The nuclear arms race is back, and it’s testing US power

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By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

A Yars intercontinental ballistic being test-fired in 2022 as part of Russia’s nuclear drills. (AP)

One of the least-discussed but most consequential outcomes of the resurgence of major-power rivalries is the return of nuclear weapons to the center of international politics.

The global salience of nuclear weapons — once expected to diminish after the Cold War — is instead rising sharply. This revival is testing U.S. power at a moment when Washington faces a more complex and fragmented strategic landscape than at any time since the dawn of the nuclear age.

The problem is not just that nuclear arsenals are expanding. It is also that the geopolitical environment that once helped manage nuclear risks has eroded.

Advances in non-nuclear strategic technologies — including precision-guided conventional strike systems, cyberwarfare, anti-satellite weapons and layered missile defenses — are driving nuclear-armed states to harden, diversify and enlarge their arsenals to ensure survivable second-strike capabilities. At the same time, regional flashpoints — from Ukraine to the Taiwan Strait to the Korean Peninsula — heighten the risk of escalation through miscalculation or coercion.

No shift is more momentous than China’s sweeping peacetime military expansion — the most ambitious in modern history. Its naval output alone now surpasses the combined production of U.S. and Soviet shipyards at the height of the Cold War. Even more troubling is its frenzied nuclear buildup: China has more than doubled its nuclear-weapons stockpile in just five years and is on track to field as many deployed warheads as the U.S. by the mid-2030s.

Determined to supplant the U.S. as the world’s leading power, China is not only expanding but diversifying its nuclear arsenal. The aim is to give Beijing an expanded set of coercive tools and create new escalation pathways. In effect, China has already diluted its own longstanding “no first use” nuclear pledge. Few now view that declaratory policy as credible.

Although China’s nuclear surge is framed domestically as defensive, its purpose extends beyond deterrence. Beijing’s growing arsenal enables it to pursue coercive territorial and strategic objectives — from the South and East China Seas to the Himalayas. The implications for U.S. extended deterrence, especially in the Indo-Pacific, are profound.

Russia, meanwhile, has turned to nuclear weapons as the principal currency of its great-power status amid economic stagnation.

Its modernization program includes novel, destabilizing systems such as the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon underwater drone. These exotic weapons are explicitly designed to circumvent U.S. missile defenses. The Ukraine war has visibly increased the importance — and the coercive utility — of nuclear weapons in Russian strategy.

The combined nuclear expansions of China and Russia pose a challenge the U.S. has never confronted before: deterring two peer or near-peer nuclear adversaries simultaneously. During the Cold War, Washington could focus its strategic posture on a single rival, the Soviet Union. Today, the geometry is tripolar, and far more complex.

To make matters worse, the arms-control framework that provided essential guardrails for decades has nearly collapsed. Russia and the U.S. have withdrawn from key agreements, with Moscow recently suspending its participation in the New START Treaty and also withdrawing its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China, for its part, refuses to enter any arms-control negotiation that might cap its rapidly rising arsenal.

The result is a world sliding toward an unconstrained arms race, with fewer safety valves and greater risks of miscalculation.

This shifting balance reverberates through America’s alliance system. Allies who depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella — particularly Japan, South Korea, Australia and NATO’s eastern members — are increasingly anxious about whether Washington would risk a nuclear exchange with China or Russia to defend them. Their concern is not theoretical: The simultaneous growth of Chinese and Russian nuclear prowess creates the very scenario U.S. strategists long feared — deterrence stress in multiple theaters.

As credibility questions grow, so does the risk of allied nuclear proliferation. If countries with advanced nuclear fuel cycles come to doubt long-term U.S. protection, they may seek independent deterrents. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is already strained by the modernization programs of nuclear-weapon states. Moreover, the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year — while successful tactically — may deepen incentives for clandestine nuclear development elsewhere.

The U.S. now faces a stark reality: It must modernize its nuclear forces, reassure anxious allies, deter two nuclear peers and revive some form of strategic dialogue — all while preventing a ruinous arms race.

America’s challenge is to maintain credible deterrence across two theaters without overextending U.S. conventional forces. That pressure may tempt Washington to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to compensate for shrinking force-projection margins vis-à-vis China in the Indo-Pacific and Russia in Europe. Such a shift would mirror the very trends that have made nuclear weapons so prominent in Russian and Chinese strategies.

In this volatile environment, risk-reduction mechanisms are essential. The world needs updated norms for emerging technologies — particularly artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems and dual-use cyber capabilities — that could compress decision time or introduce new uncertainties in nuclear command and control.

Ensuring that nuclear-use authority remains fully under human control is no longer simply a normative concern; it is becoming a strategic imperative in the age of AI.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

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Ending the war in Ukraine serves Western interests. That’s why Trump is pressing the matter

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Smoke rises from an apartment building hit by a Russian missile strike in Ternopil, Ukraine on Nov. 19. Andriy Bodak/Reuters

Brahma Chellaney, The Globe and Mail

President Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace plan has triggered sharp reactions in Kyiv and across Europe – and the backlash is revealing.

At its core, the plan represents a direct effort to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the negotiating table and toward concessions he has consistently resisted. But the proposal now taking shape also places significant demands on Moscow – concessions designed to make any peace deal financially lucrative for a commercially minded Trump administration. Beyond enshrining in law a Russian policy of non-aggression toward Europe and Ukraine, the version of the plan put forward by Mr. Trump last week proposed that Russia would allow US$100-billion of its Western-frozen central bank reserves to be funnelled into a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. Washington would pocket 50 per cent of the profits from that venture. The remaining frozen Russian assets, totalling over US$200-billion, would be shifted into a separate U.S.-Russia investment vehicle tasked with executing joint projects.

More fundamentally, America’s urgency to end the conflict reflects a strategic recalibration: the proxy war with Russia no longer advances core U.S., Canadian or even European interests.

