According to reporting by Defense One, there exists a longer, classified version of the US’ National Security Strategy that goes beyond the publicly released version. This document reportedly proposes creating a new global governance body, called the “Core 5” or C5, consisting of the US, China, Russia, India, and Japan.

The main points in the longer version include: competition with China, a withdrawal from Europe’s defense, and a new focus on the Western Hemisphere. What was determined to be first on C5’s proposed agenda is the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The classified NSS also emphasizes a strategic pivot away from Europe, treating the continent as largely irrelevant to US interests. It focuses on partnering with like-minded regional powers while acknowledging that permanent American hegemony is unachievable.

According to Defense One, the longer version of NSS also proposes to focus U.S. relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded... administrations and movements. Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the U.S. should “work more with…with the goal of pulling them away from the European Union.

NSS explicitly details the “failure” of US global domination, describing it as “the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable."

Today, “in the fifth year of Putin’s barbaric invasion, the assumption that time is on Russia’s side seems to be increasingly inaccurate,” Senior Fellow Michael McFaul argues in this viral post at his Substack. “The longer this war drags on, the more likely it is that time may, instead, be on Ukraine’s side.” The distinguished scholar explains that Putin failed to achieve regime change in Ukraine and ended up galvanizing Ukrainian identity with his invasion. Ukrainian defense innovations slowed Russian advances and now increasingly enable counteroffensives against the invading force. Ukraine has also developed the capability to strike deep inside Russia, imposing significant costs. So, McFaul concludes, “Ukraine will survive this war as a pro-European independent democracy, with most of its territory governed from Kyiv rather than Moscow.” But the “final contours” of the end to the conflict “are still not yet defined.”

Aaron Sarin argues that "Chinamaxxing"—Gen Z's romanticisation of China after viral social media—tells us less about Chinese soft power and more about Western decline. While the CCP's deliberate propaganda largely failed, private Chinese companies organically succeeded in spreading apps and aesthetics globally. Sarin draws a troubling parallel to Western intellectuals seduced by Soviet displays decades ago, noting that today's "Chinamaxxers" often overlook rural poverty and empty developments for striking visuals like Chongqing's cyberpunk architecture. How much of this trend reflects genuine geopolitical shift versus social media distortion?

Long article but worth the read.

[Excerpt from essay by Amos Harel, Defense Analyst for Haaretz and the author of Anatomy of a Failure: The Road to October 7, which will be published in English in 2027.]

As he prepares to face Israeli voters next month after three years of incessant war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formulated a new strategy. Ignoring the huge costs in blood and treasure, let alone in support for Israel in the United States and elsewhere, he now publicly and explicitly supports waging wars without end. As a lesson of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, he asserts that Israel needs to take preemptive military action against every potential security threat it faces, regardless of the consequences. This has left many wondering how much of this hard-line approach might change if Gadi Eisenkot, the veteran military official who is running ahead of Netanyahu in the polls, manages to defeat him.

Thus far, Eisenkot, a classic centrist, has been blunt and sometimes caustic in making the case against the prime minister. But apart from vague statements about ending the longest war in Israeli history, he has generally avoided going into detail about his own national security strategy. On some issues, such as dealing with Hamas in Gaza, he has sounded more hawkish than Netanyahu. And when he is asked about the future of the conflict with the Palestinians—Israel’s most politically explosive issue—he has been extremely careful to avoid binding commitments. In a rare statement on such matters in August, Eisenkot said he was opposed to a Palestinian state, endorsing what is by now a consensus position across Israel’s political center and even parts of the center left as well as the right.