​Quotes of the Day:

“Irregular warfare needs an ideology – a big idea or two. Spiritual and political inspiration mobilize and grow insurgency.”

– Colin S. Gray

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” 

– George Eliot

"Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life." 

– Charles Scribner, Jr.

1. Next Question for Gaza Peace Plan: Who Wants to Police It?

2. China Is Filling Up Its Oil Reserves Fast

3. War Powers Law Does Not Apply to Trump’s Boat Strikes, Administration Says

4. After Trump’s Early Exit From APEC, Asia’s Top Powers Seek Alignment on Trade and Security

5. EDITORIAL: Reassurance from diplomatic flurry (Asia-Indo-Pacific and ROK-Japan)

6. Reagan–Thatcher, Trump–Takaichi, and Cold War II

7. Trump Threatens Military Action in Nigeria Over Protections for Christians

8. These are the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela

9. ‘A House of Dynamite’ gets a lot right. Experts hope that terrifies you.

10. The U.S. Army's Drone Nightmare Is Coming True

11. Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.

12. Hegseth: Nuclear tests bolster credible strategic deterrence, lower risk of nuclear conflict

13. US and Cambodia to revive defence drills

14. How the Russian Orthodox Church Became a Weapon of Political Warfare

15. Hand of Moscow? The men jailed for vandalism in French hybrid warfare case

16. China's new gateway into South America: the Port of Chancay

17. Afghanistan and the Long Shadow of Bagram

18. Tariffs are Trump's favorite foreign policy tool. The Supreme Court could change how he uses them

19. Is it Time to End the American Global War on Terror?

1. Next Question for Gaza Peace Plan: Who Wants to Police It?

​I would guess that this might be the most dangerous peacekeeping mission in the 21st century. There will likely be casualties among the peacekeepers.

Excerpts:

Then there is the question of whether any country would really be willing to commit any troops to the plan if it involved facing down the militants as they attempt to consolidate their power in Gaza.

The broader project to restore some stability to Gaza is already at risk of stalling. Interviews with a number of U.S., European and Middle Eastern officials indicate that the militant group insists on having a significant postwar role in the strip and still has enough firepower after two years of war with Israel to wreck a cease-fire. Since the truce last month, Hamas fighters have emerged from the rubble and begun consolidating power in some areas. In some cases, they have publicly executed their rivals.

Any country sending troops to keep the peace in the enclave could risk having a run-in with Hamas forces at some point, and that could place them in an uncomfortable position.

​Summary:

Creating an international Gaza security force faces major hurdles: Hamas demands a postwar role and limits on any force, deterring troop contributors. Egypt may lead ~5,000 troops plus 2,000–3,000 trained Palestinians. Mandate, especially confronting Hamas, remains unresolved. U.S. explores a UN mandate as regional offers emerge, amid fragile cease-fire and Israeli objections.

Next Question for Gaza Peace Plan: Who Wants to Police It?

WSJ

Any country sending troops to keep the peace in the enclave could risk having a run-in with Hamas, which says it will resist any attempt to confront it

By​ Summer Said​ and​ Robbie Gramer

Nov. 1, 2025 11:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/next-question-for-gaza-peace-plan-who-wants-to-police-it-1a63cb9a

Palestinian militants wearing the uniform of the military wing of Hamas in Gaza City last month. Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg News

• An international security force for Gaza faces obstacles, including Hamas’s demand for a postwar role and reluctance from countries to commit troops.
• Hamas insists an international security force only operate at Gaza’s borders and not confront the militant group, complicating peace efforts.
• Egypt is expected to lead a proposed force of up to 5,000 troops, supplemented by 2,000 to 3,000 trained Palestinian personnel.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• An international security force for Gaza faces obstacles, including Hamas’s demand for a postwar role and reluctance from countries to commit troops.

A fresh obstacle to President Trump’s Gaza peace plan is taking shape: how to bring in an international security force to police the enclave without either Hamas or Israel abandoning the process.

Then there is the question of whether any country would really be willing to commit any troops to the plan if it involved facing down the militants as they attempt to consolidate their power in Gaza.

The broader project to restore some stability to Gaza is already at risk of stalling. Interviews with a number of U.S., European and Middle Eastern officials indicate that the militant group insists on having a significant postwar role in the strip and still has enough firepower after two years of war with Israel to wreck a cease-fire. Since the truce last month, Hamas fighters have emerged from the rubble and begun consolidating power in some areas. In some cases, they have publicly executed their rivals.

Any country sending troops to keep the peace in the enclave could risk having a run-in with Hamas forces at some point, and that could place them in an uncomfortable position.

“No government, especially from the Arab and Muslim world, wants to be put in the spotlight with their troops there and have their people saying, ‘You’re just acting as an Israeli proxy force now,’ ” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group think tank.

“Everyone is really dancing around the fact that you need a mission that can use force, and that is going to be really tough both in terms of operations but also optics,” said Gowan.

A humanitarian aid convoy sent by Egypt in the Gaza Strip. Belal Abu Amer/Zuma Press

This point gained additional resonance after Hamas operatives met last week with the head of Egyptian intelligence and said they would agree to an international security force only at the borders of Gaza and if it wouldn’t try to confront the militant group.

Some Arab and Muslim-majority countries have voiced interest in contributing troops to a security force for Gaza, while more have offered to help fund its reconstruction. But so far there have been no hard commitments to put boots on the ground.

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The majority have said they would like to start by securing Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt and preventing arms smuggling. Cairo, which is expected to lead the force, has asked for Palestinian forces, expected to be trained in Egypt and Jordan and vetted by the U.S., to join the force and operate inside Gaza.

The crucial question is whether an international force would have responsibility for confronting Hamas if the militant group refuses to disarm and disband. The U.S. and Israel have repeatedly said Hamas can have no role in Gaza’s future.

Hamas, though, has other thoughts. The frequent flare-ups in violence and Israeli counterstrikes—the most recent came on Tuesday, after it accused the militants of killing an Israeli soldier—suggests it remains a threat, including to troops sent to Gaza as part of any international force.

Trump administration officials are working closely with regional allies to sort through what such a security force should look like, and whether to establish a legal mandate for the force through a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Destroyed buildings in the besieged Palestinian territory on Thursday. Some Arab and Muslim-majority countries have offered to help fund its reconstruction. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. officials said the process is still under way and it is too early to announce details of any final plan, while insisting the cease-fire remains intact.

“No one’s under any illusions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a visit to Israel on Oct. 23. “We’ve already done the impossible once, and we intend to keep doing that if we can.”

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, traveled to Israel on Friday to meet senior Israeli officials and visit a new civilian-military coordination center in southern Israel tasked with overseeing the peace plan.

Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Indonesia have expressed interest in contributing troops to an international security force, officials familiar with the plans said, though Israel has voiced objections to the participation of Turkey, a significant regional power.

Egypt and other countries have proposed deploying up to 5,000 troops as part of the force, adding to around 2,000 to 3,000 Palestinian personnel currently being trained in Egypt and Jordan. Egypt is expected to lead the force, if it is deployed.

Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com

WSJ

2. China Is Filling Up Its Oil Reserves Fast

​Gearing up for protracted war or simply the fuel to sustain its economy in the face of new US sanctions on Russian oil?

Summary:

China stockpiled oil in 2025, importing over 11 million barrels daily and adding 1–1.2 million to reserves. With 2 billion barrels storage capacity (≈60% used), Beijing cushions against U.S. sanctions on Russian crude and supply shocks. Stockpiling props up Brent $65. U.S. reserves lag; purchases continue via yuan-settled Russian supplies.

China Is Filling Up Its Oil Reserves Fast

WSJ

By Rebecca Feng

Nov. 1, 2025 10:00 pm ET

Cushion could protect country from any short-term supply disruptions related to new U.S. sanctions on Russian crude

Nov. 1, 2025 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/china-is-filling-up-its-oil-reserves-fast-444b8edb

An oil tanker unloading imported crude in eastern China. Cfoto/DDP/ZUMA Press

• During the first nine months of the year, China imported on average more than 11 million barrels of oil a day, above the daily Saudi production, according to official customs data.
• China’s total storage capacity rose to just over 2 billion barrels at the end of 2024 from 1.4 billion barrels in 2015, according to Lin Ye, an analyst at Rystad Energy.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• During the first nine months of the year, China imported on average more than 11 million barrels of oil a day, above the daily Saudi production, according to official customs data.

China has spent months building up its oil reserves. That might come in handy in the wake of the new sanctions the U.S. recently imposed on Russian crude.

During the first nine months of the year, the world’s second-largest economy imported on average more than 11 million barrels of oil a day, an amount above the daily production of Saudi Arabia, according to official customs data. Analysts estimate 1 million to 1.2 million of those barrels were stashed in reserves each day.

Low oil prices and concern over Ukraine’s repeated attacks on Russia’s production facilities help explain the timing of the buying spree, which accelerated in March. China is the world’s biggest importer of crude and the largest buyer of Russian oil.

Energy security has long been a priority for China’s leaders. The country’s dependence on foreign nations for its crude oil—China imports about 70% of the oil it consumes—is a headache.

“The energy rice bowl must be held in our own hands,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said repeatedly over the years.

China’s robust appetite for oil has had another unintended consequence: It has helped put a floor on prices, which approached a nearly five-year low in October. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is trading near $65 a barrel and is down 13% this year. It bounced higher following the sanctions the U.S. placed on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies.

“If China really stops buying, the path toward low $50 would be very quick,” said Michael Haigh, global head of fixed-income, currencies and commodities research at Société Générale.

The U.S., in contrast, has been slow to replenish its emergency oil reserves, which are languishing at some of their lowest levels in 40 years. President Trump promised to fill the U.S. reserves to the top when he returned to office but has announced just one small purchase of crude thus far.

To wean itself off imported oil, China has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into reviving domestic crude production and building the world’s largest electric-vehicle industry. It has also snapped up cheap barrels—sometimes from sanctioned producers—to bolster its reserves.

China began the construction of its strategic petroleum reserves in 2004. After about two decades of development, the country has built large-scale petroleum reserve bases, both under and above ground, in a long list of locations including the eastern city of Zhoushan and the northeastern port city of Dalian.

China doesn’t make public the size of its stockpile. Analysts attempt rough estimates by subtracting the amount of processed oil from China’s imports and domestic production. Most of those projections put the stockpile at 1.2 billion to 1.3 billion barrels.

“China’s current strategic petroleum reserve and commercial stocks already provide a meaningful buffer against short-term supply disruptions,” said Kelly Xu, a commodity and energy strategist at Alpine Macro.

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Xu expects China’s precautionary stockpiling to continue into 2026. She estimates that Beijing has 400 million barrels in its petroleum reserve and about 800 million barrels in commercial stocks stored by Chinese oil companies.

China appears to have plenty of room to store more crude. Its total storage capacity rose to just over 2 billion barrels at the end of 2024 from 1.4 billion barrels in 2015, according to Lin Ye, an analyst at Rystad Energy. That means China has only used about 60% of its storage capacity. Ye estimates 124 million barrels of capacity will be added by the end of this year.

Few analysts actually expect Chinese refineries to slow their purchases of Russian oil because of the sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, which block them from conducting dollar transactions. Russia settles only 5% of its oil exports in dollars, according to Russia’s Ministry of Energy. The dominating currency—representing 67% of Russian oil exports—is the Chinese yuan.

Most of the seaborne oil imports from Russia go to China’s independent refineries, known as teapots. Many of those refineries have limited dollar assets, conduct business mostly through Chinese regional banks, and cater mostly to Chinese customers, shielding them from the impact of sanctions. Some have become hooked on cheap Iranian crude of late.

Meanwhile, the recent trade agreement between the U.S. and China did little to resolve questions over China’s purchases of Russian oil, according to analysts. China hasn’t indicated whether it would stop buying, and there had been some hope that China would agree to purchase U.S. oil and gas as part of a broader U.S.-China deal.

For now, China’s stockpiling is helping to keep global oil prices from getting even lower as traders and analysts have acknowledged a worldwide glut. The International Energy Agency forecast in October that the world would be oversupplied by an average 3.7 million barrels of oil a day in the current quarter. JPMorgan analysts put that number at 3.6 million barrels.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are partly responsible for the glut by continuing to pump extra oil into the market. The cartel intends to boost production by 137,000 barrels a day in November, in a reversal of cuts implemented in 2023. Energy prices that year were falling from highs hit after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine the year before. At Sunday’s meeting, the cartel is expected to announce another increase for December.

Write to Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com

WSJ

3. War Powers Law Does Not Apply to Trump’s Boat Strikes, Administration Says

​Will the court(s) decide? 

Will Congress assert itself and exercise its Constitutional responsibilities?

I am sure this will be debated for a long time to come until it is settled in court.

Excerpts:

“The operation comprises precise strikes conducted largely by unmanned aerial vehicles launched from naval vessels in international waters at distances too far away for the crews of the targeted vessels to endanger American personnel,” the official said.

...

“By expanding on that precedent, Mr. Trump is more deeply entrenching the idea that the 60-day limit does not apply to air wars. That is an important development for the history of a law that presidents of both parties have chafed at over the past half century.”

Summary:

The Trump administration argues that its lethal drone strikes on drug-smuggling boats do not constitute “hostilities” under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, allowing operations to continue past the 60-day limit without congressional approval. The Justice Department says drones operate too far to endanger U.S. personnel—expanding Obama’s 2011 Libya precedent limiting the law’s reach.

War Powers Law Does Not Apply to Trump’s Boat Strikes, Administration Says

NY Times · Julian E. Barnes · November 1, 2025

The move deepened the idea that a Vietnam-era law, which says congressionally unauthorized deployments into “hostilities” must end after 60 days, does not apply to airstrike campaigns.

By Charlie Savage and Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

Published Nov. 1, 2025

Updated Nov. 2, 2025, 7:51 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/us/politics/trump-boat-attacks-war-powers.html

Air Force personnel prepared an MQ-9 Reaper drone in Puerto Rico last month.Credit...Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

By Charlie Savage and

Reporting from Washington

Nov. 1, 2025, 9:34 p.m. ET

The Justice Department told Congress this week that President Trump could lawfully continue his lethal military strikes on people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, notwithstanding a time limit for congressionally unauthorized deployments of armed forces into “hostilities.”

In a briefing, the official who leads the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, T. Elliot Gaiser, said the administration did not think the operation rose to the kind of “hostilities” covered by the 60-day limit, a key part of a 1973 law called the War Powers Resolution, according to several people familiar with the matter.

