The United States leverages its “centrality” within global financial networks, particularly through the dominance of the US dollar and its influence over institutions such as SWIFT, to exert coercive economic pressure on other states. US sanctions policy has increasingly shifted from traditional trade embargoes toward targeted and secondary sanctions, extending pressure to non-sanctioned states and entities maintaining commercial or financial relations with sanctioned countri

Recently, on September 30, 2026, Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War, during a speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico, announced the establishment of the Autonomous Warfare Command, or “AutoWarCom”. Illustration by The Geostrata In a way, the announcement marked an institutional pivot in modern military affairs. By establishing a dedicated four-star command equipped with “service-like authorities", the U.S. Department of War is restructuring its forces to overcome modern military

The islands known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan have regained importance after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to the disputed territory. Russia has also conducted large-scale military exercises around the islands, which have provoked protests from Japan. Illustration by The Geostrata The renewed tensions over the islands come at a time when Russia’s military posture in the region is drawing greater attention from Japan

On 7 August, 2026, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed a joint defence agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Titled the Mecca Joint Deterrence Agreement, the pact aims to “strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all”, functioning in a similar manner to the collective defense principle enshrined in NATO's Article 5. Illustration by The Geostrat

The problem facing global governance today is not simply that its institutions are outdated as much as it is that the world has changed faster than our ability to respond to it. New centres of economic and political power have emerged, developing countries are demanding greater representation, and the interests of major powers have become harder to reconcile. Yet the institutions through which these competing interests are meant to be negotiated remain tied to an earlier dist

For decades, the world has run on the dollar. Oil is priced in dollars, most trade invoices are written in dollars only, and when a central bank anywhere from Lagos to Jakarta wants to build a reserve safety net, it still reaches for US Treasury Bonds First. This is not an accident, and it never should be. It is the result of America’s size, for its deep and liquid bond markets and the kind of institutional trust that took decades. Illustration by The Geostrata But lately a q

Uranium is a heavy metal, mined from the ground like any other essential commodity, such as coal or iron ore. It is not of much importance when it is first mined, but becomes important when it has gone through a process inside a nuclear reactor wherein its atoms split apart in a process called fission, and that reaction releases an enormous amount of heat. Illustration by The Geostrata Heat boils water into steam, then the steam spins a turbine, which then generates electrici

Indian foreign policy is reaching a stage where its relations with the US are too significant to give up but too unclear to stake everything on. New Delhi is strengthening its ties with Russia and China through its involvement in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, while bolstering its partnership with the United States in defence, technology, trade, and the Indo-Pacific region. Illustration by The Geostrata This growing strategic engagement with multiple power c

In modern air warfare, a stealth fighter operating without a top-tier engine is a little more than an expensive glider. For India’s Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), the engine is the strategic core of the entire program. This billion-dollar project represents India’s effort to enter the circle of nations operating native fifth-generation stealth platforms. While General Electric (GE) Aerospace has been selected to power the initial AMCA Mk1 prototypes, a high-stakes co

“The external boundaries of India as depicted are neither accurate nor authentic.” - These are the words that for decades Indian customs officials have stamped on every foreign atlas or map that has shown India’s borders differently from the official Indian claim. It is this set of words in a rubber stamp applied to thousands of books that becomes the perfect description of cartographic anxiety in action. Cartographic anxiety is a term attributed to a political scientist at t

On 7 August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Officially, it is described as a defensive pact, an armed attack against one member is considered an attack on the other two. Islamabad has been at equal pains to stress that the accord is not directed against any country in particular. For Pakistan, however, the significance of the pact is more than the language of collective defence. It offers Islamabad a chance to recover some d

After eight decades of domination and cracks starting to appear, we look at whether the reign of the greenback is eternal or merely very long. A CROWN NO ONE THOUGHT WOULD HOLD UP THIS LONG In 1944, delegates from 44 Allied nations met at a mountain hotel in New Hampshire to rewire the global economy, with the United States dollar as the anchor of international finance (pegged to gold at $35 an ounce) and every other currency fixed to it. At that time, it was a practical if n

Recent reporting from Taipei Times regarding the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) operational planning highlights a fundamental paradigm shift away from traditional, high-attrition amphibious landing models towards systemic urban paralysis, grey-zone coercion and multi-domain encirclement. Illustration by The Geostrata Moving beyond the classic Joint Island Landing Campaign, PLA strategists are actively refining an operational framework termed “All-Domain Megacity Inc

India undoubtedly has one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems in the world. However, one must stop and start asking the question of why almost 9 out of 10 startups fail in India. The answer would provide you with a typical checklist of bad unit economics, copied business models, and businesses that scaled and invested capital before finding adequate product-market fit. Illustration by The Geostrata Every single reason is true, but it is not the primary reason. All thes

The Geopolitical architecture of the Persian Gulf is undergoing a profound realignment. For over half a century, the security doctrine of the Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) rested on a foundational, military-centric arrangement: the host states provided territorial basing access and recycled petrodollars into Western financial markets and weapons systems, while the USA provided the deterrent shield against external threats. Illustration by The Geostrata Thi

In 1987, Soviet political scientist Georgy Arbatov told off his American counterparts, saying, “We are going to do a terrible thing to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.” The West laughed off the warning, but it should have known better. If there was ever something that held the entire NATO alliance together, it was the common threat of the totalitarian regime beyond the Iron Curtain. Once that threat lost its plausibility, the fractures that had only been masked b

The multi-front conflict in the Middle East has brought about a significant geopolitical change, one that is going beyond headlines of price surges and shipping disruptions. The tactical confrontation is in the spotlight, but a much more fundamental structural realignment is taking place in the region of Eurasia. This battle has unwittingly catapulted Asia's two superpowers into a high-stakes, asymmetrical game of chess. In New Delhi, the battle is considered mainly a problem

Minamitorishima is Japan's easternmost territory, the only island east of the Japan Trench. It is a coral atoll of roughly 1.5km2, covered in trees, grass, and little else besides a species of gecko and large colonies of seabirds. It is administratively part of Ogasawara, a municipality governed as part of the Tokyo metropolis. From the nearest inhabited Japanese island, it is still over 1200 kilometres away. Under international law, every island generates a 200-nautical-mile

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” In the case of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Türkiye and a number of other Gulf states and even NATO, abrasive US policies threaten to shake these eternal interests and inflict collateral damage. Illustration by The Geostrata Signed in Mecca on 7 August 2026, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement brings Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan

In the last few years, especially after COVID-19, the world order has been fragmented with strategic uncertainty and gradual erosion of persisting traditional security arrangements. The post-Cold War liberal international order, which often relied on stable alliances, multilateralism, and most importantly of all, predictable, responsible leadership by major powers, is being transformed into a more contested landscape. Cover by The Geostrata Amid such global flux, countries an