This is the fifth article in a planned eight-part strategic series by the Gold Institute examining how global conflict is reshaping security, defense, industry, technology, alliances, diplomacy, and strategic decision-making.

Europe’s test is integrated readiness. The Indo-Pacific’s test is integrated deterrence. The Middle East’s test is integrated resilience. But none of these tests can be fulfilled without the foundations that support them: economic security, industrial capacity, critical materials, energy, technology, logistics, and supply chains.

The new race for security is not only a race for weapons. It is a race for the systems that produce, sustain, repair, power, move, and replace those weapons under pressure.

For decades, many democratic countries treated economic efficiency and national security as separate questions. Markets would boost supply chains. Companies would reduce costs. Governments would buy what they needed when they needed it. Globalization would lower prices, increase access, and reduce the incentives for conflict. Defense industries could be smaller because future wars were expected to be shorter, more precise, and technologically managed.

Those assumptions have weakened.

Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s use of economic leverage, instability in the Middle East, the vulnerability of maritime routes, the race for semiconductors, and growing dependence on critical minerals have all shown the same lesson: economic systems are now part of the security battlefield.

A country may have cutting-edge aircraft, missiles, ships, drones, satellites, and command systems. But without semiconductors, rare earth elements, energetics, batteries, fuel, microelectronics, steel, titanium, machine tools, software, data centers, electricity, ports, skilled workers, and trusted suppliers, those systems cannot be produced, sustained, repaired, or replaced at scale.

This is why economic security is now national security.

Deterrence is not built only in military headquarters. It is built in factories, ports, mines, laboratories, shipyards, data centers, energy networks, rail networks, and supply chains. It is built by workers, engineers, procurement officials, investors, private companies, public institutions, and political leaders who understand that resilience cannot be improvised after a crisis begins.

The world is already spending as if it understands the danger.

Global military expenditure reached a record level in 2025, approaching $2.9 trillion. The United States, China, Russia, Germany, and India accounted for more than half of the world’s military spending. Europe’s spending rose sharply. Asia and Oceania continued to increase defense investment. NATO members together accounted for more than half of global military expenditure.

Janes projects global defense spending at roughly $2.8 trillion in 2026. But the more important signal is not only the growth of total budgets. It is the growth of investment budgets: procurement, research and development, modernization, and long-term force building. Governments are not only paying for today’s militaries. They are trying to rebuild the capacity to equip, modernize, and sustain tomorrow’s forces.

That distinction matters.

Record spending does not automatically create security. The central question is not only whether governments spend more. It is whether spending creates production capacity, resilient supply chains, trained workforces, stockpiles, repair capacity, logistics, and sustainable deterrence.

Spending is necessary. It is not sufficient.

Money can buy platforms, but it cannot instantly create a trained workforce, expand ammunition production, build shipyards, secure rare-earth supply chains, produce semiconductors, upgrade ports, increase energy capacity, or align procurement systems across allies.

The real question is whether countries can convert money into production, production into readiness, readiness into deterrence, and deterrence into strategic stability.

Ukraine has made this impossible to ignore.

The war is not only high-tech. It is also industrial, attritional, adaptive, and brutally material. Artillery shells, air-defense interceptors, drones, armored vehicles, electronic warfare systems, repair facilities, fuel, logistics, and spare parts all matter. So do software, sensors, commercial satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and rapid battlefield innovation.

The lesson is not that countries must choose between mass and technology. The lesson is that they need both.

They need ammunition and autonomy. They need tanks and drones. They need air defense and cyber defense. They need critical minerals and data infrastructure. They need production lines and software updates. They need military stockpiles and commercial innovation. They need industrial depth and decision speed.

This is the central economic-security challenge of the new era: converting resources into usable power before the next crisis exposes the gap.

Defense requirements are also changing.

Countries no longer define defense requirements only by geography or traditional force structure. They now have to match threats, alliances, industrial capacity, economic robustness, and technological readiness. Baltic states, Gulf states, Japan, Australia, Israel, India, Poland, Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan do not face identical problems. Their geography differs. Their threat perceptions differ. Their alliances differ. Their economies differ. Their industries differ.

But the modern capability requirements are increasingly similar.

They need an integrated air and missile defense. They need drones and counter-UAS systems. They need cyber and electronic warfare. They need intelligence fusion and AI-enabled decision support. They need logistics and military mobility. They need critical infrastructure protection. They need resilient supply chains. They need the industrial ability to produce, repair, and replenish under pressure.

This is why the defense-spending debate is changing.

NATO’s new framework reflects this shift. The old two-percent debate is no longer enough. Allies have moved toward a wider defense-and-security investment model: core military capabilities, as well as defense-related infrastructure, cyber resilience, civil preparedness, innovation, industrial capacity, and social resilience.

That is a major conceptual shift.

It means that bridges, ports, energy systems, cyber networks, data infrastructure, civil preparedness, and military mobility are no longer peripheral to defense. They are part of the deterrence equation.

A missile defense battery is not enough if the port it protects cannot operate. A tank brigade is not enough if the bridges cannot support movement. A cyber unit is not enough if data centers lose power. A weapons factory is not enough if it depends on foreign suppliers for critical inputs. A military alliance is not enough if members cannot move forces, share data, or sustain production together.

The battlefield and the home front are no longer separate.

Europe shows this clearly.

European governments are spending more, but Europe’s challenge isn’t only financial. The continent must convert determination into production, mobility, interoperability, and readiness. It must rebuild stockpiles, expand ammunition capacity, strengthen air defense, protect critical infrastructure, improve military mobility, and reduce dangerous dependencies, yet without cutting itself off from the United States or other trusted partners.

This is difficult because Europe remains fragmented.

National procurement often protects each country’s own defense industrial base. Requirements differ. Certification is slow. Industrial planning is uneven. Defense companies need predictable demand before they invest in new production lines. Smaller companies struggle to move from innovation to scale. Governments announce targets faster than they build implementation mechanisms.

This is the gap between spending and power.

Countries want speed, but they also want autonomy. They want urgent capability, but they also want domestic production. They want innovation, but they also want reliability. They want private capital, but they need public demand. They want national control, but they require an allied scale. They want lower costs, but they need resilient supply chains.

The answer cannot be ideological.

Countries will need a mixed model: domestic production where sovereignty is essential, allied production where scale is required, trusted imports where urgency demands speed, stockpiles where disruption is likely, and dual-use innovation where commercial technology can strengthen defense.

The Indo-Pacific shows the same logic.

China’s military modernization and economic leverage are pushing regional actors to invest not only in platforms but also in industrial autonomy, cyber defense, maritime resilience, critical minerals, and advanced technologies. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Australia, and others are trying to reduce dependence on foreign-sourced systems while increasing cooperation with the United States and trusted partners.

This is not only a military trend. It is an industrial and investment trend.

The Indo-Pacific defense market is becoming more important because the region understands that deterrence depends on regional production, innovation, supply chains, and technology ecosystems. South Korea’s defense industry, Japan’s gradual opening to defense-industrial cooperation, India’s push for indigenous production and export, Australia’s investment in munitions and undersea infrastructure, and Taiwan’s need for asymmetric systems all point in the same direction.

Security is becoming localized, regionalized, and networked simultaneously.

The United States remains central, but allied nations and partners increasingly understand that they cannot depend only on U.S. capacity. American power is still indispensable, but American industrial capacity is not unlimited. If the United States must support Europe, deter China, manage the Middle East, defend the homeland, and sustain its own modernization at the same time, allies must bring more than political support. They must bring production, infrastructure, logistics, technology, and resilience.

This is where the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is important.

Deterrence in the Pacific is no longer only about forward-deployed forces. It is about logistics, prepositioned munitions and fuel, maintenance, infrastructure stability, exercises, experimentation, innovation, partner capacity, and the ability to continue operations in a contested environment. The ability to fight is inseparable from the ability to move, supply, repair, communicate, and endure.

The Middle East teaches the same lesson in another way.

Missiles, drones, proxy networks, cyber activity, maritime disruption, and information warfare show that prosperous states can be vulnerable if they depend on fragile infrastructure, narrow chokepoints, expensive interceptors, or external protection alone. Gulf states may buy advanced platforms, but they also need civil defense, maritime alternatives, local industry, air-defense integration, cyber resilience, and public confidence. Israel may have advanced military capabilities, but it still must sustain legitimacy, cohesion, production, and international support during prolonged pressure.

The Middle East shows that economic security is both psychological and material.

Markets, investors, tourists, expatriate workers, insurers, and the public all respond to recognized risk. An adversary need not destroy an economy to pressure it. It can create uncertainty around ports, airports, energy facilities, data centers, shipping lanes, or public safety. Economic confidence becomes part of the security equation.

This is why critical infrastructure is now strategic terrain.

Energy systems, ports, railways, roads, undersea cables, satellites, cloud infrastructure, semiconductor facilities, telecommunications networks, and water systems all matter. They are civilian assets, but they enable military resilience. They are commercial systems, but they shape national endurance. They are economic infrastructure, but they can become targets in a crisis.

Critical minerals are another strategic terrain.

Rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, nickel, gallium, germanium, indium, graphite, titanium, tungsten, and other materials are not abstract commodities. They are inputs into missiles, aircraft, batteries, sensors, satellites, electric motors, microelectronics, optics, drones, data centers, and advanced manufacturing. A country may control advanced designs, but if it depends on a rival for the materials needed to build them, its security remains exposed.

China understands this.

China’s dominance in parts of the critical minerals supply chain gives it leverage in a crisis. Export controls, licensing delays, customs scrutiny, pricing pressure, or processing bottlenecks can create strategic effects without firing a shot. Recent controls and tighter checks around rare earths, indium, and other strategic materials show how quickly supply-chain dependence can become geopolitical leverage.

This is why the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and others are trying to diversify mining, processing, recycling, stockpiling, and trusted supply chains.

Europe’s Critical Raw Materials Act reflects this logic. It sets benchmarks for domestic extraction, processing, recycling, and reduced dependence on any single external supplier. The details are technical, but the strategic message is clear: material dependence is now a security problem.

But this is harder than announcing a policy.

Building critical minerals resilience takes time. Mining requires permitting. Processing requires capital, expertise, and environmental management. Recycling requires scale and technology. Strategic stockpiles require planning. Alternative suppliers require infrastructure and political stability. Governments must decide what they are willing to pay for security, redundancy, and dependability.

Efficiency and resilience are not the same thing.

For decades, supply chains were optimized for cost. The new security environment requires them to be optimized for trust, redundancy, speed, and survivability. That does not imply abandoning markets. It implies recognizing that markets alone do not price strategic risk correctly.

The same logic applies to the defense industrial base.

For many years, the defense industrial base in democratic countries has narrowed, consolidated, and become more dependent on peacetime demand. That model may be efficient in stable periods, but it creates vulnerabilities in crises. If only a few suppliers can produce an important component, if only one factory can produce a key munition, if a production line depends on foreign inputs, or if workers with specialized skills are not available, then military readiness becomes fragile.

Defense-industrial resilience requires more than factories.

It requires long-term demand signals, workforce development, supplier depth, financing, export pathways, inventory transparency, flexible procurement, and political willingness to make tradeoffs. It requires governments to tell the industries not only what they want to buy this year, but also what they intend to sustain over time.

No company will build strategic capacity on uncertain signals.

This is especially important for ammunition and munitions. Ukraine and the Middle East have shown how quickly stockpiles can be consumed. Air-defense interceptors, artillery rounds, precision missiles, rockets, drones, and spare parts are not optional. They are the material foundation of endurance. If production cannot keep up with operational use, deterrence weakens.

The United States is now saying this openly in strategy and budget documents.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy treats the defense industrial base not as a support function, but as one of the central pillars of defense strategy. Recent U.S. budget materials point in the same direction, emphasizing the defense industrial base, critical minerals, munitions, next-generation technology, autonomy, AI, shipbuilding, space, homeland defense, and supply chain resilience.

