​Quotes of the Day:

"I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious."

– Albert Einstein

"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."

– Malcolm X

"Forgive yourself for not knowing earlier what only time could teach."

–Unknown

1. Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’

2. America’s New Imperialism

3. Russian Propaganda Ramps Up After U.S. Raid in Venezuela

4. Largest Protests in Years Sweep Through Iran’s Capital

5. Iran Is Cut Off From Internet as Protests Calling for Regime Change Intensify

6. A Shadow Fleet Smuggles Illicit Oil Across the High Seas. This Is How It Works.

7. U.S. Navy Is Chasing Several Oil Tankers in the Atlantic

8. The Real Reason China and Russia Won’t Try a Maduro-Style Raid

9. AI In Cyber And The UN’s Role In Competitive Global Disorder

10. The Taiwan ‘Idiocy’: Why Game Theory Rules Out A 2027 Invasion – OpEd

11. How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security

12. Philippine leadership puts ASEAN at center of South China Sea rivalry

13. A Networked Leapfrog Strategy to Recapture Technology Leadership

14. Exclusive | Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come

15. Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse.

16. China hacked email systems of US congressional committee staff

17. Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

18. Wild Bill: The Leadership Legacy of William Donovan

19. The Northern Corridor Doctrine

20. Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

21. Taiwan’s Growing Civic Soft Power­­­­ in Southeast Asia

22. Book Review: “Those Who Face Death” by Mark Grdovic

23. Lawrence’s Shadow: How Afghan Resistance Can Topple the Taliban

24. It’s Time – Recognizing The Taiwanese Nation State

1. Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’

​Summary:

POTUS tells the NYT that his authority as commander in chief is limited only by his “own morality,” not by international law, treaties, or traditional norms. He emphasizes coercive uses of U.S. military and economic power, citing strikes on Iran, regime change in Venezuela, and pressure on Colombia as proof of effectiveness. He treats NATO and alliances as transactional and secondary to U.S. primacy, and views “ownership” (e.g., Greenland) as strategically decisive. He appears relaxed about eroding arms-control regimes and precedent risks for Russia and China, while exploring legal workarounds and domestic deployment of force under emergency authorities.

Comment: POTUS granted this interview in the Oval office with these NY Times reporters.

So if I was teaching a national security class I would ask my students the following questions:

If U.S. power is constrained primarily by one leader’s personal morality rather than law, what happens to strategic predictability, alliance cohesion, and deterrence credibility in a prolonged crisis?

How does normalizing unilateral regime change and territorial “ownership” claims by the United States affect our ability to credibly oppose similar moves by China, Russia, or regional powers in the Asia-Indo-Pacific and beyond?

What institutional safeguards and decision processes are required if emergency authorities, military force, and economic coercion become routine tools of statecraft, rather than exceptional measures bound by law and multilateral consensus?

This article/interview is going to drive narratives from our friends, partners, allies, and adversaries for some time to come. January 9, 2026 (publication date) will be known as a strategic inflection point for the US.

Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’

NY Times · Zolan Kanno-Youngs ·

On topic after topic, President Trump made clear that he would be the arbiter of any limits to his authorities, not international law or treaties.

By David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs

The reporters are White House correspondents for The Times. They interviewed President Trump in the Oval Office.

• Jan. 8, 2026
• Updated 6:47 p.m. ET

• Jan. 8, 2026Updated 6:47 p.m. ET

Leer en español

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.

“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.

He did acknowledge some constraints at home, even as he has pursued a maximalist strategy of punishing institutions he dislikes, exacting retribution against political opponents and deploying the National Guard to cities over the objections of state and local officials.

He made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations. During his interview with The Times, he took a lengthy call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, who was clearly concerned after repeated threats that Mr. Trump was thinking of an attack on the country similar to the one on Venezuela.

“Well, we are in danger,” Mr. Petro said in an interview with The Times just before the call. “Because the threat is real. It was made by Trump.”

The call between the two leaders, the contents of which were off the record, was an example of coercive diplomacy in action. And it came just hours after Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had extracted the United States from dozens of international organizations intended to foster multinational cooperation.

In his conversation with The Times, Mr. Trump sounded more emboldened than ever. He cited the success of his strike on Iran’s nuclear program — he keeps a model of the B-2 bombers used in the mission on his desk; the speed with which he decapitated the Venezuelan government last weekend; and his designs on Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark, a NATO ally.

When asked what was his higher priority, obtaining Greenland or preserving NATO, Mr. Trump declined to answer directly, but acknowledged “it may be a choice.” He made clear that the trans-Atlantic alliance was essentially useless without the United States at its core.

Even as he characterized the norms of the post-World War II order as unnecessary burdens on a superpower, Mr. Trump was dismissive of the idea that the leader of China, Xi Jinping, or President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could use similar logic to the detriment of the United States. On topic after topic, he made clear that in his mind, U.S. power is the determining factor — and that previous presidents have been too cautious to make use of it for political supremacy or national profit.

The president’s insistence that Greenland must become part of the United States was a prime example of his worldview. It was not enough to exercise the U.S. right, under a 1951 treaty, to reopen long-closed military bases on the huge landmass, which is a strategically important crossroads for U.S., European, Chinese and Russian naval operations.

The president’s insistence that Greenland must become part of the United States was a prime example of his worldview. Credit...Esther Horvath for The New York Times

“Ownership is very important,” Mr. Trump said as he discussed, with a real estate mogul’s eye, the landmass of Greenland — three times the size of Texas but with a population of less than 60,000. He seemed to dismiss the value of having Greenland under the control of a close NATO ally.

When asked why he needed to possess the territory, he said: “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”

The conversation made clear that in Mr. Trump’s view, sovereignty and national borders are less important than the singular role the United States plays as the protector of the West.

Trump Says His Only Limit on His Global Powers Is His ‘Own Morality’

President Trump brushed aside international law and repeated his goal for the U.S. to own Greenland.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

He argued that only he — and not two predecessors on whom he heaped scorn, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama — had proved capable of persuading NATO nations to spend 5 percent of the gross domestic product on defense. (About 1.5 percent of that is actually for domestic infrastructure — from power grids to cybersecurity — that can support defense. The target does not kick in until 2035, six years after Mr. Trump leaves office.)

“I want them to shape up,” he said. “I think we’ll always get along with Europe, but I want them to shape up. I’m the one that got them to spend more on the, you know, more G.D.P. on NATO. But if you look at NATO, Russia I can tell you is not at all concerned with any other country but us.”

The president added: “I’ve been very loyal to Europe. I’ve done a good job. If it weren’t for me, Russia would have all of Ukraine right now.”

Ukrainian soldiers firing howitzer weapons at Russian positions in the Donbas region of Ukraine last month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

He seemed unconcerned that the last major nuclear arms control agreement with Russia was set to expire in four weeks, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers free to expand their arsenals without limit, for the first time in half a century.

“If it expires, it expires,” he said. “We’ll just do a better agreement,” he added, insisting that China, which has the fastest-growing arsenal in the world, should be incorporated in any future agreement.

“You probably want to get a couple of other players involved also,” Mr. Trump said.

The president seemed equally sanguine about whether his decision to send Special Operations forces into Caracas to remove Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela would be exploited by China or Russia. In the days since the action in Venezuela, there have been arguments that the U.S. precedent would help justify a Chinese effort to take Taiwan, or Russia’s attempt to seize Ukraine, which Mr. Putin has described as a historical part of the Russian empire, dating back more than a dozen centuries.

Asked whether he had created a precedent that he may later regret, Mr. Trump argued that his view of the threat posed by Mr. Maduro’s Venezuela was quite different than Mr. Xi’s view of Taiwan.

“This was a real threat,” he said of Venezuela. “You didn’t have people pouring into China,” he argued, repeating his oft-made claim that Mr. Maduro dumped gang members into the United States.

Mr. Trump added: “You didn’t have drugs pouring into China. You didn’t have all of the bad things that we’ve had. You didn’t have the jails of Taiwan opened up and the people pouring into China,” or, he said later, criminals and others “pouring into Russia.”

When a reporter noted that Mr. Xi regarded Taiwan as a separatist threat to China, Mr. Trump said: “That’s up to him, what he’s going to be doing. But, you know, I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t.”

Then, asked whether Mr. Xi might seize on recent events to attack or choke off Taiwan, he suggested that the Chinese leader would not dare to take that step while Mr. Trump was in office. “He may do it after we have a different president, but I don’t think he’s going to do it with me as president,” he said.

Trump Says ‘It’s Up To’ Xi Jinping What China Does In Taiwan

President Trump said that his actions in Venezuela did not set a precedent for other countries like Russia and China because he claimed he was responding to a “real threat.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

On Thursday, in a rare assertion of congressional authority over the president’s war powers, the Senate agreed to debate a resolution aimed at curbing Mr. Trump’s use of military force in Venezuela. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said one factor that may have tipped the vote was the president’s comment during Wednesday’s interview that the United States might remain involved in Venezuela for years.

On the domestic front, Mr. Trump suggested that judges only have power to restrict his domestic policy agenda — from the deployment of the National Guard to the imposition of tariffs — “under certain circumstances.”

But he was already considering workarounds. He raised the possibility that if his tariffs issued under emergency authorities were struck down by the Supreme Court, he could repackage them as licensing fees. And Mr. Trump, who said he was elected to restore law and order, reiterated that he was willing to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military inside the United States and federalize some National Guard units if he felt it was important to do so.

So far, he said, “I haven’t really felt the need to do it.”

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 9, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Asserts His Global Power Has One Limit: Himself

Add the Sunday Times in print to your subscription. 50% off the first year. Learn more.

NY Times · Zolan Kanno-Youngs ·

2. America’s New Imperialism

​Summary:

Vatikiotis traces Trump’s Maduro raid to a long U.S. history of regime change from Diem and Allende to Marcos and Saddam, often cloaked in democracy promotion but driven by strategic and economic interests. What is new is Trump’s open rejection of that moral fig leaf. His “America First” agenda pairs declining domestic popularity with growing military adventurism: Iran, Venezuela, threats against Colombia, Mexico, and even designs on Greenland. Officials now justify control of the Western Hemisphere as an imperial “backyard,” sidelining ideals of democracy and free trade. The author warns this explicit new imperialism could destabilize the global order.

Comment: Mr. Vatikiotis takes us down the history lane of US interventions. Although this was likely written without prior knowledge of the NY Times interview with POTUS on his power, this is an example of the narrative we will see as a result of that interview. 

As an aside, the author is a "private diplomat." I don't know what that is.

Politics

America’s New Imperialism

Unleashing the demons

Jan 08, 2026

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/america-new-imperialism?utm

By: Michael Vatikiotis

These are our chickens. Fotosearch/Getty Images

Lost in the shock and awe of President Trump’s audacious snatching of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro in the early hours of January 3 is the fact that America has a long history of orchestrating the departure of government leaders. Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963, Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, and then Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, to name but three. One might also throw in Indonesia’s President Sukarno after a CIA-supported coup in 1965.

More recently, in concert with the EU, the US poured money and intelligence resources into popular protests that brought down the government of President Victor Yanukovych in February 2014.

Clearly, the use of either force or indirect and covert means by the US to enact regime change is not new. Other great powers, notably Russia, have also exercised regime change as a tool of foreign policy - in Czechoslovakia in 1968, then Afghanistan in 1979.

Often, what followed was messy. As many as a million people died in the post-1965 coup witch hunt against Communists in Indonesia. Saddam Hussein’s downfall at the hands of the US resulted in a civil war that cost the lives of up to three million Iraqis. The 2014 Maidan protests set the stage for Russia to occupy Crimea and eventually invade Ukraine – Moscow describing the events in Kyiv as a coup to justify its actions.

Yet, just as often, much of the world, especially the Western non-communist world, quietly cheered US efforts to keep authoritarianism, communism, or extremism at bay. No one much believed the allegation that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had WMD, but European states were fixated on the fear of Islamic extremism in the wake of 9/11. Saddam, although no Islamic extremist, was a convenient fall guy.

With very few exceptions, what followed these interventions was bad for the affected countries. South Vietnam fell to Communist North Vietnam a decade after Diem’s downfall; Chile endured decades of right-wing violence and repression; Indonesia under Suharto’s New Order endured military rule and repression, even as the economy prospered and grew.

Yet there were also moments of high-minded idealism. After Ferdinand Marcos fled into exile in Hawaii, courtesy of the US, the Philippines underwent a process of democratic reform and change led by President Corazon Aquino, the widow of assassinated opposition figure Ninoy Aquino. Her address to the US Congress in 1986 marked the high-water mark of a more benign US foreign policy rooted in the promotion of democratic change. Five years later, when President George Bush ordered US troops into Kuwait to counter an Iraqi invasion, the US was similarly praised.

What is new, and shocking to many today, is the absence of the old fig leaf, often used in these mostly covert operations, that the US was motivated by a desire to promote freedom and democracy. Let’s be clear: It almost always was a fig leaf. Usually, what followed was government led by a more pliant client of the US, which helped preserve vital strategic and economic interests of the US. “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” Franklin Roosevelt is alleged to have said about the Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasia Somoza in 1939.

Today, Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda eschews the idea that the US is in the business of forging change in the image of itself. ‘Far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins,’ Trump told an audience in Saudi Arabia last May. He slammed ‘so-called nation-builders’ who he said ‘wrecked far more nations than they built.’

Yet since making that speech, Trump has acquired a taste for military intervention. Barely a month later, he sent B2 bombers to attack Iran’s nuclear installations; in the months since, he has launched attacks on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, and on Islamic extremists in Nigeria and Syria. He has also threatened to use force to crack down on drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico, and even acquire Greenland.

Like Presidents before him, some see a correlation between Trump’s declining popularity at home and increasing military adventurism abroad. In tandem, Trump seems to enjoy the situation room drama of overseeing military ops and has just announced a further increase in US defence spending.

Again, there’s nothing much new there. Only the mask of morality has slipped. So much, therefore, for Trump as “the President of Peace”.

Rather, what many now fear is that the US is forging a new brand of imperialism, one that harks back to the days of former US President Theodore Roosevelt who as Secretary of the Navy in the late 19^th century initiated America’s colonial expansion into the former Spanish colonies of Cuba and the Philippines, arguing that it was a ‘step toward the complete freeing of America from European dominion.’ Interestingly, the counter argument was idealism: the US had no need to obtain colonies because the very notion of its democracy and freedom endowed it with the power of persuasion that would help open markets and boost trade.

Similarly today, Trump administration officials argue the need to impose control on states and territory in the Western hemisphere – defined as stretching from Latin America to Greenland – to secure control over resources because this is America’s backyard. Notions of America’s greatness being built on the idea of democracy and free trade are clearly no longer operative.

It is this new imperialism, rather than military intervention, that threatens global order. Just as Great Britain’s colonial neuralgia in the early 20^th century set the stage for a devastating world war, so we should all be worried about what demons Trump has unleashed by declaring America First!

Michael Vatikiotis is a writer and private diplomat who has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for four decades. He is the author of seven books and was the managing editor of the now-defunct Far East Asian Review.

3. Russian Propaganda Ramps Up After U.S. Raid in Venezuela

​Summary:

In the days since the U.S. raid in Venezuela, Russian state-linked media and a network of “Portal Kombat” websites have intensified propaganda to discredit U.S. military power and defense exports. Amplifying Sputnik content, they portray the Maduro seizure as kidnapping and U.S. aggression, urge countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to stop buying U.S. arms, and highlight supposed unreliability of American defense suppliers. Analysts say Russia seeks to offset battlefield inferiority by “beating America in the information space,” protect its oil and arms ties with Venezuela, and redirect global weapons sales away from the U.S. toward Russian systems.

Excerpts:

“It’s an example of how if you can’t beat America on the battlefield, beat them in the information space,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Sowing doubt about American defense suppliers is a key way to weaken the U.S.”

FilterLabs, another firm that monitors online discussion, also tracked increased Russian activity in Venezuela, as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts that have pushed Moscow’s narratives in the past immediately criticized the operation and echoed statements from Russian diplomats.

Comment: Should not be a surprise. Surely we were prepared to fight and win in the "information space."

This is a pretty clear statement of Russian intent (and probably of the entire CRInK). How are we competing among operations in the information environment?

Russian Propaganda Ramps Up After U.S. Raid in Venezuela

NY Times · Julian E. Barnes · January 8, 2026

By Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

Jan. 8, 2026, 4:24 p.m. ET

A network of websites known as “Portal Kombat” is spreading messages about U.S. military hardware, according to tracking firms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/russia-propaganda-venezuela.html

Red Square in Moscow. Russia and Venezuela have had a close diplomatic relationship, and Moscow is keen to retain those ties.Credit...Ramil Sitdikov/Reuters

By

Reporting from Washington

Jan. 8, 2026, 4:24 p.m. ET

In the days since the U.S. raid in Venezuela, a network of Russian propaganda websites has been promoting a message that countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia should stop buying American military hardware, according to a firm that tracks the online activities.

The websites, known as “Portal Kombat,” have also said that the U.S. seizure of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, shows that the United States is unreliable and dangerous.

An analysis by Alethea, a company that tracks influence operations, found that articles published by Sputnik, a media outlet controlled by the Russian state, were quickly amplified and promoted by the larger network of websites used by Russian security services to attack the West.

The U.S. military operation in Venezuela on Saturday was a demonstration of the effectiveness of American military weaponry, and the weakness of Russian defenses. U.S. F-35 aircraft were used to take out Russian-made air defense batteries.

Lisa Kaplan, the chief executive of Alethea, said Russia invented the concept of information campaigns and had trained how to use them effectively to muddy facts, in this case to try to undermine the post-raid perception of the strength of American military equipment and the weakness of Russian weaponry.

“It’s an example of how if you can’t beat America on the battlefield, beat them in the information space,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Sowing doubt about American defense suppliers is a key way to weaken the U.S.”

FilterLabs, another firm that monitors online discussion, also tracked increased Russian activity in Venezuela, as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts that have pushed Moscow’s narratives in the past immediately criticized the operation and echoed statements from Russian diplomats.

On one level, the language promoted by Russian diplomats and Moscow’s network of allied social media influences was hardly surprising. The accounts, Russian officials and media aligned with the Venezuelan government have referred to the seizure of Mr. Maduro as a kidnapping and described the U.S. operation as military aggression and banditry.

But Jonathan Teubner, the chief executive of FilterLabs, said cross-posted social media messaging suggested coordinated dissemination — a sign of a likely Russian influence operation.

“The Russian interests are aligned with the U.S. getting bogged down in Venezuela,” Mr. Teubner said. “What you don’t see is a coordinated campaign with a clear strategic objective. Instead this is a disruptive campaign, the standard type of campaign Russia has traditionally done.”

Russia and Venezuela have had a close diplomatic relationship, and Venezuela has traded its oil with Russia. Russia also provided some of the air defense weaponry used by Venezuela, weaponry that failed to protect against the U.S. operation.

Moscow is keen to retain its ties to Venezuela, even as the Trump administration demands that the Venezuelan government resist showing animosity toward the United States and make a deal to allow American companies to extract its oil.

Russia has been targeting the American defense industry for a while. In April, the Portal Kombat network coordinated a campaign to spread rumors that American allies would not have control over fighter planes they purchased.

That campaign was mostly focused on the F-35. But Kayla Ryan, a spokeswoman for Alethea, said the new campaign was a much broader attack on the American defense industry to persuade allies around the world to not purchase U.S. weaponry.

“Russian influence operations are promoting the narrative that in order to punish the U.S. for the raid on Venezuela, global customers should stop buying U.S. arms,” Ms. Ryan said. “The broader goal of this narrative is to encourage sales of their own weapons and portray the U.S. as an unreliable ally.”

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.

See more on: Nicolás Maduro

More on the U.S. Operation in Venezuela

On January 3, the U.S. military seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife in a strike on Caracas, the culmination of a campaign to oust Maduro from power.

• Close Call for U.S. Commandos: As a damaged U.S. helicopter struggled to stay aloft over Venezuela’s capital, the success of the entire operation hung in the balance.
• Lawmakers Receive Classified Briefings: Republicans praised what they characterized as a narrow and well-executed plan, while Democrats expressed alarm, warning that the mission was vaguely defined. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers the administration has a three-phase plan for Venezuela after ousting its leader, including seizing oil and controlling the proceeds.
• Oil Tankers: The U.S. military seized two oil tankers, including a Russian-flagged ship that had been evading American forces for weeks, as the Trump administration moved aggressively to take control of Venezuela’s multibillion-dollar oil industry. Both are part of a so-called “ghost fleet” — vessels that surreptitiously transport oil for Russia, Iran or Venezuela in violation of sanctions.
• Venezuelans Struggle to Pay for Food: A new Gallup survey found that more than half of Venezuelans reported struggling to afford food last year, with economic hardship reaching even the wealthy.
• Trump Calls Colombia’s President: The conversation appeared to defuse a crisis that erupted after President Trump said military action against Colombia “sounds good.” President Gustavo Petro spoke to The New York Times just before the call.
• Venezuelan Oil: Companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips say that Venezuela owes them billions of dollars for confiscating their assets two decades ago.

4. Largest Protests in Years Sweep Through Iran’s Capital

​Summary:

Protests, the largest since 2022, are sweeping Tehran and 92 cities nationwide, driven by economic crisis, post-war trauma with Israel, and anger at repression. Oil workers, merchants, students, and activists have joined, with strikes hitting key refineries in Kangan. Security forces are firing on demonstrators; at least 36 have been killed and over 2,000 arrested. The regime cut internet access to choke mobilization and outside scrutiny. Reza Pahlavi has openly called for a united front, invoking Trump’s warning that mass killings will be punished. Sanctions, currency collapse, and stalled nuclear talks deepen pressure on a regime losing economic legitimacy.

Comment: Some questions in addition to the perennial ones of what comes next and what do you do now Lieutenant? Are we about to see the tiger's tale being caught? 

Do oil sector strikes and internet shutdowns signal regime fragility or the leadership’s confidence in coercive control?

How should external actors support Iranian civil society without feeding regime narratives of foreign orchestration that justify harsher crackdowns?

Largest Protests in Years Sweep Through Iran’s Capital

WSJ

The demonstrations, now in their second week, have spread across the country as strikes hit the nation’s oil sector

By Benoit Faucon

Follow

Updated Jan. 8, 2026 8:39 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/internet-blackout-hits-iran-as-former-shahs-son-calls-for-protests-0449c3bb

In an image taken from a Tuesday social- media post, Iranian security forces use tear gas to disperse demonstrators in the Tehran bazaar. UGC/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Large groups of protesters swept through Tehran on Thursday, chanting anti-government slogans and setting fires in a display of public discontent not seen in at least three years.

Anti-government demonstrators gathered late Thursday in several areas across the capital, according to videos verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. The protests were the biggest since the unrest started in late December and haven’t been seen at such a scale in the capital since 2022 during an uprising over the death of a young woman detained for not wearing a headscarf.

Since late last month, the protests have included oil workers, merchants, students and activists, adding another layer of pressure on a government still reeling from its war with Israel last year and a currency crisis.

The biggest day of protests so far came amid a call for demonstrations from Reza Pahlavi, the heir to the last dynasty to rule Iran until it was toppled by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands,” said Pahlavi, son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader, and the IRGC that the world and [President Trump] are closely watching you. Suppression of the people won’t go unanswered.”

In Haft Hoz, a shopping center in East Tehran, protesters were chanting “Long live the Shah” as they witnessed the burning of a government building. Fire could also be seen during demonstrations at Kaj Square, a residential area in the northwest of the capital.

The government shut down the internet Thursday in an attempt to tamp down demonstrations that have grown bigger by the day.

Iranians protest against the government in Bandar Kangan on Jan. 7.

Internet connectivity dropped abruptly to 5% from close to 100% earlier in the day, according to Netblocks, the watchdog group. The shutdown was the worst to hit Iran since its 12-day war with Israel in June, when authorities said they were trying to stop Israel from spying on it. Iran also shut down online access during the 2022 protests.

The internet shutdown occurred around the same time Trump said in an interview Thursday with “the Hugh Hewitt Show” that if “Iran starts killing people” they will be “hit very hard.”

The government has acknowledged the protesters’ economic complaints but also has used its security forces to keep the demonstrations under control. More than 2,000 people have been arrested and at least 36 killed in an uprising that has now spread to 92 cities, according to the most recent tally from the group Human Rights Activists in Iran.

The protests, now in their second week, have spread to include strikes in the country’s oil sector. The largest oil trade union in Kangan, home to a large refining and petrochemical complex, said its members at two refineries went on strike Thursday, joining with anti-government protesters.

The union said a large number of members were transferred to a local hospital in critical condition after security forces fired at them. Police can be seen firing at protesters in video circulated on social media and verified by Storyful.

Disruptions at oil facilities could worsen economic difficulties in Iran because energy exports remain the biggest source of revenue. Iran’s oil ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the strikes had affected production.

On Thursday, shopkeepers went on strike in more than 30 cities across Kurdish-dominated areas in west and south Iran, according to Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, an Iranian rights group.

Central to Iran’s economic problems are tight international sanctions. Last year, Tehran and Washington engaged in talks over Iran’s nuclear program that could have led to relief, but Iran’s leaders refused to budge on a demand that they quit enriching uranium.

Iran’s problems worsened in the aftermath of a disastrous war with Israel in June. The currency has lost some 60% of its value against the dollar since the summer, driving inflation to new highs.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the January 9, 2026, print edition as 'Internet Blackout Hits Iran as Protests Intensify'.

WSJ

5. Iran Is Cut Off From Internet as Protests Calling for Regime Change Intensify

​Summary:

Iran’s regime has effectively taken the country offline as the largest, most explicitly anti-regime protests in years spread across Tehran and major cities like Mashhad, Bushehr, Shiraz and Isfahan. Diverse crowds chant “Death to Khamenei,” “freedom, freedom,” and even “Long live the Shah,” signaling both republican and monarchist currents united in rejecting clerical rule. Security forces fire live rounds and tear gas; at least several dozen protesters have been killed. Bazaars are striking and streets are filling despite threats of “no mercy” and likely deployment of the Revolutionary Guards, revealing a crisis of legitimacy that repression and blackout may not resolve.

