Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride."

- Sophocles

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact."

– Daniel Kahneman

"No man is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform."

– Euripides

1. Trump’s Armada Is Getting in Place. Now He Must Decide What to Do With Iran.

2. The Maduro Operation: Five Insights On Power And International Relations – Analysis

3. Panama High Court Gives Trump a Win Over Canal by Ousting Hong Kong Port Operator

4. Essay | How America First Risks Becoming America Alone

5. U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms

6. China counting how many missiles it needs to win a Taiwan war

7. Is Trump's foreign policy really realist?

8. China, Russia and Iran are investing billions to influence the US midterms

9. China has spent decades making inroads in Latin America. Will the ‘Donroe doctrine’ push it out?

10. China says Philippines is stoking tensions with Scarborough Shoal drill

11. China & Taiwan Update, January 30, 2026

12. Politicians Are Calling the Protests in Minnesota an Insurgency

13. The Limits of the China–Russia Strategic Partnership in Military Space Cooperation

14. The meaning of Xi’s military purge

15. Leading the Digital Fight: How the Navy’s IW Community Must Innovate to Win

16. Xi’s control of his regime is looking ever more Stalinist

17. U.S., Taiwan Establish Joint Command for 2027 Defense

1. Trump’s Armada Is Getting in Place. Now He Must Decide What to Do With Iran.

Summary:

The U.S. military has assembled a major force in the Middle East within striking range of Iran, and POTUS must decide how to use it. Officials say the debate centers on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, pursue regime collapse, or combine these aims. POTUS wants quick, decisive options that avoid a long war and push Tehran to accept U.S. nuclear demands and stop killing protesters. Options discussed range from large scale bombing of regime and IRGC facilities to limited symbolic strikes. Iran remains able to retaliate against U.S. forces and allies, including Israel, and officials and analysts warn the “day after” is uncertain.

Comment: Are we going to war with Iran? What comes next after the war?

If objectives range from nuclear denial to missile suppression to regime collapse, what single political end state is being optimized, and what does success look like in measurable terms?

If Iran can retaliate against U.S. bases, warships, and allies even while weaker than before, what level of escalation and defense cost is implicitly being accepted to keep operations “quick and decisive”?

If officials and experts stress uncertainty after Khamenei’s removal and warn there is no “shock and awe” solution, what theory of change links air and missile strikes to durable compliance on nuclear demands and internal repression?

Ultimately, what is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will protect, sutain, and advance US national security interests in the region?

Trump’s Armada Is Getting in Place. Now He Must Decide What to Do With Iran.

WSJ

The challenge is achieving big goals with a limited action

By David S. Cloud

and Alexander Ward

Jan. 30, 2026 8:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trumps-armada-is-getting-in-place-now-he-must-decide-what-to-do-with-iran-93007d5a?st=oBbj1n

DUBAI—The U.S. military has assembled a formidable force in the Middle East within striking range of Iran. Now, President Trump must decide how to use it.

As warships and planes reach the region in growing numbers, administration officials said they are debating whether the main aim is to go after Iran’s nuclear program, hit its ballistic missile arsenal, bring about the collapse of the government—or some combination of the three.

Trump has asked aides for quick and decisive attack options that don’t risk a long-term war in the Middle East, officials said. The ideal option would be one that hits the regime hard enough that it has no choice but to accede to U.S. nuclear demands and lay off dissidents, they said.

There have been discussions about a punishing bombing campaign that could topple Iran’s government, the officials said. Trump and his team have also weighed leveraging the threat of military force to extract diplomatic concessions from Iran.

What Trump decides will determine the shape of any military action. “The kind of things you’d want to do and the force packages you would need are very different,” said retired Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, a former Navy intelligence officer.

A senior administration official said that while Trump has consistently said Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon, he is being purposefully ambiguous to keep his strategic objectives and military thinking secret.

President Trump has been briefed on possible attack options developed in tandem by the White House and Pentagon. Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg News

Speaking about the ships converging on the Middle East, Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office that “they have to float someplace. They might as well float near Iran.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday that Tehran was open to nuclear discussions but that the U.S. needed to stop issuing military threats.

Trump in his second term has ordered attacks in Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Somalia and Nigeria, often without an Oval Office speech explaining his actions or seeking congressional authorization.

A January raid on Caracas was aimed at seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to stand trial. The airstrikes and missile attack on Iran in June targeted key nuclear sites with powerful bombs designed for penetrating such hardened targets.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Trump’s other military advisers have helped the White House achieve notable tactical successes, often by using surprise operations developed over months that sought to avoid quagmires.

In Iran the president is facing an opponent that, though considerably weaker militarily than it was only a few years ago, remains capable of withstanding a major U.S. attack and of retaliating with missile and drone strikes on U.S. bases, warships, and allies in the region, including Israel.

“There is no ‘shock and awe’ solution to the Iranian question,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, alluding to the U.S. bombing campaign before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Anyone promising otherwise is probably mistaken.”

Protesters took to the streets in Tehran earlier in January. Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s path toward new military confrontation with Tehran began when he vowed this month to come to the aid of antigovernment protesters demonstrating in Tehran and other cities.

At the time, there weren’t enough U.S. forces to the region to launch a sustained bombing campaign and defend U.S. bases and Middle East allies from Iran’s certain retaliation. Faced with bad options, Trump abruptly decided against military action.

Now he has more forces at his disposal. “We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now. And it would be great if we didn’t have to use them,” he said Thursday, adding that he had communicated his demands to Tehran.

“I told them two things: Number one, no nuclear; and number two, stop killing protesters,” the president said.

Trump has received briefings on possible attack options developed in tandem by the White House and Pentagon. Among them is the so-called big plan, which would see the U.S. strike facilities of the regime and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a large-scale bombing campaign, the officials said.

More limited options include strikes on symbolic regime targets, allowing space for attacks to ramp up if Iran, which denies seeking a nuclear weapon, doesn’t agree to a deal to Trump’s liking.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. atta kenare/AFP/Getty Images

An operation targeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei like the one Trump ordered this month to capture Maduro using special forces teams would be far more difficult in Iran, which is extra vigilant about protecting its leadership and where the capital is far inland.

Even if Khamenei is ousted, no one can say for sure whether the government that follows would be any more friendly, officials said. A senior IRGC member would likely assume control, some officials assess, which could preserve—or even deepen—the regime’s hard-line approach.

Addressing a Senate committee Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it is an open question what would happen if Khamenei were removed and the regime fell. “I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer as to what happens next in Iran,” Rubio said.

“Even if you defeat the regime really quickly, the day after matters,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and former U.S. official now at Johns Hopkins University.

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Administration officials are using the threat of an attack to pressure Tehran to agree to talks on restricting its nuclear program, as well as limitations on its ballistic missiles and assistance to regional proxies.

The White House is wary about getting drawn into unproductive negotiations. If Trump orders an attack instead, analysts said, none of the goals he has outlined is achievable through a swift round of airstrikes or missile attacks of the sort that the Pentagon appears to be readying.

“He likes the application of military violence when it is quick, cheap and decisive,” said Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. “The problem is you can’t do things quickly and cheaply and get decisive results.”

Write to David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

WSJ

2. The Maduro Operation: Five Insights On Power And International Relations – Analysis

Summary:

Ernesto Talvi argues the 3 January 2026 U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro reshaped Venezuela’s internal balance and revealed how great power competition is changing international behavior. He offers five insights. First, POTUS should be taken seriously because his policy follows a stated hierarchy of interests in the National Security Strategy, especially stability, migration, crime, hostile incursions, supply chains, and access to strategic locations in the Western Hemisphere. Second, the U.S. still wraps force in legal framing to manage audiences and preserve leverage against rivals. Third, Realpolitik drives a client state approach and bargaining with regime apparatus. Fourth, Latin America’s left condemns intervention but omits clear condemnation of Maduro and recognition of the 2024 winners. Fifth, the EU responds pragmatically as a rules based actor dependent on the U.S.

Excerpts:

1. Trump must be taken seriously

2. The US still regards a legal framework as essential to legitimate its actions

3. Realpolitik reappears on stage

4. Latin America’s left clings to principles, selectively

5. The EU’s response reflects pragmatism consistent with its identity

Comment: A view from Spain. But what comes next inside Venezuela? Can there be stabilization, reconciliation, then elections?

The Maduro Operation: Five Insights On Power And International Relations – Analysis

January 28, 2026 0 Comments

By Elcano Royal Institute

By Ernesto Talvi

https://www.eurasiareview.com/28012026-the-maduro-operation-five-insights-on-power-and-international-relations-analysis/?utm

A turning point in the Venezuelan crisis was reached on 3 January 2026. The US operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro not only abruptly altered Venezuela’s internal political balance; it also sharply exposed some of the structural tensions that now run through the international system.

Beyond the valid and necessary normative debate on the legality and legitimacy of intervention, this article proposes a deliberately analytical exercise. Based on this episode, five key insights are offered that aim to understand not so much how international actors should behave, but how they are actually behaving. In other words, it is an analysis of the reality, rather than the ideal, of international relations in a context of competition between blocs.

1. Trump must be taken seriously

It is common to hear voices dismissing President Trump’s announcements as empty threats intended, at best, to strengthen his negotiating position, or to qualify his actions by arguing that he almost always backs down in the end (the famous TACO). Recent events in Venezuela show that this is a mistake.

The Venezuelan episode confirms that the Trump Administration’s foreign policy is neither erratic nor purely reactive; it responds to an explicit hierarchy of national interests defined in advance. Taking Trump seriously does not mean sharing his methods or objectives, but rather recognising that his international conduct is consistent with a worldview in which power, control of strategic resources, and direct deterrence prevail over normative considerations.

The National Security Strategy document published last November clearly sets out the objectives of US foreign policy:

‘The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of fundamental national interests; that is the sole purpose of this strategy (…) The affairs of other countries concern us only if their activities directly threaten our interests.’

And with respect to Latin America it states:

‘We want to ensure the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well governed enough to prevent and deter mass migration to the US; we want a hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narcoterrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursions or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.’

What has just happened in Venezuela follows that script to the letter and is a textbook example of the implementation of this strategy: a country with an illegitimate government that stole last year’s election and is not recognised by the major Western countries; a narco‑dictatorship that organises and facilitates drug trafficking and other illegal businesses; a regime that silences, imprisons and tortures political opponents and has impoverished its people, triggering mass outflows of migrants fleeing persecution, poverty and lack of prospects; a regime that provides cover and operational capabilities to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and serves as a beachhead for China and Russia to project their influence in the region; and a country endowed with enormous oil wealth and mineral resources.

Trump must be taken seriously.

2. The US still regards a legal framework as essential to legitimate its actions

More than a substantive belief in the binding force of international law, the Venezuelan episode reveals something else: the US still considers it fundamental –politically and strategically– to wrap the use of power in legal language. Not because that shell decisively conditions the decision to act, but because it is part of how the Trump Administration wields power and communicates it.

The legal legitimacy invoked by the US is articulated, broadly, along the following lines: characterising Maduro’s detention as a law‑enforcement operation linked to criminal proceedings; denying him immunity due to lack of recognition as head of state; the absence of a Venezuelan authority capable of exercising effective jurisdiction; the lack of viable alternative means to capture and detain Maduro; and the limited, selective and proportional nature of the operation, presented as distinct from regime change or a sustained military intervention.

However, the operation against Nicolás Maduro is not explained by the existence of a prior legal foundation; the foundation is constructed after the fact to organise the narrative, reduce political costs and manage the consequences. The law thus operates less as a material constraint on power than as an instrument for managing it, allowing an exceptional action to be presented as compatible –however forcibly– with a formal normative order.

From this perspective, the effort to give legal standing to an essentially unilateral act is not aimed at convincing international jurists or satisfy a demanding normative standard. It is aimed, above all, at three specific audiences. First, the domestic audience: to avoid congressional scrutiny and minimise the risk of judicial challenges, consistent with the fact that Trump, even while testing the limits, has tended to comply with US court rulings. Secondly, allies: to offer them a minimum argument that makes it politically feasible not to break ranks with Washington. And third –perhaps most importantly–, strategic rivals: by building a legal narrative, even on shaky grounds, Washington seeks to preserve the balance between acting with discretion and not having to declare the total irrelevance of norms.

In this way it retains room to question –elsewhere– equivalent actions by China or Russia as illegitimate, even when in practical terms they respond to a similar logic. As Gideon Rachman has suggested, Moscow and Beijing can condemn Maduro’s fall while also arguing that it sets a precedent –for Taiwan or Ukraine– if the reading is that the great powers have abandoned any pretence of normative framing.

That the White House worries about the legal narrative, rather than limiting itself to an explicit logic of ‘I do it because I want to, because I can, and because this is my neighborhood’, does not reflect normative attachment. It reflects strategic calculation. And it is precisely that calculation –more than the legal content itself– that matters when assessing the likelihood of similar actions in other scenarios (Greenland, for example) and, more broadly, in understanding how the unwritten rules of competition among major blocs are being reconfigured.

3. Realpolitik reappears on stage

At the first press conference following Maduro’s capture, Trump dismissed María Corina Machado, leader of Venezuela’s democratic opposition and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, by stating explicitly that she ‘does not have the support or respect’ needed within Venezuela to govern. At the same time, he hinted at his willingness to reach an understanding with the regime’s apparatus insofar as it aligns with US strategic interests, beginning with control of oil resources.

Venezuela is thus headed towards becoming a kind of client state: one that does not fully exercise its sovereignty and is subject to external US supervision, direction and control. It is not a minor detail that Washington warned Diosdado Cabello, feared repressor and the regime’s number two, that he would be the next target if he does not cooperate in the transition and the maintenance of order after Maduro’s fall. In response, Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice-president and acting President, has decided to surround herself with the regime’s hardest elements, while in official statements showing a willingness to work jointly with the US, especially on trade. It is not obvious that a marriage conceived in this way will end well. But it is clearly the Trump Administration’s bet.

The dismissal of María Corina was unfair and, if I may say so, even cruel to a woman who is not only representative of the aspirations of most Venezuelans but also extraordinarily brave. But it was deliberate. And it dealt an almost definitive blow to the expectation that this operation would immediately restore sovereignty to the Venezuelan people by installing in power the elected officials who won the 2024 election by a wide margin –an outcome Maduro chose to deny–.

The Trump Administration argues that the goal is to avoid a power vacuum in Venezuela by keeping those who control the state security apparatus in charge, thereby preventing the violence and anarchy that erupted after Saddam Hussein’s fall. Moreover, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced when presenting the Trump Administration’s plan for Venezuela to senators in Congress, this bargaining stage with the regime is conceived as the first phase of a sequence: first, stabilisation (especially economic); then recovery, with an emphasis on national reconciliation; and, finally, transition and normalisation towards holding elections. In the process, the US would retain indefinite control of oil.

It would be premature to assume that this will inevitably be the natural sequence of events. In the cold logic of a context in which the dominant blocs prioritise geopolitical alignments, regional stability, access to critical energy and minerals, control of routes, immigration and terrorism, and counterbalancing the influence of strategic rivals, alliances with ‘politically toxic’ partners will become increasingly frequent if they deliver critical capabilities. And the promotion of democracy and human rights as a universal and absolute value –even when applied with cracks and exceptions– will no longer be the guiding principle.

Striking a deal with Venezuela’s regime and keeping it in place is a return to Realpolitik, where the moral quality of the occasional ally is secondary if it contributes to strategic goals. The phrase attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza –‘He is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch’– serves as a rhetorical shortcut, in vulgar but precise language, to describe a doctrine that prioritises strategic ends over normative affinity.

4. Latin America’s left clings to principles, selectively

It is not surprising that Latin American governments on the right of the ideological spectrum have aligned, to varying degrees, with the Trump Administration, prioritising the fall of an authoritarian and criminal regime over a rigorous reflection on respect for international law and the legitimacy of unilateral US action. That position is consistent with their prior diagnosis of the Venezuelan regime and with their strategic alignment with Washington.

Nor is it surprising that left‑leaning governments have condemned the intervention. What is striking is the tone, content and, above all, the omissions of the joint communiqué issued by Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay. As expected, the text expresses ‘deep concern and rejection of the military actions executed unilaterally on Venezuelan territory, which contravene fundamental principles of international law’, reaffirms that ‘the situation in Venezuela must be resolved exclusively by peaceful means, through dialogue, negotiation, and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people’, and warns against ‘any attempt at external control, administration, or appropriation of natural or strategic resources’.

However, if the intention was to maintain a principled position, the communiqué fails precisely where it mattered most. First, it avoids clearly and unequivocally condemning Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which bears ultimate responsibility for the country’s institutional, humanitarian and economic collapse. Secondly, it avoids recognising the legitimately elected government in 2024, whose victory was widely documented. These omissions are not minor: they undermine the moral authority of the critique.

Defending principles selectively –condemning violations of international law forcefully when the actor is an ideologically distant power, while downplaying or silencing systematic violations of human rights and democratic order when committed by an ideologically aligned regime– condemns these countries to strategic irrelevance. In an international system increasingly structured in blocs, medium and small actors preserve autonomy only if they are coherent and predictable in their defence of norms.

5. The EU’s response reflects pragmatism consistent with its identity

The EU’s response is, in fact, the only one that can be expected from an actor of its nature, capabilities and limitations. Among the major blocs, the EU is the one that has most explicitly built its strategic identity as a normative power: an integration project whose legitimacy derives from defending an international order based on institutions, rules and procedures, rather than the unilateral use of force. That vocation is the core of its internal cohesion and its principal calling card towards third parties.

