Commentary

In an effort to transform the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into the most technologically advanced military in the world, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is systematically reorganizing its science and technology sectors to ensure that new innovations simultaneously advance...

On February 2, 2023, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III announced the temporary return of American troops to four new military bases in the Philippines, restarting a military presence there that has been dormant for thirty years. These four new...

In early November 2023, Estonia announced a decision to allow Taiwan to open an unofficial, non-diplomatic economic and cultural representative office in Tallinn. The opening of an office does not mean that Tallinn and Taipei are establishing official diplomatic...

In the September 2023 Center Party leadership elections, members chose Tallinn Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart over former Health Minister Tanel Kiik as party chair. Center Party rose to prominence in the 1990s by forging a coalition of disaffected citizens, Russophones...

In March 2023, China signed a joint communique with the Honduran Foreign Ministry declaring that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory,” breaking relations with Taiwan after over eighty years of Honduran-Taiwanese relations. A few months later, in...

This July, the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, was yet another historical gathering for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. After facing years of dilemmas with regard to Russia, the allies agreed to bolster NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) battlegroups and...

This past July, Iraq and France’s TotalEnergies finalized the Gas Growth Integrated Project, a $27 billion energy deal aimed at Iraq’s natural resources and improving the country’s electricity supply. Despite Iraq’s natural wealth, decades of conflict and corruption have...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) heads of state and government participated in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July — the fourth summit the Alliance has held since the full scale Russian invasion...

On January 17, 2022, a little after 10 a.m., the Iranian-aligned Houthis in Yemen carried out a surprise, deadly drone attack on the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Abu Dhabi. Paris responded by activating, for the first...

Sending Kentucky to Korea  On July 18, 2023, the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, docked in Busan, South Korea. The USS Kentucky is one of 14 Ohio-class submarines tasked with conducting nuclear deterrence patrols and carries up...