June 24, 2020

How Will the EU Survive the Coronavirus?

What will be the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on Europe?  How will the pandemic change the trajectory of European development? One way to answer these questions is to ask where Europe seemed to be headed before the coronavirus struck and then assess what is likely to change as a result of the pandemic. We will address these questions based

June 24, 2020

Terrorism in Afghanistan: A Joint Threat Assessment (Chapter III)

Chapter III: Afghanistan in the Regional Security Interplay ContextAs it has for centuries, Afghanistan, based on its location, sits at the intersection of many competing regional and international security agendas. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the geostrategic security interplay between the British and Russian Empires provided the backdrop

June 23, 2020

An Affordable Defense of Asia

US military advantages over China are steadily eroding…For the last two decades, China has studied the US military, identified its key weaknesses, and developed the tactics and forces best suited to exploit those vulnerabilities. These challenges are compounded by significant deficiencies in today’s US joint force across all domains of

June 10, 2020

China’s Inopportune Pandemic Assertiveness

For a state just beginning to recover from Covid-19, China has been remarkably active in pressing its sovereignty claims. Chinese forces have been involved in a spate of incidents around its borders, most recently a series of tense encounters with India. Foreign media have seized on this as another example of Chinese opportunism, in which Beijing

May 11, 2020

Still First to Fight? Shaping the 21st Century Marine Corps

The headline in the New York Times on June 1, 1918, read “Marines – First to Fight.” The day before, a brigade of Marines attached to the U.S. Army’s 2nd Division had raced to the Western Front to halt a breakthrough threatening Paris. They stopped the Germans cold, and five days later, the brigade successfully counterattacked at Belleau Wood

April 20, 2020

An American Perspective on Post-Pandemic Geopolitics

Viewed from the other side of the Atlantic, the coronavirus crisis will have significant geopolitical implications in the near term, becoming possibly even more significant over the next few years.With this in mind, we should expect politics in Europe and the US to be more focused on the current health crisis and its follow-on implications.

April 15, 2020

Building a Marine Corps for Every Contingency, Clime, and Place

Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger’s recently published Force Design 2030 has riled up both the “old guard,” who fear for the service’s future, and industry lobbyists, who fear for the future of contracts for amphibious ships and F-35s. The document rationally outlines the changes necessary for the Marine Corps to play its role as the nation’s

April 14, 2020

Responding to the Epidemic in Wuhan: Insights into Chinese Military Logistics

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has portrayed its response to the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in heroic terms: battling against an insidious enemy, PLA personnel courageously and tirelessly helped to mitigate the disaster in the epidemic-ravaged city. The PLA has even made the amazing (and highly improbable) claim that it accomplished

April 14, 2020

The Virus Of Disinformation: Echoes of Past Bioweapons Accusations in Today's Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories

Despite its moniker, the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic almost certainly did not originate in Spain. The belligerents of World War I suppressed reporting on the outbreak in order to avoid harming morale, while Spain, as a neutral country, had a media free to report openly on the extent of the disease. Since most media coverage of the outbreak came

April 10, 2020

The Melians’ Revenge

Russia’s military modernization and aggressive behavior continues to threaten the security of NATO’s frontline Allies, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russia’s proximity to these states and their distance from other NATO Allies presents the Alliance with a fundamental problem: if a crisis were to erupt with little warning