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The Franchise That Governs: Why the Sahel's Jihadists Are Building States While Africa's States Collapse

The Franchise That Governs: Why the Sahel's Jihadists Are Building States While Africa's States Collapse

The Sahel has become the world's deadliest region for terrorism, accounting for half of global terror deaths. But the real story is not violence—it is governance. Jihadist groups now tax, adjudicate, and administer territories that nominal states cannot reach. As this parallel order expands...

The Arithmetic of Abandonment

The Arithmetic of Abandonment

America's 60% humanitarian aid cut forces a brutal question: who loses most—fragile states facing immediate mortality, China struggling to fill the vacuum, or American soft power bleeding out across generations? The answer is all three, but the damage operates on different timescales with...

Runway Roulette: America's Pacific Dispersal Gamble

Runway Roulette: America's Pacific Dispersal Gamble

The United States is spending $40 billion to rebuild World War II-era Pacific airfields as a hedge against Chinese missiles. The strategy assumes dispersal complicates targeting. But satellites see everything, logistics constrain everything, and coral crumbles unpredictably. Is Washington...

The Precision Paradox: Why NATO Keeps Buying Weapons Russia Has Learned to Defeat

The Precision Paradox: Why NATO Keeps Buying Weapons Russia Has Learned to Defeat

GPS-guided munitions have failed catastrophically against Russian jamming in Ukraine. Yet Western militaries continue building doctrine around these vulnerable systems. The explanation lies not in ignorance but in institutional structures that profit from fragility.

The Submarine That Bends Everything

The Submarine That Bends Everything

North Korea's first nuclear-powered submarine sits at Sinpo, its reactor status unknown and missiles untested. Yet the strategic calculations it forces in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington reveal that regional stability, extended deterrence, and the nonproliferation regime were never as separate as...

The Dictator's Dilemma: Why Xi's Taiwan Problem Has No Good Solutions

The Dictator's Dilemma: Why Xi's Taiwan Problem Has No Good Solutions

The 2027 'invasion window' misunderstands China's Taiwan calculus. Xi Jinping's political survival does not require taking the island—it requires ensuring no one can challenge him for not taking it. The system he built to guarantee his power may guarantee escalation instead.

The Hierarchy of the Ungrievable: Why Sudan Burns Alone

The Hierarchy of the Ungrievable: Why Sudan Burns Alone

With over 150,000 dead and famine gripping multiple states, Sudan's civil war has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The West's near-total absence reveals not hypocrisy but something more structural: a new hierarchy of geopolitical concern that operates according to rules rarely...

The 2027 Question: What Breaks First Over Taiwan

The 2027 Question: What Breaks First Over Taiwan

China's military readiness deadline approaches as American deterrence, semiconductor supply chains, and allied resolve in Tokyo and Seoul each show stress fractures. The question is not whether the system holds—but which component fails first, and whether the failure propagates before anyone...

Trump's Nigeria Strike: Precision Without Purpose

Trump's Nigeria Strike: Precision Without Purpose

The Christmas Day Tomahawk strikes against ISIS in Nigeria demonstrated American reach but not American strategy. As ISWAP grows stronger and the Sahel slips toward Russia, tactical excellence continues to substitute for strategic coherence in U.S. counterterrorism.

Germany's Conscription Questionnaire Reveals Europe's Mobilization Illusion

Germany's Conscription Questionnaire Reveals Europe's Mobilization Illusion

Berlin's new selective service law asks young men to fill out forms while NATO's eastern flank faces a 2028-2030 threat window. The gap between bureaucratic gesture and military capability exposes Europe's defense architecture as dependent on American protection it may not receive.

The 2027 Prophecy: How a Date Became a Destiny

The 2027 Prophecy: How a Date Became a Destiny

U.S. intelligence warned that China would be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The assessment has since escaped its origins, becoming a self-reinforcing timeline that shapes military budgets, alliance postures, and crisis dynamics across the Pacific—regardless of whether Xi Jinping has decided...

The Ledger and the Loophole

The Ledger and the Loophole

Iran now openly offers missiles for cryptocurrency. North Korea funds its weapons program with stolen Bitcoin. As sanctioned states build parallel financial systems, the West faces an uncomfortable question: what happens when economic coercion loses its teeth?