Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The parachute soldier has characteristics that mark him out among men. First, he is a volunteer and, second, he has to overcome something every time he jumps."

— Lieutenant General Sir Richard Gale, Commander of the British 1st Airborne Division

“Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief?”

— Benjamin Franklin, c. 1784

"We're paratroopers, Lieutenant. We're supposed to be surrounded."

— Captain Richard Winters, 101st Airborne Division, as portrayed in Band of Brothers

1. Army to recode 20,000 parachutist jobs in major airborne restructuring

2. Senior Leaders Say Special Ops Community Aligned With Joint DOD Mission

3. Trump Transforms Tariff War Into High-Stakes Showdown With China

4. Trump Pauses ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs, but Hits China Harder

5. 'The Economist' editor unpacks the 'biggest trade policy shock' of Trump's tariffs

6. Trump’s tariff pause brings investors relief—but worries remain

7. Why Trump Blinked on Tariffs Just Hours After They Went Into Effect

8. Donald Trump shoots his own global mouthpiece

9. Panama Hopes Hegseth Visit Turns Page and Ends Trump Pressure

10. Socom: Changing Operational Demands Requires Acquisition Changes

11. Ukraine says more than 150 Chinese mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine

12. Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages

13. White House Should Direct Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff to Review Strategic Choices on Embassy Crisis Response

14. Lawmakers fearful of SOCOM cuts, possible risk to mission.

15. Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose

16. Trump and Xi Are in a Tariff Trap

17. Total Defense Strategy: How Small Nations Strengthen Resilience and Trust

18.Tyranny of Time & Distance: Logistics & Contested Deployment in LSCO

19. CIA is reviewing its authorities to use lethal force against drug cartels

20. Fentanyl Should Not Be Designated as a WMD. Period.

21. Trump Signs Order to Revive US Shipbuilding, DOGE Review of Navy

22. NATO Is a Corpse

1. Army to recode 20,000 parachutist jobs in major airborne restructuring

I recall the knife fights when I was the G3 at USASOC and we tried to protect every paid parachute position. So many different arguments can be made (tough training, tradition, morale, esprit de corps, sustained proficiency of paratroopers in staff positions and non direct combat positions because they will rotate back to combat positions or may need to be used as replacements in combat, and more).

One of my close friends and SAMS classmate was in TRADOC working force structure issues after he retired from active duty and we used to argue over this issue.

There are many aspects to this. The key question is how many paid parachute positions do we need in the force to conduct the required missions? What is the real number we need to maintain? That is a hard number to discern as it all depends on the assumptions we make and criteria we use.

One issue that is overlooked is that the Air Force cannot provide the resources to sustain readiness training for all 56,000+ paid positions.

Excerpts:

In recent years, limited aircraft availability, especially C-17s and C-130s, has contributed to an overall “decline in collective airborne proficiency,” Anderson said.

“We started to assume risk with the high-end forces that have to be ready to go tonight,” Anderson said. “This is not about saving money; it’s about getting readiness to where we need it.

As noted this is not about money. I understand that basic jump pay is going to increase to $200 per month. And there will be an additional $150 per month for current/qualified jumpmasters.

Army to recode 20,000 parachutist jobs in major airborne restructuring

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2025/04/09/army-to-recode-20000-parachutist-jobs-in-major-airborne-restructuring/

armytimes.com · by Todd South · April 9, 2025

The Army will recode nearly 20,000 paid parachutist positions in a major restructuring of its airborne forces aimed at improving readiness, service officials said.

The recoding means the positions will remain airborne billets, but soldiers will no longer be required to maintain jump status or receive jump pay.

Over a five-month period beginning last September, two dozen Army organizations met to examine the service’s requirements for airborne operations and training, Lt. Gen. Gregory Anderson, head of the 18th Airborne Corps, told Army Times.

18th Airborne at center of major Pacific exercise for the first time

A Hawaii headquarters will run a simulated battle with the North Carolina-based unit as its lead.

Since 2006, the Army has kept 56,756 paid parachutist positions on its rolls, Anderson said. For reference, the entire force of Army parachutists that jumped into Normandy during World War II was 13,000 troops.

In recent years, limited aircraft availability, especially C-17s and C-130s, has contributed to an overall “decline in collective airborne proficiency,” Anderson said.

As a result, assets used to maintain the jump status of the more than 56,000 positions has come at the expense of keeping the assault force — the combat troops in immediate response missions — at a high level of readiness, the three-star said.

“We started to assume risk with the high-end forces that have to be ready to go tonight,” Anderson said. “This is not about saving money; it’s about getting readiness to where we need it.”

Below are the parachutist position recodings by command; these figures are estimates by the U.S. Army and are not yet finalized:

9,000 – Army Special Operations Command
3,600 – Army National Guard
3,500 – Army Forces Command
1,900 – Army Reserve
1,000 – Army Pacific
850 – Army Europe and Africa

Currently, to maintain jump status, a parachutist must jump four times each year.

“What ends up happening we take fewer aircraft, same jump requirements and units doing everything they can to achieve basic airborne currency,” Anderson said. “In many cases, they were not meeting even currency.”

The Pentagon requires the Army to produce 15,000 parachutists at the ready at any time.

As the organizations analyzed this requirement, training needs and the demands of maintaining the force from riggers to jumpmasters, they had to ask tough questions, Anderson said.

“Are support battalions going to jump into a combat situation with the assault echelon?” Anderson said. “Or would they come in later some other way?”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Army Times in an email statement that the adjustments will prioritize training and resources where they are needed most.

“Too many positions were allocated outside the direct combat force. This was a drain on resources and we’re fixing it.”

Soldiers in the affected billets will still be airborne trained and if they transfer into an assault position, they will be retrained with a refresher course and put on paid jump status, Anderson said.

“These decisions help make our paratroopers more proficient by concentrating on those who could be jumping into combat,” George said.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

2. Senior Leaders Say Special Ops Community Aligned With Joint DOD Mission

This is the key excerpt:

"Our priorities for the SOF enterprise are squarely nested with Secretary Hegseth's priorities for the joint force: defend the homeland, strengthen deterrence and increase burden sharing with U.S. allies and partners," he added.

This is the only time I have seen this priority of "increase burden sharing with U.S. allies and partners." The final question from Rep Ryan at the HASC hearing today asked what was on my mind: What is burden sharing ? What do we really mean by that. Does this mean we are somehow reducing our commitment to our allies. General Fenton was adamant that that is not the case and reiterated that SOF is the premier partner force. Rep Ryan said that he commends that message and hopes that others in administration will also reiterate that we are not backing away from our critical partnerships.

I would add to the above that it should be "America First, Allies Always."

You can see the HASC hearing from today at this link: https://armedservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=5032

Senior Leaders Say Special Ops Community Aligned With Joint DOD Mission

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4150296/senior-leaders-say-special-ops-community-aligned-with-joint-dod-mission/

April 9, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |

During a posture hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, the two most senior leaders from the U.S. military's special warfare community explained how the special operations force's mission aligns with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's overall priorities for the joint force.

Colby Jenkins, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, explained the community's priorities while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Jenkins told the committee that special operations remain at the forefront of the nation's strategic priorities. Tasked with the most challenging and dangerous missions, SOF is the world's most lethal, adaptable and capable force.

"Our priorities for the SOF enterprise are squarely nested with Secretary Hegseth's priorities for the joint force: defend the homeland, strengthen deterrence and increase burden sharing with U.S. allies and partners," he added.

In his Jan. 25, 2025, message to the force, Hegseth listed reestablishing deterrence by defending the homeland and working with allies and partners to deter aggression as one of his three primary pillars for DOD to focus on going forward. The other two are restoring the warrior ethos and rebuilding the military.

"Our elite warriors deter adversaries by creating strategic asymmetric advantages and maintaining irregular warfare superiority, leveraging our close relationships with our foreign partners in critical regions," Jenkins said.

He explained that irregular warfare includes potent, non-kinetic strikes — such as information operations — that must be timed precisely.

"The coordination of information operations actually resides within SO/LIC. ... So, we have the unique opportunity to coordinate across the combatant commands; not only within DOD but also with sister agencies. … [So, irregular warfare] is not just a SOF opportunity, it's a whole of Department of Defense opportunity," he added.

After Jenkins described SOF's aforementioned attributes, Fenton then discussed Socom's role in crisis response, including conducting anti-terrorism operations.

"Socom's crisis response mission is the nation's most lethal and surgical tool to eliminate threats to the homeland, rescue American citizens [and] protect diplomats, all at a moment's notice," Fenton said.

He explained that, in just the past three years, the frequency of presidentially directed crisis response missions has increased by 200%.

"Yet, for this sacred obligation, we will accept no risk in today's crisis response mission," he said.

Noting the Socom team makes up just 3% of the department's forces and less than 2% of the defense budget, Fenton pointed out that Socom forces in recent months have eliminated over 500 terrorists with the intent and capability to strike the homeland, as well as capturing an additional 600 with the aid of global SOF partners.

"Socom remains the world's premier special operations force. I pledge to always provide the nation with the best capability for the fiscal and personnel resources we receive. We will never compromise on standards and lethality," Fenton told the committee.

Jenkins added that the nation's security depends on a strong, agile, modernized and accountable SOF enterprise.

"With your support, we'll continue ensuring SOF is ready to deter, fight and win anytime, anywhere," he added.

3. Trump Transforms Tariff War Into High-Stakes Showdown With China

Just spitballing here, but what if the plan is to now lift tariffs on friends, partners, and allies, and harness them on the US side in an economic war with China?

Trump Transforms Tariff War Into High-Stakes Showdown With China

Clash locks world’s two largest economies in an extraordinary conflict without any immediate exits

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trump-trade-tariff-war-98676e74?mod=WSJ_home_supertopperbottom_pos_2

By Lingling Wei

Follow, Alex Leary

Follow and Jared Malsin

April 9, 2025 7:50 pm ET

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President Trump said he would impose a 125% tariff on China for retaliating against the U.S., while also announcing a 90-day pause on some tariffs. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

By pausing global tariffs against dozens of countries and raising them on China, President Trump has set up a high-stakes showdown in hopes he can pressure Beijing into a face-saving deal after weeks of global turmoil.

There is little sign so far, though, that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is ready to buckle.

Trump announced Wednesday on social media that tariffs on Chinese goods would jump to 125%, saying “hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.” So far, Beijing has hit back at each round of tariff increases from the U.S. by raising duties on American products and targeting U.S. companies.

The clash likely means higher costs for U.S. consumers and locks the world’s two largest economies in an extraordinary conflict with no immediately clear offramps.

For Trump, the decision to pause the bulk of his reciprocal-tariff program underscored his growing concern about the economy. But by escalating against China, he has avoided a full retreat from his tariff policies, making it even harder to back down against the last remaining target, analysts said.

“I think the Chinese appreciate that and they are more and more suspicious that negotiating will help them. Trump has to have a win on China,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

For Xi, caving to the U.S. under such pressure is a nonstarter, say people who consult with senior Chinese officials. The Chinese leader will continue to respond to Trump’s escalations with a bare-knuckle approach that makes a prolonged fight even more likely.

“China is unlikely to change its strategy: stand firm, absorb pressure and let Trump overplay his hand. Beijing believes Trump sees concessions as a weakness, so giving ground only invites more pressure,” said Daniel Russel, a former senior State Department official now with the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Trump and Xi appear to be on a collision course in which the Chinese government is prepared to continue retaliating in response to any further escalatory moves by Washington.

