War on the Rocks

Ceasefires and Communications

WOTR Staff — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:30:32 +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.***IranIn the space of less than 11 hours on April 7, President Donald Trump went from warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” to announcing a two-week ceasefire with Iran. That whiplash-inducing turn was just a taste of the twists that would follow over the coming week. First came a resumption of negotiations mediated by Pakistan. With the presence of Vice President J.D. Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, it marked the highest in-person engagement between the two sides

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How to Counter the Houthis Without Strengthening Them

Erin K. McFee — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:30:01 +0000

If the United States is drawn into another round of military action in Yemen, it ought to avoid the mistakes of the last decade. From about 2015 to last year, successive administrations backed Saudi‑ and Emirati‑led military campaigns, arms sales, and naval blockades that devastated civilians, deepened Yemen’s fragmentation, and perversely strengthened Houthi power and legitimacy instead of containing it.Instead, Washington should treat force as one tool within a broader political and economic strategy. Officially known as Ansar Allah (“Partisans of God”) and referred to here as the Houthis for ease of reference, the group is a Zaydi revivalist political-military

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Winning in the Donbas: What Russia’s 2014–2015 Campaign Reveals About Modern War

Amos Fox — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:15:59 +0000

It is clear that the U.S.-Israeli decapitation, airpower-centric, and precision strike campaign are again not enough to bring about the two countries’ strategic goals. The United States still finds itself potentially having to commit land forces into its war with Iran, yet many unknowns lurk, including a fragile ceasefire and a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Setting aside the question of whether U.S. land forces will be committed to the war, the question that remains unknown is how, and to what degree, they would be employed.The continued relevance of land forces in the 21st century is a

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Anthropic’s Nuclear Bomb

Naveen Krishnan — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:22 +0000

A few hours before Anthropic announced the launch of its newest model, Claude Mythos Preview, on April 7, I had just completed a six-month analysis of AI-enabled cyberattacks. My research traced Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaigns against U.S. critical infrastructure and found that the barrier between nation-state-level hacking and everyone else was eroding far too fast.By the time I closed my laptop that afternoon, Mythos had shattered that barrier. This new model could theoretically autonomously exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in virtually every major operating system and web browser on Earth, without human supervision. My threat model, seemingly alarmist at breakfast, was

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A Fragile Ceasefire with Iran and the Price of Ending the War

Federico Manfredi Firmian — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:46 +0000

After failing to reach an agreement in the first round of talks in Islamabad, the United States and Iran are set to resume talks in the coming days. Via Pakistani mediation, U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reportedly made progress toward a framework agreement, though significant gaps remain and a deal is far from guaranteed. In the meantime, President Donald Trump has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports, while Israel is pressing ahead with its assault on the Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil, even as it engages in direct talks with Lebanon in Washington. The two-week ceasefire with Iran is

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Rethinking Security Cooperation in the Age of Commercial Tech

Jarrett Lane — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:07 +0000

Commercial technologies are enabling the U.S. military and militaries around the world to operate with greater efficiency, speed, precision, and lethality. The benefits of commercial capabilities can be particularly impactful given the defense industrial base’s struggles to produce at the speed and scale needed to outmatch China, Russia, and other aligned adversaries. It is largely for these reasons that President Donald Trump mandated the Department of Defense to preference commercial solutions. Congress also reinforced efforts to prioritize commercially available solutions in Section 1214 of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.Commercial technologies are also a driving factor behind increasingly rapid evolutions in

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The End of Managed Escalation in the Gulf

Robert Mason — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:15:01 +0000

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has exposed a reality many policymakers long preferred to avoid: The deterrence model that governed the Gulf for decades is no longer working as intended.For years, the region operated in the gray zone — covert strikes, proxy warfare, and carefully managed escalation. Iran built a strategy around missiles, regional partners, and nuclear latency.The United States underwrote Gulf security without direct war. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors relied on that umbrella while hedging against its limits, investing in missile defense and selective partnerships. There were rules, even if unwritten.That world is breaking down. The two-week ceasefire announced

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Operationalizing Economic Statecraft: A New Imperative for the Pentagon

Anita Kellogg — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:00:57 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the sixth 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.The next major war the United States fights could be decided by supply chains long before the first shot is fired. That reality is already taking shape, as adversaries use export controls, sanctions, and supply chain leverage to shape outcomes on the

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Bonus In Brief: Choke Point: The Risks and Realities of America’s Iran Blockade

Emma Salisbury — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:53:46 +0000

On April 13, the U.S. military began a “blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports.” The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 12 that the United States would begin a blockade after American and Iranian negotiators were unable to reach an agreement during a meeting in Islamabad.The announcement of a blockade immediately raised questions about how a blockade would work, how it fits into a broader U.S. strategy, its impacts on the global economy, and more. We asked five experts to assess the practicalities of enforcing a blockade, its legality, Iran’s likely response,

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Examining the Cracks and the Cement in the Sino-Russian Relationship

