The Global Eye is in partnership with SIOI – Società Italiana per l’Organizzazione Internazionale
China – US – Space Race
*(Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan – ASPI The Strategist) China has abruptly postponed its planned Chang’e-7 lunar launch, which was scheduled to take place today. While the new launch timeline is unclear, the mission could still be a significant step in the US-China space race. The launch was initially scheduled for 23 August before being rescheduled for today and eventually postponed indefinitely. Some outlets have reported poor weather as a reason for the delay, but official statements have given limited details, saying that the lunar expedition ‘failed to meet launch criteria’. It’s now less clear whether China will return to the lunar surface before the United States. If it can, it may be able to gain advantages in areas such as resource mapping and the reshaping of norms, supporting Beijing to pursue its ambitions in outer space. While the US still holds considerable advantages gained through its earlier lunar explorations, this mission could provide China with a crucial edge. – Despite delays, China could gain ground in the space race | The Strategist
Defence and Military
(Al Vigier – ASPI The Strategist) Armed forces need greater robustness from the systems they are increasingly using to support combat decision-making. These software systems must keep satisfactorily advising officers on decisions even when communications links go down, as they must be expected to go down. Delegation to lower-level commanders improves combat effectiveness: action continues even when higher officers have lost an ability to direct. Sometimes the higher command, though still in contact, wants lower officers to take control, because they may have better and faster awareness of what is going on. All this delegation works better if helped by decision-support software, which offers expertise that a local commander may lack and which eases his or her cognitive load. It may, for example, recommend which of three possible dispersal sites for an air-defence battery is best, or which casualty evacuation task needs to go first. In another case, the software may give its assessment of which track of an unknown unit – say, an aircraft or ground vehicle – has met the threshold for reporting as hostile. – How to make military decision-support software reliable when comms go down | The Strategist
Germany
(Marc Felix Serrao – Politico) It’s not the kind of photo op German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would likely want to frame for his office wall: him standing next to Ulrich Siegmund, the far-right politician a national magazine recently labeled the country’s “most dangerous man”. And yet, such a picture might soon be hard for Merz to avoid. On Sept. 6, Siegmund is set for a sweeping victory in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. If his far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party secures an outright majority in the state parliament, Siegmund will likely become premier, and his party will have broken through the political “firewall” that has kept it out of all federal and state governments since its founding in 2013. It would be a historic triumph for the AfD and a shock to Germany’s political system. As premier, one of Siegmund’s earliest duties would be to take over the annually rotating chair position of the regular conferences of Germany’s 16 state premiers. The role usually comes with a visit to Berlin and a joint appearance with the chancellor before the press. Calling this uncharted territory would be an understatement. “The AfD is questioning the fundamental decisions made by the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949,” Merz once said. The chancellor is not alone in his concern. All other major parties, and large parts of the German media, see the AfD as a threat to the country’s liberal postwar order. Yet, if the party takes power in a state for the first time, the political establishment will no longer be able to keep it at arm’s length. While normal relations may be out of the question, at least for the foreseeable future, Germany’s federal system requires a minimum of cooperation and mutual support. So how would the German establishment deal with a state governed by the AfD? POLITICO put this question to officials in the federal government and several state governments. The reluctance to answer was striking, especially among Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. Senior party figures and state ministers either refused to comment or would not be quoted by name. The hesitation is understandable. The CDU and the CSU once owned the political space to the right of center. Today, the AfD is eating into it. State ministers from both the Social Democrats and the Greens were more prepared to discuss strategy on the record. The conversations for this article were dominated by a single concern: domestic security, especially the protection of intelligence information, given the AfD’s advocacy for closer ties with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. According to Social Democrat Georg Maier, who serves as the state of Thuringia’s interior minister, Siegmund’s party has “good channels” to Moscow. “If the AfD provides the minister-president in Saxony-Anhalt, the champagne corks will be popping in the Kremlin,” he told POLITICO. Although there is no playbook yet for containing an AfD government, the thinking in Berlin and several state capitals has already moved well beyond the abstract. – Germany’s establishment has a plan to contain the far right. Sort of. – POLITICO
Russia – Ukraine
