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…
By Kenneth Maxwell A crisis at the Strait of Hormuz was always coming. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 10, 2026 that Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and the UAE’s smaller Habshan-Fujairah pipeline are now among the most critical pieces of infrastructure in the world economy, the only overland arteries…
By Pierre Tran Paris – President Emmanuel Macron started Feb. 17 an official visit to India, a few days after the defense ministry in New Delhi said it had given the green light for contract talks for a further batch of Rafale and missiles, with local media reports of a…
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…
