News

Evening Brief: Pentagon Severs Academic Ties With Harvard, US and Russia to Resume Military to Military Talks, US Warships To Haiti

BY Guy D. McCardle

Washington is tightening the screws from Cambridge to the Caribbean while quietly reopening a line to Moscow, a reminder that influence is applied with universities, warships, and phone calls long before it is applied with bullets.

US sea-going power approaches Port-au-Prince on February 3rd, 2026. Image Credit: Haitian Times

Pentagon To Harvard: We’re Done Here

The Pentagon is severing its academic relationship with Harvard University, and it is not being subtle about why.

Advertisement

War Secretary Pete Hegseth (himself a Harvard grad) announced that beginning with the 2026 to 2027 school year, the Department of War will discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs affiliated with Harvard. Service members currently enrolled can finish their course of study, but new participation stops with the next academic cycle.

Hegseth’s stated rationale is a mix of ideology, culture, and value for money. In public remarks and the Pentagon’s own write-up, he argued that Harvard has drifted into what he called “globalist and radical ideologies,” and that sending officers there no longer meets the needs of the department or the military services. Reuters also reported that Hegseth pointed to Harvard’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests, accusations of antisemitism on campus, and related controversies as part of his justification.

Advertisement

This is not being presented as a one-off. Hegseth said the department will evaluate “all existing graduate programs for active duty service members” across Ivy League schools and other civilian universities, with the explicit goal of determining whether these programs deliver cost-effective strategic education compared with public universities and military graduate programs. In other words, Harvard is the first domino, not the whole set.

Zoom out, and the politics are impossible to ignore. Reuters and the AP both frame the move as the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s broader confrontation with Harvard and other elite institutions over campus climate, speech, DEI policy, and the aftermath of high-profile protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. Harvard has also been battling the administration in court over federal pressure and funding actions, and it has publicly emphasized its commitment to combating discrimination and maintaining longstanding ties with the U.S. military.

Here’s our operational takeaway. The Pentagon is signaling that “prestige” is not a mission requirement. The department is drawing a bright line between civilian institutions it believes sharpen warfighters, and those it believes shape narratives at odds with the profession of arms.

Advertisement

Whether you cheer or cringe, the message is simple: the DoW is auditing where it sends its future senior leaders, and Harvard just failed the test.

Back on Speaking Terms, This Time, With a Nuclear Backdrop

After more than four years of cold-shoulder silence at the senior level, the United States and Russia are reopening a high-level military-to-military dialogue, a channel that went dark in the fall of 2021 as tensions spiked ahead of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. European Command said the two sides agreed to reestablish the mechanism after talks in Abu Dhabi that involved U.S., Russian, and Ukrainian officials, with Gen. Alexus Grynkewich representing the U.S. side. The stated purpose is simple and painfully practical: reduce the risk of miscalculation and escalation.

Here’s the easiest way to understand it. Imagine two heavily armed men in a dark house, moving room to room with their fingers on the trigger. You do not need them to be friends. You need them to yell “I’m on the stairs” before somebody panics and empties a magazine into the drywall. That’s what military-to-military dialogue is in a high-tension environment, not diplomacy, not trust, just basic fire prevention.

It is also not the same thing as an emergency hotline, which never fully disappeared. Even after the broader dialogue froze, reporting notes an emergency deconfliction line remained available, the kind of last-ditch phone you pray you never have to use. The difference now is intent and frequency, a return to regular, structured contact instead of a break-glass option.

Timing matters. This restart lands as Washington keeps trying to shape an off-ramp to the Ukraine war, and it coincides with a brutal reality: the guardrails of arms control are thinner than they have been in decades. The Washington Post reported the announcement came the same day New START expired without a replacement, and officials see renewed military dialogue as one tool to improve transparency and dampen worst-case assumptions.

The takeaway is not “America trusts Russia again.” It does not. This is the Department of War recognizing that even hostile powers need a way to talk shop when the consequences of a misunderstanding are measured in wreckage, not press releases.

A line of communication does not make peace. It just lowers the odds that a bad night turns into an irreversible one.

U.S. Warships Off Haiti: A Show of Presence as the Floor Drops Out

Three American cutters and gray hull muscle have slid into the Bay of Port-au-Prince as Haiti’s political transition hits a hard stop and the security situation keeps bleeding. The ships are the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Stockdale and two Coast Guard cutters, USCGC Stone and USCGC Diligence, according to the U.S. Embassy statement cited by regional reporting.

The timing is not subtle. Haiti’s nine-member Transitional Presidential Council was installed in April 2024 to help steer the country toward elections and stabilize the state after years of collapse. Its mandate ended on February 7, 2026, and it ended with no agreed succession plan. Reuters described the moment plainly: political limbo, worsening insecurity, and no consensus on what replaces the council.

Washington’s public line is risk management. The U.S. Embassy said the warships’ presence reflects an “unwavering commitment” to Haiti’s security and stability. The wider picture is that the Department of War is trying to keep Haiti from slipping into a vacuum that gangs can fill completely, while also protecting U.S. interests in the approaches to the Caribbean.

Think of this like a fire engine pulling up to a neighborhood where the hydrants are broken, and arsonists run the block. The engine cannot rebuild the city, but its presence changes behavior. Maybe.It gives locals a little room to breathe, and it gives bad actors something to think about.

There is also a second lane here that matters. The embassy statement tied the deployment to Operation Southern Spear, the Trump administration’s regional campaign aimed at countering narcotics trafficking networks across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. That matters because Haiti’s instability is not isolated. When governance collapses, trafficking routes thicken, weapons flow faster, and the region gets uglier for everyone.

Meanwhile, the international security effort meant to help Haitian police is still underweight. Reuters reported that fewer than 1,000 troops, mostly Kenyan police, were deployed as part of the U.N.-backed force, far short of the 5,500 envisioned, with the U.N. aiming for full strength by summer.

So this naval move is not an invasion and it is not a rescue mission.

It is a signal and a pressure point.

Haiti’s political crisis is deepening, and the Department of War is placing a visible thumb on the scale, hoping the next stumble does not become a fall.

Advertisement

What readers are saying

Generating a quick summary of the conversation...

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR