By: Sanjay Mummana, Research Analyst, GSDN

The Middle East is never just a desert between Asia and Africa; it is the place of the birth of empires, of religions, and of civilizations in conflict. Yet, when the world today thinks of this land, one word comes to mind: war. From the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the wars going now, the Middle East has seldom been a peaceful place. One conflict ends another begins, as if the region is trapped in an endless cycle. Peace in Middle East isa question shaped by both politics and history. Let us first examine the history of the Middle East, to understand the roots of its persistent conflicts.

The 1910s and 1920s: Promises and Betrayals:

The first decade of the twentieth century changed the history of the Middle East. At that time, Britain was still very dependent on oil from the United States (U.S.), and the American position on anti-colonialism made the British nervous. To reduce dependence, they turned to the oil-rich Middle East and chose to break the Ottoman Empire’s hold on the region. Arabs who had rebelled against the Ottomans thought that Britain promised them independence through the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence but their fate had already been sealed. On May 16, 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the land between Britain and France, and on November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, without regard to the Arab majority living there. The Treaty of Sevres (August 10, 1920) ended the Ottoman Empire and divided its territories among the European powers. By the 1920s, instead of actual independence, Arabs were given artificial states under foreign rule, sowing mistrust and conflicts that continue to this day as well.

The 1930s and 1940s: Rising Nationalism and the Birth of Israel:

In the 1930s, anger grew in Arab lands under European control, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Jewish migration to Palestine increased, and pushed further by Nazi persecution, which led to clashes with local Arabs. After the Holocaust, pressure rose to create a Jewish homeland, and on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared unilateral independence, and the very next day Arab countries attacked, starting the first Arab-Israeli War. Jews lost millions of lives in the Holocaust, finally got a place to live, and when others tried to take it away, they fought till the last drop of blood and won. For Arabs, it was the opposite. They saw it as their land unfairly given to others. For Palestinians, it was the Nakba (“catastrophe”), when many were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes.

The 1950s and 1960s: The Age of Coups and Wars:

Arab nationalism grew stronger in the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt wanted to unite Arabs under socialism and reduce Western control. This came to a head during the Suez Crisis on October 29, 1956, when Egypt took control of the Suez Canal. Britain, France, and Israel attacked, but they were forced to withdraw under pressure from the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Arab-Israeli conflict rose again on June 05, 1967, in the Six Day War, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and Golan Heights, causing more Palestinian displacement.

The 1970s and 1980s: Oil, Peace, and Proxy Wars:

The 1970s were transformative. On October 06, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel to regain territories. Israel pushed back, the Arab oil producers then used the “oil weapon,” cutting supplies to the West and quadrupling the prices. This showed the world the power of Middle Eastern oil. At the same time, there were efforts for peace. On September 17, 1978, the Camp David Accord between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin, led by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, resulted in Egypt officially recognizing Israel. While Sadat was praised abroad, at home he was assassinated on October 6, 1981, by extremists who saw peace with Israel as betrayal. The February 11, 1979 Iranian Revolution also reshaped the region. Iran removed U.S. backed Shah and became an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini, opposing Western influence and encouraging Islamist movements across the Middle East.

The 1980s were violent. The Iran-Iraq War (1980 – 1988) took the lives of more than a million people. Saddam Hussein, with the help of the West and Arab countries, attempted to prevent Iran, but the war did not conclude with a victory. From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon was during a civil war involving Israel, Syria, and numerous local militias. Israel invaded Lebanon in June 6, 1982 to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which only led to more fighting. It was also the period in which the Shiite militant organization Hezbollah was born, backed by Iran. The First Intifada started in December 9, 1987 with mass protests, boycotts against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

The 1990s and 2000s: Hope, Terror, and Occupation:

In August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, shocking the Arab world. On January 17, 1991, a U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm. Soon, Saddam’s army was defeated and Kuwait was freed. But U.S. troops stayed in Saudi, which angered many Arabs. This presence became one of the reasons extremists like Osama bin Laden later turned their anger against the West.

Even in this tense time, the 1990s gave some hope for peace. On September 13, 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shook hands. Later Jordan also signed peace with Israel. For a short while, it seemed peace might be possible. But this hope was shaken when, Rabin was killed by an Israeli extremist. His death showed that peace could be destroyed not only by enemies but also from within one’s own side.

The first decade of the 21st century was even more turbulent. On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was attacked by al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, in the 9/11 attacks. This resulted in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban who were sheltering al-Qaeda. Two years later March 20, 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, claiming that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was captured and executed on December 30, 2006, but such weapons were not found. The war left Iraq unstable with bombings, sectarian violence, and the rise of new extremist groups that would later become ISIS.

The 2010s and 2020s: The Arab Spring and Continuing Struggles:

The Arab Spring (2010-2011) originated in Tunisia and spread throughout the Arab world. Ordinary people took to the streets demanding freedom and dignity, revolting against rulers. Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt. Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Libya. But in Syria, the protests lead into a civil war that drew in world powers and produced the worst refugee crisis.

The 2020s began with some hope for peace. On September 15, 2020, the Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and later a few other Arab states. However, this peace did not include the Palestinians. Later, the Israel–Gaza conflict broke out on October 07, 2023, leaving Gaza in ruins. Syria is still stuck in war, Yemen faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, and Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to compete for power.

Recently U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran because they feared that if Iran built nuclear weapons, it would threaten the whole region. Their worry was also linked to the groups Iran supports. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a powerful militia and political force that has fought many times with Israel. Hamas in Gaza is the group leading the fight against Israel and is behind many rocket attacks. The Houthis in Yemen are fighting a long war against the Saudi-backed government and have targeted ships and cities in Saudi. Because of these ties, many countries see these groups as terrorist organizations. Iran’s backing of them, along with its nuclear ambitions, made it a key target of U.S. and Israeli action.

Looking back at the past century, several factors have kept the Middle East locked in a cycle of conflict. In my view, some of these are as follows:

• The Middle East is a mix of ethnic groups (Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Copts, etc.) and religious groups (Sunni and Shia Islam, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and Judaism). These identities have been used historically and politically to divide people even more. The Sunni–Shia divide has been one of the deepest tensions. Saudi, as the leading Sunni power, is strongly backed by the U.S., while Iran, the main Shia power, supports Shia-linked groups in different countries. To spread its influence, Iran relies on proxy groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. The goal of these proxies is not only to weaken Iran’s rivals but also to spread Shia dominance in the region. Whenever these groups gain more ground, Iran’s influence grows, creating constant friction with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and their allies.

• After World War I, Britain and France drew borders without any regard to existing tribal, ethnic, or religious realities. This produced states with internally divided populations. As a result, in many countries, certain groups became minorities and were denied equal rights. Many conflicts, such as those between Israel and its neighbours, the Kurdish, and tensions in Iraq and Syria, have their origins in these colonial era decisions.

• Large oil, gas, and mineral reserves have been both a blessing and a curse. Wealth creation has been accompanied by internal power struggles, wars, and foreign interventions as control over resources is constantly contested. Often, competing claims have worsened tensions within countries and across borders.

• Decades of authoritarian rule, corruption, and fragile institutions have left many states incapable of providing for the basic needs of their populations. This failure has led to public anger, revolutions, and extremist movements, as seen in the Arab Spring and the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

• Middle Eastern oil has made the region a playground for global powers. The U.S. relies on Saudi Arabia not just for oil but also to maintain a strong Sunni front against Iran. On the other hand, Russia and China lean towards Iran. China is the largest importer of Iranian oil and pays using its own currency, giving China a strong economic lifeline and leverage against U.S. sanctions. For Russia, Iran is strategically important because it acts as a barrier against NATO expansion and holds key gas pipeline routes that connect to Europe and Asia. This great power rivalry means that local conflicts are often turned into proxy wars between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing.

• One of the biggest dangers comes from the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Israel sees this as an existential threat, as it fears that if Iran gets nukes, they could be passed down to proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis. If such groups were ever to gain nuclear capability, the region could face uncontrollable chaos. This fear drives constant strikes, sanctions, and political pressure to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Although there have been peace treaties, like the Oslo and the Abraham Accords, the Middle East is still full of conflicts. Real peace does not come just from signing agreements. It needs solving deeper problems. History shows that change is possible. Europe, once torn apart by many wars, rebuilt itself by talking and working together. This led to the European Union, where countries cooperate for shared goals. The Middle East can also move toward lasting peace if its nations focus on working together instead of fighting.

At this moment each nation and organization pursue its own interests, and the interests are not similar very often. And this is why peace operations cannot work. Imagine the fight as a tree – the top branches can be cut away but the roots of religion, identity, and history run deep. Without resolving the issue at root level, violence will continue to reappear. According to Mahabharata, in war there are no winners or losers but only widows and orphans. In the Middle East, this is particularly so where the common people bear the brunt. Leaders should prefer knowledge over vengeance, hope over fear, and long-term peace rather than immediate benefits. Then only peace will cease being a dream, and become a reality.

By: Prof. Bawa Singh, Anjana VS and Jay Koche

China and the Central Asian Republics (CARs) have signed the Treaty of Permanent Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship, and Cooperation in June 2025. The treaty is considered as a landmark agreement that formalized Beijing’s strategic depth across Eurasia. Literally and linguistically, the treaty emphasized harmony and mutual respect for each other, but its subtext has concealed a deeper ambition i.e., institutionalization of China’s leadership in a region that was long dominated by Russia and contested by the West.

The evolving regional framework that is being dubbed as the “Xi’an Consensus” soon after the inaugural 2023 summit in Xi’an. It marks a shift from transactional diplomacy to a rules-based, multilateral architecture covering infrastructure, security, and soft power. It is being perceived as China’s most ambitious attempt, yet to reshape the regional norms and embed its influence through legal, economic, and cultural means.

Strategic Depth

China has been emerging as hegemon in in the economic region architecture. The  China–Central Asia trade had reached to a phenomenal record level to the amount of US$ 94.8 billion in 2024, from just US$ 460 million in 1992. In the just first five months of 2025 alone, China and Central Asia trade surged to the amount of US$ 39.8 billion, with Kazakhstan accounting for nearly half. Concomitantly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has transformed the region from a post-Soviet periphery into a Chinese backyard and logistical artery, linking China to Europe. Chinese  direct investment stock in Central Asia reached to the amount of  US$ 17 billion in 2024. The investment is growing with a focus on critical minerals and green energy. The same further strengthened by projects like the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway, which broke ground in December 2024 and anticipated that it would cut freight time to Europe by 10 days.

The Treaty of Permanent Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship, and Cooperation (2025) has institutionalized s the BRI through the legally binding multilateralism. The treaty has offered to China a regulatory anchor and geopolitical firewall. It includes clauses on non-interference, dispute resolution, and security cooperation, reducing risks of instability that could derail infrastructure corridors. China has expanded its geostrategic footprints by some measures like joint counterterrorism drills with Tajikistan and security assistance to Kyrgyzstan. These measures signal a quiet entrenchment   into domains, which were once dominated by Russia. The establishment of China–Central Asia Secretariat in 2023, now the same has been coordinating the  regional multilateral engagements with China covering the trade, education, and climate resilience.