At the same time, the EU is a major economic actor, comparable in size to China. But it lacks military autonomy and is not positioned at the vanguard of the technological frontier. In both domains it depends heavily on the US. This structural asymmetry constrains its room for manoeuvre: it can hardly sustain on its own a strategy of hard confrontation with Washington without paying a significant price.

It is in that context that the statement of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policyshould be read. On the one hand, it urges respect for the principles of international law and the UN Charter; on the other, it avoids explicitly condemning the Trump Administration for its actions in Venezuela. At the same time, it tries to remain consistent with Europe’s normative vocation: it declares that Nicolás Maduro lacks the legitimacy of a democratically-elected president, stresses the priority of fighting transnational organised crime and drug trafficking, and calls for respecting the will of the Venezuelan people as a condition for restoring democracy and resolving the crisis.

It may be frustrating that the EU is not more emphatic or confrontational. However, in an international system increasingly structured in blocs and dominated by hard‑power logics, the EU cannot –and does not intend to– behave as a revisionist power. Its influence does not rest on military coercion or technological dependence, but on its capacity to articulate consensus, set standards, offer predictability and keep open the space of international legality as a foothold for third parties.

Precisely for that reason, the most rational strategy for the EU is not to dilute its profile but to reinforce it. Championing –without ambiguity– the defence of a rules‑based order is its main strategic asset. It is also the only credible basis from which it can rally intermediate powers and medium and small countries that perceive their security, prosperity and autonomy as depending less on forced alignment with one bloc or another than on the effective vitality of institutions, norms and limits on the arbitrary use of power.

Conclusions

What has happened in Venezuela is not an isolated episode or a temporary anomaly, but rather a privileged window through which to observe the reconfiguration of power and international relations. Nicolás Maduro’s capture starkly reveals how, in a context of competition between blocs, the exercise of power is once again being organised around hierarchies and strategic interests, rather than consistently applied universal principles. International law does not disappear, but it is instrumentalised; democracy is not rhetorically abandoned, but it is subordinated; and the normative coherence of actors such as the EU, as well as other medium and small actors, becomes a scarce but decisive asset for preserving autonomy and relevance.

In this context, Venezuela is no longer just another episode in President Trump’s journey, but rather a test case for a global order in transition, where Realpolitik is making a comeback without any reservations and the rules are adapted to power, rather than power to the rules. For Europe and Latin America, the challenge is not to choose between normative naivety and strategic cynicism, but to understand that the credible defence of principles requires consistency and awareness of our own capabilities. The signing of the EU-Mercosur agreement, just days after the intervention in Venezuela and 25 years after negotiations began –completed despite strong internal opposition within the EU, not least from France– is the crown jewel of that strategy.

About the author: Ernesto Talvi is Senior Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute. He has been Director of the Economic and Social Policy in Latin America Initiative at Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.; Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York; Founding Member of the Latin American Committee for Macroeconomic & Financial Affairs (CLAAF); Director of the Center for the Study of Economic & Social Affairs (CERES) in Montevideo, Uruguay; and Chief Economist at the Central Bank of Uruguay.
Source: This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

Elcano Royal Institute

The Elcano Royal Institute (Real Instituto Elcano) is a private entity, independent of both the Public Administration and the companies that provide most of its funding. It was established, under the honorary presidency of HRH the Prince of Asturias, on 2 December 2001 as a forum for analysis and debate on international affairs and particularly on Spain’s international relations. Its output aims to be of use to Spain’s decision-makers, both public and private, active on the international scene. Its work should similarly promote the knowledge of Spain in the strategic scenarios in which the country’s interests are at stake.

3. Panama High Court Gives Trump a Win Over Canal by Ousting Hong Kong Port Operator

Summary:

Panama’s Supreme Court annulled the contract terms letting CK Hutchison operate the Port of Balboa and Cristóbal at either end of the Panama Canal, calling the terms unconstitutional and advancing POTUS’s security aims in the Western Hemisphere. The ruling cannot be appealed, though the firm can seek clarifications that could delay license termination and pursue international proceedings. Panama plans interim management by APM Terminals, then a new bidding process. The company argues the deal was transparently bid and the decision harms investor confidence. China signals it will protect its companies’ rights.

Comment: Small victory or large one? Rule of law or lawfare?

Panama High Court Gives Trump a Win Over Canal by Ousting Hong Kong Port Operator

WSJ

In blow to China, Supreme Court says CK Hutchison’s contract breaches the constitution

By Santiago Pérez

Updated Jan. 30, 2026 7:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/panamas-high-court-rules-against-hong-kong-firm-running-canal-ports-714c23c8

The Port of Balboa, one of two Panama Canal ports operated by CK Hutchison of Hong Kong. Fred Ramos for WSJ

Panama’s Supreme Court ruled that the terms for CK Hutchison to operate two Panama Canal ports are unconstitutional, aiding U.S. security goals.
The ruling is a diplomatic setback for China, following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro, a key ally in China’s Latin American strategy.
Panama aims to hire a new company to manage the ports after Hutchison’s license is revoked, with a potential bidding process for new terms.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

Panama’s Supreme Court ruled that the terms for CK Hutchison to operate two Panama Canal ports are unconstitutional, aiding U.S. security goals.

The Supreme Court of Panama has annulled a contract for a Hong Kong company to operate two ports at either end of the Panama Canal, handing President Trump a victory for his security ambitions in the Western Hemisphere and denting China’s influence in the region.

The high court said the terms under which CK Hutchison runs the ports of Balboa on the Pacific Coast and Cristóbal on the Atlantic side were unconstitutional, setting the stage for the company’s departure from the port facilities.

For Panama’s Supreme Court justices, the political pressure was significant, as the port operations put Panama center stage in the rivalry between the U.S. and China.

The ruling comes a year after Trump set his sights on Panama. He said Chinese infrastructure that has been built up around the canal in the past three decades was a security threat to the U.S.

“China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China,” Trump said in his inaugural address last year.

Hutchison can’t appeal a Supreme Court ruling, but it can request clarifications that could delay the termination of its operating license.

Once the license is revoked, the government aims to ensure the continuity of port operations by hiring APM Terminals, a unit of shipping firm A.P. Moeller-Maersk, to manage the facilities until it opens a bidding process with new license terms, possibly separating the two ports, said Panama’s pro-American President José Raúl Mulino.

“Our ports are one of the strategic pillars for the national economy and a key link for international trade,” Mulino said in an address to the nation early Friday.

The Hutchison unit operating the Panama ports denounced the ruling, saying it undermined Panama’s reputation as a reliable place to do business. The company said its contract was the result of transparent bidding and the ruling was “diametrically opposed to previous decisions” on similar contracts.

CK Hutchison shares fell 4.75% in Hong Kong trading Friday.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman cited the Hutchison statement and said Beijing would take all necessary measures to safeguard the rights of Chinese companies.

The high-court decision is a diplomatic defeat for China and comes weeks after the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, an ally in China’s efforts to secure a strategic foothold in Latin America.

“It’s a diplomatic setback for China, but not an economic setback,” said John Feeley, who served as U.S. ambassador to Panama from 2015 to 2018. Chinese shippers, which rank among the top users of the canal, will still be able to use the waterway as the ruling won’t have an effect on canal operations, he said.

Private lawyers and Panama’s comptroller filed lawsuits against Hutchison at the Supreme Court, alleging the contracts violated the interests of the government and taxpayers. A government audit showed as much as $1.3 billion in lost government revenue since Hutchison’s arrival in the late 1990s.

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Last year Hutchison had agreed to divest itself of operations of the two Panama container terminals and dozens of other ports worldwide to a group led by BlackRock and Mediterranean Shipping Co. for almost $23 billion. China’s government opposed the sale, demanding that Chinese state-run shipping company Cosco have a majority stake and veto power in the firm managing the global port assets.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Hutchison’s unit said it reserved the right to pursue international legal proceedings to protect its investment, hinting at the possibility of taking the case to international arbitration.

“Panama has a good batting average when it comes to arbitration,” Felipe Chapman, Panama’s finance minister, said in an interview before the ruling was disclosed. “It’s part of doing business and crucial for rule of law.”

China has invested close to $300 billion in infrastructure projects across Latin America, including subway lines, bridges, hydroelectric dams, power plants and stadiums. One flagship project is the Peruvian deep-water megaport of Chancay, which Chinese leader Xi Jinping inaugurated in November 2024. The $3.5 billion project was developed by Cosco.

While Chinese investment has displaced that of the U.S. in most of Central and South America, the U.S. remains Panama’s top investor and trading partner. The tiny Central American nation is vulnerable to Trump’s pressure because it uses the U.S. dollar as its national currency and has no central bank or armed forces. In 1989, U.S. troops invaded the country to overthrow then-dictator Manuel Noriega.

Two months before the U.S. handed control of the canal to Panama’s government in late 1999, Hutchison won bidding for the two ports, beating U.S. rivals such as Bechtel. Reagan-era defense secretary Caspar Weinberger said at the time that the “huge spread” between Hutchison’s winning bid and the next nearest one showed that its interest in Panama wasn’t purely commercial. He suggested that China could gain an “enormously important intelligence platform.” The Pentagon, which supervised the canal’s operation before the handover, dismissed such concerns. Hutchison executives called such fears “totally ridiculous.”

Mulino, who has a master’s degree in maritime law from Tulane University, had grumbled about the terms of the Hutchison deal after taking office in 2024.

Mulino, who has worked with the U.S. on migration and security issues, rejected Trump’s threats to take over the canal as an affront to Panama’s sovereignty. But he withdrew from Xi’s signature “Belt and Road” initiative last year.

Trump’s complaints accelerated the simmering dispute between Hutchison and Panama’s government, officials said, primarily because the Hong Kong company had extracted better license terms from previous administrations even as Panama became a global transshipment hub for container cargo. About 5% of world trade goes through the canal now.

In previous administrations, the Chinese gained a foothold in Panama, said Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, who served as deputy foreign minister during the first months of the Mulino administration. The Chinese didn’t operate the canal or pose a security risk, but there was a symbolic perception.

“The Americans had the notion that the Chinese were closer to the canal than they were,” Ruiz-Hernández said.

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

Watch: Trump on the Panama Canal

Last year President Trump threatened to ‘take back’ the Panama Canal, and said Panama was violating a decades-old treaty that ceded U.S. control of the waterway. WSJ breaks down his strategy. Photo Illustration: Alexandra Larkin

WSJ

4. Essay | How America First Risks Becoming America Alone

Summary:

The essay argues “America First” is sliding toward “America Alone,” with reputational damage spreading from Berlin across allies and neighbors. It contrasts past U.S. solidarity in Berlin with today’s anger after the first year of POTUS’s second term. It cites cuts to most foreign aid, withdrawal from many multilateral bodies, an end to direct military aid to Ukraine, threats to use force for Greenland, and new trade barriers, paired with frequent insults aimed at allies. Polls show sharply rising unfavorable views of the U.S. in Britain and Germany, and declining trust across Europe. The piece warns allies may rearm and even reconsider nuclear options, while U.S. companies and tourism suffer.

Comment: If trust in U.S. guarantees is eroding and allies respond by rearming or debating independent nuclear deterrents, what strategic leverage is gained, and what long-term risk is created, by treating alliances as liabilities rather than force multipliers?

If foreign aid cuts, multilateral withdrawals, Ukraine support termination, and coercive trade policy are defended as ending “free riding,” what mechanism replaces the old web of reciprocity that helped secure bases, intelligence sharing, and open markets for U.S. firms?

My recommendations to counter these developments:

Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy

Asia-Pacific Policy Strategy Dialogue – UK Parliament

Hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea

House of Lords of the UK Parliament

July 01, 2025

https://apstrategy.org/2025/07/13/appsd/

America First, Allies Always: securing the Asia-Indo-Pacific together

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/07/15/korea-perspective-david-maxwell-speech/8541752588776/

Optimizing U.S. and Allied Forces for Deterrence and Defense Throughout Indo-Pacom: From Korea to Australia and Everywhere in Between

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/24/us-allies-deterrence-indo-pacific/

Essay | How America First Risks Becoming America Alone

WSJ

U.S. allies are growing increasingly disenchanted by the country’s aggressive foreign policy strategy.

By David Luhnow

, Sune Engel Rasmussen

and Bertrand Benoit

Jan. 30, 2026 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/how-america-first-risks-becoming-america-alone-6592701a?st=sSSq8s

BERLIN—Few cities are more emblematic of the postwar trans-Atlantic alliance than the German capital. In 1963, John F. Kennedy delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech here promising American solidarity during the Soviet blockade. In 1987, Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear it down. And 21 years later, 200,000 Berliners turned out to hear then-Sen. Barack Obama herald a new era of U.S.-European friendship.

Today, the mood toward Uncle Sam in Berlin, and much of the world, has darkened. After the tumultuous first year of Donald Trump’s second term, few Germans have positive things to say about the current U.S. president, partly because he doesn’t have nice things to say either. During a speech in neighboring Switzerland last week, Trump taunted Europeans that without U.S. help in World War II, “you’d all be speaking German.”

“My grandfather was from Hawaii, he came as a GI, so I always had a very trusted connection to the U.S.,” said Natascha Ahrens, a 59-year-old office manager. “ I find the image of the U.S. that Trump is spreading around the world to be absolutely devastating.”

President John F. Kennedy delivering his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963. Associated Press

Ronald Regan at the Berlin Wall in 1987. Associated Press

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, addressing the city in 2008. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President John F. Kennedy delivering his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963; Ronald Regan at the Berlin Wall in 1987; Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, addressing the city in 2008. Associated Press; Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Welcome to a world where America First is coming to mean America Alone, whose friends are searching for alternatives to what increasingly feels like an abusive relationship and whose enemies are gloating.

In the past year, Trump has cut off most forms of U.S. foreign aid, pulled out of scores of multilateral institutions and ended direct military aid to Ukraine as it tried to fend off a Russian invasion that many Europeans view as a threat to their entire continent. He also threatened to use military force to acquire Greenland before more recently relenting, and erected trade barriers against countries selling goods to the U.S.

The president has accompanied this with a steady stream of insults, aimed almost exclusively at allies. Last week, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, he mocked French President Emmanuel Macron, criticized Canada for not being more grateful, characterized NATO as a money pit and said, incorrectly, that NATO countries didn’t send their troops to front-line duty in Afghanistan to help U.S. forces (he later apologized). Despite everything the U.S. has done for allies, he said, they never return the favor: “All we are asking for is a place called Greenland.”

Predictably, positive views of the U.S. are declining in much of the world. The number of Brits who view the U.S. unfavorably has doubled in the past two years to 64%, more than twice the figure who hold a favorable view, according to a YouGov poll last week. In Germany, 71% now view the U.S. as an “adversary,” according to German polling firm Forsa, and across Europe, just 16% view the U.S. as an ally, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The image of the U.S. is really hitting the bottom right now,” said Peter Matuschek, Forsa director.

It’s not just Europe. Nearly two-thirds of Canadians and Mexicans hold unfavorable views of the U.S., according to various surveys, and view their neighbor as a bigger threat than China, a sentiment echoed in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. Anger over Trump’s attacks on Canada helped propel Mark Carney’s election as prime minister; for several months last year, Canadians were lustily booing the American national anthem at hockey games.

A ‘Buy Canadian Instead’ sign in the American whiskey section of a Vancouver liquor store. jennifer gauthier/Reuters

Protesters in Seoul rallying agains President Trump’s trade and tariff policy toward South Korea. jeon heon-kyun/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Even in Asia, the U.S. is taking reputational hits. Roughly half of South Koreans labeled the U.S. as threatening, authoritarian and dishonest, according to local pollster Hankook Research. An immigration raid that briefly led to the detention of hundreds of South Korean workers at a Hyundai plant in September sparked protests.

“If the U.S. continues on this course, a deeply unhealthy anti-Americanism could take hold across many democracies,” wrote William Hague, a former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, in a recent op-ed.

Trump says many of his policies aim to end an era where foreign partners took advantage of the U.S. by running trade imbalances and relying on America for security. Trump also insists he wants to save Europe from self-destructive policies like costly green-energy subsidies and excessive illegal immigration (plenty of Europeans agree).

There are exceptions to the negative trend. Views of the U.S. climbed in Israel after Trump’s support of its campaign in Gaza, are up in India, and are still narrowly positive in Argentina, where President Javier Milei is a big Trump fan. And many Venezuelans are grateful for Trump’s removal of strongman Nicolás Maduro.

People around the world can separate a nation’s leader from its citizenry. But it gets more difficult over time, especially because Trump was re-elected, and American institutions are struggling to limit the president’s power, says Rubens Ricupero, a former Brazilian finance minister and ambassador to the U.S. “Of course everyone is aware that what is happening is a reflection of Trump’s personality, but it ends up reflecting on the U.S., just like how Putin affects people’s views of Russia,” he said.

The shift won’t only make it less comfortable for millions of Americans to go abroad on vacation or for retirement. It will hurt American companies competing overseas. And it may mean a more dangerous world: Countries are fast losing trust in the U.S. and its security guarantees, which Trump sees as a liability rather than an asset. Without an American president they can rely on, countries from Europe to Asia will have no choice but to rearm; more are now debating whether they will ever be safe without nuclear weapons of their own.

