LSESU WAR STUDIES SOCIETY

The Review: The Balkans Edition II

The Review: Southeast Asia Edition II

The Review: Africa Edition II

The Review: Middle East Edition II

The war in Iran has exposed something energy economists have been noting for years: not all oil importers are equally vulnerable, and the gap between them is widening.

Before the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) was signed in 2014, the Mindanao administrative region in Southern Philippines was the site of a decades-long conflict involving indigenous Moro Muslim armed groups and the largely Christian Philippine central government. 

On the 28th of February, the United States and Israel launched a series of strikes on Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury (USCENTCOM, 2026).

On December 17th 2025, the US announced its largest arms sales to Taiwan in its history.

America First did not emerge in a vacuum. It arose from a country stretched across two decades of war, frustrated by the growing distance between what leaders promised abroad and what citizens felt at home.

Defence procurement is no stranger to utter catastrophe: Britain’s Ajax combat vehicle provides its occupants with a sensory environment more intense than that found next to the sound booth at a Metallica concert.

On 27 December 2025, Thailand and Cambodia signed a second ceasefire agreement to halt fighting at the Thailand-Cambodia border.

Israel is currently the largest recipient of American military aid, having received over $244 billion between 1946 and 2024. 

Sudan has always been a land of multiplicity, a crossroads of Africa and the Arab world, home to hundreds of ethnic communities and more than a hundred languages. For centuries, it has been a meeting place of trade, poetry, and memory. The very name Bilad al-Sudan once referred to a vast region of powerful kingdoms, but it also encoded racial hierarchies that shaped how Africa was imagined by Arab and European worlds.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024 transformed Syria into a vacuum, pitting interests of regional powers against one another. Nearly a year later, Türkiye, Israel, Iran, and the Ahmed al-Sharaa government continue to champion competing visions for Syria’s future.

That modern warfare will unfold on a cyber front, as well as on the physical battlefield, has long been expected. Yet, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, awareness of the weaponisation of information has grown sharply.

Sudan's conflict recently dominated the news for satellite images proving large-scale civilian massacres. As the civil war enters its third year, the humanitarian catastrophe is deepening. Over 100,000 people have died, while 12 million have fled their homes (Booty & Chothia, 2025). More than 24 million Sudanese face acute food insecurity.

On the 26th of October, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured El-Fasher, the last major city held by the national army (SAF) in the Darfur region.

This article is a snap insight into Japan’s defence posture since Prime Minister (PM) Sanae Takaichi from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took office on 21 October 2025, and the implications for regional security in East Asia.

On the 9th of October, trade war tensions were reignited, with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announcing the strengthening of its export controls on rare earth elements (REEs).

The last month has seen the continuation and expansion of the Russian deep strike campaign against Ukraine.