In a statement provided by the White House, an unnamed senior administration official said that American service members were not in danger because the boats suspected of smuggling drugs were mostly being struck by drones far from naval ships carrying U.S. forces.

“The operation comprises precise strikes conducted largely by unmanned aerial vehicles launched from naval vessels in international waters at distances too far away for the crews of the targeted vessels to endanger American personnel,” the official said.

The U.S. military has killed about 62 people across 14 airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific so far, and the administration has told Congress that Mr. Trump “determined” that the operation counts as a formal armed conflict.

But the stance that the operation does not count as “hostilities” because the people on the boats could not shoot back builds on a precedent established by President Barack Obama during the 2011 NATO air war over Libya, to significant disagreement at the time in Congress and within Mr. Obama’s own legal team.

The War Powers Resolution says that a president who unilaterally deploys U.S. forces into hostilities “shall terminate” the operation after 60 days if Congress has not authorized it by then. But the legislation left the term “hostilities” vague.

Under that law, the clock starts no later than when a president submits a required 48-hour notice to Congress. President Trump notified Congress about the first strike in his operation on Sept. 4, meaning the 60th day will arrive on Monday. That timing had raised the question of whether he would stop or, if not, how he would justify continuing the operation.

When the White House, Pentagon and Justice Department were asked that question by The New York Times last Wednesday, the administration provided a general statement that did not clarify. But Mr. Gaiser laid out the administration’s position in briefings to lawmakers and some staffers last week. His comments were earlier reported by The Washington Post.

The statement from the unnamed official also argued that “even at its broadest,” the War Powers Resolution “has been understood to apply to placing U.S. service members in harm’s way.” And it pointed to two past Office of Legal Counsel opinions discussing military deployment issues — one from a Republican administration and one from a Democratic one.

One memo, from 1984, contained a paragraph discussing what “hostilities” might mean, though it did not take a position. It observed that a House report about the War Powers Resolution had said that term should be interpreted as encompassing a danger of armed conflict, not just combat. It also noted that the Ford administration had argued that “hostilities” referred to a situation in which U.S. armed forces were “actively engaged in exchanges of fire.”

The other memo, from 1994, was about President Clinton’s authority to unilaterally deploy peacekeeping troops to Haiti. It did not discuss the 60-day limit.

The statement did not cite the Obama-era Libya precedent on the 60-day pullout law — which, while the closest historical analogue, did not lead to an opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel. The office’s top lawyer at the time did not agree with the theory Mr. Obama had embraced.

Other lawyers on Mr. Obama’s team had come up with that theory. But their argument that the war over Libya did not amount to “hostilities” was based on more than the idea that there was little risk of U.S. casualties, because there were no ground troops and Libyans could not shoot back. The Obama team’s argument also cited other constraining factors that are absent from Mr. Trump’s boat attacks, including that the Obama-era operation was a NATO-led multilateral mission to carry out a United Nations Security Council resolution.

By expanding on that precedent, Mr. Trump is more deeply entrenching the idea that the 60-day limit does not apply to air wars. That is an important development for the history of a law that presidents of both parties have chafed at over the past half century.

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution near the end of the Vietnam War.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution near the end of the Vietnam War, after decades in which presidents from both parties had used the large standing armies left in place after World War II to send troops into combat without congressional authorization. The bill contained a package of measures intended to wrest back Congress’s intended constitutional role in deciding when the United States would go to war.

President Richard M. Nixon vetoed it, calling it an unconstitutional intrusion on his authority as commander in chief. But Congress overrode the veto, so it became law anyway.

Since then, however, some parts of the legislation have eroded.

For instance, the law says presidents may deploy the military in hostile situations only with prior congressional authorization or if the country is under attack. Every subsequent president since Mr. Nixon has exceeded that limit, treating the provision as too narrow to be constitutional. Congress has acquiesced by not impeaching any president for doing so.

Another part of the law said Congress could order a president to immediately end an operation through a kind of resolution that presidents cannot veto. That clause was effectively struck down in 1983 when the Supreme Court ended so-called legislative vetoes of executive actions, saying that Congress could only legally act by passing measures that presidents could veto.

But the part of the legislation that created the 60-day window has fared better. (The law allows presidents to extend that period by up to 30 days if they certify to Congress that extra time is needed to withdraw U.S. forces safely.)

In 1980, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Carter administration produced a memo declaring that it was constitutional for Congress to impose a 60-day limit. Subsequent administrations have left that memo in place as the official legal interpretation of the executive branch, and it remains on the office’s website.

For the most part, the 60-day clock has not been an issue, for three reasons.

First, numerous one-off strikes and short-term interventions ordered by presidents without congressional authorization have ended before reaching 60 days. Second, Democratic and Republican administrations have argued that the law should not be interpreted as applying to ambiguous types of operations, like peacekeeping missions with only intermittent fighting, or naval operations to protect shipping lanes.

And finally, presidents have obtained congressional authorization for major wars, such as the Persian Gulf war, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda and its progeny.

Still, along the way, lawyers for some administrations — especially Republican ones — have suggested that the 60-day clock might be an unconstitutional limit on the commander in chief’s power. To date, though, no president has acknowledged that the law applied to a particular military operation that lacked congressional authorization and kept that mission going past the deadline by asserting a constitutional right to override the statute.

Other administrations — mostly Democratic ones — have come up with narrow interpretations of the statute to argue that they could lawfully continue certain military operations beyond its apparent deadline.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton directed the United States to participate in a NATO-led air war over Kosovo, including past the 60-day mark. Congress never explicitly authorized the operation, but before the deadline arrived, it passed a spending bill that provided funding for it.

The Clinton legal team argued that the spending bill counted as authorization, even though the War Powers Resolution said that providing funding for troops already in the field could not count as granting permission. But the Office of Legal Counsel opined that a past Congress could not constrict future lawmakers in how they chose to authorize an operation.

A similar situation arose in 2011, when Mr. Obama directed the United States to participate in a NATO-led air war over Libya that ended up lasting more than 60 days. Congress had not passed a spending bill for the operation, but, for policy reasons, Mr. Obama did not want to halt or scale back American participation before the war was over.

The Obama legal team was internally divided about whether the law required the president to ratchet back U.S. contributions to the operation anyway. But one faction came up with a theory that Mr. Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without changes because American involvement fell short of “hostilities.”

Mr. Obama embraced that argument and kept going, weathering significant criticism.

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

NY Times · Julian E. Barnes · November 1, 2025

4. After Trump’s Early Exit From APEC, Asia’s Top Powers Seek Alignment on Trade and Security

​Note the two different perspectives and the ROK and Japan toward the PRC.

​Summary:

After Trump’s early APEC exit, Xi Jinping dominated diplomacy in South Korea, meeting Japan’s Takaichi and South Korea’s Lee. Takaichi challenged Xi on Taiwan and Chinese militarization, reaffirming Japan’s defense stance. Lee sought China’s help reopening North-South dialogue. Xi emphasized economic cooperation, while regional leaders reaffirmed “robust” trade amid U.S. disengagement.

After Trump’s Early Exit From APEC, Asia’s Top Powers Seek Alignment on Trade and Security

In separate meetings with China’s Xi Jinping on Friday and Saturday, the leaders of Japan and South Korea sought to tamp down military tensions while boosting economic cooperation.

DONALD KIRK

Published: Nov. 1, 2025 01:17 PM ETUpdated: Nov. 2, 2025 04:05 AM ET

nysun.com

https://www.nysun.com/article/after-trumps-early-exit-from-apec-asias-top-powers-seek-alignment-on-trade-and-security

GYEONGJU, South Korea – While President Trump was tucking into Halloween festivities at the White House, leaders of the three richest East Asia nations were talking together about cementing commercial ties and easing military confrontation.

Communist China’s president, Xi Jinping, did not leave South Korea until Saturday evening after summits with the leaders of China’s two most formidable regional rivals, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan and President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea.

Ms. Takaichi, alone among the leaders Mr. Xi met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group summit, confronted him directly over the Free Chinese island province of Taiwan, which Japan will likely join in defending if China ever tries to make good on threats to take it over.

Voicing subtle expressions of “concern,” she told Mr. Xi that “favorable cross-Strait relations” between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan are “important for the region’s safety and security,” according to Nikkei Asia, an English-language offshoot of Japan’s financial daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

The reference to “cross-Strait relations” concerned persistent intimidation of Taiwan by Chinese air and naval forces based on the mainland, just 90 miles away across the Taiwan Strait.

Ms. Takaichi, whose right-wing outlook was influenced by Japan’s long-ruling Shinzo Abe, also warned against “China’s activity in the South China Sea,” where Beijing is buttressing its territorial claims by building air and naval bases on islands and atolls. Abe was assassinated in 2022, two years after he resigned as prime minister.

Reputed to be an ultra-rightist hawk, Ms. Takaichi hinted at rising Chinese military power when she said she hoped that she and Mr. Xi would “actively engage in dialogue” to resolve “various issues and challenges.”

Although both Japan and South Korea are bound to Washington by historic defense treaties, Mr. Lee played on China’s role as a peacemaker rather than as a military threat in his summit with Mr. Xi.

Most importantly, Mr. Lee asked Mr. Xi to exercise his influence to bring about dialogue between North and South Korea. Rebuffed in repeated attempts to get through to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Mr. Lee sees China as the only channel through which to communicate with the unpredictable leader who has declared South Korea an “enemy.”

Mr. Xi responded that China is willing to “jointly address challenges” via “the bilateral strategic relationship.” China exercises huge influence over North Korea – to which it supplies oil and food – while South Korea counts China as its biggest trading partner.

Mr. Xi described South Korea and China as “close neighbors who cannot move apart and inseparable partners in cooperation.” He said the two “have achieved co-prosperity through sustained exchanges and collaboration.”

One-on-one conversations between national leaders here this week were far more important than the waffling final “consensus” reached amid differing views on the meaning of “free trade” and how much to support it.

“In recent years, the focus has been much about finding common ground on free trade amid uncertainties driven by a growing tide of protectionism,” South Korea’s Yonhap News noted.

This year, said Yonhap, “the leaders reaffirmed that ‘robust’ trade and investment are vital to the growth and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region,” – a statement that could be interpreted any way the delegates wanted.

But what if Mr. Trump had stayed for the summit after meeting with Mr. Xi before it opened? Nikkei Asia reflected Asian views of Mr. Trump’s absence in a commentary headlined, “Trump’s early exit handed Xi the starring role at APEC.”

nysun.com

5. EDITORIAL: Reassurance from diplomatic flurry (Asia-Indo-Pacific and ROK-Japan)

​A Taiwan perspective on APEC. Note the positive assessment of ROK-Japan relations.

Excerpts:

Also of importance to Taiwan, in terms of the network of like-minded alliances in the region, was the cordial meeting between Takaichi and Lee, during which the two leaders agreed to develop Japan-South Korea relations “in a future-oriented and stable manner, based on the foundation built since the normalization of diplomatic ties,” according to Takaichi.

This was good news indeed, as Lee has been resistant to a warming of ties between the two nations after years of acrimony eased following overtures in 2023 between then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and then-South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.

Any concerns that improving ties would not survive the end of the administrations of Kishida and Yoon, and the impact such deterioration would have on the US-Japan-South Korea alignment, can be put to bed for the time being, as there now seems to be some institutionalization of the relationship.

​Summary:

Regional diplomacy reassured Taiwan as Trump and Xi’s Seoul meeting avoided the Taiwan issue, focusing instead on stabilizing U.S.-China trade ties. Japan’s Takaichi strengthened alliances with the U.S., China, and South Korea, reinforcing a free Asia-Indo-Pacific, addressing Chinese aggression, and institutionalizing Japan-ROK cooperation, bolstering Taiwan’s confidence in regional stability and solidarity.

• Editorial & Opinion
• ​Taipei Times

Sun, Nov 02, 2025 page8

EDITORIAL: Reassurance from diplomatic flurry

• https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2025/11/02/2003846488
• The attention of Taiwanese pundits and politicians last week was laser-focused on the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday in South Korea. The question on everyone’s lips was whether Xi would bring up the issue of Taiwan, and whether Trump would sell Taiwan out to improve the chances of securing favorable terms in the discussion over trade tensions.
• The attention was born of a paranoia that Trump would live up to his transactional reputation to Taiwan’s detriment. As it turns out, the meeting between the leaders of the two largest economies in the world remained focused on trade, with the US and China achieving little more than a reset that nevertheless signaled a willingness to reduce tensions.
• Taiwan was — according to reports — not even mentioned, but speculation over its inclusion distracted from the larger picture of the past week’s diplomatic flurry.
• For Taiwan, the important thing was not the Trump-Xi meeting in isolation, but what was learned from it in the larger context of Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo prior to his arrival in South Korea, the meeting between Xi and Takaichi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Friday, and the meeting between Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Thursday.
• The reset in the Trump-Xi meeting shows that, for all his attempts to subvert the international order, Xi is well aware of the degree to which China’s economy is intertwined with the US economy, and also how important it is for him to steady his ship to address his country’s domestic economic woes; it also shows that Trump was aware of the same realities for the US. For Taiwan, the noteworthy aspect was that Xi knows that China’s continued economic health remains dangerously exposed to punitive sanctions by the US.
• The meeting between Trump and Takaichi, a political prodigy of late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, sent a strong message about the resilience of the US-Japan alliance and the importance both leaders placed on national security, defense spending, a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
• Takaichi also noted that Japan faces an “unprecedented, severe security environment,” which could be interpreted as referring to Chinese actions in the region. In her meeting with Xi, she expressed serious concerns about the South China Sea and brought up the issue of Chinese actions in the East China Sea around the Japanese-administered Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列嶼), known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands.
• Her policy trajectory as a continuation of Abe’s national security concerns, as well as her affinity with Taiwan, reassured Taipei.
• Also of importance to Taiwan, in terms of the network of like-minded alliances in the region, was the cordial meeting between Takaichi and Lee, during which the two leaders agreed to develop Japan-South Korea relations “in a future-oriented and stable manner, based on the foundation built since the normalization of diplomatic ties,” according to Takaichi.
• This was good news indeed, as Lee has been resistant to a warming of ties between the two nations after years of acrimony eased following overtures in 2023 between then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and then-South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.
• Any concerns that improving ties would not survive the end of the administrations of Kishida and Yoon, and the impact such deterioration would have on the US-Japan-South Korea alignment, can be put to bed for the time being, as there now seems to be some institutionalization of the relationship.

