Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

– Oscar Wilde

“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.”

– Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist

while smiling the whole damn time.”

― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

1. The U.S. Military Hardware Pouring Into the Middle East

2. Exclusive | Trump Weighs Initial Limited Strike to Force Iran Into Nuclear Deal

3. If Iran’s Regime Falls, Options to Replace It Are Narrow—and Risky

4. As Peace Talks Stall, Russia and Ukraine Share One Aim: Keep Trump Happy

5. How China’s Xi Purged His ‘Big Brother’ to Achieve Absolute Power

6. Opinion | The ‘Discombobulator’ arms race has begun

7. China, Afghanistan, and Critical Minerals: Options for U.S. Strategic Competition Below the Threshold of War

8. America’s most important Asian ally just got stronger

9. China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

10. The Chalabi Syndrome: Why Washington Must Reject Reza Pahlavi’s Call for War

11. PLA, Chinese firm release satellite images showing US military build-up around Iran

12. China’s latest box office draw: spy thriller backed by state espionage agency

13. From Readiness to Resilience: Two Decades of Extreme Weather Impacts on US Military Infrastructure

14. Washington offers US$200 million to boost American smartphone industry in Indo-Pacific

15. Hegseth’s Firing Campaign Reaches Down Into the Ranks

16. The Institutional Battlefield: Why Irregular Warfare Must Contemplate Path Dependence

17. Iran and the Gulf: Why Hedging Is No Longer Enough

18. When GPS Goes Dark: Building a Force That Navigates from Orbit to Seabed

19. ‘The Intelligence Intellectuals’ Review: Brains, Cloak and Dagger

20. Three Short Tales on War Kori Schake Wants You to Read

21. Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front

22. When the Fiction Ends: Lessons from “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky”

23. The Battlefield Moved, Humans Didn’t: Why a 1930s Historian Still Understands Modern War Better Than We Do

24. The Taiwan 10 episode TV series Zero Day

1. The U.S. Military Hardware Pouring Into the Middle East

Comment: Extensive graphics at the link.

The U.S. Military Hardware Pouring Into the Middle East

WSJ · Roque Ruiz, Marcus Weisgerber and Carl Churchill ·

A look at the warships, fighters and missiles massing at Iran’s doorstep

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-middle-east-us-military-7400d800?mod=hp_lead_pos7

The U.S. military has deployed scores of combat aircraft across the Middle East and will soon have a second aircraft carrier within range of Iran if President Trump gives the order to strike. Over the past month, dozens of jet fighters and support aircraft have flown from the U.S. and Europe to bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, according to flight-tracking data.

For decades, the U.S. military has located warplanes at bases throughout the Middle East that have served as launching points for conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. However, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates won’t allow the U.S. aircraft to use their respective airspace to strike Iran. That has prompted the U.S. to base many fighters farther away in Jordan, which means warplanes would need to rely more on aerial refueling to reach their targets and return to the bases.

WSJ · Roque Ruiz, Marcus Weisgerber and Carl Churchill ·

2. Exclusive | Trump Weighs Initial Limited Strike to Force Iran Into Nuclear Deal

Summary:

POTUS is weighing an initial limited strike on Iran to pressure Tehran into a nuclear deal while stopping short of a full-scale attack. The opening option would target a few military or government sites, with escalation to a broader campaign against regime facilities if Iran refuses to end nuclear enrichment. A regional official warns a limited strike would likely pause negotiations. Aides have repeatedly presented the option, though recent discussions have focused more on larger campaigns. POTUS says he will decide within 10 days to about two weeks. The U.S. has continued deploying major air and naval assets to the region.

Comment: A “limited” strike is framed as coercion, but it also signals readiness to climb the ladder fast if Iran does not bend. The timeline talk is part diplomacy and part pressure, and Tehran will read it as a message campaign aimed at shaping choices. The force flow is not theater; it is a narrative of inevitability meant to narrow Iran’s options and stiffen U.S. leverage.

If a limited strike is meant to compel a deal, how does Washington manage the situation if Iran walks away from negotiations for a significant period? What comes next?

Exclusive | Trump Weighs Initial Limited Strike to Force Iran Into Nuclear Deal

WSJ

President considers a range of military options but has said he still prefers diplomacy

By Alexander Ward

Updated Feb. 19, 2026 7:16 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-hints-at-10-day-window-for-decision-on-iran-6370e477

During his Board of Peace meeting, President Trump said the U.S. might make a deal with Iran, noting a decision could come within ‘the next probably 10 days.’

WASHINGTON—President Trump is weighing an initial limited military strike on Iran to force it to meet his demands for a nuclear deal, a first step that would be designed to pressure Tehran into an agreement but fall short of a full-scale attack that could inspire a major retaliation.

The opening assault, which if authorized could come within days, would target a few military or government sites, people familiar with the matter said. If Iran still refused to comply with Trump’s directive to end its nuclear enrichment, the U.S. would respond with a broad campaign against regime facilities—potentially aimed at toppling the Tehran regime.

The first limited-strike option, which hasn’t been previously reported, signals Trump might be open to using military force not only as a reprimand for Iran’s failure to make a deal, but also to pave the way for a U.S.-friendly accord. One of the people said Trump could ratchet up his attacks, starting small before ordering larger strikes until the Iranian regime either dismantles its nuclear work or falls.

A limited strike would lead Iran to walk away from negotiations, at least for a significant period, a regional official said, especially when officials in Tehran are currently formulating their response to U.S. demands.

It couldn’t be determined how seriously Trump is considering the option after weeks of deliberations, though senior aides have repeatedly presented it to him. Discussions of late have focused more on larger-scale campaigns, officials said.

On Thursday, Trump said he would decide his next moves on Iran within 10 days. Later he told reporters his timeline was a maximum of about two weeks. “We’re going to make a deal or get a deal one way or the other,” he said.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly declined to discuss what course the U.S. would take, saying “only President Trump knows what he may or may not do.”

WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains the massive U.S. military presence in the Middle East as President Trump amps up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

Trump hasn’t yet decided to order an attack at any scale, officials said, though he is considering options ranging from a weeklong campaign of attacks to force regime change to a smaller-scale wave of strikes on Iran’s government and military facilities. Some U.S. officials and analysts have warned that such assaults would encourage an Iranian retaliation, possibly drawing the U.S. into a war in the Middle East and endangering regional allies.

Trump’s consideration of a smaller initial strike echoes a debate the president held in his first term about delivering a so-called “bloody nose” to North Korea. In 2018, during a period of heated nuclear rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang, the first Trump administration weighed a limited, pre-emptive strike on North Korea. The move would have demonstrated how serious the U.S. was about ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Trump and his team decided against attacking North Korea. The president instead engaged in diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, though three meetings failed to persuade the autocrat to part with his weapons.

On the diplomatic front, senior U.S. officials met this week with Iranian counterparts for negotiations. The U.S. wants an end to Tehran’s nuclear work and to see constraints on Iran’s ballistic-missile program and support for regional armed proxies. Iran has rejected a sweeping arrangement and so far has offered modest concessions on its nuclear efforts. It once again denied it had ever sought to acquire a nuclear weapon.

The impasse, which U.S. officials increasingly say is unlikely to be broken, and an American military buildup near Iran have raised the prospects of strikes.

Iranian officials have threatened to respond with maximum force to any level of American strikes. In a series of social-media statements Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said his forces could sink a U.S. aircraft carrier and hit the American military “so hard that it cannot get up again.”

Iran is already wary of Trump’s diplomatic timelines. Last year, the White House said it would give Iran two weeks to make a similar nuclear deal. But just days later, B-2 bombers and other platforms attacked three Iranian nuclear sites, setting back the country’s nuclear work.

Over the past few days, the U.S. has continued to move cutting-edge F-35 and F-22 jet fighters toward the Middle East, according to flight-tracking data and a U.S. official. A second aircraft carrier loaded with attack and electronic-warfare planes is on the way. Command-and-control aircraft, which are vital for orchestrating large air campaigns, are inbound. Critical air defenses have also been deployed to the region in recent weeks.

Appeared in the February 20, 2026, print edition as 'Trump Weighs Initial Limited Strike'.

Alexander Ward is a national security reporter covering the White House and State Department for The Wall Street Journal in Washington. Alex’s reporting focuses in particular on the inner workings of the National Security Council and how top players in an administration formulate and execute foreign policy.

Alex was previously the White House and national security reporter at Politico, where he was also the first author of its "National Security Daily" newsletter. Before that, he was Vox's White House reporter covering foreign policy and worked at the Atlantic Council think tank covering national security and military affairs.

Alex has won numerous awards for his reporting and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with Politico colleagues for Supreme Court coverage.

In February 2024, Alex published his first book, "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump." He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

WSJ

3. If Iran’s Regime Falls, Options to Replace It Are Narrow—and Risky

Summary:

If Iran’s regime collapses, there is no clear successor and the pathways are narrow and risky. The opposition is fractured, disorganized, and split between الداخل and diaspora. Street protests recur but lack leaders and structure, and prominent figures are jailed. Exile activists are seen as out of touch, and they disagree on whether U.S. strikes are acceptable. Reza Pahlavi is visible but divisive, including among ethnic minorities, and coalition efforts have failed. The MEK is organized yet widely distrusted. Officials warn removal of Khamenei could yield harder-line rule or regime adaptation, though a perestroika-like opening is also possible.

Comment: I am sure someone is planning for the collapse. But be careful what you wish for. I am not sure Venezuela is a useful template. And we do not need another "Chalabi" in the form of Reza Pahlavi. The question is what do the people want? Who can effectively lead them? Has there been sufficient preparation of the environment from an unconventional warfare perspective? Have we conducted effective "activities to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power?" Have we supported the development of a shadow government that is prepared to govern after the fall of the regime? How do you go from the dictatorial regime to self determination of government by the people?

Decapitation reads clean on a target list, but it buys uncertainty, and uncertainty is where rivals and hard men thrive. The opposition can mobilize anger, yet it cannot yet convert anger into governance, and that gap is the regime’s shield. In cognitive warfare terms, “regime change” is a slogan battle too, and the fractures described here give Tehran many seams to exploit.

If Iran’s Regime Falls, Options to Replace It Are Narrow—and Risky

WSJ

What comes next would present its own set of challenges

By Margherita Stancati

and Benoit Faucon

Feb. 19, 2026 8:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-regime-leader-replacement-opposition-options-f67236f1

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose image is posted throughout Tehran, is the longest serving leader in the Middle East. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock

President Trump is reckoning with an unusually difficult risk assessment if he chooses to strike at the regime of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: There is no clear alternative that would emerge if it collapses.

Iranian opposition to the Islamic Republic is politically fractured, disorganized and physically divided between those at home and abroad. If the U.S. opts to knock out the top leaders in the hope that more malleable figures rise to replace them, there is no guarantee that they will be any more moderate than Khamenei.

“If Trump goes for such action—killing Khamenei and top commanders—the problem is, what happens next?,” said Mohsen Sazegara, a former Islamic Republic official turned opposition activist based in the U.S. “Iran may become a failed state.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged as much, recently telling Congress that the U.S. would have to hope to find someone to work with in the government through a complex transition.

WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains the massive U.S. military presence in the Middle East as President Trump amps up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

It wasn’t like this the last time Iran’s government fell. On the eve of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, there was a much clearer vision of what would follow.

At the time, Iranians across social classes and political divides, inside and outside the country, united under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The charismatic cleric could lean on a vast network of mosques and charitable organizations to coordinate the popular mobilization. When Khomeini returned from exile in Paris in February 1979, he received a hero’s welcome.

No comparable opposition figure exists today.

And every option for what comes next presents its own set of challenges. “The spectrum of options is very, very narrow, if there are any at all,” said Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an Iran expert with the Chatham House research group.

The protesters

The most formidable threat to the Islamic Republic comes from within Iran itself. Angry Iranians have taken to the streets with increasing frequency over the past decade, mobilizing over allegations of election rigging in 2009, women’s rights in 2022, and, late last year, the worsening economic crisis.

Analysts and activists say it is inevitable they will flare up again despite a brutal crackdown that killed thousands of people. Already a fresh wave of anger is brewing, with people shouting slogans such as “Death to Khamenei” and “Death to the Child-Killer Republic” during ceremonies mourning those killed.

Iranians protesting the government took to the streets in Tehran last month. Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

But these popular movements have no clear leaders or organizational structure inside the country. Prominent opposition figures are sooner or later silenced or jailed, among them the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former Iranian lawmaker. Both are currently imprisoned.

Antiregime figures based outside Iran include many human rights-focused activists. Many of them—including Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and another Nobel Peace Prize winner—have been outside Iran for so many years that many Iranians feel they are out of touch with the reality on the ground.

Ebadi, for instance, said she is in favor of targeted U.S. strikes aimed at killing Khamenei and top commanders. “That would cause the regime to collapse because if they are eliminated, no one else can run the country,” she said in an interview.

That puts her at odds with prominent political activists inside Iran who are opposed to military intervention.

The heir

The most prominent opposition figure outside Iran is Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the deposed shah, who has put himself forward as a future leader. He emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition to the regime during the recent protests. Iranians responded to his call for nationwide protests by showing up in large numbers in January, many chanting his name or slogans against the regime before security forces unleashed another crackdown.

“I will return to Iran. I am uniquely positioned to ensure a stable transition. That’s not my opinion, that’s the verdict delivered loudly and clearly by the people in the face of bullets,” said Pahlavi, whose stated goal is to help Iran transition to a secular democracy.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, and wife Yasmine Pahlavi at a rally in Munich last week Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters

Yet the heir remains a divisive figure among Iranians who remember his father’s political repression and the social inequalities that characterized his time in power. Many Kurds, Azeris and other ethnic minorities—who make up close to half of Iran’s population—distrust Pahlavi because of his father’s focus on centralized control.

Pahlavi and Ebadi, the human rights activist, tried to create a broad alliance after the women’s rights protests in 2022 but it fell apart over their personal disputes. More recently, Pahlavi’s more aggressive supporters have called for the restoration of the monarchy, alienating many other opponents of the Islamic Republic.

“We don’t want the return of the monarchy in the country—absolutely not,” said Mehrdad Darvishpour, a Sweden-based sociologist and well-known figure in Iran’s pro-democracy movement.

Pahlavi has also criticized some of his more eager supporters, saying a democratic system is better equipped to accommodate political differences.

The Marxists

Some opposition groups despise each other as much as they despise the Islamic Republic.

The People’s Mojahedin Organization, a well-organized leftist-Islamist group, waged an armed struggle against the shah and participated in the 1979 revolution that overthrew him. Also known as the MEK after its Persian name—the Mojahedin-e Khalq—it soon fell out with the Islamic Republic and staged a violent campaign against it. It is distrusted by many Iranians who point to MEK’s decision to side with Iraq during the war in the 1980s but has since gained some support among politicians in Europe and the U.S. It is largely based overseas.

The regime

Arab and European officials say that removing the 86-year-old Khamenei won’t necessarily result in more moderate figures taking over the leadership of the Islamic Republic, let alone topple it. They say the regime could adapt and survive, perhaps through conservative cleric Ali Asghar Hejazi, Khamenei’s current envoy to the security apparatus, and Mohammad-Mahdi Mirbagheri, the spiritual leader of an ultraradical faction rejecting any democratization.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who is now the speaker of Iran’s parliament, might lead an even more hard-line government if Khamenei is killed, said Saeid Golkar, associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an expert on Iran’s security services.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, seated, earlier this month. Hamed Malekpour/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency/WANA/Reuters

Moderate figures already are being sidelined. Several members of a reformist movement pushing for change within the existing system have been detained after criticizing the recent crackdown.

Yet an opening modeled on Russia’s 1980s perestroika is also a possibility. Some officials say a potential Khamenei replacement is Ali Khomeini, a grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder, who is close to moderate clerical figures.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What is your outlook on the long-term sustainability of the Iranian regime? Join the conversation below.

Appeared in the February 20, 2026, print edition as 'No Clear Path Would Follow Regime’s Fall'.

Margherita Stancati is a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Rome. She has reported from over a dozen countries for the paper and was previously posted in the Middle East, Afghanistan and India. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflict, politics, energy and social change.

Margherita was part of a reporting team whose coverage of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. The Society of Publishers in Asia in 2022 gave Margherita and her colleagues its breaking news award for their coverage of the fall of Kabul. Her work was also a runner-up in SOPA's award for excellence in reporting on women's issues.

Benoit Faucon is a Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He focuses on the geopolitics of oil, Iran, and Russia's involvement in Africa and the Middle East. He also has strayed into investigative stories such as pharmaceutical counterfeits, sanctions, money laundering and terror finance.

His work was part of an award-winning package at the Overseas Press Club of America in 2017 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

A four-time winner of the William Clabby awards, Benoit was also part of a finalist team for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for stories on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The team also earned recognition at the New York News Publishers Association Award that year.

He has written or co-written five books, Including "West Bankers" (Mashreq Publishing, 2010) on the financial history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "A Cartel Named Daech" (First Editions, 2017, with Clement Fayol) and an upcoming book on crisis entrepreneurs.

He joined Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal in 2002 after three years at French dailies Le Figaro and les Echos.

WSJ

4. As Peace Talks Stall, Russia and Ukraine Share One Aim: Keep Trump Happy

Summary:

Russia and Ukraine share a tactical goal in peace talks: avoid angering POTUS by appearing cooperative, as both fear consequences if he loses patience. Negotiations mediated by U.S. officials show little real movement despite positive rhetoric. Some participants call the process political theater meant to avoid blame for failure. POTUS seeks a deal as a major diplomatic achievement and has alternated between blaming both sides, recently pressuring Ukraine to concede territory. Russia wants broad concessions, including influence over Ukraine’s system and NATO rollback. Minor progress has occurred on prisoner exchanges and cease-fire monitoring, but officials expect the war could last one to three more years.

Comment: Both sides negotiate for optics first and outcomes second. The audience is Washington. Process has become leverage. Delay itself is a weapon when patience is a variable. In cognitive terms, each delegation is shaping perception of blame, not just terms of peace.

If talks function partly as performance to avoid blame, how should U.S. mediators measure genuine progress versus signaling behavior?

What leverage remains if both parties believe U.S. interest is fading as attention shifts to other crises?

If Russia believes it is slowly winning militarily and diplomatically, what incentive structure inside the talks could alter that calculation?

As Peace Talks Stall, Russia and Ukraine Share One Aim: Keep Trump Happy

WSJ

U.S. officials warn that he could lose interest as midterm elections approach.

By Matthew Luxmoore

and Alexander Ward

Feb. 19, 2026 5:13 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/as-peace-talks-stall-russia-and-ukraine-share-one-aim-keep-trump-happy-b105dabc?mod=hp_lead_pos10

A Ukrainian soldier and artillery ammunition in the Kharkiv region this week. Andrii Marienko/AP

GENEVA—In talks about ending the war, Ukraine and Russia have converged on one goal: to avoid angering President Trump by appearing to block peace.

They continue to send delegations to talks mediated by U.S. officials who applaud their constructive attitude and report back to Trump, who seeks a peace deal in Ukraine as his greatest diplomatic victory.

U.S.-brokered negotiations in Geneva this week ended like other talks this year: with no one able to point to any real movement.

The head of Russia’s delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, called the talks “tough but businesslike.” Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, described them as “substantive.” The U.S. special envoy, Steve Witkoff, hailed “meaningful progress,” without specifying.

The upbeat diplomatic buzzwords belie the impasse in a peace process that many observers, and even some participants, said has turned into political theater.

“These talks aren’t moving us closer to ending the war,” said Ivo Daalder, who was a U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during the Obama administration. “It’s a game to avoid being blamed for Trump’s failure to end the war.”

“President Trump’s success in bringing both sides of this war together, including at three trilateral meetings, has continued to generate meaningful progress,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “Both parties agreed to update their respective leaders and continue working towards a deal.”

Antidrone nets being installed in the Kharkiv region late last year. Diego Fedele/Getty Images

Trump has said he is mediating to stop the loss of life even though the U.S. is an ocean away and the war should be Europe’s business. He told the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last month that a deal between Russia and Ukraine was “reasonably close.”

“I believe they’re at a point now where they can come together and get a deal done. And if they don’t, they’re stupid,” he said.

Most recently, Trump has returned to blaming Ukraine—a country that has spent four years holding back a full-scale Russian invasion—for not agreeing to a deal that would give away territory vital to its defenses.

A senior Ukrainian official said the three rounds of trilateral talks so far this year, two in Abu Dhabi and one in Geneva, have amounted to a performance to persuade the U.S. president that Ukraine isn’t the problem.

Moscow and Kyiv both fear that the unpredictable American leader could hurt them if he loses patience. Trump has already ended the bulk of American aid for Kyiv, but Ukrainian forces still get vital U.S. intelligence support, while the U.S. sells arms to Europe that are passed on to Ukraine’s defenders.

Tighter Western sanctions could cripple Russia’s ailing economy, especially if they further squeeze its vital oil revenue. And as the costs of its invasion mount, according to analysts, Russia needs American help to pressure Ukraine into concessions.

“Putin can’t afford to anger Trump, as the Russian economy is rapidly deteriorating and new sanctions are counterproductive. Therefore he is diligently playing the role of a man prepared for a peaceful resolution,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter.

The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

History lectures

Ukraine openly questions Russia’s sincerity about the talks, accusing Moscow’s negotiators of playing for time by giving history lectures. “I don’t need historical s— to end this war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on the social-media platform X on Thursday. “It’s just a delay tactic.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump conferred at Mar-a-Lago in December. Jim Watson/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator, is a leading architect of the historical revisionism that Russian President Vladimir Putin used to justify invading Ukraine.

Russian officials said that Putin and Trump reached an agreement over Ukraine this past summer in Alaska and that Kyiv needs to accept the terms—although no such accord was ever made public.

The Kremlin’s consistent demands include territorial concessions by Kyiv, a restoration of Moscow’s influence over Ukraine’s domestic and international affairs, and a rollback of NATO in Eastern Europe.

Some analysts said the talks are real, not performative. “The fact that very little has leaked out about the talks suggests a level of seriousness we have not seen in the past,” said Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former White House official. “This does not mean we get a deal. But people are trying.”

The intelligence services of several Western countries, however, have determined that Putin isn’t negotiating in good faith, according to several senior European officials. Instead, the assessment is that Putin is trying to use the U.S.-brokered talks to make gains he is struggling to achieve on the battlefield.

For months, Trump has oscillated between blaming Zelensky and Putin for the impasse. Most of the time, Trump has said he believes Putin wants a deal. Meanwhile, Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities has left millions without heating and electricity in the midst of freezing winter temperatures.

Damage from a Russian drone strike in Odesa, Ukraine, this week. Nina Liashonok/Reuters

Residents in Kyiv, Ukraine, taking shelter in a metro station during an air-raid alert. Alina Smutko/Reuters

This week, Trump again pointed the finger at Zelensky. “Ukraine better come to the table fast, that’s all I’m telling you,” he said in comments aboard Air Force One on Monday.

Donbas dilemma

The White House has been working off the optimistic theory that Putin’s war aims are more limited than his public rhetoric—and that he would be satisfied if Ukraine just gave up the rest of its eastern Donbas region, most of which Russia has occupied.

But Russian officials keep loudly repeating to anyone who will listen that they haven’t given up their broader goals, which Putin has stated in numerous speeches and essays over the years.

Russia wants all of Donbas, but also a rewiring of Ukraine’s government, military, media, religion and identity, amounting to the restoration of Russian sway over the country.

Russia believes it is winning on both the battlefield and the diplomatic front, said Tatiana Stanovaya, an analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“They see it as a process that is slowly, slowly pushing Ukraine towards Russia’s goals,” she said. “The message is: ‘We can stop the war today, but you must fulfill all our demands.’ It’s still the same position. Nothing has changed.”

The part of Donbas that Ukraine still controls is the linchpin of its defenses: a network of fortified cities where Russian forces have taken staggering losses as they advance at a snail’s pace.

Zelensky isn’t willing simply to hand over the unoccupied part of Donbas. Instead, he is proposing a mutual pullback of troops by Ukraine and Russia, which Moscow rejects. The Kremlin also rejects the Western plan for security guarantees, which would involve stationing European forces in Ukraine after a cease-fire.

Meanwhile, Ukraine wants the U.S. and Europe to give it explicit, binding guarantees of military assistance if Russia invades again. Trump wants Ukraine to make concessions on territory first, but Zelensky wants to see cast-iron commitments on security guarantees before it signs anything.

Some progress has been made in the talks, albeit not on the core strategic issues, according to Ukrainian and Russian delegates. Previous negotiations have produced agreements on prisoner exchanges. Military officials from both sides have outlined how the monitoring of a cease-fire could work.

But no cease-fire is in sight. Senior European officials said the war is likely to continue for another one to three years.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What is the path to an enduring peace deal between Ukraine and Russia? Join the conversation below.

The White House has repeatedly urged Moscow and Kyiv to make a deal as soon as possible, with some U.S. officials hoping an agreement is completed ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November.

But Trump isn’t placing any extra pressure on Putin or Zelensky to coerce them into a deal, U.S. officials said. Instead, they said, the Trump administration is slowly losing interest in the peace process as it turns attention toward nuclear negotiations with Iran and rebuilding Gaza.

Appeared in the February 20, 2026, print edition as 'Russia, Ukraine Aim to Keep Trump Happy as Talks Stall'.

Matthew Luxmoore is a foreign correspondent covering Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, with a particular focus on Russia’s defense, national security and the role of its military on the world stage.

In his previous role as Moscow Correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, he traveled the length and breadth of Russia, visiting dying towns in the Arctic, driving across frozen rivers in Siberia, covering protests in Russia’s Far East, and traversing the restive republics of the North Caucasus.

Matthew was a 2022 finalist for the Livingston Award and a 2018 winner of New York University's Reporting Award. He grew up in Poland and holds a master’s degree from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow.

Alex has won numerous awards for his reporting and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with Politico colleagues for Supreme Court coverage.

In February 2024, Alex published his first book, "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump." He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

WSJ

5. How China’s Xi Purged His ‘Big Brother’ to Achieve Absolute Power

Summary:

Xi Jinping detained top general Zhang Youxia, once a trusted ally, in a dramatic purge signaling further consolidation of one-man rule over China’s military. Zhang’s arrest capped a decade of purges and followed unusual moves to install loyal security leadership in Beijing. Allegations against Zhang include leaks of nuclear secrets and corruption, though not independently verified. Analysts say Xi now relies on recurring purges rather than stable coalitions, leaving key military posts vacant and turning the Central Military Commission into a personal instrument. The campaign reflects fears of disloyalty, lessons drawn from Russia’s coup scare, and concern that corruption and leaks undermine military readiness and regime security.

