Quotes of the Day:

“in 1917, Lenin impressed on the newly appointed Commissar for Education that libraries would be a key weapon in the fight for hearts and minds: Try to pay attention to libraries in the first instance. We must borrow from progressive bourgeois countries all those methods they have developed for making library books widely available. We must make books accessible to the masses as soon as possible. We must try to make our books available all over Russia, in as large a quantity as possible.”

– The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading by Andrew Pettegree

“I think the American Dream should be to have a good life, and to live well, and to be a good citizen. I think that should apply to all of us.” 

– Rosa Parks

“The most revolutionary act is a clear view of the world as it really is.”

– Rosa Luxemburg

1. Creating Conspiracy Theories: What Information Warriors Need to Know

2. Cognitive Deterrence: How Taiwan Is Learning to Govern Resistance

3. The Resilience Series – The West’s Greatest Vulnerability: Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI)

4. Tensions Rise in Iran as Protesters Face Off With Regime Loyalists

5. 25 Years After 9/11: Former CENTCOM Commander’s Strategic Warning on What America Still Gets Wrong

6. The Cognitive Battlefield is Now Decisive Terrain

7. Joint Interagency Task Force Announces Counter-UAS Marketplace

8. China’s Fragile Future: How Secure Is the CCP?

9. Anthropic Pushes Claude Deeper Into Knowledge Work

10. The United States Is Dangerously Misreading Iran

11. Why Iran Will Escalate

12. Japan’s National Security Reckoning

13. Inside the Secret Briefings That Pushed Apple to Move Chip Production to the US [Report]

14. Are Chinese AI labs cheating? US AI giant Anthropic alleges some are

15. Political, Psychological, and Cognitive Warfare in an Asymmetric Conflict Environment

16. War Without Soldiers: The Evolution of Warfare in the Age of Machines

17. Breaking Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Habit: The End of the Senior Partner Myth

18. The Danger in the Middle: Will Xi’s Purges Increase the Risk of War?

19. America Needs Cognitive Civil Defense

1. Creating Conspiracy Theories: What Information Warriors Need to Know

Summary:

The essay argues conspiracy theories function as cognitive environments that shape threat perception, trust, and authority before overt action occurs. Using France’s La Bleuite in the Algerian War, it shows how manufactured suspicion collapsed cohesion and triggered internal purges, weakening the FLN more than direct force. It explains two frameworks. The Existential Threat Model identifies five elements that make conspiracies persistent: pattern, agency attribution, meaningful threat, coalition, and secrecy. A second model explains adoption through anxiety, social influence, synergy, plausibility, and unfalsifiability. Debunking often fails because it targets claims, not conditions, and can harden identity-based belief. Weaponized narratives drift, boomerang domestically, erode institutional legitimacy, and escalate without off-ramps.

Creating Conspiracy Theories: What Information Warriors Need to Know

by Douglas Wilbur

02.24.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/24/creating-conspiracy-theories-what-information-warriors-need-to-know/

Conspiracy theories play a growing role in modern conflict by shaping how audiences interpret threat, trust, and authority before overt action occurs. This essay examines conspiracy theories as cognitive environments rather than collections of false claims. Drawing on the Existential Threat Model and a political-psychological model of conspiracy belief formation, it explains how such beliefs are cultivated, why counter-messaging often fails, and what strategic risks weaponized conspiracy narratives pose for information warriors. 

Introduction 

During the Algerian War of Independence, French counterinsurgency forces exploited a psychological vulnerability within the ranks of the National Liberation Front (FLN) by creating a conspiracy theory. Through a deception operation known as La Bleuite, the French generated the fear of betrayal and increased risk amongst the Algerian revolutionaries. The conspiracy held that French intelligence had deeply infiltrated the FLN movement. Suspicion spread through the ranks, causing trust and cohesion to collapse in some cases. The perceived threat was existential. If traitors were everywhere, the movement’s identity and moral authority were at risk. This resulted in purging of the ranks in an effort to sift out traitors. Many otherwise loyal revolutionaries were persecuted and murdered. This weakened the FLN more effectively than direct military action. It succeeded because it leveraged existing fears, redefined uncertainty as hostile intent, and imposed social and operational costs on disbelief.  

For information warriors, the lesson is that conspiracy theories can be weaponized as an information weapon if properly constructed. They emerge when uncertainty is left unresolved, and uncertainty is pervasive in war. Understanding this matters because conspiracy theories can condition how people interpret events before any visible action takes place. They shape what feels plausible. They determine which sources are trusted and which are dismissed. They define enemies in advance and assign moral blame before facts are known. By the time violence, protest or mobilization occurs, the interpretive work has already been created. Actions then feel defensive rather than aggressive. Decisions feel necessary rather than chosen. For information warriors, this means influence is often decided upstream, at the level of belief formation, not at the moment of crisis.  

This essay does not offer tactical guidance on deploying conspiracy narratives; instead, it explains how such belief systems function, why they are effective and what risks they pose when treated as tools of influence in modern conflict. However, it does offer practitioners guidelines for taking direct action. For example, conspiracy theories are not injected into audiences at moments of decision. They are cultivated in advance by shaping how threat, trust, and identity are interpreted over time. This requires keen attention to the operational environment and the existing vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation. Effective influence operates upstream, before claims are stabilized and before sides are fixed. To explain how this works, the discussion now turns to two complementary theoretical frameworks about conspiracy theories. First is the existential threat model (ETM), and second is what can be referred to as the conspiracy belief formation model. Taken together, they show how conspiracy theories can be deliberately cultivated without relying on spectacle, mass deception, or centralized propaganda. 

Existential Threat Model 

ETM specifies five structural elements derived from evolutionary psychology that must be present for a conspiracy theory to form and persist. Together, they explain why certain narratives harden into conspiracy beliefs while others remain ordinary propaganda or rumor. The model has been applied directly to strategic communication analysis and is well-suited for information warfare contexts. In order to demonstrate how the elements of ETM are applied to reality, we will rely on a real world example of a Russian cyberattack on an American technology company, called Solar Winds that morphed into a conspiracy theory. In that incident, the Russians inserted malicious code into a routine software update from Solar Winds, granting covert access to government agencies and private companies for months before detection. The technical complexity of the breach, the delayed discovery and the limited public visibility into attribution created prolonged uncertainty. As a result, the incident became the basis for conspiratorial interpretations, with routine detection failures, incomplete disclosures and interagency coordination recast as evidence of hidden cooperation, tolerance or deeper infiltration. 

First, a conspiracy theory must present a pattern that appears to causally connect people and events. The pattern does not need to be true; it just needs to feel coherent. Discrete events are arranged to suggest coordination rather than coincidence. In information warfare, this often appears as timelines, repeated “signals,” or selective sequencing that implies design. The pattern gives the audience a sense that chaos has an underlying order. In modern information environments, unresolved cyber incidents often become the raw material for pattern construction. The SolarWinds breach linked routine software updates, multiple government agencies and private firms into a single narrative of coordination. Discrete technical events were interpreted as evidence of an overarching design rather than isolated compromise. 

Second, is agency attribution, where patterns must be driven by some kind of agent acting intentionally. In an information warfare context, this takes the form of exaggerated intent attribution even when intent is absent. Audiences are encouraged to assume that negative outcomes are deliberate rather than accidental. These actors are depicted as highly capable and tightly coordinated. When policies fail or plans break down, those outcomes are treated as intentional signals rather than mistakes. Setbacks are explained as deception or misdirection. Random error disappears from the explanation and is replaced by assumed hostile intent. Cyber intrusions like SolarWinds encourage exaggerated intent attribution. Because the operation appeared sophisticated and persistent, failures in detection or response were reinterpreted as intentional tolerance or hidden cooperation. Mistakes were treated as signals. Delay became evidence of complicity. 

Third, the conspiracy must involve a meaningful threat to the audience or their group. This threat can be physical, economic, cultural, or moral. ETM shows that threat perception is central to belief adoption. In information warfare, chronic and unresolved threats like pervasive cyber-attacks, are more effective than a single large attack. It keeps anxiety active and attention focused. The breach created a chronic and unresolved sense of threat rather than a single crisis moment. Access to government networks, private infrastructure, and sensitive data suggested long-term exposure. This sustained uncertainty aligns with ETM’s finding that persistent, low-resolution threats are more destabilizing than isolated attacks. 

Fourth is the perception of a coalition of conspirators, as conspiracies require more than one actor. ETM specifies that audiences expect alliances working together toward a malevolent goal. These coalitions can be states, corporations, institutions, or social groups. The size of the alliance signals power. The diversity of actors signals reach. Together, they make resistance feel difficult and vigilance necessary. SolarWinds also enabled coalition narratives. Technical complexity and scale made it easy to frame the breach as involving intelligence agencies, corporations, and political actors acting in concert. The breadth of affected institutions reinforced perceptions of coordinated power and reach.  

The final element is secrecy. The conspirators must be attempting to hide their actions. Secrecy explains gaps in evidence and neutralizes counterarguments. Absence of proof becomes proof of concealment. In information warfare, secrecy also discredits official denials in advance. If the truth were visible, the theory argues the conspiracy would have failed already. Finally, the technical opacity of the breach reinforced secrecy assumptions. Limited public attribution, classified assessments, and incomplete disclosure made absence of evidence appear expected rather than reassuring. Secrecy did not weaken conspiratorial interpretation; it sustained it. 

Together, these five elements explain why conspiracy theories are resilient. They impose order, assign blame, elevate threat, and close off alternative interpretations. For information warriors, ETM provides a clear diagnostic framework. If all five elements are present, the narrative is operating as a conspiracy theory. If one is missing, it is not. ETM explains what a conspiracy theory must look like to function as a belief system. However, it does not explain why some audiences adopt these narratives while others do not. That vulnerability is explained by the conspiracy belief formation model, which accounts for the psychological and social conditions that make individuals receptive to conspiratorial explanations.  

Conspiracy Belief Formation Model 

The conspiracy belief formation model emerged from the intersection of social and political psychology. It specifies that five conditions existing in the mind of a person generates conspiracy belief adoption. In information warfare, they define when belief systems are easiest to cultivate. The first condition is anxiety, which is the primary entry point. People become vulnerable when uncertainty feels persistent and unresolved. The anxiety does not need to be extreme, just ongoing. In information warfare, this is often produced by ambiguity around institutions, competence or fairness. Anxiety creates a demand for explanation. Conspiracy beliefs supply it.  

The second condition is social influence because belief adoption is socially mediated. People often look to peers to judge credibility under uncertainty. Endorsement by trusted others reduces perceived risk. In contested environments, messages carried through personal networks carry more weight than statements from authorities. Belief spreads through relationships before it spreads through media. Third is synergy, which refers to the way multiple cues reinforce each other. Anxiety, social validation, and repetition interact. No single signal is decisive. Together, they create momentum. In practice, partial claims, anecdotes, and moral cues combine to produce a coherent belief environment. The whole is stronger than any part. 

The fourth condition is perceived plausibility. Claims must feel plausible within the audience’s existing worldview. They do not need to be proven. They must align with prior grievances, lived experience, or known facts. Plausibility is contextual. In information warfare, this often involves blending true elements with interpretation rather than fabrication. The final condition is unfalsifiability, where conspiracy beliefs are extremely difficult to disprove. Contradictory evidence is reframed as manipulation or concealment. Lack of evidence is treated as proof of secrecy. This makes the belief system resilient. Counter-arguments may strengthen rather than weaken commitment. 

How the Two Models Work Together in Practice 

Taken together, the Existential Threat Model and the conspiracy belief formation model explain both how conspiracy theories are constructed and how they are adopted. ETM operates at the narrative level. It explains how environments are shaped so that the? threat feels persistent, intentional, and patterned. Events are framed as coordinated rather than accidental. Agency is attributed to hostile actors. Coalitions are identified, and secrecy is implied. This narrative structure makes conspiratorial explanations feel reasonable rather than extreme. The conspiracy belief formation model explains how individuals respond to that environment. Anxiety increases under uncertainty. Social cues signal shared concern. Repetition builds familiarity. Plausible elements anchor belief to lived experience. Unfalsifiability prevents disengagement. Belief forms gradually through interaction and reinforcement, not persuasion. Together, the models show that conspiracy theories stabilize when narrative structure aligns with psychological vulnerability. For information warriors, influence is achieved by shaping conditions, not by inserting claims. 

Why Counter-Messaging and Debunking Can Fail 

Counter-messaging against conspiracy theories can fail when it targets specific claims made in a specific theory rather than conditions present in that context. Conspiracy beliefs are sustained by an interpretive environment shaped by threat, identity, and distrust. Disputing individual facts does not dismantle that environment. Counter-messaging could backfire by signaling that contested claims represent something important. Debunking also reintroduces uncertainty. By removing intentional explanations and replacing them with ambiguity, corrective messaging restores the anxiety that conspiracy beliefs were adopted to manage. Debunking further fails because it challenges identity rather than evidence. Once belief is tied to group belonging, disagreement becomes a social threat. Corrective messages signal elite authority and out-group judgment, activating defensiveness rather than reflection. Efforts to disprove claims are then interpreted as proof of secrecy and coordination. Absence of evidence becomes evidence of concealment. In this way, counter-messaging hardens belief instead of weakening it. This does not mean that tactical debunking has no role; in time-sensitive situations, it can be necessary to protect specific systems, personnel, or decision-making processes from immediate harm. 

Loss of Control and Narrative Drift 

Weaponized conspiracy theories are difficult to control once they take hold. They do not remain fixed to their original framing or intent. Because they operate through interpretation rather than instruction, meaning is constantly renegotiated by participants. New actors add explanations. Peripheral claims become central. The narrative expands and absorbs unrelated grievances. Attempts to narrow or redirect the conspiracy theory may fail because they can be interpreted as evidence of manipulation. This drift creates strategic risk. Narratives designed to undermine trust in a specific institution can generalize into distrust of all authority. Theories aimed at foreign adversaries can be repurposed against domestic actors. As beliefs adapt to local identities, reach increases but predictability declines. Over time, the conspiracy can persist even after the initiating conditions disappear. Once a belief environment is established, no single actor controls its trajectory. 

Blowback and Domestic Contamination 

Conspiracy theories do not respect audience boundaries. Narratives introduced for foreign influence often circulate back into domestic information environments through social media, diaspora networks, and open information channels. Once internalized, these beliefs can target domestic institutions, officials, or media ecosystems that were not part of the original objective. This contamination is difficult to contain because conspiracy narratives travel through peer networks rather than formal channels. Blowback is especially acute when conspiracy theories erode generalized trust. Distrust rarely remains selective. Suspicion aimed at one authority spreads to others. Over time, this weakens institutional legitimacy and complicates governance. For information warriors, the risk is cumulative. Short-term gains against an adversary can produce long-term instability at home. Once domestic belief systems are affected, reversal is slow and often incomplete. 

Institutional Self-Damage 

The use of conspiracy narratives carries long-term costs for institutional credibility. When influence operations rely on framing authorities as deceptive or corrupt, those frames do not remain isolated. Over time, cynicism generalizes. Audiences become skeptical not only of targeted institutions but of institutional authority as a whole. This erodes the shared assumptions required for effective governance, coordination, and crisis response. Institutional self-damage also limits strategic flexibility. Actors that routinely rely on conspiratorial framing reduce their own ability to communicate credibly in future operations. Messages intended to reassure, de-escalate, or mobilize may be dismissed as manipulative. Once trust is degraded, it cannot be selectively restored. For information warriors, this creates a paradox. The tools that weaken an adversary’s legitimacy can also undermine the legitimacy of the user. 

Escalation Without Off-Ramps 

Conspiracy theories framed around existential threats tend to escalate without clear stopping points. Once narratives portray adversaries as hidden, coordinated, and morally corrupt, compromise becomes suspect. De-escalation is reframed as capitulation. Restraint appears dangerous. Each new development is interpreted as confirmation of hostile intent, reinforcing the cycle of suspicion. This dynamic reduces strategic flexibility. Because conspiracy beliefs transform uncertainty into moral certainty, they eliminate ambiguity as a resource for negotiation or adjustment. Positions harden. Reversal becomes betrayal. For information warriors, this creates a serious risk. Influence campaigns that rely on existential framing can generate momentum that outpaces control, locking audiences into confrontational postures with no credible exit. 

Implications for Strategic Communication and Resilience 

While this essay does not offer prescriptive guidance, the analysis suggests several implications for practice. Efforts to build cognitive resilience should focus on reducing chronic uncertainty rather than correcting individual claims, as persistent ambiguity creates the conditions for conspiratorial interpretation. Strategic communication should prioritize trust maintenance over message optimization, since conspiracy beliefs spread through social relationships rather than authoritative channels. Consistent institutional behavior, transparency about limits, and credible acknowledgment of uncertainty matter more than reactive rebuttal. Practitioners should also distinguish between tactical containment and strategic prevention. Debunking may be necessary in time-sensitive situations to protect specific systems or decisions, but it does not address the upstream conditions that sustain conspiratorial belief environments over time. 

Conclusion 

Conspiracy Theories as Cognitive Terrain in Modern Conflict 

Conspiracy theories are best understood not as collections of false claims, but as cognitive environments that manage meaning through? perceived existential threat. They impose order on uncertainty, assign agency to ambiguous outcomes, and supply moral clarity when trust erodes. The Existential Threat Model explains the narrative architecture that makes these systems compelling, While the conspiracy beliefs formation model explains why individuals become receptive to them. Together, they show that conspiracy theories stabilize through threat perception, social reinforcement, plausibility, and unfalsifiability. By the time violence, protest, or mobilization becomes visible, the cognitive terrain has already been shaped. 

For information warriors, the implication is that influence is decided upstream, at the level of interpretation rather than claims. Tactical interventions such as debunking may still be required for immediate operational security, but they do not substitute for shaping the broader belief environment in which conspiratorial interpretations take root. Conspiracy theories function as environments, not messages. They define what feels reasonable, whom to trust, and how to assign blame. At the same time, they carry serious risks. Once established, they are difficult to control. Narratives drift, blowback contaminates domestic audiences, institutional legitimacy erodes, and escalation hardens without off-ramps. Understanding conspiracy theories, therefore, matters less as a tool for use than as a feature of modern conflict. Information warfare is ultimately a struggle over meaning, identity, and legitimacy. Conspiracy theories reveal how that struggle unfolds when threat dominates perception. 

Summing Up 

Conspiracy theories are not anomalies at the margins of modern conflict. They are predictable outcomes of environments marked by uncertainty, distrust, and perceived existential threat. When these conditions are present, conspiratorial belief systems emerge as tools for restoring meaning, identity, and moral order. This essay has shown that such systems are neither spontaneous nor irrational. They are structured narratives that align with psychological vulnerabilities and social dynamics long before overt action occurs.  

For information warriors, the central insight is that conspiracy theories operate as cognitive terrain. They shape interpretation upstream, defining what audiences consider plausible, legitimate, and necessary. Attempts to counter them through fact correction alone routinely fail because they target claims rather than the conditions that sustain belief. At the same time, the strategic risks of weaponized conspiracy theories are substantial. Once released, these narratives drift, generate blowback, erode institutional trust, and escalate without clear off-ramps. Understanding conspiracy theories, then, is not about learning how to deploy them. It is about recognizing how belief environments form, persist and, constrain strategic choice. In contemporary conflict, influence is rarely decided at the moment of crisis. It is decided earlier, in the quiet shaping of meaning, threat perception, and trust. That is where modern information warfare is won or lost. 

Tags: belief formation, cognitive resilience, Cognitive Warfare, conspiracy theories, counterinsurgency, cyber conflict, Disinformation, existential threat model, influence operations, information operations, information warfare, irregular warfare, Misinformation, modern conflict, narrative warfare, national security, political psychology, propaganda analysis, Psychological Operations, strategic communication, Strategic Influence, threat perception, trust and legitimacy

About The Author

• 
  
• Douglas Wilbur
• Douglas S. Wilbur, Ph.D. is a former US Army information operations officer with four deployments. After the military, he earned his Ph.D. in strategic communication from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His research specialty is in propaganda and information warfare.

2. Cognitive Deterrence: How Taiwan Is Learning to Govern Resistance

Summary:

Erika Lafrennie argues deterrence now starts in cognition, not force, because modern conflict is driven by perception, expectation, and what people accept as normal. In Taiwan, deterrence is pursued through civic education, civil defense normalization, platform governance, and public messaging that shape expectations long before crisis. The piece describes China’s approach as “governance warfare,” a continuous administrative, legal, economic, diplomatic, and narrative pressure that builds precedent without a single overt act of aggression. Taiwan’s answer is “cognitive deterrence,” which denies legitimacy, inevitability, and administrative payoff by treating resilience as pre-commitment, not post-crisis recovery.

Comment: Taiwan is trying to make Beijing’s pressure yield no return, so the contest becomes less about stopping an invasion and more about preventing administrative absorption from feeling natural. If resilience is pre-commitment, then civic curricula and routine preparedness become operational terrain, because they blunt the shock value that makes inevitability narratives work. When deterrence is denial of meaning, the center of gravity shifts to legitimacy and normalcy, and that makes governance, law, and platforms as decisive as force design.

If China’s pressure is cumulative and precedent-based, what indicators should planners track to detect when “normalization” has begun to harden into acceptance?

If Taiwan’s approach is to deny cognitive payoff, how should the United States and partners design support that reinforces continuity and legitimacy without escalating alarm?

If deterrence depends on civic education, legal architecture, and platform governance, where should defense institutions draw the line between protection and overreach, and who sets that boundary?

Cognitive Deterrence: How Taiwan Is Learning to Govern Resistance

Why deterrence now depends on denying legitimacy, inevitability, and administrative control rather than imposing military cost

Erika Lafrennie

Feb 24, 2026

https://www.xinanigans.com/p/cognitive-deterrence-taiwan-governance-resistance?utm

Modern conflict no longer begins with force. It begins with cognition—with the shaping of perception, the conditioning of expectations, and the quiet management of what populations come to regard as normal, inevitable, or futile. This reality is now broadly acknowledged across defense, intelligence, and policy communities. The cognitive domain is recognized as contested terrain. Influence, narrative, and sensemaking are understood as strategic tools rather than peripheral effects.

What remains unresolved is how deterrence works in this domain. In Taiwan, that question is answered not in mobilization orders or troop movements, but in civic education programs, civil defense normalization, and public messaging designed to condition expectations long before a crisis.

Deterrence theory evolved around visible threats, discrete escalation, and the imposition of cost. It assumes an adversary must be stopped, coerced, or dissuaded from acting. That logic strains under conditions where the adversary does not require persuasion, confusion, or even compliance—only acceptance. When the objective is normalization rather than conquest, deterrence no longer operates through warning or punishment. It must instead block the accumulation of legitimacy and inevitability.

Taiwan now sits at the center of this problem. Not as a case of deterrence failure, but as the clearest example of how deterrence must function when governance itself is the weapon. This shift is visible in Taiwan’s most recent national defense planning, which places increasing emphasis on societal resilience, civil preparedness, and psychological defense alongside conventional military capabilities.

From Governance Warfare to Cognitive Deterrence

Understanding deterrence in the cognitive domain first requires recognizing the form that strategic pressure now takes: governance warfare conducted through administrative, legal, and narrative systems rather than episodic force. China’s strategy toward Taiwan has already revealed the limits of traditional deterrence frameworks. The contest is not organized around invasion scenarios or escalation ladders. It is continuous, administrative, and cumulative. Beijing applies pressure through jurisdictional claims, diplomatic conditioning, legal interpretation, economic dependency, and narrative saturation. No single action constitutes aggression. Each establishes precedent. Each normalizes the next step.

The objective is not to defeat Taiwan militarily. It is to render Taiwan administratively governable: to shape international, domestic, and third-party expectations so that Taiwan’s separate status appears temporary, abnormal, and ultimately unsustainable. Governance warfare accumulates conditions rather than triggering events. It operates on legitimacy, inevitability, and time.

Taiwan’s response reflects a recognition of this reality. The island is no longer organizing its defense primarily around deterring attack. It is organizing around deterring normalization.

This shift marks the emergence of cognitive deterrence.

Deterrence When the Objective Is Normalization

Cognitive warfare, as currently framed, focuses on how adversaries shape perception and decision-making. It assumes identifiable attacks, discrete campaigns, and measurable effects. Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand disruption and recover performance. Counter-influence degrades adversary capability. Narrative intelligence protects sensemaking. Those approaches are necessary, but they are not sufficient.

Taiwan’s challenge is continuous conditioning. Beijing does not need to convince Taiwan’s population or the international community in a single moment. It needs only to make resistance appear costly, accommodation appear rational, and integration appear inevitable over time.