“We are on a spiral,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “Once it gets started it becomes a contest between two very strong-minded individuals.”

Of the two, Trump sounded the most conciliatory Wednesday, calling Xi a friend and a “very smart guy.” Asked whether he would meet or call Xi, Trump said, “Oh sure I would.”

‘Bad scenario for China’

Attempts to arrange talks between the two leaders have stagnated since Trump took office, despite early positive signs. Trump believes he must deal with Beijing from a position of strength, advisers say.

One possible U.S. move would be to try to isolate China by reaching more favorable trade terms with other countries, including those in Asia, and Trump’s decision to suspend higher duties on dozens of countries could aid that effort.

“This is a bad scenario for China. Everyone else cuts a deal with the U.S. and keeps trading with the U.S.,” said Evan Medeiros, a former senior national-security official in the Obama administration and now a professor at Georgetown University. “China is isolated and facing more pressure.”

Beijing, though, has sought to capitalize on the disruptions Trump’s tariffs have created with longstanding partners.

China has a number of tools to cause economic pain for the U.S. that go far beyond tariffs, analysts said. In addition to further raising its own tariffs, China could consider cutting off its supplies of critical rare-earth minerals.

Beijing could also further court other U.S. trade partners, seeking to use Trump’s gyrating trade policy to position itself as a more reliable partner and potentially squeeze the U.S. out of crucial global markets, including in Europe.

Rerouted Chinese goods

As recently as earlier this week, during a call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Chinese Premier Li Qiang described the U.S. tariffs on its trading partners as a typical example of unilateralism, protectionism and economic coercion. China’s retaliatory action is intended to not only protect its own interests but also to safeguard the international trading system, he said.

“Protectionism leads nowhere,” Li told Von der Leyen. “Openness and cooperation are the right path for all.”

But with the new U.S. tariffs making the American market all but closed to Chinese products, even more Chinese goods will be rerouted to countries in Europe and Asia, where leaders are already concerned about a flood of Chinese products that have jeopardized jobs. In addition, Beijing has deeply antagonized Europe with its support for Moscow during Russia’s three-year-long invasion of Ukraine.

In contrast with past crises, Xi and the Chinese government have the advantage of being able to clearly blame Trump for starting the trade war, possibly helping Beijing rally the support of Chinese elites and sections of world public opinion.

“The prospects for a negotiated dealmaking were kind of evaporating” before Wednesday’s announcement, said Susan Shirk, director emeritus of the 21st Century China Center at University of California San Diego. “Now I think they are just going to hunker down and make the best of it.”

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com, Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

4. Trump Pauses ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs, but Hits China Harder

Trump Pauses ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs, but Hits China Harder

The 10% global baseline levy for all imports will stay in effect

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-pauses-reciprocal-tariffs-but-hits-china-harder-27d2a1cd?mod=WSJ_home_supertopperbottom_pos_1

By Gavin Bade

Follow and Annie Linskey

Updated April 9, 2025 7:03 pm ET

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President Trump announced he would impose a 125% tariff on China for retaliating against the U.S., while also announcing a 90-day pause on some tariffs. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—President Trump walked back his steep tariffs on nearly 100 nations that had taken effect just hours earlier, a shocking reversal that sent stocks soaring even as Trump announced simultaneously that he would raise levies on Chinese imports to 125%.

Trump said Wednesday that his 10%, baseline tariff on virtually all imports would stay in effect. But he implemented a 90-day pause for the higher, so-called reciprocal rates he had announced a week earlier on nations the administration views as “bad actors” on trade—except for China. In an early afternoon social-media post, Trump wrote that he had raised the tariff imposed on China to 125%, “effective immediately.”

An administration official said that Canada and Mexico would remain exempt, for now, from the 10% baseline global tariff. While America’s neighbors remain subject to plans to impose 25% tariffs on most imports to the U.S. for what Trump says is their role in fueling the fentanyl crisis, an exemption is still in place for these levies on autos and many other goods compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

At the 4 p.m. close, the Nasdaq roared ahead 12%, the S&P 500 added 9.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved 7.9%, or 2,962 points, higher.

Trump said that he decided to pause the bulk of his reciprocal-tariff program because of growing concern about the economy. “They were getting yippy,” Trump said when asked why he enacted the temporary rollback. “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

The move opens up a 90-day sprint for trading partners to offer Trump deals to reduce their tariffs.

President Trump preparing to sign executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“Nothing is over yet,” Trump said, adding that somebody needed to take the steps that he took to rebalance global trade in America’s favor. He said many countries had come forward to make deals with the U.S.—including China.

“China wants to make a deal,” said Trump, who added that the Chinese were proud people and were determining how to make a deal with the U.S.

The reversal on tariffs shocked even some allies close to Trump. “It was a big-time surprise to a lot of people,” said Sen. Jim Justice (R., W. Va.), a longtime Trump friend, adding that “I love what it’s done to Wall Street.”

Some Democrats criticized the rapid swings in U.S. policy. “Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) wrote on X. “These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading. Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense?”

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, told reporters that he watched JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s interview on Fox Business on Wednesday morning. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariffs but defended the idea of tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged Trump to give Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Also Wednesday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”

President Trump reportedly watched Jamie Dimon’s interview Wednesday on Fox Business in which the JPMorgan Chase CEO said the tariffs would lead to a recession. Photo: Richard Drew/Associated Press

The about-face was greeted with glee by most Senate Republicans, many of whom were at a caucus luncheon when Trump announced the pause. The reaction in the room was positive, said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who added that the pause “sounds like good news to me.”

In the aftermath of the decision, many Republican senators suggested that imposing tariffs and then pulling them back was the strategy all along. “The president is a master negotiator,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) said.

But some of the more vocal critics of Trump’s tariffs weren’t so sure.

“I’m not sure this was gamed out,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.). “Whether or not this was in the playbook or a reaction, I don’t know.”

The surprise over the tariff shift appeared to extend to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was testifying in front of the House Ways and Means Committee when Trump posted the announcement. Democrats on the committee then demanded to know if Greer knew about the shift ahead of time, and if so, why he didn’t mention it during his hours of testimony.

Greer responded that he was aware of discussions on a tariff pause but wouldn’t divulge any more details about his conversations with the president or the rest of the cabinet. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), a close Trump ally, said he met Wednesday morning with Greer but that the trade official hadn’t mentioned plans for a tariff pause; Hagerty stressed he found that laudable, as Greer wouldn’t want to get ahead of the president.

Trump said Wednesday that he was watching the bond market closely as he decided to pause the reciprocal tariffs. “The bond market right now is beautiful,” Trump said, talking to reporters at the White House. “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.”

Trump’s tariff-delay announcement upended the bond market. Longer-term yields, which had been surging based on generalized fear about the fallout from tariffs, were down after his announcement. Yields on short-term notes, which had been relatively stable, shot higher, reflecting a sharp decline in the prices of the bonds. That was welcome news to lawmakers such as Tillis.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was before Congress when the tariff reversal was announced, subjecting him to pointed questions from House members. Photo: shawn thew/Shutterstock

“You take a look at Treasury yields…things were not moving in the right direction,” Tillis said, “and some things could have combined for a really unpleasant outcome.”

Hagerty, who helped negotiate a trade deal for Trump as his first-term ambassador to Japan, said he had heard from many governments keen to strike economic pacts with the president.

Trump likely will have a high bar for such deals, Hagerty said, saying that foreign nations should be ready not only to reduce their own tariffs, but cancel their non-tariff barriers to U.S. products, make commitments to buy U.S. exports, and outline plans to invest in U.S. manufacturing.

The pain is not over for U.S. businesses, Trump’s tariff critics said. They said that lingering uncertainty over the tariff agenda would continue to prevent businesses from making long-term investments in new factories.

“You’re certainly not in an environment where capital is going to be moving until this is settled,” said Tillis, who added that “smaller retailers are gonna be really stressed until we get the China situation worked out.”

Write to Gavin Bade at gavin.bade@wsj.com and Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com

5. 'The Economist' editor unpacks the 'biggest trade policy shock' of Trump's tariffs

This is very educational and explains a lot in a fairly objective way.

Although the President has paused the tariffs on most countries for 90 days this is still very much worth the 44 minutes to listen to with an open mind.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5355907/trump-tariffs-zanny-minton-beddoes

These are the key points that we should all think hard about. I really do think that the economic world order the US created after WWII has been the most beneficial to the US. We have the largest economy and are the richest country in the world. Yes, the system is not perfect and there have always been problems but what is going to replace that system that will be better for us?

Excerpts:

MINTON BEDDOES: I think that this view of the world that President Trump has is at a big-picture level fundamentally wrong. The U.S. is the most successful economy in the world. It's the richest economy in the world. And broadly, the global trading system has hugely benefited the U.S. Now, that's not to say that there are not certain countries that are, you know, not obeying the letter of the global trading system. It's not to say that there are certain products and certain areas where, you know, other countries should open up more. So it's not perfect, but broadly, I think the U.S. has absolutely benefited.

But I think to understand what President Trump is trying to do, you need to step back a bit. And he has two views, and it's not quite clear which of them is predominant. But one view is that if you look at the United States over the last 30 years, he thinks that the U.S. manufacturing base has been hollowed out and the U.S. has suffered because of unfair trade practices from other countries and that you need tariffs to reindustrialize the United States and that this permanently would mean that behind a tariff wall, you would encourage companies to invest in the United States, to create U.S. jobs and that, therefore, the U.S. would fundamentally be better off if it permanently had high tariffs. That's kind of one potential view.

The other view is that he actually views these tariffs as negotiating tools to get better deals with other countries and that by threatening, then you negotiate a better deal with the other countries. There could be truth to both of those, but it's not clear what is actually driving President Trump - whether he primarily wants to have a kind of 19th century view where the U.S., in his view, prospered behind a high tariff wall. And I think that's where he's trying to go.

But the modern economy is built, as you know, Terry, on long supply chains where companies get supplies from many different countries and where the U.S. has specialized in services and higher-value-add manufacturers. And if you really what the consequences would be of this vision, do you think the U.S. is going to start having factories making T-shirts? Is the U.S. going to start, you know, having factories that make sneakers, all of the things that are bought from countries around the world? It's a very sort of radical shift back to an era where the U.S. was much less wealthy and successful than it is now. And so at one level, if that's where he wants to go, this is a fundamental break, and it's going to have huge and ongoing consequences for everybody.

...

The 1930s are another powerful history lesson because there, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were increased. And although it wasn't the main reason for the depression, it certainly didn't help. And other countries retaliated, and that tit-for-tat retaliatory tariff made the depression worse. It certainly didn't help it. That's one of the reasons why, after 1945, there was a decision made to never again have that kind of a tariff war and to create a sort of stable, global system for trade, which is the one that President Trump is essentially now blowing up. The question for U.S. consumers and, indeed, for the U.S. economy is to say, has the U.S. economy overall really been hurt by the current system? My answer would be no, it hasn't. It's the richest, most successful economy in the world. U.S. consumers have an extraordinary range of choice. They are better off from the competitive environment that comes from a low-tariff economy.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5355907/trump-tariffs-zanny-minton-beddoes

'The Economist' editor unpacks the 'biggest trade policy shock' of Trump's tariffs

NPR · by Terry Gross · April 9, 2025

A stock ticker shows trading at a securities firm in Beijing April 9. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images AsiaPac

NPR · April 9, 2025

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I follow the news pretty carefully, but it used to be when I'd come across an article about tariffs or free trade, I'd give myself permission to skip over it. I assumed it might be boring and that I wouldn't understand it even if I read it. But now, Trump's tariffs are high drama. They've upended world markets, and it feels essential to understand their impact on the U.S. and the global economy, how they might have a long-term effect on U.S. relations with our allies and adversaries and how they'll affect consumer prices and our savings.

