The strikes at Abu al-Duhur matter less for what happened than for what they revealed. Strip away the incident report and what is left is familiar rhetoric. Two regional powers reading the same accounting and drawing opposite lessons from it.

The fall of Assad did not create a vacuum so much as reveal one that existed for years, hidden by a regime too weak to project power but too entrenched to remove. Turkey and Israel are now the two actors with both the capability and the appetite to fill the power void, and they are filling it from opposite directions with opposite security theories. Ankara’s theory is based upon proximity, allowing for influence over Damascus, embedding advisers, directing infrastructure investment, and producing a client government that owes its stability partly to Turkish backing. Israel’s theory is based upon distance, leaving an emptied buffer zone, allowing minimal contention, and the right to strike anything that threatens these. Both theories will collide somewhere in Idlib or Hama. Abu al-Duhur is just where the collision appeared.

When Intent Becomes the Threat

What is more interesting than the Abu al-Duhur strike itself is how each side communicates about it afterward because the language reveals what each government fears. Turkish officials denied the specific claim of a permanent base, while Syrian officials said they had assured Israel that no Turkish presence was planned. Both statements can be true and still miss the point because the Israeli concern (a radar, an air-defense node, or a rotational advisory presence) does not require anything as formal as a “base” to change the operating environment. In short, Israel does not need Turkey to build a garrison to lose strategic value. They only need Turkish sensors to be present in their airspace to reduce Israeli air maneuver. This presents a much lower bar than the word “base” implies, which is why the denials satisfied no one.

When Strategic Ambiguity Becomes a Trigger

The question of whether Turkey was building a pincer is also interesting. The public evidence that Turkey posed a deliberate two-front strategy against Israel is thin and treating this as evidence of one risks manufacturing a conspiracy out of two states pursuing separate, self-interested expansions that happen to be converging. The more useful approach is to question what happens structurally once any two states with unresolved historical friction start operating in the same 200-mile strip of contested territory without a shared rulebook. That is a problem independent of intent. Even if Ankara is not trying to encircle Israel and Israel is not seeking a war with a NATO-adjacent power, the lack of agreed rules leaves each side to interpret future moves through worst-case assumptions. That is what almost happened here. Turkish forces are watching unannounced Israeli jets approach their border and had to decide in real time whether they were witnessing an isolated strike or the opening move of something larger, with no immediate channel to ask.

This interpretation is the part that gets lost when the coverage focuses on “was this an imminent threat?” Whether or not the Abu al-Duhur strikes specifically mattered is only a part of what happened. The mechanism by which it almost escalated one side into acting unilaterally and the other side was forced to guess at intent is likely to recur as long as Turkey keeps deepening its role in Syria and Israel reserves the right to strike in the region, all without an agreed set of boundaries. The airbase is almost incidental. The pattern is the story.

Managing a Rivalry That Won’t Disappear

The outcome desired is not necessarily a settlement of who is “right” about Syria, as both Ankara and Jerusalem are not going to agree on what kind of country a post-Assad Syria should become, and there is no likely version where their interests fully align. Instead, what is achievable and worth pursuing is a much narrower path. They should seek a standing arrangement or a formal conflict-avoidance mechanism where neither side is forced to act on assumptions when it has no knowledge of the other’s intentions. That means real advanced notice or advanced provisions before strikes near the Turkish frontier, instead of an after-the-fact explanation. This means Turkey must be willing to declare, rather than deny, the scope of its military footprint in Syria so that ambiguity stops creating unintended outcomes. It means Damascus, the government with the least power and the most to lose from being squeezed between two much larger militaries, has some voice in such an arrangement that it is not reduced to a battleground that occurs to its detriment.

Conclusion

An arrangement as described herein does not resolve the underlying rivalry. Turkey will keep building influence in Syria because that is what a rising regional power with a long land border does. Israel will retain the right to strike because that has provided security since 1973 and they have no intention to abandon it. However, managed rivalry through a known channel provides a fundamentally different kind of danger than rivalry managed through guesswork under time pressure. The best and most realistic outcome here is not peace between Ankara and Jerusalem. Instead, it is peace by ensuring the next Abu al-Duhur results in a diplomatic phone call instead of deployed border unit deciding if it is watching the start of a war in real time and must react.