6. Reagan–Thatcher, Trump–Takaichi, and Cold War II

​Are we in a Cold War II or 2.0?

Summary:

Francis P. Sempa compares Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi to Margaret Thatcher, suggesting a Trump–Takaichi partnership may mirror the Reagan–Thatcher alliance that won Cold War I. As the U.S. and Japan confront China in Cold War II, their strengthened alliance forms the cornerstone of Asia-Indo-Pacific strategy and deterrence.

Reagan–Thatcher, Trump–Takaichi, and Cold War II – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

spectator.org · Francis P. Sempa

October 31, 2025, 10:07 PM

https://spectator.org/reagan-thatcher-trump-takaichi-and-cold-war-ii/

In Japan, she is known as the “iron lady,” a not-so-subtle comparison to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher — the staunch American ally who helped Ronald Reagan defeat the Soviet Union in Cold War I. Sanae Takaichi recently became the prime minister of Japan. Like Thatcher, she rose to power from humble origins. Like Thatcher, she is a conservative known for supporting a “hawkish” foreign policy and a stronger military.

Like Thatcher, she is a conservative known for supporting a “hawkish” foreign policy and a stronger military.

In the late 1970s, in the wake of America’s defeat in Vietnam and the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, Thatcher partnered with Ronald Reagan to reverse the “correlation of forces” that appeared to be shifting in the Soviet Union’s favor in Cold War I. There are indications that Takaichi may partner with Donald Trump, in the aftermath of the disastrous, Carter-like Biden presidency, to face down the growing geopolitical challenge of China in Cold War II.

During President Trump’s recent Asia trip, he heaped praise upon Japan’s first female prime minister, saying that she “will be one of the great prime ministers.” Takaichi pledged to significantly increase Japan’s defense spending, signed an agreement on critical minerals and rare earths, and lauded potential new investments by Japanese companies in the United States. She also praised Trump’s peacemaking efforts around the world. (RELATED: Japan’s MAGA Moment)

Prime Minister Takaichi is a protégé of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, who was a key Trump ally during Trump’s first term. Abe, who stepped down as prime minister in 2020, was assassinated in 2022 while giving a speech in support of a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidate for Japan’s upper house of parliament.

There is geopolitical symmetry in our alliances with Britain and Japan. Thatcher’s Britain, an island offshore of the Atlantic coast of Eurasia, was the most important maritime ally of the United States during Cold War I. Takaichi’s Japan, an island offshore of the Pacific coast of Eurasia, is the most important maritime ally of the United States in Cold War II. Just as the Atlantic Ocean and Western Europe were centers of gravity in Cold War I, the Pacific Ocean and East and South Asia are the centers of gravity in Cold War II.

In the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher achieved victory over the Soviet Union while avoiding World War III. Both leaders sensed that Mikhail Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader who, in Thatcher’s words, they could “do business with.” Their policies led to a peaceful resolution of Cold War I. Trump and Takaichi understand that we are in Cold War II with China, but they also know that a kinetic war with China would be disastrous for both sides. Trump and Takaichi are both speaking softly while wielding a big stick in the form of military power and a strengthened alliance. (RELATED: Some Dare Call It Treason)

President Xi is no Gorbachev, and China, although it has weaknesses that can and should be exploited, is not as vulnerable to collapse as the Soviet Union was in the mid-to-late 1980s. Cold War II is not likely to end while Xi remains in power. Xi has been systematically purging China’s military leaders and Communist Party officials, and Sinologists differ on whether the purges are evidence of strength or weakness.

In either case, it is important for China to be faced with a strong U.S.-led Indo-Pacific alliance, and U.S.–Japanese relations are the cornerstone of such an alliance. Let’s hope that, as Trump and Takaichi said, it is the “Golden Age” of U.S.-Japan relations.

7. Trump Threatens Military Action in Nigeria Over Protections for Christians

​Will we be consistent against all violators of religious freedom? (yes, a rhetorical question). However, among the worst of course in north Korea. 

​Summary:

President Trump threatened military action and aid cuts against Nigeria, accusing its government of failing to protect Christians from Islamist violence. He ordered the Pentagon to prepare for strikes, while Nigeria’s president denied the allegations. Analysts doubt feasibility without Nigerian cooperation. Trump also labeled Nigeria a violator of religious freedom.

Trump Threatens Military Action in Nigeria Over Protections for Christians

NY Times · Pranav Baskar · November 1, 2025

Accusing Nigeria of not doing enough to protect Christians from violence, President Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to prepare for action.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/world/africa/trump-nigeria-military.html

President Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

By

Nov. 1, 2025Updated 8:31 p.m. ET

President Trump on Saturday threatened Nigeria with potential military action and said the United States might cut off aid, accusing the West African country’s government of failing to protect Christians.

Mr. Trump said in a post on social media that he was instructing the Pentagon “to prepare for possible action” to wipe out “Islamic Terrorists” in the country. “If we attack,” he wrote, “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

Later on Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to the president’s post with: “Yes sir.” The Pentagon, he said, was “preparing for action.”

“The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria — and anywhere — must end immediately,” he said, adding, “Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

The announcements came a day after Mr. Trump said he would designate Nigeria a country of particular concern, a label given by the government for nations “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.” He claimed on social media on Friday that “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” adding that thousands of Christians were facing targeted violence — a claim made by some evangelical groups and U.S. lawmakers.

Nigeria has denied the accusations, and its president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Saturday defended the country’s protection of religious groups, before Mr. Trump’s threat.

The characterization of Nigeria “as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” he said in a statement, responding to Mr. Trump’s announcement on Friday.

Mr. Trump’s threat of military action faces major challenges. The United States withdrew its forces last year from Niger, to Nigeria’s north, and airstrikes would most likely seek to target small groups scattered across a large area. Effective military action against these groups, analysts say, is likely to require assistance from the Nigerian military and government — which Mr. Trump also threatened to cut off from assistance.

Around 220 million people live in Nigeria, and parts of the country have long suffered violence at the hands of extremist groups, including Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group that has attacked Christians and Muslims it does not consider faithful enough.

But there are also secessionists in the south, criminal groups known for kidnappings in the northwest and other violent groups with their own motives.

Extremist violence in the country “affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found in 2024.

Mr. Trump has already targeted American aid work around the world, working to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has long been central to distributing foreign aid. Nigeria has been a major recipient of U.S. global health funding, relying on it for about 21 percent of its national health budget.

Ruth Maclean, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

See more on: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Donald Trump

NY Times · Pranav Baskar · November 1, 2025

8. These are the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela

​Please go to the link to view the graphics. There are a lot more ships reported here than I expected.

These are the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela

Washington Post · Júlia Ledur

The large-scale buildup of U.S. military forces and assets in the Caribbean suggests that the Trump administration is preparing to expand operations.

Updated yesterday at 9:22 a.m. EDT

By Júlia Ledur and Susannah George

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/11/01/venezuela-us-militarty-aircraft-carrier-ships-strikes-caribbean-trump-maduro/

The large-scale buildup of U.S. military forces and assets in the Caribbean suggests that the Trump administration may be preparing to expand operations in the region, escalating tensions between Washington and Caracas and raising the possibility of the first U.S. strikes on Venezuela.

Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

U.S. forces in the Caribbean include eight Navy warships, a special operations vessel and a nuclear-powered attack submarine. When the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford arrives in the Caribbean next week, it will bring with it three more warships and more than 4,000 additional troops.

President Donald Trump has indicated that he is planning for increased operations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but when asked on Friday whether he is considering military strikes inside Venezuela, he replied “no.”

9. ‘A House of Dynamite’ gets a lot right. Experts hope that terrifies you.

​As noted this was not well received in the Pentagon.

Is it a wakeup call?

How many of us remember the civil defense drills in school and hiding under our desks? I remember: "Do not look at the light."

Excerpts:

“Most nuclear policy experts say ‘A House of Dynamite’ accurately captures how fragile and fallible America’s nuclear defenses actually are… ‘Everything changes when a missile is in the air. At that point, you have already lost. We stand much closer to a nuclear precipice than most of us realize.’”

...

“We are at a moment where we are losing the last generation of the people who actually understand how terrible nuclear war actually is… For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons in the world is increasing.”

​Summary:

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, Netflix’s top global film, vividly exposes the fragility of U.S. nuclear defense systems and the terrifying speed of nuclear decision-making. Experts affirm its realism: America’s missile defenses are unreliable, presidents have mere minutes to decide alone, and deterrence depends on human judgment. The film, echoing The Day After’s 1980s impact, underscores renewed nuclear dangers amid U.S., Russian, and Chinese rearmament. Historians and policymakers say it reminds audiences that nuclear war remains a present, not past, threat—one still lacking effective safeguards or democratic oversight. The Pentagon even circulated internal memos countering misconceptions the movie raised.

‘A House of Dynamite’ gets a lot right. Experts hope that terrifies you.

Washington Post · Anne Branigin

If you think Kathryn Bigelow’s new thriller is terrifying, wait until you hear from a nuclear policy expert.

By Anne Branigin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2025/11/01/house-dynamite-bigelow-nuclear-war-experts/

On the morning of Oct. 10, 1983, in the rocky hills of Camp David, President Ronald Reagan was treated to an early screening of one of the year’s most anticipated films, “The Day After,” a two-hour dystopian imagining of what nuclear apocalypse might look like in the United States.

In a matter of weeks, the movie would air on ABC on Thanksgiving and have a profound effect on a politically polarized American public. More than 100 million people would watch scenes of a mushroom cloud swelling over Lawrence, Kansas, with many citizens instantly vaporized. In the wake of the attack, ash smothered farmland, mothers gave birth to deformed babies, and survivors died slow, agonizing deaths. Historians would credit the television event with helping sway Americans against Reagan’s “peace through strength” approach to nuclear conflict. Reagan too, gradually pivoted, in rhetoric, in behavior, in policy.

But that fall day, before heading back to the White House, Reagan took to his diary to process what he had just seen. “It is powerfully done — all $7 mil. worth. It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed,” he wrote. “Whether it will be of help to the ‘anti nukes’ or not, I cant say. My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a nuclear war.”

More than 40 years later, as world leaders are building up arsenals of next-generation weapons, a new nuclear war movie hopes to inspire a similar awakening. But Kathryn Bigelow’s buzzy procedural, “A House of Dynamite,” is less interested in the effects of a nuclear attack, focusing its attention instead on the processes designed to keep Americans — and the rest of the world — safe from annihilation.

End of carousel

It’s now Netflix’s most-watched movie in the world, garnering 22.1 million views in three days and launching fiery discourse among scholars and normies alike. Within a week, the film’s official Reddit thread has clocked more than 3,700 responses, while military defense experts and policy advocates have picked apart the movie’s themes and details.

According to a Bloomberg News report, the Pentagon itself waded into the discourse, in an internal memo sent earlier this month by the Missile Defense Agency. That document told recipients to prepare to “address false assumptions, provide correct facts and a better understanding” about the weapons depicted in the movie. (The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.)

But most nuclear policy experts say “A House of Dynamite” accurately captures how fragile and fallible America’s nuclear defenses actually are.

Garrett Graff, historian and author of the 2025 bestseller “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing the Atomic Bomb,” put it this way: “Everything changes when a missile is in the air. At that point, you have already lost.

“We stand much closer to a nuclear precipice than most of us realize.”

HANDOUT IMAGE: Military officials at STRATCOM (Strategic Command Headquarters) in Omaha assess an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from an unidentified attacker in 'A House of Dynamite.' (Eros Hoagland/Netflix)

In “A House of Dynamite,” the characters tasked with saving the world are sleep-deprived parents, bureaucrats navigating divorces and new jobs, intelligence officers who groan about receiving a work call while they’re on vacation. Military jargon rattles through the dialogue. The events of the film — a 30-minute sequence repeated three times, through different perspectives — occur (with some license) in real time. (Here come spoilers.)

Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim said he and Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director of “The Hurt Locker,” committed early in the filmmaking process to being as accurate and authentic as possible. They worked with more than a dozen technical experts, he said, including people who have held senior roles at the Pentagon, CIA and the White House, such as Larry Pfeiffer, the senior director of President Barack Obama’s Situation Room.

Pfeiffer, who was on hand for scenes depicting the White House “SitRoom,” reported that the set felt so authentic, when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket at one point during the production, “I felt pangs of guilt as if I had brought my phone into a secure facility.”

Still, experts have debated the level of accuracy and plausibility in the film, which chronicles the government’s response to a single intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched by an unidentified attacker.

“Approximately three minutes ago we detected an ICBM over the Pacific,” a general flatly informs a wide-eyed group of government officials in the film’s opening sequence. “Current flight trajectory is consistent with impact somewhere in the continental United States.” The estimated time until the nuke lands somewhere in the heartland (Chicago, it turns out): 18 minutes.

“I’ve seen people quibbling with the idea that we would not know where the launch came from or who was responsible,” said Mark Melamed, who helps lead the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a D.C.-based nonprofit. (Some of Melamed’s colleagues reviewed and provided notes on an early draft of the “House of Dynamite” script.) Other points of contention: that the president would face such immense time pressure in the scenario outlined in the film — since it’s just one weapon — and that any adversary would launch just one nuke at the United States.

Oppenheim has said the inciting incident is the biggest creative liberty the film takes. But what follows is “a series of decisions that all fall within the realm of possible to probable,” he said. “Somebody might make a different decision if this were to unfold.”

“A House of Dynamite” director Kathryn Bigelow, shown at an Oct. 17 screening in Los Angeles, has said she wanted to envision how the country may respond to a nuclear attack in the present day. (Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

“A House of Dynamite” screenwriter Noah Oppenheim said he and director Kathryn Bigelow wanted their film to “do justice” to the American military and government personnel responsible for responding to a nuclear crisis. (Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

“These are all fair points for debate. Mileage may vary in terms of how plausible you find individual elements of this scenario,” Melamed said. “We’ve never seen nuclear weapons used in the world that we currently inhabit, so I think it’s totally fair to say we don’t know exactly how that would play out.”

It is true that we have a robust missile defense system — but not a foolproof one. In “A House of Dynamite,” two land-based missiles are launched from Fort Greely in Alaska to intercept the incoming enemy one. Both fail.

“The description of it as a coin flip is generally quite accurate,” Melamed said — and that 50/50 chance is under test conditions, leading many experts to speculate that their success rate in the real world would be lower. (The film describes it as a 61 percent rate. In its internal memo, the Pentagon reportedly claimed a 100 percent success rate on its tests.)

