Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."

– Abraham Lincoln

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth."

– Pearl Buck

"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."

– John Quincy Adams

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115830428767897167

Truth Details

12217 replies

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

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Jan 03, 2026, 4:21 AM

1. Trump Captures Maduro: The End of the Narco-Terrorist Dictatorship in Venezuela

2. In a Phone Interview, Trump Celebrated the Capture of Maduro

3. Opinion | Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters

4. Why We Must Be Concerned About The Attack On Putin’s Residence – OpEd

5. Zelensky Picks Military Intelligence Chief as Top Aide After Corruption Probe

6. Treating Cartels as Terrorists Isn’t About Crime—It’s About Justifying Force

7. A year of strikes: US military operations surge under Trump

8. China’s Military Is Planning for Combat in Latin America

9. Xi’s Strategy to Win Taiwan Without Fighting

10. China Is Turning the Indo-Pacific Into a Pressure Cooker

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

12. China’s Taiwan Drills Are Crossing a New Line

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

14. Cuba on the Brink: Where Will the Island’s Crisis End?

15. How Multilateralism Can Survive

16. The New Arteries of Power: Subsea Cables Are This Century’s Hidden Battleground

1. Trump Captures Maduro: The End of the Narco-Terrorist Dictatorship in Venezuela

Summary:

Burrell and Harkins frame Venezuela as a collapsed narco-state and legitimacy crisis, citing mass outmigration and a disputed 2024 vote they argue was won by opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. They describe a stepped U.S. pressure campaign under “Operation Southern Spear,” including coalition diplomacy, expanded sanctions, maritime and air restrictions, and counter-narcotics interdictions. They report that POTUS announced a large-scale strike and a special operations raid that captured and extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife for U.S. prosecution, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirming trial. The strategic hinge is “now what”: prospects for rapid democratic transition versus regime-loyalist consolidation, terror, and instability.

Comment: Video at the link. Yes, the proverbial question is what do you do now Lieutenant? We should be concerned with the blowback. I do hope US officials have beefed up security around the world. And then another way to look at it is whether POTUS has put the leaders of the CRInK on notice - we can reach out and touch anyone.

Is this the "Panama Model" - e.g., Noriega in 1989 captured, arrested, and tried, and convicted?

Trump Captures Maduro

The End of the Narco-Terrorist Dictatorship in Venezuela

Robert Burrell, PhD and Homer W Harkins

Jan 03, 2026

https://robertburrell.substack.com/p/trump-captures-maduro?utm

For years, Dr. Homer Harkins and I have been covering the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. Eight million citizens have fled the country over the last 10 years, producing even more refugees than the exodus from Syria. In 2024, the Venezuelan people voted for change, electing Edmundo González Urrutia as the new president with 67% of the vote according to independent tallies and opposition-collected evidence. Instead of accepting the results, Nicolás Maduro ignored the election, ending 66 years of democracy in Venezuela and continuing to rule as a dictator.

The Venezuelan people have struggled bravely and non-violently for the return of democracy. The leader of this resistance, María Corina Machado, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 for her tireless dedication to this effort.

The growing threat to the region posed by its first narco-state regime since the days of Manuel Noriega, combined with Maduro’s deepening alliances with adversaries of the United States such as Cuba, Iran, Russia, and China prompted the Trump administration to deploy a large maritime task force to the Caribbean as part of escalating pressure under Operation Southern Spear.

The U.S. effort to restore democracy and the rule of law to Venezuela and to counter the growing international presence there began immediately after Trump took office, with renewed diplomatic pressure on the Maduro regime. This focused on building a coalition of American states that recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the duly elected president. Economic sanctions and designations for key regime leaders were expanded and enhanced. The campaign then escalated to enacting a partial maritime exclusion and no-fly zone, supported by kinetic targeting of drug-smuggling boats, the seizure of internationally sanctioned oil transported illegally by ghost ships, and other counter-narcotics operations.

Today, this phase reached a significant milestone with what appears, based on first reports, to be a spectacularly successful special operations raid that captured, arrested, and extracted Maduro and his wife from Caracas to the United States, where they will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison. The operation was most likely spearheaded by elite U.S. special mission forces (reported positioned offshore on 26 December) and supported by the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. President Trump announced the capture early on January 3, 2026, describing it as part of a large-scale strike, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has confirmed that Maduro will face trial on criminal charges in the U.S.

Despite this success, a larger question remains: now what? Caracas is eerily quiet at the moment, likely in a state of social shock. The raid faced minimal resistance, suggesting the Venezuelan military may be beyond incompetence or, possibly, was aware something big was about to happen and chose not to resist. But regime loyalists are already leveraging their propaganda machine to mobilize support for the revolution begun by Hugo Chávez 34 years ago.

Has the stage already been set for the return of Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, the restoration of legitimate government, and a smooth, mostly peaceful transition? Or, once the shock wears off, will remaining regime leaders be able to re-exert authority through a wave of terror and survive in power?

For now, there is hope that the Venezuelan people will regain freedom and democracy, ending two decades of criminal corruption, economic collapse, and collective fear brought by the revolution to their country.

Stay tuned as events unfold. I would expect more detailed information to follow, with the most significant updates likely coming from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

2. In a Phone Interview, Trump Celebrated the Capture of Maduro

Comment: a 50 second interview between POTUS and NY Times:

In a Phone Interview, Trump Celebrated the Capture of Maduro

In a call with The New York Times, President Trump called the U.S. operation in Venezuela “brilliant" but did not address whether he had consulted Congress.

By Tyler Pager

Reporting from West Palm Beach, Fla.

Jan. 3, 2026, 5:32 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/world/americas/in-a-phone-interview-trump-celebrated-the-capture-of-maduro.html

Trump called the strike against Venezuela “a brilliant operation.”Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

By Tyler Pager

Reporting from West Palm Beach, Fla.

Jan. 3, 2026, 5:32 a.m. ET

President Trump sounded tired.

It was just after 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning and 10 minutes after he announced on social media that the United States had captured Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela. I had called the president to try to better understand what happened and what comes next. He picked up after three rings and answered a few questions.

Mr. Trump first celebrated the mission’s success.

“A lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people,” he told me. “It was a brilliant operation, actually.”

I then asked if he had sought congressional authority before the U.S. military, along with law enforcement personnel, engaged in a “large scale strike,” as he put in on social media.

“We’ll discuss that,” he said. “We’re going to have a news conference.”

In his social media announcement, Mr. Trump said he would speak at 11 a.m. from Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence where he has spent the past two weeks.

I tried to ask what he envisions next for Venezuela and why the high-risk mission was worth it.

“You’re going to hear all about it 11 o’clock,” he said before hanging up.

The call had lasted 50 seconds.

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

3. Opinion | Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters

Summary:

The Wall Street Journal editorial says protests in Iran are spreading from economic anger into open anti-regime revolt, and it argues POTUS’s blunt warning of U.S. support has forced Tehran to take notice and elevated international attention. It contrasts this posture with the Obama administration’s restraint in 2009 and cites the June strikes on Iran’s nuclear program as proof the regime must take threats seriously. It argues U.S. help need not mean invasion, and recommends strike funds, resilient communications such as Starlink and VPNs, exposure and disruption of regime security networks, and tougher enforcement against Iran’s “shadow fleet” oil exports to China to tighten pressure while encouraging defections.

Comment: Of course this OpEd was written and published before the successful Maduro operation was executed. However, I wonder if the recent focus on the past couple of days was part of a strategic deception operation - to focus the press and the world on Iran while preparing for Venezuela?

Specifically regarding Iran, the WSJ Editorial Board calls for information support to the Iranian people which of course has been panned by many asking the question - will we follow up since we have not done so in the past (going back to Hungary in 1956 but also protests in Iran in this century)?

Opinion | Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters

WSJ · Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters

He has options short of military force to assist the country’s people against the government.

By The Editorial Board

Jan. 2, 2026 5:31 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-iran-protests-military-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-50fce4fe

President Donald Trump on Monday. Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Protests in Iran are growing against the despotic regime, and on Friday President Trump declared American solidarity with the protesters. “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, “the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Opinion: Potomac Watch

Zohran Mamdani Promises NYC 'the Warmth of Collectivism'

New York's mayor uses his inaugural address to insist he won't back away from socialism, including freezing rent and providing free buses, as he's sworn into office by Bernie Sanders. But will Mamdani be able to deliver, and at what cost? And will other Democrats follow his lead in shifting the party further to the left?Read Transcript

The words lacked diplomatic subtlety, but the mullahs in Tehran got the message. Top Iranian officials issued frantic statements in response, and the press now has reason to pay more attention to the protests. Iran’s security forces have killed at least eight protesters and arrested many more.

What began a week ago with Tehran shopkeepers has spread nationwide and hardened into anti-regime demonstrations. Iranians know the source of their economic plight. The Islamic Republic has made Iran a pariah and deprived its people—and for what? A nuclear program and terrorist proxy empire? Both now lie in ruins.

Mr. Trump’s contrast with Barack Obama couldn’t be greater. Mr. Obama stayed mute in 2009 while the regime put down protests following a rigged election. Then again, Mr. Obama never would have joined with Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear program, as Mr. Trump did in June.

Saturday is the anniversary of Mr. Trump’s 2020 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s terror empire. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can’t be confident that Mr. Trump won’t follow through on his latest threat.

Mr. Trump’s words imply the use of military force, but this seems unlikely to go beyond what’s left of the nuclear program or the ballistic-missile program he threatened on Monday. In June only Israel attacked Iran’s apparatus of repression.

The President has other options to support Iranians. The U.S. can help protesters with strike funds and communications, extending Starlink access or virtual private networks when the regime cuts off the internet. The U.S. can also expose regime thugs and cripple their communications, while encouraging defections.

Above all, Mr. Trump can enforce oil sanctions as he now is doing in Venezuela. When Iran’s “shadow fleet” can no longer take discounted crude to China, the regime will know he meant what he said. Iran is exporting two million barrels a day—20 times the “maximum pressure” target set out by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in February.

The Islamic Republic is ideologically bankrupt, pushing Iranians away from Islam, and it has run Iran’s economy into the ground. There have been false dawns of protest before, but Iran’s regime is vulnerable. As the protest waves build, they expose the regime’s dependence on fear and violence.

Journal Editorial Report: An active President covered a lot of ground.

Appeared in the January 3, 2026, print edition as 'Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters'.

WSJ · Trump Stands With Iran’s Protesters

4. Why We Must Be Concerned About The Attack On Putin’s Residence – OpEd

Summary:

Hunter argues an alleged December 28–29 drone attack on Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod region, reported by Russian media as involving 91 drones, signals a dangerous escalation at a moment when peace talks were reportedly being explored after Zelensky’s Mar-a-Lago visit. He says Ukraine denies the claim and suggests either rogue Ukrainian elements, possible European collaboration, or a false-flag effort aimed at sabotaging negotiations and provoking Russian retaliation. He links the episode to another reported drone attack causing civilian casualties, warns conventional retaliation could widen the war into western Europe, and criticizes western narratives portraying Putin as irrational, claiming provocation is the real risk.

Comment: Perhaps now we should put this in the broader context of leadership targeting now that we have just conducted the capture operation in Venezuela which of course has implications beyond just the peace talks in Ukraine.

Why We Must Be Concerned About The Attack On Putin’s Residence – OpEd

January 3, 2026 1 Comment

By Murray Hunter

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03012026-why-we-must-be-concerned-about-the-attack-on-putins-residence-oped/?utm

Just after the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was at Mar-a-Lagi talking about a peace with US President Donald Trump, elements within the Ukraine armed forces with assistance from British intelligence (not fully substantiated) launched a drone attack targeting Russian President Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod region on the night of December 28-29.

This drone attack on Putin’s residence involved 91 drones according to Russian media, which were all reported intercepted. Ukraine has strongly denied such claims, calling it a fabrication to undermine peace negotiations. However, its clear a third party most probably rogue elements within the Ukrainian military with some “European” collaborations are trying to sabotage any plans. RT claims the Russian authorities found a flight plan file in the drone wreckage to prove the origin of the attack.

Just a couple of days after the attempted attack on Putin’s residence, there was a deadly attack on the village of Khorly involving multiple drones killing at least 24 and injuring 50 people according to RT.

These aggressions pose critical threats to the sovereignty of Russia and call for conventional weapon retaliation.

This comes at a time when analysts believe that real substantive negotiations are now taking place between the US and Ukraine.

It is clear now that there is friction within the leadership and military inside Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky may not completely control what is ‘happening on the ground’. There is also the possibility that these are false flag attacks to provoke Russia to ‘take out’ command and control centres, including Zelensky in Ukraine.

This is all risking potential Russian retaliation against western Europe, if it can be proven there was direct involvement. Although the recent attacks in Russian have not crossed any Russian nuclear doctrine red lines, conventional retaliation is not out of the question. Russian hypersonic multi-warhead Oresknik missiles even with conventional warheads could cause much devastation and panic on any city targeted. Ukrainian attacks on Russia have potentially put the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in danger. To date Russia has mostly targeted infrastructure.

Much of the western media has amplified the narratives of some western leaders portraying Putin as a ‘madman’. French officials close to French President Emmanual Macron have described Putin’s pre-invasion speeches as paranoid, while the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski repeatedly referred to a British saying that leaders ‘go mad’ after long periods in power. Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson exemplified the myth of Putin as ‘irrational’.

Its ironical, that the same man is the only person standing in between restraint and retaliating against western Europe. Its not Putin who is the ‘madman’, its those who are provoking his patience today.

There are leaders in western Europe that are intent on pushing the world towards war.

We must become very concerned about European aggression towards Russia today. They are playing Russian roulette.

Murray Hunter

Murray Hunter has been involved in Asia-Pacific business for the last 30 years as an entrepreneur, consultant, academic, and researcher. As an entrepreneur he was involved in numerous start-ups, developing a lot of patented technology, where one of his enterprises was listed in 1992 as the 5th fastest going company on the BRW/Price Waterhouse Fast100 list in Australia. Murray is now an associate professor at the University Malaysia Perlis, spending a lot of time consulting to Asian governments on community development and village biotechnology, both at the strategic level and “on the ground”. He is also a visiting professor at a number of universities and regular speaker at conferences and workshops in the region. Murray is the author of a number of books, numerous research and conceptual papers in referred journals, and commentator on the issues of entrepreneurship, development, and politics in a number of magazines and online news sites around the world. Murray takes a trans-disciplinary view of issues and events, trying to relate this to the enrichment and empowerment of people in the region.

5. Zelensky Picks Military Intelligence Chief as Top Aide After Corruption Probe

Summary:

Zelensky appointed Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, 39, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, as his new chief of staff, replacing Andriy Yermak, a longtime political aide and former chief peace negotiator who resigned amid a corruption investigation in the energy sector. Budanov said he accepted and argued Ukraine must tighten its security posture while peace talks continue. His portfolio includes keeping the armed forces focused on emerging threats and helping Kyiv sustain U.S. support as negotiations proceed, alongside chief negotiator Rustem Umerov. Zelensky named foreign intelligence head Oleh Ivashchenko to replace Budanov at HUR.

Comment: As I monitor some social media exchanges among those who know Ukraine, the assessment is Kyrylo Budanov is an excellent professional leader who has come up through the intelligence community who has led multiple effective special operations (as noted in the article) and has no hint of corruption surrounding.

