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Quotes of the Day:
"All oppression creates a state of war."
- Simone de Beauvoir
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
– Robert Louis Stevenson
1. China says it doesn’t interfere. The war next door suggests otherwise.
2. Trump threat of military action in Nigeria prompts confusion and alarm
3. That Time When China’s Leader Joked About Espionage
4. Vietnam Is Building Islands to Challenge China’s Hold on a Vital Waterway
5. Trump Says Xi Will Help Fight Fentanyl. Will China Follow Through?
6. Xi-Trump meeting ‘a historic moment’ that will help avoid missteps, China’s top envoy says
7. Taiwan Concludes Huge New Military Exercise
8. Taiwan Does Not Want China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ – OpEd
9. China tweets satellite photos of Taiwan's critical Hsinchu chip hub in pressure-ratcheting political stunt
10. Hegseth says U.S. is ready to share tools to help allies counter an 'aggressive' China
11. Opinion | A U.S. Troop Exit From Eastern Europe?
12. Opinion | The AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity
13. Ukraine's Sea Baby Drones: A New Maritime Threat
14. No, Recent Drone Sightings are Not Examples of Hybrid Warfare
15. Welcome to the Western Hemisphere
16. Ukraine receives promised Patriot air defense systems from Germany, Zelensky says
17. Attack Helicopters Must Hunt the Hunters
18. Kings, Usurpers, and Shadow Wars: Lessons on Irregular Warfare from Shakespeare
19. The Pacific Islands Challenge
20. The Regime Change Temptation in Venezuela
21. The Fantasy of a New Middle East
1. China says it doesn’t interfere. The war next door suggests otherwise.
Non-interference is a good propaganda line.
I stand by my assessment that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).
Excerpts:
‘By propping up a fragile regime that might otherwise have collapsed, Beijing has effectively extended the life of this civil war,’ said Ye Myo Hein, a Myanmar scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington.
It has paralyzed major Chinese infrastructure investments along a trade corridor stretching from China’s Yunnan province through Myanmar into the Indian Ocean — and it has threatened wider Chinese contingencies to overcome the ‘Malacca Dilemma’... ‘
On the Thailand-Myanmar border, rebel fighters and political exiles express frustration but also resignation about China’s growing role.
“We know at this point, expecting any support, any balancing role from the West is a waste of time,” said Khunsai Jaiyen, an adviser to rebel groups in Shan state. “The only one here is China.”
Summary:
China claims “noninterference” in Myanmar, yet Beijing props up the junta with billions in aid, weapons, and diplomatic backing, prolonging the civil war. It pressures ASEAN to endorse sham elections and suppresses rebel groups threatening Chinese projects. Its meddling fuels anti-China sentiment, regional instability, and questions over Beijing’s expanding influence.
China says it doesn’t interfere. The war next door suggests otherwise.
Washington Post · Rebecca Tan
Beijing’s effort to secure its interests is deepening the political crisis in Myanmar, analysts say.
November 3, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. ESTToday at 5:00 a.m. EST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/30/china-myanmar-civil-war/
In pitching itself as an alternative global leader to the United States, China repeatedly stresses that it practices a “policy of noninterference.” That was the message Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi promoted when he visited neighboring Myanmar in August 2024: Despite the “chaos and conflict” of the country’s civil war, Beijing opposes “any interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs by outside forces,” he said.
Since that visit, however, the nation that has attempted most brazenly to interfere in Myanmar’s affairs is China, according to community activists, rebel leaders and diplomats in Myanmar, as well as conflict analysts and officials in Southeast Asia.
“China’s involvement in Myanmar has been a bit shocking,” said Charles Santiago, a former Malaysian lawmaker who co-chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Parliamentarians for Human Rights. “The clout they’ve been willing to wield is phenomenal.”
Myanmar has been mired in conflict since 2021, when the military seized control from a democratically elected government, sparking a war against pro-democracy revolutionaries and powerful ethnic rebels who now control swaths of the country. The United Nations has described the war as a “catastrophic human rights crisis.”
Beijing’s attempts to shape the conflict according to its interests have only made it more intractable, analysts say.
“By propping up a fragile regime that might otherwise have collapsed, Beijing has effectively extended the life of this civil war,” said Ye Myo Hein, a Myanmar scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington.
From Tibet to Xinjiang, China has becoming increasingly sensitive to instability in its frontier regions. Now, its involvement in Myanmar, Ye Myo Hein said, is shaping up to be among the clearest examples of its ambitions to consolidate power beyond its borders.
China has ramped up support for Myanmar’s military junta and is backing a plan by the junta to hold elections, which the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Myanmar says will be a sham.
Ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) annual meeting this past weekend, officials from the region said Chinese diplomats were pressuring them to follow their lead. A group of leaders from Southeast Asia, including two former foreign ministers, wrote an open letter pleading the regional bloc to resist this call, citing the junta’s record of human rights abuses, which have been documented by groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In an official statement released Sunday, leaders of the group said “the cessation of violence and inclusive political dialogue must precede elections.”
While attending the ASEAN meeting, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres also told reporters “it is obvious that the conditions for fair elections are not there” in Myanmar and that “elections might be part of the problem instead of being part of the solution.”
Neither China’s Foreign Ministry nor its embassy in Myanmar responded to requests for comment.
The effects of the war have been felt on Myanmar’s 1,300-mile-long border with China.
It has fueled crime along the border, Chinese officials and analysts say. It has paralyzed major Chinese infrastructure investments along a trade corridor stretching from China’s Yunnan province through Myanmar into the Indian Ocean.
And it has threatened wider Chinese contingencies to overcome the “Malacca Dilemma” — shorthand for the possibility of a naval blockade cutting off China’s access to the Indian Ocean — analysts say.
“Many, many projects [are] not running anymore, and this isn’t what China wants,” said Yaolong Xian, a doctoral researcher in Frankfurt, Germany, who studies China-Myanmar relations.
According to data from Janes, a defense intelligence firm in Britain, there were at least 166 attacks affecting Chinese investments in Myanmar from January 2024 to March of this year, including several where rebel groups took control over Chinese projects.
In response, China has pledged billions of dollars’ worth of aid to Myanmar’s junta, and Chinese state-owned companies are increasingly helping to arm the military, according to watchdog groups.
Chinese officials have also worked to grant greater legitimacy to Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader who is under sanctions by most of the West and could soon face an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Chinese leader Xi Jinping met publicly with Min Aung Hlaing twice this year, boosting his political credibility to the highest level it’s been since the 2021 coup, analysts say.
Though Beijing has long tried to influence the political situation on the border, its recent efforts suggest it’s extending its sphere of influence beyond the border, said Derek Mitchell, the U.S. ambassador in Myanmar from 2012 to 2016.
“What China wants is to be able to control things, especially in its proximity. The problem,” Mitchell said, “is that Myanmar is uncontrollable by anyone.”
Some of Beijing’s efforts have turned out to be miscalculations; others have backfired by fueling anti-Chinese sentiment, said Jason Tower, an independent analyst formerly at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
A survey by the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, a Thailand-based think tank, last year found public distrust of Beijing was rising across factions. Further evidence came when a bomb was set off at the Chinese Consulate in the central city of Mandalay in October of last year.
Even rebel groups that have traditionally operated with deference to Chinese power are showing “surprising resilience” against Beijing’s demands, Tower said.
In October 2023, an alliance of rebel groups launched a coordinated offensive against Myanmar’s military, successfully capturing dozens of towns and cities, most near the Chinese border.
Analysts initially speculated that China had granted tacit approval for the rebel attack, called Operation 1027, to punish the junta for failing to stamp out scam centers that had victimized Chinese citizens.
But as the offensive stretched into weeks, then months, the rebels gained far more territory than expected. In August 2024 — the same month that Chinese foreign minister Wang visited — they took Lashio, a regional capital near the Chinese border and a major node of trade.
“Never did Beijing imagine this. Never did they think the military would lose Lashio,” said Nan Lwin, head of the China studies program at the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar. “This was a turning point.”
In the following months, China rapidly backpedaled, rekindling its relationship with the junta and supplying it with material and political support that shifted the dynamics of the conflict, analysts say. After months of primarily taking defensive positions, the military began to launch counteroffensives.
On the battlefield, resistance fighters said they began to see more Chinese equipment. The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a watchdog group led by former U.N. officials, released a report in July presenting evidence that a Chinese state-owned enterprise, China South, has been helping Myanmar’s military manufacture aerial bombs.
Along the border, Chinese authorities cut off electricity and imposed trade blockades on rebel-held areas, eventually pressuring one group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, to sign a ceasefire and withdraw troops from Lashio. China’s special envoy to Southeast Asia, Deng Xijun, led a monitoring team to oversee the handover of the city, which analysts said was among the most blatant shows of China’s encroachment.
More recently, the United Wa State Army, a powerful rebel group, said it would no longer provide “weapons, military passage or economic aid” to other organizations fighting the junta because of the threat of “punitive measures” by China.
“The current pressure is already unbearable. It’s the worst survival crisis in 40 years,” the vice chair of the Wa state army, Zhao Guoan, said in a rare public meeting. “We dare not imagine the consequences if China escalates its pressure.”
In Shan state, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), a group previously seen as within China’s orbit, refused for over two years to obey Beijing’s demands to stop fighting. Tar Bone Kyaw, general secretary of the TNLA, in August wrote a rallying cry against what he described as “the hegemony of China that only looks after its own interests.”
Following months of intense military bombardment, however, the TNLA announced this week from the Chinese border province of Yunnan that it would sign a ceasefire.
Some rebels, however, have still remained defiant.
North of the TNLA, a resistance group called the Kachin Independence Army has continued to fight, using its control over massive rare earth mines as leverage against Chinese pressure.
Farther west, a rebel group called the Arakan Army now controls almost all of Rakhine state, including territory surrounding the deep-sea port of Kyaukphyu — a multibillion-dollar Chinese investment that is part of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Chinese officials have sometimes spoken about ethnic rebel groups near the Chinese border as proxies, said a European diplomat in Yangon, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she had not been authorized to discuss the situation. “But they have their own aspirations and their own support base, which differs from what the Chinese want,” she said. “That has become crystal clear.”
The junta’s next push is to legitimize its rule through polls, which will unfold in phases starting in December. But human rights experts — in the U.N., European Union and elsewhere — say elections organized under the military will not be free or fair. Voting will not be possible in parts of the country not under junta control.
“We can’t hold the election everywhere 100 percent,” Min Aung Hlaing admitted on a state broadcast.
Still, a contest will be held — and with the backing of a superpower.
Speaking in October in Naypyidaw, the seat of the junta, Chinese envoy Deng repeated Beijing’s position that an election is needed. China, he added, is prepared to provide “all the necessary material and assistance.”
On the Thailand-Myanmar border, rebel fighters and political exiles express frustration but also resignation about China’s growing role.
“We know at this point, expecting any support, any balancing role from the West is a waste of time,” said Khunsai Jaiyen, an adviser to rebel groups in Shan state. “The only one here is China.”
Cape Diamond in Yangon contributed to this report.
Washington Post · Rebecca Tan
2. Trump threat of military action in Nigeria prompts confusion and alarm
In Asia we talk about the tyranny of distance but at least we have a silk web of alliances, partnerships, and friends that allow us to project power. But the distances in Africa are enormous and we do not have the infrastructure and support that we have in Asia-Indo-Pacific. I feel for the military planners working on Africa problems.
Excerpts:
“If Trump launches a military action, it will trigger a religious and ethnic crisis in Nigeria. He will create more problems than solutions,” said Shehu Sani, a former Nigerian senator and human rights activist.
“Insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) often present their campaigns as anti-Christian, but in practice their violence is indiscriminate and devastates entire communities,” said Ladd Serwat of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
Summary:
Trump’s threat to cut aid and launch military action in Nigeria over alleged Christian killings caused confusion and alarm. Nigerians and analysts said violence affects all groups, not just Christians. Experts warned U.S. intervention could spark religious conflict, worsen instability, and misrepresent Nigeria’s complex security crisis.
Trump threat of military action in Nigeria prompts confusion and alarm
Washington Post · Rachel Chason
Trump also warned of aid cuts over alleged attacks on Christians, though an adviser to Nigeria’s president dismissed the remarks as a negotiating tactic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/11/02/nigeria-trump-military-threat-aid-cuts/
UpdatedNovember 3, 2025
DAKAR, Senegal — Nigerians described a mixture of confusion and fear on Sunday as people across the country tried to decipher President Donald Trump’s threat to stop all aid to Africa’s most populous country and go in “guns-a-blazing” after accusing Nigeria’s government of allowing “the killing of Christians.”
Group chats and social media in the West African nation blew up in the wake of Trump’s comments Saturday, with many Nigerians baffled by Trump’s ire. In a post on Truth Social, Trump singled out the plight of Christians allegedly targeted by violence in Nigeria, and raised the threat of direct military action.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he said. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”
Bwala also said that Nigeria’s government saw Trump’s threats as a negotiating tactic, and added that Nigeria’s government would welcome increased intelligence sharing from the United States.
“The fight against terrorism is a concern for the world — that is our perspective,” he said. “We don’t expect there to be U.S. military action in Nigeria … but we do think the two leaders could come together to reach a common understanding.”
Nigeria is a diverse, multiethnic country of more than 230 million with a population that is roughly split between Muslims and Christians. (Some polls show an almost even split; others put it at closer to 45 percent Christian, 55 percent Muslim.) Analysts say violence in the country has broadly impacted Nigerians, regardless of their religion.
Bouts of violence and insecurity in the country, some spanning years, differ in their specifics by location. Islamist extremist groups including Boko Haram compete for influence in the northernmost states. Bandits increasingly wreak havoc in the northwest. Farmer-herder conflicts affect the central states.
In recent weeks, some U.S. politicians have called for increased attention to the killings of Christians in Nigeria. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accused officials in Nigeria last month of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist Jihadists” in a post on X. He introduced a bill to “target these officials with powerful sanctions and other tools.”
The move, pushed by Cruz, opens the door to punitive sanctions, but does not necessitate their imposition.
The State Department did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.
Shehu Sani, a former Nigerian senator and human rights activist, said that Nigeria’s continued insecurity must be blamed on Nigeria’s government, but that the administration of Tinubu — who was elected in 2023 — has made more efforts than the previous government to eradicate the violence. If Trump launches a military action, Sani added, “it will trigger a religious and ethnic crisis in Nigeria.”
“He will create more problems than solutions,” Sani said.
Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa who has been studying Boko Haram for more than a decade, said his first response was that of disappointment. “As a researcher, I thought: U.S. authorities should sure have more accurate information than relying on a false narrative.”
Samuel said that Christians and Muslims alike have been killed in the ongoing insecurity in the country, and denied that there had been a targeted campaign to kill Christians specifically. In communities in northern Nigeria most affected by violence by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, the vast majority of victims are Muslim because most of the people living in the north are Muslim, he said. The same, Samuel added, holds true for victims of banditry in the northwest. In farmer-herder conflict in central Nigeria, there have been more Christian victims because they tend to dominate farming communities.
Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, said that claims of mass Christian fatalities are not backed up by data.
“Insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) often present their campaigns as anti-Christian, but in practice their violence is indiscriminate and devastates entire communities,” Serwat said in a statement.
Mustapha Alhassan, a security analyst based in Abuja, said that many Nigerians were wondering whether Trump’s threats were retaliation for Nigeria’s government refusing to accept deportees from the U.S., as some other African nations have done.
“The essential question for me is: All of this is to what end?” he said, adding that the significance of a threat of apparent invasion can’t be downplayed and would likely trigger a wave of migration by Nigerians to the United States and Europe that would upset many Trump supporters backing his threats.
Still, for some Nigerians who feel the plight of Christians has long been overlooked, Trump’s announcement brought relief. Ochole Okita, 28, standing outside a church in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Sunday, holding her Bible, said she was excited when she saw Trump’s announcement, and hoped that intervention by the U.S. might stop the violence ravaging farming communities.
“I was excited but with mixed feelings,” Okita said. Though she was glad that someone seemed to care, “it’s still going to affect us. We’re the ones in the grass roots and are going to suffer, especially when the aid is taken.”
Atta Barkindo, a priest and executive director of the Kukah Center, a Nigeria-based policy research institute, said that while there are no deliberate attempts to “kill Christians or deploy state actors to kill Christians,” Trump’s remarks point to a bigger issue: the government’s inability to protect its citizens.
“I think at the end of the day, we have to ultimately engage the Americans,” Barkindo said. “For me, it’s how to defeat these terrorist activities. For 15 years, they have been wreaking havoc in this country and we just sit and watch. It can’t continue like that. And that’s the bigger issue.”
Jamiu reported from Abuja, Nigeria.
Washington Post · Rachel Chason
3. That Time When China’s Leader Joked About Espionage
Jokes aside, the threat is real.
Summary:
During a meeting in South Korea, Xi Jinping gifted President Lee Jae Myung two Xiaomi phones and joked, “You can check if there’s a backdoor.” The lighthearted exchange publicly referenced espionage, highlighting tensions over Chinese tech security while symbolizing efforts to balance diplomacy and economic cooperation amid U.S.-China rivalry.
That Time When China’s Leader Joked About Espionage
NY Times · Yan Zhuang · November 3, 2025
By Yan Zhuang
Published Nov. 2, 2025
Updated Nov. 3, 2025, 2:51 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-south-korea-spying.html
Xi Jinping gave two cellphones to South Korea’s president, who asked how secure they were. “You can check if there’s a backdoor,” he said with a laugh.
Listen to this article · 4:13 min Learn more
Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, giving two cellphones to President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Saturday.Credit...South Korea's Presidential Office
By
Published Nov. 2, 2025Updated Nov. 3, 2025, 2:51 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
It’s an open secret that countries spy on each other. That’s probably why world leaders almost never talk about espionage in public.
But over the weekend, it was the punchline of a joke between China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea.
The joke revolved around two cellphones Mr. Xi gave Mr. Lee — one for him, one for his wife — during their meeting in the South Korean city of Gyeongju on Saturday. The phones were manufactured by the Chinese company Xiaomi, with Korean-made displays, a spokesman for Mr. Xi said as the two leaders inspected them with news cameras rolling.
Mr. Lee picked up one of the phones, still in its box, and admired it. Then he asked how good the security was.
Mr. Xi laughed. “You can check if there’s a backdoor,” he said, referring to preinstalled software that allows a third party to monitor a cellphone. That prompted Mr. Lee to laugh and clap his hands in apparent delight.
The exchange was notable in part because Mr. Xi is rarely seen speaking off the cuff in public. It also deviated from a “sort of old-fashioned gentlemen’s agreement” in which world leaders typically pretend that covert activities aren’t happening, said John Delury, a historian of China based in Seoul.
“What’s interesting here is they’re doing it in public, but they’re not acknowledging ‘I spy on you, you spy on me,’” said Mr. Delury, the author of a book about a C.I.A. campaign in China in the 1950s. “They’re more ironically and playfully referencing the secret world of espionage and surveillance and laughing it off.”
For years, the United States and its allies have been warning that Chinese technology could be used for espionage. The United States, Australia and Britain have all banned Huawei, a Chinese technology firm, from their 5G mobile communication networks. They argue that the company is inseparable from China’s ruling Communist Party.
The first Trump administration placed Xiaomi on a blacklist and warned American companies that doing business with the maker of smartphones and electric cars could get them barred from future Pentagon contracts.
Xiaomi successfully sued the U.S. government to be removed from the blacklist, arguing that it did not have any links to the Chinese military.
When Mr. Lee met Mr. Xi on Saturday, on the sidelines of an international economic summit, he seemed to be acknowledging concerns about Chinese products and China’s surveillance capabilities, Mr. Delury said.
“But by joking about it, by using irony, ultimately he’s dismissing a lot of those concerns and saying, ‘Thank you for the phone and it’s great that Korean and Chinese companies are building it together,’” he said.
The jovial interaction reflected efforts by the two leaders to strengthen their countries’ relationship through economic collaboration. That is a challenge for South Korea, a key U.S. ally, in part because the rivalry between Washington and Beijing is growing. During a meeting last week in Gyeongju, Mr. Lee awarded President Trump South Korea’s highest decoration and a replica of an ancient gold crown.