Under these conditions, deterrence cannot rely on signaling or punishment. It operates by denying cognitive payoff, ensuring that pressure cannot produce legitimacy, precedent, or compliance.

Resilience as Pre-Commitment

This distinction reshapes how resilience functions in Taiwan’s defense planning.

Resilience is often treated as recovery, or the ability to absorb shock and restore function after disruption. Taiwan treats it instead as pre-commitment. Civic education, public preparedness, and institutional continuity are designed to condition responses before crises occur. Ambiguity is normalized. Pressure is expected. Disruption is routine. Resilience operates as anticipatory governance, not post‑crisis recovery.

By educating citizens about administrative pressure, economic coercion, and narrative manipulation before those mechanisms escalate, Taiwan reduces their psychological impact. By embedding resistance into ordinary civic processes rather than emergency measures, Taiwan removes the sense that each new pressure represents a decisive turning point. Crisis loses its mobilizing power when it is no longer novel.

The result is a population less susceptible to inevitability framing. Pressure does not accumulate into resignation because expectations have already been shaped.

Governing Resistance Upstream of Force

Taiwan’s most effective cognitive deterrence mechanisms do not originate in the military domain. They operate upstream of doctrine, command, and force design.

Civic education reinforces historical continuity and democratic legitimacy. Platform governance limits the reach of malign narrative amplification without resorting to censorship. Civil defense normalization integrates preparedness into daily life rather than reserving it for wartime mobilization. Public communication emphasizes continuity rather than alarm.

These mechanisms impose denial by design, constraining strategic effect rather than signaling threat. They deny Beijing the ability to convert pressure into legitimacy. They deny the framing of integration as natural or inevitable. Each administrative action, each narrative assertion, encounters a population and institutional structure already conditioned to resist normalization. Taiwan directs resistance toward governability itself, preventing administrative absorption rather than contesting individual narratives.

Deterrence Without Visible Fighting

Taiwan fights inevitability, not invasion. This is where cognitive deterrence diverges from both classical deterrence and contemporary cognitive warfare frameworks. Deterrence is no longer about imposing cost, but about the same denial of payoff that makes pressure cognitively futile.

The adversary is deterred not because action is punished, but because action fails to produce the desired strategic effect. Pressure that does not translate into legitimacy loses its utility. Conditioning that does not produce acceptance stalls.

Taiwan deters not by threatening China, but by refusing to behave as a governable object. Beijing governs inevitability to dominate. Taiwan governs inevitability to survive. The logic is shared. The values are not. Both sides understand that perception shapes reality in governance competition. Both act on the same terrain. The outcome depends on which vision of normalcy takes hold first and endures longest.

Cognitive deterrence describes how deterrence functions when competition targets the same administrative capture and legitimacy normalization—rather than territorial conquest—that define governance warfare. It operates by denying cognitive payoff and ensuring that pressure never acquires strategic meaning.

Information warfare defense focuses on identifying, countering, or mitigating specific messages and influence campaigns. Cognitive deterrence operates upstream. It is not organized around defeating individual narratives, but around shaping governance conditions so that narrative pressure produces no strategic return. The mission is not correction, but futility. Where information defense reacts to persuasion and manipulation, cognitive deterrence pre-structures expectations so that persuasion is unnecessary and manipulation ineffective.

Where Cognitive Deterrence Becomes Decisive

Cognitive deterrence becomes relevant wherever governance competition operates through legal ambiguity, jurisdictional friction, and legitimacy saturation rather than overt coercion. These conditions are most visible in contested jurisdictions that are claimed but not fully controlled, governed but not fully recognized, or integrated economically but not politically absorbed.

Ukraine faces continuous governance pressure in occupied and gray-zone territories where administrative normalization precedes formal annexation. The South China Sea has become a laboratory for jurisdictional conditioning through maritime lawfare and regulatory precedent. Hong Kong demonstrated how cognitive deterrence fails when administrative inevitability is allowed to take hold unchecked.

Taiwan is not unique because of its geography or military balance. It is unique because its legal ambiguity, political exposure, and strategic importance reveal governance warfare in pure form. The same conditions—jurisdictional complexity, legitimacy contests, administrative pressure—are spreading across the international system as competition increasingly occurs through standards-setting, institutional influence, regulatory regimes, and narrative framing. Deterrence will continue to misfire if it remains tied to kinetic assumptions: force will arrive late because it addresses effects rather than causes, and by the time military deterrence becomes relevant, cognitive terrain and governance conditions have already been shaped.

Taiwan is not teaching us how to deter China militarily. It is demonstrating how deterrence still functions when war never visibly begins. Future deterrence strategies must therefore assume that governance, not firepower, is the opening move of modern conflict. Where legitimacy and inevitability determine outcomes, deterrence depends less on threatening action than on denying meaning. For defense planners, civic curricula, legal architecture, and platform governance shape deterrence outcomes as decisively as ships, aircraft, and missiles.

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3. The Resilience Series – The West’s Greatest Vulnerability: Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI)

Summary:

The article argues the West’s greatest vulnerability is Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure, the undersea and land-based systems that carry over 95 percent of global internet traffic. These fiber-optic cables and nodes are physically exposed and not designed for kinetic conflict. Russia and China recognize Western internet dependency and have monitored and stress-tested this infrastructure under hybrid doctrine. Coordinated attacks could produce cascading economic and governance failure, with daily losses measured in tens of billions of dollars. Russia’s development of a sovereign web reduces its own exposure. The author calls for strategic acceptance of the threat, public-private investment, layered defense, physical up-armoring, and a parallel sovereign internet capability.

Comment; Note the costs of a 24 hour internet failure. See the charts and graphs at the link.

The Resilience Series – The West’s Greatest Vulnerability: Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI)

by Ian Saunders

02.24.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/24/the-resilience-series/

ABSTRACT

There is a growing realization that to survive and thrive, Western cultures must be resilient against hybrid and unconventional aggression; however, our technological revolution has not only placed us at the forefront of human evolution but also created a fragile dependency, and our greatest vulnerability. This essay, the first in a series on resilience, focuses on Western culture’s greatest dependence: the Internet. The power of the Internet is delivered across sovereign states through what I have termed as Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI), which is vulnerable and not physically designed to withstand kinetic conflict. We pose the question, will a coordinated attack on the West’s ACADI be akin to an ultimate cyber weapon of mass destruction, and what can we do to mitigate such a threat?

Introduction

Global instability has increased over the last decade to a level comparable to that of the Cold War. Russia’s kinetic aggression in Eastern Europe through the attempted invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine has driven a significant change in the deployment of conventional warfare. The threat situation has also dramatically increased from a hybrid warfare perspective, with sabotage and deniable attacks on Western critical infrastructure by Russian foreign intelligence agencies using conduit groups and “Gig” operators, perpetrating attacks on both land and below the sea.

In contrast to the Cold War years, the evolution of the Internet across every level of global society has resulted in the most significant cultural shift since the invention of the wheel or the printing press. Individuals, businesses, and governments are now totally dependent on the Internet to a point where its failure has become too catastrophic to contemplate, but not for all.

Russia and China have shown particular interest in Western online dependency and the vulnerability of ACADI assets. Acutely aware of such global dependencies, Russia is actively planning its own strategic and defensive independence from the World Wide Web. Could this be an indicator of future aggressive intent?

The Asset

Despite what is portrayed, the World Wide Web does not live in the “clouds”; it travels through cables that span the world’s oceans, connecting towns, cities, countries, and continents, creating a long and complex global data supply chain. This chain is supported by an extensive infrastructure network that enables high-speed data movement across approximately 900,000 miles of fiber-optic cable. The data that travels through these cables is responsible for the operability of not only Western nations but also almost every country on the planet, meaning that any interruptions to their activity will affect the productivity, governance, and security of sovereign states and entire global regions. In 2023, Tim Stronge of Telegeography calculated that these cables facilitate the movement of $22.4 trillion a day, a figure, according to the IMF, currently greater than the GDP of every national economy in the world apart from the US.

The impressive transmission speeds of fiber-optic cables have revolutionized modern telecommunications and data-driven technology, being considerably faster than satellite communication and enabling the rapid exchange of vast amounts of data globally with minimal signal degradation and latency. This is particularly relevant considering the emergence of AI and cryptocurrencies. Yet despite their importance to Western operability and survival, data supply chains are predominantly and “critically” exposed to, and unprotected from, current and evolving physical threats.

What I like to refer to as the data supply chains consist of amphibious “wet” and “dry” phases as they carry global data between coastal landing stations. The “wet” segment of the submarine cable system, consisting of the cable itself, the repeaters, and the branching units, makes landfall at a beach manhole (BMH), which, in turn, connects to the “dry” segment Transmission Line Amplifier (TLA) as part of the Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) and landing station through a short cable and on to the terrestrial networks and data centres.

Submarine Communication Cable System and its components. Source: Congressional Research Service, Undersea Telecommunication Cables: Technology Overview and Issues for Congress.

Fiber optic communication cables have relied on security through obscurity ever since they were first laid on the seabed, suffering a limited number of deniable instances of sabotage from ships dragging anchors and damaging cables, resulting in limited failures.

It is the author’s opinion that Western democracies have, up to now, relied on a fragile hybrid peace to protect their most valuable assets. But what happens to those assets and our dependence on them when peace becomes a memory, and those same assets constitute our greatest weakness?

Evolving threats against Western vulnerability

To understand their relevance in context, the threats to Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI) need to be analyzed within three geopolitical verticals, each requiring separate analysis across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.

• The peacetime threat situation
• The hybrid conflict threat situation
• The kinetic conflict threat situation

This approach is crucial as it ultimately identifies the levels of protection required to ensure resilience during periods of contrasting geopolitical instability and proactively guards against peacetime mitigation measures being deployed against hybrid or kinetic warfare threats.

Peacetime Threats

Threats to critical infrastructure are defined across two primary vectors: cyber and physical, with the physical vector being further categorized into aggressive and natural threats, as well as the danger posed by structural decay.

All international data, including that of the defined critical infrastructure sectors, is over 95% communicated through vulnerable and remote undersea fiber optic cables and land-based infrastructure. Considering that Russian hybrid warfare doctrine has highlighted the importance of targeting the West’s critical infrastructure, and in particular that which facilitates the Internet, it would be reasonable to think that ensuring its resilience against physical attack and natural threats would be paramount. Assumptions can, of course, be misleading.

Organizations, such as the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), report that natural hazards, including earthquakes and underwater landslides, are responsible for only around 10% of the 150-200 cable faults that occur each year. However, when they do occur, such natural processes can damage multiple cable systems simultaneously, sometimes across large areas. The ICPC data supports further open-source intelligence (OSINT), in stating that direct and “accidental” human activity (justified under plausible deniability) is the primary threat to undersea infrastructure during peacetime.

The number of internationally available specialist ships used to lay and repair fiber optic cables, at the time of writing, is believed to be approximately 60; the exact figure is either unknown or not publicly disclosed. Not all of these ships are equipped to both lay and repair damaged cables, however, and at the current rates of reported damage, they are contracted months and sometimes years in advance. Peacetime demand for cable repair ships exceeds supply; currently, the industry appears to be “just” coping, yet many of these ships are ageing. At the time of writing, the UK, for example, lacks sovereign undersea cable repair capability. It takes about three years to build a new cable ship and ten years to train the crew. After a “splurge” of investment around the turn of the century, no new cable ships were delivered globally between 2004 and 2010, and only five were delivered between 2011 and 2020.

From a peacetime perspective, the low frequency of natural disasters and accidental human interference leading to cable failures is costly but operationally insignificant. However, the consequences of a coordinated attack resulting in multiple failures and the subsequent cascading effects have the potential to impact national, regional, and global stability. Our dependence on these amphibious assets cannot be overstated; without them, our modern societies would be unable to operate, our governments would be unable to govern, and we would be unable to defend ourselves effectively from attack. History has shown that “peacetime” complacency leads to an inability to defend against aggression, a Western cultural characteristic that Russia seeks to exploit.

Hybrid Warfare – Situational analysis (Strategic, Operational, Tactical)

Russia’s “multi-type” hybrid conflict architecture is well documented within its New Generation Warfare (NGW) doctrine. NGW is less siloed than the Western approach, prioritizing psychological and people-centered aspects over traditional military concerns. Russian NGW emphasizes a phased approach to non-military influence, such that armed conflict, if it arises, is significantly less costly in human or economic terms for the aggressor than it would otherwise be. It was first enunciated in 2013 by General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, First Deputy Minister of Defense.

In 2007, Frank Hoffman wrote that “simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare” refers to a complex combination of conventional and unconventional or hybrid warfare. Such a combination enables the exploitation of economic, social, religious, cultural, political, legal, racial, commercial, chemical, biological, nuclear, and natural resources, as well as environmental factors, aimed at negatively impacting national stabilization. The ultimate result is to diminish a nation’s ability to govern or defend itself.

Russia is in no doubt that it is in the non-military phase of a hybrid war with the West, yet the West does not believe that it is at war with Russia. The West is still on a peacetime footing, yet supporting countries like Ukraine, which are fighting a kinetic war.

Such a non-military warfare doctrine highlights the identification and manipulation of national dependencies as a formidable weapon; the West’s internet dependency has not gone unnoticed. Russia and China are aware that the destruction of a nation’s online capability through physically attacking its ACADI can be operationally and psychologically decisive.

To make things easier for an aggressor, there are seven significant single points of wet (sub-sea) and dry (land-based) failure along a global data supply chain that threaten the whole system’s operability:

CADI (Data Supply Chain) Vulnerabilities – Wet AssetsCADI (Data Supply Chain) Vulnerabilities – Dry AssetsCable repeatersData CentersFiber optic cablesBeach manholesBranching UnitsPoints of presenceLanding Stations

Russia has committed significant assets into monitoring and “stress testing” the resilience of Western ACADI both during and since the Cold War.

Such maritime assets include submarine and surface vessels, both military and civilian registered, and tasked with conducting surveillance, reconnaissance, and in some cases, deniable sabotage operations. Such activities have increased in recent years, with Russia constantly testing the willingness of the West to retaliate.

A formidable hybrid warfare asset is the Russian “Shadow Fleet” of old and poorly maintained vessels that fly under various foreign flags to break Western oil sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. Usually under opaque ownership and with similar insurance cover, they have a dual role when required. Alongside sanction busting, they aim to disrupt the undersea cables of their adversaries under the cover of plausible deniability when opportunities arise. Research from the Brookings Institution indicates that the shadow fleet has steadily expanded from fewer than 100 vessels in February 2022 to 343 vessels by 2025.

Kinetic War – Threat Situational Analysis (Strategic, Operational, Tactical)

So, what happens when deniability is no longer required? When potential enemies deploy their doctrine and lethal capabilities without restraint?

Indications are that a country targeted by Russia can expect an early physical attack on its ACADI as a precursor to a kinetic attack. The Russian approach of treating the enemy as a multi-level system offers a significant operational insight into how potential adversaries assess the West’s holistic strengths and weaknesses, and how they would best deploy their offensive force concentration.

One of Russia’s most important, effective, and sensitive assets is the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI), also known as Unit 40056, a classified unit within the Russian Ministry of Defense. It operates from its base in Olenya Guba on the Kola Peninsula of the Barents Sea, home to the 29th Special Purpose Submarine Brigade, which includes small submersibles and carrier submarines like the BS-64 Podmoskovye and BS-136 Orenburg. The fleet also consists of the Belgorod, a special-purpose nuclear submarine capable of carrying Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicles and autonomous deep-sea stations.

The GUGI’s specialist units consist of arguably the most highly trained of Russia’s elite troops, and it is important to note that they have (at the time of writing) not been deployed to Ukraine, despite Russia’s insatiable demand for reinforcements in that theatre. There is no definite OSINT explanation for this; however, a reasonable assumption would be that such a highly specialist forward tactical asset, with training similar to that of Russia’s cosmonauts, would be considered too valuable to be deployed in a conflict of attrition and is therefore being held for future hybrid surveillance and sabotage operations or as the “tip of the spear” in a future kinetic war. To support this theory, OSINT from the RUSI Russian Military Report, via Russian publications, has reported that naval personnel on attachment with GUGI in 2012 were earning 600,000 Rubles ($20,000) a month, linked to the periods spent at extreme depths.

Such highly trained elite units pose operational threats to NATO’s entire ACADI landscape, as they are specifically trained and equipped to not only disrupt but also potentially destroy the internet capability of a significant number of member states at pace. Without a major defensive upgrade to NATO’s ACADI, such tactical aggression would have the potential to dramatically affect the operational and strategic balance of any future battlespace and concurrently the domestic ability of nations to survive to fight.

What are the consequences of ACADI failure?

NATO’s enemies possess the capability and, no doubt, have conducted planning to destroy its greatest dependency, but what does that mean?

Failure of data supply chains is of significant strategic concern to national and alliance (NATO) survivability. The Internet is the vehicle through which the movement of global finances travels, and all countries operate. A benchmark to judge the economic value of the Internet of Things (IoT) is the financial cost of internet failure for just one day.

The national cost of internet failure for 24 hrs.

CountryThe Cost of Internet Failure over 24hrs ($)United States$11,014,601,859China$9,897,063,274United Kingdom$3,271,132,526Japan$2,714,477,506Germany$1,498,942,239India$1,431,042,434South Korea$1,270,826,722France$871,276,534Italy$643,251,995Canada$576,611,171Total$33,189,226,260

Source. Slingerland, C (2024). The Cost of Shutting the Internet. CloudZero.

These figures become even more significant when compared against national budgets. The annual UK Defense budget for 2024/25 was approximately £66 billion or $87.7 billion; it would take just 24 days of failed internet connectivity for the sovereign cost to equate to the entire UK Defense budget. From a US perspective, with the world’s largest defense spending, which (according to the FY2026 discretionary defense budget) will exceed USD1 trillion, a 3.2% proportion of GDP by 2026, parity between the financial cost of internet failure losses and the annual defense budget would occur in approximately 91 days or 3 months.

China, with the second-highest global defense spend, with an approximate $247 billion (declared) annual budget (with a recent increase of 7.2%), would take 25-26 days of financial loss from a failed internet capability to match its defense budget. Interestingly, the UK and China would be impacted over a very similar timescale.

Russia is not included in the research of the world’s top twenty countries most impacted by the Internet, or, conversely, those most dependent on the Internet of Things, despite having an internet penetration rate of 90.87%. Russia is developing a home-based sovereign-only web network, as defined by legislation adopted in 2019. The aim is to self-partition Russia from the World Wide Web, thereby reducing its dependence on a globally controlled capability and enabling it to effectively operate its critical infrastructure independently. OSINT has suggested that preparations are rapidly underway.

With Russia independent of the cascading effects of internet loss and immune to like-for-like retaliation attacks, it provides them with a decisive unconventional capability to dominate both the hybrid and conventional battle spaces. They can achieve this by diminishing the West’s critical infrastructure operability, shaping and weakening a target landscape to their advantage, and supporting their drive from a deniable hybrid to a successful kinetic attack. It could be said that destroying an adversary’s ACADI is a 21st-century prerequisite for success in any future war, much the same as dominating the air or destroying conventional logistical supply chains.

What does the West need to do to protect its Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure and strategic data supply chains?

Strategically. Understanding and accepting threats against a primary dependency is paramount. All threats must be identified, analyzed, and accepted (or not) before responsibility for mitigation can be determined and agreed upon, and any action taken. Accepting a threat and not acting upon it (for budgetary reasons, for example) is irresponsible and potentially catastrophic. To this end, the seabed defense challenge and broader non-military warfare threats require heightened official acceptance and collaboration between the government and the private sector to address them.

In January 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced the deployment of Baltic Sentry, which will involve a range of assets, to support the protection of ACADI. This is a significant first step, which hopefully will evolve in response to accepted threats; however, this cannot happen without the introduction of new funding mechanisms.

The concept of sovereign ACADI Public Private Partnership (PPP) investment vehicles, or an equivalent form of strategic finance, initiated across the NATO member states and their allies, has now become a critical defense requirement. Unlike Russia, the majority of NATO ACADI is privately owned/controlled, yet has a significant relevance to individual sovereigns and the NATO Alliance’s security.

Operationally and tactically. The financing of ACADI resilience and defense is critical, but what does it buy? What is operationally and tactically required to provide a credible deterrent against a coordinated and sustained attack as described in this document?

In a kinetic warfare situation, it is tactically easier and more effective to attack fiber optic and energy cables using undersea area weapons that result in multiple and devastating destruction through blast. The accepted and proven form of defense of a linear asset has been to deploy a layered system of barriers and activities that together form a credible deterrent against physical aggression. From an ACADI perspective, this must include:

• Air asset capabilities,
• Land asset resilience and defense capabilities,
• Surface capability,
• Subsea capability,
• Seabed capability,
• Asset (cable, pipeline, and associated land/sea infrastructure) up-armoring and monitoring capabilities.
• Deployment of an armored independent sovereign internet capability to be used by official and identified critical infrastructure sectors in the event of a significant internet outage.

Deploying layered defense capabilities against a constant threat requires a significant and dedicated military commitment and is by no means foolproof. Physically enhancing supply chain resilience by up-armoring ACADI assets is therefore critical, as it is the only contiguous defensive capability option, providing the last line of defense or the first line of resilience in the layered approach. In addition, NATO member states would also be advised to implement a parallel, armored, and independent internet capability to facilitate resilient, sovereign critical infrastructure and defense connectivity, as Russia has done.

To gain a greater understanding of the threats against Western ACADI and the non-military threat spectrum within which it is located, an in-depth situational analysis must be conducted from which informed and relevant holistic operations can be coordinated. It is recommended that such analysis be conducted in research form at the national and allied levels to ensure continuity strategically, yet independent to ensure national operational and tactical relevance. It is advised that any such doctrine be deployable rather than just debated, and include government, private sector, and civil society input. It is recommended that, in addition to the military, private, and civil sector requirements, three ACADI essential components be included, but not limited to:

1) Physical up-armoring of ACADI

2) The development of an armored sovereign web capability

3) Active social development to meet the challenges of the cascading effects of internet failure or a reduction in capability.

Summery

Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI) supports our entire modern Western culture; without it, we cannot communicate, travel, work, access clean water, purchase essential goods, or effectively defend our freedoms. These assets, which give NATO and the West their military dominance and the protection it affords, are currently protected against peacetime threats. What would be the outcomes in the event of an escalation in hybrid threat levels or a kinetic war? It would undoubtedly provide adversaries the ultimate unconventional advantage: a cyber weapon of mass destruction.

Tags: Critical Infrastructure, Hybrid Warfare, Internet Dependency, Physical Vulnerability, Resilience, strategic deterrence

About The Author

• 
  
• Ian Saunders
• Head of Defense Systems at Soteria Shielding Systems, Visiting Fellow, Cranfield University, United Kingdom.

4. Tensions Rise in Iran as Protesters Face Off With Regime Loyalists

Summary:

Iran is seeing rising tension as antiregime student protests entered a fourth straight day and clashed with pro-government counterprotesters on university campuses. The crowds grew in several major cities after campuses reopened for a new term, with activists commemorating students killed in an early January crackdown. Counterprotesters include apparent Basij members, who burned American and Israeli flags and blamed those states for the unrest. Verified videos show fistfights at Iran University of Science and Technology and organized marches at Shahid Beheshti University chanting “God is Great.” The unrest remains largely campus-bound, even as fears of a possible U.S. attack rise amid stalled nuclear talks.

Comment: The regime is trying to shift the fight from street legitimacy to campus control, using Basij-linked countercrowds to frame dissent as foreign-made and to make fear a daily fact. The protests are still narrow, but the symbols are sharp, so each campus clash becomes a test of whether memory of the January killings hardens into sustained resistance or collapses under organized intimidation.

Tensions Rise in Iran as Protesters Face Off With Regime Loyalists

WSJ

Clashes break out in Tehran as protests continue for a fourth straight day

By Feliz Solomon

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Feb. 24, 2026 1:30 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/tensions-rise-in-iran-as-protesters-face-off-with-regime-loyalists-32d97c99

Clashes were reported between students and members of a pro-regime militia following protests at the University of Tehran. Scopal/Reuters

Tensions are growing in Iran between antiregime activists and pro-government militias as the two sides clashed Tuesday during protests on campuses for a fourth consecutive day.

Crowds swelled at universities in several major Iranian cities starting last weekend, the first major protests since the regime launched a crackdown in early January that killed thousands of people. As demonstrations continued, they were met by growing crowds of pro-regime counterprotesters.

Many counterprotesters appear to be student members of the Basij, a volunteer pro-regime militia that played a leading role in putting down the earlier wave of demonstrations. They have burned American and Israeli flags on campus, alleging those countries are helping to foment the unrest.