Zelensky Picks Military Intelligence Chief as Top Aide After Corruption Probe

Kyrylo Budanov replaces Andriy Yermak, who resigned during a corruption investigation

By Anastasiia Malenko

Jan. 2, 2026 12:41 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/zelensky-turns-to-military-intelligence-head-as-new-chief-of-staff-a39316ab?st=g48vYK

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov ran daring operations as Ukraine’s military intelligence chief. Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg News

KYIV, Ukraine—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday tapped the country’s military intelligence chief to replace a top political aide who was caught up in a corruption investigation that badly shook the government.

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, 39 years old, made a name for himself running a range of daring operations, from raids on Russian-occupied Crimea to strengthening front-line positions in places such as Pokvovsk. He said he would accept the offer to serve as chief of staff, adding that now was the time for Ukraine to focus more on firming up its security as it continues peace talks.

The presidential office was previously led by Zelensky’s longtime right-hand man, Andriy Yermak, who had been Ukraine’s chief peace negotiator. Yermak resigned amid an investigation into corruption in the energy sector though neither he nor Zelensky has been accused of any wrongdoing.

Zelensky took more than a month to find a replacement for Yermak, often sharing updates on social media. Budanov’s responsibilities will include keeping the country’s armed forces focused on new security threats while figuring out how Kyiv might secure more support from the U.S. as it tries to negotiate a peace deal with Russia, working alongside Rustem Umerov, a former defense minister who now acts as chief negotiator after Yermak resigned.

Budanov’s new role might also help stabilize Zelensky’s presidency, which has come under growing scrutiny during the corruption investigation.

The intelligence chief’s curt, deadpan delivery has helped popularize the work of the military intelligence agency, known as HUR, with the public using Budanov’s interviews for widely circulated memes on social media mocking Russia. Under his leadership, HUR notched some of its most successful operations behind enemy lines, including strikes on Russia’s oil-refining capacity, air defenses and aircraft.

Treating Cartels as Terrorists Isn’t About Crime—It’s About Justifying Force

by Nelly A. Hernández Valdez

01.02.2026 at 09:29pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/02/treating-cartels-as-terrorists-isnt-about-crime-its-about-justifying-force/

Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducts a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, 15 November 2025. Source: US Southern Command.

Trump’s militarized approach breaks international law, ignores how criminal markets work, and reveals a strategy driven by power, not public safety.

The US boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific that have killed more than 100 people have materialized concerns raised by experts after the executive designation of 13 cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Those warnings centered on the expansion of presidential powers reserved for armed conflict, the justification of mass deportation policies, and the interventionist narratives now being put into action.

Cartel violence has undeniably made Latin America and the Caribbean one of the most violent regions in the world. But using that reality as a pretext to expand lethal force for political gain is not strength—it is a strategic weakness. By framing drug trafficking as terrorism, the Trump administration believes it can disregard international law, sideline human rights, and abandon what decades of research tell us about how transnational criminal networks actually operate. This approach does not dismantle cartels; it escalates violence and destabilizes the region.

Recently, Trump justified the Caribbean strikes by claiming that “Every boat that gets hit, we save 25,000 American lives. And when you view it that way, you don’t mind.” The statement exposes the strategic incoherence behind the administration’s approach.

The primary driver of drug overdose deaths in the United States is fentanyl, which accounted for more than 65 percent of fatalities in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet fentanyl is neither produced in Venezuela nor trafficked through the maritime routes targeted by these strikes. In other words, the policy’s stated objective—saving American lives—has little connection to the actual dynamics of the drug trade it claims to confront.

What this strategy is achieving instead is the erosion of the rules-based order in the hemisphere. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has underscored, combating illicit drug trafficking is fundamentally a law enforcement matter, governed by strict limits on the use of lethal force. Under international human rights law, which the United States is obligated to respect even overseas, the deliberate killing of individuals who pose no immediate threat and who could be apprehended through non-lethal means constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life—an extrajudicial killing.

These strikes also erase critical distinctions between high-level traffickers and the individuals actually being targeted. Investigations by the Associated Press show that some of those killed were low-level actors—often fishermen driven by economic pressure to assist traffickers. Under a law enforcement framework, these boats would have been interdicted and their crews prosecuted in US courts.

Even setting aside the human rights concerns this administration appears willing to dismiss, Trump’s advisers should mind the strategy’s effectiveness—because by its own logic, it fails. As drug policy expert Vanda Felbab-Brown has long argued, killing drug mules has virtually no impact on the flow of narcotics or the structures of criminal organizations. These actors are easily replaced, while the systems that sustain transnational crime remain intact.

The administration’s National Security Strategy embraces a militarized approach while ignoring fundamental economics: you cannot use airstrikes to dismantle a market that demand keeps alive. It calls for regional cooperation against “narco-terrorists” to curb instability and migration, yet overlooks one of the most consequential sources of cartel power—access to US sourced firearms. The proliferation of military-grade weapons sustains the very violence the strategy claims to reduce, driving displacement across the region and contributing to the worst border crisis in modern US history. A strategy that relies on force abroad while ignoring its own internal enablers is not a security strategy—it is a contradiction.

What has become evident is that this strategy is not truly about addressing crime. The administration’s willingness to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández—a figure emblematic of the nexus between political power and organized crime—makes that clear. No serious counter-narcotics agenda can claim legitimacy while invoking “narco-terrorism” to justify force abroad and, at the same time, extending leniency to a leader convicted of state-sponsored drug trafficking—someone who weaponized public institutions to facilitate the very criminal economies Washington claims to be fighting. If the goal is security rather than spectacle, the facts—and the priorities—need to align.

Cartels are not ideological actors; they are market-driven organizations that adapt to incentives. When pressured, they diversify into more lethal drugs, expand into human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and environmental crimes, penetrate legal economies, or shift operations to new geographies. In the most destabilizing scenario, sustained militarization and misclassification can push criminal groups toward radicalization.

By confusing crime with terrorism and force with effectiveness, the United States risks reshaping the criminal landscape of the Americas in ways far more dangerous than the problem it claims to solve.

Tags: Armed Conflicts, Boat Stikes, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Law, Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC), Use of Force, War Powers

About The Author

Nelly A. Hernández Valdez
Nelly A. Hernández Valdez holds a Master of Arts in Security Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, with a concentration in international security. Her academic and professional work focuses on combating violence perpetrated by non-state actors, with emphasis on international law, human rights, gender, and human security. She has served as a Hemispheric Security and International Law Analyst at the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the Organization of American States. She is a McHenry Fellow for Global Public Service at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

7. A year of strikes: US military operations surge under Trump

Summary:

Military Times reports a sharp rise in U.S. overseas strikes under POTUS, who brands the approach “peace through strength” while authorizing far more kinetic action than his predecessor. Since January 20, 2025, the article cites at least 626 air strikes, versus 555 across the prior four-year term. It highlights sustained counter-ISIS operations in Somalia and Iraq, a costly spring air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, and the June 22 B-2 bunker-buster strike on Iran’s hardened nuclear sites. It also notes ongoing lethal maritime strikes tied to counternarcotics operations near Venezuela, plus late-year actions in Syria, Nigeria, and reported activity inside Venezuela.

Comment: The scorecard for 2025.

A year of strikes: US military operations surge under Trump

militarytimes.com · Tanya Noury

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/12/31/a-year-of-strikes-us-military-operations-surge-under-trump/

President Donald Trump has presided over a rapid surge of U.S. military activity abroad since returning to the Oval Office.

In the first year of his second term, he has authorized a series of strikes ranging from the unprecedented use of bunker-buster bombs against Iran’s most fortified nuclear sites to a sustained counternarcotics campaign off the Venezuelan coast.

Trump, who has labeled himself a “peace president,” frames the expansion of force as a strategy of “peace through strength.”

At his inaugural ball in January, he declared, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

Trump added that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

Since taking office on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump has overseen at least 626 air strikes, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project that was shared with Military Times.

By comparison, his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, launched a total of 555 strikes in his entire four-year term.

Here is where the U.S. military operated overseas in 2025.

Somalia – Feb. 1 and ongoing

The first major strike in the second Trump administration targeted the Islamic State in Somalia.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the strikes aimed to degrade ISIS’ ability to “plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians.”

The campaign has continued in the region, representing a sustained U.S. military presence against ISIS affiliates in East Africa.

Iraq – March 13

A U.S.-led coalition strike in Iraq’s Anbar Province killed ISIS’ second-highest ranking leader, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, and one other insurgent.

Iraq’s prime minister described al-Rifai as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world.”

Houthi supporters chant slogans during a weekly, anti-U.S. and anti-Israel rally in Sanaa, Yemen, April 18, 2025. (Osamah Abdulrahman/AP)

Yemen – March 15 to May 6

In mid-March, the Trump administration began an air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The strikes targeted command-and-control hubs, air defense systems and facilities used for manufacturing and storing advanced weapons, according to the Pentagon.

The offensive — which used JASSM long-range cruise missiles, JSOWs and Tomahawk missiles — surpassed $1 billion in costs within its first month.

The operation concluded on May 6 following an Oman-brokered ceasefire with the Houthis.

Iran – June 22

Operation Midnight Hammer deployed seven B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base to strike Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities.

The bombers dropped 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordinance Penetrators on Fordo and Natanz, while a U.S. Navy submarine in the region launched more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan.

Trump, in a primetime address, declared the mission achieved “total obliteration” of Iran’s enrichment capabilities, though Tehran disputed that assessment.

The Pentagon estimates the military strikes likely set back Iran’s nuclear program by up to two years.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran, June 22, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean – Sept. 2 and ongoing

Since September, the U.S. military has waged a sustained campaign of lethal maritime strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific, part of what the Trump administration says is an attempt to dismantle powerful drug cartels and stop the flow of Venezuelan narcotics into the United States.

Trump boasts that the deployment involves the “largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America,” and pledged it will “only get bigger.”

At least 106 people have been killed in strikes on alleged drug-carrying vessels.

Syria – Dec. 19

Operation Hawkeye Strike was launched by Trump to avenge the deaths of two U.S. soldiers, Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard and Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, and a civilian U.S. interpreter, Ayad Mansoor Sakat, killed in a terrorist attack in Syria.

American fighter jets, attack helicopters, and artillery struck more than 70 suspected ISIS targets across central Syria, according to CENTCOM.

The operation was named in honor of the fallen soldiers from Iowa, the “Hawkeye State.”

A U.S. airman prepares an A-10 Thunderbolt II for flight from a base in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, Dec. 19, 2025. (U.S. Air Force)

Nigeria – Dec. 25

On Christmas Day, Trump announced the U.S. carried out airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

The president said he acted to protect Christians who he asserts are being “mass slaughtered” by “radical Islamists,” and chose the date for symbolic reasons.

“They were going to do it earlier,” Trump said in an interview. “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.’”

The operation involved more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea and was coordinated with the Nigerian military.

Venezuela – December and ongoing

The C.I.A. reportedly carried out a drone strike on a facility in Venezuela – the first known U.S. attack inside the country since the Trump administration intensified its pressure campaign against the government of Nicolás Maduro.

The strike targeted a dock along Venezuela’s coast that officials said was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua to store narcotics and potentially prepare them for shipment, according to CNN.

About Tanya Noury

Tanya Noury is a reporter for Military Times and Defense News, with coverage focusing on the White House and Pentagon.

militarytimes.com · Tanya Noury

8. China’s Military Is Planning for Combat in Latin America

Summary:

Ellis argues Beijing is actively thinking through Western Hemisphere combat operations as part of a broader war with the West. He cites a December 19 CCTV affiliate segment showing a PLA wargame that simulated actions near Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. He warns China’s dual-use footprint in Latin America, including ports, space and telecom sites, could become wartime enablers. Examples include the Neuquen deep-space facility in Argentina, COSCO’s control of Peru’s Chancay port, and China-linked leverage over Panama Canal operations. He highlights Cuba-based ELINT risks, Caribbean political influence, and commercial shipping as potential strike vectors.

Comment: Cognitive warfare? What is the intended effect on US and Latin American decision makers? Can the PRC/PLA really fight effectively in Latin America? Could these enablers that are described be sufficient to support effective projection of power?

China’s Military Is Planning for Combat in Latin America

A recent wargame shines new light on China’s extensive dual-use infrastructure in the region.

By R. Evan Ellis

December 31, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/12/chinas-military-is-planning-for-combat-in-latin-america/

Credit: Depositphotos

On December 19, an affiliate of the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) ran a story about a recent Chinese military wargame in the city of Xuchang, Henan Province, involving the simulation of combat operations by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Western Hemisphere. Images of the wargame carried by CCTV clearly showed simulated interactions between Red (Chinese) and Blue (Western) forces near Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean.

The screens shown by CCTV from the wargame, which also depicted PLA operations in the Sea of Okhotsk and near Taiwan, illustrate how Beijing is thinking about conducting military activities in the Western Hemisphere in the context of a broader war with the West.

Such evidence lends credence to numerous statements by senior U.S. military officials, including former heads of U.S. Southern Command General Laura Richardson and Admiral Alvin Holsey, regarding the risks of China’s “dual-use” infrastructure – including ports, space, telecommunications, and other projects – in times of war.

For example, there has long been concern about China’s military use of its “Deep Space Radar” in Neuquen, Argentina. The radar is operated with little Argentine government oversight by an organ of the PLA, and uses communications frequencies commonly used by the Chinese military.

Another dual-use concern is the “exclusive” operation of the Peruvian port of Chancay by China Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO), which the U.S. government has sanctioned for its close ties to the PLA, as well as China’s insistence that COSCO be given a controlling stake in any change of ownership of ports in Panama.

The PLA’s wargaming of operations in Latin America also gives new meaning to the presence of the PLA Navy ship Silk Road Ark, which showed up in the Caribbean in December 2025. Silk Road Ark made port calls in Jamaica and Barbados, with the approval of their governments, which brought the PLA Navy vessel within miles of major U.S. military operations in the region under “Operation Southern Spear.”

China has sought diplomatic advantage by proclaiming Latin America a “Zone of Peace.” Reciprocally, many Latin American political and business leaders seek economic benefit from China without involving themselves in “great power competition.” Nonetheless, during a major conflict with the West, China would have virtually irresistible incentives and opportunities to conduct military operations in Latin America, even without formal alliances or basing agreements.

During such a war, important U.S. military facilities in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and the U.S. East Coast would potentially be within range of China’s operation of electronic intelligence (ELINT) facilities in Cuba. There is public evidence, confirmed by the U.S. government, such facilities in multiple sites across Cuba, including Bejucal, Salao, and Wajay.

Similarly, vital U.S. combat forces and military supply ships would logically transit from U.S. bases, through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, en route to the Indo-Pacific. The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico are precisely the sites of the PLA military operations being rehearsed in the exercise depicted by CCTV.

China could seek to leverage the political and economic sway it has gained over Caribbean governments – like those of Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Dominican, Jamaica and Barbados – through years of gifts, hotel and port operations, and military exchanges with governments in the region. If successful, China could be allowed to stage special operations forces out of those countries, putting U.S. forces at risk.

Similarly, the ability of China to close down the Panama Canal through the physical access, technical knowledge, and relationships it has there, could make the difference in Taiwan holding out against a PLA invasion or blockade.

During a hypothetical war, China’s access to space from the Western Hemisphere, through facilities it controls or has access to in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and elsewhere, could allow it to locate Western satellites in order to blind, jam or destroy them, gravely impairing global combat operations by the United States and its NATO and Asian allies.

