Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The worse that a man can do to himself is to do injustice to others."

– Henrik Ibsen

"If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you'd be furious. Yet you handover your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled – have you no shame in that?"

– Epictetus.

"Reality cannot be ignored, except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid."

– Aldous Huxley.

1. Analysis: China has a message for Trump: the US won’t stop its rise

2. China military vows to tighten 'noose' around Taiwan if separatism escalates

3. The America-Sized Hole in Ukraine’s War Effort

4. Musk: If I Turn Off Starlink, Ukraine’s Frontline Would Collapse

5. US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’

6. Trump Is Overturning the World Order That America Built

7. Trump is carving up Ukraine with Putin. Taiwan is terrified it could be next

8. China learned from Trump's first trade war and changed its tactics when tariffs came again

9. Tariff Wars Are Often Short. Their Legacies Aren’t.

10. China wants to change the world with disruptive technologies. But what are they?

11. The Cartel Nexus: Mexico’s Drug Cartels, China’s Involvement, and the U.S. Response

12. With Drones and North Korean Troops, Russia Pushes Back Ukraine’s Offensive

13. BREAKING: DHS Detains Lead Negotiator of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment After Online Campaign by Pro-Israel Groups

14. Trump demands ships "very fast, very soon" as China dominates

15. EXCLUSIVE: Trump Administration Cancels $400 Million in Grants to Columbia

16. Two Cheers for DOGE

17. Douglas Murray: How MAGA Lost Its Way on Ukraine

18. How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious

19. Thoughts from a Kyiv Park Bench by Mick Ryan

20. A Europe in Emotional Shock Grapples With a New Era

1. Analysis: China has a message for Trump: the US won’t stop its rise

"China, of course. will look more important."

Excerpts:

And while Beijing’s priorities – and rhetoric – may echo those of years past, this time they are coming from a country that is starting to regain its swagger after being battered by its own Covid restrictions, a property sector crisis and by a tech war with the US.

“Confidence” has been an unofficial buzzword of the weeklong event, which ends Tuesday. It was used nearly a dozen times during a press conference held by China’s economic tsars on Thursday, splashed across state media coverage and included in a pointed reminder – that “confidence builds strength”– during the closing lines of Li’s nationally broadcast speech.

That optimism might be more aspiration than reality. Many in China are looking to the future with uncertainty. They’re more willing to save than spend, while young people are struggling to find jobs and feeling unsure whether their lives will be better than those of their parents.

But unlike last year, the country is entering 2025 buoyed by the market-moving successes of Chinese firms and technology. And while Trump’s return has Beijing concerned about economic risks, it’s also eyeing opportunity for its own rise.

“By the end of Trump’s second term, America’s global standing and credibility image will have gone down,” People’s Liberation Army Sen. Col. (ret) Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing, told CNN. “And as American strength declines, China, of course, will look more important.”

...

And the view from some parts is that even if tariffs cause the Chinese economy short-term pain, it will be the US which loses in the long run. China is still an indispensable part of global supply chains. It’s also better prepared to weather this trade war than the last one, because it’s sending goods to more markets globally now, data show.

“If you play (imposing tariffs) with a peer competitor, it actually would not work that well compared to if you’re doing this with small countries or medium powers,” said Zhou in Beijing, who is also the author of the forthcoming book “Should the World Fear China?”.

China, he said, wants cooperation not friction.

“But since the US is still the stronger side in this relationship, (it will) decide which kind of relationship this is … so China has to say ‘OK – if this has to be to be one of competition, then we must dare to fight,’” he said.

Analysis: China has a message for Trump: the US won’t stop its rise | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · March 9, 2025

Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrives at a plenary session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 8.

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Beijing, China CNN —

As US President Donald Trump ratcheted up economic pressure on China over the past week, Beijing sent back its own message: Its rise won’t be interrupted.

A major political meeting taking place in the capital was the ideal backdrop for Beijing to respond. The “two sessions” gathering of China’s rubber-stamp legislature and its top political advisory body is where the government reveals its plans and sets the tone for the year ahead.

The top item on its priority list? Boosting consumer demand to ensure China doesn’t need to rely on exports to power its vast but slowing economy. And the next: driving forward leader Xi Jinping’s bid to transform the country into a technological superpower, by ramping up investment and enlisting the private sector.

Beijing is making these moves as it prepares for what could be a protracted economic showdown with the United States. Trump doubled additional tariffs on all Chinese imports to 20% on Tuesday and has threatened more to come – as well as tighter controls on American investment in China.

“We can prevail over any difficulty in pursuing development,” China’s No. 2 official Li Qiang told thousands of delegates seated in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People at the opening meeting of the National People’s Congress Wednesday. The “giant ship of China’s economy” will “sail steadily toward the future,” he said.

A foreign ministry spokesperson was more direct when asked about trade frictions on Tuesday: “If the US insists on waging a tariff war, trade war, or any other kind of war, China will fight till the end,” he told reporters.

Members of China's political advisory body, known as the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, attend a meeting on March 4.

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

And while Beijing’s priorities – and rhetoric – may echo those of years past, this time they are coming from a country that is starting to regain its swagger after being battered by its own Covid restrictions, a property sector crisis and by a tech war with the US.

“Confidence” has been an unofficial buzzword of the weeklong event, which ends Tuesday. It was used nearly a dozen times during a press conference held by China’s economic tsars on Thursday, splashed across state media coverage and included in a pointed reminder – that “confidence builds strength”– during the closing lines of Li’s nationally broadcast speech.

That optimism might be more aspiration than reality. Many in China are looking to the future with uncertainty. They’re more willing to save than spend, while young people are struggling to find jobs and feeling unsure whether their lives will be better than those of their parents.

But unlike last year, the country is entering 2025 buoyed by the market-moving successes of Chinese firms and technology. And while Trump’s return has Beijing concerned about economic risks, it’s also eyeing opportunity for its own rise.

“By the end of Trump’s second term, America’s global standing and credibility image will have gone down,” People’s Liberation Army Sen. Col. (ret) Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing, told CNN. “And as American strength declines, China, of course, will look more important.”

An electric vehicle by Chinese manufacturer BYD is loaded on a ship in the southeastern Chinese port city of Guangzhou last month.

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images

Confidence boost

This mood isn’t just percolating in the halls of power.

On the streets of the capital, gleaming homegrown electric vehicles weave through traffic, including those from carmaker BYD, which now goes toe-to-toe with Elon Musk’s Tesla for global sales – a reminder of China’s successful push to become a leader in green tech.

Then there’s the box office record-smashing animation “Ne Zha 2” and the breakout success of privately owned Chinese AI firm DeepSeek. Its large language model shocked Silicon Valley and upended Western assumptions about the costs associated with AI.

In Beijing this week, “you can ask DeepSeek” has been a playful and proud punchline in casual conversation.

“Last year, people may have been impacted by the US narrative that China is declining, that China has peaked,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing. “We still have many difficulties. We still have many problems, of course, but it’s not that we’ve reached peak China.”

Even Trump’s focus on economic rivalry with Beijing as he rolls out tariffs on US trade partners appears to some as a mark of how far China has come. On a recent weekday afternoon in downtown Beijing, some passersby interviewed by CNN pointed to competition with the US as a sign of their country’s growing strength.

“China is developing quickly now and that’s attracted international attention, especially from the United States,” but that may not be a bad thing, said a medical graduate student surnamed Xia. “Trump’s increase on tariffs is competition … (and) if there’s no competition maybe China’s independent development is not sustainable.”

Security personnel stand outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing as China's "Two Sessions" gets underway.

Tingshu Wang/Reuters

High stakes rivalry

But even as Chinese officials seek to project confidence, international observers say the economic stimulus measures announced this week show Beijing is girding itself for major challenges to come.

Premier Li alluded to that in his opening address. “The external environment is becoming more complex and severe, which may have a greater impact on the country’s trade, science and technology and other fields,” he said.

China doesn’t want to deal with that volatility while also grappling with a weak economy at home. That’s one reason why it’s trying to boost consumption and spur growth, setting an ambitious expansion target of “around 5%” this year. Beijing is also aware that trade frictions mean the economy needs to rely less on exports.

“It is likely that Beijing has thought through the scenarios of Trade War 2.0, but whatever happens, it is clear that China’s growth will have to rely more on domestic demand,” said Bert Hofman, a professor at the East Asian Institute at the National University Singapore and former World Bank country director for China, in a note.

Still, some analysts say Beijing’s initiatives are short on details and much less aggressive than needed to rev up the economy and boost consumer confidence.

“It adds up to a sense by the leadership that they want to refocus on growth and development, but still a desire to do only as much as necessary in terms of stimulus to get there,” said Michael Hirson, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Xi may also be balancing this goal with another concern: a need to save some firepower to support the economy if China faces “a nasty four years dealing with Donald Trump,” he said.

A humanoid robot entertains the crowd at a robotics exhibition in eastern China's Nanjing last month.

Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Beijing also wants to direct resources toward the high-tech transformation of its economy and industries. That’s another key part of the government’s 2025 agenda – and a long-term objective of Xi, who unlike US presidents is not subject to term limits on his leadership.

Beijing is pushing for innovations in AI, robotics, 6G and quantum computing, announcing a state-backed fund to support tech innovation and even welcoming foreign enterprises – in a significant tone shift for Xi – to play a role.

China is still smarting from the first Trump administration’s campaign to keep its tech champion Huawei out of global mobile networks and from the Biden administration’s efforts to convince allies to join it in cutting Chinese access to advanced semiconductors.

Last month, Washington said it was considering expanding restrictions on US investment in sensitive technologies in China.

But Beijing this week has also touted its confidence in advancing no matter the barriers.

“Be it space science or chip making, unjustified external suppression has never stopped,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters Friday. “But where there is blockade, there is breakthrough; where there is suppression, there is innovation.”

“We are witnessing an ever-expanding horizon for China to become a science and technology powerhouse,” he said.

US President Donald Trump, pictured here in the White House's oval office, has made tariffs a cornerstone of his economic policy.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Trump threat?

How much Trump’s policies will challenge China remains an open and urgent question for Beijing.

The US president has refrained so far from slapping Chinese imports with the blanket 60% or more tariffs that he had threatened on the campaign trail.

He’s been focused elsewhere, including on unleashing sweeping changes to US global leadership by decimating US foreign assistance, threatening to take control of other countries’ sovereign territory, and upending US alliances in Europe, while pulling closer to Russia at the expense of Ukraine.

There are potential risks for Beijing in that shake-up. For example, if a Washington-Moscow rapprochement pulls Xi away from Russian President Vladimir Putin, his closest ally, or if an American dial-down of security in Europe allows it to ramp up attention on Asia.

But Chinese diplomats have also been taking advantage of the changes to play up their country as a responsible and stable global leader, despite criticisms of Beijing’s own aggressive behavior in Asia.

“A big country should honor its international obligations and fulfill its due responsibilities. It should not put selfish interests before principles, still less should it wield the power to bully the weak,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday in response to a question from CNN on Trump’s “America First” policy. China “resolutely opposes power politics and hegemony,” Wang added.

When it comes to tariffs, observers say Beijing is trying to moderate its response, holding out for a potential meeting between Xi and Trump or perhaps even a deal that could avert an escalating trade war.

A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas sails into a port eastern China's Shandong province last month.

FeatureChina/AP

While China immediately retaliated against two sets of US tariffs this year, including with levies on US energy and key agricultural goods, it has remained measured in its reprisals.

The country’s deficit with the US means it will have less room to hit back if a trade war escalates, but Beijing is expected to be calculating other measures like export controls that it could use for leverage.

And the view from some parts is that even if tariffs cause the Chinese economy short-term pain, it will be the US which loses in the long run. China is still an indispensable part of global supply chains. It’s also better prepared to weather this trade war than the last one, because it’s sending goods to more markets globally now, data show.

“If you play (imposing tariffs) with a peer competitor, it actually would not work that well compared to if you’re doing this with small countries or medium powers,” said Zhou in Beijing, who is also the author of the forthcoming book “Should the World Fear China?”.

China, he said, wants cooperation not friction.

“But since the US is still the stronger side in this relationship, (it will) decide which kind of relationship this is … so China has to say ‘OK – if this has to be to be one of competition, then we must dare to fight,’” he said.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · March 9, 2025

2. China military vows to tighten 'noose' around Taiwan if separatism escalates

Is the message to the US (and of course Taiwan) to reign in, or at least not support, Taiwan's independence separatists and independence desires?

Excerpts:

"The more rampant 'Taiwan independence' separatists become, the tighter the noose around their necks and the sharper the sword hanging over their heads will be," military spokesman Wu Qian said, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The PLA (People's Liberation Army) is a force of action in countering separatism and promoting reunification," said Wu.

"You've ridden your steed to the edge of the cliff. If you persist in taking the wrong course, you will meet a dead end," he warned.

China military vows to tighten 'noose' around Taiwan if separatism escalates

09 Mar 2025 01:58PM

(Updated: 09 Mar 2025 04:14PM)

channelnewsasia.com

BEIJING: China's military said Sunday (Mar 9) it would tighten its "noose" around Taiwan if separatism over the island escalated, warning proponents to step back from the "edge of the cliff" or face a "dead end", state media reported.

Beijing considers the democratically ruled island of Taiwan to be part of its territory and has not ruled out using military force to claim it.

China has increased pressure on Taiwan's authorities in recent years with military drills and frequent dispatches of fighter jets and naval vessels around the island.

"The more rampant 'Taiwan independence' separatists become, the tighter the noose around their necks and the sharper the sword hanging over their heads will be," military spokesman Wu Qian said, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The PLA (People's Liberation Army) is a force of action in countering separatism and promoting reunification," said Wu.

"You've ridden your steed to the edge of the cliff. If you persist in taking the wrong course, you will meet a dead end," he warned.

The comments, made during China's "Two Sessions" annual political gathering, come days after Beijing announced a 7.2 percent increase to its defence budget in 2025.

It is above the government's annual GDP growth target of around five percent.

Calling the increase "limited... reasonable and stable", Wu said the extra cash would be used to develop "combat forces in new fields and with new qualities", and to enhance reconnaissance, joint strike and battlefield support capabilities.

SECOND TO THE US

China's military spending has been on the rise for decades, broadly in line with economic growth.

The country has the world's second-largest defence budget, but lags well behind the United States, its primary strategic rival.

Beijing's 1.78-trillion-yuan (US$245.7-billion) budget for this year is still less than a third of Washington's.

Military spending last year made up 1.6 per cent of its GDP, far less than the United States or Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

But its defence expansion is viewed with suspicion by Washington, as well as other powers in the region.

China has increasingly flexed its muscles in the region, including in the South China Sea, which it claims almost entirely despite an international arbitration ruling that declared its stance baseless.

China describes its military stance as "defensive" and aimed at preserving its sovereignty.

China faces "one of the most complex neighbouring security situations in the world", army spokesman Wu said, adding that it had to deal with "severe challenges" in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

But its sweeping territorial claims over areas controlled by other governments have raised fears of a regional clash.

Taiwan is a potential flashpoint for a war between China and the United States, which is the island's most important backer and biggest arms supplier.

On Friday, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference that Taiwan coming under China's control was the "shared hope of all Chinese people, the general trend of the time, and a righteous cause".

"Using Taiwan to control China is just like trying to stop a car with the arm of a mantis," he said.

Last month, Taiwan's Ministry of Defence condemned China for holding "live-fire" exercises to the island's south. Beijing defended the drills as "routine".

Source: AFP/kl

3. The America-Sized Hole in Ukraine’s War Effort

So sad and disappointing to read.

Map, graphics, sketches, and photos at the link.

The America-Sized Hole in Ukraine’s War Effort

Defenders can hold out against Russians for now, but impact of U.S. weapons and intelligence halt will ‘cascade and compound’ over time

https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-russia-ukraine-arms-intelligence-32855af8?st=ueEsSH&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By James Marson

, Alistair MacDonald

and Michael R. Gordon

March 8, 2025 9:00 pm ET

KYIV, Ukraine—The Russian army was advancing relentlessly in northeastern Ukraine in the summer of 2022 when the U.S. tipped the scales with new weapons and crucial battlefield intelligence.

The superior accuracy and greater range of M777 howitzers, supplied by the U.S., hit back against Russia’s mostly Soviet-designed artillery. Then U.S. intelligence tipped off Ukraine’s generals that Russia had moved several battalions to another front. Accurate U.S.-made rocket artillery struck Russian fuel depots and weapons stores, leaving the Russian army short of supplies ahead of a rapid Ukrainian counteroffensive that retook dozens of towns.

Now, with Russia’s military again grinding its way forward, the Trump administration has halted weapons deliveries and intelligence sharing that have been critical to Ukraine’s resistance against a three-year invasion by its giant neighbor that has killed tens of thousands and razed dozens of cities.

A Ukrainian serviceman passes by a residential building damaged by Russian military strikes in the front-line town of Pokrovsk, in Donetsk region. Photo: inna varenytsia/Reuters

The impact of the halt—which U.S. officials described as a temporary pause designed to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate with Russia—will be limited at first, but is likely to grow over time as Ukraine’s stocks of U.S. ammunition run down, and weapons systems cannot be repaired or replaced, officials and analysts said.

