Quotes of the Day:

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up." 

– Vince Lombardi

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." 

– Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." 

– Plato

1. Trump Explores Diplomacy With Iran While Weighing Strikes, Officials Say

2. Iran Is Hunting Down Starlink Users to Stop Protest Videos From Going Global

3. Deposed Shah’s Son Seeks Center Stage Amid Iran Protests

4. U.S. Tries a New Playbook: Regime Management, Not Regime Change

5. Military Experts Reject Trump’s Logic That U.S. Must Own Greenland to Defend It

6.  The Iranian Regime Could Fall: But a U.S. Strike Would Prop It Up

7. How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler

8.  Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War

9. The Battle Over Who Runs the Panama Canal Ports Is About to Be Decided

10. Beyond Lethality: The Primacy of Influence in Cognitive Warfare

11. War, Warfare, and Domains: Why Cognitive Warfare Is Hard to Place

12. Everything Is Governance: Why the Real Contest With China Is Systemic, Not Economic

13. Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome

14. China Sucks. Even Their Propaganda Makes America Look Awesome.

15. A Green Beret Went on a Shooting Rampage. Is the Army at Fault?

16. U.S. Citizens Are Joining the Military to Protect Undocumented Parents

17. Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed With American Poverty

18. Lightning Lab gives Pacific Army division drone-building capabilities on the front lines

19. A La Carte Feminism: The Limits of NATO’s WPS Commitments in a Time of Crisis

20. How is India Integrating Drones in its War-Fighting?

21. After Maduro: Trump’s Managed Authoritarianism Trap in Venezuela

22. 

1. Trump Explores Diplomacy With Iran While Weighing Strikes, Officials Say

Summary:

POTUS is weighing calibrated military strikes on Iran, including cyber, security force, nuclear, and ballistic missile targets, while publicly stating diplomacy is preferred. Tehran faces its gravest crisis in years as nationwide protests and brutal repression converge with war damage to its nuclear program. Iran signals conditional willingness to negotiate, likely to delay or shape U.S. action, while seeking to preserve missile deterrence and avoid further Israeli strikes. POTUS has floated secondary tariffs and Starlink support to break Iran’s information blackout. Any strike risks escalation, allied friction, and legal scrutiny at home and under international law.

Comment: So will we leave 80 million Iranian people out in the cold to fend for themselves against the regime?

How should the United States integrate support to Iranian protesters, including information access, into a broader strategy to weaken authoritarian resilience across the CRInK axis without overcommitting militarily in the Middle East at the expense of the Asia-Indo-Pacific?

If POTUS uses the killing of protesters as a red line for kinetic action, what precedent does that set for U.S. responses to repression in other authoritarian states, including north Korea, and can Washington sustain that standard consistently?

Does striking Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure in this moment strengthen long term deterrence and alliance assurance, or does it risk accelerating asymmetric and cognitive warfare by Tehran and its partners that could stretch U.S. bandwidth away from priority theaters and campaigns?

Trump Explores Diplomacy With Iran While Weighing Strikes, Officials Say

NY Times · Eric Schmitt · January 13, 2026

By Edward WongTyler Pager and Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Washington

Published Jan. 12, 2026

Updated Jan. 13, 2026, 2:57 a.m. ET

The Pentagon is presenting a wider range of strike options to the president than previously reported. Targets could include Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile sites.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/us/politics/trump-iran-options-diplomacy-strikes.html

Trump Explores ‘Many Options’ for Dealing With Iran

President Trump is considering several options, including diplomacy and military force, for dealing with Iran, which has been rocked by violent protests.Credit...UGC, via Associated Press

Published Jan. 12, 2026Updated Jan. 13, 2026, 2:57 a.m. ET

President Trump is exploring options for diplomacy with Iran even as he weighs whether to attack the country to try to deter its leaders from killing more protesters, U.S. officials said on Monday.

The Pentagon is presenting a wider range of strike options to Mr. Trump than previously reported. Possible targets include Iran’s nuclear program, going beyond the U.S. airstrikes that battered it in June, and ballistic missile sites, a U.S. official said.

But the narrower options, a cyberattack or a strike against Iran’s domestic security apparatus, which is using lethal force against protesters, are more likely, the official said. Any attack is at least several days away, and could prompt a vigorous retaliation from Iran, the official said. Mr. Trump is scheduled to be briefed on options on Tuesday.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that airstrikes were “one of the many, many options that are on the table,” but that “diplomacy is always the first option for the president.”

“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately,” she added, “and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages.”

That suggested that the private missives the administration has received were less fiery than the Iranian government’s bellicose public messages about the United States since Mr. Trump’s initial threats of a new attack.

Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday night that it appeared that Iran had crossed his red line, after he said this month that he would come to the aid of protesters if the Iranian government used lethal force against them.

“There seems to be some people killed who weren’t supposed to be killed,” he said. “These are violent — you can call them leaders, I don’t know if they’re leaders. I guess they rule with violence. But we’re looking at it very seriously; the military’s looking at it. And there’s a couple options.”

On Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump issued a new threat, saying in a social media post that the United States would impose a tariff of 25 percent on “any and all business” done with the United States by countries that are also engaged in commerce with Iran. It is unclear how or whether this would be enacted.

India, Turkey and Middle Eastern nations could be affected, as well as China, which is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil. But Mr. Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, agreed to a truce last fall in their trade war, and the American president has aimed to keep relations stable in order to ensure a planned April summit with Mr. Xi in Beijing stays on track.

The Iranian government has managed to cut internet service across the country, keeping it in an information blackout. Ms. Leavitt said Mr. Trump had asked Elon Musk, a conservative billionaire ally in the technology industry, to see if his company SpaceX can get internet service to Iranian citizens through the Starlink satellite network.

On Monday, Iranian officials appeared to temper some of their anti-American rhetoric of recent days by saying they were ready to talk with the Trump administration again. “We are not looking for war, but we are prepared for war — even more prepared than the previous war,” Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, told a conference of foreign ambassadors in the capital, Tehran, broadcast by state television.

He appeared to be referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June, during which the United States joined Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“We are also ready for negotiations, but negotiations that are fair, with equal rights and mutual respect,” Mr. Araghchi added.

Iran also said on Monday that communication channels were open between Mr. Araghchi and Steve Witkoff, a top envoy for Mr. Trump who led U.S.-Iran talks last spring. “Iran has never left the negotiating table, but it will not engage in one-sided negotiations,” Esmail Baghaei, a foreign ministry spokesman, said at a news conference on Monday. Mr. Witkoff did not respond to a request for comment.

Some American officials think Iran is trying to delay a U.S. attack rather than aiming to sincerely engage in diplomacy, two officials said.

It was not clear on what topics the Iranian government was willing to negotiate with the United States. The two nations held talks last spring over Iran’s nuclear program, which the country’s leaders say is for civilian use. American and Israeli officials, however, fear it could be used to make nuclear warheads.

The Obama administration had negotiated an agreement to limit the program, but Mr. Trump withdrew from the pact in his first term. Iran then increased its uranium enrichment, bringing the material closer to weapons-grade, though as of June the country’s leaders had not made a decision to pursue nuclear weapons, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

The talks between the Trump administration and Iran ended with the U.S. strikes on the country’s nuclear sites in June. Iranian officials made some overtures after that, but American officials did not engage.

Iran’s new diplomatic outreach comes at what might be the greatest moment of crisis the government has faced in years, more so than even during the 12-day war.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his allies are trying to quell mass protests that have spread across the country. They began in late December over dissatisfaction with the economy and a currency crisis, but in reality are the result of years of discontent with the government. The protesters are calling for expansive changes to the government, and while top officials have acknowledged the need to address problems, they are intent on not giving up power.

Iranian security forces armed with tear gas rifles and long guns have fired into crowds, and videos of gunfire and people yelling have circulated widely, according to an analysis of the videos by The New York Times. The forces have killed scores of Iranian civilians and injured many more, according to estimates from human rights groups.

“Iran is dangling talks and deals to dissuade Trump from using military force against them,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Iran and its foreign policy. “It’s not clear what they would be offering as concessions given the destruction of much of their nuclear program and regional proxies.”

Vali Nasr, a scholar of Iran at Johns Hopkins University, said that the Iranian government was taking a pragmatic approach and not just trying to buy time, but that it had less leverage now in negotiations because its nuclear program has been at a standstill since the June war.

“Iran’s objective is they don’t want any war with the United States, and they want the United States to prevent Israel from attacking Iran,” he said.

Israeli officials have been stressing the dangers of Iran’s ballistic missile program, but Mr. Nasr said the top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the major power center in Iran’s military, would be reluctant to allow Iranian diplomats to negotiate over that. There is a view in Tehran that Iran’s ballistic missiles are the country’s most important form of deterrence, he said.

Mr. Trump has threatened since Jan. 2 that he would attack Iran if the government killed protesters. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he wrote that day in a social media post.

It is unclear what, if any, legal justifications under U.S. law and international law the Trump administration would cite for such an attack. Two days after ordering the June 21 attack on Iranian nuclear sites, Mr. Trump sent a letter to Congress that said the action was done to advance a “vital” national interest and to defend an ally, Israel.

Mr. Trump was recently briefed by the Pentagon on options for a new strike on Iran, The Times reported on Saturday. The strike could take aim at targets in Tehran, including ones associated with domestic security forces that U.S. officials deem to be responsible for attacks on protesters, including the state-backed Basij militia.

A U.S. strike would be aimed at sending a message to the ayatollah about killing protesters and not intended to lead to a direct overthrow of the government, officials said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other aides have been keeping Mr. Trump apprised of the protests, and he has also been tracking news coverage about them.

Ellie Geranmayeh, the deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview on Friday that there had been signs late in the week that the Iranian government could be having security agencies hold back on unleashing their most repressive actions in order to avoid giving Mr. Trump a rationale to attack.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is now facing an unprecedented bottom-up pressure, as well as a top-down pressure,” she said. “Usually they’ve only had to confront one or the other. And they are masters at survival, by the way.”

However, the security agencies intensified their crackdown over the weekend, leading to what Ms. Geranmayeh said on Monday was a “very bleak turn.”

The intensifying violence has fueled more vocal threats against Iran from Mr. Trump, even as he has denounced protesters in the United States who criticize his policies.

“The president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary,” Ms. Leavitt said on Monday, “and nobody knows that better than Iran.”

Katrin Bennhold and Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London, and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.

Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.

Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 13, 2026, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Explores Iran Diplomacy While Weighing Strikes, Officials Say

NY Times · Eric Schmitt · January 13, 2026

2. Iran Is Hunting Down Starlink Users to Stop Protest Videos From Going Global

Summary:

Iranian protesters, cut off from national internet and phone networks, are using illicit Starlink terminals to upload videos of unrest and regime violence, one of the few remaining channels to reach global audiences. Tehran is treating this as electronic warfare, intensifying jamming, tracking and confiscating dishes, and pressing the ITU to curb Starlink. U.S. backed NGOs have smuggled in thousands of terminals, while POTUS weighs sending more to sustain external visibility and pressure. The shutdown worsens Iran’s economic crisis, hurting already sanctioned businesses and amplifying grievances even as the regime mobilizes controlled media and staged rallies to shape narratives.

Comment: Information is the key to resistance and revolution. How should the United States conceptualize Starlink style systems, and similar tools, as instruments of information and political warfare, and what doctrine is needed to govern their use in support of protesters in Iran, north Korea, and elsewhere?

Does routing protest visibility through a U.S. linked commercial platform strengthen American narrative advantage and deterrence, or does it create a single point of failure that adversaries can target technically, legally, and kinetically while refining their own approaches to cognitive warfare against the United States and its allies?

Bottom line is should we be dependent on Starlink? If not Starlink, then what? Is there any similar capability that can support resistance in denied areas? Other than old school: e.g., shortwave and AM radio.

Iran Is Hunting Down Starlink Users to Stop Protest Videos From Going Global

WSJ

Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and authorities’ actions

By Benoit Faucon

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Jan. 12, 2026 11:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-is-hunting-down-starlink-users-to-stop-protest-videos-from-going-global-d8b49602?mod=hp_lead_pos3

Iranians blocking a street during a protest in Tehran last week. Khoshiran/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

With the government shutting down the internet and throttling phone services, Iranians are leaning heavily on Elon Musk’s Starlink service to share videos of growing protests and the regime’s escalating crackdown with the world.

But Iran has intensified efforts to jam the service, which is banned in the country, and users are being hunted.

Over the weekend, authorities began searching for and confiscating Starlink dishes in western Tehran, said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at Miaan Group, a U.S. nonprofit opposed to internet censorship.

“It’s electronic warfare,” Rashidi said. He said disruptions are worst in parts of Tehran where protests are taking place and in the evening, when the demonstrators gather.

The battle over information—while secondary to the confrontations taking place nightly in dozens of cities across Iran—has potentially serious consequences. President Trump has threatened to intervene in response to a crackdown by the regime.

Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and the actions of Iranian authorities.

More than 500 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Another rights group, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, circulated video footage Sunday showing a large number of bodies at a morgue in south Tehran.

Trump is scheduled to be briefed Tuesday on his options. One under discussion is to send in more Starlink terminals. Trump said he would ask Musk about the possibility.

“We may get the internet going if that’s possible,” Trump told the reporters.

Iran shut down most internet connections for the country’s 90 million inhabitants late last week, after protests over a crippling economic crisis exploded into large-scale unrest with demonstrators chanting for an end to the regime. The government has also made it difficult to connect calls or send text messages.

The only exceptions are the government itself, its media services and regime loyalists who are registered on a “whitelist” of internet addresses, said diplomats and others communicating with some of those with uninterrupted access.

In one message Sunday, the government told people to rely on news from the Mehr agency, which is affiliated with the security services. Another text called on Iranians to join a pro-government demonstration Monday at the University of Tehran, a stronghold of recent protests.

“The Iran government invites the people to join a demonstration in support of the regime and against US & Israel,” it said.

Security forces at a pro-government rally in Tehran on Monday. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

The rest of the country relies on Starlink to send out footage of the demonstrations.

“It is the only way,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, co-founder of Iran Human Rights, both based in Norway. He said he received footage of protests in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city by population.

A user in Tehran, who spoke to The Wall Street Journal through a Starlink connection early Sunday, said he had uploaded protest videos taken by relatives. He then sent them to third parties abroad who posted them on social media.

People who have Starlinks don’t let it be known and only upload videos to people they trust, he said over his crackling and distorted Starlink connection.

The government’s efforts to interrupt the service have slowed down Starlink access but haven’t stopped it, said Mehdi Yahyanejad, co-founder and board director at NetFreedom Pioneers. The U.S. group helps people in authoritarian nations get access to the internet.

When Iranian users get good connections, often in the morning or midday, they transmit as many videos as they can, Yahyanejad said.

Starlink terminals are illegal in Iran and had to be smuggled in, often on small boats from Dubai or across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan.

They started to show up in big numbers at the end of the last big wave of protests in 2022, when Musk said his company would seek an exemption to sanctions for his terminals.

Yahyanejad said his organization, NetFreedom, sent thousands of Starlink kits to nonprofits in the country. Others were brought in via commercial intermediaries.

Iran has pushed the U.S. through the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, to ban Starlink service within its territory. The U.S. and Starlink have resisted enforcing the ban beyond cutting off terminals identified by Iran.

The internet shutdown is deepening the economic crisis that triggered the protests. Businesses in Iran—already struggling with sanctions, inflation and now widespread strikes—have been hit by the loss of online services and the frequent interruption of domestic calls, Iranians abroad who have spoken to their contacts in Iran said.

“Because there is no email, their business is at standstill,” Rashidi said.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 13, 2026, print edition as 'Iranians Rely on Starlink To Get Out Protest Video'.

WSJ

3. Deposed Shah’s Son Seeks Center Stage Amid Iran Protests

Summary:

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, is trying to move to the center of Iran’s protest-driven crisis as a potential transitional leader. Some protesters raise pre-1979 flags and chant in his favor, but others reject both monarchy and the Islamic Republic, reflecting deep ambivalence about his father’s repressive rule. Pahlavi’s critics accuse him of exaggerating support and strong-arming rivals in exile. His appeal rests on nostalgia, desperation, and the absence of alternative figures inside Iran. He publicly urges U.S. intervention and courts POTUS, which risks tying Iran’s opposition to external power and old regimes.

Comment: Beware another Chalabi. One American weakness is that we gravitate toward those who speak English well. I have no knowledge of Reza Pahlavi (other than knowing he is the son of the former Shah). But we better think long and hard about exploiting or supporting someone like him without having sufficient confidence that he will be an acceptable leader. And we cannot simply take him at his word as to his acceptance by the people.

The question is should the United States engage a polarizing exile like Reza Pahlavi as a potential transitional figure, or would any visible alignment with a monarchic legacy undercut the legitimacy of indigenous, plural, bottom-up leadership that is essential for durable change in Iran and instructive for future transitions in places like north Korea.

Deposed Shah’s Son Seeks Center Stage Amid Iran Protests

NY Times · Aaron Boxerman · January 13, 2026

Reza Pahlavi, living in exile in the United States, has long marketed himself as a future leader of Iran. His father’s repressive legacy casts a long shadow.

By Aaron Boxerman

Jan. 13, 2026

Updated 5:48 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-protests-shah-son-pahlavi.html

A demonstration in London on Sunday called on the British prime minister to support the Iranian people. Some Iranian protesters have rallied around Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran.Credit...Isabel Infantes/Reuters

Jan. 13, 2026Updated 5:48 a.m. ET

As mass protests have swept Iran, some Iranians have called for an unexpected figure to take center stage — Reza Pahlavi, scion of the Pahlavi monarchs who ruled Iran before their ouster 47 years ago.

Mr. Pahlavi has long sought to market himself as a potential counterweight to the clerics who wield power in Tehran. But Iranians are bitterly divided about him, with many recalling the repressive rule of his father, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

For two weeks, huge crowds of Iranians have joined the protests that now openly seek the ouster of the Islamic Republic. Human rights groups say hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested in the government crackdown.

Protesters have been filmed raising the flag flown by the government before the Islamic Revolution. Some demonstrators appear to be rallying around Reza Pahlavi, even chanting, “Long live the shah,” using the Farsi word for “king.” Others reject any sort of authoritarian rule, chanting, “Death to the oppressor, be it king or supreme leader.”

Analysts say it is difficult to assess how many Iranians on the ground seriously hope Mr. Pahlavi would return as a future leader, because of both a government-imposed internet blackout and his own polarizing reputation. His critics accuse him of exaggerating his support within the country, and say they face frequent harassment and threats from his supporters.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran? , and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Last Thursday, many activist groups and dissidents, including Mr. Pahlavi, called for the mass protests. Huge crowds have taken to the streets of large metropolises and marginalized rural provinces alike.

Born in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in 1960, Mr. Pahlavi, now 65, was the second of five siblings. His father married three times, first to an Egyptian princess who gave birth to Mr. Pahlavi’s sister, Shahnaz. Mr. Pahlavi was born to his father’s third wife, Farah Diba, and as the oldest boy, he became the crown prince and heir apparent.

The Pahlavis’ autocratic rule was broadly secular, and they were close to the United States. But under the monarchy, the Iranian security services routinely arrested and tortured dissidents, a legacy that Mr. Pahlavi has either declined to address or sought to play down.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2009, Mr. Pahlavi was asked about his father’s repressive rule, particularly his “brutal secret police.” He did not directly address the question, saying that he wanted to focus on the future.

Popular fury finally boiled over in Iran in 1979, leading to the Pahlavis’ ouster and ushering in the rule of the Islamic Republic. The family fled to the United States, and Mr. Pahlavi has lived in exile there since the revolution.

Mr. Pahlavi graduated from the University of Southern California, married and had three daughters. He has continued his campaign against the Islamic Republic, urging its overthrow and pitching himself as a potential future leader for Iran.

But even in exile, Mr. Pahlavi has not managed to bring together under one banner Iranian opponents to the current government in Tehran, in part because of his insistence that he take charge, said Sanam Vakil, an Iran expert at Chatham House, a research institute based in London.

Mr. Pahlavi, nonetheless, has a base of supporters among the Islamic Republic’s opponents, in part because the Iranian government has jailed many other potential leaders, said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“It seems to be a broad base — the older generation with nostalgia for the past, the younger generation desperate for a redeemer and the disgruntled willing to support anyone who could topple this regime,” Mr. Vaez said.

In public remarks, Mr. Pahlavi has stressed that he hopes to serve as a transitional leader steering Iran toward democracy. But many Iranians are not fully convinced, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — leader of the Islamic Revolution — “made the same promise but ended up monopolizing power,” Mr. Vaez said.

Mr. Pahlavi also most likely needs the vote of another man who seems equally skeptical of his relevance: President Trump. Asked last week whether he would meet with Mr. Pahlavi, Mr. Trump demurred and suggested it would be better to see how things played out.

“Well, I’ve watched him and he seems like a nice person,” Mr. Trump said in a radio interview. “But I’m not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president. I think we should let everybody go out there and see who emerges.”

Mr. Pahlavi has, nevertheless, attempted to curry favor with Mr. Trump, writing on social media that the American president would “Make Iran Great Again" and comparing him favorably to former Democratic presidents, who, Mr. Pahlavi argued, had betrayed Iran.

On Sunday, Mr. Pahlavi said he supported U.S. intervention against the Iranian government, calling on Mr. Trump to follow through on his threats to retaliate militarily if protesters were killed.

Addressing Mr. Trump, Mr. Pahlavi said: “They know that you’re not going to throw them under the bus, as has happened before. This is why they are empowered — by the hope that you have their back.”

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.

See more on: Donald Trump, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

NY Times · Aaron Boxerman · January 13, 2026

4. U.S. Tries a New Playbook: Regime Management, Not Regime Change

Summary:

After capturing Nicolás Maduro, the United States is testing “regime management” in Venezuela: decapitate the top leader, keep the rest of the authoritarian system, and coerce behavioral change without full regime collapse or U.S. occupation. Washington aims to secure oil access, reduce drug flows, and limit Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence, while de-emphasizing rapid democratization. Hard line Chavista elites remain in control, and paramilitaries still patrol the streets. The model promises lower costs than Iraq or Afghanistan but ties the U.S. to discredited actors and risks state fracture if the remaining strongmen cannot maintain order or deliver reforms.

Comment: If “regime management” in Venezuela becomes the template for Iran, Cuba, or even future crises in north Korea, does relying on hostile but controlled elites produce sustainable stability and strategic advantage, or does it entrench corrupt power structures that undermine U.S. credibility, fuel anti-American narratives, and weaken the moral and cognitive foundations of long term competition with the CRInK and other like regimes?

U.S. Tries a New Playbook: Regime Management, Not Regime Change

WSJ

After costly failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Trump administration is betting that managing Venezuela’s autocracy is cheaper than dismantling it

By David Luhnow

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Jan. 12, 2026 2:39 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-trump-maduro-regime-change-9433883d?mod=WTRN_pos1

The Venezuelan acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has been a regime stalwart. Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

In the aftermath of the U.S. raid to seize Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, Washington is trying a new approach to regime change: Keep the regime—and try to change its behavior.

Having removed Maduro from power, the Trump administration has kept the rest of the dictatorship’s hard-liners in place, including top officials wanted by the U.S. for drug trafficking and other crimes. It also has gone out of its way to play down the importance of the Venezuelan opposition.

The goal, administration officials say, is to force Venezuela’s leaders in a more U.S.-friendly direction without risking the instability that comes with removing an autocratic government that has been in power for 27 years. Ultimately, it seeks to avoid U.S. boots on the ground in the kind of open-ended occupation that troubled U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and proved unpopular with the American public.

“This is not regime change as traditionally conceived. It is regime management—an attempt to reshape behavior without collapsing the system that produces it,” said Christopher Hernandez Roy, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., who specializes in Latin America.

The idea, he said, is to manage Venezuela rather than liberate it.

It is far too early to tell if the strategy will pay off. But its initial success means it could become a template for handling other regimes such as the one in Iran, where the Trump administration is considering strikes against the country’s theocratic government amid a crackdown on protests. Cuba’s ossified communist regime could be another target, analysts say.

Students heading to school Monday pass a mural depicting late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. Maxwell Briceno/Reuters

By taking out Maduro, the Trump administration hopes to get practical change on the cheap, including forcing Venezuela to open its oil industry to U.S. and foreign companies, reduce the flow of drugs to the U.S., and box out China, Russia and Iran. Any kind of transition to democracy seems a lower priority, at least for now.

The approach might be called “nation-coaching” rather than nation-building, said Javier Corrales, a political scientist whose research at Amherst College has focused on democracy and Latin America.

“It’s an innovative strategy,” Corrales said. The U.S. wants tangible changes from Venezuela’s regime, but it doesn’t want to send in the Marines, so it outsources stability on the ground to the bad guys—the regime.

“It’s a bit like removing Saddam Hussein but keeping the rest of his government in place,” he said. The big question is whether it will work, he added.

For most ordinary Venezuelans, the approach could avoid a bloody civil conflict but it dashes their hopes of a quick transition to democracy or economic recovery. More than a week after the ouster of Maduro, the same corrupt regime remains in place, with armed paramilitary squads roaming the streets. One encouraging sign is that several dozen political prisoners have been released in the past week.

So little has changed in Caracas that the regime is functioning as if Maduro had died from a heart attack rather than been taken prisoner to the U.S., said Eliot Cohen, Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela during his first term.

WSJ National Security Reporter Robbie Gramer explains the rationale behind President Trump’s military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro. Photo: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg News

The strategy is a departure from recent decades, during which U.S.-led forces ousted regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the war on terror, and in 1989 invaded Panama to topple Gen. Manuel Noriega on drug charges. In all three cases, the U.S. forced the collapse of the pre-existing regime, requiring tens of thousands of U.S. troops to try to keep order and create space for civilians to attempt to help set up a Western-style democracy.

Results were mixed at best: Panama became a stable democracy, Iraq endured a protracted civil war and is now a shaky democracy, and Afghanistan has reverted to the Taliban. The long and messy occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan cost thousands of American lives and cost taxpayers at least $4 trillion, according to estimates by Brown University’s Cost of War project—a cost in blood and treasure that turned many Americans against the idea of exporting democracy. Trump has long said he would avoid that kind of idealistic nation-building exercise.

After decades of aspiring to remake the world along western liberal lines, the U.S. is coming to terms with limits on U.S. power, said John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of military history at Yale University.

“The choice is between accepting that your own power has limits and that you’ll have to learn to live with some bad guys, or risk dissipating your power and the domestic roots that sustain it in the interest of turning the world into one of angels,” he said.

A member of an armed civilian group guards the entrance to a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 4. Ronald Pena R/EPA/Shutterstock

The Trump administration likely concluded that decapitating Venezuela’s entire leadership would require a ground invasion and prolonged military presence, risking fragmentation and violence between rival factions of the military and cocaine-trafficking groups allied with Maduro and his lieutenants, said Hernandez Roy.

A U.S. occupation of Venezuela would likely require at least 100,000 troops, according to John Polga-Hecimovich, who teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy and closely tracks American policy in Venezuela. That figure is short of the peak of about 170,000 in Iraq, but far more than the 27,000 used in Panama, a far smaller country.

“Trump doesn’t have the appetite for that, and his base doesn’t have the appetite for that. So the alternative is this,” said Polga-Hecimovich. It also turns out that while the U.S. isn’t very good at nation-building, it is good at the kinds of strikes the Trump administration has rolled out in the past year: bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and the daring raid that captured Maduro.

“The military is trained for this type of raid. We are really good at that—and we got to show Russia and China we are really good at that,” he said. The almost made-for-Hollywood raid in Venezuela was also a much easier sell to the American public than being mired on the ground for years, he added.

Absent a U.S. ground force, an immediate transition to opposition figures after the capture of Maduro was deemed unrealistic by the Trump administration because the opposition would have difficulty leading the government and military, which are staffed by regime loyalists.

U.S. troops in Baghdad in 2007, part of an extended boots-on-the-ground U.S. presence overseas that the current White House wants to avoid. DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

Trump has said he is open to meeting Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a regime stalwart who has long been close to Cuba, and said she has been “very good” so far. Opposition leader María Corina Machado, whom Trump has said lacks the clout to manage a transition in Venezuela, is due to meet Trump on Thursday. She is expected to press him on pushing a transition in Venezuela.

Although it doesn’t have boots on the ground, the U.S. has leverage: the threat of more military action against uncooperative regime members and the ability to seize Venezuela’s oil exports to starve the regime of money.

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Whether that leverage is enough to press regime leaders to make meaningful changes like an eventual transition to democracy remains to be seen.

The U.S. approach comes with risks. It binds the U.S. to a hard-line group of Venezuelan officials who have wrecked Venezuela’s economy, spent decades working to oppose the U.S., and worked with terrorist groups as well as U.S. enemies like Russia and Iran.

“Venezuela right now is closer to democracy than it was on Jan. 2, but it is also much closer to collapse than Jan. 2,” Polga-Hecimovich said. “Maduro held all these rival factions and competing groups together. Can Delcy do the same? Can she toe the line between obeying masters in Washington and keeping armed Chavismo on the ground happy?”

Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

John Polga-Hecimovich teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he is at the U.S. Naval War College. (Corrected on Jan. 12)

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Appeared in the January 13, 2026, print edition as 'U.S. Tries Fresh Tack on Regime Change'.

WSJ

5. Military Experts Reject Trump’s Logic That U.S. Must Own Greenland to Defend It

Summary:

U.S. officials and experts say POTUS’s claim that America must own Greenland to defend it contradicts decades of U.S. basing practice and alliance strategy. The United States operates more than 100 foreign bases on allied territory under bilateral agreements, not sovereignty. Denmark and Greenland’s 57,000 residents firmly reject any transfer of ownership while remaining open to expanded U.S. presence. Critics warn that insisting on ownership erodes NATO solidarity, raises doubts about U.S. commitment to defend non U.S. territory, and aligns with a new strategy that narrows U.S. obligations only to threats seen as directly impacting American interests.

Comment: If POTUS ties U.S. defense commitments to territorial ownership in Greenland, what signal does that send to allies from Denmark to South Korea and Japan about the reliability of U.S. security guarantees, and how might adversaries exploit any perceived conditionality in their own Arctic and global deterrence strategies.

Military Experts Reject Trump’s Logic That U.S. Must Own Greenland to Defend It

WSJ

President’s assertion runs counter to decades of policy and undermines deterrence, say former military and diplomatic officials

By Daniel Michaels

Follow

Jan. 12, 2026 11:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/military-experts-reject-trumps-logic-that-u-s-must-own-greenland-to-defend-it-fa71e537

Greenland is home to 57,000 people. Oscar Scott Carl for WSJ

President Trump’s assertion that the U.S. must own Greenland to expand its defenses there runs counter to decades of policy and undermines the deterrence of its global network of bases and alliances, say former American military and diplomatic officials.

Trump has said the U.S. should have full control of the island, a semiautonomous Danish territory that is larger than Alaska. In recent days, he has said the U.S. needs to own it to assure Arctic and U.S. security.

“When we own it, we defend it. You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it,” Trump said Friday. “And we’ll have to defend Greenland. If we don’t do it, China or Russia will.”

But military officials and diplomats say the U.S. has built the world’s most formidable assembly of overseas military bases without owning foreign soil.

The Defense Department manages or uses more than 128 foreign bases in at least 51 countries, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2024. Independent analyses have said the total number, including smaller facilities, could top 750 installations in 80 countries and territories. Many date to World War II and the Cold War.

In almost all cases, land is provided by host countries under bilateral agreements, without a change of ownership. Host countries generally permit the U.S. to build and operate facilities, as spelled out in detailed diplomatic documents.

“We don’t need ‘ownership’ in order to conduct all the operations we would like to do,” said retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Overseas bases are the backbone of America’s global defense posture, which a Defense Department document describes as “the fundamental enabler of U.S. defense activities and military operations,” which also advances U.S. strategic interests, according to the Congressional report. Of 1.3 million active-duty U.S. military personnel, almost 13% are based overseas, according to the Defense Department.

The biggest U.S. overseas military installations are in Japan, Germany and South Korea. Those countries and other allies not only provide land but also contribute to U.S. operating costs.

According to the Pentagon, more than 53,000 active-duty troops are stationed in bases across Japan and more than 36,000 are in Germany. Landstuhl Regional Medical Center there is the Pentagon’s largest overseas medical facility, treating servicemembers from across the hemisphere. The adjacent Ramstein Air Base employs more than 12,000 service members and civilians on approximately 4,000 acres.