Excerpt:

Zhang’s arrest on Jan. 19 marked a stunning fall for a man whose political lineage and loyalty once made him the bedrock of the Chinese ruler’s military flank. But it also represented something more profound for China—the consolidation of absolute power by Xi, asserting again his primacy over the world’s second-most-powerful military.

Comment: As Mao said, "war is politics with bloodshed and politics is war without bloodshed."

Power now rests on fear more than trust. Fear obeys fast but thinks slow. A leader alone hears only echoes. Narrative control is also command control. How can we exploit this? What is the narrative that can undermine Xi's legitimacy? Can it be undermined? Do we want to undermine it? If so, for what end?

If loyalty is enforced through recurring purges, how sustainable is command cohesion in a military modernizing for complex war?

What strategic risks arise when a system replaces institutional trust with personal dependence on a single ruler? Can those risks be effectively exploited?

If accusations can serve political purposes, how should intelligence analysts assess Chinese military stability versus staged signals?

How China’s Xi Purged His ‘Big Brother’ to Achieve Absolute Power

WSJ

The Beijing leader consolidated one-man rule last month in rapid-fire actions against the military’s senior commanders

By Lingling Wei

Feb. 19, 2026 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/xi-purge-general-big-brother-4fc7a13d?mod=hp_lead_pos8

It was a bitterly cold, overcast winter day when China’s senior-most general left for a meeting with hundreds of high-ranking Communist Party officials, including their leader, Xi Jinping.

Gen. Zhang Youxia never made it.

Security personnel sent by Xi intercepted Zhang en route to the gathering at the Central Party School in Beijing, said people close to Chinese government decision-making. Securing the general in an undisclosed location, officers also raided Zhang’s home and detained his son, a military researcher, the people said.

Zhang’s arrest on Jan. 19 marked a stunning fall for a man whose political lineage and loyalty once made him the bedrock of the Chinese ruler’s military flank. But it also represented something more profound for China—the consolidation of absolute power by Xi, asserting again his primacy over the world’s second-most-powerful military.

Zhang’s downfall capped more than a decade of military purges that have sidelined dozens of high-ranking officers and cemented Xi’s control. A childhood friend that Xi called his “big brother,” Zhang rose to prominence following the initial waves of dismissals—a move seen as placing a trusted ally at the helm of the military. Analysts said Zhang’s ouster shows that, even with totalitarian control, Xi is having trouble finding a leadership circle he can fully trust.

“The fall of Zhang Youxia signals that Xi’s ‘one-man rule’ has reached a point where systemic trust—the belief that loyalty guarantees safety—has completely evaporated,” said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California and editor of the quarterly journal, China Leadership Monitor. “At this stage, he isn’t ruling through a stable coalition anymore. Rather, he is relying on a cycle of endless political purges to keep his grip on power.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a military parade in September. wu hao/epa/Shutterstock

Days before Zhang’s arrest, Xi had quietly appointed a new commander to lead the elite force responsible for the security of Beijing. He installed a trusted figure from Shanghai’s armed police, breaking from the tradition of appointing an army officer. This unusual move, the people close to decision-making say, is aimed at ensuring the capital’s defense is led by a figure personally beholden to Xi, rather than the military networks associated with the purged general.

After Zhang disappeared, the Chinese leadership kept its military brass in the dark about why their most senior commander didn’t attend the Jan. 20 “study session” with Xi, a can’t-miss event. Senior civilian party officials were briefed within 24 hours of his arrest, but the military high command didn’t learn until a few hours before the news was broadcast to the world on Jan. 24.

During a high-level military briefing that morning, Zhang was accused of leaking core technical data regarding China’s nuclear-weapons program to the U.S., The Wall Street Journal has previously reported. Other charges included forming “political cliques,” abusing his authority within the military commission, and accepting bribes to promote officials, the Journal reported.

The Journal hasn’t been able to independently verify these allegations. Party leaders have a history of tarring their enemies with allegations that may not be grounded in reality. A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman warned against “unfounded speculation,” referring back to an official statement that the probe concerns violations of party discipline and state law.

Xi began his most recent round of purges in the summer of 2023 after he watched his strategic partner, Russian President Vladimir Putin, suffer a direct challenge to his authority—a failed coup staged by his once-trusted aide, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now-dead operator of Wagner, the private army.

For the party, according to the people close to its decision-making, the Russian experience served as a cautionary tale. Moscow’s inability to secure a swift victory against both Ukraine and then Prigozhin, despite multibillion-dollar upgrades to its military, suggested to Chinese leaders that ambitious modernization doesn’t automatically produce a formidable fighting force.

Supporters visit the grave of the mutinous former Putin aide Yevgeny Prigozhin in St. Petersburg, Russia. anatoly maltsev/epa/Shutterstock

With Xi already worried about corruption undermining his country’s fighting force, the people said, he appears to have concluded that military hardware alone is insufficient if it isn’t backed by absolute political loyalty.

As the son of a revolutionary elder, Xi began his career in a plum posting at the heart of the defense establishment. In 1979, the 26-year-old Xi was appointed as a personal secretary to Geng Biao, then the secretary-general of the Central Military Commission—the decision-making body for the People’s Liberation Army—and a close comrade of Xi’s father. That early access gave Xi a front-row seat to the raw mechanics of military power—and taught him that the commander who doesn’t fully control the generals is a leader standing on quicksand.

Upon rising to the party’s top job in late 2012, Xi wasted no time in launching a sweeping overhaul of the military, driven by a conviction that it had been riddled with corruption and structurally ill-equipped for modern, integrated warfare. He initiated an antigraft purge and dismantled the military’s top-heavy administrative fiefs in favor of centralized, joint-combat theater commands that report directly to the Central Military Commission, which he leads.

More than a decade later, he has gone a step further. Since mid-2023, Xi has removed five of the Central Military Commission’s seven members. Rather than repopulating the body, he has left most seats vacant. On the same day Zhang was shoved aside, another commission member, Gen. Liu Zhenli, was also placed under investigation.

Today, the commission is made up only of Xi, who is its chairman, and a general known less as a traditional warrior than as a political enforcer.

These purges, analysts say, effectively have transformed the Central Military Commission from a decision-making body into a personal secretariat, cementing Xi as the sole arbiter of military power.

Dennis Wilder, a former U.S. intelligence officer who has spent decades analyzing the Chinese military and Beijing’s corridors of power, describes the ouster of Zhang as the “most stunning development in Chinese politics” since Xi came to power.

Wilder, now a professor at Georgetown University, notes that the fallout is far from over, as Zhang and other senior officers are likely being “sweated” in detention centers to produce confessions and reveal their wider patronage networks, suggesting a much deeper wave of political cleansing to come. In Xi’s view, the people close to decision-making say, these networks represent a serious threat to his authority.

The Journal has reported that, in a sign of the depth of the current probe, Xi has commissioned a task force to conduct a deep-dive investigation into Zhang’s tenure as commander of the Shenyang Military Region, one of China’s most strategically sensitive and historically entrenched military hubs.

As the traditional cradle of Chinese heavy industry, the region provides the industrial backbone for advanced naval and aerospace production. It is a vital node for China’s strategic missile forces. Specifically, the region hosts a major Rocket Force base that manages a network of regional ballistic missiles.

A power plant near Shenyang in northwestern China. Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Zhang’s tenure in Shenyang spanned five years from 2007 to 2012, a time when he built the kind of deep loyalties in the military ranks that Xi ultimately found untenable. The investigators have notably chosen to stay in local hotels in the city of Shenyang, rather than military bases, where Zhang would have a network of support.

In an apparent effort to steady morale following Zhang’s arrest, Xi used a video address on Feb. 11 to appeal directly to the boots on the ground. He said the rank and file had been hardened “in the fight against corruption” and praised them as “entirely trustworthy.”

With an institutional vacuum at its highest ranks, the Chinese military is now struggling with how the chain of command functions, analysts inside and outside China say. Xi is more at risk of being insulated from professional military advice, just as the armed forces are building up their capabilities and increasing pressure on Taiwan.

Jon Czin, a former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, said Xi’s leadership style has changed. He said earlier purges targeted political rivals or distant peers, but Xi has now progressed to marginalizing partners and is “really going after his friends” like Zhang.

Zhang Youxia held the rank of China’s No. 1 general. Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Zhang and Xi are both “princelings” whose fathers fought side-by-side in the 1940s civil war that forged modern China.

When Xi, 72 years old, assumed the presidency, he effectively made Zhang, 75, the architect of his military vision. By personally elevating Zhang to the rank of No. 1 general in 2022 even after he had passed the customary retirement age, Xi signaled that Zhang was the indispensable hand behind the military’s modernization.

As a battle-hardened veteran and a trusted confidant, Zhang played an instrumental role in helping Xi centralize power at the top. For years, he had been the primary guardian of Xi’s “China Dream” of national rejuvenation, serving as the bridge between the party’s revolutionary past and its high-tech military future.

Czin, currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said Xi is stripping the high command “down to its studs,” demonstrating a total loss of patience with the military institution itself. This move indicates that even lifelong revolutionary ties—like the “princeling” connection Xi shared with Zhang—provide no protection.

As the investigations continue, the purge underscores a new, darker phase of Xi’s tenure. Czin of Brookings describes this as the “ultimate demonstration of Xi’s coldbloodedness,” proving he is willing to discard “lifelong-revolutionary ties to ensure the military lives up to his unforgiving standards.”

The specific reasons for Zhang’s undoing remain shrouded in mystery.

Official statements from the Ministry of National Defense and state media have avoided specifics, saying Zhang is under investigation for “suspected serious violations of discipline and law.”

However, a flagship military editorial accused Zhang of having “seriously trampled on and undermined the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the chairman.” This rare phrasing suggests the arrest was in response to a perceived direct challenge to Xi’s absolute command rather than routine graft.

The nuclear-secrets allegations add a strategic twist touching on China’s battle-readiness. Evidence of vulnerability surfaced in recent years through a series of reports by American researchers that detailed China’s rapid nuclear expansion.

Wilder, the former intelligence official, noted that the public exposure of roughly 300 new nuclear-missile silos in western regions like Gansu and Xinjiang likely unsettled Beijing. This tension, he said, was compounded by subsequent U.S. intelligence reports alleging that widespread corruption had rendered some of these missiles nonfunctional—including claims of defective silo lids. Such reports likely made the Chinese leadership feel vulnerable and “paranoid,” Wilder said.

For Xi, the fact that Western intelligence could identify such humiliating technical flaws suggested a breach of trust, Wilder said, leading him to suspect that “somebody is telling somebody something” from deep within the defense-industrial complex.

Even if unproven, the alleged espionage charge serves a political function, reframing a power struggle as a matter of patriotism and foreclosing any narrative of Zhang as a “loyal dissenter,” wrote Seong-Hyon Lee of the George H.W. Bush Foundation in a recent article published by the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Such charges also justify a closed-door trial, avoiding public scrutiny.

The 2014 downfall of Zhou Yongkang, the former domestic security czar, offers a possible template. As the most significant “tiger” caught in Xi’s early anticorruption campaign, Zhou was sentenced to life in prison following a secret trial that found him guilty of bribery, abuse of power, and leaking “party and state secrets.”

In this image taken from video released by China's CCTV, former domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang, center, makes a courtroom appearance in 2015. CHINA cctv/Associated Press

The historical parallels to the era of Mao Zedong are unmistakable, Chinese historians say. They point to the 1971 fall of Lin Biao, who was dubbed the “invincible general” for his crucial role in winning the Chinese civil war.

By 1970, Lin had become what many party insiders then called a “second center” of power. Mao grew paranoid that the military’s devotion to Lin was eclipsing its loyalty to him. That tension reached a breaking point in September 1971, when Lin allegedly attempted a botched coup before dying in a mysterious plane crash in the Mongolian desert while fleeing to the Soviet Union.

The downfall of both Lin and Zhang reflects a recurring pattern in Chinese communist history in which the person closest to the leader becomes the primary target of his suspicion.

WSJ

6. Opinion | The ‘Discombobulator’ arms race has begun

Summary:

David Ignatius argues the United States is publicly signaling directed-energy weapons as conflict risk with Iran rises, after a Jan. 3 operation in Venezuela that reportedly disabled air defenses and enabled the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Public hints from POTUS, Pentagon tech leadership, and the press office suggest microwave, laser, and acoustic systems that can disrupt electronics and incapacitate personnel. Ignatius links these disclosures to renewed debate over “Havana syndrome,” noting competing U.S. government assessments about whether pulsed energy is a plausible cause. He urges “rules of the road” and warns a directed-energy arms race could rebound on America.

Comment: Yes, a clickbait headline from the Washington Post.

Public boasting is messaging. It aims to deter by making rivals doubt their systems and their safety. If directed energy is framed as clean and decisive, leaders may underestimate escalation and blowback. This is cognitive warfare too. Fear, uncertainty, and contested attribution become part of the weapon.

If deterrence depends on ambiguity, how does the United States prevent ambiguity from fueling miscalculation and rapid escalation?

What lines should separate directed-energy use against military targets from use against diplomats and intelligence officers, and who enforces them?

If other states soon gain blackout and neurological disruption tools, what defense and resilience posture protects U.S. forces, allies, and civil society?

Opinion | The ‘Discombobulator’ arms race has begun

Washington Post · David Ignatius

Recent glimpses of exotic directed-energy weapons raise a question: How will they change warfare?

February 19, 2026 at 6:53 p.m. ESTYesterday at 6:53 p.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/19/directed-energy-havana-syndrome-weapons/

As the United States moves toward possible military conflict with Iran, the White House and the Pentagon have been boasting about an exotic arsenal of directed-energy weapons that could signal a new era of lethality in warfare.

The administration’s public talk about the new weapons systems followed the success of U.S. forces on Jan. 3 in penetrating Venezuelan air defenses, neutralizing defenders there and snatching President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. After that decisive operation, officials began providing a glimpse of weapons that are rarely discussed. Perhaps they hope to intimidate prospective military opponents, such as Iran or China.

These disclosures about U.S. directed-energy capabilities come as a Post report raised new concerns that Russia or another foreign adversary might have secretly used a pulsed-energy weapons over the past decade against CIA and State Department personnel, inflicting a constellation of symptoms known as “Havana syndrome.” Descriptions of the effects of U.S. and alleged foreign attacks are eerily similar.

President Donald Trump blurted out some hints of new systems during a Jan. 24 interview with the New York Post when he said U.S. forces used what he called “the Discombobulator” to storm Maduro’s compound. “I’m not allowed to talk about it. I would love to. … They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off. We came in, they pressed buttons, and nothing worked.”

Trump offered another clue in a Feb. 13 speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg, the home of some of the Army’s most elite warriors. “Everyone’s trying to figure out why [Venezuelan air defenses] didn’t work. Someday you’re going to find out,” Trump said, according to a report from a North Carolina news outlet. The local reporter noted that the disabling weapon sounded like little-known Air Force systems that use high-powered microwaves to disrupt electronics.

Another flashy advertisement of U.S. capabilities came in a social media post from the office of Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer. “Yes, the @DeptofWar has directed energy weapons. Yes, we are scaling them,” his office said on X on Jan. 23. The post was accompanied by a bright red image of a laser cannon with the words: “Light-Speed Lethality … Directed Energy Dominant.”

Wall Street analysts foresee an investment boom in this spooky technology. A research report last month by Astute Analytica predicted that the global market could grow from $7.1 billion in 2024 to $32.5 billion by 2033.

Public reports cast light on some U.S. weapons that could have effects like those described in Venezuela. The Air Force in 2017 posted a video simulation of a rocket carrying a high-powered microwave system known as CHAMP. The video shows a rolling blackout across a city, like what is said to have happened in Caracas early last month.

A more advanced microwave weapon known as HIJENKS was described by the Air Force and Navy in a 2023 release. It explained that the system uses high-powered microwaves for “disabling of computer systems, damaging targeted electronics, disrupting security and industrial control systems, etc.”

The Pentagon has developed sonic weapons, known as Long Range Acoustic Devices, that can fire beams of sound at adversaries. Smaller versions of these “sound cannons” have been used by police forces in the United States and abroad for crowd control, according to a human rights watchdog group.

Public White House discussion of these exotic weapons began on Jan. 10, a week after the Venezuela attack, when press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X: “Stop what you are doing and read this.” She then shared what purports to be a Venezuelan security guard’s account of what happened the night of the attack, as summarized by a right-wing social media influencer:

“We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation,” said the security guard. “At one point they launched something — I don’t know how to describe it … it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”

What’s striking about this account is how similar it is to the first known incident of Havana syndrome. The victim’s experience was described in the preface to a 2020 report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine: “An individual assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba was awakened one night at home in Havana in 2016 by severe pain and a sensation of intense pressure in the face, a loud piercing sound in one ear with directional features, and acute disequilibrium and nausea. Symptoms of vestibular and cognitive dysfunction ensued.”

What caused these symptoms? The National Academies study assessed scores of incidents and decided that directed energy was “the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases,” as I noted in 2021. But the U.S. intelligence community, led by the CIA, reversed that finding in 2023, concluding that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary had used a “novel weapon” to inflict the damage.

The judgment seemed to shift once more when the Biden administration’s National Security Council decided in January 2025, in its last weeks, that “pulsed electromagnetic or acoustic energy remains a plausible explanation in certain cases.”

Last weekend, alarm bells started ringing again with The Post’s disclosure that a Norwegian scientist had built a pulsed microwave system and tested it on himself — causing neurological symptoms like Havana syndrome. U.S. officials had visited Norway in 2024 to explore his findings, and the CIA had covertly acquired and tested a foreign-made device that used pulsed radio waves. Yet CIA analysts continued to assert that Havana syndrome cases weren’t linked to Russia or other foreign governments — infuriating some victims.

Former CIA officers who served in Moscow told me they’re frustrated by the agency’s long-standing reluctance to recognize the severity of Russian attacks using exotic technologies, whether they were to blame for Havana syndrome or not.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who spent two tours in Moscow, said in an email message: “As far as I know, the agency has never interviewed the living retired officers who can paint a picture of the operational conditions in Moscow in the 1970s and ’80s that provides the context for assessing the health threat — such as microwaves, X-rays, laser attacks, electronic bugging devices, tunnels, and other exotic technical attacks. The truth is they had no idea what the KGB was doing — and still don’t.”

The Russian surveillance was so intense that a Russian command post in a church across from the American compound in Moscow was known as “Our Lady of Telemetry,” because it bristled with “every type of technical monitoring device known to man,” including lasers and heat sensors, writes Rosie Mowatt-Larssen, Rolf’s wife and a part-time case officer, in a recently published memoir.

Here’s the bottom line: Ready or not, we’re entering an era of directed-energy weapons. As with any new technology, the first obligation is to set “rules of the road” for the United States and then, hopefully, with other countries. A starting point is to distinguish between attacks on military personnel, as in Venezuela, and on civilian diplomats and intelligence officers, as is alleged in the Havana syndrome cases. The first may be permissible; the second shouldn’t be.

The larger question is whether we’re setting off a new arms race that could ultimately hurt America more than its adversaries. Soon, other countries, too, will be able to launch rockets and drones that can trigger rolling electricity blackouts, fry computer circuits and cause severe neurological damage. A warning to enthusiasts for what Trump called “the Discombobulator”: What goes around comes around.

Washington Post · David Ignatius

7. China, Afghanistan, and Critical Minerals: Options for U.S. Strategic Competition Below the Threshold of War

Summary:

Afghanistan matters again, not for counterinsurgency, but as a permissive arena for strategic competition below war centered on economic statecraft, infrastructure, critical minerals, and selective security cooperation. China filled space after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, yet its mineral and infrastructure promises have underperformed, reflecting risk management, weak Afghan security and regulation, and technical complexity across extraction, transport, processing, and refining. The authors propose the United States compete by shifting value capture downstream, using multilateral financing, procurement commitments, selective sanctions relief, certification, and chain-of-custody systems, while the U.S. military enables interagency efforts with intelligence, partner advising, engineering support, and information operations.

China, Afghanistan, and Critical Minerals: Options for U.S. Strategic Competition Below the Threshold of War

by Sean Ryan, by Adib Farhadi

02.20.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/20/china-afghanistan-critical-minerals/

ABSTRACT

Afghanistan remains relevant to the United States in the context of Great Power Competition. While China assumed a major role in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, its promises of economic performance on mineral extraction contracts continue to underperform financially. The U.S. has an opportunity to compete for strategic minerals by changing where value is gained in the strategic supply chain.

Introduction

Why Afghanistan matters for the U.S. military today is no longer a question of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, or nation-building. Instead, Afghanistan has reemerged as a permissive or semi-permissive arena for strategic competition below the threshold of war, where influence is exercised primarily through economic statecraft, infrastructure investment, access to critical minerals, and selective security cooperation. Following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the absence of sustained Western engagement created political and economic space for competitors—most notably the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—to expand influence without assuming the costs and risks associated with overt military intervention. This environment highlights a central feature of contemporary great power competition: strategic outcomes are increasingly shaped through non-kinetic means in fragile states rather than decisive battlefield engagements.

For the U.S. military, Afghanistan remains relevant not as a battlefield but as a case study in contemporary campaigning. China’s engagement intersects with three issues central to U.S. military’s relevance in great power competition: persistent competition short of armed conflict, resilience of defense-critical supply chains, and the growing importance of non-military instruments in shaping strategic environments. RAND research emphasizes that future competition will hinge less on episodic combat operations and more on shaping activities conducted over time through diplomatic, economic, informational, and limited security tools. Afghanistan illustrates how competitors exploit governance vacuums, economic distress, and infrastructure deficits to secure strategic advantages without provoking direct confrontation.

Afghanistan’s renewed significance is further amplified by its perceived mineral potential. While early claims that Afghanistan possessed a “$1 trillion” mineral endowment overstated its near-term economic value, the country does contain deposits of iron ore, copper, rare earth elements, lithium, and hydrocarbons that are strategically relevant in an era of tightening global critical mineral markets. As global demand for defense-relevant minerals grows—and as supply chains become more concentrated—the political control of extraction, transit, and processing nodes assumes increasing importance for national security. China’s approach to Afghanistan must therefore be understood not as opportunistic adventurism, but as part of a broader geoeconomic strategy aimed at shaping regional connectivity, managing security risks along its western periphery, and preserving long-term optionality in critical resource access.

It is important to note that extraction of critical minerals and resources is not the end game, but rather the beginning of the supply chain. Removing ore in remote locations can be challenging. Processing those ores into useful mineral concentrations is complicated and requires transporting and processing ores across vast distances in large quantities. Refining and purification leads to production of key materials useful in manufacturing—essential for defense industries worldwide. China currently accounts for 60 percent of the processing of cobalt, lithium, and manganese globally. Furthermore, China controls over 70 percent of graphite extraction globally. These minerals are critical for manufacturing batteries, electromagnets, and other key technologies.

The Current Strategic Environment

Since 2021, Beijing has pursued a deliberately cautious approach in Afghanistan—expanding diplomatic outreach, offering calibrated economic inducements, and engaging in limited security coordination while stopping short of formal recognition of the Taliban regime. China offers the Taliban regime many benefits typically associated with formal state recognition with becoming politically entangled with questions of legitimacy at a time when the regime has yet to demonstrate its sustainability. This posture preserves flexibility and reduces reputational and political risk, a pattern Beijing has adopted with other politically isolated actors. Trilateral mechanisms—principally coordination among China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—have become the principal vehicle for advancing Chinese interests, with dialogue emphasizing counterterrorism, trade, transit, and plans to link Afghanistan to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Economic measures have accompanied diplomacy: in late 2024, Beijing extended tariff-free access for certain Afghan goods, facilitated limited air links, and allowed Afghan diplomatic operations in Beijing; investments have targeted lower-risk opportunities such as limited oil extraction in the Amu Darya basin, road work, and feasibility studies for rail connectivity.⁸ But these steps have so far been incremental rather than transformational. Many announced projects remain exploratory or pilot efforts; Chinese firms typically prioritize ventures with limited capital exposure and short time horizons, deferring projects that require sustained security guarantees, regulatory certainty, and long-term financing. China is consistent in its avoidance of becoming entangled in unstable areas where security threats persist. This pattern of risk management echoes pre-2021 dynamics—Mes Aynak and other flagship agreements have stalled despite political support—so the widely noted promises of mineral-derived benefits have not materialized at scale. That apparent “promise gap” likely reflects a mix of investor caution, extended project timelines, Afghanistan’s weak regulatory and security capacity, and the technical complexity of modern extraction and processing operations.

The economic consequences are visible: overland infrastructure meant to facilitate China-linked trade has yet to produce sustained commercial flows, and extractive projects have generated only modest revenues and employment. Far from signaling disengagement, however, this pattern is consistent with Beijing’s risk-management approach—maintaining political access and strategic optionality while constraining financial exposure amid instability. The net effect is that China’s economic role in Afghanistan to date has been more conditional and limited than some public statements imply.

Security remains the dominant driver of Chinese calculations. Beijing frames Afghanistan chiefly through spillover risks to Xinjiang, with the Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISK) and the perceived threat of ETIM informing its posture. Beijing’s skepticism about the Taliban’s capacity to prevent anti-China militancy reinforces its preference for cautious, reversible engagements. Reports of Chinese access to the former U.S. facility at Bagram—while unconfirmed—would, if validated, add tactical value to Beijing’s situational awareness and symbolic weight to perceptions of declining Western influence.

Lessons from China’s History of Mineral Extraction in Africa

China’s experience in Africa offers comparative insight where developing nations with weak governance possess rich natural resources. Over two decades, Chinese state-owned and private entities have paired extraction projects with infrastructure financed by Chinese banks; outcomes have varied widely with governance, labor standards, and security conditions. Qualitative studies document substantial local hiring in unskilled roles alongside retention of Chinese managerial and technical staff, while larger cross-national analyses link some Chinese investments to limited local value capture or negative employment effects where oversight is weak.

A consistent business model highlights risk sensitivity: in insecure contexts Chinese firms often delay, reduce, or suspend operations rather than accept persistent security losses or deploy substantial private security forces. This proclivity helps explain slow progress in Afghanistan: investment alone is unlikely to generate transformative change absent improved security and governance. For the United States, however, China’s uneven record creates opportunities to compete indirectly—by shaping incentives, standards, and meam nodes of value capture—rather than by attempting to outbid Beijing for upstream concessions.

