Indian Strategic Studies

6 January 2026

Military exercises seek to erase vital buffer zone between China and Taiwan.

Andrew Yeh

For the thousands of frustrated travelers facing delayed and cancelled flights between Taiwan and its outlying Matsu Islands and Kinmen, there may have been a sense of déjà vu. Last week’s multi-domain Justice Mission 2025 exercises were not the first occasion on which China’s large-scale military drills have disrupted civilian air routes in the region. Yet the increasingly routine character of such exercises should not obscure their significance, nor the ways in which they are challenging long-standing cross-strait arrangements.

Beijing is, once again, testing a core element of the status quo that has underpinned a fragile peace across the Taiwan Strait for decades. This time, the focus is Taiwan’s contiguous zone – the 12-nautical-mile buffer surrounding its territorial waters. The steady normalization of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military activity within this space marks a subtle but consequential shift, one that lowers thresholds, increases the risk of miscalculation, and sets a potentially destabilizing precedent for future Chinese military operations.

The West anticipates an invasion. Beijing trusts its 15th Five-Year Plan.

Ashton Ng

The dawn of 2026 arrived in the Taiwan Strait with a thunderous dissonance. On the water, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was concluding Justice Mission 2025, a massive exercise involving 89 warplanes, drone swarms, and blockade simulations that Taipei rightly characterized as an unprecedented escalation. Yet, on the airwaves, President Xi Jinping’s New Year’s address offered a different frequency. While he reiterated that reunification is “unstoppable,” the context was not one of imminent fiery conquest, but of cool, historical inevitability.

For defense planners in Washington and Taipei, the impulse is to merge the drills and the speech into a single signal of accelerating aggression – a countdown to a D-Day scenario. Such a reading is superficially correct but strategically flawed. By misinterpreting Beijing’s confidence as urgency, the West risks preparing for the wrong war.

The Changing China Challenge: Nixon To Trump – OpEd

Lim Teck Ghee

In April 2026, President Donald Trump will undertake a trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Most observers view the visit as a symbolic but significant reaffirmation of China’s rise in the world order that is reshaping geopolitics today, and in the short and medium term future.

This visit comes just over 50 years after President Richard Nixon’s pathbreaking visit in 1972 which was aimed at using China as an American wedge in the US escalating confrontation with the Soviet Union, at that time entering its most heated and dangerous phase.

The event and following developments have been regarded as one of the most significant strategic pivots of the 20th century. Although propagated to the public as a “peace mission”, it was a calculated move in realpolitik by the U.S., then undoubted leader of the world order, to reshape the Cold War’s power structure and to reinforce the American position.

China Is Turning the Indo-Pacific Into a Pressure Cooker

Joe Varner

As we approach 2026, China is pursuing a unified, and increasingly assertive, military posture across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and the Himalayan frontier. These theatres are often discussed as separate issues. They are not. Beijing is treating them as interconnected fronts in a long-term campaign to erode U.S. influence, evaluate allied cohesion, and normalize Chinese dominance across Asia.

Nowhere is this clearer than Taiwan, the centre of gravity in China’s regional strategy. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now flies dozens of sorties a week around the island, with many crossing the once-respected median line in the Taiwan Strait. Warships operate off Taiwan’s east coast. Large encirclement drills, once rare, have become routine, rehearsing maritime blockades and coordinated missile strikes. These are not signals of imminent invasion, but they are far more than political theatre. China is conditioning the region to live with a permanent, intrusive PLA presence. The goal is simple: make Taiwan’s isolation feel inevitable and U.S. support appear costly.

The Demographic Decline of China

Philip Huffman

Over the past half century, China has experienced massive growth—from the world’s 10th largest economy in 1980 to the number two spot today. It boasts a massive and expanding military, advanced technology, and a wide range of natural resources. Perhaps though, the greatest Chinese asset is the Chinese people, 1.4 billion of them to be exact. While the U.S. is still ahead of China as the world’s economic power and its military continues to have an edge, its population of 340 million is dwarfed by the behemoth of the Chinese population of 1.4 billion. That’s at least 4 Chinese people for every American. China’s population has been key to its strength: the economic output of a Chinese citizen per year is $12,600, which is far below the U.S. average of $82,700, but since there are 1.4 billion Chinese people, the total economic output of the country is around $18 trillion and that’s much closer to the U.S. total which is at around $29 trillion. If China had America’s civilian to active military ratio (0.4%) then it would have an active military of 5.4 million—giving it the potential to overpower the U.S. active military which stands at 1.4 million. With such a large population, it’s no wonder that China has made incredible strides in AI and quantum computing with its incredible supply of human capital. The country is still seen as the world’s factory as it has an overabundance of cheap labor, and it remains one of the world’s largest markets. However, although China has benefited massively from its large population, its demographic future is in danger.