Debt, Distrust, and Strategic Exclusivity

Without an iota of doubt, geostrategic footprints of China have been phenomenally growing in the Central Asian region. On the contrary, yet the Xi’an Consensus is not without challenges, contradictions and criticism. The critics have been highlighting the Chinese  debt-trap diplomacy in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In these countries, the Chinese debt accounts for 40% and 27% of GDP respectively. Concurrently, the environmental concerns are spreading their tentacles. The  BRI projects often bypassing and ignoring the environmental safeguards and exacerbating ecological stresses. Public discontentment is also growing. The protests against the Chinese investment and projects are frequent, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan due to  local distrust stemming from land loss, labour practices, and opaque governance. Critics argue that Article 3 of the China–Central Asia Treaty may strategically exclude  Central Asian states from alliances like Westerns Alliances  limiting their foreign policy flexibility. While this framed as non-alignment, but the analysts warned it as a China-centric regional framework.

Moreover, compared to other external powers, China has emerged as the dominant external actor in Central Asia, with trade reaching a record US$ 94.8 billion in 2024, as compared to Russia (US$ 18–20 billion) the EU (US$ 15–17 billion) and the US (US$ 5–6 billion).  Similarly, China is sharing strong connectivity through projects like the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway and the Khorgos dry port. China’s strategic influence has institutionalized through the China–Central Asia Secretariat and the Xi’an Consensus.  Although,Moscow retaining the cultural and linguistic influences, but its economic and strategic primacy have been shrinking. Some analysts at CEPA and CNAS highlighted that  that Russia has learned to accept and accommodate China’s rise in the region.

Realizing the geopolitical and geostrategic concerns, the Central Asian countries also have not been remained passive. The CARs are pursuing multi-vector diplomacy, engaging with major external powers such as the India, US, EU, Japan etc.

At last, it is argued that the Xi’an Consensus is not a formal alliance, rather it’s a blueprint. China has been expanding its geostrategic tentacles through the connectivity, diplomacy, debt, infrastructure, and soft power means. China has embedded into the multi-dimensional fabric of Central Asia. China’s these strengths proving to be hedges against Russian security, historical and cultural influences.   On the other hand, it’s a mix of opportunities and constraints for the CARs. Concomitantly, it is a reminder for Russia that its multilateral influences and CARs as backyard, once for always cannot be taken for granted, rather, now it must be revisited and reframed. Thus, new Eurasian order is emerging with the Chinese influence gaining and waning Russian with zero sum and positive sum game, being built, bargained, and quietly signed into permanence.

By: Lt Col JS Sodhi (Retd), Editor, GSDN

Two contrasting statements by the Donald Trump Administration in just a span of over five years, pretty much explains the tough position Taiwan finds itself in, as China’s war for Taiwan is clearly visible on the horizon.

One, as the Covid-19 pandemic was unleashing its full force and fury globally in 2020 with deaths being reported by the dime and dozen every second, the 45^th US President Donald Trump posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on March 17, 2020 terming the Corona virus causing this deadly pandemic as the “Chinese Virus”. China took strong objection to this statement and the relations between the USA and China nose-dived for the balance of Trump’s Presidential tenure that ended in January 2021.

Two, on April 12, 2025, Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary of the 47^th US President Donald Trump’s administration shocked the world when in a candid statement he admitted that China’s hypersonic missiles could destroy the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers in just 20 minutes. He further added that in every war game conducted in the US Military, the Americans always loose to the Chinese. War games are conducted in all militaries the world over to assess the readiness of military strategies and are designed to simulate real-war scenarios.

No wonder as Donald Trump after getting elected as the US President on November 05, 2024, was briefed on various operational and security aspects of America including the military capabilities of USA’s main adversary China, before being inaugurated as the 47^th US President on January 20, 2025, invited the Chinese President Xi Jinping for his inauguration ceremony in Washington D.C. This Presidential invite was amongst the few extended to world leaders known as strong allies of Donald Trump that included the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Argentinian President Javier Milei amongst the specially selected.

Though Xi Jinping did not attend the inauguration but he sent China’s Vice President Han Zheng for the inauguration. The Presidential invite for Xi Jinping marked a turning point in Donald Trump’s change in attitude towards China in just five years from calling out China as culpable for the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic to inviting the Chinese President for his inauguration.

The US-China tango had just started and as time would reveal, Donald Trump would have a soft attitude towards China as he spared no other nation, apart from Russia, in the pursuit of “Making America Great Again”.

“Making America Great Again” also called MAGA, the slogan that caught the American voter’s fancy in the run-up to the US Presidential elections last year, gave Donald Trump resounding victory in the elections though almost every media house, think-tank and political analyst in the USA had predicted Donald Trump’s defeat to Kamala Harris, the Democrat Presidential nominee. After Donald Trump refused to have his next Presidential Debate with Kamala Harris as the solitary Presidential Debate with her had ended as a disaster for Trump, it was a forgone conclusion that Donald Trump would never return to the White House as America’s President.

But the American voter saw merit in MAGA as it entailed getting back manufacturing to the USA and Trump’s promise on not taking part in any war/conflict in the world, and elected Donald Trump as the USA’s 47^th President with a thumping majority.

Within a few weeks of settling down as America’s 47^th President, Donald Trump unleashed the Tariff War on April 09, 2025. And each day the world would wake up to new set of tariffs being announced by President Trump. So much so, that within a few weeks, one lost count of what tariffs were imposed on which nation. The media and social media were in a frenzy discussing Trump’s Tariff War.

But two nations remained unfazed – Russia & China. The messaging was clear as events would unravel soon.

China struck back at the USA by imposing tariffs on American imports. The Chinese Embassy in the USA retorted that China was prepared for any war with the USA, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war and that China was ready to fight till the end.

Russia too struck back on August 05, 2025 by calling the American tariffs as ‘neocolonial’ and accused Washington of attempting to maintain its hegemony.

But beneath these strong statements, neither China nor Russia were affected by the US tariffs as Donald Trump had exempted major trading commodities of Russia and China from tariffs.

The bonhomie visible between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the Alaska summit in Anchorage on August 15, 2025 and the US President’s statement that he was planning to visit China later this year, brings to fore that there is nothing amiss between the three Superpowers.

