War on the Rocks

Conflict and Consequences

WOTR Staff — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:00:04 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranOn March 17, Israel announced — and Tehran later confirmed — the killing of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. If eliminating Ali Khamenei on the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli offensive struck down the regime’s supreme leader, Larijani’s death removes its supreme coordinator. A longtime fixture in the regime, Larijani appears to have been serving as the regime’s majordomo in recent months — and especially since Khamenei’s death on Feb.

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What It Was Like to Be Under Incoming Fire from the War on Terror to Today

Matt Francis — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:00:59 +0000

On this special, crossover episode of our members-only armed services podcasts, some of our hosts sat down to discuss their experiences with indirect fire and bombardment. With the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, they rehash some of their own personal stories, provide context on today’s threat environment, and share some advice for troops both downrange and at home.Image: Sgt. Albert Juarez via DVIDS

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Why Did the United States Lift Sanctions on Assad’s Chemical Weapons Scientists?

Gregory D. Koblentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:30:51 +0000

On June 30, 2025, as part of the process of normalizing relations with Damascus following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Trump administration overhauled the sanctions imposed on Syria to facilitate the rebuilding of that war-ravaged country. In the course of revising these sanctions, however, 266 employees of the Scientific Studies and Research Center, the heart of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons complex, were removed without explanation from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals List. This list is a compilation of human rights abusers, proliferators, terrorists, drug lords, and others deemed a threat to U.S.

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What the Donroe Doctrine Could Mean for China’s Economic Statecraft

Audrye Wong — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:15:59 +0000

In the first few months of 2026, the Trump administration has embarked on military interventions in Iran and Venezuela and threatened possible annexation of Greenland. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s February trip to Beijing followed on the heels of the first state visit to China by a British leader in eight years. As the United States and China prepare for their much-touted summit in late March, Beijing is weighing its options in the face of recent American actions and the new “Donroe Doctrine.”Chinese foreign policy remains driven by the core priorities of preserving regime security and consolidating influence in its

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Countering Drones and the Pace of Modern War

Jeff Cole — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:00:08 +0000

This episode is about far more than countering drones. It is about how America prepares for and fights its wars. With three leaders from three companies at the forefront of counter-drone solutions (AeroVironment, Epirus, and Hidden Level), the conversation explores how America and its enemies are adapting, how the U.S. military is and isn’t keeping pace, the problems with how America buys things, and more. This episode also features a rant from Ryan about companies that exaggerate the value they are providing to Ukraine. The idea for this episode precedes the latest war with Iran, but the fight in the

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The Inevitability of Chinese Military Purges

Rob Pierce — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

The scale of Secretary General Xi Jinping’s military purges is shocking. More than 100 senior leaders have been removed since 2022. And that number keeps growing, with nine military officers purged just last week and three more retired generals removed from a senior advisory body in early March. But it is the January removal of China’s top general, Zhang Youxia, that represents the most visible episode of these purges, and the one with the greatest implications for the future of the People’s Liberation Army. The purge of Zhang came just months after the unprecedented expulsion of nine senior generals which

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Islamic State Containment Is Collapsing in Syria

Kelly Kassis — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:15:18 +0000

Less than a month after the repeal of Caesar Act sanctions, Syria’s transitional president Ahmad al Sharaa launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, triggering Arab tribal defections and a rapid loss of territory. The fallout has jeopardized Islamic State containment in northeast Syria by disrupting intelligence networks built by the Syrian Democratic Forces, widening security gaps, and degrading detention-and-camp control. The most acute consequence has been mass escapes from the al-Hol refugee camp, which held approximately 24,000 family members linked to the Islamic State. A recent U.S. intelligence assessment estimates that roughly 15,000–20,000 individuals are now at

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Syria and the Islamic State: Analyzing America’s Departure

Thanassis Cambanis — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:30:15 +0000

In 2024, Thanassis Cambanis wrote, “Leave Syria, Keep Fighting the Islamic State,” where he argued the United States should withdraw from Syria, but continue to invest in counter-terrorism measures to combat the Islamic State. Two years later, after an American withdrawal from Syria and a new Syrian government in power, we asked Thanassis to revisit his article.Image: Photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob Connor In your 2024 article, “Leave Syria, Keep Fighting the Islamic State,” you argued the United States should withdraw from Syria, allow the Syrian government to fight and control the Islamic State, and invest in sustainable counter-terrorism measures. Now that

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Military Operational Thinking in an Age of Artificial Intelligence

Anders McD Sookermany — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:00:11 +0000

In recent years, as AI has begun to enter military planning and operational design, a persistent unease has surfaced among practitioners. Even with improved tools, increased tempo, and unprecedented access to data, plans continue to falter on integration, coherence, and a shared sense of direction. Marco Lyons’ recent War on the Rocks article on the perceived decline of operational art gives voice to this unease in a way that is both timely and important.We do not know enough about the specific wargame, its constraints, or its internal dynamics to adjudicate these conclusions directly. What Lyons’ account nevertheless captures with clarity

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Double-Edged Swords: How Military Purges Shape Authoritarian Appetite for War

Jun Sudduth — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:30:39 +0000

When leaders fire their top generals, they may be clearing the path to war or quietly sabotaging their own military.On Jan. 24, 2026, China’s defense ministry announced that the nation’s highest-ranking general, Zhang Youxia, a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, was under investigation for unspecified violations of laws and political discipline. Since 2022, General Secretary Xi Jinping has removed five of the six generals serving on the Central Military Commission, including Zhang. In less than three years, dozens of other senior military officials have also been removed. Many of these officers were promoted by Xi after he assumed power

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Bailing Out Russia for “Peace” Is a Losing Proposition

Emma Isabella Sage — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:15:02 +0000

Why would the West underwrite the very system it has spent four years trying to contain? Yet that’s exactly what Russia has proposed, and what some leaders in Washington might be willing to entertain.In February 2026, Russia proposed an economic reintegration plan (the “Dmitriev package”) that it claims would be worth $14 trillion. The package includes sanctions relief, aeronautics contracts and restoration of access to dollar-based financial systems for Russia, preferential treatment for Western firms in the Russian market, and joint ventures in energy and mining. While the Russian wish list is fanciful at best, including points like a tunnel between Russia

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Drinking from the Bitter Chalice in the Middle East, Again

Steven Simon — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:00:42 +0000

In August 1988, with his country bled white by eight years of war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a million dead, the economy in ruins, the revolutionary generation exhausted, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N. ceasefire. He called it “more deadly than taking poison.” He was drinking from the bitter chalice of defeat.And then what happened? The Islamic Republic survived. It did not moderate, liberalize, or reckon with its failures. It nursed its wounds, rebuilt its Revolutionary Guard, and spent the next three and a half decades constructing the very proxy network and missile arsenal that the United States and Israel

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Takeaways from China’s National People’s Congress Meeting

Ling Chen — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:03:31 +0000

From March 5 to 12, China held its annual Two Sessions — the National People’s Congress meeting and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. These gatherings provide yearly insights into China’s economic and political priorities and plans. Additionally, this year, the government presented its 15th Five-Year Plan, laying out key policies to 2030. We asked four experts to offer their key takeaways from the National People’s Congress.Read more below. Ling ChenWilliam L. Clayton Associate Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins UniversityA key takeaway from China’s most recent National People’s Congress is that Beijing is trying to respond

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How Does the Iran War Affect China’s Energy Security?