The message is clear: the United States is not only buying weapons. It is trying to rebuild the industrial, mineral, digital, and production foundations that sustain military power in a prolonged crisis.

That is the logic of strategic capacity.

But strategic capacity also has a macroeconomic cost.

Defense spending can support growth, employment, research, and industrial activity. But large defense buildups can also increase deficits, debt, inflationary pressure, and trade imbalances if they are financed poorly or spent mostly on imports. The macroeconomic question is no longer whether defense spending is rising. It is whether that spending builds domestic and allied productive capacity or creates fiscal pressure without solving the underlying capability problem.

This is a serious issue for democracies.

Governments must increase defense investment while also managing debt, social spending, infrastructure needs, energy transition costs, and public expectations. Citizens will ask what they are getting for higher defense budgets. Allies will ask whether spending produces real capabilities. Markets will ask whether governments can finance their ambitions. Defense companies will ask whether demand will last long enough to justify investment.

This means that defense spending must be strategically designed.

If spending is mostly imported, the domestic industrial benefit is smaller, and external dependence may remain. If spending is fragmented across national programs, the allied scale is lost. If spending is focused only on high-end platforms, stockpiles, and sustainment may remain weak. If spending supports prototypes but not production, innovation will not become capacity. If spending is not connected to the workforce, infrastructure, and supply chains, it may fail to improve readiness.

The goal is not simply to spend more.

The goal is to spend in a way that builds capacity.

That requires joint procurement, predictable demand, allied production, domestic industrial depth, stockpiles, infrastructure robustness, and a stronger link between defense budgets and economic strategy. It also requires honesty: defense spending has tradeoffs. The question is whether those tradeoffs are made early, deliberately, and strategically, or late, under pressure, after a crisis begins.

The innovation problem is equally important.

The democratic world has no shortage of innovation. There are companies developing artificial intelligence, autonomy, space systems, cyber tools, advanced manufacturing, robotics, sensors, and software-defined capabilities. The problem is not only invention. The harder problem is adoption.

A prototype that works in a demonstration does not automatically create military power. A start-up that wins an urgent contract does not automatically become part of the long-term defense industrial base. A new technology does not matter strategically unless it can be tested, integrated, funded, scaled, sustained, and used operationally.

This is the “second valley of death.”

The first valley is moving from idea to prototype. Many governments have improved at crossing that gap. Innovation units, accelerators, flexible contracting, and commercial technology pathways have helped bring new ideas closer to military users.

The second valley is harder.

It is the move from prototype or limited production into programmed procurement, sustainment accounts, doctrine, training, and force structure. This is where many promising technologies fail. They may be useful. They may have a military demand. They may be proven in exercises or even deployed in small numbers. But if they do not enter the acquisition system, receive durable funding, and gain an institutional owner, they remain episodic.

An innovation ecosystem is not the same as an industrial base.

An innovation ecosystem produces ideas, prototypes, demonstrations, and early contracts. An industrial base produces scale, reliability, sustainment, repair capacity, trained workers, and long-term availability. The new security race requires both. But the bridge between them is still weak.

This is why NATO’s DIANA program matters.

Its focus on dual-use technology, testing, acceleration, and adoption by defense end users shows that the Alliance understands the challenge. NATO is not only searching for traditional weapons. It is searching for technologies in energy, communications, contested electromagnetic environments, logistics, space, autonomy, naval operations, decision support, and other areas where commercial innovation can strengthen defense.

But the test is not whether innovation programs can attract proposals. The test is whether useful technologies can move into operational use across several countries, different regulations, different classification systems, different budgets, and different military requirements.

Alliances must therefore become industrial and technological networks, not only military coalitions.

This changes the meaning of burden sharing.

Burden sharing is not only about how much money countries spend as a percentage of GDP. It is also about what capabilities they produce, what infrastructure they provide, what stockpiles they maintain, what supply chains they secure, what technologies they develop, and how quickly they can support allies in crisis.

A country that contributes munitions production may be as strategically important as a country that contributes a combat brigade. A country that controls rare-earth processing may be as important as a country that buys aircraft. A country with ports, repair facilities, data centers, or shipyards may become a key node in the alliance system. Smaller countries can matter if they control useful industrial niches, move quickly, or supply critical geography.

This point leads directly to the next strategic question.

If economic security is now part of national security, then smaller and medium-sized countries face a difficult choice. They cannot match the scale of great powers. They cannot build every capability at home. They cannot control every supply chain. But they also cannot afford to remain passive consumers of security.

Their challenge is different: how to identify the industrial niches, geographic advantages, technological strengths, diplomatic networks, and alliance roles that allow them to remain strategically relevant in a great-power security race.

This is one of the most important lessons of the new race for security.

Power is becoming networked.

The strongest countries will not be those that simply spend the most. They will be those who can connect public and private sectors, military and civilian infrastructure, national industries and allied production, legacy platforms and new technologies, economic policy and security strategy.

This requires a new kind of strategic planning.

Defense ministries cannot solve this alone. Finance ministries, transportation ministries, energy ministries, industry ministries, education systems, private companies, investors, universities, and local governments all have roles. The defense industrial base is not isolated from the wider economy. It depends on the workforce, energy, transportation, finance, digital infrastructure, and political support.

Economic security is therefore a whole-of-government and whole-of-society challenge.

This does not mean militarizing the economy. It implies recognizing that democratic societies must be able to sustain themselves under pressure. It means building enough redundancy to survive disruption. It means protecting critical infrastructure. It means creating trusted supply chains. It means training workers. It means making hard choices about where dependence is acceptable and where it is dangerous. It means having an industry that can shift quickly from peacetime production to wartime needs.

It also means measuring success differently.

The question is not only how many platforms are purchased. It is whether forces can be sustained. It is whether munitions can be replenished. It is whether ports can operate. It is whether production can surge. It is whether cyber systems can survive an attack. The question is whether companies can move from prototype to scale. The question is whether allies can share production and reduce bottlenecks. It is whether critical materials can be sourced without strategic vulnerability.

The next crisis may not begin with a direct military attack.

It may begin with an export control, a port disruption, a cyberattack on a logistics network, a shortage of critical minerals, a shipping crisis, a power-grid failure, a drone strike on an energy facility, a semiconductor bottleneck, or a sudden surge in demand for munitions that production lines cannot meet.

When that happens, the question will not be only who has the most advanced weapons.

The question will be who can keep producing, moving, repairing, supplying, adapting, and deciding under pressure.

That is strategic capacity.

Europe’s test is integrated readiness.

The Indo-Pacific’s test is integrated deterrence.

The Middle East’s test is integrated resilience.

The foundation beneath all three is integrated economic security.

In the new race for security, military power depends on the economic system behind it. Deterrence depends on production. Resilience depends on infrastructure. Innovation depends on adoption. Alliances depend on industrial cooperation. Sovereignty depends on trusted supply chains.

The defense industrial base is no longer separate from national resilience. It is part of deterrence itself.

But this raises the next question.

What happens to countries that cannot build everything themselves? How can smaller and medium-sized states compete, adapt, and remain relevant when great powers dominate production, technology, finance, and supply chains? Should they specialize, align, hedge, integrate, or build sovereign capacity in selected areas? How can they avoid becoming only consumers of other countries’ security decisions?

These questions will shape the next phase of the new race for security.

The future will not be shaped only by those who spend more.

It will also be defined by those who know where they fit, what they can build, whom they can trust, and how quickly they can turn limited resources into a strategic advantage before the next crisis begins.

Omer Haim is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This is the fourth article in a planned eight-part strategic series by the Gold Institute examining how global conflict is reshaping security, defense, industry, technology, alliances, diplomacy, and strategic decision-making.

Europe’s test is integrated readiness. The Indo-Pacific’s test is integrated deterrence. The Middle East’s test is integrated resilience.

The Middle East is not only a region of recurring wars. It is a stress test for the entire modern security system. In this region, military operations, missile attacks, drone campaigns, proxy networks, maritime disruption, energy flows, cyber activity, information warfare, domestic politics, great-power diplomacy, and public legitimacy all interact at the same time. A strike in one arena can affect oil prices in another. A maritime incident can change insurance costs and shipping routes. A drone attack can create a diplomatic crisis. A battlefield image can shape public opinion across continents. A ceasefire on one front can influence escalation on another. A local militia attack can pull the United States, Israel, Iran, Gulf states, Europe, Asia, and global markets into the same crisis.

This is why the Middle East matters beyond its borders.

It shows that modern conflict is no longer contained within the boundaries of one battlefield. It moves through airspace, ports, energy corridors, digital networks, financial markets, social media, and diplomatic channels. It pressures governments not only through military force, but also through uncertainty, cost, exhaustion, and political division.

In Europe, the central question is whether democratic states can rebuild the industrial, military, and logistical capacity needed for high-intensity conflict. In the Indo-Pacific, the question is whether a diverse group of allies and partners can build a networked deterrent system before a crisis becomes a war. In the Middle East, the question is whether states can absorb pressure across multiple domains without losing control of escalation.

That is integrated resilience.

The first reality shaping this environment is the missile, drone, and UAS revolution.

Iran and its partners have invested heavily in ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, rockets, one-way attack drones, loitering munitions, unmanned aerial systems, and other unmanned platforms. These weapons do not need to defeat a state’s military outright to create strategic pressure. They can threaten cities, airports, energy facilities, ports, bases, shipping lanes, and critical infrastructure. They can force defenders to remain on alert for long periods. They can exhaust interceptor stockpiles. They can create fear among civilians and uncertainty among investors.

This is one of the central lessons of the region: even successful defense can become expensive, and even the best defense is not foolproof.

A relatively cheap drone or rocket can force the defender to use a much more expensive interceptor. A repeated wave of attacks can pressure budgets, production lines, magazines, and public patience. The defender may win each individual engagement and still face a growing economic and operational burden over time.

The answer cannot be only more interceptors.

The Middle East will need cheaper defensive systems, directed energy, electronic warfare, autonomous detection, passive defense, hardened infrastructure, distributed basing, rapid repair capacity, and AI-enabled prioritization. The goal is not only to shoot down more threats. The goal is to make the entire national system harder to saturate, exhaust, deceive, or paralyze.

The second reality is the power of proxies.

Iran’s regional strategy is not based only on conventional military power. It is based on survivability, ambiguity, geography, proxies, missiles, drones, maritime leverage, nuclear threshold capability, and political patience. Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi militias, Hamas, and other actors are not identical. Each has its own local roots, political interests, and operational logic and limits. But together, they show how non-state and semi-state actors can become part of a wider regional pressure system.

Proxy networks allow a state to apply pressure without always accepting direct responsibility. They can open additional fronts, complicate deterrence, increase ambiguity, and impose costs below the threshold of formal war. They also make escalation harder to control. A militia attack may be local in execution, but regional in consequence. A drone launched from one country can trigger a military response in another. A maritime attack by a non-state actor can affect global shipping.

This makes the Middle East different from a traditional state-to-state battlefield.

The region is not organized around one front line. It is organized around networks: military networks, ideological networks, financial networks, smuggling networks, media networks, and diplomatic networks. Understanding the region requires looking not only at armies and borders, but at the systems that connect them.

The third reality is maritime vulnerability.

The Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Gulf are not only geographic spaces. They are strategic pressure points. Hormuz alone carries roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption. Any disruption there can affect energy prices, shipping behavior, insurance markets, inflation expectations, and the strategic calculations of governments far beyond the region.

The Red Sea crisis showed that a relatively limited military capability can create global commercial disruption. The Houthis did not need a navy equal to the United States or Europe to affect shipping behavior. They needed missiles, drones, intelligence, geography, and political will. The result was not only a military problem. It became a shipping problem, an insurance problem, a supply-chain problem, and a diplomatic problem.

The Strait of Hormuz is even more sensitive.

A country does not need to close the strait permanently to create leverage. It only needs to make governments, companies, insurers, and markets believe that access is uncertain. In the new security race, uncertainty itself becomes a weapon.

