Military Archive

At their second informal summit in as many years, China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, arguably the two most powerful leaders in Asia, eschewed confrontation for the sake of plodding along. While they hobnobbed in the seaside town of Mamallapuram in southern India earlier this month, they did little to resolve underlying border tensions and other contentious issues. Instead, Modi and Xi agreed on a few maxims—to be “factors for stability in the current international landscape” and to prevent “differences on any issue to become disputes.” While there was an emphasis on optics over substance, it is still encouraging […]

The People’s Republic of China marked the 70th anniversary of its founding Oct. 1 with an extravagant celebration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The military parade that headlined the event served as a reminder to domestic and foreign audiences of the ruling Communist Party’s durable grasp on power, while also providing yet another opportunity for China to flaunt the rapid and remarkable growth of its military capabilities. Chinese military parades are intended to demonstrate China’s military prowess and technological advances under the Communist Party. While this message is intended primarily for domestic consumption, over the past decade China has increasingly used […]

Three years ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin barely registered a blip on Google trends in English or Russian. Today, the Kremlin-connected businessman better known as “Putin’s chef” is persona non grata in many places around the world, including the United States, where the Treasury Department leveled another round of sanctions against Prigozhin this week for his role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Although Prigozhin’s close ties to President Vladimir Putin have long been known to Russian observers, stretching back to their younger days in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, the Kremlin insider was virtually unknown in the United […]