Yun Sun — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:30:34 +0000

Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, a key question constantly asked is how Beijing might react — assuming that China’s economy relies on oil imported from Iran and shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.In reality, however, China is 85 percent energy self-sufficient. While China imports more than 10 percent of its global oil total from Iran, its energy supply has long been diversified internationally and electrified domestically to avoid critical dependence on any single source. Beijing has built a cushion against a short-term supply shock from a war in the Middle East. However, the closure of the

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Open War at the Durand Line: Can Pakistan’s Escalation Compel a Taliban Recalculation?

Amira Jadoon — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:15:11 +0000

When Pakistan declared “open war” with Afghanistan in February 2026 and struck Taliban military installations in Kabul and Kandahar, it crossed a threshold: from targeting non-state militants to putting Taliban-governed Afghanistan’s assets on the table. This escalation was not impulsive. Months of indirect cost imposition through border closures, trade restrictions, and limited strikes on Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan camps failed to shift Taliban behavior, making direct military pressure a logical next step in Pakistan’s hybrid coercion strategy.I frame the recent escalation as a bargaining failure, driven by information asymmetries, commitment problems, and competing sovereignty claims, and ask whether the Taliban — a

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Investing in Women is Investing in the Future

WOTR Staff — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:45:57 +0000

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyКультура –

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The Danger of Vibe Patriotism in Defense Tech

Ben Buchheim-Jurisson — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:00:58 +0000

At conferences, in pitch decks, and increasingly in public writing, “service” is increasingly being used to describe the work of startup founders, employees, and venture capital investors in defense technology. The claim, sometimes explicit, more often implied, is that building defense technology is itself a form of service comparable to uniformed military service.It is visible in corporate messaging that invites civilians to “serve” through product work, from Palantir’s “Why We Serve” to Anduril’s description of “national service as a form of innovation,” to public-private innovation narratives that describe entrepreneurship as a form of national service and “answering the call” advocacy

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Don’t Count Launches: Misreading Iran’s Drone Capacity

Kelly A. Grieco — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:30:43 +0000

After the Gulf War’s air campaign concluded in February 1991, U.S. commanders were confident that airpower had destroyed the bulk of Iraq’s Republican Guard before the ground offensive ever began. A subsequent General Accounting Office review found they were wrong and identified why. The Republican Guard was among the “least measurable” target categories in the entire campaign. About a third of reported F-117 strikes either lacked corroborating evidence or conflicted with other data, putting the probability of a successful F-117 strike between 41 and 60 percent. Commanders had mistaken reduced enemy activity for the physical destruction of enemy capacity.That analytical

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The Navy’s Latest Is Not a Plan, Not a Strategy, and Not Fighting Instructions

Bruce Stubbs — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:15:36 +0000

Churchill once demanded, “Take this pudding away — it has no theme!” U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle’s new Fighting Instructions presents a similar sort of dish.In November 2024, I argued in War on the Rocks that successive chiefs of naval operations developed a pattern of issuing strategic guidance that described aspirations but did not consistently impose the concrete direction necessary to guide naval force planning. In a March 2025 Atlantic Council paper evaluating the 2024 Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy, I similarly found that its guidance projected aspiration but did not consistently

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Southeast Asia’s Nuclear Blind Spot: Latent Pathways and Explicit Pressures

Hely Desai — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 07:30:18 +0000

Why is Southeast Asia becoming more vulnerable to nuclear risk even as it remains formally non-nuclear?Southeast Asia’s Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone has long been treated as a stabilizing firewall in an otherwise volatile region. Yet despite the continued legal compliance and strong anti-nuclear norms, the region is increasingly exposed to nuclear danger.Across East Asia, nuclear dynamics are shifting in ways that extend beyond overt weaponization. The most consequential changes stem from the diffusion of nuclear-adjacent capabilities across maritime strategy, civilian nuclear development, and conventional military competition. Prevailing assessments have largely only focused on flashpoints in Northeast Asia — particularly the Korean

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Military Senior Service Colleges Require Reform, But There Sure Are Some Bad Ideas Out There

Bradford T. Duplessis — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 07:15:20 +0000

“No one is thinking if everyone is thinking alike.” Gen. George S. Patton’s quip shows that he not only understood the advantage of audacious combat leadership, but the necessity to develop leaders and organizations that think critically and challenge assumptions. Military education is at the forefront of this endeavor in professional militaries. Indeed, last week Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a review of the military’s senior service/war colleges and the severing of ties between the department and 22 academic institutions in an effort to better prepare strategic leaders for the complexities of modern warfare.In a recent opinion article, Thomas

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Magazine Breadth — Not Just Depth — Is Key to Munitions Industrial Base Resilience

Jerry McGinn — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:00:59 +0000

Is America running out of missiles? The attacks on Iranian forces and leadership have had a devastating impact on the regime, but the repeated salvos of precision-guided munitions and interceptors have put a strain on U.S. and Israeli stores of some of these munitions. While the United States retains significant capacity, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has stated, the expenditures do create risk, particularly in other potential theaters of action such as East Asia. President Donald Trump acknowledged as much in his Friday statement after meeting with industry chief executive officers on the imperative to “quadruple” the production of

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Testing Denial: The Philippine Alliance in America’s First Island Chain Strategy

Patrick Cronin — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:30:18 +0000

An alliance is only as credible as the runway it can repair under fire.The Pentagon’s latest National Defense Strategy clarifies American aims in the Indo-Pacific while exposing what those aims demand of frontline allies such as the Philippines. The strategy’s emphasis on a “strong denial defense” shifts the metric of credibility. Though the strategy does not specify the objectives to be denied, its logic implies preventing a rapid Taiwan fait accompli and constraining the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to establish sustained sea and air control inside the chain. Whatever the precise intent, the question is no longer how many forces

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A Blank Check for Israel and the War with Iran

Farah Jan — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:15:39 +0000

The United States did not enter the war with Iran because it was attacked or was about to be attacked. It seems to have entered after concluding that once Israel moved, American involvement would be unavoidable. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed congressional leaders last week, three days before the strikes began, the debate, as later reported by the Washington Post, was not whether to fight but whether to strike alongside Israel or wait until Iran retaliated against American forces in the region. The choice was not between war and peace. It was between two pathways into the same

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How China Views the Cognitive Element of a War for Taiwan

Koichiro Takagi — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:30:05 +0000