The USA, Russia & China have in an unwritten pact decided not to meddle in each other’s domain. The world has been unofficially divided into three regions with each Superpower deciding not to transgress in the other’s domain.

The first loser of this unofficial pact between the three Superpowers will be Taiwan as the next major war the world is going to witness is China’s war on Taiwan.

On February 03, 2023, William Burns, the Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), USA officially tasked with gathering, processing and analysing national security information from around the world, said in a statement that USA and China will go to war over Taiwan in 2027.

And this year, on May 31, 2025, Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary warned that China is actively training to invade Taiwan.

In March 2025, the American Portrait Survey found that 59.6% Taiwanese citizens do not consider the United States trustworthy. The Brookings Institution Report released on April 25, 2025 noted that 60.9% of the Taiwanese disagreed with the statement that “Taiwan is safer than before with Trump as President”.

The Taiwanese are absolutely correct. On July 27, 2025, Donald Trump’s administration denied permission to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te to stop in New York enroute to Central America after Beijing raised objections with Washington about the visit.

Incidentally, in 2023 the Joe Biden administration had allowed the then-Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to stop in New York on her way to Belize and Guatemala in South America.

Reminiscences of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis

Perhaps the reason behind the Donald Trump administration not allowing the Taiwanese President for the stopover in New York was The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis which began in a rather unmilitary background when President Lee Teng-hui, the then President of Taiwan during whose currency as the Taiwanese President, the martial law ended and Taiwan became a democracy, decided to accept an invitation in 1995 from his alma mater, the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA, to deliver a speech on “Taiwan’s Democratisation Experience”.

China vehemently opposed USA giving a visa to President Lee Teng-hui as by that time USA in accordance with the One China principle was diplomatically recognising China and not Taiwan.

However, the US Congress passed a concurrent resolution, allowing the issuance of visa to President Lee Teng-hui and the Taiwanese President visited USA on June 09-10, 1995 to deliver the speech. China was infuriated and branded the Taiwanese president as a traitor attempting to “split China”.

Jiang Zemin, the Third Paramount Leader of China, extremely furious and angry over the Taiwanese President’s visit to USA, ordered the mobilisation of PLA and directed PLA to conduct missiles tests on July 07, 1995. The missile tests began on July 21, 1995 and lasted a few days with the sole aim of intimidating Taiwan.

Live ammunition military exercises were conducted by China from August 15-25, 1995, followed by naval amphibious assault exercises. USA immediately responded to China’s military overtures by sending two aircraft carrier groups in the vicinity of Taiwan – the USS McClusky and USS Nimitz in December 1995. On March 08, 1996 US President Bill Clinton announced that the Carrier Strike Group 5, would deploy in international waters near Taiwan. However, undeterred by all these American naval deployments, China continued its live ammunition firing exercises.

On March 11, 1996 USA despatched its Carrier Strike Group 7 from the Persian Gulf to the international waters near Taiwan. With two US Navy Carrier Strike Groups stationed near Taiwan, China had no option and the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ended on March 23, 1996 in a whimper with no combat taking place between China and Taiwan.

But militarily China has expanded manifold since 1996. Being the global leader today in 57 out of the 64 critical technologies that exist today and boasting of the world’s biggest navy apart from the distinction of being the only military in the world to have declared its capacity and capability to fight any war in the world in all six domains of modern warfare – land, sea, air, cyber, electromagnetic spectrum and space in 2014, America knows that militarily the odds favour China exponentially.

The statement of Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary on April 12, 2025 mentioned earlier in the article, needs no over-emphasis.

In the event of China attacking Taiwan, the island nation will have no ally to bank upon as clearly the military support of the USA is no longer assured. The other littoral nations of the South China Sea be it Japan, South Korea or the Philippines have very small militaries to assist Taiwan in the face of the Chinese aggression.

G3: An idea whose time has come

After China became the world’s third biggest economy in 2007, American intelligence agencies started sensing that China was slowly becoming assertive. Going by the current rate of the economic progress that China was experiencing, it was clear that in a couple of years China would become the world’s second biggest economy, which it eventually did in 2010.

As China’s economic rise would increase, so would its military prowess. On June 01, 2008, C. Fred Bergsten, the noted American economist in an article in Foreign Affairs proposed a grouping of three nations/organisations which at that time were economically & militarily powerful – the USA, European Union and China. Though, no name was mentioned for the proposed grouping.

Russia was not included in this grouping as the erstwhile USSR had broken up into 15 nations in 1991 and in the intervening period till 2008, Russia, the biggest nation to emerge after the breakup of the USSR, was not seen as the successor of the erstwhile USSR as the claimant to the Superpower status. However, exactly two months after the article had been published, Russia invaded Georgia on August 01, 2008 and thereby started Russia’s accession as a Superpower and with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia had firmly established herself as a Superpower.

The three Superpowers of the contemporary times seem to have informally constituted the G3 or the Group of Three, wherein no Superpower is at crossroads with the other two. The Russian-Chinese strong friendship is well known and after Donald Trump has been inaugurated as America’s 47^th President, the US too isn’t at crossroads with Russia & China. Thus, the formal date for the informal G3 grouping can be assumed as January 20, 2025, the day of inauguration of Donald Trump’s second Presidency.

The world is now in a precarious position where all the three Superpowers have their own domains of operations and influence and will not interfere in the domains of the other two.

A case in point is India. After President Barack Obama announced the East Asia Strategy also known as the Pivot to Asia strategy on December 21, 2011, the relations between the USA and India grew closer. In the Indo-Pacific region, only two countries ie the USA and India are in a position to check the growing aggressiveness of China, if the two nations combine militarily. As the Indian-American friendship was deepening, so were the Chinese concerns of India’s rise increasing.

