​Quotes of the Day:

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.” 

– Soren Kierkegaard 

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.”

– Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance." 

– William Faulkner

1. Transforming and Modernizing Army Information Forces: Creating the Information Warfare Branch

2. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐀𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 — 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝗼𝗺𝐚𝐜𝐲 ＆ 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲

3. U.S. Offers Ukraine Security Guarantee in Bid to Break Peace-Talks Deadlock

4. U.K. Spy Chief Warns of Acute Russia Threat: The ‘Frontline is Everywhere’

5. After a Generation of Peace, Europe Tells Its People to Prepare for War

6. Top 10 Fault Lines China Can’t Acknowledge (But You Should Watch Closely)

7. The New Arms Race: Global Drone Dominance and America’s Tactical Wake-Up Call

8. The Deterrence Facade

9. Invading Venezuela: The One-Word Reason America Won't Do It

10. Operating AI in the Gray Zone: Drawing Clear Lines Before They Blur

11. 2025 National Security Strategy Validates Core Thesis of "Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant"

12. An active, engaging, and honest National Security Strategy

13. A farewell to Oz: Trump’s strategy for a multipolar world

14. What Would Teddy Roosevelt Think of the “Trump Corollary”?

15. Why (and how) the US military wants to resupply troops from space

16.China seizes 430kg cocaine aided by US intel, in sign anti-drug pact may be working

17. The Imperial Trap: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Lessons of Failed Conquests

18. Japan’s Strategic Challenges: Historical Lessons and the Imperative for Comprehensive War Understanding

19. The Weakness of the Strongmen – What Really Threatens Authoritarians?

20. How to Survive in a Multialigned World – The Indian Way of Strategic Diversification

21. Marine Corps reopens Ie Shima airfield after repairs, ending temporary Kadena drops 

1. Transforming and Modernizing Army Information Forces: Creating the Information Warfare Branch

​Summary:

Army Information Forces are fragmented across IO, PO, cyber, EW, PA, CA, and space, which slows integration and leaves gaps against adversary influence, disinformation, and cyber attacks. ADP 3-13 defines information warfare as integrated lethal and nonlethal actions to disrupt enemy command and control while protecting friendly forces. SOCoE proposes an Information Warfare Branch by merging FA30 Information Operations officers with the Psychological Operations branch. The aim is a unified cadre trained in influence, deception, communication, and use of cyber and EW enablers, backed by doctrine updates, redesign, and training. A phased rollout should improve advantage, lethality, survivability, and interoperability.

Excerpts:

The need to transform and modernize the Army’s Information Forces is clear. As adversaries become more adept at weaponizing information, the Army must evolve to meet these challenges head-on. Establishing the IWar branch is a strategic step toward creating a more agile, responsive, and effective force. The SOCoE’s efforts will enable the U.S. Army to shape the IE, counter adversary influence, and support national security objectives. Proactive leadership and sustained commitment are essential for implementing this vital transformation without compromising core functions, ensuring the Army remains dominant in the complex and contested information landscape of the future.

This is an important initiative, one that recognizes the talent within the force and seeks to invest in and elevate such talent to the benefit of the Army. As work on this initiative continues, feedback from leaders throughout Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) is needed. ARSOF’s talented community is ready to meet the challenges ahead and it can, and will, rapidly innovate to create the streamlined, agile, and effective Information Forces needed for future conflicts.

Comment: At the risk of showing my bias, this is one of the most important (yet will likely be overlooked) efforts of Army transformation. I am very optimistic about the new Information Warfare (IWar) Branch and I am very gratified to see how our Army is taking information and the need to lead with influence so seriously. 

 Graphics at the link.

Transforming and Modernizing Army Information Forces: Creating the Information Warfare Branch

by William Bryant

|

12.16.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/16/transforming-and-modernizing/

Editors’ Note: This article is part one in a series of IWar transformation papers. It provides preparatory fires that address initial changes and momentum in this historic transformation. The goal is to inform readers and expand lodgment in the information space, allowing for more information to be announced in the coming weeks and months. 

Introduction

“Information technology is expected to make a thousandfold advance over the next 20 years. In fact, the pace of development is so great that it renders our current materiel management and acquisition system inadequate. Developments in information technology will revolutionize-and indeed have begun to revolutionize-how nations, organizations, and people Interact. The rapid diffusion of information, enabled by these technological advances, challenges the relevance of traditional organizational and management principles. The military implications of new organizational sciences that examine internetted, nonhierarchical versus hierarchical management models are yet to be fully understood. Clearly, Information Age technology, and the management Ideas It fosters, will greatly Influence military operations in two areas – one evolutionary, the other revolutionary; one we understand, one with which we are just beginning to experiment. Together, they represent two phenomena at work in winning what has been described as the information war – a war that has been fought by commanders throughout history.” – Force XXI Operations

The quotation above was written in 1994. During this period, the Army attempted to marshal its resources to prepare for the future operating environment in anticipation of the information age. While Force XXI Operations correctly identified the characteristics of the information age and the need for adaptation, the Global War on Terror blindsided the United States and interrupted this effort. Now, 31 years later, the U.S.’s adversaries effectively retain the capabilities to outcompete it in the information environment (IE), as seen in modern conflict and within strategic competition. In response, the U.S. military must adapt now to ensure future relative advantages across competition, crisis and armed conflict.

Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-13 defines information warfare as “the integrated employment of lethal and nonlethal capabilities to disrupt, degrade, deceive, or destroy enemy command and control systems while protecting friendly forces from the same.” Traditionally, Special Operations Forces (SOF) conducted information warfare alongside a multitude of other conventional components. However, the speed of the modern information age necessitates adaptation to dominate in the IE. To effectively shape this environment, the Army must transform its Information Forces into a cohesive, agile entity capable of countering and dominating sophisticated threats.

This article explores the first steps towards modernizing and unifying Army Information Forces by establishing an IWar branch. Ultimately, it emphasizes the strategic integration of Functional Area (FA) 30 Information Operations (IO) officers with the Army Psychological Operations (PO) branch to create a unified and more effective capability in support of operations in the information environment (OIE).

Figure 1: Domains and Dimensions of an Operational Environment. Source. Department of the Army. (2023). ADP 3-13, Information. Army Publishing Directorate.

The Current State of Army Information Forces

Our current state of Army Information Forces is marked by fragmentation and limited coordination (and, in some instances, redundancies) across key capabilities, including cyber, civil affairs (CA), public affairs (PA), electronic warfare (EW), IO, space, and PO. Different units often operate in silos, with limited integration of their capabilities. This creates gaps in response speed, strategic coherence, and effectiveness in countering adversaries’ malign influence campaigns.

Concurrently, the threat landscape is evolving rapidly. Adversaries now employ sophisticated information warfare, including social media manipulation, cyber intrusions, disinformation, and targeted propaganda, to sway public opinion and undermine allied cohesion. These tactics exploit weaknesses in the Army’s existing capabilities, often leaving critical vulnerabilities unaddressed.

Figure 2: Russian Activities Vignette. Source: Department of the Army. (2023). ADP 3-13, Information. Army Publishing Directorate.

Bottom line: the traditional force structure is no longer sufficient for modern conflict. It lacks the flexibility and agility needed to effectively counter or disrupt current threats. The limited integration among IO, PO, CA, cyber, space, EW, and PA hinders a unified response, reducing the Army’s ability to proactively shape the IE. The absence of a dedicated, cohesive force specialized in influence and IO means that the Army cannot maximize its potential in the information dimension. This fragmentation risks strategic failures in conflicts where information dominance is a decisive factor.

Figure 3: Current Army Information Forces, per ADP 3-13 Source. Created by author. (2025).

The Path Forward: Establishing the IWar Branch

To address these gaps, the Special Operations Center of Excellence (SOCoE) is pursuing a transformative initiative: consolidating, streamlining, and modernizing our IWar capabilities through a dedicated, integrated force. The new IWar path will integrate the FA 30 IO officer community with the Army PO branch. This new path will create a unified, multidomain capability that enhances the Army’s capacity for information warfare and strategic communication.

An IWar branch will expand the Army’s information warfare capabilities by combining the integration expertise of IO officers with the operational experience of PO soldiers. This will enhance coordination across various influence and cyber activities, enabling rapid and tailored responses to emerging threats. It will also foster increased IWar specialization, allowing personnel to develop a deeper understanding of the diverse tools required for modern information warfare.

Developing a dedicated cadre of IWar soldiers with diverse expertise aligned to current threats is essential. These IWar soldiers will be trained in advanced influence techniques, military deception, how to leverage and employ cyber and electronic warfare technical enablers, Information Force integration, and strategic communication, ensuring they are prepared for the complexities of modern conflict. Organizational redesign, doctrine updates, and training modernization programs will be necessary to institutionalize this branch establishment. These changes will support the broader goal of enabling effective OIE, ensuring the Army can conduct deception, influence, precision messaging, and other information warfare capabilities more effectively.

Figure 4: Proposed IWar Branch Establishment, Phase 1. Source: Created by author. (2025).

Modernized forces will be better equipped to counter adversary disinformation, conduct information warfare campaigns, and support friendly information initiatives. Additionally, the establishment of IWar will optimize the delivery of integrated capabilities that increase the Army’s effectiveness on the battlefield. Enhanced battlefield visualization, deception capabilities, and a more holistic integration of information forces into the targeting process will facilitate lethality and survivability. The integration of modern tools, such as artificial intelligence capabilities, will further enhance our Army’s effectiveness as a fighting force, capable of achieving information/ decision advantage for Army and joint commanders.

Implementation and Future Steps

Implementing this transformation requires a phased, comprehensive approach. Key steps include updating doctrine to integrate influence activities with cyber and space operations, developing leadership with specialized expertise, and conducting Army and joint training exercises to ensure interoperability. Pursuant to this initiative, an operational planning team (OPT) is conducting analysis and planning for the integration of FA30 and PO Soldiers already in our formations, at each echelon, under a consolidated IWar branch. This analysis also includes planning for the phasing and timelines of future recruitment, selection, training, and education of future IWar soldiers.

This is only the first step of this transformative initiative. In the coming months the Army will move fast, but deliberately. Leaders must continue to iterate on the analytical steps required to enact this change in an expeditious manner. However, the Army will not compromise core functions. Any potential changes to current force structure will be done to enhance IWar capability and capacity to increase the lethality, survivability, and effectiveness of the Army on the battlefield of tomorrow.

Conclusion

The need to transform and modernize the Army’s Information Forces is clear. As adversaries become more adept at weaponizing information, the Army must evolve to meet these challenges head-on. Establishing the IWar branch is a strategic step toward creating a more agile, responsive, and effective force. The SOCoE’s efforts will enable the U.S. Army to shape the IE, counter adversary influence, and support national security objectives. Proactive leadership and sustained commitment are essential for implementing this vital transformation without compromising core functions, ensuring the Army remains dominant in the complex and contested information landscape of the future.

This is an important initiative, one that recognizes the talent within the force and seeks to invest in and elevate such talent to the benefit of the Army. As work on this initiative continues, feedback from leaders throughout Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) is needed. ARSOF’s talented community is ready to meet the challenges ahead and it can, and will, rapidly innovate to create the streamlined, agile, and effective Information Forces needed for future conflicts.

Check out everything Small Wars Journal has to offer.

Tags: Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF), Information Forces, information operations, information warfare, Transformation

About The Author

• 
  
• William Bryant
• Chief Warrant Officer 4 William Bryant is a career Regular Army Soldier and Special Forces Officer with more than 24 years of service. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies, the Air Command and Staff College, How the Army Runs Course, the Joint Information Planner Course, the Tactical Information Operations Planner Course, and several other OPSEC and MILDEC courses. He holds three graduate degrees (MA, MS, and MA) and an FAA commercial pilot certificate. The views, opinions, and analysis expressed do not represent the position of the U.S. Army or the Department of War.

2. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐀𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 — 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝗼𝗺𝐚𝐜𝐲 ＆ 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲

​Summary:

Hunnewell frames the week as a shift from kinetic leverage to narrative leverage, where the decisive terrain is grids, feeds, and votes. He flags four signals: Ukraine’s grid degradation reshaping negotiation baselines, Thailand–Cambodia insecurity disrupting Mekong supply chains, Chile’s runoff win driving polarization and fast-moving digital frames, and Beijing’s “Three Warfares” in the Middle East. Core idea: “sentiment arbitrage” and cognitive sabotage reward early detection of baseline shifts.

​Comment:  Four new terms (to me anyway – perhaps not for our Information Warfare experts): Kinetic diplomacy, narrative insurgency, sentiment arbitrage, and cognitive sabotage. 

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐀𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 — 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝗼𝗺𝐚𝐜𝐲 ＆ 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲

Stephen Hunnewell

Stephen Hunnewell

  • Following

Premium • Following

Shaping National Power in the Grey Zone | Tech x Policy | Tufts Fletcher | Babson MBA

Shaping National Power in the Grey Zone | Tech x Policy | Tufts Fletcher | Babson MBA

19h •

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7406351087466745856/

19 hours ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐀𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 — 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝗼𝗺𝐚𝐜𝐲 ＆ 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲

The market sees price action; the strategist sees "Preparation of the Environment." This week’s drift: from kinetic leverage to narrative leverage. The center of gravity isn’t a battlefield—it’s the grid, the feed, and the vote.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞: Analysis of 15 Dec 2025. The alpha isn’t certainty—it’s earlier detection of baseline shifts before the tape notices.

Here is the outlook:

𝟏. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 “𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝗼𝐱” 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝗼-𝐀𝐭𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜

Peace framing is colliding with energy physics. Washington Post reports nearly 5,000 drones/missiles launched in Nov 2025, with Kyiv seeing outages up to ~16 hours/day. Ukrenergo leadership also warned many regions are at 12–16 hours/day after Dec 6 strikes. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞: Markets price “announcements.” Grids price “repair timelines.” If the grid’s bargaining value collapses, so does the negotiation baseline. hashtag

#EnergySecurity hashtag

#Ukraine

𝟐. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 “𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭” 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬

Reuters reports the Thailand–Cambodia conflict has displaced >250,000 in Thailand and nearly 395,000 in Cambodia, with curfews and fuel/export controls on the table. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐬𝐤: Mekong manufacturing can absorb tariff friction; it struggles with security friction (closures, convoys, insurance repricing). Watch spillover around Preah Vihear. hashtag

#SupplyChain hashtag

#Mekong

𝟑. 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 “𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐲 𝐙𝗼𝐧𝐞” 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐕𝐨𝐭𝐞

José Antonio Kast won the runoff with ~58% vs ~42%. The market narrative will lean “pro-business.” The risk narrative should price polarization and rapid reframing. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 (heuristic): Digital Sentiment Velocity—how fast a frame propagates across WhatsApp/Telegram before institutions endorse it. High velocity ≠ proof of coordination; it is a signal of narrative instability.hashtag

#Copper hashtag

#LatAm

𝟒. 𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐣𝐢𝐧𝐠’𝐬 “𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐟𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬” 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐄𝐚𝐬𝐭

Wang Yi’s tour (UAE–Saudi–Jordan, Dec 12–16) is a live template for public-opinion + legal + psychological levers (“Three Warfares”). 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐭𝐚: Track UNGA voting coincidence on sovereignty texts vs. security procurement. Divergence—buying U.S. hardware while aligning with Beijing’s framing—signals a shift: the U.S. becoming a vendor rather than an architect.

hashtag

#Geoeconomics hashtag

#MiddleEast

𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓: "𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝗺𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐀𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞" We are tracking a global spike in "Cognitive Sabotage"—amplifying domestic grievances to induce decision-paralysis. The "Alpha" lies in holding assets insulated from social fragmentation (utilities) versus those exposed to narrative crossfire. hashtag

#CognitiveDomain

Watch the "Negotiation Baseline." If the Berlin phrasing shifts from "immediate implementation" to "roadmap for discussion," the algorithm will unwind the peace trade.

hashtag

#IrregularWarfare hashtag

#PoliticalWarfare hashtag

#Russia hashtag

#Chile hashtag

#GeopoliticalRisk

3. U.S. Offers Ukraine Security Guarantee in Bid to Break Peace-Talks Deadlock

​Summary:

In Berlin talks with Ukraine and European leaders, the U.S. offered to backstop European security guarantees for Ukraine and seek Senate approval for a U.S. role if Russia attacks again. U.S. officials said Kyiv and Washington are aligned on about 90 percent of the draft peace package, including monitoring, verification, deconfliction, and continued arms to deter violations, while ruling out U.S. ground troops. The core deadlock is territory: what lands Ukraine keeps and whether it withdraws from parts of Donetsk. POTUS wants a year end deal; Kyiv and Europe doubt Russia will accept without demanding concessions that undermine Ukraine's defenses.

Comment: Does Senate backing mean this effort is doomed to fail? Are we throwing a bone to Ukraine now with the understanding that the Senate will likely not support this? Or will they? And what about the principle of sovereignty. How can those who believe in the sovereignty of the nation state recommend that a nation give up territory to illegitimate occupiers?

U.S. Offers Ukraine Security Guarantee in Bid to Break Peace-Talks Deadlock

WSJ

Washington promises to seek Senate backing for U.S. role in safeguarding Ukraine from future attack, a must-have for Kyiv

By

Laurence Norman

,

Bertrand Benoit

in Berlin and

Anastasiia Malenko

in Kyiv, Ukraine

Updated Dec. 15, 2025 6:31 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-offers-ukraine-security-guarantee-in-bid-to-break-peace-talks-deadlock-a79336dc?mod=hp_lead_pos3

Front row from left, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and other European officials on Monday in Berlin. Kay Nietfeld/Press Pool

• The U.S. pledged to protect Ukraine from future Russian attacks, offering support for European security guarantees and seeking Senate backing.
• U.S. officials said they secured consensus with Ukraine on 90% of issues after eight hours of talks, as Washington aims for a deal by year-end.
• A bigger hurdle remains over which contested territories Kyiv would keep and whether it would withdraw unilaterally from one area.

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.

• The U.S. pledged to protect Ukraine from future Russian attacks, offering support for European security guarantees and seeking Senate backing.

The U.S. pledged to protect Ukraine from any future Russian attack, U.S. officials said, offering to support European security guarantees and seek Senate backing for Washington’s promised role, which it hasn’t yet publicly detailed.

The American pledge, which Russian officials are likely to dispute, came on the second day of talks in Berlin among the U.S., Ukraine and European leaders and top officials. It remains unclear to what extent Washington would militarily intervene.

The shift could lift one of the biggest obstacles to Kyiv signing up to a peace deal with Russia, but a bigger hurdle remains, over territory. Still unresolved is the issue of which contested territories Kyiv would keep and whether Ukraine would withdraw unilaterally from an area of the Donetsk region that it currently controls.

European officials have for months offered Ukraine security guarantees to deter a future Russian attack but they have stressed the need to have some form of U.S. help to backstop those plans. European officials have advised Ukraine to tread carefully in agreeing to other major concessions until they had locked in clear U.S. military support.

The U.S. officials said they had secured consensus with Ukraine on 90% of the issues being discussed after eight hours of face-to-face talks since Sunday between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump’s Russia envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Trump told reporters at the White House that the talks were “very good,” noting he has had numerous conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“At this moment, Russia wants to get in and the problem is they’ll want to get it ended, and then all of a sudden they won’t, and Ukraine will want to get it ended, and all of a sudden they won’t,” Trump said. “So we have to get them on the same page.”

While U.S. officials insist they aren’t unduly pressuring Ukraine, the Trump administration wants a deal done by year-end, if possible. Ukrainian and European officials are skeptical an agreement can be reached so quickly.

Zelensky said at a press conference in Berlin that Washington was hearing Ukraine’s concerns. Clemens Bilan/EPA/Shutterstock

Hovering over the talks: doubts about whether Russia would accept any deal that forces it to compromise over territory, and whether Moscow would reject precisely the kind of security guarantees for Ukraine that would satisfy Kyiv.

Moscow has said it would strongly object if proposals developed by Kyiv and Brussels, such as U.S.-backed security guarantees, are included in the peace plan.

“I would assess that it was really, really positive in almost every respect,” one of the U.S. officials said. “We have got consensus on a number of issues that we view as critical to getting to a peace deal. We have some things to discuss as well.”

The security guarantees would include monitoring, verification and deconfliction, the officials said, and would lay out the role the U.S. would play if Russia breached a peace deal and came back to attack Ukraine. They would also include the provision of weapons to deter a Russian force. The U.S. officials didn’t spell out details of the U.S. role, besides reiterating that Washington wouldn’t send ground troops.

The presence on the U.S. delegation of U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who heads both North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military operations and the U.S. European Command, underscored the seriousness of the discussions on the military aspects of a cease-fire deal.

Trump said in August that Washington was prepared to use air power to support European troops in Ukraine.

A statement signed Monday by a dozen European leaders welcomed the greater convergence between the U.S. and Ukraine on ending the war. They said security guarantees would include help to regenerate Ukrainian armed forces of up to 800,000 troops, the securing of Ukraine’s skies and legally-binding commitments to come to Ukraine’s aid in the event of a Russian attack.

“These measures may include armed force, intelligence and logistical assistance, economic and diplomatic actions,” the leaders said.

In a document signed by European officials say Washington is also open to providing enablers such as intelligence and logistical support.

The U.S. officials said the guarantees, which are set out in a draft document compiled by the U.S., European and Ukrainian militaries, would be similar to NATO’s Article 5 guarantees, referring to a part of the founding treaty that covers collective defense.

Zelensky, speaking at a press conference, said that progress had been made on security guarantees and that Washington was hearing Ukraine’s concerns. He said that what he called “destructive” parts of the original proposal had been removed from the document, but that Ukraine would need Washington to mediate over territorial issues.

Territory has emerged as a central stumbling block to a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The initial U.S.-led proposal calls for Kyiv to surrender the “Fortress Belt,” the fortified strip of land that forms the backbone of the country’s defenses. Ukraine’s leaders can’t accept this. Illustration: Jason Boone

Zelensky said later Monday in written comments to reporters that the peace deal documents would be finalized as soon as Tuesday and shared with the Kremlin. The U.S. will share Russia’s response with Kyiv by the weekend, he said.

If Russia rejects the plan, “There will be turbulence,” Zelensky said, adding that Kyiv would ask for tougher sanctions and more weapons from the U.S.

“It is important that the U.S. accepts ‘Article 5-like’ plus the corresponding security guarantees,” Zelensky told journalists on Monday. “And we are making progress there. I see the details that the military has been working on. They look quite good, even though it is only the first draft.”

“What the U.S.A. has put on the table here in Berlin in terms of legal and material guarantees is truly remarkable. This is a very important step forward, which I very much welcome,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “The American side has made some political and legal commitments here that are quite remarkable.”

The officials said Trump was open to putting the security-guarantees package up for a vote, the official said, noting they had briefed Trump twice on their discussions in Berlin. They cautioned that the offer wouldn’t stay on the table forever, a sign that Kyiv will need to move swiftly to resolve the remaining issues blocking a deal.

Trump allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), have been encouraging the White House to send the package of security guarantees to the Senate for a vote. Their approval would send a strong message that the U.S. stands with Kyiv regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

“I think if you got a security agreement that Ukraine could support, that would prevent a third invasion, and that was part of the peace deal, you’d get a big vote in the Senate,” Graham said in an interview. “If Ukraine is for it, Europe is for it, I think you’ll get most Democrats. And if Trump is for it, you’ll get most Republicans.”

But Graham said the vote wouldn’t necessarily turn the security guarantees into a treaty with Ukraine. “It would be a congressional blessing, statutory in nature, that would survive Trump.”

Resolving differences over territories still looks very complex. The U.S. is pushing to create a demilitarized economic zone in a swath of the Donetsk province that Ukraine still controls. Ukraine has pushed hard against withdrawing its troops from the zone, but Russia has vowed to win complete control of the whole Donbas region.

Washington proposed last month that Russia would have sovereignty over the area held by Ukraine. European and Ukrainian officials fear there would be little to stop the Kremlin from occupying the area with troops and taking over some of Ukraine’s most critical defensive fortifications

The U.S. officials said that ultimately, Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution on the issue.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com, Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com and Anastasiia Malenko at anastasiia.malenko@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 16, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Offers Kyiv Security Guarantee'.

WSJ

4. U.K. Spy Chief Warns of Acute Russia Threat: The ‘Frontline is Everywhere’

​Summary:

In her first public speech as MI6 chief, Blaise Metreweli warned Russia poses an acute threat and is exporting chaos into Europe through hybrid attacks. She cited arson, sabotage, assassinations, cyber operations, and drone activity, and argued the frontline is now everywhere, including inside democratic societies via disinformation. Metreweli urged intelligence services to modernize fast by integrating A.I. and deeper partnerships across the tech ecosystem, and by making technical mastery central to tradecraft and culture. She downplayed other theaters, mentioned China only briefly, and avoided U.S. specifics amid questions about ties under POTUS.

Comment: Are Europe's eyes wide open now? (Our ours?)

U.K. Spy Chief Warns of Acute Russia Threat: The ‘Frontline is Everywhere’

NY Times · Mark Landler · December 15, 2025

In her first public speech as head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli said Russia was attempting to export chaos to Europe through hybrid attacks and disinformation.