Mr. Lee has also faced a domestic backlash from a conservative opposition party that accuses him of aligning too closely with China. His predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, raised concerns about Chinese meddling in South Korea’s elections. China has rejected the accusations.
Governments usually acknowledge spying on allies only when they’re forced to. In 2013, after Edward Snowden revealed that the United States had been monitoring the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for over a decade, President Barack Obama promised Ms. Merkel that it would not happen again.
Mobile phones are not a common diplomatic gift because of the security concerns they bring, said Patrick F. Walsh, a professor of intelligence and security studies at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
Will Mr. Lee use the Xiaomi phones? Probably not, he said.
“I can’t imagine him saying ‘We’ve got this phone, I’ll talk to the Japanese prime minister or Washington on it,’” Mr. Walsh said. “He might gift it to a granddaughter or something.”
Yan Zhuang is a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news.
See more on: Lee Jae Myung, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping
NY Times · Yan Zhuang · November 3, 2025
4. Vietnam Is Building Islands to Challenge China’s Hold on a Vital Waterway
Maps/graphics at the link.
Vietnam seems to be adopting the Chinese playbook.
Summary:
Vietnam has rapidly expanded and fortified 21 Spratly outposts since 2021, building over 2,200 acres with ports, airstrip, munitions storage and defenses, countering China’s dominance. Beijing’s response is muted versus its aggression toward the Philippines, reflecting complex ties. The U.S. stays quiet, viewing Vietnam’s buildup as a potential regional counterbalance.
Vietnam Is Building Islands to Challenge China’s Hold on a Vital Waterway
WSJ
Contested South China Sea boasts rich oil and gas reserves and could play key role in a conflict over Taiwan
By Gabriele Steinhauser , Emma Brow an Ming Li
Nov. 2, 2025 11:00 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/vietnam-is-building-islands-to-challenge-chinas-hold-on-a-vital-waterway-84198231
In the turquoise waters of the South China Sea, one country is challenging Beijing’s grip on one of the world’s most important maritime thoroughfares.
Over four years, Vietnam has built out a series of remote rocks, reefs and atolls to create heavily fortified artificial islands that expand its military footprint in the Spratly Islands, an archipelago where Hanoi’s claims clash not only with China’s but also with those of Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
Built from sand, coral and rock carved from the bottom of the sea, the new islands now sport multiple ports, a 2-mile-long airstrip to accommodate large military aircraft, ample munitions storage and defensive trenches that could host heavy weaponry, according to satellite images reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and analysts who study the South China Sea.
Island race
Vietnam’s outposts allow it to project power in the Spratlys and are a response to China’s own campaign to expand and fortify a series of rocks and atolls in the same island chain. The Vietnamese militarization of the islands far surpasses what any country other than China has undertaken in the South China Sea, a key thoroughfare for global trade that would be a vital resupply route for the U.S. military should a conflict break out over Taiwan.
Satellite images show that Vietnam has created new land on all 21 rocks and so-called low-tide elevations—reefs that were previously submerged at high tide—that it occupies in the Spratlys. That compares with China’s seven such artificial islands in the archipelago.
As of March, Vietnam had built more than 2,200 acres of artificial land in the South China Sea, compared with just under 4,000 acres constructed by China, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS.
In the 1970s and ’80s, China forcibly seized from Vietnam several features in the Spratlys and the Paracel Islands, another disputed archipelago further north, in battles that claimed the lives of dozens of Vietnamese troops.
More recently, China took control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012, raising fears among other countries in the region, including Vietnam, that China could do the same to them. Beijing also has pressured Hanoi to cease oil-and-gas exploration in waters it considers its own and challenged Vietnamese fishermen’s access to the Paracels.
How to build an island
Vietnam began reclaiming land on a large scale in 2021, when huge dredging barges appeared near several reefs and rocks in the Spratlys.
Vietnam also employs land-based excavators that lift material from closer to the shore to expand the island surface. The new landmass is then fortified with rock and concrete walls to protect it from erosion.
The scale of transformation can be seen on Sand Cay, which in a matter of years grew from a fleck of an island with a handful of buildings into an expansive outpost with a large, fortified port and other military infrastructure.
Sand Cay development
2012
'13
'14
'18
'21
'23
'25
Sources: Vantor (2025); Google Earth (2012-2023)
China has used its fortified islands in the South China Sea to deploy vessels and aircraft for longer periods without having to refuel and restock on the mainland. It has also installed extensive radar and other surveillance infrastructure that give it visibility of other countries’ movements across the waterway.
Vietnam is expected to make similar use of its new outposts, albeit without directing aggressions against other countries, says Harrison Prétat, deputy director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
A base for critical infrastructure
Barque Canada Reef, Vietnam’s largest and most sophisticated artificial island in the South China Sea, illustrates major new facilities and their purpose.
Other islands built out by Vietnam feature many of the same installations, including ports, ammunition storage and the larger administrative buildings or barracks.
The Vietnamese government hasn’t publicly addressed its artificial island building, although officials have said that the country is focused on protecting its sovereignty in the South China Sea. Spokespeople for the Vietnamese and Chinese foreign ministries didn’t respond to requests for comment.
When asked in February about Vietnam’s land reclamation, a spokesman for the Chinese government said that it opposes “construction activities on illegally occupied islands and reefs.”
However, Chinese forces never sought to prevent Vietnamese dredgers from accessing the outposts. That contrasts with China’s aggressive rhetoric and actions against the Philippines, whose vessels it has repeatedly blocked from taking supplies to its more modest outposts in the South China Sea.
Milder response
The strikingly different treatment can be explained by Vietnam’s more complex relationship with China, says Khang Vu, a visiting scholar at Boston College. Chinese companies own thousands of factories in Vietnam, from where they export to the U.S. and other countries that have placed higher tariffs on China. The two nations’ ruling Communist parties have also established ways to tackle issues, such as Chinese aggressions against Vietnamese fishermen in the Paracels, out of the public eye.
“Vietnam wants to manage the dispute with China, but at the same time we want to prevent another Chinese surprise attack against those islands,” says Vu.
By contrast, Beijing views the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, as a proxy for Washington, whose presence in the South China Sea Beijing opposes. The U.S., which has condemned China’s island-building, hasn’t publicly spoken out against Vietnam’s efforts, likely because they are seen as a potential bulwark against Beijing, says Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
A State Department official said the U.S. calls “on South China Sea claimants to resolve their disputed claims to territory peacefully in accordance with international law.”
Few analysts believe that Hanoi, with its much smaller navy and air force, could actually defend the outposts during an all-out war. That relative weakness also helps explain why other countries in the region have mostly looked the other way on Vietnam’s large-scale creation of artificial land that can be seen here:
“China’s island building represented a direct threat to a lot of Southeast Asian economic interests, the access to the waters, and…also was a threat to navigation and international maritime rights,” says Boston College’s Vu. “I don’t think that anyone thinks that Vietnam is going to do any of that.”
Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at Gabriele.Steinhauser@wsj.com, Emma Brown at Emma.Brown@wsj.com and Ming Li at ming.li@wsj.com
WSJ
5. Trump Says Xi Will Help Fight Fentanyl. Will China Follow Through?
Why should China follow through? And there is always plausible deniability if China attributes activities to rogue actors.
What is more important to China - economic relations with the US or executing the plays from its unrestricted warfare playbook to subvert American society?
And then there is still the demand signal from the US.
Summary:
Trump cut China tariffs to 10% after Xi pledged tougher action on fentanyl precursors. History suggests cooperation tracks broader U.S.-China relations and often fades. Working groups will set metrics, but enforcement is hard: small workshops, online sales, laundering networks. Mexico intensified crackdowns. Sustained Chinese action and lasting results remain uncertain.
Trump Says Xi Will Help Fight Fentanyl. Will China Follow Through?
WSJ
Getting China’s cooperation has been a recurring challenge for U.S. presidents
By
Brian Spegele
in Beijing and
Santiago Pérez
in Mexico City
Updated Nov. 3, 2025 4:49 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-says-xi-will-help-fight-fentanyl-will-china-follow-through-2462622a
President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Thursday in South Korea. andrew caballero-reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
- President Trump reduced tariffs on China in return for Beijing’s commitment to help stem the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl.
- Chinese supplies of precursor chemicals go to Mexican cartels that produce fentanyl and smuggle the drug into the U.S.
- The Trump administration faces the challenge of making sure that China takes action to halt the flow of the chemicals and sustains its cooperation with the U.S.
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.
- President Trump reduced tariffs on China in return for Beijing’s commitment to help stem the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl.
For years, the U.S. and China have been locked in a pattern on the deadly issue of fentanyl. The White House pressures Beijing to stop Chinese companies from exporting chemicals used to make the drug to Mexico. Beijing takes incremental steps in exchange for Washington dialing down economic pressure—only for China to drag its feet when relations deteriorate.
President Trump, after a summit on Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said tariffs he had imposed on China over its role in the fentanyl trade would be lowered to 10% from 20% because of Beijing’s “very strong action” in cracking down and Xi’s commitment to do more.
It was the latest U.S. bid to win China’s help to stem a scourge that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The challenge now for Trump is to make sure that China takes action—and sustains its cooperation, particularly when Beijing has consistently pushed back against U.S. tariffs.
A White House official said that the Trump administration will be setting up working groups with Chinese officials in the coming weeks to set objective measures and ensure that all sides live up to their commitments. China’s Foreign Ministry also said China would work with the U.S. to implement the agreement to strengthen cooperation in the field of drug control.
China’s main connection to the opioid crisis is as the source of the chemicals, known as precursors, used by Mexican cartels that produce fentanyl and smuggle the drug into the U.S. But while Trump has leaned on Mexico to mobilize law enforcement, convincing Beijing that it is in China’s interests to crack down is more difficult.
A photo released last year by the Mexican Attorney General's Office shows seized fentanyl pills and chemical precursors. Mexican Attorney General’s Office/AFP/Getty Images
China calibrates its cooperation on counternarcotics in response to the overall U.S. relationship, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution.
“If it’s going well, it’s willing to extend that cooperation,” she said. “When the relationship deteriorates, it weakens the cooperation.”
The fentanyl-related tariffs imposed by Trump earlier this year have been a sore point in U.S.-China relations, viewed by some Chinese officials as a bid to embarrass Beijing—a suggestion it was soft on crime, when working-level cooperation on fentanyl had been progressing through the end of the Biden administration.
Chinese authorities have insisted that pressure from Washington on fentanyl aims to make their country a scapegoat for the U.S.’s own shortcomings in addressing a domestic addiction crisis. Around 80,000 people died last year in the U.S. of drug overdoses, though the annual total is declining, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even when Beijing toughens regulations on individual precursors, as it has done several times in recent years, including this summer, Chinese producers can get around the rules by slightly altering the chemical structure of their products.
President Trump rated his highly anticipated sit down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping a 12 out of 10. WSJ’s Alexander Ward explains why. Photo: Yonhap/EPA/Shutterstock
Trump acknowledged the challenge after his meeting with Xi. “I believe he’s going to work very hard to stop the death,” Trump told reporters. “But again, it’s complex because of what fentanyl is, what the precursors do.”
Many of the Chinese precursor chemicals are produced in small workshops, and then sold over the internet, at times using cryptocurrency for the deals, according to U.S. officials.
Some of these chemicals are shipped to the U.S. via consolidated commercial shipments. The content is harder to identify because there is no registry of individual packages in the shipments, and the only way for law enforcement to detect precursors is to go through each package, U.S. officials say. Once the chemicals arrive in the U.S., they can easily be smuggled south into Mexico.
An underworld network connects China to Mexico’s most powerful drug-smuggling cartels and their distribution and money-laundering rackets in the U.S.
Chinese criminal groups also serve as money launderers for the cartels. Given China’s desire to control its financial system, stamping out that activity is an area where the U.S. and China could find cooperating easier. In the meeting with Trump, Xi mentioned combating money-laundering as an area for the two countries to work together, according to a statement on the summit by China’s Foreign Ministry.
Trump has also exerted intense pressure on Mexico, the world’s top producer of the drug.
Mexican forces at the border with the U.S. in Tijuana earlier this year. Joebeth Terriquez/Xinhua/Zuma Press
In February, after Trump threatened to impose tariffs if Mexico didn’t step up its fight against fentanyl smuggling, the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 troops along the border. Her government has sent more than 50 imprisoned drug bosses to the U.S. and destroyed dozens of fentanyl and methamphetamine labs this year. U.S. fentanyl seizures at the border dropped nearly 50% in the year that ended Sept. 30.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How can the U.S. secure China’s lasting cooperation in the fight against fentanyl? Join the conversation below.
Trump granted a reprieve to Mexico recently by delaying punitive tariffs, but he has continued to press for deeper U.S. military involvement in the fight against drug cartels.
The U.S. military recently carried out lethal strikes on speedboats allegedly operated by drug smugglers in international waters near Mexico’s southern Pacific coast. The Trump administration has considered using drones to blow up fentanyl labs and sending U.S. Special Forces to capture or kill drug bosses, according to people familiar with bilateral security discussions.
Mexico recently handed over to the U.S. a suspect considered to be the most important link between China and the Mexican cartels. Zhi Dong Zhang, considered by U.S. prosecutors to be the world’s top fentanyl producer, was extradited from Mexico to the U.S. on Oct. 23.
Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com and Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 3, 2025, print edition as 'Xi’s Role in Fentanyl Fight Questioned'.
WSJ
6. Xi-Trump meeting ‘a historic moment’ that will help avoid missteps, China’s top envoy says
Wishful thinking, spin, or reality? Enquiring minds want to know.
Summary:
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi hailed the summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump as a “historic moment” that signals a more stable, manageable U.S.–China relationship. The meeting emphasized dialogue over confrontation and coincides with China preparing the tech hub Shenzhen to host next year’s APEC summit.
Xi-Trump meeting ‘a historic moment’ that will help avoid missteps, China’s top envoy says
As China prepares for Apec summit next year, Wang Yi says advances in host city Shenzhen showcase extent of China’s reforms
Published: 6:04pm, 3 Nov 2025Updated: 6:44pm, 3 Nov 2025
China’s top diplomat has called the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump “a historic moment” that will help reduce misunderstanding and prevent major fluctuations in their countries’ ties.
According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement on Sunday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi also noted that Shenzhen in southern China was getting ready to host next year’s Apec summit, a key diplomatic event for Beijing, noting that the tech hub would “present a spectacular event to the world”.
Xi and Trump held talks on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in South Korea, their first in-person meeting since Trump’s return to the White House in January.
The meeting highlighted the personal connection between the two leaders and struck a conciliatory tone for long-term ties. Beijing and Washington reached a truce on thorny issues ranging from soybeans and rare earths to fentanyl.
‘We have a deal’: Trump claims breakthrough after ‘12 out of 10’ talks with Xi Jinping
Wang said observers widely welcomed the summit, “viewing it as highly significant and a positive signal that helps ease tensions”.
“Many believe the meeting marks the start of a more stable and manageable period in bilateral relations. The return of China-US economic and trade dialogue has also boosted global market confidence,” Wang was quoted as saying.
“The leaders’ meeting is seen as irreplaceably important for reducing misunderstandings and misjudgments between the two sides and avoiding major fluctuations in the relationship.”
Wang noted that the summit in Busan was “a historic moment” in bilateral ties and “a landmark event” in international affairs.
“While China-US relations have experienced ups and downs this year, China’s policy towards the United States has remained consistent and stable, always guided by the three principles proposed by President Xi: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” he said.
“Facts have proven that dialogue is better than confrontation, that zero-sum games lead nowhere and that win-win cooperation is the right path forward.”
“Fully implementing the consensus reached by the two leaders and promoting the stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US relations, while finding the right way for the two countries to get along, is the shared aspiration of both peoples and the common expectation of the international community.”
On Saturday, Xi announced at the end of the 2025 summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, that next year’s Apec gathering would be held in the innovation hub of Shenzhen.
Wang said it would be China’s third time hosting Apec – and the first in 12 years – and that the decision highlighted the growth of Shenzhen.
“Shenzhen, once an obscure fishing village, has transformed into a modern international metropolis through China’s reform and opening-up process, vividly embodying the country’s strategy of mutually beneficial openness,” he said.
“Now preparing to become China’s third Apec city, Shenzhen is ready to present a spectacular event to the world.”
With the Xi-Trump summit, China and the US signalled there was likely to be at least 14 months of stability in bilateral ties, and hinted the two sides would meet “regularly”, setting the stage for more encounters next year.
Trump has told reporters that both sides agreed he would visit China in April and that Xi was expected to visit Palm Beach or Washington “some time after that”.
Beijing’s official release confirmed that Trump looked forward to visiting China “early next year” and that Xi had been invited to visit the US.
Nvidia CEO: ‘100% confidence’ in Trump’s ability to reach US trade deal with China
While China is preparing to host Apec in 2026, the US is the backdrop for the Group of 20 summit late next year.
The two annual events will provide opportunities for the two heads of state to engage in person again. Although their attendance has yet to be confirmed, it could mean there will be more frequent face-to-face engagement between Chinese and US leaders in the second Trump administration than under former president Joe Biden.
During his four-year term, Biden never visited China – partly because of pandemic-related disruptions and the 2023 balloon incident that caused more friction in the US-China relationship – and met Xi only three times: in Indonesia in 2022, in the United States in 2023 and in Peru in 2024.
Vanessa Cai
Vanessa Cai is a reporter for the China desk, based in Shanghai. Previously she worked for Caixin Global in Beijing and Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone.
7. Taiwan Concludes Huge New Military Exercise
Firepower value?
Photos at the link.
Excerpt:
This year, the military used a new “firepower value” (火力值) system to keep track of how effective each side was. When two forces engage, reference data like distance, force size, and equipment are computed to judge how lethal an attack would be. The “firepower value” is being compared as a similar to a batting average or ERA in various Taiwanese news reports. For example, if a military vehicle suffers a malfunction and its forces do not repair it within a certain timeframe, that vehicle is considered a loss.
Summary:
Taiwan conducted its most advanced military exercise, Lu-Sheng 1, a seven-day force-on-force drill emphasizing asymmetric warfare, decentralized command, drones, and contested logistics. Using new “firepower value” metrics and Tactical Awareness Systems, it showcased modernized tactics and realism. President Lai praised the reforms as key to Taiwan’s evolving defense and attrition strategy.
Taiwan Concludes Huge New Military Exercise
Mechanized Infantry vs. Armored Units, Taiwan gets serious with first ever "Lu-Sheng 1", force-on-force exercises.
substack.com · Jaime Ocon
Nov 02, 2025
https://jaimeo.substack.com/p/taiwan-concludes-huge-new-military?utm
Since Defense Minister Wellington Koo took office, Taiwan’s military has undergone numerous reforms and restructuring. This is all part of efforts to turn Taiwan into a modern fighting force, centered on asymmetric warfare, and able to conduct a defense in depth.
This week, we got to see a new exercise showcasing what I think is the most modern and advanced military exercise Taiwan has ever carried out.
陸勝一號, Lu-Sheng 1
For 7 days, 6 nights, Taiwan’s Army has been conducting force-on-force exercises in Northern Taiwan. It was the Armored 542nd Brigade (Team A) vs. the 234th Mechanized Infantry (Team B). Each side was supported by one Army Aviation division (601st & 602nd), consisting of AH-64E Apache and AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters as well as special forces. By in large, this was one of the biggest and most realistic joint and combined arms exercises, with both sides travelling more than 200km or 125 mi. Blank rounds and smoke grenades were used.
Officials say the focus of the drill was on 6 main areas:
- Decentralised command & control
- Small-unit mission command
- Urban combat
- Artillery/firepower use (through the use of air/ground assets)
- Utilizing new drones/C2 (Command & Control) equipment
- Dispersed/Contested Logistics.
New Tech, Tactics
This year, the military used a new “firepower value” (火力值) system to keep track of how effective each side was. When two forces engage, reference data like distance, force size, and equipment are computed to judge how lethal an attack would be. The “firepower value” is being compared as a similar to a batting average or ERA in various Taiwanese news reports. For example, if a military vehicle suffers a malfunction and its forces do not repair it within a certain timeframe, that vehicle is considered a loss.
For the first time, Taiwan’s military also used Tactical Awareness Systems (TAK) to monitor simulated injuries, casualties, and movements from both sides.