But with the way President Trump has called out India since his inauguration in January this year, the US-Indian strategic partnership to counter China is over. In his 100-minute speech on January 20, 2025, President Trump praised Pakistan but did not mention India even once.

During the February 12-13, 2025 visit of Prime Minster Narendra Modi to the USA, when the topic of persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh was broached upon, Trump left it onto India to handle. Ideally, the US President words in calling out Bangladesh for the persecution of Hindus since August 05, 2024 would have had great weight, but it didn’t happen this way.

On July 30, 2025, Donald Trump called India a “dead economy” and on August 27, 2025, India had been tariffed the maximum in the world with 50% tariffs imposed.

Clearly, the US has stepped back from the American-Indian strategic friendship that has been so solidly built in the last 14 years. And with Trump having three and half years in office left, it is unlikely that the US-Indian partnership will come back to the pre-January 2025 levels.

And this is exactly what China wanted. China is set to wage the war on Taiwan in 2027. With the strong Indian-American strategic friendship that existed till January this year, China knew that it is no position to counter the two-front war scenario with Taiwan on its eastern borders and India on its western borders.

Now, with the US weaning away from India, China is confident that its western borders will be safe when it attacks Taiwan in 2027 as India doesn’t have an aggressive defence policy, and the Indo-American strategic relationship is over.

USA has offered Taiwan on a platter to China. The US-China tango that is no longer under wraps any more, is sure trouble for Taiwan. Russia will be a mute spectator when China invades Taiwan in 2027 as the depth of Russian-Chinese partnership has increased exponentially after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General cautioned the world on June 25, 2025 about the massive Chinese military buildup and potential for Taiwan invasion. Last year, Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command on October 28, 2024 stated that China is conducting the largest military buildup in world history.

Lyndon B Johnson’s quote “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose” holds a deep meaning for Taiwan in specific and the World in general, as the fall of Taiwan will be disaster for democracy and rules-based world order.

After Taiwan, the next big military target for China will be the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh for which China will wage the two-front war jointly with Pakistan on India any time after 2030.

Taiwan has to be protected at all costs.

By: Gayathri Pramod, Research Analyst, GSDN

Donald Trump’s return to the peak of American power has reshaped the very structure of international diplomacy, displacing the traditional foundations of strategic planning and alliance unity with a far more fragile basis: the appeasement of presidential vanity. What unfolded in Washington during those critical days amounted to the formalization of a troubling new model in transatlantic relations—one in which national security, alliance credibility, and the stability of the post–Cold War order is subordinated to the unpredictable impulses of a single individual. The scenes that played out in the halls of power were at once extraordinary and profoundly disquieting. At present, the United States Sanctions on Russia’s nuclear sector do not exist in a vacuum—they are part of a much broader strategy to constrain Moscow’s energy complex as a whole. At the heart of these sanctions lies the dual recognition that Russia’s civil nuclear industry is both a significant source of revenue for the Kremlin and a potent tool of geopolitical leverage. Through this analysis, I will unpack the geopolitical implications, taking into consideration India’s stance and last but not least the US hegemonic matrix.  

In 2025, Washington’s measures against Russia’s nuclear capabilities are not uniform; instead, they combine targeted sanctions, carefully crafted exemptions, and long-term strategies for supply chain resilience. The policy mix is designed to avoid collateral damage to allies’ energy needs while still limiting Russia’s strategic room to manoeuvre. The most prominent example of this balancing act came in June 2025, when the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 115B. This license authorizes certain transactions involving Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom and its subsidiaries, but only under specific conditions. Namely, it applies to civil nuclear energy projects that were initiated or already under construction as of November 21, 2024. The scope of the license is global, which means it is not tied to a particular geographic region or political bloc. Its expiration date—December 19, 2025—ensures that this is a reprieve, allowing for a transitional period rather than a permanent sanction lift. The immediate practical effect was felt in Hungary, where the Paks II nuclear plant, a high-profile joint venture with Rosatom, had been hampered by earlier US sanctions. Budapest welcomed the exemption as a vindication of its long-standing argument that nuclear cooperation with Russia in the civil sphere should not be lumped in with military or dual-use restrictions. The decision by Washington also demonstrated the US’s commitment to its allies, showing that it is willing to apply flexibility when allied governments are heavily invested in long-term infrastructure projects that cannot easily be replaced or cancelled.

This calculated leniency, however, sits alongside an unmistakable tightening of Russia’s nuclear leadership and its broader strategic nuclear ecosystem. On January 10, 2025, the US imposed sanctions on Rosatom’s top executives, including its chief executive officer, along with affiliated companies directly implicated in the development and proliferation of Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities. These measures were motivated not only by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine but also by what Washington regards as reckless and destabilizing actions—chief among them, the Russian military’s continued occupation and operational control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been under Russian control since March 2022, and its status has become emblematic of the conflict’s risks to civilian nuclear safety. By targeting Rosatom officials and entities tied to the plant’s management and security, the US aimed to send a clear signal: involvement in military-linked nuclear activities, particularly those violating international safety norms and other protocols.

Parallel to these sanctions, the United States has taken a more systemic step by cutting off Russian access to one of its most important nuclear export markets: Enriched Uranium. In May 2024, President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which bans the importation of enriched uranium from Russia, historically a major supplier to US nuclear power plants. The ban, which came into effect roughly ninety days later, is not absolute; it contains waiver provisions allowing imports through 2028 in cases where the alternative would be the shutdown of reactors or severe disruptions to the US electricity grid. This reflects a complex reality: for all of Washington’s political will to isolate Russia, the US nuclear industry has been heavily dependent on Russian enrichment services, particularly for low-enriched uranium (LEU) used in civilian reactors. The role of the US nuclear industry in this context is crucial, as it not only reflects the economic implications of the US nuclear strategy but also the challenges the industry faces in transitioning away from Russian supplies. Recognizing this, Congress paired the ban with a $2.7 billion investment program to rebuild America’s domestic uranium enrichment capacity. The policy is thus as much about long-term industrial resilience as it is about immediate punishment. It represents an effort to close a vulnerability that Moscow has exploited for years, and to ensure that future US administrations are not forced to choose between energy stability and foreign policy resolve.

