The Illusion Of Hard Power: Reflection On How Democratized Technology And Strategic Geography Broke The Superpower Monopoly On War

October 5, 2026

By Dawit W. Giorgis

Key Takeaways:

A former infantry officer argues that Vietnam, Iraq, and African interventions show firepower does not buy compliance when a population treats the fight as existential, and that external backing or neglect left long instability from Congo and Somalia to Libya and the Sahel.

The 2026 Iran war and Ukraine are presented as a cost inversion: cheap mass drones and missiles force million-dollar interceptors, and Hormuz pressure moved the contest into shipping, insurance, and energy; Ukraine’s sea drones against the Black Sea Fleet are cited as the same pattern.

The conclusion is that total destruction is politically and strategically unavailable, so China’s caution on Taiwan and future stability depend on defensive sustainability and compromise rather than regime change—an argument, not a demonstrated law.

Written from the unique perspective of a former infantry officer of the late sixties, this paper examines the paradigm shift in 21st-century geopolitics, in which conventional military dominance no longer guarantees political control. Tracing an evolutionary line from the ideological endurance of Vietnam to the urban insurgencies of Iraq, the paper argues that contemporary conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine mark a watershed in modern warfare. By pairing fierce nationalist resolve with cheap, mass-produced asymmetric technology, weaker states have triggered a severe industrial-economic inversion, bankrupting expensive Western defensive systems through supply-chain attrition. Crucially, the paper highlights how Iran successfully weaponized its strategic geography—specifically the Strait of Hormuz—shifting the center of military gravity into global shipping, insurance, and energy networks and holding global markets hostage. Confronted with the reality that victory against an existential defense would require total destruction, superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and an island-facing China are hitting a structural wall. The paper concludes that absolute military coercion is obsolete; future global stability depends on balancing defensive sustainability with soft power, diplomatic tolerance, and mutual compromise.

The Illusion of Hard Power

In 1967, I was a young officer training at the Advanced Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, alongside American officers. The ghost of the Vietnam War hung heavy over every field exercise, tactical briefing, and grueling march we endured. We were trained by men who had just returned from those jungles, and the lesson they drilled into us had nothing to do with a lack of American firepower. Instead, they forced us to confront the limits of willpower. We learned the hard way that you cannot militarily break an indigenous population when they are fighting for their own dirt. Fifty years have passed since my time in uniform, and as I get older, I watch the news and realize that our strategic leaders are still trapped in the same fallacy. We continue to assume that an overwhelming accumulation of military might can force a weaker nation to surrender its independence and existence. History has shattered that illusion across my lifetime, from Southeast Asia to the deserts of Iraq, and now to the tech-driven battlefields of Ukraine, the proxy conflicts of Africa, and the waters of the Persian Gulf. The basic reality of modern conflict is that military dominance no longer equals political control. When a nation views a conflict as existential, hard power can only achieve two things: death and destruction. It cannot buy compliance. Today, because the means of resistance have been cheapened and widely democratized, the pursuit of absolute control is a path toward mutual ruin. True strength for the future lies not in our capacity to destroy, but in our willingness to tolerate, compromise, and engage the world through mutual respect.

To understand why US military dominance is broken, we must look closely at how resistance has changed since my time. In the 1960s and 70s, US conventional doctrine was pushed to its limits. The United States dropped millions of tons of ordnance on Vietnam yet failed to achieve its political objectives. The failure was not a lack of tactical skill on the ground; it was a fundamental strategic failure to recognize that a population defending its homeland measures victory purely by its willingness to keep dying. Against deeply rooted nationalism, conventional bombing campaigns could not break the enemy’s resolve. As my generation learned through immense trauma, a democracy simply cannot sustain a war of indefinite casualties for non-existential goals. Decades later, I watched the next generation of American soldiers march into Iraq. While the initial conventional phase of that war was won in a matter of weeks through “Shock and Awe,” the secondary phase of controlling and governing the country was completely lost. Our political leaders were blindsided by the raw willpower of a population that flatly rejected a foreign occupation. The battlefield quickly evolved into a decentralized, borderless insurgency fueled by improvised explosive devices and urban terror. Iraq demonstrated what any seasoned infantryman fears in his bones: demolishing a state’s conventional armor and infantry is the easy part. Holding and controlling a hostile nation is politically, morally, and economically unsustainable. The sheer friction of trying to enforce compliance against an unwilling population eventually drains a superpower’s resources and erodes its domestic political capital.


Yet this failure to understand the limits of hard power is not confined to the Middle East or Southeast Asia. When evaluated against my twenty-eight years as a UN peacemaking consultant across Africa’s most volatile war zones, the limits of conventional military coercion become even more starkly apparent. In all the wars I have witnessed on the African continent, there was always a degree of heavy-handed, unbalanced, or indifferent Western and global involvement that excluded local populations and created a legacy of perpetual instability. Cold War logic led to American support for the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Washington, this was a low-cost transactional alignment; for the DRC, it left behind a legacy of systemic fracture and a perpetual war that refuses to heal. Similarly, American indifference during the Rwandan genocide left a scar on America’s declared role as an advocate for genocide and crimes against humanity, and its unwise, heavy-handed intervention followed by a disgraceful exit in Somalia fundamentally altered the regional landscape, leaving Somalia trapped in a cycle of warlordism from which it cannot recover. In Libya, a relatively low-cost NATO aerial intervention to overthrow Gaddafi resulted in a fractured state that became a breeding ground for human trafficking, weapon proliferation, and militia warfare that spilled across the Sahel. Historical alignments like the American-supported Charles Taylor created havoc and civil war across both Liberia and Sierra Leone, proving that short-sighted external backing yields catastrophic regional consequences on the back end.


Today, this cycle continues as global superpowers and regional actors treat the continent as a theater for cheap geopolitical disruption. In Central and West Africa, Russia uses its mercenary arm, formerly Wagner and now Africa Corps, as a low-cost tool to loot mineral resources and displace Western influence. Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, the absence of a clear, balanced US policy has allowed its allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to wage destructive proxy wars to secure their strategic and mineral interests. This echoes the historic “Françafrique” policies of control in West and Central Africa, where foreign dictation systematically excludes local people from the economic value chain. When war is supported, sponsored, or neglected by global powers, it becomes a negative-sum game where everyone loses. Because of these heavy-handed or neglectful policies, Africa’s true potential is suppressed, making it impossible to establish equitable, win-win trade or security architectures. Instead of being a robust global partner, these destabilized regions are forced into a state where they become involuntary exporters of instability through migration crises, piracy, and transnational terrorism. The West is then forced to spend trillions on reactive border security and counter-terrorism operations—a massive, unsustainable defense expenditure triggered by the long-tail consequences of original policy failures. Africa is left unable to heal itself, the West remains trapped in a cycle of reactive containment, and the global rules-based order faces an asymmetric threat to peace that cannot be solved by expensive weapons alone.