John Stanko — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:30:20 +0000

In 2024, John Stanko and Spenser Warren wrote, “Russian Threat Perception and Nuclear Strategy in its Plans for War with China,” where they explained some of the potential tensions between Russia and China that could make armed conflict between the two countries a possibility. Two years later, we asked them to revisit their arguments. Image: Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2024 article, you explained some of the potential tensions in the Sino-Russian partnership that could make armed conflict between the two countries a possibility. Two years later, have any new tensions emerged between the two countries? Are Russia and China stronger partners than they were

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Why Booz Allen is Partnering With One of the World’s Most Important VC Firms

Matt Cronin — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:58 +0000

What happens when one of the defense industry’s leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital’s growing role in national security, how this partnership is supposed to work in practice, and why getting real technology into government hands is still harder than it should be.Image: Midjourney

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Silent Killers, Not Signals: Why States Use Poison in Assassinations

Naomi Rio — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:30:15 +0000

The recent news that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death was caused by epibatidine — a South American frog toxin — has reignited interest in state use of poisons and toxins in assassinations. Although state use of such compounds has a long history, the erosion of the norms prohibiting assassinations and chemical and biological weapons increases the likelihood of future assassinations using poisons and toxins. As demonstrated in the recent targeting of the Iranian leadership in Operation Eric Fury and in the assassinations of prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the assassination norm has collapsed. The norms against chemical

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The Demise of Strategic Planning in Israel

Shimon Arad — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:15:45 +0000

What happens when a country at war stops seriously debating its own strategy and goals?In Israel today, that scenario is no longer theoretical. In the aftermath of Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, Israel’s strategic decision-making ecosystem has been progressively undermined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political associates.Netanyahu has surrounded himself with pliable officials and supportive voices, including the defense minister and the leaders of the Mossad and the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet). He has become increasingly dependent on extreme coalition partners who constrain the parameters of

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Hungary Turns a New Page

WOTR Staff — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:00:06 +0000

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in a parliamentary election on April 12, ending his 16 years in power, after his Fidesz party lost its majority in parliament. The center-right Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, won and is projected to have a two-thirds supermajority. Orbán has been a prominent right-wing populist, with close ties to the Trump administration in Washington and warm relations with Moscow. Magyar campaigned on promises to address corruption, improve the economy, and align more closely with Europe.We asked five experts to assess how the election results will shape Hungary’s role in Europe and its relationships

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The Bromine Chokepoint: How Strife in the Middle East Could Halt Production of the World’s Memory Chips

Alvin Camba — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:09 +0000

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, now in an unstable ceasefire, has exposed a structural failure in the global semiconductor memory supply chain, and it is not the one analysts seem to be tracking. The story receiving attention is helium: Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility went offline, a 45-day inventory clock started running, and spot prices doubled within days. The story receiving almost no attention is bromine, and it is potentially the more dangerous one. Bromine is the raw material from which specialized chemical suppliers produce semiconductor-grade hydrogen bromide gas, the etch chemical that South Korean fabs use to carve the transistor

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Tactical Success, Strategic Failure? Washington Walks the Path to Defeat in Iran

Ryan Evans — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:30:36 +0000

Six weeks after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, what was the political object? Not the military means and objectives — those are the hammer, not the nail. The nail is: What condition in the world, what durable change in Iran’s relationship to the United States and its neighbors, were these strikes meant to produce? That question was never answered, because it was never seriously asked. The Trump administration confused the instrument for the purpose and then changed the purpose whenever the instrument produced inconvenient results.As our country’s most senior uniformed military leader, standing beside our

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Strategy Without Hubris: How China Rose by Managing America’s Reaction

Luis Simón — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:15:47 +0000

Oriana Skylar Mastro, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024)Why didn’t China’s rise trigger containment sooner?For three decades, Beijing’s economic weight expanded dramatically, its military modernized at speed, and its diplomatic footprint widened across every region. Structural theories of power transition would lead us to expect sharper and earlier confrontation as capabilities converged. Instead, the U.S.-Chinese rivalry deepened gradually, punctuated by crises but rarely exploding into decisive pushback. The United States remained engaged economically, its alliances held but were not quite mobilized to balance Chinese power, and many countries hedged rather than chose sides.One explanation for the

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Bankova, Budapest, and Bunnies

WOTR Staff — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +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 StrategyФокус— Fokus

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Can a New Bridge Finally Save the Pentagon’s Best Ideas?

