Strategy&Future

Almost exactly sixty years ago, in October 1962, the Cuban crisis took place. Speaking on Thursday 6th October, at a meeting with donors supporting the Democratic party’s campaign for the Congressional by-elections, President Biden stated that “For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue down the path they’d been going.” It is worth noting that Biden was referring not to situations where a nuclear weapon could be used in the course of an unintentional escalation (i.e., for example, during the Able Archer ’83 exercise), but as a result of structural factors.

After the debacle in Kharkiv, the Russian Army forced the Russian leadership to search for the proper answer to the new military challenges. It seems the panacea has been found in mobilisation. Officially it has been called partial mobilisation, but all the evidence points us to believe that it is overwhelming and large in scale. Russia is accumulating more manpower than was officially announced. It looks like Moscow is preparing a considerable force to create full domination on the frontline.

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Nicholas Myers on the Russian military mobilisation.

The Russian political and military leadership is facing a dilemma in Ukraine. On the one hand they are feeling that the Russian Army is exhausting its power, hence the need for a peace agreement or at least an armistice.

When Putin stated in July that Moscow had barely started its campaign in Ukraine, daring the west to try to defeat it on the battlefield, it was considered a sign of Russia’s readiness to continue its military campaign in Ukraine and its grand strategy concentrated on the bigger geopolitical game than Eastern Europe.

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Assaf Heller and Omer Dank from Israel on the future of the modern airwarfare.

Jacek Bartosiak and Brandon Weichert talk about the coming world war and its opening salvos in space.

Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan begins a new era of confrontation between the US and China, and with it, marks the beginning of an already open conflict over Eurasia, this unique place where world history takes place and world wars are fought. It begins an era of war slightly different than the previous world wars, because it is scalable. Each of the subsequent system wars was obviously different from the previous one, so there is no surprise here. This time, in a scalable clash, each side will try to force its interests through various domains of contemporary dependencies in a densely globalised world that will be violently split open before our eyes.

The war in Ukraine is escalating from one stage of the escalation ladder into another, but much higher than the previous, and no end to the war is feasible on the horizon. Ukraine is a negligible front in the grand game of grand players, but the aftermaths of the Russo-Ukrainian War will have paramount importance to world history.

The war in Ukraine unleashed by Russia represents the most serious challenge that has been faced by the United States since the end of the Cold War, a clear challenge to both the international order and the rules of the road established by Washington during the unipolar moment. In fact, the most important postulate that was part of the list of demands made by Russia against the collective West in December 2021 was the recognition of Russia’s right to have its own sphere of influence – and thus accepting its imperial status.

Space is the mother of war in the 21st century. Without space technologies, war would immediately be brought back to the first half of the 20th century. Armies would be myopic compared with contemporary armies. Modern logistics, communications and cybersecurity fully depend on the space domain.

Now, with the war in Ukraine raging, and an open challenge to the international order being laid down by Russia in a way not witnessed in Europe since the end of the second world war we believe it is critically important to have the perspective of the Intermarium states heard louder than ever before. With that in mind we decided to launch the Intermarium Strategic Survey – a cyclical and in-depth review of key trends and developments affecting the structural balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black sea. Intermarium Strategic Survey will take form of a bundle of texts published on Strategy&Future website, both most recent and archival, delivered on a monthly basis via email.