Over the past 15 or so years the Pentagon has shifted away from running its own large overseas installations to using sites belonging to allies and partners, an approach dubbed “places, not bases,” according to the Congressional report.

The Guantánamo Naval Station in Cuba is an exception where the host country deems U.S. presence illegitimate. The facility was established under open-ended diplomatic agreements struck decades before the 1958 communist revolution. But even there, the U.S. doesn’t own the land.

The motorcade of Vice President JD Vance traveled through Pituffik Space Base in Greenland last year. Jim Watson/Pool photo/Associated Press

Greenland, located just north of eastern Canada, is a crucial gateway to the Arctic Ocean. It also sits beneath the flight paths of potential intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from parts of Russia or China.

Danish leaders have said Greenland isn’t up for grabs and any decisions about the island’s future lies primarily with its 57,000 residents.

The U.S. since the 1940s has considered Greenland crucial to national security and during the Cold War had 17 bases on the territory. The U.S. now operates just one base there, a Space Force facility focused on tracking potential missile attacks.

Denmark, a founding member of NATO, has said it is open to discussing an expanded U.S. footprint on Greenland. Copenhagen last year also bowed to pressure from Trump and pledged to significantly boost its own Arctic military presence.

A Danish navy ship patrolling the waters off Greenland in March. Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Greenland, and the sovereign state Denmark, have always been courteous and responsive hosts going back many decades,” said Stavridis.

Richard Fontaine, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to former Republican Sen. John McCain, among other diplomacy-related positions, said Trump’s argument that “you don’t defend leases” amounts to a “No One Washes a Rental Car theory of international relations.” In other words, a country only defends or cares about its own territory, but not that of other countries.

“That makes sense for private property but not for nations,” said Fontaine, who now runs the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. He said that the U.S. is committed to defending many allies without owning their territory.

Trump defended Israel last year, Fontaine noted as an example, and many allies have fulfilled pledges to defend the U.S. “The whole point of alliances is mutual defense of one another’s territory,” he said.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme commander, said on Sunday in Sweden that allies are expanding joint Arctic activities and “military cooperation in this region has never been stronger.” He declined to “comment on the political dimensions of recent rhetoric.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said Trump’s stated desire to take Greenland “poses a grave threat” to the 32-country alliance.

“Merely suggesting that the U.S. can only be secure if it owns Greenland raises fundamental questions about its willingness to defend countries that it doesn’t own,” said Daalder.

Daalder was one of 14 former diplomats and national-security officials from both parties who on Friday published a letter praising Denmark as a staunch ally and criticizing Trump’s posture on Greenland.

“Far from strengthening U.S. security, musing about taking Greenland only weakens Alliance solidarity, undermines American credibility as a trusted ally, and diminishes deterrence,” the letter says.

WSJ’s Max Colchester reports from Greenland’s capital, where President Trump’s threats to buy or seize the island are beginning to sink in. Photo: WSJ/Max Colchester

Administration officials have been scornful of such thinking, reflecting a fundamental shift in American foreign policy that was set out most starkly last month in a new national-security strategy. Its fifth paragraph says that after the Cold War, “American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”

The document is being seen as a playbook for U.S. action. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on CNN last week that the U.S. “is the power of NATO” and that for the U.S. to secure the Arctic region and defend NATO interests, “obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.”

Even serving politicians from Trump’s own party have denounced that position.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said on Wednesday in the Senate that Miller’s assertion of a need to own Greenland “is absurd.” Tillis, the Republican leader of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group and a Trump supporter, lauded Denmark’s contribution to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan as exemplary.

“This nonsense on what’s going on with Greenland is a distraction” for Trump, Tillis said, praising the president. “And the amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.”

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

WSJ

6. The Iranian Regime Could Fall: But a U.S. Strike Would Prop It Up

Summary:

Iran’s nationwide protests spring from deep economic collapse, environmental crisis, and long standing political frustration, uniting merchants, students, workers, and some clerics against a visibly exhausted regime. Khamenei faces budget revolt, elite splits, and a self admitted inability to govern. The opposition is fragmented and lacks a single accepted leader, yet Iran retains functioning republican institutions and a history of citizen driven reform. The authors argue that U.S. or Israeli strikes would rally Iranians around the flag, as in the June war, extending regime survival when indigenous pressure alone could eventually topple the theocrats.

Excerpts:

Iran does not need a government built from scratch. It already has executive and legislative branches of government, a popularly elected president, and representatives who appoint justices to the judicial branch—even if the independence of those three branches of state is undermined by their subordination to Iran’s theocratic wing. Most important, Iran has previous experience with citizen-driven political change, during the constitutional revolution of 1905–6. That democratic breakthrough resulted in political reforms including a popularly elected parliament, multiple political parties, a free press, and civic involvement from all societal groups. Iranians can replicate those events in the twenty-first century.

The plain fact is that the Khamenei regime’s days are numbered, at least in its present form. Even with brutality, the ayatollah and his cohort are struggling to drive protesters off the streets. Missiles are not needed. Iran’s citizens can topple the theocrats on their own.

Comment: Quite a confident concluding statement above. If Iran’s regime is eroding from within, how should the United States balance visible coercive power and support to Iranian civil society so that it accelerates indigenous political change rather than repeating Venezuela by unintentionally rescuing the very regime it seeks to constrain? Or conversely to make the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or do we stand back and watch the Iranian people topple the theocrats on their own?

The Iranian Regime Could Fall

Foreign Affairs · More by Jamsheed K. Choksy · January 13, 2026

Jamsheed K. Choksy and Carol E. B. Choksy

But a U.S. Strike Would Prop It Up

January 13, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/iranian-regime-could-fall?utm

Iranians protesting in Tehran, Iran, January 2026 MAHSA / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images

JAMSHEED K. CHOKSY is Distinguished Professor of Iranian and Central Eurasian Studies in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and Director of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center at Indiana University.

CAROL E. B. CHOKSY is Senior Lecturer of Strategic Intelligence in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University.

• More by Carol E. B. Choksy

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Many thousands of Iranians are again risking their lives to protest their authoritarian, theocratic regime. And as it has done during previous protests, the regime is responding by cutting off the country’s Internet access, unleashing violence on its citizens, and blaming foreign scapegoats. The protests’ death toll is rising: Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based nongovernmental organization, estimates that over 600 demonstrators have been killed nationwide since late December.

Perhaps emboldened by his recent ouster of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to launch military strikes if Tehran continues to repress protest. The United States “will start shooting too,” he warned on January 6, if Iranian protesters keep getting killed. Tehran’s heavily armed troops and militias have brutally suppressed previous demonstrations, and there is a genuine need to prevent a larger massacre. Moreover, the Islamic Republic appears more fragile than ever after last June’s 12-day war. The regime seems incapable of addressing the root causes of the economic crisis that has driven its people to the streets; protests have spread from Tehran to every corner of the country, revealing Iranians’ widespread lack of faith that their current leaders can set the country on a better course.

All these factors surely increase the Trump administration’s temptation to deal Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime a deathblow—or even a warning shot to try to convince it to negotiate a change in governance. But an attack by Trump would damage the protest movement far more than the regime and could undermine an effort that has plenty of momentum for change on its own.

THE LAST STRAWS

These protests represent broader concerns than did Iran’s other, recent popular uprisings. After Iran’s 2009 presidential election, widespread demonstrations broke out over vote rigging; in 2019, an overnight spike in gas prices prompted large protests; and 2022’s “Women, Life, Freedom” protests focused on the theocratic regime’s draconian punishment for behavior and dress-code violations. But although the crash of the Iranian rial—which, in late December, declined in value by 50 percent—was the immediate trigger for the ongoing protests that began on December 28, that devaluation merely represents the broader economy’s catastrophic condition: for most Iranians, the country has become unlivable. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, food prices overall have jumped by 72 percent since January 2025. An Iranian government spokesman warned that they could rise by another 20 to 30 percent in the coming weeks.

For many years, Tehran regulated and subsidized the prices of essential commodities such as rice and cooking oil, but after the currency devaluation cut into the regime’s economic reserves it has instructed that free-market prices should prevail. But few Iranians can afford to pay these prices, thanks to longer-term disastrous shifts in the Iranian economy. Between January and December of 2025, inflation soared by over 48 percent and housing costs climbed by almost 37 percent. According to the government-run Statistical Center of Iran, the average Iranian would now have to save for 100 years to be able to purchase a modest apartment in a major city.

Meanwhile, crumbling infrastructure and outdated equipment have stalled Iran’s industrial expansion. The country’s economy relies on oil and gas for 80 percent of its exports and 30 percent of national revenue, a dependence that will not go away even if U.S. sanctions are lifted. Domestic manufacturing has largely ground to a standstill as customers are unable to pay for orders. Work stoppages and strikes are increasingly frequent. Together, these factors drove GDP growth down from 5.3 percent in 2023 to 0.6 percent in 2025. A shadow economy has flourished as the formal economy has stalled, but the benefits of commodity smuggling and human trafficking disproportionately flow to elites because of judicial corruption.

For most Iranians, the country has become unlivable.

Educated youth and professionals have been hit especially hard. The country’s overall unemployment is officially 9.2 percent, with youth unemployment around 23 percent. But these numbers likely underestimate the scale of the problem. Iran’s population is well educated—over 61 percent of both men and women have completed a university degree, according to the World Bank—but few can gain any economic rewards or professional stability from their knowledge.

Citizens are also frustrated by the theocratic regime’s reckless exploitation of Iran’s natural resources, which has accelerated environmental degradation. Major rivers supplying Isfahan and Shiraz with water now routinely run dry, and Tehran is running out of water. In November 2025, the government proposed a likely unworkable plan to relocate the nation’s capital to the southeastern coast of the Persian Gulf. Pollution, meanwhile, is turning the urban air toxic and extreme heat is rendering parts of the country uninhabitable, especially around the southern and southwestern oil and gas fields. Population migration northward is depleting the oil industry’s workforce, and rising temperatures are limiting farmers’ ability to raise livestock and harvest. The Iranian government has been incapable of managing climate change, in part because of corruption among officials tasked with implementing remediation projects.

One factor not actively influencing the protests is the collapse of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance and the country’s various military humiliations by Israel and the United States since October 7. Although citizens are, by and large, relieved that the regime is incurring less expense supporting foreign proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, ordinary people have yet to see any real benefits.

A REGIME ON THE ROCKS

Like other successful domestic revolts in Iran—the 1905–6 constitutional revolution and the 1978–79 Islamic Revolution—the recent demonstrations unite men and women from a range of socioeconomic classes and professions: merchants, public and private employees, students, seminarians, public intellectuals, and moderate Shiite clerics. Although merchants facing business collapse initially organized the demonstrations, university students and unemployed young adults picked up on this momentum in cities across the country. The government inadvertently helped spread the protests to smaller villages by criticizing protesters in state media; the reporting prompted otherwise isolated citizens to express their discontent. Now the uprising has become self-sustaining.

Iran’s government has sought to placate the public by announcing an increase of more than 300 percent to the monthly credit subsidy that much of the population receives. But the truth is that Iran’s central bank does not have the money to deliver this promise. If it tries to pay off citizens, it is likely to trigger a further depreciation of the rial. Iran’s domestic problems simply cannot be solved without integrating Iran’s economy into the region and the world. This is why Tehran has made some rapprochements with Riyadh and suggested a willingness to negotiate with Washington and European governments.

But Khamenei is now in a Catch-22: he understands that opening Iran’s markets and society enough to fix its economic problems will also speed the end of his rule. So he and some other hard-line leaders have resorted to blaming alleged external instigators. State-controlled media outlets claim that the protests are “manufactured chaos” originating from spy agencies in Israel, Washington, and even the United Kingdom.

Iranian leaders are more split on how to respond than they have been in the past. Iranians know that Khamenei cannot halt, let alone reverse, these rapidly mounting national crises. In December, Iran’s parliament rejected the executive branch’s proposed 2026 budget, declaring to President Masoud Pezeshkian that it was inadequate to address the country’s problems. The regime has raced to appoint a new central bank governor, hopelessly tasked with lowering the inflation rate, stabilizing the currency, and curtailing the shadow economy all at once. Pezeshkian and other senior officials have thrown up their hands and instructed regional authorities to solve crises locally.

Pezeshkian himself has made a series of extraordinary admissions of failure, acknowledging to government officials in December that “the government is stuck, really badly stuck. … Catastrophes are raining down. … The problem is us.” He told a group of university students, “If someone can do something, by all means go for it. I can’t do anything; don’t curse me.” The antigovernment demonstrations have forced Tehran to ask opposition leaders for dialogue. On December 30, in another unprecedented move, an official administration spokesperson acknowledged that “we see, hear, and recognize the reasons for protests.” These are signs that the regime knows it is on the ropes.

BOOMERANG EFFECT

The success of the protests in generating real change is not guaranteed. One major problem handicapping the demonstrations is that the protesters also have not rallied behind a single public face. During the Islamic Revolution, by contrast, the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the uprising against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, creating a unifying national figure for the cause.

The various Iranian dissident groups supporting the protests—and which could lead a post-Khamenei regime—also lack a shared ideology and method. Former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, retains symbolic support in a country with a long imperial history. The United States and Israel could turn to him to try to stabilize a post-theocratic Iran; Pahlavi even has an administrative plan sketched out to restore the monarchy. But having spent almost 50 years in exile, Pahlavi and his advisers have very limited organizational capacity within Iran. And Iranians may not want to risk a return to an older form of absolutist rule—especially not a monarchy beholden to the United States, which supported the shah.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, meanwhile—an opposition coalition periodically favored in Washington—is linked to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK. The MEK has some organizational capacity within Iran, but it is widely disliked by many Iranians for its support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and for its Marxist orientation. The leaders of the so-called Green Movement, which came close to overthrowing Khamenei’s government during a wave of 2009–10 protests, are now elderly and remain in government detention. If they were freed, they could play a role in transitioning Iran to more secular and representative government. So could former Iranian presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, who both attempted reforms during their terms in 1997 to 2005 and 2013 to 2021, respectively.

There is one thing, however, that might unify the country temporarily, but in the wrong way: a foreign attack. Iran’s leaders know that U.S. or Israeli strikes would shift ordinary citizens’ focus away from protesting. Antigovernment protests were gaining momentum last June, when the 12-day war broke out. But as Israeli and U.S. bombs fell, ordinary citizens had to go into hiding, giving Tehran a six-month reprieve from popular discontent. Trump’s threats do not seem to be making the regime more reluctant to brutalize protesters, and in recent days, commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have spoken about launching preemptive strikes to tempt the United States and Israel into retaliating. In a Sunday interview on state television, even the usually relatively temperate Pezeshkian’s rhetoric became more hard-line: he blasted the protesters as “rioters” and “terrorist elements,” echoing Khamenei.

HOMEMADE LEVERAGE

Exactly when and how Iran’s current regime will fall is unclear. Khamenei, who is 86, could cling to power until he is incapacitated or dies. Midlevel Revolutionary Guards leaders, seeking to preserve their organization’s economic clout, may step in and impose military rule. Protesters could overwhelm local and national security forces, forcing pro-regime religious leaders and politicians to flee. But irrespective of their feelings about their regime, Iranians in the country have no desire for U.S.-led regime change. They have seen it fail along their own borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in the first few days of 2026, they have witnessed the United States’ incursion into Venezuela with no plan for political succession or stabilization. They do not want the Trump administration to plunder their oil industry, either.

Iran does not need a government built from scratch. It already has executive and legislative branches of government, a popularly elected president, and representatives who appoint justices to the judicial branch—even if the independence of those three branches of state is undermined by their subordination to Iran’s theocratic wing. Most important, Iran has previous experience with citizen-driven political change, during the constitutional revolution of 1905–6. That democratic breakthrough resulted in political reforms including a popularly elected parliament, multiple political parties, a free press, and civic involvement from all societal groups. Iranians can replicate those events in the twenty-first century.

The plain fact is that the Khamenei regime’s days are numbered, at least in its present form. Even with brutality, the ayatollah and his cohort are struggling to drive protesters off the streets. Missiles are not needed. Iran’s citizens can topple the theocrats on their own.

Foreign Affairs · More by Jamsheed K. Choksy · January 13, 2026

7. How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler

Summary:

Marco Rubio has reinvented himself from Reaganite internationalist to chief enabler of POTUS’s transactional “America First” foreign policy. As Secretary of State and de facto national security adviser, he justifies unilateral raids like the Maduro capture, frontloads oil and migration interests, and defends deep cuts to alliances, USAID, democracy programs, and soft power even as China fills vacuums. Inside State, Trump loyalists and ideologues reshape personnel and policy while Rubio tries to moderate at the margins, especially on Ukraine and Latin America. He gains proximity to power yet presides over the erosion of U.S. credibility, diplomacy, and normative leadership.

Comment: A few strategic thoughts/questions from this fascinating read:

If Rubio’s State Department hollows out diplomacy, aid, and human rights in favor of coercive deals and tariffs, what tools remain for the United States to compete with China and Russia in the Global South and the Asia-Indo-Pacific without defaulting to force?

Does Rubio’s choice to normalize raids, regime management, and personalized deal making create a usable template for future crises in Iran or north Korea, or does it accelerate the perception of the United States as an unreliable, opportunistic power that others must hedge against?

By trading his earlier principles on alliances, democracy promotion, and immigration for influence with POTUS, is Rubio preserving a moderating voice in a volatile system, or teaching future American leaders and foreign partners that values are fully negotiable in U.S. statecraft.

How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler

The New Yorker · Dexter Filkins · January 12, 2026

As Secretary of State, the President’s onetime foe now offers him lavish displays of public praise—and will execute his agenda in Venezuela and around the globe.

By Dexter Filkins

January 12, 2026

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/01/19/marco-rubio-profile

For Rubio, taking down the regimes in Venezuela and Cuba has long been seen as a way of ascending to the White House.Illustration by AJ Dungo; Source photograph by Andrew Harnik / Getty

Just after midnight on January 3rd, as American commandos surged into Caracas to seize President Nicolás Maduro, large sections of the city went dark. Blackouts are common in Venezuela, but the blasts that followed confirmed the arrival of the United States military, which for weeks had kept thousands of troops poised offshore. The sky filled with helicopters—some skimming the rooftops—along with fighter jets and B-1 bombers. They had been dispatched to protect a Delta Force team heading to the Fuerte Tiuna military complex, where Maduro and his wife were hunkered down. There, the commandos undertook an operation that they had spent months practicing at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky: they shot their way past the defenses and, as the Maduros struggled to shut a heavy metal door, took them into custody. More than fifty of Maduro’s guards were killed, but the Americans left nearly untouched. President Donald Trump told Fox News afterward that it was like “watching a television show.”

At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the morning after the attack, a similar sense of gleeful unreality prevailed. Trump boasted of “an assault like people have not seen since World War Two,” and said, “We’re a respected country again . . . maybe like never before.” But his account of the motivation for the attack shifted. For years, he and his supporters have maintained, with little public evidence, that Maduro was a narco-trafficker on a global scale, bringing vast amounts of cocaine into the U.S. From the podium, Trump insisted that Maduro had “waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States,” adding that he was responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths. Though Trump spoke of America’s interest in safeguarding “the good of the Venezuelan people,” he mentioned the country’s oil reserves—the largest in the world—no fewer than twenty times. The infrastructure needed fixing, he said: “It’s, you know, blowup territory. Oil is very dangerous. It’s a very dangerous thing to take out of the ground. . . . We’re going to be replacing it, and we’re going to take a lot of money out so that we can take care of the country. Yeah.”

As Trump spoke, Marco Rubio, his Secretary of State, stood quietly behind him. When he was finally called to the microphone, Rubio began what has become a familiar routine, offering Trump the kind of adulation that is ordinarily reserved for heroes. “People need to understand that this is not a President that just talks and does letters and press conferences,” he said. “If he says he’s serious about something, he means it.” He hailed Trump as not just “a President of action” but also “a President of peace.”

Rubio proceeded to the second phase of his routine: explaining that Trump’s most flamboyant measures—in this case, the nighttime invasion of a sovereign state to capture its leader without congressional authorization—were, in fact, completely ordinary. “Nicolás Maduro was indicted in 2020 in the United States,” he said. “He is not the legitimate President of Venezuela. That’s not just us saying it. . . . He’s not recognized by the European Union, in multiple countries around the world.” Rubio pointed out that the State Department had offered a fifty-million-dollar reward for Maduro’s arrest. Trump interrupted over his shoulder. “Don’t let anybody claim it,” he said. “Nobody deserves it but us.”

As Secretary of State and also national-security adviser, Rubio is, at least in theory, the most powerful American diplomat since Henry Kissinger. But compared with Kissinger, whose crusading interventionism defined a generation of America’s global relationships, Rubio often seems like a support staffer for the President. As Trump lurches from one crisis to another, Rubio—calm, articulate, and capable of projecting a Boy Scout’s earnest charm—justifies his policies, soothes rattled allies, and puts the best face on initiatives that only a few years ago he would have denounced.

In the days after the attack on Venezuela, many observers made the inevitable comparison to Iraq, another oil-rich country where the U.S. toppled a strongman ruler, prompting a years-long quagmire. Rubio insisted in a series of appearances that the situations were not at all the same. On “Face the Nation,” he said, “A lot of people analyze everything that happens in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 through, you know, 2015 or ’16. . . . This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different.”

Since Trump began his second term, his “America First” foreign policy has brought about an epochal change in the country’s place in the world, as the U.S. casts off traditional commitments to pursue its immediate self-interest. The sprawling network of alliances, treaties, and foreign-assistance programs that the U.S. built at the end of the Second World War is being radically altered or simply discarded. Since January, the U.S. has cut tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian and development aid, withdrawn from such landmark agreements as the Paris climate accord, and curtailed reporting on human-rights abuses. Entire government departments have been hollowed out. In their place is a highly personalized approach, largely dependent on the whims of Trump, whose foreign policy reflects a harsher, stingier, and less forgiving country.

Rubio, at fifty-four, is the policy’s unlikely executor. Before joining the Trump Administration, he spent his career advocating for America as the leader of the world’s democracies; the son of Cuban immigrants, he was a champion of aid to impoverished countries. Some observers believe that Rubio is working to provide consistency and balance in a tumultuous Administration. “He’s doing his best to moderate Trump’s worst impulses,” a European foreign minister told me. “He understands the stakes. He’s whispering in Trump’s ear. But he has only so much influence.” Others are less charitable. They believe that Rubio is presiding over the remaking of America as a kind of rogue nation, just as an axis of authoritarian rivals, led by China, rises to challenge the world’s democracies. “Trashing our allies, gutting State and foreign aid, the tariffs—the damage is going to take years to repair, if it can ever be repaired,” Eric Rubin, a retired ambassador who headed the State Department’s diplomatic union, told me. “I hope it ruins his career.”

By most standards, Rubio occupies a privileged post: his desk in the White House is just a few steps from the Oval Office. But it is not the position that he hoped to occupy. In 2016, Rubio ran for President and lost to Trump in the primary. He now serves his former opponent—an unstable leader who regularly traduces institutions that Rubio spent his career supporting. “Ultimately, he has to be a hundred per cent loyal to the President, and when the President zigs and zags Rubio has to zig and zag, too,” a former Western diplomat told me. “He’s had to swallow a lot of shit.”

The election in 2016 is the only one that Rubio has ever lost—an anomaly in a carefully managed ascent. In 1999, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, from a largely working-class area of West Miami; though he didn’t live in the district when the seat opened up, he moved there in time to campaign. Just four years later, he announced that he would run for speaker of the House. Florida had recently imposed term limits, and many senior House members were retiring. The leadership was open, and Rubio wanted it.

Many people in Florida politics felt that the time was right for a Cuban American speaker, but Rubio faced a difficult issue. For years, public-school teachers in Florida’s cities were paid more than those in rural areas, to compensate for their higher cost of living. A powerful group of legislators, mostly from rural north Florida, wanted salaries equalized across the state. No candidate for speaker had supported the change; Gaston Cantens, a Cuban American legislator who represented Miami, had refused to do so in the previous speaker race and ended up dropping out. But Rubio was amenable. “The rural legislators got their formula, and in exchange they went with Marco,” a former senior Democrat in the legislature told me. “Cantens was a carcass on the side of the road.” Rubio won. The Florida Bulldog, a regional newspaper, later calculated that the change had cost Miami teachers nearly a billion dollars. “The one constant in Marco Rubio’s career is that he has betrayed every mentor and every principle he’s ever had in order to claim power for himself,” a political figure in Miami told me.

In Florida, term limits make it harder for elected officials to acquire deep experience, and Rubio’s legislative record is relatively thin. For his first address as speaker, he placed a book titled “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future” on every legislator’s desk. The pages were blank; Rubio said that he wanted to fill them with proposals gathered from voters. This effort resulted in a few dozen successful, though mostly marginal, pieces of legislation, including one that expanded scholarships for private-school education and another that created an advisory committee to help make the government more efficient. “Give him credit,” a lobbyist working in Florida at the time told me. “He didn’t have a lot of ideas himself. It was a clever thing to do.”

The same day that Rubio presented his idea book, he was inaugurated as speaker at the capitol. He gave a speech that summoned the experience of a young single mother, arguing that the government had a moral obligation to help her secure a better life for her child. Governor Jeb Bush, a longtime booster, sat in the front row, moved to tears. “I can’t think back on a time when I’ve ever been prouder to be a Republican, Marco,” he said afterward. He handed Rubio a golden sword, explaining that it was “the sword of a great conservative warrior”: a reference to the anti-Communist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had been part of his family’s folklore since George H. W. Bush served as a diplomat in China. Rubio hung the sword in the speaker’s office. In his memoir, “An American Son,” he called Bush “the man I most admired in Florida politics.”

In the memoir, Rubio wrote about the ambition that propelled him: “All my life I’ve been in a hurry to get to my future.” He has repeatedly evinced an instinct for seizing opportunities, sometimes in ways that angered his colleagues. (He wrote that, in pursuit of the speakership, he made “a series of terrible blunders.”) In 2009, when his tenure as speaker had ended, Rubio announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate. He was thirty-seven and mostly unknown statewide.

His main opponent was Charlie Crist, who was finishing a term as governor. At one point, Crist was thirty points ahead in the polls, and Rubio considered dropping out. But Florida’s Republicans were becoming more conservative, and the right-wing movement known as the Tea Party was gathering strength. Rubio adopted its platform, vowing to repeal Obamacare, lower taxes, and shrink the government.

Crist’s record in office made him vulnerable; he had governed as a moderate and endorsed an economic-stimulus plan that Obama passed after the financial crisis of 2008. Nearly every Republican governor had willingly accepted money from the plan, but Rubio, like many Tea Party candidates, argued that it was bankrupting the country. A pro-Rubio ad showcased a moment when Crist embraced Obama at a public event, and Rubio gleefully talked about it in interviews. “Why would I hug someone I don’t know?” he asked in one, smiling broadly with feigned bewilderment. Rubio captured the Party’s nomination, then the seat in the Senate. “Marco got lucky,” a Republican lobbyist in Florida told me. “Charlie fucked himself. He governed from the left, which he could get away with, but then hugging Obama? Marco just jumped on him.”

In the Senate, Rubio was known as a serious legislator with an engaging manner. He was passionate about football, which he’d played in high school and for a time in college; most mornings, he worked out in the Senate gym. “He wanted to be an N.F.L. player, but he can’t, so he’s a politician,” Alex Conant, who was the communications director for Rubio’s 2016 Presidential campaign, told me. “He approaches his life like an athlete does—very disciplined, very competitive.” A Senate staffer told me that Rubio often seemed like a different person in private: “In closed hearings, he’s funny and relaxed. The moment the doors open and the reporters come in, he changes. It’s a little sad.” Rubio is a crisp and polished speaker, especially in front of a camera; during the 2016 Presidential campaign, he was in demand on talk shows. “The TV bookers always wanted him, because whenever Marco came on their ratings went up,” Conant said.

The charm didn’t work on everyone. “He’s a hard guy to get close to,” a senator who knows Rubio told me. “After work, when we’d go out for a drink or a dinner, Marco never really went for that.” A former Rubio staffer said that he was an introvert, in a job that required relentless glad-handing. “He reads voraciously,” the staffer said. “Most senators don’t read.” During the 2016 campaign, Rubio wrote his own speeches, a rarity among modern politicians, and worked his way through a volume of “The Last Lion,” in which William Manchester depicts Winston Churchill in the years before he confronted Hitler.

Rubio’s focus was national security. He sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and on the Intelligence Committee, which oversees America’s spy agencies, including the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. He got to travel a lot. “Marco had never really left the U.S.—I think he went to Paris with his wife,” a former adviser to Rubio said. “The Senate helped him see the world.”

Rubio established himself as an heir to Ronald Reagan, who advocated relentless anti-Communism, robust military force, and unapologetic support for human rights abroad. “He always viewed domestic politics as political issues, as opposed to foreign policy, which he viewed as bipartisan, and more serious,” the former adviser told me. In 2014, after Russia invaded Crimea, Rubio gave an impassioned floor speech calling for a vigorous response—not just because the Ukrainians deserved help but also because the invasion threatened the global order. “We cannot allow this to go unpunished, and I tell you that the only way that this can be punished is if the free countries of the world rally together and impose sanctions and costs for having taken this action on Vladimir Putin and on his cronies,” he said. “And that will never happen . . . unless the United States of America leads that effort.”

When there were elections at stake, though, Rubio proved more malleable. After Obama won a second term, in 2012, G.O.P. leaders concluded that they had to find a way to appeal to Latino voters, so they decided to soften the Party’s stance on illegal immigration. For years, efforts to reform the immigration system had ended in stalemate, with Republicans favoring tougher border security and Democrats wanting to legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country. Now, with Republicans signalling that they were open to compromise, a deal began to take shape. The senators leading the initiative, four Republicans and four Democrats, became known as the Gang of Eight. The Republicans included such veterans as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, but Rubio emerged as the most important among them. He was the group’s lone Republican Latino, an articulate conservative from a state that had experienced waves of illegal immigration. G.O.P. leaders saw him as uniquely capable of selling the legislation in venues like Fox News. In 2013, he appeared on the cover of Time with the headline “The Republican Savior.”

But opposition began to rise from the Party’s surging right wing. In the Senate, a young aide named Stephen Miller compiled a handbook of statistics and talking points to discredit the bill. On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh railed against welcoming “illegals” and said, “It is all about expanding government, creating a power base that can never, ever lose.” Even as the legislation headed for victory in the Senate, some House members started backing away. After Rubio made a trip to New Hampshire to assess his chances in a Presidential campaign, he, too, withdrew his support. “An ‘all or nothing’ strategy on immigration reform would result in nothing,” Conant, his spokesman, said at the time. After Rubio signalled his ambivalence, the bill died in the House.

Rubio later insisted that he had abandoned the legislation because Democrats were trying to change it. But proponents of reform blamed him for the bill’s failure. Frank Sharry, an immigration advocate, said, “If Rubio had stayed with it, and provided leadership—if he’d had a backbone—we would have passed immigration reform.” Rubio’s Republican colleagues in the Gang of Eight were blunt about his prospects. “We don’t need another young guy not quite ready,” Graham said. “He’s so afraid of the right.”

The failure of immigration reform did not deter Rubio, who soon declared that he would run for President in 2016. The decision put him in direct competition with Jeb Bush, his friend and mentor—a leading candidate at the time. “Jeb fully expected that Marco would stand aside out of loyalty,” a former Rubio associate told me. “But Marco knew Jeb was not suited to the current moment.” (The friendship was ruptured, but the two have since made peace. “Marco is the prodigal son, and Jeb always forgives him,” someone who has worked with both men said.)

On the campaign trail, Rubio spoke of growing up in a family of Cuban immigrants. His father, Mario, was a hardworking bartender; his mother, Oriales, was a hotel maid. “You know what my parents achieved?” Rubio said at an event before the Florida primary. “They owned a home in a safe and stable neighborhood. They retired with dignity. And they left all four children better off than themselves. That’s the American Dream.”

But Trump, whose shameless venality was still a novelty in national politics, dominated the primary. Rubio’s efforts to push back gave the campaign its most colorful moments. He savaged Trump as a “con artist” who was perpetuating “the biggest scam in American political history.” After Trump dubbed him “Little Marco,” Rubio countered by mocking his relatively small hands—“and you know what they say about guys with small hands.” (His line about Trump’s spray tan was arguably wittier: “He should sue whoever did that to his face.”)

Rubio publicly apologized for the crude remarks, explaining that they had embarrassed his children. Yet, even as he and Trump exchanged insults, they developed a friendly rapport backstage, the former Rubio adviser told me: “They would joke with each other, when none of the other candidates would talk to Trump, because they thought he was too toxic, or they just didn’t like him.”

