Space is now a key stage in the competition among great powers. No longer peripheral, it is becoming integral to how states pursue dominance and shape the international system. Grand strategy is the long-term (multi-generational) effort by states to secure advantage and shape the international system. When great powers compete, they do so through rival grand strategies, extending their pursuit of security and influence across domains.
Since the onset of hostilities, Russia has used the war to target sites that anchor Ukrainian national and spiritual identity.
By anchoring itself in Africa's emerging space economy, Washington has a rare opportunity to strengthen its partnerships on the continent and compete more effectively with China in the process. Now, it’s up to policymakers to seize this opening.
“The terms of the new Memorandum of Understanding agreed to between Washington and Tehran over the weekend have now been made public, and the agreement as currently formulated is more lopsided and less favorable than even the skeptics had initially predicted.”
The potential for change within Iran persists—although the mechanism and timing for such a change are still unclear.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for Russians — both Russia’s elites and ordinary citizens — to ignore the growing disaster that has been created by more than four years of Vladimir Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine.
Though battered by the United States and Israel, Iran is putting renewed emphasis on its network of regional proxies.
Space-based nuclear weapons are a serious matter, and one that deserves the very highest level of national attention.
Which version of the Russia story will global publics end up believing: the one in which it is a misunderstood friend, or the one where Putin is prepared to bankrupt the state to satisfy his will to imperial power?
The US Coast Guard should work with South American partners to end China’s illegal and environmentally harmful fishing practices.
Mr. Macron’s gambit rests on a fundamental miscalculation. It presupposes that France has the economic heft, military capabilities and political legitimacy to chart a truly independent course in world affairs.
By tying the Accords to the current Iran conflict, the Trump administration risks turning what was previously seen by regional states as a strategic opportunity into something approaching an unwelcome obligation. Doing so would end up serving neither the Accords nor U.S. regional policy well.
This essay by Dr. S. Frederick Starr was written for the meeting of the World Society for the Study, Preservation, and Popularization of the Culture of Uzbekistan, a body that has brought together Uzbek-sourced manuscripts from all the world’s museums. It has sent teams to the US, France, Germany, Turkey, and Japan, and has vastly expanded the known body of manuscripts from Central Asia, publishing them online and in print editions of superior quality. Dr. Starr has been a trustee since its founding in 2017.
The lesson is clear: both Trump and his successors would be wise to factor in the home front more strategically before the next U.S. military action abroad.
The Iranian regime may be down, but it is far from defeated. It is, moreover, adapting in ways that will invariably pose a problem for Western security—and a political and ideological challenge for its Muslim neighbors.
China believes peace is possible, as long as only the United States changes its behavior.
The Iran war seems to have devolved into a waiting game
It’s the most important story that most people aren’t watching.