In fact, the grinding war in Europe distracts the U.S. from a far more consequential challenge: an increasingly assertive China determined to displace America as the world’s pre-eminent power. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has strained the international order, a Chinese assault on Taiwan could shatter it altogether. And the longer the West continues to pour resources into Ukraine, the greater the risk becomes that Beijing calculates it has a window to throttle Taiwan via coercion, a blockade or a rapid fait accompli.

An America tied down in Europe clearly serves Chinese President Xi Jinping’s globally expansionist ambitions.

Yet Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, shut the door on diplomacy with Moscow and embraced an open-ended pledge to support Kyiv “for as long as it takes.” At the 2023 G7 summit, the U.S., Canada and other member states doubled down by issuing maximalist conditions – including the total, unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory. That outcome was implausible then, and is today even further removed from reality.

The U.S.-led “hybrid war” strategy – weaponizing sanctions and global financial systems – has not weakened Russia enough to change the battlefield. Russia has dug in and annexed the territory it holds, and continues to make battlefield gains. Ukraine, even with major Western weapons supplies, lacks the capability to defeat its stronger enemy on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Russian aerial attacks are inflicting ever-greater destruction on Ukraine. Worse still for Kyiv, replenishing exhausted and depleted front-line forces is becoming increasingly difficult as a growing number of draft-eligible men flee to European Union countries to avoid being sent to the trenches.

The war has also exposed troubling Western military weaknesses. Western munitions stockpiles are being depleted much faster than they can be replenished. America’s weapons-manufacturing capacity remains too limited for the demands of long-term great-power competition.

A protracted war, meanwhile, accelerates the deepening partnership between Russia and China. Since 2022, Beijing has become Moscow’s indispensable financial and industrial lifeline, buying up discounted Russian oil and gas, supplying key electronics and components, and helping the Kremlin circumvent sanctions. A de facto Eurasian axis is emerging, with China as its central pillar.

This is the strategic backdrop against which Mr. Trump’s peace proposal should be understood. The plan seeks to compel Kyiv to negotiate not because Ukraine’s cause is unworthy, but because the war’s continuation is increasingly antithetical to Western interests.Video 2:29

Critics claim that a settlement with Moscow would only embolden China’s expansionism. But Mr. Xi does not need lessons in opportunism from Russia. China’s own cost-free expansion – from the South China Sea to the Himalayas – already shows that it advances when it sees little pushback. What would truly embolden Beijing is an overstretched U.S., hollowed-out munitions stockpiles, and a distracted Indo-Pacific strategy.

For the U.S., the path forward is clear. A negotiated settlement is the only realistic way to end the war. A conflict continuing indefinitely serves neither Ukraine’s long-term security nor NATO’s. Ending it would free up Western bandwidth, rebuild critical stockpiles, and allow Washington to shift attention to the Indo-Pacific, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub that will likely shape the new global order.

Mr. Trump’s peace plan accepts the reality that it is in America’s own interest to help bring this war to an end sooner rather than later. A diplomatic settlement would also serve Canadians well by reducing economic burdens, lowering the risk of a wider NATO conflict, and enabling Ottawa to focus on the Indo-Pacific, where Canada’s long-term interests increasingly lie.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

If China can bully Japan, it can bully anyone

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If China can punish Japan — economically powerful, diplomatically influential and protected by a U.S. defense treaty — then no other country should imagine itself beyond Beijing's reach.

If China can punish Japan — economically powerful, diplomatically influential and protected by a U.S. defense treaty — then no other country should imagine itself beyond Beijing’s reach. 

By Brahma Chellaney
Contributing Writer, The Japan Times

China’s latest confrontation with Japan is more than a bilateral spat. It is a warning shot to all of Asia — and to the U.S., Japan’s treaty ally.

By trying to bludgeon a major democracy into accepting its “red lines,” above all on Taiwan, China is exposing the raw coercive logic now powering its foreign policy. Its willingness to target Japan — a historic great power and today the world’s third-largest economy — telegraphs how Beijing intends to deal with the rest of Asia: through intimidation, economic punishment and calibrated use of nationalist fury.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s warning that a Chinese assault on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan — enabling the country to exercise its right to collective self-defense — provoked not a routine diplomatic protest but a ferocious, full-spectrum backlash. Beijing answered with a sweeping coercive campaign that showcases its new playbook — and its growing willingness, as it earlier demonstrated against India, to impose costs even on countries far too large and powerful to be cowed easily.

Beijing’s reprisals against Japan have been broad, theatrical and unmistakably punitive. Officials have issued warnings to Chinese tourists and students to avoid Japan, dispatched naval vessels to the waters of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, suspended diplomatic engagements and threatened further freezes in economic and cultural exchanges.

The now-deleted threat by the Chinese consul general in Osaka to “chop off” Takaichi’s “filthy head” was extraordinary not only for its crudity. It showed how emboldened China’s “wolf warrior” apparatus has become, with state media amplifying the incitement rather than disavowing it.

The escalation is deliberate. Beijing is not merely signaling displeasure; it is trying to shock Japanese society, especially business and political elites, into pressuring Takaichi to back off her Taiwan stance. Intimidation is the strategy by seeking to weaponize Japan’s economic dependence on China and making an example of a country others consider too powerful to be pushed around.

China is waging an economic war on Japan in all but name — slapping de facto bans on seafood imports, freezing group tours, stalling Japanese film releases and even scrapping trilateral summits. Airline cancellations have gutted winter travel bookings. For the Japanese economy, these are not pinpricks but calculated moves to hurt and to coerce.

This is not new behavior. Beijing has repeatedly used trade as a weapon against countries that defy its wishes — from Australia and South Korea to Norway, Lithuania, Mongolia, the Philippines and India. But until now it has typically calibrated such punishment to avoid meaningful blowback to its own business interests. Going after Japan marks a bolder escalation: an effort to show that crossing Beijing carries a price even for a major power, and that no state — however large — is beyond China’s coercive reach.