Isobel Porteous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:43 +0000

In May 1953, in the desert west of Idaho Falls, a crew powered up the world’s first naval nuclear propulsion system. What made it possible was daringly aggressive innovation: Adm. Hyman Rickover insisted that the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I be built to exactly the specifications that would later be required inside a submarine. This meant hundreds of pounds of simulated sea pressure per square inch, shock resistance tested to the standards of a depth-charge attack, and air conditioning sized at three times the requirement. Rickover’s own engineers fought him, arguing that the basic challenge of building a nuclear reactor

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A Closed Strait of Hormuz Risks a Global Food Security Crisis

Morgan D. Bazilian — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:30:12 +0000

The war in Iran has done more than rattle energy markets. It has exposed an ordinary farm input as a strategic commodity. Urea is a concentrated, easy-to-transport nitrogen fertilizer that increases the yields of many crops, especially staple grains like corn, rice, and wheat. These small white pellets are essentially natural gas in solid form, bound with nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere through the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process. They are literally a building block of the Green Revolution and critical to global food security.While the recent U.S.-Iranian ceasefire may have paused or limited hostilities, it already shows signs of breaking apart,

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Regime Change in Iran, Underpants Gnomes, and the Phase II Problem

Denis Prieur — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:15:59 +0000

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the Iran war off with a bang — not just the bang of bombs and rockets, but the rhetorical bang of declaring their intent to spur the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic Republic.As a ceasefire pauses more than a month of combat, and failed talks lead to a planned blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, what has happened to their dreams of regime change? They seem to have fallen prey to the magical thinking of South Park’s underpants gnomes — you know, the episode where Stan, Kyle, and

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The Future Soldier Loadout: Smarter Gear or Dead Weight?

Brian Cummings — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:45 +0000

The tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, safety, and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry leaders look ahead to how frontline capabilities may evolve over the next decade and what will constrain them.Image: Sgt. Thiem Huynh via DVIDS.

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Disperse to Survive: The Logic of French Forward Deterrence

Frank Kuhn — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:30:43 +0000

In his long-awaited nuclear deterrence speech, French President Emmanuel Macron laid out his new doctrine of “forward deterrence” (dissuasion avancée) and — for the first time in history — offered to deploy the French Strategic Air Forces to European countries. “In the same way that our strategic submarines dilute naturally in the oceans,” the French president said, “our strategic air forces will also be able to be spread deep into the European continent.”The proposal to deploy French nuclear forces on allied territory may appear similar to the forward deployment of U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons and NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements. But the

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Iran’s Other Front: The War Over the Internet

Sara Bazoobandi — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:15:40 +0000

For a long time, the Iranian government has treated free internet access as a privilege that is extended by the state to those willing to carry its message and withheld from everyone else. Around four hours after Israeli and American strikes began, internet traffic collapsed by 98 percent — a near-total blackout. Iran’s communications infrastructure was deliberately dismantled by the government and internet traffic was completely halted. The strikes were made by the Iranian government’s adversaries aimed at military installations, capabilities, and senior political and military leadership. The internet blackout was imposed by the government, aimed at the Iranian people.

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Update from the Battlefield: Drones, Distance, and Diminishing Returns for Russia

Michael Kofman — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:43:25 +0000

Michael Kofman joins Ryan to unpack the current state of the Russo-Ukrainian War after his recent trip to the front. They examine how drone warfare has transformed the battlefield into a dispersed contest over a vast kill zone, why Russian infiltration tactics have failed to produce meaningful gains, and how Ukraine is working to close gaps in its strike capabilities. They also explore the growing pressure from Russian long-range strikes and how the war in Iran is beginning to shape the conflict.Image: ArmyInform via Wikimedia Commons

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What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?

Antulio J. Echevarria — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:30:49 +0000

The states most likely to draw America into its next major crisis or war are not unknowns. They are the usual suspects: The same handful of states that have threatened the United States repeatedly across decades. Interstate rivals have caused roughly 80 percent of history’s wars and the odds of any given rivalry ending peacefully are little better than a coin toss. Yet America’s key strategy documents since the 2017 National Security Strategy have used phrases like great power competition, interstate strategic competition, and strategic competition without acknowledging the essential difference between a competition and a rivalry. Nor does the

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Iran’s Asymmetric Counterair Campaign: Attacking the U.S. Air Force’s Nests and Eggs

Maximilian K. Bremer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:15:20 +0000

On March 27, Iranian drones and missiles struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, destroying an E-3 Sentry, an airborne command center for U.S. operations in the region, and damaging multiple KC-135 tankers. It was not the first strike. Earlier in the month, an Iranian attack had already damaged five KC-135s at the same base. In the history of these aircraft, no enemy had ever achieved such a hit until Iran did both — within two weeks.These strikes are the latest in a broader pattern, part of a deliberate counterair campaign waged through asymmetric means in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Prior to the

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How NATO’s Air Defense Future Is Unfolding

Shaan Shaikh — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:30:01 +0000

In 2024, Shaan Shaikh wrote, “Three Visions for NATO Air and Missile Defense,” where he laid out three potential scenarios NATO could take in the next few years to further its air and missile defense capabilities. Two years later, amidst alliance tensions and ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, we asked Shaan to revisit his arguments. Image: Sgt. Mariah Gonzalez via DVIDSIn your 2024 article, you laid out three potential directions NATO could take in the next few years for further developing its air and missile defense capabilities. Two years later, amidst alliance tensions and ongoing conflicts in

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How This Precision Weapon Reengineered Modern War