Comment: If a regime must repeatedly rely on nationwide internet blackouts and the Revolutionary Guards to control its own bazaars and middle-class neighborhoods, how long can it maintain authority without either meaningful reform or a decisive and possibly catastrophic escalation in violence? Where does the real "revolutionary spirit" lie in Iran? Is there a tipping point in the near future?

Iran Is Cut Off From Internet as Protests Calling for Regime Change Intensify

NY Times · Sanam Mahoozi ·

By Farnaz FassihiPranav Baskar and Sanam Mahoozi

Jan. 8, 2026

Updated 8:29 p.m. ET

As protests swelled around the country, Iran’s internet was shut down, and the heads of its judiciary and its security services warned of a harsh response amid calls for “freedom, freedom.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/world/middleeast/iran-protests-internet-shutdown.html

A woman checking her phone in Tehran in October.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Jan. 8, 2026Updated 8:29 p.m. ET

Iran plunged into an internet blackout on Thursday, monitoring groups said, as nationwide protests demanding the ouster of the Islamic government spread to multiple cities and grew in size, according to witnesses.

The internet shutdown came a day after the heads of Iran’s judiciary and its security services said they would take tough measures against anyone protesting. But the threats did not deter demonstrators.

In telephone interviews, more than a dozen witnesses said that they saw large crowds forming on Thursday night in neighborhoods across Tehran, the capital, and in cities around Iran, including Mashhad, Bushehr, Shiraz and Isfahan. They said the crowds were diverse, with men and women, young and old. The people interviewed inside Iran asked that their names not be published out of fear of retribution.

One resident of Tehran said that the crowds were chanting, “Death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and “freedom, freedom.” The chants could be heard from several blocks away in the affluent neighborhood of Shahrak Gharb in Tehran, which had until now sat out the protests.

Videos filmed on Thursday night showed government buildings on fire across the country, including in Tehran, as protests grew. While the protests were mostly peaceful early in the evening, violence broke out later in the night in Tehran, with demonstrators setting fire to cars, buildings and items in the street. A video verified by The New York Times shows fires in the streets of Kaj Square in the capital, with thousands of protesters flooding the area.

In Karaj, a suburb west of Tehran, a video verified by The Times showed protesters fleeing after gunshots were fired, though it is unclear from the videos whether it was security forces firing. .

As the protests grew, internet connectivity data showed an abrupt and near-total drop in connection levels in Iran on Thursday afternoon, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis database. The data indicates that the country is almost completely offline.

An image taken from social media shows Iranian security forces using tear gas to disperse protesters at the Tehran bazaar on Tuesday.

Iranian officials did not immediately respond to questions about the cause of the shutdown, but the government has previously enforced internet blackouts during moments of crisis. During the country’s 12-day war with Israel last June, Iran blocked access to the internet, saying that it was a necessary security measure to stop Israeli infiltration. That measure also cut off the flow of information outward to the rest of the world.

“The Iranian government uses internet shutdowns as a tool of repression,” said Omid Memarian, an Iranian human rights expert and senior fellow at DAWN, a Washington-based organization focused on the Middle East. “Whenever protests reach a critical point, authorities sever the country’s connection to the global internet to isolate protesters and limit their communication with the outside world.”

Iranians have been protesting against the authoritarian rule of the Islamic clerics for decades, in wave after wave of protests that have been repeatedly crushed.

The latest round of protests began a week ago. Multiple opposition groups, including Kurdish political groups, the Coordination Council of Azerbaijani Parties and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah of Iran, had all called for people inside Iran to take to the streets. Mr. Pahlavi had said in a video message that people opposing the government should come to the streets at 8 p.m. on Thursday.

Pro-democracy activists, such as the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is currently in detention, said in a statement with 17 prominent dissidents and film directors last week that the demand for democracy could not be quashed.

A resident in the southern city of Bushehr said the crowd was so large there that the security forces retreated.

A resident of Isfahan said that as a crowd of protesters marched, drivers honked and waved, and people in nearby apartment building whistled in solidarity.

A resident of Sadeghiyeh, a middle-class neighborhood in Tehran, said the crowd was swelling in size by the hour. He said security forces had fired their weapons into the air and fired tear gas canisters, but did not disperse the crowd. He said that some people in the crowd chanted, “Long live the Shah,” a reference to the last monarch in Iran, who was toppled in the 1979 revolution.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said in a post on social media that the “Zionist regime” — referring to Israel — was behind the protests. “The destabilization puzzle has been activated; a puzzle that the Iranian nation will not allow to be completed,” he added.

A senior government official, who did not want to be identified, said in an interview that many officials were privately calling and texting one another, at a loss of how to contain the avalanche of protests. He said the Revolutionary Guards Corps, typically in charge of securing Iran’s borders not internal security, would likely take over.

The slogans chanted by the crowd covered an array of political views but with one united target: the end of the Islamic regime.

Amir Ali, a 32-year-old businessman in Tehran, said he and a group of friends had joined the protests and chanted, “death to the oppressor, be it king or supreme leader,” and “the street will prevail, the people will win.”

Shima, a 52-year-old from Tehran, said she and her husband, her teenager children and her elderly parents were all on the streets Thursday night protesting for the first time as a family and chanting, “we are together, we are together, don’t be afraid,” and “clerics, get lost, the shah is coming back.”

As the protest movement has spread to cities across the country, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, told Iranian media that the protests were plotted by the country’s enemy and the government would show no mercy.

“This time it’s different. This time there are no excuses left,” he said. “The enemy has officially announced its support. I tell the people and the families that this time no one will be spared.”

Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday that it had documented at least 28 protesters killed in the recent days of protest, including children. Three other groups that document and track human rights — HRANA, based in Washington, Iran Human Rights based in Norway and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights — put the toll higher, at more than 40.

Amirparsa Neshat, an Iranian influencer and podcaster who supports the protests, was arrested when security forces raided his home in the middle of the night, Kaveh Rad, a lawyer and one of his relatives, announced on his Instagram on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday, a crowd of several hundred men stormed into a Shia seminary that trains clerics in the city of Gonabad, ransacking the building and beating up the clerics with “wood and batons,” said a statement from the cleric who directs the seminary, which was published in Iranian media. “We, too, are protesting the high prices, but protests are different than riots, people must part ways with rioters,” said the statement from the cleric, Hujjat al-Islam Ismaeil Tavakoli.

Merchants and business owners in the traditional bazaars in the cities of Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, Mashhad and Kerman have closed their shops to protest the dire state of the economy and the plunging value of Iran’s currency, according to interviews with witnesses and Iranian news media reports. These bazaars are at the heart of the country’s commerce and economy, and strikes could paralyze the economy if they continued.

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Belgium and Aric Toler contributed from Kansas City.

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.

Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 9, 2026, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Cut Off in Iran as Protests Grow; Calls Heard for Ayatollah’s Death

6. A Shadow Fleet Smuggles Illicit Oil Across the High Seas. This Is How It Works.

​Summary:

A global “shadow fleet” of roughly 1,000–1,500 aging tankers now carries 6–7 percent of world crude, moving sanctioned oil for Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. These ships evade sanctions through frequent renaming, flag-hopping to permissive “flags of convenience,” falsified GPS data, ghost transmissions, and ship-to-ship transfers like recent operations in the Sea of Japan/ East Sea. Many are over 20 years old, poorly insured, and owned through opaque shell companies, raising safety and environmental risks. Western sanctions alone have proven insufficient, driving an unprecedented shift toward direct interdiction and even military action to enforce economic pressure and contest this illicit maritime network.

Comment: Maps, graphics, and charts are at the link. I have no significant knowledge in this area but it seems that this shadow fleet as well as all the other illicit activities that take place on the high seas, from weapons proliferation to smuggling operations of all kinds (to include human trafficking), requires a well orchestrated international effort to shut down or at least reduce these malign activities. It is unlikely to be feasible in today's international political environment but this seems like it could be an effort that likeminded countries could (and should) get behind. But that is probably too naive a view.

A Shadow Fleet Smuggles Illicit Oil Across the High Seas. This Is How It Works.

WSJ

By Rebecca Feng

Follow

, Matthew Dalton

Follow

 and Daniel Kiss

Follow

Jan. 8, 2026 7:00 pm ET

Russia, Iran and Venezuela have amassed an armada of aging tankers to move barrels around the world

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/a-shadow-fleet-smuggles-illicit-oil-across-the-high-seas-this-is-how-it-works-eb8c9954?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Two sanctioned oil tankers shut off their transponders earlier this month and powered to a meetup point, drawing alongside each other in the Sea of Japan.

The crew of one of the vessels, known as the Kapitan Kostichev, then emptied 700,000 barrels of Russian crude into the tanks of the other, the Jun Tong, according to ship-tracking service Kpler.

The clandestine ship-to-ship transfer, visible via satellite and other shipping data, is a maneuver typical of the shadow fleet, an armada of aging tankers that crisscross the world, smuggling illicit oil for sanctioned nations including Venezuela, Russia and Iran.

The fleet’s operations came into sharp focus this week when U.S. Special Forces dropped from helicopters onto the deck of the Russia-flagged Marinera in the Atlantic Ocean south of Iceland. The tanker, which days before was sailing under a false flag and going by the name Bella 1, was escaping Trump administration action against vessels carrying Venezuelan oil. It had a Russian naval escort and wasn’t carrying any oil when it was captured Wednesday.

Western powers have imposed increasingly severe sanctions to suffocate the smuggling network, but Wednesday’s action—the latest in a recent string of assaults against the shadow fleet—demonstrates a more decisive approach to stamping it out.

Here’s how the shadow fleet works

Russia, Iran and Venezuela have amassed a fleet of old tanker ships to move sanctioned barrels of oil products around the world—or use as floating storage at sea.

Ship operators go to elaborate lengths to disguise the origin of their cargo and avoid detection. Crews change vessel names frequently, falsifying their GPS coordinates, use fake vessel names and duplicate transmissions to create ghost ships. On Wednesday, U.S. forces also boarded a tanker near the Caribbean that was broadcasting its location as being close to Nigeria at the time.

What are the numbers?

There are now more than 1,470 tankers classed as being part of the shadow or dark fleet, according to the ship monitoring website TankerTrackers.com. Their number has swelled since 2022 as Russia has looked for routes around Western sanctions for its war against Ukraine.

S&P Global puts their numbers at 940, which represent 17% of tankers currently transporting oil, oil products and chemicals around the world.

The shadow fleet transported some 3.7 billion barrels of oil in 2025, accounting for 6% to 7% of the annual global crude oil flows, according to ship-tracking service Kpler.

How do the ships disguise themselves?

After unloading its cargo in the Sea of Japan, the Russia-flagged Kapitan Kostichev reappeared on shipping radars on Tuesday, heading back toward the port serving Sakhalin I, the giant offshore oil project in the frozen waters of Russia’s far east from where it initially set out.

The Jun Tong, known as the Fair Seas until January 2024 and the Tai Shan until August, set a course for the Chinese port of Yantai. China, the world’s largest importer of crude, is also the biggest buyer of Russian oil. The vessel currently sails under the Cameroon flag but has in the past adopted the flags of Malta, the Marshall Islands and Panama.

International maritime law requires every ship to be registered with a specific country—a flag state—granting it nationality. The ship’s flag subjects it to that country’s laws for safety, technical issues and social matters relating to the crew. This registration, handled by a registry, provides legal proof of ownership and requires the ship to carry official documents and display the flag of its registration.

WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains what’s at stake after U.S. forces boarded and took control of two oil tankers—one of which was being escorted by a Russian submarine. Photo: Secretary Kristi Noem

A shadow tanker often uses a “flag of convenience” provided by smaller, non-Western nations such as Gabon, Comoros or Cameroon. Flag states’ ship registries are responsible for recording ship ownership and loans secured against vessels, as well as investigating incidents.

In return, the shipowners pay fees. Some small states outsource their shipping registry to third parties. They have also been known to offer sweeteners to shipowners, such as cheaper registration fees, lower taxes and less stringent checks.

The minimal oversight allows shadow tankers to sidestep a global system that was designed to ensure ships are properly insured and crew members well treated.

But when incidents do happen, the smaller flag states don’t always come to the rescue of the vessels sailing under their jurisdiction.

Many of these ships frequently change their names to allow them to evade scrutiny. For example, the oil tanker that was seized in the Atlantic on Wednesday was renamed to the Marinera a few days after the U.S. Coast Guard began pursuing it in December. Its past monikers include the Neofit and the Yannis, according to Singapore-based maritime intelligence company MagicPort. The ship claimed Russian protection after the crew sloppily painted a Russian flag on the side of the vessel.

What other features distinguish the fleet?

Around one-third of the tankers involved in the shadow fleet are more than 20 years old, according to TankerTrackers.com, making them prone to major accidents. Many lack reliable insurance.

Most of the world’s ships are insured and reinsured in Europe. Western sanctions have banned most insurers from providing services to these ships, cutting the vessels off from Western insurance markets. As a result, some use non-Western insurers or sail without coverage.

Who owns its ships?

Shadow-fleet vessels typically change ownership multiple times, relying on shell companies in places with loose registration regulations such as Dubai, Hong Kong and the Marshall Islands, to disguise the identities of their ultimate owners.

What action has been taken to stop the fleet?

Aside from the U.S. action against Venezuelan oil and sanctions of the tankers themselves, Ukraine went after the Kremlin’s shadow fleet in international waters last year for the first time during its war with Russia. In November, Ukraine’s navy and SBU security service used drones to attack two tankers in the Black Sea that had been sanctioned for carrying Russian oil.

The explosion of sanctions in the Russia-Ukraine war, and the money to be made from circumventing them via shadow vessels, has shown the limits of Western sanctions, said Nathanael Kurcab, a partner at law firm Morrison Foerster’s National Security Group.

“We’re now having to do almost what sanctions were never supposed to require, which is using military assets to enforce the blockade of Venezuela. That’s brand new,” he said.

Write to Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com, Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com and Daniel Kiss at daniel.kiss@wsj.com

WSJ

7. U.S. Navy Is Chasing Several Oil Tankers in the Atlantic

​Summary:

The U.S. Navy is pursuing multiple sanctioned oil tankers that bolted from Venezuelan waters in a coordinated attempt to break a partial naval blockade imposed in mid-December. Sixteen tankers tried to run the gauntlet; four have already been boarded or seized, including one captured between Iceland and Britain after a weeklong chase. Several others, many laden with Venezuelan crude, are now racing east across the Atlantic or northeast through the Caribbean, some spoofing their locations or reflagging as Russian vessels with new names. Analysts say the mass flight is a calculated gamble that U.S. forces cannot intercept every ship.

U.S. Navy Is Chasing Several Oil Tankers in the Atlantic

NY Times · Eric Schmitt · January 8, 2026

A mass departure by sanctioned tankers, some switching to Russian flags, has triggered a fresh effort by the United States to pursue Venezuelan oil shipments at sea.

By Christiaan TriebertRiley Mellen and Eric Schmitt

Jan. 8, 2026, 5:59 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/world/americas/navy-chasing-tankers-venezuela.html

An image from video released by the U.S. military purporting to show the seizure of the oil tanker M Sophia in the Caribbean on Wednesday.Credit...U.S. Southern Command

Jan. 8, 2026, 5:59 p.m. ET

Leer en español

A U.S. Navy vessel is pursuing several sanctioned oil tankers that appear to be making a break across the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Venezuelan waters earlier this week, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. military official. The ships, most of them laden with oil, are hundreds of miles from land and appear to be heading east, toward Africa and Europe.

The U.S. began a partial naval blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments in mid-December and has since boarded or seized four vessels trying to trade oil in defiance of the effort. On Wednesday, U.S. forces intercepted and took control of two of these ships, including one seized between Iceland and Britain after a weekslong chase across the North Atlantic.

The ships now crossing the Atlantic are among a larger group of sanctioned tankers that made an apparently coordinated attempt to evade the blockade last weekend, departing Venezuelan waters en masse. Of the 16 vessels involved, only one, the M Sophia, was boarded by U.S. forces, in the Caribbean on Wednesday.

Of the remaining 15 tankers, four were spotted heading east in the Atlantic Ocean, at least 400 miles from land. A second group of five vessels was detected sailing northeast through the Caribbean on Monday. The same day, a U.S. Navy destroyer was also pictured steaming toward the tankers heading across the Atlantic. One tanker reappeared off the coast of Colombia, according to TankerTrackers.com, a company that tracks global oil shipments. The positions of the remaining five ships are unknown.

Sources: Vessel detections by Ollie Ballinger using satellite images by Copernicus via Sentinel Hub.

By Leanne Abraham

The ships were detected by a computer program written by Ollie Ballinger, a lecturer in geocomputation at University College London’s Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis. The Times also analyzed the imagery, and verified Mr. Ballinger’s findings.

One of the tankers, the Veronica, which is not carrying any oil, changed its name to Galileo and its flag to Russia this week in an apparent effort to evade a U.S. boarding attempt. The Times identified three other tankers, all carrying Venezuelan oil, that registered in Russia this week.

The ship seized on Wednesday in the North Atlantic had also recently changed names and re-registered with Russia. It had been sanctioned by the United States as part of its measures taken against Iran.

The mass departure was a calculated bet intended to overwhelm U.S. enforcement, said David Tannenbaum, a former sanctions compliance officer with the U.S. Treasury. “All of these vessels fleeing at once is a gamble that U.S. forces don’t have the legal power or capability to stop them all at once,” he said. “It’s essentially a zombie race, you just have to be faster than the next boat.”

U.S. military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said they expect more boardings of sanctioned vessels.

The final destinations of these ships are unclear, and some are broadcasting false location information by pretending to be other ships around the world.

Christiaan Triebert is a Times reporter working on the Visual Investigations team, a group that combines traditional reporting with digital sleuthing and analysis of visual evidence to verify and source facts from around the world.

Riley Mellen is a reporter on The Times’s Visual Investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.

See more on: U.S. Navy

Add the Sunday Times in print to your subscription. 50% off the first year. Learn more.

NY Times · Eric Schmitt · January 8, 2026

8. The Real Reason China and Russia Won’t Try a Maduro-Style Raid

​Summary:

Eveleth argues that fears the Maduro raid will “green light” similar Russian or Chinese actions against Ukraine or Taiwan misunderstand what actually constrains U.S. rivals. It is not respect for norms but lack of capability. Leadership targeting is already baked into Russian and Chinese doctrine. What sets the United States apart is a rare mix of technology, experience, and elite special operations forces able to execute complex raids. Russia’s failed 2022 attempt to seize Zelensky exposed its limits. China lacks real combat experience and would need large-scale strikes or invasion to capture Taiwan’s leaders, reverting to brute force rather than surgical raids.

Comment: These are some useful narratives about China and Russia. They bring to mind some questions:

If China and Russia are forced to compensate for their lack of precision power with brute force, how can the United States and its allies raise the political, economic, and military costs of brute force to prohibitive levels without triggering uncontrolled escalation?

If allies better understand the qualitative gap between U.S. and authoritarian militaries, how can we (Washington) translate that insight into stronger coalition cohesion, greater defense industrial integration, and more effective deterrence in the Asia-Indo-Pacific and Europe?

The Real Reason China and Russia Won’t Try a Maduro-Style Raid

Foreign Policy · Decker Eveleth

U.S. rivals aren’t deterred by norms so much as by the limits of their own militaries.

By Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization based in Washington.

January 6, 2026, 1:35 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/06/venezuela-maduro-us-operation-china-russia-ukraine-taiwan/

In the wake of the United States’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, some observers and U.S. officials have warned that this may have given Moscow and Beijing a green light to pursue similar operations in Ukraine and Taiwan.

Just as the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s rule in Venezuela, Russia and China do not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine’s and Taiwan’s respective independence. If China, for instance, were to seize Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, or if Russia were to capture Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on what grounds could the United States reasonably object?

In the wake of the United States’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, some observers and U.S. officials have warned that this may have given Moscow and Beijing a green light to pursue similar operations in Ukraine and Taiwan.

Just as the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s rule in Venezuela, Russia and China do not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine’s and Taiwan’s respective independence. If China, for instance, were to seize Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, or if Russia were to capture Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on what grounds could the United States reasonably object?

Part of why this comparison is made so frequently is because the United States makes such operations look easy. To those unfamiliar with military planning, the capture of Maduro can look almost casual—helicopters fly in, extract the target, and depart without much difficulty. The apparent smoothness of the U.S. operation has even led some observers to doubt that there was any resistance at all, speculating instead that Maduro was given up by his own government in a back-channel deal.

It is often assumed that other countries refrain from certain actions because they are more respectful of international norms than the United States, which is seen as uniquely unhindered by moral concerns under U.S. President Donald Trump and thus does whatever it wants.

Such thinking is flawed in this particular context, for two major reasons.

For one, it implies that the United States has broken a particular norm that currently constrains a wide array of Chinese and Russian actions. The problem is that no such norm exists. Russia has never respected any supposed prohibition on targeting foreign leaders, as demonstrated in the opening days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Nor does China, which incorporates leadership targeting into its military planning for a Taiwan contingency.

This argument also overlooks the reality of special operations. The one carried out over the weekend required thousands of U.S. personnel across military and intelligence services working in close coordination, using some of the most advanced technology available. It was executed by the most elite forces the United States can field, involving cyber-operations, clandestine intelligence, preparatory attacks on Venezuelan air defenses, and the use of highly specialized helicopters flown by exceptionally skilled pilots—likely equipped with classified capabilities known to very few. What the United States possesses, and others largely do not, is a rare combination of advanced technology and decades of experience conducting high-risk special operations.

Russia and China refrain from conducting similar missions not because of a supposed norm against extracting leaders they consider illegitimate. They refrain because they lack the capability to do so. In the opening days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow attempted precisely this sort of operation and failed. Russian agents infiltrated Kyiv with orders to seize Zelensky and hold him until airborne forces landing in nearby Hostomel could reinforce them. Neither objective was achieved: Russian airborne units suffered heavy casualties both in the air and on the ground, and the network of Russian agents in Kyiv was dismantled. Having failed with the scalpel, Russia is now relying on brute force, not special operations, to break Ukraine.

China’s military, while arguably more technologically advanced than Russia’s, faces a different constraint: a near-total absence of combat experience. China’s last major military engagement, the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, was almost 50 years ago. Personnel turnover in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is high, and the PLA has struggled to retain experienced noncommissioned officers. As such, unlike the United States, China lacks a cadre of veterans with real-world combat experience to train the next generation in conducting complex special operations. To be sure, the PLA practices for such contingencies and has even built a full-scale replica of Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building at a desert training facility. But rehearsal is not experience.

There is also a more obvious obstacle: Taiwan is not as weak as Venezuela. While Taiwan’s military likewise lacks recent major combat experience, it is highly practiced at monitoring and interdicting hostile air activity, and it possesses an advanced array of air- and ground-based early warning systems. For China to pull off an operation comparable to the U.S. mission in Venezuela, it would not need to strike a dozen targets—it would likely need to strike hundreds. Such an effort would potentially require days of preparatory strikes, during which Taiwan’s leadership could disperse or relocate. Seizing Lai from his secure residence in the middle of Taipei is not a plausible “smash and grab” job—unless, of course, it was paired with a full-scale invasion. But at that point, it’s no longer a special operation; it’s the start of a war.

The PLA appears to understand this, which is why it has devised a far simpler approach for dealing with Taiwan’s leadership: bombing them to bits. During military exercises last month, China practiced utilizing air, sea, and land forces to blockade Taiwan and conduct precision strikes on Taiwanese forces. Writing for China Military Online, a PLA-run outlet, commentator Jun Sheng described “leadership decapitation” as a central objective of the exercise, intended to signal that the PLA can “impose precise punitive measures against the principal instigators at any moment.” It’s not a particularly subtle message.

The latest discourse over the U.S. operation in Venezuela is yet another instance of the United States suffering from the taken-for-granted invisibility of its own military superiority. U.S. forces are so good at what they do that their operations can appear almost magical. In the past year or so, the United States has conducted combat operations over Yemen, Iran, and now Venezuela without losing a single confirmed manned aircraft to enemy fire. By contrast, Russian forces routinely lose combat aircraft in Ukraine, while the PLA is so aware of U.S. tactical superiority that it explicitly trains its pilots not to engage in aerial dogfights.

None of this is to dismiss the threat posed by Russia or China. Rather, it is to emphasize that both rely on brute force to compensate for their tactical inferiority, which can certainly be effective in some contexts but not in the realm of precision-based special operations. Russia and China will not be “emboldened” to conduct leadership-targeting operations in the near future, and it has nothing to do with norms. It’s entirely because China does not believe it is ready and Russia already put its hand in the fire and got burned.

This post appeared in FP's The Reading List newsletter. Sign up here.

Foreign Policy · Decker Eveleth

9. AI In Cyber And The UN’s Role In Competitive Global Disorder

​Summary:

AI is transforming cyber defence with self-protecting, self-healing, predictive systems, but also supercharging offence: AI-driven phishing, malware, disinformation, and reconnaissance by China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea raise risks of miscalculation, misattribution, and escalation. The UN has begun to integrate AI into cyber norms (OEWG, UNSC debates, LAWS process) and launched new AI panels and dialogues, but consensus politics, lack of enforcement, and great-power rivalry limit impact. Practical guardrails are emerging mainly from like-minded coalitions such as Five Eyes, ICRI, and the Pall Mall Process, yet these too rely on voluntary commitments and have weak accountability.

Comment: I am afraid the current US administration will not want to engage with or support UN activities in this area. This would likely appear to some in the administration to be ceding sovereignty.

How does U.S. withdrawal from 66 UN and other international bodies affect Washington’s ability to shape UN-based AI cyber norms, guardrails, and accountability mechanisms that it will still want adversaries to follow?

If the U.S. sidelines itself institutionally at the UN, what concrete mechanisms will it use to connect Five Eyes, ICRI, and other minilateral AI initiatives to any remaining UN processes so they reinforce, rather than fragment, a rules-based digital order?

What strategy should POTUS adopt to support or selectively re-engage UN AI initiatives in cyber, short of full institutional return, to ensure U.S. technological advantage is protected while still constraining malign AI use by China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea?