Fistfights erupted at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, where video footage verified by The Wall Street Journal appears to show regime loyalists waving the Iranian flag as they chased after antigovernment activists and hit them.

At Shahid Beheshti University, also in Tehran, a large group of male counterprotesters waved the Iranian flag as they marched through the campus chatting “God is Great,” according to footage verified by Storyful, which is owned by Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp

Tensions grew in recent days as demonstrations gathered momentum. Antiregime protesters have chanted slogans like “Death to Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, and raised the nation’s former flag, which was replaced after the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy.

Witnesses said the confrontations at the University of Tehran broke out after students gathered on campus chanting anti-government slogans. VIDEO: Scopal/Reuters

The fresh unrest comes as Iranians brace for a possible U.S. attack, as efforts to negotiate a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program flounder. U.S. warships and jet fighters have amassed across the region in recent weeks following President Trump’s threats to punish the regime.

Protests over a crumbling economy spread across the nation late last year, posing the biggest challenge to Iran’s clerical leaders in decades. In early January, the regime cut off the internet and carried out a bloody crackdown. Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based nonprofit, says some 7,000 people have been confirmed killed and more than 50,000 were arrested.

The latest round of protests so far remains limited to universities and hasn’t gained traction among the broader population, but its persistence underscores the challenges facing the regime. The protests resumed Saturday when campuses reopened at the start of a new term, as activists organized events commemorating fellow students who were killed in the crackdown.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Feliz Solomon is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the Middle East, with a focus on Israel and the Palestinian territories. She contributes to the paper’s coverage of the war in Gaza and has reported from across the West Bank.

She previously spent more than a decade in Asia writing on topics ranging from geopolitics to conflict to transnational organized crime. Her investigative series on “pig butchering” scams, a virulent form of cyber fraud that swindled billions of dollars from Americans, won a public service journalism award from the Society of Publishers in Asia and a New York Press Club award for crime reporting.

Feliz has a degree in fine art from the Cooper Union in New York. She began her journalism career as an editor for local media outlets in Thailand and Myanmar and later held various roles at Time magazine in Hong Kong. She joined the Journal in 2019 as a reporter in Singapore.

WSJ

5. 25 Years After 9/11: Former CENTCOM Commander’s Strategic Warning on What America Still Gets Wrong

Summary:

In a Military.com interview tied to his memoir, Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon warns the United States still trades long-term stability for short-term political wins and leans too quickly on the military while neglecting other tools of statecraft. He recounts 9/11 from inside the Pentagon and describes continuity-of-command actions as the attack unfolded. As PACOM commander, he stressed sustained power projection, core competencies, and preventing readiness atrophy even while resources flowed to the Middle East. As CENTCOM commander, he faced Washington infighting, disputed Iraq surge timelines, and argues Afghanistan was overshadowed, enabling Taliban resurgence that he recognized too late.

Excerpts:

His final call is unequivocal: learn history rigorously or risk repeating the same costly mistakes. “There are a lot of lessons out there,” Fallon stressed. “The key thing is to learn them.” In an era of great-power competition and persistent irregular threats, ignoring this imperative invites more calamity, wasted resources, and eroded national resolve.

Fallon’s warning is not defeatist, but rather it is a call for a disciplined, forward-looking strategy that respects hard realities rather than political expediency. As America marks 25 years since 9/11, his insights remind us that true victory demands patience, competence, and an unflinching grasp of history’s unchanging lessons.

Admiral William J. Fallon’s book, “DECISIONS, DISCORD & DIPLOMACY: From Cairo to Kabul,” was released in December and is available anywhere books are sold.

Comment: Admiral Fallon’s through-line is that strategy dies in the short term, because elections and optics pull leaders toward quick closure while wars and alliances demand patience, diplomacy, and disciplined end-states. His Afghanistan admission is the hard lesson of irregular war: stability can be a mask, and when senior leaders focus on the main effort elsewhere, the enemy uses time, silence, and local cover to rebuild.

25 Years After 9/11: Former CENTCOM Commander’s Strategic Warning on What America Still Gets Wrong

military.com · Robert Billard · February 23, 2026

https://www.military.com/feature/2026/02/21/25-years-after-9-11-former-centcom-commanders-strategic-warning-what-america-still-gets-wrong.html

Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon (Ret.), the only U.S. officer in history to command both U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), spent more than four decades at the center of some of America’s most critical military decisions.

From Vietnam, to Beirut, to the Pentagon on 9/11, to steering military strategy across two theaters during the height of the Global War on Terror, Fallon’s new memoir, “Decisions, Discord & Diplomacy: From Cairo to Kabul” offers a rare insider’s view. In an exclusive interview with Military.com, Admiral Fallon delivers a clear strategic warning: America continues to sacrifice long-term stability for short-term political wins.

His service, from both inside the beltway all the way to the points of friction at America’s biggest flashpoints, provides invaluable insight into the range of challenges that strategic advisors face across the spectrum of the instruments of national power. Early in his memoir, he offers the following sage wisdom that will become a theme:

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been too quick to use the military in response to global challenges. We seem to have forgotten about the other instruments of statecraft.

September 11th – Inside the Pentagon

Admiral Fallon was serving as the Vice Chief of Naval Operations in 2001. As he drove into the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th, he made note of the crystal-clear blue sky and cool weather after a hot summer. Jumping into a morning meeting, his attention was quickly brought to the news on television screens in the room. As an experienced naval aviator, he knew right away that something was amiss.

I said out loud – that was no accident.

There was little time for anyone to unpack the complexity of what was happening, though there was an understanding that multiple airplanes had been hijacked. Less than an hour later, Fallon heard and felt the explosion of Flight 77 impacting the building. In that moment, he said, “There was no doubt in my mind what happened.”

Like countless other Americans, the attack would quickly become very personal to the Admiral. He would learn that a good friend, Rear Admiral Wilson “Bud” Flagg, and his wife, Dee, were on board Flight 77. Further, 42 of Admiral Fallon’s sailors and civilians would give their lives that day in the Pentagon – he knew every one of them.

Fallon and the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) quickly surmised they needed to split up for the purposes of continuity of command in case the attack continued. The CNO would relocate to the Washington Navy Yard while Fallon was moved to the nearby Bureau of Naval Personnel. He expeditiously made his way through the unfolding chaos and found a pair of Marines at nearby Henderson Hall, armed with M-16s, who helped the Admiral get to the Annex.

I saw very interesting things from people of all ranks. From the utmost valor to people screaming and running away. I thought to myself: It was just like combat. Some people do well, and some others do not.

A complete unity of effort, Fallon described, by the Navy and the Marines ensured a continuity of operations throughout all of it. As the dust settled, Admiral Fallon knew that with Afghanistan looming, it was not going to be easy, and U.S. retaliation was going to have to come from the sea. In short order, he began getting orders out to subordinate commanders to start preparing for the long war ahead.

Admiral Fallon and King Abdullah II of Jordan, Aug. 28, 2007 (Photo by Yosef Allan, courtesy of Admiral William J. Fallon)

From PACOM to CENTCOM: Strategic Visions and Washington Pressure

In 2005, Admiral Fallon was appointed as the Commander, U.S. PACOM (now called USINDOPACOM). As the commander, he oversaw military relations across 36 nations in Asia and the Pacific; a theater far larger with extreme, unique, and underserved requirements while the Global War on Terror (GWOT) raged.

While trying to contain North Korean nuclear ambitions and rising tensions with China, Fallon was forced to contend with his own resources that would be directed toward the Middle East. His knowledge of what it would take to succeed in PACOM is equal parts prescient and timeless: he emphasized sustained power projection capabilities, core warfighting competencies, and preventing skill atrophy. Principles rooted in readiness across all domains, not just reactive surges.

These lessons carried forward directly into his role at CENTCOM when, in early 2007, he was nominated to be the commander. This would mark the first naval officer to command the combatant command, and unusual to go from one combatant command to another. The Washington environment, however, would prove the most challenging of all. Difficult dynamics with General Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (including back-channel communications that bypassed the traditional chain-of-command) would complicate a unified strategy.

Fallon disagreed sharply on the drawdown timeline associated with the Iraq surge and the risk-averse approach that prolonged U.S. involvement. He suggested that the U.S. transition the military structure in Iraq in anticipation of a long-term security agreement between the countries. But other key stakeholders were focused exclusively on the short term.

Frustration mounted over the administration’s short-term political focus, prioritizing immediate tactical “wins” and optics over strategic patience, which ignored broader implications for regional stability and squandered opportunities such as a negotiated framework for enduring U.S.-Iraq ties that he helped shape but saw unraveled post-2008.

Admiral Fallon and Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jabbar Al-Sabah Amir of Kuwait and Ministers, Kuwait City, May 2007 (Photo courtesy of Admiral William J. Fallon)

Afghanistan in 2007-2008: The Blind Spot That Still Haunts

While Afghanistan was one of the highest priorities for CENTCOM during his tenure as the commander, it was still immensely overshadowed by the surge efforts concurrently being brought to bear in Iraq. Asked if national leaders truly understood the nature of the Afghan War in 2007, Admiral Fallon emphatically replied: “No. They didn’t get it.”

Fallon himself, though, laments the attitude toward Afghanistan during this period. The biggest mistake, Fallon says, he made was visiting Afghanistan in 2007, listening to all the reports, and thinking, “Okay, this place is pretty stable. Particularly compared to Iraq.”

What Fallon missed, he said, was the extent to which the resurgent Taliban were masking their efforts to re-establish their presence throughout the country. “I missed it. I didn’t pick up on it until it was too late. I was confident in the relative stability of Afghanistan compared to Iraq.”

Afghanistan had a unique, NATO-specific command structure that differed greatly from Iraq. While this added an advantage of having different eyes to look at different things, it would still cause disruptions with commanders reporting to NATO headquarters and CENTCOM.

In spite of these challenges, Fallon decided that “we were not likely to have an Iraq-type dustup, at least not while I was there,” that would have necessitated the same type of main force sweep through the country that Iraq received. To put things in perspective at this time, Iraq had 20 combat brigades in the country – compared to only one in Afghanistan.

Other unique challenges persisted in Afghanistan. Efforts to field modern, U.S.-style aviation assets (such as F-16 fighters) for the Afghan Air Force were squashed by the Admiral – the ability for the Afghan Air Force to maintain such modern equipment was simply nonexistent.

There were requests by the Karzai administration to bulk up the Afghan National Army to ~200,000 soldiers; also not feasible due to literacy and management concerns. Nonetheless, Fallon did recognize that the resilience of the Afghan people was far stronger than what he witnessed in Iraq. But that would prove to be a double-edged sword:

The self-resilience of the Afghans lulled me to sleep and made me think they could get it done.

Afghan National Air Corps (ANAC) MI-17 helicopters take off in a formation practice for a aerial parade in Kabul, 2007. Air Force mentors assigned to Defense Reform Directorate Air Division under Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan provided guidance to soldiers with the Maintenance Operations Group for the ANAC. (U.S. Air Force photo by TSgt Cecilio M. Ricardo Jr.)

Strategic Warning: Prioritize Long-Term Visions Over Short-Term Tactical Wins

Admiral Fallon’s reflections cut to the core of America’s post-9/11 military struggles: the persistent temptation to chase short-term political victories at the expense of genuine strategic patience and enduring outcomes. In his view, this pattern has repeatedly undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, turning hard-won tactical gains into fleeting illusions while the bigger picture (regional stability, sustainable alliances, and realistic end-states) slips away.

He points directly to how this short-term political thinking overrides strategic realities. During his CENTCOM tenure, Fallon saw this play out vividly in Iraq, where the surge delivered tactical success but prolonged U.S. entanglement because leaders hesitated on forcing a faster transition to Iraqi control. He pushed for quicker handoffs and a negotiated framework for long-term U.S.-Iraq ties, only to watch it unravel post-2008 as the administration prioritized quick closure over sustained presence.

“The president wanted to wrap things up as soon as possible,” Fallon recalled, highlighting how electoral cycles and optics trumped the patient diplomacy required for lasting influence.

A recurring frustration for Fallon is how critical lessons from past conflicts, especially Vietnam-era counterinsurgency (COIN), were discarded and then painfully re-learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The lessons of Vietnam went out the door,” he said bluntly. “The fact that the army and Marine Corps had to relearn counterinsurgency was appalling.”

This lesson goes beyond institutional amnesia; it reflects a general failure to maintain core competencies across domains (e.g., power projection, air defense, mine warfare, etc.), allowing skills to atrophy under shifting priorities. The military paid dearly for this neglect, as short-term focus on immediate fights sidelined the sustained readiness needed for complex, protracted conflicts.

Lance Corporal Sean Kunis, a rifleman with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, maintains security during a patrol in the Helmand province of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Dec. 21, 2008 (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sergeant Pete Thibodeau)

Fallon emphasizes that while technology advances, human behavior and the patterns of history remain stubbornly constant. “Very little is new in our lives,” he observed. “People have been acting the same for millennia; technology changes, sure, but human behaviors are still the same.” This timeless reality demands rigorous historical study to spot recurring pitfalls before they repeat. Without it, leaders risk being blindsided by the same miscalculations (over-optimism, mission creep, bureaucratic infighting) that have plagued U.S. interventions since 9/11.

The essential leadership principle Fallon advocates is for military commanders to try to nudge politicians toward sustained planning rather than quick headlines. Military leaders must remind civilian decision-makers that “the chances of something being a one-and-done are low” and that strategic success requires thinking beyond the next election cycle or news cycle. Fallon’s own tenure exemplified this tension: he tried to steer toward long-term regional stability, but Washington’s short-term impulses often prevailed.

His final call is unequivocal: learn history rigorously or risk repeating the same costly mistakes. “There are a lot of lessons out there,” Fallon stressed. “The key thing is to learn them.” In an era of great-power competition and persistent irregular threats, ignoring this imperative invites more calamity, wasted resources, and eroded national resolve.

Fallon’s warning is not defeatist, but rather it is a call for a disciplined, forward-looking strategy that respects hard realities rather than political expediency. As America marks 25 years since 9/11, his insights remind us that true victory demands patience, competence, and an unflinching grasp of history’s unchanging lessons.

Admiral William J. Fallon’s book, “DECISIONS, DISCORD & DIPLOMACY: From Cairo to Kabul,” was released in December and is available anywhere books are sold.

military.com · Robert Billard · February 23, 2026

6. The Cognitive Battlefield is Now Decisive Terrain

Summary:

Authors argue the cognitive domain has become decisive terrain where decision advantage, psychological leverage, and narrative dominance can determine strategic outcomes. The gray zone contest is sustained influence across media, social platforms, messaging, gaming, and AI systems, producing “cognitive attrition” through repetition that normalizes intrusions and corrodes will. They describe a “cognitive supply chain” where disinformation reinforces itself until it feels true, demanding speed, scale, and persistence. Effective deterrence requires credible attribution and resilient transport layers, including terrestrial networks, undersea cables, satellites, and space assets. They call for modular, reliable agentic systems, outcome-based acquisition, cultural fluency, and an interdisciplinary cognitive workforce built through public-private collaboration.

Comment: If unity and will are the center of gravity, then the real target is domestic and allied confidence, and the weapon is time plus repetition, not the single dramatic blow. Attribution is deterrence’s hinge in this fight, because when ambiguity stands, the attacker keeps safe shelter, and the defender pays the political cost without gaining leverage. If adversaries build influence as “networks with local roots,” then takedowns are not enough, and the contest becomes governance of narratives through persistent, credible alternatives carried by the same transport layers.

The Cognitive Battlefield is Now Decisive Terrain

 23 February, 2026

By Bob Pearson

Bob Pearson is Chairman of the Pearson Advisory Group and a Member of the Information Professionals Association.

By Austin Branch

Professor of Practice, University of Maryland, Applied Research Lab for Intelligence & Security

Austin Branch is a national security and intelligence senior executive with over 35 years in federal service and private sector. He served in multiple Army Command and Staff positions, including becoming the Army's first Information Operations Officer. Branch also served as OIE Technology & Integration Director and Senior Advisor at Secretary of the Air Force Directorate for Concepts, Development and Management; and in several senior roles in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/the-cognitive-battlefield-is-now-decisive-terrain?share_id=9182219

OPINION -- Senior policymakers, military leaders, technologists and narrative strategists had one thing on their minds as they gathered in a Reston conference room last week - how decision advantage, psychological leverage, and narrative dominance are increasingly capable of determining strategic outcomes. Cognitive warfare - once treated as an adjunct to cyber or information operations - is becoming a primary instrument of power and the implications are profound.

Clausewitz wrote that the center of gravity in war is the source of an adversary’s strength. In today’s environment, that center of gravity is increasingly ideological and psychological. Unity and will - both domestic and allied - are strategic assets. Information is not merely a supporting function. It’s a weapon.

The contest unfolding in the gray zone is fundamentally about narrative. Not propaganda in the blunt Cold War sense, but sustained, cumulative influence campaigns that shape how populations interpret reality. These efforts operate across media, social platforms, text messaging networks, gaming environments, and increasingly, AI-driven platforms.

Subtle Corrosion Beats Spectacular Attack

One of the most important insights shared last week centered on the cycle of desensitization. Consider the steady drumbeat of cyber intrusions attributed to China or Russia. Each incident sparks temporary outrage, but repetition normalizes the activity. Over time, the public and sometimes policymakers, stop reacting. Strategic corrosion sets in.

This is cognitive attrition. It does not rely on a single catastrophic blow. Instead, it leverages small, atmospheric messages that accumulate. A fabricated report of a measles outbreak in Ukraine, spread via text messages. Repeated claims that Western institutions are corrupt or incompetent. False narratives injected into local conversations. Individually trivial. Collectively transformative.

The cumulative effect resembles what some participants described as a “cognitive supply chain”- disinformation introduced through multiple channels, actors, and devices over time, reinforcing itself until it feels like truth. In this environment, the question is not simply whether a narrative is false. It is whether the repetition of that narrative alters perception faster than truth can catch up.

If traditional principles of war emphasize mass and maneuver, today’s information battlefield demands speed, scale, and persistence. Speed, because narratives form quickly and harden fast. Scale, because digital transport layers allow messages to reach millions instantly. Persistence, because influence is cumulative. It rewards actors willing to repeat, reinforce, and adapt.

Military leaders are increasingly recognizing that communications is not a peripheral function, it is a commander’s business. Every action or inaction is an information operation. Tone, repetition, and secondary amplification matter as much as initial statements. And dominating that narrative requires dominating the transport layers that carry it. That includes terrestrial networks, undersea cables, satellite infrastructure, and increasingly, space-based assets. Space is not peripheral to information warfare; it is foundational.

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Another critical component to consider is that of attribution. In the cyber domain, attackers benefit from ambiguity. If malicious actors can hide behind plausible deniability or if governments can shield them, deterrence collapses. Credible attribution raises costs. It narrows safe havens. It signals resolve.

Some countries are beginning to codify this posture. Latvia, for example, has criminalized election-related fake news and deepfakes, recognizing that information manipulation is not abstract speech but a direct threat to democratic integrity. The United States faces a harder question: are our legal and institutional structures optimized for cognitive deterrence? Or are they still calibrated for a previous era of warfare?

The Rise of Agentic Systems

If the cognitive domain is decisive, technology will be central.

The next frontier is not simply artificial intelligence, but agentic architecture - systems capable of augmenting commander decision-making in real time. The goal is not automation for its own sake. It is better recommendations. Faster synthesis. Clearer visibility.

Architecture matters and open, modular systems are essential. Black boxes are strategically dangerous. Defense institutions need plug-and-play capabilities that allow integration of new tools as threats evolve.

Reliability, not feature proliferation, should guide procurement – think more Amazon.com rather than bespoke. Outcome-based acquisition must replace programmatic inertia. A culture of velocity must supplant a culture of compliance.

In Afghanistan, smaller, foreign terrorist organizations were easier to degrade than deeply embedded, locally rooted movements like the Taliban. Structure mattered. Networks with widespread local integration were far more resilient. The same principle applies to narrative ecosystems. Loosely connected but culturally embedded influence networks are harder to disrupt than centralized propaganda hubs.

If adversaries build durable cognitive infrastructure across diaspora communities, digital platforms, and local influencers, countering them requires more than takedowns. It requires building alternative narratives and actions with comparable persistence and legitimacy. Cognitive advantage requires a network of networks approach (think private-public), operating at the intersections of shared security interests.

Cultural Terrain Is Strategic Terrain

Perhaps the most underappreciated shift in today’s information environment is cultural. Gaming now plays a role similar to Hollywood’s influence after World War II. Streaming platforms dominate storytelling. Media consumption patterns are fragmented and algorithmically curated. Stories remain, as one speaker observed, “the fuel of the human soul.”

For decades, institutions like Voice of America succeeded because audiences sought out American content. The positive narrative of opportunity and possibility carried weight. In today’s environment, focusing solely on countering adversaries may be insufficient. Affirmative narratives about democratic resilience, economic opportunity, and alliance strength remain strategic assets. If the center of gravity is ideological, then cultural confidence is not soft power. It is core power.

None of this is executable without human capital. Building a cognitive arsenal requires building a cognitive workforce - professionals who are fluent in AI, media ecosystems, psychology, geospatial intelligence, and policy. Upskilling is not optional. Institutions must cultivate interdisciplinary talent capable of integrating technology and narrative strategy. They must also accelerate collaboration across government, private sector, and research institutions. And Government is looking to the private sector for training, skill development, and use of advanced technology, methods and applications. The adversary does not operate in stovepipes. Neither can we.

The most important question raised at that conference in Reston may have been the simplest: Are we structured to enact our own strategy?

The United States possesses extraordinary technological and intellectual advantages. But advantages unrealized are advantages lost. If cognitive warfare is indeed the new frontier of power, then institutional adaptation- not incremental reform - will determine success. Speed, modularity, reliable attribution, cultural fluency, and decision-centric AI must move from theory to practice. Because in this domain, the battlefield is not a distant theater. It is perception itself. And perception, once shifted, is far harder to reclaim than territory.

The Pinnacle Conference was hosted by The Information Professionals Association, The National Center for Narrative Intelligence and The Cipher Brief at the Carahsoft Conference & Collaboration Center

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7. Joint Interagency Task Force Announces Counter-UAS Marketplace

Comment: This is procurement as operational tempo, because the marketplace tries to turn counter-UAS buying from a slow staff ritual into a repeatable, near-fielding action. 

The joint force is transforming in contact.

Joint Interagency Task Force Announces Counter-UAS Marketplace

Feb. 24, 2026 | By Joint Interagency Task Force 401 |   

https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4413359/joint-interagency-task-force-announces-counter-uas-marketplace/

Joint Interagency Task Force 401 announced today that its revolutionary counter-unmanned aircraft systems marketplace has reached initial operational capability.

The online platform, hosted on the common hardware systems electronic catalog, will revolutionize how the War Department and its interagency partners acquire critical counter-UAS technology. 

The marketplace streamlines the process for users to identify and procure the right equipment to meet their specific needs, featuring a growing catalog of validated counter-UAS systems and components, with plans to include performance data from the task force's authoritative test and evaluation repository. It allows customers to compare systems based on real-world performance against a variety of threats and in different environments. 

"The JIATF 401 [counter]-UAS marketplace is a critical step forward in our whole-of-government approach to countering the threat of small drones," said Army Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, JIATF 401 director. "Our goal is to integrate sensors, effectors and mission command systems into a responsive, interoperable network that protects service members and American citizens alike." 

The marketplace is built on an established indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, enabling customers to place orders immediately and significantly reducing the lengthy contracting process typically associated with defense procurement. The common hardware systems website provides an intuitive interface for users to browse available equipment, review technical specifications and compare pre-negotiated contract options. 

"Building and maintaining the [counter]-UAS marketplace has been a collaborative effort focused on delivering a user-friendly and effective tool for the warfighter," said Army Maj. Matt Mellor, the lead acquisitions specialist assigned to JIATF 401. "We've worked to create a platform that not only simplifies the procurement process but also provides the crucial data and expert support necessary for our customers to make informed decisions. This is about getting the best technology into the hands of those who need it as quickly as possible." 

The marketplace is actively expanding its inventory to include all validated counter-UAS equipment not already designated as a program of record. The common hardware systems electronic catalog already lists over 1,600 items, demonstrating its capacity to support a comprehensive, growing selection of counter-UAS solutions. 

Access to the marketplace is available to users throughout the War Department and interagency partners via a common access card or other government-issued smart card. 

