Quotes of the Day:

“Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his sense to justify his logic.”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

“Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

~Ursula K. Le Guin

“The greatest danger to liberty is from the majority, not from the minority. The people themselves become the greatest tyrants when they abandon principle for faction.”

— James Madison

1. America Is Losing Its Ability to Deter China

2. China’s Premier Outlines Deeper Commitment to U.N.

3. How China Stands to Gain as the U.S. Steps Away From the U.N.

4. U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz's, Interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business

5. Gabbard Ends Intelligence Report on Future Threats to U.S.

6. Analysis: Russia’s twin plays in Denmark and Alaska push adversaries to respond with force

7. China uses AI as cognitive warfare tool, official says

8. An Introduction to Chinese Video Game Diplomacy: How Beijing Weaponized Parasocial Intimacy and Jiggle Physics for Global Influence

9. Trump Is Reasserting U.S. Dominion Over Latin America

10. U.S. Military Is Struggling to Deploy AI Weapons

11. U.N. to reimpose sanctions on Iran after weeks of failed diplomacy

12. Europe’s Flattery of Trump Is a Strategy. It Isn’t Working.

13. Will Putin call Nato’s bluff? European militaries are a paper tiger

14. Stop the World: Greenland’s strategic weight surges amid US, China, Russia jostling

15. How Long-Range Weapons Could Upend Modern Warfare

16. Russia will equip and train Chinese air battalion, leaked documents reviewed by think tank show

17. The Trump Administration Talks Tough on China, But Enables the CCP’s Repressive Behaviors

18. China-Russia partnership is less than meets the eye

19. US plotting a military comeback at Philippines' Subic Bay

20. Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest

21. Has America Left And Gone For Good?

22. Why Is the Pentagon Afraid of the Press?

23. The elusive ship built to carry US special operators is in the Caribbean

24. How a Russia vs. NATO War Could Actually Start

1. America Is Losing Its Ability to Deter China

Seth points out some important weaknesses that can, should, and must be exploited.

However, we are talking about deterrence. The question I would like answered as we craft concepts of deterrence is what do we think actually deters China, the CCP, and Xi himself.

America Is Losing Its Ability to Deter China

Beijing is relentlessly building its military as its leaders issue ominous threats against Taiwan.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/america-is-losing-its-ability-to-deter-china-2f1105cc

By Seth G. Jones

Sept. 26, 2025 5:20 pm ET

A military parade in Beijing, Sept. 3. Photo: Liu Xu/Associated Press

China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun has renewed a threat to take over Taiwan. In remarks at a Beijing security forum on Sept. 18, Mr. Dong asserted that the island’s “restoration” to China was “an integral part of the postwar international order.” His comments came on the heels of China’s grand military parade, in which Beijing displayed a suite of missiles, aircraft and other weapons.

The signs are clear: Beijing presents a serious and growing challenge to the U.S. and is rapidly undermining U.S. deterrence in the region.

China is producing advanced-grade ships, aircraft, missiles, space technology, cyber tools and land systems. Its long-range missile capabilities have mushroomed over the past two decades. Standing against such a force would present a major test for the U.S. in a potential war over Taiwan and within the Second Island Chain, which extends from Japan south through the Ogasawara Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Palau.

China’s People’s Liberation Army has ballistic and cruise missiles that can be launched from a range of air, land and maritime platforms to strike the U.S. ships, aircraft, and ground forces in the Second Island Chain. China complements these capabilities with large numbers of advanced fighter aircraft such as the J-20 and J-35 and with long-range bombers. The PLA Navy is also modernizing its surface and subsurface fleets, including nuclear-powered submarines and antiship cruise missiles.

China is the world’s leading shipbuilder, outstripping the U.S. in a critically important industry. In 2024 alone, China’s largest state-owned shipbuilder built more vessels by tonnage than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has since the end of World War II. China’s navy now fields more warships than the U.S. and is on track to deploy a 425-ship fleet by 2030.

China is also becoming a major nuclear power. Since 2020, it has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal from 300 weapons to an estimated 600, and it is on its way to more than 1,000 by 2030. China revealed five nuclear capabilities at its September parade that can all reach the continental U.S.

The result of China’s modernization: The U.S. is losing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, particularly around the Taiwan Strait. U.S. bases and forces in the region are vulnerable to targeting before they even arrive to the fight. The U.S. has lost its overmatch—the ability to overwhelm an adversary in all domains of warfare.

But all isn’t lost. The PLA has weaknesses that the U.S. can exploit. One of the most significant is undersea. Antisubmarine warfare remains an Achilles’ heel for the PLA Navy, which has been slow to develop modern platforms and techniques to detect and counter submarines. The PLA also struggles to detect U.S. submarines, giving the U.S. a major undersea advantage.

Another weakness is rampant corruption. China’s leadership values political loyalty over more-useful qualities like operational competence. Since 2023, Xi Jinping has dismissed numerous top leaders in the PLA Rocket Force due to allegations of corruption, including fraud in the construction of ballistic missile silos. Corruption has raised serious questions about defective weapons and equipment, falsified training certifications, fabricated logistics and maintenance books, and poor quality control that could compromise the military’s fighting ability.

Finally, China hasn’t fought a major war since the 1979 border war with Vietnam. Some Chinese analysts—and even Mr. Xi—have referred to the PLA’s lack of combat experience as “peace disease.” A major war in the Indo-Pacific would likely require air, maritime, ground and other units to operate jointly. PLA war games, exercises and simulations appear to be highly scripted, showing a lack of battlefield experience.

A big test for the U.S. is how well it can exploit these weaknesses. So far U.S. officials haven’t shown the appropriate sense of urgency. The growing deployment of U.S. troops along the Mexican border, in U.S. cities, and in the Western Hemisphere risks undermining military readiness and focus for a possible war with China. U.S. defense spending is also notably smaller as a percentage of gross domestic product than at any time during the Cold War, the last time the U.S. faced a great-power adversary.

Moving forward, the U.S. military needs to generate combat power that can operate both inside and outside the reach of China’s weapon systems. Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of Indo-Pacific Command, has said: “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hell scape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable.”

But creating a hell scape for China won’t be easy. It will require a major revitalization of the U.S. defense industrial base, a defense budget that rises to 4% or 5% of GDP, a streamlined defense acquisitions and contracting process able to deliver new and innovative weapons, and a focus on technology like undersea systems that can exploit PLA weaknesses.

China’s rapid military expansion and aggressive posture risk further eroding American deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. can regain the advantage, but it will require more than rhetoric.

Mr. Jones is president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of “The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance.”

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25:58

Donald Trump once said Volodymyr Zelensky had 'no cards' to win the war against Russia, but now the President says Ukraine can win its territory back from Vladimir Putin. What caused this pivot, and what will the U.S. do if Russian aircrafts breach NATO airspace?

Appeared in the September 27, 2025, print edition as 'America Is Losing Its Ability to Deter China'.

2. China’s Premier Outlines Deeper Commitment to U.N.

This does not change my view of China. My assessment remains that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).

China’s Premier Outlines Deeper Commitment to U.N.

The most senior-level Beijing official to address the General Assembly in a decade challenges tariffs and pledges wider role

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-premier-outlines-deeper-commitment-to-u-n-842424c2

By James T. Areddy

Follow

Sept. 26, 2025 5:34 pm ET

Chinese Premier Li Qiang addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Friday. Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters

Quick Summary

• Chinese Premier Li Qiang outlined plans for deeper engagement with the United Nations.View more

Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Friday outlined Beijing’s plans to deepen its engagement with the United Nations in such sectors as artificial intelligence and culture, during a speech that rejected tariffs and unilateralism.

The most senior-level Chinese appearance at the U.N. General Assembly in a decade included a reiteration of Beijing’s support for the organization’s central role in global affairs and its sustained calls for “true multilateralism,” referring to a desire for less U.S.-centric global policymaking.

The Chinese premier didn’t name the U.S. during his address, but implicitly criticized some of the core policies that President Trump outlined in his own appearance at the U.N. earlier in the week.

Li described world growth as sluggish in a clear criticism of the U.S.’s trade policies. “A major cause of the global economic doldrums is the rise in unilateral and protectionist measures such as tariff hikes and the erection of walls and barriers,” he said.

Washington and Beijing are working on plans for Trump to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as soon as next month. In New York on Thursday, Li told representatives of the American business community that Beijing seeks stable relations with Washington.

On the U.N. stage, Li nevertheless took implicit aim at some of the Trump administration’s agenda by warning that divisions will ensue. “When might dictates right, the world risks division,” he said. “We must uphold justice while pursuing our own interests. This is particularly true for the major countries.”

A container terminal in eastern China this week. Photo: Cfoto/ZUMA Press

While Washington’s agenda has been top of mind during General Assembly week, few other leaders used their addresses to challenge the U.S. But even allies are concerned, such as South Korea, which is facing pressure from the Trump administration to increase its investment in the U.S. even after an immigration raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia that affected South Koreans.

Beijing, in the midst of China’s global rivialy with the U.S., has sought to take advantage of Washington’s inattention at the U.N. to put its mark on global affairs.

It involves itself, for instance, in the setting of technical standards, according to Shannon K. O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The way they will build power and influence around the world is that step-by-step involvement in institutions while the Trump administration is seeing it as being very unilateral or bilateral,” she told a conference after the president’s address.

Li highlighted a number of ways Beijing is making good on multilateralism, including remaining a participant in efforts to combat climate change. Still, he said China supports “common but differentiated responsibilities,” meaning it opposes outside pressure to limit its emissions or reduce coal burning. Speaking by video earlier in the week, Xi told a conference that China’s emissions would decrease between 7% and 10% from peak levels by 2035, the first-ever pledge from the world’s largest emitter that output would fall, as it extends a global lead in solar and wind capacity.

The premier said Beijing would launch a series of programs related to “culture and civilization” for developing countries, while proposing an initiative on global governance of artificial intelligence and advocating for establishment of a world AI cooperative organization. 

Beijing intends to provide $10 million in support for a China-U.N. facility for development of nations from the global south and intends to join with the U.N. on a center for sustainable development in Shanghai, Li said.

Xi Jinping pledged this week in a video address to a U.N. climate meeting that China’s emissions would decrease. Photo: Wu Xiaoling/ZUMA Press

And the premier said China is providing the U.N. with soil samples from an unmanned mission last year to the far side of the moon. 

While only one U.N. agency—the Food and Agriculture Organization—is led by a Chinese citizen, Beijing’s power comes from its sustained presence within the bureaucracy, according to analysts. The presence of Beijing officials gives them a chance to push for recognition of Xi’s political and technology initiatives and block others, such as any presence of Taiwan in the world body. 

“It’s less a takeover than targeted toeholds,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. He said Beijing has little desire to control the U.N. system and instead is cultivating committees to gain influence over emerging standards, such as AI governance.

Write to James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com

3. How China Stands to Gain as the U.S. Steps Away From the U.N.

How China Stands to Gain as the U.S. Steps Away From the U.N.

U.S. funding cuts are straining the United Nations and giving Beijing an opening to strengthen its influence, at a fraction of the cost Washington once paid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/world/asia/china-united-nations-trump.html

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, along with his wife, Peng Liyuan, welcomed António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, in Beijing in 2024.Credit...Pool photo by Andres Martinez Casares

By Mara Hvistendahl

Reporting from Geneva

Sept. 19, 2025

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

China has long sought greater influence in international bodies. Now, as the White House cuts funding for the United Nations and other global organizations, it finally has its chance.

And instead of trying to match America’s deep pockets, as once seemed necessary, Beijing can gain influence on the cheap.

The Trump administration has canceled billions in funding for the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other international aid agencies. The clawback has aggravated a pre-existing U.N. budget crisis, prompting widespread cuts.

Chinese officials have long denounced multilateral efforts on labor rights, minority rights and other areas as an excuse for meddling in countries’ affairs. They are seizing the opportunity to diminish that work. At meetings in Geneva, the center of U.N. human rights work, China has joined with Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela to propose saving money by scaling back human rights inquiries, a New York Times investigation found.

Chinese officials have argued that while Washington is pulling back, Beijing is upholding global values. On Sept. 12, a Chinese former U.N. official wrote in China Daily, a state-run newspaper, that with the “doubts and challenges facing the U.N., it is notable that China has been a steadfast supporter of the U.N.’s global governance endeavors, standing firm in shaping solutions to global challenges.”

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Influence for Less

In fact, China has contributed to the U.N. budget crunch by paying its dues so late in the year that they cannot be used. But the U.S. retreat is overshadowing that reality.

“We’ve seen China in recent days move to position themselves rhetorically as a defender of multilateralism and a responsible member state,” said Eugene Chen, a former U.N. official now at a U.N. research organization.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement that “international institutions are platforms for international cooperation, not arenas for geopolitical rivalry. China has never intended to challenge or replace the United States.”

At a recent gathering of leaders from countries including India, Russia and many Central Asian nations in the Chinese city of Tianjin, President Xi Jinping of China introduced what he called a “Global Governance Initiative,” an extensive but loosely defined vision for reshaping international institutions. The proposal called for a greater voice for developing nations, in line with Beijing’s push to curb Western dominance in global bodies.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, who attended the meeting, welcomed Mr. Xi’s proposal. “We are moving towards a multipolar world,” he said.

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Beyond the United Nations, Beijing is filling some of the gap left by Washington in global aid, though on a leaner budget. When an earthquake devastated Myanmar in March, China swiftly dispatched search-and-rescue teams to comb through the rubble. The United States sent help later, taking longer than usual because of upheaval at U.S.A.I.D.

And after President Trump withdrew from World Health Organization this year, China pledged $500 million in funding over five years — far less than the United States most likely would have paid, but enough to win it headlines and good will.

A Selective Approach

Mr. Trump’s pick for U.N. ambassador, Michael Waltz, said at his confirmation hearing in July that it was “absolutely critical” for the United States to counter China at the United Nations. But the White House has said that the global body does not serve U.S. interests, and that China already has too much influence over its operations.

The Trump administration has not yet announced the results of a sweeping review, due last month, into U.S. involvement in international organizations. The review is expected to prompt an American withdrawal from more U.N. agencies. Mr. Trump withdrew from several agencies this year.

American diplomats have told their European counterparts in Geneva that going forward, the White House will take a selective approach to the United Nations. That most likely means staying in technical agencies that set policy on critical technologies but retreating from broader ones that work on issues like human rights and development.

But even at the technical agencies, there are signs that Washington is losing ground. In June, China won a bid to host a crucial 2027 conference for the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency that sets policy for satellite communication and internet cables, defeating a last-minute bid from the United States.

European diplomats in Geneva said they fear that with the United States largely absent at the United Nations, some agencies will be ceded to a loose alliance of largely undemocratic countries in which China plays an influential role.

“There was a more strategic way of doing this, instead of letting China say, ‘We’re going to bring in some small amount money to keep this project going,’” said Allison Lombardo, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former State Department official. “That’s a public diplomacy win for them. All over the world now, they can point to where the United States is absent.”

The United Nations and Global Powers

China Flexes Muscles at U.N. Cultural Agency, Just as Trump Walks Away

July 23, 2025

U.S. Says It Will Withdraw From U.N. Cultural Organization, Again

July 22, 2025

Trump Signs Executive Order Calling for Review of U.S. Funding and Ties to U.N.

Feb. 4, 2025

Mara Hvistendahl is an investigative reporter on the International desk. You can reach her at mara.hvistendahl@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 2025, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: China, Filling Power Vacuum, Expands Global Influence at a Bargain Price. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

4. U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz's, Interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business

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U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz's, Interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business

https://usun.usmission.gov/u-s-representative-to-the-united-nations-ambassador-mike-waltzs-interview-with-larry-kudlow-on-fox-business/

By United States Mission to the United Nations

5 MINUTE READ

September 25, 2025

Ambassador Mike Waltz

U.S. Representative

New York, New York

AS DELIVERED

LARRY KUDLOW: We bring on Mr. Mike Waltz, who is now the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Mike – Ambassador Mike. Thank you very much. So, let me get this right. Trump speaks yesterday, okay? It looked like UN was sabotaging him. The escalator didn’t work. By the way, that could have been very dangerous for him, Melania. The teleprompter didn’t work. Yes, he can ad lib, but then we find out that there was no sound in the auditorium.

AMBASSADOR MIKE WALTZ: And to add one more insult to injury here, was his speech, in the middle of it, switched to Portuguese in terms of the broadcast, and then, and then back again. Look, the whole thing is unacceptable. The whole thing stinks. There’s 150 world leaders there, and this only happens to him. Not once, not twice, but three times.

KUDLOW: Do you think it was deliberate?

AMBASSADOR WALTZ: It’s well – look, it’s under investigation. I’ll tell you, just in fairness, the Secretary-General, who I’ve talked to twice now, has opened their doors. Come see the video. We’ll fully cooperate. We’ll get to the bottom of it, and all those instances, and secret services on the case. So, a lot of folks don’t realize that’s its own mini little like Vatican City there, and as the Ambassador I said, you got to open your doors. And some people were kind of shoulder shrugging this. This could have been incredibly serious. Right? It’s insulting, and it’s right here on American soil.

KUDLOW: His message was so phenomenal. I mean, he just slammed them, he buried them. One, two, three, they’re all sitting there like this, and there’s no sound. Come on.

AMBASSADOR WALTZ: Energy and immigration. Calling – There are seven UN agencies focused on climate. Regardless of what you think, the whole thing, the whole bureaucracy needs to be cut back.

KUDLOW: How much do we cut that? How much do we cut the UN by?

AMBASSADOR WALTZ: Well, we withheld this year.

KUDLOW: Fair amount? Paid a good amount?

AMBASSADOR WALTZ: Yeah, we haven’t paid any of it. And my first meeting with Secretary-General was, here are the reforms that we need to see before you start talking about taxpayer dollars.

KUDLOW: Oh, I love it. We haven’t had a really good reform ambassador in a long time.

AMBASSADOR WALTZ: The last time was 1999, Senator Jesse Helms said, we’re going to clean house before you get another American dollar. And we have every obligation to make sure it’s transparent. Do you think cleaning up the federal government was tough? How about this 193 globalist, multinational thing – and my wife says I’m a masochist.

KUDLOW: And I know you, and you’re a bulldog, and you’re going to do it. Ambassador Mike Waltz. Love it. Congratulations, by the way.

###

5. Gabbard Ends Intelligence Report on Future Threats to U.S.

What is the purpose of intelligence? Forecasting? Threats?

What does this statement mean? Was it poor analysis or in opposition to a political agenda?

Excerpt:

“A draft of the 2025 Global Trends report was carefully reviewed by D.N.I. Gabbard’s team and found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities,” the office said.

Gabbard Ends Intelligence Report on Future Threats to U.S.

Some issues in the document, which is issued every four years, had become politically inconvenient, former officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/us/politics/gabbard-intelligence-report-cancellation.html

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, said the group that compiles the Global Trends report had “neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for” and had pursued a partisan political agenda.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper

Julian Barnes reported from Washington and Helene Cooper from New York

Sept. 26, 2025

Every four years U.S. intelligence officials have published Global Trends, a public document that predicts what challenges the United States — and the world — will face in the coming decades.

With the intelligence community often focused on immediate issues, the Global Trends report has taken a longer-term look. Past editions warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, is eliminating the group that compiles the report.

Some of the warnings, most notably on climate change, had become politically inconvenient, according to former officials.

Ms. Gabbard’s office, in announcing the decision, said the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group had “neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for” and had pursued a partisan political agenda.

“A draft of the 2025 Global Trends report was carefully reviewed by D.N.I. Gabbard’s team and found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities,” the office said.

The elimination of the office last month was little noticed because it came amid a flurry of activity by Ms. Gabbard, including the closure of the National Intelligence University and sharp cutbacks of officers working on foreign malign influence and election threats.

Defending the move, Ms. Gabbard’s office highlighted what it said were problems of tradecraft, or the methodology used to gather information and analyze intelligence for the report.

Until recently, the Global Trends report was viewed as an objective look into the future by intelligence experts during both Democratic and Republican administrations. But like so much in the Trump administration, what was once considered apolitical is now labeled political.

Ms Gabbard eliminated this year’s report and the team that crafted it with a stroke of her pen. If a future administration wants to revive either, it will not be as easy. While traditionally released in the first months of a new administration, the reports represent months of work by intelligence officers working under the previous White House.

