RUSI – In January 2025, the RUSI Maritime Sanctions Taskforce met for the second time. This report presents findings from the meeting, which was held to examine the evolving strategies of the shadow fleet and provide operational recommendations to enhance collective enforcement efforts.

BBC – A Hong Kong-based company has agreed to sell most of its stake in two key ports on the Panama Canal to a group led by US investment firm BlackRock. The sale comes after weeks of complaining by President Donald Trump that the canal is under Chinese control and that the US should take control of the major shipping route.

The War Zone – Donald Trump seems more insistent than ever on controlling Greenland, but regardless of his controversial intentions, the island is of real strategic importance.

War on the Rocks – Should a war erupt with China over Taiwan, many observers seem to think that Europe would be largely irrelevant as far as the actual fighting is concerned. Those who share this opinion typically point to Europe’s reluctance to confront China or a lack of meaningful military capabilities to bring to the table. Or they prefer Europe simply mind its knitting and focus on the Russian threat, which is much closer to home, and would free up the United States to concentrate on China…We have a different perspective.  

National Interest – James Holmes says Donald Trump’s second term could solidify the U.S. pivot to Asia, focusing resources on countering China’s assertiveness. Prioritizing the Indo-Pacific requires downgrading European commitments, leveraging alliances like Japan and Taiwan, and strengthening the first island chain’s defenses to thwart Chinese ambitions.

CIMSEC – The 2022 National Security Strategy proudly proclaims that “No region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere,” but the U.S. defense posture in Latin America and the Caribbean is at risk of being outflanked by extra-hemispheric competitors, the People’s Republic of China first among them.

War on the Rocks – Money is the sinew of all wars. In Haiti, feuding gangs are financed by illicit traffic of all sorts, including narcotics and weapons. Disrupting that flow of cash could help provide some leverage to the authorities trying desperately to re-establish order. Considering that Haiti is insular, cutting seaborne illicit traffic would be a practical and effective step for countries that wish to help the Haitian population but are hesitant to contribute boots on the ground.

War on the Rocks – The Kremlin’s preoccupation with prevailing in Ukraine is pushing it to contemplate geostrategic risks and adopt a more proactive approach in regions like the Red Sea. In the past, the Yemeni quagmire had limited appeal even to Russia, a country known for its inclination to exploit crises around the globe. But Moscow’s calculations may be shifting. The Kremlin’s warming ties with Yemen’s Houthi rebels could enable the latter to expand and intensify their destabilizing activities, especially if advanced military hardware changes hands.

RUSI – The UK has made a foolish trade of hard power for soft, which will quickly evaporate, and gained nothing in return.

BBC – The UK has announced it is giving up sovereignty of a remote but strategically important cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean after more than half a century. The deal – reached after years of negotiations – will see the UK hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a historic move.

War on the Rocks – Today, with the return of great-power competition and the corresponding activities of revisionist actors in the wider Mediterranean region, the Mediterranean has come roaring back as a contested body of water. Following Russia’s invasions of Ukraine and the war in Gaza, this sea is once again what it has been for millennia: a zone of competition.

ISPI – Recent crises have demonstrated that maritime security is essential for international stability and Europe’s prosperity. This dossier examines the challenges to the maritime order and the governance and capabilities needed to address them, emphasizing the role of both state and non-state actors in shaping the global order at sea.

AlJazeera – Intelligence experts have warned that Europe is under a growing threat from Russian sabotage operations, and believe those operations aim to secure concrete military results in Ukraine, political and economic costs to Europe, and nuisance value.

RUSI – As uncertainty grows over the future of cooperation in the Arctic, the risk is that creeping alternatives will harden the dividing lines between Russia and the West.

War on the Rocks – What happens in the Baltic will have major implications for regional defense and deterrence efforts. As such, it should be of interest to alliance members well beyond the sea’s littoral.

RUSI – Despite some common interests, Russia and China have different goals in the Arctic.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that the United States’ standing in the world hinges on alliances and fellowships of all types—chiefly in the rimlands and marginal seas ringing the Eurasian supercontinent. America has no strategic position in the rimlands without them.

War on the Rocks – A bottom-up approach to securitywould help the West engage effectively with West African countries whilst also pushing back against misinformation from Russia and economic competition from China.

CIMSEC – 11 articles on the Red Sed, which has become arguably the most hotly contested maritime region in the world. A vital maritime chokepoint is being fought over by a coalition of naval powers and a heavily armed Iranian proxy group, the Houthis. These events offer useful lessons on the exercise of naval power, as well as the crisis decision-making of militaries, commercial firms, and nation-states.

War on the Rocks – The Arctic Ocean may be the world’s smallest but it looms large in the imagination. Remote and unique, the Arctic is, for some at least, the most romanticized ocean in the world. It has been fueling legends and ambitions for centuries, and continues to fuel new geopolitical myths today.

War on the Rocks – Comparing Indian and Chinese military capabilities in isolation from the broader transregional context can lead to inaccurate assessments. China faces security challenges at a much larger scale than India. Moreover, India currently also benefits from strategic partnerships with countries such as the United States, Japan, and France that give it greater latitude in the Indian Ocean, which is its principal area of interest. Growing power disparity will certainly keep Indian strategic thinkers worried for some time to come, but they should not lose sight of the strategic advantages India currently enjoys. These reflect India’s fewer supply-chain vulnerabilities in its own backyard, the nature of other security threats the two countries face, and, most important, the enormous geographical advantage India has over China in the Indian Ocean. Any Chinese naval flotilla sent to engage the Indian navy would be without reliable air cover and, due to logistical constraints, would only be able to sustain combat operations for a few weeks.

War on the Rocks – One Sea, Two Seas, Far Seas, Near Seas? For all the attention they receive as contested Indo-Pacific maritime regions, the strategic differences between East and South China Seas do not always get their due. Each of these bodies of water contains land features claimed by the People’s Republic of China and at least one ally or partner of the United States. To Beijing, the East and South China Seas are all part of its “near seas,” and China continues to take steps to assert control over this space as one unified maritime periphery — which we refer to colloquially as China’s “One Sea.” The disputed land features in these seas are small — islands, reefs, and rocks — but the economic, maritime, and security stakes associated with them are large. Countries around the East and South China Seas, however, are not taking China’s actions passively. In their own unique ways that reject the notion of a single “One China Sea,” these countries are adapting and exploring new methods to assert their own maritime rights.

US Naval War College Review – China’s rise augurs a power transition that challenges the preeminent security position of the United States in East Asia and has led to an incoherent retrenchment that both undermines that position and complicates efforts to recapitalize the Navy to face that challenge effectively.

Barents Observer – The treaty, which is a key pillar to regulate international cooperation in the sea, is seen by the Russian authorities as “detrimental”.

ET – Thomas P. M. Barnett says we think of grand strategy as superpowers fighting over the world’s continents, like who can dominate Eurasia. But what if, in our hyper-connected world, that struggle is best pursued on a subnational scale: first splitting, then transmuting, and finally capturing the core identities of individual citizens?