By inflicting economic pain, China is seeking to marshal political challengers and business lobbies in Japan against Takaichi, who heads a narrow conservative coalition. Beijing’s objective is to try and reshape Japan’s political landscape from the outside. This is a tactic it has used to strong-arm smaller neighbors, but now it is brazenly attempting it against a Group of Seven power.

China has intensified the pressure by also reviving its familiar historical narrative of Japan as an aggressive, unrepentant militarist state. By invoking World War II “victory,” questioning Okinawa’s sovereignty and accusing Japan of “remilitarization,” Beijing is recasting Takaichi’s remarks as dangerous provocations rather than straightforward defensive clarifications. The messaging is aimed at two audiences: to stir renewed nationalism at home by portraying Xi Jinping’s regime as standing firm against Japanese “aggression,” and to make it harder for other nations to align openly with Japan’s concerns over Taiwan.

Weaponizing history in this way is classic wolf-warrior diplomacy — a tactic meant to force the target onto the defensive and to reframe Chinese coercion as justified self-protection.

The most ominous element of Beijing’s campaign is its geopolitical message. If China can punish Japan — economically powerful, diplomatically influential and protected by a U.S. defense treaty — then no other country should imagine itself beyond reach. The lesson Beijing wants others to absorb is clear: Stay silent on Taiwan, on Chinese expansionism from the South and East China Seas to the Himalayas and on human rights abuses in China — or pay a steep price. This is coercive diplomacy elevated into a foreign-policy doctrine.

Tokyo, however, has not buckled. Takaichi has held her ground, clarifying but not retracting her statement, and polls show broad public unease over China’s behavior.

If Japan withstands the pressure until Beijing is forced to scale back, it will send an unmistakable signal that China’s coercion can be resisted. Indeed, Beijing may be accelerating the very alignments it fears — including tighter U.S.-Japan strategic coordination, deeper informal links among Tokyo, Taipei, Canberra and New Delhi, and a greater appetite in Asia for pushback against Chinese coercion.

What was meant as a warning to Asia may instead become a rallying cry. Japan is teaching the region that standing up to coercion is not only necessary — it is possible. And reinforcing the perception that China’s aggressive rise poses an expanding threat to Asian and global security.

Brahma Chellaney, a longtime contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Trump’s nuclear test order projects toughness — and sows confusion

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By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Was President Trump’s recent directive to resume U.S. nuclear testing — after a hiatus of 33 years — an actual policy decision? Or was it a political stunt to project toughness?

His surprise announcement stirred Cold War echoes and revived the old fears of Armageddon and “mutually assured destruction” that once defined nuclear deterrence.

The U.S. last conducted a full-scale nuclear explosion in 1992. Russia stopped doing them in 1990, China in 1996. Those moratoria paved the way for the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to prohibit all nuclear testing.

Although the treaty never formally entered into force, it has established a powerful international norm. Nations have gained confidence that any nuclear detonation would be quickly detected. Since the treaty opened for signature, no country other than North Korea has carried out a nuclear explosion — and even Pyongyang has maintained a self-declared moratorium since 2018.

Yet Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, while returning from South Korea, that he had decided to restart testing.

“We’ve halted it many years ago,” he said. “But with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate that we do also.” On Truth Social, he posted: “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

The announcement raised immediate alarms — and eyebrows. For one thing, nuclear testing is not the Pentagon’s responsibility, but that of the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the design, production and stewardship of America’s nuclear arsenal. Trump’s reference to the War Department thus hinted at his unfamiliarity with the institutional framework governing nuclear weapons.

His vaguely worded vow to test “on an equal basis” with geopolitical rivals baffled security officials. And his boast that the U.S. has “more nuclear weapons than any other country” was flatly wrong — Russia has several hundred more.

Then came more mixed messages. In a “60 Minutes” interview, Trump spoke of denuclearization while simultaneously accusing Russia, China, North Korea and even Pakistan — whose only tests were conducted in 1998 — of “testing nuclear weapons.” Having confirmed his intention to resume tests, he immediately contradicted himself: “I believe we need to do something about denuclearization, and I have indeed discussed it with both [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and President Xi [Jinping of China].”

The confusion rattled allies and arms control experts alike. Energy Secretary Chris Wright soon intervened to clarify that any U.S. testing would involve not nuclear explosions but “what we call non-critical explosions” — non-explosive subcritical tests that use nuclear materials but stop short of a self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction.

In reality, the U.S. has been conducting subcritical tests for decades to ensure the safety and reliability of its weapons stockpile. As Brandon Williams told the Senate during his confirmation hearing as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, “I would not advise testing, and I think we should rely on the scientific information.”

Beyond politics, there are hard technical obstacles to restarting full-scale explosive tests. Facilities at the Nevada National Security Site have degraded, and the specialized know-how to conduct live detonations has largely vanished after decades of reliance on supercomputer modeling and subcritical tests. Launching a live test would take months, if not years — making Trump’s call for “immediate” testing technically impossible.

Trump’s announcement appeared to stem partly from anxiety over recent Russian and Chinese developments. Moscow recently claimed to have tested two exotic nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable delivery systems — the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon underwater drone — designed for nearly unlimited range and stealth. Beijing, meanwhile, is racing ahead with a massive nuclear buildup, more than doubling its warhead inventory since 2020 and expanding its missile silos, submarines and bomber fleets. This surge aligns with China’s goal to achieve global primacy by 2049, the centenary of Communist rule.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s abrupt testing directive sent tremors through arms control circles. Even hinting at a return to nuclear testing risks unraveling the global test moratorium. If the U.S. — the principal architect of the test ban treaty — were to abandon restraint, others would likely follow, triggering a destabilizing cascade of nuclear test resumption.

Fortunately, Wright’s clarification defused the immediate crisis, reducing Trump’s order to bluster rather than policy. Still, the episode underscored how impulsive presidential words can reverberate globally, unsettling allies and emboldening adversaries.