This is one reason the Gulf states are reassessing their security assumptions.

For decades, many Gulf states operated under two parallel assumptions. The first was that stability could be preserved through accommodation: avoid direct confrontation with Iran, manage tensions, protect economic growth, and keep the region attractive for investors, tourists, and global business. The second was that if deterrence failed, the United States would provide the ultimate security umbrella.

Both assumptions have weakened.

The image of an air-raid alarm in a luxury mall in Dubai or Riyadh captures something deeper than a moment of fear. It captures the collapse of a psychological security model. For societies built around stability, prosperity, global connectivity, and controlled risk, the sound of an alarm is not only a warning of incoming danger. It is a reminder that wealth, advanced buildings, global brands, and foreign partnerships do not automatically create resilience.

The Gulf has spent enormous resources on advanced weapons, foreign partnerships, and modern infrastructure. Yet the new threat environment raises harder questions. Do these states have enough civil defense? Do their populations know what to do under attack? Can their economies absorb repeated disruption? Can they defend airports, ports, hotels, energy facilities, desalination plants, and data centers? Can they maintain confidence if Iran or its partners can threaten daily life?

These questions matter because Gulf power is not only military. It is economic and psychological.

The Gulf model depends on confidence: confidence that energy exports will continue, that tourists will arrive, that investors will stay, that airports will function, that ports will remain open, that expatriate workers will feel safe, and that ruling families can provide order. If Iran can shake that confidence, even without defeating Gulf militaries, it gains leverage.

This is the new vulnerability of prosperous states.

Modern economies create enormous strength, but they also create new targets. Airports, ports, financial centers, energy facilities, digital infrastructure, tourism hubs, logistics centers, and desalination plants are all strategic assets. They are also strategic vulnerabilities.

The Gulf states are not abandoning the United States. But they are hedging more actively.

They are investing in air and missile defense, counter-drone and counter-UAS systems, maritime security, cyber resilience, local defense industries, space and surveillance capabilities, and alternative export routes. They are also looking for new forms of practical security cooperation. This includes not only Washington, but also regional partners, Asian energy consumers, European defense industries, and, quietly or openly, Israel.

This creates a new regional paradox.

Israel remains politically sensitive in much of the Arab world. The Palestinian issue remains central. Gaza, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to shape public opinion and limit what Arab governments can do openly. But the hierarchy of threats has changed in parts of the region. Iran is increasingly viewed not as a distant ideological adversary, but as a direct military threat to cities, infrastructure, economies, and regimes.

That does not erase the Palestinian issue. On the contrary, it brings it back into the strategic equation.

For Gulf states, normalization with Israel may be strategically useful, but politically difficult without a credible path on the Palestinian question. They may see Israel as a country with relevant military, intelligence, air defense, cyber, and counter-Iran experience. But public legitimacy still matters. Regional security cooperation cannot be sustained only by threat perception. It also requires political space.

This is another Middle East lesson: strategic convergence does not automatically become political alignment.

Shared threats can create opportunities, but they do not remove history, identity, religion, public opinion, or domestic politics. Governments may cooperate quietly while criticizing one another publicly. They may agree on Iran while disagreeing sharply on Gaza. They may need Israel’s capabilities but fear the political cost of a visible partnership.

This is why diplomacy is itself a domain of competition.

In the Middle East, negotiations, ceasefires, normalization processes, hostage deals, sanctions relief, maritime understandings, and reconstruction plans are not separate from security. They are part of security. Every diplomatic arrangement changes incentives, legitimacy, and leverage. Every actor asks who is included, who is excluded, who gains recognition, who receives money, and who can claim victory.

Iran understands this well.

Tehran often seeks to connect issues that others prefer to separate: nuclear talks, sanctions relief, maritime security, proxy activity, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, Syria, and relations with the Gulf. This does not mean Iran controls every actor or every front. It does mean that Iran benefits when multiple fronts create pressure at the same time.

The United States also faces a hard choice.

Washington cannot simply leave the Middle East without consequences. Energy markets, maritime chokepoints, counterterrorism, Iranian power, Israel’s security, Gulf stability, and global trade still matter. A Middle East crisis can divert American attention from the Indo-Pacific, affect European energy prices, influence elections, and give China and Russia new opportunities.

But Washington also cannot manage every crisis as if it has unlimited bandwidth.

The United States remains indispensable, but the old model of American crisis management is under pressure. Regional partners still want U.S. protection, intelligence, air defense, weapons, diplomacy, and political backing. At the same time, they question whether Washington will always be present, always act decisively, and always prioritize the region when Europe and the Indo-Pacific are also demanding attention.

This creates a familiar pattern.

The region doubts American reliability, but still depends on American power. Washington wants partners to do more, but partners still look to Washington in moments of danger. Adversaries test the seams. Allies hedge. Crises repeat.

This is not sustainable.

U.S. strategy should therefore shift from crisis response to resilience building.

The United States should not only ask regional partners to buy more weapons. It should help build integrated systems: shared warning, air and missile defense coordination, maritime security, counter-drone and counter-UAS cooperation, cyber resilience, critical infrastructure protection, defense-industrial partnerships, and crisis communication channels. It should help partners reduce vulnerability, not only increase firepower.

Israel faces its own version of the same challenge.

Israel has built one of the world’s most advanced security systems: intelligence, airpower, cyber capabilities, special operations, missile defense, civil defense, and precision strike. But the current Middle East tests Israel not only militarily, but systemically.

Israel must manage Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, militias, cyber threats, information campaigns, domestic pressure, international legitimacy, and U.S. support at the same time. It must defend against rockets, drones, missiles, infiltration, cyber operations, and global diplomatic pressure. It must protect civilians, preserve economic continuity, sustain military readiness, and avoid strategic isolation.

The challenge is not only whether Israel can defeat a specific threat. It is whether Israel can manage a prolonged multi-domain campaign without losing legitimacy, cohesion, or freedom of action.

Lebanon shows this clearly.

A conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is not only a border conflict. It involves Iran, the Lebanese state, U.S. diplomacy, Gulf calculations, displaced civilians, international legitimacy, domestic politics, and the broader regional balance. Even ceasefire discussions become part of a competition over who gains leverage, who is represented, and who is blamed for the next round.

The same is true in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the Red Sea.

In the Middle East, military events rarely remain military. They become diplomatic events, legal events, media events, economic events, and domestic political events almost immediately.

That is why the region complicates the idea of victory.

A state can win a military exchange and still face strategic pressure. It can intercept missiles but lose public patience. It can destroy capabilities but fail to eliminate the adversary’s political leverage. It can secure a ceasefire but leave the coercive system intact. It can deter a direct attack while facing proxy pressure, cyber disruption, and information warfare.

This is the essence of the Middle East as a multi-domain stress test.

The future regional security architecture will have to be layered.

The first layer is legitimacy and information resilience: public trust, strategic communications, legal preparation, alliance messaging, and the ability to counter disinformation. In the Middle East, this is not a secondary layer. It is the foundation. Without legitimacy, public confidence, and credible information, no integrated security system can endure prolonged pressure.

The second layer is air and missile defense: interceptors, radars, early warning, counter-drone and counter-UAS systems, electronic warfare, directed energy, and shared tracking.

The third layer is maritime security: chokepoint protection, unmanned systems, minesweeping, escort planning, port resilience, shipping data, and contingency routes.

The fourth layer is critical infrastructure protection: energy facilities, desalination plants, airports, ports, data centers, undersea cables, pipelines, and electricity grids.

The fifth layer is intelligence and decision advantage: classified intelligence, open-source intelligence, commercial satellite imagery, cyber indicators, social media analysis, financial data, and AI-enabled fusion.

The sixth layer is industrial resilience: interceptors, drones, ammunition, spare parts, fuel, maintenance, repair capacity, and the ability to surge production during a crisis.

This is what integrated resilience means.

It is not only the ability to absorb a missile strike. It is the ability to keep the state functioning, keep the economy moving, keep the public informed, keep allies aligned, keep infrastructure operating, keep military options open, and keep escalation under control.

The Middle East does not need a perfect regional security architecture to begin building this kind of resilience. A single NATO-style structure is unlikely. Political divisions are too deep. Threat perceptions vary too widely. Public opinion matters too much. Normalization processes are fragile. Iran will continue to exploit seams.

But practical networks are possible.

Shared warning systems are possible. Maritime coordination is possible. Counter-drone and counter-UAS cooperation is possible. Civil-defense planning is possible. Critical infrastructure protection is possible. Quiet intelligence sharing is possible. Emergency energy planning is possible. Industrial partnerships are possible. Regional crisis hotlines are possible. AI-enabled decision-support systems are possible.

The key is to build these systems before the next crisis.

The next Middle East crisis may not begin with a dramatic invasion. It may begin with a drone strike, a maritime incident, a cyberattack, a militia attack, a contested ceasefire, a disrupted port, a damaged pipeline, a false video, a social media campaign, or an air-raid alarm in a city that believed it was safe.

When that happens, the question will not be only who has the strongest military.

The question will be who can see the crisis clearly, absorb pressure, protect civilians, defend infrastructure, sustain operations, coordinate with partners, preserve legitimacy, and prevent a local incident from becoming a regional war.

That is integrated resilience.

The Middle East is teaching democratic nations and their partners that security is no longer only about defeating enemies at the front. It is about protecting the entire system behind the front: infrastructure, economy, society, information, alliances, and political will.

Europe’s test is integrated readiness.

The Indo-Pacific’s test is integrated deterrence.

The Middle East’s test is integrated resilience.

All three are part of the same new race for security.

Omer Haim is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This is the third article in a planned eight-part strategic series by the Gold Institute examining how global conflict is reshaping security, defense, industry, technology, alliances, diplomacy, and strategic decision-making.

Europe is the clearest case study in the new race for security. But the Indo-Pacific may be the most important test of whether democratic nations can adapt before a crisis becomes a war.

Fiction is not strategy, but sometimes it helps clarify strategic risk. In 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis imagine how a naval clash in the South China Sea could escalate into a much wider conflict. The value of that scenario does not lie in its ability to predict the future. It lies in the warning it offers: great wars can begin with local incidents, misread signals, and decision-makers who believe they can still control escalation.

The Indo-Pacific is not Europe. It does not have a NATO-like alliance structure, a single collective-defense framework, or a continental security architecture. It is larger, more maritime, more geographically dispersed, economically exposed, and politically diverse. Its geography is defined by oceans, island chains, chokepoints, ports, undersea cables, energy routes, and long distances. Its security problems stretch from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea, from the Korean Peninsula to the East China Sea, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Islands.

Europe’s problem is how to rebuild integrated readiness after decades of underinvestment. The Indo-Pacific’s problem is how to build integrated deterrence across a region where the threat is distributed, the partners are diverse, and the security architecture is still evolving.

The central challenge is China.

China’s military modernization, maritime pressure, missile forces, cyber capabilities, economic leverage, defense-industrial expansion, and coercive behavior are forcing governments across the region to rethink deterrence. Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, India, and others are not responding in identical ways, but they are reaching a similar conclusion: the old model is no longer enough.

For decades, the United States operated in the region through a “hub-and-spokes” alliance system. Washington served as the hub, with bilateral alliances connecting the United States to Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and other partners. That model gave the United States enormous influence and provided allies with access to American military power, intelligence, logistics, technology, and deterrence.

But the hub-and-spokes model was built for a different era. It was designed when many U.S. allies had limited security cooperation with each other, when China was weaker, and when the United States could assume a more dominant regional posture. Today, China is more capable. The U.S. military is stretched across multiple theaters. Allies are more anxious about American bandwidth. Regional partners are more willing to cooperate directly with one another. Technology, supply chains, and the defense industry are becoming as important as formal treaties.

A recent U.S. strategic recalibration makes this shift even more significant.