‘Nobody Likes a Bully’

America’s image has long had ups and downs. It declined during the Vietnam War, Reagan’s more aggressive posture fighting Communism in the 1980s and George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Brand America also took a hit during Trump’s first term.

In each case, it largely recovered, often when a new administration brought a fresh face and different tone. The image of America also recovers because its fundamentals and soft power remain strong: people still want to go to its universities, watch its movies and admire its economy, says Mitchell Reiss, a longtime U.S. diplomat who is now at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

A soldier in Nuuk, Greenland.. Robert Kagan, a former member of Republican administrations and a Brookings Institution fellow, says that although Trump backed away from the idea of using military force to acquire Greenland, “This isn’t the end of the problem, this is still the beginning.” Oscar Scott Carl for WSJ

“A lot of damage is being done by Trump,” he says. “But we are also the most resilient country in the world.”

Others think it could be different this time around. Two things have changed. First, past presidents viewed the international order—the multilateral institutions and web of security and economic alliances set up by Washington—as an asset worth defending. George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq after trying, and failing, to get U.N. backing, but still had a coalition of some 49 countries offering to help.

Trump is unapologetic about pursuing U.S. interests narrowly. He tends to see allies as grasping dependents rather than force multipliers. Gone is talk of promoting Western values like democracy and open markets.

Trump has broken a system of trust between the U.S. and its allies that created a relatively benign global order for the past 70 years, says Robert Kagan, a former member of Republican administrations and fellow at Brookings Institution think tank.

During that time, Kagan argues, American power helped protect allies. In exchange, they hosted American bases, shared intelligence and kept relatively open markets for U.S. firms. Together, the U.S. and its allies faced down challengers, like Russia and China, to this stable order.

Now, Kagan said, allies are unlikely to trust America as much again, regardless of a change in administration. “I think it’s virtually inconceivable to imagine recovery at this point. Let’s imagine three more years of this,” he said. “So he backed off a bit on Greenland. This isn’t the end of the problem, this is still the beginning.”

Another reason anti-Americanism might be stronger this time around is basic pride. Past presidents generally tried to not mock other leaders and nations.

“We’ve all been insulted,” says Gabriel Guerra, a former presidential spokesman and PR expert in Mexico. “Nobody likes a bully.”

Damage in dollars

The loss of the U.S. as a reliable ally could hurt the allure of top American brands abroad, which are already facing tougher competition from Chinese products. Top trading partners are scrambling to diversify their economies; European and Asian states that rely on U.S. military might are ramping up their own military production; and countries like Canada, Britain and South Korea are all making overtures to China.

After Trump came to office, many countries in trade-dependent Asia expressed a sense of betrayal at the sudden imposition of tariffs last year. “These are not actions one does to a friend,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in a speech to Parliament in April.

Workers at a garment factory in Vietnam. Such operations have started adding non-American buyers to their retail networks to reduce exposure to volatile U.S. trade policies. nhac nguyen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Local manufacturers who for decades sought American buyers are instead diversifying their client rosters. Paul Norriss, who runs a clothing factory in Vietnam with a largely American buyer network, said he has added non-American retailers to reduce his exposure to volatile trade policies.

The damage hurts in other ways. The number of tourists to the U.S. fell by 6% last year, led by a decline in visiting Canadians and Mexicans. After Trump slapped tariffs on Canada, grocers like Loblaws and Sobeys tagged products sourced locally. A popular new app, Maple Scan, lets users try to skirt tariffs and support Canadian companies by identifying local products.

“The U.S., we’ve been neighbors for years, and we’ve fought in wars together. But ultimately, things have become very unpredictable,” said Sasha Ivanov, a Canadian programmer from Calgary who developed the app.

In much of Latin America and elsewhere, viral images of masked ICE officers arresting and chasing Hispanics on the street are also souring views of the U.S. “Even if you don’t care about soft power at all, it should worry you that millions of people from a neighboring country who interact with you all the time are growing resentful,” said Guerra.

Au revoir, Europa

The shift is most enduring and consequential across Europe, where the trans-Atlantic partnership that kept the peace after two calamitous world wars is at risk of unraveling. European leaders have tried to appease Trump; they swallowed tariff increases without raising levies on U.S. imports. They sent groveling notes of flattery, and agreed to sharply increase defense spending so the U.S. can focus on threats elsewhere, like China.

Federal immigration agents take a person into custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In much of Latin America and elsewhere, viral images of residents clashing with masked ICE officers are souring views of the U.S. Scott Olson/Getty Images

It hasn’t seemed to help. In the past year, the administration has repeatedly pushed a settlement to the Ukraine war that is seen in European capitals as a win for Moscow, leaving the continent exposed to a predatory Putin. The U.S. now regularly describes NATO not as its creation, but as a club for Europeans. Even if Trump has backed off for now, his threats against NATO member Denmark to seize Greenland marked a Rubicon moment: Trust that the U.S. will defend a European partner under attack has evaporated. Putin will have noticed.

This week, The Economist’s cover featured a bare-chested Trump riding atop a polar bear, an obvious reference to Putin riding a horse to show off his tough-guy pecs and disregard for borders. Under the title “Donald, That’s Enough!” Germany’s Der Spiegel showed Europe’s leaders dressed in Nordic warrior garb and brandishing swords. Beneath the montage: “How Europe can stand up to Trump’s imperialism.”

Every Fourth of July, the Danish-American friendship group Rebild National Park Society holds one of the biggest celebrations outside the U.S., gathering up to 60,000 guests for pickled herring and music in the rolling hills of northern Denmark. Speakers over the years included Walt Disney, Walter Cronkite and Ronald Reagan.

Earlier this month, the nearby city of Aalborg said it would pull crucial funding for this year’s gathering unless the organizers rescinded invitations to U.S. military and civilian officials, including the ambassador. “It hurts to see a more than hundred-year relationship suddenly tested this way,” said Jørgen Bech Madsen, president of the RNPS.

“It’s been a painful process. Since childhood I have admired the United States,” said former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who later served as Secretary-General of NATO from 2009 to 2014.

Rasmussen embodies the close relationship cultivated between Denmark and the U.S. in the 2000s. He deployed Danish troops to the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and joined the U.S. war in Iraq, even as nations like France and Germany refused. His son has become a U.S. citizen.

“I think the self-inflicted wounds on the United States and its global influence, in fact, the Trump behavior, fuels the forces in Europe that are arguing that we need an alternative to the U.S.,” Rasmussen said.

Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com, Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com and Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com

WSJ

5. U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms

Summary:

The article argues that as POTUS unsettles partners, China is gaining diplomatically on its own terms. After “Liberation Day” tariffs, Xi Jinping threatened countries cooperating with U.S. trade restrictions and rolled out rare earth export pressure broadly, betting allies would hedge by moving closer to Beijing while accepting its priorities. That wager is described as paying off through visits and resets by Keir Starmer and Mark Carney, despite unresolved disputes on human rights, espionage, election interference, and trade. Analysts warn this widens Beijing’s leverage on trigger issues like Taiwan.

Comment: Perhaps there is more "realistic realism" among our allies than some might have thought. Their assessment of their interests may be much different than some administration officials may have assessed and understood. But there is danger for them. If Beijing can pull partners closer without conceding on the issues that once divided them, what practical leverage remains for U.S. allies to defend their red lines while still “hedging” economically?

U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms

NY Times ·

As Washington unsettles its partners, Beijing is reaping diplomatic gains, without backing down on human rights, trade or security.

By David Pierson and Berry Wang

Reporting from Hong Kong

Jan. 31, 2026, 12:01 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/world/asia/trump-xi-starmer-carney.html

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain in Shanghai on Friday. Mr. Starmer became the first British leader to visit China since 2018.Credit...Pool photo by Kin Cheung

By David Pierson and

Reporting from Hong Kong

Jan. 31, 2026, 12:01 a.m. ET

When President Trump upended global trade with his “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, China could have seized the moment to win over bewildered U.S. allies and partners with a charm offensive. Instead, it did the opposite.

Beijing threatened countries that dared to cooperate with the Trump administration in restricting trade with China. And when China unveiled a plan to choke exports of its critical supplies of rare earths, it targeted the world, not just the United States.

It was a high-stakes gamble by President Xi Jinping of China. Rather than provide relief to spurned American allies, Beijing wanted to compound their dilemma, analysts say, so that countries unnerved by Washington would learn that crossing China also carried economic pain.

The calculation was that those countries would eventually seek closer ties to China to hedge against the United States, and that when they did so, they would be more accommodating of Beijing’s interests.

That bet is now paying off with the procession of European and Canadian leaders arriving in China seeking to deepen ties with the world’s second-largest economy — even as Beijing has conceded little on the issues that once divided them, like human rights, espionage, election interference and unbalanced trade. (This outreach has drawn a sharp rebuke from Mr. Trump, who warned on Friday that it was “dangerous” for Britain and Canada to look to China as the answer to their economic woes.)

“China chose to accentuate rather than alleviate the pressure on the allies to force them to tilt closer to Beijing’s position,” said Jonathan Czin, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who previously worked at the C.I.A. analyzing Chinese politics. “Beijing’s patient policy now seems to be paying dividends.”

That was underscored by Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who reversed years of frosty relations on a visit to China this week, the first by a British leader since 2018.

Mr. Starmer made clear that his priority was cutting business deals while tiptoeing around contentious issues like the imprisonment of the Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai, a British citizen. Critics of Mr. Starmer say he also caved to Beijing when his government recently approved a new Chinese mega-embassy in London despite concerns that it would enable China to ramp up spying.

Prime Minister Mark Carney with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing earlier this month.Credit...Pool photo by Sean Kilpatrick

Similarly, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada arrived in Beijing this month as the first Canadian leader to travel to China in almost a decade. He sought a “pragmatic” reset with a country that has imprisoned Canadian nationals, meddled in Canada’s elections and dressed down its former prime minister.

Mr. Carney announced a “new strategic partnership” with China, agreed to cut tariffs on a small number of Chinese electric vehicles and made clear that Canada was willing to break ranks with the United States for its economic survival.

“Beijing has played this all extremely well, much better than they could have reasonably expected at this time last year,” Mr. Czin added.

Some Chinese analysts argued that China’s refusal to budge in the face of U.S. pressure commanded a certain geopolitical deference.

America’s allies need to “diversify the risk of their dependence on the United States,” said Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “Naturally, they chose China.”

“China’s might has won respect,” he said. “China’s stance has won respect.”

Beijing has been quick to capitalize on this opening. Mr. Trump’s aggressive maneuvers — like tariffs and military strikes in Venezuela, the Middle East and Africa — have allowed Beijing to cast itself, however improbably, as a defender of the rules-based order, the global trading system and a leader of the Global South.

China has long sought to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe. This campaign has been helped by Mr. Trump’s threats to seize Greenland, which have rattled the foundations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the security alliance that Beijing has long considered one of America’s greatest strengths.

Since December, when President Emmanuel Macron of France toured China (and was mobbed by adoring students at a university in Sichuan Province), Western leaders have been lining up to seek an audience with Mr. Xi, while he holds court as the indispensable partner in an unstable world. In addition to the prime ministers of Canada and Britain, visitors have included leaders from Ireland, South Korea and Finland, and Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany is expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

President Emmanuel Macron of France greeting university students in Chengdu, China, in December.Credit...Pool photo by Sarah Meyssonnier

“As Trump widens divisions between America and its traditional partners, China is sitting back and collecting the diplomatic windfall,” said Ryan Hass, the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

“The growing rift between America and its traditional partners gives Beijing more margin for error in its diplomacy with these countries,” Mr. Hass continued. “Beijing does not feel it needs to make concessions to pull these countries closer, it just needs to remain predictable and firm on its top goals.”

That could make it more difficult for Europe and other Western allies to push back on matters that are important to them, like China’s support for Russia in the war in Ukraine and China’s global trade surplus, which reached a record $1.2 trillion last year.

It could also leave Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing, more isolated and exposed to Chinese coercion. Already, two Canadian members of Parliament cut their visits to Taiwan short at their government’s request days before Mr. Carney was set to embark on his trip to China.

“Beijing will increasingly use whatever it has to make sure that countries do not speak or act out of line on these trigger issues, especially when it comes to Taiwan,” said Yanmei Xie, a senior associate fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies and a senior adjunct researcher at RAND’s China Research Center.

Ms. Xie argued that Canada and China have effectively swapped roles. Canadian prime ministers used to arrive in Beijing dangling offers of nuclear energy technology and other advanced industrial products. This time, Mr. Carney traded a foothold for Chinese electric vehicles in Canada for the easing of Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola.

“It’s a poignant display of the techno-industrial rise of China and the technical industrial decline of the West,” Ms. Xie said.

A Geely auto factory in Hangzhou, China, in October.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The parade of Western leaders has provided a propaganda win for China, masking a domestic reality of an economy in the doldrums and a military leadership hollowed out by political purges. “Xi leads China’s diplomacy to usher in new chapter in turbulent world,” one headline in a state media report said.

“The applause for China at Davos is sincere,” said another headline, referring to the World Economic Forum, a gathering this past month in Switzerland of world leaders and corporate executives.

Still, some Chinese analysts view the rebalancing by Western countries as a short-term pivot rather than an enduring change of heart. The United States, they said, has long underwritten the global trading system that allowed its allies and partners to thrive. China, on the other hand, has frustrated many countries by dumping exports onto their markets and using state subsidies to tilt the playing field in favor of Chinese firms.

“This is purely a short-term tactical remedy, not a reorientation toward China,” on the part of the West, said Shen Dingli, an international relations expert based in Shanghai.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.

Berry Wang is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Hong Kong.

NY Times · Berry Wang ·

6. China counting how many missiles it needs to win a Taiwan war

Summary:

Gabriel Honrada examines whether China can sustain the missile volume an attrition heavy Taiwan war would require. He argues that modern warfare is shifting toward cost, scale, and industrial endurance, not just precision. Chinese military analysis, citing U.S. experience in the Red Sea, highlights the unsustainability of using expensive interceptors against cheap threats and urges a high low mix of munitions. U.S. doctrine notes China’s Joint Firepower Strike Campaign would rely on massive early ballistic missile barrages. While China has expanded its missile inventory and industrial base, analysts warn that centralized production, technical complexity, and supply chain vulnerabilities could constrain sustained output over time.

Comment: To paraphrase an old saying, don't count the missiles, make the missiles count. (apologies for the attempt at humor).

More seriously, if China’s Taiwan war plans depend on prolonged missile barrages, does the true center of gravity lie in launchers and inventories, or in the resilience of a tightly centralized missile production system under sustained disruption? Can launchers, missiles stocks, and production systems be attacked and disrupted?

China counting how many missiles it needs to win a Taiwan war

Shift toward cheaper munitions spotlights whether China’s missile industry can muster the massive barrages a Taiwan war would require

by Gabriel Honrada

January 31, 2026

https://asiatimes.com/2026/01/china-counting-how-many-missiles-it-needs-to-win-a-taiwan-war/

As modern warfare shifts toward attrition, China’s push for cheaper munitions raises a sharper question: can its missile industry sustain the scale and tempo a Taiwan war would demand?

This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China should consider adopting low-cost guided munitions to prepare for future large-scale drone and attrition warfare, according to an analysis in a Chinese military magazine that examines the US’s efforts to cut the soaring costs of modern conflict.

The article, published this month in Ordnance Science and Technology and cited by SCMP, says the US has found it financially unsustainable to counter low-cost threats with expensive precision weapons, pointing to US operations in the Red Sea, where missiles costing more than US$2.5 million each were used to intercept Houthi drones worth under $2,000, driving total costs to about $1 billion in 2023.

In response, the US military is developing cheaper long-range munitions such as L3Harris’s Wolf Pack system, a compact cruise-missile family priced at roughly $300,000–$400,000 per unit and designed for mass use across land, sea and air platforms.

While these systems trade speed, range, and reliability for affordability, the article argues that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could benefit from a similar “high-low mix,” particularly given China’s vast industrial base and ability to mass-produce and replenish weapons.

It adds that China’s dense air-defense network could blunt such low-cost attacks. Still, it concludes that stockpiling inexpensive munitions remains essential even for rapid victories, underscoring a shift toward industrial capacity and cost control as decisive factors in modern warfare.

In a US-China conflict over Taiwan, China would unleash huge volumes of precision-guided munitions during the opening phases and throughout the campaign.

According to an April 2025 report by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), China’s Joint Firepower Strike Campaign is a core operational concept designed to deliver coordinated, cross-domain strikes against an adversary’s critical systems at the outset of conflict.

The report states that the campaign integrates fires from the PLA Rocket Force, Navy, Air Force, and Army to attack command-and-control nodes, air defenses, airfields, ports, and logistics hubs, aiming to paralyze the enemy’s operational system.

It notes that ballistic missiles are central to this concept, providing long-range, high-volume precision strikes from mainland launch sites, particularly in support of blockades and amphibious campaigns.

According to the report, large-scale operations would be preceded by massive ballistic-missile barrages, forming the backbone of early joint firepower strikes. However, it mentions that sustained use may be constrained by magazine depth in later phases.

Looking at how many missiles China could deploy in such an event, William Alberque notes in a November 2025 CNN article that China previously believed it needed 5,000-10,000 missiles to defeat Taiwan. Furthermore, Alberque says the Russia-Ukraine War changed China’s calculus, possibly leading it to significantly raise its estimates.

Looking specifically at China’s ballistic missile arsenal, the US Department of Defense (DoD) China Military Power Reports (CMPR) show steady growth in the PLA Rocket Force’s (PLARF) ballistic missile inventory from 2020 to 2025.

