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Quotes of the Day:
“Human create their own meaning through choices and actions.”
–Jean-Paul Satre
"Take counsel from many on the things you must do; what you later want to do, tell few."
– Niccolo Machiavelli
“I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible … except by getting off his back.”
– Leo Tolstoy
1. SOCOM to host first-of-its-kind exercise to inform multi-domain task force
2. The Oval Office ambush
3. A North Korean Defector's View on International Politics
4. A Fiasco in the Oval Office By Eli Lake
5. Ukraine's security guarantees are Europe's responsibility, Trump tells Zelensky
6. Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle
7. Zelenskyy speaks out after public spat with Trump, Vance, says dustup 'bad for both sides'
8. Hegseth Warned of Military Action if Mexico Fails to Meet Trump’s Border Demands
9. Exclusive: Hegseth orders Cyber Command to stand down on Russia planning
10. It’s Xi Jinping’s World, and Trump Is Just Living in It
11. Trump Zelensky Chess (Don’t underestimate Donald Trump)
12. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 28, 2025
13. Two steps backward (Ukraine) by Sir Lawrence Freedman
14. The transactional world Donald Trump seeks would harm not help America
15. 5 Partisan Ex-DOD Chiefs Call for Hearings on Trump's Firing of Generals
16. China’s Military Puts Pacific on Notice as U.S. Priorities Shift
17. Marlene Dietrich's secret role in a women-only spy ring - and the brazen act that put a Nazi price on her head
18. PRC Dominance Over Global Port Infrastructure
19. Trump Taps Special Operations Veteran for Navy Under Secretary Role (Hung Cao)
20. These specialized soldiers are trained to neutralize enemy nuclear weapons
21. US Air Force dubs new OA-1K armed crop duster ‘Skyraider II’ ahead of first delivery
1. SOCOM to host first-of-its-kind exercise to inform multi-domain task force
Damn, I wish I was an SF Colonel on active duty.
On a serious note this seems like a very important initiative. But SOF has to work for two masters - the joint force of course but also for the elements of our government that are executing political warfare in the gray zone of strategic competition in the space between peace and war. State and diplomats and most importantly POTUS need options (in addition to what the CIA already may provide). And I think it is clear to us that POTUS is practicing "unconventional diplomacy." He is changing all the rules. The way for SOCOM to contribute is to provide POTUS with options based on unconventional warfare activities that create dilemmas for our adversaries (primarily China).
Bottom line is we need conventional warfare in support of POTUS' unconventional diplomacy. (long live the spirit of the OSS)
SOCOM to host first-of-its-kind exercise to inform multi-domain task force
Sonic Spear 25 will be a live, virtual, constructive exercise, which will help inform a new approach to how commando forces are provided.
By
Mark Pomerleau
February 27, 2025
defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · February 27, 2025
U.S. Special Operations Command is gearing up for its first ever live, virtual and constructive exercise, which will help inform forthcoming changes to how it provides forces to combatant commands.
Sonic Spear, beginning in April with elements peppered into other exercises throughout the year, will be SOCOM’s first opportunity as a combatant command to host such an event as opposed to tabletop exercises. The gathering will test the command’s ability to synchronize joint special operations effects from seabed to low-Earth orbit in support of the joint force and integrate those to support a joint task force commander, according to a command spokesperson.
Overall, the event will help validate how service components to SOCOM provide forces to it and geographic combatant commands, exercising those offerings and integrating them into a truly joint special operations force presentation, they added.
Special ops forces, much like the conventional units within the U.S. military, are taking a harder look at how to integrate capabilities seamlessly across all the domains of warfare. Commandos and conventional forces have historically been too siloed in their approaches to employing capabilities, looking at single domains rather than a more integrated arrangement.
The exercise will also help SOCOM look at different technologies, such as robotics, and the future investments it might need in those areas.
“Let’s look at our investments. We have a lot of autonomy investments happening across the force. We want to hold ourselves accountable … Robots can do what we told them to do. They can drop track quality data into the Joint Fires Network, theater agnostic, and then all those actions put together can support, again, the SOF effects that support joint SOF maneuver,” Lt. Gen. Francis Donovan, vice commander of SOCOM, said Feb. 20 at the Special Operations Symposium hosted by NDIA. “Sonic Spear 25 is our first go at this. That’s where we’re going to look at again, seabed to low-Earth orbit, what are our gaps and seams? Let’s push our autonomous investments, some other investments we’re making … and what do our forward forces need to be able to control ourselves, control our robots and then link in with the joint force.”
This all builds towards SOCOM’s eventual model for an emerging O-6 — colonel or Navy captain — level multi-domain special operations task force.
Special ops historically has integrated multiple O-5 — lieutenant colonel or Navy commander — and O-6 forces from individual components under a general or admiral. The new model under development will look to integrate those joint special operations forces at the O-6 level to enable them across each domain, to include space and cyber.
With the need to integrate capabilities seamlessly across domains, combined with adversary actions that will disperse friendly forces, the forthcoming task force will allow commando formations to conduct synchronized operations at levels historically held at higher echelons, the SOCOM spokesperson said.
“That is our first step to moving forward of a SOF force presentation model that looks a little different from the past. We’ll eventually have a multi-domain special operations task force at the O-6 level that can synchronize SOF effects, seabed to low-Earth orbit in support of the joint force. Yes, that’s what we’re building towards. But we have to start somewhere,” Donovan said of Sonic Spear 25.
While this year will be relatively rudimentary as the first instantiation, he said officials hope to evolve it — adding in electromagnetic interference, for example — culminating in 2027 with “a joint SOF force offering.”
Written by Mark Pomerleau
Mark Pomerleau is a senior reporter for DefenseScoop, covering information warfare, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, intelligence, influence, battlefield networks and data.
defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · February 27, 2025
2. The Oval Office ambush
I am only going to provide six articles on the Trump Vance - Zelensky meeting. One from Australia, one from the north Korean Diaspora, one from the Free Press (Eli Lake), one from Kyiv a Wall Street Journal editorial, and the Fox News reporting on the Zelensky interview with Brett Bair. I. am sure everyone has read all the reports in the mainstream media.
My worst fear is that this could lead to the end of Ukraine. The fracture between the US and Ukraine could be irreparable. There may be only two outcomes. One is that the EU and the remainder of NATO countries could step up and really come to the complete aid and defense of Ukraine which would radically alter the balance of power in Europe and completely change the NATO alliance forever. The second is that if Europe does not step up and the US ends aid to Ukraine that all of Ukraine will fall (or Russia will eventually occupy all of Ukraine and experience a combination of Afghanistan and Vietnam for decades to come). Another possibility is that this was all orchestrated theater. It could be a deliberate act by Trump and Vance to squeeze Zelensky or simply that they orchestrated this just because of ego (and it will be a real shame to see the Ukrainian people suffer because of the ego of an American president). A real long shot is that it could be orchestrated theater in coordination WITH Zelensky and they are trying to create some kind of condition to influence Putin (what that is I do not know). But if we see an agreement result over the weekend or in coming days perhaps this was deliberate. But it is a long shot.
When I saw the video my first thought was also about the Ugly American. So I asked my AI friend if Trump and Vance could be compared to the Ugly American. Here is its response:
In "The Ugly American," the term "ugly American" originally refers to Homer Atkins, an American engineer whose unassuming appearance contrasts with his effective and respectful engagement with local communities in Southeast Asia. Atkins embodies the positive impact Americans can have abroad when they offer practical assistance and show respect for local cultures.
However, over time, the term "ugly American" has evolved into a pejorative stereotype describing Americans abroad as loud, arrogant, and culturally insensitive.
Recent events involving President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have drawn parallels to this negative stereotype. During a heated Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, both Trump and Vance displayed confrontational behavior. Trump accused Zelenskyy of "gambling with World War Three," while Vance criticized him for being "disrespectful" and organizing "propaganda tours."
This incident reflects the "ugly American" stereotype of displaying arrogance and insensitivity in international relations. Such behavior can undermine diplomatic efforts and damage the United States' global reputation.
In summary, while Homer Atkins in "The Ugly American" represents the positive potential of Americans abroad, the term has come to symbolize negative behaviors. The actions of Trump and Vance during their interaction with Zelenskyy align more closely with this latter, pejorative interpretation.
A view from Australia.
The Oval Office ambush | Lowy Institute
lowyinstitute.org · by Mick Ryan
“This is going to be great television … I will say that.” This is how the American president summed up the conclusion of the most fractious meeting to have occurred in front of journalists between an American president and his foreign counterpart in the modern era.
In a meeting in the White House today, the Ukrainian president was lectured by the American President and Vice President, in front of television cameras, in what appears to be an orchestrated display of what power now looks like in the American polity. The meeting ended early, and the Ukrainian president left without signing the much-telegraphed minerals deal that has been discussed in recent weeks.
The signs earlier in the week had pointed to a more productive meeting. Donald Trump had rolled back his narrative about Volodymyr Zelenskyy being a dictator, and the minerals agreement may have seen America having an enduring interest in the security of Ukraine. All that disintegrated in an explosive, unseemly exchange between Zelenskyy, Trump and J.D. Vance. At times, the three shouted over each other in what could only be described as anti-diplomacy.
What are the immediate implications of the Oval Office brawl that will be studied for years to come?
First, The Ukraine-America relationship is now in freefall. Ukraine does not have a deal with the Americans. The US President’s focus on “peace” over “advantage” means that he is focused on peace at any price. Ukraine is not. It cannot and should not accept an unjust peace that will subject them to the predations of Russia. Ukrainians in occupied territories know exactly what it is like to live under the Russian boot. Ukraine does not want that, and any American facilitation of such an outcome would be strategically inept and would comprise gross moral cowardice on the part of the American leader.
Second, while the Americans have been a vital aid provider for Ukraine in the past three years, that aid appears to potentially be at threat. The Europeans need to act fast to ensure that any drop off in American aid can be at least partially backfilled from the European Union and other sources on the continent. While there will be some, most likely French President Emmanuel Macron, who will want to act as peacemaker between Trump and Zelenskyy, this will just be a band-aid. There is a deep-seated hostility from Trump and Vance towards Zelenskyy that defies short term fixes. Europe needs to step up now, increase their defence spending and production to provide increased aid to Ukraine and a significantly enhanced deterrent against Russian aggression.
Ukraine cannot and should not accept an unjust peace that will subject them to the predations of Russia
Third, while it might earn the ire of the Trump administration, statements of support for Ukraine now are even more important than ever. This will provide an important test of courage for many Western leaders. But it is a test they must pass. Remaining silent in the face this bullying of the Ukrainian president is not an option. As we say in the Army, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. What will the Australian Prime Minister do?
Finally, the big winner in the Oval Office on Friday did not even have to participate in the fight. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose disinformation campaign has cleared influenced the Trump administration, will continue his onslaught in Ukraine to solidify the notion only Russia can win this war. It isn’t true, but that doesn’t matter. If the Trump administration believes it, facts have no bearing. The events in the Oval Office will be amplified by Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to provide further “evidence” of the decline of the West. Today’s events, and those of the past few weeks, demonstrate that we are now in the midst of a full-scale geopolitical tempest that Putin and Xi are sure to exploit.
Sadly, the ultimate outcome of the raucous meeting in the Oval Office is that this unnecessary war, begun by Putin and in which he has overseen large-scale rape, looting, torture, murder and destruction, will continue. Indeed, the war may intensify in the coming weeks. The soldiers and citizens of Ukraine, having just commemorated three years of death and destruction at the hands of Russia, deserved better than this.
lowyinstitute.org · by Mick Ryan
3. A North Korean Defector's View on International Politics
Views on Ukraine, Russia, Korea, and the US (and President Reagan) from the north Korean diaspora.
Excerpts:
Then, I suddenly imagined how President Reagan would have responded to this situation if he were alive. Reagan was the person who led the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Considering his “force for peace” philosophy, it is likely that he would have strongly restrained Russian expansionism. He might have strengthened military support for Ukraine and pressured Russia through economic sanctions. At the same time, Reagan was diplomatically flexible, so he might have tried to create a direct dialogue with Putin and bring him to the negotiating table. However, I think he would have maintained a hard-line stance that would never back down.
Some people say Trump resembles Reagan, but I don’t think so at all. Reagan was optimistic and ideologically consistent conservative, while Trump feels more impulsive and focused on personal interests. Reagan valued trust with allies, while Trump often made allies uncomfortable. In the Ukraine War, Trump showed a pragmatic attitude of trying to end it quickly through negotiations, but Reagan would have been more principled in trying to block Russian expansion.
A North Korean Defector's View on International Politics
https://m.blog.naver.com/freedom88-/223779833500
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28 minutes ago
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English and Korean versions
Watching the Russia-Ukraine war recently has stirred a lot of thoughts in me. Historically speaking, Europe has been a region that fiercely fought for liberal democracy. The French Revolution and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe are symbolic examples of this struggle. On the other hand, the United States, having grown as a nation rooted in a capitalist economy, tends to lean more toward economic and strategic interests rather than the values of liberal democracy. That's why, observing the recent meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy, I couldn't help but feel that the US came across as somewhat rude.
For the past three years, Ukraine has been fighting against Russia's invasion, defending not only its own freedom but also contributing to the stability of Europe as a whole. Given that Russia's invasion is undeniable, viewing Ukraine as the aggressor distorts historical facts. If Ukraine's fight for freedom is ignored or merely exploited, it ultimately undermines the very values of liberal democracy. In international politics, shouldn't great powers act with true freedom and justice at the core, rather than just pushing their weight around?
Watching Trump's demeanor, he felt more like a real estate developer than a politician. His style of pressing the other side at the negotiating table to maximize his own interests screamed businessman. Of course, international politics is a game of power and interests, but this approach isn't always effective. Especially with a country like Ukraine, where survival is at stake, simply strong-arming them can complicate relations further. Diplomacy should be about building trust over the long term, don't you think?
This led me to wonder how President Reagan would have responded to this situation if he were alive today. Reagan was the figure who played a pivotal role in the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Considering his philosophy of “peace through strength,” he likely would have taken a hardline stance against Russia's expansionism. He might have bolstered military aid to Ukraine and pressured Russia through economic sanctions. At the same time, Reagan was diplomatically flexible, so he could have tried to bring Putin to the negotiating table through direct talks. But I believe he would have maintained an unwavering, tough stance regardless.
Some people say Trump resembles Reagan, but I don't see it that way at all. Reagan was optimistic and ideologically consistent in his conservatism, while Trump feels more impulsive and driven by personal gain. Reagan valued trust with allies, whereas Trump often makes them uncomfortable. In the Ukraine war, Trump seems focused on wrapping things up quickly through negotiations, but Reagan would likely have taken a more principled approach to stopping Russia's expansion.
On another note, I find it hard to understand why people separate Russia and the Soviet Union as different entities. Legally, yes, the Soviet Union dissolved, and Russia was recognized as its successor state. But when you look at historical continuity and power structures, doesn't it seem like Russia inherited much of the Soviet Union's core? Especially under Putin's regime, there's a clear attempt to revive the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Cases like the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine make it feel like the expansionist tendencies of the Soviet era are still very much alive.
Looking at Putin's early career sheds more light on this. He worked as a KGB agent in Dresden, East Germany, during the Soviet era. But rather than engaging in flashy espionage, his role was mostly focused on gathering intelligence and surveillance, and due to the circumstances in East Germany and limitations within the KGB, he didn't stand out much. Experiencing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union firsthand likely planted seeds of resentment toward systemic collapse and a thirst for power in him. Later, as he rose onto the political stage, his tenacity and knack for seizing opportunities became evident. His statement calling the Soviet Union's dissolution “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” speaks volumes about where his worldview comes from.
Ultimately, I think this complex historical context and his personal background have shaped the Russia of today. International politics can't be resolved through power alone—I understand that. But blindly aligning with certain politicians, especially American ones, to discuss global order doesn't feel right.
This time, I think South Korea made a dangerous move. In an agreement related to the Russia-Ukraine war, signing a document that used the ambiguous term “conflict” instead of “invasion” is a big issue. This dilutes the clear fact of Russia's invasion and risks making South Korea's stance look vague on the international stage. South Korea is a divided nation, and North Korea's provocations and threats of invasion still haven't stopped. If we can't uphold our national pride and principles in diplomacy, what happens down the line? Wouldn't we have to turn a blind eye to North Korea's aggressive actions in a future inter-Korean agreement? In such situations, South Korea needs to show a more resolute, independent stance while cooperating with allies but staying firm on our own principles.
Moreover, we must remember that while the US is our ally, we are not their colony. In this Ukraine situation, even though there's talk of peace agreements, the US's intent to expand its influence over Ukraine is apparent. Rather than treating Ukraine as a true ally, they seem to see it as a tool for their geopolitical interests. From this perspective, South Korea shouldn't merely get dragged along by US policies but should protect our national interests through independent judgment and proactive diplomacy.
I had a lot of thoughts watching the recent war between Russia and Ukraine. In historical context, Europe is a region that has fought fiercely for liberal democracy. Events such as the French Revolution and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe are symbolic examples. On the other hand, the United States is a country that grew based on a capitalist economy, so it tends to lean more toward economic and strategic interests than the values of liberal democracy. Perhaps that is why, watching the recent meeting between Trump and Zelensky, the United States’ attitude felt somewhat rude.
Ukraine has been fighting against Russian aggression for the past three years, contributing not only to the freedom of its own country but also to the stability of Europe as a whole. I think that viewing Ukraine as an aggressor when Russia’s aggression is clear is a distortion of historical facts. If we ignore or simply try to use the power of the freedom that Ukraine has protected, we will end up belittling the value of liberal democracy. Shouldn’t the powerful countries in international politics truly center on freedom and justice, rather than just pushing forward with force?
Trump's attitude is more like a real estate developer than a politician. He seems like a businessman, trying to pressure his opponents at the negotiating table and maximize his own interests. Of course, international politics is a battle of power and interests, but this method is not always effective. Especially in a country like Ukraine where survival is at stake, simply pressuring with force can make the relationship even more complicated. I think diplomacy should be a game of building trust by looking at the long term.
Then, I suddenly imagined how President Reagan would have responded to this situation if he were alive. Reagan was the person who led the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Considering his “force for peace” philosophy, it is likely that he would have strongly restrained Russian expansionism. He might have strengthened military support for Ukraine and pressured Russia through economic sanctions. At the same time, Reagan was diplomatically flexible, so he might have tried to create a direct dialogue with Putin and bring him to the negotiating table. However, I think he would have maintained a hard-line stance that would never back down.
