​Quotes of the Day:

"We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim."

– Jean-Paul Sartre

"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."

– Will Rogers

“One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

1. U.S. Army Changes Tools and Tactics to Prepare for the Next Pacific War

2. Essay | Local Spies with Lethal Gear: How Israel and Ukraine Reinvented Covert Action

3. U.S. Forces Raid Ship, Seize Cargo Headed to Iran From China

4. Scoop: Trump plans to appoint U.S. general to lead Gaza security force

5. A Letter from Ukraine – How to stop Russian aggression: appeasement or resistance?

6. At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025

7. U.S. Pours More Firepower Into the Caribbean as Trump Ramps Up Threats

8. Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s Zombie Reaganism

9. China Can Send 300 Thousand Troops to Taiwan Within 10 Days

10. "Taiwan independence" separatists who forget their roots will be condemned by history: spokesperson

11. U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history

12. Experts React: Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy • Stimson Center

13. What Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy Missed

14. The NSS Is the Strategy We Have Waited For

15. AI Can Make Decisions Better Than People Do. So Why Don’t We Trust It?

16. Coordinated online attack sought to suggest Taylor Swift promoted Nazi ideas, research finds

17. The Military Story Ken Burns Missed in the Revolution

18. How Europe Lost: Can the Continent Escape Its Trump Trap?

19. U.S. military members fear personal legal blowback tied to boat strikes

20. ‘China threat’ narrative a ‘complete mislabelling’, economist Jin Keyu says

1. U.S. Army Changes Tools and Tactics to Prepare for the Next Pacific War

​

Summary:

The U.S. Army is shifting fast from exquisite, expensive systems toward nimble, cheap, and expendable tools suited for a Pacific fight where China’s missiles, drones, and industrial depth could deny U.S. air dominance and strain resupply. In Hawaii exercises, units fielded multiple new drone types in rapid succession, including 3-D-printed loitering munitions, while also testing counterdrone gear such as smart-rifle attachments and wearable electronic-warfare jammers. The Army is reorganizing to integrate scouts, drone operators, and electronic-warfare specialists closer to the fight, and it wants to accelerate domestic drone production to avoid an “amazing prototypes” force without magazine depth.

Excerpts:

The timing is tricky. The world’s pre-eminent military power must rethink its tried-and-tested tools and tactics even as it girds for one of its most vexing challenges since World War II: potential great-power conflict with China.

For the U.S. Army in particular, which spent two decades fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, future conflicts may be different on fundamental counts—where, how and against whom.

China has one of the world’s largest missile arsenals and unrivaled industrial strength to buoy forces in a protracted war. Fighting it in the Pacific would involve a vast, watery battlespace speckled with jungle-swathed island chains—all within reach of those missiles. That means the U.S. can’t expect to rule the skies and would struggle to resupply scattered troops.

The Army is thinking boats, buggies and bombardment. Docked at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam during the exercises was a small new watercraft designed to move equipment straight to a beach. Soldiers zip around in light, maneuverable vehicles out of a Mad Max movie that one military official called the biggest game-changer since night vision. To prepare for a cross-island fight, clunkier cannon artillery has made way for shoot-and-scoot Himars missile platforms, 16 of which arrived in Hawaii this year.

Comment: Video and photos at the link. Transformation in contact. Yes, an "amazing prototypes" force is a hollow force. 

U.S. Army Changes Tools and Tactics to Prepare for the Next Pacific War

WSJ

A ‘terrifying’ era of warfare arrives, forcing America to rethink how it prepares for great-power conflict with China

By Niharika Mandhana

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Dec. 12, 2025 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-army-changes-tools-and-tactics-to-prepare-for-the-next-pacific-war-93be0a4f?st=7m3tNp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, Hawaii—A winged drone circled 2,000 feet above the jungle. “Three pax,” said U.S. Army Specialist Josiah Whitt, counting enemy troops on a laptop screen.

It has been an unusual year for soldiers like him.

“We get a drone, we train on it…then we get a new drone, train on it, test it out,” said the 20-year-old, who learned to fly the Stalker less than a month earlier.

Crouched under a green poncho, Sgt. Nicholas Cole Hagler lifted a C100 quadcopter—one of five drone systems the 22-year-old has been taught in quick succession. In 23-year-old Sgt. Brock Beckman’s vehicle: 3-D-printed drones that dive and explode with a nudge of the thumb.

These young American soldiers are preparing for the next war in the Pacific.

They brought out some of their newest gear for large-scale Army exercises in November that unfolded over two weeks across several Hawaiian islands. Such systems dominate the battlefield in Ukraine and Russia. The U.S.—long reliant on expensive fighting kit and extended processes—is trying to catch up, shifting to a starkly new era marked by nimble, relatively cheap and expendable equipment.

Military exercises held last month in Hawaii gave the U.S. Army a chance to determine how best to deploy new tech. Christopher Lee/Bloomberg News

The timing is tricky. The world’s pre-eminent military power must rethink its tried-and-tested tools and tactics even as it girds for one of its most vexing challenges since World War II: potential great-power conflict with China.

For the U.S. Army in particular, which spent two decades fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, future conflicts may be different on fundamental counts—where, how and against whom.

China has one of the world’s largest missile arsenals and unrivaled industrial strength to buoy forces in a protracted war. Fighting it in the Pacific would involve a vast, watery battlespace speckled with jungle-swathed island chains—all within reach of those missiles. That means the U.S. can’t expect to rule the skies and would struggle to resupply scattered troops.

The Army is thinking boats, buggies and bombardment. Docked at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam during the exercises was a small new watercraft designed to move equipment straight to a beach. Soldiers zip around in light, maneuverable vehicles out of a Mad Max movie that one military official called the biggest game-changer since night vision. To prepare for a cross-island fight, clunkier cannon artillery has made way for shoot-and-scoot Himars missile platforms, 16 of which arrived in Hawaii this year.

First contact

Atop the maritime littorals is the 21st-century problem of “air littorals”—airspace between the earth and high skies where drones lurk, hunt and kill. Soldiers navigating Hawaiian terrain took great pains to blend into it, shrinking command posts to a handful of trucks, draping vehicles with camouflage nets and vegetation, and painting their faces with thick stripes of green.

“The truth of the modern battlefield is that everyone can be seen,” said Maj. Gen. James Bartholomees, commander of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division that focuses on the Indo-Pacific.

Soldiers must prepare to fight with drones, against drones and via electronic warfare. Looking up and dealing with “first contact” from the sky or the electromagnetic spectrum is the new reality, said Bartholomees.

Troops are experimenting with a smorgasbord of buzzing, flying machines—launching more than 600 flights over two weeks during the exercises—and layering them through the depth of the battlefield. They are learning that drones tested successfully elsewhere in the world can wobble in tropical heat. Cloud cover can mean defaulting to human senses over drone sensors.

They are also thinking of ways to stymie enemy drones without accidentally thwarting their own. Several dozen M4 assault rifles now have “smart shooter” add-ons that can lock onto a flying drone and fire a round when the target is aligned.

The growing role of drones means their operators are becoming targets on the battlefield. Christopher Lee/Bloomberg News

A soldier participating in the exercises wields a rifle mounted with a device for targeting drones. Christopher Lee/Bloomberg News

A higher-tech new arrival: a wearable drone blocker with two units roughly the size of iPhones. One, called Wingman, detects incoming drones and the other, Pitbull, disrupts or jams the drone with what amounts to an electromagnetic arrow.

Jamming, however, means showing oneself on the electromagnetic spectrum.

“It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game that we’re watching and learning from in Ukraine,” said Bartholomees. “There are vignettes that are easily seen on YouTube of how you see a drone that’s defeated in one way, that then there’s a counter that’s already planned.”

‘Just insane’

The two mobile brigades that make up Bartholomees’s division—each about 3,500 personnel strong—have both been through what the Army calls “transformation in contact,” the whirlwind shift toward new technology.

The difference is night and day, said Sgt. First Class Kamakaniokalani Mann Tomita, 31. In about a year, his infantry platoon went from having one kind of drone, a small quadcopter, to seven types to experiment with. “The amount of systems and different assets that we’ve had is just insane,” he said.

On a recent afternoon, he learned the art of kamikaze-style attacks using a flock of drones. The chassis of the quadcopters were 3-D-printed in-house, while the technology to move and attack as a swarm came from Auterion, a company that makes autonomous drone operating systems. The firm’s crew was in Hawaii’s jungles to troubleshoot.

Seven drones soared. With clicks on a screen, two peeled off to swoop down for the kill. Tracking the hit from a shrouded nook between towering trees, Tomita reflected on the new world of deadly drone wars. “It’s very, very terrifying to be frank,” he said.

Tomita’s brigade was playing the adversary in an exercise scenario that could someday become reality: A U.S. ally’s island territory is under attack, enemy forces have landed, and America joins the fight several weeks in. China and Taiwan weren’t mentioned, but the parallels are evident.

If Beijing invaded and the U.S. decided to come to the island democracy’s aid, American soldiers might find themselves fighting in the “first island chain” where Taiwan is located, between Japan and the Philippines.

To better prepare them for a war like that, a new combat training center called the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center was created in 2022 in Hawaii. During last month’s exercises, it brought together more than 8,000 personnel largely from the U.S. but also from places including Taiwan, France and Malaysia. Soldiers executed air assaults, simulated missile shots across islands, navigated gulches and slept fitfully under trees.

It was the first year of exercises where both sides—American soldiers playing themselves and the enemy—were given the latest systems the Army is trying out. “We have new tech against new tech,” said Col. Matthew P. Leclair, who leads the training center. Evaluators were looking to see who used it better, how and why.

“The best way to do it then becomes the doctrine,” he said.

Portable spectrum analyzers are among the tools gaining importance in the hunt for enemy forces. Christopher Lee/Bloomberg News

U.S. soldiers put counterdrone tech to the test. Christopher Lee/Bloomberg News

Next year, one of the two brigades will go out to the Philippines to stress-test its takeaways—part of a rotation that allows them to take turns training in forward locations.

“We can quickly turn lessons learned,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry of the 25th Infantry Division. “Did it work here in Hawaii and then does it work in the first island chain in 100 degrees heat, in 100% humidity.”

Magazine depth

The Army wants to change not just what it buys but how it buys, since fast-paced technological shifts can render new equipment obsolete within months. It is trying to break out of a laborious acquisition process and give commanders some flexibility to curate their own shopping carts. Like Amazon, said Curry.

To be ready for a near-term conflict, however, the U.S. also needs to scale up. Ukraine and Russia are making millions of drones a year, and China can outproduce them both. The U.S. Army hopes to spur domestic drone production over the next few years.

“The one fear I have is that we develop an army of amazing prototypes but we don’t have a deep-enough magazine depth,” said Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Army needs to move fast on attack drones in particular, military analysts and soldiers said. Russia routinely hits Ukraine with Iran-designed Shahed drones that explode on impact—a capability the U.S. has now copied. Cheap first-person-view, or FPV, drones steered using a live feed on a pilot’s goggles, have also proved highly destructive.

“Since the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out, everybody’s saying, ‘Oh, FPV, FPV,’ ” said Staff Sgt. Thanh Ho, a drone specialist. “We’re a little behind, we need to play the catch-up game.”

Ho used to pilot the RQ-7 Shadow, a surveillance drone used in Iraq and Afghanistan. After two decades, the Army decided last year to phase it out—among several bulky systems to go. The drones he now flies are compact and don’t need a runway.

Still, there’s a lot to figure out. One drone he pilots can throw up an effective cloak of invisibility against electronic onslaughts, but others he has trained on don’t hold up well in that domain, he said. That means a sophisticated adversary could knock them out.

The nerds

Ho belongs to a new formation called the multifunctional reconnaissance company, which brings together human scouts with drone pilots and electronic-warfare specialists.

Some of their new drones fly high and long, seeking enemy coordinates. Others sit closer to the fight, guiding scouts and ground forces into the fray. Alongside these are a few loitering munitions that don’t just “see” and “sense” but also strike.

“We have all these commercial off-the-shelf drones, they month-after-month just build one on top of the other,” said First Sgt. Karissa Lopez. “They’re just coming out of the woodworks.”

But the soldiers know that what they have the enemy does, too. That is why electronic warfare, although not new, has become more important than ever. Soldiers fighting with invisible waves and signals who once stayed in the back are now coming forward “up close and personal with the enemy,” said First Lt. Andres Rodriguez, an expert in the field.

The goal: to find and kill drone operators by detecting the signals their devices emit. “We’re trying to find the controllers out there, and then we call for fires—we call for rounds, bombs coming down on the actual drone controller,” he said.

Moving close to the enemy means soldiers adept in electronic warfare are now also training hard on the physical fight, signing up for programs like the Army’s jungle school. “We get a lot more of the nerds,” Rodriguez said.

Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com

WSJ

2. Essay | Local Spies with Lethal Gear: How Israel and Ukraine Reinvented Covert Action

​Summary:

Israel and Ukraine are reshaping covert action by pairing local agents with compact, remote, and autonomous weapons. Mossad allegedly recruited and trained ordinary people inside Iran, then activated “drawer” networks in June to hit air defenses and missile launchers with smuggled drones and rockets. Ukraine used a parallel model in Operation Spiderweb, using civilians who blended into Russia to stage explosive drone strikes on strategic aircraft. Pervasive cameras, phones, biometrics, and “digital dust” make classic undercover tradecraft brittle, so services shift risk to locals while handlers operate at distance. Miniaturized electronics, batteries, and explosives now deliver effects and deniable reach.

Comment: It's a brave new world of agents, spies, and saboteurs. Are these techniques really new and novel? Or is it only that they are being exposed? Certainly these operations are on a scale and with technology we have not often seen but the tactics, techniques, and procedures seem to be based on many time tested methods. Using "locals" with handlers at a distance cannot be something new and novel.

As an aside, if the media thinks covert action has been "reinvented" perhaps it is because so much covert action has been conducted without exposure. Successful covert action does not (usually) make the news (unless big things get blown up).

Essay | Local Spies with Lethal Gear: How Israel and Ukraine Reinvented Covert Action

WSJ

A potent new fusion of old-style human spycraft with cutting-edge technology is having a big impact on high-stakes conflicts.

By Benoit Faucon

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 and Lara Seligman

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Dec. 12, 2025 4:43 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-forces-raid-ship-seize-cargo-headed-to-iran-from-china-35a1e2ac

When Israel launched its 12-day attack on Iran in June, a network of secret agents on the ground proved critical in crippling Tehran’s defenses. Some of the most secret operatives weren’t professional spies or commandos in camouflage. They were ordinary locals empowered by Israeli high-tech gadgetry.

Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, had spent years identifying and cultivating inside Iran a silent force, including victims of Iranian repression, ethnic minorities sidelined by regime policies, and people from Afghanistan and other neighboring countries who can live and work openly in Iran. At secret camps outside Iran, Israel trained its recruits to operate sophisticated automated and remotely controlled equipment, according to people familiar with the operation.

Then Mossad instructed them to go about their daily routines across Iran, as part of what it calls a “drawer operation”—one that sits quietly in reserve until the drawer needs to be opened. That day was June 13, when the strategically located agents used rockets, drones and other weapons smuggled into Iran to destroy nearby air-defense systems and missile launchers, according to Israeli statements and people familiar with the operation.

Weeks earlier, Kyiv had used a similar playbook to attack Russia’s strategic bomber fleet with explosive drones. Ukraine’s real-life version of James Bond, Artem Tymofeyev, is a bearded DJ who posted on SoundCloud under the name Tim and had worked at his father’s Russian flour mill. Tymofeyev and his wife, a tattoo artist, secretly prepared Operation Spiderweb from inside a warehouse they rented near a Russian state security office, according to Russian and Ukrainian officials.

Like Israel’s agents in Iran, Tymofeyev and his wife are ordinary people who easily blended into Russian society. But they employed advanced technologies supplied by their spymaster-handlers back in Kyiv.

Over the past year, Ukraine and Israel have displayed a potent new fusion of old-style human spycraft with cutting-edge gear, giving clandestine action an outsize impact on high-stakes conflicts. The transformation has been made possible by increasingly compact electronics, batteries and explosives. Miniaturization, especially of power supplies, lets spy agencies equip field agents with capabilities unimaginable a few years ago.

Buildings damaged by Israeli strikes on Tehran in June. A network of local agents on the ground was critical to crippling Iran’s defenses during the 12-day attack. Sha Dati/xinhua/Zuma Press

Until recently, achieving big impact at close range in unfriendly territory generally required putting elite career operatives directly in harm’s way. Now, with the advent of powerful remote or autonomous devices, the people deploying them don’t need to be seasoned professionals. Amateurs with minimal training can execute critical elements within larger missions, such as planting devices or operating them near hard-to-reach targets. Being local, they can remain hidden or escape before an attack.

“The lone 007 operator is not what we’re looking for now,” said Eran Lerman, a former top official in Israel’s National Security Council and senior military-intelligence official. “Now, people are at the tip of a very complex operation.”

Spy agencies have long made innovative use of technology, including devices more fanciful than those James Bond gets from Q, his gadgetry wizard. Technology is also wielded against spies, and that threat is precisely why intelligence organizations are now seeking local agents from outside their ranks.

Pervasive surveillance, electronic tracking and biometric profiling—together known as “digital dust”—have gutted traditional undercover operations. The U.S. discovered that in 2003, when a team of almost two dozen agents who had abducted an Egyptian cleric in Italy for secret interrogation was outed by analysis of their local cellphone records.

Mossad was similarly upended by technology in 2010, when an entire team sent to assassinate a Palestinian official in Dubai was exposed by security cameras. Local police published stills from the footage and photos of the agents from their forged passports, blowing their covers.

The fiasco followed a botched attempt by Mossad agents in 1997 to assassinate a Palestinian leader in Jordan that sparked a diplomatic crisis and demonstrated limits to Israeli operatives’ ability to act abroad.

Israeli Uri Brodsky, center, is escorted to court in Poland in 2010, while being investigated in connection with a Palestinian official‘s assassination in Dubai. Covert operations using professional agents have become more vulnerable. Czarek Sokolowski/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mossad’s two failures shocked an organization accustomed to operating with impunity. Its agents in 1960 had kidnapped Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and spirited him back to Israel for trial. After Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Mossad agents spent years crossing the globe to hunt down and kill the assailants.

Spy agencies saw profound implications in the recent debacles, far beyond public humiliation. Traditional spy tools and methods—known in the field as “tradecraft”— suddenly seemed unusable. Forged passports became evidence of crimes. Cellphone-network data from secret calls offered a trail of breadcrumbs for investigators. Facial-recognition software and DNA analysis made wigs and disguises laughable.

“The impact of biometrics was enormous,” said Alon Kantor, an Israeli investor who specializes in security technology.

Not long ago, a few documents could establish a fictitious identity. In a digitized world where almost everyone has some degree of online presence, lacking an internet persona becomes suspicious, Kantor noted.

Former Israeli intelligence officials say they realized that rather than sending their own people on foreign missions, they needed to find locals who would execute critical elements on Israel’s behalf.

While spy agencies have long relied on local agents for tasks that insiders can accomplish best—like unlocking doors, cracking safes and planting bugs—the new agents would do more than assist. And unlike “sleeper” agents that Moscow sent to the West during the Cold War and after, who led deep-cover lives for years awaiting instructions that might never arrive, Israel’s operatives were trained for specific missions, former officials say.

Israel tapped its network in 2018 to help steal Iran’s nuclear archives and spirit them out of the country. Israeli officials said the stash included around 50,000 printed pages and 183 computer disks.