Here to help me and you better understand what's happening is a journalist who's been covering economic issues for years and recently returned from a reporting trip to China. Zanny Minton Beddoes is the editor-in-chief of The Economist. She previously was the magazine's business editor and economics editor and is a former economist for the International Monetary Fund.

We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Trump's tariffs went into effect at midnight. And this morning, as I record this introduction, they're still in effect. But who knows what will happen later today or tomorrow? Our interview is about the context and possible consequences of the tariffs, so it will be helpful in understanding the news no matter what twists and turns the story takes.

Zanny Minton Beddoes, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: Thank you for having me.

GROSS: If Trump were to say, oops, my mistake; I didn't intend my beautiful tariffs to tank the global economy; let's call the whole thing off and put things back exactly like they were, would the markets likely recover quickly, even if he did that?

MINTON BEDDOES: I'm sure there would be a recovery rally, but I don't think the uncertainty that he's created would go away. I think we've crossed some kind of a Rubicon in the last week or so, and we're not going to go back to the world as it was before.

GROSS: What do you mean by that?

MINTON BEDDOES: Well, you know, President Trump has for decades said that he believes in tariffs, and he has said that he feels that the global trading system is unfair to America. It's a very long-held belief of his. So this whole tariff action of the last week hasn't kind of come out of nowhere. He really believes this, and it's part of a broader sense from this administration that it wants to radically remake the rules of global security, geopolitics, economics. And so even if - and I don't think he would do this - but even if he did, what you suggest and said, oops, this was all a terrible mistake, who's to say that he won't change his mind next week or the week after or in six months?

And you can really only go on the best evidence, which is what President Trump has been saying over years and decades. And that is that he believes - wrongly, in my view - but he believes that the global trading system doesn't work for America. And he believes that it needs radical change. And I think since he's been saying that for such a long time, we have to believe him. And so I don't think that there will be a fundamental shift. I think there will be negotiations with certain countries. I think the markets will affect his calculus. But I don't think we can suddenly kind of wish away what's happened and go back to the world that we had before, quote-unquote, "Liberation Day."

GROSS: You said that tariffs are something that Trump has believed in for a long time. And he recently said that America is being, quote, "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far." What's your take on that high-drama description?

MINTON BEDDOES: I think that this view of the world that President Trump has is at a big-picture level fundamentally wrong. The U.S. is the most successful economy in the world. It's the richest economy in the world. And broadly, the global trading system has hugely benefited the U.S. Now, that's not to say that there are not certain countries that are, you know, not obeying the letter of the global trading system. It's not to say that there are certain products and certain areas where, you know, other countries should open up more. So it's not perfect, but broadly, I think the U.S. has absolutely benefited.

But I think to understand what President Trump is trying to do, you need to step back a bit. And he has two views, and it's not quite clear which of them is predominant. But one view is that if you look at the United States over the last 30 years, he thinks that the U.S. manufacturing base has been hollowed out and the U.S. has suffered because of unfair trade practices from other countries and that you need tariffs to reindustrialize the United States and that this permanently would mean that behind a tariff wall, you would encourage companies to invest in the United States, to create U.S. jobs and that, therefore, the U.S. would fundamentally be better off if it permanently had high tariffs. That's kind of one potential view.

The other view is that he actually views these tariffs as negotiating tools to get better deals with other countries and that by threatening, then you negotiate a better deal with the other countries. There could be truth to both of those, but it's not clear what is actually driving President Trump - whether he primarily wants to have a kind of 19th century view where the U.S., in his view, prospered behind a high tariff wall. And I think that's where he's trying to go.

But the modern economy is built, as you know, Terry, on long supply chains where companies get supplies from many different countries and where the U.S. has specialized in services and higher-value-add manufacturers. And if you really what the consequences would be of this vision, do you think the U.S. is going to start having factories making T-shirts? Is the U.S. going to start, you know, having factories that make sneakers, all of the things that are bought from countries around the world? It's a very sort of radical shift back to an era where the U.S. was much less wealthy and successful than it is now. And so at one level, if that's where he wants to go, this is a fundamental break, and it's going to have huge and ongoing consequences for everybody.

Alternatively, it's more of a negotiating ploy, and it's designed to get a better deal from certain countries. And within the people around the president, there are different views as to whether these tariffs are really about negotiation or whether they are really about creating the barriers that will bring manufacturing back to the United States. They have different visions, but both of them imply a lot of turmoil, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of pain for consumers - because tariffs are taxes on consumers. The people who pay this in the end - the cost of the tariffs - are people who pay more for the things that they buy.

GROSS: It's ironic that Trump wants to lower taxes, but at the same time, the tariffs will create high taxes. So the billions that Trump says will be getting from tariffs, is that money that we, the consumers, will be paying to the government?

MINTON BEDDOES: Let me try and give the best possible explanation that I can of what I think is the logic of the administration. The administration's logic is, we want more things to be built and produced in the United States. We want manufacturing back so we can create the kind of jobs that existed in the middle of the 20th century. And so we are going to have high tariffs, which will encourage companies to come and invest and produce in America. And another way of encouraging to do that is that we'll offer lower taxes. And for American consumers, we'll get more revenue from tariffs so we can lower other kinds of taxes. That's what you hear from administration officials. And they will point to the late 19th century, when America, it's true, had very high tariffs, and it's also true that that was the main source of fiscal revenue. The income tax wasn't invented until 1913. But to think that you can recreate that now or that it would be a good thing, I think, are both very mistaken.

First of all, if you go back to the 19th century, most of the best scholarships suggests that, actually, the McKinley tariffs were, if anything, a detriment to the U.S. economy. It would have done even better without them.

GROSS: Are you talking about the tariff of 1930?

MINTON BEDDOES: No. I'm talking about the late 19th century, the McKinley era...

GROSS: Oh, oh, oh. OK.

MINTON BEDDOES: ...When the U.S. had high tariffs and was growing very fast. The 1930s are another powerful history lesson because there, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were increased. And although it wasn't the main reason for the depression, it certainly didn't help. And other countries retaliated, and that tit-for-tat retaliatory tariff made the depression worse. It certainly didn't help it. That's one of the reasons why, after 1945, there was a decision made to never again have that kind of a tariff war and to create a sort of stable, global system for trade, which is the one that President Trump is essentially now blowing up. The question for U.S. consumers and, indeed, for the U.S. economy is to say, has the U.S. economy overall really been hurt by the current system? My answer would be no, it hasn't. It's the richest, most successful economy in the world. U.S. consumers have an extraordinary range of choice. They are better off from the competitive environment that comes from a low-tariff economy.

If tariffs are raised, consumers pay more. U.S. companies have higher costs. That's why you see this incredible turmoil in the stock market right now. I don't think you end up with a system where the U.S. is better off. Nobody gains from a tariff war. And the other part of this is that countries will retaliate. We've already seen China announcing retaliation. I think others will retaliate, too. And so you end up with a situation which is really lose-lose. And the goal of it is one that I think is not only unattainable, is not really advisable. We're in 2025. The U.S.' strengths are in high tech, the U.S.' strengths are in services. The U.S.' strengths are not in going back to making garments in - sewing sneakers. That's not what the U.S. economy is at, and trying to force it back through tariffs, I think, is a very damaging and dangerous direction to go in.

GROSS: In terms of tech innovation, like you were saying that the U.S. strength is in tech, in the service industry, and in research. But the Trump administration has been cutting research and cutting agencies that do research, cutting universities that do research. So if our strength in terms of the financial system is in innovation and we're decreasing the funding intentionally of innovation, where does that leave us?

MINTON BEDDOES: Well, I would say that that's a big mistake, and it will leave the U.S. worse off. Terry, if we stand back, I think the simplest way of encapsulating this is that in 2025, the U.S. is the most successful economy in the world. This administration wants to radically reshape the rules of global trade in order to put a large tariff wall around the United States, which it thinks will lead to a much stronger U.S. economy as companies invest behind that tariff wall. It's not clear that companies will invest because the most important aspect of this current moment is just how much uncertainty there is, and no one knows if this approach of President Trump is going to last or if these tariffs will be negotiating tools and therefore won't go. So I think the most likely thing is that companies don't actually invest. They just wait and see.

But even if they did, and some companies did come back, it would be a U.S. economy behind a tariff barrier that is less efficient, less productive than it would be without that barrier. And my view - and this won't surprise you since I, you know, run a magazine that for 183 years has fought for free trade. But my view is that the best recipe for the U.S. to succeed in the 21st century is not to hide behind a barrier of tariffs but to double down on its economic strengths. And those strengths, as you say, are its strengths in technology, its strengths in innovation. It attracts the smartest, brightest people from around the world. It has the deepest, most liquid capital markets.

These are incredible strengths that I think the U.S. should play to, and it has every possibility of carrying on being the most successful economy in the world. The bit that I would add is that I think much, much more needs to be done to help those people who have been left behind by not just trade but also technology. So I think there is a big to-do list in the United States, whether it's education, whether it's training, whether it's a much more focus on people who really have suffered. But I don't think hiding behind tariff barriers or reshaping the global trading system is going to be the route to long-term success for the U.S. economy.

GROSS: Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We'll talk more about the Trump tariffs after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We're talking about Trump's tariffs and their impact on everything from the global economy to our daily lives. Trump's approach to the tariffs is to put a 10% tariff as a minimum on everybody, like every country, and then individually, you know, have a formula so that he can individually place tariffs on all of our trading partners. And it's all happening simultaneously, and it's all happening with a very fast deadline. Is that usually the way tariffs are done? Like, how have tariffs traditionally been instated on countries?

MINTON BEDDOES: No, this is absolutely not. This is, without a doubt, the biggest trade policy shock, I think, in history because if you look at - back to the late 19th century, the increase in tariffs under McKinley was less big than this. Even Smoot-Hawley was smaller. You know, presidents from Reagan and indeed to President Biden have increased tariffs on individual goods or individual sectors, but nothing like this. So this is off the charts in terms of scale. It's off the charts in terms of speed and uncertainty.

GROSS: Considering what's happening in the markets, I'm surprised that people in finance, people in the banking system, people in hedge funds, and just, you know, major investors aren't complaining more, aren't objecting more because they're losing a fortune and a lot of corporations, I mean, are losing millions or billions in terms of their stock prices.

MINTON BEDDOES: Well, first of all, some people are now beginning to speak out publicly. You will have seen...

GROSS: Yes.

MINTON BEDDOES: ...That Bill Ackman, for example...

GROSS: Some.

MINTON BEDDOES: ...A very prominent investor was - is worried about an economic nuclear winter, thinks this is a mistake. Other people, other prominent, wealthy investors, have started to speak out. I think you're also hearing from senators - Senator Ted Cruz publicly coming out that these were a bad idea. You're hearing it from more Republican senators. So I think people are beginning to speak out. Behind the scenes, people are somewhere between, you know, baffled, alarmed, befuddled. I mean, you know - because firstly, the scale of this has really shocked people. But I think no one is quite sure what the administration's end game is because, as we were discussing, there are three not necessarily compatible goals, and it's - and the administration's logic switches between them.

