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…
By Robbin Laird A new special report brings together three strands of analysis on the MV-75 Cheyenne into a single argument about the future of trans-Atlantic defense. Over the past several weeks, I have written a series of pieces tracing how the U.S. Army’s MV-75 Cheyenne tiltrotor can help reshape…
By Robbin Laird When visiting Bahrain some years ago, I made a point of seeing the Portuguese fort. Standing inside those ancient walls, looking at the stonework — Arab foundations overlaid with Portuguese military engineering — I was struck by a simple but powerful thought: the strategic logic that drove…
When I worked on German reunification in the 1980s, one of the core concerns was not simply whether the two German states could be brought together institutionally, but whether the deep historical and cultural gap between East and West Germany could be bridged in any meaningful way. The question was…
By Robbin Laird This article is the convergence point of several analytical projects I have pursued in recent years: the breakdown of the post–Cold War order and the global war in Ukraine, the reconfiguration of power across key middle states such as Australia and Brazil in the shadow of China’s…
By Robbin Laird My 2026 framework Mastering Chaos begins from a premise that most leadership literature still refuses to accept: traditional crisis management is not merely inadequate. It is actively dangerous. It was designed for a world of isolated, slow-moving systems with slack built into every layer. That world no…
By Robbin Laird When Admiral Samuel Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Bitcoin is “a reality” and “a valuable computer science tool, as a power projection,” he did more than offer an off‑the‑cuff comment on a fashionable technology. He signaled that at least one major combatant commander now…
