Geopolitics & Defense

Stories from War on the Rocks. Show all stories · All sources

• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-15✓ Read

  Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks of Hosting U.S. Military Bases?

  Since the end of World War II, the United States has maintained hundreds of military installations abroad. While U.S. forces have faced some objections to their presence, many allies and partners have seen U.S. bases and other facilities on their territory as a sign of their close relations with a superpower, a form of protection, and an economic boon. However, the war with Iran has raised questions about whether hosting U.S. military installations subjects Arab Gulf states to Iranian retaliation while failing to provide sufficient protection.

  
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-15✓ Read

  Golden Dome Is Technologically and Financially Infeasible

  For as long as nuclear-armed, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles have existed, strategists and engineers have pursued a seductive idea: a shield effective enough to diminish — or even block — a ballistic missile attack. The appeal is obvious. A state that could reliably intercept ballistic missiles could protect its cities from these terrifying weapons and reduce its adversaries’ leverage.But defenses against strategic ballistic missiles have a long history of disappointments.

  
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-15✓ Read

  How Sudan Became a Laboratory for Drone Warfare, Thanks to Abu Dhabi

  In June 2026, I visited Khartoum, my hometown, for the first time since the war broke out in Sudan in April 2023. I left the city to seek safety with my family after the war spread into civilian neighborhoods. I never imagined I would return to the same city. I was very excited but also traumatized by the destruction I saw as the plane landed at Khartoum International Airport.

  
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-15✓ Read

  China’s Military Expansion in Southeast Asia Masks a More Complicated Reality

  The Chinese Ministry of Defense’s announcement of a “joint support and training center” at an airport in Ban Keun, Laos, on Sept. 29 drew attention to the People’s Liberation Army’s growing footprint in Southeast Asia. Although China does not call it a “base” and said it’s “not targeted at any third party,” it is China’s first publicly acknowledged overseas military facility centered on airpower.

  
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-14✓ Read

  The Paradox of Victory: When Winning in Ukraine Raises the Nuclear Stakes

  In 2022, Jeremy Shapiro warned in “We Are on a Path to Nuclear War” that the war between Russia and Ukraine was heading toward nuclear escalation. Four years into the war, we asked him to revisit that argument.Image: Vyacheslav Argenberg via Wikimedia CommonsIn your original piece, you named nuclear escalation as “the path that we are currently on.” Instead, the past few years have brought several rounds of stalled negotiations and, more recently, a near-frozen front line.

  W
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-14✓ Read

  The Mecca Pact and Pakistan’s Bid to Become Indispensable

  For most of its history, Pakistan’s geopolitical value has risen and fallen with other countries’ emergencies. The Mecca Pact may be its most serious attempt yet to break that cycle. On Aug. 31, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey established a secretariat in Saudi Arabia for the Mecca Defence Agreement. The first secretary-general comes from Pakistan for a three-year term. The agreement builds on the Saudi-Pakistani agreement signed in September 2025, locking a decades-old informal security arrangement into a mutual defense pact.

  W
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-14✓ Read

  The United Kingdom’s Military AI Ambitions Need Guardrails

  Advancing military AI capability is a priority for the United Kingdom, and in recent weeks, the new government has doubled down on its ambitions for AI and defense via two major partnerships.On Aug. 24, 2026, on his first overseas trip as the new prime minister of the United Kingdom, Andy Burnham signed a landmark partnership: The United Kingdom is the first international partner to receive access to Ukraine’s Avengers AI Labs.

  W
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-13✓ Read

  Doubts Grow Over the Terms of Ukraine’s European Union Accession

  Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.Western coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war.

  W
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-13✓ Read

  Building an Arsenal That Survives the Tenth Salvo

  America faces a well-defined industrial base problem. Whether it’s a hypothetical Taiwan invasion wargame run two dozen times, the current Iranian conflict, or the Russo-Ukrainian War, the same result repeats: Magazines of key weapons such as cruise missile systems and interceptors empty within days, weeks, or months, and the current industrial base takes years to replenish them.

  W
• WWar on the Rocks2026-10-13✓ Read

  How Taiwan Activates Beijing’s Chosen Fear

  The standard explanations for why Taiwan is so important to the Chinese Communist Party are familiar: territorial integrity, credibility of deterrence commitments, great power competition with the United States, the strategic value of the first island chain, and the semiconductor industry concentrated in TSMC’s fabrication facilities. These explanations work, but they don’t tell the whole story.

  W

Know a source we’re missing? Tell us about it