By Mark Landler

Reporting from London

Dec. 15, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/world/europe/uk-mi6-russia-chaos.html

Blaise Metreweli in London on Monday. She became the first female leader of MI6 in October.Credit...Pool photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth

The new spymaster of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service warned on Monday that Russia posed an “acute threat” to the West, plotting arson and sabotage operations, assassinations, and cyber and drone attacks across Europe.

“The new frontline is everywhere,” said the chief, Blaise Metreweli, who in October became the first woman to lead the agency, known as MI6, after a career as an intelligence agent. “The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” she said.

In her inaugural speech at the MI6 headquarters, Ms. Metreweli struck an unapologetically dark tone, describing a “new age of uncertainty” in which Russia and other hostile powers use a battery of weapons, from cyber technology to disinformation, to sow discord and disrupt Western democratic societies.

In such a world, Ms. Metreweli said, intelligence agencies need to harness A.I. and other technologies to fight back, by striking alliances in the “wider tech ecosystem” and changing the mentality of intelligence agents.

“Mastery of technology must infuse everything we do, not just in our labs but in the field, in our tradecraft, and even more importantly, in the mind-set of every officer,” she said. “We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages.”

For Ms. Metreweli, the reference to computer programming was hardly surprising. A graduate of Cambridge University, she most recently served as MI6’s director general of technology and innovation, a post commonly referred to as Q — the developer of the gadgets immortalized in the James Bond film series.

As the agency’s chief, Ms. Metreweli, 48, is now known by the letter C, a designation that dates to the first chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mansfield Cumming, who signed his directives with C in the early 1900s. By tradition, the only publicly identified official in MI6 is the chief.

Ms. Metreweli had no public profile when she was named to run MI6, and nothing in her demeanor on Monday suggested that she planned to pivot to a more public role as the director. Speaking crisply from a lectern in her private dining room atop the agency’s brooding building on the Thames, she stuck to the script of her speech and took no questions from an audience of about 20 journalists.

Still, Ms. Metreweli did offer a glimpse into her personal life, noting that she came “from a family shaped by devastating conflict,” which left her with a “deep sense of gratitude for the U.K.’s precious freedom and democracy.”

This appeared to be a reference to an article in The Daily Mail last June, which reported, citing documents found in German archives, that one of Ms. Metreweli’s grandfathers, Constantine Dobrowolski, was a Ukrainian who defected from the Soviet Red Army and collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Asked for a comment on Monday, MI6 referred The Times to a statement that a spokesman for the Foreign Office gave to The Mail at the time: “Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather. Blaise’s ancestry is characterized by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.”

“It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today’s hostile states,” the spokesman told the paper.

Ms. Metreveli described a childhood spent overseas and her budding interest in psychology, anthropology and A.I. Though she offered only the most spare details about her career, which included a stint in Britain’s domestic security agency, MI5, she suggested she had her share of derring-do.

“Over the years, I’ve listened to terrorists who have told us how to defuse the bomb because they know that more violence won’t help,” Ms. Metreweli said. “To proliferators and smugglers, who’ve told us where to find the dangerous material, motivated to protect their children’s future.”

Unlike past MI6 chiefs, who often used speeches to offer a tour of the world’s hot spots, Ms. Metreweli kept her remarks focused on Russia. She referred to China, which Britain has characterized as a national security threat, in a single phrase as a “central part of the global transformation taking place this century.”

She also said nothing about the United States, despite a long intelligence-sharing relationship between MI6 and the C.I.A., an arrangement that has come under question with the return of President Trump. Ms Metreweli did refer to the Five Eyes, a group of allies — Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States — whose agencies share intelligence.

If anything, Ms. Metreveli suggested that Britain needed to rely more on itself, with the pillars of post-World War II security under pressure, and, as she put it, “new blocs and identities forming and alliances reshaping.”

“Our world is more dangerous and contested now than for decades,” Ms. Metreweli said, describing an “interlocking web of security challenges — military, technological, social, ethical even — each shaping the other in complex ways.”

“We are living in a space between peace and war,” she said.

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.

See more on: British Secret Intelligence Service

NY Times · Mark Landler · December 15, 2025

5. After a Generation of Peace, Europe Tells Its People to Prepare for War

​Summary:

European leaders are conditioning their publics for a Russia threat after decades of “peace dividend” thinking. Officials warn Moscow is already running a gray zone campaign across Europe, including sabotage of infrastructure and military facilities, cyberattacks, disinformation, arson, and drone incursions. The urgency has sharpened as POTUS pursues a Ukraine deal that could leave Russia emboldened and free forces for Europe’s eastern flank, while allies worry about reduced U.S. backing. NATO’s European members plan to lift core defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, plus 1.5 percent on security adjacent resilience. Governments are war gaming, reviving service, and reorienting training toward Russia.

Excerpts:

Governments are taking steps to prepare. France has said that it would reinstate a voluntary military service for young people, following similar moves by Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Germany is actively war-gaming how it would rush troops to the front in the event of a Russian attack. The U.K. is scaling back military training outside Europe, to focus on Russia.

Military spending across the continent is rising. This year, NATO’s European members agreed to increase traditional defense spending to 3.5% of their economies by 2035, compared with 2% currently. They have also agreed to spend another 1.5% on security-adjacent measures, such as hardening their infrastructure, which could help counter Russia’s hybrid attack. Germany has pledged to spend more than a trillion dollars on its military and its infrastructure over the next decade, with the goal of creating Europe’s largest conventional force.

However, in many of the big western European economies, the trade-offs haven’t yet been felt by the public. Britain, for instance, is funding a rise in military spending by cutting foreign aid to developing nations. Several military chiefs have publicly stated that spending will have to be increased much more if Russia is to be deterred from further aggression.

On NATO’s Eastern Flank, low-grade Russian attacks are ramping up. 

Comment: Europe waking up? Will these warnings be enough?

After a Generation of Peace, Europe Tells Its People to Prepare for War

WSJ

As Trump tries to negotiate Ukraine peace deal, European leaders sound alarm that Russia could target their countries next

By Max Colchester

Follow

 and Bertrand Benoit

Follow

Updated Dec. 15, 2025 11:16 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/after-a-generation-of-peace-europe-tells-its-people-to-prepare-for-war-ba2a1a88

German military recruits during an exercise in November. ina fassbender/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

• European officials are increasingly warning their citizens to prepare for potential conflict with Russia, a psychological shift for the continent.
• NATO’s European members plan to increase traditional defense spending to 3.5% of their economies by 2035, up from 2% currently.
• Russia is suspected of conducting a covert “gray zone” assault on Europe, to try to damage its economy and sow confusion.

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.

• European officials are increasingly warning their citizens to prepare for potential conflict with Russia, a psychological shift for the continent.

European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: Get ready for conflict with Russia.

Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia. It is a profound psychological shift for a continent that has rebuilt itself after two world wars by trumpeting a message of harmony and joint economic prosperity.

Over the weekend, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy in Ukraine to that of Hitler in 1938, when he seized the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia before pressing on to conquer a large chunk of the continent. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop. Just like the Sudetenland wasn’t enough in 1938,” Merz told a party conference on Saturday.

That came days after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte made a speech warning that “conflict is at our door” and that “we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.” Rutte said that Russia could be ready to use military force against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization within five years. The head of the French military recently said that France was at risk “because it is not prepared to accept the loss of its children.”

This sense of urgency has been amped-up as the Trump administration looks to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. There is concern in European capitals that Ukraine will be pushed by Trump into accepting a lopsided peace-deal that leaves Putin emboldened and Ukraine vulnerable to future Russian attack. Crucially, a cease-fire would free Russian military resources to focus on Europe, too, potentially paving the way for a future attack on its eastern flank.

Ukrainian forces installing antidrone nets in Izyum, in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, this month. Diego Fedele/Getty Images

The warnings are accompanied by fear that a more isolationist Trump administration won’t come to Europe’s aid if an attack does materialize. The U.S. National Security Strategy, which was published this month, says that the U.S. government will aim to stop war spreading in Europe and “re-establish strategic stability with Russia.” For the first time in recent years, it makes no mention of Russia as an enemy.

The U.K.’s annual threat assessment by the head of its Secret Intelligence Service, delivered on Monday, sounded a very different note. MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli warned that Russia will continue to try to destabilize Europe “until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”

The head of the U.K.’s armed forces, Richard Knighton, meanwhile on Monday said that the situation “is more dangerous than I have known in my career” and that the British public had to be prepared. “More families will know what sacrifice for our nation means,” he said.

For Europe, the sobering messaging marks a deep shift. The European Union was expressly designed, with the encouragement of the U.S., to prevent the kind of total war that ravaged the continent during the 20th Century. Its population has reaped the benefits of the so-called peace dividend—when military spending was cut back after the Cold War and the extra funds plowed into social spending.

Politicians across the region have warned that re-instilling a martial mindset into the public, accompanied by an explanation of the difficult spending trade-offs ahead, is a challenge. A Gallup poll last year found that only a third of Europeans would be willing to fight to defend their country, compared with 41% in the U.S.

Retired Dutch admiral Rob Bauer, who recently completed a term as NATO’s most senior military official, says that if Europe is to maintain peace, it must prepare for war to deter Putin.

In recent months that message “has gotten stronger,” he says, adding that officials are alarmed by data showing the Russian military industrial complex is producing more than it needs for the war in Ukraine, raising fears that it could regenerate to attack Europe faster than previously envisaged.

In private, European officials say voters will only support the sacrifices necessary—from higher military spending to the reintroduction of conscription—if they think an attack will happen.

Already, European security chiefs say that Russia has begun a covert “gray zone” assault on Europe, to try to damage its economy and sow confusion. Russia is suspected of being behind a string of sabotage on critical European infrastructure and military facilities, cyberattacks on businesses, as well as arson attacks on warehouses and shopping centers. Russian drones have disrupted Polish airspace and jet fighters zipped over Estonia.

“We are now operating in a space between peace and war,” said Metreweli.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in acts of sabotage or drone incursions in Europe, and Putin last month said the idea that Russia would invade another country was a “lie.”

A house in eastern Poland that was damaged by debris from a downed drone in September. wojtek radwanski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Last week, Germany accused Russia of being behind a cyberattack on its air-traffic control in 2024 and trying to interfere with a federal election by spreading disinformation online. Suspected Russian drones have also interrupted flights in several European airports in recent months.

German officials suspect Moscow’s campaign of sabotage and espionage is partly aimed at preparing an attack on NATO’s logistical routes that would delay the deployment of troops in Eastern Europe in case of an armed conflict targeting Poland or the Baltic States.

Governments are taking steps to prepare. France has said that it would reinstate a voluntary military service for young people, following similar moves by Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Germany is actively war-gaming how it would rush troops to the front in the event of a Russian attack. The U.K. is scaling back military training outside Europe, to focus on Russia.

Military spending across the continent is rising. This year, NATO’s European members agreed to increase traditional defense spending to 3.5% of their economies by 2035, compared with 2% currently. They have also agreed to spend another 1.5% on security-adjacent measures, such as hardening their infrastructure, which could help counter Russia’s hybrid attack. Germany has pledged to spend more than a trillion dollars on its military and its infrastructure over the next decade, with the goal of creating Europe’s largest conventional force.

However, in many of the big western European economies, the trade-offs haven’t yet been felt by the public. Britain, for instance, is funding a rise in military spending by cutting foreign aid to developing nations. Several military chiefs have publicly stated that spending will have to be increased much more if Russia is to be deterred from further aggression.

On NATO’s Eastern Flank, low-grade Russian attacks are ramping up. 

WSJ’s Matthew Luxmoore goes inside Lithuania’s efforts to build defenses and train citizens for war as fears of a full-scale conflict grow. Photo: Eve Hartley/Wall Street Journal

Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com and Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 16, 2025, print edition as 'Europe Officials Sound Alarm Over Russia'.

WSJ

6. Top 10 Fault Lines China Can’t Acknowledge (But You Should Watch Closely)

​Summary:

China’s real risk signals sit in what Beijing cannot admit. Erika LaFrennie lists ten internal fractures: PLA hesitation after purges, a succession trap around Xi, a technology class seeking exit or low visibility, a middle class withdrawing, provinces strained by debt and post Zero COVID capacity loss, a rejuvenation narrative losing emotional pull, digital control systems degrading as citizens adapt, diaspora networks distancing to avoid reputational cost, uneven demographic decline, and a secrecy driven blindness that filters bad news upward. Core claim: enforced silence sustains control optics but blocks self correction, raising the odds of sudden, misread crises.

Comment: I leave it to our China hands to assess this essay. But it does seem like there are some important things for us to watch here. nNd I would think effective themes and messages could be derived from this list that could be employed by our tools of the information instrument of national power.

Top 10 Fault Lines China Can’t Acknowledge (But You Should Watch Closely)

What China’s leaders cannot acknowledge in 2026, and how these fractures shape the system from within.

Erika Lafrennie

Dec 16, 2025

https://www.xinanigans.com/p/china-risk-2026-top-10-fault-lines?utm

Most assessments of China focus on what Beijing chooses to display. The speeches. The numbers. The theatrical unity. Yet political systems reveal more through what they cannot name. Silence often carries more information than any public declaration.

China enters 2026 with outward confidence. The narrative is unified. The posture is controlled. The performance is polished. Beneath that surface sits a set of fractures that shape the system from within. These fractures weaken China’s ability to adapt. They distort how it interprets events. They increase the likelihood of sudden shifts.

Beijing uses silence to sustain the illusion of systemic control. But that silence creates blindness. Leaders can’t address problems they refuse to name. The performance of strength becomes a source of weakness. What Beijing refuses to acknowledge becomes what’s most likely to break under pressure.

Here are the ten fault lines that Beijing cannot acknowledge as it enters 2026.

1. The PLA no longer trusts itself

Years of purges have changed the command climate. Officers who watch their colleagues disappear learn to avoid decisions that might be questioned later. The PLA that emerges prioritizes safety over initiative. Coordination suffers. Confidence disappears. A military that operates inside suspicion develops hesitation at the very moment it needs clarity.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: By refusing to acknowledge the chilling effect of purges on military effectiveness, leadership cannot distinguish between loyalty and paralysis.

2. The leadership has no path for succession

Xi Jinping presents himself as essential to system survival. Xi eliminated term limits in 2018, creating a succession crisis that deepens every year he remains in power. That choice removes every credible successor. It also creates a senior class that prepares quietly for unexpected change. A modern state requires visible continuity. China now carries a hidden uncertainty at the top.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A power transition without structure invites elite conflict and sudden instability that cannot be planned for or managed.

3. China’s technology class is detaching from the system

Engineers, founders and technical managers respond to political tightening by seeking opportunities abroad or withdrawing from high-profile roles. Chinese applications to US universities for AI and related technical fields remain substantial despite political headwinds, with Chinese talent continuing to represent a disproportionately large share of leading AI researchers in US academic and industry settings. Many protect their careers by finding work outside China and avoiding domestic risks. The Party continues to present them as committed innovators, but China faces the risk of losing elements of the technical core that have powered its ascent.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A state that loses its innovators loses the capacity to compete at the pace its ambition demands, but cannot course-correct without admitting the political controls are counterproductive.

4. The urban middle class is withdrawing from public life

The middle class that once drove consumption and innovation now focuses on capital preservation and exit strategies. Work hard. Build savings. Move forward. That story no longer holds. Surveillance increases. Costs rise. Mobility stalls. Families retreat into private life. Participation declines. Legitimacy changes shape when the middle class steps back.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A disengaged middle class erodes the social foundation that stabilizes a one-party system, but acknowledging the withdrawal would signal systemic failure.

5. Provincial governments are exhausted

Local officials carry heavy debt and diminished capacity after the Zero COVID years. Beijing demands confidence. Local governments manage slow decline. Services weaken. Decisions stall. The central government sees harmony. The provinces feel strain.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A national system fails when its local structures cannot execute central intent during crisis, but Beijing cannot acknowledge provincial weakness without undermining the performance of unified control.

6. China’s core narrative is losing emotional force

The promise of national rejuvenation once energized the population. It now meets rising skepticism, especially from young people who embrace “lying flat” and treat official messaging with open mockery. They read the official story without belief. They respond with satire, evasion, and silence. Once a central narrative loses power, the state relies on more coercive tools to maintain coherence.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A regime that depends on belief becomes brittle when its primary story stops working, but cannot revise the narrative without admitting current messaging has failed.

7. China’s digital control systems are growing less accurate

China relies on automated surveillance to manage society at scale. It filters information. It predicts behavior. It analyzes sentiment. As the system grows, its clarity decreases. Citizens learn to code-switch between public and private language, use euphemisms to evade detection, and coordinate through platforms the state cannot monitor effectively. Signals move faster than algorithms.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A state that depends on perfect visibility risks collapse when visibility fails, but cannot acknowledge system limitations without undermining the surveillance apparatus’s deterrent effect.

8. China’s diaspora is building distance from Beijing

Chinese diaspora networks that once provided soft power influence increasingly distance themselves from Beijing’s messaging, fearing reputational contamination. Many now establish more independent identities. They watch China’s trajectory with caution. They advocate for themselves rather than for a national project. Influence abroad weakens quietly.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A regime that relies on external validation loses a key instrument when its global networks detach, but cannot acknowledge diaspora skepticism without admitting international reputation damage.

9. Demographic decline is reshaping the country unevenly

China’s population is shrinking. Regions lose workers. Schools close. Neighborhoods empty. Social care burdens rise. The scale of demographic change outpaces state messaging. A shrinking society becomes uneven. That unevenness affects governance.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: A country that contracts unevenly becomes harder to govern uniformly, but acknowledging demographic reality would undermine confidence in long-term economic planning.

10. The top of the system cannot see itself clearly

Extreme secrecy produces internal blindness. Senior officials receive filtered information. Agencies soften reports. Problems move upward slowly. When negative economic data disappears from public release or protest footage never reaches leadership briefings, the system loses its ability to self-correct. The leadership governs through distortion rather than clarity.

Why Beijing’s silence makes this worse: Leaders who cannot see reality misread risk and act on false assumptions, but creating accurate information flows would require acknowledging that current reporting mechanisms produce systematic deception.

These fault lines shape China’s behavior more powerfully than any official five year plan. They determine how stress enters the system. They shape how long Beijing can absorb pressure before it reacts. They reveal the true sources of instability.

A system that relies on silence treats weakness as something that must remain hidden. In reality, silence exposes the exact locations where pressure will break the structure. The performance of control becomes the source of fragility.

If you want to understand China’s next moment of crisis, listen for what Beijing refuses to say.

Coming next Tuesday:

What We Got Wrong About China in 2025

We will revisit the assumptions, narratives, and analytic shortcuts that shaped this year’s China conversation, and examine how those misreads distort our 2026 foresight.

7. The New Arms Race: Global Drone Dominance and America’s Tactical Wake-Up Call

​Summary:

Edwards argues the Ukraine and Gaza wars prove unmanned systems now drive tactics, tempo, and survivability, yet the U.S. still treats drones as add-ons. Ukraine’s edge comes from distributed, frontline innovation, rapid iteration cycles, mesh networking, and blended enablers like EW, autonomy, 5G, and Starlink. He highlights UGVs for mines and CASEVAC, USVs as strike and mothership platforms, and a counter-UxS fight complicated by RF agility and shifting frequencies. He stresses “left of launch” targeting of pilots and training pipelines. Prescription: streamline procurement, integrate UxS into doctrine and training, strengthen the industrial base, and field mobile, layered counter-UxS defenses.

Excerpts:

Conclusion: The Future Is Autonomous

The race for UxS dominance defines military, industrial, and technological competition in the 21st century. Drones are no longer niche tools—they are central to warfare, logistics, and intelligence. The U.S. must recognize that future conflict will be autonomous, scalable, and adaptive. Falling behind is no longer an option.

Ukraine and other areas have proved that innovation can emerge from necessity. But for the United States, the time for reactive adaptation is over. It must lead with vision, urgency, and strategic clarity to shape—and not merely respond to—the future of unmanned warfare.

The sky is no longer a sanctuary — drones have turned the air above us into contested ground, and ignoring it is a risk we cannot afford.

The New Arms Race: Global Drone Dominance and America’s Tactical Wake-Up Call

by Bill Edwards

|

12.16.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/16/the-new-arms-race/

"Ghost", 24, a soldier with the 58th Independent Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Army, catches a drone while testing it so it can be used nearby, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, near Bakhmut, Ukraine, November 25, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis /File Photo To match Special Report US-CHINA-TECH/DRONES

Introduction: Are We Paying Attention? Technology Lessons from Modern Conflict

Are we truly learning lessons from recent major conflict zones and applying them to doctrine, training, and technological or material solutions? Beyond isolated innovations, are we considering the broader ecosystem of unmanned systems (UxS), which now dominate the modern battlefield?

The war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, has inflicted immense human suffering but has also reshaped global perspectives on warfare. Lessons emerging from Ukraine and Gaza are rapidly influencing tactics across Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Alarmingly, Mexican cartels—just across our southern border—have sent fighters to Ukraine and are now deploying evolved tactics rooted in internal violence.

These are the questions every Department of War leader should be asking, even at the tactical level. The global UxS ecosystem demands holistic consideration, as modern conflict shows drones and robotics fundamentally altering the character of war. Ukraine’s UxS evolution has been rapid, adaptive, and driven at the tactical edge. Its model of distributed innovation and networked communications is worth tracking closely for applications in counter-UAS challenges that must account for autonomy, electronic warfare, and mesh networking.

Let’s begin by examining unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) on the battlefield. UGVs are increasingly integral to the UxS fight, especially in delivering improvised explosive devices, laying mines, and conducting casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) missions. Their increasing use has made them high-value targets, with Ukrainian and Russian forces routinely striking these systems during operations and again during recovery efforts. As with all conflicts, communication is crucial; in Ukraine, terrain often obstructs line-of-sight links. To extend connectivity, Ukrainians are deploying airborne repeaters, though mesh networking remains the most reliable method for maintaining communications. Signals now play a prominent role in decision-making, driving multi-layered communication architectures for units at every echelon, and let’s not forget about the emergence of 5G and Starlink as enabling communications tools as we think deeper about “the how” when shaping the future force.

In the UxS realm, RF jamming is becoming increasingly complicated as platforms shift frequencies. Recent reports indicate that sUAS systems operate within the 7–12 GHz range, and evidence suggests some can also function at 150 MHz, highlighting the fluid nature of modern electromagnetic warfare. These developments should be top-of-mind for DOW decision-makers.

Consider the evolution of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). These robotic systems pose a complex challenge for naval forces and have proven highly effective in Ukraine against the Russian fleet. Their utility goes beyond ship attacks—USVs are now used as weapons platforms, sUAS motherships, and even anti-aviation delivery systems.

“At the tactical level, organic innovation is accelerating. Ukraine’s platoons maintain their own UAS “manufacturing shops” for assembly and repair, while higher echelons operate research and development labs focused on mid-range strike capabilities. Brigades receive funding to design, build, and arm drones, driving a three-month, Moore’s-Law-like innovation cycle. But challenges persist—supply chain limitations mean both sides rely heavily on the same Chinese components. China’s “neutrality” appears driven more by economic advantage than by political position, but what does that really mean in the long term? I don’t think the USG can discount this fact as it prioritizes preparing the force in modern realities.”

As technology evolves, battlefield awareness must keep pace. Ukrainian forces are focusing on left-of-launch intelligence, emphasizing predictions of Russian pilot shift changes to time movements and attacks. This has emerged as a critical vulnerability and one of the most effective methods to disrupt enemy UxS capability—target the pilot or the pilot training pipeline.

Social media is filled with sUAS, often first-person-view systems, striking tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles. This has sparked debate about whether the “Age of Armor” is over. While armor protection has improved, survivability has declined. Ukraine estimates it now takes seven drones—up from three—to destroy a modern tank, but the precision of FPV drones allows operators to immobilize armor by targeting guns and critical components. As a result, armored vehicles are often held far behind the zero line.

Now let’s address the essential mission of detecting, tracking, identifying, and defeating UxS. As TTPs mature, countermeasures are becoming a primary survivability task. Experimentation with acoustic, thermal, and electronic defenses is ongoing. Layered sensors improve survivability but also increase the soldier’s signature. Ukraine is now exploring thermal camouflage for drones, similar to the concealment already used for troops and vehicles.

Ukraine’s UxS evolution is fast, adaptive, and driven by frontline innovation. Its distributed model offers valuable insights for autonomy, mesh networking, and rapid adaptation. When asked how Ukraine became so innovative so quickly, the simple answer remains: They were invaded.

A Revolution in Military Affairs

Make no mistake—we are once again in an arms race. But this time, the battlefield is not defined by nuclear warheads or stealth bombers. It is a race for global dominance in unmanned systems, and the United States is trailing behind nations that have embraced the robotics revolution with urgency and scale. The war in Ukraine shattered assumptions about modern warfare, revealing a paradigm where small, agile, lethal drones can shift tactical power.

As the U.S. prioritized traditional capability development, other nations surged ahead. China, home to DJI—the world’s largest producer of small unmanned systems—has mastered drone manufacturing and showcased its capabilities with bold transparency. Ukraine, driven by necessity and survival, demonstrated how tactical parity can be achieved against a superior force through improvisational drone warfare.

Are we applying these lessons to doctrine, training, and modernization? Beyond isolated efforts, are we considering the broader UxS ecosystem that now defines the battlefield?

Ukraine’s UxS evolution remains a critical model: rapid adaptation, networked communications, distributed innovation, and tactical autonomy. These lessons are essential for any credible counter-UAS solution.

