Indian Strategic Studies

16 December 2025

Why We Still Don’t Know Who the Rich Are in India

Soumyajit Bhar

India knows how to count the poor. From ration cards to multi-decade surveys such as the National Sample Survey, there are sophisticated systems to track deprivation – who’s getting by, who’s falling behind, who needs support.

But when it comes to the rich – or even just the securely well-off – we’re oddly clueless.

This isn’t just a data oversight. It’s a conceptual blind spot in how India thinks about economic life. In a country where inequality is widening and wealth is concentrating, we still don’t have a clear picture of who’s doing well, how they live, and what that means for the rest of society.

What people own – and what that ownership says about their place in the social and economic hierarchy – is one of the most revealing indicators we have. Research by this author suggests a way to access and use that information.

The Rich Are Hiding in Plain Sight

Affluence is everywhere – in the high-rise towers of Gurugram, the global luxury brands in Delhi’s malls, the soaring numbers of Indians flying business class, sending their kids abroad, or buying second homes. India has more than 1.4 million dollar-millionaires, according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2023 – and yet, India doesn’t have reliable public data on what they earn or consume.

A Whole New Ballgame: India Has a New Security Paradigm

Dr. Lauren Dagan Amos and John Spencer

For nearly a decade, India has been shedding the vocabulary of strategic restraint. The cycle of responses to major Pakistan-based terrorist attacks, including Uri in 2016, Balakot in 2019, and Pahalgam in 2025, made clear that predictable retaliation had not deterred cross-border terrorism. In fact, it enabled it. Restraint, once thought to be stabilizing, had become strategically dangerous. Predictability gave militant groups the space and time to prepare for new attacks. Eventually, Delhi’s belief that terrorism could be contained below the threshold of interstate conflict collapsed. As was made clear in Operation Sindoor, India has crossed a doctrinal threshold. It no longer responds to terrorism with calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices. It is building a new operating logic rooted in coercive clarity and a willingness to act first when its citizens are threatened.

Indian strategic restraint was designed to prevent escalation with Pakistan. In practice, it did the opposite. Terror groups backed by Pakistan’s security agencies exploited the firebreak between terrorism and state aggression on the assumption that India would avoid decisive retaliation or cross-border action. Limited responses produced predictable patterns, and predictability invited more violence.

Trump’s Pivot to Pakistan

Rishi Iyengar

Even in an administration that has been full of surprises, Donald Trump’s pivot to Pakistan has stood out.

The U.S. president has developed a close relationship with senior Pakistani leadership, including the country’s powerful military chief, Asim Munir—whom he hosted at the White House in June and again in September—and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whom he has met three times this year.

China Bets on Unmanned Stealth Bombers

Olli Pekka Suorsa

China recently unveiled two large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), which have been unofficially designated as the “WZ-X” and “GJ-X” by China military watchers. The UAVs’ intended roles could include strategic reconnaissance and strike, offering Beijing unprecedented options in the coming decade.

China has accelerated development and testing of a growing number of advanced tailless flying wing-type UAVs, such as the Hongdu GJ-11 and its naval version, the GJ-21, as well as CASC CH-7. This trend is instructive of Chinese industry’s advances in autonomy and aeronautical design. More than that, it offers critical insights into the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) vision of its future airpower strategy.

China has worked on a next-generation manned bomber, known as the H-20, to replace the venerable H-6 fleet for a long time. Despite occasional rumors surfacing about the type’s imminent release over the years, no official or leaked (real) images of the actual design have emerged to date. Most recently, a video showing an alleged first flight of the H-20 made the rounds in social media but was quickly proven fake.

To China's war planners, AI is just another thing to deceive

TYE GRAHAM and PETER W. SINGER

A mask of darkness had fallen over the Gobi Desert training grounds at Zhurihe when the Blue Force unleashed a withering strike intended to wipe Red Force artillery off the map. Plumes rose from “destroyed” batteries as the seemingly successful fire plan took out its targets in waves. But it had all been a trap.

