The Commitment Trap
Australia's $368 billion submarine program locks it into US alliance dependency while China remains its largest trading partner. Trump 2.0's economic loyalty tests are eliminating the space for strategic hedging.
Michael Soren
The Precision Mirage: What Happens When GPS-Guided Weapons Meet Systematic Jamming
Western militaries built three decades of doctrine around satellite-guided precision. Russia and China built their counter-strategies around denying it. The weapons still work—but the advantage they promised is eroding faster than the modernization meant to restore it.
The Sahel's Sovereignty Ritual: Why the Junta Alliance Fights Wars It Cannot Win
Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have launched joint military operations against jihadists with a force one-twentieth the size counterinsurgency requires. The offensive is not a strategy for victory—it is a performance of sovereignty that the three military governments cannot afford to abandon,...
The Quiet Realignment: How Australia and Indonesia Are Rewriting Indo-Pacific Security
The new Australia-Indonesia defense treaty creates strategic ambiguity that complicates adversary planning while preserving Indonesian non-alignment—a model that could reshape regional security cooperation beyond traditional alliance structures.
The Quarry's Revenge: Can Australia Break China's Rare Earth Stranglehold?
Australia extracts rare earths then ships them to China for processing, creating circular dependency. The processing challenge is surmountable, but requires abandoning the fiction that mining equals sovereignty and accepting the true costs of strategic independence.
The Nuclear Mirage: Why Australia Can't Actually Maintain Nuclear Submarines
Three years after AUKUS, Australia lacks the dry docks, workforce, and industrial base to service nuclear submarines. The gap between political promises and physical reality grows wider each year.
The Sacrificial Fleet
Australia's military exists to signal commitment through spectacular failure, not to win wars. This explains why $50 billion in annual spending hasn't produced readiness for high-intensity conflict.
The Carrier Question: China's Missiles and the Future of Taiwan Defense
China's long-range anti-ship missiles can now theoretically reach American carriers thousands of miles from its coast. But whether this capability translates into strategic advantage depends on kill chains, countermeasures, and political will—variables that neither side has tested in combat.
The Decade That Decides: America, China, and Russia's Collision Course
Three great powers operate on three incompatible timescales. Washington resets every four years, Beijing plans through 2035, Moscow thinks in generations. The next decade will reveal which clock keeps better time—and whether any of them can be synchronized before collision.
The Pacific Auction: How Micro-States Learned to Sell Sovereignty
Pacific Island nations with populations smaller than provincial towns have discovered their geography commands superpower attention. The bidding war between Beijing and Washington delivers resources—but at what cost to the states caught between?
Why Sudan's Peace Agreements Keep Succeeding at Everything Except Peace
Sudan has signed more than a dozen major peace accords since 1972. Each promised transformation. Each delivered reconfiguration. The problem isn't failed implementation—it's a political economy where durable peace is structurally irrational for those with guns.
Japan's $58 Billion Bet: Deterrence or Target Practice?
Tokyo's record defence budget buys genuine capabilities that will complicate Chinese military planning. But constitutional constraints, industrial limitations, and alliance dependencies mean the billions purchase time and options—not security guarantees. The honest answer: Japan is creating both...
