Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Does the law exist for the purpose of furthering the ambitions of those who have sworn to uphold the law, or is it seriously to be considered as a moral, unifying force, the health and strength of a nation?”

– James Baldwin

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

– Kurt Vonnegut

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

– Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy (1959)

1. We are RFA Radio Free Asia.

2. CIA chief Ratcliffe to appoint veteran officer to lead spy operations

3. FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say

4. How the CIA’s ‘Benign Coverup’ After the JFK Assassination Gave Rise to the ‘Deep State’

5. ‘Keep Moving to Survive’: Ukrainians Recount Perilous Retreat From Russian Territory

6. China Explores Limiting Its Own Exports to Mollify Trump

7. What Is the Endgame for Ukraine?

8. A New Era of Undersea Conflict Is Here

9. Don’t Give Up on China’s Democracy Just Yet

10. Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Musk on War Plans

11. Xi Targets Petty Corruption on a Giant Scale to Soothe China’s Masses

12. Why Trump's global transformation might just succeed

13. Opinion Polls: US Voter Support for Ukraine Is Solid, for White House Foreign Policy– Not So Much

14. How Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Leave a Vacuum That China Can Fill

15. ‘How are you going to do that?’ Pentagon scrambles to make Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system a reality

16. Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped

1. We are RFA Radio Free Asia.

We are RFA Radio Free Asia.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/22/we-are-rfa-radio-free-asia/

by SWJED

03.22.2025 at 03:38am

Please watch the short video (it is in English) from two RFA journalists and three Koreans who escaped from the north HERE.

RFA and VOA have had their funding cut and the majority of their outstanding journalists have been furloughed.

This means the US is ceding the information space to China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea.

We are RFA Radio Free Asia.

RFA’s mission is to protect the North Korean people’s ‘right to know’ and ‘freedom of expression.’ We are RFA.

From the RFA Website:

We at Radio Free Asia (RFA) are operating on a reduced basis due to the US government’s funding cutoff on March 15. However, we will continue to provide limited updates through our website and social media. Thank you for your continued interest and support.

A message from an RFA journalist:

As you may have seen in the news, RFA is facing serious operational challenges due to the U.S. government’s funding freeze. While our overseas bureaus, including Seoul, will continue operating for now, most staff at the Washington, D.C. headquarters have been placed on furlough.

As of Friday, March 21, at 5 PM, I will no longer have access to the RFA building or this email account. Any form of volunteer work is also legally prohibited.

2. CIA chief Ratcliffe to appoint veteran officer to lead spy operations

It looks like the Operations Directorate/Clandestine Services will be reinvigorated.

Recall:

During his Senate confirmation hearing on January 15, 2025, CIA Director-designate John Ratcliffe referenced the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA's World War II predecessor, stating:

"It has been said that the CIA's World War II predecessor—the OSS—described its ideal recruit as 'a Ph.D. who could win a bar fight.' This sentiment is the essence of what today's CIA must recapture."

https://nypost.com/2025/01/15/us-news/trump-cia-pick-john-ratcliffe-vows-to-root-out-political-biases-focus-on-threats-from-china/?utm

He emphasized that the agency should embody this fighting spirit while seeking recruits with diverse talents, skill sets, and backgrounds.

CIA chief Ratcliffe to appoint veteran officer to lead spy operations

Ralph Goff, a six-time former station chief, will run human espionage and covert action programs — one of the agency’s most powerful positions.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/jfk-document-cia-coverup-deep-state-conspiracy-58ed97dd?mod=hp_lead_pos4

March 21, 2025 at 4:02 p.m. EDTYesterday at 4:02 p.m. EDT

4 min

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at the entrance of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

By Warren P. Strobel and Ellen Nakashima

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has selected a veteran CIA operations officer who has expressed strong support for Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia to head the spy agency’s clandestine operations, according to seven people familiar with the matter.

Ralph Goff, a six-time CIA station chief who left the agency in October 2023, has accepted Ratcliffe’s offer to be deputy director for operations, responsible for running human espionage and covert action programs, the people said.

The DDO, as it is known with the CIA, is one of the agency’s most powerful positions, and Ratcliffe’s selection of Goff is one of his most significant personnel moves since taking the helm at the spy agency in late January.

Ratcliffe, who during his Senate confirmation process promised to strengthen the CIA’s ability to recruit and run human agents, is also considering changes to the agency’s organizational structure, people close to him say.

Goff served in covert roles in Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, including several war zones, according to his online biography. He also served as the CIA’s chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia and led the agency’s National Resources Division, which gathers information from businessmen and other Americans who have traveled abroad, and attempts to recruit foreigners in the United States to spy for the CIA when they return home.

Follow Trump’s first 100 Days

The CIA declined to comment on Goff’s appointment.

One person familiar with the situation said that Goff and Ratcliffe had developed a close rapport and that Goff has “unassailable” credibility inside the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because Goff’s appointment has not been formally announced.

This person cautioned that although Goff has accepted the job offer, he still has to pass background checks and go through other administrative procedures. The post does not require Senate confirmation.

As head of the CIA’s directorate of operations, Goff would lead the thousands of officers who recruit and run agents globally, including from key adversarial countries such as Russia, China and Iran. He is expected to implement Ratcliffe’s vision of re-empowering the directorate, which some current and former officials say has played a diminished role since a major CIA reorganization conducted under Director John Brennan.

Under Goff, the directorate of operations will be restored to “the most elite and dominant intelligence service in the world,” said a former CIA officer who knows him well.

Goff would replace Tom Sylvester, who has served as DDO since June 2023 and had long planned to finish his career with a final overseas assignment, former officials said.

In a February 2024 CIA podcast, Sylvester — identified only as “Tom” — said he and his team were deeply involved in planning and overseeing U.S. intelligence support to Ukraine following “Russia’s brutal invasion.” That involved intelligence sharing as well as training, he said.

President Donald Trump has been far less supportive of Ukraine than his predecessor, dressing down President Volodymyr Zelensky in public in the Oval Office and suggesting it was Kyiv, not Moscow, that was responsible for the conflict. Trump is pushing for an end to the conflict and briefly withheld U.S. military and intelligence assistance to pressure Ukraine to agree to ceasefire terms.

Since retiring in October 2023 after a 28-year agency career, Goff has praised Ukraine’s battle to fend off Russia’s invasion. According to his LinkedIn page, he traveled to Ukraine earlier this year, where he met Kyiv’s mayor and visited volunteers delivering medical supplies to the city of Sumy, which has been under Russian attack.

Current and former U.S. officials noted that Goff’s new post does not involve making policy on Ukraine or Russia and that the region remains a high CIA priority under Trump’s new strategy.

In an interview with the Cipher Brief, a national security-focused media outlet, following Trump’s election, Goff expressed sympathy for Ratcliffe’s and many congressional Republicans’ view that the CIA’s focus on diversity and inclusion had taken away from its core intelligence-gathering mission.

“They’re not incorrect in that assumption,” he said. “They want to return back to where people are doing the jobs that they were hired, vetted, trained and expected to do.”

correction

A previous version of this article misspelled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's name as Volodomyr Zelesnsky.

What readers are saying

The comments on Ralph Goff's appointment as head of the CIA's clandestine operations reflect a mix of optimism and skepticism. Some commenters appreciate his firsthand experience and support for Ukraine, viewing his appointment as positive news. However, concerns are raised about potential challenges he might face, such as interference from the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, and the broader political environment under the Trump administration. There is also skepticism about his lack of experience in Latin America and the potential influence of other political figures.

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

All comments 24

By Warren P. Strobel

Warren P. Strobel is a reporter at The Washington Post covering U.S. intelligence. He has written about U.S. security policies under seven presidents. He received numerous awards, and was portrayed in the movie "Shock and Awe," for his skeptical reporting on the decision to invade Iraq. Send him secure tips on Signal at 202 744 1312follow on X@wstrobel

By Ellen Nakashima

Ellen Nakashima is an intelligence and national security reporter at The Washington Post. She's been a member of three Pulitzer prizewinning teams, for probing the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the hidden scope of government surveillance. Send her secure tips on Signal at Ellen.626 follow on X@nakashimae

3. FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say

How does this square with keeping America safe? (rhetorical question) – Especially when the attacks on Tesla dealerships meet the definition of domestic terrrorism.

FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say

Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

Fri, March 21, 2025 at 6:11 AM EDT4 min read

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-fbi-scales-back-staffing-101126394.html

FILE PHOTO: The FBI building in Washington

By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The moves, sources said, are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, may be less of a priority under FBI Director Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the effort.

Some sources said the changes will reduce the FBI’s ability to monitor threats posed by white supremacists and militia groups and potentially hamper law enforcement’s ability to disrupt plots. The moves come despite repeated warnings from U.S. officials in recent years that domestic violent extremists present some of the most significant security threats to the United States.

“There is a broader desire I think within the administration to at best ignore data and put their head in the sand and at worst to realign resources away from this battle,” said Jacob Ware, an expert on domestic terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The FBI did not directly address Reuters' questions about the changes, but said it is committed to "protecting the U.S. from many threats including terrorism, violent crime, drug trafficking, and cyberattacks."

"All our work is focused on providing safer communities for our citizens every day," the statement said.

FBI leadership recently transferred agents and intelligence analysts from its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which supports investigations run out of the FBI’s 55 field offices and provides information on domestic threats, according to five sources briefed on the moves.

Two sources familiar with the changes said about 16 people had been reassigned from the section, which would have hundreds of employees if fully staffed. A different source said senior FBI officials have discussed disbanding it entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced.

The FBI has also discontinued a practice of tagging investigations with a connection to domestic terrorism, two of the sources said. The tags were an important tool in helping the bureau identify trends and track relevant probes across the country.

The Trump administration has separately directed the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which investigate domestic and international terrorist threats, to assist in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

Some former officials said that it is not unusual for the FBI to shift resources based on changing threats. Patel has previously vowed to streamline operations at the FBI's Washington headquarters.

More in Politics

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Trump says ‘contract’ being drafted on ‘dividing up’ land in Ukraine war

The Hill

FOCUS ON TESLA ATTACKS

The changes come as the Trump administration has said it will treat attacks at Tesla dealerships and charging stations as domestic terrorism, an effort nearly certain to involve FBI investigators.

Protests have erupted in recent weeks against Tesla CEO Elon Musk for his leading role in Trump's effort to slash the federal government. At least three people have been accused in separate cases of using Molotov cocktails to set fire to Tesla property.

The changes at the FBI also follow Trump’s decision to pardon nearly all roughly 1,600 people charged with participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. The leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups were released from prison as part of Trump's sweeping grant of clemency.

Trump-appointed officials at the Justice Department have said they are reviewing FBI agents' handling of those cases for potential misconduct.

The FBI stepped up its focus on domestic terrorism following the killing of a counterprotester at a 2017 white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters kicked those efforts into high gear.

The FBI said in a 2023 report that it had about 2,700 active domestic terrorism investigations, about half of which were related to the Capitol riot, up from roughly 1,000 in 2020.

That report identified white supremacists as posing the most consistent threat, though FBI officials have warned that violent extremists are often motivated by a mix of ideologies.

The FBI's previous efforts have drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers and Trump allies like Patel, as part of a broader claim that the FBI improperly targeted conservatives.

Three former FBI agents testified to Congress in 2023 that FBI officials pressured agents to boost the number of cases tagged as domestic terrorism. A Republican-led panel alleged the tagging of cases was used to advance a political narrative favorable to Democrats, a claim a senior FBI official denied.

A spokesperson for Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, a Trump ally who led that panel, called the removal of tagging for domestic terrorism cases a "great step in the right direction of returning the FBI to its primary crime fighting mission."

Two of the FBI witnesses testified that they received financial support from a group founded by Patel.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Alistair Bell)

4. How the CIA’s ‘Benign Coverup’ After the JFK Assassination Gave Rise to the ‘Deep State’

Working to protect sources and methods led to the conspiracy theory of the 'deep state?"

Excerpts:

Two months before the assassination, the CIA had photographed Oswald in Mexico City, where he tried to get visas from the Cubans and Russians.

What the CIA was trying to protect by distancing itself from the photo was its vast gauntlet of surveillance of Soviet and Cuban diplomatic missions in Mexico City. The surveillance included a microphone in a coffee-table leg in the Cuban ambassador’s office, “six base houses commanding the entrances to target embassies, two mobile photosurveillance trucks and three agents trained in photo surveillance on foot.”

In the decades to come, the CIA would attempt again and again to hide from Kennedy investigators far darker truths about how it operated overseas, including its wielding of terrorism against enemies, its use of Mafia hit men and attempts to rig foreign elections.

But the revelations came out anyway, and each time they did, the flames were fanned of a once fringe belief of a secret Washington cabal. It metastasized into an idea so compelling that it would become the central plank of an American presidency 60 years later.

“The Kennedy Assassination and the conspiracy that grows out of it are at the root of what people now refer to as the ‘deep state,’ ” said Steven Gillon, a Kennedy historian.

One of President Trump’s most consistent narratives since his first term has been that a conspiracy of intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, and media cohorts have tried to usurp the voters’ will and thwart him, including by drumming up false prosecutions. “With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,” he said at an event sponsored by the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023. “I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces.”

...

By 2017, Trump was in his first term in office but already mired in accusations from the intelligence community that his campaign was assisted by Russia. His claims that a deep state was trying to undermine him—and by extension the American public—began to merge with theories about Kennedy’s assassination.

Trump’s promotion of the idea of a deep state has converted many on the right to the belief that the government played a role in Kennedy’s assassination, said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” a book debunking the conspiracy theories associated with JFK. “It’s an article of faith that what happened to Trump is a ‘deep-state’ operation,” said Posner, describing the thinking, adding: “That’s what the deep state does. It eliminates and destroys presidents it doesn’t like.”

How the CIA’s ‘Benign Coverup’ After the JFK Assassination Gave Rise to the ‘Deep State’

President Kennedy’s killing planted the seeds for the belief that shadowy bureaucrats could be conspiring against the public

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/jfk-document-cia-coverup-deep-state-conspiracy-58ed97dd?mod=hp_lead_pos4

By Joel Schectman

Follow and Brian Whitton

March 22, 2025 9:00 am ET

The day after Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, an FBI agent showed up at the door of Oswald’s mother with a cutout of a man’s image, believing it was her son or an associate.

I got it from the CIA, the agent told her, according to a newly released Central Intelligence Agency document. In doing so, he blew off the one request the agency had made—to keep its name out of it—and helped set off decades of secrets, contortions and coverups that are still being unraveled today.