Taiwan’s Army pointed out that the Lu-Sheng exercise is organized into phases: The drills start with a tactical concentration of forces, maneuvers into the battlefield, various encounter battles, offense-defense battles, and finally shifting between offensive/defensive advantage.
Below is a map produced by my team at Taiwan Security Monitor that shows some of the major movements seen during the exercises. The map was pulled together using open-source materials such as news articles and photos from official sources.
Participants
(Team A) 542nd Armored Brigade “Rapid Thunder”
- Stationed: Hu-Kou, Hsinchu County
- Main equipment: CM-11 tanks, CM32/33/34 armored vehicles, TOW-2B Humvees, Avenger air-defense systems.
- Reportedly travelled to the U.S. for training
(Team B) 234th Mechanized Infantry Brigade
- Stationed: Taichung, Yunlin
- Main equipment: CM 33,34 armored vehicles, Humvees
- One of the largest units, dedicated to protecting Central Taiwan
Previously…
The Lu-Sheng series of drills is a combination of the former Chang-Tai, Chang-Ching, and Chang-Sheng exercises. The “Chang” series of drills builds on the premise of force-on-force, north vs. south, offense vs. defense style of exercises.
Chang-Sheng Exercise （長勝）
- Purpose: To simulate wartime anti-landing and island-seizure operations.
- Content: Under simulated wartime scenarios, units train on how to effectively conduct counter-landing operations before or after an enemy landing, and how to recapture key positions.
- Area: Army 8th Corps, Southern Taiwan
Chang-Ching Exercise （長青）
- Purpose: To strengthen the defense of military infrastructure and critical facilities.
- Content: Units train on how to protect key military sites—such as ports and airfields—during wartime, ensuring they can rapidly restore operations after an attack and maintain combat power.
- Area: Army 10th Corps, Central Taiwan
Chang-Tai Exercise （長泰）
- Purpose: To execute rapid-response missions and preserve combat power.
- Content: Under simulated wartime conditions, units practice rapidly reaching the battlefield and preserving as much force as possible to handle unexpected developments on the battlefield
- Area: Army 6th Corps, Northern Taiwan
Here are some shots of last year’s Chang Tai drill:
Looking Forward to Lu Sheng 2
This drill is no doubt a step in the right direction, and officials say next year’s “Lusheng 2” exercise will include scenarios for “drone attacks and counter-drone defense”.
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, praised how the exercises featured asymmetric warfare and stressed the military’s attrition strategy. Let’s see if other exercises like Han Kuang follow suit.
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substack.com · Jaime Ocon
8. Taiwan Does Not Want China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ – OpEd
Sounds like a declaration of independence. How will China react?
Summary:
President Lai Ching-te reaffirmed Taiwan’s rejection of China’s “one country, two systems,” vowing to defend sovereignty, democracy, and freedom. He pledged to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2030. U.S. officials reiterated support, assuring Taiwan it wouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip in Trump–Xi discussions.
Taiwan Does Not Want China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ – OpEd
eurasiareview.com · Veeramalla Anjaiah · November 2, 2025
https://www.eurasiareview.com/03112025-taiwan-does-not-want-chinas-one-country-two-systems-oped/
Taiwan does not want China’s “one country, two systems” and must uphold its freedom and democracy, and resolve to defend itself, President Lai Ching-te said on Oct 31, rejecting Beijing’s latest push to get the island to come under Chinese control, the Channel News Asia (CNA) and Reuters news agency reported.
China said this week that it “absolutely will not” rule out using force over Taiwan, striking a much tougher tone than a series of articles in state media that pledged benign rule if the island comes over to Beijing under a system of autonomy it uses for Hong Kong and Macau.
Lai, whom China views as a “separatist”, told soldiers at a military base in northern Taiwan’s Hukou that only strength can bring true peace.
“Accepting the aggressor’s claims and abandoning sovereignty certainly cannot achieve peace. Therefore, we must maintain the status quo with dignity and resolve, firmly opposing annexation, aggression, and the forced advancement of unification,” the CNA reported quoting Lai as saying.
“We reject ‘one country, two systems’ because we will forever uphold our free and democratic constitutional system,” Lai added.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No major political party in Taiwan supports China’s “one country, two systems” idea.
Lai said that the Republic of China – Taiwan’s formal name – and the People’s Republic of China are “not subordinate” to each other and that “Taiwan’s sovereignty cannot be violated or annexed” and its future can only be decided by its people.
“The Taiwanese people safeguarding their sovereignty and preserving their democratic and free way of life should not be viewed as provocation. Investing in national defence is investing in peace.”
Lai has pledged to increase military spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030, strengthening the island’s defences in the face of a rising threat from its giant neighbour, China.
He was in Hukou for a commissioning ceremony for Taiwan’s first battalion of M1A2T Abrams tanks, made by General Dynamics Land Systems, a unit of U.S. firm General Dynamics.
Taiwan has so far received 80 of the 108 M1A2T tanks it ordered from the U.S., the island’s most important international backer and arms supplier, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.
The M1A2T tank can fire high-explosive anti-tank warheads and kinetic energy ammunition, such as armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot.
In a separate development, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “Taiwan is Taiwan” when asked if it will come up at the upcoming meeting with China’s leader, the Taiwan News newspaper reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Taiwan should not worry about being used as a “bargaining chip” in trade talks with China. He told Reuters no one in Washington is considering any trade deal that would “walk away from Taiwan.”
Reuters reported recently that Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said he is not worried that Trump will “abandon” Taiwan during the meeting between the two leaders. Lin added “our Taiwan-US relations are very stable.”
Trump has sent mixed signals on Taiwan, trying to cut trade deals with Beijing while holding off on new arms sales to Taipei. Some in Taiwan fear Trump could trade away the country’s interests when he meets Xi, according to Reuters.
The Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said it is in close communication with Washington following reports that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping did not discuss Taiwan during their meeting in South Korea, the Taipei Times newspaper reported.
Taiwan “never came up. That was not discussed, actually,” Trump said on Air Force One after meeting with Xi.
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement also did not mention Taiwan among the topics it said were discussed.
MOFA spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei said, without elaborating, that Taipei is in close communication with Washington over the meeting.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as telling Trump that he would continue to work to build a solid foundation for bilateral ties, and create a sound atmosphere for the development of both countries.
Earlier, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung told reporters on the sidelines of a legislative session that Taiwan is “confident” in its relations with the U.S.
Bilateral ties are based on the Taiwan Relations Act and the “six assurances,” and both countries have engaged in close exchanges and cooperation in areas spanning security, economics and trade, technology and culture, Lin said.
Taiwan’s Premier Cho jung-tai said the government is joining hands with society to safeguard Taiwan, adding that the world would appreciate Taiwan’s value, as long as it firmly stands its ground.
Trump has made it clear that Taiwan was not discussed, Democratic Progressive Party China Affairs Director Wu Chun-chih said.
Rumors circulating before and after the meeting that Taiwan would be betrayed have been proven false, Wu said, adding that Taiwanese should unite and not be influenced by China’s cognitive warfare.
National Taiwan University associate professor of political science Chen Shih-ming said that Taiwan and Japan were the biggest winners of Trump’s Asia visit, as the U.S. president displayed a commitment to the region by touting the U.S.’ security cooperation with Japan and its relationship with the Philippines, as well as acknowledging Taiwan’s geostrategic value.
“Not bringing up Taiwan is the best outcome of the Trump-Xi meeting there could be,” Chen said.
Trump and Xi’s conversation lasted just 100 minutes and went largely unreported in China’s state-run media, suggesting that Beijing likely did not achieve anything it wanted in the negotiations, he said.
Washington is unlikely to escalate tensions with Beijing because pushing China into forming a stronger bond with Russia would be unwise while Moscow’s war with Ukraine continues.
eurasiareview.com · Veeramalla Anjaiah · November 2, 2025
9. China tweets satellite photos of Taiwan's critical Hsinchu chip hub in pressure-ratcheting political stunt
I am reminded of the mafia gangster showing photos of a target's family to influence them to either pay a ransom or take some action in support of the gangster..
Summary:
China’s embassy posted satellite photos of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park—home to TSMC, UMC, and MediaTek—in a veiled political warning highlighting Taiwan’s global chip dominance. Analysts saw it as intimidation amid rising tensions, underscoring Taiwan’s vulnerability and centrality to the world economy, where nearly all advanced semiconductor manufacturing occurs.
China tweets satellite photos of Taiwan's critical Hsinchu chip hub in pressure-ratcheting political stunt — 'where all the world’s advanced foundry IP is created,' highest concentration of chipmaking facilities in the world
Tom's Hardware · Luke James · November 2, 2025
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/china-posts-photo-of-taiwans-chip-hub-in-political-message
On Friday night, China’s embassy in Washington posted a familiar message to X: “There is but one China in the world.” But this time, the predictable rhetoric from China came with a glossy photo carousel that included a sweeping aerial shot of Hsinchu Science Park, the epicenter of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing.
As analyst Patrick Moorhead highlighted in a response to the embassy’s post, Hsinchu includes TSMC’s Fabs 12A, 12B, 20, 3, 5, 8, 2 and the Advanced Backend Fab 1, all crammed into the park’s core, along with the company’s Global R&D Center, “where all the world’s advanced foundry IP is created,” he wrote, pointing out that chips for Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, and even Intel depends on this small square of land.
There is but one #China in the world; #Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. Every inch of Taiwan Province, China, is vibrant under the "Jilin-1" space satellite's perspective. Sun Moon Lake 日月潭Alishan 阿里山Taipei City 台北市️Taipei Port 台北港… pic.twitter.com/bOIvAdrSuyOctober 31, 2025
While the post didn’t mention chips directly, it didn’t have to. Hsinchu is home to TSMC’s original fabs, the headquarters of MediaTek and UMC, and key government agencies that oversee Taiwan’s space and chip strategy. There is no other place on Earth with the same concentration of cutting-edge logic process nodes. This is where the GPUs that train AI models begin, where desktop and server CPUs are etched, and where bleeding-edge silicon IP is designed. Expand the embedded tweet below to see the images.
Let me be clearer. Here are the TSMC fabs currently in Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan: Fab 12A/12B/20/3/5/8/2 and Advanced Backend Fab 1. Oh, and $TSM HQ and the “Global R&D Center” where all the world’s advanced foundry IP is created to build all $NVDA, $AMD, $AVGO, $AAPL,… https://t.co/zpCTETPHKf pic.twitter.com/d0KiK19iYWNovember 1, 2025
This isn’t the first time that Beijing has tried to remind the world of Taiwan’s vulnerability. In recent months, Chinese naval forces have staged simulated blockades in the Taiwan Strait, inspecting commercial cargo ships and raising fears of a chokepoint disruption. The Trans-Pacific Express Cable System, which directly connects Taiwan to the U.S. East Coast, Japan, South Korea, and China, was damaged by a Cameroon-flagged freighter, Shunxing39, earlier this year, prompting Taiwan to increase legal penalties for damaging undersea cables.
According to a recent special report from Reuters, U.S. officials have begun modeling worst-case scenarios for the Bashi Channel, a key shipping lane essential to Taiwanese exports like advanced wafers and electronics, in response to recent incursions.
In September, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Taiwan’s chip sector the “single greatest point of failure for the world economy” because 99% of high-performance chips are manufactured there, and back in June 2021, a White House review warned that even a temporary hit to TSMC output could ripple through everything from datacenters to defense.
China’s embassy didn’t need to mention any of that directly. A single photo of Hsinchu was enough at a moment while tensions remain high.
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10. Hegseth says U.S. is ready to share tools to help allies counter an 'aggressive' China
Summary:
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth condemned China’s “aggressive” actions in the South China Sea, pledging to share U.S. technology and build joint maritime awareness with ASEAN allies. He urged unity against Chinese coercion while reaffirming U.S. strength, deterrence, and dialogue. His remarks followed regional drills and Trump’s nuclear testing announcement.
Hegseth says U.S. is ready to share tools to help allies counter an 'aggressive' China
CNBC · November 1, 2025
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/01/hegseth-us-ready-to-help-allies-counter-aggressive-china.html
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth applauds during ASEAN Plus meeting at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Nov. 1, 2025.
Vincent Thian | Via Reuters
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Saturday took aim at Beijing over an increase in "destabilizing actions" in the South China Sea and committed to support Southeast Asian countries with technology to help them respond jointly to Chinese threats.
On a second day in Kuala Lumpur packed with meetings that included multilateral talks with allies Australia, Japan and the Philippines, Hegseth proposed to ASEAN defence ministers the building of shared maritime domain awareness and said China had shown a lack of respect and threatened their territorial sovereignty.
"You live it on the threats we all face from China's aggression and course of actions in the South China Sea and elsewhere," he said.
"We need to develop our joint capabilities to respond, and this includes being able to monitor maritime conduct and develop the tools that allow us to respond quickly ... ensuring that whoever is on the receiving end of aggression and provocation is then, therefore, by definition, not alone."
"No one can innovate and scale like the United States of America, and we're eager to share those capabilities with allies and partners," Hegseth added.
Chinese Coast Guard armada
Hegseth's remarks came a day after the armed forces of Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and the U.S. held a drill in the South China Sea, a patrol that a Chinese military spokesperson said "seriously undermined peace and stability."
Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea via a line on its maps that overlaps with parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
China has deployed an armada of coast guard vessels hundreds of kilometers off its mainland that has repeatedly clashed with vessels of the Philippines and been accused of disrupting energy activities of Malaysia and Vietnam.
Beijing denies acting aggressively and says its coast guard has operated professionally in defending Chinese territory from incursions.
On Friday, its Defense Minister Dong Jun said it was necessary for China and ASEAN to work together to "pool Eastern strength" and safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.
Testing of nuclear weapons prudent
Hegseth's visit to Southeast Asia came soon after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on social media that he had asked the U.S. military to "start testing our Nuclear Weapons," after a halt for 33 years, a move that appeared to be a message to rival nuclear powers China and Russia.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump meant nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Security Administration, or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles.
Asked by reporters what kind of testing Trump was referring to, Hegseth said his department would comment later, adding: "We have very capable nuclear capabilities, and testing them is only prudent."
In addressing the defense ministers' forum, Hegseth touted Washington's peace credentials and said the U.S. was dedicated to building a military "unmatched in global power," while stressing its commitment to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
He said U.S. dialogue with China was important and the opportunity to talk to his Chinese counterpart on Friday was of value, but warned Beijing's actions must be watched closely.
"We seek peace. We do not seek conflict, but we must ensure that China is not seeking to dominate you or anybody else," Hegseth told ASEAN counterparts.
CNBC · November 1, 2025
11. Opinion | A U.S. Troop Exit From Eastern Europe?
This is the challenge with "rotational forces." Sometimes you cannot sustain the rotation.
Summary:
The U.S. plan to withdraw a 101st Airborne brigade from Romania “without replacement” alarms Congress and allies, signaling weakened deterrence as Russia escalates aggression. GOP defense leaders warn it sends “the wrong signal” to Putin and urge maintaining strong NATO forces in Eastern Europe. The WSJ calls retreat a strategic mistake.
Opinion | A U.S. Troop Exit From Eastern Europe?
WSJ
By The Editorial Board
Follow
Nov. 2, 2025 4:58 pm ET
Pulling back a combat brigade from Romania is a bad message for Putin.
Nov. 2, 2025 4:58 pm ET
Russian President Vladimir Putin Alexander Kazakov/Associated Press
It’s a safe bet that most Americans won’t notice if the U.S. pulls an Army brigade out of Romania, but you can bet Vladimir Putin will. Behind a reshuffling of U.S. forces abroad is a larger debate within the Trump Administration about America’s posture in the world, and senior Republicans in Congress are expressing alarm.
The U.S. Army confirmed last week that soldiers from a brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne Division will return to Kentucky “without replacement.” Romania’s defense ministry called the decision “an effect of the new priorities of the presidential administration”—that is, the Trump Pentagon. About 1,000 troops will remain in the country, and the U.S. footprint in Romania is a small share of the roughly 85,000 troops on the continent.
But the U.S. is trimming combat power from NATO’s eastern front as Mr. Putin’s military escalates his drone incursions and other tests of the Western alliance and refuses to settle his war in Ukraine. The decision earned a rebuke from GOP hawks in Congress who support the President and aren’t known for picking futile showdowns.
The decision “sends the wrong signal” to Mr. Putin, Republicans Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, said in a statement. Romania, the lawmakers noted, is a reliable ally that has hosted a U.S. missile defense detachment since 2016. The chairmen want assurances the Administration intends to maintain two armored brigades in Poland.
Mr. Trump may not know it, but some of his advisers in the Pentagon want an even broader pullback from Europe. That would make it harder for President Trump to negotiate a durable peace in Ukraine. What America needs is more of its forces in Europe moving east to the Baltics, not west to the U.S.
Messrs. Rogers and Wicker are giving the President sound counsel that this is no time to go wobbly on deterrence in Europe.
Following Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace, and inspired by the innovation demonstrated on Ukraine’s front lines, European nations are confronting the threat with a ‘Drone Wall,’ drone vs. drone takedowns, and in countries such as Lithuania training children as young as six to pilot drones.
Appeared in the November 3, 2025, print edition as 'A U.S. Troop Exit From Eastern Europe?'.
WSJ
12. Opinion | The AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity
For who?
We can only wait and see. But I hope they are right.
Excerpts:
From the colossal changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution of the last quarter-century, improvements in technology have created an array of jobs that far exceeded—in quantity and quality—the ones eliminated, elevating standards of living.
...
If we base our policies to cushion the AI transition on proven results rather than good intentions and let the market system develop and absorb AI technology, we can achieve a second economic miracle, which will enrich America and the world.
Summary:
Phil Gramm and Michael Solon argue the AI revolution, like past industrial and digital revolutions, will create far more wealth and better jobs than it destroys. They warn against fear-driven government controls and protectionism, urging free-market adaptation instead. Properly managed, AI can spark a new era of global prosperity.
Opinion | The AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity
WSJ
The growth of industry disrupted old economic patterns but produced undreamed-of wealth.
By
Phil Gramm
and
Michael Solon
Nov. 2, 2025 4:05 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-ai-revolution-will-bring-prosperity-707e71d0
David Gothard
Most speculation about artificial intelligence has focused on its potential to kill jobs and on the policies that government might implement to control AI and cushion workers against temporary or permanent unemployment. Amid all the pessimism and calls for government protection, it’s important to remember that our only window into the future is the past. From the colossal changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution of the last quarter-century, improvements in technology have created an array of jobs that far exceeded—in quantity and quality—the ones eliminated, elevating standards of living. History offers cautionary tales of how special interests and public fear can spawn government policies that delay progress and raise the cost of the transition.
For a medieval economy that had scarcely grown in 1,500 years, the Industrial Revolution in the U.K. unleashed a greater concentration of material blessings than ordinary people had ever experienced. From 1840 to 1900 real wages doubled, and the average lifespan increased by 22%, from roughly 41 years to 50. The population doubled, and employment rose by 80%.
In America growth during the Industrial Revolution was of biblical proportions. From 1870 to 1900 real gross domestic product tripled, the population and labor force roughly doubled, and output in manufacturing grew sixfold. Real per capita income rose by 110% between 1865 and 1910, while real wages of manufacturing workers increased an estimated 173%. Life expectancy rose by a quarter as inflation-adjusted costs of food, clothing and shelter dropped by roughly 50%.
During the Digital Revolution of the last quarter-century, U.S. real GDP rose by 66%. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show the extraordinary capacity of the American economy to absorb new technology. Since 2000 on average five million Americans have either been laid off or quit their job every month, but the economy has created 5.1 million better-paying jobs a month. This creative destruction isn’t new. In 1810, 81% of Americans worked in agriculture; today only 1.2% do. In 1953, 32% of Americans worked in factories. As real industrial production quadrupled, the share of the labor force in manufacturing declined to 7.8% in 2025.
No one perceived the creative destruction of the Industrial Revolution more clearly than Karl Marx. He saw the Industrial Revolution unleashing “more massive and colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together” in “scarce one hundred years.” But Marx also saw the destruction of the old “instruments of production” tearing asunder “the motley feudal ties that bound man to his natural superior” and leaving “no bond between man and man other than naked self-interest and callous cash payments.” Unfortunately, Marx saw these changes not as the dawning of economic freedom and the ascent of mankind, but as the beginning of a new age of exploitation, a view that once impoverished and enslaved half the world and still exerts influence across the planet.