The Beirut bedroom of Kamal Nasser after he was killed in a 1973 operation carried out by Mossad, which pursued those suspected of orchestrating the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Harry Koundakjian/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mossad in 2020 enlisted agents inside Iran to help position a robotic machine gun, hidden in the back of a parked pickup truck, along the commute of Iran’s top nuclear scientist. When remote operators hundreds of miles away shot Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Israel’s local agents were already far from the scene, according to people familiar with the operation.

This June, Israel’s local operatives destroyed Iranian air defenses and spotted high-value targets before and during the attacks, according to former Israeli intelligence officials familiar with the operation.

“What you have is a sort of extension arm, which gives you the best of both worlds,” said Eyal Tsir Cohen, a former senior Israeli intelligence official. “It allows you to operate at a distance but gives you deniability and gives your agents survivability.”

New covert technologies don’t just empower local agents hiding in plain sight. Israeli intelligence agents last year remotely detonated explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah across Lebanon, inflicting severe damage on the group and killing at least 12 people. Still, the plot behind sneaking the lethal devices into enemy hands was more of a classic covert operation, carried out by intelligence professionals rather than amateurs, according to people familiar with the project.

Other spy agencies have learned from Israel’s new approach, using digital communications and imaging technology in cellphones and drones to blur the lines between intelligence gathering and covert activities.

“Political leaders are increasingly asking intelligence agencies not only to collect information but also to affect the situation on the ground,” said a European intelligence official. “It’s increasingly important to have a special-forces unit inside your intelligence agency.”

Clandestine action—the stuff of thrillers and Hollywood hits—has traditionally served a less colorful policy purpose, somewhere between diplomacy and war. The motto of the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations division, the Special Activities Center, is tertia optio, or third option, neither combat nor negotiation.

Flashing fangs in this way can let one side display its abilities to an adversary—such as the harm it can inflict or how deeply it can penetrate a leadership—using acts that fall short of outright war. Covert actions can actually support diplomacy by showing an enemy that armed conflict would fail and, paradoxically, lead to de-escalation, say practitioners.

The scene of an Israeli attack, using a remote-controlled gun, that killed Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh outside Tehran in 2020. wana news agency/Reuters

“You use a combination of covert activity and airstrikes when you don’t want to send in any ground forces,” said Seth Jones, who previously worked in U.S. Special Operations Command and now runs the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “They generally are not going to win you a war, but they can be effective in many ways.”

That’s what happened in 2007 after Israel spotted an undisclosed facility in Syria that intelligence analysts believed to house an illicit nuclear program. Israeli leaders opted to destroy it with a secret airstrike that they only acknowledged more than a decade later.

Syria, unable to resume a program it had conducted in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, only said at the time that it had thwarted an Israeli airstrike. It staged no direct retaliation.

No country has applied new technology and Israel’s lessons more actively than Ukraine, which is fighting for its existence and has limited capacity to strike deep inside Russia. Following Moscow’s large-scale invasion in 2022, Kyiv made innovative use of commercially available drones for reconnaissance, targeting and dropping improvised explosives. Ukrainian troops tapped crowdsource intelligence on Russian troop positions, aggregated through software similar to ride-sharing apps.

A turning point in Kyiv’s covert operations came after Russian forces in March 2022 massacred civilians in Bucha, a quiet commuter town outside Kyiv. Ukrainian intelligence officials told their Western counterparts they would replicate Israel’s reprisal for the Munich Olympic murders, according to people in the meeting.

Ukraine intensified purges of holdover Russia sympathizers from its SBU intelligence agency and set out to professionalize on the model of Mossad.

Outgunned by Russia in weaponry, Kyiv ruthlessly exploited its few advantages available for covert action. Its agents proved adept at getting near their targets because most Ukrainians speak Russian and many have Russian passports, relatives or homes, allowing them to blend into Russian society. Rampant corruption in Russia also means that information and access can often be bought.

Ukrainian operatives killed a Russian propagandist with an exploding statuette at a cafe in St. Petersburg in April 2023. Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images/Zuma Press

Ukraine also blurred lines on the battlefield. A Ukrainian intelligence officer with the call sign Paragraf said last year she created a fake account on a Russian dating app using AI-generated photos and connected with Russian soldiers. Sending carefully selected responses generated by ChatGPT, she tempted the soldiers to share photos of themselves. Paragraf’s colleagues then used details in the photos to pinpoint the soldiers’ locations and called in airstrikes.

As war dragged on, SBU agents inside Russia staged increasingly daring attacks, often abetted by Russians unaware of their role. SBU operators assassinated a general in Moscow using a bomb hidden in a scooter and killed a propagandist in St. Petersburg with an exploding statuette presented by an unwitting Russian woman at a public event. The strikes mixed detailed human intelligence with advanced remote technologies that allowed many of Ukraine’s agents to evade capture.

Russia has also employed local agents inside Ukraine and Western Europe. Dutch authorities in September, acting on information from the country’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, arrested three 17-year-old Dutch men for allegedly receiving payment from a hacker group linked to the Russian government. The three received equipment to map and hack Wi-Fi systems at official buildings, potentially “for digital espionage and cyberattacks,” according to the Dutch public prosecutor. A Kremlin spokesman rejected the allegations as groundless.

A big distinction, say intelligence specialists, is that Russia’s local agents generally work for pay, and many don’t know that they are working for Moscow. Israel and Ukraine, in contrast, have developed networks of agents who act out of conviction.

The aftermath of Ukraine’s drone strike at the Belaya air base in Russia in June. Ukraine’s high-tech approach allowed it to hit distant targets while protecting its own agents. maxar technologies/Reuters

Operation Spiderweb’s Tymofeyev was one of those agents. A dual Ukrainian-Russian citizen, he had worked over recent years in the Russian industrial city of Chelyabinsk, about 900 miles east of Moscow.

Tymofeyev’s wife Kateryna, also a dual citizen, moved to Chelyabinsk with him in 2018. There she ran a tattoo parlor that locals said stayed open late in the evening, Russian state media reported.

An undated social-media photo of Artem and Kateryna Tymofeyev, who secretly prepared Operation Spiderweb from a warehouse they rented near a Russian state security office.

The couple’s legitimate public life allowed them to operate so openly that when Tymofeyev last year set up a road-freight business for the operation, he was able to rent a warehouse near the local field office of Russia’s FSB state security service.

Technology allowed Ukraine to run the operation from afar, but it also presented engineering challenges because even digital connections need time to cover distance. The drones would be attacking targets up to 3,000 miles away from their pilots, so video signals would lag slightly, potentially causing image delays known as latency that could botch the strikes. Ukrainian planners carefully constructed software and the communications channels to minimize latency, according to people involved in the work.

Israel took similar measures with the remote machine gun it used to kill Iranian nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh in 2020, according to a person familiar with the attack.

Ukraine’s high-tech approach in Spiderweb allowed it not just to hit distant targets but to protect its agents. The Tymofeyevs left Russia days before the strikes. Ukrainian officials say the couple is now in a secure location.

WSJ

3. U.S. Forces Raid Ship, Seize Cargo Headed to Iran From China

​Summary:

A U.S. special operations team boarded a ship in the Indian Ocean and seized Chinese-origin, dual-use components believed destined for Iranian procurement networks tied to missile development. The raid, conducted several hundred miles off Sri Lanka, reflects a more assertive Trump-era maritime interdiction posture aimed at slowing Tehran’s military reconstitution after the June 12-day war that damaged Iranian nuclear and missile infrastructure. U.S. officials said the seized items were destroyed and the ship was allowed to continue. The action also fits a broader pattern of sanctions enforcement and interdictions at sea, amid renewed international restrictions on Iran arms trade and heightened scrutiny of China-linked transfers that can improve Iranian missile capability.

​Comment: Good work. BZ to the Navy and Naval SOF. As an aside, when do we plan to aggressively interdict all the CRInK malign shipping, smuggling, and proliferation activities, especially north korea?

U.S. Forces Raid Ship, Seize Cargo Headed to Iran From China

Operation highlights the Trump administration’s use of aggressive tactics against adversaries at sea that were rarely used in the past

By Benoit Faucon

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 and Lara Seligman

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Dec. 12, 2025 4:43 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-forces-raid-ship-seize-cargo-headed-to-iran-from-china-35a1e2ac?st=HMDzM2

The Iranian flag over Tehran in November. atta kenare/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A U.S. special operations team boarded a ship in the Indian Ocean last month and seized military-related articles headed to Iran from China, U.S. officials said, a rare interdiction operation at sea aimed at blocking Tehran from rebuilding its military arsenal.

The ship was several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka when the operatives boarded it and confiscated the cargo before letting the vessel proceed, the officials said. The U.S. had been tracking the shipment, according to the officials and another person familiar with the operation.

The previously undisclosed raid was part of a Pentagon effort to disrupt the Islamic Republic’s clandestine military procurement after Israel and the U.S. inflicted heavy damage on its nuclear and missile facilities during a 12-day conflict in June.

It was the first time in recent years that the U.S. military is known to have intercepted cargo with Chinese origins on its way to Iran. The name of the ship and its owner couldn’t be determined.

The operation occurred weeks before the U.S. seized a sanctioned oil tanker on Wednesday off the coast of Venezuela that had been used to transport oil from Venezuela to Iran. It underscored the Trump administration’s use of aggressive maritime tactics against adversaries that the U.S. has rarely used in the recent past.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which carried out the operation, declined to comment. Spokespeople for Iran and China’s foreign ministry didn’t return requests for comment.

The cargo consisted of components potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons, one official said, adding that the shipment was destroyed. The seized components were dual-use items, with both civilian and military applications, the official said.

The U.S. had gathered intelligence suggesting the cargo was going to Iranian companies that specialize in procuring components for its missile program, said the second official and the person familiar with the seizure.

The operation included special operations forces as well as conventional forces, according to the first U.S. official.

Iranian officials say they are redoubling efforts to rebuild the country’s ballistic missile arsenal, fearing a new confrontation with Israel. Negotiations with the U.S. over Iran’s disputed nuclear program have yet to resume after they were interrupted by the war.

Iranian missiles on display at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Museum in Tehran in November. Majid Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters

The rare confiscation of military-related technologies bound for Iran comes as the United Nations reimposed an international ban on Iran arms trades late September.

In recent years, the U.S. has seized several cargoes of weapons and oil belonging to Iran. Back in January 2024, the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American operations in the Middle East, confiscated Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missiles components headed to Yemen’s Houthis militants near the coast of Somalia.

The U.S. also seized Iranian oil shipments in 2020 and 2023, saying they were benefiting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s paramilitary organization.

Chinese sales of products suspected of going to Iran’s missile program have come under increased scrutiny in the U.S. Last month, two Democratic congressmen urged U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe to investigate a large shipment of chemicals from China to Iran potentially useful in missile propellants.

“Beijing’s latest shipments of these critical chemical precursors indicate that U.S. actions to date have failed to deter it from supporting Tehran’s procurement of offensive military capabilities,” Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.) and Joe Courtney (D., Conn.) wrote in a Nov. 13 letter. “Beijing seems increasingly emboldened to assist Tehran’s rearmament efforts with impunity.”

Two Iranian ships have been sailing from China with tons of sodium perchlorate, a main ingredient for producing solid propellant for ballistic missiles, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. In April, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned several Iranian and Chinese entities for facilitating transfers of chemical precursors to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps useful for ballistic missile production.

China has long been a diplomatic and economic ally for Iran, importing its crude oil and decrying U.S. sanctions on Tehran as illegal. It isn’t clear if the Chinese government is aware of shipments to Iran’s missile program, which are often carried out by Iranian-controlled vessels and companies.

“By remaining a permissive jurisdiction for the export of illicit technologies, China is an enabler for Iran’s ballistic missiles program,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank advocating tighter sanctions on Iran.

Companies in China typically provide dual-use technologies that improve the precision of Iran’s projectiles, such as spectrometers, gyroscopes and other measurement devices, said Ben Taleblu. “That is much more dangerous than chemical precursors,” he said.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 13, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Forces Raid Ship, Seize Cargo Going to Iran'.

4. Scoop: Trump plans to appoint U.S. general to lead Gaza security force

​Summary:

POTUS plans to put an American two star general in command of the International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The move would deepen U.S. ownership of the ceasefire’s second phase, alongside a U.S. civil military headquarters in Israel, U.S. led reconstruction planning, and the Trump chaired Board of Peace that the UN Security Council authorized in November. Axios reports Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, CENTCOM special operations commander, is a leading contender, though no decision is final. Partners hesitate over Hamas disarmament and rules of engagement. Washington is warning Europe that without support, the IDF will not withdraw fully.

Excerpt:

The latest: A top contender for the role is Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, special operations commander for CENTCOM, a U.S. and an Israeli official said.

• Until a few months ago, Jeffers headed the U.S. mechanism to monitor the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Comment: The reward for doing a good job is the opportunity to do more work.  

Scoop: Trump plans to appoint U.S. general to lead Gaza security force

https://www.axios.com/2025/12/11/gaza-security-force-trump-us-general

• Barak Ravid
• 
  

Smoke and dust rises after Israeli forces demolish several buildings in northern Gaza City. Photo: Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images

The Trump administration is planning to appoint an American two-star general to command the International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza, according to two U.S. officials and two Israeli officials.

Why it matters: The appointment will further increase the U.S. responsibility for securing and rebuilding Gaza, which is turning into the biggest U.S. political-civilian-military project in the Middle East in more than two decades.

Breaking it down: The U.S. established a civil-military headquarters in Israel to monitor the ceasefire and coordinate humanitarian aid.

• The U.S. is leading the planning for the reconstruction of Gaza.
• Trump is expected to head the Gaza Board of Peace, and his top advisers will be members of an international executive board.
• Now, the U.S. will be in command of the enclave's security force.

Nevertheless, White House officials stress there will be no U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza.

Driving the news: The ceasefire in Gaza is Trump's biggest second-term foreign policy achievement so far, but the truce is fragile and his administration wants to proceed to the second phase soon to avoid sliding back into war.

• The second phase of the deal involves the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulling farther back, the ISF deploying to Gaza, and a new governing structure coming into force, including the Trump-led Board of Peace.
• The UN Security Council recently authorized both the ISF and the board.
• Trump told reporters Wednesday that he's planning to announce the Gaza Board of Peace in early 2026.

Behind the scenes: Two Israeli officials said UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, who visited Israel this week, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials that the Trump administration is going to lead the ISF and appoint a two-star general as its commander.

• "Waltz even said he knows the general personally and stressed he is a very serious guy," one Israeli official said.
• The Israeli officials said Waltz stressed that having an American general in charge of the ISF should give Israel confidence it will operate according to appropriate standards.
• Two U.S. officials confirmed that the plan is to appoint a U.S. general to lead the ISF.

The latest: A top contender for the role is Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, special operations commander for CENTCOM, a U.S. and an Israeli official said.

• Until a few months ago, Jeffers headed the U.S. mechanism to monitor the ceasefire in Lebanon.
• A White House official said no decision had been made.

State of play: U.S. officials say they're in the last stages of putting together the ISF and the new governance structure for Gaza.

• The U.S. has proposed that former UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov serve as Board of Peace representative on the ground in Gaza, working with a future Palestinian technocratic government, sources with knowledge said.
• The Trump administration has been quietly briefing Western countries about the Board of Peace and the ISF and inviting them to join. Two countries that have already been invited to join the board are Germany and Italy, according to two sources with direct knowledge.

• Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Egypt have previously expressed willingness to send soldiers to the ISF, though it's unclear whether that's still the case. It's also unclear if any Western countries will agree to send troops.

Friction point: The main reason for the hesitation is that many countries want to know whether Hamas will actually disarm voluntarily, and what the rules of engagement will be for the new force.

• The U.S. told European countries in recent days that the plan is to start deploying the ISF when the Board of Peace is in place, but no clear timeline was given, a European diplomat said.
• U.S. officials stressed in a briefing to European diplomats in Tel Aviv on Monday that if their countries won't send soldiers to the ISF or support the countries that do, the Israeli military won't withdraw from the areas of Gaza it still occupies.
• "The message was: 'If you are not ready to go to Gaza, don't complain that the IDF stays,'" the European diplomat with knowledge of the briefing said.

What they're saying: A White House official said there have been discussions around the composition of the ISF, the Board of Peace, and a technocratic Palestinian government, "but no definitive decisions have been made or communicated."

5. A Letter from Ukraine – How to stop Russian aggression: appeasement or resistance?

​Summary:

Oleksandr Sukhobrus argues Ukraine has already tested two Western prescriptions for dealing with Russia, and one failed fast. In 2014, Kyiv leaned on diplomacy as Russian special operations forces and proxies seized Crimea, and the result was territorial loss, a surge of domestic legitimacy for Putin, and an expanded appetite that spilled into the Donbas. When Ukraine shifted to armed resistance, Russia could not achieve decisive breakthroughs even after reinforcing with armor, artillery, and combat-experienced troops. Sukhobrus contends Europe’s instinct to freeze conflict only deferred escalation, because Putin sought a larger political payoff than partial occupation. His core warning is existential: Russian control means systematic erasure of Ukrainian identity, so renewed “appeasement” risks ending Ukrainian sovereignty rather than ending the war.

A Letter from Ukraine – How to stop Russian aggression: appeasement or resistance?

by SWJ Staff

|

12.12.2025 at 03:04pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/12/russian-aggression-appeasement-or-resistance/

Oleksandr Sukhobrus—a native of Kyiv, licensed lawyer, psychologist, and former diplomat—writes below that to stop Russian aggression, the West must abandon appeasement and instead back Ukraine’s resistance with decisive, sustained military and economic support, because concessions only encourage further expansion and threaten Ukraine’s survival.

How to stop Russian aggression: appeasement or resistance? Ukraine has experienced both methods.

In its propaganda narratives aimed at Western audiences, Russia is trying to impose the thesis that Ukraine has chosen the path of armed confrontation with Russia and thereby made a mistake. Kremlin narratives claim that Russia has always been willing to negotiate on contentious issues, but shooting at Russian soldiers, even if they suddenly appear on your territory, is wrong, as in an armed confrontation, Russia will always prevail, and all issues with Russia can be resolved at the negotiating table. Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of Russia’s main points is that Ukraine should not have fought Russia but negotiated with it. This Russian narrative is pure war propaganda; however, in the fourth year of the war, many so-called experts in the West are parroting Russia’s propaganda theses and accusing Ukraine and the West of a lack of peace initiatives towards Russia. In an attempt to stop Russia’s aggression, Ukraine has tried both appeasement and armed resistance. The results of these two approaches are described below.