Is this about, you know, fundamentally changing the global system so that the U.S. reindustrializes behind a high tariff wall? In that case, these tariffs are here to stay because it won't happen unless they stay. And it's going to be extraordinarily painful - I would say a very bad idea - but they have to stay. Is it primarily to raise revenue? Because if that's the main goal, then you actually don't want too much - too many factories to come back 'cause obviously if they come back, they're no longer paying the tariffs. You only pay the tariffs if you're importing stuff. And thirdly, is it really a negotiating tool? In which case, there'll be a bunch of turbulence, but perhaps this is only a temporary phenomenon. And it really isn't clear.

I think there's a division between the president's advisers. President Trump, if you look at what he's said for the last 30 years, you'd think probably he thinks the U.S. would be better off permanently behind a high tariff wall, but he also loves to deal. So because we have no clarity about what the goal is, or at least because there are different goals, that makes it even more uncertain about where this is going from here. Then you have the question of how will other countries react. And right now, there's a big difference between countries like Japan, which have already been knocking on the door, saying they want to do a deal, and China, which has, you know, reacted with high counter-tariffs and other measures. So this is really a tariff war in the making. That's a different approach to that taken by Japan and others.

GROSS: What does a tariff war look like? Like, take the example of the U.S. and China. And I don't think President Xi is likely to back down. President Trump says he's not going to back down. So if there's a tariff war, say, between China and the U.S., what does that look like?

MINTON BEDDOES: So we're already, I think, in the early stages of a tariff war between China and the U.S. I mean, if you just backtrack a bit, there were tariffs imposed by President Trump in the first Trump administration, to which China retaliated somewhat. Then President Biden kept those tariffs in place, but this was relatively modest amounts, and they didn't really have a huge amount of impact on the U.S. economy.

Now we've had President Trump, first of all, putting 20% tariffs on China earlier in the administration because they, in his view, were not doing enough to stop the precursors of fentanyl being shipped to Mexico. Last week, he added another 34% tariffs as part of his broad reciprocal tariffs. The Chinese then very robustly announced a retaliation the following day. They said they would impose 34% tariffs on U.S. exports to China and also announced another set of measures. They were going to restrict certain rare earth exports. They put a number of U.S. companies on what they call their unreliable entity list. They used other tools to retaliate. And now President Trump has said, well, in response to that retaliation, he's going to increase tariffs on China by a further 50%. This is a tariff war, tit for tat.

The impact of all of this is that tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the U.S. will, I think, be somewhere in the order north of a hundred percent. The knock-on effect of this - now, China is more dependent on the United States for its exports than vice versa, so it will suffer more. But it can retaliate with, you know, all manner of other potential - if we really get into a kind of economic war, then, you know, for example, Apple produces a huge number of its phones in China, which are now going to be hit by these tariffs, but China could put all kinds of restrictions on Apple. China could put all kinds of restrictions on other kinds of critical minerals that it exports. You can get into a very nasty tit-for-tat economic battle from which nobody wins. And it becomes quite hard to get out of because whatever the economic logic, this starts then becoming a matter of national and political pride.

GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We're talking about Trump's tariffs and their impact on everything from the global economy to our daily lives. We'll talk more after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking about Trump's tariffs and how they may reshape the global economy, consumer prices, and our relationships with allies and adversaries. My guest is Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist.

You recently returned from a reporting trip to China. What kind of information did you pick up there about China's economy and how it's going to react to Trump tariffs?

MINTON BEDDOES: So I had been expecting to find China angry and worried because it was clear to me before any tariffs were imposed on "Liberation Day" that China was likely to be a big target of the Trump administration. And when I'd been in China - I go pretty much every year around this time - and the mood two years ago was very, very grim. There was a sense that, you know, China and U.S. relations were getting ever worse, and they were sort of slipping, you know, to a place where you'd worry about war. Last year, the mood was very grim because the Chinese economy was in very, very weak shape. And so this year, I was thinking, oh, my goodness, this is going to be even worse. But actually, I found a quiet confidence in China that they could weather a tariff war with the United States if it happened. They were feeling more optimistic, partly because of - I don't know if you remember. A few weeks ago, there was a - the release of a Chinese AI model called DeepSeek, which...

GROSS: Right.

MINTON BEDDOES: The DeepSeek moment. And DeepSeek is an LLM, a large language model, that is almost as good as those produced by the best American companies, like OpenAI, and much more efficient and doesn't need as much compute power as the Americans' one have. And I - it gave an enormous sort of sense of confidence and ability in China that, gosh, despite the U.S. controls on exports of high-end chips, we can actually make serious progress. So that was one reason for confidence.

But the other was that I think there was a recognition amongst many in Beijing that the Chinese economy - which has been flat on its back because it has been going through a very protracted housing bust and sort of debt overhang that the government hadn't really been addressing, but instead, it had been relying a lot on exports - that if there was a full-on tariff war with the United States, that would hurt very hard. But it would push China towards the kinds of the reforms that everyone knows, including the Chinese government, they need to do, which is to focus their economy away from exports and more on domestic consumers, to increase Chinese consumer spending at home, to provide Chinese people with more of a social safety net, to give them more resources to spend at home, to boost the domestic economy. And that's the kind of big shift that China's economy needs to do. And I think there is a sense in Beijing that if President Trump launches a big tariff war against China, yes, they will be hit, but they will react by boosting domestic consumption and that because that is something that the economy needs, it's actually an opportunity for China.

GROSS: I think there's another way that this might be an opportunity for China. China sees itself, I think, as a major competitor with the U.S. globally. And China has been doing its best to make inroads in countries that have minerals and other things that China needs. So if the U.S. makes a lot of enemies in these trading wars and has trouble trading with traditional trading partners, how can that create an opportunity for China?

MINTON BEDDOES: Absolutely. So as you say, the United States, by, you know, imposing tariffs on everybody - friends and foes alike - is undermining, I think, one of the core aspects of its strength, which is its alliance system and the fact that it does have, you know, very strong relations with a large number of countries. And it has the reputation of being the country that sort of set up and upheld this system of global trade and security rules. Whereas now it seems to be turning its back on that, and that is an opportunity geopolitically for China. It was really ironic, you know, being in China and hearing Chinese officials say, we believe in the rules-based order. We believe in multilateralism. You know, it's the law of the jungle in the U.S. And of course, that's not entirely true because China, as we all know, has abided by the - you know, perhaps the letter of trade rules but not the spirit. I mean, it has had some very questionable trade practices, and no one would deny that, that it is - certainly not played by the rules. But it is now because the U.S. is behaving in this way, you know, China is able to say, well, we - you know, we are upholders of this rules-based system, and the real bully, the real, you know, bad actor here is the United States.

GROSS: What's another way of dealing with China beyond tariffs in terms of trade?

MINTON BEDDOES: Well, if you wanted to deal with China's not fully playing by the rules, then surely the sensible thing to do would be for the United States to act in concert with its allies to put pressure on China. But that is not what's happening. What's happening instead is that the U.S. is putting tariffs on everybody - allies and foes alike. If you wanted to really put pressure on China, you would act much more in concert, which was sort of what the Biden administration was trying to do, right? The Biden administration, you know, kept the economic pressure on China, but it also made a big effort to build up alliances in the rest of Asia.

GROSS: I want to talk about Vietnam for a minute and its relationship to China in this trade war. Vietnam has a 40-plus percent tariff that's being imposed on it, and Vietnam wants to negotiate that down. But the Vietnam tariff has to do with China. Can you explain that connection?

MINTON BEDDOES: So in Trump's first administration, when he first imposed tariffs on China, many Chinese companies, in order to avoid those tariffs, moved their operations to other countries, particularly Vietnam but also Cambodia - some to Mexico - and then exported them to the United States. And because those exports came from Vietnam and not from China, they were not subject to the tariff. But it was essentially Chinese companies just doing the manufacturing somewhere else, and actually also because labor costs were lower in Vietnam than they were in China. By now increasing tariffs so heftily on Vietnam, essentially, Trump is trying to prevent Chinese companies from exporting to the U.S. by shifting their manufacturing to Vietnam. That's the logic. But he's - not just Vietnam. He's increased tariffs on pretty much every country and, you know, also a couple of islands only with penguins on them. You know, it's a universal approach.

GROSS: I just want to say, you mentioned the islands with only penguins on them near Antarctica. The rationale apparently is - and I - was it Howard Lutnick who said this - that this is so that China can't use these islands to get around tariffs?

MINTON BEDDOES: I don't think that was serious. What I think really happened is that they, you know, essentially used a AI program to basically apply these things to pretty much every country. And these islands have a separate - I think it's a - sort of a separate URL. They come up as separate jurisdictions, and so they got a tariff. The logic, if you will, that of - and it was Howard Lutnick - the logic of what he said was, well, just as China moved its production to Vietnam, you know, we want to make sure it's not moving its production to these countries, like the ones in the southern - near the Antarctic. But if you've looked at these islands, they're tiny, and they literally have penguins on them. So the notion that any Chinese company is going to be, you know, moving an assembly factory there is, you know, ludicrous. But the underlying point is, I suppose, to - by imposing tariffs across the board, you prevent Chinese companies from avoiding these tariffs by moving their production elsewhere. That's the serious point. But it comes at huge, huge cost.

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I'm going to quote President Trump and use a word that I don't traditionally use on the radio. Trump said that the EU was created to, quote, "screw," unquote, Americans. The EU, meanwhile, is trying to figure out a way to counteract these tariffs, to negotiate. I don't know what their plans are, but are we creating adversaries out of allies?

MINTON BEDDOES: Creating an adversary is a very strong phrase that you used there. I don't think the Europeans think of the U.S. as an adversary yet. But the shocks of the past two months - which are not just about trade, but they are about, you know, Vice President Vance coming to Europe a few weeks ago to the Munich Security Conference and essentially delivering a sort of outright hostile speech, accusing the Europeans of not dealing with the enemy within, of not allowing free speech, of - and essentially pointing to extreme right-wing parties like the AfD in Germany and, you know, essentially giving them his support. It was a very striking moment where he spoke to Europeans, intervened in European politics, and did so in a kind of outright hostile way. Then, remember - in the controversy about the Signal messages that were made public, you know, he said that the Europeans were pathetic.

There is a sense in Europe that this administration is hostile to Europe. There is a sense that they want - not just that they want Europeans to spend more on defense, which is absolutely right and the Europeans should, but they, you know, want to get out of Europe, or they want to reduce the U.S. commitment to Europe, and in economic terms, as you say, that President Trump thinks that the European Union is somehow designed to hurt the United States - none of which is true and all of which has caused in Europe, you know, something like a sort of accelerated version of the stages of grief. First of all, shock, anger and then acceptance of, OK, this is the new world we're in. We can no longer rely on the United States. We thought the transatlantic relationship was immutable, but we can't. What are we now going to do? And if you look at European politics, there's been a huge rise in sort of skepticism of America in European countries. And the European officials are trying to work out how best to navigate this. How do you minimize the hit to the European economy? How do you make sure Europe is less reliant on the United States? And just as with China, actually, this is a big opportunity for Europe. Europe can do more to boost its own economy. Europe can do more to integrate with other countries. Europe can do more to boost its own defense.

And it's important to remember the United States is powerful, very powerful, but it is not the only power around. And the United States only adds up to 15% of global trade. The vast majority of trade globally is by countries outside the U.S. So if the rest of us want to continue with a global trade - rules-based trading order, I think it's incumbent on us to do so. If the United States wants to hide behind a tariff wall, it's going to hurt everyone, but so be it. The point then for everybody else is how to retain a system that I think we all agree is a much better system for leading to prosperity and economic success.

GROSS: Would that shut out the U.S.? Are you describing a system in which the U.S. is weaker, not stronger?

