Christopher Clary

I’m not sure they are increasing necessarily but they are plausibly holding steady. (Figures are mine from the UAE Ministry of Defense daily data.)

Yale Law class of 2016 questioning Yale Law class of 2009.

In general, I find, it is a good rule of thumb if you find yourself saying dialogue that could be in a movie script for a villain to perhaps reconsider one's rhetorical approach. The Secretary of Defense does not share my rule of thumb it appears.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

Hindu Nationalism, Akhand Bharat, and Foreign Perceptions of India national politics? This essay considers two ideological initiatives closely associated with the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. First, it examines how Indian efforts to cultivate a ...

Pleased my article, "Hindu Nationalism, Akhand Bharat, and Foreign Perceptions of India," is now out in the journal Indian Politics & Policy (without a paywall). www.ippjournal.org/hindu-nation...

. @hbanai.bsky.social on what's next in Iran. "The question that will dominate moving ahead is not the one the administration has been asking... It is this: what comes after the Islamic Republic, and who decides?"

This is practically an endorsement of Iranian proliferation www.axios.com/2026/02/28/t...

“The prevailing grammar of anti-imperial critique has a habit of allowing the indictment of external aggression to crowd out the indictment of internal tyranny, as though the two were in competition rather than in parallel.“

Read President Trump’s statement on Iran in full U.S. President Donald Trump said in an 8-minute video posted on his Truth Social that the U.S. has begun “major combat operations in Iran.”

apnews.com/article/iran...

I think it’s likely that the US military can bring about the downfall of the Islamic Republic. But to do so without any authorization to use military force from the US Congress is clearly a lawless act, contrary to every vision of national defense offered in the constitution.

Trump's stated war aims are... expansive.

This is the best discussion of dealing with SAMs I can recall appearing in the media in quite a while.

a man in a suit and tie is sitting at a table with papers . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is sitting at a table with papers .

After I ask a student if their paper was written by AI.

Vacancy: Project Manager, Policy Fellow - BASIC BASIC is looking for a Project Manager and Policy Fellow to lead on our South Asia work within the Responsibilities and Global Governance Programme.

BASIC's South Asia team is looking for a talented, mid-career candidate with regional expertise and past experience with project management, who would be able to work in the UK, Italy, or Germany. Here is the job post: basicint.org/vacancy-proj...

An ungated copy of the manuscript that subsequently appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies is available here: www.christopherorenclary.com/uploads/3/9/...

Pleased to have an opportunity to speak with Sad Dhume as he researched his most recent column on Indian military acquisitions in the face of a challenging Sino-Indian military balance. www.wsj.com/opinion/indi...

One thing notable as I consider this episode is that I am unaware of any Biden administration official—by name or on background—who has indicated the Trump admin is wrong about this event.

A New U.S. Blockade Is Strangling Cuba

Good example of what the diffusion of commercial satellite imagery and other open source intelligence tools means for our understanding of the world. Clear documentation of a de facto US blockade of Cuba that appears to be working. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/w...

Deadline for paper/panel submission for the 1st ever @isanet.bsky.social conference in South Asia has been extended (March 2)! And we are working on resolving the technical problems with submission asap. More on the conference 👇

Great opportunity to join @ssp-mit.bsky.social and conduct research on China's foreign and security policies!

Interested in reading about alleged Chinese nuclear testing and the ability to detect such testing? This is good and you should read it.

Today's a good day to revisit Stephan and Chenowith (here their 2008 article). www.belfercenter.org/sites/defaul...

The Personalist Global Order When individual whims drive great-power policy.

"The emerging global system is one in which three nuclear-armed leaders, insulated from dissent, pursue risky gambits. The result will not be the relatively stable if tense competition that characterized the Cold War. It will be something more volatile..."
www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

This looks and sounds like a letter read aloud in a Wes Anderson movie by one of his precocious boys or broken men

Forthcoming, co-edited with Sameer Lalwani, at Georgetown University Press. (Thanks to generous support from @stimsoncenter.bsky.social and the Smith Richardson Foundation.)

Happy to announce the 1st ever @isanet.bsky.social conference in South Asia in August 2026. Hosted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, we welcome proposals from scholars based in and/or studying South Asian politics & international relations, but also broader global themes ofc www.isanet.org/Conferences/...

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

It's increasingly difficult to explain many of Trump's foreign policy endeavors without turning to either variables of personal financial gain or Trump's individual status concerns. Goddard and Newell's neo-royalism offers a framework that I found useful.

The most superlative claims go viral on here about the state of LLMs and they are truly about as good as a smart but sloppy RA, but they remain sloppy in various ways that the viral claims don't always acknowledge.

I've been cleaning data all week that involves merging similar but not identical questions across many datasets. A human RA did a lot of work but made a variety of small but consequential errors, which LLMs helped catch. Now the LLMs are making small but consequential errors.