Dr. Yashwant Singh is an Indian sociologist working at the intersection of urban studies, development, nature and geopolitics. He holds an M.Phil. in Sociology from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. from the University of Hyderabad. He has published in Across Voices, Modern Diplomacy, Geostrategic Media, South Asia Journal, World Geostrategic Insights, and IA-Forum.  The views represented in this article are the author’s own.

Turkey, Israel and the Dangerous Vacuum in Post-Assad Syria was originally published on Global Security Review.

The State Department’s “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism” report and the independent assessment by resilience and resistance interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Robert Burrell both address important but differing views. The State Department examines how Havana converted limited conventional power into a durable system of espionage, ideological influence, proxy relationships, and political subversion. Burrell examines why the Cuban regime continues to survive economic decline, sanctions, demographic pressure, and public unrest. One follows the outward projection of power, the other measures the internal foundations of authoritarian durability. Together, they offer a useful composite picture. Yet both stop short of the assessing what is most necessary, whether Cuba has contemporary value as a strategic access platform for Russia, China, and Iran. 

First is that Cuba has transitioned from a revolutionary exporter to an enabling platform. Cuba no longer needs to export revolution on the scale of the 1960s to remain strategically consequential. Instead, it can leverage geography, diplomatic cover, intelligence tradecraft, Spanish-language credibility, telecommunications access, port facilities, and a tightly controlled operating environment ninety miles from Florida. These activities connect to the modern cognitive warfare apparatus. NATO defines cognitive warfare as synchronized activity intended to influence, protect, or disrupt cognition to affect attitudes and behavior. Through that lens, Cuba is more than a messenger. It can serve as an intermediary that helps foreign narratives acquire regional identity, historical legitimacy, and attributional distance. 

Russia’s Cuban provision is one of proximity, access, and narrative localization. Russian information operations in Latin America benefit when themes originating in Moscow are restated through Cuban institutions, sympathetic regional outlets, diplomatic networks, or established anti-imperialist frames. These themes can appear less like foreign intervention and more like an indigenous critique of U.S. power. The 2025 U.S. Southern Command statement described Russian, Chinese, and Iranian cyber espionage and information operations across the region and discussed the 2024 Russian naval visit to Havana. That activity did not establish an imminent attack, but demonstrated how access, intelligence collection, and messaging can be leveraged. 

China’s Cuban provision is more infrastructural, known as cognitive infrastructure: the telecommunications, data, sensing, media, and analytical systems through which perceptions can be studied and influence delivered. CSIS satellite-imagery assessments have identified Cuban facilities containing equipment potentially capable of signals-intelligence collection while appropriately treating Chinese involvement as a possibility requiring continued evaluation rather than a conclusively established fact. 

At first glance, many access points Cuba provides to China may appear innocuous. They are simply telecommunications upgrades, academic exchanges, commercial partnerships, port visits, research cooperations, media engagements, or technical assistance. Individually, these activities can be explained as routine state-to-state transactional relations. Their strategic significance emerges through accumulation. Each interaction creates another opportunity to observe institutional routines, social networks, political reactions, military patterns, and regional audience vulnerabilities. Over time, persistent collection can transform ordinary access into a developing exploitation infrastructure. 

Cuba’s value in this process is not limited to geography. Its controlled political environment, security institutions, regional relationships, and proximity to the U.S. can provide China with a discreet platform from which engagements may gradually support intelligence partnerships, narrative targeting, and future cognitive influence. 

Iran’s Cuban provision is wholly different. It is built around sanctions solidarity, diplomatic reach, technical cooperation, and hemispheric access. Evidence does not indicate a substantial Iranian combat presence in Cuba.  