Conceptual and Theoretical Lenses

Formal game-theoretic models—particularly generalized Nash equilibrium formulations of asymmetric resource extraction—illuminate how asymmetric actors interact under scarcity and weak governance, demonstrating how first-mover advantages, access constraints, and commitment mechanisms can lock in unequal outcomes. While China entered Afghanistan quickly as the U.S. disengaged, Chinese reluctance to deal with security challenges negatively impacts the potential value of Chinese contracts to the Taliban regime. These models also show how altering payoff structures—through multilateral financing, procurement guarantees, or sanctions calibrations—can change strategic equilibria. Mitigating current sanctions coupled with altering financial structures may offer the U.S. a way to counter Beijing’s early advantage.

Ends–ways–means remains a useful heuristic for aligning political objectives, methods, and resources while explicitly accounting for risk. Blue Ocean Strategy offers an economic complement that leverages Afghanistan’s abundant critical mineral resources: rather than contesting raw-ore extraction where China enjoys structural advantages, the United States can seek uncontested value by investing in processing, certification, recycling, and substitution—nodes where allied cooperation can capture greater value and reduce strategic vulnerability.

A Synthesized Strategic Approach for the United States

Directly contesting China for raw extraction in Afghanistan is neither feasible nor desirable given China’s geographic proximity, regional partnerships, and calibrated engagement. Instead, U.S. strategy should reshape incentives and the structure of competition: deploy commitment devices (multilateral financing facilities, long-term procurement commitments, selective sanctions relief), pursue achievable objectives (prevent monopolization rather than total exclusion), and focus on higher-value supply-chain nodes. Blue Ocean approaches—investment in processing/refining capacity outside Afghanistan but linked contractually to Afghan output, trusted-supplier certification regimes, and secure chain-of-custody systems—can capture value while mitigating security risks. A recent Trump Directive and DoD investments in allied and domestic critical-mineral capacity demonstrate the plausibility of such a path.

Implications for the U.S. Military

Afghanistan’s strategic salience now lies largely in its role within contested supply chains rather than as a theater for conventional operations. The military’s contribution should therefore be enabling and catalytic: provide intelligence fusion and analytic support to interagency mineral-security efforts; offer security-force-assistance teams to advise and enable regional partners on site security and customs integrity (consistent with U.S. policy and authorities); deploy engineering and mobility capabilities to support allied critical-mineral processing hubs located outside Afghanistan; and support information operations that illuminate contract transparency and labor standards. These activities require clarified joint–interagency authorities, pre-positioned enabling capabilities, and measurable indicators (secure site count; contracted processing capacity; reductions in illicit exports) to judge strategic effect.

Prioritized action list

To take advantage of the opportunities presented in Afghanistan through multilateral investments and mineral processing that can shift the value recognition away from China’s offers to extract raw ores, a sample set of high-level tasks that would strengthen U.S. competitive posture in the Afghan environment include the following:

Near-term (6–12 months). Charter an Interagency Afghanistan Critical Minerals Working Group (State lead; DoW analytic support). Metric: Working group chartered; first quarterly strategic assessment published; negotiations initiated.
Mid-term (1–3 years). Support one allied processing facility in a stable partner state (financing via Commerce/Treasury and possibly DoW; DoW engineering/logistics support). Metric: Processing capacity contracted; first verified shipments accepted under certified chain-of-custody.
Long-term (3–5 years). Establish a trusted-supplier certification regime for Afghan-origin minerals with allied buy-in and secure verification. Metric: Certification recognized by three major downstream buyers; measurable share of Afghan minerals processed via certified channels.

Conclusion

China’s expanding role in Afghanistan reflects a broader great power strategy centered on security, connectivity, and access to (if not control of) critical minerals. While Beijing benefits from unrivaled geographic proximity and regional momentum, its economic engagement to date reflects caution and conditionality rather than large-scale commitment that reduce China’s asymmetric advantages. Afghanistan’s mineral wealth will not automatically translate into strategic advantage absent stability, governance, and integration into higher-value supply chains. This presents opportunities for the United States.

For the U.S. military, Afghanistan illustrates how competition below armed conflict increasingly hinges on economic statecraft, institutional design, and interagency coordination rather than force projection. A strategy grounded in ends–ways–means logic, informed by game-theoretic insights, and oriented toward value innovation offers a viable path forward as great power competition intensifies.

Tags: Afghanistan, China, critical minerals, Geopolitics, supply chain, US military strategy

About The Authors

Sean Ryan
Dr. Sean Ryan is Director of Irregular Warfare Research and Program Manager in the Global Security Initiative and an Assistant Clinical Professor at Arizona State University. A graduate of the United States Military Academy, he served 30 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel in 2012, and subsequently earned a doctorate in Leadership and Organizational Change. His research and teaching address irregular warfare, strategic competition below the threshold of armed conflict, and civil-military relations.
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Adib Farhadi
Dr. Adib Farhadi is a tenured Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict at the University of South Florida and Faculty Director of the Executive Education Program. His scholarship examines geoeconomics, geopolitics, and great-power competition in Central and South Asia. He has published widely on regional security dynamics and policy responses to transnational threats.

8. America’s most important Asian ally just got stronger

Summary:

Brahma Chellaney argues Japan’s Feb. 8 election delivered a geopolitical shift: Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s LDP won a two-thirds supermajority, giving Tokyo a mandate to revise constitutional constraints, formalize the Self-Defense Forces, and accelerate defense spending to 2 percent of GDP. Japan is portrayed as moving from a U.S.-protected posture to a shaping security power, focused on denying Chinese coercion, especially along the southwestern island chain toward Taiwan. The piece says Chinese pressure consolidated Japanese politics, and Japan will diversify partnerships and harden supply chains. For Washington, this strengthens deterrence but requires treating Tokyo as a co-architect, not a junior ally.

Comment: Japan wants weight and voice. It will trade deference for responsibility. China’s pressure did not intimidate. It disciplined Japan’s politics and stiffened its will. Alliance management is now narrative management. Respect and consultation become deterrence tools. Does the US administration understand this?

America’s most important Asian ally just got stronger

The Hill ·

by Brahma Chellaney, opinion contributor - 02/19/26 8:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5741023-americas-most-important-asian-ally-just-got-stronger/

Japan’s Feb. 8 election was not merely an electoral landslide. It was a geopolitical turning point.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party secured a two-thirds supermajority — an outcome that finally gives Tokyo something it has lacked for decades: a political mandate to redefine its postwar identity and act as a proactive security power.

For Washington, this is both a gift and a challenge. The U.S. can now deepen collaboration with its most important and capable ally in Asia. Japan hosts the largest concentration of U.S. forces anywhere in the world. Its geographic position is uniquely strategic, and its naval and air capabilities are the most sophisticated among U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, with interoperability unmatched by any regional partner.

But the election also signals Japan’s strategic reawakening. It marks the arrival of a Japan that will be more assertive, more strategically self-confident and less inclined to subordinate its interests to shifting currents of U.S. policy. Tokyo is no longer content to be a U.S.-protected power. It intends to be a shaping power.

For almost eight decades, Japan operated within self-imposed limits — constitutional pacifism, restrained defense budgets and a preference for economic statecraft over hard power. Takaichi’s mandate alters that trajectory. With a supermajority, she can pursue constitutional revision, formalize the status of the Self-Defense Forces and accelerate defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product.

Japan is set to shift from merely reacting to Chinese military pressure to imposing costs for it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the southwestern island chain stretching toward Taiwan. Tokyo is building the capacity to deny access, complicate Chinese planning and ensure that no “fait accompli” seizure of territory or coercive maritime gambit goes unanswered.

For American strategists concerned about U.S. overreach, this is a structural upgrade to the regional balance. A Japan capable of defending its southwestern approaches will reduce the burden on U.S. forces while disrupting Chinese war-planning.

Beijing’s pressure campaign was meant to deter Japan’s rightward drift. Instead, it helped bring about Takaichi’s landslide. Chinese economic restrictions, maritime incursions and thinly veiled threats did not fracture Japanese politics; they consolidated it. Voters concluded that dependence invites coercion and that resilience requires strength.

Japan’s push to rewire supply chains toward India, Southeast Asia and trusted partners is not just industrial policy — it is counter-coercion doctrine.

Takaichi has described a Taiwan contingency as an “existential threat” to Japan. That language would once have been politically radioactive. Now it carries electoral legitimacy and, if sustained, will alter the military geometry of the Taiwan Strait. In a crisis, Japanese bases, surveillance networks and maritime forces would become integral to a U.S. response.

For the U.S., this reinforces a broader trend: Chinese pressure is accelerating, not halting, the formation of balancing coalitions. A stronger Japan becomes the anchor of that process in East Asia.

Takaichi’s strategy also involves alliance diversification. She is building stronger economic and defense links with Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and especially India, alongside the U.S. treaty alliance — insurance against volatility in American politics.

Japanese policymakers have drawn a sober conclusion: that resilience requires options. Fluctuating U.S. trade policy, tariff threats, periodic talk of retrenchment and transactional approaches to alliances have convinced many in Tokyo that Japan must insure itself against strategic volatility in Washington.

For the U.S., this is not a loss of influence but a redistribution of responsibility. A Japan that leads within the Quad, shapes regional trade architecture and invests in defense industrial cooperation strengthens a stable Indo-Pacific order — provided Washington treats Tokyo as a strategic partner rather than a junior ally.

Takaichi’s economic program — “Sanaenomics” — fuses industrial policy with national defense. Supply-chain resilience, semiconductor co-development, critical-mineral stockpiles and shipyard revitalization are designed to reduce Japan’s vulnerability to “weaponized interdependence.”

This aligns with Washington’s emphasis on economic security but also introduces potential friction. A more nationalist “Japan First” posture could collide with U.S. tariff policies or technology controls if not coordinated. The opportunity lies in building a shared defense-industrial ecosystem.

For years, American policymakers urged Japan to do more for its own defense. Takaichi’s victory answers that call.

But greater capability brings greater autonomy. Tokyo will expect a more important voice in alliance strategy — from Taiwan contingencies to regional trade architecture — and will not accept policies that expose it to coercion without consultation.

Alliances endure not because one side dominates, but because both sides see them as vehicles for advancing national strategy. A stronger Japan will strengthen the alliance if Washington treats Tokyo as a co-architect rather than a subordinate.

The most consequential implication of Japan’s election is regional. Across the Indo-Pacific, middle powers increasingly see a stronger Japan as a stabilizing “strategic ballast” amid uncertainty about both China’s trajectory and America’s staying power. Japan is reentering history as a security actor, not merely an economic one.

Washington should recognize what just happened. Japan did not simply elect a new government. It chose strategic normalization — deterrence over hesitation — and signaled that the era of passive alliance management is over.

For Washington, the message is clear: The most important geopolitical shift in Asia is not China’s rise alone, but Japan’s return. The alliance must evolve accordingly.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

The Hill ·

9. China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

Summary:

Erika Lafrennie assesses Beijing used a holiday week to harden governance: proceduralized supervisory talks for top leaders to tighten vertical control, and closed-loop “look-back” inspections in Hunan SOEs that use discipline to steer industrial policy, innovation incentives, logistics, and Party-building. In Hong Kong, China summoned Western envoys over Jimmy Lai criticism, framing it as sovereignty and rule-of-law, turning narrative dispute into formal diplomatic procedure. Beijing also shaped U.S. subnational channels via Xi’s Iowa letter stressing grassroots and youth ties. In Europe, Wang Yi used Munich to position China as a stabilizer and portray alliance hardening as destabilizing, using norms as constraint architecture.

China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

February 13 – February 19, 2026

Erika Lafrennie

Feb 20, 2026

https://www.xinanigans.com/p/china-weekly-2026-2-20?utm

A standing weekly operational intelligence brief tracking China’s governance-based competition.

Bottom Line: This week’s signals reflect governance maintenance during a holiday cycle: procedural tightening at the top, supervision-driven industrial steering, jurisdictional discipline in Hong Kong, calibrated subnational outreach to the United States, and normative positioning in Europe. Beijing is reinforcing vertical control, synchronizing economic execution, and shaping external interpretive environments simultaneously — increasing coherence while narrowing institutional elasticity.

The pattern is consistent. Governance functions as infrastructure maintenance, even during holiday cycles. Internal discipline, industrial supervision, sovereignty enforcement, and narrative framing function as layered components of system hardening, a system optimized for control that trades adaptive flexibility for execution reliability.

1. Proceduralized Top-Leader Oversight: Supervisory Talks Formalized

The General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued new “Measures for Party Committees (Party Groups) to Conduct Supervisory Talks with the Top Leaders of Lower-Level Party Organizations.” The document formalizes routine and timely supervisory interviews of subordinate Party secretaries, mandates full coverage within leadership terms, and establishes reporting, rectification, and follow-up mechanisms. The regulation explicitly ties oversight to fulfillment of the “primary responsibility” for comprehensive and strict Party governance.

Why it matters:

This is vertical control institutionalized within the broader architecture of comprehensive and strict Party governance. Oversight of “top leaders” is no longer episodic or campaign-based; it is proceduralized as a recurring governance mechanism. The system embeds anticipatory supervision—early intervention, problem-oriented discipline, and rectification tracking—into routine Party management.

Supervision is being transformed from investigation into structured administrative rhythm. What began in the anti-corruption era as campaign enforcement has now matured into routine supervisory infrastructure. That rhythm strengthens compliance coherence while narrowing informal discretion and lateral initiative inside the system.

Implications for US National Security:

Top-leader dependency intensified: Subordinate Party secretaries operate under formalized upward accountability structures, tightening political alignment.
Rectification cycles embedded: Closed-loop reporting requirements create institutional memory of compliance.
Early warning governance model: “Emerging or potential problems” language incentivizes preemptive discipline.

2. Hunan SOE “Look-Back” Inspections: Supervision as Industrial Steering

Hunan Province conducted follow-up “look-back” inspections on state-owned enterprise rectification efforts, establishing a closed-loop mechanism of “rectification -> return visit -> re-rectification -> acceptance.” The Provincial Party Committee Inspection Office identified 13 common structural issues across SOEs and tied supervision to industrial innovation, logistics coordination, environmental compliance, and Party-building integration within firms.

Specific interventions included promoting science and technology committees, aligning innovation incentives, reforming risk tolerance for R&D projects, strengthening multimodal transport capacity, and integrating Party-building assessment into enterprise performance systems.

Why it matters:

Inspection is functioning as industrial policy enforcement. Supervision is not confined to discipline; it is steering resource allocation, innovation tempo, and risk management norms within strategic sectors. The “look-back” mechanism shifts rectification from discrete problem resolution to systemic alignment, synchronizing industrial coordination through Party oversight infrastructure.

Implications for US National Security:

Supervision-to-production integration: Discipline mechanisms directly shape industrial modernization.
Innovation risk management recalibrated: Explicit tolerance frameworks for R&D errors encourage strategic experimentation within Party oversight.
Port and logistics emphasis: Multimodal coordination strengthens domestic circulation resilience.
Institutional durability: Closed-loop inspection systems reduce policy drift between campaigns.

3. Hong Kong Envoy Summons: Sovereignty-Law Discipline in Foreign Narrative Space

China’s Commissioner’s Office in Hong Kong summoned envoys from the United States, United Kingdom, EU, and Australia following criticism of the Jimmy Lai sentencing. Official messaging framed the matter strictly as sovereignty and rule-of-law enforcement, rejecting “external interference.”

Why it matters:

This is sovereignty discipline executed through diplomatic procedure. Law enforcement outcomes are defended as jurisdictional absolutes, while foreign criticism is reframed as political intrusion.

Summoning envoys converts narrative disagreement into a formalized sovereignty violation. The mechanism is procedural, and it operates through diplomatic instruments rather than rhetorical exchange. Beijing uses law as a boundary-setting instrument.

Implications for US National Security:

Jurisdiction hardening: Legal proceedings become instruments for shaping foreign political space.
Narrative deterrence: Diplomatic summons raise the reputational cost of public criticism.
Red-line codification: “Interference” language tightens interpretive boundaries around Hong Kong’s autonomy discourse.
Precedent setting: Law-enforcement framing can be replicated in Taiwan-related legal designations, sanctions, “anti-secession” enforcement architecture, and future national security law applications.

4. Xi Jinping’s Iowa Letter: Subnational Channel Conditioning

People’s Daily published a letter from Xi Jinping replying to an Iowa resident, recalling his 1985 visit and emphasizing that “the foundation lies in the grassroots” and “the future lies in the youth.” The message underscored people-to-people exchanges, youth engagement, and local-level friendship as the stabilizing foundation of China–US relations.

Why it matters:

This is calibrated subnational channel shaping. While leader-level tensions remain elevated, Beijing reinforces a parallel narrative lane centered on grassroots cooperation and generational continuity.

The Iowa reference activates long-standing personal diplomacy and rural affinity imagery, projecting continuity and emotional memory into bilateral framing.

The signal is subtle: national friction does not negate societal connection. Beijing maintains alternative diplomatic conduits.

Implications for US National Security:

Parallel diplomacy architecture: Subnational actors are positioned as stabilizers amid strategic rivalry.
Grassroots legitimacy framing: “People-to-people” language buffers national policy disputes.
Youth pipeline emphasis: Long-term perception shaping targets generational continuity.
Narrative bifurcation risk: Divergent messaging environments may emerge between Washington and US state and local actors.

Irregular Warfare Spotlight

Munich as Governance Warfare: Normative Constraint as an Operational Tool

At the Munich Security Conference, Wang Yi framed China’s preferred international order in “global governance” and “right course of history” terms, emphasizing coexistence, responsibility, and opposition to bloc politics. The speech positioned China as a stabilizing actor while implicitly associating alliance hardening with destabilization.

Why this is an irregular warfare case study:

This is gray-zone competition through legitimacy engineering. By shaping elite European interpretive frameworks inside a high-status forum, Beijing conditions downstream policy defaults. The mechanism is procedural and cognitive: redefine what counts as “responsible,” “proportional,” or “escalatory” — for example, labeling alliance reinforcement or technology controls as “bloc confrontation” or “Cold War mentality.” Normative language becomes constraint architecture.

Implications for US National Security:

Legitimacy framing as friction: Hard alignment can be rhetorically associated with instability.
Coalition tempo modulation: Norm debates slow rapid convergence during crisis.
Venue leverage: High-prestige platforms amplify interpretive shaping.
Escalation vocabulary shaping: Risk language becomes contested terrain before crisis onset.

Chinese Vulnerabilities & US Counter-Opportunities

This week’s pattern reveals a system reinforcing coherence through procedural density, increasing execution reliability while narrowing adaptive margin.

Vertical oversight of top leaders increases compliance reliability but concentrates authority and reduces informal feedback channels. Closed-loop industrial supervision enhances execution discipline yet exposes sector prioritization and innovation sequencing. Sovereignty-law enforcement clarifies red lines but generates cumulative diplomatic friction. Parallel people-to-people outreach reveals sensitivity to reputational insulation amid strategic competition. Normative positioning in Europe depends on interpretive uptake beyond Beijing’s direct control.

Governance discipline strengthens durability. It also increases rigidity sensitivity under stress, where delayed problem recognition and centralized decision filters can amplify shock effects.

For US and allied planners:

Monitor supervisory talk frequency and scope as indicators of internal stress calibration.
Map inspection-driven industrial interventions to identify priority sectors and bottleneck mitigation timelines.
Track sovereignty-law invocations as jurisdictional precedent formation.
Distinguish between state-level rivalry and subnational engagement shaping.
Observe normative framing shifts in European venues as early indicators of coalition tempo friction.

Beijing continues to engineer the conditions under which competition unfolds — procedurally, industrially, diplomatically, and normatively — before crises materialize.

10.The Chalabi Syndrome: Why Washington Must Reject Reza Pahlavi’s Call for War

Summary:

Iran’s regime is brutal and culpable for violence, and that a strike on the IRGC may seem morally and strategically tempting, but U.S. action must have clear objectives and fully considered consequences. He warns Washington against lobbying by exile figure Reza Pahlavi, who has shifted from nonviolent resistance rhetoric to sustained public calls for U.S. and Israeli “surgical” or “definitive” strikes to facilitate regime change. The piece likens this to Ahmad Chalabi’s role before Iraq, arguing an exile seeking power through foreign force lacks organic legitimacy, can validate regime propaganda, intensify repression, and deepen Iranian divisions. The author urges the U.S. to state it will not install Pahlavi and to support Iranians pursuing change themselves.

Comment: Exiles can sell certainty but war buys uncertainty and the bill comes due in blood. A public call for U.S. strikes is also a gift to Tehran’s narrative machine. If Washington looks like it is picking a ruler, it fractures the very movement it claims to help. We really do lack a deep understanding of the principles of unconventional warfare at the national strategic level.

The Chalabi Syndrome

realcleardefense.com · Charles Wald February 19, 2026

Why Washington Must Reject Reza Pahlavi’s Call for War

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/02/19/the_chalabi_syndrome_1165743.html

For most Americans, particularly those exhausted by two decades of war in the Middle East, Iran represents a persistent and complex geopolitical challenge. The Iranian regime has American blood on his hands, which could justify ending many years of restraint and launching a devastating strike against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The bloody crackdown on the wave of protests in Iran and the ensuing carnage with thousands being killed, many more injured and tens of thousands being arrested, further call for action from a moral perspective notwithstanding the possible political outcome of helping the Iranian people and triggering another wave of protests to overthrow the regime.

However, any military intervention will also have its downside, for which it seems that president trump is acting prudently. Thus, a well-defined objective is a must, and a possible scenario must be fully considered.

For all these reasons, this is an American issue that ultimately the president should decide. What is seriously troubling is strong lobbying by Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed shah for US military intervention in Iran. In recent months, however, and with growing intensity in just the past few weeks, he has abandoned the language of nonviolent civil resistance in favor of openly advocating American and Israeli military action. He is no longer merely positioning himself as an opposition figure; he is actively lobbying to become the beneficiary of a foreign military intervention, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

We have seen this movie before. And we know how it ends.

Pahlavi’s recent media blitz leaves little ambiguity about his intent. In a speech at the National Press Club on January 16, he called on the United States to carry out a “surgical strike” against the regime’s military and paramilitary infrastructure. That same day, he told the BBC that targeting the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would “facilitate regime change” and prevent further loss of life.

The rhetoric has only intensified. On January 20, in an interview with Fox News, Pahlavi declared that a “definitive strike” by the United States, Israel, or “whatever” force was necessary to tip the balance against the regime. Three days later, during a CNN appearance, he reiterated his call for U.S. airstrikes to remove Iran’s government.

This is not a momentary lapse in judgment or an isolated misstatement. It is a sustained, calculated campaign. In a June 27, 2025, op-ed for USA Today, Pahlavi urged the international community to “end it once and for all,” arguing that war had exposed the regime’s vulnerabilities. Reporting by CBC has likewise documented his repeated endorsement of U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, consistently pressing for “more action.”

Many argue that Pahlavi is acting in the same way as Chalabi did nearly a quarter century ago. He claimed to have support in Iraq and even engineered a coalition with a few other groups, many of them were closely guided by the Iranian regime. This is why there is serious concern among many in the US who in principle agree with a strike but want to make sure that it will not drag the US to another war, which President Trump has always strongly rejected.

That absence of organic legitimacy helps explain his strategic pivot. Unable, or unwilling, to pursue power through the arduous, dangerous work of organizing Iranian society under repression, he seeks instead to acquire it through foreign military force.

Pahlavi now appears to be following the same script as once Chalabi did. From the safety of exile, he urges the United States to assume military risks whose consequences he himself will never bear.

When an exile figure goes on American television to openly solicit U.S. airstrikes, he validates the regime’s propaganda and hands it a ready-made justification for intensified repression. The cost is paid not by him calling for war from abroad, but by ordinary Iranians protesting at home.

Rejecting Pahlavi’s call for war does not amount to an endorsement of the Islamic Republic. On the contrary he is playing into the hands of the Iranian regime. The regime in Tehran remains brutal, corrupt, and deeply repressive. The best for the US is to help the Iranian people.

Reza Pahlavi’s lobbying for U.S. military intervention has not only strengthened the regime’s claim that Iran lacks an authentic, homegrown popular movement, but by implying that the United States intends to impose him on the country, he has also fueled divisions among the Iranian people.

Whatever course of action the United States ultimately chooses, it is essential to declare publicly and unequivocally that it has no intention of installing the son of a deposed dictator as Iran’s future monarch. Regrettably, monarchist groups, through disinformation and empty propaganda, have cultivated this perception. It must be clearly corrected: this is not, and has never been, U.S. policy.

The question confronting American policymakers is not whether Iran deserves a better future—it unquestionably does. The real issue is whether the United States will once again allow itself to be guided by an exile seeking power through foreign intervention, or whether it will honor its own stated principles by aligning policy with the aspirations of the Iranian people for a free and democratic Iran—an outcome that is also indispensable to peace and stability in the region.

The only realistic and responsible path forward lies with the Iranian people themselves—above all, those prepared to bear the cost and make the sacrifices necessary to liberate their country and reclaim their future.

Gen Charles F. Wald (U.S. Air Force, ret.) was Deputy Commander of United States European Command (2002 – 2006).

11. PLA, Chinese firm release satellite images showing US military build-up around Iran

Summary:

The report says China’s PLA and Chinese firm MizarVision released high-resolution satellite imagery on social media showing U.S. military deployments around Iran, amid reporting Washington could strike as soon as this weekend. MizarVision images depict bases in Qatar, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, including aircraft counted at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan: 18 F-35s and six EA-18G Growlers. The firm also cites U.S. transport, refueling, and airborne early warning aircraft positioned across regional bases, some transiting via Germany. The PLA account China Military Bugle posted a video mapping eight monitored U.S. bases and claiming Patriot launchers are oriented toward Iran. The article notes the unusual public release, China’s calls for restraint, and the implication that Chinese space reconnaissance and AI-enabled tracking challenge U.S. operational security.

Comment: is the PRC exploiting the US playbook on exposing the enemy before it attacks as the US did prior to Putin's war in Ukraine? China is turning surveillance into theater. It wants the world to watch the watcher. If deployments and forces can be counted in public, deterrence and deception get harder at once. This is message warfare as much as ISR. It signals reach, precision, and confidence.

If Beijing calls for restraint while publishing targeting-relevant imagery, what outcome is it shaping in global perception and crisis diplomacy?

If AI-driven satellite networks can track distant U.S. assets continuously, how should U.S. and allied forces adapt basing, dispersal, and signaling to preserve decision advantage?