Speaking on Wednesday at The New York Times’s Climate Forward conference, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, rejected the argument that intelligence officers were raising concerns to pursue any sort of political agenda.

Mr. Sullivan noted that turning away from thorny global issues like climate change would not stop them from posing a threat to the United States, and the world.

“The United States is not going to be as prepared and as capable to contend with this challenge going forward,” he said.

Mr. Sullivan lamented that cuts and firings in the intelligence community had fallen heavily on career professionals.

“To have the director of national intelligence cast aspersions upon the professionalism and public service of dedicated people, I just find basically offensive and wrong,” he said.

Gregory F. Treverton, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President Barack Obama, also took issue with Ms. Gabbard’s criticism. He said work on the report helped develop new ways of gathering and analyzing intelligence. The 2017 Global Trends report was developed with the help of focus groups around the world.

“I lament its demise — it was a good exercise in developing tradecraft,” Mr. Treverton said. “Obviously, they didn’t like it, didn’t find it necessary. Obviously, they don’t find much intelligence necessary.”

The Trump administration has dismantled a number of national security groups looking at long-term trends. At the Pentagon, the Office of Net Assessment, which had helped senior leaders think about the future of war, was shut down in March.

The Global Trends project began in 1997, before the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and released a report every four years that looked years into the future.

The 2017 report overseen by Mr. Treverton, for example, discussed the possibility of a pandemic plunging the world into economic chaos. While it forecast that a pandemic would begin in 2023, as opposed to 2020, its warnings about travel restrictions, economic distress and isolation were prescient.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 27, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Gabbard Ends Trend Report On Threats. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard

6. Analysis: Russia’s twin plays in Denmark and Alaska push adversaries to respond with force

Again:

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” 

– Vladimir Ilich Lenin

Home » J.J. Green » Analysis: Russia’s twin plays…

Analysis: Russia’s twin plays in Denmark and Alaska push adversaries to respond with force

https://wtop.com/j-j-green-national/2025/09/analysis-russias-twin-plays-in-denmark-and-alaska-push-adversaries-to-respond-with-force/

J.J. Green | jgreen@wtop.com

September 25, 2025, 6:47 PM

Two incidents that lit up Western airspace in the past 48 hours have escalated deep concerns about Russian-linked hybrid warfare: drones over Denmark’s airports and warplanes near Alaska.

There is no proof the events are linked, but together, they illustrate a sharpened pattern of pressure tactics that Russia and others have mastered.

In Denmark, seemingly coordinated drone flights forced the closure of multiple airports, including Aalborg, Billund and Esbjerg. Danish authorities are now calling it a “professional” operation, not a prank.

A similar disruption took place Monday. Police and defense didn’t know definitively if it was a prank or something more.

On Thursday, they quickly labeled Wednesday night’s incursions as a hybrid attack: deliberate disruption designed to unsettle the public, drain resources and probe gaps in air defense. No person or organization has claimed responsibility, but suspicion points squarely toward Russia, which has used similar low-cost tactics across Europe.

Over the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, the tactics were different but followed the same logic.

Two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Su-35 fighters entered the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone. NORAD scrambled F-16s and an E-3 Sentry to intercept and escort them out. The Russian jets stayed in international airspace.

This cat-and-mouse game has been going on for years, but the timing, coming as Europe reels from drone disruptions, reminds Washington that Moscow can run operations on both sides of the Atlantic at once.

What connects these events is not coordination, but strategy. They probe defenses and force NATO and the U.S. to respond. They create friction, uncertainty and headlines — without crossing the legal or military threshold that would trigger a shootdown or a war.

That is the essence of modern pressure tactics: Deliver an intimidating message while denying adversaries the clear justification to strike back.

Western officials know this. That’s why the U.S. didn’t even hint at firing on the Russian planes, and why Denmark is still investigating carefully before naming names. Both cases reveal the uncomfortable truth: Russia can keep raising the temperature through drones, flybys and cyber intrusions, while Western governments are left balancing deterrence with restraint.

The link is unmistakable. But similarity is not proof of a single plot. It’s proof of a playbook — one that exploits gray zones where fear and ambiguity do the work of missiles.

But it’s not lost on Moscow that discussions are underway among NATO countries about shooting down Russian military planes that deliberately enter their airspace without permission.

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J.J. Green

JJ Green is WTOP's National Security Correspondent. He reports daily on security, intelligence, foreign policy, terrorism and cyber developments, and provides regular on-air and online analysis. He is also the host of two podcasts: Target USA and Colors: A Dialogue on Race in America.

 jgreen@wtop.com

•  @JJGreenWTOP

7. China uses AI as cognitive warfare tool, official says

 Unrestricted warfare. AI surely supports two of the three warfares: psychological warfare and media or public opinion warfare.

• Home Taiwan News

Wed, Sep 24, 2025 page2

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2025/09/24/2003844335

China uses AI as cognitive warfare tool, official says

DEEPFAKE: An AI-generated video of the president and vice president recently posted on YouTube expresses Beijing’s standard talking points, a security official said

• By Su Yung-yao and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
•  
• 
  
•  
• China is stepping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI) in cognitive warfare operations against Taiwan, a national security official said on Saturday.
• Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the national security apparatus is investigating a YouTube channel called AI Shared Destiny (AI命運共同體), which on Wednesday last week released an AI-generated video simulating a conversation between President William Lai (賴清德) and Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴).
• While the channel described its output as “entertainment,” much of the content — including the fictional conversation between Lai and Hsiao — amplified Beijing’s information warfare messages targeting Taiwan, they said.
• 
  

The letters AI are pictured on a motherboard in an undated illustration.

• Photo: Reuters
• In the fabricated exchange, the AI-generated Lai says that the US could no longer contain China, suggesting Taiwan’s arms procurement is futile and declaring his intent to make as much money as possible before the end of his term, the official said.
• The 48-second video conveyed themes of China’s rising power, Taiwanese and US impotence, and the futility of Taiwan’s defense investments, amounting to a checklist of Beijing’s standard talking points, the official said.
• The channel, which has posted about 50 videos, has amassed more than 12,000 subscribers since its launch in July — an unusually rapid rise for a new platform, the official said.
• Its content uses simplified Chinese characters, phrases used mainly in China and narratives identical to those of China’s state-run media, suggesting direct involvement by Beijing, they said.
• Citing a recent study by Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, the official said the Chinese People’s Liberation Army-affiliated GoLaxy Co (中科天璣) has been using generative AI to study personal data collected from 5,000 Taiwanese from social media.
• The company appears to be developing AI-driven psychological profiling tools — examining political leanings, personal values and religious beliefs — to augment the effectiveness of Beijing’s propaganda, they said.
• The results of GoLaxy’s efforts have already been put into practice through disinformation and deepfake circulated during last year’s presidential and legislative elections, the official said.
• China’s use of advanced technology has transformed the nature of cognitive warfare from broad demographic influence campaigns to the deployment of personally tailored content aimed at specific targets, they added.
• Ultimately, media literacy and fact-checking are key for citizens to defend themselves against cognitive warfare, the official said.

8. An Introduction to Chinese Video Game Diplomacy: How Beijing Weaponized Parasocial Intimacy and Jiggle Physics for Global Influence

I received a briefing more than 5 years ago from a Taiwan risk assessment professional on China's infiltration of and focus on the global gamigninusurrty for psychological warfare purposes.

We must begin by recognizing China's strategy, then understanding it, then EXPOSING it, and then attacking it with a superior political warfare strategy.

Excerpts:

Meanwhile, America’s brand in gaming has faltered. Once synonymous with dominance and innovation, U.S. companies are now mired in regulatory uncertainty, culture wars over content moderation, and growing distrust abroad. Into this vacuum, Beijing has positioned Chinese games as aspirational, technologically advanced, and culturally resonant.

What makes this trend particularly significant is that games are more than entertainment. They are immersive environments where fiction and reality, identity and ideology, freedom and control blur. Chinese games leverage addictive mechanics, parasocial character design, and expansive digital worlds to foster intense emotional attachments. At the same time, they come bundled with invasive technologies, such as kernel-level anti-cheat systems, which grant root access to players’ devices [11]. In other words, these games are dual-use assets, combining psychological influence with technical infiltration.

We describe this strategy as Chinese Video Game Diplomacy, and it represents a new frontier in cognitive warfare. While debates about TikTok bans dominate headlines, China has already colonized the cognitive bandwidth of millions through gaming. The stakes are not whether games matter in geopolitics, but whether the United States and its allies recognize that they do.

To some, the idea that people would riot over changes to a digital character might sound absurd. Yet South Korea’s “gacha gender wars” demonstrated precisely that dynamic [17]. History reminds us that the absurd often masks the effective: American colonists in costume tossing tea into Boston Harbor, or Greek soldiers hidden in a wooden horse. People fight to protect what they love, and today, many love their virtual companions as much as (if not more than) real ones. This is the gamification of love, and it has profound implications for global politics.

The following sections introduce six mechanisms that underpin Chinese Video Game Diplomacy. Each could be explored in greater depth on its own, but together they offer a broad introduction to a challenge that blends entertainment, identity, and influence.

1. The Emotional Operating System of Chinese Games

2. Colonizing the Cognitive Domain

3. Data Access and the Cybersecurity Threat

4. Influencers as Asymmetric Weapons

5. Weaponizing Sexual Identity Politics: The “Gyatt Gap”

6. Pitfalls of Censorship

An Introduction to Chinese Video Game Diplomacy: How Beijing Weaponized Parasocial Intimacy and Jiggle Physics for Global Influence - Information Professionals Association

https://information-professionals.org/an-introduction-to-chinese-video-game-diplomacy-how-beijing-weaponized-parasocial-intimacy-and-jiggle-physics-for-global-influence/

By Sean Guillory and Cogni-Chan [Alias]

Introduction: China’s Rise in Gaming and America’s Brand Decline

In recent years, China’s gaming industry has matured into a global powerhouse. Titles such as Genshin Impact, Naraka Bladepoint, and Black Myth: Wukong are not simply commercially successful; they also showcase a cultural ambition that rivals or even surpasses that of their Japanese, European, and American competitors. When Black Myth: Wukong sold more than ten million copies in its first week and went on to win the 2024 Steam Game of the Year Award [1], it marked a turning point. Chinese studios, long dismissed as imitators, had firmly established themselves as peers, and in some ways leaders, in the global gaming industry.

This rise is no accident. It reflects government support for the industry, from national investment funds to regional incentives that nurture developers [1]. It is also the result of expanding markets, as Chinese-speaking players now make up more than half of Steam’s global user base [1&2]. Perhaps most importantly, it reflects strategic ambition: Beijing views gaming as not just entertainment, but as a driver of innovation and national power [3&15].

Meanwhile, America’s brand in gaming has faltered. Once synonymous with dominance and innovation, U.S. companies are now mired in regulatory uncertainty, culture wars over content moderation, and growing distrust abroad. Into this vacuum, Beijing has positioned Chinese games as aspirational, technologically advanced, and culturally resonant.

What makes this trend particularly significant is that games are more than entertainment. They are immersive environments where fiction and reality, identity and ideology, freedom and control blur. Chinese games leverage addictive mechanics, parasocial character design, and expansive digital worlds to foster intense emotional attachments. At the same time, they come bundled with invasive technologies, such as kernel-level anti-cheat systems, which grant root access to players’ devices [11]. In other words, these games are dual-use assets, combining psychological influence with technical infiltration.

We describe this strategy as Chinese Video Game Diplomacy, and it represents a new frontier in cognitive warfare. While debates about TikTok bans dominate headlines, China has already colonized the cognitive bandwidth of millions through gaming. The stakes are not whether games matter in geopolitics, but whether the United States and its allies recognize that they do.

To some, the idea that people would riot over changes to a digital character might sound absurd. Yet South Korea’s “gacha gender wars” demonstrated precisely that dynamic [17]. History reminds us that the absurd often masks the effective: American colonists in costume tossing tea into Boston Harbor, or Greek soldiers hidden in a wooden horse. People fight to protect what they love, and today, many love their virtual companions as much as (if not more than) real ones. This is the gamification of love, and it has profound implications for global politics.

The following sections introduce six mechanisms that underpin Chinese Video Game Diplomacy. Each could be explored in greater depth on its own, but together they offer a broad introduction to a challenge that blends entertainment, identity, and influence.

1. The Emotional Operating System of Chinese Games

At the heart of China’s gaming influence are gacha games, a model derived from Japanese gachapon vending machines. In these games, players spend currency, often purchased with real money, to “pull” randomized virtual rewards. Gacha games are typically free-to-play, but they heavily incentivize spending by offering rare and desirable characters or items that can only be obtained through repeated attempts [18].

This model is more than a business practice; it is an emotional operating system. Chinese gacha games like Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero are designed to hook players through psychological levers. The sunk-cost fallacy keeps them investing, as each purchase or “pull” creates pressure to continue until the desired outcome is achieved [4]. Characters are written with personalities, relationships, and backstories that foster parasocial bonds, turning digital avatars into perceived friends or partners [8]. And sexualized avatars trigger protective instincts, producing outrage when designs are altered to meet Western content standards [9].

The consequences are measurable. Research has linked gacha mechanics to heightened stress, anxiety, and problem gambling behaviors [4&6]. At the same time, many players rationalize gacha spending as earned achievement rather than chance, reinforcing loyalty and reducing resistance to the model [5].

This blend of addictive mechanics and parasocial intimacy creates conditions ripe for political volatility. When governments or studios change content (whether by banning a game, censoring outfits, or restricting access), players respond as though their personal freedoms are under attack. The precedent is clear: Gamergate in the U.S. and Korea’s anti feminist “finger pinching conspiracy” [17; see image below] show how disputes about aesthetics can metastasize into broader political mobilization.

[Image and quote from Reference 17] “Seen is an animated video recently inserted into Nexon’s popular game MapleStory in which a character makes a finger gesture that is associated with the defunct radical feminist community Megalia. Nexon removed the video after it became controversial”

2. Colonizing the Cognitive Domain

If gacha mechanics are the hook, then narrative embedding is the line and sinker. Chinese games excel at occupying players’ cognitive bandwidth. Daily engagement loops, such as time-limited events or log-in bonuses, create habits that tether users to the platform. Ideological cues, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt, frame narratives about gender roles, morality, and power [3]. The neurological circuits associated with gambling are activated by reward loops, reinforcing both play and spending [7].

For many players, these games are not escapes from reality but preferred realities in their own right. In our earlier work on O-O Convergence [16], we described how virtual, physical, and cognitive domains are fusing. Gamers cry when non-playable characters die, rage when their avatars are censored, and rally to defend fictional partners as though they were family. This blending of realities means that the emotional weight of in-game events can surpass that of real-world politics, creating vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit.

3. Data Access and the Cybersecurity Threat

The influence of Chinese games is not only psychological. It also extends into the realm of cybersecurity. Riot Games, owned by Tencent, requires players to install kernel-level anti-cheat systems that grant privileged access to their devices [11]. Analysts have compared these systems to spyware, raising concerns about potential espionage [12].

This creates a dual-use dynamic. On the surface, these platforms deliver engaging gameplay and immersive worlds. Beneath the surface, they provide opportunities for surveillance, data harvesting, and behavioral analysis. From a national security perspective, games should now be understood as part of the same risk landscape as telecommunications hardware or semiconductor supply chains. They are simultaneously entertainment platforms and potential vectors of exploitation.

4. Influencers as Asymmetric Weapons

If games themselves are influence platforms, then influencers are their force multipliers. The case of streamer IShowSpeed’s 2025 tour of China illustrates this point vividly [see below image]. His broadcasts generated more favorable U.S. coverage of China than many official diplomatic initiatives [13&14].

[Image from Reference 19]

This influencer-industrial complex operates on several levels. Managed tours are staged to sanitize China’s image and present the country as welcoming and modern [13]. Developers have also pressured streamers, as in the case of Black Myth: Wukong, to avoid politically sensitive discussions such as feminism [10]. Above all, influencers foster aesthetic loyalty: fans defend them and the games they promote with greater passion than they defend political institutions.

For Beijing, this is propaganda that does not look like propaganda. For Western governments, it creates a dilemma. Heavy-handed regulation risks alienating audiences and radicalizing gamers against policymakers. Leniency risks ceding the narrative terrain entirely. Navigating this space requires a balance between protecting free expression and mitigating adversarial influence.

5. Weaponizing Sexual Identity Politics: The “Gyatt Gap”

Few issues illustrate the power of Chinese Video Game Diplomacy as clearly as what we call the “Gyatt Gap”, which we define as the cultural divide over sexualization in games. In the video game space there has been a long held debate around players and game developers over culturally sensitive topics such as the sexualized design of characters in games. This debate has blown up in the west when certain game developers in Asia have claimed that they had to alter their game to meet a more western audience. The opposing side claims this is censorship. The controversy over the Invisible Woman “Malice” skin in Marvel Rivals [see image below] in 2024 is emblematic of a larger trend that goes back years in the video game community.

[Image from Reference 20]

A seemingly small change in character design provoked outrage that quickly spread into debates about feminism, censorship, and freedom of expression [9].

Here, aesthetics are not superficial. Features like jiggle physics (i.e. how “bouncy” the parts of certain sexualized characters are) are mechanisms designed to deepen immersion and foster emotional attachment. When players fall in love with their “waifus,” they are not merely consuming entertainment; they are investing in relationships that feel real. Attempts to alter or restrict these experiences are perceived as existential threats.

This is why such controversies matter. They are emotionally supercharged, politically resonant, and easily weaponized. They map onto existing social fractures, allowing adversaries to stoke outrage that spills into the streets. As we argued in our earlier piece on the cognitive domain, cultural policy and digital aesthetics are now matters of national security.

6. Pitfalls of Censorship

Given the risks, policymakers may be tempted to ban or censor Chinese games. But experience shows that this approach is fraught with danger. Even minor changes, such as adjustments to character outfits, can provoke extreme backlash, including doxxing, protests, and political mobilization [9]. In an O-O Converged world, a game patch can be as geopolitically sensitive as a trade negotiation.

A more effective response requires a nuanced strategy. Restrictions must be framed carefully, with narrative justification that explains their necessity. Western governments and allies must invest in developing alternatives that are not only secure but also culturally resonant and aspirational. Finally, lawmakers must be educated to recognize that games are not trivial entertainment, but infrastructure for influence.

Implications for Practitioners and Policymakers

For national security practitioners, the lesson is clear: video games are dual-use technologies, akin to telecom or AI. They must be addressed in doctrine, training, and strategy as platforms for cognitive warfare. Counter-narratives and resilient digital cultures are essential.

For policymakers, gaming policy has become national security policy. Funding is needed for research, for developing alternative platforms, and for understanding how to mitigate risks without alienating player bases. Policymakers must also anticipate the political blowback that comes with restricting access to beloved platforms.

For government-based information professionals, gaming represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Grievances within gaming communities can be tracked as indicators of potential mobilization. Parasocial attachments can be studied as force multipliers in influence operations. Most importantly, frameworks must be developed to counter adversarial narratives without eroding the trust of gaming populations.

Conclusion: Video Games as a National Security Concern

Chinese video game diplomacy may sound ridiculous at first glance. But what appears absurd is often what matters most. Games have become frontline tools of cognitive warfare, shaping identities, loyalties, and political behaviors. They blend psychological conditioning with technical infiltration, creating a form of influence that is difficult to counter and easy to underestimate.

Cognitive warfare does not always resemble traditional psyops or disinformation campaigns. Sometimes it looks like a streamer’s livestream, a limited-time cosmetic skin, or a patch note that nerfs jiggle physics. Beijing understands this. The question is whether we do.