When Blue began to shift positions to avoid counter-battery fire, exercise control called a halt—and revealed that, far from defeating the enemy, more than half of Blue’s fire units had already been destroyed. After the exercise, the Red commander explained the ruse: he had salted the range with decoy guns and what he called “professional stand-ins,” the signatures of units and troops, which not only tricked Blue’s sensors and AI-assisted targeting into shooting at phantoms, but also revealed their own firing points. It was just one example of how China’s military is building for a battlefield where humans and AI seek not just to fight, but fool each other.

Vietnam Tries to Escape the U.S.-China Trap

Derek Grossman

Amid the drumbeat of war and conflict, it’s easy to overlook more subtle geopolitical shifts. One such shift occurred in November, when Vietnam elevated its partnerships with Algeria, Kuwait, and South Africa following visits by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the three countries. At first glance, this may seem like a nothingburger: After all, Hanoi has been upgrading partnerships with various countries and maintains many such partnerships around the world.

However, Vietnam’s latest moves are different due to the current geopolitical climate and Hanoi’s changing foreign-policy priorities. For one, it seeks to lessen its overdependence on economic and security collaboration with China and the United States. And next month, the Communist Party of Vietnam will hold its quinquennial national congress to determine potential changes to the national leadership and approve plans for all areas of statecraft over the next five years. On foreign policy, the party has adopted a new slogan—“core, frequent”—to describe the critical role of diplomacy in continuously advancing Vietnam’s interests as a rising middle power. Put another way, Vietnam’s national security greatly and perhaps existentially depends on effective diplomacy, especially as intensifying U.S.-China competition threatens to destabilize the region and endanger Hanoi’s national interests.

The EU’s Burgeoning Defence Role and its Impact on Third-country Market Access

Tim Lawrenson

Europe’s defence landscape is shifting as the EU expands its financial tools and industrial ambitions. While NATO remains the continent’s core security guarantor, rising national spending and stricter EU-participation rules are reshaping access, influence and opportunities for partners in Europe’s evolving defence market.

NATO remains Europe’s primary security provider, and its regional plans and capability targets have set strenuous objectives for its European members. However, its role in the continent’s defence market is limited. The European Union, by contrast, has become an increasingly significant actor, particularly since it set up instruments offering financial support to EU industry and member states for capability development and procurement programmes. Having had no dedicated defence budget before 2014, the EU allocated EUR591 million in the 2014–20 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) rising to EUR11.37 billion for 2021–27. In 2025 the European Commission proposed a EUR131bn budget for defence and space for the 2028–34 MFF.

Having initially focused on supporting defence research and development, the Commission recently expanded its purview to encompass procurement and industrial capacity with a series of instruments, the most significant of which is the EUR150bn Security Action for Europe (SAFE), adopted by EU member states in May 2025. The growing budget, broader mandate and proliferation of instruments will give the EU greater influence over the evolution of the defence market in Europe.

Exploring Opportunities for European Rearmament Through Ukraine’s Experience and Indo-Pacific Partnerships

As the war in Ukraine redefines the requirements of modern industrial warfare, this report analyses how Kyiv has maintained and scaled defence production through sectoral restructuring, battlefield-driven innovation and flexible sourcing. It explores the growing relevance of Indo-Pacific partners and the broader implications for Europe’s resilience, supply chains and defence-industrial planning.

The war in Ukraine has become the most significant real-world case demonstrating how modern states can generate, scale and adapt defence-industrial capacity during a prolonged period of high-intensity warfare. Ukraine’s ability to sustain and expand output under wartime conditions reflects three overlapping developments: the restructuring of its domestic defence sector, the rapid adaptation and diversification of supply chains, and the emergence of new industrial partnerships beyond Europe. Ukraine has shifted toward more resilient sourcing arrangements and global technology markets, as reliance on Russian and Chinese-origin components became untenable. Within this environment, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have become indirect but strategically relevant contributors, while China remains both a critical supplier and a mounting geopolitical constraint.

U.S. Army unveils lean Mobile Brigade Combat Team built for modern warfare.

The U.S. Army is moving toward a new Mobile Brigade Combat Team that cuts brigade manning to about 1,900 troops while packing in more sensors, drones, and precision weapons, according to a new Congressional Research Service note based on Army data. The design is meant to help light infantry survive and win in drone-saturated, electronically contested battles similar to Ukraine, trading sheer numbers for speed, dispersion and precision fires.

The U.S. Army is preparing to replace traditional Infantry Brigade Combat Teams with a lighter, more technically dense Mobile Brigade Combat Team built around mobility vehicles, organic drones and long-range precision strike, according to a December 9 Congressional Research Service note drawing on official Army force design data. The future MBCT trims brigade strength to roughly 1,900 soldiers, less than half the manpower of a current IBCT, while adding layers of small UAS, loitering munitions, electronic warfare, and mobile command nodes designed to maneuver and survive under constant observation and long-range fire.

The reduction in organizational size is the first major shift. The MBCT will consist of approximately 1,900 soldiers, compared with 4,500 in a traditional Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT). The Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) is the standard infantry brigade designed for sustained operations in low-intensity environments. The new format redistributes essential functions to prioritize mobility, autonomy and the ability to disperse, while retaining a core of fires, logistics, communications, medical support and information advantage. This reduction does not imply a loss of capability; instead, it reflects a technological densification intended to replace mass with speed and precision.

Turkey’s Second Act

Ekrem Imamoglu

As the Turkish Republic enters its second century, the world around it has become more complicated and less forgiving than ever before. The order that anchored global politics for decades is giving way to new centers of power, and crises are extending across borders. Populist threats to democracy and energy, climate, migration, and security challenges are intertwining in ways that test the capacity of governments everywhere.

For Turkey, a country that sits on two continents and near several conflicts, meeting the moment requires a steady hand: stability and freedom at home, and clear direction in its dealings abroad. But that is not what the Turkish government is delivering. The institutions that once made Turkey a confident democracy and a trusted partner have been weakened. The justice system no longer acts independently. Bureaucracy has lost its competence and diplomacy its discipline.

America’s Great Enemy Isn’t China or Russia Anymore

Andrew Latham

-Dr. Andrew Latham argues that a federal debt near 100 percent of GDP now acts like “strategic gravity,” pulling resources away from defense and compressing U.S. options before crises even begin.

Social Security Check. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Rising interest costs squeeze the Pentagon, hollow force structure, and weaken the defense-industrial base just as long-term competition with Beijing and Moscow demands stamina and surge capacity.

-Debt also poisons domestic politics, turning foreign policy into a partisan budget fight. The real danger is not sudden collapse, but a slow loss of strategic freedom bought on credit.

ADF autonomous warfare: go big, go fast

Malcolm Davis

The Australian Defence Force needs to expand and accelerate acquisition of autonomous equipment to achieve a rapid increase in force-structure numbers and capability. This is necessary to reinforce Australia’s strategy of deterrence by denial and to be ready to protect sea lanes of communication as the country faces an increasingly powerful and assertive China.

In a new ASPI report, I argue that the ADF and defence industry should ensure rapid and continuous adaptation and modernisation of autonomous systems. This would allow them to make the most of what Biden administration defence official Michael Horowitz referred to as ‘the age of precise mass.’

The report acknowledges that Australian defence policy is moving in the right direction in recognising the importance of autonomous systems. This was highlighted in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP) spending plan, as well as in the Defence Industry Development Strategy (DIDS).

Unjammable drones are leaving wires everywhere, forcing Ukrainian troops to move with caution

Jake Epstein

Small unjammable drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations that they are leaving trails of cabling everywhere, turning areas of the battlefield into a tangled web.

As a counter to extensive electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with sprawling cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers are moving with greater caution.

"You see the little webs, and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or it's a part of a booby trap," Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who for security reasons could only be identified by his call sign ("Predator" in Ukrainian), told Business Insider. Mines and traps have also been prominent threats in this war.

Earlier in the war, first-person-view (FPV) drones — small quadcopter-style drones fielded by both Russia and Ukraine that often carry explosive warheads — relied on radio-frequency connections. However, both sides quickly figured out how to use signal jamming to stop them.

Ukraine's ground robots are surging in popularity, but have yet to carry out even 1% of its total drone missions

Matthew Loh

Ground drones are growing more popular on Ukraine's front lines, but they're still vastly overshadowed by the small aerial drones made famous in the war.

In November, uncrewed ground vehicles accounted for less than 0.66% of Ukraine's total drone missions.

Usage numbers were announced on Tuesday by Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces, as he gave a statement on the war situation this winter.

"At the current stage of the war, it is unmanned aerial vehicles that provide about 60% of all strikes on enemy targets," Syrskyi wrote.

The military chief said that in November alone, Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, carried out over 304,000 missions, striking or destroying roughly 81,500 targets.

Ukraine showed the UK its classic 'tactically safe' trench-clearing methods don't work in chaotic, booby-trapped trenches

Sinéad Baker

The UK had assumed trench building and clearing to be quite clean and surgical, an officer who trained Ukrainians said.

But in Ukraine's fight, they're uneven and full of traps.

It has led the UK to rethink its own approach to trench warfare, the officer said.

The trenches in Ukraine are too messy and irregular for the UK's classic "tactically safe" trench-taking methods to work well, a British military instructor told Business Insider.

As the UK leads training for Ukrainian troops fighting against Russia's invasion, it’s finding that parts of Western doctrine don’t hold up, prompting changes to its own training.

Key lessons are in trench warfare. Along the front lines in Ukraine are crisscrossing trench networks reminiscent of the earthworks of World War I battlefields. The West hasn't fought a war like this in a long time.

Maj. Maguire, a British military officer who led part of the Operation Interflex training for Ukrainian troops, told Business Insider that in the British mindset, "we arguably had this idea that trenches were all pretty clean and sort of surgical."

Ukrainian women embrace combat roles as technology reshapes the battlefield

Ukrainian women are increasingly taking on combat roles in the military. Technological advancements, especially in drone warfare, are opening new opportunities. Soldiers like Monka and Imla are embracing these roles. Despite some challenges, the Ukrainian army is actively recruiting women for both combat and technical positions, recognizing their vital contributions.

When Russia's full-scale invasion began nearly four years ago, a 26-year-old soldier known as Monka didn't see a combat role she could do. But that changed as technology reshaped the battlefield and opened new paths.

Last year, she joined the military as a pilot of short-range, first-person view, or FPV, drones after giving up a job managing a restaurant abroad and returning home to Ukraine to serve.

Her shift is part of a larger trend of more women joining Ukraine's military in combat roles, a change made possible by the technological transformation of modern warfare, military officials say.

"The fact that technology lets us deliver ammunition without carrying it in our hands or running it to the front line - that's incredible," said Monka, who serves in the Unmanned Systems Battalion of the Third Army Corps. She and other women followed Ukraine's military protocol by identifying themselves using only their call signs.

PRC–Russia–DPRK Relations Grow Closer

Seong-Hyon Lee

On September 4, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) published the readout of a leaders meeting between Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The document highlighted the themes of “traditional friendship” (传统友好), a “shared destiny” (命运与共), and “mutual vigilance and support” (守望相助). It called especially for deeper exchanges in the “governance of party and state affairs” (深化两党治国理政经验交流互鉴) (MFA, September 4). Notably, it omitted “denuclearization.” Four weeks later, the official readout from the meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers similarly omitted the term, instead elevating governance exchanges among socialist parties (MFA, September 28). When Premier Li Qiang (李强) met Kim Jong Un on October 9, People’s Daily coverage likewise celebrated “traditional friendship and cooperation” (传统友好合作关系) without reference to denuclearization (People’s Daily, October 10). The pattern has now hardened into a deliberate tifa (提法)—a formalized policy wording.