In 2020, China fielded over 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), hundreds of medium-range (MRBMs) and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), and about 100 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers.

In 2021, SRBM numbers remained above 1,000, while MRBM and IRBM inventories continued to expand, particularly DF-21 and DF-26 systems. In 2022, China began constructing more than 300 new ICBM silos, signaling a sharp acceleration in strategic missile growth.

By 2023, the US DoD assessed that China’s ICBM launcher count was rapidly increasing, while its total ballistic missile force was around 2,850 missiles. In 2024, China had 500 operational ICBM launchers and 400 missiles, more than doubling since 2020.

By 2025, the US DoD described PLARF as operating the world’s largest land-based ballistic missile arsenal, supporting projections of over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

Backing this growth is a large ballistic missile industrial base. Peter Wood and Alex Stone mention in a May 2021 report for the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) that in recent years, the country has rapidly expanded its ballistic missile manufacturing capacity.

According to Wood and Stone, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), the state-owned giants responsible for missile production, have grown their workforce by 50% since 2000, with CASC employing 164,000 and CASIC 150,000 personnel as of 2020.

They note that key facilities such as Factory 211 in Beijing and new satellite campuses in Tianjin and Hebei have added tens of thousands of square meters of production and R&D space. They also note that CASIC’s 4th Academy built four new zones and a high-performance computing center to reduce design timelines.

While production rates are not publicly quantified, Wood and Stone confirm a significant expansion of solid and liquid rocket motor output, driven by both military demand and China’s growing space launch sector.

However, capacity alone does not guarantee wartime endurance, particularly when missile production is concentrated in a small number of technically complex and tightly integrated facilities.

Despite China’s formidable ballistic missile arsenal and defense industrial base, it faces significant challenges. Markus Schiller mentions in a May 2024 report for the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) that China’s ballistic missile industry is highly centralized, state-controlled, and technically mature, but still constrained by structural and technical complexities.

Schiller points out that missile development and production are concentrated within CASC and CASIC, whose subordinate academies divide responsibilities for solid propulsion, liquid engines, guidance, and final assembly, creating coordination challenges across programs.

He also highlights China’s long, difficult transition from liquid- to solid-propellant missiles, which delayed the development of mobile and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV)-capable systems for decades.

He points out persistent opacity and data inconsistencies stemming from secrecy, frequent institutional reorganizations, and overlapping responsibilities, which complicate assessments of production efficiency and actual output levels.

Furthermore, a January 2026 Heritage Foundation report identifies several structural challenges in China’s missile production despite its large-scale capacity.

The report points out that missile manufacturing is concentrated in a small number of state-owned conglomerates, particularly CASC and CASIC, creating bottlenecks wherein disruption to seeker calibration, warhead integration, or guidance-module assembly could cascade across multiple missile families.

It also states that production depends heavily on specialized energetic materials (RDX, HMX, CL-20) and precision components such as microelectronics and optoelectronics, some of which remain vulnerable to import controls or targeted disruption.

While the Heritage Foundation report says that fixed, highly automated facilities and digitally integrated logistics further improve efficiency, they also increase exposure to cyber, kinetic or infrastructure attacks, potentially constraining sustained missile output in prolonged conflict.

Ultimately, a Taiwan war would expose whether China’s impressive missile buildup translates into sustained combat power, or whether industrial bottlenecks and cost pressures blunt the very barrages its war plans depend on.

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · January 31, 2026

7. Is Trump's foreign policy really realist?

Summary:

Leon Hadar argues POTUS’s second-term foreign policy uses realist language but only partly fits classical realism. He sees a realist turn in the embrace of spheres of influence and balance-of-power thinking in the 2025 National Security Strategy, plus a Western Hemisphere focus framed as a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. It also labels alliance policy as transactional, treating cooperation as interest-based. But it says the record departs from realist restraint through multiple military operations, including the Maduro capture, and through Ukraine policy that includes a security guarantee modeled on NATO Article 5. It also portrays threats involving Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada as expansionist and strategically imprudent, creating unpredictability.

Comment: If the administration accepts spheres of influence and balance-of-power logic as “timeless truths,” what concrete criteria determine when U.S. force or guarantees are vital to core interests and when restraint should prevail, and who enforces that discipline when decision-making is highly personalized? (e.g., something like the Weinberger or Powell doctrine?)

Is Trump's foreign policy really realist? - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Leon Hadar · January 31, 2026

Trump’s vocabulary is realism without discipline, borrowing from the policy tradition but acting more on impulse than interest

by Leon Hadar

January 31, 2026

https://asiatimes.com/2026/01/is-trumps-foreign-policy-really-realist/

Trump’s second-term foreign policy presents a complex picture when evaluated against classical realist principles. While certain elements align with realist thinking—particularly its emphasis on power politics and national interest—others reveal significant departures from the restraint and prudence that define the realist tradition.

The administration’s explicit embrace of spheres of influence represents perhaps the clearest realist turn in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. The 2025 National Security Strategy openly acknowledges “the outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations” as “a timeless truth” and rejects “global domination” in favor of “global and regional balances of power.”

This fundamentally realist worldview breaks decisively with the post-Cold War liberal internationalist consensus that sought to export democracy and integrate rising powers into a rules-based international order. Instead, Trump’s strategy accepts the world as it is—a competitive arena where great powers inevitably dominate their regions.

The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine demonstrates a geographically-focused strategy prioritizing the Western Hemisphere—from military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean to the emphasis on denying extra-hemispheric powers the ability to position forces or control strategic assets in the Americas.

This represents classic great-power behavior: securing one’s immediate periphery before projecting power globally, reminiscent of how Russia views its near abroad or China conceives of its regional preeminence in East Asia.

The transactional approach to alliances also reflects realist thinking about the instrumental nature of international cooperation. Trump’s explicit conditioning of NATO support on allies meeting defense spending targets, combined with efforts to broker trade deals and shift defense burdens to European and Asian partners, treats alliances as means to advance national interests rather than values-based commitments or permanent institutional arrangements.

This echoes the realist insight that states cooperate when interests align, not because of shared ideals or institutional inertia.

Departures from realism

However, Trump’s approach often embodies what might be called “illiberal interventionism” rather than true restraint. While rejecting liberal nation-building and democracy promotion, the administration has engaged in numerous military operations, including strikes against ISIS in Nigeria, Venezuelan facilities, and most dramatically, the capture of President Maduro.

These actions contradict realism’s core emphasis on restraint, selectivity and avoiding unnecessary entanglements that don’t serve vital interests. Classical realists would question whether these interventions pass the cost-benefit test or advance America’s fundamental security.

The Ukraine policy reveals the administration’s most glaring contradictions. The 28-point peace plan includes an unprecedented security guarantee modeled on NATO Article 5, committing the US to treat attacks on Ukraine as attacks on the “transatlantic community.”

This represents a significant open-ended commitment that could draw America into future conflicts—hardly the offshore balancing or buck-passing that realists typically advocate for regions beyond core strategic interests. A true realist approach might accept a Ukrainian settlement that acknowledges Russian predominance in its near abroad, rather than extending American security guarantees eastward.

The threats to annex Greenland and reclaim the Panama Canal, combined with rhetoric about Canada becoming the “51st state,” represent territorial ambitions that go beyond securing spheres of influence into outright expansion. This behavior risks alienating allies, creating new security dilemmas, and squandering diplomatic capital on projects of dubious strategic value—all outcomes that prudent realists would seek to avoid.

The realist reality

Trump’s foreign policy incorporates realist language and concepts—spheres of influence, burden-sharing, transactionalism, great-power competition—but the execution often undermines realist principles of strategic discipline and restraint.

The concentration of decision-making in the president personally, the “frenetic diplomacy,” and the use of American power “deployed at will, subject to change at his whim” create unpredictability that destabilizes the very international order that realists value for providing stability and predictability in great-power relations.

The administration’s approach has been described as achieving “some notable results in the form of trade deals” while leaving “Trump still in search of a major, concrete foreign policy win” and struggling “to produce a major positive outcome from its frenetic activity.”

The gap between ambition and accomplishment suggests that borrowing realist concepts without the underlying strategic coherence produces activity without achievement.

Perhaps the most telling assessment: rather than isolationism, Trump has “established a new brand of American internationalism with Trumpian characteristics,” one that borrows realist concepts but applies them inconsistently, often in service of personal rather than strategic objectives.

This is realism’s vocabulary without its discipline—a foreign policy that talks like Hans Morgenthau but acts more like impulse than interest. True realism requires not just recognizing power realities but exercising power with prudence, selectivity and strategic purpose.

This article was originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriber here.

asiatimes.com · Leon Hadar · January 31, 2026

8. China, Russia and Iran are investing billions to influence the US midterms

Summary:

Darjan Vujika argues that China, Russia, and Iran are spending billions to shape U.S. politics ahead of the midterm elections through sustained influence operations. Hecites testimony by Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, nominee to lead the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, but warns cyber defense alone is insufficient. Russia has boosted information operations funding by over 50 percent, China is building a capital-intensive “cognitive domain” apparatus exceeding $10 billion annually, and Iran is expanding state media despite economic crisis. The author argues adversaries exploit the “off-season” between elections using AI-driven scale, demanding sustained political will and a whole-of-government response.

Comment: I have not seen too much reporting on General Rudd's testimony.

But one very important response to election interference is also found in POTUS' 2017 NSS (I hate to keep beating the dead horse with this). But it is our responsibility to defend ourselves with our own critical thinking. I also wish (so naive I know) that the actions of China, Russia, and Iran (and likely north Korea too) would serve as a unifying force and make us want to unite to protect our elections against these external threats. These actions may be more dangerous to our great American experiment than was the attack on Pearl Harbor and the fight against the Axis powers in World War II.

"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."

Access the 2017 NSS HERE

China, Russia and Iran are investing billions to influence the US midterms

The Hill ·

by Darjan Vujica, opinion contributor - 01/30/26 1:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/5713097-china-russia-iran-influence/

On Jan. 15, Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, pledged before the Senate Armed Services Committee to use the full weight of the nation’s cyber capabilities to protect the U.S. from foreign interference in the upcoming midterm elections.

It was a reassuring signal that the military apparatus remains vigilant. But the reality of modern information warfare is that securing our midterm election requires far more than Fort Meade. It requires a synchronized, whole-of-government effort that spans the interagency — but it ultimately starts with political will at the White House.

Rudd’s commitment was particularly welcome because China, Russia and Iran have drastically increased their budgets for influence operations. Russia, for instance, has made a calculated trade-off. Its 2026 budget increased funding for state-run media and information operations by 54 percent — an additional $458 million. As Ukraine’s foreign ministry has noted, Moscow has determined that maintaining the “firehose of falsehood” is as critical to its survival as the supply of artillery shells.

China, likewise, is investing in the information domain at levels that reflect the importance Beijing places on soft power in the age of AI. Based on forensic analysis of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (for 2026 to 2030) and current fiscal trajectories, Beijing is re-architecting its operations into a capital-intensive “Cognitive Domain” war machine.

Aggregate annual spending on foreign influence is projected to exceed $10 billion this year. This figure includes the United Front Work Department — the Chinese agency tasked with co-opting foreign elites — whose budget alone, adjusted for current fiscal trajectories, is projected to reach $4 billion. To put that figure in stark perspective: Beijing now spends more on influence operations than the entire operating budget of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Even Iran, grappling with hyperinflation exceeding 40 percent, has prioritized this domain. The 2025 budget for the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting was set at approximately $580 million, a 46 percent increase year-over-year. In a country where the economy is crippled, the regime has explicitly chosen to starve civil infrastructure to feed its propaganda machine.

The billions flowing into these operations are funding a new kind of weapon: industrialized artificial intelligence. This technology has fundamentally altered the economics of influence. In 2016, interference required expensive “troll farms” — buildings full of human operators manually typing posts. Today, generative AI automates that labor, allowing a single adversary to manage thousands of distinct personas that produce unique, convincing content at infinite scale.

Simultaneously, the barrier to entry has collapsed. What once required the resources of a state intelligence service now requires little more than a commercially available subscription, granting every malign actor the power to flood America’s social media feeds and news with falsehoods. That is why, crucially, efforts to protect our midterm elections must begin now.

For too long, Washington has operated under a strategic misconception I call the “Super Bowl Fallacy.” Inside the State Department and across the federal government, elections are treated as the “Super Bowl” of malign influence — a scheduled, high-stakes spectacle that begins a few months before voting starts and ends when the networks call the race. Under this mindset, we scramble resources late in the season to “secure the vote,” standing up task forces and surging intelligence capabilities.

But now more than ever, the information space is a perpetually shifting mosaic, and the true strength of a democracy is forged or fractured in the “quiet years” between elections. It is in these intermediate periods — the “off-season” — during which our adversaries take advantage. They are deepening social fissures, planting harmful narratives and building the AI-enabled bot networks that will be activated well ahead of November’s elections. There is no “push button” solution that can undo years of adversarial conditioning in a single news cycle.

Gen. Rudd’s pledge is vital, but it is insufficient. As we navigate the weaponization of artificial intelligence and increased adversary budgets for malign influence, both Congress and the White House must pledge to the American public that they will do everything they can to ensure the sovereignty of our elections.

If we wait until the weeks before the election to confront these influence operations, we will be fighting for voters who have already been targeted, profiled and manipulated by adversaries who began their work years ago. To delay action now is a costly mistake.

Darjan Vujica served as a senior official at the State Department and was most recently the emerging technology coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and director of the Global Engagement Center’s Analytics Directorate.

The Hill · Al Weaver

9. China has spent decades making inroads in Latin America. Will the ‘Donroe doctrine’ push it out?

Summary:

This CNN article argues that the surprise U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro signaled a broader United States campaign to push China out of Latin American influence, framed as the “Donroe doctrine.” It says Beijing has spent decades expanding trade, lending, and infrastructure across the region, including ports, power grids, telecom networks, and mining. A December U.S. national security strategy pledges to deny non-hemispheric competitors control of strategic assets, and officials are weighing force, tariffs, sanctions, and legal pressure, as seen in Panama’s court move against a Hong Kong-linked port operator near the Panama Canal. The article says China is not retreating, is recalibrating, and is projecting a benevolent contrast through outreach and a naval hospital ship tour.

Comment: On the global Go/Wei Chi/Baduk board we are exerting greater influence over the territory of the western hemisphere. But China still has some of its stones here so the region will continue to be contested.

China has spent decades making inroads in Latin America. Will the ‘Donroe doctrine’ push it out? | CNN

CNN · Simone McCarthy · January 31, 2026

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/30/china/china-latin-american-trump-venezuela-intl-hnk-dst

As the dust cleared around the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise military strike earlier this month, US officials left little question that they had another target too: China.

A longtime friend to the government in Caracas, China has for years pumped money into the oil fields and infrastructure of the South American country. Maduro’s ouster is a blow to that partnership that could leave Chinese banks facing billions in unpaid Venezuelan debt.

But viewed from Beijing, the stakes are much higher than that. The shake-up was also the loudest warning shot yet of a deeper campaign for the Trump administration: to root out China’s influence across Latin America.

How Trump’s Venezuela strike complicates China’s Latin America strategy

8:51 • Source: CNN

How Trump’s Venezuela strike complicates China’s Latin America strategy

8:51

Beijing has spent decades growing its trade ties and bankrolling projects in the region, to boost transportation links and cut energy costs – cementing its own influence along the way.

A US national security strategy released in December pledged to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors” control of “strategically vital assets” in the Western Hemisphere and “make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.”

Speaking to oil executives at the White House earlier this month about Venezuela, US President Donald Trump spoke more plainly: “If we didn’t do this, China would have been there and Russia would have been there … but they’re not going to be there now.”

Washington’s new assertiveness now has a name: the so-called Donroe doctrine. A twist on an 1823 statement by President James Monroe warning European colonial powers to respect the US’ sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere, the riff was coined by right-wing commentators, and has been used by the president himself.

The Mirador de las Americas monument, commemorating 150 years of Chinese presence in Panama, was controversially demolished in December 2025.

Enea Lebrun/Reuters

Now, the question of whether the US could again use force – or tactics like tariffs or sanctions – to strong-arm countries into choosing Washington’s interests over ties with China is a viable risk being evaluated in the region’s capitals.

“There is no doubt that the pressure is on, and the countries are vulnerable to it … and in foreign ministries, people are planning different ways of how to handle this,” said Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to China.

Beijing is well aware of how US pressure could make governments become more wary of working with Chinese firms or re-evaluate existing ties, analysts in its policy circles say – something that’s already happened in Panama. There, a high court decided Thursday to annul port contracts held by a Hong Kong-linked firm, which the US has wanted to oust from its decades-long operations at the Panama Canal. The court found the contracts were unconstitutional.

“The US shift toward securitizing infrastructure, supply chains, and strategic assets in the Western Hemisphere will certainly raise the political cost of China’s engagement in Latin America,” said Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing.

But it’s also clear that the world’s second-largest economy is not preparing for a retreat – setting up the region as a test case for whether an aggressive US policy can counter China’s influence or will drive more countries to hedge their bets with Beijing.

China for decades has cultivated an extensive network of ties across Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that encompasses more than 30 countries and 670 million people.

From an economic relationship that took off in the early 2000s as China looked to resource-rich Latin America to feed its economic boom, the two sides now rack up half a trillion dollars in annual trade. China earlier this month announced the world’s largest ever trade surplus at $1.2 trillion in 2025, with trade to the region up 8% from the previous year – helping Beijing offset the blow of recent trade frictions with the US.