References

1. Game Developer. (2024). What’s driving growth in the Chinese video game industry? Retrieved from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/what-s-driving-growth-in-the-chinese-video-game-industry-
2. Niko Partners. (2024). Chinese video game companies are adapting their US strategies. Retrieved from https://nikopartners.com/chinese-video-game-companies-are-adapting-their-us-strategies/
3. Asia Times. (2024). Video games are the next front in US-China tech war. Retrieved from https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/video-games-are-the-next-front-in-us-china-tech-war/#-
4. Tang, A. C. Y., et al. (2022). Prediction of problem gambling in video game gacha mechanics using machine learning. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 940281. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.940281
5. Zhang, J. (2024). Catching the unlikely gambler: An exploration of gacha gaming and consumer psychology. Lingnan University Theses. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/234/
6. Lakić, N., Bernik, A., & Čep, A. (2023). Addiction and spending in gacha games: A quantitative analysis. Information, 14(7), 399. https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/14/7/399
7. Li, W., Mills, D., & Nower, L. (2019). The relationship of loot box purchases to problem video gaming and problem gambling. Addictive Behaviors, 97, 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.05.016
8. Tan, Y. H., & Lim, K. (2024). Free-to-play games with in-game monetization: An analysis of consumer behavior. EDULEARN24 Proceedings. https://library.iated.org/view/TAN2024FRE
9. Lynch, T., Dooley, A., & Erxleben, M. R. (2024). Examining how sex appeal cues and strength cues influence impressions of female video game characters. Communication Research, OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502241279625
10. Wired. (2024). Black Myth: Wukong streaming controversy highlights China’s cultural red lines. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/black-myth-wukong-streaming-controversy/
11. OSNews. (2024). Riot Games installs rootkit-level software with League of Legends anti-cheat. Retrieved from https://www.osnews.com/story/139517/chinese-tencent-owned-company-riot-games-installs-rootkit-on-every-league-of-legends-players-computer/
12. The Wall Street Journal. (2020). If you play videogames, China may be spying on you. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/opinion/if-you-play-videogames-china-may-be-spying-on-you-11603926979
13. Lowy Institute. (2025). American abroad: How one influencer’s visit to China turned tables. Retrieved from https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/american-abroad-how-one-influencer-s-visit-china-turned-tables
14. South China Morning Post. (2025). China hails US YouTube star who racks 10 million views in Beijing and Shanghai streams. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3304034/china-hails-us-youtube-star-who-racks-10-million-views-beijing-shanghai-streams
15. APCO Worldwide. (2024). The role of gaming and esports in China’s innovation strategy. Retrieved from https://apcoworldwide.com/blog/the-role-of-gaming-and-esports-in-chinas-innovation-strategy/
16. Information Professionals Association. (2023). Online-Offline Convergence and the Future of Conflict. Retrieved from https://information-professionals.org/what-online-offline-convergence-means-for-the-future-of-conflict/
17. Baek, B. (2023, November 27). Nexon, Kakao Games accused of using feminist hand gesture in promotional videos. The Korea Times. Updated November 28. Retrieved from https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20231127/nexon-kakao-games-accused-of-using-feminist-hand-gesture-in-promotional-videos 
18. Pettigrew, A. (2025, January 4). What is a gacha game? Digital Trends. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-is-a-gacha-game/
19. Overseasidol.com. (2025, April 11). IShowSpeed gains massive popularity in China through his enthusiastic cultural journey. Overseas Idol. Retrieved from https://overseasidol.com/en/ishowspeed-gains-massive-popularity-in-china-through-his-enthusiastic-cultural-journey/
20. Katsura, S. (2025, January 14). How to get Malice Sue Storm skin in Marvel Rivals. ONE Esports. Retrieved from https://www.oneesports.gg/gaming/malice-sue-storm-skin-in-marvel-rivals/

9. Trump Is Reasserting U.S. Dominion Over Latin America

The subtitle makes obvious sense.

Trump Is Reasserting U.S. Dominion Over Latin America

A region seen as the ‘U.S.’s backyard’ is crucial to the president’s goals of reining in migration and stopping drug flows

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trump-latin-america-migration-drug-trade-05dec866

By Juan Forero

Follow and Ryan Dubé

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Sept. 27, 2025 5:30 am ET

Argentine President Javier Milei and President Trump are close allies. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Quick Summary

• President Trump has adopted a forceful approach in Latin America, using military and economic power to treat the region as an exclusive sphere of influence.View more

BOGOTÁ, Colombia—President Trump has remade Washington’s role in Latin America with a force not seen in decades, deploying U.S. military and economic weight with abandon and treating the region as an exclusive sphere of influence.

No American president has exerted as much pressure on the region since the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan focused his efforts there on battling left-wing Central American insurgencies and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

From the Mexican border to Patagonia, Trump is punishing adversaries with high tariffs, airstrikes and rhetorical broadsides while offering those he considers friends security aid and economic deals. One analyst called it, “The Donroe Doctrine,” a play on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine guiding U.S. policy toward the region.

The region is crucial to the president’s goals of stopping migration and the flow of drugs into the U.S. while trying to counter China, which has deepened economic and diplomatic ties in Latin America the last two decades. 

“We haven’t seen a U.S. president as brazen and as aggressive as Trump has been in Latin America,” said Michael Shifter, a senior scholar at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group. “His mindset is that the region is the U.S.’s backyard and his strategic prerogative, in the name of protecting the homeland and boosting ‘America First.’ ”

Allies who flatter the president and align with his worldview—from Argentine President Javier Milei to El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele—are scoring deals and a warm embrace. Those who defy him—most notably Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro—find themselves in his crosshairs.

Trump has worked closely with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Photo: Carol Guzy/Zuma Press

The Trump administration’s top diplomats have experience in Latin America, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has made numerous visits to the region even as he has juggled peace talks in Ukraine and Gaza. The State Department’s second in command, Christopher Landau, is a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. The new ambassador to Mexico, Ron Johnson, is a former U.S. intelligence officer with broad experience in Latin America.

Rubio said that previous administrations overlooked the Western Hemisphere and gave adversaries a pass, hurting American interests.

“As a result, we’ve let problems fester, missed opportunities and neglected partners,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. “That ends now.”

Before Trump, the U.S. backed Latin American allies in the region while isolating and sanctioning countries Washington considered autocratic and anti-American, namely Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, under a policy defined by broader, long-term considerations.

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WSJ’s Vera Bergengruen explains how the heightened rhetoric and military moves by the Trump administration and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro could escalate. Photo: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images; Francis Chung/CNP/Zuma Press

Bill Clinton tried to forge stronger trade ties with the region, George W. Bush promoted democracy and intensified America’s war on drug smugglers in Colombia, and Barack Obama re-established full diplomatic relations with Cuba, temporarily easing the antagonism between the two countries.

From the first day of his administration, Trump and his team reversed course on decades of policies, taking a more confrontational approach that called for a quick response from regional leaders.

The tone was set at his inauguration, when he asserted that China controlled the Panama Canal and said the U.S. would take control of the waterway. Days later, Trump threatened to level 25% tariffs on Colombia if Petro, a leftist and former guerrilla, didn’t permit flights of deported migrants to arrive. Petro quickly caved in.

Trump also took on the U.S.’s biggest trading partner, claiming Mexico allied itself with drug cartels. He pressed Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to let U.S. armed forces take a leading role in battling Mexican cartels, warning his administration would act unilaterally if Mexico didn’t. Sheinbaum rejected any direct U.S. military presence.

Analysts said the president increasingly bases policy on the individual personalities and ideologies of political leaders and the transactional nature of the relationship. Some leaders have learned that flattery—and a healthy dose of lobbying in person—can earn them big rewards. 

No president could potentially reap more than Argentina’s Milei, who built close bonds with Elon Musk and had once said Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election “put Western civilization in danger.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a determined U.S. adversary. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration on Wednesday pledged a financial lifeline amid a run on the peso that endangers Milei’s free-market overhaul. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. could provide a $20 billion swap line, buy Argentina’s dollar bonds or give the country credit via the Treasury’s exchange stabilization fund.

Meanwhile, leftist leaders like Petro and Maduro have fared worse. 

Trump this month gave Colombia, long the U.S.’s closest ally in the war on drugs, a failing grade in Washington’s annual report card. And in the Caribbean, the U.S. military has launched at least three airstrikes this month on suspected drug boats leaving Venezuela, with Trump warning that more could come.

It is an approach that risks alienating leaders in a region that has sought closer cooperation with the U.S. on trade and investments but been wary because of their neighbor’s history of meddling and military interventions. U.S. adversaries, China most prominently, are trying to capitalize.

“It’s not the conduct of a power that is attempting to establish itself as the region’s go-to international partner,” said Benjamin Gedan, a fellow at the Latin America Studies Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “If that is the strategy, then they have concluded the region can be bullied into submission and loyalty.”

He questioned whether the administration has real engagement with the region beyond stopping immigration and drug trafficking, issues that rally Trump’s political base. The U.S. has slashed aid that once won goodwill among the region’s 660 million people, from programs to reduce Amazon deforestation to improving job opportunities for Central Americans and helping Colombian farmers get land titles.

Analysts say the policy can be erratic—the administration one day floating talks with Venezuela, a few later hardening its approach. Those most reliant on the US—like Mexico or Central America—are especially vulnerable.

Tommy Pigott, the State Department’s deputy spokesman, said in a statement that the administration’s foreign policy in the region “is centered towards prioritizing our national interests and standing with regional partners.”

“From combating illegal immigration, designating vicious gangs as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and holding accountable illegitimate regimes in our hemisphere, this administration will not back down in its commitment to make our hemisphere safer, stronger, and more prosperous,” Pigott said.

Brazil, a regional behemoth with growing exports to China, has room to maneuver in its souring relationship with Trump.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has defended Brazil against Trump’s attacks, saying ’our democracy and our sovereignty are nonnegotiable.’ Photo: Ton Molina/Zuma Press

Trump, angry that Latin America’s biggest country had convicted a former president who was his ally, accused President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of censorship and repression in a speech that came two months after the U.S. leveled 50% tariffs on the country. The Treasury had previously sanctioned the Brazilian Supreme Court judge who led the criminal trial against the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the justice’s wife.

“Brazil is doing poorly,” Trump said Tuesday in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. “Without us they will fail just as others have failed.”

Speaking at the U.N., da Silva said, “there is no justification for unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy.”

“Before the eyes of the world,” he said, “Brazil sent a message to all would-be autocrats and those who support them. Our democracy and our sovereignty are nonnegotiable.”

Latin American experts admit that they don’t know what turn Trump’s policy will take.

Trump himself sounded conflicted. In the same speech at the U.N. where he took aim at Brazil, he noted bumping into the charismatic da Silva moments before.

“I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced…He seemed like a very nice man actually,” Trump said. “He liked me, I liked him. And I only do business with people I like.”

He later added: “At least for about 39 seconds, we had excellent chemistry.”

Write to Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com and Ryan Dubé at ryan.dube@wsj.com

10. U.S. Military Is Struggling to Deploy AI Weapons

I was unaware that the DAWG fell under USSOCOM. Is that the right place for it? How does this impact all the other missions that fall under special operations, especially those that focus exclusively on the human domain?

Excerpts:

The Pentagon leadership has shifted the Replicator work to a new division under Special Operations Command known as the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG, in the hopes of accelerating the program and focusing on the most appropriate weapons. 

Those involved in Replicator offer different reasons for the delays, but say the effort has largely been a success. Some point to the military services, who pushed to buy systems that weren’t ready to be fielded, while others say the setbacks were just a normal part of any ambitious attempt to fast-track technology.

In an email, Hicks said Replicator was on track for success when she departed the Pentagon in late January, and had jump-started the process of buying autonomous systems for the military.

The purpose of Replicator is to prepare for a potential conflict with China in the Pacific. Beijing has rapidly expanded its arsenal of ships, aircraft and high-tech weapons in recent years, and U.S. officials believe Beijing may be ready to seize Taiwan—a key U.S. trading partner—as early as 2027.

A conflict over the island would bring technological and logistical challenges, requiring ocean vessels and aerial drones to cross long stretches and work autonomously, even if radio and GPS communications are jammed. The drones would allow the U.S. to spread out the battlefield, confuse the enemy, overwhelm defenses and attack targets without significant loss of life or expensive equipment, defense officials say.

DAWG now has less than two years to deliver the drones the Pentagon says it needs, according to the people familiar with the matter. The tight timeline reflects the urgency with which officials believe the U.S. must be prepared to fight a war in the Pacific. 

Replicator is now being overseen by the vice commander of Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, a defense official said. In August, as he was taking over the program, Donovan attended part of an event in California that was supposed to showcase some of the whiz-bang technology Replicator had acquired—but also highlighted that the systems weren’t ready for prime time, according to people who participated in the exercise.

...

Integrating the technology also proved challenging. During an exercise last year in the Pacific called Project Kahuna, drones from different manufacturers connected by Anduril’s software struggled at times to coordinate and perform tasks when out of sight from the operator, said people familiar with the exercise. 

But those involved in the effort say Replicator, which was always intended to be transferred to the military, still notched significant achievements in two short years: It helped buy, test and advance new drone systems, pushed advancements in autonomous technology and shaved years off the traditional weapons-buying process. That approach is now being used for other Pentagon efforts, they say. 

“We wanted to fill gaps and create a more competitive marketplace. Let’s scale what’s scalable, and then let’s find other technology that might be promising,” said Aditi Kumar, former principal deputy director of the innovation unit. “I think the transition to [Special Operations Command] is natural at this point.”

U.S. Military Is Struggling to Deploy AI Weapons

The work is being shifted to a new organization, called DAWG, to accelerate plans to buy thousands of drones

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-ai-weapons-delay-0f560d7e

By Shelby Holliday

Follow, Heather Somerville

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Sept. 26, 2025 10:00 pm ET

The Switchblade 600 drone is among the largest acquisitions in the Pentagon’s AI weapons push. Photo: Michel Euler/Associated Press

Quick Summary

• The Pentagon’s Replicator program, aiming to field thousands of drones by August 2025, has fallen short of its goals and faced implementation challenges.View more

An ambitious Pentagon plan to field thousands of cutting-edge drones to prepare for a potential conflict with China has fallen short of its goal, and the military has struggled to figure out how to use some of the systems in the field, according to people familiar with the matter.

The effort, launched two years ago as a way to quickly buy low-cost autonomous weapons to counter China’s growing military capabilities, is now being shifted to a new organization over concerns it isn’t moving fast enough, the people said.

The move reflects frustrations over setbacks in the program known as Replicator, a signature effort of the Biden administration’s Pentagon that aimed to deliver thousands of air-, land-, and sea-based AI systems by August 2025. Then-Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks announced the program in 2023 with the promise of technology that would be “small, smart, cheap.”

While Hicks requested $1 billion over two years for Replicator, some lawmakers have called for billions of dollars more in spending, arguing the total needs to be far higher to ensure success.

Some Replicator systems have been unreliable, or were so expensive or slow to be manufactured they couldn’t be bought in the quantity needed, according to people familiar with the matter. The Pentagon has also struggled to find software that can successfully control large numbers of drones, made by different companies, working in coordination to find and potentially strike a target—a key to making the Replicator vision work.

Kathleen Hicks, then deputy secretary of defense, announced in 2023 the department’s plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on air-, land-, and sea-based AI systems. Photo: amanda andrade-rhoades/Reuters

The Pentagon leadership has shifted the Replicator work to a new division under Special Operations Command known as the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG, in the hopes of accelerating the program and focusing on the most appropriate weapons. 

Those involved in Replicator offer different reasons for the delays, but say the effort has largely been a success. Some point to the military services, who pushed to buy systems that weren’t ready to be fielded, while others say the setbacks were just a normal part of any ambitious attempt to fast-track technology.

In an email, Hicks said Replicator was on track for success when she departed the Pentagon in late January, and had jump-started the process of buying autonomous systems for the military.

The purpose of Replicator is to prepare for a potential conflict with China in the Pacific. Beijing has rapidly expanded its arsenal of ships, aircraft and high-tech weapons in recent years, and U.S. officials believe Beijing may be ready to seize Taiwan—a key U.S. trading partner—as early as 2027.

A conflict over the island would bring technological and logistical challenges, requiring ocean vessels and aerial drones to cross long stretches and work autonomously, even if radio and GPS communications are jammed. The drones would allow the U.S. to spread out the battlefield, confuse the enemy, overwhelm defenses and attack targets without significant loss of life or expensive equipment, defense officials say.

DAWG now has less than two years to deliver the drones the Pentagon says it needs, according to the people familiar with the matter. The tight timeline reflects the urgency with which officials believe the U.S. must be prepared to fight a war in the Pacific. 

Replicator is now being overseen by the vice commander of Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, a defense official said. In August, as he was taking over the program, Donovan attended part of an event in California that was supposed to showcase some of the whiz-bang technology Replicator had acquired—but also highlighted that the systems weren’t ready for prime time, according to people who participated in the exercise.

Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, vice commander of Special Operations Command. Photo: Zachary Zephir/U.S. Marine Corps

An unmanned boat made by BlackSea Technologies experienced a rudder failure and drifted away. The launch of an aerial drone made by Anduril Industries, a venture-backed defense company, was delayed due to a potential problem with the launch tubes. And the software running on several boats misidentified or failed to identify objects as expected, the people said.

“There were very, very good things that happened from Replicator,” said Anduril’s founder Palmer Luckey. “Could it have been done better? Could it have been more clear about what exactly they were doing? Yes, of course. But big picture, I don’t think it was that bad.” 

A spokeswoman for the Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit, which ran the Replicator program until August, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Some of the participants said that the exercise was a success, and that risk-taking and mishaps are a feature, not a bug.

Last month, the Defense Innovation Unit’s director, Doug Beck, a former combat veteran and Apple executive who was appointed during the Biden administration, resigned.

While the Defense Innovation Unit helped get commercial technologies into the military, it had to grapple with many of the same bureaucratic problems that have long existed in the Defense Department, according to people familiar with the organization. Uniformed officers who lacked technical expertise held sway over which drones would be bought in large numbers, the people said, and some platforms required extensive work to make them operate autonomously. 

A senior Navy officer observes BlackSea Technologies’ unmanned boats, known as the GARC, in Baltimore earlier this year. Photo: u.s. navy/Reuters

Of the dozen or so autonomous systems acquired for Replicator, three were unfinished or existed only as a concept at the time they were selected, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Among Replicator’s shortcomings, officials said, is that the Defense Innovation Unit was directed to buy drones that had older technology, and it didn’t rigorously test platforms and software before acquiring them, other people familiar with the matter said.

One such misstep was the purchase of hundreds of BlackSea’s unmanned boats, known as the GARC, or Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, according to people familiar with the matter. The boats aren’t designed for complex, long-range missions in the Pacific, and Navy officers pushed for them without a clear understanding of their technical limitations, the people said. The military repeatedly changed software stacks and added complications, leading to mounting costs and unnecessary setbacks, they said.

The Navy didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

One of the largest Replicator acquisitions was of the Switchblade 600 drone, which had struggled to perform in Ukraine. An analysis from an Army intelligence center suggested that Switchblade would be vulnerable in conditions where communications were jammed—a feature of modern conflicts, people familiar with the matter said.

AeroVironment, which produces the Switchblade, said it has made extensive improvements to the drone based on years of work in Ukraine, so it can now perform much better against electronic warfare. But the Army declined to buy the newer models for Replicator because it would have caused delays, the people said.

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Lockheed Martin is developing new technology to allow F-35 fighter pilots to control drones. WSJ toured the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility to see the jets and futuristic tech. Photo: Lockheed Martin

The Switchblade costs around $100,000—an order of magnitude more than the small drones the Ukrainians and Russians are using. AeroVironment said its aircraft’s capabilities far exceed that of the typical cheap drone used in Ukraine, and can take out huge air defense or missile launching systems, justifying the price tag.

Integrating the technology also proved challenging. During an exercise last year in the Pacific called Project Kahuna, drones from different manufacturers connected by Anduril’s software struggled at times to coordinate and perform tasks when out of sight from the operator, said people familiar with the exercise. 

But those involved in the effort say Replicator, which was always intended to be transferred to the military, still notched significant achievements in two short years: It helped buy, test and advance new drone systems, pushed advancements in autonomous technology and shaved years off the traditional weapons-buying process. That approach is now being used for other Pentagon efforts, they say. 

“We wanted to fill gaps and create a more competitive marketplace. Let’s scale what’s scalable, and then let’s find other technology that might be promising,” said Aditi Kumar, former principal deputy director of the innovation unit. “I think the transition to [Special Operations Command] is natural at this point.”

Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com, Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com and Brenna T. Smith at brenna.smith@wsj.com

11. U.N. to reimpose sanctions on Iran after weeks of failed diplomacy

Now we can observe what countries will and will not support the sanctions. It would be good for the UN to hold accountable those countries that violate the sanctions.

U.N. to reimpose sanctions on Iran after weeks of failed diplomacy

Rebuffed by the Trump administration, Iran failed Friday in a last-ditch effort to prevent the “snapback” of sanctions that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/26/iran-sanctions-witkoff-nuclear-un/

September 26, 2025 at 9:04 p.m. EDTYesterday at 9:04 p.m. EDT

Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian enters to address the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. (Heather Khalifa/AP)

By Karen DeYoung and John Hudson

Iran and its allies failed Friday in a last-ditch effort to prevent the reimposition of global sanctions that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, as the U.N. Security Council voted down a resolution to extend the deadline.

