Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below. *** China This week highlighted the importance of both domestic politics and economic policy in the United States and China, as China held its long-awaited Third Plenum and the Republican National Convention met to formally nominate Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as candidates for president and vice president. China’s Third Plenum produced few clear signals of policy change. While the communique&nbs ..read more

Tensions between China and the Philippines have escalated dramatically in recent months around Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef in the eastern Spratly Islands. The Chinese Coast Guard has repeatedly attempted to block delivery of food, water, and building supplies to the Philippine marine detachment aboard the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II–era warship grounded on the shoal since 1999. In at least two incidents since March, China’s use of coercion has injured Philippines sailors. The risks of escalation are serious. The United States has said its defense obligations under the Mutual Def ..read more

Ryan Evans talks with Philip Zelikow about his recent article for TNSR, “Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking.” Their wide-ranging and insightful conversation covers everything from Zelikow’s career as a high-level foreign policy practitioner and as an historian, his experience directing the 9/11 Commission, his argument that we are in an exceptionally volatile time in global politics, and more. Image: ChatGPT The post Mitigating Risks in a Volatile World: A Conversation with Philip Zelikow appeared first on War on the Rocks ..read more

In 2020, Walker D. Mills and Dylan “Joose” Phillips-Levine wrote “The Future of Tactical Airlift is Here and it’s Vertical,” where they explore tactical airlift use in the U.S. military and argue that rotary-wing and tilt-rotor aircrafts should have a significant role in the future. Four years later, we invited them back to discuss how tactical airlift has evolved.  Read more below. Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Staff Sgt. Rose Gudex) In your 2020 article “The Future of Tactical Airlift is Here and its Vertical” you argued that vertical-lift aircraft were superior to fixed-wing air ..read more

What is a country to do when military action and diplomacy are both presently hopeless? That is the situation the United States finds itself in today: Military escalation will not compel the Houthis to halt their anti-shipping campaign or attacks on Israel. Nor will diplomacy — at least not yet. Intensifying the use of force will strengthen the Houthis’ regional legitimacy and their control over Yemen. At the same time, it will draw the United States further into a conflict it cannot win, thus making it harder to cut losses when the time comes. It will also incentivize Israel to The post When ..read more

Recent calls to create a Cyber Force are only the latest response to the U.S. military’s years-long struggle to train and retain talented cyber personnel. In 2019, for example, an instructor at the Cyber Center of Excellence noted the difficulty of rotating soldiers through assignments executing offensive or defensive cyber operations given the need for specialization within those fields. In 2021, then-Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, commanding general of the Cyber Center of Excellence, observed that graduates of the Cyber School weren’t ready to execute those missions due to a lack of job-specific tr ..read more

Last week, the Chinese Communist Party held its third plenum, a closed door meeting of high-level party officials that has historically indicated the country’s policy direction on major issues, such as the economy. This was the first third plenum held since 2018 and was hotly anticipated, especially considering China’s faltering economic growth. We asked four experts to tell us more about the outcomes of the meeting and what this might indicate about China’s strategy in the coming months and years. Read more below. Collin Meisel Associate Director of Geopolitical Analysis Pardee Inst ..read more

On April 2, 2024, Ukraine’s military struck several buildings in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan region. The strike demonstrated Ukraine’s steadily improving ability to hold targets deep inside Russia at risk. But it was also a stark reminder of just how far Iranian-Russian defense cooperation has come since 2022: As of last year, Russia has indigenized the production of Iranian-designed Shahed drones at Alabuga — practicing a degree of cooperation with Tehran that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The Shaheds and other Iranian-origin drones deployed by ..read more

Madeleine Albright once asked Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Nobody ever asked that question about nuclear weapons. Not using them is the whole point. Deterrence thinking, far from being in decline, is now more fashionable than ever. Deterring China in particular calls for all hands on deck. The notion of “integrated deterrence” is thus a key pilar of the current U.S. National Security Strategy. While buzzwords may change, the basic idea is sure to feature in future strategies as well. Integrating all forces, in a ..read more

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** Having devoted our July 4 newsletter to maps of America, I had to wait till today for my second favorite Independence Day topic: an extended rant about monarchy. Thankfully, the subject only gets more timely with time. Waiting an extra two weeks to write abo ..read more