2024 brought a host of developments and changes in the security and defense environment facing the United States, Turkey, and their NATO partners. Some of these dynamics were political and geopolitical in nature, some operational, others military and technical. As the Defense Journal assesses and describes the state of the Alliance in 2025 for its readers, a brief retrospective on the year just passed and its impact provides a part of the necessary context.
Geopolitical shaping events
Momentous geopolitical events since our winter issue have included the advent of Donald Trump’s second term as US president, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and the apparent revelation in Europe that conventional military defense is a sovereign responsibility that cannot be outsourced in perpetuity. These events have had significant implications for the security of NATO, Turkey, and the United States.
Trump’s return has had several immediate effects on the United States (and thus the global) security environment. His approach narrows the US global mission from maintaining a liberal world order to pursuing US national interests, while adopting a tone of strategic ambiguity toward both rivals and allies. He has simultaneously directed reform of the US military to reemphasize combat readiness and lethality while minimizing social or ideological programs. As commander in chief, Trump has directed US soldiers to conduct counterterror strikes in places like Somalia and Yemen even as his negotiators seek to defuse conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere.
The fall of Bashar al-Assad after an eleven-day rebel offensive reshaped the strategic map of the Middle East. Iran lost a valuable strategic position in its multidimensional “resistance” against Israel and Western influence. Russia lost its sunk investment in Assad and a degree of its influence in the Middle East. Turkey has gained greater stability on its southern border, close defense and intelligence ties with the new Syrian authorities, and prospects for expanded regional trade and a leading role in Syrian reconstruction. The challenges of stabilizing Syria, and tensions between Israel and Turkey stemming from their respective threat perceptions, have no immediate or apparent solution, and will require deft diplomacy to manage.
Shifts that might have attracted more attention in other times were easy to miss, but still noteworthy in terms of global security. China and Russia took steps to bolster the military junta in Myanmar that is teetering on the edge of collapse against a rebel coalition. Battles between the Sudanese army (backed by Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) and the antigovernment Rapid Support Forces (supported by Russia and the United Arab Emirates) have shifted decisively in favor of the army, though not yet presaging an end to the civil war. The war in Ukraine grinds on amid serious attempts by Trump to forge a ceasefire. Early 2025 continues to be an era of persistent conflict and great power competition, but one with dramatic developments that will echo throughout this and future years.
Strategic alliance development
International patterns of alliance and armament over the past half-year have reflected the weight of geopolitical changes noted above. Deep and effective US support to Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression has led to a tighter convergence of what has been referred to as the axis of upheaval, with China, Iran, and North Korea sending weapons, supplies, and even soldiers to aid the Russian war effort. A dozen or more other countries have provided diplomatic support to Moscow, but these three have become critical suppliers of weapons and cash for the Kremlin. This is a trend that began before 2024, but has only accelerated in recent months.
The global arms market continues to shift in other significant ways. The United States in 2024 cemented its leading position in arms exports, accounting for 43 percent of global exports. Russian exports have sharply decreased as domestic production has been consumed by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Italy and Turkey have more than doubled their national shares of global exports over the past several years (2 percent to 4.8 percent for Italy and 0.8 percent to 1.7 percent for Turkey). Five Turkish defense firms rank among the one hundred largest in the world—and a sixth, Baykar, would almost certainly be high on the list if all of its sales data were publicly released. Only the United States, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom match or exceed this number. Of particular note has been the continued rise in demand for Turkish armaments from Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
Europe, for its part, has shown signs of finally getting serious about developing its own conventional military deterrent vis-à-vis Russia—or at least talking about doing so. Shocked by Trump’s heavy-handed conditionality on future aid to Ukraine, Brussels and its member states have drawn up plans for massive new defense spending and other deterrent steps—if taxpayers and military-age youth prove willing. Yet the European Union’s initial formulation of deterrence against Russia independent of Washington and without integrating Turkish geography, military capabilities, and strategic resources does not inspire confidence, especially given the long years needed to restore defense industrial capacity even assuming consistent commitment. European firms and national leaders would do well to welcome Turkish contributions to European defense planning and resourcing both in NATO and in EU planning by following through on plans to sell Ankara Eurofighters and encouraging more collaboration like that between Italy’s Leonardo and Turkey’s Baykar.
While the past half year has demonstrated volatility at the geopolitical and political levels, it has brought multipolarity and diffusion of power at the strategic level. This has played out in the evolution of alliances and the flow of arms and trade more broadly. In mid-2024 dualistic constructs (autocracy versus democracy, the US-led Alliance against an axis of evil) retained some utility. The current environment is messier, with issue-specific coalitions and transactional diplomacy creating a kaleidoscope of rivals, partners, and targets that, for now at least, deny predictable patterns and lead some to question the credibility of the international system’s most potent actor.