In 2022, Koichiro Takagi wrote, “New Tech, New Concepts: China’s Plans for AI and Cognitive Warfare,” where he explored the role of AI in China’s cognitive operations. Four years later, with AI becoming increasingly capable and sophisticated, we asked Koichiro to revisit his arguments.Image: geralt, pixabay licenseIn your 2022 article, you explain how China is increasingly utilizing AI to plan for battle in the cognitive domain. Four years later, where does China stand with developing the thought-manipulating capabilities it seeks?China’s pursuit of cognitive operations is often misunderstood as an effort at dramatic “mind control.” In reality, the central issue is whether

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Lessons from Ukraine for Defending Gulf Airspace from Shaheds

Dimko Zhluktenko — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:00:24 +0000

In early March 2026, U.S. Central Command confirmed the first U.S. fatalities of the Iran conflict. A drone strike at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait killed six American servicemembers.A counter-drone system can intercept “most” threats and still fail at the mission that matters: protecting people and critical nodes. Small drones can fly as low to the ground, present detection challenges, and punish any gap in hardening or point defense. And there is a big imbalance in target cost and cost to intercept, especially when the United States is using expensive Patriot interceptors to take down Iranian Shaheds: low-cost kamikaze drones.While advanced

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Indonesia’s Blue-Water Ambition Requires Sustained Overseas Deployments

Muhammad Fauzan Malufti — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 07:30:48 +0000

Indonesia is rapidly expanding its naval fleet to meet its blue-water ambitions. But, for much of the past decade, budget constraints and limited political attention meant the country could focus only on acquiring small- and medium-sized naval vessels.That pattern has shifted noticeably in recent years.Jakarta has moved ahead with the procurement of larger and more capable platforms, including two Multipurpose Combat Ships/PPA from Italy and two I-class frigates from Turkey. It has also secured two additional Arrowhead 140 frigate licenses from the United Kingdom, bringing the total to four, with the first two licensed in 2021 and now under construction

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Gaza and the Logic of High-Intensity Urban Warfare

Danny Orbach — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 07:15:04 +0000

To analyze a war accurately, one must apply an analytical framework suited to its actual character. This requirement is nowhere more evident than in assessments of the Gaza War between Israel and Hamas. Much commentary on the conflict has implicitly measured it against a perceived “gold standard” of humane warfare: restrained campaigns emphasizing separation between insurgents and civilians, dismounted ground operations, and expansive humanitarian assistance designed to win “hearts and minds.”This model is often drawn from interpretations of Western experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, including battles such as Fallujah, Mosul, and the surge. Those wars encompassed multiple modes of warfare:

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Arab States Scramble to Adapt to New Regional War

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:49:26 +0000

Since the United States and Israel began intensive airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28, Iran has retaliated with missile and drone strikes against multiple Arab countries. Although Iran says it is striking U.S. military targets based in the Arab states, it has also hit civilian infrastructure and buildings. Iran has hit targets in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Jordan. The war marks a hard stop to a recent warming in relations between Iran and some Gulf Arab states.Arab states are now trying to understand the war, its consequences, and how to adapt their

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Fighting for Relevance Isn’t Everything

WOTR Staff — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:56:34 +0000

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A Worst-Case Scenario for the War with Iran

Kerry Boyd Anderson — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:52:07 +0000

The war with Iran has prompted many questions about what comes next. Will the Islamic Republic regime survive? What could replace it? Will Iran dissolve into chaos? What does this all mean for the Arab Gulf states, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, and the rest of the region? What are the near-term, medium-term, and long-term risks and opportunities?The White House has said that the war will last four to six weeks, but what if it goes well beyond that? What if the United States and Israel have unleashed a chain of events that is beyond their control? A worst-case scenario is that

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We Were Right About Havana Syndrome

Marc Polymeropoulos — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 07:15:17 +0000

In late 2017, while traveling to Moscow on official duty, I experienced a sudden, debilitating health incident. After a long and arduous battle with the CIA to obtain treatment, military doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington ultimately diagnosed and treated me for a line-of-duty traumatic brain injury. I was never the same after the incident and years of painful recovery continue to this day.I served for 26 years in the U.S. intelligence community, rising to the Senior Intelligence Service’s top ranks and receiving the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal upon retirement. Yet my departure from government

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AI-Ready Biodata Is America’s Next Strategic Infrastructure

Michelle Holko — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:00:18 +0000

There is little doubt in Washington that AI is a powerful technology that will help determine which country rules the 21st century. Policymakers from the Hill to the White House have made U.S. AI leadership a priority and invested significant resources towards staying ahead of competitors. Yet the United States is at perhaps greater risk than ever before of losing the broader global technology competition.Despite growing investment in AI, U.S. policymakers have failed to prepare for its convergence with biotechnology, a fusion that will define economic and national power in the coming decades. While competitors are building coordinated AI-bio ecosystems,

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AI and the New Blueprint of Terrorism

Brian Fishman — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:30:03 +0000

Advanced violence is democratizing. AI, in conjunction with dramatic improvements in robotics, energy production, and sensors, will increasingly enable ever-smaller groups of people to use targeted violence more effectively, and from a distance. Over time, this shift will dramatically impact all varieties of force projection: state-on-state war, various forms of low-intensity conflict, and how states enforce internal order. Perhaps understandably, however, national security discourse about the AI revolution has generally focused on more earth-shattering scenarios: superintelligence, state-to-state conflict, and the prospect of unleashing new biological weapons. These are all critical questions that deserve extensive scrutiny. But super-empowering small groups of people

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As War With Iran Rages, the Axis of Resistance is in Survival Mode

Renad Mansour — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:15:38 +0000

In Beirut, Baghdad, and across the Middle East, the same pattern repeats: a leader is killed, a funeral fills the streets, and within weeks someone new is giving orders.Indeed, despite the setbacks faced by the regional network of armed groups aligned with Iran that calls itself the “axis of resistance,” it has not disappeared. U.S. forces have struck several groups linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, while Israel has sustained operations against Hizballah across southern Lebanon and Beirut. In response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Hizballah launched a series of rockets and drones into

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Why Washington’s Kurdish Gambit Could Backfire in Iran

Albert B. Wolf — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:30:24 +0000

The Trump administration should abandon any plans to arm Iranian Kurdish forces before the first fighter crosses the Iraqi-Iranian border. Not refine it. Not sequence it more carefully. Drop it entirely. The operation will not topple the Iranian regime, will inflame the Persian nationalism that is the Islamic Republic’s most reliable reserve fuel, and — most damagingly — will hand Tehran a coalition-fracturing tool it did not have to build. There is no version of this gambit that serves American strategic interests.The case for the Kurdish option rests on seductive logic: Iran is multi-ethnic, Kurdish grievances run deep, and armed

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Quenching the Nuclear Stockpile’s Thirst for Tritium

Audrey Beldio — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:15:51 +0000

Most accounts of the Manhattan Project tell a familiar story: American scientists relentlessly racing to design and build the fission bombs that would ultimately fall on Japan. A neglected chapter of the saga was the obsessive advocacy of a handful of physicists who favored a far more potent weapon design. The “Super” of their imagination would derive its explosive energy not simply from fission, or the splitting of atomic nuclei, but also from the fusion of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen. Although wartime expediency demanded the more straightforward fission path to a weapon, such hydrogen bombs would soon