MINTON BEDDOES: We wouldn't shut out the U.S. But if the U.S. wants to have these high tariffs, that doesn't mean everybody else has to follow suit. I think the real challenge now will be to ensure that the rest of the world salvages a global trading system, notwithstanding what the U.S. is doing.

GROSS: So the EU is talking about going after tech, like Google, in retaliation for the tariffs. And I'm trying to understand what a tech retaliation would look like.

MINTON BEDDOES: So the EU has a mechanism that - it created an instrument for itself, which is called, I think, the Economic (ph) Coercion Instrument, which it created a few years ago, ironically, because it wanted to have a way of retaliating against China because it thought China was the biggest, sort of most dangerous actor in the global trading system. And this mechanism allows it to use retaliation in areas that are not tariffs - basically, in any other area. The one area where many people think the EU will retaliate is on tech companies, and the reason is because the U.S. exports a huge amount of services to the European Union.

We've talked in this conversation, Terry, about trade in goods 'cause President Trump is very focused on trade in goods, where it's true that the U.S. runs a big deficit. But services, which is things like, you know, selling technology services, selling creative industry services, selling legal services, all manner - and the services are a huge part of the 21st century economy. America is very strong in selling services. And so the Europeans are thinking, well, maybe that's where we can push back. And so, for example, the Europeans have a digital services tax, which they could apply more forcefully. They could impose some constraints on data sharing. There are all manner of ways in which they could hit U.S. tech companies where U.S. tech companies make an awful lot of their revenue in Europe.

GROSS: You know, Zanny, this interview - and just, like, reading the news in general - is really making my head spin because there's just so many changes that the Trump administration wants to make to the dollar, to the global economy, to the American economy. And, you know, who knows how that will work out?

MINTON BEDDOES: This is my first trip to D.C. since the inauguration. I've been thinking about nothing other than pretty much this administration for months, it seems. And like you, my head is spinning. And whether it's the economy, whether it's trade, whether it's geopolitics - everywhere, it seems that this administration is determined to kind of be revolutionary. I think the best way to think about this is this is a self-proclaimed revolutionary administration that wants to rip things up and wants to have a radical break from what it sees as a status quo that is hurting its base - hurting American workers, hurting the MAGA base, hurting America. And when you start from that position, then I think you sort of begin to understand the scale of what they're trying to do.

Whether it's with tariffs, whether it's with financial markets, whether it's with universities, whether it's with all of the - whether it's the size of government and Elon Musk and his DOGE efforts, it's rip things up, start again, kind of ground zero mentality. The reason it's so hard to get your head around the consequences of that is not just the scale of what they're doing and the speed of what they're doing but because there is a lack of clarity and, I think, actually a lack of agreement on what the end goal is.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. We're talking about Trump's tariffs and their impact on everything from the global economy to our daily lives. So let's talk about Scott Bessent, who's the secretary of the Treasury and is, by the way, worth over $500 million. He was a hedge fund manager. So what can you tell us about his economic philosophy and how he's regarded by mainstream economists?

MINTON BEDDOES: So I think of those in the administration, he is seen as one of the more mainstream. He's clearly a - was a successful investor, successful hedge fund manager, mainstream people. The way I think about it is that I think there are various factions in economic policy - and are similarly, actually, in geopolitics - who have different priorities. And I'd put maybe Peter Navarro on the kind of extreme end, of, we want to create a new system where trade deficits are eliminated, where we decouple the U.S. economy, and we bring all of the goods and manufacturing and jobs back to the United States.

And I would put Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett into a slightly different camp, which is more that kind of tariffs are negotiating tools to get a better deal. And so for them, I think they probably don't really think tariffs are that - permanently are a good idea, but they see them as an effective negotiating tool for the United States, which is very powerful, to get itself in a better position. And Steve Miran, who is head of the Council of Economic Advisers, has written several papers now, which is the closest you get to a written explanation of the overall strategy, which is basically about trying to get a better deal for the United States in a postwar economic system that they believe, as we've been discussing, has kind of disadvantaged the U.S.

But more importantly than these people's individual beliefs is the fact that this is a court, and it is a court where all that matters is what the king decides to do. President Trump, who obviously is the king in this analogy - he likes having debates amongst his advisers. And he likes the sort of chaos and uncertainty that comes from that, and he likes having a world where lots of countries want to negotiate with him. What's less clear to me is that he has a kind of deeply articulated strategy. He clearly has some instincts, and he's - I don't for a second think he's not a smart dealmaker. And he wants more jobs and more companies to come back to the United States. He wants more investment in the United States. He wants to do deals which make America strong. But what all of that adds up to in terms of a kind of global economic system - I'm not sure he's spent a huge amount of time thinking about that.

And so there - what worries me is that you have a very powerful king with courtiers around who have different views but who are basically trying to say what they think he will hear. And that, as a result, you have less an economic strategy with a clear goal than you have a sort of cacophony of announcements, drama, negotiation, which will be incredibly destructive of a system that, as we've just been discussing, has been the underpinning of a successful world economy but, most importantly, an underpinning of an incredibly successful U.S. economy. And that this would be interesting and entertaining as a sort of mind exercise. What happens if you rip up the roles of global trade and finance and, you know, start all over again?

But in the real world, this has huge consequences, and we've begun to see them in the last week - not just the dramatic declines in the markets, but this is going to have real impact on real people. And nothing in, you know, economic history makes me think that it is going to have a positive impact on most people. This is going to, I think, hurt the U.S., certainly over the medium term, and is a self-inflicted, I think, hugely damaging direction to go.

GROSS: A lot of Trump's money comes from his brand, the Trump brand. How big has that brand been internationally, and how have his money policies and these tariffs impacted it, or how do the tariffs stand to impact his own brand?

MINTON BEDDOES: So Brand Trump is now really just about Trump the person. And, you know, Trump became, in his first administration, by far the most kind of prominent U.S. president in recent history, and now even more so in Trump 2. I think broadly, it's hurting people's perceptions of not just President Trump, but of the United States. I mean, we've discussed this, but in Europe, in particular, I think people's perceptions of the United States are changing, and not for the better, and certainly of President Trump.

Now, there are parts of the world where he is still viewed very positively. But I think this kind of unpredictability, this bullying, this attitude that other countries are, in his view, all, you know, enriching themselves at the U.S. expense, that doesn't endear you to people around the world. And so I think the - so not just Brand Trump, but Brand USA is being affected by this. And that's actually, for me, one of the potentially longer-lasting and very damaging consequences of what we're seeing in this administration.

This administration is doing what it's doing because it feels that America has the power to push other countries to do what it wants because it's got the economic clout. We'll see whether it can do that in tariffs. But it's based on a sense that we are the most powerful country in the world, and we think the system is stacked against us, and we're going to, you know, force it to be changed. People don't like that around the world. And people, I think, are increasingly looking at the U.S. not as the shining city on the hill, place which, you know, we all aspired to and certainly held in very high regard, but increasingly as a sort of bullying, swaggering, selfish, transactional country, which, as someone who's spent most of my adult life in the U.S., really saddens me.

GROSS: The last time you were on our show was right after Trump was elected. You spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies. And you said, I'm going to be resolutely optimistic about Trump's second term, not least 'cause it's too depressing not to be. And you said you thought it was worth remembering that if you stand back in various areas, he either made clear something that everyone knew and no one was willing to say or actually had some successes. Are you still resolutely optimistic?

MINTON BEDDOES: I am a resolute optimist, so I'm still trying to find the positive. I have to say that the events over the last few weeks have made me more worried that we could have some really, really damaging consequences and that this is a revolutionary administration with revolutionary fervor and that it could, in many areas - domestic and international - really result in the world ending up in a dangerous place.

I still think that President Trump, you know, has got some important insights. He's right that Europeans need to spend more on defense. He's right about certain things on China. What we haven't seen so far is too many successes. We've seen an awful lot of uncertainty. And on the trade thing, I just find it so baffling that he would take such damaging action with such seeming insouciance, and I worry that that can sort of spiral out of control. So despite my resolute optimism, I have to confess that I'm a little more concerned than I was last time I spoke to you a few weeks ago.

GROSS: Zanny Minton Beddoes, thank you so much for coming back to FRESH AIR.

MINTON BEDDOES: Thank you. And I hope that next time, I will be more upbeat again.

GROSS: Zanny Minton Beddoes is the editor-in-chief of The Economist. We recorded our interview yesterday morning. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be journalist Gardiner Harris, author of a new book Investigating Johnson & Johnson called "No More Tears." Last month, the company lost a bid to settle lawsuits that claimed its talc powder products, including baby powder, caused cancer. The company faces tens of thousands of claims. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair.

(SOUNDBITE OF SO PERCUSSION'S "MALLET QUARTET: III. FAST")

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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NPR · April 9, 2025

6. Trump’s tariff pause brings investors relief—but worries remain

It is the uncertainty.

Trump’s tariff pause brings investors relief—but worries remain

Amid market panic, he backs off his most extreme “reciprocal” tariffs

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/04/09/trumps-tariff-pause-brings-investors-relief-but-worries-remain

Photograph: Reuters

Apr 9th 2025|WASHINGTON, DC

ONALD TRUMP has blinked. Little more than 12 hours after his radical regime of “reciprocal” tariffs took effect, he has put most of them on pause for 90 days. Mr Trump said this was in recognition of the fact that more than 75 countries had engaged with his administration in negotiations, working together to address America’s complaints about global trade. The convulsing Treasury market may also have aided his decision. Mr Trump’s announcement provided immediate relief to markets, with stocks and commodity futures surging, as the delay alleviated fears about imminent economic damage.

Since Mr Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2nd of sky-high tariffs, everyone from investors to diplomats had settled on the profoundly unsettling conclusion that the president was dead-set on trying to remake the global trading system, heedless of the economic and financial consequences. That belief, as much as the tariffs themselves, was driving global markets into a tailspin. Businesses were beset by uncertainty. Consumer sentiment was tanking. And economists were issuing increasingly dire forecasts for a recession this year. With his abrupt reversal, Mr Trump has revealed that he is not in fact completely impervious to the fallout from his trade policies.

Nonetheless, the pause in tariffs is far from a full ceasefire. Three worries stand out. First, the president made one giant exception to his benevolence, vowing that he would raise tariffs on Chinese products to 125%, up from 104% a dozen hours earlier, which itself was up from his announcement of 34% a week ago. The special punishment stemmed from the Chinese government’s temerity to go tit-for-tat in retaliating against Mr Trump’s tariffs. China had shown a “lack of respect” to the world’s markets, he said on his social-media platform.

Second, Mr Trump’s pause only applied to “reciprocal” tariffs, the extra levies imposed on countries that have high bilateral surpluses in their trade with America. Left in place is the baseline of a 10% universal tariff on all imports bar a few products. Some exceptions, notably cars, face a higher tariff of 25%, announced last month. Others, including pharmaceutical products and semiconductors, could soon be hit with their own tariffs. The result is that, even while pulling the world back from the brink of a cataclysmic trade war, Mr Trump has still, in the space of two months, raised America’s average tariff rate to its highest in nearly a century. The country’s average effective tariff rate has gone from roughly 3% to about 20% during that time.

A final worry is that Mr Trump has promised only a delay, not a full suspension of his “reciprocal” plan. Judging by Mr Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on Canada and Mexico, there is reason to think he will revive his threat of higher tariffs before the 90 days are up. The next time round, investors are likely to treat his hawkish rhetoric with more scepticism. But if that means that market reactions are relatively muted, Mr Trump will only have more leeway to press on. ■

7. Why Trump Blinked on Tariffs Just Hours After They Went Into Effect

Excerpts:

Those who have watched Trump for years weren’t surprised by the turn of events.