During later stages of such a conflict, the ability of the PLA-affiliated COSCO to use its exclusive control of Chancay to resupply PLA Navy warships with armaments could contribute to Chinese combat operations against the United States in the Eastern Pacific. COSCO previously hosted PLA Navy vessels in its Hambantota port in Sri Lanka in 2022 and again in 2024. China’s access to the Port of Corinto in anti-U.S. Nicaragua could bring the wartime PLA Navy threat even closer to the continental United States.

China may not even necessarily use PLA Navy vessels to launch an attack. Recent reports of a Chinese commercial cargo ship that has been equipped to launch missiles illustrate how China-operated commercial routes and ports from Tijuana, Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, could be used in wartime to threaten U.S. strategic targets and chokepoints.

Although a major war with China in the Indo-Pacific is not inevitable, worrisome recent developments – including the PLA’s new military exercises focused on Taiwan, and the cutting of an alarming number of Taiwan’s undersea data cables – highlight that war is a realistic possibility that U.S. planners must seriously consider.

The new 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy recognizes the strategic importance of Taiwan’s survival, and pushing back against China’s military presence, control of military-relevant infrastructure, and influence that would limit U.S. access in the Western Hemisphere. China’s inclusion of Western Hemisphere targets in its wargame in Xuchang shows that the effective implementation of those good intentions, working with U.S. partners in both regions, is vital to U.S. national security.

Authors

Guest Author

R. Evan Ellis

R. Evan Ellis is Latin America Research Professor with the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. The views expressed herein are strictly his own.

9. Xi’s Strategy to Win Taiwan Without Fighting

Summary:

Ng argues Xi is signaling strategic patience, not imminent invasion, and that the West risks preparing for the wrong war by reading exercises as a D-Day countdown. He frames PLA drills like “Justice Mission 2025” as an access-denial shield meant to freeze the status quo, deter U.S. and Japanese intervention, and tighten Taipei’s diplomatic space. Behind that shield, Xi’s main effort is the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030): building “New Quality Productive Forces” in AI, quantum, and green tech to become sanction-resistant and increase long-term leverage. Ng also highlights a “memory war” narrative shift using “Taiwan Recovery Day” to legitimize claims.

Comment: Everyone focuses on the same excerpt from Sun Tzu ("win without fighting"). But they always seem to overlook "what is of supreme importance is to attack the enemy's strategy." While we prepare to support Taiwan to defend itself from an invasion, we should also expend sufficient energy on attacking the PRC/CPP's entire strategy to include unrestricted warfare and its three warfares. If we (Taiwan and the US and those who support Taiwan's sovereignty) only prepare for one fight and overlook the others we could see Taiwan fall by means other than conventional invasion.

Xi’s Strategy to Win Taiwan Without Fighting

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

By Ashton Ng

January 03, 2026

https://thediplomat.com/2026/01/xis-strategy-to-win-taiwan-without-fighting/

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping addresses Chinese and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during the 20th Party Congress, Oct 23, 2022.

Credit: Screenshot/ 中国新闻社

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

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

From the vantage point of Beijing, the “unstoppable” rhetoric is not a prelude to a sprint, but the settling in for a marathon. By framing reunification as a “trend of the times” (shishi) – a classical Chinese concept blended with Marxist historical determinism – Xi is subtly decoupling the Taiwan issue from immediate military timelines. In the Chinese government’s lexicon, “historical inevitability” acts like gravity. If the outcome is guaranteed by the laws of history, one does not need to force it violently today; one simply needs to grow massive enough to let gravity do its work.

This perspective reveals the true function of Justice Mission 2025. To the Western observer, these drills look like invasion rehearsals. But viewed through the lens of strategic patience, they serve primarily as an “access denial” shield. Their strategic goal is to freeze the status quo and lock out external interference – specifically from the United States and Japan. By establishing a credible ceiling on Taipei’s international space through military pressure, Beijing secures the perimeter.

Behind this shield, the real work begins. The bulk of Xi’s New Year address was not fixated on the Taiwan Strait, but on the “engine” of national rejuvenation: the launch of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030). His focus on “New Quality Productive Forces” – the Communist Party’s terminology for dominance in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and green energy – is the tell. The leadership in Beijing understands a truth that Western hawkishness often obscures: China cannot successfully absorb Taiwan if it loses the broader war for economic and technological stability.

Therefore, Xi’s “unstoppable” narrative is a calculated maneuver. It buys him the political space to prioritize these complex domestic challenges without being accused of weakness on sovereignty. It signals a shift from the reactive urgency of the 2022–2024 period to a strategy of confidence. This effectively rebuts the Western “Peak China” theory; Xi is asserting that China has not peaked, and that its leverage will only grow with time.

Furthermore, the newfound emphasis on “Taiwan Recovery Day” (October 25) – linking the island’s status to the anti-fascist victory of 1945 – is a move to fortify the moral legitimacy of Beijing’s claim. By shifting the narrative from a prolonged civil war dispute to a matter of post-WWII international order, Beijing is engaged in a “memory war.” This reframing portrays American intervention not as the defense of democracy, but as the disruption of the anti-fascist peace. This “ritualization” of the conflict allows the Communist Party to demonstrate resolve through high-profile historical gestures rather than high-risk military gambles.

The danger for the West lies in mistaking this patience for passivity. A patient China, focused on correcting its internal economic vulnerabilities and dominating critical technologies, is a far more formidable competitor than a rash China seeking a premature military showdown. The 15th Five-Year Plan is designed to make China sanction-proof. An invasion today would be catastrophic, but an “integration” in 2035, backed by overwhelming economic gravity, is the scenario Beijing is building toward.

If Washington continues to view every PLA movement solely as a precursor to an amphibious landing, it plays directly into Xi’s hand – expending resources on a kinetic conflict that Beijing hopes to avoid, while missing the deeper, structural contest for comprehensive national power. Xi has bet his legacy not on a roll of the dice in the Taiwan Strait, but on the “inevitable” current of history. He intends to win without fighting. The question is whether the West has a strategy to counter a rival that is willing to wait.

Authors

Guest Author

Ashton Ng

Dr. Ashton Ng is Kuok Family–Lee Kuan Yew Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

10. China Is Turning the Indo-Pacific Into a Pressure Cooker

Summary:

Varner argues China is running a coordinated, multi-front coercion campaign across Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and the Himalayas, treating them as linked theaters meant to erode U.S. influence and test allied cohesion. Taiwan is the center of gravity, with frequent PLA sorties, median-line crossings, and encirclement drills designed to normalize constant pressure and make isolation feel inevitable. He highlights daily harassment of the Philippines to strain the Mutual Defense Treaty, intensified coercion around Japan’s Senkakus and the Ryukyus, and Sino-Russian probes that pressure Seoul while enabling north Korea. In the Himalayas, China entrenches gains against India. The main risk is miscalculation.

Comment: Unrestricted warfare, three warfares, cognitive warfare. All of the above. I still think Goerge Kennan's description of political warfare remains the most fitting. And China is not afraid to borrow (or steal it). I think the two PLA Colonels simply adapted Kennan's 1948 concepts in 1999.

269. Policy Planning Staff Memorandum

Washington, May 4, 1948.

The Problem

The inauguration of organized political warfare.

Analysis

1. Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures [Page 669](as ERP), and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d269

Who in the US (State Department, IC, Pentagon, or NSC) is George Kennan and writing the updated policy planning memo to "re-inaugurate" political warfare in the 21st Century,

China Is Turning the Indo-Pacific Into a Pressure Cooker

realclearworld.com · Joe Varner

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2026/01/03/china_is_turning_the_indo-pacific_into_a_pressure_cooker_1156558.html

As we approach 2026, China is pursuing a unified, and increasingly assertive, military posture across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and the Himalayan frontier.

These theatres are often discussed as separate issues. They are not. Beijing is treating them as interconnected fronts in a long-term campaign to erode U.S. influence, evaluate allied cohesion, and normalize Chinese dominance across Asia.

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

But Taiwan is only one front in a widening strategic contest. In the South China Sea, the Philippines now faces daily harassment from China’s coast guard and maritime militia. At Second Thomas Shoal, Scarborough Shoal, and Sabina Shoal, Filipino vessels have been water-cannoned, rammed, and their passage blocked. Lasers and flares have been fired at aircraft. These activities fall below the threshold of open conflict but are just high enough to create the risk of a fatal incident--one that could force the U.S. to decide whether its Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila still means what it says it does. For Beijing, this grey-zone pressure is a feature, not a bug. If China can make the Philippines doubt American resolve, it will send a powerful message to every U.S. ally in the region.

To the north, Japan faces its most dangerous operating environment since the Cold War. Chinese and Russian joint bomber patrols now fly routine circuits through airspace around Japan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), forcing Tokyo to scramble fighters. Chinese coast-guard vessels have dramatically increased their intrusions around the Senkaku Islands, staying longer and deploying larger ships designed to intimidate Japanese patrols. At the same time, PLA Navy carrier groups treat the Miyako Strait as their gateway for operations east of Taiwan, an unmistakable warning that China views the entire Ryukyu chain as a strategic corridor. In December alone, Japanese fighters were radar-locked by Chinese jets near Okinawa, underscoring just how thin the margin for error has become.

China’s posture toward South Korea is less overtly confrontational but strategically consequential. Combined Sino-Russian air patrols regularly probe the Korean ADIZ, signalling deepening coordination between Beijing and Moscow at a time when Pyongyang is accelerating its nuclear program with their implicit backing. Any enhancements to U.S.–South Korea missile defence systems are met with Chinese diplomatic threats and economic coercion. In short, China is telling Seoul that aligning too closely with Washington carries a price, and that North Korea’s growing capabilities can be wielded as leverage.

Meanwhile, the quietest but most enduring front of all lies in the Himalayas, where India faces a hardened Chinese military presence. Since the violent 2020 clashes in Ladakh, the PLA has built roads, air bases, and permanent barracks that allow rapid force mobilization along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Despite diplomatic talks, China has not reversed its gains. Instead, it has entrenched them. At sea, Beijing’s “research vessels” and naval patrols in the eastern Indian Ocean now challenge India’s maritime awareness, threatening its traditional dominance in a region that is vital to global energy flows.

Individually, these flashpoints look local, but together they form a deliberate pattern: China is applying coordinated pressure across the Indo-Pacific to force Washington to divide its focus while Beijing incrementally shifts the balance of power.

The real danger heading into 2026 is not a planned offensive but a miscalculation, a collision in the South China Sea, an intercept gone wrong near the Senkakus, or a communications failure over Taiwan, playing out against a backdrop of normalized Chinese coercion. The region is becoming a pressure cooker, and whether it boils over depends on whether democracies grasp that these are not isolated flare-ups but parts of a single strategy that grows bolder each time it goes unchallenged.

Joe Varner is the deputy director of the Conference of Defence Associations, a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, and the Center for North American Prosperity and Security in Washington, D.C.

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

Summary:

POLITICO sketches six plausible 2026 inflection points and assigns betting-style odds. It gives longish odds that POTUS ends the Ukraine war (4/1), arguing Putin benefits from delay while Ukraine faces manpower strain, though Russia’s finances may bite. It sees a higher risk that bond markets force policy U turns or topple leaders as deficits and borrowing costs rise (5/1). Netanyahu’s survival is treated as likely again (3/1), and Orbán is favored but vulnerable in a tight Hungarian race (2/1). A shadow-banking or private-credit shock is a real tail risk (3/1). In U.S. politics, Democrats taking the House and Republicans holding the Senate are both set at 2/1.

Comment: The 2026 starting scorecard tracker. Overlooks a number of things I am worried about.

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

Politico · January 2, 2026

https://www.politico.eu/article/what-are-the-odds-analyzing-six-global-scenarios-2026-trump-ukraine-bond-market-netanyahu-hungary-orban/

What are the odds?

Analyzing six global

scenarios for 2026.

A series of inflection points await the world. Here’s our view of what might happen next year.

By JAMIE DETTMER

Illustration by Michael Waraksa for POLITICO

January 2, 2026 4:00 am CET

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

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

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

But if you want to place some wagers, be my guest. There are plenty of online gambling sites that’ll be happy to take your money.

Here’s a caution though. Politics in this topsy-turvy era is even less predictable than sports. And even more so with the ever-unpredictable Donald Trump in the White House. After a whirlwind year at the start of his second term, here’s how we see things unfolding across the globe in 2026.

Trump pulls off an end to the war in Ukraine

For all the talk of Western sanctions crashing the Russian economy and bringing the Kremlin to heel, Vladimir Putin seems unperturbed. Regardless of the carnage on the frontlines or Russians queueing for gas because of Ukrainian drone strikes on oil refineries, he has remained fixed on pressing his maximalist demands.

Meanwhile, there are domestic political limits on what Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy can agree to without triggering a public backlash.

Nonetheless, Trump often seems more inclined than not to think a deal might be possible. After his Alaska summit with Putin, Trump was heard on a hot mic explaining to France’s Emmanuel Macron that he thinks Putin really wants to “make a deal for me.” “I think he wants to make a deal with me. Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds,” Trump added.

Of course, the stubbornness of the Russian leader has left Trump frustrated and occasionally musing about whether he’s being played — which is what Melania Trump reportedly thinks Putin is doing.

The Russian leader is adept at stringing Trump along — and his timing is impeccable when reaching out to his US counterpart. Take his two-hour-log phone call last month dangling the prospects of a summit just as Trump hinted he might give Ukraine Tomahawk Cruise missiles.

Arguably, prolonging the war is useful for Putin. It has the benefit of further straining cash-strapped European nations (see below), and risks fracturing the transatlantic alliance. A distracted West also helps Putin’s ally Xi Jinping as he calculates whether, or when, to make a move on Taiwan.

Arguably, prolonging the war is useful for Putin. | Sputnik

And Putin’s regime could be imperiled if he ends the conflict abruptly. A rapid shift out of a war economy would likely trigger some dangerous sociopolitical infighting, according to Ella Paneyakh, a sociologist at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre think tank. She says it would spark “cruel and vicious competition for diminishing resources.”

With Ukraine’s severe manpower shortage — Ukrainian units are able to deploy just a dozen troops per kilometer of front — there’s always the chance of a frontline breakthrough. In short, Putin may well calculate he can get more by persisting: more land, Western security guarantees so watered down they’re worthless and a cap on the size of a postwar Ukrainian army. That would handily set the stage for a later resumption of Russian revanchist hostilities.

The counter-argument? The Russian economy is struggling with high interest rates, labour shortages and soaring government borrowing costs. There’s alarm about the bad debt Russian banks are shouldering. The status quo may not be able to last forever. Likewise, though, Ukraine could be on the ropes this winter with Russia’s relentless targeting of the country’s energy infrastructure and the Europeans unable to bankroll Kyiv sufficiently.

Odds: 4/1

2026 is the year the bond market says enough is enough

Bill Clinton’s campaign guru James Carville once suggested it would be fun to be reincarnated as the bond market. “You can intimidate everybody,” he said.

Even Trump appears to appreciate he’s outranked by the real masters of the universe — the bond vigilantes, hedge and pension fund bosses and high financiers. In the spring he had to pause his signature policy of “reciprocal tariffs” when the bond market frowned.