A cache of 82,864 pages that the Trump administration released this week related to the Kennedy assassination lay bare the extent to which the CIA tried to hide what it knew from the very day Kennedy was shot, and how its clumsy efforts fed dangerous suspicions about the agency and the nature of the American government.

As waves of hysteria shook the country in the aftermath of the assassination, the story of the photo took on a life of its own. Why was the CIA monitoring Kennedy’s assassin just months before he killed the president? As a series of investigations proceeded, CIA officials would give wildly divergent accounts of the photo, leading a small part of the public to consider an idea that had previously been nearly taboo in America: What if elements of the government itself conspired to take over?

Two months before the assassination, the CIA had photographed Oswald in Mexico City, where he tried to get visas from the Cubans and Russians.

What the CIA was trying to protect by distancing itself from the photo was its vast gauntlet of surveillance of Soviet and Cuban diplomatic missions in Mexico City. The surveillance included a microphone in a coffee-table leg in the Cuban ambassador’s office, “six base houses commanding the entrances to target embassies, two mobile photosurveillance trucks and three agents trained in photo surveillance on foot.”

In the decades to come, the CIA would attempt again and again to hide from Kennedy investigators far darker truths about how it operated overseas, including its wielding of terrorism against enemies, its use of Mafia hit men and attempts to rig foreign elections.

Castro’s revenge

The CIA photo shown to Oswald’s mother led to public revelations about other surveillance the agency had of the assassin’s contact with Cuban officials in Mexico City. That led to more questions about CIA operations against Cuba. Just two months before the assassination, Castro warned that if the U.S. tried to kill “Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” Could Castro have been trying to get revenge?

The CIA later revealed it had engaged in what it described as a “benign coverup” concealing from JFK investigators its efforts to topple the Cuban government. Agency officials would later say it wanted to lead investigators toward the “best truth” that Oswald was a lone gunman with no foreign backing; CIA officials feared candor about its own activities could have led investigators to the conclusion that Castro had killed Kennedy out of revenge, triggering a catastrophic conflict with the Soviet Union.

By the 1980s, polling showed that most Americans believed Washington had a role in the Kennedy assassination, according to Gillon, the Kennedy historian. One of the most popular theories was a dark mirror of American actions in Cuba: that the CIA had worked in concert with defense contractors, anti-Castro groups and Mafia figures to kill Kennedy.

One document showed that CIA operatives, with the help of the Mafia, agreed to try to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro for $100,000. Photo: Duke University Rubenstein Library/Gado/Getty Images

In the past, most American conspiracy theories pointed to foreign nations secretly trying to subvert the U.S. But revelations that the CIA was capable of deploying Mafia hit men to other countries to kill a president in a neighboring country fueled concerns that it could be trying to do so at home. “It’s not a huge intellectual leap that if we are doing this abroad we might do it on our own shores as well,” said Jonathan Earle, a Louisiana State University historian who has studied the growth of American conspiracy theories.

That theory went mainstream in Oliver Stone’s 1991 blockbuster “JFK,” whose protagonist declares “President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government.” The character exhorts viewers that the proof is tucked away in the government’s hidden files. “All these documents are yours. The people’s property. You pay for it.”

At the end of the film, a text screen calls on viewers to contact their lawmakers to demand the release, and many did.

The following year, Congress passed the JFK Records Act mandating that assassination related materials be released by 2017. In the intervening decades the CIA repeatedly argued that some of the releases would hurt its operations. As documents were released with heavy redactions, they seemed to confirm suspicions among the public that the government was still hiding something about Kennedy’s killing.

Kevin Costner in a scene from the 1991 film ‘JFK.’ Photo: Warner Bros/Everett Collection

By 2017, Trump was in his first term in office but already mired in accusations from the intelligence community that his campaign was assisted by Russia. His claims that a deep state was trying to undermine him—and by extension the American public—began to merge with theories about Kennedy’s assassination.

Trump’s promotion of the idea of a deep state has converted many on the right to the belief that the government played a role in Kennedy’s assassination, said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” a book debunking the conspiracy theories associated with JFK. “It’s an article of faith that what happened to Trump is a ‘deep-state’ operation,” said Posner, describing the thinking, adding: “That’s what the deep state does. It eliminates and destroys presidents it doesn’t like.”

Write to Joel Schectman at joel.schectman@wsj.com and Brian Whitton at brian.whitton@wsj.com

If you want to provide news tips or documents on any subject to reporters at The Wall Street Journal, you can do so using the instructions below.

5. ‘Keep Moving to Survive’: Ukrainians Recount Perilous Retreat From Russian Territory

‘Keep Moving to Survive’: Ukrainians Recount Perilous Retreat From Russian Territory

Soldiers hiked through forests and swamps with drones overhead and mines underfoot

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keep-moving-to-survive-ukrainians-recount-perilous-retreat-from-russian-territory-feabc8ea?mod=latest_headlines

By Isabel Coles

Follow and Ievgeniia Sivorka | Photographs by Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Updated March 22, 2025 12:09 am ET

SUMY, Ukraine—As the pocket of territory held by Ukrainian troops in Russia shrank around him, Ukrainian Sr. Sgt. Zenon Dashak began plotting a way out.

For weeks, few supply vehicles could get through to the troops in Kursk province as Russian advances had brought the roads into the range of explosive-drone teams—leaving Ukrainian stocks so low that some soldiers melted snow for drinking water.

Dashak, a drone operator, began studying maps. With roads under fire, he and his men would face a perilous hike through forests and swamps.

It was a harsh end to a seven-month operation that shocked Moscow and the West with the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would later declare that the operation had achieved its aims by catching Russia off guard, drawing in Russian forces that could have been deployed in Ukraine and seizing hundreds of prisoners.

Critics have questioned whether it was worth the troops and equipment expended, but that debate was of little interest to the Ukrainian soldiers on the ground in Kursk who now had a new aim of their own: getting out alive.

Street scenes in the front-line city of Sumy, the main logistical hub for Ukraine’s Kursk operation.

Assaults by Russian and North Korean troops had whittled away at the land held by Ukrainian troops for several months. By the end of February, Russia had choked off supply routes from Ukrainian territory, targeting any movement along the main road with explosive drones guided by fiber-optic cable, which prevented Ukraine from jamming them electronically. It became almost impossible to rotate troops in and out. Vehicles attempting to deliver ammunition and provisions were picked off.

Situation in Kursk

Ukrainian forces in Russia

Russian forces in Ukraine

Kyiv

UKRAINIAN FORCES

AS OF SEPT. 10

Rylsk

current

Ukrainian

positionS

Kazachya Loknya

Sudzha

KURSK REGION

Sumy

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

20 miles

20 km

Note: As of March 20

Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

“We couldn’t hold on any longer,” said a senior sergeant in a mortar unit known by the call sign Mesnik.

Other units had already begun to withdraw when Mesnik and his mortar crew embarked on the arduous walk back to Ukraine. Their U.S.-supplied M120 mortar launcher was too heavy to carry so they destroyed it and planted mines before leaving. Russian soldiers were so close they could hear them over the radio, he said.

The situation was already critical when Dashak’s unit heard that Russian forces had broken through Ukrainian lines by sneaking through a gas pipe on March 8. Ukraine’s army said it had thwarted the attempt, but Dashak and other soldiers said it triggered panic. Some field commanders told their men to withdraw before receiving orders from senior officers.

“If I hadn’t done it, the boys would likely have become prisoners of war—or worse,” said platoon commander Sgt. Serhiy Savchuk, who was later reprimanded.

Before leaving, Dashak and the two other members of his unit destroyed everything they couldn’t take with them, including a generator, drones and antennas. They were about to leave when a drone strike nearby caused a gas canister to explode, throwing Dashak off his feet and searing the skin on his left side. It was time to go.

Sgt. Serhiy Savchuk, 35, a member of the Owl drone unit.

At the Owl unit base in Sumy, Ukraine.

They set out from their position in the village of Kazachya Loknya, sticking to the cover of treelines. When they encountered other groups of retreating Ukrainian soldiers, they were careful to pick a different route to avoid drawing attention. As drone operators themselves, they knew how to spot targets and used those skills to avoid being seen.

A Ukrainian soldier they met warned them a group of Russian soldiers was no more than 500 yards away. To avoid them, they would have to break cover and walk across open fields in full view of Russian reconnaissance drones. As they trudged on, a strike hit the place they had stopped to rest moments earlier. “We had to keep moving to survive,” Dashak said.

Light was ebbing and there was still a long way to go. If moving in the daytime was difficult, night was worse. Darkness made it impossible to spot first-person-view drones, or FPVs, overhead—or mines underfoot. And drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras would still be able to see them.

An elderly Russian woman pointed the way to a field hospital in Sudzha, the main town held by Ukraine, where they spent the night in a basement. Other soldiers covered themselves in branches or bedded down in abandoned homes.

China Explores Limiting Its Own Exports to Mollify Trump

Chinese officials weigh Japan’s 1980s strategy—restraining exports while charging more—for products such as electric vehicles or batteries

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-explores-limiting-its-own-exports-to-mollify-trump-dcd347b7?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Lingling Wei

March 21, 2025 9:00 pm ET

An auto-parts plant in Suqian, China. Photo: FANG DONGXU/Zuma Press

During Donald Trump’s first presidency, China was determined not to yield to American pressure over trade like Japan did in the 1980s.

Now, faced with an even greater economic assault from the second Trump presidency at a time of sluggish growth at home, Beijing may take a page from Tokyo’s playbook—on one specific issue it sees as in its own interest.

Like Japan decades ago, China is considering trying to blunt greater U.S. tariffs and other trade barriers by offering to curb the quantity of certain goods exported to the U.S., according to advisers to the Chinese government.

Tokyo’s adoption of so-called voluntary export restraints, or VERs, to limit its auto shipments to the U.S. in the 1980s helped prevent Washington from imposing higher import duties.

Honda vehicles at Yokohama port in Japan. Photo: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg

A similar move from Beijing, especially in sectors of key concern to Washington, like electric vehicles and batteries, would mitigate criticism from the U.S. and others over China’s “economic imbalances”: heavily subsidized companies making stuff for slim profits but saturating global markets, to the detriment of other countries’ manufacturers.

President Trump has already imposed cumulative new tariffs on China of 20%, on top of those levied in his first term and largely maintained by President Joe Biden. No negotiations have yet taken place between Beijing and Washington. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent late last month raised concerns over China’s market-distorting practices during his introductory call with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, positioned to be Xi Jinping’s chief trade negotiator with the Trump administration.

According to the advisers to the Chinese government, it is partly because of the potential U.S. pressure on this issue that China’s economic officials are exploring emulating aspects of the Japanese approach. The Xi leadership has indicated a desire to cut a deal with the Trump administration to head off greater trade attacks.

Japan first agreed to limit exports of cars in 1981. Exports fell by about 8% from the previous year as a result. Doug Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and author of “Clashing over Commerce,” notes that the restraints were particularly binding in the mid-1980s. But by the early 1990s, the VER was no longer needed, in part because by then Japanese companies were building cars for the U.S. market at local transplant operations.

President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in 2019. Photo: kevin lamarque/Reuters

One reason Japan was willing to limit exports was that its companies could charge a higher price per car on a smaller number of cars sold, Irwin says. The price of an average Japanese car rose by about $1,000, roughly $3,500 in today’s dollars, and Japan also began to export larger, higher quality cars as a result of the restraints.

Similar to Japan, the Chinese advisers say, Beijing may also consider negotiating export restraints on EVs and batteries in return for investment opportunities in those sectors in the U.S. In some officials’ views, they say, that might be an attractive offer to Trump, who at times has indicated an openness to more Chinese investment in the U.S. even though members of his administration firmly oppose it.

Beijing’s economic imbalances aren’t new but have been made worse in recent years by Xi’s policy of encouraging factories to pump out more goods, regardless of domestic demand, that can keep China’s economy running in the event of severe Western sanctions or an outright conflict.

The Biden administration repeatedly warned the Chinese leadership that output by China’s enormous manufacturing machine had gotten too large for the world to absorb. In the final year of Biden’s presidency, the U.S. raised tariffs on Chinese steel, EVs and other products.

“The insistence of the Trump administration on using tariffs as a tool of trade policy might make China receptive to voluntary export restraints,” Irwin says.

The export-restraints discussion doesn’t mean Beijing has any intention of changing its manufacturing-centric policy, the Chinese advisers caution. Rather, they say, some officials view it as an option Beijing can use in negotiating with the Trump team and even help China move up the value chain.

Cargo containers are seen at Xiasha Port freight yard in Hangzhou, China. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

As Irwin points out, the premium charged by Toyota and other Japanese exporters back then gave them the profits to finance an upgrade from smaller, cheaper vehicles to larger, more profitable cars that competed more directly with their American counterparts. That is the kind of upgrade Beijing would hope for if it follows the Japanese path.

However, Irwin and other economists also note that it would be all but impossible to rebalance all of U.S.-China trade through VERs. China’s $295 billion trade surplus with the U.S. is the widest of any U.S. trading partner.

Another obstacle is the difficulty of enforcing VERs, particularly when Chinese companies export to the U.S. from third countries including Mexico and Vietnam. In addition, Trump likes the revenue from tariffs and may find the idea of VERs unappealing.

And Beijing has yet to find out what Trump wants. He has directed federal agencies to assess the economic relationship with China. The review, due in early April, will then initiate a process within the administration for evaluating how to address trade issues with China.

“If I were the Chinese, I’d put VERs on the table or at least have them in my back pocket,” says Arthur Kroeber, founding partner and head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Would agreeing to limit the quantity of goods exported to the U.S. help China to blunt tariff attacks from the Trump administration? Join the conversation below.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

7. What Is the Endgame for Ukraine?

It is interesting how the Korean peninsula (then and now) continues to have an influence over events in Eurasia and around the world. My bias aside, this article illustrates half a dozen historical parallels for consideration and comparison.

As an aside, this shows why we should be thoroughly studying history and must be an integral part of any national security studies program and professional military education.

What Is the Endgame for Ukraine?

History offers a range of precedents for what an agreement with Russia could look like—and how bad the consequences might be.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/what-is-the-endgame-for-ukraine-1747564f?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

Ukrainian servicemen return from captivity during a POW exchange between Russia and Ukraine, March 19, 2025. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

March 21, 2025 10:56 am ET

President Trump is pushing to end the war that has been raging in Ukraine for more than three years. While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accepted the U.S. proposal for an unconditional 30-day cease-fire to pave the way for peace negotiations, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hasn’t agreed so far. Talks between the U.S. and Russia are set to continue in the Middle East. Zelensky’s European allies, who are determined to prevent Kyiv’s capitulation, will also play a major role in shaping the outcome.