This shift was further confirmed in Gyeongju during the November 1 APEC leaders’ summit. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung held his first bilateral meeting with Xi, in which he called for PRC assistance on denuclearization of the peninsula (YouTube/Yonhap News TV, October 29). Yet the PRC readout entirely omitted the words “denuclearization” (无核化), “Korean Peninsula” (半岛), and “North Korea” (朝鲜) (MFA, November 1). This “split readout” was no clerical slip. In PRC political discourse, such formulation changes never occur by chance. A stock phrase dropped four times in three months across leader-, premier-, and minister-level texts signals deliberate recalibration. Beijing now acknowledges a nuclear Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as reality, not aberration.

Myanmar makes more meth than anywhere else. Opium production there also just hit a decade high,

Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar surged to its highest level in a decade this year as the nation engaged in a civil war remains one of the world’s primary suppliers of illicit drugs, according to a United Nations survey.

The growth solidifies Myanmar’s position as the world’s main known source of illicit opium, especially following sharp declines in production in Afghanistan after the ruling Taliban imposed a ban following their 2021 takeover.

The Myanmar Opium Survey 2025, issued Wednesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, found the area where opium is cultivated expanded by 17% from 2024 to 53,100 hectares (131,212 acres), the largest area since 2015.

Trump greenlights exports of Nvidia H200 chips to China

Elisabeth Buchwald

In this photo illustration, an Nvidia chip is seen through a magnifying glass on August 1, 2025 in Beijing, China. Visual China Group/Getty Images/File

President Donald Trump on Monday announced he’s removing export controls on Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, a key reversal in what’s become part of a broader trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

H200s – the second most-powerful AI chip in Nvidia’s inventory – are vital for completing tasks performed by AI.

Nvidia’s highly sought-after Blackwell chips and next-generation Rubin chips are not part of the deal, Trump wrote.

“I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. President Xi responded positively!” Trump wrote in the post.

US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

James FitzGerald

Tourists from dozens of countries including the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States, under a new proposal unveiled by American officials.

The new condition would affect people from dozens of countries who are eligible to visit the US for 90 days without a visa, as long as they have filled out an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form.

Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has moved to toughen US borders more generally - citing national security as a reason.

Analysts say the new plan could pose an obstacle to potential visitors, or harm their digital rights.

Asked whether the proposal could lead to a steep drop-off in tourism to the US, Trump said he was not concerned.

The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean

Jonathan Blitzer

In a federal courtroom in New York City last year, a crime boss from the most notorious drug cartel in Honduras took the stand to testify against Juan Orlando Hernández, the country’s former President. “They should have tried to catch us,” he said, of the Honduran government, which Hernández led from 2014 to 2022. Instead, “they allied with us.” The former President was found to be responsible for more than four hundred tons of cocaine reaching the United States. The Justice Department had been building the case against many of his family members and associates for years, most notably during Donald Trump’s first term.

On November 28th, two days before national elections in Honduras, President Trump announced that he was pardoning Hernández, who was just a year into a forty-five-year sentence he was serving in a federal prison in West Virginia. “It was a Biden setup,” Trump said. “I looked at the facts.” Though the White House denied it, such facts had apparently come via the political operative Roger Stone, who’d handed the President a letter from Hernández in which the former President called Trump “Your Excellency” and compared his plight to Trump’s own “persecution.” The two men’s shared resentment of Joe Biden evidently proved more important than Hernández’s rap sheet. Trump didn’t seem troubled by the fact that combatting the flow of drugs into the U.S. is his Administration’s principal rationale for launching a string of boat attacks in the Caribbean. Those attacks, in which the U.S. military, without evidence, has targeted alleged drug traffickers and killed at least eighty-seven people to date, appear to violate national and international law.

Trump Is Making the Same Mistake as Biden

David Axelrod

Donald Trump recaptured the White House in part by relentlessly exploiting Joe Biden’s failure to heed widespread concerns about the rising cost of living. Now, bizarrely, President Trump is walking himself—and his party—into the same perilous trap by denying the economic reality that working families are living.

In the summer of 2023, as he geared up his ill-fated race for reelection, Biden mounted a campaign to convince the public that his policies had delivered the economy and American workers from the depths of the pandemic to renewed prosperity. “Our plan is working—Bidenomics,” the president declared during a rally at the Philly Shipyard.