8. China’s Fragile Future: How Secure Is the CCP?

Summary:

Andrew J. Nathan reviews two books that challenge the common view that the Chinese Communist Party is stable and broadly trusted despite economic strain. Lianjiang Li argues standard surveys overstate regime support because “institutional trust” in an authoritarian system can reflect lack of alternatives, not durable confidence. Reworking Asian Barometer data, Li estimates only about 28 percent have “total trust” in Xi, with sizable shares partially trusting, skeptical, or distrustful, and he suggests crises could cascade distrust into mass protest. Chenggang Xu argues China’s Leninist party state carries “institutional genes” that resist reform and will drive stagnation, yet Nathan finds both arguments suggestive but not definitive. He warns collapse could yield chaos and renewed authoritarianism rather than democracy.

China’s Fragile Future

Foreign Affairs · More by Andrew J. Nathan · February 17, 2026

Review Essay

How Secure Is the CCP?

Andrew J. Nathan

March/April 2026 Published on February 17, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/chinas-fragile-future-nathan?utm

John Lee

ANDREW J. NATHAN is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

In This Review

• Political Trust in China
• By Lianjiang Li
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• Tertulia
• Bookshop
• Amazon
• Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism
• By Chenggang Xu
• 
  
• Tertulia
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How Secure Is the CCP?

Andrew J. Nathan

March/April 2026

• Article link: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/chinas-fragile-future-nathanhttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/chinas-fragile-future-nathan
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For many years, predicting the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party was something of a sport among China watchers. But few serious observers today suggest that China looks unstable. Despite facing numerous challenges, including the implosion of the country’s real estate sector since 2021 and high debt loads that have bogged down local government finances, China’s political system appears strong. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has a firm hold on all the levers of power, and the country is proving to be competitive, or even dominant, in a growing number of twenty-first-century technologies, such as electric vehicles and biotechnology. Moreover, scholars consistently find overwhelmingly high levels of public support for the CCP. In comparison to the growing fragility and divisiveness of political systems elsewhere, including in the United States, the Chinese regime appears to the outside world as competent and stable—an image that Beijing is eager to project.

Two new books challenge this view. In Political Trust in China, the political scientist Lianjiang Li digs deep into survey methodology to question the way that most scholars have measured public support for leaders in Beijing. He concludes that citizens’ trust in the regime is weaker than other researchers believe. In Institutional Genes, the economist Chenggang Xu uses a sweeping comparative and historical analysis of China’s political institutions to argue that the country’s inability to reform them will condemn it to economic stagnation. In Xu’s view, the kind of authoritarian rule that worked for China’s imperial dynasties is strangling its modern economy.

Both books offer a needed corrective to the conventional wisdom that the Chinese regime is stable, but neither is definitive. To translate local findings into national claims, Li reinterprets existing data sources in ways that stretch their meaning. Xu’s metaphor of “institutional genes,” meanwhile, shows that Chinese authoritarian institutions are resistant to change—but it does not adequately explain why they cannot be reformed. Still, it is difficult to read these deeply researched texts without worrying about China’s future. Sadly, if the two authors are correct, what follows regime collapse might be even worse than the system China has now.

SURVEY SAYS

Li, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, is a veteran scholar who has spent decades trying to understand and measure the foundations of political and social trust in China through field surveys of Chinese citizens. A well-designed survey with a valid sample of respondents produces a map of attitudes and behaviors within a population. Investigating the variation within this map allows a social scientist to analyze how different types of citizens think and act—for example, how characteristics such as education, gender, and income shape what people believe and how they behave. But Li, like all good survey researchers, is uncomfortable with some of the core assumptions of the method he uses. Gathering large quantities of survey data requires simplifying complex attitudes: citizens answering questionnaires have to express unidimensional views on multidimensional topics.

The dangers of overly simplified results are especially pronounced when scholars try to understand how citizens view the state. Researchers often ask respondents to rate their level of trust in various public institutions, such as the national government, local officials, or the police, on a scale from one to six or one to ten. Scholars frequently use the average trust level in these institutions as a variable, labeled “institutional trust,” to summarize a regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. The Asian Barometer Survey, which since 2001 has collected six waves of data from countries across Asia (and which I advise and help design as a core partner), relies on this index to show that Chinese citizens accord high levels of trust to their government. In the 2014–16 ABS wave, for example, which surveyed citizens from 14 countries, China scored 4.6 out of 6 on institutional trust, compared with 2.1 for Taiwan, 2.3 for South Korea, and 2.6 for Japan.

Li argues that the high level of reported institutional trust in China is misleading. In China, people trust the government because they “do not have an enforceable right to retract trust through free, fair, and regular elections”—that is, because they have no alternative. It is like the fable of the fox who, unable to reach a bunch of grapes, decides he doesn’t want to eat them. The political scientist Jon Elster labeled this phenomenon “adaptive preference formation,” arguing that people form preferences by choosing among only those options that are realistically available to them. Li calls the same phenomenon “embedding,” because the range of possible preferences is embedded in the system in which the preferences are being formed. Embedded trust is still real trust—but it is different from the trust that is expressed by citizens in systems in which there is an option to distrust political leaders.

Li thus set out to find a more meaningful measure of regime support than the conventional measure of embedded trust. He narrows his focus from trust in a set of core government institutions to trust in the top power holders in the CCP, or what Chinese people call “the party Center”—which, he suggests, today consists of one man: Xi. Li further reconceptualizes trust not as a single rating between zero and six, but as a set of types based on two dimensions, “commitment” and “capacity.” Commitment is citizens’ belief in the Center’s—that is, Xi’s—commitment to pursuing good policy goals, and capacity is the belief in Xi’s ability to make the bureaucracy achieve those goals.

Trust in the party may be less robust than most scholars believe.

This approach generates four types of trust in contemporary China. Citizens expressing total trust have confidence in both Xi’s commitment to adopt the right policies and his capacity to make the bureaucracy carry them out. Those with partial trust believe in Xi’s commitment but not in his capacity, and those who are skeptical have some doubts about Xi’s commitment, capacity, or both. Citizens expressing total distrust do not have faith in either Xi’s commitment or his capacity.

Li carried out two local surveys to test this conceptual reboot, one in 2006 and one in 2014. He asked remarkably direct questions about residents’ attitudes toward Xi and leaders at four lower levels of government, from the province down to the local township, and found that citizens assess leaders on both commitment and capacity. The more local the government, the less citizens believe in officials’ willingness to implement central government policies, which Li understands as the Center’s lack of capacity to force them to do so.

To fully assess his idea that there are four types of trust toward the party Center, however, Li needed a national sample, not a localized survey of a few areas. But it would have been politically difficult in China’s repressive research environment to conduct a new national survey on trust. So Li instead deconstructed and reassembled the standard battery of institutional trust questions from the fourth and fifth waves of the ABS’s China questionnaire, completed in 2015 and 2019, respectively. Because citizens associate the central government with setting policies and local governments with implementing them—or failing to do so—Li uses the ABS measure of trust in central government as a measure of how people perceive Xi’s commitment to pursuing good policies, and trust in local government as a proxy for Xi’s capacity to achieve his goals.

People pose for a picture near Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, November 2025 Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

Reinterpreting the meaning of survey questions in this way risks imposing an esoteric meaning on straightforward responses, which calls into question whether these data points are valid measures of perceived commitment and capacity. Still, Li’s work provides an intriguing foundation for challenging the consensus that China’s population overwhelmingly supports the regime. The ABS finding that 95.7 percent (in 2015) or 98.3 percent (in 2019) of respondents in China trust the central government always seemed too good to be true. Li instead shows that only about 28 percent of the population has total trust in Xi. He finds that another 20 to 25 percent partially trust China’s leader—believing in his goals but not his capacity—while around 35 percent are skeptical of either his commitment or his capacity, neither fully trusting nor distrusting. Ten to 20 percent express total distrust. Even if Li’s analysis of national data should be viewed with some caution, these numbers suggest that trust in the party Center is much less robust than most scholars—and perhaps the party itself—believe.

This new perspective explains much that is otherwise puzzling about citizen behavior in contemporary China. People with total trust support the government, and those who are skeptical tend to be politically apathetic. People with partial trust, who think local officials are not implementing the leader’s correct policies, are likely those who denounce, petition, and demonstrate against local authorities, or who call government hotlines or post on online government platforms to bring pressure on local officials from above. And those with total distrust are the ones who “join protests to express discontent, to vent anger, and even to embarrass the regime and the central leadership,” as Li writes.

Li’s analysis suggests a greater likelihood that dissent will threaten the regime than is often assumed. If a large number of citizens with total distrust come out against the regime, perhaps because of an economic or public health crisis, many who only partially trust the regime’s capacity might join the protests, followed by those whom Li classifies as skeptics. In that scenario, protest would spread from group to group, in the same way that demonstrations grew out of control in 1989 in Tiananmen Square or during the revolution in East Germany that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual dissolution of the communist bloc. Even citizens who now express total trust might change their attitude once they perceive that an option has opened up to voice distrust—like foxes who want to eat the grapes once they are able to reach them.

GENETIC DISORDER

Whereas Li challenges overly rosy views of Chinese citizens’ support for the regime, Xu disputes optimistic assessments of the health of the Chinese economy. Beijing’s official figures acknowledge that the country’s growth has slowed to around five percent per year, but Xu has claimed elsewhere that the true current growth rate is zero or even negative. In 2024, he told the German news outlet Deutsche Welle that although industries such as electric vehicles are booming, they make up only a small share of the economy compared with floundering sectors such as real estate, which are dragging down growth.

In his book, Xu claims that China’s economic problems are rooted in its political institutions. For any economy to grow, Xu explains, the state needs to give up some control. For several decades after the death of Mao Zedong, in 1976, Chinese leaders did loosen their grip on private entrepreneurship, the media, academia, and people’s personal lives. Although the government never relinquished the ultimate right to control how land, energy, and labor are used, it allowed enough openness for businesses to grow, farmers to search for new sources of income, and local economies to take off. What followed is well known: China’s economy boomed, frequently reaching double-digit annual rates of growth.

But, Xu argues, the country’s Leninist party-state system could not tolerate the increasing autonomy of private entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and the middle class that powered this expansion. To regain control, Xi has reversed many economic and social reforms since he came to power in 2012. He has punished private entrepreneurs for criticizing CCP policies or even just running companies that became too large, expanded party cells in private enterprises, tightened control over the media, and increased social surveillance.

Many observers attribute this reversal to Xi’s personal thirst for power, but Xu blames China’s institutions. He proposes the concept of “institutional genes,” which he describes as the fundamental components of China’s historical approach to property rights, government administration, personnel recruitment, and ideology. These institutional genes replicate themselves over time and limit how China can change. Notable examples of institutional genes from imperial times were the emperor’s right to commandeer any person’s land, top-down bureaucratic control of political and judicial functions, and the use of the examination system to enforce ideology and to prevent wealthy families from emerging as an independent hereditary nobility. These institutional features are replicated in today’s communist party-state, which maintains a monopoly over key industries and land, administers its program through several levels of local government, and metes out influence and regulates ideology through college entrance examinations, tests to enter the civil service, and a performance-based promotion system within the party.

China’s institutional genes were compatible with Leninism.

To show that past institutional patterns control future institutional developments, Xu argues that China failed to establish a constitutional democracy in the first part of the twentieth century because restrictions on government power did not fit its authoritarian traditions. The imperial system had eliminated independent social forces that could have formed the basis of a constitutional republic. The revolutionaries who overthrew the empire in 1911 did not seek to empower citizens but rather embraced a superficially appealing Western political model to increase national wealth and power. In Xu’s view, China’s experiment with constitutional democracy was dead on arrival.

China’s institutional genes were instead compatible with the Leninist party-state system, which China imported from the Soviet Union. Leninism reproduced in modernized form the patterns of centralized control over the economy, administration, personnel recruitment, and ideology characteristic of the Chinese dynasties. Given these institutional genes, partial liberalization under Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening” policy that began in the late 1970s could not continue indefinitely, much less expand. Xi’s retrenchment was the inevitable expression of the CCP’s deeper genetic makeup, and it ended China’s growth spurt. As Xu writes, “Communist totalitarian systems are fundamentally unreformable, making economic reforms destined to fail, leading to economic stagnation.”

Xu substantiates his analysis with a deeply informed account of how Chinese institutions have developed through history. But his use of the gene analogy falls short in explaining the mechanisms by which the past blocks change in the present. The science of genetics explains in chemical and biological detail how an organism’s characteristics are passed from one generation to the next. It also shows how organisms with the same genes can vary, as genes express themselves differently in different environments, and how organisms evolve as genes mutate.

Xu does not present a similarly concrete theory of how political institutions replicate themselves or how they change. Drawing on mechanism design theory, a branch of economics focused on incentives, Xu argues that an institutional change will survive only if it aligns with the self-interest of those already in power. But this line of reasoning is circular: if an institutional change sticks, then Xu determines that the incentives for adopting it were in place; and if it doesn’t, they were not. This reasoning rules out the possibility of fundamental change, which is contrary to how real genes evolve.

At times, Xu grasps for other ways of explaining why institutions endure, suggesting causes as varied as culture, norms, or social consensus. But he does not explain how any of these forces come into being or what enables them to resist change. These arguments, too, ultimately seem circular: institutions persist because they are able to persist, and they change when change is compatible with the interests of their members. These may be truths, but they are not explanations.

CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION

Both Li’s and Xu’s books imply a bleak future for the party and what may come after it. Li establishes that regime support is connected to the perception that the regime is unassailable, and this image of unassailability is fragile because it depends so much on one man. “Aside from the practical challenges,” Li writes, “a much graver challenge for the ruling party is maintaining the credibility of the paramount leader. As the ultimate object of political trust, the top leader is the soul and face of the Center. His credibility is critical for sustaining trust in the Center as an institution.” The current party leadership, which has bristled at any criticism of Xi, seems to agree that unraveling trust in the top leader could threaten the regime.

In Xu’s telling, meanwhile, China is today so obsessed with fine-grained surveillance and social control that it is strangling itself economically and socially. The state-dominated economy is inefficient, household income is too low, China’s population is declining, and top-down control of personnel and ideology stymies innovation. The ongoing real estate slump, Xu suggests, could even spark “a financial and fiscal crisis.”

Such an event—or a public health emergency or failed attempt to take Taiwan by force—could crack Xi’s veneer of invincibility, spurring those with partial trust to join their compatriots who fully distrust Xi and trigger a spreading movement against the regime. Li does not say what might follow such a trust meltdown, but both his and Xu’s theories suggest that a collapse of political order is more likely than a democratic transition. Xu notes that if the regime were to fall, China lacks the resources, including “widespread private property rights, a civil society, and a social consensus on human rights, property rights, and the rule of law and constitutionalism” that it would need to reconstruct itself as a stable democratic system. If trust in the party were to collapse, the only forces able to reimpose order would be either a party faction or the military—neither of which would bode well for China’s future. The country would likely undergo a period of painful chaos and end up with some other form of authoritarian rule.

Although many U.S. observers and politicians might like to exploit China’s fragility to topple the CCP, the implications of these books should serve as a warning. Lacking either the trust or the institutional genes to set up a more stable alternative, a post-CCP authoritarian regime rooted more in raw power than in engineered consensus might be even harder for the West to deal with than the relatively disciplined and strategic regime China has today.

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In This Review

• Political Trust in China
• By Lianjiang Li
• 
  
• Tertulia
• Bookshop
• Amazon
• Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism
• By Chenggang Xu
• 
  
• Tertulia
• Bookshop
• Amazon

Foreign Affairs · More by Andrew J. Nathan · February 17, 2026

9. Anthropic Pushes Claude Deeper Into Knowledge Work

Summary:

Anthropic released new updates to its Claude Cowork platform, aiming to make it a “central brain” for how knowledge workers use AI. Cowork, launched in research preview in January, lets users build AI agents that understand company context and connect to enterprise apps via Anthropic’s model context protocol. The update adds integrations with Google apps including Gmail, plus Docusign, LegalZoom, and others, and expands customizable “plug-ins” for workflows such as financial analysis, investment banking, and equity research, building on earlier legal plug-ins. The rollout comes amid market turmoil as more capable AI agents fuel investor fears about traditional SaaS vendors and have contributed to large software stock selloffs.

Comment: The real bet is not a better chatbot. It is an operating layer for office work, where agents sit inside the tools and make context switching feel obsolete. Markets are reacting to a shift in power, because if agents become the front door, then many SaaS products risk becoming back-end utilities unless they adapt fast and prove they still own the workflow.

Note: SaaS stands for Software as a Service (I had to look that up)

Anthropic Pushes Claude Deeper Into Knowledge Work

WSJ · DELOITTE

While the market remains rattled over how new AI tools threaten traditional software-as-a-service vendors, Anthropic pushes forward with new updates to its Claude Cowork platform

By Isabelle Bousquette

Follow

Feb. 24, 2026 9:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anthropic-pushes-claude-deeper-into-knowledge-work-23bd5abe

AI giant Anthropic is pushing out new updates to its Claude Cowork platform, amid a continuing market frenzy over how AI is affecting traditional SaaS. Samyukta Lakshmi/Bloomberg News

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

Amid a market frenzy over artificial intelligence’s impact on traditional software, AI giant Anthropic Tuesday launched new updates to Claude Cowork, a platform it expects to become the “central brain” for the way knowledge workers engage with AI.

Cowork, released in research preview in January, lets users build AI agents that understand company context and can connect into a host of downstream enterprise apps like Slack, through Anthropic’s model context protocol. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced additional integrations with Google apps including Gmail, as well as Docusign, LegalZoom and others.

“I think of Cowork as sort of a front door for work,” said Scott White, head of product, Enterprise at Anthropic. The surge in agentic coding, as illustrated by the explosion in Claude Code’s popularity, is now spreading to the rest of knowledge work, from finance to legal, sales, human resources, design and operations, he said.

Anthropic also on Tuesday announced new “plug-ins,” or customizable agents, for workflows across financial analysis, investment banking, equity research and other areas, expanding upon its previously announced plug-ins for the legal sector.

The release of more capable AI agents across a variety of sectors is also sending shock waves through the markets. It was on the heels of some updates to Cowork’s research preview earlier this month that investors panicked over the resilience of traditional software vendors, erasing hundreds of billions of market value and affecting companies like Thomson Reuters, LegalZoom and Intuit.

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The weekslong selloff in software stocks deepened Monday, driven partly by a now-viral Sunday night Substack post from Citrini Research, which outlined a hypothetical scenario where AI profoundly impacts the economy in the near future.

Also Monday, shares of International Business Machines tumbled 13%, their worst single-day move since October 2000, after Anthropic in a blog post said that its AI tools can help with modernizing Cobol, a dated programming language that’s run on IBM’s mainframe computers.

Still, Anthropic doesn’t think its products are to blame for the stock turmoil.

White said he believes it’s an overreach to connect market performance to any single product release. Platforms like Cowork can help the SaaS players deliver more value to their customers and end users get the most out of that software, according to White.

“We’re not a company that is trying to own every workflow inside of every tool. We’re trying to help people get their work done,” he said.

In the past, knowledge workers have mostly been engaging with AI chatbots in separate windows from the apps where they performed their work, White said, and part of the goal of Claude Cowork is to avoid that cycle of copy and pasting, context switching and repeating.

“What we’re announcing this week is sort of the end of that gap.”

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Isabelle Bousquette is a reporter covering enterprise technology, data and artificial intelligence for The Wall Street Journal in New York.

Her stories explore large-scale technology efforts at Fortune 500 companies and topics of significance to chief information officers. She writes frequently on the benefits and drawbacks of emerging technologies and the role they play in the corporate world.

Isabelle is a 2021 recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, awarded to the top four graduates each year of Columbia Journalism School. She also has a bachelor’s from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Isabelle joined the Journal from Forbes, where she worked to estimate the net worth of billionaires. Prior to Forbes, Isabelle wrote a series of investigative stories about local museums for the Detroit Free Press.

WSJ · DELOITTE

10. The United States Is Dangerously Misreading Iran

Summary:

Ali Hashem argues Washington is misreading Iran by assuming calibrated military pressure can force concessions without broad escalation. He frames Iran’s strategy as endurance, not precision, illustrated by Shahed drone swarms that exhaust defenses and improved through battlefield learning in Ukraine, then used in clashes with Israel to saturate interceptor layers. He contrasts negotiating red lines: Iran accepts zero nuclear weapons but rejects zero enrichment, while the U.S. treats zero enrichment as essential. He warns Iranian leadership is shifting from “tactical restraint” to Karbala-based resistance language, making a limited strike a legitimacy test requiring response. Iran’s deterrence favors horizontal escalation across missiles, cyber, maritime pressure points, and regional networks, and succession planning could produce an even harder post-strike leadership.

Comment: "Fear, honor, interest" (always). Washington is thinking in signals and ladders, but Tehran is thinking in survival and honor, so a “limited” strike can land as a moral summons, not a measured message. Iran’s way of war is accumulation, because drones, layered missiles, and cross-domain pressure are built to grind defenses and stretch attention until exhaustion replaces control. A strike meant to weaken the system may tighten it, because the Ali Hashem's picture of succession planning suggests conflict can fuse elites into a wartime consensus that outlasts one leader.

The United States Is Dangerously Misreading Iran

Foreign Policy · Ali Hashem

Washington can start a war, but it may not be able to control the escalation.

By Ali Hashem, a research affiliate at the Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London.

February 23, 2026, 10:54 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/23/trump-iran-war-misreading-khamenei-strategy-nuclear/?tpcc=roundup&utm

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, most people outside the global military community had never heard of the Iranian Shahed drone. The world learned about it from the low hum in social media videos of the swarms of the inexpensive drones over the Ukrainian battlefield. They were not very accurate or advanced, but their strength was in wearing down defenses over time. Ukrainian officials called them a “flying nuisance,” a weapon meant to exhaust defenses rather than deliver a decisive strike.

For Western capitals, particularly Washington, Iran’s decision to provide thousands of these drones to Russia marked a turning point in Iranian grand strategy. During nuclear talks in Vienna in 2022, several Western diplomats confided in me that Tehran had crossed an invisible line, demonstrating its readiness to shape events in conflicts far beyond its own borders. But for Iran, the conflict provided a different result. Ukraine became a testing ground. Russian battlefield improvements, developed through hard-won combat experience, enhanced drones’ effectiveness, extending their reach and impact.

The message was clear: Iran had started fighting a new kind of war, one focused on endurance instead of control. And in the multiple confrontations between Iran and Israel over the past several years, this proved effective. Iran was able to overwhelm several layers of Israeli missile interceptors with drones and less effective missiles, allowing the bigger ones to hit.

Today, as the United States begins to increase its military presence around Iran while making tentative diplomatic overtures, that lesson becomes more pertinent than ever. The current crisis is rapidly escalating to resemble the weeks leading up to June 2025, when Israel launched its latest war against Iran just as Washington and Tehran were about to engage in another round of nuclear talks.

Then, Iran’s negotiating strategy was simple: Zero nuclear weapons is acceptable, but zero enrichment meant no deal. The United States, on the other hand, approached the negotiating table with the opposite assumption in mind: Zero enrichment was simply the only acceptable path to a guarantee of no nuclear weapons. The difference was not merely a matter of technical and ideological definitions. Each side had a different definition of stability.

Since then, little has changed. Iran is still negotiating under growing military pressure.

Iranian leaders keep saying that diplomacy can prevent war, just as they did before fighting broke out in June 2025. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump keeps warning Iran that it has only days to make a deal before military action begins.

In Washington, more people are asking if a limited strike could force concessions without starting a larger war. But this idea may rest on a flawed assumption. Wars are not bound by plans; they are limited only when both sides want to keep them contained. Right now, it seems that shared interest may be gone.

Recently, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has moved away from “tactical restraint” and started using the language of “confrontation through the lens of Karbala.” This refers to the key Shiite story of Imam Hussein, who chose martyrdom over submitting to an unjust ruler.

For external audiences, such references may have a symbolic meaning. For Shiite political consciousness, however, Karbala is a moral and political code. It is the glorification of resistance in the face of existential threat over compromise. The idea of “dying on one’s feet and not living on one’s knees” challenges the United States’ logic of proportional response and coercive diplomacy.

By referencing historical tyrants such as Yazid, Nimrod, and Egyptian pharaohs, the Iranian leader makes it clear that the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is increasingly based on resistance rather than capitulation. In this regard, a limited U.S. strike will not be seen as a signal of strength. Rather, it will be recognized as an attack that requires a response to maintain moral legitimacy. And, contrary to previous attacks, a face-saving response will make things worse this time, especially if it’s followed by unbalanced negotiations.

Washington sees military pressure as a means of diplomatic leverage. Tehran increasingly sees conflict as a challenge of ideological survival. The two may be speaking in entirely different strategic languages.