Jeffrey Stern — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:00:44 +0000

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Jeffrey E. Stern, an award-winning journalist and author of the newly released The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare, which details the development of Paveway, the precision-guided bomb. We asked him to share his thoughts on the bomb’s history and its role in air campaigns, and the relationship between government, science, and industry. You spent years researching and writing this book about Paveway, a relatively underdiscussed weapon. Why tell this story? I wanted to tell this story in part because Paveway is so underdiscussed. The big

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The Campaign Ends at the Breach: Lessons from Ukraine on Why Armies Fail

Michael Carvelli — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:30:34 +0000

Somewhere behind the Novodarivka breach point in June 2023, Ukrainian armored formations sat staged and ready. The ammunition was there. The fuel was there. The original concept of operations called for 12 brigades to push through roughly 30 kilometers of frontage, isolate Tokmak within days, and drive south before Russian forces could consolidate. They never moved. The engineers could not open the lane. Without the lane, none of the rest of it mattered.Against prepared defenses, breaching and gap-crossing capacity can decide whether a land force ever gets to test the rest of its campaign design. Much of the serious work

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The Iran War’s Widening Impacts in the Middle East and North Africa

Gregory D. Johnsen — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:09:43 +0000

The war with Iran has had ripple effects across the Middle East and North Africa. The Gulf Arab states, Iraq, and Jordan have suffered direct attacks from Iran, and Iraq also faces violence from Iranian-aligned militias. In response to an attack from Hizballah, Israel has intensively bombed parts of Lebanon and launched an expanded ground invasion in the south.While those countries coping with the direct impacts of the war receive — and deserve — attention, the war is also affecting other parts of the region, highlighting that the conflict will have wide-ranging and long-standing effects. We asked five experts to assess the impact so far

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The Hidden System Turning Chinese Tech Companies into Military Suppliers

Charles Sun — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:00:02 +0000

In October 2022, Unitree Robotics joined Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and three other firms in signing an open letter pledging not to weaponize their machines and to review customers’ intended applications. This Chinese startup based in Hangzhou had earned its place in that group. Founded in 2016 by a 26-year-old engineer named Wang Xingxing, who quit his job at the drone maker DJI during his probationary period, Unitree set out to build affordable quadruped robots. It worked. By 2023, the company held over 60 percent of the global quadruped robot market by unit sales. Its investors included Sequoia China, Meituan,

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Closing the Air and Missile Defense Gap in the Indo-Pacific

Christopher J. Watterson — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:30:22 +0000

During last summer’s 12-day war between Iran, Israel, and the United States, the U.S. military supported Israeli air and missile defense operations by utilizing its regionally deployed air and missile defense assets to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. By the time the shooting had stopped, CNN reported that the United States had expended 100 to 150 upper-tier, terminal-phase missile interceptors against Iranian missiles. This means that, in 12 days of fighting, the United States expended approximately 25 percent of its total stockpile — or 150 percent of annual global production at current production rates (though production increases are anticipated). The

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Iran’s Anti-Access and Area Denial Strategy Is Cruder Than China’s But Still Dangerous

Brigadier Anil Raman — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:15:10 +0000

In past wars, commanders worried about what would happen after crossing the line of departure. Today, the concern is whether they can cross it at all. Surely this is a concern as the United States considers sending a Marine expeditionary unit into the Persian Gulf. Before they enter, whether by air or sea, the fight will already be underway. Meanwhile, closed shipping routes are increasing the costs of shipping, America’s Gulf partners are under continued pressure, and the Houthis fired a missile to underscore the point. The path to the battlefield is the battlefield. No longer a prelude.This is by

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Reopening the Strait of Hormuz & Saving Downed Pilots

Jamie Foggo — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:12:05 +0000

Two retired U.S. admirals with deep experience at sea and in the air joined Ryan to discuss the military challenge of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Adm. (ret.) Jamie Foggo and Vice Adm. (ret.) John “Fozzie” Miller unpack how Iran has been able to throttle one of the world’s most important waterways and what it would actually take to restore freedom of navigation. The conversation explores mines, drones, missiles, escorts, air strikes, how a Marine expeditionary unit might raid Kharg Island, and (of course) the strategy. Hours before this was recorded, news had broken that a U.S. Air Force F15E

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Are Perceptions the Reality?