Geopolitical Distortion & Spill Over

The geopolitical reverberations of this strategy extend far beyond the bilateral US–Russia relationship. India illustrates the complexity of third-party dynamics. Moscow has long been a key partner in India’s civil nuclear expansion, supplying reactors and fuel under pre-war agreements. While current US sanctions stop short of directly targeting India-Russia nuclear cooperation, the debate in Congress over measures such as the proposed Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 threatens to complicate matters. That proposal, which would impose a punitive 500% tariff on countries importing Russian oil, gas, or uranium, could force India into a difficult choice: absorb the costs of maintaining strategic and energy ties with Moscow, or scale back under US pressure. The potential consequences of India’s response, whether it chooses to absorb the costs or scale back, could significantly impact the geopolitical landscape. From Washington’s perspective, the effectiveness of sanctions depends on preventing third parties from filling the gaps left by Western disengagement. However, from New Delhi’s perspective, such extraterritorial measures threaten its sovereignty and energy security, raising the risk of friction with the United States. Military signalling complements this economic pressure, demonstrating that US resolve extends beyond sanctions. When former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested earlier in the year that direct conflict with the US was possible, President Trump ordered two US nuclear-powered submarines to patrol closer to Russian waters. While the Kremlin dismissed the manoeuvre publicly, its cautionary remarks about nuclear rhetoric revealed the underlying sensitivity. This interplay of rhetoric and force movements highlights how economic measures, arms control positioning, and military signalling are now tightly woven together into a single fabric of deterrence policy.

Taken together, the US approach to Russia’s nuclear sector in 2025 is best understood as a multi-layered strategy. It begins with targeted sanctions against individuals and entities directly linked to unsafe or military nuclear activities, such as Rosatom’s leadership and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It also allows for selective exemptions to prevent unnecessary ruptures with allies while simultaneously pushing for long-term supply chain diversification through the uranium import ban and domestic enrichment investments. These specific measures are reinforced by the broader sanctions environment constraining Russia’s energy complex, which indirectly limits its nuclear sector as well. Finally, Washington is willing to project military power to underscore the credibility of its economic and diplomatic measures. Together, these layers constitute a posture that accepts greater strategic tension in the present in order to preserve long-term leverage, constrain Russia’s options, and ensure that any eventual negotiations take place on terms favourable to the United States and its allies.

Way Ahead in the US-Russia Nuclear Standoff

Looking ahead, three scenarios frame the trajectory of the US-Russia nuclear rivalry. In the managed competition scenario, New START is either extended or replaced with a limited arms control framework that stabilises deployed warhead levels while allowing both sides to modernise their arsenals. Economic sanctions remain in place but are selectively eased for civil nuclear cooperation under tight verification, preserving a thin layer of cooperation amid rivalry. This would require both Moscow and Washington to compartmentalize the Ukraine conflict and return to pragmatic engagement—a possibility but not the most likely path. In the unbounded arms race scenario, New START expires with no replacement, and both sides embark on parallel force expansions. The US accelerates warhead production and diversifies deployment platforms, while Russia deploys new strategic systems and expands its tactical nuclear arsenal. Economic sanctions remain maximalist, driving Russia into deeper alignment with China and further militarising its nuclear export policy. This path risks destabilizing crisis dynamics, especially if paired with heightened conventional confrontation in Eastern Europe. The fragmented deterrence scenario envisions a breakdown in centralized arms control, but without a full-scale numerical race. Instead, nuclear rivalry plays out through regional deployments, missile defence competition, and selective nuclear sharing arrangements. The US strengthens nuclear cooperation with NATO and possibly Indo-Pacific allies, while Russia seeks to expand nuclear partnerships in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. This scenario would normalize a world of multiple, semi-detached nuclear blocs—unstable, but less apocalyptic than a direct bilateral arms race.

For now, the United States appears to be steering between managed competition and fragmented deterrence, keeping its options open while leveraging its technological and alliance advantages. The enduring challenge will be maintaining a credible deterrent that reassures allies, constrains adversaries, and avoids the kind of uncontrolled spiral that history warns can emerge when arms control regimes collapse entirely. Washington’s nuclear posturing toward Russia is thus less about preparing for war than about shaping a strategic environment in which the risk of war remains contained—but where the balance of leverage tilts toward American and allied interests. The United States’ nuclear posture toward Russia in 2025 sits at the intersection of Deterrence Theory, sanctions-driven statecraft, alliance management, and the slow unspooling of a decades-old arms control order. Unlike the post–Cold War interlude, when strategic forces were largely backgrounded behind cooperative frameworks and confidence-building measures, nuclear signalling is again a visible instrument of policy. It does not operate in isolation. It is braided together with the Ukraine war’s unsettled endgame, a transatlantic debate over deployments and risk, a global reshaping of nuclear fuel markets, and the emergence of dual-use technologies that compress warning and decision timelines. What makes this era distinct is not merely the volume of nuclear rhetoric but the way nuclear tools are combined with economic levers, information campaigns, conventional posture moves, and industrial policies aimed at reducing long-term dependency on Russian capabilities.

Univocally, the current US strategic setting is defined by three converging trends. First, the legacy arms control scaffolding has thinned to its load-bearing beams. Verification habits atrophied through the 2010s and early 2020s; inspections and data exchanges that once anchored confidence now sputter at best. Second, the European theatre has re-entered an era of forward deployments, rotational presence, and rapid reinforcement plans that make the nuclear dimension more salient even when moves are conventionally configured. Third, the Economics of nuclear power—fuel cycles, enrichment capacity, and reactor service contracts—have become instruments of geopolitical competition. The United States’ posture is shaped by all three. It tries to set a floor under escalation while ensuring that Moscow cannot wield civil-nuclear interdependencies as leverage over allies. At the core of the posture is an old idea expressed with modern instruments: Credible, Flexible, and Survivable Deterrence that is highly legible to allies and intentionally ambiguous to adversaries about precise thresholds.