(Jamie Dettmer, Daria Zakharova – Politico) For most of Russia’s years-long war against Ukraine, Russian civilians have been relatively insulated from Kyiv’s attacks. That is changing. Since July, Kyiv has broadened its long-range drone campaign beyond conventional military targets, intensifying strikes on Russia’s oil and gas industry and hitting the vast warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon. While these are primarily intended to cause economic damage, in the words of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “to bring the war back home – to Russia,” they also mark another important shift. Ukrainian authorities are increasingly seeing Russian civilian casualties as a price they are prepared to pay for taking the war deeper into enemy territory. The numbers help illustrate the change. In 2025, Ukrainian attacks inside Russia killed 253 civilians, according to the United Nations, which says it was not able to independently verify the numbers. This year, in the month of July alone, Russian authorities reported that 79 civilians were killed and 601 injured, a marked increase in the casualty rate. Zelenskyy has said that Wildberries is a legitimate target because it has been “used by the aggressor to ensure the supply of sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment.” Russian soldiers supplement their equipment by purchasing items from Wildberries. Maryana Bezuhla, a Ukrainian lawmaker and one of the most outspoken critics of Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s military leadership, is unapologetic about the increased risk to civilians. “Russia’s logistics system is used to wage the war of aggression against Ukraine,” she told POLITICO. “Russia has been targeting Ukrainian civilians all the years of the war”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied accusations from Ukraine that Wildberries handles military supplies but conceded to journalists that “the situation is indeed difficult” for the company. – Ukraine widens its targets — and its tolerance for civilian casualties – POLITICO
(RFE/RL) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s push to bolster international support and receive additional air defenses continues on August 24 as the so-called Coalition of the Willing meets to discuss ways to pressure Russia to halt its invasion months ahead of another likely brutal winter. The summit — with some leaders attending in person in Kyiv and others joining by video conference — comes a day after a grouping of Baltic and Nordic nations gathered in the Ukrainian capital in a show of support for Ukraine. The Coalition of the Willing, led by London and Paris, is an informal grouping of some 34 countries supporting Ukraine. No US representative was identified as a participant in the upcoming meeting. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s office said the new UK leader will arrive in Kyiv on August 24, his first international visit since taking office a month ago, “to reiterate the UK’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine”. The statement said Britain had “agreed that defense firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine”. Ahead of the event, Zelenskyy stressed the urgency of securing European funding for Ukraine’s defense — especially against Russia’s deadly ballistic missiles — calling on the European Parliament to approve the legislation needed to unlock the money. “We are supposed to receive 30 billion euros in European funding…. It is tied to the adoption of the relevant legislation,” he said. “It is very important here that parliament works — the entire parliament, including the opposition. Because [this money is] needed for the defense of the entire country”. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will co-chair the meeting, which will focus on continued military support for Ukraine, air defense, and longer-term security arrangements. Both Macron and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Radmila Sekerinska will join the summit remotely via video link. – Zelenskyy Turns To Coalition Of The Willing In Push To Bolster Ukraine’s Defenses
US – China
(CNN) La Cina è il maggiore consumatore mondiale di albumina umana, la proteina più abbondante nel plasma, ampiamente utilizzata nella cura di traumi gravi come le ustioni e per ripristinare i livelli di proteine nel sangue in caso di patologie croniche, come le malattie epatiche. Tuttavia, da tempo soffre di una carenza interna, dovuta principalmente alle rigide normative sulla raccolta del plasma – retaggio dello scandalo delle infezioni da HIV degli anni ’90 – e rimane fortemente dipendente dal plasma del suo principale rivale geopolitico, gli Stati Uniti, per gran parte del suo approvvigionamento di albumina umana. Gli Stati Uniti forniscono circa il 70% del plasma mondiale e sono uno dei pochi paesi che retribuiscono i donatori. – US supplies most of the world’s plasma. No country depends on it more than China | CNN
US – North Korea
*(Seong-Hyon Lee – Lowy The Interpreter) Donald Trump’s recent public acknowledgment that North Korea possesses “57 very powerful nuclear weapons(Opens in new window)” was framed by the president himself as evidence of his pragmatic ability to manage the threat. Yet, coupled with his expressed expectation to meet Kim Jong-un again this year(Opens in new window), Trump’s rhetoric has exposed a fundamental contradiction in US policy. Even though the White House’s November 2025 Joint Fact Sheet on President Trump’s meeting with President Lee Jae Myung(Opens in new window) explicitly stated that the two leaders reiterated their commitment to “the complete denuclearisation of the DPRK,” the optics of the US commander-in-chief are now unmistakable: he is treating a substantial nuclear arsenal as an accepted baseline fact. This American transactionalism traps Seoul in a dilemma, evidenced this week when South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back(Opens in new window) had to officially maintain the policy of non-recognition of North Korea’s nuclear status, while carefully navigating questions about Trump’s specific “57 nukes” assessment. More importantly, this American transactionalism is inadvertently feeding directly into China’s preferred endgame for the Korean Peninsula. For years, Washington and Beijing at least nominally shared the goal of a denuclearised North Korea. But recent diplomatic signalling suggests that this shared foundational principle is being abandoned. While Washington blurs the lines through personalised summiteering, Beijing is engaging in a quiet, linguistic retreat from nuclear disarmament. – Trump’s “57 nukes” and the hollowing out of North Korean denuclearisation | Lowy Institute