Some people say Trump resembles Reagan, but I don’t think so at all. Reagan was optimistic and ideologically consistent conservative, while Trump feels more impulsive and focused on personal interests. Reagan valued trust with allies, while Trump often made allies uncomfortable. In the Ukraine War, Trump showed a pragmatic attitude of trying to end it quickly through negotiations, but Reagan would have been more principled in trying to block Russian expansion.
On the other hand, I also don’t understand the perspective that Russia and the Soviet Union are different countries. Of course, legally, the Soviet Union was dissolved and Russia was recognized as its successor, so they are different. However, if we look at historical continuity and power structure, shouldn’t we see that Russia has inherited a significant portion of the Soviet Union’s core? In particular, since the Putin administration came to power, attempts to recreate the influence of the Soviet era have continued. Cases such as the annexation of Crimea and the Ukrainian War make it seem like the expansionist attitude of the Soviet era has continued.
Putin’s early career makes this more understandable. He worked as a KGB agent in Dresden, East Germany, during the Soviet era. However, rather than engaging in flashy espionage activities, he focused mainly on intelligence gathering and surveillance, and due to the situation in East Germany at the time and the limitations within the KGB, he was unable to display any notable activities. As he personally experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, he must have developed a sense of resistance to the collapse of the system and a thirst for power. After he entered the political arena, his tenacity and ability to seize opportunities stood out, and his expression of the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” is a passage that shows where his worldview came from.
In the end, I think that this complex historical context and personal background created today's Russia. I know that international politics cannot be solved simply by force. However, it is not right to discuss world order just because you like a certain politician, especially American politicians.
This time, Korea also made a dangerous move. It is a big problem that it signed an agreement that included the ambiguous expression “dispute” instead of “invasion” in the Russo-Russian War Agreement. This expression obscures the clear fact that Russia invaded, and Korea’s position may be seen as ambiguous in the international community. Korea is a divided country, and North Korea’s provocations and threats of invasion are still ongoing. If we fail to protect our national pride and principles in diplomacy, won’t we end up having to tolerate North Korea’s aggressive actions in future inter-Korean agreements? I think that Korea needs to show its position more firmly in this situation, and maintain diplomatic balance by cooperating with its allies while making clear Korea’s principles.
We must also keep in mind that the United States is only an ally and not a colony of that country. In the current Ukraine situation, the United States is outwardly supporting the peace agreement, but in reality, it is revealing its intention to expand its influence.
Rather than treating Ukraine as a true ally, it seems like they are treating them as a tool for their own geopolitical interests, i.e., as a colony. In this regard, I think that Korea should protect its national interests through diplomacy based on its own judgment and Korean values, rather than simply being dragged along by American policies.
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4. A Fiasco in the Oval Office By Eli Lake
From the Free Press.
A Fiasco in the Oval Office
The dressing down of a besieged ally might be ‘great television.’ But it’s terrible for the United States.
By Eli Lake
03.01.25 — The Big Read
https://www.thefp.com/p/a-fiasco-in-the-oval-office?utm
Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and JD Vance meet in the Oval Office. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
23
39
On Friday the world witnessed one of the most astonishing spectacles in White House history.
American presidents have surely dressed down besieged allies behind closed doors; never before has it happened on live television. This break with any prior presidential diplomacy must be seen to be believed.
What unfolded between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance turned into a political Rorschach test.
For Trump’s base, the 50-minute exchange was proof positive of America First foreign policy—an ungrateful freeloader gets upbraided by the populist tribune.
For Americans who still cling to the now unfashionable notion that the international system should be ruled by rules and not might, Friday’s incident was a horror.
From the perspective of Europe, it's the beginning of the end of the Trans-Atlantic alliance.
To recap, after agreeing under pressure from the White House to sign a rare earth mineral deal, Zelensky came to Washington with the intention of repairing his strained relationship with Trump, inking the deal, and convincing the U.S. to keep the weapons flowing to his war effort.
The meeting was intended to be a photo-op before the real discussions behind closed doors—and it began on a cordial note. Trump praised Ukraine’s soldiers. Zelensky politely showed Trump photographs of Russian atrocities.
But then Vance laid a trap. Or at least deviated from the diplomatic niceties. He explained that Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, thumped his chest and talked tough but never engaged in diplomacy with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. “The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy,” he said.
Vance, in this case, was not a reliable narrator of recent history. Biden hosted a virtual summit with the Russian leader at the end of 2021. Biden also waived sanctions on the construction of a second gas pipeline between Russia and Europe in the months leading up to the war. Before Putin invaded, Biden tried for nearly a year to dissuade him from doing it.
Nevertheless, the smart thing to do at this point would have been for Zelensky—who desperately needs America’s military support—to nod politely and let it go.
That’s not what happened. Instead Zelensky felt the need to correct Vance in front of the press. Big mistake. And to do it all without an interpreter, another big mistake.
“Can I ask you?” he said.
“Sure. Yeah,” Vance responded.
“We had conversations with him, many conversations,” Zelensky said, speaking of Putin. He reminded Vance that he signed a ceasefire with Putin after he was elected in 2019. But Putin broke his word. “He killed our people and he didn’t exchange prisoners,” Zelensky said. “What kind of diplomacy, J.D., are you speaking about? What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that is going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance replied. He was just getting warmed up.
“Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you guys have man-power problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”
From there it went from bad to worse. It’s difficult to choose the most uncomfortable moment, but perhaps it was when, in the course of a retort, Zelensky observed that even America’s military has problems in war, but that the United States is fortunate to be buffered by two oceans. “You don’t feel it now,” he warned. “But you will feel it in the future.”
Zelensky was trying to make the point that appeasement leads to further conflict. But Trump interpreted it as the Ukrainian leader telling the United States that it was weak. “You don’t know that. You don’t know that,” Trump said. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel because you’re in no position to dictate that. We’re going to feel very good and very strong.”
It devolved further from there. At one point, Trump, raising his voice and wagging his finger, said, “You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is disrespectful to the country, to this country.”
At the end of the fiasco, Trump said: “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”
Before dismissing the press corps and kicking Zelensky out of the White House, Trump observed that the last 40 minutes had made for some “great television.”
It certainly had. And that’s the only good thing one can say about the entire meeting.
One image of Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington with her head in her hands captures the entire debacle.
Trump’s handling of Zelensky thrilled the America First camp.
David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, and an influential foreign policy voice in MAGA land, summed it up when he posted: “Every other President would have just sat there and taken the insolence. President Trump defended the country’s honor and stood tall for peace.”
What was astonishing was how the spectacle left even some of Ukraine’s most stalwart defenders siding with Trump.
Marc Thiessen, a longtime foreign policy hawk with the Ukrainian flag in his handle on X and a fellow at the center-right think tank AEI thought the incident was “entirely Zelensky’s fault. Trump greeted him graciously, was ready to turn the page. . . And Z comes in and gets into a fight in public? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
But blaming Zelensky for poor diplomatic tactics—and he deserves blame—only gets us so far.
The vastly more important question is why Zelensky was baited in the first place.
What exactly was Vance trying to accomplish? It’s impossible to know what was in the vice president’s head. But it’s reasonable to assume that he believed a fight with Ukraine’s embattled leader was good politics—for the base and perhaps also for the president.
Ukraine, after all, played a supporting role in the Russiagate scandal that Hillary Clinton’s campaign manufactured in 2017 and was cynically and credulously pursued by the FBI, even after its investigators found there was nothing to the theory that Trump and his campaign had colluded with the Kremlin. And Zelensky’s trip to the US in the middle of election season, which included a speech alongside Kamala Harris and a trip to a munitions factory in Pennsylvania, didn’t help his popularity among Republicans.
Vance and his circle represent a real and growing constituency in the Republican Party. They believe that the days of American global hegemony are long over and that the country needs to accept the new reality of a multipolar world. For this crowd, the humiliation of Zelensky must have felt sweet.
But that feeling is fleeting. As Zelensky tried and failed to explain in the Oval Office, if Russia swallows his country, America will find itself with an even stronger foe.
Trump is now openly talking about cutting off his supply line, an invitation to the rapacious Putin to complete his war aim and extinguish Ukraine altogether. Russia could not be happier: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office,” tweeted former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. You can comfort yourself with the notion that Trump is playing four dimensional chess, or you can notice that the party that started the war in Ukraine is cheering.
Read more of our coverage of Ukraine and Trump’s new world order here, here, and here. And listen to the latest episode of Eli Lake’s podcast, “Breaking History”:
5. Ukraine's security guarantees are Europe's responsibility, Trump tells Zelensky
From Kyiv.
Ukraine's security guarantees are Europe's responsibility, Trump tells Zelensky
kyivindependent.com · by Tim Zadorozhnyy · February 28, 2025
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include the statements from U.S. President Donald Trump.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Feb. 28 during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington that security guarantees for Ukraine would be Europe's responsibility.
"I know that France is going to (provide guarantees), I know the U.K. is going to… But we would have security in a different form. We would have workers there… digging," Trump said, as the two leaders prepared to sign a framework deal on Ukraine's natural resources.
Trump positioned himself as a neutral mediator in the negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
"I am in the middle; I am for both Ukraine and Russia. I want to get it (Russia's war against Ukraine) solved," he added.
Zelensky has repeatedly emphasized that security guarantees are essential to any agreement with Washington. The deal to be signed on Feb. 28 does not include explicit security commitments from the U.S., leaving those discussions for future negotiations.
The issue of security guarantees has been linked to the potential deployment of a European-led peacekeeping force in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
Washington has backed the idea, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying on Feb. 12 that such a mission should exclude U.S. troops.
France, the U.K., and several other European nations have expressed support for deploying peacekeepers, though a consensus has not yet been reached.
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 17 that up to 30,000 European troops could be sent to Ukraine to monitor a ceasefire.
Zelensky's visit to Washington followed weeks of tense negotiations, during which Ukraine rejected two earlier U.S. draft proposals, arguing they placed one-sided obligations on Kyiv without security commitments from Washington.
The final agreement establishes a fund to which Ukraine will contribute 50% of proceeds from the future monetization of state-owned mineral resources, including oil, gas, and logistics infrastructure.
Trump had previously lashed out at Zelensky over his reluctance to sign the initial draft, accusing him of being a "dictator" and repeating Kremlin-backed narratives about his legitimacy.
As the U.S. and Ukrainian teams made progress on the deal, the final version of which was obtained by the Kyiv Independent, Trump softened his rhetoric, seemingly retracting his earlier statements.
"Did I say that? I can't believe I would say that," Trump said during a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Feb. 27 when asked by a journalist whether he still considers Zelensky a "dictator."
Zelensky, Trump get into heated argument while speaking with journalists in Oval Office
President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump held a 45-minute-long press briefing in the Oval Office that ended in a heated argument about American aid to Ukraine.
The Kyiv IndependentOleksiy Sorokin
kyivindependent.com · by Tim Zadorozhnyy · February 28, 2025
6. Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle
Excerpts:
Friday’s spectacle won’t make him any more willing to stop his onslaught as he sees the U.S. President and his eager deputy unload on Ukraine’s leader. Some Trumpologists have been suggesting Mr. Trump will put pressure on Mr. Putin in due time. But so far Mr. Putin hasn’t made a single concession on territory, or on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future after a peace deal is signed.
President Trump no doubt resents having to deal with a war he thinks he might have prevented had he won in 2020. But Presidents have to deal with the world they inherit. Peace in Ukraine is salvageable, but he and Mr. Zelensky will have to work together on an agreement that Ukrainians can live with.
Mr. Trump does not want to be the President who abandoned Ukraine to Vladimir Putin with all the bloodshed and damage to U.S. interests that would result. Mr. Vance won’t like to run for President in such a world either.
Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle
Vice President Vance starts a public fight that only helps Russia’s dictator.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/putin-wins-the-trump-zelensky-oval-office-spectacle-e23e9b21?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
By The Editorial Board
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Feb. 28, 2025 6:02 pm ET
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) talks with U.S. President Donald Trump (C) and Vice President JD Vance (R) in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday. Photo: Jim LoScalzo/POOL/Zuma Press
Toward the end of his on-camera, Oval Office brawl with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, President Trump quipped that it was “great television.” He’s right about that. But the point of the meeting was supposed to be progress toward an honorable peace for Ukraine, and in the event the winner was Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday afternoon after the exchange, while booting the Ukrainian president from the White House. “He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” The two didn’t sign a planned agreement on minerals that would have at least given Ukraine some hope of future U.S. support.
The meeting between Messrs. Trump and Zelensky started out smoothly enough. “It’s a big commitment from the United States, and we appreciate working with you very much, and we will continue to do that,” Mr. Trump said of the mineral deal. Mr. Zelensky showed photos of Ukrainians mistreated as prisoners of war. “That’s tough stuff,” Mr. Trump said.
But then the meeting, in front of the world, descended into recriminations. The nose dive began with an odd interjection from Vice President JD Vance, who appeared to be defending Mr. Trump’s diplomacy, which Mr. Zelensky hadn’t challenged. Mr. Zelensky rehearsed the many peace agreements Mr. Putin has shredded and essentially asked Mr. Vance what would be different this time.
Mr. Vance unloaded on Mr. Zelensky—that he was “disrespectful,” low on manpower, and gives visitors to Ukraine a “propaganda” tour. President Trump appeared piqued by Mr. Zelensky’s suggestion that the outcome in Ukraine would matter to the U.S. “Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Mr. Trump said at one point.
Why did the Vice President try to provoke a public fight? Mr. Vance has been taking to his X.com account in what appears to be an effort to soften up the political ground for a Ukraine surrender, most recently writing off Mr. Putin’s brutal invasion as a mere ethnic rivalry. Mr. Vance dressed down Mr. Zelensky as if he were a child late for dinner. He claimed the Ukrainian hadn’t been grateful enough for U.S. aid, though he has thanked America countless times for its support. This was not the behavior of a wannabe statesman.
Mr. Zelensky would have been wiser to defuse the tension by thanking the U.S. again, and deferring to Mr. Trump. There’s little benefit in trying to correct the historical record in front of Mr. Trump when you’re also seeking his help.
But as with the war, Mr. Zelensky didn’t start this Oval Office exchange. Was he supposed to tolerate an extended public denigration of the Ukrainian people, who have been fighting a war for survival for three years?
It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength. The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot. That core interest hasn’t changed, but berating Ukraine in front of the entire world will make it harder to achieve.
Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to. Ukraine has enough weapons support to last until sometime this summer. But as the war stands, Mr. Putin sees little reason to make any concessions as his forces gain ground inch by bloody inch in Ukraine’s east.
Friday’s spectacle won’t make him any more willing to stop his onslaught as he sees the U.S. President and his eager deputy unload on Ukraine’s leader. Some Trumpologists have been suggesting Mr. Trump will put pressure on Mr. Putin in due time. But so far Mr. Putin hasn’t made a single concession on territory, or on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future after a peace deal is signed.
President Trump no doubt resents having to deal with a war he thinks he might have prevented had he won in 2020. But Presidents have to deal with the world they inherit. Peace in Ukraine is salvageable, but he and Mr. Zelensky will have to work together on an agreement that Ukrainians can live with.
Mr. Trump does not want to be the President who abandoned Ukraine to Vladimir Putin with all the bloodshed and damage to U.S. interests that would result. Mr. Vance won’t like to run for President in such a world either.
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After voting against a U.N. resolution calling out Russia for the invasion of Ukraine three years ago, the Trump administration is nearing a deal with the Eastern European country that would allow the U.S. to mine its rare earth minerals. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images/POU/Zuma Press
Appeared in the March 1, 2025, print edition as 'Putin Wins an Oval Office Spectacle'.
7. Zelenskyy speaks out after public spat with Trump, Vance, says dustup 'bad for both sides'
Report on the Zelensky interview with Brett Bair.
Zelenskyy speaks out after public spat with Trump, Vance, says dustup 'bad for both sides'
foxnews.com · by Madeline Coggins Fox News
Video
Zelenskyy doesn't apologize for blowup with Trump, but insists he respects president and US
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses heated Oval Office exchange with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, conditions for a peace agreement and more with Putin in an exclusive 'Special Report' interview.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not apologize for the heated exchange with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, but told Fox News in an exclusive interview he is confident their relationship can be salvaged.
Zelenskyy's meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance erupted into a shouting match at the White House on Friday that was seen worldwide. The Ukrainian president traveled to the United States to meet with Trump after the commander-in-chief said a peace negotiation to end the war between Ukraine and Russia is in its final stages.
"Mr. President, do you think your relationship with Donald Trump — President Trump — after today can be salvaged?" Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier asked Zelenskyy.
"Yes, of course, because it's relations more than two presidents. It's the historical relations, strong relations between our people, and that's why I always began… to thank your people from our people," Zelenskyy said during an exclusive interview Friday on "Special Report."
"Of course, thankful to the president, and, of course, to Congress, but first of all, to your people. Your people helped save our people… we wanted very much to have all these strong relations, and where it counted, we will have it."
Zelenskyy said he was "not sure that we did something bad" when asked about the heated exchange but conceded the dustup was "bad for both sides."
"I just want to be honest, and I just want our partners to understand the situation correctly, and I want to understand everything correctly. That's about us not to lose our friendship," he later said.
TRUMP SAYS ZELENSKYY CAN ‘COME BACK WHEN HE IS READY FOR PEACE’ AFTER FIERY WHITE HOUSE EXCHANGE
During Zelenskyy's visit to the White House, Vance said a path to securing peace between Russia and Ukraine was through the United States engaging in diplomacy. Zelenskyy then tried to engage in a line of questioning about Russia's moves since 2014 and attempts at diplomacy.
"Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media," Vance told Zelenskyy. "Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict."
Video
Zelenskyy later said that under war, "everybody has problems, even you," and that the United States would feel the war "in the future."
"You don't know that," Trump responded as Zelenskyy said "God bless you" to him.
"Don't tell us what we're going to feel," Trump continued. "We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going to feel."
The president also accused Zelenskyy of "playing cards."
"You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III, and what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country — this country — that’s backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have."
Video
Vance interjected, asking Zelenskyy if he'd "said thank you once this entire meeting."
EUROPE NEEDS TO ‘STEP UP’ OR ZELENSKYY NEEDS TO ‘STEP DOWN’: WHAT'S NEXT AFTER EXPLOSIVE OVAL OFFICE MEETING
The tense war of words continued for several minutes, and Trump accused Zelenskyy of "disrespecting" the United States during their meeting.