In the primary, Rubio lost every one of Florida’s sixty-seven counties, except for his home base, Miami-Dade. He dropped out of the race in time to run for reëlection to his Senate seat. He kept his distance from Trump, skipping the Republican Convention and staying away when he came to Florida to campaign. “Everyone assumed Trump was going to lose anyway,” Alex Conant told me. Instead, Trump won Florida and the Presidency., and his victory transformed the G.O.P.

Rubio won, too, and as he returned to the Senate he remade himself as a Trump-style partisan. In 2021, after Trump refused to accept that Joe Biden had won the Presidency, Rubio voted to certify the results, proclaiming that “democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election.” But, as Trump insisted that he had won, Rubio began casting doubt on the election, baselessly alleging fraud in places like Wisconsin and Arizona.

When Rubio released “An American Son,” in 2013, he wanted to tell the sunny story of a child of immigrants who’d risen on the strength of hard work and family values. Ten years later, he published “Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity.” It was an angry book, in which he excoriated the country’s leaders, Republican and Democratic, for conspiring to destroy the working class by shipping jobs overseas while concentrating on identity politics and transgender rights. In foreign policy, Rubio advocated a more focussed deployment of resources, aimed at confronting China. The book is closely argued but at times shrill and inconsistent. In one section, Rubio refers to the Biden Administration as “the most radical, Marxist presidency the country has ever seen.” Elsewhere, he lauds the Paycheck Protection Program, a huge COVID-relief bill that he helped design. Subsequent audits have found that the program, which cost more than eight hundred billion dollars, was riddled with inefficiency and fraud.

During Biden’s term, nominees for senior posts often came before the Foreign Relations Committee for approval. According to a Senate staffer who regularly attended committee meetings, Rubio frequently allowed nominations to proceed without raising objections—then afterward recorded his vote as a no. Though this practice is not uncommon, Rubio seemed unusually intent on creating a record to show that he had resisted Biden’s nominees. “Over the course of four years, he did this hundreds of times,” the staffer said.

In Trump’s first term, his foreign policy was a loosely articulated mix of positions and prejudices. Soon after taking office, he supplied Ukraine with sophisticated weapons to use against Russia; six months later, he held an inexplicably affectionate meeting with Putin in Helsinki, talking to him in private, with no advisers in the room. He denounced America’s European allies as “freeloaders” and “delinquents,” but he succeeded, where his predecessors had failed, in forcing them to spend more on their own defense.

Trump came into his second term with a more substantial policy, much of it provided by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. This vision was guided by two deep grievances. The first was that the U.S. was upholding international laws and alliances at the expense of ordinary citizens, who paid taxes to sustain the country’s overseas entanglements and who surrendered their children to its wars. The second was that America was being economically exploited. According to this idea, which most economists rejected, the U.S. was harmed by importing far more than it exported.

Under Trump, America would focus on dominating the Western Hemisphere, leaving Eurasia to China and Russia. The goal of foreign policy would be not diplomacy but commerce, enabled by tariffs on nearly all goods imported from foreign countries, friend or foe. Trump promised in his Inaugural Address, “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.”

Trump’s attack on the status quo reflected a momentous change: the bipartisan consensus that had characterized American foreign policy since the Second World War was breaking apart. Defenders of the status quo noted that the postwar period was a time of unprecedented peace, free of the great-power wars that had killed about a hundred million people in the previous century. The era of American supremacy had also brought immense prosperity; in 2025, the U.S. accounted for roughly a quarter of the world’s G.D.P.

But America First proponents say that this account fails to acknowledge the societal and economic devastation that swept many parts of the U.S. “Our country is a lot weaker in 2023 than it was, say, in 1983,” Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Roberts asserted that the American social order, measured by such things as marriage rates, had splintered, and that huge fiscal deficits meant that the country could soon “literally be bankrupt.” Rubio, in “Decades of Decadence,” offered his family as an economic benchmark: “This country has undergone immense economic and social changes since my parents first came to this country. Many of these changes have not been for the better.”

As the mood turned against foreign involvement, Tom Shannon was a mainstay at the State Department. Shannon was an archetypal Foreign Service officer: an Oxford graduate, fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, who served as a diplomat for thirty-four years, including stints as Ambassador to Brazil and, during Trump’s first term, as Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Shannon told me that the disillusionment with diplomacy began after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when the U.S. launched wars that went terribly wrong. “We spent trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all we got were dead kids,” he said. “And then, if you add in the financial crisis, the heartland of this country was thrown into a deep malaise.” Shannon drew a surprising comparison to the political upheavals of 1968. “Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and eventually Cesar Chavez all came out against the Vietnam War,” he said. “They believed that the focus on pumping resources into these conflicts deflects us from addressing the political issues in our own country.” Trump appealed to the MAGA base with a version of the same message, Shannon said: “How much is it costing us? How many hospitals in the United States, how many schools, how many roads, how many free-tuition universities, could we have built instead?”

Some supporters understood this vision as anti-interventionist. In reality, it was hostile to anything that prevented America from securing quick results, and to any alliance in which the U.S. didn’t have the better end of the deal. “Trump doesn’t talk about Central Europe or Indochina,” Shannon said. “He talks about Canada, Greenland, and Panama—the United States as a regional hegemon that protects itself from attacks coming over the Arctic. That means the Canadians have to be locked in. And what better way to lock them in than make them the fifty-first state? And Greenland? You can’t trust the Danes to do it. We’re going to have such a fearsome military that nobody is going to mess with us. And it’s not up to us to protect others.”

I told Shannon that this was the most lucid explanation of Trump’s foreign policy I’d heard in months of reporting. “That’s part of the problem,” he said. “This is one of the most inarticulate Administrations in American history.”

As the 2024 election approached, Rubio was on a shortlist of candidates for Vice-President—but, unlike J. D. Vance, he didn’t lobby for the job. “The President kept saying, ‘Why doesn’t he call me?’ ” a Washington lawyer who speaks to Trump often told me. When Vance, who is not a natural retail politician, made a series of awkward statements during the campaign, Trump sometimes mused that he would have been better off with Rubio. (The White House denied this.) “The thing about Marco is, he’s very comfortable with the guys,” the lawyer said. “He’s a guy’s guy—which I think is why Trump likes him.”

When Rubio was nominated for Secretary of State, America First advocates were suspicious that he represented the vestiges of the Old Guard. “Rubio was the neocon candidate in 2016,” Curt Mills, the editor of The American Conservative, told me. “Nobody forgot that.” But a senior White House official told me that Trump and Rubio were not as far apart on the issues as their 2016 campaign rhetoric had suggested. “Honestly, times have changed,” the official said. “The Party has changed. Marco has evolved. The President has evolved the other way. So, by the time they got together in January, there really wasn’t much of a gap. And there’s no question in Marco’s mind about who’s in charge.” The desire to have a steady hand running foreign policy meant that getting him through the Senate would be easy. “The White House understood that there wasn’t going to be any opposition,” Mills said. He was confirmed by a vote of 99–0.

Still, Rubio sometimes had to contort himself to meet the realities of Trump’s second term. Not long after taking office, he visited the American Embassy in Guatemala City to discuss painful news. The U.S. had been spending about two hundred million dollars a year to bolster Guatemala’s government and economy, in part to relieve the surge of migrants to the U.S. Now those initiatives were imperilled. Soon after taking office, Trump had signed an executive order freezing foreign assistance and had placed some ten thousand aid workers on leave. Days before Rubio’s visit, Elon Musk, the tech mogul charged with slashing government spending, had declared that the U.S. Agency for International Development would be abolished, and its surviving functions overseen by an office in the State Department. Aid to Guatemala would be cut by nearly forty per cent.

At the Embassy, Rubio spoke to staffers in the courtyard and could do little more than try to offer reassurance. According to a person familiar with the discussion, he said that he hadn’t known that there would be aid cuts when he’d agreed to become Secretary, and that he didn’t like them. Though he acknowledged that there would be changes to eliminate waste at U.S.A.I.D., he said that assistance would remain robust. “Rubio’s message was, he didn’t know about the cuts, didn’t sign off on them, and that he’d fight to restore them,” an American official who saw the address said.

A few weeks later, Rubio told a different story. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, he claimed that he’d made the cuts himself. “The DOGE team didn’t do any-thing,” Rubio said. “I did it. I was the one who made the decisions. . . . I remember being in a hotel—I believe in Guatemala—going through, line by line, on spreadsheets of contracts that were cancelled.” Afterward, Rubio changed his story yet again: in private meetings, he assured senators that he would try to reverse the cuts. “My impression was that he didn’t have much power,” a source on Capitol Hill told me.

As Rubio entered the State Department, a contingent was gathering there to carry out Trump’s agenda. A core group of influential supporters came from the Ben Franklin Fellowship, a network of conservative foreign-policy thinkers that seeks to reshape American diplomacy, much as the Federalist Society has reshaped the courts. The group—including Christopher Landau, who became Deputy Secretary—espoused a stringent resistance to “unlimited interventions” abroad. It was also determined to change the way that employees were hired and promoted. The fellowship’s members are mostly white men, and many of them argue that the department under Biden had privileged minority and female candidates. Simon Hankinson, a former Foreign Service officer who is now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told me, “We had two hundred and fifty years of racism in this country, and the Biden Administration decided that the only way to reverse that was with more racism.” Hankinson said that the left-wing ethos extended to installing Black Lives Matter and gay-pride flags at U.S. embassies, even in conservative countries. “Flying a gay-pride flag doesn’t go down well in East Africa,” he said.

The European foreign minister suggested that, amid the fervor of cost-cutting, Rubio had quietly worked to limit the damage: “He has protected, I think, sensible people at the State Department—and he has a couple of Trumpian commissars watching him at all times.” The minister explained that the White House had placed loyalists at the department: “Marco’s got people around him who he clearly didn’t pick, and who keep an eye on him.”

To help run the department, Rubio brought his two closest allies from his Senate office, Mike Needham and Dan Holler. Both were former longtime employees of the Heritage Foundation. Heritage rose to prominence in the nineteen-eighties as a think tank promoting small government at home and anti-Communism abroad. Since Trump’s first election, though, it had aligned itself more overtly with his views, sometimes taking a Christian-nationalist tone. A scholar who recently resigned from Heritage told me, “These are people who think Vladimir Putin is the savior of Christendom and the white race.”

Although Rubio never espoused anything like that in public, some of the new arrivals at State did. One of them was Darren Beattie, the acting Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Beattie, who has a Ph.D. in political theory from Duke, was a speechwriter for Trump during his first term, until he was fired after speaking at an event attended by white nationalists. Out of government, he routinely wrote racist and authoritarian missives on social media. A month before Trump’s victory in 2024, he posted, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” Beattie told me that he had not intended the posts to be read literally. “I approach Twitter in a provocative and sometimes hyperbolic manner to make an underlying point,” he said. Beattie is still at the State Department, and also presides over the recently renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.

The State Department released pronouncements unlike anything that had come from there before. In May, Samuel Samson, a twenty-seven-year-old senior policy adviser, published an article titled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” on the department’s Substack. In it, he claimed that élites were conspiring to destroy Europe’s ancestral heritage: “The global liberal project . . . is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people.” Much of the America First agenda is predicated on the idea that European culture is threatened, in both Europe and the U.S.; the White House’s newest National Security Strategy warned that Europe, amid waves of unrestrained immigration, faced “civilizational erasure.”

Even Rubio put out memos that would previously have been inconceivable. In April, an order was sent in his name to embassies around the world, urging employees to report colleagues for “anti-Christian bias.” The memo specified that “reports should be as detailed as possible, including names, dates, locations.” Violators would be disciplined, it noted. Another memo informed diplomats that they would be rewarded for “fidelity to the Secretary”—that is, to Rubio.

At times, the department seemed as if it were in the throes of a revolution. “It felt like Year Zero, when the Khmer Rouge took over—anything that came before 2025 should be purged,” a former longtime diplomat told me. In the weeks after Trump’s Inauguration, new political appointees gathered for meetings from which career diplomats were excluded; by some accounts, I.D.s were checked at the door. The appointees competed to demonstrate loyalist zeal. “There is an outer circle of MAGA people who are desperate to show that they’re part of the team, so they overcompensate,” the former diplomat said. On a trip to Europe to discuss aid programs in Afghanistan, a new Trump appointee announced to officials from some thirty countries that the U.S. would no longer take part. When the officials looked stunned, the MAGA appointee shut them down. “We’re not going to be repeating the failures of the past four years,” she said.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric around avoiding foreign entanglements, he has intervened indiscriminately around the globe. He ordered the destruction of Iran’s key nuclear facilities, loosing a stream of thirty-thousand-pound bombs—something Presidents before him had threatened but never done. He shipped immense numbers of sophisticated weapons to Israel, even as those weapons were deployed to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. He imposed steep tariffs on India, one of America’s most important allies, for buying Russian oil, but refrained from imposing them on China, which buys far more. He has made common cause with Christians in Nigeria, and spun up a phony “genocide” of white farmers in South Africa. “With Trump, you have to resist the temptation to intellectualize what he is doing,” a former National Security Council staffer told me. “They’re emotional responses, flying all over the place.”

In January, during one of Rubio’s first visits to the Oval Office as Secretary, Trump picked up the phone and called Laura Loomer, the right-wing influencer. Loomer had visited Panama, to film migrants passing through the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S., and also to document what she described as a Chinese takeover of the Canal Zone. Trump had posted some of Loomer’s footage on his Truth Social account and threatened to seize the canal, prompting Panamanians to burn effigies of him. During the call in the Oval Office, he said, “Laura, send Marco all your reports.” Rubio flew to Panama a few days later. In the capital, he met with the Panamanian President, José Raúl Mulino. The men entered a negotiating room stone-faced.

In the following months, Rubio emerged as one of the main enforcers of the President’s immigration crackdown. After leaving Panama, he visited El Salvador, where he made a deal with Nayib Bukele, the populist President, to accept about two hundred and fifty Venezuelan immigrants into a fearsome maximum-security prison called CECOT. Bukele has disregarded due process and repealed term limits in El Salvador; according to Human Rights Watch, prisoners at CECOT are routinely tortured. The Trump Administration alleged that the deportees were gang members and drug traffickers, although many did not have criminal records. The immigrants did not receive trials or deportation hearings. Trump removed them under the Alien Enemies Act, which gives the President enhanced powers in wartime; court challenges ensued. In exchange for Bukele’s coöperation, the U.S. paid his government about five million dollars. During a signing ceremony, Rubio called the deal “the most unprecedented, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”

Rubio has also used visas as a weapon against what the Administration regards as hostile elements. Since taking office, he has revoked the visas of at least eighty-five thousand people, many of them students at American universities, on the ground that they pose a threat to the “citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” of the United States. The revocations punished not just actions but also speeches, articles, and Facebook musings. In March, Rubio ordered American diplomats to scour the social-media posts of people who had applied for student visas. That month, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, was walking down a street in Massachusetts when she was seized by masked immigration agents, thrown into a van, and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. No charges were made public, but her supporters say that her offense was co-writing an op-ed supporting divestment from Israel. She was held for six weeks; her case is still unresolved.

Trump’s critics, including the President of Colombia and the former Presidents of Costa Rica and Panama, were also prevented from entering the country. Rubio barred judges from the International Criminal Court after they condemned Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, and he threatened to keep out foreigners who criticized Charlie Kirk, the assassinated pro-Trump commentator. He even paused visas for thousands of truck drivers, who are mostly from Mexico, warning that “the increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives.” One exception he made was for athletes; a team from Venezuela was allowed to attend the Little League World Series.

After taking over the State Department, Rubio fired some two hundred and fifty diplomats and about a thousand civil-service employees. The raw number—about seven per cent of the department’s U.S.-based staff—was not necessarily catastrophic; even with the reductions, the department was above its pre-pandemic level of employment. But the positions that were eliminated suggested a blunt, even indiscriminate, approach. Entire offices were closed or gutted, including the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy; and the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which dispatched officers to countries emerging from civil war.

Nowhere was the diminishment of America’s global ambitions more evident than in the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. Before Trump returned to office, the agency had distributed about forty billion dollars a year to support a vast array of initiatives, ranging from food assistance to training police to combat drug trafficking. The new Administration quickly eliminated ninety per cent of the agency’s staff. Rubio announced that he would cut more than eighty per cent of its programs, and approved sharp reductions to efforts that tracked human-rights abuses and provided health care, including for people with H.I.V. The cuts baffled some experts, especially given that the programs totalled less than one per cent of the federal budget. Richard Fontaine, an N.S.C. aide during George W. Bush’s Presidency, predicted that the Administration would come to regret its choices. “One day, they’re going to wake up and decide that they don’t want to bomb people—that they want to try something other than military,” he told me. “And many of the soft-power tools they once had are going to be gone.”

Jeremy Lewin, a former DOGE operative who helped restructure the State Department after the cuts, argued that U.S.A.I.D. had become a corrupt, inefficient, and “consultant driven” bureaucracy that rewarded a well-paid administrative class at the expense of the American people. “There’s a ton of waste,” he told me. “You had all these left-wing organizations paying their C.E.O.s millions of dollars. It became a cottage industry.” Lewin said that U.S.A.I.D. had pushed human-rights and democracy programs indiscriminately, in a way that alienated allies. “The idea was: We’re going to have a bunch of civil servants doing democracy promotion, civil liberties, and, whatever, running multilateral institutions,” he said. “We’re going to bring all these authoritarian countries together and liberalize them. That has demonstrably failed, of course, and now we see the rise of nondemocratic countries all around the world, the rise of China.”

Yet the cuts to foreign aid have undermined American influence across the globe, even as the U.S. is struggling to compete with China. Experts are concerned about China’s domination of the world market for rare-earth minerals, which are essential to the equipment that powers much of modern life. Many crucial sources are found in Africa and Asia. Tom Shannon, the former Under-Secretary, explained, “The battle for technological superiority and economic dominance is going to be built through the markets and the resources of the Global South. Why would you take the one instrument that you have that connects you to all the Global South countries—and not just to governments but to peoples and societies—and blow it up?” In addition to foreign aid, “you need a really competent, capable diplomatic corps that can walk the world for you and help secure these relationships,” Shannon argued. “Access to resources and markets can no longer be assured through colonialism. You can’t just go in and capture large swaths of the world and force these countries to hand over their minerals. The competition is going to be ferocious.”

Indeed, in many places where the United States has diminished its presence, China has already moved in. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe broadcast news to parts of Eastern Europe that were under Communist dominion. Its modern-day counterpart, Radio Free Asia, built an estimated weekly audience of fifty-eight million people in fifteen languages, employing reporters to dig up news in places where free expression is ruthlessly suppressed. In 2017, a Radio Free Asia reporter named Shohret Hoshur broke the story that the Chinese government was holding members of the fiercely oppressed Uyghur minority in concentration camps in Xinjiang. The story caused a sensation; after it emerged that inmates were being forced into slave labor, Rubio co-authored a bill in the Senate banning imports from the region. In 2020, Radio Free Asia revealed that China was covering up deaths from COVID-19.

When the cuts went into effect, the network lost ninety per cent of its staff, including nearly all the reporters. Bay Fang, the president and C.E.O., told me, “The Chinese picked up right where we left off.” After Radio Free Asia was forced to give up the sixty-plus frequencies it broadcast on, China’s government began using many of them to reach its former audience.

When U.S.A.I.D. was dismantled, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dispatched staff members to assess the impact in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The results, published in an ninety-one-page report, make for sobering reading. The report details dozens of defunct programs in places where America is struggling to secure its interests. One was in sub-Saharan Africa, where the U.S. had backed a half-billion-dollar loan and twenty million dollars in grants to develop a rail line that would move valuable minerals from Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to a port on the Atlantic Ocean. The project had attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investments. It was halted for almost all of 2025. China, meanwhile, continued building its own billion-dollar railway, from Zambia to the opposite coast. “The Chinese didn’t stop—they’re going to move the minerals straight to China,” a committee staffer who visited the region told me.

Lewin suggested that America could maintain its influence by directly cultivating national leaders. “What Secretary Rubio is doing is, he’s making a department that actually works in this new era of great-power competition,” he said. The State Department would still promote democracy, but mostly in hostile places such as Cuba and Venezuela, not in countries that are friendly to the U.S., no matter how autocratic they are. Much of the money from cancelled programs could be dispensed according to the desires of Rubio and Trump, rather than those of the State Department or aid groups. (Or those of Congress, which has legal authority over such funding.)

Lewin offered an example: In September, the Philippine President, Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos, visited Washington, and Rubio decided to give his country two hundred and fifty million dollars in public-health aid. The State Department provided few details about the Philippines grant or any other new program—not to the press, to the public, or to Congress—despite the fact that these disclosures are required by law. The committee staffer told me, “We’ve asked for information, and we’ve gotten almost nothing.” (The State Department says that it has fully complied with the law.) Periodically, the Administration announces new initiatives by press release. In Africa, it has pledged billions of dollars to deeply corrupt governments in Kenya, Liberia, and Uganda, claiming that the grants will encourage self-sufficiency. But without American aid workers overseeing programs, it’s not clear how the new system will insure that money isn’t wasted or stolen.

As a senator, Rubio made both moral and tactical arguments for helping other countries.“We don’t have to give foreign aid—we do so because it furthers our national interest,” he said in a speech in 2013. Rubio sat on the board of the International Republican Institute, which provided training to fledgling democracies, teaching candidates how to campaign and poll watchers how to observe elections. The institute operated in more than a hundred countries, including Cuba, where it supported dissidents facing down the Communist government. In the current round of cuts, the I.R.I. lost more than half its budget and furloughed two-thirds of its staff.

In 2022, Rubio wrote Biden a letter urging him to boost U.S.A.I.D.’s budget to counter Chinese influence. Three years later, when the aid cuts were announced, he spoke as though he had opposed U.S.A.I.D. all along, celebrating “the close-out of an agency that long ago went off the rails.”

In May, Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which had launched him toward confirmation just a few months earlier. The mood had soured among many of his former colleagues. The committee’s Democratic members savaged Rubio for diminishing America’s global role; the meeting grew so rancorous that Senator Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho who was Rubio’s closest friend in the Senate, had to repeatedly bang his gavel to bring order. The most bitter exchange came when Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, denounced Rubio’s role in gutting humanitarian aid. “We didn’t always agree, but I believe we shared some common values—a belief in defending democracy and human rights abroad and honoring the Constitution at home,” he said. “That’s why I voted to confirm you. I believed you would stand up for those principles. You haven’t. ”

Van Hollen spoke about Sudan, which is enduring a simultaneous famine and genocide. When Rubio signed off on U.S.A.I.D.’s demolition, the U.S. froze food assistance to Sudan, closing as many as eleven hundred emergency kitchens. “People died because of those actions—mothers, fathers, and children. And tons of emergency food that could have saved their lives was left rotting in warehouses, because you and Elon Musk refused to let U.S.A.I.D. do its job,” Van Hollen said. “I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State.”

Rubio shot back, “Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job.”

Many of the world’s diplomats are watching Rubio to see which of his old convictions he will stand up for. “The previous Marco Rubio, he was genuine,” a former senior European official said. “He did believe those things. He understands what is at stake, that people could die because of decisions that are being made. Once in a while, if you listen to Rubio, you get a sense that deep down, somewhere, there is still a person there, under a very thick layer of whatever it is that’s covering him.”

Rubio’s position in the Trump Administration is one of uncertain and shifting influence. In an ordinary government, the Secretary of State would take the lead on addressing a few crises around the world and spend the rest of the time maintaining relationships with America’s allies and trading partners—what a former U.S. official, who worked in diplomacy for many years, described as “global glue.” This Administration, however, does not believe in global glue. Though Rubio meets nearly every day with foreign dignitaries, his most consequential work, advising the President, takes place in private.

The two men have developed a comfortable rapport, enlivened by Rubio’s knowledge of sports trivia. “Marco sees the President as much as any single person,” the senior White House official said. But a former official who regularly advises the Administration told me that three other people are contending for Trump’s ear on foreign policy: the chief of staff, Susie Wiles; her deputy Stephen Miller; and the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. In any case, it is not clear that the President is listening. Rubio often sits in as Trump receives briefings from the intelligence agencies. They are typically unproductive. “Trump mostly just talks,” a former senior official who has attended briefings with the President told me. “He doesn’t listen to anything from anyone.”

One of Rubio’s persistent concerns is China, which he has criticized fiercely for years. At one point, he brought a Uyghur activist to the State of the Union address. Trump has been as inconsistent with China as he is with everything else; he imposed stiff tariffs, then lowered them, then raised them again, then backed away, each time spreading chaos in the world’s capital markets. (China was the only country to retaliate with significant tariffs of its own, and the President was forced to back down. As the former official who advises the Administration told me, “Trump felt that he’d been checkmated.”)

More recently, China sought to purchase sophisticated microchips from Nvidia, a California-based company that is a global leader in artificial intelligence. Many observers argued against allowing the transaction, saying that the U.S. would be sacrificing an important technological advantage. In early December, Trump abruptly announced that Nvidia could sell China advanced H200 chips, as long as it gave the government a quarter of the proceeds. According to the former official who advises the Administration, Trump made the decision at the behest of his A.I. adviser, David Sacks, and Nvidia’s C.E.O., Jensen Huang. “Every chip that goes to China will be one less chip that goes to an American company, because there aren’t enough available,” the former official said. “Trump may have just handed China dominance—not just in A.I. but in the military as well.”

The need to stay close to Trump means that Rubio is mostly absent from the State Department offices. “Rubio is more invisible than any Secretary in the postwar era,” Rubin, the retired ambassador, told me. “He’s rarely seen inside the building.” In his absence, the day-to-day functioning of the department is handled by Mike Needham and Christopher Landau.

From the start, Rubio found that much of his position’s power had been taken away. The N.S.C. has been drastically shrunk. “The policy staff is basically the size that it was at the dawn of the age of color television,” the former official told me. “It’s entirely emasculated.” The three most pressing national-security issues—Iran’s nuclear program and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine—have been largely ceded to Steve Witkoff, a New York businessman who has been friends with Trump since his early days as a real-estate developer.

In a world where diplomats travel in carefully assembled teams, Witkoff flies on a private jet with his personal staff and sometimes his girlfriend or Jared Kushner; during several meetings with Putin, according to NBC, he relied on the Kremlin’s translator. (The White House denies that he has violated protocol.) Witkoff’s approach has been to minimize America’s commitments while boosting trade and investment. He has little interest in dealing with the complex structures of foreign administrations. Instead, he focusses on direct contact between Trump and other heads of state.

The Administration has boasted of an unbroken string of diplomatic successes, stopping “eight wars in eight months.” In fact, most of the advances have been splashy but tenuous. In Gaza, Witkoff and Kushner achieved a tentative ceasefire and a partial pullback of Israeli forces, but have made little progress toward a longer-term plan. A similar pattern applied to conflicts in eastern Congo and between Thailand and Cambodia. “They declare peace, and then they walk away,” the former U.S. official said. “Only six people in the government are allowed to make policy, so nobody does follow-through implementation.”

In this milieu, Rubio’s persistence stands out. “We need Rubio, because he’s a bulwark against worse things,” the former official said. “But he’s clearly picking his battles. He does not want to touch Gaza in any way, shape, or form. He doesn’t want to be the one deciding when you get tough with Bibi. He just wants to be pro-Israel.” Rubio is also apparently keeping his own counsel on ethical matters. In many of the places where the Administration has focussed its diplomatic efforts, relatives of senior officials—including Witkoff’s sons, Trump’s sons, and Kushner—have signed lucrative business deals. “Rubio is the only one in this pantheon who has no money of his own,” the former U.S. official added. “He’s not making money off these deals, while everyone around him is. So he’s not going to tell them which governments they can make drug deals with—though he’s not pushing back, either.”

The ideological rift within the Administration became most apparent in the struggle over the war in Ukraine. In one camp are Vance, Witkoff, and Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, who have sought to restrain overseas commitments. Vance once said, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other.” Earlier this year, senior Pentagon officials held up key arms transfers to Ukraine, apparently without the assent of Trump or the State Department. In the other camp, increasingly, is Rubio.

Rubio’s position on Russia has vacillated over the years. As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he led an inquiry that found Moscow had tried repeatedly to interfere in American elections; the report noted that one of his own campaigns had been targeted. When Russia first sent troops into Ukraine, Rubio backed a vigorous response. But, as Trump campaigned to return to the White House, he flipped; in early 2024, he voted against sending some sixty billion dollars in military aid. “What we are funding is a stalemate,” he declared, days after Trump’s election.

Still, European diplomats say that Rubio has quietly reassured them since becoming Secretary of State. Dmytro Kuleba, who until 2024 was Ukraine’s foreign minister, told me, “Rubio is the one who is trying to steer developments in the direction that Ukraine would consider right, within the limitations imposed on him by Trump and the inner circle.” Others noted indications that he was exerting influence behind the scenes. “Within a week of Rubio getting the N.S.C. job, the intel on Ukraine-Russia that was going into Trump’s brain seemed to be getting more accurate,” the former U.S. official told me. “He’s helping the President get better information and not just go on his 1985 view of the world.”

At times, Rubio has given hints of discomfort with the Administration’s policy. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky came to the White House to ask for help, and Trump and Vance scolded him on live television for expressing insufficient gratitude. (“Have you said thank you once?” Vance asked.) Rubio sat a few feet away, deep in the couch, his hands folded in his lap and his face stricken.

The Oval Office meeting was widely seen as a disaster: an American Administration had publicly turned on an embattled ally. Admiral William McRaven, a former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote in an open letter to Trump, “You have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage, and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.” Special scorn was directed at Rubio. “We all saw you. You tried to shrink in your chair,” the Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell posted on X. But, as the European foreign minister put it, “Rubio knows what the rules are.” After the meeting, Rubio insisted that Zelensky should apologize and gushed with praise for Trump: “Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.”

In October, as the White House was preparing for a summit between U.S. and Russian leaders in Budapest, Rubio held a call with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. Russia had been demanding vast tracts of Ukrainian territory in exchange for peace, and on the call Lavrov refused to back down. Afterward, Rubio apparently described his intransigence to Trump, and the summit was quickly cancelled.

But the policy soon seesawed again. (“The children are fighting,” as the former U.S. official put it.) Later that month, Witkoff met with the Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Miami and emerged with a twenty-eight-point peace plan that effectively gave Putin everything he wanted. Soon afterward, a group of senators announced at a press conference that Rubio had briefed them on Witkoff’s plan, telling them that it was merely Moscow’s “wish list,” forwarded to the White House. “He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican, said. “It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.” Rubio denied making these comments, but the controversy had already dimmed the chances that Witkoff’s deal would go through.

For now, the Ukrainian government is trying to prepare the country for a war that will grind on for at least several more years, regardless of what the White House decides. “I think we can rule out the possibility that President Trump will walk away from Ukraine,” Kuleba, the former foreign minister, said. “He can say he is washing his hands. But, in a week or in a month, the situation on the ground will make him drown his hands in the blood and dirt of the war.” Yet neither Kuleba nor other observers I spoke to held out much hope that the Administration would increase the pressure on the Russians. “The one constant is Trump’s inability to do anything that would upset Vladimir,” the European foreign minister told me.

Rubio has not given a major speech on any subject during his year as Secretary. Instead, he tends to appear on television, or at press events, justifying the President’s actions. After Trump outraged Canada by insisting that he intended to make it America’s “fifty-first state,” Rubio visited Quebec and couched the issue of sovereignty as a mere difference of opinion. “The Canadian government has made their position, how they feel about it, clear,” he said, with a shrug. “The President has made his argument as to why he thinks Canada would be better off joining the United States, for economic purposes.”

The job of Trump’s advocate is not an easy one. As the President insults allies, woos dictators, and spurns long-standing commitments, Rubio has to convince his counterparts that America will not entirely abandon its friends. A senior British official told me that Rubio was effective in gatherings of diplomats. “I’ve been in these meetings,” he said. “All the foreign ministers are reading scripts written by ChatGPT. They all sound the same. No one is listening. Everybody’s on their phones. Rubio is different. He speaks in a human way, looks at you, doesn’t read the script. He has everybody hooked.”

After Trump threatened to impose severe tariffs on Mexico, America’s largest trading partner, Rubio visited to ameliorate the outrage. “Rubio did not apologize for the President—he was loyal—but he managed to convey that he understood what we were going through,” a senior Mexican official told me. “I think he was going as far as he could go.”