The One Child Policy

Taiwan vows to defend sovereignty after China's military drill

Yimou Lee

TAIPEI, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said on Thursday the island is determined to defend its sovereignty and boost its defence in the face of China's increasing expansion, after Beijing fired rockets towards the island as part of military drills.

The international community is watching to see whether the Taiwanese people possess the resolve to defend themselves, Lai said in a New Year's speech broadcast live from the presidential office in Taipei. The U.S. State Department said later on Thursday that China's military activities near Taiwan and others in the region "increase tensions unnecessarily" and urged Beijing to halt military pressure against the democratically governed island.

"As president, my stance has always been clear: to resolutely defend national sovereignty and strengthen national defence," Lai said, noting China had targeted Taiwan's newly added combat capabilities as a "hypothetical adversary" in their drills this week.

How Central Asia Is “Containing” Afghanistan

Fatemeh Aman

For much of the past two decades, regional diplomacy on Afghanistan rested on the belief that outside engagement could gradually stabilize the country. That assumption shaped how neighboring states justified political, economic, and security involvement, even when progress remained limited.

Today, that framework is weakened. Afghanistan’s neighbors largely no longer base their policies on expectations of reform or reintegration. What has replaced it is a narrower, more cautious objective: limiting exposure to instability rather than attempting to change conditions within Afghanistan.

This shift reflects more than temporary fatigue. What has changed is the disappearance of any belief that engagement can alter the Taliban regime’s internal trajectory in the near term. Regional states still engage, but with fewer illusions. The aim is no longer to stabilize Afghanistan itself. It is to manage the effects of its continued fragility. Containment, in this context, is a policy intended to reduce the spillover costs of Afghanistan’s instability without assuming responsibility for the country’s internal political settlement.

Subsea Cables Are This Century’s Hidden Battleground

Lynn Kuok

In 1893, a few decades after the first transatlantic cable was laid, Rudyard Kipling published a poem about the marvels of “The Deep-Sea Cables.” As communication became nearly instantaneous, Kipling heralded the connectivity that was previously unimaginable, writing, “Let us be one!”

Over a century later, telegraph lines have given way to fiber-optic cables, but their unifying promise has all but faded. The seabed has become an arena of great-power competition, sabotage, and surveillance. Fiber-optic data cables carry 99 percent of transoceanic digital traffic, including financial flows and government, diplomatic, and military communications. But as risks grow and trust erodes, global cabling is splintering into U.S.-led, Chinese-led, and nonaligned blocs, with routes and landings increasingly mirroring geopolitical alignment rather than commercial logic.

How Multilateralism Can Survive

Monica Herz and Selina Ho

Within hours of returning to office, in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump took an axe to multilateralism by pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization. The following month, Washington withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and ordered a review of U.S. commitments to other international institutions, such as UNESCO. In April, Trump took aim at the global trading system, issuing his “Liberation Day” tariffs in violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) principles.

Trump is not the first American president to attack international institutions, nor are his actions the only cause of their declining relevance. Rising domestic inequality, a consequence of hyperglobalization without adequate support for workers, has fueled discontent with multilateralism in many countries. Most of these organizations, moreover, were established in the twentieth century, and insufficient reform has left them bloated, outdated, and siloed, offering one-size-fits-all remedies for complex problems such as climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence, and a new nuclear arms race. Still dominated by their creators in North America and Europe, these institutions are poorly suited to govern a world where more and more economic activity and political decision-making happen in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

What are the odds? Analyzing six global scenarios for 2026.

JAMIE DETTMER

Last year, POLITICO chose to be boosterish about the future as it outlined some not entirely tongue-in-cheek reasons for optimism about 2025. Some predictions were spot-on, though others less so: Donald Trump did manage to end (maybe) the war in Gaza, but peace in Ukraine is proving more elusive.

This P28 we’re taking a different tack by offering odds on some 2026 scenarios — from the political survival of both Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to the chances of a financial crash and the likely winners of the mid-term elections in the United States.

Is the author prepared to bet his own salary on any of the episodes sketched below? Hell no! The most common mistake when it comes to gambling is to start in the first place. Just ask Harry Kakavas, one of Australia’s smartest real-estate salesmen, who made a fortune selling property on the Gold Coast only to lose tens of millions of dollars at the Baccarat tables.

Ukraine as a Model, a Warning, and a Partner for Taiwan’s Drone Industry

Samara Duerr

Today’s warfare is marked by rapid innovation in unmanned systems – and extremely high consequences for falling behind. Pioneering this shift, Ukraine’s expertise in strategic drone deployment, high-speed technological advancements, and mass scaling of UAV manufacturing redefine the logic of modern warfare.

Deriving battlefield truths from Ukraine’s circumstances, Taiwan – as another geopolitical flashpoint – strives to synthesize Ukraine’s drone-related tactics into its own asymmetric military operations. Alongside this, increasing geopolitical pressure has prompted Taiwan to accelerate efforts in building an autonomous drone supply chain. According to statistics from Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance, from January to October 2025, Taiwan’s drone exports totaled US$54.75 million, a significant increase of 11.4 times compared with US$4.41 million for the entire year of 2024.

What are the odds? Analyzing six global scenarios for 2026.

JAMIE DETTMER

Last year, POLITICO chose to be boosterish about the future as it outlined some not entirely tongue-in-cheek reasons for optimism about 2025. Some predictions were spot-on, though others less so: Donald Trump did manage to end (maybe) the war in Gaza, but peace in Ukraine is proving more elusive.

This P28 we’re taking a different tack by offering odds on some 2026 scenarios — from the political survival of both Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to the chances of a financial crash and the likely winners of the mid-term elections in the United States.

Is the author prepared to bet his own salary on any of the episodes sketched below? Hell no! The most common mistake when it comes to gambling is to start in the first place. Just ask Harry Kakavas, one of Australia’s smartest real-estate salesmen, who made a fortune selling property on the Gold Coast only to lose tens of millions of dollars at the Baccarat tables.

The Long War on Gaza

Sara Roy

Gaza is being devastated as we watch. A stated goal of Israel’s assault, which has so far killed more than 19,400 people, is to “destroy Hamas” in retaliation for its attack that killed 1,200 in Israel’s south in October. But a number of critics, such as the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, have argued persuasively that Israel’s goal is less to vanquish Hamas—impossible in any case—than to finally expel Palestinians from Gaza without international censure or sanction.

There is mounting evidence for their claims. In mid-October, Israel’s intelligence ministry drafted a “concept” paper proposing the forcible and permanent transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to the Sinai Peninsula. The ministry is less influential than its name suggests, but its policy ideas are nonetheless distributed among government and security services. In November a USAID official approached a colleague of mine and asked about the feasibility of building a tent city in the Sinai, which would be followed by a more permanent arrangement somewhere in the northern part of the peninsula. Later that month the daily Israel Hayom revealed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to “reduc[e] the number of Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip to the minimum possible.”

100,000-Watt Iron Beam laser becomes world’s first drone defense zapper to be operationally deployed — it can also shoot down rockets, mortars, and other aerial threats

Mark Tyson

The first Iron Beam laser defense system was deployed by Israel on Sunday. This 100kW laser weapon thus became the world’s first high-power drone defense zapper to be operationally deployed. Iron Beam lasers will fortify Israel’s multi-layered defense, complementing the existing Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow system architecture.

The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sight laser interceptor that is extremely cheap to run and, therefore, perfectly suited for intercepting low-cost, high-volume threats. According to the official Israeli announcement, Iron Beam systems have “successfully intercepted rockets, mortars, and UAVs.”

Welcome to the Age of Chaos

Robert A. Manning

Every year since 2017, we have given our predictions for the greatest threats facing the world. If some of the top risks this year seem to echo those we anticipated for 2025, it is not that they are static, but that the peril continues, without reaching a denouement. The risks of a Trump presidency we feared have come faster and thicker than we envisioned of Gaza, Ukraine, and climate. China and Taiwan are not among the top geopolitical risks, as we judge 2026 is unlikely to see tensions rise to that level in the aftermath of the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The world remains in a protracted interregnum, still unsettled, fragmenting, but no less contested. The National Security Strategy makes the U.S. retreat from primacy official: “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” The old neoliberal rules-based architecture is decomposing, power diffusing, and much of the world is searching for new multilateral arrangements to act as a buffer against three predatory, revisionist major powers.

Why U.S. Military Combatant Commands Aren’t the Issue—The Military Services Are

Robert Farley

A U.S. Army M1 Abrams, assigned to 4th Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, fully emerges from the tank firing point to engage the simulated enemy at Novo Selo Training Area, Bulgaria, March 5, 2025. 1st Armored Division, a rotational force supporting V Corps, conducts training with engineers and tank operators in the European Theatre to maintain readiness and instill fundamental Soldier skills that are vital in maintaining lethality. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Kyle Kimble)

-The creation of the Air Force and Space Force shows the U.S. can remake institutions when strategy demands it; critics now argue redundancy has grown, with “multiple air forces” and overlapping roles.

A New Year, a "New" Weapon, & an Old Tale

What is one of the fundamentals that we keep returning to here? If you want to know what will be important in and needed for the next large war, look closely at the most advanced small and medium sized wars happening now.

There is no better judge, test, or simulation to help you see the utility of a weapon system than actually having it perform in sustained combat conditions against a non-cooperative target.

As we approach the 4th anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022, untold pages of text have been written about FPV and other drones. Yes, these are important and are a new tool for war—but they are not the answer to all.

Gunpowder, machine guns, airplanes, submarines, etc…all these things were new tools in the conduct of war and changed the way wars were fought, but they did not change the nature of war. They unquestionably did not dominate the battlefield to the extent that they were the only thing you needed. They simply joined existing legacy systems that still worked and had their niche.

The Separation:Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership

Adam Entous

The train left the U.S. Army depot in the west of Germany and made for Poland and the Ukrainian border. These were the final 800 miles of a trans-Atlantic supply chain that had sustained Ukraine across more than three long years of war.

The freight on this last day in June was 155-millimeter artillery shells, 18,000 of them packed into crates, their fuses separated out to prevent detonation in transit. Their ultimate destination was the eastern front, where Vladimir V. Putin’s generals were massing forces and firepower against the city of Pokrovsk. The battle was for territory and strategic advantage but also for bragging rights: Mr. Putin wanted to show the American president, Donald J. Trump, that Russia was indeed winning.

Advertising their war plan, the Russians had told Mr. Trump’s advisers. “We’re going to slam them harder there. We have the munitions to do that.” In Washington, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had been talking about munitions, too, testifying to a Senate appropriations subcommittee that those earmarked for Ukraine by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were “still flowing.”

CIA taught Ukraine how to target Achilles’ heel of Putin’s oil refineries

Iona Cleave

The CIA secretly taught Ukraine how to target crucial components of Russia’s oil refining infrastructure and its sanction-busting shadow fleet, according to officials.

Despite Washington pulling back its support for Kyiv’s war effort under the Trump administration, it has emerged that US intelligence and military officers continued to find new ways to stifle Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Since June, the CIA, with Mr Trump’s blessing, had been covertly providing specific intelligence to bolster Ukraine’s aerial offensive against oil refineries inside Russia, according to the officials.

The move came amid Mr Trump’s growing frustration with Putin’s unwillingness to negotiate while Russian forces accelerated attacks on Ukrainian cities.

The US has long shared intelligence with Kyiv that helps attacks on Russian military targets in occupied parts of Ukraine and provides advanced warning of incoming Russian missiles and drones.

The C-Suite’s Expectations for 2026

Rebecca Patterson

Optimism, but with a healthy dose of caution. That was the tone expressed at the Council on Foreign Relations’ latest CEO Summit in New York City, which included more than two dozen executives across industries from the United States and Europe.