In modern history, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began in 2014. Russian Spetsnaz—special operations forces and Russian paramilitaries—began seizing government buildings in Crimea. Ukraine attempted to respond to Russia’s aggressive actions through diplomacy and negotiations. Peace was considered a priority for Ukraine, and problems, as was then believed in Ukraine with the “friendly Russian people,” could be resolved at the negotiating table. The result of this pacifist sentiment in the Ukrainian establishment and society was the loss of Crimea. The annexation of Crimea became a source of particular pride for Putin and an extremely gratifying fact, propelling Putin’s approval ratings among Russians to record highs. The experience was so inspiring for Putin that he decided to continue the aggression. On April 2014, a group of Russian combatants who had previously participated in the seizure of Crimea, taking advantage of Ukraine’s virtually unguarded border – Ukraine didn’t consider it necessary to guard its border with Russia, as Russia, considered a fraternal nation before the events of 2014 that would not harm Ukraine, crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border and captured the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian leadership, realizing that continuing a pacifist policy toward Russian aggression would lead to further annexation of Ukrainian territory, this time offered armed resistance to the invaders. Russia later reinforced its invasion force in Ukraine with artillery, tanks, and troops hardened by battles in the Caucasus and Syria, but was unable to advance further into Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who became President of Ukraine in 2019, intensified efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where fighting took place, and achieved partial success. The intensity of fighting in Donbas decreased during this period, and there were even several lulls between the sides. Everything was moving toward freezing the conflict, with Russia effectively occupying part of Donbas. This situation suited Europe, as the European political establishment believed that Russia’s acquisition of Crimea and part of Donbas would appease Putin and satiate Russia’s imperial appetite. For Ukraine, this situation was extremely difficult to accept, yet the Ukrainian leadership tolerated it. In the eyes of the Ukrainian political establishment and Ukrainian society, such a situation was preferable to a full-scale war. The only person who wasn’t happy with the situation was Vladimir Putin.

The euphoria in Russian society over the annexation of Crimea had faded. Russian citizens were thinking less and less about the annexed Crimea and increasingly focused on the problems the government had created—the lack of change of power, corruption, arbitrary law enforcement, and the deteriorating civilian infrastructure. In 2014, the Russian flag over Sevastopol sent a powerful dopamine rush through Russian society and made Russians temporarily forget their problems. In Putin’s mind, the Russian flag over Kyiv was supposed to restore a sense of happiness to Russians. On February 22, 2022, Putin launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian army and society as a whole resisted. As a result, after almost four years of war, Russia hasn’t even been able to capture the Donbas completely.

For Ukraine and Ukrainians, there’s another important point related to the Russian occupation: Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory doesn’t mean Ukrainians begin to live under Russian rule. Russia erases their identity, raising Ukrainian children to hate Ukraine and the West, and forcing adults to forget who they are. In effect, Russia is ensuring that after it arrives in Ukrainian lands, there will be no Ukrainians left. The Russian authorities treat Ukrainians in the Russian-occupied territories in the spirit of Vladimir Putin’s article, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which he wrote on the eve of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Putin’s arguments in the article, Ukrainians are part of a larger nation—a triune people comprising Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians. Accordingly, since they are part of a larger nation, they should speak, think, and have a culture like members of a larger nation—Russians—and live in the same state. For Ukraine, another attempt to appease Russia by abandoning armed resistance would cost its independence and risk the eradication of the Ukrainian nation on Ukrainian territory.

Faced with Russian aggression, Ukraine has tried two approaches. The first was appeasement to the aggressor, an attempt to preserve peace at any cost, and faith in the opponent’s constructive stance. This approach led only to the immediate loss of territory, an increase in the aggressor’s appetite, and continued aggression. The second approach—armed resistance against the aggressor—showed that Russia, with its entire vaunted army and even together with the regular armed forces of North Korea, is not capable of capturing even Donbas.

Ukrainians realized in 2014 that surrendering territory without a fight and attempting appeasement would only whet Putin’s appetite. By 2025, this should be clear to everyone in the West as well.

Tags: appeasement, Crimea, Donbas., resistance, Russo-Ukrainian War

About The Author

• 
  
• SWJ Staff
• SWJ Staff searches the internet daily for articles and posts that we think are of great interests to our readers.
• 
  

6. At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025

​Summary:

AFSA’s 2025 report warns the U.S. Foreign Service is in crisis at a moment of rising global risk. Based on an August to September 2025 survey of more than 2,100 active-duty diplomats worldwide, it finds deep damage to mission performance and retention. Eighty-six percent say workplace changes since January have reduced their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities. Ninety-eight percent report poor morale, and nearly one in three are considering leaving the Service. AFSA argues that personnel losses, political interference, and erosion of soft power are pushing America’s diplomatic corps to a breaking point, creating vulnerabilities adversaries can exploit.

Comment: We need our diplomatic instrument of national power in top form to lead. Just as the first SOF principle: in diplomacy humans are more important than hardware. We write off this report at our peril.

Download the full report: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/at-the-breaking-point-full-report.pdf

Download the EXSUM: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/at-the-breaking-point-executive-summary.pdf

Download Survey Data: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/at-the-breaking-point-survey-data.pdf

Download Congressional Brief: https://afsa.org/sites/default/files/at-the-breaking-point-congressional-brief.pdf

At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025

https://afsa.org/at-the-breaking-point

Publications > At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025

America’s Diplomatic Corps in Crisis

Major Findings

• 86% say changes in the workplace since January have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities.
• 98% report poor morale.
• Nearly 1 in 3 are considering leaving the Service.

America’s global leadership depends on a strong, professional diplomatic workforce. But in 2025, the U.S. Foreign Service faces an unprecedented crisis. Personnel losses, political interference, and the erosion of America’s soft power have pushed the diplomatic corps to a breaking point—just as global threats intensify.

To document the realities and challenges facing career diplomats in this moment of profound institutional strain, the American Foreign Service Association conducted a survey of its active-duty membership between August and September 2025. More than 2,100 diplomats responded—from entry-level officers to senior leaders, serving in Washington and at posts worldwide.

With the federal government’s own workforce survey discontinued earlier this year, AFSA undertook this study to fill the gap and ensure the voices of America’s diplomats are heard.

Read the Report

We invite journalists, policymakers, AFSA members, and the public to explore our findings.

To read the report press release, please click here.

Download Full Report

Download Executive Summary

Download Survey Data

Download Congressional Brief

As this report makes clear, a year of relentless attacks by the administration against these dedicated public servants has left our diplomatic corps in crisis — a vulnerability that our adversaries are all too happy to exploit.

–Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), co-founder of the Senate Foreign Service Caucus

Having served near half my life in the Foreign Service, from Jamaica to Pakistan, I know that diplomacy requires a robust and cohesive presence on the ground. AFSA’s data confirms we’re asking our diplomats to do more with less precisely when robust engagement is needed most.

–Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former Director General of the Foreign Service and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

Our diplomats deserve the independence, respect, and resources necessary to serve with integrity — ensuring that America remains powerful, secure, and prosperous.

–Harry K. Thomas Jr., former Director General of the Foreign Service and three-time U.S. ambassador

I encourage those currently serving to maintain their high professional standards, to document and report abusive and illegal behavior, and to develop specific proposals for reforming and restoring the Foreign Service, including specific steps for implementing those proposals.

–Nancy Jo Powell, former Director General of the Foreign Service and U.S. ambassador to India

When the vast majority of diplomats say recent changes have hurt their ability to advance U.S. priorities, we have a profound problem. They are sounding the alarm that our global standing is at risk. We must listen.

–Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas)

For press inquiries, contact:

Nikki Gamer

Communications & Outreach Director

Gamer@afsa.org

About AFSA

The American Foreign Service Association, established in 1924, is both the professional association and exclusive representative for the U.S. Foreign Service. AFSA’s members include active-duty and alumni/retired members of the Foreign Service at the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Foreign Commercial Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

7. U.S. Pours More Firepower Into the Caribbean as Trump Ramps Up Threats

​Summary:

The U.S. is surging combat power into the Caribbean to expand POTUS’s options against Venezuela’s Maduro, signaling preparation for possible escalation beyond maritime interdictions. New deployments reportedly include F-35A fighters, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, and rescue assets staged in Puerto Rico, plus tanker aircraft in the Dominican Republic to support longer-range strike sorties. This adds to an existing buildup that includes multiple warships, MQ-9s, P-8s, and the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. Analysts assess the posture is optimized for precision strikes and air-defense suppression, with electronic warfare and cyber effects likely preceding any land attack. Regional experts warn escalation could spill across Latin America.

Comment: What comes next and how does this end?

U.S. Pours More Firepower Into the Caribbean as Trump Ramps Up Threats

WSJ

American leader now has an array of options for Venezuela’s Maduro, including land strikes and electronic warfare

By Shelby Holliday

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 and Costas Paris

Follow

Dec. 12, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/u-s-pours-more-firepower-into-the-caribbean-as-trump-ramps-up-threats-8e964845

U.S. Navy aircraft pictured Friday at a naval base in Puerto Rico. Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

The U.S. military is moving more weapons and units into the Caribbean that give President Trump powerful new options to escalate his pressure campaign on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and potentially bring him down.

After weeks of deadly boat strikes and the seizure of an oil tanker, the Pentagon is sending assets that could enable land strikes, disable Venezuela’s defenses and enforce an oil embargo—posing a direct threat not only to Maduro but to his regional allies such as Cuba.

F-35A stealth jet fighters, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes, HH-60W rescue helicopters and HC-130J rescue planes are being staged in Puerto Rico, according to photographs and flight tracking data. Tanker aircraft that can refuel bombers and jet fighters midair have been moved to the Dominican Republic in recent days. Such aircraft could play a key role in any potential attacks on land, analysts say.

The deployments add to the significant amount of combat power that the U.S. has already shifted to the region in recent months, including 11 warships, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-35B jet fighters and P-8 Poseidon spy planes, among other weaponry. The arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford last month brought dozens of aircraft into the region that could also be used in airstrikes. Some of the latest aircraft movements were reported by the War Zone.

Trump has threatened to up the ante by attacking targets on land after months of bombing alleged drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela and beyond. The administration also seized an oil tanker full of Venezuelan crude earlier this week, opening a new front in the White House’s pressure campaign.

The USS Gerald R. Ford with dozens of jet fighters deployed to the Caribbean last month. handout/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Trump has also said that he has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

“We’ve been watching the efforts to intimidate us,” Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said in an address Friday, referring to American aircraft near Venezuelan territory. “We ask humbly, don’t be mistaken. We’re ready to defend this country. You’re not going to intimidate us.”

Military analysts say the recent movement of equipment further signals the administration’s intent to carry out combat operations. The buildup also means the U.S. has the resources in place to seize more oil tankers if Trump chooses to do so.

“I think what’s important about the forces and capabilities that are moving into the theater is that they are optimized to conduct precision, stealthy strikes that can minimize collateral damage,” said Heather Penney, a former fighter pilot and director of studies and research at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, an aerospace think tank. “All of them together work in concert to open up the battlespace and conduct precision strikes with minimum risk to U.S. forces. And of course, you have a search-and-rescue team there just in case.”

Regional analysts and former government officials have warned that U.S. military action in Venezuela could spiral into a wider crisis across Latin America. Cuba, which suffers from a fragile economy and severe energy shortages, relies on Venezuela for oil. Any conflict could also quickly spill across the porous borders with Colombia, where armed groups rule much of the frontier.

“This could be devastating, not only for Venezuela, but also for the region,” said Francesca Emanuele, senior international policy associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “These actions would almost certainly lead to a civil war or a prolonged, devastating conflict.”

President Nicolás Maduro was in Caracas this week to commemorate a historic battle. Federico Parra/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The next step in the U.S. campaign against Maduro may not be actual combat but enforcing an oil embargo on Venezuela—either a physical one or a de facto one, if ships steer clear of the country, said Evanan Romero, a Houston-based energy consultant and former Venezuelan deputy oil minister.

The U.S. has sanctioned Venezuelan crude oil, giving the Trump administration a basis to more strictly enforce those measures. Only Chevron legally exports Venezuelan oil, but a vast fleet of tankers still carry it, using false flags and opaque ownership to shield their operations.

“You get rid of the oil, we’re talking about the final collapse,” said Romero, who is advising opposition leader María Corina Machado on an oil-sector recovery plan.

Inside Venezuela, port officials said local authorities had warned them that American strikes are likely. An official at Venezuela’s airport in Valencia said antiaircraft guns have been deployed near the runway and storage buildings. He said more than 80% of flights have been canceled over the past two weeks.

The port officials said ship traffic is nearly at a standstill. On Friday at least a dozen containerships and tankers reversed course as they were approaching to dock.

A tanker off the coast or Maracaibo, a Venezuelan hub for oil exports. henry chirinos/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Trump hasn’t ruled out a land invasion, but military experts said even the large number of forces in the Caribbean falls far short of what would be needed to conquer a country as large as Venezuela. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that “prolonged war is definitely not something this president is interested in.”

Targeted airstrikes on land targets are far more probable. Such an operation would likely begin with cyber operations and satellite jamming to disable the Venezuelan military’s ability to use its relatively sophisticated Russian air-defense systems. These efforts may already be under way to help prepare the battlefield, analysts said.

Southern Command, which oversees U.S. troops in the region, declined to comment on the movement of equipment. Analysts say it would make sense to station electronic warfare systems as close to the battlefield as possible. That equipment, which could be operated even closer to Venezuela by ship, could potentially jam satellite uplinks and downlinks to cut off Venezuela’s access to communications and navigation systems.

Following electronic warfare efforts, the U.S. could send in a first wave of stealth F-35 fighter aircraft to destroy Venezuela’s defenses, command and control facilities and electricity infrastructure, analysts say. Tanker aircraft, like those recently positioned in the Dominican Republic, would be needed to refuel the aircraft as they fly toward Venezuela and back. Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the Caribbean could also be used in such an attack.

In following waves, the U.S. would likely send in “strike packages” of aircraft and other munitions to attack targets on land. Growler electronic warfare planes that can jam enemy defenses would play a key role, with other jet fighters and bomber aircraft flying alongside them depending on the mission.

A Growler electronic warfare plane took off from Puerto Rico on Friday. Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

A diplomatic track has been unfolding in parallel with the U.S. military pressure campaign. Last month, Trump held a phone call with Maduro in which they discussed general amnesty for him, his family and his senior aides, many of whom face U.S. sanctions or criminal indictments, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump warned Maduro that if he didn’t leave Venezuela willingly, the U.S. would consider other options including the use of force, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com and Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 13, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Sends in More Firepower To Turn Up Heat on Venezuela'.

WSJ

8. Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s Zombie Reaganism

​Summary:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is trying to brand POTUS as Reagan’s heir while misreading what made Reagan effective. Reagan negotiated only after he rebuilt military and economic power, held the alliance together, and forced Moscow to concede it could not keep up. The editors say today the U.S. faces two nuclear peers, China and Russia, cooperating rather than competing, yet POTUS is offering concessions while defense spending, as a share of GDP, is not rising in a Reagan-like way. They fault “detente” language, warn against isolationist instincts, and stress Reagan fused realism with moral purpose.

Excerpts:

The defense secretary is right that Reagan hesitated to use military force abroad. But then Mr. Hegseth revived Reagan Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger’s test for U.S. intervention abroad. That doctrine prescribes force only as a last resort for a vital interest, and only if it’s popular, among other requirements. “This is sound stuff,” Mr. Hegseth said.

But Reagan and his Administration never fully accepted those tenets. Bill Safire, the conservative columnist, described the doctrine in the New York Times at the time as “only the fun wars” and a vow not to defend ourselves until the stakes are dire. As Safire put it: “Our tradition has been to accept risks for a just cause.”

That point matters because you can’t reduce Reaganism to “out with utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism,” as Mr. Hegseth averred. The Reagan grand strategy blended idealism with realism—naming an evil empire, while arming even unpalatable enemies of communism across the world.

Comment: We can and must learn the right lessons from President Reagan. The highlighted portion in the expect above is political warfare.

Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s Zombie Reaganism

WSJ

The Defense Secretary’s history of the 1980s omits some points Trump could learn from.

By The Editorial Board

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Dec. 12, 2025 5:41 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/pete-hegseths-zombie-reaganism-20d6129f

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gives a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 6 in California Caylo Seals/Getty Images

You almost have to admire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth taking the stage at the Ronald Reagan presidential library and immediately opening fire. “Most who invoke Ronald Reagan’s name today, especially self-styled Republican hawks, are not much like Ronald Reagan,” he said. “Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan.” Who says the Gipper is irrelevant in Republican politics?

Mr. Hegseth aimed to locate the Trump project in Reagan’s mantra of peace through strength, and their slogans are the same. But the history of Reagan’s success is worth recalling as Mr. Hegseth accuses others of besmirching the 40th President’s legacy. Reagan rebuilt the U.S. military but also took political risk to negotiate with communists to win the Cold War, and Mr. Hegseth says President Trump is rerunning that playbook.

***

That doesn’t get the Reagan history right. Reagan negotiated from strength because he first built up that strength, both military and economic. He deployed midrange nuclear missiles in Europe despite ferocious Soviet opposition. The Soviets tried to break the U.S. alliance with Europe, and they only turned to serious negotiating when they concluded they couldn’t compete with the U.S.

Today the U.S. faces two nuclear peer adversaries, China and Russia, both global and ideologically hostile powers like the Soviet Union. And they are working together. Mr. Trump is so far making concessions to both and is spending less on defense as a share of the economy than Jimmy Carter did in 1979.

Mr. Hegseth said the defense budget is going up. “My kids and yours will someday talk about the Trump buildup,” he said. We’re ready to help the President make the case, and his one-time cash infusion in this year’s Republican budget bill was a start. But now what? Mr. Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposed a defense cut after inflation.

The defense secretary is right that Reagan hesitated to use military force abroad. But then Mr. Hegseth revived Reagan Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger’s test for U.S. intervention abroad. That doctrine prescribes force only as a last resort for a vital interest, and only if it’s popular, among other requirements. “This is sound stuff,” Mr. Hegseth said.

But Reagan and his Administration never fully accepted those tenets. Bill Safire, the conservative columnist, described the doctrine in the New York Times at the time as “only the fun wars” and a vow not to defend ourselves until the stakes are dire. As Safire put it: “Our tradition has been to accept risks for a just cause.”

That point matters because you can’t reduce Reaganism to “out with utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism,” as Mr. Hegseth averred. The Reagan grand strategy blended idealism with realism—naming an evil empire, while arming even unpalatable enemies of communism across the world.

The Chinese Communists may not be fomenting revolution abroad the way the Soviets did—for now—but their ambitions are still to become the pre-eminent global power, and Vladimir Putin is their junior partner. Mr. Trump casually said recently that Ukraine is losing its war, but Reagan would understand that Ukraine’s defeat would be a loss for the West that makes the U.S. less secure.

Mr. Hegseth’s lines that the “unipolar moment” of American primacy “is over” and talk about “respecting” China’s massive military build-up—designed to defeat U.S. forces—is a call for detente. But Reagan rejected detente with the Soviets in the 1970s. He rejected the view, common at the time, that the best the U.S. could do was negotiate a balance of power. This also may not be the best week for Mr. Hegseth to denounce “globalism” as the Trump Team argues that America can trust Beijing with Nvidia’s advanced AI chips.

Mr. Trump has made several policy choices worthy of Reagan, notably his Golden Dome homeland missile shield and enforcing his word that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. Both Presidents evince a genuine hatred of nuclear weapons and the awful human cost of war. President Trump carries an instinct for U.S. primacy in the world, albeit without Reagan’s decades of arguments about freedom and the virtues of free societies.

***

America’s enemies are doubtless pleased that Mr. Hegseth is so focused on settling scores about the Iraq War and firing inside the GOP tent. But if there’s a silver lining to his historical rewrite, it’s that the Trump team understands that Reagan’s legacy is important to embrace. Some in the MAGA coalition have dismissed this as “Zombie Reaganism” and claim that the U.S. would be better off if Pat Buchanan’s isolationism had prevailed.

Don’t believe it. The Administration is associating with Reagan because Republican voters still see themselves in his tradition and coalition. Mr. Trump knows who is the standard bearer for Republican electoral and strategic success. We wish his policies were as similar to Reagan’s as his slogan.