This structural failure of global foreign policy mirrors the tactical crisis we see on the modern battlefield, driven by the brutal mathematics of the Cost-Imbalance Doctrine. Modern warfare is no longer dictated by platform sophistication but by logistics, replacement speed, and lopsided economic exchange ratios. The collapse in the cost of commercial electronics, additive manufacturing, and open-source autonomous systems has shattered the traditional cost curve, tilting the strategic advantage sharply toward mass-produced, low-cost offense. The 2026 war involving Iran represents the ultimate, terrifying evolution of this trajectory, presenting a style of warfare that my peers in the seventies could scarcely have imagined. If Vietnam required dense jungles and Iraq required complex urban networks, modern asymmetric warfare requires only three things: basic, a determined population, universally manufacturable technology, and the strategic weaponization of geography. Iran effectively rewrote the global rules of engagement by manufacturing mass-produced, low-cost weapons—primarily twenty-thousand-dollar kamikaze drones and standard ballistic missiles. This has created a catastrophic economic and industrial imbalance for Western forces. Today, advanced militaries are forced to defend multi-billion-dollar assets like aircraft carriers by firing two-million-dollar air-defense interceptors at targets that cost less than a used car. When a five-hundred-dollar FPV drone or a thirty-thousand-dollar Shahed loitering munition forces a defender to fire a multi-million-dollar Patriot, THAAD, or SM-3 interceptor, the exchange ratio becomes unsustainable. This is no longer a war of tactical maneuver; it is a war of supply chain attrition, and the mathematics favor the cheap.


Furthermore, Iran’s true stroke of strategic genius was recognizing that its geographic position is a more powerful weapon than any nuclear arsenal. By sitting directly astride the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow maritime bottleneck through which twenty percent of the world’s petroleum flows—Iran shifted the center of military gravity entirely out of the mud and into global financial markets. By deploying its low-cost sea-denial arsenal to menace commercial shipping, it effectively nationalized a global commons. This strategy weaponized marine insurance networks, sent global energy prices soaring, and proved that controlling a geographic bottleneck allows a weaker state to hold the entire global economic system hostage. This is why Iran marks a watershed moment: it demonstrated that geography, activated by cheap tech, can completely bypass a superpower’s military superiority to strike directly at its domestic and economic vulnerabilities. We see proof that this shift is a universal law, not an American exception, in the stagnation of the Russian war machine in Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, conventional military wisdom predicted a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian state within days. Instead, the world witnessed the brutal stagnation of a traditional military giant. Ukraine countered massive armored columns and superior air power by leveraging the same formula: boundless national will paired with asymmetric technology. Armed with relatively inexpensive, mass-produced anti-tank missiles, first-person-view kamikaze drones, and decentralized digital command networks, Ukraine transformed the battlefield into a meat grinder for conventional assets. Ukraine’s ability to completely neutralize Russia’s Black Sea Fleet—not with a rival navy, but with low-cost, domestically manufactured explosive sea drones—perfectly mirrors how the vulnerability of multi-billion-dollar warships has been exposed globally.


This new reality explains the profound caution we see in East Asia regarding the Taiwan Strait. Objectively, China possesses the overwhelming conventional means—the world’s largest navy, advanced missile arsenals, and proximity—to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Yet Beijing hesitates. This caution stems from a clear-eyed analysis of these new rules of engagement. The Chinese leadership understands that invading Taiwan would mean wading directly into an asymmetric trap. Taiwan has spent decades preparing a “porcupine strategy” centered on cost-imbalance warfare. Crossing a hundred miles of open sea leaves Chinese transport ships highly vulnerable to swarms of low-cost, domestically produced anti-ship missiles and autonomous sea drones. Even if Chinese forces landed successfully, controlling a highly urbanized island of twenty-three million people against a deeply nationalist insurgency would mirror our catastrophic occupation failures in Iraq, multiplied tenfold, while inflicting an estimated two-and-a-half-trillion-dollar hit on the global economy. China’s hesitation proves the thesis: they recognize that while they have the hard power to cause immense death and destruction, they cannot guarantee surrender or control.

When a superpower faces a determined populace armed with universally manufacturable denial weapons and backed by strategic geography, it hits a wall. Because economic sanctions and localized strikes fail to break a deeply nationalist population, a superpower is left with only one military option to force an unconditional win: total destruction. Forcing a sovereign nation to abandon its existential interest today would require sustained, uninhibited bombardment or the use of nuclear weapons. However, as any strategist knows, this is a dead end. If the resisting nation or its allies possess even primitive nuclear or chemical deterrents, any escalation toward total destruction guarantees mutually assured destruction(MAD). Furthermore, neither the domestic population of a democracy nor the international community will tolerate the absolute annihilation of a country. Because total destruction is morally, politically, and strategically impossible, unconditional surrender is a relic of the past. Hard power has reached its absolute limit. If the accumulation of military might can no longer buy security or compliance, the global architecture must undergo a pragmatic revolution. This is not an appeal to utopian idealism; it is hardheaded realism from someone who has spent a lifetime reflecting on the cost of war. When conflict becomes too expensive for the strong and resistance too cheap for the weak, coexistence is the only affordable strategy left on the table.

Conclusion

True national security must be built on a balanced matrix of defensive sustainability and soft power. Superpowers must pivot away from a doctrine of regime change, containment, and forced compliance and toward policies of tolerance, compromise, and mutual respect. If a powerful nation needs resources, stable trade routes, or geopolitical cooperation, it can no longer acquire them bythe barrel of a gun or the threat of a carrier strike group. It must acquire them through diplomatic reciprocity. By recognizing the sovereignty and existential interests of smaller nations, superpowers can foster partnerships built on mutual benefit rather than perpetual, exhausting hostility. The lessons of my lifetime are clear. The world will never know peace, and superpowers will never achieve stability, until they accept that hard power is a blunt instrument capable only of wreckage. True strength lies in the capacity to compromise, to tolerate difference, and to engage the world through the sustainable lens of mutual respect.

Bibliography

Angell, Norman. The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage.London: William Heinemann, 1910.

Batmanghelidj, Esfandyar. “Drones Like Bicycles: The Real Economics of the Shahed Fleet.” Phenomenal World, March 11, 2026. Phenomenal World.

Boyle, Michael J., and Anthony H. Cordesman. Regime Change Revisited: The Intersecting Failures of Post-Conflict Governance and Hard Power. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2016.

Brown, Seyom. The Illusion of Control: Force and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Brookings Institution.
Center for Strategic and International Studies. Assessing the Air Campaign After Three Weeks: Iran War By the Numbers. CSIS Missile Defense Project Report, March 25, 2026.

CSIS Analysis

Cordesman, Anthony H. The Lessons of Ukraine and the Changing Nature of Asymmetric Attrition.Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2024.

Fard, Erfan. “Iran Didn’t Need to Win the War. It Needed to Outlast It: AI Targeting and Strategic Geography in the 2026 Conflict.” Small Wars Journal, July 8, 2026. Small Wars Journal.

Malahila, Letsema. “The Contradictory Logics of International Intervention in Africa: Structural Fragility from Mobutu to Françafrique.” GIGA Focus Africa, no. 4 (2022): 1–9. GIGA Hamburg.

O’Hanlon, Michael E. The Porcupine Strategy: Asymmetric Sea Denial and Taiwan’s Defense Dilemma.Brookings Institution Policy Brief, 2025.

United Nations Department of Peace Operations. The Intervention Dilemma: 28 Years of Multilateral Peacekeeping and Political Vacuums in War-Torn States. New York: United Nations Blue Book Series, 2024.