Over the years in Latin America, Chinese firms have financed or built ports and power stations, bridges and roads, wind and solar farms, metro lines and mines – spurred by spare capital and industrial overcapacity in China, and, in more recent years, the global ambitions of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to expand Beijing’s global sway.

Overall, financing from China’s official sector has totaled $302 billion between 2000 and 2023, according to AidData, a research lab at William & Mary university in Virginia.

Chinese firm MMG Ltd. owns the Las Bambas Chalcobamba copper mine in the Apurimac region of Peru.

Alessandro Cinque/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Today, China-linked firms mine copper in Peru and extract vast amounts of lithium – key for the manufacture of rechargeable electric vehicle batteries – from mines in Argentina and Chile and are working to expand into Bolivia.

Chinese state-backed power companies own and operate parts of power grids in Peru, Chile, and Brazil, while telecoms giants like Huawei and ZTE – blocked in the US over national security concerns – equip digital networks in several South American economies, including some 8,000 kilometers of optical fiber for broadband in the Amazon rainforest.

China’s EV giant BYD last year inaugurated a massive factory in Brazil, built on land vacated by US automaker Ford. Another major Chinese car company Great Wall Motors started production in the country at a plant it bought from the maker of Mercedes-Benz.

A BYD electric vehicle charges at a station in front of Brazil's Ministry of Economy in Brasilia in October 2023.

Adriano Machado/Reuters

The inroads of Chinese firms have not been without controversy or local challenges, but they have closed infrastructure gaps in the region and forged tighter political bonds between governments there and Beijing, allowing China to woo diplomatic allies away from Taiwan and strengthen Xi’s bid to establish his country as a leader among developing economies.

For years, Washington watched this play out with “a lot of hand-wringing,” according to Evan Ellis, a former State Department official and expert on China’s role in Latin America at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

“We were victims of our own uncertainty … (in the sense of) well, these are sovereign countries, and these are largely commercial projects, even though we’re worried about these things, can we actually stop them? Do we have the right to stop them?” Ellis said.

That strategy appears to have taken a hard turn, as Washington is now looking squarely at what it appears to see as a massive security lapse stretching across the US’ home court.

Trump set that tone in his inauguration speech a year ago when he falsely claimed that “China is operating the Panama Canal” and the US was “taking it back.”

The pressure pushed the Panamanian government to exit Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – a symbolic blow for Beijing. Panama was the first Latin American country to join the global infrastructure drive in 2017 after dropping diplomatic ties with Taipei.

But extricating the Hong Kong-backed firm operating ports at either end of the canal has been slower work. The case ruled on by Panama’s Supreme Court this week had been pending for months, and Beijing had earlier asserted it must “conduct reviews and supervise” any asset sale by the company, while rejecting US claims of security risks.

A COSCO container ship sails the newly inaugurated Cocoli locks in the Panama Canal, during a visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in December 2018.

Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

At the heart of Washington’s concerns is so-called dual-use infrastructure: projects that may be commercial in nature but can be co-opted for military use in the event of a conflict.

Key among those are ports – more that three dozen of which across Latin America and the Caribbean are linked to Chinese companies, according to researchers at the Center for Strategic International Studies think tank in Washington. Another is a deep space station jointly run by China and Argentina in the Andean foothills of Patagonia.

The majority of projects linked to Chinese firms are “legitimate commercial projects or legitimate Chinese scientific, technology and other cooperation,” according to Ellis. “The problem is that… the presence and the knowledge and the relationships that that gives China creates all kinds of options for them to exploit in time of war.”

One need only look to the port of Chancay near the Peruvian capital Lima to see another potential target of US concern.

Inaugurated by Xi and then Peruvian President Dina Boluarte in late 2024, the deep-water port is operated by a joint venture between a Peruvian partner and a subsidiary of China’s state-owned shipping giant COSCO, which is the majority shareholder. COSCO is cited by the US defense department as having links to the Chinese military.

But when seen from the vantage of Peru, the $3.5 billion-dollar port is a major economic win: saving money and time by shaving more than a week off cargo transit to China, South America’s largest trading partner. There’s unlikely to be much appetite in the country or elsewhere in the region for an overhaul – especially as China and Brazil are planning a railway corridor linking the country, and its exports like soybeans and iron ore, to the Peruvian port.

“Chancay helps Peru to consolidate its role as a Latin American hub … allowing Peru to become one of the best countries in the region in terms of logistics development,” said Juan Carlos Paz, a former Peruvian National Port Authority president who led the agency at the time of the port’s inauguration.

“Concerns are logical with the political turmoil around the world … but at the same time, I think that these concerns could be eased with transparency and communication,” he said.

Experts say countries in the region will have different calculations when it comes to responding to potential US pressure on Chinese partnerships. But what they will be looking for from Washington are true alternatives to working with China.

Some US diplomats have conveyed a message that they don’t mind Latin American countries continuing to sell their produce and raw materials to China, but they don’t want them to accept investment in infrastructure and energy, according to Heine, the former Chilean ambassador, who is co-author of “The Non-Aligned World,” a book about navigating great power rivalry.

“Now, what is the message? The message is – you stay underdeveloped. You continue to be hewers of wood and carriers of water, forever. We don’t want you to have digital advancement. We don’t want you to have railways. We don’t want you to have up-to-date ports… don’t industrialize and don’t advance any further.”

“That seems to me a very difficult thing to sell to governments in the region,” he added.

China has outspent the US on a three-to-one basis in terms of official lending and grant-giving since 2014 in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Brad Parks, executive director of AidData in Virginia.

There are signs that Washington is looking to mimic China’s lending model, Parks said, pointing to the decision in December to triple the budget for the US Development Finance Corporation and in October to extend an emergency credit line to the central bank of Argentina, long a major borrower from China.

A woman hangs clothes to dry near the Cardon oil refinery in Punto Fijo, Venezuela earlier this month.

Matias Delacroix/AP

The US is the biggest investor in Latin America and the Caribbean, dwarfing China in foreign direct investment, according to data from the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America, which notes, however, that only a small proportion of Chinese investments is captured by its current metrics due to how they are structured.

But when it comes to big-ticket projects, experts are skeptical that US private companies have the interest to counter-offer China’s deep-pocketed state-owned enterprises and private firms that pay close attention to the directives of Beijing.

That’s an urgent question in Venezuela, where it remains to be seen whether American oil giants are ready to pony up investment in the unstable country, despite calls from the Trump administration to do so. So far, US oil executives remain deeply skeptical.

China has strongly condemned the US military action there and is watching closely how that develops – including whether it may be able to operate its existing oil projects in the country or recoup what is estimated to be least $10 billion in debt meant to be repaid in oil.

And in the meantime, Beijing has been sending its own signals to the region.

As the US amassed a major build-up of naval forces in the waters of the Caribbean in recent months – positioned to hunt down suspected drug boats and blockade US-sanctioned oil tankers around Venezuela – Beijing quietly dispatched one of its own assets – a People’s Liberation Army navy hospital boat – to the region.

The plan for the tour of the “Silk Road Ark” was set months earlier, but for Beijing its presence weaving between Latin American ports of call and treating patients, has been a timely chance to project itself as a benevolent force in contrast to the new, muscular US approach.

And days after the Trump administration released its national security strategy last month, China released its own new policy paper on the region.

The agenda laid out dozens of areas in which it proposed boosting collaboration from aerospace to law enforcement, and said China had stood with the region through “thick and thin.”

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any adjustment in how its firms proceed there in the face of a more watchful US.

The USS Sampson, a US Navy missile destroyer, docks at the Amador International Cruise Terminal in Panama City, Panama, on September 02, 2025.

Anadolu/Anadolu/Anadolu via Getty Images

For Latin America and the Caribbean, Beijing’s response is “about reassurance: signaling to Latin American partners that China does not seek military presence or bloc confrontation, but long-term development cooperation and mutual economic resilience,” said Sun, the Tsinghua researcher.

Beijing may look to focus on development-oriented sectors such as green energy, agriculture, industrial parks, public health, and logistics that are harder to frame as strategic chokepoints, he said, adding: “What is more probable is a recalibration in how China operates, not whether it operates.”

And while policy thinkers in China say Beijing is prepared to be flexible in its own approach, they also see an opportunity.

“China will take its cue from how Latin American countries react to the US posture, said Tang Xiaoyang, professor of international relations, also at Tsinghua.

But even if some countries accede to US demands in the short term, he added, “in the long run, they are going to be seeking other possibilities to avoid becoming the US de facto colony… and their desire to work with China will actually grow.”

CNN’s Mike Valerio, Joyce Jiang and Fred He contributed to this report.

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CNN · Simone McCarthy · January 31, 2026

10. China says Philippines is stoking tensions with Scarborough Shoal drill

Summary:

China accused the Philippines of stoking tensions through a drill warning linked to Scarborough Shoal and said it lodged formal representations and would take steps to defend sovereignty. The report situates the dispute amid leadership turmoil in China’s military: Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were placed under investigation, potentially leaving the Central Military Commission heavily narrowed around Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin. A Beijing-linked think tank criticized the drill zone as large and disruptive to navigation and overflight. The piece recalls prior collisions, China’s nature reserve and map moves, a recent rescue of Filipino crew, and ongoing maritime talks.

Comment: Pot, meet kettle. If Beijing is managing a major internal shake-up of senior commanders while warning Manila over Scarborough Shoal drills, how might less experienced leadership at the top alter China’s risk tolerance and signaling in the South China Sea?

China says Philippines is stoking tensions with Scarborough Shoal drill

South China Morning Post

Manila reportedly issued a notice warning of military exercises across a wide area of the South China Sea until the end of March

Cao Jiaxuanin Beijing

Published: 9:00pm, 30 Jan 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3341859/china-says-philippines-stoking-tensions-large-scale-scarborough-shoal-drill

He said Beijing had lodged formal representations with the Philippines and expressed its “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition”, adding that it would take all necessary steps to safeguard its territorial sovereignty.

The Philippine armed forces and civil aviation authority have been asked for comment.

Last week, Beijing announced that Zhang Youxia, the first-ranked vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s most senior uniformed officer, was under investigation for serious disciplinary violations, a typical euphemism for corruption.

Liu Zhenli, head of the commission’s Joint Staff Department, was also placed under investigation.

Their downfall could leave the country’s top military decision-making body with only two members: President Xi Jinping, who chairs the commission, and second-ranked vice-chairman Zhang Shengmin, who oversees internal discipline in the People’s Liberation Army.

The investigations are unfolding as Beijing weighs both opportunities and risks ahead of two major milestones next year: the 21st Communist Party congress, which traditionally sees an extensive reshuffle of the top leadership, and the centenary of the PLA, a key deadline for the first phase of the drive to modernise the military.

Zhang, 75, and Liu, 61, were among the few remaining senior commanders with direct combat experience, having taken part in clashes with Vietnam in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Zhang had long been regarded as Xi’s closest military ally and was responsible for overseeing weapons development and the defence industry.

Although China has not fought a major war in decades, it has adopted an increasingly assertive posture in contested areas, including the East China Sea, the South China Sea and around Taiwan. Late last year, the PLA staged its largest-ever military drills around the island, which Beijing regards as part of China.

Most countries, including the Philippines and its main ally the US, do not recognise Taiwan as independent, but Washington opposes any move to take the island by force and is committed to supplying it with arms to defend itself.

The nature of the drill warning drew sharp criticism from the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, a Beijing-linked think tank, which posted what it believed to be a screenshot of the coordinates of the exercise on social media.

It said: “If it is true, this zone is large, lasts for a long period, and has a wide impact, seriously threatening the navigation and overflight rights of neighbouring countries and undermining the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all countries under international law.”

New collision of Chinese-Philippine ships in South China Sea

The screenshot could not be independently verified.

Scarborough Shoal has long been one of the main flashpoints in the long-standing territorial dispute between China and the Philippines.

Last year, China approved the establishment of a nature reserve there – a move widely seen as an attempt to reinforce its sovereignty claims – and published a map outlining the precise nature of its claim.

In September, vessels from the two countries were involved in a collision near the shoal, which China said was caused by a Philippine ship deliberately ramming a coastguard vessel.

Earlier this month, Chinese coastguards rescued 17 Filipino crew members after a Singapore-flagged cargo ship capsized near the shoal, in an incident in which at least two sailors died.

The Philippine military has defended this week’s joint exercise, saying it had helped improve mutual understanding with the US and had contributed to the maintenance of a rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific.

Meanwhile, diplomatic engagement between the two sides is continuing amid these ongoing tensions, with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reporting that diplomats had met in the Philippines on Thursday to discuss maritime issues.

South China Morning Post

11. China & Taiwan Update, January 30, 2026

China & Taiwan Update, January 30, 2026

January 30, 2026

https://understandingwar.org/research/china-taiwan/china-taiwan-update-january-30-2026/

January 30, 2026

Data Cutoff: January 30, 2026

Daniel Shats, Matthew Sperzel, Alison O’Neil, Karina Wugang, Jackson Karas, and Alfred Han of the Institute for the Study of War;

Alexis Turek, Yeji Chung, Luke Jacobus, and Alex Chou of the American Enterprise Institute

TOPLINES

CCP General Security Xi Jinping has expanded his military purges to include two of the most senior PLA officers. Xi may have purged them because he saw them as undermining his leadership and military objectives. The continued purges have reduced the Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2023 from seven members to two members, including Xi, transforming the body into an extension of Xi’s will rather than a major military decision-making forum. The CMC purges consolidate Xi’s control over the military but risk isolating him or surrounding him with sycophants, which in turn risks military miscalculations.

The 2026 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) emphasized the need to bolster US and partner military strength in the Indo-Pacific but deemphasized competition with the PRC relative to previous NDS iterations. The PRC could perceive that framing as reflecting an opportunity to further assert its own regional influence. The Pentagon released the 2026 NDS on January 23. The strategy prioritizes threats to the US homeland and in the Western Hemisphere over threats posed by the PRC or other US adversaries. The NDS did not mention Taiwan—unlike the 2022 NDS—which focused on strategic competition with the PRC and framed its aggressive behavior toward Taiwan as a central challenge to US national security.

The 2026 NDS acknowledged growing PRC military power and the United States’ economic interest in preventing PRC dominance of the Indo-Pacific. The NDS characterized US strategy toward the PRC as not being “unnecessarily confrontational.” The NDS focused on achieving US and partner defenses through burden-sharing, strengthening partner defense capabilities, and increasing partner responsibility for regional security in order to fortify the first island chain.

READ THE FULL UPDATE

KEY TAKEAWAYS

PLA purges: CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has expanded his military purges to include two of the senior most PLA officers. The purges risk isolating Xi while further consolidating his control and influence.

US policy: The 2026 US NDS emphasized the need to bolster US and partner military strength in the Indo-Pacific but deemphasized competition with the PRC relative to previous NDS iterations.

12. Politicians Are Calling the Protests in Minnesota an Insurgency

Summary:

The article warns that calling U.S. unrest an “insurgency” imports war language into domestic politics and can legitimize violence. After federal immigration agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Graham Platner, a Democratic Senate candidate and Marine veteran, urged nonviolent community “watch groups,” “rapid response teams,” and “intelligence collection networks” to track immigration agents, comparing tactics to civilian warning systems in Syria and Ukraine. Republicans and some commentators labeled such activity “insurrection,” “communist insurrection,” or a “color revolution,” and some urged using the military. Experts argue the label distorts reality because insurgents use violence to overthrow government, and negotiation is how many insurgencies end. The piece also notes ICE’s militarized appearance, mask use, and POTUS’s oscillation between de-escalation talk and inflammatory labels.

Comment: War language? Insurgency? Politics. Politics. Politics. Understand the politics.

Below is a short paper I wrote in CGSC in 1995 because someone asked about insurgency and it was not taught as part of the basic curriculum. (at the time I wrote this Larry Cable had not had his academic credentials challenged).

Also here are my feelings on how we have turned to hate our fellow Americans. The members of the CRInK have to be loving this. They cannot conduct subversion of American society better than Americans.

America’s Attack on the Enemy Within: Victory for the Dark Quad’s Political Warfare Strategy

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/08/americas-attack-on-the-enemy/

Politicians Are Calling the Protests in Minnesota an Insurgency

NY Times · Thomas Gibbons-Neff · January 31, 2026

By Greg Jaffe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Jan. 31, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

The term, used to describe war, poses dangers when applied to American political unrest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/us/politics/minnesota-protests-insurgency.html

Protesters demonstrating against ICE agents in Minneapolis on Friday. Republicans and Trump administration officials have described slain protesters as insurgents or “domestic terrorists.”Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The day after federal immigration agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine spoke with his supporters about resisting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Graham Platner, a Democrat and Marine combat veteran, urged them to join “watch groups,” “rapid response teams” and “intelligence collection networks” to alert citizens and potential targets to the presence of federal immigration agents in their communities.

“Don’t just join a Signal thread and monitor it,” Mr. Platner told the audience in the coastal town of Kittery, referring to the encrypted texting app. “You’ve got to get in a room with people. You’ve got to develop relationships and trust.”

Mr. Platner was talking about a form of nonviolent resistance that employs methods common in war zones like Syria and Ukraine, where civilians built text chains to track and seek shelter from enemy attack drones and fighter jets.