Despite the expressions of sympathy, the tariff threats didn’t stop. The economy is just one of many areas in which America’s credibility has been profoundly damaged. European officials told me they no longer trust that the U.S. would come to their aid if Russia attacked, which they believe is an increasing possibility. “We were born and raised in the transatlantic spirit,” the former senior European official told me. “There was a strategic clarity about the U.S.’s will to defend Europe. Now it is what you would call strategic ambiguity. The United States is no longer a trustworthy ally. It hurts. We do not like to say these things.” Officials from Europe and the U.S. have made repeated statements about the enduring strength of the alliance. But “the private conversations are very different,” Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs, told me. “There is a real structural break. We all understand that we will not be going back to the good old days of transatlantic partnership. All this flattery of Trump—the humiliation that we inflict upon ourselves—is not going to get us anywhere.”

When Rubio first spoke with Trump about serving as Secretary of State, he said that he wanted to be the main driver of policy in Central and South America. This is not a part of the world that has historically concerned Trump. As the senior White House official acknowledged, “Marco has a bigger interest in Latin America than the President does.” The America First policy made Latin America a higher priority. Trump’s goals were to stop the flow of illegal immigrants; marginalize China, which had made deep economic inroads in the region; and neutralize hostile regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

For Rubio, who grew up among Cuban immigrants in Florida, hostility toward leftist governments in Latin America was a kind of birthright. As recently as 2023, he had warned of “the horrors occurring not far from our shores.” People who know him say that this was not just rhetoric. “He really believed that Venezuela and Argentina and Brazil and Colombia should be great countries, and that they should be staunchly anti-Communist,” the former U.S. official said. “They should be the engines of a reinvigorated South America.” Rubio has a special loathing for Nicolás Maduro, whose regime devastated Venezuela’s economy and sent millions of citizens streaming out of the country. Maduro was aided substantially by Cuban intelligence officers, who helped root out threats to his rule. As part of the alliance, Venezuela sent Cuba about fifty thousand barrels of oil a day, propping up an otherwise desperate economy. In Florida, the expat community has long dreamed that if Maduro fell his allies in Havana would follow. “If Rubio took down Maduro and the regime in Cuba, he’d be a hero in Miami forever,” a former Florida politician who knows Rubio told me. A successful intervention could also build support in his base for another run at the White House. “It’s part of his Rubio-for-President strategy,” a former U.S. official who worked in Latin America said.

In 2019, Rubio was deeply involved in an attempt to force out Maduro—a combination of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation that Trump described as a “maximum pressure” campaign. Though the U.S. stopped short of using force, the intention to remove Maduro was clear; as Rubio said, “It’s only a matter of time.” Soon afterward, the White House encouraged a revolt by senior Venezuelan military leaders and other government officials—a hapless, underplanned effort that quickly fell apart. “It just flat-out failed,” a former senior American official who was involved told me.

In Trump’s second term, Rubio’s Venezuela strategy was sidetracked by immigration concerns, the President’s highest priority. The Administration revoked a rule that gave some three hundred thousand Venezuelans temporary residency in the U.S.—a deeply unpopular move in Miami, home to the country’s largest Venezuelan community. “The majority of people getting deported are Venezuelans,” a former U.S. official who worked in Latin America said. “Rubio is getting hammered for this.” Trump also deported thousands of Cubans, and Rubio did not step in to save them. Billboards went up around Miami condemning Rubio and the area’s three Cuban American Congress members—all Republicans—for supporting the deportations. One sign bore a photo of Rubio and the others, with the caption “TRAITORS.”

At first, Trump gave the task of dealing with Venezuela not to Rubio but to his envoy Richard Grenell—a former Ambassador to Germany who, before entering government, built a reputation as an unusually tenacious public-relations man. Grenell’s strategy was to seek an accommodation with the Venezuelan regime. He met with Maduro and secured the release of six American hostages, along with an agreement to accept deportees from the U.S. He also began talks to give American oil companies greater access to Venezuela. “The President wanted to get a deal for the energy right away,” a U.S. businessman who spoke with Trump told me. “Maduro was fully game on giving American companies priority.”

But Grenell’s deal collapsed when the Cuban American Congress members from Miami protested that Trump was doing business with a dictator. They made it clear that, unless he resumed his hard line against Maduro, they would vote down his tax bill, the centerpiece of his agenda. Some close observers believe that the representatives were acting in concert with Rubio. “I think Rubio played a much better bureaucratic knife game than Grenell did,” the former U.S. official who worked in Latin America told me. In the coming months, Trump all but stopped negotiating with Maduro. The new policy was regime change, with Rubio in the lead. As tensions rose, Maduro warned, “Mr. President Donald Trump, watch out, because Mr. Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood.”

In Trump’s first term, the campaign against Maduro had been couched as an effort to restore democracy and human rights in Venezuela. This time, the Administration emphasized issues closer to Trump’s heart: illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The rhetoric, particularly about narcotics, aroused skepticism. Experts said that, although elements of the Venezuelan military were involved in drug smuggling, the shipments reaching the U.S. were relatively small, and did not include fentanyl; the claim that Maduro was a kingpin had no apparent support. “The people around Trump decided that the only way to get the American public’s attention was to press all the right buttons,” Phil Gunson, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, in Caracas, told me. “Trump is not interested in human rights and democracy. If you can present a plausible case that Maduro is a narco-terrorist invading the U.S., which is total bullshit, then you can move forward. Rubio used that to mount his military campaign.”

Trump dispatched an armada, including the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and some fifteen thousand troops, to the waters off Venezuela’s coasts. Since September, he has ordered at least thirty-five air strikes on boats that he claimed were ferrying drugs to the U.S., killing more than a hundred people. Trump did not seek congressional authorization. Instead, he invoked a dubious legal rationale, declaring that drug traffickers such as the Tren de Aragua gang, which he claims are responsible for the smuggling, were a terrorist organization attacking the United States. As the strikes raised accusations of war crimes, Trump provided few details to the public and minimal information to the Senate. A senator who attended a classified briefing told me that the information Rubio gave differed markedly from what Trump said in public. “The President has made statements since that briefing that are not consistent with what we heard,” the senator said.

Just weeks before the lightning raid that removed Maduro, Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told legislators that they had no plans for regime change. After the strike, Rubio maintained that the operation didn’t need congressional approval, because it was a law-enforcement exercise. Besides, he argued, it was too sensitive—a “trigger-based mission”—to be trusted to Congress.

In the coming days, Trump mused about intervening around the world: Mexico, Panama, Greenland, Iran. Rubio spoke ominously about the prospect of regime change in Cuba. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” he said. He noted that thirty-two of the guards killed in the operation were Cuban.

After Maduro’s capture, Rubio was constantly in the news, while Vance, his likely rival for the G.O.P.’s Presidential nomination, was notably quiet. Trump announced that the U.S. was now “in charge” of Venezuela, and Rubio became the main conduit to the new government. But he was left with a complicated task: running the Venezuelan state and restoring its ravaged oil industry, which Trump has repeatedly invoked as the primary objective of America’s presence there. U.S. companies, including Chevron, have substantial operations in Venezuela, which have been hobbled by Western economic sanctions. Restoring them won’t be easy; years of neglect have ravaged the infrastructure for pumping, refining, and transporting oil. By some estimates, revamping the system will cost more than a hundred billion dollars and take years. The Trump Administration and its allies will need time—as well as a pliant administration in Caracas. As the U.S. businessman put it, “They want a government that is fully agreeable to American interests.”

One of the most striking parts of Trump’s intervention in Venezuela was that he sidelined the country’s democratic opposition and its leader María Corina Machado, whom Rubio had championed. Machado, a conservative Catholic and an enormously popular figure among critics of the regime, went into hiding last year, after Maduro claimed victory over her party in an election that most observers regarded as stolen. In the aftermath, the Venezuelan opposition coördinated its activities with Rubio and stayed in constant touch. Machado also worked to cultivate Trump. Last fall, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and dedicated it to him, declaring that he ought to have shared in the victory.

In the months before Maduro was seized, Machado’s allies were optimistic. An opposition leader told me, “Venezuela doesn’t have religious issues, we don’t have warlords, we don’t have tribes—we are a unified country. The moment the regime is removed, you are not going to see the streets lighting on fire and people trying to destroy institutions.” At the press conference announcing Maduro’s capture, though, Trump dismissed Machado as “a very nice woman” who lacked “the respect within the country to lead.” Instead, he spoke warmly of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice-President, who also led the national petroleum company. “Trump threw the opposition under the bus,” the former U.S. official who worked in Latin America told me.

The arrangement that Trump described was difficult to distinguish from the one that Grenell negotiated last year. Venezuela would open its oil fields to U.S. companies, but its government would remain largely the same. Senior military and civilian leaders, at least fourteen of whom faced indictments for drug trafficking, would stay in place. So would other officials who are suspected of profiting from illegal mining and smuggling.

Rather than working with his ally Machado, Rubio was obliged to deal directly with Rodríguez, who had been hastily inaugurated as the interim leader. Her coöperation seemed less than assured. Rodríguez is a hard-line leftist with deeply anti-American views learned from her father, a Marxist guerrilla commander who died at the hands of Venezuelan security forces. Though there were hints that she had offered up Maduro to the Americans to save herself, she remained publicly defiant, describing the U.S. incursion as a “barbarity” and insisting that Maduro was the only legitimate President of Venezuela. The government ordered police to “immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States.”

To secure compliance, Rubio outlined a strategy that relied less on diplomacy than on coercion; he said the Administration intended to blockade Venezuelan oil exports if Rodríguez did not comply with American demands. Under duress, she agreed to turn over as many as fifty million barrels of oil.

Some observers still hold out hope that the U.S. will help the opposition take control of the country. Under the Venezuelan constitution, elections must be held within thirty days of the Presidency being vacated, or six months under emergency circumstances. Trump has said that Venezuela may remain under U.S. control indefinitely, but Rubio is likely to push for elections, which Machado would almost certainly win. “Rubio is a true believer—he wants regime change and democracy in Venezuela,” the former U.S. official who worked in Latin America said.

For now, though, Rubio finds himself responsible for a vast country with a powerful, deeply corrupt Army, which is likely to resist any attempt at constraint. “Machado wouldn’t be able to control the military,“ Gunson said. “But it’s not clear that Rodríguez can, either.” Rooting out corrupt generals and criminal networks could take months, or even years. Guerrilla armies roam the country’s western border, and private militias stand ready. “They could unleash chaos,” Gunson said. As Rubio tries to sort this out, Trump will likely insist that the oil keep flowing. As the former U.S. official who worked in Latin America told me, “If it all falls apart, Rubio will get the blame.”

Published in the print edition of the January 19, 2026, issue, with the headline “Power Trip.”

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Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “The Forever War,” which won a National Book Critics Circle Award.

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The New Yorker · Dexter Filkins · January 12, 2026

8.  Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War

Summary:

AI-first guidance turns the Department of War into a rapid, experimental AI warfighting lab, built on massive compute, unlocked data, aggressive talent recruitment, and seven “Pace-Setting Projects” in swarming, agents, simulation, TechINT weaponization, deterrence optimization, GenAI access, and enterprise agents. Speed and continuous model updating are treated as decisive variables. Bureaucratic, legal, and risk controls are ordered stripped away in favor of wartime urgency. “Responsible AI” is redefined as ideologically untuned, any-lawful-use models, with CDAO empowered to break data silos. The memo aims at kinetic overmatch but leaves governance of cognitive effects and information operations largely implicit.

Excerpt:

Clarifying "Responsible Al" at the Do W - Out with Utopian Idealism, In with Hard-Nosed Realism. 

Comment: "AI-First" in warfighting. Also note "Ender's Foundry."  

If AI agents, simulations, and GenAI tools shape commanders’ perceptions and generate content, how should the Pentagon define and govern “cognitive fires” so that AI-enabled decision support and messaging strengthen narrative intelligence instead of creating opaque, machine-driven propaganda that can backfire at home and abroad.

By prioritizing speed, any-lawful-use models, and unconstrained data access, what safeguards, red teams, and narrative-intelligence frameworks are needed to prevent adversaries from hijacking U.S. military AI systems for disinformation, deepfake operations, and psychological manipulation in ways that erode American legitimacy and strategic coherence in long-term cognitive warfare.

MEMORANDUM FOR SENIOR PENTAGON LEADERSHIP COMMANDERS OF THE COMBATANT COMMANDS DEFENSE AGENCY AND DOW FIELD ACTIVITY DIRECTORS 

SUBJECT: Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War Accelerating America's Military AI Dominance 

President Trump makes clear in Executive Order 14179, "It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America's global Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security." In the national st:curity domain, AI-enabled warfare and AI-enabled capability development will re-define the character of military affairs over the next decade. This transformation is a race - fueled by the accelerating pace of commercial AI innovation coming out of America's private sector. The United States Military must build on its lead over our adversaries in integrating this technology, established during President Trump's first term, to make our Warfighters more lethal and efficient. To this end, aligned with America's AI Action Plan, I direct the Department of War to accelerate America's Military AI Dominance by becoming an "AI-first" warfighting force across all components, from front to back. 

Access the 6 page PDF at this link: https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-STRATEGY-FOR-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR.PDF

SECRETARY OF WAR 

1000 DEFENSE PENTAGON WASHINGTON, DC 20301-1000

MEMORANDUM FOR SENIOR PENTAGON LEADERSHIP

COMMANDERS OF THE COMBATANT COMMANDS DEFENSE AGENCY AND DOW FIELD ACTIVITY DIRECTORS

SUBJECT: Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War

Accelerating America's Military AI Dominance

President Trump makes clear in Executive Order 14179, "It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America's global Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security." In the national st:curity domain, AI-enabled warfare and AI-enabled capability development will re-define the character of military affairs over the next decade. This transformation is a race - fueled by the accelerating pace of commercial AI innovation coming out of America's private sector. The United States Military must build on its lead over our adversaries in integrating this technology, established during President Trump's first term, to make our Warfighters more lethal and efficient. To this end, aligned with America's AI Action Plan, I direct the Department of War to accelerate America's Military AI Dominance by becoming an "AI-first" warfighting force across all components, from front to back.

The Department will achieve this objective by:

• Unleashing experimentation with America's leading AI models Department­ wide, and rewarding AI-first re-conceptions of legacy approaches;
• Aggressively identifying and eliminating bureaucratic barriers to deeper integration, which are vestiges of legacy information technology and modes of
• warfare;Focusing our investment to leverage America's core asymmetric advantages in

AI computing, model innovation, entrepreneurial dynamism, capital markets, and combat-proven operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations that no other military can replicate; and

• Executing a set of "Pace-Setting Projects" (PSPs) that will demonstrate the

accelerated pace of execution, focus, and ethos we need to stay ahead. The PSPs will also serve as tangible, outcome-oriented vehicles for rapidly completing our buildout of the foundational AI enablers (infrastructure, data, models, policies, and talent) needed to accelerate AI integration across the entire Department.

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The seven initial PSPs outlined below establish the new execution standard: single accountable leaders, aggressive timelines, measurable outcomes, and rapid iteration where failure accelerates learning and improvement.

Accelerati on Appro ach

The means we will employ to pursue this strategy will continue to encompass our substantial program funding and workforce focused on AI across the Services and Components. We will also use the timely financial resources provided by Congress in the form of One Big Beautiful Bill, along with expanded budget withhold (Joint Acceleration Reserve) flexibility, to catalyze our accelerated pace of Military AI integration in the immediate term. And we will leverage the access, capabilities, investments, and insights of America's allies and partners to support our shared objectives, consistent with the President Trump's AI Action Plan to "Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security".

We will re-focus the Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) and these enhanced

resources to unlock critical foundational enablers needed to accelerate war-winning efforts across the Department, starting with enabling the set of seven PSPs listed below in fiscal year 2026. These PSPs will address key opportunities for enhanced military AI advantage across W arfighting, Intelligence, and Enterprise mission areas:

• Warfighting:

1. 1. Swarm Forge: Competitive mechanism to iteratively discover, test, and scale novel ways of fighting with and against AI-enabled capabilities - combining
2. America's elite Warfighting units with elite technology innovators.2. Agent Network: Unleashing Al agent development and experimentation for Al­ enabled battle management and decision support, from campaign planning to kill
3. chain execution.3. Ender's Foundry: Accelerating AI-enabled simulation capabilities - and sim-dev and sim-ops feedback loops - to ensure we stay ahead of AI-enabled

adversaries.

• Intelligence:

1. 4. Open Arsenal: Accelerating the TechINT-to-capability development pipeline, turning intel into weapons in hours not years.
2. 5. Project Grant: Enabling transformation of deterrence from static postures and speculation to dynamic pressure with interpretable results.

• Enterprise:

1. 6. GenAI.mil: Democratizing AI experimentation and transformation across the

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Department by putting America's world-leading AI models directly in the hands of our three million civilian and military personnel, at all classification levels.

1. 7. Enterprise Agents: Building the playbook for rapid and secure AI agent development and deployment to transform enterprise workflows.

The PSPs will each be led by an exemplary program leader in partnership with a

sponsoring organization. Progress will be demonstrated monthly to the Deputy Secretary of War (Deputy Secretary) and Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (USW(R&E)), with initial demonstration by transition-partner user(s) to occur within six months from the date of this memorandum.

The CDAO will also ensure all foundational enablers unlocked by these projects are made available to programs Department-wide in real-time, so accelerated execution by PSPs will enable projects across the Department to accelerate their pace along with them. Therefore, I direct each Military Department, combatant command, and defense agency and field activity to identify within 30 days at least three projects they will prioritize to fast-follow these PSPs. Efforts under the Department's six Critical Technology Areas - including autonomy, C-C5ISRT, and advanced manufacturing-must continue to push the pace for the Department of War (Do W). And the special initiatives outlined in classified annexes, including those in the Classified Annex provided by separate cover to this memorandum, will also be accelerated. CDAO will track and rank this extended pack of AI efforts by speed and impact, and progress will be reported monthly to the Deputy Secretary and USW(R&E).

AI Compute. As part of our AI and Autonomy acceleration investments, the Department will invest substantial resources in the expansion of our access to AI compute infrastructure, from datacenters to the edge. We will leverage the hundreds of billions in private sector capital investment being made in America's AI sector through our growing array of creative partnerships with America's world-leading companies. We will work with interagency partners to establish technical standards for new secure datacenters. And we will support and leverage the American Science and Security Platform being developed by President Trump's Genesis Mission for science and technology innovation, so our warfighters and capability developers have the full benefit of America's AI compute resources and latest innovations.

Data Access. I direct the CDAO to enforce, and all Do W Components to comply

with, the 'DoD Data Decrees' to further unlock our data for AI exploitation and mission advantage. Military Departments and Components will establish, maintain, and update federated data catalogs exposing their system interfaces, data assets, and access mechanisms across all classification levels, as mandated by the Department's May 2021 memorandum, "Creating Data Advantage." They will deliver their current catalogs -with all available updates-to the CDAO within 30 days of the date of this memorandum. The Under Secretary of War for Intelligence and Security will ensure intelligence data receives parallel treatment, with exploitation pathways established within the same timeframe. The CDAO is authorized to direct release of any Do W data to cleared users with valid purpose, consistent

3

with security guidelines. Effective immediately, denials of CDAO data requests must be justified to the USW(R&E) within seven (7) days, who will remediate or escalate to the Deputy Secretary. Our data advantage is meaningless if our developers and operators cannot exploit it.

Talent. Finally, I believe the best American talent will see this accelerated posture of

AI capability development and adoption at the Do W, and I expect each Service and Component to attract and retain this talent. To that end, I direct use of special hiring and pay authorities Department-wide, as well as novel talent programs from the Office of Personnel and Management and other partners, to accelerate our pace of technical talent hiring into AI roles. And I direct each Component to provide AI hiring and talent development plans to the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness within 60 days of this memo for approval, denial or modification within 30 days thereafter.

Acceleration Expectations

This strategy will accelerate our advantage, and we must implement it with the

Warrior Ethos. Consistent with the refocusing of the Department onto a wartime footing, I expect the following approaches to become internalized as essential elements of our execution in this race to maintain Military AI Dominance:

Speed Wi ns. We must internalize that Military AI is going to be a race for the foreseeable future, and therefore speed wins. We must weaponize learning speed, and measure and manage cycle time and adoption rates as decisive variables in the Al era. We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment. I direct CDAO to establish deployment velocity and operational cycle-time metrics for all PSPs, to be a focus of their monthly reporting to the Deputy Secretary and USW(R&E).

AI Model Pari ty. We are seeing unprecedented velocity in the evolution of the

frontier AI models. These models are becoming smarter and more robust every day. The Department cannot be working off models that are months or years old. We must have the latest and greatest AI models deployed for our warfighters. Deploying these capabilities across all echelons is simply not enough, we must be able to support and sustain rapid model updates across all echelons. I direct CDAO to establish a delivery and integration cadence with AI vendors that enables the latest models to be deployed within 30 days of public release. This shall be a primary procurement criterion for future model acquisition.

War time Approach to Blockers. We must eliminate blockers to data sharing,

Authorizations to Operate (ATOs), test and evaluation and certification, contracting, hiring and talent management, and other policies that inhibit rapid experimentation and fielding. We must approach risk tradeoffs, "equities", and other subjective questions as if we were at war. To this end, I expect our CDAO to act as a Wartime CDAO and work with the Chief Information Officer to fully leverage statutory and delegated authorities to accelerate AI capability delivery, including cross-domain data access and rapid A TO reciprocity on behalf of pace-pushing leaders across the Department. The USW(R&E) will establish a monthly "Barrier Removal Board" with authority to waive non-statutory requirements and escalate

4

blockers for immediate resolution.

Competition > Centralized Planning. As America's AI ecosystem demonstrates,

robust competition by small teams, with transparent metrics for results, is the engine of commercial AI leadership. We must bring this model into the Department and encourage robust competition to spur faster military AI integration. Small, accountable teams will win over process in a race characterized by dynamic and unpredictable innovation. We will measure success through continuous field experimentation: putting AI capabilities in operators' hands, gathering feedback within days not years, and pushing updates faster than the enemy can adapt. I direct CDAO to establish AI system usage and mission impact metrics for evaluating the success of these AI acceleration efforts. To enable market dynamics to drive resourcing, decisions about future resourcing and deprecation of associated capabilities will principally be made on the basis of these metrics.

AI-Native Warfighting. Together with capability innovation, we must more fully

incorporate AI and Autonomy into military planning; tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) development; and experimentation processes. I direct each Service Chief and Combatant Commander to designate an AI Integration Lead within 30 days, who will work with the CDAO and be responsible for the co-evolution of AI-enabled capabilities with warfighting concepts and experimentation. I direct CDAO to establish criteria for robust experimentation with AI capabilities. And I direct the Joint Staff to designate a senior official to monitor Service AI warfighting concept development and workflow optimization, and provide me with progress reports on a quarterly basis. We must put aside legacy approaches to combat and ensure we use this disruptive technology to compound the lethality of our military. Exercises and experiments that do not meaningfully incorporate AI and autonomous capabilities will be reviewed by the Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation for resourcing adjustment.

Modular Open Architectures. In the AI arms race, system architectures must enable component replacement at commercial velocity to maintain overmatch. I direct Military Department and Component Program Managers acquiring AI capabilities to enforce Modular Open System Architectures (MOSA) along with the "DoD Data Decrees," exposing modular interfaces and associated documentation sufficient for third-party integration without prime contractor support.

Clarifying "Responsible Al" at the Do W - Out with Utopian Idealism, In with Hard-Nosed Realism. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and social ideology have no place in the Do W, so we must not employ AI models which incorporate ideological "tuning" that interferes with their ability to provide objectively truthful responses to user prompts. The Department must also utilize models free from usage policy constraints that may limit lawful military applications. Therefore, I direct the CDAO to establish benchmarks for model objectivity as a primary procurement criterion within 90 days, and I direct the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment to incorporate standard "any lawful use" language into any Do W contract through which AI services are procured within 180 days. I also direct the CDAO to.ensure all existing AI policy guidance at the Department aligns with the directives laid out in this memorandum.

5

Becoming An AI-First Department

The time is now to accelerate AI integration, and we will put the full weight of the

Department's leadership, resources, and expanding corps of private sector partners into accelerating America's Military AI Dominance.

Becoming an "AI-First" warfighting force requires more than integrating Al into

existing workflows. It requires re-imagining how existing workflows, processes, TTPs, and operational concepts would be designed if current AI technology existed when they were created- and then re-inventing them accordingly.

We must drive this transformation across every aspect of the Department. The expectations outlined above must become technological "AI fitness standards" for our Joint Force. 2026 will be there year we emphatically raise the bar for Military AI Dominance.

9. The Battle Over Who Runs the Panama Canal Ports Is About to Be Decided

Summary:

Panama’s Supreme Court is nearing a ruling on whether Hong Kong based CK Hutchison can keep operating the Balboa and Cristóbal ports at the Panama Canal, a key node for about 5 percent of global trade. Lawsuits and a government audit allege constitutional violations and up to 1.3 billion dollars in lost revenue since the late 1990s concession, renewed in 2021. A decision to void the license would please Washington, upset Beijing, trigger arbitration, and force Panama to manage continuity while rebidding control. China is already preparing a Latin America task force as regional governments move to curb Chinese economic expansion.

Comment: More than a single strategic economic chokepoint. This is strategic competition. If control of Panama Canal ports becomes a visible U.S. versus China test case, how should Washington integrate narrative intelligence and cognitive warfare so that legal, commercial, and naval moves there shape global perceptions of legitimacy and reliability in ways that reinforce, rather than erode, long term U.S. influence from the Caribbean to the Asia-Indo-Pacific.

The Battle Over Who Runs the Panama Canal Ports Is About to Be Decided

WSJ

Panama’s Supreme Court is winding up deliberations in a lawsuit that could void a Chinese company’s license to operate the ports and hand President Trump a win

By Santiago Pérez

Follow

Jan. 13, 2026 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/panama-canal-port-china-ck-hutchinson-9b0c5a6b

The port of Balboa, on the entrance of the Panama Canal from the Pacific Ocean side. Fred Ramos for WSJ

PANAMA CITY—The Supreme Court of Panama is winding up deliberations that will decide whether a Hong Kong company can run two ports at either end of the Panama Canal, a decision closely watched in Washington and Beijing.

The case carries the weight of geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China. President Trump has said he wanted to take back control of the canal, which the U.S. built in the early 20th century and handed over to Panama in late 1999. China, meanwhile, has thrown up obstacles to the sale of the canal ports and other assets operated by Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison to a group led by BlackRock and Mediterranean Shipping Co.

A ruling is expected soon.

For Panama’s Supreme Court justices, the political pressure is immense. Allowing Hutchison to continue running the ports risks infuriating the Trump administration and exposes the vulnerability of the tiny Central American nation that uses the U.S. dollar and owes its 1903 independence to American intervention against Colombia.

Private lawyers and Panama’s comptroller filed lawsuits against Hutchison with the Supreme Court alleging the company breached Panama’s constitution by violating the interests of its government and taxpayers. A government audit showed up to $1.3 billion in lost government revenue since Hutchison’s arrival in the late 1990s, when it outbid companies such as U.S.-based Bechtel to win the 25-year license. The license was renewed for another 25 years in 2021.

“Hutchison’s relationship with Panamanian society over the past decades has been very tense and difficult,” said Felipe Chapman, Panama’s finance minister, in an interview in Panama City.

Chapman and senior Panama government officials said that they are prepared to carry out the high-court ruling if justices order the termination of Hutchison’s license. A priority would be to ensure continuity of port operations by recruiting a company to manage the terminals until the government opens a new bidding process with new license terms, possibly separating the two ports to maximize value, officials said.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino. Fred Ramos for WSJ

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said he would wait and comply with the court’s ruling but suggested last year that the status quo was untenable.

“I don’t see the continuation of the Panama Ports contract at the moment, amended or not,” Mulino said in July after the comptroller filed the lawsuits with the high court.

A person close to Hutchison said the company considers the complaint to be politically driven, but that it is awaiting the high-court ruling. The company would take the case to international arbitration panels to protect its investment if justices rule against the company, the person said.

China’s foreign ministry said that it hoped for a fair and nondiscriminatory environment for companies from all countries. If Hutchison is stripped of its license, Beijing would likely look for ways to retaliate. Following the U.S. military raid in Venezuela, China is forming a Latin America task force that will study how to protect its interests in the region, said a person familiar with the plans.

Justices also could hit Hutchison with fines and remedy measures and allow it to continue running the ports. The company can’t appeal a Supreme Court ruling, but it can request clarifications that could delay its execution.

CK Hutchison, which operates the canal, is based in Hong Kong. Paul Yeung/Bloomberg News

At least 5% of global trade flows through the Panama Canal, underpinning the country’s prosperity relative to its neighbors.

Panamanian officials say that they have assessed scenarios linked to the court ruling to prevent disruptions in its ports system.

“The continuity of operations is fundamental for the transshipment industry worldwide,” said Alberto Alemán, who served as Panama Canal administrator and now advises the Mulino administration.

Amid rising U.S. pressure, CK Hutchison agreed to sell more than 40 ports globally to BlackRock and MSC for almost $23 billion. The two Panama container terminals—Balboa on the Pacific coast and Cristóbal on the Atlantic side—were the crown jewels of the deal.

China’s government opposed the transaction, demanding that Chinese state-run shipping company Cosco have a majority stake and veto power in the firm managing the global port assets. The deal is now at risk.

In Panama City, the Mulino administration watched the deal talks in astonishment because licenses granted by Panama don’t allow the participation of foreign state-owned firms. Neither Chinese government officials nor Hutchison executives approached the Mulino administration to provide information or seek Panama’s consent, officials said.

Panamanian officials had long grumbled about the terms of the CK Hutchison deal, and Trump’s complaints accelerated the simmering dispute. Hutchison had extracted better terms from previous administrations even as global trade boomed and Panama became a global transshipment hub for container cargo.

“There has been a lot of criticism and a flood of lawsuits with the high court since then,” said Alemán, referring to the license renewal in 2021. “Hutchison has large, latent liabilities.”

Other countries in the region are also erecting barriers to Chinese companies to avoid further tensions with Trump. Mexico’s government has sought to contain the rapid expansion of China’s BYD, the world’s largest electric-vehicle manufacturer, by imposing 50% import tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles and blocking BYD’s plans to open an assembly plant in Mexico.

Shipping companies manage containers much like airlines manage passengers with connecting flights and multiple destinations, with container terminals playing the role of a busy airport hub.

Panama invested billions of dollars in new, bigger canal locks as the infrastructure handed over by the U.S. more than two decades ago was nearly obsolete. It developed a state-of-the-art oceanic passageway that helped transform global shipping as supertankers and containerships grew bigger and bigger.

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What do you think will happen with the Panamanian ports? Join the conversation below.

The canal connects north Asian ports with East Coast markets in the U.S. that import goods from China or Japan. Tankers move oil, petroleum products and liquefied natural gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast through the canal, while containerships transport Chilean wines or Ecuadorean bananas to large markets such as New York.

Along with the canal expansion, Panama developed a platform for the transshipment of containers. Panama’s port system handles as many containers as the New York and New Jersey terminals. Hutchison arrived in the country when the transformation was in its early stages. The country now handles more than nine million containers a year, compared with some 100,000 more than two decades ago.

Write to Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com

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WSJ

10. Beyond Lethality: The Primacy of Influence in Cognitive Warfare

Summary:

Influence now sits at the center of modern conflict. Lethal force still matters, but its strategic value depends on legitimacy, narrative coherence, and population behavior. Digital connectivity empowers individuals, fragments information authority, and turns local populations into decisive actors. Narratives shape alliances, deterrence, and enemy cohesion, while cyber, economics, and soft power function as persuasion tools. The liberator’s dilemma warns that kinetic action without influence can produce political defeat despite battlefield gain. The decisive battles are fought in minds, not terrain. The question becomes whether states can wield influence responsibly without eroding trust and democratic resilience in the process.

Comment: This is an excellent overview of the major concepts and emerging terminology.  I obviously support Joe's position and will reinforce and build on it. 

If influence becomes the decisive center of gravity, what organizational reforms and authorities are required to give narrative intelligence and cognitive warfare parity with kinetic forces inside the U.S. national security system?

If populations become “super-empowered” through digital connectivity, how can liberal democracies compete in cognitive warfare without adopting authoritarian manipulation techniques that ultimately corrode their own legitimacy?