Trump’s brand of nuclear showmanship may play well to a domestic audience seeking toughness, but it highlights the perils of improvisation in nuclear policy. In the nuclear age, restraint is not a sign of weakness but a strategic necessity.

History shows that nuclear deterrence rests not only on weapons but on credibility and clarity. When those erode, the risks of miscalculation rise sharply. Trump’s confused directive serves as a reminder that, when it comes to nuclear weapons, even words can be destabilizing — and confusion itself can become a form of danger.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

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Trump’s tariffs exact ‘tribute’ more coercive than China’s Belt and Road

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Transformed into a tool of geopolitical domination, U.S. trade policy sows the seeds for backlash

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Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

20251105 Trump tariffs

For U.S. President Donald Trump, trade diplomacy has become less about markets and more about American might. By weaponizing tariffs, sanctions and investment rules, he has turned trade policy into a tool of coercive statecraft — one that seeks to realign global power relationships in favor of America’s short-term geopolitical goals.

Trump’s approach treats trade as subservient to geopolitical strategy. Tariffs and threats of economic punishment are deployed as geopolitical levers not only against adversaries such as China and Russia but also against allies like Canada, India, Japan and Mexico. His administration even invoked a national emergency to justify using tariffs as a coercive instrument, underscoring how far the traditional lines between economics and security have blurred under Trump.

During his Tokyo visit late last month, Trump praised Japan’s pledge to buy “a very large amount of U.S. military equipment,” adding that “we very much appreciate the trade.” The remark revealed a profound transformation in international economic relations. Under Trump, bilateral trade agreements no longer revolve around tariffs or market access. They have become political contracts to secure vast foreign investments and military purchases, binding allies into Washington’s orbit and curtailing their policy autonomy.

The scale is striking. Japan has committed $550 billion, South Korea $350 billion and Malaysia $70 billion in U.S. investments, while Southeast Asian partners have agreed to buy American aircraft, weapons and energy products worth tens of billions. The Japan deal even allows Trump to decide how Tokyo’s money is invested and grants Washington 90% of profits once Japan recoups its outlay. As U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick conceded, Japan would have to “blow up their balance sheet” and borrow money to meet the obligations.

Such arrangements amount to economic vassalage disguised as partnership. Japan bears the debt burden and financial risk while the U.S. captures the profits and dictates deployment of capital according to its strategic priorities, rather than commercial logic. Trade diplomacy under Trump has effectively become an instrument for extracting tribute in the guise of cooperation.

Trade has also turned into a selective punishment tool. India has been singled out for secondary U.S. sanctions over its Russian oil imports, even as the European Union, Japan and Turkey continue major Russian energy purchases. The EU has been given a comfortable transition period until January 2028 to phase out Russian energy — a timeline unlikely to hold if the Ukraine war ends earlier. The inconsistency exposes Trump’s trade coercion as driven by geopolitics, not principle.

Sanctions and tariff threats now serve as levers of intimidation to extract concessions through fear of economic harm. This form of “negotiation” allows Washington to tilt deals decisively in its favor, securing asymmetric outcomes that entrench dependence. The approach underscores a revival and global extension of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine.

The line between economic diplomacy and interference in other nations’ domestic affairs has also blurred. Trump has linked his 50% tariffs against Brazil since July to the legal proceedings against former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. And in Argentina, Trump conditioned a $20 billion American aid lifeline — one of the largest to any country since World War II — on the success of President Javier Milei’s party in the recent legislative elections. Trump’s success there can only embolden similar tactics elsewhere.

Recent U.S. trade deals with Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam signed during Trump’s recent Kuala Lumpur visit illustrate the fusion of commercial and security goals. In exchange for Washington lifting tariff threats, these nations accepted economic and strategic concessions aligned with U.S. interests. The Cambodia deal even included lifting a long-standing arms embargo and resuming joint military drills, marking a full integration of defense and trade policy.

Each of Trump’s trade deals shares the same blueprint: partner nations make concrete economic and strategic commitments, while the U.S. retains both significant tariff barriers and the power to adjust or revoke terms unilaterally. The accords extend well beyond traditional trade matters to encompass investment quotas, defense-procurement obligations, critical-minerals cooperation and compliance with American sanctions and export-control policies. Defense procurement commitments, for example, will deepen technological dependence on U.S. weapons systems, making it ever harder for partners to pursue independent security policies.

For countries heavily reliant on U.S. markets, the choice is stark: accept constrained sovereignty in return for economic access, or resist and face punishment. Worse still, the new agreements lack the legal grounding and bipartisan consensus that once lent durability to American trade pacts. They are politically fragile and inherently imbalanced.

By treating allies less as partners than as instruments of leverage, Trump is corroding the foundations of alliance solidarity. Overtly coercive and transactional trade relationships breed resentment and erode the trust that sustains long-term cooperation. Allies begin to see engagement with Washington not as an expression of shared interests but as participation in a protection racket: pay the tribute or face economic retribution.

The inevitable consequence is blowback. Nations are already hedging against overdependence on the U.S. by diversifying trade and defense ties with other powers. The perception of America as an unreliable and self-serving partner is accelerating the global shift toward multipolarity. Ironically, Trump’s efforts to consolidate U.S. dominance are hastening its erosion.

In many ways, Trump’s model of weaponized trade diplomacy resembles China’s Belt and Road Initiative — only more unabashedly coercive. While Beijing used loans and infrastructure projects to bind partners, Washington now employs tariffs, sanctions and investment dictates. Yet just as China’s debt-trap diplomacy provoked geopolitical backlash, Trump’s heavy-handed economic unilateralism is likely to face mounting resistance.