PLA, Chinese firm release satellite images showing US military build-up around Iran

Imagery of combat aircraft and support planes at bases in the region comes amid reports that Washington appears ready to strike Tehran

Liu Zhen

Published: 6:00pm, 20 Feb 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3344129/pla-chinese-firm-release-satellite-images-showing-us-military-build-around-iran?utm

China’s military and a tech firm have released high-resolution satellite imagery showing the US military build-up around Iran, amid reports that Washington may strike Tehran as soon as this weekend.

Images posted on social media on Thursday by Chinese commercial satellite analysis company MizarVision show the latest American deployments at bases in Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The images from Jordan show 18 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters and six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft on the tarmac of the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. The post did not say when or by which satellites the images were taken.

US media has reported that the United States military appears ready to strike Iran this weekend. President Donald Trump is said to be considering a limited strike to force Tehran into a deal to abandon its nuclear programme.

Iran has insisted the programme is peaceful and has denied claims that it is developing nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, Trump warned during the first Board of Peace meeting in Washington that “bad things” would happen if a deal was not reached, and later set a 10- to 15-day deadline.

Iran has threatened to retaliate if attacked. On Monday, it temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz to conduct live-fire military drills as it held the latest round of nuclear talks with the US on Tuesday.

The satellite images show transport aircraft, aerial refuellers, and airborne early warning and control planes at bases in the region. Photo: Weibo/觅熵MizarVision

According to MizarVision’s observations, the US has also sent C-130 and C-17 transport aircraft, KC-135 aerial refuelling tankers, and E-3C airborne early warning and control aircraft to other bases in the region, with some in transit through Germany.

The company has been tracking US military movement – including aircraft and warships – in the Middle East since tensions flared between Iran and the United States after Tehran’s crackdown on anti-regime protests last month.

Satellite images released by MizarVision also show Tehran’s deployments, including the drone carrier IRIS Shahid Bagheri and its escort warship near the Iranian coast.

Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army – through its official social media account China Military Bugle – has posted a video with high-resolution satellite imagery showing eight US bases it has been monitoring in the region.

The video, posted earlier this month, is titled: “Siege of Iran: where will the US military launch its attack in the Middle East?”

It said the US was amassing large numbers of aircraft, warships, drones and vehicles at its bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Syria.

The video also claimed the detailed satellite images showed “the launchers of the Patriot air defence systems are pointed towards Iran” at the Al Udeid, Al Dhafra and Prince Sultan air bases in Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

It is unusual for such sensitive intelligence to be released by either the Chinese military or Chinese commercial entities, and it comes as Beijing has called for de-escalation and restraint from both sides.

China’s growing capabilities in space-based reconnaissance pose a challenge for the US, as its AI-driven satellite networks continuously and precisely track critical American military assets in a region far from East Asia.

In the Middle East, Chinese commercial firms have previously used high-resolution satellite imagery to assess the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip.

Liu Zhen

Liu Zhen joined the Post in 2015 as a reporter on the China desk. She previously worked with Reuters in Beijing.

12. China’s latest box office draw: spy thriller backed by state espionage agency

Summary:

The article reports that Scare Out, a Lunar New Year box office hit directed by Zhang Yimou, was produced under the direct supervision of China’s Ministry of State Security and billed as based on real cases. The plot follows counter-espionage officers pursuing a researcher who leaked stealth-fighter information, then uncovering a mole. The film earned 483 million yuan in its first three days, ranking second behind Pegasus 3. The ministry used the film to stress that AI and big data increase threats such as cyber espionage, technological infiltration, and biometric data theft, arguing data security is central to national survival and calling for nationwide security education and citizen participation. The article notes China expanded its espionage law definition in 2023.

Comment: This is Chinese entertainment as instruction. A "Game of Pawns" it is not (FBI counterintelligence short HERE.) It trains the public eye to see threats everywhere. The state is building consent for tighter control of data, platforms, and people. A spy story also signals deterrence. It warns insiders that betrayal ends badly.

Can we use this film to expose Chinese weaknesses?

If the security service supervises popular film, how does Beijing use culture to normalize citizen reporting and wider surveillance acceptance?

If AI, big data, and biometric theft are framed as existential threats, what new controls will be justified under “data security” in daily life and business?

If espionage definitions broaden to cyber and infrastructure, how might foreign firms and researchers in China be exposed to expanded legal risk?

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the South China Morning Post describes the "Lunar"" New year rather than the Chinese New Year.

China’s latest box office draw: spy thriller backed by state espionage agency

Scare Out – supported by the intelligence services and made by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou – is one of the most popular films over Lunar New Year

Alyssa Chen

Published: 8:50pm, 19 Feb 2026Updated: 10:46pm, 19 Feb 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3344033/chinese-state-sponsored-spy-thriller-comes-cold?utm

Alyssa Chen

Published: 8:50pm, 19 Feb 2026Updated: 10:46pm, 19 Feb 2026

A spy thriller backed by a Chinese intelligence agency has become one of the biggest box office hits of the Lunar New Year.

Scare Out, directed by Zhang Yimou, who is best known internationally for films such as Raise the Red Lantern and House of Flying Daggers, was produced under the direct supervision of the Ministry of State Security, which said the film was based on real-life cases.

The film features a tense game of cat and mouse as counter-espionage agents track down a researcher who leaked information about a stealth fighter to foreign spies, but then discover that there is a mole within their own ranks.

The movie did not specify the model of the fighter jet involved but a similar case was made public in March last year involving a Chinese engineer who leaked secrets to foreign spies and was later sentenced to death.

Some overseas media outlets suggested that the case was related to the FC-31 fifth-generation stealth fighter, the basis of another model that later became the J-35 stealth fighter.

The film has so far taken in 483 million yuan (US$70 million) in the first three days of the Year of the Horse, putting it second behind the motor-racing comedy Pegasus 3, which took in 1.5 billion yuan, according to Maoyan, a Chinese movie-ticketing and film data platform.

The film, largely shot in Shenzhen, a tech hub on the border with Hong Kong, was the first movie directly supervised by the ministry, which said the script was based on real cases.

In an interview with state broadcaster CCTV, Zhang said national security officers had “shared many behind-the-scenes stories”, but turning them into a 100-minute film “required a high degree of precision and tight pacing”.

One scene shows a spy collecting an encrypted phone from a litter bin.

“How spies exchange phones in real life was never revealed [to us] … So the movie production team invented our own ways,” Zhang said, but he added that he had been told this was a plausible scenario.

In a social media post published on Wednesday, the ministry emphasised that the rise of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data had reshaped the landscape of how to protect national security.

CIA targets Chinese military officers in new recruitment video

“Threats like cyber espionage, technological infiltration, and biometric data theft are becoming increasingly prevalent … Fortifying the defences of data security has become not just a technical challenge but a fundamental safeguard for the survival and development of [the nation’s] future,” the post said.

The ministry also said the film was “a timely warning rooted in reality”, highlighting the need for nationwide security education.

In a promotional video released at the end of last month, the film crew said they had been advised by intelligence officers who had told them about real-life situations, such as capturing a suspect in busy areas.

One actor also said in the video that national security personnel had taught him about their daily habits and some hand gestures they used to communicate.

The film suggested that even everyday settings could be dangerous, including a scene that shows a Western spy trying to use express delivery services to collect secret information.

The ministry said the film highlighted the “hi-tech, covert nature” of modern intelligence battles.

“Safeguarding national security requires not only the courage and dedication of national security officers but also the active participation of every citizen,” the ministry said on social media.

In recent years, the Chinese authorities have placed an increasing focus on safeguarding national security.

Beijing expanded its definition of espionage in 2023 by updating its laws to cover cyberattacks against state organs or critical information infrastructure as well as acts targeting third countries.

Alyssa Chen

Alyssa joined the Post in 2023 as a reporter on China desk to cover diplomacy. Her interests lie in cross-strait relations and Sino-Japan relations. Previously, she was the Asia Correspondent for the Japan Times, and graduated from the University of Hong Kong.

13. From Readiness to Resilience: Two Decades of Extreme Weather Impacts on US Military Infrastructure

Summary:

Drs. Pesicka and Nightengale-Luhan argue extreme weather from roughly 2005 to 2025 has intensified in frequency, severity, and reach, creating chronic risk to U.S. military installations that underpin readiness and power projection. They describe how hurricanes, inland flooding, wildfires, heat, drought, and severe storms damage aging infrastructure, disrupt training and operations, force asset relocation, strain energy and water systems, and deepen maintenance and modernization budget pressure. Case examples include Hurricane Michael’s catastrophic damage to Tyndall AFB and mission displacement, and the 2019 flood at Offutt AFB affecting installation capacity and highlighting outdated design assumptions. They conclude resilience is a national security imperative requiring proactive, risk-informed planning, hardened and redundant systems, institutionalized funding and accountability, and partnerships across services and civilian stakeholders.

From Readiness to Resilience: Two Decades of Extreme Weather Impacts on US Military Infrastructure

by Dr. Emily Pesicka, by Ella Nightengale-Luhan

02.20.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/20/extreme-weather/

Image credit: US Army (The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement.)

Introduction

Over the past two decades, extreme weather events have occurred with increasing frequency, severity, and geographic reach. Globally, the period from roughly 2005 to 2025 has been marked by a notable escalation in high-impact hazards—ranging from catastrophic hurricanes and inland flooding to large-scale wildfires, prolonged drought, and compounding heat extremes. These events have been amplified by broader climatological shifts that are reshaping baseline environmental conditions, increasing the likelihood that once-rare disruptions now pose chronic and systemic risks. As these hazards accelerate, their consequences extend well beyond civilian communities and economic infrastructure, directly affecting institutions central to national security.

US military installations—whether large coastal hubs, inland training ranges, logistics nodes, or forward-operating bases—function as essential national infrastructure. They host critical assets, serve as staging areas for operations, enable global force projection, and support the daily readiness of service members. Because these installations often sit in regions of strategic value that are also highly exposed to environmental hazards—coastal zones, river basins, arid regions, and fire-prone landscapes—they face an increasingly complex risk environment. Damage to installation infrastructure, disruptions to training and operations, and stress on energy and water systems can quickly cascade into broader challenges for mission assurance and force readiness.

The strategic relevance of these extreme weather event disruptions is profound. Extreme weather events have repeatedly curtailed or delayed operational activities, reduced training availability, and forced the relocation of high-value assets. They have strained already-pressured maintenance and modernization budgets, compromised installation energy resilience, and placed additional burdens on the military and surrounding communities during recovery. More fundamentally, these disruptions threaten the Department of Defense’s (DoD) capability to maintain a stable, ready, and forward-leaning posture amid evolving geopolitical competition.

This article examines major extreme weather events affecting US military installations from approximately 2005 to 2025 and evaluates their physical, operational, and strategic impacts. It assesses how hurricanes, floods, wildfires, heat extremes, and other hazards have shaped installation vulnerability and highlights recurring patterns across diverse geographic regions and service branches. The article concludes by identifying core lessons for future planning and adaptation—arguing that understanding these events is essential not only to protect physical infrastructure but also to sustain long-term readiness and national security in an era of accelerating environmental change.

Background: Extreme Weather Trends and Military Vulnerability

The past two decades have produced clear evidence that extreme weather hazards in the United States are intensifying in both frequency and severity. Hurricanes have become more destructive, with slower-moving, rainfall-heavy storms increasing the likelihood of catastrophic flooding along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Inland regions have experienced recurrent riverine flooding driven by extreme precipitation and saturated watersheds. At the same time, the western United States has endured unprecedented wildfire seasons fueled by prolonged drought, elevated temperatures, and shifting vegetation regimes. Concurrently, persistent heat waves across the southern and central states have created acute risks to personnel, training availability, and installation energy demand. These trends collectively reflect a broader climatological shift: climatological change is amplifying hazard intensity, extending hazard seasons, and increasing the probability of multiple hazards occurring simultaneously or sequentially.

Military installations are deeply embedded within these evolving environmental conditions. Many of the largest and most strategically important US bases are located along coastlines, river deltas, and other high-risk zones. Naval Station Norfolk, Tyndall Air Force Base, Camp Pendleton, and Offutt Air Force Base exemplify the geographic exposure that characterizes the US military basing footprint. Installations in the Southeast face recurrent tropical storm activity and coastal flooding; bases in the West confront wildfire encroachment and drought-driven water scarcity; and northern installations contend with extreme cold events and rapid freeze–thaw cycles. As environmental hazards shift and intensify, the environmental envelope within which installations operate is becoming less predictable and more disruptive.

These pressures intersect with long-standing challenges in military infrastructure management. Much of the DoD’s built environment is decades old, with large portions suffering from deferred maintenance that has reduced structural resilience and increased vulnerability to climate stresses. Hangars, piers, housing, power systems, and aging utilities are often ill-suited to withstand repeated flooding, extreme heat, or wildfire threats. Moreover, the concentration of critical assets—shipyards, aviation hubs, logistics depots, and command-and-control facilities—within a limited number of coastal or regionally clustered installations compounds risk. Damage or downtime at a single installation can disrupt continuity of operations across entire mission sets, highlighting the essential relationship between infrastructure resilience and military readiness.

Over the past decade, the DoD has begun to formalize its approach to environmental risk. Key directives—from early climate adaptation guidance in 2014, to the 2019 and 2021 climate reports, to the Climate Adaptation Plan released in 2021 and updated through 2024—have emphasized the need to integrate environmental considerations into installation planning, acquisitions, and mission assurance frameworks. The military services have likewise advanced service-specific resilience strategies, such as the Navy’s Climate Action efforts, the Army’s Installation Energy and Water Plans, and the Air Force’s focus on resilient energy and infrastructure modernization. Despite these initiatives, external assessments, particularly from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), continue to document persistent maintenance backlogs, inconsistent resilience planning, and vulnerabilities across both shipyards and fixed installations. These findings emphasize that while policy direction has strengthened, implementation remains uneven, and vulnerabilities and risks endure.

Together, the scientific trends, infrastructure challenges, and policy developments outline a clear framework: US military installations are operating in an increasingly hazardous environment where environmental extremes interact with aging infrastructure and mission-critical demands. Understanding this context is essential for interpreting the impacts of region-specific extreme weather events and for developing a forward-leaning resilience strategy capable of sustaining military readiness in a rapid environmental change.

Overview of Major Extreme Weather Events Affecting Installations

This section surveys the major categories of extreme weather events that have most directly disrupted US military installations in recent decades, highlighting recurring patterns of exposure, vulnerability, and operational impact. Collectively, these cases demonstrate that extreme weather is a systemic challenge shaping installation resilience and military readiness.

Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

Hurricanes represent some of the most acute threats to military installations, given the concentration of major bases along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 marked an early inflection point, severely affecting naval installations across the Gulf Coast and disrupting port operations, housing, and maintenance facilities. Katrina’s widespread destruction highlighted the cascading consequences of coastal vulnerability, including prolonged regional recovery and the diversion of military resources toward humanitarian response.

Hurricane Sandy in 2012 introduced a new risk profile for installations in the Northeast. Naval Station New York and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst experienced significant flooding, power loss, and transportation disruptions. Sandy highlighted the susceptibility of densely populated coastal zones—where military and civilian infrastructure are deeply intertwined—to both storm surge and large-scale energy system failures.

The 2017 hurricane season—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—further demonstrated the breadth of military exposure. Harvey overwhelmed installations across Texas with record-breaking rainfall, Irma disrupted operations throughout Florida and the Southeast, and Maria devastated military facilities in Puerto Rico, generating long-term challenges to local readiness and energy resilience. In 2018, Hurricane Michael caused some of the most concentrated installation-specific damage in recent history when it struck Tyndall Air Force Base as a Category 5 storm, destroying much of the installation’s built environment and dispersing aircraft and personnel. Collectively, these events revealed how tropical systems can impose multibillion-dollar shocks on single installations while simultaneously affecting broad swaths of the military basing network.

Wildfires

In the western United States, wildfire seasons from 2017 to 2021 brought repeated and severe disruptions to operations at several major installations. Camp Pendleton and Vandenberg Space Force Base experienced direct fire encroachment that destroyed training infrastructure, required evacuations, and halted range operations. Beyond immediate physical damage, prolonged smoke exposure created hazardous air quality conditions that canceled training, degraded personnel health, and impaired visibility for flight operations. These wildfire impacts illustrate how environmentally driven shifts in temperature, fuel loads, and precipitation have expanded the spatial reach and operational implications of fire hazards for military missions.

Flooding (Non-Hurricane)

Extreme inland flooding has also emerged as a significant threat. In 2019, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska suffered one of the most severe non-coastal flooding events in DoD history when swollen rivers and levee failures inundated nearly one-third of the installation. The flooding damaged command facilities, airfields, and support infrastructure, demonstrating that major disruptions are not limited to coastal bases. Similarly, chronic tidal flooding at Naval Station Norfolk and Joint Base Langley–Eustis has become a recurring issue, affecting access roads, piers, and stormwater systems. These “nuisance” flooding events illustrate how sea-level rise interacts with daily operations, creating cumulative impacts even in the absence of significant storms.

Heat Waves and Drought

Heat extremes and water scarcity pose persistent challenges to installations across the Southwest. Prolonged heat waves have triggered training restrictions at Army bases such as Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, and Fort Huachuca, reducing available training hours and increasing heat-related health risks for personnel. Concurrent drought conditions have strained water availability at installations like Fort Irwin, where resource limitations complicate both daily operations and long-term planning. These slow-onset hazards demonstrate how environmental stress can accumulate over time, reducing installation resilience and operational flexibility.

Severe Storms, Tornadoes, and Other Hazards

Beyond the more widely recognized environmental hazards, severe storms and cold weather events have also disrupted installations. Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany has suffered repeated tornado damage, affecting facilities and delaying logistics operations. In northern states, Arctic cold snaps have stressed energy systems, increased heating demand, and complicated maintenance operations. These events highlight the diversity of hazards that installations face, and the importance of preparing for both acute, high-impact events and chronic stressors that can degrade readiness over time.

Case Studies

This section examines four case studies that illustrate how extreme weather hazards—both acute and chronic—disrupt military installations, degrade readiness, and impose long-term resilience challenges. Together, these cases show that extreme weather is a structural factor shaping installation resilience and military effectiveness.

Case Study 1: Hurricane Michael and Tyndall Air Force Base (2018)

Aircraft hangars lay scattered in pieces across the flight line at Tyndall Air Force Base after Hurricane Michael made landfall on Oct. 10, 2018 (Image Credit: Staff Sgt. Alexander C. Henninger/US Air Force)

Hurricane Michael’s landfall on 10 October 2018 remains one of the most consequential extreme weather events to strike a US military installation. Making landfall as a Category 5 hurricane—the first such storm to impact the Florida Panhandle—Michael exhibited sustained winds exceeding 155 mph, rapid intensification in the 24 hours prior to landfall, and a destructive combination of storm surge and wind-driven debris. The storm’s unusual intensity, tightly packed core, and trajectory placed Tyndall Air Force Base directly in its path, leaving the installation exposed to forces far exceeding the design standards applied when much of the base infrastructure was constructed in 1941.

Tyndall’s exposure to the storm’s eyewall resulted in catastrophic damage. Post-event assessments estimated that nearly 60 percent of the installation’s buildings were severely damaged or entirely destroyed, including hangars, dormitories, administrative buildings, and key support facilities. Maintenance structures designed to house advanced fighter aircraft were torn apart, energy and water systems failed under the combined pressure of flooding and wind damage, and residential areas across the base were rendered uninhabitable. Infrastructure that was not physically destroyed was often structurally compromised, requiring extensive remediation before it could be returned to service.

The operational implications were immediate. Tyndall served as a critical home for a substantial portion of the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor fleet, a sophisticated and limited asset central to US air dominance. Although a portion of the fleet was evacuated ahead of the storm, aircraft that remained on-site were damaged, and the destruction of maintenance and support facilities forced the rapid displacement of the entire F-22 mission to other installations. This redistribution stressed receiving bases, complicated maintenance schedules, and temporarily reduced the fleet’s operational flexibility. The disruption also revealed how concentrated basing of high-value assets can amplify vulnerability when exposed to low-probability, high-impact hazards.

The long-term recovery challenges at Tyndall have been equally significant. Rebuilding the installation has required one of the most ambitious reconstruction efforts in recent Air Force history, with cost estimates surpassing $5 billion. The project has involved not only repairing or replacing damaged structures, but fundamentally rethinking the installation’s footprint, design, and resilience posture. This effort has included elevating facilities, modernizing utilities, integrating passive survivability measures, and redesigning mission areas to reduce single-point failures. The scale and duration of the reconstruction underscore the reality that extreme weather events can generate decade-long financial and operational burdens, even when anticipated and managed effectively.

Tyndall’s experience provides several key lessons for enhancing airbase resilience. First, the storm demonstrated the vulnerability of legacy infrastructure built to outdated design standards that do not reflect modern climatological baselines. Second, the F-22 mission’s displacement highlighted the importance of distributed basing concepts and cross-installation redundancy for continuity of operations. Third, the reconstruction effort illustrated the value of integrating environmental-driven projections into installation planning and military construction, rather than applying minimal compliance metrics. Ultimately, Tyndall serves as a case study in the operational, financial, and strategic costs of insufficient resilience in a rapidly changing hazard environment.

Case Study 2: Offutt Air Force Base Flooding (2019)

Offutt Air Force Base – One-third of the installation was flooded, and the boom was a precautionary measure for possible fuel leaks (Image Credit: US Air Force/Delanie Stafford)

In March 2019, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska experienced one of the most severe non-coastal flooding events ever recorded at a US military installation. A combination of extreme precipitation, rapid snowmelt, frozen ground, and upstream ice jams along the Missouri River produced historic water levels that overtopped levees and breached flood defenses surrounding the installation. The resulting inundation occurred quickly, leaving little time for protective actions and overwhelming drainage systems not designed for such extreme hydrological conditions.

As floodwaters spread across the installation, roughly one-third of the base was submerged under several feet of water. The inundation severely damaged buildings, roadways, aircraft maintenance facilities, and portions of the airfield. Particularly noteworthy were the impacts on facilities supporting US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), whose global mission makes installation resilience essential to national security. STRATCOM’s headquarters had recently transitioned to a new building located on higher ground. Still, numerous support and administrative structures, IT systems, and mission support facilities remained within the floodplain and sustained substantial damage. The event highlighted the strategic consequences of locating critical command-and-control support functions in areas exposed to intensifying hydrological hazards driven by exogenous change.

The Offutt flood also provided key lessons in engineering and hydrology. Post-event analyses identified that the levee systems protecting the base were designed for historical flood conditions that no longer reflect current or projected climate realities. The scale of the 2019 flood demonstrated that planning assumptions based on 20th-century hydrological norms underestimate contemporary risk, particularly in regions experiencing more volatile precipitation patterns. The event catalyzed a reassessment of local flood protection measures, leading to new investments in levee improvements, updated flood maps, and hardened infrastructure for essential services.

In the aftermath, the Air Force initiated a multi-year effort to relocate vulnerable facilities to higher elevations and reconfigure installation layout to minimize flood-exposed concentrations of mission-critical assets. Similar to the lessons at Tyndall, Offutt’s experience highlighted the importance of integrating environmental projections into master planning, reducing dependency on at-risk structures, and developing capabilities to maintain continuity of operations even during prolonged recovery periods.

Case Study 3: Wildfires and Threats to Western Installations (2016–2025)

The Las Pulgas Fire burns behind the Marine Corps Air Station at Camp Pendleton, Calif., 16 May, 2014. The Las Pulgas Wildfire on Camp Pendleton has burned more than 15,000 acres and is the largest fire in San Diego County history (Image Credit: US Marine Corps/Cpl. Ethan Johnson)

From 2017 to 2021, western US military installations faced a dramatic escalation in wildfire activity, driven by prolonged drought, extreme heat, and shifting vegetation patterns across California and the broader region. Vandenberg Space Force Base (formerly Vandenberg Air Force Base) and Camp Pendleton, two of the military’s most significant West Coast installations, experienced repeated fire encroachment that threatened facilities, training ranges, launch infrastructure, and personnel safety.

At Vandenberg, wildfires in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2025 burned thousands of acres on or adjacent to the installation, in some cases disrupting scheduled space launches and damaging training infrastructure. Camp Pendleton, situated in one of the most fire-prone regions of California, faced numerous fires in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 that forced partial evacuations, threatened housing areas, and destroyed or degraded range facilities essential to Marine Corps training. In several instances, flames approached or crossed installation boundaries faster than anticipated, with wind-driven fire behavior complicating suppression operations and overwhelming existing firebreaks.

These wildfire events had serious operational consequences. Evacuations reduced personnel availability and forced pauses in training cycles, while smoke and poor air quality created hazardous conditions for outdoor training, aviation operations, and routine maintenance. Across multiple seasons, installations lost dozens of training days due to unsafe conditions, reducing the predictability of training schedules and increasing pressure on units to meet readiness requirements in compressed timeframes. The health risks posed by prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke—ranging from respiratory irritation to more serious long-term impacts—added further burdens to installation medical systems and personnel welfare.

Infrastructure losses further complicated operations. Fires damaged communication lines, range targets, utilities, and perimeter fencing, requiring repairs that diverted funding and personnel from other mission priorities. At both Vandenberg and Camp Pendleton, firefighting coordination presented significant challenges. Installations rely on a combination of military, local, state, and federal firefighting assets, and large wildfires often strain these joint capabilities. Differing organizational timelines, communications protocols, and resource needs occasionally introduced friction into multi-agency fire responses. These coordination challenges highlight the importance of well-developed interagency planning and joint incident command structures, especially in regions where military and civilian lands interface closely.

The broader implications for readiness and range management are substantial. Wildfires have forced the services to reconsider vegetation management practices, rethink the placement of critical infrastructure, and invest in early detection and rapid response capabilities. They have also revealed the limitations of relying on historical fire patterns in regions experiencing rapid ecological change. For installations whose training missions depend on large, contiguous tracts of land—as is the case for the Marine Corps and the Space Force—fire-driven landscape transformation threatens the long-term realism and availability of training. Ultimately, the wildfire experience from 2017 to 2021 highlights that western installations face not just episodic threats, but a shifting environmental baseline that demands sustained, adaptive resilience planning.

Cross-Cutting Impacts on Military Readiness and Operations

Extreme weather events do not affect military installations as isolated incidents; rather, they generate cascading effects that reverberate across infrastructure, readiness, mission assurance, and the well-being of the force and their families. The past two decades demonstrate that hazards as varied as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat extremes consistently degrade the DoD’s ability to maintain operational continuity and strategic responsiveness.