The United States’ military strategy has recently been based on calibrated force and punitive strikes aimed at restoring deterrence without escalating conflict. Previous military operations in Venezuela and Syria have reinforced the confidence that escalation can be managed through precision and signaling.

However, Iran is a different strategic environment. Carl von Clausewitz once described war as an activity that is characterized by friction, the gradual buildup of uncertainty that turns simple plans into complex and unpredictable events. Once escalation has begun on the grounds of existential threat, the boundaries of escalation become increasingly fluid.

Iran is not a nonstate actor that can be taken out with a single strike. It is a large country with widely spread capabilities, making it hard to control escalation. Its expanding arsenal is built on this idea. The Shahed drone program illustrates a warfare strategy that relies on persistence rather than precision. In addition to ballistic and cruise missiles, cyber warfare, Gulf maritime pressure points, and allied networks in the region, Iran’s deterrence strategy promotes horizontal escalation. Warfare expands across multiple theaters rather than deepening along a single axis.

The real question is not if escalation will happen, but where it will start. It is evident that Iran’s regional partners have been weakened. In Lebanon, Hezbollah took heavy blows in its war with Israel in 2024. Iraqi militias are now facing increasing internal pressures, and the regional environment has limited Iran’s escalation flexibility.

From Washington’s view, this weakening might look like less danger. But weaker deterrence systems are not always safer. When they feel threatened, they can become less restrained. During the 2024 conflict, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies carefully measured their responses, partly due to reluctance and partly due to hopes that diplomacy would stop escalation. A situation characterized by the perceived danger of regime change in Tehran would completely upend these calculations.

Hezbollah, which is closely tied to the Islamic Revolution’s ideology, would face a major threat if the regime fell. In that case, restraint could turn into all-out resistance, fighting not just to survive but to assert its existence. The same could happen with Iraqi groups like Kataib Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen have their own goals, but their actions during the Gaza war showed they are willing to spread conflict further, using maritime attacks in the name of ideological unity. This would likely lead to horizontal escalation, with several semi-independent confrontations unfolding across different fronts rather than a single, organized regional conflict.

But what if a U.S. strike leads to a change of leadership in Tehran? Western observers often link Iran’s hard-line stance to Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But the Islamic Republic’s strength lies in a broader set of institutions. Within the Assembly of Experts, the constitutional body charged with selecting Iran’s supreme leader, an ideologically consistent group has been preparing for succession for years. Groups loyal to this current regime range from clerical institutions to thoroughly distrustful political institutions.

If Washington thinks military pressure will break Iran’s leadership, then it may miss the fact that succession plans have already been designed with the expectation of conflict and that those plans were accelerated after the June 2025 war. A strike meant to weaken hard-liners could actually speed up the uniting of leaders around a wartime mindset. The irony is striking: Efforts to force change could create a post-Khamenei establishment that is even more rigid and unpredictable than the current one.

The great Clausewitz famously wrote, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” On a strategic planning map in Washington, a strike against a missile site may look like a controlled act of signaling. In Middle Eastern politics and ideology, however, the boundaries begin to dissolve once escalation begins. And when wars begin this way, they rarely stay limited for long.

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Foreign Policy · Ali Hashem

11. Why Iran Will Escalate

Summary:

Nate Swanson argues Iran is likely to escalate if the United States strikes because Iranian weakness narrows room for compromise and Tehran now fears repeated U.S. and Israeli attacks on its ballistic missile program, which it sees as core to regime survival. He says POTUS believes he can strike and exit cleanly, based on past episodes that produced fewer repercussions than predicted, but conditions differ from June 2025 when Iran de-escalated. Swanson describes a U.S. demand for sweeping public concessions, including zero enrichment and dismantling missiles, while offering little concrete. He expects Iran to retaliate for credibility, likely through actions that kill Americans, stress Israel’s defenses, and disrupt shipping or energy infrastructure.

Excerpts:

Finally, Tehran could target global oil flows and international shipping, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump. Iran may well encourage the Houthis to resume attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also been preparing to selectively seize adversary ships in the Strait of Hormuz. If conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly. In 2019, during Trump’s last “maximum pressure” campaign, Iran directly attacked Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility, the world’s largest. That assault appeared to be designed to damage easily replaceable components, thus limiting the consequences to the global energy supply. But if Tehran instead assaulted infrastructure that it knows would take longer to repair, the results would be much more damaging. The relationships between Iran and the Gulf Arab states are stronger now than they were then, but Tehran knows that Gulf leaders carry real influence with Trump and could appeal to him to back down if they came under pressure.

Iran may be weak. But it still has ways to inflict real pain on the United States—and much more incentive to try than it did before. If Trump wants to maintain the playbook that has worked for him, he will need a decisive and low-cost end to this saga. But powerful forces, both within him and external to him, have led him to dismiss the many off-ramps he already had. Iran hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham are urging Trump not to “talk like Reagan and act like Obama,” a comparison Trump hates and fears. It may seem implausible that Trump, who promised his supporters an end to forever wars, would take out Iran’s leaders or commit ground troops to regime change and nation building. Yet he has come this far. He may well be pushed onward, regardless of the cost.

Comment: Kissinger said something to the effect: "The guerrilla does not have to win, just not lose." A demand for zero enrichment and no missiles is not bargaining, it is an end-state, and when the offer brings “virtually nothing” back, Iran’s leaders have little room to sell compromise at home. Iran’s best leverage is not winning, it is hurting, so the fight shifts to casualties, oil, and shipping, where a weaker actor can still force politics to do the damage.

Given the US history of the past two decades perhaps Iran thinks it can make it look like it can string things out for 20 years so as to rapidly exhaust America as we want no more long wars. 

Ho Chi Minh said: "You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first."

Why Iran Will Escalate

Foreign Affairs · More by Nate Swanson · February 24, 2026

U.S. Military Strikes and the Risk of a Quagmire

Nate Swanson

February 24, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/why-iran-will-escalate

A fighter jet preparing to launch from a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Arabian Sea, February 2026 U.S. Navy / Reuters

NATE SWANSON is Resident Senior Fellow and Director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council. He was Director for Iran at the National Security Council between 2022 and 2025. In the spring and summer of 2025, he served on the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team.

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U.S. Military Strikes and the Risk of a Quagmire

Nate Swanson

As foreign policy luminaries rush to warn about the perils of a U.S. attack on Iran, there is widespread confidence in the White House that President Donald Trump can manage a strike’s fallout. This confidence reflects a years-long pattern that has shaped Trump’s thinking. Washington’s foreign policy establishment warns the president against some norm-breaking act. He ignores their advice and plows forward. And he faces no apparent repercussions. In 2018, when Trump broke with U.S. policy to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, I was serving in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Our own bureaucratic experts predicted that the move would prompt widespread protests and violence against U.S. personnel, and we set up task forces and evacuation plans for a doomsday that never came. This dynamic repeated itself last June, when Trump joined Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear program. Analysts warned that the decision would trigger a broader war and hasten Iran’s nuclear breakout. Once again, little happened. When the administration ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, pundits insisted that his country and even the region would plunge into chaos, but nothing of the sort has yet occurred.

It is easy to see why Trump would believe that the warnings about another attack on Iran are overwrought and that he can repeat his formula of decisive action and a clean exit. But this time is different. I spent 18 years working on Iran in various U.S. government capacities, including as President Joe Biden’s Iran director and on Trump’s negotiating team in the spring and summer of 2025. From that experience, I can see that Trump fundamentally fails to grasp that Iranian weakness will not lead the country to capitulate at the negotiating table. On the contrary, Iran’s present fragility only narrows the space for meaningful compromises. Nor does Trump understand that Iran faces entirely different conditions than it did in June 2025, when it chose to de-escalate. The Islamic Republic now believes that Israel and the United States intend to repeatedly strike its ballistic missile program—the foundation of Iranian self-defense—and that it must be more aggressive to forestall the kind of perpetual assault that could topple it altogether.

Trump’s own behavior also increases the risk of escalation. The president’s ever-intensifying wish to be seen as a historic peacemaker has led him to an unnecessarily binary choice—strong-arm Tehran into a major new deal or use substantial force. And the nebulousness of his motives makes this flash point much more dangerous. Trump seems interested, in no particular order, in demonstrating the prowess of the U.S. military, strengthening his negotiating position, showing he was serious when he vowed in a January Truth Social post to protect Iranian protesters, and differentiating his approach from President Barack Obama’s. This mishmash of objectives contrasts with the focus he brought to his previous successful operations and will make him less prepared if a strike does not yield the expected, swift capitulation. All told, today’s conditions mean that an attack by the United States on Iran could result in unexpectedly deadly retaliation—and a much longer and potentially damaging conflict for Washington.

A SELF-MADE TRAP

Strategically speaking, Trump has no great reason to attack Iran. Tehran is a threat to Washington’s Middle East interests, yes, but it poses no immediate menace to the United States. In the aftermath of Iranians’ widespread protests and their subsequent brutal massacre, sustained economic and diplomatic pressure would have further weakened the regime without risking open conflict. But this president is rarely satisfied with quiet victories. As a result, he has made a major, flashier demand. Either the Iranian government agrees to a grand nuclear deal in which it gives up all nuclear enrichment and its missile program, or Washington attacks.

Launching a limited military strike on Iran to force it to meet U.S. requirements fits Trump’s playbook. It would afford him a spectacle. And he clearly wants either a surrender pact or a broad framework that validates his claim to have brought peace to the Middle East for the first time in several millennia. But Iran’s leaders are increasingly indisposed to offer him a big, symbolic victory. In general, Iranian negotiators like to focus on specifics and narrow, tit-for-tat concessions. Biden understood this, and as a member of his Iran negotiating team, I spent countless hours deliberating how to categorize nuclear-related sanctions.

At a round of negotiations with the United States in Geneva last week, Iran fronted Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, his full complement of official advisers, and a team of technical experts to hammer out fine specifics such as how Iran would export its uranium stockpiles and which U.S. executive orders would be rescinded. Trump, by contrast, sent just two people: his catchall special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. He does not care about technicalities or grasp their particular importance to Iran.

Iran’s leaders do not want to offer Trump a symbolic victory.

Instead, Washington is demanding sweeping public concessions while offering virtually nothing concrete in return. John Limbert, a former U.S. diplomat and, in 1979, a hostage in Iran, has wryly observed in his book Negotiating With Iran that “Iran doesn’t give in to pressure—only to a lot of pressure.” He notes how Iran, after years of fiery defiance, accepted in 1988 a humiliating UN-sponsored cease-fire with Iraq after finally concluding that continuing the devastating eight-year war threatened the Islamic Republic’s survival. Iran will not cave to major demands simply because of a bombing campaign. And by extension, the Iranian regime will not sign on to arrangements that, in its view, fundamentally undermine its viability, especially without concurrent guarantees. Insisting that Iran dismantle its missile program, for example, is almost certainly a nonstarter—the regime believes that the missile program undergirds its grip on power. Trump fails to comprehend that no matter how weak Iran is or how much force the United States deploys, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will never willingly negotiate the end of the Islamic Republic. He would rather die a martyr.

If anything, Iran’s negotiators have less flexibility now than they did a year ago. At this juncture, Khamenei should have authorized his negotiating partners to break with their traditional approach and offer Trump the appearance of a major win. Six weeks ago, the mere fact that Trump held off on his promise to retaliate on behalf of Iran’s protesters and offered negotiations created a huge opportunity for Tehran. But it squandered the opening when it rejected the Trump administration’s first proposal—a regional summit in Istanbul between foreign ministers, which could have differed enough from Obama’s negotiating framework to give Trump political cover. Iran simply couldn’t bring itself to let Trump save face and score a symbolic win. In truth, Khamenei is just as obsessed with appearances as Trump is, and he is increasingly catering to his most hard-line supporters. He has made it impossible for his negotiating team to offer even minor compromises, much less the kinds of big concessions Trump is demanding.

POINT OF NO RETURN

Iran knows that it cannot win an outright war with the United States or Israel. In theory, if Trump strikes, Tehran would be best off seeking a quick de-escalation—as it did with Israel in April and October of 2024 and with both countries in June 2025. But Iran is facing a very different situation now than it did then. Today, Israel and the United States both perceive Iran as a paper tiger. The proxy militias that it used to deter Israel and terrorize the Middle East for years have largely been neutralized. Its nuclear program is in ruins. Its air defenses are in tatters: the June strikes destroyed most of its surface-to-air missile sites and punched massive holes in its early-warning radar network. And in December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Mar-a-Lago and got Trump’s permission to strike Iran’s ballistic missile program, the keystone of the country’s defense, at a time and place of Netanyahu’s choosing. This development threatens the very existence of the Islamic Republic. The program is Iran’s only remaining means of threatening Israel. (Iran also mostly makes these missiles domestically, so Israel would have to strike Iran every six months or so to keep the arsenal sufficiently degraded.)

The ambiguity of Trump’s current intentions also changes the Iranian calculus. The U.S. president is not threatening to attack Iran because of any imminent threat or in response to any act of Iranian aggression. His motives are various and unclear: he is disappointed by the negotiations’ progress, he feels compelled to defend the redline he established with his Truth Social post, he is desperate to avoid unflattering comparisons to Obama, and he believes he can undertake major operations with minimal consequences. From Iran’s perspective, both Israel and the United States appear to have concluded that they can strike without any direct provocation and when doing so serves domestic political needs; Iran even thinks the two countries will be tempted to strike frequently. As a result, Iranian officials feel they need to give Trump a bloody nose or they will perpetually be at risk.

In a speech last week, Khamenei threatened to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier and close the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran is unlikely to do either of these things, given the current U.S. military buildup in the region. But it could more easily inflict U.S. casualties. Killing Americans may be a particularly appealing option: Iranian leaders remember that in 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan withdrew all U.S. forces from Lebanon after the Iran-backed suicide bombing of a Marine barracks there, despite initially claiming he would not be cowed by terrorism.

Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure.

The United States has roughly 40,000 troops positioned across 13 regional bases, not including the significant naval and air power it has recently deployed to the Middle East. On February 19, Iran’s ambassador to the UN warned the body that if the country were attacked, all nearby “bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force … would constitute legitimate targets.” Although Tehran’s regional proxies are degraded, Iraqi and Houthi militias still have the capacity to add to any Iranian response. According to a mid-January Quinnipiac poll, 70 percent of Americans—and a majority of Republicans—oppose military intervention in Iran. Trump will struggle to justify any American deaths in a conflict of his own making. Iran could also intensify its missile strikes on Israeli civilian targets, straining Israel’s defensive capabilities and challenging the United States to pour resources into bolstering its ally.

Finally, Tehran could target global oil flows and international shipping, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump. Iran may well encourage the Houthis to resume attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also been preparing to selectively seize adversary ships in the Strait of Hormuz. If conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly. In 2019, during Trump’s last “maximum pressure” campaign, Iran directly attacked Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility, the world’s largest. That assault appeared to be designed to damage easily replaceable components, thus limiting the consequences to the global energy supply. But if Tehran instead assaulted infrastructure that it knows would take longer to repair, the results would be much more damaging. The relationships between Iran and the Gulf Arab states are stronger now than they were then, but Tehran knows that Gulf leaders carry real influence with Trump and could appeal to him to back down if they came under pressure.

Iran may be weak. But it still has ways to inflict real pain on the United States—and much more incentive to try than it did before. If Trump wants to maintain the playbook that has worked for him, he will need a decisive and low-cost end to this saga. But powerful forces, both within him and external to him, have led him to dismiss the many off-ramps he already had. Iran hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham are urging Trump not to “talk like Reagan and act like Obama,” a comparison Trump hates and fears. It may seem implausible that Trump, who promised his supporters an end to forever wars, would take out Iran’s leaders or commit ground troops to regime change and nation building. Yet he has come this far. He may well be pushed onward, regardless of the cost.

Foreign Affairs · More by Nate Swanson · February 24, 2026

12. Japan’s National Security Reckoning

Summary:

Masataka Okano argues Japan must rethink national security as the postwar system built by U.S. power and multilateral rules becomes less reliable and the world more dangerous. He cites intensified Chinese pressure around Taiwan and the South China Sea, Russia’s war in Ukraine and its spillover effects, north Korean nuclear and missile advances, and rapid change in warfare driven by drones and AI. He warns “America first” policies entrenched under POTUS are weakening allied confidence through tariffs, burden-sharing demands, and withdrawals from global institutions. Japan is responding with stronger defense posture, economic security measures to reduce supply chain dependencies, broader partnerships beyond the United States, and a revised national security strategy paired with sustained diplomacy.

Excerpts:

Even with capable partners, confronting today’s national security challenges will not be easy. Many governments struggle with severe fiscal deficits and shortages of public-sector personnel, and Japan is no exception. An effective strategy requires prioritization, allocating limited resources to the most critical objectives rather than promising to do everything and then falling short. This means making difficult political decisions to adjust the level of defense spending, reallocate budgets from traditional military platforms to unmanned and AI-enabled systems, and invest in cutting-edge industries. And as people today both follow foreign policy more closely than in the past and tend to consume information that aligns with their existing views, national security practitioners must take greater care to explain and defend their decisions to the public than their predecessors did. Without a shared popular understanding of the realities of current threats, Japan will find it difficult to mount an effective response. It is a good thing, then, that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government has decided to spend one year revising Japan’s National Security Strategy, leaving time for the Japanese public to grapple with the new realities that make the strategy necessary.

The tensions in the world today are unsustainably high. Having served in Japan’s foreign service for nearly four decades, I am certain that even as countries take necessary steps to protect themselves, this is the time to emphasize diplomatic engagement. Direct communication between rivals can help reduce frictions, and refusing dialogue seldom yields its intended outcome. Japan’s outreach to like-minded partners, including many in the global South, can also help consolidate support for international law and reinforce the principle that any attempt to occupy the land of a foreign country or otherwise disrupt the status quo by force will not be tolerated. Adjusting to a world of complex security threats and to a new relationship with the United States calls for strong defense, intelligence, and economic capabilities. But working toward a less tense, less fragmented future calls for diplomacy.

Japan’s National Security Reckoning

Foreign Affairs · More by Masataka Okano · February 24, 2026

How Tokyo Is Adjusting to a More Dangerous World

Masataka Okano

February 24, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/japan/japans-national-security-reckoning

Military personnel taking part in a drill in Funabashi, Japan, January 2026 Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters

MASATAKA OKANO was National Security Adviser and Vice Foreign Minister of Japan between 2023 and 2025. The views expressed here are his own.

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How Tokyo Is Adjusting to a More Dangerous World

Masataka Okano

For decades, U.S. allies operated within an international system built and maintained by the United States. Washington was committed to keeping global trade flowing, to the benefit of countries around the world. The multilateral institutions formed in the wake of World War II did not prevent war altogether, but they reinforced a norm against outright conquest. And the United States’ vested interest in its allies’ security offered assurance to Japan and other countries that they would be protected if conflict came to their shores.

National security leaders around the world knew that this system was not guaranteed to last forever. Already, in the past several years, the outbreak of deadly wars in Europe and the Middle East, escalating Chinese military activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea, the reemergence of trade wars and breakdown of global governance, and the dizzying pace of change in modern warfare—especially when it comes to drones and artificial intelligence—all required countries to adjust their expectations. The world was becoming a more dangerous, more unpredictable place. Yet Japan and its partners believed that the rules-based international order, upheld at the initiative of the United States, was still the best remedy to these problems.

But now, seismic changes in U.S. foreign policy are forcing Japan and other U.S. allies to undertake a more fundamental reassessment. “America first” policies introduced under the first Trump administration have become entrenched in the second, and Japan and other close partners have been startled by Washington’s tariff-based trade policy, demands that allies assume a greater share of security burdens, military operations in the Middle East and Venezuela, claims of ownership over Greenland, and withdrawal from UN agencies. They have been shocked, in other words, to see the United States undermining the very system it built. They relied on that system and on the United States to help them tackle shared challenges, be they military threats or obstacles to free trade. It is becoming clear, however, that they cannot shore up multilateral institutions or their relationships with Washington themselves as they could before.

Responding to the transformations underway in the United States and around the world requires more than just reaching agreements with the Trump administration about tariffs and defense spending. For Japan, as for other allies, the foundation of a decades-old national security strategy has become fragile—and the task now is to develop a new strategy to take its place.

HARD TRUTHS

Since the end of the Cold War, Japan has enjoyed a relatively stable international environment. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and China’s rising military spending have been sources of concern, but both seemed manageable, if only just. U.S. extended deterrence and efforts by Japan and other U.S. allies to enhance their own defense capabilities seemed to ensure that the region could remain free of actual military conflict.

But in recent years, the Japanese public and the country’s policymakers have had to confront inconvenient realities. The first is the Chinese Communist Party’s pursuit of the “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” which Chinese leader Xi Jinping describes as the “China Dream.” Some of the policies that fall under this umbrella pose challenges to China’s neighbors. Beijing’s aim to reunify with Taiwan without excluding the possibility of doing so by force, for example, is worrying. So are China’s efforts to control chokepoints in global supply chains for critical materials, including rare earths, and itssubstantial lead in artificial intelligence, space, and quantum technologies, which enables Beijing to deepen other countries’ dependence on Chinese systems, reinforcing its dominance and giving it power to set international standards.

As China becomes more coercive, escalating the activities of its naval and coast guard vessels and imposing economic penalties such as import bans and export controls, Japan’s geographic proximity leaves it particularly exposed. The challenge has been to accurately assess how China is operating, and to push back on any efforts by Beijing to change the regional status quo by force. China debates and formulates policies within a particular domestic context and a specific political language. Policymakers in Tokyo and in other capitals cannot assume that Beijing’s decision-making follows the same logic as their own. To prevent misunderstandings, it has become necessary to keep direct lines of communication open at the leadership level and to avoid any appearance of a power vacuum in the region. Japan has needed to present its case clearly and deliberately, although sometimes strategic ambiguity can be useful to ease a standoff. More and more, Tokyo has also needed to back up its statements with displays of force, such as joint defense operations with the United States, Australia, India, and European partners.

The international system was not guaranteed to last forever.

The spillover of the war in Ukraine into the Indo-Pacific has added to Japan’s security concerns. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a blatant violation of the UN Charter and international law, and it lowered the threshold for the use of force everywhere. It also reshaped the geostrategic landscape in Japan’s backyard. More than 10,000 North Korean troops have reportedly been deployed to Ukraine to fight on Russia’s behalf, and military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow is deepening. So, too, is the triangular relationship between China, North Korea, and Russia. This group is not monolithic, and each member has different and sometimes conflicting interests. Yet North Korea’s and China’s support for Russia’s war offer a glimpse of how the three countries might cooperate in the event of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula or in the Taiwan Strait.

The conflict in Ukraine, furthermore, has ushered in a new era of warfare, compelling all countries to adapt their own military planning and procurement or risk being unable to respond effectively to a potential conflict. In February 2022, Russian forces advanced toward Kyiv with tanks, but that tactic has now become obsolete. Drones dominate the frontlines and all battle domains—in the air, underwater, and on land. Sensors, precision munitions, and other technologies are advancing at extraordinary speed, driven by immediate battlefield needs. Brave1, a platform operated by the Ukrainian government, functions as a rapid procurement hub, matching startups’ newest technologies with frontline units. New systems are tested almost immediately after development and incorporate real-time feedback from the field. Japan, lacking such wartime urgency, does not yet possess comparable mechanisms. Companies cannot easily obtain operational feedback, testing fields are physically limited, and strict regulations constrain experimentation.

As Japan’s and other peacetime countries’ military technology lags, dangers are mounting. North Korean forces in Ukraine may have gained operational experience using and countering drones in battle. If North Korea, with Russian assistance, were also to master and apply drone technology, both Japan and South Korea could find themselves at a military disadvantage. The protraction of the war in Ukraine offers another warning. Moscow expected a lightning-fast victory. But the fighting has continued for four years, as both sides introduce a series of new weapons—particularly drones—that make the battlefield highly visible, reducing the likelihood of surprise breakthroughs. These technological advances increase the risk that other conflicts, too, will devolve into prolonged wars of attrition. Military planners everywhere are tasked with contingency planning to ensure that, if their country were attacked, it could sustain its defense and repel the attacker. But they usually aim for a swift resolution so as not to exhaust the resources they have at hand. Factoring in the increased likelihood of a long war requires more stockpiling of strategically important materials, protection of critical infrastructure, strengthening of cybersecurity, and expansion of ammunition production capacity than planners previously assumed. The purpose of these efforts is not to fight a war—it is to prevent one by deterring an attack.

Japan has taken the shifts of the past few years seriously.

