China remains determined to replace the United States as the leading nation in Asia and eventually the world. The need for an effective U.S. grand strategy to deal with that threat, among others, is accordingly urgent. Grand strategy refers to a nation’s collective deployment of all its relevant instruments of power to accomplish key strategic goals.

Given the United States’ longtime material, institutional, and ideational strengths, American grand strategy involves projecting its great power for the survival of world order. To that end, sustaining prosperity, which derives substantially from the United States’ dominance in technological innovation, becomes the economic precondition for protecting its own homeland, the homelands of its allies, and its diverse national interests. It can achieve those goals through both military and non-military methods, but force is acceptable only if it represents an inescapable choice to protect vital national interests. Promoting democracy is never such an inescapable choice.

Elon’s Perfect Problem

Terrence Keeley

It was the most telling line of Davos 2026.

In the World Economic Forum’s closing interview, host Larry Fink asked Elon Musk whether his planned deployment of thousands of humanoid robots and autonomous driving vehicles might deprive millions of people of meaningful enterprise, value, and purpose.

Musk’s flat response: “Well, nothing’s perfect.”

There may be nothing else you need to know about Musk – or, perhaps, Davos. Indifference to human dignity demeans us all. It was badly off-key for reasons both mundane and profound. Obviously, many things are perfect, and anything that deprives humans of value and purpose is perfidious, perfection’s opposite. That he and consummate host Fink could continue their exchange pretending Musk said nothing wrong was so, so wrong.

Indiana’s football team just concluded a 16-0 season. You needn’t be a card-carrying member of Hoosier Nation to know – that’s perfect. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing “Summertime” and Michelangelo’s David in the Galleria dell’Accademia might have a small flaw in them somewhere, but none have been found yet. Mark Spitz winning seven gold medals in Munich in 1972 while setting seven world records, and Nadia Comaneci getting the first 10.0 in the uneven bars in Montreal in 1976 were nothing if not perfect.

Four scenarios for the post-rules world

Gabriel Elefteriu

The Greenland psychodrama together with some of the startling opinions aired in Davos last week – especially Mark Carney’s definitive language on the end of the rules-based order – have sent the Western geopolitical angst to new heights of alarm, confusion and, often, despair. This is certainly true in Europe where the increasingly-likely demise of the transatlantic relationship – at least in the substantive form we’ve known it for over 80 years – raises almost existential questions from a security point of view going forward.

Beyond security, the consequences for future European economic and technological competitiveness of a serious “civilisational” break with the US, perhaps even a transition to an adversarial relationship, could well be disastrous or even terminal. There is no telling where the widening split between America and its allies will lead all of us, the US included. Some hopes are now being placed in a midterm upset for Trump, and then in a Democrat presidential win in 2028 – as if such events were magic keys that could turn back the clock and restore the inter-allied trust, ethos and sense of common destiny (for better or worse) that still existed, in some form, a few years ago.

Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine

Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe

Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power. Since February 2022, Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties, more losses than any major power in any war since World War II. At current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by the spring of 2026.

After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century. Meanwhile, Russia’s war economy is under mounting strain, with manufacturing declining, slowing growth of 0.6 percent in 2025, and no globally competitive technology firms to help drive long-term productivity.

Where does Europe go from here?

Mark Leonard

At the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos this month, the global elite witnessed firsthand what some have called US president Donald Trump’s “neo-royalist” style of government. But the week offered more than an over-the-top spectacle (more Game of Thrones than Versailles). It also revealed deeper, structural changes that will shape political and business leaders’ decision-making for a long time to come.

Although the crisis over Trump’s demand that Denmark hand over Greenland to the United States appears to have been defused for now, the idea of a united West has been dealt a fatal blow. Even if Trump keeps his promise to refrain from using force against a NATO ally, his (and all his advisers’) boorish behaviour in the run-up to Davos and at the conference has raised lasting doubts about America’s reliability, even in the minds of some of the most committed Atlanticists.