The rise of UGVs, communication challenges in contested terrain, RF agility, the explosive growth of USVs, and organic drone innovation at the platoon and brigade levels all demonstrate how fast the character of conflict is changing. Ukrainian battlefield awareness improvements—including targeting pilot pipelines—show that disrupting UxS capability requires targeting not only machines, but human enablers.

Ukraine’s model proves that a distributed, adaptive, frontline-driven approach can outpace industrial warfare. Rapid innovation is born from an existential threat.

The Rise of UxS: Redefining Warfare

Unmanned systems—whether aerial (UAV), ground (UGV), surface (USV), or underwater (UUV)—are transforming military operations:

• Surveillance and Reconnaissance: Drones provide real-time ISR, enabling precise monitoring of enemy movements and terrain.
• Strike Capabilities: Armed drones deliver precision effects without risking pilots.
• Logistics and Resupply: UxS platforms are increasingly used for contested-environment sustainment.
• Electronic Warfare and Cyber Operations: Some drones now jam communications, spoof GPS, or conduct cyber intrusions.

These systems are not theoretical—they are shaping real-world operations and forcing militaries to rethink doctrine and procurement.

Ukraine: The Catalyst for Tactical Innovation

Ukraine’s defense against Russia revolutionized drone warfare. Facing a superior adversary, Ukrainian forces turned to commercial drones—many from DJI—to provide ISR, target artillery, and drop grenades on enemy positions. Their success demonstrated:

• Cost-Effective Warfare: A $500 drone can replace multimillion-dollar systems.
• Rapid Adaptation: Civilian tech is quickly weaponized.
• Psychological Impact: Constant drone presence disrupts operations and morale.

These lessons have triggered a global reassessment of drone strategy and investment.

Global Leaders in UxS Development

China: Industrial Scale and Strategic Ambition

China leads commercial drone manufacturing, with . Beyond consumer drones, China is developing stealth UCAVs, swarm technology, and aggressive export strategies. Military-civil fusion accelerates innovation.

Turkey: The Drone Export Powerhouse

Baykar’s TB2 and Akıncı platforms have proven their effectiveness across multiple conflicts. Turkey’s agile procurement and battlefield-validated systems have turned it into a major drone exporter.

United States: Legacy Leadership, Tactical Lag

The U.S. leads in strategic ISR and strike drones but lags in tactical sUAS due to procurement bottlenecks and reliance on legacy platforms. Programs like Replicator are evolving to address this issue, but as faith in the program wanes, the urgency is on the rise.

Israel: Pioneer of Drone Warfare

Israel’s decades-long innovation in ISR, precision strike, and loitering munitions maintains its leadership. Combat experience in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria continuously validates new systems. Think human-out-of-loop to better understand the Israeli innovative thought in this space.

United Kingdom and Nordic Nations: Agile Innovators

The UK’s LANCA program, Sweden’s Saab underwater systems, and advanced counter-UxS development across NATO’s northern flank make these nations emerging leaders in autonomy and defense tech.

Germany and Mexico: Dual-Use Innovation

Germany’s Wingcopter and Mexico’s modernization efforts demonstrate growing interest in both military and civilian UxS applications, especially logistics, surveillance, and border security.

These examples are simply samples of what is taking shape, but we cannot leave out Ukraine, Russia, India, Poland, and many other countries around the world that are paying attention and energizing their industrial base.

Strategic Implications: What the U.S. Must Do

To regain leadership in UxS, the U.S. must act decisively:

1. Accelerate Tactical Innovation
2. • Invest in affordable drones for the infantry, but think about the total force. Securing logistics and forward locations of all types of units is a comprehensive approach to the new and evolving reality.
3. • Develop modular, mission-tailorable platforms. Manufacturing at the tactical edge is essential, providing the tools and resources to enable field expedient innovations, repairs, and quantity will prove the deciding edge in some tactical engagements.
4. Streamline Procurement
5. • Reduce acquisition delays, which is happening. Acquisition reform has been talked about for decades. Moving away from the military industrial complex to a combination of big and small firms working together to bring solutions to the force. Encouraging small businesses to get in the fight was/is a winning recipe for Ukraine.
6. • Leverage commercial off-the-shelf (COTs) solutions. A good way to look at COTs is to understand the purpose of the technology, investigate technical assertions and metrics in all-weather environments, determine if the technology meets the need, normalize the supply chain, and continuously review the technology to know when to predict a sunset as end-of-life nears.
7. Enhance Training and Doctrine
8. • Integrate UxS at all echelons.  Train foundations before deploying technology. This is the single most problematic issue when it comes to the United States Joint Force. The common response to new military innovations is to lean heavily into technology purchases, field the force with cutting-edge material solutions, and simultaneously fail to teach, educate, and train on “why and how” this new gear will support the ability to fight and win on the modern battlefield. Additionally, unit leaders at all levels need to understand this Age of Robotics while developing and applying a pillar approach that includes threat assessment, protection, quick reaction response, and left-of-launch information and intelligence processes that produce Concepts of Operations (CONOPs) and proactive mission orders.
9. • Develop doctrine for autonomous logistics and swarms.
10. Strengthen the Industrial Base
11. • Support domestic manufacturers. This means that counting on the big firms to continue to provide solutions without working closely with small businesses must be a thing of the past.
12. • Foster public-private partnerships. Working with and vetting companies to provide technology that meets security requirements and ensures the success of the mission must be emphasized.
13. Invest in Counter-UxS Technology
14. • Improve detection, jamming, and defeat systems that are agile, easily moved, and not dependent on cargo air transport. The need for these systems is at the tactical edge.
15. • Prepare forces for drone-contested environments. This is a doctrine problem and will create issues at all tactical levels. Look no further than the typical heavy U.S. armor battalion to see why this new environment does not fit current techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs); however, it goes further when taking into account all Services and how logistics are executed. This is a complex problem that requires quick change. The United States military is known for its long and deep logistics tail. It is “the how” in sustaining and winning conflicts.

Conclusion: The Future Is Autonomous

The race for UxS dominance defines military, industrial, and technological competition in the 21st century. Drones are no longer niche tools—they are central to warfare, logistics, and intelligence. The U.S. must recognize that future conflict will be autonomous, scalable, and adaptive. Falling behind is no longer an option.

Ukraine and other areas have proved that innovation can emerge from necessity. But for the United States, the time for reactive adaptation is over. It must lead with vision, urgency, and strategic clarity to shape—and not merely respond to—the future of unmanned warfare.

The sky is no longer a sanctuary — drones have turned the air above us into contested ground, and ignoring it is a risk we cannot afford.

Tags: autonomous systems, autonomous weapons, drone warfare, drones, innovation, military innovation, Ukraine, Unconventional Warfare, unmanned aerial systems

About The Author

• 
  
• Bill Edwards
• Bill Edwards is the Director of Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) Operations and Training at ENSCO, after retiring from the military in 2018. Edwards has more than 35 years of expertise in operational and technical security, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, surveillance, and counter-surveillance.
• Before coming to ENSCO, he founded and operated Phoenix 6 Consulting, a customized security services firm. He also led Thornton Tomasetti’s security consulting group as a principal from 2018 to 2022. Recently, he led Building Intelligence’s directorate as President of the Federal and Public Safety to promote federal awareness of the firm’s trusted access management software. Edwards served as the Director of Intelligence for Theater Special Operations Command-North (USSOCOM), a position requiring extensive collaboration across the U.S. government security enterprise. He designed a cohesive counter-terrorism network with the U.S. Department of Defense, law enforcement, and inter-agency partners known as the“Blue Network,” while simultaneously building connections and networks abroad to support U.S. Homeland Security needs. Edwards has extensive experience in homeland security, homeland defense, and C-UAS security, safety, and emergency preparedness.
• Find all his work at:  William “Bill” Edwards CPP, PSP, PCI, CPD | LinkedIn.

8. The Deterrence Facade

​Summary:

Spillman argues Operation Southern Spear is being mislabeled as deterrence when it is closer to compellence and elimination. He contends the administration is “securitizing” drug trafficking by framing it as an existential “narco-terrorist” threat, enabling extraordinary military measures without normal legal and political constraints. The scale and composition of forces, including a carrier strike group and a Marine expeditionary force, signal warfighting tools rather than law enforcement interdiction. Spillman warns the approach invites legal and moral blowback, repeats regime change failures, and sacrifices U.S. rule-of-law advantage. He predicts a self-fulfilling outcome that pushes Latin American states toward China and Russia.

Excerpt:

The language of deterrence, as applied to the new U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean, is a dangerous facade. The operation is a high-stakes political gambit, enabled by the successful securitization of the regional drug trade into an existential narco-terrorist threat. This process has allowed the administration to pursue a high-risk policy of regime change, trading the momentary satisfaction of gunboat diplomacy for long-term strategic risk. The U.S. public and its elected officials must be wary of this trap. The true enablers of this uncertain policy are not just the administration officials who authorize strikes or author the subsequent social media post, but all those in the audience, from the junior officers on watch in the Caribbean to members of Congress, who themselves nodded along and accepted the pretext of deterrence at face value. The first and most critical step toward a sounder, more sustainable policy is to pierce the veil of deterrence and call this operation what it is: a dangerous and counterproductive example of securitization.

Comment: In general I think we throw around the term deterrence much too loosely. Like someone said (paraphrasing) He who tries to deter everything, deters nothing.

The Deterrence Facade

by Kevin Spillman

|

12.16.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/16/the-new-arms-race/

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Operation Southern Spear should not be mistaken for an exercise in deterrence. It posits the current administration is using “securitization” – reframing drug trafficking as an existential “narco-terrorist” threat – to legitimize extraordinary military measures and pursue the unstated political objective of regime change and ultimately, regional hegemony. The article concludes that this high-risk approach is strategically counterproductive, as it abandons the rule of law and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that will drive Latin American nations toward U.S. adversaries.

Last month, a Navy rear admiral visited a group of junior officers to discuss the state of the fleet and answer their questions. Unsurprisingly, one of the first questions raised concerned the legality and ethical considerations of the Navy’s new, aggressive actions in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. The admiral, clearly practiced in his response, explained that this operation was a textbook case of deterrence theory, one deemed both legal and necessary. His use of the term ‘deterrence’ not only melded nicely with the current administration’s messaging of Peace Through Strength, but it supported the longstanding U.S. strategy of defending the homeland and deterring attacks, rather than seeking to escalate or provoke confrontation (the concept remains the backbone of the current National Defense Strategy, penned by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin). Many in the crowd nodded along, accepting the answer at face value, while others remained skeptical.

Albeit on a much smaller scale, this anecdote serves as a perfect microcosm of the profound political process unfolding in real-time: securitization. A military leader delivers a legitimizing speech act in the name of deterrence, as the nodding young officers serve as an accepting audience, validating their leadership’s framing and thus its irregular actions. However, this simple exchange papers over a larger shift in U.S. policy. The growing military operation off the coast of Venezuela has gone far beyond drug deterrence and now has the potential to become a real kinetic conflict, which, without legal justification, is dragging both U.S. forces and policymakers into a mess of legal, strategic, and moral quagmires.

Tools of War

The clear blue waters of the Caribbean, long romanticized as an American Lake, are now the backdrop for one of the most significant U.S. military deployments in decades. The growing force starkly contrasts with the calm, defensive language of deterrence, and is a far cry from the region’s typical maritime law enforcement missions. From a maritime perspective, the Caribbean typically only sees one or two U.S. warships operating at a time. Whether that be a destroyer or littoral combat ship sailing from Naval Station Mayport to conduct drug interdictions, or a larger group in route to South America to participate in a multinational exercise, these warships are seldom tasked with or armed with the tools to conduct maritime strikes. In contrast, Operation Southern Spear now encompasses dozens of warships with the recent arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group (CSG), both drone and bomber aircraft, and least publicized but most tellingly, the establishment of a new joint task force led by the II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF). II MEF is a unit structured for amphibious assault and combat operations ashore, and the USS Gerald R. Ford CSG is an instrument for delivering sustained maritime power projection. These are tools of war, not law enforcement.

This deployment signals a deliberate paradigm shift, explicitly rejecting the traditional counternarcotics model. Historically, such missions were led by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S), both focused on law enforcement in international waters. Operating under peacetime authority, their goal was interdiction: to inspect, search, seize, and arrest. The primary objective was to disable vessels, capture suspects, and, critically, gather evidence to better understand cartel operations. After the decades-long War on Drugs, it is unlikely that any previous administration was naïve enough to believe these interdictions would result in the wholesale stoppage of illicit drugs flowing through the Caribbean. In fact, the seizures likely directly lead to the development of new routes and innovative technologies for smuggling. However, the operations maintained a status quo in the region. That is the existence of an enduring drug trade, but with it, a stable effort to prevent its reaching the United States. The effort upheld international legal norms and provided data and intelligence to be used by allies and partners in the region, all while achieving a variety of follow-on strategic initiatives (forward presence, joint and interagency integration, security cooperation, etc.).

The new operation, under a Marine Corps combat command, rejects this legal-procedural model. Its objective, as described by administration officials, is elimination, not interdiction. President Donald Trump articulated this new doctrine with blunt clarity: “We’re going to kill them. You know? They’re going to be, like, dead”. This kinetic-first approach, by its very nature, removes any possibility of gathering evidence. It reveals a fundamental disconnect from any genuine law enforcement or intelligence-gathering objective.

The analysis below argues that Operation Southern Spear is not a genuine deterrence operation but a textbook example of securitization. The politically resonant and strategically legitimate language of deterrence has been co-opted to frame a regional drug enforcement dispute as an existential threat to the United States. This speech act is a subversion of strategic language to justify extraordinary military measures that are poorly suited for counternarcotics but perfectly aligned with a long-standing, unstated political objective: hegemony.

The Deterrence Claim

Even with its recent rebranding to the Department of War, the official mission of the Department of Defense remains to deter war and ensure our nation’s security. This foundational principle, which orients the U.S. military toward a defensive posture of maintaining the status quo, creates an immediate analytical tension when contrasted with the present escalatory actions in the Caribbean. To justify this operation, the current administration has constructed a clear and public-facing narrative: it is framing the complex issue of drug trafficking as a war against narcoterrorism. Specifically, against those groups believed to be under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The language is a deliberate political choice. By invoking terrorism, it constructs a clear and present danger that appears to necessitate a robust, military-led response, moving the issue from the purview of the Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Defense.

This deterrence framing, however, fails under the slightest analytical scrutiny. As defined, deterrence aims to prevent an action and maintain the status quo. The current U.S. operation does the opposite; its stated goal is to “kill them” and eliminate the problem, and its unstated goal is to see Nicolas Maduro evicted from his presidency. These are not acts of deterrence. They are, respectively, acts of elimination and compellence; the use of force to radically alter the status quo. This linguistic bait-and-switch is the core of the political facade. Deterrence is a politically sacred concept, implying a legal, defensive, and necessary posture. Compellence and elimination imply aggression, choice, and extralegal killing. The language is a political tool, a legitimacy facade for an operation that is, at its core, strategically perilous.

The Securitization Playbook

With the deterrence frame deconstructed and revealed as a facade, the administration’s actions leading up to the establishment of Southern Spear become clear through a different theoretical lens: securitization. This is not a strategic interaction but a political process for enabling radical policy.

The process begins with the securitizing actor – in this case, the current administration- using a “speech act”. The speech act reframes a complex social, public health, and criminal issue (drug trafficking) as an existential threat to the nation. The lynchpin of this speech act is the term “narcoterrorism”. This word is a powerful political tool. It successfully moves the issue from a manageable public health and law enforcement problem to an imminent danger that demands a military response. The referent object, the thing to be protected, is explicitly defined as homeland security and the American people, who are portrayed as being under constant, existential assault from narco-terrorists. 

A speech act, however, is merely rhetoric until a relevant audience accepts the issue as existential. This acceptance is the critical and often overlooked step. The administration’s narrative has been consistently reinforced through official statements, executive orders, and the dramatic publication of strike videos. The publication of these videos, for instance, is not merely a message to the enemy; it is a performance of the speech act for the domestic audience. It is designed to prove that the narco-terrorist threat is real and that the elimination policy is necessary and effective. This creates a powerful feedback loop. The audience has accepted this move, not because it was logical, but because the speech act effectively tapped into genuine public concerns about drug-related deaths and national security. This public and political acceptance, from the nodding junior officers to a compliant Congress, is the key that unlocks the next and most dangerous step: legitimizing extraordinary measures.

Because the audience accepted the existential threat framing, the securitizing actor successfully lifted the issue beyond the realm of normal, deliberative politics. This move establishes a zone of exception, a political space where normal rules, legal norms, and democratic procedures no longer apply. This zone of exception is precisely what has enabled the extraordinary measures that define this operation, from the deployment of II MEF and the Ford CSG to the shift from legal interdiction to kinetic elimination. It further allows the campaign to continue without congressional approval.

This significant disconnect between the stated threat and the nature of the U.S. response is the smoking gun. The extraordinary measures are poorly suited for counternarcotics but perfectly aligned with a long-standing, unstated political objective: regime change to a long-standing challenger to U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. As some institutions have noted, the current administration’s foreign policy focus on Latin America bears a resemblance to the age of the Monroe Doctrine and the Cold War’s spheres of influence, where regional hegemony was synonymous with national security. Operation Southern Spear is a clear embodiment of that very foreign policy.

The High Price of Securitization

The present administration, having made the securitization of Latin America a hallmark foreign policy approach, has embarked on a high-risk policy that is likely to fall short in its stated, unstated, and strategic objectives. The long-term risks of this strategy are profound, inviting historical failure, enabling geopolitical adversaries, and ultimately creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that undermines U.S. security.

The first risk flows directly from the creation of the zone of exception. When an issue is lifted beyond politics, long-term planning, diplomatic considerations, and uncomfortable questions about “what comes after” are dismissed as weak or obstructionist. The administration is myopically focused on toppling a regime while ignoring the clear, disastrous lessons of history. U.S.-led attempts at regime change fail far more often than they succeed. Even “successful” overthrows, such as in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, failed to lead to long-term stability and instead produced cycles of repression and violence. By focusing only on toppling the regime, the administration repeats the core error of Iraq and Libya. The securitization process directly causes this risk. Because the threat is existential, the only goal is its elimination, which precludes careful post-conflict planning. Decades of research confirm this: foreign-imposed regime change drastically increases the likelihood of civil war in the target state.

The second risk stems from the extraordinary measures. In choosing to employ “gunboat diplomacy” and extralegal killings, the administration abandons its primary advantage over its revisionist rivals and thus its leadership of a global system based on the rule of law. The United States abandons this high ground for the ‘law of the jungle’. This is not merely a reputational problem; it is a profound strategic gift to adversaries like China and Russia. It makes it all but impossible for the United States to make principled objections to others’ aggressive acts. When Beijing inevitably sinks a Philippine or Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea, President Xi can simply point to Washington’s unilateral and extralegal actions in Latin America as justification for its own actions. The U.S. unilaterally surrenders its moral authority and, in doing so, disarms its own diplomacy on the global stage. 

These first two risks combine to create the ultimate securitization trap: a devastating, self-fulfilling prophecy. A commonly stated strategic objective for SOUTHCOM is to box out China from the Western Hemisphere. Previous means have included humanitarian aid, security cooperation, and the ultimate goal of becoming Latin America’s partner of choice. These have now taken a backseat to hard power and gunboat diplomacy. This method is guaranteed to backfire. It will inevitably bolster widespread anti-American sentiment and revitalize traumas from past interventions. This reaction is precisely what drives countries away from cooperation with Washington and leads them to search for a substitute, to seek alternative partners, including Beijing and Moscow. Herein lies the trap: the extraordinary measure taken to achieve regional hegemony thus becomes the primary cause of further Chinese influence. The policy is not only likely to fail; it is strategically guaranteed to accelerate the very outcome it hopes to deter.

Beyond the Facade

The language of deterrence, as applied to the new U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean, is a dangerous facade. The operation is a high-stakes political gambit, enabled by the successful securitization of the regional drug trade into an existential narco-terrorist threat. This process has allowed the administration to pursue a high-risk policy of regime change, trading the momentary satisfaction of gunboat diplomacy for long-term strategic risk. The U.S. public and its elected officials must be wary of this trap. The true enablers of this uncertain policy are not just the administration officials who authorize strikes or author the subsequent social media post, but all those in the audience, from the junior officers on watch in the Caribbean to members of Congress, who themselves nodded along and accepted the pretext of deterrence at face value. The first and most critical step toward a sounder, more sustainable policy is to pierce the veil of deterrence and call this operation what it is: a dangerous and counterproductive example of securitization.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed here belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the DoD or any of department of the United States Government.

Read more from Small Wars Journal here.

Tags: Deterrence, Latin America & the Caribbean, regime change, Securitization, Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), U.S. foreign policy

About The Author

• 
  
• Kevin Spillman
• LT Kevin Spillman is a US Navy Officer recently stationed in Latin America and will be returning to the US FOURTH FLEET area of operations to serve as a combat systems department head. He holds an M.A. in International Security from King’s College London, and a certification in Western Hemisphere Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is also a Global Resilience and Security Senior Fellow.

9. Invading Venezuela: The One-Word Reason America Won't Do It

​Summary:

Balestrieri argues a U.S. ground invasion of Venezuela is unlikely because the decisive problem is not toppling Maduro but the insurgency that would follow. He contends U.S. counterinsurgency performance in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan reveals structural weaknesses: a bias for conventional solutions, impatience with political work, and operations that alienate populations. Venezuela’s size, dense cities, and fractured politics would produce lethal urban combat, rural guerrilla warfare, and violence from criminal gangs defending smuggling and mining networks. He warns Russia, Cuba, and Iran would sustain resistance with intelligence, advisors, and logistics, while Latin America would unite against Washington, isolating the U.S. in a long quagmire.

Comment: Beware the "I" word. We will never do insurgency again, right? This time we would be welcomed as liberators, right? 

Invading Venezuela: The One-Word Reason America Won't Do It

nationalsecurityjournal.org · Steve Balestrieri · December 15, 2025

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/invading-venezuela-the-one-word-reason-america-wont-do-it/

Key Points and Summary – A U.S. ground invasion of Venezuela is highly unlikely—but if it happened, the real war would start after Maduro fell.

-Expert Steve Balestrieri argues that America’s poor track record in counterinsurgency, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, would collide with Venezuela’s size, dense cities, and fractured politics.

A U.S. Army M1A3 Abrams Tank from the 1-12 Cavalry Squadron, 1st Cavalry Division waiting to be guided onto a loading vehicle and secured for transport at the Port of Agadir, June 3, 2022, Agadir, Morocco. African Lion 2022 is U.S. Africa Command’s largest, premier, joint, annual exercise hosted by Morocco, Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia, June 6 – 30. More than 7,500 participants from 28 nations and NATO train together with a focus on enhancing readiness for U.S. and partner nation forces. AL22 is a joint all-domain, multi-component and multinational exercise, employing a full array of mission capabilities with the goal to strengthen interoperability among participants and set the theater for strategic access. (U.S. Army photo by PFC Donald Franklin)

-Any invasion would likely trigger urban combat, rural guerrilla warfare, and resistance from criminal gangs protecting lucrative smuggling and mining networks.

-Russia, Cuba, and Iran would feed the conflict with intelligence, advisors, and logistics. Latin America would rally against Washington, leaving the U.S. isolated in a long, bloody, and unnecessary quagmire.

In 1 Word: Insurgency

What Would An Insurgency In Venezuela Look Like?

The prospect of a U.S. ground invasion of Venezuela is extremely unlikely. The logistical costs in personnel and material would be extremely high, and it would be highly unpopular with the U.S. population and Congress.

It would then entail another long, expensive nation-building operation—precisely the type that U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly stated he wants to avoid—and is not in the interests of the United States.

But Trump has left open the option of a ground invasion for political purposes, to try to force strongman Nicolas Maduro from power.

But if the U.S. did invade Venezuela, it would generate a large counterinsurgency campaign in response. And Venezuela is four times the size of Iraq, making it even harder from a counterinsurgency standpoint.

The US Isn’t Good At Counterinsurgency:

The United States military is not good at counterinsurgency (COIN) for a couple of reasons.

The U.S. has a preference for conventional warfare, technological fixes, and a focus on “body counts” over population protection, leading to cultural insensitivity, impatience with long-term political solutions, and alienation of local populations.

The way the U.S. tried to fight in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—conflicts during which military actions often ignored underlying political issues and failed to build trust with the people—is not a recipe for winning.

U.S. Army Spc. Harry Santiago IV, assigned to the Multi-Functional Reconnaissance Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), launches a Skydio X2D drone on Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania, July 09, 2025. V Corps provides essential support to multinational training and exercises of robust and evolving complexity, scope, scale, rigor, and operational conditions and provides targeted security force assistance alongside national and multinational corps and divisions. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Breanna Bradford)

U.S. military doctrine prioritizes large-scale, technologically advanced battles, which are ill-suited for irregular warfare during which the enemy blends with the population.

A fundamental COIN principle is to protect the population, but U.S. forces often inadvertently alienate them through large-scale operations or a focus on enemy kills rather than securing civilians.

The U.S. often separates war from politics and lacks the cultural empathy and patience for complex, long-term nation-building required to win “hearts and minds.”

