During the first Obama Administration, as American defense policy pivoted toward Asia and grappled with budget pressures following the financial crisis, a critical question emerged: Where did the United States Coast Guard fit in the nation's strategic framework? For decades, the Coast Guard had operated somewhat in the shadows of…
In November 2015, Kenneth Maxwell wrote an essay looking ahead to the coming Trump presidency and we are republishing that essay as a baseline reminder of one element of the launch into a new historical epoch. Reading his piece today, in January 2026 reveals both how much Maxwell understood about…
By Robbin Laird My latest book on Australian defence has focused on the significant challenge facing liberal democracies to develop credible defense in depth capabilities that extend far beyond traditional force structures to encompass whole-of-society considerations. The contemporary security environment demands a fundamental reimagining of how nations prepare for, deter,…
John Blackburn, Air Vice Marshal (Retired) of the Royal Australian Air Force, stands as a leading Australian figure in advancing the discourse on national resilience, from traditional defense concepts to critical infrastructure protection and energy security. His journey, professional background, major published works, and founding of the Institute for Integrated…
By Nick Dowling In 2016, on a stage at Ohio State, I was asked to debate Donald Trump’s foreign policy. My answer was blunt: there wasn’t one. Trump wasn’t a neoclassical realist. He wasn’t an isolationist. He wasn’t anything you could diagram in an IR textbook. He improvised. And it…
By Robbin Laird The traditional architecture of naval power centered on capital ships projecting force through manned platforms is approaching obsolescence. Western navies stand at an inflection point where incremental adaptation will no longer suffice. The emergence, proliferation, and rapid development of maritime autonomous systems (MAS) demands nothing less than…
By Robbin Laird The January 3, 2026 U.S. operation in Venezuela can be understood not as an isolated hemispheric intervention, but as a deliberate strike against Russia's external energy ecosystem and sanctions-evasion machinery, designed to erode Moscow's war-fighting capacity in Ukraine over time. What is being reordered is not merely…
By Robbin Laird While finalizing my book to be published later this year, The Lessons From the Drone Wars, I watched a fascinating Wall Street Journal video which highlighted how a drone command center in Ukraine was operating against the Russian aggressor. Throughout the video they showed calibrated attacks on…
