Guns, Atom and Diplomacy: Insights, Analysis & Perspectives from the World of A&D, Nuclear, Strategy & Geopolitics

By: Rajat Narang

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The 2026 edition of Guns, Atom & Diplomacy provides cutting-edge insights, comprehensive analysis and unmatched global perspectives on all that is latest, trending and burning issues from the world of Aerospace & Defense (A&D), Nuclear and Geopolitics as the traditional world order has already become a disorder marked by utter chaos, anarchy and a return to strategic power competition among states in a fundamentally radical and unprecedented & disruptive manner.

Trump's latest geopolitical pivot, after having waged disruptive trade wars for over a year on the economic front, with distancing from Europe, deposing of Maduro regime in Venezuela by brute force & control of oil fields, threats to Mexico & Colombia and bid to annex Greenland from Denmark via military force have upended and fundamentally disrupted the traditional & fundamental notions of international law & world order curated perniciously over decades after World War II while also heralding the onset of a geopolitical wild west. Middle East is in flux mode with Israel effectively having become the regional hegemon, Iran facing an existential political crisis, rift between UAE & Saudi Arabia over conflicting interests in Yemen and China's deepening inroads in the region.

Key Drivers & Determinants:-

1. Russia’s military resurgence & restructuring of its entire economy around defense posing a serious threat to entire Europe with the development of hypersonic missiles, drones and the, so called, superweapons for delivery of nuclear warheads.
2. EU plans to spend around EUR 4 Trillion on defense through 2035 to counter Russian threat with Germany spearheading it with around 15% of it, translating into a planned EUR 650 Billion outlay for defense, through 2030.
3. China’s military ascendancy, belligerence & bullying of neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region as it tries to match America geopolitically and militarily.
4. Radical evolution of technological landscape powered by AI leading to development of disruptive weapons systems & capabilities fundamentally altering & disrupting the traditional notion of balance of power among nations in conventional weapon systems & capabilities.
5. Global nuclear renaissance with the onset of a 3-way nuclear arms race between the U.S., Russia and China with almost all Cold-War era treaties virtually repudiated and non-existent now, U.S. spending $1.4 trillion on nuclear triad modernization through late 2030s, Russia developing radical nuclear delivery systems and China set to ramp-up its nuclear arsenal from 600 in 2025 to 1,500 by 2035.

The global defense spending, consequently, has already been surging for the past few years consistently which touched a record level of $2.7 trillion in 2024, while growing at 9% year-on-year, and projected to grow further and touch the highest-ever level of $3 trillion for 2025, 2.7% of World GDP, which is a historic record...

Key Excerpts:

1. Future of Nuclear Arms Control - Back to the Nuclear Brink or a Re-START for the ‘New START’ in 2026?
2. Back to the Future: from 1938’s Munich Agreement to the proposed Ukraine Peace Plan of 2025 – Likely End Game for the Russia-Ukraine War
3. Europe’s Hour of Reckoning: In the Crosshairs of Multi-Front Existential Crises while Facing the Devil, his Guardian and the Devil’s Advocate
4. Trump’s Geopolitical Powerplay in Venezuela and Geoimperialistic pivot after a year of Trade Wars and implications
5. The Fragile Peace in the Middle East following Iran’s Debilitation and Israel’s Emergence as the Proverbial Bad Guy and Hegemon of the Region
6. Stealth: From Secret Exclusivity to Ubiquity: Tracing the Evolutionary Journey over Half-a-Century and its Core Architects: 1975-2025
7. India's massive defense modernization to counter a two-front regional threat landscape and arch-rivals, namely, China & Pakistan