The awesome collective power of the global investment giants and traders was demonstrated three years ago when they reacted adversely to the poorly sequenced tax-cutting mini-budget of Britain’s Liz Truss. Her premiership was the shortest-lived in British history; Truss’s brief 49 days in office broke the previous record of George Canning, who served for 119 days in 1827 — but he had the excuse of dying on the job.

How many other Western heads of governments might be ushered to the door next year by the bond market as they fail to reduce rising budget deficits?

How many other Western heads of governments might be ushered to the door next year by the bond market as they fail to reduce rising budget deficits? | Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

The parlous state of public finances — from Japan to Britain and the United States — has kept long-dated borrowing costs at near multi-year peaks this year. The fiscal challenges of high levels of government borrowing, slow growth and sluggish productivity are only mounting. And it is going to be an uphill battle to keep the bond markets reassured.

Demand for government bonds worldwide has cooled with institutional investors put off by the outlook for some major governments being able to maintain their finances, including the United States. “The economic reforms needed to really cover increasing debt are lacking, and the capital market sees that,” Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing said in September.

With its exploding public debt, France has been the canary in the mine with a succession of Emmanuel Macron-appointed prime ministers unable to muster parliamentary — or public — support for serious debt-reduction. Britain is closely following. Financial crisis and political crisis go hand-in-hand, reinforcing and fueling each other. For electoral reasons, governments are equally loath to hike taxes or cut spending, but something has got to give.

Odds: 5/1

Netanyahu survives again

They call him “the Magician” for a reason. When all has seemed lost in Benjamin Netanyahu’s long political career, he has implausibly bounced back. “An obsessive, relentless fighter, failure is not a legitimate option for him,” noted one of his biographers, Ben Caspit.

The Israeli leader was first nicknamed “Bibi the Magician” in the 1990s, after beating Shimon Peres in elections held months after the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Later, few believed he could pull off a win in 2015 given talk of criminal investigations and allegations of breach of trust and bribes. Still, Bibi pulled another rabbit out of his hat and secured reelection by courting the Israeli far right and religious nationalists — a tactic he repeated in 2019 to claw his way back.

The political obituarists were quick to declare him finished two years ago after Hamas rampaged through the kibbutzim of southern Israel. His government was widely blamed for a catastrophic failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, seen as the worst security lapse since the 1973 Yom Kippur war that ended the legendary Golda Meir’s career.

They call him “the Magician” for a reason. When all has seemed lost in Benjamin Netanyahu’s long political career, he has implausibly bounced back. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Parliamentary elections have to be held by October next year. The smart money is on a vote being held sooner, likely Netanyahu’s preferred option. And despite Oct 7 and Netanyahu’s legal travails, he has slowly improved his political position. The rock-bottom poll ratings of his ruling Likud party started to lift after the military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and they continued to rise with the humbling of Iran.

And Trump may have done Bibi a big favor by pushing him into accepting the Gaza peace plan and agreeing to a ceasefire. Netanyahu was able to use Trump as the excuse for halting the military campaign in Gaza, allowing him to overrule the religious nationalists and far-right partners in his rambunctious coalition who wanted the war to continue.

Netanyahu’s political opponents are drawing comfort from the fact that Likud appears to be running short of the 35 seats it secured in the last election. Opinion polls are showing his right-wing coalition would struggle to secure 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. But so too would the opposition bloc. And a poll last month for Zman Yisrael, a Hebrew-language media site, suggested Bibi was enjoying increased support in the wake of the ceasefire and hostage release deal. Likud appears on course to once again emerge as the largest party in the Knesset.

The best hope for Netanyahu’s opponents is to unite and offer Israelis a simple choice. That’s the strategy former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is pursing; he’s wooing Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, in a bid to shape the election as a head-to-head fight between himself and Bibi. Does Netanyahu have another card up his sleeve?

Odds 3/1

Hungary’s Viktator wins reelection

Who would bet against Viktor Orbán leading his national conservative party, Fidesz, to another parliamentary victory?

The Viktator — a pun combining his first name and the Hungarian word for dictator — has been victorious in the past last three elections. The bête noire of Europe’s centrists and leftists, they will be determined to see him tripped up this time when Hungarians go to the polls in April, eager to be free of his EU obstructionism.

Who would bet against Viktor Orbán leading his national conservative party, Fidesz, to another parliamentary victory? | Pierre Crom/Getty Images

“The election isn’t going to be hermetically sealed off from the rest of Europe,” chuckles Frank Furedi, who heads the Brussels branch of the Hungarian government-backed college Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Furedi predicts Hungary will be the venue for a massive ideological brawl, further polarizing an already highly divided country.

Trump, MAGA influencers and Orbán’s allies in the Patriots for Europe group will be equally determined to see him remain as prime minister. They’re already drawing comfort, says Furedi, from the result in October of the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election, which saw right-wing populist Andrej Babiš’s ANO party secure a big win. The presidential election victory by a national conservative in Poland this year is also a source of confidence. But even Orbán loyalists don’t doubt this is going to be the toughest election he has faced in the past 15 years with incumbency proving a disadvantage.

And election campaigning is already underway. Péter Magyar, an MEP and former Fidesz insider, is Orbán’s main rival and hopes to capitalize on widespread public dissatisfaction with record inflation, economic woes and a series of political scandals. He’ll hope Orbán fatigue will kick in. His pro-Western and center-right party, Tisza, is running neck-and-neck with Fidesz in many polls, although some independent pollsters reckon Magyar is ahead.

But one in four Hungarians remain undecided. “A bit of trickery and a lot of campaigning” could shift the polls, according to political analyst Péter Krekó of the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital. “Tisza’s lead is not unchangeable.”

Orbán is casting Magyar as a puppet of the EU and even a Ukrainian agent of influence who wants to push Hungary into war. He will hope his populist EU-baiting narratives, helped by a media controlled by his friends, shift the focus of the election toward the culture wars. It just may work, again.

Odds: 2/1

A shadow banking crisis erupts

And spare a worrying thought for the unregulated private credit market and the so-called shadow banks. The usually staid Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has already tolled the alarm bell.

In October, he warned of parallels with the 2008 financial crash, which was sparked by an American housing bubble fueled by easy credit and the issuance of risky subprime mortgages, with their subsequent bundling into opaque financial products that spread risk throughout the global financial system. Risk turned to contagion.

Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned of parallels with the 2008 financial crash. | Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Will the global financial system once again be brought to its knees? The private credit markets have become a major source of funding for businesses. That’s partly because traditional banks never regained their appetite for riskier lending after the 2008 crisis, and they have also been restrained because of greater regulatory scrutiny.

The hedge funds and private equity firms comprising the shadow banking sector now account for just under half of the world’s financial assets, worth around $250 trillion, according to the US Financial Stability Board.

The good news is that unlike traditional and investment banks they’re not using consumer cash deposits to invest in long-term, illiquid assets; they raise and borrow funds from investors, who in large part agree for their investment to be locked up for long periods. That reduces the short-term risks for the shadow banks — so in theory there shouldn’t be massive runs on them, like, say, what happened to Lehman Brothers in 2008.

But that’s in theory. If the private credit market is roiled, there’s bound to be an impact on other parts of the global financial system. And cash-strapped governments will be in no position to organize a bailout like in 2008, particularly at a time of even greater populist revolt. Furthermore, shadow banks have bet heavily on AI — and the AI boom might be a bubble ready to pop. It might soon be time to take cover.

Odds 3/1

Democrats vs. Republicans

It will be a tall order for the Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives.

The incumbent president’s party invariably loses control of the House in the midterms — only twice since 1938 has that not been the case. “Both exceptions reflected unusual circumstances,” according to William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank.

It will be a tall order for the Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives. | Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In 2002, President George W. Bush’s Republicans surfed a rally-round-the-flag wave following the 9/11 attacks; and in 1998, Bill Clinton’s Democrats benefited from the unpopular effort by Republicans to impeach him.

Complicating the task for Democrats next year is a controversial redistricting scheme pushed by Trump in Texas and other states that should net Republicans additional seats, though some of that will be offset by Democrats redistricting in California. Nonetheless, with Republicans only enjoying a slim majority in the House, Democrats have to be odds-on favorites to win back control, especially if Trump’s net approval rating remains negative. In a reassuring sign for the party, Democrats scored big wins in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia in November.

The Senate is another matter. The GOP has a six-seat majority currently, and they’re playing on much safer turf. Although they will be defending 22 seats next year compared to the Democrats’ 13, most of their incumbents are considered secure. Only one Republican senator is running in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. Two Democratic incumbents will be running in states that Trump won last year.

All in all, Republicans in the Senate look to be in a much stronger position than their counterparts in the House. For Democrats to win the Senate would require a giant wave of anti-Trump fervor sweeping into even some of the most conservative states in the country. It’s unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

Democrats seize the House: 2/1 odds; Republicans keep the Senate: 2/1 odds

Politico · January 2, 2026

12. China’s Taiwan Drills Are Crossing a New Line

Summary:

Yeh argues China’s Justice Mission 2025 drills crossed a qualitative threshold by normalizing PLA and China Coast Guard operations inside Taiwan’s 12-nautical-mile contiguous zone, the last practical buffer short of territorial waters. He says the late-December multi-domain exercise rehearsed blockade and deterrence, with a larger footprint than post-2022 war games and heavy ADIZ activity, but the decisive shift was mass entry into the contiguous zone. Taiwan reports multiple PLAN and coast guard vessels crossing the line, missile activity near the zone, and a radar-lock incident that forced a Chinese destroyer to withdraw. Yeh warns eroding this buffer increases miscalculation risk and exploits allied ambiguity about what “status quo” means.

Comment: There is a lot of reporting on "Justice Mission 2025" outside of the mainstream media. MOst of the major papers seem to be one and done with the exercises but a number of analysts continue to ...well.... analyze it. Is it as significant as some seem to make it appear? Is there a "red line?" And if so, what do we do when China inevitably crosses it?

China’s Taiwan Drills Are Crossing a New Line

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

By Andrew Yeh

January 03, 2026

https://thediplomat.com/2026/01/chinas-taiwan-drills-are-crossing-a-new-line/

In this official photo released by the PLA, China’s military fires rockets during Justice Mission 2025.

Credit: Sina Weibo/ 中国军号

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

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

After several months in which China’s large-scale military exercises appeared to be on hiatus, the closing days of 2025 saw their return. The December 29–30 Justice Mission 2025 drills brought together the PLA Navy, Air Force, Rocket Force, and other branches to rehearse a full maritime blockade of Taiwan – establishing air and sea control, targeting key ports, and deterring external forces from entering the island chain. The exercise covered a larger area than any of the six major war games conducted since August 2022, when then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, and involved more than 130 aircraft sorties into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, alongside 14 warships and at least 15 coast guard and other official vessels.

Lost amid the unprecedented scale of the Justice Mission exercises is a more consequential development: their increasing focus on the contiguous zone surrounding Taiwan’s main island. Like other coastal states, Taiwan defines its territorial waters as extending 12 nautical miles from its baseline, beyond which lies a further 12-nautical-mile contiguous zone. This area functions as a critical buffer, allowing authorities to address potential infringements before they reach sovereign waters or airspace. In the Taiwan context, it has also helped distinguish between routine – if coercive – Chinese military activity and actions that more clearly signal an attempt to infringe upon Taiwan’s territorial sovereignty.

The Justice Mission exercises marked the first instance in which Chinese military and coast guard vessels entered Taiwan’s contiguous zone in significant numbers. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, 11 PLAN vessels crossed into the zone, alongside eight China Coast Guard and other official vessels. One Chinese destroyer, the Urumqi, reportedly withdrew only after a Taiwanese naval vessel applied a radar lock – a move that signals imminent capability to fire on the target. In addition, 27 missiles were fired in or around the contiguous zone, although their precise impact locations have not been publicly disclosed.

The mass encroachment into Taiwan’s contiguous zone during the Justice Mission exercises follows several years in which China has steadily increased its attempts to challenge – and eventually cross – this boundary. While never formally acknowledged by Beijing, the zone was largely respected for decades, with Chinese naval and coast guard vessels generally avoiding it. That pattern began to shift in the early 2020s, most notably with a sharp increase in the activity of quasi-military maritime research vessels operating near the zone in 2023. During exercises in April that year, dozens of Chinese and Taiwanese vessels engaged in standoffs along the edge of the contiguous zone in the Taiwan Strait, including a brief incursion by a Type 052D destroyer. Two years later, the Strait Thunder exercise in 2025 saw a China Coast Guard vessel also enter the zone, reportedly reaching within 20 nautical miles of Taiwan’s main island.

While the distinction may appear technical, China’s efforts to erode the significance of Taiwan’s contiguous zone should be a cause for concern well beyond the Taiwan Strait. Taipei has made clear that any intrusion into its territorial airspace would be treated as a “first strike,” reserving the right to respond with force. No equivalent red line has been articulated for the contiguous zone, which has instead functioned as a critical final buffer to manage risk and prevent escalation.

If that buffer is gradually erased, the dangers multiply. Military drills conducted closer to Taiwan’s sovereign waters may be interpreted as actual attacks, heightening opportunities for miscalculation and unintended escalation. Alternatively, actual attacks might be initially misinterpreted as drills, reducing Taiwan’s response time and weakening its response. Either way, sustained activities in the contiguous zone push ever closer to Taiwan’s red lines, increasing the chances of provoking a military response.

Despite the significance of these developments, Taiwan’s partners have so far appeared slow to acknowledge how incursions into the contiguous zone make these drills qualitatively different from earlier exercises. U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, said that “nothing worries me” about the drills, noting that China had been conducting naval exercises in the area “for 20 years.” Statements from other G-7 partners – including Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Japan – largely reiterated familiar calls for restraint and the peaceful resolution of disputes, without addressing the escalated risks posed by the normalization of activity within Taiwan’s contiguous zone.

This points to a broader weakness in how the G-7 and other partners approach cross-strait stability. While officials routinely warn against any “unilateral change to the status quo,” far less effort has gone into defining what that status quo actually consists of in practice. That ambiguity has already allowed Beijing to all but nullify the median line in the Taiwan Strait as a meaningful constraint on military behavior. The latest exercises suggest a similar effort may now be underway with respect to Taiwan’s contiguous zone, despite the heightened risks involved. Unless the United States and other governments begin to address this issue more explicitly, there is little incentive for Beijing to reconsider its approach.

Authors

Guest Author

Andrew Yeh

Andrew Yeh is the executive director at the China Strategic Risks Institute and former Visiting Scholar at Taiwan’s Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET).

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

Summary:

Duerr argues Ukraine’s drone war offers Taiwan both a template and a warning: survive by adapting fast, scaling production, and building resilient supply chains. Taiwan’s drone exports surged in 2025, and Taipei plans large purchases of commercial-grade military drones and counter-UAS systems, but the effort lags Ukraine’s mass output and is constrained by maritime geography and limited official ties with Kyiv. Early cooperation is emerging through industry MOUs with Ukrainian and regional partners. Key lessons include rapid feedback loops from operators, decentralized procurement, and balancing localization with co-production. She warns reliance on Chinese components creates bottlenecks and security risk, and urges Taiwan to anchor a non-Chinese drone ecosystem with Ukraine.

Comment: Can we all learn from Ukraine, not just Taiwan? And we need to think beyond drones, what comes next?

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

Every minute of the Russo-Ukrainian war has showcased the level of adaptation needed for survival, presenting Taiwan with both a model and a warning: act fast or suffer losses.