While Marx saw both the creative and destructive effects of the Industrial Revolution, the public response focused almost exclusively on the destructive. The British historian Arnold Toynbee saw the Industrial Revolution as “a period as disastrous and terrible as any through which a nation ever passed.” A room at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington has paintings of the titans of American industry as well as economic journalist Henry George. The label with George’s portrait quotes his judgment of the American Industrial Revolution: “The rich grew richer, the poor grow helpless, the middle class is swept away.”
In Britain, displaced textile artisans engaged in industrial terrorism by destroying machinery such as looms in the Luddite Uprisings. The government sent in troops, and Parliament imposed the death penalty to stop the destruction. In America, mechanization, economies of scale and mass marketing gutted local competitors by providing lower prices and higher-quality products. States and then the federal government sought to constrain large, efficient producers with Progressive-era regulations that for 90 years protected producers at the consumer’s expense.
In the 19th century the U.K. and U.S. governments were small and largely noninterventionist. Today both governments are large and filled with political interests eager to expand government’s role in the economy. Sen. Bernie Sanders has embraced the Luddites’ cause, calling for taxes on robots. President Biden issued an executive order imposing government oversight of the use of AI and requiring AI to promote unionism, improve the environment and advance “equity” and civil rights. The AFL-CIO president has said “working people are fighting back against artificial intelligence and other technologies used to eliminate workers or undermine and exploit us.” And this is only the beginning.
Almost every discussion of AI calls for extensive economic assistance for those who are displaced, and a growing chorus calls for a guaranteed income. These proposals show no awareness that while trade adjustment assistance, extended unemployment and our welfare system were no doubt well-intended, they have impeded workers’ transition to new jobs. Impediments are already being raised to AI. Mr. Biden launched a wave of antitrust actions against big tech that the Trump administration largely has continued.
American exceptionalism—in which Americans are more productive and have higher living standards—depends in part on our extraordinary ability to adjust to change. Europe makes it hard to lay people off, which constrains the ability to create jobs. In China, most industrial subsidies go to noncompetitive industries, not to the potential winners of the future.
Despite all the costs entailed in the transition, industrial technology and the market system accomplished what no benevolent king’s redistribution, no loving bishop’s charity, no mercantilist’s protectionism and no powerful guild ever did. It delivered a massive increase in productive capacity that continues to enrich our world. If we base our policies to cushion the AI transition on proven results rather than good intentions and let the market system develop and absorb AI technology, we can achieve a second economic miracle, which will enrich America and the world.
Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Solon is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Journal Editorial Report: Saving the planet falls back to earth.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 3, 2025, print edition as 'AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity'.
WSJ
13. Ukraine's Sea Baby Drones: A New Maritime Threat
Summary:
Ukraine’s Sea Baby drones have transformed naval warfare, evolving from improvised explosive boats into long-range, modular, armed USVs capable of striking deep into Russian-held waters. They’ve damaged Russian assets, forced fleet relocations, and reopened trade routes. Their swarm tactics and low cost offer a new blueprint for small nations’ maritime defense.
Ukraine's Sea Baby Drones: A New Maritime Threat | SOF News
sof.news · Guest
By Avery Warfield.
https://sof.news/drones/ukraine-sea-baby-drones/
As the Russia-Ukraine war enters another winter, an unlikely weapon has begun to redefine naval warfare: small, unmanned Ukrainian drones known as Sea Baby drones. Developed by Ukraine’s Security Service, these surface craft have evolved from improvised explosive vessels into sophisticated unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) capable of carrying heavy payloads, launching rockets, and operating far beyond coastal waters.
Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea has been under siege since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. With its navy destroyed mainly in the war’s early days, Ukraine first turned to asymmetric tactics with aerial drones, and later with sea-based ones. The Sea Baby became a centerpiece of this strategy, combining endurance, stealth, and modular design to offset Moscow’s overwhelming naval power.
The latest generation of Sea Baby drones can travel over 1,500 kilometers and carry payloads of up to 2,000 kilograms. The SBU says newer models can be armed not only with explosives but also with rocket launchers and machine-gun turrets, enabling both strike and defensive missions.
This marks a significant shift from early “kamikaze” versions, which were designed for one-way attacks. Ukraine’s engineers have since refined the drones’ navigation systems, communications links, and modular payload bays, turning them into reusable combat platforms.
The results have been visible and dramatic. Ukraine’s sea drones have successfully targeted Russian naval assets, fuel depots, and even parts of the Crimean Bridge, undermining Russia’s sense of maritime security. Independent analyses indicate that Moscow has moved parts of its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to safer harbors further east in Novorossiysk.
Each successful strike carries both symbolic and strategic weight. The attacks have demonstrated that Ukraine can project force deep into Russian-controlled waters without risking crews or large ships. They have also forced Russia to divert substantial resources into coastal defenses, detection systems, and counter-drone measures, diluting its focus on offensive naval operations.
Military observers note that these drones have effectively neutralized Russia’s naval dominance in parts of the Black Sea. Commercial shipping routes from Odesa and Chornomorsk have reopened under Ukrainian protection, mainly because Russian vessels are now reluctant to operate close to the western coast.
Swarm Tactics and Modular Design
What sets Sea Baby apart is not just its range or payload, but how Ukraine is learning to use it. The SBU has discussed plans for “drone squads” or formations of 10 to 20 USVs operating together like a coordinated fleet. These groups can divide tasks into reconnaissance, direct assault, and electronic warfare or decoy operations.
Such swarm tactics could fundamentally change how small navies conduct warfare. Instead of relying on a few expensive warships, nations could deploy dozens of semi-autonomous drones, each inexpensive, expendable, and capable of operating independently. The cost-to-impact ratio heavily favors the attacker, which is a theme increasingly echoed across modern conflict zones.
Ukraine’s engineers have also pushed for modularity. A single hull can be reconfigured for various missions: reconnaissance, direct strike, or remote fire support. Some models carry Grad-type rocket launchers capable of saturating coastal targets before retreating to safety.
The Global Implications
The Sea Baby program is being closely watched across the world’s defense industries. Its success offers a blueprint for small and medium-sized nations seeking to counter larger naval powers.
If Ukraine’s technology is eventually exported, something officials have hinted at, it could accelerate a new wave of maritime drone proliferation. Coastal states with modest budgets could suddenly field credible deterrents to large fleets. The spread of such systems would likely trigger new naval doctrines and, potentially, arms-control challenges over unmanned maritime weapons.
For major navies, the lesson is equally urgent. Counter-USV technologies are now a high priority. Traditional radar systems struggle to detect low-profile boats, especially in rough seas. Future warships may need enhanced sensors, autonomous defense drones, and electronic-warfare suites explicitly designed to counter fast-moving surface swarms.
The Future of the Sea Baby and Beyond
Beyond Ukraine, Sea Baby represents a larger shift toward distributed, unmanned naval warfare. Rather than a few expensive ships carrying hundreds of sailors, the future fleet may consist of hundreds of inexpensive drones networked into a single fighting organism.
In this sense, Ukraine’s sea drones are a glimpse of tomorrow’s naval battles. Their success will depend on software as much as steel.
For now, the Black Sea is the proving ground. Each mission refines Ukraine’s tactics and advances its designs. Whether or not Sea Baby becomes an export success, its influence is already evident. It has forced one of the world’s largest navies to retreat and rethink.
As the war continues, these small, unmanned vessels may turn out to be Ukraine’s most powerful strategic equalizer and proof that in the modern age, innovation can outweigh power.
**********
Author: Avery Warfield is a Drone and UAV Warfare analyst and an Intelligence Analyst with extensive international experience living and working in the United States, France, Mauritania, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, and Scotland. With a deep understanding of UAV and drone systems, intelligence analysis, and threat assessment, Avery provides valuable insights into emerging drone capabilities and the evolving field of drone warfare.
Image: “Ukraine’s Sea Baby Drones” by Avery Warfield, ChatGPT, October 22, 2025.
sof.news · Guest
14. No, Recent Drone Sightings are Not Examples of Hybrid Warfare
Excerpts:
Drone warfare today indeed a represents a tactical revolution, but hardly a strategic one. Drones used for strategic purposes suffer from the same limitations as all forms of strategic bombing: targeting the heart of enemy morale and/or economics through air power sounds good on paper, but is almost guaranteed to fall short of such grand aims in reality. They can, however, have great operational ramifications, and serve as an able force multiplier for less industrious actors. But war-winning? No. What does this have to do with the drone sightings? If such technology is not as revolutionary as often touted, then one is dealing with the technological equivalent of a human spy caught in the act. Such events are also seen as concerning, but are less likely to evoke talk of hybrid wars and the like.
The truth is that the free world is losing the fundamental vocabulary that underpins the distinction between its culture and those of authoritarians. Yes, it is critical to understand how lax rival states are with the line between war and peace, but it must not lead to a reflection of such a dangerous mindset. Such a course risks disaster, not only in terms of geopolitical relations, but also in maintaining our values. Complexity is not the same as hybridity, and the gray zone is not a state of war. Nor is it clearly a state of peace however, so one must react accordingly: proportionate response, not panic and alarmism.
Summary:
Andreas Foerster argues that recent drone sightings over Europe are not examples of hybrid warfare but rather gray zone activities, nonviolent, coercive actions short of war. He stresses that “war” requires organized violence, and misuse of such terms risks escalation. Russia’s behavior reflects active measures, not open conflict. Foerster warns Western policymakers against conflating gray zone competition with warfare, urging precision, restraint, and proportional response to avoid militarizing diplomacy or provoking unnecessary confrontation.
No, Recent Drone Sightings are Not Examples of Hybrid Warfare
by Andreas Foerster
|
11.03.2025 at 06:00am
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/03/no-recent-drone-sightings-are-not-examples-of-hybrid-warfare/
Introduction
There has been a lot of talk in the headlines the past weeks about drone sightings across Europe, and how these are apparently examples of “hybrid warfare.” Normally, common sense would dictate that in order to call something a “war,” there has to be an actual war going on. Or, for something to be an “attack,” something has to actually be attacked. Clearly, clarification is needed. In reality, these events are yet another case of hybrid warfare being confused with gray zone activities, with potentially dire consequences. In this short article, the difference between the two will be explained, and why it matters.
What is a “war”?
What is a state of war? That is a difficult question, and one that is still being forcefully debated by scholars, philosophers and policymakers. Still, there is enough in the literature to determine when some situations are clearly not indicative of a state of war. Clausewitz stated that “War is an act of violence intended to compel an enemy to submit to one’s will.”, and that “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” This firstly means that war is an organized act of violence with a clear target. The threat of violence is not enough to constitute war, being only deterrence or coercion through power projection. Secondly, it means that war is the end of primarily peaceful diplomatic action and the resorting to primarily violent diplomatic action. The end goal remains the same, achieving the state’s political objectives. However, the means have changed, entering into a state of deadly combat. And critically, the primacy of the equation of elements of national power has changed, as the focus shifts from nonviolent to violent action.
Obviously, not all action in war involves violence, but for any conflict to be called a war, it must be primarily a violent affair. If these drones are all Russian, then they are part of a reconnaissance, surveillance and intimidation strategy, not any kind of coordinated kinetic strike against European military and/or civilian targets. Without that essential aspect, it is not only wrong to throw around words like “war,” but extremely dangerous. Make no mistake, this may very well be the latest in a long line of reckless and aggressive actions perpetrated by Russia against Europe. However, if one wishes to avoid worsening the current tensions, one must be careful about the language deployed in international relations.
The West has, unfortunately, increasingly normalized terms such as “trade war,” “economic warfare,” “cyber warfare,” “information warfare,” “war on terror,” “war on drugs,” etc. which are all not only confusing, but inevitably militaristic, even jingoistic. If one militarizes every aspect of society, how can one expect to avoid treating everything as a military affair, whether foreign or domestic?
What is hybrid warfare?
The original meaning of hybrid warfare is as a military strategy employed within a defined geopolitical area of operations, for the main purpose of most effectively causing attrition to the enemy through maximum tactical flexibility. The level of war is clearly fixed at the strategic level, because the overall objective of using a hybrid warfare strategy is to achieve victory in a set war. The key is in the name: hybrid warfare, just as one uses terms such as “limited war,” “total war,” “war of maneuver,” “war of attrition,” etc. These are all strategic methods for achieving victory as defined by a particular grand strategic endeavor. Hybrid warfare, then, means the fluid combination and/or transitioning between of operation or tactical natures depending on the situation a unit finds itself in. Often, this is done to the point that the tactical condition is so blurred that it is no longer recognizable as either “conventional” or “irregular.” This makes for extremely complex situations, where there is little distinction between a soldier, an insurgent, a terrorist, a civilian or even a criminal. They can be any one of them at any time, or all of them at once.
However, that does not mean that one must jump up a level of analysis and declare any kind of tool for “conflict” as “hybrid,” let alone an aspect of “hybrid warfare.” Not only does this eradicate the line between grand strategy and strategy, making doctrine and policy inevitably incoherent, but it also begs for miscalculation relating to rival powers’ intentions and the utilization of national power. Sooner or later, everything will look like an existential threat, and at best, resources will become overstretched and “mission creep” will be a constant. At worst, it could result in the deploying of military assets in a grossly unproportionate manner, or even a quick escalation towards total/nuclear war, which would spell disaster for all humanity. The West risks repeating the grand strategic failures of when the US took George Kennan’s sound advice about “containment” too far during the Cold War, resulting in the unnecessary Vietnam War and several other serious missteps — many of which brought the world to the brink of Armageddon. Of course, the expansionism and aggressiveness of the Soviet Union had a great deal to do with that, just as the US faces similar inclinations from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Still, restraint must dominate the mindset of policymakers, so as to ensure faulty first steps by these rogue actors are not worsened by faulty second steps by the free world.
The better term would be gray zone activities, not hybrid warfare, though often in the literature the former is erroneously viewed as the latest incarnation of the latter. This should be rejected, because it confuses the necessary demarcation between states of war and peace that are inherent in classic hybrid warfare theory. But of course, acts of organized violence happen all the time and in many complex ways, and more importantly, tools or methods of wide operational capability can be used for seemingly nonviolent acts — yet still acts of aggression to some degree. This is where one must recognize the inherent complexity of geopolitics, especially today in such a legalistic, decentralized, information-centric world. The gray zone is the area of grand strategic activity which straddles the line between states of war and peace. It is not friendly, representing “conflict,” but it has not crossed that line into war, and that is important. In many ways, if Russia is indeed behind these drone incursions, this should not be surprising, as they are merely a new tool for a long-standing international rivalry. But that does not mean that they are part of a “war,” or a “prelude to war.”
What is Russia doing?
There are no serious indications in Russian military literature, let alone its doctrine, that suggests that drone incursions signal the ignition of an “unrestricted war” on Europe and/or the West as a whole. Anyone familiar with the facts should be skeptical of the years of claims that Russia is committed to a “hybrid war” on its enemies. The closest this comes to truth is that Russia believes they themselves are the target of “hybrid warfare” from the West. Of course, this is nonsense, and goes to show the paranoia inherent in Russian geopolitical thinking. Still, they do not subscribe to hybrid warfare in either of the forms so far discussed. Russia believes in a delineation between states of war and peace, but what exactly certain methods can be employed in peacetime, or the gray zone, differ from that of the West. Make no mistake, Russia acts aggressively short of war, but it is also important not to let our own values confuse the intended signaling. Russia believes in stages of escalation, going from active measures (also known as strategic deterrence and/or political war) to limited war to total war and finally nuclear war. What is key, however, is that in each of these states of conflict, nonmilitary methods play an extremely important role.
What to do with this information? The West has to balance the objective label of a gray zone conflict with the peculiar Russian label of active measures. However, that is a question for a different day. In any case, it is not hybrid warfare, and it is not a war, or even an attack.
Now, one can certainly use the term “hybrid threats,” because their activities are in some way hybrid, and they are indeed threats to be taken seriously. Hybrid tactics also make sense, because they are tactics used for a grand strategic/strategic non-military endeavor. It may seem strange to stress semantics, but in the world of geopolitics, words are often just as important as actions. There is a reason that the US used the word “quarantine” during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So what?
Drone warfare today indeed a represents a tactical revolution, but hardly a strategic one. Drones used for strategic purposes suffer from the same limitations as all forms of strategic bombing: targeting the heart of enemy morale and/or economics through air power sounds good on paper, but is almost guaranteed to fall short of such grand aims in reality. They can, however, have great operational ramifications, and serve as an able force multiplier for less industrious actors. But war-winning? No. What does this have to do with the drone sightings? If such technology is not as revolutionary as often touted, then one is dealing with the technological equivalent of a human spy caught in the act. Such events are also seen as concerning, but are less likely to evoke talk of hybrid wars and the like.
The truth is that the free world is losing the fundamental vocabulary that underpins the distinction between its culture and those of authoritarians. Yes, it is critical to understand how lax rival states are with the line between war and peace, but it must not lead to a reflection of such a dangerous mindset. Such a course risks disaster, not only in terms of geopolitical relations, but also in maintaining our values. Complexity is not the same as hybridity, and the gray zone is not a state of war. Nor is it clearly a state of peace however, so one must react accordingly: proportionate response, not panic and alarmism.
Tags: drones, Gray Zone, Hybrid Warfare
About The Author
- Andreas Foerster
- Andreas Foerster is a military analyst and scholar of hybrid warfare. He served as an Infantry Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces from 2015 to 2020. He graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with his BA in Honours History in 2019, and with his MA in War Studies in 2025.
15. Welcome to the Western Hemisphere
Excerpt:
The Western Hemisphere may appear less challenging than other regions. It lacks the direct threat posed by a rising competitor like China or the reckless aggression displayed by Russia. It is generally peaceful compared to the seemingly endless conflict among the countries of Southwest Asia. The nature of the region is in part due to political, historical, and cultural commonalities, but it is also the product of decades of diplomacy and military cooperation. With more US military assets in the region than have been seen in a generation, there is the potential to resolve longstanding problems. However, uninformed actions and poorly formed strategy can also undermine the long-underappreciated stability of the hemisphere.
Summary:
Michael Burgoyne outlines the U.S. military’s new strategic pivot to the Western Hemisphere, as major assets deploy under SOUTHCOM to combat narcotrafficking and regional instability. He stresses that success depends on understanding hemispheric history, consulting allies, and balancing non-intervention vs. democracy promotion. Unilateral U.S. actions risk fracturing regional unity and empowering China’s growing influence through CELAC. Burgoyne urges commanders to study Latin America’s security traditions, leverage existing institutions like the OAS, Rio Treaty, and Inter-American Defense Board, and engage proactively with partners. Understanding transnational organized crime networks, from Venezuela’s criminalized state to regional cartels, is essential. He concludes that the hemisphere’s stability, built over decades, could unravel if U.S. policy ignores consultation, diplomacy, and cultural context.
Welcome to the Western Hemisphere
by Michael L. Burgoyne
|
11.03.2025 at 10:02am
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/03/welcome-to-the-western-hemisphere/
22nd MEU(SOC), Amphibious Operations Training in Southern Puerto Rico, 5 September 2025. Source: DVIDS, (Photo by Cpl Emily Hazelbaker). Public Domain. The appearance of US. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
Perhaps you were preparing for another round of operations in the Red Sea, or flying multinational patrols over Poland, or training with partners in the Philippines. Maybe you were a strategist who had been running wargames on defending Taiwan or Estonia. That doesn’t matter now, because the Trump Administration is now all-in on the Western Hemisphere and you have orders to US Southern Command! A few months ago in Small Wars Journal, I provided some recommendations to commanders and staff being assigned to Joint Task Force Southern Border. Now, it seems appropriate to facilitate a larger regional understanding. As of this writing, the United States has deployed an Amphibious Ready Group, a Carrier Strike Group, F-35s, and multiple other assets into the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. These forces have engaged in lethal strikes against more than 10 alleged drug boats resulting in more than 50 deaths. Effective strategy requires a detailed understanding of the operating environment. In this brief guide, I will lay out some key characteristics of the hemisphere, provide some critical homework to better understand the region, and deliver some advice to improve your chances of success.