Review & Outlook: Despite claiming that ‘Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan,’ the administration’s new security document is soft on Russia and China, and while not entirely isolationist, reads more like a declaration that America can no longer afford to bear the burden of global leadership.

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 13, 2025, print edition as 'Pete Hegseth’s Zombie Reaganism'.

WSJ

9. China Can Send 300 Thousand Troops to Taiwan Within 10 Days

​Summary:

China could surge an invasion force by pairing PLA amphibious shipping with mobilized ferries and other commercial vessels. Citing a Center for Transportation Strategies analysis, it estimates landing ships could put about 21,000 troops ashore in a first wave, then move up to 300,000 troops within 10 days if civilian lift is requisitioned. It warns that targeting such vessels is fraught unless they are clearly requisitioned. Dense, routine traffic in the Taiwan Strait could mask preparations, consistent with Chinese deception doctrine. It also notes tests of ramp ships designed to offload armored vehicles from barges onto undeveloped coastlines.

Comment: Assuming this is an accurate assessment what do we do with this information?

China Can Send 300 Thousand Troops to Taiwan Within 10 Days - Militarnyi

militarnyi.com · Dmytro Shumlianskyi December 12, 2025 18:43

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/china-can-send-300-thousand-troops-to-taiwan-within-10-days/

Chinese amphibious vehicles land from the Type-075 UGV during an exercise. Photo credits: People's Liberation Army of China

China’s landing ships can land 21,000 troops in the first wave of an attack, and 300,000 in 10 days if civilian vessels are mobilized.

This is according to an analytical report by the Center for Transportation Strategies.

The confrontation around Taiwan could become the next hot spot on the current unstable geopolitical map of the world. Taiwan’s defense ministry has identified 2027 as the likely time for China’s invasion of the island.

Beijing’s main military power in the conquest of the island should be the navy, which China is actively building up. For example, China puts into operation 20-25 times more warships per year than the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom.

Chinese main battle tanks are loaded aboard the commercial ferry Zhong Hua Fu Jing. Photo credits: China Military Online

On December 4, 2025, China conducted its largest naval operation in the East China and South China Seas. The operation involved a hundred ships of the navy and coast guard.

To capture Taiwan, it is necessary to deliver a large number of soldiers and equipment, so China is rapidly building up not only its military but also its commercial fleet, including ferries, which, along with fishing vessels, are part of the maritime militia.

In 2022, Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, tracked about 30 Chinese commercial ferries during military exercises involving the People’s Liberation Army.

In addition, civilian vessels have heavy traffic in the Taiwan Strait, so this could help conceal preliminary preparations for an invasion. This fits in well with Chinese military doctrine, which calls for the use of deception to achieve the effect of surprise in war, as the scale of the invasion would be difficult to conceal.

Analysts estimate that China’s landing ships could land 21,000 troops in the first wave of an attack. Combined with mobilized civilian vessels, the army could transport 300,000 within 10 days.

At the same time, the use of formally civilian vessels complicates the counteraction, as an attack on civilian vessels violates international legal norms unless they have been clearly requisitioned for military use.

A Chinese support ship assisting with a beach landing, March 2025.

In March, China tested newly developed auxiliary vessels. They are supposed to ensure the landing of armored vehicles from civilian barges on unprepared coastlines and can be used to capture Taiwan.

In the stern of such vessels there is a large open platform for receiving equipment and cargo from other vessels. This equipment is supposed to go along the ship and come ashore on an elongated folding ramp about 120 meters long.

militarnyi.com · Dmytro Shumlianskyi December 12, 2025 18:43

10. "Taiwan independence" separatists who forget their roots will be condemned by history: spokesperson

​Summary:

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun condemns “Taiwan independence” advocates and the DPP for what he calls historical amnesia and collaboration with Japan. He criticizes Tokyo for avoiding explicit reaffirmation of China Japan political documents on Taiwan, and faults the DPP for echoing Japan while easing seafood restrictions and sending delegations. Guo invokes Japan’s 50-year colonial rule in Taiwan, citing killings, land seizures, resource extraction, forced labor, conscription, famine, and sexual slavery. He says the DPP whitewashes colonial oppression as development and acts as a pawn of Japanese militarism.

Comment: The CPP wants to tailor history to support its message and strategy. I think if we follow history China would be shown to have never controlled Taiwan as part of the mainland (as I understand the history).

"Taiwan independence" separatists who forget their roots will be condemned by history: spokesperson

english.news.cn

"Taiwan independence" separatists who forget their roots will be condemned by history: spokesperson

Source: Xinhua

Editor: huaxia

2025-12-12 22:09:30

https://english.news.cn/20251212/f23da39d2eea48ec887ebc570c365035/c.html

BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- What awaits the "Taiwan independence" separatists who have betrayed their ancestors is contempt from the people and the judgement of history, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Friday.

The Japanese government has been recently refusing to explicitly reiterate Taiwan-related statement set forth in the four political documents between China and Japan and kept dodging the issue by repeating that its position "remains unchanged." At the same time, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities echoed Japan's erroneous remarks and deeds by lifting import restrictions on Japanese seafood and sending groups to visit Japan to show support.

Noting that Japan has committed innumerable crimes in Taiwan over the 50-year occupation and colonial rule, Guo said at a regular news briefing that the DPP authorities have turned a blind eye to the countless tragedies and evidence, and instead blatantly glossed over Japan's colonial rule by using the term "end of the war" to fudge historical facts and avoid mentioning "the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" or "Taiwan's recovery."

During Japan's colonial rule, hundreds of thousands of our Taiwan compatriots were murdered by the Japanese military, accounting for about one-fifth of the population at that time. Under Japan's massive economic plundering and spiritual enslavement, 70 percent of Taiwan's land was occupied, and natural resources including coal and gold mines were destructively exploited.

Over half of the rice produced in Taiwan was shipped to Japan, while the local people were starved to death. Many Taiwanese were used as forced laborers, among whom 40 percent died. Around 200,000 young Taiwanese were forced to serve in the Japanese military and tens of thousands of them died as the "cannon fodder" of Japanese militarism. More than 2,000 Taiwanese girls and women were forced to become "comfort women." The Taiwanese, who were slaves living on a conquered island, had no political rights, freedom of belief or cultural freedom.

The DPP authorities have whitewashed Japan's colonial rule and oppression on Taiwan as "development" and "contribution," turning its back on the Chinese nation, selling Taiwan out to ingratiate with Japan, and serving as the accomplices and pawns of Japanese militarism, Guo said.

As China marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, the Japanese leader once again cited "survival-threatening situation" regarding the Taiwan question, which amounts to a challenge to human conscience and international justice, and has undoubtedly met with strong outrage from the Chinese people and the international community, the spokesperson said. ■

english.news.cn

11. U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history

​Summary:

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposal would require many short-term visitors using the Visa Waiver Program to disclose up to five years of social media history as part of the ESTA application. It would also add other data requests when feasible, including phone numbers used in five years, emails used in ten, IP and photo metadata, and potentially biometrics such as facial, fingerprint, DNA, and iris data, plus detailed family information. CBP says the proposal is not final and is open for a 60-day comment period. Critics warn it could chill travel, speech, tourism, and U.S. reputation.

Comment: Slippery slope? Security or political targeting?

U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history

Washington Post · Frances Vinall

The United States could begin requiring visitors from countries on the visa waiver program to provide up to five years of their social media history, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposal posted to the Federal Register to be officially published Wednesday.

There are dozens of countries on the visa waiver program list, including many European nations, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Brunei, Singapore, Qatar, Israel and Chile.

The proposal suggests adding social media as a “mandatory data element” for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application.

Applicants would also have to provide additional information “when feasible,” according to the proposal. The list includes telephone numbers used in the past five years; email addresses used in the past 10 years; IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos; and biometrics, including facial, fingerprint, DNA and iris data.

It would also require applicants to provide information about their family members, including names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, places of birth and residences.

According to CBP, the proposal is open for a 60-day public comment period. In an emailed statement, a CBP spokesperson said the proposal was “not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe.”

“The Department is constantly looking at how we vet those coming into the country,” the statement added.

ESTA is an automated system used by tourists and people traveling for short-term business who are entering the United States through the visa waiver program. It allows citizens of select countries to visit for up to 90 consecutive days. The authorization costs $40 and is generally valid for two years, and the ESTA holder can enter multiple times during that period.

Farshad Owji, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and partner at law firm WR Immigration, said the proposal could “chill travel and expression.”

“Basically, people will self-censor, and they avoid coming to the U.S. altogether, and that affects tourism, business and America’s global reputation.”

Owji added that it appeared the Trump administration wanted to use the social media evaluation to “understand the person’s view of general politics around the world.”

“Having the citizenship of an ESTA country doesn’t necessarily mean that person has a political view that is aligned with the current administration’s view,” he said.

The proposal also includes removing the option of applying for an ESTA from the government website and instead requiring applicants to use the ESTA Mobile app. CBP estimates that more than 14 million people annually will use the ESTA Mobile app after the changes come into effect.

Similar requirements have previously been applied to other visa categories.

All immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applicants have been required to disclose their social media accounts since 2019 in a change implemented during the previous Trump administration, covering about 15 million applicants per year, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.

In June, the State Department began requiring student visa applicants to have their social media accounts set to public, and the same requirement soon goes into effect for H-1B high-skilled worker visa applicants.

Washington Post · Frances Vinall

12. Experts React: Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy • Stimson Center

​Summary:

Stimson’s experts argue the December 4, 2025 National Security Strategy signals a sharp reframe of U.S. foreign policy away from democracy promotion and toward sovereignty, restraint, and narrowly defined “core” interests.  Christopher Preble notes the NSS leans on the Declaration of Independence to justify non-intervention and respect for differing systems, yet it also concedes strict non-intervention is impossible and claims discretion to intervene when Washington deems it justified. That caveat matters because contributors see carve outs that could widen quickly, especially a Western Hemisphere emphasis framed as a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Others warn the same posture could pressure allies in the Asia-Indo-Pacific to align with U.S. priorities with limited reciprocal benefits, while language about “cultivating resistance” in Europe reads to some as interference or implied regime change.

Comment: Are these the three key concepts: "Non-interference, non-intervention, and the rights of sovereign nations"

Experts React: Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy • Stimson Center

stimson.org ·

Experts provide insight on the new National Security Strategy and its approach to key U.S. foreign policy issues

By  Christopher Preble  •  Benjamin N. Gedan  •  Kelly A. Grieco  •  Yun Sun  •  Akriti (Vasudeva) Kalyankar  •  Emma Ashford  •  Evan Cooper  •  James Kim  •  Nevada Joan Lee  •  Dan Grazier  •  Elias Yousif  •  Rachel Stohl  •  Andrew Hyde  •  Will A. Smith Editor  •  Alessandro Perri Editor

Grand Strategy

• December 9, 2025
• https://www.stimson.org/2025/experts-react-trump-administrations-national-security-strategy/

Introduction: Non-interference, non-intervention, and the rights of sovereign nations

Christopher Preble

Director, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program

The NSS invoked the Declaration of Independence — specifically, the idea that all nations are entitled to a “separate and equal station” with respect to one another — to suggest that the Trump administration would similarly follow the path of “non-interventionism in the affairs of other nations.” The document explains that the administration would “seek good relations … with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

The NSS also reaffirmed the centrality of the “nation-state” as “the world’s fundamental political unit.” “It is natural and just,” the NSS explains, “that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.”

On the surface, then, the Trump NSS embraces non-interference, non-intervention, and sovereign equality, the same precepts at the heart of the United Nations Charter. That these passages in the NSS strike many as radical, however, suggests just how much has changed in international relations. Foreign policy elites today tend to treat sovereignty as a responsibility more than a right. Many have advocated for foreign interventions — including the use of force — to punish governments that have failed to protect vulnerable populations living within their borders or otherwise fallen short of their obligations.

The steady erosion of the principle of non-interference hinged on the presumption that foreign actors meddling in other states’ domestic affairs were operating in good faith, whereas any state invoking sovereignty as a shield against such intrusions was necessarily the villain. Call it the “we meant well” loophole.

President Donald Trump’s behavior and rhetoric so far in his second term give ample reason to revisit the merits of non-interventionism and of respecting other states’ sovereign rights.

For one thing, the NSS declares that “rigid adherence to non-intervention is not possible,” while promising to “set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.” But that bar might not be so high after all. The administration reserves the right to meddle throughout the Western Hemisphere (the so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine), as Benjamin Gedan notes. Akriti Vasudeva Kalyankar warns of a similar spirit guiding the administration’s approach to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, who are expected to follow Washington’s lead, but with few benefits offered in return. And Europeans also have reasons to be concerned. Nevada Lee calls attention to the Trump administration’s plan for cultivating “resistance” and boosting the fortunes of “patriotic European parties,” language which Emma Ashford explains could be read “as veiled threats” of “regime change.”

The NSS decries how past strategies read like “laundry lists of wishes” and asserts that it, by contrast, aligns ends and means to protect “core national interests” and avoid overreach. In the end, however, the actual priorities are hard to discern. As Kelly Grieco points out, the NSS invokes terms like realism and restraint, but may be operationally indistinguishable from the primacy that came before.

NSS Western Hemisphere pivot’s ends may betray its means

Benjamin N. Gedan

Director, Latin America Program

Typically, hunting down references to Latin America and the Caribbean in the NSS requires sleuthing with Ctrl+F. Since the Cold War, the region has been an afterthought, overshadowed first by the Middle East and later by the Indo-Pacific. This time around, however, it takes center stage, appearing before Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the NSS. The goal for the Western Hemisphere is ambitious: “to restore American preeminence.”

It is such a priority that the president gets naming rights, baptizing the strategy as the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” — a reference to President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration that any European meddling in the Americas would be treated as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

The pivot to our southern neighbors is sensible. Mexico is the top U.S. trading partner. Latin America produces the most copper and holds the world’s largest lithium reserves. It is also the region whose problems most directly threaten U.S. interests, from migration and drug trafficking to the rising influence of U.S. adversaries — above all, China.

The proposed approach rightly looks beyond chest-thumping and gunboat diplomacy. It promises an emphasis on “commercial diplomacy” and recognizes the opportunity to build “critical supply chains” throughout the hemisphere. That goal reflects bipartisan concerns about pandemic-era supply chain disruptions and price spikes, as well as overdependence on Chinese manufacturing. The document even nods to “nearshoring”, the relocating of distant overseas factories to nearby countries — a strategy eclipsed of late by Trump’s preference for reviving the U.S. industrial sector. It also suggests expanded engagement by the U.S. Development Finance Agency to encourage U.S. businesses to operate in the region. The promised infrastructure finance would help Washington more effectively compete with China, though it would hardly justify the monogamy the NSS demands of U.S neighbors. (The document observes ominously that the United States wants “other nations to see us as their partner of first choice” and will “discourage their collaboration with others.”)

Regrettably, there are reasons to doubt the administration’s sustained commitment to supremacy in the Western Hemisphere, and not only because of the president’s improvisational, transactional approach to foreign policy. Serious regional economic integration requires opening U.S. markets to Latin American trade. That was once widely understood; the United States has free trade agreements with 20 countries worldwide, 11 of them in Latin America. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush favored establishing a free trade area stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Over the past year, however, the United States has been increasing tariffs on imports from the region, compounding the economic damage from cuts to U.S. foreign aid, even as the president’s deportation agenda threatens to dry up remittances that constitute at least one-fifth of gross domestic product in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Worse still, the White House’s narrow, aggressive focus on migrants and drugs has frayed U.S. diplomatic relationships and damaged the U.S. image even as its NSS promises to “deepen our partnerships.” The president has threatened to invade Panama and fire missiles at Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. To protest the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for a failed coup attempt, Trump imposed a 50% tariff on the region’s largest economy. In Mexico, 69% of the population now views the United States unfavorably, up from 33% a year ago, according to the Pew Research Center. Ironically, the NSS itself further tarnishes the U.S. image by reviving the Monroe Doctrine, a toxic brand that evokes a long history of U.S. military interventions and coup plots.

Finally, the strategy’s reliance on stepping up the U.S. military presence in Latin America is bad medicine for a region where sluggish growth and metastasizing organized crime demand greater U.S. investment and support for law enforcement institutions. “The choice all countries should face,” the White House insists, “is whether they want to live in an American-led world.” Troublingly, for many in Latin America, the answer is increasingly no.

NSS nods at restraint, but pursues primacy by other means

Kelly Grieco

Senior Fellow, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program

The 2025 NSS opens with a hard truth: For decades, Washington pursued the illusion that “permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country.” This overreach produced what the NSS calls “laundry lists of wishes or desired end states,” leading to costly wars, failed nation-building, and reduced security. The acknowledgment is long overdue.

Yet even as it recognizes these failures, the NSS advances a strategy that, while rhetorically different, mirrors what it claims to replace. Where liberal hegemony pursued primacy through democracy promotion and multilateral institutions, this strategy pursues primacy through civilizational nationalism and economic coercion.

The strategy makes clear the scale of that ambition. It commits the United States to maintain the “world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military,” “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent,” “the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy,” “the world’s most robust industrial base,” all while remaining “the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country.” Yet the strategy simultaneously declares that “the days of the United States propping up the world order like Atlas are over.” This raises a question: does the NSS reject American primacy, or merely the liberal values that once guided it? The answer is the latter.

Rather than seeking liberal primacy, Trump’s NSS advances civilizational primacy. It warns of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” from migration and “cratering birthrates,” blaming the European Union (EU) and other transnational institutions for eroding liberty, undermining sovereignty, and stifling creativity and industriousness. By pledging to “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory,” the NSS signals support for political movements that would reshape allied politics and weaken the EU. Just as liberal primacy made governance a security concern, civilizational primacy makes demographics and cultural identity strategic priorities, drawing the United States into allies’ immigration, demographic, and social policies.

The NSS also imagines that aggressive economic coercion can sustain this vision. It treats China primarily as an economic threat, pledging to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China” through tariffs, export controls, and supply chain restructuring. It demands that allies spend 5% of GDP on defense and conditions “favorable treatment on commercial matters” on alignment with U.S. export controls. The document makes assistance to states in the Western Hemisphere “contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence.” The strategy assumes that what failed under liberal primacy —transforming adversaries through economic engagement, building alliances on shared values, and sustaining U.S. influence through cooperation — can be achieved through some clever combination of carrots and sticks. This is implausible. Economic coercion breeds resentment, not willing cooperation, and the costs of primacy remain regardless of how it is advanced.

The 2025 NSS replaces one unsustainable vision of primacy with another. Civilizational nationalism will fail just as liberal internationalism failed — not simply because the values differ, but because comprehensive dominance exceeds American means. Until Washington accepts that U.S. security does not require global preeminence, U.S. strategy will keep repeating the same mistakes, producing overextension, resentment, and failure. The illusion remains.

China welcomes NSS’s reevaluation of Sino-American relations

Yun Sun

Director, China Program

The Chinese reaction to the new NSS has been overwhelmingly positive. China identifies a clear turn from the previous focus on great power competition to a balance of power strategy, which is music to its ears. The Trump administration has narrowed down the definition of U.S. national interests. For China, that significantly reduces the scope of issues that the United States and China clash over.

For example, the NSS section on China does not reference ideology or political regime, which in Beijing’s view removes a fundamental conflict between the United States and China that complicates bilateral relations. And the declared “Predisposition to Non-Interventionism” anchors an isolationist tendency, which reduces China’s threat perception of U.S. intervention in regions where China’s interests are growing.