"The problem is I've empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don't think you'd be a tough guy without the United States," Trump said before the meeting wrapped up.
"And your people are very brave, but you're either going to make a deal, or we're out — and if we're out, you'll fight it out. I don't think it's going to be pretty, but you'll fight it out, but you don't have the cards. But once we sign that deal, you're in a much better position, but you're not acting at all thankful, and that's not a nice thing, I'll be honest. That's not a nice thing."
Video
Zelenskyy was asked about what set him off in the on-camera spat, which he conceded was "not good for both sides anyway."
"When they, for example, say that Ukraine is almost destroyed, that our soldiers run away, that they are not heroes, that Ukraine lost millions of civilians, that his president is dictator. What is the reaction? It's not about me. The reaction is that, where is our friendship between Ukraine and the United States? This is [the] feeling," he said, repeating calls for being "correct" in characterizing the war.
"It's not funny or fairytale. This is real life. That's what I said, and when you said it a lot of times to my big friends, we've been here today in our dialogue, and then they again begin to repeat the same things… it's not good way between partners, good partners and friends."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
When Baier asked whether Zelenskyy thought the confrontation was pre-planned, the Ukrainian leader stressed he did not know. Instead, he said it "was just a really tough situation because we've been very open, very direct."
The Trump administration was also working to ink an agreement with Ukraine that would allow the United States access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for support the United States has offered the nation since war broke out in 2022, as part of the peace deal.
The Oval Office exchange led to a canceled press conference, a minerals deal off the table and Trump asking the Ukrainian president to leave, a White House official previously confirmed to Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital's Emma Colton, Andrew Mark Miller and Diana Stancy contributed to this report.
Madeline Coggins is a Digital Production Assistant on the Fox News flash team with Fox News Digital.
foxnews.com · by Madeline Coggins Fox News
8. Hegseth Warned of Military Action if Mexico Fails to Meet Trump’s Border Demands
I guess there are no "closed door comments" if we can read about them in the Wall Street Journal.
Excerpts:
Hegseth told the officials that if Mexico didn’t deal with the collusion between the country’s government and drug cartels, the U.S. military was prepared to take unilateral action, according to people briefed on the Jan. 31 call. Mexico’s top brass who were on that call were shocked and angered, feeling he was suggesting U.S. military action inside Mexico, these people said. The Defense Department declined to comment.
Hegseth’s private warning—echoed by other Trump administration officials—now looms over Mexico’s trade talks with President Trump. Their fear: Demands that Mexico end fentanyl smuggling and migrant trafficking are quietly backed by potential U.S. military action—and not just 25% tariffs that would cripple the country’s economy.
Hegseth Warned of Military Action if Mexico Fails to Meet Trump’s Border Demands
Defense secretary’s closed-door comments have unnerved Mexican officials negotiating to avoid 25% tariffs
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-mexico-drug-cartel-tariff-hegseth-military-action-5f507ab0?mod=latest_headlines
By José de Córdoba
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, Santiago Pérez
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and Vera Bergengruen
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Feb. 28, 2025 5:13 pm ET
U.S. Marines patrol on the San Diego side of the border with Mexico. Photo: Carlos A. Moreno/Zuma Press
MEXICO CITY—It was the first call U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held with Mexico’s top military officials, and it wasn’t going well.
Hegseth told the officials that if Mexico didn’t deal with the collusion between the country’s government and drug cartels, the U.S. military was prepared to take unilateral action, according to people briefed on the Jan. 31 call. Mexico’s top brass who were on that call were shocked and angered, feeling he was suggesting U.S. military action inside Mexico, these people said. The Defense Department declined to comment.
Hegseth’s private warning—echoed by other Trump administration officials—now looms over Mexico’s trade talks with President Trump. Their fear: Demands that Mexico end fentanyl smuggling and migrant trafficking are quietly backed by potential U.S. military action—and not just 25% tariffs that would cripple the country’s economy.
Trump said those tariffs would go into effect on Mexico and Canada—the U.S.’s two biggest trading partners—on Tuesday, along with an additional 10% on China, sparking an effort by those countries in recent days to find a way to head off the levies.
“We still have three days,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said early Friday. A spokesman for Sheinbaum declined to comment on January’s call with Hegseth.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Photo: Carlos Santiago/Zuma Press
Senior Mexican officials are focusing on delivering tangible results on the border and drugs that Trump can see as signs of progress, but there are worries that it won’t be as easy to avoid tariffs as it was on Feb. 3, when Sheinbaum got a monthlong reprieve by sending 10,000 National Guard troops to the border.
In a post on his social-media platform Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said “drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.” Tariffs would go into effect “until it stops, or is seriously limited,” he said.
Mexico’s extraordinary handover this week of 29 drug gang bosses facing charges in the U.S. marks another concession for Trump, said former U.S. officials.
Another concession floated by Mexican officials involves one common trade rival: China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg TV on Friday that one “very interesting proposal” the Mexican government has made was matching the U.S. on China tariffs.
A spokesman for Mexico’s Economy Ministry declined to comment.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Photo: Al Drago/Press Pool
The proposal comes after Mexican authorities have recently raided shops and confiscated Chinese-made electronics and other goods thought to have breached import rules. Mexico’s government has also halted plans by Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD to open a factory in the country, launched a program to substitute imports from China, and started antidumping probes into imports of various Chinese products.
“There’s a sense that Trump wants specific things,” such as troop deployment, said one person familiar with the bilateral talks.
This week, half a dozen Mexican cabinet ministers flew to Washington where they met with Hegseth and other U.S. officials on Thursday to give an account of the actions Mexico has taken to shut down the fentanyl trade. Even before the meeting started, Mexico had already begun the historic rendition of the Mexican capos, including Rafael Caro Quintero, a notorious drug boss who is accused of killing Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985.
Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said that the prisoner transfer was made at the request of the U.S. government on Thursday. Mexico’s government approved the handover invoking the country’s national-security laws because the extradition of many of those criminals had been bogged down in Mexican courts, four decades in the case of Caro Quintero and 11 years in the case of another criminal sent to the U.S., Gertz said at a news conference on Friday.
He said the criminals represented a threat to both countries. “There’s no way to justify sanctions against Mexico,” Gertz said.
Mexico got a monthlong reprieve on tariffs by sending National Guard troops to the border. Photo: Luis Torres/Shutterstock
The State Department said Thursday’s meeting represented a new stage of bilateral security cooperation. “Both parties agreed upon the importance of making sure there was continued action beyond meetings and suggested the implementation of a timetable and touchbacks to target clear goals and sustainable results,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement on Friday.
Canadian officials are now aiming to convince the Trump administration that they have reinforced their border. A delegation of Canadian officials visited Washington in recent days to make the case that fentanyl and drugs are under control on the northern border, but officials say they suspect the numbers don’t seem to matter to Trump.
Trump has no incentive to allow Canada and Mexico to appear to have solved the border issues, said Barry Appleton, an international trade lawyer and co-director of the New York Law School’s Center for International Law. By declaring an emergency on the border, Trump has a lot of leeway to impose tariffs, he said.
“If he loses his emergency, he loses his authority,” said Appleton. “So there’s nothing that could ever be good enough for the president on that until the president gets what he really wants. He wants a number of crown jewels, but he hasn’t actually decided what they are.”
Senior Mexican officials believe that they can make a deal with Trump on trade and migration. But the military tension with the U.S. is something new that is far harder to solve.
Hegseth’s suggestion of a potential U.S. military action struck a raw nerve for Mexico’s generals, who are brought up on stories of past U.S. armed interventions, including the 1846 Mexican-American war that cost the country half its territory.
Since the Jan. 31 call, Hegseth has repeated the same message publicly, from the U.S.-Mexico border, which he visited a few days after the call, to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which he visited this week.
Trucks line up to enter the U.S. at the border in Laredo, Texas. Photo: Cheney Orr/Bloomberg News
“We’re taking nothing off the table. Nothing,” he said when asked if he would rule out military strikes in Mexico.
The once-improbable scenario that the Trump administration could make good on its threats to take military action has reverberated in Washington.
On Thursday, a group of former U.S. and Mexican military and trade officials, congressional staffers, analysts and drug policy experts gathered around a long table on Capitol Hill for a three-hour exercise to lay out what would actually happen if the U.S. carried out military strikes in Mexico. The exercise mapped out severe economic disruptions between the two countries, border closings, violent flare-ups, and civil unrest on both sides of the border.
At the same time, it could endanger security collaboration to crack down on drug cartels, including programs that allow U.S. drones to feed intelligence to Mexican law enforcement.
That same day, a group of two dozen U.S. lawmakers released a resolution condemning “any call for U.S. military action in Mexico without authorization from the U.S. Congress and the consent of the Mexican government.” The document highlighted that any such action could trigger “severe bilateral consequences.”
Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com, Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com and Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com
9. Exclusive: Hegseth orders Cyber Command to stand down on Russia planning
This cannot be true.
Exclusive: Hegseth orders Cyber Command to stand down on Russia planning
Martin Matishak
February 28th, 2025
https://therecord.media/hegseth-orders-cyber-command-stand-down-russia-planning
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization's outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The order does not apply to the National Security Agency, which Haugh also leads, or its signals intelligence work targeting Russia, the sources said.
While the full scope of Hegseth’s directive to the command remains unclear, it is more evidence of the White House’s efforts to normalize ties with Moscow after the U.S. and international allies worked to isolate the Kremlin over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
President Donald Trump has made a series of false statements and demands that align him with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including blaming Ukraine for the war and calling the country’s leader a dictator.
Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met in Washington on Friday to sign a deal that would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. However, the deal did not happen following an Oval Office shouting match between the two leaders.
The exact duration of Hegseth’s order is unknown, though the command has been told the guidance will last for the foreseeable future, according to sources.
Heritage, who is expected to retire soon, knows all of the command’s mission packages and whether they are in a planning or execution stage. He would be responsible for contacting the relevant entities and telling them to hold off. That task likely extends to the 16th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), the outfit responsible for planning and conducting digital operations across U.S. European Command.
The sources said Cyber Command itself has begun compiling a “risk assessment” for Hegseth, a report that acknowledges the organization received his order, lists what ongoing actions or missions were halted as a result of the decision and details what potential threats still emanate from Russia.
The implications of Hegesth’s guidance on the command’s personnel is uncertain. If it applies to its digital warriors focused on Russia, the decision would only affect hundreds of people, including members of the roughly 2,000 strong Cyber National Mission Force and the Cyber Mission Force. That is collectively made up of 5,800 personnel taken from the armed services and divided into teams that conduct offensive and defensive operations in cyberspace. It is believed a quarter of the offensive units are focused on Russia.
However, if the guidance extends to areas like intelligence and analysis or capabilities development, the number of those impacted by the edict grows significantly. The command boasts around 2,000 to 3,000 employees, not counting service components and NSA personnel working there. The organizations share a campus at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Hegseth’s instruction comes at a time when Cyber Command is struggling to staff up to target Mexican drug cartels, eight of which the administration formally labeled as terrorist groups. Trump officials have advocated for military action against cartel figures and infrastructure to stem the flow of drugs across the border.
A command spokesperson deferred a request for comment to the Pentagon.
In a statement, a senior Defense official said, “Due to operational security concerns, we do not comment nor discuss cyber intelligence, plans, or operations. There is no greater priority to Secretary Hegseth than the safety of the Warfighter in all operations, to include the cyber domain.”
Effects on Ukraine?
Outside of internal challenges, the order could derail some of the command’s most high-profile missions involving a top U.S. digital adversary, including in Ukraine.
The command sent “hunt forward” teams to Kyiv in the run-up to the Kremlin’s assault to harden its digital defenses. It has since paid close attention to how Moscow uses its digital capabilities, especially for intelligence purposes.
Russia is also a bastion for cybercrime, with state-linked and criminal ransomware actors striking targets around the globe. The command has become a key player in countering the malicious activity.
In addition, the stand-down order could expose private sector entities in the U.S. and around the world to greater risk if the command is not keeping Moscow’s intelligence and military services, which both feature notorious hacker groups, at bay.
Late last year Microsoft found Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) had targeted government employees and others in dozens of countries to gain access to their devices and systems.
Updated 5:27pm EST with a comment from a senior Defense official.
10. It’s Xi Jinping’s World, and Trump Is Just Living in It
Excerpts:
This wider convergence between the US and China was on display this week at the UN, when both countries agreed on a Security Council resolution on Ukraine that didn’t blame Putin for starting the war. For China, which has reaped perhaps more economic benefits from the rules-based order than any country, this is exactly how the global body should operate: Major powers divide the world into spheres of influence and find ways to resolve problems without any high-minded appeals to universal human rights.
Although Trump’s wrecking ball to global norms may deal some short-term blows to China, particularly on trade, ultimately he’s ushering in a much more comfortable world for the Communist Party. Trump’s threats of military and economic coercion to acquire Greenland, for example, provide Xi with a less bloody model to assert control over Taiwan than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
And in the overall contest for power, Xi has one major advantage over Trump: At 71, the Chinese leader is seven years younger, and he never needs to face an election.
That effectively means Xi can wait out Trump until the pendulum swings back again in the US. When it does, whoever takes over may find that “Chinese-style democracy” is the norm and “the rules-based order” has fundamentally changed, perhaps forever.
Weekend Essay
It’s Xi Jinping’s World, and Trump Is Just Living in It
As Donald Trump blows up the rules-based order, China is pulling ahead in the global battle for ideas.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-26/a-private-equity-disaster-exposes-industry-s-fuzzy-math-for-deals?sref=hhjZtX76
By Daniel Ten Kate
February 27, 2025 at 8:00 PM EST
On a frigid Alaskan day in March 2021, shortly after Joe Biden took office, top US and Chinese diplomats gathered at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage for a meeting that quickly went off the rails.
Such gatherings usually follow a script: Journalists are let into the room, both sides make a few banal opening comments, and then they get down to business once the cameras are gone. In this case, they engaged in a 71-minute sparring match over the international order, drawn out as translators tried to accurately convey the blunt messaging amid stony, awkward stares by both sides.
What really incensed the visitors from Beijing were comments by then Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who accused China of “economic coercion” against US allies, and lambasted actions in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan that “threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.” He called for that system to be strengthened and said the alternative “is a world in which might makes right and winners take all.”
China’s top diplomat at the time, Yang Jiechi, fired back with a lengthy retort saying his nation follows “the United Nations-centered international system.” The US, he said, “does not represent the world” and many nations don’t recognize “the universal values advocated by the United States.”
“The United States has its United States-style democracy and China has Chinese-style democracy,” Yang said.
Antony Blinken (second from right) speaks to Yang Jiechi (second from left) at the opening session of US-China talks in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18, 2021.Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
Four years on, with Donald Trump back in the White House, the back-and-forth almost looks quaint. Blinken’s talk of a “rules-based order” has been replaced with a doctrine of “America first” and “peace through strength.” Trump has threatened friends and foes alike with tariffs, pushed to somehow acquire Greenland and the Gaza Strip, and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — who has spent the past three years fighting off an invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russia — a “dictator.”
“It’s really peace through strength,” Trump said last week. “Because without the strength it’s going to be very hard to have peace.”
Trump has also questioned the very essence of the rule of law, declaring on social media that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
A little more than a month into Trump’s second term, the clear line that divided the US and China in Alaska is now blurred, if not completely erased. Trump’s understanding of power — demanding fealty and showing he is prepared to use coercion to achieve his aims — is arguably more in line with China’s vision of the world than any US president since the establishment of the UN in the wake of World War II. That shift is putting Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead in the global battle of ideas.
In China, all politicians, soldiers, judges, bureaucrats and business titans answer to the Communist Party, a form of control that will be on display next week at the annual gathering of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. Xi’s government has spent billions creating an Orwellian surveillance state to monitor citizens and snuff out dissent before it can threaten the Party. Laws serve as tools to maintain power, and access to China’s market of 1.4 billion consumers is wielded as a weapon to achieve geopolitical aims.
But whereas Xi flexes every bit of state muscle to ensure no one can challenge the Party’s power, Trump is using all levers of American economic and military might to keep the US ahead of China as the world’s preeminent superpower. While that strategy may prove successful in the short term, in the long run his actions are creating a world much more aligned with China’s interests.
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump attend a welcoming ceremony in Beijing in 2017.Photographer: Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images
At the top of the crumbly slopes of Sharp Peak, one of the highest points in Hong Kong, one can look down into the scenic waters of Mirs Bay along the coast of southern China. It was from this body of water more than 100 years ago that the US would reshape the geopolitical map of Asia, in no small part because China couldn’t control its own coastline at the time.
After President William McKinley — a Trump favorite — put a naval blockade on Spanish-held Cuba in 1898, US forces stationed in British-controlled Hong Kong had 48 hours to leave the city, as international law forbade neutral ports from giving ammunition and fuel to nations at war. So Commodore George Dewey floated out of Victoria Harbor 30 miles up the coast into Chinese waters to prepare his fleet to attack Spanish forces in Manila.
Writing later about the blatant move to sidestep global rules, Dewey said: “We appreciated that so loosely organized a national entity as the Chinese empire could not enforce the neutrality laws.”
Later that year, the US would acquire the Philippines and Guam from Spain, and separately annex Hawaii — all locations that remain strategically important in American efforts to counter China. Beijing refers to that period, when colonial forces took control of ports up and down its coast, as the Century of Humiliation. And it’s embedded deep into the nation’s political psyche to this day.
During trade talks in Trump’s first term, he attempted to force Xi into submission with demands for changes to several Chinese laws, including those related to intellectual property protections and forced technology transfers. Nationalists in China were outraged, and at one point compared Xi’s top trade negotiator to a Qing dynasty official who in 1895 signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan. That agreement remains a source of national shame because it obligated China to open more ports to foreign trade and to cede territory, including Taiwan.
Xi ended up resisting Trump’s demands, and the US president eventually settled for what was termed a “Phase One” trade deal largely tied to purchases of US agricultural goods ahead of the 2020 election. Then came Covid-19, tanking US-China ties and ultimately Trump’s chances at victory.
Trump’s first term left China wounded. Its Foreign Ministry had adopted a more aggressive tone to counter his daily barbs, hurting the country’s global image with what became known as “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. As Trump jabbed Beijing by calling Covid-19 the “China virus,” Xi adopted some of the world’s strictest controls on movement in part to show the nation’s superiority in controlling the outbreak. That zero-tolerance policy ultimately led to simultaneous, spontaneous street protests — the biggest public display of dissent against Xi and the Communist Party in years.