Biden had some legitimate claims. An impressive 13 million jobs had been created on his watch, and growth was relatively strong. He had pushed through policies that had begun to lift wages. Still, Americans were not nearly as enthusiastic as the president about an economy he had ill-advisedly branded with his name.

U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese Says There’s No Cease-Fire in Gaza

John Haltiwanger

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has been among the most prominent and outspoken critics of Israel and its allies over the war in Gaza—which she’s described as a “full-fledged genocide”—and she’s made powerful enemies because of it.

The Israeli government in 2024 declared Albanese, an Italian national and a human rights lawyer, to be persona non grata and banned her from entering the country. Albanese was also sanctioned by the Trump administration this July for engaging with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its “efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Albanese of antisemitism and said she’s “unfit” for her role.

Former CYBERCOM Commanders Urge Caution on Push for New Military Cyber Service

Shaun Waterman

Creating a new military service to wage war in the cyber domain would take too long, risk creating a top-heavy bureaucracy, and create confusion about the defense of other services’ IT networks, two former leaders of U.S. Cyber Command told a congressionally chartered research committee looking into the question.

Retired Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh and his predecessor, Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, both testified last month at the first hearing of the National Academies’ committee conducting a “consensus study” on “alternative organizational models for the cyber forces of the U.S. Armed Forces,” as directed in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

The committee expects to finish its work and report to Congress sometime next year, a National Academies staffer told Air & Space Forces Magazine on condition of anonymity.

In testimony Nov. 20, both men argued that the CYBERCOM 2.0 reforms that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on last month should be given time to bear fruit before embarking on the massive organizational lift of creating a whole new service.

Changing patterns of conflict: The role of cyber-warfare

Eve Goode

In this SJUK exclusive, Paul Feenan, Chief Revenue Officer at Arqit discusses how cyber-warfare is reshaping the defence strategy. Cyber-warfare has become a major part of modern conflict. How has this changed the way militaries think about protecting their networks?

Cyber-warfare is fundamentally changing the way we approach modern conflict. Traditionally, militaries thought about warfare across the physical domains including land, sea, air and space.

In the current landscape, cyber has now become a domain in its own right and for good reason. Adversaries no longer need to physically attack to cause harm. They can cross borders in the cyber domain in ways that are impossible in the physical world, using cyber operations to pre-empt phases of conflict or as a core part of war fighting.

What they target are networks, data systems, communications and command-and-control as they are the lifeblood of operations across all physical domains. This has changed the mindset around protection. We can no longer rely on perimeter defence, because networks are now organic and fundamental to how all operations are conducted.

15 December 2025

India and the Indo-Pacific in Trump’s Second-term Strategy

Biyon Sony Joseph

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India signs the guest book in the Roosevelt Room before a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Feb. 13, 2025.Credit: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

The present Trump administration’s approach toward India and the Indo-Pacific reflects a marked departure from the strategic framing that characterized its first term (2017-2021). While New Delhi finds itself navigating an increasingly strained phase in bilateral relations with Washington, the release of the latest United States National Security Strategy offers important insights into how a second Trump presidency views the Indo-Pacific and the role India is expected to play within it. For India, the document carries both signals of continuity and indications of a broader strategic recalibration that could have significant implications for its regional ambitions.

During the first Trump administration, the Indo-Pacific occupied a central place in American strategic thinking. The 2017 National Security Strategy explicitly positioned the Free and Open Indo-Pacific as the cornerstone of U.S. engagement with Asia, underlining the region’s importance for maintaining a balance of power, securing vital sea lanes, and upholding a rules-based order. The new strategy, however, reflects a noticeable downgrading of regional priority. Although the Indo-Pacific continues to be identified as an area of core American interest, it no longer commands the same strategic prominence. Instead, the document makes it clear that the administration’s principal focus will be on the Western Hemisphere, reinforced by the articulation of a so-called Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Pakistan and Afghanistan: Can the ‘Mother of All Relations’ Be Fixed?