Increasingly, though, Republicans have described the measures he was highlighting as something else: an American insurgency.

“The issue is always revolution, right? That’s what these people want,” Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona and a former Navy SEAL, told the right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday. “They want to fundamentally remake and tear down the institutions and the culture of this country.”

To Mr. Crane, the resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere added up to “communist insurrection,” and he argued that President Trump should use the U.S. military to reimpose order.

On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson, the right-wing commentator, struck a similar tone. “What you’re watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority,” he said, referring to the protests in Minneapolis.

Such language, reminiscent of overseas battlefields in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, has become a growing staple of American politics, especially among Republicans and Trump administration officials, who have described slain protesters as insurgents or “domestic terrorists.”

A danger, experts on such wars said, is that the martial rhetoric antagonizes protesters, cuts off the possibilities for civil debate and lowers the bar for violence on both sides.

“When you start using the language of warfare and treating someone that has an opposing view as a terrorist or as an insurgent, that legitimizes the use of violence against them,” said Seth G. Jones, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such terms, Mr. Jones added, grossly distorted the situation. The protesters in places like Minneapolis and Maine are standing watch in the cold, sending out alerts on text chats and blowing whistles when they see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Insurgents use violence to overthrow a government and replace it.

“We’re nowhere near any of that,” Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Platner pointed to the government’s heavy-handed approach, captured in videos showing older women “getting thrown to the ground” by ICE agents for recording videos or protesting. Such brutality, he said in an interview with The New York Times, could easily be described as “using the language of militarism.”

“It’s literally what federal agencies are doing in our communities,” he said.

Graham Platner speaking at a rally against ICE in front of Senator Susan Collins’s office in Portland, Maine, on Thursday.Credit...Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald, via Associated Press

The parallels to war zones extend beyond rhetoric and are reflected in the federal immigration officers’ appearance and aggressive posture on patrols. ICE agents frequently deploy clad in helmets, camouflage and tactical gear that call to mind U.S. soldiers fighting in overseas wars. Many wear masks, which immigration officials say are needed to protect them and their families from retribution.

To Emma Sky, who spent years in Iraq advising U.S. military commanders, the masks evoke the state-sponsored sectarian militias that were often sent out by Iraqi strongmen to terrorize civilians. “It is in dictatorships and authoritarian systems that opposition movements are routinely described as terrorists or insurgents, which signals that violence is the appropriate response,” said Ms. Sky, a lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Those who label protesters as insurgents or domestic terrorists and suggest that they must be put down using force or arrest ignore the fact that most insurgencies are resolved through negotiation.

“My challenge to those on the right who have chosen to label what’s happening as an insurgency would be to ask how insurgencies often end, which is usually some of kind of political compromise,” said Andrew Exum, a former Army officer and senior Pentagon official.

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “de-escalate” the situation in Minneapolis. He has not specified what tactics federal immigration agents might change after the fatal shootings of Mr. Pretti and another protester, Renee Good. But he replaced Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official whose harsh tactics drew the ire of state and local officials, with Tom Homan, the White House border czar.

By Friday, Mr. Trump was back to calling Mr. Pretti an “agitator” and possibly an “insurrectionist,” using the inflammatory language that characterized his administration’s initial response to the protests.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz also turned to the language of war and insurgency to describe the events in his state. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Mr. Walz mused this week to The Atlantic, referring to the opening shots of the Civil War.

“It’s a physical assault,” he said. “It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.”

Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a national correspondent for The Times, covering gun culture and policy.

See more on: Donald Trump

NY Times · Thomas Gibbons-Neff · January 31, 2026

MAJ David S. Maxwell

28 MAR 95

SUBJECT: Notes on Insurgency

1. Insurgency: An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. (JCS Definition)

a. It is an armed expression of internal and organic (regardless of external support) political disaffiliation. May be offensive (revolutionary war) or defensive (separatist or autonomous movements). (Dr. Larry Cable)

b. A protracted political-military struggle designed to weaken government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control and legitimacy (FM 31-20 Special Forces Operations)

c. Each insurgency has its own unique characteristics based on strategic objectives, its operational environment, and available resources (FM 31-20)

(1) Revolutionary insurgencies seek to overthrow existing social order and reallocate power within the country.

(2) Other insurgencies seek to:

· Overthrow an established government without a follow-on social revolution.

· Establish autonomous national territory within the borders of a state

· Cause a withdrawal of an occupying power

· Extract political concessions that are unobtainable through less violent means

2. The three phases of an insurgency (Mao’s Protracted War) (FM 100-20 and FM 31-20, 1990)

a. Phase I: Latent or Incipient Phase. Resistance leadership develops the resistance movement into an effective clandestine organization. Prepares the population psychologically to resist subversion – propaganda, demonstrations, boycotts, and sabotage) There is no major outbreak of armed violence. Shadow government may be established. Tasks include:

(1) Recruit, organize, and train cadres.

(2) Infiltrate key government organizations and civil groups.

(3) establish cellular intelligence, operational, and support networks

(4) Organize or develop cooperative relationships with legitimate political action groups, youth groups, trade unions, and other front organizations to develop popular support for later political and military activities.

(5) Solicit and otherwise obtain funds (rob banks, embezzle, outside donations)

(6) Develop sources of external support.

b. Phase II: Guerrilla Warfare. Initiation of low-level violence – sabotage, terrorism, propaganda, mobilize masses, create base areas for low-level guerrilla action, proclaim counter-government, expand attacks, expand political activity, enlarge forces, enlarge and link base areas.

c. Phase III: War of movement of mobile warfare. Transition from guerrilla to conventional operations (guerrilla warfare will/can continue). If successful brings the collapse of the established government or the withdrawal of the occupying power. Without direct intervention the Phase III insurgency takes on the characteristics of a civil war. Establish a national government, consolidate military political front allies; consolidate military-political dominance; neutralize/eliminate former political elite. The insurgent government becomes responsible for the population.

3. Resistance organizations.

a. Guerrilla force. Overt military or para-military arm of the resistance organization.

b. Underground. A cellular organization that conducts clandestine subversion, sabotage, evasion and escape, and intelligence collection activities.

c. Auxiliary. The clandestine support element of the guerrilla force. It is cellular like the underground. Tasks include:

(1) Security and early warning

(2) Intelligence collection

(3) Counterintelligence

(4) Recruitment of new personnel

(5) Air or maritime reception support

(6) Communications

(7) Psychological operations

(8) Populace and resource control

(9) Support evasion and escape mechanisms

(10) Internal logistic and medical support

(11) Fund raising

Note: Classical unconventional warfare doctrine distinguishes between a guerrilla force and an underground. There may be no distinction between a guerrilla forces and an underground, especially in an urban insurgency.

4. Seven Phases of a US sponsored insurgency.

a. Phase I. Psychological Preparation

b. Phase II. Initial Contact

c. Phase III. Infiltration.

d. Phase IV. Organization.

e. Phase V. Buildup.

f. Phase VI. Combat Employment

g. Phase VII. Demobilization.

5. Some additional notes on insurgency for consideration.

a. Consider that there are generally four “elements” that may be involved in the insurgency:

(1) The insurgent (and his external support)

(2) The population

(3) The counter-insurgent (the existing government or occupying power)

(4) External support to the host nation (e.g., the US supporting the host nation executing a foreign internal defense mission: “Participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.” (JCS Pub 1-02) (FM 31-20, 1990)

b. Key to understanding insurgency is that it is a political problem first and foremost which has implications for the military. However, an insurgency will ultimately be successful if the underlying political and socio-economic causes are not addressed,

c. The insurgent, the counter-insurgent, and the peace keeper/enforcer have only two fundamental tools to work with to accomplish their goals:

(1) The enhancement of popular perceptions of legitimacy.

(2) The credible capability to coerce

d. Success or failure is determined by each sides understanding, application, and the mixture of these tools (which is determined by the political leadership NOT the military leadership)

e. Remember that no armed political disturbances begin without significant lead times.

f. When is the US military committed to counter-insurgency? Usually during the guerilla warfare or, at worst, the war of movement phase. Guess what? The war is already lost especially if a thorough Phase I has been conducted. It is generally too late for the established government to initiate the political reforms necessary to defeat the insurgency. Therefore, the US military ends up conducting a military operation to counter a political problem which just adds strength to the perceived legitimacy of the insurgency. The signs of a latent insurgency are too often overlooked and unrecognized.

g. Some fundamental considerations needed for the mindset of dealing with insurgencies.

(1) Encourage improvisation by subordinates (can lead to valuable tactics and techniques; i.e., SF CIDG program in Vietnam or the USMC Combined or Civic Action Platoons (CAP in Vietnam).

(2) Orient on the “human terrain”. Think in terms of cultural historical, and psychological terms.

(3) The killing (military operation) is clearly subordinate to the psychological and political.

(4) Replace “shoot, move, and communicate: with “presence, patience and persistence.” Someday, if you are successful, the mission will disappear, like a river flowing into a swamp. (Dr. Larry Cable)

13. The Limits of the China–Russia Strategic Partnership in Military Space Cooperation

Summary:

China and Russia present their space relationship as a stabilizing strategic partnership against U.S. pressure, but the article argues military space cooperation stays selective because the stakes are high and trust is thin. It highlights visible cooperation like the International Lunar Research Station and efforts to improve interoperability between BeiDou and GLONASS, plus diplomatic alignment on space security and strategic stability. It also notes occasional deeper military-technical cooperation, including Russian help on ballistic missile early warning. Limits persist due to capability gaps, sanctions exposure, divergent priorities, bureaucratic and industrial competition, and fear of espionage, technology leakage, or operational dependence in the most sensitive areas.

The Limits of the China–Russia Strategic Partnership in Military Space Cooperation

by Tahir Azad

01.30.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/30/the-limits-of-space-cooperation/

China and Russia are increasingly portraying their relationship as a stabilizing “strategic partnership”, defined by mutual resistance to US hegemony, and what both characterize as Western-led containment. This alignment is especially appealing in space because it is both symbolic and strategic, and it can be used for both military and civilian purposes. For example, satellites support precision strikes, intelligence, communications, missile warnings, and the resilience of command-and-control. They are also allowing civilians to navigate, monitor disasters, and provide commercial services. The official language stresses working together for a long time on lunar and deep-space exploration and getting China’s BeiDou and Russia’s GLONASS navigation systems to work better together. However, the same things that make space cooperation useful also make it risky. Military space capabilities are an important part of national security. They make countries more vulnerable to spying, technology leaks, operational dependence, and strategic weakness. So, China and Russia still work together a lot in military space, but only in certain areas. This is because of ongoing problems like differences in capacity and sanctions exposure, different strategic priorities, competition between bureaucracies and industries, and a long-standing lack of trust over the most sensitive technologies and operational concepts.

What Cooperation Looks Like in Practice

The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) is the most visible space project of the partnership. It was officially started in 2021 with a memorandum between the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Russia’s State Corporation for Space Activities “Roscosmos”. The ILRS is shown as scientific and open to participation from other countries, but it also has strategic signaling value as a non-US-led framework that is similar to US-linked coalitions around Artemis. Satellite navigation and timing are the second pillar. BeiDou and GLONASS offer precise navigation and timing services that are clearly useful for defense. Analysts say that there are more and more efforts to improve compatibility and performance through ground infrastructure and cooperation agreements. These can make systems more accurate and reliable. Third, there are times when people work together and talk about space security and strategic stability. A joint statement from China and Russia in 2025 about global strategic stability shows that both countries believe that US missile defense, “space militarization”, and high-precision conventional strikes make the world less stable. This is often why both countries focus on counterspace options and resilience. Lastly, there are sometimes public mentions of more in-depth military-technical cooperation. For instance, reporting has brought attention to Russian statements that encourage closer cooperation on military satellites and other high-tech areas. One example is Russia’s earlier help to China with its ballistic missile early-warning systems, which is a strategically important area that can help us understand both cooperation and its limits.

Western Assessments Emphasize Selective Sharing and Risk Management

Many analysts in the West think that China and Russia work together in space, but only to a certain extent. One constant judgement is that both sides are looking for practical benefits, like navigation redundancy, joint science missions, and diplomatic coordination, while limiting their exposure in the most sensitive military areas where dependence or leaks could be very expensive. A comprehensive study by the US Air University and the Chinese Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) characterizes cooperation as a strategy to enhance influence and provide an alternative institutional route to US-supported norms. Simultaneously, it acknowledges that practical limitations and political prudence influence results. A second worry in the West is that the partnership could make strategic risk worse, even if there are no formal “alliance” commitments. Think tanks and policy analysts say that working together on space governance and dual-use technologies could indirectly make the military stronger by making it easier to understand the situation, navigate accurately, and operate in areas where there is a lot of competition.

At the same time, Western commentary often points out problems that make full integration harder. After 2022, Russia is relying on China more because of sanctions and the needs of war. This gives China more power in negotiations, while Russia becomes a more politically dangerous partner for China’s commercial space goals. This imbalance makes Moscow want to work together, but it also makes it want to protect its most important technologies. It also makes Beijing want to avoid making open-ended promises that could lead to secondary sanctions or damage its reputation.

Chinese Perspectives Emphasize Sovereignty, Multipolarity, and Regime Security

The official language of China often talks about space cooperation in terms of sovereignty, peaceful development, and opposition to “hegemony”, while also stressing autonomy in important technologies. The story of the ILRS is told in a way that makes it seem open and cooperative, but it also shows how China is becoming a leader in deep-space exploration and setting standards.

In Chinese strategic thought, space is becoming more and more important for “informatized” and “intelligentized” warfare, where strong networks, remote sensing, and positioning services give you a big edge. Working with Russia can be helpful, but China still values independence, redundancy, and variety more. That logic naturally sets limits: Beijing probably would not want to rely on Russian systems for operations, and it will protect technologies that are important for its own military modernization and business competitiveness.

There is also a political side to this: China wants to look like a responsible space power. Things that upset people around the world, like anti-satellite (ASAT) tests that make debris, can make it harder for China to get its diplomatic message across. This does not mean that Beijing does not want counterspace capabilities; it just wants to control how things look and limit its exposure to bad publicity. This can make it harder for China to openly support Russia’s more aggressive actions in space.

Russian Perspectives Emphasize Strategic Stability and Asymmetric Leverage

For a long time, Russian strategic discourse has linked space systems to strategic stability. This is because satellites make it possible to do precision strikes, missile defense cueing, and command-and-control. From this perspective, counterspace capabilities can be characterized as an “asymmetric” reaction to perceived US aerospace superiority. Arms control reporting illustrates this reasoning by highlighting how Russian military leaders and analysts rationalize counterspace tools as stabilizing within their preferred narrative.

Russia also has practical reasons that make sense. It still has a lot of engineering know-how and niche skills, but budget problems, sanctions, and problems in the industrial sector have made Moscow look for partners who can help it with big projects and keep its status. The ILRS and recent news about Russia’s plan for a lunar power system linked to the joint program show that Russia is interested in staying relevant in a field where China is becoming the leader. Still, Russian strategic culture also has a warning instinct: being too dependent can be risky. China is becoming a stronger partner in many industries that are important for space. Russia has reasons to work with China, but it also has reasons to limit the transfer of technology that could help China become more powerful in the long run, or make it harder for Russia to act on its own.

Where the Limits are Most Visible

The “ceiling” on cooperation is most clear in four areas:

First, it’s unlikely that all of the most sensitive military space architectures, like those linked to strategic nuclear forces, will be shared. Early warning, secure communications, and specific space situational awareness capabilities are critical and require a lot of intelligence. Even if there is cooperation (as suggested by reports of Russian help with early warning), it is probably set up to keep both sides from getting too close and keep control of their own territory.
Second, the rules and behavior in counterspace cause problems with reputation and operations. The direct-ascent ASAT test that Russia did in 2021 made a lot of debris and got a lot of bad press. Analysts reported that debris hazards do not discriminate; they can also threaten other space actors, like China, and make it harder for Beijing to project an image of being a “responsible power”.
Third, sanctions and dual-use export controls put limits on how things can be done. Russia’s limited access to advanced parts and supply chains for launching pushes it towards China. However, this also makes it riskier for Chinese companies and institutions that are exposed to Western markets and finance. These dynamics foster low-visibility, meticulously defined collaboration instead of expansive, transparent amalgamation.
Fourth, different strategic geographies are important. Russia’s main military focus is still Europe and the countries nearby, while China’s focus for planning and contingencies is still maritime Asia and the Western Pacific.

Working together in space can be good for both sides, but different operational priorities make interoperability requirements less strict. For instance, both value navigation and ISR resilience, but the architectures that work best in the Arctic and Europe may not work as well in the Indo-Pacific. This makes it less appealing to do deep operational fusion.

The Paradox of “All-Weather” Partnership in Space

Politically, China and Russia can be “all-weather friends”, but when it comes to technology, they can only be partial partners. The partnership is based more on a shared sense of threat than on shared values, especially when it comes to the US and its allies. This gives long-lasting reasons for countries to work together diplomatically and on projects that show that there are more than two poles of power.

However, it is very hard to build trust in military space cooperation. Both sides are smart intelligence players who know that a partner today could be a competitor tomorrow, especially in high-tech fields. China’s rise has also made things awkward: it needs Russia less and less as time goes on, but Russia needs China more and more because of sanctions. Instead of the smooth integration that alliance rhetoric suggests, that gap can cause anger, caution, and bargaining behavior.