It is far from clear what a Russia-Ukraine agreement would look like. But a look at key precedents from the 20^th century suggests a range of possible outcomes. A cease-fire deal could lead to another, more successful Russian invasion; the establishment of a Ukrainian puppet government under Russian influence; a hostile but relatively peaceful coexistence; or maybe even a Ukrainian comeback. It all depends on which lessons from history turn out to be the right ones.

The Baltic States. In 1939, just before World War II began, the Soviet Union signed a treaty with Nazi Germany dividing Eastern Europe between them. The U.S.S.R. did not invade Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia immediately when the war started. Rather, it forced them to accept “mutual assistance” agreements, in which Moscow promised to respect their sovereignty in exchange for military bases and pledges of neutrality.

Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, seated, signs the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in Moscow, Aug. 23, 1939, watched by Joseph Stalin, second from right, and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, third from right. Photo: German War Department/ASSOCIATED PRESS

But the Soviets had no intention of honoring the bargain. In June 1940, Moscow accused the Baltic states of violating the neutrality pledge by cooperating with each other and occupied the small countries nearly overnight, with little resistance. They were annexed into the U.S.S.R. weeks later. Hundreds of thousands of Balts were deported to Siberia in following years, and much of the bureaucratic and intellectual elite exterminated.

Today, Baltic officials and analysts openly compare Trump’s embrace of Putin’s Russia to the Nazi-Soviet pact—a betrayal that would come at the expense of Ukraine’s independence, and perhaps their own. “That’s the lesson for Ukraine today: you will be slaughtered, so don’t give up. It’s better to die on the front lines than to be executed afterward,” said Artis Pabriks, Latvia’s former minister of defense and foreign affairs.

Vichy France. When France’s military collapsed in 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain, a World War I hero, took charge of the government and asked Germany for an armistice. More than half of the country—the north and west, including Paris—was placed under direct German military occupation, a sliver was annexed outright, and the southeast remained unoccupied and nominally independent, with a temporary capital in the spa town of Vichy. While technically neutral, Vichy France collaborated with Nazi policies, including the deportation of Jews to death camps.

A division of Ukraine could follow a similar pattern if Russia succeeds. “Much like Hitler occupied militarily only part of France yet politically controlled the entire country, Putin seeks to establish a Vichy regime in Kyiv,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome.

Marshal Philippe Pétain, left, who collaborated with Germany as leader of Vichy France, shakes hands with Adolf Hitler, October 1940. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Historian Thomas Gomart believes Putin would go much further than that, pointing out that it was the elected French parliament rather than the Nazis who installed Pétain: “The Russians seek the destruction of the Ukrainian state, and therefore they want to punish the political elites who fought against them—which wasn’t the case with Germany and Vichy.”

The other big difference, of course, is that while France’s military collapsed in six weeks, Ukraine’s is still fighting Russia after three years. “To get to Vichy, you first need to lose the war—which, for Ukraine, isn’t the case,” said former French diplomat François Heisbourg.

Finlandization. Unlike the Baltic states, Finland rejected Soviet ultimatums in 1939. The Red Army invaded, but after several months of fierce Finnish resistance Stalin agreed to sign a peace treaty, in which Finland ceded key territory but retained its independence. War resumed the following year, and a new “friendship and mutual assistance” treaty was signed in 1948. During the Cold War, Moscow allowed the country to develop a market economy but wielded a veto over its government by regularly hinting at military intervention, a policy known as “Finlandization.” President Urho Kekkonen, who held office for 26 years, could sideline potential rivals simply by arranging an editorial in Pravda.

Putin’s Russia has already tried a version of this approach in Ukraine, supporting authoritarian President Viktor Yanukovych as he steered the country away from the West. After Yanukovych was ousted by popular protests in 2014, Russia moved toward asserting direct control of Ukraine by annexing Crimea and invading the Donbas region.

Finlandization, often misunderstood as prosperous neutrality, was proposed as a model for Ukraine by Henry Kissinger in 2014, though he later changed his mind. Finland’s current President, Alexander Stubb, considers the very term “an insult,” adding, “It’s a period in our history which I feel personally very uncomfortable with. We had to compromise some of our values, but not our independence.” Today Finland is a member of the European Union and NATO—and one of the European nations most hostile to Russia.

The Korean Armistice. In the Korean War, American forces fought for the government of President Syngman Rhee in the south of the country against the Communist north and its Chinese and Soviet allies. In 1953, after three years of fighting, an armistice divided the country roughly along the 38^th parallel. Rhee opposed the agreement, considering it a sellout, but was pressured to fall in line by President Eisenhower’s threat to cut off American military support.

American and South Korean soldiers at the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea, October 2022. Photo: anthony wallace/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President Trump’s special adviser David Sacks invoked this precedent when he hailed the recent cutoff in American assistance to Ukraine. But there is a key difference: Trump has ruled out any security guarantees to Ukraine in case Russia re-invades. In Korea, by contrast, tens of thousands of U.S. troops and a bilateral security treaty are ensuring the peace, said Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The treaty is the teeth behind the armistice that forced deterrence.”

Trump’s return to the White House has raised fears in South Korea about the reliability of that American support. “More and more people are starting to question the validity of the security guarantees from the U.S.,” said Eric Ballbach, Korea fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “It leads to a situation where we now have strong support for South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons, a debate that is no longer on the fringe anymore.”

Cyprus. Russia justified its invasions of Ukraine since 2014 by the need to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Turkey offered a similar rationale for its invasion of Cyprus in 1974, saying it needed to protect the well-being of the ethnic Turkish minority after a Greek-inspired coup on the island. Unlike Ukraine, Cyprus did have a history of communal bloodshed. Half a century later, Turkey continues to occupy the northern third of the island, while virtually all Greek Cypriots fled to the south, which remains internationally recognized as the Republic of Cyprus. Peace talks over the past half-century have proved fruitless, and Nicosia is the world’s only divided capital city.

The Republic of Cyprus has long treated direct trips to and from northern Cyprus as illegal, and forbidden travelers from visiting the Turkish-occupied area without first going through official Cypriot immigration. Ukraine adopted a similar policy after Russia occupied Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014. Yet despite its contested borders, Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, which is also Ukraine’s aspiration.

A Turkish tank in the Turkish-occupied section of Nicosia, Cyprus, July 1974. Photo: Associated Press

“Turkey thought what we have is fine, we don’t need the entire place, we don’t need to deal with resistance, and everything that flows from that,” said Stathis Kalyvas, a professor of government at Oxford University. “But my concern is that Russia in Ukraine would not be satisfied with that kind of outcome, and would seek to essentially control the entire country.”

Croatia. Croatia’s declaration of independence in 1991 triggered a war with the Serbian-led remainder of Yugoslavia. In December 1991, former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance negotiated a halt to the fighting and U.N. forces were deployed to maintain the peace. More than a quarter of Croatia’s territory, however, remained under the control of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a proxy statelet sponsored by Belgrade—not unlike the Russian-controlled enclaves in Donbas after 2014.

The cease-fire allowed the battered Croatian army to recover, while Serbian proxy forces in Krajina decayed. In 1995 Croatia broke the cease-fire, launching two offensives that succeeded in reclaiming most of its territory; the rest was won in negotiations in 1998.

Retired Croatian Lt. Col. Goran Redžepović, now a military commentator, warns that Ukraine would not have an easy time replicating the Croatian success. “The [Krajina] Serbs had a lot of weapons, a lot of tanks, but it was a peasant army that didn’t have the manpower—and at the end it didn’t receive support from Serbia,” recalled “It’s not the same conditions as in Ukraine.”

Still, the Croatian precedent is one of the reasons why Russia insists on limiting the Ukrainian military to as little as one-tenth of current levels and curtailing Kyiv’s access to modern weapons. “Another Vance plan is what both Russia and Ukraine fear,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who heads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “They both fear that the cease-fire will provide time for the other side to rebuild and restart the war.”

The sun sets behind the Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv. Photo: Andreas Stroh/Zuma Press

Appeared in the March 22, 2025, print edition as 'What Is the Endgame for Ukraine?'.

8. A New Era of Undersea Conflict Is Here

Excerpts:

Third, hybrid actions can be met by covert, and often deniable, countermeasures. While few want to return to the high stakes tension of undersea competition during the Cold War, continuing to reinvigorate the technical, operational, and organizational mandate of the American submarine force and cognate oceanographic teams and its growing fleet of undersea, uncrewed systems is necessary when adversaries violate international laws and norms.

Enhanced deterrence will require focused U.S. action.

More work needs to be done to disentangle various U.S. government entities charged with securing undersea cables. One challenge for American policymakers is the sheer number of federal entities with stakes in the game. Just to oversee regulation and licensing, the U.S. government operates Team Telecom with the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security as core members. Attribution, deterrence, and defensive preparations require active roles for the intelligence community and the armed services. This whole government approach tends to languish unless a clear lead actor is assigned, wielding the authority of the chief executive.

We believe the National Security Council should be given greater authority and capacity to implement stronger policies and ensure accountability. The Navy, working closely with the Coast Guard and the intelligence agencies, should lead operationally. Other agencies and departments should serve as interagency advisors.

A New Era of Undersea Conflict Is Here

Enhanced deterrence will require focused American action.

By Peter Dombrowski, the William B. Ruger chair of national security economics at the Naval War College, and Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution.

Foreign Policy · by Peter Dombrowski, Bruce Jones

Science and Technology

March 21, 2025, 12:01 AM

Undersea cables are having a moment. In November, breaks in two data cables in the Baltic Sea garnered media attention far beyond what problems with undersea critical infrastructure normally generate. These apparent acts of sabotage came after similar damage to subsea cables in the Baltic Sea a year earlier and damage to three undersea cables in the Red Sea in February 2024. On the other side of the globe, Taiwan’s Coast Guard have been investigating whether a ship owned by a Hong Kong company cut one of the small number of fiberoptic cables connecting the island nation to the outside world.

The United States has vital stakes here: Four U.S. firms account for a growing share of the ownership in undersea data cables and the traffic they carry. These firms—including Meta and Google—are the crown jewels in the U.S. technology sector. The American financial sector, another vital source of American prosperity, is heavily reliant on undersea cables. Every day, financial transactions worth more than $10 trillion travel along the seabed.

The U.S. military also relies heavily on these undersea data flows, with the vast majority of command-and-control information flowing on private undersea cables.

As international security experts are fearful that an era of undersea conflict is upon us, there is a compelling case for the United States to galvanize international action to protect what author and historian Aaron Bateman calls the “soft underbelly of American power.”

Within several decades of the emergence of undersea communication cables, states sought to protect their own and interfere with those of their opponents including during the Spanish America War and, more famously, World War I. But the volume of data flowing through today’s cables and its central role in intelligence and command and control far exceeds that of previous eras of conflict. Given globalization and the information revolution, the challenge is orders of magnitude greater.

Some experts argue that there is an ongoing hybrid warfare campaign on Western infrastructure waged by Russia, China, and nonstate actors seeking to disrupt commerce and undermine Western economic power. While China is widely understood as the “pacing challenge” facing the United States, it is Russia that has the most highly developed capacity to threaten undersea infrastructure. Russia has recently made attacks on seabed infrastructure a core objective of its modernized naval strategy. Russia’s navy is resuscitating its already sophisticated submarine fleet by developing special purpose boats focused on seabed warfare.

Russia’s words and investments have been backed by action: Its survey ships have been spotted near European energy seabed energy grids and windfarms, and its submarines have been detected operating near some of the most crucial undersea infrastructure in the world. According to the Finnish government, Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, which is hundreds of vessels strong and was developed to avoid energy sanctions, may be involved in cable cutting maneuvers in the Baltic Sea.

China’s threat to the undersea infrastructure appears more limited, at least doctrinally. Its co-dependence on global financial flows suggests a limited interest in more widespread attacks in circumstances short of war. And wider attacks, beyond the Asian littoral (on the financial infrastructure of the West or the European energy grid), likely remain beyond the scope of China’s plan—at least, without Russian help.

Yet in two recent cases of damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, the ships involved have both Chinese and Russian ties. When the Balticconnector gas pipeline was damaged in October 2023, the culprit was found to be the Hong Kong registered Newnew Polar Bear; but the firm that owns the ship has ties to Russia, and it was sailing in close proximity—for hundreds of miles—with a Russian hydrographic ship, the Sevmorput, a nuclear-powered cargo ship owned by state agency Rosatom.

Emerging technologies are introducing new dynamics to geostrategic competition with uncertain implications for protecting and threatening the undersea ecosystem. While the proliferation of undersea robotics may make cable laying and maintenance easier, uncrewed vessels may also provide the tools necessary to interfere with cables or tap into cables for intelligence purposes. In the coming years, the adoption of SMART (Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) cables raises concerns that data generated by sensors can be tapped or abused, making information assurance critical. How these contradictory possibilities play out over time are unknown and very risky.

Moving beyond fiberoptic cables, the gray zone risk extends to the seabed energy grid and undersea mining. Increasingly the seabed is crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines, and by power cables sending electricity from areas of abundance to areas where demand is high or driving the operation of offshore facilities. Today researchers estimate that there are approximately 750,000 miles of submarine power cables, and industry observers believe that figure may double over the next decade. As efforts to mine the deep seabed for rare earth materials advance, the commercial and strategic stakes in the seabed will rise further.

The immediate implications of the recent attacks tied to Russia and China may have been exaggerated in some circles. But it is well past time to address the real and growing vulnerabilities of the globe’s undersea infrastructure.

There are many impediments to responding to states and nonstate actors that intentionally cut a submarine cable. One difficulty is timely attribution; accurate attribution is necessary to name and shame, initiate appropriate legal action, and, most important, punish the offender. Even when the malefactor can be identified, quick responses to ships interfering with submarine cables is challenging, especially in the open ocean. Protecting hundreds of thousands of miles of cables is highly unlikely given the number of vessels even theoretically available. The lack of clear legal authority in international waters limits how a state or private firm can punish hostile vessels. What is more, the favorite tool of the West in recent years—sanctions—may not work here. Russia already labors under extensive sanctions and may be impervious to further punishments; small states subject to undersea aggression by Chinese actors may have limited capacity to sanction. Even more powerful states victimized by cable cutting may be hesitant to act given well-known attribution difficulties.

Still, three steps can be taken to enhance deterrence by reducing vulnerabilities and increasing costs to hostile actors.

The first deterrence strategy is denial through improved resilience. Whatever the effects an offending state or nonstate entity is hoping to attain by interfering with a submarine cable, the ability to swiftly repair a break, and to maintain service through rerouting, will mitigate the impact of the break and thus limit the reward for aggression. Even if the adversary is interfering with cable as part of a larger and longer campaign, efforts to restore service may be useful as well.

