India’s Failure Against PLA In Ladakh in 2020 Was Due To Political Indecision, Says Ex-Army Chief Gen. Naravane – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

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In his yet unpublished book entitled Four Stars of Destiny, India’s former army chief, Gen. M.M.Naravane blames the highest echelons of the country’s political leadership for the setbacks suffered by the Indian army in the Ladakh sector of the Sino-Indian border in 2020-21. Naravane was army chief between December 2019 and April 2022, a period that was one of the most consequential in recent military history, after the 1962 border war.

A point which emerges from Naravane’s account is that unlike the People’ Liberation Army (PLA) of China, the leadership of the Indian army is not an integrated military-political institution. China’s political leadership is represented at the very top of the PLA, providing the strategic thinking. China’s top leadership is part of the over-arching Central Military Commission, the head of which is none other than President Xi Jinping. But in India, the military and political leaderships are not intertwined in the same way. The two are distinct entities with the political leadership having the final say in matters of war and peace. Therefore, the PLA in Ladakh, as elsewhere, was better equipped to quickly tackle tactical and strategic challenges, as compared to the Indian army which lacked such a well-integrated back up.

Disinformation and deepfakes: Improving crisis communications in India and Pakistan

Qamar Shahzad Rajoka

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The four-day military crisis between India and Pakistan in May 2025 became even more dangerous when both countries integrated disinformation and fake images into their conventional warfighting. The speedy generation of false information and realistic deepfakes, aided by AI, made it difficult to verify what was really happening during the crisis. Even reputable journalists, government officials, and politicians were misled by fabricated content shared as authentic battlefield footage. 

Such material might not trigger a crisis, but it can dangerously intensify one. The type of synthetic data that was unleashed during the May 2025 crisis poses two big challenges in South Asia: strategic confusion and the danger of reading the other side wrong. Fortunately, there are several policies that can help counter viral disinformation within the nuclear dyad of India and Pakistan. The 2025 crisis. Disinformation spreads faster than correct information. That makes it extremely hard to verify narratives emerging on social media. Respected figures who have many followers on social media can unwittingly spread fake news to large audiences who accept the information as truth.

The S-500 Factor: India’s Missile Defence Ambitions and the New Asian Security Dilemma

Tahir Azad

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India is steadily modernizing its military capabilities and expanding its air defense network, entering a potentially transformative phase. After buying advanced fighter jets and multi-layer missile defense systems such as the S-400 missile system, India is once again focusing on the Russian S-500 missile system, which is at the top of the list for air and missile defense. The timing is important because the renewed push comes at a time when strategic competition is getting worse in Asia, threats from both conventional and non-conventional weapons are rising, and the global order is changing quickly. Vladimir Putin’s visit to India in 2025 has given this goal more energy by starting up talks again about buying high-end weapons and making weapons together.

This paper examines the potential benefits for India regarding a prospective S-500 acquisition, its integration into India’s overarching military modernization efforts, the anticipated responses from regional powers—particularly Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China—and the apprehension with which the United States is monitoring this strategic realignment.

Sri Lanka: Managed Stability – Analysis

Afsara Shaheen

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Sri Lanka entered 2026 with a security environment that remained broadly stable but layered with unresolved structural vulnerabilities rooted in post-war reconciliation failures, persistent diaspora activism, narcotics trafficking, and evolving regional security dynamics. While the country continued to record an absence of terrorism-linked fatalities, sustaining its position among the lowest-risk nations globally, the year nonetheless underscored the paradox of “negative peace” – the absence of violence without the resolution of underlying political and ethnic contestations. The National People’s Power (NPP) Government, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, inherited a security architecture shaped by long-standing counterterrorism frameworks, and largely opted for continuity rather than rupture, particularly in matters related to proscription regimes and intelligence-led policing.

A defining development shaping the 2026 security narrative was the January 13 decision of the NPP Government to issue an extraordinary gazette extending the long-standing ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and multiple Tamil diaspora organisations and individuals. By reissuing and updating the May 2025 proscription list, the Government reaffirmed its position that overseas Tamil political and advocacy bodies continued to pose security risks through alleged terrorism-related activities. Organisations such as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC), World Tamil Movement (WTM), Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), World Tamil Relief Fund (WTRF), National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT), and Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) remained blacklisted, with updated identification details and new reference numbers issued for 2026. Although no substantive new allegations were introduced, the continuation of this sweeping proscription regime reinforced the securitised lens through which the Sri Lankan State continues to view diaspora mobilisation more than 15 years after the end of the civil war. Originally introduced in 2014 under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the proscription framework continues to criminalise contact with listed entities, constraining political engagement and perpetuating mistrust between the State and Tamil communities abroad.