Touqir Hussain

Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, famously said that the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship is “the mother of all relations.” He may have been right. Otherwise how do you explain that Pakistan and the Taliban, whom Islamabad had nurtured for decades at the cost of much reputational damage, are now engaged in a deadly armed conflict?

After taking control of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban, Islamabad’s former proxies, were expected to provide Pakistan with so-called “strategic depth” against India. Instead they have come to be diplomatically closer to India than to Pakistan. And now Pakistan’s defense minister has been warning about an open war to obliterate the Taliban – threatening to change the very regime Pakistan helped to come to power in Afghanistan.

At the center of the dispute is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its sinister campaign of terrorism inside Pakistan. TTP attacks continues to cause heavy fatalities, specially among security forces. By all accounts, these attacks are being directed by TTP leaders and commanders based in Afghanistan. This has motivated Pakistan to conduct several rounds of strikes on Afghan soil, with the Taliban responding with military actions along the border.

Between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Trade War With No End in Sight

Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman

One of Peshawar’s largest markets in western Pakistan once bustled with thousands of Afghan-owned shops and carts, selling everything from deep-fried khajoor pastries to kitchen items and cricket gear.

But business has been cut by half, according to business owners, and the market’s alleys have become so sparse that shoppers can walk freely along its stalls without elbowing through crowds. And aid shipments urgently needed in Afghanistan are piling up at Pakistani ports.

“Afghans are afraid of going outside,” said Hameed Ullah Ayaz, an Afghan owner of 12 bakeries in Peshawar.

Amid the deepest erosion of relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan in decades, the Pakistani government has cut off cross-border trade. It is aiming to punish the Taliban administration for failing to rein in affiliated militants who attack Pakistan and find refuge on the other side of the border.

Trial Guidelines on Transportation Safety Services for Autonomous Vehicles

In order to guide the development of autonomous driving technology and standardize the application of autonomous vehicles (自动驾驶汽车) in the transportation services sector, these guidelines have been formulated in accordance with the Production Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Road Traffic Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Road Transport, and other relevant laws and regulations, as well as relevant provisions on road transport and urban passenger transport management.

These Guidelines apply to the use of autonomous vehicles on urban roads, highways, and other roads open to public motor vehicle traffic to engage in urban public bus and streetcar passenger transport, taxi passenger transport, road passenger transport operations, and road freight transport operations.

One click can bring down a country': Israel cyber chief warns of digital siege

Raphael Kahan

“We are heading toward an era in which wars will begin and end in the digital sphere,” Karadi warned. He introduced the term “digital siege,” a nightmare scenario in which power stations are shut down, traffic lights stop working, communications systems collapse and water sources are contaminated, all with the push of a remote button. “This is not some imaginary future scenario, but a very real direction of development,” he said.

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The idea of a digital siege, Karadi stressed, is not just a catchy phrase. It marks the end point of a 15-year evolution. In the past, state cyber warfare was seen mainly as quiet espionage or a “surgical” tool aimed only at military facilities. In recent years, the gloves have come off. The new enemy is not only trying to steal secrets, but to disrupt the daily lives of civilians.

The widely accepted starting point of physical cyber warfare is the exposure of Stuxnet in 2010. The sophisticated worm, attributed in foreign reports to Israel and the United States, hit centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Stuxnet’s defining feature was its precision. The malware was carefully designed to strike only specific industrial controllers, while broadly avoiding civilian computers or unrelated infrastructure. It was a sniper’s weapon, quiet, targeted and without collateral damage.

The Treason of the Populists

MICHAEL BURLEIGH

The modern media landscape has given far-right "thinkers" a salience beyond their wildest dreams, reflected in the new US National Security Strategy. But their pseudo-intellectualism will never pass as the real thing, and while they may court the working class, it is financiers and tech billionaires whose interests they serve.

LONDON – Until a few days ago, it had never crossed my mind that people across Europe – including Londoners like me – were living in a strife-afflicted hell hole, “suffocated” by regulations, stripped of political liberties, and bound for “civilizational erasure.” So, it was with some surprise that I read this assessment in the new US National Security Strategy – a document that echoes pseudo-intellectual propaganda more than resembling any serious foreign-policy analysis.