It is also true that, if someone were to launch a nuclear attack, the world’s leaders, their militaries and their bureaucrats would have mere minutes to talk through the most consequential decision in human history. It would take 30 minutes or less for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched from the Pacific Ocean to hit the United States. Launched from the Atlantic coastline, where Russian submarines regularly patrol, it would take somewhere around 10 to 12 minutes.

Yes, Graff said, the fate of the world would be decided over a conference call while the president “and whichever senior officials happen to be reachable at that exact moment” were simultaneously being evacuated to various underground bunkers.

And yes, Graff confirmed, “the nuclear football” at the heart of America’s nuclear deterrence strategy is exactly what is depicted in the film: a plain leather briefcase with a couple of briefing binders, “filled with what is pejoratively called a ‘Denny’s Menu’ of nuclear options of ‘rare, medium, and well done.’” Always just steps away from the commander in chief.

In “A House of Dynamite,” the U.S. president (played by Idris Elba) laments that he has had just one briefing on nuclear war. Experts say that rings true. (Eros Hoagland/NETFLIX/Eros Hoagland/Netflix )

In the film, the president (played by Idris Elba) laments that he has had only one briefing about how nuclear war might unfold, yet the decision rests on his shoulders alone. This also rings true, Graff said: While the scenarios prepared by the military and the Pentagon have been carefully planned and choreographed, “historically, the president never participated in a decision-making drill himself.”

“You wouldn’t ever want your adversary to have insight into how a president would actually react to a nuclear attack,” he explained.

That the president is the sole authority on commanding such a strike has been a core part of our nuclear policy since the Cold War, said Erin Dumbacher, the Stanton Nuclear Security Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The president is capable of launching a nuclear assault at any time — by land, by sea or by air. Theoretically, that readiness is enough to discourage the country’s enemies from attacking.

“Nuclear weapons policy is the only area where the Constitution does not require the president to seek congressional authorization to go to war,” Dumbacher said. And what recourse is there for a president who sets off nuclear armageddon?

“Certainly there are no guardrails on the president other than the threat of impeachment, I suppose,” Dumbacher said.

With “A House of Dynamite,” Bigelow, a vocal advocate for denuclearization, expects audiences will be — ought to be — shocked by these realities.

“I have a friend who saw it on a plane over the weekend and he texted me. I think he must have been on a red eye. He texted me in the middle of the night with like, the head exploding emoji,” said Melamed.

In the 21st century, the nuclear war film has become a period piece. Nuclear weapons are now little more than a plot point, just another tool in a bad guy’s arsenal. But as “A House of Dynamite” reminds us, we still live in the nuclear age. And indeed, we may be at a crucial turning point.

“We are at a moment where we are losing the last generation of the people who actually understand how terrible nuclear war actually is,” said Graff, the author and historian.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons in the world is increasing: Russia has been expanding its arsenal, as has China. Mounting global tensions and shifting alliances could mean that even more countries will elect to build their own stockpiles, no longer confident that the United States will use its “nuclear umbrella” to protect them.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has ordered the Pentagon to construct a new, more robust missile defense shield dubbed “Golden Dome,” which would effectively flood Earth’s orbit with hundreds, if not thousands, of “suicide satellites” to intercept enemy missiles. This week, Trump said he directed the Pentagon to begin testing its nuclear weapons, “immediately.”

“We don’t want to think about these existential threats in this way every day and we shouldn’t,” Dumbacher said. “But we do, in fact, live in this world. And so we have to kind of take a step across or through that disbelief in order to do something about it.”

Washington Post · Anne Branigin

10. The U.S. Army's Drone Nightmare Is Coming True

​Are drones game changing? Do they change the character of war? Is "catching up" to China (and Russia, Ukraine, and even Iran and north Korea) sufficient? What about leaping ahead? What comes next after drones? 

​Excerpts:

Despite these initiatives, the U.S. Army still has a lot of catching up to do. China, for example, leads in mass production and component manufacturing, dominating the global consumer drone market through companies like DJI.

Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army is rapidly advancing autonomous drone capabilities and integrating them into its strategic doctrine. Russia, meanwhile, has embraced attritable drone warfare, deploying thousands of expendable drones and loitering munitions. Its battlefield tactics emphasize saturation attacks and electronic warfare, areas where the U.S. is still developing effective countermeasures.

Ukraine’s innovation model deserves special mention. Driven by frontline units and supported by a decentralized tech ecosystem, Ukraine has demonstrated how rapid iteration and battlefield-driven design can yield highly effective drone systems.

The U.S. Army is studying this model, but has yet to replicate its agility and responsiveness. The centralized nature of U.S. military procurement and development makes it difficult to adopt such a nimble approach.

But the fact that the military top brass recognizes the problem is, at the very least, a good start.

Summary:

Ukraine’s war made cheap drones central to modern combat, exposing U.S. shortcomings. Despite pioneering Predators and Reapers, America now trails China, Russia, and Ukraine in scale, speed, and affordability. Costly systems and slow procurement hinder adaptation. Pentagon initiatives like Replicator and DOGE aim to mass-produce expendable, autonomous drones, but progress remains uneven.

The U.S. Army's Drone Nightmare Is Coming True

nationalsecurityjournal.org · Isaac Seitz · November 1, 2025

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-u-s-armys-drone-nightmare-is-coming-true/

Key Points and Summary – Ukraine’s war made drones the centerpiece of modern combat, shifting battlefields toward WWI-style positional fights as cheap FPV swarms hunt armor and artillery.

-While the U.S. pioneered Predators and Reapers, it lags China, Russia, and even Ukraine in scale, cost, and speed.

S-70 Drone VIA X Screenshot. Image Credit: X Screenshot.

-Bureaucratic procurement, thin manufacturing capacity, and pricey systems like Switchblade 600s hinder mass adoption versus $500 FPVs.

-Washington is responding with Replicator and DOGE to field expendable, autonomous drones and treat them as consumables, empowering frontline buys.

-Progress is real but uneven; until America can iterate fast and produce at scale, adversaries’ swarms and jammers will keep the edge.

The U.S. Army Isn’t Ready for a Drone War

The ongoing war in Ukraine has revealed to the world just how vital drones are in modern and future warfare.

Whereas armies relied on high-speed, precision artillery to outmaneuver their enemies, with the advent of drones, two world-class armies are forced to assume WWI-style positional warfare.

What’s more shocking is that the U.S., once a world leader in drone technology, is now falling behind the likes of China, Russia, and even Ukraine.

Drones are the New Normal

In the late 90s, the U.S. was firmly leading the world in drone production/technology. The Cold War saw the introduction of the RQ/MQ-1 Predator drone.

This platform was relatively small and only possessed two hard points. This platform was followed by the larger, more capable MQ-9 Reaper.

The MQ-9 saw extensive use during the war on terror, where it targeted Al-Qaeda and ISIS militants.

The platform was so successful that, through that strike, the U.S. would adopt drones like the MQ-9 as the future and soon replace manned fighter jets.

When the war in Ukraine broke out, military drone technology evolved in a very different way.

Lancet Drone. Image Credit: Russian State Media.

Lancet Drone from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Instead of growing larger, the drone shrank. Initially intended for civilian use, small quadcopter drones were retrofitted to carry and drop grenades, antitank missiles, and other types of explosives.

Drones were also converted into one-way kamikaze platforms, the most notorious being the Russian Lancet and the Iranian-made Shahed-136 (or Geran-2 for its Russian-made counterpart).

These drones were quickly proliferated between both sides and fundamentally changed how the war was fought.

Why The U.S. Army Isn’t Keeping Pace

The U.S. Army, on the other hand, has been slow to deploy drones at the same scale.

One of the most pressing issues is the Army’s procurement process, which has been widely criticized for being too slow and bureaucratic. Senior Army officials have openly acknowledged this problem. Lieutenant General Charlie Costanza, for example, admitted that “we aren’t moving fast enough.

And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to realize, ‘Hey, we need to go fast.’

This slow pace stands in stark contrast to the agile innovation models seen in Ukraine, where frontline units rapidly iterate drone designs and tactics based on real-time battlefield feedback. Ukraine’s approach has allowed it to adapt quickly and effectively, while the U.S. Army remains bogged down by red tape and procedural inertia.

Manufacturing capacity is another area where the U.S. Army is struggling. While Ukraine reportedly produces up to 200,000 drones per month and Russia has equipped its forces with over 1.5 million small drones, the U.S. Army’s production goals are far more modest.

U.S. Air Force Drones. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The SkyFoundry initiative, for instance, aims to produce 10,000 drones per month by late 2026, with a long-term goal of one million annually.

Although this represents a significant step forward, it still lags behind adversaries’ current output.

The lack of industrial capacity to produce drones at scale hampers the Army’s ability to saturate the battlefield with these critical assets.

Too Little Bang for Too Many Bucks

The Army has several drone systems at its disposal, but they are all far too expensive to mass-produce in the quantities needed for a comprehensive system.

The Army’s current drone systems, such as the Switchblade 600, are expensive, costing upwards of $170,000 per unit (don’t even get me started on what Palantir and Anduril charge for their systems).

In contrast, both Ukraine and Russia have effectively deployed FPV drones with larger payloads that cost as little as $500.

This stark cost disparity limits the U.S. Army’s ability to scale its drone operations. Moreover, the Army has struggled to integrate artificial intelligence and autonomy into its drone platforms.

CH-7 Drone from China. Image Credit: Chinese Government

While adversaries are deploying AI-assisted targeting and autonomous navigation systems, the U.S. is still in the early stages of developing drones that can understand a commander’s intent and operate independently of constant human input.

What the Army is Doing to Catch Up

Recognizing these shortcomings, the Pentagon has launched several initiatives to accelerate drone development and deployment. One of the most notable is the Replicator Initiative, introduced in 2023.

This program seeks to field thousands of low-cost, autonomous drones by 2025, emphasizing systems that are small, smart, cheap, and numerous.

Over 30 contracts have already been awarded under this initiative, signaling a strong commitment to modernization. However, progress has been uneven, and questions remain about how effectively these systems will be integrated into broader military operations.

Another significant effort is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is spearheading a plan to acquire 30,000 small drones and streamline procurement processes. One of the key innovations here is the shift in how drones are classified.

By treating drones as consumables rather than durable assets, the Army can empower frontline commanders to purchase drones directly, bypassing traditional procurement bottlenecks. This change could dramatically improve responsiveness and adaptability on the battlefield.

Still a Long Way to Go

Despite these initiatives, the U.S. Army still has a lot of catching up to do. China, for example, leads in mass production and component manufacturing, dominating the global consumer drone market through companies like DJI.

Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army is rapidly advancing autonomous drone capabilities and integrating them into its strategic doctrine. Russia, meanwhile, has embraced attritable drone warfare, deploying thousands of expendable drones and loitering munitions. Its battlefield tactics emphasize saturation attacks and electronic warfare, areas where the U.S. is still developing effective countermeasures.

Ukraine’s innovation model deserves special mention. Driven by frontline units and supported by a decentralized tech ecosystem, Ukraine has demonstrated how rapid iteration and battlefield-driven design can yield highly effective drone systems.

The U.S. Army is studying this model, but has yet to replicate its agility and responsiveness. The centralized nature of U.S. military procurement and development makes it difficult to adopt such a nimble approach.

But the fact that the military top brass recognizes the problem is, at the very least, a good start.

About the Author: Isaac Seitz

Isaac Seitz, a Defense Columnist, graduated from Patrick Henry College’s Strategic Intelligence and National Security program. He has also studied Russian at Middlebury Language Schools and has worked as an intelligence Analyst in the private sector.

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nationalsecurityjournal.org · Isaac Seitz · November 1, 2025

11. Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.

​What are the national security implications? What about for the broader defense industrial base?

I wonder about the question: "is the West worth defending?"  What are these high school students taking away from these seminars? And what is the intent here? Instead of college will they now receive their "indoctrination" from Palantir? I might feel a little better if these high school grads did an enlistment in the military before going to Palantir.

​Excerpts:

“Interns were put on live projects for customers in complex industries, from hospitals and insurance companies to defense industrials and even government work, in one fellow’s case.”

...

“Questions the company hoped the seminars would answer for the fellows included: What is the West? What are its challenges and how do we think through them? And, perhaps most important, is the West worth defending?—which Palantir sought to answer in the affirmative.”

​Summary:

Palantir’s Meritocracy Fellowship recruits high-school grads into government-facing data work, bypassing traditional degrees. The program immerses 22 teens in Western civ and IR, then embeds them on live defense and critical-infrastructure projects. If scaled, this pipeline could expand tech talent, accelerate deployment of AI tools, and reshape vetting and training.

Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.

WSJ

Tech company offers 22 teens a chance to skip college for its fellowship, which includes a four-week seminar on Western civilization

By Angel Au-Yeung

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 | Photographs by Gabby Jones for WSJ

Nov. 2, 2025 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/palantir-thinks-college-might-be-a-waste-so-its-hiring-high-school-grads-aed267d5

• Palantir’s new ‘Meritocracy Fellowship’ attracted more than 500 high-school graduates, with 22 selected for the inaugural class.
• The four-month program includes a four-week seminar on Western foundations and U.S. history, followed by embedded work on live company projects.
• Fellows Matteo Zanini chose Palantir over college, despite external pressure, valuing the company’s mission and early project involvement.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• Palantir’s new ‘Meritocracy Fellowship’ attracted more than 500 high-school graduates, with 22 selected for the inaugural class.

At first, the idea of skipping college to take a fellowship for Palantir PLTR 3.04%increase; green up pointing triangle Technologies seemed preposterous to Matteo Zanini. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“College is broken,” one Palantir post said. “Admissions are based on flawed criteria. Meritocracy and excellence are no longer the pursuits of educational institutions,” it said. The fellowship offered a path for high-school students to work full time at the company.

After deciding to apply, Zanini found out he got the fellowship at around the same time he learned of his admission to Brown University. Brown wouldn’t allow him to defer and he had also landed a full-ride scholarship through the Department of Defense.

“No one said to do the fellowship,” said Zanini, who turned 18 in September. “All of my friends, my teachers, my college counselor, it was a unanimous no.” His parents left the decision to him, and he decided to go with Palantir.

Matteo Zanini, a Palantir fellow.

Zanini is one of more than 500 high-school graduates who applied for Palantir’s “Meritocracy Fellowship”—an experiment launched under Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s thesis that existing American universities are no longer reliable or necessary for training good workers.

Some fellows applied because college wasn’t interesting to them. Others applied after getting rejected from target schools.