WOTR Staff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:30:46 +0000

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The Age of Unlearning: How Democracies Lost Their Grip on Strategic Time

Beniamino Irdi — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:30:35 +0000

The past several years have produced a quiet but consequential shift in how the United States understands, and fails to understand, time. American strategy has gradually weakened through bureaucratic cuts, institutional downgrades, and political incentives that privilege immediacy over endurance and partisanship over long-term statecraft. The temporary elimination of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment last year is particularly emblematic. Established during the Cold War, the Office was designed to provide the Department of Defense with independent, long-term comparative assessments of U.S. and adversary military capabilities. On paper, its dismantling was framed as an exercise in streamlining. In practice, it

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Sharpening Signals and Reducing Noise for Better Defense Budgets

Mark Mitchum — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:15:02 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the fifth 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. Debates over defense budgets and economic statecraft are not a distraction from warfighting. They reflect a basic reality: Military power does not exist in isolation. It is built, sustained, and ultimately limited by America’s economic capacity and the system that translates

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The Limits of Trump’s Regime Capture Strategy from Venezuela to Cuba

Charles Larratt-Smith — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:30:42 +0000

Since the beginning of the year, President Donald Trump has enthusiastically reinstated regime change as a key tool of U.S. statecraft, despite previously campaigning against the military excesses of former presidents. This drastic foreign policy reversal owes much to his administration’s dramatic capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a successful raid and arrest on Jan. 3. Clearly encouraged by the apparent ease with which this act of leadership decapitation converted a one-time regional adversary into something Trump can present as a vassal state virtually overnight, the administration has sought to replicate this success in other revisionist states, most

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How the War with Iran Ends

Omar Mohammed — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:15:40 +0000

Three weeks into the joint American-Israeli military operation against Iran, a pressing question occupies Washington: What will ultimately follow these strikes? The attacks themselves are already degrading Tehran’s military capacity, but the more crucial focus is the aftermath — specifically, whether the pressures now weighing on the theocracy point to a negotiated settlement, prolonged attrition, or the collapse of the Islamic Republic from within.This month, I turn 40. I was born in Iraq, in the middle of my country’s eight-year war with Iran — another war that also involved this same regime. Forty years later, I find myself watching what

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The Global Ripple Effect of the War in Iran

WOTR Staff — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:30:56 +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 the war with Iran extends into a second month, the White House is publicly bullish on both its military achievements and diplomatic prospects. The former are considerable, though not definitive. While the Iranian regime’s instruments of hard power have been degraded, it remains capable of striking Israel and Gulf allies, and its threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are putting a significant strain on the global economy. Meanwhile, there seems little to

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A 250-Year Arsenal of Innovation: A Call for Articles on American Defense Technologies

Cogs of War Staff — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:00:37 +0000

On July 4, 2026, the United States turns 250. At Cogs of War, we plan to mark the occasion the way we know best: by examining how Americans have built, adapted, and fought with technology in war.From David Bushnell’s Turtle submarine to the Gatling gun, nuclear warhead, GPS, and AI, American defense innovation has always been more about people working at the edge of constraint to deliver advantage in war — improvising, scaling, and sometimes breaking institutions — than any singular invention. For more than two centuries, these efforts have shaped how the United States and the rest of the

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From Filament to Firepower: 3D Printing’s Impact on Warfare

Travis Veillon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:30:27 +0000

While much ink has been spilled over how 3D printing has enabled intense drone-on-drone warfare in Ukraine, the U.S. defense and intelligence communities have overlooked a stealthier development: Additive manufacturing is revolutionizing how guns are produced, fielded, and sustained in armed conflicts, especially by non-state actors. What once required a web of smuggling networks, foreign sponsors, and captured stockpiles can now be made with digital files and off-the-shelf parts. Even ammunition production, once considered an insurmountable barrier, is increasingly possible. This revolution in how arms and ammunition are manufactured has yielded resilient and decentralized supply chains that can endure both

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The Iran War and the Energy Lesson We Failed to Learn

Emily Holland — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:15:21 +0000

How many energy crises will it take before we stop betting our economies on a fragile oil market?The U.S. and Israeli war with Iran quickly morphed from a regional conflict into a global energy shock. Oil and gas markets have been volatile since the start of the war, with Brent crude oil prices rising 59 percent since Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. In the first half of 2025, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas passed through the strait. Now, five weeks into the conflict, attacks

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From Theory to Reality: Evaluating the U.S.-Ukrainian Minerals Deal

J.C. Ellis — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:30:34 +0000

In 2025, J.C. Ellis wrote, “Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure,” where he argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian control and allied access to its storehouse of critical minerals. A year later, after a critical minerals investment plan for Ukraine has been established, we asked J.C. to revisit his original argument.Image: MidjourneyIn your 2025 article, you argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian control and allied access to its massive storehouse of critical minerals. A few months after your article was written, the United States and Ukraine

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The Folly of Seizing Kharg Island

Bilal Y. Saab — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:53:09 +0000

The war with Iran is into its fifth week, and despite much of its military power being destroyed by U.S. and Israeli strikes, Tehran has yet to give in or show any signs of external vulnerability or internal destabilization. If anything, it is increasingly convinced that whenever the guns fall silent, it will come out on top.The main source of Iran’s confidence is its upper hand in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints and aortic valves of globalized production.In response to U.S. and Israeli attacks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has closed the strait

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China’s AI Is Spreading Fast. Here’s How to Stop the Security Risks

