Today’s world is rife with flashpoints for future conflicts, and America’s baptism by fire into drone warfare, such as we’ve seen in Ukraine, may be close at hand. Tactics and technologies born in the Russo-Ukrainian war have already appeared in Myanmar, Colombia, and Mexico, as well as in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq.

Migration is the most destabilizing force in the world today, vastly exceeding the impact of nuclear weapons, war, poverty, oppressive governments, natural disasters and all the other causes of instability that news outlets focus on. In fact, the main destabilizing impact of the other factors is the migration they cause.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has endured almost 3,000 Iranian missile and drone strikes since February 28, 2026. This volume of kinetic activity exceeds that of any other nation in the theater, including Israel.

The combined U.S. Operation Epic Fury and Israeli Operation Roaring Lion (OEF/ORL) is the largest conventional air and naval operation in a generation, but it is also an irregular warfare (IW) showcase. The current (mid-April 2026) ceasefire provides an opportunity to take stock of what has happened so far in the IW space.

The logic seems compelling to argue that fuel shortages are in China’s future - consider three facts. First, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) imports more oil than any other nation on earth, about 11 million barrels per day (mbpd). Second, a large percentage of the world’s exported oil, more than 14 million barrels per day (mbpd), passes through the...