The NSS wording on the most important issue in US-China relations — Taiwan — is satisfactory for China. The NSS states that the United States “does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.” China had been advocating for explicit U.S. opposition to Taiwanese independence, but is willing to settle for this statement, which implies that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence. While the position also indicates that the United States does not support China’s unilateral action to achieve unification either, China has developed diverse approaches under the threshold of direct conflict to advance its goal in this regard. In this sense, the NSS’s focus on deterrence may not fully capture the full scope of China’s activities or effectively counter the threats they pose. This is particularly true if the Trump administration’s prioritization of trade deals prevents the implementation of policies that may offend or anger Beijing. The core issue here is not necessarily whether the United States can deter China, but whether the Taiwanese people maintain their confidence in the will of the United States to intervene militarily in a Taiwan contingency. If they don’t, capitulation may become a real possibility.

NSS shift of focus away from Indo-Pacific could trouble allies

Akriti Vasudeva Kalyankar

Fellow, South Asia Program

Indo-Pacific watchers may have been relieved to see an articulation of the Trump administration’s focus on the region in its recently released NSS. After months of speculation about the theater’s importance to Trump 2.0 and the postponement of the Quad Leaders’ summit, a reiteration of the U.S. commitment to “a free and open Indo-Pacific” and “preserving freedom of navigation in crucial sea lanes” is reassuring.

However, a closer look at the strategy suggests a radically different U.S. approach, which would exert significant pressure on allies and partners in the region to address critical threats and sometimes put them at odds with Washington.

Broadly, the strategy seeks to focus U.S. foreign policy on prioritizing core American national interests, defined as a strong economy, robust manufacturing base, powerful military, secure borders, and economic and technological preeminence. To be sure, this is a worthy goal for any country. But the strategy goes against decades of U.S. policy that focused on ensuring global prosperity and stability and instead turns inward. In the Indo-Pacific, the strategy calls for moving away from burden sharing and instead towards significant burden shifting, expecting allies and partners “to assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense,” but without clarifying how the United States would support such endeavors. Additionally, while the strategy predicates competing in the Indo-Pacific on allies’ economic and material strengths, it does not consider how the administration’s own tariff measures could weaken U.S. partners’ positions on this count.

Additionally, while the strategy discusses deterring conflict in the Indo-Pacific, it does not address scenarios of Chinese military aggression or malign influence outside of the . It barely mentions Southeast Asia and does not even touch South Asia, both regions where Beijing’s predatory and coercive tactics are on full display.

Most worryingly for Indo-Pacific allies and partners, the NSS does not explicitly mention China as a strategic competitor and accords topmost priority to the Western Hemisphere, in a departure from at least 15 years of U.S. policy focused on a pivot to Asia and the Indo-Pacific. For countries like India, the explicit U.S. aim to focus more on the near abroad, which would likely reduce U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, may raise serious questions about where and how it can depend on the United States to manage China’s rise going forward. For instance, U.S. redeployment of forces from the Middle East and Indo-Pacific to the Western Hemisphere would have an operational, coordination, and resource impact on India. Moreover, with the strategy’s explicit focus on reindustrialization and guarding dual-use and advanced technology, some of the key inducements Washington may have had in getting New Delhi to step up on regional security are now gone. Concerningly, the NSS’ Indo-Pacific section reads like a litany of asks from allies and partners rather than the promulgation of a collaborative approach to jointly tackle threats in the region.

(Culture) war: what is it good for?

Emma Ashford

Senior Fellow, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program

It’s safe to say that the Trump administration’s new NSS offended a wide range of observers in European capitals. It repeated many of the themes of JD Vance’s now notorious speech at the Munich Security Conference, accusing European states not just of being weak on defense, but also of knuckling under to a wave of migration and political correctness.

The strategy even explicitly argues that current European governments engage in “subversion of democratic processes,” and not-so-subtly suggests that the United States would like to see many current ruling parties pushed aside by their more conservative counterparts. It’s no surprise that this all seems to have been taken by many European observers as both insulting and a sign that Trump’s America is no longer friendly to Europe.

This somewhat misreads the situation. The Trump administration both loves and hates Europe, in much the same ways as it both loves and hates the United States of America. The document’s criticisms of European policy bear a strong resemblance to those of Trump and the MAGA movement regarding modern America. They believe content controls and disinformation monitoring on social media amount to censorship, believe that conservative parties are naturally disadvantaged in a modern media environment, and that stifling regulation inhibits economic growth and dynamism.

The NSS thus argues that Europe must regain its civilizational footing and become stronger by embracing the kinds of policies that the Trump administration hopes to implement in America, from migration restrictions to slashing regulation and bureaucracy. And as in American politics, there’s even a grain of truth to some of these criticisms: the Draghi report, for example, commissioned by the EU itself, pointed to regulatory overload as one key reason for a lack of European economic dynamism.

No doubt the Trump administration sees the criticisms in the NSS as written in the tone of a concerned friend — trying to help Europe to find its way. But of course, that’s not at all how it is being received in Europe, where many governments and observers see these points as direct criticism of their own actions or as veiled threats that the United States may engage in regime change by helping far-right parties come to power.

Then there’s the other problem. It should come as no surprise to any observer that Trump is hostile to the EU and the project of greater European unification that it represents. The president has been friendly with Britain’s Nigel Farage since his first run for office; MAGA foreign policy hands value sovereignty, something that they see as in direct contradiction to the EU’s supranational mandate.

Again, none of this is philosophically inconsistent or surprising. It is, however, entirely counterproductive. At a time when the United States is trying to persuade European allies to do more for their own defense and build up their military capabilities, it is not helpful to alienate them. Nor is it particularly helpful to try and undermine the EU’s common financing and coordination mechanisms, which offer significant benefits as the bloc shifts toward more effective defense capabilities.

In short, this national security strategy rightly focuses on the importance of burden shifting to capable allies, both in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific. It is past time for the United States’ allies to do more for their own defense, particularly as we enter a period of contested multipolarity and great power competition. Yet focusing on culture-war slogans is likely only to undermine the push for burden shifting in Europe, resulting in a weaker and more fragmented continent that cannot pick up the burden from the United States.

The Trump administration would be wise to think about how it prioritizes these two concerns.

Trump administration’s interest in diplomacy requires reinvestment

Evan Cooper

Research Analyst, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program

This NSS affords diplomacy a greater role than previous strategies have, touting President Trump’s “unconventional diplomacy” as a principle on which the strategy is built. It is also more explicit about the limitations of American power and the “essential connection between ends and means” in the creation of a viable strategy.

The administration is right to elevate diplomacy in the foreign policy toolkit and likewise is accurate in criticizing past versions of the NSS as being full of priorities while lacking prioritization. But when it comes to utilizing the diplomatic tool, the strategy fails to meet the measure it sets. Its reliance on “presidential diplomacy” to advance U.S. interests is insufficient to accomplish the administration’s goals.

The NSS accurately represents the approach to diplomacy that the Trump administration has taken. The President has consistently spoken about his desire to resolve conflicts and tasked his administration, namely Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, with engaging in aggressive negotiation. While one can question the extent of the role played by the United States in the eight conflicts that the President claims to have ended, the underlying inclination towards utilizing diplomacy rather than military intervention or disengagement should be applauded.

Likewise, the emphasis on American “soft power” is a departure from past strategies, none of which have used the term in discussing the country’s strengths. The Trump administration’s recognition that the United States maintains influence around the world, and that these ties can be utilized for diplomatic ends, has been woefully absent from previous NSS documents.

However, the Trump administration’s strategy falls short in matching its ambition for diplomacy with the means it makes available. It relies almost solely on the use of presidential diplomacy to engage the world, ignoring the importance of the diplomatic corps. The United States needs capable and empowered diplomats who can secure U.S. interests abroad, communicate opportunities for additional U.S. engagement, and develop relationships that facilitate peace agreements and trade deals. This capability has been severely harmed by the Trump administration’s cuts to the State Department and elimination of USAID, and there is no indication of a course correction. A recent survey of the U.S. Foreign Service by the American Foreign Service Association found 98% of Foreign Service officers (FSOs) reporting poor morale and 1 in 3 considering leaving the State Department. The survey reported that 86% of FSOs felt the changes to the Department since January have “affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities.”

Presidential diplomacy is likely to remain the preferred approach of this administration, but it will require an expert diplomatic corps to backstop the President’s efforts. The agreements touted by the NSS, like those between Armenia and Azerbaijan and DRC and Rwanda, require sustained and complex diplomacy to maintain (or ideally, build upon). Reinvestment in the traditional tools of U.S diplomacy is required if President Trump is to succeed as a peacemaker.

What does the NSS mean for South Korea?

James Kim

Lead, Korea Program

The long-anticipated 2025 NSS presents an unfiltered formulation of President Donald Trump’s vision for an “America First” foreign policy. Putting aside any normative assessment of the strategy, what does the most recent NSS mean for South Korea?

To begin, the NSS mentions South Korea three times. The first moment references the U.S. “current account deficit” vis-à-vis South Korea — calling it unsustainable — and urges South Korea, among other countries, to help absorb Chinese excess capacity (p. 22). On both counts, South Korea has worked to address these concerns. Even in the face of an unexpected domestic political upheaval, the incoming administration in Seoul negotiated a trade deal that commits South Korea to inject $350 billion into the U.S. economy (capped at $20 billion per year). On trade, South Korea accepted a general tariff of 15% with an adjustable tariff on semiconductors while agreeing to eliminate several non-tariff barriers. But even before the deal announcement, South Korea’s overall goods trade surplus with the U.S. declined from $44.3 billion in the first ten months of 2024 to $39.7 billion in the first ten months of 2025. Regarding China, South Korea has maintained a trade deficit with Beijing since May 2022.

The NSS also raises the issue of South Korea’s role in coordinating with the United States on providing developmental assistance to the “Global South” (p. 22), calling for Washington and its allies to formulate a joint strategy. In reality, South Korea has coordinated with the United States on this issue since 2019 through various channels, some of which continued into this year until the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Finally, the NSS calls upon South Korea to increase its defense spending and contribution to burden sharing (p. 24). SIPRI’s data on military expenditure shows South Korea as having the world’s 11th highest ($48.5 billion) military spending as of 2024, which is 2.56% of the country’s GDP. During the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, President Lee Jae Myung pledged to spend $25 billion on purchases of U.S. military equipment by 2030 and provide $33 billion in support for the 28,500 U.S. forces in Korea. He also committed to increasing South Korea’s defense spending to 3.5% of GDP. This move prompted Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby to applaud South Korea as “a model” and “the first treaty ally of the U.S. outside of NATO to commit to the 3.5 percent standard.”

In sum, South Korea appears broadly aligned with the expectations laid out in the strategic vision of the NSS. It bears mentioning that even though South Korea is mentioned only three times, “allies” are mentioned over thirty-one times, acknowledging that America First does not mean America alone.

Lastly, “North Korea” and “denuclearization” never feature in this year’s NSS, unlike its predecessors in 2017 and 2022. While this could mean that the administration places greater priority on the defense of the First Island Chain, the exact meaning of this omission is not yet known, especially given that Trump and Lee reiterated their commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea.

NSS’s advocacy for interference in Europe is a strategic misstep

Nevada Joan Lee

Research Associate, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program

Not all attention is good attention. Europeans found that out when the Trump administration’s NSS dropped. While the NSS claims the United States will project soft power in a manner respectful of “other countries’ differing religions, cultures, and governing systems,” it is clear that this respect will not be applied evenly. Europeans, in particular, are likely to find themselves as the unwanted exception.

The Trump administration’s strategy toward Europe is, at its core, self-contradictory. The NSS signals that Washington wants European economies to grow, European governments to spend more on defense, and migration to Europe to decline. It cannot have all three. By focusing on what it calls “civilizational erasure,” the White House appears intent on re-anchoring the transatlantic relationship on ethno-nationalist grounds. In doing so, the White House would risk its opportunity for longer-term and sustainable change in transatlantic trade and military relations.

Immigration is a charged political topic across both Europe and the United States, and one could read the European part of the NSS as an effort to export the administration’s domestic agenda across the Atlantic. Some experts anticipated this goal, but the brazen, racially charged language — and the signals of how far the administration is willing to go in its defense of European “civilizations” — comes as a surprise, though it does reflect the ideas in Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference.

Europeans’ own views on immigration and national identity differ widely. This is, in part, because most European states — like the United States — would face steep population decline without immigration. This demographic reality arguably matters more for Europe, as Europeans are accustomed to a much more robust social safety net and will either need a workforce capable of sustaining that spending or to endure painful cuts. If European governments were to significantly restrict immigration, their economies would likely suffer, making the current momentum for increased defense spending difficult to maintain.

The most chilling part of the NSS is the stated goal of “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” When the Trump administration attempted to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, it justified the effort partly by claiming the agency favored liberal ideals. There certainly is some truth to the fact that the post-Cold-War use of Radio Free Europe and other platforms originally created to combat Soviet propaganda played a part in straining the US-Russian relationship. The administration must realize that similar issues would arise from attempts to, once again, “cultivate resistance” in Europe. Both the United States and Europe should acknowledge that interfering to favor specific parties in other democratic states sets a dangerous precedent and reject meddling in their own states’ politics.

If the administration continues down this path of foreign interference, it will not only jeopardize the transatlantic relationship but also damage the United States’ global image.

Lead with effectiveness

Dan Grazier

Director, National Security Reform Program

A key passage of the NSS states that a major goal of the Trump administration is to “recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and — if necessary — win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces.”

The overarching goal to build a military capable of meeting the nation’s security needs is correct, but the way it’s written all but guarantees the policy will fail. The key offending phrase is “technologically advanced.” Those words are particularly problematic because they give license for national security establishment leaders to continue with the failed practice of pursuing exquisite military technologies that have proven so troublesome in recent history.

Most of the Pentagon’s major weapons programs this century have proven to be major disappointments, if not outright failures. The Zumwalt-class destroyer, F-35, Littoral Combat Ship, Future Combat System, and Ford-class aircraft carrier are just a few of the systems that have cost a fortune yet failed to deliver a comparable level of utility. The latest tranche of weapons programs is now showing signs of repeated mistakes. The Sentinel ballistic missile program saw 81% cost growth, and the Navy recently cancelled the Constellation-class frigate.

What these programs have in common is that they were all intended to be “technologically advanced.” The phrase is vague enough to give defense industry leaders a broad mandate to incorporate every conceivable gadget into these systems. They are incentivized to increase the complexity of their products because doing so increases their revenues through the longer research and development process and, later, the higher price tag. The practice also comes with a political benefit: additional technology means extra subcontracts to be spread throughout more Congressional districts, thus increasing support for the program on Capitol Hill.

The practical results of the desire for technological overmatch are ballooning costs and dysfunctional systems. Weapons become so complex that it becomes impossible to get all the components to work together properly, and costs rise dramatically as a result. Program cost is important not only because of the taxpayer burden, but because it determines the size of the force. As costs rise, service leaders will often reduce the number of units produced to balance the budget. That is how the Air Force went from a planned fleet of 750 F-22s to one of only 187.

Rather than trying to build the “most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced” military, the administration should have stated the simple goal of building the most effective force. National security leaders should carefully evaluate what the services actually need to carry out their missions. Low-tech solutions should be used whenever possible. When the situation calls for more technological sophistication, engineers should still work to keep the system as simple as possible. Doing so will reduce both the time and costs required to field the new weapon. These programs will also increase readiness by reducing supply chains and maintenance burdens, thus making the force more effective.

Missing the point on security assistance in the NSS

Elias Yousif

Deputy Director, Conventional Defense Program

Rachel Stohl

Director, Conventional Defense Program

The Trump administration’s newly released NSS makes only three specific references to arms transfers and security assistance — one regarding the Western Hemisphere, another for Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, and lastly in more general terms with respect to burden sharing.

Each reference underscores the Trump administration’s uniquely transactional view of security cooperation and implicitly points to arms sales as a compensatory instrument for an emerging foreign policy approach that prioritizes U.S. commercial competition and the reduction of overseas security burdens.

But beyond these oblique discussions of security cooperation, what the NSS leaves out is a more explicit — and strategic — consideration of the role security cooperation should play in advancing U.S. interests beyond offsetting a reduced U.S. global presence. The absence is especially concerning given the administration’s efforts to accelerate U.S. arms transfers and dismantle key guardrails on arms transfers. Over the past year, the administration has signed executive orders that are intended to reduce the “rules and regulations involved in the development, execution, and monitoring of foreign defense sales and of transfer cases,” encouraged Congressional efforts to revamp and speed up the arms transfer process, and dispensed with longstanding norms that allowed lawmakers to effectively voice concerns about specific arms sales packages.

In effect, the administration’s NSS presents a foreign policy that suggests the United States will expand arms transfers to enable burden shifting and offset more aggressive commercial diplomacy, but without outlining a clear strategy for how security cooperation can be more effectively leveraged to support U.S. interests. It is a missed opportunity. What the administration should have done in the NSS is explain how security cooperation and assistance can be more effectively structured to enable responsible partnerships without unnecessarily entangling the United States in foreign crises or conflicts. Such an approach requires discernment and restraint, themes that should align with an NSS that so directly critiques the overextension of the United States’ overseas burdens and commitments.

A shifting premise for the Transatlantic relationship

Andrew Hyde

Senior Fellow, Strategic Foresight Hub

President Donald Trump’s 2025 NSS has received extensive attention for how it characterizes the transatlantic relationship. It sees Europe as haplessly falling into a trap leading to “civilizational erasure” while ignoring the fact that European publics for decades have affirmed these sovereign preferences through the ballot box. The document, instead, calls for cultural and political renewal on US-defined terms and conditions.

Beneath the rhetoric, some elements of the new strategy echo longstanding views from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum. Europe needs to take more responsibility for its own security, which it has done by committing to a 5% of GDP target for defense spending at the NATO summit this past summer. It also needs to develop specialized capabilities to replace those that the United States currently brings uniquely to continental defense. The strategy’s explicit linkage of economic fairness and regulation to security provision strengthens the coercive tools Washington will deploy in its future dealings with European counterparts. The NSS’ most vivid departure from past U.S political consensus comes from its underlying attitudes toward Europe — still valued partners, but on a dramatically different foundation. As a consequence, the strategy advocates for relative U.S. disengagement from security leadership on the continent, emphasizes “healthy” countries (an apparent code for the elevation of far-right voices and parties on a continent that has an unfortunate history with them), and demands economic “fairness” on U.S. terms. It is squarely an America First agenda, and that should not come as a surprise.

While it does not say so explicitly, the strategy and the administration’s rhetoric take aim at the existence and purpose of the EU and deny that it could play any potential role in facilitating the achievement of U.S. goals. Traditionally seen as an economic player with decisions made in full transparency by sovereign governments and often supported by popular referendums, European governments are now turning increasingly to the EU to help build needed security capabilities, such as a renewed defense industrial base, in a way that NATO, dominated by the United States, cannot. Yet the NSS denigrates the EU as being illegitimate, undemocratic, and unrepresentative of the goals and aspirations Washington thinks Europe should have for itself.