Failure to effectively use information and communication technology to connect with local populations often leaves this space open to insurgents’ propaganda.

Insurgency In Venezuela Would Exacerbate These Issues

An insurgency in Venezuela would likely be a messy, multi-faceted conflict involving urban unrest, rural guerrilla tactics, and significant foreign involvement. It would be characterized by state repression, militias, criminal gangs, disgruntled military personnel, and refugee crises.

External powers such as Russia and Cuba are backing the Venezuelan government, and their support could turn the conflict into a low-intensity civil war with widespread civilian suffering. Iranian influence in Venezuela also has been growing for decades.

There wouldn’t be a traditional, unified rebellion, but a breakdown of state control, leading to power vacuums and a chaotic mix of actors.

Carl von Clausewitz wrote a cautionary tale that the U.S. has frequently ignored: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”

An M1A2 Abrams tanks, assigned to 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, maneuver into fighting position during a battalion live-fire range during Agile Spirit 19 at Orpholo Training Area, Georgia, August 9, 2019. AgS19 is a joint, multinational exercise co-led by the Georgian Defense Forces and U.S. Army Europe which incorporates a command post exercise, field training and joint multinational live fires. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. True Thao)

Urban & Rural Warfare

After a dedicated air campaign to hammer Venezuela’s air defenses, a conventional campaign would quickly smash their conventional forces, which are ill-trained and equipped for a traditional fight.

But a U.S. invasion would automatically turn a large segment of the population that opposes Maduro against the U.S. instead. They would rally around their sovereignty rather than oust a corrupt dictator who ran a once-prosperous country into the ground economically.

Urban warfare would break out. The United States’ tremendous advantage in military might would be mitigated by terrain favoring defenders, difficulty supporting troops, diminishing high-tech advantages, civilian presence complicating targeting, and the lack of a dedicated doctrine.

Cities offer defenders cover and concealment, nullifying some U.S. mobility and firepower advantages.

Tanks get bogged down or become vulnerable; conventional assets struggle, requiring infantry-heavy, complex operations, as seen in Fallujah.

The 1-148th Field Artillery Regiment is the latest unit in the Idaho Army National Guard to upgrade its combat capability as modernization efforts across the U.S. Army and Army National Guard take shape.

Urban combat is highly lethal and resource-intensive, consuming far more troops and supplies than anticipated, with high casualty rates.

Insurgent groups could range from organized opposition militants to criminal syndicates, and even disillusioned military defectors lacking unified command.

Foreign Interference Will Be Common

Russia and Cuba would likely provide intelligence, logistics, and electronic warfare support to the government, while external powers might back opposition factions, escalating conflict.

Iran provides military advisors, training (including drone operations at a joint facility), and potentially arms, using Venezuela as a logistical hub for regional operations and intelligence gathering.

Venezuela serves as Iran’s key partner in Latin America, expanding its diplomatic and commercial influence and challenging U.S. hegemony in the region.

Criminal Gangs Will Fight To Protect Their Interests:

Venezuela is rife with criminal gangs. Illicit drug trade, illegal mining, and smuggling has proliferated thanks to the complicity of Maduro’s regime.

While they have no loyalty to Maduro, save for the blind eye that the government has turned toward their activities, these groups will fight to preserve their interests, especially against a foreign occupying power. They know the terrain and could intimidate the population.

U.S. Soldiers assigned to the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division supporting the 4th Infantry Division maneuver an M1A2 Abrams tank and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle past a simulated opposing force’s Leopard 2A6 tank during exercise Arrow 23 in Niinisalo, Finland, May 5, 2023. Exercise Arrow is an annual, multinational exercise involving armed forces from the U.S., U.K., Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, who train with the Finnish Defense Forces in high-intensity, force-on-force engagements and live-fire exercises to increase military readiness and promote interoperability among partner nations. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. John Schoebel)

Latin America Would Galvanize Against A US Invasion:

Maduro is not a popular dictator. And, as recent elections have shown in Honduras and elsewhere, he’s losing allies. No one would miss him if he’s ousted.

But Latin American politics is strewn with memories of U.S. interventions, and an invasion would turn every country against the United States. Any South American involvement in a post-invasion stabilization of the country would be extremely limited, leaving the U.S. to shoulder the burden.

So, getting rid of Maduro would be the easy part. The aftermath is where the quagmire might begin.

A Venezuelan insurgency would be a complex, prolonged internal conflict growing from deep roots in political and economic crisis. It would be heavily influenced by international actors and result in immense human suffering and regional instability.

It is a war the United States does not need and should not start.

About the Author: Steve Balestrieri

Steve Balestrieri is a National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing on defense, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.

nationalsecurityjournal.org · Steve Balestrieri · December 15, 2025

10. Operating AI in the Gray Zone: Drawing Clear Lines Before They Blur

​Comment: A useful roll-up of recent AI related articles.

Operating AI in the Gray Zone: Drawing Clear Lines Before They Blur

by SWJ Staff

|

12.15.2025 at 03:28pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/15/ai-gray-zone-plummer-swj-essay-roundup/

Morgan Plummer argues in his War on the Rocks article, “Operating AI in the gray zone: Drawing Clear Lines Before They Blur,” that the AI problem is not on a near-future battlefield—it is already here. Plummer discusses AI’s role in the gray zone where influence operations, economic coercion, and cyber campaigns converge, blurring the lines between peace and war.

Using Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice, Plummer’s key warning is that AI is too portable: capabilities that may be appropriate in combat become corrosive when repurposed for peacetime manipulation. He concludes that we must urgently establish clear lines across domains before norms harden, explicitly defining what should be prohibited, restricted, and permissive in AI-enabled statecraft.

For a peek inside the black box of AI and gray zone operations, read these five recent SWJ essays:

–  “Dark Pragmatism and the Ethics of Cognitive Warfare” (Oct. 31, 2025) — Grapples with the core dilemma Plummer flags: how liberal democracies compete in cognitive/information conflict without becoming what they’re fighting.

– “Bridging the Geopolitical Divide in Cyber Governance” (Oct. 16, 2025) — Makes the “lines and norms” case in cyberspace: competing visions, low trust, and the stabilizing role of coalitions and shared standards.

– “The Ethical Imperative of Information: Just War Considerations for Global Information Strategy” (Oct. 15, 2025) — Explicitly frames information warfare as a gray-zone tool and argues for ethical constraints to achieve objectives while minimizing harm.

– “The Countdown to Venezuela’s Digital-AI Authoritarian Future” (Sep. 2, 2025) — A case study of how AI “portability” enables domestic control; how biometric surveillance, AI analytics, and digital repression to preempt dissent, which are exactly the kind of sphere-blurring Plummer is warning about.

– “Demystifying China’s Gray Zone Aggression: Water Cannons, Ramming, and the Use of the Force” (Aug. 6, 2025) — A concrete “where’s the threshold?” piece that argues ambiguity can enable coercion and that deterrence may require clearer definitions of what counts as force.

Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Warfare, cyber governance, digital authoritarianism, Gray Zone, influence operations, information operations, irregular warfare

About The Author

• 
  
• SWJ Staff
• SWJ Staff searches the internet daily for articles and posts that we think are of great interests to our readers.

11. 2025 National Security Strategy Validates Core Thesis of "Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant"

​Summary:

Fortis Novum Mundum claims the 2025 National Security Strategy validates its book Asymmetric Warfare by echoing its central argument that strategic competition now occurs mainly below the threshold of war. The release says the NSS treats cyber intrusions, disinformation, economic coercion, proxy forces, and supply chain pressure as integrated instruments of state power, not side issues. It highlights shared emphasis on attribution ambiguity as a deliberate shield against conventional response. It also points to “cost asymmetry,” where cheap drones and widely available AI tools impose disproportionate effects and defensive burdens. The publisher argues the NSS response, resilience, allied coordination, and scalable low-cost defenses, mirrors the book’s prescriptions.

Comment: Using the NSS to promote a book. But this is a useful example of how we can interpret the NSS to suit our agendas (I am guilty as charged of this).

2025 National Security Strategy Validates Core Thesis of "Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant"

12-15-2025 08:46 AM CET | Advertising, Media Consulting, Marketing Research

Press release from: Fortis Novum Mundum

https://www.openpr.com/news/4313623/2025-national-security-strategy-validates-core-thesis

The White House's newly released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) provides striking validation of the strategic framework outlined in "Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant," published by Fortis Novum Mundum earlier this year. The official government document's treatment of irregular threats, gray zone operations, and technology-enabled conflict mirrors analysis the book presented months before the NSS was drafted.

"Asymmetric Warfare" argued that irregular and sub-threshold conflict had become the primary mode of strategic competition between states. The 2025 NSS confirms this assessment, treating cyber intrusions, disinformation, economic coercion, proxy forces, and supply chain manipulation not as peripheral concerns but as integrated tools of state power designed to achieve strategic effects while avoiding conventional military response.

"Between peace and war exists a contested realm where strategic advantage is gained without triggering conventional military response. This 'gray zone' represents neither peace nor war but a deliberate operating space where asymmetric actors conduct operations with strategic impact while remaining below thresholds that would provoke decisive conventional reaction."

- Asymmetric Warfare, Chapter 4

The NSS employs nearly identical framing, identifying adversary campaigns that "stay below the threshold of war while achieving strategic effects" through cyber operations, influence campaigns, and economic leverage. The document explicitly names these approaches as the central challenge facing American national security.

Cost Asymmetry and Technology Democratization

Perhaps the most direct validation appears in the NSS treatment of cost asymmetry in modern conflict. The document acknowledges "the huge gap, demonstrated in recent conflicts, between low-cost drones and missiles versus the expensive systems required to defend against them" - a dynamic "Asymmetric Warfare" identified as fundamentally reshaping the distribution of military power.

"A $1,500 commercial drone can now deliver capabilities that would have required million-dollar military systems just a decade ago. Artificial intelligence tools available to anyone with internet access can generate sophisticated disinformation at scale... The democratization of technology has fundamentally altered the power dynamics of modern conflict."

- Asymmetric Warfare, Preface

The NSS response to this dynamic - calling for "a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale" - reflects exactly the strategic imperative "Asymmetric Warfare" outlined for conventional powers facing technology-enabled irregular threats.

Attribution Challenges and Proxy Warfare

The NSS identifies propaganda, influence operations, and proxy forces as primary instruments of adversary strategy. "Asymmetric Warfare" provided the analytical framework for understanding why these approaches have become dominant:

"Gray zone operations deliberately create attribution uncertainty through technical means, operational methods, and strategic communication. This attribution ambiguity paralyzes conventional response mechanisms designed for clearly defined threats rather than deliberately obscured aggression."

- Asymmetric Warfare, Chapter 4

The government's strategic response - emphasizing resilience, allied coordination, and whole-of-government approaches - aligns with the book's conclusion that traditional military frameworks prove insufficient against adversaries specifically designing operations to exploit institutional seams.

"Asymmetric Warfare" concluded that understanding irregular approaches had become essential for security practitioners because "the future belongs not to those with the largest arsenals, but to those who best comprehend how to leverage asymmetries across multiple domains of conflict." The 2025 NSS appears to operate from precisely this premise, treating economic security, cyber defense, information operations, and alliance resilience as co-equal priorities alongside conventional military capability.

"Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant" is available through major booksellers and directly from Fortis Novum Mundum. For media inquiries, review copies, or author interviews, contact the publisher at the information below.

About "Asymmetric Warfare"

"Asymmetric Warfare: Strategies and Tactics for the Modern Combatant" provides a comprehensive examination of how warfare has evolved beyond traditional paradigms. Drawing on historical case studies from Vietnam to Ukraine and contemporary analysis of cyber operations, gray zone conflict, and information warfare, the book offers frameworks for understanding, analyzing, and responding to asymmetric challenges across multiple domains. It is written for military officers, intelligence professionals, policymakers, and security analysts navigating an era where conventional military superiority offers diminishing returns against adaptable adversaries.

Fortis Novum Mundum

2319 Nostrand Ave Unit 100202

Brooklyn, NY 11210

Fortis Novum Mundum is a premier publishing house dedicated to thought-provoking works on defense, intelligence, cybersecurity, and global strategy. Our mission is to deliver insightful, authoritative content that challenges conventional wisdom and prepares readers for the complexities of modern conflict.

This release was published on openPR.

12. An active, engaging, and honest National Security Strategy

​Summary:

The Washington Examiner argues the 2025 National Security Strategy is energetic and candid, not isolationist. It highlights a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that prioritizes the Western Hemisphere, aims to counter China’s footholds, and recruits regional partners to curb migration, drugs, and instability. In the Asia-Indo-Pacific, it stresses Taiwan’s strategic value for semiconductors and theater geography, and calls for allied economic coordination, access, and higher defense spending. On Europe, it is blunt about demographic decline and demands more burden sharing while backing Ukraine’s survival. The author says the real issue is whether POTUS follows the document consistently.

An active, engaging, and honest National Security Strategy

Washington Examiner

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/3916139/active-engaging-honest-national-security-strategy/

Sometimes, what a troubled relationship needs more than anything else is honesty. That is what President Donald Trump‘s 2025 National Security Strategy would deliver to Europe. Despite what critics want you to believe, the document calls for active and engaged United States relations with the rest of the world, even though Trump’s priorities are different than those of past administrations. If anything, what should worry observers is not the strategy laid out in the document, but Trump’s ability to execute it.

It begins with a trenchant critique of American foreign policy since the end of World War II, saying correctly that “elites … placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called ‘free trade’ that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.” The same people “allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people” and “lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.”

The answer to these mistakes is not to retreat from the world but to pursue America’s interests abroad with a renewed and refocused vitality. Beginning at home with the Western Hemisphere, the strategy adds a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that would “protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region” while denying “non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.” This is a clear reference and warning, primarily to China, but also to Russia and Iran.

To accomplish this “Trump Corollary,” the document promises to “enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability on land and sea.” This would be accompanied by an effort to cultivate “new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.” As this passage shows, any suggestion that Trump does not recognise the threat of China’s encroachment into our backyard is unfounded.

The next section offers a clear-eyed assessment of our interests in Asia, with China’s economic and territorial ambitions playing a leading role. The document spells out the strategic importance of preserving the status quo in Taiwan in both economic (“Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production”) and military terms (the island “splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinctive theaters”).

On the economic side, the document calls for working “with our treaty allies and partners to counteract predatory economic practices … and ensure that allied economies do not become subordinate to any competing power.” It calls for diplomatic efforts to increase U.S. military access to allied ports and more defense spending from allies on their militaries. These are good approaches.

Most controversy focuses on Trump’s approach to Europe, and some challenge the document’s claims, too. The tenor of this section is also tactless, presumably deliberately. It bluntly reminds European leaders that the continent’s share of the world economy has dropped from 25% in 1990 to just 14% today, and that unless Europe’s nations end mass migration and increase birthrates among their indigenous populations, they will face “civilization erasure.” All this is true. On its present course, Europe is becoming more and more irrelevant, and as the document explains, Europe’s decline is not in America’s interests.

Trump’s desire to see Europe become great again is another area where critics are misrepresenting the strategy document. Trump does not, as some claim, assert any moral equivalence between Europe and Russia. “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe,” the document says, adding that, “It is a core interest of the United States … to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.” Anyone who says Trump is indifferent to the outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine either has not read this passage or is choosing to ignore it.

But it is fair to question whether Trump is living up to his strategy. When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has bolstered defense spending, recently said an invasion of Taiwan would threaten Japan‘s “survival,” Trump sided with China and told her to shut up about the issue. This is not how one supports allies against Chinese territorial ambitions in the Pacific.

COOL HAND MIKE

Still, the new strategy document is a welcome break from the past administration’s faith in the magic of international institutions to advance American interests. Where former President Barack Obama campaigned in Europe against Brexit, Trump promises to campaign for nationalist parties. Where past Democratic presidents pushed America into international agreements that undermined domestic manufacturing and energy production for mythical reductions in global temperatures, Trump is prioritizing American workers and industrial capacity.

Whatever one thinks of Trump’s style, the 2025 National Security Strategy is neither isolationist nor incoherent. It is a candid diagnosis of allied weakness and global competition paired with an assertive vision of American leadership. The real test is not the document’s honesty, but whether the president consistently acts on it.

Washington Examiner

13. A farewell to Oz: Trump’s strategy for a multipolar world

​Summary:

George Beebe argues the 2025 National Security Strategy ends post Cold War “make believe” by admitting U.S. resources are finite and priorities must track the security, prosperity, and freedom of Americans, with renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. He says it is realist about a polycentric, multipolar order and about technology reshaping power. The strategy seeks to avoid pushing Russia and China into tighter alignment, encourage a more self reliant Europe that can balance Russia, and mix deterrence, engagement, and competition with China. Beebe warns execution will be messy, politically intrusive, and hampered by staffing and bureaucracy, but sees a path to solvency.

Comment: From the Quincy Institute.

A farewell to Oz: Trump’s strategy for a multipolar world

NSS is actually more realist about the US role going forward than critics want to admit

Analysis | Washington Politics

1. washington politics U.S. Foreign Policy

George Beebe

Dec 15, 2025

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-nss-europe/

The end of the Cold War ushered in a long period of make-believe in American foreign policy. We saw ourselves, in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as “the indispensable power. We stand tall. We see farther into the future.” And we could use our unmatched abilities to transform the world in unprecedented ways.

Globalized flows of capital and labor would liberalize China and usher in a new age of largely frictionless international relations. Russia would be transformed quickly into a friendly, free market democracy. NATO would shift its focus from protecting Western Europe to reforming and incorporating the states between it and Russia, with little worry that it might ever have to fight to defend new members. The US military would serve as the world’s benevolent policeman, and Americans could re-engineer societies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Americans would be endlessly content to fight endless wars that bore little connection to their own well-being, and foreign creditors would forever finance America’s burgeoning national debt.

Things obviously did not go as planned.

President Trump’s new National Security Strategy says goodbye to such magical thinking. It begins with a clear premise that breaks sharply with past strategies: The United States does not have infinite resources and capabilities, so it must prioritize what it seeks to accomplish in its foreign policy. It asserts that these priorities must flow from an assessment of what is most important to the security, prosperity, and freedom of the American people. And it argues that, while the world has changed in important ways, geography has not: the threats and opportunities in America’s immediate neighborhood matter more to our national security than events in far-flung locales.

This reasoning is little more than common sense, but it has been entirely uncommon in past American strategies.

Trump’s approach is much more than a simple effort to reconnect American objectives in the world to its capabilities and interests, however, as commendable as that is. Equally important, it recognizes that the distribution of power in the world has become more polycentric, and that technologies are changing the components of national power in ways that have big implications for geopolitics.

In an emerging multipolar world, it makes no sense for the United States to do things that encourage Russia and China to cooperate against us, as we have inadvertently done for many years. The strategy implicitly recognizes that having a more normal relationship with the West will make Moscow less beholden to Beijing and better able to operate as an independent pole in the emerging order, rather than as a force-multiplier of Chinese power. The strategy also understands that it makes no sense for the United States to encourage continued European dependence on US security protection. We need Europe to have the military strength and internal cohesion to serve as a stabilizing counterweight to Russia, and we need it to have the societal and cultural health to manage perceived threats on the basis of confidence and resilience rather than fear.

Of course, rational strategic thinking does not necessarily make for a successful foreign policy. It makes abundant sense to elevate the principle of non-intervention, pursue peace settlements that advance American interests and influence, recognize the importance of the Western hemisphere, rebalance the transatlantic alliance, and pursue a mix of deterring, engaging, counter-balancing, and out-competing China. The attempt to translate those concepts into practice is likely to be messy, however, as Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have demonstrated. Much can go wrong, and often does, when plans encounter unforeseen crises, opposition from friends and foes, and the stubborn complexities that underlie so many problems abroad. Striking the delicate balances that the strategy envisions and achieving the broad goals it outlines will require a high degree of nuanced statesmanship.

In this regard, questions remain about implementation. The strategy’s proclamation of a “Trump Corollary” to America’s longstanding but recently dormant Monroe Doctrine raises the question of whether the administration will learn from the mistakes Russia has made in trying to drive foreign actors out of its own neighborhood, where Moscow’s bullying and coercion only encouraged neighbors to seek closer ties to the West.

The strategy’s call to “cultivate resistance” to European continent’s self-destructive trajectory has caused some to question just how intrusive the administration plans to be in the region’s domestic affairs – and whether too heavy a hand might hurt rather than help Europe’s populist parties, a stated goal in the NSS.

Moreover, Trump’s foreign affairs team remains far from complete, with key positions unfilled. Its ability to marshal the expertise necessary for the strategy’s success while managing an often resistant and sometimes defiant bureaucracy is far from clear.

Policy implementation concerns are inevitable in any administration, but they grow more acute when a strategy is such an abrupt departure from the ways past administrations have approached their foreign policies.

That departure is to be welcomed, not lamented, however. The most renowned American foreign affairs columnist of the twentieth century, Walter Lippmann, coined a term to describe a wide gap between America’s objectives in the world and its capabilities to attain them: foreign policy “insolvency.” By this measure, US foreign policy has been insolvent for more than three decades. If nothing else, the new Trump National Security Strategy provides hope that our approach to the world may become solvent again.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

George Beebe

George Beebe is the Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA's Russia analysis and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. He is the author of "The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe" (2019).

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

14. What Would Teddy Roosevelt Think of the “Trump Corollary”?

​Summary:

Holmes argues the NSS “Trump Corollary” echoes Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 corollary but diverges in three ways. First, it speaks of “restoration,” implying a weary power recovering influence, while Roosevelt acted from rising regional confidence. Second, it targets a blurrier threat set, mixing state competitors with substate actors like drug networks, not just foreign armadas. Third, its pledge to block non-hemispheric control of “vital assets” could extend beyond ports and territory to modern economic choke points, possibly the Panama Canal, depending on how “vital” is defined. Holmes closes with a Clausewitz test: prioritize the main theater and judge secondary commitments by reward, resources, and risk, including the Asia-Indo-Pacific.

Excerpts:

All in all, the 2025 National Security Strategy reorients US strategic priorities to a startling degree. Strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz laid out a simple test for setting and enforcing priorities among various theaters and lines of operation. Clausewitz wanted political and military chieftains to concentrate on what mattered most. He implored them to determine the primary theater for national endeavor, and to take a jaundiced eye toward lesser commitments. They should abjure a secondary theater or line of operations unless it promised “exceptional” reward, unless they had “decisively superior” resources to handle events in the primary theater, and thus unless they could spare resources for a secondary endeavor without risking cataclysm in the primary theater. After all, it makes little sense to sacrifice what matters most for something that matters less.

I call these metrics Clausewitz’s Three R’s: reward, resources, risk. While the National Security Strategy does not rule out extraregional commitments, especially in the Indo-Pacific, it specifies unmistakably that the Western Hemisphere comes first in Washington’s security calculus. How the administration implements its strategy in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, gauging and applying the Three R’s, remains to be seen.

Somewhere Clausewitz is watching.

What Would Teddy Roosevelt Think of the “Trump Corollary”?

The National Interest · James Holmes

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-would-teddy-roosevelt-think-of-trump-corollary-jh-120925

December 9, 2025

By: James Holmes

The new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine echoes a similar set of ideas promoted by Teddy Roosevelt a century earlier—but differs in at least three ways.

The White House has released its much-anticipated National Security Strategy, and as rumored, the document situates the Western Hemisphere squarely atop President Donald Trump’s list of priorities. Not only does it list the Americas first, it explicitly declares a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”

This is bracing. The White House has sounded a homeward note.

The “Roosevelt Corollary” Came First

The strategy’s language riffs on President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, enunciated in 1904 to frame the US response to a war scare in Santo Domingo, the modern-day Dominican Republic. (Someone ought to write a book about that.) In those days it was commonplace for a European great power to send its naval fleet to seize the customhouse of a country that had defaulted on its debts to European banks. In such a case, the fleet would divert tariff revenue from trade flowing through that country’s ports to repay the bankers. Geopolitical thinkers like TR objected to this practice because it left an extraregional navy in possession of territory in the Americas—territory it might later decide to keep, despite the ostensibly temporary nature of the operation. A hostile power could then build a naval base from which ships of war could menace the sea lanes leading to the Isthmus of Panama, where the Canal would one day run.

The crisis in Santo Domingo fit the paradigm perfectly—and precipitated the Roosevelt Corollary. TR’s logic may sound paranoid, but such intrigues had happened in Asia and Africa time and again during the age of imperialism. It could happen in the Americas.

To head off creeping encroachment in southern waters, Roosevelt proclaimed an “international police power,” a limited right of intervention that Washington might wield if a Caribbean debtor government proved unable or unwilling to fulfill its responsibilities to foreigners. The idea was that the United States would intervene early to settle debt disputes, and would in the process preempt any European excuse for wresting away ground in the Caribbean basin. TR then staged a bloodless, low-key intervention in Santo Domingo to avert European military action. The constable of the Western Hemisphere conducted himself with restraint.

How Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump Differ on US Strategy

Today, the 2025 National Security Strategy announces that the Trump administration will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

That sounds familiar, but the Trump Corollary differs from its namesake in at least three subtle but potentially important ways.

