Analysis

Introduction  Zimbabwe created a US dollar-denominated exchange in Victoria Falls, the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX), to offer issuers and investors a rules-based “hard currency land” for capital raising and secondary trading, in an environment where domestic currency instability...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. On April 10, after coalition forces had fired at least 1,700 Patriots in just five weeks, the Pentagon announced...

As many in Central and Eastern Europe were emerging from the buoyant aftermath of Hungary’s mid-April 2026 elections, less than 500 miles southeast of Budapest another consequential national plebiscite transpired. On April 19, a mere week after the watershed...

More than 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake uranium sit at Airbase 101 adjacent to Niamey’s international airport, loaded onto trucks that have not moved in weeks, a convoy that has become a defining image of a world order in...

Vladimir Putin, 73, has been Russia’s leader for over a quarter of a century and the driving force behind Moscow’s efforts to reassert control over its former Soviet and Tsarist empire. His eventual departure from the world stage will...

As the dust settles and the euphoria ebbs on the historic mid-April 2026 elections in Hungary, the consequences of Tisza’s resounding victory over Victor Orban’s Fidesz party will start to manifest to the north of Budapest, specifically in Poland,...

Japan’s hands have been tied militarily since it embraced a pacifist constitution in 1947, and the national debate to reassess its defense capabilities is intensifying amid the sweeping shifts in the global security landscape. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took...

Some argue that the goals of the attacks on Iran are ambitious: to eliminate the Iranian threat, delegate Middle Eastern security to regional partners, and redirect strategic bandwidth to the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the demonstration of sheer...

This piece is part of Behind the Front, an FPRI project on the future of US and allied national defense. In late 2020, drones burst onto the national security scene in a new way. During the Nagorno-Karabakh war between...

The following analysis was originally published on Two Marines, a newsletter on Russia’s war in Ukraine, defense technology, and modern warfare, on April 3, 2026.  During 2025, the Russian military continued to experiment with improving its employment of uncrewed...