Emile Avdaliani Western media outlets recently announced China has built military facilities on the Tajik side of the Tajik-Chinese border. The move is significant as it is first confirmation (built upon earlier unconfirmed reports) of the Chinese military/semi military presence in the Central Asia region. The section where …

Thomas Callender Whatever the promise of emerging technologies, combatant commanders still want more floating mobile airfields. The Pentagon reportedly wants to cancel the mid-life refueling for the aircraft carrier USS Truman, an unexpected move that would save $1.5 billion in fiscal years 2021-23, but only $16.9 million in 2020. More …

Soldiers are increasingly connected to the virtual world and it is degrading Operational Capability.  Our soldiers’ social groupings and structure have been redefined; they are no longer isolated and forced to forge social links with those in their immediate surroundings.  Instead he or she can pick up their …

Robert Scales The flurry of self-congratulatory prose emerging from multi-domain warfare literature today obscures the fact that a slogan such as “multi-domain” is not doctrine, and doctrine rooted in the fundamental tenets of warfare is a prerequisite for meaningful reform. Nowhere is the gap between sloganeering and meaningful doctrine more …

Bryson Bort  The China problem is bigger than you think. It’s bigger than Huawei, bigger than 5G, and bigger than simmering trade wars. It’s bigger, even than China. Recent developments have brought China’s aggressive policy of state-sponsored cyber espionage back into the spotlight: The Justice Department (DOJ) filed charges …

Luke Coffey Imagine a region with energy resources that could help break Western Europe’s dangerous dependence on Russian oil and gas. Now imagine that Russia has revisionist ambitions for that same region; China is already expanding its economic influence there; extremism is on the rise . . . …

Judy Twigg The current conversation about Russia sanctions centers around targeting and scope. Are we punishing the people whose behavior we most want to change? Is there pain, well inflicted, on those individuals responsible for creating chaos in Ukraine and Crimea, for reckless attacks on Sergei Skripal and …

Giancarlo Elia Valori The issue of Sinai and its jihad is increasingly important, also considering Hezbollah’s new strategy in Southern Lebanon, as well as the current deployment of Iranian, Syrian, Russian and various Sunni and jihadist forces between the Golan Heights and the Bekaa Valley, on the border …

A US peace plan for the Middle East – which is set to be unveiled after Israel’s general election on 9 April – has been delayed since December 2017 when Palestinian uproar followed President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, …