 The credibility piece is carried by investments in the triad’s recapitalisation and by deliberately publicised touches of visibility—strategic bombers conducting predictable yet high-profile missions, submarine patrol narratives that are vague but reassuring, and command-and-control exercises that signal continuity of government and continuity of operations under stress. Flexibility now means more than just a range of yields or platforms. It includes the ability to rapidly reconfigure conventional forces around nuclear-relevant signalling, to surge ISR and missile defence assets for crisis windows, and to integrate cyber and space effects in ways that can either dampen or amplify escalatory perceptions. Survivability is still the foundation. Hardening, dispersion, stealth, and redundant communications are the quiet bedrock beneath the day-to-day messaging. Together, they aim to produce an adversary calculus in which nuclear first use or coercive brinkmanship would not change battlefield realities in ways that justify the risks.

The declaratory aspect of US posturing is intentionally restrained. It avoids novel doctrines that might blur thresholds while leaving room to respond to a spectrum of Russian behaviours, from overt nuclear sabre-rattling to subtler forms of nuclear adjacency like exercises near sensitive borders or the messaging use of dual-capable systems. The operational aspect is more dynamic. It accepts the reality of a messy information environment and leverages selective transparency. Announcing specific deployments after the fact, showcasing allied participation in strategic exercises, and emphasising readiness without dramatisation are all designed to reassure publics and parliaments across the alliance while sending Moscow the familiar message that the United States does not require a crisis to be ready for one.

Arms control is not abandoned in this posture, but it is reframed. Instead of a single comprehensive treaty doing all the work, Washington increasingly treats arms control as a spectrum of stabilizers that can be applied piecemeal when politics allow and removed when they do not. This includes informal guardrails around exercises, reciprocal notifications that do not require intrusive inspections, and time-bounded understandings to avoid close-approach incidents or misread tests. The strategic bet is that such thin guardrails are preferable to total opacity, even if they fall short of the verification-rich regimes of the past. The United States also keeps an open door for a more durable framework if there is a credible partner on the other side. However, it accepts that any future agreement will have to address categories of capability that older treaties left untouched, from hypersonic and exotic delivery systems to theatre-range systems that matter just as much as intercontinental ones.

Economic statecraft forms the second pillar. By restricting Russian enriched uranium’s access to the US market and pressing allied utilities to diversify fuel contracts, Washington is executing a medium-term decoupling strategy that reaches into a sector once treated as politically inert. In the near term, narrow exemptions and waivers minimize collateral damage to allied energy security. Over the longer run, investment in domestic enrichment and alternative suppliers is intended to harden the transatlantic grid against market manipulation or policy blackmail. The aim is not simply to punish, but to alter the structural conditions that once let Rosatom bind countries into decades-long dependencies. This economic track sits alongside targeted sanctions on individuals and entities tied to unsafe practices, militarisation of civilian sites, or proliferation-adjacent activities. The more the civil-nuclear sphere is used as a tool of coercion or occupation, the more it becomes a legitimate ground for sanctions escalation.

Alliance management is the third pillar, and it may be the most intricate. Within NATO, the United States must harmonize deterrence moves acceptable to front-line allies with the risk tolerances of more distant capitals. Each publicised bomber rotation, each missile defence test, and each policy paper on nuclear sharing has a different impact in Warsaw, Berlin, Rome, and Oslo. The posture aims to knit these differences into a coherent narrative: NATO’s nuclear deterrent remains credible, the United States’ extended deterrence commitments are unambiguous, and the pathways to crisis stability are preserved. In practice, this means more frequent allied consultations, greater transparency with parliaments on the logic of deployments and exercises, and a careful division of labour between nuclear and conventional moves so as not to heighten salience needlessly. Beyond Europe, the posture intersects with Indo-Pacific priorities. Washington cannot afford a nuclear messaging campaign in Europe that suggests vulnerability in Asia, so it synchronizes signals with allies like Japan and Australia while keeping India at the table even when secondary sanctions debates complicate cooperation.

Russia’s counter-posture exploits ambiguity as a tool. Its doctrine and rhetoric flirt with lowered thresholds and dual-use opacity in order to keep NATO planners guessing and allied publics anxious. Periodic references to nuclear options, high-visibility movements of dual-capable systems, and exercises designed to blur conventional-nuclear boundaries are optimized for political effect. At the same time, Russia tends to calibrate its actions to avoid tripping unmistakable red lines. It seeks to capture the value of nuclear coercion without paying the operational costs of actual nuclear use, which would be catastrophic diplomatically and militarily. This is where the US posture tries to box Moscow in: by combining steady readiness with crisis-time restraint and explicit alliance signalling, it attempts to deny Russia the psychological dividends of nuclear theatrics. Technology trends complicate the dance. Hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, long-range precision conventional strike, more survivable and mobile command posts, and proliferated space architectures collectively compress warning time and challenge traditional notions of “strategic stability.” The United States is leaning into resilience rather than matching every capability like-for-like. Hardened, redundant C3I, disaggregated sensors, and rapid reconstitution capacity are all meant to lengthen decision time rather than shorten it. In a crisis, the posture prefers to widen the aperture for diplomacy by making first-strike payoffs less plausible and by keeping leadership confident that retaliatory options are intact. This logic also animates missile defence investments.