Zenodo Research Repository. Iran’s New Grand Strategy, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Search for a Regional Security Order. Open-Access Strategy Paper, Archive ID 21707611, July 2026. Zenodo Records.



About Dawit W. Giorgis
Dawit W. Giorgis is originally from Ethiopia, US citizen, permanent resident of Namibia; served as P.S of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governor of Eritrea (prior to independence) and Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner during one of the most publicised famine relief operations. He later served as UN consultant in 11 African conflict and post conflict countries; was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, University of Cape Town and Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Wash, D.C. at different times.
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From Prototypes To Mass Production: DARPA’s Gamble On Next-Gen Hypersonics – OpEd

Illustration of a hypersonic Next Heneration Glide Body (NXGB). Credit: Lockheed Martin

October 5, 2026

By Shamil Abdullah Saleh

Key Takeaways:

The piece says DARPA’s Aug. 7 request for information on a Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missile seeks industry views before any funded program, after HAWC proved scramjet flight but only incremental gains and HACM cut tests from seven to five.

It dates China’s DF-17 as operational around 2019–20 and cites a September 2025 YJ-19 scramjet anti-ship missile, against the U.S. Army Dark Eagle reaching initial capability in April 2026 and appearing at Valiant Shield with a stated range of about 2,175 miles.

The author’s test is production, not physics: design-for-manufacture and non-traditional contractors, or another HACM-style delay that widens a gap the U.S. has not led.
Introduction


Hypersonic missiles do something that conventional cruise and ballistic missiles cannot do; they combine speed (more than Mach 5) with sustained maneuverability mid-flight. This denies the adversary’s air defenses, which seek predictable flight patterns, the ability to intercept the incoming projectile. This combination of speed and maneuverability is the reason why the Pentagon views hypersonic weapons as a potential answer to overcome the increasingly capable air defense networks China and Russia have built along their borders. Whichever state holds a survivable and affordable hypersonic missile can hit time-sensitive targets in heavily defended airspace. The outcome of the hypersonic race, however, will be decided by execution: whether the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) can convert its Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missile program from a Request for Information (RFI) into a fielded system faster than its peers can extend their current lead.

On 7 August, DARPA posted a request for information seeking industry feedback on the new Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missile (NGHCM). DARPA is not seeking a missile just yet; it is seeking information from industry professionals on what is possible before deciding whether an actual program is feasible. What is evident is that DARPA is not seeking small upgrades. It already mentions that the basic technology works but delivered small and predictable results, but not the kind that would be a breakthrough in future wars. According to the same RFI, states like China and Russia are fielding improved air defense systems, and in the future U.S. missiles may not be effective enough to punch through anymore. The U.S. is already behind when it comes to hypersonic systems; the U.S.’s Dark Eagle reached Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for the first time in April 2026. Compare that with China, whose DF-17 has been operational since around 2019-2020, and the U.S. capability gap is evident.

Evolutionary, Not Disruptive

DARPA’s admission of failure is that in more than a decade of testing hypersonic technology, there have been marginal gains, which is not enough to win the next-generation war. The RFI itself admits that the scale of the problem is definite; it says that prior scramjet demonstrations “successfully proved the fundamental viability of scramjet-powered flight,” but those programs “achieved predictable and incremental gains in isolated performance metrics” rather than a “revolutionary leap” in range, cruise speed or altitude. The admission is notable for an agency to put in a public procurement document that a decade-long effort of hypersonic testing could not achieve results that could have helped the U.S. with future warfighting. China is now moving past the first generation of hypersonic technologies, hypersonic glide technologies, to the next generation of hypersonic missiles: air-breathing scramjet engines. In September 2025, China unveiled the YJ-19, an advanced scramjet-powered hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile capable of reaching hypersonic speeds. The missile is small enough to fit in standard submarine torpedo tubes.

Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) Legacy

HAWC, a joint DARPA/Air Force program, demonstrated that the hypersonic air-breathing system is effective. However, the U.S. is still unable to draw anything concrete out of this program. Its successor, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), has faced design delays, testing delays, and a reduction from seven tests to five to save money.

DARPA’s RFI for NGHCM is a tacit admission that HACM and HAWC were built and invested in to prove that missiles could fly, not that these missiles could be mass-produced. As DARPA plainly states, it expects a “design for manufacturing and assembly” (DEMA) philosophy to be embraced from the onset, and this time with a realistic path to affordable and high-rate production. China, on the other hand, appears to have prioritized fielding and mass-producing first-generation hypersonic systems over waiting for a technically optimal one, which the U.S. now seeks. This claim is corroborated by independent assessments of China’s faster testing and fielding pace.

This supports the above proposition that although the system works, it may not be able to give any meaningful advantage to the U.S. during the war. Another point to note is that DARPA seeks systems that can be produced cheaply in large numbers; the document notes that older manufacturing methods are making the missile too expensive and too complicated to produce. DARPA’s concern is valid that, in case of conflict, if the missiles are too complicated and expensive to produce, the U.S. wouldn’t be able to mass-produce them.

The Frontrunners?

The U.S. actually has a deeper technical pedigree, with testing of hypersonic systems starting back in the 1950s–60s, with Pershing-II reaching hypersonic speeds (Mach 8); however, it was classified as a maneuvering reentry vehicle (MaRV) rather than a modern hypersonic missile, as it had limited maneuverability in the terminal phase. It used active radar terminal guidance for pinpoint accuracy rather than sustained aerodynamic cruising or gliding. Nevertheless, the U.S. has a much older hypersonic missile program compared to China, whose dedicated hypersonic program started in the 2000s, and the DF-17 was unveiled in 2019.

China, however, moved much faster than the U.S. in testing and operationalizing the hypersonic missile program and is considered ahead in the hypersonic race. China has deployed its DF-17 across multiple People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rocket force brigades with Pacific-focused density while the U.S. has just reached its initial operational capability. Chinese missiles are now reportedly expanding into multiple generations of hypersonic weapons across land, sea, and potentially air. At the same time, the U.S. program faced multiple delays, technical challenges, and cost growth, with the U.S. still seeking a quantum leap in hypersonic technology. China accepted early, less sophisticated hypersonic systems into service rather than waiting for more advanced designs, giving its rocket force years of operational experience and production infrastructure before the U.S. had either.

Is the U.S. Catching Up?

As of mid-2026, the U.S. finally deployed the hypersonic missile “Dark Eagle,” with the U.S. Army in the Valiant Shield 2026 exercise in the Western Pacific, which could potentially hit targets around 2,175 miles away. The U.S. is narrowing the gap, but whether it closes it fully remains an open question, since technology-wise the U.S. is still a few years behind. DARPA’s request for industry feedback also supports the proposition that the U.S. has yet to find what it is looking for, but that does not imply that the U.S. is still at the baseline and may need to start from scratch. The U.S. understands the technology; it just seeks the correct tools to implement it effectively.

This, however, is just phase 0: the RFI does not commit any funding to a contractor. Rather, it is gathering information from industry to shape a future program’s technical requirements before any formal solicitation is issued. The U.S. is yet to find a good enough recipe to make a missile that will be a “quantum leap” in overall performance.

Conclusion

Whether the gap narrows depends upon the execution of DARPA rather than physics. Within the document, DARPA is explicitly courting non-traditional contractors to inject the kind of speed which the traditional defense-industrial base has not delivered. If NGHCM moves from phase 0 to a real program on schedule, the U.S. could produce a next-generation hypersonic cruise missile for testing within a few years. If this program also faces delays as HACM did, the U.S. will lag further behind in a race it has yet to lead.



About Shamil Abdullah Saleh
Shamil Abdullah Saleh is a Research Assistant at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad.
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SPACE/COSMOS

Robert Reich: Mercury Is Shrinking, So Am I – OpEd

October 3, 2026

By Robert Reich


Key Takeaways:

A Geophysical Research Letters study led by Gaku Nishiyama finds Mercury’s cooling core is shrinking the planet up to 30% faster than earlier estimates, by as much as 14.5 miles—nearly 1% of its 1,516-mile radius—versus a few miles before.

The estimate comes from surface wrinkle ridges; the author notes interior contraction may be faster and harder to see.

The column uses that cooling, plus spinal-disc compression and osteoporosis, as a joke about human height loss, not as a claim that people and planets shrink by the same process.

I’ve always felt a certain affinity for Mercury. Maybe that’s because Mercury is by far the smallest planet in our solar system — about 1/29th the width of Jupiter and just one-third the width of Earth — and I’m not a giant myself.

Mercury is becoming even smaller — it’s actually shrinking.

Apparently, when Mercury formed about 4.5 billion years ago in the primordial collisions of the early solar system, it was much hotter than it is now. Over many millennia since then, its metallic core has cooled and contracted, causing the planet’s surface to warp and wrinkle.

You know who else is warping and wrinkling, and shrinking?

Previous estimates suggested that Mercury had shrunk by just a few miles since its formation. Now, scientists say it’s shrinking up to 30 percent faster than expected. It might have even shrunk by as much as 14.5 miles, which is nearly 1 percent of its current radius of 1,516 miles.

This new estimate, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, gives astronomers a new understanding of how the planet — and others like it — formed and evolved.

And what’s in store for them. It’s not great news.

“Many bodies are shrinking nowadays,” said Gaku Nishiyama, a planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Space Research, who led the study.

Tell me about it. Humans start a slow, gradual loss of height during their 30s. Then they lose a half inch every 10 years. Between 30 and 70, they lose an inch or two.

That may not sound like much, but if you’re 4 feet 11 inches at your zenith, the loss of an inch or two is not welcome. Then, after age 80, the typical human who survives loses another inch. At this rate I may disappear entirely.

Dr. Nishiyama says Mercury’s estimated shrinkage is difficult to measure because researchers have to rely on topographies visible on the surface of the planet. “Inside, things may be getting much worse, much faster,” she said.

I know about that, too.

All heavenly bodies are shrinking, as are human bodies. With humans, it’s partly due to compressed spinal discs —as the soft cushions between back bones dry out and flatten over time. And because of osteoporosis, that can cause tiny cracks in spinal bones.

“Every planet is an odd little duck that has a story to tell,” says Dr. Sam Birch, a planetary geoscientist at Brown University.

Well, Dr. Birch, every human is an odd little duck with its own story, too. Planets and people — we’re all part of the same cosmos, with slightly different combinations of hydrogen and helium, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and neon.

We’re all parts of the same mystery.

This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack


About Robert Reich
Robert B. Reichis Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes atrobertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
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Three space agencies to research how to grow crops on the moon

05.10.2026, DPA

Photo: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire/dpa

The space agencies of the United States, Germany and Canada will conduct joint research to learn how to grow crops on the Moon, which will be essential to helping astronauts go farther and stay longer in space.

NASA, Canadian Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center signed a joint statement of intent to begin coordinated, preparatory work toward an Earth-based demonstrator, called The Lunar Agriculture Module-Ground Test Demonstrator.

It aims to develop the technologies needed to grow space crops and study how they perform under atmospheres and controlled environments similar to those expected during missions at Moon Base.

Through Moon Base, NASA and its partners will build the infrastructure to support an enduring human presence near the Moon's South Pole, advancing science and technology while preparing for future human missions to Mars.

Space crops will provide deep space crews with whole-food nutrition and increase dietary variety. They can also absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, and recycle water. These capabilities will become increasingly important as human missions extend farther from their home planet, NASA says in a press release.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

Whisky to be aged in space for first time in uni satellite project

05.10.2026,  DPA

Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Wire/dpa

Whisky will be distilled in space for the first time as part of an experiment which will also measure how the spirit ages in the harsh environment beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

Engineers in Scotland and Japan are planning to put Scotch on a rocket in 2028, sending a satellite containing samples of whisky and its base ingredients on a five-year mission to orbit the Earth.

It is hoped the frequent changes between extreme heat and freezing cold experienced by the whisky as it rotates the planet every 90 minutes could speed up the maturation process.

This could potentially open the door to future production of space-aged whisky, which the scientist behind the project expects to have “very bold” flavours as a result of its unusual journey.

While such whisky would command astronomical prices due to the cost of launching and recovering the liquid, collectors are already known to pay hundreds of thousands for some of the rarest bottles.

Dr Gilles Bailet, of the University of Glasgow, said a number of students have travelled from Scotland to Japan to help to co-design the “cubesat” which will contain the tiny whisky samples and ingredients.

The research is also expected to provide insight into how orbital factories could work, which could develop molecules for medications which are difficult to produce on Earth.

Bailet told Press Association: “We want to see what the effect of a space environment is on the ageing of the whisky.”

He added: “We’ve got the best people here in Scotland to be able to inform that, with centuries of experience, so we can bring this whisky experience into space.”

The current plan for the whisky experiment – nicknamed “Space Puffin” – is to launch the cubesat in 2028 on a SpaceX supply mission to the International Space Station, before deploying it into orbit from the Japanese module of the space station.

The science around the process of whisky “breathing” as it ages in wooden casks is not well understood, Bailet said, but the cycles could happen much faster in space – where temperatures can quickly vary between minus 150 degrees to 200 degrees.

Bailet continued: “We build our spacecraft to be able to get an environment which is better for the whisky, but this wood will breathe faster than on Earth.

“And so we are hoping that we’ll be able to accelerate the ageing to be able to get something more interesting.”

The whisky on the cubesat will be monitored while it is in space, feeding data on its colour and chemical composition back to scientists on the ground.

On Earth, whisky is produced by mixing barley with water and yeast.

Yeast breaks down the sugars in the barley, creating ethanol as a byproduct.

The team’s system will demonstrate how ethanol, which plays a role in the production of many drugs, can be extracted in orbit.

While the cubesat will not be recovered at the end of its five-year mission, Dr Bailet said he is keen to scale up whisky maturation in space and develop a system for launching Scotch into space and landing it on Earth after maturation.

He said: “We are really keen to be able to actually fly a full whisky-making system, with a full cask, if we’re able to collaborate with investors or other people interested about it.

“But it’s totally in the realm of possible to bring back something like a litre of whisky within the next three to five years.”

He hopes this process would produce “really bold whiskies” with “extremely complex flavour profiles”.

While whisky has previously been into space as part of an experiment to understand flavour, it did not leave the temperature-controlled confines of the International Space Station.