Historical Context
As with any region, the Americas has its own distinctive opportunities and challenges. From a defense and security perspective, the development of a long-standing asymmetrical alliance and conflict management system is the region’s most vital but underappreciated characteristic. The United States has benefited immensely from its largely calm and friendly neighborhood. Realists like John Mearsheimer have pointed out the importance of maintaining an uncontested Western Hemisphere so that the United States is free to address threats globally. Certainly, the region faces issues like drug trafficking and irregular migration, but interstate conflict has been rare, and the United States has not been confronted by hostile regional powers.
Unfortunately, there is no concise history of defense relations in the region. However, there are three books that together provide a comprehensive understanding. First, L Lloyd Mecham’s The United States and Inter-American Security 1889-1960, provides an excellent survey of early regional security challenges and the structures that were created to alleviate them. Second, John Child’s Unequal alliance: The Inter-American Military System, 1938–1978 extends the narrative further and provides a more in-depth look at World War II and the formation of a hemispheric alliance and conflict management system. If you only plan on reading one of these three, Unequal Alliance is the most useful and succinct. Unfortunately, Child’s book is out of print, but his dissertation is available online. Rounding out the trilogy, Latin America’s Cold War by Hal Brands outlines the threats and responses posed by the US – Soviet rivalry in the hemisphere.
A historical survey of security in the region reveals a few key threads that are critical to the US crafting successful strategy and policy. First, US unilateral interventionism has a powerful influence on foreign relations in the region. Since 1810, there have been more than sixty US interventions in the hemisphere, including the Mexican-American War, the secession of Panama, multiple incursions into Central America, operation Power Pack in the Dominican Republic, the invasion of Grenada, and the removal of Noreiga in Panama.
Often used as a synonym for interventionism, the Monroe Doctrine is deeply misunderstood and few in the national security policy sphere bother to study its later evolution. In 1823, President James Monroe declared that “…we should consider any attempt on their [European powers] part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” At the time, the policy was praised by the region’s newly established republics that were anxious about European powers claiming or reclaiming territories. However, in 1904 Theodore Roosevelt added his Corollary which instead of simply keeping European powers collecting debts out, declared a unilateral US right to the “exercise of an international police power.” The United States would act in the case of “chronic wrong-doing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.” Of note, current US policy in the Hemisphere has strong parallels to the Roosevelt Corollary.
As the war clouds grew over Europe in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a change to US policy toward the Western Hemisphere in anticipation of the coming conflict. Instead of a paternalistic policy of unilateral intervention, FDR announced the “good neighbor” policy which prioritized consultation with the countries of the region in the case of a security concern. Importantly, the Monroe Doctrine would become a multinational policy culminating in the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance or Rio Treaty in 1947 and the Organization of American States Charter in 1948. These two documents established norms and structures for resolving conflict among the signatories and created an alliance committed to defending the region from outside aggression. This was a bargain in which the United States gained global legitimacy and the region gained assurances that the United States would not engage in unilateral interventions.
The immediate post-World War II period would prove to be a high point in regional security cooperation. As the Cold War unfolded, the United States was often frustrated with its partners as the Soviet Union and its Cuban ally fomented revolution and insurgency in the Hemisphere. As a result, on multiple occasions, the United States took action without a consensus or in the face of opposition from the OAS.
This highlights a second thread in regional security: the tension between non-intervention and the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The Rio Treaty and OAS Charter emphasize non-intervention as an ironclad rule in regional relations. However, the Democratic Charter signed in 2001 declared, “The peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it.” It goes on to outline potential actions to be taken should a government stray from the democratic standards of the region. Yet, democratic norms have been long absent in Cuba and have eroded away in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
For the United States, the inability of regional institutions to effectively confront threats and instability has been a longstanding frustration and a justification for unilateral action. After the failed Bay of Pigs landing, John F. Kennedy highlighted US restraint, but warned “should it ever appear that the inter-American doctrine of non-intervention merely conceals or excuses a policy of nonaction—if the nations or this hemisphere should fail to meet their commitments against outside Communist penetration–then I want it clearly understood that this Government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations which are to the security of our Nation!” The most recent echo of this sentiment was provided by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in an address to the OAS General Assembly where he highlighted desperate instability in Haiti and festering authoritarianism in Cuba and Venezuela. He challenged the members, “this is not a time for mere words and slogans about hemispheric solidarity. It’s time for the OAS to show results.”
Yet, cooperation in a crisis can happen. Shortly after Kennedy’s warning, the Rio Treaty was exercised in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis authorizing armed force. Aside from the United States, twelve countries volunteered military forces. In support of the naval quarantine, the Dominican Republic provided two patrol frigates and Argentina deployed two destroyers and two aircraft. In addition, Venezuela employed two destroyers off its coast. In 1965, after an initial unilateral US response to instability in the Dominican Republic, the OAS deployed a combined Inter-American Peace Force led by a Brazilian commander. The IAPF was considered successful having provided stability and allowing for free elections. In addition, the OAS and Rio Treaty have a respectable, if not perfect, record of defusing interstate conflicts in the region.
A final thread that runs through the history of the region is a tug-of-war between what scholars Javier Corrales and Richard Feinberg label “Hemispherism” and division. Since the Congress of Panama in 1826, there have been two camps in the region. One would like to see a regional organization that excludes the United States and Canada. Another takes an integrative approach based on “common values and goals.” The Rio Treaty and OAS Charter marked the ascendence of hemispherism.
Unfortunately, the consensus toward unity has deteriorated over time, in part due to US unilateralism. Alternative groupings which excluded the United States have emerged and faded. However, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is becoming a growing challenge to the OAS. CELAC excludes the United States and Canada, and importantly, it has become a welcome entry point for Chinese engagement. China has displaced the United States as the number one trading partner in South America and is only second to the United States in all of Latin America. Twenty-one countries in the region have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. While the OAS can be frustrating, its dissolution or weakening paired with a rising CELAC backed by China, would be a far worse scenario.
A failure to manage these three interlocking aspects of security relations in the hemisphere endangers vital US interests. As you navigate the new focus on the region your decisions should weigh the costs of unilateral intervention to regional unity. In addition, finding a way to untangle often opposing commitments to non-intervention and democracy will require deft and nuanced diplomacy and consultation.
Consultation Matters
These three historical threads are essential context for anyone operating in the region. Instead of engaging in balancing against the United States, the Americas turned to “republican internationalism” wherein international laws and agreements restrict signatories’ ability to take unilateral action. The use of coercion or military force requires the use of the mechanisms outlined in the Rio Treaty and OAS Charter. The more states feel that the United States is not consulting with them and is acting on its own, the more likely fracturing and erosion of the hemispheric alliance will occur. In a worst-case scenario, this could lead to true balancing with China and Russia happily supporting a new hemispheric reality.
One valuable piece of advice to those working on regional operations, strategy, and policy is that consultation is essential. A Rio Treaty or OAS resolution would be ideal in the ongoing situation with Venezuela; however, any coalition building and consultation is a chance to break the narrative of US unilateralism. SOUTHCOM maintains a number of foreign liaison officers, and service component commands likewise have FLOs (One assumes this will carry forward as US Army South transitions to Western Hemisphere Command). Another point of coordination is the Inter-American Defense Board. The IADB, while lacking the authority and structure of NATO’s Military Committee, is a venue to discuss military action in the hemisphere. In addition, multinational engagement at the service level occurs at the Conference of America Armies, the System of Cooperation Among the American Air Forces, the Inter-American Naval Conference, and the Marine Leaders of the Americas Conference. While these mechanisms are not primarily operational, they offer existing networks for multilateral coordination. Proactive diplomacy and military-to-military engagement are reoccurring elements of successful policy in the hemisphere.
Understand Transnational Threats
The ongoing operations in the hemisphere are being justified by the threat posed by illegal drugs being trafficked into the United States. This is a serious problem. More than 80,000 Americans died in 2024 due to drug overdoses. Drug producing and transit countries have faced powerful criminal groups which have directly challenged states with terrorist tactics, military capabilities, and corruption.
If you would like to better understand transnational organized crime, there are several outstanding options. Moises Naim’s Illicit provides an excellent survey of the effect of globalization on trafficking. In Narconomics, journalist and economist Tom Wainwright provides a unique perspective on drug trafficking incentives. Paul Rexton Kan’s Drug Trafficking and International Security is a thorough examination of the effects of the drug trade on security interests. However, a short article, “The Future Evolution of Transnational Criminal Organizations and the Threat to US National Security,” by Celina Realuyo offers perhaps the best insights. Realuyo outlines eight illicit enablers which are critical components of any transnational criminal organization. For a better understanding of criminal tactical capabilities dive into the work of John Sullivan and Robert Bunker.
Pressure on the Maduro regime is largely based on the assertion that Nicolas Maduro is in fact not the duly elected president of Venezuela, but rather the head of a criminal enterprise—the Cártel de los Soles, a group of senior government officials and military officers managing the flow of drugs through Venezuela. What’s more, this criminal enterprise, has been designated a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department. In neighboring Colombia, the ELN and FARC have long carried the terrorist label. They have been joined by several Mexican cartels, Central American gangs MS-13 and Barrio 18, as well as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.
There are several concepts outlining how a narcotrafficking group could achieve state capture or evolve into a terrorist or insurgent organization. The case of Venezuela is an example of what Doug Farah calls a “criminalized state.” This can occur when criminals successfully coopt government officials through bribery or extorsion; or government officials can use the state’s power to effectively take control of the illicit economy for their own benefit. Tamara Makarenko provided the “Crime-Terror Continuum” on the blending of insurgent, terrorist, and criminal characteristics. Her model is especially valuable for leaders and analysts because political rhetoric that categorizes groups in support of policy can obfuscate critical vulnerabilities only identifiable when a group’s nature is decerned objectively. The overall concept of a merging of threat typologies is called “convergence.” The National Defense University published two outstanding compilations on the subject appropriately titled Convergence and Beyond Convergence.
Finally, there are several resources that are useful as reoccurring references. The National Drug Threat Assessment produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) describes different transnational criminal organizations and illicit drug markets. The Office of National Drug Control Strategy writes the National Drug Control Strategy, which is a comprehensive plan to address the drug problem in the United States. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime generates worldwide reports and country reports. The Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report includes a breakdown of drug issues by country. To keep up with Western Hemisphere transnational crime issues, visit Insight Crime and Small Wars Journal–El Centro.
Find a FAO
If all of this seems complicated, I implore you to find a Foreign Area Officer (FAO). FAOs are provided language training, advanced civil schooling, and in-region training to become experts in their regions. There are FAOs at SOUTHCOM, service component commands, the Pentagon, combat support agencies, and at embassies throughout the region. The Navy FAO community prides itself in leveraging its FAOs in fleet assignments. Navy FAOs with regional experience would be invaluable to the task force currently operating in the Caribbean. These officers know the hemisphere and have networks that can help resolve issues with foreign counterparts and in the US joint interagency environment.
A Final Word of Caution
The Western Hemisphere may appear less challenging than other regions. It lacks the direct threat posed by a rising competitor like China or the reckless aggression displayed by Russia. It is generally peaceful compared to the seemingly endless conflict among the countries of Southwest Asia. The nature of the region is in part due to political, historical, and cultural commonalities, but it is also the product of decades of diplomacy and military cooperation. With more US military assets in the region than have been seen in a generation, there is the potential to resolve longstanding problems. However, uninformed actions and poorly formed strategy can also undermine the long-underappreciated stability of the hemisphere.
Tags: FAOs, Foreign Area Officer(s), SOUTHCOM, US Southern Command
About The Author
- Michael L. Burgoyne
- Michael L. Burgoyne is a retired U.S. Army Colonel. He deployed twice to Iraq in command and staff positions and served as the Defense Attaché in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was a counterinsurgency trainer at the National Training Center and co-authored The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa, a tactical primer on counterinsurgency. He served in various policy and security cooperation positions in the Americas including assignments as the Army Attaché in Mexico, Andean Ridge Desk Officer at U.S. Army South, Senior Defense Official in Guatemala, and policy analyst at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Colonel (ret) Burgoyne holds an M.A. in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College and an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University. His research and writing focus on security in the Western Hemisphere, insurgency, transnational organized crime, alliances, and defense policy. He is currently pursuing a PhD in War Studies at King’s College London.
16. Ukraine receives promised Patriot air defense systems from Germany, Zelensky says
Summary:
Germany has delivered new Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine, fulfilling prior commitments and boosting Ukraine’s protection against intensified Russian air strikes. President Zelensky thanked Chancellor Friedrich Merz, calling the delivery vital to saving lives and ending the war. Germany has now provided five Patriots, supported through NATO’s new Priority Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative.
Ukraine receives promised Patriot air defense systems from Germany, Zelensky says
kyivindependent.com · Abbey Fenbert · November 2, 2025
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-receives-promised-patriot-air-defense-systems-from-germany-zelensky-says/
Germany has delivered Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine in fulfillment of prior agreements, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Nov. 2.
"We have strengthened the 'Patriot' component of our Ukrainian air defense," the president wrote on social media.
"I thank Germany and personally Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz for this joint step to protect human lives from Russian terror. For some time, we have been preparing this reinforcement of our air defense, and now the agreements reached have been implemented."
The announcement comes just over a month after German Defense Minister Boris Pistoruis said that Berlin would provide Ukraine with two Patriot systems by the end of 2025.
Russian aerial attacks against Ukraine have escalated in scope and intensity since the spring of 2025. The Kremlin's current campaign against energy infrastructure ahead of winter has raised the stakes even further, causing frequent large-scale blackouts.
"Russian air strikes are (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's main stake in this war — through terror he tries to compensate for his inability to achieve his insane goals on the ground," Zelensky said.
"Therefore, every strengthening of our air defense literally brings us closer to the end of the war that we are all waiting for."
A U.S.-made Patriot air defense system — also called a battery — consists of radar units for target detection and tracking, a fire control center, missile launchers, and support equipment such as power supplies and communications systems.
Depending on its configuration, a typical battery includes between four and eight launchers, capable of firing a range of missiles designed to intercept ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as aircraft.
Advanced air defense systems like the Patriot remain in short supply globally, with some components taking years to produce.
Germany has previously supplied Ukraine with three Patriot systems. The additional batteries have been provided under an agreement with the U.S. manufacturer to quickly replenish Germany's stocks.
The deal comes after U.S. President Donald Trump in July announced the creation of the PURL (Priority Ukraine Requirements List) program, a NATO- and EU-backed initiative under which alliance members will purchase U.S.-made weapons systems for Ukraine.
Zelensky said that there would be "further results" regarding Ukraine's air defenses and that additional deals were underway.
17. Attack Helicopters Must Hunt the Hunters
Will attack helicopters soon be obsolete?
Excerpts:
Army planners need better understanding of friendly air defense suppression capabilities, especially beyond kinetic effects. Compared to air and naval forces, American and NATO ground forces have an underdeveloped grasp of what electronic warfare contributes to the fight.The counter-drone fight presents another challenge. Drones extend air defense capabilities, saturating airspace with surveillance assets and potential weapons targeting low, slow aircraft. Yet the fear that swarms of cheap drones make the battlefield unnavigable has proven largely unfounded in Ukraine. Open source reporting shows drone-on-helicopter shootdowns happening only a handful of times — twice in 2024 and once in 2025.In future wars, helicopters must be able to conduct their own suppression of enemy air defenses, or they will be unable to conduct their primary mission sets. Developing a suppression-centric mission today is the only way to ensure helicopters participate in the next fight rather than watch from the sidelines. The alternative is obsolescence.
Summary:
Attack helicopters face obsolescence unless they adopt suppression of enemy air defenses as a core mission. Stephen Olguin argues they must “hunt the hunters,” exploiting terrain and radar limits rather than avoiding threats. Integrating long-range weapons like Spike missiles and shifting to offensive tactics can preserve helicopters’ combat relevance.
Attack Helicopters Must Hunt the Hunters
warontherocks.com · November 3, 2025
Stephen Olguin
November 3, 2025
https://warontherocks.com/2025/11/attack-helicopters-must-hunt-the-hunters/
“Bingo” means the point of no return: the call that fuel is running dry and the mission is over. The same call now threatens the attack helicopter itself.
Army aviators face an existential crisis. They must find a meaningful role on the sensor-saturated modern battlefield or retire from combat entirely. The threat is not being shot down — it’s being benched.
The problem is simple: American helicopters cannot operate where enemy air defenses remain intact. Mission planners treat functioning surface-to-air missiles as automatic grounds for cancellation. This creates a crippling dependency. The Army waits for the Air Force and Navy to clear the skies before its helicopters can fly. This overreliance afflicts NATO forces broadly, but the solution lies within Army aviation itself.
Suppression of enemy air defenses should become a core competency for American attack helicopter pilots. For some specialized units, it should be the primary mission. Without the capability to conduct their own suppression of enemy air defenses in support of their primary missions, helicopters will watch the next war from the sidelines.
BECOME A MEMBER
The Drone Mirage
New technologies promise to transform warfare. Companies are developing drones that they claim will be able to find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess threats without human control. Some designs launch vertically, eliminating the need for runways and increasing survivability in contested environments. These high-tech capabilities sound impressive. They also remain years away from operational reality.
Manned attack helicopters already do all of this today.
Simpler low-tech drones have proven their worth in Ukraine, grinding away at Russian infantry and armor near the front lines. But this is not where attack helicopters operate in large-scale war. They strike deep into enemy territory, hitting targets far behind the lines. Quadcopters lack range and cannot yet autonomously conduct all requirements of a kill chain.
Consider the most spectacular deep drone strike to date: Operation Spiderweb in June 2024. Ukrainian forces smuggled drones into Russia in cargo trucks, parked near airfields, and launched dozens of kamikaze quadcopters into Russian planes. The operation took eighteen months to plan and targeted defenseless aircraft sitting on runways. In contrast, Army planners expect Apache helicopters to achieve similar effects on both soft and hardened targets, on demand, every night — if they can survive the air-defense threat.
The United States does not yet field drones at a decisive, war-winning level of maturity. The impressive promises from startups describe capabilities the attack helicopter already possesses. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.” When the next conflict comes, the Army will fight with the hundreds of helicopters already in its inventory, not speculative products that might arrive in five or ten years.
The Misunderstood Threat
Most Army planners do not understand surface-to-air missiles. Late in my Apache career, I spent considerable time training with American and European ground forces. Commanders rarely asked about the Apache’s capabilities. They understood how to use helicopters when opportunities arose. The problem was that opportunities were routinely missed because no one grasped the threat.
Red circles on maps dominated planning sessions. These supposed “death rings” grounded helicopter fleets and rendered vast regions off-limits for days or weeks, waiting for suppression assets to destroy enough air defense. This model is deeply flawed. It treats surface-to-air missiles like artillery, as if they broadcast death in all directions equally. They do not.
These systems depend on line of sight. Targeting at low altitude becomes a game of geometry, not range.
Terrain masking is easy to explain. Hiding behind a hill or tree line obscures a helicopter from enemy radar and optical sensors. What proved surprisingly difficult was convincing planners that the Earth is round.
The horizon is just another obstacle, and not a distant one. A typical short-range system with radar elevated twelve feet off the ground can see only eight kilometers to the horizon. Even tall systems with telescoping antennas reaching 130 feet can see just 25 kilometers — far short of the massive red circles they receive on planning maps. While a ground-based radar system may claim a range of 100 kilometers, the target would need to be at an altitude of over 1,000 feet to be within line of sight. Attack helicopters typically fly a much lower mission profile of 50 feet and below. Horizon range matters more than advertised maximum range for low-altitude operations.
When helicopters do crest the horizon, missile radars face another problem: ground clutter. A lone object in an empty sky is easy to spot. One flying low among rocks, trees, and infrastructure is not. Some radars handle low-altitude acquisition better than others, but all struggle with clutter.
Two Kinds of Deep Strike
Attack helicopter operations deep behind enemy lines fall into two categories: dynamic and fixed.
Dynamic targeting focuses on smaller armor and artillery units dispersed around the battlefield. Helicopters face short-range brigade-level systems — infrared shoulder-fired missiles, optically aimed systems with 30-millimeter guns, and radar-guided launchers. Just beyond the close fight, the helicopter flight profile keeps them below distant long-range surveillance radars that provide early warning. The networked threat umbrella becomes tattered at the edges, shrinking reaction time against pop-up attacks.