Washington is moving toward a narrower military emphasis on conventional deterrence in the Pacific, especially along the First Island Chain: Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. The decision to restore the historical name U.S. Pacific Command, after years of using U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, is more than a bureaucratic change. The command’s geographic area may remain the same, but the signal is clear: the United States is emphasizing the Pacific theater as the center of gravity for conventional deterrence against China.

This does not mean the broader Indo-Pacific has disappeared.

On the contrary, the more the United States concentrates its military focus on the Pacific, the more important the wider regional network becomes. If Washington prioritizes Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, then the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands cannot be left strategically empty. They must be carried by a wider web of partners, middle powers, maritime cooperation, economic security arrangements, and defense-industrial ties.

This is the new burden-sharing logic of the region.

The United States will remain essential, but it is increasingly signaling that allies and partners must carry more responsibility for conventional defense in their own sub-regions. Washington can convene, enable, support, arm, train, coordinate, and deter. But it cannot anchor every security problem alone.

That is why the Indo-Pacific is moving from a hub-and-spokes model toward a networked security architecture.

This does not mean an “Asian NATO.” That phrase is misleading. The region is too diverse, too geographically dispersed, and too politically complex for a single NATO-style alliance. Many regional states do not want to choose openly between Washington and Beijing. ASEAN countries have different threat perceptions. India values strategic autonomy. South Korea is focused on North Korea and China. Japan is becoming more active, but still operates under political constraints. Australia is deeply aligned with the United States, but must manage geography, industrial capacity, and regional diplomacy. The Philippines faces direct pressure in the South China Sea but must balance domestic politics and economic exposure.

The more realistic model is not a single alliance. It is a network.

This network includes U.S. bilateral alliances, AUKUS, the Quad, Japan-Australia cooperation, Japan-Philippines cooperation, U.S.-Japan-South Korea cooperation, India-Australia ties, maritime cooperation with Southeast Asian partners, growing Indo-Pacific-Europe defense cooperation, and expanding defense-industrial and technology partnerships. The network is not neat. It is uneven and incomplete. But it reflects the region’s direction.

Japan’s transformation is one of the most important strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific. For decades, Japan’s postwar security posture was cautious, constrained, and defensive. That posture is changing. Tokyo is raising defense spending, investing in long-range strike, strengthening missile defense, expanding cyber and space capabilities, deepening cooperation with the United States, building new security ties with Australia, the Philippines, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian partners, and gradually opening space for defense-industrial exports and cooperation.

Japan is no longer only a protected ally. It is becoming a security connector.

Japan sits at the heart of the First Island Chain, close to Taiwan, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and the Western Pacific. Its geography makes it central to any regional contingency. Its technology base, industrial capacity, maritime forces, and alliance with the United States make it one of the most important actors in the Indo-Pacific security network.

But Japan also shows the difference between spending and capability. Its defense buildup is significant, but the practical question is whether Tokyo can convert budgets into long-range strike weapons, air defense, cyber defense, sustainment capacity, and usable regional deterrence without losing public legitimacy.

Australia represents another model.

Australia is no longer only a distant rear-area partner. Its geography still gives it strategic depth, but distance is no longer protection. China’s expanding long-range strike, cyber, maritime, space, and undersea capabilities mean that Australia must increasingly think of itself as part of the operational theater, not only a support base behind it.

Australia’s role is therefore changing. It is becoming a logistics platform, industrial partner, intelligence partner, maritime hub, northern deterrence anchor, and undersea-power center for the broader coalition system. Its importance lies not only in what it can contribute to allied operations abroad, but in whether it can defend its own approaches, protect critical infrastructure, sustain operations from its territory, and help maintain a favorable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

AUKUS shows why this matters. It is often discussed as a submarine agreement, but it is more than that. It is a defense-industrial and technology-integration project linking undersea capabilities, shipyard investment, sustainment infrastructure, supply chains, cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, electronic warfare, and advanced defense cooperation.

In this sense, AUKUS is not only about platforms. It is about building strategic depth.

Australia also illustrates how the Indo-Pacific threat is expanding. Future pressure may target not only ships and bases, but also undersea cables, ports, trade routes, fuel networks, satellite links, energy flows, and digital infrastructure. That is why Australia’s investments in local ammunition production, sustainment infrastructure, undersea cooperation, northern basing, and defense-industrial capacity matter. They are part of the wider network’s resilience.

The Philippines shows a third model: frontline pressure.

The Philippines faces direct maritime coercion in the South China Sea. Its vessels, fishermen, coast guard, and military forces operate under constant pressure from China’s maritime militia, coast guard, and navy. This is a daily contest over access, sovereignty, law, and control.

The response has been a rapid strengthening of defense cooperation with the United States, Japan, Australia, and other partners. Joint maritime exercises, expanded access arrangements, information sharing, and operational cooperation are becoming increasingly important as the South China Sea tests whether rules, alliances, and maritime access can withstand gray-zone pressure.

The Philippines also reveals one of the central lessons of the Indo-Pacific: deterrence cannot be only about major war. It must also be about daily resilience against coercion below the threshold of open conflict.

South Korea brings another layer. Its primary security concern remains North Korea, but it is also increasingly relevant to the wider Indo-Pacific security network. South Korea is a defense-industrial power, a shipbuilding leader, a semiconductor power, and an increasingly important arms exporter.

South Korea’s role in the new security race is not only military. It is industrial.

The war in Ukraine and the rearmament of Europe have confirmed the importance of countries capable of producing at scale. South Korea’s defense industry gives Seoul influence beyond the Korean Peninsula and shows how industrial capacity can become a strategic asset. But the more South Korea contributes to regional and global security, the more it must manage risk with China, maintain readiness against North Korea, and navigate domestic political debate over its role in the region.

India represents a different kind of partner.

India is not a U.S. treaty ally. It values strategic autonomy and will not simply fit into an American-led alliance structure. But India is central to the Indo-Pacific because of its geography, population, economy, military scale, maritime position, and rivalry with China.

This becomes even more important if Washington narrows its conventional military focus toward the Pacific. The Indian Ocean does not become less important because the United States uses a more Pacific-centered frame. It becomes more dependent on India and other regional actors.

China continues to expand its maritime infrastructure, port access, naval deployments, and economic power across the Indian Ocean. India’s role is therefore not only to participate in the Quad. It is to help anchor the Indian Ocean side of the broader strategic map while preserving strategic sovereignty.

India’s investment in missile defense, anti-ship missiles, indigenous defense production and export, and maritime capabilities reflects this logic. New Delhi is preparing for a security environment in which it must deter China on land, compete at sea, protect its energy routes, and preserve strategic autonomy while cooperating more closely with other partners.

This is why the Indo-Pacific network must be flexible.

The most important regional cooperation will not always take the form of a formal alliance. It may involve maritime domain awareness, logistics agreements, intelligence sharing, exercises, port access, technology partnerships, critical minerals, defense production, and crisis coordination. The strategic value lies in practical alignment, not identical political positions.

Taiwan is the most dangerous flashpoint.

A conflict over Taiwan would not be only a local war. It would test the credibility of U.S. deterrence, the resilience of Taiwan’s society, the readiness of Japan and other regional partners, the survivability of supply chains, the security of sea lanes, the global semiconductor economy, and the ability of democratic coalitions to coordinate under extreme pressure.

Taiwan’s defense challenge is urgent and unforgiving. It must strengthen resilience, harden infrastructure, invest in asymmetric capabilities, expand drone and missile production, improve civil defense, protect communications, and prepare for coercion, blockade, cyberattack, disinformation, and direct military pressure.

Taiwan’s recent emphasis on combat-readiness training reflects this reality. The issue is not only whether Taiwan can acquire more weapons. It is whether its forces can move quickly from peacetime posture to wartime operations, maintain command and control under pressure, sustain logistics, protect critical infrastructure, and operate in a degraded information environment — including in a conflict that could become longer and more exhausting than many planners assume.

Taiwan’s use of open-source reporting and public information tools to monitor Chinese military activity also reflects a wider trend. Deterrence increasingly depends not only on classified intelligence but also on public awareness, civil participation, information resilience, and the ability to expose coercion in real time.

The war in Ukraine has made this lesson impossible to ignore.

The Indo-Pacific is watching Ukraine closely. Regional militaries have seen how drones, electronic warfare, long-range strike, dispersed operations, rapid innovation, commercial technology, and industrial endurance can shape a war. They have also seen the danger of insufficient stockpiles, slow production, fragile supply chains, and delayed decision-making.

Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian refineries, fuel infrastructure, rail links, and military production facilities carries lessons for the Indo-Pacific. Modern war is also about disrupting the logistics, energy, fuel, repair, and transportation networks that keep a war machine functioning. In a maritime theater, ports, fuel depots, air bases, shipyards, undersea cables, logistics hubs, and energy corridors would all become strategic targets.

But the Indo-Pacific is not Ukraine.

A conflict in the Indo-Pacific would be more maritime, more missile-heavy, more dependent on air and naval power, more connected to economic flows, and more exposed to escalation among major powers. It would involve vast distances, contested logistics, undersea warfare, space systems, cyber operations, and long-range precision strike. It could affect energy flows, shipping, semiconductors, insurance markets, ports, and global trade almost immediately.

This is why the Indo-Pacific security race is not only a military race. It is a systems race.

Defense spending in the region is rising. China remains the dominant driver, while Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and India are all increasing or modernizing defense investments in different ways. The region is investing in submarines, missiles, air defense, drones, cyber capabilities, space, naval forces, surveillance, electronic warfare, and critical infrastructure.

But money alone will not decide the outcome.

The decisive question is whether Indo-Pacific partners can integrate.

Can Japan and Australia operate together more effectively? Can Japan and South Korea sustain strategic cooperation despite historical and political tensions? Can the United States and the Philippines build real combat readiness, not only access agreements? Can Australia become a sustainment hub for undersea and long-range operations? Can India anchor the Indian Ocean while cooperating with Pacific partners? Can Taiwan build enough resilience to complicate Chinese planning? Can regional partners share maritime data quickly enough? Can defense industries expand production before a crisis, not after it?

The Indo-Pacific’s defense problem is not fragmentation in the European sense. It is distributed complexity.

The region has many capable actors, but they are separated by distance, threat perception, politics, history, legal frameworks, and different levels of connection with the United States. This makes network-building difficult.

The Indo-Pacific network must therefore be layered.

The first layer is the formal alliance system.

The second layer is minilateral cooperation: AUKUS, the Quad, U.S.-Japan-South Korea cooperation, Japan-Australia cooperation, U.S.-Japan-Philippines cooperation, India-Australia cooperation, and other smaller formats.

The third layer is defense-industrial cooperation: shipyards, submarines, missiles, drones, ammunition, sustainment, software, AI, cyber, and critical technologies.

The fourth layer is economic security: semiconductors, critical minerals, energy routes, port infrastructure, undersea cables, telecommunications, and supply-chain resilience. China’s use of export controls on rare earths, indium, and other critical materials shows why this layer now belongs inside the security debate. A country may have strong alliances and advanced platforms, but if it depends on a rival for the materials needed to produce and sustain them, its security is still exposed.

The fifth layer is decision advantage: intelligence sharing, maritime domain awareness, data fusion, early warning, cyber defense, operational planning, and political coordination.

The sixth layer is social resilience: civil defense, public trust, information resilience, economic endurance, and the ability of democratic societies to withstand coercion and disinformation.

This layered structure is the real Indo-Pacific security network.

The risk is that the network remains too slow, too shallow, or too symbolic.

Exercises are useful, but they are not enough. Statements are useful, but they are not enough. Access agreements are useful, but they are not enough unless they are connected to logistics, stockpiles, command relationships, infrastructure, repair capacity, and political decisions made in advance. Technology partnerships are useful, but only if they move from announcement to production. Defense-industrial cooperation is useful, but only if export controls, classification barriers, procurement rules, and workforce shortages are addressed.

The Indo-Pacific does not need more formats only. It needs more operational integration.