Palantir is a data-analytics company that has become known lately for its government contracts, including with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Its work with immigration enforcement authorities and in other arenas has drawn criticism, but Karp and other executives have leaned into a pro-America ethos. The company also has many commercial clients.

Karp—who studied philosophy at Haverford College and got a law degree from Stanford University—said in an August earnings call that hiring university students these days has meant hiring people who have “just been engaged in platitudes.”

The inaugural class of 22 Palantir fellows wraps up in November. If they’ve done well in the four-month program, they’ll have the chance to work full time at Palantir, sans college degree.

The fellowship kicked off with a four-week seminar with more than two dozen speakers. Each week had a theme: the foundations of the West, U.S. history and its unique culture, movements within America, and case studies of leaders including Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.

This was a surprise to the fellows, who were given little information about the program before they started.

“We felt obligated to provide more than the average internship,” said Jordan Hirsch, a senior counselor who works with Karp on special projects, including this program. “They’re really still kids, right?”

Fellowship participants take part in a debate led by Palantir’s Jordan Hirsch and Sam Feldman at the company’s New York City office.

The interns’ inexperience showed early on: One fellow asked Hirsch how to take notes during the seminars. “He mostly did math and coding and was never too engaged in history courses,” Hirsch said. “He said he’d never taken a note in his life.”

Questions the company hoped the seminars would answer for the fellows included: What is the West? What are its challenges and how do we think through them? And, perhaps most important, is the West worth defending?—which Palantir sought to answer in the affirmative.

The fellows read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, took an improv-themed class on how to think on one’s feet and present oneself in the workplace, and went on field trips, including to the site of the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. While they were there, the students learned of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“It was very poignant to be brought back to that time two centuries ago when there was so much political contention, and then seeing it pop up again on that day,” said Aryan Mehra, a fellow who grew up near San Francisco. “I don’t think any of us expected that.”

Aryan Mehra, a Palantir fellow.

Gideon Rose, a former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and an adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College, said his course for Palantir fellows didn’t involve ideological or politically partisan perspectives. Instead, he focused on introductory international relations.

One fellow asked Rose whether he thought it was a good professional bet for people to skip college and go straight into the workforce. “It wouldn’t be for most people,” Rose recalled answering. “It could be for some people. That’s their choice to make.”

After the seminars, the interns embedded themselves in teams within Palantir, often traveling all across the country with other “forward-deployed engineers”—a job title coined by Palantir that has spread to other startups. These engineers operate much like consultants, traveling to where the clients are.

The first week with the teams—which Palantir intentionally set up as a trial by fire—proved difficult for all the fellows. Interns were put on live projects for customers in complex industries, from hospitals and insurance companies to defense industrials and even government work, in one fellow’s case.

By week three or four, Palantir executives said they had a clear sense of who was working well in the company environment, and who wasn’t.

The company hasn’t decided which of the 22 fellows will get full-time offers. Some of the fellows would like to stay, even if it’s against the wishes of their parents.

Interns who do well in the fellowship are offered a full-time role at Palantir.

“It’s been a source of conflict between me and my parents,” said Zanini. His mother was under the impression that he would do the fellowship as a gap year, and then reapply to return to college. But if he gets a full-time offer, that might no longer be the case.

Part of the appeal, says Zanini, is the company mission and the surprising amount of work and control he has been given, despite his inexperience in the workforce. “I mean, what company puts people on real projects on their third day?” said Zanini. “That’s insane.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How could Palantir’s internship program serve as a model for other companies? Join the conversation below.

It’s also possible some might turn down Palantir’s offer to stay, and instead reapply for college, said Sam Feldman, another Palantir employee who helped manage the program with Hirsch.

“But I’m going to guess that whether they stay or leave, you’ll have zero who end up in investment banking or consulting,” said Feldman. “They’ve tasted what it’s like to build and have agency.”

Write to Angel Au-Yeung at angel.au-yeung@wsj.com

WSJ

12. Hegseth: Nuclear tests bolster credible strategic deterrence, lower risk of nuclear conflict

​(rhetorical questions directed to our national leadership) 

Please answer the question of what actually deters Xi, Putin, Kim, and the Mullahs? We throw around the term deterrence rather flippantly. Do we really understand how they are deterred and by what actions (not just statements). Is testing a sufficient action? Or does that only work in our minds when we "mirror image?" Have we convinced ourselves of deterrence without really understanding what deters our adversaries.How does a test deter someone (yes we can make the case that it can demonstrate capability and will - but we need a lot more demonstration of will and I am not sure our actions are backing that up).  

​Summary:

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a resumption of U.S. underground nuclear tests, arguing that credible deterrence reduces nuclear conflict risk. He said stronger U.S. capabilities and alliances make war less likely, citing adversaries’ expanding arsenals as justification for the move.

Hegseth: Nuclear tests bolster credible strategic deterrence, lower risk of nuclear conflict

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth leaves after a bilateral meeting with Malaysia’s Defense Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) more >

Print

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Friday, October 31, 2025

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/oct/31/pete-hegseth-nuclear-tests-bolster-credible-strategic-deterrence/

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — President Trump’s decision to resume nuclear tests was needed to strengthen the credibility of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and will help prevent nuclear war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.

Mr. Hegseth told reporters the Pentagon will partner with the Energy Department, which is in charge of maintaining nuclear warheads, on resuming underground tests after Mr. Trump announced this week that the testing will resume.

“The president was clear: We need to have a credible nuclear deterrent. That is the baseline of our deterrence,” Mr. Hegseth said during a meeting with Kao Kim Hourn, secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, host of an international defense leaders’ conference.

Understanding nuclear warhead capabilities and resuming testing is “a very responsible way to do that,” he said.

“I think it makes nuclear conflict less likely if you know what you have and make sure it operates properly,” he said of underground testing that was halted in 1992.

The Pentagon is moving quickly to implement the president’s directive to resume testing, Mr. Hegseth said.

“We don’t seek conflict with China or any other nation, but the stronger we are, the stronger our alliances are, the more we work with allies in this region and around the

world, I think the less likely conflict becomes,” he said.

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Mr. Trump said the decision to begin testing again after a 33-year hiatus under a self-imposed testing moratorium was based on adversaries resuming nuclear tests. He provided no details on those tests.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said recently that if the United States begins nuclear testing again, Russia will also conduct nuclear tests.

“America will ensure that we have the strongest, most capable nuclear arsenal, so that we maintain peace through strength,” Mr. Hegseth said.

The defense chief said that, during multiple bilateral meetings with defense leaders from Southeast Asia states, he stressed the Trump administration’s approach to security is “peace through strength” and the nuclear arsenal is part of it.

The Pentagon is currently engaged in a $1 trillion modernization program over 10 years to upgrade nuclear weapons and the missiles, bombers and submarines that

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can deliver them.

For decades, anti-nuclear advocates in Congress blocked the development of newer, safer and more reliable nuclear warheads.

Instead, the warhead stockpile has been regularly maintained and monitored without conducting tests to determine if the warheads are still functioning properly.

As part of the modernization, the new Sentinel land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are being built along with the new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and new B-21 strategic stealth bombers.

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The modernization comes as China’s nuclear forces expanded rapidly from the several hundred warheads they had a decade ago to more than 600 today. Intelligence estimates China’s arsenal will include up to 1,500 warheads by 2035, according to military officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported that between 2020 and 2024, China sharply expanded the nuclear-weapons test site at Lop Nur.

The Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military said the expanded activity is likely preparation for operating the test site continuously “raised concerns regarding its adherence to the U.S. ’zero yield’ standard adhered to by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France in their respective nuclear weapons testing moratoria.”

No full-scale nuclear tests at Lop Nur, however, have been reported.

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China’s nuclear warheads were also developed with stolen U.S. warhead designs. In the 1990s, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that China obtained secrets on every deployed U.S. warhead through espionage.

Mr. Trump announced Wednesday on Truth Social that he was ordering the Pentagon to test the U.S. nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear-armed states.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will

begin immediately,” he stated, using the new name for the Pentagon, which has yet to be formally approved by Congress.

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“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years,” the president said.

The announced resumption of U.S. testing came days after Russia tested two new nuclear weapons, the Poseidon — a nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable underwater drone, and the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

The timing suggests Mr. Trump may have been referring to the Russian drone and missile tests as the reason.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to the president that the Russian tests “cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test.”

Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way back to the U.S. from South Korea that other nations’ testing prompted the shift in policy.

“With others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do also,” he said.

Nuclear testing sites will be determined later. Nevada was the most recent nuclear test site.

On mounting nuclear threats posed by China and Russia, Mr. Trump said he favored holding talks to reduce nuclear arsenals.

“I’d like to see a denuclearization because we have so many and Russia’s second and China’s third and China will catch up within four or five years,” he said. “We are actually talking to Russia about that, and China would be added to that if we do something.”

For several years, China has refused to join U.S.-Russia nuclear arms talks and has said it would do so after sharp reductions in U.S. nuclear forces.

“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday.

Currently, the U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal includes 3,700 nuclear warheads, behind Russia’s 4,300, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr. Hegseth was in Malaysia as part of a meeting of ASEAN defense ministers.

Earlier Friday, he met with Adm. Dong Jun, China’s defense minister and voiced concerns about China’s military activities near Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

13. US and Cambodia to revive defence drills

​Strategic competition over Cambodia? There is a large Chinese presence there. Are we competing for influence? (rhetorical question).

A US stone placed on the Asia-Indo-Pacific Go/Wei Chi board (surrounding territory ceded in 2017) . Perhaps we are playing Go/Wei Chi/Baduk with China (instead of checkers or chess).

Excerpt:

“The US and Cambodian defence chiefs also discussed Hegseth joining a future US naval ship visit to the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia… Washington has long worried that China would be given exclusive military access to the naval base on the Gulf of Thailand as part of a secret deal signed six years ago.”

​Summary:

The U.S. and Cambodia will restart Angkor Sentinel joint military drills after eight years, signaling improved ties amid a Trump-brokered Thai-Cambodian peace accord and new trade deals. Defense chiefs discussed U.S. naval visits to Ream Base, easing concerns over Chinese influence. Both nations also pledged FBI-Cambodia cooperation against transnational crime.

​

US and Cambodia to revive defence drills

‘Angkor Sentinel’ joint exercises suspended since 2017

Bangkok Post · Bangkok Post Public Company Limited

PUBLISHED : 1 Nov 2025 at 15:10

WRITER: Bloomberg News

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3129729/us-and-cambodia-to-revive-defence-drills

Cambodian soldiers make their way to the ground after jumping from the back of a US KC-130J Hercules during the Angkor Sentinel joint military exercises in July 2010. (Photo: United States Marine Corps via Wikimedia Commons)

The United States and Cambodia will revive joint military exercises for the first time in eight years, the latest sign of warming ties following a flurry of deals between the two sides, including a Trump-backed peace accord with Thailand.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the return of the Angkor Sentinel drills after a meeting with his Cambodian counterpart on Friday on the sidelines of a security summit in Malaysia.

The exercises were suspended in 2017 at a time when Washington was criticising Phnom Penh heavily for worsening human rights problems and a deterioration of democracy.

The announcement caps a milestone week for US relations with Cambodia, including securing a trade deal during President Donald Trump’s three-nation Asian tour.

Trump also oversaw the signing of a peace accord to ease tensions along the disputed Thai-Cambodian border, where armed clashes killed dozens of soldiers and civilians in July.

The US president, who craves a Nobel Peace Prize, hailed the agreement as a milestone but Thailand and Cambodia have been more circumspect. Thailand officially describes it as a “declaration” to start normalising relations.

The US and Cambodian defence chiefs also discussed Hegseth joining a future US naval ship visit to the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia, according to a release issued by the Pentagon.

Washington has long worried that China would be given exclusive military access to the naval base on the Gulf of Thailand as part of a secret deal signed six years ago. Phnom Penh has denied any such deal, although the upgrade of the base was financed by Beijing.

Separately, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said that he and US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel had pledged to boost cooperation during a phone call.

Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos are home to transnational criminal networks that siphon billions of dollars from victims across the world.

Cambodian officials have said the country has tightened anti-money laundering rules and is ready to clamp down on scam centres as it seeks to be a credible member of the international financial industry.

“As a next step, we have agreed to continue strengthening cooperation between the Cambodian Security Agency and the FBI to maintain safety and security for our people and our country,” Hun Manet wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

Bangkok Post · Bangkok Post Public Company Limited

14. How the Russian Orthodox Church Became a Weapon of Political Warfare

​Who do you "compete" with a church? How do you counter a church's malign activities?

(recognize, understand, expose, and attack with superior political and information warfare).

​Excerpts:

 Moscow weaponizes faith to justify aggression and extend its ideological reach, undermining Western integration and reinforcing pro-Kremlin movements through cultural affinity and religious symbolism.

...

Religious institutions, when intertwined with authoritarian power, can become instruments of disinformation and espionage.

… 

Protecting the autonomy of faith communities is not only a matter of religious liberty—it is a matter of national security.

​Summary:

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) functions as a Kremlin tool of political and information warfare, merging faith, nationalism, and soft power. Through doctrines like Russkiy Mir, Patriarch Kirill sanctifies aggression and legitimizes Russian expansionism. The ROC’s global network, funded by oligarchs and aligned media, spreads pro-Kremlin narratives from Ukraine to Africa, undermining Western institutions. In Ukraine, ROC-linked clergy have aided Russian operations, prompting Kyiv to restrict Moscow-affiliated churches. Countering this religious weaponization requires transparency in church-state financing, oversight of foreign-linked clergy, and strengthening independent Orthodox institutions. The ROC’s capture reveals how spiritual authority has become a key tool in Russia’s hybrid warfare.

How the Russian Orthodox Church Became a Weapon of Political Warfare - Foreign Policy Research Institute

fpri.org · Kateryna Odarchenko

Kateryna Odarchenko is a distinguished leader in international political strategy and governance.

​October 27, 2025

https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/how-the-russian-orthodox-church-became-a-weapon-of-political-warfare/

Bottom Line

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has become a central pillar of the Kremlin’s political and informational warfare strategy, which shapes narratives by fusing spirituality with nationalism. Through doctrines like the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir) and appeals to shared Orthodox identity, Moscow weaponizes faith to justify aggression and extend its ideological reach. These narratives have influenced attitudes in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and across parts of Africa and Europe—undermining Western integration, sowing local skepticism toward NATO and the EU, and reinforcing pro-Kremlin movements through cultural affinity and religious symbolism.

