By Robbin Laird Over the course of 2026, I am completing a series of interconnected books that examine what I believe represents a fundamental inflection point in modern history. These works are not independent scholarly exercises but rather pieces of a larger analytical puzzle, each contributing to our understanding…
By Robbin Laird Among the many charges levelled at Donald Trump, that he is impulsive, inconsistent, transactional, hostile to alliances, one rarely examined proposition cuts in a different direction: that across both of his terms in office, Trump has pursued a strikingly coherent strategic objective. That objective is the containment…
By: Stephen Kuper Just as the Cold War was characterised by a period of “Competitive Coexistence” between the United States and the Soviet Union, our new multipolar world embodies this in a significantly more complex way, presenting significant challenges for Australia and its “Fight Tonight” force. Human history has been…
By Robbin Laird The fundamental assumptions underpinning Western defense planning are collapsing. For generations, democratic nations operated under the comfortable presumption that major conflicts would arrive with ample warning, years, perhaps a decade, to mobilize industrial capacity, train forces, and prepare society for war. This strategic cushion has evaporated. The…
By Robbin Laird For decades, national security establishments have organized around crisis management or the structured response to disruptions within fundamentally stable systems. The Cuban Missile Crisis, though terrifying, operated within understood parameters: known actors, measurable capabilities, calculable escalation ladders. Even the most dangerous moments followed a logic that skilled…
By Robbin Laird In February 2026, a team from OpenAI published what may become a landmark document in the emerging field of AI geopolitics. “AI and International Security: Pathways of Impact and Key Uncertainties” represents something unusual: a major AI laboratory attempting to map how its own technology could reshape…
Recently, Lt General (Retired) Preziosa published two essays in European Affairs in Italian which we are including in translation after this overview of his analysis of Europe’s position in the evolving global system. His argument rests on a fundamental proposition: the Russian-Ukrainian war represents not a regional conflict but a…
By Robbin Laird February 7, 2026, The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article entitled, Squeezed by U.S. and China, the World’s Middle Powers are Teaming Up. Upon reading this article, I wanted to take that assessment and compare it to the findings in my forthcoming book with Ken Maxwell…