Xi’s military purge is not really about corruption

Kerry Brown

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Zhang Youxia, a top military general and vice-chairman of the body in overall command of China’s military forces, was removed from office on January 23. His departure means all but one of the seven members of the central military commission (CMC), which is chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, have lost their positions in the last three years. Xi has an established record of purging senior officials. Back at the dawn of his tenure as head of the Chinese Communist Party in the early 2010s, there was a series of high-level fallings. Bo Xilai, a fellow Politburo member who was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges, was perhaps the most commented on.

But even Zhou Yongkang, a former senior party leader, was taken in under corruption charges in 2013 and expelled from the party. The slogan used by party leadership at the time was that even tigers needed to be afraid, not just flies. There were no exceptions when it came to party loyalty – no one was exempt and no one was safe.

China aggression renews question of whether Trump would defend Taiwan with US military

George Headley

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WASHINGTON – In a two-day operation in December, dozens of Chinese ships and aircraft surrounded Taiwan in what looked like a rehearsal for a blockade. Taiwan’s military counted 90 aircraft sorties that crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait on Dec. 29. Four amphibious assault ship formations were detected in international waters and 19 Chinese ships entered the island’s 24-mile buffer zone.

The exercise continued the next day with more incursions by air and sea. Ten long-range rockets landed within 24 miles of the coast – the closest live projectiles China had ever fired, according to the Global Taiwan Institute. “Justice Mission 2025” was one of China’s largest exercises ever around Taiwan, and the biggest since 2022, when it lashed out after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the self-governing island in 25 years.

China’s Disappearing Generals

Amy Chang Chien, Agnes Chang and Chris Buckley

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Feb. 3, 2026China’s military leadership stood before the nation in March 2023, an image of unity behind Xi Jinping. After nearly a decade in power, Mr. Xi had installed the high command that he wanted: loyalists hand-picked to make the People’s Liberation Army a world-class force.

But not even Mr. Xi’s loyalists have been spared from his sweeping campaign to clean up the military — with purges that are ostensibly focused on corruption but are also about fealty to him. One by one, members of the Central Military Commission have been dismissed and put under investigation. The latest was Gen. Zhang Youxia, Mr. Xi’s top general.

Beyond Deterrence: How China Turned Taiwan Into a Governance Testbed

Erika Lafrennie

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Taiwan dominates American strategic thinking as the ultimate deterrence problem. Pentagon war games model invasion scenarios. Think tanks debate force ratios. Analysts calculate escalation ladders. The conversation assumes deterrence is being tested.

That assumption is wrong—not because deterrence is failing, but because it was never the organizing logic shaping outcomes in Taiwan. Taiwan is not where deterrence is being tested. Taiwan is where governance competition is being made visible. This is not a war plan or a Taiwan policy piece. It is a close examination of how modern power actually operates. The conflict most analysts fear is already happening.

How Trump is giving China a chance to reshape global order

Yuchen Li

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In January, the same month the United States announced its withdrawal from 66 multilateral organizations, China hosted leaders from Canada, Finland and Britain. "The international order is under great strain," Chinese leader Xi Jinping told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for efforts to "build an equal and orderly multipolar world," as the two met in Beijing on January 29. The message is not new in China's diplomatic rhetoric but has become more pronounced amid US disengagement from multilateral institutions.

The US is notably abandoning many initiatives focusing on climate change, labor and migration — areas President Donald Trump has characterized as "woke" initiatives "contrary to the interests" of the country. At the same time, China remains a member of most of these multilateral organizations and is gaining broader global recognition. A recent international survey found that respondents across 21 countries, including 10 European Union member states, expect China's global influence to grow over the next decade, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.

North America’s top computer vision scientist Liang Jie returns to China

Shi Huang

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Twenty years ago, technologies developed by Liang Jie at Microsoft were incorporated into products like the Windows Media Video Player and Blu-ray discs used by millions worldwide. A decade on, while a professor in Canada, Liang ventured into entrepreneurship, developing an intelligent sensor system for elderly care to address global population ageing. Today, he brings his top-tier expertise in image and video compression back to China.