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War in Iran Shapes Adversaries’ Calculations

WOTR Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:25:59 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranSince the United States and Israel launched joint military strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, their targeting has worked through a lengthy list of senior Iranian officials (including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), missile facilities, naval assets, and sites associated with regime security forces. Tehran’s defenses are porous — last June, Israeli aircraft were largely unchallenged over nearly two weeks of sorties, and the trio of U.S. warplanes hit by friendly fire thus far are three

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Why a $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Request Might Slow the Pentagon’s Reform Efforts

Matt Vallone — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:00:08 +0000

On Jan. 7, 2026, President Donald Trump announced:I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars…While the specifics of the request have not yet been released, a $1.5 trillion defense budget would be a roughly 50 percent increase on the amount requested for Fiscal Year 2026 and an even greater increase above the $839 billion “base” spending levels appropriated through the normal Congressional process. If enacted, this would be the largest increase in

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The Bay of Bengal Flank: India’s Three-Front Dilemma and Its Implications for Taiwan

Wolfgang Petermann — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:30:12 +0000

What if the biggest variable in whether China attacks Taiwan is how many directions New Delhi is forced to look at once?When considering a Taiwan contingency, people tend to focus on cross-Strait dynamics and China’s military capabilities for understandable reasons. But they should be thinking about India much more. India’s ability to create risk for China matters more than most debates over the future of Taiwan acknowledge. And India’s ability to do that is no longer just a function of tensions in the Himalayas or Pakistan’s role on India’s western front. It is increasingly shaped by Bangladesh and the historic

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Fighting an Economic War Without Fused Intelligence

Karyn Eliot — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:00:25 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the third in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. In a corporate boardroom reviewing a high-stakes multinational deal, every financial risk was dissected — but no one in the room could see the classified intelligence that might have changed the decision entirely.Right now, the United States is fighting an economic

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Bonus In Brief: Global Reaction to the War in Iran

Kristin Smith Diwan — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 20:05:11 +0000

On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched major, ongoing strikes against Iran — including killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior officials. In response, Iran has launched strikes against U.S. military sites, Israel, and economic and civilian targets in Arab Gulf states. The scale of this war will have global consequences. As world leaders adjust to a new reality in the Middle East and what it means for their countries, we asked five experts to assess the international reaction.Read more below.Kristin Smith DiwanSenior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States InstituteAs the United States and Israel

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What Recent Military Operations Signal About Trump’s Grand Strategy

Joshua Rovner — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:30:12 +0000

In his 2025 article, “Start Making Sense, Strategy and Grand Strategy in the Trump Administration,” Joshua Rovner argued Trump’s flexible approach to a grand strategy could be a strategic problem in the event of war. A year later, amidst an escalating conflict in the Middle East, we asked Joshua to revisit his argument.Image: Tia Dufour via The Trump White House In your 2025 article, “Start Making Sense: Strategy and Grand Strategy in the Trump Administration,” you explained the complexities and contradictions that encompass President Donald Trump’s grand strategy (or lack thereof). You wrote, “Unclear grand strategies can produce unsuccessful strategies, but

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The Velocity Gap Between Pakistan and India

Brigadier (ret.) Anil Raman — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:30:52 +0000

In contemporary South Asian crises, velocity matters more than military power. Velocity means how fast responsibility is assigned, actions are authorized, limited operations are executed, and a dominant narrative is established before diplomatic intervention. Rather than focusing only on military capability, velocity is about the speed of coordinated action. Countries that move swiftly to shape events gain political advantages, even if their material strength is less.Pakistan’s post-2025 defense reorganization, in line with the 27th amendment to its constitution, acknowledges this shift. After Operation Sindoor, Islamabad adopted reforms that significantly reduced decision cycle times for military action and communication. While these changes

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The Burden That Should Not Be Theirs: How Congress Turned the Military into the Last Check on Illegal War

Rachel E. VanLandingham — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:15:29 +0000

Congress has unintentionally shifted the burden of preventing an unconstitutional war squarely onto the military. By failing to exercise its war powers, it has positioned the American military as a firewall made of parchment between itself and the White House. Democratic members of Congress and the Senate have issued solemn warnings regarding unlawful orders and disobedience, hoping the military will do what Congress hasn’t: prevent an unconstitutional war.This is not the right path. Making the military the last barrier to unconstitutional war corrodes civilian control, encourages executive overreach, and risks politicizing obedience itself. It is also of questionable efficacy, serving

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Increasing Tensions Between China and Japan Create Risks for the Region

Yun Sun — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:19:40 +0000

Tensions between China and Japan have been heating up in recent months, sparked in November by a statement from Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that Beijing interpreted as suggesting that Japan would respond militarily if China attacked Taiwan. Takaichi has pledged to increase Japan’s defense spending, and a major electoral victory in February has strengthened her position. We asked four experts to assess the risks.Read more below.Yun SunSenior Fellow and Director of the China Program at the Stimson CenterIn 2026, China could attempt to push back further in a number of domains. In the most extreme scenario, there is escalated

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Why Satellites Fail — and How to Protect Them

Jean-François Morizur — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:00:50 +0000

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Jean-François Morizur, the CEO and founder of Cailabs, a French company focused on ground-to-satellite laser optical communications. As satellites play a more critical and contested role than ever in global and defense communications, we asked him to share his thoughts on the emerging satellite-protection industry and growing a deep-tech company.In popular techno-thrillers, major conflicts often begin with a sudden satellite-driven communications blackout. Which real-world capabilities now exist that make such scenarios plausible, and which threats are still more speculative than operational?There certainly exist ways to cut people off from the internet — by cutting undersea cables

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Foundry, Fleet, and Fight: Hedging the U.S. Navy

Emma Salisbury — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:30:22 +0000

The U.S. Navy got some serious nautical miles under its belt during the first year of this administration, with combat operations from the Caribbean to Iran to Nigeria alongside its more regular duties. With no sign of President Donald Trump slowing down on global interventions and a tense geopolitical atmosphere, the United States remains in need of a navy that can fight and win wherever it is called to do so.The new chief of naval operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, has now published his response to this challenge: the U.S. Navy Fighting Instructions. Woven through the usual jungle of jargon and

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Missed Signals and Middle East Shockwaves

WOTR Staff — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:40:32 +0000

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Washington Built the AI Infrastructure AUKUS Needs — Then Locked Allies Out

Javaid Iqbal Sofi — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:00:45 +0000

The Manhattan Project brought allied scientists to Los Alamos because winning required pooling allied scientific capacity. Today, as Australia invests $3.4 billion in quantum and advanced defense technologies and autonomous capabilities, the United States has built the supercomputing infrastructure those technologies require — then locked its partners out of accessing it.President Donald Trump’s Genesis Mission invokes that wartime urgency to win the AI race — but the November executive order gives American companies detailed frameworks to access federal supercomputers while offering international security partners one vague sentence about exploring collaboration “to the extent appropriate.”That isn’t an accident: It reflects policy priorities. The Department of Defense’s January