The main immediate impact will be felt from the cutoff of intelligence, which will constrain Ukraine’s ability to accurately target long-range strikes to knock out Russian troops and equipment before they reach the battlefield. On Friday, Maxar Technologies said that the U.S. has cut off Ukrainian access to the satellite images that the company supplies through an American government program—imagery used by Ukrainian forces to plan and mount operations, particularly using explosive drones.

A lack of fresh arms deliveries will take longer to have an impact but the effect would be broader. A dwindling stock of long-range air-defense missiles would erode Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian ballistic missiles targeting cities. A lack of spares could see its top-performing infantry fighting vehicles and howitzers fall out of use. Although the immediate reaction from front-line soldiers was one of weary resilience, morale is likely to suffer as the withdrawal of support from Ukraine’s main backer saps confidence.

“These impacts will cascade and compound,” said a U.S. official.

“Russia is using missiles and weapons from all over the world, from North Korea to Iran, to fire from all directions into Ukraine. But we have limited Ukraine in using our weapons to fire back,” said retired Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who served as the top NATO commander from 2013 to 2016 and has been a strong supporter of Ukraine.

Top U.S. officials are meeting on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia with their Ukrainian counterparts to set the stage for potential peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, raising the possibility that the pause in assistance could end soon.

Ukrainian front line

Russian forces in Ukraine

Ukrainian forces in Russia

Belarus

Russia

Poland

Kyiv

Lviv

Kharkiv

Ukraine

Luhansk

Dnipro

Donetsk

Mol.

Odesa

Romania

Sea of Azov

CRIMEA

100 miles

Black Sea

100 km

Note: As of March 5

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

Andrew Barnett/WSJ

Whatever happens, leaders in Kyiv said that Ukraine will keep up the fight. The Biden administration increased supplies of ammunition ahead of Trump’s inauguration in anticipation of a potential cutoff. Ukraine makes more than half of its own weaponry, including game-changing drones. European Union members, which along with the U.K. have roughly matched U.S. military support to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, met Thursday to agree on a surge in military spending that could allow them to offer more support to Ukraine.

“It’s no longer 2022,” Zelensky said in a video address Tuesday. “Our resilience is higher now. We have the means to defend ourselves.”

The Kremlin has welcomed the pause to U.S. deliveries, which came just as Ukraine has significantly slowed Russian advances in recent weeks. Russian President Vladimir Putin is far short of his ultimate goal of subjugating Ukraine and is struggling to achieve his shorter-term objective of occupying Ukraine’s two easternmost regions.

Ukraine’s defenses have inflicted heavy losses on Russian forces as they have nibbled off small pieces of land along the 800-mile front lines.

Ukraine’s defensive strategy relies on eliminating Russian troops and weaponry before they reach Ukrainian front-line trenches, which are manned by increasingly exhausted and thinned-out infantry.

More than half of front-line strikes are carried out by small explosive drones manufactured in Ukraine, which accurately target Russian armored vehicles and infantry.

The use of drones has offset Russia’s artillery advantage. Russia has more guns and more shells, bolstered in recent months by supplies from North Korea.

The U.S. accounts for over half of Ukraine’s foreign supplies of the important 155mm artillery shells, according to one person familiar with the matter. Even with U.S. shells, Ukraine currently is able to fire one for every three Russia does, that person said.

“We already don’t have parity with Russia in weapons and ammunition,” said Ukrainian Army Lt. Dmytro Yanok, who commands an M777 battery. “If the U.S. ends ammunition deliveries for good, the situation will become much worse.”

Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based defense analyst, said that could necessitate tactical withdrawals in some areas, although he believes the front can hold in the near term.

“Overall it’s not catastrophic,” he said. “The dependence on the U.S. is much less in 2025 than it would have been in 2022 or 2023.”

A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, launches a rocket on Russian position in 2023. CREDIT: Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

Ukraine’s military relies heavily on the U.S. for rockets and missiles that can strike accurately behind Russian lines. The U.S. provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, to Ukraine in 2022 that fire Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets, or GMLRS with a range of about 45 miles. GMLRS strikes have destroyed Russian command posts, ammunition dumps, fuel stores and groups of infantry. It is a lack of these rockets which perhaps will affect Ukraine most, followed by artillery shells and air-defense missiles, said a former senior U.S. official involved in supplying Ukraine.

Himars also launch longer-range ATACMS, which can shoot up to 186 miles. These ballistic missiles have been particularly effective at striking Russian airfields, command centers and supply lines in occupied Ukraine, and since November in parts of Russia.

Himars can fire the long-range, near all-weather ATACMS guided missiles.

Armored cab for

increased crew protection

Carries one launch pod containing either six Guided MLRS (GMLRS)/MLRS rockets or one ATACMS missile.

In service: 2005

Origin: U.S.

Crew: 3

Max speed: 53 mph

Firing range: 19.9 to 186.4 miles

Weight: 10.9 tons

Sources: United States Army Acquisition Support Center; Military-Today

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The result of those strikes is to relieve pressure on front-line trenches as they reduce the quantity and speed with which Russia can deploy men and equipment to the battlefield.

“If they are not able to attrit the Russians before they come into the battle zones, then it just makes it harder on their army. They need to be able to kill Russians deeply and at range precisely,” said Breedlove, the former top NATO commander.

During a rapid operation to seize a chunk of Russia’s Kursk province last fall, Ukraine used GMLRS to strike a column of Russian armored vehicles rushing to the battlefield and hit bridges to cut supplies to front-line troops.

The Army Tactical Missile Systems’ ballistic missiles come in a standard version, Block 1, and a model with a longer range, Block 1A.

ATACMS missiles

Block 1A

Range: 43.5-186.4 miles

Payload: 300

APAM bomblets

Size

Block 1 (Shown)

Range: 16-103 miles

Payload: 950

APAM bomblets

Missile Guidance System

Provides navigation, guidance,

autopilot and internal

communications functions.

Control System

Positions the missile fins,

provides electrical power

in flight and supports

selected pyrotechnic

functions.

Approx. 950 bomblets

Designed to inflict

casualties by blast

and fragmentation.

Sources: United States Army Acquisition Support Center; Federation of American Scientists; Collective Awareness to UXO; Missile Threat

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Long-range strikes depend on U.S. intelligence, which helps determine targets and provide accurate location data, so the intelligence cutoff will affect strikes even before ammunition is depleted.

Ukraine was already running low on ATACMS at the end of last year.

“We’ve not seen a single confirmed ATACMS strike into Russia since Donald Trump was inaugurated,” said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute at the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

The loss of U.S. ammunition would be compounded by the gradual degradation of weapons already supplied if they cannot be repaired or replaced.

Ukrainian servicemen fire an M777 howitzer toward Russian positions near Donetsk. Photo: Roman Chop/AP

The M777, a howitzer designed for the U.S. Army in the 1980s, is Ukrainian artillerists’ favorite weapon, said Col. Serhiy Musiyenko, deputy commander of Ukraine’s missile and artillery forces.

It can shoot up to 19 miles, compared with the 15-mile ranges of their Soviet artillery, and its accuracy gives Ukrainian gunners an advantage over the Russians, Musiyenko said.

Ukraine was using Soviet artillery until it received its first 12 M777s near the northeast Ukrainian city Izium in June 2022.

“We immediately felt the advantage,” said Musiyienko, whose own combat experience stretches back to 2014.

More M777s have been sent to Ukraine, or around 180 pieces, than any other artillery. All but around 10 have come from the U.S.

M777 Howitzer

Maximum firing range:

Maximum rate of fire:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

14 to 24.2 miles

4 rpm

4.2 tons

2005

Made in U.K.,

assembled in U.S.

Crew number

155mm 39-caliber barrel

33.5 ft.

Source: Military-Today

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

While the M777 was designed and jointly made in the U.K., it was created for the U.S. Army and so its maker, BAE Systems, needs Washington’s approval to sell guns and parts abroad.

European nations later sent howitzers that were newer, could hit further and at a faster rate. They were also self-propelled so could escape counter fire faster than the towed M777 once they had fired.

But many Ukrainians still preferred their M777s because they were easy to use, rarely broke down and if damaged were quickly repairable. Among self-propelled artillery, Ukrainians like the U.S.-supplied M109 because its cab provides good protection.

Ukraine’s stock of M777s is on average off the battlefield for repairs half the time of the country’s more modern self-propelled artillery, according to one Ukrainian official.

A lack of spare parts could also eventually remove many Ukrainians’ favorite infantry fighting vehicles from the battlefield. The Bradley, an aging though highly mobile vehicle, can quickly shuttle troops to and from the front lines and protect them from drones and guided missiles.

Bradley fighting vehicle

Max speed:

Max firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

38 mph

4.2 miles

22.6 tons

1981

U.S.

Can carry up to 10 personnel

depending on model

Requires a crew of 3

Main gun

25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun

BGM-71 TOW anti-tank

guided missile launcher

Driver’s vision port

8.4 ft

10.5 ft

21.1 ft

Note: Illustration is an M2A4 model.

Sources: United States Army Acquisition Support Center, Military-Today

Adrienne Tong/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The U.S. has supplied more than 300 Bradleys, which are no longer in production. Last year, U.S. officials said they aimed to provide three months of spares for equipment sent to Ukraine.

Ukrainian mechanics have already become adept at manufacturing their own spare parts. At one repair depot, around 20% of the parts that Ukrainian mechanics used to fix damaged M777s, including hoses and some gauges, were domestically produced.

Still, that doesn’t always work. The M777, for instance, is made of titanium, an ultralight metal that is hard to weld and not readily available. German officials have said that Ukrainian attempts to use foreign parts on their tanks and howitzers often ended up further damaging the vehicles.

Even with U.S. supplies, Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn from the 47th Brigade hasn’t always had enough spares for the Bradleys under his command. The Bradley is the best infantry fighting vehicle he has worked with, and it would be unpleasant if the lack of spares puts them out of action, he said. But there are not enough of them to have a critical impact on Ukraine.

“We have other means,” he said.

In this handout footage provided by U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army fires a Patriot missile at McGregor Range Complex in New Mexico. CREDIT: USDOD/Milmotion/Getty Images

Alongside more traditional weapons, the U.S. makes some of Ukraine’s most sophisticated and new equipment. Europe has supplied much of Ukraine’s short- and midrange air defense. But Europe currently has nothing on land that can compare to the U.S. Patriot system’s ability to destroy Russian ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Both missiles are so fast and ballistics so large that there are few defenses against them.

The Patriot’s success can be seen in Ukrainian government data. Between October 2023 and last November, Ukraine shot down only 10% of ballistic missiles, according to data from the Ukrainian Air Force. But those fired at Kyiv, where Ukraine has at least one Patriot system, were typically intercepted.

“Everyone wants a Patriot,” said Viktor Petryshyn, a Ukrainian air defense commander in southern Ukraine. Petryshyn uses a Soviet S-300 system that has shot down Russian drones, missiles and planes.

Ukraine has around five Patriot systems, three of which come from the U.S. Ukraine’s biggest problem will now be getting the U.S. manufactured missiles.

“They were not getting enough as it was,” said Nick Reynolds, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“It would expose Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure even more and put the population to more risk,” he said. Ukraine’s electricity grid has been targeted through much of the war, causing black outs and hurting the country’s economy.

Underscoring the problems, France and Italy supplied a Samp/T missile defense system that was designed to handle ballistic missiles. But after arriving in Ukraine, the system’s software struggled and it failed to hit ballistic missiles, according to people familiar with the matter. Ukraine also soon ran low on the Aster missile that the Samp/T uses, they said.

A spokesman for Eurosam, the joint venture that makes the system, didn’t immediately comment.

The intelligence cutoff could deprive Ukraine of early warnings about missile strikes that have helped defenders down missiles.

Russia launched a large-scale aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities early Friday with 67 missiles and 194 attack drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The majority were intercepted, the air force said, but officials reported damage to power and gas facilities. Early Saturday, Russia struck the eastern city of Dobropillya with two ballistic missiles, killing at least 11, Ukrainian officials said.

One of the key pieces of nonlethal U.S. technology that Ukraine uses is Starlink, the satellite-internet service developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Starlink still provides effective and secure communications between troops and their commanders and allows feeds from drones to be shared to help artillery gunners target their fire.

Ukraine’s supporters supplied thousands of Starlink terminals to Kyiv. But SpaceX and Musk, who now has a senior U.S. government role and has become increasingly critical of Kyiv, can cut Ukraine off from the service.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is relying on innovation of its own.

Ukrainian companies are producing drones that fly on autopilot to strike a target selected by an operator, preventing Russian jammers from downing them.

A Starlink communication device on the front line during Orthodox Christmas in 2023. Photo: CLODAGH KILCOYNE/REUTERS

Ukraine has also solved the conundrum of how to down ubiquitous Russian reconnaissance drones cheaply—by striking them with small explosive drones.

“Technology development dictates the battlefield, not America,” said Taras Chmut, head of Come Back Alive, a charity supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army. “America has fallen behind modern warfare. Europe has fallen behind modern warfare. Ukraine is waging the war of the future.”

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com, Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

4. Musk: If I Turn Off Starlink, Ukraine’s Frontline Would Collapse

It is just business (or is it?). A private business. Private business decisions cannot be controlled by the government. What choice is there? Try to nationalize the system? How do we think that would work or turn out? Or because of Musk's relationship with the US government, can the US government use Starlink for leverage? Seems like Musk wields a lot of power that cannot be reigned in when it comes to the control of modern communications systems and capabilities particularly in conflict zones and underdeveloped areas. Modern communications is the "lifeline," "nervous system" or "blood flow" of modern military operations. Not making a judgement here, just stating what seem to be the facts, though as below some appear to be from anonymous sources.

Excerpt:

Last month Kyiv Post reported that the US has threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink – the global satellite network that has proven essential on the battlefield – if Kyiv does not accept the White House’s deal to exchange its rare earth minerals for continued security guarantees, according to anonymous sources.

(As an aside, I just want to know why Musk will not put Starlink up over north Korea to support an information campaign and help create change inside north Korea? - the answer is likely it is just business and there is little to no money to be made from such a venture)

Musk: If I Turn Off Starlink, Ukraine’s Frontline Would Collapse

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · March 9, 2025

Elon Musk stated that Starlink is crucial for Ukraine’s army and claimed the frontline would collapse without it.

by Kyiv Post | Mar. 9, 2025, 12:18 pm

Elon Musk arrives for US President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2025. SAUL LOEB / AFP

Billionaire Elon Musk stated that his Starlink satellite system is critically important for the Ukrainian army and that if he were to shut it down, Ukraine’s front line would collapse.

“I literally challenged Putin to one-on-one physical combat over Ukraine, and my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

He said he was “sickened by years of slaughter in a stalemate that Ukraine will inevitably lose.”

In his opinion, everyone who truly cares, thinks, and understands the situation wants this “meat grinder to stop.”

Musk also called for sanctions against Ukraine’s top 10 oligarchs, saying this would end the war.

“Place sanctions on the top 10 Ukrainian oligarchs, especially the ones with mansions in Monaco, and this will stop immediately,” he said.

Place sanctions on the top 10 Ukrainian oligarchs, especially the ones with mansions in Monaco, and this will stop immediately.

That is the key to the puzzle. https://t.co/hgw8tQsEs6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2025

Last month Kyiv Post reported that the US has threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink – the global satellite network that has proven essential on the battlefield – if Kyiv does not accept the White House’s deal to exchange its rare earth minerals for continued security guarantees, according to anonymous sources.

5. US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’

If this is an accurate report I wonder what exercises (and where else) are next on the chopping block? I find it hard to believe that we would cancel all future military exercises in Europe. I cannot see how any nationals security or military advisers to POTUS would think this is of any strategic benefit to the US. Or is this simply another negotiating tactic?

US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’

Nato countries could be forced to plan manoeuvres without US as Trump continues pivot away from bloc

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/03/08/us-to-cease-all-future-military-exercises-in-europe-reports/

Connor Stringer

Deputy US Editor

Trump Is Overturning the World Order That America Built

As the president embraces Putin, longtime allies are starting to view the U.S. not just as unreliable but as a possible threat to their own security

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

March 7, 2025 12:21 pm ET

America’s 80-year run as the world’s strongest power, a relatively benevolent hegemon that attracted willing partners and allies, has been rooted in two major U.S. initiatives launched in response to the upheaval of World War II.

One was to convene the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which enshrined the idea of free trade and low tariffs, generating unprecedented prosperity for the West. The other, five years later, was to lead the establishment of NATO, an alliance that won the Cold War and has ensured peace in Europe.

To fashion this system out of the chaos and rubble of world war, wrote Dean Acheson, a key adviser to Roosevelt and Truman throughout this period, required America to make “an imaginative effort unique in history and even greater than that made in the preceding period of fighting.” Acheson, who first entered politics in the 1930s to combat “America First” isolationists, called his memoir “Present at the Creation.”

President Harry Truman, left, and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson, seen here in 1949, cemented America’s global leadership after World War II. Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Both of these legacies are being undone with stunning speed by President Trump. His second administration has targeted America’s closest allies with punitive tariffs, has ordered an abrupt stop to military assistance for Ukraine, has frozen foreign aid—and is raising the prospect of a geopolitical realignment toward authoritarian Russia.

In Tuesday’s address before Congress, Trump said that “we’ve been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth, and we will not let that happen any longer,” adding that now “we reclaim our sovereignty.”

His moves have sent the rest of the world scrambling for a response, a profound reshaping of the international order in which America’s erstwhile allies are starting to view the U.S. as not just no longer reliable, but perhaps as an outright threat to their own security.