AI In Cyber And The UN’s Role In Competitive Global Disorder - The Defence Horizon Journal

tdhj.org · Pavlina Pavlova

Written by

Pavlina Pavlova

on

January 8, 2026

https://tdhj.org/blog/post/ai-cyber-un/

Abstract: AI systems have transformed cyber defence by enabling self-protecting, self-healing, and predictive defence systems, but they also transform cyberattacks by opening new attack vectors and supporting advanced cyber offensive capabilities. This article examines how AI is leveraged in cyberattacks and operations, with selected examples of the “big four” states adversarial to the Western alliances—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The use of ever-improving AI-augmented cyberattack capabilities increases the risks of escalation and destabilisation in international peace and security. The UN has addressed several gaps in multilateral governance, while like-minded minilateral coalitions are instrumental for norm-setting and operational guardrails. However, these laudable efforts will have a limited impact as long as the main AI cyber powers are either unwilling or unlikely to allow their AI capabilities to be meaningfully constrained.

Problem statement: What are the evidence-based uses of AI-enhanced cyber capabilities that threaten international security?

So what?: Given the disruptive threat the malicious use of AI poses to international peace and security, governments need to advance international guardrails for AI-enhanced cyber capabilities by establishing normative standards, operational safeguards, and accountability mechanisms to mitigate connected threats, ensure compliance with international law, and promote responsible conduct—but that will be extremely difficult in an increasingly competitive global disorder.

Source: shutterstock.com/mr_tigga

AI in Cyber Defence

In his book, “Superintelligence,” Nick Bostrom argues that if humanity develops human-level artificial intelligence (AI), such superintelligence can rapidly gain a strategic advantage over humanity, potentially exceed human cognitive performance, and act in ways adversarial to human values. Autonomous in nature, it would be difficult to control.

The race to develop a type of AI that exhibits human-like cognitive abilities, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), has been spurred by recent advancements across AI models. Currently available tools, while far from the spectre of superintelligence, fulfil an impressive array of functions, including natural language processing, computer vision, predictive analytics, autonomous decision-making, anomaly detection, and code generation. Many of these functions revolutionise how we live and work.

The race to develop a type of AI that exhibits human-like cognitive abilities, or artificial general intelligence, has been spurred by recent advancements across AI models.

Critical services on which we rely every day—from power grids to hospitals, financial systems to communications networks—are underpinned, powered by, or dependent on software. Thus, the digital resilience of critical infrastructure can be improved by AI-enhanced self-protecting systems that automatically scan for malicious code and detect adversarial activities and, increasingly, automate response. As a proof of concept, in August 2025, Microsoft’s Project Ire demonstrated an autonomous AI system that reverse-engineers software to detect and block malware without human input, achieving high accuracy rates. In other words, Ire blocks highly advanced forms of malware automatically.

AI already scales protection capabilities, enabling more efficient responses through predictive threat detection, real-time anomaly identification, and automation, while reducing errors and speeding up incident response. Another AI application for critical infrastructure is self-healing systems that continuously monitor, identify, and remediate vulnerabilities. AI can also augment individual activities, such as secure coding, helping to rewrite insecure, legacy code at scale to eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities, and make security expertise accessible and available through AI assistants. “Agentic AI” promises even further advances and autonomy of AI agents—though that autonomy creates its own risks and potential vulnerabilities.

While AI is transforming cybersecurity and helping defenders, it also opens new attack vectors and is increasingly used by malicious state and criminal actors. AI systems are complex and vulnerable to evasion (deceptive manipulation of AI inputs), data poisoning, and the exploitation of traditional software flaws, which can deceive, manipulate, and compromise them, rendering AI tools ineffective or even harmful. Particularly as AI tools, including AI agents, are often black boxes with little transparency into their algorithms or operations, the potential for undiscovered vulnerabilities or unintended harmful behaviour and exploitation grows rapidly. Moreover, training data for AI systems can be corrupted or intentionally perverted, which in turn can cause malfunctions. General data poisoning reduces overall model performance, while targeted poisoning manipulates the model’s output in specific cases, for example, to spread misinformation in large language models (LLMs). In one case, Russian actors “groomed” AI chatbots to repeat propaganda by injecting fabricated articles into the digital ecosystem. Furthermore, LLMs have been found to leak large troves of personally identifiable information if not properly configured or protected. As these systems are incorporated into digital infrastructure, including critical systems, AI tools themselves must be designed, built, and delivered with security as a top priority.

AI in Cyber Offence

AI tools are primarily incorporated across four vectors: phishing and social engineering, malware development and deployment, disinformation, and reconnaissance. Automated systems increase the capacity for scale, speed, and efficiency, while lowering barriers for attackers to design and deploy offensive cyber capabilities, even with limited programming abilities, technical skills, or language fluency. A September 2025 MIT study found that 80% of the ransomware attacks examined used AI, ranging from AI-generated phishing campaigns to malware creation.,

AI tools are primarily incorporated across four vectors: phishing and social engineering, malware development and deployment, disinformation, and reconnaissance.

Phishing and Social Engineering

LLMs are trained to generate human-like text, making them well-suited for preparing directed, persuasive messages that mimic distinct communication styles and evoke familiarity, urgency, emotion, or authority, while avoiding common phishing signs that raise suspicion, such as grammatical mistakes or unnatural phrasing., LLMs are routinely used in phishing campaigns and other social engineering schemes, increasing the likelihood of deceiving recipients and deploying attacks at scale. For instance, Iranian state-backed actors from APT42, a threat group conducting cyber espionage and surveillance, leveraged LLMs to create legitimate-looking phishing content. The Iranian campaigns against foreign targets used automated text-generation and editing for translation and for tailoring messages to selected sectors and locations. LLMs are not employed in isolation, but integrate open-source tools and tactics to breach public and private sector entities more effectively.

AI enables text-to-speech generators to mimic voices based on brief recordings, making them a potent tool for vishing, a type of phishing campaign that leverages video or audio to facilitate convincing scams. Russian-backed groups used voice cloning, with reported campaigns employing AI-powered vishing to solicit the sharing of two-factor authentication codes. Automated voice cloning scams have targeted executives and governments worldwide. In early 2025, fraudsters cloned the voice of Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto to coax business leaders into transferring nearly one million euros in ransom. A Marco Rubio impostor used an AI-generated voice to deceive high-level officials. Using this deepfake voice, the attacker contacted high-level officials through the encrypted messaging platform Signal, exposing vulnerabilities in identity verification systems relying on voice recognition.

AI enables text-to-speech generators to mimic voices based on brief recordings, making them a potent tool for vishing, a type of phishing campaign that leverages video or audio to facilitate convincing scams.

Employed in “honeypot” websites, AI models are prompted to create fake login forms that exfiltrate credentials, embed malware or exploit kits into downloadable resources, and generate convincing error messages that direct visitors to call a fake support line. FIN7 is a Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group that has attacked over one hundred organisations in the United States and Europe, including government bodies. In a campaign observed in 2024, these cybercriminals used adult-themed AI Deepnude generator websites as a honeypot to install malware on the devices of unsuspecting visitors.

AI-enhanced social engineering tactics extend to proxy job interviewing. North Korean campaigns are infamous for drafting inauthentic job applications to embed operatives in Western companies, allowing foreign cybercriminal groups to gather intelligence and generate profit for the North Korean regime. LLM prompts, such as those from Anthropic models, can create elaborate false identities with convincing professional track records. The AI is not only used in the application process, but also during the interviews to complete technical and coding assessments, and once hired, AI tools help deliver the assigned technical work, while furthering the infiltration of the victim organisation.

Malware Development and Deployment

Automated malware generation allows threat actors to design code without the previously required advanced technical knowledge, and AI tools can further recommend new attack vectors to be considered for deployment. According to Microsoft, malware variants generally use simple sets of logical rules to recognise and adapt to operating environments, such as checking for time zones, to avoid detection. AI models automate this task and enable malware to conceal its presence and malicious intent more effectively, being adaptable to diverse environments and learning from previous campaigns and security tools. As a proof-of-concept, reinforcement learning was leveraged to generate malware that evaded Microsoft Defender. Outside controlled settings, the Ukrainian national computer emergency response team, CERT-UA, detected AI-powered malware attacks targeting the security and defence sector in July 2025. The malware strain “LameHug” was attributed to the Russian-backed APT28 group, and utilised an LLM to generate commands based on textual descriptions after autonomous infiltration.

Outside controlled settings, the Ukrainian national computer emergency response team, CERT-UA, detected AI-powered malware attacks targeting the security and defence sector in July 2025.

Agentic AI tools can provide both technical advice and active operational support for attacks that would otherwise have required a team of operators. Security researchers at New York University published a study in September 2025, demonstrating a prototype of LLM-orchestrated ransomware. Since these tools can adapt to defensive measures, such as malware detection systems, in real time, their advanced properties make defence and enforcement increasingly difficult. The use of externally sourced malware or code developed without human oversight or review can introduce unpredictable behaviours, as operators may not have full visibility into how the malware behaves, how long it will persist, or how other actors could exploit it.

Anthropic threat intelligence further evidenced that AI could bolster the organised Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, enabling the development, marketing, and distribution of ransomware with advanced evasion capabilities. Foreign ransomware operations constitute a serious and growing threat to national economies and have been recognised by the UN member states as a threat to international security due to their increasing frequency, scale and severity, causing harm and disrupting essential public services.

Disinformation

Due to its ability to emulate human language and generate vast troves of plausibly looking information, as well as high-fidelity audio and visual content, AI is helping in information operations by generating inauthentic accounts. Known as “sock puppet accounts,” these fake profiles can hide users’ identities, engage in comment brigading, and organise online attacks aimed at altering perceptions. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine, Russian-linked groups have employed AI-generated deepfake videos in disinformation campaigns. In March 2022, pro-Russian groups hacked a Ukrainian media website and posted a deepfake video of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announcing his resignation and calling on soldiers to surrender. The video was briefly broadcast by Ukrainian news websites and on national television when Russia-affiliated hackers compromised the channel’s display. The inauthentic content was shortly detected and removed. President Zelenskyy responded with a counter video where he reaffirmed Ukraine’s commitment to defending against the Russian invasion. Disinformation campaigns, such as the Storm-1679 network and the Doppelganger campaign, impersonate reputable news outlets and journalists to spread false narratives, exploiting verification challenges in fast news cycles during political events and high-stakes moments. For example, in February 2025, Storm-1679 created an E! News segment claiming USAID paid celebrities to visit Ukraine. The video—a complete fabrication—was seen by millions of readers before fact-checkers could respond.

Actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been documented conducting information operations using AI-created content, focusing on the U.S. political situation and the “five poisons”—Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Xinjiang separatism, the Falun Gong, and the Chinese democracy movement. Chinese actors posted AI-generated audio clips showing a Taiwanese presidential candidate across social media platforms to influence voters ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. PRC-affiliated social media accounts have also impersonated US voters. Chinese sock puppet accounts posted AI-generated videos, members and infographics promoting divisive issues, including drug consumption, immigration challenges and racial tension. Similarly, Iranian information operations teams have been observed manipulating political content and boosting engagement in influence campaigns using LLMs.

Actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China have been documented conducting information operations using AI-created content, focusing on the U.S. political situation and the “five poisons”—Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Xinjiang separatism, the Falun Gong, and the Chinese democracy movement.

Reconnaissance and Espionage

Reconnaissance and cyberespionage are considered a grey area—not offensive actions unless they cross certain thresholds, such as interfering with critical infrastructure and democratic processes—and provide states with a strategic advantage. AI models have been making strides in this field by enabling automated data collection and analysis. LLMs can help in domain reconnaissance by autonomously generating and executing commands for network scanning, service enumeration, and credential harvesting. PRC-affiliated actors have been observed using LLMs to exploit access to centralised services, conduct domain reconnaissance on US government networks, including those of the U.S. military and U.S.-based IT service providers, and access a public database of US intelligence personnel. North Korean APT actors employed LLMs to support several phases of the attack lifecycle, including reconnaissance on target organisations and U.S. military operations in South Korea. Iranian actors undertook reconnaissance on experts, international defence organisations, and government organisations, focusing on topics related to the Iran-Israel conflict., Concurrently, LLMs and real-time machine translation lower barriers to intelligence-sharing and operational coordination between the agencies and cybercriminal groups of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, enabling closer strategic alignment of the “big four” actors and proxies adversarial to Western alliances.

Automating Response and Cyber Attack Capabilities

A natural extension of AI automating malware development and deployment, and reconnaissance and vulnerability discovery, is states using AI tools to automate military and other offensive cyberattacks and campaigns, and, conversely, to automate cyber offensive responses. There has long been a narrative in the cyber operations community that cyber capabilities, even when used for defence, must move “at the speed of cyberspace” rather than the slow and deliberative speed of traditional operations. While this argument has some visceral appeal, as a byproduct, it risks removing the human from the loop and does not allow for the evaluation of important policy considerations, especially as the implications of this new technology are far from fully developed. AI, however, will increasingly allow such automated responses in both civil and military environments. In some ways, these issues mirror considerations in the realm of autonomous physical weapon systems, though the fast pace of AI adoption significantly raises the stakes. Moreover, given the risk that AI tools largely lack transparency and are, as discussed above, themselves subject to attacks, the result of deploying these tools and granting them any degree of independence carries an outsized risk to stability. Although militaries employing AI tools for offensive operations are in relative infancy, that evolution is imminent and raises the stakes for governments discussing the use of automated systems and how to control their potentially destabilising effects.

UN’s Role in AI Governance

As states contend for dominance in cyberspace, the risk that AI-enabled cyberattacks and operations lead to misattributed attacks and unintended escalation exacerbates geopolitical tensions. The rapid development, uneven progress, distribution, and application of AI across countries and regions, and the many harmful uses of these models by threat actors, to the point that such attacks threaten international security, pose the question: What is the best-positioned forum to address these urgent issues?

The United Nations (UN) remains the most inclusive multilateral forum for international dialogue on peace and security, but arguably not the most action-oriented or agile. The First Committee, which deals with disarmament, international peace and security issues, has introduced AI considerations in the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on ICT Security under the framework of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. The forum has been debating AI-enabled cyber threats—specifically those targeting digital systems—and how AI can be employed to prevent, mitigate, and defend against them. The Group’s final report notes that AI models, such as LLMs and generative models, have reduced barriers to undertaking malicious ICT activities, including through AI-generated malware and deepfakes. In a consensus decision, delegations agreed on the importance of ensuring the safety and security of AI systems and specific considerations for the data used to train AI models. The European Union, alongside several developing countries, proposed to prioritise emerging AI threats. In contrast, the US and Israel opposed in-depth elaboration of these issues, considering them outside of the OEWG mandate and the scope of work for the succeeding format, the Global Mechanism. While the implementation of agreed-upon norms for responsible behaviour is uneven, and violations are followed by limited accountability, this inclusion of AI-related issues marks a step toward integrating AI into international security discussions. It also shows that AI considerations do not necessitate new mandates or the renegotiation of normative frameworks, but can be addressed within them when these instruments focus on behaviour and intent.

The United Nations remains the most inclusive multilateral forum for international dialogue on peace and security, but arguably not the most action-oriented or agile.

A shortcoming with the UN-agreed norms is their lack of “agency,” or the capacity to act, and this agency falls to the international community acting through the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The Council convened high-level debates on the responsible use of AI in the military domain and plays a role in shaping collective responses. While the ability to reach agreement in the UNSC on a response to malicious cyber action is very limited, these meetings have emphasised the importance of guardrails and regulatory coherence regarding AI-powered weaponry. The UNSC work aims to contribute to the responsible application of AI in compliance with international law and to support peace processes, conflict prevention, peace operations, post-conflict recovery, and early warning. Although the considerations remain more conceptual than operational and focus on a broad range of weaponry beyond cyber capabilities, the UNSC elevated the issue to the highest level of deliberation on international peace and security. The UNSC’s involvement adds political weight and coherence to parallel discussions in other UN bodies and connects AI ethics, security governance, and arms control. In parallel, the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) addresses AI as a component that facilitates autonomy in weapons. The GGE has agreed on several guiding principles, emphasising that the use of autonomous weapons must remain under human control and comply with international humanitarian law (IHL). What this process has also shown is divisions between states advocating for strict bans and those preferring voluntary guidelines.

The Council convened high-level debates on the responsible use of AI in the military domain and plays a role in shaping collective responses.

In September 2025, the UN announced it would form two AI-specific bodies. The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, created by the UN General Assembly, will assess AI risks and opportunities in annual reports. A Global Dialogue on AI Governance has been initiated to build consensus on AI governance. UN Secretary-General António Guterres hailed these bodies will “move from principles to practice” on setting global AI standards. This work should complement existing efforts, prominently at the OECD, the G7, and regional organisations. The newly established formats are consultative in nature. Without any enforcement authority, their deliberations act as a confidence-building measure and a platform to promote global understanding.

The UN is a consensus-based organisation, with many members who have different and sometimes competing interests. Creating meaningful supervision has always been difficult for the international community, not just in AI. For example, in the cyber realm, though there was agreement on certain norms of behaviour for nation-state conduct in cyberspace a decade ago, consensus and a strained and polarised geopolitical environment have slowed further progress to a crawl, and accountability for violations of norms and international law is lacking across UN bodies. Moreover, while the UN is inclusive of views from all countries, AI investment tends to be highest in states following their own rules, often prioritising voluntary agreements and competition over convergence.

Coalitions of the Willing

Norm-setting and operational guardrails for AI systems depend on national standards, and closest to shaping any guardrails are like-minded, coalition-based strategies originating in minilateral formats. Five Eyes, the cornerstones of Western intelligence and security cooperation between the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have addressed AI accountability through voluntary ethical AI frameworks, advisory councils, and self-regulation. The Five Eyes countries have issued guidance on deploying AI systems securely, particularly to ensure that the emerging technology does not exacerbate any existing network vulnerabilities. The guidelines set to improve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of AI systems, ensure the presence of adequate mitigations for known vulnerabilities, and provide methodologies and controls to protect, detect, and respond to malicious activity against AI systems and related data and services.

The International Counter Ransomware Initiative (ICRI), a pre-eminent like-minded alliance launched by the White House to enhance global cooperation against ransomware, has dedicated summit sessions to AI’s role in countering ransomware. Their discussions centred on using AI to track threat actor behaviour and plan for critical infrastructure protection—including healthcare networks. The ICRI has addressed software security and promotes secure software development principles among its 74 members to prevent ransomware from gaining access to sensitive data and infrastructure.

The International Counter Ransomware Initiative has dedicated summit sessions to AI’s role in countering ransomware.

The Pall Mall Process is a separate state-led multi-stakeholder forum under a joint UK-France leadership that aims to identify and implement political commitments to tackle the proliferation and irresponsible use of commercial cyber intrusion capabilities (CCICs). The respective Code of Practice for States acknowledged that AI, while enhancing cyber defensive capabilities, including the detection, response, and remediation of malicious cyber incidents, is likely to increase the availability of cyber intrusion tools and services, and make them more challenging to monitor and regulate their malicious use. Concurrently, the growing market for commercial cyber intrusion capabilities expands the potential pool of state and non-state actors with access to these technologies, increasing the opportunity for irresponsible use and making it more difficult to mitigate and defend against the threats they pose.

The AI Summit in Paris in February 2025 sought to define a global approach to AI safety and regulation. However, unlike the Bletchley and Seoul summits in the previous years, which produced more ambitious declarations, the Paris gathering concluded with only a modest statement. It lacked the support of key governments investing in and developing AI. The outcome document––Paris Charter on AI in the Public Interest––is a voluntary framework focused on openness, accountability, participation, and transparency. However, the text lacks a broad global consensus, attracting only ten signatories. The U.S. and the UK did not joint France-led efforts, citing national security concerns. The persistent reluctance to find a common ground on pressing AI concerns shows that states with advanced AI capabilities have doubled down on competitive AI design and deployment rather than coordinated efforts.

Rules and accountability

As noted above, AI models clearly demonstrate dual use capabilities: for protection across critical infrastructure and for offence in attacks by states and cybercriminal groups, to levels that threaten international peace and security. AI-enabled cyber operations, especially those involving autonomous malware, disinformation at scale, and covert reconnaissance, raise the likelihood of miscalculation, misattribution, and unintended escalation among competing or adversarial states. Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean actors have employed AI models in both offensive cyber operations and financially motivated attacks, fuelling geopolitical competition and asymmetric strategies. The urgency in addressing the use of AI in this context is palpable as new developments in AI models and the use of autonomous agents accelerate.

AI models clearly demonstrate dual use capabilities: for protection across critical infrastructure and for offence in attacks by states and cybercriminal groups, to levels that threaten international peace and security.

The UN provides an inclusive forum where states gather to discuss the challenge and build confidence and trust, but the multilateral progress is constrained by reliance on consensus-based decision-making, and consensus is increasingly unlikely given the perceived stakes of AI development and dominance. Under President Trump, the U.S. has backed away from constraining what it sees as its technological lead in AI and eschews any attempts by “global governance mechanisms” like the UN to constrain its progress. China, though outwardly welcoming UN governance efforts, is, if the cyber domain is any indication, unlikely to comply with any UN-developed constraints if it feels its national interests are at stake. Like-minded regional and mini-lateral coalitions carefully advance practical norms and operational guardrails, but they also lack enforcement mechanisms.

Amid fragmented global governance, the rules-based order will depend on the resolve of like-minded groups to form an influential enough community that can demand compliance and foster responsible use of emerging technologies. Enhancing stability in the digital domain demands minimum shared guardrails for AI-enhanced cyber capabilities—focused on secure development and deployment, adequate oversight, and compliance. This is an unlikely endeavour unless those bodies can find some common ground with at least one of the current AI powers. Even if some agreements can be reached, governments must show political heft to ensure accountability––something that has been sorely lacking in cyberspace writ large.

Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Nathaniel Mott, “AI Malware Can Now Evade Microsoft Defender,” Tom’s Hardware, July 10, 2025, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/ai-malware-can-now-evade-microsoft-defender-open-source-llm-outsmarts-tool-around-8-percent-of-the-time-after-three-months-of-training.

“What Is AI for Cybersecurity?” Microsoft Security, accessed October 23, 2025, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/security-101/what-is-ai-for-cybersecurity; Oladiipo Ishola Oladepo and Seye Amos Olawoyin, “The Impact of AI on Cross-Border Financial Operations in Fintech: A Legal and Ethical Perspective,” World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews 26, no. 3 (July 2025): 2445, https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2025.26.3.2445; Cem Dilmegani, “Top 13 AI Cybersecurity Use Cases with Real Examples,” AIMultiple, October 10, 2025, https://research.aimultiple.com/ai-cybersecurity-use-cases/; Jen Easterly, The End of Cybersecurity America’s Digital Defenses Are Failing—but AI Can Save Them, Foreign Affairs, 16 October 2025, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/end-cybersecurity.

Jim Dempsey, “Addressing the Security Risks of AI,” Lawfare, April 11, 2023, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/addressing-security-risks-ai.

SCSP, Generative AI: The Future of Innovation Power (September 2023), https://www.scsp.ai/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GenAI-web.pdf; DATUREX GmbH, “Russian Propaganda Manipulates AI Training Data,” External Data Protection Officer Dresden, March 28, 2025, https://externer-datenschutzbeauftragter-dresden.de/en/data-protection/russian-propaganda-manipulates-ki-training-data/.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), “Software Must Be Secure by Design—and Artificial Intelligence Is No Exception,” CISA, April 27, 2023, https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/software-must-be-secure-design-and-artificial-intelligence-no-exception.

Micah Musser et al., “Adversarial Machine Learning and Cybersecurity: Risks, Challenges, and Legal Implications,” arXiv, May 23, 2023, https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14553; John Seymour and Philip Tully, “Generative Models for Spear Phishing Posts on Social Media,” arXiv, February 14, 2018, https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05196.

Zach Church, “80% of Ransomware Attacks Now Use Artificial Intelligence,” MIT Sloan Management Review, September 8, 2025, https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/80-ransomware-attacks-now-use-artificial-intelligence.

Anthropic, Threat Intelligence Report: August 2025 (August 2025), https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/b2a76c6f6992465c09a6f2fce282f6c0cea8c200.pdf.

United Nations General Assembly, Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security: Final Report of the Open-Ended Working Group on Security of and in the Use of Information and Communications Technologies (2021–2025), A/80/257 (July 24, 2025), https://docs.un.org/en/A/80/257.

John Seymour and Philip Tully, “Generative Models for Spear Phishing Posts on Social Media,” arXiv, February 14, 2018, https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05196; Recorded Future, “I, Chatbot,” Insikt Group Research, https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/i-chatbot.

MITRE ATT&CK, “APT42 (G1044),” https://attack.mitre.org/groups/G1044/.

Google Cloud, “Untangling Iran APT42 Operations,” Google Cloud Blog, https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/untangling-iran-apt42-operations.

“Nation-State Abuse of Gemini AI,” Infosecurity Magazine, https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nation-state-abuse-gemini-ai/; Google Cloud, “Adversarial Misuse of Generative AI,” Google Cloud Blog, January 19, 2025, https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/adversarial-misuse-generative-ai.

David Trigano and Alex Kozodoy, “The Rise of AI-Driven Cyber Attacks: How LLMs Are Reshaping the Threat Landscape,” Deep Instinct Blog, March 12, 2025, https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/the-rise-of-ai-driven-cyber-attacks-how-llms-are-reshaping-the-threat-landscape.

Kaspersky, “Phishing Evolves with AI and Stealth: Kaspersky Highlights Biometric and Signature Risks,” Kaspersky Press Release, https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/phishing-evolves-with-ai-and-stealth-kaspersky-highlights-biometric-and-signature-risks.

“Italian Police Freeze Cash in AI Voice Scam That Targeted Business Leaders,” Reuters, February 12, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/italian-police-freeze-cash-ai-voice-scam-that-targeted-business-leaders-2025-02-12/.

John Hudson and Hannah Natanson, “A Marco Rubio Impostor Is Using AI Voice to Call High-Level Officials,” The Washington Post, July 8, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/07/08/marco-rubio-ai-imposter-signal/.