Ryan Fedasiuk — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:00:43 +0000

In late 2024, Chinese models accounted for one percent of global AI workloads. By the end of 2025, that figure had surged to 30 percent. Alibaba’s Qwen family now boasts over 700 million downloads, making it the world’s largest provider of “open-source” AI systems that are publicly released and capable of being downloaded and run locally. A constellation of Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax chief among them — are increasingly popular fixtures of a global, open-source marketplace, which is starting to power everything from Indian academic research to America’s most elite technology startups.Though they are open-weight and

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The Most Important Deterrent That NATO Needs Is Creativity

W. Ethan Eagle — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:30:55 +0000

What if the next war is decided not by drone swarms, hypersonic missiles, or AI — but by good, old-fashioned human creativity? We have undervalued the mindset dimension that is critical to innovation yet it is the cornerstone of defense organizations’ adaptability and very difficult to scale. We cannot buy (military) innovators.One of the most important shifts happening inside NATO today is not a drone platform, a software suite, or a breakthrough in AI — it is the growing recognition that innovation is a transferable skill between people. The alliance needs to speed up the rate of transfer so that

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The Arsenal as the Battlefield: The War on Iran and the Return of Counter-Industrial Targeting

Tyler Hacker — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:15:06 +0000

America’s war against Iran has sparked heated debates over U.S. strategic priorities, military objectives, and defense industrial capacity. It has also fueled speculation about how a hypothetical clash between the United States and the People’s Republic of China might unfold. Tehran’s ability to launch salvo after salvo of simple attack drones reflects current thinking about how the proliferation of cheap, easily producible precision weapons is changing the character of war, and previews some of the challenges that Washington might confront in a fight with Beijing. Facing an even bigger and better-armed rival, the United States is likely to find that

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Holding Water Hostage

Ed Cullinane — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:30:25 +0000

Parts of the Middle East — especially around the Persian Gulf — rely on desalinated water. Worst-case scenarios for war in the region have often included attacks on desalination facilities, and the war with Iran that began on Feb. 28 has raised the potential for such a scenario. So far, there have been reports that a U.S. strike on Qeshm Island damaged an Iranian desalination plant and that an Iranian drone had hit a desalination plant in Bahrain. On March 30, an attack damaged a building at a power and desalination site in Kuwait. Iran has warned that it could

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The U.S. Military Risks Letting Contractors Define How It Sees the Battlefield

David Kamien — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:00:10 +0000

In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a nuclear strike without presidential authorization. Once the president, the joint chiefs, and the Soviet ambassador convene in the war room, the bombers are already airborne. Only Ripper knows the three-letter prefix needed to recall them, until his aide, Lionel Mandrake, reconstructs it from Ripper’s notes. Although nearly all planes are turned back, one damaged B-52 cannot receive the recall message and successfully drops its bomb, triggering the Soviets’ secret doomsday machine and bringing about

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The Trump Administration Had No Plan for the War with Iran

Sen. Ruben Gallego — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:30:08 +0000

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.21 years ago, I was a Marine infantryman in Anbar province, western Iraq, carrying so much gear that I could barely feel my legs. My job was to go town to town, search houses, and try to stop insurgents before they stopped us. Every day, someone was trying to kill us — improvised explosive devices buried in the roads, mortars in the middle of the night, and random rocket propelled grenades fired

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The Cost of Hesitation: Why “Finishing the Mission” is Imperative in Iran

Rep. Sheri Biggs — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:15:53 +0000

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.The view from a C-130 during a combat mission in the Middle East provides clarity that is often lost in the sanitized briefing rooms of Washington. As an Air Force medical crew director, I have looked into the eyes of young servicemembers being medevacked out of theater, and I lived through what decades of strategic inconsistency asks of our warfighters. As a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, I am equally attuned

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Successes and Setbacks

WOTR Staff — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:06:55 +0000

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Every Soldier a Software Builder: Governing the Army’s New Digital Workforce

Anthony A. Joyce — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:00:57 +0000

Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has tested internal software development through efforts like the Air Force’s Kessel Run, the Army Software Factory, and the Marine Corps Software Factory. Those efforts showed that military personnel can build useful software when given the right tools and infrastructure.In its push to make better use of data, the Army fielded powerful digital platforms as a service across the force, such as Palantir’s Army Vantage and the Department of Defense’s GenAI.mil. These programs were meant to improve analysis and decision-making. But they also did something else: They gave soldiers built-in tools to

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Putin Is Not Trapped: Why Regime Survival Does Not Depend on Victory

Mariya Omelicheva — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 07:30:58 +0000

For four years, analysts and policymakers have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot afford to lose” in Ukraine. Increasingly, some argue he cannot afford peace either. In this view, the war is existential for his regime. Defeat would shatter Putin’s legacy and potentially end his rule. Trapped between humiliation and collapse, inviting comparisons to the fate of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, Putin is portrayed as having no viable off-ramp from an unwinnable war.These assumptions were central to Biden-era debates over escalation management. The Biden administration had concerns that excessive pressure might destabilize the regime, thus triggering escalation,

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The Importance of the Raid of Nassau

BJ Armstrong — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 07:15:15 +0000