The so-called “snapback” sanctions that will take effect this weekend include a conventional arms embargo, a ban on uranium enrichment and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, along with travel bans and asset freezes.

Russia and China sponsored the resolution, with only Algeria and Pakistan joining them among the 15 council members. Britain and France, which both vetoed the delay measure, had joined with Germany last month in assessing Iran’s “significant non-performance” in adhering to the terms of the original deal, with a 30-day deadline for compliance.

The snapback action removes one of the last vestiges of the deal and heightens the possibility of escalation in the already-tense atmosphere between Iran and the West. Under the terms of a U.N. resolution that codified the original agreement, the ability to restore sanctions would have expired on Oct. 18.AI Icon

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The European decision comes after years of threats and months of unsuccessful negotiations between them and Tehran. Britain, France and Germany — along with the United States, the European Union, Russia and China — were all part of the original 2015 agreement, from which President Donald Trump withdrew during his first term in office.

Trump has since employed a policy of “maximum pressure” U.S. sanctions and in June followed Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and scientists with a massive bombing campaign designed to destroy the two main facilities at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Last-minute diplomacy this week at the annual summit of global leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York failed, leaving both sides pointing fingers at each other.AI Icon

“We had hoped that European colleagues and the U.S. would think twice, and they would opt for the path of diplomacy and dialogue instead of their clumsy blackmail,” Russian representative Dmitry Polyanskiy said after the vote.

The Europeans and the United States “bear full responsibility for the serious consequences of today’s decision,” which “has utterly obliterated whatever the remaining trust of the Iranian people in the promises of the West,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the council.

In a testy back-and-forth with Araghchi, French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont said “my delegation wishes to remind the [Iranian] delegation of the fact that facts are stubborn. ... Iran is not in compliance” with its agreement.

Intense discussions over the past several days, Bonnafont said, “failed because Iran did not wish to respect three demands” from the Europeans — the full resumption of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities that stopped with the Israeli and U.S. attacks in June, an accounting of all the highly enriched uranium it had stored up to that point and the resumption of negotiations with the United States.

Last week, Iran signed a deal with the IAEA to resume inspections of what remains of Iran’s nuclear program after the bombing, but it remained unclear when they would restart and how extensive they might be.

Negotiations earlier this year between Washington and Tehran, in pursuit of what Trump called a “better deal” to contain Iran’s program of uranium enrichment to bomb-grade levels, were halted after the June attacks.

Trump had sent a letter early this year to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, saying he wanted to negotiate but that he would otherwise pursue military action. When talks finally started, Iran refused direct discussions with Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and limited engagements to technical exchanges between lower-level teams.

Russia told the council Friday that the United States had rebuffed an Iranian offer to talk during the U.N. session. But Witkoff said this week that “we’re talking to them. And why wouldn’t we? We talk to everybody, as we should, that’s the job.”

Iran, Witkoff said, “is in a tough position. Now snapbacks are going to ensue in what, two days or three days, something like that. ... They’re the right medicine for what’s happening.”

Another U.S. official said that the Iranian leadership was hoping to “get maximum sanctions relief” in exchange for the “bare minimum on nuclear and maximum maintaining enrichment.” The official said snapback was necessary “for there to be a diplomatic solution.”

In a Friday meeting in New York with journalists and academics, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticized Witkoff’s negotiating style, saying that the real estate tycoon turned diplomat had taken inconsistent positions from one meeting to the next.

“Talks with Witkoff,” Pezeshkian said, would reach a series of agreements and understandings. But “in the next meeting, all of those were off the table. ... Today they say one thing, and tomorrow it’s 180 degrees different.” During their negotiations, he said, the Trump administration hardened its position from accepting some uranium enrichment by Iran to forbidding it outright.

Iran remained open to a diplomatic solution to its nuclear program, but Pezeshkian expressed doubts about that possibility. “The wall of distrust between us and the Americans is quite thick and quite tall.” He said had spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders at U.N. headquarters in New York this week, but blamed the United States for refusing to show up at a multilateral session that might have proven productive.

Asked about the lack of U.S. participation, a White House official said in an email Friday that “Iran refuses to negotiate directly with President Trump, as their leader said publicly, and tried to sidestep the President’s desire for direct engagement.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House.

Hudson reported from New York. Adam Taylor and Susannah George contributed to this report.

12. Europe’s Flattery of Trump Is a Strategy. It Isn’t Working.

Excerpts:

“Europe,” after all, remains a fiction. The continent is split between northern states that have the prosperity and fiscal space to ramp up defense spending, and the southern states that don’t. Russophobes in Scandinavia, the Baltics and Eastern Europe don’t have much in common with Russophiles like Orban or France’s far-right leader Marine le Pen. The continent has far to go on defense, as well as economic competitiveness: One year after former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi issued his landmark report on the latter, little has happened.

There’s also the deficit of strategic tenacity. Trump’s demand for a European trade war against China was cynical, but it revealed the hypocrisy of leaders who call the Ukraine war an existential challenge yet shrink from painful measures required to win it.

It’s possible, then, that Europe will remain mired in weakness and division. It’s also possible that a post-American Europe could become a place of venom and violence again.

For decades, the American security blanket has smothered Europe’s internal rivalries. If the blanket is withdrawn, as Europe rearms — and as right-wing nationalist movements gain political strength — perhaps old fights for leadership will flare and, one day, turn lethal.

Europe’s Flattery of Trump Is a Strategy. It Isn’t Working.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/europes-flattery-of-trump-is-a-strategy-it-isnt-working/

By Hal Brands

Bloomberg Opinion

September 25, 2025

Europe, geographically speaking, is a small peninsula protruding from a much larger landmass, Eurasia. Today, the continent feels small indeed.

Europe is being squeezed by a probing, predatory Russia. It simultaneously faces a US that grows more dangerous, more distant. A continent that flourished in the American global order has reached an epic inflection point: Either Europe will become a geopolitical force in its own right, or it will become an afterthought, a victim, in a fragmenting world.

The pressure from Moscow is unabating. President Vladimir Putin’s grinding war against Ukraine is a siege of Europe’s outer defenses. Aggressive hybrid warfare makes matters worse.

Russian drones and planes overflew Poland, Estonia and Romania — and now, it seems, Denmark and Norway — this month.

President Donald Trump offered wildly inconsistent responses to Russia’s aerial bullying, and has mostly held back US capabilities from NATO’s response. This is part of Trump’s larger pattern of disconcerting behavior: demanding that Denmark cede Greenland; imposing an asymmetric trade deal on Europe; slashing US support for frontline NATO states; and politically backing pro-Russian actors including the Alternative for Germany party and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Trump has also consistently blamed the Ukraine war on Ukraine, not Russia. He recently demanded that European countries torch their trade relationship with China, in exchange for harsher US sanctions on Russia — even as Trump seeks his own trade deal with Beijing. Trump’s major contribution to transatlantic security, prodding European states to spend more on their militaries, could be a prelude to the partial withdrawal of US forces from the continent.

Russia becomes more menacing; America becomes more aloof and aggressive. The reaction of most European leaders has been to hug Trump tight.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte infamously called Trump “daddy.” A coterie of leaders — Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Italy’s Georgia Meloni and others — rushed to Washington last month to keep Trump from cutting a peace deal that fundamentally disfavors Ukraine. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, touted the lopsided US-EU trade deal as the foundation of a new transatlantic relationship.

Chasing and flattering an anti-European president may seem like diplomatic delusion. Really, it’s a hard-headed maneuver born of weakness and desperation.

There’s no denying that transatlantic ties are fraying. American attention is being drawn to Asia by the Chinese challenge. Trump is turning America into a transactional, neo-imperial superpower abroad and pursuing an illiberal project at home. Europe could one day find itself trapped between a vengeful Russia, a neo-mercantilist China, and a nakedly exploitive US.

European leaders know this: The continent, Merz said in February, must “achieve independence from the USA.” Yet for now, a rupture would simply heighten European vulnerability. Diplomatic self-abasement is a way of buying time — delaying a transatlantic breakup until the continent can strengthen itself.

Military spending is rising, albeit slowly, toward NATO’s new standard of 3.5% of GDP. Some standouts, like Poland, are going higher. German arms-makers are increasing defense-industrial cooperation with Ukraine, while European states slowly reduce dependence on a fickle Washington: Witness Denmark’s recent decision to buy French-Italian air defense systems rather than American-made Patriot missiles.

European military aid to Kyiv exceeds America’s. That aid may not help the Ukrainians win, but it can help keep them from losing — and thereby push back the moment when Putin turns his full, malign attention to Europe.

It’s hard to see any good alternative — and easy to see how this strategy could still fizzle.

“Europe,” after all, remains a fiction. The continent is split between northern states that have the prosperity and fiscal space to ramp up defense spending, and the southern states that don’t. Russophobes in Scandinavia, the Baltics and Eastern Europe don’t have much in common with Russophiles like Orban or France’s far-right leader Marine le Pen. The continent has far to go on defense, as well as economic competitiveness: One year after former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi issued his landmark report on the latter, little has happened.

There’s also the deficit of strategic tenacity. Trump’s demand for a European trade war against China was cynical, but it revealed the hypocrisy of leaders who call the Ukraine war an existential challenge yet shrink from painful measures required to win it.

It’s possible, then, that Europe will remain mired in weakness and division. It’s also possible that a post-American Europe could become a place of venom and violence again.

For decades, the American security blanket has smothered Europe’s internal rivalries. If the blanket is withdrawn, as Europe rearms — and as right-wing nationalist movements gain political strength — perhaps old fights for leadership will flare and, one day, turn lethal.

From today’s starting point, a hypercompetitive Europe seems like a distant problem. But old demons caged by US leadership could escape once that leadership is gone.

13. Will Putin call Nato’s bluff? European militaries are a paper tiger

Conclusion:

All of the above [below] explains why Putin’s motley army — home-grown mercenaries from Russia’s poorest backwaters, convicted criminals and North Korean slave soldiers — can nevertheless frighten European governments into rearming at great expense. As for Donald Tusk and his Poles — they would do well to learn the lessons of another Russian incursion in September. Not in 2025, but in 1939, when the French army did not move, and the Royal Air Force did not bomb. The difference now, of course, is that Poland really could defend itself, if it emulated the Finns across the Baltic and conscripted 18-year-olds, while continuing to add trained soldiers to its reserve units. Fail, however, and Putin will only keep pushing.

Will Putin call Nato’s bluff? European militaries are a paper tiger

https://unherd.com/2025/09/will-putin-call-natos-bluff/

Edward Luttwak

September 26, 2025   6 mins“Paper tiger”. That is how Donald Trump described Russia during his UN speech on Tuesday, but judging by their performance, that put-down could equally be applied to most of America’s own allies. That became clear enough earlier this month, when 21 Russian drones flew into Polish airspace, triggering a Nato air-intrusion alert, the closure of Polish airports, the scrambling of fighters to intercept them — and a hard look at combat readiness right across the alliance.

Dutch F-35 fighters bagged four of the drones, and the others went down by themselves: they were not bombardment drones, just plastic decoys without explosive warheads. Debris aside, in fact, the only damage was the destruction of a house near Lublin, caused not by the Russians, but by a sophisticated $1.9 million US air-to-air missile. It had been launched by a Polish F-16 fighter at a drone — and missed.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, was quick to use the Russian incursion to call for more defence spending, urging Nato members to spend 5% of their GDPs on defence. This week’s latest apparent drone incursion, this time over Denmark, has raised the pressure even further: especially now that Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury, is warning that Trump has no plans to send more troops to help out his European allies.

But simply raising defence spending will not turn Europe’s states into genuinely effective military powers. For one thing, the GDP criterion is much too vague to mean much. Finland, for instance, spends only 2.4% of its GDP on defence and yet can mobilise some 250,000 determined soldiers. Other Nato members, which spend much more than the Finns, obtain far less for their money.

Moreover, focusing on GDP instead of force requirements — so many battalions, artillery regiments, fighter squadrons — is nothing but an invitation to cheat, an opportunity lustily taken up across the continent. The latest Spanish submarine, for instance, is not imported for €1 billion or so from Thyssen-Krupp, which supplies navies around the world with competent, well-proven submarines. Instead, it was proudly designed and built at the Navantia state-owned Spanish shipyard: for €3.8 billion, roughly the cost of a much bigger French nuclear-powered submarine. As a feeble justification for that absurdly high cost, Spain’s defence minister cited a supposedly advanced air-recirculation system — so greatly advanced, in fact, that it is not actually ready, and will not be installed even in the submarine’s next iteration.

More from this authorEurope needs a new Great Power

By Edward Luttwak

Soon, though, Italy will outdo Spain’s platinum submarine: by including a new bridge to Sicily, set to cost some €13.5 billion, into its 2% of GDP Nato spending quota. The government’s excuse is that some 3,000 Italian troops may need to cross the Strait of Messina were the Italian army ever to be fully mobilised. But it would be much cheaper to fly them individually, each trooper in his own luxurious private jet. Even without the bridge, meanwhile, Italy’s cheating on the 2% target is bad enough. Most notably, much of the Italian Navy’s spending goes towards warships made by Italy’s state-owned Fincantieri shipyard. But there is not enough money for the fuel and maintenance expenses to operate more than half of them, meaning another industrial subsidy is camouflaged as defence spending. All the while, Italy refuses to increase its defence budget beyond the very modest target of 2% — which it has yet to meet.

As for Germany, three and half years since the start of the Ukraine war, with ever more ambitious rearmament plans loudly promised, the total number of personnel in uniform has actually slightly decreased. And, aside from beginning a multi-billion euro purchase on an Israeli missile-defence system, nothing much has happened. Despite its high demand in Ukraine, even the battle tank, that German specialty, is being produced in very, very small numbers: so low that the annual output could be lost in a morning of combat. In May 2023, indeed, a meagre 18 Leopard tanks were ordered to replace older models lost in Ukraine. The expected delivery date? Between 2025 and 2026! Then, in July, Germany purchased a further 105 advanced Leopard 2A8s. That is the number needed to equip a single brigade, the German force stationed in Lithuania — and they are expected to arrive in 2030!

The sad truth, then, is that Germany has yet to start working in earnest to correct the extreme neglect inflicted on its armed forces during the long Merkel premiership, when she kept saying that “even if we had the money we would not know how to spend it”. All the while, German helicopters lacked rotors and tanks lacked engines. The exceedingly slow recovery of the German army is especially frustrating because Nato is not actually short of air or naval forces. What it lacks are ground forces, soldiers more simply, or rather soldiers actually willing to fight. Having added Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the alliance, tiny countries with outsized defence needs, the alliance faces a severe troop deficit across the entire Baltic sector. The troops so far sent by Nato allies, such as visiting Alpini battalions from Italy, cannot improve the maths.

“The sad truth is that Germany has yet to start working in earnest to correct the extreme neglect inflicted on its armed forces during the long Merkel premiership”

With its 38 million inhabitants, Poland could certainly raise an adequate army to defend its two borders with Russian Kaliningrad and Russian-dominated Belarus. But its governments have persistently chosen not to do so, rejecting conscription followed by reserve service along Finnish or Israeli lines. In November 2021, just four months before Ukraine’s invasion but with every sign that Russia was on the move, Poland had just 42,000 combat-ready soldiers. That is more or less the right number for a country of 38 million — if, that is, Poland were located somewhere between Fiji and Tonga.

And now, even after the drone attack, Prime Minister Tusk still refuses conscription, the only way to generate the large forces Poland needs to defend two fronts. The official explanation is that conscription under communism subjected 18-year-old recruits to humiliation rituals, which all too often slid into torture and even rape. Those are practices which the Poles like to explain are caused by the infiltration of the Red Army’s notorious “dedovshchina” (“reign of old-timers”) system of abuse by older soldiers. But the reputation of Poland’s pre-communist army was no better here, and indeed for Belorussian, Jewish and Ukrainian conscripts things could be much worse.

The truth, then, is simpler: Polish youth are just as post-heroic as their peers across Europe. Unlike their predecessors, they do not feel the urge to prove themselves in combat, let alone to serve as long as it takes to defend their countries. The many young Ukrainians in Poland, who fled their own country to avoid being conscripted to defend it, do nothing to induce patriotic attitudes. Nor does it help that Warsaw constantly talks up the few thousand US combat soldiers foolishly deployed in Poland. As Bessant’s latest comments imply, this is a force that will be evacuated rather than reinforced if there is a major Russian offensive, but which now induces young Poles to say that if “Nato” wants more troops, let them send more Americans.

More from this authorHow the West can beat the rest

By Edward Luttwak

In Britain, for its part, the post-heroic refusal is irrelevant. His Majesty has only 73,847 full-time soldiers at his disposal, most of whom are recruited from the small subset of British families with strong military traditions. Foreign recruits with similar backgrounds make up the remainder, most notably the 4,127 Gurkhas, but also some from Fiji. The French Foreign Legion has fewer than 9,000 soldiers — self-selected aspiring warriors from everywhere, and whose French officers are just as atypical. But the rest of the French Army is so far gone that even among the 11,000 supposedly elite Troupes de Marine, less than half are willing and able to fight.

As for the other European armies, the less said the better. The Danes and Swedes announced with great fanfare that they were joining Finland in introducing conscription: only to accommodate so many demands for exemptions that in 2024 they enrolled some 10,000 troops between them, as compared to 77,000 Finns 18 year olds drawn from a far smaller population. The Belgians and Dutch, who used to provide three armoured divisions to Nato, might now field a tenth of that: a mere three battalions. The Italian, Spanish, Portuguese armies do not even train in earnest anymore. Their exercises are bored drills, their manoeuvres theatrical displays scripted to look good, instead of being deliberately disrupted by supervisors to test the mental and physical agility of officers and men as in real manoeuvres. As total numbers shrink, moreover, those armies did not reduce the number of officers anywhere near proportionately, meaning many Nato armies have plenty of generals but very few combat-ready troops for them to lead.

All of the above explains why Putin’s motley army — home-grown mercenaries from Russia’s poorest backwaters, convicted criminals and North Korean slave soldiers — can nevertheless frighten European governments into rearming at great expense. As for Donald Tusk and his Poles — they would do well to learn the lessons of another Russian incursion in September. Not in 2025, but in 1939, when the French army did not move, and the Royal Air Force did not bomb. The difference now, of course, is that Poland really could defend itself, if it emulated the Finns across the Baltic and conscripted 18-year-olds, while continuing to add trained soldiers to its reserve units. Fail, however, and Putin will only keep pushing.

Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak

14. Stop the World: Greenland’s strategic weight surges amid US, China, Russia jostling

Geography matters. Always.

Excerpts:

On the future of Greenland, polls show overwhelming opposition to becoming part of the US, but also strong support for independence from Denmark. Yet independence remains elusive. The 2009 Self-Government Act commits to eventual statehood but requires Danish parliamentary approval.

‘Why would Denmark sever Greenland? It’s like taking off your healthy leg,’ Buchanan says. ‘It gives you vast resources in the Arctic. It’s a bounty gold mine. It makes you a relevant Arctic player.’

With Washington pressing its NATO allies to boost spending, and as China and Russia deepen cooperation in the Arctic, Greenland’s status is no longer peripheral. It is now key to the reshaping of global trade, security and strategic competition.

As Buchanan concludes: ‘You can’t change geography. Greenland is a North American island, not a European one’ and ‘destiny for the Greenlandic people has always been independence, it’s just a matter of how they get there’.

Stop the World: Greenland’s strategic weight surges amid US, China, Russia jostling | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · Olivia Nelson · September 26, 2025

Greenland, an often-overlooked expanse of ice and rock, is fast becoming a focal point of strategic competition between the United States, China and Russia.

Speaking on ASPI’s Stop the World, Elizabeth Buchanan—an Arctic specialist and author of a new book, So You Want to Own Greenland?—says that US President Donald Trump’s talk of ‘buying’ Greenland is not a whimsical provocation, but the latest in a centuries-old struggle over control of the world’s largest island.

‘Buying, owning or taking Greenland’ has been a preoccupation for the US since at least the mid-19th century, Buchanan says. ‘For continental defence, Greenland has always been critical [to the US]. It is their front doorstep, their back doorstep, their side doorstep.’