“The U.S. has switched sides from standing with democracies like Canada, like France, like Japan, and is now standing with dictators like Putin. People in free countries all around the world should be very concerned,” said Canadian lawmaker Yvan Baker, echoing a view that is also rapidly becoming a European consensus.

Trump has already slapped Canada, with whom he had negotiated a free-trade agreement in his first administration, with 25% tariffs, though he soon paused most of them for the moment. He says he wants the country to stop being an independent nation and join the U.S. as the 51st state. “Trump questioning our sovereignty and trying to destroy our economy is right out of Putin’s playbook,” Baker said.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron, in a dramatic address to the nation on Wednesday that asked for a major rearmament drive, said that Europe cannot permit its future to be decided by Washington and Moscow, and that it must now prepare for an America that is no longer by its side.

‘We are entering a new era,’ French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address about the war in Ukraine on March 5. Photo: Adrien Fillon/Zuma Press

“We are entering a new era,” Macron said. “Our generation will no longer benefit from the dividends of peace, and it depends on us whether our children tomorrow will be able to collect the dividends of our commitments.”

There was a similar despondency among allies during Trump’s first administration, but by the end of his term the NATO alliance had emerged stronger and Russia weaker, said Matthew Kroenig, senior director of the Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington who served at the time as a senior Pentagon adviser.

“People are overreacting to rhetoric and symbolism, and not paying enough attention to underlying results,” he said. “If six to 18 months from now, our NATO allies are spending more and there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, I would argue that we’d be in a better place than today.”

As the Trump administration moved this week to cut off military aid and vital intelligence to Ukraine, the president threatened on Friday to impose more sanctions and tariffs on Russia if it doesn’t come to the negotiating table. Russia’s current trade with the U.S. is marginal.

In his first presidency, Trump openly questioned the value of alliances and free trade, while expressing admiration for authoritarian leaders and contempt for fellow democracies, particularly in Europe. But today, with virtually no opposition in Congress or within the administration, those impulses are pursued with unrestrained, and unmatched, vigor. There is also a new, much more destabilizing ingredient: predatory claims on foreign land, such as Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and even the Gaza Strip.

“In his first term, Trump believed that America was played for a sucker. His response was retrenchment,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute think tank in Australia. “In his second term, the same conviction is pushing him outwards. Now Trump wants more protection money and more territory—and he is prepared to use coercion to get those things.”

Trump administration officials frequently refer to their policy in the Western Hemisphere as “Monroe Doctrine 2.0”—a new incarnation of the 19th-century claim to dominate the Americas.

While Trump says he seeks global peace with his radical shifts in America’s generations-old consensus, the explosive combination of his neo-mercantilism and his embrace of 19th-century-like imperial thinking could actually push the world toward a new conflagration, warned Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute, who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia under President Obama.

“Both aspects of his foreign policy, the security component as well as the trade and economic component, hold a lot of danger, not just for the United States but for the world,” she said. “We are seeing actions put into place that contain the kernels of a potential world war.”

Chairs are removed from the signing table at the White House after the disastrous meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Feb. 28. Photo: Carol Guzy/Zuma Press

Trump’s drastic shift is not rooted in American public opinion. A recent CBS-Yougov poll showed that 52% of Americans support Ukraine, versus just 4% supporting Russia. Most Americans, including 59% of Republicans, consider Russia to be either an unfriendly power or outright enemy, according to the survey. Another poll, by Reuters-Ipsos this month, found that 50% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s foreign-policy moves, and only 37% approve, a 15% decline in net approval since January.

“The president has a mandate to try to stop the war, but not to pull the rug out from under Ukraine, switch sides, turn over Ukraine to Russia and adopt a spheres-of-influence posture in the world,” Farkas said.

The U.S. has not always been a benign world power over the past eight decades, of course. It supported coups and repressive dictatorships in Latin America, Africa and Asia and invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. But, for more than a century, it didn’t attempt to permanently seize other nations’ territory. And, in a global contest with authoritarian rivals, it stood as the champion of human rights and democratic values that have taken root around the world under American tutelage, particularly in the nations that it defeated in 1945.

Trump’s trade wars, his humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, threats to Canada, Panama and Denmark, and the sidelining of European allies have eroded that legacy around the world, including in Asia. America’s image in Asia has changed “from liberator to great disrupter to a landlord seeking rent,” said defense minister Ng Eng Hen of Singapore, one of Washington’s closest Asian partners.

The critical question these Asian allies are asking themselves is whether, after seeming to accept Russia’s right to a sphere of influence in Europe, the Trump administration would also seek a similar accommodation over their heads to divvy up the world with China’s Xi Jinping.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, front, and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, Oct. 24, 2024. Photo: Ramil Sitdikov/brics/Associated Press

Trump’s choice for undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, raised eyebrows by testifying during his recent confirmation hearings in the Senate that Taiwan, while being very important to the United States, is not an “existential interest.” Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Taiwan, too, as part of his economic moves against America’s closest trading partners.

“China has always thought that America’s greatest asymmetric advantage was its alliance system, and now that the U.S. is alienating its allies, China is delighted to see the tensions between the U.S., Europe and Canada,” said Rush Doshi, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and Georgetown University who served as deputy senior director for China and Taiwan in Biden’s National Security Council. “And obviously, a U.S. that retreats into the Western Hemisphere is going to be outplayed by a China that goes truly global.”

Amid this sea change in the world, China is already trying—not without success—to portray itself as a force for global stability, free trade and prosperity. China’s special envoy for European affairs, Lu Shaye, said Wednesday it was appalling how Trump has treated Europe, and agreed with the European leaders that the future of Ukraine shouldn’t be decided just by Washington and Moscow.

“European friends should reflect on this and compare the Trump administration’s policies with those of the Chinese government,” Lu said. “In doing so, they will see that China’s diplomatic approach emphasizes peace, friendship, goodwill and win-win cooperation.”

European governments—well aware that Russia has been able to endure three years of war largely thanks to Chinese economic and political support—aren’t likely to take these overtures at face value. But in a new world where the U.S. is going from strategic ally to predator, some rebalancing appears inevitable.

European nations collectively are America’s largest trading partner, and the largest source of foreign investment into the U.S. Until now, they have clung to hopes that the trans-Atlantic bond that endured eight decades would somehow survive.

Ukrainians visit the graves of soldiers at a military cemetery in Lviv on Feb. 23, 2025, on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Photo: yuriy dyachyshyn/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

European leaders welcomed Ukrainian President Zelensky at a summit in London on March 2, days after his meeting with President Trump. Left to right: French President Emmanuel Macron, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Zelensky and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Photo: christophe ena/Press pool

Trump’s open embrace of Russian positions over Ukraine in recent weeks has shattered that illusion. “We used to have wake-up calls, but in recent days we received an electroshock,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and a former chairman of the Munich Security Conference. In a recent opinion poll by French broadcaster BFMTV, 73% of French respondents said they no longer considered the U.S. an ally—and 67% supported sending French troops to Ukraine to police a cease-fire.

Nowhere is the mood shift more abrupt than in eastern and central Europe, which has been for decades among the most pro-American parts of the world. While French strategic thinking, underpinned by a fully independent nuclear weapons force, is shaped by what Paris and London viewed as an American betrayal during the 1956 Suez crisis, countries such as Poland or the Czech Republic have long credited Ronald Reagan’s America for their freedom.

Former Polish President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity movement that challenged Communist control of Poland in 1980, put Trump and Vice President JD Vance in a very different category. The scene of Zelensky’s humiliation in the Oval Office reminded him “of interrogations at the hands of the Security Service and the courtrooms of Communist tribunals,” Walesa wrote in a letter signed by 39 fellow former dissidents, adding that Communist judges and prosecutors at the time “also used to tell us that they hold all the cards, while we have none.”

Existential choices are looming in the immediate future for the 500 million Europeans, most of whom are not yet prepared for the costs—such as higher taxes and less social welfare—that would be required to rearm for the harsh new reality, said Rym Momtaz, a Paris-based analyst at the Carnegie Endowment.

“This presents the Europeans with a new, vital, multigenerational choice: What do they do? Are they capable of becoming the fourth pole, so that they are not subsumed into the spheres of influence of Russia, the U.S. or in some way China?” she wondered. “Or do they accept that they can’t, and then there will be a division of Europe.”

The 27-member European Union—which includes Hungary, a country hostile to Ukraine and aligned with Trump—won’t be able to develop anytime soon into a meaningful security actor in its current shape, said Ischinger. The way forward, he suggested, is for some kind of new European Defense Union, with one European defense-industrial market, that would include a coalition of willing EU members plus the U.K. and Norway.

Retired Air Marshal Edward Stringer, a former head of operations at the British defense staff, said that some sort of “east Atlantic alliance”—possibly also including Canada—could replace NATO in coming years. “Europe has a fleeting opportunity to step up to the challenge posed directly and indirectly by Putin and Trump,” he said. “Can it mobilize its latent power and take control of its security architecture—or will it become a vassal?”

Rheinmetall, a German defense company, produces Puma fighting vehicles at a plant in Germany, 2023. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is planning a vast increase in the country’s defense spending. Photo: FABIAN BIMMER/REUTERS

Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, is certainly taking dramatic steps. Incoming Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pushing next week a sea change in the country’s security policy, with constitutional amendments that would adjust limits on public debt and allow Berlin to spend hundreds of billions of euros on military procurement. Some two-thirds of European military spending went until now to American defense companies, a crucial connective tissue in the alliance.

But Trump’s sudden cutoff of military aid to Ukraine—a country that, European leaders say, is engaged in a war that is existential to Europe’s own security—is likely to prompt European nations to prioritize in the future weapons systems that could not be restricted or disabled by Washington.

“We’ve always followed the principle of hoping for the best, but now we are finally getting around to preparing for the worst—the U.S. becoming an openly hostile power aligned with Russia,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. “Is it too late? We’ll see, but it is certainly late in the game.”

While the fraying of alliances between the U.S. and fellow democracies certainly favors China, the biggest winner at the end could be Europe, said retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who served as NATO’s supreme allied commander. “Events in which the United States disengages could cause Europe to come together with will and unity, and make it a far more important force in international relations,” he said.

In his memoir, Dean Acheson noted the rapid collapse of world powers and the sudden disappearance of ancient empires. One of the great architects of the post-World War II order, he lamented the dangerous belief that in international affairs, “as in women’s fashions and automobile design, novelty and change are essential to validity and value.”

Acheson argued for the opposite: “The simple truth is that perseverance in good policies is the only avenue to success.”

Appeared in the March 8, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Is Overturning the World Order That America Built A New World Disorder'.

7. Trump is carving up Ukraine with Putin. Taiwan is terrified it could be next

There are three words from a section heading of this article that seems to explain all of US national security and foreign policy and trump everything else:

"Deals over Doctrine."

You can take your traditional international relations theories and national security dogma and shove it.

But can deals be effectively enforced without some kind of rules and soft and hard power to enforce them? Are we willing and will we have the capability to back up deals with hard power?

Trump is carving up Ukraine with Putin. Taiwan is terrified it could be next

The island could be left at China’s mercy as America’s mercurial president upends the old world order

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/09/trump-carving-up-ukraine-putin-taiwan-terrified/

Melissa Lawford Economics Reporter. James Titcomb

Technology Editor. Allegra Mendelson

Appeasing the president

Formerly a Japanese colony, Taiwan sits about 100 miles off the south-east coast of China and was part of the country until Mao Zedong’s communist revolution in 1949. The nationalist Kuomintang government that had ruled from Beijing fled to Taiwan, where they made Taipei their temporary capital and declared martial law.

Today, the island, which officially calls itself the Republic of China in opposition to the People’s Republic across the strait, is home to 23m people. Martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987 and it held its first democratic elections in 1996.

Beijing has claimed Taiwan is a province of China ever since the split in 1949, and Xi sees the rupture as a historical wrong he must right. He has called unification the “essence” of China’s “rejuvenation” and vowed to retake Taiwan by 2049, a century on from its independence.

US officials say Xi has instructed his army to be ready to invade by 2027.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has instructed his army to be ready to invade by 2027, according to US officials Credit: DALE DE LA REY/AFP

America’s historical support for the island stems from Cold War fears of communism spreading throughout Asia. While the US has no formal treaty obligations to protect Taiwan it identifies it as a key partner and supplies it with arms.

Since 1950, the US has sold Taiwan around $50bn worth of weapons and defence equipment, according to the CFR. US naval ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait in February.

“During Biden’s administration the discussions were value-based, about allyship, partnership or even democracy,” says Jason Chen, a former legislator in Taiwan and currently a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. “Trump has none of that. We need to be very clear on what we can offer and what do we want to get in return.”

Trump’s radical recasting of the situation in Ukraine offers worrying signs of what may be in store for Taiwan.

“What worries people is this victim-blaming rhetoric,” says Brian Hioe, editor at New Bloom magazine, which covers activism and youth politics in Taiwan.

“The idea of dealmaking, but also turning the pressure on Ukraine rather than Russia, the same way he could with Taiwan and China.

“[Trump] needs the optics of submission, that’s what the exchange with Zelensky shows us. He needs to think that Taiwan comes out as a complete loser in this deal and the US is the only winner.”

Chen adds: “You just have to understand it from the fundamental level that Trump is a dealmaker. He’s seeking to do deals.”

What can the island offer? The US president wants to reduce reliance on Taiwanese chips, see more investment from the island and more American exports.

Trump has been particularly irked by trade deficits since returning to the White House and Taiwan sells far more to the US than it buys. Its trade surplus with America – the value by which what it sells outstrips what it buys – has ballooned from $11bn in 2018 to $65bn last year, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Not only does this risk provoking Trump’s anger, it also exposes Taiwan to tariffs. Kuo Jyh-huei, economics minister, in February said the government was working on countermeasures to protect Taiwan’s interests from Trump’s trade war.

An official told the Central News Agency that Taiwan was preparing to buy more American energy. State-owned energy company CPC is negotiating a deal with an Alaskan gas producer.

TSMC’s investment announcement was timed neatly to give Trump a major win to parade during his first congressional address.

“They’re smart in trying to preempt what happened to Ukraine or to other US allies,” says Sacks. “I think next we will see a major weapons purchase from Taiwan as well as potentially a major energy purchase to bring down the surplus that it has with the US.

“It is being very deliberate and very proactive. There’s a broader political strategy.”

If Trump’s concerns are chiefly economic, then Taiwan can make a good case that it is in the US’s interests to protect the island. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would trigger global meltdown.

A full-blown war would wipe 10.2pc off global GDP in the first year through a combined toll from lost semiconductor production, the hit to global trade and a financial shock, according to analysis by Bloomberg Economics.

The analysis suggests war in Taiwan would be twice as costly as the pandemic and the global financial crisis.

A fifth of global maritime trade – some $2.45 trillion in goods – transited through the Taiwan Strait in 2022, according to the Centre for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). This included $586bn of goods handled in Taiwan’s ports.

Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, who has been based in Kyiv throughout Russia’s war, visited Taipei last week to speak at a business workshop on resilience.

“The focus was how does business continue to operate during circumstances like what Ukraine has seen over the last three years?” says Hunder.

While Trump may be moved by economics, the Taiwanese worry about the human cost of war. The Pentagon has estimated a conflict would have a death toll of 500,000.

A pawn in Trump’s game

Some in the Maga movement seem unnervingly relaxed about these risks.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump ally who briefly helped run Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, said during his own presidential run last year that he would be willing to effectively give up Taiwan once “we have achieved semiconductor independence”.

“After that, our commitments to Taiwan – our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict – will change because that’s rationally in our self-interest,” Ramaswamy said in August 2023. “That is honest. That is true, and that is credible.”

Trump’s exact positioning on Taiwan is still murky. Asked at the end of February if he would ever allow China to take control of the island by force, the US president said: “I never comment on that. I don’t want to ever put myself in that position.”

At face value, the contrast with Biden’s rhetoric was stark. In September 2022, asked if US forces would defend Taiwan, the former US president said: “Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.”

However, George Yin, senior fellow at the National Taiwan University’s Centre for China Studies, says: “Trump is merely returning to an earlier position of strategic ambiguity, which was the dominant approach to Taiwan in the past.”

When President Richard Nixon launched diplomatic ties with China, visiting the mainland in 1972, he adopted what became America’s “One China” policy – a US acknowledgement of China’s claim and agreement that the Chinese will settle the dispute themselves.

Washington has adopted a policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan since Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China Credit: Getty Images/Pictures From History/Universal Images Group

Since then, Washington has largely kept its stance deliberately vague – a policy known as “strategic ambiguity” – to avoid antagonising China. Biden was unusually strident in his assertion that US troops would be deployed.

What is clear, however, is that Trump wants more from Taiwan. Last summer he said Taiwan should pay the US for its defence support, particularly after it “took” semiconductor business away from America. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he said.

Ultimately, however, the truth may be that Trump doesn’t think about Taiwan nearly as much as the Taiwanese think about him. He is much more preoccupied with China.

Trump’s advisers have told The New York Times that the US president wants to strike a wide-ranging deal with China that would go beyond the trading relationship to include big investments, Chinese commitments to buy more American goods and an agreement on nuclear weapons security.

Trump’s “first buddy” Elon Musk, as well as commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, are reportedly encouraging the president to make such an agreement. (Musk’s Tesla has significant business interests in China.)