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The Deluge, the Paper Cup, and Washington’s Lack of Urgency on Guam

Michael W. Cruz — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:30:48 +0000

As I conclude nearly four decades of military and public service, including as lieutenant governor of Guam, a line from the 1986 Crowded House song “Don’t Dream It’s Over” keeps returning to me: “Trying to catch a deluge in a paper cup.”For Guam — a U.S. territory and cornerstone of American power projection increasingly under threat from both North Korea and China — that metaphor appears increasingly, and disturbingly, apt. Among U.S. defense planners and senior policymakers, the commitment to defend this central node in the Second Island Chain is well understood and rarely questioned. By contrast, Guam remains poorly understood by

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Twice Bombed, Still Nuclear: The Limits of Force Against Iran’s Atomic Program

Nima Gerami — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 21:28:55 +0000

On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched coordinated but separately named military campaigns against Iran — the United States under Operation Epic Fury and Israel under Operation Roaring Lion — striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile infrastructure, and military leadership and command structures. In a video message broadcast, President Donald Trump again urged Iranians to “take over your government. It will be yours to take.” Whatever else the campaign accomplishes, it cannot be mistaken for coercive diplomacy. It is a regime change operation, and the American president has defined that end state objective explicitly.This is the second major

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A Proxy Without a Purpose: Hizballah and the Iran Crisis

Faysal Itani — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 16:03:56 +0000

What use to Iran is Hizballah in the event of all-out war against the regime? In principle, a great deal. In practice, not so much. The ongoing U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran raises not only what would happen to and be done by Iran, but also the very future and existence of its crown jewel proxy, Hizballah in Lebanon. Almost any conceivable scenario that emerges from this confrontation represents a threat rather than an opportunity for Hizballah, further destabilizing the group and forcing it on the defensive.It has been a difficult couple of years for Hizballah. In 2024, it

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The Arsenal Beneath the Arsenal

Michael Cadenazzi — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 17:25:28 +0000

What does it take to rebuild the foundation of American military power? Michael Cadenazzi, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, joined Ryan at a live event a few weeks back for a fascinating discussion on the state of the defense industrial base (from new VC-backed entrants to the primes), the race for critical minerals, supply chain vulnerabilities, the unsexy realities of implementation, the role of allies, and the challenges of scaling production. He is also looking for your ideas. Special thanks to Altana for hosting the event at which this episode was recorded. Image: Airman Paden Henry

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All Too Quiet on the Western Neuroenhancement Front

Łukasz Kamieński — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:00:22 +0000

“A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.” The characters in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? fine-tune their mental and emotional states with the “Penfield Mood Organ,” a device named after neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, known for his research on electrical brain stimulation. This fictional apparatus remarkably resembles modern non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation (neuromodulation) and its potential for cognitive enhancement. Although studies have demonstrated promising military applications, decades of experimentation have not yet translated laboratory discoveries into battlefield use.The United States and its

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Why Trump’s Criticism of Maliki Strengthens Him in Iraq

Yasir Kuoti — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:30:11 +0000

Is publicly confronting the likely next prime minister of Iraq the right strategy for the United States? The nomination of Nouri al Maliki by the Coordination Framework, the organizing body of Shiite politics in Iraq, on Jan. 24, and the blunt and public objection by President Donald Trump three days later, have exposed a growing political crisis with major implications for U.S. interests in Iraq and the broader Middle East.Rather than weakening Maliki, the intervention has galvanized Shiite political actors under the banner of national sovereignty — including those who do not typically support him. Maliki’s nomination reflects deeper structural

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AI Is Being Misunderstood as a Breakthrough in Planning. It’s Not.

Christopher Denzel — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:00:47 +0000

In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in headquarters is no longer time. It is, rather, the willingness to say no.Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly into military planning staffs because it compresses routine cognitive labor. AI excels at absorbing guidance, reorganizing complex material, and producing clear strategic language at speed. This feels like a qualitative advance, creating the impression that planning itself has become easier. But this impression misleads. The risk of AI-enabled planning is that it will produce plausible constructs that obscure where judgment is required, creating the illusion that analytic completeness can substitute for prioritization.AI is seen

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Xi Has Made China’s Currency Ambition Explicit

Matthew Rochat — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:30:59 +0000

What changes when China’s leader finally states a reserve currency ambition explicitly? Xi Jinping has now done so, calling for the renminbi to attain global reserve currency status, not in a speech to foreign investors or at an international summit, but in Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship ideological journal.The language, drawn from a speech Xi delivered to senior regional officials in 2024, was published only recently. That timing is part of the signal. Qiushi is not a platform for trial balloons or external messaging. It is where the party formalizes priorities once internal consensus has formed, often well after an idea has circulated

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For Iran’s Regime, Better to Take a Beating than Capitulate

Tanya Goudsouzian — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:15:41 +0000

It seems natural to assume that relentless pressure will force authoritarian leaders to yield, yet the opposite is often true. When survival is at stake, backing down can be more dangerous than standing firm. This counterintuitive logic has played out repeatedly in the Persian Gulf. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein refused to leave Kuwait in 1991 to avoid humiliation, defections and the threat of a coup. Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei faces a similar trap, as giving in to U.S. pressure could weaken his hold at home. History shows that extreme pressure can embolden defiance and absorbing blows can

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The U.S. Military Must Save Itself Before Saving Others

Jennifer Kavanagh — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:30:12 +0000

In 2023, Jennifer Kavanaugh and Jordan Cohen wrote, “The True Military Assistance Tradeoff is Between Israel and Taiwan,” where they argued Washington should place clear boundaries on its military aid to Israel to preserve capabilities essential to deterring China in the Indo-Pacific. Three years later, amidst heightened tensions across multiple theaters, we asked Jennifer to revisit their arguments.Image: Chad McNeeley, Office of the Secretary of Defense Public AffairsIn your 2023 article, “The True Military Assistance Tradeoff is Between Israel and Taiwan,” you argued Washington should place clear boundaries on its military aid to Israel to preserve capabilities essential to deterring China

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Arctic Hot Takes Need a Cold Reality Check

Ryan Burke — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 08:30:39 +0000

At –40°F, cold is not a condition simply to be managed. It is a constraint that governs everything. Equipment fails, humans slow, and mistakes compound. Any serious discussion of Arctic military strategy and operations needs to begin with and remain grounded in reality.Unfortunately, there is an ever-expanding discourse around Arctic security that does not do this. Spend enough time in the Arctic, in winter, in darkness, in sustained extreme cold — and the reality check arrives quickly. Concepts that seem logical in a briefing room dissolve once eyelashes freeze shut, fingers lose dexterity, and the simple act of tying boot

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The Transatlantic Defense Business Politics Can’t Break

Wendy R. Anderson — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 08:15:35 +0000

