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. *** North Korea Russia used a North Korean Hwasong-11 missile to strike Kharkiv, Ukraine in January, according to U.N. sanctions monitors, further proof that Moscow...

Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a short series examining maritime geography and strategic challenges in specific bodies of water, ranging from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Guinea and the South China Sea. The Arctic Ocean may be the world’s smallest but it looms large in the imagination. Remote and unique, the Arctic is, for some at least,...

The Clements-Strauss Asia Policy Program hosted Xiaobing Li, professor of history and the Don Betz endowed chair in international studies at the University of Central Oklahoma, for a book talk on China’s New Navy: The Evolution of PLAN from the People’s Revolution to a 21st Century Cold War. Image: Ken Hodge The post The Evolution of China’s Navy...

In 2022, Tyler Bowen wrote “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and NATO’s Crisis of Nuclear Credibility” for War on the Rocks, in which he argued that nuclear weapons were required for NATO to deter Russia as conventional NATO forces were incapable of doing so. In response to continued Russian nuclear rhetoric and Polish President Duda’s comments on participation...

According to a well-known Jewish proverb, “It is not the mouse that is the thief, but the hole.” In other words, some of the problems we face (mice entering our home) are perhaps more a result of our own actions or lack thereof (plugging the holes in its walls), than of the malign intentions of others. What does this tell us about the security challenges...

Almost 10 years ago I penned a strategy article inspiring ad hominem attacks, the suggestion by former colleagues that I had written something akin to The Anarchist Cookbook, and otherwise causing “profound disappointment” and “alarm” in the defense community. My target at the time was the now classic formula for strategy as the sum of ends, ways, and...