Proposals include major Chinese investments in the US, big purchases of US crops and planes, and measures that address China’s overcapacity for manufacturing.

“The US business community generally wants more positive US-China relations. They want to invest in China, they want to continue to manufacture in China,” says Sacks.

Trump also wants China to crack down on the fentanyl trade and take back Chinese immigrants who are in the US illegally. Sacks believes tariffs on Chinese goods are an opening shot in negotiations, rather than the new normal.

“Those who believe that Trump is some uber China hawk are telling themselves what they want to hear,” he says.

While Biden framed his foreign policy around a concept of democracy versus autocracy, Trump has no ideological axe to grind.

In fact, Xi and Trump have something in common: the Chinese leader’s coveting of Taiwan mirrors Trump’s own imperialist ambitions to take over Greenland, Canada and Panama.

Donald Trump Jr visits Greenland in January. His father wants to buy the country to bolster US security Credit: Emil Stach

“His belief is that basically it’s Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, himself and maybe MBS in Saudi Arabia who are going to determine the contours of the world,” says Sacks. “Essentially, the smaller powers don’t have a say in that. That is a huge vulnerability for Taiwan.”

Just as Ukraine has been excluded from peace talks with Russia by Trump, so too could Taiwan find itself a pawn in the president’s great game with China.

Who holds the chips?

The parallel between Ukraine and Taiwan only runs so far, however.

“To put it bluntly, Ukraine does not have semiconductors,” says Yin at the National Taiwan University’s Centre for China Studies. “From the US perspective, Taiwan definitely has more value.”

Few industries are as critical – or as concentrated – as semiconductor manufacturing. The microchips that make our cars work, our smartphones connect to the internet and computer servers crunch artificial intelligence software were only invented in the second half of the 20th century, but without them it is no exaggeration to say that the global economy would struggle to function.

Microchips were invented in America, and its companies were the foundation of Silicon Valley. But today, they are disproportionately made in Taiwan.

In the late 1980s, Morris Chang, a former executive at the semiconductor company Texas Instruments (best known for inventing the pocket calculator), arrived in Taipei. The island’s government was in the process of lifting 38 years of martial law, and looking for a high-tech industry to put it on the map.

Chang’s idea was to offer to make microchips for other companies. At the dawn of the personal computer age, semiconductors were becoming increasingly intricate and expensive to make. Chang’s company, TSMC, would take on that complexity, benefiting from huge economies of scale.

It proved to be a tremendous bet. As the transistors that make up microchips shrank to impossible proportions (50bn of today’s smallest transistors would fit on a human fingernail), fewer companies were willing to shoulder the cost of production themselves.

Today, TSMC accounts for two thirds of all contract chip manufacturing. It is East Asia’s most valuable company, worth some $800bn. American companies such as Apple and Nvidia outsource production to the company. Semiconductors make up almost a sixth of Taiwan’s GDP.

“We used to have Intel, and Intel was run by a man named Andy Grove and Andy Grove was a tough, smart guy, I used to read about him when I was a young man,” Trump said during an Oval Office address on Friday.

“He did an incredible job, he really dominated the chip businesses. And then he died and I guess they had a series of people that didn’t know what the hell they were doing and we gradually lost the chip business and now it’s almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us, they took it from us. I don’t blame them, I give them credit.”

At $800bn, TSMC is East Asia’s most valuable company Credit: STR/AFP

“The only leverage we have is the chips,” says Chen.

Taiwan’s dominance in advanced chip production raises the stakes in any wargaming about the island.

A successful invasion could see China seize the most advanced factories, cutting off supply of critical components. Production would probably cease – the factories are widely believed to have remote kill switches in the event they fall into Beijing’s hands – but the economic impact would be devastating.

For that reason, Taiwan’s chipmaking prowess is seen as its greatest protection against China. The world cannot allow it to fail.

It is an uncomfortable balance, however. A critical chip shortage during the pandemic, which idled car factories, drew government attention to the fragile state of the supply chain.

Fearing its dependence on the island, the Biden administration handed out billions in subsidies in an attempt to encourage companies such as TSMC to set up factories in the US. US export controls also stopped China from accessing the world’s most advanced AI chips, forcing the country to invest heavily in a homegrown industry.

Trump said on Friday: “We have the biggest chip company in the world, probably one of the most powerful companies in the world and they’re coming in and building one of the largest chip plants in the world.”

TSMC’s $100bn investment in the US has proved controversial at home. There are fears that it will hollow out the silicon shield and erode the US stake in Taiwan’s future.

“What has Taiwan gained in return?” Wang Hung-wei, an opposition politician, said.

An increasingly assertive Beijing has also raised concerns that an invasion could happen regardless of the economic consequences.

“The whole population of Taiwan is basically about the size of Shanghai. If the mainland goes for Taiwan, it’s not going to be for economics. It’s really going to be about nationalism and strategy,” says Sean King, a former Asia adviser at the US Department of Commerce who works at advisory firm Park Strategies.

Chen insists that fears Taiwan’s silicon shield might be slipping are “bogus”. Even after a $100bn investment, a mere 5pc to 7pc of TSMC’s production will be based in the US. “It would take decades for the US to build the same ecosystem at the same performance level,” he says.

But if dependence on Taiwan is not disappearing, it may be slipping. The Semiconductor Industry Association expects US capacity to triple by 2032, at which point it will control 28pc of advanced microprocessor manufacturing.

Trump said on Friday: “It’s all about chips, so that was a big thing and we’ll be investing hundreds of billions of dollars in this country and we’ll be taking back a big, big portion of that industry.”

Deals over doctrines

Taiwan has another safety net: geography.

Invading the island would be an incredibly complex military operation. The Taiwan Strait is rough, meaning a seaborne military crossing is only feasible for a few months each year. Ships would be vulnerable to Taiwanese defences and there are few viable places for them to land. Taiwan has shallow waters and steep cliffs.

“The biggest limiting factor for China is that the risk of attempting [an invasion] at this moment is still too high,” says Philip Shetler-Jones, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

But China is making rapid advances in its military capabilities. Xi Jinping has tasked his forces with being ready by 2027.

Governments on both sides of the strait are ramping up military spending but the difference in scale is dramatic. Chinese defence spending in 2023 was $296bn – nearly 18 times the $16.6bn spent by Taiwan. This is why US support is so important.

“There is a fear that the US can pull out the rug,” says Sacks. “And then what happens? With Trump, the rug can be pulled out in one afternoon.”

For now, Taiwan’s greatest protection may be China’s economic woes. The world’s second-largest economy is grappling with a massive property downturn, sluggish consumer spending and an ageing population, not to mention the trade war with the US.

Economic weakness means any confrontation may not happen on Trump’s watch. The consensus among American analysts is that, based on current trajectories, China will have the capacity to invade only by the early 2030s.

Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, said on Friday he did not believe China would invade Taiwan while Trump was in the White House. “I follow President Trump’s lead and he is confident that President Xi will not make that move during his presidency,” Bessent told CNBC.

Shetler-Jones adds that Trump is unlikely to throw Taiwan to the wolves – but may give ground to China.

A People’s Liberation Army member watches military exercises near Taiwan. The island’s security has been thrown into doubt since Trump’s return Credit: Lin Jian

Jimmy Carter withdrew diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in 1978 as he normalised relations with Beijing. Ronald Reagan subsequently established the “six assurances” in 1982 that reassured Taiwan of continued US support. The pendulum may now swing back under Trump.

“It is worth imagining a Trump version of a new formula which is more like the Carter version than the Reagan version,” says Shetler-Jones. “It would be very welcome in Beijing.”

Ultimately, the mercurial, transactional nature of the US president makes him hard to predict. He is more motivated by deals than doctrines, and his own expansionists ambitions mean he can sometimes appear more sympathetic to imperialist China than Taiwan, a bastion of democracy.

What is clear, however, is the fact that Taiwan feels less secure than it did a year ago.

“For the last, you know, three or four decades, probably the world hasn’t seen a leader operate in this way,” says Chen. “Even you know, Trump 2.0 compared with Trump 1.0 is drastically different.”

Lai, the semiconductor engineer in Hsinchu, says: “I feel more fear under Trump than Biden.”

8. China learned from Trump's first trade war and changed its tactics when tariffs came again

Chins is singing from The Who: "Won't get fooled (played) again."

China learned from Trump's first trade war and changed its tactics when tariffs came again

By DIDI TANG

Updated 12:03 AM EDT, March 9, 2025

AP · March 9, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaders of both Canada and Mexico got on the phone with President Donald Trump this past week to seek solutions after he slapped tariffs on their countries, but China’s president appears unlikely to make a similar call soon.

Beijing, which unlike America’s close partners and neighbors has been locked in a trade and tech war with the U.S. for years, is taking a different approach to Trump in his second term, making it clear that any negotiations should be conducted on equal footing.

China’s leaders say they are open to talks, but they also made preparations for the higher U.S. tariffs, which have risen 20% since Trump took office seven weeks ago. Intent on not being caught off guard as they were during Trump’s first term, the Chinese were ready with retaliatory measures — imposing their own taxes this past week on key U.S. farm imports and more.

“As Washington escalates the tariff, Beijing doesn’t see other options but to retaliate,” said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank. “It doesn’t mean Beijing doesn’t want to negotiate, but it cannot be seen as begging for talks or mercy.”

As the world’s second-largest economy, China aspires to be a great power on both the regional and global stage, commanding respect from all countries, especially the United States, as proof that the Communist Party has made China prosperous and strong.

After the U.S. this past week imposed another 10% tariff, on top of the 10% imposed on Feb. 4, the Chinese foreign ministry uttered its sharpest retort yet: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

The harsh rhetoric echoed similar comments in 2018, when Trump launched his first trade war with China and it scrambled to line up tit-for-tat actions. Beijing’s leaders have since developed a toolkit of tariffs, import curbs, export controls, sanctions, regulatory reviews and measures to limit companies from doing business in China.

All are designed to inflict pain on the U.S. economy and businesses in response to the American measures.

That allowed the Chinese government to react swiftly to Trump’s recent across-the-board doubling of new tariffs on Chinese goods by rolling out a basket of retaliatory measures, including taxing many American farm goods at up to 15%, suspending U.S. lumber imports and blacklisting 15 U.S. companies.

Beijing showed restraint in its response to leave room for negotiation, analysts say.

Xi Jinping’s leadership of the ruling Communist Party spans both of Trump’s terms, giving Beijing more continuity in its planning. He is the one who decided it’s not yet time to speak with Trump, said Daniel Russel, vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“That’s not a scheduling issue, it’s leverage for China,” said Russel, who previously served as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. “Xi won’t walk into a call if there’s a chance he’ll be harassed or humiliated and for both political and strategic reasons, Xi won’t play the role of a supplicant.”

“Instead, China is hitting back promptly — but judiciously — to each set of tariffs,” Russel said.

At his annual press conference Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that “no country should fantasize that it can suppress, contain China while developing good relations with China.”

“Such two-faced acts not only are bad for the stability of bilateral relations but also will not build mutual trust,” Wang said. He added that China welcomes cooperation with the U.S., but noted that “if you keep pressuring, China will firmly retaliate.”

Scott Kennedy, a trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Chinese this time are “not psychologically shocked” by Trump’s “shock-and-awe” tactics.

“They’ve seen this before,” Kennedy said. “These are the kind of things that they’ve anticipated.”

China’s economy has slowed but is still growing at nearly a 5% annual pace, and under Xi, the party is investing heavily in advanced technology, education and other areas. It has stronger trade ties with many other countries than during Trump’s first term and has diversified where it gets key products, for example, buying most of its soybeans from Brazil and Argentina instead of the U.S.

In turn, the percentage of Chinese goods sold to the U.S. has fallen.

“They are better prepared to absorb the effect of the shocks, compared to several years ago,” Kennedy said.

Meanwhile, more than 80% of Mexico’s exports go to the U.S., and Canada sends 75% of its exports here.

China has learned from its previous dealings with Trump, Russel said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum are facing a reversal of Trump’s previous trade policies, with tariffs imposed and then postponed twice on at least some goods.

“Beijing has seen enough to know that appeasing Trump doesn’t work,” Russel said. In the first go-around, Trudeau and Sheinbaum “bought a little time, but the pressure only came roaring back stronger.”

Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump in December after the president-elect threatened tariffs. But in announcing retaliatory tariffs Tuesday, Trudeau sternly warned: “This is a time to hit back hard and to demonstrate that a fight with Canada will have no winners.”

Sheinbaum also has said that “no one wins with this decision.”

AP · March 9, 2025

9. Tariff Wars Are Often Short. Their Legacies Aren’t.

More ramblings from the elite to be dismissed.

Tariff Wars Are Often Short. Their Legacies Aren’t.

Economists fear that Trump’s tariffs, once they take hold, could have unexpected effects long after he leaves office

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-trade-war-long-term-effects-795f9226?mod=latest_headlines

By David Uberti

March 9, 2025 9:00 am ET

President Trump’s start-and-stop expansion of tariffs on trading partners has no analog in modern history. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Key Points

What's This?

Previous trade disputes have lasted decades, rattling markets and boosting consumer prices.
Trump's tariffs cover a vast array of products, and economists fear unintended consequences beyond his presidency.
Protectionist policies can lead to entrenched interest groups fighting to keep tariffs in place, and ripple effects can extend beyond U.S. borders.

President George W. Bush’s tariffs on steel products were in place for less than two years. Their impact on the economy likely lasted far longer.

Designed to protect the beleaguered but politically influential U.S. steel industry, the 2002 tariffs raised costs for companies that used steel in auto parts, metal stamping and more. Though the tariffs were rescinded the next year, the affected companies became less competitive moving forward as they tried to sell their own products abroad, said Lydia Cox, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Businesses suffered. Jobs disappeared.

“The effects were really widespread,” Cox said. Her research suggests they lingered for a half-decade after Bush’s tariffs were lifted.

President Trump’s start-and-stop expansion of tariffs on major trading partners has no analog in modern history. Yet the past can still be instructive. Previous trade disputes over everything from semiconductors to lumber to chickens have sometimes dragged out for decades, rattling international markets and boosting consumer prices.

None of the presidents who pursued those policies staked his agenda on protectionism to the same extent as Trump. His measures cover an array of products: beer from Mexico, Chinese-made toys and Canadian planes.

President George W. Bush’s tariffs on steel products raised costs for many companies. Photo: Luke Frazza/Pool/Reuters

Economists fear that Trump’s approach could unleash forces that have unintended consequences extending far beyond his time in office.

“This is the biggest change to tariff policy that we’ve seen in recent history,” Cox said.

Washington has historically had specific goals with previous import taxes, said Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College. Reagan-era tariffs on Japanese semiconductors aimed to shield the U.S. technology sector from a daunting competitor. President Nixon ended short-lived across-the-board tariffs in 1971 soon after the export juggernauts of West Germany and Japan agreed to boost the value of their currencies.

Contrary to many trade spats of past decades, the Trump White House has offered conflicting rationales for taxing foreign goods now, a sign that the coming trade wars could be open-ended.

“The problem [today] is that it’s not clear what the ask is of other countries,” Irwin said. “It’s a dramatic escalation.”

The uncertainty has already dampened consumer confidence and boosted inflation expectations, with Boston Fed researchers estimating that Trump’s early tariff proposals could add 0.5 to 0.8 percentage point to core inflation depending on the response of U.S. importers.

The uncertainty has dampened consumer confidence and boosted inflation expectations. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

On Wall Street, investors who previously viewed Trump’s trade rhetoric as a negotiating tactic are now grappling with the possibility that there are limited offramps ahead. The stock market has been thrashed over the past month, and the White House’s one-month exemption for many Canadian and Mexican imports on Thursday didn’t stanch the bleeding.

Trump has at times touted 25% tariffs on most goods from those countries, as well as additional 20% tariffs on China, as part of a push to stop the flow of fentanyl and migrants stateside. At other points, administration officials have portrayed import taxes as measures to boost domestic manufacturing and government revenue, objectives that economists say are at odds with each other.

Trump has likened his approach to a 19th-century paradigm that existed before international supply chains and foreign investment ballooned. In an address to Congress Tuesday, the president described tariffs as a means for protecting American jobs along with “protecting the soul of our country.”

“There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that,” he added. “It won’t be much.”

Economists generally believe Trump’s trade policy was more bark than bite the first time around. Even so, tariffs on commodities and consumer goods ushered in a new era of American protectionism that the Biden administration largely extended.

In 2018, import taxes on aluminum, steel and other products aimed to bring manufacturing back home, sometimes successfully. Tariffs on washing machines created an estimated 1,800 jobs at firms like Samsung, according to a study in the American Economic Review, but they cost consumers about $1.5 billion annually, or more than $800,000 per job.

The U.S. may be the world’s largest economy, but it isn’t so big that it can force foreign suppliers to eat the cost of import taxes, said Christine McDaniel, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

“The U.S. absorbed well over half of those tariffs,” she said. “We don’t have as much pricing power as you might think.”

Aluminum cans at a brewing company in Canada. Photo: James MacDonald/Bloomberg News

The Biden administration relaxed some Trump-era tariffs on imports from allied countries. But many China-focused levies remained in place, suggesting that “it is easier to ramp up tariffs than wind them down,” said Jack Zhang, a political-science professor who directs the Trade War Lab at the University of Kansas.

“The lesson of protectionism is that you end up with entrenched interest groups,” he said, adding that the complexity grows when governments retaliate. In countries on both sides of trade wars, protected industries “will fight like hell to keep tariffs in place.”