Overall, the group felt that 2025 had been “dynamic” but with the effects from tariffs less severe than initially feared and offset by a surprisingly large growth impulse from artificial intelligence (AI). The latter occurred mainly through capital spending on infrastructure like data centers and the wealth channel, as AI-focused technology companies helped lift equity markets more than had been expected at the start of the year.

The West Is Not Ready for a Multipolar World

GEMMA CHENG'ER DENG and JIM O'NEILL

LONDON – The release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy marks a pivotal moment for the United States and the West. The US has recast its global role around a narrower set of core priorities, emphasizing industrial revitalization, resilient supply chains, and strategic competition, while also signaling that traditional allies must shoulder greater responsibility for their own security and economic fortunes.

At the same time, the European Union is advancing industrial policy proposals – such as a requirement that critical goods contain up to 70% EU-sourced content – that reflect deep anxiety over dependency, vulnerability, and a loss of control. But a more fundamental rethink is needed, both across Europe and in the United Kingdom.

The age of Western strategic dominance has passed. Supply chains that were once treated as neutral commercial assets are now instruments of power, and decisions about technology, trade, and investment have become inseparable from questions of national security, social stability, and the cost of living. Yet too often, Western policies oscillate between moral posturing and defensive intervention, rather than advancing a coherent long-term strategy.

How China Carved Up Myanmar

Amara Thiha

Nearly five years after a military coup in 2021 unseated its civilian government, Myanmar has become extremely fragmented. A civil war flared after the coup, killing thousands and leaving more than 18 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Today, the central government under the military junta effectively controls less than half of the country’s territory. A variety of ethnic armed organizations and other rebel groups jostle for land, resources, and sway, running large regions of the country on their own terms.

Such a fractured political landscape could produce endless instability that might threaten investments in Myanmar or even spill beyond the country’s borders. But China, Myanmar’s most powerful and influential neighbor, no longer fears this fragmentation. Instead, Beijing believes this turmoil is here to stay—and that it can manage the chaos. For much of the civil war, Beijing reluctantly worked with both the military junta and local armed groups near its border while holding out hope for the junta to emerge dominant and unify the country, which would stabilize Myanmar and make it easier for China to operate there. Now, Beijing seeks to actively maintain its influence by simultaneously providing the junta with conditional economic and humanitarian aid and pressuring ethnic armed organizations on its border into compliance. China is using its massive economic leverage to force rival groups to the negotiating table on its terms.

Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny

Nina Khrushcheva

After February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his so-called special military operation—a full-scale invasion of Ukraine—the popularity of George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime built on mass surveillance and constant propaganda, soared in Russia. As Christmas approached that year, one St. Petersburg bookstore tied together copies of 1984 as a garland above the cash register. Another set up an entrance display of patriotic books—along with a mug depicting Orwell’s face and a caption referring to the novel’s shadowy, supposedly omnipotent leader. “Let Big Brother think that there is tea in this mug,” it read.

The trendy Moscow bookshop Respublika placed Orwell’s works all over the store. In a quiet protest against the Kremlin’s demands to reject all cultural products from “unfriendly countries”—including France, the United Kingdom, and the United States—Respublika continued to sell Ed Sheeran’s new album and the Rolling Stones’ old vinyl. Its bestsellers included American and British authors, along with Russians who had fled the country, such as Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov. But in the years since the war began, Akunin and Bykov have been accused of “extremism,” their works added to an official list of 5,000 banned titles. Respublika took those books off the shelves and relocated the not-yet-forbidden Orwell to the second floor, in case a government inspector checked in.

How to Secure the Sky

Theodore Bunzel and Tom Donilon

On June 1, Ukraine’s security services launched a covert strike on five air bases across Russia. More than 100 attack drones smuggled into Russia in plywood cabins on trucks driven by unsuspecting Russians destroyed bombers sitting on tarmacs as far away as the Belaya air base in Siberia, around 3,000 miles from Kyiv. According to Ukrainian government sources, the strikes took out about one-third of Russia’s long-range bomber force and cost Moscow roughly $7 billion. Dubbed Operation Spiderweb, it was one of the most spectacular and daring attacks to date of the war in Ukraine. It was also a dramatic warning of a growing threat to American soil.

