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Scientific research collaboration in the field of national security is becoming increasingly complex. The expansion of national security disciplines and the diversification of collaborative models have had a profound impact on innovation and development in this domain. However, existing studies lack in-depth analysis of cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary collaboration, and they have not sufficiently revealed the critical role of independent research capacity in driving academic innovation. Based on open-source data from 1985 to 2022, this paper covers 4820 authors and 4799 national security-themed papers, employing complex network modeling to construct an author-centric scientific research collaboration network. A systematic analysis of the characteristics of the national security collaboration network is conducted at the macro, meso and micro levels. The results show that at the macro level, research collaboration is primarily concentrated within single institutions, while collaborations between two or more parties have increased year by year. Despite the expanding scale of the network, collaboration density has shown a downward trend. At the meso level, core research institutions have constructed tight community structures through cross-disciplinary and cross-regional collaboration, significantly promoting academic innovation. At the micro level, researchers with strong independent research capabilities, though having lower connectivity within the collaboration network, have made significant contributions to academic innovation through their independent work. This paper provides important insights for further strengthening cross-institutional collaboration and the role of independent research capacity in the national security field, laying a solid foundation for optimizing future scientific research collaboration models.

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 2022 secured Xi Jinping’s third term as General Secretary and secured a team of supporters amid socioeconomic woes and increasingly hostile global circumstances. While leadership matters in all political systems, it matters much more in totalitarian and authoritarian ones. Political leaders in democracies are constrained by electoral cycles, term limits, and approval ratings, but the leaders of the PRC’s single-party system that emphasizes discipline, hierarchy, and democratic centralism operate relatively unchecked by bureaucracy, opposition forces, or public opinion. Its leaders possess the ultimate decision-making authority in national security and strategic policies (Zhao, 2022, p. 5).

The consolidation of Xi’s power has far-reaching implications for China’s foreign policy. As a feared, sycophantically revered, and ruthless emperor confident in his country’s military power and economic clout, Xi feels equipped to accomplish his mission of making China great again. He has also inherited a pervasive insecurity of pushback from Western powers that threatens his authoritarian rule. He has therefore upheld the security of the regime beyond Deng Xiaoping and his decades of prioritizing growth. Proactively stifling any opposition to his rule and cracking down on any hint of a “color revolution” at home in connection with foreign forces, Xi has strengthened the military and reorganized the economy in preparation for a possible showdown with the United States. He has required Chinese diplomats to act as “wolf warriors” in diplomatic battles and fight criticisms of the regime even at the cost of escalating international tensions. While his team of supporters has maximized his power to implement his policies, this has also prevented his colleagues from counseling against any mistakes they may anticipate or discover. Intentionally or not, he has minimized opportunities to correct his mistakes and increased the stakes and the risks they present, raising the potential for his country to become embroiled in a foreign adventure of no return.

Public support is a critical factor in the outcome of interstate conflicts, yet, how it operates, interacts with hard power, or influences the overall military outlook remains surprisingly undertheorized. Public support has been particularly salient for such states as Finland and Ukraine that have faced opponents of vastly greater military size, capability, and sophistication. This paper advances an original theory on the strategic utility of public support for conflict through an analysis of the case of Taiwan, a potential current flashpoint for a great power war. This paper assesses trends in Taiwanese public support for resisting a Chinese invasion over time, identifies a major upswing in the public’s willingness to fight, and argues that further coordination by state and societal actors could deter a Chinese attack or at least greatly increase the costs of an invasion and the likelihood of failure.

Pandemics are not a new phenomenon in human history or international relations. Over the centuries, pandemics have affected the course of human history by changing people’s perceptions and approach regarding national security and international stability. Pandemics have also affected mobility and behavior among different communities of the world. In today’s world of proliferating nontraditional challenges, pandemics are the newest addition to a growing list of national security threats and government priorities. The coronavirus pandemic is prompting national governments around the world to re-examine and update their national security concept and devise new, more effective measures to manage and mitigate the impacts of public health crises.

Complex national and economic security imperatives drive American China policy. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) heightens the tension between national and economic security requirements and between different levels of economic security. This renders the established American policy approach, which centers around pursuing national and economic security as separate policy tracks, difficult to sustain. The threat posed by the Initiative to the national security of the United States encourages a focus on it in these terms. Such a focus is all the more likely under President Donald Trump, who is not predisposed to consider the BRI an economic security threat.

The history of U.S. intelligence and military assessments of the security implications of climate change go back many decades to the 1980s. Since that time, hundreds of analyses of climate change, a massively growing body of literature on the impacts of human-caused climate change, and reports from every U.S. defense, intelligence, and security agency have acknowledged the links between climate and security, with a focus on two key areas: the vulnerability of U.S. military bases and assets to the threats posed by climate change; and the risks that the consequences and impacts of climate change will cause political instability that may lead to increased U.S. military interventions.