2+ day, 13+ hour ago   (154+ words) This year’s U.N. General Assembly officially opened on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The annual gathering gives diplomats and leaders a valuable opportunity to press their foreign policy priorities and engage — formally and informally — with both partners and adversaries. Most heads of state…...

2+ day, 23+ hour ago   (289+ words) Answering that question requires deliberate thinking about the role of the action officer, the work they perform, and their operating environment. To build a flexible, responsible system for automating action officer duties, agencies must first answer the classic question posed…...

2+ day, 23+ hour ago   (278+ words) For eight years I helped decide whether American counter-terrorism money was working. I can tell you where it worked and where it did not, because the reporting existed to say so. A campaign that publishes no outcome data does not…...

4+ day, 12+ min ago   (1209+ words) Collective-defense pacts are meant to make war less likely. Poorly designed ones can do the opposite. If allies make sweeping promises without the military integration, decision-making mechanisms, and escalation controls needed to carry them out, they may invite adversaries to…...

5+ day, 23+ hour ago   (375+ words) When Israeli warplanes struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria on Aug. 18, 2026, the smoke rose over the demolition of an old geopolitical assumption about the Middle East. This time, Israel directly targeted a strategic sphere of influence where the Turkish…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (160+ words) The second revolution is AI. The use of AI in wargame play is not new, but we believe advancements in large language models like Retrieval-Augmented Generation and agentic AI models provide capabilities that will be revolutionary. The work needed is…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (184+ words) Editor’s Note: While War on the Rocks has a high standard for allowing pseudonyms, this is an unusual case: U.S. Army Special Operations Command requires its uniformed personnel to use pseudonyms when writing for public consumption (Policy 23-16). Meek young men…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (148+ words) Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum, only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight…...

3+ week, 1+ day ago   (43+ words) War on the Rocks When the world's at stake, National security. For insiders. By insiders. Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide....

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (219+ words) Yet American leaders are dragging their feet in reckoning with this undeniable technological transition. Many of the electrotech components defining this shift are associated with either Beijing or maligned as belonging to the climate movement, slowing their adoption. This transformation…...