Beyond Multilateralism

JAVIER SOLANA and ANGEL SAZ-CARRANZA

Today’s geopolitical turmoil has undermined the multilateral institutions that have structured international relations since the end of World War II. To avoid a slide into global anarchy, we must begin complementing existing institutions with a patchwork of arrangements that are less formal, less universal, and less binding.

MADRID – The world is on the cusp of a profound geopolitical restructuring, as escalating great-power rivalries erode the multilateral structures that have supported the global order since the mid-20th century.

To prevent the international system from sliding into chaos and conflict, those unwilling to accept a world governed solely by raw power must find ways to reinforce today’s debilitated multilateral institutions through informal arrangements and bilateral agreements.

From the end of World War II to the early 2010s, multilateralism provided the framework for international cooperation. Though imperfect and often inconsistent, it was the most effective model of global governance ever created. But after more than a decade of continuous erosion, it is clear that the multilateral system as we know it can no longer facilitate collective action.

The future of the US surface fleet

The United States Navy faces an inflection point in the design and sustainment of its surface fleet, as delays, cancellations and industrial shortfalls collide with rising operational demands. Forthcoming budget choices, industrial timelines and early tests of new uncrewed vessels will shape whether the fleet can regain momentum by the late 2020s.

The abrupt curtailment of the Constellation-class frigate programme in November 2025, paired with mounting delays across American naval shipyards, has underscored the fragility of the United States’ surface-fleet plans. Because it takes many years and considerable funds to develop and produce warships, even compared to other defence-industrial projects, a navy is shaped by its need for sustained and broad political and economic mobilisation. A fleet is a country’s grand strategy made manifest in steel. Ships, in turn, remain in service for decades, and a fleet is slow to change. This shapes a country’s statecraft over the long term.

A fleet is a country’s grand strategy made manifest in steel.

The trajectory of the American sea services is at a malleable and uncertain point, as it was during the late Cold War. Maritime conflicts in the Red Sea and Black Sea in recent years have forced some reconsideration of the role of US naval forces. In addition, China is outpacing the US in the construction of high-end surface combatants and in the size and sophistication of its anti-ship-missile portfolio.

Venezuela Boatstrikes Raise Legal Problems for the Entire US Military

Ramon Marks

On September 2, Special Operations Command launched a drone strike against drug boat runners in the Caribbean. After two strikes, the boat was sunk with no survivors.

Before that attack was publicly reported, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and other members of Congress released a video on November 18, reminding service members that they are not obliged to execute “illegal orders.” At the time, it was unclear why the senator and his colleagues chose this particular moment to remind troops of that rule.

About 10 days later, the likely rationale became clearer: on November 28, The Washington Post broke the story about the September 2 attack. Citing unnamed sources, it alleged that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued orders to the Special Operations Command to “leave no survivors” during the attack.

The accusation was profoundly serious. If true, it meant that the secretary’s order was a war crime. The US Department of Defense Law of War manual, Section 5.4.7, could not be clearer: “[i]t is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors.” The Beltway hunt was on with Secretary Hegseth as the target.

America’s Fortress Renewed: A Constitutional Triumph in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS)

Donald Vandergriff

Over the past four days I have read and dissected every line of the Trump’s administration’s 33-page National Security Strategy released in November 2025. What follows is my unfiltered assessment, judged strictly against the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, the proven principles of Maneuver Warfare, and measured against the corrosive influence of Cultural Marxism on our culture, fighting power and the continuing evolution of the Generations of Modern War.

For more than thirty years I have championed Maneuver Warfare and Mission Command: doctrines that defeat enemies by outthinking and outmaneuvering them through decentralized initiative, tempo, and trust. Just as the Constitution distributes power while retaining accountability, these philosophies push decision-making downward, demanding that leaders at every level exercise bold judgment in pursuit of the commander’s intent—fully responsible for their actions, yet free to act, and obliged to empower those they lead.

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