It is not just in the military sphere that rising competition has necessitated more deliberate government action. The multilateral trading system no longer works as it should, given the growing prevalence of nonmarket policies and practices. China has been producing goods in numbers that far exceed global demand, government policies and investment by massive corporations are driving technological innovation, and major countries are tightening their control over supply chains for strategic materials. All of this challenges the basic functioning of free trade, and until full confidence in the World Trade Organization is restored through the recovery of its dispute-settlement mechanism, countries have no effective recourse for harmful practices.

For a country such as Japan to protect its economic autonomy and vibrancy, it must reduce dependencies that other countries can exploit while securing its position in global supply chains. The state must ensure access to strategic materials, including rare earths; protect critical electricity, water, and telecommunications infrastructure; support research and development; invest in critical and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and space; and control exports of advanced technologies including leading-edge semiconductors. Japan has begun to take such steps with its 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act and related legislation. In the years ahead, government intervention and close coordination with friendly countries will remain indispensable.

The breakdown of the global trading system is part of a broader erosion of a shared sense of responsibility for global governance. Part of the problem is that international institutions have not always represented the interests of all their members—and as countries belonging to the so-called global South gain economic heft and political influence, many are making their dissatisfaction with the existing order known. Adjusting to this shift in the global balance of power requires embracing the aspirations of these countries, as Japan has started to do. At the 50th anniversary of its partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2023, Tokyo committed to working closely with ASEAN partners to create a prosperous and sustainable economy in the Indo-Pacific. It has also hosted regular conferences with African leaders; at the most recent conference, held in Yokohama in August 2025, then Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba held 34 bilateral meetings with participating leaders. Through continued collaboration with countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the global South, which starts by listening carefully to their concerns and expectations, Japan can contribute to the restoration of global governance.

“AMERICA FIRST”

Japan, like many other countries, has taken the shifts of the past few years seriously. During that time, it was able to assume that its allies shared its diplomatic commitments to joint deterrence and staunch support of a free and open international order, based on multilateralism and the rule of law.

Now, however, Japan must contend with the more complete realization of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” policy, which may turn out to be the most consequential shift in international politics in recent history. As the U.S. National Security Strategy released last November made clear, the United States, the world’s largest market and foremost provider of military power, is now prioritizing its own interests above its stewardship of the international system. In its drive to remain the “most successful country,” as the strategy document puts it, the United States has stopped sacrificing its domestic interests for the sake of the global economy, and it has stepped back from its role as the world’s policeman. Washington has changed—perhaps irreversibly.

The effects are already visible in the Indo-Pacific. Early in the second Trump administration, the president’s warning that the United States would not defend a NATO ally that failed to direct two percent of its GDP to defense spending called into question the extent to which the United States would fulfill its defense commitments in a national security emergency anywhere—that is, how much it would do if a crisis were to occur in Asia. The U.S. National Security Strategy calmed some of this fear with its stated intention to “build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain,” referring to a string of major islands in the Pacific that includes Japan and Taiwan, but worries remain that Washington will follow through on its warning that it will not defend countries that do not invest sufficiently in their own security. In response, Japan has committed to substantially enhancing its defense capabilities. In Europe, where Trump’s animosity toward NATO partners and his threats to acquire Greenland have more thoroughly undermined allies’ assumption that the United States would come to their defense, many countries are making similar commitments.

The United States’ aggressive trade policies have presented an additional challenge, especially as they arrive amid a weakening of the multilateral trade system. In July 2025, Japan and the United States agreed to a 15 percent tariff rate on U.S. imports from Japan—a reduction from Trump’s original proposal of 25 percent—in exchange for Tokyo’s commitment to invest in the United States and purchase U.S. defense equipment. But this arrangement did not take the traditional form of an international agreement with a dispute-settlement mechanism. In the absence of such legal assurance, either party may be tempted to depart from the deal if it judges that the other party has not implemented its terms to a satisfactory degree. With such arrangements, Tokyo and many other capitals are forced to navigate an increasingly delicate balance of interests, relying on subjective judgments rather than predictable rules.

A NEW MISSION

Since the end of World War II, U.S. foreign policy has been generous to U.S. allies, but those allies now know that American generosity can no longer be taken for granted. Intensive debates are still underway across allied capitals about how best to handle relations with this new United States, but all agree that a new, sober-minded approach is necessary.

The impulses behind “America first” predate the first Trump administration, and the new orientation will likely persist. But this does not necessarily imply isolationism. The American public still aspires to global leadership, and to retain such a position, the United States should see the value of allies with strong economies and militaries. The challenge for those allies, including Japan, is to present concrete proposals for defense and economic cooperation in such a way that serves both their own interests and newly defined American priorities—and to nudge the United States toward the realization that its aspirations of maintaining leadership in today’s fiercely competitive world will require steady, trust-based cooperation with its allies.

The security environment in East Asia is of particular concern. Japan faces two nuclear-armed powers, China and Russia, that are intensifying their cooperation, while North Korea continues to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities. Confronting this peril has required that Japan strengthen its defense posture, including by introducing counterstrike capabilities to deter invasion. It is true that the United States’ overwhelming nuclear and conventional capabilities remain the ultimate guarantor of stability in East Asia. The Trump administration recognizes how powerful China has become, and it has placed deterrence against China in the Indo-Pacific among its core defense priorities. Washington’s interests go beyond defense, too—maintaining stability ensures that the United States can benefit from the economic dynamism of the region. Yet because security problems in the region may develop unexpectedly, Japan must be agile and always ready to respond—in other words, it needs to take strategic autonomy more seriously.

American generosity can no longer be taken for granted.

There is still significant overlap between U.S. strategic interests and the interests of U.S. allies, which means there are opportunities for allied leaders to highlight areas ripe for cooperation. But adjusting to the world of “America first” also requires Japan and other countries to look beyond the United States to address shared concerns. Responding to China’s ambitious domestic and regional agenda, strengthening defenses in a new era of warfare, and securing critical supply chains all require multilateral efforts. These efforts still need the support of the United States, but Japan will also need to deepen its collaboration with partners such as South Korea, ASEAN members, Australia, India, Canada, and European countries.

Even with capable partners, confronting today’s national security challenges will not be easy. Many governments struggle with severe fiscal deficits and shortages of public-sector personnel, and Japan is no exception. An effective strategy requires prioritization, allocating limited resources to the most critical objectives rather than promising to do everything and then falling short. This means making difficult political decisions to adjust the level of defense spending, reallocate budgets from traditional military platforms to unmanned and AI-enabled systems, and invest in cutting-edge industries. And as people today both follow foreign policy more closely than in the past and tend to consume information that aligns with their existing views, national security practitioners must take greater care to explain and defend their decisions to the public than their predecessors did. Without a shared popular understanding of the realities of current threats, Japan will find it difficult to mount an effective response. It is a good thing, then, that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government has decided to spend one year revising Japan’s National Security Strategy, leaving time for the Japanese public to grapple with the new realities that make the strategy necessary.

The tensions in the world today are unsustainably high. Having served in Japan’s foreign service for nearly four decades, I am certain that even as countries take necessary steps to protect themselves, this is the time to emphasize diplomatic engagement. Direct communication between rivals can help reduce frictions, and refusing dialogue seldom yields its intended outcome. Japan’s outreach to like-minded partners, including many in the global South, can also help consolidate support for international law and reinforce the principle that any attempt to occupy the land of a foreign country or otherwise disrupt the status quo by force will not be tolerated. Adjusting to a world of complex security threats and to a new relationship with the United States calls for strong defense, intelligence, and economic capabilities. But working toward a less tense, less fragmented future calls for diplomacy.

Foreign Affairs · More by Masataka Okano · February 24, 2026

13. Inside the Secret Briefings That Pushed Apple to Move Chip Production to the US [Report]

Summary:

A report says U.S. officials used classified briefings and policy pressure to push Apple and other tech firms to reduce reliance on Taiwan for leading-edge chips, which officials describe as a national security single point of failure. A cited 2022 industry report warned a Taiwan blockade could cut U.S. output by 11 percent and drive global losses above $10 trillion, while firms hold only months of chip inventory. After secure briefings in 2023, Apple began intensive engineering sessions with Intel and expanded U.S. commitments, including buying 100 million U.S.-made TSMC chips and moving Mac mini assembly to Texas. The Trump administration threatened tariffs to force domestic sourcing, spurring new U.S. fab investment, though advanced packaging still ties production to Taiwan.

Comment: This is coercive industrial policy dressed as risk management, because the lever is not persuasion alone, it is tariffs, subsidies, and security briefings that make delay feel reckless. Even if wafers move to Arizona, the Taiwan packaging choke point means the real vulnerability shifts, not disappears, so resilience will hinge on the unglamorous middle steps, not the headline factory.

Inside the Secret Briefings That Pushed Apple to Move Chip Production to the US [Report]

iclarified.com · Shalom Levytam · February 24, 2026

https://www.iclarified.com/100021/inside-the-secret-briefings-that-pushed-apple-to-move-chip-production-to-the-us-report

Washington has spent years urging Silicon Valley to reduce its reliance on Taiwan for high-end semiconductor manufacturing. Despite repeated classified briefings and billions of dollars in federal incentives, the tech industry has hesitated to shift supply chains, citing cost concerns and the unmatched efficiency of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The island currently produces roughly 90 percent of the world's most advanced computer chips, creating a single point of failure that federal officials view as a national security vulnerability. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently warned that as much as 97 percent of leading-edge chips are made in Taiwan, calling it the single biggest point of failure in the global economy.

The New York Times has published an extensive investigation detailing the behind-the-scenes friction between the U.S. government and companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Intel. The stakes are immense. A confidential 2022 report commissioned by the Semiconductor Industry Association found that a blockade of Taiwan would trigger a historic economic crisis. If the supply of chips from the island were severed, U.S. economic output could fall by 11 percent, causing twice the economic damage of the 2008 recession. China's economy would contract even more sharply, and global losses could exceed $10 trillion, according to separate economic estimates. Most major tech companies currently hold only enough semiconductor inventory to maintain operations for a few months if shipments suddenly halt.

The push to reshore chip manufacturing accelerated after a series of stark warnings. In early 2021, military officials told Congress that China's leadership wanted its armed forces ready to take Taiwan by 2027. By July 2023, the White House summoned Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and other top executives to a secure room to hear direct assessments from the CIA and the director of national intelligence. Following the presentation outlining the geopolitical risks, Cook reportedly told officials that he slept "with one eye open."

[TSMC Arizona]

Despite these warnings and the passage of the $50 billion CHIPS Act, tech giants initially resisted placing major orders with U.S. foundries. Chips made in the United States cost more than 25 percent above those fabricated in Taiwan, weighed down by higher labor, material, and permitting expenses. Industry executives also questioned whether American facilities could match TSMC's most advanced production nodes. As one industry consultant described the mindset, companies often assumed that if a crisis hit Taiwan, "everyone else is screwed," reducing the incentive to move first.

Apple is now taking concrete steps to adjust its sourcing. The company has started holding all-day engineering meetings with Intel to rigorously evaluate its domestic manufacturing capabilities. This activity supports recent analyst predictions that Intel is poised to secure Apple chip orders for future devices. The evaluation phase comes shortly after the U.S. government secured a 10 percent equity stake in Intel as part of a deal that preserved the chipmaker's $8.9 billion in federal subsidies.

Apple has also expanded its financial commitments to stateside production. Last summer, Cook met with President Trump in the Oval Office and pledged to invest another $100 billion in the United States. This funding is expected to bolster TSMC and other domestic chip manufacturers. Apple recently confirmed it is securing 100 million U.S.-made chips from TSMC this year and is moving forward with plans to finalize Mac mini assembly in Texas.

[Apple Houston]

The Trump administration has escalated its pressure on the industry to utilize these domestic facilities. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently presented an ultimatum to top chip executives, demanding they source 50 percent of their semiconductors from American plants or face a 100 percent tariff. In response to those tariff threats and negotiations, TSMC agreed to increase its U.S. investment by $100 billion, adding four more chip factories by 2028, two years ahead of its prior timeline. Taiwanese semiconductor firms have since outlined an additional $150 billion in U.S. investment commitments, alongside a broader $250 billion agreement backed by credit guarantees to expand advanced chip manufacturing in America.

Nvidia, which is currently on track to overtake Apple as TSMC's largest customer, has also committed to buying chips from the new Arizona plants. However, the supply chain remains deeply intertwined with East Asia. Even when an advanced AI chip is fabricated in Arizona, the complex packaging process required to connect it with other components still requires shipping the silicon back to a factory in Taiwan before it is ready for deployment. For now, even as billions flow into American fabs, the world's most advanced semiconductor ecosystem remains structurally tied to Taiwan in ways that cannot be untangled overnight.

iclarified.com · Shalom Levytam · February 24, 2026

14. Are Chinese AI labs cheating? US AI giant Anthropic alleges some are

Summary:

Anthropic alleges three Chinese AI labs, DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot AI, illegally “distilled” capabilities from its Claude model, raising national security concerns. Anthropic claims the firms created more than 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated over 16 million exchanges with Claude to train their own systems, despite Claude not being available in China and Anthropic banning such use. The report notes OpenAI made similar allegations this month about DeepSeek distilling ChatGPT, and that DeepSeek’s rapid progress has fueled debate over whether U.S. export controls work. Anthropic argues distilled models may lack safety guardrails and could be used for cybercrime, disinformation, and surveillance, urging swift action.

Comment: As one of my former students argued, Chinese R&D is "steal to leap ahead."

Are Chinese AI labs cheating? US AI giant Anthropic alleges some are | CNN Business

CNN · John Liu · February 24, 2026

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/24/tech/anthropic-chinese-ai-distillation-intl-hnk

The Anthropic logo on a smartphone arranged in New Hyde Park, New York, on August 22, 2025.

Gabby Jones/Bloomberg/Getty Images

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United States artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is accusing three prominent Chinese AI labs of illegally extracting capabilities from its Claude model to advance their own, claiming it raises national security concerns.

The Chinese unicorns – DeepSeek, Minimax and Moonshot AI – created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and trained their models using over 16 million exchanges with Claude, a process known as distillation, Anthropic alleged in a Monday blogpost.

CNN has reached out to DeepSeek, MiniMax and Moonshot AI for comment.

Distillation is a common method of training in the AI industry with frontier labs often distilling their own models to make cheaper versions for customers. But most leading proprietary AI model providers including Anthropic explicitly ban such practices. Claude is not available in China.

The accusations come after Anthropic’s rival OpenAI made similar allegations earlier this month that DeepSeek and other Chinese AI companies are illegally distilling its ChatGPT models over the past year, in a memo sent to the US House Select Committee on China.

DeepSeek shocked the industry last year when it launched a powerful model close to matching industry frontrunners like ChatGPT – but with fewer computing resources required.

This development challenged the prevailing wisdom then that training advanced models require more processing power, and raised questions about the effectiveness of US tech and export controls.

OpenAI then said it was reviewing evidence that DeepSeek “may have improperly distilled” its models.

In the memo this month, OpenAI said the rapid advancements of DeepSeek are based on “its ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.”

DeepSeek has yet to comment publicly on Open AI’s allegations.

Anthropic warned that illicitly distilled models may lack safety guardrails that companies like itself and other US model providers implement, and that they could create national security risks if they are used for cybercrimes and bio-weapons, for example.

These models could also enable “authoritarian governments to deploy frontier AI for offensive cyber operations, disinformation campaigns, and mass surveillance,” it said. “The window to act is narrow.”

Making the case for US export controls

DeepSeek’s surprising rise ignited debate over whether US export controls had failed. But Anthropic argued that the fact that Chinese AI labs in question developed high-performance models through distillation underscored the rationale for those restrictions, which it said it has long supported to preserve the US’s lead in AI.

Besides DeepSeek, MiniMax and Moonshot AI’s model Kimi have risen to prominence in China, becoming known as “AI tigers.” The three currently rank among the top 15 models on the prominent Artificial Analysis leaderboard.

Anthropic said that by exposing the distillation attempts, it demonstrates the effectiveness of export controls and shows that cutting-edge model development cannot be sustained alone through innovation without access to advanced chips.

“In reality, these advancements depend in significant part on capabilities extracted from American models, and executing this extraction at scale requires access to advanced chips,” it said.

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CNN · John Liu · February 24, 2026

15. Political, Psychological, and Cognitive Warfare in an Asymmetric Conflict Environment

Summary:

Shota Gvineria argues the Russia-Ukraine war has reached strategic deadlock, with neither side able to secure decisive military victory, shifting the center of gravity to political warfare. In this asymmetric equilibrium, military force shapes bargaining positions while nonmilitary instruments, diplomacy, information, economics, law, and alliances, determine leverage, legitimacy, and endurance. He distinguishes psychological warfare, which targets morale and risk tolerance, from cognitive warfare, which erodes trust and fractures cohesion inside open systems. Russia’s hybrid “kill chain” exploits ambiguity to manufacture crises and extract concessions. Drawing on Davos 2026, he contends legitimacy is increasingly produced through coalitions, narratives, and transactional power, testing alliance cohesion and conditioning any settlement. He concludes Ukraine must align its survival with U.S. interests as power-based legitimacy rises.

Comment: When guns cannot decide the map, time becomes the weapon, and the side that can manage fatigue, coalition drift, and meaning wins without moving the front line. If legitimacy now depends on access and deal-making, then the battlefield is not only Donbas. It is the alliance mind, where narratives can make sovereignty feel negotiable.

If Russia’s hybrid pressure aims at ambiguity and concessions, what concrete signals of alliance unity would deny Moscow the story that the West will trade principles for "peace?"

If Ukraine must sell itself as a strategic asset to Washington, what offer anchors U.S. self-interest without surrendering Ukraine’s claim that law, not power, should decide borders?

Political, Psychological, and Cognitive Warfare in an Asymmetric Conflict Environment - GEOpolitics

politicsgeo.com · GEO politics · February 8, 2026

Contributor

Shota Gvineria

https://politicsgeo.com/political-psychological-and-cognitive-warfare-in-an-asymmetric-conflict-environment/

Four years into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the conflict has reached a condition of strategic deadlock defined by clear military limits. Russia cannot achieve its maximalist objective of occupying and controlling all of Ukraine through military force, nor can it credibly secure even a minimum threshold for decisive military victory, defined as full control and consolidation of the five regions it claims as its own. At the same time, Ukraine is unable to attain its ultimate objective of expelling all Russian forces from its internationally recognized borders, or even the more limited outcome that would qualify as victory from Kyiv’s perspective: Russia’s return to its pre-2020 positions. The war has therefore entered a phase of political warfare in which outcomes will be decided primarily outside the battlefield.

The Politics of Asymmetric Equilibrium

The strategic deadlock that defines the war in Ukraine is a characteristic feature of contemporary warfare between adversaries, even when capabilities and constraints are clearly, but not decisively asymmetric. In such conflicts, the absence of decisive military superiority shifts the center of gravity toward nonmilitary instruments of power. Technological adaptation, precision strike capabilities, drones, cyber domain, and information operations allow opposing sides to compensate for conventional disadvantages and redefine battlefield outcomes. As a result, military force increasingly serves to shape bargaining positions rather than to deliver conclusive outcomes.

This environment elevates political warfare from a supporting function to the primary arena in which victory and defeat are determined. Theoretically, political warfare constitutes the coordinated use of diplomatic, informational, economic, legal, and alliance-based instruments to influence strategic outcomes in the absence of decisive military victory. Its purpose is to generate leverage, legitimacy, and endurance over time, both domestically and internationally. In the context of Ukraine, these factors increasingly condition what is militarily sustainable and politically acceptable for both sides.

Within this framework, psychological and cognitive warfare operate as distinct but interconnected mechanisms. Psychological warfare targets morale, perceptions, and risk tolerance among political elites, military forces, and societies, shaping short-term behavior and crisis responses. Cognitive warfare reaches deeper, aiming to disrupt how societies interpret information, assess credibility, and sustain collective action. By eroding trust in institutions, alliances, and shared narratives, cognitive warfare seeks to paralyze decision-making and fragment political cohesion, especially within open and pluralistic systems.

Diplomacy, alliances, and the information domain sit at the intersection of these forms of warfare. Diplomacy functions not only as a channel for negotiation but as a tool for signaling resolve, managing escalation, and structuring the political environment in which military force is employed. Alliances and partnerships convert political alignment into strategic endurance by pooling legitimacy, resources, and risk, while also becoming prime targets of cognitive and psychological pressure. The information domain acts as the connective tissue, shaping how actions are interpreted, justified, and contested across domestic and international audiences.

Moscow’s modern hybrid kill chain weaponizes vulnerabilities, manufactures crises, escalates under ambiguity, and seeks concessions through pressure rather than battlefield resolution.

Russia’s hybrid warfare approach integrates these dimensions into a single operational logic. Moscow’s modern hybrid kill chain weaponizes vulnerabilities, manufactures crises, escalates under ambiguity, and seeks concessions through pressure rather than battlefield resolution. Cognitive and psychological effects are employed to disrupt decision-making and alliance cohesion, enabling political warfare to compensate for military limitations and prolong the conflict on terms favorable to the Kremlin.

Diplomacy and the informational domain function as decisive instruments in this phase of the war. Analyzing their use and effectiveness in the Ukrainian case is crucial for understanding how political tools shape leverage, legitimacy, endurance, and ultimately influence outcomes in contemporary conflicts where military victory alone is unattainable.

Snapshot of Davos 2026

Davos 2026 distilled a defining feature of the current strategic competition: power shifts to the instruments that can reframe legitimacy, constrain choices, and mobilize coalitions. The most consequential Davos signals sidestepped military aspects of the war in Ukraine, and centered on whether international law is treated as a binding constraint or negotiable language, whether alliances still function as discipline and guaranteed solidarity, and whether strategic endurance can be manufactured through partnerships that survive domestic politics, economic strain, and informational pressure.

The Greenland dispute captured this shift with unusual clarity. President Donald Trump reiterated at Davos that the United States needs Greenland for strategic national security and pressed for immediate negotiations while stating he would not use force. Denmark and NATO responded by moving the issue into Alliance management and Arctic security coordination, with Danish leadership and NATO emphasizing the need for collective security engagement in the region and rejecting any discussion of sovereignty. The diplomatic lesson was uncomfortable and simultaneously operationally decisive: legitimacy is no longer assumed to flow from existing rules alone. It is increasingly produced and defended through coalition tradeoffs, security narratives, and credible reassurance mechanisms. In this setting, international law still matters, but its practical force depends more than before on whether allies enforce norms through unity, costs, and strategic messaging.

Diplomacy functions as a force multiplier only when backed by robust decision-making and credible coalition commitments. Without that, diplomacy becomes rhetoric, and stalemate becomes an opportunity for the best able to manipulate time, fatigue, and escalation anxiety.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Davos intervention placed Europe’s political performance at the center of the war’s next phase. His argument was that European resilience depends on an autonomous capacity to decide and act quickly, including stronger collective defense capabilities, tighter enforcement of pressure tools against Russia, and institutional readiness to sustain long-war politics rather than episodic crisis response. The operational implication of his stance was that diplomacy functions as a force multiplier only when backed by robust decision-making and credible coalition commitments. Without that, diplomacy becomes rhetoric, and stalemate becomes an opportunity for the best able to manipulate time, fatigue, and escalation anxiety.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s critique of Europe as a champion of overregulation and underachievement, delivered against the backdrop of great power politics, linked domestic governance to strategic leverage. His point was rather strategic: economic capacity, regulatory speed, industrial scaling, and political willingness to accept tradeoffs now directly shape diplomatic credibility. In a prolonged conflict, every promise is discounted by the adversary unless it is anchored in demonstrable output, meaning defense production and the political ability to sustain support through electoral cycles. This is where legitimacy and endurance intersect. States retain legitimacy when they can translate values into policy continuity and material capacity, not when they merely repeat declaratory positions.

Russia’s war has been a strategic failure in its intended outcomes, but that failure does not automatically become a Western win unless the West turns it into coordinated action.

President Alexander Stubb sharpened the same logic from another angle, arguing that Russia’s war has been a strategic failure in its intended outcomes, but that failure does not automatically become a Western win unless the West turns it into coordinated action. In Davos remarks reported by multiple outlets, he pointed to Moscow’s failure indicators, such as NATO enlargement, Ukraine’s growing integration into Europe, and the surge in European defense investment and in debates about self-reliance that the Kremlin sought to prevent. The analytic takeaway is that advantage in a deadlocked war is rarely created by the adversary’s setbacks alone. It is created when alliances exploit those setbacks through robust responses, sustained aid architectures, and the management of escalation signaling in ways that deny the opponent political exits framed as victory.