China’s advantage is not only military growth. It is the ability to apply continuous pressure across military, economic, cyber, maritime, diplomatic, and informational domains. Beijing can test one seam at a time: a reef, a patrol, a port, a trade dependency, an election narrative, a cyber vulnerability, an undersea cable, a gray-zone incident.

The response must be equally integrated.

That does not mean matching China action for action. It means building systems that are harder to coerce, isolate, or surprise. It means making it clear that pressure against one partner will generate coordinated diplomatic, informational, economic, and operational responses from others.

The Indo-Pacific security network must therefore be both strong and flexible.

It must be strong enough to deter major aggression. It must be flexible enough to manage gray-zone coercion. It must be open enough to include countries that do not want formal alliances. It must be practical enough to deliver real capabilities. It must be resilient enough to survive political changes in Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, Seoul, Manila, New Delhi, Taipei, and elsewhere.

A single formal alliance is unlikely. A purely bilateral U.S.-led system is no longer sufficient. National defense buildups alone will not solve the problem. What the region needs is a network capable of connecting military power, industrial capacity, intelligence, technology, logistics, economic security, and political will.

The next crisis may not begin with a dramatic invasion. It may begin with a maritime confrontation, a blockade rehearsal, a cyberattack, a coercive economic measure, a disinformation campaign, a collision at sea, a seizure of a small feature, or a sudden surge of military activity around Taiwan.

When that moment comes, the question will not be whether countries share values in general. The question will be whether they have prepared enough in advance to act together.

Can they see the crisis clearly? Can they share information quickly? Can they move forces and supplies? Can they sustain operations? Can they protect their societies from coercion? Can they coordinate political messages? Can they avoid panic? Can they deny the adversary a quick victory? Can they impose enough uncertainty to prevent aggression in the first place?

That is integrated deterrence.

The Indo-Pacific is teaching democratic nations that alliances must become networks, and networks must become operational.

The future balance in the region will not be determined only by the number of ships, aircraft, missiles, or bases. It will be determined by whether democratic countries can build a security ecosystem that is faster, more resilient, more integrated, and more adaptive than the pressure being applied against it.

Europe’s test is integrated readiness.

The Indo-Pacific’s test is integrated deterrence.

Both are part of the same new race for security.

Omer Haim is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

Captain Seth Keshel’s complete regional breakdown of 2026 U.S. House seat ratings, covering all 50 states in 12 regional installments published May–June 2026 on Captain K’s Corner.

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(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Trump zet zijn voet in de Iraanse klem. En Europa capituleert voor de ayatollah’s)

America and Iran are caught in a “peace process” that resembles a game of cat and mouse, in which the mouse leads the house cat astray. The negotiations between the two countries reached, as a first step, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that better deserves the name “Memorandum of Misunderstanding” (MoM). The roles appear reversed. The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to behave as the owner of the “Strait of Hormuz” — a flagrant violation of international law — and in doing so makes a fool of mighty America while the world economy trembles.

Symbolism is often mere appearance. Last week Trump signed the preliminary agreement with Iran at the Palace of Versailles, during a lunch with French President Macron. The MoU consists of 14 points, which calls to mind the Fourteen Points plan of 1918 by American President Woodrow Wilson, as the basis for a peace settlement in Europe after the First World War. Much of it was incorporated into the “Treaty of Versailles” of 1919, the new start for old Europe — a treaty that would lead to a Second World War. Beware of Versailles! Not everything that glitters in mirrors is real.

Party of God

Trump’s fourteen-point plan stumbles already at point 1: “a permanent end on all fronts, including Lebanon.” The last two words appeared under pressure from Iran, which has a crucial ally in Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. This “party of God” is trigger-happy and constantly bombards northern Israel. A cascade followed. Hezbollah, not a party to the US-Iran agreement, shells Israel, which is likewise not a party to the agreement. Israel, out of reflex, shoots back. Iran, which slipped “Lebanon” into the agreement, becomes angry at America, which is supposed to keep Israel under control.

Tehran then threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, blackmailing the entire world. Trump gets the blame because the fourteen-point plan guarantees “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.” Trump then quarrels with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. And that is exactly what Iran intends. About Iran’s terrorist henchmen — Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis — the MoU says nothing.

Iran plays chess while Trump sits at a checkers board

The rest of the MoU is full of points where, once again, the Americans tear their trousers. For instance, article 2 says that the two treaty parties “must refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.” Iran is the world champion of human-rights violations and the carrying out of death sentences. That is simply “passed over in silence.” The country is a religious-ideological dictatorship and, in the many thousands of years of its existence, has never known a democracy.

America, at 250 years old (congratulations!), is a newcomer. Anyone who ploughs through the history of Iran/Persia sees many invasions, from Greeks to Romans, from Turks to Arabs, and from Mongols to Afghans. Iran survived all its conquerors and now plays a game with America from its own repertoire.

The negotiations have just begun in Switzerland in order to be able to sign a full-fledged treaty within 60 days of the signing of the MoU. In Trump’s words, a “final deal.” There are hot-button issues, such as the permanent keeping-open of the Strait of Hormuz — Iran’s strategic trump card.

There are also goodies for the Iranian regime, such as: a fund of 300 billion dollars for reconstruction and economic development, an end to all sanctions, the immediate export of Iranian oil (largely to China), and the release of internationally frozen Iranian assets, roughly 100 to 120 billion dollars — in the US only 2 billion dollars. Those funds, however, flow mainly to the corrupt Iranian elite.

Nuclear weapons

But there is also a price. Iran “reaffirms that it will not acquire or itself produce nuclear weapons.” Already-enriched uranium must be made less enriched through the technology of downblending, so that it cannot be used for nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna is to monitor this. For the US this is essential, but it is at the same time the theme on which the Islamic Republic has elevated lying to the highest art. Last June the American air force carried out a major attack with “bunker busters” to blow up storage sites of more highly enriched uranium.

Iran must be content with less enriched uranium, but a nuclear weapon is the life insurance of the political regime. Without nuclear weapons the ayatollahs and the generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would feel naked, unworthy of the Islamic Republic. The bag of tricks remains within reach.

Despite all the American attacks, Iran feels like the winner, because the regime has survived the first round. It is now trying, through negotiations, to wring out more by sowing division.

The Trump-Netanyahu quarrel is a boost for Iran. Squabbling in America is too, because in November come the Midterms. It rarely happens that a sitting president comes through the Midterms well in a second term. The theme: the price of gasoline, essential for a country with great distances. The price of gasoline is now 3.94 dollars per gallon, which comes to 0.87 euro cents per liter; in the Netherlands the tax alone on a liter of gasoline is already higher than this amount. In the US the rule is: expensive gasoline = angry voter. Around mid-August it should become clear whether the great “Deal” will happen, or not.

Regime change

At home Trump faces criticism, of course from the Democrats in the opposition, but also from circles of his own Republicans. A respected senator like Lindsey Graham (70) finds the MoU falls short, as does Senator Tom Cotton (49), a former army officer.

In circles of the American military elite there are considerable reservations. They are puzzled and have the feeling that Trump is letting a crocodile lure him into the water. Trump wants a “deal.” It is mainly retired senior military officers who publicly warn in the media, such as four-star general Jack Keane. He recently said on Fox News: “Iran is not to be trusted, they lie and cheat; we all know that.” Keane: “We have to finish the job.” He wants “regime change.” The Democrats sincerely hope that Trump runs aground on Iran. Many Europeans hope the same.

French capitulation

There are no independent sources in Tehran, but the ruling regime feels stronger. That was evident this past weekend in Paris, where the oppositional National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) organized a mass demonstration against the regime in Tehran.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called his French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot to complain about the demonstration of around 100,000 Iranian opponents from all over Europe. He added that a bomb attack was not ruled out. Thereupon France revoked the permit for the demonstration and sent all the buses of demonstrators back home. France rarely misses a chance to capitulate.

The rest of Western Europe is little different. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that the confrontation between the US and Iran is not “our war,” though he does demand that the Strait of Hormuz remain open. As if that happens by itself. Great Britain is searching for itself, Spain is outspokenly pro-ayatollah, and with Italian Prime Minister Meloni the cuddling with Trump is over. Yet another unnecessary quarrel by Trump.

The American chief negotiator is the stiff Vice President J.D. Vance; previously it was mainly Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Vance comes from the Midwest, the American heartland, and wrote a book about it: Hillbilly Elegy (Lament). Rubio has Cuban parents and has a better feel for the outside world, but does not lead the dance.

The roadmap is becoming a hurdle race, under time pressure — not so much for Iran, but indeed for America.

Derk Jan Eppink is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This is the second article in a planned eight-part strategic series by the Gold Institute examining how global conflict is reshaping security, defense, industry, technology, alliances, diplomacy, and strategic decision-making.

Europe is the clearest case study in the new race for security.

For more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, much of Europe operated under a strategic belief that large-scale war on the continent had become unlikely, if not unthinkable. Defense spending declined. Industrial capacity was reduced. Military readiness was often treated as a long-term planning issue rather than an urgent political requirement. Armies became smaller. Stockpiles shrank. Procurement cycles slowed. Many governments worked under the understanding that the United States would remain the ultimate guarantor of European security, while Europe could focus on prosperity, regulation, trade, welfare, and diplomacy.

Russia’s war against Ukraine shattered that belief.

The war did not simply return military conflict to Europe. It exposed a deeper structural problem: Europe had underinvested not only in defense, but also in readiness, production, resilience, mobility, and decision speed.

That is why Europe now sits at the center of the new race for security.

But this race is not only about spending more money. It is about whether Europe can turn political alarm into usable power. It is about whether European countries can convert budgets into ammunition, platforms, logistics, air and missile defense, drones and unmanned aerial systems, electronic warfare, command-and-control systems, cyber resilience, industrial depth, and deployable military capability.

In other words, Europe’s challenge is not rearmament alone. It is integrated readiness.

This distinction matters.

Rearmament can be measured in budgets, contracts, procurement announcements, and political declarations. Integrated readiness is harder. It requires trained forces, functioning supply chains, secure infrastructure, industrial capacity capable of sustaining wartime production, interoperable systems, rapid repair, operational logistics, political and social will, and the ability to coordinate across national borders under pressure.

Europe now confronts both tasks at once.

The first Europe is institutional Europe: NATO, the European Union, and a growing set of smaller regional and mini-lateral cooperation frameworks. NATO remains the core military framework for collective defense. The EU is increasingly focused on the defense industry, joint procurement, military mobility, critical infrastructure, financing tools, industrial resilience, and reducing bureaucratic barriers. Smaller formats among Nordic, Baltic, Central European, and bilateral partners are becoming more important because they can sometimes move faster than large institutions.

The second Europe is national Europe: Germany, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Romania, the Netherlands, Spain, and others. Each has different threat perceptions, political cultures, defense industries, budget constraints, procurement systems, and strategic instincts.

These two Europes overlap, but they are not the same.

Institutional Europe can set targets, create funding mechanisms, define priorities, reduce bureaucratic barriers, and coordinate strategic direction. But national governments still control most of the money, forces, industries, planning processes, regulations, and political decisions that determine whether Europe can actually defend itself.

That is the central tension in European security today.

Europe can agree at the institutional level that it must become more capable. But readiness is built nationally, industrially, and operationally. It is built through factories, training areas, ports, railways, ammunition lines, shipyards, cyber defenses, drone production, air bases, command systems, and political decisions made inside individual capitals.

This makes Europe’s transformation uneven.

For Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, and other countries close to Russia, the threat is immediate and concrete. Their strategic culture has changed more quickly because geography makes delay dangerous. For parts of Western and Southern Europe, the Russian threat is serious but competes with other priorities: migration, terrorism, fiscal pressure, energy, domestic politics, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and industrial competitiveness.

For Germany, the challenge is different. Germany has the economic scale to become the central defense power in Europe, but money alone does not automatically create strategic leadership. Germany’s rearmament reflects a historic shift, but the harder question is whether Berlin can convert financial capacity into doctrine, deployable forces, political confidence, industrial mobilization, and operational leadership.