By Samara Duerr

January 03, 2026

https://thediplomat.com/2026/01/ukraine-as-a-model-a-warning-and-a-partner-for-taiwans-drone-industry/

Credit: Ukraine ArmyInform

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

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

Taiwan has also released a tender to procure 48,750 commercial-grade military drones for military use by 2027, and plans to purchase 635 units C-UAS systems by 2028. While significant progress, these numbers are diminutive in comparison to Ukraine, which produces an estimated 4 million drones annually. Further complicating these production disparities are Taiwan’s maritime landscape – which poses operational challenges for UAVs – and the absence of formal government-to-government ties with Kyiv, which limits the scope of technical cooperation.

Recently, initial cooperation between Taiwan and Ukraine has materialized through private-sector channels. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Taiwan’s drone industry alliance, TEDIBOA, and a Ukrainian defense tech hub, Iron Cluster, was signed in September 2025. The same month saw an MOU inked between Taiwan’s Defense Industry Development Association, DIDA, and Polish and Ukrainian counterparts. These developments place Taiwan-Ukraine cooperation at square one – a position with room to move forward and mature together. This does not negate, however, that political, industrial, and technological barriers remain.

For its security, Taiwan must both glean strategic insights from Ukraine and face its unique geographical and technical challenges head on in order to establish a resilient domestic UAV supply chain.

Applying Ukraine’s Battlefield Insights to Taipei

For Taiwan, Ukraine offers several lessons for drone production: adaptation through constant end-user feedback, establishing de-centralized procurement methods, and instituting a balance between localization and co-production with battlefield-tested foreign companies.

To the first point, technologies and tactics that used to endure 6 months on the battlefield now only sustain advantages for a short 4 to 6 weeks before Russian counter-advancements overtake them. End user feedback, particularly from Ukrainian military units, plays a major role in streamlining changes and improvements. With firsthand experiences, these units have striking clarity on what technology works and what does not. In a recent Ukrainian analytical report of 80 UAV related companies, 75 percent said they gather feedback “daily” or “regularly.” This empowers an evidence-based, bottom-up decision making founded on a direct feedback loop with military units themselves.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s drone related military procurement tenders span over a period of 1-3 years with no official mechanism in place for rapid system modifications. Consequently, Taiwan’s evolution cycle is currently too slow to allow UAV technology to gain an edge against aggressors’ advancements. A huge part of Ukraine’s success lies in its ability to integrate battlefield feedback into production in near real time – a lesson Taiwan would do well to learn.

Besides insights of adaptability and innovation, Ukraine has two overarching frameworks to combat the susceptibility of its supply chain and meet its own UAV quantity demands: localization and co-production.

Localization includes the domestic production of components and large node assembly. For the latter, Ukraine has mostly reached sovereignty, with 95 percent of drones finalized domestically. For the former, starting from 2023, Ukraine has rapidly developed its base of manufacturers for key parts including frames, wire harnesses, flight controllers, motors, and regulators. The defense cluster Tech Force in UA and the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), an independent Ukrainian think tank found that 22 out of 80 (28 percent) interviewed Ukrainian UAV manufacturers utilize at least 50 percent Ukrainian components. This number was concurrent with another Ukrainian study of around 70 manufacturers, where 45.2 percent used around 30-70 percent of Ukrainian components. While still limited, this development greatly aids both operation tempo and the scaling of UAV production.

However, Ukraine’s experience also warns Taiwan about supply chain vulnerabilities: bottlenecks stemming from reliance on foreign components and risks associated with centralized manufacturing facilities. For Ukraine, current deficiencies include semiconductors, microelectronics – Surface-Mount Devices (SMD), Printed Circuit Boards (PCB), On-Screen Display (OSD) chips, etc. – optical components, batteries, and magnets. Batteries and magnets for motors are especially critical as they rely on lithium and neodymium – rare earth elements that China has a processing monopoly on.

While promising, Ukraine’s domestic manufacturing component capacity can not yet keep up with demand volumes, resulting in the continual purchase of cheap Chinese components. Not only is this a security risk, but also due to Chinese export restrictions starting from June 2023 on various drones and components, there have been increased costs, delays, and consequent shortages – forcing Ukraine to acknowledge the necessity of a self-reliant defense.

In a poll by the Snake Island Institute, a Ukrainian research organization, 23 out of 30 (76.7 percent) of manufacturers they engaged with indicated that they would stop buying Chinese components if there were other options available at the same price.

In Taiwan’s case, under the Five Trusted Industry Sectors initiative, it is launching a development program for the drone industry (2025-2030), aimed at researching key UAV technologies among other objectives. Taiwan’s localization plan, in particular, includes targeted, critical subsystems: flight control, navigation, and communications chips and operational software.

As for co-production, there are three main justifications for Ukraine to develop additional production channels abroad. First, Ukraine does not have the financial resources to utilize its own domestic production capacity. This leads to the second reason: Ukraine benefits from European joint ventures by receiving funds via European subsidiaries and supplementing the Ukrainian economy. Lastly, Ukraine needs to establish safer manufacturing lines, and foreign production lines can operate even if domestic facilities are targeted or disrupted.

These challenges and solutions are not unique to Ukraine. The message to Taiwan is clear: redundancy not only creates resilience through secure production lines, but also creates ties for longer term political alliances. At the same time, a foundational level of self-reliant manufacturing is absolutely necessary.

Taiwan’s current UAV co-production projects are limited to a few business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-government (B2G) agreements. One notable example is the United States’ AeroVironment and Taiwan’s NCSIST’s MOU, which expects future co-development on UAVs. Still, Taiwan acknowledges the advantages of an allied co-production ecosystem, especially in jump starting “non-red” production lines. While Taiwan’s drone co-production is currently in its nascent stages, significant opportunities for scaling exist.

Merging Taiwan’s Manufacturing Might With Ukraine’s Tested Technology

Ukraine and Taiwan have astounding potential for drone cooperation. Taiwan can contribute in lessening Ukrainian vulnerabilities, while at the same time strengthening its own budding drone infrastructure. Existing cooperation comprises Taiwanese exports to Ukraine and Ukrainian sourcing of Taiwanese components, but there are opportunities for expanding these B2B connections, tech sharing, joint research and development, and aligning certifications to increase exports.

For Taiwanese exports in particular, interviews with both Taiwanese and Ukrainian sources by the the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET) found that most, if not all, of Taiwan’s drone exports to Poland (31,711 drones by October 2025) and Czechia (24,318 drones by October 2025) – the top destinations for Taiwan’s drone exports – are being transferred to Ukraine.

Besides this, the majority of present-day cooperation with Ukraine consists of Taiwanese component sales. This partnership is built upon B2B rather than governmental relations.

According to a Ukrainian defense industrial entity interviewed by DSET, out of 61 UAV related companies, seven Ukrainian companies source from Taiwanese companies. These companies likely work with the same four Taiwanese companies, consistently sourcing airframes, battery cells, motors, flight control chips, and other microelectronics.

Other initial steps include the aforementioned MOUs signed between TEDIBOA and Ukraine’s Iron Cluster on September 2, 2025 and between DIDA and its Polish and Ukrainian counterparts on September 3. These MOUs work toward facilitating more B2B partnerships and providing platforms for industrial cooperation – including joint marketing, UAV business development, and participation in international ventures.

Operationalizing Taiwan-Ukraine UAV Cooperation

Looking forward, Taiwan should focus on leveraging its manufacturing and semiconductor dominance to anchor a global, non-Chinese drone supply chain, ensuring that both nations don’t need to rely on compromised components.

While Taiwan-Ukraine cooperation remains at an early stage, Ukraine continues to expand joint drone-production initiatives with its partners, adopting several distinct paths. Cooperation with Turkiye and Germany is focused on establishing domestic subsidiaries and building factories for proven systems like the TB2 and Vector drones within Ukraine. A second model with the United States and United Kingdom aims at advanced technology integration, especially developing AI-driven interceptor drones and plugging frontline data into production lines. Finally, Ukraine has partnerships with nations like Denmark and Czechia to manufacture Ukrainian-designed drones abroad to secure supply chains. None of these arrangements currently involves Taiwan.

By contrast, Taiwan’s collaboration with its own security partners has advanced more substantially. The recent U.S. National Defense Authorization Act includes provisions for co-production with Taiwan, while the Department of Defense’s DIU has, for the first time, incorporated Taiwanese firms into the Blue UAS program. Taiwan has also been included in the U.S. Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR) initiative to strengthen critical weapons supply chains. To date, however, none of these forms of cooperation has been formalized between Taiwan and Ukraine.

Admittedly, given the absence of official engagement between Taipei and Kyiv, Ukraine’s partnerships with other states cannot be directly replicated within the Taiwan-Ukraine context. Even so, existing industry-to-industry frameworks may offer a pragmatic starting point for advancing future collaboration.

Final Thoughts: Collaboration for Shared Security

In the future, a partnership that adds Taiwan to Ukraine’s UAV ecosystem is mutually beneficial. Taiwan already possesses valuable, transferable capabilities in high-tech electronics, manufacturing, and manpower.

At the same time, Ukraine is at an inflection point as it addresses the risks of supply chain dependencies by phasing out the usage of Chinese drone components. Starting with stronger component sourcing agreements, both partners can move toward a more integrated and resilient industrial base. For Ukraine, reliable access to Taiwan’s microelectronics ecosystem offers a solution to the volatility of current supply chains, ensuring that production constraints do not dictate operational capabilities. For Taiwan, this collaboration offers a unique opportunity to mature its defense sector, leveraging Ukraine’s experience and combat-tested innovations.

Ultimately, reducing reliance on monopolized supply chains is a shared necessity. Both sides can secure greater industrial autonomy required to navigate an increasingly uncertain world.

With the war in Ukraine transforming modern conflict, Taiwan’s bold bet on UAVs is the starting line for survival.

Authors

Guest Author

Samara Duerr

Samara Duerr serves as a policy analyst for the National Security taskforce at the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), a national think tank founded by the Taiwanese government and based in Taipei, Taiwan. Her research focuses on dual use technology in relation to Taiwan-U.S. and Taiwan-Ukraine cooperation. With an emphasis on techno-geopolitics, her work specializes in the drone supply chain and emerging technology.

14. Cuba on the Brink: Where Will the Island’s Crisis End?

Summary:

Bustamante argues Cuba is in its worst crisis since the Soviet collapse, driven by mass emigration, economic contraction, grid failure, disasters, and political repression. He traces dashed hopes from the 2014 U.S.–Cuba thaw and Raúl Castro’s limited reforms, then details how renewed U.S. sanctions, the pandemic shock, and shrinking Venezuelan oil support compounded Havana’s structural weaknesses. The core problem, he says, is self-inflicted: leaders kept central planning, botched currency reform, and constrained a growing private sector while military-linked conglomerates dominate. He judges external rescue unlikely from Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. Cuba’s viable path is deeper economic liberalization, credible legal guarantees, and real exchange-rate unification, but he doubts current leadership can deliver.

Excerpts:

Whether these challenges could eventually bring about the government’s collapse is uncertain. Regime change is unlikely in the absence of a more unified opposition, and the opposition’s top figures have been largely exiled or imprisoned. There are no open divisions between the security apparatus and other realms of the state. But worsening social problems—crime, inequality, drug consumption, and corruption—could accelerate interregime fissures, transnational criminal penetration, or direct foreign intervention, precisely the things loyalists of the Cuban system have long sought to avoid. Sporadic, leaderless protests are now endemic.

Today, the island seems to be sinking, just as Raúl warned it might 15 years earlier. It is doing so because he and others delayed true reform. Change will come with steep costs thanks to years of economic policy waffling and the state’s refusal to give Cubans a meaningful political voice in shaping their future. But change is necessary. Each day of further delay prolongs the population’s suffering.

Comment: Is this the answer to what comes next after Venezuela? Will change be driven internally or externally?

Cuba on the Brink

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael J. Bustamante · January 1, 2026

Where Will the Island’s Crisis End?

Michael J. Bustamante

January 1, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/cuba/cuba-brink

Cuban soldiers at a ceremony in Havana, November 2025 Norlys Perez / Reuters

MICHAEL J. BUSTAMANTE is Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami and the author of Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile.

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In 2014, after the Obama administration and Cuba’s government announced an agreement to restore diplomatic ties, the world descended on Havana. Everyone from the Rolling Stones to would-be investors rushed to claim a stake in the island’s future. Raúl Castro, the long-serving minister of defense, had assumed power from his ailing elder brother Fidel several years earlier and launched moderate economic reforms: allowing for more small private businesses, loosening rules for foreign investments, and downsizing the state’s payroll. Together, the normalization of relations with the United States and the government’s internal actualización (or “updating,” per the Cuban Communist Party’s preferred euphemism) seemed poised to help bring the island into the twenty-first century.

Unfortunately, Cuba has fallen dramatically short of those expectations. In the last five years, well over a million people—more than one in every ten Cubans—have fled the country, mostly for the United States. Today, under President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the island is enduring its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. GDP has declined 11 percent since 2020. The electric grid is falling apart. Security forces harshly repress antigovernment protests. In October, Hurricane Melissa devastated the island’s east, damaging or destroying some 90,000 homes and 250,000 acres of farmland. Now, an outbreak of dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses has reached epidemic proportions.

Cuba’s unfolding tragedy is partly the result of external shocks, such as U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election. After taking office, Trump reinstated many of the sanctions his predecessor had lifted. Between 2019 and 2020, for instance, he sharply restricted flights, remittances, and travel to the island, and in 2021, he redesignated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, mainly for harboring a handful of fugitives from U.S. justice. U.S. President Joe Biden only partially loosened these restrictions, and Trump has reinstated some of them in his second term. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic shattered the island’s tourism industry. And with the second Trump administration mounting an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an already sharp reduction in oil aid from Caracas to Havana in recent years threatens to get worse, and Cuba risks losing its most important economic and geopolitical partner.

But the current emergency is also a mess of the Cuban government’s making. Despite Raúl’s reforms, authorities have been unwilling to break decisively from the country’s sclerotic central planning model. Additional private-sector expansions have been fitful, and bad monetary policy has contributed to severe inflation. The government has, likewise, been averse to any meaningful change to the island’s one-party system. As a result, the island’s economy remains fragile and unresponsive, and past excitement in Washington for greater engagement with Havana has been replaced by skepticism, hostility, or disinterest.

It is hard to be hopeful about Cuba’s future. Raúl, who is 94 and still plays the role of éminence grise, will die soon, along with the last of the generation that forged the 1959 Cuban Revolution. But to get out of the current quagmire, a new generation of leaders would have to seriously commit, at a minimum, to deeper economic liberalization—painful as it might be in the short term. To fully set the country on the right path, they would need to democratize as well. Sadly, after a decade of policy tinkering, Cuba’s current leadership has given few signs that it is ready to tackle the island’s challenges head on or cede control to those who could.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

“We reform, or we sink,” declared Raúl in 2010, four years after assuming power. Cuba’s socialist system had survived the immediate post-Soviet period, when aid to the island plummeted and its GDP shrank by a third. But it had only partially recovered from the contraction. To put the economy on firmer footing, Raúl devised a straightforward plan: shrink a bloated state by laying off half a million workers while expanding a tiny private sector of “self-employed” workers running restaurants, homestays, and other small businesses. Authorities would allow foreign investors to hold majority stakes in ventures, and the state would turn over fallow public lands to private farmers to address the country’s dependence on imports for 70 percent of the country’s food.