By overplaying America’s economic might, Trump risks undermining its global leadership. Coercion can yield short-term compliance but it destroys the mutual confidence and reciprocity that sustain long-term influence. The paradox is unmistakable: the more the U.S. weaponizes its economic power, the faster the world will adapt to limit its reach. In the end, America’s own overreach could prove the greatest driver of the multipolar world order Trump seeks to resist.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

Trump’s Dangerous Liaison With Pakistan

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With a combination of flattery, symbolic gestures, and promises of personal enrichment, Pakistan seems to have cracked the code for dealing with US President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the United States has turned its back on India – and on a strategic partnership that is crucial for countering China.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

Donald Trump’s first social-media post of 2018, during his initial presidential term, highlighted his mounting frustration with Pakistan. Over the preceding 15 years, he lamented, the United States had “foolishly” handed the country more than $33 billion in aid, and gotten “nothing but lies and deceit” in return. He subsequently suspended security assistance to Pakistan over its support for terrorists, including its concealment of Osama bin Laden for almost a decade after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Today, Pakistan continues to provide safe haven, as well as military and intelligence aid, to terrorist groups. It also remains a close ally of China – which, despite reaching a trade truce with the Trump administration earlier this month, remains America’s leading rival. Yet, far from admonishing Pakistan, the US is now eagerly pursuing closer ties with it.

Trump administration officials have justified this reversal by casting Pakistan as a valuable partner in efforts to contain Iran and rein in terrorist groups that could threaten US interests in the region. But Pakistan has proved time and again that it is not a reliable security partner, and there is no reason to think this has changed. The real explanation for Trump’s embrace of Pakistan probably lies in the convergence of his personal financial interests and his transactional approach to foreign policy.

Consider the controversial investment deal Pakistan signed in April with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm majority-owned by the Trump family. The firm’s CEO, Zach Witkoff – son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East – leads a company in which both the Trumps and the Witkoff family are  the principal beneficiaries. The deal has alarmed ethics watchdogs and former US officials, who warn that Trump’s business entanglements are bleeding into US foreign policy (Trump insists that conflict-of-interest rules do not apply to him). It has also reinforced a regional perception that personal enrichment is Trump’s top foreign-policy priority, further undermining US credibility.

The romance continued in July, when the US and Pakistan announced that they had reached a trade agreement. While the details have not been fully disclosed, Pakistan has celebrated the reduction in US tariffs and the prospect of increased US investment. Pakistani officials declared that the deal “marks the beginning of a new era of economic collaboration especially in energy, mines and minerals, IT, cryptocurrency, and other sectors.”

Since then, Pakistan has sought to build an image as a potential supplier of critical minerals that could help the US reduce its dependence on China’s near-monopoly over rare earths. In September, its military-linked Frontier Works Organization signed a $500 million agreement with the private firm US Strategic Metals (USSM) to develop critical-mineral deposits in Pakistan.

For Pakistan, this was not so much a business deal as a diplomatic coup. When Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan’s powerful military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, subsequently met with Trump in the Oval Office, they presented him with a polished wooden box containing mineral samples. Soon after, Pakistan dispatched a token shipment of enriched rare earths and other critical minerals to the US – a largely symbolic gesture meant to seal the new alignment.

But it is far from clear that Pakistan will be able to deliver meaningful quantities of rare earths to the US. The country’s oft-repeated assertion that it possesses $6-8 trillion in mineral wealth is based on unverified estimates, and most of the claimed reserves lie in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, where active insurgencies make large-scale extraction highly risky. As one analyst quipped, “Pakistan has long promised gold and delivered gravel.”

Trump is particularly susceptible to such grand promises, especially when they are accompanied by personal flattery. It is no accident that Pakistan’s leaders have lavished Trump with over-the-top praise, even nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize he so covets. For a president whose diplomacy often hinges on personal rapport, such gestures can have an outsize impact. It seems that Pakistan has cracked the Trump code. Emboldened, Pakistan’s leaders have pushed through a constitutional amendment that elevates the army chief – whom Trump extols as his “favorite field marshal” – to the position of de facto ruler, reducing the elected government to little more than a civilian façade.

For India, the Trump administration’s embrace of Pakistan feels like betrayal. The country has spent over two decades cultivating a strategic partnership with the US, grounded in shared democratic values and a mutual desire to counter China. Now, the US is actively working against India’s diplomatic and security interests.

The problem extends beyond Trump’s deal-making with Pakistan. Last May, after a three-day military clash between India and Pakistan ended in a ceasefire, Trump publicly took credit for stopping the fighting. India flatly denied the claim, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that he had never even spoken to Trump during the conflict. But Trump stuck to his story, crediting his own trade threats, rather than India’s targeted airstrikes, for the truce.

This undermined Modi’s standing at home and reinforced the view in India that the US cannot be trusted. Modi’s refusal to endorse Trump’s bid for a Nobel Peace Prize deepened the rift. Soon, the spat spiraled into a trade war, with Trump imposing a 25% tariff – later raised to 50% – on imports from India, supposedly over India’s own trade barriers and continued purchases of Russian oil.

In India’s view, the tariffs amounted to political retribution – an extension of the diplomatic feud over Pakistan. After all, the European Union, Japan, and Turkey have not faced secondary US sanctions over their large Russian energy purchases, and pro-Trump Hungary, which gets some 90% of its energy from Russia, received an explicit sanctions exemption from his administration.

For India, these are more than diplomatic setbacks. They threaten to unravel a hard-won strategic partnership, which successive US administrations have recognized as critical to Indo-Pacific security. By letting Pakistan win him over with flattery, symbolic gestures, and the promise of personal enrichment, Trump is putting the entire region at risk, much like America’s Cold War leaders did with their cynical policies toward South Asia.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2025.

Taiwan in the age of Trump: Navigating the perils of US unpredictability

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Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment.

Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield.

Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical threat”; the next day, he boasts of his “beautiful friendship” with strongman Xi Jinping (習近平) and dangles the prospect of a “big, beautiful trade deal.”

This policy whiplash now defines Taiwan’s strategic dilemma. For Xi, inconsistency in Washington is not confusion — it is a potential opportunity for Beijing.

