Geopolitics & international affairs
Germany is buying American Tomahawk cruise missiles. Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced the purchase on Thursday, confirming a deal sealed on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara. The decision closes what Merz called a “critical strategic gap” in German defense. Germany’s existing Taurus cruise missile has a range of about 500 km (311 miles). […]
The ceasefire that was supposed to end the US-Iran war is dead, and both sides are talking past each other. Iran says it kept its word. Trump says the ceasefire is “terminated.” And the president is now threatening to “decimate and completely destroy all areas of Iran” if the Iranian government tries to assassinate him. […]
President Donald Trump has threatened to “decimate and destroy all areas of Iran” if the Iranian government succeeds in assassinating him, escalating the rhetorical stakes of a conflict that already shows no signs of ending. In a late-night Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump said he had given orders to the military to be prepared […]
For nearly two decades, the guiding assumption of Indian foreign policy was that the United States would help India rise to become a major power. That assumption is now in question. A debate is unfolding in New Delhi’s strategic community, captured in a recent analysis by Muqtedar Khan in The Diplomat, over whether India’s fraying […]
On June 8, the Pentagon added 64 Chinese companies to its Chinese Military Companies list, bringing the total to 188 entities. The scale of the expansion drew attention, but not because of new sanctions. The CMC list does not, by itself, prohibit any commercial transactions. What it does is classify. The list, maintained under Section […]
In February 2025, President Trump told Ukraine it “didn’t have the cards.” Sixteen months later, at the NATO summit in Turkey, he granted Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missile interceptors on its own soil. What changed? The short answer, according to Dmytro Kuleba, is that Ukraine learned how to handle Trump — and quietly […]
Ukraine is fighting the most technologically innovative war in modern history, not because its government planned it that way, but because the government was too weak to control the process. The result is a phenomenon that analysts are calling “front-brewing”: small industrial workshops build drones, front-line technicians rework them in real time, and the feedback […]
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon have caused catastrophic damage to some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth. The ancient Phoenician city of Tyre — a UNESCO World Heritage site — and the 12th-century Crusader fortress of Beaufort Castle have both been hit. Lebanese Culture Minister Ghassan Salame condemned the strikes and said he […]
An Israeli drone strike hit the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, on Friday, wounding several hospital workers. The attack was the latest in a pattern that the Palestinian Health Ministry describes as the “systematic targeting of health facilities.” The strike wounded several Palestinians at the medical facility, according to Gaza’s […]
North Korea wants military satellites. Russia has them. The usual question is whether Moscow will transfer the technology to Pyongyang. But a deeper analysis, published in The Diplomat, suggests the real threat is something quieter: Russia may simply share what its satellites already see. “Rather than asking whether Russia will transfer sophisticated satellite technologies to […]