The Trump administration should more consistently apply its realistic and America First lens to an interest-based perspective on the European project, recognizing how it can take on the regional security burden in Europe that Washington wishes to shed or shift. The Trump administration should also take a more nuanced and differentiated view of how Washington and Europe should view the security threats from Russia. Moscow is actively probing Europe’s defenses, while catering to Washington’s wishful thinking about carefully defined spheres of influence. What might seem abstract and distant to the White House is very real in Warsaw, Vilnius, and Brussels.

stimson.org ·

13. What Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy Missed

​Summary:

The new NSS is dangerous for what it omits: nuclear extended deterrence and nonproliferation. He warns that encouraging allies to build their own arsenals, or assuming missile defense can substitute for nuclear guarantees, would weaken a proven U.S. tool for preventing proliferation and major war. History, he says, shows that spreading nuclear capability and making risky diplomatic bargains tends to invite aggression and escalation. Extended deterrence helped keep Japan, South Korea, and others from going nuclear. A serious strategy should explain how the United States sustains credible guarantees and reduces, not expands, the number of nuclear states.

Comment: Where you stand depends on where you sit.

What Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy Missed

The National Interest 

December 12, 2025

By: Henry Sokolski

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-donald-trumps-national-security-strategy-missed

What Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy Missed

December 12, 2025

The administration is courting serious risks to global stability by neglecting any strategy around nuclear proliferation.

Although commentators have extensively critiqued President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy, they’ve neglected what’s missing. Throughout the document’s 33 pages, there is no mention of nuclear extended deterrence and nonproliferation.

That’s worrisome. America’s security has long depended on the proper treatment of these two related matters. Ignoring them or misconstruing their connection is risky.

Consider the academic argument that more nuclear-armed states might be better. Some realists insist Washington should encourage America’s friends to go nuclear as a cheap way to keep the peace. Adopting this policy, however, would unplug one of America’s most successful stratagems, extending America’s nuclear deterrent by committing to use it, if necessary, to protect its allies. It is odd that the National Security Strategy doesn’t speak about this.

Perhaps the omission simply reflects the Trump administration’s optimism that the Golden Dome will protect America from missile threats. However, establishing this missile defense system will take time. Until then, America’s security and that of its allies will depend, as it has for decades, on threatening to project force and, if necessary, to use nuclear weapons to deter our enemies.

Hardcore isolationists might bridle at this. But extended deterrence has helped prevent repeat performances of the total wars that Americans were dragged into in 1917 and 1941. It also kept the Cold War from escalating into a hot one.

Certainly, if South Korea or Saudi Arabia went nuclear, they’d be more likely to explore what they could gain by working more closely with China, Russia, and other bad actors. Why is that a problem? World War I and World War II began, in no small part, with risky diplomatic experiments to cope with a world arming to the teeth.

In 1939, Poland tried to save its skin by signing a non-aggression pact with German chancellor Adolf Hitler; it only egged him on. Meanwhile, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to turn a blind eye to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in exchange for his own cut of Polish territory. Similarly, before World War I, European powers frantically piled up secret diplomatic security guarantees as they simultaneously planned military mobilizations.

Did these sophisticated maneuvers produce peace and stability? They did not. Yet, now we are to believe that spreading more potent nuclear ammunition among smaller states will?

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Enthusiasts for winding down extended deterrence say yes. Why station US troops overseas or spend billions to project force to protect America’s friends, they argue, when, with nuclear arms, our friends could defend themselves? America could then pull back and spend less on its own defense. Maybe, but history suggests otherwise. After Britain, France, Israel, and Pakistan went nuclear, America actually spent more, not less, on defense.

As for serving US security interests by staying out of other people’s wars, it’s an appealing argument. Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Senator William Borah, and Father Charles Coughlin all made it prior to World War II, as did President Woodrow Wilson from 1914 to 1917. America followed this advice, but in doing so, only slowed its preparations for the fights into which it was eventually dragged anyway.

American efforts at conventional deterrence prior to World War I and World War II were weak and ineffective. Today, what’s required for effective conventional and nuclear deterrence is even higher. Contrary to the desire to limit defense spending, such deterrence requires constant upgrades to military command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and delivery systems to remain credible.

Initially, new, small nuclear forces are relatively vulnerable. That’s why extended deterrence has been one of America’s most effective nonproliferation strategies. It helped keep Italy, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Germany, Turkey, and Taiwan from going nuclear or gaming the system.

Encouraging allies to go nuclear would be different. If Washington encouraged Seoul to get a bomb, a dovish South Korean president could ask American forces to leave the peninsula. What if the two Koreas, now both with nuclear arsenals, then decided to confederate?

History gives us a peek into other possibilities. In 1956, Israel joined Great Britain and France to seize the Suez Canal. Russia threatened to intervene and use its nuclear weapons. President Dwight Eisenhower had to force Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw. Would matters have been eased if Israel had its own bomb? In 2003, the belief that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear program sucked American military forces into the region for almost a decade. In a smaller repeat performance, this June, the Pentagon bombed Iran’s nuclear fuel-making plants after Israel failed to get the job done.

To avoid a future that rhymes even more explosively with this history, the world needs fewer, not more, nuclear-armed states. Towards this end, Washington must extend, rather than truncate, effective security guarantees. Any security strategy worthy of the name would detail how best to achieve both.

About the Author: Henry Sokolski

Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. He was deputy for nonproliferation policy in the Department of Defense (1989–1993), and is the author of China, Russia, and the Coming Cool War (2024).

Image: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · Alexander J. Motyl December 11, 2025

14. The NSS Is the Strategy We Have Waited For

​Summary:

The NSS as a long overdue correction toward an America First strategy anchored in concrete national interests, prioritization, and alignment of ends and means. He argues it is “statesman’s realism,” not academic realism, and calls it a governing blueprint that rejects post–Cold War primacy and moralized, unfocused global management. He defends tougher expectations of Europe as reciprocity, not abandonment. His central claim is geographic and political: the Western Hemisphere is the “civilizational” prerequisite for U.S. sovereignty, border control, and regional denial of adversary influence, which then enables selective competition in Asia and limited engagement elsewhere.

Comment: I am curious to know who was the primary author(s) of the NSS.

The NSS Is the Strategy We Have Waited For

The American Conservative · Juan P. Villasmil

At last: clarity, hierarchy, and a foreign policy with a spine.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-nss-is-the-strategy-we-have-waited-for/

The newly published National Security Strategy is beautiful. What makes the document powerful isn’t the prose but the clarity. For the first time in decades, America has a strategy grounded not in theories, slogans, or airy talk of an “international community,” but in the concrete interests of a real nation: our own.

In Newsweek last year, I argued that America had to shake off the primacist hangover of the post–Cold War with what I called foreign policy stoicism: humility, hierarchy, and a sober respect for the nation-state, oriented toward changing what can most easily be changed and prioritizing the most concrete threats. The think-tank world—even the conservative one—treats these arguments as eccentric, premature, or impolite. But the new NSS doesn’t merely acknowledge this logic; it snaps into place like a long-delayed correction. For those of us who have been making this case from the margins, the document feels revolutionary not because it echoes us, but because it drags the center of gravity toward reality.

It is not an op-ed; it’s a governing blueprint.

Many commentators, desperate to shoehorn the document into familiar categories, have rushed to call it “realist” or “restrained.” But this entirely misses the point. America First, as presented here, is not realism in the graduate-seminar sense. It is realism in the statesman’s sense: clarity about ends, honesty about means, and an unapologetic commitment to the fortunes of the republic.

The NSS captures this in one of its most important lines: America First is “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist’, realistic without being ‘realist’, principled without being ‘idealistic’, muscular without being ‘hawkish’, and restrained without being ‘dovish’.” That is not merely a doctrinal statement; it is a moral one. The intellectual schools of foreign policy have their uses, but the real task of strategy is simpler and older: determine what is necessary for the survival and flourishing of the nation and then do that, without distraction, apology, or delusion.

This also explains why so many critics, especially in Europe, have reacted to the strategy with alarm and theatrical indignation. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk lamented, “Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem.” A chorus of think-tankers joined him. But these reactions say more about European expectations than about the strategy itself. Far from dismissing Europe, the NSS places Europe exactly where it belongs: not above America’s core interests, not beneath them, but within a hierarchy of priorities.

The truth is that Europe’s critique is built on selectively projected fantasies. For years, and currently, Europe has condemned America’s pursuit of its own interests, especially in the Western Hemisphere, while simultaneously expecting the United States to underwrite its defense, restrain its adversaries, and absorb the political and financial costs of its own hesitations. Yet the same Europe that demands unwavering American commitment has repeatedly hedged with China, ignored the obvious vulnerabilities of its energy policy, and treated its alliance with the U.S. as a kind of moral entitlement rather than a strategic relationship.

The NSS simply attempts to restore symmetry. It acknowledges Europe’s historic and cultural importance and the enduring value of the alliance, while making the obvious point that sovereign nations have sovereign responsibilities. States are not schoolchildren. They respond to incentives. They pursue interests. They can and should be pushed, not coddled. The United States expects Europe to contribute not because we care less about Europe, but because we believe Europe can do more.

The most striking aspect of the NSS is that it shatters silence about the Western Hemisphere in particular. For decades, major think tanks have ignored the region. They maintain chairs for Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; host conferences on Indo-Pacific architecture and European burden-sharing; release white papers on the Gulf, NATO, Taiwan. Yet the hemisphere, the region that most directly shapes the survival of the American republic, was largely treated as an afterthought. The very few people working on hemispheric issues can assure you: this is the most pathbreaking development in U.S. foreign policy in years. The NSS finally acknowledges what has long been obvious: Asia may be the global priority, but the hemisphere is the civilizational one.

The NSS finally says out loud what many of us have argued quietly: proximity shapes power. If the United States wants to compete with China—economically, technologically, militarily—it must simultaneously secure the space in which its own republic exists. A great power does not project strength globally while hemorrhaging authority regionally. China seems to get this instinctively. It does not confront nuclear competitors while tolerating cartel rule on its own doorstep. It does not speak of deterrence while permitting mass migration that strains the civic and economic foundations of the nation itself. A republic that cannot control its borders cannot control its destiny. A country that allows its hemisphere to be infiltrated by hostile powers cannot act with clarity abroad.

Every statesman from John Quincy Adams and Alexander Hamilton onward understood that the Western Hemisphere is not a sentimental concern; it is a strategic prerequisite for national survival. What the NSS offers is not simply nostalgia for the Monroe Doctrine, nor a Cold War revival, nor a concession to diaspora pressure groups. It offers something far simpler: a recognition that the United States must secure its neighborhood if it intends to remain a sovereign power. Just as the Founders believed, just as the early republic believed, just as every serious strategist has believed, the hemisphere matters most because geography is not an academic abstraction. This, too, is part of America First’s philosophical simplicity. It begins with what is directly in front of us, not with what flatters our moral vanity.

Some critics dismiss this as overly transactional or insufficiently moral. But the NSS demonstrates the opposite. It is moral precisely because it is responsible. It understands that before the United States can lead a coalition in Asia, or shape outcomes in Europe, or broker peace in the Middle East, it must remain a functioning republic. A country that is not confident in its sovereignty, not secure in its borders, not rooted in its own civilizational inheritance, is not a country capable of bearing the burdens of a great power. America First is not isolationist. It is not primacist. It is republican in the deepest sense. It is a strategic doctrine grounded in the belief that the American people deserve a government that protects them before it protects the world.

The genius of the NSS is that it refuses to anthropomorphize states or sentimentalize alliances. It does not treat allies as fragile ornaments or adversaries as cartoon villains. It does not pretend that the United States can forever subsidize those who refuse to subsidize themselves. It rejects the unseriousness of the last 30 years: the fantasy that America could dominate the world at no cost, with no prioritization, and without consequence at home.

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The NSS demands more of Europe because Europe has the wealth, the population, and the institutions to do more—and because the alliance must be reciprocal if it is to endure. It reframes Asia not as an arena for ideological crusade but as the central theater of economic and technological competition. It approaches the Middle East not as a moral mission but as a domain of interests. And it treats Africa not as a canvas for liberal guilt but as a landscape of opportunities and risks.

Not all disruptions are destructive. Any honest historian knows that the most destabilizing act can be simply to face reality after decades of refusing to see it. The NSS forces that reckoning. It isn’t a manifesto or a theory. It’s a strategy built not for the world we wished for, but for the world we actually inhabit.

In the end, its power lies in restoring American statecraft to its proper foundation: a sovereign people deserves a sovereign strategy. For the first time in a long time, we finally have one.

The American Conservative · Juan P. Villasmil

15. AI Can Make Decisions Better Than People Do. So Why Don’t We Trust It?

​Summary:

People often distrust AI decision systems even when they may outperform humans, because humans accept opaque human judgment but fear opaque machine “black boxes.” The piece highlights a practical remedy: make AI auditable and explainable, as insurers have been pushed to do under equal standards of accountability. It profiles Aurora’s claim its autonomous truck driver could have avoided every fatal I-45 crash it simulated, yet public and industry caution still slows adoption. It also describes the American Arbitration Association’s AI Arbitrator, limited to document-only cases and designed to show its work, but not yet chosen for real disputes. Algorithm auditor Cathy O’Neil notes digitized systems also create evidence trails that can force transparency and accountability.

Comment: We need to remain skeptical. Auditable and explainable are too interesting concepts. I think this is where there has to be proper regulation.                                                                                                                                                                                    

AI Can Make Decisions Better Than People Do. So Why Don’t We Trust It?

WSJ

Machines that show their work could help overcome inherent distrust

By Christopher Mims

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Dec. 12, 2025 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-decision-making-algorithm-audit-trust-5efdec1c

An autonomous driving system from Aurora Innovation piloting a truck in April. Aurora Innovation

If you happen to be on a Texas highway sometime this summer, and see a 50,000-pound semi truck barreling along with nobody behind the wheel, just remember: A self-driving truck is less likely to kill someone than one driven by a human.

At least that’s what Chris Urmson, chief executive of autonomous-vehicle software maker Aurora Innovation, insists.

Similar logic applies in a completely different field: legal arbitration. Bridget Mary McCormack, former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and now CEO of the American Arbitration Association, thinks her organization’s new AI Arbitrator will settle some disputes better than most humans would.

Insurance companies have been doing algorithmic decision-making since before it was called artificial intelligence. Along the way, they have been sued for bias, and had to update their way of doing business. Early on, regulators made it clear that their AI-based systems would be held to the same standards as human ones. This has forced many insurance companies to make their algorithms “explainable”: They show their work, rather than hiding it in an AI black box.

Unlike many of the hype men who say we’re mere years away from chatbots that are smarter than us, the people making these decision-making systems go to great lengths to document their “thought” processes, and to limit them to areas where it can be shown they’re capable and reliable.

Yet many of us still prefer the judgment of a human.

“You go to a court, and a judge makes a decision, and you don’t have any way to see the way her brain worked to get to that decision,” says McCormack. “But you can build an AI system that is auditable, and shows its work, and shows the parties how it made the decisions it made.”

We are on a philosophical fence, she says: We tolerate the opacity of human decision-making despite years of research showing our own fallibility. Yet many of us aren’t ready to believe an automated system can do any better.

The auditor

People are at least as concerned about AI as they are excited about it, says the Pew Research Center. And rightly so: The long history of computer-based decision-making hasn’t exactly been a victory march.

Court systems’ sentencing algorithms proved racially biased. Teacher-evaluation software failed to yield accountability.

“When I wrote my book ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’ 10 years ago, I made the point, which was really true at the time, that a lot of these systems were being put into place as a way to avoid accountability,” says Cathy O’Neil, who is an algorithmic auditor.

Cathy O’Neil Rishava Green

But those early tries were important, even if they failed, she adds, because once a process is digitized, it generates unprecedented amounts of data. When companies are forced to hand over to regulators, or opposing counsel, internal records of what their algorithms have been up to, the result is a kind of involuntary transparency.

O’Neil probes decision-making software to determine whether it’s operating as intended, and whom it might be harming. On behalf of plaintiffs who might be suing over anything from financial fraud to social-media harm, she examines piles and piles of output from the software.

“One of the most exciting moments of my job is to get the data,” she says. “We can see what these people did and they can’t deny it—it’s their data.”

She focuses on the impacts of an algorithm—the distribution of the decisions it makes, rather than how it arrived at those decisions—which is why her methods have changed little even as LLMs and generative AI have taken over the field.

O’Neil is hopeful about the future of holding companies accountable for their algorithms, because it’s one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement remaining in the U.S. At a recent Wall Street Journal conference, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said that he believes tech companies should be held responsible for any harms their systems might cause.

Verify, then trust

In 2023, engineers at Aurora, the autonomous-truck software maker, looked at every fatal collision on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston from 2018 through 2022. Based on police reports, the team created simulations of every one of those crashes, and then had their AI, known as Aurora Driver, navigate the simulation.

“The Aurora Driver would have avoided the collision in every event,” says Urmson, the CEO.

Yet the company also faced a recent setback. Last spring, Aurora put trucks on the road hauling freight in Texas with no driver behind the wheel. Two weeks later, at the request of one of its manufacturers, Aurora had to bring back human observers. The company has emphasized that its software continues to be fully responsible for driving, and expects some of its trucks will be completely unmanned again by the middle of 2026.

An Aurora truck on a test track last year. Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

At launch, the American Arbitration Association is only offering its AI Arbitrator for a specific kind of case for which today’s AI is well-suited: those decided solely by documents. The system provides transparency, explainability and monitoring for deviations from what human experts might conclude in a case.

Yet despite the fact that professional arbitrators, judges and law students have found AI Arbitrator reliable in testing, no one has opted to use it in a real-life case since its debut last month. McCormack says this may be because of its novelty and practitioners’ lack of familiarity. (Both parties in a dispute must agree to use the bot at the start.)

For those asking the public to trust their AIs, it doesn’t help that systems based on related technology are causing harm in ways all of us hear about daily, from suicide-encouraging chatbots to image generators that devour jobs and intellectual property.

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“If you just ask people in the abstract, ‘Why wouldn’t you trust AI to make your disputes?’ they automatically think, ‘Well, why would I throw my dispute into ChatGPT?’ ” says McCormack. “And I am not recommending that.”

In some areas such as human resources, even AI industry professionals argue that human emotion is important—and AI decision-making might be too dispassionate.

But responsible development could start to balance the scales against the negative aspects of AI, as long as we can verify that these systems do what their makers claim. Imagine a future in which a busy stretch of highway has far fewer fatalities. Maybe even zero.

“It’s easy to get lost in the statistics and the data,” says Urmson, reflecting on the horrific—and avoidable—accidents his team has studied. “But when you start to think about the consequences for people’s lives, it’s a whole different thing.”

Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 13, 2025, print edition as 'AI Can Make Decisions Better Than People Do. So Why Don’t We Trust It?'.

WSJ

​16. Coordinated online attack sought to suggest Taylor Swift promoted Nazi ideas, research finds

​Summary:

Researchers say a coordinated online effort tried to frame Taylor Swift and her album The Life of a Showgirl as aligned with Nazi and far right imagery, using posts that posed as left wing critique to provoke outrage. An analysis by the AI platform Gudea reviewed more than 24,000 posts from 18,000 accounts across 14 platforms from Oct. 4 to Oct. 18, finding that 3.77% of accounts generated 28% of the discussion and that bot-like activity spiked on Oct. 6 to 7. The narrative seeded in fringe spaces before spreading to mainstream apps, drawing in ordinary users and algorithms even when many rejected it.

Comment: At what point will society become overwhelmed with these attacks and just shut them off and not engage with them? Probably never since this kind of information is entertaining.