Trump used his social-media platform to make encouraging comments about the stock market Wednesday morning. “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well,” he posted at 9:33 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” Trump posted at 9:37 a.m. Wednesday. An administration official said no decision had been made at that point.

“How illogical this strategy was became apparent, not just in the markets, but also with expectations of deeper cuts across the economy,” said Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.

“He’s a careful studier of the markets, and he talks to a lot of people outside the White House too,” Short said.

Bessent and other White House aides cast Trump’s move as part of a negotiating strategy where Trump took a maximalist approach to force the world to the bargaining table.

They noted that China was singled out for increased tariffs because Beijing retaliated against the U.S.

Outsiders who had been alarmed about the tariffs were quick to reinforce the White House’s new message.

“This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump,” said Bill Ackman, who had been critical of Trump in recent days. “Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

Why Trump Blinked on Tariffs Just Hours After They Went Into Effect

Treasury secretary helped persuade president to take time to negotiate with trading partners in face of pressure from business leaders

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/why-trump-blinked-on-tariffs-b588aea8

By Annie Linskey

Follow, Josh Dawsey

Follow and Meridith McGraw

Updated April 9, 2025 9:39 pm ET

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President Trump announced he would impose a 125% tariff on China for retaliating against the U.S., while also announcing a 90-day pause on some tariffs. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump finally blinked.

It took a week for the plunge in the stock and bond markets—along with a sustained campaign by executives, lawmakers, lobbyists and foreign leaders—to prompt Trump to roll back for 90 days a major element of his sweeping tariff plan.

The president said that the reaction to the tariffs was getting a bit “yippy”—like a nervous athlete unable to perform—and he relied on his instincts to change course as he watched the bond market tank and listened to business leaders including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon express fears of a recession. The episode was classic Trump: He took a drastic action, closely tracked the reaction, kept advisers and allies guessing and then changed course.

In this case, the extraordinary reversal was announced via Trump’s social-media platform just hours after so-called reciprocal tariffs officially went into effect. He tapped out the post in the Oval Office as he sat with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Trump also significantly raised tariffs on China.

Shortly after Trump published his post, as markets rose, Bessent stood outside the entrance to the West Wing and explained that the move to pause some of the tariffs was discussed Sunday when the two men met. “He and I had a long talk,” Bessent said before a crowd of reporters. “This was his strategy all along.”

Bessent was flooded with worried calls from Wall Street over the weekend and felt strongly he had to persuade Trump that a pause was needed. It wouldn’t be a capitulation, Bessent argued, because they were going to have so many deals.

He revealed little publicly about why the president and his team waited until Wednesday afternoon to enact it, with Trump saying that he decided on the move Wednesday morning. Bessent said more than 75 countries have reached out seeking a deal to ease tariffs, with Japan “at the front of the queue.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke at length with President Trump about the tariffs. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

One key to the change: Trump’s decision to give Bessent more authority within his team of trade advisers, people close to the discussions said, along with the talks on Sunday. Bessent flew down Sunday to Florida and afterward was authorized to make comments publicly about deals, which heartened many people close to Trump. When the two men returned to Washington together Sunday on Air Force One, Bessent encouraged Trump to focus on negotiations, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

A senior Treasury official said that the administration was unified behind Trump’s strategy to promote American economic and national security.

Another factor that made Trump more willing to relent on the tariffs, a person who talked to him said, was that so many countries are in negotiations with the administration.

Trump was also swayed by the stock market and the parade of business leaders expressing concerns about the tariffs. Over the past few days, executives and lobbyists had flooded White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phone, according to a person close to her. A White House aide noted that it was standard for the president’s chief of staff to field calls on his behalf.

The message delivered to Trump and his top advisers by chief executives was they needed to find an off ramp.

Trump played his cards close to his vest. He told advisers that he was willing to take “pain,” a person who spoke to him on Monday said. He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Banking executives—frustrated at their apparent lack of influence with administration officials—turned to Republican lawmakers in recent days to lobby Trump on the tariffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Their message was that Trump was going to tank the economy.

Trump was also in listening mode. Over the past few days, he has been asking friends and advisers about the markets, and he indicated he was closely watching them. At the White House on Wednesday, he had lunch with financier and investor Charles Schwab and met with Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who had warned that Michigan was already feeling the impact of the tariffs throughout its automotive industry—events that came after his decision but signaled he was widely gathering input.

On Tuesday evening, Trump said that he absorbed the bad news about a plummeting bond market. “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” Trump said Wednesday about the bond market.

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, said that he watched Dimon’s interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariff program, but also defended the idea of some tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged the president to give Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Dimon hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, people familiar with the matter said. While his appearance on the Fox Business show had been in place for some time, Dimon knew that Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox and that his message would likely get through to them, one of the people said.

Trump told reporters Wednesday he had been thinking about pausing tariffs “over the last few days” adding “it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.” He said he didn’t consult with lawyers for the wording of his announcement and instead relied on input from Bessent and Lutnick. “We wrote it up from our hearts,” Trump said. “We don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.”

During the day Wednesday, top administration officials were fanned out to meet with lawmakers, betraying little about the announcement to come.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was testifying about the tariffs before the House Ways and Means Committee when Trump announced the reversal. About 20 minutes after Trump made the announcement, Rep. Steven Horsford (D., Nev.) finally brought up the shift, asking if Greer was aware of the pause.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer before the House Committee on Ways and Means on Wednesday. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

“I am, yes,” said Greer. “I understand the decision was made a few minutes ago. It’s been under discussion.”

Horsford grew angry. “This is amateur hour,” he said. “It needs to stop. How are you in charge of negotiations if the president is tweeting about this from wherever the hell he is?”

Bessent pulled out of a lunch event Wednesday with the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in Congress, shortly before the announcement was made. Members of the caucus learned on their way to the event that Bessent was called into a meeting with Trump, and his deputy would attend in his place.

Those who have watched Trump for years weren’t surprised by the turn of events.

Trump used his social-media platform to make encouraging comments about the stock market Wednesday morning. “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well,” he posted at 9:33 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” Trump posted at 9:37 a.m. Wednesday. An administration official said no decision had been made at that point.

“How illogical this strategy was became apparent, not just in the markets, but also with expectations of deeper cuts across the economy,” said Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.

“He’s a careful studier of the markets, and he talks to a lot of people outside the White House too,” Short said.

Bessent and other White House aides cast Trump’s move as part of a negotiating strategy where Trump took a maximalist approach to force the world to the bargaining table.

They noted that China was singled out for increased tariffs because Beijing retaliated against the U.S.

Outsiders who had been alarmed about the tariffs were quick to reinforce the White House’s new message.

“This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump,” said Bill Ackman, who had been critical of Trump in recent days. “Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com and Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com

8. Donald Trump shoots his own global mouthpiece

Clickbait headline aside, this is worth a read. I missed this when it came out last month. It is a fairly balanced report with background history, issues, and pros and cons. The thing is most Americans have little to no experience with these organizations and their missions and cannot see or feel their effects. And of course effects on human thinking and behavior are difficult to measure in denied areas.

Rather than disinformation, think - grievances toward our own government and towards foreign countries (not only enemies, but friends, partners, and allies too) who are freeloaders who have been exploiting the US for decades as we protect them while they take all our manufacturing jobs, etc, . Think “exaggerated grievance communicated well.” We have a grievance and victimhood culture. The challenge is how do you effectively counter "exaggerated grievance communicated well?" (easy answer is better holistic governance, but...) I want to express this in a subtle way to make the point that there are always grievances among the governed. Grievances are normal and not necessarily bad by themselves. It is when the grievances become exaggerated and communicated well (for exploitation by those seeking influence and power) that it becomes the real challenge to governance. And even the best of governance will never be able to keep up with the speed of exaggeration and communication of the exaggeration. I am going to borrow it and build on it. How do we counter "exaggerated grievances communicated well?"

Donald Trump shoots his own global mouthpiece

The shutdown of VOA, RFE/RL and other broadcasters weakens America and supporters of democracy

Photograph: Getty Images

Mar 19th 2025

Listen to this story

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/03/19/donald-trump-shoots-his-own-global-mouthpiece

ANY HAVE tried to stifle the Voice of America (VOA) in the eight decades since its hurried birth as a wartime broadcaster in 1942. These days China blocks its website and jams its signals. In 2017 Russia declared VOA to be a “foreign agent”. Yet it is President Donald Trump who may silence it for good.

His executive order on March 14th to “eliminate” the network as far as legally possible had an immediate effect. Its 1,300 staff members were placed on paid leave. Broadcasts in 48 languages soon stopped. Such is the demise of a network whose “jazz hour” famously beamed the “music of freedom” behind the Iron Curtain. A similar fate has befallen or awaits Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks’ Arabic-language outlets and Radio and TV Martí, which broadcast to Cuba.

For Elon Musk, America’s chief cost-cutter, the networks are just waste. “Nobody listens to them anymore” he posted on X, claiming they consisted of “radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money”. Mr Musk is wrong to say “nobody” listens. The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government body that oversees all these outlets, claims they reach 427m people weekly in 63 languages and over 100 countries. VOA alone has a bigger audience than other publicly funded international broadcasters, such as the BBC World Service (see chart 1). Few people in America will have heard of them because they do not broadcast to the home audience. This may explain why the outlets have few powerful friends there.

Chart: The Economist

Yet there are legitimate and longstanding questions to be asked about whether they spread democracy and enhance American power, and whether they provide value for their annual $900m cost. These are even more salient in a world awash with blogs, newsletters and podcasts.

“Project 2025”, a conservative blueprint for Mr Trump’s second term, argued the USAGM was rife with left-wing bias, prone to repeating foes’ propaganda, poorly run and, because of lax practices in security clearances, a target for foreign spies. Little of this has been proved. Nevertheless, Project 2025 recommended reform of the agency if possible, or its abolition if not. Kari Lake, a former TV presenter and devotee of Mr Trump, who has been nominated as VOA’s director, for a time favoured reform and returning VOA to “its glory days”. When Mr Trump announced his executive orders, though, she declared that “from top to bottom, this agency is a giant rot.”

Controversy over VOA and its siblings dates back almost to their establishment. RFE and RL were set up in the early cold war, partly inspired by George Kennan, an American diplomat, to wage “organised political warfare” on the Kremlin. RFE transmitted to “captive nations” under Soviet occupation; RL beamed to the Soviet Union itself. After the collapse of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, RFE was accused of having crossed a legal line between reporting and incitement. Nearly two decades later the revelation that the CIA had been funnelling money to the stations led to efforts in the Senate to shut them down, using arguments that sound surprisingly contemporary: their high cost; that western European countries should pay; and the difficulty of knowing whether they were useful. Their defenders included Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.

Some ten years later the debate still raged: “The worth of the broadcasts, in dollars and cents, is almost incapable of measurement,” said a study published in 1982, concluding that “the benefits do seem substantial.” Many credit the stations with helping to defeat Soviet communism. Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president, said his country’s freedom was won by RFE and the pope. Meanwhile, RL was the first to broadcast the full text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”, a book that reputedly struck Soviet leaders “like an atom bomb”. It is inevitably harder to assess the broadcasters’ contribution in more recent times.

