8,403 events tracked
military · geopolitical
Besides “restoration of various Russian-made military equipment,” the Taliban regime may be keen on “Russian air defense systems” and “attack and surveillance drones” for use in conflicts with Pakistan.
military · geopolitical
Amid a simmering conflict with Pakistan, Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada approved the creation of a new 4,000-member military formation known as the Hebati Unit.
geopolitical · geopolitical
The Iran-U.S. conflict has served to concentrate attention on the transport relationship between Kazakhstan and Iran, in development for years before the war began.
geopolitical · geopolitical
The conflict did not derail the transition but exposed how vulnerable it remains to external disruption – and how quickly governments can fall back on fossil fuels.
geopolitical · geopolitical
Some equipment central for the Global War on Terror could play important roles in a potential conflict against China.
military · geopolitical
Su Mon Thant from ACLED talks about the military's mounting atrocities, and the Arakan Army's recent abuses against the Rohingya.
social demographic · education
An ambitious university-led research project to document the Dong people’s distinctive architecture is revealing a great deal about this marginalized Indigenous group’s way of life.
economic · economic
U.S. trade pressure could prove to be exactly the catalyst ASEAN needs for integration
natural disaster · natural disaster
Chadchart Sittipunt, an independent, has replicated the landslide victory that delivered him to the governor's office in 2022.
social demographic · culture
The annual bung bang fai festival calls on the god Phaya Thaen to bring rain at the start of the agricultural season.
geopolitical
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.***IranA month after negotiators met for historic high-level talks in Pakistan, Washington and Tehran seem closer to a breakdown of the ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 7 than a breakthrough. In addition to its blockade of Iranian shipping, the United States has been stepping up sanctions against Iran as part of “Economic Fury,” announcing several tranches of designations in recent days targeting its oil trade and banking networks. The toll on The post Maximalist Demands, Victory Day, and a Summit appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
This week, Israel and Lebanon are holding their third round of unprecedented direct talks on crucial issues, including borders, the disarmament of Hizballah, and ongoing Israeli military action. The United States, which is clearly driving these talks, views them expansively as seeking a “comprehensive peace and security agreement,” although one that is contingent on Lebanese action against Hizballah. Ironically, as the most injured party, the Lebanese government is the one that can least afford a comprehensive agreement that would isolate it at home. This twist represents the single greatest obstacle to a settlement that would satisfy the United States or The post In Talks with Israel, Lebanon is Walking a Thin Line appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Ukraine has reshaped the battlefield with cheap, expendable drones. South Korea reads the signals and wants to match the scale. North Korea has been reading the same signals through a more direct channel. Since late 2024, North Korea has rotated thousands of troops through Russia’s war in Ukraine, alongside what is currently the world’s most combat tested drone force — tied with Ukraine’s, of course. Ukrainian defense intelligence reports that some of those troops have begun returning home and moving into instructor roles within the North Korean military.What exactly they are bringing back is harder to pin down from the The post South Korea’s 500,000 Drone Warriors Will Be a Hollow Force appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
What if fielding more nuclear weapons makes the United States less secure, not more? That question is now at the center of a growing debate as the United States confronts a nuclear landscape shaped by two major nuclear rivals.China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal, while the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the last remaining nuclear arms control deal between the United States and Russia, has expired. In what appears as the beginning of a new, more dangerous nuclear age, some analysts believe the United States should increase the size of its deployed nuclear arsenal. Others believe The post Restrain and Hedge: A New U.S. Nuclear Strategy for a Two-Peer World appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Western airpower debates are increasingly driven by grim math. Analysts tally missile inventories, strike ranges, and sortie-generation capacity against a small number of critical runways, fuel systems, and aerial refueling aircraft. The prevailing conclusion is that U.S. and allied airpower could be severely disrupted early in a conflict with China. While China’s anti-access/area-denial capabilities place U.S. and allied air operations in the Indo-Pacific under sustained, lethal, and consequential threat, the belief that this numbers game guarantees victory is a fallacy — something Russia is learning the hard way in Ukraine. The 2026 Iran War showed why: Real combat is interactive, The post Missiles Aren’t Strategy: Lessons From Iran for a Pacific Air War appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
