By Robbin Laird and Ken Maxwell For the past several years, Western policymakers have comforted themselves with a story: that economic interdependence with China would eventually civilize the relationship, that trade would do the work diplomacy could not, and that rising Chinese power would express itself the way past rising…
By Robbin Laird The photos accompanying this article were taken at Pinal County Airpark near Marana, Arizona on April 4, 2026, during the Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-26, hosted by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1). They tell a story worth examining carefully not just as…
By Robbin Laird The United States Marine Corps is in the midst of the most consequential transformation in its modern history. That transformation is not, at its core, about new platforms or revised force structure tables, though both are part of the story. It is about something more fundamental: a…
By Robbin Laird A recent CSIS conversation between the Honorable Michael Obadal, Under Secretary of the Army, and the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, former Secretary of the Army moderated by Jerry McGinn of CSIS’s Center for the Study of the Industrial Base offered a candid look at how senior Army leadership…
By Robbin Laird Eight photographs from April 4, 2026, at Combat Village near Yuma, Arizona, document an AH-1Z tactics exercise with an unusual premise: the attack helicopter pilot as the person being recovered. The simulated personnel recovery exercise conducted by Maj. James Turner, an AH-1Z Viper pilot with MAWTS-1, turns…
By Robbin Laird I have never had a career. I want to say that plainly, at the start, because it is the truest thing I know about my own life, and because it took me the better part of four decades to be able to say it without apology. A…
By Robbin Laird A colleague recently recommended that I listen to and read through a CSIS discussion between two senior Army officials, the Honorable Michael Obadal, Under Secretary of the Army, and the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, former Secretary of the Army, moderated by Jerry McGinn of CSIS’s Center for the…
By Robbin Laird As we mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, it is worth pausing on one of history’s more consequential ironies: the survival of the American republic was purchased in no small part by the treasury, the diplomacy, and the officer corps of an absolute monarchy that…