Steve Povolny, “Attack of the Clones: How Generative AI Tools Are Redefining Phishing,” Exabeam, April 4, 2025, https://www.exabeam.com/blog/infosec-trends/attack-of-the-clones-how-generative-ai-tools-are-redefining-phishing/.

“FIN7 Hosting Honeypot Domains with Malicious AI Generators – New Silent Push Research,” Silent Push, October 2, 2024, https://www.silentpush.com/blog/fin7-malware-deepfake-ai-honeypot/.

“North Korean IT Worker Scheme Exposed,” CNN, August 5, 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2025/08/05/world/north-korea-it-worker-scheme-vis-intl-hnk/index.html; “North Korea Cybercrime: DTEX Research Center Report 227,” Cyberscoop, August 2025, https://cyberscoop.com/north-korea-cybercrime-dtex-research-center-227/.

Anthropic, “Detecting and Countering Misuse of Generative AI: August 2025 Update,” August 2025, https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-countering-misuse-aug-2025.

“ChatGPT Uses for Cybersecurity Continue to Ramp Up,” TechTarget SearchSecurity, August 2025, https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/366536112/ChatGPT-uses-for-cybersecurity-continue-to-ramp-up.

Steve Povolny, “Attack of the Clones – How Generative AI Tools Are Redefining Phishing,” Exabeam (blog), April 4, 2025, https://www.exabeam.com/blog/infosec-trends/attack-of-the-clones-how-generative-ai-tools-are-redefining-phishing/.

Brad Smith, “Artificial Intelligence and the Department of Defense: Securing Cyber Missions,” Microsoft On the Issues, May 3, 2022, https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/05/03/artificial-intelligence-department-of-defense-cyber-missions/.

“Microsoft Defender Outsmarted by AI-Generated Malware Proof of Concept,” Cybersecurity88, July 10, 2025, https://cybersecurity88.com/news/microsoft-defender-outsmarted-by-ai-generated-malware-poc/.

“Ukraine Pins AI-Powered LameHug Malware Attacks on Defense Sector to Russian-Backed APT28 Group,” Industrial Cyber, July 21, 2025, https://industrialcyber.co/ransomware/ukraine-pins-ai-powered-lamehug-malware-attacks-on-defense-sector-to-russian-backed-apt28-group/.

Anthropic, “Detecting and Countering Misuse of Generative AI: August 2025 Update,” August 27, 2025, https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-countering-misuse-aug-2025.

Howard Solomon, “AI-Powered Autonomous Ransomware Campaigns Are Coming, Say Experts,” CSO Online, September 8, 2025, https://www.csoonline.com/article/4053251/ai-powered-autonomous-ransomware-campaigns-are-coming-say-experts.html.

Anthropic, “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI: August 2025,” August 27, 2025, https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-countering-misuse-aug-2025.

Recorded Future, “I, Chatbot: How AI Is Being Used to Automate Cybercrime,” Recorded Future Research, https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/i-chatbot.

“Generative AI Makes Chinese, Iranian Hackers More Efficient, Report Says,” Voice of America, August 2025, https://www.voanews.com/a/generative-ai-makes-chinese-iranian-hackers-more-efficient-report-says/7956403.html.

Roman Osadchuk, “AI Tools Usage for Disinformation in the War in Ukraine,” Digital Forensic Research Lab, July 9, 2024, https://dfrlab.org/2024/07/09/ai-tools-usage-for-disinformation-in-the-war-in-ukraine/.

“Russian War Report: Hacked News Program and Deepfake Video Spread False Zelenskyy Claims,” Atlantic Council, March 16, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-hacked-news-program-and-deepfake-video-spread-false-zelenskyy-claims/.

“Russian Deepfakes Fool Media: Storm-1679 Campaign Impersonates Major US News Outlets,” Reality Defender, August 19, 2025, https://www.realitydefender.com/insights/russian-propaganda-network-impersonates-major-us-news-outlets-platforms-and-gover; “China AI Influence Operations: Beijing-Linked Campaigns Amplify Domestic Issues Abroad,” The Record, April 7, 2024, https://therecord.media/china-ai-influence-operations.

Reality Defender Analysis Team, “Russian Propaganda Network Impersonates Major US News Outlets: Platforms and Governments Need Defense Against AI-Generated Disinformation,” Reality Defender Insights, August 19, 2025, https://www.realitydefender.com/insights/russian-propaganda-network-impersonates-major-us-news-outlets-platforms-and-gover.

“Chinese Hackers Are Using AI to Inflame Social Tensions in the U.S.,” The Record, April 7, 2024, https://therecord.media/china-ai-influence-operations.

“Untangling Iran’s APT42 Operations,” Google Cloud Threat Intelligence Blog, May 1, 2024, https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/untangling-iran-apt42-operations.

DATUREX GmbH, “Russian Propaganda Manipulates AI Training Data,” External Data Protection Officer Dresden, March 28, 2025, https://externer-datenschutzbeauftragter-dresden.de/en/data-protection/russian-propaganda-manipulates-ki-training-data/.

Google Threat Intelligence Group, “Adversarial Misuse of Generative AI,” Google Cloud Blog, January 29, 2025, https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/adversarial-misuse-generative-ai; Microsoft Security, “Staying Ahead of Threat Actors in the Age of AI,” Microsoft Security Blog, February 14, 2024, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/02/14/staying-ahead-of-threat-actors-in-the-age-of-ai/.

Wan Rosalili Wan Rosli, “Waging Warfare Against States: The Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Espionage,” AI and Ethics 5, no. 1 (2025): 47–53, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-024-00628-x; F. J. Egloff, “Publicly Attributing Cyber Attacks: A Framework,” Journal of Strategic Studies 44, no. 5 (2021): 789–811, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2021.1895117 .

Microsoft Security, Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024, https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/microsoft/final/en-us/microsoft-brand/documents/Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 %281%29.pdf.

United Nations General Assembly, “Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security,” A/80/257, July 24, 2025, https://docs.un.org/en/A/80/257.

Pavlina Pavlova and Christopher Painter, “The UN’s Permanent Process on Cybersecurity Faces an Uphill Battle,” Lawfare, August 13, 2025, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-un-s-permanent-process-on-cybersecurity-faces-an-uphill-battle.

“High-Level Open Debate on Artificial Intelligence,” Security Council Report, September 2025, https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2025/09/high-level-open-debate-on-artificial-intelligence.php.

United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, Report of the 2023 Session of the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), CCW/GGE.1/2023/CRP.2 (Geneva: United Nations, May 12, 2023), https://docs-library.unoda.org/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons_-Group_of_Governmental_Experts_on_Lethal_Autonomous_Weapons_Systems_%282023%29/CCW_GGE1_2023_CRP.2_12_May.pdf; Lieber Institute for Law & Land Warfare, The Future of Warfare: National Positions on the Governance of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, https://lieber.westpoint.edu/future-warfare-national-positions-governance-lethal-autonomous-weapons-systems.

United Nations, “Press Release GA/12699,” December 2025, https://press.un.org/en/2025/ga12699.doc.htm.

“Global Digital Compact: Artificial Intelligence,” United Nations, 2025, https://www.un.org/global-digital-compact/en/ai.

Derek B. Johnson, “UN Seeks to Build Consensus on ‘Safe, Secure and Trustworthy’ AI,” CyberScoop, September 26, 2025, https://cyberscoop.com/un-seeks-consensus-on-safe-secure-trustworthy-ai/.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “Joint Guidance on Deploying AI Systems Securely,” April 15, 2024, https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2024/04/15/joint-guidance-deploying-ai-systems-securely.

Public Safety Canada, “International Counter-Ransomware Initiative 2024: Joint Statement,” October 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/10/international-counter-ransomware-initiative-2024-joint-statement.html.

UK Government, “The Pall Mall Process: Code of Practice for States,” 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-pall-mall-process-code-of-practice-for-states/the-pall-mall-process-code-of-practice-for-states.

“The Paris AI Summit: A Diplomatic Failure or a Strategic Success?” DiploFoundation, 2025, https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/the-paris-ai-summit-a-diplomatic-failure-or-a-strategic-success/.

“The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest,” Élysée Palace, February 11, 2025, https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2025/02/11/the-paris-charter-on-artificial-intelligence-in-the-public-interest.

“UK and US Refuse to Sign International AI Declaration,” BBC News, February 11, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8edn0n58gwo.

tdhj.org · Pavlina Pavlova

10. The Taiwan ‘Idiocy’: Why Game Theory Rules Out A 2027 Invasion – OpEd

​Summary:

Game theory, as presented by Professor Djangu Chin, argues a 2027 Chinese invasion of Taiwan is irrational. China’s coastal economic heartland sits within range of allied missiles, so war risks destroying the very industrial base that underpins Party legitimacy. Japan’s shift to “strategic clarity” has burned its bridges, making intervention in any Taiwan blockade credible and forcing Beijing to plan against a U.S.–Japan front. The Taiwan Strait is framed as a Game of Chicken where full collision yields catastrophic payoffs, while trade and tech interdependence push both sides toward uneasy cooperation rather than war.

Comment: Chart at the link. If war over Taiwan is irrational for Beijing, how should U.S. and allied planners balance deterrence against the danger of their own actions turning a rational competitor into a desperate gambler? 

Illustration: Grok/F.A.

The Taiwan ‘Idiocy’: Why Game Theory Rules Out A 2027 Invasion – OpEd

 January 8, 2026  0 Comments

By Felix Abt

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08012026-the-taiwan-idiocy-why-game-theory-rules-out-a-2027-invasion-oped/

While the Pentagon warns of a looming 2027 conflict, the strategic “payoff matrix” tells a different story.

From coastal vulnerability to the “Game of Chicken” with Japan, here is why Beijing is playing a much longer—and more cautious—game.

The drumbeat of war in the Taiwan Strait has become a staple of Western geopolitical forecasting. With military drills intensifying and the 2027 “Davidson Window” approaching, the narrative seems set: China is preparing for a historic military gambit.

But according to Professor Djangu Chin, a Yale-educated game theory expert based in Beijing, this narrative fails the test of rational logic. To Chin, the idea of a near-term invasion isn’t just unlikely—it is “idiocy.”

Using the cold mathematics of game theory, Chin argues that China’s domestic priorities and economic geography create a massive deterrent that rhetoric cannot overcome.

1. The Coastal Achilles’ Heel: A Target Too Big to Fail

The most significant deterrent to a Chinese invasion isn’t just the US Navy; it’s China’s own geography.

In game theory, a player is less likely to “defect” (start a war) if their most valuable assets are exposed to immediate destruction. China’s economic miracle is built on a narrow strip of coastline directly facing the Taiwan Strait.

• The Concentration of Wealth: China’s premier Tier-1 cities, high-tech manufacturing hubs, and global shipping ports are all within striking distance of modern missile systems.
• The Stakes: A conflict wouldn’t just be a naval battle; it would be the physical dismantling of China’s industrial base. If the “Social Contract” of the Communist Party is built on delivering prosperity, risking the total destruction of the coastal economy for a territorial gain is a catastrophic trade-off.

2. Japan and the “Burned Bridge” Strategy

In 2025, the game changed. Japanese Prime Minister San Takayachi moved Japan from “strategic ambiguity” to “strategic clarity,” declaring that a blockade of Taiwan would be treated as an existential threat to Japan.

In game theory terms, Japan has “Burned the Bridges.” By making this public commitment, they have removed their own option to stay neutral. This makes their threat to intervene credible.

• The Result: China now faces a two-front dilemma. Even if the US hesitated, China would face a rearmed, high-tech Japanese military determined to protect its trade routes. This significantly lowers the “Probability of Success” in any invasion model.

3. The “Game of Chicken” in the Strait

The current tensions are best described as a Game of Chicken. Two drivers (the US/Japan and China) are speeding toward each other. The goal is to make the other side “swerve” (back down from their claims).

• The Signaling: China’s military drills are not “practice” for an invasion; they are “signals” designed to show resolve.
• The Rational Swerve: Because a head-on collision (World War III) results in a “Negative Infinity” payoff for everyone, the rational choice remains a tense, uncomfortable status quo. As long as the cost of the collision remains higher than the cost of “swerving,” peace—however fragile—prevails.

4. The Trade War: A Lesson in Tit-for-Tat

Professor Chin also notes that the US-China trade war has behaved like a classic Tit-for-Tat game. While the Trump-era tariffs were intended to force a Chinese retreat, the result was a stalemate that hurt the US export sector.

By 2026, China’s exports have proven resilient, while the US faces the reality of interdependence. In a world of “Stag Hunts,” where both nations must cooperate to reap the rewards of AI and advanced manufacturing, “Defecting” through trade wars or military conflict creates a lose-lose equilibrium.

The Broader Perspective: Chin’s Global Outlook

To prove the consistency of this model, Professor Chin applies game theory to the world’s most intractable conflicts:

Conclusion: Don’t Mistake Noise for Signal

The media focuses on the “Noise”—the fiery speeches and the naval maneuvers. But the “Signal”—the underlying math of coastal vulnerability and economic interdependence—points toward stability.

For Beijing, the “win condition” isn’t a flag over Taipei; it is the continued survival and growth of the Chinese mainland. In the cold light of game theory, an invasion would be the surest way to lose everything. Taiwan is a distraction from the real game: the long-term survival of the Chinese economic engine.

What do you think? Is the West miscalculating China’s rational self-interest, or is “National Rejuvenation” a payoff that defies mathematical logic? Let us know in the comments.

Felix Abt

Felix Abt is a Vietnam-based entrepreneur, author (felixabt.substack.com) and travel blogger (youtube.com/@lixplore)

11. How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security

​Summary:

The article argues that London’s plan to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, to Mauritius risks a major setback for U.S. Asia-Indo-Pacific strategy. Diego Garcia is vital for submarines, carriers, bombers, and Space Force support across the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific. Under Mauritian control, the African Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone Treaty could restrict U.S. nuclear-related operations and open space for Chinese political and legal warfare. A 99-year lease would hinge on UK payments to Mauritius, creating a future veto over U.S. access. Chagossians were not meaningfully consulted and many oppose Mauritian sovereignty.

Comment: I think we have forgotten about Diego Garcia lately. It is a key "stone" on the Go/Wei Chi/Baduk board. If Diego Garcia’s status becomes uncertain, what concrete basing, access, and legal strategies must the United States pursue now to avoid strategic blackmail in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Indo-Pacific?

How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security

The National Interest ·January 7, 2026

Topic: Naval Warfare

Region: Asia

How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security

January 7, 2026

By: Alexander B. Gray, and Cleo Paskal

As Parliament reviews the transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, US access to the Diego Garcia base is no longer assured.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-the-uk-is-undermining-us-indo-pacific-security

While the world’s attention is on Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere, the British government is careening this week toward a colossal strategic blunder with significant implications for American interests in the Indo-Pacific. The British parliament is in the process of passing the “Agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago including Diego Garcia,” which would transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean from the UK to Mauritius. This archipelago contains Diego Garcia, one of the US military’s most critical facilities.

The Diego Garcia base, known colloquially as the “footprint of freedom,” is one of the few outside the United States that can reload nuclear submarines, port aircraft carriers, and base and launch strategic bombers, and is critical for Space Force operations.

Diego Garcia supports operations in some of the most strategically and economically important parts of the world—from the Middle East to Central Asia to the Pacific Ocean—all while being protected by the vast “moat” of the Indian Ocean. It is key to US power projection in the Indo-Pacific and to deterrence of China’s growing naval threat.

Currently, the land under the base is British territory. However, if legislation supported by British prime minister Keir Starmer is adopted, it will soon be handed over to Mauritius. When the treaty was announced in 2024, then-Senator Marco Rubio said the deal “poses a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean and threatens critical US military posture in the region.” He was correct then, and that assessment is even truer today.

The UK’s Labour government cites “decolonization” as justification for the treaty. This claim holds little credence, as the Chagossians—descendants of the roughly one thousand people who were forced off their islands over 50 years ago to make way for the base—are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from Mauritians. Many have taken British citizenship and live in the UK with no links to Mauritius. They were not consulted on the treaty, and they have no right of return under it.

Related Articles

• Economy
• Oil and Gas

How the Inter-American Development Bank Can Help the Venezuelan Recovery

Rebuilding Venezuela’s economy will cost far more than the country can afford on its own.

• Air Warfare

What Happens If Donald Trump Bombs Iran?

US airstrikes on Iran would likely hurt the government’s ability to respond to the ongoing protests—but might also induce it to institute violent measures to suppress them.

• Arman Mahmoudian

January 7, 2026

• Diplomacy
• Military Aid

Donald Trump’s Taiwan Stance: Quiet but Strong

The Donald Trump administration has adopted a strategy intended to strengthen Taiwan’s defense without unnecessarily provoking China.

• Christopher Vassallo

January 6, 2026

In December, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination came out against the treaty, and a recent UK House of Lords survey of Chagossian views found widespread distrust of the Mauritian government and an urgent desire to be consulted on their own future. In desperation, a large group of Chagossians has supported the declaration of a “Government-in-Exile,” which broadly supports the archipelago remaining part of the UK.

From a US strategic perspective, the transfer holds significant risks. Mauritius has signed the African Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone Treaty that “prohibits the research, development, manufacture, stockpiling, acquisition, testing, possession, control or stationing of nuclear weapons” on its soil, which, if London has its way, will soon include Diego Garcia. This will affect US use of the Diego Garcia facility and open the cognitive warfare space for a fundamental challenge to the presence, particularly from Chinese proxies who would welcome the denial of US forces in the region.

Most alarmingly, under the agreement, if the United Kingdom fails to make any of the billions of dollars in payments to Mauritius, Mauritius can legally terminate the 99-year lease for the Diego Garcia base. Pressure on the UK government to stop payments is already coming from both the Left and the Right. Eventually, the British government may cease payments, especially given Britain’s dire fiscal situation.

With the deal almost assuredly not lasting 99 years, the United States will likely face a no-win situation. It can refuse to leave, inviting charges of contravening international law. The current British government has already shown its willingness to break with Washington over security issues, using international law as a pretext, as it may have done with intelligence sharing regarding Venezuela.

The Donald Trump administration’s recent National Security Strategy makes clear Washington’s commitment to defending a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Without Diego Garcia available for US power projection, China will gain a significant advantage in its quest to deny the United States access to the world’s most economically and militarily dynamic region. Should the UK-Mauritius Treaty take effect, Britain’s self-righteous pretense of atoning for its colonial sins will only make America’s effort to contain Beijing’s ambitions to colonize the region that much harder.

About the Authors: Alexander Gray and Cleo Paskal

Alexander Gray is a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council. He served as the chief of staff of the White House National Security Council from 2019 to 2021. Mr. Gray’s writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, The National Interest, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, Naval War College Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, and the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute.

Cleo Paskal is a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular, the Pacific Islands and India. She has testified before the US Congress, and her work has been published in The Diplomat, Defense News, The Telegraph, South China Morning Post, The Australian, Japan Times, The World Today, and International Affairs. She is currently the North American special correspondent for The Sunday Guardian (India).

12. Philippine leadership puts ASEAN at center of South China Sea rivalry

​Summary:

As ASEAN chair in 2026, the Philippines will pair a push for a binding South China Sea code of conduct with a sharp expansion of U.S.–Philippine defense cooperation, including more than 500 joint activities. Manila will try to use ASEAN to advance incident-avoidance rules and stronger crisis communications, while relying on bilateral mechanisms with Beijing to manage flashpoints at Second Thomas Shoal and elsewhere. Yet ASEAN divisions and Chinese resistance make a full code unlikely. Continuous alliance training, surveillance, and coastal defense drills are turning U.S.–Philippine security cooperation into a structural deterrent, signaling that quiet accommodation at sea is over.

Comment: How can Manila use ASEAN “centrality” to legitimize stronger deterrence while avoiding the perception that ASEAN has become an anti-China bloc in the Asia-Indo-Pacific?

If diplomacy now rides on the back of growing U.S.–Philippine military integration, what guardrails are needed to prevent gray-zone incidents from escalating into open conflict at sea?

World News Jan. 8, 2026 / 5:00 AM

Philippine leadership puts ASEAN at center of South China Sea rivalry

By James Borton

upi.com

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/01/08/philippines-Philippines-ASEAN-chair-south-china-sea/2781767708752/

Jan. 8 (UPI) -- As the Philippines takes over the rotating Association of Southeast Asian Nations chair in 2026, it will do so at a moment of sharpened maritime tension and narrowing diplomatic patience in the South China Sea.

Manila has made clear it intends to prioritize two parallel initiatives that reflect the region's evolving reality: renewed efforts to finalize a legally binding code of conduct with China and a dramatic expansion of U.S.-Philippines military cooperation, with more than 500 joint activities planned for the year.

Taken together, the dual-track strategy underscores how Southeast Asia's maritime order is being reshaped. Diplomacy remains essential, but it is increasingly paired with deterrence and preparedness, reflecting a regional judgment that rules alone are insufficient without the capacity to defend them.

The Philippines is moving to fast-track a binding code of conduct after decades of inconclusive talks, using its ASEAN chairmanship to push for enforceable rules rather than voluntary guidelines.

"The Philippines will push for a binding COC at the same time continue to strengthen defense ties with the United States, as well as other partners like Japan, Australia and others," said Lucio Pitlo III, a foreign affairs and security analyst at Asia-Pacific Pathways for Progress Foundation.

Yet, the limits of ASEAN consensus diplomacy remain evident. Member states hold differing threat perceptions and economic dependencies, while China has resisted provisions that could constrain its operational flexibility or legitimize external involvement.

Analysts have argued that, with Manila chairing, a comprehensive agreement is unlikely to be concluded in 2026 given the temperature of China-Philippines tensions - though the chair can still steer narrower confidence-building steps and agenda-setting wins.

"I would not expect a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea to materialize regardless of who is ASEAN Chair," said Hunter Marston, senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic & International Studies.

As ASEAN chair in 2026, Manila is expected to press for a more active multilateral role in managing South China Sea disputes, seeking to use regional dialogue to dampen tensions when incidents erupt.

Philippine officials, however, are also likely to lean more heavily on bilateral channels with Beijing to manage flashpoints in real time. Chief among them is the Philippines-China Bilateral Consultative Mechanism, a forum designed to contain maritime flare-ups before they escalate into broader diplomatic or security crises, reflecting Manila's effort to balance regional solidarity with the practical need for direct engagement with China.

Even so, chairmanship confers agenda-setting power. Manila can steer negotiations toward narrower but meaningful gains, such as clearer incident-avoidance protocols, standardized communications between maritime forces and provisions that explicitly address coast guards and maritime militias, which are now central actors in most confrontations.

In that sense, 2026 may be less about delivering a final document than about clarifying whether a credible code of conduct remains politically attainable.

"The progress on CoC isn't necessarily hinged heavily on who holds the ASEAN chairmanship, though in some ways the ASEAN member state holding onto this position might influence or shape the direction it takes," said Colin Koh, senior fellow of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

That diplomatic push unfolds against a backdrop of persistent friction at sea. Confrontations near Second Thomas Shoal, Sabina Shoal and other contested features have increasingly involved water cannons, ramming incidents and aggressive maneuvering, often targeting Philippine resupply missions and civilian fishing vessels.

Each episode reinforces Manila's view that restraint has not been reciprocated, and that negotiations conducted without leverage risk entrenching, rather than moderating, coercive behavior.

This is where the second pillar of the Philippines' 2026 strategy becomes decisive. Plans for more than 500 U.S.-Philippines joint military activities represent a significant escalation in tempo and scope, even in the absence of a single marquee exercise.

The schedule encompasses everything from staff-level planning and logistics coordination to maritime domain awareness, coastal defense drills and repeated operational rehearsals across air, land and sea domains.

"Having the Philippines as chairman, particularly under the U.S. friendly Marcos administration, is useful to the U.S. agenda in the region," said Elizabeth Larus, adjunct senior fellow at the Pacific Forum.

She also underscored the critical importance of Trump-Marcos security accord in preventing China from displacing the United States as the dominant maritime power in the region.

The scale of this cooperation carries implications that extend well beyond symbolism. A Philippine maritime force that trains continuously with U.S. counterparts becomes harder to coerce at sea, raising the operational and political costs of gray-zone pressure in contested waters. In a region where presence, response time and narrative control often determine outcomes, that shift matters.

"China is likely to emphasize the Philippine defense cooperation with the United States over a Philippine-led ASEAN agenda that emphasizes legal norms and [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]," said Khang Vu, a visiting scholar in political science at Boston College.

The volume of combined activities also accelerates alliance integration in less visible but more consequential ways. Regular staff talks, shared surveillance practices and logistics planning embed interoperability as a standing condition rather than a crisis response.

For regional observers, the message is unmistakable: U.S.-Philippines security cooperation is becoming structural, not episodic, and is likely to endure regardless of short-term political fluctuations.

By pairing expanded readiness with a renewed push for a binding code of conduct, Manila also is reframing diplomacy. The Philippines is signaling to ASEAN partners that engagement with China should proceed from a position of resilience, not restraint alone.

In practice, this reflects a broader regional reassessment that negotiations over the South China Sea will only carry weight if backed by credible capacity to resist coercion when rules are tested.

For ASEAN, the Philippine chairmanship will test the concept of "ASEAN centrality" under far less forgiving conditions than in previous decades.

While ASEAN remains indispensable as a diplomatic convener, the region's most consequential security dynamics increasingly run through alliances and mini-lateral arrangements rather than consensus forums. The challenge for Manila will be to preserve ASEAN's relevance without pretending that diplomacy alone can manage today's risks.

Maritime relations in 2026 will be defined less by stability than by tempo, with a surge in patrols, surveillance flights and military exercises raising the risk of miscalculation and making clear rules of engagement and crisis hotlines more critical than ever.

At the same time, legitimacy at sea is becoming as important as capability. Each encounter is now fought on two fronts: on the water and in the information space.

Competing claims of lawful defense versus provocation, sovereign rights versus external interference, shape international perceptions and diplomatic alignments. How states behave during routine encounters may ultimately matter as much as formal agreements signed at the negotiating table.