Coordinated online attack sought to suggest Taylor Swift promoted Nazi ideas, research finds

The Guardian · Laura Snapes

Thousands of social media posts were traced to deliberate attempts to misrepresent the singer – and showed ‘significant user overlap’ with the campaign to attack actor Blake Lively

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/dec/10/online-attack-taylor-swift-promoted-nazi-ideas-research

Analysis has found that a coordinated online attack sought to align Taylor Swift and her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, with Nazi and rightwing imagery and values, from accounts feigning leftist critique and designed to encourage outrage.

The AI-driven behavioural intelligence platform Gudea produced a report examining more than 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts across 14 social media platforms between 4 October, the day of the album’s release, and 18 October. These posts accused Swift of sowing dogwhistle references in her lyrics and alleged that a lightning bolt-style necklace from her merchandise line – a reference to the album track Opalite – resembled SS insignia.

The report concluded that 3.77% of accounts drove 28% of discussion of Swift in the period, chiefly conspiracy theories that also made allegations about her supposed ties to the Maga movement and criticisms framing her engagement to American football player Travis Kelce as “trad” or conservative. In a spike that took place between 6 and 7 October, 35% of posts in the dataset came from bot-like accounts.

Gudea said that while they didn’t uncover the identity of those responsible, they found “a significant user overlap between accounts pushing the Swift ‘Nazi’ narrative and those active in a separate astroturf campaign attacking Blake Lively”, the actor involved in an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit against actor and director Justin Baldoni – and a once close friend of Swift’s.

The data, said Gudea, “reveals a cross-event amplification network, one that disproportionately influences multiple celebrity-driven controversies and injects misinformation into otherwise organic conversations”.

The allegations about Swift were initially disseminated on more niche online spaces such as 4chan and then migrated to mainstream social media apps – and were then unwittingly spread by the public and algorithms.

“The false narrative that Taylor Swift was using Nazi symbolism did not remain confined to fringe conspiratorial spaces; it successfully pulled typical users into comparisons between Swift and Kanye West,” the researchers wrote. “This demonstrates how a strategically seeded falsehood can convert into widespread authentic discourse, reshaping public perception even when most users do not believe the originating claim.”

Even getting the public to disagree with the allegations constituted a success for the people behind the attack, Gudea founder and CEO Keith Presley told Rolling Stone. “That’s part of the goal for these types of narratives, for whoever is pushing them. Especially with these inflammatory ones – that’s going to get rewarded by the algorithm. You’ll see the influencers jump on first, because it’s going to get them clicks.”

Nonetheless, some critics did question some of the values apparently on show in The Life of a Showgirl, pointing out that the song Cancelled! – in which Swift welcomes social pariahs into her world, having experienced widespread public backlash herself in 2015 – could happily be sung by any bad actor who has experienced consequences as a result of harmful behaviour.

This Friday sees the release of the first two episodes of The End of an Era, a six-part Disney+ docu-series going behind the scenes of Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour, which ran from spring 2023 to December 2024.

The Guardian · Laura Snapes

17. The Military Story Ken Burns Missed in the Revolution

​Summary:

Ken Burns’ Revolution documentary misses the war’s central military meaning. Critics debate which founders or social themes Burns emphasized, but Stewart says the real failure is obscuring why the Continental Army endured. After Horatio Gates fled Camden, Nathanael Greene rebuilt a shattered southern force, fought a losing campaign of retreats, stretched Cornwallis’s logistics, and helped drive him to Yorktown. Stewart says this perseverance implies soldiers fought for principles, not pay or promises. The documentary notes diversity at Valley Forge, yet fails to explain the hard choice of heroism and sacrifice that turned defeat into victory for independence.

Comment: A powerful critique. 

The Military Story Ken Burns Missed in the Revolution

realcleardefense.com · David Stewart December 13, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/12/13/the_military_story_ken_burns_missed_in_the_revolution_1153192.html

Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution has generated much commentary, some supportive and some critical. Across social media, complaints abound that he paid too much, or too little, attention to the traditional Founding Fathers—Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, Jefferson. Critics pillory him for overemphasizing one specific type of history—military, political, economic, or social—while minimizing or ignoring the other types. In nearly every interview, Ken Burns repeatedly asserts that he sought to complicate the traditional narrative about the Revolution, to insert more nuance into the conversation, and these various criticisms from across the ideological spectrum might seem to suggest he has done so.

The major flaw in the documentary, however, is not that he presented the Founders in the wrong light nor that he complicated the traditional story. Rather, in his attempt to invoke a more nuanced narrative, Burns in fact obscured the most important elements of that narrative.

Some conservative commentators object, for example, to the documentary discussing Major-General Horatio Gates’ actions after the Battle of Camden. In August 1780, Gates’ 4.000-man American army suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Lieutenant-General Cornwallis’ 2.000 British in the South Carolina midlands. In the waning moments of the battle, Gates abandoned his army, riding almost 200 miles before stopping near Durham, North Carolina. Does this make Gates look bad? Yes; deservedly so. Is it the whole story, or even the most important element? Not at all.

Congress quickly replaced Gates, appointing Major-General Nathanael Greene to command the Southern Department. He inherited a remnant army of fewer than 2.000 soldiers—isolated, defeated, and out of supply. Over the next several months, Greene doubled the size of his army as he slowly withdrew northward, drawing Cornwallis after him. As they moved north, the Americans fought a series of skirmishes and battles, losing almost every encounter—a process of strategic retreats Greene famously summarized as “we get beat, rise, and fight again.” But in this series of defeats, the Americans drew Cornwallis far beyond his supply lines, leading him to abandon the Carolinas completely and to march on Yorktown.

Notably, Greene had far more men in his army by the Fall of 1781 than he had inherited a year earlier. This strongly suggests some important values drove those American soldiers, that they fought for more than money. They did not endure a year of hard marching, a string of tactical defeats, constant food shortages, chronic undersupply, and hundreds of casualties in the hope that this feeble army or a fragile government would someday reward them with land or cash. Those men believed in some higher cause, fought for principles. This is the story Burns’ documentary should emphasize—the context that frames Gates’ cowardice.

The soldiers at Valley Forge spoke a variety of languages—that’s interesting. But why did they suffer through that winter? Why did men dive repeatedly into a frozen Hudson River in January 1776? Why did soldiers volunteer to lead a forlorn hope at Stony Point? Why did three hundred Maryland riflemen choose to die rather than retreat during as the American army crumbled in the Battle of Brooklyn? We can all easily understand why men lie, embezzle, flee, or compromise their principles. It is heroism and self-sacrifice that demand explanation, and Burns’ documentary deserves criticism for failing to explain the extraordinary.

As a trained military historian, I’ve limited my comments to military history. Other scholars, far more qualified than I, have suggested similar reservations about the documentary’s discussions of Native Americans, Blacks, women, political thought, and economic history.

Ken Burns did not make General Gates look bad—Gates did that himself. My objection is that Burns, rather than nuancing or complicating the story of the Revolution, simply marginalized one set of much-discussed actors and substituted a new set, and thereby missed the real story.

David Stewart is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and a founding faculty member of the college’s Center for Military History and Grand Strategy.

realcleardefense.com · David Stewart December 13, 2025

18. How Europe Lost: Can the Continent Escape Its Trump Trap?

​Summary:

Matthijs and Tocci argue Europe fell into a “Trump trap” after POTUS returned in January 2025. Faced with demands on defense spending, tariff threats, and political meddling, European leaders chose accommodation rather than collective pushback. The authors say this avoided worst case outcomes, but it also strengthened Europe’s far right, deepened EU disunity, and eroded Europe’s leverage on trade and democratic norms. They contend the exit is restored European agency through a coalition of the willing on defense, serious debate on nuclear deterrence, diversified trade ties, a clearer China policy, and reduced energy dependence.

Excerpts:

Taken together, these steps would not transform Europe overnight. They would, however, begin to alter the political dynamic that has trapped the continent in a cycle of deference and division. Each initiative—defense preparedness, trade diversification, a home-grown China policy, and energy transition and autonomy—would demonstrate that Europe can still act collectively and strategically in adverse conditions. Success on any one front would bolster confidence on the others and create political support for bolder steps.

The broader goal is to restore the sense that Europe’s fate is still in its own hands. Strategic autonomy does not require confrontation with Washington or the abandonment of the Atlantic alliance. It requires the capacity to say no when necessary, to act independently when interests diverge, and to sustain a coherent project at home. Appeasement has been Europe’s default posture for too long. It has been understandable, even rational in some cases, but ultimately it has been self-defeating and fanned the flames of a nationalist backlash.

The alternative is not grandstanding or isolation but steady, deliberate agency. If Europe can muster that, it may yet emerge from this period of transatlantic turbulence a more self-reliant, more united, and more respected actor in the world than it was before.

How Europe Lost

Foreign Affairs · More by Matthias Matthijs

Can the Continent Escape Its Trump Trap?

Matthias Matthijs and Nathalie Tocci

January/February 2026 Published on December 12, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-europe-lost-matthijs-tocci

European leaders with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, August 2025 Alexander Drago / Reuters

MATTHIAS MATTHIJS is Dean Acheson Associate Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations.

NATHALIE TOCCI is James Anderson Professor of the Practice at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome.

When U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, Europe faced a choice. As Trump made draconian demands for greater European defense spending, threatened European exports with sweeping new tariffs, and challenged long-held European values on democracy and the rule of law, European leaders could either assume a confrontational stance and push back collectively or choose the path of least resistance and give in to Trump. From Warsaw to Westminster, from Riga to Rome, they chose the latter. Instead of insisting on bargaining with the United States as an equal partner or asserting their self-declared strategic autonomy, the EU and its member states, as well as nonmembers such as the United Kingdom, have reflexively and consistently adopted a posture of submission.

To many in Europe, this was a rational choice. Centrist proponents of appeasement argue that the alternatives—resisting Trump’s demands on defense, resorting to Chinese-style tit-for-tat escalation in trade negotiations, or calling out his autocratic tendencies—would have been bad for European interests. The United States might have abandoned Ukraine, for example. Trump could have proclaimed the end of U.S. support for NATO and announced a significant withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the European continent. There could have been a full-scale transatlantic trade war. In this view, it is thanks only to Europe’s cautious attempts at placation that none of those things came to pass.

This, of course, could well be true. But the perspective ignores the role that Europe’s domestic politics played in pushing for accommodation in the first place, as well as the domestic political consequences that appeasement could have. The rise of the populist far right is not just an American political phenomenon, after all. In a growing number of EU states, the far right is either in government or the largest opposition party, and those in favor of appeasing Trump do not readily admit how hamstrung they are by these nationalist, populist forces. Moreover, they often ignore how this strategy in turn serves to further strengthen the far right. By giving in to Trump on defense, trade, and democratic values, Europe has effectively bolstered those far-right forces that want to see a weaker EU. Europe’s Trump strategy, in other words, is a self-defeating trap.

There is only one way out of this cycle. Europe must take steps to restore agency where it still can. Rather than wait it out until January 2029, when magical thinking assumes the current transatlantic nightmare will come to an end, the EU needs to stop groveling and build greater sovereignty. Only then will it neuter the political forces that are hollowing it out from within.

AMBITION DEFICIT DISORDER

Europe’s acquiescence to Trump on defense spending makes the most sense. The war in Ukraine is a European war, with Europe’s security at stake. The catastrophic Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February 2025, in which the latter was berated and humiliated, was an ominous sign that the United States could abandon Ukraine entirely, immediately threatening the security of Europe’s eastern flank. As a result, at the NATO summit in June 2025, European allies acknowledged Washington’s concerns about burden sharing in Ukraine and in general promised to drastically increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP while also buying a lot more American-made weapons in support of Kyiv’s war effort.

Then, after Trump rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, in mid-August, a group of European leaders, including Zelensky, flocked to Washington in a collective effort to sweet-talk Trump. They managed to box in the U.S. president by backing his mediation ambitions and by developing plans for a European “reassurance force” to be deployed to Ukraine in the (unlikely) event that Trump succeeded in brokering a cease-fire. These careful placation efforts, one can argue, have worked: Trump today appears to have much higher regard for European leaders; he seems to have settled on allowing Europeans to buy weapons for Ukraine; he has extended sanctions to the Russian oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft; and he has not actually pulled out of NATO.

But this outcome is more the product of Putin’s intransigence than European diplomacy. It is also a success only when compared with the worst possible alternative. So far, Europeans have failed to secure further American support for Ukraine. They have also failed to nudge the U.S. president into endorsing a package of comprehensive new sanctions on Russia, with a bipartisan bill of crippling active measures on hold in Congress. And by focusing on scoring political wins with Trump, they still have not developed a robust and coherent European strategy for their long-term defense that does not in essence rely on the United States.

NATO military exercises near Xanthi, Greece, June 2025 Louisa Gouliamaki / Reuters

The new five percent target for military spending, for example, was not driven by a European assessment of what is feasible but rather by what would please Trump. This cynical ploy was made plain when NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, sent text messages to Trump hailing his “BIG” win in The Hague—texts that Trump later gleefully reposted on social media. Meanwhile, many European allies, including large countries such as France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, agreed to the five percent target knowing full well that they are not in the fiscal position to reach it any time soon. European commitments to “buy American” were also made enthusiastically without any concrete plans to significantly reduce those structural military dependencies in the future.

Europe’s failure to organize its own defense can best be understood as a lack of ambition—one that is directly tied to the nationalist fervor that has swept the continent over the past five years. As far-right political parties have gained momentum, their agenda has dampened the European integration project. In the past, these parties pushed for exiting the EU altogether, but since the United Kingdom’s withdrawal in 2020—now widely recognized as a policy failure—they have opted for a different, and more dangerous, agenda of gradually undermining the European Union from within and stifling any European supranational effort. To see the effect of far-right populism on European ambition and integration, one need only compare the significant response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when the EU collectively mobilized over $900 billion in grants and loans, and the underwhelming defense initiatives today. For collectively defending Europe against external aggression, which is arguably a much larger threat, the EU has mustered only about $170 billion in loans.

The irony, of course, is that precisely because far-right forces made a strong EU defense initiative impossible, European leaders felt they had no choice but to rely on a strongman from America. Yet the far right itself is unlikely to pay the political price for this submission. On the contrary, the five percent NATO defense and security spending target risks becoming further grist for the populist mill, especially in countries that are far from the Russian border, such as Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. European leaders may have to compromise public spending on health, education, and public pensions to meet the target, which fuels the “guns versus butter” narrative on the far right.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

European capitulation to Trump’s trade demands is even more self-destructive. At least in the defense realm, the transatlantic relationship was never one of equals. But if Europeans are military lightweights, they pride themselves on being economic giants. The sheer size of the European Union’s single market and the centralization of international trade policy in the European Commission meant that when Trump unleashed a trade war on the world, the EU was almost as well positioned as China to drive a hard bargain. When the United Kingdom rapidly agreed to a new ten percent tariff rate with the United States, for example, the general assumption outside the United States was that the EU’s much greater market power would enable it to extract a much better deal.

Trade was also the area in which, ahead of the 2024 U.S. election, a fair amount of “Trump proofing” had already taken place, with European countries wielding carrots, such as the acquisition of more American weaponry and liquefied natural gas, as well as sticks, such as a new Anti-Coercion Instrument, which gives the European Commission significant power to retaliate in the event of economic intimidation or outright bullying by unfriendly states.

For example, in response to the U.S. president’s announcement of 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum in February 2025, European Commission officials could have immediately activated a prepared package of roughly $23 billion in new tariffs on politically sensitive U.S. goods, such as soybeans from Iowa, motorcycles from Wisconsin, and orange juice from Florida. Then, in response to Trump’s reciprocal “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025, they could have chosen to trigger their economic “bazooka,” as the Anti-Coercion Instrument is often referred to. Since the United States continues to have a significant surplus in so-called invisible trade, EU officials could have targeted exports of U.S. services to Europe, such as streaming platforms and cloud computing or certain kinds of financial, legal, and advisory work.

But instead of taking (or even threatening to take) such collective action, European leaders spent months debating and undermining one another. This is yet another example of how increasingly strong far-right actors have been weakening the EU. Historically, trade negotiations have been led by the European Commission, with national governments taking a back seat. When the first Trump administration sought to increase trade pressure on the EU, for instance, Jean-Claude Juncker, who was then president of the European Commission, defused tensions by flying to Washington and presenting Trump with a simple deal framed around joint gains.

Europe has reflexively and consistently adopted a posture of submission.

In the second Trump administration, however, the situation could not be more different. This time, the commission’s bargaining position was undercut from the start by a cacophonous chorus, with key member states preemptively voicing their opposition to retaliation. Notably, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a far-right favorite of Trump’s, called for pragmatism and warned the EU against setting off a tariff war. Germany also urged caution; the new government, led by the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, was concerned about recession, which would have further emboldened the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the main opposition party. France and Spain, by contrast, have centrist or center-left governments and favored a harder line and more biting retaliatory tariffs. (Spain, it is worth noting, is also the only NATO country that flatly refused to raise its defense spending to the new five percent norm.)

The level of European disunity was so profound that in late spring and early summer, companies even concluded they might do better negotiating on their own: the German car makers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW conducted their own parallel negotiations with the Trump administration on auto tariffs. It wasn’t until late July 2025, after months of paralysis, that Brussels accepted U.S. tariffs of 15 percent on most EU exports—five percentage points higher than what the United Kingdom had negotiated.

Faced with mounting internal criticism for the deal, European leaders have again claimed that the EU had no choice: since Trump was bent on imposing tariffs no matter what, they argue, retaliatory tariffs would have only ended up hurting European importers and consumers. Retaliation, in this view, would have amounted to shooting oneself in the foot. Worse, it could have risked triggering Trump’s ire and seeing him lash out against Ukraine or abandon NATO.

But again, this is Catch-22 logic. A Europe that accepts transatlantic economic extortion as a fact of life is a Europe that allows its market power to erode while further emboldening the far right. According to a leading survey conducted late last summer in the five largest EU countries, 77 percent of respondents believed the EU-U.S. trade deal “mostly favors the American economy,” with 52 percent agreeing that it is “a humiliation.” Not only does Europe’s submission make Trump look strong, increasing the appeal of imitating his nationalistic policies at home, but it also takes away the original rationale for European integration: that a united Europe can more effectively represent its interests. If a post-Brexit United Kingdom can extract a better trade deal from Trump than the EU can, many will rightly wonder why it is worth sticking with Brussels.

DIPLOMACY OVER DEMOCRACY

The starkest European accommodation has been on democratic values. Over the course of 2025, Trump has escalated his attacks on the free press, declared war on independent government institutions, and undercut the rule of law by putting political pressure on judges to take his side. And he has taken this fight to Europe: U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have openly meddled or taken sides in elections in Germany, Poland, and Romania.

Vance, for instance, did not meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the Munich Security Conference in February 2025 but did meet with the AfD leader Alice Weidel and publicly criticized the German firewall policy that keeps the party excluded from mainstream coalition talks. In Munich, Vance also lashed out against the annulment of the first round of presidential elections in Romania by that country’s Constitutional Court in light of significant evidence of Russian influence through TikTok. He said in his speech that the greatest threat to Europe came from “within” and that EU governments were “running in fear of their own voters.” Noem, meanwhile, took the extraordinary step of openly urging an audience in Jasionka, Poland, to vote for the far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki, calling his centrist opponent “an absolute train wreck of a leader.”