Some U.S. trade wars have lasted decades—take the so-called Chicken Tax. After European countries slapped duties on U.S.-grown chickens in the early 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson retaliated with a tariff that included pickup trucks made by the likes of Volkswagen. The measure has since supported domestic manufacturing of the vehicles, analysts say, but it also limited choices and boosted price tags for car buyers.

Ripple effects can extend beyond U.S. borders. In a more than 40-year-old dispute over softwood lumber, American duties on Canadian supplies at times boosted prices so high that U.S. companies turned to imports from as far as Chile, Austria and elsewhere, said Daowei Zhang, associate dean of research at Auburn University’s College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment.

“Not only are you paying a higher price, but also the price volatility of lumber dramatically increased,” Zhang said, adding that the effects spanned U.S. construction companies, remodeling firms and homeowners. “People can’t make a plan.”

Write to David Uberti at david.uberti@wsj.com

10. China wants to change the world with disruptive technologies. But what are they?

A useful scorecard to track actual and potential Chinese developments.

Can we compete? Can we outcompete?

Excerpts:

Disruptive technology – or innovations that significantly alter established industries and markets – has become a key focus for Beijing as it pushes for dominance in emerging markets ahead of Western powers like the United States.

At the start of last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the strengthening of “original and disruptive” scientific and technological innovation and accelerating efforts to achieve sci-tech self-reliance.

The world watched China make major strides in such innovation last year, some of which was outlined last week in the National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) report on economic and social development presented during the annual “the two sessions”.

China wants to change the world with disruptive technologies. But what are they?

At the ‘two sessions’ the National Development and Reform Commission highlighted China’s rise in scientific and tech innovations

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3301567/china-wants-change-world-disruptive-technologies-what-are-they

Victoria Bela

Published: 10:00am, 9 Mar 2025

China’s advancements in disruptive technologies are rapidly blurring the lines between science fiction and reality, from humanoid robots and a computer in the brain to encryption-shattering quantum computers and hypersonic aircraft.

Disruptive technology – or innovations that significantly alter established industries and markets – has become a key focus for Beijing as it pushes for dominance in emerging markets ahead of Western powers like the United States.

At the start of last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the strengthening of “original and disruptive” scientific and technological innovation and accelerating efforts to achieve sci-tech self-reliance.

The world watched China make major strides in such innovation last year, some of which was outlined last week in the National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) report on economic and social development presented during the annual “the two sessions”.

‘Two sessions’ 2025: key takeaways from Chinese premier’s work report to top legislature

The report released on Wednesday highlighted China’s continued rise in scientific and technological innovation, including in artificial intelligence and 5G technology.

The NDRC also presented its draft plan for national economic and social development for 2025, which indicated that innovation was still a key focus for Beijing, including cultivating “future industries” such as quantum technology and future energy sources.

The report acknowledged the “once-in-a-century changes” unfolding across the world, stating that an increasingly complex external environment could influence scientific innovation.

Here, the Post looks at major disruptive technology innovations in China, and how they could shape the tech race and change the world.

Quantum computing

China opened up its first home-grown third-generation superconducting quantum computer Origin Wukong for global use last year, allowing visitors from around the world to access the superfast computer. This includes users in the United States, whose own quantum computers are not open to China.

Quantum computers, which use quantum bits instead of traditional computer bits to process information, leverage quantum phenomena to perform certain tasks exponentially faster than even the best supercomputers.

China and the US are pouring resources into quantum computing and other quantum technology.

The NDRC report highlighted China’s advancements in quantum computing, including the Origin Wukong as well as the Zuchongzhi 3.0 processor, which they said had achieved “a new high in a quantum computing test”.

The 105-qubit quantum processor was first unveiled in December, just a week after Google announced its own Willow processor with the same number of qubits. According to state media, the processor developed by Chinese researchers puts the country on par with the US in this technology.

Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?

Artificial intelligence

Last year, “fresh breakthroughs” were made in the development of large-scale AI models in China, and the country saw an accelerated integration of AI into industries with “globally competitive AI products and services emerging daily”, according to the NDRC report.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek took the world by storm at the start of this year with a low-cost open-source AI model that rivalled those created by its Western counterparts, OpenAI and Meta, while using far fewer computing resources.

The Hangzhou-based start-up was already causing waves within China last year, and now Chinese AI developers are rushing to innovate and narrow the gap with DeepSeek.

DeepSeek has quickly spread across sectors in China, including being employed in medicine and education, and the fact that it is open source – or freely available to use, modify and share – means it is making its mark globally.

Humanoid robots

China’s humanoid robots generated worldwide attention after a dance performance at the annual televised Spring Festival gala on Lunar New Year’s Eve – with the robots developed by the Hangzhou-based Unitree showing impressive synchronisation and agility.

Humanoid robots – which resemble the human body in shape and see and move in humanlike ways – have a wide range of potential uses, including in factories, medicine, military and emergency services, and within homes as domestic helpers.

Dancing robots take the stage at China’s Spring Festival Gala performance

A report by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last year stated that China aimed to turn this sector into “an important new engine of economic growth” by 2027.

The NDRC report indicated that humanoid robots for “new forms of business” were emerging at a rapid pace in China.

There is also a race to develop humanoid robots for military use, such as battlefield support and reconnaissance. The US has taken an early lead in this application with a firefighting robot for its navy.

Nuclear fusion

China’s goal to create an “artificial sun” – or to achieve nuclear fusion on Earth to generate a low-cost and unlimited source of energy – has seen some promising progress in recent years.

Unlike nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear reactors where a heavy element such as uranium is split to release energy, nuclear fusion involves the fusion of two light elements – such as heavy isotopes of hydrogen – to generate energy.

Nuclear fusion uses the same reaction that powers the sun and other stars and is seen as a promising solution to energy challenges as it uses abundant raw materials and produces no greenhouse gas emissions.

In January, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak facility at the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei set a world record by sustaining a plasma temperature exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius for 1,066 seconds, or nearly 18 minutes.

The experimental device is not only a critical step in China’s domestic goals to create viable nuclear fusion but also provides insight for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), of which China is a member state.

In February, the China National Nuclear Corporation, a state-owned atomic agency that is part of the ITER project, said during a media briefing that China could commercialise nuclear fusion for power generation by 2050.

Hypersonic flight

China is significantly advancing its development of hypersonic technology, including hypersonic drones, gliders and aircraft.

They are designed to fly at hypersonic speed, or more than five times the speed of sound, and could be applied in both civilian and military settings.

China has a marked lead over the US in hypersonic weapons, as the US is still not ready to deploy a hypersonic weapon for combat use.

China has achieved several hypersonic innovations in recent years, including the development of hypersonic glide vehicles – or warheads that can manoeuvre and glide at hypersonic speed to help control missile trajectory after launch.

China has also tested a hypersonic aircraft with a bulky body that could cover the distance from Beijing to New York in just two hours – a feat thought impossible a few years ago.

Chinese plane designed to travel twice as fast as Concorde completes test flight

Brain-computer interface

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are a direct communication link between the brain’s electrical signals and an external device, such as an electronic limb or a computer.

They can offer patients with disabilities like spinal cord injuries greater mobility and could also allow for the fusion of the brain and computer intelligence – expanding the brain’s processing ability.

The Neural Electronic Opportunity (NEO) interface developed by Tsinghua University and Neuracle Technology was successfully implanted into the first patient last year, and the team is now planning to have a major clinical trial.

The NEO is the first BCI product in China to enter the “green channel” for innovative medical device approvals and is expected to be available for clinical use in 2027.

Elon Musk’s nanotechnology company Neuralink is the major competitor in this area. It focuses on more invasive implants, which have been the subject of controversy.

In February, researchers from Tsinghua and Tianjin universities announced they had developed the world’s first two-way adaptive BCI. Unlike traditional BCIs that just decode the brain’s signals, this could allow the brain and device to learn from each other.

Harnessing space

China’s ambitious plan to develop a space-based solar power project – measuring 1km wide at an orbit 36,000km (22,370 miles) above the Earth – has been referred to as the “Manhattan Project” of energy.

As outlined by a senior Chinese rocket scientist, the project, also known as the “Three Gorges Dam” of space, would be able to collect solar energy and send it to the ground to provide continuous energy without being affected by day-night cycles and seasons.

The project would require massive advances in superheavy rockets to transport the necessary materials into space.

Biotechnology and biomedicine

The US continues to hold its top spot in this field – although Chinese innovation is trying to close the gap. The design of innovative drugs and medical treatments is one area in which China has made major strides.

“We accelerated the development of the biomedicine industry and supported the rapid whole-chain development of innovative drugs”, with China in second place last year in the number of new drugs under development, the NDRC report said.

A team from the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University has developed a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease – the leading cause of dementia – using lymph node surgery, which they reported to be effective for 60 to 80 per cent of patients during a clinical trial.

Last year, a patient became the first to be cured of type 2 diabetes using cell therapy, and another patient was the first to be cured of beta thalassaemia – one of the most common inherited blood disorders – using genetic base editing technology.

Victoria Bela

Prior to joining SCMP in 2023, Victoria received her Bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Health and Environmental Studies from the University of Rochester, where she also worked in a

11. The Cartel Nexus: Mexico’s Drug Cartels, China’s Involvement, and the U.S. Response

Excerpts:

The fight against Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese enablers will require a multi-faceted approach. While law enforcement, financial sanctions, and diplomatic efforts have made some progress, cartels continue to adapt and expand their operations. The U.S. must balance aggressive action against criminal networks with efforts to strengthen Mexico’s institutions, combat corruption, and push China for greater accountability. However, achieving this while eliminating corruption seems like a bridge too far for most local Mexican governments without massive reform and political will.

As the fentanyl crisis worsens, Washington faces mounting pressure to act decisively. Whether through increased border security, expanded law enforcement efforts, or a shift toward military engagement, the battle against cartels and their global allies remains one of the most complex and urgent national security challenges of the 21st century.

The Cartel Nexus: Mexico’s Drug Cartels, China’s Involvement, and the U.S. Response

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-cartel-nexus-mexico-s-drug-cartels-china-s-involvement-and-the-u-s-response

1 hour ago6 min read

STRATEGY CENTRAL

For and By Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth – March 9, 2025

The Sinaloa Cartel and Chinese Triad's illicit drug and money laundering represent a national security threat.

Introduction

The intersection of Mexican drug cartels, Chinese criminal networks, and the U.S. response to the ongoing drug crisis is one of the most pressing national security threats facing North America today. The illicit drug trade—especially involving fentanyl—has devastated communities across the United States, claiming tens of thousands of lives annually. While Mexico’s cartels continue to exert dominance over the drug trade, China’s role in supplying precursor chemicals and laundering cartel money has exacerbated the crisis. As Washington grapples with solutions, a mix of diplomatic, financial, and potential military strategies has emerged in an attempt to stem the tide of corruption, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

The Mexican Cartels: A Persistent Threat

Mexico’s drug cartels are no longer just criminal organizations; they are sophisticated transnational criminal enterprises wielding immense power and influence. The Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are the two dominant players responsible for vast networks of drug production, distribution, and financial operations.

These cartels have moved beyond traditional cocaine and heroin trafficking. Today, synthetic drugs—mainly fentanyl—are the backbone of their operations. Fentanyl is highly potent and cheaper to produce than heroin, making it the preferred narcotic of choice for traffickers. The cartels acquire fentanyl precursors primarily from China, manufacture the synthetic opioid in Mexico, and smuggle it into the U.S.

The scale of cartel operations is staggering. In 2022, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported that the cartels were making an estimated $13 billion annually, up from $500 million in 2018. Beyond drug trafficking, cartels have diversified into human smuggling, weapons trafficking, and even controlling entire swathes of Mexican territory through paramilitary-style forces.

Their reach extends well beyond Mexico’s borders. Cartels have infiltrated American cities, using U.S.-based street gangs as distributors while relying on corrupt officials on both sides of the border to facilitate their trade. The corruption they breed further weakens Mexico’s ability to counter their power.

China’s Role: Precursor Chemicals and Money Laundering

China’s involvement in the Mexican drug trade is twofold: supplying chemical precursors and laundering money for the cartels. Chinese criminal groups dominate the supply chain of fentanyl precursors, exporting these chemicals to Mexican cartels, who then manufacture fentanyl for U.S. distribution.

The chemical trade is lucrative. Unlike heroin, which requires poppy cultivation, fentanyl production is entirely synthetic, making it more difficult to track. Chinese suppliers ship precursor chemicals to Mexican ports, particularly Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas, where cartels convert them into finished fentanyl products.

Beyond the supply chain, Chinese underground banking networks have become essential to cartel financial operations. According to U.S. Treasury reports, Chinese money laundering organizations (CMLOs) help cartels evade financial scrutiny by conducting bulk cash pickups in the U.S., converting dollars into Chinese renminbi, and then transferring funds back to cartel accounts. This description oversimplifies a highly complex process that uses illegal and legal means.

The Triad money laundering typically follows a multi-step process designed to obscure the origins of the cash and integrate it into the legitimate financial system. Tridents take possession of Cartel cash and convert it into more manageable forms, such as cashier’s checks or money orders, often using complicit businesses or individuals. These funds are then funneled through a network of shell corporations—paper entities with no real business operations—registered in offshore jurisdictions known for lax financial regulations and strict secrecy laws. By routing the money through multiple layers of transactions across different countries, often using fake invoices, overvalued or undervalued trade deals, and complex ownership structures, launderers create a confusing paper trail that makes it difficult for authorities to trace the illicit origins of the funds.

Once the money has been sufficiently distanced from its criminal source, it is reintegrated into the global banking system through seemingly legitimate investments. The laundered funds may be deposited into offshore accounts under the names of shell companies, then used to purchase assets such as real estate, luxury goods, or financial instruments. Some schemes involve cycling the funds through stock markets or hedge funds, where rapid transactions further complicate tracking. Eventually, the money appears as legitimate business revenue or investment returns, allowing criminals to access and use it without raising suspicion. Legal loopholes, attorney-client privilege protections, and banking secrecy laws in certain jurisdictions make enforcement challenging, enabling these criminal networks to exploit the global financial system for illicit gain.

The Chinese government’s response to these allegations has been largely dismissive, insisting that controlling fentanyl precursor exports is a Mexican problem and does little to reign in the Triads. While some diplomatic engagement has occurred, meaningful cooperation between the U.S. and China on this issue remains minimal.

The U.S. Response: Sanctions, Law Enforcement, and Military Considerations

The U.S. government has deployed a range of strategies to curb the crisis, from financial sanctions to direct law enforcement action. However, debates continue over whether stronger military intervention should be considered.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned multiple Chinese and Mexican individuals linked to money laundering and fentanyl trafficking. These sanctions block their access to U.S. financial systems and enable asset seizures. While effective in limiting the financial reach of key actors, cartels and their Chinese counterparts often adapt quickly, using cryptocurrencies and other financial loopholes to continue operations.

In addition to sanctions, the Biden administration has increased pressure on China to crack down on fentanyl precursor exports. During a 2023 summit, Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to renew cooperation on combating synthetic drug trafficking, though the effectiveness of these measures remains uncertain.

U.S. law enforcement agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security, have ramped up efforts to dismantle cartel networks inside the United States. Operations like Last Mile have led to the seizure of millions of fentanyl pills and thousands of pounds of precursor chemicals.

Cross-border cooperation with Mexico has also intensified. The Merida Initiative, which provided U.S. funding and intelligence support to Mexican security forces, has evolved into a broader security framework focused on targeting financial networks, disrupting cartel logistics, and addressing corruption.

However, Mexico’s government has been reluctant to embrace U.S. intervention fully. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has rejected calls for direct U.S. military involvement, citing concerns over sovereignty. President Sheinbaum of Mexico has been more receptive to combating the Mexican drug cartels but categorically rejects any U.S. military operations inside Mexico.

The Military Option: A Viable Solution or a Dangerous Precedent?

Some U.S. policymakers have proposed designating Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), which would allow for more aggressive counterterrorism tactics, including potential military action. The idea has gained traction among conservative lawmakers, who argue that the scale of cartel violence and its impact on the U.S. justifies a military response.

However, deploying U.S. military forces against cartels presents significant challenges. Unlike terrorist organizations such as ISIS, cartels operate within a sovereign nation that remains an economic and security partner of the U.S.. Direct military intervention could strain U.S.-Mexico relations and potentially destabilize the region further.

The Cato Institute warns that military action could lead to prolonged conflict, as some cartels have developed near-peer combat capabilities, including armored vehicles, drones, and heavy weaponry. Experts argue that a more sustainable approach would involve strengthening governance in cartel-controlled areas, enhancing intelligence-sharing, and expanding economic opportunities to weaken cartel influence.

Conclusion: The Road Ahead

The fight against Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese enablers will require a multi-faceted approach. While law enforcement, financial sanctions, and diplomatic efforts have made some progress, cartels continue to adapt and expand their operations. The U.S. must balance aggressive action against criminal networks with efforts to strengthen Mexico’s institutions, combat corruption, and push China for greater accountability. However, achieving this while eliminating corruption seems like a bridge too far for most local Mexican governments without massive reform and political will.

As the fentanyl crisis worsens, Washington faces mounting pressure to act decisively. Whether through increased border security, expanded law enforcement efforts, or a shift toward military engagement, the battle against cartels and their global allies remains one of the most complex and urgent national security challenges of the 21st century.