Second is “deterrence by detection”: greater visibility can help to “deny deniability.” As James Bergeron, political advisor to NATO Allied Maritime Command, has noted: “If a malefactor is going to try to harass, undermine or clandestinely attack offshore infrastructure … the main thing we seek to achieve is that they cannot get away with it. Instead, they will be spotted, the cameras will be snapping, the underwater sensors will be monitoring and there will be a signals trail of liability.”

Better detection will require fast-tracking the adoption of advanced technologies, quantum sensors collecting data for processing, underwater robotic systems, and the application of artificial intelligence to sensing data. Each can be used to enhance what we might call deterrence by detection. But more reason for the United States and its Western partners to move quicky: Whichever country manages to master emerging undersea technologies will have first mover advantages over its competitors. It will be able to harvest more data and interfere, undetected and undeterred, with undersea critical infrastructure by means unavailable to other states.

Third, hybrid actions can be met by covert, and often deniable, countermeasures. While few want to return to the high stakes tension of undersea competition during the Cold War, continuing to reinvigorate the technical, operational, and organizational mandate of the American submarine force and cognate oceanographic teams and its growing fleet of undersea, uncrewed systems is necessary when adversaries violate international laws and norms.

Enhanced deterrence will require focused U.S. action.

More work needs to be done to disentangle various U.S. government entities charged with securing undersea cables. One challenge for American policymakers is the sheer number of federal entities with stakes in the game. Just to oversee regulation and licensing, the U.S. government operates Team Telecom with the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security as core members. Attribution, deterrence, and defensive preparations require active roles for the intelligence community and the armed services. This whole government approach tends to languish unless a clear lead actor is assigned, wielding the authority of the chief executive.

We believe the National Security Council should be given greater authority and capacity to implement stronger policies and ensure accountability. The Navy, working closely with the Coast Guard and the intelligence agencies, should lead operationally. Other agencies and departments should serve as interagency advisors.

Coordinated international steps will also be needed. The United States does not have the resources, the mandate, nor the responsibility to protect the globe’s critical infrastructure. Every major economy is dependent on these cables, and the 1,400-plus land-based stations that connect the undersea grid to the terrestrial one are based in over 180 countries—all the countries bordering a sea or ocean, from Angola to Yemen and beyond.

Concrete action is more likely to come from a coalition of the willing, accepting important roles for entities like the International Maritime Organization and the International Telecommuncations Union. The G7 should be a focal point; it was under the first Trump administration that the G7 established the Clean Networks Initiative focusing on protecting undersea cables from Chinese intelligence gathering. Since then, the G7 formed a dedicated working group to advance this agenda; unfortunately, the limited investments in necessary resilience and domain awareness have been disappointing.

At the recent Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Charlevoix, Canada, the G7 created an informal task force comprised of members of the Nordic-Baltic 8 and the G7; that mutually reinforcing group brings together many of the countries with the greatest stakes in and capacities for maritime security, and could be a coalition of the willing relevant to undersea cables. Moving swiftly is key. The West has a potential first mover advantage in all things undersea, but both China and Russia are hot on its heels.

Foreign Policy · by Peter Dombrowski, Bruce Jones

9.Don’t Give Up on China’s Democracy Just Yet

I was not expecting this theory to be resurrected regarding China.

Of course this conclusion could also apply to the US as well. Almost every great American president has something similar (in the American context, e.g., "A house divided...")

In a 2023 speech to the CCP’s Central Committee, Xi said, “A fortress is most easily breached from within. The only ones who can defeat us are ourselves.” Why has Beijing in the early 2020s pushed the fiction that it is already a democracy? Why has Xi talked up China’s “whole-process people’s democracy”? Why does the CCP harp on the defects of democracy in Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere around the world? Could it not be because of the rising volume of demands for democracy at home? Modernization theory may be a coarse tool, but all told, the dial still points to the simple conclusion that openness and democracy in China should not be written off yet.

Don’t Give Up on China’s Democracy Just Yet

Scholars are increasingly making the case for reviving modernization theory.

March 21, 2025, 3:00 PM

By Neal E. Robbins, a freelance journalist and former foreign correspondent based in Cambridge, England.

Foreign Policy · by Neal E. Robbins

China
East Asia

In the 1950s, social scientists popularized an idea that would go on to shape geopolitics: modernization theory, or the belief that economic development leads to the growth of liberal democracy. The theory was powerfully supported by the second and third waves of global democratization in regions such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, and it drove international support for China’s opening up from the late 1970s. Western expectations for China’s trajectory were boosted by the collapse of the communist bloc and Francis Fukuyama’s thesis that the triumph of liberal democracy was “the end of history.”

China seemed to be on track into the early 2000s. The theory’s predictions inspired U.S. policy from Bill Clinton (“[trade] will liberate the potential of its people”) and George W. Bush (“economic freedom creates habits of liberty”) to first-term Barack Obama, who went from supporting China’s rise to seeing it as a trade and security threat. In China, democratic ideals had simmered well before the bloodily suppressed Tiananmen protests in 1989 and were renewed after it.

In 2008, human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, later a Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-authored a manifesto challenging one-party rule, while a debate raged among Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elites on how to deepen political reforms, such as by expanding consultation with experts and the public.

But hopes for China’s opening up—raised in part by the thriving examples of neighbors such as South Korea and Taiwan, which had shifted from authoritarianism to democracy decades before—were soon shattered. Liu landed in jail and eventually died on medical parole. Even before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, Beijing’s relations with liberal democracies worsened amid its rising authoritarianism, tightened surveillance, stricter limits on freedom of expression and information, and trade disputes. They hit new lows with crackdowns on Hong Kong and Xinjiang and friction with Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

Today, many analysts have forsaken modernization theory, accusing it of false promises that led the West to feed a tiger, especially after Xi ended presidential term limits in 2018. But even as a prominent index has found global democracy worse off than at any time in since its first ratings, some scholars have stayed the course. This group of academics believes the theory should not be discounted, pointing to evidence that democratic stirrings—while overlooked—are alive and well in Chinese society, despite Beijing’s best efforts.

Demonstrators take part in a pro-democracy rally. A protester at the front carries a yellow umbrella and walks past a sign with a picture of Xi Jinping that reads "Enemy of Freedom."

Demonstrators take part in a pro-democracy “Stand With Hong Kong” rally in Pasadena, California, on June 12, 2021.Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images

Half a dozen Chinese pro-democracy activists pose with signs that read "Go on strike, remove dictator and national traiter Xi Jinping" and "Free China."

Chinese pro-democracy activists gather to commemorate the one-year anniversary of China’s White Paper movement, seen in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 29, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“The evidence continues to show there is a steady expansion of democratic and liberal values and norms within the Chinese society,” said Sungmin Cho, vice director of the Sungkyun Institute of Chinese Studies in Seoul. “Although change of the political system has not happened yet, that does not deny the causal process of modernization theory.”

Cho’s views capture the beliefs of many academics who continue to support the theory. Joseph Yingnan Zhou, a political scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso, said that “economic development changes people’s attitudes … in a more democratic direction,” making them “less accepting of authoritarianism and dictatorship.” In his research, Zhou has found that public opinion—particularly in economically developed provinces of China, rather than in the middle class at large—has increasingly favored democracy and values such as freedom of speech, equality, and the rule of law. Still, he acknowledges that “absolute levels” of support for those values remain relatively low throughout the country.

Wu Yu-shan, a political scientist at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, also trusts the theory’s predictions that “more urbanization, more educated young people, and contact with the international society increasing … lead invariably to pluralization and demand for democracy.”

Wu thinks that China has simply taken a detour from reforms of past decades, including efforts to set up a more consensus-driven political system, greater legal and speech rights for citizens, and an internet uncontained by the Great Firewall. The tide had already begun to turn in the early 2000s under external pressure from pro-democratic color revolutions in post-Soviet states and internal hardliners in the CCP.

Dozens of people have dinner at a rooftop restaurant at night with the water and lit-up high rises of the Shanghai skyline behind them.Dozens of people have dinner at a rooftop restaurant at night with the water and lit-up high rises of the Shanghai skyline behind them.

How to Get Chinese Elites to Support Democracy

It may be in their own self-interest.

An illustration of a blooming plum branch shows a statue of Chairman Mao at left with workers walking across a bridge before the scene turns into one of growth and modernity with city skyline plane and construction cranes.An illustration of a blooming plum branch shows a statue of Chairman Mao at left with workers walking across a bridge before the scene turns into one of growth and modernity with city skyline plane and construction cranes.

What Produced the China Miracle?

A powerful new book challenges conventional wisdom about the role of the state in Beijing’s rise.

Wu believes we “have to patiently wait” for the return of Chinese reformers. In his view, this is particularly important for Taiwan, where China’s political direction is an existential issue as Beijing continues to threaten unification by force. Hopes for China’s eventual transformation power the ideology of a pro-unification faction within Taiwan’s opposition that believes that Beijing will one day democratize, making peaceful unification possible. Even so, both Taiwan’s ruling party and the opposition tend to treat democracy in China as a distant ideal rather than a near-term political solution.

“In principle, Wu is right,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “If China becomes a real democracy, with free flow of information and scope for open debate about history, national identity, national interests, etc., [Beijing] may or may not stick to the CCP’s post-1949 claim that Taiwan is a sacred territory of China, and the issue may go away.” But, he added, “there is practically no chance of China becoming democratic … while Xi is alive and in power.”

Xi Jinping slips a paper ballot into a red box as he stands in front of a wood-paneled wall. Xi wears a black suit and navy blue tie as well as a nametag.

Chinese President Xi Jinping casts his ballot during a vote on an amendment to abolish presidential term limits, seen in Beijing on March 11, 2018.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Even modernization theory buffs like Cho forecast at best a moderation of authoritarianism in the near term. Because China lacks the basic elements of opposition forces like those that stepped in when Taiwan and South Korea democratized, “top level institutional change [is] not going to happen anytime soon,” Cho said.

Many scholars remain less optimistic. For Chenggang Xu, a political economist at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, such a change will never happen under the CCP. In his view, the theory misunderstands the nature of Beijing’s regime. “China is not authoritarian,” he said, but a “communist totalitarian regime” like North Korea, where there is no freedom of assembly or speech.

In Xu’s view, it is easy to misinterpret Beijing’s earlier reforms. China’s decision to open up, he said, stemmed from CCP leaders’ realization that Soviet reforms had failed—leading to the bloc’s collapse in 1991—due to their insistence on economic centralization and exclusion of private business. So the CCP allowed private enterprise at the local level and gradually loosened controls, which helped the private sector prosper. As China developed, this looked like steps toward democratization, but that was a naive “illusion” soon shut down by the CCP, which never loosened its monopoly over power, resources, and ideology, Xu said.

Dozens of people mill about on a street at night. In the middle stands a cardboard cutout of Chinese President Xi Jinping holding a yellow umbrella. The lights of mid-rise buildings and street lights shine in the background.

A cardboard cutout of Chinese President Xi Jinping with a yellow umbrella, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement, is surrounded by activists in Hong Kong on Oct. 28, 2014.Alex Ogle/AFP via Getty Images

Once China reached superpower status, Xu said, it “worried a lot more about the so-called color revolutions,” which suggested “that the modernization theory would prevail.” The CCP thus reasserted firm control over the private sector, rejected calls for constitutionalism, and further limited free speech.

According to Xu, these policies account in part for the current economic downturn, which is shrinking China’s middle class, leading to the flight of entrepreneurs, and undermining globalization and relationships with the West. But these moves also ensure that economic development by “growing the so-called middle class would not automatically lead to democracy,” Xu said.

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Indeed, Chih-Jou Jay Chen, director of Academia Sinica’s institute of sociology, emphasizes that most Chinese people, including higher-educated and young people, support Beijing’s authoritarian rule. Public opinion polling in China is inconsistent and difficult to do accurately, but he said that surveys show that most Chinese people think Taiwan’s democracy “is a joke,” while Western democracies are “chaotic.” “They think that way from their heart,” he said. “Nobody forced them.” This stance is partly a product of strident nationalistic sentiment driven by Beijing-directed education and supported by the country’s internet firewall.

The lack of interest in democratic institutions may stem in part from lack of exposure. “In a real sense, they don’t understand what democracy entails,” Zhou, the political scientist at the University of Texas, said. This may have to do with China’s promotion of itself as a “Chinese-style democracy,” a concept based on a 2005 white paper on democracy. Despite backsliding on reforms, China’s leaders claim that they understand citizens’ needs through public consultation overseen by local and national “people’s congresses”—unelected, rubber-stamp forums—while at the same time downplaying freedom of expression, the media, and judiciary as key parts of a democratic society. In 2022, the CCP even announced a “Chinese-style modernization theory,” which essentially reiterates the 2005 policy under a new name.

Half a dozen protesters stand outside at night, bundled in coats against cold weather. A woman near the front holds up a blank sheet of white computer paper; others in the background do similar. All protesters wear surgical or cloth masks.

Protesters hold up pieces of blank white paper as they march during a protest against China’s strict zero-COVID measures, seen in Beijing on Nov. 27, 2022.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Yet the seeds of democracy in China—even if often drowned out—may be more important than they first appear. Public opinion in China matters to the CCP. In the 2022 white paper protests, public anger was pointed not only at repressive COVID-19 policies, but at CCP rule. Xi responded to the demonstrators’ demands with lightning speed. The protesters, mostly middle-class people and students in major cities, are widely credited with bringing about the end of China’s draconian pandemic measures. They could be a rehearsal for future demonstrations.

As Zhou acknowledged, the middle classes in China “have assets and they have their houses. They have a lot vested in the system.” The vast majority of household wealth is in real estate, where a collapsing bubble has not yet bottomed out. If China’s economy—a major source of the CCP’s legitimacy—collapses suddenly, as happened in the Soviet Union, “a large segment of China’s population will be on the side of real political change,” he said.

Consider, for instance, Argentina and other South American countries, where substantial development followed by economic crisis led to the end of authoritarian rule. “If you have a population that is more accepting of democratic values, like what happened in South Korea and Taiwan, then the outcome of a democratic country is more likely,” Zhou said.

Over time, rising popular demand for rights and empowerment may be “liberalizing or even democratizing”—or the CCP could just continue to crack down, said Joseph Wong, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. While the party may be “resolutely anti-democratic” now, said Wong, “these are choices that the regime is going to eventually have to make.”