The foundations of the Atlantic alliance are shifting in ways not seen since the early days of the Cold War. Washington is no longer simply urging greater European burden-sharing: It is redefining the terms of the alliance itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the era of a coherent, rules-based international system has passed. Recent U.S. talk of “taking” Greenland, and “civilizational erasure” — alongside the decision to end U.S. security assistance to Ukraine — has rattled European capitals and eroded trust as they realize that U.S. support is increasingly conditioned on ideological alignment. Yet beneath the political turbulence,

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Ukraine as a European Nation

WOTR Staff — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:36:05 +0000

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Using the 2026 Winter Olympics to Build Soft Power

Sim Sim Wissgott — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:30:50 +0000

The Olympics have a long history of countries and participants using the games as a platform to build soft power, promote propaganda, advance diplomacy, and highlight political causes. These efforts can take hopeful forms, such as the 2016 creation of the Refugee Olympic Team and the role of the 2018 Olympics in boosting diplomacy between North Korea and South Korea. Sometimes, these events can be very dark, such as Nazi Germany’s shrewd use of propaganda while hosting the 1936 games and the 1972 terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet

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Agentic AI and the Pentagon’s Integration Challenge

Aaron Brown — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:00:33 +0000

Agentic AI is quickly moving from demo to deployment inside the Department of Defense. But what does it actually mean to give AI “agency” — and what does it take to make those systems work on real military networks?In this episode, Ryan sits down with Ben Van Roo, co-founder and CEO of Legion Intelligence, Jags Kandasamy, co-founder and CEO of Latent AI, and Aaron Brown, co-founder and CEO of Lumbra AI, to discuss why the real challenge is not just building smart models but getting AI agents to run on military networks and inside operational workflows. They cover deploying agents

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

Joel Wuthnow — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:30:13 +0000

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has purged dozens of senior People’s Liberation Army officers since mid-2023, including two in January, but will this increase the risk of war? The loss of experienced officers could make Xi less confident in how his military would perform, but his increased power could also provide him greater latitude to order troops into combat to achieve what might be a key legacy for him — the long-elusive unification of China with Taiwan. As political scientists recognize, competent leadership is a key ingredient of battlefield effectiveness. Recent purges have removed some of the highest-ranking and most experienced Chinese

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

Moritz S. Graefrath — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:15:39 +0000

When U.S. President Donald Trump floated the possibility of taking Greenland by force, European leaders reacted with outrage — and then, almost immediately, with relief once he backed down. Wolfgang Ischinger, the doyen of the Munich Security Conference, expressed similar relief when he described Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech there — chock full of conditionality on immigration and culture war tropes — as “reassuring.”That sentiment may prove far more dangerous than any threats from Washington.The trans-Atlantic partnership of days past no longer exists. After decades of considering aligned interests and close collaboration a fact of life, the relationship between

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The Importance of St. Clair’s Defeat

Wayne E. Lee — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:30:38 +0000

In the fall of 1791, Gen. Arthur St. Clair pushed an unready, ill-trained, and poorly supplied American army of militia and regulars into the woods of central Ohio where it would experience the worst defeat in U.S. military history against Native Americans. The battle belongs to the broader Northwest Indian War, often dated 1785–1795, a conflict in which the United States sought to secure territory north of the Ohio River from the Natives, suppress their outraged raids, and more generally establish federal authority over western expansion. For their part, Native nations sought to preserve their autonomy, land, and security. Undermined

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Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture

William Norris — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:00:24 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the second in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. Who actually runs America’s economic statecraft?The answer matters because in today’s great power competition, national security increasingly hinges on economic decisions made across a sprawling federal system — and often outside government altogether.At its core, economic statecraft refers to the deliberate

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Talks, Plans, and Prison Breaks

WOTR Staff — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:15:47 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranU.S. and Iranian negotiators gathered in Geneva on Feb. 17 for their second round of talks in less than a fortnight. There appears to be incremental progress around what a possible deal between Washington and Tehran should cover. However, the two sides remain far apart on fundamental aspects of a potential agreement. Iranian officials might be willing to give a little more on the nuclear front than they did in the negotiations preceding the June

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Iran and the Gulf: Why Hedging Is No Longer Enough

Bader Al-Saif — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:30:33 +0000

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

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Three Short Tales on War Kori Schake Wants You to Read

Kori Schake — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:15:47 +0000

Editor’s Note: This is a new occasional series brought to you by War on the Rocks. If you would like to pitch your own version, please refer to the contact information and guidance on our submissions page.Wars very often inspire great American literature about the experience of war and its legacies — think of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, or Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. We are fortunate now to be living through a great renaissance of veteran writing of policy analysis, memoir, poetry, and prose literature. All three of the works I’ve selected

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Power, Paranoia, and the People’s Liberation Army

Jonathan Czin — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:15:09 +0000

China’s top military leadership has been shaken by a new round of purges at the highest level, raising urgent questions about loyalty, corruption, and combat readiness. What do these removals, and especially the purge of Zhang Youxia, signal about Xi Jinping’s grip on power, the health of the People’s Liberation Army, and Beijing’s appetite for risk abroad? We are joined by four seasoned analysts of China and its military, three of whom worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, to parse these questions and more. This episode is brought to you by Onebrief. Find out more at https://warontherocks.com/onebrief Image: Gemini

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BONUS In Brief: Vibes Out of Munich

Gesine Weber — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:30:40 +0000

On Feb. 13 to 15, leaders and specialists from around the world — especially Europe and the United States — attended the 62nd Munich Security Conference. This year’s conference highlighted an ongoing European interest in maintaining the trans-Atlantic relationship, an emphasis on European “derisking” from reliance on the United States, and general agreement — tinged with grief or celebration, depending on who you ask — that the post-World War II liberal, rules-based world order is gone. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech was reassuring to some attendees, as it emphasized that the United States and Europe “belong together,” but

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

Jesse Hamel — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:27 +0000

GPS denial is no longer a theoretical future threat. It is the environment in which modern forces increasingly operate.China has invested heavily in space and counterspace capabilities designed to degrade U.S. positioning, navigation, and timing. Other state and non-state actors are following close behind. Cheap jammers, spoofers, and electronic warfare tools now allow adversaries to disrupt GPS and radio frequency navigation with minimal funding or expertise. The result is a battlespace where signals cannot be assumed.From space-based mapping of interference to fiber-optic drones appearing on today’s front lines, the evidence is clear: the electromagnetic spectrum is contested, fragile, and increasingly

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A Worrying Military Build-up in the Western Balkans?

Blerim Vela — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:30:52 +0000

Europe’s most fragile region is not sleepwalking toward war, but it is quietly recalibrating for it. Across the Western Balkans, military procurement decisions once framed as technical upgrades are evolving into something more consequential: a shifting balance of power unfolding at a moment when Europe’s security order strains under growing trans-Atlantic tension. These regional dynamics emerged unevenly, with Serbia clearly leading the way a decade ago. In response, neighboring countries have also modernized their militaries, though in different ways. NATO members such as Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia have focused primarily on meeting alliance capability and interoperability benchmarks. Fellow NATO ally

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Lessons from Past Israeli-Palestinian Talks for Trump’s Negotiators

Aaron David Miller — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:00:13 +0000

There is a long history of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, often involving the United States as the primary negotiator. However, as the Oct. 7 attacks and war in Gaza demonstrated, neither Israelis nor Palestinians feel safe. As Israel’s recent moves to expand its control over the West Bank showed, the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state — and thus a two-state solution — is a dimmer prospect than ever. Nonetheless, U.S. President Donald Trump successfully negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October 2025, based on a 20-point peace plan. The Trump administration recently declared that Phase Two of ceasefire negotiations

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How Are Iran’s Proxies Doing Amidst a Weakened Regime?