Beyond Lethality: The Primacy of Influence in Cognitive Warfare

irregularwarfare.org · Dr. Joseph Long · January 12, 2026

“The decisive battles of modern warfare are no longer fought primarily on terrain, but in the minds of populations.”

https://irregularwarfare.org/sof-in-competition/beyond-lethality-the-primacy-of-influence-in-cognitive-warfare/

Introduction

Twentieth-century warfare was defined by industrial-scale lethality: mass mobilization, mechanized destruction, and the pursuit of decisive battlefield supremacy. In contrast, the strategic environment of the twenty-first century reflects a profound transformation. The digital revolution has fractured traditional hierarchies of power, accelerated the flow of information across borders, and empowered individuals and non-state actors in unprecedented ways. As a result, warfare is no longer confined to the physical domain. It has expanded decisively into the cognitive realm, where perceptions, narratives, legitimacy, and belief systems constitute the primary battlespace.

In this environment, the ability to shape how populations interpret events increasingly determines strategic success. Influence operations—encompassing strategic communication, psychological operations, cyber-enabled disinformation, and narrative contestation—have emerged as central instruments of power (Paul 2011; Pomerantsev 2014). While lethality remains an indispensable tool, its effectiveness is now contingent upon its alignment with influence. A kinetic force that fails to reinforce legitimacy, credibility, and narrative coherence risks strategic failure regardless of tactical success.

This paper argues that in contemporary and future conflicts—particularly those characterized by contested legitimacy, irregular warfare, and digitally connected populations—influence constitutes the decisive center of gravity. Lethality, rather than serving as the primary determinant of victory, increasingly functions in a supporting and enabling role. This shift is driven by four converging dynamics: the rise of population-centric and irregular warfare, the emergence of “super-empowered populations,” the erosion of state control over information, and the proliferation of dual-use technologies (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001; Van Creveld 1991). Together, these forces demand a reevaluation of strategic priorities and raise profound ethical and legal challenges. Navigating this cognitive battlespace responsibly will define the effectiveness and legitimacy of future military power.

The Cognitive Battlespace: Hybrid Conflict in a Digitally Mediated World

The distinction between conventional and irregular warfare has eroded, giving rise to hybrid conflicts that blend military force with political coercion, information manipulation, and social influence (Kalyvas 2006). This fusion has expanded the battlespace into the cognitive domain, where technology amplifies the reach, speed, and impact of influence operations.

Population-Centric Conflict and the Limits of Lethality

Irregular warfare is inherently population-centric. Unlike conventional conflict, where success is often measured in territory seized or enemy formations destroyed, irregular warfare hinges on legitimacy, governance, and popular consent (Sorley 1999). Tactical lethality may provide short-term security, but indiscriminate or poorly contextualized force can risk alienating the very populations whose support is essential to long-term stability.

The “liberator’s dilemma” captures this paradox: even interventions undertaken with ostensibly benevolent intent can exacerbate instability when they fail to address local grievances, cultural dynamics, and political realities (Long 2024). Excessive reliance on force can undermine trust, fuel resentment, and strengthen insurgent narratives. Sustainable success, therefore, requires influence-driven approaches that prioritize legitimacy, civilian protection, and the empowerment of local institutions.

Super-Empowered Populations and Distributed Influence

The rise of digital connectivity has produced what may be described as “super-empowered populations”—societies in which individuals possess unprecedented access to information, communication tools, and transnational networks (Long 2023). This empowerment enables rapid political mobilization, grassroots narrative production, and real-time contestation of official accounts.

These dynamics fundamentally alter the character of warfare. Local populations are no longer passive observers; they actively shape strategic outcomes by amplifying, resisting, or reframing narratives. At the same time, this empowerment creates new vulnerabilities. Disinformation, algorithmic amplification, and targeted psychological manipulation exploit cognitive biases and emotional responses, making populations both influential and susceptible (Pariser 2011; Sunstein 2017).

The Erosion of State Control over Information

Historically, states exercised significant control over information through centralized media and censorship (Hammond 2007). In the contemporary information environment, that monopoly has eroded. Social media platforms, citizen journalism, and non-state actors now compete directly with official narratives, creating a fragmented and contested epistemic landscape (Bradshaw and Howard 2017).

This environment complicates strategic communication. Competing narratives coexist, truth claims are constantly challenged, and credibility is fragile. Success depends less on suppressing information than on sustaining trust, transparency, and narrative coherence across multiple audiences.

Dual-Use Technologies and Cognitive Amplification

The proliferation of dual-use technologies further intensifies cognitive competition. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics enhance the ability to target audiences, personalize messaging, and manipulate information at scale (Singer and Friedman 2014). While these technologies offer civilian benefits, they also enable sophisticated influence campaigns and mass surveillance.

The blurring of civilian and military applications complicates regulation, ethical oversight, and attribution. Managing these technologies responsibly is now inseparable from maintaining legitimacy in the cognitive domain (Zittrain 2014).

Influence as the Decisive Center of Gravity

In this evolving strategic environment, influence increasingly eclipses lethality as the primary determinant of success. Military power remains essential, but its strategic value depends on how effectively it supports narrative control, legitimacy, and behavioral outcomes among populations.

Narrative Dominance and Strategic Persuasion

Control of the narrative confers strategic advantage. Actors capable of framing events, shaping perceptions, and preempting adversarial propaganda gain disproportionate influence over political and military outcomes (Rid 2009). Effective persuasion requires an understanding of cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and cultural context, as well as sustained credibility (Cialdini 2006; Kahneman 2011).

Lethal force that is not embedded within a persuasive narrative risks strategic backfire. Civilian harm, perceived hypocrisy, or inconsistency between stated objectives and observed behavior can rapidly erode legitimacy, even in the presence of battlefield success (Keen 1986).

Psychological Effects and Enemy Cohesion

Influence operations extend beyond friendly populations. Carefully executed psychological operations can undermine adversary cohesion, reduce morale, encourage defections, and weaken the will to fight (Berger 2018; Dalgaard-Nielsen 2013). In the digital age, social media platforms enable highly targeted messaging that exploits internal fractures within opposing forces.

Such effects can achieve strategic outcomes at a fraction of the cost—human, political, and material—associated with large-scale kinetic operations, while mitigating the risks inherent in the liberator’s dilemma.

Soft Power, Alliances, and Legitimacy

Influence is central to alliance-building and coalition warfare. Diplomatic credibility, cultural resonance, and shared values underpin access, basing, intelligence cooperation, and political legitimacy (Nye 2004; Seib 2012). Soft power enhances the effectiveness of military partnerships by aligning interests and sustaining long-term cooperation.

In cognitive warfare, isolation is a strategic vulnerability. States that fail to cultivate trust and legitimacy among allies risk narrative marginalization and strategic irrelevance.

Cyber-Enabled Influence and Information Weaponization

Cyber operations serve as force multipliers in cognitive conflict. Disruption of communications, information manipulation, and data exploitation can shape perceptions without direct confrontation (Clarke and Knake 2010; Hollis 2017). Conversely, defending the information environment requires significant investment in cyber resilience, digital literacy, and institutional adaptability—particularly in states with limited resources.

Economic Statecraft as Influence

Economic instruments—sanctions, trade agreements, and development assistance—function as tools of persuasion and coercion (Maness and Valeriano 2016). When aligned with narrative strategy, economic influence can reinforce legitimacy, deter aggression, and shape long-term behavior. Misapplied, however, it risks reinforcing adversarial narratives and undermining credibility.

Ethical and Strategic Implications

The ascendancy of influence raises acute ethical challenges. Cognitive warfare blurs the line between persuasion and manipulation, security and liberty, truth and narrative (Orend 2006).

Epistemic Erosion and the Crisis of Truth

The proliferation of disinformation undermines democratic discourse and institutional trust. Competing narratives and algorithmic amplification erode shared understandings of reality, creating strategic instability (Pomerantsev and Weiss 2014). Addressing this crisis requires media literacy, ethical journalism, transparent governance, and technological countermeasures.

Emotional Manipulation and Cognitive Bias

Influence campaigns often exploit fear, anger, and identity-based grievances. While effective in the short term, such tactics risk polarization, radicalization, and violence (Straus 2006; Hintjens 2001). Long-term resilience depends on cultivating critical thinking, emotional awareness, and public trust.

Surveillance, Security, and Civil Liberties

Data collection and behavioral analytics pose enduring dilemmas. Balancing security imperatives with privacy and civil liberties requires clear legal frameworks, independent oversight, and transparency (Anderson 2011; Dinstein 2011). Excessive surveillance may achieve tactical advantage at the cost of strategic legitimacy.

Responsible Intervention in Complex Environments

The liberator’s dilemma underscores the risks of external intervention. Effective engagement prioritizes diplomacy, development, and local agency, reserving military force as a constrained and lawful instrument (Lederach 1997). Influence must support—not supplant—self-determination.

Implications for National Security, Law, and Governance

The rise of cognitive warfare demands institutional adaptation.

• National Security: States must integrate influence capabilities across military, diplomatic, and intelligence domains while building societal resilience.
• International Law: Existing legal frameworks lag behind the realities of information manipulation and cyber-enabled influence, necessitating new norms and agreements (United Nations 1945).
• Global Governance: Multilateral cooperation is essential for setting standards, sharing best practices, and mitigating escalation in the cognitive domain.

Strategic Recommendations

To compete effectively and responsibly, states should:

1. Develop a Cognitive-Ready Workforce: Invest in education, media literacy, cultural competence, cybersecurity, and persuasion psychology.
2. Adopt a Whole-of-Government Influence Strategy: Integrate military, diplomatic, economic, and informational instruments within ethical constraints.
3. Strengthen Alliances: Leverage collective legitimacy and shared narratives.
4. Promote Public Resilience: Empower citizens to recognize manipulation and disinformation.
5. Regulate Digital Platforms Responsibly: Balance free expression with protection against malign influence.
6. Commit to Transparency and Accountability: Sustain trust in contested information environments.
7. Advance International Cooperation: Treat cognitive warfare as a shared global challenge.

Conclusion

The future of warfare is fundamentally cognitive. Victory will be determined less by the scale of destruction than by the ability to shape perceptions, legitimacy, and behavior across interconnected populations. Influence has emerged as the decisive center of gravity, with lethality serving an increasingly constrained and supporting role.

Success in this environment requires strategic adaptation, ethical restraint, and institutional innovation. States that recognize the primacy of influence—and wield it responsibly—will be best positioned to secure stability and legitimacy in an era defined not by battlefield dominance alone, but by the contest for the human mind.

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irregularwarfare.org · Dr. Joseph Long · January 12, 2026

11. War, Warfare, and Domains: Why Cognitive Warfare Is Hard to Place

Summary:

The piece argues that confusion over “cognitive warfare” comes from mixing three different levels: war as a political condition, warfare as organized practice, and domains as bounded operational environments. Most “cognitive warfare” activity looks less like war itself and more like a mode of warfare that shapes perception and decision-making, often below armed conflict. Calling cognition a domain borrows misleading metaphors of terrain, control, and thresholds, since thinking is distributed, social, and not spatially bounded. Label inflation risks turning every influence activity into “cognitive war.” The author suggests treating cognition as process and environment, not territory, and studying mechanisms of sensemaking instead.

Comment: A useful discussion of key terms. Graphics at the link. I like "label inflation." I am going to borrow that one. (we once humorously argued for a terminology non-proliferation treaty to stop the proliferation of new terms.)

Threats and the Words We Use: A Thought Experiment

https://warontherocks.com/2013/11/threats-and-the-words-we-use-a-thought-experiment/

This essay raises many important questions. 

If cognitive warfare is a mode of warfare rather than a domain, what does that imply for who should own doctrine, resources, and authorities for narrative-centric operations in the U.S. system?

How can planners design campaigns that target cognitive conditions across all domains without slipping into conceptual inflation that labels every influence activity as “cognitive war,” blurring legal and ethical lines?

War, Warfare, and Domains: Why Cognitive Warfare Is Hard to Place

substack.com · Sara Jan 11, 2026

Sara

@sararusso

I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Higher Defence Studies (CASD), working on cognitive warfare, hybrid conflict, influence, perception and decision-making across military, humanitarian, and organizational contexts.

https://sararussoresearch.substack.com/p/war-warfare-and-domains-why-cognitive

Introduction: Why Conceptual Clarity Comes First

The growing use of the term cognitive warfare reflects a genuine concern across military, policy, and academic communities: contemporary conflicts increasingly target perception, judgment, trust, and decision-making rather than physical assets alone. Yet despite its rising prominence, cognitive warfare remains analytically unsettled.

Much of this uncertainty does not stem from cognition itself, but from unexamined slippages between three distinct concepts: war, warfare, and domain. These terms are often used interchangeably in discussions of cognitive warfare, even though they operate at different analytical levels and carry different legal, strategic, and operational implications.

Before asking whether cognitive warfare constitutes a new form of conflict—or even a new operational domain—it is necessary to clarify what kind of phenomenon it is supposed to describe.

Figure 1. War, warfare, and domain: distinct but often conflated analytical levels.

War: A Condition, Not a Technique

In classical strategic thought, war refers primarily to a political condition rather than a method. As famously articulated by On War, “war is a continuation of politics by other means”—a state of organized hostility embedded in political intent and collective recognition.

Even in contemporary debates—where formal declarations of war are rare (used to be) and conflict increasingly unfolds below recognized thresholds—war continues to imply:

• a political framing of antagonism,
• strategic intentionality,
• and consequences under international law.

Many activities now labeled as “cognitive warfare” do not meet these criteria. They often occur:

• outside declared hostilities,
• without clear attribution,
• and without transition into an acknowledged state of war.

As noted in recent strategic literature on “grey zone” and “below-threshold” conflict (Mazarr, 2015; Votel et al., 2016), conflating influence activities with war risks overstating both escalation and intent. This raises a further question: to what extent does the tendency to relabel influence activities as “war” reflect analytical necessity, rather than conceptual drift driven by strategic uncertainty—a pattern previously observed in debates surrounding hybrid warfare (Libiseller, 2021)?

Treating cognitive warfare as war imports legal and strategic assumptions that frequently do not correspond to how these activities are actually conducted.

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Warfare: Practices, Modalities, and Ways of Acting

Warfare operates at a different analytical level. Unlike war, warfare does not describe a condition but rather a set of organized practices through which effects are sought.

Historically, warfare has encompassed:

• kinetic and non-kinetic means,
• regular and irregular practices,
• activities conducted both during and outside formal war.

This distinction is increasingly discussed in military doctrine and strategic studies. In particular, NATO documents acknowledge the growing relevance of activities conducted below the threshold of armed conflict—including information activities, psychological operations, and influence-related practices—without always framing them as warfare in the classical sense (NATO, 2020; NATO, 2021).

From this perspective, cognitive warfare fits more coherently as a mode of warfare rather than as war itself. It refers to organized efforts to shape cognitive conditions—how individuals and groups perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment—without requiring a formal state of war.

In short:

War is a condition. Warfare is a mode of action.

This distinction allows cognitive warfare to be studied without forcing it into binary categories of war and peace.

Domain: Analytical Category or Operational Convenience?

The concept of a domain introduces an additional layer of complexity. In military and security thinking, domains are typically understood as distinct operational environments—such as land, air, sea, cyber, or space—characterized by:

• identifiable terrain,
• relative separability,
• and the possibility of control or dominance.

Attempts to extend this logic to cognition have drawn in part on analytical frameworks developed to assess whether an emerging “field” qualifies as a warfighting domain. A frequently cited reference in this regard is the work of Patrick Allen and Dennis Gilbert, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, who proposed six criteria for determining whether a domain can be meaningfully defined. According to their framework, a domain should exhibit:

1. unique capabilities required to operate within it;
2. non-subsumption by another domain;
3. the shared presence of friendly and adversarial capabilities;
4. the possibility of exerting control;
5. opportunities for synergy with other domains; and
6. opportunities for asymmetric action across domains.

Doctrinal discussions increasingly extend this logic to the cognitive dimension. Strategic documents within NATO and related defense education frameworks—such as those used in security and defense programs at institutions like Johns Hopkins University—often imply that a domain should be operationally bounded, governable, and analytically separable.

Applying this logic to cognition raises immediate tensions. Cognition:

• is not spatially bounded,
• cannot be owned or controlled,
• and is deeply embedded in social, cultural, and organizational contexts.

Exploratory NATO discussions on cognitive warfare, including those summarized by NATO Allied Command Transformation, explicitly reference this framework when considering whether cognition—or a broader “human domain”—could be conceptualized as a domain (NATO, 2021). While such analyses suggest that a human domain may plausibly satisfy most of these criteria, they also highlight a critical limitation: cognition is not analytically autonomous. Rather, it is deeply embedded within, and arguably subsumed by, the human domain itself. On this basis, the cognitive domain risks failing the criterion of non-subsumption, since cognitive processes cannot be meaningfully separated from human, social, cultural, and organizational contexts.

This limitation is not merely semantic. Framing cognition as a domain implicitly imports assumptions about control, dominance, and boundedness that sit uneasily with how cognition actually operates. Cognitive processes are distributed, relational, and emergent; they cannot be occupied, secured, or governed in the same way as physical or technical domains.

From a cognitive and organizational science perspective (Weick, 1995; Kahneman, 20111), cognition could be considered, not as a terrain, but as an emergent process, shaped by meaning-making, uncertainty, emotion, and social interaction. Labeling it as a domain may offer operational clarity, but it risks obscuring the fundamentally distributed and relational nature of cognitive processes.

When war, warfare, and domain are conflated, several analytical problems emerge.

First, treating cognitive warfare as war encourages escalation narratives and legal framings that may not reflect empirical reality.

Second, treating cognition as a domain invites analogies—particularly with cyber—that risk overstating control, attribution, and measurability. In the cyber domain, extensive doctrinal and legal debates have focused on thresholds, including when a cyber operation may constitute an armed attack or an act of war (e.g., Tallinn Manual 2.02; Schmitt, 2017). Transposing this logic to cognition raises immediate problems. Cognitive influence activities are often cumulative, ambiguous, and indirect; their effects unfold over time and resist clear attribution or proportional assessment. Applying cyber-style thresholds to cognitive processes risks forcing fundamentally different phenomena into an ill-fitting legal–operational template.

The consequence is a form of conceptual overreach: by labeling cognition a domain, analysts may gain rhetorical clarity at the expense of analytical precision. What is lost is an appreciation of cognition as a condition of interaction, rather than a terrain of operations.

Third, using cognitive warfare as an umbrella term for all influence-related activities risks conceptual inflation, a problem long identified in security studies literature on concept creep - or “conceptual stretching” (Sartori, 19703).

This does not imply that the domain framing is without value. Conceptualizing cognition as a domain offers operational clarity, institutional legibility, and a common language for planning and coordination. At the same time, its analytical costs remain significant. Whether the benefits of treating cognition as a domain outweigh the risks of oversimplification and misplaced analogies remains an open question—one that cannot be resolved conceptually alone, but must be tested against empirical patterns of influence, decision-making, and organizational disruption.

Opening the Question: If Not a Domain, Then What?

Clarifying these distinctions does not resolve the question of cognitive warfare—but it reframes it.

If cognitive warfare is neither war in the classical sense nor a domain in the traditional operational meaning, then the key analytical challenge shifts. The question becomes not whether cognitive warfare exists, but how it operates, where its effects materialize, and at what level of analysis it should be studied.

This reframing opens the door to alternative approaches—focusing on cognitive environments, sensemaking processes, organizational dynamics, and conditions of influence rather than territorial metaphors or threshold-based models.

In the next posts, I will explore cognitive warfare as a set of mechanisms and conditions shaping sensemaking, uncertainty, and decision-making—rather than as a bounded domain.

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References

• Allen, P. D., & Gilbert Jr., D. P. (2009). The Information Sphere Domain: Increasing Understanding and Cooperation. In C. Czosseck & K. Geers (Eds.), The Virtual Battlefield: Perspectives on Cyber Warfare (pp. 132–143). IOS Press. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-60750-060-5-132
• Clausewitz, C. von. (1832/1976). On War. Princeton University Press.
• (use any standard English edition; year reflects original publication)
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Libiseller, C. (2023). ‘Hybrid warfare’ as an academic fashion. Journal of Strategic Studies, 46(4), 858–880. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2023.2177987
• Mazarr, M. J. (2015). Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict. U.S. Army War College Press.
• https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/428
• NATO. (2020). Allied Joint Doctrine for Psychological Operations (AJP-3.10).
• https://info.publicintelligence.net/NATO-PSYOPS.pdf
• NATO Allied Command Transformation – Innovation Hub. (2021). Cognitive Warfare: First NATO Scientific Meeting on Cognitive Warfare, Bordeaux (France), 21 June 2021.
• https://innovationhub-act.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Cognitive-Warfare-Symposium-ENSC-March-2022-Publication.pdf
• Sartori, G. (1970). Concept misformation in comparative politics. American Political Science Review, 64(4), 1033–1053.
• https://doi.org/10.2307/1958356
• Votel, J. L., Cleveland, C. T., Connett, C. T., & Irwin, W. G. (2016). Unconventional warfare in the gray zone. Joint Force Quarterly, 80, 101–109.
• https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-80/jfq-80_101-109_Votel-et-al.pdf
• Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage Publications.
• Schmitt, M. N. (Ed.). (2017). Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. Cambridge University Press.
• Schmitt, M. N. (2017). Cyber operations and the jus ad bellum revisited. Harvard National Security Journal, 8, 1–56.
• Rid, T. (2013). Cyber War Will Not Take Place. Oxford University Press.
• Hathaway, O. A., Crootof, R., Levitz, P., Nix, H., Nowlan, A., Perdue, W., & Spiegel, J. (2012). The Law of Cyber-Attack. California Law Review, 100(4), 817–885.
• https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol100/iss4/1/

1

The references to Weick (1995) and Kahneman (2011) are used to underscore a shared insight across organizational theory and cognitive psychology: cognition is not a stable or spatially bounded entity, but a process that emerges under conditions of uncertainty and interaction. Weick’s work on organizational sensemaking emphasizes that cognition is socially constructed through ongoing interpretation, communication, and action, particularly in ambiguous environments. Kahneman’s research on judgment and decision-making demonstrates that cognitive processes are systematically shaped by heuristics, biases, emotional states, and cognitive load. Together, these perspectives challenge spatial or territorial metaphors of cognition and support the argument that cognition resists treatment as an operational domain in the traditional military sense.

2

Tallinn Manual 2.0 is the canonical reference for cyber operations and thresholds of armed conflict. Schmitt’s work provides the legal logic behind act-of-war classifications in cyber contexts.

3

Sartori warns against “conceptual stretching” where scholars extend concepts like “democracy” to cover more cases, gaining extension but losing intension (distinctive meaning), which precisely parallels the risk of conceptual inflation when “cognitive warfare” becomes an umbrella for all influence operations.

Thanks for reading Cognitive Warfare Research & OSINT Insights— with Sara Russo! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

substack.com · SaraJan 11, 2026

12. Everything Is Governance: Why the Real Contest With China Is Systemic, Not Economic

Summary:

The article argues that the real competition with China centers on governance: how power is organized, disciplined, and sustained under constant pressure. Xi has treated governance as strategic architecture, recentralizing authority and using administrative control to manage shocks, from Covid to energy and digital disorder. This coherence allows Beijing to turn regulations, law, and economic tools into irregular warfare at the systems level, applying steady pressure without open conflict. By contrast, fragmented democracies leak authority, slow decisions, and struggle to impose coherence on complexity. The author warns that metrics on GDP or platforms miss this deeper governance contest.

Comment: If governance is the primary terrain of competition, what concrete reforms would the United States need to adopt to regain systemic coherence without sacrificing liberal pluralism?

How should U.S. cognitive warfare and narrative intelligence strategy adapt to frame governance itself as the decisive contest with China, rather than focusing on episodic crises or narrow economic indicators?

We need to recognize, understand and EXPOSE China's strategy, and then attack it with superior political warfare.  

My attempt to recognize, understand, and expose China's strategy is here: 

My assessment is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).

Perhaps these are some considerations for the generational struggle against China and the other members of the Dark Quad.

Strong deterrence - we want to prevent conflict and war BUT we cannot show fear of it and we cannot have a policy of "preventing escalation at all costs" as the previous US administration had in place. Fear of escalation is a demonstration of our strategic weakness. We have to understand that there are times to escalate to de-escalate. We have to have the strategic sense to know when.

Adopt JFK's dictum: "never fear to negotiate but never negotiate out of fear." Maintain global strategic strength to sustain a superior negotiating position.

Conduct proactive aggressive political warfare rather than "strategic competition" to protect, sustain, and advance US interests in combination with mutual defense and mutually supporting political warfare in conjunction with our friends, partners, and allies (some (e.g., UK or 5 Eyes) more than others ). This does mean protecting the rules-based international order (I cannot yet imagine something that could replace it that would be in our interest).

Regarding the Dark Quad (China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea): recognize that we cannot impose external change on any of them. We have to sustain our strength and defense capabilities to deter them from engaging in direct conflict or war. We must deal with the reality of their malign activities and work to defeat the effects of those activities while conducting our own political warfare activities to continuously create conditions (dilemmas ) that will keep them off balance - we need to sustain the initiative and not cede it to them. We need to recognize that this will be the strategic order for the long term until there is internal change in these countries where they collapse or change due to their own internal contradictions. The bottom line is we have to both create the conditions where possible but also let the conditions develop naturally that will cause these countries to fail due to their own internal contradictions. We cannot "fix" everything ourselves. We cannot "try" too hard. But we can protect, sustain, and advance our interests. If we focus on that we can live with a certain level of the status quo while recognizing that eventually our enemies will change or collapse based on their internal political resistance.

Everything Is Governance: Why the Real Contest With China Is Systemic, Not Economic

How Power Is Organized, Sustained, and Contested in the 21st Century

Erika Lafrennie

Jan 13, 2026.  https://www.xinanigans.com/p/everything-is-governance-systemic-competition-china?utm

The dominant debate about China continues to orbit familiar terrain. Analysts argue over growth rates, demographic curves, technological breakthroughs, and force posture. These indicators matter, and they generate endless heat. They also obscure the central feature of contemporary competition.

The defining contest with China does not turn on who grows faster, fields more platforms, or files more patents. It turns on how power is organized, disciplined, and sustained under pressure. The decisive domain is governance.

Governance is commonly treated as background infrastructure—administration, regulation, public management. In practice, governance functions as a strategic system. It shapes how decisions are made, how authority persists during stress, and how legitimacy is produced when outcomes disappoint. It determines whether a state absorbs disruption or fragments under it. In an era defined by systemic strain rather than episodic crisis, governance has emerged as the primary terrain on which competition unfolds.

This reality explains why so much contemporary China analysis feels unsatisfying. Economic performance, military modernization, and technological capacity are visible outputs. Governance determines whether those outputs cohere into durable power. China’s leadership understands this. Under Xi Jinping, governance has been treated as a strategic architecture rather than a managerial concern. That orientation, more than any single policy choice, defines the competitive challenge.

Governance as Strategic Architecture

Governance operates upstream of strategy and downstream of ideology. It structures incentives, constrains behavior, and shapes how systems respond to friction. Every system governs. What varies is how governance allocates authority, tolerates ambiguity, and manages error.

As a strategic domain, governance structures several critical functions simultaneously. It organizes decision velocity by determining who is authorized to act and under what conditions. It channels information by shaping which signals travel upward and which are dampened. It enforces discipline by aligning incentives with compliance. It produces legitimacy by narrating outcomes as success, necessity, or sacrifice. These functions operate continuously, regardless of whether a system is growing or stagnating, unified or polarized.

Power accrues to systems that govern pressure coherently. Pressure now arrives persistently rather than episodically: supply-chain volatility, demographic aging, climate stress, technological disruption, information saturation, and fiscal constraint. These pressures reward systems capable of imposing order on complexity. They penalize systems that disperse authority faster than they integrate it.

Governance therefore functions as a force multiplier. It determines how effectively economic capacity translates into strategic endurance, how military capability integrates with political purpose, and how societies tolerate prolonged uncertainty without loss of cohesion.

Xi’s Project as a Governance Response

Xi Jinping’s consolidation of authority often attracts explanation through personality, ideology, or ambition. A system-level reading offers greater clarity. China entered the 2010s with extraordinary growth, rising inequality, deep corruption, and expanding exposure to external dependency. Authority diffused across bureaucracies, regions, and networks. Information moved unevenly. Accountability fractured. The leadership confronted a system that generated output while accumulating fragility.

Xi’s response treated governance itself as the primary object of reform. Authority concentrated. Discipline intensified. Information flows narrowed and formalized. Metrics replaced deliberation as the organizing logic of bureaucratic performance. Control substituted for trust as the mechanism of coordination.

This architecture aimed to govern vulnerability rather than eliminate it. It prioritized predictability over flexibility and coherence over pluralism. The system absorbed economic shocks, external pressure, and internal disruption through administrative enforcement rather than adaptive negotiation. That design carries costs. It also produces a form of resilience that operates through discipline rather than consensus.

Strategically, the significance lies in orientation. Governance became the medium through which China manages risk, not a secondary function of policy. That orientation aligns power vertically, stabilizes expectations, and limits internal resistance during periods of stress.

Governance Stress and the Appeal of Administrative Control

The appeal of governance models emphasizing administrative control emerges most clearly during moments of fragmentation. Fragmentation increases transaction costs, multiplies veto points, and converts every decision into a legitimacy contest. Administrative systems that suppress fragmentation gain comparative attractiveness when pressure intensifies.

Several recent stressors illustrate this dynamic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide faced simultaneous demands for rapid decision-making, public compliance, and logistical coordination. Many systems struggled to translate expertise into authority. Information proliferated faster than institutions could adjudicate it. Public trust fractured along political, cultural, and informational lines, creating governance fragmentation that complicated response, regardless of available resources or expertise.

China’s response relied on administrative enforcement rather than persuasion. The approach imposed extraordinary social costs. It also demonstrated the capacity of centralized governance to mobilize compliance rapidly and uniformly. The lesson for external observers was not moral endorsement. It was analytical clarity: administrative coherence governs crisis outcomes as much as policy quality. (see Fukuyama’s comparative governance analysis in Foreign Affairs, 2020)

Energy price volatility following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine produced similar governance stress. States confronted inflation, supply insecurity, and public dissatisfaction simultaneously. In many democracies, fragmented authority complicated response. Regulatory lag, political polarization, and institutional overlap slowed adaptation. By contrast, systems capable of directing production, pricing, and distribution administratively demonstrated greater short-term stability. Again, the attraction lay in control over outcomes rather than optimality of policy.

Digital governance offers another example. As societies confront misinformation, platform power, and data sovereignty, governance fragmentation complicates regulation. Jurisdictional overlap, legal contestation, and political disagreement slow response. China’s model integrates digital infrastructure into state authority, reducing ambiguity about control. That clarity appeals to governments confronting information disorder, regardless of their ideological alignment.

These examples illustrate why governance models emphasizing administrative control gain appeal under conditions of stress. Fragmentation magnifies uncertainty. Administrative coherence promises predictability.

The strategic risk for other systems is not that China’s governance model is attractive in the abstract, but that governance fragmentation under sustained pressure erodes their capacity to compete at all. When authority disperses faster than coordination mechanisms can integrate it, systems lose the ability to impose coherence on complexity. Under those conditions, the appeal of administrative control emerges not from ideological convergence, but from comparative dysfunction.

Irregular Warfare at the Level of Systems

Irregular warfare is often associated with deniability, proxies, and influence operations. Those instruments operate within a deeper contest that unfolds continuously rather than episodically. The decisive struggle occurs at the level of institutional behavior—how systems impose costs, shape choices, and condition responses without open confrontation.

Governance capacity enables this form of irregular pressure by converting administrative control into strategic leverage. When a system governs trade, law, information, and infrastructure through centralized authority, it gains the ability to apply pressure indirectly while preserving formal stability.

China’s use of economic and regulatory tools illustrates this dynamic. Trade restrictions, customs delays, licensing reviews, and compliance inspections impose friction that alters behavior without crossing kinetic or diplomatic thresholds. These measures draw power from internal governance coherence. Bureaucratic discipline ensures alignment across agencies. Information control manages domestic expectations. Narrative framing absorbs external criticism. The effect is pressure that appears technical rather than strategic, administrative rather than coercive.

Legal and regulatory environments function similarly. Lawfare operates effectively when governance systems can synchronize courts, regulators, and enforcement bodies without internal contestation. Administrative consistency transforms legal mechanisms into instruments of strategic influence. Compliance becomes a function of predictability rather than persuasion.

This form of irregular warfare does not rely on surprise. It relies on endurance. Governance capacity sustains pressure across time, normalizes constraint, and shifts the burden of adjustment onto others. The battlefield exists within institutions rather than borders. Governance provides the infrastructure that makes irregular pressure durable.

Why Metrics Miss the Contest

Economic and military indicators dominate assessment because they offer clarity. They quantify capability. They also miss how governance conditions translate capability into power.

Economic growth measures production. Governance determines allocation, compliance, and durability. Military capacity measures force. Governance determines integration with political authority and societal support. Technological advancement measures innovation. Governance determines diffusion, control, and strategic alignment.

Systems can perform well across traditional metrics while accumulating governance fragility. Fragmented authority increases decision latency. Polarized legitimacy erodes compliance. Institutional incoherence magnifies shocks. These dynamics all unfold beneath headline indicators.

This explains why debates over whether China is rising or stagnating remain unresolved. The question itself operates at the wrong level. The relevant issue concerns how systems govern pressure over time.

Governance Competition Beyond China

Governance competition extends beyond bilateral rivalry. Rising complexity pressures all systems simultaneously. Demographic aging strains fiscal capacity. Climate volatility challenges infrastructure planning. Technological acceleration overwhelms regulatory frameworks. Information saturation destabilizes consensus.

Under these conditions, governance models emphasizing discipline, predictability, and administrative coherence gain relevance. The appeal rests on perceived capacity to manage disorder rather than ideological alignment.

This dynamic becomes visible in how states respond to infrastructure, digital governance, and development challenges. Procurement rules tighten. Regulatory authority consolidates. Emergency powers normalize. Performance metrics replace deliberative processes. These shifts emerge independently across regions confronting similar stressors.

China’s governance model functions as a reference point within this environment. Its emphasis on administrative integration, long-horizon planning, and compliance enforcement demonstrates how centralized authority can suppress fragmentation. States observing these outcomes adapt selectively, incorporating governance practices that promise control over complexity.

This diffusion occurs through observation rather than instruction. Governance practices spread through exposure to results. Administrative techniques travel as solutions to shared pressures. As governance stress intensifies globally, models that impose coherence acquire strategic weight.

The Domain That Determines Outcomes

The central feature of contemporary competition lies in governance. Governance shapes how systems respond to sustained pressure. It determines whether societies fragment or cohere, whether authority erodes or consolidates, whether legitimacy dissipates or stabilizes.

China’s approach demonstrates the strategic consequences of treating governance as architecture rather than administration. The system governs risk through control, coherence, and discipline. That orientation generates durability even as it imposes constraint.

The decisive question therefore concerns recognition rather than response. Competition turns on whether systems understand governance as a domain of power and examine their own structures accordingly. Economic strength and military capacity matter. Governance determines how those assets function over time.

The danger is not that governance competition is underway, but that many systems continue to treat governance as neutral infrastructure rather than contested terrain. Because governance failures accumulate quietly, they are often misread as policy missteps, leadership shortcomings, or temporary dislocations. In reality, governance determines whether systems retain the capacity to act under pressure—or discover too late that coherence has already eroded.

Everything is governance.

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13. Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome

Summary:

CNN reports that Pentagon and Homeland Security Investigations officials examined a privately built device that allegedly can reproduce some “Havana syndrome”–like effects, prompting renewed interest in whether a directed-energy weapon could explain past anomalous health incidents. The story appears to be based on internal documents and unnamed officials, not on public technical validation or peer-reviewed science. This sits uneasily beside earlier U.S. intelligence and scientific reviews that found no credible evidence any foreign adversary possesses such a weapon and judged hostile involvement “very unlikely.”

Comment: How does this report corroborate its claims beyond anonymous sources, given the strong prior assessments against an existing weapon?

Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome | CNN Politics

CNN · Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Priscilla Alvarez, Jim Sciutto, Zachary Cohen · January 13, 2026

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-device-pentagon-hsi?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_flipboard

The US flag flutters at the Pentagon on September 19, 2025.

Daniel Becerril/Reuters/File

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The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources briefed on the matter.

A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defense Department, according to two of the sources. Officials paid “eight figures” for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number.

The device is still being studied and there is ongoing debate — and in some quarters of government, skepticism — over its link to the roughly dozens of anomalous health incidents that remain officially unexplained.

CNN has asked the Pentagon, HSI and the DHS for comment. The CIA declined to comment.

The device acquired by HSI produces pulsed radio waves, one of the sources said, which some officials and academics have speculated for years could be the cause of the incidents. Although the device is not entirely Russian in origin, it contains Russian components, this person added.

Officials have long struggled to understand how a device powerful enough to cause the kind of damage some victims have reported could be made portable; that remains a core question, according to one of the sources briefed on the device. The device could fit in a backpack, this person said.

The acquisition of the device has reignited a painful and contentious debate within the US government about Havana Syndrome, known officially as “anomalous health episodes.”

The mysterious illness first emerged in late 2016, when a cluster of US diplomats stationed in the Cuban capital of Havana began reporting symptoms consistent with head trauma, including vertigo and extreme headaches. In subsequent years, there have been cases reported around the world.

In the subsequent decade the intelligence community and the Defense Department have sought to understand if those officials were the victims of some kind of directed energy attack by a foreign government — with senior intelligence officials saying publicly that there wasn’t enough evidence to support that conclusion and victims arguing that the US government has gaslit them and ignored important evidence that Russia was attacking American government officials.

Still, defense officials considered their findings serious enough that they briefed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees late last year, including reference to the acquired device and its testing.

One key concern now for some officials is that if the technology proves viable it may have proliferated, several of the sources said, meaning that more than one country could now have access to a device that may be capable of causing career-ending injuries to US officials.

CNN was not able to learn where — or from whom — HSI purchased the device, but HSI has a history of collaboration with the Defense Department for operations that take place all over the globe. The office has broad jurisdiction to investigate crimes linked to customs violations, including investigations into the proliferation of US-controlled technology or expertise overseas.

Those investigations are “the single biggest collaboration point between HSI and the US military,” according to a former Homeland Security official.

For example, when the US military came across US technology in Afghanistan or Iraq that raised questions about how those components came to the region, it would turn to HSI, according to the official.

It was also not clear how the US government learned of the existence of the device in order to purchase it. Havana Syndrome — and its cause — have remained frustratingly opaque to both the intelligence community and the medical community.

One problem facing the medical community is that there is still not a clear definition of “anomalous health incidents” or AHIs. Tests were done, in some cases, long after symptoms began, making it harder to understand what physically happened.

In 2022, an intelligence panel investigating the cause of AHIs said that some of the episodes could “plausibly” have been caused by “pulsed electromagnetic energy” emitted by an external source.

But in 2023, the intelligence community said publicly that it could not link any cases to a foreign adversary, ruling it unlikely that the unexplained illness was the result of a targeted campaign by an enemy of the US. As recently as January of 2025, the broader intelligence community assessment remained that it was very unlikely that the symptoms were caused by a foreign actor — even as an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence emphasized that analysts cannot “rule out” the possibility in some small number of cases.

That stance has long incensed victims, many of whom believe strongly that intelligence exists offering black-and-white evidence that Russia is behind their symptoms, some of which have been severe enough to force retirement.

Some current and former CIA officers have raised concerns that the agency soft-pedaled its investigation, CNN has previously reported.

The acquisition of the device has been treated by some victims as potential vindication.

“If the [US government] has indeed uncovered such devices, then the CIA owes all the victims a f**king major and public apology for how we have been treated as pariahs,” Marc Polymeropoulos, one of the first CIA officers to go public with injuries he says he sustained in an attack in Moscow in 2017, said in a statement to CNN.

CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed to this story.

CNN · Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Priscilla Alvarez, Jim Sciutto, Zachary Cohen · January 13, 2026

14. China Sucks. Even Their Propaganda Makes America Look Awesome.

Summary:

Andrew Stiles is arguing China was humiliated by the U.S. raid that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, because Chinese-supplied defenses failed and U.S. forces now stand to benefit from Venezuela’s oil. It mocks a Global Times AI propaganda video as amateurish and counterproductive, claiming it makes America’s military look impressive instead of villainous. The piece generalizes this to say China is bad at propaganda and “not very good at anything,” praises Trump’s willingness to use force, and frames recent setbacks for Assad, Maduro, Iran’s regime, and even CNN’s Jim Acosta as evidence of Trump-driven authoritarian collapse.

Comment: I could not resist sending this out to show the Chinese propaganda images (assuming they are true and not AI memes). Please go to the link to view the images.

China

China Sucks. Even Their Propaganda Makes America Look Awesome.

Communist thugs lash out after humiliation in Venezuela

https://freebeacon.com/china/china-sucks-even-their-propaganda-makes-america-look-awesome/?utm

Andrew Stiles

January 12, 2026

The American raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was deeply embarrassing for Red China. The third-world communist thugs had provided much of the military equipment designed to protect Maduro's regime from foreign intervention. It proved utterly useless against U.S. forces, who snatched Maduro just hours after his meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials.

China was especially mad because American companies are poised to take over Venezuela's oil supply. The Global Times, a regime-controlled newspaper, published a crummy AI video attempting to disparage the United States for having an awesome military that excels at taking oil from communists. The video, which features a gun-toting bald eagle jumping out of a helicopter and planting an American flag in an oil field, was terrible propaganda. The wailing Chinese soundtrack sounded like crap, and it made America look awesome.

15. A Green Beret Went on a Shooting Rampage. Is the Army at Fault?

Summary:

The article profiles Sgt. First Class Duke Webb, a Green Beret with seven deployments who killed three people in a 2020 bowling alley shooting. It traces his steady cognitive and behavioral breakdown after years of blast-heavy Special Operations training, headaches, paranoia, and off-label prescription of the Alzheimer’s drug memantine. Webb’s lawyers argue cumulative brain injury plus the drug triggered a psychotic break. The Army noted probable TBI and PTSD yet discharged him “other than honorable,” cutting off care, and has not probed how blast exposure, drugs, and operator culture may be producing hidden brain damage and rare violent outbursts.

Comment: Another very troubling story. I do not recall this story from 6 years ago. Does that mean there are too many of them to remember? I think about all the time our operators spend on the range and in the shoot house and jumping out of airplanes and conducting combatives and so much more than can affect their brains and I suppose I am amazed that there are not more of these tragedies (though I fear many are suffering in silence and although they do not resort to these kinds of actions they are dealing with debilitating effects that only they and their families and close friends see). So many questions.

To what extent should the Army be held institutionally responsible for violent acts linked to cumulative blast exposure and off-label medications it prescribes?

How could Special Operations doctrine, training standards, and medical surveillance be redesigned to detect “operator syndrome” early without undermining unit readiness or careers?

What independent investigative or oversight mechanism is needed to determine whether similar undiagnosed brain injuries are already affecting judgment, discipline, and lethality across the Special Operations community?

A Green Beret Went on a Shooting Rampage. Is the Army at Fault?

High-tempo Special Operations training can cause brain injuries that accumulate unnoticed. One soldier says that is why he snapped and killed three people.

By Dave Philipps

Send the reporter a tip at nytimes.com/tips

• Jan. 12, 2026

Sgt. First Class Duke Webb was an active-duty Green Beret with seven deployments and a flawless record when he entered a bowling alley in Rockford, Ill., one night and started shooting people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/us/blast-brain-injury-green-beret-shooting-duke-webb.html

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

No one had done anything to provoke him. He just seemed to snap. He shot a 14-year-old boy in the face by the front door, and a 16-year-old girl in the shoulder when she tried to hide. Then he walked into the snack bar and continued to fire.

By the time the police tackled him that evening in 2020, three people were wounded and three were dead. He has been awaiting trial for first-degree murder ever since.

He has admitted that he pulled the trigger. The question is why.

PTSD is the obvious guess. But there is little in Sergeant Webb’s record to support it. He was only in one real firefight, and no one on his team was hit by enemy fire that day.

The real cause, Sergeant Webb and people close to him say, had nothing to do with combat — but everything to do with his Army service.

Special Operations troops train relentlessly, jumping from planes, firing shoulder-fired rockets and setting off explosives. The years of training exposes them to so many weapons blasts and knocks to the head that it can erode their ability to do the job, or even to function normally. Many end up with significant brain injuries — injuries that are often missed by the Army.

That is what Sergeant Webb says happened to him. After 12 years in uniform, he was having splitting headaches and developed a facial tic. He often lost his train of thought and became so consumed by strange, conspiratorial anxiety that he began insisting that his girlfriend use a code name.

The Army never diagnosed a brain injury, but medical officers grew so concerned that they prescribed for the sergeant a drug used to treat advanced Alzheimer’s disease. He was 37 years old.

When he walked into the bowling alley 16 days later, he told the police afterward, he didn’t understand where he was or what he was doing.

Image

Duke Webb shot six people at a bowling alley in Rockford, Ill., in 2020, killing three. He has admitted to the shooting but has pleaded not guilty.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

His lawyers have argued in court filings that the Alzheimer’s drug, called memantine, pushed his already injured brain past its limits, and that when he opened fire, he was in the grip of psychosis caused by the medication. He has pleaded not guilty.

“I know what I did was wrong, and I deserve to be in here suffering,” Sergeant Webb said in a telephone interview in the fall, in which he sometimes lost his train of thought and rambled. “But the military used me up, then abandoned me,” he said. “I feel left behind.”

Instead of trying to understand whether off-label medication and years of blast exposure had contributed to the killings, the Army quickly cut ties with Sergeant Webb.

Shortly after the bowling alley shooting, it sent a psychologist to assess Sergeant Webb in jail. The military wanted to force him out of the Army, but federal law required it to first determine whether he was medically fit to be discharged, or had a service-related injury that required Army care. The psychologist wrote that Sergeant Webb probably had experienced a “brief psychotic disorder,” and showed signs of PTSD and a brain injury. The Green Beret was not fit to be discharged, he wrote.

The Army discharged him anyway. The paperwork rated his service as “other than honorable,” cutting him off from veterans’ medical care and benefits.

There are now three possible outcomes for Sergeant Webb’s criminal case. A jury could find him guilty and send him to prison for life. It could find him not guilty by reason of insanity, and send him to be confined in a state hospital where he would be treated and perhaps eventually released. Or it could decide that the drug prescribed by the Army temporarily made him insane through no fault of his own, and let him walk free.

In none of those scenarios, though, would the Army learn whether blast exposure in training played a role in what happened, or how that training may be hurting other soldiers.

Sergeant Webb has been in jail for five years, much of it in solitary confinement. In part because of his rattled mental state, he has replaced his legal team several times, delaying his trial and exhausting his savings — about $400,000. He has grown hopeless and at times suicidal.

“I just get tired of living with myself,” Sergeant Webb said. “The people I served with, most of them seem to have forgotten about me. What I did was so horrible, no one wants to take the time to try to understand why it happened.”

Constant Training, Constant Exposure

Sergeant Webb joined the Green Berets in 2010 after two years in the regular Army. He was assigned to 7th Special Forces Group at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and began a grueling decade of training and deployment.

The Army sent him to explosives school, sniper school, jump school and dive school. He learned to fire mortars and other heavy weapons that can cause brain injuries. He deployed three times to Latin America and four times to Afghanistan. Though combat exposure was minimal, blast exposure was constant.

In Latin America, he taught partner armies how to create landing zones in the forest using explosives. In Afghanistan, he trained local troops to detonate mines, and blew up abandoned American military equipment to keep it out of Taliban hands.

“None of those blasts completely rocked you — they didn’t hurt,” Sergeant Webb said in the interview. “But you could feel them in every part of your body.”

In interviews, Sergeant Webb and several other Green Berets estimated that only 10 to 20 percent of their overall blast exposure had come in combat. The vast majority was from training, not war.

Image

Sgt. First Class Duke Webb, pictured with colleagues, is one of a number of career troops with blast exposure who developed a pattern of cognitive and other symptoms sometimes called Operator Syndrome. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The brain is an exceptionally delicate network of some 100 trillion neural connections. Blast waves surging through repeatedly can fray its tiny fibers or break them. When damage piles up, the brain’s reactions can become hard to predict.

Early in his career, Sergeant Webb had a reputation in Special Forces for being meticulous, calm and motivated. “He was a go-getter, very smart, well spoken, squared away, never in trouble,” said his former team leader, retired Master Sgt. Duane Flores.

But over time, Sergeant Webb started to unravel. It began with restless sleep and disturbing dreams, then headaches so severe that he worried he might have a brain tumor. His thoughts grew scattered, and he struggled to retain information.

The Army treated the symptoms without diagnosing a larger cause. He got medicine for his headaches, and the stimulant Adderall for concentration.

His girlfriend at the time, Monica Gonzales, watched him gradually grow so fearful and suspicious that he started to refer to her outside the house only by the code name Matilda.

“It got worse over time, to the point that it was really making me nervous,” she said.

‘Driving With the Engine Light On’

Sergeant Webb is an extreme case of a much larger problem in Special Operations that the military is largely blind to.

Years of intense training and exposure to weapons blast waves can cause profound scarring in the brain that makes top-performing soldiers fall apart. But in case after case, the military has missed the onset of these kinds of brain injuries, in part because there is usually no obvious single accident or attack to point to as a cause, and in part because the symptoms can resemble those of PTSD.

In career Special Operations troops, insomnia, anxiety, confusion and other problems are so common that the pattern has been given a name: Operator Syndrome.

Murder and other violent crimes are a rare outcome, but when they occur, the military does little to understand whether brain injuries played a role. If troops are arrested in the civilian world, the military simply discharges them and moves on.

In response to questions from The New York Times, Special Operations Command, which oversees all Green Berets and Navy SEALs, acknowledged that “years of routine training and weapons use, particularly exposure to blast overpressure, can pose risks for brain injuries in career operators.”

A spokeswoman for the command, Col. Allie Weiskopf, said it was changing some training to reduce exposure, and increasing screening for injuries. The changes, she said, exemplify Special Operations Command’s “commitment to supporting the well-being of its personnel throughout their entire careers.”

When blast-exposed troops have turned violent, though, the military has repeatedly dismissed the possible role of cumulative brain injury, in favor of explanations that don’t implicate its training or equipment.

In 2002, four soldiers at Fort Bragg murdered their wives in a six-week span. Three were senior enlisted Special Forces soldiers just back from Afghanistan. The fourth was a combat engineer in a unit that had done extensive explosive disposal work in Kosovo.

An Army investigation initially focused on whether a malaria drug could be at fault, and eventually concluded that pre-existing marital problems were largely to blame. It never considered blast exposure.

In 2023, an Army National Guard staff sergeant who had spent years as a grenade instructor killed 18 people in Maine, and then died by suicide. A civilian laboratory that examined tissue from his brain found damage that it said was consistent with repeated blast exposure. The Army said it saw no connection.

Image

Brain injuries can accumulate in troops frequently exposed to blast waves in training. A laboratory found signs of such injuries in brain tissue from a Maine gunman who worked as a grenade instructor. Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Sergeant Webb wasn’t the only member of his Special Forces team who was struggling. His communications sergeant, Aaron Tugmon, started to have crippling panic attacks and insomnia. Reading became a struggle, and remembering nearly impossible. The Army prescribed drugs for sleep, anxiety, depression, and headaches, plus Adderall for concentration.

“Before I knew it, I was on, like, eight pills, and the Army never really looked at the cause,” said Mr. Tugmon, who retired as a chief warrant officer in 2024.

Their former team leader, Sergeant Flores, had many of the same problems, and the Army put him on many of the same drugs. He fought to control his emotions, and one morning, he chased a man who had been tailgating him and got into a physical confrontation.

“It was clear something ain’t right,” he recalled in an interview. “That’s when I went for help.”

He was medically retired from the Army in 2020. Afterward, he worked as a civilian for a Special Operations program that encourages soldiers to seek health care. The job revealed to him how widespread the problems were.

“I would say, 90 percent of our operators are driving with the engine light on, trying to ignore their problems until they can’t anymore,” he said. “Very little of it rises to the level of murder, but there are assaults, suicides, drugs, domestic problems. A lot of people are hurting.”

The problems also show up in career Navy SEALs, said Chris Frueh, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii who encountered the pattern when working with SEALs transitioning to civilian life. Unsure how to properly categorize what he was seeing, in 2020 he proposed the “Operator Syndrome” designation.

There are probably many contributing causes, including chronic stress, sleep disturbance and exposure to combat, Mr. Frueh said, “but maybe the biggest factor is brain injury.”

‘I Could Feel the Synapses Misfiring’

By his seventh deployment in 2020, Sergeant Webb was a wreck. He was in an intelligence job at a secure base in Afghanistan, working largely at a desk, but his headaches grew so intense that he often had to stop and lie down in a dark room.

“I felt like I could feel the synapses misfiring, like my brain was just scrambled eggs,” he recalled.

When he got home in August 2020, he seemed different in ways that friends found hard to explain. He had always been meticulously neat, but now his house was cluttered with unfinished projects. Commuting to work one morning, he saw a cardboard box on the roadside and was so sure the logo on it was a sign of communist activity that he filed a report with Special Forces.

“He would cry over all sorts of things,” said Ms. Gonzales, who remained friends with him after they separated in 2019. “He was sure people were out to get him.”

In December 2020, the pain and confusion grew so bad that he sought help from a Special Forces psychiatrist. The doctor scheduled him to come back in a month for a brain injury assessment, and prescribed memantine.

The drug is approved to treat late-stage Alzheimer’s, and is sometimes prescribed off-label for other forms of dementia and for headaches. But patients must be monitored carefully, because in rare cases, it can cause serious side effects, including psychotic delusions.

Sergeant Webb never made it to his follow-up appointment.

Image

Early in his career, Duke Webb was known as a meticulous, squared-away soldier. His mother, Janice Webb, held a portrait of him as she waited in November for a video call with him from jail. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

A few days after starting to take memantine, he traveled to Rockford, where his father was in a coma after an auto accident. He stayed with his half brother, Anthony Gonzales, who immediately noticed that something was off. The Green Beret had developed a stutter, blinked hard while speaking and peered constantly out windows.

“I figured it was PTSD or something, and just tried to let him know it was all OK,” Mr. Gonzales said in an interview.

Sergeant Webb stayed in Illinois through Christmas. During that time, he said in an interview, he became convinced that the federal government had been replaced by a shadowy conspiracy of Communists, Russian operatives and violent street gangs, and that ordinary people he encountered — hospital workers, waitresses, delivery drivers — were in on the plot.

On Christmas night, he told the police, he sat awake with a gun, afraid that someone was going to attack.

The day before Sergeant Webb was scheduled to return to Florida, Mr. Gonzales had to go to work at a bowling alley called Don Carter Lanes, where he was the cook and night manager. He asked Sergeant Webb to come along.

At the alley, Mr. Gonzales took his half brother to the snack bar, gave him a menu and told him to pick something out. Mr. Gonzales went to the kitchen to cook. Sergeant Webb quietly scanned the room, his thoughts reeling.

“It was like the most extraordinarily vivid combat dream I’ve ever had, and I felt everyone was trying to kill me,” he said later.

He became so agitated that he vomited in the snack bar, and then went to find his half brother in the kitchen. As he did, he pulled out a concealed handgun.

“I tried to calm him down,” Mr. Gonzales recalled. “I said, ‘You’re surrounded by good people. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you.’”

Sergeant Webb put his gun away, took a few deep breaths and appeared to relax. He left the kitchen.

A minute later, Mr. Gonzales heard a loud bang, as if someone had dropped a bowling ball. Then several more.

From the kitchen, he saw his brother pointing a gun. “I yelled, ‘Duke, no!’” Mr. Gonzales said. “He snapped his head and looked at me. But you could tell by his look that it wasn’t really him. I saw that look, and I took off running.”

Read by Dave Philipps

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro and Sarah Diamond.

A correction was made on Jan. 12, 2026: An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a University of Hawaii psychology professor. He is Chris Frueh, not Freuh.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.Learn more

Dave Philipps writes about war, the military and veterans and covers The Pentagon for The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 13, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Placing Blame in Green Beret’s Deadly Rampage. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

16. U.S. Citizens Are Joining the Military to Protect Undocumented Parents

​Summary:

The story shows Guard recruiters using Parole in Place as a lifeline for mixed-status families amid aggressive ICE operations. Blowback is likely. Critics on the right may claim the military is a backdoor amnesty machine, pressuring DoD and DHS to narrow or suspend the program. Critics on the left may see vulnerable communities pushed into service under duress, calling recruitment predatory. Recruiters will be caught between mission and ethics. Services and DoD may respond with tighter guidance, legal reviews, and new messaging to frame Parole in Place as honoring service, not exploiting fear, while Congress fights over its future.

Comment: I imagine we will see the blowback from this story soon. Political factions on both extremes are likely to latch onto this reporting for their political agendas.

How long can the services credibly defend Parole in Place as a moral obligation to military families before political actors recast it as an abuse of enlistment incentives or “amnesty by other means”?

If fear of deportation becomes a quiet driver of recruiting in Latino communities, what must DoW and the services change in oversight, counseling, and data tracking to ensure consent is genuinely voluntary and not coerced by immigration pressure?

The sad irony is that this could be helping our recruiting numbers and we are likely enlisting good soldiers.

U.S. Citizens Are Joining the Military to Protect Undocumented Parents

NY Times · Greg Jaffe · January 12, 2026

Amid an ICE crackdown in her area, an Oregon National Guard recruiter offers U.S. citizens a way to save their immigrant parents.

By Greg Jaffe

Greg Jaffe spent eight days in The Dalles, Ore., with a recruiter from the Oregon National Guard.

• Jan. 12, 2026
• 
  

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/us/politics/oregon-guard-undocumented-parents.html

Amid an ICE crackdown in her area, an Oregon National Guard recruiter offers U.S. citizens a way to save their immigrant parents.

Lindsey Vazquez, 20, joined the National Guard to help her parents, who had crossed the border three decades earlier as teenagers.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

Amid an ICE crackdown in her area, an Oregon National Guard recruiter offers U.S. citizens a way to save their immigrant parents.

Lindsey Vazquez, 20, joined the National Guard to help her parents, who had crossed the border three decades earlier as teenagers.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

By

Greg Jaffe spent eight days in The Dalles, Ore., with a recruiter from the Oregon National Guard.

• Jan. 12, 2026

She believed that the key to being a good recruiter was not just selling the military and its benefits, but herself. Sgt. First Class Rosa Cortez wanted potential recruits to notice the pictures of her smiling children, her college diploma and the awards she had earned in the course of her nearly 20 years with the Oregon National Guard.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

Listen · 20:16 min

Her goal was to “radiate positivity,” she said. “People will see it and want to align with you.”

Lately though, she, along with hundreds of other recruiters around the country, had been offering something else: protection from the government she served.

President Trump’s second term has been defined by an extensive crackdown on undocumented immigrants that has set off waves of fear in places with large Hispanic populations. In many of these areas, a little-known government program called Parole in Place has become a refuge of last resort and a powerful recruiting tool.

Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents are eligible to enlist in the military. The Parole in Place program, launched in 2013, provides the undocumented parents and spouses of service members protection from deportation, and an expedited pathway to permanent residency.

Sgt. First Class Rosa Cortez said she aims to “radiate positivity.”Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

In early December, Sergeant Cortez was working with six potential recruits who wanted to use the program. One of them was Juan, a 23-year-old with messy, black hair and a gold earring. (Juan requested that his last name be withheld to protect his undocumented family members.)

Juan had seen a video that Sergeant Cortez posted on social media and contacted her about enlisting. “I would like it if you could provide me some more information before I come to a decision,” he wrote in a text message in late September.

Sergeant Cortez sent a message back, asking Juan about his “goals in life.”

“Well for starters I’m hoping to get my mother qualified for PIP so that she doesn’t have to leave the country,” he replied, using the acronym for Parole in Place.

Two months later, masked immigration agents grabbed a longtime resident of the area at a Home Depot a few miles from the small business that Juan’s family operated in The Dalles, Ore., a town of about 16,000 people on the Columbia River.

Now Juan was sitting across from Sergeant Cortez in her small office. He handed over his Social Security card and shifted nervously in his chair. Everything was moving so fast.

National Guard soldiers train one weekend a month and two weeks every summer. During times of war, domestic unrest or natural disaster, they can be mobilized by states or the federal government to full-time duty.

Mr. Trump has also sought to deploy Guard soldiers on policing missions in cities across the country, including Portland, Ore., where the courts recently ruled that he could not send troops over the objections of local officials. On Thursday, Border Control agents shot two people in Portland during a traffic stop, stoking anger and protests.

National Guard soldiers train one weekend a month and two weeks every summer.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

When meeting with recruits, Sergeant Cortez liked to talk about the pride she felt helping during floods or fires, and the camaraderie that came with military service. But as the child of undocumented immigrants, she also recognized the fear gripping her community.

Her recruiting territory traces a 100-mile swath of central Oregon that has long drawn migrant farmworkers from Mexico, some of whom stayed and put down roots.

Sergeant Cortez had grown up in the region’s cherry and pear orchards. She had close friends who were afraid to leave their homes.

“It’s insane what’s happening,” Juan said as Sergeant Cortez took his fingerprints and finished his paperwork.

Sergeant Cortez shared a link to a practice exam that would measure his math and English skills. He promised to do it later that evening. If he passed, Juan could take the actual test in just a few weeks.

But first he needed to finish his evening shift at his family’s business, where his mother was working the cash register.

A Soldier’s Sacrifice

Family members mourning during a funeral procession for Sgt. Alex R. Jimenez, who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq.Credit...Andrew Henderson/The New York Times

Parole in Place’s origins trace to May 2007, one of the deadliest months of the Iraq War. Sgt. Alex R. Jimenez’s platoon was patrolling a village south of Baghdad when insurgents attacked and took him captive. His remains were recovered more than a year later.

While thousands of U.S. troops searched for the 25-year-old soldier, his wife, who had entered the United States illegally from the Dominican Republic, was being deported. Amid a public outcry, the Bush administration granted her permanent residency.

“The sacrifices made by our soldiers and their families deserve our greatest respect,” said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary at the time.

The program was formalized a few years later. The goal was to provide soldiers peace of mind before they went to war. If a service member drops out or is dishonorably discharged, their family member loses protective status. In 2023, about 11,500 relatives of military recruits used the benefit, a 35 percent increase over the previous year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The agency did not respond to requests for more recent data. But several states reported a recent surge in program enlistees. In Nevada, 79 enlistees, or about 20 percent of the state’s new National Guard recruits in 2025, used the program.

For Sergeant Cortez, the program had become something bigger than numbers. Her mother had crossed the Mexican border illegally with her family in 1976 at age 7. “Cherries, apples, pears, plums, onions. You name it, we probably picked it,” Sergeant Cortez said.

Sergeant Cortez’s family inspired her to enlist.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

Home was a tent, or if they were lucky, a barn. Eventually, they settled in a farm labor camp outside Walla Walla, Wash.

The turning point for her family came when one of her uncles, who had obtained legal residency in the 1980s, joined the Oregon National Guard. The entire family — seven people crammed into a car fit for five — drove more than 30 hours to Fort Knox, Ky., for his basic training graduation.

The farm labor camp, Sergeant Cortez recalled, could be chaotic. There were drugs, crime and families fighting to survive.

The basic training graduation ceremony was another world. The soldiers, clad in their dress uniforms, brass buttons gleaming, marched in perfect rows onto the parade ground.

A second uncle followed the first into the military. Soon, both found steady jobs as full-time technicians working on the Oregon National Guard’s fleet of cargo helicopters. Sergeant Cortez and her extended family moved from the farm labor camps to a neighborhood in Milton-Freewater, Ore.

In 2004, when Sergeant Cortez was 16, her uncles deployed to Afghanistan. Two years later, she enlisted and shipped off to basic training.

“Emotions are everywhere for me,” Sergeant Cortez said.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

Now, she was a 37-year-old mother of three and a full-time National Guard recruiter, selling the benefits of service to a nation at war with itself over immigration, and who deserved to be an American.

As a soldier and a recruiter, she had to steer clear of divisive, political fights. As the child of Mexican immigrants in a place that felt besieged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the topic was impossible to avoid.

“Emotions are everywhere for me,” she said.

‘We’re Scared’

The Dalles, a town of about 16,000 people on the Columbia River in Oregon, has a large immigrant community.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

The mayor and five members of The Dalles City Council stared out at the crowd that had turned out on a rainy night in early December.

The elected officials were white men. The crowd was almost entirely Hispanic. They filled the meeting room on the second floor and spilled over into the hall and a nearby overflow room, where Sergeant Cortez was watching.

Nine days had passed since Salvador Muratalla, a father of five who came to the country in 2002, was taken from the Home Depot by masked ICE agents. He had been shopping for electrical circuits for a construction job.

