WORLD ROUNDUPHow Not to Lead | America Needs a New Nuclear Nonproliferation Toolkit | China’s Military Is Seriously Rehearsing Around Taiwan, and more
· How Not to Lead
· The Great Divorce
· We Are Learning to Bully Back’
· On Greenland, Europe Stood Up, Trump Blinked, and the E.U. Learned a Lesson
· That Isn’t Signaling. China’s Military Is Seriously Rehearsing Around Taiwan
· Japan Shows Way to Boost India-Australia Critical-Minerals Cooperation
· The Israel-Iran Detente Won’t Last
· America Needs a New Nuclear Nonproliferation Toolkit
· Indonesia’s One Million Soldiers Questions
· From Defense to Offence: How Anti-Drone Technologies Are Empowering Militants in a New Era of Coordinated Drone Warfare
How Not to Lead (Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Policy)
America’s allies may comply for now. But the damage to trust will have consequences.
The Great Divorce (Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic)
The marriage between Europe and the United States has been fraught from the first—and now it might be coming apart.
‘We Are Learning to Bully Back’ (Isaac Stanley-Becker and Jonathan Lemire, The Atlantic)
How Europe got Trump to cave on Greenland.
On Greenland, Europe Stood Up, Trump Blinked, and the E.U. Learned a Lesson (Ellen Francis, Washington Post)
For some in the often fractured E.U., Trump’s retreat on the Arctic territory proves that retaliation — not conciliation — is the answer to his hardball tactics.
That Isn’t Signaling. China’s Military Is Seriously Rehearsing Around Taiwan (Nathan Attrill, The Strategist)
Analyzing China’s military activity around Taiwan often invites a simple question: what triggered it? Analysts tend to assume that spikes in aircraft sorties, naval deployments or coast guard operations must be a reaction to something political in Taiwan, US actions in the region or other international events.
But a close examination of 2025 data complicates this assumption. Domestic rhythms inside China—holiday cycles, political security priorities, command availability—shape operational tempo more reliably than events in Taipei or Washington.
Put simply, the scale and persistence of Chinese military activity around Taiwan look less like signaling and more like systematic preparation for the use of force, conducted on Beijing’s own timetable.
Japan Shows Way to Boost India-Australia Critical-Minerals Cooperation (Shruti Mittal, The Strategist)
Slow progress in creating financing mechanisms and achieving binding business commitments is holding back India-Australia critical minerals cooperation.
According to industry stakeholders, discussions between Australian miners and Indian conglomerates have stalled over offtake commitments, junior miners can’t get capital without firm purchase agreements, and investors are further deterred by China’s persistent suppression of lithium and cobalt prices.
Japan’s success with government-directed investing in rare-earths producer Lynas Corporation suggests a way forward.
The Israel-Iran Detente Won’t Last (Raphael S. Cohen, Foreign Policy)
The next round could be bigger and uglier than last year’s 12-day war.
America Needs a New Nuclear Nonproliferation Toolkit (Ariane Tabatabai, Lawfare)
The diplomatic tools the United States has historically depended on to counter proliferation are losing their edge. Adaptation is key.
Indonesia’s One Million Soldiers Questions (Muhammad Fauzan, War on the Rocks)
When journalists or policy experts fretfully discuss arms racing and military buildups in the Indo-Pacific, they tend to focus on Northeast Asian autocracies rather than Southeast Asian democracies. And yet Indonesia, a historically non-aligned nation with no recent history of great-power war, is currently engaged in a process of unprecedented military expansion. If fully realized, this sweeping set of reforms will grow its total active-duty personnel to over 1.2 million in just five years.
This expansion will mostly come from the plan to establish “territorial development infantry battalions” in the army by 2029. Indonesian Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin announced that each battalion will consist of 1,000 personnel. That means these new units will add over 750,000 soldiers to an already sizable force. Indeed, Indonesia currently boasts around 450,000 active military personnel, and, in addition to the aforementioned territorial development battalions, there are other major force enlargement efforts currently underway within the army, navy, and air force.
Such an ambitious expansion with an extremely short timeline demands scrutiny. What threats justify a force build-up of this magnitude? Can the country realistically fund, manage, and sustain such an expansion without undermining modernization and professionalism? How will this policy affect Jakarta’s role in regional security?
From Defense to Offence: How Anti-Drone Technologies Are Empowering Militants in a New Era of Coordinated Drone Warfare (Imtiaz Baloch and Esham Farooq, GNET)
In 2025, Pakistani security forces witnessed at least 405 quadcopter attacks by Islamists Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen (IMP) in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. Concurrently, TTP and IMP acquired anti-drone technology to ward off aerial attacks and disrupt the surveillance and monitoring capabilities of police and security forces. This could signify a potential arms race between militant groups to accelerate drone attacks and adopt technologies to evade counter-terrorism efforts.
Attacks by TTP and IMP are aimed at achieving strategic leverage in geographic areas that are otherwise beyond their usual physical reach. The convergence of defensive measures (anti-drone systems) with offensive tactics (drone attacks) reflects a significant shift in the militant operational landscape.
While displaying their anti-drone capabilities, these groups have simultaneously launched coordinated drone attacks, an emerging tactic that marks a new phase in militant warfare in Pakistan. Such coordination demonstrates increasing sophistication in planning, communication, and technological adaptation. This trend highlights not only the normalization of drone-based technologies in the region but also the militants’ parallel emphasis on protecting their operational spaces through disrupting surveillance measures.
