A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. *** Last week, Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office after his predecessor, Fumio Kishida stepped...

In 2023, a dramatic series of events led Western observers to declare the imminent demise of the Wagner Group, Russia’s infamous paramilitary force. First, there was Wagner’s costly assault on Bakhmut in the spring, where the organization was estimated to have lost up to 20,000 fighters, many of them convicts drawn from Russian prisons. Then there was...

The Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023 delivered a grim lesson in the brutal effectiveness of counter-mobility operations. Advancing Ukrainian forces found themselves in vast Russian minefields in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, where in some places multiple anti-tank mines were stacked in deadly vertical layers. For many Ukrainian crews, survival...

The Department of Defense has a building alliance capability problem. Through the 2018 and 2022 National Defense Strategies, the Department of Defense has trumpeted its alliance system as a primary pillar of national security. Yet as of late 2024, the collective benefits of coproduction and co-development of the critical technologies that will decide...

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. *** Iran On Oct. 1, Iran launched its second major direct attack against Israel since April. The barrage of around 180 missiles, which initial assessments suggest caused...

Despite the operational and intelligence successes of Israel in Lebanon in September 2024, a troubling question hangs over the country: Who bears responsibility for the failure to anticipate the Oct. 7 Hamas assault that led also to the war in Lebanon and on other fronts? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his intelligence chiefs appear locked in...