According to the Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo (EIT), he joined the university in January as a chair professor at its School of Electronic Science and Technology. Liang was admitted to the special programme for gifted students at Xian Jiaotong University in 1988, transferring to the electrical engineering programme in 1989.

Iran: Away From The Thucydides Trap? – Analysis

Mauricio D. Aceves

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The Islamic Revolution rewired society, recast identity, and turned religion into public power. For those who lived it, 1979 is not just a headline—it is the origin and the before-and-after that defined a lifetime and the future of a regional power. In September 1980—after border clashes—Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, calculated that a war against post-revolutionary Iran would be quick and decisive. Instead, it became an opportunity for Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini: a conflict that hardened the state, rallied supporters, and supplied a unifying enemy across Iran’s western border. From a regional optic, the war also opened a new diplomatic theatre. Once it became clear that neither side could secure a victory, states moved to contain spillover, protect energy routes, and prevent a wider conflict.

That conflict created a paradox: it obturated identities and security doctrines, yet it also forced the region to practice crisis management—back channels, coalition-signalling, and ceasefire-engineering. Even when mediation did not succeed, diplomacy served as a tool of containment, shaping alignments and laying early templates for the region’s politics. If 1979 was the turning point, 1980 was the point of no return.[1] The Iran-Iraq War broke regional dynamics and cemented a harsher reality in which security trumped politics. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stated, “This conflict threatens America’s strategic interests, as well as the stability and security of all our friends in the region.” [2]

The United States Should Apply the Arab Spring’s Lessons to Its Iran Response

Amr Hamzawy and Sarah Yerkes

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With popular protests in Iran receding rather than escalating, the United States faces a narrower but still consequential set of policy options. The experience of the Arab Spring underscores that external military intervention amid domestic upheaval rarely produces democratic breakthroughs and more often entrenches disorder. In Syria, Libya, and Yemen, foreign military involvement during moments of popular mobilization destroyed already fragile state institutions, militarized political competition, and generated prolonged civil wars whose regional spillovers continue to destabilize the Middle East. These cases suggest that even when regimes face legitimacy crises, intervention does not translate social protest into political reform. Instead, it collapses the political arena into armed conflict.

Equally important, threatening military action against a regime confronting internal unrest tends to harden authoritarian behavior rather than moderate it. When rulers interpret external pressure as an existential threat, they are more likely to frame domestic opposition as an extension of foreign hostility and to treat politics as a zero-sum struggle for survival. The Arab Spring offers ample evidence that such dynamics intensify repression, close off space for reformist actors within incumbent regimes, and marginalize nonviolent opposition. In Iran’s case, U.S. military threats risk reinforcing the security establishment’s dominance and legitimizing harsher internal controls, even as popular mobilization loses momentum.

Why ‘might makes right’ is wrong in today’s world order

Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman

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After U.S. special forces seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, President Trump announced the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and help itself to lots of oil. Trump warned Maduro’s successor she would pay “a very big price” if she did not comply. Trump’s ultimatum will sound familiar to anyone who has read Thucydides’s “History of the Peloponnesian War” and his fictionalized account of negotiations between Athens, the world’s dominant naval power, and Melos, a neutral island state.

Locked in a war with Sparta, Athens ordered Melos to pay tribute or be destroyed. Dismissing appeals to justice and morality, Athens insisted that right “is only in question between equals in power” and “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” For hundreds of years, governments viewed war as a legitimate way to pursue vital national interests, with each state the only judge of what they might be. It took two world wars and the advent of nuclear weapons for the U.S. and its allies to take seriously a radical idea: war must no longer be a lawful instrument of national policy. The linchpin of this new order was the UN Charter’s prohibition of any use of force not undertaken in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council.

There Is Only One Sphere of Influence

Michael Beckley

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After the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and President Donald Trump revived talk of acquiring Greenland, commentators reached for old clichés: the rebirth of the Monroe Doctrine, the return of great-power spheres of influence, the end of Pax Americana. But these episodes revealed something more exceptional. The world today has only one true sphere of influence. The United States alone dominates a vast home region, not merely as a buffer against competitors such as China and Russia, but as a hemispheric base from which American power and commerce can project outward, largely unconstrained by rivals.

