Trump Tests the Limits of Farcepolitik

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyОбозреватель —

Winter Storm Uri ripped through Texas in January 2021. The frigid temperatures froze pipes, which then burst and caused flooding in aging barracks at Fort Hood, many of which were overdue for renovations and had vulnerable mechanical and utility systems. The burst pipes, damaged sprinkler systems, and frozen heating, ventilation, and air conditioning coils affected over 30 barracks, forcing soldiers to relocate and causing nearly $50 million in damage.According to the Department of Defense’s reporting, the United States owns and operates more than 700,000 facilities across nearly 5,000 sites at home and abroad. Much of this infrastructure is aging. Nearly

In 2024, Judd Devermont wrote, “Human Geography Is Mission-Critical,” where he argued that the United States should focus on behaviors and attitudes informed by human geography to craft better strategy. Two years later, we asked Judd to revisit his arguments. Image: Samuel Lamptey via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2024 article, you argued that the United States needed to focus its attention on behaviors and attitudes informed by human geography to craft strategy that adequately navigates a more complex world and threat environment. Two years later, has the United States utilized human geography more as an indicator for foreign policy decisions? Can you give some examples

On this Memorial Day, American servicemembers remain deployed across the world. Many are in harm’s way. This simple fact makes the day less abstract, more real. Memorial Day is not only about wars filed away in history, but also about lives lost in service to the nation and the obligations those losses place on the living.For those who served in combat, the day is intensely personal. It is a day of names, missions, and memories that never fade away entirely. Three of the fallen return to me every year: Cpl. Andrew J. Kemple, 2nd Lt. Tracy Lynn Alger, and Sgt.

Adversaries do not need to breach the Pentagon’s systems: They only need to harvest the logic of the publicly released frontier AI models that underpin them. This is a defining risk as the Department of Defense pivots to an “AI-first” warfighting machine. In this new context, military predominance is a derivative of AI model supremacy. From Project Maven’s intelligence fusion to the high-velocity sensor-to-shooter loops of Anduril’s Lattice, the Defense Department’s most advanced systems are tethered to the frontier models forged by tech heavyweights like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. As long as these firms hold the high ground in the