When the U.S. military launched its war against Iran in Feb. 2026, it did not just dismantle Iranian military capabilities. It shattered the illusion that the United States would consult with its closest allies and that an ally’s refusal to grant base access can stop an American war in motion. Rather than the much discussed “outward flows” of military assets from the Korean Peninsula to the Middle East, it is the anticipated “inward flows” of U.S. military assets that could be more consequential in times of crisis.Focusing on the early days of the fallout of this intervention, I argue that The post When Refusal Doesn’t Matter: Operation Epic Fury and the Erosion of Host Nation Consent appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2025, Choong-Koo Lee wrote, “Putting the Screws on the Partnership Between North Korea and Russia,” where he argued that the United States and South Korea should work together to weaken Pyongyang and Moscow’s military relationship. A year later, we asked him to revisit his arguments.Image: The Kremlin via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that the United States and South Korea should work together to limit the deepening military relationship between Russia and North Korea. How has the U.S.-South Korean relationship evolved over the past year, and what does that mean for the prospects of any joint effort? Separately, The post A Check-In On North Korea and Russia’s Wartime Partnership appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Every time reports emerge about a potential reduction of U.S. forces or capabilities in Europe, the old continent falls into the same cycle of anxiety and panic. The same applies to announcements about delayed or suspended deployments, planned rotations, or broader force posture reviews.A brief historical reminder here is necessary. The 2014 Wales Defense Investment Pledge is still often misunderstood in Europe as little more than an American demand for higher defense spending. In reality, it reflected something broader already taking shape in Washington: the expectation that Europe would gradually assume far greater responsibility for conventional defense on its own continent. The post Europe’s Dangerous Hunger Games for American Troops appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
China’s diplomats are on an “AI governance” offensive. At a May 5 United Nations meeting, China’s vice minister of science and technology championed China’s role in shaping U.N.-led frameworks that determine how the technology should be built and used. Just a week earlier, two top Chinese AI experts actively involved in Beijing’s governance efforts appeared by video on a Capitol Hill panel discussion hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders, touting China’s contributions to AI safety and cooperation.Norms and standards on AI development and applications are still being defined. Being a standards-setter rather than a standards-follower can simultaneously solidify a country’s technological The post China’s AI Governance Offensive Threatens U.S. Tech Leadership appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
During Congressional testimony from Department of Defense leadership last week, Representative George Whitesides asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “How does canceling a command-initiated review support a culture of accountability?” But before the secretary could answer, Whitesides instead decided to direct the question to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Caine replied, “What you are alluding to … is a partisan question.” The exchange occupied only a few minutes amid days of acrimonious testimony focused primarily on the war with Iran, but reflected how partisan considerations have now extended to The post The Kid Rock Flyby Controversy and the Erosion of Military Professionalism appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
The Department of Defense does not primarily have a cyber recruiting problem — it has a cyber talent management problem. The military already possesses serious qualification frameworks, scholarship programs, credentialing systems, and selection tools. What it still lacks is a system tying assessment, training, assignment, performance, and retention together across an entire cyber career.In March 2026, the department announced at its Cyber Workforce Summit 2.0 an effort to reinvent the cyber workforce. Called Cyber Command 2.0, this effort’s principal goal is improvement in talent management by focusing on identifying, recruiting, hiring, and retaining the right people. The effort also emphasizes The post The Pentagon Still Cannot Manage Cyber Talent at Scale. Here’s the Fix. appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Catarina Buchatskiy, the co-founder and director of analytics at the Snake Island Institute, a Kyiv-based defense analytics center, and Viktoriia Honcharuk, the institute’s director of defense technologies. We asked them to share their views on how Ukraine’s military and defense firms turn battlefield feedback into rapid innovation, what Western investors and defense tech companies can learn from Ukraine, and what a future Ukraine-West defense industrial partnership might look like. Sign Up for Our Newsletter American and allied defense companies often speak about testing their products in Ukraine, but few have consistently done so. Why The post Inside Ukraine’s Battlefield Innovation Loop appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Editor’s note: This is the ninth article 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. The 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 September 2010, after a Chinese fishing trawler captain was detained near the