C5+1 Reframing Russia’s Position in Central Asia

Yunis Gurbanov

In November 2025, U.S. officials and delegates from all five Central Asian countries reiterated their commitment to advance cooperation under the C5+1 format, established in 2015, by focusing on critical materials, transport links, and economic resilience (The Astana Times, November 8, 2025). The November 6, 2025, summit in Washington marked the second time a U.S. president attended a C5+1 meeting (see EDM, November 20, 2025).

At the November 2025 meetings, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced deals estimated at $25 billion in aviation, critical minerals, logistics, and industry. These projects include a tungsten mining venture in Kazakhstan that advanced with a non-binding U.S. Export–Import Bank (EXIM) Letter of Interest for up to $900 million in funding, as well as preliminary agreements with U.S. firms for rare earth mining in Uzbekistan (Reuters, November 6, 2025; The Times of Central Asia, November 10, 2025). Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan all announced deals to buy U.S. aircraft, and Kyrgyzstan discussed hydropower, transport, and IT development (The Times of Central Asia, November 10, 2025).

The Case for Upending World Trade

Peter E. Harrell

Over the course of a year, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has become the most disruptive force in global trade since the 1930s. But the destruction of the post–Cold War trade order—a rules-based international trading system that sought to set economic principles for participating governments—provides a necessary opportunity to correct an overly rigid attitude toward trade.

Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, U.S. presidents generally supported free trade and encouraged other countries to lower trade barriers with initiatives such as the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which encouraged countries mostly outside the Soviet bloc to mutually reduce their tariffs. But U.S. administrations balanced this preference with pragmatism, taking a flexible approach to policy that considered distinct challenges discretely. When necessary, U.S. presidents were willing to use tools such as tariffs, sector-specific deals for politically-sensitive products such as textiles, and hard-nosed negotiations to tackle discrete trade tensions. The idea that strictly governing international trade with a set of universal rules would deliver economic and geopolitical benefits to all countries is historically abnormal.

After 843 days, the clock counting the painful wait for Israel’s hostages has finally stopped

Tal Shalev

For over two years, it was one of the most powerful symbols at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square: a digital stopwatch, counting every minute, hour, and day since 251 Israelis were abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

On Tuesday, a day after the body of the last Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, was returned to Israel, the clock counting one of the darkest chapters in the country’s history was finally stopped. After 843 days – more than 20,250 hours, or 1,215,000 minutes – all Israeli hostages, living and dead, were back on home soil.

“Rani is here with us. Not in the way we wished and prayed for, but he is here. Now we can finally pause this clock, and we can start to breathe, to heal, and to mourn,” said Shira Gvili, Ran’s sister. “Just as we promised – until the very last hostage” Gvili said, addressing the croud. “We made it happen, we brought Rani home.”

Pentagon leaders expect Cybercom 2.0 to help thwart Chinese actors ‘living off the land’

Jon Harper

Senior officials at the Defense Department say the Pentagon’s new cyber force generation model will help the military boot out Chinese threats from America’s critical infrastructure networks.

A digital tactic known as “living off the land” has been a concern for U.S. officials in recent years as actors linked to China, such as Volt Typhoon, have infiltrated networks in the United States.

“The Chinese have executed a deliberate campaign in order to compromise U.S. networks and then use native commands and native features inside those networks to move around to look like legitimate traffic. That makes it difficult for us to define those,” Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, acting commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, told lawmakers during a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity hearing.

AI and Grand Strategy: The Case for Restraint

Erica D. Lonergan and Benjamin Jensen

Conventional wisdom holds that an AI arms race will define the twenty-first century and could be decided as early as 2030. The second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy proclaims that AI “will decide the future of military power,” echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning in 2017 that whoever leads in AI “will become the ruler of the world.” But what if the defining technology of the twenty-first century actually rewards the most nineteenth-century of strategies: a cocktail of strategic parsimony and geopolitical fatigue, served neat and called “restraint”?