This configuration has no modern precedent. During the Cold War, the American sphere was confronted by a vast Soviet one. In earlier, multipolar eras, European powers ruled overseas empires and planted colonies deep in the Western Hemisphere, contesting U.S. influence even close to home. But that world is long gone. The American sphere now stands alone. China and Russia cannot consolidate control over their own regions, much less project sustained power into the United States’ backyard. They can intimidate neighbors and sow disruption, but their influence quickly runs into resistance and chokepoints. The result is not multipolarity but stark asymmetry: one consolidated American sphere and contested space everywhere else.

Moscow Leverages Extremism in the Balkans

Blerim Vela

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In mid-January 2026, analysts reported a surge of Russian-linked far-right propaganda circulating on Telegram in Serbia (Radio Slobodna Evropa, January 13). Scores of interconnected channels amplify messages from the International Sovereigntist League and other extremist networks, reaching hundreds of thousands of followers. These channels are not isolated echo chambers. Ultranationalist groups in Serbia repost coordinated content on immigration, traditionalism, and opposition to liberal norms, embedding Moscow-aligned narratives deeply into online discourse. The expansion of these networks highlights how digital platforms have become central vectors for foreign influence in the Western Balkans, shaping public opinion and political dynamics rather than merely reflecting them.

Online networks are only one layer of a broader ecosystem. Across the Western Balkans, far-right militias march in the streets, Orthodox priests frame geopolitical loyalty as a moral duty, and sympathetic politicians invoke Moscow’s blessing to resist Western norms, creating a coordinated strategy that fuses digital, religious, and political levers of influence.

Russia Uses Cossacks to Sustain Ideological Support for War

Richard Arnold

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On January 11, Russia’s war against Ukraine officially surpassed the length of the Great Patriotic War, the name Russians use for their fight against the Nazi invaders from 1941–1945 during World War II (Meduza, January 11). Forced comparisons to the epoch-making fight against Adolf Hitler have hitherto been the Kremlin’s ideological legitimation for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin may require a new historical parallel after surpassing this milestone. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has invoked Peter the Great’s Great Northern War against Sweden before and during the conflict, one might expect the resurrection of movements and social forces from the Imperial era to accompany such claims (Kommersant, January 6, 2022). The Cossacks pose a viable option. Aside from their “centuries-long” service to Russia, praise from Putin’s presidential aid and liaison to the Cossacks, Dmitry Mironov, and inclusion in the strategy for the development of the Russian Cossacks as an “historically serving society,” recent developments suggest this outcome (Kazachestvo, February 25, 2025; Council under the President of the Russian Federation for Cossack Affairs, accessed January 21). The Kremlin has used the Cossacks to promote its war mythology throughout the war against Ukraine. It appears to continue looking to them to maintain support for the war effort within Russian society.

The Volga Cossacks are finalizing agreements to participate in the 2026 Victory Day parade on Red Square. The first prorector of the Samara state technical university, Evgeny Frank, said, “For us, it is a great honor and responsibility to march alongside the heroes of the Special Military Operation in the form of a training unit” (VsKO, January 19). This remark stands out for several reasons. On the one hand, the Volga region is not commonly associated with the historical and romantic image of the Cossacks, which further supports inferences about the nationalization of the movement across Russia (see EDM, May 29, October 30, 2025). The comment coming from an official of the Cossack further supports open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigations—including one recently published in Bellingcat—which have found that cloaked Cossack movements in the region have been playing an important role in luring recruits to give their lives to Russia’s war effort (Bellingcat, December 5, 2025). On the other hand, the inclusion of yet more Cossacks on Russia’s most sanctified stage of the Victory Day Parade testifies to their importance to the regime and the creation of its military might.

Markets Are Shrugging Off Uncertainty

DAMBISA MOYO

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LONDON – Although geopolitical and policy-induced uncertainty is a dominant concern across the world’s financial markets, there appears to be a disconnect between headlines and broader media narratives, on the one hand, and investors’ relative calmness, reflected in key financial metrics, on the other. Are we witnessing market complacency?

Consider CNN’s Fear & Greed Index of investor sentiment. It has been trending from fear back toward neutral, despite all the political, international, and policy chaos of the past few months. True, professional investors do not generally cite this metric, suggesting that it is more a reflection of retail-investor sentiment or marketing. But other metrics tell the same story. US real interest rates may be nowhere near the zero bound of previous years, but after a period of higher interest rates to combat pandemic-era inflation, they have been on a downward path.