Denmark formally took possession of Greenland in 1814 under the Treaty of Kiel, after centuries of shifting Norse and colonial control. Since then, the island’s fate has been tethered to powers far larger than its 57,000 inhabitants.

Washington first contemplated annexing Greenland in the 1840s, seeing its position as crucial for continental defence. When Denmark fell to Nazi Germany during World War II, the US occupied Greenland to block German expansion. In 1946, Washington made an offer to buy the island. During the Cold War, Greenland became home to Thule Air Base—now Pituffik Space Base—a linchpin of the nuclear early-warning system.

According to Buchanan, Danish leaders have long bristled at Washington’s ambitions. In the 1940s, King Christian of Denmark resisted overtures from president Franklin Roosevelt, writing heartfelt letters asserting Greenland’s sovereignty, even as his own country was under Nazi occupation. But regardless, US influence grew, leading to clandestine nuclear storage and missile experiments, such as the now-notorious Camp Century project buried beneath the ice.

Greenland’s geography remains strategically significant. Its position straddling the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans gives Washington a launch pad for missile detection, space surveillance and power projection.

‘Cold and empty gives you a very good view of space,’ Buchanan says. With little thermal interference from human activity, Greenland offers unmatched clarity for space-based sensors.

But its value extends far beyond defence. The seabed around Greenland holds oil, gas and critical minerals, while its waters sustain rich fisheries. As climate change opens new Arctic shipping routes, Greenland sits at a strategic choke point—the Greenland–Iceland–Britain gap—vital for monitoring Russian submarines and potentially influencing the flow of global trade.

Buchanan says that the number of countries investing in Arctic shipping routes is increasing. Countries, including China and South Korea, are looking to exploit shorter northern sea lanes that could cut shipping times between Asia and Europe by up to 40 percent. Beijing has invested in Russian ports and transshipment hubs along the Northern Sea Route and is building its own nuclear-powered icebreakers.

‘If you start reorientating global shipping through the north, that takes pressure off the Malacca Strait and South China Sea,’ Buchanan warns. ‘It makes Australia a pricey market to resupply’ and undermines economies such as Singapore that rely on shipping.

Buchanan says that Beijing’s interest in Greenland is primarily focused on infrastructure, including bids to build airports. But she finds scientific and educational partnerships, such as the polar research initiative hosted at China’s Yellow River Station in Svalbard, far more concerning.

It is little wonder that the US, under any president, would be interested in the strategic value of the island and in which countries—particularly strategic adversaries—may be seeking and gaining influence. More countries, including those in the Indo-Pacific and particularly those with Antarctic interests such as Australia, should take such an interest.

For Copenhagen, Greenland is both an asset and a burden. Its control of the island grants Denmark Arctic nation status and a seat at the table in polar affairs. But it also comes with a complicated colonial past.

On the future of Greenland, polls show overwhelming opposition to becoming part of the US, but also strong support for independence from Denmark. Yet independence remains elusive. The 2009 Self-Government Act commits to eventual statehood but requires Danish parliamentary approval.

‘Why would Denmark sever Greenland? It’s like taking off your healthy leg,’ Buchanan says. ‘It gives you vast resources in the Arctic. It’s a bounty gold mine. It makes you a relevant Arctic player.’

With Washington pressing its NATO allies to boost spending, and as China and Russia deepen cooperation in the Arctic, Greenland’s status is no longer peripheral. It is now key to the reshaping of global trade, security and strategic competition.

As Buchanan concludes: ‘You can’t change geography. Greenland is a North American island, not a European one’ and ‘destiny for the Greenlandic people has always been independence, it’s just a matter of how they get there’.

aspistrategist.org.au · Olivia Nelson · September 26, 2025

15. How Long-Range Weapons Could Upend Modern Warfare

Excerpts:

Today, one has to wonder whether technology, cost, magazine depth, and weapon size are erasing the distinction between offense and defense. Of course, there will always be a difference in strategic and political terms. Offense and defense differ by the purposes impelling them. The contender on strategic offense has resolved to wrest something from an unwilling antagonist, while the contender playing defense wants to preserve what it has. That’s a fundamental disparity in purpose.

Down on the operational and tactical levels, though, the boundary is blurring into invisibility. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz defines waiting as the essence of battlefield defense. “What is the concept of defense?” he asks, then answers himself: “The parrying of a blow. What is its characteristic feature? Awaiting the blow.” But Clausewitz pivots to observe that defense is not a passive endeavor. He maintains that “the defensive form of war is not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed blows.” For Clausewitz, offense lurks within defense.

And it could come to dominate. Why wait to parry an enemy’s assault if you have the option to land a preemptive blow against hostile forces in or near their home bases? For example, Google Earth indicates that the major US naval base at Pearl Harbor sits about 4,200 nautical miles from China’s Shandong Peninsula. If the Pentagon is correct about the DF-27’s range (4,300 nautical miles), that implies a missile battery positioned on the peninsula could annihilate US Pacific Fleet units well before they ever got underway to intervene in the Western Pacific. The PLA could be playing strategic defense as the Chinese Communist Party defines it; but PLA access-denial operations would look mighty offensive to the United States. All the more so if the weapons engagement zone someday envelops the entire Pacific theater, including not just Hawaii but US West Coast bases such as San Diego. The allure of a preemptive strike—even in the service of strategic defense—could prove irresistible for military commanders and their political masters. Early and radical escalation is a real prospect.

Attack at extreme range, attack and defend at close range. Such is the brave new world we live in.

How Long-Range Weapons Could Upend Modern Warfare

The National Interest · James Holmes

Topic: Naval Warfare

Region: Americas, and Asia

Tags: A2/AD, Ammunition, Missiles, and Naval Strategy

September 24, 2025

By: James Holmes

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Long-range weapons will not totally reshape war as we know it—but they could blur the difference between offensive and defensive operations.

The character of warfare feels increasingly elastic. Countervailing factors are stretching and compressing distance at the same time. For one, military technology is galloping along. Sensor, computer, and weapons technology is drastically boosting the reach, precision, speed, and evasiveness of guided missiles. Uncrewed and often autonomous vehicles prowl the skies, the sea surface, and the depths. Novel implements like artificial intelligence promise to further alter the face of warfare. Meanwhile, space forces maintain sleepless overwatch over the battlespace, helping armed forces detect, track, and target their foes at extreme ranges.

In other words, technology is stretching precision-weapons range to its utmost. In fact, the US Air Force and Space Force prophesy that the day is not far distant when armed forces and societies will enjoy no safe refuge from attack—anywhere on the planet.

At the same time, the availability of precision technology is democratizing long-range strike warfare. Not that many years ago, the US military enjoyed a near-monopoly on long-range strikes. US fighting forces could roam Eurasian environs with impunity, intervening in the rimlands wherever policymakers in Washington decreed. American forces could wage “standoff” warfare—firing their weapons from beyond their opponent’s reach, rather than venturing into harm’s way. Standoff warfare safeguards platforms such as warships and warplanes—not to mention their human crews—while still letting them visit destruction on the foe. Range curbs risk.

Cheap, Small, Long-Range: The Missile’s Impossible Triangle

In recent years, however, the proliferation of precision-strike technology has largely nullified the US standoff advantage. Proliferation has empowered a widening circle of combatants—the standout being China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—to engage antagonists such as US joint forces from beyond the reach of their weaponry. Having belatedly awoken to this danger, the Pentagon and defense-industrial complex are working feverishly to boost the range of America’s precision arms, along with firing platforms that carry them. If successful they will restore some semblance of martial parity in the Indo-Pacific and other embattled theaters.

At the same time, though, factors such as the per-unit cost of munitions, the demand for lots and lots of them, and the demand for smaller munitions are working against the revolution in range. Extreme-range armaments come with a hefty price tag per round, meaning the inventory of them will be lean in any wise armed force. After all, defense budgets are finite; only so much national largesse can go into the military, and only so much of a defense budget can go towards procuring an arsenal boasting theaterwide reach. (Of course, this could change before long, depending on whether the reach and lethality of relatively cheap drones continue to surge at the meteoric rate they have during the Russia-Ukraine war.) A military built solely around high-end weaponry risks having too few rounds to prevail in combat.

And the Ukraine war has furnished a vivid reminder of the obvious: mass matters. Armed forces need munitions in abundance to overcome peer rivals. Military chieftains fret about “magazine depth,” slang for depositing lots of rounds in the armory to loft at an enemy in combat. Such concerns are prodding militaries to field cheaper and smaller munitions in bulk. Lower cost helps an armed force afford more rounds. Smaller size means each firing platform can carry more munitions, boosting the platform’s and the force’s volume of fire.

But holding down costs and physical proportions typically means forfeiting a measure of capability—range in particular. The quest for affordable magazine depth—or what the US Air Force calls “affordable mass”—is impelling tacticians to defend themselves, and sometimes undertake offensive operations, within knife-fight range of the enemy. So much for standoff warfare.

There Are Long-Range Weapons—but Not Enough of Them

Consider some of the ultra-long-range armaments already fielded or making their way to the battlefield. The PLA has deployed a family of anti-ship ballistic missiles able to lash out at moving ships riding the waves far away. Its DF-26 boasts a range that could exceed 2,100 nautical miles, according to the Pentagon’s latest public estimate. That means US task forces steaming to the relief of beleaguered Asian allies will have to venture deep within the PLA “weapons engagement zone,” enduring hostile fire until they close to within reach of their own weapons. And that leaves aside the rest of the PLA anti-access arsenal, including such implements as submarines and tactical and strategic air power. An even longer-range antiship ballistic missile, the DF-27, is reportedly in the works as well—and could have a range upwards of 4,300 nautical miles according to the Pentagon. That will only compound the operational and tactical dilemma for the United States and its allies.

The United States is not without ultra-long-range capabilities of its own. This summer, the US Air Force demonstrated its prowess by dispatching B-2 stealth bombers from airfields in Missouri to bomb Iranian nuclear sites half a world away. The Air Force is augmenting its slender fleet of stealth bombers with brand-new B-21 Raiders. B-21s could make their operational debut starting next year. The Navy is also backfitting its flotilla of Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers with “Conventional Prompt Strike.” This initiative will endow the three Zumwalts with a main battery of hypersonic missiles featuring much-expanded—though tightly classified—reach. Navy leaders intend to arm not just stealth destroyers, but the latest Virginia-class attack submarines, with Conventional Prompt Strike, a weapon system jointly developed by the Navy and Army.

But it warrants repeating that high-performance, long-range munitions tend to be bulky, complex, pricey, and thus hard for any military to maintain in numbers adequate to prevail in war. For example, the Zumwalt class—destroyers of cruiser proportions and displacement—will carry just a dozen hypersonic rounds apiece. Cost and size limit magazine depth.

Hence the compression effect on geographic distance. Rather than invest a disproportionate share of their budgets in extreme-range weapons, militaries both Western and non-Western end up substituting price and weapon size for range when filling out the arsenal. In other words, they search out cheaper, smaller, and simpler implements they can afford in large numbers. The upshot is that many future engagements will take place not across thousands of miles but at shockingly close quarters.

The Pentagon Is Prioritizing Quantity over Range

Examples of the US quest for affordable mass are legion. For example, the US Air Force has worked out a way to arm newer F-15 fighter/attack jets with a truly extraordinary combat load of fifty air-to-air munitions per sortie. Eight come from the standard panoply of high-end air-to-air missiles, for use in typical dogfights. Forty-two are short-range, laser-guided rockets that require F-15s to close to short range to engage their targets, chiefly drones. In other words, affordable mass once again comes at the expense of standoff distance, while exposing airframes and aircrews to increased peril.

Meanwhile, the Navy has been exploring counterdrone options of its own. It turns out that one economical way to bring down slow, ungainly drones is with a 5-inch 54 deck gun, a shipboard cannon able to disgorge up to 20 middleweight projectiles per minute across firing ranges up to 13 nautical miles. Gun engagements are another short-range affair, at least relative to surface-to-air missile shots. By contrast, the Navy’s workhorse anti-air missile, the SM-2, has an advertised range of up to 90 nautical miles—but a cost of $1.2 to 2.4 million, depending on block variant.

Another naval foray into the realm of affordable mass is “Project Revolver.” The project aims to boost the firepower on board Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) by “multi-packing” small-diameter 6.75-inch MK 58 “Compact Rapid Attack Weapon” (CRAW) torpedoes or 3-inch unmanned aerial vehicles within a single torpedo tube. If successful, this effort will empower a Virginia SSN to uncork salvoes of a dozen or more CRAWs at enemy submarines or surface warships. US Navy leaders ultimately hope to adapt Revolver multi-packs for firing from Mark 41 vertical launchers on board guided-missile destroyers.

Here again, fleet designers confront a tradeoff among per-round cost, magazine depth, range, and risk. Numbers are hard to come by, but one informed guesstimate puts the range of a CRAW somewhere around 4,000 yards. Whatever the exact figure, it is a safe bet, considering its winsome size and limited propulsion capacity, that the range of this very lightweight torpedo will be a small fraction of that of the standard SSN Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo. Sub crews seem destined to make a partial return to World War II tactics, which demanded that boats close to intimate range of merchantmen and ships of war to let loose their rudimentary torpedoes.

So the pattern repeats itself; range yields to cost, magazine depth, and weapon size, compelling combatants to accept greater risk.

What Do “Offense” and “Defense” Mean Anymore?

It’s tempting to speculate about what the elongation and compression of distance does to the balance between offense and defense. So let’s do so. Sometimes military trendlines favor shore-based defenders trying to regulate, if not forbid, access to offshore waters and skies. That was the case during the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Soviet military hoisted a “blue belt of defense” to shield the Eastern Bloc’s maritime periphery from NATO naval incursions. Shore-based combat aircraft and missiles, naval surface forces, and submarines would mount what we nowadays term an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy, exacting a steep price for hostile entry into offshore waters. The menace of seaward Soviet Backfire bomber raids was prominent in US Navy lore when I was a youngster in khakis in the 1980s.

But sometimes the trendlines profit naval forces operating on offense around hostile coastlines. The debut of the Aegis radar, computer, and fire-control system aboard Ticonderoga-class cruisers in 1983 enabled US Navy surface groups to fend off air and missile threats of the day. Aegis restored mobility to offensive naval forces during the Cold War’s endgame—making an aggressive Maritime Strategy feasible and contributing to the Soviet downfall.

Today, one has to wonder whether technology, cost, magazine depth, and weapon size are erasing the distinction between offense and defense. Of course, there will always be a difference in strategic and political terms. Offense and defense differ by the purposes impelling them. The contender on strategic offense has resolved to wrest something from an unwilling antagonist, while the contender playing defense wants to preserve what it has. That’s a fundamental disparity in purpose.

Down on the operational and tactical levels, though, the boundary is blurring into invisibility. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz defines waiting as the essence of battlefield defense. “What is the concept of defense?” he asks, then answers himself: “The parrying of a blow. What is its characteristic feature? Awaiting the blow.” But Clausewitz pivots to observe that defense is not a passive endeavor. He maintains that “the defensive form of war is not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed blows.” For Clausewitz, offense lurks within defense.

And it could come to dominate. Why wait to parry an enemy’s assault if you have the option to land a preemptive blow against hostile forces in or near their home bases? For example, Google Earth indicates that the major US naval base at Pearl Harbor sits about 4,200 nautical miles from China’s Shandong Peninsula. If the Pentagon is correct about the DF-27’s range (4,300 nautical miles), that implies a missile battery positioned on the peninsula could annihilate US Pacific Fleet units well before they ever got underway to intervene in the Western Pacific. The PLA could be playing strategic defense as the Chinese Communist Party defines it; but PLA access-denial operations would look mighty offensive to the United States. All the more so if the weapons engagement zone someday envelops the entire Pacific theater, including not just Hawaii but US West Coast bases such as San Diego. The allure of a preemptive strike—even in the service of strategic defense—could prove irresistible for military commanders and their political masters. Early and radical escalation is a real prospect.

Attack at extreme range, attack and defend at close range. Such is the brave new world we live in.

About the Author: James Holmes

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, and a Faculty Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer and combat veteran of the first Gulf War, he served as a weapons and engineering officer in the battleship Wisconsin, engineering and firefighting instructor at the Surface Warfare Officers School Command, and military professor of strategy at the Naval War College. He holds a PhD in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and MAs in mathematics and international relations from Providence College and Salve Regina University. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The National Interest · James Holmes

16. Russia will equip and train Chinese air battalion, leaked documents reviewed by think tank show

Airborne battalion. Someone thinks airborne operations have value.

Excerpts:

The agreement, if fully implemented, would bolster China’s air maneuver capabilities, one of the few areas where Moscow’s military still has an edge over the PLA. And improving in that area could – according to RUSI experts – help China one day achieve its aim of taking Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million which Beijing claims as its territory.

“Russia is equipping and training Chinese special forces groups to penetrate the territory of other countries without being noticed, offering offensive options against Taiwan, the Philippines and other island states in the region,” RUSI fellows Oleksandr V Danylyuk and Jack Watling wrote in an analysis of the deal.

The Philippines is one of many nations with which China has overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea. Vessels from both countries regularly clash in the region, as Beijing becomes more assertive in its claims.

CNN has not independently reviewed the leaked documents, and it is not clear whether the deal has been fully implemented. CNN has reached out to China’s Ministry of National Defense and Russia’s defense ministry for comment.

Russia and China have traded arms since the 1990s, but in the past decade their military partnership has become more robust as ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have warmed, raising alarm bells in Washington.

Russia will equip and train Chinese air battalion, leaked documents reviewed by think tank show | CNN

CNN · Lex Harvey · September 27, 2025

Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks with China's President Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tianjin on September 1, 2025.

Alexander Kazakov/AFP/POOL/Getty Images

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Hong Kong —

Russia has agreed to help China equip and train an airborne battalion, according to leaked documents reviewed by a leading think tank, illustrating the ever-deepening military partnership between Beijing and Moscow.

Russia in 2023 agreed to sell a suite of military equipment to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including assault vehicles, anti-tank guns, and airborne armored personnel carriers, according to documents leaked by the Black Moon hacktivist group and verified by the British think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

The armored vehicles would be equipped with Chinese comms and command-and-control suites, and Russia would train a battalion of Chinese paratroopers to use them, according to the approximately 800 pages of contracts and additional materials reviewed by RUSI.

Under the terms of the agreement, Russia would also transfer technologies to China, that will allow it to make similar weapons, RUSI’s review of the documents shows.

Military personnel take part in a military parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II held in front of Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025.

Alexander Kazakov/AP

The agreement, if fully implemented, would bolster China’s air maneuver capabilities, one of the few areas where Moscow’s military still has an edge over the PLA. And improving in that area could – according to RUSI experts – help China one day achieve its aim of taking Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million which Beijing claims as its territory.

“Russia is equipping and training Chinese special forces groups to penetrate the territory of other countries without being noticed, offering offensive options against Taiwan, the Philippines and other island states in the region,” RUSI fellows Oleksandr V Danylyuk and Jack Watling wrote in an analysis of the deal.

The Philippines is one of many nations with which China has overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea. Vessels from both countries regularly clash in the region, as Beijing becomes more assertive in its claims.

CNN has not independently reviewed the leaked documents, and it is not clear whether the deal has been fully implemented. CNN has reached out to China’s Ministry of National Defense and Russia’s defense ministry for comment.

Russia and China have traded arms since the 1990s, but in the past decade their military partnership has become more robust as ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have warmed, raising alarm bells in Washington.

Xi, Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stood side by side last month at a Chinese military parade, in an unprecedented show of solidarity against the US and its allies.

Warships of the Russian Navy and Chinese Navy take part in the joint strategic command and staff exercise "Ocean 2024" in the Sea of Japan, in this still image taken from video released September 16, 2024.

Russian Defence Ministry/Reuters

Moscow and Beijing increasingly view their close relationship as critical to achieving their respective goals. Earlier this month, Putin said the bilateral relationship was at an “unprecedentedly high level” as the two countries reportedly inked a long-stalled agreement to build a massive new pipeline to send natural gas to China via Mongolia. Moscow has increasingly turned to China to replace Europe as its major gas buyer, since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow and Bejing have also been ramping up their joint military drills in recent years, including joint naval patrols around Japan and air and sea patrols off Alaska. In August, they conducted their first-ever joint submarine patrol in the Pacific, according to reports in state-run media.

China and Russia conducted 14 joint military drills in 2024, the most since the two countries started doing drills together in 2003, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The greatest benefit of the 2023 deal for Beijing, according to the RUSI fellows, would be in the training of the airborne battalion, since Russia’s forces have combat experience in that area, while China’s do not.

