Key Takeaways: Chinese President Xi Jinping will land in Washington next week pursuing deals on trade, AI governance, and security, but analysts say his true objective lies in projecting strength to a domestic audience ahead of an upcoming political shakeup. Xi is scheduled to arrive Wednesday, Sept. 23, at a time when personnel changes are starting to take shape in […]

September 27, 2024 – The deadly pager attack in Lebanon has sparked global concerns over supply chain security. Chinese international relations scholar Shen Yi stated that China should take some measures in response to the U.S.’s increasingly aggressive stance in the strategic competition with China. When someone first sent me this message—that a pager used in Lebanon had been converted […]

Behind China’s aircraft carriers lies the strategic depth of the Pacific; behind Türkiye’s, however, lie narrow seas that are becoming increasingly transparent. One of the most consequential mistakes in debating the future of naval power is to treat the platforms operated by major powers as models that can be replicated independently of the geographic and strategic conditions in which they […]

Authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province have intensified operations to identify, detain and deport Afghans without valid visas, as UN human rights experts urged Pakistan to halt the return of people who could face persecution, torture or other serious rights violations in Afghanistan. Punjab’s Home Department said security personnel are increasing checks in residential areas and markets across the province. Afghans […]

Turkiye’s intelligence chief traveled to Pakistan after holding talks with senior Taliban officials in Afghanistan, as Ankara renewed efforts to help ease persistent tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban. Ibrahim Kalin, head of Turkiye’s National Intelligence Organization, met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Inter-Services Intelligence chief Asim Malik in Islamabad, according to Turkiye’s […]

More than 439,000 Afghan migrants have been deported from Iran so far this year, accounting for 84% of all returns from the country, according to a new report by the UN refugee agency. UNHCR said 522,200 Afghans returned from Iran between Jan. 1 and Sept. 12, including 439,000 who were deported. The agency said large-scale returns are putting additional pressure […]

Key Takeaways: Abstract Recent analytical breakthroughs in strategic studies—most notably this author’s structural realist evaluation of Saudi Arabian nuclear restraint[2]—demonstrate that states forego sovereign nuclear armaments not due to legal adherence to non-proliferation norms, but as the result of a rational cost-benefit calculation grounded in external security arrangements, institutional guardrails, and strategic ambiguity. This article examines the applicability of the […]

Key Takeaways: Asia’s oldest defense relationship is changing, with India and Russia moving beyond traditional arms sales toward greater technology sharing and joint production. For decades, the partnership has been built around Russian military hardware, but India’s growing defense capabilities are now reshaping the balance between the two countries. During the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, Indian […]

Pakistan should honor its defense commitments to Saudi Arabia through strictly defensive cooperation and protection of maritime commerce, while avoiding offensive military action against the Houthis that could drag Islamabad into a wider Middle Eastern conflict, alienate Iran, and deepen its domestic and strategic vulnerabilities. The Makkah Joint Defense Agreement between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia was widely considered the […]