The cubesat will not have a full whisky cask on board. However the liquid samples will be contained by small wood chips to mimic the cask ageing process on Earth.

Different distilleries in Scotland and Japan are expected to contribute the whisky, though these have not been chosen yet.

Bailet said: “Previous research has suggested that the microgravity of space may allow us to grow larger, purer chemical crystals and to fold proteins in new ways.

“Big questions still remain over how we might actually do chemistry in space, however, and this project aims to provide some answers.

“Whisky gives us a very recognizable, very well-understood model for studying and monitoring biological and chemical processes in microgravity.”

The initial visit to Japan is the result of a grant from distillery-design consultancy Allen Associates.

Geoff Nisbet, lead process design engineer at the consultancy, said: “We often say that our fingerprints are found all over Scotland’s distilleries - we never expected the next set might end up in space.

“We’re delighted to support a project which brings together Scotland’s world-renowned whisky industry, engineering innovation and the next generation of engineers.

“There is also something quite fitting about Scotland and Japan being brought together through whisky once again, this time with a project looking far beyond the distillery itself.”

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

Can South-East Asia’s Energy Transition Survive A Transactional World? – OpEd

October 5, 2026

By Mirza Sadaqat Huda

Key Takeaways:

At the 44th Asean energy ministers’ meeting in Manila (Oct. 5–9), the Iran war is framed as lifting petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and power prices, with more coal use and subsidies, plus knock-on effects from Philippine transport protests to Vietnamese rice and Thai factory closures.

The author treats the war and the U.S. removal of Venezuela’s president as symptoms of transactional diplomacy that weakens trust for the energy transition, visible in U.S.–China mineral rivalry and Chinese roles in the Asean Power Grid.

The proposed fix is operationalizing the petroleum security agreement, common rules for multilateral power trade, and joint mineral priorities—integration without a supranational energy authority.

At the 44th Asean Ministers on Energy Meeting (Amem) happening in Manila from Monday (Oct 5) to Friday, one immediate issue likely to loom large is the impact of the Iran crisis on South-east Asia’s energy security.

The Iran war has pushed energy security higher up Asean’s agenda, prompting calls for coordinated responses, faster regional energy trade and renewed attention to the Asean Petroleum Security Agreement (Apsa).

The region’s dependence on Middle Eastern energy has driven sharp increases in petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and electricity prices. Across Asean, reliance on coal has increased, alongside fossil fuel subsidies.


The consequences also extend far beyond the energy sector, from transport-worker protests in the Philippines to disruptions to rice production in Vietnam, and factory closures and job losses in Thailand.

Yet the Iran crisis is only a symptom of a bigger threat to South-east Asia’s energy transition: the rise of transactional diplomacy, a foreign-policy style that prizes short-term wins over long-term strategy.

The Iran war and the US’ removal of Venezuela’s president – both with implications for global energy markets – reflect this logic. In a transactional world, the objective is less cooperation than immediate strategic advantage.

Transactional diplomacy is not merely a Trumpian aberration, but a wider systemic shift. From China’s economic statecraft in Asia and Africa to India’s energy trade with Russia and Turkey’s cooperation with the EU on refugee traffic, it has become a defining feature of today’s international system.

For South-east Asia, transactional diplomacy poses a direct threat to energy and climate security because it weakens the trust, predictability and multi-stakeholder cooperation on which the region’s transition depends.


These risks are already visible. US-China competition is reshaping critical-mineral supply chains.

Indonesia’s nickel sector is heavily dependent on Chinese investment, while the US is building alternatives through the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement and bilateral minerals agreements.

Similar dynamics are emerging around the Asean Power Grid (APG), where Chinese firms and utilities are increasingly involved in interconnection and high-voltage direct current development, while alternative investment partnerships remain limited.

The danger is not only higher costs or delays, but also a transition shaped by external pressures rather than regional needs.
Towards greater Asean agency on energy

The 44th Amem should therefore look beyond the immediate fallout of the Iran war and confront the deeper challenge of building greater Asean agency over an energy transition increasingly vulnerable to external pressures.

This requires transforming energy regionalism from a diplomatic practice into a source of material power.

By pooling markets, infrastructure and bargaining power, greater regional integration can reduce the asymmetries that transactional diplomacy exploits, without surrendering national sovereignty.

Three concrete priorities deserve political attention and resources.

First, make Apsa a more operational petroleum crisis-response mechanism.


The agreement facilitates regional trade in crude oil and petroleum products under specific circumstances, such as when the receiving country experiences an energy shortfall equivalent to at least 10 per cent of its domestic demand.

However, the implementation of Apsa has been limited by its voluntary and non-binding nature. The Iran war has shown that Asean needs clearer arrangements for responding collectively when external supply shocks affect several member states at once.

Asean should develop pre-agreed Apsa procedures for emergency notification and data sharing, assessing regional supply shortfalls, and reallocating or rerouting petroleum supplies to countries facing the most severe disruptions.

Agreeing on these procedures before the next crisis would make Asean’s response faster and more predictable, while reducing reliance on ad hoc bilateral deals.

Second, accelerate APG as an instrument of strategic resilience, not only decarbonisation.

A more integrated electricity market would let countries draw on a wider range of energy resources during external shocks and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels.

The APG has gained momentum through the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project and new subsea interconnections, but multilateral electricity trade remains constrained by fragmented regulation, differing market structures and the absence of common rules.

Asean should use the Enhanced APG Memorandum of Understanding to establish regional methodologies for wheeling charges, common rules for multilateral and emergency electricity trade, data-sharing and reliability standards, and dispute resolution.

It should also coordinate responses to cross-border grid disruptions and strengthen critical grid equipment and supply chains.

This does not require transferring authority over national energy resources to a supranational body. Asean should instead develop institutions capable of governing cross-border electricity trade while leaving ultimate authority with member states.

Third, build greater collective agency in critical-mineral partnerships.

The Amem should work more closely with Asean’s existing minerals mechanisms to ensure that energy-transition priorities are reflected in regional critical-mineral cooperation.

South-east Asia has substantial mineral reserves and downstream ambitions but remains vulnerable to major-power competition and dependence on external investment, technology and markets.

Regulatory uncertainties, the adverse socioeconomic and environmental impacts of mining and processing, and competition among South-east Asian countries for investment impede the development of regional critical-mineral supply chains.


Existing frameworks, including the Asean Minerals Development Vision 2045 and Minerals Cooperation Action Plan 2026-2030, should be used to develop common priorities for external partners, including downstream processing, technology transfer, environmental and social standards, and diversified investment and markets.

Asean+3 could help coordinate critical-mineral cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea.

A collective approach would not require members to abandon bilateral partnerships but could increase bargaining power and ensure external investment supports regional priorities rather than reinforcing dependencies.

The objective is not energy autarky or choosing sides but ensuring that no single actor can easily use capital, technology or supply chains as leverage.

Taken together, these priorities amount to a simple strategy for a transactional world: deeper integration to reduce vulnerability, stronger resilience to absorb shocks, and greater collective agency with external powers.

The most important lesson of the Iran war may therefore have little to do with Iran itself.

South-east Asia is pursuing one of the most complex energy transformations in its history at a time of growing geopolitical fragmentation and uncertainty.