Greenland’s Worth a Fight and Russia’s Trying to Start One

Emma Overell, Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

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The “quickest way for Russia to penetrate our naval defenses is steaming from the Arctic to the North Atlantic.” The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap is the last place allied forces “have any hope of detecting a Russian sub before it’s in the vast Atlantic barreling toward New York.” These insightful comments were spoken not by President Donald Trump but by fictional President Grace Penn in Netflix’s The Diplomat. By contrast Trump’s rhetoric and attempts to gain leverage on Denmark have been appalling and unhelpful. But Trump and “President Penn” are both right about one thing — although the Arctic island is remote, Greenland’s location makes it fundamental to U.S. and NATO naval intelligence and missile defense missions.

Russia knows this as well and is using the Trump-inspired kerfuffle to drive a disinformation narrative intended to further weaken Euro-Atlantic relations. Kremlin-aligned sources have been circulating social media posts suggesting that Western aid to Ukraine has weakened European countries and that weaponry committed to Kyiv may be redistributed to Greenland. A deepfake of a Danish newscaster stating that Denmark plans to recall all F-16s given to Ukraine to be redeployed to Greenland was circulated by Russian influence accounts and received over 45.3K views on X.

Rubio And The Future Of American Diplomacy – OpEd

Dalia Al-Aqidi

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For much of the past decade, American foreign policy has felt confused, cautious and often reactive. Allies were unsure where the US stood. Adversaries tested limits. Too often, decisions seemed driven by short-term political pressures rather than a clear long-term strategy, creating a vacuum in global leadership. In that space, rivals like China, Russia and Iran moved more aggressively to expand their influence, while partners in Europe and the Middle East began questioning whether Washington was still willing and able to lead.

In this context, a strong argument can be made that Marco Rubio is emerging as one of the most effective secretaries of state in modern American history. Not because of dramatic gestures or media attention but because he has brought back something essential to US diplomacy: strategic seriousness. Rubio understands a basic truth that many policymakers lost sight of: foreign policy is not about being liked. It is about power, security and responsibility. The purpose of American diplomacy is not to seek applause but to defend national interests, stand with allies and stop threats before they turn into conflicts.

What Trump’s National Defense Strategy Gets Right — and Wrong

Bradley Bowman, RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

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The Trump administration quietly released its 2026 National Defense Strategy on Friday evening as the largest storm in years barreled down on much of the United States. Much like the snow that blanketed the country, the new NDS brings a combination of positive and negative elements.

Regardless, Americans should not let the snow and ice prevent them from assessing the National Defense Strategy (NDS), as well as the National Security Strategy (NSS) that preceded it last year, which together herald one of the most consequential transitions in U.S. national security policy in years. Indeed, the NDS is replete with both strengths and weaknesses that will directly impact the security of Americans. While partisans will reflexively condemn or praise the strategy, Americans should objectively assess what the NDS gets both right and wrong.

Nation Building in Venezuela? Don’t Worry, We Don’t Know How

Carl J. Schramm

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Since President Trump’s successful removal of Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro as head of state, the sachems of foreign policy have worried that the U.S. will again begin a program of nation-building. Their concern is no doubt enforced by recent Presidential promises to make Gaza a flourishing economy. As with so many ideas in foreign affairs, nation-building once seemed like the thing to do -- the purpose of America abroad. Iraq played a key role in the idea falling from fashion. One reason was that there was little evidence that the U.S. could restore a working pre-war economy.

I recall during a briefing in Baghdad on the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom, after momentarily suspending the meeting when signaled by an aide, the general in charge returned to report that it appeared the purpose of America in Iraq might have just changed. “It seems we are no longer doing nation-building. Instead, we are here to promote democracy.” As with so many fashionable ideas in foreign affairs, nation-building once seemed like the thing to do -- the purpose of America abroad. In Iraq decision-making for rebuilding that nation’s economy rested with an amorphous group in D.C., known as the 'Interagency,' which believed what was needed to get Iraq on its feet was a “whole of government” approach.

Taiwan’s Rare Earths Security Challenge

Jens Kastner

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While Taiwan dominates global high-tech manufacturing, it faces a serious upstream vulnerability: a near-total reliance on imported Critical Metals and Rare Earth Elements (REEs). Taiwan imports approximately 3,000 tonnes of rare earth elements annually but produces none domestically. 