The most immediate concern for Taiwan is security. Trump’s national security team may be hawkish on China, but the president’s own words send mixed signals. His claim that Taiwan has “stolen” the US semiconductor industry, and his suggestion that the island must “pay” America for its defense, reveal a mindset that treats a democratic partner as a negotiable asset.

Consider his deliberate ambiguity on whether the United States would defend Taiwan. Trump prizes flexibility and wields unpredictability as leverage. But in the Taiwan context, such volatility invites miscalculation. It emboldens Beijing to probe US resolve while forcing Taipei to prepare for both extremes — an American president who might sell arms one day and trade them away the next.

America’s commitment to Taiwan is not an act of charity but a crucial test of Washington’s strategy for ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region. If Washington were to treat Taiwan’s defense as a matter for negotiation, every US ally in Asia would take note. A president who views security commitments as liabilities rather than force multipliers risks unraveling US-led alliances.

Economically, Trump’s aggressive trade stance toward China also cuts both ways for Taiwan. The Washington-Beijing trade war has accelerated the relocation of supply chains away from China, benefiting Taiwan’s manufacturing and high-tech sectors and making TSMC indispensable to the global economy.

Yet the US unpredictability driving decoupling also threatens Taiwan’s prosperity. Trump’s tariff policies have rarely spared allies. His hints at new duties on foreign-made semiconductors and his relentless “America First” rhetoric make clear that strategic alignment offers no immunity from economic nationalism. Taiwan’s lesson is straightforward: it must continue to diversify export markets and deepen trade ties with other democracies.

Diplomatically, Trump’s instincts make it harder for Taiwan to boost its international profile. Under President Joe Biden, the United States worked closely with allies through the G7 and Quad to underscore that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are shared global interests. That coordination gave Taipei indirect backing. Trump, by contrast, prefers bilateral deals that showcase US leverage, not collective purpose. He often sees allies not as partners but as free riders.

If this unilateralist approach takes hold, Taiwan could face a grim scenario: sharper US-China rivalry without the stabilizing framework of coordinated US-led deterrence. Japan and South Korea, wary of being dragged into a US-China clash, might hedge — leaving Taiwan more isolated just when it needs a united front.

Taiwan cannot control the impulses of a mercurial American president. But it can — and must — control how it responds.

To help offset presidential unpredictability, one imperative is to institutionalize ties with the stable pillars of US policymaking — Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department. Expanding those linkages, especially through defense dialogues, arms co-production, and high-level exchanges, will help Taiwan hedge against sudden policy reversals.

More importantly, Taiwan must double down on self-reliance. Its shift toward asymmetric defense, civil resilience, and whole-of-society preparedness is the right strategy. Trump’s volatility only heightens the need for Taiwan to hold the line alone — at least until US support arrives, if it arrives. A deterrence posture built on self-defense credibility reduces both temptation and opportunity for Chinese adventurism.

Taiwan’s best safeguard against US unpredictability is to make itself indispensable to the democratic world. Stronger partnerships with Japan, India, Australia, and Europe can transform it from a regional flashpoint into a global stake in the balance of power. Once embedded in the world’s economic and security networks, Taiwan becomes not a chip to be bargained but a cornerstone of the free world’s credibility.

More fundamentally, Taiwan’s challenge under Trump 2.0 is to harness the deterrent benefits of a tougher US posture toward China while insulating itself from the risks of a volatile presidency. This requires balancing strategic alignment with strategic autonomy: staying close enough to Washington to strengthen deterrence, yet independent enough to withstand political mood swings there.

Trump’s unpredictability may not be new, but its consequences for Taiwan could be fateful. The island’s security, economy, and diplomacy all hinge on navigating a US policy that can suddenly shift with a social media post. The paradox is that a more assertive America may deter China, but a more erratic one could also embolden it.

For Taiwan, the challenge is not just to weather US unpredictability, but to rise above it — by anchoring its destiny to the shared purpose of the free world.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

India’s Kabul return may recast global Taliban policy

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New Delhi’s embassy reopening reflects a realist approach to regional relations

Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (center) leaves after attending a news conference at the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi on Oct. 12. The reopening of India's embassy in Kabul followed Muttaqi’s recent visit to India's capital.
Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (center) leaves after attending a news conference at the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi on Oct. 12. The reopening of India’s embassy in Kabul followed Muttaqi’s recent visit to India’s capital. | AFP-JIJI

By Brahma Chellaney, Contributing Writer, The Japan Times

By reopening its embassy in Kabul on Oct. 21, India has chosen engagement over isolation — a move that could prompt other major democracies, from Japan to the United States, to follow suit.

The decision restores direct communication with the Taliban rulers at a time when Pakistan’s airstrikes last month triggered several days of border conflict with Afghanistan, sharply worsening bilateral relations. India’s move also signals a readiness to deal with those in power — however unpalatable — to safeguard its long-term interests in Afghanistan and beyond.

The reopening followed Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s recent visit to India, enabled by a special United Nations sanctions exemption. While marking a cautious reset in India-Taliban relations, the visit indicated a shift in Afghanistan’s regional power dynamics as New Delhi and Kabul seek to counterbalance the influence of China and Pakistan.

The Taliban, meanwhile, are resisting U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure to let America reclaim Bagram Airbase, which served as the nerve center of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan. On Sept. 20, Trump warned that “bad things” would happen to Afghanistan if it did not return control of Bagram to the United States.

For New Delhi, the decision reflects a hard-nosed recognition of reality: The Taliban are in control and ignoring them would mean ceding ground to geopolitical rivals.

For more than three years, India maintained only a minimal presence in Afghanistan, limiting itself to humanitarian aid and discreet contacts through intermediaries. The cautious stance stemmed from India’s deep discomfort with the Taliban’s ideology and their historic ties to anti-India, Pakistan-backed terrorist groups. Yet as the regional landscape shifts, pragmatism is overtaking principle.