Asean cannot control these external pressures, but Amem can help determine how resilient its energy transition will be in an increasingly transactional world.

This article was published at Business Times


About Mirza Sadaqat Huda
Mirza Sadaqat Huda is Senior Research Fellow, Climate and Sustainability Programme, ODI Global, Singapore, and an Associate Fellow, Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
View all posts by Mirza Sadaqat Huda →

The Horn Of Africa States: The New Gulf Empire Of Ports, Mines And Money – OpEd

The Port of Bosaso, Somalia. Photo by Siphon, Wikipedia Commons.

October 5, 2026

By Dr. Suleiman Walhad

Key Takeaways:

The essay says Gulf port, mine, and energy pledges in Africa can recycle value from informal gold leaving Sudan, Congo, Somalia, and Ethiopia into Gulf refining and back as “investment,” with Sudan’s war gold the sharpest case.

Somalia port deals with regional authorities, Ethiopia as a Red Sea pressure point, and a Gulf stake in Zambia’s Mopani copper are cited as commerce that also buys routes and political access; Mogadishu has objected to subnational contracts.

The author does not call all Gulf capital predatory, but warns states need terms that build capacity rather than blend financier, trader, operator, and patron.

Official announcements routinely feature billion-dollar commitments to ports, renewable energy, logistics and mining, presenting Gulf capital as a catalyst for economies that have long struggled to attract investment.

The reality is more complicated. Behind the headline figures lies a system in which trade, resource extraction, sovereign investment and geopolitical influence increasingly reinforce one another. The question is not simply how much Gulf capital is entering Africa, but where it comes from, who captures the resulting value and what African states concede in return.

Gold provides the clearest illustration.


Across conflict-affected and poorly governed parts of Africa, including Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Ethiopia, large quantities of gold leave the formal economy through smuggling and informal trading networks. Much of it ultimately reaches Gulf markets, where sophisticated trading and refining infrastructure can transform opaque supplies into internationally tradable bullion.

The economic significance is considerable. Gold provides liquidity in countries where conventional financial systems are weak, currencies are under pressure and state institutions have limited reach. But the same networks can also allow armed groups, politically connected intermediaries and foreign buyers to profit while governments lose tax revenue and oversight.

This creates a striking asymmetry. African states can lose control of valuable natural resources at the point of extraction, while Gulf-based traders and investors capture value further along the chain. The resulting capital can then be redeployed in Africa as investment, in ports, mines, logistics networks or infrastructure, giving the appearance of a straightforward flow of foreign capital when the underlying relationship is considerably more circular.


Sudan offers the most troubling example.

The country’s war has devastated the formal economy, but its gold trade has proved remarkably resilient. Gold has become an important source of financing for rival power centres and an object of intense competition among domestic and foreign actors. Gulf commercial interests have consequently attracted scrutiny over their role in Sudan’s gold trade and their broader relationships with the country’s competing political and military factions.

The distinction between commerce and geopolitics becomes difficult to sustain in such an environment. A port concession, mining investment or commodity purchase can generate not only commercial returns but also strategic access, political relationships and influence over critical infrastructure.

The same logic is visible around the Horn of Africa States.

Somalia’s fragmented political structure has created opportunities for Gulf states and companies to cultivate relationships with regional authorities as well as the federal government in Mogadishu. Port agreements and commercial arrangements some of the Somali states have given Gulf actors access to strategically important positions along some of the world’s most valuable maritime routes.

For Gulf investors, this can make commercial sense. The Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean are critical arteries linking Asian manufacturing with European markets. Control or influence over ports is, therefore, about more than cranes, containers and concession fees. It can provide strategic leverage over trade routes that have become increasingly important to global commerce.

For Somalia, however, the arrangements carry a political cost. Mogadishu has repeatedly objected when foreign governments or companies negotiate directly with subnational authorities, arguing that such agreements undermine the sovereignty of the federal government. The dispute is not merely constitutional. Every external relationship that strengthens a regional administration can alter the balance of power within an already fragile state.


That is why the language of investment can be misleading. A port concession may simultaneously be a commercial transaction, a geopolitical foothold and a mechanism for reshaping the political economy of the country in which it is located.

Ethiopia adds another dimension to the Gulf’s strategy in the Horn. Its position between Sudan and Somalia gives Gulf investors a strategic pressure point across the region, while close ties with Addis Ababa provide several Gulf states with political and logistical reach far beyond Ethiopia’s borders. Gulf capital therefore does more than finance Ethiopian infrastructure and commerce: it embeds Gulf interests in the strategic geography linking the Red Sea, Sudan and Somalia, turning investment into an instrument of regional influence.

Mining presents another version of the same tension.

In Zambia, the acquisition of a controlling interest in Mopani Copper Mines by a Gulf business partner was presented as an important new chapter for one of the country’s most significant copper assets. The investment was intended to support a substantial increase in production and capital expenditure.

Butt the subsequent performance has highlighted the gap that can emerge between the ambitions attached to major Gulf-backed investments and their execution. Production targets, financing commitments and contractual obligations have become matters of public dispute, underscoring a familiar problem in African resource deals: headline investment figures are easier to announce than to translate into sustained production, employment and fiscal revenues.

None of this means that Gulf investment in Africa is inherently predatory, nor that every project is simply a mechanism for resource extraction. Gulf capital can provide something Africa badly needs such as large pools of financing, infrastructure expertise, trading networks and the ability to execute projects at a scale that many Western investors have been unwilling or unable to match.

But it does mean that the traditional distinction between foreign investment and resource extraction is becoming increasingly blurred.

The Gulf states are not merely investors seeking financial returns. They are sovereign actors pursuing strategic interests through commercially structured vehicles. Ports provide access to maritime corridors. Mining assets secure supplies of strategically important commodities. Agricultural investments can strengthen food-security positions. Commodity trading creates relationships with governments and politically influential intermediaries. And sovereign wealth can provide the financial capacity to sustain these strategies over decades rather than electoral cycles.

Africa, meanwhile, is negotiating from a position of considerable need. Governments require capital for infrastructure, energy and industrialisation, while many face high borrowing costs and limited access to Western finance. Gulf investors can therefore offer an attractive alternative, but one that can come with long concessions, preferential access to resources and political relationships that are difficult to unwind.

The central issue, then, is not whether Gulf money is technically “new” or “old”. Capital is fungible, making it virtually impossible to follow individual dollars from an African mine into a sovereign wealth fund and back into an infrastructure project. Yet that does not make the underlying connection meaningless: ownership, trade flows and political influence can still form a continuous economic chain.


The more important question is who controls the value chain.

If gold leaves Africa through opaque channels, is refined and traded in Gulf markets, and the resulting financial power is later deployed to secure African mines, ports or logistics assets, the relationship cannot be understood simply as foreign direct investment flowing into a capital-starved continent. It is a vertically integrated system of commerce and influence, in which control over commodities, finance and infrastructure increasingly sits in the same hands.

That is the strategic wager behind the Gulf’s expanding presence in Africa.

The brochures may describe a partnership for development. The more consequential story is about who controls the ports through which commodities move, the mines from which they originate, the financial networks through which they are monetised and the political relationships that protect them.