In a 2023 speech to the CCP’s Central Committee, Xi said, “A fortress is most easily breached from within. The only ones who can defeat us are ourselves.” Why has Beijing in the early 2020s pushed the fiction that it is already a democracy? Why has Xi talked up China’s “whole-process people’s democracy”? Why does the CCP harp on the defects of democracy in Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere around the world? Could it not be because of the rising volume of demands for democracy at home? Modernization theory may be a coarse tool, but all told, the dial still points to the simple conclusion that openness and democracy in China should not be written off yet.

Foreign Policy · by Neal E. Robbins

10. Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Musk on War Plans

I doubt the briefing was fake news. It was just exposed.

Excerpts:

Over the past 24 hours, my colleagues’ report that Elon Musk was set to be briefed on the military’s top-secret plans in the event of war with China has shaken Washington. It even seemed to take President Trump by surprise.

Musk’s planned visit to a secure room in the Pentagon was called off after The Times published its article on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

This morning, Trump denied the briefing had been planned. But he also made clear that he thought Musk should not have access to such war plans.

“Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said. He added, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”

I called Eric Schmitt, a Times national security reporter, who kindly stepped into one of the few Pentagon hallways where you can actually get cell service, and asked him to bring us up to speed.

On Politics: Musk’s Washington

Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Musk on War Plans

“You wouldn’t show it to a businessman,” President Trump said in denying that Elon Musk was to be briefed on top-secret plans in the event of war with China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/musk-trump-pentagon-china.html

Elon Musk in Washington this month.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By Jess Bidgood

March 21, 2025

You’re reading the On Politics: Musk’s Washington newsletter. A close-up look at how Elon Musk is trying to transform the federal government.

Over the past 24 hours, my colleagues’ report that Elon Musk was set to be briefed on the military’s top-secret plans in the event of war with China has shaken Washington. It even seemed to take President Trump by surprise.

Musk’s planned visit to a secure room in the Pentagon was called off after The Times published its article on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

This morning, Trump denied the briefing had been planned. But he also made clear that he thought Musk should not have access to such war plans.

“Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said. He added, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”

I called Eric Schmitt, a Times national security reporter, who kindly stepped into one of the few Pentagon hallways where you can actually get cell service, and asked him to bring us up to speed.

JB: Let’s start at the beginning. What did you learn yesterday about what was originally planned?

ES: The Pentagon was scheduled to give a briefing to Musk this morning on the classified war plan for China. We were told it was going to be in this secure conference room called the Tank, which is typically where you’ll have very high-level military briefings with members of the Joint Chiefs or senior commanders. The idea that a civilian like Elon Musk, who’s not in the chain of command, would be getting any briefing in the Tank — much less on highly sensitive war plans for China — was certainly unusual, and it was alarming to some people.

The administration has pushed back on your reporting. But you and the rest of the team are standing by the story.

We’re absolutely sure this is what was scheduled. There were a couple of things that gave us confidence, besides our sourcing being very strong. If Musk were really coming to the Pentagon for a more casual discussion, why would you hold it in the Tank? What’s more, the main briefer for the originally scheduled meeting was the four-star admiral in charge of the Indo-Pacific area, Samuel Paparo — and he would be the wartime commander in the event of a conflict with China.

What ended up happening this morning?

Musk arrived at about 9, on schedule. He went up to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office for what we were told would be about a 30-minute meeting. There were still tentative plans to have a Tank meeting at 9:30. Then it turned into 9:45 and 10. We were seeing top military officials moving between Hegseth’s office, on the third floor, and the Tank, which is one floor below. Shortly after 10, all the aides outside the Tank dispersed, and we were told that the Tank meeting with Musk was definitely off.

We saw Musk leave — he ignored our questions — and later, President Trump appeared in his office with Hegseth and again said our story wasn’t true. But we learned that, after our story published, the White House basically scrapped the original briefing, the war plan briefing, and went to Plan B, which was the more vanilla version.

In his office today, Trump did something new: He acknowledged that Musk has potential conflicts of interest when it comes to China. What did you make of that?

It was kind of revealing in terms of how Trump thinks about Musk’s role, because he praised Musk and how valuable an adviser he is. But then he stopped, just to point out pretty clearly where Musk’s influence ends, and what he should not be able to be doing. He seemed to be drawing some boundaries around what Elon Musk could or could not do, which he really hasn’t done very much at all up to this point.

In his remarks, Trump gave some indication that he didn’t seem to know that this briefing, as it was originally proposed, had been offered to Musk. He said he called his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Hegseth to ask about the reports when he saw them. It’s not like he was clued in ahead of time.

What does this episode tell us about the White House, the Pentagon and Elon Musk?

It’s raised questions about the relationship between Musk’s operation and the Pentagon. Secretary Hegseth has really bent over backward to publicly welcome the DOGE staff in. Yesterday, he posted a short video saying how DOGE, working with Defense staffers, had identified $580 million in contracts that they could cut. So he’s really tried to embrace the spirit of Musk and trying to win over Musk. For what purpose, we don’t really know. Is it to seriously help him fulfill his pledge to cut? Is it to protect some of the programs he might want to preserve?

It also raises questions about the communication between an inexperienced defense secretary, the White House and Musk. Are they all on the same page?

Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Image

A Tesla collision center in Las Vegas on Tuesday.Credit...Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun, via Associated Press

MEANWHILE on X

Not every C.E.O. can do this

After he left the Pentagon, Musk turned to X to promise vengeance against people who damage Tesla vehicles in protest. My colleague Kate Conger, who is tracking how he uses his account as a megaphone, explains.

Trump Administration: Live Updates

Updated March 21, 2025, 11:55 p.m. ETMarch 21, 2025

The posts — like much of what Musk does now — raised questions about his government role and how it intersects with his position as the leader of several major companies. While plenty of business leaders might demand an investigation into property destruction at their company, Musk may actually be able to influence law enforcement so that it prosecutes Tesla protesters.

It’s a level of power other executives simply don’t have. But Musk, through his proximity to the president, commands the extraordinary ability to issue federal directives, like demanding that federal workers send a weekly list of their accomplishments or that they return to a federal office instead of working from home.

Musk also re-shared a message from Trump that said “terrorists” had attacked Tesla. “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump had written.

And Musk posted a video in which he said, “If you read the news, it feels like, you know, Armageddon. I can’t walk past the TV without seeing a Tesla on fire,” and he re-shared other posts calling for investigations into the funders of protests against Tesla.

Musk also called for investigations into whistle-blowers who had leaked information about his Pentagon visit. “They will be found,” he wrote.

— Kate Conger

Image

Brad Schimel, Musk’s preferred candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election.Credit...Jovanny Hernandez/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via USA Today Network

BY THE NUMBERS

$100

That’s how much Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering to Wisconsin voters who sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges” or refer others to sign it, according to a report by my colleague Theodore Schleifer.

It’s a revival of an unusual tactic Musk deployed during the presidential election, when he offered voters $47 if they pledged their support for the First and Second Amendments.

The tactic could help increase conservative voters’ awareness of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election on April 1, while also helping collect data on the voters most likely to turn out.

The Musk ally overseeing DOGE: ‘Steve is like chemo’

Speaking of that $47-per-voter reward: The man who came up with it, Steve Davis, is the subject of an important profile by Theodore, Kate and another colleague, Ryan Mac.

Davis was the 14th employee of SpaceX, and then led Musk’s Boring Company. (His side projects over the years have included opening a frozen yogurt shop and serving on the board of a nonprofit dedicated to teaching about Ayn Rand.) Now, he’s essentially in charge of DOGE’s day-to-day operations.

He and his partner, who is working on cost-cutting at the General Services Administration, have set up a base of operations on the agency’s sixth floor in Washington, guarded by a full security detail, three agency employees said.

“Steve is like chemo,” Musk said before Trump’s inauguration. “A little chemo can save your life; a lot of chemo could kill you.”

The Trump Administration’s First 100 Days

DOGE: Top Senate Democrats asked the internal watchdogs of more than a dozen government agencies to investigate job cuts carried out at the direction of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency operation.
Top-Secret China War Plans: Trump rejected the notion that Musk should be given access to the plans for a potential military conflict with China, even as he denied a report that such a briefing had been planned to be held at the Pentagon.
Law Firm Bends: The deal between Paul Weiss and the White House was causing concern among the broader legal community that large law firms were capitulating to President Trump’s demands instead of fighting them in court.
Jan. 6 Lawsuits: The Justice Department made an unusual effort to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Government Science Data: Vast quantities of climate and environmental information have been removed from official websites in the past months. Scientists are trying keep it available.
Campus Free Speech: Trump and state politicians are pushing new laws and policies that crack down on curriculum, protests and speakers.
Attacks on Houthi Targets: The U.S. military continued a wave of attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen as part of what American officials said was an effort to stop the militant group’s attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

How We Report on the Trump Administration

Hundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters responded to some of the most common questions.

11. Xi Targets Petty Corruption on a Giant Scale to Soothe China’s Masses

China's version of DOGE? Instead of fraud, waste, and abuse, it is corruption (of course fraud is corruption too).

Xi Targets Petty Corruption on a Giant Scale to Soothe China’s Masses

Campaign snares over 500,000 low-level state personnel—known as ‘flies and ants’—for graft affecting ordinary citizens

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/xi-targets-petty-corruption-on-a-giant-scale-to-soothe-chinas-masses-2dd7b306?mod=latest_headlines

By Chun Han Wong

March 21, 2025 10:00 pm ET

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is battling petty corruption through a nationwide campaign that has swept up more than half a million low-level officials over the past year, as Beijing grapples with rising public resentment over a sagging economy.

Communist Party enforcers are targeting grassroots graft from kickbacks for public contracts to bribes for medical treatment in a renewal of Xi’s popular assault on corrupt “flies” and “ants”—low-level bureaucrats and state workers—whose misconduct affects ordinary citizens.

Such energetic enforcement is pushing Xi’s war on corruption to new levels of intensity, more than a decade after he launched it to burnish his image as a man of the people and secure the party’s grip on power. Since Xi became leader in 2012, party inspectors have disciplined more than 6.2 million people for offenses ranging from corruption to bureaucratic inaction.

The latest campaign is part of China’s response to social reverberations from broad economic challenges—including a real-estate slump and high rates of youth unemployment—that have sapped consumer confidence, stoked unrest and fueled grumbling over Xi’s stewardship of the world’s second-largest economy.

“Punish the ‘greed and corruption of flies and ants,’ and give the masses a greater sense of fulfillment,” Xi said early last year as he ordered the party’s top disciplinary body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, to curb grassroots graft.

Party inspectors proceeded to root out what they call “unhealthy tendencies and corruption issues that occur close to the masses.” Authorities punished 530,000 people and sent 16,000 of them to prosecutors for criminal proceedings in 2024. These probes drove up overall disciplinary cases to record levels last year, when the party penalized 889,000 people.

The offenses have included bribery, abuse of power and the misuse of public funds meant for school meals, pensions, medical insurance and rural development. The party also ramped up pressure on bribe-givers, opening investigations against 26,000 people last year for offering payoffs and inducing graft, a 53% increase from the year before.

The CCDI’s official newspaper said the crackdown reflects the party’s commitment to sustaining its “flesh-and-blood ties with the people” and ward off threats to its legitimacy. Curbing petty corruption “is a major task that affects the foundations of the party’s governance,” the newspaper said in a commentary this month.

“People may grumble about high-level officials enriching themselves, their families and their cronies, but ordinary citizens are likely to have a more visceral reaction to corruption when they are personally affected,” said Andrew Wedeman, a professor at Georgia State University who studies corruption issues in China.

Beijing has faced simmering unrest fueled by economic grievances. China Dissent Monitor, a platform run by U.S. rights group Freedom House, tracked an increase in protests last year driven in part by disgruntled workers and home buyers, with more than 2,400 incidents from January to September—up 16% from the same period in 2023.

China’s property market is struggling to recover from a prolonged slump. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Many local governments, whose coffers have been depleted by wasteful investments and the loss of land-sales revenues, are scrounging for funds to pay vendors and run public services.

The CCDI has claimed initial success in its petty-graft crackdown, showcasing the results in official disclosures and state media. In January, state television aired a four-part documentary, “Fighting Corruption Is for the People,” that depicted how authorities penalized officials for abusing powers and embezzling funds.

One featured case was in the northeastern city of Changchun, where officials at a primary school were found to be taking kickbacks from a catering company in return for maintaining a long-term business partnership. The company gave more than 700,000 yuan—equivalent to around $97,000—in kickbacks between 2010 and 2019, including more than 230,000 yuan to the school’s logistics director, Qi Shiguo.

“I infringed upon children’s interests in having meals and infringed upon parents’ interests,” Qi said in an interview for the documentary. “I searched my soul and felt very ashamed.”

Xi’s fly-swatters have also gone after local officials accused of misappropriating resources meant for social programs, including rural revitalization, medical insurance and elderly care.

A village official in Shanxi province was punished for fraudulently claiming more than 200,000 yuan in poverty-relief funds by registering relatives as poor households. The party expelled the official in September and handed the case to prosecutors.

Inspectors found money meant for school meals had been misappropriated. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

The CCDI’s top official, Li Xi, said the fight against petty corruption was addressing citizens’ concerns and helping social stability. He promised to keep the crackdown going for two more years.

“The people have personally felt the care and concern from the party center and General Secretary Xi Jinping around them,” Li said in January. “They have become more supportive and trusting of our party.”

Xi’s relentless disciplinary purges have helped him consolidate power and tighten control over a vast bureaucracy. Though he declared in 2018 a “crushing victory” over corruption, party enforcers have gone on to slay more high-ranking “tigers” and swat more flies. The CCDI said it opened probes last year against 92 “centrally managed cadres,” or senior officials, whose appointments are vetted by the party’s top personnel department. It is the highest annual tally disclosed so far during Xi’s rule.

Xi has signaled that the purges are central to his vision of a continuous “self-revolution” that keeps the party potent and pure. The risk, however, is that the crackdown also reveals how corruption remains widespread despite the constant cleansing.

“Hunting tigers allowed Xi to position himself as a populist attacking corrupt enemies of the people,” said Wedeman, the Georgia State University professor. “But the tiger hunt has dragged on for so long that I suspect the appeal of retributive justice has now worn thin. It thus might make sense to start ‘squashing ants.’ ”

The CCDI launched its crackdown on petty graft in April 2024, with a commitment to “tear openings, lift lids and dig up roots.” CCDI inspectors fanned out across China to supervise the effort, directly investigating 3,430 cases of low-level graft last year.

“While grassroots-level corruption is small, the evil is widespread and deep,” the CCDI’s official magazine said. “The accumulation of ‘one bite here, another bite there’ can add up to something quite shocking.”

The crackdown has fallen heavily on the rank and file. Some 741,000 people on the two lowest tiers of administrative rank as categorized by the CCDI were disciplined in 2024, accounting for 83% of the total number of punished personnel. The number of such “ordinary cadres,” rural and enterprise workers as well as other personnel penalized last year marked a roughly 48% jump from the 2023 total.

The misuse of public funds has also hit pensions. Photo: Andy Wong/Associated Press

Authorities have also sharpened scrutiny on what they call hedonistic behavior. Nearly 66,000 people were punished last year for breaching rules on taking or giving gifts and expensive specialty goods, more than double the 2023 total. The number of people penalized for improperly dining on public money as well as mishandling subsidies and welfare handouts also rose sharply last year.

In October, Beijing also ordered a yearlong effort to curb corruption in the funeral-services industry. The issue drew widespread attention last summer after the grieving mother of a 3-year-old child that died of cancer was reportedly billed 13,800 yuan for flowers in the vigil room.

Some local governments pressed the campaign’s populist messaging by touting their success in recouping embezzled assets.

In February, state media said party enforcers in the southern region of Guangxi had returned assets worth 1.66 billion yuan to the masses over the past year, while promoting the disbursement of more than 6.5 billion yuan in unpaid subsidies and other handouts.

Party inspectors in the inland megacity of Chongqing, meanwhile, said they recovered about 1.3 billion yuan in economic losses from grassroots graft over the past year. The city’s top discipline inspector, Song Yijia, promised to achieve more in the year ahead.

The goal, Song said, is to “let the masses feel a greater sense of fulfillment, a more sustainable sense of happiness and a sounder sense of security.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

12. Why Trump's global transformation might just succeed

Not a retreat but a radical overhaul.

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Hopefully we will be stronger when we get to the other side of the disruption. I am still trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Excerpts:

Trump’s global tariff increases and trade wars will have far-reaching implications, signaling the potential end of the US as a faithful consumer market, challenging the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and questioning its commitment to protecting global sea lanes.

American democracy promotion, never a consistent priority, is now without even rhetorical commitment. While the US has long backed autocrats, Trump’s acceptance of strongman rule extends to adversaries.

His recent characterization of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator while avoiding such language for Russian President Vladimir Putin shows a deliberate loosening of ideological constraints.

Additionally, the US has long been averse to international law, refusing to ratify the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Yet, it has traditionally played a central role in upholding basic global legal frameworks, with Europe often supporting its efforts.

Now shunning Europe, Washington’s acceptance of border changes by Russia and Israel signals a growing respect for force, whether from allies or adversaries. China, Iran and others are taking note, and may soon strongly mirror the US’s use of economic and political pressure, reducing the autonomy of smaller countries.

Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the foreign policy establishment does not indicate an American retreat from global affairs but rather a radical overhaul. Washington is shedding the post-World War II and post-Cold War neoliberal order it created, characterized by multilateralism, in favor of a more confrontational, transactional approach based on unilateral strength.

The erosion of institutions is another mark of the end of America’s “unipolar moment” and a return to a more volatile and unpredictable era of global affairs.

Why Trump's global transformation might just succeed - Asia Times

Trump’s dismantling of foreign policy establishment is not a US retreat from global affairs, but rather a radical overhaul

asiatimes.com · by John P Ruehl · March 22, 2025

Since returning to office in January 2025, Donald Trump has aggressively pursued a radical reshaping of US foreign policy.

In early March, the State Department terminated foreign assistance programs supporting political opposition and regime change in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, deeming them no longer in the US “national interest.” Trump also reversed the Biden administration’s agreement with Cuba, after it released 553 prisoners, to ease sanctions on the country.

In February, the government issued an executive order dissolving the Inter-American Foundation, which had long promoted economic and community-led development in Latin America.

The African Development Foundation is also slated to be eliminated under the executive order, while AFRICOM, the US military command for Africa, could be next.

Trump’s sweeping cuts extend to global initiatives like the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the US Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and US support for political prisoners worldwide.

Facing a divided opposition, a largely compliant GOP and key loyalists in power, Trump’s teardown of the foreign policy establishment is well underway.

In place of the US-led multilateral order, he is embracing a blunt, America First, transactional approach to international affairs centered on military threats, economic coercion through tariffs and sanctions, and stricter immigration policies—stripped of the usual lip service to human rights.

One of Trump’s first priorities has been a more aggressive crackdown on unauthorized migration. Weeks into his term, his administration began transferring undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, and while migrant and advocacy groups challenged this action, in March a federal judge “expressed doubts toward those challenging the federal policy,” according to a New York Times article.

Now, alleged Venezuelan gang members are being sent to El Salvador under a detention agreement with Trump ally El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, while Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras have also agreed to accept third-party nationals, under the pressure of tariffs being imposed and other economic measures.

Trump is also seeking greater control over strategic infrastructure abroad. In March, a consortium led by US firm Blackrock acquired both Panama Canal ports in a US$19 billion deal, underscoring the role of the private sector in realizing his goals.

Chinese state-run media criticized the Hong Kong-based seller, and labeled the move as “economic coercion.” With Chinese entities removed from the canal, Trump has increasingly hinted at possible military action to secure even broader control over the Panama Canal. In his first term, Trump floated the idea of sending private military companies to Venezuela to topple President Nicolas Maduro, a tactic that could resurface.

Tensions with NATO allies have played out publicly, undermining the transatlantic alliance that has been a crucial component of the US-led global order, with Trump wielding tariffs and even threats of annexation to pressure partners.

Trump is also using US aid as leverage to highlight the dependence of partner countries, like shutting off intelligence-sharing and military aid to Ukraine, one of the several pressure tactics used to push Kyiv toward peace talks with Russia.

Elon Musk, in turn, briefly hinted at disabling Starlink services in Ukraine, vital for the country’s military communications, before walking back his comments. This pattern of signaling intent is common among Trump allies—before the March 14 executive order was issued to force Voice of America to shut down, Musk publicly called for its closure in February.

To continue with his overhaul, Trump must dismantle much of the entrenched civil service and foreign policy bureaucracy, which he struggled with during his first term. Career officials, including some Republicans like John McCain, resisted his agenda through leaks, delays and policy changes.

Their efforts were complemented by the GOP’s disdain for the civil service, which has shifted increasingly left in recent decades. In the final months of his first term, Trump issued Schedule F, an executive order reclassifying certain career positions as political appointments, making them easier to dismiss, before Biden rescinded the order when he took office in January 2021.

Dismantling a decades-old political apparatus is no simple feat. Since World War II, Washington has built a vast ecosystem of NGOs, think tanks and development agencies that shape US foreign policy and diplomacy.

Even after 9/11, as President George W Bush leaned heavily on hard power with the launch of the Global War on Terrorism, his administration also introduced initiatives like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), to maintain international goodwill while waging unpopular wars.

These programs, alongside organizations like the Peace Corps, the US Trade and Development Agency and others mentioned previously, were all repurposed by various administrations, awarded lucrative contracts, and had close ties to policymakers. Over time, a revolving door of agencies, contractors and policymakers has reinforced and expanded this system, consolidating funding and influence.

Until 2006, USAID’s website openly stated, “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States,” with nearly 80% of USAID contracts and grants flowing to US firms.

By 2018, of the $48 billion in official development assistance (ODA), 21% went to governments, 20% to nonprofit organizations, 34% to multilateral organizations and 25% elsewhere.

Despite reaching nearly $80 billion in 2023 under the Biden administration, ODA still accounted for just 1.17% of the federal budget. Trump’s efforts to undermine ODA may not just be limited to cutting its spending but also extend to dismantling the core institutions that have driven American foreign policy for decades.

Now, in his second term, his purge of the civil service is far more aggressive. After labeling institutions like USIP and the Inter-American Foundation as politicized and aligned with Democratic priorities, Trump has made it harder for Democrats to justify billions of dollars for projects abroad—especially given longstanding concerns over ODA’s efficiency.

In 2015, the acting deputy inspector general flagged USAID’s “chronic, systemic weaknesses,” citing poor oversight, weak risk management and human capital issues.

By 2017, as Trump intensified scrutiny, the Carnegie Endowment reported that USAID “lacked programmatic focus” and found both the State Department and USAID were overstretched, with little evaluation of their effectiveness. Aid often went to corrupt governments, was too small to make an impact, and failed to give Washington meaningful leverage.

USIP, originally designed for conflict resolution when introduced in 1984, has increasingly been viewed by critics as a vehicle for nation-building. Similarly, AFRICOM, established in 2007 to promote US national security interests in Africa, has turned its focus toward counterterrorism, with limited results. Aid recipients also face restrictions, often required to purchase goods and services from donor countries like the United States.

Other areas of ODA, such as global media outreach, promote a more traditional approach favored by Democrats and established foreign policy experts, have also lost their strategic edge as rival powers have undercut their effectiveness.

US-backed media outlets like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have seen their influence wane amid competition from alternative international networks like Al Jazeera, RT and China’s state-run media.

These competitors have reshaped the global information sphere, while decentralized information and social media platforms have proven more effective at reaching audiences.

Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has demonstrated the effectiveness of direct infrastructure development investment, offering countries tangible benefits in exchange for strategic concessions, such as port access for Chinese ships. Russia and Israel, in contrast, have shown how unilateral military force can be used to advance foreign policy objectives.

Trump views America’s lingering military and economic dominance as key tools for reasserting US power in a changing global order. His more aggressive military stance and mercantilist economic approach prioritize coercion over multilateralism, seeking immediate and concrete gains in the national interest.

While previous administrations invested in steady economic and diplomatic maneuvering, Trump’s strategy emphasizes swift tariffs, threats and direct pressure to drive markets and provoke immediate reactions—an approach unpalatable to the ingrained culture of the current foreign policy bureaucracy.

If successful in reshaping American foreign policy, Trump will force a departure from Washington’s historical promotion of free trade. Former presidents like Bill Clinton, Bush and Barack Obama all reduced tariffs. While Biden eased some with the EU, he raised them on China.

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Trump’s global tariff increases and trade wars will have far-reaching implications, signaling the potential end of the US as a faithful consumer market, challenging the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and questioning its commitment to protecting global sea lanes.

American democracy promotion, never a consistent priority, is now without even rhetorical commitment. While the US has long backed autocrats, Trump’s acceptance of strongman rule extends to adversaries.

His recent characterization of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator while avoiding such language for Russian President Vladimir Putin shows a deliberate loosening of ideological constraints.

Additionally, the US has long been averse to international law, refusing to ratify the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Yet, it has traditionally played a central role in upholding basic global legal frameworks, with Europe often supporting its efforts.

Now shunning Europe, Washington’s acceptance of border changes by Russia and Israel signals a growing respect for force, whether from allies or adversaries. China, Iran and others are taking note, and may soon strongly mirror the US’s use of economic and political pressure, reducing the autonomy of smaller countries.

Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the foreign policy establishment does not indicate an American retreat from global affairs but rather a radical overhaul. Washington is shedding the post-World War II and post-Cold War neoliberal order it created, characterized by multilateralism, in favor of a more confrontational, transactional approach based on unilateral strength.

The erosion of institutions is another mark of the end of America’s “unipolar moment” and a return to a more volatile and unpredictable era of global affairs.

John P Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’ was published in December 2022.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and is republished with permission.

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asiatimes.com · by John P Ruehl · March 22, 2025

13. Opinion Polls: US Voter Support for Ukraine Is Solid, for White House Foreign Policy– Not So Much

Excerpts:

Averaged across the entire US electorate, five percent more Americans (53 percent) said they favored continued US support for Ukraine in reclaiming its territory, even if that requires prolonged assistance, than in December, survey results said.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats (95 percent) and even a powerful majority of Republicans (69 percent) said they were concerned Russia would violate the terms of any agreement, Gallup found.

Poll results published by Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos (CCGAI) on Mar. 20 pointed to a sharp split between a minority of Republican voters and majority of Democratic and independent voters.

“While down slightly from last year, more than half [of US voters] support continuing military and economic assistance to Kyiv. But the results are highly partisan,” a statement from the group said.

Nationwide, Americans overwhelmingly blame Russian President Vladimir Putin (86 percent) rather than Zelensky for the Russo-Ukraine War, and majority of all US voters (53 percent) feel that Trump favors Russia over Ukraine, the CCGAI poll found.

...

Fox News led Mar. 20 reporting on a national survey headlined “ Approval of Zelensky down 20 points since start of war”, but even that pro-White House outlet found that a clear majority of US voters favor of continued military and financial support for Ukraine. The Fox poll found that 56 percent of US voters favor continued financial aid for Ukraine, a figure unchanged since 2024.

Russia and Ukraine are, according to that poll, among Trump’s most criticized areas of job performance. Trump’s job ratings were found to be “underwater,” a term meaning voters criticizing performance compared to voters praising performance, across the board on foreign policy: Israel (5 percent), China (7 percent), Mexico (8 percent), Ukraine (10 percent) and Russia (16). Trump’s worst foreign policy performance in the view of US voters has been on Canada (23 percent), the Fox poll found.

Opinion Polls: US Voter Support for Ukraine Is Solid, for White House Foreign Policy – Not So Much

kyivpost.com · by Stefan Korshak · March 22, 2025

Trump US Ukraine

Kyiv Post reviewed recent findings by Gallup, NBC, Fox News, CNN and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Bottom line, the US public likes Ukraine more than Trump team likes Ukraine.

by Stefan Korshak | Mar. 22, 2025, 1:34 pm

People, some clad in the Ukrainian colors, stand on a street in Washington. Daniel SLIM / AFPA public argument between US President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a high pressure White House campaign for Kyiv to make concessions to Russia has done little to dent solid US public support for Ukraine, and by some metrics actually may have increased it, results of national US public opinion polls made public in mid-March showed.

“Three years into the [full-scale invasion phase of the] Russo-Ukrainian War, 46 percent of Americans believe the US is not doing enough to help Ukraine in the conflict, marking a 16-percentage-point increase since December to a new high,” the major US survey company Gallup said in a March 18 statement.

Although precise percentages and wording of pollster questions asked varied from survey to survey, across the board, public support for Ukraine was found to be held by a clear majority of Americans. Polls reviewed by Kyiv Post for this article were by: Gallup, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos, NBC, CNN and Fox News.

Notwithstanding an open Trump administration shift towards better relations with Russia, at Ukraine’s expense if necessary, US public support for Ukraine is stable, anti-Kremlin and overall runs counter to the White House, all five polls showed.