First, the framers of the National Security Strategy talk about “restoration.” Their words suggest that they believe the contemporary United States has fallen behind in its own hemisphere. They intend to reverse decline. By contrast, TR’s America was a regional great power on the ascent. It had constructed its first modern battle fleet and evicted a European empire, Spain, from the Caribbean (and its Pacific holdings) in a splendid little war—a war in which President Roosevelt distinguished himself on the battlefield. Roosevelt’s America was a confident newcomer to regional great power. Trump’s America is a weary titan, a world power trying to recoup its standing closer to home.

Second, where the TR administration worried about hostile armadas barging into the Caribbean, the Americas’ middle sea, the Trump administration is worried about guarding the homeland against threats posed by substate as well as state wrongdoers. In recent months, US combat aircraft have sunk over 20 speedboats ruled to have been running illicit narcotics to American shorelines. Judging from Trump’s words, the administration may soon mount a very forward defense of the homeland against drugrunners. The president has publicly ruminated about launching strikes against Venezuelan soil—presumably against sites that comprise the narcotics supply chain—“very soon.”

The Roosevelt Corollary sought to exclude extraregional conventional forces from the Caribbean and Gulf. The Trump Corollary aspires to manage a far more variegated, blurrier threat seascape than the one that confronted TR.

And third, there may or may not be daylight between the Trump and Roosevelt corollaries in the National Security Strategy language about prohibiting extraregional ownership or control of “vital assets.” Customhouses would certainly have counted as vital assets in the age of TR because they occupied geographic space that could be converted to malign use. The Trump strategy may be alluding to proscribing Chinese control of the Panama Canal. That goal would presumably gladden the heart of Theodore Roosevelt since, as he boasted, he took the Canal Zone from Colombia in 1903. But what about vital assets that do not confer control of territory in the Americas? How the administration defines that simple phrase—vital assets—could have seismic impact on how it implements its Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

Trump Has Set His Priorities—but Will He Stick to Them?

Trump might set the standard for intervention far differently than did Roosevelt. In practice, then, the Trump Corollary could depart drastically from its TR antecedent despite similar wording. Written strategy is one thing. How a strategy is executed is another.

All in all, the 2025 National Security Strategy reorients US strategic priorities to a startling degree. Strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz laid out a simple test for setting and enforcing priorities among various theaters and lines of operation. Clausewitz wanted political and military chieftains to concentrate on what mattered most. He implored them to determine the primary theater for national endeavor, and to take a jaundiced eye toward lesser commitments. They should abjure a secondary theater or line of operations unless it promised “exceptional” reward, unless they had “decisively superior” resources to handle events in the primary theater, and thus unless they could spare resources for a secondary endeavor without risking cataclysm in the primary theater. After all, it makes little sense to sacrifice what matters most for something that matters less.

I call these metrics Clausewitz’s Three R’s: reward, resources, risk. While the National Security Strategy does not rule out extraregional commitments, especially in the Indo-Pacific, it specifies unmistakably that the Western Hemisphere comes first in Washington’s security calculus. How the administration implements its strategy in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, gauging and applying the Three R’s, remains to be seen.

Somewhere Clausewitz is watching.

About the Author: James Holmes

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, a faculty fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs, and the author of Theodore Roosevelt and World Order: Police Power in International Relations. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image: Shutterstock / 4kclips.

The National Interest · James Holmes

15. Why (and how) the US military wants to resupply troops from space

​Summary:

The Air Force and Space Force are exploring “rocket cargo,” using commercial rockets to deliver supplies, or even troops, anywhere on Earth in about 90 minutes. The concept matters because future fights may disperse small units across wide areas, where traditional airlift is slow, needs overflight clearances, tanker support, and lacks survivability inside dense air defenses. Falling launch costs and more than $100 million in recent R and D contracts with firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin make the idea more plausible. Key hurdles remain: rapid loading and launch timelines, affordability at scale, safe reentry and landing, reliance on commercial providers, prepositioned orbital “loiter” cargo mismatches, and recovered capsule security.

Why (and how) the US military wants to resupply troops from space

taskandpurpose.com · David Roza

David Roza

Published Dec 15, 2025 8:00 AM EST

https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/us-military-rocket-cargo-space/

The Air Force and Space Force are spending millions of dollars researching a concept called “rocket cargo,” where they would shoot a capsule full of troops or supplies into orbit and land it anywhere on Earth in 90 minutes or less, which is way faster than anything they have currently.

That kind of capability could be a game-changer in future conflicts, where U.S. troops may be more spread out and isolated than they’ve been in decades. But tough questions remain, such as how to make rocket cargo cheap, fast and safe enough to work at scale and in combat?

First, some context. From 1970 to 2000, the average launch cost to get a kilogram into space was about $18,500, according to a NASA research paper. In 2010, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 brought it down to $2,700 per kilogram, and it could fall even further as more companies enter the space launch business and as bigger, more reusable rockets make for better economies of scale.

Cheaper space launches mean things like rocket cargo may become more feasible. Since 2020, the Air Force and Space Force have awarded more than $100 million in research and test contracts to companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Anduril, Sierra Space, and Rocket Lab. The idea for rocket cargo is to adapt these companies’ rockets to urgent tactical or humanitarian missions.

“Think about moving 80 short tons, the equivalent of a C-17 payload, anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” the head of U.S. Transportation Command, Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, said in 2020. “We should challenge ourselves to think differently about how we will project the force in the future, and how rocket cargo could be part of that.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Sept. 28, 2024. Space Force photo.

Why does the military need rocket cargo when it already has massive cargo planes that can drop hundreds of paratroopers or land a tank on a dirt strip an ocean away?

The answer is that while military airlift is awesome, it’s not magic. It takes at least half a day to get from the continental U.S. to the Middle East, and closer to an entire day to reach the western Pacific. Those flights need diplomatic clearances from the countries they fly over; they often need gas from refueling tankers that also need clearance; and none of the U.S. military’s airlift platforms have the stealth to reach friendly troops surrounded by enemy air defenses.

Rocket cargo could be a shortcut. Ninety minutes or less is really fast, and you don’t need clearance to fly over another country in space. Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told us that a resupply capsule would also likely travel nearly straight down from space at hypersonic speeds for all but the last 10,000 to 20,000 feet, which makes it very difficult to shoot down for most surface-to-air weapons. They would then parachute or land vertically at their final destination.

But while the brochure promises 90 minutes or less, it actually takes a long time to load and launch a space rocket. SpaceX connects its Falcon boosters to the rocket’s upper stages a full two days before launch just to make time for system checks. And in 2023, the Space Force was stoked to launch a satellite just 27 hours after getting launch orders.

The Space Force doesn’t own or operate any rockets, Harrison explained. Instead, they use commercial launch providers and rockets to get their satellites into orbit. The Space Force could buy and operate its own rockets to stand alert, but that would be a big change from the past several decades of doing business, and it would require a big investment, as just contracting space launches already costs tens of millions of dollars.

One way to get around this is a system developed by Inversion Space where a reusable spacecraft would be loaded with supplies ahead of time and then launched into orbit, where it could remain for up to five years, waiting to be called down. But the risk is that the cargo loaded on them months or years before may not be what’s needed in a crisis.

Then there is the question of what troops should do with the capsule after it’s landed. These may weigh hundreds of pounds, and troops stuck behind enemy lines probably won’t be able to haul it back with them. Does that mean leaving sensitive technology behind for the enemy to pick over?

In one version of rocket cargo, capsules full or supplies would loiter in orbit for up to five years, waiting to be called down in a crisis. Inversion Space illustration.

These are big questions, but so is the need for new kinds of logistics. Military officials are imagining a more dynamic way of war, where small groups of U.S. troops hop between temporary bases so they are harder to target by enemy long-range fires. That kind of agility requires a lot of airlift and sealift, but America’s current fleets are too small to keep up with that pace of operations.

That’s where new technologies such as drone boats, rocket cargo, long-range gliders, and tiny electric self-flying planes come in, though how these tools come together remains to be seen. We dive much deeper into this on our YouTube channel, so watch that here.

Task & Purpose Video

Each week on Tuesdays and Fridays our team will bring you analysis of military tech, tactics, and doctrine.

Watch Here

David Roza

YouTube Writer/Editor

David Roza writes scripts about military news for the Task & Purpose YouTube channel, and he also writes articles about military pay, benefits, health care, child care, culture, and other personnel topics on a freelance basis.

taskandpurpose.com · David Roza

16. China seizes 430kg cocaine aided by US intel, in sign anti-drug pact may be working

​Summary:

Chinese authorities intercepted 430 kg of cocaine in an international container at Yantian port in Shenzhen on November 26, after tip-offs from U.S. intelligence, according to CCTV. SCMP frames the seizure as an early indicator that the October U.S.–China counternarcotics understanding may be producing results, even as relations stay tense elsewhere. The report notes drug control is one of the few cooperative lanes, sharpened by U.S. pressure on fentanyl and precursor chemicals. It also ties the case to recent official messaging about joint coordination, including case work, video conferences, and information sharing. POTUS has elevated fentanyl as a top national security concern.

Comment: China throwing us a bone? Or could they not ignore the intelligence we provided?

China seizes 430kg cocaine aided by US intel, in sign anti-drug pact may be working

Chinese authorities uncovered the drug in an international container at the Yantian port in Shenzhen, according to CCTV

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3336590/china-seizes-430kg-cocaine-aided-us-intel-sign-anti-drug-agreement-may-be-working?utm

Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen

Published: 2:19pm, 16 Dec 2025Updated: 4:06pm, 16 Dec 2025

Chinese authorities last month intercepted 430kg (948lbs) of cocaine aided by tip-offs from the United States, indicating possible progress on the issue following an agreement on counternarcotics cooperation reached by the leaders of the two countries in October.

The drugs were found inside an international container at Yantian port in Shenzhen, southern China, on November 26, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Tuesday. The case is under investigation and no other details were given.

Drug control has emerged as a rare field of progress in US-China cooperation amid tensions on other fronts in recent years. The issue is especially important to Washington, with US President Donald Trump on Monday declaring illicit fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Earlier this month, China said narcotics control authorities in both countries had been steadily “advancing joint anti-drug efforts and achieving notable results”.

US, China join forces to counter global fentanyl trade

China’s Ministry of Public Security said on December 6 that the two sides had worked on multiple cases together and maintained “close communication”, including holding video conferences, exchanging progress updates and discussing major areas for future cooperation.

“China will cooperate with the US on the basis of equality and mutual respect to jointly tackle the prominent global drug issue,” it said.

The consensus for cooperation emerged from a meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, on October 30. During the meeting, Trump said he would lower tariffs on China in exchange for cooperation on tightening export controls on fentanyl precursors – the chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid blamed for hundreds of thousands of drug overdose deaths in the US.

On the same day, China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement that Beijing and Washington had forged consensus on tariffs, export controls and port fees during trade talks in Kuala Lumpur.

It said the US would remove half its 20 per cent “fentanyl tariffs” imposed on China, including Hong Kong and Macau and China would likewise adjust its countermeasures against the US. The consensus included issues such as fentanyl-related drug control cooperation and expanding agricultural product trade, the ministry said.

The fentanyl issue has long strained US-China relations. Even during his first term, Trump pressured Beijing to do more to stop the flow of precursor chemicals into America. In response, China imposed strict controls on drug production and export starting May 2019, placing all fentanyl-related substances under a regulatory schedule.

In November 2023, after Xi met then US president Joe Biden, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference that the two sides had established a working group on counternarcotics cooperation, to jointly combat drug-related issues.

The following month, the foreign ministry said drug control agencies from the two countries had resumed regular contact.

“Since the Americans have withdrawn their sanctions on relevant Chinese law enforcement departments, China has recently promoted some special operations on fentanyl-type substances and their precursor chemicals,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at the time.

Phoebe Zhang

Phoebe Zhang is a senior reporter with the South China Morning Post. She has a master's degree in journalism. She likes to write human-interest stories and has written many about people living on the fringes of society. She believes there's no story or person that's too small.

17. The Imperial Trap: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Lessons of Failed Conquests

​Summary:

Mankoff argues Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fits a recurring pattern of Russian imperial wars that begin with hubris, underestimate the target, and ignore Western involvement, then grind into economic strain and political risk at home. He compares Ukraine to the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and Afghanistan, where prolonged conflict exposed Russia’s under-institutionalized system. He notes Moscow has adapted better than past regimes through contract recruiting, sanctions evasion, and drone and missile innovation, while avoiding isolation via China, India, Iran, and north Korea. Yet casualties, demographic decline, fiscal stress, elite patronage pressures, and growing dependence on Beijing raise instability risks whether the war ends or drags on.

Excerpts:

From the start of the full-scale war, Moscow has continually asserted that time is on its side and that the longer the war drags on, the more Ukraine will lose. That calculation may still pan out: The key variable remains the scale and extent of Western support for Ukraine.

Despite a larger economy and population base, in some ways autocratic Russia remains less capable of bearing the burdens of a protracted conflict than a democratic Ukraine backed by U.S. and European partners. Kyiv’s own theory of victory, articulated by former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, centers on the “strategic neutralization” of Russian offensives, forcing Russia to expend resources for trivial gains until the Kremlin is forced to back down.

Zagorodnyuk’s approach recognizes the inherent limitations of the Russian system. An under-institutionalized autocracy with an extraction-based economy is ill-equipped for a grinding war of attrition, especially one where ordinary citizens are asked to make sacrifices but have little stake in the outcome. Russia has seen this story play out before. As much as Putin portrays the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of World War II, it is modern Russia’s history of failed imperial wars — from Crimea to Afghanistan — that provides the best template for understanding how Putin’s Ukrainian misadventure could end.

The Imperial Trap: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Lessons of Failed Conquests

warontherocks.com  December 16, 2025

Jeffrey Mankoff

December 16, 2025

https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/the-imperial-trap-russias-war-in-ukraine-and-the-lessons-of-failed-conquests/

Since the release of the U.S. 28-point draft peace plan in late November, many officials and observers have suggested that a ceasefire in Ukraine may be on the horizon. Undergirding this view is a growing consensus that Ukraine is losing the war as its troops cede territory and its economy and political order come under increasing strain. Indeed, as the war approaches its fourth year, Kyiv faces mounting attacks on critical infrastructure, recruiting challenges, and a corruption scandal that already forced the resignation of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff. These challenges provide the backdrop to the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, and seemingly support Moscow’s narrative that time is on its side and that Kyiv should therefore sign a ceasefire negotiated by the Kremlin with the Trump administration.

Lost amid these Ukrainian setbacks is the fact that for the first time since the spring of 2022, Russia too appears interested in substantive negotiations — even if it has so far not shown much evidence of walking back from its maximalist demands. That willingness suggests that while Moscow has managed thus far to maintain the upper hand on the battlefield, the political, social, and economic difficulties it faces are also building, and — with them — the risks that the war poses to Russian political and social stability.

In that sense, the conflict in Ukraine is unfolding similarly to others in Russia’s long history of failed or inconclusive imperial wars. Several times in the past few centuries, Russian leaders launched wars of conquest against foes they misunderstood and underestimated, and with little appreciation of the larger international context. The longer each conflict dragged on, the more strain it placed on an under-institutionalized Russian economy and political system. In these earlier instances, the inability to sustain a long war compelled leaders to pull back, sometimes too late to save their regimes — a pattern that is not unique to Russia. President Vladimir Putin’s Russia therefore faces many of the same risks — both because it has chosen to fight an old-fashioned imperial war in the 21st century and because the Russian Federation suffers from many of the same structural weaknesses as its Imperial and Soviet predecessors. While it would be simplistic to say that Putin’s Russia will necessarily traverse the exact path they did, previous failed wars of conquest or other imperial interventions offer some insights into what the enduring consequences of Russia’s Ukrainian misadventure could be.

BECOME A MEMBER

Analogies at War

To understand the strains that the invasion is placing on Russia, it is useful to compare the invasion of Ukraine with earlier examples of Russian imperial wars. While Putin constantly connects his war in Ukraine to the historical memory of World War II, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine more closely resembles failed Russian imperial wars of the past. The Crimean War (1853-56), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), World War I (1914-18), and the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-88) offer the most relevant analogies. All were wars of choice for territorial aggrandizement, which ended in military defeat followed by political upheaval.

Russia’s failure in these wars stemmed from common mistakes and shortcomings that also afflict Putin’s war in Ukraine. One common failing was to underestimate their foes’ military capabilities and societal resilience. Emperor Nicholas I expected the Ottoman Empire to quickly give way on his demand for a protectorate over Orthodox Christians in what is now Moldova and part of Romania, while Emperor Nicholas II and his commanders believed that the Japanese military could never stand up to a European great power. Similar hubris colored their assessment of the Ottomans in 1914-15, when they settled on seizing Constantinople and the Black Sea Straits as a war aim. Nor did Soviet commanders have much respect for the ragtag mujahedeen in Afghanistan.

Second, Russian leaders frequently downplayed the risks and impacts of foreign (i.e., Western) involvement that ended up prolonging the war and increasing the costs Russia was forced to bear. The landing of French and British troops in Crimea in 1854 forced Russia to fight on multiple fronts against better-equipped armies. British intelligence support enabled Tokyo to remain a step ahead of Russian plans throughout the Russo-Japanese War. While Russia declared war against Austria-Hungary in August 1914, it soon found itself at war with Germany, the Ottomans, and Bulgaria as well. A German-Ottoman blockade of the Black Sea Straits choked off Allied support, exacerbating the tsarist government’s inability to mobilize defense production. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted the United States, in uneasy alliance with Saudia Arabia and Pakistan, to arm the mujahedeen forces that ground down the Soviet army until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev ordered their withdrawal nearly a decade later.

With an economy far less dynamic that those of its Western rivals, Russia in each case found itself at an increasing disadvantage the longer these wars went on. As economic burdens and personnel losses mounted, so too did opposition not just to the war, but to the regime prosecuting it. Nicholas I died during the siege of Sevastopol (some contemporaries believed he committed suicide over his military failure), and his successor, Emperor Alexander II, would soon launch Imperial Russia’s greatest period of modernization and reform. High casualties and repeated military failures against Japan were key factors behind the demonstrations that sparked Russia’s 1905 Revolution. In 1917, Russia’s home front began disintegrating before its army in the face of persistent shortages exacerbated by the closure of the Black Sea Straits. Gorbachev characterized the Afghanistan debacle as a “bleeding wound” that sapped Soviet resources and stoked discontent at home. Military failure in Afghanistan was one factor in the demise of the Soviet Union itself that soon ensued.

Not Quiet on the Eastern Front

In all these earlier cases, hubris led Russian leaders to attack a smaller foe while ignoring the likely international implications and Russia’s own vulnerabilities. Putin’s Russia today finds itself in a similar position. The Kremlin dramatically underestimated Ukraine’s political resilience and military capability. Expecting Kyiv to capitulate in a matter of days, the Kremlin now faces a fourth year of grinding trench warfare in eastern Ukraine. While Moscow expected U.S. and European sanctions, it failed to anticipate the extent of the restrictions it would face, the cohesion (thus far) of the Western alliance, or the willingness of Ukraine’s partners to provide weapons and financial support.

Despite these failings, Putin’s Russia has done better than its predecessors at adapting under pressure, improving both its military performance and its international position, allowing it to weather sanctions and regenerate forces. These steps have allowed Russian troops to maintain a favorable battlefield position and bought the Kremlin time. What they have not done is resolved Russia’s underlying weaknesses and the tensions that wars of imperial expansion create: The longer the war lasts, the less effective these measures will become.

The Kremlin’s biggest success has been keeping Russia’s resource-dependent economy afloat amid unprecedented sanctions. The Bank of Russia has stared down pressure from oligarchs to maintain high interest rates that have headed off hyperinflation at the cost of further depressing growth. Inflation is low enough that the central bank made a small rate cut in October.

In its gradual, sometimes haphazard way, the Russian military has also proven adaptable. Unlike the Imperial and Soviet militaries’ reliance on conscripts, most of the Russian troops sent to fight in Ukraine are mercenaries, convicts, and well-paid contract soldiers (kontraktniki). Thanks to high bonuses paid to recruits, the Russian Defense Ministry has been able to meet and even surpass monthly recruiting goals this year. As either well-paid volunteers or from socially marginalized groups, casualties are less prone to spark a backlash compared to previous wars. Russia has also rapidly developed and deployed new drone, missile, and communications technology, enabling it to ramp up the pressure on Ukrainian forces and civilian infrastructure. This ability to adapt and, especially, to innovate technologically, is one that neither the Imperial nor the Soviet militaries were known for.

Another key advantage Putin’s Russia enjoys over its Soviet and Romanov predecessors has been the ability to prevent international isolation. Despite sanctions, the development of railways, road transport, and pipelines has allowed Russia to diversify its import and export routes more than its predecessors could. After dropping in the early stages of the war, the volume of rail and road transit across Russia has recovered over the past few years, while Moscow is developing new transit routes that bypass sanctions.

Russia also continues to sell crude oil and petroleum products on the global market, with China and India stepping in to offset volumes Russia can no longer sell in Europe. Russia is also able to bypass Western sanctions and export controls to access weapons (including drones, artillery shells, and rockets) from Iran and North Korea. While China has refrained from providing lethal weapons, it has become Russia’s most important source of dual-use goods subject to Western export controls, notably machine tools, components for explosives, and semiconductors. Defense production has not stagnated as it did during World War I, and Russia continues churning out drones, armor, and artillery rounds faster than its rivals.

The End of the Beginning?

Even with these measures, the strains on the Russian economy and political system are growing, much as during prolonged imperial wars of the past. The nexus between military failure and political upheaval is likely one reason for the history-obsessed Putin to pursue diplomacy with the Trump administration, as U.S.-Russian talks appear to be part of a strategy to lock in gains at the negotiating table while Moscow’s position remains favorable. When — and how — the war ends, though, the Kremlin will face a reckoning that it is ill-prepared to handle and that could have unpredictable consequences for political order in the country, though the nature of that reckoning could change depending on when and how the fighting in Ukraine stops.

The pace of Russian advances provides little basis for optimism that Russian forces will occupy the entirety of the four eastern Ukrainian regions Putin continues to demand anytime soon. Despite the likely fall of Pokrovsk in the coming weeks, Russia’s progress has been slow and come at prohibitive cost. A major offensive this past summer achieved little, despite Putin’s bravado. Russian losses remain upwards of 25,000 per month. Total Russian casualties since 2022 are likely above one million dead or grievously wounded — several times more than Moscow suffered in a decade of fighting in Afghanistan.

Russia does not have an inexhaustible supply of willing recruits — especially as funding to pay bonuses becomes more constrained. The alternative is to fall back on mobilization of conscripts, a stratagem the Kremlin tried and abandoned in 2022 after it sparked an outflow of fighting-age men, or the recruitment of mercenaries from the Global South. The exodus of Russian men, coupled with high casualties, has exacerbated Russia’s demographic decline. The situation has gotten so acute that the state statistics agency Rosstat this year stopped publishing monthly demographic data, following a measure last fall to delay some data collection for Russia’s next census. The disproportionate share of casualties suffered by ethnic minorities, including North Caucasian Muslims, Buryats, Kalmyks, Tuvans, and others, risks exacerbating ethnic tensions and demands for regional autonomy.

The Kremlin is also mortgaging Russia’s economic future, boosting defense production to unsustainable levels, while sanctions have accelerated Russia’s declining competitiveness and the de-modernization of its economy. Sberbank CEO German Gref claims economic growth has fallen to zero (though official figures remain slightly positive) despite the Kremlin spending more than 7 percent of GDP on defense this year. Bankruptcies are rising. The Moscow Stock Exchange has lost more than 40 percent of its value so far this year. By the end of August, the 2025 budget deficit had already exceeded $49 billion. Cut off from international financing and with its National Welfare Fund largely spent down, Russia has few options for financing its runaway spending short of raising taxes, which would further depress demand, or depreciating the ruble, which would stoke additional inflation.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian strikes are decimating Russia’s energy industry — the foundation of Russian prosperity and the source of the rents that Putin’s regime distributes throughout the elite. Recent strikes against tankers in Russia’s sanctions-skirting “shadow fleet” only add to this challenge, while newly imposed U.S. sanctions on Russian oil majors Rosneft and Lukoil have forced Chinese and Indian buyers to scale back purchases.

The structure of the Russian political system creates additional risk. Russia maintains what Henry Hale describes as a “patronal” model, where the Kremlin controls distribution of revenue streams to members of the elite as an inducement or reward for their loyalty. Putin’s regime has grown more personalistic throughout the war. Repression is mounting and elites are increasingly fearful for their own future. With the economic pie shrinking, fewer resources are available for redistribution, through legal means or otherwise.

Instead, Russia has witnessed a series of nationalizations, along with an intensive — if selective — crackdown on corruption. These campaigns provide short-term cash and allow the Kremlin to reward war supporters. They also, however, sever the link between the Kremlin and the officials and oligarchs who have long constituted the fabric of the Putinist system. Those who fear losing out can go to extreme measures.

Even Russia’s international partnerships — a key advantage Putin’s Russia has over its Imperial and Soviet precursors — create long-term vulnerabilities. Most significantly, the war is deepening Moscow’s strategic dependence on Beijing, including by shackling it to Chinese ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. While Beijing is willing to help Russia evade export controls, Chinese firms continue increasing the price they charge Russian customers for dual-use items, knowing that Moscow has few other choices. Russia now provides China high-end air defense, missile, and electronic warfare capabilities, and is helping to train Chinese forces for a possible invasion of Taiwan. Regardless of how the fighting in Ukraine ends, Russia will come out of the war poorer, militarily weaker (at least in the short-term), and more dependent on its erstwhile partners, especially China.