At the start of his second term, Trump appears to be in a stronger position than he was eight years ago. He has already slapped 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports, and threatened another 10% on top of that next week. They may go up even further as he weighs more sweeping moves to maintain US economic, military and technological supremacy.
At the same time, Trump has indicated he’s open for a deal with China. He’s suggested some demands — he wants China to approve a sale of TikTok and help end Russia’s war in Ukraine — but it’s unclear if he’ll push up against Xi’s red lines on sovereignty. While Trump has surrounded himself with plenty of China hawks, his closest confidante these days appears to be Elon Musk, who has extensive business interests in the world’s second-biggest economy.
So far, Xi is playing it cool. He appears to have learned lessons from round one of the trade war, when China was caught flat-footed in negotiations and took the bait from Trump’s provocations. Unlike leaders such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, who ran to Trump to stave off tariffs, he has thus far rebuffed requests for another phone call with the US president. While Xi would likely take a quick deal if its terms were not too painful, his long-game goal is building a China that can’t be pushed around by the US.
Like most Americans, the majority of Chinese just want to find good jobs, eat out on the weekends, buy nice things, travel the world, ensure their kids get a quality education and spend time with their families. Those aspirations make up the core piece of China’s social contract: Cede political control to the Communist Party in return for the prospect of a more comfortable life.
But over the past few years, the relationship between the Party and China’s citizens has been strained. A slumping property market, a crackdown on the private sector and weak consumer spending have put the country on pace for the longest streak of deflation since the 1960s, helping to knock China off its trajectory of overtaking the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2030.
The one bright spot has been exports. Xi has cranked up China’s manufacturing machine to historic levels to buoy growth and dominate emerging industries like electric cars, batteries and solar panels. But Trump’s tariffs threaten that strategy, and other nations may follow suit to stop Chinese exports flooding the world.PlayPlay
9:09
Can China Avoid Japan’s Lost Decades?
The NPC gathering next week will provide a blueprint for Xi’s plans to get the domestic economy moving again in a more protectionist world. While that’s expected to include measures to ramp up consumption, helping China mitigate persistent US demands to rebalance the economy, Xi still wants to retain a strong manufacturing sector — primarily as a source of jobs and innovation, but also for national security.
Somewhat ironically, leaders in Beijing are wary of repeating the “China shock” that decimated jobs in America’s Rust Belt and contributed to Trump’s rise. The US leader is now trying to rebuild the US’s manufacturing prowess, threatening tariffs in strategic areas like chips in a bid to win investments, all while seeking to tighten export controls to prevent China from obtaining advanced technology. So far those have failed to block China from accessing cutting-edge chips, allowing DeepSeek to reach a breakthrough on AI that has spurred new optimism among investors.
For Xi, a healthy industrial sector is also key to producing weapons and energy. Solar panels and batteries, for instance, could reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels if the US and its allies ever attempt to cut off supplies in any war over Taiwan — long the biggest flashpoint between the US and China.
Trump’s statements indicate that he’ll avoid fights with strategic adversaries like Russia and China unless core US interests are directly threatened — a worrying prospect for long-time allies in Europe and East Asia, as well as Taiwan. If the US ends up handing Putin a win in Ukraine, that raises the question of whether the country would come to Taiwan’s defense if China invades.
Yet even if Trump gave Xi a green light to seize Taiwan tomorrow, a full-fledged shooting war is unlikely. Another key feature of China’s social contract involves keeping people safe, and any major violence is a political problem for the Party. Ever since China’s military killed hundreds and possibly thousands of protesters in Tiananmen Square, the Communist Party’s preferred method for imposing its will has been extreme coercion rather than bloody conflict. In both Hong Kong and Xinjiang, for example, Xi has used draconian laws, surveillance, mass detentions and other repressive measures to quell dissent, rather than deadly crackdowns.
Even if Xi believes he can win a war over Taiwan quickly and avoid a protracted fight that could threaten the Communist Party, the potential for widespread civilian deaths from retaliatory strikes in major coastal cities like Shanghai risks it backfiring. Chinese officials will say on the record that all of China’s people are prepared to fight and die for the motherland, but privately they acknowledge that the nation isn’t anywhere near ready for war.
What’s more, any US-backed sanctions would jeopardize Xi’s broader target of ensuring China’s per capita gross domestic product is on par with a “mid-level developed country” by 2035, and that the country is leading the world in “international influence” by the middle of this century.
Premier Li Qiang will likely focus on those overarching goals next week at the NPC. While a few paragraphs about Taiwan justifiably attract media attention every year, the bulk of his 13,700-word speech in 2024 was spent outlining ways to improve the lives of ordinary citizens, including things like boosting the quality of soil for farmers, installing elevators in aging residential compounds and fostering “a love of reading among our people.”
Buildings in Xiamen on mainland China stand across the Taiwan Strait from anti-landing barriers on a beach in Kinmen, Taiwan.Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg
In China’s eyes, Trump is simply more honest than other administrations about America’s desire for hegemony.
The US has a long history of ignoring international rules that conflict with its strategic interests, a version of American exceptionalism that Chinese officials regularly criticize. Even so, the US has at least been able to argue that its rule-breaking was necessary for some greater good, that it was only trying to protect democracy against authoritarianism, keep the world safe from terrorists or quickly end a war that would otherwise kill many more people.
With Trump, even the pretension of moral authority is out the window. His United States is one where Ukraine provoked Russia into war, where European lawmakers are a bigger security threat than Russia and China, where alliances are protection rackets, where sovereignty is negotiable and where nearly any oppression of the weak can be justified in the name of national interest.
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All of that fits with China’s strategic interests, including its opposition to formal military alliances, restrictions on civil liberties in the name of national security and territorial claims in the South China Sea, Taiwan and elsewhere on its periphery. Yang, the Chinese diplomat who sparred with US officials in Alaska, articulated China’s position back in 2010, when he shocked Southeast Asia by declaring: “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”
Military delegates arrive for the closing of the Second Session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on March 11, 2024.Photographer: Bloomberg
This wider convergence between the US and China was on display this week at the UN, when both countries agreed on a Security Council resolution on Ukraine that didn’t blame Putin for starting the war. For China, which has reaped perhaps more economic benefits from the rules-based order than any country, this is exactly how the global body should operate: Major powers divide the world into spheres of influence and find ways to resolve problems without any high-minded appeals to universal human rights.
Although Trump’s wrecking ball to global norms may deal some short-term blows to China, particularly on trade, ultimately he’s ushering in a much more comfortable world for the Communist Party. Trump’s threats of military and economic coercion to acquire Greenland, for example, provide Xi with a less bloody model to assert control over Taiwan than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
And in the overall contest for power, Xi has one major advantage over Trump: At 71, the Chinese leader is seven years younger, and he never needs to face an election.
That effectively means Xi can wait out Trump until the pendulum swings back again in the US. When it does, whoever takes over may find that “Chinese-style democracy” is the norm and “the rules-based order” has fundamentally changed, perhaps forever.
11. Trump Zelensky Chess (Don’t underestimate Donald Trump)
(okay, one more on the Oval Office meeting yesterday)
A thought provoking perspective from social media.
Perhaps President Trump is playing chess and thinking 10 moves ahead. Perhaps that may work with Zelensky and Putin (on a 3D (or mutli-dimensional) chess board.
But in the Indo-Pacific with Xi and others can he play Go/Weiji/Baduk?
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/1374723229215372/user/100000112135280
Many of you probably watched what took place between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy tonight. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you might be thinking to yourself, Oh my God, Donald Trump just screwed up.
However, as a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, strategy, and philosophy, let me explain the difference between what you believe you witnessed and what actually happened.
Donald Trump has been under constant political persecution since the beginning of his first term. Over time, he has learned to be patient and calculated.
Tonight, Zelenskyy was invited to the Oval Office. However, both Trump and JD Vance knew exactly what Zelenskyy was going to do—he would use this opportunity, in front of the American people, to make a power play. Both Trump and Vance anticipated this.
When Zelenskyy began appealing to the emotions of the American people, JD Vance stepped in, accusing him of disrespecting Donald Trump. This was brilliant strategy. It’s important to understand that Zelenskyy is trying to gain access to NATO.
Trump knew this but could not allow it to happen. If Ukraine joins NATO, the U.S. would be bound by NATO’s collective defense agreement—an attack on one is an attack on all.
Now consider the larger implications: Ukraine and Russia despise each other. If Ukraine were to become a NATO member, any future skirmish between them would obligate the U.S. to enter into direct conflict with Russia. This would mean World War III. And if that happened, China would have to choose a side—they would almost certainly align with Russia.
So what you witnessed tonight was a setup. Trump and JD Vance knew that the only way to achieve peace was to strategically align, at least on the surface, with Russia. Why? Because Russia would never sign a peace treaty if Ukraine were admitted into NATO.
This is why Trump dismantled Zelenskyy’s argument. And when Zelenskyy, seeing his play failing, tried to backtrack and offer a treaty, Trump refused.
Zelenskyy’s real intent was clear—he would not agree to peace unless security guarantees were in place. But what was he actually saying? That NATO must accept Ukraine. However, Russia would never agree to peace, knowing that NATO, their historical adversary, would surround them.
Zelenskyy, Putin, and Trump all knew this. Zelenskyy, thinking he had Democrats' support, believed he could make this bold move on live television. But Trump and Vance saw right through it and outmaneuvered him.
They knew that, in the short term, Democrats and the media would try to use this moment against them. But they also knew they had two years before midterms to prove their strategy was the right one. So they held their ground—brilliantly so.
Now, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to back down and accept Trump's terms. But here’s the genius part—Trump is actually protecting Ukraine without dragging the U.S. into war.
By negotiating a mineral deal, Trump ensures that Americans will be involved in Ukraine’s mining industry. This prevents Russia from launching an invasion, because attacking Ukraine would mean endangering American lives—something that would force the U.S. to respond.
Trump played both sides like a master chess player. In the end, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to concede, because without U.S. support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia. And once U.S. companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences.
Don’t underestimate Donald Trump. In this game of chess, he’s 10 moves ahead of everyone.
12. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 28, 2025
China-Taiwan Weekly Update, February 28, 2025
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-february-28-2025
Data Cutoff: February 27, 2025
A PRC-owned cargo ship likely sabotaged a Taiwanese undersea cable on February 25, highlighting the increasing PRC willingness to strike critical infrastructure in Taiwan. on Taiwanese territory. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) announced that it detained the Hong Tai 58 on February 25 after Chunghwa Telecom--Taiwan’s largest telecom provider--notified the CGA that an undersea cable was severed between the main island of Taiwan and the Penghu Islands. The incident occurred approximately seven miles off Taiwan’s west coast, past Taiwan’s coastal baseline and well within its internal waters.
The Hong Tai 58 is a Togo-registered cargo ship owned by Hong Kong-based Dongguan Jinlong Shipping Co. The eight crew members on board were PRC nationals. The vessel has several inconsistencies in its identification and registration information, including three different names tied to its unique identifiers. The Taiwanese government created on January 26 a blacklist of 52 PRC-owned ships that warrant greater scrutiny to monitor the growing “shadow fleet” of ostensible merchant vessels that act on behalf of the PRC. The Hong Tai 58 is on the shadow fleet blacklist.
The Taiwanese National Defense Ministry launched on January 15 new protocols that supported surveillance and law enforcement efforts against vessels that authorities suspect of sabotaging undersea cables in Taiwanese waters. The ROC government enacted the new measures after another undersea cable-cutting incident on January 3, involving the PRC-owned, Cameroon-flagged cargo vessel Shunxing 39. That incident also occurred in Taiwan’s internal waters, approximately seven miles off its northern coast.
The incident on February 25 marks the sixth instance of damage to undersea cables connected to Taiwan in 2025. ROC Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling noted on February 26 the possibility that frequent submarine cable breakages are PRC sabotage. Kuan said that there have been 40 cases of submarine cable breakage in the past five years. Some of these cases were due to natural causes, such as harsh sea conditions or old age, while others were due to interference by “external forces.” Taiwan’s Digital Affairs Ministry announced in an emergency press release on February 17 that the CGA is investigating the cause of recurring damage to two undersea cables connecting to the offshore island of Matsu, which occurred immediately after their recent repair. The government originally attributed this damage to natural deterioration.
The PRC conducted unannounced live-fire drills involving three warships near Australia and New Zealand between February 21-22. The warships involved in the drills were the cruiser CNS Zunyi, the frigate CNS Hengyang, and the replenishment vessel CNS Weishanhu. The live-fire exercises occurred in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, approximately 340 nautical miles from Sydney. Australia reported sighting the ships in the Coral Sea on February 13, shortly after a PRC jet released flares within 30 meters of an Australian maritime patrol aircraft over the South China Sea on February 11. The PLA Navy reportedly warned airliners that they were crossing a secret live-fire exercise. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said that the PRC had not notified Australian authorities, however, and that the Australian government learned of the drill from the airlines. PRC Defense Ministry Spokesperson Wu Qian deflected Australia’s accusations and said that “During the exercise, China organized live-fire exercises with naval guns against the sea on the basis of repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance.” Wu added that the PRC’s actions were in line with international law and “will not affect aviation safety.”
The PRC appears to have organized the exercises to be provocative. New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said the live fire exercises took place with “a couple of hours’ notice” instead of the expected 12-24 hours usually notified via a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM). The governments of Australia and New Zealand both reported that the PRC did not issue a NOTAM. Airspace Australia CEO Rob Sharp stated that 49 flights were reportedly forced to reroute due to the exercises. Collins said that drills of this type, involving ships of these capabilities, occurring in those waters were unprecedented. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the exercise was legal and had occurred outside Australia’s EEZ. Albanese said that the PRC “could have given more notice,” however. Albanese told reporters that “Australian defense were certainly aware” and that Australian frigates had been monitoring the PRC vessels, which were 218 nautical miles east of Hobart, Tasmania, as of the time of this writing.
Key Takeaways
- The Taiwanese Central Election Commission approved recall votes for 19 KMT legislators, which could diminish the influence of the opposition parties in the legislature.
- The Taiwanese executive vetoed legislation that contains drastic budget cuts that risk compromising the ability of Taiwan to resist PRC coercion.
- A PRC-owned commercial vessel likely sabotaged a Taiwanese undersea cable, highlighting the growing PRC willingness to attack Taiwanese infrastructure, especially telecommunications.
- The PRC is exploiting recent US behavior to frame itself as an international leader that upholds multilateralism and international cooperation.
- The PRC reportedly plans to lift a ban on South Korean media products, possibly as part of an effort to strengthen ties ahead of the expected South Korean presidential election.
- The PLA conducted unannounced, live-fire exercises near Australia and New Zealand, likely to intimidate the two countries.
13. Two steps backward (Ukraine) by Sir Lawrence Freedman
Two steps backward
https://samf.substack.com/p/two-steps-backward?utm
Lawrence Freedman
Mar 01, 2025
∙ Paid
‘I mean, that’s what I do. I do deals. My whole life is deals. That’s all I know is deals.’
- Donald Trump in meeting with President Macron, 25 February 2025
‘Those who want respect, give respect.’
- Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, Season 2, Episode 12
‘This is going to make great television.’ Trump’s assessment of the bad-tempered encounter with Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the Oval Office, was a telling remark after what appeared to be a setback for his efforts to mastermind a peace deal to end the Russo-Ukraine War. In front of the cameras Zelensky offered Trump insufficient respect and gratitude and for that he was shown the White House door, with a prepared deal on raw materials left unsigned and a scheduled press conference abandoned.
What happens next depends on whether it suits Trump to restore relations with Zelensky, or whether he has been cast out never to return. If Trump really craves a deal and an end to the bloodshed then Zelensky will be back. Much depends on the degree of dramatic tension that best suits his purposes.
The Trump administration is a soap opera. The president is the producer and the star, responsible for the plot lines, the script, and the cast (all of whom are chosen to look the part). If a plot line works, such as a drive for a Nobel-Prize winning peace deal, then it will be developed and might run for many episodes. Otherwise it will be quietly dropped, or may just peter out. The purpose of every episode is to demonstrate the star’s brilliance. The reason why this story has yet to run its course is the main theme of the Trump soap opera: that the star is especially brilliant when it comes to making deals.
A soap opera around deal-making faces problems when it is played out in the real world. Actual negotiations, about vital interests, tangible commitments and uncertain risks, are often complex and time consuming. They involve pesky details that end up being discussed at length and do not fit well into the soap opera format. Most importantly deals happen with other individuals and organisations who have their own agency and prefer to write their own lines and may also fancy themselves as deal-makers. They provide Trump’s scripts with its drama, for they must be flattered into concessions, as with Putin, or bullied into submission, as with Zelensky. If it turns out the details are too difficult, and the time horizons too long, or the designated villains and suckers too resilient, then Trump must decide whether to persevere, amend the script, or move on to another deal.
Four Meetings and an Expulsion
On four occasions over the past week Ukraine was discussed in front of the cameras with the President dominating the discussion each time. There was an adulatory meeting with his Cabinet, relatively cordial conversations with European leaders Macron and Starmer, and then the concluding, stormy meeting with Zelensky.
We should keep in mind that the narrative a week ago was not dissimilar to the one today. In the build-up to the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the statements and actions of Trump Administration conveyed the impression that it was prepared to betray a country that has been the victim of a cruel aggression and lose an effective alliance that has lasted for 75 years. A particular low point was reached in the vote in the UN General Assembly when the US refused to back the routine resolution condemning Russia’s aggression.
It then offered its own anodyne resolution from which it abstained once it had been amended. It was not just that few followed here it led, but the collection of characters that accompanied them, including North Korea and Iran. Even China abstained rather than supported Russia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that as the US wanted to broker a deal it would have been inappropriate to take sides, although the impression left was that a side had been taken – just the wrong one. (This is not unprecedented: Margaret Thatcher was incandescent in April 1982 when the Reagan administration refused to condemn the Argentine seizure of the Falklands in order to maintain its position as an impartial mediator).
The sense that the US had switched side was not helped by the adoption of a series of Russian talking points: that somehow the aggression was really Ukraine’s fault, or at least it had to share the blame; that a useful place to start negotiations would be the unacceptable draft treaty presented to Ukraine at Istanbul in April 2022, which in Russian mythology was only rejected because of Western pressure. Meanwhile the Vice-President (Vance not Musk) was taking to ‘X’ to argue with a journalist and a professor that Ukraine was bound to lose if it didn’t do a deal, without wondering if that was the case why Russia had made such little progress in its quest for victory after three years.