The Philippines' 2026 approach signals that the era of quiet accommodation in the South China Sea is over, with Manila pressing for binding rules while bolstering its military posture.

Whether that strategy stabilizes the region will depend on whether China and other regional actors are willing to translate pledges of restraint into behavior at sea, but the Philippine chairmanship already is set to shape how maritime order is contested in the years ahead.

upi.com

13. A Networked Leapfrog Strategy to Recapture Technology Leadership

​Summary:

Mike Mazarr argues that U.S.–China rivalry will be decided by who leads in frontier science and technology. He proposes a “networked leapfrog” strategy: instead of competing with China incrementally, the United States should pursue high risk, large scale bets that skip to next generation technologies in semiconductors, AI, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and health. This requires tight coordination with allied industrial democracies on R&D, standards, and supply chains to build a shared innovation ecosystem. Time is short. Without bold mission style investments and coalition strategies, China’s massive, state driven technology push could lock in long term advantages.

Comment: The entire 24 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA3300/PEA3365-1/RAND_PEA3365-1.pdf

If the United States accepts a leapfrog approach, which two or three technology domains should receive truly Manhattan Project level priority, and what gets deprioritized to pay for them.

How can Washington design a networked alliance innovation architecture that aligns export controls and standards without turning allies into junior partners who resist U.S. leadership.

What specific governance, risk, and ethical frameworks are needed so that high risk, breakthrough focused programs do not sacrifice resilience, security, or public trust in pursuit of speed.

A Networked Leapfrog Strategy to Recapture Technology Leadership

Michael J. Mazarr

Expert InsightsPublished Jan 7, 2026

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA3300/PEA3365-1/RAND_PEA3365-1.pdf

Download PDF

It is now widely agreed that the contest for leadership in frontier scientific and technological progress is one of the foremost elements — if not the centerpiece — of the U.S.-China rivalry. China's leadership appears to believe that science and technology offer the primary engines of development and innovation that will realize its goals of national rejuvenation and is investing massively across many areas. After years of taking a largely hands-off approach to this contest, at least from a government standpoint, the United States now appreciates the significance of the contest for leadership in science and technology as foundational to the economic and national security aspects of the rivalry and has begun responding to the Chinese effort with investments, policies, and export controls of its own.

The author proposes a bold strategy for the United States to regain competitive advantage: large-scale, high-risk experiments targeting transformative technological breakthroughs. Rather than competing head-on with China's incremental innovations, the strategy advocates for leapfrogging current-generation technologies to create entirely new paradigms in such areas as semiconductors, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and health care diagnostics. It emphasizes multilateral collaboration with other leading industrial democracies to pool resources, talent, and influence, fostering a shared ecosystem of innovation.

​14. Exclusive | Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come

​Summary:

POTUS and his advisers are crafting a long-term plan to exert de facto control over PdVSA by acquiring and marketing most Venezuelan oil, effectively giving the U.S. leverage over a large share of Western Hemisphere reserves. The aim is to push prices toward POTUS' preferred $50 per barrel and sideline Russian and Chinese influence in Caracas. Sanctions will be selectively rolled back to release 30–50 million barrels of previously blocked crude, with U.S. firms like Chevron central to rehabilitation and export. The scheme bypasses reluctant domestic drillers but risks undercutting U.S. shale and requires massive, uncertain investment in Venezuela’s decayed oil sector.

Comment: How does turning Venezuelan reserves into a U.S.-managed strategic asset reshape global energy geopolitics, and what contingencies are needed if prices, politics, or local legitimacy make that control unsustainable?

Exclusive | Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come

WSJ

President believes the effort could lower oil prices to his target of $50 a barrel

By Brian Schwartz

Follow

, Benoît Morenne

Follow

 and Josh Dawsey

Follow

Updated Jan. 7, 2026 10:28 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/trump-venezuela-oil-us-control-plan-265a39c1?mod=hp_lead_pos1

President Trump Aaron Schwartz/Press Pool

President Trump and his advisers are planning a sweeping initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come, and the president has told aides he believes his efforts could help lower oil prices to his favored level of $50 a barrel, according to people familiar with the matter.

A plan under consideration envisions the U.S. exerting some control over Venezuela’s state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, including acquiring and marketing the bulk of the company’s oil production, people familiar with the matter said.

If successful, the plan could effectively give the U.S. stewardship of most of the oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, when factoring in deposits in the U.S. and other countries where U.S. companies control production. It could also fulfill two of the administrations’ primary goals: to box Russia and China out of Venezuela and to push energy prices lower for U.S. consumers.

Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of lowering oil prices to $50 a barrel, his preferred level, two senior administration officials said.

But oil prices are already low, with the U.S. benchmark hovering around $56 a barrel Wednesday, and Trump has struggled to persuade U.S. oil-and-gas producers to crank out more crude and help him accomplish his political goals. Many companies see $50 a barrel as a threshold below which it becomes unprofitable to drill, and a sustained period of low oil prices could decimate the U.S. shale industry, which has been a key backer of the president.

“The American energy industry and most importantly the American people and the Venezuelan people are going to hugely benefit from the president’s control of Venezuela’s oil, which was previously used to fund Maduro’s illegitimate narcoterrorism regime,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

PdVSA didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment. The company confirmed in a statement posted on social media that the U.S. and PdVSA have been holding negotiations for the sale of crude oil volumes, with those talks based on a commercial transaction.

Trump and his team began privately engaging with the newly established Venezuelan government with the goal of taking control of their oil supply within days of U.S. forces capturing President Nicolás Maduro.

Oil prices barely budged after the U.S. ousted Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and President Trump pledged billions to revive the country’s oil infrastructure. WSJ’s David Uberti breaks down the market reaction. Photo: Matias Delacroix/Associated Press

Some of the talks with Venezuelan government officials since Maduro’s arrest focused on how the U.S. can play a lead role in increasing production of the country’s rich oil reserves, according to people familiar with the matter.

Venezuela’s new leader, Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, on Wednesday called the raid and capture of Maduro “a stain on our relationship.” But she added that “it’s not extraordinary, nor irregular, having relations, for example economic ones, between the United States and Venezuela.

“Venezuela has to have relations with all countries in the hemisphere,” she said.

Others familiar with the talks say the U.S. is looking to exert control of PdVSA through a deal under which the Trump administration would work to acquire and potentially distribute the company’s oil, including through past and existing joint ventures with energy giants such as Chevron.

U.S. oil sanctions have curtailed Venezuelan production in recent years by cutting it off from many would-be buyers. China is currently the largest importer of Venezuelan oil, and U.S. control over production, marketing and distribution would give it a large say in the oil’s ultimate destination, as well as a share of the profits for U.S. companies.

Newsletter Sign-up

What’s News

Catch up on the headlines, understand the news and make better decisions, free in your inbox daily. Enjoy a free article in every edition.

Subscribe

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing on Wednesday that Venezuela sanctions will be selectively rolled back in the coming days to allow previously sanctioned oil to be sold. The president announced on Tuesday in a Truth Social post that Venezuela would provide the U.S. with between 30 million and 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in Miami that the U.S. will sell blockaded Venezuelan oil “indefinitely.”

“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela—first this backed up, stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Wright said at the conference. Trump is scheduled to meet with oil executives from Chevron, Exxon and others at the White House on Friday.

The administration’s actions amount to an expansion of its “drill, baby, drill” mantra well beyond U.S. borders. Trump has long viewed increased production and lower oil prices as an economic boon and has made that a priority throughout his second term. The initiative has taken on more urgency as voters continue to express anxieties about affordability and Trump’s polling numbers decline ahead of pivotal midterm elections.

Trump said Monday he believed that accessing Venezuela’s oil reserves was going to reduce oil prices. While consumers could benefit from that, the president’s backers in the oil industry might not be happy.

A pump jack in Caracas, Venezuela, on Tuesday. Matias Delacroix/AP

New supplies from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ cartel, combined with fears of an economic slowdown stemming from Trump’s tariffs, depressed oil prices throughout 2025. Drillers, who have for years embraced Wall Street’s demands for capital discipline, kept their spending in check despite Trump’s exhortations and a plethora of deregulatory actions meant to spur drilling.

“Investors don’t care about energy dominance. They care about energy dividends,” said Clay Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S.’s oil output increased a little over 3% between December 2024 and November, according to the Energy Information Administration, a bump brought about mostly by efficiencies in the oil fields, analysts say—not by Trump’s policies.

By taking over Venezuela’s oil, Trump is attempting to circumvent reluctant drillers. But he is also sending a message to the rest of the world that the U.S. now has a large share of the world’s production under its thumb. In a fragmenting postwar global order, the administration sees American security as linked to oil resources in the Western Hemisphere, said Kevin Book, who heads research at energy-research firm ClearView Energy Partners.

“The previous president looked to tighten alliances to essentially make America’s alliances stronger. And the current president seems to be looking at trying to make America bigger,” he said.

Another challenge to Trump’s plan is the dilapidated state of Venezuela’s oil industry, which has undergone years of underinvestment and neglect. Boosting production would require tens of billions of dollars of investment from U.S. companies, who may be wary of opening their pocket books amid low oil prices. The only major oil company operating there is Chevron, and new entrants lack the relationships, staff and logistical capabilities to hit the ground running. Analysts say it would take years to significantly boost production there.

Conversations about how the U.S. could start executing a plan to leverage Venezuela’s oil are ongoing, people familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have also been in touch with oil executives, pressing them for ideas on how both countries could best make money off Venezuela’s oil, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

U.S. officials have considered selling Venezuelan oil to a host of distributors and international energy companies, including Mercuria, Vitol and Trafigura, according to this person. Wright said the U.S. is already going to market the crude they are receiving from Venezuela and noted that the administration plans to continue selling the product. The proceeds will flow to U.S.-controlled bank accounts for now, Wright said, and the U.S. will later distribute them to Venezuela’s interim authorities.

Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com, Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com and Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com

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

Appeared in the January 8, 2026, print edition as 'Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come'.

WSJ

15. Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse.

​Summary:

Cuba’s economy is collapsing under blackouts, water shortages, failing healthcare, food scarcity, and a demographic hollowing out as 2.7 million people have emigrated since 2020. Tourism revenues have crashed, remittances are a lifeline, and inequality is widening between dollar earners and the poor. The U.S. capture of Maduro threatens Cuba’s last critical lifeline: subsidized Venezuelan oil of roughly 35,000 barrels per day. Experts warn that if this supply stops, Cuba’s fragile energy system could fail within a month, risking deeper unrest and harsher repression as a nervous regime leans on security forces to hold a fraying society together.

Comment: As an aside, 7th Special Forces Group is going to be busy for decades to come in its AOR. I hope they are dusting off their area studies of Cuba. Again the providerial question is "what do you do now Lieutenant?"

Should Washington allow some Venezuelan oil to keep flowing to Cuba to avoid state collapse and mass migration, or is accelerating regime crisis a strategic opportunity worth the humanitarian cost?

How can the U.S. and regional partners shape information, humanitarian, and economic tools now so that any future Cuban transition favors pluralism rather than a new form of authoritarianism?

Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse.

WSJ

Cubans are speculating about whether their government will be the next to fall, with crucial Venezuelan oil imports now in jeopardy

By Deborah Acosta

Follow

 and José de Córdoba

Follow

Jan. 7, 2026 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/cuba-venezuela-maduro-impact-7adcefdb?mod=hp_lead_pos9

A street scene in Cuba’s capital, Havana. The country’s economy has imploded. Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Elderly Cubans are digging through garbage for scraps of food in Havana. In the country’s second city, Santiago, crowds have gathered, blaring music by Cuban exiles such as Gloria Estefan and Willy Chirino, who sings “Our day is coming soon.”

The U.S. ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has jolted this country of fewer than 10 million people, which has long relied on Venezuela for oil imports that have barely kept its tiny economy from collapsing.

It opens a new and perilous chapter for the island’s Communist regime during an economic implosion that already rivals the crisis suffered by Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

In poorer cities, people are openly speculating about whether the U.S. will topple the government of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the successor to Raúl and Fidel Castro, the siblings who led the Cuban Revolution in 1959 that sent shock waves across Latin America.

“They are nervous,” Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a Havana-based political activist, said of the government. “Repression will increase, it’s the typical response.”

Cuba’s state security apparatus has long had a tight grip on all levels of society, from workplaces to schools or concert halls. But Maduro’s capture risks upending the government’s control of every street, its deep surveillance system and its vast network of snitches, say Cuban dissidents and former officials.

Heaps of trash mar downtown Havana. Blackouts and water shortages are common in Cuba. Ramon Espinosa/AP

Two days after Maduro’s ouster, Reynaldo Flores was dealing with his fifth consecutive day without running water at his apartment in Havana. It is his new normal, along with the daily blackouts, the failing healthcare system, the trash piled high along the streets, and his aching joints from the mosquito-borne illnesses that have plagued the island.

“Six, seven, 10 days go by with no water,” said 66-year-old Flores. “Then when the water returns, there’s no electricity to pump it in.”

Recently, he said, there was one day where he simultaneously had no electricity, no running water and no gas to cook with. Like all Cubans, Flores saves water in a tank, rationing it for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing. When it runs out, he jumps from one rooftop to another to gather buckets of water from nearby cisterns.

He worries most about the elderly looking for food in the garbage. When they contract a virus, they go to overwhelmed hospitals to die. All of that without taking into account the stifling heat.

“One of my friends works for the government and was just tasked with picking up elderly people who live alone, who’d been dead in their homes for days,” said Flores, who is retired and relies on remittances from relatives abroad.

After military action in Venezuela, President Trump turned his attention elsewhere, describing a possible move against Colombia as ‘good to me’ and repeating his desire to claim Greenland. Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Cuba has been in a perpetual economic crisis, which has intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 2.7 million people—about a quarter of the island’s population, the majority of them young and ambitious—have fled the island since 2020, most to the U.S. It is “demographic hollowing out,” said Cuban demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos. He estimates Cuba’s population is now eight million.

The combined result of mass emigration and decreased female fertility is that live births in Cuba plunged to levels below those of 1899, when Cuba emerged from a bloody three-year war of independence that decimated its population, said Albizu-Campos.

“Cuba’s problem was already existential,” said Joe García, a former Cuban-American congressman who speaks often with senior island officials. “On the Cuban side, it’s desperation and worse desperation,” said García, a Florida Democrat.

Tourism, once one of the island’s economic pillars, has plummeted, with hotel occupancy hovering below 30%, according to industry executives. Most tourists, the majority from Russia and China, arrive with all-inclusive packages, meaning that spending doesn’t trickle down to ordinary Cubans as visitors don’t spend much outside their preapproved itinerary.

A new 42-story luxury hotel towers over the once-elegant Vedado district in Havana, Cuba’s capital. Yet the $200 million, Spanish-run hotel is “nearly empty,” said William LeoGrande, a Cuba analyst at Washington’s American University who recently returned from the country.

He estimates that hard-currency income from tourism is down 75%.

Many Cubans rely on remittances from family members abroad. The state relies on billions of dollars collected by the government from thousands of Cuban doctors working in Venezuela, Mexico and other countries, and subsidized Venezuelan oil imports, to keep the lights on. But now the Venezuelan oil spigot could be shut off by the U.S.

Cuba’s economic crisis has intensified since the pandemic. Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images

Cuba has no money to buy oil on international markets, and can only hope that friendly countries such as Angola, Algeria, Brazil or Colombia will make up the shortfall if Venezuela, under U.S. pressure, cuts off its supplies, said Jorge R. Piñon, who tracks Cuba’s energy consumption at the University of Texas.

Venezuela has been providing some 35,000 barrels of oil a day of the estimated 100,000 barrels a day the island needs. Cuba produces about 40,000 barrels a day of sulfur- and metals-laden heavy crude that feeds the country’s decrepit power plants. Mexico, which sent about 22,000 barrels a day to Cuba last year, has since lowered shipments to some 7,000, while Russia sends about 10,000 barrels a day, he said.

Cutting off Venezuelan oil would devastate Cuba’s economy.

“I would not be surprised if the Americans tell Venezuela to continue giving oil to Cuba, so as not to open another Pandora’s box,” said Piñon, who calculates oil shipments to the island using reports from services that track tanker movements. Without Venezuelan oil, he estimates Cuba’s energy infrastructure would collapse within 30 days.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What does the ouster of Venezuelan dicator Nicolás Maduro mean for the future of Cuba? Join the conversation below.

As the country struggles to survive, the big question will be the response of Cuba’s leadership, which has ruled with an iron fist since the revolution led by the Castros and their “bearded men in olive green.” The first action of the Communist regime was to require workers to attend a rally over the weekend to denounce Maduro’s capture and declare two days of mourning, with flags at half-staff honoring the 32 Cuban soldiers and high-ranking military intelligence officers who died during the U.S. military incursion.

Without oil there is a risk that the rolling blackouts, which sometimes leave island residents with only four hours of electricity a day, will worsen. Those who have relied on generators to get by will have a hard time running them without access to fuel. Even cooking will be complicated, as some residents have turned to petroleum-run stoves to cook their food.

LeoGrande said that unlike the crisis after the Soviet collapse, a time known as the “special period” when the economic pain was felt across Cuban society, the hardship in this crisis is falling disproportionately on poorer Cubans who don’t have relatives abroad who send them dollars.

“There is more visible inequality,” LeoGrande said. “Poor people are as bad off as in the special period, but a segment of middle and upper class have access to dollars and are not in such bad shape, which causes real social tension.”

Write to Deborah Acosta at deborah.acosta@wsj.com and José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

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

WSJ

16. China hacked email systems of US congressional committee staff

​Summary:

China’s Ministry of State Security used the long-running “Salt Typhoon” campaign to hack email systems used by staff on key House committees dealing with China, foreign affairs, intelligence, and armed services. Detected in December, the operation may also have accessed lawmakers’ emails and builds on broader MSS penetration of U.S. telecom networks, enabling interception of unencrypted calls, texts, voicemails, and some email. Despite earlier exposure of related operations like Volt Typhoon, U.S. telecoms remain vulnerable because their networks were built without cyber resilience in mind, and major upgrades are costly. Planned Treasury sanctions on MSS entities were shelved to preserve Trump–Xi détente.

Comment: If China can routinely exploit legacy U.S. telecom infrastructure for strategic espionage, what concrete costs, and incentives is Washington prepared to impose on carriers to harden the backbone of American democracy, even at the expense of short-term profits and diplomatic “stability”? We have to get our house in order and protect our "network." Cyber defense, Cyber civil defense, and all of us need personal cyber hygiene.

China hacked email systems of US congressional committee staff

Financial Times · Demetri Sevastopulo · January 8, 2026

Beijing’s intelligence used Salt Typhoon to access communications used by top panels in US Congress

https://www.ft.com/content/44f730c4-7de3-4a09-88dd-41ea9c373dcb

China has hacked the emails used by congressional staff on powerful committees in the US House of Representatives, as part of a massive cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon.

Chinese intelligence accessed email systems used by some staffers on the House China committee in addition to aides on the foreign affairs committee, intelligence committee and armed services committee, according to people familiar with the attack. The intrusions were detected in December.

The attacks are the latest element of an ongoing cyber campaign against US communication networks by the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence service. One person familiar with the attack said it was unclear if the MSS had accessed lawmakers’ emails.

The MSS has been operating Salt Typhoon for several years. It allows China to access the unencrypted phone calls, texts and voicemails of almost every American, and in some cases enables access to email accounts.

Salt Typhoon has also intercepted the calls of senior US officials over the past couple of years, said people familiar with the campaign.

Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, in December said it was “baffling” that more attention was not being paid to Salt Typhoon. “Unless you’re on an encrypted device, they can pick any one of us,” Warner told the Defense Writers Group.

Jake Sullivan, former president Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told the Financial Times last year after leaving the White House that US telecom companies were “highly vulnerable” to Salt Typhoon.

The campaign is one of many cyber espionage efforts by Chinese intelligence and the People’s Liberation Army that target US infrastructure.

In 2024, the FBI and other US agencies said a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that has been dubbed Volt Typhoon had penetrated US energy, transportation and communications systems in ways that would help China in the case of a conflict with America.

US telecom groups have done little to protect themselves from Salt Typhoon because of the huge cost involved in making networks resilient. Warner in December said US networks were particularly vulnerable because they were built when cyber security was not a serious concern.

The US Treasury planned to impose sanctions on MSS entities over Salt Typhoon in December, but it reversed course following concerns that it would derail the détente Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reached in October.

The four committees the MSS targeted declined to comment.

The Chinese embassy in the US denied the allegations about Salt Typhoon. Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesperson, said: “We firmly oppose the US side making unfounded speculation and accusations, using cyber security to smear and slander China, and spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats.”

Financial Times · Demetri Sevastopulo · January 8, 2026

17. Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

​Summary:

Microsoft chief scientist Eric Horvitz warns that POTUS’s deep cuts to U.S. federal research funding, including scrapping more than 1,600 NSF grants since 2025, could hand rivals like China the lead in AI. He argues the current AI boom rests on decades of publicly funded university research and that the post-World War II U.S. model of backing basic science was a “talent magnet” for global intellect. As funding dries up, top researchers and students are moving abroad or into industry, risking a hollowed-out academic ecosystem and the erosion of America’s long-term capacity for foundational breakthroughs in AI and related fields.

Comment: Self-inflicted wounds? So the question is if the United States undermines its university research base while China doubles down on state-backed science, how long can American tech firms alone sustain AI leadership before the underlying innovation pipeline breaks?

Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

Financial Times · 

Cristina Criddle and Rafe Rosner-Uddin in San Francisco

Publisheda day ago

Veteran executive Eric Horvitz argues talent and ideas will move abroad without US support for universities

https://www.ft.com/content/3cf97a0b-b194-4d72-9dee-f8710b2d7476

Microsoft’s chief scientist has warned that cuts to US federal funding for academic research will drive talent and ideas abroad, giving international rivals a lead in the artificial intelligence race.

Eric Horvitz told the Financial Times that President Donald Trump’s decision to slash academic research funding could give other nations, such as China, an edge in science and technological innovation.

“I personally find it hard to see the logic of trying to compete with competitor nations at the same time as making these cuts,” Horvitz said.

The intervention comes as US universities and federal agencies have been hit by billions of dollars in funding reductions since Trump took office last year. Those moves have been justified as cost-cutting measures or by ideological stances, such as blocking grants for diversity initiatives.

While prominent scientists and academics have criticised the Trump administration’s policies, Horvitz is a rare senior corporate executive to have taken a public stance on the matter.

Big tech companies have generally sought to retain close ties to Trump, with Microsoft donating to the president’s inauguration committee and his project to build a new White House ballroom.

Eric Horvitz said that without government support, the US would be ‘decades away’ from the current AI ‘moment’ © Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

However, Horvitz, a veteran executive who became Microsoft’s first chief scientific officer in 2020, cited the government model implemented after the second world war for investment in academic research.

In 1950, the US created the National Science Foundation (NSF), an agency responsible for more than a quarter of all federal funding received by America’s colleges and universities for basic research.

“That vision turned out to be an impressive way to make an investment in the future,” said Horvitz, adding that without government support, the US would be “decades away” from the current AI “moment”.

“By betting on intellect and ideas, we can make the world better in surprising ways,” he added. Trump has scrapped more than 1,600 NSF grants, worth nearly $1bn in funding, since 2025.

Horvitz has partnered with Margaret Martonosi, a Princeton University professor and former computer science lead at NSF, to collect stories of how federal grants for research have led to scientific breakthroughs.

Multiple recipients of the Turing Award, a leading award for computer science, have contributed to the December issue of the Association for Computing Machinery magazine to promote public recognition of how taxpayer funds contributed to historic technological achievements.

One example is last year’s winners, Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton, who have been credited with developing reinforcement learning. This technique has now been embraced by the world’s top AI groups, including OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, for training their models.

“The core ideas behind these large-scale language models, multimodal models, were developed . . . by people pursuing questions about intelligence, of the type you only see in discussions at universities,” said Horvitz.

Martonosi, whose research has led to breakthroughs for the semiconductor industry, said that findings were often funnelled into industry. “I’ve had patents licensed by major chip vendors and watched my ideas go out in almost every laptop out there,” she said.

Funding cuts and freezes have forced academic institutions to overhaul their governance and finances, while prompting some academics and students to move abroad. Critics fear the measures will benefit rival superpowers such as China, whose researchers already produce groundbreaking research with substantial state funding.

Many researchers have also sought roles in the private sector, drawn by the significant resources available to them at large companies, including advanced tools and access to scarce computing power.

“Other countries are following what was a very unique American model,” said Horvitz. “If we don’t follow that model, the talent magnet, the training and the curiosity-driven investments will happen elsewhere. More than they do here.”

Additional reporting by Joe Miller in Washington

Financial Times · Cristina Criddle

18. Wild Bill: The Leadership Legacy of William Donovan

​Comment: Where is our 21st Century Wild Bill Donovan. He does not have to be in the military.

Thanks to Steve Leonard for putting together this profile.

Wild Bill: The Leadership Legacy of William Donovan

by SWJ Staff

|

01.08.2026 at 01:12pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/08/wild-bill-donovan-leadership-lessons/

Steve Leonard’s profile of William “Wild Bill” Donovan traces the evolution of American intelligence through its founding father—from the Medal of Honor recipient who refused evacuation despite a shattered knee in the Argonne to the architect of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan’s battlefield experience in WWI taught him that future conflicts would be decided not by mass but by intelligence, deception, and psychological warfare, a revelation that would guide his revolutionary approach as OSS director. Leonard distills Donovan’s legacy into five enduring lessons: intelligence as a strategic capability, diversity of thought as a competitive advantage, decentralized command as a means of enabling agility, personal courage to champion institutional vision, and the imperative to build institutions that outlast individuals. The piece reminds readers that every modern intelligence fusion center and analysis-driven operation traces its lineage to an Irish kid from Buffalo who saw what others couldn’t and built what didn’t yet exist, establishing principles that continue echoing through the Intelligence Community decades after his death in 1959.

“In war, nothing is more important than intelligence—except courage.”

Donavan firmly believed that information and human resolve were inseparable. Good intelligence tied with personal courage produces measurable results.

