Introduction In late September, a US HC-103J Super Hercules spotted four foreign vessels operating about 440 miles southwest of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Upon closer inspection, the patrol turned out to be Russian Border Guard and Chinese Coast...

  This report was initially presented as a paper at the Post-9/11 Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned Conference in Annapolis, Maryland from September 17-18, 2024. The conference was sponsored by FPRI’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and the...

  Executive Summary Virtually all of the commentary on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has focused on those two states to the exclusion of the vital importance of this war for the neighboring regions of Belarus and the Balkans. This...

Executive Summary  Turkey’s strategic position between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia places it at a pivotal crossroads in Eurasian geopolitics, particularly as regional conflicts reshape power dynamics and international alliances. Turkey’s strategic significance has long been underscored...

  Concerns about Islamic extremism are rising in Central Asia. None of the governments in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan are commenting publicly about any specific threats. Still, there is a lot of activity aimed at controlling how...

  Key Findings The U.S. Army struggled to build capable host-nation security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan because it did not give those security force assistance (SFA) missions the priority and support they deserved.  Both the selection and training...

  Introduction Since 2022, Russia’s space program has been in a state of turbulence and uncertainty. However, the deterioration started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and began the first round of the war against Ukraine. Multiple factors have...

Sudan Today Since fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the government-sponsored paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April of 2023, according to the International Rescue Committee at least 25 million people out of a total...

 Introduction The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, shocked the world. Currently, the Russian-Ukrainian war is the biggest European war since the end of World War II. The full-scale invasion was a continuation of unlawful actions in...

  Key Takeaways The Russian government expects 2024 to be a turning point in the country’s war against Ukraine. For this expectation to become reality, the Kremlin is using means of reflexive control: It projects an image of a...