To cap it all Trump exaggerated the amount of support provided by the US to Ukraine by 500% and then demand it be paid back by handing over the rights to its rare earth minerals. When Zelensky publicly worried that Trump was excluding him from negotiations about his country’s future and was caught in a Russian disinformation bubble, Trump responded with another Russian talking point - that Zelensky is a dictator who was scared to hold a due election because he had minimal public support
After Trump’s intense verbal assault, Zelensky held his ground. He stuck with the General Assembly resolution, despite the Americans pressing him to remove it. He got the votes and the Americans did not. On the anniversary of the invasion, he gathered his reliable partners around him, the Canadians as well as Europeans, and got their support for his demand that Ukraine to be included in the negotiations and for a security guarantee to be part of any acceptable outcome. It was important for him to demonstrate that Ukraine was not a meek dependent craving any deal in order to stave an impending defeat.
He had some reason to believe that this approach was working. While rejecting the first draft of a mineral deal Zelensky took care not to reject the concept (he had actually suggested it in the first place) but instead encouraged negotiations. He stressed, and Trump accepted, that a deal could give the US a greater stake in Ukraine’s security, although the wording of the agreed treaty barely alludes to this. What emerged was less extortionate than the first draft. Trump appeared happy because he could talk as if this would bring the US $350 billion, which he consistently claims to have been handed over to Ukraine (he said it again on Friday). The actual sum is closer to $100 billion. Trump has also claimed, despite being corrected directly by both Macron and Starmer, that European support was only in the form of loans that would be repaid.
The deal that was left unsigned would produce benefits to the US and to Ukraine that were uncertain, and would last as long as companies could be found to do the digging to see if the riches that are supposedly available could be extracted. In some ways this would have been an exemplary Trump deal, with numbers plucked out of thin area about minerals that had yet to be extracted, with speculative benefits which could not be properly assessed for many years. But it would have meant some sort of stake in Ukraine’s security and stability. The impression therefore gained before Friday’s meeting was that Zelensky had turned it around.
The dynamics of the meeting can be dissected. My own view is that Vance deliberately put Zelensky on the spot, who was then damned whatever he said, because he was being asked to respond to the Vice-President’s fabrications. As he tried to explain to Vance that Ukraine’s position was not hopeless and that its survival was relevant to US security, Vance and Trump claimed to be insulted because he was telling them what was good for the US even as they were telling Zelensky what was good for Ukraine.
As the meeting ended, and the secretary of State and National Security Advisor were sent to show Zelensky the door, Trump posted on social media:
‘It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations.
‘I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE.’
‘He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.’
‘He can come back when he is ready for Peace.’
And so was undone in a matter of minutes a week of incremental progress towards an apparently more balanced American position on how to handle the negotiations with Russia.
In the aftermath of this shambles, Zelensky tried to retrieve the situation. he posted on X
‘Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit."
‘Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.’
Then he went on to Fox to explain that he really did want peace, but it had to be one that respected Ukraine’s sovereignty and security, and that he hoped to be able to resume discussions with Trump.
Trump, flying off to Mar-a-Lago, did not quite close the door, suggesting that it all depended on whether Zelensky was interested in talking about peace rather than fighting a war. As Ukrainians and Europeans rallied round Zelensky, the White House released messages that largely neglected Zelensky but praised Trump, as if there was something brave and rather wonderful about berating a visiting head of state who has been leading his country through a gruelling war because he was insufficiently respectful. There were ominous and anonymous leaks to the press suggesting support to Ukraine might be pulled. Meanwhile Starmer spoke to both Trump and Zelensky in the hope of getting the show back on the road.
What about the Russians?
If Trump believes that the mineral deal was good for the United States, as he claimed, and as far as he is concerned no deal he negotiated would be anything other than that, then it should suit him to get it signed. Equally if he wants to present himself as the great deal-maker who can bring about lasting peace he still needs Zelensky because in the end there is no deal without his signature.
But what about the Russians? Obviously Moscow was ecstatic about this turn of events. Trump had accused Zelensky of ‘gambling with World War Three’, another Russian talking point. Former President Dmitri Medvedev soon chimed in:
‘The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. And @realDonaldTrump is right: The Kiev regime is ‘gambling with WWIII’.’
Even before this turn of events Putin had declared himself content with the trend in American thinking. Initial contacts with Trump’s people were ‘inspiring a certain degree of hope.’ Meeting with the FSB he observed:
‘There is a mutual willingness to work towards restoring intergovernmental relations and addressing the vast number of accumulated systemic and strategic problems in the global architecture . . . that triggered both the Ukrainian crisis and other regional conflicts.’
This, he claimed, had been made possible by the ‘courage and resilience’ of Russian troops and their ‘daily victories’ in Ukraine. While warning still of how ‘western elites’ were determined ‘to disrupt or discredit the dialogue that has begun.’
Yet some of the things Trump has said has made Moscow nervous. As I pointed out a week ago, as examples of Trump not bothering with the detail of negotiations:
‘He has spoken of how an early summit with Putin is likely, which even Putin played down, while commending the UK and France for their offers to base troops in a post-ceasefire Ukraine, although this would be anathema to Putin.’
When French President Emmanuel Macron met with Trump on 25 February the issue of the need for some sort of security guarantee was raised. Trump did not object in principle so long as it is largely provided by the Europeans. Nor did he see the deployment of European troops into Ukraine as being an obstacle to a deal. Trump suggested that he had already got Putin’s acquiescence. If true would have been something of a negotiating coup.
‘He will accept that. I have asked him that question. Look, if we do this deal, he’s not looking for more war ... I’ve specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it.’
At this point the alarm bells to start ringing in Moscow. Almost immediately Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recalled Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejection of this idea. The next day, 26 February Lavrov stepped in to reject once more the proposal that European troops could be deployed to Ukraine as this would ‘further fuel the conflict and undermine all attempts to calm it down.’ He also reiterated Russia’s insistence that all of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson belong to Russia, even though, other than Luhansk, they are not fully controlled by Russia. This, he explained, is because that is what is said in the Russian constitution.
This is not part of Trump’s script. While Trump may be hazy about the details he is consistent about how he tells the story about how he can do a deal and it assumes Russian concessions that they have not made.
Trump’s starting point is that this is an awful war that is inflicting terrible losses on both countries. It should never have been allowed to start and if he rather than Biden had been in the White House in 2022 it would not have done. The willingness to allow Ukraine to join NATO was the cause of the war, because that triggered Putin’s invasion, with the implication that once NATO is taken unambiguously off the table Putin will have less reason to continue. In this respect it is not really about territorial acquisition. At one point he even suggested that expected to help Ukraine regain some of its lost territory (‘But for Ukraine, we’re going to try very hard to make a good deal so that they can get as much back as possible. We want to get as much back as possible.’)
Although the war is not really about territory, nonetheless without negotiations Putin would just carry on until he had taken the whole country. (Putin ‘had no intention, in my opinion, of settling this war. I think he wanted the whole thing.’) The hopelessness of Ukraine’s position was one of the claims being made by Vance which made Zelensky bristle, and was echoed by Trump – ‘Your country is in big trouble.’ Trump argues that it was only American arms that allowed Ukraine to fight this long and so it is now only his mediation that will prevent Putin from pressing on.
But what will persuade Putin to stop? Trump is giving him three things: first, a return to normal relations and respect from the United States, along with a shift away in US defence and security planning from treating Russia as a potential enemy; second, permission to keep some of Ukraine’s territory; third, a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Because, he believes, all of this is already on the table then there is no reason why a ceasefire cannot be agreed quite quickly. If it is not agreed quickly then perhaps it can’t be agreed at all. Once agreed Trump seems to think Putin will be satisfied and have no need to prepare to fight again. If it helped to give reassurance to Ukraine through deployment of European forces that would therefore be fine. He has never seen the US as having a big role to play in this (‘not much’) and when pushed by Macron and Starmer, who spoke of the need for an American backstop, he was vague.
A public falling out with Zelensky will not be considered a reason to stop talking with Russia. Discussions have continued on the normalisation of relations and there may be more soon on a framework for a peace deal. But it remains the case, as I have emphasised many times, that Putin wants far more than Trump believes he needs, and certainly far more than he can deliver from Zelensky.
What is to be done?
It is possible that relations will be restored sufficiently for the mineral deal to be signed and the peace process to continue. It may be that Putin appreciates that this is the best chance he has for a moderately favourable deal and that he might make some territorial concessions to achieve that, although we have not seen a single concession from Moscow yet.
The biggest danger for Ukraine is that Trump’s irritation with Zelensky leads to support being withdrawn. Ukrainians stress that they will continue to fight under all circumstances. As things stand they produce about 55% of the materiel with which they fight and the US provides 20%, with the Europeans and others providing the rest. The difficulty is that the US contributions are at the high end in quality, as well as intelligence and logistics, and these would be hard to replace. Because President Biden sent a lot of kit in at the end of his presidency the Ukrainians can cope until the summer but after that the situation would become more difficult.
European governments will seek to raise their contributions but their defence industries have been sluggish and capacity needs to be built up faster. Russian military advances have been slow and extremely costly but they are likely to keep on coming. So the Trumpian narrative that without US support Ukraine is in trouble will not go away. Ukraine may be looking for some dramatic move of its own to at least provide a counter-narrative to demonstrate that they are putting up a serious fight.
There are big risks in this for Ukraine and for Europe, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Whatever happens with US-Ukrainian relations and peace talks, Europe is going to need to pull out the stops. We have to get used to the idea that under all circumstances, even the most benign, the US will be doing less for Ukraine and for European security in general.
The situation may be even more serious. The US is shrinking before our eyes as a serious and competent power. The trade wars are just beginning. The US national debt is growing. Throughout the public sector, including intelligence, law-enforcement and the military, personnel are being chosen because of their loyalty irrespective of competence. There is no interest in responsible statecraft. While Vance was goading Zelensky, Secretary of State Rubio sat beside him looking miserable and saying not a word. So even if things were completely turned around and a framework for an agreement could be identified, it is hard to be confident that the US will be able to provide the detailed analytical work and forms of pressure to back up the negotiations or that Trump will have the patience if they turn out to be time-consuming and complicated.
All TV dramas have their memorable moments, and Trump may feel that he has provided one for decades to come by showing how he stood up for the dignity of his office by shouting down Zelensky. For those who have relied in the past on the strength, generosity, and judgement of the US this was an appalling spectacle.
But future episodes remain unwritten, and Trump does not have a clear sense of the plot he wants to follow and how long it might take to get results. Should he decide to abandon his quest for peace he may then end up sitting on his hands while Ukraine suffers more and the death toll rises for both Ukraine and Russia. If, instead, he does want to return to his favourite theme of deal-making he will have to confront the fundamental contradiction between the quick deal he wants and the deal he can actually get and the time and work it will need to get it.
14. The transactional world Donald Trump seeks would harm not help America
Assessment from the Economist.
Briefing | Gangster’s paradise
The transactional world Donald Trump seeks would harm not help America
Ukraine, Gaza and China will all test his self-interested approach to diplomacy
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/02/27/the-transactional-world-donald-trump-seeks-would-harm-not-help-america
Illustration: Javi Aznarez
Feb 27th 2025|DUBAI, KYIV, TAIPEI and WASHINGTON, DC
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I
t MAY BE a holdover from his failure as a casino mogul or a reflection of a might-is-right worldview. Or perhaps America’s president is simply feeling lucky. Whatever the reason, Donald Trump loves to describe geopolitics as a card game. Russian forces, he said of the war in Ukraine recently, have “taken a lot of territory, so they have the cards”. Soon afterwards Mr Trump suggested that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was refusing to accept the inevitable: “He has no cards.”
China, Mexico, North Korea, even TikTok, a short-video app—Mr Trump has described them all as players in a card game. America, needless to say, always has the better hand. Its military and economic might, he believes, should guarantee it victory in every diplomatic dispute. It is only because of the weakness and stupidity of his predecessors that other countries have been able to exploit American consumers or shelter under America’s security umbrella free of charge. No longer: Mr Trump promises to extract proper recompense from such freeloaders. But even in a purely transactional world, in which America abandons principle and embraces coercion, Mr Trump may not find the game as simple or his cards as strong as he thinks.
The situation they got me facin’
Three pressing diplomatic concerns will put Trumpian foreign policy to the test in the coming months and years. The president has repeatedly suggested that he will find it easy to resolve all three through hard-nosed negotiation. He has already embarked on talks with Russia and Ukraine to end their war. With the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas coming to an end, discussions about the future of Gaza and of the Middle East more broadly will soon acquire more urgency. And looming larger than any other foreign-policy debate are relations with China, which Mr Trump has promised to reset in a manner more favourable to America. It is a daunting in-tray.
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump famously declared that he could end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours”. Certainly, America has enormous leverage. It can cripple Ukraine’s armed forces, not only by halting donations of munitions, but also by cutting off battlefield communications, which are provided in large part by SpaceX, an American firm led by Mr Trump’s buddy, Elon Musk. Although European countries have talked about boosting their aid to Ukraine, they would not be able to compensate completely for an American disengagement.
America’s power over Russia is not as expansive, but it can hold out the prospect of relief from the sanctions that have hobbled Russia’s economy and gratify the desire of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to have some say over events in Russia’s near-abroad.
America this week used its clout to bully Ukraine into a deal to share its mineral wealth with America, which Mr Trump depicts as recompense for all the military assistance America has given Ukraine. Although Ukraine was the first to float this idea, it had offered it in exchange for American security guarantees, which were not forthcoming. And the peremptory behaviour of American negotiators made it clear that they were not asking their Ukrainian counterparts, but telling them. At one stage Mr Zelensky was given an hour to approve a draft of the agreement, or else.
Me be treated like a punk
Yet Mr Zelensky refused in that instance, without triggering Armageddon. In fact, his domestic approval rating has recently risen, presumably because he has been seen to be standing up for his country. The final version of the deal did not specify a $500bn payout for America, as originally demanded. Ukrainian negotiators are pleased: they hope the deal gives America enough of a stake in Ukraine’s future stability and prosperity that Mr Trump will refrain from foisting any lopsided peace agreement on them.
With Russia, Mr Trump has been pure emollience, talking to Mr Putin above Mr Zelensky’s head, opposing hostile resolutions at the UN and conceding in advance the notion that Russia will retain most of the territory it has seized and that Ukraine will not join NATO—big victories for Mr Putin. Yet Mr Putin seems in no rush to strike a deal: “I would be happy to meet with Donald…But we are in a position where it is not enough to meet to have tea, coffee, sit and talk about the future. We need to make sure that our teams prepare.”
American officials’ retreats and concessions could, of course, be clever negotiating tactics, allowing their interlocutors to believe they have salvaged a better deal than had initially seemed possible. But Ukrainians involved in talks with Mr Trump’s team did not feel that they were witnessing a strategic chess game as much as a frantic search for anything the boss might accept. “I don’t think Trump or his people were thinking things too far ahead,” says one.
In particular, by siding with Russia against America’s European allies, Mr Trump has created a damaging rift within NATO and reinforced the impression that America is fast becoming an unreliable partner. That may not concern him much, but in fact America relies on bases in Europe to oversee and supply lots of military operations in Africa and the Middle East. It also makes copious use of intelligence from European and Asian allies. Such mutually beneficial exchanges may be curbed if Mr Trump continues to ride roughshod over his allies’ objections, complicating other foreign-policy goals.
And even if Mr Trump does manage to end hostilities in Ukraine, there will be unforeseen consequences. Having mobilised lots of soldiers and stoked Russia’s arms industry, Mr Putin is unlikely simply to send everyone home. The return of traumatised soldiers from the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan caused great instability in the late 1980s, an episode Mr Putin will not have forgotten. An alternative idea said to be circulating in the Kremlin is to dispatch troops to Africa, to act as mercenaries. In effect, bloodshed might diminish in one part of the world while surging in another.
In the Middle East, Mr Trump’s goal is to strike a series of deals that would end the region’s various wars. Doing so would allow Mr Trump to declare himself a great statesman. It might also allow America to shift resources and attention to Asia: there would be less demand for aircraft-carriers in the Persian Gulf or frenetic shuttle diplomacy. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, calls this a “liquid” moment in the Middle East. “The ability to reshape is unlimited,” he declared last year.
But even the first step—steadying the ceasefire in Gaza—is proving tricky. Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, is trying to coax Israel and Hamas into starting negotiations on the second phase of the deal, which would bring a permanent end to the war. Those talks were meant to begin on February 3rd but have been repeatedly delayed.
Mr Trump’s shocking suggestion of evicting Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to build resorts has served a useful purpose, impelling Arab states to draft an alternative plan for the enclave, to be presented at an Arab League summit scheduled for March 4th. The proposal envisages a five-year rebuilding effort, led by Egyptian firms and financed by Gulf states. Hamas would be excluded, but Gazans would not be expelled.
A peace-and-reconstruction deal in Gaza would allow Mr Trump to pursue more ambitious goals. He wants to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel, expanding the Abraham accords negotiated in his first term. He wants to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran in exchange for sanctions relief. He might also try again to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after the Palestinians rebuffed his so-called “deal of the century” during his first term.
But not everyone in the Middle East shares this vision—and if they decide to test Mr Trump, he may again find that America’s leverage is more limited than he thinks. Start with Israel. Binyamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, has goals of his own. Above all, he wants to stay in power and out of jail. That means pandering to the far-right elements of his coalition, who want to resume the war in Gaza. Beyond that, Mr Netanyahu is trying to impose a sort of Pax Hebraica on the region. He wants the Palestinians to remain weak and divided in any post-war settlement (his allies want to go further and annex Palestinian territory). He demands the “complete demilitarisation” of southern Syria. He is still determined to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, ideally with American help.
Much of this runs counter to Mr Trump’s vision. Annexation would foreclose a normalisation deal with the Saudis; so would another round of war in Gaza. A strike on Iran would end all hope of a nuclear pact. The president is not without leverage over Israel: around 70% of its arms imports come from America, which also sent $18bn in aid in the year after the October 7th massacre, equivalent to 10% of Israeli government spending. To use his leverage, however, Mr Trump would have to provoke a crisis in relations with Israel, and perhaps suffer a backlash from the otherwise supine Republican Party.