Farzin Zandi — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:30:49 +0000

In Jan. 2025, Farzin Zandi wrote, “How Iran Lost Before It Lost: The Roll Back of its Gray Zone Strategy,” where he argued Iran’s proxy network and gray zone strategy had significantly eroded over time. A year later, amidst pressure from the United States and a weakened regime, we asked Farzin to revisit his argument. Image: MidjourneyIn your 2025 article, “How Iran Lost Before It Lost: The Roll Back of its Gray Zone Strategy,” you argued Iran’s gray zone strategy had significantly eroded. What is the status of Iranian-backed proxies today? If the regime’s ability to support their proxies continues to diminish,

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Breaking Tehran’s Grip on Baghdad

Keith Phillips — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 08:30:37 +0000

What happens when the proxy network loses its patron but not its guns? We might be about to find out.Negotiations between the United States and Iran proceed, but the fact that the president has ordered a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf is a clear sign that force is not off the table. It is therefore important to consider the secondary consequences any regime change in Tehran would have in Iraq.Given the extent of Iranian influence throughout Iraq’s formal and informal institutions, a change in Tehran will immediately reverberate in Iraq. However, it could also create an opportunity for

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China Now Finds Itself in al-Qaeda’s Crosshairs

Colin Clarke — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 08:15:56 +0000

Could China replace the United States atop the target list of transnational jihadist groups like al-Qaeda? A recent statement released by Sheikh Saad bin Atef al Awlaqi, the emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, directly threatened China, labeling its government as a “pagan, infidel” enemy whose actions against Uyghur Muslims justify future attacks. The statement marks a clear escalation in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s anti-China rhetoric. But will it lead to a shift in operational goals?Jihadist groups have long exaggerated their capabilities, using their media and propaganda platforms to issue wide-ranging threats against an expansive list of adversaries,

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The Greatest Threat to Acquisition Transformation Is Fear

Bonnie Evangelista — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:00:33 +0000

The Department of Defense’s acquisition and sustainment culture is pathologically risk-averse. The greatest threat to acquisition transformation is not the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It is not congressional oversight, statutory constraints, insufficient training, or an absence of strategy.The greatest threat is fear. Not fear as emotion, but fear as architecture.The defense acquisition system is not broken. It is functioning precisely as designed. It produces compliance. It produces documentation. It produces defensible process. It produces career survivability.But it does not reliably produce speed or meaningful results.For more than three decades, senior leaders have promised reform. Since the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of

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Recalibrating U.S. Intelligence Strategy for an Uncertain Global Order

Alexander Bick — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:30:31 +0000

In the wake of 9/11, the newly established Office of the Director of National Intelligence produced the nation’s first National Intelligence Strategy, a document explicitly intended to guide reforms to the intelligence community and help prevent another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland. The challenges U.S. intelligence faces today are no less dramatic. While crises in Ukraine, Iran, and Venezuela have each been driven by their own internal logics, together they reflect profound shifts in the balance and nature of power as a new international order begins to take shape. These shifts — a more contested strategic environment; accelerating technology

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Panama’s Hidden Chokepoint: Tocumen and the Convergence of Mobility Power

Ron MacCammon — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:15:53 +0000

The most consequential infrastructure decisions in Panama today are often not made at the locks of the canal, but in conference rooms where aviation security software, cargo-routing platforms, and port-scheduling systems converge. Sustained observation of Panama’s logistics and regulatory environment — reinforced by long-standing professional relationships within its institutions — points to a shift in how influence is accumulating.Panama’s strategic relevance is no longer confined to maritime geography. It is increasingly rooted in the integration of air, sea, and data systems, with Tocumen International Airport emerging as the keystone of that convergence — a shift unfolding neither overnight nor generationally, but across

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The Full Spectrum of Victory

WOTR Staff — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 16:00:31 +0000

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The Sound of Munich: Autonomy, Anxiety, and the Twilight of Transatlantic Order

Richard Fontaine — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:30:33 +0000

Munich was warmer than Washington this weekend, both in weather and in sentiment. Neither development was widely forecast. The sense of crisis in transatlantic relations was plain, especially on the European side, and the world descended on the Bayerischer Hof hotel to sort it all out. At the Munich Security Conference there was beer to drink, brats to eat, statements to make, and bilateral meetings to hold. February’s foreign policy freneticism kicked off in earnest.And frenetic it was. Bilateral meetings were set at 25 minutes apiece and the most hyperactive delegates kept them shorter than that. Heads of state and

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Running to Stand Still: Russian Nuclear Modernization after New START

Michael Kofman — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:30:28 +0000

John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones”: an apt depiction of the current discourse and debate of what the world will look like now that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) treaty has expired. The passing of New START marks the end of treaties formally limiting strategic nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia. While there are still a few multilateral agreements — like the Outer Space, Seabed, and Moon treaties — along with deals on missile launch notifications, for all intents and purposes traditional

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Will These Four Defense Innovation Reforms Improve Industry’s Lot?

Madeline Field — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:00:36 +0000

When everyone is accountable, who is actually responsible?I can’t help but think of this question as I consider the flurry of new top-down activity on acquisition reform and modernization. In January 2026, the Defense Department and White House released four new initiatives: two memorandums on the defense innovation system and AI, an executive order on defense industry standards, and a new pilot program outlining no-fee commercial evaluation licenses. These initiatives are the latest in a series of acquisition and process reforms designed to transform how the Pentagon operates and does business with industry.Although these initiatives are a step in the

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Gilded Capability: Overinvestment and the Survivability Paradox

Trevor Phillips-Levine — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:30:02 +0000

Infernos raged aboard Japanese aircraft carriers after U.S. Navy dive-bombers found their marks during the Battle of Midway. Many Japanese pilots were incinerated in ready rooms and in the cockpits of their aircraft while they sat idling on flight decks. Those who were airborne returned to find their carriers aflame. They circled until fuel exhaustion and ditched into the sea, and many were never recovered. For Japan, the loss of its carriers was damaging, but the loss of its naval aviators was catastrophic. Her navy never recovered.Japan overinvested in individual pilots, overconcentrating capability into an exquisite cadre at the expense

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Why Russia’s Export Failures Matter For India

Vasabjit Banerjee — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:30:53 +0000