In an essay in Foreign Affairs in January 2022, one of us (Donilon) warned of this threat. Back then, America’s vulnerability to this possibility seemed to be a “failure of imagination,” echoing the 9/11 Commission’s famous conclusion about the United States’ failure to anticipate the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Today, the drone threat is no longer difficult to imagine. States can use drones to sow economic disruption or to spy on sensitive sites, lone-wolf actors can use them for political violence, and hobbyists can accidentally crash them into critical infrastructure.

The Invisible Frontline: How Encrypted Networks and AI Are Rewiring Britain’s Security

Hamzeh Abu Nowar

Encrypted networks and artificial intelligence are enabling new forms of decentralized mobilization. Britain’s institutions must learn to track behavior, not just words. When a Telegram channel created only hours before a protest swelled from a few dozen members to thousands—sharing maps, live videos and minute-by-minute instructions—the unrest that followed looked less like a spontaneous gathering and more like an operation rehearsed in secret.

This kind of rapid escalation reflects a shift in mobilization logic, where encrypted platforms enable fast-forming coordination that prioritizes speed, anonymity, and adaptability over formal organization or leadership. Incidents like this have become increasingly common across Britain’s towns and cities in 2025, reflecting a broader pattern of digital mobilization that is testing how the country anticipates and responds to disorder.

5 January 2026

China’s Quad counter centers on building an anti-India arc

Maqbool Shah

India faces the growing risk of Chinese encirclement. Image: X Screengrab

As the Quad — the US, Japan, India and Australia — seeks to constrain Beijing’s ambitions, China is quietly building a counterarchitecture aimed not at the Quad as a whole, but at its most exposed member: India. Through patient investments, military partnerships and political leverage across South Asia, Beijing is turning India’s geography from asset into vulnerability.

From “String of Pearls” to encirclement

Early talk of a Chinese “String of Pearls” focused on port access from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf. That has since evolved into a denser network of economic corridors, dual-use ports and political influence capable of generating simultaneous pressure on nearly every Indian frontier.

The logic resembles Cold War containment, but with 21st-century tools. Where Washington once built formal alliances around the Soviet Union, Beijing is weaving trade, infrastructure finance and security ties with India’s neighbors to ensure that every land border and maritime approach is contested.

Pakistan: the hard-power cornerstone

Pakistan remains the central pillar of this architecture. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, whose announced value has risen to about $62 billion, gives China a direct route from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Gwadar, easing the Malacca Strait chokepoint and locking in a long-term presence on India’s western flank.

Militarily, the relationship has deepened. China supplies the bulk of Pakistan’s major arms, including JF-17 fighters and Type 054A frigates, and has assisted sensitive missile and nuclear-related capacities designed to offset India’s conventional superiority.

Talk of “CPEC 2.0,” focused on industrial zones and deeper economic integration, underlines how far Islamabad has become a quasi-strategic tributary: economically dependent, militarily intertwined and diplomatically aligned with Beijing against New Delhi.

‘Respectful Responder’: How India Is Reshaping Regional Security Partnership

Shreya Upadhyay

The Indian Air Force provides disaster relief to Sri Lanka during Operation Sagar Bandhu following Cyclone Ditwah, Nov. 28, 2025.Credit: Indian Air Force

In the last week of December, India announced a $450 million “reconstruction package” for Sri Lanka to help the island nation recover from the devastating impact of Cyclone Ditwah. The cyclone battered Sri Lanka in late 2025 and the Indian Navy undertook comprehensive humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations under Operation Sagar Bandhu. Indian naval ships INS Vikrant and INS Udaygiri, which were present in Colombo as part of the 75th Anniversary International Fleet Review (IFR-2025) of the Sri Lanka Navy, were tasked at short notice to provide immediate relief based on emerging requirements ashore. Ship-borne helicopters were deployed for aerial reconnaissance of the affected areas and augmented ongoing search and rescue efforts. INS Sukanya was also deployed, carrying critical relief supplies.

Why Israel and Trump Should Be Cautious About Pakistani Troops in Gaza

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Pakistan does not officially recognize Israel, and has never designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. It may well have an interest in making sure that Hamas can continue its "resistance" -- meaning terrorism.

