Analysis

The following analysis was originally published on Two Marines, a newsletter on Russia’s war in Ukraine, defense technology, and modern warfare, on June 5, 2026.  One of the Russian military’s most important developments in 2024-2025 was the establishment of the...

The United States enters the second half of the 2020s facing a fundamental question in Africa: Is Washington still seen as a strategic partner of choice, or is it becoming a transactional power whose engagement is seen as narrow,...

2017: The Coup that Wasn’t  The November 2017 military move in Zimbabwe that marked the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule opened a completely new phase in the southern African country’s troubled politics. Although the military leadership insisted that...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. At the end of April, Gerry Doyle at Bloomberg reported that CENTCOM had requested the deployment of Dark Eagle...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. The new US Navy Shipbuilding Plan has arrived. It is lavishly produced, rich in operational color, and bracingly confident...

Introduction  Zimbabwe created a US dollar-denominated exchange in Victoria Falls, the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX), to offer issuers and investors a rules-based “hard currency land” for capital raising and secondary trading, in an environment where domestic currency instability...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. On April 10, after coalition forces had fired at least 1,700 Patriots in just five weeks, the Pentagon announced...

As many in Central and Eastern Europe were emerging from the buoyant aftermath of Hungary’s mid-April 2026 elections, less than 500 miles southeast of Budapest another consequential national plebiscite transpired. On April 19, a mere week after the watershed...

More than 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake uranium sit at Airbase 101 adjacent to Niamey’s international airport, loaded onto trucks that have not moved in weeks, a convoy that has become a defining image of a world order in...

Vladimir Putin, 73, has been Russia’s leader for over a quarter of a century and the driving force behind Moscow’s efforts to reassert control over its former Soviet and Tsarist empire. His eventual departure from the world stage will...