Physical Infrastructure Damage

The most immediate and visible cross-cutting impact is the degradation of critical infrastructure. Hurricanes and storm surge have destroyed or severely damaged hangars, aircraft shelters, maintenance depots, and barracks, while inundation has compromised runways, electrical substations, and fuel distribution systems. Naval shipyards and waterfront facilities face accelerated corrosion, chronic flooding, and disruptions to dry-dock operations. Each event compounds long-standing maintenance backlogs, leaving installations more vulnerable to subsequent hazards.

Operational Readiness

Extreme weather routinely interrupts training, force generation, and deployment cycles. Live-fire exercises are canceled due to wildfire risk or heat stress thresholds; aircraft and ground vehicles must be relocated ahead of storms; and flooded ranges or smoke-choked airfields delay training pipelines. These disruptions cascade into reduced sortie rates, diminished unit preparedness, and compressed training timelines once normal operations resume. Weather-driven logistical delays—ranging from compromised road access to port closures—further impede sustainment operations and mobility.

Mission Assurance and Strategic Concerns

When critical nodes are disrupted, mission assurance is jeopardized. The displacement of high-value assets, such as the F-22 fleet after Hurricane Michael or the temporary loss of STRATCOM support facilities at Offutt AFB, illustrates how environmental hazards pose strategic-level risks. Installation downtime constrains the United States’ ability to project power, maintain forward presence, or surge forces during contingency operations. For coastal and Arctic installations, recurrent flooding and extreme cold events challenge the reliability of communication systems, energy supply, and command-and-control networks essential to national security missions.

Financial Costs

The financial burden of recovery and reconstruction is substantial. Environmental disasters have generated tens of billions of dollars in repair costs, often requiring multi-year appropriations and diverting funds from modernization priorities. For services already facing significant deferred maintenance, each disaster tightens fiscal constraints and delays needed upgrades across the installation portfolio. These expenditures highlight the escalating economic risks associated with environmental vulnerabilities and military installations.

Human Factors

Finally, extreme weather imposes significant human costs on service members and their families. Housing shortages following hurricanes or wildfires displace families for months, while repeated crises contribute to fatigue, stress, and disruptions to childcare and schooling. Personnel often balance recovery duties with operational requirements, which increases burnout and compounds manning challenges. These human-factor stresses directly affect retention, morale, and the force’s overall resilience.

Conclusion

Over the past 15–20 years, extreme weather events have revealed unmistakable patterns in how environmental hazards affect US military installations and, by extension, national security. These events demonstrate that extreme weather is neither isolated nor anomalous; it forms a persistent backdrop against which the military must sustain readiness. The ability to project power and maintain deterrence depends not only on weapons systems and trained personnel but also on installations that can withstand, absorb, and rapidly recover from environmental shocks. Ensuring the resilience of installations is therefore a national security imperative, central to the nation’s ability to deter adversaries, respond to crises, and maintain global stability.

Meeting this challenge will require moving beyond reactive recovery toward proactive, risk-informed resilience planning. This includes systematically integrating extreme weather risk into installation master planning, infrastructure investment decisions, and mission assurance assessments. Hardening critical infrastructure—such as energy, water, transportation, and communications systems—must be prioritized based on mission criticality and exposure, with redundancy and rapid restoration capabilities embedded by design. Such efforts should be treated not as discretionary initiatives, but as core readiness investments that reduce operational risk and long-term costs.

Equally important is the institutionalization of resilience across governance, budgeting, and acquisition processes. Ensuring installation resilience will require greater transparency and accountability across the DoD, sustained funding mechanisms beyond post-disaster supplemental appropriations, and acquisition pathways that enable adaptive, forward-looking infrastructure solutions. Cross-service coordination and partnerships with state, local, and private-sector stakeholders can further enhance resilience, particularly where installations are embedded in shared civilian infrastructure systems vulnerable to the same extreme weather hazards.

Finally, resilience must be understood as a dynamic capability rather than a static end state. As hazard profiles continue to evolve, so too must the assumptions underlying installation design, risk tolerance, and operational planning. Developing a workforce capable of anticipating, preparing for, and learning from extreme weather disruptions—and institutionalizing lessons learned from past events—will be critical to sustaining readiness. In doing so, the Department of Defense can better ensure that its installations remain reliable platforms for power projection and crisis response despite an increasingly volatile operating environment.

The authors are aware that, in accordance with Executive Order 14347, the Department of Defense has administratively changed its name to the Department of War. The change has not been codified, and the US Code and Department policies and directives still use the official name Department of Defense. This publication will use Department of War generally but use Department of Defense for legal and policy documents that have not undergone this administrative change.

Tags: base security, Extreme weather, National Secuity

About The Authors

Dr. Emily Pesicka
Dr. Emily Pesicka is a Research Associate in the Energy Academic Group at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Before her current role, Dr Pesicka held a post-doctoral fellowship with the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) at the Naval Postgraduate School from 2021-2025, working across disciplinary boundaries, advancing research for the Department of Defense and the Department of the Navy. Her research areas include energy and resilience, surprise theory, extreme weather events relating to the U.S. military, critical infrastructure systems, and research surrounding military and civilian communities. Dr. Pesicka’s research within EAG focuses on energy security, national security, installation resilience, and training and education.
Email: emily.pesicka@nps.edu
View all posts
Ella Nightengale-Luhan
Ms. Ella Nightengale-Luhan is an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Boulder with an expected graduation date in May, 2027. She currently studies Atmospheric and Oceanic Science with a minor in Writing and Public Engagement and hopes to pursue a career in environmental law. She is an intern through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) within the Energy Academic Group (EAG) at the Naval Postgraduate School, conducting legal analysis and energy research. Her research interests include legal environmental analysis, disaster response, and environmental impacts of Naval operations. Within EAG, she focuses on energy security and resilience, international law, and extreme weather events on installations.

14. Washington offers US$200 million to boost American smartphone industry in Indo-Pacific

Summary:

The report says the State Department will offer up to $200 million under its “Edge AI Package” to help mobile operators and phone vendors deploy low-cost smartphones in the Asia-Indo-Pacific that run “trusted” American operating systems such as Android and iOS. The effort sits inside the “Pax Silica” initiative, launched in December, aimed at building a U.S.-led tech ecosystem across critical minerals, energy, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure to reduce “coercive dependencies” and strengthen AI supply-chain resilience. Officials said subsidies should lower handset prices to compete with “untrusted” incumbents, amid concern over China’s scale advantage and Chinese brands’ large overseas market share; India is said to have joined the framework.

Comment: I must have missed this reporting in major US media outlets. This is industrial policy by another name. Subsidy becomes strategy in the Asia-Indo-Pacific. The real fight is the ecosystem. Phones are the on-ramp to data, apps, and AI dependence. Price is the weapon China wields. Washington is trying to blunt it with cash and partners.

If Chinese scale enables underpriced hardware abroad, can $200 million shift market share meaningfully, and in which partner countries first?

If Pax Silica spans minerals, energy, semiconductors, and devices, how does the United States synchronize these nodes so handset subsidies reinforce the broader supply-chain objective?

Washington offers US$200 million to boost American smartphone industry in Indo-Pacific

State Department subsidies for US companies to shore up US artificial intelligence supply chain in region and counter China’s dominance

Xinmei Shenin Washington

Published: 7:23am, 20 Feb 2026Updated: 7:24am, 20 Feb 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/us/economy-trade-business/article/3344055/washington-offers-us200-million-boost-american-smartphone-industry-indo-pacific?utm

Xinmei Shenin Washington

Published: 7:23am, 20 Feb 2026Updated: 7:24am, 20 Feb 2026

The US State Department will subsidise companies to roll out cheap smartphones running American software in the Indo-Pacific region, part of its “Pax Silica” initiative that seeks to shore up the resilience of the US artificial intelligence supply chain and win the AI race with China.

The US has launched the Edge AI Package, which provides up to US$200 million of funding for mobile network operators and smartphone vendors to deploy “low-cost, high-performance” handsets in some partner nations in the Indo-Pacific, the Department of State said on Thursday.

These smartphones should run on “trusted” American mobile operating systems (OS), such as Android and iOS, and fully support the US software and AI ecosystem, the State Department said.

Companies interested in joining the programme should use US funding to lower the retail price of their handsets in Indo-Pacific countries “to a competitive level with untrusted market incumbents”, it said.

The initiative would “ensure that the digital infrastructure of our partners remains secure, autonomous, and free from coercion”, according to the State Department.

China creates analogue AI chip said to be 1,000 times faster than Nvidia GPU

“This programme is going to make millions of smartphones more competitive vis-a-vis subsidised, low-cost competitors,” Jacob Helberg, the State Department’s Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, said in a CNBC interview on Thursday.

“And ultimately, what that means is that it’s going to help promote connectivity and opportunity for the recipients, while also promoting the American OS and application ecosystem,” he said.

While the Edge AI Package did not explicitly name China, the programme came amid an intensifying artificial intelligence race with China and as the US ramps up its efforts to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities.

Concerns over China’s dominance in critical minerals have heightened after Beijing restricted rare-earth exports to the US last year in response to Washington’s trade curbs.

The Pax Silica initiative, launched in December, aimed to build a US-led technology ecosystem spanning critical minerals, energy, semiconductors and other AI infrastructure that’s secure from “coercive dependencies”.

Participating countries include Australia, Greece, Israel, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Britain, with non-signatory participants including Canada, the European Union, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Helberg said on Wednesday that India has joined the framework.

“China has 1.4 billion internal users that allow its own champions like Huawei and [Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation] to amortise those [research and development] costs across a massive domestic base before they even export a single unit,” Helberg said. “And so ultimately, that gives them a built-in cost advantage due to pure economies of scale, allowing them to dump a lot of underpriced hardware.”

Partnering with India, the only nation that surpasses China’s demographic scale, helps offset China’s price advantage, he said, but added that Pax Silica is “not really about China”, but about securing US supply chains.

Chinese smartphone brands have aggressively expanded their overseas footprints as the domestic market has matured. By the first half of 2025, Chinese vendors had captured 52 per cent of the overseas market, increasing from just 11 per cent in 2013, research firm Omdia said in October.

The companies most likely to feel pressure from the US Edge AI Package include Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, which dominate affordable smartphone segments across parts of Asia, said Lizzi Lee, Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.

But whether the initiative will successfully challenge Chinese vendors’ momentum remains to be seen, according to Lee.

“Still, the open question is whether these subsidised alternatives can realistically match the pricing, scale and rapid innovation that Chinese brands currently deliver,” she said.

Xinmei Shen

Xinmei Shen joined the Post in 2017 and is a technology reporter. She covers content, entertainment, social media and internet culture. Previously, she was with the Post’s tech news site, Abacus. Before that, she was a reporting intern at The Information whilst studying at the

15. Hegseth’s Firing Campaign Reaches Down Into the Ranks

Summary:

The article argues SECDEF/WAR Pete Hegseth’s purge campaign has expanded beyond senior generals into mid-level ranks, highlighted by the ouster of Army Col. Dave Butler, a prominent public-affairs leader and former adviser to Gen. Mark Milley. Butler was valued by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, but Hegseth opposed him, largely due to Butler’s association with Milley and Hegseth’s hostility toward Pentagon public affairs. The piece says Hegseth has fired or sidelined many senior officers for perceived disloyalty, diversity ties, or links to administration adversaries, and that his interference delayed broader promotion packages. It warns this micromanagement risks politicizing the force and reshaping leadership for years.

Comment: This is still so troubling. This is not normal no matter how people try to rationalize this. Can we not see the parallels with other countries? Hegseth is not just pruning the top. He is planting fear down the chain. Public affairs is treated as a battlefield. Control the narrative, control the institution. When promotions stall over loyalty signals, readiness pays the hidden cost.

If civilian leadership reaches into colonel-level careers, where is the line between oversight and politicized force-shaping?

If association with Milley becomes disqualifying, what does that do to candid advice and professional dissent inside the Pentagon?

If controlling Pentagon PR is a priority, how does that affect transparency, trust with the press, and public confidence in the military?

Hegseth’s Firing Campaign Reaches Down Into the Ranks

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan · February 18, 2026

The ouster of the spokesperson Dave Butler, a colonel, shows that the defense secretary’s culling is far from over.

By Nancy A. Youssef and Missy Ryan

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/02/hegseth-pentagon-butler-driscoll/686028/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Pentagon meeting last year, passed a note to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll about one of Driscoll’s top aides, asking, in effect: Why hasn’t this guy been fired yet?

The aide, Colonel Dave Butler, a former infantry officer, is a longtime leader in Army public affairs (not a specialty Hegseth embraces) who worked closely with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley (whom Hegseth despises). On Thursday, Hegseth finally got his way: Butler was pushed out.

The issue was not that Butler was incompetent in his job; quite the opposite. Both Driscoll and the Army’s chief of staff, General Randy George, are said to have valued his advice, experience, and the reforms that he initiated—and it was their endorsement, when combined with Butler’s previous assignment with Milley, that ruined his chance of making the rank of general.

Defense secretaries don’t usually get involved in decisions about the careers of colonels and other mid-level commanders, given that the lead civilian in the Pentagon is supposed to oversee war planning, a department of 3 million people, and America’s nuclear arsenal. Ever since the World War I era, when the United States established a large-scale standing force, individual branches have typically had a say in promotions and other personnel decisions. These choices are supposed to be based on merit.

Hegseth, more than any other of his predecessors, has weighed in on the makeup of the military’s top leaders. He has fired or sidelined dozens of three- and four-star officers, in many cases without any clear reason other than their perceived disloyalty to Hegseth’s beliefs, alleged support for diversity programs, or coziness with people regarded as foes of the administration.

With Butler’s removal, Hegseth has displayed a willingness to reach further down in the ranks—there are roughly 4,000 colonels in the Army alone—and demonstrated that, one year after his appointment, he still doesn’t feel that his campaign of purges has gone far enough.

“The secretary of defense is spending his time doing things that those well below his pay grade should be doing,” Kori Schake, who directs foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute and released a book last year about civil-military relations, told us. “And he is not doing the things that only the secretary of defense can do.”

Hegseth’s office referred our questions to the Army. The spokesperson Cynthia Smith said in an email that Butler would retire: “His integral role in the Army’s transformation efforts will be missed.”

Butler, who declined to comment, wasn’t a typical colonel. Over the past dozen years, he emerged as a powerful force within the Army as an adviser to the top officers, including Milley, who clashed repeatedly with Trump, particularly after the summer of 2020, when Milley had said that he regretted walking alongside Trump after federal forces cleared Lafayette Square of protesters. Before that, Butler worked under the now-retired General Austin “Scott” Miller, the head of Joint Special Operations Command and a onetime chief of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. That put Butler in the room for major decisions both for the Army—he helped organize the Army’s 250th-anniversary parade in Washington, D.C., in June—and for U.S. defense policy more broadly.

More recently, Butler served as a top adviser to Driscoll and George, and he was understood to be highly valued by both men. But Butler was also divisive, in part because of his influence over so many parts of the military—and the public-affairs community.

Hegseth and Driscoll have had a tense year. Driscoll, a confidant of Vice President Vance, has emerged as a rival at the Pentagon to the former Fox News host. Unlike Hegseth—who arrived in his position following a bruising confirmation process that surfaced allegations of mismanagement, heavy drinking, and sexual assault—Driscoll cuts a clean-living profile, has won allies in Congress with his more genial demeanor, and at times has outshone his boss.

While Hegseth has focused on internal purges and the campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, Driscoll’s star has risen with his participation in U.S. efforts to mediate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Driscoll was in Geneva today on that assignment, working with two of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. (Driscoll couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.)

Read: Pete Hegseth is the Pentagon’s holy warrior

After last year’s meeting where Hegseth questioned Driscoll about Butler, both Driscoll and George kept Butler in their inner circle. For the Army, it was not just about protecting Butler’s place. It was also about standing up for Driscoll’s and George’s roles in deciding who leads their force.

Top Army officials, over Hegseth’s objections, decided to keep Butler in the promotion queue during the past year. But Hegseth’s stonewalling of Butler’s advancement was one reason a larger group of proposed promotions, which needed sign-off from Pentagon leadership before being sent to the White House, was delayed for months, defense officials told us. was one of the reasons for the delay of a larger group of proposed promotions that needed sign-off from Pentagon leadership before being sent to the White House, defense officials told us. Some Army officials had hoped that the extra time would ultimately benefit Butler. But after another meeting between Hegseth and Driscoll on Thursday, Driscoll followed Hegseth’s order and removed Butler. “The Army delayed this inevitable decision and in the end Hegseth said, ‘Enough’s enough,’” one defense official told us.

Butler’s ouster wasn’t primarily a result of Hegseth’s rivalry with Driscoll, according to people familiar with the situation. Rather, they said, it stemmed more from Hegseth’s antipathy toward military officials closely associated with Milley. Hegseth and Trump have both accused Milley of treason, and Trump once suggested that Milley should be executed. One of Hegseth’s first actions after taking office was removing Milley’s official portrait from its place in a Pentagon hallway. Earlier this month, Hegseth replaced General James Mingus, the Army’s widely respected second in command who also had worked on the Joint Staff under Milley. Hegseth installed General Christopher LaNeve, one of his own aides, in the post. LaNeve supported the decision to remove Butler, a former defense official told us.

Hegseth and his staff have shown a particular interest in Pentagon PR. An Air Force colonel who served as spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Dan Caine was removed over a years-old social-media post asking for better support for Afghans as U.S. forces withdrew. Hegseth also censured Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, after the retired Navy captain published a video urging troops to refuse unlawful orders. And Hegseth implemented a rule that effectively required reporters to seek Pentagon approval before publishing stories or they would risk losing their press accreditation, leading hundreds of journalists to walk out in the fall.

Read: The Mark Kelly case is bigger than it seems

News of Butler’s ouster appeared to have the effect that Hegseth desired as word spread across the military’s public-affairs community. Officials told us that they feared angering Hegseth and also saw his interference as a direct contradiction of what the military teaches its commanders: that strong leaders focus on the job the military needs them to do, not on anyone else’s role.

“Hegseth’s decision speaks to a broader effort to shape the long-term trajectory of the military,” one former defense official told us. “By getting involved at the colonel rank, Hegseth could reshape the military three, five, seven, even 10 years down the road.”

Such micromanaging in the officer ranks because of political or personal animus risks further polarizing the military and undermining its status as one of America’s final refuges from hyper-partisanship.

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan · February 18, 2026

16. The Institutional Battlefield: Why Irregular Warfare Must Contemplate Path Dependence

Summary:

Ian Murphy argues irregular warfare thinking fixates on tactics and misses the institutional battlefield. Using Russia’s occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk, he shows how Moscow weaponizes governance, currency, telecoms, schooling, and citizenship to lock in a new political and social equilibrium. Forced passportization, Russified curricula, and economic integration are framed as deliberate instruments of irregular warfare, not side effects of occupation. Drawing on “path dependence” from development economics, he contends these institutional shocks create multiple equilibria where reversal becomes unlikely even if Ukraine retakes territory. The result is a durable schism, produced by bureaucracy as much as firepower.

Comment: The decisive contest is over legitimacy and habit, not terrain. Institutional capture can outlast battlefield outcomes, and it can make “liberation” administratively hollow. Irregular warfare doctrine that ignores institutions will misread end states and underestimate time horizons.

We need an American Way of Irregular Warfare and an American Way of Political Warfare.

The American Way of Irregular War

An Analytical Memoir

Charles T. Cleveland, Daniel Egel

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA301-1.html

An American Way of Political Warfare

Charles T. Cleveland, Ryan C. Crocker, Daniel Egel, Andrew Liepman, David Maxwell

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE300/PE304/RAND_PE304.pdf

Commentary

The Institutional Battlefield: Why Irregular Warfare Must Contemplate Path Dependence

This commentary argues that the field of irregular warfare must expand its focus beyond operational and tactical dimensions to include the institutional battlefield. The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war serves as a case study in which Russia has systematically imposed new governance, economic, and educational institutions in the occupied Donbas region. This institutional imposition is not a byproduct of occupation, but a calculated strategy designed to create a new long-term reality by permanently altering the adversary’s political and social equilibrium. Drawing on the concept of path dependence from economic development, this analysis demonstrates how deliberate institutional changes—such as forced passportization and Russification—produce a new equilibrium from which there is no return, regardless of the military outcome of the war. This commentary urges the irregular warfare community to integrate the study of institutional path dependence into its analysis to better understand how states use institutions as instruments of irregular warfare in modern conflict.

Ian Murphy

Published

February 9, 2026

Download PDF Version

Ian Murphy, SecuriFense Inc., Norfolk, Virginia, USA

A Conceptual Blind Spot: Institutions in Irregular Warfare

https://interpopulum.org/the-institutional-battlefield-why-irregular-warfare-must-contemplate-path-dependence/

Discourse on irregular warfare often focuses on its operational and tactical dimensions—guerrilla tactics, insurgency and counterinsurgency, plausible deniability, and even the will to fight. This is understandable, as these aspects have defined much of the discourse since the days of Mao and T. E. Lawrence. However, this focus has created a conceptual blind spot: the role of institutions in long-term irregular conflicts. This article argues that institutions are not merely an afterthought in irregular warfare but a fundamental domain of it, serving as a battlefield in their own right. From governance to education, economic systems, and infrastructure, the deliberate manipulation and imposition of new institutions can serve as a tool states use to alter an adversary’s political and social equilibrium, creating new realities that persist long after kinetic fighting has ceased. The field of irregular warfare, therefore, would benefit from a more systematic study of how states shape societies and warfare through institutions and their long-term, path-dependent effects.

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war offers a contemporary case study of institutions being used as a method of irregular warfare. While the world’s attention has been captivated by shifting front lines and the introduction of new technologies and tactics, a subtler—yet perhaps more permanent—struggle has been waged in the Russian-occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Here, Russia has systematically imposed new governance structures, currency, educational curricula, and citizenship requirements. This institutional imposition is not a random byproduct of occupation; it is a calculated form of irregular warfare designed to sever these regions from Ukraine and absorb them into a Russian sphere of control. Even in a scenario where Ukraine reclaims military control of these regions, it will face long-term, potentially irreversible consequences stemming from these institutions. Regardless of military victory, Ukraine will have to confront the enduring outcomes of an irregular war fought not with bullets, but with bureaucracy. This commentary seeks to stimulate debate on this crucial yet underexamined aspect of irregular warfare, urging the IW community to integrate the study of institutional path dependence into its thinking and future analysis.

Read the remainder of this article at this link: https://interpopulum.org/the-institutional-battlefield-why-irregular-warfare-must-contemplate-path-dependence/

17. Iran and the Gulf: Why Hedging Is No Longer Enough

Summary:

Gulf states resisted Washington’s strike talk during Iran’s protests because they fear chaos more than they prefer regime continuity. They see Iranian collapse as a direct threat: fragmentation, militia spillover, refugees, radiation risk, and energy shock. The authors argue hedging has become a trap. It manages crises but does not shape outcomes as uncertainty becomes chronic. Gulf capitals want strategic autonomy because they doubt outside powers can deter retaliation or own the aftermath, and they now view Israel’s escalation as a liability. The prescription is coordinated Gulf scenario planning and selective diplomatic and economic leverage to influence Iran’s trajectory.

Excerpts:

Taken together, these scenarios combined offer the Gulf a framework for a more proactive policy. Such an approach would require greater Gulf coordination and buy-in, if not reciprocity, from Iran. But the absence of Iranian responsiveness should not dissuade the Gulf states from pursuing what is in their control: expanding their channels of engagement and strengthening their capacity to shape the regional environment.

As Iran’s trajectory becomes more uncertain, it is clear that passivity carries costs and that dynamics inside Iran may evolve in ways that directly affect Gulf security without Gulf input or leverage. Preparing for the uncertain scenarios on the horizon requires limited, managed engagement today.

Hedging has helped the Gulf states to manage exposure to escalation, but it does not shape outcomes. Moving from crisis management toward selective coordinated engagement does not guarantee outcomes in Iran, but reduces risk for the Gulf. The central risk for the Gulf states is not that Iran collapses but that it evolves without Gulf influence. At a moment of regional flux, the Gulf has a unique opportunity to depend less on avoiding risk and instead develop the capacity to influence the environment around it.

Iran and the Gulf: Why Hedging Is No Longer Enough

warontherocks.com · February 20, 2026

Bader Al-Saif and Sanam Vakil

February 20, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/iran-and-the-gulf-why-hedging-is-no-longer-enough/

During the recent protests in Iran, most Gulf states quietly but actively pushed back against calls in Washington for military strikes. Their judgment was simple: Escalation would almost certainly destabilize the region without producing meaningful political change inside Iran, while leaving Gulf cities, infrastructure, and populations directly exposed to retaliation. At the core of Gulf reluctance lies a fear of chaos rather than a preference for regime continuity. Policymakers worry about uncontrolled Iranian collapse, including state fragmentation, militia spillover, refugee movements, nuclear or radiation leaks, and severe disruptions to energy markets that would affect Gulf states.

This position reflects a deeper reality and shifting regional threat perceptions. Gulf states no longer see themselves as distant observers of Iran crises, but as frontline stakeholders. What happens inside Iran now directly shapes their own national security. Yet the protests and uncertain trajectories for Iran have exposed the limits of Gulf hedging strategies. Hedging has helped contain tensions and avoid escalation, but as a strategy it is a reactive approach limited to crisis management rather than shaping outcomes. As uncertainty in Iran becomes structural rather than episodic, relying on risk avoidance turns hedging into a constraint. By focusing primarily on deescalation above all else, Gulf states may succeed in limiting the immediate fallout, but they will also be passive as political and security dynamics in Iran evolve in ways that will define their own security environment.

The recently reconvened Oman-led U.S.–Iran talks showcase the urgency of deescalation and the narrow window to prevent further conflict. For the first time in decades, the Gulf has an opportunity to move beyond crisis avoidance to actively shape outcomes in ways that protect its own interests. Gulf states must then move from hedging and crisis management toward proactively shaping Iran’s trajectory through coordinated diplomatic, economic, and security engagement.

BECOME A MEMBER

Strategic Autonomy

The Gulf states’ growing interest in strategic autonomy reflects accumulated doubts about the reliability and effectiveness of external security providers. Overreliance on the United States has become increasingly untenable, as Gulf states have grown doubtful that Washington can manage the escalation it initiates, deter retaliation against Gulf partners, or take responsibility for the aftermath of a crisis that unfolds on their doorstep. This skepticism has become more visible as Gulf states have been reluctant to support military action against Iran. The June 2025 12-Day Israel–Iran War notably saw an Iranian strike on Qatar. While it was signaled by Tehran ahead of time, it still reinforced fears that escalation can expand quickly impacting Gulf security. Moreover, since the 2023 Saudi-Iranian détente, the Gulf states have shown a preference for mediation, diplomacy and crisis management.