Lessons from Ukraine: Battlefield Drone Innovation Redefines Modern Defense

Anna Iovenko

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Defense innovation typically moves slowly, shaped by long procurement cycles and controlled testing. The war in Ukraine has upended that model. Since 2022, Ukraine has become the most demanding real-world proving ground for drones, artificial intelligence-enabled targeting systems and electronic warfare countermeasures, forcing technologies to evolve under continuous combat pressure. Analysts note that Ukraine’s experience illustrates how autonomous and AI-augmented systems are transforming modern combat and prompting militaries worldwide to reassess force design.

Ukraine serves as a global case study in how modern defense technology must be designed, tested and deployed to remain effective in high-intensity conflict.Fnav

What Military Revolution?

Col Thomas C. Greenwood (Ret)

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Drones have provided significant tactical advantages to both sides during the three years of brutal fighting in the Russo-Ukraine war. So, it is not surprising that uncrewed autonomous and first-person view drones and other uncrewed platforms are being heralded as the war-winning technology of the future.1 This euphoria was magnified by Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation SPIDERWEB, which masterfully employed drones to attack Russian air bases approximately 2,500 miles from the static front.2 This led some commentators to declare that the attack was Kiev’s Pearl Harbor.3

Moreover, two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution and will remove the element of fear from war.4 This is an astonishing statement given that human beings fight wars to intentionally inflict violence on others out of “greed, fear, and ideology,” making it unlikely humans will disappear from tomorrow’s battlefields.5 This article contends that drones and artificial technology (AI) will continue to transform how future wars are fought; however, technology alone is unlikely to generate the required vic-tories to qualify as the next revolution in military affairs (RMA).

Reserves Without Purpose: The Hidden Weakness in Modern Militaries

Alexander Gerald

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One of the key lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that military mass has an inherent property that cannot be replaced with other capabilities.[1] The obvious problem is that mass is expensive to maintain. In war, military mass has great utility; in peacetime that same mass has limited utility at best yet must be maintained in case of, or to deter, war. This gets to the heart of the idea of strategy as ‘the use of military force to achieve political outcomes at a tolerable cost’.[2] How can military force be maximised, while minimising the costs in peace as well as war? At its simplest, the answer is reserve forces.

Reserve forces trade time for mass. A professional army is deployable in a relatively short timeframe, but the cost of maintaining a commensurate standard of training and readiness is high. A reserve army, comprised of part-time volunteers, maintains a lesser standard of training and readiness at greatly reduced cost, but in return can only be deployed within a moderate timeframe. Building any reserve force requires a series of decisions from policymakers and military planners. What ratio of reserves to regulars should comprise the whole force? What level of training should reserve forces maintain? How can you recruit and motivate them? However, all decisions are subordinate to one key decision: what function should that reserve force fulfil in your national security strategy?

Trump refuses to be outdone by Europe, signing his own U.S.-India trade deal

Holly Ellyatt

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he has agreed a trade deal with India comes hot on the heels of Europe’s own trade agreement with New Delhi, signaling Washington is not willing to be outdone by its global competitors. The U.S. deal comes after global trading partners like the European Union and India, and China and Canada, have signed their own trade pacts since the new year, leaving America — which has been trigger-happy when it comes to imposing punitive tariffs on trading partners — looking ostracized.

Analysts had said those deals, and particularly the EU-India pact, could “light a fire” under the U.S. to get its own stalled trade agreement with India done and dusted, but it has come quicker than most expected. Trump announced Monday on the Truth Social media platform that the U.S. would cut the main tariff on India from 25% to 18%. He said Washington would also remove an additional 25% tariff it had imposed on New Delhi last summer in retaliation for its Russian oil purchases.

OPINION | Economic Survey highlights a new vision for tech sovereignty in India

Meghna Bal

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The Economic Survey’s observations on compute and AI portend potentially significant developments in the upcoming Budget. First, it flags concerns raised by the Financial Times about off-balance-sheet leverage in global AI investments, alongside skepticism expressed by IBM’s CEO regarding the financial viability of large-scale data center expansion. Second, it highlights that the demands data centers place on water, energy, and finance may be difficult to reconcile with India’s economic and existential realities, where steady access to these basic amenities is still not universal. Taken together, these signals suggest that Budget 2026 is unlikely to offer subsidies or major outlays for data centers. This presents a unique opportunity for India to reimagine its conception of technological sovereignty.