Senkaku Islands, Beijing halted rare-earth exports to Japan. The embargo lasted weeks. China showed, on a U.S. treaty ally, how a supply chain could be The post Rebuilding American Manufacturing: A Keystone for Economic Statecraft appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2004, I was a boot (translation: brand new) first lieutenant in 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at a retransmission site in the middle of nowhere, al-Qa’im, Iraq. I heard a sudden explosion and small-arms fire two kilometers away. The battalion radio net burst with chatter, with someone saying there were three casualties: two urgent surgicals (send help quickly!) and one routine (no rush to provide aid). Someone in the operating center asked about the status of the routine casualty, and the radio crackled with the kind of transmission that changes everything. “It’s Whiskey Six, he’s KIA [killed in action].” I The post The U.S. Military Lacks an Ethics Doctrine. Combat Effectiveness Suffers appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Is it too late to stop criminals and American adversaries from exploiting AI to conduct cyberattacks or design novel pathogens? Has regulation kept pace with the threat civilian drones pose to critical infrastructure? AI researcher Lennart Heim, Army drone strategist Paul Lushenko, and CEO of Sentinel Bio Claire Qureshi join Jonathan to discuss the trade-offs between protecting the public and letting the private sector forge ahead. The conversation gets into synthetic DNA, the risk of drones at the FIFA World Cup, and whether the U.S. government should get early access to Silicon Valley’s newest large language models.Image: T. T. Paris The post Synthetic Biology, Drones, and AI: The Risks of Dual-Use Technologies appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
The 11th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded on May 22. Held every five years, the conference offers an opportunity to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, respond to technological and geopolitical developments, and reinforce states’ commitment to the treaty. For the third time in a row, the conference failed to reach consensus on a final document.We asked five experts for their perspectives on what the conference achieved — or failed to achieve.Read more below.Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Host of War on the Rocks’ Thinking the Unthinkable PodcastWhile the The post What Did the NPT Review Conference Achieve? appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
When news broke that North Korea had revised its constitution, analysts in the West and across the Korean Peninsula rushed to declare it the formal death of Korean reunification as a policy objective. The changes were hard to ignore. Pyongyang stripped all references to a unified Korean nation, codified a territorial clause treating the Republic of Korea as a separate foreign state, vested direct nuclear weapons authority in Kim Jong-un personally, and concentrated near-absolute executive power in the supreme leader alone. On the surface, it looked like the official burial of seven decades of unification ideology.That reading is seductive. It’s The post What Everyone is Missing About North Korea’s Reunification Strategy appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2024, when Jiangsu Delong, the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, filed for bankruptcy, several Chinese firms and state-owned enterprises quietly absorbed its Indonesian assets. Among them was China First Heavy Industries, a state-owned enterprise founded in 1954 as one of China’s early Soviet-backed industrial projects. Today, China First Heavy Industries supplies military-grade metals to China’s military, including reactor vessels for nuclear submarines. For a manufacturer embedded deeply in China’s naval industrial base, securing nickel feedstock for specialty steels is crucial.The episode reveals China’s strategy for critical minerals: Incentivizing access to upstream assets for Chinese firms reduces the risk of supply The post Control Without Ownership: How China’s Party-Business Networks Dominate Indonesia’s Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Rose Gottemoeller joined Ryan in Washington. They discussed how the West might think about relations with Russia once the war with Ukraine ends, as well as nuclear diplomacy and other critical issues. Gottemoeller was the deputy secretary general of NATO and, before that, served as a senior State Department official. She is currently at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and has a new book out called Security Through Cooperation: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations after the Cold War (Stanford University Press).Image: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons Image: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons The post What Would Relations with Post-War Russia Look Like? appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
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.***IranThere has been increasing chatter that Washington and Tehran are nearing an agreement that might wind down the war launched by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28. The truce that took effect seven weeks ago has been a prickly affair, with occasional fire at Gulf states and tit-for-tats at sea — including in recent days, which have seen U.S. forces strike missile sites and vessels in southern Iran as well as shooting down The post Hollow Deals, Tricky Negotiations, and State Visits appeared first on War on the Rocks .