Israel, too, is increasingly viewed in Gulf capitals not as a stabilizing security partner, but as an actor whose escalation agenda risks pulling the Gulf into conflicts while leaving it to absorb much of the resulting costs. Nor do the various unilateral mechanisms and new security arrangements underway — such as Saudi Arabia–Pakistan or the United Arab Emirates–India — alleviate the Gulf’s immediate security dilemma. Only through building local, joint defense capacities will Gulf security be better served but that project will be decades in the making. Lessons from the occupation of a Gulf state (Kuwait) in 1990-91 were not fully absorbed as Gulf defense capabilities and integration continue to be a work in progress. This can be seen in the reaction and exposure of the Gulf states to the 2025 Iranian and Israeli attacks on Qatar and the measured Joint Defense Council statements that followed in September and November 2025.

These circumstances reinforce the Gulf states’ long-term goal of achieving strategic autonomy. Yet that objective cannot emerge through distancing alone. It requires Gulf capacity to shape outcomes rather than insulate against them. Much of the external policy debate in Washington and Tel Aviv continues to treat Iran through a binary lens of regime survival or collapse, assuming that coercive pressure will eventually produce one of the two outcomes. For Gulf states whose exposure to this instability is real rather than abstract, this binary is detached from reality. Multiple futures are plausible: Iran could become more inward looking and fragmented, experience elite-led transition, or gradually adapt through pragmatic calibration, particularly if Omani-led diplomacy gains traction. The question for the Gulf is not which outcome emerges, but whether the Gulf can play any meaningful role in shaping it.

Gulf Leverage and its Underuse

If hedging and strategic autonomy provide no quick fixes, the central question becomes whether the Gulf possesses meaningful leverage over Iran’s trajectory. Gulf thinking is constrained by the belief that they possess limited leverage over Iran’s trajectory. While such leverage is limited, it can be significant when deployed collectively and effectively. At the same time, Gulf leverage should not be overstated. Sanctions regimes, Iran’s domestic political economy, and the centrality of security institutions in decision-making limit the extent to which external economic or diplomatic engagement can alter Iran’s core strategic posture or internal political balance. Gulf tools are therefore unlikely to shape regime survival, ideological orientation, or major security decisions. Their impact lies instead in shaping incentives at the margins. The value of such leverage is gradual and indirect, but in a context of prolonged uncertainty even marginal influence can accumulate strategic significance. The challenge is less about lacking tools than about reaching an agreement on when and how to use them and how much risk exposure the Gulf states are prepared to accept.

Economic and infrastructural leverage remains significant. Trade, transit access, ports, and airspace all impact Iran’s regional connectivity. Energy interdependence including electricity provision, refining capacity and shipping creates additional channels of leverage. Investment flows provide further engagement opportunity even under sanctions constraints.

Equally important has been the Gulf states’ diplomatic capital. Collectively and individually Gulf states have significant mediation access and influence in Washington that is being more frequently deployed not just for Iran but also for Gaza, Russia–Ukraine, Venezuela and beyond. And regional mechanisms such as security arrangements, crisis communication channels, coordinated refugee and humanitarian planning allows Gulf states to manage spillover.

The United Arab Emirates is Iran’s second trading partner after China at $28.2 billion in 2024 and Qatar is a partner to the South Pars/North Dome field which provides over 70 percent of Iran’s gas. Saudi diplomacy, alongside Qatar and Oman, spared Iran an inevitable showdown with the United States last January. Taken together, the Gulf states have various economic and diplomatic tools at their disposal that can influence Iran and impact its strategic calculus, if channeled collectively and consistently.

While none of these tools can determine Iran’s evolution on their own, they offer incentives to reduce volatility and shape the context around which Iranian actors will operate. Thus far, they remain largely underused because the Gulf states have sought to avoid friction with the United States, limit their exposure to risk, and because of intra-Gulf divergences.

Moving Forward

A more credible Gulf strategy toward Iran therefore requires operationalized scenario planning that moves beyond the binary of regime survival versus collapse and links plausible trajectories to specific diplomatic, economic and security tools. Also knowing that a crisis is on the horizon, the Gulf states can agree on red lines, burden sharing, communication channels, and humanitarian responses before a crisis unfolds.

To arrive at lasting outcomes, a viable strategy has to start with an aligned weltanschauung that translates into an integrated policy toolkit and actions. The Gulf states need to first determine what they stand for and aspire to besides the bare minimum of regime preservation and uninterrupted economic returns. Since those two objectives are predicated on domestic calm that in turn demands a stable neighborhood, sustaining both and adopting other goals necessitates an aligned worldview. This does not currently exist.

Intra-Gulf disputes, whether the ongoing Saudi-Emirati one or the previous conflict with Qatar, reinforce the Gulf states’ differing routes to arriving at regime survival and comfortable financial returns. The bets on political Islam, nonstate actors, or the current state system have not — at least to date — yielded game changing returns to any of the Gulf states. Consolidating their approach or even coming to terms with their differences and ways of operation will go a long way in nurturing streamlined Gulf scenario planning for what is to come in Iran. The Gulf is not there yet. Arriving at a common approach toward Iran is a much-needed prerequisite for their leverage to matter and scenario planning to succeed. Though divergences are common, the Gulf states tend to come together at times of crises. An unstable Iran, despite the scenario it finds itself in, qualifies as one such crisis. Without at least minimal convergence on acceptable risk thresholds toward Iran, scenario planning will be an ineffective intellectual exercise. Such functional convergence would not eliminate intra-Gulf competition, but it would allow for operational scenario planning without requiring full strategic alignment.

A prosperous region that is comfortable in its skin and in command of its tools is a third objective that has been increasingly reverberating across the region. Increasing agency and indigeneity are the hallmarks of an aspiring new order in the Gulf. Gulf leaders have increasingly voiced this third objective in the past decade, whether in Gulf Cooperation Council summit declarations, the Gulf’s 2024 Vision for Regional Security, or in the actions of its most ambitious capitals (Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Riyadh). Those leaders have demonstrated more than once a willingness to shape outcomes in various parts of the region (Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Egypt) and across the world, whether through mediation, investments, or enlisting in new partnerships (such as the Brazil–Russia–India-China–South Africa Group) or developing new connectivity roads (as in the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor). This ambition, however, cannot be achieved if Iran’s trajectory continues to be shaped through external confrontation rather than regional incentives and constraints. While elements of growing prosperity and agency are in the works in the Gulf, they have been on display in varying degrees for some time in Iran, Israel and Turkey, the three main non-Arab states in the region.

The lessons of the past few years reinforce this logic. After the attacks on Saudi oil installations in 2019 and Abu Dhabi airport in 2022 garnered a muted reaction from the Trump and Biden administrations, the Gulf states learned the hard way the limits of U.S. security guarantees. That spurred a rapprochement with Iran and Turkey and an accelerated recalibration with other security partners, including the United Arab Emirates’ and Bahrain’s normalization with Israel in 2020. Yet Israel’s increasingly destabilizing behavior in the region, especially post-Oct. 7, 2023, has cast doubts in several Gulf capitals about the durability and benefits of a regional security architecture reset that integrates Israel. Going local better serves the interests of Gulf policymakers: developing a Gulf-centric regional order that eventually expands across the region and attempts to accommodate others in the process. Seeking autonomy aligns with recent Gulf policy debates and thinking in Gulf capitals, but implementing such a policy will be difficult if Arab Gulf states are not proactively influencing their immediate neighbors’ courses of action as they have, for instance, in Syria. This is especially pressing when the other side of the Gulf (Iran) remains weak, unstable, or in flux along paths that fall outside the collapse-survival binary.

The implications of moving beyond hedging become clearer when translated into plausible Iranian trajectories. The following scenarios illustrate how Gulf tools and priorities would differ depending on Iran’s internal evolution.

Scenario 1: Prolonged Internal Unrest, Containment, and State Fragmentation

In this scenario, Iran does not collapse outright, but neither does it stabilize. Protests ebb and flow, the state becomes more inward looking, and governance grows uneven across regions. Power increasingly fragments among formal institutions, security organs, and informal actors, while economic pressure and sanctions deepen social strain. Iran remains intact on paper, but weaker, more unpredictable, and more prone to internal and external spillovers.

The Gulf states cannot afford to be bystanders of another U.S.-led reconfiguration of regional states. Like some did in Syria, the Gulf states should capitalize on a first mover advantage catering to the conditions on the ground while shaping them to serve both the interests of the Gulf and the Iranian people. There is a need to engage with the system on all fronts and lobby for sanctions relief where possible, as Iraq has done the past few years to meet its electricity needs.

The Gulf states need to engage with the fragmented Iranian landscape even if it invites the wrath of the United States and risks exposure to its sanctions. Such an approach would carry significant costs and should not be treated lightly. Exposure to secondary sanctions could affect Gulf financial institutions, complicate relations with Washington, and risk empowering sanctioned entities within Iran’s economy. Any engagement would therefore require careful calibration, prioritizing sectors with humanitarian or infrastructural relevance, maintaining transparency with international partners, and ensuring that engagement does not undermine broader sanctions frameworks. The objective would not be sanctions circumvention, but limited engagement designed to manage spillover risks and preserve channels of influence under constrained conditions.

Iranian state-owned enterprises and other businesses have long lobbied for Gulf capital. It would transform the Gulf in Iranian eyes from a transit, re-export hub (Dubai) and an indolent energy partner (Doha) to a proactive, critical player in internal economic considerations. What makes this a possible option is a shifting U.S. landscape. The Trump administration can be convinced to exempt the Gulf states from U.S. sanctions if they present a credible unified strategy toward Iran. Economic traction translates to power and a pathway for domestic stabilization. Such an approach would limit spillovers across the Gulf and other spaces. Regional engagement amid larger containment and internal unrest gives the Gulf states a better standing in — and understanding of — Iran.

Scenario 2: Elite-led Transition

In this scenario, Iran does not experience mass collapse or revolutionary change, but power shifts take place within the system itself. Leadership transitions occur through elite bargaining, succession of the Supreme Leader, or gradual sidelining of key figures, producing a rebalanced but still recognizable state. The system survives, but with new centers of gravity, altered priorities, and internal competition among political, security, and economic elites. Change is real, but it is managed from within and remains opaque to outsiders.

In such a scenario, misreading internal dynamics or favoring one group over another is possible and can backfire. It would be mitigated by a multifaceted relationship building exercise that shields the Gulf states from unintended consequences and surprises. Falling prey to the default mode of working with one senior channel of government while sidestepping other voices, rising stars, or influential elements across the system can backfire. A modified strategy involves activating and multiplying diplomatic tracks beyond the official line. It would also entail engaging with middle management, universities, think tanks, research centers, seminaries, and cultural houses. Consolidating this know how will empower and complement Gulf policymaking, diversifying its toolkit. Widening the range of contacts and relationships will not fully shield the Gulf from black swans or readily guarantee transparent access and deep know-how, but it will build the necessary expertise and contacts that limit the aftershocks of leadership transfers. This front-facing behavior should be coupled with an accelerated internal state capacity building in Iranian studies — language, culture, politics, and economics. Investing in relationship building and internal resources are the best guarantors for a healthy, reliable relationship.

Scenario 3: Gradual Pragmatic Adaptation

In this scenario, Iran slowly adjusts rather than ruptures. Facing sustained social pressure, economic constraints, and regional realities, the state incrementally recalibrates its governance style and external posture, perhaps also making a deal with the United States to alleviate some sanctions pressure. Repression remains, but is selectively moderated, foreign policy becomes more pragmatic, and the system seeks stability through adaptation rather than confrontation. The regime does not liberalize in a Western sense, but it evolves enough to reduce threat perceptions and buy itself time.

This scenario builds on what the Gulf states have been doing since the Saudi-Iran détente of 2023. This is a long-term process that can unfold in various ways. But investing in statehood and inviting a more moderate, non-threatening attitude from the Iranian regime has been a long-held demand of the Gulf states. It would entail prioritizing the relationship and building the long-sought regional security architecture that meets Iran’s demands for less Western presence and the Gulf’s aim for less Iranian intervention. It means moving beyond symbolic normalization and slow confidence building towards institutionalized cooperation. The first step would be to agree to and activate joint principles in a much faster pace than that underway through the China-brokered Iran–Saudi rapprochement of 2023. It would also involve working on tangible projects such as developing a joint maritime security strategy and reviving a Gulf-wide regional security architecture that goes beyond the Gulf-centric Vision for Regional Security and the 2020 Iran-centric Hormuz Peace Endeavor.

Taken together, these scenarios combined offer the Gulf a framework for a more proactive policy. Such an approach would require greater Gulf coordination and buy-in, if not reciprocity, from Iran. But the absence of Iranian responsiveness should not dissuade the Gulf states from pursuing what is in their control: expanding their channels of engagement and strengthening their capacity to shape the regional environment.

As Iran’s trajectory becomes more uncertain, it is clear that passivity carries costs and that dynamics inside Iran may evolve in ways that directly affect Gulf security without Gulf input or leverage. Preparing for the uncertain scenarios on the horizon requires limited, managed engagement today.

Hedging has helped the Gulf states to manage exposure to escalation, but it does not shape outcomes. Moving from crisis management toward selective coordinated engagement does not guarantee outcomes in Iran, but reduces risk for the Gulf. The central risk for the Gulf states is not that Iran collapses but that it evolves without Gulf influence. At a moment of regional flux, the Gulf has a unique opportunity to depend less on avoiding risk and instead develop the capacity to influence the environment around it.

BECOME A MEMBER

Bader Al-Saif, Ph.D., is assistant professor of history at Kuwait University and associate fellow at Chatham House. He specializes in the Arabian Peninsula, namely its geopolitics, public policy, culture, reform dynamics, transnational trends, and gender studies.

Sanam Vakil, Ph.D., is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House and the James Anderson professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins SAIS Europe. Her expertise spans Iranian and Gulf politics, regional security dynamics, and U.S. foreign policy, with a particular focus on the evolving strategic landscape of the Middle East and its global connectivity.

Image: Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

warontherocks.com · Daisy Johnston · February 20, 2026

18. When GPS Goes Dark: Building a Force That Navigates from Orbit to Seabed

Summary:

GPS denial is now routine, not a niche edge case. Hamel argues China and others can jam or spoof positioning, navigation, and timing at scale with cheap tools, turning GPS reliability into a contested assumption. He frames the problem as cyber-physical: the antenna and receiver chain is an attack surface that affects military systems and civilian infrastructure alike. Ukraine’s fiber-optic drones are a blunt signal that radio links and GPS can fail under saturation. His prescription is software-first resilience that detects deception, fuses inertial and environmental cues, and degrades gracefully. Leaders should hard-test “GPS-out” as baseline, then reward adaptable autonomy over exquisite hardware.

Excerpts:

Global positioning system denial is the current and future operating environment. From space-based interference mapping to fiber-optic drones on the front lines, the picture is clear: the spectrum is contested, cheap jammers scale quickly, and traditional navigation assumptions no longer hold.

The joint force cannot depend on fragile links or exotic hardware. It needs autonomy and navigation systems that continue working when the global navigation satellite system, communications, and vision are unavailable. Contested autonomy that is software-driven, platform- and hardware-agnostic, and suitable for attritable platforms offers an affordable, practical, and scalable path forward.

Forces that adopt this model now will maintain the mission when signals fail. Those who wait will fight blind.

When GPS Goes Dark: Building a Force That Navigates from Orbit to Seabed

warontherocks.com · · February 19, 2026

Jesse Hamel

February 19, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/when-gps-goes-dark-building-a-force-that-navigates-from-orbit-to-seabed/

GPS denial is no longer a theoretical future threat. It is the environment in which modern forces increasingly operate.

China has invested heavily in space and counterspace capabilities designed to degrade U.S. positioning, navigation, and timing. Other state and non-state actors are following close behind. Cheap jammers, spoofers, and electronic warfare tools now allow adversaries to disrupt GPS and radio frequency navigation with minimal funding or expertise. The result is a battlespace where signals cannot be assumed.

From space-based mapping of interference to fiber-optic drones appearing on today’s front lines, the evidence is clear: the electromagnetic spectrum is contested, fragile, and increasingly hostile. What is new is not the existence of GPS interference, but its persistence, scale, and observability across domains. In this new theater, an emerging truth is glaringly obvious: forces that continue to depend on GPS alone will find themselves fighting blind and without access to critical systems.

I am not a neutral party: I started a company that works to equip U.S. warfighters with contested autonomy at scale from orbit to seabed. That interest is informed by experience and dedication. I am a retired U.S. Air Force officer, where I served as an AC-130 aviator, weapons systems officer, and U.S. special operations drone squadron commander.

Why GPS Disruption is No Longer a Niche Problem

Unclassified assessments from the intelligence community and senior U.S. officials have consistently warned that GPS jamming and spoofing are not isolated incidents and instead are persistent features of modern conflict.

Space-based radio frequency analytics now routinely detect and geolocate global navigation satellite system interference from low Earth orbit. Commercial providers publish interference snapshots across regions ranging from eastern Europe to approaches in South America, with direct relevance to U.S. combatant commands.

At the tactical level, the barrier to entry is dangerously low. Backpack– or vehicle-mounted jammers built from cheap software-defined radios are now routine in Ukraine and visible across multiple theaters. These tools require little training, scale rapidly, and create unpredictable navigation outages far beyond major-power conflict scenarios. Any force operating today should assume GPS degradation as a baseline condition.

GPS Denial is a Cyber-Physical Security Problem

U.S. policy explicitly frames position, navigation, and timing risk as a cybersecurity problem for critical infrastructure and defense users. In 2024, Ukraine publicly targeted a Black Sea offshore platform it said Russia used for global positioning system spoofing, citing the hazard to civilian navigation. Civil aviation advisories and workgroup reports reflect the scale and persistence of interference and spoofing across the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean.

These threats are no longer confined to conflict zones. Organized crime groups have employed GPS jammers inside the United States to disrupt the trucking industry. Taken together, these incidents make clear that GPS interference is not only a signal anomaly, but also a cyber-physical attack delivered through the antenna and receiver chain. This threat is one that acquisition programs should treat as part of the attack surface rather than a situational anomaly.

A Warning from the Frontlines: Fiber-Optic Drones

One of the clearest indicators of how hostile the radio and signal environment has become is the rise of fiber-optic-controlled drone use in Ukraine.

Fiber-optic drones work because they cannot be easily jammed; a jammer cannot interfere with a physical cable attached to a human-controlled station. Their limitations, however, are severe. The spooled fiber restricts range, adds weight, snags easily, and can be disabled with a single cut, while also revealing the warfighter controlling the system. These platforms are not elegant solutions. They are field-expedient workarounds adopted because radio-frequency control and GPS have become unreliable.

This does not mean that radio-frequency navigation has failed universally. Where interference density remains low or spectrum control is localized, radio-frequency control can still be effective. It does not, however, scale reliably under saturation. What has changed though, is that contesting and disrupting radio-frequency navigation is a proven and effective tactic for neutralizing the United States and Allies’ asymmetric advantage in precision warfare.

This shift should concern the U.S. military. It demonstrates that when the spectrum collapses, even technologically advanced forces revert to brittle stopgaps unless alternatives are available. Recent U.S. Navy electromagnetic warfare exercises incorporating fiber-optic drones acknowledge this reality, but broader doctrinal and acquisition changes are still required.

What the Joint Force Needs

The modern joint force should be capable of deploying and sustaining hundreds of thousands of autonomous systems across space, air, surface, littoral, and deep-ocean domains. These systems should operate in controlled swarms and waves, be attritable by design, and remain effective despite cheap jammers and theater-scale signal interference.

Autonomy can no longer assume constant communications. Navigation systems must continue functioning even when GPS is degraded or denied. Design choices should favor commodity sensors and intelligent software over exotic, fragile hardware that cannot scale or survive in contested environments. These challenges extend beyond military platforms: global navigation satellite system interference increasingly affects civilian aviation, maritime navigation, and critical infrastructure operating in the same environments.

Why Existing Alternatives Fall Short

There is no shortage of proposed alternatives to GPS, but each has limitations that prevent it from serving as a universal solution on its own. Quantum sensors offer long-term promise but remain difficult to ruggedize and are constrained by size, weight, power, and sensitivity to vibration and electromagnetic interference. Magnetic navigation can be effective in well-mapped regions, but it is vulnerable to platform-generated noise and urban ferrous clutter and is not well-mapped or reliable in most overwater areas. Gravity-based navigation relies on dense gravity models and highly stable platforms that are difficult to achieve operationally. Vision-only navigation degrades rapidly in clouds, haze, glare, low-texture environments, and, importantly, over water.

Each of these approaches addresses a specific failure mode, and none of them offer a scalable backbone for sustained, cross-domain operations under active denial.

What Works Today: Software-First Resilience

Some of the most promising solutions already exist, and they do not rely on overpowering adversaries or deploying exotic hardware.

Localized, onboard software can detect GPS spoofing and jamming by identifying inconsistencies at the measurement level and cross-checking them against independent cues, including inertial measurement units, vehicle dynamics, timing behavior, horizon geometry, and kinematic constraints. When anomalies are detected, systems can degrade gracefully to signal-free navigation rather than failing outright.

This approach treats navigation interference as a cyber-physical attack delivered through the antenna and receiver chain. It is fundamentally a software and estimation problem, not a hardware arms race. Because it scales across multiple platforms and domains, it is suitable for both high-end aircraft and attritable systems.

Making Contested Autonomy the Baseline

The clearest way forward is to make contested autonomy the default rather than the exception.

This approach recognizes that navigation systems must continue to function when GPS, communications, and vision are intermittent or unavailable. Instead of relying on any single sensor or fragile signal, systems maintain state by fusing multiple imperfect cues which combine inertial measurements, vehicle dynamics, and opportunistic environmental information through software-driven estimation. The emphasis shifts away from brittle dependencies and toward contested autonomy that can operate within the size, weight, and power constraints of both manned and unmanned platforms.

This reflects operational reality. Global navigation satellite system interference is now observable from space, and fiber-optic drones are proliferating in a toxic radio and signals environment. Navigation systems should be designed for the environment that exists today, not the one assumed in legacy requirements.

Actions Leaders Can Take Now

Adapting to GPS denial and contested environments does not require entirely new programs; it requires changes to requirements, testing, and evaluation.

Today’s requirements’ processes still assume GPS availability as a default condition rather than a contested variable, allowing programs to meet paper thresholds while failing under real-world denial. Operational testing frequently treats extended GPS and communications denial as an edge case, relying on scripted vignettes instead of prolonged exposure. Acquisition incentives continue to reward hardware milestones and certification over software iteration, making fielding exquisite platforms easier than adaptable autonomy.

Contested autonomy should be elevated to a core performance requirement, with systems routinely evaluated against explicit navigation accuracy, drift, and mission-completion thresholds under GPS-out, communications-out, and low-visibility conditions. Performance under these conditions should directly inform milestone decisions, production scaling, and platform selection.

Investments should favor approaches that can be updated, reconfigured, and redeployed through software changes rather than requiring hardware redesigns or lengthy recertification cycles. Space-based interference intelligence should inform real-time autonomous mode switching. Training and exercises should measure navigation performance during under sustained denial — particularly over vast maritime environments — with results captured and fed back into system requirements and design.

Conclusion

Global positioning system denial is the current and future operating environment. From space-based interference mapping to fiber-optic drones on the front lines, the picture is clear: the spectrum is contested, cheap jammers scale quickly, and traditional navigation assumptions no longer hold.

The joint force cannot depend on fragile links or exotic hardware. It needs autonomy and navigation systems that continue working when the global navigation satellite system, communications, and vision are unavailable. Contested autonomy that is software-driven, platform- and hardware-agnostic, and suitable for attritable platforms offers an affordable, practical, and scalable path forward.

Forces that adopt this model now will maintain the mission when signals fail. Those who wait will fight blind.

Jesse Hamel is a retired Air Force officer who served as an AC-130 aviator and U.S. Air Force weapons officer. He also served as an Air Force Special Operations Command drone squadron commander. After retirement, Hamel attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied advanced machine learning techniques that do not require perfect signals. He founded VICTUS to operationalize that approach.

Image: Senior Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras via DVIDS.

warontherocks.com · · February 19, 2026

19. ‘The Intelligence Intellectuals’ Review: Brains, Cloak and Dagger

Summary:

Michael Auslin reviews Peter C. Grace’s The Intelligence Intellectuals, arguing that Cold War era social scientists and historians helped professionalize CIA analysis after early strategic surprises, especially through the rise of National Intelligence Estimates and “method” as a cure for uncertainty. He links this technocratic turn to today’s expert culture, where outside academics feed the intelligence machine but rarely reveal how much they truly shape decisions. The review’s sharpest edge is political: an insular meritocracy can harden into groupthink, widen the populist-elite rift, and still fail to prevent strategic surprise.

Excerpts:

The increasing complexity of government operations since World War I naturally led to the rise of a professionally trained cadre of experts. These experts then furthered the complexity of the systems under their purview, creating a self-sustaining cycle in which ever more expertise was required to deal with ever more complexity. In the case of the CIA, the transition from the derring-do of Ivy League lettermen such as William Colby of the World War II-era OSS (officially the Office of Strategic Services, but mockingly called “Oh So Social”) to the professional bookworms and number crunchers of the Directorate of Intelligence simply mirrored what was happening in other government departments. And yet, whether socialite spy or glasses-wearing econometrician, both were drawn from the Ivy League and a handful of other acceptable schools, thereby maintaining a largely closed circle.

The degree to which this uniformity in training, thought and professional positions leads to groupthink, institutional capture and an inability (or unwillingness) to consider alternative approaches to intelligence assessments lies at the heart of any critique of the CIA, as well as of government at large. The current “assortative mating” of the Democrats into the party of professional elites and the Republicans into that of nonelite workers may be the culmination of a socioeconomic process given a major boost when the first Ivy League brains showed up at the CIA to save the spooks from themselves.

Comment: Another one for the "to read pile." “Better process” can become a substitute for intellectual humility, which is when estimates start lying to their authors. The closed recruitment loop is a vulnerability, not a strength, because it narrows dissent before analysis even begins. Strategic surprise persists because adversaries adapt faster than institutions learn.