Cuba’s best economists quickly pointed out the plan’s flaws. The list of 200-plus activities authorized for self-employment was comically micromanaged. Farming a plot of public land and selling most of the harvest in a price-controlled ration system, for example, is not the same as owning property and selling the resulting produce in a market. And state companies still maintained an unfair edge by being allowed to treat one Cuban peso as the equivalent of one dollar, thus artificially overvaluing their assets and lowering the cost of their imports. Private citizens, by contrast, could sell pesos to Cuban state banks for dollars at a rate of 24 to one. Still, many people remained optimistic. To visit Cuba in these years was to feel the winds of change as small businesses opened, tourists from Canada and Europe arrived in droves, and a zone of tolerance expanded for independent journalism, academic analysis, and civic debate.

U.S. President Barack Obama took notice. Even before the normalization breakthrough in late 2014, his administration authorized Americans to travel in group tours to the island if they wished to “support the Cuban people.” Members of the Cuban diaspora visited family and brought in millions of dollars in remittances, providing seed capital for small businesses. After the countries formally restored ties, airlines established direct commercial flights between them. There were cruises, self-guided visits, and new foreign investment exceptions to the long-standing embargo on U.S.-Cuban trade. In 2016, more than 580,000 U.S. and Cuban passport holders (in other words, Cuban Americans) boarded island-bound flights from Miami International Airport alone.

Yet for all the excitement, it quickly became clear that Havana was not prepared to seize the moment. U.S. investors found Cuban authorities wedded to preapproved projects, leading to few commercial deals of consequence. Hard-liners in the Cuban government bristled at Obama’s hopeful rhetoric, decrying it as a Trojan horse that would bring unwelcome political change. Calls for deepening market reforms went unheeded as party leaders feared unleashing economic forces that they could not control.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

As a result of Cuba’s shortsightedness, after the 2016 U.S. election, there was little to stop the Trump administration from reversing course. And sure enough, six months into his first term, Trump declared that he was “canceling” Obama’s “one-sided Cuba deal.” Cruise ships carrying U.S. tour groups continued to land at Cuban docks, but the Trump administration barred Americans from taking self-guided trips or from staying in Cuba’s many military-owned hotels. Soon after, news organizations began reporting on mysterious health incidents afflicting U.S. diplomats on the island, which was dubbed “Havana syndrome.” In response, Washington closed the U.S. consulate and effectively halted legal Cuban migration to the United States.

In 2019, U.S. policy took an even more punitive turn. That year, Trump eliminated the general license for “people-to-people” group travel that fueled the remaining American visits to the island and capped Cuban American remittances to $1,000 a quarter. His administration also activated the long-dormant Title III of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, allowing U.S. citizens to sue American and non-American companies for “trafficking” in property the Cuban government confiscated in the early 1960s, which had the effect of immediately chilling foreign investment to the island. In early 2020, the White House barred flights to or from Cuban cities other than Havana, and it blocked the U.S. financial services company Western Union from partnering with a financial entity owned by the Cuban military for remittance forwarding. Ignoring the humanitarian consequences, officials billed these measures as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign on both Cuba and Venezuela. That same campaign included sanctions on Venezuelan oil shipping—which tightened crucial energy supplies to the island.

Then the pandemic hit. Tourism vanished, and Cuba’s GDP plummeted ten percent. This was a trial by fire for Cuba’s first non-Castro leader, Díaz-Canel, whom Raúl tapped as his successor in 2018. But Díaz-Canel responded to mounting economic difficulties by doubling down on state economic control, such as by freezing new self-employment licenses for over a year. As the state’s hard-currency earnings dwindled, his government sought to capture more remittances by launching state-run stores selling imported goods in a new digital-only currency—the “Freely Convertible Currency” (known by its Spanish abbreviation, MLC)—pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. It was not freely convertible at all. Dollars deposited in so-called MLC accounts could not be reclaimed, further segmenting Cuban currency markets.

Cuba’s leadership has given few signs that it is ready to tackle the island’s challenges or cede control.

Díaz-Canel and his inner circle did eventually realize that this approach was not working. And in the summer of 2020, they announced a new strategy to handle the escalating economic emergency. Rather than enforce a narrow list of approved activities for the private sector, authorities adopted a list of prohibited activities, allowing everything else. The government also committed to legalizing small and medium-size private enterprises, moving beyond the “self-employment” framework. Finally, authorities agreed to unify the island’s multiple currencies and exchange rates. The separate exchange rates for private citizens and state companies had helped shield the state from the shock of the post-Soviet crisis, but they also introduced severe distortions into public companies’ accounting, worsening import reliance over time.

Yet the execution and sequencing of these reforms proved disastrous. Instead of first expanding the private sector, authorities launched their “monetary reorganization” plan on its own, unifying exchange rates across the economy at 24 pesos to the dollar in early 2021. For state-owned businesses used to operating at a one-to-one rate, this devaluation put upward pressure on prices for imported goods. A simultaneous increase in state salaries fueled further inflation, as too many pesos chased too few products. The printing of currency to finance soaring fiscal deficits made things even worse. The state also continued selling imports in its dollar-pegged digital currency, undermining the logic of currency unification and increasing demand for dollars, which the government did not have enough of. An informal currency market boomed, and by the end of 2021, the value of the Cuban peso had dropped by 75 percent, trading at 100 to the dollar even though the official rate remained 24 to one.

The result was a growing crisis in the state’s political legitimacy. This was most apparent when Cuba’s luck against COVID-19 ran out in the summer of 2021, and the delta variant of the virus tore through the country. Images of collapsing hospitals and dead bodies spread online. Fueled by the viral protest anthem “Patria y Vida” (“Homeland and Life”) by popular hip-hop and reggaetón artists and the power of livestreaming, Cubans in more than 50 cities and towns took to the streets on July 11, 2021, demanding food, medicine, and liberty. The government responded that very same day with repression that sent protesters to jail or back to their homes. More than a thousand were eventually arrested, and several hundred were sentenced to lengthy terms for crimes such as vandalism, public disorder, and sedition.

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

For the first seven months of its tenure, the Biden administration ignored Cuba, leaving Trump’s sanctions in place. But the protests and their aftermath forced Washington to take notice. Three months after the demonstrations, Cuba lifted its final COVID travel restrictions to restart tourism. Then Nicaragua, a close ally of Havana, allowed Cubans visa-free entry, providing a shorter, if still dangerous, route to the U.S.-Mexico border. Flights to Managua soon topped $2,000, but that did not stop Cubans from fleeing to the United States. Cuba appeared to be deliberately exporting dissent, thus giving Washington political headaches. The Biden administration responded by restoring remittance processing, resuming flights to Cuban provincial cities (which are largely used by the diaspora), and reopening preexisting legal avenues for migration and creating new ones—all in a bid to restore a modicum of economic stability and slow the exodus. But these efforts were unsuccessful. By the fall of 2024, more than 850,000 Cubans had entered the United States, including through a new “advanced humanitarian parole” program that the Biden administration created.

At the same time, Cuba’s government was also making a new attempt to help the economy. In late 2021, authorities finally legalized private enterprises with up to 100 employees. Over three years, more than 10,000 such businesses were approved. And for the first time since the early years of the Cuban Revolution, they received permission to import goods from abroad, albeit through state intermediaries. Entrepreneurs who had built international and diaspora contacts during the Obama period opened private grocery stores. Others imported wholesale from Mexico, Panama, or even the United States. Supply chain companies such as Supermarket23 provided Cubans abroad with an Amazon-like online platform to purchase goods for their families from local importers, as well as warehouses and logistics on the ground, facilitating door-to-door delivery. All of this was once unthinkable. By the end of 2024, the private sector accounted for 23 percent of tax receipts, 31 percent of the labor force, and over half of retail sales, outstripping state-owned enterprises.

But several problems beset the sector. One was the lack of a stable exchange market or any other legal way to move foreign currency abroad. This forced private firms into the informal currency market, driving the peso to new lows: over 400 pesos to the dollar, at present. This exchange rate has put many goods out of reach for many Cubans who are still reliant on state pensions or salaries and have little access to remittances. As a result, although new private businesses have been crucial for providing Cuban families with basic necessities in the last few years, they have become the public face of rising inequality—a political challenge for a still self-described socialist state.

And even this limited privatization has faced setbacks. Over the last two years, the government imposed new banking transaction limitations, removed tax incentives for new companies, and temporarily restricted wholesale operations. Company owners or partners must now reside in Cuba most of the year, limiting the legal involvement of the Cuban diaspora, a heretofore primary source of seed capital, knowhow, and access to non-sanctioned financial services. Observers widely interpret these moves as an attempt by the military’s business conglomerate, the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), to gain market share in the selling of marked-up foreign products, which it had dominated before the pandemic. Authorities still insist that private firms should be “complementary actors” in the economy, not the motors, even as dozens of state companies are operating at a loss.

TERMINAL DECLINE?

Cuba’s cascading problems are now so severe that even a more dynamic private sector would be insufficient to fix them. A nationwide blackout in September was the fifth in a year. Overhauling the aging, oil-dependent power grid would cost billions that the government does not have and that no country is willing to lend. The productivity effects are devastating. Authorities recently acknowledged that output in agriculture, livestock, and mining has declined 53 percent since 2019. Yet over the last decade, more of the state’s investment budget (38 percent) has gone to hotels and tourism facilities—which are also dominated by GAESA—than any other sector, despite the fact that visitor numbers are barely half what they were at the pre-pandemic peak. Tourists of all kinds are choosing Caribbean destinations that are less blackout prone. European tourists are choosing ones that won’t jeopardize their normal 90-day visa waiver for the United States (a risk that stems from Cuba’s placement on the list of state sponsors of terrorism).

Monetary policy also remains a pain point. In mid-December, Cuba’s central bank launched a new floating exchange rate for the general public and the private sector at one dollar to 410 Cuban pesos, only slightly below the informal rate, in an attempt to bring more transactions back into the formal financial system, undermine the informal market, and recover dollar reserves. But it is unclear whether the scheme will work, as popular trust in banking institutions has cratered. Moreover, the exchange system remains tiered: certain state companies, such as those in the tourism industry, still receive a preferential rate, of 120 Cuban pesos for one dollar, while state enterprises providing crucial services to the population receive a rate of 24 Cuban pesos to the dollar. Authorities have started outright dollarizing much state-run retail, reviving a practice from the 1990s. In other words, the latest maneuvers further entrench the existing segmentation of currency markets; they do not eliminate the fundamental distortions that such an arrangement introduces into the Cuban economy.

To fix—or elide—these problems, some Cuban officials may be counting on better international relations. They are likely to be disappointed. Waiting for Washington to change course is a fool’s errand: a battered Cuba, unlike oil-rich Venezuela, offers little of strategic interest to an increasingly transactional United States. But even Moscow and Beijing will be of limited help. Russian officials and business delegations have promised Cuba $1 billion in investment by 2030, and the Chinese have started building several dozen solar farms. But Havana can get only so much assistance from either country. How quickly these commitments materialize remains unclear, and both Moscow and Beijing have urged Cuba to lessen subsidies for unprofitable state companies and reduce restrictions on foreign investment and the private sector. Cuba, meanwhile, continues to run enormous trade deficits with both states and routinely asks to refinance its debts, which are thought to equal several billion dollars in the case of the Chinese. (Russia condoned most of the island’s Soviet-era debt in 2014, but Cuba has reportedly accrued hundreds of millions in obligations since.) Geopolitical motives and security ties mean Moscow and Beijing are willing to provide periodic aid and help Cuba’s government stay afloat, but neither is eager to completely bankroll an economic model they see as having failed.

Havana’s relationships with Caracas are even more vulnerable. The Trump administration has deployed significant military assets off the coast of Venezuela, launched controversial strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels and at least one port facility, and ordered a naval blockade of sanctioned oil shipments, including those heading Cuba’s way. If the Maduro regime falls—still a huge if—Cuba would lose what is left of a 25-year patronage relationship.

Cuba seems poised to slide further into economic decline.

Cuba, then, has just one choice: liberalize its economy. This includes permitting private business to operate in more industries, opening the private sector to foreign investment, and letting these firms trade free of state intermediaries. It also means cutting fiscal deficits and actually unifying exchange rates for government-owned and private businesses at levels that reflect real economic conditions. Just as important, the state must increase legal guarantees and tax incentives for domestic and foreign companies that build productive capacity. Even with U.S. sanctions, such steps would at least give Cuba the chance to begin rebuilding its economy and attract greater foreign investment.

But it is doubtful whether Cuba has the leadership to implement or inspire consensus around such a plan. Many officials seem out of touch with reality. Over the summer, the minister of labor denied that homelessness and mendicancy had increased on the island. (After a social media fury, she was forced to resign in a rare instance of public accountability.) Policymakers also continue to send mixed signals. In late November, authorities rolled out new rules to make foreign investment more agile by allowing the payment of Cuban employees without using state intermediaries. But they simultaneously barred foreign businesses from repatriating earnings held in Cuban banks. Likewise, a new government framework to “correct distortions and recharge the economy” is full of production targets but few ideas for transforming production incentives. Cuba thus seems poised to slide further into economic decline, marked by unaccountable military enterprises, constrained private businesses, and a labor force drained of talent by migration.

Whether these challenges could eventually bring about the government’s collapse is uncertain. Regime change is unlikely in the absence of a more unified opposition, and the opposition’s top figures have been largely exiled or imprisoned. There are no open divisions between the security apparatus and other realms of the state. But worsening social problems—crime, inequality, drug consumption, and corruption—could accelerate interregime fissures, transnational criminal penetration, or direct foreign intervention, precisely the things loyalists of the Cuban system have long sought to avoid. Sporadic, leaderless protests are now endemic.

Today, the island seems to be sinking, just as Raúl warned it might 15 years earlier. It is doing so because he and others delayed true reform. Change will come with steep costs thanks to years of economic policy waffling and the state’s refusal to give Cubans a meaningful political voice in shaping their future. But change is necessary. Each day of further delay prolongs the population’s suffering.

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael J. Bustamante · January 1, 2026

15. How Multilateralism Can Survive

Summary:

Herz and Ho argue global multilateral institutions are weakening from great-power politics, domestic backlash, and outdated governance, accelerated by U.S. withdrawals and tariff moves under POTUS. They contend the most practical way to preserve multilateralism is to shift more problem-solving to regional and cross-regional bodies that can act faster, tailor rules to local conditions, and pilot solutions. They point to regional trade architecture like RCEP and CPTPP, digital-economy and AI standards, and regional conflict management and peacekeeping efforts in ASEAN, Latin America, and the African Union. Regional groups can also advance nonproliferation, health cooperation, migration protections, and climate coordination. The risk, they warn, is a slide into spheres of influence unless regional institutions “step up” and interlink their efforts.

Comment: We need to sustain, protect, and advance our silk web of friends, partners, minilaterals, multilaterals, and alliances in the Asia-IndoPacific and throughout the world.

How Multilateralism Can Survive

Foreign Affairs · More by Monica Herz · January 2, 2026

Monica Herz and Selina Ho

Global Institutions Are Declining, but Regional Cooperation Can Fill the Gap

January 2, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-america/how-multilateralism-can-survive

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations–Gulf Cooperation Council–China Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2025 Hasnoor Hussain / Reuters

MONICA HERZ is Director of the Latin American Institute for Multilateralism.