The AI arms race is well covered, but it is still unclear what it means for American grand strategy. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. grand strategy has largely oscillated between variants of liberal internationalism and efforts to ensure that the United States remains the world’s dominant military, economic, and political actor. The new race concerns which groups—not restricted to states—can best mobilize and deploy the resources required to build AI infrastructure and foundation models. It also concerns who defines a new set of

AI and the Future of Education

PINELOPI KOUJIANOU GOLDBERG

NEW HAVEN – The rapid progress of large language models (LLMs) over the past two years has led some to argue that AI will soon make college education, especially in the liberal arts, obsolete. According to this view, young people would be better off skipping college and learning directly on the job.

I strongly disagree. Learning through hands-on experience is valuable and always has been. But it works best when people have a good sense of which jobs and skills will be in demand. If there is one thing we can be confident about, it is that the future of work is highly uncertain. Advising young people to forgo college in favor of early entry into the labor market is misguided, at best.

Countering the Swarm: Protecting the Joint Force in the Drone Age | CNAS

SWJ Staff

After decades of air dominance and a near monopoly on precision strike, the United States now faces a dramatically different, more hostile world as the proliferation of cheap drones has democratized mass precision fires. It is likely that in any future conflict, drones will pose an unavoidable threat to American forces.

As this report’s analysis of U.S. defense spending reveals, the Department of Defense (DoD) has invested in both legacy and emerging counter–uncrewed aerial systems (C-UAS) capabilities for nearly a decade. However, these efforts have been hindered by insufficient scale and urgency. Despite the Pentagon’s shortfalls in procuring purpose-built C-UAS capabilities, U.S. counter-drone operations in the Middle East have been notable.

Guevara in Myanmar: The Enduring Logic of Guerrilla Warfare

Patrick Goldman

On October 18, 1967, the American Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, confirmed the death of the infamous Communist revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, following a firefight with Green Beret-trained Bolivian soldiers in the Bolivian mountains. Following his death, Che Guevara’s fame lived on as a figurehead and representation of the Communist struggle against Western capitalism and the rights of the rural peasant. From posters in college dorm rooms to quotations in impassioned speeches, Guevara’s legacy has lived on in the decades following his death. However, Guevara’s legacy ultimately lies within his seminal work, Guerrilla Warfare, where he lays out the fine details and theories of conducting an insurgency.

Guevara’s theories are heavily influenced by the teachings and principles of Mao Tse-Tung and steeped in Communist ideology. This article explores Guevara’s relationship with Mao to better understand his intellectual foundations and explain his modern application. Using the present civil war in Myanmar as a case study, this article argues that Guevara’s core principles of guerrilla warfare maintain their relevance in modern insurgencies.

31 January 2026

India And Pakistan Both Think They Won “Operation Sindoor”—That’s The Problem

Robert Farley

Operation Sindoor’s three-day clash in May 2025 delivered a paradox: restraint without resolution. India struck Pakistani-linked militant targets to reassert deterrence below the nuclear threshold, while Pakistan claims it bloodied India’s air arm and proved it could impose costs. That “win-win” perception is the real danger—both sides are drawing confidence rather than caution. India is accelerating modernization in intelligence and acquisition, while Pakistan leans into Chinese weapons and support. Meanwhile, geopolitics complicates crisis control: India hedges with Russia and the West, Pakistan deepens reliance on China, and Washington’s role appears unpredictable. T

Operation Sindoor Was Only Three Days. Its Next War Risk Could Last Much Longer. In May of last year, India and Pakistan fought a short, sharp conflict that has come to be called “Operation Sindoor,” after the Indian code name for the campaign. India launched the campaign in response to a terrorist attack perpetrated by two Pakistani-based militias.

Taiwan at a Techno-Geopolitical Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities across Critical Technologies

Alayna Bone, Chiang Min-yen
Source Link

As geopolitical competition intensifies and technology becomes increasingly central to national power, Taiwan finds itself at the nexus of economic indispensability and strategic vulnerability. Its global leadership in semiconductors and information and communications technologies has long underpinned both its prosperity and security, yet mounting pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), shifting U.S. industrial policy, and rapid technological change are forcing Taipei to rethink how it sustains this position.