History Does Not Repeat, but It Rhymes

The odds of an even worse outcome will continue growing the longer the war lasts. Failure to reach a deal with the White House (and with Kyiv and Brussels) would leave the Kremlin facing a protracted conflict it is unlikely to win but also cannot abandon. Already, the post-2022 phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War has lasted longer than the Crimean and Russo-Japanese Wars, and a little longer than Russia’s participation in World War I. The strain on the economy and political system continues to grow. While the Russian economy currently faces Brezhnev-style stagnation, the risks of a crisis will mount as time goes on. A prolonged war also raises the risk of destabilization from intra-elite conflict, public opposition, and regional grievances.

Assuming it can negotiate a ceasefire, the Kremlin will face a different set of challenges, starting with the need to sell a deal that falls short of its initial goals. Ordinary Russians will want to know why the sacrifices they were forced to endure were worthwhile. The Kremlin will also struggle to reintegrate millions of traumatized veterans, including those released from the penal system to fill the ranks. Afghan war veterans (afgantsy) were a major component of the criminal underground that emerged in the years surrounding the Soviet collapse. The much larger number of Ukraine war veterans (including hardened criminals) could play a similarly de-stabilizing role today.

The mobilization economy will also have to be wound down. Even if the Kremlin intends to be prepared for war with NATO in 5–10 years as some analysts assess, current levels of defense spending are not sustainable. Cutting spending, though, will only exacerbate the elite infighting that has accompanied wartime mobilization, both at the center and in regions that have benefitted from new defense production. Nor will European sanctions be unwound anytime soon, irrespective of any deal between Moscow and Washington. The European market for Russian pipeline gas is probably gone for good. Sanctions or not, the wave of nationalizations and confiscation of assets the Kremlin has undertaken throughout the war suggests that political risk to investment in Russia remains high. Western firms are unlikely to return at scale, even if a ceasefire agreement provides for new commercial cooperation. In these conditions, the difficulties Russia faces in the short term are likely to be more chronic than acute, but will continue over time to undermine growth, political cohesion, and military reconstitution.

From the start of the full-scale war, Moscow has continually asserted that time is on its side and that the longer the war drags on, the more Ukraine will lose. That calculation may still pan out: The key variable remains the scale and extent of Western support for Ukraine.

Despite a larger economy and population base, in some ways autocratic Russia remains less capable of bearing the burdens of a protracted conflict than a democratic Ukraine backed by U.S. and European partners. Kyiv’s own theory of victory, articulated by former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, centers on the “strategic neutralization” of Russian offensives, forcing Russia to expend resources for trivial gains until the Kremlin is forced to back down.

Zagorodnyuk’s approach recognizes the inherent limitations of the Russian system. An under-institutionalized autocracy with an extraction-based economy is ill-equipped for a grinding war of attrition, especially one where ordinary citizens are asked to make sacrifices but have little stake in the outcome. Russia has seen this story play out before. As much as Putin portrays the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of World War II, it is modern Russia’s history of failed imperial wars — from Crimea to Afghanistan — that provides the best template for understanding how Putin’s Ukrainian misadventure could end.

BECOME A MEMBER

Jeffrey Mankoff, Ph.D, is a distinguished fellow at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of the books Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics (2012) and Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security (2022).

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not an official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Defense Department, or the U.S. government.

**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: RIA Novosti via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com  December 16, 2025

18. Japan’s Strategic Challenges: Historical Lessons and the Imperative for Comprehensive War Understanding

​Summary:

Akiba argues Japan’s pacifist postwar identity, built on emotional memory and a taboo around war, now constrains strategic thinking in an era where competition occurs below the threshold of conflict. He traces the roots to World War II, when Japan pursued operations without clear political goals, and to the postwar period, when victimhood narratives and academic restrictions marginalized future-oriented war studies. While Japan is adapting through economic security legislation, expanded exercises, and investment in space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains, Akiba says it remains reactive without deeper “war literacy.” He urges rebuilding a comprehensive understanding of war as a political phenomenon, including irregular and cognitive dimensions, via expanded exchanges and interdisciplinary academic ecosystems.

Japan’s Strategic Challenges: Historical Lessons and the Imperative for Comprehensive War Understanding

irregularwarfare.org · Ryota Akiba · December 16, 2025

Editor’s Note: This article was submitted as part of the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s 2025 Writing Contest, in which authors were invited to explore how the United States and its partners can use irregular warfare to strengthen security cooperation, build trust, and enhance resilience among Indo-Pacific nations. This article stood out for its nuanced examination of Japan’s evolving relationship with war—linking historical narratives, societal attitudes, and academic reform to the nation’s ability to confront modern irregular challenges.

Japan stands at a strategic crossroads. Eighty years after World War II, the country still orients its security identity around pacifism and emotional memory—an inheritance that once stabilized the nation but now risks constraining it. Japan ranks among the world’s top five economies and is the United States’ most important ally in the region—an indispensable pillar in maintaining a free and open international order. Geographically, it sits in close proximity to China, the Korean Peninsula, and Russia, and hosts over 55,000 US troops, making it central to regional deterrence and rapid response capabilities. In an Indo-Pacific defined by intensifying great-power rivalry, which plays out beneath the threshold of conflict, Japan can no longer afford to treat war as a taboo subject or assume that abstention from strategic inquiry equates to safety. Whether it wishes to or not, Japan is a significant player on the board.

Japan’s hesitancy around major conflict is rooted in the country’s postwar narrative, where war is treated as a moral taboo rather than a subject of strategic inquiry. Public discourse emphasizes victimhood and emotional memory in order to avoid repeating the same missteps again, while academic institutions have distanced themselves from future-oriented war studies due to their responsibility to the legacy of the past war. As a result, Japan struggles to develop a coherent understanding of war’s political function in contemporary security environments.

The following analysis examines how Japan’s nationwide stance on war has developed across three key periods in its history: (1) its World War II origins, (2) the post–World War II era, and (3) the current era of great-power competition. Understanding this trajectory is essential to explaining Japan’s current approach to irregular warfare; only by grappling with its past can Japan chart a clearer course for its future. The analysis concludes by outlining several key reforms to help Japan develop a more effective way of thinking about war and better position itself for the challenges ahead.

1: World War II Origins: The Absence of a Strategic Goal

During World War II, Japan lacked a unified national war plan. Instead, the Imperial Army and Navy pursued separate operational campaigns against presumed adversaries, absent an overarching strategic framework or clearly defined national objectives. While modern warfare typically follows a hierarchy, with strategy guiding operations and tactics to achieve political goals, Japan’s approach placed disproportionate emphasis on operational success. That mindset became ingrained in Japan’s military leaders and ultimately undermined Japan’s ability to wage coherent war.

This mindset stemmed from prior successful military campaigns, particularly the Russo-Japanese War of 1904―1905. In that conflict, Japan achieved decisive battlefield success through bayonet charges and naval firepower, which encouraged a short-term orientation toward victory and a doctrine emphasizing that wars should be won by decisive engagements on land and sea. That doctrine dominated the military and fostered the belief that tactical and operational excellence alone could secure national objectives, even though those objectives were not clearly defined.

As this doctrinal bias became institutionalized, it shaped Japan’s later strategic choices and left the country ill-prepared for multi‑front warfare against the Allied powers, Russia, and China during World War II. During the conflict, national resources, manpower, and logistics were stretched thin, yet military leaders continued to assume that operational victories alone could force adversaries into submission—a presumption that overshadowed broader strategic and political considerations.

the National Mobilization Law to centralize control over the human and material resources deemed essential for sustaining the war effort. National propaganda accompanied this law, portraying the war as just and service to the nation as a noble duty. Men were conscripted into the military, while women and youth were mobilized for labor service, and even students were dispatched to the front lines. Scientific research was redirected toward military needs, including tropical medicine, jet propulsion, acoustic and radio wave weaponry, and emergency food supplies.

Civilians, in turn, became targets of widespread aerial bombardment, including the devastating attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ground combat in Okinawa. Families saw loved ones sent to distant battlefields, many never to return. The personal loss of friends, relatives, and neighbors, woven into daily life under wartime conditions, became a defining experience for the postwar generation, embedding a deep emotional scar in the national psyche.

The absence of a strategic goal during the war, combined with the widespread human cost resulting from entrenched military norms and uncritical operational thinking, shaped a postwar narrative that avoided political or military analysis. Instead, war became a subject of emotional reflection and moral condemnation. This legacy contributed to Japan’s reluctance to engage with war as a political instrument, leaving a conceptual void in its contemporary strategic discourse.

2: Post–World War II era: War as a Taboo in Postwar Japan

Following its defeat in World War II, Japanese society underwent a profound reckoning. Survivors of the conflict, many of whom had lost loved ones or witnessed the devastation firsthand, internalized a moral imperative: war must never be repeated, and therefore, must be narrated. This sentiment became a foundational norm in postwar public discourse.

The absence of surviving wartime leaders further reinforced this silence. Many of those who had directed Japan’s war effort perished in battle, died by suicide, or were executed as war criminals. Without authoritative figures to articulate the rationale behind Japan’s wartime decisions, the public narrative defaulted to one of victimhood. Rather than confronting the nation’s role in initiating or escalating the conflict, citizens came to see themselves as passive victims, swept into a war started by distant elites.

This framing was not only cultural, but institutional. For example, the Japan Science Council, the country’s leading academic advisory body, formally prohibited research that could contribute to military development or war-related applications. This policy, rooted in postwar reflection and a desire to prevent future militarization, effectively excluded strategic studies from mainstream academic inquiry. Universities avoided military-related research outside of historical analysis, and disciplines such as political science and international relations often sidestepped the subject of war altogether.

As a result, Japan’s strategic literacy remains underdeveloped. War is treated not as a political instrument or subject of analysis, but as a moral failure to be mourned. This taboo has constrained Japan’s ability to engage with contemporary security challenges, particularly those requiring a nuanced understanding of war’s political and strategic dimensions.

3: The Current Era of Great-Power Competition: A Vulnerable Partner Nation

Still, Japan’s approach has not remained static. Recent developments show meaningful movement. In response to the realities of great power competition, Japan has undertaken several significant measures. For instance, Tokyo passed the Economic Security Law, aimed at protecting critical supply chains, infrastructure, and emerging technologies. Japan has also expanded its military cooperation and exercises with allied partners and broadened its focus to include strategic domains such as space, cyber, electromagnetic, and cognitive warfare. Japan has also increased the defense budget to strengthen its defense capacity and initiated a comprehensive review of its defense and security policies to adapt to an evolving security environment.

Despite these initiatives, the absence of robust war theory in public discourse and policymaking leaves Japan reactive rather than proactive in shaping its security environment. Modern conflict has become multidimensional, blending political, cultural, social, and informational domains. The boundaries between peace and war have blurred, with influence and legitimacy now central to hybrid and irregular warfare. This shift demands a conceptual approach that goes beyond tactical coordination and embraces strategic understanding.

Japan remains strategically vulnerable within this landscape. Its postwar victimhood narrative, while historically significant, emphasizes emotional and operational aspects of war, limiting engagement with its strategic dimension. Public discourse avoids war as a political instrument, and academic institutions have distanced themselves from future-oriented war studies due to historical sensitivities. As a result, Japan’s strategic literacy remains underdeveloped.

To navigate great power competition effectively, Japan must move beyond tactical and operational adaptation. It must embrace war as a total phenomenon, as theorized by Clausewitz, and recognize irregular warfare as a central strategic concern. This requires not only policy reform but also a cultural and intellectual shift. Strategic inquiry must be reclaimed as a legitimate and necessary part of national resilience.

Recommended Key Reforms

To address the complex realities of modern conflict, as well as the unique challenges Japan faces in that context, the nation must enhance its academic and public understanding of war as a political phenomenon that encompasses the entire society. The National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan’s largest government institute for security and strategic warfare research, has only 90 scholars. Compared to institutions in the US or UK, this pool remains relatively small, partly because many researchers are oriented toward supporting Japan’s pacifist ideology or current policy frameworks. At present, university research in Japan tends to focus on dual-use technologies rather than conceptual studies of war itself.

Therefore, establishing robust academic environments to study war beyond military dimensions is crucial for bridging existing gaps and reinforcing Japan’s role as a global security partner. To translate this vision into action, Japan can pursue two mutually reinforcing reforms that enhance both the international exchange of ideas and the domestic academic foundation for studying war in all its dimensions:

1. International Exchanges

Expanding programs to enable Japanese researchers to collaborate with leading war theory institutions, particularly in countries with significant war experiences, would open avenues to both theoretical and applied frameworks. Enhanced scholarship, funding, and exchange programs are vital for building sustainable capacity in war research and analysis while addressing domestic constraints.

2. Development of Academic Ecosystems

Creating interdisciplinary academic environments to study war, including irregular warfare, enables scholars to explore its complexities through diverse fields. Communication studies, emphasizing cognition and bias, shed light on how narratives shape perceptions and decision-making, influencing conflict dynamics. History and cultural anthropology uncover how accumulated histories impact societal and international responses. Revisiting historical expertise, such as the Nakano School, alongside interdisciplinary research, offers crucial insights for enhancing Japan’s ability to tackle hybrid threats and strengthen global partnerships.

Conclusion

Japan’s future security depends not on distancing itself from war as a concept, but on understanding war as a political phenomenon that demands foresight rather than fear. Building the intellectual infrastructure to study conflict in all its dimensions is not a return to militarism but an act of national responsibility. By confronting the full spectrum of modern warfare: irregular, hybrid, cognitive, and informational, Japan positions itself not as a reluctant participant, but as a thoughtful and capable shaper of the Indo-Pacific order.

Ryota Akiba is an independent researcher specializing in Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. He earned a Master’s degree in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Additionally, he conducted research in Special Operations as an intern at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. Continues independent research following service with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Intelligence Unit at Northern Army.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) 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.

Main Image: Generated by DALL-E, OpenAI (December 2025).

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.

Related Posts

• Teaching Irregular Warfare In The Era Of Strategic Competition
• Elena Pokalova The 2022 National Security Strategy focuses on US leadership in strategic competition over the future of international order. The document lays out the threats and challenges the United States faces…
• Another Forgotten War: America's Experience In Afghanistan
• Jeff Phaneuf and Kyle Atwell Episode 61 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast contemplates lessons learned from America’s twenty years of war in Afghanistan. Our guests begin by discussing whether, in the year following…
• Al-Shabaab And The Grim Realities of Somalia's Forever War
• Sam Wilkins Despite over a decade of international military interventions, the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group known as al-Shabaab remains the most capable extremist organization on the African continent. On October 30, the group served…

irregularwarfare.org · Ryota Akiba · December 16, 2025

19. The Weakness of the Strongmen – What Really Threatens Authoritarians?

​Summary:

Kotkin argues authoritarian regimes look strong but are brittle. He flags five pressure points: coercive organs, revenue, narratives, control of life chances, and the global environment. Security services repress yet breed rivalry and paranoia. Cash flows from oil, gas, minerals, crime, or exports create chokepoints in shipping, pipelines, and sanctions evasion. Regime stories of greatness and foreign plots can be undercut with credible accounts of corruption and self damage. Life chance control through jobs, housing, and schooling can be softened by lawful private markets. Democracies should renew governance, rebuild leverage with allies, and compete to avoid hot war over time.

Excerpts:

All the major authoritarian regimes have shown themselves to be committed to achieving unencumbered sovereignty by driving U.S. power from their immediate regions and collapsing Washington’s alliances. All share the goal of undermining and weakening the United States and its allies in any way they can. Despite not being subjected to aerial bombardment or amphibious invasion, open societies are under constant attack. China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and other anti-Western authoritarian regimes spread disinformation, exfiltrate confidential personnel files, purloin intellectual property, harass and sometimes abduct their own nationals on Western soil for exercising free-speech rights, pay criminals and gang members in Western societies to commit arson or sabotage, plant malware in financial, electrical, and water systems, and much more. “Peace” in the sense of that blissful time between wars has been lost. The gray zone is the new twilight zone.

Nonetheless, the future can still be shaped, and the open and secure global commons can be reinvented for another long run. The Ukrainians stood up to a full-scale Russian invasion and dragged the entire West into the fight. The Israelis knocked the teeth out of Iran’s manifold proxies and even the Islamic Republic itself, and then pulled Washington in. The Taiwanese for three consecutive elections have selected the presidential candidate most despised by the CCP. The United States can neither eliminate nor transform the Eurasian authoritarians, but it can reenergize itself and, in the process, make it harder for the authoritarians to marshal their strengths and easier for their weaknesses to hold them back. The American experiment has always had to contend with bouts of disorder, disarray, and doubt. But the United States has also periodically rediscovered and renewed itself, sometimes in profound ways, and it must do so again. Its authoritarian adversaries are displaying audacity and resolve, but the nature of their regimes always presents an opportunity: their loyalists are their true enemies within.

The Weakness of the Strongmen

Foreign Affairs · More by Stephen Kotkin · December 16, 2025

What Really Threatens Authoritarians?

Stephen Kotkin

January/February 2026 Published on December 16, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/weakness-strongmen-stephen-kotkin

Daniel Downey

Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

Not long ago in the sweep of history, countries that had once been buried behind the Iron Curtain, and even some Soviet republics, were transformed into members of the solidly democratic club. Some of those that weren’t, such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, experienced mass revolts against rigged elections and corrupt misrule amid widespread public yearning to join the West. Free trade was again celebrated as an instrument of peace; Kant’s “democratic peace theory” enjoyed a revival.

Western democracy promotion, inept as it could be, struck fear into authoritarian corridors of power. Ever-shriller authoritarian denunciations of supposed Western conspiracies to foment “color revolutions” seemed to confirm a direction toward democracy. In the early 2010s, spontaneous uprisings rocked the heavily autocratic Middle East and North Africa. Hopes for political loosening persisted in the stubborn holdouts of China, Iran, and Russia. Large-scale demonstrations had broken out in Iran in 2009 and, in 2011–12, similar protests accompanied Vladimir Putin’s announcement that he would return to the Russian presidency after a brief stint as prime minister. Many clung to what they considered signs that Xi Jinping, who rose to become China’s top leader in 2012, would be a reformer.

In the blink of an eye, however, the authoritarians flipped the dynamic, driving the democracies onto the back foot, where they remain. Arab autocrats, Iran’s mullahs, and Putin cracked down viciously. In China, Xi elevated himself to something akin to emperor, driving an even more resolute version of authoritarianism. In well-established democracies, meanwhile, fear spread about the decay of liberal institutions and norms.

The authoritarians relied on an innovative set of tactics to suppress democratic influence from abroad or from within their societies: branding organizations that receive overseas funding as “foreign agents” (essentially, traitors) and using tax inspections to disqualify opposition candidates from running for office. These techniques were combined with the tried-and-true practice of dominating the media. And then, the coup de grâce: continuing to decry nonexistent Western plots to take them down, the authoritarians—thanks to technological innovations produced by free societies—developed new ways to meddle forcefully in democratic polities and sometimes even destabilize them. Now, the authoritarians watch as freely elected democratic leaders praise and emulate them.

And yet: beware those who once hailed “the age of democracy” and now proclaim “the age of autocracy.” Formidable as these regimes appear—and, in fact, can be—they are shot through with weaknesses. They can mobilize vast resources and personnel in pursuit of ambitious national projects but suffer debilitating incapacity stemming from corruption, cronyism, and overreach. They last far longer than generally anticipated but all the while remain prone to sudden runs on their political banks. With the right strategies, they can be jolted off balance. Democracies, despite a growing loss of confidence bordering on despair, retain innumerable strengths and deep resilience, and can get back on the front foot.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

What is authoritarianism? And what—and who—is an authoritarian? Given how important this phenomenon has always been and the prominence it has recently reacquired, it might seem surprising how difficult it can be to answer those questions. At the most basic level, authoritarianism involves weak or near-absent institutional limits on executive power. Initially, authoritarians unabashedly ruled in the name of the few, but ever since the French Revolution, nondemocratic regimes have taken on the trappings of democracy: staged elections, rubber-stamp legislatures, constitutions granting nominal rights. “Modern authoritarianism,” as the political scientist Amos Perlmutter defined it, is the rule of the few in the name of the many.

Perlmutter, writing in 1981, singled out “authoritarianism/totalitarianism” as “this century’s most remarkable political phenomenon.” But the slash separating (or combining) the two terms concealed a challenge: namely, explaining the difference between them. As it happens, the sociologist Juan Linz had already taken this up, and his experience offers a cautionary tale. Born in 1926 in Weimar Germany, where hyperinflation bankrupted his father’s business, the young Linz witnessed the breakdown of democracy and the onset of Hitler’s dictatorship. Linz and his Spanish mother relocated to Spain in 1932, where Linz lived through the 1936 military putsch and the civil war that it provoked. During Franco’s dictatorship, he graduated from the University of Madrid. In 1950, he crossed the Atlantic to pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he soon began to teach. He later shifted to Yale and, in the decades that followed, became one of the world’s foremost experts on regime types and democratic stability.

When Linz entered the profession, the world was seen as divided between two basic regime types: democratic and totalitarian. Where, he wondered, should one place Franco’s Spain? It was patently not democratic, but also not totalitarian like Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. The classic schema advanced by the likes of Hannah Arendt, as well as Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, had no room for Iberia. In 1963, Linz presented a long paper titled “An Authoritarian Regime: Spain.” Despite its banal title, it constituted a breakthrough in explicating a third type. Linz offered a mostly negative definition: unlike totalitarianism, authoritarianism didn’t have a concentrated single source of power or a pervasive ideology, and it could muster only minimal mass mobilization. The major attribute authoritarian regimes possessed, rather than lacked, Linz suggested, was limited pluralism. The distinction remained uncertain, and for all his achievements, Linz never nailed it down. He tried “Sultanistic regimes,” which fell flat, and by 2000 had come up with “chaocracy” (the rule of chaos and mobs). All the while, a consensus built around the too-broad rubric of “hybrid regimes.”

Typologies can sometimes help one grasp how such regimes sustain themselves or implode or are overthrown. For example, scholars have shown that authoritarian regimes that rely on hereditary succession tend to be more stable. But such insights do not translate into policy action. For that purpose, it is better to identify not types but constituent parts—what can be thought of as the five dimensions of authoritarianism—and their susceptibility to countermeasures. Admittedly, a policy-oriented framework will not satisfy those who prefer strict definitions and typologies. Nonetheless, it could serve as a foundation from which to push today’s authoritarian regimes onto the back foot.

THE IRON FIST

The first dimension is obvious: no authoritarian regime could survive without security police and military forces capable of domestic repression. Compared with their social spending or economic investment, authoritarian regimes extravagantly overcommit funds to the agencies, equipment, and training they need for massive repression. They expend staggering resources on surveillance and censorship of the Internet, social media, and related technologies and services, often alongside paid and voluntary human monitoring of neighborhoods and workplaces. Coercive apparatuses vary widely among authoritarian countries, which inherit legacy structures from previous regimes or previous incarnations of their own regimes. Think of the Iranian shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, which the revolutionaries angrily dissolved in 1979 only to carry over many of its practices, prisons, and even personnel into a new organization, SAVAMA.

Authoritarian regimes relentlessly reorganize their repressive apparatuses, but rarely to streamline their functions. On the contrary, they deliberately assign agencies and operatives to overlapping jurisdictions, ensuring that they are, to an extent, at daggers drawn. Sometimes such agencies engage in sabotage against one another, as officials regard going on the offensive as the best defense against colleagues poised to go after them. In communist China, the jockeying for supremacy between the security police and the People’s Liberation Army has at times been decisive in power struggles. In Russia, the civilian repressive apparatus persecutes the military, which leaps at every chance for revenge. Meanwhile, anticorruption bodies—always more than one—are feared by all, including one another.

Professionals in repression, whether fingernail pullers or computer hackers (sometimes one and the same), have the means to take down not just their rivals but also their superiors and even their country’s ruler. They at once ensure regime survival and pose the greatest threat to it. That is why, for example, presidential bodyguards are almost never integrated into the main repressive apparatus. In Russia under Putin, just as it was under Stalin, the bodyguard directorate (today known as the FSO) stands alone, separate from the main successors to the KGB (the FSB and SVR), the multiple counterintelligence units, and the also self-standing National Guard. Paranoia rules.

An arrest at a memorial for the dissident Alexei Navalny, Moscow, February 2024 Reuters

Cronies and mediocrities might run the critical security police or armed forces, a circumstance observed in Putin’s war against Ukraine, which was planned and overseen until May 2024 by a former construction foreman with whom the dictator had spent some bare-chested time in the Siberian wilderness. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the repressive muscle or the capacity for learning and correction of these mechanisms and militaries. They monitor, disappear, imprison, and butcher. They are highly fractious, however, roiling with jealousies, resentments, and enmities, which rulers aggravate to exercise control. Intelligence agencies in the United States and other Western countries closely follow these cleavages, of course, and can sometimes recruit the disaffected or the ambitious to provide insider information.