Outlook

In the medium term, China and Russia are likely to work together more on military space projects that have a lot of benefits and manageable risks. These include lunar and deep-space projects that send strategic signals, navigation interoperability and ground infrastructure, and involve working together in international forums on space governance. The hard limits will still be around strategic nuclear enablers, the most sensitive counterspace capabilities, and any deals that make a state dependent on others for operations. The partnership will therefore remain best understood as selective integration under pressure: strong enough to complicate Western planning and to provide each side with diplomatic leverage but constrained by enduring mistrust, asymmetric dependence, and the unforgiving logic of space as a military high ground.

Tags: China-Russia Relations, Space, Space Domain

About The Author

Tahir Azad
Dr. Tahir Mahmood Azad is currently a research scholar at the Department of Politics & International Relations, the University of Reading, UK. He previously served as an Affiliate Researcher at King’s College London and held fellowships at Sandia National Laboratories (USA), the University of Bristol, the University of Georgia USA, the Graduate Institute Geneva, ISDP Stockholm, and PRIF Germany. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leicester and holds a PhD in Strategic & Nuclear Studies from National Defence University (NDU), Pakistan. Azad also worked as a Research Fellow and Programme Coordinator at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), Pakistan. His research focuses on nuclear politics, missile proliferation, China’s military modernisation, politics & security in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East regions, and South Asian strategic affairs.

14. The meaning of Xi’s military purge

Summary:

Dennis Wilder argues Xi Jinping’s purge of top general Zhang Youxia is not proof of Xi’s omnipotence but a sign of stress inside the party–army relationship. It says Xi’s long paranoia about U.S. covert influence shapes his reactions, yet the deeper driver is structural tension between the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA, with historical precedents under Mao Zedong and Hu Jintao. The author suggests Xi may have feared Zhang’s growing power after moves within the Central Military Commission, including the removal of two generals Xi had elevated. Charges that Zhang damaged the “chairman responsibility system” imply a challenge to Xi’s control, raising elite doubts about Xi’s judgment and succession.

Comment: If Zhang’s “real crime” was becoming too powerful, what does that imply about the reliability of Xi’s command system (or control and command system that really describes actually C2 in dictatorships) when the regime faces decisions on Taiwan?

The meaning of Xi’s military purge

Financial Times · Dennis Wilder

Relations between Chinese Communist leaders and the army have always been fraught

Dennis Wilder

https://www.ft.com/content/1e722210-d6c6-4972-a60c-92d460059fa8

The writer is a professor at Georgetown and Texas A&M universities and was Special Assistant to the President and senior director for east Asia at the National Security Council (2005-2009)

Since Xi Jinping became president of the People’s Republic of China in 2013, many analysts have convinced themselves that he is omnipotent, his power and authority unchallenged.

For such observers, the purging of China’s military leadership, including top general Zhang Youxia last weekend, among others, was simply another example of Xi clearing out the dead wood, rooting out the corrupt or underperformers in the upper echelons of the People’s Liberation Army. However, recent events show that this assessment is dangerously wrong.

First, it ignores the longtime paranoia of Xi, who claims to have discerned the evil hand of the American CIA behind every episode of domestic unrest from the Tiananmen Square student movement of 1989 to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong or Uyghur unrest. This time around, there may in fact be good reason for Xi to feel paranoid, as party leaders question his judgment in removing Zhang.

Second, and more significantly, the assessment ignores the inevitable tensions between the first and second most powerful institutions in the Chinese communist system: the party and the army.

The fact is that every civilian leader since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 has had an uneasy relationship with the PLA, even Mao Zedong. History is littered with instances in which the army has questioned the wisdom of the civilian leadership. In 1958, for example, Peng Dehuai, the commander of PLA forces in the Korean war, questioned the wisdom of Mao’s economic Great Leap Forward. He cited letters from his soldiers saying that their families were dying of starvation. Only a military man would have presumed to question the party leader so openly. But that was no protection against Mao’s wrath: Peng was purged.

In a less dramatic but equally telling fashion, in January 2011 the PLA apparently showed its displeasure with how then president and party general secretary Hu Jintao was handling US-China relations during a visit to Beijing by then American defence secretary Robert Gates. As Gates tells it, the PLA, in a remarkable flexing of its muscles, rolled out for the first time its new J-20 fighter, just hours before the American was due to meet Hu. One of Gates’ aides told him: “This is about as big a ‘fuck you’ as you can get.” Hu was embarrassed and the only man in the room who knew of the test was the Chinese military representative.

There is no evidence that General Zhang ever defied Xi. Nor has there been any hint of disagreement between the two men. Indeed, Xi promoted Zhang to the Central Military Commission and has relied on him to run the PLA — until now.

So, what happened? It seems likely that Xi was alarmed when, last summer, Zhang was able to purge the CMC of two generals whom Xi had personally installed at the top of the military command structure. He Weidong and Miao Hua were military commanders on the Taiwan front when Xi was a party leader in that same region.

We may never know what caused Zhang to trigger their removal or indeed if Xi, at the time, acquiesced. There is some speculation that they were arguing for a more aggressive military approach to dealing with Taiwan. Some Chinese sources believe Zhang, as an old soldier experienced in combat on the Vietnamese border, did not believe that the PLA was ready to change its approach. It could also be that the younger generals simply had different ideas about military modernisation and policy.

But it seems clear that Xi became concerned about Zhang’s accumulation of unchecked power after eliminating his rivals on the CMC. The charges levelled at Zhang include the allegation that he “severely trampled on and damaged the chairman responsibility system”, an obvious allusion to Xi’s position as the commander-in-chief of the PLA.

Xi might have wondered whether he might be Zhang’s next target or that Zhang might try to prevent him enjoying a fourth five-year term as leader. As a member of the politburo, as well as the top uniformed officer, Zhang could conceivably have worked over the next year with other members of the politburo and retired party elders to do so.

More ominously, it is also possible that Zhang had voiced opposition to Xi’s drive to prepare the military for combat in the Taiwan Strait by 2027.

Whatever the truth, there is a risk that Zhang’s downfall triggers concern among the party elite about Xi’s judgment and leadership. They could, for example, press him to name a successor — something he has been loath to do thus far — or seek power-sharing arrangements that allow younger leaders to come to the fore.

Since 2013, Xi has ruled China with an iron hand. But taking out Zhang may have been authoritarian over-reach.

One thing is certain: Zhang’s real crime was not corruption or incompetent leadership. It was that he became too powerful for Xi to bear.

Financial Times · Dennis Wilder

15. Leading the Digital Fight: How the Navy’s IW Community Must Innovate to Win

Summary:

The article argues the U.S. Navy’s Information Warfare community must innovate because resources and AI spending alone will not fix outdated workflows. It says IW now underpins modern operations, yet afloat and fleet staffs still waste time on manual PowerPoints, slow RFI searches, and siloed databases that block rapid fusion. It highlights “deckplate” innovation such as ad hoc Chief Data Officer roles at Maritime Operations Centers and Carrier Strike Group One’s Data Science at Sea team, which automated routine IW processes and created new awareness tools. The authors call for formalizing digital talent credentials, creating permanent data science teams, reforming the Information Warfare Commander construct through new Information Warfare Squadrons, and deploying LLMs on classified networks with disciplined data curation.

Leading the Digital Fight: How the Navy’s IW Community Must Innovate to Win | Center for International Maritime Security

cimsec.org · Guest Author

https://cimsec.org/leading-the-digital-fight-how-the-navys-iw-community-must-innovate-to-win/

By Shane Halton and Adam Reiffen

“When companies spend millions of dollars on new information technologies but don’t change anything else, there are usually barely detectable productivity improvements. In contrast, when they also invest similar amounts in business process changes and in worker training, productivity can double or more.”-The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

In the last year, Israel disabled all of Iran and Hezbollah’s senior military leadership at a stroke with a series of audacious precision strikes. Ukraine launched hundreds of small drones against Russia’s strategic air assets from clandestine launch locations deep inside Russian territory. Though the weaponry and tactics employed in these strikes varied wildly from explosive pagers to first person view (FPV) drones, one common thread tied these operations together – innovation in the realm of Information Warfare (IW). From the Levant to the Black Sea, the crucial role played by IW (hereafter used collectively to refer to the intelligence, cryptology, information technology, meteorology/oceanography, cyber, and space communities) has never been more impactful to warfighting than it is today.

The US Navy has adjusted accordingly to this changing character of war. In 2024, the Navy moved Information Warfare (IW) out of the Restricted Line officer category and into a newly minted Information Warfare Line (IWL) category, which serves to both acknowledge IW’s growing impact on operations and to open additional opportunities for leadership across the Fleet. This elevation offers the IW community an excellent chance to step back, assess its tactical strengths and weaknesses, and innovate where needed.

If called upon today, could the Navy’s IW community deliver the same level of support to operations that the IDF and Ukrainian military receive from their respective military intelligence communities today? Surely it has the resources. The IW community has a workforce in the tens of thousands and close working ties with the national intelligence community. The DoW is making huge capital investments in AI solutions that should positively impact IW workflows. With all these resources available, is innovation even necessary?

The answer is yes. Despite being well-stocked with talented personnel and appropriated funds, the Navy IW community aboard Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs), Amphibious Readiness Groups (ARGs), and at fleet-level Maritime Operations Centers (MOCs) still operate according to increasingly antiquated and inefficient business practices. Dozens of human analysts spend countless man-hours every day creating and editing PowerPoints. Others spend time using outdated search tools to answer requests for information (RFIs) from senior leadership, watchstanders, and other operators throughout the organization. Compounding these challenges is the structure of the information systems themselves, as critical information remains siloed in disparate databases, thwarting rapid retrieval, analysis, and automated fusion. The net effect of these overlapping issues is that the most data-centric part of the Navy, the Information Warfare Community, is today poorly postured to lead the Navy’s digital transformation and risks failing to effectively adapt to the modern maritime battlespace.

Luckily for the Navy and the country at-large, there are several innovative initiatives underway across the naval IW enterprise that are showing us the way forward. These efforts, coupled with the thoughtful integration of commercially available AI solutions, offer Navy IW a once in a generation opportunity to increase productivity and output for relatively little cost. The solutions can be grouped into three categories: workforce, organizational reform, and technological solutions.

Workforce: Identifying and Cultivating Digital Talent

Walk into any MOC in the Navy and you may find an intelligent, bright-eyed young individual who identifies themselves as the command’s Chief Data Officer, or maybe Chief Technology Officer, or perhaps lead for Artificial Intelligence or Data Science. Press them a little further and they will happily explain to you that they started off at the MOC doing something entirely different but at some point they shared with their leadership that they had a technical background and could do some coding and voila they received a new job, a new set of responsibilities, and a direct line of communication to senior leadership.

The positions of Chief Data Officer, Chief Technology Officer, AI Lead, etc. do not exist on any MOC manning documents. Still, those individuals are today found at every MOC in the Fleet. What is happening? The simplest answer is that the operational leadership at the MOCs realized they needed something that Big Navy was unable or unwilling to provide, then created new positions of their own accord by drawing from their own staffs. Every MOC did this independently, seemingly without coordinating across the Service. This is both an admirable example of deckplate innovation at the MOC-level and a fairly serious indictment of the Navy’s manpower challenges when it comes to manning a modern, digital workforce.

But the need for an innovative solution only highlights a Fleet-wide problem. The Navy lacks the ability to identify, employ, and retain digital talent (hereafter “digital” will refer to data science, data engineering, and artificial intelligence, broadly defined). There is one Navy Additional Qualifying Designator (AQD) for Data Science and it is only granted upon graduation from the Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) Data Science Program. There are no equivalent AQDs for artificial intelligence or other information- and data- related fields of study. The Navy currently has a much better understanding of which Sailors speak Hausa than which can code in Python, C++, or Java.

The easiest way for the Navy to address this issue is to leverage work already done by the DoW. The DoW’s Digital Workforce initiative, started by the DoW Chief Data and Analytics Office (CDAO) in 2022, generated multiple highly readable reports and useful insights for how to develop “digital talent” across the DoW. CDAO already did the hard work by creating language that could easily convert to Navy AQDs and Sub Specialty Codes (SSPs) related to data science, data engineering, software engineering, AI, etc. Once established, these AQDs and SSPs should be called out explicitly in board convening orders and other promotion criteria, making plain to both promoters and promotees that such skills are as much Navy priorities as Operations Research and Financial Management. The IW community can further lead in workforce development by serving as the community sponsor for innovative graduate certificate programs and “stackable” degrees delivered asymmetrically, including the recently-launched Master of Applied Computing program at NPS.

The AQD/SSP approach has the advantage of increasing the Navy’s oversight of who has which digital skills without unduly disturbing existing career paths, and allows detailers, commanders, and other senior leaders to quickly find and fit talent to key roles in the Fleet. Formally recognizing digital qualifications would have positive impacts on URL communities as well. For instance, an E-2D pilot with coding expertise can still be a pilot, but the Navy will also be aware that he or she has coding expertise, allowing that person to fill relevant billets, liaison roles, or collateral duties. Over time, this AQD/SSP approach will allow the formal creation of billets like the MOC Chief Data Officer and ensure that those billets are manned by qualified personnel. We believe the above recommendations are in alignment with the “Talent” section of the DoW’s January 9, 2026 AI guidance.

Organizational Reform Afloat and at the Fleets

In November 2022, Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1), in collaboration with Project Overmatch, established the Navy’s first Data Science at Sea (DS@S) team empowered to use all available intelligence, battlespace, and operational data to address emerging warfare requirements. The DS@S team, cobbled together from volunteers around CSG-1 and its subordinate units, automated routine tasks and found novel ways to analyze, fuse, and visualize battlespace data over two deployments to the Western Pacific and the 2024 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii. This grassroots effort went on to inspire similar efforts through PACFLT and resulted in the generation of a classified TACMEMO from the Navy Information Warfare Development Center (NIWDC) detailing the initiative.1

Over the teams’ nearly three years of operations on CSG-1, it partially or fully automated many IW processes across the Strike Group. The major lesson learned was not that you can do more IW work with fewer people – although this is true – but rather that the DS@S approach creates more bandwidth and time for meaningful human analysis. The DS@S team also developed several novel battlespace awareness and planning tools that are now commonly used by units across the Pacific.2

These teams cannot continue to operate on an ad hoc basis, however, and must be codified, trained, and employed with the same eye towards standardization as at any ESG or MOC across the Fleet. Activating reservists and peeling civilian shipriders away from other tasks has worked well enough to date but is not sustainable over time due to an ever expanding list of operational requirements with ever limited material and personnel resources. To generate consistent decision advantage, build skills over time, and be maximally responsive to the needs of the CSG, ESG, or MOC Commander, data science teams must have a permanent home, dedicated billets, and funding for both training and equipment. In May 2025, the Naval Postgraduate School hosted a summit with a variety of stakeholders to tackle these issues and explore how best to scale the DS@S initiative across the Fleet and “productionalize” the tools that the deployed teams develop.

Until now, the CSG-1 DS@S team has been housed within the Admiral’s staff, but the most natural fit for such a group is within the Information Warfare Commander (IWC) afloat construct. At present, the IWC is the senior member of the IW community embarked with the CSG, but as a member of the Admiral’s staff is without ADCON of any personnel and OPCON of only a select few. The exact nature of the IWC’s roles and responsibilities varies between CSGs based on commander’s discretion. The lack of job standardization and formal authorities (i.e., budget, NJP) for IWCs across the Fleet has hamstrung the role.

There is an effort underway to address the structural weakness of the current IWC construct. In December 2025, Naval Information Forces (NAVIFOR), the TYCOM for IW across the fleet, established two Information Warfare Squadrons or IWRONs. These IWRONs are designed to “addresses the increasing complexity and sophistication of global threats, which actively seek to exploit vulnerabilities from seabed to space.”3 It is critical that these new IWRONs establish DS@S teams as a Department within the command. Should these pilot IWRON initiatives succeed, they should be replicated both ashore at the MOC (as previously discussed) and afloat at the Navy’s Amphibious Readiness Groups (ARGs). In this construct, the DS@S team would have the personnel, budget, hardware, and authorities to operate continuously as a digital innovation hub for the entire CSG. The IWC could even dispatch the team to work with allies and partners, as the CSG-1 DS@S team did with its French counterparts aboard ships within the CHARLES DE GAULLE Strike Group during the PACIFIC STELLER series of exercises in early 2025.4

Technological Transformation: Leveraging AI and Data

First airing in 1966, Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek imagined a future where technology had completely redefined the human experience, allowing us to explore the universe with a fleet of massive spacecraft. One thing that the starship Enterprise did not have was an Intelligence Officer. If someone wanted to know a specific scientific fact, the capabilities of Klingon ships or the location of the nearest spaceport, they asked “Computer.” The US Navy is not quite there yet, but we’re much closer now than ever. In July 2025, the DoW announced it was granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.5 Not all of that money will directly impact Navy priorities, nor will it be immediately available to afloat units, but we are getting very close to the day when almost all classified RFIs can be answered by a Large Language Model (LLM) connected to every SIPR and JWICS on a ship. Secretary Hegseth’s December announcement of GenAi.mil is a welcome step towards realizing this vision.6

The deployment of LLMs on classified datasets across the Fleet is unlikely to lead to the wholesale replacement of IW personnel but will likely change the nature of their work. LLMs on warships will need to be optimized to operate in denied or degraded communications environments, meaning they likely need to be installed and run locally onboard ships. This will improve daily performance by removing the need for an internet connection, but it also means that over the course of a deployment the datasets feeding the LLM will become out of date and questions like “when is the last time Country X’s ship operated here” will go from being accurate and useful to inaccurate and misleading after a few weeks.