This Asia Policy roundtable series brings together a diverse set of essays that examine Taiwan’s evolving technology and industrial strategies across emerging and established domains from frontier technologies enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to drones, satellites, energy systems, and trusted supply chains. Taken together, this roundtable explores how government policy, international partnerships, and domestic capacity-building intersect as Taiwan seeks to remain a reliable partner to democratic economies while safeguarding its autonomy. At stake is not only Taiwan’s competitiveness, but its ability to translate technological strength into long-term resilience in an era of techno-geopolitical uncertainty

Ancient Doctrine, Digital Tools: China’s Enduring Model for Irregular Governance

Erika Lafrennie

When Beijing moves on Taiwan, it is unlikely to improvise post-invasion governance. The Chinese state appears positioned to apply strategic principles refined over more than two millennia, recently field-tested in Xinjiang, and now scalable through modern technology.

Western analysis often treats China’s irregular warfare toolkit—surveillance, lawfare, demographic engineering, narrative control—as novel products of Xi-era authoritarianism. This framing misses the deeper pattern. The tools are modern; the governing logic reflects much older traditions. China’s approach to Xinjiang, Taiwan, and Belt and Road partner states appears to follow enduring strategic principles inherited from imperial statecraft. The tactical implementations are modern—AI surveillance, global infrastructure investment, real-time social control. But the strategic logic suggests continuity with ancient methods: comprehensive absorption through legal, economic, demographic, cultural, elite, and informational domination.

China's Demographic Window to Action is Closing

CDR Salamander

Of all the theories out there about if/when/where the People’s Republic of China may decide to claw back more territory they “lost” during their century of humiliation, there is one common thread that is there, but is not given the attention it deserves: demographics. The demographic collapse we are all about to see over the next few decades will arrive in East Asia first, then Europe. The greatest impact on the globe will be in East Asia, simply by the numbers, if nothing else.

Demographics are one of those things you really cannot spin your way out of. You can’t catch up. A baby is born and reaches adulthood—or it does not. You can try to hide numbers and lie to your boss for just so long; eventually, the bodies simply will not be there. In South Korea and Japan you have relatively transparent societies where decision makers and leaders can at least plan for what is coming, but for the largest nation in East Asia—and the U.S.A.’s greatest global competitor, that is not the case.

Is China quietly winning the AI race?

Lily Jamali

Every month, hundreds of millions of users flock to Pinterest looking for the latest styles. One page titled "the most ridiculous things" is filled with plenty of wacky ideas to inspire creatives. Crocs repurposed as flower pots. Cheeseburger-shaped eyeshadow. A gingerbread house made of vegetables. But what would-be buyers may not know is the tech behind this isn't necessarily US-made. Pinterest is experimenting with Chinese AI models to hone its recommendation engine. "We've effectively made Pinterest an AI-powered shopping assistant," the firm's boss Bill Ready told me. Of course, the San Francisco-based tastemaker could use any number of American AI labs to power things behind-the-scenes.

But since the launch of China's DeepSeek R-1 model in January 2025, Chinese AI tech has increasingly been a part of Pinterest. Ready calls the so-called "DeepSeek moment" a breakthrough. "They chose to open source it, and that sparked a wave of open source models," he said. Chinese competitors include Alibaba's Qwen and Moonshot's Kimi, while TikTok owner ByteDance is also working on similar technology. Pinterest Chief Technology Officer Matt Madrigal said the strength of these models is that they can be freely downloaded and customised by companies like his - which is not the case with the majority of models offered by US rivals like OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT.

China's Renewable Energy Transformation in Tibet Autonomous Region

Dr Y Nithiyanandam

While the previous edition of the Geospatial Bulletin examined solar energy harvesting in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in depth, this edition turns to the other pillars of electricity generation on the plateau: geothermal, wind, and hydropower. The focus is not simply on where these projects exist, but on what they are designed to achieve: the scale of deployment, the stated purpose of these sites, the technological shifts enabling high-altitude operations, and the way infrastructure is being arranged and connected across TAR.