If China were to attack Taiwan, an air maneuver would likely be the most effective way to get key troops and equipment onto the island in the early stages of an operation - although any attempt to invade and hold the island would likely require a huge and very difficult amphibious assault by sea.

According to the agreement, the training would be carried out partly in Russia and partly in China. Russian instructors would then train the Chinese airborne battalion at training grounds in China, preparing the soldiers for landing, fire control and maneuvering.

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CNN · Lex Harvey · September 27, 2025

17. The Trump Administration Talks Tough on China, But Enables the CCP’s Repressive Behaviors

A view from Amnesty International.

Excerpts:

Instead, rhetoric on the threat of the CCP and its authoritarian practices is increasingly being used by the administration to justify terminating domestic policies the administration already opposed, including education programs and reproductive health policies. On May 9, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) announced the United States’ decision to cut its funding to the organization, amounting to $355 million, on the unfounded claim that UNFPA supports the Chinese government’s coercive reproductive policies. 

On May 22, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it had decided to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification to hold the school “accountable for… coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.” On May 28, State Department took further action, announcing the administration will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” and “revise visa criteria” for all future Chinese and Hong Kong applicants. 

On August 26, Trump appeared to reverse his stance, stating the U.S. would accept 600,000 Chinese students into the country, but an DHS proposal that appeared two days later reiterated visa restrictions against international students, including Chinese nationals explicitly. 

By abandoning international fora and its responsibility to pressure the Chinese government to end its human rights abuses while simultaneously taking knee-jerk actions to combat the “the China threat” at home, the Trump administration leaves the root issue of CCP authoritarian abuses unaddressed. While legislation aimed at addressing CCP human rights abuses recently passed the House, emboldened congressional and state lawmakers are also increasingly introducing blunt and far-reaching anti-China bills that have the potential to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities already faced by dissidents in exile, diaspora, and heritage communities in the U.S. 

With Trump’s repeated statements of his intention to visit China in the near future, there is an opportunity for lawmakers to push the administration to take a more principled approach to policymaking on China. Opposing the CCP for its authoritarian practices and repressive abuses is a stance U.S. lawmakers should continue to hold. Any government systematically violating the human rights of the people in its jurisdiction and beyond its borders should face such opprobrium.

However, that stance will be increasingly and rightfully criticized as uncredible and meaningless in practice if the lawmakers in power aren’t equally opposing the use of authoritarian practices at home, or if lawmakers who have consistently stood up against the abuses of the CCP in the past are suddenly silent or unwilling to challenge the administration’s policy decisions on China. The lawmakers in power need to be vocally and publicly supportive of minority colleagues’ efforts to document and challenge the administration’s decisions to undermine means to combat abuses. 

The Trump Administration Talks Tough on China, But Enables the CCP’s Repressive Behaviors

The White House’s actions are far short of what is needed for responding to, and now even reporting on, CCP abuses.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/the-trump-administration-talks-tough-on-china-but-enables-the-ccps-repressive-behaviors/

By Racqueal Legerwood

September 27, 2025

Credit: White House

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made repeated references and centered a significant part of its foreign policy around responding to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its malign actions. There is no question that the CCP is engaging in grave human rights abuses, including crimes against humanity. Withstanding heavy revisions intended to limit its scope, the State Department’s own recently published 2024 Human Rights Report on China outlines the continued control and expanding repression within and outside of China under President Xi Jinping. 

However, despite the Trump administration’s tough stance on China, particularly on trade, its track record falls far short of what is needed for responding to, and now even reporting on, these abuses in a meaningful way.

Since January, President Donald Trump’s executive action on China has prioritized responding to national and economic security concerns laid out in the America First Trade and America First Investment policies, while sidelining human rights issues. The most notable result has been an ongoing tumultuous tariff war. Since coming to an initial resolution in Geneva in May, both sides have continued to accuse the other of violating the fragile agreement as negotiations continue. Meanwhile, American and Chinese workers and businesses have borne the brunt of impacts of market uncertainty, rising prices and loss of inventory, jobs, and wages. 

Simultaneously, increased caseload enforcement of the administration’s tariffs has also raised human rights concerns about the ability of Customs and Border Patrol to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). Now coupled with USAID cuts to rights groups that inform UFLPA enforcement, these decisions not only ignore longstanding calls from civil society and lawmakers to strengthen enforcement mechanisms, but actively undermine it. 

The administration has issued executive orders gutting federal agencies at a dizzying pace, severely undermining the United States’ existing response capabilities to Chinese human rights issues. Some of these policy changes have been outright welcomed by the CCP. 

The dismantling of USAID had cascading negative impacts on Chinese human rights NGOs and Tibetan refugee communities. Strict domestic laws governing foreign funding and operation of NGOs in China, coupled with gaps in private and philanthropic sectors, have resulted in China-focused groups relying heavily on U.S. government funding, with USAID dispersing $4.3 million in aid distributed for government and civil society out of $14.2 million in aid for China in 2024. 

Cuts to the Agency for Global Media, which includes the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), threaten crucial and often exclusive reporting on Uyghur and Tibetan issues. This renders many of the abuses suffered by these communities even more hidden to the world and enables the Chinese government to continue that oppression with increased impunity. The State Department’s Human Rights Report China chapter made repeated references to RFA as a source for documenting abuses, demonstrating the administration’s own need for its reporting.  

Most recently, the reorganization of the State Department and the termination of all but two programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) decimates human rights expertise and diplomacy within the institution and represents an overall downgrading of human rights – at a time when civil society groups in many contexts, not least China, are in critical need of support. 

As a part of DRL’s restructure, the new Office of Natural Rights significantly narrows the bureau’s policy focus, with China reportedly singled out as the office’s only country policy priority under “competition with China through a human rights lens.” What this means in practice remains to be seen. However, reframing an understanding of human rights based on “natural rights” rather than the definition established under international law and further elaborated under by recognized international institutions raises significant concerns that the U.S. government plans to define rights unilaterally to meet its own political agenda, undermining universal, long-established protections. These institutional changes, coupled with the extensive revisions to the State Department’s annually mandated human rights reporting, shrink opportunities for the United States to document CCP abuses and seek accountability. 

There were significant omissions from the State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report on China, Hong Kong, and Tibet published last month. That included a blanket omission of LGBTQ issues and a reduction of focus on women’s rights and ethnic discrimination issues, particularly on Tibetan language and cultural erasure efforts. 

In 2024, Amnesty reported on continued repression against LGBTQ activism in China, with activists facing arbitrary detention and interrogation and online censorship of related topics. In Hong Kong, the government cut funding and obstructed fundraising and promotion activities to LGBTQ groups, and failed to provide any meaningful updates on progress toward the implementation of a 2023 ruling by the Court of Final Appeal requiring it to provide an alternative legal framework for the recognition of same-sex partnerships. None of these threats and legislative attacks appeared in the State Department’s report.

The report did include some overview of repressive reproductive policies and systemic challenges unmarried pregnant women in China face. However, it failed to report on gender equality issues beyond certain policies, including continued workplace gender discrimination and government efforts to encourage women to return to “traditional Chinese values” and encourage a “birth-friendly society.” The report briefly made reference to the #MeToo Movement as a “taboo” topic, but contrary to prior reports, did not report on the June sentencing of #MeToo activist Sophia Huang to five years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” 

On Hong Kong, while the report did discuss in detail the human rights impacts of the National Security Law (NSL) and Article 23, the report failed to highlight the added gender-based challenges and gender-based and sexual violence women human rights defenders face for pursuing their activism. This gap is demonstrated in State’s reporting on the case of Chow Hang-tung. While the report highlights her case, it fails to mention her latest legal challenge filed against the Commissioner of Correctional Services over a policy that requires female prisoners to wear pants during the summer while male inmates are allowed to wear shorts. 

On Tibet, there were cuts to previous year’s section on “systematic racial or ethnic violence and discrimination” and redactions to the Children’s Rights section on education. Last year, this section importantly highlighted the United Nations’ 2023 statement on the forced separation of one million Tibetan children from their families to attend residential schools. These reductions left a major gap in reporting on the continued repression against Tibetan language and cultural instruction, most notably the July closures of the Jigme Gyaltsen Vocational School in Gansu province and the Gangjong Sherig Norbu School in Qinghai province. 

The BBC,  New York Times, and RFA all reported on residential boarding schools for Tibetan children and their “prison-like” conditions. RFA published exclusive reporting on the continued staggering number of forcible transfers of monastic students to residential schools, including over 300 students ages 6 to 14 years old from the now-closed Lhamo Kirti Monastery school in Sichuan province in July alone. RFA reports also highlighted the arrests of teens for resisting attending boarding schools, and teens taking and attempting to take their lives after being forced to transfer from monasteries. None of these important reports was mentioned in the State Department’s overview.

On transnational repression and “bilateral pressure,” the report failed to mention the Chinese government’s efforts to erase Tibetan culture on the global stage, including the late 2023 mandate to use “Xizang” in all official documents referring to Tibet, and media reporting on the CCP’s actions in 2024 to encourage international bodies and organizations to use the term, including the British Museum and Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac.

Simultaneously, the administration’s response to human rights concerns – a significant part of then-Senator Marco Rubio’s critique of the Chinese government – has been noticeably muted. In March, the State Department issued visa restrictions in response to the forced return of 40 Uyghurs who had spent over a decade in Thailand to China – after the U.S. demonstratively failed to exhort sufficient influence on its “longstanding ally” to uphold international law. Rubio had expressed strong confidence in his department’s diplomacy to “achieve results” on this issue during his January confirmation hearing. That confidence was clearly misplaced.

In May, Trump suggested he would raise the case of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong billionaire-turned-media mogul who faces trial under the NSL, during trade negotiations in Geneva. No public reporting confirmed this occurred, and the official joint readout of the talks did not mention Lai. 

Rather than modeling rights-respecting policy, the administration’s own authoritarian-like actions have been criticized by some as mimicking CCP behavior, with a few commenters coining these similarities as “MAGA Maoism.” These actions risk fundamentally undermining the United States’ credibility to maintain and implement a principled China policy. 

Instead, rhetoric on the threat of the CCP and its authoritarian practices is increasingly being used by the administration to justify terminating domestic policies the administration already opposed, including education programs and reproductive health policies. On May 9, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) announced the United States’ decision to cut its funding to the organization, amounting to $355 million, on the unfounded claim that UNFPA supports the Chinese government’s coercive reproductive policies. 

On May 22, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it had decided to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification to hold the school “accountable for… coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.” On May 28, State Department took further action, announcing the administration will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” and “revise visa criteria” for all future Chinese and Hong Kong applicants. 

On August 26, Trump appeared to reverse his stance, stating the U.S. would accept 600,000 Chinese students into the country, but an DHS proposal that appeared two days later reiterated visa restrictions against international students, including Chinese nationals explicitly. 

By abandoning international fora and its responsibility to pressure the Chinese government to end its human rights abuses while simultaneously taking knee-jerk actions to combat the “the China threat” at home, the Trump administration leaves the root issue of CCP authoritarian abuses unaddressed. While legislation aimed at addressing CCP human rights abuses recently passed the House, emboldened congressional and state lawmakers are also increasingly introducing blunt and far-reaching anti-China bills that have the potential to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities already faced by dissidents in exile, diaspora, and heritage communities in the U.S. 

With Trump’s repeated statements of his intention to visit China in the near future, there is an opportunity for lawmakers to push the administration to take a more principled approach to policymaking on China. Opposing the CCP for its authoritarian practices and repressive abuses is a stance U.S. lawmakers should continue to hold. Any government systematically violating the human rights of the people in its jurisdiction and beyond its borders should face such opprobrium.

However, that stance will be increasingly and rightfully criticized as uncredible and meaningless in practice if the lawmakers in power aren’t equally opposing the use of authoritarian practices at home, or if lawmakers who have consistently stood up against the abuses of the CCP in the past are suddenly silent or unwilling to challenge the administration’s policy decisions on China. The lawmakers in power need to be vocally and publicly supportive of minority colleagues’ efforts to document and challenge the administration’s decisions to undermine means to combat abuses. 

Authors

Guest Author

Racqueal Legerwood

Racqueal Legerwood is the current China research and advocacy fellow for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA).

18. China-Russia partnership is less than meets the eye

Maybe. I hope so. But I would not count on it.

Excerpts:

China-Russia interdependence is growing but not at a particularly hurried pace, and in some respects, the bilateral relationship is still vastly underdeveloped. For example, the first road bridge connecting the two countries over the Amur River was only completed in 2022.

Despite China’s impressive high-speed rail (HSR) system, it is still impossible to ride HSR between Chinese and Russian cities and that will not change anytime soon.

There are reasons for concern, of course. Russian (and Soviet) engineering has played a fundamental role in improving Chinese air and sea power. The two countries have a very ambitious pattern of space cooperation that even includes a joint mission to set up a lunar base.

In a development worth noting, Xi and Putin were joined in Beijing by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, a development which could portend potential China-Russia coordination in the Korean peninsula.

Nevertheless, China and Russia have decided very clearly not to opt for an all-out military alliance that could threaten the West. While Russia could plausibly be open to such a near-term escalation, China has rejected that approach and Beijing is firmly in the driver’s seat of this bilateral relationship.

With substantial foresight, Chinese leaders have concluded that a new cold war, however overstated, would endanger China’s prosperity and national security.

US pressure, applied continuously against both Russia and China for the last two decades, has unfortunately been a contributing factor to this “quasi-alliance.” Yet if Washington now opts to match Beijing’s restraint, it can make sure the China-Russia relationship remains at its current level, which is to say moderate and non-threatening.

China-Russia partnership is less than meets the eye - Asia Times

China-Russia interdependence is growing slowly, not quickly, as Beijing continues to hedge against a new cold war

asiatimes.com · Lyle Goldstein · September 27, 2025

Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, where the two leaders observed China’s military parade. Watching it, one could be forgiven for thinking Beijing and Moscow are growing dangerously close to the detriment of the United States.

That’s all the more concerning given the Chinese military might on full display at the parade. And while the People’s Liberation Army is indeed no paper tiger, the Beijing spectacle raised an obvious question: if China and Russia are really marching in “lockstep,” why is none of this fearsome Chinese hardware currently being used on the battlefield in Ukraine?

Washington pundits rarely stop to ponder why Russian forces have not been reinforced with Chinese “volunteers” or military gadgetry and firepower. In fact, China has offered the Kremlin only tepid support for its Ukraine war effort.

While this has frustrated some Moscow strategists, it reflects Beijing’s caution, restraint and a more fundamental conviction that a “new cold war” against the West should be strenuously avoided.

This could be seen at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Tianjin, attended by both China and Russia among other nations, which had diplomatic and economic overtones but very little military agenda.

The major headline from that summit was that Chinese and Indian leaders were finally coming together to dialogue and hopefully get beyond the persistent border dispute that has drastically soured that key bilateral relationship since 2020.

Instead of wringing their hands over a new world order run by an “axis of authoritarians,” Washington should be celebrating a major breakthrough between two formerly hostile nuclear powers with a history of recent and intensive violence.

The SCO, founded in 2001, has traditionally focused on border security and extremism, not minor subjects in the vast expanses of Asia, particularly after the sudden collapse of the USSR. Notably, the organization took a pass on joining the US effort to pacify Afghanistan, despite many calls for it to “step up” in that complex and ultimately futile situation.

The SCO’s member states and its two founding great power leaders, China and Russia, seem leery about major new commitments and content for the organization to exist primarily as a “talk shop.” New agreements from the Tianjin deliberations to jointly study transnational crime and particularly the narcotics trade hardly presage an organization plotting regional aggression.

Likewise, the agreements inked on a bilateral basis between Moscow and Beijing were focused on the commercial, scientific and cultural realms. The long-anticipated natural gas deal for the building of the ambitious Power of Siberia 2 line linking the two countries is a significant milestone to be sure.

But that project is simply the continuation of a long trend, and mostly reflects Europe’s decision to reject Russian energy imports as part of its sanctions regime.

In fact, Americans could very well benefit from this pipeline agreement, as US air quality was negatively impacted by Chinese air pollution before China’s major switch from coal to natural gas. Moreover, such pipeline transits are less likely than seaborne transit to threaten Alaska’s shores with the possibility of a devastating oil spill.

China-Russia interdependence is growing but not at a particularly hurried pace, and in some respects, the bilateral relationship is still vastly underdeveloped. For example, the first road bridge connecting the two countries over the Amur River was only completed in 2022.

Despite China’s impressive high-speed rail (HSR) system, it is still impossible to ride HSR between Chinese and Russian cities and that will not change anytime soon.

There are reasons for concern, of course. Russian (and Soviet) engineering has played a fundamental role in improving Chinese air and sea power. The two countries have a very ambitious pattern of space cooperation that even includes a joint mission to set up a lunar base.

In a development worth noting, Xi and Putin were joined in Beijing by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, a development which could portend potential China-Russia coordination in the Korean peninsula.

Nevertheless, China and Russia have decided very clearly not to opt for an all-out military alliance that could threaten the West. While Russia could plausibly be open to such a near-term escalation, China has rejected that approach and Beijing is firmly in the driver’s seat of this bilateral relationship.

With substantial foresight, Chinese leaders have concluded that a new cold war, however overstated, would endanger China’s prosperity and national security.

US pressure, applied continuously against both Russia and China for the last two decades, has unfortunately been a contributing factor to this “quasi-alliance.” Yet if Washington now opts to match Beijing’s restraint, it can make sure the China-Russia relationship remains at its current level, which is to say moderate and non-threatening.

Lyle Goldstein is director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities.

asiatimes.com · Lyle Goldstein · September 27, 2025

19. US plotting a military comeback at Philippines' Subic Bay

Would it have been better to have remained in Subic after Pinatubo in 1991 or will we have better facilities to access today because we left?

Excerpts:

However, Derek Grossman points out in a February 2023 Foreign Policy article that there are limits to how far Marcos Jr can push this alignment-for-survival strategy. Grossman says it is unlikely the US will regain complete control of Subic, as the Philippine Constitution expressly prohibits foreign bases on Philippine territory unless approved by the country’s Senate.

Economic woes may also temper the Marcos Jr administration’s stance in aligning with the US. As Camba points out, Marcos Jr’s alignment with the US is premised on the assumption that closer ties with the US would not affect the Philippines’ economic ties to China.

That position makes the Philippines no different from Australia or Japan, the latter two of which seek economic clout with China while building up their militaries, strengthening their alliances with the US and diversifying their security partners – reflecting caution against China’s pragmatic use of economic leverage to advance its geopolitical aims.

Slumping foreign investment may incentivize the Philippines to calibrate its future engagement with the US. According to Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data via Manila Standard reporting, foreign investment commitments in the Philippines fell sharply by 64.4% in the second quarter of 2025, totaling 67.38 billion pesos (US$1.16 billion)—a steep decline from the 189.50 billion pesos ($3.26 billion) recorded over the same period last year.

Furthermore, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) mentions that China remains one of the Philippines’ top foreign investors, accounting for 22% of total foreign investments as of June 2025. With Subic reaffirming the US’s presence in the Pacific, the Philippines finds itself pulled between the former’s shield and China’s purse. Its survival now hinges on how deftly it can walk this tightrope of security and economics.

US plotting a military comeback at Philippines' Subic Bay - Asia Times

US Navy establishing storage facility at strategic base alongside plans to create world’s largest weapons manufacturing hub

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · September 27, 2025

Subic Bay is back in play as the Philippines weighs US security guarantees against China’s economic leverage and military pressure, a high-stakes balancing act between survival and prosperity.

This month, multiple media outlets reported that the US Navy plans to establish a military storage facility in the Philippines’ Subic Bay by September 2026, according to lease documents.

The US has requested proposals for a five-year lease on a 25,000-square-meter climate-controlled warehouse and maintenance shop within the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority Freeport area, located within 16 kilometers of the existing US Marine Corps prepositioning program site.

The facility, which reportedly will not be used to stockpile munitions, is designed for the storage and maintenance of vehicles and equipment and will accommodate up to 60 personnel. The move follows a smaller April solicitation and marks one of the most significant US developments in Subic Bay since US bases were closed in the 1990s, when Subic was converted into a special economic zone.

Aside from that US facility, US and Philippine officials have greenlit a separate munitions plant, touted as the world’s largest weapons manufacturing hub, which is intended to boost Philippine defense self-reliance and US forward posture.