Concerns Over AI Investments. In a digital economy typified by cross-border and multi-directional data flows, technological sovereignty need not hinge on physical localisation, but on predictability. Until now, the idea of technological sovereignty in India has largely meant building as much as possible domestically, and forcing localization where it was not. Ratcheting up the number of home-grown data centers fed into this vision.

India–Europe At A Geopolitical Crossroads – Analysis

Ramesh Jaura

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When India and the European Union finally inked their long-anticipated Free Trade Agreement on January 27, 2026, the fanfare barely masked the unease that had driven both sides to the table. Leaders hailed a “historic milestone,” a “new chapter,” and a “shared vision for prosperity.” Yet beneath the triumphant rhetoric, a deeper reality surfaced: this treaty was born not from a resurgence of faith in globalisation, but from its unravelling. It was shaped less by confidence than by uncertainty, less by plenty than by the fear of becoming dependent.

The agreement was signed during the State Visit of António Costa, President of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who were invited as Chief Guests for India’s Republic Day celebrations. This invitation alone carried strategic meaning. India rarely accords such honour to leaders of a regional bloc, having done so only once before with ASEAN in 2022. The spectacle of the two European leaders riding with President Droupadi Murmu down Kartavya Path and being received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was carefully choreographed to signal that Europe had re-entered India’s strategic imagination not merely as a trading partner but as a geopolitical interlocutor.

Sodium Supply Chain Emerges to Support Lithium Alternatives

Lea Thome

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The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as the world’s largest producers of electric vehicles (EVs). In becoming the dominant global player, it has had to grapple with the high cost and low supply of raw lithium materials—critical inputs for the batteries that fuel most new energy vehicles. A lack of lithium deposits at home have led Chinese investors and mining companies to set up shop in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, and Zimbabwe, to extract and process the silvery metal. But as supply chains have become increasingly volatile due to tariffs, export bans, and host country legislation, Chinese policymakers and companies have started exploring alternatives to support the growth of the new energy storage industry.

One solution is sodium. In recent years, Chinese engineers have been testing sodium-based new-type energy storage technologies. In 2025, they deployed them for the first time. Chinese firms have also begun to focus their attention on the country’s salt lake industry, which is rich in sodium products but also offers opportunities to extract lithium and other materials.

Xi the Destroyer

Jonathan A. Czin and John Culver

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The January 24 purge of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general, was a Shakespearean moment in Chinese politics. Even after a decade of high drama in the People’s Liberation Army, the decision by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to remove Zhang from the PLA’s top governing body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), suggests a new level of intrigue. Xi and Zhang have known each other for decades: Xi’s father and Zhang’s father were comrades-in-arms during China’s ferocious civil war, and Zhang was widely seen as Xi’s closest ally in the army’s high command. As recently as 2022, after a flurry of purges of other senior leaders, Xi not only allowed Zhang to stay in office past the unofficial retirement age but also promoted him to the top position for a military officer. A relationship that long and deep is valuable in any setting, but especially in the vicious, low-trust world of Chinese politics.

Zhang’s dismissal is thus the ultimate illustration of just how little trust Xi has in the PLA. As we argued in Foreign Affairs last August, “Xi wants to ensure he can employ violence with confidence, but Xi’s confidence seems to be the rarest and most precious commodity for an otherwise well-resourced military.” But Zhang’s unceremonious dismissal also illustrates the depths of Xi’s ruthlessness in managing the PLA. It is one thing for a leader to show no mercy to his enemies; it is quite another for him to be so pitiless with his friends.

The Islamic Republic’s Founding Myth

Azadeh Moaveni

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The Islamic Republic’s already lengthy catalogue of fears has ballooned of late: alongside the possibility of being overthrown by its own citizens, it is haunted by the prospect of a full accounting of the massacres it has carried out; by the tenuous loyalty of its army, and its empty coffers; and by the shadow of Israeli spies and Islamic State militants. What terrifies Iran’s theocrats the most, the fear that eclipses all their fears, is the ability of the people at large to clearly see the essential realities of the present regime.

While Iranians have heroically demanded a great many things in recent weeks—change, new rulers, democratic freedoms—they are fundamentally insisting on dismantling the meticulously curated edifice of deceit and falsehoods sustaining the state as it has been constructed since 1979. For the first time ever, by explicitly chanting the name of a specific, alternative leader in the streets, Iranians have emphasized the true problem: the biggest, the most unsustainable lie of all, they are collectively saying, is the system itself.