Iranian Spanish-language messaging, resistance narratives, and anti-sanction’s themes can reinforce Cuban and Russian accounts without requiring a single integrated command structure. The three states can repeat complementary claims portraying the U.S. as coercive, destabilizing, culturally hostile, or economically predatory. Repetition across separate national and media sources can produce narrative convergence, giving audiences the impression that multiple independent observers have reached the same conclusion. 

Second is the separation of Cuban regime resilience from external influence capacity. Intelligence services, security institutions, elite cohesion, and foreign assistance do not merely explain Cuban survival. They also make Cuba useful to foreign actors by protecting personnel, concealing sensitive agreements, disciplining state media, and preserving long-duration access. Economic weakness may therefore increase Havana’s willingness to exchange infrastructure access, intelligence cooperation, political support, or technological privileges for energy, credit, and regime security. 

Third is the absence of a Cuban campaign continuum. Cuba-enabled competition could progress from commercial investment, diplomatic exchanges, media partnerships, and technical assistance into secure facilities, persistent foreign personnel, expanded data access, port familiarity, intelligence sharing, cyber staging, and coordinated crisis narratives. Visible military deployment might appear only at the far end. By then, much of the cognitive preparation could already be complete. U.S. audiences may become divided over attribution. Regional governments may become reluctant to cooperate. And policymakers will become uncertain whether responding to a limited provocation would produce escalation. 

Fourth is the institutional perception risk inside the U.S. Cuba’s intelligence success has never depended solely on stealing secrets. Long-duration penetration can also shape what institutions believe is important, which warning indicators they discount, and how threats are categorized. The conviction of former U.S. ambassador and National Security Council official Victor Manuel Rocha for secretly acting for Cuba over decades demonstrates the patience and access Cuban intelligence can achieve. The cognitive effect of penetration is therefore larger than the information removed. 

CONCLUSION 

The State Department report and the Cuban independent assessment are useful, but each risks treating Cuba as an isolated problem rather than as a strategic access point for larger adversarial powers. Cuba is better understood as a strategic doorway, an authoritarian platform whose value increases when connected to the resources of larger powers. Russia can use it to localize narratives and signal proximity. China can use it to gain access to data, sensing, and infrastructure. Iran can use it to extend diplomatic and informational reach into the hemisphere. 

The missed threat is therefore not a Cuban conventional assault. It is the gradual construction of an ecosystem in which foreign collection, political access, information laundering, cyber opportunity, and cognitive pressure converge near the American homeland. Cuba’s economy may be failing; its strategic utility is not. 

Greg Sharpe is a Fellow and the director of Communications and Marketing for the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and the Managing Design Editor for the Global Security Review. He has 25+ years in marketing and communications with a focus on digital communications, organizational and institutional change, and analysis. The views of the author are his own. 

Cognitive Warfare at America’s Edge was originally published on Global Security Review.

In an age of persistent great power competition, the fight for influence is the decisive precursor to any potential conflict. Adversaries like Iran, who cannot compete symmetrically with the U.S., have poured resources into the information domain, recognizing it as the critical battlespace. As detailed in “In an Asymmetrical War, Iran Seeks an Edge With Its Information War,” Iran is waging a sophisticated offensive to win the war of perception first, shaping the cognitive battlefield to paralyze U.S. decision-making. This poses a direct challenge to the U.S. Department of War’s core focus on “maximum lethality,” as outlined in the 2026 National Defense Strategy. That goal, however, is unachievable if the information battlespace is lost. Cognitive dominance in the operational information environment is not a distraction from lethality; it is the fundamental prerequisite for it. To win, the joint forces must complement their pursuit of kinetic overmatch with a mastery of the cognitive domain. 

Iran’s gray zone strategy, a mix of proxy warfare and calibrated escalation detailed in analyses by CSIS and Michael Eisenstadt, is designed to create dilemmas and exploit the seams in Western military thought. The U.S. response was to elevate “Information” to a joint function, a critical doctrinal step. But as then-Brigadier General Grynkewich noted when introducing the concept, doctrine-on-a-shelf changes nothing without a corresponding shift in the force’s “cultural mindsets.” The real work is building cognitive architecture to apply it. 