SELINA HO is Vice Dean of Research and Development and Dean’s Chair Associate Professor in International Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

This essay emerged from the Lloyd George Study Group on Global Governance.

More by Selina Ho

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

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

This is where regional organizations come in. The world lacks leadership in free trade, technology, conflict management, and human security—and in each of these areas, regional bodies can help bridge the gap. These organizations have been reinforcing and adding to the work of international institutions for decades, and now is the time to expand their portfolios and deepen their cooperation with one another. If they do not step up to the task, the world’s problems will be addressed not through multilateralism but by great powers seeking spheres of influence—a mode of global politics that historically has not ended well for small and medium-sized states.

FAIR TRADE

Regional institutions enjoy certain advantages over global ones. They are closer to the sources of issues and can more quickly and accurately diagnose problems, mitigate them, and prevent future occurrences. Groups of neighboring countries can be more sensitive and responsive to local realities and adapt global governance principles and norms to local contexts. With fewer countries involved in decision-making, there are fewer obstacles to collective action and fewer opportunities to veto proposals. Regional institutions can more quickly course correct when strategies do not work as expected, and they can try novel, untested solutions that an international organization may consider too risky.

Regional organizations are already key facilitators of cross-border trade and investment. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest free trade agreement, was signed in November 2020 by Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (An 11th country, Timor-Leste, joined ASEAN in October 2025 and has not yet joined RCEP.) Since coming into force in 2022, the RCEP’s rules and tariff reduction policies have strengthened integration and optimized the regional value chain. As additional members join—Bangladesh, Chile, and Sri Lanka have applied—trade and investment within the bloc will likely grow.

Organizations in different regions also work with one another. In 2014, ASEAN established an annual meeting with the Pacific Alliance—a Latin American free trade arrangement comprising Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru—to explore how the two groups can cooperate on sustainable development, the digital and green transitions, support for small and medium-sized firms, and people-to-people exchanges. Most recently, this collaboration has led to the launch of an innovative new tourism initiative and a free trade agreement between the Pacific Alliance and Singapore—one that could become a model for other ASEAN members. The Pacific Alliance also has partnerships and agreements with the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Commission, and the South American trading bloc Mercosur.

International institutions are poorly suited to govern in today’s world.

In other cases, countries from different regions have come together to promote free trade. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which became effective in 2018 and includes 12 members across five continents, reduces tariffs and other barriers to free trade and sets rules that protect intellectual property, investment, financial services, the environment, and labor rights. The CPTPP has facilitated trade even amid global disruption; from 2018 to 2021, a period that included the COVID-19 pandemic, trade among members increased by 5.5 percent overall, and by 13.2 percent among members that did not previously have free trade agreements with each other. In the fall of 2025, 16 small and medium-sized states from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific launched the Future of Investment and Trade Partnership to promote open and fair trade. At the inaugural meeting, in November, Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong described the group’s structure, which allows a subset of members to advance an initiative before the rest sign on, as one that allows states to “move fast to innovate, test new ideas, and seize new opportunities.” If it works as intended, the partnership may devise new ways to overcome trade and investment barriers—solutions that could also be applied elsewhere.

These cross-regional trading regimes can act as stabilizing forces amid rising U.S. protectionism and retaliatory tariffs. By boosting trade and investment, strengthening science and technology innovation, and promoting financial integration, they help keep the global economy running. Even as individual countries negotiate concessions from the Trump administration, regional bodies can collectively bargain with the United States or at least agree to a set of joint principles to guide bilateral talks. Forums in Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia can even prevent a total fragmentation of the international trading system by diversifying their supply chains, using new technology to streamline global commerce, and aligning their rules on digital trade and clean energy. Eventually, those rules can be brought to the WTO. This global organization is no longer capable of rule-setting on its own, but delivering to it a set of rules that have broad buy-in and have been shown to work may restore some of its governance capabilities.

WORK SMARTER

In addition to converging on free trade, regional organizations can help regulate AI and the digital economy. UN efforts to promote the ethical use of AI and to protect personal data have focused on advancing universal guidelines but the UN’s slow bureaucratic processes are not able to keep up with the pace of technological development. But at the regional level, the EU has enacted comprehensive, binding regulation on AI use in its 2024 AI Act. Other regional and cross-regional groups, meanwhile, have put forward nonbinding agreements, declarations, or principles that can adapt to rapidly evolving technology and can inspire national legislation. In 2020, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore signed the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, the first of its kind to regulate digital trade and data flows, promote interoperability, and set ethical standards for AI. They have updated the agreement since to make the original rules more enforceable and to add a new member, South Korea, in 2024. ASEAN is expected to sign a similar pact in 2026 after two years of negotiations to facilitate the flow of digital goods and services between the bloc’s members. In Latin America, Mercosur created a Digital Agenda Group in 2017 to promote the development of a free and secure digital market, and the Inter-American Network on Digital Government, created in 2003, has conducted pilot projects for making data freely available and accessible, established a fund for collaborative digital governance efforts, and supported efforts to provide digital health care and social services during the pandemic.

If these regional and cross-regional bodies follow through with their plans, more efficient digital trade, safer transfers of data across borders, and higher trust in digital systems will follow. Other regional organizations can contribute to this effort, too, by developing and updating their own digital standards. The CPTPP, for example, should modernize its e-commerce provisions, which were established in 2015 and do not address recent advances in e-payments, electronic invoicing, or government efforts to make data transparent and accessible to the public. Over time, regional frameworks can expand and converge, eventually leading to a globally agreed upon set of principles and regulations to govern new technology and the digital economy.

KEEP THE PEACE

Regional institutions must also step up to manage global conflicts as international organizations that have traditionally led peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, including the United Nations, see their funds dry up and their support wane. Southeast Asia has shown how this can be done: a set of informal norms known as the “ASEAN Way,” which promotes consensus building, noninterference, and voluntary cooperation among member states, has largely prevented disputes from erupting and destroying regional peace. Indonesia’s mediation, for instance, helped the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front, a Filipino separatist group, sign a peace agreement in 1996. In keeping with these norms, Malaysia and Singapore peacefully resolved their dispute over the island of Pedra Branca by turning the case over to the International Court of Justice to arbitrate in 2003.

For years, Latin American organizations have also helped resolve border disputes and keep regional tensions low even as individual countries have increased their military spending. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), for example, helped negotiate an end to months of political unrest in Bolivia in 2008, provided a platform for addressing concerns in the region after Colombia and the United States agreed to a deployment of American troops to Colombian bases in 2009, and mediated talks between Colombia and Venezuela when the two had a diplomatic spat in 2010 over the presence of Colombian armed rebels in Venezuela. The African Union, too, has invested heavily in peace and security, creating advisory bodies, a peacekeeping force, and other mechanisms to prevent conflicts and stabilize postconflict environments. The AU’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia, for example, has helped strengthen Somali forces’ control of national territory and stabilize the country since its launch in January 2025.

Regional efforts can also reduce nuclear threats. Historically, Latin America has been a leader in nonproliferation: the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, which established a nuclear-free zone across Latin America and the Caribbean, became a model for similar agreements in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. In 1991, Brazil and Argentina established a bilateral agency that, together with the International Atomic Energy Agency, oversees both countries’ civilian nuclear programs to ensure that facilities adhere to strict safety guidelines and are being used exclusively for nuclear energy. And today, the IAEA and the bilateral agency are working closely with Brazil to ensure that adequate safeguards are in place as the country develops a nuclear-powered-submarine program. If other regions were to adopt similar practices—particularly East Asia, where China and North Korea are expanding their nuclear arsenals and South Korea is beginning to consider a nuclear weapons program—such cooperation could help keep a lid on an emerging nuclear arms race.

STEP UP

Regional groups can bridge other global gaps, too. Since the nineteenth century, Latin American countries have been applying common health regulations, sharing information about disease outbreaks, and sending one another medical aid during health crises. Since 1902, the Pan American Health Organization has been fighting disease, strengthening health systems, and responding to emergencies. In 1996, Mercosur convened regional forums and a working group to harmonize health policies among its members and help them implement international health regulations. The result is a culture of regional cooperation that facilitates joint investments on high-priority health concerns, support for countries with weaker health systems, and close collaboration with international bodies such as the World Health Organization.

Africa has also developed innovative health initiatives in recent years. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), created in 2017, has improved the capacity of the continent’s public health institutions to detect, prevent, control, and respond to diseases. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the African Union and Africa CDC played key roles in rapidly expanding health infrastructure, research, and information sharing between countries. Together they launched a regionwide strategy in 2021 to make African public health systems more self-sufficient and to raise the continent’s profile in international public health governance. In both Latin America and Africa, regional bodies have helped contain outbreaks of diseases with the potential to spread to other parts of the world.

The world still needs collective action.

There is a similar role for regional groups in advancing democracy, human rights, and protections for migrants. In Africa, the AU monitors elections and has adopted agreements establishing a commitment to democratic principles, and countries often respond collectively when an unconstitutional change of government occurs. In Latin America, the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees offer civil and political rights protections, including for specific groups such as women and indigenous populations, and establish generous asylum procedures. Mercosur (whose members include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) and the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) have an agreement that allows migrants to temporarily reside and work in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Although far from perfect, regional human rights monitoring and measures that facilitate cross-border movement can fill some of the gaps left by international bodies that are unable to provide adequate protections.

With international climate diplomacy delivering limited progress, regional organizations can also provide platforms for negotiation and policy coordination. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden often lead the world in implementing ambitious policies for cutting carbon emissions and making the transition to renewable energy, and their Nordic Council of Ministers plays an important role in aligning a regional climate strategy. Latin America has made notable progress on climate cooperation, too: Mercosur hosts meetings of its members’ environment ministers, and the 18-member Platform of Latin America and the Caribbean for Climate Action on Agriculture, established in 2019, helps national ministries of agriculture incorporate climate policies into their work. Even so, the region could use an institutional platform that can coordinate as closely as the Nordic Council of Ministers and revitalize the climate action that has slowed since the increase in fossil fuel subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NOW OR NEVER

International forums are faltering, but the world still needs collective action. Regional organizations can be a recourse. They are not a panacea for global problems; they often fall short of their aims, and internal squabbles and changes in government among their members can limit their effectiveness. The ASEAN Way, for instance, has not always prevented national and regional disputes from disrupting the region: civil war broke out in Myanmar in 2021, the Thai-Cambodian border dispute has escalated into direct military clashes several times over the past year, and the intensifying U.S.-Chinese rivalry is creating problems across the region. But if ASEAN members can set up stronger conflict prevention and mitigation mechanisms, the group can help manage conflicts when global bodies are unable to do so.

Latin America has more work to do. UNASUR, comprising all 12 South American states, helped resolve several regional and intrastate conflicts between 2008 and 2016. But infighting and a failure to elect a new secretary-general since 2017 have resulted in the withdrawal of several key member states, effectively rendering the bloc defunct. As the Trump administration threatens intervention in Venezuela and as China increases its economic and security influence across Latin America, the region needs to be able to come together to resolve conflicts, manage great-power rivalry, promote common policies, and strengthen its voice in international forums. That requires Latin American countries to put aside their differences and be willing to support multilateral cooperation through a functioning regional organization.

Other regions are contending with even more formidable challenges. The European Union is bogged down by the war in Ukraine, immigration issues, political polarization, trade headwinds, and attacks from Trump. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation rarely meets, and even when it does, members keep contentious topics off the table. The African Union faces persistent crises, such as terrorism and civil wars in member countries, and significant hurdles to regional economic integration. The Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, too, are beset with internal divisions and regional conflicts.

Yet regional governance remains the best antidote for weakening multilateralism. It is an essential building block of global governance and has a long history of supporting international cooperation. Since the end of the Cold War, regional institutions have expanded, and their role in facilitating trade, resolving conflicts, and developing shared standards has grown. Now they must support weakened global institutions and take on more responsibilities themselves. This shift will not only help sustain multilateralism but could also improve on it, by harnessing regional strengths and facilitating innovative, bottom-up solutions to the world’s most intractable problems.

Foreign Affairs · More by Monica Herz · January 2, 2026

16. The New Arteries of Power: Subsea Cables Are This Century’s Hidden Battleground

Summary:

Kuok argues subsea fiber-optic cables, carrying roughly 99 percent of transoceanic data, have become a strategic battleground for sabotage, surveillance, and regulatory coercion, and the global network is splintering into U.S.-led, China-led, and nonaligned blocs. She highlights Europe’s heightened vulnerability after Nord Stream and Baltic incidents, and Asia’s steady pattern of cable breaks around Taiwan alongside Chinese capability development. The harder problem is attribution and enforcement under outdated UNCLOS-era rules, compounded by “bureaucratic” obstruction of surveys and repairs. Kuok calls for a global security architecture that links national and regional measures with modernized legal standards, joint monitoring and investigations, faster repair protocols, and a trusted-cable certification regime, with U.S. leadership central.

Excerpts:

Progress on these many fronts would reduce the scope for sabotage, surveillance, and regulatory obstruction. Stronger operational coordination, investigation, attribution, and penalization would make sabotage and gray-zone activity harder to execute and evade, thereby strengthening deterrence. A system for information exchange, an intelligence-sharing network, and a trusted cable certification regime would reduce surveillance risks. Defining the limits of coastal states’ rights and boosting collective leverage could minimize regulatory roadblocks and the tendency to avoid contentious areas. A meaningful code of conduct would articulate the behaviors expected of responsible states.

Stronger legal and institutional frameworks are no panacea—states could still flout international law, as China and others have done. But the aim of these legal and institutional measures would be to alter the cost-benefit analysis by raising the political, economic, and reputational costs of hostile or noncompliant actions. A global architecture that links national, regional, and international efforts and modernizes laws and institutions is critical to safeguarding these lifelines and ensuring seabed access. Absent this architecture, the subsea order on which all countries depend will weaken. For the United States, the stakes are especially high. A defining contest of this century will be fought and decided, as Kipling put it, “on the tie-ribs of earth.”

Comment: "RIbs of the earth." Another form of sea lanes of communication.

The New Arteries of Power

Foreign Affairs · More by Lynn Kuok · January 2, 2026

Subsea Cables Are This Century’s Hidden Battleground

Lynn Kuok

January 2, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/new-arteries-power

A Russian-crewed ship suspected of cable sabotage, Tromso, Norway, January 2025 Rogan Ward / Reuters

LYNN KUOK is Lee Kuan Yew Chair at the Brookings Institution.

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

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

The vulnerabilities of critical subsea infrastructure are especially pronounced in Europe. The September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions in the Baltic Sea drew global attention to these risks. Subsequent incidents in the Baltic, including damage investigators traced to a Chinese-linked vessel, showed how actors from one region can endanger infrastructure in another. Increased vessel and submarine activity along Atlantic and Baltic routes has also heightened concerns about undersea surveillance, as adversaries map and monitor critical cable routes.

Asia faces similar risks, even if they attract less attention. Taiwan reports seven to eight cable breaks annually, with most linked to China—part of Beijing’s broader coercive campaign against the island. In March, Beijing unveiled a deep-sea cable cutter that is reportedly compatible with uncrewed submersibles and capable of severing cables at depths of more than 13,000 feet—twice the operational depth of subsea communication systems. But even as incidents become more frequent and the capacity for interference grows, states have a hard time attributing cable cuts to particular actors and holding those ultimately responsible to account.