Marines and sailors splashing ashore from landing boats has become a defining image of the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. It happened for the first time at the town of Nassau in the British colony of the Bahamas on March 3, 1776. While the operation itself was a tactical success, its impact on the broader war for American independence was marred by inexperience and poor judgment. Despite this, the raid of Nassau offers important insights for contemporary naval forces, including the challenge of command and control across vast distances with limited communication, the need for adaptability during sustained expeditionary

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Punish Russia for Helping Iran Target the U.S. Military

Ryan Evans — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 07:30:38 +0000

In the second week of March, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to be “helpful” in the Middle East. More recently, in a spat with the E.U. foreign policy chief over America’s diplomatic stance on Russia and Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly snapped “We are doing the best we can to end the war” and indicated the United States would be happy to stop if Europe thought it could do better. Admittedly, in diplomacy it is sometimes wise to say the opposite of what you believe. As such, the best I can say

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The Pentagon Wants Dual-Use Innovation. Patent Law Might Punish It.

Tony Rowles — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 08:00:22 +0000

In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court held that government contractors could be sued for patent infringement even if their products were manufactured specifically for the U.S. government. Franklin D. Roosevelt, then acting secretary of the Navy, wrote an urgent letter to Congress warning that contractors were hesitant to build equipment for the Navy that could expose them to expensive litigation. Congress responded swiftly, amending federal law to shield contractors from patent suits when they were manufacturing products for the government. That statutory immunity, now codified as 28 U.S.C. § 1498, has protected defense manufacturers for over a century. But a

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Hellscape Taiwan: A Porcupine Defense in the Drone Age

Stacie Pettyjohn — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 07:30:24 +0000

It is 2029. General Secretary Xi Jinping has given the order for the People’s Liberation Army to forcibly take Taiwan. Hundreds of Chinese warships begin to cross the Taiwan strait, supported by fighter jets and protected by an umbrella of electronic jamming. 80 kilometers from Taiwan’s coast, the first blow comes from below. Autonomous underwater vehicles lurking on the seabed detonate against the hull of troop transports, scattering formations and forcing destroyers to divert to antisubmarine warfare. Moments later, hundreds of cheap kamikaze drones, interspersed with decoys and antiship cruise missiles, approach the flotilla in waves from every azimuth, forcing

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10 Ukrainians Humbled Two NATO Battalions. When Will NATO Wake Up?

Bryan Daugherty — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:30:39 +0000

Last May, NATO invited 10 Ukrainians to act as an opposing force during Hedgehog 2025, one of NATO’s largest exercises in the Baltics. The Ukrainians successfully simulated the destruction of 17 armored vehicles and conducted 30 strikes in half a day, effectively neutralizing two NATO battalions before dinner. One observing commander summed up the broader implication in three words: “We are finished.” Ominously, the exercise occurred without American forces.The Western debate on Ukraine is sometimes framed as an act of generosity, with NATO propping up a beleaguered partner. This perspective is wrong and dangerously blind to a strategic asset for

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A Torpedo in the Trade Lanes: Naval Warfare Returns to the Indo-Pacific

Jennifer Parker — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:15:10 +0000

A U.S. submarine recently sank an Iranian warship in one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. Many overlooked the incident’s significance. Others misunderstood what had occurred.The sinking of the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean, roughly 40 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, was a graphic reminder of the brutality of war on the high seas. Footage of the ship’s stern exploding and images of Sri Lankan Navy personnel rescuing survivors quickly circulated online, prompting fierce debate about the legality of the strike and the nature of combat at sea. It also exposed a broader problem. Naval warfare remains

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How South Korea Can Bring Iron to the Strait of Hormuz

Jun-seok Lee — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:00:30 +0000

Recent developments indicate that the United States has begun redeploying critical missile defense assets — including elements of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and Patriot batteries — from South Korea to the Middle East. As Washington navigates an increasingly volatile global security landscape, the need for “strategic flexibility” is understandable. South Korea remains a committed partner in the Indo-Pacific and recognizes the gravity of the threats facing our allies elsewhere. Yet the manner in which such decisions are handled raises a fundamental question about alliance trust. It also should prompt Seoul to think hard about what it

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How Are Iran’s Partnerships with Belarus and Russia Holding Up During War?

Jack Roush — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:30:56 +0000

In 2025, Jack Roush wrote, “Russia’s War in Ukraine Has Brought Iran and Belarus Closer Together,” where he argued that a closer security partnership between Belarus and Iran could have devastating consequences for Ukraine. Now that Iran is involved in a war with the United States and Israel, we asked Jack to revisit his arguments.Image: khamenei.ir via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that if the security partnership between Belarus and Iran deepens, it could provide a faster, more secure flow of critical drone technology to Russian forces in Ukraine. After another year of war in Ukraine, has this ultimately

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Your Defense Code Is Already AI-Generated. Now What?