This is where a “Global Mindset,” defined by scholars in “A Whole New Global Mindset for Leadership” as “the capability to influence others unlike yourself,” becomes a warfighting imperative. This mindset is not an abstract virtue, but a tangible capability built on three pillars: (1) Intellectual Capital: The cognitive horsepower to understand the complex web of political, cultural, and social factors in a contested environment. (2) Psychological Capital: The resilience and fortitude to operate effectively in ambiguous, long-term struggles, countering an adversary’s “long game.” (3) Social Capital: The behavioral skill to build trust and show intercultural empathy, allowing for the creation of authentic partnerships and resonant counter-narratives. 

Yet, how do you build this mindset at scale? The answer lies in a structured, teachable framework. The Olympus Mons Problem-Solving Model, a methodology developed at The Air University and Defense Information School. It was designed specifically to make the abstract actionable. It provides a repeatable process for planners to solve “wicked problems” in the information domain. Its five core elements are: 

(1) Complex Adaptive Systems Thinking: This foundational mindset shifts planners from linear predictable models to seeing the information environment as a dynamic ecosystem. It allows them to anticipate ripple effects and identify high-leverage nodes in an adversary’s network. 

(2) PESTLE and Ecosystem Analysis: Using a structured analysis of the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental domains, this step builds the deep situational awareness required to uncover the root grievances an adversary like Iran exploits. 

(3) Cynefin Sensemaking Framework: This framework helps leaders correctly categorize the environment. The gray zone is a “Complex” domain, where the only effective approach is to “Probe-Sense-Respond,” in essence to conduct small-scale, reversible actions, see how the system reacts, and adapt accordingly. This neutralizes an adversary’s probing tactics and reduces the risk of miscalculation. 

(4) Wicked Solutions for Complex Problems: This approach is the engine for building social capital. It forces planners to see the problem from the diverse perspectives of all stakeholders, enabling the creation of sustainable, locally resonant strategies that can “flip the script” on an adversary’s propaganda. 

(5) Strategic Foresight: This element breaks Iran’s “long game” advantage by shifting the U.S. focus from short-term reactions to long-term competition, allowing planners to anticipate future conflict domains and build strategic patience. 

Defeating our adversaries in the gray zone is a cognitive, not purely a kinetic, challenge. To achieve the Department of War’s goal of decisive lethality, we must first win the war of ideas. The time has come for U.S. military leaders to stop treating information as a supporting effort and recognize it as the central battlefield in modern competition. This requires a deliberate, sustained investment in the intellectual and cultural readiness of our warfighters. We must integrate cognitive frameworks like the Olympus Mons model into professional military education and operational planning. This is not just about improving human decision-making today; it is about future-proofing our force. The structured, logic-based nature of this model is the most compatible framework for integration with the Information Advantage large language models that will define the next generation of warfare, allowing our warfighters to serve as the critical ‘human-in-the-loop’ for AI-enabled operations in the information environment. 

The character of conflict is evolving, but the core of American strength, the ingenuity and adaptability of its warfighters, remains unchanged. The next generation of warfare will not be won by military might and technology alone, but by those who can master the cognitive battlefield of the Operational Information Environment which includes the complex human terrain where influence is wielded and will is broken. Frameworks like the Olympus Mons Problem-Solving Model do not replace the warrior’s ethos; they sharpen it, forging leaders who can out-think, out-maneuver, and out-compete our adversaries in the war of ideas. Seizing this cognitive high ground is the ultimate expression of ‘peace through strength.’ The tools to build this future are within our grasp; what is required now is the vision and the will to forge the victory of tomorrow. 

Oshawn Jefferson is a national security professional and strategic communication expert with over two decades of experience in the U.S. military and academic sectors. He is the creator of the Olympus Mons Problem-Solving Model and a leading voice on developing cognitive readiness and a global mindset within the Joint Force. The views of the author are his own. 

Applying the Olympus Mons Problem-Solving Model to Defeat Iran in the Gray Zone was originally published on Global Security Review.