Better, then, to hunt for a deal that Mr Netanyahu can accept. In Gaza, that means neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority (PA) can run the enclave. But Hamas wants to retain de facto control, even if it might be willing to cede responsibility for day-to-day governance. Arab states insist they can cobble together a committee of Palestinian technocrats to oversee reconstruction. They are vague on how those technocrats might disarm a militia. Hamas can also sabotage any attempt to reach a broader peace agreement with Israel, as it has done for decades.
It will be equally difficult to satisfy Mr Netanyahu when it comes to Iran. For now, the Islamic Republic seems eager to cut a deal with America. Its regional power is at a low ebb after Israel battered Hamas and Hizbullah, two of its proxies. It feels vulnerable at home: two rounds of ballistic-missile strikes on Israel last year did little damage, whereas Israel’s retaliatory strikes knocked out Iran’s most sophisticated air defences. Its economy is a mess.
Still, a willingness to talk does not mean Iran is willing to make enormous concessions. Some of Mr Trump’s advisers want an ambitious deal that limits not only Iran’s nuclear programme but also its ballistic missiles and its support for proxy militias. As an opening position, that is sensible. But Iran is unlikely to accede. The president will have to decide whether to settle for a narrower deal, hardly better than the one he (at Mr Netanyahu’s urging) abrogated in 2018, or to keep escalating the pressure and hope Iran caves.
On February 24th America’s Treasury department announced sanctions on more than 30 brokers, tankers and firms involved in smuggling Iranian oil to China. To really squeeze Iran, America will need to go much further: imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese ports, for example, or threatening penalties for the United Arab Emirates, home to lots of dodgy middlemen. This will mean antagonising countries in Asia and the Gulf, again complicating other foreign-policy goals. It might also drive Iran to lash out at its neighbours—as it did in 2019, when Iranian drones and missiles temporarily knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.
All this makes the Saudis nervous. They want a formal defence treaty with America in return for normalisation with Israel. Ironically, they would be negotiating one at a moment when Mr Trump is devaluing American security guarantees. Moreover, there is a real contradiction in Mr Trump’s goals. If he wants to show that he is serious about protecting the Gulf, he must cement rather than curtail America’s military commitments in the Middle East. If he does not, then a combination of sanctions relief for Iran and hollow security guarantees for Saudi Arabia could actually make the region more volatile.
Illustration: Javi Aznarez
The Middle East is full of surprises. Post-Assad Syria could slip back into chaos. The death of Iran’s ageing leader, Ali Khamenei, could set off a power struggle. It is hard to find a stable equilibrium amid so many failed or failing states. There is also no shortage of hardened poker players who may be willing to call Mr Trump’s bluff. Israel or Hamas (or both) could spoil plans for Gaza, leaving the enclave in a twilight world between war and peace. Iran’s regime could defy his demands for a better deal, gambling that it could survive whatever military strikes or sanctions he might order in retaliation. The Saudis could stick to their principles and reject a one-sided normalisation deal.
Even if Middle East peace eludes him, Mr Trump may seek a deal with China. There are signs that he is angling for one. He invited Mr Xi, whom he considers “an amazing guy”, to his inauguration and has mused on social media about all the problems the two of them will solve together.
At the same time, Mr Trump is as usual seeking to demonstrate the strength of his cards. The tariffs that he imposed in his first term and that Joe Biden, his successor, expanded, remain in place. Since returning to the White House, he has imposed an additional 10% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, proposed hefty docking fees for Chinese-made or -owned vessels, and signalled a tightening of rules on inbound and outbound investment to China. More tariffs are probably on their way after a review of trade policy due by April 1st.
Chart: The Economist
But there are limits to how far Mr Trump can squeeze China economically. Tariffs raise prices in America and invite retaliation. China, America’s third-biggest export market, has not only imposed reciprocal tariffs on American goods, but also restricted the export of various strategic minerals to America and initiated an antitrust investigation of Google.
China does not seem especially worried. Mr Xi did not show up to Mr Trump’s inauguration. Nor did China honour the trade agreement it struck with Mr Trump in 2020, albeit partly owing to covid-19. China’s dependence on exports to America, although still substantial, has shrunk markedly in recent years (see chart). In general, although America’s big trade deficits mean that it is likely to suffer less from a trade war than its main trading partners, it suffers all the same. And China has plenty of ways beyond tariffs to strike back at America, both economic and geopolitical.
Better watch how you talkin’
One option is to further menace Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory but which America helps to protect through arms sales, diplomatic support and its military presence in the western Pacific. Mr Trump appears conflicted over Taiwan which, he thinks, “stole” America’s chip industry. Mr Trump told an interviewer in October, “They want protection. They don’t pay us money for the protection, you know? The mob makes you pay money, right?”
Mr Trump’s equivocation over both Ukraine and Taiwan alarms America’s other allies, who naturally wonder how reliable a friend it will be. If their doubts become severe enough, countries like Japan and South Korea might seek to develop their own nuclear deterrent, with unpredictable consequences. And even if things do not go that far, America’s perceived faithlessness strengthens China’s hand, as countries in the region seek to hedge their bets.
Mr Trump’s card game, in short, has many complexities he does not acknowledge. The incentives of his adversaries are far from straightforward. Mr Xi’s overarching goal is the survival of the Communist Party. Economic growth is one means to that end, but not too sacrosanct to be tempered for reasons of security. Likewise, no inducement can convince Gazans to leave Gaza voluntarily, or Ukraine to stop fighting to preserve its independence.
The players are also not fixed, with decisions in one dispute having ramifications for another. Thus if Mr Trump decides to impose tariffs on computer chips to strengthen domestic production, he weakens Taiwan, which produces some 90% of the world’s most advanced microprocessors. That, in turn, adds to his difficulties with China. By the same token, the rehabilitation of Mr Putin is also likely to benefit China.
Perhaps most important, the game has infinite rounds. Mr Trump’s bullying and bluster can be effective in the short run. But it is a wasting asset. As he alienates ever more friends, America’s clout will diminish. As friends and foes alike call his bluff, his credibility will decline. Treating international relations as a card game does America more harm than good. ■
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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Gangster’s paradise”
15. 5 Partisan Ex-DOD Chiefs Call for Hearings on Trump's Firing of Generals
Also partisan.
Pro-tip: Never sign letters. Ever.
5 Partisan Ex-DOD Chiefs Call for Hearings on Trump's Firing of Generals
Breitbart · by Kristina Wong · March 1, 2025
A group of five partisan former defense secretaries — including one who signed the discredited letter calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation — are calling on Congress to hold hearings on President Donald Trump’s firing of top generals.
The five former defense secretaries — William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, and Lloyd J. Austin III, who are all either Democrats or served in Democrat administrations — signed a letter saying they are “deeply alarmed” by the firings.
“We write to urge the U.S. Congress to hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its Constitutional oversight responsibilities,” they said in the letter, which was predictably sent to legacy news media outlets.
A senior defense official told Breitbart News, “This is a typical move by the left. Whenever they have something that’s bad news for them, or something that they want to accelerate, they’ll get former officials to line up, and usually these letters are written by liberal think-tanks who then circulate them for signature.”
“It’s the swampiest of the swampy signing this letter,” the official added.
Last week, Trump fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and — via Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife, and the top judge advocate generals for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
All military officers served at the pleasure of the president and could be replaced at any time, per the president’s commander-in-chief authority under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. However, the former defense secretaries complained that Trump “offered no justification for his actions.”
“As former Secretaries of Defense, we call on both the House and the Senate to hold immediate hearings to assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals,” they wrote, and demanded that the Trump administration “justify each firing.”
They also called on the Senate to refuse to confirm any new Department of Defense nominees, including Brown’s nominated replacement, Air Force Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Dan “Razin” Caine.
The senior defense official noted that the signatories of the letter are all Democrats or anti-Trump, and include some who were either fired or fell under congressional investigation themselves.
Perry, a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration, fell under congressional scrutiny in the aftermath of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that led to the deaths of 19 airmen and 498 others injured. Senior Pentagon leaders were warned of a threat eight days before the attack.
Panetta, a Democrat who served as CIA director and defense secretary in the Obama administration, was one of the signatories of the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials who falsely claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. He has, to date, never retracted his endorsement of that letter, despite the FBI confirming that the laptop was indeed real and not Russian disinformation.
The senior defense official called Panetta signing the letter “a joke because he is one of the leaders of Hunter Biden cover up letter.” The official noted that Trump has pulled the security clearances of signatories of that letter.
Hagel is a Republican but served in the Obama administration and was himself fired after two years by former President Barack Obama over policy disagreements.
Mattis, who served in the first Trump administration, never officially confirmed his political affiliation but as defense secretary wanted to bring in Democrat Michele Flournoy as his deputy and surrounded himself with anti-Trump Democrats as his top advisers. He was also fired — or, forced to resign — by Trump over policy disagreements.
Austin is a Democrat who served as former President Joe Biden’s defense secretary and fell under congressional investigation after it was discovered that he hid several hospitalizations from Biden and even his own deputy, leaving a break in the chain of command and risking the nation’s security. He was never held accountable for that, nor the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, which saw the deaths of 13 American service members.
Notably, the living former defense secretaries who did not sign the letter were all Republicans — Mark Esper, Robert Gates, and William Cohen.
Despite the signatories’ own failures and transgressions that led to the deaths of troops, they accused Trump of weakening “national security.”
They also claimed, “Talented Americans may be far less likely to choose a life of military service if they believe they will be held to a political standard.”
Recent figures by the Army and Navy actually show that military recruitment has only gone up during Trump’s election in November.
The Trump administration said in a response to the Washington Post about the letter:
President Trump is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and his actions are well within his authority. Our military readiness is down, we have faced historic lows in recruitment and retention, we aren’t building enough ships, and service members are living in abysmal barrack conditions.
“President Trump is taking bold action to ensure the Joint Staff is leading a well-run and lethal warfighting force that is second to none,” it added.
Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on ”X”, Truth Social, or on Facebook.
Breitbart · by Kristina Wong · March 1, 2025
16. China’s Military Puts Pacific on Notice as U.S. Priorities Shift
POTUS needs options for his unconventional diplomacy. How about some unconditional warfare activities?
China’s Military Puts Pacific on Notice as U.S. Priorities Shift
China is flexing its military muscle in the region to show that it will not wait for the Trump administration to decide how hard it wants to counter Beijing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/world/asia/china-military-drills-pacific.html?utm
A photo released by the Australia Defense Force showed an Australian Navy ship in the foreground and two Chinese navy ships in the Tasman Sea in February.Credit...Australian Defense Force, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Chris Buckley and Damien Cave
Chris Buckley reported from Taipei, Taiwan, while Damien Cave reported from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Feb. 28, 2025
Want to stay updated on what’s happening in East Asia and Oceania? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
China has in recent weeks staged military drills off Australia and Vietnam, sending pointed warnings near and far. Neither was a full-fledged exercise. But taken together, China’s recent shows of force, experts said, conveyed a message: the region must not ignore Beijing’s power and claims.
Three Chinese naval ships, including a cruiser with 112 missile tubes, showed up in the waters near Australia this month, only announcing plans to fire artillery for practice after the exercise had started. A few days later, on Monday, Chinese forces held live-fire drills in the Gulf of Tonkin, after Vietnam pressed its territorial claims in the gulf. Meanwhile, Chinese military aircraft buzz the skies near Taiwan almost daily.
While Washington is consumed with other matters, from Ukraine and the Middle East to budget cuts at the Pentagon, China keeps pressing. The exercises, while relatively brief, highlight that China’s military reach is likely to keep growing, regardless of whether the Trump administration ultimately tries to confront China or pull it into some kind of deal.
The series of drills aimed to show scale and scope, “showcasing China’s expanding naval capabilities and ability to project power across multiple theaters simultaneously,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow with the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
“The timing, with many in the Indo-Pacific region concerned about the U.S. commitments under President Donald Trump, is just perfect.”
The People’s Liberation Army had been growing more active long before Mr. Trump took office, and China held far larger exercises near Taiwan last year. In its own sometimes ominous way, experts said, China is trying to persuade governments in the Asia-Pacific region that, like it or not, their future lies in accommodating Beijing. And that includes its claims to democratically governed Taiwan and over much of the South China Sea, which is disputed by Vietnam and other countries.
Image
A video screen in Beijing showing Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait last year.Credit...Tingshu Wang/Reuters
Beijing’s message may gain more traction if American influence in the region ebbs.
“In purely military terms, these actions — the live firing training or three ships in seas near Australia — don’t have much significance,” said Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, an organization in Taipei that is funded by Taiwan’s ministry of defense. “But they can be seen as political signaling.”
Dan Blumenthal, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who studies East Asian security, said that China’s displays of military power should not be dismissed as mere theater. The displays matter because they are backed by a real and growing ability by China’s leaders to raise the military stakes in disputes.
“The low-intensity war that China conducts daily only works if the threat to escalate conventionally is credible,” he said in an interview.
Asian governments have long turned to Washington to offset Chinese power in the region. But Mr. Trump has sent contradictory signals about whether he wants to contain or cooperate with Beijing — or, somehow, both. He has ideas for a big trade deal with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and has sometimes spoken admiringly of Mr. Xi, but has also imposed additional tariffs and trade restrictions on China, with more set to come.
Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has called for big cuts in American military spending across much of the globe so that the United States can concentrate on countering China in the Asia-Pacific. Yet it remains unclear whether and how that shift will happen. Mr. Trump has also complained that Asian countries spend too little on their defense.
The Trump administration has not commented on the recent Chinese drills, and the White House has yet to spell out a broader plan for the region.
Image
President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Mr. Trump has sent contradictory signals about whether he wants to contain or cooperate with Beijing, or both.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Vietnam mostly fears being caught in a tidal wave of Trump tariffs after leaning closer to the United States on security in recent years. The country of 100 million people has sought to keep relations with the United States and China in balance. Vietnam did not respond strongly to the drills held in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, though they occurred a few days after Vietnam reinforced its rival territorial claims in the Gulf with what is known as a new baseline declaration. Experts said the drills were within China’s maritime boundary, and seemed to be smaller than previous efforts.
Like Vietnam, Australia has tried to maintain ties to both China, a major trade partner, and the United States, its primary ally for defense. After a thaw in relations with Beijing, which had shunned and punished Australia over political and diplomatic disputes, the arrival of three Chinese navy vessels struck much of Australia as a setback, if not outright intimidation.
The warships were cruising in the Tasman Sea, without having previously declared the mission — according to Australian officials — as the top U.S. commander for the region, Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, finished a three-day trip to Australia. Earlier this month, Admiral Paparo warned that American forces were ill-prepared for China’s military buildup in the Asia-Pacific.
China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, said the ships did not pose a threat.
“As a major power in this region, as a country that has so many things to look after, it is normal for China to send their vessels to different parts of the region to conduct various kinds of activities,” Ambassador Xiao said, in an interview with Australia’s main public broadcaster.
The warships were outside Australia’s territorial waters, but they traveled within about 150 nautical miles of Sydney. Anxiety there grew after the Chinese naval ships said last week that they were holding live fire exercises, and 49 commercial planes were forced to suddenly divert their routes to avoid the area. A New Zealand frigate said it had spotted firing from one of the Chinese warships on Saturday.
New Zealand’s defense minister, Judith Collins, said the drills were the “most significant” that region has seen from China. Australian officials said Beijing did not provide proper notice.
The most acute uncertainties about the role of the United States in Asia are perhaps felt by Taiwan, which has for decades relied on Washington for military and political support and is regularly tested by Chinese military forces. In addition to the Chinese aircraft that flew near Taiwan this week, Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that Chinese ships had warned that they planned to hold live fire training to the south of the island. But the ships ultimately did not fire any weapons there, two Taiwanese security officials said, on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Trump’s recent actions, including turning against embattled Ukraine, have magnified anxieties among Taiwanese policymakers. Mr. Trump has also demanded that Taiwan dramatically increase its military spending, and this week he refused to say whether the United States would step in if China launched a war against Taiwan.
Image
A military exercise in Taiwan in 2023. Mr. Trump has demanded that Taiwan dramatically increase its military spending.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
“I never comment on that. I don’t comment on any — because I don’t want to ever put myself in that position,” Mr. Trump said in answer to a reporter’s question about stopping China from using force to take Taiwan. “And if I said it, I certainly wouldn’t be saying it to you.”
Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to comment on the defense of Taiwan echoed the calculated ambiguity of previous decades of U.S. policy, when administrations also avoided clearly committing to entering war over Taiwan. President Biden, however, had repeatedly said that Washington would intervene.
Mr. Trump’s administration includes longtime supporters of Taiwan, such as the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, but Mr. Trump may undercut their influence with his demands toward Taiwan and attention on bargaining with China’s leader, Mr. Xi.
After his comment on Taiwan, Mr. Trump said: “But I can tell you what, I have a great relationship with President Xi. I’ve had a great relationship with him. We want them to come in and invest.”
Victoria Kim in Sydney, Amy Chang Chien in Taipei and Vivian Wang in Beijing contributed reporting.
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues. More about Chris Buckley
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world. More about Damien Cave
A version of this article appears in print on March 1, 2025, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: In Show of Force, China Puts Pacific on Notice as U.S. Priorities Shift. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
17. Is There an Axis of Autocracy?
Fear, weakness, desperation, envy.
Why is there an axis of autocracy, a fusion of foes, a dark quad?
In my view It is because those four nations FEAR the silk web of alliances that the free world has developed from alliances, to bilateral, mini-lateral, and multi-lateral organizations of political, economic, and security arrangements.
ALl four have internal WEAKNESS because of the internet contradictions of their domestic political systems.
They have a DESPERATION for recognition, influence, support and most importantly resources (e.g., energy).
And they ENVY the silk web of alliances of the US and the friends, partners, and allies in the free world that are built on shared values and mutual trust.
And my assessment is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan)
Excerpts:
That China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia cooperate and collude to evade sanctions both old and new is not in question. The testimonies at the USCC hearing showed that the actors on both sides of the equation have been nimble in finding ways to get around the other.
In terms of China, it has clearly headed back to a greater degree of autocracy and therefore autocratic “friends” because there’s really no other place to go. China longed for admiration and respectability from the Western nations of the world, a prize that has remained elusive primarily due to Beijing’s own actions and the friends it now chooses to keep.
Xi Jinping needs security and energy, and has increasingly turn to fellow autocracies to fill those needs. Yet these same partners in the “axis” are countries that most of the Chinese people would prefer not to be identified with. The Chinese wish to be respected as a nation and as a people. They desire status. Most of what they do around the world is defensive, borne of a centuries-old sense of vulnerability and paranoia.
