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PROFILE: Nauru, tiny Pacific state caught in the path of a Chinese missile
First, the geography needs setting, because scale changes everything in this story. Nauru is the smallest independent island state in the world, an island…
COMMENTARY: Beijing fires a submarine missile into the Pacific and nobody is reassured
Some military gestures read like full sentences. On Monday, July 6, 2026, around noon Beijing time, a Chinese nuclear submarine fired a ballistic missile…
REPORT: Defense budgets, the new measure of Western power
Walking away from the NATO summit held in Ankara on July 7 and 8, 2026, one pattern stood out above every other: this gathering…
INVESTIGATION: Western defense industry buckles under production strain
This investigation starts with a number that Western military experts have been repeating with growing urgency since the NATO summit held in Ankara on…
DECODING: Co-production, the new grammar of Western aid to Ukraine
One word dominated the coverage coming out of the NATO summit held in Ankara on July 7 and 8, 2026: license. Donald Trump announced…
COLUMN: Allied air defense, the lesson Ukraine is paying for on the West's behalf
On the night of July 6, 2026, Ukrainian air defense intercepted none of the nearly thirty ballistic missiles Russia fired that night. Zero.
REPORT: Ankara, the capital where a NATO summit redrew the West's map
It took two days, July 7 and 8, 2026, for the Turkish capital to become the meeting point for thirty-two Western delegations gathered at…
ANALYSIS: Zelensky, the endurance of a wartime leader nothing has broken
Some leaders get worn down to nothing by a war, and then there is Volodymyr Zelensky, who instead seems to have found in the…
DECODING: Europe finally pays for its own security, $1.8 trillion changes everything
It took a shock to make Europe start paying for its own defense again, and that shock has a name: the Russian invasion of…