Germany is the perfect example of Europe’s broader dilemma: the gap between resources and capability.

A country may have fiscal strength, advanced industry, and political influence, but it will still struggle to move fast if its procurement systems are slow, its military culture is cautious, its political consensus is fragile, and its strategic doctrine remains underdeveloped. In Europe, this is not only a German problem. It is a continental problem.

France brings a different model: strategic culture, expeditionary experience, nuclear status, and a long-standing commitment to European strategic autonomy. But any serious European defense model also depends on German financial scale, industrial depth, and political willingness. France can help shape the strategic vision, but France alone cannot carry the industrial, financial, and operational burden of European defense.

The United Kingdom remains central to NATO and retains important military, intelligence, nuclear, and expeditionary capabilities. But it also faces constraints in readiness, capacity, and modernization, while Brexit complicates its relationship with EU defense mechanisms. Poland is moving quickly and ambitiously, but scale, sustainment, and integration remain major challenges. The Nordic and Baltic countries bring urgency, resilience, and geographic clarity, but require deeper integration with larger allies.

Europe is therefore not moving as one. It is moving through a combination of institutional pressure, national fear, industrial opportunity, fiscal constraint, old national rivalries, and geopolitical necessity.

The numbers show the scale of the shift.

Global defense spending is rising, but the more important change is the growth in investment: procurement, research, development, modernization, and long-term force building. Europe is part of that global trend, but it is also one of its main drivers. European defense budgets have increased sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. NATO has moved from the old two-percent debate toward a much more demanding defense-and-security benchmark. The EU has launched new tools intended to mobilize large-scale defense investment, accelerate joint procurement, and strengthen Europe’s industrial base.

Arms-transfer trends tell the same story. Europe is not only spending more; it has also become a central destination for major weapons imports. European NATO members have sharply increased their arms imports, and much of that immediate capability still comes from the United States. This creates Europe’s rearmament paradox: the continent is moving toward greater strategic autonomy, but its near-term effort to rebuild military power still depends heavily on external suppliers, American platforms, and transatlantic industrial capacity.

This paradox should not be ignored. It is the reality of the transition.

Europe needs to move quickly, but it also wants to reduce dependency. It needs urgent capability, but it also wants a stronger European industrial base. It needs the United States, but it also knows that Washington’s attention, resources, and political will may be increasingly divided among Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and domestic priorities.

The question is not only how much Europe spends. The question is what Europe can actually do.

Can European forces deploy quickly? Can they sustain high-intensity operations? Can ammunition be produced and replenished according to wartime needs? Can air defenses protect critical infrastructure? Can drones be built at scale? Can governments share intelligence quickly enough? Can industry increase production fast enough? Can ports, railways, roads, and bridges support military mobility? Can Europe operate if U.S. support is delayed, limited, redirected, or politically contested?

These are the questions that matter.

Ukraine has become the forcing mechanism.

The war has shown that modern conflict is not only high-tech. It is also industrial, attritional, adaptive, and brutally material. Artillery shells, air defense interceptors, drones, armored vehicles, repair capacity, electronic warfare, logistics, manpower, and resilient infrastructure all matter. So do software, sensors, data, artificial intelligence, and commercial technologies, which have been adapted quickly to military use.

The lesson is not that Europe must choose between old warfare and new warfare. The lesson is that Europe needs both mass and innovation.

It needs ammunition and autonomy. It needs tanks and drones. It needs air defense and cyber defense. It needs military mobility and data fusion. It needs long-range fires and secure supply chains. It needs national resilience and coalition interoperability.

Ukraine has also shown that the speed of adaptation matters. The side that can identify a battlefield problem, develop a solution, produce it at scale, deploy it quickly, learn from its use, and improve it continuously has the advantage. This favors countries and coalitions that can connect soldiers, engineers, companies, intelligence analysts, procurement officials, and political leaders into a faster learning system.

Europe is not yet organized for that speed.

Its defense ecosystem remains fragmented. National procurement systems usually protect local industries. Requirements differ by country. Certification procedures are slow. Industrial planning is uneven. Ammunition production takes time. Defense companies need long-term contracts and certainty before they invest in new capacity. Smaller companies struggle to move from innovation to scale. Governments often announce ambition before they create the mechanisms needed to implement it.

This is why Europe’s defense challenge cannot be solved by budgets alone.

Money can buy platforms, but it cannot automatically create strategic coherence. It cannot automatically produce ammunition quickly, rebuild supply chains, train personnel, repair infrastructure, integrate software, or align political priorities across more than two dozen states.

The real question is whether Europe can convert spending into power.

This question becomes even more urgent when Europe considers what it would take to defend itself with less American support.

The U.S. contribution to European security is not limited to troops and platforms, or even the much-discussed nuclear umbrella. It includes the connective tissue of modern defense: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; space-based capabilities; command and control; airlift; logistics; senior command structures; operational planning; strategic communications; and the ability to move and sustain forces at scale.

These enablers are not always visible in public debates about burden sharing, but they are central to how NATO functions. Without them, Europe would not simply need to buy more tanks, aircraft, ships, and missiles. It would need to build much of the architecture that allows modern forces to see, move, coordinate, strike, defend, and sustain themselves.

That is the real cost of strategic autonomy.

It is not only financial. It is industrial, operational, political, and organizational. It requires Europe to develop capabilities that the United States has provided for decades, while also maintaining domestic political support, managing fiscal constraints, and avoiding duplication among national defense systems.

Independent assessments suggest that directly replacing key parts of the U.S. contribution would require a vast, long-term investment. But even the largest price estimates understate the challenge. The issue is not only the money. It is the time required to build capacity, train personnel, expand production, integrate systems, and create the public consensus needed to sustain the effort.

Europe’s immediate priorities are therefore clear: air and missile defense, long-range precision strike, area-denial systems, and the connective tissue of modern warfare — space, intelligence, electronic warfare, command and control, cyber resilience, and logistics.

These capabilities matter because they determine whether Europe can deny an adversary freedom of action, protect critical infrastructure, support maneuvering forces, strike at operational depth, and coordinate multinational operations under pressure.

The problem is that many of these capabilities take years to build.

Europe can close some gaps quickly through off-the-shelf purchases, joint procurement, and cooperation with non-European suppliers. But that creates a tension. If Europe buys quickly from outside the continent, it may reduce immediate vulnerability while sustaining external dependence. If it insists on European-only solutions, it may strengthen long-term autonomy but leave dangerous capability gaps open for too long.

This is one of the central dilemmas of European defense policy today.

Speed and autonomy do not always point in the same direction.

The answer cannot be ideological. Europe will need a mixed approach: urgent external procurement where the gap is immediate, European industrial expansion where the capability is strategic, joint production where scale is needed, and deeper partnerships where no single country can move alone.

This is also where the defense-industrial question becomes political.

European leaders can announce higher targets, but industry cannot expand without predictable demand. Companies will not build new factories, hire specialized workers, expand supply chains, and invest in production lines if governments send only short-term signals. Industrial mobilization requires multi-year commitments, clear priorities, faster contracting, common standards, and procurement mechanisms that reward speed, scale, and interoperability.

That is difficult in Europe because defense remains both national and collective. Governments want efficiency, but they also want domestic jobs. They want joint procurement, but they also want national control. They want European autonomy, but they often disagree over what should count as European. They want to increase production, but they face fiscal constraints, labor shortages, regulations, and political resistance.

The result is a familiar European problem: strategic ambition ahead of implementation capacity.

The Czech Republic offers one important example.

It is not one of Europe’s largest countries, but its defense industry has become more important because it is connected to real demand, practical production, ammunition supply, and battlefield urgency. The Czech case shows that smaller and mid-sized countries can become significant players in the new security race when they control useful parts of the supply chain, specialize in areas of urgent demand, and move faster than larger bureaucratic systems.

But it also shows the limits of opportunity. Smaller countries often depend heavily on exports, foreign demand, political access, and larger alliance frameworks. They can become important nodes in a security network, but they may struggle to sustain that role without stronger research and development, government-backed export mechanisms, industrial depth, and institutional influence.

That is a broader lesson for Europe.

The future European defense ecosystem will not be built only by the largest powers. It will depend on networks of countries, companies, suppliers, research centers, and military users. Some of the most important contributions may come from states that are not traditional strategic leaders but are agile, specialized, and industrially relevant.

This is where the civil and military worlds converge.

European security can no longer be understood only through defense ministries and armed forces. It now depends on transportation networks, energy systems, ports, rail corridors, digital infrastructure, space assets, cyber resilience, telecommunications, financial systems, private industry, and dual-use technology.

Military mobility is a good example. A tank, missile battery, or air defense system is only useful if it can move where it is needed, when it is needed. That requires roads, bridges, railways, ports, permissions, logistics planning, and coordination between civilian and military authorities. The same is true for ammunition production, energy resilience, drone manufacturing, data centers, and cyber defense.

The battlefield and the home front are no longer separate.

Europe must therefore rethink security as a whole-of-society and whole-of-alliance challenge. This does not mean militarizing society. It means recognizing that deterrence depends on the ability of civilian systems to support military resilience under pressure.

The war in Ukraine has also changed the meaning of strategic autonomy.

For years, European strategic autonomy was often debated as a political slogan, sometimes interpreted as distance from the United States. That framing is too narrow. The real issue is not whether Europe should separate from the United States. It should not. The transatlantic alliance remains central to European security.

The real question is whether Europe can become a more capable partner.

A Europe that cannot produce enough ammunition, defend its airspace, move forces across its own territory, secure its critical infrastructure, or sustain a long conflict will remain dependent in ways that weaken both Europe and the United States. A stronger Europe would not replace NATO. It would strengthen NATO.

Strategic autonomy, properly understood, is not strategic isolation. It is a strategic responsibility.

It means the ability to act, sustain, produce, decide, and contribute at scale. It means reducing dangerous dependencies without abandoning alliances. It means building enough European capacity so that transatlantic cooperation becomes more balanced and more credible.

This is especially important as the United States faces competing demands in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and at home. Even when Washington remains committed to Europe, American attention, forces, industrial capacity, and political capital are not unlimited. Europe must prepare for a world in which U.S. support remains essential but cannot be taken for granted to cover every gap.

That requires a new European bargain.

European governments must spend more, but they must also spend differently. They must buy together where possible, standardize more, reduce fragmentation, support industrial expansion, integrate emerging technologies, and create faster pathways from innovation to procurement. They must build stockpiles not only for symbolic readiness, but for sustained operations. They must connect military planning with infrastructure, energy, cyber, transportation, and industrial policy.

They must also accept that deterrence is not a peacetime abstraction. It is a daily discipline.

The next European security model must be measured by practical questions: Can forces deploy quickly? Can ammunition be produced and replenished to match wartime needs? Can air defenses protect critical infrastructure? Can drones be built at scale? Can cyber systems survive sustained pressure? Can ports and railways move forces eastward? Can governments share intelligence fast enough? Can industry increase production fast enough? Can allies coordinate decisions before the crisis becomes unmanageable? Can governments bring civil society on board for a sustained security effort?

These are the questions that define integrated readiness.

Europe’s transformation is real. But it is incomplete.

The continent has recognized the danger. It has begun to shift budgets. It has launched new financing tools. It has rediscovered the importance of the defense industry. It has learned from Ukraine. It now understands that resilience, mobility, and production capacity matter.

Still, recognition is not the same as readiness.

Europe will be judged not by the ambition of its declarations, but by the speed and depth of its implementation. It will be judged by its ability to move from fragmented rearmament to integrated readiness.

The new race for security is not only a race to spend. It is a race to organize, produce, adapt, integrate, and decide.

Europe is the clearest case study because it faces the challenge first and most visibly. But the lesson extends far beyond Europe: in the new security environment, power belongs not only to those who possess resources, but to those who can convert resources into coordinated action.

