CHINA:
Pentagon Report: China Now Has World’s Largest Navy
By John Grady, USNI News: “China is bent on creating a world-class military that can conduct joint operations across the globe and already boasts the world’s largest navy, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual assessment of the Chinese military."

Deciphering China’s ‘World-class’ Naval Ambitions
By Ryan D. Martinson, Proceedings: "The PLAN’s newest aspiration is to transform itself into a “world-class navy.” The idea of becoming “world class” was not a PLAN invention. Sometime in 2016, China’s head of state Xi Jinping told the PLA to transform itself into a world-class military. This injunction later appeared in Xi’s report at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, making it the official policy of the Chinese party-state."

Why the Pentagon’s GMD System Needs to Be Upgraded and Expanded
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "In the midst of a global pandemic and hard-fought election season, it is easy to lose sight of the biggest danger to our democracy. The biggest by far is the threat posed by nuclear weapons."

China Rapidly Increasing Nuclear, Naval, and Next-Gen Tech, Pentagon Warns
By Patrick Tucker
The PLA is preparing for modern, networked warfare with more artificial intelligence, warships, and even a space station.

Soldier-Scholar (Pick One): Anti-Intellectualism in the American Military
By James Joyner, War on the Rocks: "Crossing the Great Plains on an expedition to Utah in the 1850s, Maj. Charles A. May searched the wagons in an effort to reduce unnecessary baggage. When he reached the wagons of the light artillery battery, Capt. Henry J. Hunt proudly pointed out the box containing the battery library. “Books,” May exclaimed. “You say books? Whoever heard of books being hauled over the Plains?"

Guam Needs Aegis Ashore
By Shane Praiswater, Defense News: “Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, a former general is head of state, and charges against Hosni Mubarak have been dismissed—it's like 2011 all over again.” ​

How Do You Actually Measure Military Capability?
By Collin Meisel, Jonathan D. Moyer & Sarah Gutberlet, Modern War Institute: ““The ultimate yardstick of national power is military capability.” So declared RAND analysts in a monograph on measuring national power twenty years ago. Yet, no go-to measure of military assets currently exists beyond one-off net assessments of fighting forces, simple comparisons of military spending, or point estimates of firepower that conflate capabilities with combat power."

Civil-Military Lessons from Latin America by David Pion-Berlin and Andrew Ivey   

Report to Congress on Russian Military Doctrine and Strategy
From USNI News: “These documents offer insight into how Russian leaders perceive threats and how Russian military and security policymakers envision the future of conflict."

U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik
By Caleb Slayton, Strategy Bridge: "When Africa might have given the U.S. a clean bill in terms of colonialism, Cohen contends that had early America not been engaged in expanding westward under the Louisiana Purchase or engaged in colonial-type activities in the Philippines, America’s history in Africa could have looked differently."

https://www.amazon.com/Asias-New-Geopolitics-Reshaping-Indo-Pacific/dp/0817923241

​"Iranian Power Is Not Inevitable, " 1of2: or The Lessons of Mackinder. Ian Morris, Stratfor.com

"...In the last 10,000 years, the world's most developed societies have almost always been in the band of latitudes that Mackinder called Eurasia's "inner rim," running from the Mediterranean to China. Farming was invented in this area, with the Middle East leading the way around 9500 B.C. and the rest of the inner rim following its example over the next several thousand years. Along with farming came cities and governments, which most parts of the inner rim had developed by 500 B.C. Two hundred and fifty years later, the world's first multiethnic empires comprising tens of millions of subjects controlled most of the inner rim.

Because ancient empires could not project their power very far, at any one time the inner rim tended to have four or five regional hegemons, jostling with each other but rarely extending their power into what Mackinder called Eurasia's "outer rim," facing toward the oceans, or its "heartland," far from the seas. However, because Eurasia's inner rim held 75 percent of the world's population and 90 percent of its wealth, its imperial rivalries became the most significant issues in global geopolitics.

The planet's balance of power began to change around 1000 B.C., when pastoral nomads on the steppes — the arid, treeless grasslands running from Manchuria to Hungary — first bred horses able to carry riders for long distances. These horsemen in the Eurasian heartland, far more mobile than the armies of the inner rim empires, were able to plunder almost at will and then gallop away before the imperial infantry could respond.

For the next 2,500 years, Eurasian history was dominated by a struggle between predators from the heartland — Scythians, Huns, Turks and Mongols, to name just a few — and the empires of the inner rim. China and Iran, which had relatively open frontiers along the steppes, were the regions most exposed to devastation, and their ruling dynasties were regularly overthrown by invaders. India and Europe, shielded by mountains and forests, generally suffered less.

The contest between the inner rim and the heartland was eventually overtaken by a new strategic struggle, which pitted the inner rim against the outer, after A.D. 1500. Mackinder labeled this new situation, which still prevailed in his own day, "the Columbian epoch." The great shift was driven by two inventions, both of them pioneered in China but quickly adopted and adapted all along the inner rim. When the new inventions reached Europe, they merged to form a world-conquering package.

The first invention was the gun, which military men gradually improved upon until muskets could be fired fast enough to counter nomadic archers on horseback. In 1500, steppe cavalry could still normally defeat volleying infantry; in 1600, they could sometimes win the same victories. But by 1700, they hardly ever could. After that, riders from the heartland no longer seriously threatened the inner rim.

The second invention was the oceangoing ship, which could fairly reliably sail for thousands of miles. These ships transformed the balance between the inner and outer rims just as decisively as the gun had altered the dynamic between the inner rim and the heartland. Armed with the new ships and guns, outer rim states could now project power farther and strike harder than any civilization before. The Columbian epoch had arrived.

Thanks to their long coastlines, India and the western parts of the Ottoman Empire were the most exposed to outer rim sailors and their guns, while distance and difficulty of access made China and Iran less vulnerable. By 1600, Western Europeans had overrun much of the Americas, built dozens of fortresses around the shores..."

 For more information on Halford Mackinder visit: 
​www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mackinderProgramme/pdf/mackinde...