• Trump’s Cuba Report Borrowed Heavily from My Book on an Anti‑imperialist Movement – but Twisted the Arguments

    A State Department’s 20 July 2026 report summarizes large portions of the argument in my book — From the Tricontinental to the Global South — without citation. The report preserves the structure of my book’s historical arguments, but it twists its interpretations and conclusions — and it also misrepresents a larger body of scholarship on the relationship between Cuba and the left wing in the U.S. The effect is to support the Trump administration’s false claim that Cuba has “backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil.”

  • Back to (Oil) Normalcy? Not So Fast

    Oil shipments from the Gulf, averaging about 21 million barrels a day before the Iran war, declined precipitously in the first months of the, but the administration insists that the shipments are either “back to normal” or “near normal.” The numbers do not support these claims, and, more importantly, there is no “normal” to go back to, as Iran now has a veto over Gulf shipping.

  • AI, China, and the New Risks to U.S. Security: Q&A with Matan Chorev

    Major powers like the United States and China will find it harder than they hoped to translate advantages in AI into geopolitical dominance. They’ll still depend on external players for key resources, inputs, markets, and more. Emerging powers, meanwhile, will find that the gap between them and the great powers will grow, rather than shrink, since none of them possesses the combination of inputs—chips, compute, capital, talent, and energy—needed to develop frontier AI.

  • North Korea Grows Stronger as South Korea Reckons with Fading U.S. Support

    The Russia-North Korea  partnership has created a clear cycle in which North Korea supplies ammunition and manpower for Russia to use in the war, Moscow supports North Korea with resources and technology in return, and Pyongyang uses these to improve its standing against the south.

  • North Korea Is Learning from War. The U.S.–South Korea Alliance Must Keep Pace

    President Donald Trump’s instruction to the Pentagon on Sunday to ‘substantially reduce’ joint military exercises with South Korea comes at a particularly difficult moment. North Korea is rapidly improving the capabilities that the US–South Korean alliance may someday have to confront. Substantially reducing US–South Korean exercises now would be a mistake.

  • The Significance of the Pentagon’s Investment in a Bauxite Mine in Guyana

    The United States is investing in a bauxite mining operation in Guayana because China has positioned itself at a vulnerable point in a specialized materials supply chain, and the Trump administration has decided that leaving the problem entirely to the market to sort out is no longer acceptable.

  • A Permanent Veto: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

    U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright claims that oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is returning “back to normal” or “normalizing.” But there is no going back to normal because the old normal is dead and buried – a victim of the Trump-driven U.S. strategic defeat in the Iran war. That defeat has made Iran’s commercial veto power over the Strait the new normal.

  • Criminal Gangs Have Diversified Across Latin America, Making Them More Resilient – but Not Untouchable

    Latin America’s most powerful criminal groups have expanded beyond the drug trade – and have become more resilient as a result. Criminal networks now draw revenue from illicit and legal sources alike. Many of them police neighborhoods and influence local politics. Brazil is one place where these trends are on display.

  • The Long Shadow of the Cuban Mafia: From Havana’s Casinos to Quintana Roo’s Smuggling Rings

    An investigative report has pulled back the curtain on one of the most violent and well-connected human-smuggling networks operating between Cuba, Mexico, and the United States: a group Mexican authorities call La Mafia Cubana en Quintana Roo. A threads appears to be leading from the criminal organization all the way to the inner circle of the Castro family itself.

  • Strategic Attack on Iran: Airpower’s Promises, Limits, and Lessons

    Operation Epic Fury demonstrates that airpower is both essential and insufficient. Strategic success ultimately depends on altering Iranian behavior in ways that advance U.S. geopolitical objectives. Five months into a campaign that was originally promised to last weeks, Iran not only has not changed its behavior, but it now controls the vital Strait of Hormuz.

  • ASEAN, Still Toothless, Is Losing Its Faith in the U.S.

    At the July meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers, most of whom were already furious at the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did little to lower the temperature. But ASEAN also continued its trend of saying much while doing almost nothing.

  • U.S.–Nigeria Counter-Terror Cooperation

    The US Africa Command (AFRICOM) is leveraging U.S. intelligence capabilities to help the largely Nigeria-led ground forces with advanced surveillance, intelligence analysis, and joint planning in the fight against Islamist terrorists.

  • Ceuta’s Border Crisis and Europe’s Migration Paradox

    The continent may be seeing fewer irregular crossings overall, but it remains vulnerable to dramatic local shocks. As long as the EU combines a formal commitment to free movement with uneven external control and strong procedural protections, border crises like Ceuta will continue to expose the system’s contradictions.

  • Clausewitz on Operation Epic Fury

    The decision to launch the war and the manner in which it was managed violated foundational principles of war that have guided strategic and operational decision-making for well over a century. Given the prominence of these foundational principles in strategic thinking, it would seem that this was a war decided upon and guided at the strategic level of war by those who lacked not only the training, experience, and understanding to apply them effectively, but also the wisdom to listen to professionals in the security community, in and out of uniform, who surely knew them well.

  • Expert: Oil Is Rarely the Cause of War

    It is a misconception to talk about ‘oil wars’ and great powers going to war to secure energy supplies, says a professor of political science.