Radio killed the Soviet star

By some measures the outlets have reported considerable success. Over the past decade they have nearly doubled the size of their weekly audience, from 215m in 2014 to 427m in 2024, despite increased competition. One reason for this may be that listeners see them as trustworthy. The Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, found that VOA accounted for 55% of online searches in 26 countries in Asia for foreign-radio broadcasters, well ahead of the second-most popular outlet, Russia’s Sputnik, with 27% (see chart 2).

Chart: The Economist

The USAGM’s most valuable units are probably those that most Americans have never heard of, such as Radio Free Asia, which can reach audiences living under the boot of authoritarian states that have few other reliable sources of news. It is one of the few independent media outlets that can winkle stories out of North Korea, or can generate scoops from Xinjiang and Tibet in China. The revelations of ethnic Uyghurs being corralled in massive Chinese “re-education” camps were largely its work. It is also one of the few independent news outlets that reaches Uyghurs, who try to evade state censorship of the internet by listening to its radio broadcasts.

Though Russians face nothing like the levels of censorship and oppression of Uyghurs, RFE/RL plays an important role in nurturing independent local journalism. The strength of these outfits lies in their history as surrogates for local media behind the Iron Curtain, where they hired exiles to report on those countries in the local languages. This tradition continues today, with tailor-made programmes reaching the remotest regions that other outlets do not, from Dagestan to Siberia, and breaking stories about local corruption scandals and much more.

VOA is akin to a state broadcaster like the BBC, offering a mix of political (especially American) news and lifestyle features and has the largest audience. But it is harder to argue that it provides an irreplaceable service across much of the world. Never before have people had access to such a wide range of news sources. There are, however, exceptions, particularly in parts of Africa where VOA covers smaller countries and contested elections that are often ignored. Its publicity can play a role in protecting opposition politicians and activists. “In shining a spotlight on individual leaders, VOA helps to add a layer of security for them,” says Jeffrey Smith of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy outfit based in Washington. “It lets leaders of [oppressive] governments know that the world—and that Washington in particular—is paying attention.”

Staff at USAGM still hope that, faced with an outcry and lawsuits, the administration may relent. RFE/RL may be in a better position than their siblings as they may win a reprieve from European governments, ten of which said they would work together to find funding. The networks are trying to protect vulnerable staff from being sent home to repressive regimes. One reform option might be to merge overlapping functions and language services.

USAGM uses complex metrics to measure its impact, including its audience, its trustworthiness, influence, and whether it increases knowledge of international news, particularly in places targeted by state-sponsored disinformation. Yet are reach and trustworthiness enough?

Insiders argue that they produce invaluable journalism for less than Russia and China spend on their foreign-influence operations. They argue that they must be pricking a nerve, given the repression their journalists suffer: at least ten are currently in prison. Yet amid America’s wider retreat from the network of alliances that have largely kept the peace for almost 80 years, and its gleeful destruction of a liberal economic order that made it richer, there is little hope that arguments around soft power or appeals to high-minded ideals will sway Mr Trump or Mr Musk.

Nor will the gloating of America’s foes. “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately,” said Margarita Simonyan, the editor of Russia’s RT network. “But America did so itself.” As their broadcasts cease, candles of hope in some of the world’s darkest places are being snuffed out. ■

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This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Voicelessness of America”

9. Panama Hopes Hegseth Visit Turns Page and Ends Trump Pressure

Excerpts:

Hegseth and his counterparts agreed to work out a “first and free” deal to reimburse U.S. vessels for transit fees through the Panama Canal, signed a memorandum of understanding to increase security cooperation and agreed to resume jungle warfare training for U.S. troops.

Panama had previously announced that it would scrap an infrastructure deal with China and conduct a sweeping financial audit of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, which controls ports on either side of the canal. It had also agreed to accept non-Panamanians deported from the U.S., one of the Trump administration’s top priorities.

As Hegseth took off from Panama City to return to Washington on Wednesday, Panamanian officials appeared relieved.

“We went all in,” one person familiar with the discussions said. The Panamanian president had a warm rapport with Hegseth, who at one point called Trump and put him on speakerphone. Trump indicated that he was pleased with the negotiation, the person said, and that he would watch their press conference on television.

Panama Hopes Hegseth Visit Turns Page and Ends Trump Pressure

Some Panama officials wonder whether President Trump, who has threatened to take Panama Canal, is placated by new concessions

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/panama-hopes-hegseth-visit-turns-page-and-ends-trump-pressure-64abe5da

By Vera Bergengruen

Follow and Juan Forero

April 9, 2025 4:22 pm ET

The port of Balboa, operated by Hutchison’s Panama Ports Co., located at the Pacific Ocean entrance of the Panama Canal. Photo: Fred Ramos for WSJ

On a rare high-level visit to Panama, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth secured new commitments from the small Central American country but left some Panamanian officials wondering if they were enough to mollify President Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to “take back” the country’s canal.

Under normal circumstances, the flurry of agreements and concessions announced over the two-day visit would be hailed as a high point in U.S.-Panama relations.

Hegseth and his counterparts agreed to work out a “first and free” deal to reimburse U.S. vessels for transit fees through the Panama Canal, signed a memorandum of understanding to increase security cooperation and agreed to resume jungle warfare training for U.S. troops.

Panama had previously announced that it would scrap an infrastructure deal with China and conduct a sweeping financial audit of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, which controls ports on either side of the canal. It had also agreed to accept non-Panamanians deported from the U.S., one of the Trump administration’s top priorities.

As Hegseth took off from Panama City to return to Washington on Wednesday, Panamanian officials appeared relieved.

“We went all in,” one person familiar with the discussions said. The Panamanian president had a warm rapport with Hegseth, who at one point called Trump and put him on speakerphone. Trump indicated that he was pleased with the negotiation, the person said, and that he would watch their press conference on television.

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President Trump has threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, saying Panama is violating a decades-old treaty that ceded U.S. control of the waterway. WSJ breaks down his strategy and the risks that come with it. Photo Illustration: Alexandra Larkin

Some in Panama remained wary, even though the Pentagon chief’s visit was hailed as a “new chapter” between the two countries after months of escalating threats from Trump, who has refused to rule out military force to fulfill his promise to reclaim the Panama Canal.

“It has been as if your best friend becomes furious with you for no reason,” said Panamanian congressman Roberto Zuñiga, describing U.S. demands in recent weeks. Zuñiga said he hoped to see Panama’s president, José Mulino, and Trump meet for high-level discussions to address pressure directed from Washington.

“Sometimes great opportunities arise in a crisis,” Zuñiga said, “and so I think this could be a great opportunity to turn the page on this matter and strengthen our relationship with our great ally.”

Hegseth cast Panama as a partner in America’s goals after months of heated rhetoric that has inflamed nationalistic fervor in the country in the aftermath of Trump’s comments about the canal. “Obviously, he’s the impetus for this,” Hegseth said of Trump, confirming that he had been in touch during the visit. “He put the spotlight on the importance of the Panama Canal.”

“We certainly recognize that the Panama Canal is in Panama,” Hegseth said at a press conference on Wednesday. The Panamanian security minister Frank Abrego, who stood next to Hegseth, added that the U.S. defense chief had acknowledged Panama’s sovereignty over the waterway.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after an address in Panama City on Wednesday. Photo: aris martinez/Reuters

It was a contrast to the tense visit from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio two months earlier, during which he warned Mulino that the U.S. would “take measures necessary” if Panama didn’t curb Chinese influence. That trip ended with Mulino accusing the U.S. of “quite intolerable falsehoods” about having secured a deal for free passage for U.S. government vessels through the canal.

Hegseth, the first defense secretary to visit Panama in decades, said the two countries had agreed to “bold steps” to “secure” the canal, which was built by the U.S. in 1914 and handed to Panama in 1999.

“Together, we will take back the Panama Canal from China’s influence,” Hegseth said earlier, speaking on Tuesday from a pier that the U.S. had helped renovate. “China will not weaponize this canal. Together with Panama in the lead, we will keep the canal secure and available for all nations.”

Responding to the American pressure on Panama, Chinese officials accused the U.S. of “intimidating and abusive conduct.”

“The U.S. has orchestrated a sensationalist campaign around the so-called ‘China threat theory,’ attempting to sabotage China-Panama cooperation,” it said in a statement. “All of this stems purely from the U.S.’s own geopolitical ambitions, laying bare its hegemonic intent.”

A Panama Canal worker in Panama City, Panama, earlier this year. Photo: Fred Ramos for WSJ

John D. Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama, said Panama’s president has responded strategically to the demands from Washington, presenting the measures as a “win” for the American president. He noted, for instance, that Panama also accepted flights of deportees during the Biden administration

“José Raúl Mulino is writing the playbook of how you deal with Donald Trump,” Feeley said. “You make it look like something new and make it look like a concession. And that’s what Mulino has been doing.”

Still, Panama’s break with China on development projects, and its moves to wrestle the Hutchison Holdings ports on either end of the canal from the Chinese, have gone far to meet U.S. demands.

For now, it appeared the Panamanian response had left the defense secretary pleased.

“In reality or in perception, the communist Chinese have had designs on more control of this canal, and to that we say: Not on our watch,” Hegseth said in a meeting with U.S. troops and Panamanian security forces. “We will grow our partnership even more.”

Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com

Appeared in the April 10, 2025, print edition as 'Panama Hopes Hegseth Visit Eases Tensions'.

10. Socom: Changing Operational Demands Requires Acquisition Changes

Senators and Representatives on the SASC and HASC did focus a good bit of questions on SOF service-secretary like responsibilities and authorities.

General Fenton makes some recommendations:

"Our current acquisition procurement system ... I would just offer, it's outdated," he said. "It's glacial. I think it works in years and decades."

He added that the lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine made it clear how the U.S. military acquisition process can be changed for the better.

"What we're seeing through the lens of Ukraine needs to be an acquisition ... and procurement system that is hyper-speed, supersonic," he said. "Because over there, we're watching the changes in minutes, hours and days, and that is a very stark contrast" to what the U.S. does.

Fenton said changes to the requirements process, including simplifying it, as well as changes to authorities, could help Socom quickly get what it needs.

"If I could say it so bluntly, take more people out of that system, get less hands on the requirements process," he told lawmakers. "Go from operator to commander and then acquisition."

Fenton also suggested how changes in funding could benefit acquisition within Socom.

Funding for systems comes in the form of operations and maintenance funds; research, development, testing and engineering funds; and procurement funds. The Defense Department can't easily move money between those budget lines, and that could be simplified, he said.

Socom: Changing Operational Demands Requires Acquisition Changes

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4150954/socom-changing-operational-demands-requires-acquisition-changes/

April 9, 2025 | By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News |

Worldwide threats put the U.S. at risk and sometimes demand attention from U.S. Special Operations Command. To best meet those challenges, U.S. military acquisition needs to change, said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Socom commander.

"The character of war is changing faster than we've ever seen," he said today before the House Armed Services Committee's intelligence and special operations subcommittee.

"The innovation cycle now turns in days and weeks, not months and years. Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles — that cost-benefit curve is upside down," he said.

Fenton noted that this is the most complex asymmetric and hybrid threat security environment he has seen during his 38 years of service. Contending with these challenges demands more from special operations forces.

"[It] requires tough choices, forcing trade-offs, as we strive to balance an increase in operations readiness and the need for modernization," he said.

Fenton explained that over the past two years, for example, demand for Socom capabilities by combatant commands has increased by more than 35%, while at the same time, Socom has dealt with years of flat budgets.

To meet the demands of increased mission requirements and increasingly complex missions, he said Socom needs to improve its acquisition process.

"Our current acquisition procurement system ... I would just offer, it's outdated," he said. "It's glacial. I think it works in years and decades."