The infrastructure that sustains this spiritual-political influence is an interconnected ecosystem of state, church, and media. The ROC hierarchy operates in tandem with state-controlled broadcasters, diplomatic missions, private “patriotic” NGOs, and digital platforms such as Telegram and YouTube channels linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. Financially, the system is underpinned by Kremlin-aligned oligarchs, state enterprises, and tax-exempt church assets, while its logistical reach relies on global dioceses, cultural centers, and ecclesiastical missions that double as nodes of soft power. This coordination allows Moscow to adapt its messaging to local contexts—presenting itself alternately as a defender of faith, a peace broker, or a bulwark against Western “moral decay.”

Countering this form of religiously cloaked disinformation requires targeting both the financial and institutional lifelines that enable it. Transparency over church-state funding flows, regulation of foreign-linked religious structures, and exposure of clerical actors engaged in political propaganda are essential to curbing the Kremlin’s influence. Cases like the Ukrainian autocephaly movement in 2019—when the spiritual head of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, granted the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) independence from the ROC—and proactive oversight in states such as Moldova show the importance of dismantling hybrid religious-political networks. Complementary measures—strengthening independent Orthodox institutions, enhancing media literacy, and deepening international cooperation—are vital to defending democratic resilience against this evolving form of ideological warfare.

Introduction

Between faith and manipulation lies a blurred frontier. For millions of believers, the ROC is a pillar of tradition and spirituality, a continuation of centuries-old liturgy and culture. Yet behind the sacred façade, the church’s hierarchy has for decades been intertwined with the Soviet and Russian state security apparatus. What began as a project of survival under Bolshevik persecution evolved into systematic subordination to the KGB—and now, to the FSB and Patriarch Kirill— and into a global network of political influence.

This is not an indictment of Orthodoxy or its faithful. It is an examination of how the Kremlin has hijacked the ROC’s institutional structure, transforming it from a spiritual community into an instrument of Kremlin statecraft and soft power. Understanding this evolution—its Soviet origins, its post-Soviet continuity, and its expansion across Ukraine, Africa, and the West—reveals how the ROC has become a “transmission belt” of Russian power, to borrow Vladimir Lenin’s own term for ideological front organizations.

From Subjugation to Collaboration: Soviet Origins

The subjugation of the ROC to state power began long before the Bolsheviks. In the early 18th century, Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchate and replaced it with the Holy Governing Synod in 1721, effectively turning the church into a department of the imperial bureaucracy. Bishops became state officials, sermons were monitored for loyalty, and the clergy were obliged to report politically suspect behavior among their parishioners. This transformation marked the beginning of the church’s long entanglement with the state—a system of spiritual servitude masked as “symphony” between altar and throne.

Resistance emerged almost immediately. The Old Believers, who rejected Peter’s and Patriarch Nikon’s earlier liturgical reforms, became symbols of defiance against both religious standardization and state coercion. Brutally persecuted and driven underground, they preserved an alternative model of faith rooted in autonomy and conscience. Yet their marginalization reinforced the dominance of a church hierarchy dependent on imperial favor—setting a precedent for later regimes to exploit its structures for political ends.

The story then continues with the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet repression. The All-Russian Local Council of 1917–1918 sought to restore the church’s self-governance after centuries of imperial control, but its brief renewal was crushed under the Bolshevik state. Lenin’s Decree on Land and subsequent anti-religious campaigns stripped the church of property, outlawed religious education, and executed or imprisoned tens of thousands of clergymen and women. Yet the Soviet approach was not only about destruction—it was also about infiltration.

By the late 1920s, the OGPU, the Soviet secret police, had adopted a dual strategy of terror and co-optation. Thousands of bishops, priests, and monastics were purged, while others were recruited as informants or installed as loyal agents. In 1927, under pressure from OGPU officer Yevgeny Tuchkov, Metropolitan Sergius issued his notorious Declaration of Loyalty to the Soviet Union, pledging that “the joys and successes of our Soviet homeland are our joys and successes, and its misfortunes are our misfortunes.” With that act, the ROC’s institutional independence was extinguished. A regime-approved synod replaced genuine leadership, and the principle of Sergianism, submission to state power, became the defining doctrine of Soviet ecclesiastical life.

After World War II, the church was revived not as a free institution but as a controlled one. The Council for Religious Affairs and the KGB vetted every bishop and seminary rector. After 1943, the Soviet authorities not only “allowed” the revival of the ROC but placed it entirely under the control of the OGPU’s successor, the NKVD, and later the KGB. The church’s leadership, especially at the episcopal level, largely consisted almost entirely of agents or collaborators of the state security services. Abroad, ROC missions operated as instruments of Soviet diplomacy and intelligence. Among their representatives was a young cleric named Vladimir Gundyaev, today Patriarch Kirill, who, according to Swiss archival evidence, served as a KGB officer under the codename “Mikhailov” while stationed in Geneva in the 1970s. His assignment at the World Council of Churches illustrates how Soviet religious diplomacy doubled as espionage and propaganda.

Continuity under Kirill: The Post-Soviet Church of Power

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not sever these ties—it institutionalized them. When Kirill became Patriarch in 2009, the Church’s mission was recast within the ideological framework of the Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”), a doctrine fusing Orthodoxy, patriotism, and empire. The ROC emerged as a key partner in the Kremlin’s soft-power strategy, sanctifying Russian geopolitical ambitions as a civilizational mission.

Kirill’s public statements have consistently aligned with Kremlin narratives. His 2022 sermons depicted the invasion of Ukraine as a “holy struggle” against a morally corrupt West. In January 2025, he blessed crosses engraved with President Vladimir Putin’s initials to be distributed to “war heroes.” These symbolic acts illustrate a deeper continuity: the church not merely as a moral authority, but as a legitimizing arm of state power.

Global Missions of Influence

Today, the ROC’s foreign reach extends far beyond its traditional sphere. In Africa, Moscow has built a new Patriarchal Exarchate since 2021, establishing over 350 parishes across 32 countries. The official purpose is to serve Orthodox believers who allegedly felt “abandoned” by the Patriarchate of Alexandria after it recognized the independence of the OCU. Yet Ukrainian intelligence reports describe the project as a hybrid influence operation, blending religious diplomacy, propaganda, and soft-power projection under the guise of pastoral care.

ROC emissaries in Africa meet with local officials, cultivate political contacts, and promote narratives of Russian moral leadership. These efforts mirror Soviet-era tactics, replacing Marxism with Orthodoxy as the ideological export. The Kremlin’s objective remains the same: to undermine Western influence and expand Russian presence across strategic regions.

Similar operations occur closer to home. In Georgia and Moldova, ROC-linked clergy propagate anti-Western messages, framing NATO and the EU as threats to traditional Christian values. In the United States and Western Europe, ROC parishes within the Moscow Patriarchate have served as platforms for pro-Kremlin messaging—often cloaked in appeals to “family values” or “spiritual resistance to globalism.” What appears as religious conservatism frequently doubles as information warfare.

Ukrainian Autocephaly and the Post-2022 Contest Over Faith and Influence

The January 2019 decision by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to grant autocephaly to the OCU marked a historic rupture. It ended Moscow’s centuries-old claim over Ukrainian Orthodoxy and struck at one of the Kremlin’s key channels of soft power. Yet it was only after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 that the conflict over ecclesiastical allegiance transformed into an open struggle between a sovereign Ukraine and a weaponized church hierarchy.

For Patriarch Kirill, the war in Ukraine became a sacred mission. Through televised liturgies, state-sponsored processions, and martial blessings, he recast Russian aggression as a crusade against Western decadence and moral relativism. The blessing of crosses engraved with Putin’s initials symbolized this fusion of faith and war. Such ceremonies reinforce the idea that Russia’s campaign is not merely political but spiritual—defending “Holy Rus” from a hostile world.

In Ukraine, however, the OCU’s independence has enabled the state to reassert control over its religious sphere. Since 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has opened at least 174 criminal proceedings against clergy of the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP), with 122 priests formally charged and 31 convicted for collaboration or propaganda in support of the aggressor state. Investigations uncovered priests spreading anti-Ukrainian propaganda, coordinating with Russian operatives, or even stockpiling weapons left by retreating Russian troops. One Kherson-based priest was arrested for attempting to sell Igla missiles and explosives hidden beneath a church under construction.

Other cases reveal more subtle forms of collaboration. A seminary rector in Pochaiv was accused of spreading Russian narratives online, while in Kirovohrad, a UOC-MP bishop allegedly distributed pro-Kremlin leaflets and justified the occupation of Crimea. The Ukrainian parliament has since advanced legislation restricting religious organizations with direct administrative ties to Russia, arguing that such structures represent a threat to national security.

Moscow’s response has been predictably fierce. The ROC accuses the OCU and Constantinople of “schism,” portraying Ukraine’s religious independence as a Western-engineered plot to divide the Orthodox world. These narratives are amplified through Russian media and church channels abroad, turning theology into geopolitics. What began as an ecclesiastical dispute has thus become a front line of hybrid warfare, where sermons, icons, and canonical decrees serve as tools of statecraft.

For Kyiv, confronting this challenge means balancing national security with religious freedom—rooting out subversive networks while safeguarding the faith of millions who worship sincerely. The autocephaly of the OCU has provided a moral and legal framework for such efforts, allowing Ukraine to reclaim its religious sovereignty from a hierarchy that long served Moscow’s interests.

Conclusion

The tragedy of the Russian Orthodox Church lies not in its faith, but in its capture. What began as persecution under Lenin evolved into co-optation under Josef Stalin and institutional servitude to the KGB. Under Putin, this system endures: the Church remains a pillar of Kremlin ideology and a vehicle of political influence from Kyiv to Nairobi.

For policymakers, the lesson is clear. Religious institutions, when intertwined with authoritarian power, can become instruments of disinformation and espionage. Western governments should enhance transparency over foreign-linked religious networks, support independent Orthodox institutions, and include ecclesiastical influence mapping in broader analyses of hybrid warfare. Protecting the autonomy of faith communities is not only a matter of religious liberty—it is a matter of national security.

The Kremlin’s political warfare now wears vestments. Understanding how the Russian Orthodox Church became both a soft-power shield and sword for the state is essential to countering its reach—and to ensuring that faith remains the domain of the faithful, not of the powerful.

Image credit: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia visit the exhibition Orthodox Rus’ dedicated to the National Unity Day in Moscow, Russia November 4, 2024. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofye via REUTERS

fpri.org · Kateryna Odarchenko

15. Hand of Moscow? The men jailed for vandalism in French hybrid warfare case

​The “red hands” ​o​peration reveals how Moscow’s hybrid strategy threatens not just physical security but also societal cohesion, narrative integrity, and democratic stability​, i.e., the ​"soft underbelly​" of national defense.

​As an aside - note the use of "drones" here - "human drones." Recall that Socrates (in the Republic) warns that when too many “drones” appear in the hive of the state, they bring decay and revolution. Drones are described  as idle, parasitic members of society who consume but produce nothing.

​Excerpts:

All three were jailed on Friday for two to four years.

But to bemoan the barely audible banality of it all – the dull motives, the mumbled attempts to shift blame, the sullen complaints about prison life and unsatisfactory psychiatric evaluations - is to miss the truth.

The banality is the whole point.

Like the cheap drones that both Russia and Ukraine now use to patrol their front lines, the three men on trial in courtroom 2.01 at the Palais de Justice in Paris represent a low-budget evolution of modern hybrid warfare.

​...

But they insisted, as did their clients, that they were unwitting pawns, proxies – one might even say "drones" – in a shadow war against the West.

​Summary:

Three Bulgarian men were jailed in France for vandalizing Holocaust and religious sites in a Kremlin-linked hybrid warfare plot. The low-cost, deniable operation—amplified by Russian social media trolls—aimed to exploit France’s social divisions and erode confidence in its institutions, exemplifying Moscow’s shift toward decentralized, low-budget psychological warfare.

Hand of Moscow? The men jailed for vandalism in French hybrid warfare case

BBC

4 hours ago

Andrew Harding

AFP via Getty Images

Georgi Filipov was one of the three Bulgarian men jailed for their part in the plot

This week's trial of three undercover operatives, accused of helping the Kremlin to wage a hybrid warfare campaign to "destabilise" France, sounds like a surefire recipe for drama, sophistication, and intrigue.

If only.

Over the course of three days, in a spacious, pine-panelled courtroom on the northern edge of Paris, the case against three seemingly unremarkable Bulgarian men, seated behind glass and shadowed by three police officers who seemed absorbed with their own mobile phones, unfolded with all the panache and excitement of a half-whispered lecture in a library.

"I had absolutely no idea where we were."

"I did it for the money."

"In the future I plan to get involved in charity work."

These few lines from the men's testimony may help convey the general tone.

All three were jailed on Friday for two to four years.

But to bemoan the barely audible banality of it all – the dull motives, the mumbled attempts to shift blame, the sullen complaints about prison life and unsatisfactory psychiatric evaluations - is to miss the truth.

The banality is the whole point.

Like the cheap drones that both Russia and Ukraine now use to patrol their front lines, the three men on trial in courtroom 2.01 at the Palais de Justice in Paris represent a low-budget evolution of modern hybrid warfare.

Improvised and startlingly effective.

AFP via Getty Images

The Wall of the Righteous in Paris was vandalised with red hand prints in May 2024

Rising in turn inside their glass cage, Georgi Filipov, Nikolay Ivanov and Kiril Milushev admitted carrying out the acts, but denied working for a foreign power as well as antisemitism.

Early one morning in May 2024, on the banks of the River Seine in the heart of Paris, the three men conspired to spray red paint - and filmed themselves doing so - on the Wall of the Righteous, a monument to those who saved French Jews from the Holocaust during World War Two.

Thirty-five red handprints were left on the Shoah memorial. Five hundred more were painted elsewhere.

It was the first in a series of symbolic attacks in France: pigs' heads placed outside mosques (an act blamed on a group of Serbians); coffins left ominously by the Eiffel Tower; Stars of David painted around the capital.

News of each event was swiftly broadcast around the world – not just by regular media outlets, but by the automated army of Russian social media trolls which, according to the French agency monitoring such activity, routinely seeks to weaponise each sliver of news that might raise doubts about the stability of French society, and the strength of Europe's democracies, its institutions, and its values.

France is seen as a particularly tempting target for the Kremlin, given its current political and social divisions, its often ambiguous attitude to Nato, its large Muslim and Jewish populations, the increasing popularity of the far right, and a history of close ties to Moscow on both extremes of the political spectrum.