Works Cited

Calderón, María. Mexican Cartels and the FTO Debate: Designation Process & Government Stakeholders. February 2024.

Felbab-Brown, Vanda. "How is China involved in organized crime in Mexico?" Brookings Institution, 23 February 2022.

Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice. Federal Indictment Alleges Alliance Between Sinaloa Cartel and Money Launderers Linked to Chinese Underground Banking. 18 June 2024.

U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Sanctions Mexico- and China-Based Money Launderers Linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. 1 July 2024.

Whitepaper Security Taskforce. U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation 2018-2024.

Ziccarelli, Kristen. The America First Approach to Defeat the Cartels. Center for Homeland Security and Immigration, 6 September 2023.

Buck, Brandan. Reconsidering U.S. Special Forces Deployment against Mexican Cartels. Cato Institute, 13 November 2024.

12. With Drones and North Korean Troops, Russia Pushes Back Ukraine’s Offensive

I hope we can study this hard and learn if there is a coordinated effort with lessons that the north will be able to take back to the peninsula and employ in a war. against the South We must anticipate the changes that might occur within the nKPA.

With Drones and North Korean Troops, Russia Pushes Back Ukraine’s Offensive

Russia has retaken about two-thirds of the territory Ukraine seized last summer in the Kursk region of Russia, but at a fearful cost in lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/world/europe/ukraine-russia-north-korea-kursk.html?utm

A Ukrainian military vehicle driving in the country’s Sumy region, near the border with the Kursk region of Russia, in January.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

By Marc Santora

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Published March 8, 2025

Updated March 9, 2025, 12:52 a.m. ET

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Russian and North Korean forces have made significant battlefield advances in recent days in the Kursk region of Russia, threatening Ukraine’s supply lines and its hold on a patch of land it hopes to use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, according to Ukrainian soldiers, Russian military bloggers and military analysts.

Working together, a new influx of North Korean soldiers and well-trained Russian drone units, advancing under the cover of ferocious artillery fire and aerial bombardment, have been able to overwhelm important Ukrainian positions, Ukrainian soldiers said.

“It’s true; we can’t stop them,” said Oleksii, the commander of a Ukrainian communications unit fighting in the area, when reached by phone. “They just sweep us away, advancing in groups of 50 North Koreans while we have only six men on our positions.”

“Decisions are being made here, but I don’t know how effective they will be,” he said.

If Ukrainian forces were cut off or forced to retreat, it would be a significant setback for Kyiv. Not only was the incursion into Kursk a signature operation that boosted morale and embarrassed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but holding territory in Russia gave Ukraine a potential bargaining chip in any peace negotiations. Pulling out could weaken its bargaining position at a moment when President Trump is trying to force through settlement talks.

Ukrainian forces first swept across the border last summer in an unexpected assault, overrunning unprepared Russian positions and securing a bridgehead of some 200 square miles around the Russian town of Sudzha, which sits about six miles from the border.

It was the first time that a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since World War II.

Military analysts remain divided on whether the surprise decision to carry out an offensive into Russian territory served a useful purpose or was a strategic mistake.

Russian and North Korean soldiers have retaken about two-thirds of the land lost in the summer — but at a horrendous cost, with at least 4,000 troops killed in combat, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and Western intelligence estimates.

Image

Ukrainian service members carrying the body of a Russian soldier from a destroyed building at the Sudzha Border Crossing last August.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Ukrainian officials have said the offensive served multiple goals: thwarting a looming Russian offensive into the Sumy region of Ukraine; demonstrating that Western fears of escalation were overwrought; forcing Russia to divert resources away from the frontline in Ukraine; and possibly serving as leverage in future peace negotiations.

The recent setbacks in Kursk have come as Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine have managed to stall Russian offensive efforts for months and largely stabilize their lines.

Three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin, who keeps tight control over all information in Russia, has paid no apparent political price for the military embarrassment in Kursk, even as the Kremlin has lost thousands of soldiers in grueling battles to drive the Ukrainians out.

As the battles dragged on, the Russians brought in an estimated 12,000 North Koreans to join the fight. North Korea was already supplying Russia with millions of artillery shells Moscow desperately needed, as well as artillery and ballistic missiles.

For months, Russian and North Korean forces have been attacking in some of the most ferocious clashes of the war, the intensity rising and falling but never really subsiding, soldiers said.

The North Koreans were forced to withdraw from the battlefield in January and regroup, but they soon returned.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Feb. 8 that “Russia has once again deployed North Korean soldiers alongside its troops.” Four Ukrainian soldiers all said in interviews that North Koreans were at the vanguard of the latest waves of attacks, along with elite Russian drone units.

Ukrainian soldiers said the North Koreans were now better adapted to waging war on a battlefield that has been transformed by the proliferation of drones. They still engage in the same ferocious frontal assaults that led to so many casualties, but they are operating more cohesively.

“The North Koreans’ application of tactics is constantly improving,” said Andrii, a drone commander fighting in Kursk. They are working in better coordination with North Korean artillery units and supported by Russian drone operators, he said.

They have helped the Russians break through Ukrainian lines in the western part of the Ukrainian-held pocket near the border, south of Sudzha, according to DeepState, a group of analysts mapping the battlefield based on sources in the Ukrainian military, and open-source data like satellite imagery, photos and video posted on social media.

Image

Razor wire threaded through the forest along the border between Ukraine and Russia.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Ukrainian soldiers in the fighting said that their lines were broken south of the small village of Kurylivka, where the enemy troops were able to cross a narrow river in January. They quietly amassed forces, soldiers said, but by early March, there were simply too many North Koreans, and when they attacked they overran the Ukrainian positions.

Ukrainian forces retreated in an organized manner along designated defensive lines, Ukrainian soldiers said. The enemy advance has been halted, for the moment.

In addition to having an overwhelming edge in troops and firepower, the Russians have saturated the battlefield with fiber-optic drones. Unlike radio-controlled drones, these are immune to jamming because they are controlled by ultrathin fiber optic cables that unspool as their pilots guide them to their targets.

Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in the 47th Mechanized Brigade fighting in Kursk, said that the Russians appeared to have increased the range the drones can fly while bringing some of their best operators to the Kursk region.

Small Russian assault units of just a couple of soldiers are also now sometimes moving forward with the drones, further extending the range pilots can fly them.

“Once they storm in, at approximately 200 to 300 meters from the front line, they start using them from there,” he said.

This, he said, has allowed the Russians and North Koreans to strike more effectively at Ukraine’s main supply line: the only road leading from Ukraine to Sudzha.

That route has long been a target of Russian attacks. On a visit to the border this winter, it was littered with the wreckage of blasted-out armored tanks and other military vehicles that had failed to safely run the gauntlet.

The Russians can now keep that road under near-constant fire.

Captain Shyrshyn said that his soldiers were still able to hold their positions even under increasing pressure, but other soldiers said the situation was growing more difficult by the day.

Andrii, the drone commander, said, “The enemy has strongly focused on cutting our logistics, which affects our ability to hold the defense.”

“This was influenced by the number of their drones and the training of their crews,” he said. “It feels like they have gathered their best crews here, and, accordingly, their numbers are large.”

“We have losses,” he added, “but we are still carrying out the tasks assigned to us.”

Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora

A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Russian Drones and North Korean Troops Beat Back Ukraine’s Forces in Kursk. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

13. BREAKING: DHS Detains Lead Negotiator of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment After Online Campaign by Pro-Israel Groups

I have not seen this reported yet in any mainstream media.

Excerpts:

Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin and an American green-card holder, was detained by DHS officials around half past eight as he was entering the Columbia residential building he lives in. He was returning from an iftar, breaking the day-long fast observed by many Muslims during the month of Ramadan.

Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, was with him at the time. A statement by the pro-Palestine group Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) stated that he was “abducted and detained without the physical demonstration of a warrant or officially filed charges.” At the time of writing, Khalil is still being detained at a DHS facility in New Jersey, according to a database for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to WAWOG, the DHS agents told Khalil that the U.S. Department of State had revoked his student visa. The group said this was “despite the fact that he has a green card, not a visa, and is a lawful permanent resident.”

BREAKING: DHS Detains Lead Negotiator of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment After Online Campaign by Pro-Israel Groups

Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained on Saturday, is being held at an ICE detention facility.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/dhs-detains-columbia-university-student-gaza?utm

Janine AlHadidi and Meghnad Bose

Mar 09, 2025

Columbia University security officers speak with Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University on Thursday, March 6. Photo: Janine AlHadidi

NEW YORK CITY—On Saturday night, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents entered a student residential building at Columbia University in uptown New York and detained Mahmoud Khalil, one of the lead negotiators on behalf of pro-Palestine protesters at 2024’s Gaza solidarity encampment. In a sweeping attack on the First Amendment, the Trump administration said this week it would begin revoking visas of “Hamas sympathizers,” specifically citing Columbia University students. The detention followed a two-day targeted online campaign against Khalil by pro-Israel groups and individuals, including Columbia’s high-profile pro-Israel professor, Shai Davidai.

Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin and an American green-card holder, was detained by DHS officials around half past eight as he was entering the Columbia residential building he lives in. He was returning from an iftar, breaking the day-long fast observed by many Muslims during the month of Ramadan.

Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, was with him at the time. A statement by the pro-Palestine group Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) stated that he was “abducted and detained without the physical demonstration of a warrant or officially filed charges.” At the time of writing, Khalil is still being detained at a DHS facility in New Jersey, according to a database for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to WAWOG, the DHS agents told Khalil that the U.S. Department of State had revoked his student visa. The group said this was “despite the fact that he has a green card, not a visa, and is a lawful permanent resident.”

Khalil’s wife was unlocking the door to the building when “two plainclothes DHS agents forced their way in behind them.” They initially refused to identify themselves, she reported, but then threatened Khalil’s wife that if she remained with him, she would be detained too.

On Wednesday, Khalil was among the protesters at a sit-in at Milstein Library in Columbia University’s Barnard College, protesting the recent expulsion of three Barnard students over pro-Palestine activism. New York Police Department officers later arrested nine individuals from the same protest—the third round of arrests of pro-Palestine demonstrators on Columbia’s campuses in the past year.

Over the course of Thursday and Friday, several prominent pro-Israel groups and individuals published a series of tweets targeting Khalil, mentioning his presence at the sit-in on Wednesday and his history as a lead negotiator with Columbia in April 2024, and demanded that the Trump administration act strongly against him by revoking his visa and deporting him. They tagged President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Shai Davidai, a professor at Columbia Business School, who was suspended from entering Columbia’s Morningside campus in 2024 following allegations of misconduct against students and staff of the university, tweeted, “Illegally taking over a college in which you are not even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda should be a deportable offense, no? Because that’s what Mahmoud Khalil from @ColumbiaSJP did yesterday at @BarnardCollege”.

“Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U”—an account on X with more than 20,000 followers—tweeted, “Secretary Rubio (@SecRubio), please revoke Mahmoud Khalil's visa!” On March 6, Rubio had tweeted that “those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security” and that such “violators of U.S law—including international students—face visa denial or revocation, and deportation.”

A pro-Israel student protester at Columbia shared that Khalil was “known to have been on a foreign visa last year” before stating that he “recently helped illegally take over a library building”. Canary Mission posted against Khalil on their social media profiles with the caption “SUSPECTED FOREIGN NATIONAL ALERT”.

A post on Instagram by “Documenting Jew Hatred On Campus” and another account, “another account, “Jews In School” referred to Khalil as a “foreign student agitator at Columbia University” and “the poster child for demonstrating that the Trump administration is serious about revoking visas of foreign students who support terrorism, foment hatred, and harass Jews.”

Saturday’s actions against Khalil also took place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s decision to cancel around $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University. The White House has claimed that Columbia’s “failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment” was the reason for this move.

Columbia University recently set up an office that is secretly investigating its students for political statements about Israel, Drop Site News reported this week, and is requiring students to sign non-disclosure agreements to view the evidence being brought against them. On Friday evening, Columbia University’s Interim President Katrina Armstrong said that the university has reworked leadership structures to “more swiftly respond to incidents of antisemitism and discrimination on campus.”

Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, had previously stated that he was accused by the university’s office of misconduct just weeks before his graduation in December 2024. “I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” he told the Associated Press in an article published on March 6.

After refusing to sign the nondisclosure agreement, Khalil reportedly said the university put a hold on his transcript and threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, he said, they eventually backed down.

14. Trump demands ships "very fast, very soon" as China dominates

This is where we should go after a JAROKUS consortium for rapid shipbuilding.

Please go to the link to view the chart.

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/08/trump-shipbuilding-office-navy-china

Excerpt:

What's next: Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, both Utah Republicans, want the option to build warships and major components overseas, in NATO countries and friendly Indo-Pacific areas (think Japan or South Korea).

Mar 8, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Trump demands ships "very fast, very soon" as China dominates

Colin Demarest
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Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

President Trump is ship obsessed.

He's texting about rust into the wee hours of the morning, according to John Phelan, his pick to be Navy secretary.
And he's sprung the idea of a White House shipbuilding office, spanning both commercial and military sectors.

Why it matters: Amid years of American atrophy — shuttered shipyards, workforce woes accelerated by the pandemic, abandoned guns and schedule overruns — China has cornered the market.

Beijing's capacity is hundreds of times larger than Washington's by some estimates.
That spells trouble in the Indo-Pacific, a watery region where military leaders and Beltway diviners believe a war over Taiwan could erupt as soon as 2027.

Driving the news: Trump in a combative nationwide address said he would "resurrect the American shipbuilding industry."

"We used it to make so many ships," he said. "We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon."
But details on the office — exactly how it would work and how far it would reach — are scarce. The president did mention tax incentives.

By the numbers: The Navy would need to spend tens of billions of dollars a year for three decades to satisfy its expansion goals, according to a roundup from the Congressional Budget Office.

The service tallied 296 battle force ships (aircraft carriers, submarines, surface combatants, amphibious ships, and logistics and support ships) in December.
It's eyeing 381.
That doesn't include the many unmanned assets key to the hybrid fleet envisioned by former chiefs of naval operations Adms. Lisa Franchetti and Michael Gilday.

Merchant ships built by country as a share of global gross tonnage, 2014 to 2023

A stacked area chart illustrating the share of global gross tonnage of merchant ships built by country from 2014 to 2023. The categories include China, South Korea, Japan, and the rest of the world. In 2023, the U.S. accounts for 0.1% of the total.

U.S. in 2023

0.1%

China

South Korea

Japan

Rest of the world

Data: UN Trade and Development; Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios

Flashback: The U.S. built thousands of cargo ships during World Wars I and II, according to a 2023 congressional report.

"In the 1970s, U.S. shipyards were building about 5% of the world's tonnage, equating to 15-25 new ships per year."
"In the 1980s, this fell to around five ships per year, which is the current rate of U.S. shipbuilding."

What they're saying: The shipbuilding office "can only help," Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at a Ronald Reagan Institute event. "How it will work, I do not know."

"We are producing 1.2 attack submarines a year. We need to produce 2.7, or we need to produce almost three, a year," he added. "The way to get started doing it is to say we're going to get started."

Support also rolled in from industry.

Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, said companies are "ready to answer the call to design and build America's commercial and military fleets."
Fincantieri in a statement to Axios said it welcomed the creation of the office, "which will empower us to further expand the U.S. industrial base by creating hundreds of additional jobs in the" immediate term.

What's next: Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, both Utah Republicans, want the option to build warships and major components overseas, in NATO countries and friendly Indo-Pacific areas (think Japan or South Korea).

Go deeper: Saronic, now valued at $4 billion, wants its own futuristic shipyard

15. EXCLUSIVE: Trump Administration Cancels $400 Million in Grants to Columbia

Excerpts:

The move comes just days after the Trump administration wrote to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong, threatening to pull over $5 billion in federal funding unless Columbia immediately addressed antisemitism on its campus.

According to a representative from the task force, Armstrong did not respond to the letter, although the university did release a public statement, saying, “We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism,” adding that "glorifying violence or terror has no place at our university.”

...

The task force includes the Department of Justice and representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and from the General Services Administration.

The Trump administration's announcement about Columbia comes days after the Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the University of California system, a move first reported by The Free Press. The system’s schools “may be engaged in certain employment practices that discriminate against employees who are or are perceived to be Jewish or Israeli,” said DOJ officials in the letter sent to the UC system.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Administration Cancels $400 Million in Grants to Columbia

The cuts are “only the beginning,” according to Trump’s antisemitism task force.

By Maya Sulkin and Gabe Kaminsky

03.07.25 — Israel and Antisemitism

https://www.thefp.com/p/exclusive-trump-administration-cancels

Anti-Israel protesters protest outside Columbia University Campus in New York City. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

0:00

The Trump administration is cutting off $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, claiming it has failed to take steps to confront antisemitism on campus after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, The Free Press has learned.

The cuts represent the federal government’s first round of grant cancellations for Columbia, according to the administration’s newly formed antisemitism task force, which is leading the effort. Columbia has over $5 billion in active federal grants that are being reviewed by the government.

Leo Terrell, the head of the DOJ’s antisemitism task force, said the funding cuts are “only the beginning.”

“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”

In a statement to The Free Press, Columbia said: “We are reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding. We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”

The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services plan to immediately issue stop-work orders on grants to the school, the task force said. The task force provided no specifics to The Free Press on the programs affected.