This assessment sits within a broader national context in which China’s renewable build-out has crossed a historic threshold. Total installed renewable capacity has reached 1,889 GW, accounting for 56% of the nation’s power capacity: wind and solar alone amount to 1,482 GW, overtaking thermal power at 1,451 GW. China also met its 2024 target of 1,200 GW of wind and solar six years ahead of the 2030 deadline announced by President Xi in 2020. By current estimates, China accounts for 44% of global renewable capacity and hosts approximately 64–74% of the world’s utility-scale renewable projects under construction. Against that scale, the TAR’s contribution is surprisingly modest: it holds less than 0.5% of China’s renewable capacity, about 7.176 GW out of 1,889 GW, roughly comparable to Austria’s solar photovoltaic capacity. Yet this small base masks a turning point: the region is now entering an acceleration phase, with substantial additions anticipated during 2026–2030.

China’s Economic Statecraft Is Working

Audrye Wong

With the second Trump administration has come a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign economic policy. Washington is imposing tariffs on partners and rivals alike, slashing foreign aid, aggressively renegotiating trade deals, and rejecting multilateral diplomacy. The United States, in other words, is acting like a bully. And as countries around the world grow more wary of dealing with the United States, they are turning more and more to its main economic rival, China. That trade is one of several factors contributing to China’s rise in exports in 2025—which resulted in a trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, a 20 percent increase.

Washington’s policies have, in fact, been a double boon for Beijing. Not only have China’s economic offerings become more attractive to partners looking for an alternative to working with the United States but U.S. pressure tactics have also made it more permissible for China to coerce others. Beijing’s increasing use of export controls and its flooding of foreign markets with cheap goods still generate unease in many of the countries with which it wants to do business. Yet its record of economic statecraft does not have to be perfect to succeed. China is honing its approach to the trade war with the United States while using multilateral deals, development projects, and strategic financing of key sectors to secure other countries’ place in Chinese supply chains. It may never pull most of these countries fully into its orbit. But using its economic carrots and sticks may give Beijing enough leverage to advance an important goal: minimize global opposition to China’s domestic and foreign policies.

Is the US preparing to strike Iran again?

Jonathan Beale

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump sent a message to Iranians who were protesting against the regime, that "help is on its way". Since then, there has been a slow, steady and significant build-up of US military forces in the region. America, which is the world's most powerful military, has already shown it can strike Iran. Last June's operation "Midnight Hammer" targeted its nuclear facilities. It involved more than 100 aircraft, with B-2 stealth jets flying all the way from the United States to deliver their "bunker-buster" precision guided bombs.

The question now: Is the US getting ready to hit Iran, again? Donald Trump's latest social media post suggests he may, with him warning Iran that unless it makes a deal to limit its nuclear programme then "the next attack will be far worse!" The US president said a "massive Armada" was heading to Iran and - like in Venezuela where the US seized Nicolás Maduro - it was "ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfil its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary". He called for Iran to come to the negotiating table but added that time was "running out".

Trump Briefed on Intelligence Saying Iran’s Government Is Weaker

Tyler Pager, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt

President Trump has received multiple U.S. intelligence reports indicating that the Iranian government’s position is weakening, according to several people familiar with the information. The reports signal that the Iranian government’s hold on power is at its weakest point since the shah was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. Protests that erupted late last year, according to the reports, shook elements of the Iranian government, especially as they reached into areas of the country that officials thought were strongholds of support for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

While the protests have died down, the government remains in a difficult position. Intelligence reports have repeatedly highlighted that in addition to the protests, Iran’s economy is historically weak. Economic hardship ignited sporadic protests in late December. As the demonstrations spread in January, the Iranian government found it had few options to ease the financial difficulties families were feeling. Officials resorted to a heavy handed crackdown that further alienated wide swaths of the population.