Instead of rejecting such hostile election interference, however, the EU leadership has largely stayed silent on the matter, likely hoping that cooperation elsewhere might survive. This transactional approach is most clearly seen in the European Commission’s investigation into disinformation on X, the social media platform primarily owned by the former Trump ally Elon Musk. Initially, Brussels had robust accusations against X, including that the platform was amplifying pro-Kremlin narratives and dismantling its election-integrity teams ahead of the EU elections. But the investigation has since slowed and been downplayed: X has been granted repeated extensions for compliance, and Brussels has signaled a preference for “dialogue” over sanctions.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Trump at the White House, August 2025 Al Drago / Reuters

This strategy is not only failing to produce deals in the European interest but also comes at a political cost: it normalizes illiberal moves in the United States while narrowing Europe’s own space to defend liberal standards at home and abroad. Right-wing leaders have already embraced the political messages coming from Washington. After Vance’s comments in Munich, for instance, Hungarian officials praised the vice president’s “realism.” And after the murder of the American right-wing personality Charlie Kirk, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned the “hatemongering left” in the United States and warned that “Europe must not fall into the same trap.” Across the continent, far-right parties have seized on such moments to portray themselves as part of a broader Western counter-elite, while mainstream European leaders, wary of inflaming tensions with the United States, have refrained from denouncing the rhetoric as forcefully as they once would have.

As with defense spending and with trade, many in Europe argued that it wasn’t worth it to poke the bear on U.S. democratic backsliding. European pushback was not likely to influence American domestic politics, after all. And some proponents of a more passive European response theorize that Trump’s followers’ abrasive support for the far right in Europe could sow the seeds of its own demise. In both Australia and Canada, the pro-Trump front-runner candidates ended up losing in the spring 2025 elections.

Some early results showed that this strategy could work in Europe, too. Vance and Musk, for instance, offered full-throated support for the AfD, but it had no discernible effect on the outcome in Germany. And in Romania, the pro-Russian and pro-Trump front-runner in the presidential election lost, while in the Netherlands, the liberals made an impressive comeback. But in Poland, the Noem-endorsed candidate ended up winning the presidential elections. And in the Czech Republic, the populist pro-Trump billionaire also won. While the evidence is not yet conclusive, what is clear is that appeasement has yielded little protection against Europe’s own illiberal drift. By soft-pedaling its defense of democratic values abroad, the EU has made it harder to address their erosion at home.

ONE FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE?

Europeans already know what they need to do to stop this vicious cycle. The road map for a stronger EU was laid out in 2024 with two comprehensive reports by two former Italian prime ministers that aimed to build on the successes of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund. Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi proposed deepening the EU’s single market in areas such as finance, energy, and technology and establishing a new major investment initiative through joint borrowing.

But despite the positive attention these proposals initially received, most of them remain dead letters just one year later. European leaders face electorates that are anxious about the cost of living, skeptical of further integration, and sensitive to any large joint debt initiative that might appear to transfer sovereignty or raise fiscal risks. What is required, therefore, is not another maximalist blueprint but a focused effort on what is still politically achievable. Although there is no single remedy, the union can take smaller steps on defense and trade that would reduce its dependence on the United States, and it can make changes regarding its relations with China and its energy policy that would restore its agency and bolster its autonomy.

The EU has tried in recent years to address the problem of its security architecture. It has, for instance, launched the European Defense Fund, created a framework to coordinate joint projects, and established the European Peace Facility, which was used to finance arms deliveries to Ukraine (until Hungary blocked it). It has also developed a defense industrial policy and proposed a 2030 defense readiness plan featuring initiatives on drones, land, space, and air and missile defense. But these instruments are still mostly aspirational, and when they do deliver, the results are narrow and slow, focused mainly on defense-industrial coordination and small-scale missions.

They have also exposed the EU’s Achilles’ heel: its requirement for unanimity on foreign and security policy. An organization in which all 27 members have an equal say can easily be hijacked. Orban of Hungary, for instance, has vetoed aid to and accession talks with Ukraine and sanctions on Russia at least ten times. Beyond the veto, the Hungarian member of the European Commission, Oliver Varhelyi, was recently accused of being part of an alleged spy network in Brussels. While this is so far only an allegation, it raises the broader question of whether sufficient political trust still exists to discuss vital security questions.

The five percent NATO spending target is grist for the populist mill.

The EU’s members also have divergent sensitivities toward the United States: eastern and Nordic countries continue to see Washington as their ultimate security guarantor, while France, Germany, and parts of southern Europe favor greater autonomy. Meanwhile, EU members that are not in NATO, such as Austria, Ireland, and Malta, are hampered by constitutional neutrality laws that restrict participation in collective defense. And several members have unresolved bilateral conflicts, such as Turkey and Greece’s dispute over Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean.

Instead of devising an EU answer to Europe’s defense problem, a more realistic path lies in a European “coalition of the willing.” The group that has coalesced around military support for Ukraine provides a good foundation for such an alliance. Although still informal, this group—led by France and the United Kingdom and including Germany, Poland, and the Nordic and Baltic states—has begun to take shape through regular coordination meetings among defense ministers and bilateral security compacts, most notably the European-led security agreements with Kyiv signed in Berlin, London, Paris, and Warsaw last year. It has shown a commitment to Kyiv irrespective of political shifts in the United States or at home, backed by sustained arms deliveries, long-term bilateral aid pledges, and joint training and procurement programs designed to keep Ukraine’s war effort viable even if U.S. support falters. Its rationale is both normative and strategic: these states understand that European security ultimately depends on Ukraine’s military defense and national survival.

The coalition has not been perfect, of course. Its focus thus far has been too abstract, centered on the hypothetical reassurance force, and it has only recently shifted its attention to sustaining Ukraine’s defenses without U.S. support. As it evolves, it should focus on boosting, coordinating, and integrating conventional forces. And ultimately it should tackle the hardest question facing European defense: nuclear deterrence.

Nuclear deterrence is almost a taboo subject in Europe, since there is no good alternative to the American umbrella: the French and British nuclear deterrents are ill equipped to counter Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal. But Europeanizing such a deterrent opens countless dilemmas, such as financing an expanded French-British nuclear capability, determining how decisions would be reached on its use, and providing the conventional military support needed to enable a nuclear deterrent and strike force.

The question of how to ensure nuclear deterrence in Europe, however, is so vital that Europeans cannot continue ignoring it. Poland and France took a first step when they signed a bilateral defense treaty in May, and Polish leaders have welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea to extend France’s nuclear umbrella to European allies. This is a promising start, but these conversations should not take place bilaterally; ideally, they would extend to the coalition of the willing. The goal is not to replace NATO but to ensure that if Washington steps back abruptly, Europe can still stand on its feet as it faces external threats.

MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY

This same logic applies to trade. Europe’s prosperity has always relied on openness, but the EU’s uneven deal with Trump exposed how easily the bloc’s commitment to free transatlantic trade and commerce can be exploited. Yet the EU has like-minded partners. It has already begun diversification efforts, signing and implementing trade deals with Canada, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It should deepen these trade ties but also press ahead by signing and ratifying other agreements with India, Indonesia, and the Mercosur countries in Latin America, while accelerating negotiations and reaching deals with Australia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and others.

Beyond bilateral deals, the EU should invest in a broader strategy to sustain the global trading system itself. The World Trade Organization has been completely paralyzed since 2019, when its Appellate Body ceased to function because the United States had blocked the appointment of new judges. The EU, however, could develop an alternative mechanism for dispute settlement and rule-making by working with members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. With more than 20 countries collectively representing over 40 percent of global GDP involved in trade with the EU, such an effort would effectively create a complement to the WTO. It would offer an outlet for cooperation between middle powers that share Europe’s interest in maintaining an open, rules-based order. And it would show that Europe remains capable of shaping global economic governance rather than merely reacting to U.S. or Chinese moves on the geopolitical chessboard.

To further demonstrate this agency, Europe needs to finally develop an autonomous policy toward China. As competition between the United States and China has grown, Europe’s policy toward China has become a function of Washington’s. During the Biden administration, this was not considered a problem: Europe was strategically dependent on U.S. intelligence and at the mercy of U.S. export-control frameworks, but it had a reliable and predictable partner across the Atlantic. Now though, as Trump’s China policy oscillates between escalation and deal-making, Europe has lost its bearings. Brussels continues to enforce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and to complain about Beijing’s backchannel support for Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. But it is unclear how the EU can stand up to China while Washington strikes bilateral deals with Beijing behind its back.

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic in Brussels, August 2025 Yves Herman / Reuters

To reclaim its credibility as a global actor, the EU should pursue a dual track with China: firm and clearheaded where its members’ security is at stake, but pragmatic and economically engaged elsewhere. On security, Europe won’t be able to convince China to stop trading with and buying oil and gas from Russia. But Europeans could persuade Beijing to stop exporting dual-use goods—those valuable to both military and civilian purposes—to Russia. China would expect something in return, of course, including concessions that some in Europe may consider distasteful, such as a pledge by NATO to no longer formally cooperate with East Asian partners.

Europe must also confront its energy predicament. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans have replaced one vulnerability—reliance on Russian gas—with another, heavy dependence on U.S. liquefied natural gas. Although this shift was inescapable in the short term, it cannot be the basis for long-term energy security, especially given the volatile state of transatlantic relations. As a fossil-fuel-poor continent, the EU must forge a more sustainable path. At a minimum, this means broadening its network of energy partners and cultivating suppliers in the Middle East, North Africa, and other regions. But it also means doubling down on the European Green Deal, which is currently being diluted through omnibus laws backed by the center right and the far right.

The politics of the Green Deal are difficult, particularly amid a cost-of-living crisis and slow growth. But the alternative, continued fossil fuel exposure and geopolitical vulnerability, is much worse. The message should be clear: energy diversification is not just about climate change but also about sovereignty. Moreover, a credible green-industrial strategy would help create the high-technology jobs that nationalist parties claim to want to defend. It would show that decarbonization and economic strength can be mutually reinforcing in practice.

THE POWER OF NO

Taken together, these steps would not transform Europe overnight. They would, however, begin to alter the political dynamic that has trapped the continent in a cycle of deference and division. Each initiative—defense preparedness, trade diversification, a home-grown China policy, and energy transition and autonomy—would demonstrate that Europe can still act collectively and strategically in adverse conditions. Success on any one front would bolster confidence on the others and create political support for bolder steps.

The broader goal is to restore the sense that Europe’s fate is still in its own hands. Strategic autonomy does not require confrontation with Washington or the abandonment of the Atlantic alliance. It requires the capacity to say no when necessary, to act independently when interests diverge, and to sustain a coherent project at home. Appeasement has been Europe’s default posture for too long. It has been understandable, even rational in some cases, but ultimately it has been self-defeating and fanned the flames of a nationalist backlash.

The alternative is not grandstanding or isolation but steady, deliberate agency. If Europe can muster that, it may yet emerge from this period of transatlantic turbulence a more self-reliant, more united, and more respected actor in the world than it was before.

Foreign Affairs · More by Matthias Matthijs

19. U.S. military members fear personal legal blowback tied to boat strikes

​Summary:

NPR reports growing unease inside the U.S. military over POTUS-directed lethal strikes on suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The story says more than 20 vessels have been hit since September, with over 80 people killed, and that some service members are seeking outside counsel over potential personal legal exposure. Groups such as Quaker House and the Orders Project report increased calls from staff officers involved in intelligence, targeting, and legal review, plus at least one drone pilot. The anxiety stems from competing claims: the administration argues the strikes are lawful self-defense under Article II and the laws of war, while some former military lawyers contend they are unlawful killings.

Comment: What are the long term implications of this? Beyond potential legal ramifications for individuals, morale, unit cohesion, how will these operations (and the controversy over them) affect future recruiting and retention efforts? Are the planners, intelligence analysts/targeteers, and operators going to suffer consequences or will the decision makers - if there are any consequences? (which is at heart the issue - was/is this right or wrong and thus should there be consequences or not?). It would seem the paradox is that if planners, intel analysts/targeteers, and operators suffer consequences then so must decision makers.

U.S. military members fear personal legal blowback tied to boat strikes

NPR · Ryan Lucas · December 12, 2025

December 12, 20255:00 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5629164/boat-strikes-service-members-legal-risk

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, sitting with other senior military leaders, listen as President Trump speaks at Marine Corps Base Quantico in September 2025. Evan Vucci/AP

U.S. service members — including staff officers and at least one drone pilot — are seeking advice from outside groups, fearing they could face legal consequences for any involvement in the Trump administration's lethal strikes on suspected drug boats.

Over the past three months, the U.S. has blown up more than 20 vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that the administration says were running illicit narcotics. More than 80 people have been killed in the strikes.

The administration says it is taking action to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. It says the strikes are legal and are being conducted under the laws of war, and that President Trump ordered them under his Article II powers as commander-in-chief and in self-defense.

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Many legal experts, however, including former military lawyers, contend the strikes against the alleged civilian narcotraffickers are unlawful and amount to murder.

The vast gulf between those two legal views has left some members of the U.S. military in the lurch, worried about potential legal blowback for themselves for taking part in the campaign.

"It's hard to be a soldier and make determinations in any situation, but it's especially hard in a situation like this — where most people don't see an imminent threat — to be sent to do something that you're really worried about, could I go to prison for this?" said Steve Woolford, a resource counselor with Quaker House in North Carolina and the GI Rights Hotline.

His organization — one of several that make up the GI Rights Hotline, which provides confidential counseling and information for members of the American military — has received calls from service members since the administration began blasting suspected narcotrafficking boats in September.

Quaker House has been contacted so far by two service members who Woolford said were "very concerned" about their own involvement in the campaign.

"Their calls were both about the legality of what they were participating in and what that might mean for them in terms of being subject to punishment for doing something that they weren't supposed to do and were supposed to know better than to do," he said. "Both of them also had moral concerns because they are people who are willing to be part of defense but they don't want to be part of doing something illegal, or I don't think they feel right killing people outside of the laws of war."

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Woolford, who is not an attorney, said in both instances the service members were put in touch with lawyers who could provide more guidance on the legal issues.

"A lot more calls"

Military personnel have also reached out to attorneys at the Orders Project, which is a non-partisan group that serves as a reference for service members who have questions about lawful and unlawful orders.

"We're receiving a lot more calls in the last three months than we did before," said Frank Rosenblatt, a former military lawyer with the Orders Project.

He declined to provide numbers, but he said some of the individuals are staff officers with legal, intelligence or targeting expertise.

"What we're finding out is that they're being told that there are these political appointees who really want to be able to talk about this and ... say everybody in the military who looked at this said it was 'green light, A-OK, good to go,'" said Rosenblatt, who is a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps.

Pressure from above

When some of those career officers don't sign off, instead indicating 'non-concur,' they are coming under pressure from higher-ups, he said.

"So much pressure, in some cases, that they're giving us a call to say, 'What are my options? I want to do the right thing but I also don't want to torpedo my career unnecessarily.'"

The Orders Project's attorneys who speak with service members are not giving "grand decrees" about whether an order is lawful or unlawful, Rosenblatt said. Instead, the guidance they provide is focused on what's in the caller's best interest.

"Generically, the advice that we might give might vary from how you can document the pressure you are receiving, to what kind of questions you can ask or clarification you can seek," he added.

Rosenblatt said his group has received calls from at least one drone pilot, but both he and Woolford at Quaker House said generally the service members who are reaching out are not the people pulling the trigger. Instead, they say, the callers are more on the operational planning side.

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While the number of callers may not be large at this point, the fact that service members are reaching out at all reflects the confusion and worry some of them feel about what they are being ordered to do.

Woolford said that many people have voiced a concern that any future consequences for service members should be based on the law but they worry it may end up being driven by politics instead.

"And then it just becomes this complicated guessing game of who's going to be in charge and what are they going to say is right as opposed to maybe the more solid foundation of 'we have accepted rules we can just go by,'" he said. "So that's just a really hard thing for people in the military to try to be guessing."

NPR · Ryan Lucas · December 12, 2025

20. ‘China threat’ narrative a ‘complete mislabelling’, economist Jin Keyu says

​Summary:

Economist Jin Keyu argues the widely cited “China threat” narrative is a mislabelling that ignores China’s role as a global technology benefactor. Speaking in Hong Kong, she said China’s scale manufacturing and innovation have sharply reduced costs for developing economies, citing the roughly 90 percent fall in solar panel prices. Jin said Beijing recognizes the need to rebalance toward domestic consumption, curb destructive “involution-style” competition, and promote global supply chain harmony. She warned that decoupling is unrealistic given deep economic interdependence and argued that harsher trade restrictions often accelerate diversification, substitution, and techno-nationalism rather than constraining China’s technological advance.

Comment: Who's messaging? 

‘China threat’ narrative a ‘complete mislabelling’, economist Jin Keyu says

South China Morning Post · December 9, 2025

At a recent summit, the economist said China has been a ‘benefactor’ by lowering the cost of technology for developing economies

Sylvia Ma

Published: 8:30pm, 9 Dec 2025Updated: 10:05am, 10 Dec 2025

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3335778/china-threat-narrative-complete-mislabelling-jin-keyu-says

A prominent economist has dismissed the “China threat” phenomenon as a “complete mislabelling”, arguing that the country has instead supported the global diffusion of technology by significantly lowering costs through production at scale.

Speaking at a summit on Tuesday, Jin Keyu – a professor of finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – also said China’s proposals for its next five-year plan indicate Beijing recognises the need to rebalance its economy and better harmonise with the rest of the world in a process she added will require patience.

“We have to recognise that the other angle is not China as a threat, but China as a great benefactor of the diffusion of technology around the world,” she said at the Global Supply Chain Business Summit in Hong Kong.

Economist Jin Keyu at a 2023 Ted Talk. Photo: Handout

She described China as a “huge contributor” to the proliferation of advanced technology, which she called “essential” for developing economies seeking to catch up with the rest of the world.

Jin attributed this to the country’s enormous manufacturing and innovation capacity, giving China the lion’s share of credit for the roughly 90 per cent drop in solar panel prices observed in recent years.

She also noted Beijing’s transition to a more consumption-driven economy and efforts to curb “involution” – the cutthroat, low-quality competition that has driven down profits in several industries – reflect an awareness of a need to rebalance.

“It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take time, three to five years,” she said. “But we also see the government trying to hold back some of the export enthusiasm and urge, because it needs to think about global harmony.

“Only under those circumstances can we really keep the global supply chain intact and resilient,” Jin said.

In a detailed proposal for China’s 15th five-year plan, released in October after the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party held its fourth plenum, Beijing listed “expanding domestic demand” and “comprehensively addressing ‘involution-style’ competition” among its priorities.

During the summit, Jin also said the success of attempts at “decoupling” would be improbable, owing to the deep integration of the global economy.

Even after the first iteration of the bilateral trade war during Donald Trump’s first White House term, she said, US and European Union trade dependence on China continued to rise, and China’s reliance on the two economies has declined, though “China still depends a lot on the US”, she added.

Jin noted the increasing difficulty of coordinating policy between allied countries, which she said makes trade and investment restrictions “much harder to implement” and could generate a backlash.

“The harsher the imposition of blockages is, the more diversification and substitution possibilities there are,” she said.

“We see semiconductors rising to unprecedented levels of advancement in China, the mobilisation of ‘techno-nationalism’, competitors working with each other – thanks to Trump.”

Sylvia Ma

Sylvia Ma joined the Post in 2023 and covers China economy. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Hong Kong and a bachelor’s degree in English from Fudan University.

South China Morning Post · December 9, 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