Sergeant Cortez had seen the online video of the three agents dragging Mr. Muratalla out of the store by his arms as he yelled his name and phone number.

Now his daughter, Yami Muratalla, was shaking as she addressed the Council.

“Why did they let three masked agents take my father?” she cried. “They went to where he was and took him away from his five children, the youngest being 10 years old, who’s mentally affected, who’s scared to go to school!”

She gasped for breath.

“I’d ask you to wrap it up,” the mayor said.

“That’s all I’ve got to say,” replied Ms. Muratalla, who covered her face with her hands.

The elected officials were not sure what to do. One proposed that they draft a statement. A second said he needed time to reflect.

“I don’t have a lot of Hispanic friends,” confessed a third.

“We’re your new friends,” someone called out from the crowd.

The meeting ended with the Council members deciding that they needed more time to study the situation.

Federal agents facing off with protesters outside of an ICE detention center in Portland in October.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times

Sergeant Cortez approached Ms. Muratalla in the hallway outside the meeting room. Months earlier, Ms. Muratalla and her mother had attended an information session on Parole in Place that Sergeant Cortez had held at the National Guard armory, where she works.

The two women hugged.

“I’m so sorry,” Sergeant Cortez told her.

Sergeant Cortez recalled the anger, fear and shame she had felt as a child watching police arrest her grandfather at a community festival where he was selling Mexican snacks to make extra money.

He often stole the identities of Americans so that he could get hired and work. Eventually, the police would catch him and send him to jail. Sometimes, he would be deported to Mexico, where he would sleep on the street until the family raised enough money to hire a smuggler to bring him back across the border.

Like Sergeant Cortez’s grandfather, Mr. Muratalla had a theft conviction, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesman.

Sergeant Cortez’s phone buzzed later that evening with a message from Ms. Muratalla. Her father was being moved from Tacoma, Wash., to a detention facility somewhere in Texas.

“I can’t stop crying,” Ms. Muratalla wrote.

“I completely understand,” Sergeant Cortez replied.

An American Dream

Ms. Vazquez’s parents have already received work permits and social security numbers through the parole in place program.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

One of the soldiers Sergeant Cortez had helped was Lindsey Vazquez, 20. Ms. Vazquez stood only 4 feet 8 inches tall and had needed to gain five pounds just to meet the military’s minimum weight requirement.

She had joined to help her parents, who had crossed the border three decades earlier as teenagers, and because she wanted to prove she could support herself and be a soldier.

Ms. Vazquez was a logistics specialist for the Guard and worked full time as a clerk at a discount department store in The Dalles, with hopes of someday using her military benefits to go to college. She, her parents and two sisters were living in a camping trailer parked next to the nearly finished house her father had spent the last six years building.

During the day, her father, Omar, ran a one-person construction company out of his white pickup truck. At night and on weekends, he built their house. “Whatever I have is what I spend on it,” Mr. Vazquez said of the three-bedroom, two-bath home.

Ms. Vazquez, her mother and sisters helped hang drywall and cut tile.

Ms. Vazquez lives with her parents and two sisters in a camping trailer parked next to the nearly finished house her father has spent the last six years building.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

Ms. Vazquez’s parents had already received work permits and Social Security numbers through the Parole in Place program. As soon as they had their permanent residency cards, her father wanted to go to Mexico to see his 87-year-old mother. His wife had siblings she had not seen in decades.

But their lives, their children and their future were in Oregon.

“All the way to the creek is ours,” Mr. Vazquez said. There were fruit trees, fairy lights and a small barn where he kept a pinto horse and some chickens. A few days earlier, Mr. Vazquez had installed the kitchen and living room flooring, purchased at the same Home Depot where Mr. Muratalla was arrested. The two men knew each other from construction work.

He wanted to build a stone patio with a grill where he would be able to gaze out at the high-desert mountains. “I go step by step by step,” he said.

This was his American dream.

Cold Feet

Sargeant Cortez’s recruiting territory traces a 100-mile swath of central Oregon that has long drawn migrant farmworkers from Mexico.Credit...Amanda Lucier for The New York Times

Juan scored in the 44th percentile on his practice entrance exam, 13 points above what he would need when he took the actual test. But as the prospect of joining the military grew more real, so too did his reservations.

He worried about leaving his girlfriend, who had moved to The Dalles four months earlier from Portland to be with him. He was nervous about basic training.

When Sergeant Cortez suggested setting a firm date for the test, he hesitated. “I was wondering if there’s any chance for you to put my application at a halt,” he wrote in a text message. “I’m so sorry.”

“Absolutely,” Sergeant Cortez replied. “I’ll put you on my back burner.”

She went to talk to Juan’s mother, who had spent 22 years building a life in Oregon and nine years growing a small business with Juan’s stepfather. She did not want her son to join just so she could get legal status.

“We make sacrifices because we don’t want our children to have to sacrifice,” she told Sergeant Cortez in Spanish.

Sergeant Cortez replied that Juan was acting out of “love.” Helping his mother, she said, could bring him “a sense peace.”

Three days after The Dalles City Council meeting, Sergeant Cortez asked Juan to stop by her office at the armory. Almost all recruits get cold feet. She knew that the best way to overcome such doubts was to keep the process moving.

They talked about basic training. Juan had been watching online videos of new recruits packing before they left, and was thinking about one of his last visits to the airport. He recalled seeing people with military-style haircuts frantically running through the concourse with their green duffel bags, and wondered if that would be him.

“Is it a hassle trying to get the new recruits on planes?” he asked.

“I give you a whole brief before you leave,” she reassured him.

And they talked about his mother’s precarious status. The recent arrests and uncertainty were taking a mental toll, Juan explained.

“It just breaks me,” he said.

Juan scheduled a time to drive with Sergeant Cortez to Portland so he could take the military’s entrance exam. He still was not entirely committed to enlisting. But he was getting closer.

“It’s become more realistic to me,” he said.

He strode out of Sergeant Cortez’s office, passing plaques, streamers and black-and-white photos commemorating Oregon Army Guardsmen’s service over the last 150 years fighting in places like the Philippines, Europe and Afghanistan.

“He’s a good kid, full of energy,” Sergeant Cortez said. “I think he’ll be a great leader.”

Some people join the military for the benefits. Others for adventure, patriotism or to escape a bad situation at home. Juan was motivated primarily by a desire to keep his family together.

To Sergeant Cortez, his reasons made perfect sense.

Juan passed the entrance exam on Dec. 22. He planned to take his physical, the next step in the process, in the new year.

Read by Greg Jaffe

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.

Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.

Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration

• Guidance for ICE: Weeks before the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE officer, officials warned agents to remain vigilant about protesters and be “prepared to take appropriate and decisive action should you be faced with an imminent threat.”
• Haitian Migrants: A federal judge questioned whether the Trump administration appropriately reviewed safety conditions in Haiti before ending protections for people from the Caribbean nation.
• Asylum Seekers: Two Caribbean nations, Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, said they had agreed to start receiving foreign nationals seeking asylum in the United States.
• Judge Convicted of Obstructing Immigration Agents: Hannah Dugan, the Wisconsin state judge who was convicted of obstructing federal agents attempting to arrest an undocumented immigrant, has resigned her position in a letter sent to Gov. Tony Evers.

NY Times · Greg Jaffe · January 12, 2026

​17. Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed With American Poverty

​Summary:

China’s propaganda machine is pushing the “kill line” meme to paint American capitalism as irredeemably cruel and to distract from China’s own economic fragility. State and quasi state outlets amplify vivid stories of U.S. homelessness, medical bankruptcy, and “sudden ruin” while contrasting them with China’s claimed safety net and poverty alleviation. The goal is emotional relief and regime legitimacy at home, not serious analysis. Yet Chinese censors suppress discussion of China’s own vast low income population, weak pensions, medical insecurity, and local policy failures, revealing a gap between the narrative of security and the lived reality of risk.

Comment: Another form of "Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations?"  How can American and allied narrative campaigns expose the “kill line” trope as projection of China’s own economic precarity, using Chinese data and voices to turn Beijing’s propaganda inward without appearing to mock genuine poverty in either country?

What tools in the cognitive domain could systematically highlight Chinese household insecurity, youth unemployment, and rural hardship in ways that resonate with Chinese audiences as “their” kill line, undercutting the Party’s claim that only its system shields ordinary people from sudden, irreversible disaster?

Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed With American Poverty

NY Times · Li Yuan · January 13, 2026

By Li Yuan

Jan. 13, 2026, 12:00 a.m. ET

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

the new new world

State media, embracing the gaming phrase “kill line,” is asserting China’s political superiority over the United States, deflecting focus on China’s own economic challenges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/business/china-american-poverty.html

Credit...Doris Liou

By

Jan. 13, 2026, 12:00 a.m. ET

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Chinese commentators are talking a lot these days about poverty in the United States, claiming China’s superiority by appropriating an evocative phrase from video game culture.

The phrase, “kill line,” is used in gaming to mark the point where the condition of opposing players has so deteriorated that they can be killed by one shot. Now, it has become a persistent metaphor in Communist Party propaganda.

“Kill line” has been used repeatedly on social media and commentary sites, as well as news outlets linked to the state. It has gained traction in China to depict the horror of American poverty — a fatal threshold beyond which recovery to a better life becomes impossible. The phrase is used as a metaphor to encompass homelessness, debt, addiction and economic insecurity. In its official use, the “kill line” hovers over the heads of Americans but is something Chinese people don’t have to fear.

The depiction of the United States as a place where economic hardship is deep and widespread has been a go-to of official Chinese messaging for years. But the use of the “kill line” phrasing and imagery is new. The power is in the simplicity of what it describes: an abrupt threshold where misery begins and a happy life is irreversibly lost. The narrative is meant to offer China’s people emotional relief while attempting to deflect criticism of its leaders.

The worse things look across the Pacific, the logic of the propaganda goes, the more tolerable present struggles become.

It’s not a coincidence that there is a swell of these messages now. China’s economic growth is half what it once was. Youth unemployment is high. Familiar paths to security — stable jobs, rising property values, steady upward mobility — have become less predictable. For many families, the margin for error feels thinner than it once did.

In an essay published online in late December, the legal blogger Li Yuchen argued that the appeal of the “kill line” idea was its convenience. It allowed Chinese people to condemn a distant system while avoiding uncomfortable questions about their own lives, he wrote.

The term “functions less as an analytical tool than an emotional interpreter,” he wrote. His essay was removed by censors, joining a long list of content erased for questioning official economic narratives.

The fact is that societal inequality is a problem in both China and the United States. And the American economy no doubt leaves many people in fragile positions. The causes are complex.

Yet in China, poverty is experienced and perceived differently. In most Chinese cities, street begging and visible homelessness are tightly managed, making them far less prominent in daily life. Many urban residents encounter such scenes only through foreign reporting, rebroadcast by Chinese state media, about the United States and other places.

Economic insecurity remains widespread in China: Meager rural pensions and high medical costs drive fears of financial ruin and fuel some of the world’s highest household savings rates.Credit...The New York Times

Economic insecurity remains widespread in China. Some 600 million people, or about 40 percent of the population, make about $1,700 a year. Rural pensions often amount to only $20 or $30 a month, and a serious illness can send families into a financial crisis. That fear of running out of money is one reason China has among the world’s highest household savings rates. But such pressures are portrayed as part of a culture of endurance and responsibility that leaves families prepared to overcome unpredictable life events.

For older Chinese, the enlistment of American poverty in service of domestic politics is familiar. During the Cultural Revolution, a famous slogan proclaimed that “happy Chinese people deeply cared about the American people living in misery,” even as most Chinese themselves were living in poverty.

When I was growing up in China in the early 1980s, my family subscribed to China Children’s News, which ran a weekly column with a simple slogan: “Socialism is good; capitalism is bad.” It described seniors in American cities scavenging for food, and homeless people freezing to death. Those stories were not invented, but they lacked context and were presented as the dominant experiences in American society. Much of Chinese society was still closed off from the world, and reliable information was scarce.

That many people accepted such narratives was hardly surprising. What’s striking is that similar portrayals continue to resonate today, when access to information is relatively much greater despite state control.

The formula is simple: magnify foreign suffering to deflect from domestic problems. That approach is taking shape today around the “kill line” metaphor.

The phrase is believed to have been first popularized in this new context on the Bilibili video platform in early November by a user known as Squid King. In a five-hour video, he stitched together what he claimed were firsthand encounters of poverty from time he spent in the United States. His video used scenes of children knocking on doors on a cold Halloween night asking for food, delivery workers suffering from hunger because of their meager wages and injured laborers discharged from hospitals because they could not pay.

The scenes were presented not as isolated cases but as evidence of a system: Above the “kill line,” life continues; below it, society stops treating people as human.

The narrative spread beyond the Squid King video, and many people online repeated his anecdotes. Essays on the nationalist news site Guancha and China’s biggest social media platform, WeChat, described the “kill line” as the “real operating logic” of American capitalism.

In China, poverty is less visible. Street begging and homelessness are tightly managed, and many urban residents see such scenes mainly through foreign news coverage.Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Others cited examples of Western journalism that they felt presented the America-China contrasts. A Financial Times article published on Dec. 24 about Connecticut’s wealth gap — affluent Greenwich, struggling Bridgeport — was recast in Chinese media. Even a modest financial shock, such as a missed paycheck, the loss of health care benefits or a sudden expense, can trigger a rapid downward spiral.

Another widely circulated example drew on “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2016 memoir by Vice President JD Vance. People online highlighted his account of selling plasma while struggling with student debt. If even a future national leader had to drain his body to stay afloat, Chinese commentaries asked, what chance does an ordinary American have?

By late December, the “kill line” framework had gained official momentum. Beijing Daily and Southern Daily, both state-run outlets, launched several “hot topics” on the Weibo platform that usually help draw wider attention. Guancha published more than a dozen commentaries in less than two weeks applying the metaphor to American poverty, health care and working conditions. The site later included “kill line” in its roundup of the year’s top news, linking it to critiques of President Trump’s first year back in office.

In early January, Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal, published a commentary addressing the “kill line” as a structural feature of U.S. capitalism. A term borrowed from gaming culture had entered sanctioned political language.

In many of the commentaries, anecdotes about Americans experiencing abrupt financial crises are followed by comparisons with China. Universal basic health care, minimum subsistence guarantees and poverty alleviation campaigns are cited as evidence that China does not permit anyone to fall into sudden distress.

“China’s system will not allow a person to be ‘killed’ by a single misfortune,” one commentary from a provincial propaganda department states.

Many readers expressed shock at American poverty and gratitude for China’s system. “At least we have a safety net,” said one commenter.

Not everyone has accepted the narrative. Some commentators even applied the “kill line” language to domestic policies, including local actions in northern Hebei Province that sharply raised winter fuel costs for rural households.

“A topic does not gain traction simply because people are foolish,” one person wrote on WeChat. “Often, it spreads because confronting reality is harder.”

The title of the article: “The American kill line is not about America.”

Li Yuan writes The New New World column, which focuses on China’s growing influence on the world by examining its businesses, politics and society.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Communist Party of China, Donald Trump

NY Times · Li Yuan · January 13, 2026

​18. Lightning Lab gives Pacific Army division drone-building capabilities on the front lines. 

​Summary:

Lightning Lab at the 25th Infantry Division is turning soldiers into front line drone builders. In a repurposed storage room at Schofield Barracks, a 13 person team designs and 3D prints drones, weapon accessories, and training aids at unit level. They built and iterated the Kestrel and indoor capable Falconette during exercises in the Philippines, incorporating real time soldier feedback. The lab also produces ultra cheap one way attack drones and rapidly adapts frames to new swarm components within a day. Their goal is to push printer skills and design know how across the division to avoid a single point of failure.

Comment: Potential for creative solutions. Perhaps our best scientists and engineers and designers are our own troops.

Lightning Lab gives Pacific Army division drone-building capabilities on the front lines

defenseone.com · Jennifer Hlad

The small group of soldiers can produce gear—and then immediately take feedback to make it better.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2026/01/lightning-lab-gives-pacific-army-division-drone-building-capabilities-front-lines/410607/?utm

SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, Hawaii—The 25th Infantry Division is all about drones: Drones that sense. Drones that shoot. Drones that get blown to smithereens for HIMARS target-practice. And more and more, drones built by soldiers themselves.

Tucked away in the converted storage room of a former movie theater, a handful of soldiers are producing drones by the dozen as part of the division’s Lightning Lab, a 13-person unit borrowed from other parts of the division and rapidly trained to build drones, training aids and ad hoc solutions to problems encountered on the battlefield.

The Lightning Lab troops also take their 3D printers on the road. When the division was deploying to the Philippines last summer, the unit was tasked with producing drones to use during the training, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 John Crutcher. They decided to produce a 3D-printed unibody frame they called the kestrel, so they “went out to the Philippines, made 125 of them out there in the field, and took a lot of good feedback from the field,” including that soldiers needed to be able to fly the drones indoors, for training and room-clearing, Crutcher said.

So, a week after they returned to Hawaii, they made a new model, dubbed the Falconette.

The rapid—some might even say “lightning-fast”—speed at which the lab can gather feedback and adapt is a key component of the U.S. Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative, and a radical departure from the traditional yearslong defense acquisition process.

Lt. Col. Eugene Miranda, spokesman for the 25th Infantry Division, said much of what the lab does is “soldier-driven innovation from the point of need.”

“A lot of that innovation is being powered down to the soldiers who are actually the users of the things. So we get that real-time feedback, versus these age-old systems where it’s optimized only for the process of the planning, programming, budgeting and execution time horizon.”

In addition to the Kestrel and Falconette, the lab also makes one-way attack drones that cost just $12 in components to make, and is working with a company that won an Army innovation competition on swarm tech. The company brought its winning tech here and “in 24 hours, we had redesigned our Kestrel frame to be able to fit their components to be able to get up and fly a swarm,” Crutcher said.

It’s not just drones. During the Philippines trip, Crutcher said, they printed 110 new buttstocks for rifles, because the scopes were sitting too high to easily and comfortably use them with the original buttstocks. They also print training aids.

So how much training do the soldiers need before they can build drones? Crutcher said his expertise came from “YouTube University, Google University, Reddit University.”

One soldier who showed up on a Tuesday morning had built his first drone by the afternoon, and was building drones unsupervised by Thursday, he said.

The lab also teaches other units how to use the printers and build drones, because “we don’t want to be the single point of failure for the 25th ID,” Crutcher said. “You can’t rely on a 13-person shop to mass-manufacture at scale, right? Anybody who knows how to do math is going to be able to figure that out pretty quickly.”

defenseone.com · Jennifer Hlad

19. A La Carte Feminism: The Limits of NATO’s WPS Commitments in a Time of Crisis

​Summary:

NATO’s 2024 Women, Peace, and Security policy ties gender to deterrence, crisis management, and cooperative security, yet democratic militaries still practice “a la carte WPS.” Expired national action plans, inconsistent data, and weak accountability keep women underrepresented in leadership, peace processes, and protection from conflict related sexual violence. Anti gender movements and remasculinization politics sharpen this gap between rhetoric and reality, handing autocracies an easy propaganda line about Western hypocrisy. In democracies, legitimacy, recruitment, and operational insight all depend on inclusion. 

​Comment:  ​I am sure this will be panned by certain partisan political factions. But we cannot and must not ignore women and women's issues and we have to stop treating women's issues from a partisan perspective. ​

A La Carte Feminism: The Limits of NATO’s WPS Commitments in a Time of Crisis

by P.A. Cegielski

|

01.13.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/13/a-la-carte-feminism/

As NATO marked its 75th anniversary and the 25th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, the Alliance’s renewed focus on the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda presents both symbolic commitment and practical challenges. This article evaluates NATO’s 2024 WPS policy in the context of its four strategic objectives—gender-responsive leadership and accountability, participation, prevention, and protection—highlighting persistent implementation gaps across member states. Drawing on national action plans, gender equality indices, and internal diversity reporting, the analysis identifies inconsistencies in policy execution, data transparency, and institutional accountability.

Introduction

NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary during the NATO Summit July 2024 in Washington, D.C., highlighting the Alliance’s implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). October 2025 will mark 25 years since UNSCR 1325’s adoption.

NATO adopted its first WPS policy in 2007, action plan in 2021, incorporated WPS into its Strategic Concept, and its latest policy in July 2024. NATO focuses on four WPS strategic objectives: gender responsive leadership and accountability, participation, prevention, and protection.

However, gaps remain where progress and accountability are needed to achieve these goals. This analysis will compare objectives in relation to NATO member rankings on gender equality and WPS indices, the existence of members’ WPS national action plans (NAPs) and the transparency and progress of NATO’s Diversity and Inclusion Reports, identifying areas of improvement. Additionally, it will also review public criticisms of NATO’s limited engagement on WPS in Ukraine, Sweden’s shift from a feminist foreign policy, LGBTQ+ security challenges, and the rise of anti-gender movements in Europe, which the new policy must address.

NATO’s WPS Strategic Objectives

NATO’s 2024 WPS policy links its 2022 strategic concept goals and aims to integrate WPS across its three core tasks: deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security. The policy emphasizes gender mainstreaming, which NATO defines as “a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of both women and men an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, programs and military operations.” A summary follows NATO’s four WPS objectives and the challenges in their implementation:

Gender Responsive Leadership and Accountability: NATO’s first WPS objective seeks to ensure gender-responsive leadership by strengthening gender expertise, promoting gender equality and holding leaders accountable for WPS agenda implementation. While NATO has introduced policies, NAPs, training requirements and gender advisors, data collection remains opaque and there is limited evidence of security benefits. This will not change the “male- dominated security sphere” with needed “deep-rooted and radical integration. Requiring training on gender will promote greater understanding of why WPS is important beyond operational effectiveness and address broader equality concerns. NATO should mandate training on WPS for partners to encourage the recognition of gender rights as human rights.

Leaders need to recognize that being gender responsive is not just about women. Morrison (2023) wrote that NATO’s revised Bi-Strategic Command Directive 40-001 (2017) included men and boys in gender discussions to reduce resistance to gender mainstreaming at the operational and tactical levels.

Women In International Security (WIIS) and other practitioners stated the need for more male policymakers’ engagement in gender-responsive leadership and accountability and to challenge “men to engage with women and treat women as rights holders rather than as passive recipients.

Leaders need to recognize that being gender responsive is not just about women.

Participation: NATO aims for gender parity in its workforce, especially in leadership and decision-making roles, but none of its member states have achieved parity in parliamentary representation. A 2023 article on NATO’s future points out that while the percentage of women in member forces doubled from 5.9% in 2001 to 12% in 2019, parity remains elusive. NATO’s WPS integration is predicated on gender becoming a key part of leadership approaches and the goals to diversify that leadership must have accountability.

NATO aims for gender parity in its workforce, especially in leadership and decision-making roles, but none of its member states have achieved parity in parliamentary representation.

According to the 2023 Georgetown Institute of Women Peace and Security’s index, Iceland leads with 47.6% representation, while Hungary trails with 13.1%. Despite an increase in women within NATO and senior leadership roles, gender parity is only reached at the lower grades. The 2018-2022 Annual Diversity and Inclusion Reports (now the 2024 Diversity Balanced Scorecard) from NATO indicate inconsistent data collection, hindering tracking progress over time. (See NATO Country Findings table for additional analyses).

Women in International Studies (WIIS) held a sideline event during the July 2024 NATO summit, highlighting women’s leadership in the Alliance and the need to create more defense leadership roles for women and incorporate diverse voices in strategic decisions.

Prevention: This objective seeks to prevent and counter threats that disproportionately affect women and girls and promote their participation in crisis prevention and management. NATO’s performance in Afghanistan had difficulties with this objective as women were excluded from peace negotiations. Henderson (2023) noted NATO focused on increasing women in the military rather than their participation in peace negotiations.

In 2023, women made up just 16% of negotiators, declining for two consecutive years. NATO does not currently provide any gender disaggregated data on participants for peace processes or political talks. NATO’s commitment to “strengthen efforts to integrate gender perspectives into all aspects of its work” would be well demonstrated if data were provided on how women participate in the prevention of crises and crises management.

The PeaceRep PA-X Peace Agreement Database reports that in 2022, only 6 of 18 peace agreements (33%) referenced women or gender, and only one was signed by a representative of a women’s group. Researchers argue that this falls short of “UNSCR 1325’s ambition to adopt a gender perspective when negotiating and implementing peace agreements. The focus on training and capacity-building may have overlooked the need to address entrenched norms that view conflict as “exclusively the business of men,”

Protection: On June 19, 2024, the NATO International Military Staff Office of the Gender Advisor hosted a session on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). The discussion emphasized the importance of combatting CRSV with localized control of the process and highlighted NATO’s role in protecting men and boys from CRSV, noting those policies need strengthening (See GenderHub project on Men, Peace and Security). The May 2024 NATO Parliamentary Assembly recognized that NATO needs to strengthen relations with the Global South to check Russian and Chinese influence and reduce “sexual violence in conflict”.

NATO’s 2024 WPS policy sees CRSV as a deliberate tactic of war and that it is “committed to ensure effective prevention and response to CRSV in all NATO missions, operations and activities”. It pledges to protect women and girls from GBV and has expanded this to address technology-facilitated GBV, or TFGBV. (See details in the New Themes section). However, this protection is not explicitly extended to the LGBTQ community, although NATO has implemented internal programs in this regard. (See LGBTQ+ Policies).

NATO Allies often lack support services for conflict-related sexual, gender-based violence (CR-SGBV) and domestic violence.

While NATO has shown advances in the protection objective, Clarkson, McAnally and McInnis revealed that NATO Allies often lack support services for conflict-related sexual, gender-based violence (CR-SGBV) and domestic violence. They suggest that NATO should have learned CR-SGBV lessons from Afghanistan, the Balkans and Iraq. The U.N. Special Rapporteur 2024 report on violence against women and girls and Afghanistan’s human rights echoed these concerns: “The situation of Afghan women and girls is becoming increasingly alarming, with impunity creating risks that the international community has not yet fully grasped”.

Highlighted Themes in NATO’s 2024 Policy

Two key concerns were highlighted at the NATO anniversary event: climate change and TFGBV.

The 2024 NATO WPS Policy identifies climate change as a “defining challenge of our time,” noting it will affect genders differently and therefore women are needed to help find solutions to climate change-related security challenges. Research from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS) underscores the nexus of climate, conflict, and gender, declaring that climate change destabilizes political systems and aggravates underlying political, social and economic conditions, which potentially provoke increased or renewed conflict. However, missing from the participation strategic objective is the promotion of women’s leadership in climate-related conflict mitigation and prevention.

[M]issing from the participation strategic objective is the promotion of women’s leadership in climate-related conflict mitigation and prevention.

The second theme referenced at the anniversary event was digital and emerging technologies. While these technologies can support gender equality, they propagate biases and violence, particularly TFGBV. NATO recognizes that women and girls are disproportionately targeted by GBV, CRSV, human trafficking, and now TFGBV. Men and boys can also be victims of these types of violence and should be included in any WPS agendas on this issue.

In 2024, a GIWPS Policy Brief stated that 85% of women globally experience or witness online violence, with 20% of victims reporting that it led to offline violence. TFGBV disrupts WPS objectives and international peace and security by excluding women from positions of power through harassment, exacerbating existing GBV threats (e.g., CSRV is filmed for propaganda and blackmail), facilitates new types of violence (e.g., AI generation of sexually explicit deepfakes), and fuels radicalization and violent extremism used by far-right groups to recruit young men violence.

LGBTQ+ is a target for mis/disinformation and violence. A 2023 report from Strategic Communications Task Forces and Information Analysis, looked at how foreign actors, such as the KillNet Russian hacker group, target LGBTQ+ individuals, including releasing the identities of NATO-affiliated people registered on a gay dating site.

To effectively address TFGBV, NATO needs to include LGBTIQ+ considerations and not just binary gender in its analysis. GIWPS recommends NATO include a gender lens in digital transformation, address how technology exacerbates CRSV, online misogyny and radicalization, and research on TFGBV in conflict contexts.

NATO Gender Findings and Diversity Reports

NATO’s 2024 WPS policy places primary responsibility for the WPS agenda on member nations through their NAPs, security and defense strategies, and “commitments to broader international frameworks.” It stresses the importance of coherence between national and global efforts.

The Peacewomen.org. and Oursecurefuture.org NAP databases track WPS implementation across NATO member states. Additionally, the 2023 European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Gender Equality Index and the GIWPS Index provide insights into NATO members’ gender rankings. (See chart). These databases serve as valuable tools for change, helping identify areas where NATO can push for stronger WPS commitments. WIIS research in 2024 adds support for this type of guidance, “We know that countries that mention the defense department…generally score higher on implementation.”

All NATO members except Türkiye and Hungary have NAPs. However, 14 out of 32, or 44%, have NAPs that are expired or outdated. NATO could leverage its influence to encourage members to update or create new NAPs, ensuring a commitment to WPS both internally and externally. In the EIGE index, all European NATO countries scored above 50%, with 30% in the top quarter (noting EIGE only collects data on European countries). GIWPS’s rankings, which cover all NATO countries, show an average score of 85%, with 90% in the top quarter of 177 nations. Türkiye ranks lowest among NATO members (99/177), scoring 66.5%, followed by Greece at 51/177 and 76.6%.

However, NATO’s own gender data reporting has been inconsistent. (See chart for side-by-side comparison.) The 2021 report removed “U grade” appointments but reintroduced them in 2022, reducing female representation to 26%. Starting in 2020, the report removed the breakdown by percentage of women overall and female senior leaders in 11 categories and added one category of “other,” which is not defined, making year on year comparisons nearly impossible.

To maintain accountability and transparency, NATO must improve the consistency of its gender data.

The NATO 2024 scorecard shows comparisons between 2021 and 2023, skipping the 2022 data, and uses categories for subunits that were not listed in previous reports. It excluded several grades and presented data only on international staff, showing 44% female representation. This contrasts sharply with the 27% reported in 2022, suggesting the figures may not reflect the entire NATO organization. To maintain accountability and transparency, NATO must improve the consistency of its gender data. Accurate, year-over-year data is crucial if NATO aims to lead by example in promoting full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peace and security.

European Challenges for NATO WPS

Civil Society

NATO’s initial engagement with WPS in 2007 lacked consultation with civil society, but this changed in 2014 with the creation of the WPS Civil Society Advisory Panel (CSAP). Despite this, many within civil society organizations remain wary of engaging with NATO because of its military nature. A 2023 article revealed concerns from participants in CSAP about the lack of transparency and meaningful dialogue, lack of racial and inadequate funding. Additionally, some worry NATO may use women’s rights groups as intelligence tools.

Absence of WPS in Ukraine Response

NATO’s lack of a gender-focused response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights challenges with WPS implementation. The 2024 NATO policy on WPS states that the “use of CRSV as a deliberate tactic of war is an acute threat in all conflicts”. The policy highlights how Russia used CRSV, unlawful killings and torture on Ukrainians, particularly on women and girls.

 An analysis by Wright in 2022 noted that NATO did not express gender’s importance in its response, drawing attention to the “disjuncture between the rhetoric and reality of NATO’s commitment to the WPS agenda.” O’Sullivan, and Krulišová argued in 2023 that the international community, neglected to use WPS approaches to aid Ukraine. They claim the war places the WPS focus on external insecurity, and the silence is apparent evidence that the agenda is not suitable for full-scale war. “This failure to apply WPS when urgently needed relates to the deeper challenges surrounding the global WPS policy and practices,”. Despite supporting Ukraine’s WPS policy since 2014, NATO’s limited inclusion of WPS in its Ukraine response undermines its commitment to the agenda.

Sweden’s Abandonment of Feminist Foreign Policy

Sweden supported NATO in its WPS agenda, bringing the first gender advisor to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, and evaluating NATO’s 2012 WPS implementation in operations. In 2014, Sweden became the first country to adopt a feminist foreign policy (FFP). However, Sweden abandoned FFP in 2022 amid its bid for NATO membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This silence on FPP came before the October 2022 election of the new conservative government, which officially abandoned FPP and saw NATO membership as incompatible with the policy, even though NATO promoted WPS in its 2022 strategic concept.

Wright and Rosamund,(2024) attribute Sweden’s gendered silence partly to Türkiye and Hungary blocking Sweden’s membership forcing Sweden to sacrifice ideals to appeal to their “gendered nationalism.”

