Analysis September 18, 2025 Lessons from Burkina Faso’s Fight Against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State By: Michael DeAngelo Introduction Jihadist insurgencies in Burkina Faso began in 2016-2017 and have escalated dramatically since 2019. Between 2018 and 2024, jihadists killed more than 25,000 people. From 2022 to 2023, fatalities attributed to terrorism increased by 68 percent, making Burkina... Read more	Analysis September 17, 2025 The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: A Regional Destabilizer or a New Model for African Development? By: Charles A. Ray On September 9, 2025, the government of Ethiopia officially inaugurated Africa’s largest dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). This massive project was under construction from 2011 to 2023 and was in the process of being filled for the... Read more	Podcasts September 10, 2025 Bear Market Brief \| Kyiv Dispatch A flurry of back-and-forth diplomacy, a renewed Russian offensive, and a rare outburst of protest in Ukraine. The Kyiv Dispatch with Fabrice Deprez returns to break down what’s actually happening and most importantly, how people on the ground are... Read more
Outside Publications September 5, 2025 Russia’s New Battlefield Tactics in Ukraine By: Rob Lee The Kyiv Independent’s Francis Farrell sits down with Rob Lee, a military expert and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, to assess the state of Russia’s war in Ukraine three and a half years into the... Read more	Reports September 2, 2025 Small Drones, Big Problems: Managing the Unmanned Threat to the Homeland By: Aaron Stein, Tim Ball “There is perhaps no better example of the rapidly evolving strategic environment than the emergence of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) as a threat to infrastructure and personnel in the homeland. The availability and utility of small... Read more	Analysis August 28, 2025 Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Peace that Never Was By: Charles A. Ray The June 27, 2025, signing of a Peace Agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Rwanda in Washington, DC and the Declaration of Principles, agreed to by representatives of the DRC government and... Read more
Analysis August 25, 2025 Atlantic Bastion: The Future of Submarine Warfare By: Emma Salisbury Atlantic Bastion represents the Royal Navy’s future plan for anti-submarine capabilities, defending the North Atlantic against the threat from the Russian submarine fleet. First formally revealed in the United Kingdom’s recent Strategic Defence Review, the program brings in emerging... Read more	Intern Corner August 20, 2025 China’s Cyber Playbook for the Indo-Pacific By: Nathan Lee Cyber operations are now a defining feature of modern warfare, as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated—and China is taking note. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has served as a testing ground for the integration of emerging technologies... Read more	Analysis August 19, 2025 Baltic Training Grounds and NATO Forward Presence By: Lukas Milevski One may occasionally hear statements about military defense that sound absurd, like a recent claim that “Lithuania is running out of space for its military.” How and why does this statement make sense, and what does it mean for... Read more