This means that the role of deployed IW personnel will be ensuring that the datasets feeding LLMs are accurate and up to date. This includes the tactical data that is collected by the ship during the course of a deployment, whether that is intelligence, METOC, or SIGINT data. As this data management and LLM curation will be a cross-IW enterprise it should become a core function of the nascent IWRON structure discussed above. Some learning and experimentation will be required as the knowledge management practices onboard most ships today do not extend beyond maintaining Sharepoint sites, Collaboration at Sea (CaS) pages, or share drive folders.

Of course ships themselves must also be considered in the execution of this concept, particularly regarding space available for hardware and power output to run LLMs as described. Operating the aforementioned equipment requires specialized–or at least dedicated–compute, which will have to be installed likely in classified spaces already at a premium on smaller classes of warship. Furthermore, both the ship’s Engineering and Information Warfare teams must be engaged to determine what capabilities could be lost or degraded if LLMs are integrated into the ship’s technology stack, including hardware, software, power supply, maintainers, and operators. These conversations and their solutions fall squarely in the wheelhouse of NAVIFOR’s IWRON program, currently being piloted on both the east and west coasts. IW Commodores and their staffs should work directly with both operational and training DESRONs, along with AIRLANT/PAC and CSG staffs, to ensure hardware, software, and manpower training and operational needs are met going into workup and deployment cycles. Integrating these solutions into routine operations as quickly as possible will be key to fully implementing an AI strategy that is set up for success.

Innovation is Necessary to Retain IW’s Warfighting Edge

As McAfee and Brynjolfsson note, investments in both workforce training and improved business practices are more impactful than technological investment alone. The Navy IW community must therefore be proactive in addressing its productivity challenges by taking a round turn on training and innovation. We must organize our forces both afloat and ashore to identify current talent, train new innovators, and ensure they are accounted for throughout their time in uniform. We must prioritize our operational forces both afloat and ashore. This means the IWC must be resourced, staffed, and authorized appropriately to operate afloat, while their MOC counterparts must be similarly taken care of ashore. And we must incentivize our most innovative personnel–the Navy’s greatest strength–to learn, train, fight, and stay Navy.

Taken together, these improvements are critical to the Navy’s future and certainly greater than the sum of their parts. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, after all. The Navy has reorganized itself to adapt to technological change time and again – steel over wood, steam over wind. Now the Navy must absorb, understand, and harness the power of the digital technologies to maintain its warfighting edge.

Lieutenant Commander Shane Halton is an Intelligence Officer currently serving in Washington DC. He previously served as a Requirements Officer at the Navy’s Digital Warfare Office and helped create the Navy’s first Data Science at Sea team aboard CSG-1.

Lieutenant Commander Adam Reiffen is an Intelligence Officer currently serving as a Federal Executive Fellow at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. He previously served as a Requirements Officer at OPNAV N2N6 and was Officer-in-Charge of the Navy’s Data Science at Sea team aboard CSG-1 from 2024-25.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or policy of the U.S. Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government. No federal endorsement is implied or intended.

References

1. Rear Admiral Carlos Sardiello and Lieutenant Commander Shane Halton, U.S. Navy, and Annie Voigt, CNA, “The Case for Data Science at Sea,” CNA In-Depth, June 2024, https://www.cna.org/our-media/indepth/2024/06/the-case-for-data-science-at-sea.

2. Lieutenant Commanders Adam Reiffen and Shane Halton, U.S. Navy, “Lessons Learned in Year One of Data Science at Sea,” Proceedings, May 2024, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/may/lessons-learned-year-one-data-science-sea.

3. Joshua Rodriguez, U.S. Navy, “A Paradigm Shift: Navy Establishes First Information Warfare Squadron, ” navy.mil, Dec 2025, https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/display-news/Article/4353901/a-paradigm-shift-navy-establishes-first-information-warfare-squadron/

4. Ensign Rachael Jones, U.S. Navy, “U.S. and French Host First-Ever Military Hackathon at Sea,” DVIDS, May 2024, https://www.dvidshub.net/news/492989/us-french-host-first-ever-military-hackathon-sea.

5. Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., “Anthropic, Google and xAI win $200M each from Pentagon AI chief for ‘agentic AI’,” Breaking Defense, July 14, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/07/anthropic-google-and-xai-win-200m-each-from-pentagon-ai-chief-for-agentic-ai/

6. C. Todd Lopez, ”Hegseth Introduces Department to New AI Tool,” war.gov, Dec 2025, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4355797/hegseth-introduces-department-to-new-ai-tool/.

Featured Image: GULF OF ALASKA (Aug. 23, 2025) Lt. Michael Zittrauer works on a terminal in the combat information center (CIC) aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) during exercise Northern Edge 2025 (NE25). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Christian Kibler)

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16. Xi’s control of his regime is looking ever more Stalinist

Summary:

The article argues Xi Jinping’s rule is becoming more Stalinist through repeated purges that prize control over competence, especially in the military. It says the investigations of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli have hollowed out the Central Military Commission, leaving little senior field-command expertise and elevating Zhang Shengmin, whose background is political discipline rather than warfighting. It traces earlier removals of senior officers and notes that personal ties, service affiliation, and “red” pedigree no longer protect anyone. The result is fear, mistrust, and a leaderless operational planning node. The author suggests this could drive tactical activism around Taiwan to signal loyalty, but also strategic caution due to weak, untrusted top leadership.

Comment: If “Xi commands the gun” is replacing “the Party commands the gun,” how should analysts reassess crisis stability around Taiwan when incentives favor visible tactical assertiveness but senior operational judgment at the top is thinning?

We used to say that only Kim Il sung could "out Stalin" Stalin. But Xi is giving him a run for his money.

Xi’s control of his regime is looking ever more Stalinist | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · Ying Yu Lin · January 30, 2026

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/xis-control-of-his-regime-is-looking-ever-more-stalinist/

With repeated purges, Xi Jinping increasingly resembles Joseph Stalin in controlling the regime that he leads.

The Chinese Communist Party general secretary and national president shows widespread distrust of lieutenants. Their loyalty to him earlier in their careers seems to count for nothing. Their capacity to do their jobs also seems unimportant to him.

This particularly raises questions about the evolving competence of the armed forces.

With the removal this month of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of four remaining members of the Central Military Commission (one of the other two being the president himself), Xi has even been willing to leave the highest body of the armed forces without adequate expertise.

The first signs of the latest move appeared on 20 January. On that day the CCP convened a provincial- and ministerial-level leadership seminar, a routine but politically significant event often used to signal elite alignment and policy priorities. According to official media coverage, four Politburo members did not attend the opening session: Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, Organization Department Director Shi Taifeng, former Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui and Vice Premier He Lifeng. Only the absence of He Lifeng, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, was explained.

Footage from state broadcaster CCTV further showed that CMC member Liu Zhenli was also absent. While Shi Taifeng later appeared before the conclusion of the seminar, Ma Xingrui had previously missed multiple key meetings, reinforcing speculation about his political standing. Newly appointed CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin and Defence Minister Dong Jun attended the opening ceremony on 20 January, but only Dong Jun appeared at the closing ceremony on 23 January; Zhang Shengmin was notably absent. Liu Zhenli missed both sessions. Within the tightly choreographed environment of CCP elite politics, such attendance patterns rarely escape notice.

And on 24 January the Ministry of National Defence said Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had been formally placed under investigation. The announcement sent shockwaves through political and security circles. This development seems to leave the current CMC without a senior leader possessing substantial field command experience. Although Zhang Shengmin was promoted to vice chairman at the end of last year, his career has been rooted primarily in political work and disciplinary oversight. While this background may enhance internal compliance and organisational discipline, his capacity to supervise complex joint operations and high-intensity warfighting is doubtful.

The investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli suggest that Xi Jinping’s control over the Chinese military has entered a phase of heightened political centralisation. Since assuming power, Xi has overseen the removal of many senior military figures—from Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong during the Hu Jintao era to, Zhang Yang and Fang Fenghui in 2017, and more recently former rocket force commander Wei Fenghe, former defence minister Li Shangfu, and Miao Hua, who previously worked with Xi around the turn of the century, when the president was governor of Fujian.

Taken together, these cases demonstrate that neither service affiliation nor personal proximity to the top leader guarantees protection. The investigation of Zhang Youxia, the son of a founding general of the people’s republic, emphasises that red lineage and revolutionary pedigree no longer confer political immunity.

Rather than relying on stable patron-client relationships that have long been a feature of Chinese politics, Xi appears increasingly willing to exploit factional rivalries within the armed forces, using mutual accusations, internal audits and disciplinary dossiers to neutralise potential centres of influence. This approach strengthens top-down control but risks fostering an atmosphere of fear and mistrust within the officer corps.

The earlier detention of Miao Hua is particularly instructive. Miao’s cross-service experience and postings across multiple military regions, followed by his tenure in charge of the military’s Political Work Department, put him in a position to shape personnel appointments and promotions across the force. Such authority inevitably facilitates the formation of informal networks and factions within the military.

For Xi, the existence of autonomous military factions, regardless of their personal or historical ties to him, is fundamentally unacceptable. Although both He Weidong and Miao Hua had previously worked in positions that intersected with Xi’s own career, the emergence of self-contained power bases within the Chinese military appears to have crossed a political red line. Viewed in this context, the detention of both He Weidong and Zhang Youxia as CMC vice chairmen underscores a broader reality: Xi places no absolute trust in princeling networks or former associates. Political loyalty is constantly subject to re-evaluation.

At present, the CMC effectively consists of Xi and Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin. All other members have been removed or are under investigation. The Joint Staff Department, a critical node for operational planning, joint command and crisis management, appears leaderless. So Xi puts internal political stability above external combat readiness.

Paradoxically, such a political climate may incentivise ambitious officers to demonstrate loyalty through assertive tactical behaviour, as ASPI’s Nathan Attrill has pointed out. This could mean greater frequency and visibility of air and maritime activities around Taiwan, including joint combat readiness patrols, grey-zone manoeuvres and routine exercises designed to signal resolve. However, these actions are likely to remain tightly bounded. The absence of trusted, experienced field commanders at the top may actually discourage large-scale operational innovation or escalation. So the result is more likely to be tactical activism combined with strategic caution—showing strength without incurring excessive political or military risk.

Altogether, Xi’s approach increasingly resembles a Stalinist model of control, characterised by pervasive distrust of senior commanders and officials regardless of their past loyalty or credentials. For the armed forces, his ultimate objective may be a comprehensive purge followed by the promotion of a younger generation of officers, echoing Jiang Zemin’s strategy in the 1990s. By ensuring that no Politburo member possesses an independent military power base, Xi can retain exclusive control over the gun, even if future arrangements change the distribution of formal party or state titles.

Such a trajectory would further transform the long-standing principle that ‘the Party commands the gun’ into a more personalised system in which ‘Xi commands the gun’. This shift risks pushing China’s armed forces back towards something like the old model in which being red was more important than being expert—more specifically meaning that being politically loyal was more important than having professional competence. Whether such a force, despite increasingly advanced hardware, can perform effectively in modern warfare may be doubted. Ultimately, wars are fought not by equipment alone, but by people operating under pressure, uncertainty and imperfect information.

aspistrategist.org.au · Ying Yu Lin · January 30, 2026

17. U.S., Taiwan Establish Joint Command for 2027 Defense

Summary:

Taiwan and the U.S. have reportedly set up a joint operational posture by creating a “Joint Fire Coordination Center” that integrates U.S. reconnaissance target data with Taiwan’s missile strike systems in real time. Taiwanese reporting says the center includes dedicated seats for U.S. personnel and was active during China’s encirclement drills late last year. A digital countdown clock is set to January 1, 2027 as a presumed invasion “D-Day.” The center is meant to fix Taiwan’s weaknesses: limited joint command across services and no indigenous reconnaissance satellites. Taiwan has acquired or built missiles with 700 to 1,000 km range. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said China will pursue unification regardless of global events.

Comment: In the Korean press reporting on a Taiwan report. This is the only report I have seen of this in the media and I asked my research assistant (AI) to scour the net for anything on this and this is the only report it could find. I have checked the White House, Pentagon, and State Department web sites and there is no reporting on.

I think this report would launch Xi into orbit if the headline were true. But the Korean press may be over-sensationalizing this I think as this appears to be jumping to conclusions. But it is likely jumping to conclusions based on the US strategic doctrine being applied to South Korea - CMBLS - "critical but more limited support." (the phrase used 9 times in the NDS) I think we are seeing the beginning of the fears of "Korea passing."

U.S., Taiwan Establish Joint Command for 2027 Defense

Integrated center links U.S. reconnaissance, Taiwan missiles, counts down to January 1, 2027 invasion

By Ryoo Jae-min,

Kim Eun-joong

Published 2026.01.31. 00:45

Updated 2026.01.31. 12:40https://www.chosun.com/english/world-en/2026/01/31/N3UNDZEFNFFD5MTNW4C4LMTAXM/

On the 27th, pilots and ground crew rush toward an F-16 fighter jet during combat readiness training at an air force base in Taoyuan City, Taiwan. The Taiwanese military assumes January 1, 2027, as a potential Chinese invasion date and has reportedly established a joint operations command structure to share U.S. military target information in real time and integrate it with domestic missile systems. /EPA-Yonhap

Taiwan and the U.S. have reportedly established a joint operational posture linking U.S. military reconnaissance assets with Taiwan’s strike systems, assuming an imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Both sides are also observed to be placing weight on the possibility of an invasion occurring in 2027, which marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the end of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s third term. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on the 28th, “The Taiwan issue is a historical task that Xi Jinping has vowed to accomplish. China will pursue unification with Taiwan regardless of what happens in the world,” suggesting that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is being treated as a fait accompli.

Taiwan’s daily United Daily News reported on the 29th, citing military insiders, that the Taiwan military established the ‘Joint Fire Coordination Center’ last year to integrate command and control systems with the U.S. military. It is essentially a joint operational command structure. The center reportedly has multiple dedicated seats for U.S. military personnel. During the period of the Chinese military’s encirclement drills around Taiwan late last year, U.S. personnel were frequently observed entering and exiting the center, conducting joint operations with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense and General Staff Department. The newspaper, citing multiple sources, reported that the center has a digital countdown clock set to ‘January 1, 2027,’ the designated ‘D-Day’ for a Chinese invasion, with the time decreasing by the second.

Graphics by Yang In-sung

The Taiwan military has secured missiles with a range of 700 to 1,000 km capable of reaching major cities on mainland China, such as Shanghai and Nanjing. These were either imported from the U.S. or domestically produced. However, the lack of an integrated control system for the army, navy, and air force made real-time coordination and unified command impossible during wartime. This led to persistent concerns about redundant firepower deployment or missing critical targets due to hesitation. Additionally, Taiwan lacks its own military reconnaissance satellites, making it impossible to obtain strategic target information about the enemy.

The newly established Joint Fire Coordination Center is understood to serve as a control tower that integrates scattered military strike assets under a single ‘integrated command system’ to address these weaknesses. Beyond merely integrating Taiwan’s military forces, the center is analyzed to play a key role in U.S.-Taiwan cooperation by receiving real-time target information from the U.S. military and linking it with Taiwan’s missile systems. The United Daily News stated, “The joint information coordination work between Taiwan and the U.S. means that the U.S. military will provide Taiwan with target information for various long-range missiles through joint operations when necessary. This is the most sincere measure to actualize deterrence capabilities after the U.S. sold a large quantity of missiles to Taiwan.”

On the 29th, Taiwan's first domestically developed defense submarine 'Narwal' (Chinese name: Haijun) conducts its first sea trial in Kaohsiung. /AFP-Yonhap

Unlike South Korea, which has maintained a ‘ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command’ system under the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty for decades, Taiwan had no formal joint operational command structure with the U.S. since the two countries severed diplomatic relations in 1979. While the U.S. has been proactive in selling ‘defensive’ weapons such as fighter jets and missiles, it has been extremely cautious about providing an integrated command system that links these assets with U.S. military resources. The integration of command and control systems would elevate Taiwan’s military to the status of a formal ally, which the U.S. judged could unnecessarily provoke China, emphasizing the ‘One China’ policy. As a result, Taiwan’s military has long maintained a deformed structure with firepower but lacking the ‘eyes’ to see the enemy and the ‘brain’ to make judgments.

The recent shift in the U.S. Department of Defense’s stance is analyzed to stem from the growing recognition that the ‘2027 invasion scenario’ is not merely a hypothesis but an imminent reality. Faced with the rapid military buildup by the Chinese military coinciding with the end of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s third term, the U.S. has judged that Taiwan’s defense is impossible in its current state, leading to a heightened sense of crisis.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly claimed that Xi Jinping will not invade Taiwan until the end of his second term in 2029, frontline assessments view the threat as significantly higher. In 2023, then-Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Bill Burns revealed an intelligence analysis indicating that Xi Jinping had ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for a successful Taiwan invasion by 2027. Secretary of State Rubio’s remarks on the 28th during a Senate hearing, stating that ‘China will inevitably invade Taiwan,’ align with this context. Rubio’s comments came in response to a question about whether the U.S. ousting of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro would justify China’s invasion of Taiwan, emphasizing that Xi Jinping’s resolve to invade Taiwan is so firm that it would not be affected by other international developments.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

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."

Access NSS HERE

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