For African governments, the challenge is not to reject Gulf capital. It is to negotiate with it from a position strong enough to ensure that investment produces productive capacity rather than merely changing the ownership of extraction.

The danger is not that the Gulf will invest too much in Africa.

It is that Africa will become increasingly dependent on a form of investment in which the distinction between financier, trader, infrastructure operator and geopolitical patron becomes impossible to see.


About Dr. Suleiman Walhad

Dr. Suleiman Walhad writes on the Horn of Africa economies and politics. He can be reached at suleimanwalhad@yahoo.com.

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China Becomes More Aggressive In The South China Sea – OpEd

This screengrab taken from a handout video filmed on June 17, 2024, and released by Armed Forces of the Philippines shows Chinese coast guard personnel aboard their inflatable boats blocking Philippine navy boats during a confrontation at the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. Phoot Credit: Armed Forces of the Philippines video, X

October 5, 2026

By Veeramalla Anjaiah


Key Takeaways:

The piece says China is building and militarizing features and entering the EEZs of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia under a nine- then ten-dash line the 2016 arbitral award rejected, which Beijing still calls null.

It reports a PLA drill at Scarborough Shoal and a China Coast Guard block of the Philippine resupply ship M/V Lapu-Lapu at Second Thomas Shoal, with no collision or injuries; the U.S. embassy condemned the maneuvers and China called the mission provocative.

India is said to have delivered about $330 million of BrahMos to the Philippines, with talks of further sales to Vietnam and Indonesia and interest from Malaysia; the author treats missiles as insufficient without pressure to honor UNCLOS.

In the South China Sea (SCS), China is expanding its presence in disputed waters and adopting increasingly dangerous tactics against neighboring Southeast Asian states.

China has been building artificial islands and converting some of them into military bases in the SCS. As part of its grey-zone tactics, China has intruded into the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia several times.

China claims more that 80 percent of the SCS based on the controversial and illegal Nine-Dash Line (now 10-Dash) map. It has overlapping claims with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei Darussalam.


China also claims a part of Indonesia’s EEZ in the North Natuna Sea. Indonesia is not a claimant state in the SCS dispute. Chinese vessels several times intruded into Indonesia’s EEZ and its fishing boats stolen the fish from there.

An expansionist and aggressive China is challenging the centrality of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as the foundation of global order at sea, a decade after the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) rejected Beijing’s sweeping maritime claims and declared the Nine-Dash Line map and China’s claims were illegal.

Who will stop mighty China and its aggression in the SCS?

The U.S. offered to supply weapons to the Philippines but it is not enough. To stop China’s navy, India offered to sell its BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to Southeast Asian countries.

BrahMos missiles are long-ranged and ramjet powered and they can be launched from submarines, ships, fighter jets or transporter erector launchers.

BrahMos is a joint venture between India’s Defence Research and Development (DRDO) and the Russian NPO Mashinostroyeniya. The missile is based on P-800 Oniks.


BrahMos is a benchmark for India’s emerging export story with exports to cross US$600 million to the Philippines, Indonesia and the Philippines, the ANI news agency reported.

The missile also has an air-launched version and it is a great success on Sukhoi fighter jets. BrahMos missile system to the tune of about $330 million has been delivered to Philippines.

India said that exports should be about $100 million to start with for Vietnam, and for Indonesia, it should be around $200 million.

India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh had described that BrahMos is not just a missile, but a symbol of the growing indigenous capabilities of India.

The missile features a traditional warhead and an advanced guided system and possesses the capability to strike long distances at supersonic speeds. This combination of speed, accuracy, and power makes BrahMos one of the best systems in the world.

Malaysia is also currently considering to purchase BrahMos missiles from India. China claims a part of Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak areas and Chinese ships regularly intrudes into Malaysia’s EEZ.

Recently, China’s military conducted a ​joint naval and air training exercise around ‌a disputed shoal and in the waters and airspace around the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the SCS, the Reuters news agency reported.

The Shoal is located in the Philippines, where it is known as Bajo de Masinloc. It is also claimed by China based on its controversial Nine-Dash line map and call it Huangyan Dao.

The People’s ​Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, in a statement on WeChat social media app, described the operation as a necessary response ​to actions by “certain countries” it said had ​undermined regional peace and stability.


It that said that the training “aims to test and enhance combat capabilities in safeguarding China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests”.

The China Coast Guard (CCG) announced separately that the exercises focused on “maritime rights-protection, law enforcement, and management and control” in the waters around Scarborough Shoal.

The exercise came just after two days after the Philippines accused China of obstructing a resupply mission to its troops stationed at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands, prompting a strong rebuke from the Chinese government.

The Philippines Coast Guard (PCG) said in a statement that “temporarily suspended after a CCG vessel carried out dangerous maneuvers” against the Philippine resupply vessel M/V Lapu-Lapu. The maneuvers “put Filipino personnel at risk” and prevented the mission from being completed.

According to The Diplomat magazine, the Shoal located around 200 kilometers to the west of the Philippines’ Luzon Island and 874 kilometers from China’s Hainan Island, Scarborough Shoal has been a persistent flashpoint in the maritime disputes between the Philippines and China.

The Shoal has been under Chinese control since 2012, when the two nations engaged in a tense 10-week stand-off that concluded with China occupying the feature, despite an agreement for mutual withdrawal from the Shoal.

Finally, the Philippines took China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and won the case. But China boycotted the PCA’s proceedings and rejected the PCA’s ruling.

Since then, China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels have surrounded the Shoal and made repeated attempts to restrict Filipino fishermen from accessing the rich fishing grounds inside the atoll’s central lagoon.

There was ​no collision, and no one was injured, but the ​dangerous maneuvers of the China Coast Guard created a serious ⁠risk of collision.

For its own part, CCG spokesperson Jiang Lue accused the PCG of engaging in “provocative” acts at Second Thomas Shoal, restating its position that the BRP Sierra Madre was illegally grounded on the shoal in 1999.

“China Coast Guard, in accordance with the law, took measures including on-site monitoring and following, as well as issuing verbal warnings to the Philippine resupply vessel,” it stated.

In a statement, the U.S. embassy in Manila condemned the Chinese action and lauded its Philippine allies’ “professionalism and restraint.”

“The United States strongly condemns the use of dangerous blocking and other irresponsible maneuvers by the China Coast Guard and the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) that threatened a collision with a Philippine vessel and prevented a lawful and routine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal,” it said.

China criticized the U.S. for supporting the Philippines provocative actions.


“China urges the U.S. side to stop fanning the flames and refrain from actions that undermine regional peace and stability,” it said.

China and the Philippines clashed many times over the Shoal during the 2023 and 2026 period.

The two sides finally agreed to de-escalate the situation at Second Thomas Shoal, reaching a “provisional understanding” that allowed the Philippines to resupply the grounded warship.

China’s attempt to interrupt the Philippines resupply mission suggests that the “provisional understanding” between Manila and Beijing has broken down, potentially ushering in a new period of tension at Second Thomas Shoal.

This year, the Philippines is marking the 10th anniversary of the 2016 PCA’s Arbitral Award. The Award, which declared that China’s claims were illegal in the SCS, was final and legally binding but China remains adamant and tensions remain increasing. It continues to say that the Award is “illegal, null and void”.