Subic Bay, once one of the largest US naval hubs in Asia, has regained prominence amid tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. The US and the Philippines are expanding defense cooperation under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which now covers hundreds of activities annually, and are jointly modernizing facilities across the Philippines.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro has signaled openness to further US military investments, framing them as opportunities to enhance resilience, create employment and facilitate technology transfer.

Subic Bay’s revival highlights the Philippines’ dual role as a forward logistics hub in an intensifying superpower rivalry, and a small power balancing security from the US with economic ties to China. The Philippines is a critical node of the US First Island Chain strategy, in which the US aims to contain China through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Sustaining US combat power in contested environments requires a fundamental rethink of logistics. Joslyn Fleming and other writers emphasized in a March 2024 RAND report that as the US Navy transitions to distributed maritime operations (DMO), adversaries’ ability to target transportation hubs could render traditional resupply methods untenable.

Furthermore, Samuel Winegar warns in a December 2022 Proceedings article that, in the event of a possible Taiwan contingency, China would likely target US Navy resupply vessels and depots across the Indo-Pacific, exploiting the asymmetry of operating in its backyard while forcing the US to sustain forces from afar.

Christopher Salerno reinforced the point in a September 2025 Military Review article, arguing that without a shift to distributed systems, US credibility would erode as all its service concepts depend on dispersed operations.

Zeroing in on the Philippines’ role in US strategy, Michael Mazarr and others note in a June 2025 RAND report that the country’s location along key intra-theater lift routes makes it an obvious candidate for forward sustainment nodes.

Regarding the selection of Subic as a critical munitions plant, the US Defense Appropriations Act for 2026 highlights the absence of a forward-positioned ammunition production facility in the Indo-Pacific, despite multiple bipartisan Congressional directives to create one.

The act states that the facility would enable quick resupply and sustainment during a high-end conflict, especially in a Taiwan contingency, while also mitigating risks associated with lengthy logistics routes and contested maritime regions. Additionally, it aims to decrease reliance on stockpiles located in the US mainland and trans-Pacific supply routes.

While the Philippines needs US assistance to strengthen its military stance against China, domestic politics also play a significant role.

As Alvin Camba points out in a 2023 article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s approach to the US is a political survival strategy – one that involves aligning more closely with the US to weaken the rival Duterte dynasty and exploit public anger over Chinese maritime incursions.

Camba adds that Marcos Jr’s acceptance of additional EDCA bases (and other US facilities) and pursuit of stronger defense ties with Japan, Australia and South Korea are strategies to consolidate his own political power and marginalize Duterte-aligned elites.

However, Derek Grossman points out in a February 2023 Foreign Policy article that there are limits to how far Marcos Jr can push this alignment-for-survival strategy. Grossman says it is unlikely the US will regain complete control of Subic, as the Philippine Constitution expressly prohibits foreign bases on Philippine territory unless approved by the country’s Senate.

Economic woes may also temper the Marcos Jr administration’s stance in aligning with the US. As Camba points out, Marcos Jr’s alignment with the US is premised on the assumption that closer ties with the US would not affect the Philippines’ economic ties to China.

That position makes the Philippines no different from Australia or Japan, the latter two of which seek economic clout with China while building up their militaries, strengthening their alliances with the US and diversifying their security partners – reflecting caution against China’s pragmatic use of economic leverage to advance its geopolitical aims.

Slumping foreign investment may incentivize the Philippines to calibrate its future engagement with the US. According to Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data via Manila Standard reporting, foreign investment commitments in the Philippines fell sharply by 64.4% in the second quarter of 2025, totaling 67.38 billion pesos (US$1.16 billion)—a steep decline from the 189.50 billion pesos ($3.26 billion) recorded over the same period last year.

Furthermore, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) mentions that China remains one of the Philippines’ top foreign investors, accounting for 22% of total foreign investments as of June 2025. With Subic reaffirming the US’s presence in the Pacific, the Philippines finds itself pulled between the former’s shield and China’s purse. Its survival now hinges on how deftly it can walk this tightrope of security and economics.

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · September 27, 2025

20. Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest

Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest

Russia is using its battlefield experience to give Chinese airborne units the training and technical knowhow to carry out lightning-fast operations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/09/26/russia-china-weapons-sales-air-assault/

September 26, 2025 at 6:23 a.m. EDTYesterday at 6:23 a.m. EDT

Soldiers rehearse before a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on Sept. 3. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

By Catherine Belton and Christian Shepherd

Russia has agreed to equip and train a Chinese airborne battalion and share its expertise in airdropping armored vehicles that analysts say could boost Beijing’s capacity to seize Taiwan, according to newly obtained documents that show the two nations’ deepening military cooperation.

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The agreements allow Beijing to access training and technology in one of the few areas where Russian capabilities still surpass those of the Chinese military: Russia’s more experienced airborne troops, military analysts said.

Moscow has become increasingly dependent on China for dual-use items to prop up its sanctions-hit military industry and sustain its war in Ukraine, but the deals show how Beijing is simultaneously tapping its partner’s battlefield expertise to further Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s drive to build a modern military with capabilities that match or surpass those of the United States.

The accords are an example of the two militaries moving beyond symbolic joint drills and public statements to develop interoperable systems and shared combat experience in areas that China considers critical for winning a battle over Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as its territory.

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The documents — details of which have been independently verified by the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank — appear to demonstrate the deepening alliance between Moscow and Beijing as Russia seeks to forge a new global order to counter the West and disrupt the status quo.

The intricate level of cooperation between Russia and China also underscores a weakness in Pentagon efforts to divert resources from defending Ukraine and Europe and to focus instead on countering China in the Asia-Pacific region, analysts said.

“It is a very good example of how the Russians have become an enabler for the Chinese,” making the security challenges of the two countries almost impossible to separate, said Jack Watling, senior research fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI.

In a future war over Taiwan, Moscow’s supply of oil, gas and other natural resources — and its large defense industry — could become “strategic backup for China,” added Watling, who co-authored a report published Friday by RUSI on the documents.

The deals

The 800-page cache — obtained by hactivist group Black Moon and reviewed by The Washington Post — shows Russia agreeing in October 2024 to sell 37 BMD-4M light amphibious vehicles, 11 Sprut-SDM1 self-propelled anti-tank guns, 11 BTR-MDM airborne armored personnel carriers to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

The main equipment provision contract — which had a provisional value of $584 million before it was finalized — also included the transfer of several command and observation vehicles and special purpose parachute systems designed to airdrop heavy loads from high altitudes.

Russian tanks move during the Zapad-2025 joint Russian-Belarusian military drills at a training ground near the town of Borisov on Sept. 15. (Olesya Kurpyayeva/AFP/Getty Images)

Additional documents in the cache show several rounds of negotiations including a meeting in Beijing in April 2024 at which the Chinese side requested Moscow accelerate the delivery timeline for certain vehicles, include complete technical documentation and adapt the weaponry to make it compatible with Chinese software, electronic, radio and navigation systems.

Separate documents outlined training programs for Chinese paratroopers in the combat use of the weaponry — and the advanced command and control systems used to direct operations — by Russian specialists in Russia and later in China.

In its report on the agreements published Friday, RUSI said the training and the transfers described in the files would give China’s air force “expanded air maneuver capability” that offered “offensive options against Taiwan, the Philippines and other island states in the regions.”

The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment on the deal. Similarly, neither China’s Ministry of Defense nor state-owned defense contractors involved in the deals responded to requests for comment.

While China has so far declined to provide military hardware at scale for Russia’s war effort, the two countries have continued to celebrate a close security partnership that both consider important for countering the U.S. and its allies.

“Military cooperation between China and Russia goes far beyond what has been publicly acknowledged,” said a Taiwanese security official commenting on the Russia-China deals.

Taiwan has tracked Russian provision of an advanced paratrooper command system to China and its military is prepared to respond effectively, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal security assessments.

From left, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, China's President Xi Jinping and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un arrive for a reception in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, following a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, on Sept. 3. (Jade Gao/AFP/Getty Images)

Over the last year, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have attended each other’s military parades. Their two militaries held 14 joint exercises in 2024, nearly double the number a decade earlier. Last week, Chinese military representatives attended Russia and Belarus’s Zapad-2025 war games where Russian demonstrated the high-altitude airdrops of heavy equipment that China, according to the agreements, is seeking to replicate.

Although the Chinese military is widely viewed as superior to Russia’s, it lags behind Moscow in airborne combat experience and capabilities for air maneuver, which Russia has deployed in Ukraine and Syria.

The agreement will give Beijing the opportunity to take Russian technology and apply it to its own weapons, analysts said. “Russia is transferring technologies that will allow China to scale-up the production of similar weapons and military equipment through localization and modernization,” according to the authors of the RUSI report.

Target Taiwan

For China, Russia’s airdrop expertise and weaponry is most valuable as part of preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan, analysts said.

Chinese planners consider small, well-equipped units delivered by helicopter or aircraft “absolutely essential” in their plans to deliver thousands of troops to Taiwan in the early hours of a conflict, said Lyle Goldstein, an expert on the Chinese and Russian militaries at Brown University.

Even with its far greater firepower, a full-scale takeover of Taiwan would be a complex and risky move for an untested Chinese military. To succeed, China would need to deliver hundreds of thousands of troops to the small number of suitable landing spots along the island’s shores — all while deterring or defeating a potential U.S. intervention.

Chinese Changhe Z-8L and Harbin Z-20 helicopters carrying banners reading “the people will prevail, peace will prevail, justice will prevail” fly in formation during a rehearsal ahead of a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, Aug. 24. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

“They have studied D-Day backward, forward and upside down [and] realized that it would have failed without an airborne component,” said Goldstein, who is writing a book on China-Russia military ties.

That makes Russian experience in Ukraine even more valuable for Beijing, and right now, “Russia will do more or less anything to keep China happy and cooperative,” he said.

Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has repeatedly said that bringing Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party rule is an essential step in the country’s journey to “national rejuvenation.”

To achieve that goal, he has ordered the military to modernize faster and prepare to “fight and win” wars, including, according to U.S. intelligence, being ready to seize Taiwan by 2027, although experts say this is not a deadline to launch an attack.

For Taiwan, Russian support for China’s already significant airborne attack capabilities intensifies concerns that Beijing could seize infrastructure inland even as it storms ports and beaches along the coast.

“Previously, China’s lack of ability to deliver troops in large numbers and maintain logistical support were considered weaknesses, but if Russia is providing technical support, that will be a bigger challenge for Taiwan’s anti-landing operations,” said Su Tzu-yun, a director at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taiwanese think tank.

Faced with intensifying Chinese aggression and uncertain support from the Trump administration, Taiwan has boosted military spending and focused on training to repel a potential invasion. This year’s annual exercises involved practicing shooting down a Chinese airborne attack on the island’s main Taoyuan International Airport — a location Chinese military commentators have flagged as key for breaking through Taiwanese defenses.

Leaked Pentagon assessments from 2023 ruled Taiwan’s air defenses especially vulnerable to missile strikes that could cede air superiority to China early in a conflict.

Taiwan's military conducts artillery live-fire drills at Fangshan township in Pingtung, southern Taiwan, on Aug. 9, 2022. (Johnson Lai/AP)

Command and control

Analysts said technical instruction in Russian command and control systems, which integrate battlefield data from multiple sources to improve decision-making, would be of particular interest for China as it plans a potential assault on Taiwan.

“China expects to fight in a degraded environment where their systems will be under threat from jamming and cyberattack. Having Russia train them to operate a potentially proven command and control system is going to be worth the millions of dollars they are going to spend,” said Joshua Arostegui, chair of the China Landpower Studies Center at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.

“China has never really used its airborne forces in a combat situation,” he added.

In addition, supplying the Chinese airborne battalion with Russian amphibious vehicles, anti-tank guns, armored personnel carriers and command and observation vehicles would boost its capabilities to that of a conventional army unit, Arostegui added. “This would give them the opportunity to learn tactics, techniques, and procedures for airborne combined arms operations.”

Earlier documents from the cache, reported on in August by independent investigative outlet the Insider, showed Russian-Chinese cooperation to create an automated command system for Chinese airborne troops designed to coordinate operations, plan missions, designate targets and provide secure data transmission.

Russian customs records reviewed by the Insider indicated work on the joint project was underway, with two entries dated June 18, 2024, showing the transfer of “military purpose products” to state-owned China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) from Russia’s Research Institute of Communication and Control Systems.

Moscow has long been Beijing’s biggest arms supplier, although Chinese imports of Russian arms have dropped in recent years as the war in Ukraine stretched Russian production capacity and China’s own designs and manufacturing capacity improved. But official Chinese military publications have continued to regularly praise Russia’s advanced airdrop capabilities.

People walk by Russia banners at an event promoting “Made in Russia” goods and relations with China at a shopping mall in Beijing on Aug. 28. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

China’s air force in particular has been one of the largest recipients of Russian weaponry. It has purchased dozens of Il-76s — the heavy-lift transport aircraft that could be used to drop armored vehicles in an airborne assault — since 2005 while also rapidly expanding a fleet of its own domestic equivalent Y-20s.

China’s progress developing its own hardware was on display at the military parade in Beijing earlier this month when the PLA Air Force Airborne Corps revealed major upgrades to air-droppable vehicles built specifically for use with the Y-20 transport aircraft.

China’s purchase of Russian equipment was in part a way to receive training. “If you want the Russians to train you, the Russians aren’t going to be able to do that on a load of Chinese equipment,” RUSI’s Watling said. “It makes more sense to buy a battalion’s worth from Russia.”

Rudy Lu contributed to this report.

21. Has America Left And Gone For Good?

Conclusion:

In short, empires rely on a mix of power, trust, and self-interest. Possibly, it is in US interest to retreat to the Americas. But this is not the 19^th century. The Monroe Doctrine long ceased to have any meaning. America’s strength now is commercial and technological but alliances, whether mercantile or military, are fundamental to the global success of US enterprise. Friends regret America’s exercise in self-harm, a Brexit times 10. Like Brexit, it will be regretted. But returning to the previous status quo is not possible.

Opinion

Has America Left And Gone For Good?

Traditional allies have a lot of thinking to do in the wake of Trump’s UN speech

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/has-america-left-gone-for-good?r=7i07&utm

Philip Bowring

Sep 26, 2025

At one level, US President Donald Trump’s September 23 speech to the United Nations General Assembly was a rambling, at times barely coherent mix of rants and ramble, full of self-congratulation, abuse of allies, and plenty of plain, simple lies about much of the rest of the world. On another, it contained a warning to Asia and the world that America has left and gone for good.

Here was the grandson of German and Scots immigrants to the US exhibiting to the world and to non-white America his strong distaste for “invaders” from what he earlier called “shithole” countries – non-western or non-Christian ones. Here was an oracle making up stories on climate issues, on Sharia law coming to London, and why he should get the Nobel Peace prize for ending multiple wars.

Some might well dismiss this as the unhinged rhetoric of a megalomaniac. It would pass, normalcy would return. Yet it may also be seen as a window into Trump’s soul and those of tens of millions of his star-struck followers, one reacting to the relative decline of America by making out that it was now richer and stronger than ever, thanks to him. Much of the rest of the world was going to hell, overrun by immigrants and impoverished by believing fictions such as climate change.

Saving America from such ills required firm government, intolerance of enemies as had flourished under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and keeping America distant from the destructive influences from outside, be it a Muslim mayor in London or the “colossal invasion” across America’s southern border which he had stopped. US interests required such hitherto shocking developments ranging from a claim on Greenland, to the destruction of Venezuelan vessels allegedly and without evidence carrying drugs, and repeated support for Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu’s genocidal Gaza destruction.

All these things could perhaps be dismissed as temporary aberrations of one individual. Yet the reality is that they all enjoyed the (sometimes grudging) support of the Republican majority in Congress and of a Supreme Court majority supplied by the arch-conservative Federalist Society, swept up by the executive’s demands for ever larger powers, overriding congressionally approved policies and budgets.

Free speech, at least when it criticized Trump and his policies, was undermined, critics were threatened with prison, academic freedoms were limited by the withdrawal of funds while Trump’s followers stepped up their barely disguised vitriol against those who did not adhere to the white, Christian self-image of Trump and his followers.

Trump may not carry the majority with him. The US is too diverse for that. But the power of his MAGA followers remains in the ascendant, at least for now, meanwhile bolstered by, among other factors, a stock market which has (at least as far as AI and tech stocks are concerned) reached delusional valuations. It is no coincidence that the tech titans now align with Trump.

But even assuming that that axis falls apart, that the great Trump boom turns to bust, that the tariff chaos gives way to stabilization at more moderate rates, that the US economy stagnates while inflation remains, that midterm elections 13 months away see a Democrat revival, there can be no undoing of all of Trump’s destruction.

That is particularly the case with external relations and US foreign influences. Some policies may be reversed, renewed commitments made by a new administration to open trade, and plans to force local production of certain goods abandoned. Easing of immigration restrictions and anti-migrant rhetoric may provide a new boost to an economy which historically thrived on migration.

Some ground lost can never be regained. The idea that the US is a reliable trade partner which operates under broadly understood rules, whether those are within the World Trade Organization or subject to specific mutually-agreed bilateral agreements, is being shaken to its core.

Likewise, the dominance of the US dollar in international trade and finance has been seriously undermined. The dollar was probably destined to gradually lose ground to other currencies. Its weaponization against Russia following the Ukraine invasion caused concerns among several countries with large dollar reserve assets. But much more damage has since been done by Trump’s abrogation of trade deals and resort to strong-arm tactics of various sorts as the US makes every country, often friends more than foes, subject to transactional bilateral deals based on Trump’s whims and prejudices.

At the same time, faith in the dollar has been eroded by Trump’s commitment to tax cuts which are almost certain to increase government debt and keep long-term interest rates high or see a sharp devaluation of the dollar. Trump’s campaign against the Federal Reserve and in favor of a looser monetary policy may suit his short-term domestic objectives but will encourage holders of US debt to seek alternatives.

China is likely to gradually make yuan assets more readily available. The encouragement of cryptocurrencies by Trump may also see the rise of cryptos linked to currencies other than the dollar. Some in the US may view a reduced role for the dollar as neutral or even a benefit. However, it also reduces the inordinate privilege the currency has enjoyed and enabled the US to run decades of external deficits without feeling much cost.

Most significant for the longer term of all aspects of Trumpism is a lack of trust in military alliances. Americans can be forgiven for suspicion of a global role when overconfidence leads them into Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But Trump’s accommodation of Russian despot Vladimir Putin and failure to give adequate arms support to Ukraine is seeing Europe think again about the trans-Atlantic relationship. His ambiguity towards Taiwan worries not just Taiwan but Japan, Korea, Australia, and the Philippines. His attitude towards Modi and India defies explanation. Meanwhile, China continues to erode its firepower imbalance with the US.

In short, empires rely on a mix of power, trust, and self-interest. Possibly, it is in US interest to retreat to the Americas. But this is not the 19^th century. The Monroe Doctrine long ceased to have any meaning. America’s strength now is commercial and technological but alliances, whether mercantile or military, are fundamental to the global success of US enterprise. Friends regret America’s exercise in self-harm, a Brexit times 10. Like Brexit, it will be regretted. But returning to the previous status quo is not possible.

22. Why Is the Pentagon Afraid of the Press?

The press should not be the friend of the military but it should not be the enemy either. Both the Press and the Military have the mission to support and defend our Constitution and protect our democracy, albeit from different perspectives. 

Why Is the Pentagon Afraid of the Press?

Pete Hegseth’s department is imposing restrictions that threaten to limit media scrutiny.

By Nancy A. Youssef

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef · September 26, 2025

In the 18 years I have been reporting at the Pentagon, military leaders have rarely been delighted to see me. Over the years, I have had heated conversations with generals, spokespeople, and civilian leaders. I have reported news that the department officials didn’t want publicized, as well as information they were eager to share. I have traveled in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, prepared to die in pursuit of informing others, losing colleagues along the way and getting seriously injured myself. To witness the horrors of war means to forever carry scars. And yet, I am one of the lucky ones. I survived.