In 2022, Vasabjit Banerjee and Benjamin Tkach wrote, “After Ukraine, Where Will India Buy Its Weapons,” where they explore India’s various defense systems acquisition relationships. Four years later, amid changing geopolitical dynamics and Russia’s ongoing war, we asked them to revisit their arguments.Image: Creative Commons, Flickr user cell105In your 2022 article, “After Ukraine, Where Will India Buy Its Weapons?,” you argued Russia was struggling to meet its weapons export commitments due to a buildup of debt, sanctions, and battlefield losses. In 2026, has Russia’s position changed from strained to structurally incapable as an exporter, or is it still scraping by? We see evidence

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Pauses Without Peace: What Last Year’s Ceasefires Reveal About Global Conflict Management

Gopi Krishna Bhamidipati — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:30:08 +0000

What if the United States isn’t ending wars, just interrupting them?Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump — who has repeatedly described himself as a “President of Peace” — has intervened to halt conflicts across multiple crisis theaters. From Gaza and the Israel–Iran confrontation to Ukraine, the India–Pakistan conflict, and Southeast Asia’s Thailand–Cambodia border, U.S. diplomatic pressure helped impose ceasefires, halt escalation, and stabilize front lines. At the same time, the United States conducted hundreds of air and missile strikes across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and beyond, underscoring a striking paradox at the heart of Trump-era

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Sweet Nothings: Rutte’s Trump-Whispering Is Counterproductive

Leonard A. Schütte — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:15:28 +0000

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte might have been the only European in the room who enjoyed President Donald Trump’s lengthy, meandering speech last month at the World Economic Forum at Davos. He was lavishly praised not once but twice by the president, who called him an “excellent Secretary General” and, later, “a very smart man.” In subsequent bilateral talks, Rutte appeared to have used his chemistry with Trump to help reach a framework deal on the future of Greenland, which at least for the time being has eased tensions between the U.S. administration and Europeans. This episode was only the

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Syria’s Post-Assad Pulse Check

Alexander McKeever — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:00:08 +0000

In December 2024, forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham defeated Assad regime forces, leading to the regime’s collapse and raising hopes for an end to Syria’s brutal civil war. Since then, President Ahmed al Sharaa has impressed many Syrians and foreign observers with his pragmatism and ability to stabilize the country. However, the path to peace has not been smooth. Many minority groups in the country feared a Sunni leader with a jihadist background, and the Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces were reluctant to surrender their hard-won autonomy. In addition to managing domestic challenges, al Sharaa has had to

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Does Guaranteeing Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge Still Serve U.S. Interests?

Rob Geist Pinfold — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:30:47 +0000

In early January 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell. In an interview for the Economist, he claimed that he sought to “taper off” the $3.8 billion in military aid that Israel receives from the United States or even end this longstanding military assistance program entirely. Yet, Netanyahu claimed in the same interview that Israel is embroiled in a battle to defend all “western civilisation” from “fanatic forces” who wanted to “take us back to the early Middle Ages.” What makes this even more extraordinary is that previous reports suggested that Netanyahu not only sought to renew a

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Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons

Junaid Nabi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:00:14 +0000

The next great biological threat may not begin in a wet market, a jungle, or a laboratory accident. It may begin on a laptop with a commercially available AI model.In October 2025, AI researchers from Microsoft reported that generative AI tools could design dangerous proteins capable of evading biosecurity and, alarmingly, could slip past the screening systems used by DNA manufacturers.In February 2025, researchers at Arc Institute released Evo 2, an AI model trained on 128,000 genomes that can design entirely new organisms. The model achieves 90 percent accuracy in predicting which genetic mutations cause disease. Within weeks of its predecessor’s

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Deterrence Won’t Fail in the Taiwan Strait — It Will Be Bypassed

J. William DeMarco — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:30:38 +0000

On Dec. 29, 2025, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported one of the most intense single-day episodes of Chinese military activity in recent years. Over 100 Chinese aircraft were detected operating around the island, not merely signaling but actively compressing Taiwan’s defensive space. Of these, 90 aircraft crossed the median line, effectively erasing a boundary that had kept the peace for decades. More ominously, these air assets were joined by 13 Chinese warships and, crucially, 14 official ships from the China Coast Guard and Maritime Safety Administration.The escalation did not stop at encirclement. On Dec. 30, the Chinese military fired 27 rockets from Fujian,

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The Marines That Led the Evacuation of Afghanistan, Four Years Later

Aaron Reep — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:16:55 +0000

On this special, free episode of Marine Pulse, Ian Brown sat down with two Marines who recount their mission at Hamid Karzai International Airport on the day of the suicide bombing attack at the Abbey gate during the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan. Aaron Reep and Lee Bowden share their personal accounts of the mission, what stood out to them about their fellow Marines during the mission, and the timeless lessons Marines can take from it.If you enjoyed this episode, you can listen to all of our armed service podcast shows by becoming a member.Image: Senior Airman Brennen Lege via DVIDS

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Is the Age of Drones Really the Age of Poor Maneuver?

Antonio Salinas — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 08:30:16 +0000

On today’s battlefields, drones are undeniably lethal. They kill with precision, shape movement across the battlespace, and impose a constant psychological presence. Their hum has become synonymous with modern combat, and combat footage from Ukraine appears to suggest that their sound is a defining feature of 21st-century war. Analysts and policymakers increasingly speak of drones as transformational weapons as they appear to have fundamentally altered the character of ground combatBut history urges caution.In Rethinking Military History, Jeremy Black cautions against technological determinism, suggesting to us that “the age of cavalry was really the age of bad infantry — a political,

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Endless Talks, Elusive Outcomes

WOTR Staff — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:45:24 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranAs tensions simmer between the United States and Iran, attempts to resume negotiations and avert a military showdown face an uphill battle. Uncertainty over the location and format of talks between the United States and Iran underscores the massive gaps that any talks will have to narrow on substance. Tehran wants to focus discussions on a nuclear agreement, while the White House is aiming for far broader concessions on Iran’s uranium enrichment, ballistic missile program,

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How We Arrived at this Iranian Moment and What Happens Next

Alex Vatanka — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 21:16:54 +0000

The Iranian regime has crushed the latest wave of protests through brute force, but the regime’s survival comes at a cost. It now confronts a volatile mix of domestic opposition, weakened regional proxies, and years of economic decay. Ryan is joined by co-host Kerry Anderson in a conversation with Alex Vatanka (Middle East Institute), Holly Dagres (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), and Naysan Rafati (International Crisis Group) about the pressures bearing down on Tehran and what might come next. This episode is brought to you by Victus Technologies. To learn more about Victus, check out: https://warontherocks.com/victus Image: khamenei.ir via Wikimedia

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Beyond the Missile: A Cost-Per-Effect Blueprint for the Future Force

Erik Schuh — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:00:05 +0000

Should the United States buy more destroyers, or would the money be better spent developing bases, munitions, or software? These are the kinds of questions the Department of Defense confronts every year when building its budget. Yet the Pentagon’s process still lacks a clear way to answer the most fundamental question: Which force structure delivers the greatest strategic effect for every dollar spent? And just as important: How should the Pentagon work with industry to generate the concepts, data, and prototypes needed to answer that question?This challenge is not the result of neglect but of how the U.S. military has

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