By Robbin Laird The comfortable certainties of the post-Cold War era are dissolving. For Australia, this transformation presents both unprecedented challenges and opportunities to reshape its role as a strategic actor in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is moving from alliance dependence toward more strategic independence while deepening operational integration with trusted…
Brazil stands at a critical juncture that will determine whether it emerges as a strategic power or remains trapped as a raw material supplier in China's sphere of influence. While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration pursues deeper integration with Beijing through initiatives like BRICS expansion and transcontinental infrastructure…
By Robbin Laird My friend and colleague Erik Hoffmann and I worked extensively on analyzing the efforts to change the Soviet system under the pressures of the technological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. This was when Brzezinski published his book on the technotronic age and described the challenges a…
By Pasquale Preziosa In recent months, Russia has radically transformed the way it uses drones, making these low-cost tools a pillar of its strategy. What appeared at the beginning of the war to be a rudimentary bombing campaign, conducted with Iranian-made aircraft adapted for local use, has gradually evolved into…
History rarely repeats itself exactly, but it often rhymes with haunting resonance. The international coalitions that formed around the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine since 2022 reveal striking parallels in how major powers align themselves during ideological and geopolitical crises. Both conflicts transformed from…
In the early hours of a spring morning in 2024, a beaten-up Soviet-era propeller plane taxied to a halt on a rural Ukrainian runway. Two unlikely warriors emerged from the cockpit, a 56-year-old pilot who had learned to fly as a hobby before the war, and a 38-year-old former auto…
By Pierre Tran Paris - The Chinese navy was large, growing fast, and led by a complex command structure which showed an aggressive approach in operations at sea, the navy chief of staff, Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, told the Association des Journalistes de Défense (AJD) Sept. 3. Meanwhile, the Russian navy…
When Vladimir Putin launched his "special military operation" against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he envisioned a swift victory that would restore Russia's great power status. Instead, the invasion has triggered one of the most devastating scientific brain drains in modern history, systematically dismantling the mathematics and physics capabilities that…