Markus Sandelin — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:00:52 +0000

Somewhere in a defense ministry, someone is drafting a policy on whether to permit AI-assisted software development in defense procurement. The sentiment is understandable, but the policy is unfortunately unenforceable because the code is already there.In April 2025, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella told an audience that 20 to 30 percent of code in some Microsoft repositories is now AI-generated. The figure cannot be independently verified — as multiple analysts have observed, there is no reliable method to measure AI-generated code in a repository after the fact. If Microsoft cannot trace it in their own repos, national defense organizations

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Five Wargames Every Force Design Process Needs

Nathaniel Ambler — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:30:10 +0000

In 2019, Gen. David Berger, the 38th commandant of the Marine Corps, issued his Commandant’s Planning Guidance, which announced the service’s force planning initiative to prepare for conflict in the modern era. Berger identified wargaming as critical to the Marine Corps’ efforts and direction was issued to improve games in both quality and quantity. Twenty major wargames and several smaller games were executed in the first two years to support what became Force Design 2030. This drew deep lessons from the wargames of the inter-war years of the 20th century, used to develop opposed amphibious assault capability. Yet a formal

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Proxy Pressure on Iran: The Promise and Pitfalls of Arming the Kurds

Jonathan Schroden — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:15:16 +0000

Early in the ongoing war against Iran, the Trump administration and its ally, Israel, believed they could foment a popular uprising to topple the Iranian regime. Part of that plan involved arming Kurdish fighters to infiltrate Iran from their locations in Iraq.The idea had intuitive logic. Kurdish fighters have built a reputation as capable battlefield partners of the U.S. military in recent years, particularly in the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Kurdish groups already maintain networks along the Iran–Iraq border and inside Iran. The marriage of their reputation and experience with U.S. capabilities, such as weapons, funding, training,

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Follow the Money: Finance and the Future of Allied Economic Statecraft

Georgie Skipper — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:00:07 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the fourth 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. What if the real battlefield of great-power competition is the global flow of money?The ability to mobilize and direct large pools of public and private capital across critical industries — defense, infrastructure, manufacturing, and technology — is becoming the defining instrument

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The War in Iran and Implications for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Ankit Panda — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:00:24 +0000

The nuclear non-proliferation regime is a global framework of norms, practices, and diplomatic agreements — underpinned by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The regime has had both failures and successes over the decades. Perhaps the biggest challenge in recent years came from Iran. The country’s nuclear activities raised international concern, prompting diplomatic, economic, and covert efforts to constrain it. Iran is a signatory to the NPT and has argued that it was not pursuing a nuclear weapon but rather engaging in legitimate civilian nuclear activities. However, its activities prompted suspicions that

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War as a Force of Destruction, Change, and Opportunity

WOTR Staff — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:53:58 +0000

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The Next Transformation of U.S. Shipbuilding

Eric Chewning — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 08:00:38 +0000

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Eric Chewning, the executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. As HII is America’s largest and one of its oldest military shipbuilders, we asked him to share his thoughts on maritime startups, reindustrialization policy, and more.Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt AI and other automated tools in comparison to other manufacturing industries. What cultural shifts inside a century-old yard are the hardest to drive when adopting new design/manufacturing tools?While HII has been using advanced automation to accelerate production in our shipyards for years, shipbuilding use cases have been

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Converting History into Hard Power: A Polish-German Reckoning

Sławomir Dębski — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:30:21 +0000

Beneath the surface of Polish-German alignment within NATO lies an unresolved problem with growing strategic weight: Almost 70 percent of the Polish public believes that Germany has not made amends for the destruction it wrought on Poland during World War II. As a U.S.-Chinese great power rivalry intensifies, American engagement in Europe becomes less assured, and Berlin aspires to lead on European security, this unfinished ledger is no longer a purely historical or legal matter. It increasingly conditions how German leadership is perceived in Warsaw and across the region. If German rearmament proceeds without a corresponding architecture of trust, doubts

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The Battlefield is the Next Betting Market

Jonathan Walberg — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 07:30:53 +0000

When the United States and Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June last year, the operation caught many observers off guard — the planning was tightly concealed. By contrast, when Operation Epic Fury started in the early hours of Feb. 28, much of the world was staying up refreshing their screens, waiting for it to begin. Open source analysts tracked the usual indicators of escalation: satellite imagery, repositioning of carrier strike groups, and cryptic statements from officials. Intelligence agencies monitored missile deployments, while journalists quoted inside sources. Energy markets reacted to every rumor. Amid this flood of signals, one stood out:

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Trump’s Visit to China Won’t Fix Much, If It Even Happens

Daniel Rechtschaffen — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 07:15:00 +0000

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he would likely delay his planned state visit to Beijing by “a month or so” to focus on the war with Iran underscores the fragility of the U.S.-Chinese truce that has held since October. Expectations of a U.S.-Chinese thaw had resurfaced in recent months as both sides worked toward a summit, reduced tariffs and carried out a series of good-faith measures like delaying implementation of export controls. But Trump’s March 15 call for China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz before his state visit illustrated how quickly external events can reshape the bilateral agenda.Both

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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

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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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