‘The Intelligence Intellectuals’ Review: Brains, Cloak and Dagger

WSJ

The CIA has relied on various professors and social scientists for insight. How much their expertise influences final decisions is unclear.

By Michael Auslin

Feb. 18, 2026 2:23 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-intelligence-intellectuals-review-brains-cloak-and-dagger-ec450bac

Before there was Jack Ryan, there was Ronald Malcolm, the hero of the spy novel “Six Days of the Condor” (1974), later made into a movie starring Robert Redford. Ronald (code name: Condor) is the anti-James Bond: A milquetoast book reader for the CIA, he gets swept up in a murderous conspiracy and survives thanks to his brains, not his brawn. “Condor” is the fantasy of the professional class that they, too, can covertly save the world.

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The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA

By Peter C. Grace

Georgetown University Press

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According to Peter C. Grace in “The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA,” such bookworms did indeed play a role at the height of the Cold War—if not in saving the world, then in rescuing the CIA from weak leadership and its own incompetence. The Condor’s real-life counterparts included Sherman Kent and William Langer, historians at Yale and Harvard, respectively, and Max Millikan, an MIT economist. These “intelligence intellectuals” were drafted in the early 1950s to rationalize and run the CIA’s strategic-intelligence assessment on the heels of the institution’s failures to predict, among other events, China’s fall into communism and the Soviet Union’s development of an atomic bomb—both in 1949—as well as the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Policymakers decided that what they needed was not analysis of headlines (“current intelligence”) but predictive assessments of high-level issues (“strategic intelligence”). These were to come in the form of National Intelligence Estimates, and the best way to get rigorous NIEs was to rely on social scientists—or so it was believed.

As someone who has occasionally contributed to the intelligence community’s “products,” as they are called, I can attest that, 75 years after those first social scientists showed up at the CIA, such gatherings often feel like graduate-school reunions. Currently America’s 18 intelligence agencies, overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, employ, contract or rely on a multitude of professors, pundits and members of think tanks to give input on intelligence work in progress. How much this expertise actually influences the agency’s final decisions is unknowable from the outside. But everyone assumes it was their sparkling insight that swayed the president.

Today’s doctorate-fest is a far cry from the beleaguered CIA to which Kent and Langer showed up in 1950. Mr. Grace, who teaches politics and international relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand, traces their attempts to use social-science techniques to create analytically rigorous methods for assessing trends, confronting uncertainty and predicting major future events, such as war or economic collapse.

While Mr. Grace’s discussion is rather academic, it is nonetheless compelling reading for anyone who has thought about how to analyze information. He focuses on the years 1950 to 1953, when Kent and his colleagues struggled to codify processes for making sense of what was already a welter of information (long before today’s digital tsunami) and turn it into coherent and defendable assessments. Mr. Grace’s institutional history is itself a sociological study.

Yet in choosing to end at the beginning, so to speak, and focus on the early Cold War, Mr. Grace avoids having to assess how the new arrangement subsequently performed. Failures to foresee the Iranian Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—to mention only a few—have buffeted America and the world with a generation of strategic surprise, exactly what the NIEs were designed to avoid.

More intriguingly, if unintentionally, Mr. Grace’s book cuts to the core of the cultural divide that currently wracks the country. In reminding us that the social scientists after World War II sought to “establish authority in intellectual and moral matters”—to quote another study mentioned in “The Intelligence Intellectuals”—Mr. Grace is delineating the origins of what is popularly called the deep state, revealing the fracture between populist and elitist views of governance and society. It is James Burnham’s managerial revolution—the idea that a class of permanent professional administrators dominates government, business and other institutions—brought to the world of cloak and dagger and the commanding heights of government, economics, education and society by an increasingly self-conscious (and self-protecting) professional class.

The increasing complexity of government operations since World War I naturally led to the rise of a professionally trained cadre of experts. These experts then furthered the complexity of the systems under their purview, creating a self-sustaining cycle in which ever more expertise was required to deal with ever more complexity. In the case of the CIA, the transition from the derring-do of Ivy League lettermen such as William Colby of the World War II-era OSS (officially the Office of Strategic Services, but mockingly called “Oh So Social”) to the professional bookworms and number crunchers of the Directorate of Intelligence simply mirrored what was happening in other government departments. And yet, whether socialite spy or glasses-wearing econometrician, both were drawn from the Ivy League and a handful of other acceptable schools, thereby maintaining a largely closed circle.

The degree to which this uniformity in training, thought and professional positions leads to groupthink, institutional capture and an inability (or unwillingness) to consider alternative approaches to intelligence assessments lies at the heart of any critique of the CIA, as well as of government at large. The current “assortative mating” of the Democrats into the party of professional elites and the Republicans into that of nonelite workers may be the culmination of a socioeconomic process given a major boost when the first Ivy League brains showed up at the CIA to save the spooks from themselves.

Mr. Auslin is a historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. His book “National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America” will be published in May.

Appeared in the February 19, 2026, print edition as 'Brains, Cloak And Dagger'.

WSJ

20. Three Short Tales on War Kori Schake Wants You to Read

Summary:

Kori Schake argues that war literature is not a luxury. It is a bridge between a tiny fighting fraction of Americans and the rest who rarely pay the cost. She recommends three veteran-written works that show what combat does to the mind and to belonging: J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé, with Love and Squalor” as a story of breakdown and a stranger’s grace; Phil Klay’s “Psychological Operations” as a hard account of truth-telling, shame, and the hunger to be understood; and Matt Gallagher’s Daybreak as a search for purpose, usefulness, and redemption in Ukraine’s war.

Comment: Three more more works for my "to read pile." As an aside, I am still a great fan of the late Charles Hill's book on Grand Strategy that traces the influence of literature on strategy.

Charles Hill’s Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order argues that true statecraft requires engaging with classic literature to navigate the complexities of international relations. He defines grand strategy as the holistic art of leadership, blending historical, literary, and diplomatic wisdom to address the fundamental, chaotic, and often unpredictable issues of the human condition.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300171334/grand-strategies/

Three Short Tales on War Kori Schake Wants You to Read

warontherocks.com · · February 20, 2026

Kori Schake

February 20, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/three-short-tales-on-war-kori-schake-wants-you-to-read/

Editor’s Note: This is a new occasional series brought to you by War on the Rocks. If you would like to pitch your own version, please refer to the contact information and guidance on our submissions page.

Wars very often inspire great American literature about the experience of war and its legacies — think of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, or Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. We are fortunate now to be living through a great renaissance of veteran writing of policy analysis, memoir, poetry, and prose literature. All three of the works I’ve selected were written by veterans, two by veterans of our twenty-first century wars. At a time when our country requires a military comprised of just one half of one percent of our population, veteran sensibilities can make meaningful for the rest of us the costs and conduct of our wars. These three writers brilliantly engage the experience of war for individuals who fight them on our behalf. As Colum McCann writes in the introduction to the collection of short stories Fire and Forget, “The war went literary. And the literature broke our tired hearts.”

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“For Esmé — with Love and Squalor,” by J.D. Salinger, in Nine Stories

Soldiering is central to Salinger’s art; his own World War II service was “the transformative trauma of his life and career.” He landed at Utah Beach on D-Day and was in the 4th Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge. He later suffered a nervous breakdown, just as the soldier does in “For Esmé.”

The narrator is wry, performatively perspicacious. In justifying the letter he sends as a wedding present to the girl who saved him, he begins, “If my notes should cause the groom, whom I haven’t met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better.” But as with all the Glass family who comprise the characters of his interconnected work, the humor is a defense against despair. The tale the veteran recounts in the letter (she’d asked him to write her a story) is one of psychological shattering and salvation. The bride to whom the letter is addressed was a brave little girl who saved him with a sacramental offering that pulled him back into the living world.

An intelligence officer, bored and restless in England during the run up to the Normandy landings, goes to listen to a children’s choir and strikes up conversation with an extraordinary little girl (extraordinary children being a Salinger affliction), who professes an interest in squalor. He describes Esmé during choir practice as having “blase eyes that, I thought, might possibly have counted the house.” She wears a man’s military issue watch that belonged to her father, already killed serving in the war. The officer recounts the conversation:

[Esmé states,] “Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no sense of humor.”

Watching her, I lit a cigarette and said I didn’t think a sense of humor was of any use in a real pinch.

“Father said it was.”

This was a statement of faith, not a contradiction, so I quickly switched horses. I nodded and said her father had probably taken the long view, which I was taking the short (whatever that meant).

As they part, she asks if she could write to him, saying “I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact.”

He does not. Five campaigns after D-Day, he suffers a nervous breakdown. Unable to read, unable to sleep or bear bright lighting, he trembles and twitches and chain smokes to deal with the way “abruptly, familiarly and, as usual with no warning, he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack.”

What calms him, makes possible his recovery, is receipt of a letter from Esmé, enclosing her father’s watch. She offers it as “a lucky talisman.” That act of generosity, a near stranger giving him something they treasured to strengthen him as he fought to preserve their way of life, reclaims him. And it is his wedding gift to her, that child now grown, to tell her that she saved him.

What I love about this story is the portrait of soldiering: the casual way it describes the conversations among soldiers (“Clay left his feet where they were for a few don’t-tell-me-where-to-put-my-feet seconds”), the haunted feel of occupied Germany, well-meant but trifling and wholly uncomprehending correspondence from home, and the interior monologue and physical sensations of a mind untethered by strain. The story unapologetically accepts all of the above as an inherent part of warfare.

Esmé’s act of grace, in a story that is untainted by religion, serves as salvation. Because religion is the thrumming undercurrent in all of Salinger’s writing, but in “For Esmé” it is not yet freighted with religiosity. It is the human act of sacrament that provides salvation.

“Psychological Operations,” by Phil Klay, in Redeployment

I could pick any of the stories in this National Book Award-winning collection by Phil Klay. But I pick “Psychological Operations” because I think no one who wasn’t a veteran would have written it. It deals with the difficulty of explaining your experience of war to Americans who are living so securely far from it, and the yearning to be able to be honest about that experience, to reconnect with the society you defended.

The narrator is a veteran using his G.I. Bill benefits for an education to clamber into the middle class. The story opens with him describing a student he’s interested in: “Everything about Zara Davies forced you to take sides.” Neither are white, a rarity on campus, but she is a child of privilege, while he is further anomalous because of his military service. “It’s amazing how well the veteran mystique plays, even at a school like Amherst, where I’d have thought the kids would be smart enough to know better … everyone assumed I’d had some soul-scarring encounter.”

She converts to Islam, which she loves for the Ummah and the beauty of the Quran. To him, a Christian whose family came from Egypt, it is the violence of jihad. Zara seeks him out to talk about the war, asking, “How could you kill your own people?” He makes a tart reply, which she reports as threatening, an honor code violation that could have him expelled. So he chooses to play the post-traumatic stress card, and it works to avoid official censure.

Zara also apologizes when they are alone, which ignites his self-loathing. “‘You think the big bad war broke me,’ I said, ‘and it made me an asshole. That’s why you think I said those things. But what if I’m just an asshole?’” It’s such a powerful admission that society is ascribing to him an identity that, while beneficial, isn’t truly who he is. It’s just who we’re comfortable boxing him in as.

The title of the story comes from his occupational specialty, and is such a fine description of the manipulation he engages in. But what makes the story exceptionally moving is that the argument spurs honest engagement between them about his genuine experience of the war, and that is the center of gravity in the story.

He describes his missions in Fallujah and being with Marines as they went “100%,” each Marine in the unit having killed someone. She states her belief that civilians were innocents, rebutting his explanation that the U.S. forces were trying to persuade imams not to send “an untrained kid against a Marine squad in camouflaged positions with marked fields of fire” by justifying Iraqis fighting against invaders.

He admits he joined the Army to get to college. They compare her modest dress since conversion to a military uniform: a symbol of commitment. They talk about what it was like, him being an Arab American in the Army, she saying, “I don’t know if I could fight for an organization that treated me like that,” and he frustrated that she smugly can’t understand the unifying ethos of the military.

At his most honest he thinks:

I didn’t know if she’d understand. Or rather, if she’d understand it the way I did, which is what I really wanted … The weird thing about being a veteran, at least for me, is that you do feel better than most people. You risked your life for something bigger than yourself. How many people can say that? You chose to serve. Maybe you didn’t understand American foreign policy or why we were at war. Maybe you never will. But it doesn’t matter. You held up your hand and said, “I’m willing to die for these worthless civilians.”

At the same time, though, you feel somehow less. What happened, what I was a part of, maybe it was the right thing. We were fighting very bad people. But it was an ugly thing.

That’s about the most direct and honest description of people who volunteer for military service.

He’s yearning for connection, so he tells the worst part of his experience, of the degrading taunting of a jihadist knowing it would get them to attack. He expects her to flare in disgusted anger, but she proves worthier, superior even, by replying that she’s glad he’s able to talk about it and perhaps they’ll talk another time. Turns out this, too, is a war story about being given a human sacrament. In this case, it’s understanding.

Daybreak, by Matt Gallaher

Many of our best contemporary veteran writers are shape shifters, working in many forms, and none more so than Matt Gallagher. He burst onto the scene writing a blog during his deployment in Iraq that became the book Kaboom, wrote short stories and edited a book of other emerging veteran writers, and took up novels. I’m cheating a little, sneaking a recent novel into the novella category, but feel justified because it picks up a theme of other veterans of recent American wars (including Phil Klay with Missionaries): longing for a war that was meaningful to their society.

Daybreak is a love story, in several ways. It’s a man adrift, looking to redeem the mistakes he made in combat a decade ago, searching for a woman he loved, and wanted to join a war of moral clarity that his own war lacked. Mostly, though, it’s a love story about the people of Ukraine fighting to preserve their society. Gallagher volunteered in Ukraine, and it shows in his specificity about how Ukrainians are weathering the conflict: some as criminals, many as soldiers, most just trying to hold their lives and families together. They argue among themselves about who is contributing enough to the war effort. And he lets the Ukrainian characters speak for themselves. Grace at a dinner is, “Any act of normalcy is an act of courage. For that, we thank you.”

Gallagher captures so deftly the purposelessness many veterans feel returning to civilian life after the intensity and camaraderie of war, especially when so few of their countrymen have been in service. Being an army at war, not a country at war, rattles through the American’s experience of dislocation:

“Boy goes to war to become a man and comes back someone he doesn’t know,” Pax thought, “to a country he doesn’t recognize.” The biggest cliché on the fucking planet. The least I can do for anyone is keep it to myself.

The protagonist joins a group of volunteers going to Ukraine, only to realize how little he has to contribute. “Pax knew the only way to be someone again, was to come here, now, like this.” But he doesn’t make the cut to serve in Ukraine’s military. “Pax was thirty-three years old and certain his best days were already gone. This had been his chance. Now he had nowhere to go but the tunnels of infernal memory.”

But he finds redemption. He doesn’t find love with the women he was hoping to reconnect with. He finds it in a clarifying confrontation with his former commander from Afghanistan. He finds it in becoming useful as a mechanic, and in sacrifice. He goes to the front to retrieve his love’s wounded husband. He never really does figure himself out, and his death is inconsequential in a war of many consequential losses. But his dying sacrament is hearing her say, “You are good, Luke, and you are safe.”

What all three of these beautiful, poignant stories have in common is the search for meaning in the violence and displacement, human strength and human frailty, that war is an arbiter of. All three stories are of veterans needing to be reconnected when they are mired in loneliness because of their wartime experience. Salinger’s soldier becomes re-tethered by a stranger’s generosity. Klay’s soldier is unburdened by telling his story truthfully to the only person whose understanding he wants. Gallagher’s marine is lost until he makes himself useful to people with greater needs than his own. They are all war stories that are not about combat but about how to retrieve our veterans from the isolation of their experience.

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Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Gemini

warontherocks.com · Grace Parcover · February 20, 2026

21. Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front

Summary:

James Torrence uses a realistic fiction vignette to show how Russia can test NATO without firing a shot by poisoning positioning, navigation, and timing across the Baltic-Nordic front. A missed civilian approach into Vilnius becomes the first tripwire, then Mikkeli’s new land headquarters, JFC Norfolk, and allied air and maritime nodes converge on a shared picture of GNSS jamming and spoofing tied to Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, and the Kola. On the ground, a US battalion in Finland relearns analog movement, PACE comms, and skeptical targeting. The story’s point is simple: treat “lying sky” conditions as normal, not exceptional.

Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 19, 2026

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/maneuver-under-a-lying-sky-russia-tests-nato-on-the-baltic-nordic-front/

Editor’s note: This is a short work of fiction depicting a realistic scenario on NATO’s northern flank. The author wrote a short companion piece in which he extracts five real-world lessons from the story for US and allied military forces, which you can read here.

Prologue: The Missed Approach

The first warning does not come from an intelligence summary. It comes from a missed approach over Vilnius. On the operations floor of the new Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Mikkeli, Finland, Captain Henrik Nyman watches a civil aviation display he is not supposed to care about. It lives in the corner of his screen as context, a way to judge how commercial traffic is flowing around military transit routes.

A Boeing on final approach to Vilnius drops through one thousand feet, hesitates, then claws its way back into the sky and bends west. A few seconds later the Lithuanian aviation authority pushes an advisory into the Eurocontrol feed. Suspected GNSS (global navigation satellite system) interference on final approach. Aircraft diverting to Warsaw. Nyman tags the incident in the ever-growing PNT log—the staff has a whole column for disruptions to positioning, navigation, and timing systems now. His cursor slides to another window, a heat map that overlays the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.

Colored blotches show where receivers are losing lock, where ships and aircraft are reporting spoofed positions. The blotches have been getting larger for weeks. Tonight they pulse, especially along the Russian coast and around Kaliningrad. A small icon on his screen marks the suspected source of the worst interference near Kaliningrad. The intelligence section has given it a polite label: “probable long-range electronic warfare system.” Everyone just calls it the jammer.

Nyman adds a note to the log: “Suspected Russian GNSS jamming impacting civilian arrivals to Vilnius. Consistent with previous incidents.” He hits save and walks the printout across the operations floor to his boss.

Chapter 1: A New Northern Warfighting Headquarters

Brigadier Erik Halvorsen reads the line twice. He has watched similar reports stream across his desk for months. MCLCC-NW is NATO’s newest land headquarters. Officially it is Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest, subordinate to Joint Force Command (JFC) Norfolk. Unofficially it is the alliance’s experiment in running a land fight in the high north and the Baltic approaches with a Nordic-led staff.

The walls of the Mikkeli headquarters still smell of pine cleaner. Finnish Army Command used to live here. The coffee is still Finnish and strong enough to stand a spoon in. The national flag outside now shares a flag stand with NATO’s blue banner. Halvorsen walks to the main map board. On the board, the northern region is split into command seams. JFC Norfolk owns the northwestern regional defense plan, which now includes Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and the adjacent seas. JFC Brunssum handles the central region. JFC Naples watches the south.

Under JFC Norfolk, the maritime fight belongs to the naval component, the air campaign goes to the air component, and land goes to MCLCC-NW. That is the theory. In practice, the details are still being hashed out. Halvorsen looks up from the printout Nyman just brought him. “We have another diverted flight,” he says.

Nearby, the United States Navy liaison officer, Commander Nathan Lewis, looks up from his laptop. “Vilnius again?” he asks.

Nyman nods. “Suspected Russian jamming. Lithuanians reported loss of satellite approach guidance. Exact pattern matches last month’s spike.”

A large monitor on the wall shows the same heat map Nyman had viewed on his screen, and Halvorsen taps it. “Kaliningrad and the Saint Petersburg area,” he says. “Same Russian systems. Same aim. Make life harder for civilians and military alike. Make our planning harder.” He looks at Lewis. “Does JFC Norfolk still treat this as background noise?” he asks.

Lewis grimaces. “Norfolk is updating its assumptions,” he says. “The new regional defense plan annex assumes persistent PNT degradation over the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and parts of Finland and Sweden in crisis. They expect land forces to treat Russian GNSS jamming as a standing condition.”

Halvorsen nods slowly. “Good,” he says. “Because this is starting to look less like weather and more like shaping fires.”

* * *

Two hundred kilometers northeast, an American battalion executive officer feels the effects long before anyone in Norfolk signs an annex. Major Elena Ruiz, United States Army, stands in a Finnish brigade command post with one hand on a paper map and one eye on the digital common operational picture. Her battalion is subordinate to the Finnish brigade and is the first US maneuver battalion operating under MCLCC-NW.

On the screen, blue force tracking icons drift. The sustainment company convoy moving along Route KARHU slides three hundred meters into the forest, then snaps back. The graphic for a Finnish engineer company duplicates itself and appears in two places at once before resolving into one. A drone feed tags a stand of birch trees with a coordinate that, on the printed 1:50,000 map, sits squarely in the middle of a lake.

The brigade operations officer, Major Jari Laaksonen, leans over. “Your system thinks our engineers can teleport,” he says. “I just spoke to their commander on the radio. He is at the crossroads near the old sawmill. Your satellite picture says he is straddling the river.”

“So Russian spoofing again,” Ruiz says.

“They have been working the spectrum over the gulf for weeks,” Laaksonen answers. “We have reports from civil aviation, from ferries, from truckers. Now they are leaning into it.”

The Finnish brigade commander took the reports seriously enough to update his guidance that morning. All subordinate units are to assume degraded PNT across the brigade’s area of responsibility in eastern Sodankylä. All units will include PNT status and GNSS interference incidents in their daily reports. Russian electronic warfare systems near the Russian-Finnish border and in the Kola Peninsula are named explicitly in the threat notes. Ruiz has the printed guidance folded in front of her. Underneath it she has written in capital letters:

PNT STATUS: GREEN / AMBER / RED

GNSS INTERFERENCE: EXAMPLE REQUIRED

On the big map projected into the white-painted wall, they shade a ring in dry-erase where Finnish authorities report the strongest jamming. The circle overlaps civilian trouble spots where airliners have abandoned approaches to small eastern airports and where ferries and other civilian vessels have complained about losing positional data. “We need to assume the Russians will keep the knob turned up,” Ruiz says. “Not just flick it on for exercises.”

Laaksonen nods. “They are testing us,” he says. “Testing Finland as a new ally. Testing Sweden. Testing our new commands. Seeing how we react before any tanks cross any borders.”

* * *

On the Baltic Sea, the Russian test feels like an invisible hand on the compass. The Swedish corvette HSwMS Härnösand runs a patrol east of Gotland, listening for any submarine that might decide to get familiar with cables and pipelines. The sensors officer, Lieutenant Sofia Tamm, flicks her gaze between the acoustic screens and a small display that shows GNSS integrity. The bars on the integrity display rise and fall. When the ship’s course takes them closer to the central shipping lanes, the bars falter more often.

“Jamming intensity increasing,” Tamm says. “Pattern consistent with emissions from Kaliningrad and the eastern gulf. Likely Russian Krasukha or similar long-range system.”

Commander Ingrid Björk, the captain, glances toward the island. Gotland is a low dark line on the western horizon. “Plot our position using radar ranges and depth soundings,” she says. “No decisions based on satellites alone tonight.”

The navigator acknowledges. Old skills come out. Bearings to lighthouses and radar reflectors, depth under keel, inertial navigation system checks.

When Sweden was outside NATO, Björk wondered whether the island would ever attract the attention it deserved. Since Sweden joined the alliance, Gotland has become an exercise magnet. American airborne brigades drop in on its airfields. Polish and British units practice amphibious landings. Staff officers from across Europe come to brief in front of large maps that show arrows stretching from the island toward the Baltic states.

Those same maps now carry new annotations—small icons for Russian electronic warfare units along the coast of Gotland, circles that show where their jamming should be strongest. Tonight those circles sit right under the Härnösand’s plotted track. Tamm watches the GNSS display flicker again. “Our civilian ferries are complaining,” she says. “They call it ‘ghost steering.’ Their autopilots try to compensate for fake positions. We keep telling them to trust their eyes and radar.”

Björk thinks of the NATO staff officers who use the same phrase. Trust your sensors, but know which ones the Russians can lie to. “Send our nav anomalies to the maritime operations center,” she says. “Flag them as likely Russian hybrid activity. And tell them land forces might want to know that their rail ferries and roll-on/roll-off ships will be navigating by eyeball.”

* * *

Thousands of kilometers away, at JFC Norfolk, another watch floor comes to life around the same interference pattern. JFC Norfolk is NATO’s newest operational-level headquarters, responsible for the security of the Atlantic sea lines of communication and, since the new regional defense plans, for the broader northwestern region that includes the Nordics and the Baltic approaches. It is across the ocean from MCLCC-NW, but the workflows crisscross constantly.

On the giant screen at the front of Norfolk’s operations center, the duty director brings up the Baltic overlay. Color-coded reports from aircraft, ships, and land units show where GNSS is being jammed or spoofed. The density of incidents over the Gulf of Finland and around Kaliningrad looks like someone spilled ink.

The duty director nods to the intelligence watch officer. “What’s the assessment?”

The intel officer steps forward. “Same Russian electronic warfare systems, sir,” she says, gesturing to the screen. “We see overlap with known 1RL257 Krasukha deployments and other theater systems. They’ve been probing since 2022. This is the heaviest pattern yet.”

The deputy commander, a British three-star, listens while his staff describes how civil aviation has diverted flights, how ferries and tankers are reporting positional anomalies, how the European Union has sent formal complaints about Russian hybrid attacks on navigation and safety. “Good. The complaints help bring this to our attention, but now we have to do something about it,” he says. “The problem we have to solve is what happens when reinforcement forces try to cross that sea and land in those ports under a contested spectrum.”

He turns to his land advisor. “How is MCLCC-NW incorporating this?” he asks.

“We just spoke to Brigadier Halvorsen,” the advisor says. “He is building PNT reporting into every land unit’s battle rhythm. He is treating Russian GNSS jamming as a constant, not a spike.”

“Good,” the deputy says. “We built these new commands to handle exactly this. New allies, new headquarters, new operating environment. This is our test run before things get kinetic.”

He looks back at the map, at the triangle formed by eastern Finland, Gotland, and Latvia. “Make sure the maritime and air components are seeing the same PNT picture,” he says. “If land is treating these events as deliberate targeting, the rest of us need to as well.”

* * *

By evening, the pattern is clear enough that nobody at MCLCC-NW calls it coincidence.

The intelligence section brings an update to Halvorsen. “Russian jamming intensity has increased over the last twelve hours,” the senior analyst says. “Airliners diverted in Lithuanian and Estonian airspace. Swedish and Finnish maritime agencies reporting serious interference in the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. Civilian GNSS receivers near the Kola Peninsula are showing similar anomalies.”