These examples demonstrate how freely Hamas operatives function within Pakistan. Allowing Pakistani troops into Gaza would therefore pose serious infiltration and counterintelligence risks. Unlike a genuinely neutral peacekeeping force, Pakistani soldiers may be unwilling — or ideologically disinclined — to confront Hamas. In a worst-case scenario, some elements could covertly assist Hamas fighters in evading disarmament.

Pakistani media have reported that Islamabad does not wish to be perceived as a "B-team of the Israeli military focused solely on disarming Hamas." Such statements underscore the likelihood of operational friction and divided loyalties on the ground.

Europe’s Taiwan Dilemma Lessons from a Tabletop Exercise

TOMASZ SZATKOWSKI, OCTAVIAN MANEA, LUIS SIMÓN AND GIULIA TERCOVICH

This trajectory produced the exercise’s central strategic insight: Europe’s main contribution to a Taiwan war is not expeditionary combat power, but industrial sustainment and logistical depth. Europe increasingly functions as the “arsenal and artery” of a US-led coalition fighting in the decisive theatre, while shouldering primary responsibility for deterrence in its own theatre. This logic crystallised in the “Atlantic Corridor” concept: a two-way transatlantic logistics and industrial lifeline enabling Europe to supply US and Indo-Pacific forces while ensuring that Europe itself remains defensible if Russia escalates.

Over time, the corridor becomes more than a supply route – it becomes a mechanism of progressive economic and strategic entanglement, binding the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres into an interdependent industrial and operational ecosystem. In this respect, the exercise revealed a historical parallel with the Lend-Lease relationship of 1941/42: indirect support, followed by deep industrial integration and, ultimately, unavoidable strategic involvement. As in that earlier period, Europe initially seeks insulation from direct belligerence but is gradually drawn into the systemic logic of great power war by the very act of sustaining the frontline.

The TTX therefore demonstrates that Europe cannot remain a distant observer in a Taiwan conflict. Even without deploying major combat forces to East Asia, Europe becomes a central strategic actor through production, logistics, economic warfare and the defence of the Atlantic lifeline. The exercise shows that indirect involvement is not a form of neutrality – it is a pathway to structured belligerence.

Beijing Is Facing a Population Bust | Opinion

Ilan Berman

When it comes to a nation’s potential, few factors matter more than demographics. The pace of a country’s population determines a great many things, from the vibrancy of its society to its global competitiveness.

That’s what makes the case of Russia so striking. Despite the ambitious neo-imperial agenda that has been charted by Vladimir Putin in recent years, the country is locked in a pattern of massive, protracted demographic decline that has the potential to fundamentally alter the complexion of the state. I have written on this subject for publications like The National Interest and The Moscow Times, and most extensively in my 2013 book Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America.

An aged Chinese couple walk by several rows of lanterns in Beijing, China. (Getty Images)

What is less well understood is that China is facing an equally ominous demographic profile. Just how significant of a problem this is for the People's Republic of China (PRC) is reflected in the most recent data update from the U.S. Census Bureau. That information projects that, in the years ahead, China’s current population of 1.4 billion will face marked decline, and could fall by more than half by 2100. These projections, moreover, are broadly consistent with those of institutions like the World Bank, which project a population plateau in the near future, followed by deepening decline in subsequent decades.

This trajectory is due to multiple causes, most prominently the ruinous long-term effects of Beijing’s now rescinded “one-child policy.” That policy, launched in 1979 and formally ended in 2015, helped lock the country into one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. The effects are profound: births in China are now at historically low levels, even as life expectancy has continued to rise and the share of the country’s elderly is swelling. Moreover, things are only projected to get worse in the years ahead.

Why China Is Not Betting on Its Relationship With the Kuomintang

Zhenlin Cui

On December 29, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China announced the commencement of a large-scale military exercise around Taiwan. While the specific motives remain unclear, it is widely believed within Taiwan that this may be a response to the diplomatic tensions between China and Japan caused by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s remarks about Taiwan in November, as well as the recently approved U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. However, the timing of this exercise is still somewhat surprising, especially considering the Shanghai-Taipei City Forum had been held just one day prior.