That is Europe’s test.

And it may become the test for every democracy in the decade ahead.

Omer Haim is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Ernie Audino and appeared on Frontlines of Freedom. Diplomacy Without Military Reality Is Fantasy — Our “MOU” With Iran)

Former CIA operative, Sam Faddis, published one of the first, accurate analyses of this crazy MOU we just signed with the patron of global Islamist terrorism. He discussed it with me on the show this week, and it’s another opportunity to hear hard truths based on relevant experience.

First, a little about Sam. He an Army vet, then later CIA operator and head of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Unit at the CIA Counter Terrorism Center. He infilled into the Kurdish north of Iraq in 2002 to prep the AO for our subsequent invasion (Opn Iraqi Freedom) in March, 2003. He’s got years of experience on the ground in the area, specifically along the Iranian border, but he also has years of direct experience with Iran’s nuclear program. He knows what he’s talking about.

But let me start with this – In the Real World of international relations, compliance with any document signed between nations is inherently voluntary. The international lawyers of the species will disagree, of course (because they make their living on this Fantasy), but unless one of those signatures was procured in the face of overwhelming combat power, noncompliance has no compelling sanction. This is why War exists.

As to Iran. We initiated combat. We ceased combat. We negotiated. Then we signed an MOU. Our entering into this MOU was a political decision. It wasn’t a result of a compelling military reality.

So, it’s worth asking why? Why agree to a set of conditions that we don’t control into the future? Let me re-state that…we don’t control the conditions agreed to in this MOU. And yet, the subject matter in the MOU is too important, and the stakes are too high, so why risk it all on a mere signature?

The only plausible answer is because the decision-maker must perceive other risks to be higher. That the President perceives some risk, somewhere, that is greater than the risk of a nuclear ayatollah. That some other risk somewhere exceeds the risk of an ayatollah in control of the Straits of Hormuz. That an ayatollah able to hold hostage 1/3rd of the world’s daily maritime transit of energy is acceptable, because some other risk, somewhere, is scarier. That the risk of the patron of global, Islamist terror, able to continue funding terror operations against Western Humanity is worth taking, because something is more important.

Okay, what is this thing that is more important?

Is it the potential political costs of mid-term elections that go the wrong way? Is that it? Is it because the isolationists advising the WH think Americans won’t accept a longer war? If that’s it, then these politicos better start acting like statesmen and not amateurs. If they want to “advise” on war, then they better start studying war. They can start with Clauzewitz, and specifically with his observation that “it’s the value of the objective that determines the magnitude and duration of any war any nation will wage in its pursuit.” If we understand that the stakes are extremely high, then we will do what’s necessary and endure what we must.

So, for those advising the president…look in the mirror, kids. If you guys advising the president think Americans won’t support a longer war on Iran….then you either think stopping a nuclear ayatollah ain’t that important….or you do, but you failed to help the rest of us understand how important it is.

As to the MOU. First, it’s largely an agreement to reach a final agreement…so consider everything in it locked in Jello. Second, it’s chock full of weasel words, ie vacuous statements that sound important, but mean nothing. They have no binding effect. Third, Iran and its proxies are going to ruin the deal anyway. In fact, they already have. As of today, Saturday, they’ve already announced they’ve closed the Straits again. Wait, but I thought they signed a paper saying they wouldn’t??!! WTF??

Of the MOU’s 14 terms, only 3 take effect immediately, but they are concerning. First, we agreed to IMMEDIATELY LIFT OUR BLOCKADE. Our doing that is irrational, as it is our only remaining leverage on the Regime. Second, we agreed to immediately ease the export restrictions on Iranian crude. Amazing. So, now the regime can start earning money again and replenishing its war chest (Yes, elements of regime leadership already said that is exactly what they’re going to do). Third, we agreed to the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon”! How is this possible, when neither Lebanon, Hezbollah, nor Israel are parties to this MOU??

There’s plenty more to analyze in the document, including a small matter of $300B, too much to get into here. Click on the link to hear Sam Faddis and I dig into them: https://frontlinesoffreedom.com/show-965/

Ernie Audino is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This is the first article in a Gold Institute strategic series examining how global conflict is reshaping security, defense, industry, technology, alliances, diplomacy, and decision making.

The next decade will be shaped by a new race for security, not only a race for military power, but a race for industrial capacity, economic resilience, critical materials, trusted supply chains, technological integration, information resilience, cognitive security, and decision advantage.

Europe is the clearest example of this change, but it is not alone. Across the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, and in the broader allied world, governments are reaching the same conclusion: the assumptions that shaped the post-Cold War security order are no longer sufficient.

For decades, many democratic nations operated under a familiar set of assumptions. Large-scale war in Europe was considered unlikely. Globalization was expected to reduce the incentives for major-power conflict. Defense industrial capacity could be reduced because future wars were assumed to be shorter, more precise, and technologically managed. Supply chains could be optimized for efficiency rather than resilience. The United States would remain the central security guarantor in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East.

Those assumptions have weakened.

Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s pressure across the Indo-Pacific, instability in the Middle East, the proliferation of drones and missiles, cyber threats, fragile supply chains, and uncertainty over the ability of the United States to support multiple theaters simultaneously are forcing governments to rethink defense.

The result is not simply higher defense spending. It is a broader strategic awakening.

NATO’s shift toward a much higher defense-investment benchmark reflects the scale of the change. The old two-percent debate is no longer enough. Allied governments are now being pushed to think about defense requirements, infrastructure, industry, resilience, and long-term readiness in a more integrated way.

Global military spending is moving in the same direction. But money alone will not solve the problem. The central question is not only whether governments can spend more. The real question is whether they can build the readiness, production capacity, technological integration, economic durability, and decision speed required to deter, survive, and prevail in a more dangerous world.

Modern warfare is no longer simply a contest between militaries. It has become a competition between entire national systems.

Military power still matters. Firepower still matters. Air superiority, missile defense, intelligence, logistics, and industrial capacity still matter. But no single element is decisive on its own. The decisive advantage increasingly belongs to countries and coalitions that integrate these elements faster and operate more effectively as a system.

Current conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East show that national security now depends on the interaction of military forces, intelligence networks, defense industries, technology ecosystems, civilian infrastructure, energy systems, information environments, and political leadership.

A country’s ability to fight and endure is shaped not only by what happens at the front line, but by the strength and integration of the entire national security ecosystem behind it.

This changes how governments should think about alliances.

In the twentieth century, alliances were often built around geography, formal commitments, and shared political interests. In the twenty-first century, alliances will increasingly be measured by operational coordination: shared planning, shared intelligence, compatible systems, industrial cooperation, trusted supply chains, technology partnerships, and the ability to coordinate under pressure.

Political alignment is important, but it is not enough.

When a crisis begins, it is too late to build trust, integrate systems, establish intelligence-sharing mechanisms, or create emergency industrial capacity. Successful coalitions prepare before the crisis. They integrate planning, operations, intelligence, technology, logistics, industry, and decision making in advance.

Russia’s war in Ukraine shows why these matters.

The war exposed the return of industrial warfare on European soil. It showed that artillery, ammunition, drones, electronic warfare, air defense, logistics, manpower, and repair capacity remain decisive. It also showed that the side that adapts faster — technologically, industrially, and organizationally, can offset traditional military disadvantages.

The war has also demonstrated how rapidly the character of conflict can change. What began primarily as a war of ground maneuver, armor, artillery, and territorial defense has increasingly become a laboratory for drone warfare, long-range strike, electronic warfare, and rapid battlefield adaptation. Ukraine’s use of drones has not only shaped the front line; it has also allowed Kyiv to extend pressure into Russian territory, striking military infrastructure, energy facilities, logistics networks, and other strategic assets. This is one of the clearest examples of how relatively low-cost technologies, when combined with intelligence, innovation, and operational adaptation, can change the balance of pressure in a prolonged war.

Europe’s current defense transformation reveals this new reality. Air and missile defense, artillery, ammunition, drones, cyber, electronic warfare, AI, military mobility, space, and critical infrastructure protection are no longer narrow military issues. They are becoming core elements of European statecraft.

Yet Europe’s challenge is not simply financial.

Money is necessary, but not sufficient.

The deeper problem is fragmentation. European defense remains divided by national procurement systems, divergent industrial interests, uneven military readiness, incompatible platforms, slow acquisition cycles, workforce shortages, and political constraints. Europe has world-class defense companies and advanced technologies, but it commonly lacks the scale, speed, and integration needed for sustained high-intensity conflict.

Europe’s defense gap is therefore not simply a shortage of equipment. There is a shortage of integrated readiness.

The same lesson applies beyond Europe.

In the Indo-Pacific, China’s military modernization, maritime pressure, missile forces, cyber capabilities, and economic leverage are driving Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, and other partners to rethink deterrence, supply chains, defense production, and alliance integration.

In the Middle East, missile and drone warfare, proxy networks, cyber operations, maritime disruption, energy pressure, and information operations show how regional conflicts can quickly become multi-domain stress tests. The conflicts involving Iran demonstrated that range changes the structure of war, not only its distance. Long-range missiles, drones, and strike capabilities expand the battlespace, compress decision timelines, and turn what may appear to be a bilateral confrontation into a regional systems challenge.

The Middle East also shows a growing cost problem. Low-cost drones, rockets, and one-way attack systems can force defenders to use expensive interceptors or maintain high readiness levels for extended periods. Even a successful defense can become economically stressful if defenders must spend far more than attackers for every engagement.

This creates demand for cheaper interceptors, directed energy, electronic warfare, autonomous detection, passive defense, and AI-enabled prioritization.

Economic security is now part of national security.

A country may have advanced defense platforms, but without semiconductors, rare earth elements, energetics, batteries, fuel, microelectronics, steel, titanium, machine tools, software, and trained workers, those platforms cannot be produced, sustained, repaired, or replaced at scale.

Critical raw materials are especially important. Materials required for the green, digital, defense, and space sectors are strategic assets. Supply chains are no longer a background economic issue. They are part of the security equation.

Deterrence is not only built in military headquarters. It is built in factories, ports, mines, data centers, laboratories, shipyards, energy networks, and supply chains.

The information and cognitive domains are also becoming central to modern security.

Adversaries increasingly use disinformation, propaganda, cyber activity, fake personas, manipulated media, bot networks, social platforms, leaks, and influence operations to shape political environments before, during, and after military crises. Their goal is not always to convince the public of one alternative truth. Often, it is to create confusion, reduce trust, divide societies, slow decision-making, weaken alliances, and make democratic governments hesitate.

This means that defense modernization must include more than platforms, ammunition, cyber, AI, and industrial capacity. It must also include the ability to understand, protect, and operate in the information and cognitive domains.

The challenge is not only to collect more information. Modern governments already collect enormous amounts of data: intelligence reporting, open-source information, social media signals, cyber indicators, satellite imagery, diplomatic reporting, financial data, logistics data, and public sentiment indicators.

The real challenge is turning information into insight.

Information often sits in separate systems, agencies, formats, and classification environments. Decision-makers receive too much information, too late, and missing sufficient context. The future advantage will belong to governments that can collect, fuse, analyze, and present information in ways that support faster, better decisions.

This requires four capabilities.

First, collection: the ability to acquire relevant data from classified, commercial, open-source, cyber, social, economic, and operational environments.

Second, fusion: the ability to connect different types of information into one coherent picture.

Third, analysis: the ability to understand patterns and to identify anomalies, risks, opportunities, and adversary behavior.

Fourth, predictive insight: the ability to move from describing what happened to anticipating what may happen next.

AI can help, but only when connected to trusted data, human expertise, clear governance, and operational decision-making. AI should not be treated as a narrow software tool. It should be treated as part of the national security strategic infrastructure.

The future advantage in conflict will belong not only to the side with better weapons, but to the side with better prediction, faster fusion, and more effective decision support.

The next decade will therefore test whether democratic nations can move fast enough.