The analyst taps a second slide. “We assess with high confidence that Russian electronic warfare brigades in Kaliningrad, the Saint Petersburg region, and the Kola Peninsula are deliberately targeting GNSS as part of a hybrid campaign. Likely objectives are to intimidate civilian populations, stress critical infrastructure, and test NATO’s reaction in the Nordic and Baltic region.”

Halvorsen listens, then makes the decision that turns analysis into orders. “All right,” he says. “From this point forward, for all land units under MCLCC-NW, we will treat Russian GNSS jamming as a standing condition. Not an inject.” He looks at Nyman. “Draft a fragmentary order,” he says. “Directive one. All headquarters will incorporate PNT status into their routine reports. Directive two. All units will identify which of their systems are most vulnerable to Russian jamming and report mitigation measures. Directive three. Exercise analog navigation and time discipline in the next twenty-four hours.”

He pauses. “And make sure JFC Norfolk sees that we are acting on their assumptions, not waiting for perfect clarity.” The FRAGO races out over secure nets, riding systems that themselves depend on the same sky the Russians are poisoning.

Chapter 2: Trial by Jamming on the Baltic-Nordic Front

In the Finnish brigade command post, Ruiz hears the new guidance summarized over the divisional net. “MCLCC-NW assesses Russian GNSS jamming as persistent,” the voice from division reads. “All units will adjust plans accordingly. PNT status will be reported as routinely as fuel and ammunition.”

Ruiz flips to a fresh page in her notebook and writes as she listens. “PNT status line in SITREP,” she says. “Green, amber, red, with example. Explicit mention of Russian jammers. Command emphasis.”

Her US battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Samir Patel, nods. “We already knew this,” he says. “Now higher is admitting it.”

They gather the staff around the projected map. Ruiz shades their sector again, darker this time. “Inside this ring, we assume Russian jamming is active,” she says. “Their electronic warfare brigades in the Western Military District and Baltic Fleet are trying to make our own systems unreliable. We treat every GNSS-enabled device as suspect unless proven otherwise.” The staff moves quickly.

Staff members make changes to routes. They adjust movement plans so that phase lines align with geographic features and not just grid lines. Checkpoints are buildings and intersections, not anonymous waypoints. They write instructions in plain language: “Turn east at crossroads with three birch trees and a red barn on the northwest corner.”

They make changes to fires. The fire support officer marks systems that are most vulnerable to spoofing. Counterbattery radars that depend on precise timing. Tablets that calculate firing solutions based on target coordinates pulled automatically from a network. The staff members drill a simple rule: If a target comes only from a system that could be fed bad PNT by Russian jammers, they will confirm with a second method before engaging.

They make changes to communications. The signal officer builds a PNT-aware primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency communications plan. The staff notes which radios and waveforms depend on accurate time from satellites and which can operate on manual time hacks. Net operators rehearse time-of-day changes not by trusting their screens, but by taking time from one designated master clock in the tactical operations center.

On a handful of vehicles, the battalion runs an experimental assured-PNT kit—a black box bolted under the radios that fuses inertial sensors, wheel encoders, multiple GNSS constellations, and whatever civilian signals of opportunity it can hear, from cellular towers to broadcast transmitters. When GNSS degrades, the box dead reckons position and time well enough to keep fire missions and movement orders coherent. The signal officer jokes that it is a University of Texas professor’s revenge on the jammer belt around Kaliningrad, a nod to research that proved you could navigate by the city’s radio noise alone.

And they make changes to reporting. The battle captain updates the battalion situation report template. PNT status sits between ammunition and casualty lines.

The command sergeant major writes a new task organization on the whiteboard. “Platoon sergeants are now map instructors,” he says. “Tonight, every convoy and every dismount lane is run in ‘red PNT’ condition. No tablets. No phone nav. Wristwatches, compasses, eyes.”

* * *

Just after midnight, the invisible barrage peaks. In Estonia and Lithuania, pilots on approach call go-arounds when their GNSS-guided approaches show erratic behavior below one thousand feet. In Finland, regional carriers decide that it is safer to divert than to trust jumpy needles. Baltic maritime agencies issue urgent notices that warn of “serious positioning disturbances” in the Gulf of Finland and central Baltic Sea. Captains are told to rely on radar, depth, and visual marks. Ferries and tankers report ghost tracks, their instruments showing them miles from where they know they are.

Along the seabed, sensors attached to subsea cables between Sweden and Latvia, and between Finland and Estonia, record sharp spikes. One cable’s traffic drops suddenly. A second shows increased error rates. Whether dragged anchors or something more deliberate is to blame is unclear. In a headquarters near Saint Petersburg, a Russian electronic warfare brigade commander watches his own screens glow brighter as his systems push more power into the sky. He knows civil aviation authorities will complain. That is part of the point. He knows NATO’s new commands will have to react. That is the more interesting part.

The same signatures appear in three NATO headquarters at once. In Mikkeli, MCLCC-NW’s PNT display lights up. In Virginia, JFC Norfolk’s plots of GNSS reliability over the North Atlantic and the Baltic spike in red over the Gulf of Finland and Kaliningrad. At Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany, staff officers received increased reports from Combined Air Operations Centre Bodø of navigation problems on NATO air policing.

Secure chat windows bloom with messages. MCLCC-NW pushes an immediate update to subordinate land formations: “Russian GNSS jamming intensified over Baltic region and eastern Finland. All units execute ‘red PNT’ procedures. Provide PNT SITREP in two hours.”

JFC Norfolk sends guidance down to its components: “Treat Russian PNT interference as coordinated hybrid action. Maritime and air components adjust routing to account for degraded navigation. Land component to report impact on movements in Finland and the Baltics.”

Allied Maritime Command directs warships and maritime patrol aircraft to move closer to critical cable junctions and chokepoints. The Swedish and Finnish navies coordinate patrols to look for suspicious vessels and unusual anchor patterns. Allied Air Command adjusts air policing routes and tanker tracks to avoid the worst interference zones. Crews brief non-GNSS approaches and backup procedures for Baltic and Nordic airfields.

For the first time, all three components are reacting to Russian jamming as a shared operational problem rather than as isolated technical faults. The new commands, the new allies, and the new regional defense plans are being tested in contact. Halvorsen looks at the reports on his screen. “Get me a consolidated land PNT status report from Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic states,” he says. “And send our mitigation measures to JFC Norfolk. If this is a rehearsal, we need to show that the new structure can adapt.”

* * *

On the ground, the orders become friction. Patel’s battalion gets its tasking from the Finnish brigade at three in the morning. Secure a major rail junction and adjacent highway interchange that feed west toward ports and south toward the capital region. Be prepared to move onward to reception areas for allied reinforcements from Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The battalion’s lead company rolls out along forest roads before dawn. Platoon leaders use intersection counts, terrain association, and kilometer markers to track their progress. Tablets ride in rucksacks, ready for use when they can be trusted. “PNT status amber,” one company commander reports to the battalion headquarters at the first checkpoint. “Our icons are drifting up to one hundred meters. We are on route by terrain. One drone team reports target coordinates jumping when they cross Phase Line FOX. They are using terrain reference instead.”

“Report that as your example,” Ruiz says on the net. “Higher wants concrete cases of Russian effects.”

The sustainment convoy follows behind, its drivers unhappily familiar with the route from the previous night’s analog rehearsal. In the lead truck, a specialist slid his thumb across a dead screen like it might wake up, then gave up and held the paper map under a red light. “Feels like we trained for the eighties,” he said, because the blue dot was gone and the world had gone back to bearings, landmarks, and intuition.

The truck commander answered without looking over, telling him to “call the next intersection off the map, not the tablet.” A moment later, he added, more quietly, that the screen can come back when it wants, but the convoy still needs to reach its destination.

In a rail yard, civilian dispatchers stare at screens that show trains ghosting in and out of stations. Their own backup paper logs say something different. Patel assigns one liaison officer to sit with them and reconcile reality. “Treat Russian GNSS spoofing as enemy artillery,” Ruiz tells her. “These are the effects. You are the counterbattery.”

Chapter 3: Lessons from the Signal Storm

The next day, the external situation calms slightly. The GNSS interference levels drop from extreme to merely bad. Civil aviation authorities continue to divert flights around the worst areas but resume some approaches. Maritime warnings remain in effect. Cable operators keep extra eyes on sensor feeds.

Inside NATO, the crisis leaves a mark. JFC Norfolk convenes a secure video session with MCLCC-NW, Allied Maritime Command, and Allied Air Command. On the screen behind the JFC commander, the Baltic map shows three layers at once: Russian electronic warfare platforms, GNSS interference patterns, and NATO movements. “Russia just conducted a PNT live-fire exercise,” the JFC commander says. “They targeted civil trust, critical infrastructure, and our new command arrangements. We need to treat this like an after-action review, not a weather report.”

Halvorsen briefs from Mikkeli. “Land units that performed best were those that assumed Russian jamming from the start,” he says. “They built analog navigation into training, made PNT status a routine report, and fused civil interference reports with military ones. Units that treated interference as an exception struggled more.” Allied Maritime Command reports on how Swedish, Finnish, and allied ships adapted by reverting to visual and radar navigation and by increasing patrols around critical subsea infrastructure. Allied Air Command presents data from diverted flights and from NATO air patrols that had to adjust for spoofed signals.

As staff officers capture lessons, a colonel from the science and technology staff directorate briefs options for hardening navigation and timing: accelerated fielding of mounted assured-PNT systems that blend inertial navigation units, miniature atomic clocks, and signals from multiple satellite constellations and low-earth orbit PNT payloads; leveraging the results of experiments in the Nordic countries that use 5G and Internet of Things infrastructure as a giant, passive triangulation grid; and capitalizing on renewed European debates about employing terrestrial systems such as eLORAN, an enhanced version of the LORAN hyperbolic radio navigation system introduced during World War II, along the North Sea and Baltic coasts as a hard-to-jam backup layer.

The JFC commander looks at the overlay one last time. “Russia just tested our newest allies and our newest commands,” he says. “Finland and Sweden are living inside the contested electromagnetic environment we wrote doctrine about. MCLCC-NW and JFC Norfolk were designed for exactly this. The good news is that the structure held. The bad news is that this was only jamming. Next time it might be jamming plus something else.” He concludes with a task. “Within one week, I want updated PNT annexes from land, sea, and air,” he says, “based on what you just lived. This is not a technical issue. This is force employment.”

* * *

In central Finland, the crisis already feels like a preview instead of a climax. Patel’s battalion drops to a slightly lower readiness posture. The fuel trucks are full. The maps are worn at the creases. The young leaders are more comfortable saying, “I am at the red barn just north of the crossroads” than reading off a string of digits from a suspicious device.

Only a few vehicles carry the experimental assured-PNT boxes. Everyone else still lives on a mix of paper, habit, and skeptical use of digital systems. Ruiz and the signal officer make a note: If the kit proves its worth under real Russian jamming, the battalion will fight for more. Ruiz walks through the motor pool as the command sergeant major posts the next week’s training schedule.

“More no-GNSS drills?” she asks.

“More living like the Russians are still jamming us,” he answers.

One of the platoon leaders shakes his head. “Ma’am, it feels like cheating to turn the GPS off on purpose.”

“It is the opposite of cheating,” Ruiz tells him. “Russia is already doing that for you. We are just getting ahead of it.” She thinks of Mikkeli and Norfolk, of maritime patrols around Gotland, of air controllers juggling diverted flights over Vilnius.

“They are watching how we react,” she says. “They just saw that the newest allies and the newest commands can keep moving when the sky lies. That is a message.”

Lieutenant Colonel James J. Torrence, US Army, is the commander of the 39th Strategic Signal Battalion in Chièvres, Belgium. He holds an MS in strategic design and management, an MS in cybersecurity, a master of military art and science, and a doctorate in strategic security. Torrence is a LTG (Ret) James M. Dubik Writing Fellow. He has deployed twice to Afghanistan as a battalion communications officer and has served in various military leadership positions in the United States, Germany, Belgium, Korea, and Israel.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Tom Lamb, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 19, 2026

22. When the Fiction Ends: Lessons from “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky”

Summary:

James Torrence argues that FICINT can surface real operational lessons because Russia’s GPS jamming and spoofing already behaves like a standing campaign, not a rare anomaly. He links civilian disruptions in the Baltic and Nordic region to a deliberate stress test of NATO’s newest allies and command seams, including the new land headquarters in Mikkeli and its relationship to JFC Norfolk. His core takeaway is procedural and practical: treat degraded PNT as baseline, standardize reporting, rehearse “red PNT” in exercises, and push brigades back to map, compass, time discipline, and PACE comms, while fusing civilian and military reporting into one picture

When the Fiction Ends: Lessons from “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 20, 2026

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/when-the-fiction-ends-lessons-from-maneuver-under-a-lying-sky/

Editor’s note: This is an epilogue to “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky,” a work of FICINT. In it, the author of the short story extracts five real-world lessons from it for US and allied military forces. You can read the story here.

“Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” is a work of fiction. But the details the story weaves together are not. FICINT—fictional intelligence—offers a powerful means of anticipating and understanding threats because it blends imagination and reality. It secures our understanding of potential threats to ground truths while simultaneously freeing us to consider how those threats might present themselves before we face them in the real world. So what lessons emerge from the story?

1. Russia’s Existing Theater PNT Campaign

The pattern of Russian activity “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” portrays is already visible in open sources. In April 2024, Finnair temporarily suspended flights to Tartu, Estonia after repeated GPS interference prevented safe landings, prompting Estonian officials to blame deliberate jamming from Russia. Later that year and into 2025, Baltic and Nordic authorities continued to report widespread disturbances to satellite navigation, particularly near Kaliningrad and the Gulf of Finland. A Ryanair flight to Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted to Poland in January 2025 because of GPS interference on approach, underscoring how safety margins for civil aviation can erode when position, navigation, and timing (PNT) are contested in peacetime.

By mid-2025, multiple European Union member states had moved beyond isolated complaints. A group of thirteen EU countries formally called on the European Commission to respond to global navigation satellite system (GNSS) jamming and spoofing linked to Russia and Belarus, and a broader coalition of states backed common action against interference in the Baltic and Nordic region. Analysts have documented tens of thousands of incidents affecting aircraft and ships since 2022. The Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland have become persistent hotspots for GNSS disruption rather than rare anomalies.

2. Stress-Testing New Allies and New Commands

The story’s headquarters in Mikkeli, Finland, is modeled on NATO’s real Multinational Corps Land Component Command Northwest. The command became operational in Mikkeli on September 1, 2025 and was formally inaugurated the following month as a multinational land headquarters for northern Europe. Reporting from Finland and allied outlets describes a small but growing international staff led by a Nordic core, exactly the kind of team the vignette imagines reacting in contact. In addition, NATO opened a new combined air operations center in Norway in October 2025, which integrated with NATO’s air command-and-control architecture.

At the same time, NATO has been reshaping its operational-level command seams. Joint Force Command Norfolk (JFC Norfolk) has assumed responsibility for a redefined “northwest” region that now includes the territory of all five Nordic allies along with the North Atlantic. Recent coverage notes that this shift concentrates responsibility for the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the Nordic-Baltic approaches under a single headquarters, tightening the link between maritime reinforcement routes and land operations in Finland and Sweden.

3. Implications for MCLCC-NW and JFC Norfolk

In that context, the story’s crisis is best read as a stress test: Russia uses PNT disruption to probe NATO’s newest allies and newest command arrangements. For Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest (MCLCC-NW) and JFC Norfolk, several implications follow:

First, treat Russian GNSS jamming and spoofing as a standing theater condition, not a rare technical anomaly. That means building a persistent PNT running estimate that fuses civil aviation, maritime, and land reports into a single picture.

Second, standardize a simple PNT status line in reporting across the region (for example, green/amber/red plus one concrete example), so that land, air, and maritime headquarters can compare effects quickly without bespoke formats.

Third, rehearse red PNT conditions in major exercises, including NATO’s new regional defense plan drills and Nordic-hosted maneuvers, so that staff processes and command post layouts work when satellite-derived time and location are untrusted.

And fourth, align authorities and processes between JFC Norfolk, MCLCC-NW, Allied Maritime Command, and Allied Air Command so that Russian PNT attacks trigger a shared operational response rather than siloed technical troubleshooting.

Those command-level changes sit alongside a quieter revolution in how allies think about backup timing and navigation. Defense ministries and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are experimenting with assured-PNT approaches that blend multiple technologies: vehicle-mounted that combine GPS with inertial sensors and integrity monitoring; alternative satellite layers in low-earth orbit; terrestrial timing distribution over fiber; and renewed interest in hardened terrestrial systems such as an enhanced version of LORAN, the hyperbolic radio navigation system pioneered during World War II, as a GNSS backup.

European and international studies point toward a layered future: multiple GNSS constellations, resilient space-based PNT, and signals of opportunity from existing infrastructure. The European Space Agency’s PNT Vision 2035 white paper highlights signals of opportunity and hybrid solutions as key elements of future resilience, while technical vendors and policy papers argue for combining low-earth orbit PNT, miniature atomic clocks, and fiber-based time distribution into a single architecture rather than betting on any one layer.

Research groups have highlighted the particular utility of signals of opportunity, showing that navigation is possible even when GNSS is completely untrustworthy by using signals from cellular networks, broadcast towers, and other ambient radio sources. Early work on GPS spoofing by Professor Todd Humphreys and colleagues helped crystallize the threat; later projects have demonstrated antispoofing, interference detection, and even navigation based largely on non-GNSS signals. A recent paper coauthored by Humphreys details dozens of days of interference patterns and underscores that human-directed interference is now part of the operational backdrop, not an edge case.

4. Tasks for Brigades and Battalions on the Northern Flank

For brigade and battalion commanders who may one day fall under MCLCC-NW in crisis, the scenario points toward tangible tasks that can be trained now, without waiting for new equipment.

First, rebuild analog navigation and time discipline as core skills. Leaders at every echelon should be able to move and report accurately with maps, terrain association, and synchronized watches when GNSS is unreliable.

Second, design PACE (primary, alternate, contingency, emergency) communications plans that explicitly account for Russian jamming of GNSS-dependent systems. Some radios, waveforms, and data links will fail gracefully; others will not. Units need to know which is which.

Third, make PNT a routine part of the running estimate. Intelligence, operations, and signals sections should track Russian electronic warfare activity and GNSS interference the way they track weather or enemy artillery.

And fourth, integrate civil reporting into military understanding. In the Nordic-Baltic region, civil aviation authorities, maritime agencies, and rail and energy operators often see Russian interference first. Their open reporting should inform NATO’s military picture whenever possible.

Units that do have access to assured-PNT kits or experimental navigation aids should treat them as tools to be tactically validated, not magic boxes. Hybrid navigation approaches that combine inertial systems, visual scene matching, and radio frequency signals of opportunity will only deliver real resilience if commanders understand their limits as well as their strengths.

5. Questions for the Next Rotation to Finland and Sweden

Finally, “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” suggests a few questions that units deploying to Finland, Sweden, or the Baltic states might ask themselves during mission analysis or a predeployment rehearsal-of-concept drill:

If Russian GNSS jamming in our area of operations looked like the last six months of real-world interference over the Baltic Sea, what would break first in our current scheme of maneuver?

Where in our plans do we implicitly assume precise time, location, or automated track correlation without realizing it?

How will we communicate PNT degradation to higher headquarters quickly and clearly enough that MCLCC-NW and JFC Norfolk can adjust?

Which civilian partners in our sector (airports, ports, rail, energy, telecom) have already adapted to GNSS interference, and how can we learn from their procedures before a crisis?

If we were given a small number of assured-PNT or alternative navigation kits, where would we place them to get the most operational value and learning?

The story’s battalion in eastern Finland, the corvette off Gotland, and the staff officers in Mikkeli and Norfolk are invented. The Russian jammers, the diverted flights, the European Union letters, the emerging alternative PNT technologies, and the new NATO headquarters are not. Treating those as a single operating problem, rather than as disconnected news items or science projects, is the first step toward fighting through the lying sky that already hangs over the Baltic-Nordic front.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Reece Heck

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mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 20, 2026

23. The Battlefield Moved, Humans Didn’t: Why a 1930s Historian Still Understands Modern War Better Than We Do

Summary:

David T. Cloft argues that Sir Herbert Butterfield’s core claim still holds: war is not a tidy system to be solved by charts, metrics, or technocratic process. It is fear, honor, faith, and meaning colliding under lethal pressure. Cloft says modern “fifth-generation” conflict shifts fear into institutions, screens, and narratives, then uses metrics and inevitability stories to sap moral coherence. States may win tactically yet lose strategically because they cannot explain why sacrifice matters. Resilience, he argues, is not training slogans. It is belief anchored in legitimacy and purpose.

Excerpts:

This is why modern states win battles and lose wars while insisting they are doing everything “right.” They dominate tactically while hemorrhaging morally. Butterfield would not be impressed by precision-guided munitions paired with leaders who cannot articulate why survival should require courage in the first place.

He also anticipated the most corrosive weapon of fifth-generation warfare: the myth of inevitability. Today’s conflicts are packaged as historical destiny. Resistance is labeled backward. Compliance is labeled moral. Butterfield warned that this Whiggish nonsense doesn’t clarify history—it weaponizes it. People do not fight for inevitability. They fight for meaning. Tell them history has already decided, and you shouldn’t be surprised when they stop standing in front of bullets—or stop believing the system deserves loyalty at all.

Comment: The Whig Interpretation of History New edition by Herbert Butterfield (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Whig-Interpretation-History-Herbert-Butterfield/dp/0393003183

The Battlefield Moved, Humans Didn’t: Why a 1930s Historian Still Understands Modern War Better Than We Do

afnn.us · David T. Cloft · February 18, 2026

https://afnn.us/2026/02/18/the-battlefield-moved-humans-didnt-why-a-1930s-historian-still-understands-modern-war-better-than-we-do/

Nearly a hundred years ago, Sir Herbert Butterfield sat down and committed the unforgivable sin of telling historians, strategists, and polite academics something they still hate hearing today: war is not a clean system. It is not a spreadsheet problem. It is not solved by better charts, prettier maps, or a PowerPoint deck with the right color palette. War—every war—boils down to frightened human beings trying to reconcile self-preservation, honor, faith, and meaning while other frightened human beings try to kill them.

This was an inconvenient truth in the 1930s. It is downright heretical in the age of fifth-generation warfare.

Butterfield wrote before drones, social media, cyber operations, influence campaigns, and armies of anonymous experts explaining conflict through think-tank jargon. Yet he understood something that entire modern bureaucracies still manage to miss: the further war drifts from formal battlefields, the more decisive the human soul becomes—and the worse technocrats perform.

Modern warfare has convinced itself that it has evolved past fear. We call it “information dominance” now. Or “narrative shaping.” Or “whole-of-government approaches.” Butterfield would have recognized the same old human panic, just dressed up in acronyms and grant funding. Fear did not disappear; it went airborne. It moved into phones, screens, news cycles, and institutional cowardice.

Fifth-generation warfare doesn’t seek to destroy your army. That’s inefficient. It seeks to exhaust your meaning. It attacks trust, legitimacy, identity, and belief until people voluntarily surrender their courage and call it progress. Butterfield saw this coming before the first influencer monetized outrage or the first general briefed “strategic patience” as a victory condition.

The modern obsession with metrics is exactly what Butterfield warned against. We measure clicks, sentiment analysis, territory “controlled,” and engagement statistics as if these things explain why societies fracture or hold. They don’t. They never did. A population doesn’t collapse because it lost the narrative battle on Twitter. It collapses because it no longer believes sacrifice is honorable, truth exists, or endurance matters.

Butterfield’s critics—then and now—prefer a safer story: history bends toward enlightenment, modernity fixes ancient problems, and technology redeems human weakness. Butterfield ruined that party by insisting humans don’t evolve out of fear. They merely find new ways to justify it.

In fifth-generation warfare, fear isn’t episodic. There is no “combat zone” where you brace yourself and then return home. Fear is ambient. It hums constantly. It comes through headlines, HR policies, economic pressure, reputational threats, and moral confusion. Butterfield understood that courage is not infinite. It must be anchored to belief. When belief dissolves, self-preservation takes over—and no amount of firepower can reverse that.

This is why modern states win battles and lose wars while insisting they are doing everything “right.” They dominate tactically while hemorrhaging morally. Butterfield would not be impressed by precision-guided munitions paired with leaders who cannot articulate why survival should require courage in the first place.

He also anticipated the most corrosive weapon of fifth-generation warfare: the myth of inevitability. Today’s conflicts are packaged as historical destiny. Resistance is labeled backward. Compliance is labeled moral. Butterfield warned that this Whiggish nonsense doesn’t clarify history—it weaponizes it. People do not fight for inevitability. They fight for meaning. Tell them history has already decided, and you shouldn’t be surprised when they stop standing in front of bullets—or stop believing the system deserves loyalty at all.

Modern strategists love to talk about “resilience.” Butterfield knew resilience is not built by workshops or slogans. It is built by moral coherence. When soldiers, citizens, and institutions are asked to endure fear without honor, sacrifice without meaning, or obedience without legitimacy, resilience collapses quietly. Then everyone pretends it was a surprise.

Butterfield’s real crime was refusing to flatter modern confidence. He insisted that war would always be a study of fear and courage, usually of faith, and sometimes of vision. Today we would prefer to replace faith with branding, vision with messaging, and courage with compliance training. And then we act stunned when societies fracture under pressure.

Fifth-generation warfare has not disproven Butterfield. It has vindicated him mercilessly. The battlefield has moved, but the human animal has not. Fear still governs action. Honor still restrains panic. Faith still determines endurance. Vision still separates collapse from survival.

Butterfield didn’t predict drones or cyber operations. He didn’t need to. He understood the one system that has never been upgraded: the human soul under threat. And nearly a century later, while we congratulate ourselves on how sophisticated warfare has become, we are still relearning the lesson he already wrote down in plain English.

War was never about the maps. It was always about whether people believe life is worth risking for something greater than themselves. Fifth-generation warfare just made that truth impossible to ignore.

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afnn.us · David T. Cloft · February 18, 2026

24. The Taiwan 10 episode TV series Zero Day

Comment: Finally. I am going to download all 10 episodes to my iPad and watch on my flight to Korea tomorrow.

The Taiwan 10 episode TV series Zero Day about a PRC invasion scenario is now available with English subtitles on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAnZdVG041Y&list=PLtozm5v6pMf4HQRBkFXxooXOW1oEGfbXy

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

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

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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