“The best intelligence service is one that tells the truth, even when the truth is unpopular.”

Donavan held a fundamental commitment to the integrity of the intelligence services. Don’t tell people what they want to hear; tell them what they need to hear.

“We must organize our thinking as carefully as we organize our forces.”

Donovan understood that strategy begins in the mind. As General James Mattis so aptly stated, “The most important six inches on the battlefield is between the ears.”

“There are no rules in intelligence except those imposed by necessity and conscience.”

Donavan was nothing if not practical. His pragmatic yet principled approach to unconventional warfare ensured that the people he empowered to make the hard choices in complex circumstances had the autonomy – and trust – to do so.

“Leadership means accepting responsibility before you are given authority.”

Few statements better capture how Donovan operated – from the trenches of World War I to the creation of the OSS. Leadership isn’t about a position of authority or a corner suite in an office building. It’s about setting a positive example and holding yourself accountable.

Tags: Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF), Intelligence history, irregular warfare, Office of Strategic Services (OSS), strategic leadership, Unconventional Warfare, William J. Donovan

About The Author

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

19. The Northern Corridor Doctrine

​Summary:

Cold War 2.0, Velina Tchakarova argues, is a bloc-on-bloc struggle over corridors, not colonies. The “DragonBear” axis fuses China’s economic-technological reach with Russia’s coercive military power, seeking control of Arctic routes and resources. The Northern Corridor Doctrine is Washington’s answer: treat the Arctic as the northern backbone of the transatlantic system, with Greenland as the key node. It calls for a new U.S.–Denmark–Greenland defense agreement, an AUKUS-like Arctic security pact, and a transatlantic critical-minerals ecosystem to reduce dependence on China. The aim is corridor control without open war, binding Europe to an Anglosphere-led security and geoeconomic architecture.

Comment: It is too bad there is all the focus on "acquiring" Greenland. Our administration is right that we have to secure the Arctic for our interests and prevent Russian and Chinese domination. I fully support that. The question is which helps the US and like minded democracies more - the US "owning" Greenland or the US have complete and unfettered access to Greenland through cooperation with Denmark and Greenland to protect national security interests in the region? Why do we need to expand the political capital to try to take ownership of Greenland? Shouldn't we expand our energy in other ways to "catch-up" to Russia and China? How does "owning" greenland help us to "catch-up?"

I love the graphic of the regionat the link.

Velina Tchakarova

The Northern Corridor Doctrine

Securing the Arctic Corridor in the New Cold War

Velina Tchakarova

Jan 05, 2026

https://substack.com/inbox/post/183578431?utm

The world has entered what I describe as Cold War 2.0. This is not a revival of twentieth-century ideological bipolarity. It is a systemic confrontation between two competing bloc-building systems.

On one side stands the United States and the Anglosphere, increasingly organized around military dominance, financial leverage, technological control, and security-driven trade governance. On the other stands what I have long framed as the DragonBear—the global modus operandi of strategic coordination between China and Russia, fusing China’s economic and technological reach with Russia’s military-revisionist power and readiness for coercive escalation.

In this new Cold War, power is no longer measured primarily by territorial conquest or ideological appeal. It is measured by the ability to secure corridors. Global supply chains, trade routes, commodities, and strategic technologies have fused with national security. Donald Trump captured this shift succinctly when he stated that the future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce, territory, and resources that are core to national security. That sentence captures the strategic logic of the era. Commerce, territory, and resources now form a single interconnected battlefield.

This logic is not new in American strategic thinking. During the Second World War, the United States explicitly insisted that Greenland belonged to the Western Hemisphere and therefore had to be integrated into the broader system of continental and hemispheric defense. Greenland was not treated as a distant colonial outpost. It was understood as a strategic extension of North American security. The current debate over Greenland is therefore not an anomaly. It is a return to historical continuity under new systemic conditions.

The Donroe Doctrine, the Trump-era revival and hardening of the Monroe Doctrine, formalized this continuity in the Western Hemisphere. It redefined hemispheric security as a non-negotiable U.S. interest, enforced not through annexation but through access control, coercive leverage, and precedent-driven enforcement. It marked the end of deniability and the return of openly asserted power politics.

The Northern Corridor Doctrine is the Arctic extension of that same logic.

Together with the emerging Iron Curtain 2.0 along NATO’s Eastern Flank—from the High North through the Baltic states, Central and Southeastern Europe to Türkiye, with Türkiye’s decisive access to the Black Sea as a global commodities choke point and strategic connector to Ukraine—these doctrines form a three-pillar architecture of Cold War 2.0 containment in this part of the world. The Arctic secures the northern backbone of the transatlantic system. The Eastern Flank secures the continental boundary with Russia. The Black Sea anchors access to Eurasian trade, energy, and food flows.

The Arctic, therefore, is not a peripheral theater. It is the Northern Corridor of the transatlantic system. It links North America and Europe militarily, economically, digitally, and in space. It anchors missile warning and space-domain awareness. It hosts undersea cables and energy routes. And as ice recedes, it is reshaping global maritime connectivity.

At the same time, the Arctic is increasingly exposed to the power projection of the DragonBear. Russia has moved aggressively to consolidate control over the Northern Sea Route, while China—self-declared as a near-Arctic state—is providing comprehensive economic, technological, and logistical support to that effort. Beijing treats the Polar Silk Road as a strategic extension of its Belt and Road Initiative, integrating Arctic shipping into its long-term trade, energy, and industrial planning. Chinese financing, shipping companies, research platforms, and dual-use technologies are already embedded in the Northern Sea Route ecosystem. This is not just a commercial project. It is systemic positioning.

It is against this backdrop that President Trump has repeatedly stated that the United States needs Greenland from the standpoint of national security, citing its strategic location, the presence of Chinese and Russian ships, and its mineral wealth. His public references to Greenland becoming part of the United States should be understood less as literal policy proposals and more as strategic signaling. They reflect a clear assessment that gaps in Arctic power projection, between the United Kingdom, Northern Europe, Greenland, Canada, and the continental United States, are no longer acceptable in a systemic confrontation with China and Russia.

Source: Brussels School on Geopolitics

The purpose of the Northern Corridor Doctrine is to manage this reality. It offers a strategic framework that allows the United States to expand its military, security, and geoeconomic presence in Greenland without triggering confrontation, bifurcation, or polarization inside the Euro-Atlantic bloc. It also redefines the role of European states in the Arctic, not as passive stakeholders, but as co-architects of corridor security.

Strategic Objectives

The doctrine rests on several core objectives. It anchors U.S. Arctic expansion in consent-based governance with Denmark and Greenland in order to prevent internal Western fracture. It secures the Arctic as a military, space, maritime, and digital corridor rather than as contested territory. It accelerates bloc-level decoupling from Chinese dominance in rare earths, critical minerals, and Arctic-adjacent supply chains. Finally, it seeks to deny the DragonBear strategic access to the Arctic corridor without provoking direct military confrontation with Russia, and by extension China.

A New U.S.–Denmark–Greenland Defense Agreement

The cornerstone of the Northern Corridor Doctrine is an explicit recommendation: the United States and Denmark must sign a new, updated defense agreement on Greenland, upgrading the 2004 framework and building on the legal and strategic continuity of the 1941 and 1951 agreements.

This is neither radical nor unprecedented. At the height of the Cold War, the United States operated up to seventeen military installations in Greenland. These were justified not as occupation, but as continental defense under conditions of systemic threat. The legal logic already exists. What is missing today is an updated political mandate.

The new agreement should formalize expanded U.S. access to Greenlandic territory for military, space, maritime, and infrastructure purposes while explicitly reaffirming Danish sovereignty and Greenlandic self-governance. It should institutionalize structured consultation and consent, but once agreed, preserve full U.S. operational flexibility. This is precisely how earlier agreements functioned and why they endured.

Such an agreement would acknowledge an uncomfortable but necessary truth: in Cold War 2.0, Greenland is once again indispensable to North American and transatlantic security. Avoiding this reality does not preserve sovereignty. It weakens it.

Toward an AUKUS-Like Arctic Defense Pact

Beyond the bilateral and trilateral level, the Northern Corridor Doctrine calls for the creation of an AUKUS-like Arctic defense pact bringing together the United States, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the other Arctic Council nations in a capability-driven, non-treaty security framework.

Like AUKUS, this pact would focus on interoperability, technology sharing, basing access, maritime security, space-domain awareness, and hybrid threat denial. It would not replace NATO, nor would it militarize the Arctic Council. Instead, it would fill the growing gap between alliance structures and the operational demands of Arctic corridor control.

This Northern Corridor Security Framework prioritizes corridor defense over territorial defense, hybrid threat denial over power projection, and interoperability without new treaty obligations. Roles are clearly distributed. The United States and Canada provide strategic enablers through NORAD modernization, space and missile warning, long-range ISR, and rapid reinforcement. The United Kingdom and Norway anchor North Atlantic and Arctic maritime security, undersea infrastructure protection, and anti-submarine warfare. Denmark and Greenland provide sovereign basing, Arctic policing, and political legitimacy. Sweden and Finland contribute Arctic mobility, cold-weather land forces, distributed basing, and defense-industrial capacity. Iceland functions as a critical air and sensor hub.

The framework delivers a shared Arctic operating picture across maritime, air, cyber, and space domains. It establishes joint protocols for undersea infrastructure protection and conducts annual Northern Corridor exercises focused on grey-zone escalation management rather than conventional war. The result is predictable, resilient Arctic security that closes power-projection gaps without provoking Russian red lines. This architecture deepens the Anglosphere core while keeping Europe inside the security design rather than outside it.

Maritime Corridors and Strategic Access

Climate change is transforming the Arctic from a barrier into a passage. Three routes define the future geometry of global trade and power projection: the Northwest Passage, the Northern Sea Route, and the emerging Transpolar Route.

The Northern Sea Route already enjoys material advantages and is being actively shaped by Russian control and Chinese support. The Transpolar Route represents the long-term strategic prize. Control over access, monitoring, and infrastructure along these routes will define future maritime power.

By securing Greenland as a central node of the Northern Corridor, the United States positions itself at both ends of the Arctic maritime system - toward the Pacific via Alaska and toward the Atlantic via Greenland. This would allow Washington to exert decisive leverage over Arctic transit dynamics while simultaneously securing undersea infrastructure and maritime approaches.

The doctrine therefore prioritizes maritime domain awareness, seabed monitoring, and rapid response capabilities. Allied patrols, unmanned systems, and satellite surveillance are integrated into a single operational picture. Undersea cables and energy links are treated as strategic assets, protected through continuous monitoring and pre-agreed response mechanisms. The objective is not to militarize shipping, but to ensure that no hostile actor can weaponize Arctic transit.

Arctic Critical Resources and Geoeconomic Power

The geoeconomic dimension of the Northern Corridor Doctrine is as decisive as its military aspects. U.S. Geological Survey assessments estimate that the Arctic may hold roughly 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional natural gas and about 13 percent of undiscovered oil. These resources lie within the exclusive economic zones of the five Arctic coastal states: Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, and Denmark through Greenland. Russia’s Arctic is central to its hydrocarbon system, accounting for the majority of Russia’s gas production and a large share of its reserves.

Beyond hydrocarbons, Greenland is of exceptional strategic importance for critical minerals. It holds some of the world’s largest potential deposits of rare earth elements, particularly in the southern Gardar province, including projects such as Kvanefjeld and Kringlerne. These materials are vital for green technologies, defense systems, and advanced electronics amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a global technological competition between America and China.

Greenland also hosts widespread graphite occurrences critical for battery production, significant platinum group metal deposits such as those in the Skaergaard intrusion, base metals including zinc, lead, copper, and nickel, gold deposits in the south including Nalunaq, large iron ore deposits at Isua and Itilliarsuk, and additional potential reserves of titanium, vanadium, tungsten, molybdenum, niobium, tantalum, diamonds, and anorthosite.

The doctrine therefore calls for a transatlantic Arctic critical materials ecosystem. Greenland provides upstream access. Sweden and Norway contribute mining, metallurgy, and processing capacity. Canada anchors North American upstream production. The United States and European partners provide capital, offtake guarantees, and defense-grade demand. The strategic center of gravity lies in midstream processing and refining, where dependency on China is currently greatest. Environmental governance and Indigenous participation are embedded as security enablers rather than obstacles.

Control Without Confrontation

The New Cold War is not a competition for coexistence. It is a competition for systemic dominance. In Cold War 2.0, the winner does not merely gain influence and leverage. The winner takes all and sets the rules, controls the corridors, and shapes the future of trade, security, and technology once again.

For Europe, this is a matter of strategic survival. Fragmentation, bifurcation, or illusions of strategic autonomy will lead to systemic and structural decline. Europe’s security, industrial base, and access to global markets depend on alignment with the United States and the Anglosphere core. The alternative is strategic irrelevance in a world shaped by others.

For the United States, this is a matter of strategic necessity. Facing the DragonBear from the Arctic to the Indo-Pacific, America cannot prevail alone. It requires reliable, capable, and integrated allies who share both the burden and the benefits of corridor control. Power in Cold War 2.0 is exercised through blocs, not isolation.

The Northern Corridor Doctrine manages an unavoidable reality. The United States will expand its military, security, and geoeconomic presence in Greenland. The only strategic question is whether this expansion produces confrontation and polarization or cohesion and stability among strategic allies.

The Northern Corridor Doctrine ensures that the Arctic corridor is secured by those who depend on it most. It is not a doctrine of annexation. It is a doctrine of function, access, and mutual control.

20. Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

​Summary:

Microsoft chief scientist Eric Horvitz warns that POTUS’s deep cuts to U.S. federal research funding, including scrapping more than 1,600 NSF grants since 2025, could hand rivals like China the lead in AI. He argues the current AI boom rests on decades of publicly funded university research and that the post-World War II U.S. model of backing basic science was a “talent magnet” for global intellect. As funding dries up, top researchers and students are moving abroad or into industry, risking a hollowed-out academic ecosystem and the erosion of America’s long-term capacity for foundational breakthroughs in AI and related fields.

Comment: Self-inflicted wounds? So the question is if the United States undermines its university research base while China doubles down on state-backed science, how long can American tech firms alone sustain AI leadership before the underlying innovation pipeline breaks?

Trump cuts to academia risk ceding AI lead, warns Microsoft scientist

Financial Times · 

Cristina Criddle and Rafe Rosner-Uddin in San Francisco

Publisheda day ago

Veteran executive Eric Horvitz argues talent and ideas will move abroad without US support for universities

https://www.ft.com/content/3cf97a0b-b194-4d72-9dee-f8710b2d7476

Microsoft’s chief scientist has warned that cuts to US federal funding for academic research will drive talent and ideas abroad, giving international rivals a lead in the artificial intelligence race.

Eric Horvitz told the Financial Times that President Donald Trump’s decision to slash academic research funding could give other nations, such as China, an edge in science and technological innovation.

“I personally find it hard to see the logic of trying to compete with competitor nations at the same time as making these cuts,” Horvitz said.

The intervention comes as US universities and federal agencies have been hit by billions of dollars in funding reductions since Trump took office last year. Those moves have been justified as cost-cutting measures or by ideological stances, such as blocking grants for diversity initiatives.

While prominent scientists and academics have criticised the Trump administration’s policies, Horvitz is a rare senior corporate executive to have taken a public stance on the matter.

Big tech companies have generally sought to retain close ties to Trump, with Microsoft donating to the president’s inauguration committee and his project to build a new White House ballroom.

Eric Horvitz said that without government support, the US would be ‘decades away’ from the current AI ‘moment’ © Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

However, Horvitz, a veteran executive who became Microsoft’s first chief scientific officer in 2020, cited the government model implemented after the second world war for investment in academic research.

In 1950, the US created the National Science Foundation (NSF), an agency responsible for more than a quarter of all federal funding received by America’s colleges and universities for basic research.

“That vision turned out to be an impressive way to make an investment in the future,” said Horvitz, adding that without government support, the US would be “decades away” from the current AI “moment”.

“By betting on intellect and ideas, we can make the world better in surprising ways,” he added. Trump has scrapped more than 1,600 NSF grants, worth nearly $1bn in funding, since 2025.

Horvitz has partnered with Margaret Martonosi, a Princeton University professor and former computer science lead at NSF, to collect stories of how federal grants for research have led to scientific breakthroughs.

Multiple recipients of the Turing Award, a leading award for computer science, have contributed to the December issue of the Association for Computing Machinery magazine to promote public recognition of how taxpayer funds contributed to historic technological achievements.

One example is last year’s winners, Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton, who have been credited with developing reinforcement learning. This technique has now been embraced by the world’s top AI groups, including OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, for training their models.

“The core ideas behind these large-scale language models, multimodal models, were developed . . . by people pursuing questions about intelligence, of the type you only see in discussions at universities,” said Horvitz.

Martonosi, whose research has led to breakthroughs for the semiconductor industry, said that findings were often funnelled into industry. “I’ve had patents licensed by major chip vendors and watched my ideas go out in almost every laptop out there,” she said.

Funding cuts and freezes have forced academic institutions to overhaul their governance and finances, while prompting some academics and students to move abroad. Critics fear the measures will benefit rival superpowers such as China, whose researchers already produce groundbreaking research with substantial state funding.

Many researchers have also sought roles in the private sector, drawn by the significant resources available to them at large companies, including advanced tools and access to scarce computing power.

“Other countries are following what was a very unique American model,” said Horvitz. “If we don’t follow that model, the talent magnet, the training and the curiosity-driven investments will happen elsewhere. More than they do here.”

Additional reporting by Joe Miller in Washington

Financial Times · Cristina Criddle

21. Taiwan’s Growing Civic Soft Power­­­­ in Southeast Asia

​Summary:

Taiwan, branded by Beijing as a “renegade province,” has become a quiet refuge for dissidents from Hong Kong, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Singapore, and beyond. Its strong civil society, high press freedom, and bodies like the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation project civic soft power across Southeast Asia. Exiles build independent media, find safety, and for many LGBTQ+ activists, a rare space to live openly. Yet the island’s image collides with harsher realities for low-skilled Southeast Asian migrants, who face discrimination, exploitation, and domestic abuse. Taiwan’s real test as a rights champion lies in how it treats these workers.

Comment: Taiwan: a leader in support of freedom and democracy. Chips yes, but values too. Another reason why Taiwan deserves the support of the international community.

Asia Sentinel

Society

Taiwan’s Growing Civic Soft Power­­­­ in Southeast Asia

Chin’s ‘renegade province’ is home to thousands of political refugees

Jan 09, 2026

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/taiwan-growing-civic-soft-power-southeast-asia?utm

By: Nguyễn Vũ

Photo from Alberto Buzzola / LightRocket via Getty Images

Taiwan, increasingly isolated by Beijing, which considers it a renegade province, has nonetheless become an unlikely sanctuary for thousands of political refugees, especially from Hong Kong, but also from China, Tibet, Turkey, Singapore, Myanmar, and other nations as far away as Egypt and Uganda.

The island’s unique status precludes it being a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, so it is difficult to quantify the numbers and the government in Taipei maintains a cautious stance to avoid escalating tensions with China and to prevent national security risk, but its stance as a beacon of free thought serves as an international propaganda asset while undoubtedly irritating regional governments for harboring dissidents.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents relocated beginning in 2019 as Beijing cracked down harshly on what had been one of Asia’s most liberal cities, with figures surging in 2020-2021, though exact total numbers are hard to pin down. Estimates suggest over 37,000 arrived by late 2022, making Taiwan a significant destination for those seeking democracy and freedom despite tightening Taiwanese residency rules.

While China is a major development sponsor and creditor to Southeast Asian governments, Taiwan, especially through the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, funded by the island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs with “international help,” has also subsidized democratic activities in the region. In its 2024 report, of 105 projects earmarked for its international grants, 24 were focused on Southeast Asia. Founded in 2018 as a supplement to the New Southbound Policy, one of the signature diplomatic legacies of former President Tsai, the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation serves as the island’s first Southeast Asia-focused think tank. The organization executes events and publications aiming to strengthen Taiwan-Southeast Asia connections through NGO cooperation, civil society, and people-focused exchange.

Taiwan ranked 24th in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders, first in East Asia and second in Asia Pacific. Although jailed democracy icon Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily Taiwan (Apple Online) ceased operations on August 31, 2022 after the parent was closed in Hong Kong, Singaporean entrepreneur Joseph Phua established a new platform and hired almost all of the original Taiwan staff of 300-odd employees to join the new venture, Next Apple News. While the original Apple Daily brand is defunct, the core reporting team continues to operate in Taiwan under the Next Apple News banner, maintaining a similar tabloid-style digital presence.

One of those arrivals is Koko Thu, the son of a Myanmar junta officer during the 1988 Uprising who witnessed a schoolmate’s shooting, awakening him to the atrocities of the system that his father served. The then-21-year-old university student fled the embattled country, becoming both geographically and politically estranged from his father. He first landed in Thailand and shortly after leveraged his mother’s connections to reach Taiwan. Koko Thu has never left the island since.

“I remember learning to write the very first Chinese characters 谢谢 (Thank you）right after having landed in Taiwan in 1988,” he recalled. In 2021, the now 58-year-old rallied again in protests against the coup back home, hoping his father would forgive him in the netherworld. He continues to calls for international support for his compatriots. “I feel very safe in Taiwan,” he said.

Another to take advantage of is Trịnh Hữu Long, who began his activism for democracy in Vietnam first as an anti-China protester in 2011. He moved to the island in 2016. Since 2014, he has not returned to his home country, where the government has imprisoned his mentor and friend Phạm Đoan Trang since 2020 and branded him a “traitor’. He is now running an independent outlet Luật Khoa Tạp Chí in Vietnamese language and its English sister publication The Vietnamese from Taipei.

“I say ‘I love Taiwan’ as a way to express my gratitude to a country that offers me and my fellow exiled Vietnamese shelter, freedom, and kindness,” says Trịnh in his 2025 interview with independent Taiwan-based media New Bloom. “And after nine years of living in Taiwan, I am certain I made one of the best decisions of my life relocating to this country.”

An LGBTIAQ-friendly hub

For those who belong to communities including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual/Ally, Taiwan offers a friendlier environment than their home countries, annually featuring Taiwan Pride, the largest such gay event in East Asia, usually on the last Saturday of October and featuring massive crowds. Roy Ngerng is a Singaporean blogger found liable for defaming Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a post alleging Lee mismanaged Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings in 2015 and was ordered to pay damages of S$150,000. In 2021, he paid off the outstanding obligation through a crowdfunding campaign in just nine days. He used excess funds to support another Singaporean blogger, Leong Sze Hian, who was also sued by the PM in a separate case. Openly gay, Ngerng is currently living with his partner in Taiwan.

Photo from Out Magazine

“When I moved to Taiwan, it was because I needed to find a job, but it was also very useful for me, because I was undergoing depression,” Ngerng said. “And being in Taiwan helped me recuperate. There was also a time when I wasn’t writing and I was taking time to explore the place, the rivers and parks, which helped me get better. Moving to Taiwan thus feels like moving to another place, and moving along with life?”

A Malaysian activist who identified only as Kin said he believes that he wouldn’t be able to find a welcoming environment in his home country as a gay man. His Taiwanese partner would not be able to secure Malaysian spouse visa, and their marriage would not be recognized back home.

“Ten years ago, when I searched for words like “gay” and “boys like boys,” the information I got on the internet was extremely negative, so I only learned to hate myself when I was growing up,” Kin wrote. In his recent posts on Thread, he expressed his dismay when coming across homophobic comments on social media back home, especially from religious groups in Malaysia. In response, he wrote in Malay: “Sexual orientation is innate, please stop criminalizing LGBT+.”

Room for more sustainable soft power

Yet it remains to be seen whether Taiwan can walk its talk on democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia although soft power has its domestic limitations. While educated dissidents are welcome, low-skilled workers face rampant discrimination. Observers say protections for migrant workers was conspicuously absent in the signature New Southbound Policy launched by former President Tsai in 2017. About one in 33 employed in Taiwan are foreign workers, 90 percent of whom come from Southeast Asia.

Racism permeates migrant worker policy. Filipino workers in semiconductor factories in Taiwan are reportedly subjected to abysmal working conditions. In 2024, Taiwan fell short of agreeing to demands from Indonesian union members. In 2019, Kaoxiong Mayor had to publicly apologize for his slip of the tongue referring to Filipinos teachers as “marias,” considered demeaning, discriminatory, and politically incorrect. In recent years, many Taiwanese universities have been reportedly sending Southeast Asian students to work illegally in factories.

While Taiwan is known for being a champion of women’s rights, domestic violence has been known by Taiwanese male partners against their Southeast Asian spouses. Since the 1990s, immigrant women arriving in Taiwan from Southeast Asia through commercially brokered marriages have represented a growing group that now accounts for 2.4 percent of the population. The test of its soft power as a bastion of democracy lies in its treatment of the most vulnerable groups, particularly low-skilled workers, who have been left behind by their home countries and pin their hopes on a better future on the island.

22. Book Review: “Those Who Face Death” by Mark Grdovic

Book Review: “Those Who Face Death” by Mark Grdovic

January 8, 2026 Guest Books 0

https://sof.news/books/book-review-mark-grdovic/

By How Miller.

LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic (pronounced grid-uh-vich) has written an exciting and knowledgeable account of the U.S. Army Special Forces’ remarkable efforts in Kurdistan that contributed to the success of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He and his 10th SFG (A) Battalion Commander, LTC Ken Tovo, are probably the only two who saw the operation from conception to conclusion as active participants.

They took painstaking efforts to ensure each ODA knew that the real mission was to tie up several of Saddam Hussein’s divisions in the north so they could not be used to combat the ground offensive taking place in the south of Iraq. During pre-mission planning conducted in isolation, he and Ken were able to visit each team early and at the end to make sure they were asking questions without judgment so they could be confident in knowing the commander’s intent, and they could act largely independently. This was a key to their remarkable success.

Mark keeps us always abreast of the larger picture, including his many maps, so you feel like you really know what is going on, as though you were actually there. He describes personal interactions, moods, and the thread of gaining trust with the hardened veterans leading the Peshmerga, which translates to “Those who Face Death”.