The USCC made clear that the “axis of autocracy” is at heart a set of transactional relationships. Of the four autocratic nations, it is China that is best suited to break with the other three.
Is There an Axis of Autocracy?
thediplomat.com · by Bonnie Girard
At heart, what binds China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia is a set of transactional relationships.
By
March 01, 2025
Credit: Gemini Generated Image
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From cautious concern to doomsday predictions, the U.S.-China Security and Review Commission (USCC) heard testimony on February 20 that broadly addressed one question: Is China a partner in an “Axis of Autocracy,” alongside the other major autocratic countries of Iran, North Korea, and Russia?
Interestingly, the scope of the Commission’s hearing was limited to addressing the relationships between only four of the world’s autocracies. Yet, multiple sources state that, in fact, the population of the world is far more governed by autocracies than not. Indeed, a map of autocracies around the world shows that the nations of the African continent are led far more by autocrats than by any other political system – yet none of these governments were included in the USCC’s “axis.”
By not encouraging comment and debate on the rest of the autocratic world, largely found in Africa and the Middle East, an opportunity is missed. In diving deeper into other autocracies’ links with the “big four” and among themselves, we would gain a more profound understanding of the power of autocratic societies and their consequential and complex relationships.
Nonetheless, as several testimonies at the USCC hearing revealed, the activities and dependencies among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have increased and deepened to the point that the relationships can be loosely characterized as a single unit – an axis of autocracy – all while each maintains a great deal of individual sovereignty.
It is hard to find positive commonalities among these four countries, but very simple to find negative ones. Among the latter are a lack of or seriously curtailed freedoms in the key areas of speech, religion, press, assembly, petition, unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom of movement.
The China-Russia Relationship
The China-Russia portion of the axis – if indeed it can be said to exist in such a concrete conceptual form – is made up of a number of components, according to Dr. Elizabeth Wishnick of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA).
“China and Russia claim they are priority partners not allies,” Wishnick told the USCC, according to her written testimony, “but military and technical cooperation has been an important aspect of their relations since the establishment of their strategic partnership in 1996.” She went on to name concrete examples of such cooperation: “bilateral and multilateral military exercises… arms and weapons component sales, and joint production and systems development. Collaboration by Chinese and Russian actors in hybrid maritime actions has been a new area of activity since 2023.”
Wishnick also mentioned that Chinese forces “seek to learn” from Russian combat experience. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has not been in a battlefield for 46 years, since China first initiated and then lost a war with Vietnam in 1979.
However, it is unlikely that the PLA would see itself as an inferior partner in any military exercise. In fact, Chinese officials typically refuse to characterize any interaction with foreign individuals or entities as an opportunity to be “taught”; they have far too much pride to admit that they don’t already know something. If that concept holds true in joint exercises with the Russians, therefore, it suggests a scenario that could lead to genuine resentment between Chinese and Russian forces.
In fact, there are a dozen or more “areas of divergence” between China and Russia, which Wishnick identifies. Distrust stretches back decades to the 1950s and 1960s, when finally, the Soviet Union withdrew thousands of advisers and material support from China over the ideological chasm created by Mao’s accusation of “revisionism” (and years of tension preceding that). That history still rankles with an older generation – ask any 80-year-old in Beijing.
Wishnick pointed out, however, that “[a]t this juncture Chinese and Russian officials have made a political decision to emphasize their areas of agreement – all of their joint statements do this, omitting any areas of discord.” The care both China and Russia take to maintain a united and positive front publicly could be seen as an indication of the political will behind their relationship – but also a tacit admission of the potential for public disgruntlement.
What Really Unites the Axis: Sanctions Evasion
In one of the more compelling testimonies, the former head of intelligence at the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) addressed the economic linkages among all four autocracies, and their techniques for evading Western sanctions. Kimberly Donovan of the Atlantic Council described the “sophisticated money laundering techniques…used by U.S. adversaries, such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea,” who “work together to take advantage of the global financial system and evade U.S. sanctions that are intended to deter and disrupt their nefarious activity.”
“Being sanctioned by the West is one of the few things these rogue states have in common,” Donovan pointed out. Sanctions severely restrict these countries’ access to the US-led global financial system, limit their ability to trade in commodities, generate revenue, and import sophisticated technology.”
Much of Donovan’s testimony reads like a Ken Follett spy thriller. From the case studies she presented, Donovan offered three fundamental conclusions:
First, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have constructed elaborate systems to circumvent and evade U.S. sanctions;
Second, third country procurement networks enable these sanction evasion systems; and
Third, these sanctions evasion systems have limitations and vulnerabilities that may present opportunities for U.S. action.
China is motivated by the sanctions, by its competition with the United States, and by its need for inexpensive energy, to work with other three autocratic nations to get around the sanctions, Donovan said.
“China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have developed trade systems that bypass Western financial systems and shipping services. In this system, payments are denominated in Chinese currency and processed through China’s opaque financial system,” she explained. Russia has adopted the Chinese yuan and is trying to connect the Chinese payment system with the Russian alternative to SWIFT. Donovan cautioned that Hong Kong in particular functions as “a hub for sanctions evasion” and money laundering, largely because, as she noted, “Many international banks still treat Hong Kong as a global financial hub.
In addition, Donovan noted that “goods and commodities, such as oil, are carried by the ‘shadow fleet’ tankers that operate outside of maritime regulations and take steps to obscure their operations.” Her testimony goes on to detail these shadow fleet trade routes and cargos, including the transport of luxury goods into North Korea. Among the examples she cited are “Chinese independent refineries called ‘teapots,’ which absorb 90 percent of Iranian oil.”
Donovan also described a barter system among the nations, such as the improbable 2021 arrangement between a Chinese company selling auto parts to Iran in exchange for $2 million worth of pistachios.
Conclusion
That China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia cooperate and collude to evade sanctions both old and new is not in question. The testimonies at the USCC hearing showed that the actors on both sides of the equation have been nimble in finding ways to get around the other.
In terms of China, it has clearly headed back to a greater degree of autocracy and therefore autocratic “friends” because there’s really no other place to go. China longed for admiration and respectability from the Western nations of the world, a prize that has remained elusive primarily due to Beijing’s own actions and the friends it now chooses to keep.
Xi Jinping needs security and energy, and has increasingly turn to fellow autocracies to fill those needs. Yet these same partners in the “axis” are countries that most of the Chinese people would prefer not to be identified with. The Chinese wish to be respected as a nation and as a people. They desire status. Most of what they do around the world is defensive, borne of a centuries-old sense of vulnerability and paranoia.
The USCC made clear that the “axis of autocracy” is at heart a set of transactional relationships. Of the four autocratic nations, it is China that is best suited to break with the other three.
Authors
Contributing Author
Bonnie Girard
Bonnie Girard is President of China Channel Ltd. She has lived and worked in China for half of her adult life, beginning in 1987 when she studied at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing.
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thediplomat.com · by Bonnie Girard
17. Marlene Dietrich's secret role in a women-only spy ring - and the brazen act that put a Nazi price on her head
Who is today's Marlene Dietrich and why isn't she working for the CIA and USSOCOM?
EXCLUSIVEMarlene Dietrich's secret role in a women-only spy ring - and the brazen act that put a Nazi price on her head
By RUTH WALKER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 07:56 EST, 1 March 2025 | Updated: 07:56 EST, 1 March 2025
Marlene Dietrich made her way to a recording studio in the middle of New York’s Times Square, about to give one of the most audacious performances of her career.
The Berlin-born screen siren had renounced her German citizenship five years earlier, and become a proud American - a move that had so enraged Hitler, he’d put a seven-figure bounty on her head.
But Dietrich was undeterred, and went on to become a key figure in the US war effort, singing for Allied troops in Algeria, France, Italy, and Germany - often in extremely dangerous conditions.
What is less well-known is her role as part of a top secret team of ‘black propaganda’ specialists whose work helped break the Nazis’ stronghold in Europe.
And on the night of August 16, 1944, Dietrich wasn’t about to record just any album.
In her new book, The Propaganda Girls, author Lisa Rogak reveals that the classic songs on the set list were destined to be beamed into enemy territory - with their subtly altered lyrics written specifically to undermine the Germans and chip away at morale.
Lili Marlene, for instance. The German love song was based on a World War I poem written by a soldier who was missing his sweetheart back home.
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Dietrich was a key figure in the US war effort , singing for Allied troops in Algeria, France, Italy, and Germany - often in extremely dangerous conditions
Marlene Dietrich's 'Lili Marlene' song popular among Allies and Axis
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But in Dietrich’s version, the soldier was dying, losing not just his love, but his life as well.
‘With one manicured hand Marlene caressed the silver microphone that could be easily mistaken for a grenade in the dark, while a Lucky Strike dangled from her other hand,' writes Rogak.
‘She lowered her head as if in prayer; she needed a moment to collect her thoughts. First, her family back in Germany. She knew that what she was about to do could be signing their death sentence.
‘That is, of course, if they were still alive.’
She went on to record a total of 12 songs over three sessions, and the result was almost instant. The former German icon’s subversive versions of these beloved, patriotic numbers rubbed salt in the wounds of the Nazis - especially Lili Marlene.
‘The Nazis fought back with a different rendition… sung by German vocalist Lale Andersen,’ writes Rogak.
‘It was broadcast on Nazi radio stations every night at 9.57pm, forging brief and fragile cease-fires nightly as men in the trenches on both sides dropped their guns for a few minutes.
‘But it was Marlene’s interpretation that affected German morale to a greater degree.’
The recording was part of a much larger campaign whose output included official-looking - but entirely fake - military orders, newspapers, and radio broadcasts as well as songs.
The small band of women behind the devastating project - Elizabeth 'Betty' MacDonald, Jane Smith-Hutton, Barbara 'Zuzka' Lauwersall and Dietrich - worked for the US Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, in the Morale Operations branch, or MO for short.
‘Outside of a small group of spies,’ writes Rogak, ‘no one knew they existed’.
It’s hard to imagine how a few songs could make much impact on an already long drawn-out conflict. But OSS boss William Joseph ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, was convinced their work could be ‘even more effective than a shooting war’.
And women, he believed, were much better at it than men.
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Marlene’s interpretation of the song Lili Marlene devastated German morale
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Hitler grew increasingly obsessed with capturing Dietrich, following her movements carefully - especially while she was touring the front lines
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Marlene barely escaped with her life when a German counterattack struck only a kilometer away from her camp
Betty MacDonald once said: ‘We were able to think of a lot of gossipy things to do... that men never would have thought of.
‘I don’t want to brag, but women can hurt people better, maybe, than men could think of. Women seemed to have a feeling for how to really fool people.’
In fact, they had already witnessed an astonishing level of success.
As the war dragged on, US troops started to see a dramatic increase in the number of enemy soldiers surrendering.
‘Defeated German and Japanese troops stumbled across enemy lines… with one hand thrust in the air, waving a piece of paper with the other,' writes Rogak.
That piece of paper was often a leaflet, newspaper cutting, or letter created by the MO that had finally convinced them the war was futile.
‘One half-starved German even handed over a couple sheets of rough toilet paper with Hitler’s face printed on it as his ticket out of the war.'
The more effective the Propaganda Girls were, the more furious Hitler became - and it seems Dietrich was his arch nemesis. He grew increasingly obsessed with capturing her, following her movements carefully - especially while she was touring the front lines.
'Indeed,' writes Rogak, 'during the Battle of the Bulge, as the Third Army moved into Germany, Marlene barely escaped with her life when a German counterattack struck only a kilometer away from her camp'.
But she refused to be cowed and claimed she was unafraid of death.
What did keep her awake at night, however, was the possibility of being taken alive and tortured.
‘They’ll shave off my hair, stone me, and have horses drag me through the streets,’ she said, ‘or worse, force me to talk on the radio’.
According to Rogak: ‘General George Patton had presented her with a pearl-handled revolver identical to his… leaving no doubt that he meant for her to use it on herself, if the circumstances required.’
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Marlene Dietrich claimed she was unafraid of death
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A woman advertises her own war effort in Times Square in April 1945 - having donated her clothing to victims of the conflict
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VE Day celebrations in Times Square
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In the end, however, the pistol was not needed. Hitler committed suicide less than a year after her devastating Times Square recording session and Germany surrendered a week later.
With the war over, Dietrich was desperate to return to Germany and search for her family.
'First, she located her sister, Elisabeth, and her husband,' writes Rogak. 'For all the years of the war, Marlene had imagined that they had suffered incredible hardships.
'But instead, she discovered, they actually operated a small theater for the Nazis who ran the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.'
Dietrich was disgusted and never spoke to them again.
She was overjoyed to learn her mother, Josefine, was still alive, though very frail.
'She unfortunately died a couple of months later.'
Dietrich went on to tour the world with her Las Vegas cabaret act, made more movies, and re-recorded the songs she'd performed for the MO.
But she always said that her work during the war had been the most important she'd ever done.
'It was the best role she ever played,' said her daughter Maria Riva in her memoir. 'She earned laurels for her heroic courage, collected medals, and was honored and respected.
'The officer’s daughter had found her true calling, she was playing the part of the brave soldier.'
From Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS by Lisa Rogak. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
18. PRC Dominance Over Global Port Infrastructure
So what are we going to do about this?
Except:
The United States currently lacks the means to reduce the PRC’s global port footprint, even within the Western Hemisphere. Within the United States itself, PRC firms continue to exercise property rights at five ports. The first Trump administration successfully removed PRC ownership of U.S. ports when it forced COSCO to divest its shares in the Long Beach Container Terminal, but contracts to operate the ports remain in PRC hands (Freight Waves, July 8, 2018). In 2022, when COSCO’s contract for another terminal at Long Beach came up for expiry in 2022, no other operator reportedly had the technical ability to replace COSCO (MERICS, November 7, 2024). In the near term, European port operators that have expertise and global presence could erode some of Beijing’s influence if paired with U.S. capital. For now, there may be little that President Trump can do to challenge Beijing’s port presence—even in what he considers America’s backyard.
PRC Dominance Over Global Port Infrastructure
https://jamestown.org/program/prc-dominance-over-global-port-infrastructure/
February 28, 2025 06:01 PM Age: 17 hours
The Port of Balboa in Panama, one of two owned by Hutchinson Port Holdings (Source: Wikipedia)
Executive Summary:
- Beijing’s economic control of port operations at strategic chokepoints across the world, many of which are part of the Maritime Silk Road initiative, pose a threat to the United States and its allies.
- Two Chinese state-owned firms, COSCO and China Merchant Ports, control 12.6 percent of global throughput. Beijing could also exert significant influence on the third-largest Chinese player, privately-owned Hutchison Port Holdings, which works extensively with PRC state-owned enterprises and has participated in strategically significant projects.
- Hutchison also controls two ports on the Panama Canal. Under pressure from the United States, Panama’s President Murillo announced his government will not renew the memorandum of understanding on the Maritime Silk Road signed with Beijing in 2017.
- Leveraging the economic power of state-owned shipping firms is part of Beijing’s strategy to become a strong maritime power.
On February 2, President Murillo of Panama announced that his government will not renew the memorandum of understanding on the Maritime Silk Road signed in 2017 with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). At a press conference that followed shortly after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Murillo said that Panama is going to study “the possibility of whether it can be completed sooner or not. I think it is due for renewal in one or two years,” he explained (X/ECOtvPanamá, February 2). [1] The Maritime Silk Road refers to the maritime portion of the PRC’s One Belt One Road (一带一路) initiative. The PRC was quick to respond. Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Zhao Zhiyuan (赵志远) made solemn representations to the Panamanian government, saying that his country “deeply regrets” (对此深表遗憾) the announcement, and warning that Panama would be running counter to the expectations of the Chinese and Panamanian peoples by “‘driving backwards’ and sailing against the wind on ‘One Belt One Road’” (在“一带一路”上“开倒车”、行逆风船违逆中巴人民期待) (FMPRC, February 8).
The flashpoint around the Panama Canal centers on Hutchison Port Holdings (和記港口), a private firm headquartered in Hong Kong that has operated the two of the canal’s five ports since 1997. While this does not equate to U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that the PRC controls the Panama Canal, the evolution of the PRC’s maritime strategy in recent decades and Hutchison’s moves to closer align with Beijing in the last few years reflect longstanding and valid concerns in the United States about Beijing’s strategic investments in global port infrastructure (White House, January 20; The Wire China, February 9). Already, Panama’s supreme court has agreed to consider a request filed by a lawyer to nullify the contract to CK (AFP, February 22).
Economics is Key to PRC Maritime Power
Becoming a “strong maritime power” (海洋强国) was set as a guiding ambition by former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Jintao in his report to the 18th National Congress in 2012, and Xi Jinping later incorporated this vision into his signature policies, including the “China dream” (中国梦) and the One Belt One Road (一带一路) initiative (People’s Daily, November 18, 2012, November 20, 2017).
The CCP’s conception of maritime power, especially as put forward by Hu, is in large part about naval strength, but the economic dimension has become increasingly vital. According to Xi Jinping’s Economic Thought, “an economically strong nation must be a strong maritime nation and a strong shipping nation” (经济强国必定是海洋强国、航运强国) (Xi Jinping Economic Thought Research Center, April 19, 2024).
Port infrastructure is key to building this strength. As the world’s largest trading nation, the network effects of the PRC’s extensive control over maritime shipping infrastructure are invaluable. By securing ownership stakes and operational leases in port infrastructure, Chinese firms can streamline global operations and grow their influence over supply chains while providing greater market access and reduced shipping costs for other Chinese companies. After a terminal operating contract is signed with a Chinese firm, total trade with the PRC increases about 21 percent, according to a study by the Mercator Institute of China Studies, a German think tank. The study also notes that PRC firms buy more goods than they sell to host countries after operating agreements are signed and that much of the cost savings go to PRC firms (MERICS, December 4, 2023).
The PRC has dramatically expanded its interests in maritime shipping infrastructure under the policy umbrella of One Belt One Road. Like many aspects of the One Belt One Road, this expansion preceded Xi Jinping’s official announcement of the initiative in 2013 but has gathered steam over the past decade. Counterintuitively, it is the “belt” part of the initiative’s name that describes the continental portion, while the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” announced by Xi Jinping at the Indonesian parliament in October 2013, is the portion that covers the seafaring element (ASEAN-China Centre, October 3, 2013).