Considering the current scenario, Crisis management remains the most fragile element to tackle. With formal inspections and trusted data exchanges attenuated, the opportunity for misinterpretation grows. Exercises can look like mobilization, ISR surges can look like pre-strike preparation, and conventional raids can look dual-capable. The United States’ answer is to over-invest in communication channels that can work under stress, to socialise patterns of behaviour that are recognisable as “deterrence choreography” rather than prelude, and to embed de-escalation options in operational plans. The art is to avoid performative maximalism that would box leaders into single-step ladders. In Washington’s ideal world, crises contain multiple off-ramps at every rung. The civil-nuclear market piece is often overlooked in public debate, but matters greatly over the medium term. Reactor technology choices lock states into vendor ecosystems for decades, shaping everything from spare parts to safety culture to diplomatic habits. The United States’ push to expand fuel fabrication options, to promote next-generation reactors with safer operating profiles, and to support allied regulatory capacity is not just an industrial policy. It is a geopolitical play that reduces Russia’s leverage over client states and makes sanctions more durable by shrinking the circle of actors with high sunk costs in Rosatom’s ecosystem. The more suppliers there are for enriched uranium, fuel assemblies, and maintenance, the less power Moscow has to threaten outages or price shocks. Over time, this should make allied political coalitions more cohesive in moments of coercion.

All of this feeds into scenario planning. One plausible trajectory is managed rivalry with thin guardrails. In that world, the United States and Russia avoid a breakout race, hover near current deployed levels due to budgetary and operational constraints, and resurrect a handful of reciprocal notifications or exercise guardrails whenever a crisis bites. The signalling is loud but bounded, and civil-nuclear decoupling continues on a measured but persistent path. Stability is probabilistic rather than guaranteed, and shocks can still pierce the membrane, but the default returns after a crisis recedes. A second trajectory is competitive expansion under opacity. Here, arms control lapses entirely, and both sides invest in upload capacity, theatre-range deployments, and ambiguous dual-use capabilities around Europe. In that world, alliance politics become rougher, deterrence crises more frequent, and decision time shorter. A third, less likely trajectory is transactional détente tied to concrete developments around Ukraine and accompanied by narrow, verifiable limits on categories that both sides find risky, perhaps non-strategic systems near NATO’s borders or specific exotic delivery systems. That path requires domestic political narratives that can sell limited compromises as strategic wins and a willingness to re-learn verification disciplines.

The Indo-Pacific and the Global South are not passive backdrops in any of these scenarios. India’s balancing act—deep legacy ties to Russian reactors and fuel on one side, growing strategic convergence with the United States on the other—will shape how aggressively Washington enforces secondary restrictions in civil-nuclear commerce. The more alternatives the United States and partners can credibly offer India and other swing states, the easier it becomes to hold the line on sanctions without losing broader strategic cooperation. Similarly, Russia will keep courting Africa and the Middle East with attractive financing and build-operate-transfer models. The United States’ posture, therefore, includes development finance and export credit tools that can make non-Russian options viable, especially for countries that see nuclear energy as essential to base load decarbonization. Domestic politics inside the United States will colour the posture’s tone but not its basic silhouette. Across administrations, the triad’s recapitalisation enjoys bipartisan support because the cost of letting it slip is judged higher than the cost of modernisation. The debate plays out at the margins—how much public signalling is optimal, how far to go on missile defence, how tight to make sanctions, how generous to be with allied carve-outs—but the core logic of credible deterrence, resilient C3I, and economic decoupling from coercive dependencies is set. This continuity is itself a signal to Moscow that time will not necessarily soften Washington’s position.

The risk ledger is not blank and deserves sober accounting. Accidental escalation in a verification-light environment remains the top concern, particularly with dual-capable systems that are indistinguishable in flight and ISR patterns that can be read as pre-emption. Alliance divergence is the second risk, as uneven threat perceptions inside NATO can be exploited by a Russia skilled at wedge politics. A third risk lies in technological surprise, not in the Hollywood sense of a silver bullet, but through incremental combinations that reduce leaders’ confidence in their understanding of the battle space. The US posture mitigates these by privileging resilience over brittle offence, by investing in allied consultation and shared intelligence pictures, and by rehearsing crisis communication under degraded conditions.

Conclusion

The practical implications for the next several years are straightforward, even if the world they inhabit is not. Expect the United States to keep signalling readiness through visible but reversible actions, to invest heavily in the plumbing of deterrence—the communications links, hardened nodes, and redundant sensors that do not make headlines—and to press forward with a civil-nuclear realignment that gradually drains Moscow’s leverage without imposing sudden shocks on allies. Expect persistent outreach for minimal stabilizers when opportunities arise and prompt tightening of sanctions where nuclear adjacency is abused. Expect, too, a steady cadence of alliance reassurance that keeps publics on board and adversaries uncertain about the payoff of nuclear coercion.

If the rivalry tilts toward managed competition, the payoff is a strategic environment in which crises can be ridden out without catastrophic miscalculation, sanctions can do their work without splintering coalitions, and modernization can proceed without igniting spirals of fear. If it tilts toward competitive expansion under opacity, the posture will harden. Upload options will be exercised, theatre deployments will accelerate, and nuclear salience will rise in public discourse with all the psychological and political costs that entail. A transactional détente is not impossible. It would require verifiable steps that reduce the risk of a sudden breakout and a political moment in which both sides can sell restraint as strength. The posture is designed to be ready for any of these paths, to keep American and allied interests protected while preserving the option space that deterrence seeks to defend in the first place.

In the end, nuclear posturing is not about theatrics; it is about time: buying time for diplomacy to work when it can, for sanctions to reshape incentives, for industrial policy to rebuild resilience, and for alliances to absorb shocks without fraying. The United States’ current approach recognises that there is no return to a neatly compartmentalised nuclear relationship with Russia. The centre of gravity has shifted to a world of mixed instruments and layered signals. In that world, the measure of success is not eliminating risk—an impossible task—but keeping it bounded, legible, and manageable enough that choices made in a hurry do not define the era, but rather an era marked by Ego over Geopolitics.