There were many factors to contend with, including a threat from Ansar al Islam, a sizeable Islamic extremist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. They had to be dealt with to allow the Peshmerga the freedom to then turn south and face the Iraqis at the “Green Line”, the de facto border between Saddam’s control and Kurdish control.

There was the fragile peace between the Kurdish PUK, with whom Mark and Ken Tovo were embedded, and the KDP. They had recently been in a civil war between the two for control of Kurdistan.

Not to mention the U.S. conventional army units having their own priorities, culminating in the PUK taking Kirkuk weeks before the very formidable 173rd Abn Bde was planning to strike.

Mark recaps and summarizes lessons learned at the end of the book. This will be a valuable resource going forward for SF and others in future conflicts, large and small.

Those Who Face Death is both a celebration of the joint achievements of the Peshmerga and Green Berets and all the allied forces, and a clear-headed assessment of lessons learned.

At this link, Mark shares with us Chapters 11 and 12, from the personal and immediate lead-up to Operation Viking Hammer to eliminate Ansar al-Islam, and the exciting beginning parts of the battle.

**********

This book review by How Miller was first published in the January 2026 issue of the Sentinel. This monthly publication is published by Chapter 78 of the Special Forces Association. You can view past issues at this link. How Miller is the editor of the Sentinel.

The book, Those Who Face Death: The Untold Story of Special Forces and the Iraqi Kurdish Resistance by Mark Grdovic, published by Copper Mountain Books, 08/15/2025 is available on Amazon.com.

Book Author Background. LTC (Ret.) Mark Grdovic served with the US Army for over 23 years, including 19 years as a Special Forces officer. He served with the 10th Special Forces Group, the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) and the White House Military Office (WHMO). His experience includes multiple deployments to Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and crisis response operations in Europe and Africa. Since retirement in 2012, he has served as a defense consultant and contractor supporting USSOCOM in a variety of capacities. LTC (Ret.) Grdovic holds a Master’s degree in National Defense Studies from King’s College London.

23. Lawrence’s Shadow: How Afghan Resistance Can Topple the Taliban

​Summary:

Robert Billard argues that the Taliban’s apparent dominance masks deep vulnerabilities in legitimacy, governance, and security, creating an opening for a renewed Afghan resistance. Drawing on T. E. Lawrence’s “Twenty-Seven Articles,” he contends that fragmented anti-Taliban groups like the NRF and AFF can evolve from harassment to strategic effect through mobility, unified command, parallel governance, and population-centric operations that expose Taliban failures. He urges a low-footprint Western role: intelligence, precision weapons, training, funding, and information support, without conventional forces. While acknowledging risks of proliferation, Pakistani backlash, and civil war, he concludes that calibrated external enablement is the most credible way to deny the Taliban lasting control and terrorist sanctuary.

Lawrence’s Shadow: How Afghan Resistance Can Topple the Taliban

by Robert D. Billard, Jr.

|

01.09.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/09/lawrences-shadow-how-afghan-resistance-can-topple-the-taliban/

A group of Islamic militants, members of the Afghan religious Taliban militia, move toward the front line on a tank captured from Hezb-i-Islami faction at Charasyab, approximately 13 miles from Kabul, on February 18, 1995. The Taliban warriors, who are believed to have emerged from religious seminaries, or madressas, in Pakistan, took to the Afghan scene in 1994, captured Kabul in 1996 and control two-thirds of Afghanistan, which has been at war for 20 years following the Soviet invasion of 1978. (Photo credit should read SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Abstract

Four years after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan’s regime faces deepening economic collapse, ethnic alienation, and persistent internal and external pressures. The United States now possesses an ideal opportunity to subvert Taliban rule and deny Afghanistan’s further usage as a terrorist safe haven. While the past quarter-century has seen overt investment into Counter Insurgency Operations, this article explains how the United States can enable and empower a current insurgency to achieve strategic goals that went unrealized during 20 years of sustained ground operations. Drawing directly on T.E. Lawrence’s “Twenty-Seven Articles,” this article examines how fragmented anti-Taliban forces could adopt a mobility-focused, population-centric campaign to exploit these vulnerabilities and progressively erode Taliban control. It outlines a practical strategy built on unified command, indirect warfare, parallel governance, and targeted information operations. The article then specifies low-footprint Western support measures – such as intelligence sharing, precision weapons, exile training, and deniable funding – that could enable victory without reintroducing conventional forces. Finally, it addresses proliferation risks, Pakistani reactions, and moral hazards, concluding that calibrated external enablement offers the most viable path to deny the Taliban permanent consolidation.

Introduction

August 2021 represented a sordid and humiliating bookend to two decades of immeasurable sacrifice as U.S. troops executed a haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan, directly handing the country back over to Taliban rule. While a stated goal of the initial 2001 invasion was to preclude Afghanistan’s usage as a terrorist safe haven, the culmination of the extended conflict has left the country in a state that is bafflingly worse for U.S. and global security interests than it was in September 2001. Throughout the course of the Afghanistan conflict, experts largely shifted their focus from preparations for Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) to Counter Insurgency (COIN). While the latter yielded a plethora of tactical victories, it did not ultimately result in strategic success. With COIN now being relegated back to the dustbin of history, leaders and strategic planners have shifted their focus back to LSCO-style Great Power Competition. While Afghanistan now sits well on the periphery of mainstream interest, there are disparate anti-Taliban resistance groups waging an insurgency who, if properly empowered, could produce strategic outcomes consistent with U.S. security interests.

The timing could not be more ideal for emboldening resistance efforts in Afghanistan. As of November 2025, the Taliban are simultaneously coping with a shooting war with Pakistan along the Durand Line, losing control of opium revenue, and risking losing $40 million weekly payments in direct support from U.S. taxpayers, all while managing their own COIN operations against ISIS-K. These elements all compound to lead to the worst economic contraction in modern Afghan history. This article is not focused on what the United States did wrong in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 (of which there is extensive literature); rather it will discuss what the U.S. can do right by supporting resistance movements that are operating right now. Doing so will remove a terrorist safe haven that continues to threaten global security while potentially also granting strategic access back to Central Asia for the United States. This would both come at a fraction of the cost of the 2001-2021 Global War on Terror and allow the U.S. to salvage some dignity and credibility following the 2021 withdrawal.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas E. Lawrence, 1919 (Photo by Lowell Thomas, Public Domain)

The core component that must be first analyzed is how to wage an insurgency as opposed to a counterinsurgency. While the preponderance of military literature in the past quarter-century tackled the latter, there is relevant precedent for the former. In the First World War, British Army officer Thomas E. Lawrence (better known as “T.E. Lawrence”) provided a blueprint for how Western powers can enable successful foreign insurgencies. Between 1916 and 1918, T.E. Lawrence helped transform a fragmented Arab tribal revolt into a strategic campaign that crippled the Ottoman Empire in the Hejaz. With minimal British manpower on the ground, he emphasized mobility, political legitimacy, and selective external aid to exploit an overextended occupier’s weaknesses. Today, more than four years after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan presents strikingly similar conditions: a resented regime struggling with governance, an alienated population, rugged terrain ideal for guerrilla warfare, and embryonic resistance movements seeking unity.

The Taliban’s ideological rigidity and administrative incompetence have created openings that a disciplined, population-centric insurgency could widen into fatal cracks. By applying principles from Lawrence’s “Twenty-Seven Articles,” written for British officers advising irregular Arab forces in precisely this kind of war, Afghan resistance groups could evolve from pinprick attacks into a sustainable campaign capable of eroding Taliban control. Western states, chastened by 2021, can enable this outcome through low-footprint, deniable support without repeating past mistakes.

The Taliban’s Weaknesses in 2025

By late 2025, the Taliban regime confronted a compounding crisis of legitimacy, resources, and security. Economically, Afghanistan remains in free fall. The abrupt 2021 cutoff of international aid, frozen central-bank assets, and ongoing sanctions have produced chronic unemployment, household debt, and poverty affecting nearly half the population. Taliban policies, such as banning female education beyond the primary level and most women’s NGO employment, have cost the economy billions annually while fueling resentment. Mass deportations from Pakistan and Iran have flooded border areas with destitute returnees, further straining meager services.

Governance failures have only compounded these woes. Corruption and favoritism toward Pashtun hardliners have alienated non-Pashtun communities and even moderate Taliban factions. Ethnic arrests and purges in provinces like Badakhshan reveal deepening internal fractures. Drug policy flip-flops and methamphetamine proliferation underscore administrative incoherence.

Militarily, the Taliban face persistent bleeding from Islamic State–Khorasan (ISIS-K), which continues targeted killings of officials and Shia civilians despite Taliban counteroperations. The ongoing conflict with Pakistan threatens to boil over into an all-out conflict, posing a significant threat to the Taliban regime. Overstretch is evident: Forces are dispersed across 34 provinces, reliant on checkpoints and static garrisons vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics. Desertions and recruitment shortfalls reflect low morale in a movement that promised victory but delivered isolation and hardship. These interlocking crises mirror the Ottoman vulnerabilities Lawrence exploited: administrative brittleness masking apparent strength.

Lawrence’s Core Lessons (The 27 Articles Applied)

Lawrence distilled his experience into “Twenty-Seven Articles,” published in the Arab Bulletin in August 1917, as pragmatic guidance for British officers working with irregular Bedouin forces. Several articles remain directly relevant to Afghanistan’s topography, tribal society, and asymmetric imbalance.

First, mobility and dispersion over concentration: “The more unorthodox…you are, the more likely you are to have the Turks cold [Article 22].” In Afghanistan’s mountains and valleys, small, self-contained guerrilla bands using pack animals or motorcycles can strike Taliban convoys and outposts, then melt away; exactly the approach that bled Soviet and NATO forces.

Second, political primacy: “Win and keep the confidence of your leader… Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly” (Articles 4, 5). Resistance success depends less on battlefield victories than on demonstrating the Taliban cannot protect or govern, while offering an inclusive alternative that appeals across ethnic lines.

Third, population-centric warfare: “Learn all you can about [them]. Get to know their families, clans and tribes, friends and enemies, wells, hills and roads.” (Article 2). Lawrence stressed learning local dialects, customs, and grievances. In multiethnic Afghanistan, resistance fighters must frame operations as national liberation, not Tajik or Uzbek revanchism, to peel away disaffected Pashtun tribes.

Fourth, external support without domination: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands” (Article 15). British gold, explosives, and advisors were decisive yet kept invisible. Modern equivalents (such as precision weapons, intelligence, and training) can achieve similar leverage today.

Finally, psychological warfare: “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander” (quote). Lawrence used propaganda leaflets and rumors masterfully. Afghan resistance can exploit social media and diaspora networks to amplify Taliban atrocities and showcase battlefield successes.

These principles succeeded against a twentieth-century empire; adapted intelligently, they can work against a twenty-first-century theocracy.

Current Landscape of Afghan Resistance

The primary anti-Taliban armed actors in 2025 are the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA or NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud from exile, and the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), commanded by former Afghan National Army generals such as Yasin Zia. Smaller groups, including the Afghanistan Liberation Movement and Soldiers of Freedom, operate in pockets.

Ahmad Massoud, Leader of NRF, 2019 (Wikimedia Commons)

The NRF retains the strongest brand recognition, rooted in Panjshir’s symbolic resistance and the legacy of Ahmad Shah Massoud. By mid-2025, NRF fighters were reported to be active in over a dozen provinces, conducting ambushes and raids that forced Taliban reinforcements northward. The AFF has emerged as the more operationally aggressive actor, claiming 88 attacks and over 200 Taliban killed in the first eight months of 2025 alone. Both groups participated in the fifth Vienna Process conference in February 2025, signaling tentative political coordination.

Strengths include high motivation, intimate knowledge of terrain, and residual loyalty from former Afghan National Security Force personnel. Many commanders are U.S. or NATO trained, giving tactical sophistication that is rare in irregular forces. Weaknesses remain severe: chronic fragmentation, competing egos among exile politicians, limited heavy weapons, and no secure cross-border sanctuary comparable to Lawrence’s Aqaba or the Hejaz Railway. Funding is ad hoc (largely diaspora donations and minor criminal revenue), constraining sustained campaigns. Unity efforts continue, with joint statements and occasional coordinated attacks, but a single operational command structure is still absent. ISIS-K’s parallel insurgency indirectly aids resistance by fixing Taliban units in the east, yet also competes for recruits and risks sectarianizing the conflict. Overall, resistance remains embryonic but growing, capable of harassment, but not yet strategic disruption.

Gen. Yasin Zia greeting Afghanistan National Army troops, March 2020 (Photo by Spc. Jeffery J. Harris/DVIDS and Wikimedia Commons)

How Resistance Can Win: A Lawrence-Inspired Strategy

A Lawrence-style campaign would reorient resistance from sporadic attacks toward systematic attrition focused on political effects.

First, establish a unified political-military command. A council incorporating NRF, AFF, and minority representatives (modeled on Lawrence’s advisory role with Prince Feisal) could reconcile exile leaders and field commanders, ending duplicative operations and enabling joint planning.

Second, prioritize mobility and an indirect approach. Small 20-50-man teams, equipped with sniper rifles, IEDs, drones, and MANPADS, can interdict Taliban supply lines, target mid-level officials, and destroy checkpoints. Lawrence’s attributed maxim, paraphrased as “The death of a Turkish bridge or rail has more effect than the death of a hundred Turks,” translates directly to blowing culverts on the Ring Road or Salang Highway, forcing the Taliban into fuel-consuming patrols.

Third, population protection and governance in liberated pockets. Rather than holding towns, resistance should create “ink-spot” safe zones in remote valleys where parallel administration provides justice, food distribution, and girls’ schooling in order to demonstrate superior legitimacy and encourage defections.

Fourth, sophisticated information operations. Published online footage of successful ambushes, testimonials from Taliban defectors, and exposés of regime corruption, disseminated via encrypted apps or on social media, can erode the narrative of Taliban invincibility.

Fifth, exploit ethnic and tribal fissures. Targeted outreach to disaffected southern Pashtun tribes (offering amnesty and development funds upon regime change) could trigger cascading breakdowns, as Lawrence achieved with the Howeitat and Beni Sakhr.

With disciplined adherence to these principles, resistance can raise Taliban governance costs beyond sustainability, provoking overreaction that further alienates the population and eventually fractures the movement along existing fault lines. Historical precedent is clear: The mujahideen of the 1980s and the Northern Alliance of 2001 both prevailed through exactly this model.

What the West Must Do Without Boots on the Ground

Western states can replicate Britain’s World War I Hejaz model: enable, do not lead.

Intelligence sharing represents possibly the highest return on investment. Overhead imagery, signals intercepts, and real-time drone feeds (delivered through cutouts or commercial providers) would multiply resistance effectiveness without attribution.

Precision weapons in limited quantities (such as Javelins, Stingers, and commercial quadcopters modified for munitions) can neutralize Taliban air and armor advantages that Lawrence never faced. Delivery via Central Asian neighbors or airdrop is feasible and deniable.

Training in secure third countries (Tajikistan, UAE, or Europe) in explosives, sniping, and command-and-control for select cadres would professionalize operations. Funding routed through cryptocurrency, hawala networks, or humanitarian NGOs can sustain fighters without large footprints.

Diplomatic cover, such as public condemnation of Taliban human-rights abuses paired with private signals of support for “inclusive governance,” keeps moral pressure high while preserving space for eventual negotiations. Information operations amplifying resistance narratives on Voice of America, BBC Persian, and social platforms would accelerate psychological erosion.

All support should be conditioned on resistance unity, civilian protection, and an inclusive political platform to avoid repeating 1990s warlordism. Cost would be orders of magnitude lower than the $2 trillion 2001–2021 effort, yet potentially decisive.

Risks and Counterarguments

Critics argue that arming Afghan guerrillas risks proliferation, Pakistani retaliation, or another 1990s-style civil war. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s 2025 airstrikes demonstrate Islamabad’s sensitivity to cross-border sanctuaries, potentially escalating into broader conflict. Moral hazards exist in that external aid could prolong suffering without victory. Yet inaction guarantees continued Taliban consolidation and terrorist safe havens. If managed carefully, low-footprint enablement can contain these dangers better than indifference ever could.

Conclusion

Afghanistan is not irrevocably lost. History suggests, and Lawrence proved, that a determined irregular force, wisely advised and selectively supplied, can defeat a nominally stronger occupier by exploiting administrative frailty and political illegitimacy. If Afghan resistance internalizes its lessons and the West provides calibrated support, the Taliban’s grasp on power can still be rolled back… One raid, one defection, one liberated valley at a time.

Check out everything Small Wars Journal has to offer.

Tags: Afghanistan, COIN, Great Power Competition, insurgency, irregular warfare, Legitimacy, resistance, Taliban

About The Author

• 
  
• Robert D. Billard, Jr.
• Robert Billard is an active-duty U.S. Marine Corps Major. He is currently a student at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. He has several operational and combat deployments, including Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Find him at Robert Billard \ X

24. It’s Time – Recognizing The Taiwanese Nation State

Summary:

Taiwan, Ken Gleiman argues, is already a sovereign democratic state, with a consolidated Taiwanese national identity and a government that meets every test of statehood. The problem is not facts but fear. U.S. strategic ambiguity made sense in the Cold War, yet Washington failed to adapt as Taiwan democratized and the PRC hardened into high tech authoritarianism. Beijing has already “won” the first war through deterrence by punishment, coercing democracies into self censorship on Taiwan. Ken proposes decentralized, grassroots recognition by individuals, cities, universities, and civil society to normalize Taiwanese sovereignty and ultimately force Beijing to recalculate in light of its true core interest: regime survival.

Excerpt:

Strategic shifts do not begin with governments. They start with individuals willing to state what they know to be true.

Comment: This is the most provocative essay you will read today. It is from my Special Forces brother, and noted scholar and the Editor-in-Chief, Ken Gleiman. He is also responsible for revitalizing Small Wars Journal in partnership with Arizona State University.  

Is it time for civil society to shift from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity?

I really like his conception of US policy from "masterstroke to failure to adapt." 

How far could U.S. leaders quietly enable a global “swarm” of subnational recognitions without triggering a premature crisis with Beijing?

At what point does incremental recognition shift from clever political warfare to an escalatory red line for the CCP, and how would we know we are approaching that threshold?

It’s Time – Recognizing The Taiwanese Nation State

by Jan Gleiman

|

01.09.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/09/its-time-recognizing-the-taiwanese-nation-state/

Abstract

For decades, the international community has maintained a diplomatic fiction: pretending Taiwan is not a sovereign state despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This essay argues it is time to break this taboo through incremental, grassroots recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation-state.

Five arguments support this shift. First, the Taiwanese people constitute a distinct nation—longitudinal polling shows over 60 percent identify as “Taiwanese only” with only 2-3 percent as “Chinese”—and the Republic of China governs a de facto independent state. Second, while U.S. strategic ambiguity was brilliant Cold War statecraft, Washington failed to adapt as Taiwan and China diverged fundamentally between 2005-2015. Third, Beijing’s deterrence by punishment has been so effective that democratic governments now police their own speech. Fourth, decentralized recognition by individuals, municipalities, universities, and civil society can overwhelm Beijing’s coercive apparatus by distributing resistance across actors too numerous to suppress. Fifth, this strategy may force Beijing to reconsider whether absorbing Taiwan serves the CCP’s only true core interest: regime survival.

Incremental recognition is not merely confrontation but a pathway toward sustainable coexistence. The current trajectory leads toward military catastrophe. The essay concludes with the author’s formal declaration recognizing Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Introduction

Breaking the Delusion

For decades, the international system has entertained a diplomatic fiction worthy of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone can see that Taiwan functions as a sovereign, democratic nation-state, yet governments pretend otherwise primarily because Beijing insists on maintaining the illusion. The world nods along, applauding the procession, even as Emperor Xi-Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) march naked and humorless down the geopolitical runway.

This strange ritual persists despite the facts. Twenty-three and a half million Taiwanese citizens elect their own leaders, speak their own dialects, defend their own borders, trade globally, operate a competent military, and most importantly, maintain their own collective identity as a Taiwanese people. Yet, the world speaks of their statehood and their identity as a nation in hushed tones, as if acknowledging it aloud might summon a security crisis into being. The result is one of the worst-kept secrets in modern statecraft: everyone privately recognizes Taiwanese de facto statehood while accommodating Beijing’s tortured naming conventions, but few are willing to say so publicly. Not because the truth is complicated, but because the consequences of honesty feel politically inconvenient at best and downright dangerous at worst. The taboo persists through coercion from Beijing and misplaced nostalgia among small factions in Taiwan. Beijing built it. The United States accommodated it. The world internalized it. And the longer we perform this self-imposed silence, the more we mistake fear for prudence.

As this essay goes to press, Beijing has provided fresh evidence of its coercive intent. Xi Jinping’s New Year address declared Taiwan’s reunification ‘unstoppable’. The week prior, PLA forces conducted Justice Mission 2025, simulating a comprehensive blockade of Taiwan with live-fire exercises. These drills explicitly targeted ‘deterrence outside the island chain,’ a direct warning to would-be American and allied intervention. The message is clear: Beijing is rehearsing the tools of coercion while the world maintains its polite fiction. The question is whether we will continue performing our assigned roles in this charade.

This essay argues that it is time to break that taboo and, incrementally and responsibly, move toward full international recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation-state. To be clear, the arguments in this essay should not be construed as a universal endorsement of secessionist claims, nor a template for revisiting settled internal borders within consolidated democratic states. It applies narrowly to a case where a self-governing, democratic polity faces existential absorption by an external authoritarian power that has never exercised legitimate sovereign control over it. Conflating Taiwan with domestic minority politics inside democratic states collapses a critical distinction between internal constitutional pluralism and external imperial conquest.

Five conceptual arguments underpin this claim and point to a necessary strategic shift for the United States and its allies.

First, three basic facts demand acknowledgment: (a) the Taiwanese people constitute a nation, despite decades of CCP propaganda; (b) the political entity known as the Republic of China (ROC) is the legitimate government of a de facto independent state of Taiwan, and (c) there is only one China and Taiwan is NOT part of it.

Second, although often criticized for short-termism, the United States executed a remarkable grand-strategic balancing act during the late Cold War and early post-Cold War period by marginalizing Taiwan to achieve broader geopolitical gains. What Washington failed to do was adapt that posture as the strategic environment shifted between 2001 and the 2010s, when Beijing adopted a far more coercive national strategy.

Third, the only remaining reasons that these fundamental facts are not globally acknowledged are (a) the CCP’s sustained and highly effective coercion, and (b) the degree to which that coercion has deterred U.S. and allied leaders into silence. In this respect, the PRC’s “deterrence by punishment” has succeeded beyond anything the PLA could achieve with missiles or ships: it has coerced democratic governments into policing their own speech.

Fourth, a strategy of grassroots, incremental recognition conducted by individuals, organizations, municipalities, professional associations, and civil society may erode this artificially imposed narrative and help build the connective tissue of legitimacy that Taiwan and its would-be supporters will need in the coming future confrontation.

Fifth and finally, if such a strategy gains momentum, it may force Beijing to reconsider the premise that national rejuvenation requires the unprecedented absorption of Taiwan and its distinct people. That premise is historically dubious, strategically unnecessary, and politically constructed. It is also the root cause of what could be the defining geostrategic disaster of this century.

1- THE FACTS OF TAIWANESE IDENTITY

The Taiwanese Nation

Understanding Taiwan requires first disentangling two foundational concepts—nation and state—that are often blurred in popular discourse but analytically indispensable. Borders, armies, or bureaucracies do not define a nation. A nation is defined by people who share a socially constructed sense of collective identity; what Benedict Anderson famously called an ‘imagined community’. Such communities are imagined because their members will never know most of their compatriots; they are communities because they share symbols, narratives, values, and expectations; they are limited because they define in-groups and out-groups; and they are sovereign because they aspire to (or in this case, already have) self-rule. Measured against these criteria, the Taiwanese people today are unmistakably a nation.

Identity Data: The Empirical Line That Will Not Recede

No amount of CCP propaganda or wishful thinking in certain Western capitals can obscure the blunt, longitudinal reality: Taiwanese identity has diverged sharply and irreversibly from Chinese identity over the past four decades. National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center (ESC) time series, the gold standard for identity polling, shows a profound transformation. In the early 1990s, “Taiwanese only” hovered in the single digits. By the mid-2010s, it had surged above 60 percent, with roughly 30 percent identifying as “both” and only 2–3 percent identifying as “Chinese.” These numbers are not statistical noise. They are confirmed in numerous other studies. These are the sociological expressions of a national community that has consolidated itself through shared experience, democratic participation, and generational change. The Taiwanese nation is not emerging; it has always existed to some degree, it has recently matured, and it continues to grow stronger in the public consciousness of the island’s people. Each act of saber-rattling and subversive activity only makes the Taiwanese identity stronger in the minds of its people.

The Taiwanese nation is not emerging; it has always existed to some degree, it has recently matured, and it continues to grow stronger in the public consciousness of the island’s people. Each act of saber-rattling and subversive activity only makes the Taiwanese identity stronger in the minds of its people.

History as the Crucible of the Taiwanese Nation

History is used here to explain how collective identity and political legitimacy emerge over time, rather than to establish primordial claims or revive antiquated borders. Modern sovereignty rests not on medieval inheritance, but on present consent and governance. Unlike revisionist historical claims used to justify conquest, Taiwan’s case rests on contemporary democratic self-rule and the expressed will of its population.

The persistent misunderstanding, especially among Western observers, is the belief that Taiwan’s “Chineseness” is a timeless historical inheritance. It is not. Taiwan’s past is the story of repeated encounters with foreign rule, migration, occupation, resistance, and assimilation, producing a distinct society that, only under the CCP’s narrative lens, is flattened into an extension of “China.”