These regimes take great pains to cultivate façades of unity and approval, which makes them vulnerable when disunity and disapproval are exposed. Many officials in authoritarian regimes chafe at the conflation of the ruler’s interests with the country’s, at cronies hoarding all the spoils, and at the concealed national debilitation that ensues. Washington and its allies should systematically call out these divisions, as well as the deep resentments felt within regimes over malfeasance and corruption, aiming to drive wedges between the elites and the ruler. Of course, naming specific disaffected individuals could cause their imprisonment or execution. Carelessness could backfire. Still, discontent, thwarted ambition, and offended patriotism are no secret, and available to exploit. When such regimes figuratively or literally push their officials out of windows—as they do without any Western pressure—democracies need to emphasize how such barbarism reveals weakness, how it constitutes a tacit admission that dissatisfaction suffuses officialdom, and how the regimes fear its spread. “Outwardly strong, inwardly brittle,” an internal Chinese critique, should be the name of a relentless public campaign that forces the Chinese regime to continually deny it.

CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME

The second dimension of an authoritarian regime is the nature of its revenue streams. All governments require sources of funding, of course, and most get them through a wide array of taxes. Taxes render governments dependent on their people, and although authoritarian regimes do not mind obtaining revenues that way, they are loath to depend on the consent of the people if they can get away without doing so—and many can. They have alternative sources of revenue, often gushing right out of the ground.

Among the most stubborn misconceptions about authoritarian regimes is the idea that they rest on a de facto social contract, whereby the regimes raise living standards and in exchange the people surrender their freedom. Obviously, if an authoritarian regime fails to raise living standards, its ruling circle does not admit its failure to fulfill its side of the contract and leave power. Nor can the people force its exit by taking the rulers to court for failure to comply. Authoritarians are happy to have GDP growth, but they do not require it, and they feel no imperative to satisfy the material aspirations of ordinary people. Unfree people can sometimes be more easily pacified if their incomes are rising and opportunities for their children are expanding. But in China, the authoritarian country where such a contract is most frequently alleged to exist, those conditions have never held for large segments of society. The Chinese people understand the true contract under which they live: if they keep disappointments and doubts largely to themselves and publicly profess loyalty, then the authorities might not come after them.

Authoritarian regimes can survive with little or no economic growth, thanks to those wielding truncheons, but not without cash flow—and the best source of that comes from material that nature deposited into the earth hundreds of millions of years ago, which can be sold on world markets for hard currency. Beyond mother lodes of oil or natural gas, ready cash can also be generated with diamond or gold mines, precious metals, and rare minerals. All it takes is some extraction equipment, labor (often forced), railroads, and ports. But these regimes also find new ways to generate cash flow. North Korea once counterfeited U.S. $100 bills at scale. Then it innovated, discovering that it could hack its way into foreign central bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchanges. The regime also rakes in cash, especially in foreign currencies, the old-fashioned way: by dispatching soldiers and laborers abroad for a fee.

In authoritarian regimes, paranoia rules.

In the case of Putin’s Russia, oil and gas exports help fund the regime—so much so that such revenues have covered as much as a quarter of the costs of the war against Ukraine. China, India, and Turkey have together purchased close to $400 billion in Russian oil since 2023, sometimes to consume it, sometimes to resell it at a markup. Moscow has innovated, too, assembling a shadow fleet of decrepit tankers as well as a coterie of sketchy insurers and shell companies (a time-honored Western invention) to evade a U.S.-devised price cap.

But the need for cash also creates vulnerabilities. Oil becomes money only when it traverses seas or crosses international land borders and is then refined and shipped to consumers. Washington and its partners could sanction oil refineries in China, India, and Turkey, raising those countries’ costs and lowering Russia’s revenues while helping coordinate alternative sources. A new EU draft proposal would allow member states to board and detain shadow-fleet tankers, which are already under sanctions. As for pipelines, cyber-capabilities can cause repeated temporary disruptions, reducing Russia’s revenues.

At first glance, China might look like an exception to the idea that Western countries can exploit an authoritarian regime’s need for cash. China consumes most of its own natural resources, and is the world’s largest importer of raw materials. It also collects taxes, including a value-added tax that is its biggest source of income. But its other big source is what it earns from finished-product exports, which account for roughly 20 percent of China’s GDP and on which corporations pay taxes. Retaliatory tariffs and other trade restrictions could thus choke off much of the regime’s cash flow if they are executed by a broad coalition of cooperating countries, which would need to invest substantially in their own reindustrialization and in alternative supply chains—which they should be doing, anyway.

TALL TALES

The third dimension of authoritarianism is the stories a regime tells about itself, its people, its history, and its place in the world. Authoritarians always try to suppress the stories they do not want their people to see. But they understand that even effective suppression is insufficient on its own; they also need to propagate visions of the nation and the world that resonate with ordinary people. These stories vary across regimes, but elements recur. They aim to spread fear to bolster national cohesion, featuring the collusion of internal and external enemies: ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, labeled as terrorists; elites, intellectuals, democrats (usually but not always in scare quotes); the International Monetary Fund, Jews, George Soros, foreigners; the Great Satan (the United States), the Little Satan (Israel). Authoritarian narratives also evoke a period of national greatness in the past that was undone by hostile forces but will be restored as soon as today’s enemies are vanquished by the nation’s sole savior: the regime and current ruler.

Anti-Westernism is the core trope of today’s authoritarian regimes, and they can frequently draw on Western sources for material. Some of the greatest hits: NATO attacked Russia, the West encourages coups and installs puppet governments, the West is striving to maintain hegemony over the world majority. And then there is the simplest and most effective of all the authoritarian stories: “The East is rising, the West is declining.”

People living under these regimes, however, do not accept regime narratives at face value. Plausible enemies, saboteurs, and spies must occasionally be paraded before them, and plausible tales of U.S. hostility toward China or Russia (preferably straight from the mouths of Americans themselves) must be cited alongside implausible ones. Regime stories must speak to ordinary people, to their sense of violated fairness, their struggles and aspirations. Not everything in these narratives will comport with their experiences, but many people will excuse discrepancies as long as some of it does. The Chinese nation and the Russian nation were, in fact, great imperial civilizations, and few inhabitants of those places dispute that they deserve to be great again.

The centrality of narrative in the operation, legitimacy, and survival of authoritarian regimes makes them vulnerable. They are especially exposed where they are most active: in wielding history. China drills home stories of what it calls its “century of humiliation” beginning in the 1800s, and these resonate with large numbers of Chinese people. But there are also compelling stories about the more than half century of self-humiliation under Chinese Communist Party rule: the CCP has killed far more Chinese people than foreign interventions ever did. Similarly, the CCP takes credit for China’s economic miracle, but the boom resulted primarily from the diligence and ingenuity of the Chinese people; party officials have often been parasitic on the country’s economic success, expropriating businesses once they have become successful. The party casts itself as the great defender of Chinese civilization and Confucianism. But the CCP continues to be the desecrator of philosophical and religious traditions as well as innumerable monuments, and the persecutor of monks, writers, artists.

To tell those stories, democracies would have to invest more in penetrative communications and persuasive content. The glory days of the Voices, as American and European radio stations broadcasting into the Soviet Union were known, were gone even before the Trump administration eliminated their funding earlier this year. It has become difficult to maintain virtual private networks (VPNs) that allow people to evade Internet restrictions in countries such as China; then again, Washington has barely tried. The CCP, meanwhile, controls the algorithm on the app TikTok, which serves as a dominant source of news for nearly half of Americans under the age of 30.

THE DECIDERS

The fourth dimension of authoritarianism is the control that a regime exerts over life chances: the way the state reaches deep into the lives of its subjects. The more the state serves as the principal employer, the harder it is for people to refuse to praise it, let alone speak out against it. In regime hands, housing becomes a weapon, whether via state ownership, licenses to register property ownership, or residency permits, such as in China’s urban hukou system of household registration. State-controlled education means that the authorities can deny children admission to school if a parent or family refuses to perform whatever political tasks might be demanded of them. Individuals and families begin to volunteer to serve the regime, even if they detest it, in the hopes of obtaining or retaining employment, a place to live, or educational opportunities; having a chance to vacation at state-owned resorts; or just securing a passport or an exit visa. In some ways, control over quotidian affairs empowers regimes more than their repressive apparatuses—and does not require far-reaching forms of “tech authoritarianism.”

Few states control life chances fully, of course. Black markets and corruption flourish, providing alternative spaces and options. But the more the state controls your life chances, the more the state has power over you and the less power you have. At the highest levels of such control, authoritarian states become totalitarian. They push subjugation to the maximum, incentivizing denunciations of any perceived nonconformity. Neighbor is pitted against neighbor, coworker against coworker, as the people themselves undermine the social bonds and trust that might otherwise enable a modicum of autonomy from the state.

An authoritarian regime’s control over its subjects’ life chances is yet another source of strength that also creates weaknesses—albeit fewer than do the other dimensions. The private sector can, in theory, provide a vital antidote. If you can start your own business, join others in doing so, or move freely from one private employer to another based on your qualifications and hard work, you are less subject to state control. The same holds for one’s ability to buy or rent private housing, attend nonstate schools, or form nongovernmental organizations.

But authoritarian regimes can exert massive influence over the private economy, and particularly over the largest employers, when a single person or a small group sometimes owns the enterprise (or the housing stock). What is more, harsh economic sanctions designed to punish regimes often instead end up punishing ordinary people and driving private enterprises either out of business or into the hands of the regime for help. That is what happened in Russia after the imposition of Western sanctions following Putin’s widening of the war against Ukraine in February 2022. Moreover, even when private markets are allowed to flourish, they can entrap people, as happened when Xi decided to puncture China’s property bubble, leaving untold millions with crushing debts, incomplete homes, and job losses—and thus often more vulnerable to and dependent on the regime. Still, the freedom that derives from legal, smaller-scale market activity can be a godsend.

CONDUCIVE OR CORROSIVE?

The fifth and final dimension of authoritarianism is not a feature of a regime per se but the geopolitical environment in which it exists. A global order can be conducive to or corrosive for authoritarian regimes, and is almost always some combination of both, but what matters is the degree and the trendlines.

This is the dimension in which the United States has the most potential wherewithal to unsettle the autocrats. For a system putatively constructed to ensure that democratic ideals and free markets flourished, the U.S.-led world order has for a long time been remarkably conducive to authoritarian regimes. Consider, for example, the fact that such regimes usually require mass transfers of technology, since they have generally lagged behind the world’s most advanced economies, which are democracies. The latter have been more than happy to have their private sectors supply nondemocracies, including Putin’s Russia and communist China, with what they needed to develop. In 2016, according to the Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, Apple pledged to invest $275 billion over five years to help Xi transform China into a crucial supply-chain hub and skilled-worker behemoth.

Authoritarian regimes also desperately need access to the lucrative markets of the West to sell their commodities and finished goods. The decisive U.S. domestic market was opened to communist China in 1980 and to Russia in 1992, when they were respectively granted “most favored nation” trading status. Both were also eventually admitted to the World Trade Organization without having to meet all the conditions required for admission and without being part of the U.S. security order. Authoritarians were allowed to make free use of the global financial system and receive foreign direct investment, which in the case of China was often routed through British-ruled Hong Kong. Today, Chinese-language commentary on the country’s trade with and investment in India pointedly warns not to repeat the mistakes that Washington made with China.

European countries, in particular Germany, became the crucial customers of Russian energy products, which could be developed at scale solely in cooperation with Western oil majors and service firms. At its peak before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian gas accounted for 45 percent of European imports in terms of volume. Even some four years into the Kremlin’s attempted eradication of Ukrainian sovereignty, Russia is still responsible for around 12 percent of European gas imports. In 2024, European countries spent more money importing Russian energy than they did aiding Ukraine financially, effectively footing the bill for Russia’s aggression.

A screen showing news footage of Xi, Beijing, July 2024 Tingshu Wang / Reuters

Japan proved to be one of authoritarian China’s most important sources of technology transfer and foreign direct investment, but Europe deepened its dependence on China, too, becoming a lucrative market for Chinese exports as they advanced up the value chain. In this regard, however, the United States is the main offender. The deliberate transfer of American manufacturing and critical supply chains to a country ruled by a communist monopoly regime was one of the most breathtaking gifts ever given to an authoritarian country, greater even than the bonanza of advanced technologies that the United States and European countries bestowed on Stalin’s Soviet Union. The wealth generated by Western technology transfers made China the first country in history to become the world’s greatest trading nation without a real navy; China gladly relied on the U.S. Navy to secure global sea-lanes. Beijing then used the proceeds to build its own navy, which is now eclipsing the American one.

Criticizing such folly comes easily. The intention, however, was never to support authoritarianism but to undermine or at least soften it—to carry out what the West Germans dubbed Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade.” Western governments and pundits could look back on the spectacular successes of postwar West Germany and Japan, as well as those of the latter’s two former colonies, South Korea and Taiwan, and imagine that related transformations could be brought about in postcommunist Russia and even communist China. But Eurasian landmass empires have been stubbornly autocratic for nearly their entire existence, despite repeated attempts at democratic revolutions. They have refused to bend to the West, even as they borrowed technologies and ideas from it, and proudly uphold their civilizations as superior.

When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping articulated a policy of “reform and opening,” in the late 1970s, it was not a commitment to become a responsible stakeholder in the U.S.-led international order. It was a strategy to use that order to modernize a woefully poor China, depressed by Communist rule, while hiding its intentions and biding its time, for however long it took, before assuming its rightful place in an alternate international order shaped by Beijing. It happened far faster than Deng or anyone else had imagined it could. The CCP was also mindful that past communist parties that had pursued political liberalization had come to realize that they were in fact liquidating themselves, as happened in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Had the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev never come to power or never attempted to liberalize, the CCP might have embarked on its own suicidal political liberalization. Instead, the Chinese leadership learned history’s lesson.

In warmly welcoming closed, illiberal regimes into the open, liberal global order, Washington and its allies were not demonstrating an ignorance of history. They just chose the wrong history as a guide. Sometimes the global order was, as designed, corrosive to authoritarianism. Still, it allowed and even incentivized the United States and other democratic countries to make choices that were conducive to autocrats. Vital market and tech access constituted the greatest leverage the United States and the West had over the authoritarians. It was essentially squandered.

A regime’s need for cash creates vulnerabilities.

The opportunity remains, however, to push back vigorously. Russia’s exports of oil and gas and China’s exports of manufactured goods remain their lifelines. China can ramp up its purchases of Russian oil and gas, for instance, but it cannot make up for all the revenue that Russia would lose if Europe managed to wean itself off imports of Russian energy. And Russia can buy more finished goods from China, but it cannot make up for all the revenue that China would lose if the United States and European countries significantly reduced their own imports of such goods.

Despite the clarity of these vulnerabilities, the United States and its friends cannot make up their minds on whether (and how) to “de-risk” their relationships with China or to effectuate a rapprochement or even some sort of grand bargain. They struggle to gird themselves against Russia as global energy demand continues to rise, especially with China controlling much of the alternative energy supply chain. At the same time, Washington has turned on its allies over their security free-riding and shortcomings in trade reciprocity, both of which the United States itself had partly encouraged. The failure of the West’s big bet on corroding the great Eurasian authoritarians has, for the time being, turned the West against itself. Meanwhile, authoritarian cooperation, above all between Beijing and Moscow, keeps getting deeper. Yet those countries ultimately face significant limits, which become visible when their partnerships are stacked up against the combined wherewithal of Western countries and their partners.

Alliances are built on trust and attraction, otherwise known as soft power, and they are the most effective tools that democracies have in their struggle with autocracies. To be sure, anti-Western and particularly anti-American sentiment retains perennial purchase in all corners of the globe (and in the United States, too), owing to the very real histories of European and American imperialism and the sheer preponderance of U.S. power. This ideology provides considerable opportunity for authoritarian regimes—but many of the people living under them continue to be attracted to Western ideals, institutions, and lifestyles. That soft power is largely an emergent property, rather than something that can be guided by a government. Still, a successful democratic example with good governance, high living standards, social mobility, and freedom will always be the most corrosive force against authoritarianism. But the United States is perhaps as far from that, in various ways, as it was in the 1970s.

MAN IN THE MIRROR

Now comes the elephant in the room: U.S. President Donald Trump, whose second term has aroused domestic and international trepidation about American authoritarianism. After all, if the president is an authoritarian, or if the United States is becoming an authoritarian country, how could it lead the democratic world in a fight against authoritarianism?

Warnings about the breakdown of American democracy derive partly from disappointments over policy reversals on contentious issues: immigration, crime-fighting, energy, abortion, foreign alliances. The ferocity and scope of Trump’s counterrevolution have stunned progressive revolutionaries and the far larger number of Americans on the center-left who for decades had complied (or had been intimidated into silence) as left-wing orthodoxies swept through and reshaped establishment institutions. What many of them see as an authoritarian assault on such institutions, more Americans see as an overdue restoration of common sense. This back-and-forth struggle to dominate American institutions testifies to their surpassing value and to their insusceptibility to permanent subordination.

One American institution, however, could be viewed as problematic, just as the Antifederalists argued in the 1780s and Linz argued two centuries later: namely, presidentialism. Trump’s exercise of presidential power should surprise no one. Executive orders—which are not expressly provided for in the Constitution—go back to George Washington, and too many presidents have had recourse to them. Impoundment (the delaying or withholding of congressionally mandated spending) is also absent from the Constitution, but presidents of both parties have practiced it. The power to issue absolute pardons, explicitly stipulated in the founding document, has been exploited with bipartisan intemperance. Trump is a shameless, concerted abuser of this lamentable executive inheritance. But his predecessors would recognize it.

Putin giving a press conference in Moscow, October 2025 Vyacheslav Prokofyev / Sputnik / Reuters

The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published The Imperial Presidency in 1973. He went easy on the phenomenon’s gold standard, Franklin Roosevelt, whose policies he favored. (Democrats tend to like presidential power when their party holds the office.) The Caesarism inherent in the original American presidency got turbocharged not just by the New Deal but also by the country’s ascension to superpower status. Still, it would matter far less if Congress were doing its job. Following Richard Nixon’s abuses, Congress did seek to constrain the imperial presidency, but as the decades have passed it has largely failed to stick to the task. On the contrary, congressional majorities have often sacrificed the institution’s prerogatives to presidents of their own party and sabotaged their institution’s operations with debilitating procedural changes, such as centralizing power away from congressional committees.

Trump’s second term does have novel aspects: for example, his assertions of absolute authority over all federal government bodies and personnel, the so-called administrative state. These actions claim support from a theory known as “the unitary executive.” The current Supreme Court has generally shown strong backing for this form of sweeping presidential power, in the name of holding career officials accountable. Conservatives have long decried how Republicans get elected president only for the federal bureaucracy to obstruct their policies. The problem is real, although exaggerated. And Trump’s response—political purges and enforced sycophancy across the executive branch—offers no remedy. The unitary theory might add a veneer of legitimacy to his commanding the Department of Justice to pursue vindictive indictments of his critics and ease up on his law-breaking supporters, but it will bequeath that same validation to his successors.

Trump has also made a show of deliberately exceeding his constitutional authority, including by imposing, suspending, and reimposing tariffs and using fig-leaf declarations of “emergencies.” (One standout in his sewer of social media posts: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”) His strong-arming of universities, law firms, and media companies is a response to real problems, but his actions seem aimed more at harming those entities—and expanding his dominion over them—than at crafting enduring fixes. Although the courts move slowly and through multiple levels, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have ruled many of these steps illegal.

Critics of Trump’s authoritarian wishes and methods have a significant point, one shared by a solid majority of voters, who justifiably look askance at his pathetic envy of strongmen, demonstratively brutal enforcement of immigration law, performative deployment of National Guard units to urban areas, bullying, and epic self-dealing. Trump and his supporters celebrate his singular imperative to transgress—then, when institutions move to hold him to account, they complain that he is being singled out. Still, even at his picaresque worst, Trump’s presidency has not placed the United States on some irreversible slide to authoritarianism.

Combating authoritarianism requires patience and resolve.

Nothing delivers a better appreciation of democratic resilience than close study of authoritarian regimes. The United States has no real coercive apparatus, let alone one that consumes the lion’s share of its budget. For revenue, the government depends not on some cash-flow machine but entirely on taxpayers (and voters) who operate in a vast, open-market economy. Storytelling is endlessly contested, and recourse to propaganda provokes resistance and derision. The state exercises little control over life chances. Nothing the term-limited, lame-duck Trump has done, or might yet try, could significantly move the needle on any of those dimensions. As for the fifth dimension, China’s power is having a corrosive effect on democracies, including in the United States, which has clumsily adopted measures that resemble the CCP’s mercenary mercantilism. But such steps cannot coalesce into wholesale self-destruction of the open U.S. model.

Rather than institutionalized authoritarianism, what threatens the United States is bipartisan fiscal insanity, a deep erosion of basic government performance, severely diminished public trust in institutions, and the absence of a shared national narrative, all of which are interrelated. Trump didn’t start these fires, and he won’t put them out. He and too many of his opponents feed off and contribute to the country’s extreme distraction and its resulting inability to craft a robust strategy of national renewal that would put the authoritarians on the back foot.

The seductions of immutable hierarchies, an imagined golden age, or the transformative power of violence can persist in open, tolerant societies, and political entrepreneurs can, for a time, make hay with them. Populism in all its guises surfaces problems but rarely solves them. The erosion of government performance helps get populists elected, but their governing tends to worsen that erosion, and this dynamic, alongside flagrant corruption, erodes their popularity. One of the abiding strengths of any genuinely liberal order—domestic or international—is that within it illiberalism can exist, and do damage, without posing an existential threat to it. Institutions and citizens of such an order should neither overrate the risk nor underrate their own strength and potential to prevail.

NO GUARANTEES

Linz’s primary subject, Franco, is long dead, and so is his authoritarian Spain. Every strongman and would-be strongman in power today will be dead, at some point. For authoritarian regimes, survival is uncertain, and never more so than during inescapable successions.

But combating authoritarianism requires patience and resolve. It does not entail overthrowing every such regime or, indeed, any of them. The United States can topple weaker authoritarian regimes, but it cannot ensure their replacement by a better alternative. Time and again, Washington has demonstrated that it lacks the complex toolkit, cultural understanding, and sustained attention to establish enduring rule-of-law institutions and democratic political cultures on foreign soil, whether by force of arms, diplomacy, trade, or some combination thereof. Besides, Washington cannot directly bring down nuclear-armed authoritarian adversaries such as China and Russia without risking Armageddon. Instead, the goal should be to shape an environment that makes authoritarian regimes even less confident about their continued existence and, therefore, more preoccupied with their domestic affairs and less able to risk acting coercively abroad. The desired outcome is proactive multidomain competition and occasional cooperation—in other words, cold war instead of hot war.

Combating authoritarianism also requires that democracies get their own houses in order, which is particularly urgent in the United States because of its weight. No single country in recorded history has amassed so much power across so many domains simultaneously. That Americans profoundly disagree on what promotes or threatens their country’s strength, and also on the appropriate degree of U.S. involvement in world affairs, is itself a strength. What is not, however, is a loss of a shared sense of a positive national identity and purpose. Some argue that instead of expending resources and effort to knock its adversaries off balance, the United States should invest in itself and its distinct advantages, including existing and new relationships with allies, friends, and partners. That position relies on a false binary: reinvigorating national purpose and solidifying relationships is, in fact, knocking one’s adversaries off balance.

Neither the United States nor China is going to vanish. Therefore, they must share the planet. Washington’s path could not be clearer: build substantial leverage with which to negotiate (or, if necessary, enact with like-minded countries) more advantageous and stable terms for planet sharing. These should favor an open and secure global commons, economic arrangements that foster opportunity at home and abroad, and sovereignty—which coercive spheres of influence (masquerading as a multipolar world) profoundly threaten but which alliances enhance for all.

Trump attending a cabinet meeting in Washington, D.C., December 2025 Brian Snyder / Reuters

The U.S.-led postwar order did not fail. It succeeded. It aimed to facilitate “the rise of the rest,” and it did, spectacularly so. But the countries that built and led the order did not prepare for the predictable results of that success: a relatively smaller share of global GDP for the advanced, wealthy countries of the G-7 and a relatively larger share for everyone else, with corresponding demands for more voice. Now the global order must be updated for a new era, one in which China—a supreme beneficiary of the existing order—possesses the wherewithal, and not just the ambition, to try to supplant it.

After World War II, ordered liberty took hold across much of the world because the United States became a superpower and acted like one, for worse but also for better. Today, the demand for U.S. power is essentially unlimited: bring Ukraine into NATO, defend Taiwan, sign a security treaty with Saudi Arabia. The supply, however, is not. And so Washington must adjust. Commitments must come into alignment with capabilities. This is finally happening. As the United States necessarily (albeit erratically) rebalances its global posture to deal with new circumstances, it is possible to see the advent of what might be called middle-power horizontalism: deeper economic and security cooperation, especially among the countries of northern Europe and the Indo-Pacific. This is a highly encouraging development, partly galvanized by Trump—a kind of latticework of additional integration that does not entail displacing the United States but enhancing its ability to lead. This will be the work of a generation.