These targets sit relatively close to friendly forces, allowing helicopters to lean on artillery support and pair with drone sensors to engage missiles without exposing themselves. With correct tactics, directly engaging many of these lower-tier, decades-old systems is feasible. Surface-to-air missile hunting at this level is less about contributing to the strategic suppression campaign and more about organically supporting their own attack missions within their area of operation.
Fixed targets are static formations or infrastructure deeper in enemy territory, well outside the reach of friendly support. Here, helicopters enter the dome of medium- and long-range strategic systems. Radar coverage appears intimidating, but holes form when three-dimensional terrain is considered. The greater threat comes from aerial surveillance, which may cue advanced long-range missiles.
Deep missions stretch helicopter fuel limits, so crews focus on exploiting gaps in radar coverage to bypass missiles en route to objectives. They may need to engage some systems to open gaps. Early in the Russo-Ukrainian War, a Ukrainian Hind helicopter used favorable terrain to destroy a Russian medium-range launcher from point-blank range, proving the ominous range rings can be penetrated. The bigger danger comes from high-end, short-range systems acting as point defense for strategic launchers.
Deep operations also offer a chance to integrate helicopters into comprehensive air defense suppression by penetrating the bubble and closing distance on long-range assets. But the modest range of rockets and Hellfire missiles may not suffice.
New Weapons
The Spike missile changes the calculus. This long-range weapon uses an electro-optical guidance system controlled via data link by a joystick in the gunner’s station. The gunner sees what the missile sees, steering it in first-person view. Because the missile carries its own optical sensors, the firing helicopter remains hidden during guidance. In testing, Apaches have hit targets from 32 kilometers away.
This capability is extremely promising for standoff suppression missions and has let Army aviation brigades experiment with surface-to-air missile hunting. But the Apache may not be the right platform. Suppression aircraft would need dedicated weapons loadouts and battlefield positioning, sacrificing valuable anti-armor firepower.
A better solution: mount Spike launchers or similar weapons in the cabin of a Black Hawk utility helicopter. Fly this “Spike Hawk” (Sikorsky calls their version the “quiver”) a few miles behind the Apaches to handle long-range threats too dangerous for direct engagement. Keeping fire support within the organic control of the aviation command structure solves common problems helicopters face with traditional artillery: range, priority, communication, and coordination.
Proven in Combat
Helicopters have suppressed air defenses before. In 1991, Apache helicopters conducted the opening strike of Desert Storm. Flying 50 feet above the ground under darkness, they approached Iraqi early warning radars unprepared for low-altitude helicopters. The strike cleared the way for the air campaign.
Two decades later during NATO operations in Libya, attack helicopters eliminated remaining surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery after the larger suppression campaign succeeded. These operations demonstrate two use cases: long-range penetration strikes on strategic radar sites, and self-sufficient elimination of residual air defense systems.
The Path Forward
It is time for Army pilots and planners to rethink their training and culture. Surface-to-air missiles can no longer be obstacles in the way of a mission — they must be an inherent part of the mission. Pilot mentality must shift from defensive posturing to deliberate offensive operations.
The red circle model of battlefield analysis is not tenable. Surface-to-air missiles have practical limitations that helicopter flight profiles can exploit. This requires a more thorough training curriculum than simple vehicle identification and range memorization.
Army planners need better understanding of friendly air defense suppression capabilities, especially beyond kinetic effects. Compared to air and naval forces, American and NATO ground forces have an underdeveloped grasp of what electronic warfare contributes to the fight.
The counter-drone fight presents another challenge. Drones extend air defense capabilities, saturating airspace with surveillance assets and potential weapons targeting low, slow aircraft. Yet the fear that swarms of cheap drones make the battlefield unnavigable has proven largely unfounded in Ukraine. Open source reporting shows drone-on-helicopter shootdowns happening only a handful of times — twice in 2024 and once in 2025.
In future wars, helicopters must be able to conduct their own suppression of enemy air defenses, or they will be unable to conduct their primary mission sets. Developing a suppression-centric mission today is the only way to ensure helicopters participate in the next fight rather than watch from the sidelines. The alternative is obsolescence.
BECOME A MEMBER
Stephen Olguin is a former Army chief warrant officer and Apache helicopter pilot. He currently works in aviation threat simulation and modeling for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. government or Department of Defense.
**Please note, as a matter of house style War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.
Image: Midjourney
warontherocks.com · November 3, 2025
18. Kings, Usurpers, and Shadow Wars: Lessons on Irregular Warfare from Shakespeare
I am reminded of the late Charles Hill's excellent book on grand strategy which is a survey of literature throughout history and its impact on strategic thinking.
Excerpts:
To be clear, Shakespeare is not doctrinal, operational, or tactically prescriptive. The Bard will not provide planning guidance or suggest lines of effort. But what he does provide—again and again, with uncanny relevance—is a different perspective to help think about the human terrain of irregular conflict. When examining the fall of civilizations, the weaponization of truth, and the fracturing of loyalties, Shakespeare compels the analyst to see patterns and psychological/sociopolitical dynamics beneath the neat headings of modern doctrine.
Deploying Shakespeare in the context of irregular warfare is not meant to supplant doctrine or standard analysis—it is meant to augment, confront biases, identify and articulate emotional currents, and—as always when one steps back from the day-to-day—to remember that war is not just the struggle for power but the struggle over perception, story, and faith. In each of his plays, Shakespeare asks us to look more closely at how leaders misinterpret intelligence, populations realign their loyalties, and legitimacy is gained or lost not simply through violence but through speech.
This process of re-examination fosters intellectual humility, challenges one’s mental models, and reveals new levels of understanding about the “why” of irregular threats that complement the “how.”
In an age of increasingly complex and hybrid conflict, where war and politics are two sides of the same coin of continuous competition, Shakespeare has no ready answers or suggested approaches to recommend. But he will force you to reassess your mental models. In a fast-changing, foggy, complex world, that’s a capability in and of itself.
Summary:
Dr. John Hatzadony argues that Shakespeare’s plays offer timeless insights into irregular warfare and conflict driven by perception, loyalty, and narrative. Henry VI reveals state collapse through elite fragmentation; Julius Caesar illustrates narrative control; Richard III exposes strategic deception; and Coriolanus shows how leaders weaponize mass sentiment. Shakespeare’s lens sharpens modern understanding of cognitive, political, and psychological warfare.
Kings, Usurpers, and Shadow Wars: Lessons on Irregular Warfare from Shakespeare
irregularwarfare.org · Dr. John Hatzadony
November 3, 2025
https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/kings-usurpers-and-shadow-wars-lessons-on-irregular-warfare-from-shakespeare/
Whereof what’s past is prologue
Few scholars would credit William Shakespeare as an irregular warfare (IW) expert, but one of the most-read authors in the Western canon has much to offer the practitioner. Shakespeare wrote about state failure, factional competition, assassination attempts, and manipulation of public opinion. These storylines, played out in very human terms, have clear application today as irregular actors challenge sovereign control along the world’s geopolitical fault lines. Irregular warfare, to borrow from Jeffrey White, is “protracted, ambiguous, and politically charged.” This enduring nature of conflict continues to outpace the theoretical and doctrinal constructs.
In the following analysis, four of Shakespeare’s plays—Henry VI, Julius Caesar, Richard III, and Coriolanus—illuminate key dynamics of irregular warfare: elite fragmentation and state collapse, narrative control, strategic deception exploiting cognitive vulnerabilities, and weaponized mass sentiment. These dramas can equip practitioners with an analytical lens to recognize patterns, question assumptions, and understand the human terrain that doctrine may overlook.
Elite Fragmentation and State Collapse: Henry VI
One of the clearest portrayals of irregular warfare through elite fragmentation appears in the three-part chronicle history of Henry VI. The erosion of central authority during the Wars of the Roses is dramatized not simply through open battle but through the disintegration of institutional legitimacy. Shakespeare captures a world where political loyalty is transactional, rival nobles command private armies, and legitimacy is no longer legal but tactical: secured by proximity to the capital and by the ability to sway mob sentiment. The line from 2 Henry VI—“The commons like an angry hive of bees / That want their leader, scatter up and down”—evokes a state suffering from warlordism. The absence of centralized monopoly on violence mirrors modern case studies from Libya, Somalia, or early 2000s Afghanistan, where irregular governance structures supplant official authority. When assessing a conflict zone, practitioners must challenge the ‘Westphalian bias’ of assuming a state holds a monopoly on violence. Rather, they should ask: Has the state’s legitimacy become tactical rather than legal, and is our strategy optimized for a world where loyalty is transactional and rival warlords command private armies?
Shakespeare’s fictionalized history depicts a patchwork of violence driven by shifting alliances, personal grievances, and decentralized command—key characteristics of irregular warfare. The fracture of Henry VI’s state illustrates how the disintegration of institutional legitimacy makes conventional military control irrelevant. In this vacuum, the decisive contest shifts from physical territory to control over perception, a failure in strategic discourse that brings down the conspirators in Julius Caesar.
The Power of Narrative: Julius Caesar
The assassination of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s tragedy offers a textbook example of a failed decapitation strategy in irregular conflict. The conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, succeed in removing the head of a growing autocratic power. However, their inability to control the post-decapitation narrative results in political disaster. Mark Antony, through his famous funeral oration, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” manipulates the Roman mob and reclaims the initiative with emotional appeal rather than reason. His repetition of the phrase “Brutus is an honorable man” weaponizes irony and activates a shift in popular sentiment that leads to chaos and civil war.
The lesson for irregular warfare is clear: targeting leadership without controlling the information environment yields instability, not freedom. The conspirators’ failure is not kinetic—it is cognitive. The critical question after any decisive action becomes: Have we identified the ‘Mark Antony,’ the charismatic counter-narrator, who can weaponize irony or emotion to seize the post-event initiative and render the initial action strategically futile?Strategic communication in the aftermath of an irregular action is critical. This same pattern played out in modern IW settings, from the post-Qaddafi collapse of Libya to the post-Saddam disarray in Iraq where regime change was not matched by narrative legitimacy, leading to power vacuums filled by violent nonstate actors. Shakespeare understood this intuitively: warfare is not won by daggers alone, but by discourse.
However, controlling the narrative is only one part of the cognitive domain; achieving dominance in irregular conflict often requires the proactive, deliberate engineering of ambiguity and moral confusion through strategic deception and psychological operations, a process most aptly applied by the usurper Richard III.
Strategic Deception and Psychological Operations: Richard III
In Richard III, Shakespeare anticipates the full spectrum of cognitive and psychological operations that define much of modern hybrid and irregular conflict. Richard’s rise to the throne is not accomplished through force of arms alone but through strategic manipulation, coercion, and psychological dominance. He crafts a public image of humility and piety while privately eliminating rivals. His chilling aside—“I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days”—reads like the mission statement of a cognitive warfare campaign.
Richard engineers public spectacles, such as staged displays of piety and false reluctance to accept the crown, that recall contemporary IW strategies involving disinformation, false-flag operations, and lawfare. These tactics recur throughout modern conflicts where actors seek to destabilize adversaries without triggering formal warfare. Operations in various contested territories rely on information campaigns, proxy forces, and strategic ambiguity—echoing Richard’s court, where nothing is as it seems.
The lesson is timeless: domination in irregular conflict often comes not from overwhelming force but from overwhelming perception. Practitioners must guard against the bias of focusing solely on observable military threats. They should instead ask: What is the adversary’s low-cost, high-gain intelligence gap they are attempting to exploit? What are the indicators of strategic deception (e.g., false-flag operations, engineered public spectacle) designed to overwhelm our perception and blur the line between war and politics?
Strategic deception, ambiguity, and moral confusion are as effective in the digital age as they were on the medieval stage. Once a deceptive narrative has been crafted and successfully deployed, the final, and often most volatile, step in political warfare is to translate that strategic ambiguity into tactical power by weaponizing the masses through identity and grievance, the core contest explored in Coriolanus.
Weaponizing the Masses and Political Warfare: Coriolanus
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, one of his final tragedies, reveals a dimension of irregular warfare often overlooked: the weaponization of the masses through identity, grievance, and psychological manipulation. Shakespeare does not romanticize the Roman crowd—they are portrayed as volatile, fickle, and easily manipulated by political elites. The tribunes Sicinius and Brutus exploit this volatility, turning public opinion against Coriolanus and forcing his exile. Their tools are not swords, but speeches; not threats, but theater.
Later, Coriolanus himself becomes a symbol of reverse irregularity: a patrician who defects to the enemy, threatens Rome with destruction, and ultimately falls victim to the same instability he once despised. His story mirrors the rise of insurgent leaders in modern IW—figures like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Muqtada al-Sadr—whose power derives not from military superiority but from their capacity to channel grievance into legitimacy and legitimacy into coercion.
Kilcullen’s 2013 analysis of urban insurgency further explores how irregular actors exploit the linkages between public mood, crowd manipulation, and strategic centers of gravity. Rather than viewing irregular forces simply as criminals or terrorists, analysts must identify the underlying emotional currents and core grievances being channeled by figures like the tribunes, asking: Where is the contest for loyalty currently shifting, and what sentiment can political elites or insurgents channel into legitimacy and subsequent coercion?
Coriolanus is a meditation on political warfare: the contest not for land, but for loyalties; not for security, but for sentiment. The chaos of irregular warfare does not arise solely from lack of control, but from the overabundance of contested narratives.
Conclusion: Shakespeare as Analytical Lens for Irregular Warfare
Ultimately, the chaos of irregular warfare arises not just from a failure of state control, but from the deliberate overabundance of contested narratives and weaponized sentiment. Tracing this progression—from the conditions (fragmentation) to the methods (deception and narrative control) to the execution (mass coercion)—Shakespeare compels the practitioner to move beyond rigid doctrine and acknowledge that the struggle is fundamentally over perception, story, and faith.
For example, in state-building and security cooperation efforts, the analytical lens of Henry VI compels the practitioner to look beyond the capital. Rather than focusing solely on central government ministries, they must identify where power is truly secured—where tactical legitimacy resides among rival nobles and private armies—and then determine if current efforts are strengthening the official state or merely legitimizing the existing warlordism.
Similarly, when planning a leadership targeting operation, the practitioner using this lens doesn’t just calculate kinetic effects; they anticipate the Mark Antony moment. They must ask: Who controls the funeral oration, and how will the sudden, violent removal of the leader be immediately reframed to weaponize popular sentiment against us, just as Antony flipped the script following Caesar’s assassination?
To be clear, Shakespeare is not doctrinal, operational, or tactically prescriptive. The Bard will not provide planning guidance or suggest lines of effort. But what he does provide—again and again, with uncanny relevance—is a different perspective to help think about the human terrain of irregular conflict. When examining the fall of civilizations, the weaponization of truth, and the fracturing of loyalties, Shakespeare compels the analyst to see patterns and psychological/sociopolitical dynamics beneath the neat headings of modern doctrine.
Deploying Shakespeare in the context of irregular warfare is not meant to supplant doctrine or standard analysis—it is meant to augment, confront biases, identify and articulate emotional currents, and—as always when one steps back from the day-to-day—to remember that war is not just the struggle for power but the struggle over perception, story, and faith. In each of his plays, Shakespeare asks us to look more closely at how leaders misinterpret intelligence, populations realign their loyalties, and legitimacy is gained or lost not simply through violence but through speech.
This process of re-examination fosters intellectual humility, challenges one’s mental models, and reveals new levels of understanding about the “why” of irregular threats that complement the “how.”
In an age of increasingly complex and hybrid conflict, where war and politics are two sides of the same coin of continuous competition, Shakespeare has no ready answers or suggested approaches to recommend. But he will force you to reassess your mental models. In a fast-changing, foggy, complex world, that’s a capability in and of itself.
finis
John Hatzadony, PhD, is a former Homeland Security intelligence and law enforcement professional and the Program Chair for Homeland Security at Rabdan Academy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Main Image generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI), October 2025.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.
If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.
19. The Pacific Islands Challenge
Are we effectively competing in this region?
Excerpts:
Yet in the face of China’s ever-expanding influence, Pacific-led efforts will only succeed with steadfast support. One positive step would be for the U.S. Congress to adopt the Pacific Partnership Act, legislation that would mandate the administration to put forth a formal Pacific Islands strategy, that would likely facilitate increased and more predictable U.S. financing, deeper cooperation on maritime and security challenges, and better coordination with other partners. Following through on such a strategy would be a powerful signal of U.S. commitment to the region.
The United States can build a better model of engagement that recognizes the islands’ own interests even as it enhances U.S. national security. American and Pacific Island interests are already aligned in seeking to deter aggression and coercion in the Pacific. But to sustain that deterrent capacity, the United States and its partners must recognize the political, economic, environmental, and social concerns of the islands themselves. Supporting the islands’ sovereignty and democratic institutions, and sincerely addressing their interests, is not only good for Pacific peoples. It is a cost-effective way for Washington and its allies to preserve the fragile balance that keeps the Pacific as peaceful as its name.
Summary:
Michael Kovrig warns that U.S.–China rivalry is reshaping the Pacific Islands, where Beijing’s influence, infrastructure projects, and political pressure threaten regional democracy and autonomy. U.S. disengagement with its aid cuts, tariffs, and neglect of climate concerns has alienated partners. To preserve balance and sovereignty, Washington must reengage respectfully, bolster governance, and align with island priorities.
The Pacific Islands Challenge
Foreign Affairs · More by Michael Kovrig · November 3, 2025
In America’s Tug of War With China, Oceanic Democracy Is Caught in the Middle
November 3, 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/pacific-islands-challenge
Flags of Solomon Islands and China fluttering in Beijing, July 2023 Florence Lo / Reuters
MICHAEL KOVRIG is Senior Adviser, Asia for the International Crisis Group.
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As the strategic rivalry between China and the United States intensifies across the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait is often seen as the key flash point. Yet whether the regional balance holds or tips into conflict will also be shaped by choices made in, by, and about the Pacific Islands—the 12 sovereign states and several territories whose archipelagos stretch across the vast ocean between the Philippines and Hawaii.
Since the first decade of this century, China has steadily expanded its presence across the region. Most Pacific governments have leaned into Beijing’s offerings—seeking infrastructure and investment, as well as the leverage that Chinese ties give them with other partners. At the same time, they have worked to preserve their own autonomy and advance a “Blue Pacific” vision of a peaceful and cohesive regional order. But as China’s influence deepens and the islands’ democratic institutions come under growing pressure, that vision risks being eclipsed.
Under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, the United States belatedly recognized that, left unchecked, Chinese influence could erode governance and eventually turn some island nations into client states of Beijing. Over time, it could split regional consensus, deprive Taiwan of diplomatic allies, and complicate Western deterrence in the Pacific. To counter this dynamic, both administrations began a re-engagement with the region, and the Biden administration launched a government-wide Pacific Partnership Strategy and pledged $1 billion in assistance over ten years.
Since then, however, the second Trump administration has taken steps that many Pacific leaders see as disregarding their countries’ interests. With the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the islands lost USAID’s regional mission in Fiji, which oversaw programs across all 12 Pacific Island countries. The administration has also frozen tens of millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid to the region. Other Western allies in the region have tried to fill the gap—including Australia, which has reallocated $77 million to the Pacific. But that will not be enough to counterbalance Beijing.
Meanwhile, the United States has imposed across-the-board tariffs of 10–15 percent on Pacific nations such as Fiji, Vanuatu, and Nauru. And the administration’s dismissal of climate change flies in the face of the priorities of islanders, who regard it as an existential threat—particularly those in low-lying atoll countries such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu.
For now, the Pacific Islands have mostly sought to avoid explicit alignment with either China or the United States and its partners. At this year’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in September—an annual gathering of island countries and territories together with Australia and New Zealand—the host nation, Solomon Islands, broke with tradition and did not invite any non-members. The immediate reason was to avoid controversy over Taiwan’s participation, which China opposes as part of a persistent campaign to deprive Taipei of diplomatic recognition and relevance. But a larger consideration was China’s own expanding presence in the region, which has, in turn, encouraged the United States and other powers to treat the islands more as strategic assets than as sovereign partners.
In a bid to manage this trend, the forum announced new rules on island partnerships with outside powers and made a formal declaration to keep the region free from militarization and external coercion. But to make these ideals a reality, Western partners will need to do more to help the islands protect their democratic institutions and defend their sovereignty. For the United States and its allies, it will be imperative to find new ways to address the islands’ priorities and concerns, even as they seek to balance China.