AFP via Getty Images

French politics is increasingly divided - a perfect opportunity for the Kremlin

In another era, the Kremlin might have used its own deep undercover agents to carry out acts of sabotage or vandalism.

But – to make the drone warfare comparison again – why rely solely on valuable assets like highly trained spies, giant ballistic missiles, or submarines used to cut undersea cables, when for a few thousand euros you can, through discreet and easily deniable channels, recruit your own disaffected army of petty criminals, or unemployed wannabe fascists?

"I had absolutely no idea where we were," said Georgi Filipov, as he tried to play down his alleged role in the "red hands" operation, arguing that he had travelled from Bulgaria simply to make a little money to help with child support payments for his nine-year-old son.

He was allegedly paid €1,000 (£875) plus travel expenses.

In the dock, Filipov, 36, cut a gaunt but muscular figure, twitching slightly like a boxer before a fight as he attempted to defuse awkward questions about his tattoos. In particular, the swastika on his chest and the social media photos showing him giving a Nazi salute and wearing a t-shirt that claimed Hitler "was right".

"I made bad choices in the past," Filipov explained, and pointed out that he had already removed several tattoos.

The Paris criminal court sentenced him to two years in jail.

Having been successfully extradited from Bulgaria and Croatia to face trial in France, the men all sought to place the blame on a fourth man, Mircho Angelov, who remains at large but is alleged to have links to a Russian intelligence officer. He was given a three-year term in absentia.

The second defendant, Kiril Milushev, 28, said he had only come to France because he had broken up with his partner, was struggling with a bipolar disorder, and wanted to keep his friend, Mircho, company. He was given two years.

Seated beside Milushev, Nikolay Ivanov creased his forehead as he denied any links with Russia.

He spoke of his grandparents' role in saving Jews during World War Two and said his ambition now was to obtain a master's degree in law, and to be reunited with his girlfriend - if she'd still have him, when all this was over.

Considered the mastermind behind the plot, he was given the heaviest jail term of four years.

As for Russia's alleged role in the red-hands affair, even the defence lawyers openly admitted that "we suspect" Moscow's hand.

But they insisted, as did their clients, that they were unwitting pawns, proxies – one might even say "drones" – in a shadow war against the West.

16. China's new gateway into South America: the Port of Chancay

​China places its stone on the Go/Wei Chi board capturing some territory in the Western Hemisphere.

Excerpts:

Chancay effectively eliminates this costly and inefficient detour. When Chinese goods pass through US transshipment ports, the US retains a degree of logistical control and visibility over the flow of goods. Chancay bypasses that system entirely, reducing US insight over Chinese trade into South America.

...

The Port of Chancay is the product of growing Chinese influence across South America. The port will spur greater Chinese leverage over trade and infrastructure – further sidelining the US, which has continued steadfastly down a path of increased isolationism.

Summary:

China’s $1.3 billion Port of Chancay in Peru, its first deep-water facility on South America’s west coast, creates a direct trans-Pacific trade route bypassing U.S. and Mexican ports. Operated mainly by state-owned COSCO, Chancay boosts China’s leverage over regional infrastructure, accelerates trade, cuts costs by 20%, and expands its strategic influence while U.S. investment wanes.

China's new gateway into South America: the Port of Chancay - Asia Times

The port will translate into greater Chinese leverage over trade and infrastructure – further sidelining the US

asiatimes.com · Evan Williams · October 31, 2025

https://asiatimes.com/2025/11/chinas-new-gateway-into-south-america-the-port-of-chancay/

This article was originally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission.

China has emerged as an economic and strategic competitor of the United States in South America.

As part of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has funneled $1.3 billion into the new Peruvian Port of Chancay, a deepwater facility that became fully operational in November 2024. The port will deepen the trade relationship between South America and China, the region’s largest trade partner, and will reorient Pacific shipping networks away from US port infrastructure.

It will further elevate China as not only the region’s largest trading partner, but as a powerful actor with leverage over local infrastructure and trade at a time when the US has stepped back from free trade institutions and has increasingly isolated itself from the region.

North of Lima, the Port of Chancay is the first South American port on the continent’s West Coast with the capability to receive ultra large container vessels (UCLVs). With majority ownership (60%) held by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate COSCO shipping, the port has unlocked a new major transpacific shipping channel between China and South America that bypasses the traditional deepwater ports in the US and Mexico.

Before the construction of the Port of Chancay, no deepwater port along South America’s West Coast could handle UCLVs, which carry 18,000 to 24,000 shipping containers and require a port of at least 16-17 meters of depth.

Previously, these massive cargo ships had to travel north to Mexico’s Port of Lázaro Cárdenas or US ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland. This created a logistical dependency on these ports, as they served as a critical transshipment connection for UCLV cargo processing for South American trade. From there, goods would be reloaded onto smaller ships that would travel to smaller South American ports.

Chancay effectively eliminates this costly and inefficient detour. When Chinese goods pass through US transshipment ports, the US retains a degree of logistical control and visibility over the flow of goods. Chancay bypasses that system entirely, reducing US insight over Chinese trade into South America. The transition has already begun. In April, China announced its first major shipping lane from its southern port of Guangzhou directly to Chancay, which will now circumvent North American ports.

Chancay was expected to process 1-1.5 million shipping containers in its first year alone, with full capacity in the next several years estimated to reach 3.5 million.

While this is substantially less than the 9 million and 10 million containers handled by Long Beach and Los Angeles, respectively, it may significantly divert trade away from US ports. It also foreshadows the increasing likelihood of frequent traffic from other Chinese ports, such as Shanghai, the largest in the world, into Chancay and away from North America.

As the US becomes sidelined in the Pacific trade routes, South American countries are becoming more dependent on China through deepening trade ties and infrastructure integration.

The new corridor will shave 10 days off the 35-day trip between China and Peru, which is expected to slash costs by up to 20%.

Through the utilization of on-site technologies, such as fully autonomous cranes, which can increase port productivity by up to 50% compared to other deepwater ports, China is innovating new ways to reduce costs and shipping times.

In the last year alone, trade between Peru and China surged by 15%, with neighboring countries reflecting similar upward trajectories.

Elsewhere in Latin America, China seeks to capitalize on Ecuador’s exports of fresh fruit and seafood.

Despite China’s position as Ecuador’s top trading partner, only 3-4% of the country’s 346 million boxes of bananas – its top export – were shipped to the country last year. This was due to lengthy transit times and high refrigeration costs that made the distribution of perishable goods minimally profitable.

Through this new route, banana exports to China are expected to triple, as reduced costs allow Ecuador to compete with Vietnamese bananas, which previously were up to 41 times cheaper.

This growing relationship will help Ecuado, already China’s leading shrimp supplier, increase the $3 billion worth of seafood it now sends annually. Ecuador gains from Chancay an opportunity to extend the shelf life and minimize the costs of its Asian exports.

Other countries, such as Bolivia, are also clambering to redirect their exports through Chancay. Days after the opening of Chancay, Bolivia signed a multibillion-dollar mining deal to increase output of lithium. Mineral exports that previously took costly routes overland to ports in Chile, to be shipped through the US, will now have the capability to filter toward the Port of Chancay and directly to China.

It reinforces China’s influence over the US in the global mineral supply chain and enables more efficient and direct delivery of these critical resources to its domestic market.

The port has positioned Peru as the focal point of Chinese trade with South America. In the same way that the US or Mexico was the facilitator of trade between China and South America, Peru will now grow into that role, serving as a transshipment hub for its neighbors. The region will grow increasingly dependent on Peru, both to dispatch smaller feeder vessels and to move cargo inland.

The acceleration of Chinese influence has been assisted in part by the Trump administration’s decision to implement tariffs, which pushes the region closer to China. Currently, with close to half of South American countries receiving special tariff rates between 15 and 50%, and the other half operating on the baseline 10%, trade with the US is expected to decline, particularly in areas such as beef and coffee.

On the other hand, China has implemented free trade agreements with its major trading partners in the region, including Chile, Ecuador and Peru, which in turn are expected to increasingly turn to China as a facilitator of free trade. The greater the Chinese influence on these countries, the more it can steer them away from US initiatives.

The American response to these deepening ties has proven insufficient, as the US has simply not offered any level of investment in hard infrastructure that comes close to that of China.

Despite having been approached for investment in other Peruvian ports, such as the southern port of Corio, the US has been unwilling to provide upfront financial guarantees. While handing out repeated warnings to South American countries through the State Department urging, “the importance of adequate oversight, security, regulation and fair competition for all key infrastructure projects,” the US is offering South American governments few financial alternatives.

The growth of Chinese economic investment has deepened its connection with China while the US can offer little but cautionary rhetoric.

The Port of Chancay is the product of growing Chinese influence across South America. The port will spur greater Chinese leverage over trade and infrastructure – further sidelining the US, which has continued steadfastly down a path of increased isolationism.

The US must re-engage the region economically, since rhetoric alone will not be enough to counter China. This includes shoring up trade relationships, committing US investment to impactful and visible infrastructure and offering viable technological and funding alternatives to Chinese sources.

Evan Williams (egwa2022@mymail.pomona.edu) is a student at Pomona College studying public policy and olitics. He previously served as an intern at The Pacific Forum and S-3 Group in Washington D.C. His upcoming thesis will further explore the strategic and economic role played by China in South America.

asiatimes.com · Evan Williams · October 31, 2025

17. Afghanistan and the Long Shadow of Bagram

​Is re-engagement with Afghanistan feasible, acceptable, and suitable from a political, strategic, economic and national security perspective? I know some people (besides this author, who I do not know) who are advocating and working on this.

Excerpts:

Bagram has long been a stage on which successive rulers, from the Soviets to the Americans, tested their power — a citadel at the heart of Asia where empires rise, project influence, and ultimately overreach.

...

A military return to Bagram without prior diplomatic groundwork risks undermining the Taliban’s narrative of victory and driving fighters toward ISKP. The United States must instead pursue calibrated diplomacy, targeted economic engagement, and multilateral partnerships to shape Afghanistan’s future.

​Summary:

Bagram Air Base has been a crossroads of empires since Alexander the Great, used by Soviets, then Americans, to project power in Central Asia. Today, Russia courts the Taliban through diplomacy, seeking influence and stability. The article urges the U.S. to reengage Afghanistan through diplomacy and economic strategy, not military return.

Afghanistan and the Long Shadow of Bagram

thediplomat.com · Freshta Jalalzai

The former U.S. and Soviet air base has been a central location for empires for thousands of years. Does Trump truly understand its significance?

By

October 31, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/10/afghanistan-and-the-long-shadow-of-bagram/

In this Apr. 25, 2007 file photo, aircraft line the taxiway at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

Credit: U.S. Department of Defense photo by Jim Garamone

I grew up not far from Bagram Airfield, which is located about 60 kilometers north of my childhood home in Kabul. Yet despite that, and the years I spent reporting on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, I only fully appreciated Bagram’s historical importance, and the extent to which it had been overlooked in policy and strategy, during a recent visit to Germany.

A statue of Buddha sits behind glass in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, a priceless gift from the people of Afghanistan to Germany intended to lift the spirits of a war-torn nation after World War I. The relic represents a journey spanning thousands of years.

The statue came from Bagram. 

Its hand gestures and symbolic motifs embody Buddhist iconography, while its Hellenistic drapery and naturalistic folds are reminiscent of Greek sculpture. This one artifact embodies the layered history of Afghanistan, and the ebb and flow of power surrounding this fabled citadel on the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountain-range. 

Archaeological studies suggest that Bagram began its life as “Alexandria in the Caucasus,” founded by Alexander the Great to command the mountain passes and trade routes of Central Asia all the way to the Far East.

This legacy resurfaced during the Cold War, when Bagram became a central arena of superpower rivalry. While the Soviets set their sights on this historic stronghold in the early 1950s, U.S. engagement remained cautious and limited in scope. Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1953 signaled initial U.S. interest, but policy lacked strategic depth, allowing Soviet influence to intensify. President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1959 visit added symbolic weight, yet Washington’s involvement still fell short of sustaining a strategic foothold.

In the 1960s, the Soviets transformed Bagram into a sprawling hub for projecting influence across northern Afghanistan. They extended the runway and constructed barracks, roads, and a major military plane maintenance facility. As part of its campaign, Soviet Russia also trained thousands of Afghan military pilots, technicians, and engineers who worked at the factory and maintained the aircraft.

Bagram became the largest and most fortified military installation in Afghanistan. Yet it also served as a center for cultural exchange, featuring a school that taught Russian, a theater where Soviet and Afghan artists performed, and other amenities. This setup was part of a Soviet campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, which later became the nerve center of Moscow’s 1979 invasion.

During the invasion, most Soviet bomber jets and cargo carriers operated from Bagram due to its central location. Tactical aircraft like the Su-17 and MiG-27 carried out close air support, and transports like the Ilyushin Il-76 and Antonov moved equipment and personnel across the region. A flight from Bagram to Astrakhan, one of the closest Russian settlements west of the Caspian, took roughly three hours, about the same time it takes to fly from Washington, D.C., to Miami. Depending on the aircraft, it took about the same amount of time to fly from Bagram to Makhachkala on the Caspian coast of southern Russia. 

After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet-backed government in 1992, Bagram fell into disrepair as Mujahedeen fighters, local thieves, and militias looted the base. Yet it rose from the ashes to once again become a hub during the U.S. and NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan. 

Between 2001 and 2021, the United States reportedly invested millions in its expansion, transforming the old Soviet-built compound into a massive, city-sized complex that featured multiple runways, over 120 acres of aircraft parking, hangars, housing, a hospital, and even fast-food outlets for thousands of personnel.

At its peak, the base hosted, at one time, more than 40,000 troops and contractors, serving as the central logistics hub for U.S. and allied operations across Afghanistan and providing a commanding position for air support and surveillance.

Through the years, local residents knew Bagram for its prison holding senior Taliban and al-Qaida figures, often called “Obama’s Gitmo.” During the Taliban’s two-decade fight against the U.S. and NATO, the release of thousands of prisoners was a central demand, culminating in the Doha Agreement and the eventual U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

The airbase was abandoned in a hasty manner, evident in the items left behind. Local reporters wandered the deserted base, finding scattered uniforms, utensils, and scribbled messages, silent witnesses to a once-mighty force. 

“The prison was broken as soon as the Taliban took the airbase,” a former prisoner told a local YouTuber. To many, it was really the United States’ reputation as the world’s most powerful military and political machine that had been shattered. 