My job has been to ask questions on behalf of my fellow citizens, seeking information we all have the right to know about national security in the United States. The First Amendment protects my ability to do this work. But one week ago, the Pentagon announced that journalists would no longer be accredited to enter the building unless they sign a new agreement. In the past, reporters were required to sign a one-page agreement with stipulations about locking office doors and wearing badges above the waist. The new restrictions are very different. Although worded somewhat ambiguously, they appear to put sharp limits on news-gathering activities and may impose penalties on people seeking information—including unclassified information—outside of what decision makers want to share. Under the proposed rules, which run to 17 pages, “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.” Anyone who publishes unapproved information could, theoretically, have their accreditation revoked, which would leave them barred from the Pentagon—and maybe from military facilities worldwide. Reporters who refuse to sign will lose the badge that has, until now, given them the right to work in a building that has been available to the press—through wars and national crises, under Democratic administrations and Republican ones—since the Pentagon opened its doors on January 15, 1943.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on X described the changes as an effort to impose common sense. “The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon—the people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules—or go home,” he wrote. But at its best, the press works on behalf of the people, seeking to hold the powerful to account. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has asked the Pentagon for clarification and noted the inscrutable nature of some of the proposed rules. In response, the Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote Wednesday that the restrictions are meant to remind reporters that Pentagon employees operate under strict protocols for what they can and can’t disclose and that the department wants to prevent “active solicitation that encourages DoW personnel to violate these disclosure rules.” The acronym refers to the “Department of War,” Hegseth’s preferred name for the entity with nearly 3 million employees that he runs.

Read: Pete Hegseth’s Department of Cringe

These are not the first restrictions that Hegseth has placed on the reporters who cover him. In May, he reduced journalists’ once-expansive Pentagon access to a few hallways and banned us from talking face-to-face with any of the officials from the service branches or from the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s office without an escort. Now we would lose even that.

Up until last week’s announcement, I never worried that I could be kicked out of the building, no matter how aggressive I was in pursuing my stories. The U.S. military’s policy of opening the Pentagon to the press was never a favor to the journalists who cover the military, but rather an obligation to a country that asks its sons and daughters to volunteer for service. If the government was going to ask Americans to risk their lives for our freedoms, then those empowered to send them into harm’s way would be willing to answer questions, especially tough ones. The Pentagon’s decision to let the press into the building served its own interests.

President Donald Trump noted over the weekend that reporters won’t be stopped from doing their jobs. He is technically right. If these rules are implemented, the best journalists will become better at their craft and find other ways to report their stories. But I have found that giving reporters less access to information about what the military does rarely serves the American people. The Pentagon has already dramatically curtailed its willingness to share basic facts. I struggle to see how this new policy doesn’t further reduce the availability of information that the public has come to expect: Which ocean is a U.S. carrier strike group operating in? Did the secretary speak with his Chinese counterpart? Why is the U.S. denying a shipment of approved weapons to Ukraine? What are the rules of engagement for National Guardsmen deployed on American streets?

News organizations, including this one, have made their opposition to these changes clear. “The Atlantic fundamentally opposes the restrictions that the Pentagon is attempting to impose on journalists who are reporting on matters of defense and national security. The requirements violate our First Amendment rights, and the rights of Americans who seek to know how taxpayer-funded military resources and personnel are being deployed,” our editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said in a statement. “These proposed rules also break with long-standing practices—under presidents of both parties, through wars and national crises—that have allowed Pentagon correspondents to do their jobs without political interference.”

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon wanted reporters to embed with the troops—even when we ended up documenting civilian deaths, abuse at military prisons, and the fallacy that the U.S. was turning the corner in those doomed conflicts. Generals and civilian leaders regularly answered questions in the briefing room. The Pentagon wanted us to pay attention to what it was doing, especially when it came time to discuss the need to grow the DOD budget, which now stands at nearly $1 trillion. Asking for more money is a lot easier when Americans can see what U.S. troops are up to. Americans may not be willing to give so much—either financially or through those who serve—if they are allowed to see so little.

If the leaders of the world’s most advanced military aren’t comfortable responding to critical questions, they look weak—not strong. Hegseth has repeatedly promised to bring back “the warrior ethos,” a prospect that’s impossible to imagine if taking questions from the American public is too scary to countenance.

Some past DOD leaders welcomed questions as a form of accountability—or at least a bellwether of how those outside the U.S. military were receiving its message. Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11, sometimes began briefings in the years after those attacks by asking reporters: “How are we doing?” In his memoir, former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who worked under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said repeatedly that he would not have learned about the horrible conditions that troops and their families were living in at Walter Reed Medical Center without the press.

“The Pentagon is fortunate in having, on the whole, an experienced and capable group of reporters assigned to it, most of whom are interested in the substance of issues and not personalities. I never had a real problem with them,” Gates wrote, adding: “I hated leaks. I rarely blamed the reporters for printing leaks, though; my anger was reserved for those in government entrusted to keep secrets who did not.”

Or, as he told U.S. Air Force Academy cadets during their 2007 commencement address: “I want to encourage you always to remember the importance of two pillars of our freedom under the Constitution—the Congress and the press. Both surely try our patience from time to time, but they are the surest guarantors of the liberty of the American people.

“The press is not the enemy,” he added, “and to treat it as such is self-defeating.”

Mark Esper, who was the defense chief during the first Trump administration, listed in his memoir the number of times he answered questions from the media or spoke publicly to explain Pentagon decision making: “By the end of my [15-month] tenure, I had held nearly two dozen Pentagon Briefing Room briefings, eight town halls, thirty-two so-called press gaggles, twenty-nine televised or taped interviews, twenty-two off-the-record sessions, sixteen briefings with Q&As at think tanks, nine messages to the force, and eleven major policy speeches.”

To Esper, being available for questioning from the public appeared to be a point of pride, and a fundamental part of his duty. As it should be.

The place where reporters gather in the colossus that is the Pentagon is a hallway leading to two big rooms for print press, several closet-size offices for TV journalists to broadcast from, and a large space for easy access to spokespeople. Throughout my time, that corridor has been a physical representation of a free press. Defense officials have regularly introduced their foreign counterparts, usually unannounced, to our part of the building to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the First Amendment. The day before the proposed new rules were announced, I met a visiting delegation from Poland, a country that, within the past decade, has had its own struggles with media clampdowns.

If we do our jobs correctly, the Pentagon is not surprised by our coverage, both what we publish and what we don’t. When journalists obtain sensitive information through their reporting, basic ethical and professional codes dictate whether the people’s right to know outweighs any potential risk in putting the information before the public. This past spring, The Atlantic was extremely careful in choosing to publish the messages that Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration’s national-security team inadvertently sent over Signal to our editor in chief. The Atlantic informed the government before the story’s publication and verified in advance that the chat group was legitimate. We published the full text exchange only after the administration insisted, implausibly, that “there was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put it at the time. Why did we ultimately publish the full text exchange? Because the American people had a right to make their own assessments.

Read: Here are the attack plans that Trump’s advisers shared on Signal

Reporters have frequently held back information that would endanger U.S. troops. And even more frequently, journalists have written stories exposing lies that could have endangered American forces. Without coverage of Iranian-made explosives in Iraq, Pentagon leaders said, there would not have been the urgency to get mine-resistant vehicles, or MRAPs, to the troops downrange. The press revealed how exposure to toxic fumes at U.S. bases harmed troops. It documented security lapses during the 2012 Benghazi-consulate attack and the failures of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

My introduction to the U.S. military came on the front lines of the war in Iraq. I sat alongside troops, some of whom had never before been outside the United States, as we rode together in Humvees, tanks, and Strykers, bracing for an attack. I watched troops get hit by explosives, dodge live fire, and relearn the same lessons as their predecessors, who had rotated back to the U.S. I witnessed troops raiding the homes of Iraqis and felt the fear of those we said we were liberating. I spent years of my life counting the number of shoes piled up after bombings to determine how many lives had been lost. I wrote stories about Iraqis and American troops alike fighting to survive, never quite knowing what it was all for.

The first time I stepped into the Pentagon, shortly after returning home from Iraq, I experienced a different kind of wartime shock, a feeling of sterility as people went about their days as though they were not responsible for the suffering thousands of miles away. Nobody I saw had the look of robbed innocence that only war can permanently etch into a face. Those who served in the building may have thought about war during the day, but they went home to a family at night.

And yet they, too, suffered. Gates requested that his staff show him local press accounts of every troop killed during his tenure. Once, on a flight aboard his plane, I snuck a peek into his quarters and saw him crying as he read the story of a fallen service member in Iraq. During the first Trump administration, I saw angst on commanders’ faces ahead of U.S. strikes in Syria. During the final days of the war in Afghanistan, I saw their horror as the number of troops and civilians killed by a suicide bomber outside Abbey Gate grew over the course of the day. Officials at the Pentagon knew they had failed those troops and the Afghans so desperate to leave.

No phone call can replace going to a general’s office and seeing the challenge coins he or she has collected, the art displayed on the office walls, or the small everyday interactions that give you a window into who that person is. The best stories are ones found unexpectedly, by walking the hallways and getting to know the people who command the U.S. armed forces.

That ability to see so much made the Pentagon the best agency in Washington to cover—and imposed a great responsibility on the journalists assigned to it. Our presence was the military’s way of saying it saw the value of a free press, not just in helping to execute its mission but also as an American ethos. Strong leaders, in my experience, welcome the opportunity to defend their handling of U.S. national security. They open their doors, in every sense of the term.

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef · September 26, 2025

23. The elusive ship built to carry US special operators is in the Caribbean

We have come a long way from the USNS Stockham in the JOA in the Sulu Archipelago (IYNYK). 

The elusive ship built to carry US special operators is in the Caribbean

The MV Ocean Trader, a floating barracks, helicopter base and command center for special ops forces, is currently operating in the Caribbean.

Jeff Schogol, Patty Nieberg

Published Sep 25, 2025 6:07 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · Jeff Schogol, Patty Nieberg

A vessel that has been described as a special operations mothership is currently deployed to the Caribbean, Task & Purpose has confirmed.

A Military Sealift Command spokesperson confirmed to Task & Purpose that the MV Ocean Trader is currently operating in the Caribbean. The official deferred questions about its mission to U.S. Special Operations Command, which declined to comment.

Naval experts told Task & Purpose that the U.S. has a history of using commercial ships like the MV Ocean Trader as part of special operations missions. U.S. military officials have not said publicly exactly what the ship’s current mission in the Caribbean is.

Formerly named the MV Cragside, the transformation of the MV Ocean Trader from a commercial roll-on/roll-off cargo ship to a vessel fit for special operations missions has been tracked through rigorous reporting from The War Zone. Over the years, the publication has followed the ship’s movements from port calls in Seychelles and a dry dock in Oman.

“The ship is intended to blend in with merchant traffic, whereas obviously a destroyer shows someplace or an [amphibious ship], something like this might not attract as much attention,” said retired Navy Capt. Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a retired surface warfare captain of 30 years with four command tours.

The ship is built to carry up to 159 special operations forces plus its crew of 50 for up to 45 days at sea before having to refuel and be resupplied at sea or return to port, said retired Navy Capt. Brent Sadler, of the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C.

“If the ship is in the Caribbean and hosting special forces, it is clearly supporting the operation to interdict the Cartel drug boats,” Sadler told Task & Purpose on Thursday. “The limited endurance of the ship, however, would mean there are likely other vessels rotating to replace it in time.”

The MV Ocean Trader has also been on contract with the military before it was converted from commercial use for its current role, Sadler said.

The MV Ocean Trader’s main role is to serve as both barracks and command center for special operations forces, said Michael Fabey, a naval analyst with Janes, an open-source defense intelligence provider.

Roll-on/roll-off ships are designed to unload cargo in austere environments, and they are a common sight in Central and Latin America, Fabey told Task & Purpose. Its color scheme is similar to commercial ships, making it hard to distinguish from merchant vessels at a distance, he said.

The practice of using commercial vessels for military operations goes back to World War II and was “not uncommon” for the U.S. to use them as staging bases for special operations during the Global War on Terror Operations, Martin said.

The vessel is able to launch zodiacs and other boats that could be used for counter-narcotics missions along with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Fabey said.

“What this capability allows a force to do is embark, stay fairly low key, but still be able to deliver [special operations] capabilities effectively,” Martin said.

The cargo ship-turned special warfare asset was spotted by an open-source intelligence researcher who analyzed satellite imagery from Sept. 20 of a vessel resembling the MV Ocean Trader operating off the southwest end of St. Kitts in the Caribbean. Another Reddit user appears to have posted a photo of the Ocean Trader outside their window on St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands.

The ship’s traversing through Caribbean waters comes amid a greater build up of U.S. military assets in the region since August, including a host of Navy ships.

So far this month, the U.S. military has destroyed three boats in the Caribbean, which President Trump has said were being used to smuggle drugs, killing a total of 17 people.

The MV Ocean Trader in Fremantle, Australia in 2022. Photo courtesy Mike Barker, Fremantle Shipping News

Most recently, the destroyer USS Stockdale arrived in the region to join seven other warships: the destroyers USS Jason Dunham and USS Gravely; the cruiser USS Lake Erie; the Littoral Combat Ship USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul; and the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which consists of the assault ship USS Iwo Jima and the amphibious transport docks USS San Antonio and USS Fort Lauderdale. About 2,200 Marines with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit are embarked on the amphibious ready group’s three ships.

The Iwo Jima can carry AV-8B Harriers and other aircraft. Additionally, the U.S. military has deployed Marine Corps F-35 Lightning II aircraft to Puerto Rico.

And in August, Air Force special operations troops were practicing airfield seizures in the Caribbean as part of an annual exercise. An unnamed Air Force Special Operations Command officer said in a release that the Caribbean operations “simulate many of the geographical features our forces may encounter when deployed around the globe.”

On at least two occasions, Venezuelan F-16s have flown close to the Jason Dunham. After the first incident, President Donald Trump said that U.S. military commanders have leeway in responding to Venezuelan military aircraft, adding, “If they do put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down.”

The Venezuelan government has also accused U.S. service members from the Jason Dunham of stopping a fishing boat within its declared exclusive economic zone and searching the crew for several hours before releasing them. An unnamed U.S. official told ABC News that the search took place in international waters and no drugs were found.

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Jeff Schogol

Senior Pentagon Reporter

Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for nearly 20 years. Email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com; direct message @JSchogol73030 on Twitter; or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488.

Patty Nieberg

Senior Reporter

Patty is a senior reporter for Task & Purpose. She’s reported on the military for six years, embedding with the National Guard during a hurricane and covering Guantanamo Bay legal proceedings for an alleged al Qaeda commander. Her previous bylines can be found at the Associated Press, Bloomberg Government, Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC. You can reach Patty by email at Patty.Nieberg@taskandpurpose.com.

• Ships
• Tech & Tactics

taskandpurpose.com · Jeff Schogol, Patty Nieberg

24. How a Russia vs. NATO War Could Actually Start

How a Russia vs. NATO War Could Actually Start

nationalsecurityjournal.org · Reuben Johnson · September 27, 2025

Key Points and Summary – Russian drones crossing into Poland and MiG-31s violating Estonian airspace revived the core question: how does a Russia vs. NATO war actually begin?

-This analysis argues Moscow will keep probing seams—airspace, air defenses, political will—aiming to force NATO into an Article 4/5 dilemma.

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 510th Fighter Generation Squadron takes off during Exercise Anatolian Eagle 25 at the 3rd Main Jet Base, Konya, Türkiye, June 30, 2025. Through realistic multinational training, the 31st Fighter Wing enhances survivability, increases combat effectiveness and demonstrates that the U.S. and its Allies and partners are prepared to defend the homeland, deter aggression, and, if necessary, fight and win. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Zachary Jakel)

-Europe’s fragmented defense industry, ammunition shortages, and uneven appetite for risk create openings for a rapid, deniable “fait accompli” in the Baltics using EW, drones, and covert forces.

-That scenario wouldn’t resemble a set-piece tank battle; it would be a shock campaign designed to split allies before they can mobilize.

The Baltic Fait Accompli: Putin’s Most Likely Play Against NATO

WARSAW, POLAND – Recent incidents involving Russia and neighboring NATO member-states have the world asking two questions. One is just how a war between Moscow and the transatlantic Alliance might begin. The other is what would have to transpire for a conflict to spread from a localized incursion or skirmish into a full-fledged war between the two.

On Sept. 9, at least 19 Russian drones heading toward targets in Ukraine crossed over into Poland, catching the Polish air defense command off-guard. In a second incident, three Russian Aerospace Forces Mikoyan MiG-31 fighters – manned aircraft with two-man aircrews – violated Estonian air space on Sept. 19.

In both cases, the nations in question – Poland and Estonia – called for Article 4 consultations in accordance with the NATO charter. Under Article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty, “members can bring any issue of concern, especially related to the security of a member country, to the table for discussion within the North Atlantic Council.” Since the Alliance’s creation in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked only nine times.

The assumption is – and it is by no means unreasonable – that this is how a war with Russia could begin. As Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said, “this was a heavy violation by Russia.”

A B-52 Stratofortress assigned to the 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, completes refueling behind a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 134th Air Refueling Wing, Tennessee Air National Guard, during exercise Saber Guardian 19, June 17, 2019. The bombers participated in three exercises in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, providing opportunities for training with our allies and partners. Strategic bomber missions enhance the readiness and training necessary to respond to any potential crisis or challenge across the globe. The USEUCOM, NATO exercise promotes regional stability and security while increasing readiness, strengthening partner capabilities and fostering trust. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech. Sgt. Daniel Gagnon)

“Three fighters, MiG-31s, entered NATO airspace for 12 minutes,” Tsahkna added. “NATO acted very adequately and by the book. But if you see what Russia is doing, they are putting more pressure on NATO.”

“Russia is testing NATO, the unity of Europe. The Eastern flank is taking more responsibilities. We are the first line [of defense].”

How Much Bang For the Buck

Often those who measure the potential outcomes for a Russia vs. NATO conflict engage in what people in the defense business refer to derisively as “bean-counting.” Who has more tanks, who spends more on defense, how many weapon systems do the allies have? It is not always a productive starting point for calculating an enemy’s potential to cause trouble – or how to counter that enemy.

By way of example, NATO in the aggregate spends more money than Russia on defense, but as one recent report details, how it is spent is more important than how much.

Duplicate and incompatible capabilities are a problem within NATO. Altogether the Alliance’s EU members operate 178 weapon systems types and 17 different makes of tank, according to the BBC. And those numbers do not include the U.S., Canada and the UK.

Russian President Vladimir Putin realizes that these NATO nations operate a cornucopia of weapons and can field a “powerful, and modern fighting force,” reads one analysis by the Kyiv Independent. “But – its European contingent at least – faces ammunition shortages, a fragmented defense industry, and insufficient air defense coverage”.

Therefore, Putin’s war with the Alliance is not likely to start in some set-piece battle – a major engagement of one army against another rolling across the plains of Europe. He would take advantage of areas in which the Alliance is weak – and the greatest weakness is not a shortage of ammo or other assets, but the simple fact that some nations are ready to fight Russia to defend themselves, but others will do anything to avoid it.

The Weakest Link

“It is Ukraine that today has perhaps the most combat-ready army in Europe”, wrote Oleg Dunda, a member Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, in The Spectator. The U.S. has more weaponry, he points out, but the Ukrainian military is unique in having adapted to defending against Russia’s electronic warfare and drone systems.

A Russian war against NATO is likely to begin against one of the small Baltic states that lacks the ability to react as Ukraine has. The larger, more established members of the alliance, such as Germany, will not be anxious to go to war for one of the Baltic nations.

A potential invasion of the Baltic states might not involve a single tank, reads an assessment in one of the UK’s leading weekly publications. It would instead be a quick and silent offensive that seeks to take over one of these small states overnight and leave NATO with a fait accompli: Either accept Russia’s aggression – its takeover of an alliance state – or go to all-out war.

“It will be unexpected: with communication blackouts, drone strikes on infrastructure and civilian convoys in uniform without identification marks,” said Ukraine’s Dunda. “Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania may simply wake up as part of Russia without a single shot fired by Nato.”

Such an invasion of the Baltics could happen at any time, including while Russia is still fighting in Ukraine, he and others have forecast. And Europe does not have the time to prepare, build more weaponry, and equip its militaries for the war that would ensue.

This would bring about the crucial choice. Let Russia get away with picking on the weakest links, the smallest nations – this would most likely break the Alliance, and would certainly diminish its relevance and credibility. The other option would be going to war with an underequipped set of allies that have neither the personnel nor the logistics to sustain a long-term counteroffensive.

It is the most unfavorable scenario that there is. Which is why it is the one Putin is most likely to choose.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.

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nationalsecurityjournal.org · Reuben Johnson · September 27, 2025

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