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Assessments

The Trillion-Dollar Question

The Trillion-Dollar Question

President Trump's call for a 50% defense budget increase promises to fix America's military readiness crisis. But the system that converts dollars into capability is broken. More money through broken channels produces contractor profits, not combat power.

The Philippines Cannot Defend Its Undersea Cables—and Neither Can Anyone Else

The Philippines Cannot Defend Its Undersea Cables—and Neither Can Anyone Else

Ninety-five percent of Philippine internet traffic travels through fiber-optic threads that no navy can protect. China's gray zone operations exploit legal voids and attribution impossibilities, leaving Southeast Asia's digital infrastructure structurally vulnerable to interference that cannot...

America's Nigeria Problem: Why Military Strikes Risk Handing Beijing a Strategic Gift

America's Nigeria Problem: Why Military Strikes Risk Handing Beijing a Strategic Gift

The Christmas Day airstrikes against ISIS in Nigeria exposed a deeper tension in American strategy. Washington wants counterterrorism results and Nigerian partnership—but its methods may be driving Africa's most consequential state toward China's waiting embrace.

Why China Keeps Pouring Concrete into the South China Sea

Why China Keeps Pouring Concrete into the South China Sea

Beijing's artificial islands violate international law, alienate neighbors, and invite American warships into contested waters. China builds them anyway. The reason reveals uncomfortable truths about its Taiwan planning horizon and the method behind apparent recklessness.

The Trillion-Dollar Bottleneck

The Trillion-Dollar Bottleneck

Trump's proposed 50% defence spending surge promises a 'Dream Military' by 2027. But with the industrial base running at 41% capacity and 700,000 security clearances backlogged, the money cannot buy what the factories cannot build. The bottleneck is physical, not fiscal.

The Philippines Cannot Defend What It Cannot Connect

The Philippines Cannot Defend What It Cannot Connect

China has developed specialized equipment to sever undersea cables at 4,000-meter depths. The Philippines routes 95% of its international data—including military command systems—through exactly such cables. If Beijing cuts these connections during a Taiwan crisis, Manila's ability to coordinate...

The UAE's Red Sea Gambit: Strategic Retreat or Preparation for the Real War?

The UAE's Red Sea Gambit: Strategic Retreat or Preparation for the Real War?

Abu Dhabi's withdrawal from Yemen was neither overextension nor weakness—it was a calculated bet that Iran matters more than the Horn of Africa. The Emirates are consolidating forces for a Gulf confrontation they believe is coming, trading influence in one theater for survivability in another.

The Protectors Who Couldn't Protect

The Protectors Who Couldn't Protect

Western counterterrorism in the Sahel collapsed not from poor execution but structural impossibility. What fills the vacuum—Russian mercenaries, jihadist governance, military juntas—offers something foreign intervention never could: belonging. The lesson is uncomfortable.

The Six-Minute Warning: What China's Taiwan Exercises Reveal About the Vanishing Window for Defense

The Six-Minute Warning: What China's Taiwan Exercises Reveal About the Vanishing Window for Defense

China's Joint Sword exercises compressed attack timelines to hours, not days. Taiwan's radars can detect missiles six minutes out—but detection is not decision. The real question is whether anyone can act on what they see before the window closes entirely.

The Ice That Binds: Trump's Greenland Gambit and the Fractures in American Arctic Strategy

The Ice That Binds: Trump's Greenland Gambit and the Fractures in American Arctic Strategy

Trump's demand for Greenland ownership does not create contradictions in US Arctic strategy—it exposes structural fractures that have long empowered patient adversaries. The real question is whether Washington can align its planning horizons with melting realities.

The Rehearsal That Never Ends

The Rehearsal That Never Ends

China's surprise military drills around Taiwan aren't preparing for a blockade—they are the blockade, executed in installments. As exercises blur into operations, the invasion may have already begun at a tempo too slow for democracies to recognize.

America's Quiet War in Nigeria

America's Quiet War in Nigeria

December's airstrikes in Sokoto marked the first direct US military action inside Nigeria. The intervention architecture that produced them was designed to expand. Whether Washington can control what it has started depends on understanding why the Somalia analogy misleads.