China has been using its trade and investments as tools to influence countries like Indonesia and Malaysia to adopt a soft approach towards its aggressive policies in the SCS.

Indonesian Deputy Foreign Minister Arif Havas Oegroseno stressed the importance of maintaining a habit of cooperation to sustain communication and prevent tensions in the South China Sea.

He urged all the countries to abide by the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) as the primary framework for peaceful dispute resolution.

The international community must put pressure on China to stop its excessive and respect the international law. It is very strange China, which signed and ratified the UNCLOS, refuses to follow international maritime laws.



About Veeramalla Anjaiah
Veeramalla Anjaiah is a Jakarta-based senior journalist and the author of the book “Azerbaijan Seen from Indonesia
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Afghanistan And The Terrorism Question Before The United Nations – OpEd

Photo Credit: Zarif Amir, Pexels

October 5, 2026

By Dr. Sahibzada Muhammad Usman


Key Takeaways:

A closed Security Council meeting on Sept. 16, 2026, days before the General Debate, was briefed that terrorist groups in Afghanistan still threaten the region; France pressed the Taliban on security as well as rights, and Afghanistan’s own envoy called terrorism a serious threat.

The piece says the worry is wider than Pakistan’s TTP-sanctuary claims, which Kabul denies, and points to the February Monitoring Team report, the secretary-general’s reporting, and the Sept. 11 counterterrorism session.

The author’s ask is measurable checks on movement, recruitment, finance, and training, plus Pakistani intelligence through U.N. channels, not isolation of Afghans.

At a highly significant diplomatic juncture, Afghanistan is back at the heart of international security issues. The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door meeting on the situation in Afghanistan on 16 September 2026, just days before world leaders will arrive in New York for the 81st United Nations General Assembly’s General Debate. The timing matters. No longer is Afghanistan only talked of as a humanitarian crisis or uneventful political transition. Terrorist groups have become a recurring theme in debates on security in the region and indeed in the international community. The Security Council meeting record shows that the Council was briefed separately on Afghanistan and the UNAMA briefing explicitly stated that Afghanistan remains the victim of the threats of terrorist groups and the situation in the region and international peace and security is at threat.

That is the wording which needs to be watched as it takes the dialogue beyond bilateral Pakistan Afghanistan blame game. Islamabad has also repeatedly alleged the presence of armed groups, especially the Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan, in Afghanistan, which it alleges provide them with sanctuaries and/or operational networks. Kabul has denied Pakistan’s charges and said that the Afghan land was not being used to strike other nations. But the worry over the terror activity within Afghanistan is not restricted to Pakistan. There is institutional support for international monitoring of the security situation through the most recent reporting schedule of the SG, the Monitoring Team in August, and the Taliban sanctions monitoring report.
A Concern That Extends Beyond Pakistan

France has added important diplomatic weight to this discussion. During earlier The position can be reviewed in the official Security Council transcript. At the 16 September meeting, France again pressed the Afghan authorities to demonstrate credible action on security concerns, alongside human rights and political commitments. The wider Council discussion therefore illustrates something significant. Concern about terrorism linked with Afghanistan is not merely a Pakistani talking point. It has entered the vocabulary of permanent and elected Security Council members.


This distinction should shape the international discussion. It is built through convergence between national evidence and independent international assessments. The February Monitoring Team report and the earlier Secretary General report on Afghanistan show that the United Nations has continued to track extremist networks and security risks. Even Afghanistan’s representative at the United Nations stated during the September meeting that terrorism remained a serious threat and referred to Monitoring Team findings concerning numerous terrorist organisations. His Security Council statement also argued that counterterrorism concerns must be addressed through accountable governance and respect for international law.

There is also a larger lesson emerging from the Council’s recent counterterrorism discussions. On 11 September, France convened a Security Council meeting marking twenty five years since the attacks of 2001. The Council terrorism debate addressed changing terrorist methods, recruitment, financing and the exploitation of new technologies. The accompanying Council briefing analysis recorded negotiations in which the continued presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan became part of the discussion. This places Afghanistan within a much wider security problem involving cross border networks, digital recruitment, terrorist financing, foreign fighters and increasingly decentralised extremist organisations.

Why UNGA 81 Creates a Diplomatic Opening

The coming General Assembly week gives this issue additional importance. The 81st session formally opened on 8 September and its General Debate begins on 22 September, according to the United Nations UNGA guide. The UNGA high level program confirms that heads of state, governments and senior delegations will converge in New York during the same week. Other international institutions are organising their priorities around this diplomatic gathering, including the World Health Organization program and the European Union UNGA agenda. Afghanistan therefore enters the high level week with its security situation already fresh in diplomats’ minds.

For Pakistan, this creates an opportunity to internationalise the discussion without turning it into a campaign against Afghanistan or the Afghan people. The distinction is essential. Pakistan’s argument should remain focused on specific terrorist organisations, their leadership structures, financing, movement, recruitment and alleged operational facilities rather than treating Afghanistan itself as the adversary. Evidence presented through multilateral institutions carries greater credibility than sweeping political allegations. The Security Council September forecast already identified cross border militancy as an important regional security issue and noted Pakistani allegations regarding TTP activity as well as the Taliban’s rejection of them. The UN Web TV record also provides a public record of the September Afghanistan discussion.
From Diplomatic Attention to Measurable Action

What ultimately matters is verification. The international community should seek measurable indicators showing whether organisations operating within Afghanistan are losing freedom of movement, recruitment capacity, financing, training infrastructure and the ability to plan external attacks. Afghanistan’s authorities, for their part, have an opportunity to demonstrate through verifiable measures that their territory will not be used against neighbouring states. Pakistan should similarly continue sharing actionable intelligence through appropriate international and bilateral mechanisms rather than expecting political statements alone to resolve the problem.


The diplomatic environment is therefore becoming more consequential. France holds the Security Council presidency during September, as reflected in the Council program of work, and its recent interventions have placed terrorism in Afghanistan within a broader international security framework. The Security Council’s monitoring architecture, UNAMA reporting, sanctions mechanisms and the political visibility of UNGA 81 together create a moment when evidence can be translated into sustained diplomatic attention. The purpose should not be isolation for its own sake. It should be accountability and measurable counterterrorism action capable of protecting Afghans, Pakistanis and the wider region.

As the Security Council declared years ago, international terrorism represents a challenge to all states and all humanity. That principle remains highly relevant today.

“Acts of international terrorism constitute a challenge to all States and to all of humanity.”
RecommendationsPakistan should present verifiable intelligence through established United Nations mechanisms consistently.

Regional states should strengthen intelligence sharing and coordinated border security arrangements.

UN monitoring bodies should regularly assess terrorist mobility recruitment and financing.
Afghan authorities should demonstrate measurable action against every designated terrorist organisation.

International engagement should connect diplomatic normalization with verifiable counterterrorism commitments.

About Dr. Sahibzada Muhammad Usman
Dr. Sahibzada Muhammad Usman holds a PhD (Italy) in geopolitics and is currently doing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Shandong University, China. Dr. Usman is the author of a book titled ‘Different Approaches on Central Asia: Economic, Security, and Energy’, published by Lexington, USA.
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