Caspian Less Safe for Shipping as Russia and Iran Increase Military Use of Sea

Paul Goble

The recent sinking of an Iranian ship in Turkmenistan’s sector of the Caspian Sea on January 14 may or may not have been the result of hostile action (Telegram/@istories_media, January 14). According to Nurani, an Azerbaijani columnist writing under a mononym, it has called attention to how “the weapons corridor” Russia and Iran have established in the sea means that the Caspian and its littoral are no longer safe. As far back as 2023, reports arose that Iran was sending weapons across the Caspian to Russia for attacks on Ukraine or from Russia through Iran to their allies and partners (Meduza, August 19, 2025; Minval Politika, January 17). Nurani continues, “From [the Caspian], Russia has launched Kalibr missiles at targets in Ukraine, and these are most often civilian targets. Even earlier, before the start of the Ukrainian war, targets in Syria were attacked [by Russia] from the Caspian Sea” (Minval Politika, January 17). Russia’s use of its Caspian Flotilla against Ukraine is also important, as it has done so by moving ships from the Caspian to the Sea of Azov via the Volga-Don Canal (see EDM, August 16, 2022).

The Azerbaijani analyst explains that Ukraine openly targets Russian vessels in the Caspian. Nurani notes, The base of the Red Banner Caspian Flotilla in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, was attacked by Ukrainian drones. Oil platforms in the Russian sector of the Caspian have repeatedly come under attack. Finally, there have been attacks on a Russian control ship in the Caspian” (Minval Politika, January 17). The columnist further suggests that “it is even possible that tomorrow the United States and its allies will enter the game … [since] the issue of strikes on Iranian targets is on Washington’s agenda” (Minval Politika, January 17). Russia feels confident that it can develop ties between itself and Iran—given that both are littoral states, something the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea permits—even as it declares that expansion of ties between other littoral states and foreign powers such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are impermissible under the terms of the convention.

The Israel-Iran Détente Won't Last

Raphael S. Cohen

If there is a single through line of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign policy, it has been his hard-line stance on Iran. For decades, he has been warning of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of the ayatollahs. Understandably, he sees a regime whose refrain is “death to Israel” and that has a countdown clock to Israel's destruction prominently displayed in the middle of Tehran as a threat to his country's survival. Israel and Iran fought a shadow war for many years and, since the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre perpetrated by Iran-supported Hamas, three bouts of direct confrontation that culminated in a limited 12-day war last June. And the conflict shows no signs of being over.

But as occasionally happens in the Middle East, the unexpected transpired. As Iran faced widespread unrest spurred by high inflation and popular dissatisfaction with the regime, longtime Iran hawk Netanyahu backed off. Israel reportedly cut a deal with Iran for neither to attack the other and, together with Gulf states, helped talk U.S. President Donald Trump out of bombing Iran this time.

Post-Khamenei Iran: Who’s Who Among Potential Alternatives

Masoud Kazemzadeh

Iran is at a turning point. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 86 years old (born in 1939). The 12-Day War with Israel and the United States in June 2025 was a catastrophic defeat for Khamenei and his regime. The economy has been deteriorating fast in 2025. Rather than changing course, Khamenei’s response has been to rebuild Iran’s missile and nuclear programs as well as rejuvenate it’s proxy groups. Officials and observers in Iran, Israel, and the United States have publicly stated that if Khamenei’s policies continue, another far more devastating war is forthcoming.

The political situation in Iran is volatile and fluid. Khamenei’s policies have come under criticism from figures inside the regime and Iranian citizens opposed to fundamentalism. Iranian society is highly fragmented and polarized. No leaders and no popular movements have succeeded in garnering the support of even a simple majority. In this article, I will discuss alternative scenarios for Iran’s future and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each group and personality that might play a major role in Iran’s politics.

Trump, Diego Garcia and the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ in the Indian Ocean

Nitya Labh

On 20 January, Donald Trump said that the UK’s deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius was an ‘act of total weakness’ and ‘great stupidity’. He argued that such weakness on the part of US allies is a reason why the US must acquire Greenland. Trump has justified his insistence on US control of Greenland in part by concerns about the encroaching presence of China and Russia in the north Atlantic and Arctic regions. Now this argument is being extended to the Indian Ocean over sovereignty in the Chagos Archipelago.

