From the Sahel to Iraq, authority is produced through negotiation among distributed actors rather than imposed by centralized institutions. US diplomacy continues to ignore these sovereign ecosystems at its own peril.

Examining the great power interests and religious millenarianism fueling the US-Israel Iran war.

Beijing is not a viable alternative to Washington and pretending otherwise represents a costly strategic error.

Intensifying geopolitical shifts in Central Asia are straining the region’s multivector diplomacy, but frameworks like C5+1 can still help strike a balance between competing great power interests.

The C5+1 Summit is the latest of many historical attempts by Washington to engage with Central Asia, this time driven by growing great power competition and a need to diversify critical mineral supply chains. Could this time be different than the abortive initiatives of the past?

Indonesia’s outreach to North Korea represents a classic middle-power play: carve out a niche as an honest broker, even if the broker occasionally makes uncomfortable allies.

Moscow’s attempted annexation of Ukraine is in keeping with centuries of imperial tradition. European leaders should bear this in mind if they want to protect the integrity of international law.

The renaming of the US Department of Defense is not new, and it reflects a global order that is pivoting back toward the peer military conflicts of the past.

Whether motivated by Trump’s antagonistic relationship with the press, or business considerations tied to figures like Musk, attempts to shut down RFA and VOA represent a major strategic misstep.

As China and Russia gain ground, the EU is recalibrating its Africa policy—blending values with economic, migration, and security priorities in a competitive global landscape.

Exploring the potential geoeconomic impacts of the world’s most advanced central bank digital currency (CBDC), China’s e-yuan.

The fall of Assad in Syria is a monumental geopolitical event, and one that will reverberate on the domestic, regional, and international levels. And whatever the new order that eventually emerges, it will not resemble the Levant of the past.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine echoes the theories of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, who noted the critical importance of the Eurasian Heartland in global peace and conflict.

After a reprieve in the post-Cold War era, Pacific island countries are once again figuring prominently in the geopolitics of great power rivalry.

Japan’s annual China Security Report sees the zero-sum competition for and against the current international order only intensifying in the years to come.

Geopolitical forces could mean that the global COVID-19 dip in defense spending turns out to be short-lived.