Critics have warned that cutting off federal dollars is a blunt tool with which to punish colleges, given that most of that money goes to scientific research. As the economist Alex Tabarrok noted last month, “The problem is that the disciplines leading the woke charge—English, history, and sociology—don’t receive much government funding.”

Over $1.3 billion of Columbia’s $6.6 billion in annual operating revenue comes from federal research grants, according to a 2024 report. The National Institutes of Health accounts for 62 percent of these grants, totaling about $747 million in the financial year ending June 30, 2023, according to the school—although not all of those funds were allocated to research. Columbia’s Irving Medical Center is a significant recipient of federal funding.

The move comes just days after the Trump administration wrote to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong, threatening to pull over $5 billion in federal funding unless Columbia immediately addressed antisemitism on its campus.

According to a representative from the task force, Armstrong did not respond to the letter, although the university did release a public statement, saying, “We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism,” adding that "glorifying violence or terror has no place at our university.”

Immediately following the initial warning from the joint task force, Columbia and Barnard College students occupied a Barnard campus library, leading to nine arrests—of four Columbia students, one Barnard student, one Union Theological Seminary student, and three others who are unaffiliated with any of the schools. All were charged with disorderly conduct, trespassing, and obstructing governmental administration. Barnard President Laura Rosenbury noted that the police were called to clear the building after receiving notice of a bomb threat, not because students took over the building in protest.

The task force includes the Department of Justice and representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and from the General Services Administration.

The Trump administration's announcement about Columbia comes days after the Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the University of California system, a move first reported by The Free Press. The system’s schools “may be engaged in certain employment practices that discriminate against employees who are or are perceived to be Jewish or Israeli,” said DOJ officials in the letter sent to the UC system.

16. Two Cheers for DOGE

There are some good aspects to DOGE. Two cheers may be warranted. Hopefully we can stop spending money on some very, very stupid things.

Two Cheers for DOGE

It turns out that Washington spends our money on some very, very stupid things.

By The Editors

03.05.25 — U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/two-cheers-for-doge

(Alfred Gescheidt via Getty Images)

0:00

One of the older cliches in politics, dating at least to Jimmy Carter’s presidency, is the promise to cut spending by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal budget. It’s effective because nobody favors waste, fraud, and abuse. There is no waste, fraud, and abuse lobby. Waste, fraud, and abuse does not command the loyalty of some key voting constituency. Fraud is, by definition, illegal. It’s a meaningless promise, offending no one because it says nothing.

Yet this White House, in the course of six weeks, has done the seemingly impossible: They have found the waste, the fraud, and the abuse. And they are promising to get rid of it.

Even more improbably, President Trump is doing this with the help of Elon Musk, a longtime beneficiary of federal funding himself, such as the money given to SpaceX and Tesla. And they’re doing it through a federal quasi-agency collectively known as DOGE, staffed by young, disagreeable eccentrics who go by names like “Big Balls.”

Anyone who has ever had the experience of waiting in line at a DMV knows that the government doesn’t work the way it ought to. And yet the extent of the waste so far revealed has astonished even the staunchest libertarian.

We’ll start with a scandal just revealed by Free Press reporter Madeleine Rowley. A $27 billion fund aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions was intended to address the climate crisis while revitalizing communities that it considered “historically left behind.”

But it appears little of that $27 billion revitalized anything—except the coffers of a range of environmental nonprofits associated with former Obama and Biden administration officials in the waning hours of the Biden administration. As the EPA’s new chief, Lee Zeldin, told our reporter: “The Biden administration used so-called ‘climate equity’ to justify handouts of billions of dollars to their far-left friends. It is my utmost priority to get a handle on every dollar that went out the door in this scheme and once again restore oversight and accountability over these funds.”

You don’t need to be a fan of Trump to be baffled that tens of billions of dollars—inside one fund in one agency—went to progressive nonprofits established, it seems, simply to take in the government money.

This is one of hundreds of examples. With the caveat that much of this information comes from the White House and DOGE itself, here are some of our favorites:

The limestone mine in Pennsylvania that DOGE is shutting down. That’s the place where over 700 workers process thousands of federal employee retirement applications—by hand, using paper—230 feet underground. Closing that operation will save Americans some $200 million a year.
The USAID money that flowed to terror-tied Palestinian groups, as reported by The Free Beacon.
The $59 million to house undocumented immigrants at New York City’s absurdly expensive hotels.
The millions that flowed to American colleges to promote concepts like “white privilege” and “linguistic supremacy.”
The $20 million for an Iraqi version of Sesame Street, a nice idea in theory that could certainly cost less.
The $10 million for male medical circumcision in Mozambique.
The $14 million to improve public procurement in Serbia.
The $1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia.
The $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia. (Asia is already “doing very well with learning,” as Trump noted in his address to Congress on Tuesday.)

All those millions sent abroad. And yet a domestic concern, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, received only $10,000 for their “cabaret show on ice skates focused on climate change.” Speaking of domestic spending, what to make of the $3 million the Education Department spent on a report about how its previous reports were ignored?

Everyone in Washington knows someone who has been fired by Musk & Co. at this point. Also, everyone in Washington is a Democrat. So DOGE has been criticized at length by the Washington press, which (predictably) questions Musk’s claims about how much taxpayer money he’s saved. And there’s been some (understandable) angst about DOGE’s shuttering of USAID, its single biggest cost-saving endeavor.

Speaking of USAID, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the administration must release nearly $2 billion in frozen foreign aid. And in an indication that even some conservatives have misgivings about DOGE’s approach, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett—a Trump appointee—sided with their liberal colleagues in the decision.

Meanwhile, some entities are pushing back. As The Free Press’s Eli Lake reported Wednesday, the National Endowment for Democracy is taking the administration to court. They argue that the executive branch has no authority to cut off their funding, and say they have resorted to the measure because NED is nearing complete collapse.

So DOGE’s decision to go after federal spending with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel is having its foreseeable hiccups. The federal government is not the Trust and Safety Board at Twitter, as Musk is hopefully learning, because many federal workers actually do important things. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which was briefly gutted by the Muskrats before they realized that maintaining our nuclear stockpile is a worthwhile endeavor, is a valuable case in point. Moving fast and breaking things is not always the ideal approach.

And yet: DOGE now claims to have saved the American taxpayer $105 billion, and while it’s appropriate to be skeptical of such a claim, if DOGE has achieved just half of that number then it’s already been a wild success. And this gets us beyond the economics and the savings and the occasional hilarity of what our government spends money on: It’s just not right to waste other people’s money like this. It’s immoral. We should all be glad an era of fiscal recklessness is hopefully coming to an end.

Perhaps the biggest issue with DOGE is what it’s not cutting. Dancing onstage with a chainsaw can, in theory at least, make for decent entertainment, although Musk lacks Trump’s ability to actually land a joke. But it’s time America had a serious discussion about what to do about our essentially untouchable entitlement programs, namely Medicare and Social Security.

These and other “mandatory programs,” like veterans’ benefits, make up the vast majority of what the government spends money on. And that number is set to skyrocket as more Baby Boomers and Gen Xers age out of the workforce. As in the rest of the West, we are becoming a society where elderly beneficiaries will outnumber young taxpayers; in the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office projects federal spending to balloon by 53 percent, with mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare making up about half of that increase.

Since the beginning of his political career, Trump has promised to leave Social Security and Medicare untouched. This was politically savvy but economically untenable. Barring a miracle, like curing Alzheimer’s, we will soon have to make hard choices about raising taxes and cutting programs that Americans depend on.

In the meantime, however, DOGE and Musk have begun a process that culminates in something more serious. Fingers crossed that this is the start of a discussion that better grounds Americans in fiscal reality.

17. Douglas Murray: How MAGA Lost Its Way on Ukraine

Perhap the ultimate "what aboutism" in the second paragraph of the excerpt. But Murray is not wrong I think in the Ukraine-Russian comparison.

Wittingly or otherwise, the MAGA online right started to absorb Russia’s narrative on Ukraine: that it isn’t a real country, that the Ukrainians aren’t a real people, that if they are a real people, then they are uniquely corrupt. On and on it went: that Ukrainian soldiers are “literal” Nazis, that Zelensky is constantly buying villas and yachts in the south of France, that the whole war is one big money-laundering operation, that Ukraine’s war to push the Russians back is unwinnable because of the great might of the Russian army—and that the whole thing is a giant waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money.

Of course, almost all the allegations the MAGA right makes against Ukraine are infinitely truer of Putin’s Russia. Interested in international corruption? Try looking at Putin and his friends. Interested in an anti-Christian government? How about looking at the cynical faith of Putin, who trumpets Christian values while firing rockets at great cathedrals like that in Odesa and recruiting jihadists to fight for him. Think Ukraine is cruel in forcing draft-dodgers into the army? Consider Putin’s army recruitment processes. Dislike Zelensky for not holding an election during a total war? Have you noticed Putin’s electoral habits?

By this stage, Ukraine is not just a country that the MAGA right has never visited. It is a fantasy country that they imagine they know everything about—and all of it is bad.

Perhaps they will manage to wade their way out of the memes. Or perhaps they will find out the hard way that most of the American public may dislike woke, but they dislike dictators, too—and that it is possible to keep both these dislikes inside one head, and movement, at the same time.

Douglas Murray: How MAGA Lost Its Way on Ukraine

Ukraine is not just a country that the Trumpian right has never visited. It is a fantasy country that they imagine they know everything about.

By Douglas Murray

03.06.25 — The Big Read

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-how-maga-lost-its

(Photo by Allison Robbert / AFP via Getty Images)

0:00

How can the right be so wrong? Or at least portions of the right—especially the American right—when it comes to Ukraine? To begin to grapple with this, you have to go way, way back to Donald Trump’s first term in office.

In that time, Ukraine came to the public’s consciousness just twice. The first occasion was when Trump and other Republicans began to make hay over the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Since 2014 the then vice president’s son had been sitting on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. He was earning around $1 million annually to advise a company in a sector about which he had zero expertise. Why might a foreign company want the son of the vice president on their board? Obviously—as all the investigations have shown since—so that the Biden name could bring contracts, grants, and other support to Burisma.

The only other time Ukraine came to the attention of the American right was in 2019, when President Trump had a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump’s political opponents claimed that he had used the call to tell Zelensky that American aid to the country could be contingent on Ukraine helping to expose the Biden family’s financial dealings. Trump was impeached over the call but acquitted by the Senate. But these two events started to embed the idea on the right that Ukraine was simply a corrupt country, which had enriched and cooperated with its own political opponents.

This was all that Ukraine meant to most MAGA Republicans until Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

For a while the old guard of the Republican party asserted itself in the Senate and the House. With Trump in exile and fighting a thousand legal battles, Republican lawmakers such as Lindsey Graham fought to be more pro-Ukraine and anti-Vladimir Putin than the next man. Some people might think that was cynical, but it was largely an assertion of a Republican principle: which is that tanks—and especially Russian tanks—should not be allowed to roll with impunity into an allied country. But all the while an upcoming generation of mainly online MAGA Republicans could be seen veering in a different direction.

For these people, the question of whether Putin was a bad guy was not settled. During the peak of Biden’s presidency and woke, Putin became, for some of them, a focus of admiration. While the West had turned away from traditional values—not least the Christian faith—here was a leader who spoke in defense of such values. Shortly before Russia’s invasion, Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon was podcasting with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater. “Putin ain’t woke,” said Bannon at one point. “He’s anti-woke.”

“The Russian people still know which bathroom to use,” added Prince.

You might say that all this was part of the inevitable overcorrection to the period of woke. But these memes gathered force online. At the start of the invasion, the normal conservative view prevailed: Ukraine had been brutally attacked, had stood its ground, and was admirably fighting back.

Then several things that are typical of our age began to occur. The first was that the online right became bored with the story and wanted to move it along. Being an essentially reactionary movement, they also began to get bored of the near-universal admiration for Ukraine—specifically for Zelensky. These people understandably hate the idea of narratives being pushed on them, and they noticed that many of the lost souls who had been putting BLM flags in their Twitter bios were now posting Ukraine flags.

They became additionally irritated that unheroic and distinctly unmasculine figures such as Justin Trudeau of Canada were suddenly able to present themselves as wartime leaders. When the Zelenskys did things like the Vogue shoot, they were doubtless simply trying to keep the plight of their country in the Western public eye. But the online right started to find this stuff risible and smelly: If Biden, Trudeau, French president Emmanuel Macron, and every other hated left-wing “globalist” was shimmying up to Zelensky, there must be something wrong with him.

Wittingly or otherwise, the MAGA online right started to absorb Russia’s narrative on Ukraine: that it isn’t a real country, that the Ukrainians aren’t a real people, that if they are a real people, then they are uniquely corrupt. On and on it went: that Ukrainian soldiers are “literal” Nazis, that Zelensky is constantly buying villas and yachts in the south of France, that the whole war is one big money-laundering operation, that Ukraine’s war to push the Russians back is unwinnable because of the great might of the Russian army—and that the whole thing is a giant waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money.

Of course, almost all the allegations the MAGA right makes against Ukraine are infinitely truer of Putin’s Russia. Interested in international corruption? Try looking at Putin and his friends. Interested in an anti-Christian government? How about looking at the cynical faith of Putin, who trumpets Christian values while firing rockets at great cathedrals like that in Odesa and recruiting jihadists to fight for him. Think Ukraine is cruel in forcing draft-dodgers into the army? Consider Putin’s army recruitment processes. Dislike Zelensky for not holding an election during a total war? Have you noticed Putin’s electoral habits?

By this stage, Ukraine is not just a country that the MAGA right has never visited. It is a fantasy country that they imagine they know everything about—and all of it is bad.

Perhaps they will manage to wade their way out of the memes. Or perhaps they will find out the hard way that most of the American public may dislike woke, but they dislike dictators, too—and that it is possible to keep both these dislikes inside one head, and movement, at the same time.

This column was first published in The Spectator magazine.

18. How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious

What are we doing? What good can come of all this? I fail to see the strategic benefit of engaging in this talk and these efforts.

Who thinks it is a good idea to dismantle NORAD?

Who thinks it is a good idea to eject Canada from Five Eyes?

How is all this talk going to impact Canadian elections and what position will the next Prime Minister have on these issues? Is this all about influencing the next election in Canada?

How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious

President Trump, in an early February call, challenged the border treaty between the two countries and told Justin Trudeau he didn’t like their shared water agreements.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/world/canada/trump-trudeau-canada-51st-state.html?searchResultPosition=1

Canadian officials went from thinking Mr. Trump was joking when he referred to Canada as “the 51st state” to fearing he was very serious.Credit...Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff

Reporting from Toronto

March 7, 2025

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After President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an extraordinary statement that was largely lost in the fray of the moment.

“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” Mr. Trudeau told the news media in Ottawa.

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” he added.

This is the story of how Mr. Trudeau went from thinking Mr. Trump was joking when he referred to him as “governor” and Canada as “the 51st state” in early December to publicly stating that Canada’s closest ally and neighbor was implementing a strategy of crushing the country in order to take it over.

The February Calls

Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau spoke twice on Feb. 3, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of discussions to stave off tariffs on Canadian exports.

But those early February calls were not just about tariffs.

The details of the conversations between the two leaders, and subsequent discussions among top U.S. and Canadian officials, have not been previously fully reported, and were shared with The New York Times on condition of anonymity by four people with firsthand knowledge of their content. They did not want to be publicly identified discussing a sensitive topic.

Image

President Trump has taken issue with Canada’s protected dairy sector, among other trade grievances.Credit...Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

On those calls, President Trump laid out a long list of grievances he had with the trade relationship between the two countries, including Canada’s protected dairy sector, the difficulty American banks face in doing business in Canada and Canadian consumption taxes that Mr. Trump deems unfair because they make American goods more expensive.

He also brought up something much more fundamental.

He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.

The border treaty Mr. Trump referred to was established in 1908 and finalized the international boundary between Canada, then a British dominion, and the United States.

Tracking Trump’s First 100 Days ›

The Trump administration’s previous actions on North American tariffs

See every major action by the Trump administration ›

How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious - The New York Times

Mr. Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of treaties, a topic he’s expressed interest about in the past.

Canadian officials took Mr. Trump’s comments seriously, not least because he had already publicly said he wanted to bring Canada to its knees. In a news conference on Jan. 7, before being inaugurated, Mr. Trump, responding to a question by a New York Times reporter about whether he was planning to use military force to annex Canada, said he planned to use “economic force.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

During the second Feb. 3 call, Mr. Trudeau secured a one-month postponement of those tariffs.

This week, the U.S. tariffs came into effect without a fresh reprieve on Tuesday. Canada, in return, imposed its own tariffs on U.S. exports, plunging the two nations into a trade war. (On Thursday, Mr. Trump granted Canada a monthlong suspension on most of the tariffs.)

Glimpses of the rupture between Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau, and of Mr. Trump’s aggressive plans for Canada, have been becoming apparent over the past few months.

The Toronto Star, a Canadian newspaper, has reported that Mr. Trump mentioned the 1908 border treaty in the early February call and other details from the conversation. And the Financial Times has reported that there are discussions in the White House about removing Canada from a crucial intelligence alliance among five nations, attributing those to a senior Trump adviser.

Image

A small obelisk marking the Canada-U.S. border east of Coutts, Alberta.Credit...Amber Bracken for The New York Times

Doubling Down

But it wasn’t just the president talking about the border and waters with Mr. Trudeau that disturbed the Canadian side.