The Paradox of Wartime Commerce

Mariya Grinberg

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The Trump administration’s policy toward China remains difficult to parse, but calls to “de-risk” the U.S. economy or even to completely decouple from China still dominate Washington’s strategic debates. Advocates for decoupling urge the United States to revive domestic industries and make them resilient to external shocks, to “friend shore” key supply chains to allies and other well-disposed countries, and to secure reliable access to critical resources. Without such measures, analysts warn, China could strangle the U.S. economy in a crisis. 

Already, Beijing’s decision in 2025 to block the export of certain rare-earth metals to the United States set alarm bells ringing in Washington. Analysts bemoan the possibility of “weaponized interdependence” and point to the vulnerabilities caused by the entanglement of the American and Chinese economies through globalization. This dynamic can have extreme implications. If a crisis between the United States and China were to somehow escalate to war, China could withhold important materials and components necessary for the defense industrial base, but it could also withhold other critical exports, such as pharmaceuticals.

In an Age of Superpowers, Geography Is Still Destiny

Hal Brands

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The world is a battleground again. The post–Cold War moment of great-power peace and borderless globalization has ended. Fracture, rivalry and disorder are defining themes of our age. In recent years, ghastly wars have upended crucial regions. Freedom of the seas and the sanctity of borders are under assault. Aggressive autocracies are challenging the US and its democratic allies. America’s commitment to leading a prosperous, stable international system is itself in doubt.

Meanwhile, economic warfare intensifies, as tariffs, sanctions and other trade controls proliferate. Technological breakthroughs, from artificial intelligence to synthetic biology, promise revolutionary progress — and threaten terrible new forms of destruction. The decades ahead will feature ugly, grinding cold wars — or perhaps even devastating, great-power hot wars. Transiting this volatile, uncertain era will require reacquainting ourselves with the strategic logic of geography, that most enduring, unforgiving force in world affairs.

The Predatory Hegemon: How Trump Wields American Power

Stephen M. Walt

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Ever since Donald Trump first became U.S. president, in 2017, commentators have searched for an adequate label to describe his approach to U.S. foreign relations. Writing in these pages, the political scientist Barry Posen suggested in 2018 that Trump’s grand strategy was “illiberal hegemony,” and the analyst Oren Cass argued last fall that its defining essence was a demand for “reciprocity.” Trump has been called a realist, a nationalist, an old-fashioned mercantilist, an imperialist, and an isolationist. Each of these terms captures some aspects of his approach, but the grand strategy of his second presidential term is perhaps best described as “predatory hegemony.” Its central aim is to use Washington’s privileged position to extract concessions, tribute, and displays of deference from both allies and adversaries, pursuing short-term gains in what it sees as a purely zero-sum world.

Given the United States’ still considerable assets and geographic advantages, predatory hegemony may work for a time. In the long run, however, it is doomed to fail. It is ill suited for a world of several competing great powers—especially one in which China is an economic and military peer—because multipolarity gives other states ways to reduce their dependence on the United States. If it continues to define American strategy in the coming years, predatory hegemony will weaken the United States and its allies alike, generate growing global resentment, create tempting opportunities for Washington’s main rivals, and leave Americans less secure, less prosperous, and less influential.

Nuclear deterrence is dying. And hardly anyone notices

Alex Kolbin

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For decades, nuclear weapons have been treated as the ultimate arbiter of international politics. They were supposed to deter great-power war, impose caution on leaders, and anchor what strategists liked to call strategic stability. Today, that framework is eroding in plain sight. Yet the reaction from policymakers and much of the expert community remains oddly muted. Put simply, nuclear weapons are no longer functioning as a decisive factor in global security.

For almost four years, Russia—the world’s largest nuclear power—has been subjected to missile strikes carried out with systems supplied by several other nuclear-armed states. The United Kingdom now openly speaks of developing new tactical ballistic missiles for Kyiv and of placing “leading-edge weapons” directly into the hands of Ukrainians. Russia itself employs nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic Oreshnik missiles as if they were any other conventional weapon system for punishing Ukrainian infrastructure. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump casually commented on New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5—“If it expires, it expires.” And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, currently serving as a Deputy Chief of the Russian Security Council, stated, “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries,” referring to what may come next after New START expires.