All the major authoritarian regimes have shown themselves to be committed to achieving unencumbered sovereignty by driving U.S. power from their immediate regions and collapsing Washington’s alliances. All share the goal of undermining and weakening the United States and its allies in any way they can. Despite not being subjected to aerial bombardment or amphibious invasion, open societies are under constant attack. China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and other anti-Western authoritarian regimes spread disinformation, exfiltrate confidential personnel files, purloin intellectual property, harass and sometimes abduct their own nationals on Western soil for exercising free-speech rights, pay criminals and gang members in Western societies to commit arson or sabotage, plant malware in financial, electrical, and water systems, and much more. “Peace” in the sense of that blissful time between wars has been lost. The gray zone is the new twilight zone.

Nonetheless, the future can still be shaped, and the open and secure global commons can be reinvented for another long run. The Ukrainians stood up to a full-scale Russian invasion and dragged the entire West into the fight. The Israelis knocked the teeth out of Iran’s manifold proxies and even the Islamic Republic itself, and then pulled Washington in. The Taiwanese for three consecutive elections have selected the presidential candidate most despised by the CCP. The United States can neither eliminate nor transform the Eurasian authoritarians, but it can reenergize itself and, in the process, make it harder for the authoritarians to marshal their strengths and easier for their weaknesses to hold them back. The American experiment has always had to contend with bouts of disorder, disarray, and doubt. But the United States has also periodically rediscovered and renewed itself, sometimes in profound ways, and it must do so again. Its authoritarian adversaries are displaying audacity and resolve, but the nature of their regimes always presents an opportunity: their loyalists are their true enemies within.

STEPHEN KOTKIN is Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941–1990s, the last in his three-volume biography.

Foreign Affairs · More by Stephen Kotkin · December 16, 2025

20. How to Survive in a Multialigned World – The Indian Way of Strategic Diversification

​Summary:

Tanvi Madan argues multialignment is becoming the norm as allies hedge against U.S. unpredictability, and India offers a model. Since 1947, New Delhi has treated partnerships like a portfolio, balancing powers to preserve autonomy, extract aid, and reduce coercion risk. The approach yields options but not assured deterrence, so India invested in defense, built a nuclear deterrent, and sometimes muted criticism to protect ties. Diversification is high maintenance, can create incompatible force structures, and expose India to others’ rivalries. Now pressure from POTUS, tariffs, and Russia oil demands are pushing India toward Europe, Japan, and Australia while keeping U.S. cooperation.

Excerpt:

Countries that want to diversify their foreign policy strategies will likely find themselves in a situation like India’s. Rather than decoupling from the United States, whose power and influence remain significant, these countries can reduce risk and improve their resilience by developing closer relations with a variety of partners and speeding up efforts to build their own economic and security capabilities. But countries that adopt this strategy not only face the promises and downsides of a diversified approach; they also make the whole web of international relationships exponentially more intertwined. Any geopolitical change could set off a chain reaction of consequences as countries simultaneously rebalance their own carefully calibrated portfolios of partners. When these countries move beyond alliances to multialignment, how effectively they manage their multiple relationships will determine whether a diversified world will tend toward safety and stability or be thrown into bouts of upheaval.

How to Survive in a Multialigned World

Foreign Affairs · More by Tanvi Madan · December 16, 2025

The Indian Way of Strategic Diversification

Tanvi Madan

January/February 2026 Published on December 16, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/how-survive-multialigned-world-tanvi-madan

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Brioni Island, Croatia, Yugoslavia, July 1956 AFP / Getty Images

TANVI MADAN is Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and the author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War.

Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

As the United States reevaluates its global commitments and questions the existing international order, longtime American allies and partners are seeking alternatives to foreign policy strategies that rely heavily on Washington. Canada, South Korea, and the European Union have all talked about building ties with a wider range of countries. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are hedging against U.S. unpredictability by cementing other partnerships; the Saudis, for instance, recently concluded a security deal with Pakistan. Such efforts aim to make countries less vulnerable to sudden changes in any single bilateral relationship and give them more options and greater autonomy in foreign policy decision-making.

Although many of these countries are only now pursuing diversification in their external relations, India has long adhered to this strategy. Balancing a variety of partners without committing fully to any one country or bloc has been the core of Indian foreign policy since the country achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Over the years, this policy has been given different labels—nonalignment, bi-alignment, multialignment, even omnidirectional engagement—but the approach has been the same. When successful, a diversified strategy has enabled New Delhi to avoid acquiescing to any one partner’s decisions and to play countries off one another to strengthen its own position.

Throughout the Cold War, India sought to strike a balance in its relations with the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as with several smaller powers and nonaligned countries, because it feared that one or both superpowers might be unreliable or coercive when New Delhi found itself in need. In the post–Cold War period, India has maintained its overall approach of avoiding full reliance on any one partner. Like an investor managing a complex portfolio, India has constantly rebalanced its set of relationships as new opportunities and risks have arisen. At times, this has meant significantly increasing its exposure to some partners—as it has arguably done in recent years by aligning itself with the United States on several security, economic, and technology issues.

But pressure from the second Trump administration is now leading India to adjust the relative weight of the United States in its portfolio of partners. President Donald Trump’s tariffs of up to 50 percent, calls to parley with Pakistan, and demands to reduce India’s oil imports from Russia have increased doubts about American reliability. These actions have also raised questions about whether New Delhi has aligned itself too closely with Washington. For many Indian policymakers, the uncertainty caused by Washington’s actions has reinforced the importance of diversification and bolstering other partnerships—not only with U.S. allies, such as France and Japan, but also with U.S. adversaries, including Russia.

With diversified foreign policies becoming the new global norm, India’s experience offers lessons for a world no longer shaped by American unipolarity. New Delhi’s pursuit of multiple partnerships helped India maximize its autonomy amid the superpower politics of the Cold War and has continued to do so in the U.S.-led order that has dominated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But policymakers around the world considering diversifying their own foreign ties must also understand the challenges of such a strategy. India has learned that it requires constantly cultivating, assessing, and rebalancing different relationships. Maintaining a diversified portfolio of partners also provides less of a safeguard against aggression than formal alliances do, so India has had to spend more on its own defense, develop a nuclear deterrent, and sometimes pull its punches against rivals. Without learning from India’s experiences, countries that now find themselves looking to adopt a similar strategy may end up merely exchanging overreliance on one country for overreliance on many.

DEPENDENCE AFTER INDEPENDENCE

India’s foreign policy orientation was forged when, like today, transformative technologies and great-power competition were upending existing global dynamics. The country emerged out of the partition of British India in 1947, at the dawn of the nuclear age and the advent of fierce competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. The leaders of independent India, wary of inviting new forms of colonial domination, wanted to be self-reliant. But they quickly realized that sourcing military supplies, economic aid, and technical assistance required partnering with or depending on other countries. They feared, however, that an alliance with either the Soviet or the American bloc would be a straitjacket rather than a security blanket. Instead, New Delhi hoped that multiple partnerships would preserve Indian autonomy by preventing any one country or bloc from being able to force India to submit to its preferences.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, welcomed help from the United States, which hoped that a democratic India might counterbalance communism in Asia. In the early 1950s, New Delhi used American concern about the “loss” of China to the communist bloc to solicit economic and food assistance. Nehru also reached out to Moscow, but he initially found that the Soviet Union had little interest in India—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin believed India was too close to the West.

The downsides of having no partner with which to balance the United States were soon evident. Aiming to establish a peaceful periphery, New Delhi tried to engage rather than contain China, which angered American policymakers. They criticized India’s recognition of the Chinese communist regime and New Delhi’s unwillingness to fully support the United States and its United Nations allies during the Korean War, from 1950 to 1953. U.S. legislators saw India’s nonalignment as immoral and akin to siding with the Sino-Soviet bloc. They tried to make any assistance contingent on India curbing its engagement with the communist bloc or giving the United States access to Indian raw materials and critical minerals such as manganese. Congress eventually passed a food assistance bill for India, in 1951, without requiring New Delhi to change its foreign policy or give resources to the United States, but it came with the expectation that India would not offer strategic materials to the communist bloc.

Geopolitical changes in the mid-1950s gave New Delhi more room to maneuver. Seeking influence among countries that were not aligned with the United States or the Soviet Union, Moscow offered India diplomatic, economic, and military assistance—on terms that India found attractive, including support for India’s state-owned industrial sector—and tolerated New Delhi’s insistence on refusing to side with any one bloc. Nehru felt that if India had better ties with the Soviet Union, the United States would take India more seriously. Indeed, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations chose to strengthen ties with India. The United States became invested in ensuring that democratic India wouldn’t fail while communist China succeeded. With both Moscow and Washington now interested in working with New Delhi, Indian policymakers believed that their gambit had succeeded. They had played the two powers against each other and garnered economic assistance, military supplies, and technical knowledge—which not only helped New Delhi’s nation-building efforts but also bolstered its autonomy by allowing India to diversify its dependence.

STRINGS ATTACHED

But diversification did not bring deterrence. In 1962, India suffered a humiliating defeat after China attacked as part of a dispute over the two countries’ shared border. During the war, Moscow sided with China, its ally, over India, merely its friend. The United States and its allies aided India militarily, but New Delhi found that the help came with strings attached: Washington subsequently tried to pressure India to reach a settlement with Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir, to limit its defense budget and spend more on development, and to cease its military acquisitions from Moscow. If the United States had remained its only option, India might have had no choice but to accede to these demands after the war, but the growing Sino-Soviet split ensured that Moscow again wanted to work with India. Instead of making Indian leaders reconsider their aversion to alliances, this entire experience made it even clearer that any single partner could be unreliable, as the Soviet Union had been, or coercive, as the United States had been.

India’s 1965 war with Pakistan further reinforced the wisdom of its diversified strategy. New Delhi again turned to the United States when China threatened to intervene on behalf of Pakistan. Washington warned Beijing against getting involved, but it also suspended military and economic aid to both South Asian belligerents to pressure them to reach a cease-fire. Yet India still had access to Soviet military supplies, which policymakers in New Delhi saw as a vindication of an approach based on securing multiple partnerships.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who came to power in 1966, sought to further expand India’s portfolio of partners. She reached out to countries that shared India’s concerns about China, including Australia, Japan, and Singapore. Worried about waning U.S. interest in India and Soviet overtures to Pakistan, Gandhi also tried to reduce India’s need for either superpower by going so far as to try to normalize relations with rival Beijing in the late 1960s, albeit unsuccessfully. Moscow offered India a formal treaty to establish closer relations and provide more assistance, but Gandhi declined because of concern about overdependence on any single partner. Only when India needed to deter China from intervening in another war with Pakistan, in 1971, did New Delhi sign this treaty, tilting India’s overall balance toward the Soviet Union after Washington switched from containing to engaging Beijing.

India’s foreign policy approach does not exempt it fully from picking sides.

The Soviet Union provided military supplies and diplomatic support to India in its war with Pakistan, but Soviet help, too, came with limits—Moscow pressed Gandhi to meet with the Pakistani leader to avoid a war and later declined an Indian request to publicly warn the United States against intervening. To offset potential overreliance on the Soviet Union, Indian policymakers wanted to repair ties with Washington, in the 1970s. But the United States no longer needed a counterweight to China—which after rapprochement in 1971–72 was now working with the U.S.-led bloc against the Soviet Union—and wasn’t interested in India economically. So India looked for other partners, including in the developing world, and redoubled its efforts to build a nuclear program, which could provide an independent deterrent and help hedge against overreliance on the Soviet Union.

Such an approach weathered domestic convulsions. When the Indian National Congress lost power in 1977 to the opposition Janata coalition, Indian leaders still pursued a diversified foreign policy. Prime Minister Morarji Desai criticized Gandhi, his predecessor, for making India too dependent on the Soviet Union. He proposed a program of genuine nonalignment in which India would simultaneously maintain ties with the Soviet Union, repair relations with the United States, normalize ties with rival China, and strengthen domestic economic and military capabilities. When Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she also followed this policy.

But Indian governments faced a problem as they tried to diversify: many potential partners, especially those in the West, did not see India as important to their objectives and thus had limited interest in engaging New Delhi. As a result, in the 1970s and 1980s, India continued to depend heavily on the Soviet bloc. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, India had no backup plan. Facing foreign policy and financial crises, New Delhi had to once more rebalance its portfolio of partners.

TILTING TOWARD WASHINGTON

In the post–Cold War period, recalibrating has meant investing in new partnerships and reviving old ones. In 1992, India established full diplomatic ties with Israel, which New Delhi had previously not done because of its ties with the Arab world and solidarity with the Palestinian cause. And India renewed partnerships in East and Southeast Asia, including with countries such as Japan and Singapore, whose strong economies could help India grow. India’s liberalizing reforms and, subsequently, its 1998 nuclear tests, bolstered its economic outlook and defensive capabilities. These moves also increased global interest in India, widening New Delhi’s options for partners—including, once again, the United States.

As in the twentieth century, India’s foreign policy approach in the twenty-first century has remained consistent no matter which parties have held power in New Delhi. In 2003, the foreign minister in the coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party noted a “desire for balance, for noninterference, and for independence of action” as the motivation for India’s strategy. That government and the subsequent coalition led by the Congress party strengthened ties with the United States while also exploring economic and multilateral cooperation with China. India also joined issue-based groups, including the Quad, with Australia, Japan, and the United States, and BRICS, alongside Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa.

The current BJP-led coalition government has continued to pursue diversification. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in power since 2014, has looked to several different partners for diplomatic support, defense equipment, markets for Indian goods and services, commodities (including energy and critical minerals), investment, jobs, and technology. Like its predecessors, the current government has also actively tried to reduce overreliance on any one partner in key sectors. For instance, Russia has gone from being the source of 76 percent of Indian defense imports in terms of value between 2000 and 2004 to 36 percent between 2020 and 2024.

Gandhi meeting U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Washington, D.C., March 1962 Abbie Rowe / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Even as India’s broader approach has been consistent, the depth and breadth of its partnerships have changed as the country’s interests—and available collaborators—have evolved. In the early 2000s, India saw promise in a closer partnership with China, but New Delhi has adopted a warier posture after military standoffs in 2013, 2014, 2017, and especially 2020, when the first fatal military clash in 45 years occurred along the disputed Chinese-Indian border. India has shifted from looking to China to offset its growing ties with the United States and Europe to finding ways to balance against Beijing as tensions have risen. Russia, which has itself deepened its dependence on China, has become a less relevant strategic partner than in the past. Although New Delhi will not break its ties with Moscow, the benefits of close relations with Russia have diminished as India prioritizes accessing and developing advanced technologies.

In contrast, in the last decade, Modi’s government has continued to expand India’s defense and security, economic, and technological cooperation with the United States based on a shared desire to counter China’s growing assertiveness. This U.S.-Indian strategic alignment has resulted, for instance, in increasingly sophisticated military exercises, including a recent antisubmarine drill off the coast of Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, and technology collaboration, such as Google’s plans to build a $15 billion artificial intelligence hub in India.

Tilting toward Washington has not meant abandoning diversification, however. Even as India has moved closer to the United States, its leaders have pursued balance by deepening other partnerships. The Modi government has invested in ties with Indo-Pacific partners, such as Australia and Japan, which share India’s concerns about China. It has renewed relations with traditional European partners, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and made new efforts to build ties across other parts of Europe. To balance the increasing weight of the West in its portfolio of partners, New Delhi has also explored opportunities across the developing world. India, for instance, sold antiship missiles to the Philippines, signed an economic agreement to boost trade with the United Arab Emirates, and is working to obtain critical minerals such as lithium from Argentina.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

India believes this diversification has paid off. Being able to pick from a menu of countries has helped it counter rivals and extract benefits from partners. It has also allowed India to hedge against the risk of overreliance when a partner’s foreign policy priorities change. When Moscow abandoned India during its 1962 war with China, when Washington did the same during India’s 1971 crisis with Pakistan, or when Moscow stayed neutral in the 2020 border clashes between China and India in the Himalayas, New Delhi could turn to other options for support.

More significantly, drawing support from multiple sources has been crucial to building India’s domestic capabilities, which, in turn, have made it a more attractive partner. India’s domestic space sector, for instance, benefited from partnerships with multiple powers. France and the United States enabled India’s access to expertise and technology in the 1960s; then, after Washington imposed export controls, the Soviet Union stepped in to support India’s space ambitions. Today, India is a strong player in the space domain in its own right. It sent a Mars orbiter into space, helps other countries launch satellites, and has collaborated with NASA on an observation satellite and the U.S. Space Force on a proposed semiconductor fabrication facility.

Policymakers have learned that this approach requires being pragmatic rather than perfectionistic about autonomy. Although leaders want full control over their own choices, achieving India’s objectives often requires them to exercise restraint or make tradeoffs. For instance, India refrained from condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 or publicly criticizing Trump when he imposed tariffs on India, prioritizing the need to maintain advantageous partnerships over the desire to express opposition. India’s foreign policy approach also does not exempt it fully from picking sides. In critical and emerging technologies, for instance, when India must choose between Chinese or Western infrastructure, it has opted for the West. This is not to curry favor with the United States but because India does not want to increase its vulnerability to its rival China.

Diversification is a high-maintenance strategy.

India has also discovered diversification’s downsides. When it has managed diversified relationships poorly, India has pleased none of its partners and annoyed all of them. Early in the Vietnam War, for instance, Washington wanted India to criticize U.S. actions less, while Moscow was unhappy it would not criticize the United States more. In addition, in sectors in which India has not developed its own capabilities, a diversified strategy may make it reliant on multiple counterparts. Then, with each partner navigating its own constantly shifting priorities, India’s dependencies can leave it exposed not only to a single country but also to a wider range of rivalries and geopolitical risks. This has been the case in the Middle East, where multiple countries—often fighting one another—are key diplomatic partners for India and provide oil, natural gas, investment, military equipment, and jobs to India and its citizens.

Diversification can also lead to suboptimal choices. Unwilling to be fully dependent on one country, the Indian military looks to several countries to procure defense platforms, some of which are incompatible. Buying defense products from Russia can limit India’s ability to acquire more advanced technology from the United States. Although these practices might not maximize military effectiveness, India has persisted with them in part to preserve its autonomy.

An even bigger disadvantage is the questionable deterrent effect of diversification compared with formal alliances. It is debatable, for instance, whether China would have attacked in 1962 had India been under the security umbrella of either the Soviet Union or the United States. Recognizing this shortcoming in its diversification strategy, New Delhi subsequently signed an air defense agreement with Washington in 1963 and pursued the treaty with Moscow in 1971, both of which called for consultations in the event of a Chinese attack. These agreements sent a signal to Beijing and offered India insurance in exchange for ceding some autonomy. In recent years, India has drawn closer to the United States to counter a rising China, but New Delhi would likely still refuse any offer of an alliance with Washington because it believes its conventional and nuclear weapons can help offset diversification’s deterrence disadvantage without tying its hands.

Ultimately, diversification is a high-maintenance strategy. India’s leaders must constantly assess how each of the country’s relationships affect its other partnerships. For instance, India has had to limit its connections with Iran to stay in the good graces of Israel, the United States, and the Gulf states. Sometimes India’s balancing act falters. In September 2025, for example, the Indian military participated in a Russian military exercise that simulated a nuclear attack against Europe, upsetting EU member states at a time when Brussels was attempting to convince them to approve a trade deal with India. At least two of those states—Poland and Romania—have since set up diplomatic and defense meetings with India’s rival Pakistan.

READY TO RECALIBRATE

Many countries besides India are now trying to craft foreign policies that allow them to hedge without fencing themselves in. They would do well to study India’s successes in playing partners off one another to improve its national security, accelerate its domestic development, and deal with partners’ unreliability. But they should also analyze diversification’s potential weaknesses, including how it can leave a country exposed to multiple partners’ shifting priorities, miss out on cooperation opportunities to prioritize autonomy, and limit deterrence compared with a strong and secure alliance.

Despite these shortcomings, India’s experience continues to reinforce its desire to establish multiple partnerships over a great-power alliance. In the face of unexpected pressure from the United States in Trump’s second term, New Delhi is now seeking to diversify even further. This strategy will look different than it did during the Cold War, when India could balance the Soviet Union and the United States. Such clear options are not available today given India’s comprehensive rivalry with China. Instead, New Delhi has made significant overtures to Europe, including accelerating efforts to conclude trade agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union. It is also deepening defense and economic security partnerships with Australia and Japan; exploring new areas of cooperation with South Korea, including on shipbuilding; and repairing relations with Canada. And it is maintaining its partnership with Russia while trying to stabilize ties with China, which was on display when Modi met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a regional forum in China, in August 2025.

But even as India persists with diversification, it does not want to fully replace its partnership with the United States. India will continue to try to maintain and, in certain areas, even reinforce its connection to Washington. New Delhi understands that ties with the United States still enable India to enhance its own capabilities and give it leverage with its rivals and partners. For instance, U.S. investments have been indispensable in India’s efforts to boost its semiconductor manufacturing industry. What India gains from working with the United States is crucial for India to make itself a desirable partner—to Washington and to the growing number of countries looking to diversify their own partnership portfolios.

Countries that want to diversify their foreign policy strategies will likely find themselves in a situation like India’s. Rather than decoupling from the United States, whose power and influence remain significant, these countries can reduce risk and improve their resilience by developing closer relations with a variety of partners and speeding up efforts to build their own economic and security capabilities. But countries that adopt this strategy not only face the promises and downsides of a diversified approach; they also make the whole web of international relationships exponentially more intertwined. Any geopolitical change could set off a chain reaction of consequences as countries simultaneously rebalance their own carefully calibrated portfolios of partners. When these countries move beyond alliances to multialignment, how effectively they manage their multiple relationships will determine whether a diversified world will tend toward safety and stability or be thrown into bouts of upheaval.

Foreign Affairs · More by Tanvi Madan · December 16, 2025

21. Marine Corps reopens Ie Shima airfield after repairs, ending temporary Kadena drops

​Comment: I imagine this had an impact on airborne operations for 1st Bn, 1st Special Forces Group at Torii Station. Jumping at Kadena is much simpler (for 1-1 but not so for the Air Force of course). Going out to Ie Shima is a logistical pain in the fourth point of contact for 1-1.

Marine Corps reopens Ie Shima airfield after repairs, ending temporary Kadena drops

Stars and Stripes · Brian McElhiney · December 15, 2025

https://www.stripes.com/branches/marine_corps/2025-12-15/ie-shima-runway-reopens-okinawa-20096644.html?utm

The commander of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, Maj. Gen. Brian Wolford, reopens Ie Shima Auxiliary Airfield alongside Okinawa Defense Bureau Director Masaru Murai on Ie Shima, Okinawa, Dec. 15, 2025. (Ryan M. Breeden/Stars and Stripes)

IE SHIMA, Okinawa — The Marine Corps has reopened a small island airfield off Okinawa’s coast after two years of repairs, restoring a key training site and easing pressure on Kadena Air Base, where parachute jumps had drawn local opposition.

The auxiliary runway on Ie Shima — a 9-square-mile island northwest of Okinawa’s main island — resumed operations following a reopening ceremony attended by about 100 Marines, sailors and Japanese officials.

Among them was Maj. Gen. Brian Wolford, commander of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, who arrived aboard a KC-130J aircraft from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

“Ie Shima has a proud history, and today we add a new chapter — one built on trust, collaboration and a shared vision of stability in the region,” he said during the ceremony.

Marine Corps Installations Pacific commander Maj. Gen. Brian Wolford speaks to reporters during the reopening of Ie Shima Auxiliary Airfield on Ie Shima, Okinawa, Dec. 15, 2025. (Keishi Koja/Stars and Stripes)

The airfield is the Marine Corps’ only expeditionary runway in the Indo-Pacific and has undergone what Wolford described as a “complete reset.” Planning was conducted from December 2023 to December 2024, and construction ran from April 1 to Oct. 10 and cost $15 million, said Maj. Erich Lamm, director of the command’s contracting office.

Unlike the previous concrete surface, the rebuilt runway consists of multiple layers of aggregate stone, a design intended to speed repairs and extend the airfield’s lifespan. The new surface supports the same training missions as before, Lamm told reporters after the ceremony.

The runway serves as a parachute training site for the Marine Corps and Air Force. During the repair period, the Air Force’s 18th Wing shifted monthly training drops to Kadena’s Ridout drop zone, a move that prompted protests from Okinawa prefectural officials.

The Ie Shima airfield remains the primary drop zone under bilateral agreements with Japan, the wing said in an unsigned email Monday. However, the command noted that weather, sea conditions and other operational factors may still require occasional jumps at Kadena under an “exceptional use” clause.

A KC-130J with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152 takes off from Ie Shima Auxiliary Airfield on Ie Shima, Okinawa, Dec. 15, 2025. (Ryan M. Breeden/Stars and Stripes)

As of November, the U.S. military had carried out seven parachute drops at Kadena this year, according to Okinawa’s Military Base Affairs Division. Prefectural officials sent protest letters in October arguing the training could no longer be justified as exceptional.

Ie village Mayor Masahide Nashiro did not attend the reopening ceremony, citing consideration for residents, some of whom oppose base activity. The village has also raised concerns about dust generated by runway operations.

To address those complaints, the Marine Corps installed a sprinkler system along the flight line and uses tarps to cover aggregate stockpiles, Lamm said.

Stars and Stripes reporter Keishi Koja contributed to this report.

A KC-130J with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152 prepares to take off from Ie Shima Auxiliary Airfield on Ie Shima, Okinawa, Dec. 15, 2025. (Ryan M. Breeden/Stars and Stripes)

Stars and Stripes · Brian McElhiney · December 15, 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