The persistent social media references to Canada as the 51st state and Mr. Trudeau as its governor had begun to grate both inside the Canadian government and more broadly.

While Mr. Trump’s remarks could all be bluster or a negotiating tactic to pressure Canada into concessions on trade or border security, the Canadian side no longer believes that to be so.

And the realization that the Trump administration was taking a closer and more aggressive look at the relationship, one that tracked with those threats of annexation, sank in during subsequent calls between top Trump officials and Canadian counterparts.

One such call was between Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — who at the time had not yet been confirmed by the Senate — and Canada’s finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc. The two men had been communicating regularly since they had met at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and club in Florida, during Mr. Trudeau’s visit there in early December.

Mr. Lutnick called Mr. LeBlanc after the leaders had spoken on Feb. 3, and issued a devastating message, according to several people familiar with the call: Mr. Trump, he said, had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon.

Mr. Trump was interested in doing just that, Mr. Lutnick said.

He wanted to eject Canada out of an intelligence-sharing group known as the Five Eyes that also includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes agreements and conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario.

And he is also reviewing military cooperation between the two countries, particularly the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Image

Mr. Trudeau visited the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado, in 2022. Mr. Trump has been reviewing military cooperation between the two countries.Credit...Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

A spokesperson for Mr. Lutnick did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Mr. LeBlanc declined to comment.

In subsequent communications between senior Canadian officials and Trump advisers, this list of topics has come up again and again, making it hard for the Canadian government to dismiss them.

The only soothing of nerves has come from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the four people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Rubio has refrained from delivering threats, and recently dismissed the idea that the United States was looking at scrapping military cooperation.

But Canada’s politicians across the spectrum, and Canadian society at large, are frayed and deeply concerned. Officials do not see the Trump administration’s threats as empty; they see a new normal when it comes to the United States.

On Thursday, at a news conference, a reporter asked Mr. Trudeau: “Your foreign affairs minister yesterday characterized all this as a psychodrama. How would you characterize it?”

“Thursday,” Mr. Trudeau quipped ruefully.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country. More about Matina Stevis-Gridneff

19. Thoughts from a Kyiv Park Bench by Mick Ryan

Thoughts to ponder on a Sunday afternoon.

Excerpts:

Sitting on this hard, timber park bench, I contemplate my own presence here. What the hell is an Australian, someone from a different culture on the other side of the world, doing here?

The easy answer is that I am here to learn. And to pass on what I learn to soldiers on the other side of the world who may soon be called to fight as the Ukrainians have. I am also here because over the past three years I have fallen in love with these people and their independent, courageous nature.

But deep down, I am here because I know what is at stake in this war. The future of Ukraine’s existence is at stake. But this war is just the beginning of an existential fight between democracies and authoritarians. I wish I were exaggerating.

Putin and Xi, emboldened by a new American president who is aligned with their world view, have read the signals. They see democracy in retreat, as weaklings to be bullied. These dictators believe that democracies are unwilling to invest their people nor their vast riches in defending themselves. Because of this, there are much darker days ahead, I fear. We need to learn all we can from Ukraine about how to protect ourselves from this peril.

For me, as an old soldier, sitting here watching people go about their business in a park on a Sunday provides me with the clearest sense of purpose. Purpose in defending Ukraine and defending all democracies. People should be free to wander aimlessly in parks and live their lives without interference. But it must be protected. The Ukrainians have been fighting to do so for 11 years now.

The least we can do is help them. And in doing so, help ourselves to prepare for the terrible trials ahead.

Futura Doctrina

Thoughts from a Kyiv Park Bench

Such everyday idyllic scenes are what Ukraine and its soldiers are fighting for.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/thoughts-from-a-kyiv-park-bench?utm

Mick Ryan

Mar 09, 2025

∙ Paid

The view from the park bench in Kyiv where I wrote this piece.

It’s just after lunchtime on a Sunday in Kyiv. I have a break between meetings so decide to go for a walk to enjoy what is a lovely Day outside. It’s cool (at least for this Aussie) but not cold.

I meander through the square, past the Princess Olha monument, and along the rows of decaying, rusted remnants of Russian armoured vehicles. This is my fifth visit to Ukraine. Each time I come here the vehicle hulks are more decrepit and covered in Ukrainian flags and symbols.

The square in front of Saint Michael’s Cathedral has a new sign since I was here last. The sign is quite simple and made from polished metal: it says “Freedom”.

The bells of Saint Michael’s are playing and there are small crowds of people entering and exiting out into the square. It’s Sunday, so I guess business is brisk.

I wander down the street that branches off the square. The long blue wall on my left which is covered in the faces of Ukrainian service personnel lost in the wars spawned by Russias 2014 invasion and its 2022 full scale invasion.

I walk slowly, looking at the many different faces. Some are old, some are young. Some are so young I can’t believe they are in the army. As usual, there are many floral tributes sitting at the base of the wall. Some of the flowers left by those paying their respects are emplaced in the empty brass artillery cases that are another remnant of this war.

I never fail to visit this wall when I am here. As an old soldier, I am compelled - and honoured - to pay my respects to those who gave their last full measure of devotion to their nation.

I turn left and walk into the park. Just ahead of me is the glass bridge, which is also sometimes known here as the Klitschko Bridge after the mayor of Kyiv who oversaw its construction. A Russian missile landed very close to it in the opening days of this war. It is crowded with people enjoying the sunshine and the views across the river.

The mighty Dnieper River winds its way through Kyiv below me. Thin sheets of ice slowly make their way downstream. For over 15 centuries, since a time long before there was a place called Moscow, this broad water course has been a superhighway for trade and transportation. Today, there are few boats on the river.

The park is on the high ground well above the river. This ground has been where the wealthy and the rulers of Kyiv have lived since the founding of the city. It has also served as a bastion for its defence for a thousand years.

The trees here are without their leaves, but they will soon burst into life after a warmer than usual winter. The grass is a mix of brown and green tinges.

The park is busy but not too crowded. Those I pass are a mix of older folks out for a quiet Sunday stroll, families enjoying an opportunity for the kids to run around on the grass and young people in small groups who appear to see the park as a way to get from one place to another, not somewhere to be enjoyed itself.

And there are dogs. Dogs chasing balls, on leashes and just generally enjoying the sunshine.

In the gazebo overlooking the statue of Prince Volodymyr, there is a young guy playing the piano. He is wearing a VR headset, so I am not sure whether he recording what he is playing or if he is imagining he is playing in a concert hall. It doesn’t matter. He is a terrific pianist; and as I write this he plays the melancholic Tennessee from the film Pearl Harbour. It is such a beautiful piece of music, hauntingly sad and appropriate at the same time.

As I sit and watch people pass by, it is hard to imagine the bitter fighting that continues to the east over the horizon. Young men and women, and many who are not so young, stand on the frontline against Russian imperialism.

They endure cold, hunger and the constant peril of Russian drones and artillery. All have families back east who constantly worry about their safety. They know the Russian army is happy to throw dozens or hundreds of soldiers against them in 21st century kamikaze charges to gain just a few metres.

Image: Taken by Author.

Sitting here in the park, this feels a world away, but the occasional passing of soldiers in uniform drags me back to the reality of the brutal Russian assault on Ukraine.

It is such a lovely day. People in the park are enjoying a respite from work, from the war, even if it is fleeting. Children play in a brightly colored playground in the shadow of the gleaming domes of Saint Michaels.

There are some who might be critical of the peaceful environment of Kyiv and the ability of the people to enjoy their Sunday in the park unmolested by Russian soldiers. Criticism of Ukraine, its president and its people has become more common due to the disinformation campaigns of Russia which are amplified by Trump, Vance and their army of MAGA trolls.

It is unwarranted and unfair.

Preserving the ability of people to walk in the park on a sunny yet cool Sunday afternoon is exactly what Ukraine’s soldiers fight for. It is the idyllic that both soldiers and civilians yearn for. It represents the society they are drawn from and the society they fight to protect. It is what every solder wants to be doing and what they wish to return to. It is vital that societies preserve such things, even in the grim and shocking circumstances of this war.

And after the shocks of the past few weeks, where a previously trusted friend has withdrawn military assistance, intelligence sharing and most importantly, the hand of friendship, simple pleasures like a walk in the park matter.

Sitting on this hard, timber park bench, I contemplate my own presence here. What the hell is an Australian, someone from a different culture on the other side of the world, doing here?

The easy answer is that I am here to learn. And to pass on what I learn to soldiers on the other side of the world who may soon be called to fight as the Ukrainians have. I am also here because over the past three years I have fallen in love with these people and their independent, courageous nature.

But deep down, I am here because I know what is at stake in this war. The future of Ukraine’s existence is at stake. But this war is just the beginning of an existential fight between democracies and authoritarians. I wish I were exaggerating.

Putin and Xi, emboldened by a new American president who is aligned with their world view, have read the signals. They see democracy in retreat, as weaklings to be bullied. These dictators believe that democracies are unwilling to invest their people nor their vast riches in defending themselves. Because of this, there are much darker days ahead, I fear. We need to learn all we can from Ukraine about how to protect ourselves from this peril.

For me, as an old soldier, sitting here watching people go about their business in a park on a Sunday provides me with the clearest sense of purpose. Purpose in defending Ukraine and defending all democracies. People should be free to wander aimlessly in parks and live their lives without interference. But it must be protected. The Ukrainians have been fighting to do so for 11 years now.

The least we can do is help them. And in doing so, help ourselves to prepare for the terrible trials ahead.

20. A Europe in Emotional Shock Grapples With a New Era

It is a brave new world. It is a strange new world. Certainly not a world I expected to see in our lifetime.

A Europe in Emotional Shock Grapples With a New Era

It remains to be seen how far President Trump’s embrace of Russia and abandonment of traditional allies will go. But “the West” may be gone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/world/europe/trump-putin-russia-europe.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes

European leaders with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, wearing all black, at a summit meeting in London this month.Credit...Javad Parsa/NTB, via Reuters

By Roger Cohen

Reporting from Paris

March 8, 2025

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For decades a core objective of the Soviet Union was to “decouple” the United States from Europe. Decoupling, as it was called, would break the Western alliance that kept Soviet tanks from rolling across the Prussian plains.

Now, in weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow the gift that eluded it during the Cold War and since.

Europe, jilted, is in shock. The United States, a nation whose core idea is liberty and whose core calling has been the defense of democracy against tyranny, has turned on its ally and instead embraced a brutal autocrat, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Gripped by a sense of abandonment, alarmed at the colossal rearmament task before it, astonished by the upending of American ideology, Europe finds itself adrift.

“The United States was the pillar around which peace was managed, but it has changed alliance,” said Valérie Hayer, the president of the centrist Renew Europe group in the European Parliament. “Trump mouths the propaganda of Putin. We have entered a new epoch.”

The emotional impact on Europe is profound. On the long journey from the ruins of 1945 to a prosperous continent whole and free, America was central. President John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963 framed the fortitude of West Berlin as an inspiration to freedom seekers everywhere. President Ronald Reagan issued his challenge — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” — at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987. European history has also been America’s history as a European power.

But the meaning of “the West” in this dawning era is already unclear. For many years, despite sometimes acute Euro-American tensions, it denoted a single strategic actor united in its commitment to the values of liberal democracy.

Image

Activists in Brussels this month urged European leaders to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine.Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters

Now there is Europe, there is Russia, there is China and there is the United States. The West as an idea has been hollowed out. How that vacuum will be filled is unclear, but one obvious candidate is violence as great powers duke it out.

Of course, as the almost daily whiplash on new tariffs has made clear, Mr. Trump is impulsive, even if his nationalist and autocratic tendencies are a constant. He is transactional; he could change course. In 2017, on a visit to Poland during his first term, he said, “I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail.”

The president has since stripped himself of the shackles of such traditional thinking and of the establishment Republican entourage that buttressed it. He appears to be a leader unbound.

The challenge for Europe is to judge what constitutes maneuvering on Mr. Trump’s part and what is a definitive authoritarian American reorientation.

A week after the ugly Oval Office blowup with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, accused of failing to say “thank you” for American military assistance that has since been “paused,” Mr. Trump has agreed to a meeting next week of senior Ukrainian and American officials. He has also threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia if it does not enter peace talks. This may allay some of the damage, although little if any basis for ending the Russian-instigated war seems to exist.

“Whatever Trump’s adjustments, the biggest danger would be to deny his abandonment of liberal democracies,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at Sciences Po University in Paris. “Trump knows where he is going. The only realist position for Europe is to ask: What do we have as a military force and how do we integrate and grow that power with urgency?”

President Emmanuel Macron of France declared this week that the continent faced “irreversible changes” from America. He urged “massive shared financing” for rapid European military reinforcement, announced a meeting next week of European chiefs of staff and said “peace cannot be the capitulation of Ukraine.” He also offered to extend France’s nuclear umbrella to allies in Europe.

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A meeting at the Oval Office this month between Mr. Zelensky and President Trump exposed raw tensions.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

These were indications of big strategic shifts. But nowhere in Europe has the impact of American realignment been more destabilizing than in Germany, whose postwar republic was largely an American creation and whose collective memory holds sacred the generosity of American soldiers offering the first succor to a devastated nation.

Christoph Heusgen, the German chairman of the Munich Security Conference, teared up last month as he contemplated the end of his three years in the job. It was easy, he said, to destroy a rules-based order and a commitment to human rights, but hard to rebuild them. He spoke after Vice President JD Vance accused Europe of denying democracy by trying to block the advance of far-right parties, including a German party that has used Nazi language.

“It was a terrible sight, the whipping boy and the weeping boy,” said Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist who has written extensively on Central Europe. “Europe must step up now to fight for democracy.”

For many Germans, the idea that America, whose forces did so much to defeat Hitler, should opt to cosset a party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, that includes members openly supportive of the Nazis feels like an unpardonable betrayal. The AfD is now Germany’s second largest party.

In the words of the British historian Simon Schama, interviewed this week by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, this combined with the cutting-off of American military and intelligence aid to Ukraine, at least for now, constituted “horrible infamy.”

Germany’s incoming conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, reacted with words that felt like the death knell of the old order. “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the United States,” he said. The Trump Administration, he suggested, was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

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Christoph Heusgen, the German chairman of the Munich Security Conference, said last month that it was easy to destroy a rules-based order and a commitment to human rights, but hard to rebuild them.Credit...Sven Hoppe/DPA, via Associated Press

In moments, a triple German taboo fell. Mr. Merz’s Germany would exit American tutelage, examine the extension to Berlin of French nuclear deterrence and permit growing debt to finance a rapid defense industry buildup.

Even at a time of economic difficulty, Germany is a bellwether for Europe. If French-German military cooperation does grow fast, and is complemented by British military involvement, as seems likely under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Europe may shed its reputation as an economic giant and strategic pygmy. But it will not happen overnight.

Europe’s major powers, it seems, have concluded that Mr. Trump is no outlier. He has plenty of support among Europe’s growing far right who are anti-immigrant nationalists. He is the American embodiment of an age of rising autocrats for whom postwar institutions and alliances are obstacles to a new world order built around great-power zones of influence.

If Mr. Trump wants to grab Greenland from a European Union member, Denmark, what other European conclusion is credible? The outlier of the past decade now looks like President Biden with his passionate defense of democracy and a rules-based order.

Of course, the ties between Europe and the United States are no small matter. They will not be easily unraveled; they are much more than a military alliance. According to the latest E.U. figures, trade in goods and services between the 27-nation European Union and the United States reached $1.7 trillion in 2023. Every day, some $4.8 billion worth of goods and services crosses the Atlantic Ocean.

Mr. Trump has claimed since taking office a second time that the European Union was “formed in order to screw the United States.” It was a statement typical of his a-historical, zero-sum view of the world. In fact, by any reasonable assessment of the past 80 years, the Euro-American bond has been a prosperity engine and a peace multiplier.

“The alliance is at a very painful stretching point, but I would not call it a breaking-point, at least not yet,” said Xenia Wickett, a London-based consultant who has worked for the U.S. National Security Council. She differentiated between Mr. Trump’s demand that Europe pay more for its defense, a not unreasonable request, and his embrace of Mr. Putin.

Where that embrace leads, if maintained, is unclear. But as Mr. Schama said, “When you do reward aggression, it guarantees another round of aggression.” Ukraine, for Mr. Putin, is part of a much broader campaign to undo NATO and the European Union. Along with China in a “no limits” partnership, he wants his Russian resurrection to put an end to what he sees as Western domination of the world.

As Pierre Lévy, a former French ambassador to Moscow, wrote last month in Le Monde, “It’s up to the American people to understand they are in Putin’s line of fire: de-Westernize the world, end American hegemony, end the dollar’s dominant place in the global economy, and act with the backing of Iran, North Korea and China.”

For now, and for unclear reasons, Mr. Trump does not seem to care. He is not about to waver from his zero-criticism susceptibility to Mr. Putin. Europe, it seems, will just have to overcome its stupefaction.

“We are all heartbroken when we wake up,” Ms. Bacharan said.

The U.S., Russia and Europe

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Feb. 27, 2025

Trump Wants Europe to Defend Itself. Here’s What It Would Take.

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With Trump’s Backing Uncertain, Europe Scrambles to Shore Up Its Own Defenses

Feb. 3, 2025

Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about Roger Cohen

A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Thanks to Trump, a Soviet Goal May Finally Have Been Achieved. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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