Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below. *** China Lai Ching-te’s inauguration as Taiwan’s new president, featuring a speech that did little to assuage Beijing’s fears that Lai is a “separatist” bent on formal...

The North Korea problem is set to get worse before it gets better. North Korea continues to perfect the reentry technology, targeting capability, and solid-fuel missiles that will dramatically increase the potency and reach of its nuclear weapons, overwhelm missile defenses on the Korean Peninsula, and threaten America’s homeland and allies in Asia....

Welcome to Rewind & Reconnoiter. Each week, we’ll ask one of our authors to look back at an article they’ve written for War on the Rocks in light of a current news event. Did their argument hold up? Read more below to find out. *** In 2021, Kelly McFarland co-authored “To Tackle Instability and Conflict, It’s Time to Elevate Hunger as a National...

Scottish philosopher David Hume observed that “there is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves … we find faces in the moon, armies in the clouds.” Humans have always had a fondness for anthropomorphism, the tendency to attribute human-like traits to non-humans. Psychologists, philosophers, and anthropologists have...

Last week, William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated as president of Taiwan, replacing Tsai Ing-wen as leader of the island nation. Upon his inauguration, Lai told mainland China to “stop threatening Taiwan” and accept the country’s democracy, while China has stepped up military drills around the island since Lai’s election in...

“Ike Returns to Normandy, Tells Reds: Remember Hitler.” With this June 1948 headline, the Washington Post left readers in no doubt about the present politics that often underpin D-Day commemorations. When Western heads of state, including President Joe Biden, visit Normandy next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the concerns of...