Operational trends
As geopolitics and alliances continue to evolve, so, too, does war in operational terms. In a world with ongoing “hot wars” in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere, several discernible trends can be identified. These include diminishing returns for artillery as seen in Ukraine, failure to achieve military victory through ground maneuver forces for Russia and Israel, and the fragility of lightly armed proxy forces in various theaters.
Russia since 2022 has compensated for shortcomings in its infantry, armor, and air forces through reliance on superior tube and rocket artillery, exacting a heavy toll on Ukrainian defenders in the process. Yet in late 2024, losses among Russian artillery units rose as Ukrainian drone tactics and counterbattery fire became more effective. While Russia still outproduces NATO in artillery ammunition and continues to fire it at prodigious rates, its advantage is decreasing in relative terms.
Russia has continued to advance at high cost to try and consolidate control over the nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory it occupies, but has failed to end the war via ground maneuver after three years. The difficulty of ending wars through ground maneuver even against inferior opponents can also be seen in Gaza, where operations which have continued for eighteen months are not yet meeting the stated war goals of military and political leaders. Both the Russian and Israeli campaigns reflect the historical difficulty of reconciling the political nature of conflict termination with the operational conduct of wars, and a resultant tendency for destructive wars to yield stalemate when that task remains incomplete.
The recent period produced impressive operational results in other cases, notably Israel’s campaign against Iran’s regional proxy network and the Sudanese army’s efforts to regain control of the national capital region from the insurgent Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. In late 2024 Israel crippled Lebanese Hezbollah and struck Iranian-supported militia targets in Syria and Iraq during an audacious campaign involving air strikes, ground maneuver, and exploding cellphones. Between November 2024 and March 2025 the Sudanese Army routed the RSF from Khartoum and other areas in central Sudan. The RSF had been supported by a number of foreign sponsors, including the United Arab Emirates and several other regional countries, but ultimately failed to achieve local or regional legitimacy—as had the Iranian proxy groups in Lebanon and Syria, and arguably in Iraq and Yemen as well. The past several months have badly undermined the notion popular over the past decade that proxy wars can effectively “enable intervention on the cheap.”
Military technical developments on the horizon
Over the past several months sixth-generation fighter aircraft have moved from concept to reality. China flew two prototypes in December 2024, one produced by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group and the other by AVIC Shenyang Aircraft. US prototypes for a Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft have been under evaluation since 2020, but in March 2025 the Boeing F-47 was officially selected as the program’s platform. A half-dozen other countries have done some sixth-generation work—integrating advanced stealth, artificial intelligence, manned-unmanned teaming, and other advanced technologies—though even for those with the deepest pockets, fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft will be mainstays for the foreseeable future.
Artificial intelligence is a growing element in military planning and readiness. While the United States and many of its allies have endorsed the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, many potential adversaries and rivals have not. Military applications for AI focus at present on information processing, threat identification, and decision-making, areas in which the United States has relative advantage. The Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit is implementing a project, Thunderforge, to deploy such capabilities to headquarters in Asia and Europe. The military services each have designated units to test concepts and systems related to AI in the field. The drive to develop effective defenses against small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has gained urgency with the continued broad proliferation of cheap, easy-to-use, lethal UAS around the world. The December 2024 Department of Defense adoption of a classified strategy to accelerate counter-UAS development signals the rising criticality of the need for cost-effective and combat-effective counters to the cheap and plentiful threat. This is an area ripe for technical development and fielding in the near future.
Adaptive Alliance
The shifting dynamics at all these levels—geopolitical, strategic, operational, and technical—shape the contours of defense and security challenges for the United States and its NATO allies. These are certainly challenging times, yet the Alliance has endured for over seven decades through other chaotic and difficult periods because the basic value proposition of mutual defense among the members remains sound. Secretary General Mark Rutte strikes the right tone with his assessment that “there is no alternative to NATO” for either the United States or its partners, and that despite frictions related to burden sharing, domestic politics, and sometimes divergent national interest, NATO’s summit in The Hague in late June will show the Alliance evolving rather than dissolving.
Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Turkey with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on X @RichOutzen.
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The Atlantic Council in Turkey aims to promote and strengthen transatlantic engagement with the region by providing a high-level forum and pursuing programming to address the most important issues on energy, economics, security, and defense.
Image: U.S. Green Berets from various special forces groups pose for a photo with Turkish Army and Air Force joint terminal attack controllers while two U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighters fly overhead at a training area near Konya, Türkiye, August 24, 2023. U.S. SOF joint terminal attack controllers (JTAC) conducted a bilateral call for air support exchange with Turkish Air Force and Army members near Konya, Türkiye to increase Turkish JTAC capabilities and further interoperability between NATO allies. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st. Class Adrian Borunda)