When a former NATO secretary general warns that Britain is “underprepared, underinsured, under attack” and “not safe,” it is more than a routine shot in the Westminster blame game. Lord George Robertson’s recent intervention goes to the heart of the United Kingdom’s war‑fighting credibility in an era of state‑on‑state confrontation.…
By Robin Laird Begin with a simple arithmetic problem. A kamikaze drone costs roughly $5,000 to manufacture. A Patriot interceptor missile costs $4 million. An adversary launching a swarm of 200 cheap propeller-driven drones, each priced at $20,000, presents a defender using Patriot interceptors with a bill of $800 million…
For three decades, the dominant narrative of Western economies has been one of deindustrialization, offshoring, and financialization. Manufacturing moved to Asia. Software and services became the prestige sectors. “College for all” became the default cultural script, and anyone who questioned it was accused of writing off an entire generation. The…
By Robbin Laird European primes can evolve into kill web ecosystem orchestrators but only if they move faster than their current political, financial, and organizational wiring allows, and Ukraine’s war laboratory window will not stay open indefinitely. The strategic question is deceptively simple: Can Europe’s defense primes make the transition…
By Kenneth Maxwell When I wrote in April 2012 of ‘a tale of two competitions,’ I was describing a Brazil suspended between options, still debating the merits of the Dassault Rafale, the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, and the Saab Gripen NG while simultaneously wrestling with the politics of Embraer’s Super…
By Robbin Laird The United States was not born as a centralized nation-state. It was improvised as a federation, then repeatedly re-engineered in crisis. From the loose league of the Articles of Confederation to the stronger architecture of the 1787 Constitution, from the Union victory in the Civil War to…
By Kenneth Maxwell Brazilian foreign policy has long prided itself on a distinct grammar: sovereignty, non‑intervention, dialogue with adversaries, and strategic autonomy rather than bloc alignment. Layered on top of that diplomatic tradition, especially within the Brazilian left, sits a powerful anti‑imperialist political culture that reads world politics primarily through…
By Robbin Laird The 2025 publications in the Portugal and Brazil Confront the Contemporary World series represent a pivotal consolidation of an ambitious intellectual endeavor, one that repositions Portuguese and Brazilian historical experiences as central rather than peripheral to understanding global modernity. Three substantial volumes appearing this year demonstrate how…