LGBTQ+ Policies

NATO has made internal progress supporting LGBTQ+ rights through initiatives such as Elevate Diversity, Proud@NATO and NATO’s diversity and inclusion program. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg publicly supportedLGBTQ+ rights: “LGBTQ+ people deserve respect & dignity, and I am proud to call myself your ally.” However, Hurley noted such statements describe identity rather than concrete action.

Despite policy advancements, NATO still adheres to a gender binary, as noted in a 2024 article by Security and Defence Quarterly. The researchers stated that despite having policies and practices promoting a diverse and inclusive workforce, the equal opportunity and diversity policy remains unenforced. Additionally, Botha revealed in 2021 that WPS does not adequately address LGBTQ+ vulnerabilities, especially in conflict zones where LGBTQ+ people face heightened violence and discrimination. LGBTQ+ identity has become part of what Hurley, defines as “value centered,” claims by states and alliances for foreign and security policy justification. Hurley’s article notes that LGBTIQ+ rights define states, international institutions, and their leaders as well as their relationships, “whether this be as ‘progressive allies’ in the case of NATO or as a defender of Mother Russia’s ‘traditional values’ against the ‘immorality’ of a corrupt West.”

Examining NATO Alliance member policies on LGBTIQ+ with such tools as the Global Acceptance Indexcould be the start of finding a baseline of where members are in terms of human rights and incorporating LGBTIQ+ into the WPS agenda. This would allow the issue to gain needed traction and support.

Gender Policy Backlash

NATO’s WPS agenda faces resistance from a growing “anti-genderism” movement that opposes gender equality and mainstreaming, particularly in countries such as France, Hungary, and Poland. This transnational movement has actors mobilizing people against women’s rights, reproductive services, marriage equality, sex education, gender studies, and gender mainstreaming, which are related to the WPS agenda and objectives.

The Global Action for Trans Equality organization notes that anti-gender movements aim to restrict human rights across multiple domains, from legal gender recognition to healthcare access. Walton, has reported on the movement, noting findings from the 2020 U.N. Human Rights report that cited conservative groups forming a “national and transnational alliance with shared strategies and objectives” to show that the concept of gender is dangerous, as it changes the ways societies are structured. This movement is found in many countries within NATO and poses a threat to the integration of gender equality.

A 2020 Foreign Policy Analysis article identifies a trend referred to as “remasculinization” in international politics, where male leaders and anti-gender political groups oppose gender equality and mainstreaming at the national level. Kotliuk (2023) argued the Soviet Union’s fall created a “remasculinization” gap that Putin was able to fill this gap with his hypermasculinity.

Gottzén and Berggren (2023) found young men in many Western states increasingly oppose women’s rights and gender equality, feeling marginalized and turning to misogynistic and far-right ideologies that will “remasculinize” them. The authors say this process is not just individual but societal, as masculinity is viewed as threatened by “non-whites, feminists, sexual minorities, and others, and therefore believes it needs to be reclaimed.” These global trends have disturbing implications for the WPS agenda and NATO’s WPS objectives. Structured discussion and policies to address anti-gender and remasculinization within NATO’s framework are needed, with a self-critical internal look on how its own structures and processes may be supporting or ignoring such movements.

Summary

NATO’s 2024 WPS Policy reaffirms the allies’ commitment to advancing the global WPS agenda, as outlined in UNSCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions. While NATO has made noteworthy progress, this advancement is grounded in policies but lacking in implementation and documentation. In 2023, Simone Benson, a researcher at the Centre for International and Defence Policy, emphasized that NATO’s success depends on the full integration and transparency of its WPS commitments. However, some Alliance members and partners selectively engage with the WPS agenda, a practice termed “a la carte WPS” by the Gender Hub.

NATO needs to hold all its members and partners accountable to the four WPS strategic objectives. Transparent data collection and consistent reporting by members and partners is essential for assessment. Additionally, European WPS challenges must be addressed in future discussions with concrete plans for mitigation. At NATO’s 75th Anniversary, there is progress to applaud; however, as UNSCR 1325 reached its 25th anniversary, there is also a reckoning to see how much progress can be measured and what tactics are needed to stay the course.

Table 1: NATO Members: WPS National Action Plans (NAPs), Gender Equality and WPS Indices Rankings

CountryYear joinedFirst NAPMost recent NAP2023 (EIGE) Gender equality index (100 = full equality)2023/24 WPS index rankings (0-1)Ranking: WPS index (comparing 177 countries)1Albania200920182018-20200.79645/1772Belgium194920082017-2021760.90211/1773Bulgaria200420202020-202565.10.82635/1774Canada194920102023-20290.88517/1775Croatia20092011201660.70.86225/1776Czechia199920172017-202057.90.88418/1777Denmark194920052020-202477.80.9321/1778Estonia200420102020-202560.20.89213/1779Finland202320082023-202774.40.9244/17710France194920102021-202575.70.86424/17711Germany195520132021-202470.80.87121/17712Greece195220242023-2028580.76651/17713Hungary199957.30.83532/17714Iceland194920082018-20220.9244/17715Italy194920102020-202468.20.82734/17716Latvia200420202020-202561.50.87220/17717Lithuania200420112020-202464.10.88616/17718Luxembourg194920152018-202374.70.9244/17719Montenegro201720082019-20220.80841/17720Netherlands194920082021-202577.90.9089/17721North Macedonia202020132013-20150.79844/17722Norway14920062023-20300.927/17723Poland199920182018-202161.90.85927/17724Portugal194920092019-202267.40.87719/17725Romania200420142014-202456.10.842/17726Slovakia200420202021-202559.20.85629/17727Slovenia200420102018-202069.40.82436/17728Spain198220072017-202376.40.85927/17729Sweden202420062016-202082.20.9263/17730Türkiye19520.66599/17731United Kingdom1949200620230.8626/17732United States1949201120230.82337/177Average67.520.8625.66

Sources: NAP data gathered from Peacewomen.org and aligned with Oursecurefuture.org. The Gender Equality Index rankings are from European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and the WPS Index Rankings from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security.

Table 2: NATO Gender Distribution by Grade per Diversity and Inclusion Charts, 2018-2023

Sources: All data collected from the NATO Diversity and Inclusion reports 2019 through 2022. The 2023 format switched to a scorecard that was only for the January through March 2023 time frame, but the rest of 2023 has not yet been released. Note that the 2021 report removed U grade appointments and added L grades, which accounts for the huge change in numbers. See section on NATO Country Findings for additional context.

NATO Percentage of Women Senior Leaders per Diversity and Inclusion Reports, 2018-2023

201820192020202120222023International Staff (IS)25%27%30%32%38%International Military Staff (IMS)0%0%0%0%0%Other0%0%0%0%0%NATO HQ subtotal23%25%10%Allied Command Operations (ACO)16 %14%14%13%Allied Command Transformation (ACT)0%0%25%33 %NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Force0%0%NATO Defense College (NDC)0%0%Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) and Combat Air Command and Control Centre (CACCC)0%0%NATO Communications & Information Systems Group (NCISG) NATO Signal Battalion (NSB) and HQ0%0%Closing Entity0%not includedStrategic commands and other entities subtotal9 %NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA)17%22%18%21%21%NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA)90%13%29%16%16%NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency (NETMA)80%8%Science and Technology Organization (STO)29%14%NAEW & C Programme Management Agency (NAPMA)0%0%NATO Helicopter Design and Development Production and Logistics Management Agency (NAHEM)0%not listedNATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency (NAGSMA)25%not listedNATO Medium Extended Air Defense System Management Agency (NAMEADSMA)0%not includedOther14%10%9%Agencies subtotal10%11%NATO-wide civilian total15%17%19 %22%36%

Note: The 2024 scorecard lists 14 entities to breakout women in senior leadership, but none track to any of previously used entities. They range from 67% to 0%. Subtotals were abandoned after 2020.

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Tags: NATO, women peace and security

About The Author

• 
  
• P.A. Cegielski
• Dr. Cegielski is currently the Assessments Lead and Social Science SME for Peraton. Her research has focused on critical military and feminist security studies. She is also a gender focal point for the US military and was a previous instructor at the Air Advisor Academy. Dr. Cegielski did five tours in Afghanistan as a DoD civilian and contractor.
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20. How is India Integrating Drones in its War-Fighting?

​Summary:

India is racing to make drones central to its warfighting by 2030. It is boosting domestic production with incentives, tax changes, and public–private partnerships while still struggling with dependence on Chinese components and unclear procurement plans. The army is fielding drone platoons to create sensor-rich, loitering battlefields and offset combat air gaps, backed by new drone schools and border-force training. The air force and navy focus on ISR and future MQ-9B strike roles, including at sea. Yet a missing joint unmanned doctrine and fragmented command and control limit true multi-domain, networked operations and stable deterrence.

How is India Integrating Drones in its War-Fighting?

by Maryam Raashed

|

01.13.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/13/how-is-india-integrating-drones-in-its-war-fighting/

Contemporary warfare is being increasingly revolutionized by the rise of drones as potent systems being integrated into military arsenals. Drones are quickly becoming lucrative because of their cost-effectiveness, their ability to substitute costly larger tactical systems. This is because of their petite stature that facilitates easier use and creates space for defense innovation. New Delhi is looking to lead the way in drone integration into its military architecture by 2030. These goals have particularly gained momentum after recent conflict with Pakistan.

India’s race towards unmanned technologies has been an elaborate and extensive process characterized by efforts towards both qualitative and quantitative enhancements in India’s drone inventories. Alongside autonomous technology, New Delhi is also ​conducting drone employment training and joint exercises to bolster their military effectiveness. While they had previously been employing drone in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles, the 2025 Pakistan-India conflict was the first instance of drone use in a combat context. This indicated that unmanned platforms are becoming increasingly central to New Delhi’s defense-related requirements and its transition to multi-domain warfare model. 

The Indian military is operationally prepared to employ drones for a diverse range of roles and purposes. New Delhi is already slated to procure the MQ-9B Predator drones from Washington. More recently, the Indian firm Larsen & Toubro and the U.S.-based General Atomics have also agreed to co-produce Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones. In the event the collaboration materializes, it could be a major breakthrough for New Delhi since it has long struggled to organically produce MALE systems. With defense trade being an essential facet of the U.S-India strategic partnership, the developments in India’s drone eco-system can offer insights into India’s emerging operational needs, and market opportunities for U.S-based firms. 

In this view, this article dissects New Delhi’s pathway toward ​modernizing its indigenous drone ecosystem, following a three​​–pronged route, beginning with stepping up the ​​production and ​procurement of drones. Following this, New Delhi is also conducting ​training​s​ and ​exercises to operationalize the use of drones for military purposes. Simultaneously, New Delhi is also moving towards a ​​​doctrinal recalibration where the ​first arm of the rapidly transforming drone ecosystem in India relates to drone production and procurement. While the country’s public sector is primarily responsible for ​defense-related production, the Indian government, however, is actively taking steps to ​encourage private sector producers to develop their drone production capabilities. New Delhi has introduced initiatives such as the Production-Linked Incentive (commonly known as the Drone Scheme) that launched in 2020, and the Drones Rules which was introduced in 2021. ​​Together, these initiatives aimed at simplifying regulatory frameworks for drone production for both civilian and military purposes

In the immediate aftermath of the recent Four Day Conflict between India and Pakistan, New Delhi’s attention toward drone production has particularly intensified. New Delhi announced their allocation of $234 million to invest in a Drone Incentive Program. It is seeking to incentivize the production of not just drones, but also drone components, software, and counter-drone technologies. Furthermore, New Delhi has also relaxed and uniformized the goods and services tax (GST) on drone production from the earlier GST of 18​%​ to 28​%​ ​to ​5%​​. According to New Delhi, the purpose of these efforts is to ​develop drone manufacturing into a stable, predictable, and affordable industry. In addition to this, India’s indigenous drone production aims to cater to a very wide and diverse range of drones from nano quadcopters to medium-altitude ​Intelligence Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms and kamikaze/​First Person View systems. New Delhi ​​hopes to emerge as a competitive and capable drone producer.

It is worth noting that the indigenous drone production in India faces significant challenges with access to raw materials and technology. New Delhi has remained ​​excessively reliant on China for its drone production. In 2023, citing national security concerns, New Delhi banned the use of Chinese components in military drones, which further complicated India’s supply chains. Secondly, despite government-led announcements of supportive policies, there is a lack of clarity over the Indian military’s procurement plans, operational requirements, and acquisition timelines. This lack of clarity impedes production since private manufacturers require stable and predictable procurement plans before committing to large-scale investment and production.

The second prong of the transformation of India’s drone ecosystem pertains to the operational side, where the Indian military is seeking to institutionalize drones. This shift has been most evident in the Indian Army. While arming its infantry battalions with drone platoons for both ISR and combat purposes, the Indian army’s force structure appears to be moving towards a wide range of smaller drones per corps. This is aimed at converting the battlefield into a sensor-rich, loitering-enabled, and strike-rich ​domain. By doing so, New Delhi may be looking forward to reconfigure battle space in its favor via improved situational awareness and precision striking. Also, the employment of unmanned aerial vehicles may also allow New Delhi to off-set the operational gap resulting from its shortage of combat air squadrons. 

Furthermore, the Indian Army has also ​initiated ​​training​​​​ to position drones as a regular component of military activity. ​N​ew goals have been made to establish nineteen drone training centers ​​cross India by January 2026. This is to reinforce the idea that technological training is an essential component of the curriculum for all army ranks. Also, in June 2025, India’s Border Security Force opened its first-ever drone warfare school at its training academy in Madhya Pradesh. It can be noted that an inherent ​​downside of employing drone technology by border security forces in highly securitized environments can be potentially destabilizing ​​the environment. This is due to ​the possibility of inadvertent airspace violations, misattributions, or wrong detections. The Indian Air Force, on the other hand, has been already using Medium Altitude Long Endurance tactical drones, however, exclusively for ISR purposes. With the impending procurement of MQ-9B class platforms, the ​Indian Air Force may also move toward long-range strike capabilities.

The Indian Navy​, on the other hand,​ primarily operates naval drones for ​maritime domain awareness. While the procurement of MQ-9B Sea Guardians is expected to offer the Indian under-water strike capabilities, more specifically anti-submarine warfare capabilities, such underwater capabilities are easier in theory, than in practice. This is mainly due to the congested, dynamic, and challenging nature of the underwater domain. ​As for now, while the recent conflicts depict the declining relevance of land-centric forces against aerial and naval forces, the Indian Army’s lead in ​​operationalizing drones could also be an attempt to maintain its relevance. 

​Together, India’s drone production and procurement, coupled with the operationalization of drones for military purposes is indicative of New Delhi’s bid to usher in a doctrinal-level transformation. This is the final part of India’s drone modernization drive. The Indian military appears to be envisaging an integrated, network-centric and inter-service future of warfare.​ ​The ​goal is to bolster strategic deterrence, and to achieve operational superiority through network means rather than platform means. This is envisioned to be done by wiring and mastering kill chains by converging diverse datalinks and fast cueing​. However, the bid to engage in multi-domain operations can be severely curtailed by​ fact that New Delhi has been unable to devise a unified, joint unmanned systems doctrine. While there are apparent prospects of large-scale drone procurements left, right, and cent​er, more needs to be done for​ ​forging capability-centric inter​–​operable operations to continue to be challenged by fragmented command and controls. Consequently, the ability to wire and master kill​ ​chains by converging diverse datalinks and fast cueing remains challenging.

To continue to encourage interoperability, in October​ 2025​​, the Indian military also conducted a tri-service military drill, named the “Cold Start” exercise. Named after India’s Cold Start doctrine; the drill aimed at testing India’s drone and counter-drone capabilities for improving India’s air defenses. The derivatives of any such exercise shall rely on defining clear strategic and tactical objectives, mechanisms to forge interoperability, logistical availability, technological integration, and effective evaluation mechanisms.

Either way, the elaborate integration of drones into warfare is nevertheless poised to complicate the strategic realities of South Asia, possibly pushing towards lowered thresholds of confrontation, regional arms race, and speedy military innovation.

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Tags: drones, emerging technology, India, security

About The Author

• 
  
• Maryam Raashed
• Maryam Raashed is a research associate at the Strategic Vision Institute in Islamabad, Pakistan. Her research interests include South Asian geostrategic and military-technological developments. 

21. After Maduro: Trump’s Managed Authoritarianism Trap in Venezuela

​Summary:

The article argues that POTUS’s post-Maduro Venezuela policy is not democratization but “managed authoritarianism.” Washington removed the apex of the pyramid yet keeps the authoritarian structure, steering it through three levers: oil access, targeted sanctions relief, and personal legal exposure for regime elites. U.S. strategy seeks continuity government, calibrated repression, and transactional compliance that secures oil flows, migration control, and reduced Russian, Chinese, Iranian influence without owning state collapse. Venezuelan security organs, coup-proofed and abusive, remain central to order. Democratic opposition is treated as a variable to manage, not empower, risking a stable but illiberal U.S.-patronized regime in the hemisphere.

Comment: Is "managed authoritarianism" the right course of action? (I think the author ocining this phrase reveals his agenda). There are of course legitimate questions that we should consider.

How will adversaries and uneasy partners exploit the gap between U.S. rhetoric on sovereignty and democracy and this (new?) overt practice of managed authoritarianism to undermine American legitimacy in the region and beyond?

What concrete levers do Venezuelan opposition leaders, regional democracies, and U.S. institutions still possess to constrain or reshape this managed-authoritarian model before it hardens into a durable precedent for future U.S. regime-management projects? Or will this plan work? WIll it result in continued authoritarian rule or can there be a transition?

After Maduro: Trump’s Managed Authoritarianism Trap in Venezuela

warontherocks.com · January 13, 2026

Orlando J. Pérez

January 13, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/01/after-maduro-trumps-managed-authoritarianism-trap-in-venezuela/

It’s early days, but the Trump administration’s approach to a post-President Nicolás Maduro Venezuela is quickly coming into focus. This is not externally imposed democracy building but a regime management project that relies on compliant regime insiders, the existing state security apparatus, and offshore coercive leverage. As I argued previously in these pages, removing the apex of an authoritarian pyramid does not dissolve the pyramid. What changes is who gets to set the terms for the people still holding it up.

White House adviser Stephen Miller made the premise explicit on national television when he declared that “the United States of America is running Venezuela.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio then tried to narrow the claim without abandoning it: The United States is not “micromanaging day-to-day,” he insisted, but “what we are running is the direction this is going to move going forward.” The administration now intends to use coercive leverage to shape Venezuelan governance through the very insiders who have built the authoritarian order in the country. The keyword in Rubio’s statement is “direction.” It’s vague on purpose. It signals U.S. veto power without committing to direct rule, and it sits awkwardly — and hypocritically — alongside the administration’s frequent invocation of sovereignty elsewhere.

In practice, the Trump administration can probably only “run the direction” of Venezuela through three choke points: oil access, sanctions relief, and personal legal exposure. Those levers are not abstract. They are the coercive toolkit the administration can apply quickly, repeatedly, and without owning the day-to-day business of governing the country.

In Venezuela’s case, the tools are visible: expansive sanctions authority, a criminal indictment regime that turns politics into an arrest-and-prosecution logic, and a U.S. military presence deliberately positioned as an over-the-horizon threat. The Maduro raid made that posture real.

The unfolding drama now serves as the first real-world test of the 2025 National Security Strategy. The administration’s own rationale, as it shifted from drugs to sanctions to oil, and the post-raid rhetoric about “running” Venezuela all reflect a new strategic framing. In a post-Maduro Venezuela, the U.S. project amounts to managed authoritarianism: continuity government, calibrated repression, and transactional compliance, with transition reduced to timetable management rather than any democratization.

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From Counter-Narcotics to Regime Management

The administration’s objectives did not evolve in a straight line, but the direction has been consistent: maximize leverage while minimizing liability. Early escalation was sold as counter-narcotics — including strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats and talk of widening pressure beyond maritime interdiction. Then pressure migrated to economic coercion: court-backed oil tanker seizures, “quarantine” rhetoric, and a blockade posture aimed at cutting off cash flows from crude exports. By late 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump was talking openly about “getting back” Venezuelan oil rights, treating Venezuela less as a country in the grip of systemic collapse and a prolonged humanitarian emergency than as a strategic asset to be repossessed.

The Maduro raid was then framed as law enforcement, a warrant-driven arrest operation justified through indictments and sanctions authority. That framing mattered politically, because it gave the administration a cleaner argument for why Congress was left in the dark. In Rubio’s own words, pre-notification would have “endanger[ed] the mission,” arguably a dubious claim.

But the rule of law wrapper is selective. The same administration that has executed a dramatic overseas capture of an indicted foreign leader also chose to pardon a former Honduran president convicted in a U.S. drug trafficking case — a reminder that justice here is not a neutral principle, but a discretionary tool. And it is hard to miss the commercial throughline: Removing Maduro also cleared the political obstacle to a rapid push for U.S.-linked oil access and investment, a point the White House has now leaned into openly. In reality, this was never only about putting one bad guy in the dock. It was about forcing a renegotiation of Venezuela’s power structure under U.S. terms while preserving the claim that this was not regime change.

Detailed reporting on internal deliberations shows overlapping agendas — oil, drugs, and immigration — pulling U.S. policy toward militarized coercion even as the public justification shifted. The intent is not democratization, it is control: reduce outward flows, pressure illicit networks, and restructure Venezuela’s external alignments without inheriting the costs of a collapsed state.

The National Security Strategy is explicit in subordinating democracy promotion to order, deterrence, and transactional hemispheric security. It uncharacteristically frames U.S. interests in terms of controlling access, commerce, and strategic infrastructure. Read plainly, it is a doctrine of management: keep adversaries out, keep flows under control, and treat whether the regime cooperates on oil, migration, and security as instruments of U.S. security, not as ends in themselves.

In that doctrinal frame, a loyalist-led interim government in Caracas is not a bug, but a feature. It is the quickest way to suppress centrifugal dynamics, keep the oil sector moving under U.S. conditions, and pry Venezuela away from Iranian, Russian, and Chinese sanctions-evasion networks. The tension is that continuity is delivered by the very actors most invested in preventing meaningful political opening.

Coup-Proofing After the Apex Falls

“Coup-proofing” is often misread as buying loyalty. In practice, however, it is about controlling coordination: fragmenting coercive institutions so that no single rival can move quickly and seize control. Venezuela’s version has been unusually layered by South American standards, involving overlapping intelligence services, politicized promotions, surveillance inside the ranks, and the empowerment of paramilitary proxies who can threaten even senior officers. That mix isn’t unprecedented in authoritarian systems globally, but Venezuela distinguishes itself by combining multiple parallel security services with irregular enforcers and persistent internal monitoring designed to prevent coordination against the leadership. The system is designed so that no single security entity can move fast without being detected, and no single potential challenger can unify the coercive apparatus without immediately triggering suspicion from rivals who are paid to monitor one another.

The catch is that the same architecture that prevents a coup can make coherent national defense harder when the chain of command is disrupted. It produces a coercive system that is very good at repressing civilians and policing elites, but less capable of unified action under shock. When the apex disappears suddenly, the question inside the system shifts overnight from “who can overthrow the leader?” to “who gets blamed for losing him?” That is when coup-proofing changes targets: The apparatus turns inward to police the ruling coalition itself, enforce discipline, and manage panic.

The empirical record on Venezuela’s coercive apparatus is not subtle. International investigations have documented patterns of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and intimidation used to police dissent and discipline insiders. A 2025 U.N. report and its detailed conclusions annex describe practices best understood as state policy, not episodic instances of abuse. Human Rights Watch summarizes the same architecture in more accessible terms. This is the apparatus the Trump administration is betting on to keep order now that Maduro is gone, and it is also the apparatus most capable of sabotaging any meaningful political opening if insiders believe cooperation with the United States might be repaid with prosecution or asset seizure.

This is why it is both rational and dangerous for the Trump administration to bet on continuity. Rational, because continuity suppresses the centrifugal forces that coup-proofing tends to unleash when the apex is removed. Dangerous, because the actors best positioned to prevent fragmentation are precisely the actors with the strongest incentives to preserve coercive control. Managed authoritarianism succeeds by keeping the knife visible while moving the goalposts just far enough to garner sanctions relief, investment, and diplomatic breathing room.

Why the Armed Forces Stood Down

The least romantic answer for why Venezuela’s military did not react to the U.S. raid is likely closest to the truth: They could not coordinate fast enough, and because, in a coup-proofed system, acting without clear top cover is professional suicide. In the first hours of the operation, U.S. planners appear to have treated the raid as a short-fuse extraction problem: disrupt communications and air defenses, isolate the protective bubble, and move the target before the regime can generate a coherent response. In that environment, most units were not choosing passivity: They were operating blindly, waiting for direction, and watching for internal traps.

Moreover, once Maduro was removed, the chain of command became ambiguous, and a structure built to punish initiative without prior authorization defaulted to inaction. While it is plausible that a highly placed compromised insider may have made the U.S. operation cleaner, you don’t need a wholesale sellout to explain the outcome. Instead, you only need a disrupted command and control interacting with an apparatus designed to prevent rapid coordination.

Temporary command and control disruption is only half the explanation. The other half is elite survival calculus. Once the Trump administration demonstrated capability and willingness to decapitate the regime, the incentive for senior commanders shifted from “fight for the leader” to “avoid being the next leader.” The U.S. criminal cases matter here as signaling devices — specifically the Southern District of New York’s 2020 narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons conspiracy indictment that names Maduro and key lieutenants (and the accompanying rewards/sanctions ecosystem), which tells insiders they are already on a defined target list. Maduro is already claiming status-based immunity as a sitting head of state, and his lawyers have signaled they will litigate it. But from the perspective of Venezuela’s senior security leadership, the raid itself communicates the practical point: The Trump administration is not treating immunity as a shield. The 2020 charging tranche explicitly identified a broader roster of potential defendants beyond Maduro. In that context, ordering units into a direct fight with the United States is not an act of sovereign defense — it is a wager that invites follow-on strikes, collapses illicit revenue networks, and makes you the obvious next target.

There is also the likelihood that the Maduro raid was facilitated by inside help. Authoritarian security systems tend to produce disgruntled gatekeepers: bodyguards, aides, logistics officers, and intelligence liaisons. Reporting indicates the inner circle was penetrated. That does not mean the armed forces flipped. It suggests that the regime’s most protected layer was breached, possibly with the quiet acquiescence of a few senior figures who calculated that standing down reduced their personal risk.

Continuity Government, New External Patron

The regime’s rapid move to install Delcy Rodríguez as interim president was a signal of continuity in the only sense that matters in a coup-proofed system: keep the security chain of command, patronage, and internal controls running so no one splinters. But continuity is brittle. It depends on keeping the coercive coalition intact while meeting enough U.S. conditions to avoid renewed military pressure — without conceding so much that hardliners conclude they’re being sacrificed. American demands are transactional and legible: expel foreign security/intelligence personnel tied to U.S. adversaries, sharply reduce operational ties with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, and reopen the oil sector on terms that privilege U.S. firms and buyers. Rubio has framed the rest as compliance benchmarks, trafficking networks, sanctions relief, and an oil “quarantine” calibrated to behavior.

The continuity coalition will not be run by one person. Hardliners such as the interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, and security power brokers such as the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino, will care less about formal titles than about who controls arrests, promotions, and revenue streams. Their calculations will shape whether the interim government is stable or brittle. Both Cabello and Padrino are named in the 2020 case and are under individual sanctions, so they are now calibrating survival in a world where the United States has shown it can reach the apex. That is also why they weren’t taken in the same raid: Senior U.S. officials have said the operation was deliberately narrow and that trying to arrest multiple targets simultaneously would have meant a longer, riskier campaign. Operational logic dovetails with strategy. The Trump administration is trying to coerce cooperation from remaining power brokers to avoid a vacuum, and officials privately worry that removing Cabello outright could trigger violent backlash from paramilitary groups and accelerate instability.

Here, the administration’s “running Venezuela” rhetoric becomes consequential. In practice, it’s the three levers of oil access, sanctions relief, and personal legal exposure that do the steering. The U.S. president’s fixation on getting Venezuelan oil reads strangely for a country producing at record levels, but the fixation isn’t about scarcity: it’s about control of prices, supply chains, and an adversary’s cash flow. Energy dominance does not eliminate the political utility of foreign oil. It changes how it is weaponized.

The blockade and tanker seizure campaign sits in the same coercive toolbox. When the White House described a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned tankers, it signaled that access to trade is conditional, and that conditionality can be enforced at sea with a mix of sanctions law and force. For the continuity government in Caracas, the message is simple: comply on issues the United States prioritizes — drugs, oil, and geopolitical alignment — or face economic strangulation and the demonstrated possibility of further decapitation.

This is managed authoritarianism in practice: a Venezuelan government staffed by regime insiders, retaining a coercive apparatus capable of repression, and offering tactical concessions to satisfy external demands. It is not an occupation, but it is not autonomy either. The Trump administration may prefer this arrangement because it avoids the costliest parts of regime change while delivering the optics of decisive action against an indicted narco-terrorist. The risk is that the administration becomes invested in the continuity government’s survival, because its collapse would mean either chaos or a deeper U.S. commitment the White House clearly does not want.

The Opposition as a Controlled Variable

One important way to see that democratization in Venezuela is not the near-term U.S. priority is to watch what happens to the political opposition. In theory, Maduro’s removal should strengthen the organized democratic bloc. In practice, the opposition is being treated as an input to be managed: useful for legitimacy, dangerous if empowered.

Edmundo González and María Corina Machado still matter because, by most international observers’ accounts, they won the July 2024 elections. Machado has praised the arrest of Maduro and has tried to ingratiate herself with President Trump by offering the Nobel Peace Prize to him. A meeting between the president and Machado is scheduled for Jan. 15th, but it is uncertain if the opposition leader will be able to persuade the president to accelerate the political transition. In fact, the president has already indicated that elections cannot happen any time soon. Trump told Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, “They wouldn’t even know how to have an election right now.”

The reality is that, in a continuity-first strategy, including the demands of the opposition carries complications. Their inclusion raises demands for accountability, security-sector change, and guarantees they can participate freely in any future electoral process, all of which threaten the coalition of insiders the Trump administration is trying to co-opt. Expect a pattern seen in other U.S.-backed stability-focused transitions: limited, symbolic engagement with opposition figures to create the appearance of inclusion, paired with continued reliance on the coercive apparatus and procedural and legal engineering to keep the timetable controlled from above.

In Venezuela, a stability-first approach doesn’t start from a blank slate — it plugs directly into the state’s coercive infrastructure built and refined in the wake of the 2024 elections. The 2025 U.N. report describes how intimidation operates through systematic practices and through institutions that answer upward, not outward. The International Criminal Court’s Venezuela investigation remains a background pressure point for insiders weighing whether cooperation buys protection or merely delays accountability. In that context, a continuity government under U.S. direction has every incentive to keep the coercive toolkit intact because it is the only reliable way to enforce elite bargains in the absence of trust.

The Current Equilibrium: Stable Enough, Legitimate Enough

The post-Maduro moment can be summarized as an equilibrium the Trump administration appears willing to accept — stable enough to reduce migration and keep oil flowing, plausible enough as a transition to justify selective sanctions relief and a rollback of the costliest pressure tools, and coercive enough to prevent a rapid political break. That equilibrium is what “running Venezuela” looks like in practice: not governing ministries, but setting the outer boundary of what is permissible and punishing violations. For the Trump administration, the attraction is obvious: claim victory, avoid inheriting state failure, and trade sanctions relief for compliance. For regime insiders, the attraction is survival: keep the apparatus, keep the rents, and bargain down personal risk. For Venezuelans who expected a real political rupture, the implication is harsher. The same system remains in place, only now it answers to two masters: domestic hardliners and an external patron whose priorities, by words and deeds, are not democratic reform.

That is why the democracy question should be answered head-on. The Trump administration is not behaving like an actor trying to midwife a democratic transition. It is behaving like an actor trying to manage problems: migration, drugs, oil, and geopolitics, in that order. In the near term, the best predictor of what comes next is not Venezuela’s electoral calendar. It is the bargaining space between the administration’s leverage and the regime’s coup-proofed coalition, and the narrow slice of managed authoritarianism that both sides currently find preferable to the alternatives.

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Orlando J. Pérez, Ph.D., is a political science professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas. He authored Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Societies: Transforming the Role of the Military in Central America and Political Culture in Panama: Democracy after Invasion; co-authored Making Police Reform Matter in Latin America, and co-edited Democracy and Security in Latin America: State Capacity and Governance under Stress. As a consultant, he has worked on issues of democratization, civil-military relations, and anti-corruption for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Development Program.

Image: Vice Presidency of Venezuela via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com · · January 13, 2026

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