Threat Status for Tuesday, November 11, 2025. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
Today is Veterans Day, which this year comes a day after the 250th birthday of the U.S. Marines.
… President Trump’s surprise threat to launch strikes in Nigeria underscores the often-overlooked reality: Africa is one of the most active international hot spots for the U.S. military.
… Mr. Trump got Syria’s president, a former al Qaeda fighter, to sign a pledge to join the U.S. in trying to destroy the remnants of the Islamic State terror group.
… Japan’s first female prime minister has triggered outrage from the Chinese Communist Party by threatening to respond with force if China attacks Taiwan.
… A suicide bombing in Pakistan’s capital has killed at least 12 people.
… The Iran-backed Houthi militants of Yemen have signaled a halt to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea while the fragile Gaza ceasefire holds.
… Ukraine’s nuclear energy company says its operations are unaffected by a major corruption probe.
… A Turkish military cargo plane with 20 people on board crashed Tuesday near the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan.
… And China says crew members of the Shenzhou-20 space mission are “in good condition” after their craft was believed to have been hit by space debris.
Africa has become what the United Nations describes as “the epicenter of global terrorism,” supplanting the Middle East as the world’s top breeding ground for Islamic extremism that threatens the U.S., its interests abroad and its allies. More than 3,400 terrorist attacks were reported on the continent last year, resulting in nearly 14,000 deaths.
Mr. Trump’s recent threat to launch strikes in Nigeria has thrust back into the spotlight this often-overlooked reality: Africa is one of the most active international hot spots for the U.S. military. National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang offers a deeper dive, noting that even with a current footprint of just 6,500 troops, the U.S. is already actively targeting terrorist groups on the continent.
This year alone, the U.S. has conducted at least 89 strikes against terrorist groups such as al-Shabab and the Islamic State in Somalia, according to figures from U.S. Africa Command. The 6,500 troops, AFRICOM said, are deployed “across the continent.” About 3,500 are based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. AFRICOM officials would not disclose the location of the rest of the troops because of security concerns.
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda leader, signed a pledge during his meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House Monday to join the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and work with the U.S. toward eliminating remnants of the terror group. In exchange, the U.S. will allow Syria to resume operations at its embassy in Washington “to further counterterrorism security and economic coordination,” a senior White House official said.
The Trump administration also has lifted some economic sanctions against Syria that had been in place for more than two decades. Mr. al-Sharaa has disavowed Islamist extremism since rising to lead Syria, which has been battered by civil war for decades. He led a rebel militia force last year to oust longtime dictator Bashar Assad, who is now in exile in Russia.
Ahead of Mr. al-Sharaa’s arrival in Washington, the administration removed sanctions on him and Syria’s interior minister. U.S.-based Syrian advocacy groups are still urging Congress and the administration to fully scrap economic aid and investment restrictions that Washington imposed on Damascus during the Assad era — the so-called Caesar Act sanctions. The State Department partially suspended those sanctions on Monday, announcing that they have been waived for 180 days.
Although the other armed services are commemorating Veterans Day on Nov. 11, Leathernecks around the world observed the Marine Corps’ landmark 250th birthday a day earlier.
Retired Maj. Gen. James Lukeman, president of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, joined about 1,000 fellow Marine veterans and their families on Monday to mark the day on Nov. 10, 1775, when the first recruiting drive for the Continental Marines was held at Tun Tavern, a popular Philadelphia watering hole.
Today, a Marine’s journey begins in boot camp or officer candidate school, when they learn to leave aside personal comfort and become part of something bigger than themselves, Gen. Lukeman said at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. “So many Marines have gotten out and continued to serve their communities across the country,” he said. “It really does stay with you.”
Veterans Day began as Armistice Day to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War I, the day in 1918 when the “guns went silent on the Western front,” writes Don Feder. “The carnage of the Great War was unimaginable at that time: approximately 16 million dead, civilian and military. That number was dwarfed by World War II, with 75 million to 80 million dead, twice as many civilians as military.
“The ‘war to end war’ was followed by World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Six-Day War, Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Mr. Feder, a columnist with The Washington Times. “Those are just the wars that come immediately to mind. The University of Uppsala in Sweden has identified 285 distinct armed conflicts since 1946.
“No sane person wants to see the devastation of war,” he writes, “but war can be only mitigated, never eliminated.”
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has “projected an image of a ‘peace-loving’ civilization wronged by imperialism and devoted to harmony,” writes Miles Yu, an opinion contributor to Threat Status.
“Yet from the Korean War to Ukraine, from the Himalayas to the South China Sea, the historical record exposes a very different truth,” he writes in a Times op-ed. “The CCP, not the United States, has been the principal engine of global instability since the end of World War II, as today’s China is a revolutionary regime whose survival depends on perpetual struggle, conquest and deception.
“Communism, by its very nature, is a militant ideology. … Mao Zedong built his regime on the doctrine of permanent revolution, declaring that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’” writes Mr. Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. “Like the Soviet Union before it, the CCP must continually demonstrate its vitality through conflict to preserve its myths of infallibility and invincibility. For the CCP, aggression is not an aberration but an existential requirement.”
• Nov. 11 — Free showing of the Award-Winning Documentary ‘Honor in the Air: Remembering Captain Scott Alwin and the 68th Assault Helicopter Company,’ Washington Policy Institute
• Nov. 12 — Afghanistan-Pakistan Conflict: What Does It Mean for Regional Stability and U.S. Strategic Interests? Middle East Institute
• Nov. 12 — Space Force Association Washington Fall Social, SFA D.C. Chapter
• Nov. 13 — 10 Years of Arms Trade Treaty Transparency, Stimson Center
• Nov. 13 — The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: Anthony Vinci on AI, Geopolitics and the Future of Espionage, Hudson Institute
• Nov. 13 — Meeting the U.S. Defense Imperative: Challenges and Opportunities in the Development of the Defense Industrial Base Workforce, Center for Strategic & International Studies
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