The strategic importance of the Indian Ocean

In a new era of great power ‘spheres of influence’, and as global warming opens up new trade routes across the Arctic Ocean, it is possible that the region could become a battleground between the US, Russia, and China as the president suggests. But these proposed polar routes are still not enough to sustain significant shipping volumes. Indian Ocean shipping routes are far more significant. Today, two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments and one-third of the world’s cargo shipments travel through the ocean.

Clausewitz and the American Center of Gravity: A Look at the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy Together

David Maxwell

Carl von Clausewitz wrote about centers of gravity in an era of monarchies, armies, and capitals, yet his insight remains unsettlingly current. Power, he argued, does not rest everywhere at once. It concentrates. It binds. And when it fractures, the state weakens from within. His warning was blunt. The blow must be directed against those elements that hold a system together. When applied to the United States in the contemporary global geostrategic environment, this insight forces a hard reading of the 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy. Not as bureaucratic texts, but as signals of where American power truly resides, and where it is most exposed.

The center of gravity is real, and it is vulnerable. The question facing American strategy is whether it will defend that center deliberately or continue to assume it will hold on its own.

The question is not whether the United States faces threats. The NSS and NDS assume that as a given. The harder question is whether these strategies correctly identify America’s own center of gravity, and whether they protect it or unintentionally place it at risk.

NATO Chief Says Europe Is ‘Dreaming’ if It Thinks It Can Defend Itself Without U.S.

Jeffrey Gettleman

Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, warned Europe on Monday that it could not defend itself without the United States in remarks aimed to address the growing worries that the United States and Europe are pulling apart over President Trump’s ambitions for Greenland.

“If anyone thinks here again that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming,” Mr. Rutte told members of the European Parliament in Brussels. “You can’t. We can’t. We need each other.” Mr. Rutte’s remarks followed days of anxiety that crested last week after President Trump said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he would not seize Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, backing off earlier threats. Mr. Trump used the same speech to belittle Europe, essentially saying that it wouldn’t exist without America. Mr. Trump had also threatened to impose additional tariffs on European countries that resisted his bid to control Greenland, but he backed away from those as well. Mr. Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, has cultivated a chummy relationship with Mr. Trump, and that has raised some eyebrows in Europe. On Monday, Mr. Rutte backed up the American president’s strategic vision for the Arctic and a stronger defense of Greenland.

Geopolitics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Jake Sullivan and Tal Feldman

Everyone has a theory of artificial intelligence. Some believe the technology is progressing toward superintelligence—powerful AI that will bring epochal changes beyond any previous technology. Others expect that it will boost productivity and scientific discovery but will follow a more uneven and potentially less dramatic path.

People also disagree about how easily breakthroughs can be replicated. Some argue that rivals will fast-follow (that is, quickly imitate), whereas others believe catching up will become slower and costlier, giving first movers lasting advantage. And whereas many are sure China is determined to beat the United States at the frontier, others insist it is focused on deployment of existing technology while seeking to distill and reproduce leading-edge American innovations once they appear.

The Case for Upending World Trade

Peter E. Harrell

Over the course of a year, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has become the most disruptive force in global trade since the 1930s. But the destruction of the post–Cold War trade order—a rules-based international trading system that sought to set economic principles for participating governments—provides a necessary opportunity to correct an overly rigid attitude toward trade.

Between the end of World War II and the early 1990s, U.S. presidents generally supported free trade and encouraged other countries to lower trade barriers with initiatives such as the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which encouraged countries mostly outside the Soviet bloc to mutually reduce their tariffs. But U.S. administrations balanced this preference with pragmatism, taking a flexible approach to policy that considered distinct challenges discretely. When necessary, U.S. presidents were willing to use tools such as tariffs, sector-specific deals for politically-sensitive products such as textiles, and hard-nosed negotiations to tackle discrete trade tensions. The idea that strictly governing international trade with a set of universal rules would deliver economic and geopolitical benefits to all countries is historically abnormal.

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