In September of this year, Bagram was back in the headlines, as U.S. President Donald Trump expressed renewed interest in the base. “We gave it to [the Taliban] for nothing. We want that base back,” he said.

Trump later followed up with a threat posted to his social media account: “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!”

Trump’s interest in Bagram is was not merely a contemporary military move or even a bid to restore U.S. pride. Instead, it continues a strategic pattern that has shaped Asia for centuries, with Bagram at the center of regional authority, a stage on which successive rulers, from the Soviets to the Americans, tested their power.

The historical pattern of external powers leveraging Bagram continues today, albeit in altered forms. Moscow, for example, now seeks influence in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan not through occupation but through alignment, reflecting a nuanced awareness of Afghanistan’s ethnic structure and power dynamics. Russia favors diplomacy and soft power, directly engaging the predominantly Pashtun Taliban rather than its traditional Tajik allies. 

The Soviets primarily backed non-Pashtun pro-communist factions. As a result, five out of the seven main Mujahedeen groups supported by the U.S. were Pashtun, a reflection of deep-rooted resistance to among the ethnic group. Even during the Taliban’s first rule in Afghanistan, Moscow, despite its fragile political and crippled economic state, supported the Tajik Northern Alliance.

But despite its historically well-documented mistrust of the Pashtuns, today, Russia recognizes the Taliban as indispensable actors and has granted them formal diplomatic recognition. 

The Taliban’s consolidation of control, alongside the dispersal of the Northern Resistance Front, is why Moscow now treats the Taliban as the primary power broker in Afghanistan. The Taliban have proven their ability to maintain relative stability across Afghanistan despite the persistent threat posed by the Islamic State’s local affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). This is a degree of control that the former Islamic Republic, despite receiving billions in U.S. assistance, failed to achieve. 

By taking this strategic turn, Moscow seeks to stabilize its southern frontier, limit U.S. influence, and reassert its lost authority, despite lingering mistrust, as much of the Taliban’s senior Pashtun leadership, including the Haqqanis, once fiercely fought against the Soviet occupation. 

Beyond Afghanistan itself, Russia’s outreach to the Taliban reflects a broader recalibration of its Eurasian strategy. By aligning with the Taliban, Moscow seeks to balance China’s growing economic footprint in Central Asia, prevent the spread of instability into its own Muslim-majority regions, and reassert itself as a regional power broker after its isolation from the West over Ukraine.

For Russia, Afghanistan offers a potential bridge between Central Asia, Iran, and Pakistan, routes critical to emerging energy corridors and trade networks that could bypass Western-controlled supply chains. Therefore, cultivating relations with Kabul under Taliban control is less about ideology than about strategic insulation, countering Western influence, competing subtly with Beijing, and maintaining relevance in the shifting architecture of post-U.S. Eurasia.

As for the Taliban, they are navigating a difficult and constrained positions. The Taliban face a legitimacy crisis, economic collapse, and a growing threat from ISKP. Despite a bitter history as a former occupier and its reputation for unreliability, Russia’s outreach offers Afghanistan’s current rulers a rare diplomatic lifeline: an opportunity to ease isolation, gain a measure of legitimacy, and attract investment without signaling a compromise of independence. 

For the United States, this convergence of challenges presents a critical window to reassert influence in Afghanistan. U.S. policy could leverage these vulnerabilities through sustained dialogue, targeted diplomacy (especially with the dominant Pashtuns), and strategic economic engagement rather than unilateral military deployment. 

This does not mean extending unconditional recognition to the Taliban government, given their poor record on women’s rights. However, strategic patience and a nuanced understanding of historical patterns and ethnic dynamics are key for any U.S. policy. A military return to Bagram without prior diplomatic groundwork risks undermining the Taliban’s narrative of victory, eroding trust, and potentially driving rank-and-file fighters toward ISKP, a mutual risk to the United States and Afghanistan. 

Growing up near Bagram and reporting on the war, I saw its local impact but only later grasped its full historical and strategic significance. For the United States, as the world’s leading military and political power, there is no room for such a gap in understanding.  

U.S. policy toward Bagram (and Afghanistan as a whole) must involve calibrated diplomacy, targeted economic engagement, and multilateral partnerships to shape outcomes. This approach would address the challenge posed by ISKP, strengthen governance, and reinforce the United States’ strategic presence in a region historically marked by cycles of occupation and external competition.

Looking at its rich cultural history reminds us that Bagram is more than a military installation. The base can be a critical platform from which the United States can exert influence, guide Afghanistan toward sustainable stability, and prevent a repeat of the mistakes of the past.

Authors

Guest Author

Freshta Jalalzai

Freshta Jalalzai is an Afghan-American journalist who holds a degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York.

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18. Tariffs are Trump's favorite foreign policy tool. The Supreme Court could change how he uses them

​This could be the most decisive court ruling of POTUS' term. I don't think we are really aware of the potential strategic impact of this ruling. Without the tariff tool what will be left of his economic and foreign policy? And what would result from a ruling against tariffs? Would it lead to a show down between POTUS and the Supreme Court? Is this the test of the unitary executive theory?

Summary:

President Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of both his foreign and economic policy, using them to pressure allies and adversaries alike. The Supreme Court is now reviewing whether his use of emergency powers under IEEPA is lawful. A ruling against him could sharply limit his trade-based diplomatic leverage worldwide.

Tariffs are Trump's favorite foreign policy tool. The Supreme Court could change how he uses them

AP · November 2, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump sees tariffs — or the threat of them — as a powerful tool to bend nations to his will.

He has used them in an unprecedented way, not only as the underpinning of his economic agenda, but also as the cornerstone of his foreign policy in his second term.

He has wielded the import taxes as a threat to secure ceasefiresfrom countries at war. He has used them to browbeat nations into promising to do more to stop people and drugs from flowing across their borders. He has used them, in Brazil’s case, as political pressure because its judicial system prosecuted a former leader who was a Trump ally, and in a recent blowup with Canada, as punishment for a television ad.

This week, the Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the Republican president has overstepped federal law with many of his tariffs. A ruling against him could limit or even take away that swift and blunt leverage that much of his foreign policy has relied on.

Trump increasingly has expressed agitation and anxiety about the looming decision in a case he says is one of the most important in U.S. history.

He has said it would be a “disaster” for the United States if the justices fail to overturn lower court rulings that found he went too far in using an emergency powers law to put his tariffs in place. Trump has suggested he may take the highly unusual step of attending the arguments in person.

The Justice Department, in its defense of the tariffs, has highlighted the expansive way Trump has used them, arguing that the trade penalties are part of his power over foreign affairs, an area where the courts should not second-guess the president.

Earlier this year, two lower courts and most judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that Trump did not have power under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to set tariffs — a power the Constitution grants to Congress. Some dissenting judges on the court, though, said the 1977 law allows the president to regulate imports during emergencies without specific limitations.

The courts left the tariffs in place while the Supreme Court considers the issue. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to wield them as he has tried to pressure or punish other countries on matters related — and unrelated -- to trade.

“The fact of the matter is that President Trump has acted lawfully by using the tariff powers granted to him by Congress in IEEPA to deal with national emergencies and to safeguard our national security and economy,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “We look forward to ultimate victory on this matter with the Supreme Court.”

Still, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump trade team is working on contingency plans should the high court rule against the Republican administration.

“We do have backup plans,” Leavitt said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But ultimately…we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule on the right side of the law and do what’s right for our country. The importance of this case cannot be overstated. The president must have the emergency authority to utilize tariffs.”

Most presidents haven’t used tariffs as a foreign policy tool

Modern presidents have used financial sanctions such as freezing assets or blocking trade, not tariffs, for their foreign policy and national security aims, said Josh Lipsky, a former Obama White House and State Department staffer who is now the international economics chair at the Atlantic Council.

There are other laws that presidents can use to impose tariffs. But they require a monthslong process to justify the rates.

Trump, citing the IEEPA, moves faster and more dramatically. He signs executive orders imposing new rates and fires off social media posts threatening additional import taxes, as he did in late October when he was angered by an anti-tariff television ad aired by the province of Ontario.

“Presidents have typically treated tariffs as a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Lipsky said.

In contrast, Trump has used tariffs as the backbone of his national security and foreign policy agenda, Lipsky said. “All of it is interconnected and tariffs are at the heart of it,” he said.

For example, earlier this year Trump had threatened a 30% tariff on European imports, a major increase from 1.2% before he took office. Seeking to secure Trump’s support for the NATO military alliance and for security guarantees for Ukraine in its war with Russia, the European Union struck a deal to settle for 15% tariffs.

The EU Commission faced criticism from businesses and member states for giving away too much. But Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič argued the settlement was “not only about the trade. It’s about security. It’s about Ukraine.”

Trump has been able “to use it in specific circumstances to get better deals — not just trade deals — but better deals overall than he might otherwise,” Lipsky said. “On the other hand, you would say there’s probably some backlash.”

Supreme Court decision could rattle geopolitics — and wallets

Trump’s tariff strong-arming has rattled relationships with America’s friends and foes. Some have responded by becoming more protectionist or looking to foster relations with China, which has tried to be seen as a promoter of free trade.

There also is the impact on pocketbook. Some businesses have passed on some of the costs to consumers by raising prices, while others have waited to see where tariff rates end up.

Tariffs traditionally have been used just as a tool to address trade practices.

“There’s literally no precedent for the manner that President Trump is using them,” said Emily Kilcrease, who was a deputy assistant U.S. trade representative and earlier worked on trade issues at the National Security Council as a career civil servant during the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations,

“The use of tariffs the way that President Trump is using them is like — just broadscale attack on an economy as a way to incentivize a foreign government to change their posture,” said Kilcrease, now a director at the Center for a New American Security think tank.

But she said the case is not clear-cut. Kilcrease said she thinks there is a “decent chance” the Supreme Court could side with Trump because IEEPA gives the president “broad, flexible emergency powers.”

The case is also coming before a Supreme Court that has thus far been reluctant to check to Trump’s wide-ranging use of executive powers.

If the court constrains Trump, it could leave foreign governments questioning whether to try to renegotiate trade agreements recently struck with the Trump administration, experts said. But there are political realities at play too, because reneging on deals could affect other foreign policy or economic priorities.

The administration could pivot to try to use other laws to justify the tariffs, though that could mean a more complex and bureaucratic process, Kilcrease said.

“It certainly doesn’t take tariffs off the table,” she said. “It just makes them a little bit slower.”

___

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

AP · November 2, 2025

​19. Is it Time to End the American Global War on Terror?

​Summary:

Robert Bruce Adolph argues the U.S. Global War on Terror is unwinnable because terrorism is a human condition, not an enemy that can be defeated militarily. Misunderstanding motives—ranging from sociopathy to perceived injustice—has produced endless wars, vast costs, and new extremists. He urges ending the campaign and reassessing U.S. strategy.

Is it Time to End the American Global War on Terror?

BY Robert Bruce Adolph / November 2, 2025

Terrorism isn’t an enemy to be defeated, it’s a symptom of despair and miscalculation—and until America accepts that truth, every strike it makes will plant the seeds of the next war.

sofrep.com · Robert Bruce Adolph · November 2, 2025

https://sofrep.com/news/is-it-time-to-end-the-american-global-war-on-terror/

If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu

While serving in the US Special Operations Forces, I supported counterterrorism. While serving with the United Nations, I worked in antiterrorism. While in Baghdad, Iraq in August of 2003, I became an actual victim of terrorism in a vehicular jihadist suicide bombing attack. These varied experiences forced me to think more critically about the people labeled terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11.

To begin, and simply put, terrorism is a tactic — among others — used by what could also be called fanatics in the attainment of group goals. But everyone has a different take on the meaning. The UN alone has identified over one hundred wildly differing definitions. The problem is that terrorism is, and always has been, part of the human condition, perhaps more correctly terrorists should be labeled extremists instead.

Multiple violent extremists are no doubt high on the scale of sociopaths. Among the modern groups that have adopted terrorist tactics, the sociopathic and worst are no doubt drawn to violence. This explanation is a long way from the whole story though.

There are others, the majority, who fall within the normal range of empathy that feel driven to terrorist acts because they have experienced repeated traumatic injustices. Yes, normal people can be driven to killing innocents when there appears to them that there is no other recourse. The utterly human response is the thoroughly understandable desire for retribution against those who have repeatedly wronged them. I wonder, and to use a current example, would Palestinians qualify given this understanding?

Almost anyone can make the terrible choice to kill when there seems no other way to achieve a semblance of justice for themselves and their group. A constant state of despair can have a role in the choice to become extreme in thought and deed. It is also important to note that terrorist acts are usually the weapon of the weak.

Terrorists are supposed to be irredeemable, but Robert Pape of the University of Chicago makes a powerful case that suicide bombers can be otherwise normal, driven to horrendous acts that will cost them their own lives to serve their community. From the suicide bomber’s perspective, their death is an act of altruism. Hence, the term martyr is often used to describe them by their ethnic and/or religious group in the aftermath.

Of course, and if the above paragraphs capture anything approximating an essential truth, they also present a conundrum. For if terrorism is part of the human condition, then the American Global War on Terror is a conflict that will never appear in the win column. The strategy undergirding the program is based on a false assumption, that victory is definable in the military sense. This suggests that US Foreign and Defense Policies both require in-depth reassessment.

Over two decades of body counts have more than proven the point. Keeping tally of those killed is not now, nor has it ever been, a viable marker of success. I would only remind everyone that the US military won all the battles in Afghanistan and still lost that war. Why? The US Military’s civilian commander-in-chief in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attack failed to understand the nation’s adversaries and our limitations.

The costs are measured in hundreds of thousands of lives lost on all sides and trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted. The American military fought bravely and well in the vain attempt to achieve Oval Office selected political objectives that proved to be unrealistic. This means that the ultimate fault lies with the chief executive and a Congress which has not formally declared war since WWII, leaving their Constitutionally mandated task repetitively to successive White House residents that have not done well by it.

The US can continue killing those labelled as terrorists, or narco-terrorists, by the thousands. However, and if my assertions reflect actuality, there will always be more waiting in the wings. In other words, a lack of comprehension and flawed strategy only results in the creation of more of those who would do the country harm. It took over twenty years of conflict in Afghanistan to finally conclude that the Taliban could not be defeated by military means. The nation might consider concluding the American Global War on Terror and then begin the search for more feasible alternative strategies.

sofrep.com · Robert Bruce Adolph · November 2, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com