MIDDLE KINGDOM, MARITIME POWER
In the late twentieth century, Pacific Island countries and territories aligned with and relied on former colonial overlords. As they achieved independence or at least greater self-rule, they built a multilateral regional order centered on the Pacific Islands Forum, established in 1971 to coordinate policies and elevate Pacific voices. Over time, this cooperative framework helped the islands chart their own destinies, alongside broad partnerships with Western governments. After the Cold War ended, however, Western strategic interest in the islands waned: aid declined, diplomatic representation thinned, and high-level engagement became sporadic.
Against this background, most Pacific Islands have welcomed China’s emergence. Beijing’s ambitions in the region can be traced to the early years of the twenty-first century, with then Premier Wen Jiabao making a landmark visit to Fiji in 2006. Since then, China has shaped a Pacific strategy based on incrementally increasing its presence, influence, and pressure. President Xi Jinping personally signaled that the Pacific had become a priority with trips to Fiji in 2014 and Papua New Guinea in 2018. The scale of Xi’s ambition was revealed four years later, when Beijing attempted to persuade ten Pacific leaders to sign on to a Chinese-led development and security framework. Although this plan failed to win consensus, China has pressed ahead with some 50 bilateral agreements that deepen climate cooperation, enhance culture and education ties, expand trade and investment, facilitate Chinese maritime mapping and seabed mining, and establish law enforcement and security cooperation.
For many of the islands, the economic benefits China brings have been immediate and often literally concrete, in the form of extensive construction projects. Beijing has sought to frame its infrastructure investments—such as the longest wharf in the South Pacific at Luganville in Vanuatu or a restored airfield in the Micronesian state of Yap—as benign and trust-building. But China clearly has its own economic and military agenda, as well. Assessing the Pacific as relatively weakly contested, Beijing aims to become a maritime power (haiyang qiangguo) that can control the western Pacific, marginalize regional neighbors, and prevent the United States from acting as an offshore balancer that could deter it.
To further this Pacific vision, the People’s Liberation Army needs access to ports and airstrips. So far, the PLA has not sought to establish actual military bases, which would undoubtedly draw countermeasures from the United States and other Western powers. By instead building infrastructure and leasing or investing in potential dual-use logistics facilities on the islands, China can acquire the footholds it needs more quietly, often with local buy-in.
Thus far, Chinese actors have directed most attention to the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. But they are by no means neglecting others. China in this sense views the Pacific Islands as a network that can support its broader strategy across enormous ocean expanses. With time, this will enable the Chinese military, Coast Guard and research vessels to operate routinely in the central Pacific, Antarctic waters and ultimately the approaches to North and South America.
BREAKING THE CHAINS
As military scholars Andrew Erickson and Joel Wuthnow have noted, Chinese analysts have adopted the American concept of successive chains of islands (daolian) running north-south across the Pacific Ocean. As Beijing sees it, the three island chains serve as springboards for Western military deployments, benchmarks of the PLA’s own force projection, and concentric Western lines of defense and containment that China must break.
Until now, most international attention has focused on the first island chain, which wraps along the coast of Asia from the Kuril Islands through Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, to Borneo. Since roughly 2012, when Xi came to power and China became increasingly assertive in the Pacific, Beijing has persistently stepped up its military presence in the Taiwan Strait and claimed maritime sovereignty over large parts of the seas within this chain—despite international rulings to the contrary.
Yet the second island chain, where many of the Pacific Islands are located, has also become a geopolitical testing ground. Running from the north Pacific through Micronesia and Melanesia, this broad arc of countries and territories is where Western interests collide with China’s emerging power projection across the Pacific. South Pacific sea lanes that link Asia with Australia pass Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, making those countries strategically significant for Australia and potential pressure points for Beijing. A third conceptual chain stretches from the Aleutian Islands through Hawaii, Kiribati’s Line Islands, and French Polynesia. For now, China is not directly asserting influence there, but signs of nascent Chinese interest in atolls such as Kanton, Kiritimati, and Hao suggest longer-term ambitions.
Just as Taiwan and Hawaii are critical defensive links for the United States and its allies in the first and third chains, Guam, an unincorporated territory, is the linchpin of U.S. deterrence in the second island chain, allowing the U.S. military to respond rapidly to military contingencies in the first chain. But over the past decade, the PLA has introduced intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as the DF-26—often dubbed the “Guam killer” (Guandao shashou)—capable of striking Guam and other second-chain islands.
In September, Beijing also showcased new hypersonic missiles that Chinese media claim can “break” the island chains. In response, the U.S. military has sought to harden, disperse, and distribute its assets more widely across the region, notably by expanding airfields in the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia. Both developments have heightened Pacific Island concerns that they could become U.S. staging bases—and, hence, Chinese targets.
To anchor its growing influence, Beijing has tried to build formal and substantive relations with all the Pacific Islands. Since 2019, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, and Nauru have switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, leaving only the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Tuvalu maintaining ties with Taipei, despite persistent Chinese pressure. For China, muscling Taiwan out of the region and embedding its own assets there is part of its larger aim to dominate the maritime approaches to the first chain, be able to deny and disrupt Western military operations and logistics between there and the second, and develop the blue-water naval capabilities to distract and divert in the third.
At the Pacific edges of what Beijing’s policymakers call China’s greater periphery (da zhoubian), the PLA and China Coast Guard are also rapidly increasing surveillance, intelligence gathering, and force projection—often using “gray zone” tactics. For example, Chinese research vessels have probed the waters of Micronesia and navy ships have expanded defense diplomacy. In 2024, PLA Navy destroyers visited Vanuatu and Tonga, and in a rare missile test, the PLA Rocket Force sent an intercontinental ballistic missile into the South Pacific. In February, a Chinese naval task force circumnavigated Australia and conducted live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. Australian analysts see these as unsubtle demonstrations of China’s growing capability to coerce Canberra.
Pacific Island officials fret about a spiral of militarization, and with good reason. In a clash between China and Taiwan, for example, multiple war-gaming scenarios indicate the PLA could seek to thwart Western intervention by striking military targets, cutting undersea cables, and disrupting transportation along and between the island chains. The consequences for the Pacific Islands could be catastrophic—particularly if fighting coincided with one of the region’s frequent natural disasters.
PERMANENT CONTEST
Alongside its growing military presence in the region, Beijing has sought to become a preferred provider of internal security expertise, training, and equipment. China’s Ministry of Public Security now works with police in Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu; PLA defense attachés offer similar assistance to the militaries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. The China Coast Guard’s recent registration of 26 ships with the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, an intergovernmental body that promotes sustainable fishing, underscores Beijing’s aim to become a leading enforcer of the high seas. Security and human rights experts worry that these activities may also provide Beijing a way to disseminate authoritarian doctrines and politicize defense and law enforcement.
In its diplomatic and economic activity, China is already rivaling the United States and slowly closing the gap with Australia. For now, Canberra still has the most officials working on Pacific countries and is their leading donor. But as part of its overall strategy to strengthen ties, China has hosted frequent state visits for Pacific leaders and gatherings of officials, offered scholarships and cultural exchanges, and deployed Chinese medical teams and a PLA hospital ship. These efforts have begun to shape Pacific perceptions.
All the Pacific Islands that have diplomatically recognized Beijing have also joined its Belt and Road Initiative, including most recently the Cook Islands, which signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement in February, rattling officials in New Zealand, its constitutional partner and strategic guarantor. These accords are weaving a new web of economic and political relationships and jolting traditional Western partners to shore up their own influence. Australia has responded with a slew of its own initiatives, including a landmark mutual defense treaty with Papua New Guinea signed in October. Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, says her country is in a permanent contest.
Chinese investments often involve extensive corruption.
Trade, financing, and development assistance now link most Pacific Islands to China. Some countries, such as Tonga, have become increasingly dependent on Chinese credit. Chinese engineering companies dominate construction sectors, and other Chinese enterprises have become key players in Pacific economies. Although some islanders and observers criticize Chinese loans and projects as unsuitable, unsustainable, or coming with hidden strings attached, the general view from most of these countries is that China delivers—typically more quickly and with less red tape than Western competitors.
Yet these deals and projects often involve extensive corruption. In island after island, politicians, civil society representatives, journalists, and analysts allege that Chinese interests have used bribery and other unethical incentives. They report such methods as coercion, election interference, media manipulation, and use of proxies who are linked to organized crime networks or the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front, an international network of the party that operates globally to capture foreign elites and shape narratives about China abroad. Although few cases have been proved in court, surveys indicate many islanders believe corruption is widespread and safeguards are inadequate.
Regional analysts also warn that China has been targeting island elites with lavish financial and political rewards for supporting its strategic preferences. This has already been reflected in the shifting voting patterns of the 12 Pacific Island countries at the UN General Assembly: in 2000, on resolutions where China and the United States disagreed, Pacific votes aligned with China’s just 54 percent of the time. By 2024, that alignment had risen to 86 percent. To be fair, such support for China is at least partly motivated by frustration against Western partners for failing to deliver on climate financing and critical infrastructure. But it suggests how quickly China has gained sway.
HANGING IN THE BALANCE
By now, many Pacific leaders understand what is at stake in China’s bid to bring the region into its orbit. Despite its tangible benefits, engagement with Beijing is posing new threats to governance, political stability, environmental sustainability, national security, regional consensus—and potentially self-determination. The Pacific norms and institutions that hold elites accountable, ensure rule of law, and sustain independent news reporting all show signs of strain. The sheer disparity in scale with Beijing that the islands face—China’s population is 1.4 billion compared with their combined 14 million—imposes an extreme imbalance of power.
Pacific peoples insist that their islands are not just links in strategic chains and are making clear that they form a unique, self-governing community with a right to define its own vision and destiny. They have been asserting their priorities, such as dealing with climate change, promoting sustainable development, and addressing nontraditional security threats, through such initiatives as the Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration on Regional Security, the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, and now the Ocean of Peace Declaration, which the forum adopted in September.
Yet in the face of China’s ever-expanding influence, Pacific-led efforts will only succeed with steadfast support. One positive step would be for the U.S. Congress to adopt the Pacific Partnership Act, legislation that would mandate the administration to put forth a formal Pacific Islands strategy, that would likely facilitate increased and more predictable U.S. financing, deeper cooperation on maritime and security challenges, and better coordination with other partners. Following through on such a strategy would be a powerful signal of U.S. commitment to the region.
The United States can build a better model of engagement that recognizes the islands’ own interests even as it enhances U.S. national security. American and Pacific Island interests are already aligned in seeking to deter aggression and coercion in the Pacific. But to sustain that deterrent capacity, the United States and its partners must recognize the political, economic, environmental, and social concerns of the islands themselves. Supporting the islands’ sovereignty and democratic institutions, and sincerely addressing their interests, is not only good for Pacific peoples. It is a cost-effective way for Washington and its allies to preserve the fragile balance that keeps the Pacific as peaceful as its name.
Foreign Affairs · More by Michael Kovrig · November 3, 2025
20. The Regime Change Temptation in Venezuela
Excerpt:
Despite all this, some might still argue that regime change is justified by the United States’ strategic interest in Venezuelan oil reserves, which are the world’s largest. But negotiations over U.S. access to those resources were working. As The New York Times reported in October, under a deal discussed over the summer, Maduro had “offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.” This was arguably the most generous package of concessions offered by a foreign adversary to a U.S. administration in decades. And diplomacy was far from exhausted when Trump abruptly walked away. If the administration’s goal is to secure U.S. interests in the region, it would be wiser to return to the negotiating table than to gamble on the chaos that regime change would unleash.
Summary:
U.S. regime change in Venezuela would likely fail and backfire: covert ops have poor success, airstrikes rarely oust leaders, invasion would be costly, and even success breeds instability and insurgency. It contradicts Trump’s anti-war rhetoric, lacks public support, and wouldn’t solve drugs, migration, or energy, diplomacy performed better.
The Regime Change Temptation in Venezuela
Foreign Affairs · More by Alexander B. Downes · October 31, 2025
If Past Is Prologue, a U.S. Attempt to Overthrow Maduro Would Not End Well
October 31, 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/venezuela/regime-change-temptation-maduro-trump-venezuela
A member of the Bolivarian Militia of Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025 Gaby Oraa / Reuters
Alexander B. Downes is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University and author of Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong.
Lindsey A. O’Rourke is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College, a Nonresident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and author of Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War.
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What began in early September as a series of American airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean—which U.S. officials alleged were trafficking drugs from Venezuela—now seems to have morphed into a campaign to overthrow Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Over the course of two months, President Donald Trump’s administration has deployed 10,000 U.S. troops to the region, amassed at least eight U.S. Navy surface vessels and a submarine around South America’s northern coast, directed B-52 and B-1 bombers to fly near the Venezuelan coastline, and ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group—which the U.S. Navy calls the “most capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world”—to U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility.
These moves reflect a recent, broad shift in the administration’s policy toward Venezuela. As reported by several major news outlets, for months after Trump’s January inauguration, internal debate pitted long-time advocates of regime change—led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—against officials who favored a negotiated settlement with Caracas, including the president’s special envoy Richard Grenell. During the first half of 2025, the negotiators held the upper hand: Grenell met with Maduro and struck deals to open Venezuela’s expansive oil and mineral sectors to U.S. firms in exchange for economic reforms and the release of political prisoners. But by mid-July, Rubio reclaimed the initiative by reframing the stakes. Ousting Maduro, he argued, was no longer just about promoting democracy—it was a matter of homeland security. He recast the Venezuelan leader as a narcoterrorist kingpin fueling the United States’ drug crisis and illegal immigration, tying him to the Tren de Aragua gang and claiming that Venezuela was now “governed by a narco-trafficking organization that has empowered itself as a nation state.”
That narrative appears to have persuaded Trump. In July, the president ordered the Pentagon to use military force against certain drug cartels in the region, including Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles, the latter of which the administration claimed was headed by Maduro and his top lieutenants. Two weeks later, the administration doubled the bounty on Maduro’s head from $25 million to $50 million. On October 15, Trump acknowledged to reporters that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. When asked about his intended next steps, Trump said, “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control.” According to The New York Times, “American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.”
But whether covert or overt, any attempt at regime change in Venezuela will face formidable challenges. Covert methods fail far more often than they succeed, and it is unlikely that threats of force or airstrikes will successfully pressure Maduro to flee. And even if Washington were to succeed in ousting Maduro, the longer-term game of regime change would still be risky. Historically, the aftermaths of such operations have been chaotic and violent.
IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED?
The Trump administration has several covert options for bringing about regime change in Venezuela. But by effectively announcing such plans in advance, it has forfeited the primary advantage of acting covertly: minimizing the political and military costs of an operation by preserving plausible deniability. Going public saddles Washington with full responsibility for a mission’s outcome while reducing its ability to control events on the ground should things go awry. In practice, this invites a series of half measures, too overt to be deniable and too limited to be decisive.
But even if Trump had preserved secrecy, the United States’ history of covert interventions offers little reason for optimism. Washington could offer clandestine support to local armed dissidents, try to assassinate Maduro, or instigate a coup against his regime. Yet each tactic carries a poor track record. A 2018 study by one of us (O’Rourke), analyzing 64 U.S.-backed covert regime change attempts during the Cold War, found that efforts to support foreign dissidents succeeded in toppling the target regime in only about ten percent of cases. Assassination efforts have fared no better. Washington’s intentional attempts at covert killings of foreign leaders—most notoriously Cuban leader Fidel Castro—repeatedly failed, although a few leaders, such as South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, were killed during U.S.-backed coups without U.S. approval. Fomenting coups has proved more effective at bringing U.S.-backed forces to power, including in Iran, in 1953, and Guatemala, in 1954. But neither outcome led to long-term stability. And Maduro has so thoroughly coup-proofed the Venezuelan armed forces that this option appears less viable.
The United States has never been able to oust a foreign leader through airpower alone.
Some of these tactics have even been tested in Venezuela before—and failed. In 2019, the United States recognized the opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president and backed a popular uprising against the Maduro regime. But the attempt collapsed when Maduro’s military refused to defect. The following year, a group of about 60 Venezuelan dissidents and a few American contractors launched a botched amphibious incursion to storm the capital and capture Maduro, called “Operation Gideon.” It was swiftly intercepted by Venezuelan security forces.
History shows that failed covert regime changes usually make a bad situation even worse. Relations between the intervening actor and its target go downhill, and as we have found in our research, militarized clashes between them become more likely. In the target state, such attempts tend to trigger violence, including civil war, and increase the risk that the regime kills masses of civilians.
The United States has long conducted covert interventions in other countries’ domestic politics—in Afghanistan, Albania, and Angola, to name just a few. But this pattern was especially pronounced in Latin America, where Washington attempted at least 18 covert regime changes during the Cold War. In 1954, it overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected government, ushering in a military regime that rounded up thousands of opponents and presided over a 36-year civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people. In 1961, the United States backed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and launched a coup in the Dominican Republic that unintentionally provoked the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. After Trujillo’s son seized power instead of the U.S.-backed coup plotters, Washington forced him into exile and continued to meddle in Dominican elections—as well as those in Bolivia and Guyana—throughout the 1960s. It also supported coups in Brazil in 1964, Bolivia in 1971, and Chile in 1973, and funded the Contra rebels in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s.
Yet not one of these operations produced a stable, pro-American democracy. More often, U.S. interventions installed authoritarian regimes or triggered cycles of repression and violence. Even when Washington found a staunch anticommunist ally, such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile, relations eventually soured over the regime’s brutality and human rights abuses. More broadly, the public exposure of Washington’s role in these covert operations fueled deep and lasting anti-Americanism that continues to haunt U.S. policymaking in the region. Indeed, Maduro regularly invokes this history to portray current U.S. pressure as a continuation of Washington’s imperialist past.
POINT BLANK
Among its overt options for regime change, the United States could try to intimidate Maduro into leaving power with threats of force. This technique has sometimes worked, but only against tiny states that are faced with great-power antagonists capable of overwhelming them in a land invasion. In 1940, for example, Joseph Stalin used threats of invasion to oust the leaders of neighboring Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The United States has coerced regime change using threats of force only against essentially defenseless targets, such as Nicaragua in 1909–10. In more recent times, militarized threats by the United States against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya failed to convince either leader to abdicate.
A second tool Washington could use to induce regime change is airpower, but this is easier said than done. Hypothetically, airstrikes could bring about regime change by killing leaders, cutting off the military’s ability to command its forces, or triggering a military coup or popular uprising. The United States, however, has never been able to oust a foreign leader through airpower alone. Even with the development of precision weapons, it has proved difficult to track and strike heads of state, and the proliferation of communications technologies has made the project of isolating leaders from their militaries extremely difficult. Militaries, for their part, are unlikely to stage a coup while fighting a foreign enemy, such as the United States, and civilians would likely find it difficult to mobilize to oust their regime if they were also trying to dodge bombs. All these challenges helped thwart Israel’s regime change aspirations during its recent air campaign against Iran.
Finally, the United States could invade Venezuela. If it decided to go that route, however, the forces the administration currently has in place would not get the job done. In early October, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that a ground invasion would require at least 50,000 troops. Trump could, theoretically, assemble such a force. But launching a major invasion would starkly contravene his loud and repeated opposition to sending U.S. troops on foreign adventures and risk fracturing his base. Most observers downplay the invasion scenario, instead anticipating, as military experts told The Atlantic in October, a “push the button, watch things explode” campaign. It is also worth recalling that the United States could not control Iraq—a country half the size of Venezuela—with more than three times as many troops in 2003.
It is tempting to invoke previous U.S. invasions to achieve regime change in the Caribbean—such as the 1983 attack on Grenada, which ousted a Marxist regime, or the invasion of Panama in 1989, in which Washington overthrew and extradited the dictator Manuel Noriega—as a model for Venezuela. But both comparisons are deeply misleading. Grenada is a tiny island nation that had a population of roughly 90,000 at the time of the U.S. invasion. Panama offers a slightly better comparison, but it is still nowhere close to Venezuela’s size: Venezuela is more than 12 times as large and has roughly ten times as many people as Panama did in 1989. Unlike Panama, Venezuela is not a small state centered on a capital city but a vast, mountainous country with multiple urban centers, rugged jungle terrain, and porous borders that insurgents and irregular forces could exploit. The U.S. military has not fared well against insurgencies under similar conditions in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
THE DOWNSIDES OF SUCCESS
Even if a regime change operation succeeds at first, history again shows that long-term outcomes are often disappointing. Studies by each of us (and many others) have shown that efforts to promote democracy after foreign-imposed regime changes rarely succeed—a point made painfully clear by recent U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
Regime change instead often begets further violence—for example, it dramatically increases the likelihood of civil war in target countries. Even regime changes that result from decisive land victories can go wrong if the targeted state’s armed forces scatter instead of surrendering, allowing those forces to provide the basis for insurgencies against a new regime, as occurred in Iraq.
Venezuela’s internal landscape suggests that this is a real possibility. As the Latin America analyst Juan David Rojas has noted, Venezuela contains a “kaleidoscope of sophisticated armed actors,” including pro-regime militias known as colectivos and transnational armed groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and remnants of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told The Guardian in early October that Venezuela “is absolutely packed from end to end with armed groups of various kinds, none of whom has any incentive to just surrender or stop doing what they’re doing.” The chances—and possible consequences—for U.S. missteps are high.
Militaries are unlikely to stage a coup while fighting a foreign enemy.
Whoever replaced Maduro would face significant obstacles—especially if the United States put them there. Leaders brought to power by outside actors are more likely than other leaders to be ousted violently. Indeed, whether overtly or covertly, our research has found that nearly half of externally imposed leaders are later removed by force. Often viewed as weak or illegitimate—either because they lack broad domestic support or are seen as puppets of a foreign government—these leaders struggle to consolidate power. To be sure, Venezuela has a vibrant democratic opposition, and that opposition’s leader, the recent Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, commands a majority of public support. In the country’s July 2024 presidential election, Edmundo González—who became the opposition’s candidate after Machado was barred from running—won more than twice as many votes as Maduro, a result that the government promptly suppressed.
Proponents of regime change argue that it could empower this democratic majority and carry Machado to power. But even public opinion polling favorable to Machado shows that Maduro still retains the loyalty of roughly one-third of the population. That minority importantly includes the core pillars of the regime’s coercive apparatus, whose positions and privileges rely on the survival of the current system. In 2023, a study by the RAND Corporation warned that U.S. military intervention in Venezuela “would be protracted and not easy for the United States to extricate itself from once it begins its engagement.”
All of this points to a broader lesson: democratic revolutions are most likely to succeed when they are indigenous. If Machado truly enjoys widespread support and the opposition truly commands majority sentiment, then their best chance for success is to translate that support into power from within. Aligning their movement with a foreign military risks delegitimizing their cause and inviting nationalist backlash. Moreover, the fact that the opposition is now courting U.S. military assistance should make U.S. policymakers wary. If the political balance really is in their favor, why do they need outside help to topple Maduro? The answer, of course, is that Maduro’s regime still controls the guns. But if the opposition requires foreign backing to seize power, it will also likely struggle to hold it.
History offers no shortage of cautionary tales. Those bent on regime change have repeatedly relied on biased information and rosy assumptions about the aftermath of these operations. When assessing his prospects for installing a puppet regime in Mexico during the 1860s, for example, Napoleon III of France trusted the counsel of exiled Mexican conservatives, who assured him that their countrymen would welcome rule by an Austrian archduke—just as the George W. Bush administration believed the prominent Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi’s assurances that all would be well after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Both interveners ended up battling powerful insurgencies. The root problem is that interveners tend to focus myopically on how to topple a regime, without giving much thought to what will come after. But as Benjamin Franklin once put it, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” By neglecting to plan, the Trump administration risks repeating the disasters of Iraq and Libya.
AMERICA FIRST?
A U.S. policy of regime change—its chances of success notwithstanding—would violate every principle of the foreign policy Trump claims to champion. Trump has long railed against the United States’ “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq and vowed to end “the era of endless wars” more broadly. He has repeatedly cast himself as a peacemaker, claiming to have ended eight international wars in nine months. In May, in a speech in Riyadh, Trump praised regional self-determination, declaring, “The birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves. . . . The so-called ‘nation builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built—and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
A U.S.-engineered effort to topple Maduro would contradict this vision. It would potentially entangle the United States in another open-ended conflict, alienate regional partners amid a broader competition with China for influence in the region, and defy the desires of the American public. A YouGov poll conducted in September found that 62 percent of adult U.S. citizens “strongly or somewhat oppose the U.S. using military force to invade Venezuela,” and 53 percent strongly or somewhat oppose “the U.S. using military force to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.” (The support for U.S. Navy deployments was more mixed, with 36 percent strongly or somewhat approving “the U.S. sending Navy ships to the sea around Venezuela” and 38 percent strongly or somewhat disapproving.) A poll from early October found that even in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, home to the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the United States, more residents oppose than support the U.S. military being used to oust Maduro, 42 percent to 35 percent.
Nor would regime change advance the administration’s stated goals in the Western Hemisphere: curbing drug trafficking, dismantling cartels, and reducing illegal immigration. For one, Venezuela is not a major supplier of narcotics to the United States. Indeed, the 2024 Drug Enforcement Agency National Drug Threat Assessment does not mention Venezuela at all, and the agency estimates that only eight percent of U.S.-bound cocaine transits its territory. The threat posed by Tren de Aragua also appears overstated. A declassified April memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that the gang’s small size makes it “highly unlikely” that it “coordinates large volumes of human trafficking or migrant smuggling.” Nor is there any clear reason to believe that regime change would stem or reverse the mass emigration from Venezuela. If anything, further destabilizing the regime may only increase the number of refugees fleeing the country.
Despite all this, some might still argue that regime change is justified by the United States’ strategic interest in Venezuelan oil reserves, which are the world’s largest. But negotiations over U.S. access to those resources were working. As The New York Times reported in October, under a deal discussed over the summer, Maduro had “offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.” This was arguably the most generous package of concessions offered by a foreign adversary to a U.S. administration in decades. And diplomacy was far from exhausted when Trump abruptly walked away. If the administration’s goal is to secure U.S. interests in the region, it would be wiser to return to the negotiating table than to gamble on the chaos that regime change would unleash.
Foreign Affairs · More by Alexander B. Downes · October 31, 2025
21. The Fantasy of a New Middle East
Conclusion:
Israel may view itself as the region’s new hegemon, but in fact it has made itself both less necessary and less useful. After the attack on Qatar, leaders of the Gulf states are unlikely to continue pointing all their air defense systems toward Iran and Yemen. Perhaps they could accept Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, but now Israel has made itself a threat to their own security. That Israel has avoided paying any serious price thus far for its military expansionism in the region and for the devastation of Gaza has fed the sense in Israel that it never will. But that is as misguided as the Israeli belief in 1973 that no Arab state would ever dare attack it again after its sweeping victory six years earlier or its notion, prior to October 7, 2023, that Hamas would remain forever contained in Gaza.
Summary:
Marc Lynch argues that Israel cannot achieve lasting regional peace through military dominance alone. The Gaza cease-fire moment hints at potential change, but Israel’s escalating strikes and neglect of Palestinian statehood undermine Arab trust. Without shared purpose and legitimacy, Israel’s bid to lead the Middle East is built on unstable foundations.
The Fantasy of a New Middle East
Foreign Affairs · More by Marc Lynch · October 31, 2025
Israel Cannot Destroy Its Way to Peace
October 31, 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/fantasy-new-middle-east
A Palestinian boy sitting at the site of an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza, October 2025 Mahmoud Issa / Reuters
MARC LYNCH is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and the author of America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region.
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The regional order of the Middle East is rapidly evolving, but not in the way many Israeli and U.S. officials assume it is. U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to end the war in Gaza delivered the release of all the surviving Israeli hostages and a respite from the relentless killing and destruction that has so scarred the territory. That breakthrough raised hopes of a broader regional transformation, even if what comes after the initial cease-fire remains hugely uncertain. Trump himself speaks of the dawn of peace in the Middle East. If his deal prevents the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank, many Arab governments may once again be eager to explore normalizing ties with Israel. Indeed, Israelis saw how Arab leaders pressured Hamas to accept Trump’s deal as evidence that normalization could be back on the table.
But even if the Gaza deal holds, this moment of U.S.-Israeli convergence won’t last. Israel’s mistaken belief that the country has established permanent strategic superiority over its adversaries will almost certainly lead it to take increasingly provocative actions that directly challenge the goals of the White House. The Gulf states that Israel dreams of bringing into its fold doubt that it is willing or able to protect their core interests. They are now less concerned about confronting Iran—and less convinced that the road to Washington leads through Tel Aviv. And Israel seems not to grasp the extent of Trump’s affinities with the Gulf states.
Wishful thinking has pervaded the Israeli government and national security establishment, which have reveled in the opportunities created by the country’s exercise of strength. After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel embarked on a cascading series of airstrikes and interventions across the region aimed not just at Hamas but the entire Iranian-led axis, repeatedly crossing redlines that had long governed the regional shadow war, killing leaders who had been viewed as untouchable: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive bomb dropped in central Beirut, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in an Iranian safe house, multiple Iranian military commanders in Syria, and the Houthi prime minister of Yemen. Its bombing of nuclear and military sites in Iran represented the culmination of Israel’s long-held desire to strike at the heart of its greatest foe.
An attack in the Gulf, however, has proved to be a surprising turning point. Israel’s shocking attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders gathered for U.S.-brokered negotiations in Doha in September represented a dramatic escalation of its bid to reshape the Middle East by airpower. That was the kind of gambit undertaken only by leaders completely convinced of their immunity from the consequences of their actions. But Trump decided that this time, Israel had gone too far. The indelible image of a scowling Trump watching Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sheepishly read a scripted apology on a phone call to the emir of Qatar seems emblematic of the shifting geopolitical moment that led to the initial cease-fire in Gaza.
It is unclear whether Trump’s irritation with Israel will produce meaningful changes beyond the cease-fire. Citing supposed Hamas attacks in the south of Gaza, the Israeli military has resumed bombarding parts of the territory this week. Israel would be far better served by stepping back from the brink and embracing the opportunity offered by the cease-fire to dial down its military adventurism and seek the kind of sustainable regional order that can be reached only through serious movement toward a Palestinian state. Protracted conflict has exposed Israel’s shortcomings: its missile defenses do not offer perfect security, its economy cannot sustain endless war, its domestic politics are convulsed after the long period of strife in Gaza, and its military remains deeply dependent on the United States. The devastation of Gaza has destroyed Israel’s standing in the world, leaving the country increasingly isolated and alone.
Israel cannot bomb the Middle East into a stable new order. Regional leadership requires more than military primacy. It also demands some degree of consent and cooperation from other regional powers. But nobody in the Middle East wants Israeli leadership, and all states now increasingly fear its unchecked might. Some in Washington celebrate the prospect of an unrestrained Israel laying waste to U.S. adversaries. But they should be careful what they wish for. Israel’s interests are not the same as those of the United States—and Israel is writing a lot of checks that the United States might not be willing or able to cash.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE ORDER
Israel’s bid to remake the region has gone further than most imagined it ever could, but it swims against strong currents. The Middle Eastern regional order has been remarkably stable over the last 35 years. Beneath the turbulence, violence, and seemingly nonstop churn, the basic structure of regional politics has experienced only a few moments of potential change—none of which lasted. That structure consists of an uneasy, unpopular, and largely unwanted American primacy at the international level and a highly robust, if only occasionally acknowledged, division of the region into two competing blocs.
This regional order arose with American global primacy following the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, countries in the region had the option of playing the two superpowers off each other, while Washington and Moscow worried excessively about the possible loss of valuable local proxies and allies. After 1991, all roads ran through Washington. The critical question became whether countries fell inside or outside that order. Those inside—Israel and most of the Arab states—enjoyed security guarantees, access to international institutions and financing, and diplomatic protections. Those outside—Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria—faced crippling sanctions, frequent bombings and covert interventions, and routine demonization. Small wonder that Libya and Syria spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s trying to find their way back into Washington’s good graces and back into the U.S.-led regional order.
American primacy, weakened by the debacle of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the 2008 global financial crisis, no longer looks as ironclad as it was in previous decades. But multipolarity remains a distant prospect. Russia had only one ally in the region—the enfeebled regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Now, after Assad’s 2024 ouster, it has none. China’s inexorable economic rise and daunting array of strategic agreements with regional powers has not manifested in any serious challenge to the U.S.-led regional order. Beijing has been largely invisible on Gaza and merely condemned the Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran. China maintains only one naval base in the region, a small post in Djibouti that is used for counterpiracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden, but it did nothing when the Houthis blockaded Red Sea shipping as retribution for Israel’s campaign in Gaza. For now, China seems content to keep free-riding on American military dominance in the Gulf despite Chinese dependence on Middle Eastern oil and gas. Although states in the region are trying to diversify their military and economic partnerships and strike more favorable bargains with Washington, no alternative to American primacy has yet emerged.
Israel cannot bomb the Middle East into a stable new order.
Middle Eastern states have all been comfortably ensconced, since 1991, in a functionally bipolar regional order that arrays a U.S.-led bloc comprising Israel, most Arab states, and Turkey against Iran and its regional partners. Gulf leaders feel comfortable with Trump’s transactional approach and his hunger for the kind of deals that wealthy oil states can readily offer. The Abraham Accords, in which several Arab states normalized relations with Israel in 2020 at Trump’s behest, changed little but the optics, as many of those Arab states had long maintained strategic relations with Israel against Iran.
This U.S.-led order has proved remarkably robust. The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in 2001 and the brutal second intifada didn’t disrupt it in any meaningful sense. Nor did the September 11 attacks, the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, or the pursuit of extremely unpopular policies in the name of the global “war on terror.” Those disasters did strengthen the position of the Iranian bloc, which for decades seemed to be rising inexorably as its allies reached dominant positions in Baghdad, Beirut, and Sanaa; the Assad regime clung to power in Damascus; and Hamas and Hezbollah developed formidable arsenals of missiles and other military capabilities.
During the great disruptions of the era of Arab uprisings after 2011, that bipolarity turned into something recognizably tripolar. Iran’s “axis of resistance” mostly held together. But the threats and opportunities opened by those momentous political changes drove intensely destructive competition across multiple regional fronts, splitting the U.S.-led coalition in two: Qatar and Turkey on one side, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the other, and Washington struggling to keep them working toward the same goals. The Emirati-Saudi blockade of Qatar from 2017 to 2021 severely hampered efforts to maintain a unified front against Iran. But that ill-begotten spat resolved itself quickly when U.S. President Joe Biden took office, with all the major parties reconciling, resuming the traditional order despite the failure of the Biden administration’s monomaniacal pursuit of an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement.
In the wake of the war in Gaza, however, Arab regimes have rediscovered their interest in the Palestinian question. Always fearful of a renewed wave of popular uprisings and carefully attuned to potential triggers for new protests, the region’s leaders are keenly aware of the depth of public outrage over the ethnic cleansing and devastation of Gaza. The Saudi reassertion of the Arab Peace Initiative, which predicates peace with Israel on the creation of a Palestinian state, shows how potent the shift has been. That shift was reflected in the terms of the Gaza cease-fire, which ruled out the expulsion of Palestinians and the Israeli annexation of the territory, conditions that aligned more closely with Gulf preferences than with those of Israel.
ISRAEL’S LOST MOMENT
And yet this turn has been lost on Israeli leaders. They dwell instead on how Israel’s campaign against Iran and Iran’s allies has upended the balance of power in the region. The decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership and the destruction of much of its missile arsenal removed one of Iran’s critical military assets. The fall of the Assad regime deprived Tehran of an easy path to rebuilding its Lebanese ally, while Israel systematically destroyed Syria’s military arsenal, attacked Iranian assets in the country, and claimed effective sovereignty over a large swath of Syria’s south.
Israeli national security thinkers and officials believe that each escalation has proved only that the concerns of critics were overblown. Their mistake prior to October 7, they now insist, had been to allow threats to fester without dealing with them decisively, whatever the cost. Their gamble is that order can be imposed by force and from the air and that Arab leaders are either so intimidated or so weak that they would never risk responding. Israel seems convinced that normative concerns don’t matter much: legitimacy, its actions suggest, simply follows the gun. Arab leaders might grumble but will ultimately toe the line set by the ascendant regional hegemon. Israel has always been the most realist of regional powers. It prefers a region where might makes right, where no self-interested state would sacrifice its interests for the Palestinians, where international law has no binding force, and where military power reigns supreme.
But Israel’s military primacy and grumbling Arab acquiescence won’t make a sustainable order. Consolidating Israeli regional leadership would require Arab states to share with Israel either a sense of purpose or a sense of threat. Israel has undermined both. The destruction of Gaza and moves toward the annexation of the West Bank have ripped away any pretense of Israel allowing a path toward a just solution to the question of Palestinian statehood. Even before Israeli attacks decimated Iran’s regional military power, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states had been moving toward rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. After the strike on Doha (and, before that, Israeli threats to expel millions of Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan), Israel now appears as much a threat to Arab regimes as does an enfeebled Iran. And Arab countries will not feel as inclined to countenance an unpalatable alignment with Israel if the threat from Iran no longer keeps them awake at night.
Unchecked power and unbounded ambition lead to tragedy. Israel has proved notably unwilling to take any meaningful steps toward building the shared sense of purpose that might allow its military success to be translated into regional leadership. Israelis remain consumed by the trauma of the October 7 attack. Large majorities of the Israeli public reject the international condemnation of the country’s war crimes in Gaza, with most simply refusing to believe reports of famine or mass civilian casualties. And Netanyahu is more concerned with maintaining his narrow far-right government than with addressing international criticism and reviving plans for Palestinian statehood that are anathema to his coalition partners. The Gaza cease-fire offered an opportunity to change direction, but the continuing skirmishes, ongoing obstruction of humanitarian aid, and escalating settler violence in the West Bank do not bode well.
Arab regimes have rediscovered their interest in the Palestinian question.
It doesn’t help that Israel also holds an exaggerated view of its military strength. For all its audacious surprise strikes and clear air superiority, Israel does not have the kind of military that can occupy and hold territory beyond the Palestinian and Syrian lands it seized 55 years ago. It has shown that it can advance many of its tactical goals through assassinations and bombings from afar. But it has not shown that it can actually accomplish any of its strategic objectives: Hamas remains the most powerful force in Gaza, Hezbollah refuses to disarm despite taking significant losses, and the massive 12-day campaign against Iran failed to end Iran’s nuclear program or inspire Iranians to rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Israel’s military dominance is real, but it remains contingent. Israel could sustain its war on Gaza only with American resupply of munitions. Its Iron Dome defenses against Iranian missile strikes ran dangerously low of interceptors before the United States imposed a cease-fire in the 12-day war. Israel’s emergency appeals over the course of the last two years to Washington reveal how deeply dependent the country remains on the United States. Regional powers have surely taken note of this potential vulnerability in a protracted conflict.
Netanyahu has been playing the game of American politics for decades and has good reason to assume Israel’s hold on U.S. policy will persist indefinitely despite current turbulence. But warning lights should be flashing. Netanyahu’s partisan embrace of the Republicans and Israel’s conduct in Gaza have badly eroded what was once a bipartisan consensus in favor of Israel. Majorities of Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis, and Democratic politicians are increasingly questioning military aid to Israel. Republicans continue to support Israel, but the nativists in “America first” circles seem less willing to subordinate U.S. interests to Israel’s. Trump is aging, unpredictable, and erratic and has deep personal and financial ties to Gulf regimes; his potential Republican successors, such as Vice President JD Vance, have no particular commitment to Israel. Without a blank check from the United States, Israel’s primacy could evaporate much faster than anyone expects.
Israel may view itself as the region’s new hegemon, but in fact it has made itself both less necessary and less useful. After the attack on Qatar, leaders of the Gulf states are unlikely to continue pointing all their air defense systems toward Iran and Yemen. Perhaps they could accept Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, but now Israel has made itself a threat to their own security. That Israel has avoided paying any serious price thus far for its military expansionism in the region and for the devastation of Gaza has fed the sense in Israel that it never will. But that is as misguided as the Israeli belief in 1973 that no Arab state would ever dare attack it again after its sweeping victory six years earlier or its notion, prior to October 7, 2023, that Hamas would remain forever contained in Gaza.
Foreign Affairs · More by Marc Lynch · October 31, 2025
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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