Defense

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.

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...

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...

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...