The Gallup poll conducted March 3 to 11 found that a contentious Feb. 28 meeting in the Oval Office between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, followed by a White House order to halt all arms deliveries and military intelligence transfers for Ukraine, triggered a 31-point spike in support for Ukraine among Democrats, to 79 percent a new record since 2022.

Cybersecurity as a Bargaining Chip in Ukraine Talks – US Backs Off Russian Threats, Part 2

As ceasefire talks unfold, Washington appears to be leveraging cybersecurity and intelligence-sharing as diplomatic tools – potentially exposing Ukraine and NATO to Russian hybrid warfare.

The fracas played out on live television with Vance shouting at Zelensky and accusing him and Ukraine of being ungrateful for US assistance cut Republican support for Ukraine 28 points, but simultaneously, delivered a 14-point jump for Ukraine among American independent voters, likewise the highest ever for that demographic, Gallup found.

Averaged across the entire US electorate, five percent more Americans (53 percent) said they favored continued US support for Ukraine in reclaiming its territory, even if that requires prolonged assistance, than in December, survey results said.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats (95 percent) and even a powerful majority of Republicans (69 percent) said they were concerned Russia would violate the terms of any agreement, Gallup found.

Poll results published by Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos (CCGAI) on Mar. 20 pointed to a sharp split between a minority of Republican voters and majority of Democratic and independent voters.

“While down slightly from last year, more than half [of US voters] support continuing military and economic assistance to Kyiv. But the results are highly partisan,” a statement from the group said.

Nationwide, Americans overwhelmingly blame Russian President Vladimir Putin (86 percent) rather than Zelensky for the Russo-Ukraine War, and majority of all US voters (53 percent) feel that Trump favors Russia over Ukraine, the CCGAI poll found.

In results closely matched by Gallup, the CCGA survey found 55 percent of Americans favor of continued US economic assistance for Ukraine, and 52 percent support arms shipments. Respondents 55 percent of the time said they believed Trump was taking Russia’s side in peace negotiations.

A red line Kremlin condition for peace – absolute exclusion of Ukraine from NATO or any other security alliance – though openly supported by the Trump administration is not popular among US voters.

The CCGAI poll found that only 38 percent of Americans support the idea of prohibiting Ukraine’s membership in NATO in exchange for peace (Republicans – 49 percent, Independents – 42 percent, Democrats – 24 percent).

“It may be the case that the current US administration only cares about the view of its Republican base, which seems fairly aligned with its decisions to decrease funding for Ukraine. But majorities of Americans, and a sizable portion of Republican Party supporters, believe the United States should grant some kind of military assurance that it will come to Kyiv’s assistance if Russia breaks the ceasefire,” the CCGAI poll concluded.

Fox News led Mar. 20 reporting on a national survey headlined “ Approval of Zelensky down 20 points since start of war”, but even that pro-White House outlet found that a clear majority of US voters favor of continued military and financial support for Ukraine. The Fox poll found that 56 percent of US voters favor continued financial aid for Ukraine, a figure unchanged since 2024.

Russia and Ukraine are, according to that poll, among Trump’s most criticized areas of job performance. Trump’s job ratings were found to be “underwater,” a term meaning voters criticizing performance compared to voters praising performance, across the board on foreign policy: Israel (5 percent), China (7 percent), Mexico (8 percent), Ukraine (10 percent) and Russia (16). Trump’s worst foreign policy performance in the view of US voters has been on Canada (23 percent), the Fox poll found.

Results of a national poll released by NBC on Mar. 17 found solid US public support for Ukraine, outright hostility towards Russia, and strong inclination towards the proposition Trump is Kremlin-biased.

Per that survey, 61 percent of registered US voters said they support Ukraine more than Russia, while 35 percent said they were neutral and just 2 percent said they liked Moscow. Asked where they see Trump’s sympathies, 49 percent answered “Russia,” 40 percent said “neither side” and only 8 percent said Ukraine. Trump has claimed he is neutral and supports US national interest.

The poll report cited Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates: “I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters’ views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other.”

Support for Ukraine among Democrats and Independents crossed most demographic cross-sections including gender, age and race, excepting Hispanic voters who were evenly divided between Ukraine and “neither side, the poll found.” The majority of Republicans and conservative-leaning voters (57 percent) said their sympathies lie with neither nation, but, 53 percent college-educated Republicans said their sympathies lie more with Ukraine, while 62 percent of Republicans without a college degree say their sympathies lie with neither country.

Results of a CNN Poll made public on March 14 found that Americans are skeptical that President Trump’s peacemaking efforts would deliver peace between Russia and Ukraine, that a majority of Americans view his handling of the conflict negatively, and that exactly half of US voters (50 percent) believe the Trump administration’s foreign policy is harmful for the United States.

A solid 59 percent of Americans think it’s not too likely or not at all likely that Trump’s approach will bring long-term peace between Russia and Ukraine, and the same figure disapproves of Trump’s handling of the US relationship with Russia, that poll found.

Only 29 percent of voters surveyed saw White House policy towards Russia and Ukraine as in the US national interest, a view held by sizable minority (15 percent) of Republicans. More than half of Americans (54 percent) said they believe Trump’s foreign policy decisions have hurt America’s standing in the world, CNN found.

Survey results pointed to a broad belief among US voters that Ukraine is a friend or ally (72 percent) and that Russia is unfriendly or an enemy to the US (81 percent). The share of Americans believng Ukraine to be an ally has climbed 7 points since 2014, while the number of Americans seeing Russia as a friend of the US fell 25 percent over the same period, the poll found.

CNN headlined the report: “Most Americans disapprove of Trump’s approach for Ukraine war, doubt it will yield peace.”

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Stefan Korshak

Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas and is a Yalie. He has worked in journalism in the former Soviet space for more than twenty years, and from 2015-2019 he led patrols in the Mariupol sector for the OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass. He has filed field reports from five wars and enjoys reporting on nature, wildlife and the outdoors. You can read his blog about the Russo-Ukraine war on Facebook, or on Substack at https://stefankorshak.substack.com, or on Medium at https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak

14. How Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Leave a Vacuum That China Can Fill

What will be the situation in 10 years? Will the F-47 be in a position to help us then? Or will it be too late?

Excerpts:

The list goes on, more evidence that in its first two months the new administration has been devastatingly efficient in tearing things down, but painfully slow to explain how their actions fit into their broader strategy.

All this has the Chinese celebrating. As the Voice of America was being dismantled and fell silent, The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote that “the so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.”

China is still trying to take its measure of the new administration, which is putting new sanctions on Chinese entities that buy Iranian oil, but is also talking about wiping out the CHIPS and Science Act. The law not only provided federal funding to jump-start the production of advanced semiconductors in the United States, but provided billions for advanced work in a range of key technologies, from batteries to quantum computing, that China is subsidizing.

“It’s a contradiction, as the Chinese say, that we are cutting back on our instruments of national power while saying that we are stepping up our competition with Beijing,” said Michael J. Green, chief executive of the United States Study Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. “When we reveal human rights abuses or Chinese misinformation, it’s another form of competition with China. And getting rid of it only creates a vacuum that Beijing is going to try to fill. And we are already seeing that happening.”

The speed of the dismantlement has left many Asia experts a bit stunned, because they know the new aircraft — which Mr. Trump said would be called the F-47, clearly in homage to his own second term — will not contribute to American deterrence for a decade, if it is on time.

How Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Leave a Vacuum That China Can Fill

The Department of Government Efficiency is shuttering organizations that Beijing worried about most, or actively sought to subvert.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-china.html

President Trump announced on Friday a project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger covers the revival of superpower conflicts and reports from Washington. He previously reported from Asia for The Times.

March 22, 2025Updated 9:22 a.m. ET

When President Trump announced on Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to contain Beijing’s ability to dominate the skies over the Pacific.

But here on earth, the reality has been very different.

As the Department of Government Efficiency roars through agencies across government, its targets have included some of the organizations that Beijing worried about most, or actively sought to subvert. And, as with much that Elon Musk’s DOGE has dismembered, there has been no published study of the costs and benefits of losing those capabilities — and no discussion of how the roles, arguably as important as a manned fighter, might be replaced.

On the list of capabilities on life support is Radio Free Asia, a 29-year-old nonprofit that estimates its news broadcasts reach 60 million people in Asia each week, from China to Myanmar, and across the Pacific islands where the United States has been struggling to counter China’s narratives about the world. It furloughed all but 75 of its Washington staff members on Friday, trying to stay on the air while court cases develop on Trump officials’ moves to defund U.S. government-supported media.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth eliminated the Office of Net Assessment, an internal think-tank. With an annual budget that accounted for a few seconds of Pentagon spending each year, the office tried to think ahead about the challenges the United States would face a decade or two in the future — such as the new capabilities of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons and the hidden vulnerabilities of supply chains for military contractors.

It was a revered institution, what a Wall Street Journal editorial this past week called “The Office that Won the Cold War.” Mr. Hegseth said in a statement that it would be reconstituted in some unspecified way “in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities,” though its value was that it challenged conventional thinking about those priorities.

Over at the Department of Homeland Security, a series of cyberdefenses have been stripped away, at a moment when China’s state-backed hackers have been more successful than at any time in recent memory.

Among those dissolved, at least for the time being, is the Cyber Safety Review Board, created on the model of the National Transportation Safety Board, which examines aircraft accidents and tries to extract lessons learned. The cybersecurity board was just beginning to take testimony on how Chinese intelligence bored deep inside America’s largest telecommunications firms, including the system the Justice Department uses to monitor its “lawful intercept” system, which places wiretaps on people suspected of committing crimes or spying — including Chinese spies.

Now the board has been disbanded. No one at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency seems able to say what has happened to the investigation into one of the most successful penetrations of American networks, or who is now responsible for figuring out why American telecommunications firms were caught unawares, for more than a year, by China’s Ministry of State Security.

The list goes on, more evidence that in its first two months the new administration has been devastatingly efficient in tearing things down, but painfully slow to explain how their actions fit into their broader strategy.

All this has the Chinese celebrating. As the Voice of America was being dismantled and fell silent, The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote that “the so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.”

China is still trying to take its measure of the new administration, which is putting new sanctions on Chinese entities that buy Iranian oil, but is also talking about wiping out the CHIPS and Science Act. The law not only provided federal funding to jump-start the production of advanced semiconductors in the United States, but provided billions for advanced work in a range of key technologies, from batteries to quantum computing, that China is subsidizing.

“It’s a contradiction, as the Chinese say, that we are cutting back on our instruments of national power while saying that we are stepping up our competition with Beijing,” said Michael J. Green, chief executive of the United States Study Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. “When we reveal human rights abuses or Chinese misinformation, it’s another form of competition with China. And getting rid of it only creates a vacuum that Beijing is going to try to fill. And we are already seeing that happening.”

The speed of the dismantlement has left many Asia experts a bit stunned, because they know the new aircraft — which Mr. Trump said would be called the F-47, clearly in homage to his own second term — will not contribute to American deterrence for a decade, if it is on time.

“The charge for the United States is to deter war with China without capitulation and to compete effectively across all the areas of soft power,” Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former Republican aide to John McCain in the Senate, said on Friday. “The United States has an array of tools to do this, including humanitarian aid, development assistance, support for democracy abroad, and strategic communications efforts. Strangely, these are the efforts most under threat by the new cost-cutting teams.”

“If it goes too far,” he warned, “it will amount to unilateral disarmament in the world’s most important contest.”

It is hard to find an understandable theme to the cuts; some are based on perceived acts of disloyalty, or old grudges, or a sense that even state-financed media or think tanks are inhabited by anti-Trump liberals.

Sometimes it is especially mystifying. The Office of Net Assessment, for example, was mostly staffed by career civilians or uniformed military, who are asked to think outside the box: How would a prolonged economic downturn in China affect its leaders’ thinking about Taiwan? What happens to warfighting when manned aircraft — like the newly announced jet fighter — can be regularly outmaneuvered by autonomous weapons?

The cuts at Radio Free Asia, which broke many of the biggest stories about the internment camps China has built to “re-educate” Uyghurs in Xinjiang, are among the most mystifying. Its broadcasts have been attacked by Beijing, which has gone to great lengths to censor the reports and broadcast their own narrative, often on YouTube and X.

Bay Fang, the president of Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit that gets its $60 million budget from a congressionally approved disbursement, said in an interview that she doubted the organization was specifically targeted.

DOGE and the White House were gunning for Voice of America, which has hundreds of millions of listeners and readers, and which Mr. Trump has denounced as “the Voice of Radical America.” In one of his executive orders, he said he would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.” (Almost all of Voice of America’s staff of 1,300 journalists have been put on paid leave.)

Image

The offices of Radio Free Asia, which said the federal grants that funded it were terminated last week.Credit...Reuters

“You have only to look at the way dictators in the region are celebrating our defunding,” Ms. Fang said in an interview. “We provide a voice that counters their propaganda and shines a light into dark corners they’d rather leave untouched.” The result, she said, is that “we are an essential way that America wins trust among the people living in these authoritarian countries. Shuttering RFA is not only their loss, but America’s.”

Winning trust, however, is hard to quantify. It takes years, and the results are not as easy to demonstrate as showing off a new fighter jet and, in the case of the new F-47, the semiautonomous attack drones that fly alongside.

Radio Free Asia’s budget is so small that Ms. Fang said she was pretty certain the nonprofit was “collateral damage” as the administration moved to defund the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which also supports Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

The defunding is taking place even before the Senate has confirmed Mr. Trump’s choice to head the global media agency, L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative political activist. He has picked Kari Lake, the pro-MAGA former journalist who lost a Senate race in Arizona, as the new head of Voice of America, but for now she is only a “special adviser” because Mr. Trump fired the board members that could have replaced the current leader.

This administration clearly regards “soft power” as a largely irrelevant concept. But the lack of it leaves a vacuum that Beijing will happily fill.

“It seem self-defeating that while China mounts unrelenting cyberattacks, builds a Navy to defeat the U.S. Pacific fleet, sends ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomats far afield, and created alternatives to the dollar that America pulls inward and closes off avenues of information to the Chinese people,” said Paul Kolbe, a career C.I.A. officer who spent much of his career countering Soviet propaganda and covert operations.

Speaking from Jakarta, Mr. Kolbe answered his own question: “We affirm Chinese beliefs that they are ascendant, and that our decline is accelerating.”

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges. More about David E. Sanger

15. ‘How are you going to do that?’ Pentagon scrambles to make Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system a reality

Excerpts:

But it remains unclear how much money the Pentagon will request for Trump’s Golden Dome in its budget proposal or how officials will determine the amount of funding is required.

Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery believes creating a ballistic missile defense system may be possible in 7-10 years, but even then, it will have severe limitations, potentially capable of protecting only critical federal buildings and major cities.