Because Beijing has consistently refused direct dialogue with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in power since 2016, the city-to-city forum, a political legacy of Ma Ying-jeou’s administration, has become the de facto highest-level regular exchange mechanism between mainland China and Taiwan. Although the forum has been used by the DPP as a pretext to criticize the KMT, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an still visited Shanghai despite the pressure. This sudden military exercise, starting so soon after his trip, undoubtedly represents a heavy blow to the KMT’s image.

The Trial of Abe’s Assassin Is a Test of Takaichi’s Appetite for Political Reform

Peter Chai and Charles Crabtree

The Yamagami Tetsuya trial, which began in October after he admitting to killing former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2022, has increased anxieties about political corruption and the Liberal Democratic Party’s ties to religious groups. The proceedings raise questions about current Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s commitment to confronting these deep-rooted relationships, with the answers very much important to the ongoing controversy over the balance between religious freedoms and public welfare.

Taken together, Yamagami’s testimony and social media accounts suggest a childhood marred by family tragedy and financial ruin caused by his mother’s devotion to the Unification Church. His story calls attention to and symbolically represents several enduring national concerns: coercive religious environments, unclear political fundraising, and the intersection of religion and political power. While Takaichi has not been in office long enough to fully address these issues, it remains unclear whether and to what extent she might.

The Demographic Decline of China

Philip Huffman

Over the past half century, China has experienced massive growth—from the world’s 10th largest economy in 1980 to the number two spot today. It boasts a massive and expanding military, advanced technology, and a wide range of natural resources. Perhaps though, the greatest Chinese asset is the Chinese people, 1.4 billion of them to be exact. While the U.S. is still ahead of China as the world’s economic power and its military continues to have an edge, its population of 340 million is dwarfed by the behemoth of the Chinese population of 1.4 billion. That’s at least 4 Chinese people for every American. China’s population has been key to its strength: the economic output of a Chinese citizen per year is $12,600, which is far below the U.S. average of $82,700, but since there are 1.4 billion Chinese people, the total economic output of the country is around $18 trillion and that’s much closer to the U.S. total which is at around $29 trillion. If China had America’s civilian to active military ratio (0.4%) then it would have an active military of 5.4 million—giving it the potential to overpower the U.S. active military which stands at 1.4 million. With such a large population, it’s no wonder that China has made incredible strides in AI and quantum computing with its incredible supply of human capital. The country is still seen as the world’s factory as it has an overabundance of cheap labor, and it remains one of the world’s largest markets. However, although China has benefited massively from its large population, its demographic future is in danger.

China warns satellites from Elon Musk’s Starlink are ‘safety and security’ risk

China has warned that the rapid expansion of internet satellite constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink presented “pronounced safety and security challenges”.

Addressing an informal United Nations Security Council event initiated by Russia on Monday, Beijing’s representative cited several incidents, including near collisions between Starlink satellites and the Chinese space station in 2021, and a satellite that disintegrated in December.

The representative also pointed to the disregard of countries’ airspace and laws by “certain low Earth orbit constellations”, including their use for military reconnaissance and by terrorist and separatist groups.

The comments were made shortly after a senior Starlink executive said there had been a near miss between one of the firm’s satellites and a newly launched Chinese satellite, accusing the Chinese side of not coordinating with other satellites.

“In recent years, humanity has made new progress in the exploration and use of outer space,” the representative said, according to a statement by Beijing’s UN mission that did not name the diplomat involved.

MERICS Top China Risks 2026

Europe faces a demanding year in 2026. President Donald Trump’s impulsiveness and transactional approach to foreign policy make transatlantic relations hard to predict. Washington and Beijing’s focus on bilateral negotiations will marginalize Europe. Worse, Europe’s declining relevance in Beijing’s foreign-policy thinking means Brussels should prepare for a China unwilling to offer meaningful concessions.

To help European actors anticipate what 2026 might bring, MERICS has developed a foresight effort to identify key China risks, especially those with the biggest impact on European interests and security. To identify these, we hosted two separate, off-the-record foresight workshops with officials and experts from across Europe. They assessed China’s likely trajectory over the next five years, and which trends might have the deepest impact on Europe-China relations. We then held a further, internal workshop with analysts from MERICS’ research teams to refine our selection of risks.

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