The embassy reopening suggests that the Taliban have provided credible assurances — both on the security of Indian personnel and on ensuring that Afghan territory will not be used by groups hostile to India. These guarantees, if honored, would mark a sharp break from the 1990s when the Taliban regime hosted Pakistani terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Some skepticism is warranted. Critics argue that reopening the embassy lends de facto legitimacy to a regime that continues to suppress women’s rights and exclude minorities from governance. India has carefully avoided formally recognizing the Taliban regime. Yet, in practice, reopening the embassy implies a gradual normalization of relations.

India’s engagement rests less on trust than on calculation: It is safer to have a diplomatic foothold than to operate from the sidelines. For New Delhi, the calculus is strategic rather than moral: Regaining influence in Afghanistan is essential to India’s security and to balancing Pakistani and Chinese leverage.

India has long been among Afghanistan’s leading development partners. It has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure, education and health projects — from the Salma Dam and the Afghan Parliament building to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul. These investments won India enduring goodwill among Afghans and embodied its soft-power approach to regional influence.

The Taliban’s return in 2021 froze most projects and raised fears that India’s hard-won gains would erode. The return of Indian diplomats will help safeguard these assets and could revive stalled initiatives, especially in sectors that benefit ordinary Afghans rather than the Taliban leadership.

For India, economic engagement is also a means to reassert its strategic footprint. Trade and connectivity form the backbone of this renewed outreach. New Delhi is keen to expand the use of Iran’s Chabahar Port — a vital alternative to the China-run Gwadar Port in Pakistan — for trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Facing isolation and sanctions, the Taliban have sought Indian participation in mining and infrastructure projects. Afghanistan’s vast untapped reserves of lithium, copper and rare earths could eventually become a new arena for cooperation, though the political risk remains high.

The timing is significant. The sharp deterioration in Afghanistan-Pakistan ties opened a window for India to reengage. The India-Taliban rapprochement represents a major setback for Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence agency spent over 25 years nurturing the Taliban as a strategic asset.

More broadly, India’s approach reflects a shift toward issue-based realism in its neighborhood policy. Across South Asia, New Delhi has been recalibrating its diplomacy — engaging whoever holds power, including the Islamist-leaning regimes in Bangladesh and the Maldives and Myanmar’s military junta. In Afghanistan, India will have to walk a fine line: supporting the rights and aspirations of the Afghan people while engaging the Taliban to ensure the country does not again become a sanctuary for anti-India terrorism.

That balancing act is complicated by the international community’s divided stance. While some countries — such as China, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan — have accredited ambassadors to the Taliban regime, others, especially in the West, remain unwilling to go beyond limited humanitarian engagement.

The Trump administration, however, has sent high-level officials to Kabul for meetings with the Taliban, signaling a shift toward more direct engagement on certain issues. U.S. officials like Special Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler discussed possible economic arrangements, security cooperation and even an American presence at Bagram.

Like Washington’s pragmatic engagement with the Taliban, India’s return to Kabul represents a quiet but consequential recalibration. It reflects a recognition that in a volatile region, diplomatic absence is a luxury no major power can afford. Engagement gives India leverage, intelligence and access — tools indispensable for managing the crosscurrents of regional security.

India’s action could now lead other important players to also choose realism over principle, tacitly acknowledging that effective diplomacy often requires engaging regimes as they are, not as one wishes them to be. Strategic absence in Afghanistan is no longer a viable option.

Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

From peace to power: How the Nobel Peace Prize turned political

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Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 9, 2025. Photo by Associated Press

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The Oslo-based Nobel Peace Prize committee may have turned down President Trump’s latest bid for glory. Yet by honoring Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado — at a time when Trump is openly backing efforts to topple the government in Caracas — it has laid bare the extent to which the peace prize has become a political instrument.

Trump’s allies have predictably fumed over his snub, and the White House itself drove the point home by accusing the Nobel jury of putting “politics over peace.”

But Machado, Venezuela’s “iron lady,” has long courted the Trump camp and even dedicated her prize “to the people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” In an NPR interview, she went further, declaring that if Trump succeeded in overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro, it would “ignite regime change” across the Americas — including in Cuba to Nicaragua.

Over the decades, no Nobel award has courted more controversy than the peace prize, which — unlike the other five Nobel awards chosen by the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation — is selected and bestowed in Norway. The prizes bear the name of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish arms tycoon who made his fortune selling cannons and explosives.

The irony is enduring: An arms dealer’s legacy, now dispensed by a committee that too often confuses politics for peace. Nobel’s own will was explicit. The prize, he wrote, should go to the person who has done “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

That mandate has been repeatedly ignored. Geopolitical convenience, not peace, has become the guiding principle. Machado’s award — ostensibly for “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” — reads less like a tribute to peacebuilding and more like an endorsement of regime change.

Trump, of course, is no peacemaker, despite his victory lap for brokering a Gaza ceasefire. By ordering airstrikes on Iran, he betrayed his own 2025 inaugural pledge that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

Yet the Peace Prize has gone before to war-makers and bloodstained militarists. Henry Kissinger, architect of the secret carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos, shared the 1973 award. Yitzhak Rabin, who oversaw the “force, might, and beatings” policy during the Palestinians’ First Intifada, was another laureate.

Far from honoring genuine peacemakers, the Nobel committee has often used the award to advance Western foreign policy interests. Machado is simply the latest in a long line of anti-regime figures crowned to signal Western solidarity.

Aung San Suu Kyi, now detained in Myanmar, and China’s Liu Xiaobo, whose 2010 award froze Norway’s ties with Beijing for six years, are prime examples. Oslo eventually pledged not to support actions undermining “China’s core interests.” When the committee blamed Beijing for Liu’s premature death in 2017, it apparently forgot its own geopolitical calculus.

Then there is Muhammad Yunus. Awarded the peace prize in 2006, he was hailed as a bridge between Islam and the West at a time when post-9/11 fears had gripped the West. Today, Yunus presides over rampant rights abuses and extrajudicial killings as head of an Islamist-leaning regime in Bangladesh. Yet the Nobel committee, having served its political purpose, looks the other way.