Adding to all those concerns, Trump’s Board of Peace initiative, advanced further in Davos, offered the clearest example of the decline of traditional diplomatic forums and the substitution of practices reflecting new multipolarity, rather than multilateralism based on Western institutions and principles. The design is explicitly hierarchical and inherently transactional, with decision authority concentrated in the chair and membership structured around loyalty, money, and access rather than universal rules or values. The new Board of Peace was not welcomed unanimously; however, France and Spain decided not to join on grounds tied to multilateralism, international law, and the United Nations system, and there was limited participation within the European Union, while controversy arose over the revocation of Canada’s invitation after a petty political disagreement.

The core implication for the Ukraine context lies in how peace initiatives themselves are being reconceptualized as instruments of influence rather than neutral frameworks for conflict resolution. President Trump was explicit that participation in the Board of Peace would be determined by influence, effective control, and the ability to shape outcomes, not by formal adherence to international rules or institutional standing. In this model, legitimacy is no longer primarily derived from international law, multilateral norms, or universal procedures, but from power relationships and access to decision-making authority. Peace, in this framing, becomes a managed outcome produced by those who control the process, rather than a rule-governed settlement grounded in established legal principles.

By forcing states to choose between transactional inclusion and normative alignment, such initiatives expose fault lines within alliances and reframe legitimacy as something granted by power holders rather than conferred by institutions.

This approach directly tests alliance cohesion and the resilience of the rules-based order. By forcing states to choose between transactional inclusion and normative alignment, such initiatives expose fault lines within alliances and reframe legitimacy as something granted by power holders rather than conferred by institutions. For Ukraine, this shift reshapes the diplomatic battlefield on which its future will be negotiated, determining who has a voice, who sets the agenda, and whether outcomes are anchored in law or in the cards each side holds.

These Davos signals point to a diplomatic domain in which outcomes are shaped less by formal legal claims and more by the operational use of partnerships, institutional capacity, and narrative control. Diplomacy becomes decisive when it builds coalitions that can enforce constraints, absorb costs, and deny the adversary an informational path to normalize aggression. This same logic also explains why the informational domain is inseparable from diplomacy in the Ukraine war: diplomatic choices only hold when publics and partners interpret them as legitimate, sustainable, and strategically coherent, and when adversarial narratives fail to fracture that perception.

The Informational Domain as a Battleground of Legitimacy

When legitimacy is no longer grounded primarily in international law and shared norms but increasingly vested in power, access, and control, it cannot endure without narrative construction and cognitive reinforcement. Power-based legitimacy is inherently unstable unless it is made to appear normal, inevitable, and acceptable to key audiences. This is where the informational domain becomes decisive. Diplomatic leverage achieved through power asymmetries must be translated into stories of necessity, responsibility, realism, or inevitability if it is to hold over time. Without such narration, power-driven arrangements remain exposed to contestation, resistance, and reversal.

This logic sits at the core of political warfare theory. Classical literature on political warfare emphasizes that the influence is sustained not just by coercion or material advantage but by shaping how political realities are understood and internalized. Political outcomes become durable only when they are cognitively embedded within societies and alliances as reasonable, unavoidable, or even desirable. Contemporary cognitive and information warfare literature extends this insight by showing how modern conflicts target opinions and wider frameworks through which legitimacy, risk, and responsibility are interpreted. The objective is normalization, that is, making power-based decisions appear as common sense responses to complex realities rather than as departures from established rules.

In the context of Ukraine, this means that diplomatic initiatives, alliance behavior, and settlement proposals gain traction only if they are accompanied by narratives that redefine what constitutes justice, peace, and security amid prolonged conflict. Informational operations, therefore, do not simply support diplomacy; they condition its effectiveness by shaping how power-based legitimacy is received, debated, and ultimately accepted across domestic publics and international partners. Understanding this dynamic is essential for assessing how political tools influence outcomes in contemporary warfare, where the decisive struggle increasingly unfolds in the cognitive and informational space rather than on the battlefield alone.

Indicators of effectiveness in this domain are observable. They include public tolerance for long-term costs, stability of alliance consensus under pressure, persistence of support despite escalation risks, and the absence of narrative fragmentation that adversaries can exploit. Conversely, informational vulnerability is revealed through fatigue framing, the normalization of aggression, the erosion of responsibility attribution, and the growing acceptance of imposed settlements as pragmatic inevitabilities rather than coerced outcomes.

Russia’s approach to hybrid warfare, which seeks concessions by escalating pressure, exploits precisely these dynamics. By contesting meaning rather than facts alone, it seeks to normalize stalemate, shift blame, amplify divisions, and recast power-based outcomes as reasonable compromises. The informational domain thus becomes the mechanism through which political warfare either succeeds or collapses. If power-based legitimacy is not continuously narrated and reinforced, it decays. If it is successfully internalized, it reshapes the strategic landscape without further military action.

Power, Legitimacy, and the Future of War Beyond the Battlefield

When the territorial integrity of an ally is discussed primarily through the lens of great power necessity rather than alliance obligation, the credibility of collective defense is inevitably called into question.

For the Euro-Atlantic community, the implications extend beyond Ukraine in ways that are now impossible to ignore. Recent debates surrounding Greenland (even if an amicable solution is found, as the latest statements suggest) and the framing of U.S. security interests showcase a potentially profound erosion of the foundational assumptions underpinning NATO. When the territorial integrity of an ally is discussed primarily through the lens of great power necessity rather than alliance obligation, the credibility of collective defense is inevitably called into question. A NATO whose guarantees are perceived as conditional, negotiable, or subordinate to alternative power-based arrangements ceases to function as a stabilizing security institution. For Ukraine, this is deeply consequential. For NATO’s eastern flank, it is existential. Without a rock-solid alliance commitment, the Baltic states are not strategically insulated from the vulnerabilities Ukraine has faced; they are merely buffered by political expectations instead of enforceable deterrence.

The broader strategic implication is that legitimacy itself is being reordered. If power increasingly defines outcomes, and if the United States signals a preference for ad hoc structures such as a Board of Peace over treaty-based alliances, the Euro-Atlantic security environment is poised to be fundamentally transformed. NATO, long the anchor of stability and collective defense, risks being displaced by more fluid, hierarchical, and transactional arrangements in which access and influence matter more than membership and legal obligation. This would weaken NATO and accelerate the transition toward a multipolar system in which security is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, norms are selectively applied, and smaller states are forced to navigate between power centers rather than rely on institutional guarantees.

The war in Ukraine becomes more than a test of resilience or endurance. Despite being a partner rather than a member, it serves as a bellwether for whether coalition-based security can survive in an era of political warfare where legitimacy is no longer assumed but must be continuously defended against power-driven alternatives.

In this context, the war in Ukraine becomes more than a test of resilience or endurance. Despite being a partner rather than a member, it serves as a bellwether for whether coalition-based security can survive in an era of political warfare where legitimacy is no longer assumed but must be continuously defended against power-driven alternatives. A discredited NATO would represent a strategic failure far exceeding the outcome of the war itself, undermining deterrence across the eastern flank and reshaping the Euro-Atlantic order in ways that favor coercion over commitment. The stakes, therefore, are not confined to Ukraine’s sovereignty, but to whether collective security remains a viable organizing principle in a world increasingly defined by power, perception, and political bargaining.

Ukraine, backed decisively by the United States, can function as a durable counterweight to Russian expansion in Europe and as a major European power capable of sharing the strategic burden of transatlantic security.

What follows from this diagnosis is an unavoidable strategic question rather than a policy checklist. It is no longer clear whether President Trump has already settled on a vision of a reordered international system in which Russia, as a nuclear great power, cannot be allowed to lose. Whether this represents a transitional moment or the consolidation of a genuinely multipolar order remains open, but the direction of travel is unmistakable and troubling, including for Georgia. Given Trump’s publicly articulated skepticism toward the European Union, reinforced in the recently released U.S. national security concept, the long-standing European strategy of compensating for fragmentation through rhetorical unity appears increasingly ineffective. Even a hypothetically rearmed and institutionally coherent Europe may no longer align with prevailing U.S. strategic priorities.

In this context, the center of gravity shifts toward Ukraine itself. The decisive task becomes persuading Washington that a strong, sovereign Ukraine is not a liability to be managed, but a strategic asset to be cultivated. Ukraine, backed decisively by the United States, can function as a durable counterweight to Russian expansion in Europe and as a major European power capable of sharing the strategic burden of transatlantic security. Beyond deterrence, such a partnership offers tangible alignment with American interests through access to critical natural resources, mutually reinforcing defense industrial cooperation, and large-scale investment opportunities tied to postwar reconstruction. If power now defines outcomes, then Ukraine’s future will depend on whether it can anchor itself not only in law and principle, but in a compelling strategic proposition that aligns its survival with the interests of the dominant power shaping the emerging order.

politicsgeo.com · GEO politics · February 8, 2026

16. War Without Soldiers: The Evolution of Warfare in the Age of Machines

Summary:

This essay argues autonomous and robotic systems are rapidly reshaping modern conflict, using a Kharkiv-area operation where Ukrainian drones and an unmanned ground vehicle helped compel Russian troops to surrender to machines as a signal of what is coming. The authors contend autonomy changes how war is fought by increasing tempo, enabling 24/7 operations, reducing human exposure, and lowering commanders’ cognitive load through managed autonomy and swarming control. It also changes what forces fight with, expanding precision drones, robotic breachers, and unmanned logistics for resupply and casualty evacuation, while making electronic attack, hacking, and AI-enabled cyber effects central. Finally, it changes the human dimension by imposing constant surveillance and anxiety on soldiers while distancing operators through screen-mediated, game-like interfaces, raising ethical and accountability concerns.

Excerpt:

There is no single model that captures what the next conflict will demand. However, it is clear that the character of war is dramatically evolving. The rise of autonomous systems challenges long-held assumptions about the role of the soldier and the very essence of combat. The imperative for the military profession is clear: to fight and win on a battlefield where success depends not just on flesh and blood, but on silicon and steel.

War Without Soldiers: The Evolution of Warfare in the Age of Machines - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · James Mingus · February 24, 2026

James Mingus and Maggie Harris | 02.24.26

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/war-without-soldiers-the-evolution-of-warfare-in-the-age-of-machines/

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Editor’s note: This article is the fifth in an eight-part series led by retired General James Mingus, the thirty-ninth vice chief of staff of the Army, on transforming the Army to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s battlefield. You can read other articles in the series here.

The forest was silent, save for the faint hum of machines cutting through the air near Kharkiv. A heavily fortified Russian position stood as an unyielding obstacle—until the machines arrived. Without a single soldier stepping into the fray, Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade launched an operation that would rewrite the rules of combat. Drones armed with explosives struck with pinpoint accuracy, followed by a kamikaze robot that breached the enemy’s defenses. Moments later, as another unmanned vehicle approached, Russian troops surrendered—not to humans, but to machines. This unprecedented event, where soldiers laid down their arms to robotic systems alone, was more than a tactical victory; it was a glimpse into the future of warfare.

The proliferation of robotics and autonomous systems is altering the character of modern conflict. As these technologies change how we fight, what we fight with, and how we perceive our adversaries, military professionals must adapt their tactics, technology, and mindset to ensure their actions remain decisive and set them up to win.

Changing How We Fight

Autonomous systems are fundamentally changing the how of warfare. They accelerate the tempo of battle with unprecedented speed and precision, while enabling continuous, 24/7 operations unconstrained by human fatigue. Combat is conducted from secure, remote locations, minimizing direct human exposure to danger. Moreover, by automating routine tasks, these systems also reduce the cognitive burden on commanders. This allows leaders to focus on critical decision-making and command larger, more dispersed formations with greater agility.

This shift is most evident in the expansion of autonomous mission sets. Early automated systems were limited to remote-controlled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Tomorrow, AI-driven platforms will independently perform complex tasks; a single platform will sense and identify a target, determine the system best positioned to engage, calculate fire control measures, engage the target, and assign an element to conduct battle damage assessment. This evolution from direct human control to managed autonomy allows a single operator to manage a swarm of drones or a team of robotic ground vehicles, demonstrating a new level of operational adaptability and multiplying their impact on the battlefield.

Changing What We Fight With

The instruments of war are also transforming. The modern arsenal is no longer defined solely by traditional manned platforms but by a suite of advanced, often unmanned, weaponry. Drones equipped with precision-guided munitions, like the Switchblade loitering munition, have become ubiquitous. Unmanned ground vehicles are deployed to breach obstacles, clear mines, and provide direct fire support.

Logistics, the backbone of any military operation, is also being revolutionized. Unmanned vehicles are increasingly tasked with resupply and casualty evacuation missions, reducing the need for vulnerable human-led convoys and protecting medical personnel from harm. Furthermore, these technologies introduce new domains of warfare into ground combat, where electronic interference, hacking, and AI-driven cyberattacks are as critical as controlling physical terrain.

Changing How We View the Adversary and Ourselves

Perhaps the most profound change is in the human dimension of conflict. The persistent, pervasive presence of autonomous systems could influence an adversary’s will to fight. Soldiers are subjected to constant surveillance that creates a debilitating state of anticipatory anxiety. This fear lingers even when drones are not present, as their long reach extends the danger zone far beyond the front lines, removing sanctuary. Highly maneuverable systems can circumvent traditional cover, leaving soldiers with the terrifying feeling that there is nowhere to hide. Facing an adversary that does not fear, hesitate, or tire has a deeply demoralizing effect, as demonstrated by the surrender in Kharkiv.

Simultaneously, these systems are altering the psychology of those who operate them. Drone piloting interfaces, often resembling video games, create a sense of detachment from the battlefield. Operators view the conflict through screens, their targets reduced to pixels, which can lead to a dehumanization of the enemy and a diminished sense of the consequences of their actions. This gamification of warfare distances combatants from the visceral reality of combat, raising some ethical questions. Delegating life-and-death decisions to machines creates a potential accountability gap, blurring the lines of responsibility for actions taken on the battlefield.

There is no single model that captures what the next conflict will demand. However, it is clear that the character of war is dramatically evolving. The rise of autonomous systems challenges long-held assumptions about the role of the soldier and the very essence of combat. The imperative for the military profession is clear: to fight and win on a battlefield where success depends not just on flesh and blood, but on silicon and steel.

Retired General James Mingus served as the thirty-ninth vice chief of staff of the Army.

Lieutenant Colonel Maggie Harris is an intelligence officer and the deputy director of the vice’s initiatives group.

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

Image credit: Sgt. Kammen Taylor, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · James Mingus · February 24, 2026

17. Breaking Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Habit: The End of the Senior Partner Myth

Summary:

Europe’s old trans-Atlantic habit is now a liability, the author argues, because many leaders still treat U.S. protection as a permanent fact and search for comforting signals instead of planning for rupture. The Greenland episode, and the warm reception for Secretary Rubio’s conditional Munich speech, show a reflex to normalize a harsher U.S. approach. The piece claims Trump’s second-term alliance model is transactional, tied to burden shifting and rent extraction, and laced with ideological hostility toward Europe’s politics. Europe, trapped between nostalgia and defeatism, risks strategic subjugation unless it builds real autonomy, closes key enabler gaps, and organizes leadership to act fast.

Breaking Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Habit: The End of the Senior Partner Myth

warontherocks.com  · February 24, 2026

Moritz S. Graefrath and Gesine Weber

February 24, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/breaking-europes-transatlantic-habit-the-end-of-the-senior-partner-myth/

When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the possibility of taking Greenland by force, European leaders reacted with outrage — and then, almost immediately, with relief once he backed down. Wolfgang Ischinger, the doyen of the Munich Security Conference, expressed similar relief when he described Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech there — chock full of conditionality on immigration and culture war tropes — as “reassuring.”

That sentiment may prove far more dangerous than any threats from Washington.

The trans-Atlantic partnership of days past no longer exists. After decades of considering aligned interests and close collaboration a fact of life, the relationship between Washington and what it long enthusiastically referred to as its “allies and partners” in Europe today bears little resemblance to what it once was. The recent episode surrounding Trump’s declared intent to acquire Greenland, by means of a military invasion if necessary, especially signaled to the world that a genuine geopolitical rift separating the two sides has emerged and shows no sign of going away anytime soon.

Yet, while French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to call the Greenland crisis a “strategic wake-up call for Europe” and reaffirmed his intent to work towards genuine European strategic autonomy, it does not seem as if Paris, Berlin, and others are actually planning to walk the walk anytime soon. Despite what by now amounts to conclusive evidence that a return to the harmonious trans-Atlantic relationship of the past is no longer feasible, neither Marcon, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, nor any other European leader has demonstrated a genuine commitment to strategic emancipation. To the contrary, most policymakers appear convinced that, if they just try hard enough to assuage Trump, everything will soon go back to normal. Their desperation for any sign of goodwill from Washington was on full display in Munich, where Rubio’s aforementioned speech received a standing ovation and was lauded as a recommitment to the “indissoluble [trans-Atlantic] bond,” although it de facto provided little evidence of a serious change in U.S. attitudes.

The bad news is that hoping for a return to the “normalcy” of days past is nothing but wishful thinking. The good news is that, even if NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s claim that Europe cannot “defend itself without the U.S.” might hold today, Europe has both the means and the opportunity to effectively adjust to its new geopolitical reality. It is high time that European leaders finally give up on the dream of restoring the trans-Atlantic partnership and abandon their identity as America’s junior partner.

BECOME A MEMBER

A New Reality, Made in the USA

It is in its conception of alliances and treatment of allies — specifically those in Europe — that the second Trump administration has most evidently broken with the foreign policy establishment. Driven by voices in the administration calling for a more “realistic” approach in its dealing with others, Trump has abandoned the “allies and partners” thinking that characterized the foreign policies of his predecessors. Where former President Joe Biden and those before him treated U.S. alliance commitments as sacrosanct ends in themselves, the White House today espouses a very different perspective. Briefly put, alliances are means to an end only. And they are not always effective means either: Where Biden-era officials viewed them as unconditionally beneficial “shields of the republic,” Trump and his advisors are more skeptical, frequently highlighting dangers of entrapment and especially free-riding.

Yet, this has not led Trump to reduce U.S. alliance commitments and adopt a more restrained grand strategy. Far from being committed to reducing America’s global military footprint, Trump has instead devised his own brand of primacy — sometimes labelled “illiberal hegemony” — that perpetuates U.S. hegemony for purposes of rent extraction. The goal is not to carefully scrutinize the costs and benefits of individual alliances, but rather to make those being offered protection pay a steep price for it.

On top of these strategic recalibrations, express ideological hostility towards many states’ continued opposition to Make America Great Again-style populist nativism wreaked even further havoc on a relationship already pushed close to the breaking point. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025 openly displayed the significant ideological rifts between the Trump administration and Europe on the stage of the most important meeting of trans-Atlanticists worldwide. Rubio’s speech in Munich was hailed for seeming more conciliatory, but as Nathalie Tocci argues, “beneath the surface, Rubio’s speech this year and Vance’s in 2025 were two sides of the same coin.” While Rubio was, as she describes, “more subtle and coherent,” that is not enough for comfort as “the message from Washington remains that Europe and the US should be defined by ethno-political values of culture, tradition and religion.”

The 2025 National Security Strategy clearly downgraded the priority of Europe to the benefit of a focus on the western hemisphere and called for the promotion of “European greatness” in the face of a threat of “civilizational erasure.” While the Trump administration clearly does not aim at a full withdrawal or abandonment of Europe, there is little doubt that it seeks to engage with a very different kind of Europe — namely, a vassal market that willingly accepts strategic subjugation and becomes a key destination for U.S. exports.

The (Lack of a) European Response

Needless to say, most European leaders and strategists have taken note of the profound changes that have taken place in Washington’s attitude towards Europe. Across the board, they have reacted with disbelief and, in not a few cases, anger. This was particularly true during Trump’s Greenland threats. Capturing the unexpectedly determined opposition they exhibited, Der Spiegel displayed various leaders as a sort of rustic European Avengers, applauding their newfound guts. One can only guess the factors that ultimately prompted the U.S. president to change his mind, but at least to a certain extent, European deterrence seems to have played a role.

Applause, whether in Munich or anywhere else, is misguided. For all their rhetoric, too many in Europe are already reverting back to viewing the trans-Atlantic relationship in the largely idealistic way that has remained predominant throughout Trump’s presidencies. After a missed opportunity to reform the alliance through trans-Atlantic coordination under the Biden administration — and also muting all debates over NATO’s future due to concerns about unity over support for Ukraine — many Europeans do not see any alternative to the American-led alliance for the continent’s security.

This does not mean that they do not acknowledge that the European contribution to NATO must change; the commitment made at last year’s NATO summit in the Hague to spend 3.5 percent of national GDP on defense and invest an additional 1.5 percent in defense-adjacent areas demonstrates that Europe’s sense of responsibility in NATO has changed. However, what has not changed is the trans-Atlantic reflex and the idea that European security cannot be imagined or constructed without the United States. Europeans have convinced themselves that the trans-Atlantic relationship can be saved if they just contribute enough themselves, and that it has to be saved at whatever price necessary.

The first steps taken by European leaders after the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Trump announced that the United States would not take Greenland by force, serve as a case in point. After the emergency meeting of the European Council dedicated to U.S.-E.U. relations in late January, E.U. Council President António Costa underlined the need for the European Union to implement the trade deal which it had accepted in mid-2025 after pressure from Washington, and after the Trump administration had reportedly linked the deal to security guarantees. The move, the hope in Brussels is, will go a long way towards normalizing trans-Atlantic relations.

Rutte’s remarks about how Europeans should “stop dreaming” about defending the continent without the United States similarly exemplify the lack of a genuine desire to break with the past. In Munich, the Secretary General doubled down on his embrace of subordination, noting that the United States would remain “absolutely anchored in the [North Atlantic Treaty] Organization.” Psychologically, the need for U.S. security guarantees is certainly felt more strongly in Tallinn or Helsinki than in Madrid or Paris. It is, hence, unsurprising, that the states most exposed to the threat from Russia are those most eager to generate goodwill in the White House, even if dependence and the exposure to risks are the price for it. But their stance is not unique: Even in western Europe, a similar mindset evidently continues to reign supreme.

Rather than accepting and reacting to the reality of Washington’s turn away from the trans-Atlanticism of the past, Europe is falling back into a lazy trans-Atlantic default mode where it is all too eager to forgo strategic autonomy and accepts subordination to Washington’s whims.

Caught Between Nostalgia and Defeatism

Why has Washington’s change in attitude and behavior not led to a more serious reaction and a willingness to actively reduce dependence on the United States? Part of the answer lies in nostalgia for the past. After the Cold War, many countries — Germany foremost among them — embraced not only the purported “end of history” but came to view harmonious relations among the advanced democracies on both sides of the Atlantic as a given. The emotional appeal of this idea is hard to understate, and it remains deeply influential. But the idea no longer reflects reality: Whatever may have been the case in the past, Washington clearly no longer believes that cooperation with Europe always serves the national interest of the United States.

The misinterpretation of the emerging definition of the U.S. national interest by strategic elites especially in eastern European and traditionally trans-Atlanticist European states is key to understanding their limited response. Die-hard trans-Atlanticists in Brussels, Berlin, London, Paris, and elsewhere cling to the idea that not abandoning Europe and remaining present in European defense self-evidently serves Washington’s interests (e.g., because the military bases in Europe are important for its operations beyond the European theater and its alliances have historically been a power multiplier for the United States). Such thinking is illustrated by statements of high-ranking politicians like German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who called the bond between Europe and the United States “rock solid” and warned against questioning NATO. The trans-Atlantic relationship is seen as a strategic necessity for Washington from which it could not possibly turn away for long. That Washington evidently disagrees is consistently ignored: The fact of the matter is that, instead of a benevolent senior partner perceiving a unity of interests, Europe is facing a predatory hegemon.

A more generous reading views the lack of a meaningful European response as a strategic bet that Trump’s confrontational rhetoric and especially his declared aim of reducing American responsibilities in NATO will be short-lived and not actually lead to a marked drawdown of American forces. Free-riding was an extremely lucrative arrangement for U.S. allies in Europe. To some, any effort to take over the critical functions of European defense, such as the role of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, could push the United States out when it might otherwise not act on its threats to do so; Rutte himself just recently called it “extremely important” for the position to be held by an American. But, of course, banking on a return to normalcy is a losing proposition.

Then there are states that make this strategic bet out of necessity, namely states that are particularly exposed to the threat posed by Russia and have stacked their entire defense on the United States. Given the lack of credible deterrence and defense capability by Europe alone, states like Lithuania reason that they have no other choice but to keep believing in Washington’s ultimate goodwill and hoping that hitting spending targets and concluding bilateral deals with Washington will appease the United States sufficiently to renew its assurances.

Finally, a significant element of defeatism underlies Europe’s evident geopolitical petrification. Rutte’s aforementioned claim, under a generous reading, captures Europe’s inability to defend itself alone today, but it does not account for the possibility of change in the future and, overall, vastly underestimates Europe’s strategic-military potential. There is no doubt that continuing reliance on U.S. technology and military infrastructure, lack of personnel, and underdeveloped strategic expertise will constitute massive challenges on the way towards autonomous European defense capabilities. However, the continent can, in fact, build what it needs in the medium- to long-term. It harbors a vast power potential that remains largely untapped, and its current military weakness is not due to a lack of opportunity but political will. The critical task for Europe consists in avoiding a defense gap in the short-to medium-term, but even here off-the-shelf acquisitions from non-European suppliers could go a long way towards shortening the time needed to replace essential U.S. capabilities.

The idea that Europe will “never” be able to defend itself without the United States ultimately rests on the faulty assumption that Europe’s capability will stagnate in the future. And statements on a purported European inability lead to a vicious circle: they undermine European ambition and kill meaningful initiatives before they can even fully emerge.

European Ends and Means

It is high time for Europeans to snap out of their current approach to the trans-Atlantic relationship, embrace the fact that things have changed, and take concrete steps to face a new geopolitical reality in which the senior partner is acting more and more like a predatory hegemon. Concretely, Europe should collectively rethink its ends and means for European security and the trans-Atlantic relationship, with one ultimate goal: achieving security in itself. In other words, Europe needs a genuinely European grand strategy.

The first step in this endeavor needs to be the definition of ends, meaning the objectives for Europe’s security and defense. Instead of seeing trans-Atlantic cooperation as the default mode for European security, the standard assumption needs to become that European NATO members have to carry the lion’s share for their security and defense, and that the United States could support this effort — but more as a defender of last resort than a central guarantor providing constant protection. In the medium-to long-term, NATO Europe should further develop ideas on how to phase out the U.S. contribution to European security completely.

Such a phase-out would be a positive development for both Europe and the United States: Europe gains agency and independence and is less exposed to changes in U.S. priorities, while Washington needs to worry less about stretching itself thin by guaranteeing the security of allies that do not carry their own weight. To be clear, this mindset shift does not imply total decoupling from the United States: The trans-Atlantic relationship can very well continue in other areas like trade, science, or civil society exchange. All of these areas have strengthened the link across the Atlantic for decades, but they are not conditional on the U.S. serving as Europe’s security provider.

Europe should then give itself the means to achieve these objectives. As necessary NATO reforms and a restructuring of European defense in general were neglected for too long, European states are now running out of time and need to set clear priorities. Similar to medical staff who decide in major health crises or grave accidents which patients need to be prioritized and saved, and where no hope is left, the continent should start approaching the issue of European defense with a triage mindset. In other words, NATO’s European members need to identify what can easily be fixed, what is in a grave state and needs urgent care, what can wait, and what cannot be saved. In particular, priority needs to be assigned to two kinds of defense gaps: first, the gaps that can be replaced relatively easily; and second, the gaps that are particularly vital but challenging to address.

Among the first type of priorities — addressing existing gaps that can be closed relatively easily — the recruitment issue stands out. To fully replace the U.S. presence in Europe, the continent would have to mobilize around 300,000 additional troops. Although recruitment remains a major challenge, many European states have actively revisited their conscription models, which might lead to an effective increase of troops to fill potential gaps in the next years. This includes, among others, noteworthy efforts in Poland, which will provide military training to 400,000 citizens in 2026 to enhance defense readiness. Progress will be gradual and encounter significant domestic political constraints, but overall, it remains one of the easiest gaps to fill.

Among the second type of priorities — targeting those gaps that are critical but harder to address — continued reliance on U.S. strategic enablers stands out, as it entails that any European defense effort crucially depends on U.S. support. Going forward, such dependence is unacceptable, and whatever can be done to diminish or fully resolve that dependence should rank highly among strategic priorities. Although very challenging, especially when it comes to the replacement of air capabilities, this work needs to start now. To this end, Europe should quickly seek to promote European military intelligence integration, the procurement of additional air lift capabilities and air tankers, and filling the gaps in aerial early warning platforms with existing (albeit less capable) alternatives to U.S. systems.

At the same time, any coalition of European states leading the effort to seize strategic autonomy — as discussed below, such a coalition would likely comprise a small core group centered around France, the United Kingdom, and Germany — needs to accept that there are gaps which cannot be addressed in the short-term but are tolerable for the moment. Nuclear defense is one of these gaps. To be clear, European states should think seriously about how to address the nuclear question in the long-term. There are essentially two options on the table: first, greater reliance on, and expansion of, the existing British and French arsenals; and second, that some states develop new nuclear capabilities. Most pundits seem to prefer the first, but it is unclear whether either London or Paris would be willing to shoulder the responsibility of providing extended deterrence in the United States’ stead. Although the idea is certain to encounter significant opposition, the best course of action might thus be one of national proliferation. In particular, a German nuclear weapon would do much to complement existing British and French arsenals and offer the continent protection against external predation. But other than the previously outlined priorities that address a pressing strategic need in the short-term, the nuclear question can relatively safely be relegated to a later point in time. After all, if Europe massively invests in conventional defense, this will go a long way towards deterring outside challengers, especially if the U.S. nuclear umbrella continues to exist for the time being, albeit in a somewhat weakened form.

Rethinking and Reorganizing European Leadership

All of these efforts will require ambitious political leadership and the ability to take challenging decisions. In our eyes, the best format for such leadership would be a European core group. With France, the United Kingdom, and Germany as Europe’s most important military powers at the center, this group could bring in Finland, Poland, Italy, and Spain to achieve geographical balance and balance of threat perceptions as well as the E.U. Commission to harness its potential for institutional initiatives and support. Focusing on a smaller sub-group of states rather than all E.U. member states makes sense particularly insofar as Europe cannot afford to lose time or ambition through lengthy searches for a lowest common denominator forced upon it by states such as Hungary who frequently block consensus on foreign and security policy-decisions. The fact that even Germany, traditionally opposed to the idea of a “multi-speed Europe,” proposed for six major E.U. economies to bypass the unanimity rule to accelerate decision-making in defense-industrial matters, signals openness for such a political reorientation. Notably, article 44 of the Treaty on European Union allows for the delegation of a task to a select group of able and willing states.

In addition, Europe seizing the mantle of leadership in matters of security will require a general rethinking of the division of labor of different security institutions and cooperation formats in the European security order. Most importantly, this means recognizing that, if NATO is to survive and remain effective, it will have to become a primarily European alliance. Accordingly, European leaders need to prioritize strengthening European NATO which, relying on NATO’s existing structures, could constitute the backbone of future conventional defense and defense planning. The European Union, meanwhile, can contribute to these efforts through new political initiatives, especially in realms like hybrid defense or defense funding. The above-mentioned European core group should take the lead in the alliance in terms of communication with the Trump administration, as well as other states, whether allies or adversaries. And to address critical operational gaps, it can serve as a focal point for the construction of smaller but highly effective coalitions of the willing as well as additional bilateral ties to advance European security goals.

Facing an Uncomfortable Reality

Of course, any genuine move towards strategic autonomy will require sacrifices. Increased spending on defense will come at the expense of other areas, such as welfare spending, industrial subsidies, or climate policy. And more European citizens will have to serve in their militaries instead of pursuing other careers. But their external surrounding leaves them little choice. Caught between a rock (U.S. unreliability) and a hard place (the Russian threat), there are no easy ways out, and recent public opinion surveys suggest that European citizens realize this and, hence, support the idea of strengthening European defense. To quote J.R.R. Tolkien, of course most Europeans wish these geopolitical upheavals “need not have happened in [their] time.” But they evidently do acknowledge that, at this point, “all they have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to them.”

BECOME A MEMBER

Moritz S. Graefrath, Ph.D., is the Wick Cary assistant professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities.

Gesine Weber, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the ETH Zurich.

Image: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · Daisy Johnston · February 24, 2026

18. The Danger in the Middle: Will Xi’s Purges Increase the Risk of War?

Summary:

Joel Wuthnow argues Xi’s mid-2023 to early-2026 PLA purges cut two ways. In the near term, removing seasoned commanders and hollowing out the Central Military Commission likely degrades planning and command-and-control for a Taiwan war, even if China can still stage coercive drills or a limited quarantine. Over the medium term, danger rises as replacements consolidate. New leaders may be more joint-competent and technically fluent, yet politically weaker and less able to challenge Xi if he turns to legacy-seeking “war optimism.” Long term, a civilian successor may again face corruption and poor information, raising uncertainty.

The Danger in the Middle: Will Xi’s Purges Increase the Risk of War?

warontherocks.com · · February 24, 2026

Joel Wuthnow

February 24, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/the-danger-in-the-middle-will-xis-purges-increase-the-risk-of-war/

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has purged dozens of senior People’s Liberation Army officers since mid-2023, including two in January, but will this increase the risk of war? The loss of experienced officers could make Xi less confident in how his military would perform, but his increased power could also provide him greater latitude to order troops into combat to achieve what might be a key legacy for him — the long-elusive unification of China with Taiwan.

As political scientists recognize, competent leadership is a key ingredient of battlefield effectiveness. Recent purges have removed some of the highest-ranking and most experienced Chinese officers of their generation and underlined Xi’s lack of trust in his own inner circle. Zhang Youxia, who served as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which is the highest military decision-making and advisory body in China, was perhaps his closest advisor. Empty chairs at the decision-making table, and in key operational posts throughout the military, will weigh on any leader contemplating a war.

The disruption, however, will likely be temporary. The greatest prospects for war will be in the medium term of the late 2020s to early 2030s when new commanders are firmly in place. Those officers will have stronger credentials but less power than their predecessors to push back if Xi embraces war optimism. Xi will also be aware that the long-term time horizon will be bleaker. Not only will he be gone, but his successor will have trouble managing a force that could revert to its old habits of corruption and obfuscation. The key for deterrence in these middle years will be to convince Xi himself, moreso than his military advisors, that the risks of aggression remain unacceptable.

BECOME A MEMBER

Near-Term Woes

The loss of senior commanders will probably reduce the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to plan for and conduct a war over the next year or two. The Central Military Commission has ceased to function. Members of this commission are typically appointed at the major conclaves of the Chinese Communist Party that meet every five years, called party congresses. Of the six officers who Xi appointed at the 20th Party Congress in Oct. 2022, the sole survivor is Zhang Shengmin. Unlike his former Central Military Commission colleagues Zhang Youxia or Liu Zhenli (who served concurrently as the chief of the joint staff and was also purged in January), Zhang Shengmin is not a combat veteran but a political commissar. These are uniformed officers whose main function is not to fight wars but to protect the authority of the party within the military by overseeing political indoctrination and personnel appointments. One of Zhang’s chief functions in recent years was managing the purges as head of the Discipline Inspection Commission. If war broke out tomorrow, there would be no high command to lead it.

Below this level, Xi has taken out some of his most experienced operators over the past two-and-a-half years. Of the 43 generals and admirals that the most recent congressionally mandated report on China’s military power lists as having been purged since July 2023, 29 were senior operational commanders. Their responsibilities included leading the five theater commands (including two former commanders of the Eastern Theater, which would carry out cross-strait operations), services, and departments under the Central Military Commission. The purge cut more deeply into the operational muscle than an earlier campaign carried out from 2012 to 2015, in which most targets were logisticians and political commissars. Xi may have judged that such a drastic step was necessary to cleanse the force of its most corrupt offenders and elevate readiness to the high levels demanded in wartime.

Reconstituting key billets will take time. Given that many of the prime candidates would have had close professional connections to Zhang Youxia or other recently dismissed officers, Xi would be cautious in filling positions and may have to rely on deputies serving on an acting basis. Vetting will be difficult because the systems that Xi relied on to scrutinize choices were themselves impacted by the purges. This includes the political work system, which is responsible for managing promotions and whose leader Miao Hua was dismissed in 2024, and the Central Military Commission’s general office, which functions as a critical gatekeeper to Xi and as his “eyes and ears” to deliver information on military activities.

To be sure, Chinese military and paramilitary forces will still be able to carry out powerful demonstrations, such as combat rehearsals around Taiwan. They may even be able to escalate to quasi-war activities such as a limited quarantine of the island. But the process necessary to vet new commanders and establish trust with Xi will take time. These delays could impact his ability to meet the deadlines he imposed on the force to be ready for a full-scale cross-strait conflict by 2027 — the ability to achieve a “strategic decisive victory” against Taiwan and credibly threaten U.S. intervention on Taipei’s behalf. Being ready for such a contingency in this tight timeframe was always going to be a tall order for a military that has not fought a war since 1979, but the replacement of many of the senior commanders who would be responsible for it has probably set the clock back.

Peak People’s Liberation Army

In the medium term, the odds of war will increase as new commanders arrive and trust is built. Cleaning the slate gives Xi a chance to reach into a new generation of rising stars who have professional advantages over their predecessors. They tend to be better educated and technically literate, have more real-world experience conducting operations in places like the Taiwan Strait and beyond China’s periphery, and have more experience operating in the new command structure that Xi established as part of his 2015-2016 reforms. Under those reforms, the old Cold War-era system that Xi inherited, where operational control was held by the services, was replaced by a national-level joint staff and five joint-theater commands. They are collectively responsible for developing contingency plans, executing joint training, and would lead forces from all the services into combat if ordered by Xi. Under the new system, there have been more officers from the navy and air force serving in senior roles, who would be tasked with conducting multi-domain joint operations.

One example is the new Eastern Theater commander, Yang Zhibin, who assumed his role in Dec. 2025. A career air force officer, Yang served much of his early career in the former Nanjing Military Region opposite Taiwan and is therefore familiar with the cross-strait operating environment. What distinguishes him from his predecessors, however, is his impressive joint qualifications. Prior to his current position, he served as deputy commander in the Eastern, Western, and Southern Theaters. This type of experience is similar to the rotations offered to rising stars in the U.S. military to gain joint experience in a variety of challenging environments and emerge with stronger credentials. Xi will be able to benefit from more officers like Yang over the next several years.

What makes this medium-term phase dangerous is not only the professional competence of the military’s new elite, which could give Xi confidence that he has the right people in place to lead a war, but the new party-army dynamic that puts him in control. In China, party-army relations refer to the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, which is led by Xi, exercises authority over the armed forces. In the past, the model was a bargaining relationship where military officers could exercise significant influence on internal military matters such as personnel and procurement. But by eviscerating his high command, Xi has become the unequivocal leader of the military — a role he has sought since early in his tenure under the label of the “Central Military Commission Chairman Responsibility System.”

This system is enshrined in the 1982 Chinese constitution, but was largely ignored under Xi’s predecessors when the military vice chairman of the commission made most of the important decisions. This put Xi’s predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, into weak roles. By stressing the Chairman Responsibility System, Xi has positioned himself to make the tough calls and will not tolerate alternative power centers. Whoever he appoints to fill important vacancies will be in a diminished status and less likely to push back if Xi orders them to undertake risky missions.

The critical variable is whether Xi’s calculus on war changes. In his first 15 years, he hesitated in pushing the boundary between war and peace. While he used armed forces aggressively in regional disputes, he was not as brash as Russian President Vladimir Putin and sought to avoid lethal force. By the late 2020s, Xi could conclude that the time is right for his end game with Taiwan. More capable generals with less ability to push back could promote the same war optimism that beguiled Putin — even if those officers privately think that a war would be too risky. Of course, the generals might be overly confident in their own skills and not desire to resist in the first place. These dynamics would complement other factors that push in the direction of war, such as new capabilities that make crossing the strait plausible and the tendency of aging autocrats to take more risks to firm up their legacy.

After Xi: Back to the Past

The long-term future could herald a return to the same problems that plagued Xi during his early years in power. Xi will be followed by a successor drawn from the civilian elite of the Chinese Communist Party. Specifically, that person is often selected from the Politburo Standing Committee, which is the party’s highest decision-making body and currently includes Xi and six other civilians. That person will not have had any military experience and may not have close connections with those in uniform.

Xi has avoided naming a civilian vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, a role that he served in from 2010 to 2012, and may hesitate to do so until at least the 21st party congress in 2027 since this would atrophy his own power. A new civilian leader will take time to establish his credentials as chairman and have less latitude to order troops into combat.

Xi’s successor will also have to contend with the same dysfunctions in party-army relations that he faced early in his tenure. These include poor information sharing, corruption, and limited willingness to work with colleagues from other parts of the national security apparatus. The reason why these problems are likely to resurface is that Xi has not changed the basic structure of party-army relations in China. Unlike Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who used internal security agents to purge the Red Army, Xi has allowed his army to remain autonomous of outside interference.

Xi has established his own bona fides by developing a “cult of personality” through frequent appearances at military events and writings that troops must study. The emphasis on the Chairman Responsibility System is part of that strategy to elevate his own status. But to achieve his vision, he counts on the military to police itself. Political commissars are supposed to safeguard the party’s interests but are still uniformed officers, not external agents. Financial auditing is also done by specialists within the military rather than from outside inspectors. Xi also needs to rely on those in uniform to carry out the purges. These have been executed by military members who have aligned themselves with Xi (most notably Zhang Shengmin and members of the Discipline Inspection Commission system).

Even after the most recent purges, this basic system of self-policing remains in place. Civilian oversight remains confined to Xi and management of the military is done internally. Xi might have avoided changing the party-army relationship because he needed military support to accomplish other goals, such as his 2015 to 2016 reforms. He also might have faced more concerted pushback against his leadership if he had attempted to impose Stalin-esque external checks and balances, such as sending in representatives of the civilian internal security forces to look into military malfeasance. Whatever his rationale, he has allowed the party’s military to continue to operate as an insular organization. External control is provided only by the thin reed of his own tenure as Central Military Commission Chairman, which will expire at some point in the coming years.

Xi’s successor will therefore inherit a military staffed with capable generals, but ones who have too much autonomy and may return to their old habits. As scholars also note, the longer-term future for China will be beset by problems such as demographic trends that create economic headwinds the party will have to handle in the 2030s and 2040s, and China’s adversaries will have new military capabilities (such as stronger arsenals of hypersonic weapons) to counter offensive campaigns. Thus, even if military officers tend to be more professional than in the past, the successor will still have many other issues that could prevent them from taking decisive action against Taiwan.

Navigating the Medium Term

Xi himself is looking out to this uncertain future. He must consider what kind of military his successor will inherit, and whether that individual will be able to compel reunification through force during a tenure that may extend to mid-century. A bleaker outlook for the military in the long term could promote riskier decision-making in the medium term when Xi has the power and the leadership to make bold decisions.

For China’s opponents, the key will be directly influencing Xi’s calculus. Military deterrence, such as exercises and the revelation of new capabilities, will be of little use if China’s military leadership is either too confident to be intimidated, or too intimidated by Xi to deliver bad news. Information underscoring the heavy risks, not only military but also economic and political, of a gamble on Taiwan must be messaged directly to Xi by his foreign counterparts. An example of effective messaging came in April 2023 when European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen warned Xi about the dangers of unilateral changes to the status quo. Statements from leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron suggesting that they might sit out a Taiwan conflict send the wrong signal. The essence of deterrence in the late 2020s and early 2030s will be whether the West and other supporters of Taiwan can speak truth to power in a way that might elude Xi’s own generals.

BECOME A MEMBER

Joel Wuthnow is a senior research fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the U.S. National Defense University. His latest book, with Phillip C. Saunders, is China’s Quest for Military Supremacy (Polity, 2025). This essay represents only the views of the author and not those of the National Defense University, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.

** Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com ·  · February 24, 2026

19. America Needs Cognitive Civil Defense

Greetings from Korea. Here is my latest essay on what I think is a very important topic for us as Americans. 

America Needs Cognitive Civil Defense

by David Maxwell

02.24.2026 at 06:00am

Thucydides showed that fear, honor, and interest move states. Clausewitz taught that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Mao described politics as war without bloodshed and war as politics with bloodshed. Sun Tzu wrote what is of supreme importance is to attack the enemy’s strategy. These were not ancient observations. They are field manuals for today. The battlefield has expanded. It now sits inside the mind.

Cognitive Civil Defense is not theory. It is national security.

The Battlespace Is the Public Mind

A democracy stands on what its citizens believe is true. If they cannot judge truth, they cannot judge policy. If they cannot judge policy, they cannot guide power. An adversary does not need to win elections or battles. He only needs to erode trust. Russia proved this. Its operations did not seek one vote or one law. They sought doubt. Doubt in media. Doubt in institutions. Doubt in each other.

So ask. What does an enemy want us to think? What decisions does he want us to make? What actions does he want us to take? If we cannot answer, we are only reacting and already losing.

The Threat Is Organized and Persistent

China does not merely message. It conducts campaigns. These campaigns fuse economic leverage, diplomatic pressure, platform access, and proxy voices. Their aim is not applause. Their aim is alignment. The goal is a world safe for authoritarian systems and hostile to democratic ones. The method is patient pressure. The timeline is generational.

Chinese strategy accepts that unification by force is costly and peaceful unification is unlikely. So coercion becomes the path. That logic extends outward. Influence becomes terrain. Narratives become maneuver. Institutions become objectives.

Question. If a rival shapes how your allies think, whose coalition is it?

Cognitive Civil Defense as Doctrine

A nation protects airspace. It protects waters. It protects networks. It must now protect cognition. This requires doctrine. A simple loop works.

Recognize. Understand. Expose. Attack.

Recognize signals early. Understand structure and intent. Expose mechanisms and sponsors. Attack the system that sustains the campaign. Attack does not mean mimicking propaganda. It means disrupt, attribute, impose costs, and deny gains. It means superior narrative backed by superior conduct.

If you only fact check after impact, you fight debris. If you pre-bunk before impact, you shape terrain.

Institutional Muscle Matters

Democracies improvise well in crisis. They decay in peacetime. Adversary cognitive warfare punishes that habit. Standing machinery is needed. A permanent interagency group should fuse intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement, cyber, and public communication. Another cell should track united front networks and proxy ecosystems. Fragmented response is slow. Slow response is defeat in narrative time.

Consider. Why should an adversary fear exposure if exposure comes months late?

Narrative Intelligence as Capability

Narrative intelligence studies how stories drive belief and action. It draws from linguistics, psychology, policy, and machine analysis. In an age of synthetic media and algorithmic amplification, this is not academic work. It is operational art. Leaders need warning indicators. Commanders need decision support. Citizens need literacy.

The center of gravity in this contest is not a missile field. It is perception.

Lawfare and the Speed of Legitimacy

Chinese lawfare frames legal disputes as administration or stewardship. They file fast. They repeat often. Legitimacy follows repetition. The answer is coordinated counter lawfare that is faster and simpler. Pre drafted filings. Shared allied language. Legal red teams. Public explanation that survives social media compression.

Ask. If truth is complex and falsehood is simple, which spreads first?

Defeating Reflexive Control

Russian theory calls it reflexive control. Shape what the opponent sees, and he will choose what you want. The rule is old. Always ask what the enemy wants you to think. This question is armor. Without it, analysis becomes echo.

The Civic Front Line

Citizens are sensors. They are also targets. Civic literacy is defense infrastructure. Teach people how manipulation works. Teach source verification. Teach pattern recognition. An informed public is not a slogan. It is a shield.

Strategic Recommendations

America should build an allied cognitive security consortium that integrates intelligence, academia, and technology. It should educate leaders and citizens in narrative intelligence. It should fuse open source analytics that detect coordinated influence in real time. It should authorize rapid disclosure of verified intelligence in crises. It should invest in civic resilience education nationwide.

These are not optional reforms. They are the cost of sovereignty.

Final Assessment

The contest underway is not loud. It is constant. It rewards patience, discipline, and clarity. We cannot impose internal change on rival regimes. We can protect our system and shape conditions. Over time, systems that rely on distortion weaken from their own contradictions. But only if we hold firm.

So the closing questions are simple.

If the mind is now a battlefield, who defends it?

If truth is a strategic asset, who secures it?

If we do not build Cognitive Civil Defense, who fights for us when belief collapses?

Tags: Chinese lawfare, civic defense literacy, Cognitive Warfare, CogWar, democratic resilience, information operations, narrative warfare, public trust and national security, Russian reflexive control

About The Author

• 
  
• David Maxwell
• David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region (primarily Korea, Japan, and the Philippines) as a practitioner, specializing in Northeast Asian Security Affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is the Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines during the war on terrorism and is the former J5 and Chief of Staff of the Special Operations Command Korea, and G3 of the US Army Special Operations Command. Following retirement, he was the Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society, on the board of advisers of Spirit of America, and is the Editor-at-Large of Small Wars Journal.

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