Tigray Burns, Cuba Rattles, and Kim Tests Again: The Week's Overlooked Crises
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The Tigray situation in Ethiopia deserves far more attention than it is receiving. The Tigray People's Liberation Front declared what it is calling a defensive war, TPLF forces have seized the airport in Mekelle — the regional capital — and fighting has spread into the Afar region, which borders Djibouti, where the United States maintains Camp Lemonnier, a major military base. Ethiopian Airlines has suspended all flights to Tigray. The last Tigray conflict, from 2020 to 2022, produced what the UN estimates was one of the deadliest humanitarian catastrophes of this century, with casualty estimates ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 deaths from combat, starvation, and disease. A renewed conflict along similar lines would be devastating, and the geographic spread toward Afar gives Washington a direct strategic interest it does not always foreground publicly.
Cuba had a memorable week at the UN. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla led the Cuban delegation in a walkout after Trump called Cuba a 'failed state' and predicted the communist government 'will fall.' More substantively, the U.S. Army Reserve's assessment of troops for a possible Cuba-related mission was reported this week — without extensive detail. The combination of Trump's UN rhetoric about imminent Cuban collapse and a military readiness assessment for Cuba-related operations suggests contingency planning that may go beyond rhetoric.
North Korea conducted its fourteenth ballistic missile test of 2026 on September 20th, launching two short-range ballistic missiles that Kim described as causing an 'incurable headache' for enemies. Fourteen tests in nine months is a sustained operational pace designed to normalize the program and develop tactical capabilities below the intercontinental threshold, where the political cost of testing is lower. The rate is notable even as the launches are increasingly absorbed into a crowded news cycle. Meanwhile, the AfD winning a second German state government — with Chancellor Merz vowing to remain — gives the European far-right party institutional infrastructure and legitimacy that amplifies its political weight well beyond the state level.