Such choices erode the moral authority that once gave the peace prize its aura. By turning it into a geopolitical signal, the committee diminishes its power to inspire genuine peacemakers. Instead of being a universal emblem of hope, the prize risks becoming a partisan badge of ideological alignment.

There is another danger: Politicized prizes can deepen the conflicts they claim to ease. When the Nobel committee sides publicly with one faction in a polarized nation, it emboldens that camp while hardening the regime’s resolve — fueling repression under the convenient label of “foreign interference.”

The committee’s habit of rewarding intentions over achievements makes things worse. The peace prize has become a tool to encourage desired political transitions rather than celebrate actual peacemaking.

If the committee continues to align its selections with geopolitical agendas rather than universal peace principles, it risks moral bankruptcy. A prize seen as a tool of soft power cannot credibly honor those who challenge power.

The Nobel committee still has time to restore integrity to the world’s most famous award. It can begin by returning to Alfred Nobel’s mandate: rewarding tangible efforts to reduce armed conflict and foster fraternity between nations. That would mean fewer political signals, fewer premature coronations, and a renewed focus on results, not rhetoric.

The world does not need another politicized trophy. It needs a genuine celebration of peacemaking — one that transcends ideology, resists manipulation and reclaims its moral core. Only then can the Nobel Peace Prize once again stand as what it was meant to be: A beacon of peace in an increasingly divided world.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Xi’s Purges Reveal His Insecurity

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From surveilling and repressing Chinese citizens to firing and prosecuting potential rivals, Chinese President Xi Jinping seems able to rule only through fear. But fear is not a foundation for long-term stability, and the more Xi seeks to consolidate power, the more vulnerable his position becomes.

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

During his 13 years in power, Xi Jinping has steadily tightened his grip on all levers of authority in China – the Communist Party of China (CPC), the state apparatus, and the military – while expanding surveillance into virtually every aspect of society. Yet his recent purge of nine top-ranking generals, like those before it, shows that he still sees enemies everywhere.

After taking power in 2012, Xi launched a crackdown on corruption within the CPC and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The campaign was initially popular, because China’s one-party system is rife with graft and abuse of power. But it soon became clear that enforcement was highly selective – a tool not for building a more transparent or effective system, but for consolidating power in Xi’s hands. In Xi’s China, advancement depends less on competence or integrity than on earning the leader’s personal trust.

But even after more than a decade of promoting only loyalists, Xi continues to dismiss officials regularly, including top military commanders. According to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, nearly five million officials at all levels of government have been indicted for corruption under Xi. And this is to say nothing of those who simply disappear without explanation.

True to form, Xi’s regime claims that the military leaders swept up by his latest purge – including General He Weidong, a member of the Politburo, Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission, and the third-highest-ranking figure in China’s military hierarchy – committed “disciplinary violations” and “duty-related crimes.” But a more plausible explanation is that Xi is playing an interminable game of Whac-a-Rival, desperately trying to preserve his grip on power.

Xi’s fears are not entirely misplaced: each new purge deepens mistrust among China’s elite and risks turning former loyalists into enemies. From Mao Zedong to Joseph Stalin, there is ample evidence that one-man rule breeds paranoia. By now, Xi may well have lost the ability to distinguish allies from foes. At 72, Xi remains so insecure in his position that, unlike even Mao, he has refused to designate a successor, fearing that a visible heir could hasten his own downfall.

None of this bodes well for China. By refusing to lay the groundwork for an eventual leadership transition, Xi sharply increases the risk that the end of his rule – however that comes – will usher in political instability. In the meantime, Xi’s emphasis on personal fealty over ideological conformity is weakening institutional cohesion in a system once grounded in collective leadership. Coupled with his arbitrary firings and prosecutions, Chinese governance is now increasingly defined by sycophancy and anxiety, rather than competence and consistency.

China’s military is paying a particularly steep price for Xi’s insecurity. In recent years, the PLA has undergone sweeping structural reforms aimed at transforming it into a modern fighting force capable of “winning informationized wars.” But Xi’s purges risk undermining this effort by disrupting military planning and leadership. For example, his abrupt removal in 2023 of the leaders of the PLA’s Rocket Force, which oversees China’s arsenal of nuclear and conventional missiles, may have jeopardized China’s strategic deterrent.

Replacing experienced commanders with untested loyalists might ensure Xi’s political survival – and Chinese leaders have often used the military to safeguard their own power – but it does nothing for national security. And when generals are preoccupied primarily with political survival, both morale and operational readiness suffer. Can the PLA fight and win a war against a major adversary like the United States or India while operating under the political constraints Xi has imposed on it?

So far, Xi has advanced his expansionist agenda through stealth and coercion rather than open warfare. But a paranoid leader surrounded by sycophants unwilling or unable to challenge him is always at risk of strategic miscalculation. Recall that Stalin decimated the Red Army’s leadership on the eve of the Nazi invasion – with disastrous results. In Xi’s case, it might be China that does the invading, if he orders an amphibious assault on Taiwan.

For all the pomp surrounding China’s rise, the country is beset by structural problems, including a slowing economy, rising youth unemployment, and an aging and declining population. Popular discontent may well be growing, but it is masked by repression, just as any potential challenge to Xi’s leadership is preempted by purges and prosecutions. Ultimately, Xi seems able to rule only through fear.

But fear is not a foundation for long-term stability. A leader consumed by fear of disloyalty may command obedience but not genuine fidelity. Obedience is not merely a poor substitute for strength; it can become a source of fragility, as it leaves little room for creativity, competency, or collaboration. The great irony of Xi’s approach is that the more he seeks to consolidate power in his own hands, the more vulnerable his rule becomes.

Mao’s purges culminated in chaos and national trauma. Xi’s methods are more sophisticated, but the underlying logic is the same – as could be the results.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2025.