Cuba continues to loom large in the Trump administration’s strategic planning. But now months into a maximum pressure campaign intended to throttle the island’s economy, regime change remains elusive as ever.

Operation Epic Fury may have begun as a demonstration of power, but its ultimate significance will depend on whether Washington recognizes when to leave the table—or continues raising the stakes in pursuit of a winning hand that may never arrive.

The invocation of Christian iconography in US framing of the Iran war is not some trivial rhetorical shift or meaningless theater for domestic audiences. Rather, it represents a highly consequential shift in the language of US war-making, one that will resonate across a range of US strategic interests for years to come.

The assassination of New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) leader ‘el Mencho’ is a game-changer, but not necessarily in the way that some analysts were hoping.

This week we examine the launch of a ‘major combat operation’ by the United States and Israel against Iran, the outbreak of all-out war between Pakistan and Afghanistan, China’s latest effort to turn the economic screws on Japan, Iceland looking to move up its referendum on EU membership, a hotter-than-expected inflation report in the United States, and Ukraine’s low-tech approach to shoring up drone defenses.

This week we examine the potential impact of new protests on US-Iran negotiations, fallout from the US Supreme Court striking down President Trump’s landmark tariff policy, new rare earth magnet facilities in India and the United States, and the potential for faster-than-expected rate hikes in Japan.

The instincts driving the Trump administration’s domestic policy increasingly align with its foreign-policy posture: a readiness to discard norms and constraints in the name of expediency.

This week we examine warning signs that EU critical minerals policy is falling short in its diversification efforts, ISIS-linked attacks in Nigeria and how they reflect a widening band of Sahel instability, the assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in Libya, winners and losers in a potential US withdrawal from Syria, and an emphatic election win for Sanae Takaichi’s LDP in Japan.

The foreign policy of the second Trump administration may appear chaotic, but it is constrained by three dictates: cheap oil, cheap debt, and cheap interventions.

This week we examine show elections in Myanmar, the re-deployment of a US Carrier Strike Group to the Middle East, and new US tariff threats against Canada.

The US-Pakistan rare earths deal looks like a win-win: the US diversifies its rare earth supply chain, Pakistan hedges on FDI. But the optics begin to strain when technological, regulatory, and security realities are considered.

The United States does not need a sovereignty workaround for Greenland. It needs the opposite: a disciplined commitment to consent, clarity, and negotiated access that treats Greenland as a political community, not a strategic asset with residents attached.

The era of the bystander is over. In 2026, you are either at the table, on the lease, or in the way.

This week we examine how a rapidly evolving situation in Greenland could remake trans-Atlantic relations, details of the long-awaited US-Taiwan tariff deal, a shock government offensive that changed the map of Syria, and Canada’s efforts to thaw out its relations with China.

Without stable, predictable governance and insurance companies willing to cover Venezuelan risks, tactical military success will not translate into sustained economic engagement.

Regime change in Venezuela is a game-changing development that will resonate across the geopolitics of the Americas. But it’s not without its risks.

The geopolitical importance of Guyana has been underscored by the recent regime change in Venezuela.

The Maduro operation was coercive diplomacy enforced by overwhelming military action, rather than regime change framed as democratization. In other words, it is gunboat diplomacy adapted to the twenty-first century.

The arrest of Nicolás Maduro hardens a quiet conviction already spreading across the South: that the rules of the international order are no longer universal, but situational—and that survival now depends not on norms, but on leverage.

The 2025 US National Security Strategy shifts the United States decisively away from expansive regional engagement in the South Caucasus, instead favoring selective, interest-driven involvement.