These dangers are compounded by an overlooked bureaucratic challenge: the use of legal and regulatory pressure to deny, delay, or complicate cable surveys, installation, and repairs. In the South China Sea, such tactics have helped China expand its de facto control over the seabed. Some companies are rerouting cables around disputed areas rather than contesting China’s claims.

Despite the growing importance of subsea cables, the laws and institutions governing them have not kept pace. The relevant provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) were drafted for an earlier era and build on the 1884 Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables, which was signed by the monarchs of Kipling’s time. Securing the world’s subsea arteries demands a comprehensive global architecture that links national and regional efforts with international ones and modernizes the legal and institutional regime.

The United States is uniquely positioned to lead this effort. Although it has challenged China’s attempts to dominate the waters of the South China Sea by conducting freedom of navigation operations, the United States has largely ceded the sea floor. If this neglect continues, Washington risks losing control not only of communications and energy lifelines beneath the waters but the balance of power above.

UNCLOS UNDER STRAIN

UNCLOS guarantees certain basic freedoms. A coastal state enjoys sovereignty in its 12-nautical-mile territorial sea. But beyond that limit, all states have the freedom to lay, maintain, and repair cables, including in exclusive economic zones and on continental shelves—the submerged extension of a country’s land territory. The convention explicitly protects the laying and maintenance of cables on continental shelves and stipulates that coastal states “may not impede” these activities, subject to “reasonable measures” for resource development and pollution control. Although the United States is not a party to UNCLOS, it treats the convention’s provisions on subsea cables as reflecting customary international law, and they serve as the authoritative codification of cable-related rules alongside the narrower 1884 Convention, which remains the formal treaty instrument for non-parties.

Domestic implementation of UNCLOS, however, does not always conform to the convention’s requirements. For example, although China ratified UNCLOS in 1996, its 1989 Provisions Governing the Laying of Submarine Cables and Pipelines directly contradict the convention by requiring foreign companies to secure consent for cable routes across its continental shelf, as well as for maintenance or repair.

The legal framework governing subsea cables also suffers from structural flaws. Countries often struggle to hold perpetrators to account for deliberate damage to subsea cables given jurisdictional limits in UNCLOS, weak flag state enforcement, and difficulties attributing incidents to actors. If incidents occur beyond the territorial waters of a coastal state, then only the country in which a suspected ship is registered—the flag state—has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute any actors suspected of causing damage to cables. But many commercial vessels are registered in regimes that lack the will or the capacity to act. This was brought into sharp relief in October, when a Finnish court dismissed sabotage charges against the crew of the Eagle S, a Russian-linked tanker suspected of severing five critical Baltic cables, on jurisdictional grounds because the incident had occurred beyond Finland’s territorial waters. The vessel’s flag state, the Cook Islands, has not initiated any proceedings.

Even when the will and the capacity to prosecute exist, successful prosecution remains elusive. Attribution—linking damage to a particular vessel or crew—is often difficult, and holding the sponsoring state accountable is harder still since it requires proof that the act was carried out under the state’s instructions or that the state had control of the ship or crew.

Taiwan’s experience underscores how difficult attribution usually is. Despite stepped up monitoring in response to frequent cable damage, Taiwan secured its first successful prosecution only this summer, when a Chinese captain of a Togo-flagged vessel was jailed for three years after being found guilty of intentionally damaging undersea communication cables five nautical miles off Taiwan’s coast.

Workers installing an undersea cable in Amanzimtoti, South Africa, February 2023 Rune Stoltz Bertinussen / Reuters

Experts are also divided over whether cable sabotage can be prosecuted as piracy, terrorism, or even as a use of force or an armed attack, which could provide alternative bases for legal action. Unmanned platforms, meanwhile, introduce an additional layer of complexity. It is unclear, for instance, if they constitute “ships” and thus trigger flag-state obligations, and the absence of a crew further complicates the already tricky matter of attribution.

UNCLOS also has loopholes that countries can easily exploit. For instance, a coastal state’s jurisdiction over marine environmental protection in its exclusive economic zones allows it to require environmental impact assessments, which may indefinitely delay cable works. On the continental shelf, its right to take “reasonable measures” to protect resources can block, delay, or condition the laying, maintenance, and repair of cables. Because a single cable often crosses multiple maritime zones and jurisdictions, there are multiple opportunities for obstruction.

The mundane nature of this bureaucratic obstruction belies its far-reaching consequences. Chinese objections and permitting hurdles delayed the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 by over a year before its launch in July; such challenges have also deterred other projects. Recent conversations in the region on subsea electricity interconnectors, which are critical to energy resilience and security, reveal that governments are choosing to avoid the South China Sea altogether rather than seeking China’s permission. The U.S.-linked systems, Apricot and Echo, were originally designed to cross the South China Sea but were reengineered to avoid it, adding both distance and cost amid concerns over permitting delays and the security risks associated with operating in China’s claimed maritime areas.

Remedies under UNCLOS, meanwhile, are often impracticable. Private cable owners must rely on their governments to act. But the state-to-state dispute settlement system under UNCLOS is slow, limited where carve outs apply, and politically fraught. To date, no state has brought a case under UNCLOS solely over subsea cable interference.

Institutional gaps compound these problems. The International Cable Protection Committee, an industry association representing the world’s subsea cable owners and operators, focuses on technical recommendations for cable installation, protection, and maintenance. The UN International Telecommunication Union, a specialized agency for digital technologies responsible for setting technical standards, established an advisory body for submarine cable resilience in November 2024 with a two-year term. Neither institution has a mandate to investigate sabotage, attribute responsibility, impose consequences, or mediate state-to-state disputes or company-to-state disputes. Addressing legal and institutional gaps is not a legal nicety or bureaucratic exercise; for the United States and its partners, it is a strategic imperative.

PATCHWORK PROTECTIONS

Awareness of the vulnerabilities facing critical subsea infrastructure is growing, but national and regional responses vary widely in ambition and scope. In 2025, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission adopted stringent rules to secure landing sites—where subsea cables reach the shore—and restrict foreign adversaries from accessing them. The U.S. Congress also introduced bills, including the Undersea Cable Control Act, aimed at preventing foreign adversaries from acquiring items needed to build, maintain, or operate undersea cable projects, and the Taiwan Undersea Cable Resilience Initiative Act, which directs the U.S. government to work with Taiwan and partners to improve monitoring, rapid response, and coordination to strengthen the security of Taiwan’s undersea communications cables. Through the Quad’s Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience, Washington is also working with allies and partners to align investment and security standards for trusted cable systems.

Europe’s response is most advanced at the regional level. The European Union has adopted an action plan setting out measures to prevent, deter, detect, and respond to acts against subsea cables, as well as to repair any damage. The plan promotes the use of Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) technology, which equips data cables with sensors, although take-up remains limited because of concerns that the sensors could infringe on sovereignty or be tapped. NATO has established a coordination cell and a maritime center dedicated to the security of undersea infrastructure, increased air and naval patrols in the North and Baltic Seas, and launched initiatives such as HEIST to detect cable damage and reroute data via satellites.

In Asia, regional cooperation on subsea cable security remains relatively nascent, although it is developing. Until recently, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations tended to view critical undersea infrastructure through an economic rather than a security lens. It issued guidelines to streamline repair permits and formed a working group to coordinate repairs and maintenance. But that approach began to change in October, when ASEAN defense ministers adopted principles for defense cooperation around the protection of critical underwater infrastructure.

At the global level, momentum is growing around a joint statement on the security and resilience of undersea communication and data cables issued in New York during the 2024 UN General Assembly. Originally endorsed by 15 countries and the EU, the number of endorsing countries has since grown to over 30, including the full G-7 and all Nordic-Baltic states. Although nonbinding, these principles establish norms such as prioritizing “secure and verifiable” supply chains, which effectively excludes high-risk vendors, and promoting “route diversity” to reduce risks when communications and data cables are compromised.

Although these national, regional, and multilateral efforts are important, the world still lacks systems at the international level for continuous threat monitoring and intelligence sharing, as well as common protocols for joint investigations, attribution, and coordinated political responses. Growing geopolitical fragmentation makes it harder to close these gaps and costlier to leave them unaddressed. Regular multinational exercises to test crisis procedures would strengthen deterrence, as would mechanisms to expedite permits and repairs—alongside fixes to the international legal and institutional regime.

A NEW SUBSEA ORDER

A comprehensive global architecture linking international law, institutions, and operations so that each reinforces the other would strengthen the rules-based subsea order. The United States would benefit most from such an architecture: its economy and security depend on extensive data networks, its allies rely heavily on data and electricity cables, and its adversaries exploit legal gaps. Although some strategists privately argue for preserving legal ambiguity so that the United States could respond in kind, that approach would normalize tit-for-tat retaliation and erode the global order that supports U.S. interests.

Realizing such an architecture would require sustained leadership to align national, regional, international, and private-sector efforts. Given its global reach, its alliance network, and its convening power, the United States is well placed to play an enabling role in building a more coherent seabed security architecture. Domestically, this would mean providing strategic direction on subsea cable security and resilience and treating subsea cables as strategic infrastructure, not merely commercial assets; aligning defense, diplomatic, commercial, and regulatory objectives; and coordinating across agencies. Externally, it would involve working with allies, partners, and industry to link national measures, regional frameworks, international initiatives, and private-sector operations into a more integrated system—even as the United States remains outside UNCLOS. Whether Washington chooses to exercise leadership will ultimately depend on political will.

At the operational level, this architecture would require closer coordination around joint patrols in critical subsea cable corridors, including the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait. It would also require greater consensus around procedures for cable repair, particularly with respect to expedited permits for emergency cable repairs, access for repair vessels, and coordination among authorities during incidents.

Because most international subsea cables are privately owned and operated, often through consortia that include telecommunications firms and cloud service providers, public-private partnerships are essential. Although no standing, security-focused public-private partnership exists specifically for subsea cables, governments could adapt models for strengthening the resilience of overland telecommunications and for reporting cyber incidents to establish shared systems for threat information, incident reporting, and emergency response. At present, anomalies are typically detected by operators internally and reported on an ad hoc and voluntary basis, with no common threshold for what constitutes suspicious activity, when authorities should be notified, or how information should be shared across borders. Clearer rules for information sharing of suspicious activity and network anomalies would enable earlier detection of interference or surveillance affecting subsea cable systems.

Public-private partnerships should also establish operator responsibilities more clearly by assigning explicit obligations to private companies or consortia that operate subsea cable systems. These responsibilities should include diversifying cable routes and landing points to reduce single points of failure and limit the impact of disruption, as well as establishing baseline security standards for cable landing stations to address vulnerabilities at these critical but relatively accessible nodes. Although landing stations are increasingly recognized as critical infrastructure, both their siting and their operations are typically regulated as commercial matters, with security responsibilities distributed across multiple authorities and baseline physical and cybersecurity standards varying widely in practice. Common baseline standards would help reduce exposure to interference and surveillance at these points of access.

NETWORK EFFECT

Progress toward a comprehensive global architecture will also depend on strengthening regional and cross-regional linkages. More advanced regional frameworks could serve as pathfinders that are later scaled or linked globally. A stronger ASEAN framework for the governance and resilience of subsea cables would support a free and open Indo-Pacific by providing political cover and collective leverage against excessive jurisdictional claims.

ASEAN could adapt elements of the EU’s regulatory system to develop its own rule book for cable governance and resilience. This could include more transparent permitting processes and clearer guidance governing fees, obligations, and cost allocation across jurisdictions, which would narrow national-level regulatory discretion, reduce arbitrary delays and obstruction, improve predictability for operators, make projects more commercially viable, and strengthen collective resilience against external regulatory pressure. An ASEAN-EU charter for cable governance and resilience could help blunt nationalist resistance that a purely intraregional, ASEAN initiative might face, while EU technical assistance and funding could incentivize participation and support implementation. ASEAN could also draw on models of security cooperation by establishing a center—or expanding the mandate of the Information Fusion Centre in Singapore—to share threat assessments, coordinate navies and coast guards, and develop common protocols to safeguard critical underwater infrastructure.

RULES FOR THE DEEP

Operational coordination and intraregional and interregional efforts will ultimately be limited, however, without addressing the shortcomings of the international legal regime. States should thus seek to clarify the rights and responsibilities of coastal states and flag states under UNCLOS and establish domestic laws and regulations that implement obligations under it to strengthen compliance and accountability. Among other things, such efforts should encourage stronger penalties for intentional cable damage, clarify that “ships” under UNCLOS include unmanned platforms so that flag-state obligations extend to them and to their remote operators, and require that unmanned vehicles register with a flag state and carry unique identifiers for traceability and the establishment of jurisdiction.

States could address legal ambiguities and gaps either through a UN General Assembly resolution, which is unlikely given the current geopolitical environment, or through an ad hoc conference outside the UN process that a coalition of like-minded states convened. Such a forum would allow participating states to clarify responsibilities and develop shared standards; it would also allow the United States to play a leading role despite its nonratification of UNCLOS. The conference would seek broad participation, including from underrepresented regions such as Africa, the Indian Ocean states, and Southeast Asia, which are increasingly important nodes in global cabling. Operators and insurers could be invited to participate. The conference should aim to produce a code that articulates responsible behavior for subsea cables that later feeds into UN deliberations.

Finally, to support these efforts, like-minded states should create an intergovernmental organization for the security of seabed infrastructure. Its core mandates would include impartial technical investigations of cable damage, which could help lift the veil to expose any responsible state, and setting and auditing standards through a “trusted cable” certification program, which would give members a common basis for denying market access to noncompliant systems. It could also mediate regulatory disputes through state-to-state and company-to-state mechanisms, which would facilitate timely, mutually acceptable agreements.

Drawing on lessons from export control regimes and technology standards bodies, the organization’s members should anticipate that U.S. adversaries, such as China and Russia, may respond by building parallel systems, contesting the body’s legitimacy, or pressuring third countries not to participate. They might also seek to join to dilute standards, obstruct decision-making from within, and slow investigations, which underscores the importance of conditional membership, transparency requirements, and institutional safeguards. Founding members could eventually open the organization to wider participation, but only on terms that reinforce rather than weaken its objectives.

“ON THE TIE-RIBS OF EARTH”

Progress on these many fronts would reduce the scope for sabotage, surveillance, and regulatory obstruction. Stronger operational coordination, investigation, attribution, and penalization would make sabotage and gray-zone activity harder to execute and evade, thereby strengthening deterrence. A system for information exchange, an intelligence-sharing network, and a trusted cable certification regime would reduce surveillance risks. Defining the limits of coastal states’ rights and boosting collective leverage could minimize regulatory roadblocks and the tendency to avoid contentious areas. A meaningful code of conduct would articulate the behaviors expected of responsible states.

Stronger legal and institutional frameworks are no panacea—states could still flout international law, as China and others have done. But the aim of these legal and institutional measures would be to alter the cost-benefit analysis by raising the political, economic, and reputational costs of hostile or noncompliant actions. A global architecture that links national, regional, and international efforts and modernizes laws and institutions is critical to safeguarding these lifelines and ensuring seabed access. Absent this architecture, the subsea order on which all countries depend will weaken. For the United States, the stakes are especially high. A defining contest of this century will be fought and decided, as Kipling put it, “on the tie-ribs of earth.”

Foreign Affairs · More by Lynn Kuok · January 2, 2026

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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