When the Dutch East India Company established control over parts of the island in 1624, the population was overwhelmingly indigenous. Han settlers were imported largely as labor, beginning a pattern of migration to Taiwan rather than Taiwan’s subordination to China. The Zheng regime (1662–1683), while linked to the Ming, governed Taiwan as a separate base of power. Qing rule, often invoked by Beijing as historical “proof,” was neither deep nor consistent; it was colonial suzerainty, not integrated nationhood. The Qing voluntarily ceded its claim over Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Hardly the behavior of a state guarding an inseparable part of its national territory, though the people of Taiwan mounted a concerted resistance to the subsequent Japanese invasion and occupation.

Japanese rule (1895-1945), which is often characterized as oppressive, extractive, and transformative, left deep administrative, educational, cultural, and infrastructural imprints. Taiwanese (including descendants of Han settlers) resisted their subordinate status, but they also assimilated elements of Japanese modernity, identity, and governance. By 1945, Taiwan was not “returning” to a Chinese political community; it was entering yet another round of foreign rule.

The KMT’s arrival in 1945 sparked a period of occupation, political violence, and resistance. When Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces occupied Taiwan after Japan’s defeat, they were stunned by how Japanese—in language, custom, and habit—the population had become. The KMT responded by attempting to erase Japanese and native Taiwanese influence and impose its own version of Chinese nationalism. From 1945 to 1949, Taiwan was governed not as a fellow Chinese province but as a conquered territory. The February 28, 1947, violent crackdown on uprisings, known as the 228 Massacre, initiateddecades of political repression. Known as the White Terror, this repressive response was meant to eliminate both Taiwanese identity and prevent communist subversion from the mainland. It also prepared the KMT for the pipe dream of reclaiming the mainland from the CCP. Ironically, the decades-long struggle against authoritarianism only fertilized the sense of common identity that bound the people of the island together. This was just the latest chapter in Taiwan’s history of occupation, resistance, and assimilation. In the long arc of Taiwan’s history, foreign occupiers are eventually absorbed into the island’s evolving identity—and the same happened to the KMT. What began as a military occupation slowly mutated, under internal pressure, into a shared political community.

The Sovereign State of Taiwan

If the Taiwanese nation is the product of history, the Taiwanese state is the product of political transformation. The two are related but distinct. A nation is a matter of identity; a state is a matter of institutions, governance, and sovereignty.

Taiwan’s transition from a KMT-run authoritarian regime to a vibrant democracy was the foundational shift that tied the Taiwanese nation to the state that governs it. The democratization process, beginning haltingly in the 1970s and accelerating after Chiang Ching-kuo’s reforms in the 1980s, fundamentally reshaped political legitimacy on the island. The KMT lifted martial law in 1987, opposition parties emerged openly, and by the mid-1990s, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election. Democratization liberalized the ROC system, but it also re-rooted that system in Taiwanese identity, which was further strengthened by the contrast with the mainland. The authoritarian “Republic of China on Taiwan” slowly became the democratic “Taiwan under the ROC constitutional framework.” Schools began teaching Taiwanese history, rather than the KMT-mandated history of China. The distinction matters: the state did not create the nation; the nation remade the state through a long-term, multi-generation resistance movement that turned the occupiers into natives.

One of East Asia’s least appreciated transformations was how the post-1949 mainlanders (外省人) assimilated into Taiwanese identity. The KMT arrived as occupiers, not compatriots, imposing repression and cultural control. Yet by the second and third generations, these communities became Taiwanese in culture, democratic practice, and political preference. This inverts Beijing’s narrative: the Taiwanese population did not assimilate into China; the Chinese who arrived in 1949 assimilated into Taiwan.

A Contested State, but a State Nonetheless

Taiwan today is a “contested state”—a term political scientists use for entities that possess the full attributes of statehood but lack universal diplomatic recognition. Yet analytically, Taiwan meets every criterion of the modern state, including a defined territory, a permanent population, a functioning government (democratically elected), and the capacity for external relations (which it exercises even under constraints). Taiwan fields armed forces, collects taxes, passes laws, maintains its own currency, controls its borders, signs trade agreements, and operates foreign missions. Remarkably, Taiwan hosts the world’s most indispensable business: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. In practice, the ROC governs the island as the undisputed sovereign authority. In theory, only coercion by the PRC prevents other states from acknowledging this reality.

Taiwan is not a nation seeking a state; it is a state whose nation has been denied recognition. This distinguishes it categorically from cases such as the Kurds, whose claims, however legitimate, involve the redrawing of existing sovereign borders across multiple states. Recognizing Taiwan acknowledges an existing political reality without revising borders.

2-US POLICY: FROM MASTER-STROKE TO FAILURE TO ADAPT

American policy toward Taiwan from the 1970s through the 1990s deserves recognition as one of the more elegant exercises in Cold War statecraft. The opening to China, with Taiwan as the necessary concession, allowed the United States to take advantage of the emerging split in the Sino-Soviet bloc, accelerate Soviet encirclement, and ultimately help bring the Cold War to a favorable conclusion. The marginalization of Taiwan was strategic triage, not a moral failure. When survival is at stake, great powers make hard choices. Nixon and Kissinger made theirs, and history largely vindicated them.

Students of US-China relations today learn that the Three Communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the Six Assurances inform US policy towards China and Taiwan. The genius of the arrangement is in its studied ambiguity. The Shanghai Communiqué and subsequent agreements did not recognize PRC sovereignty over Taiwan. They merely agreed that Taiwan was part of China and “acknowledged” Beijing’s claim. This linguistic sleight of hand created space for the United States to maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, continue arms sales, and preserve the island’s de facto independence while pursuing normalized relations with Beijing. The result was a deliberately constructed hedge rather than a permanent settlement: if China liberalized, unification might eventually become acceptable to the Taiwanese people. If China collapsed or fractured, the ROC framework might prove helpful. If neither occurred, the arrangement at least bought time.

Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, this hedging logic remained defensible. The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 revealed the CCP’s willingness to use mass violence to preserve its rule. Still, it also confirmed that the regime was brittle and potentially reformable under sufficient external pressure. The Clinton administration doubled down on engagement, operating under the widely shared theory among Western elites that integrating China into the global economy would generate middle-class demands for political liberalization. Strategic ambiguity served this theory perfectly: it avoided forcing a crisis over Taiwan while leaving open the possibility that cross-strait tensions would eventually dissipate as both societies converged toward liberal-democratic norms.

But the theory did not hold. More importantly, the conditions that made strategic ambiguity a rational hedge began to erode between 2005 and 2015; a decade during which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consumed American attention while policymakers missed or downplayed the tectonic shifts occurring across the Taiwan Strait.

The Decade of Divergence

On the mainland, the CCP did not liberalize. It adapted. Under Hu Jintao, and especially after Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, the Party systematically dismantled the fragile legal and civil society reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s. Rather than evolving toward political pluralism, the regime invested in surveillance technologies, social control mechanisms, and ideological discipline. While the United States was preoccupied with counterterrorism, Beijing leveraged global concerns over Islamic extremism to justify the systematic repression and cultural genocide of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. That campaign revealed not a regime in crisis but one confident in its coercive capacity.

Simultaneously, Taiwan moved in the opposite direction. The island’s democracy deepened through successive peaceful transfers of power, and Taiwanese civil society demonstrated remarkable resilience. The 2014 Sunflower Movement crystallized what polling showed: Taiwanese identity was a consolidated national consciousness, not a phase.

By 2015, the divergence was complete, as Taiwan had become one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies and one of its most prosperous economies. The PRC, on the other hand, had become the world’s most technologically sophisticated authoritarian state. The idea that these two political communities might peacefully converge—the theoretical foundation of engagement and strategic ambiguity—was empirically dead. Yet American policy did not adapt and stubbornly still refuses to budge.

The Status Quo Trap

The failure is one of strategic imagination. U.S. policymakers continue to speak of “preserving the status quo” and “maintaining stability” as if these were coherent goals. They are not, at least not when one party to the arrangement has openly committed to overturning it.

Strategic ambiguity was designed as a hedging strategy, not an equilibrium. It was assumed that China’s future political character was uncertain and that time might favor a peaceful resolution or transition. But hedging strategies have a shelf life. When uncertainty resolves, and one side states its intention to revise the arrangement by force while systematically building the military, economic, and political means to do so, the hedge collapses into a trap.

Status quo strategies are inherently reactive, setting defensive perimeters and relying on deterrence thresholds to prevent overt aggression. But they are poorly suited to counter revisionist powers that employ incremental coercion, gray-zone operations, and political warfare. Each move of economic pressure, diplomatic isolation, cyberattacks, disinformation, and military exercises falls below response thresholds. Beijing understood this dynamic and ruthlessly exploited it. Rather than trigger a war that might unite the international community, the PRC made recognition of Taiwan so costly and accommodation so attractive that democratic governments police their own behavior. Meanwhile, the military balance shifts, Taiwan’s international space contracts, and the window for intervention narrows. The status quo erodes through a thousand cuts rather than a single big crisis. Deterrence by punishment focused on political speech instead of military action.

The United States and its allies have spent two decades debating how to maintain a status quo that no longer exists. The Taiwanese nation is not emerging; it has always existed to some degree, it has recently matured, and it continues to grow stronger in the public consciousness of the island’s people. Each act of saber-rattling and subversive activity only makes the Taiwanese identity stronger in the minds of its people.

The Taiwanese nation is not emerging; it has always existed to some degree, it has recently matured, and it continues to grow stronger in the public consciousness of the island’s people. Each act of saber-rattling and subversive activity only makes the Taiwanese identity stronger in the minds of its people.

3- DETERRENCE (AND COMPELLANCE) BY PUNISHMENT: HOW BEIJING WON WITHOUT FIGHTING

The national security establishment in Washington loves to debate deterrence. Elbridge Colby, now serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has built much of his career around the concept of “denial.” The idea that the United States, alongside Taiwan and regional allies, can develop military capabilities that make a PRC invasion of Taiwan prohibitively costly or outright impossible. Deterrence by denial, the theory goes, is superior to deterrence by punishment because it removes the adversary’s confidence that aggression can succeed, rather than merely threatening retaliation after the fact.

It is a sound strategic concept, and its manifestation in policy, posture, and capability is long overdue. There is only one problem. While American strategists have been absorbed in debates over how to deter Beijing militarily, they have failed to notice that Beijing has already cognitively deterred Washington.

The PRC’s most effective weapon against Taiwan has not been its amphibious fleet, its missile arsenal, or its cyber capabilities. It has been the systematic use of coercion to silence, isolate, and marginalize Taiwan in the international system and to condition foreign governments, corporations, and institutions into enforcing Beijing’s preferred narratives on its behalf. This is deterrence by punishment in its most refined form: not the threat of military retaliation, but the certainty of economic, diplomatic, and reputational costs imposed on any actor that acknowledges Taiwan’s reality.

While American strategists have been absorbed in debates over how to deter Beijing militarily, they have failed to notice that Beijing has already cognitively deterred Washington.

The Three Warfares and the Erosion of Recognition

Beijing’s strategy rests on what PLA doctrine calls the “Three Warfares” (三战): psychological warfare, media warfare, and legal warfare. These are the primary instruments through which the PRC has reshaped international behavior without firing a shot. The evidence is exhaustively documented in policy reports, academic studies, and diplomatic case files. Since 2016, the PRC has aggressively poached Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific. Numerous analyses of China’s “anaconda strategy” capture the method: Beijing combines economic inducements (infrastructure investments, debt relief, trade access) with implicit threats (withdrawal of aid, exclusion from Chinese markets) to pressure small states into switching recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The result has been a steady contraction of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic space from over 20 countries in 2016 to fewer than a dozen today. Additionally, Beijing systematically polices informal recognition: airlines list Taiwan as ‘Taiwan, China’ or face market exclusion; universities avoid hosting Taiwanese officials; international organizations from the WHO to INTERPOL exclude Taiwan even when cooperation serves public interest.

This is a deliberate, globally coordinated campaign to enforce a political fiction and to punish any deviation from it. It works not because Beijing’s arguments are persuasive, but because the costs of resistance are immediate and the benefits of compliance are tangible.

The Deterrence That Dare Not Speak Its Name

What makes this strategy so effective is that it operates primarily beneath the threshold of what Western governments recognize as “deterrence.” When policymakers in Washington, Brussels, or Tokyo think about deterrence, they think about missiles, naval blockades, and invasion scenarios. They do not think about the quiet pressure on a trade ministry, the revenue projections that shift when a CEO considers offending Beijing, or the cultural event that gets canceled because a Taiwanese representative was invited.

Yet this is precisely where the PRC has achieved its most significant victories. Democratic governments have internalized Beijing’s red lines and begun enforcing them preemptively. Officials avoid using the word “country” when referring to Taiwan. Diplomatic invitations are quietly rescinded. Trade delegations are renamed. Political leaders rehearse verbal gymnastics to avoid “provoking” Beijing, as if acknowledging observable reality were itself an act of aggression.

This is not prudence. It is capitulation. And it is precisely what deterrence by punishment is designed to achieve: behavior modification through the internalization of threatened costs. Beijing does not need to punish every transgression if governments learn to punish themselves.

The Uncomfortable Truth

American strategists debate force structures, missile inventories, and alliance coordination as if these are the decisive factors in cross-strait stability. They are not wrong to focus on military readiness—deterrence by denial will matter when (not if) Beijing attempts an invasion, coercive blockade, or any other combination of strategic approaches. Building better capabiities and even forming a stronger Pacific Defense Pact can have real effect. But American strategists are fighting the second war. The PRC has already won the first one. It secured victory over whether Taiwan’s existence can be acknowledged in polite company.

The assumption that recognition “accelerates” conflict rests on a misreading of Chinese behavior. Beijing’s military modernization, legal preparation, and gray-zone coercion have proceeded independently of Western recognition debates. The relevant variable shaping conflict risk is not declaratory policy, but perceived trends in relative power, legitimacy, and time. The CCP will invade, subvert, or aggressively coerce when it is ready. Paradoxically, indefinite delay may be more destabilizing than incremental recognition, because it reinforces Beijing’s belief that coercion works and that time favors absorption rather than accommodation. Even if Beijing were to achieve rapid military success, recognition remains strategically consequential because the decisive contest would shift immediately from invasion to occupation, legitimacy, and resistance. These are domains where political recognition directly shapes outcomes.

Until democratic governments recognize that they have been deterred and that their silence is not strategic patience but strategic defeat, they will continue to cede ground. The question is not whether Beijing will attempt further coercion, which continues and is now routine. The question is whether the international community will continue to enforce it on Beijing’s behalf.

But American strategists are fighting the second war. The PRC has already won the first one. It secured victory over whether Taiwan’s existence can be acknowledged in polite company.

4 – INCREMENTAL RECOGNITION – WE CAN SALAMI SLICE TOO

If Beijing’s coercion succeeds through a thousand small cuts, the response must mirror the method. The path to recognizing Taiwan need not, and realistically cannot, begin with a sudden diplomatic reversal by Washington or Brussels, barring a crisis. They have wasted too much credibility by repeating the lie that there is one China and that Taiwan is a part of China…it is NOT. But it can begin with something more diffuse, more resilient, and ultimately more difficult to suppress—grassroots recognition by individuals, institutions, municipalities, universities, civil society organizations, and subnational governments.

One of the significant advantages of living in open societies is that governments can maintain official positions while populations remain free to hold and express different views. This is a defining feature and great strength of democratic governance. And it is precisely this feature that offers a strategic opportunity. If the PRC’s coercion operates by isolating Taiwan through centralized pressure on national governments, the counterstrategy must distribute recognition across a decentralized network of actors too numerous and too dispersed for Beijing to effectively coerce.

If the PRC’s coercion operates by isolating Taiwan through centralized pressure on national governments, the counterstrategy must distribute recognition across a decentralized network of actors too numerous and too dispersed for Beijing to effectively coerce.

The Power of Defiant Speech

The first step is simple, and it costs nothing. Individuals and organizations should publicly recognize Taiwan. Newspapers and media outlets should refer to Taiwan as a country. Municipalities should pass resolutions acknowledging Taiwanese sovereignty. Universities should host Taiwanese officials without apology. State and provincial governments should engage in sister-city relationships and trade delegations with Taiwan, using language that reflects reality rather than Beijing’s preferred euphemisms.

This will provoke resistance not just from Beijing but also from within democratic institutions themselves. The reflexive response will be to hide behind procedural neutrality: “Our organization does not take stands on political issues.” But this framing is dishonest. Refusing to acknowledge Taiwan is itself a political position and, worse yet, one adopted under coercion. When the Taiwanese people overwhelmingly reject the claim that they are part of the PRC, pretending otherwise is not neutrality; it is complicity in Beijing’s narrative engineering.

I know this invites retaliation, but this is precisely why distributed recognition matters. If only a handful of actors break ranks, Beijing can isolate and punish them with precision. If thousands do, the coercion becomes unsustainable. The PRC cannot boycott every university, sanction every city council, or exclude every company that acknowledges Taiwan without exposing the absurdity of its own position. Crucially, if retaliation does occur, it should be met with public exposure and collective defense, not capitulation.

Building a Network of Resilience – Swarming Recognition?

The strategic logic here is straightforward. Decentralized recognition creates resilience. If recognition is concentrated in national governments, Beijing can focus its coercion on a small number of high-value targets. But if recognition is distributed across civil society, municipal governments, professional associations, cultural institutions, and private citizens, the coercive burden becomes prohibitive. If it happens simultaneously, it becomes even stronger and opens the door for future coordinated recognition by national governments.

Consider the mechanics: A state legislature recognizes Taiwan. Beijing threatens to cancel trade or withdraw investment. But if ten states act simultaneously, Beijing faces a dilemma: escalate against all and reveal its retaliation as indiscriminate, or selectively punish and prove its threats are manageable? Either response weakens Beijing’s position. Indiscriminate retaliation exposes the coercion as performative authoritarianism, turning international opinion against the PRC. Selective retaliation suggests the threats are hollow and invites further defections. This is the logic of decentralized resistance: it forces the coercer to choose between escalation that discredits it and restraint that emboldens opposition. Swarming recognition creates dilemmas that expose Beijing’s position as weak.

The Role of Governments: Plausible Deniability and Strategic Cover

National governments, particularly the United States, need not—and, in the near term, perhaps should not—lead this process. The executive branch can maintain its official policy of strategic ambiguity, thereby providing plausible deniability and avoiding immediate confrontation with Beijing. But this does not mean passivity. The federal government and allied governments must immediately begin a concerted effort to provide strategic cover in several ways:

First, they should immediately begin efforts to reintegrate Taiwan into those key international and intergovernmental organizations from which it has been banned or sidelined. This should start with INTERPOL and the WHO, and also include the use of the name “Taiwan” in international sporting competitions.

Second, they can loudly and publicly defend actors who are targeted by PRC retaliation. If a university is punished for hosting a Taiwanese official, the State Department should issue statements condemning the coercion and signaling support for academic freedom. If a corporation faces exclusion from Chinese markets for recognizing doing business with Taiwan, trade authorities should publicize the incident, consider it in broader economic policy deliberations, and most importantly, retaliate by punishing Beijing and assisting Taiwan in kind.

Third, legislative branches that may be less constrained by diplomatic protocol can amplify grassroots recognition. Members of Congress, parliamentarians, and regional legislators can pass resolutions, host delegations, and issue statements that incrementally normalize Taiwan’s status without requiring executive action. This creates political space for civil society while signaling to Beijing that democratic institutions are not monolithic.

Fourth, governments can refrain from disciplining their own actors. When a city council recognizes Taiwan, the federal government need not endorse the resolution—but it should neither endorse nor discourage it. The message should be clear: in democracies, subnational and non-governmental actors are free to speak, and attempts to coerce them will be met with resistance, not compliance.

Overwhelming the Coercion Machine

The goal is to build a critical mass of recognition that causes Beijing’s coercion strategy to collapse under its own weight. If hundreds of cities, universities, professional organizations, and media outlets begin openly referring to Taiwan as a country, the PRC faces an impossible choice: accept the erosion of its narrative control or engage in such widespread and indiscriminate retaliation that it alienates the very international community it seeks to dominate.

Let Beijing get angry. Let it issue protests, suspend partnerships, threaten retaliation, and conduct yet another military exercise around Taiwan. Each time Beijing desperately states that its claims on Taiwan are “sealed in seven locks,” it will expose the coercive apparatus that has silenced democratic discourse for decades. Beijing, thou doth protest too much. Each time civil society actors stand firm, they will demonstrate that Beijing’s red lines are not laws of nature. The red lines are political constructs that can be dismantled through collective defiance.

This strategy will not produce immediate diplomatic breakthroughs. But it will do something more important: it will rebuild the connective tissue of resilience that Taiwan and its supporters will need in the confrontation to come. It will normalize the language of Taiwanese sovereignty, making eventual formal recognition less of a shocking provocation and more of a natural extension of reality. Ultimately, it will shift the burden of escalation back onto Beijing, forcing the CCP to confront the limits of coercion and the stark reality when it is applied against open societies that refuse to be silenced.

5 – TOWARD A REAL GRAND BARGAIN

The conventional wisdom holds that the CCP’s commitment to “reunification” with Taiwan is ironclad—a core national interest so profoundly embedded in regime legitimacy that no amount of external pressure or internal calculation could dislodge it. This belief has paralyzed Western strategy for decades, creating a sense of inevitability that forecloses serious consideration of alternatives.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong. More precisely, it mistakes rhetorical rigidity for political immutability. The CCP’s position on Taiwan is not an eternal truth rooted in the profound logic of Chinese civilization. Instead, it is a constructed political commitment that the CCP adopted for specific historical reasons and has reinforced through decades of propaganda. Like all constructed commitments, it can be deconstructed.

The Constructed Nature of “Core Interests”

Mao Zedong did not always believe Taiwan was part of China. In the 1930s and 1940s, CCP rhetoric on self-determination was ambiguous, and Party leaders often treated Taiwan as separate from the Chinese civil war. Only after the KMT’s 1949 retreat did the CCP embrace the reunification narrative. It did so not because Taiwan was integral to Chinese identity, but because a rival government threatened the regime ideologically and politically.

Over the past 75 years, the CCP has embedded this narrative in textbooks, Party doctrine, and nationalist rhetoric. The “core interests” (核心利益) language emerged in the 2000s to signal non-negotiable issues. But here’s the paradox: if Taiwan’s status is a “core interest” only because the CCP declared it so, the CCP can revoke that declaration. The question is whether circumstances can arise in which maintaining the commitment costs more than abandoning it.

The CCP’s Real Core Interest: Survival

The CCP’s only true core interest is its own survival and the perpetuation of its rule over 1.3 billion people in mainland China. Everything else, from territorial claims and ideological narratives to nationalist rhetoric, is instrumental to that goal. When policies threaten the regime’s stability, the CCP has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to reverse course, often with startling speed and flexibility.

The Party reversed the catastrophic economic policies of the Great Leap Forward when famine threatened social collapse. It dismantled the ideological extremism of the Cultural Revolution when it became clear that chaos was unsustainable. Deng Xiaoping abandoned Maoist economics in favor of market reforms when regime legitimacy required it. More recently, Xi Jinping reversed Zero-COVID policies after widespread protests revealed that public patience had limits.

This is not to say the CCP is inherently pragmatic or benign. It is ruthless, calculating, and willing to impose enormous suffering when it believes doing so serves its interests. But it is also adaptive. And when the regime perceives that a policy has become a liability rather than an asset, it can and does change course. The question is whether the international community can establish conditions that make Taiwan’s absorption seem like the strategic disaster it is likely to be, rather than a national triumph.

Schrodinger’s China: Rising Power or Peak Power?

China exists in a state of strategic ambiguity/ It is simultaneously portrayed as an unstoppable rising power and a brittle regime facing systemic crises. Both narratives contain truth. China’s economy is slowing, demographics are collapsing, the financial system is debt-burdened, and technological innovation is increasingly constrained by Western export controls, all while Xi’s authoritarian turn breeds inefficiency and resentment.

In this context, a contested Taiwan invasion represents an enormous gamble. A cross-strait invasion would be one of history’s most complex amphibious operations, conducted against a well-armed defender with likely external support. Even if successful, the PRC would face insurgency, international sanctions, and economic collapse while its model depends on global market access. The quagmire problem that consumed Russia in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the U.S. in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, awaits.

The CCP leadership is not suicidal. If they conclude that seizing and pacifying Taiwan costs more than quietly abandoning the project, they will reverse course, perhaps incrementally and with face-saving rhetoric that preserves regime legitimacy.

What Incremental Recognition Could Achieve

Grassroots recognition is not just about confrontation but must be part of a pathway toward sustainable coexistence. If successful, it could force both sides to abandon cherished fictions. The PRC would accept that Taiwan is not coming back through persuasion or coercion. The ROC would officially abandon any remaining claim to represent all of China.

Symbolic gestures could ease this transition and provide Beijing with face-saving measures. Taiwan could return some or most of the cultural artifacts taken by the KMT in 1949. These treasures belong to Chinese civilization and remain a source of resentment. The ROC could relinquish claims to Kinmen and Matsu, offshore islands geographically part of the mainland and strategically indefensible. These concessions don’t compromise Taiwan’s core identity or security, but they offer Beijing symbolic victories for domestic consumption.

But none of this becomes possible while the international community treats Beijing’s claims as immutable and Taiwan’s sovereignty as unspeakable. Breaking the silence is the first step. The second is demonstrating, through incremental recognition and collective resistance, that coercion’s costs are rising and Taiwan’s isolation is unsustainable. The third is patience. Let the CCP’s strategic calculus shift as the costs of its Taiwan policy become undeniable.

CONCLUSION

Strategic shifts do not begin with governments. They start with individuals willing to state what they know to be true. And so, let this begin here:

I, Ken Gleiman, Editor-in-Chief of Small Wars Journal, hereby recognize the Taiwanese people as a nation and the government of the Republic of China as the sovereign authority governing Taiwan.

Was that so hard?

Who’s next?

Tags: China-Taiwan, Legitimacy

About The Author

• 
  
• Jan Gleiman
• Jan K. Gleiman (Ken) is the Editor-in-Chief of the new Small Wars Journal. He is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and the Associate Director for Irregular Warfare at ASU's Future Security Initiative (FSI). He is the co-author of Winning Without Fighting: Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century. (Cambria Press 2024)

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com