They must rebuild readiness, expand production, secure critical materials, protect supply chains, integrate AI and data, defend the information environment, strengthen alliances, and prepare societies for sustained strategic pressure.

The articles that follow will examine how this race is unfolding across Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, smaller countries, economic and security systems, alliance networks, and the United States. Each arena is different, but the underlying strategic requirement is increasingly similar: the ability to integrate military power, industrial capacity, economic resilience, technology, intelligence, diplomacy, and decision-making processes into one coherent system.

The future will not be shaped only by those who spend more. It will be shaped by those who integrate better.

The decisive advantage will belong to countries and coalitions capable of connecting military power, economic resilience, industrial capacity, technology, intelligence, information awareness, and political will into one coherent system.

That is the new race for security.

Omer Haim is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Brig.-Gen. Ernest “Ernie” Audino and appeared in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Defensible Borders Are an American Interest)

Strategic Depth, Hybrid Warfare, and the Logic of Forward Defense After October 7

Strategic depth is not a slogan. It is a function of time and distance that enhances a nation’s geographic defensibility, and it does so in two concrete ways. It provides adequate reaction time between sensing a threat and acting on it. And it provides sufficient land area to deploy and array friendly forces before committing them to combat. Every serious military planner understands this. Few American politicians do.

October 7, 2023, forced the question back into the open. Without the high ground of Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights, Israel is incredibly narrow—too narrow to permit the swift internal deployment of overwhelming combat power against any compelling external threat. This is not a recent insight or an Israeli talking point. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff reached exactly this conclusion in their own analysis in the late 1960s, when modern Israel was barely two decades old. Their judgment has only been reinforced by the technological developments of the intervening half-century. The terrestrial range of the weapons commonly employed today is far greater than it was 20 years ago, let alone 60. Once-adequate strategic depth is no longer adequate.

The Litani Lesson

Consider the area south of the Litani River since the IDF’s unilateral withdrawal in 2000. The river’s furthest point from the Israeli border is less than 30 kilometers. That is not a vast theater. It is a thin strip of land. Yet in the 23 years between withdrawal and the October 7 war, that strip became saturated with Hizbullah missiles, artillery, mortars, anti-tank guided missiles, rockets, and drones. The terrain, combined with modern technology, enabled deeper, more accurate strikes into Israel proper than had been possible previously. Every weapon was emplaced for one purpose: to kill Israeli civilians.

Three conclusions follow, and they are not difficult. First, it is unacceptable that non-combatants should be targeted by these weapons. Second, it is unacceptable that the Lebanese government has been unable to disarm Hizbullah. Third, it is a fantasy to think Hizbullah will disarm itself. Given these realities, re-securing this area as a buffer is therefore imperative—not optional, not negotiable, and not subject to revision by a foreign chancellery whose own borders are not exposed to a single Hizbullah rocket. Similarly, the same logic applies on the Syrian side of the Golan, where the lessons of 2000 in Lebanon and 2005 in Gaza were paid for in Israeli lives and should not have to be paid again.

Why Washington Misses This

American opposition to Israel’s IDF presence in Lebanon and Syria is, at root, ideological, not experiential. Most U.S. politicians lack military experience and do not understand battlefield realities. They are politicians, not colonels. They first weigh every issue in terms of political coin, whether it will gain or cost a vote, and they are uniquely vulnerable to their preferred sources of information on warfighting, because they lack the relevant experience to critically assess what they are told. Lacking relevant experience, they’re vulnerable to their preferred sources, shaped by decades of orchestrated false narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian arena, Iran, and the broader Middle East. The result is that passions masquerade as reason—and they do not or cannot acknowledge it. Advocates of defensible borders face less an analytical challenge than an engagement challenge: figuring out how to reach politicians on the terrain of American interests, where their passions already lie.

Appeal to Self-Interest, Not Mercy

With this in mind, the most effective way to convey to U.S. lawmakers the necessity of military buffer zones and demilitarization on Israel’s exterior borders is not to appeal to American mercy. Instead, it appeals to American self-interest. President Trump’s “America First” framing may be labeled arrogant by his political rivals, but it is eminently rational. The essence of rational behavior is acting in one’s own interest. As unseemly as that may sound in polite company, it is how the world goes round, and it is how alliances are sustained when the rhetoric of shared values runs thin.

A related factor complicates the conversation: isolationist sentiment now occupies much of the Republican coalition and, in the Beltway, inhibits discussion of allies’ security needs. Even isolationists rarely admit they’d want as many strong friends as possible in a fight—not senior citizens, but buddies with the power and will to knock someone out. That is Israel. As General George Marshall said: You don’t want to fight unless you must, but if you do, you don’t want to fight alone or for long.

From an American viewpoint, Israel is on the front lines against global Islamist terror, providing a buffer. Israel’s need to counter threats daily has fostered valuable experience, technology, and intelligence networks. Their lessons benefit U.S. security as well.

The Same Enemy in Our Own Backyard

A similar dynamic plays out in the United States’ own backyard, making the case for defensible borders relevant beyond Israel. The United States faces the same enemy, albeit from a greater distance, conducting distributed operations on non-contiguous terrain in our own hemisphere. Venezuela is the clearest illustration. Until the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro, Iran’s presence there was pervasive and deliberate. Since at least 2010, Tehran has maintained a growing complement of Quds Force and Hizbullah assets on Venezuelan soil. In 2022, Tehran and Caracas began coordinating with Moscow and Beijing to establish an Iranian naval base on the Venezuelan coast. In 2023, the commander of the Iranian Navy publicly announced the regime’s intention to deploy and maintain assets at the Panama Canal. For several years, Iran supplied Venezuela with drone components and assembly lines, eventually opening a dedicated factory producing three variants of the Shahed loitering attack drone—the same family of drones supplied to Venezuelan forces and to other Latin American militant groups. Shortly before Maduro fell, the two regimes had agreed to deepen nuclear cooperation.

The threat in the Western Hemisphere is not isolated. The tri-border area where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet has become a narco-terror hub, and it should surprise no one that Quds Force and Hizbullah operatives are on the ground there to exploit those networks in service of Iranian interests. The same Quds personnel missioned to train, equip, and cadre terror forces in the Middle East are the same personnel missioned to do the same in Latin America, and, almost certainly, inside the United States itself. The enemy employs hybrid capabilities by design, operating in the gray zone between war and peace, between combat and crime. That ambiguity confuses lawmakers and warfighters alike and inhibits effective response. Because Tehran calculates each hybrid action to remain just below the threshold that might trigger a decisive American reply, the temptation in Washington is to deny that this is a new character of war at all.

President Trump is finally doing something about this. Re-invigorating the Monroe Doctrine and toppling Maduro were the first steps. Cuba is likely next. The second- and third-order effects for global adversaries, Iran above all, who have been quietly setting up shop near our southern border while American eyes were closed, will be considerable. Stay tuned.

Tehran Is the Center of Gravity

What happens in Tehran does not stay in Tehran. Modern, global Islamist terrorism was born there in 1979. Islamist terrorism existed before the Islamic Revolution, but the example set by Khomeini’s seizure of power, combined with the regime’s explicit doctrine of exporting jihad, inspired and underwrote campaigns of terror worldwide. Tehran is now the global patron and center of gravity for these movements. Their dependency on that patron is also their vulnerability.

Eliminating the center of gravity makes its operations—including those in Latin America—untenable. Israel’s proximity, will, and capability make it indispensable for any effort to destroy that center. Whenever Americans choose to target Iran’s regime, Israeli participation will be essential. The reverse is also true: a secure Israel within defensible borders is the platform from which this work continues.

The Floor of a Serious Strategy

Defensible borders, buffer zones, and demilitarization on Israel’s northern and southern frontiers are not maximalist demands. They are the minimum required for a small state to survive in a hostile neighborhood, and the precondition for any lasting peace. The military center of gravity in any democracy is almost always the support of its domestic population. If Americans want a willing and capable ally in Israel—and it is increasingly clear that many of our European allies are no longer willing or capable—if we want a partner who can go shoulder-to-shoulder with us and deliver a punch, we need to understand that sufficient strategic depth is necessary to secure the Israeli population. That is not charity. It is American interest, plainly stated.

Brig.-Gen. Ernest “Ernie” Audino, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Military Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Del crimen inicial al poder criminal)

Let us not get too distracted by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his jewels. Because it is true that his own abusive and criminal vocation became clear very soon after he arrived at La Moncloa riding on the dead and wounded of the Atocha attack in 2004. Just as it is true that it was he who laid all the political, amoral and criminal foundations — with his pacts with murderers and his deployment of perverse laws for revenge and civil-war agitation in Spain — so that, after those revealing years of total betrayal of the Spanish people by Mariano Rajoy and his gang of Montoro and assorted “kitchen” operatives, Pedro Sánchez could find the Spanish situation ripe for the taking: to seize every institution and literally put an end to any possibility of the State functioning with the slightest probity.

There is an abysmal lack of honesty in all those real or feigned expressions of surprise voiced these days at the latest revelations concerning José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Whether over those jewels used for money laundering and the efficient transport of great value. Whether over the accusations by former Venezuelan political prisoners about the blackmail this wretched little man exerted to win favors from the narco-murderer Nicolás Maduro. Whether over the dealings — more than murky, downright sinister — that will be revealed one after another.

That he has dragged his daughters into a scheme that entangles them for life in ties with some of the most abject figures of organized crime is almost logical. His participation — as enthusiastic as it is self-interested — in the plans of the drug-trafficking criminal gang of Delcy Rodríguez and company only reveals the abyss of vileness hidden behind that smiling little simpleton’s face and unhurried voice.

You will forgive me the petulance of recalling two books I wrote about the regime Zapatero was inaugurating, published by Imelda Navajo at La Esfera de los Libros, titled Libelo contra la secta (“Libel Against the Sect”) and Días de Ira (“Days of Wrath”). Of course, since both were published once I had already escaped the social-democratic paradise of El País and its realm of Babelia, both books were gaslighted in the media and — although treated with affection by some members of that tribe of analysts and columnists of the day — they did not, of course, provoke the debate I intended. A debate concentrated on denouncing the imminent danger of the destruction of every last remnant and glimmer of the rule of law and democracy in Spain, arising from Zapatero’s aims and methods. Today, some two decades later, these have finally crystallized into the aims, methods and attitudes not of a more or less corrupt group of people, but of an international criminal organization to whose interests every decision of government in Spain is subordinated.

Everyone is now rightly laughing at Luís Arroyo — that self-serving, demagogic, tacky and fraudulent figure of Zapaterism and Sanchism who now runs the Ateneo — over the appraisal he made of the jewels Zapatero kept in his office. He deserves it. But those jewels are mere chicken feed next to the sums being weighed by the DEA, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and, I suppose, the UCO, in the dealings in which Zapatero’s direct or indirect starring role is under investigation. For everyone also knows that if those jewels serve to move, say, a million and a half euros from one place to another, the profits from the other smuggling operations under investigation run into the billions — and of course many of them are impossible to carry out without the collaboration of the Venezuelan government, of Sánchez’s Spanish government and of the PSOE.

If to all this you add that we now know the Attorney General’s Office in Spain not only persecutes members of the opposition but mounts operations against the judiciary itself, we are left with precisely the picture that those who read my books called catastrophist or apocalyptic. I congratulate myself that so much has come to pass and that so many Spaniards today — unlike when those books were published — are now conscious that we are governed not by the corrupt but by organized crime.

The only factor that makes today’s situation objectively better than that one is the existence of Vox, the origin of the lucidity in the face of the gravity of the crime of which Spain is the victim. “Under Zapatero we were terribly badly off, with every lane set for catastrophe, and we did not know it. Today things have worsened to an extreme degree, but we are better off because many of us Spaniards are conscious of what is happening to us.” We have been kidnapped. They are robbing us as if there were no tomorrow. And they are preparing an immense electoral fraud to try to make their power, their impunity and their unbridled criminal activity last forever.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.