The commercial aspect of the PRC’s maritime strategy is closely tied to key “national champion firms” (国家冠军企业). The policy of nurturing these firms through preferential access to capital and state support became institutionalized in the 2000s and is also a key objective of One Belt One Road (The China Project, September 11, 2024). For instance, the city of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, dubbed the “city of [national] champions” (冠军之城), explicitly links PRC industrial policy to One Belt One Road. Noting that its firms depend on external markets, an article by the city’s customs office says, “Serving the construction of ‘One Belt, One Road,’ Ningbo has established friendships with 117 cities in 60 countries, and its ‘circle of friends’ continues to expand” (服务共建“一带一路”，已与60个国家117个城市建立友城关系，宁波“朋友圈”持续扩容). It also quotes a popular saying among local businesses: “Rely on policies, seize opportunities” (依靠政策，抓住机遇) (Ningbo Customs, January 8).
Top Firms’ Strategic Posture
Two players have been essential to establishing the PRC’s overseas port empire, China Merchants Port Holdings Company Limited (CMP; 招商局港口控股) and COSCO Shipping Ports Limited (COSCO; 中远海运港口), the port subsidiary of China COSCO Shipping Corporation (中远海运集运). While CMP and COSCO operate as separate, commercially run companies in their day-to-day functions, they are ultimately controlled by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) under the PRC State Council. This structure has two significant international consequences. First, these companies enjoy substantial advantages that would be considered highly irregular or even illegal in Western systems, such as wide-ranging state aid and an ecosystem of allied state-owned enterprises. Second, Beijing retains ultimate control over these national champions. On occasion, COSCO and CMP might resist interventions that run counter to commercial imperatives and Beijing realizes the risk of undermining these champions through overt influence. Nevertheless, SASAC holds the ultimate power to weaponize port operations if it so chooses, for example, by interfering in price setting or controlling capacity allocation.
According to the “Vision for Maritime Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative,” issued in June 2017 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the State Oceanic Administration, the maritime silk road consists of three “blue passages.” These passages go between the PRC to Africa and the Mediterranean via the Indian Ocean, to the South Pacific, and to Europe via the Arctic (Xinhua, June 20, 2017).
PRC firms have established port operations across these major arteries and at strategic choke points such as the Malacca Strait, the Suez Canal, and the Panama Canal. These include 23 European ports; 13 North and Central American ports; 11 ports in the Middle East; 8 ports in Africa; 8 in Southeast Asia; and 4 each in South Asia, East Asia, and Australia (MERICS, November 7, 2024). They have done so under One Belt One Road, leveraging access to billions in state financing, securing operating concessions and then investing in expansion projects, or, alternatively, by winning expansion projects first and subsequently taking on the operational responsibilities. In some cases, they have also gained a foothold through larger acquisitions. The most notable of these is CMP’s 2013 acquisition of a 49 percent stake in Terminal Link, a subsidiary of French shipping company CMA CGM (CMA CGM, June 11, 2013). This deal provided CMP with interests in 15 container terminals across eight countries, and in 2019, CMA CGM and CMP reached an agreement for Terminal Link to acquire stakes in an additional 10 port terminals (CMA CGM, December 20, 2019). In some cases, CMP and COSCO have also acquired equity stakes in the ports. These include in the ports of Piraeus in Greece, the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Chancay Port in Peru, Port of Abu Qir, Egypt, and Kuantan Port, Malaysia (China Brief, March 14, 2024).
The world’s seven largest firms now control 40 percent of global throughput, adjusted for equity, according to the latest Global Container Terminal Operators Annual Review and Forecast from the independent global maritime advisory and research organization Drewry. [2] Trailing Singapore’s PSA International with 7.2 percent of global share, COSCO and CMP reported 6.4 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively, though due to their shared ownership they can be considered collectively (Drewry, August 12, 2024). Combining these two firms means that SASAC indirectly controls 12.6 percent of global throughput. The degree of vertical integration in COSCO—the world’s third largest operator and one of the largest container shipping companies—and in the broader ecosystem of PRC state-owned enterprises makes Beijing’s control of global shipping and maritime infrastructure particularly formidable. This gives Beijing even greater leverage to shape global maritime trade flows.
Adding Hutchison’s throughput to a collective Chinese total is difficult to justify—though such assessments may be increasingly reasonable. Although it is the third most significant PRC actor involved in overseas ports, as a private firm headquartered in Hong Kong it has been excluded from most analyses of Beijing’s global port expansion. However, as the CCP expands its control over the national economy and erodes Hong Kong’s independence, the distinctions between state-owned and private enterprises—and between Hong Kong and the mainland as separate jurisdictions—are becoming increasingly blurred (China Brief, January 19, 2024, March 1, 2024). Although Hutchison remains much more similar to a private Western firm than CMP or COSCO, Beijing could still exert significant influence if it chose to do so. Hutchison works extensively with PRC state-owned enterprises and has participated in strategically significant projects. For instance, it has collaborated with the Egyptian navy (Hutchinson Ports Abu Qir, August 27, 2020). While Hutchison is in a different league to COSCO and CMP, it is reasonable to consider its assets in an assessment of PRC influence today.
The significance of the PRC’s control over throughput also extends beyond shipping. Ports are critical nodes in global commodities supply chains, where PRC state-owned firms have entrenched positions. Entire supply chains, from extraction and processing to logistics and trade, are vertically integrated with PRC SOEs, banks, and trading houses, ensuring that control over ports translates into broader leverage over the global flow of resources, from iron ore to soy beans.
Conclusion
U.S. concern about the PRC’s global port footprint tends to focus on the military potential of these interests (DoD February 5; SOUTHCOM, February 20). To date, the PRC has only one confirmed overseas military base, in Djibouti. [3] By comparison, the United States has bases in dozens of countries around the world. Nevertheless, concerns about harder security dimensions are valid. Under the military-civil fusion development strategy, ports are strategic dual‑use assets that serve both economic and defense objectives (China Brief, April 14, 2023). In addition to this dual-use potential, there are legitimate reasons to suspect that commercial investments might provide footholds for a military presence (China Brief, October 19, 2020).
The geopolitical consequences of the PRC’s economic control poses an arguably greater threat, however. While the United States dominates global maritime security, there is a huge disparity in the other direction when it comes to influence over maritime trade. Unlike the PRC, which controls around 12.6 percent of global port throughput through COSCO and CMP, the United States has no state-backed firms among the world’s leading terminal operators. In terms of global port influence, the United States would likely rank behind not only the PRC but also the United Arab Emirates (DP World), France (CMA CGM/Terminal Link), and Singapore (PSA International).
The United States currently lacks the means to reduce the PRC’s global port footprint, even within the Western Hemisphere. Within the United States itself, PRC firms continue to exercise property rights at five ports. The first Trump administration successfully removed PRC ownership of U.S. ports when it forced COSCO to divest its shares in the Long Beach Container Terminal, but contracts to operate the ports remain in PRC hands (Freight Waves, July 8, 2018). In 2022, when COSCO’s contract for another terminal at Long Beach came up for expiry in 2022, no other operator reportedly had the technical ability to replace COSCO (MERICS, November 7, 2024). In the near term, European port operators that have expertise and global presence could erode some of Beijing’s influence if paired with U.S. capital. For now, there may be little that President Trump can do to challenge Beijing’s port presence—even in what he considers America’s backyard.
Notes
[1] Original: “Vamos a estudiar la posibilidad de si se puede terminar antes o no. Creo que le toca en uno o dos años la renovación.”
[2] Throughput refers to the amount of cargo or number of vessels that a port handles over a specific period of time. Adjusted for equity here means that, for example, a 50 percent stake in any given terminal would contribute 50 percent of total throughput.
[3] Despite concerns over PRC involvement renovating Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, it currently appears unlikely that the PRC will use it for military purposes (Lowy Institute, December 4, 2024).
19. Trump Taps Special Operations Veteran for Navy Under Secretary Role (Hung Cao)
Trump Taps Special Operations Veteran for Navy Under Secretary Role
Mallory Shelbourne
February 28, 2025 2:36 PM
https://news.usni.org/2025/02/28/trump-taps-special-operations-veteran-for-navy-under-secretary-role
Hung Cao
President Donald Trump selected Navy veteran Hung Cao to serve as the Department of the Navy’s number two civilian.
An official Trump administration X account shared a Truth Social post from the president announcing Cao’s nomination to the under secretary position.
“As a refugee to our Great Nation, Hung worked tirelessly to make proud the Country that gave his family a home,” Trump wrote in the Thursday evening post.
“He went to our amazing United States Naval Academy, and later earned his Master’s Degree in Physics. Hung served in combat as a Special Operations Officer for twenty five years. With Hung’s experience both in combat, and in the Pentagon, he will get the job done.”
Cao retired as a captain in the U.S. Navy. He served as a special operations officer for explosive ordnance disposal and diving, according to a biography on his Senate campaign website. Cao ran for a Senate in Virginia in 2024, but lost to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). He previously lost a House election in 2022 to former Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.).
While campaigning for the Senate seat, Cao attributed the military’s recruitment challenges to the Biden administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion polices. During the debate with Kaine, the moderator asked Cao how DEI policies are hurting military recruitment.
“When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want,” Cao replied. “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.”
Cao was referencing a 2022-2023 Navy recruitment effort that featured a sailor who dresses in drag.
Cao also spoke out against the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate that led to the separation of service members who refused the vaccine. After Congress passed the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act directing the Pentagon to rescind the mandate, the administration allowed separated service members to rejoin the military. The Pentagon at the time did not create a new policy for service members who were separated. The Trump administration issued an executive order last month directing the Pentagon to reinstate all service members who were separated and want to rejoin the military.
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20. These specialized soldiers are trained to neutralize enemy nuclear weapons
These specialized soldiers are trained to neutralize enemy nuclear weapons
If such a situation were to arise and we needed a force uniquely trained to tackle that kind of emergency, the President of the United States would call on the Army’s Nuclear Disablement Team, or NDT.
By Blake Stilwell
Posted 21 Hours Ago
Reviewed By Tessa Robinson
0
wearethemighty.com · by Blake Stilwell
Everyone who served in the military is familiar with the U.S. Army’s most elite forces: the Rangers, Green Berets and even Delta Force. Each has unique capabilities and a unique mission, and they are highly trained to execute those missions. It’s no surprise that the United States has called on them to conduct operations in some of the most dangerous scenarios – but what about a doomsday scenario?
Luckily, outside of Hollywood, there hasn’t been a rogue nuclear weapon or a sabotaged nuclear plant (at least, none that we were ever told about). But if such a situation were to arise and we needed a force uniquely trained to tackle that kind of emergency, the President of the United States would call on the Army’s Nuclear Disablement Team, or NDT.
NDTs are really specialized soldiers. So specialized, in fact, that there are only three teams who do this kind of work. Army mumbo jumbo describes the NDT mission as “contributing to the nation’s strategic deterrence by staying ready to exploit and disable nuclear and radiological Weapons of Mass Destruction infrastructure and components to deny near-term capability to adversaries.”
What this means in the actual English Americans speak in everyday life is that these teams are standing by in case anyone, be it a country, a terrorist or some other jerk decides to come try to nuke an American city. With the help of Army Special Forces, they will forcibly enter an area to disable nuclear weapons or a weapons component before the enemy can effectively use it. They’re basically a nuclear bomb squad who are always training for the worst of nightmare scenarios.
Each of the three NDTs are stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and are composed of Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction officers, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, a Nuclear Medical Science officer and a Health Physics noncommissioned officer.
Capt. John M. Prevost, an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer from Nuclear Disablement Team 2, told reporters that the NDTS “increase the safety of nuclear infrastructure, enabling freedom of maneuver to the ground component commander and reducing the risk of a potential contamination event.”
By “potential contamination event,” he means the NDTs can prevent nuclear power reactors from being programmed or forced to spew radiation into the air, and keep dirty bombs from blowing up and spreading radioactive material. They can also stop fallout from a nuclear blast from irradiating large parts of the country by ensuring nuclear bombs are prevented from being set off, triggered or otherwise exploding.
In June 2024, the NDTs were specially trained with the 7th Special Forces Group and the 75th Ranger Regiment for a doomsday-like scenario. In that kind of emergency, the Rangers and/or Green Berets would be charged with helping the nuclear bomb squad fight their way into an area where a nuclear weapon is suspected. The nuclear experts would enter this zone wearing nuclear protective gear and respirators, severely hampering their ability to perform in a firefight.
“You’re talking about a potentially radioactive or contaminated environment that they would have to go into, which can be daunting,” Steven Modugno, a spokesperson for the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives Command (CBRNE) told Task&Purpose. “But the teams are self-deployable. They can go in, recon the site, collect samples, and identify them to figure out what materials are there. Like what hazards may be present and if there’s a threat.
Anyone joining the military who thinks they might have a knack for joining the regular bombs squad (called explosive ordnance disposal) might consider stepping up their bomb-defusing goals and learning that craft with weapons of mass destruction.
wearethemighty.com · by Blake Stilwell
21. US Air Force dubs new OA-1K armed crop duster ‘Skyraider II’ ahead of first delivery
US Air Force dubs new OA-1K armed crop duster ‘Skyraider II’ ahead of first delivery
flightglobal.com
Fixed-Wing
By Ryan Finnerty2025-02-28T17:28:00+00:00
The US Air Force has revealed the name of its newest combat aircraft, as the type is poised to begin service.
The service on 27 February said the close air support turboprop being delivered by L3Harris will be known as the “Skyraider II”, hearkening to the single-seat Douglas A-1 Skyraider light-attack platform that served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Officially designated the OA-1K, the Skyraider II is based on the Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster. L3Harris is the systems integrator and prime contractor for the new aircraft, which is designed to provide special operations troops with light-attack and reconnaissance support.
The aircraft was developed under US Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Armed Overwatch programme and will be operated by pilots with the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), which provides rotary- and fixed-wing aviation support to the Pentagon’s commando forces – often in far flung, austere locales.
“AFSOC has enduring global missions,” says Brigadier General Craig Prather, AFSOC’s director of strategic plans, programmes and requirements. “While we don’t expect the Skyraider II to go mix it up with fifth- and sixth-generation fighters, it will provide value to our supported forces globally.”
Source: US Air Force
US Air Force Special Operations Command is preparing to receive its first OA-1K Skyraider II, an Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster militarised by L3Harris to provide close air support and other functions for US commandos
In January, L3Harris told FlightGlobal it had two OA-1K test assets flying from Waco, Texas as part of the effort to secure supplemental type certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The company’s president of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance Jason Lambert said a production line in Tulsa, Oklahoma is assembling operationally-configured aircraft, the first of which L3Harris expects to deliver in the early part of 2025.
AFSOC now confirms it expects the first operational OA-1K to arrive at Hurlburt Field in the coming weeks. Two non-militarised AT-802s were delivered to the air force in 2024 for pilot familiarisation.
Source: L3Harris
L3Harris has been actively flying test versions of the OA-1K for the past year
Current plans call for a fleet of 62 aircraft – a reduction from the original requirement of 75 OA-1Ks, which had been the subject of scrutiny in a 2023 review of the Armed Overwatch programme by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
SOCOM has also received criticism for its choice of a turboprop in the era of precision-guided anti-air missiles, which have proven highly effective against Russian rotorcraft flying low-altitude close air support missions in Ukraine.
Auditors at the GAO also noted that the Armed Overwatch programme’s requirements were developed prior to the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan – a conflict with minimal anti-air threat and a regular need to provide ground forces with fire support in rugged and remote terrain.
However, even as the Pentagon has reoriented toward high-end conflicts with so-called “near peer” adversaries like Russia and China, special operations leaders have affirmed their need for a simple, rugged combat platform that can operate in lower-threat environments without the complex support infrastructure required by modern jet fighters.
“Providing scalable and precision effects is where the Skyraider II will come in,” says Prather. “The Skyraider II could take on missions from the southwest [US-Mexico] border to Africa and create dilemmas to those we are in competition with,” he adds, seemingly referencing the presence of Russian mercenary groups in that continent.
The fielding of the new OA-1K also comes as the air force moves to retire an ageing titan of the close air support mission set – the Fairchild Republic A-10.
Although air force brass have long sought to phase out A-10s and redirect that aircraft’s funding toward procuring more modern aircraft, elected lawmakers in Congress blocked that goal for years. Congress finally relented in 2022 with approval for a modest round of initial A-10 retirements, which began in 2023.
Legislators approved further reductions to the A-10 fleet in the USA’s 2024 defence budget, with retirement of jets deployed in the Indo-Pacific region now ongoing.
Defenders of the A-10 have long fought back against the retirement effort, arguing the durable ground-attack platform offers unique capabilities not replicated by high-end strike fighters like the Lockheed Martin F-35 or F-16.
“Every time there’s a conflict, the A-10 proves itself, but then after the end of the conflict we talk about getting rid of the airplane again,” decorated and now retired A-10 pilot Colonel Kim Campbell told FlightGlobal in 2023.
Now, AFSOC appears to be taking a similar stance with the OA-1K, positioning it as a flexible platform able to fill niches less suited to expensive and complex fighter jets.
“I am excited about the Skyraider II,” says AFSOC commander Lieutenant General Michael Conley. “We are going to have the ability to shape that into something that the rest of the nation might not even know they need right now.”
L3Harris is already looking to expand the capabilities of the OA-1K beyond its original light-attack and reconnaissance roles. That effort includes the possible addition of signals-intelligence-collection sensors and electronic-warfare systems.
These would add to the aircraft’s existing payload of precision air-to-ground missiles, laser-guided rockets, joint direct-attack munition-guided bombs and onboard electro-optical/infra-red sensors.
L3Harris has experimented with the concept of the OA-1K as a rapidly deployable, crisis-response aircraft, demonstrating the turboprop can be partially disassembled in as little as 6h for transport via cargo aircraft.
“We take the wings off, we package it in the back of a [Boeing] C-17 and we can deploy it anywhere worldwide,” Lambert told FlightGlobal in September.
In a January, he also revealed that the company has experienced “huge interest” for the new aircraft internationally. At that time, Lambert said L3Harris had received export approval for the type from the US Department of State for 22 potential overseas buyers, with another 15 countries being reviewed.
The company’s 2022 deal with SOCOM under the Armed Overwatch contract is worth up to $3 billion.
Ryan FinnertyRyan Finnerty is the Americas defence reporter for FlightGlobal.com and Flight International magazine, covering military aviation and the defence industry. He is a former United States Army officer and previously reported for America’s National Public Radio system in New York and Hawaii covering energy, economics and military affairs.View full Profile
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
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