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Great Powers

Strategic analysis of US-China-Russia competition, multipolarity, and the dynamics of great power rivalry that shape the international order.

The Quiet Realignment: How Australia and Indonesia Are Rewriting Indo-Pacific Security

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Japan's $58 Billion Bet: Deterrence or Target Practice?

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...

China's Nine-Carrier Cathedral: Monument or Miscalculation?

China's Nine-Carrier Cathedral: Monument or Miscalculation?

The Pentagon says China will field nine aircraft carriers by 2035—the largest Indo-Pacific carrier buildup since World War II. But building ships optimized for blue-water prestige while Taiwan sits 100 miles from the mainland reveals a strategic culture at war with strategic geography.

Japan's $58 Billion Defence Budget: The Power of Useful Ambiguity

Japan's $58 Billion Defence Budget: The Power of Useful Ambiguity

Japan's record military spending buys missiles and command integration with American forces. What it cannot buy is constitutional clarity. That ambiguity may be the alliance's most valuable asset—a deterrent that works precisely because no one knows its limits.

The Silicon Shield's Expiration Date

The Silicon Shield's Expiration Date

Taiwan's semiconductor monopoly has made the island indispensable to its international partners. But American industrial policy is explicitly designed to end that dependence. As chip production diversifies and military costs rise, the calculus sustaining Taiwan's security is quietly shifting.

The Unmaking of the West

The Unmaking of the West

When America sanctions Europeans for enforcing European law, it is not merely disagreeing about policy—it is declaring that the European conception of digital governance is itself illegitimate. The transatlantic relationship has survived many disputes. It may not survive this one.