“The more you want it closer to 100%, the more expensive it’s going to get,” said Montgomery, the senior director of the Center On Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

A comprehensive system will require different sets of satellites for communication, sensing incoming missiles, and launching interceptors, John Tierney, a former Democratic congressman who held years of hearings on ballistic missile defense, told CNN. Those types of systems are long-term projects, he said, requiring existing defenses to fill the gap in the meantime.

“You’ve gotta be responsible here,” Tierney said. “You’re not going to be able to defend everything with these ground-based missiles. They defend a circle around them, but it’s not large.”

‘How are you going to do that?’ Pentagon scrambles to make Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system a reality | CNN Politics

CNN · by Zachary Cohen, Oren Liebermann · March 22, 2025

President Trump in Washington, DC, on March 6.

Allison Robbert/The Washington Post/Getty Images

CNN —

US military officials are scrambling to develop a “Golden Dome” defense system that can protect the country from long-range missile strikes and have been told by the White House that no expense will be spared in order to fulfill one of President Donald Trump’s top Pentagon priorities, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

“Golden Dome” is the Trump administration’s attempt to rebrand vague plans for developing a missile defense system akin to Israel’s Iron Dome.

At a time the Pentagon is looking to cut budgets, the Trump administration has ordered military officials to ensure future funding for “Golden Dome” is reflected in new budget estimates for 2026 to 2030 – but the system itself remains undefined beyond a name, the sources said.

“Right now, Golden Dome is, it’s really an idea,” one source familiar with internal discussions about the project said, adding there may be technology in the pipeline that, if ever scaled up, could apply to it, but as of now discussions are purely conceptual.

That makes projecting future costs nearly impossible, the source added, though it would likely cost billions of dollars to construct and maintain.

Trump has repeatedly insisted the US needs a missile defense program similar to Israel’s Iron Dome, but the systems are orders of magnitude apart. In practical terms, the comparison is less apples to oranges, and more apples to aircraft carriers.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system selectively protects populated areas from short-range threats in a country the size of New Jersey; Trump wants a space-based missile defense system capable of defending the entire United States from advanced ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

An Israeli soldier takes up a position in front of a battery of an Iron Dome air defense system near Jerusalem on April 15, 2024.

Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

For one thing, “Israel is tiny,” the source familiar with ongoing internal discussions about the Golden Dome project said. “So, it is 100% feasible to blanket Israel in things like radars and a combination of mobile and fixed interceptors.”

“How are you going to do that in the United States? You can’t do it just at the borders and the shoreline, because intercontinental ballistic missiles, they can re-enter the atmosphere over Kansas.”

Still, Trump issued an executive order during his first week in office ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a plan for developing and implementing the next-generation missile defense shield by March 28.

And a senior Pentagon official insisted earlier this week that work is underway.

“Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order], we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome,” Steven J. Morani, currently performing the duties of undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said this week at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington.

At the same time, Pentagon officials have been realigning the Defense Department’s 2026 budget proposal to meet Hegseth’s priorities, which were outlined in a memo delivered to senior leaders last week and represents a major overhaul of the military’s strategic goals, according to a copy obtained by CNN.

The memo specifically directs Pentagon leadership to focus on strengthening missile defense of the US homeland through Trump’s “Golden Dome.”

“There is a rigorous analytic process underway taking a relook at [the budget],” Morani added. “This is standard practice for any new administration that takes office.”

But it remains unclear how much money the Pentagon will request for Trump’s Golden Dome in its budget proposal or how officials will determine the amount of funding is required.

Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery believes creating a ballistic missile defense system may be possible in 7-10 years, but even then, it will have severe limitations, potentially capable of protecting only critical federal buildings and major cities.

“The more you want it closer to 100%, the more expensive it’s going to get,” said Montgomery, the senior director of the Center On Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

A comprehensive system will require different sets of satellites for communication, sensing incoming missiles, and launching interceptors, John Tierney, a former Democratic congressman who held years of hearings on ballistic missile defense, told CNN. Those types of systems are long-term projects, he said, requiring existing defenses to fill the gap in the meantime.

“You’ve gotta be responsible here,” Tierney said. “You’re not going to be able to defend everything with these ground-based missiles. They defend a circle around them, but it’s not large.”

Potential pay day for arms companies

US arms manufacturers are already seeing dollar signs. The Missile Defense Agency held an Industry Day in mid-February to solicit bids from companies interested in helping to plan and build Golden Dome.

The agency received more than 360 secret and unclassified abstracts about ideas for how to plan and execute the system.

Lockheed Martin has taken it a step further, creating a polished website for Golden Dome claiming the world’s largest defense contractor has the “proven, mission-tested capabilities and track record of integration to bring this effort to life.”

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative to create a space-based defense against ballistic nuclear missiles. The system was derisively nicknamed “Star Wars,” and consumed tens of billions of dollars before it was ultimately cancelled, facing insurmountable technical and economic hurdles.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation on the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983.

Corbis/Getty Images

Laura Grego, a Senior Research Director of the Global Security Program at the Union for Concerned Scientists, says the same challenges remain and have been known for years.

“It has been long understood that defending against a sophisticated nuclear arsenal is technically and economically unfeasible,” Grego told CNN.

America’s current ballistic missile defense is designed to thwart a small number of missiles from a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran. The system relies on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), which has failed nearly half of its tests, according to the Arms Control Association, rendering it incapable of stopping a major attack from Russia or China.

But in his executive order, Trump called for a far more complex and robust system - space-based interceptors capable of downing a target moments after it launches.

Such a system would require thousands of interceptors in low-earth orbit to intercept even a single North Korean missile launch, according to the American Physical Society (APS), which has studied the feasibility of ballistic missile defenses for years. A single interceptor in orbit is almost never at the right place and time to rapidly intercept a ballistic missile launch, so you need exponentially more to ensure adequate coverage.

“We estimate that a constellation of about 16,000 interceptors would be needed to attempt to counter a rapid salvo of ten solid-propellant ICBMs like the [North Korean] Hwasong-18,” the APS wrote in a study earlier this month.

Even then, Grego says a space-based missile defense system is vulnerable to enemy anti-satellite attacks from far less expensive ground-based systems.

“The most critical weakness of a system like this is its brittleness, its vulnerability to attack,” Grego added.

In the Red Sea, the US has fired scores of multi-million dollar interceptor missiles at Houthi drones and missiles that cost a fraction of the price. The fiscal imbalance gets far worse when the system is in space, according to Tierney.

“It’s a joke. It’s basically a scam,” Tierney said bluntly. Now the executive director for the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, Tierney ripped Trump for being “willing to throw billions and billions and billions of dollars at something that won’t work.”

Adversaries likely to react

As the US pours money into research and developing the Golden Dome, current and former officials say America’s adversaries will likely expand their own arsenal of ballistic missiles in an effort to stay ahead.

But since the offensive ballistic missiles are far less expensive than the interceptors needed to stop them, Tierney says the system quickly becomes financially unfeasible.

US military officials are also assessing how Golden Dome could disrupt the current stability provided by nuclear deterrence, according to the source familiar with internal planning discussions related to the project.

Today, the main US deterrent against another country launching a preemptive nuclear attack is its survivable second strike, or ability to retaliate even after enduring an initial nuclear attack, the source said.

“If you implement something that your nuclear armed adversaries believe is a reliable countermeasure that just nullifies their nuclear arsenal, now you’ve done away with deterrent stability, because you’ve improved the ease of the United States sending a nuclear attack to them with impunity,” the source added. “And then you have to ask yourself, well, how much do we trust the US not to do that?”

“If I’m China, if I’m Russia, my confidence is lower and lower, that that the US won’t strike us with a nuclear missile in in a crisis,” according to the same source.

“Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense. Technically, it doesn’t make any sense. Economically it doesn’t make any sense,” Tierney added.

CNN · by Zachary Cohen, Oren Liebermann · March 22, 2025

16. Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped

Money talks...

Columbia Agrees to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped

The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/columbia-response-trump-demands.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

Columbia University was accused by the Trump administration of a systemic failure to protect students and faculty members “from antisemitic violence and harassment.”Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times

By Troy Closson

Published March 21, 2025Updated March 22, 2025, 2:15 a.m. ET

Columbia University agreed on Friday to overhaul its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department in a remarkable concession to the Trump administration, which has refused to consider restoring $400 million in federal funds without major changes.

The agreement, which stunned and dismayed many members of the faculty, could signal a new stage in the administration’s escalating clash with elite colleges and universities. Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and dozens of other schools face federal inquiries and fear similar penalties, and college administrators have said Columbia’s response to the White House’s demands may set a dangerous precedent.

This week, the University of Pennsylvania was also explicitly targeted by the Trump administration, which said it would cancel $175 million in federal funding, at least partly because the university had let a transgender woman participate on a women’s swim team.

Columbia, facing the loss of government grants and contracts over what the administration said was a systemic failure to protect students and faculty members “from antisemitic violence and harassment,” opted to yield to many of the administration’s most substantial demands.

The university said it had agreed to hire a new internal security force of 36 “special officers” who will be empowered to remove people from campus or arrest them. The wearing of face masks on campus will also be banned for the purpose of concealing identity during disruptions, with exceptions for religious and health reasons.

Columbia will also adopt a formal definition of antisemitism, something many universities have shied away from even as they, like Columbia, faced pressure to do so amid protests on their campuses over the war in Gaza. Under the working definition, antisemitism could include “targeting Jews or Israelis for violence or celebrating violence against them” or “certain double standards applied to Israel,” among other issues.

Taken together, the administration’s plan — issued in an unsigned, four-page letter — reflected a stunning level of deference to the Trump administration from a top private research university.

Columbia’s interim president, Katrina A. Armstrong, said in a separate letter that the university’s actions were part of its effort to “make every student, faculty and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”

“The way Columbia and Columbians have been portrayed is hard to reckon with,” Dr. Armstrong said. “We have challenges, yes, but they do not define us.”

She added: “At all times, we are guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make.”

The Trump administration demanded each of the changes in a letter to Columbia officials on March 13. It was not immediately clear whether the university’s actions would be sufficient to reclaim the $400 million in federal money. A spokeswoman for the Education Department, one of three federal agencies named in the letter, did not immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment, including to questions about the potential restoration of federal funding.

In perhaps the most contentious move, Columbia said it would appoint a senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department. The White House had demanded that the department be placed under academic receivership, a rare federal intervention in an internal process that is typically reserved as a last resort in response to extended periods of dysfunction.

Columbia did not refer to the move related to the Middle Eastern studies department as receivership, but several faculty members said that it appeared to resemble that measure.

Legal scholars and advocates for academic freedom expressed alarm on Friday over what they described as Columbia’s dangerous surrender to President Trump at a perilous moment for higher education. Some critics of the university’s response said they feared the White House could target any recipient of federal funds, including K-12 public schools, hospitals, nursing homes and business initiatives.

Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the university’s Middle Eastern studies department, said in a text message that “Columbia faculty are utterly shocked and profoundly disappointed by the trustees’ capitulation to the extortionate behavior of the federal government.”

“This is a shameful day in the history of Columbia,” Dr. Pollock said, adding that it would “endanger academic freedom, faculty governance and the excellence of the American university system.”

The moves by Columbia were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The school’s response to the administration’s demands was the latest turn in a turbulent phase that began 17 months ago, when pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students organized competing protests in the days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Since then, the Manhattan campus has experienced a rare summoning of the police to quell protests, the president’s resignation and the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate, by federal immigration officials.

The extraordinary cancellation of funding for the university escalated the crisis, imperiling research that includes dozens of medical and scientific studies. (The university did not mention the loss of funds in outlining the steps it was taking.)

On social media, Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, called it “a sad day for Columbia and for our democracy.”

Others said that a wholesale overhaul was appropriate in light of the conflict and tension on campus in recent semesters.

Ester R. Fuchs, who co-chairs the university’s antisemitism task force, said that many of the administration’s changes appeared to be issues that the group had previously highlighted.

“What’s fascinating to me is a lot of these are things we needed to get done and were getting done, but now we’ve gotten done more quickly,” said Dr. Fuchs, who is also a professor of international and public affairs and political science.

She added: “We are completely supportive of principles of academic freedom.”

Among other changes, the university also said that the administration would work to adopt a universitywide “position of institutional neutrality.” It said that it would move an independent panel of faculty, students and staff members who handle disciplinary procedures under the provost’s office — and that members would be “restricted to faculty and administrators only.”

The school also agreed to review its admissions policies for potential bias after it “identified a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment,” and last week announced a range of disciplinary actions against an undisclosed number of students.

Despite the overhaul, the current fraught chapter in Columbia’s 270-year history may not be over. The Trump administration has told the university that meeting its demands was “a precondition for formal negotiations” over a continued financial relationship and that the White House may call for other “immediate and long-term structural reforms.”

Columbia’s changes are notable for their scope and for how quickly they were made. But it is not the only institution to make concessions as the White House indicates that its campaign against elite universities and colleges will not end at the Morningside Heights campus.

Federal money is the lifeblood of major research universities, and some have begun to keep quiet on hot-button issues in hopes of escaping the administration’s ire. Many, including the University of California this week, have retreated from diversity-related efforts.

Many of the changes Columbia agreed to make involve issues that have been points of contention on campus for some time.

Face masks, for example, emerged as a source of conflict last year amid the Gaza protests, with demonstrators saying they should be able to conceal their identities to avoid being doxxed, and others arguing that mask-wearing makes it harder to hold protesters accountable if their actions veer into harassment.

The detainment this month of Mr. Khalil, a prominent figure in the protests who stood out because he chose not to wear a mask, cast a spotlight on the issue.

But putting the Middle Eastern studies department, which has long been in a pitched battle over its scholarship and the employment of professors who describe themselves as anti-Zionist, under outside scrutiny provoked unique outrage.

Columbia said that the senior vice provost would review curriculum and hiring in several of the department’s programs, including the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. The university said the move was aimed at “promoting excellence in regional studies.”

But Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia math professor who described reading Dr. Armstrong’s letter with “profound disappointment and alarm,” called it “a giant step down a very dangerous road.”

He worried that the Middle Eastern studies department would effectively be run by “a member of Columbia’s thought police” who could interfere with anything from course offerings to faculty appointments. “It strikes at the heart of academic freedom,” Professor Thaddeus said.

“Of all the bad things,” he continued, “this one is really the worst.”

Katherine Rosman contributed reporting.

Troy Closson is a Times education reporter focusing on K-12 schools. More about Troy Closson

A version of this article appears in print on March 22, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ceding to Trump, Columbia Agrees To Alter Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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