He added that the lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine made it clear how the U.S. military acquisition process can be changed for the better.

"What we're seeing through the lens of Ukraine needs to be an acquisition ... and procurement system that is hyper-speed, supersonic," he said. "Because over there, we're watching the changes in minutes, hours and days, and that is a very stark contrast" to what the U.S. does.

Fenton said changes to the requirements process, including simplifying it, as well as changes to authorities, could help Socom quickly get what it needs.

"If I could say it so bluntly, take more people out of that system, get less hands on the requirements process," he told lawmakers. "Go from operator to commander and then acquisition."

Fenton also suggested how changes in funding could benefit acquisition within Socom.

Funding for systems comes in the form of operations and maintenance funds; research, development, testing and engineering funds; and procurement funds. The Defense Department can't easily move money between those budget lines, and that could be simplified, he said.

"I think there's a way to take a lot of that off, compress the multiple lines to just a couple, and really modernize there," Fenton said.

The general also asked for greater flexibility in how the department contracts new systems, particularly the option to increase the length of multiyear procurements.

"Give us an opportunity to think through multiyear processes," he said. "Two years might seem multiyear, I think, to all of us. Multiyear probably needs to be five to 10 years so we can move at the speed and evolution of what we're seeing out on the battlefield."

11. Ukraine says more than 150 Chinese mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine

Ukraine says more than 150 Chinese mercenaries are fighting for Russia in Ukraine

By SAMYA KULLAB

Updated 9:42 PM EDT, April 9, 2025

AP · April 9, 2025

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine on Wednesday expanded on its claim that significant numbers of Chinese nationals are fighting for Russia’s invading army, saying it had gathered detailed intelligence on more than 150 mercenaries Moscow allegedly recruited through social media. In China, officials called the allegations “totally unfounded.”

The Ukrainian accusation and Chinese denial come as the U.S. strives to secure a ceasefire in the more than three-year war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Tuesday that the Ukrainian military had captured two Chinese men fighting alongside the Russian army on Ukrainian soil. It was the first time Ukraine had made such a claim about Chinese fighters in the war.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said he was willing to exchange the two prisoners of war for Ukrainian soldiers held captive in Russia. Without providing evidence, Zelenskyy said officials in Beijing were aware of Russia’s campaign to recruit Chinese mercenaries. He stopped short of saying the Chinese government authorized the mercenaries’ involvement in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine has the last names and passport data for 155 Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian army and that “we believe that there are many more of them.” He shared with journalists documents listing names, passport numbers and personal details of the alleged Chinese recruits, including when they arrived in Russia for military training and departed for service; the AP has not independently verified the documents.

China has provided strong diplomatic support for Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It has also sold Russia machinery and microelectronics that it can use to make weapons, Western officials say, in addition to providing an economic lifeline through the trade in energy and consumer goods.

China is not believed to have knowingly provided Russia with troops, weapons or military expertise.

U.S. officials have accused Iran of providing Russia with drones, while American and South Korean officials say North Korea has sent thousands of troops and ammunition to help Russia on the battlefield.

With the U.S. and Europe having provided substantial military support and diplomatic heft for Ukraine, the war has to some degree become a contest between power blocs.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have deepened in recent years. Disputes have centered on geopolitical influence, technology and trade — and recently escalating import tariffs between the countries have roiled global financial markets. Zelenskyy said U.S. officials expressed “surprise” when informed of the presence of Chinese mercenaries in Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to follow through on a campaign promise last year to swiftly end the war in Ukraine.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at a briefing in Washington on Tuesday that reports of Chinese citizens fighting on behalf of Russia were “disturbing.”

“China is a major enabler of Russia in the war in Ukraine,” Bruce said. China provides nearly 80% of the dual-use items Russia needs to sustain the war, she claimed.

But Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said he is “not convinced yet” the Chinese personnel identified as fighting on behalf of Russia against Ukraine are more than mercenaries or volunteers.

“There’s an axiom in the military, the first report is always wrong,” Kellogg said during a Wednesday appearance at Georgetown University. “And this is one of those let’s sit back and see how this plays out, because it could be volunteers.”

Kellogg noted that Ukraine also has volunteers from other countries, including the United States, fighting on its behalf. He added that the early reports of Chinese personnel are not on par with North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to the frontlines.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also called Beijing “the key enabler of Russia’s war.”

Dual-use goods are entering Russia via China, she said in Brussels, adding “it’s clear that if China would want to really stop the support then it would have an impact.”

China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for the war, according to a U.S. assessment last year.

The Kremlin has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting in Ukraine. The Kyiv government has consented to it. Both sides are believed to be readying spring-summer military campaigns.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in Beijing that China has played a “constructive role in politically resolving the Ukraine crisis.”

Lin told a daily news briefing Wednesday that “the Chinese government always asks Chinese citizens to stay away from conflict zones, avoid getting involved in any form of armed conflict, and especially refrain from participating in any party’s military operations.”

His comments appeared to indicate that the captured Chinese had joined Russia’s ranks on their own initiative. Both Russia and Ukraine allow foreign soldiers to enlist.

China has previously put forward a vague peace plan that was swiftly dismissed by most observers.

In the meantime, both countries have kept fighting a war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line and targeted each other with long-range strikes.

The city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk endured a “massive drone attack” overnight, regional head Vadym Filashkin said, injuring an 11-year-old girl, her mother and her grandmother.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 55 Shahed and decoy drones at the country overnight.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 158 Ukrainian drones over 11 Russian regions overnight but reported no casualties or damage.

Several Russian regions temporarily suspended flights at their airports because of the attack, however, and some Ukrainian drones reached Russia’s Orenburg region in the southern Urals located nearly 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) east of the Ukrainian border, the Defense Ministry said.

___

AP reporters Christopher Bodeen in Taipei, Taiwan, Lorne Cook in Brussels, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · April 9, 2025

12. Underestimating China: Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages

We should think about this phrase, "as Washington turns away from its coalition."

Excerpts:

Yet as Washington turns away from its coalition, China is constructing its own. Driven together by anti-Western grievance and their own parochial interests, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are creating substantial authoritarian scale. China has built Russia’s defense industrial base, helped Iran provide Russia with one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, and assented as North Korea has sent troops to fight in Europe. All four governments are working to erode U.S. sanctions and are engaged in diplomatic coordination, intelligence sharing, and military exercises. This is a unified challenge that requires a unified response.

The rise and fall of great powers often begins with flawed self-diagnosis.

As some in the United States talk about creating divisions among China’s partners by executing a “reverse Kissinger” with Russia, Beijing is determined to exploit fissures in Western alliances, notably between the United States and Europe. The risk now is that Washington will split from Europe while failing to split China and Russia. Efforts to build democratic capacity have been aided by China’s own missteps in conducting confrontational “wolf warrior” diplomacy; the United States is now engaged in counterproductive diplomatic pugilism of its own, providing openings for China to play the role of reasonable partner. Washington will have better luck partnering with allies than with adversaries animated by deep anti-U.S. sentiment.

If the United States fails to pursue scale with others, or retreats to the Western hemisphere while undoing its alliances, the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose. The United States, like the United Kingdom before it, will find itself diminished by a great power with unprecedented scale. It will encounter a world divided among multiple great powers, but with China the strongest among them and in some areas stronger than all of them. The result will be a United States that is weaker, poorer, and less influential—and a world in which China sets the rules.

Although a growing consensus has swung toward underestimating China’s power and overstating America’s resurgence, that thinking echoes past cycles of misjudgment. Rosy perspectives on America’s trajectory risk fueling the kind of go-it-alone unilateralism that assumes, implicitly and increasingly explicitly, that American allies and partners are obsolete or overvalued when they are in fact the only path to scale against a formidable competitor. Success requires going much further and with greater ambition than the alliance-friendly policies of the previous Biden administration and rejecting outright the alienating, go-it-alone “America first” approach taking shape under Trump.

Such a commitment is not just a policy, but a signal of the capabilities of the United States, its allies, and partners. The Chinese Communist Party is inordinately focused on perceptions of American power, and a critical input in that equation is its estimation of Washington’s ability to pull in the allies and partners that even Beijing openly admits are the United States’ greatest advantage. Accordingly, the most effective U.S. strategy—the one that has most unsettled Beijing in recent years and can deter its adventurism in the future—is to build new, enduring, and robust capacities with these states. A sustained, bipartisan commitment to an upgraded alliance network, coupled with strategic cooperation in emerging fields, offers the best path forward to finding scale against the most formidable competitor the United States has ever encountered.

Underestimating China

Foreign Affairs · by More by Kurt M. Campbell · April 10, 2025

Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages

May/June 2025 Published on April 10, 2025

Illustration by Tyler Comrie

KURT M. CAMPBELL served as Deputy Secretary of State and Indo-Pacific Coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

RUSH DOSHI is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University and Director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

More by Rush Doshi

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Success in great-power competition requires rigorous and unsentimental net assessment. Yet the American estimation of China has lurched from one extreme to the other. For decades, Americans registered blistering economic growth, dominance of international trade, and growing geopolitical ambition, and anticipated the day when China might overtake a strategically distracted and politically paralyzed United States; after the 2008 financial crisis, and then especially at the height of the COVID pandemic, many observers believed that day had come. But the pendulum swung to the other extreme only a few years later as China’s abandonment of “zero COVID” failed to restore growth. Beijing was beset by ominous demographics, once unthinkable youth unemployment, and deepening stagnation while the United States was strengthening alliances, boasting breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and other technologies, and enjoying a booming economy with record low unemployment and record high stock markets.

A new consensus took hold: that an aging, slowing, and increasingly less nimble China would not overtake an ascendant United States. Washington shifted from pessimism to overconfidence. Yet just as past bouts of defeatism were misguided, so is today’s triumphalism, which risks dangerously underestimating both the latent and actual power of the only competitor in a century whose GDP has surpassed 70 percent of that of the United States. On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States. Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually. Militarily, it features the world’s largest navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities—all results of the fastest military modernization in history. Even if China’s growth slows and its system falters, it will remain formidable strategically.

During the Cold War, Soviet leaders often made the point that “quantity has a quality all its own.” As productivity equalizes, nations with larger populations, broader geographic reach, and greater economic heft scale up and dominate smaller first-movers. This dynamic has held throughout most of history. The United States benefited from it during the last century. It caught the tide of European industrialization, then leveraged its continental scale and larger population to outclass the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, and ultimately the Soviet Union. Today, it is China that benefits from that dynamic and the United States is at risk of being overtaken technologically, deindustrialized economically, and defeated militarily by a rival with far greater size and productive capacity.

This is an era in which strategic advantage will once again accrue to those who can operate at scale. China possesses scale, and the United States does not—at least not by itself. Because its only viable path lies in coalition with others, Washington would be particularly unwise to go it alone in a complex global competition. By retreating to a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere, the United States would cede the rest of the world to a globally engaged China.

Yet acknowledging the need for allies and partners should be the starting point, not an endpoint—because the United States’ legacy approach to alliances will no longer suffice. That approach, rooted in Cold War–era assumptions and extended by inertia over eight decades, tended to view partners as dependents: recipients of protection rather than co-creators of power. They were often seen as helpful, but also as burdensome and even obstructive. That model is obsolete. To achieve scale, Washington must transform its alliance architecture from a collection of managed relationships to a platform for integrated and pooled capacity building across the military, economic, and technological domains. In practical terms, that might mean Japan and Korea help build American ships and Taiwan builds American semiconductor plants while the United States shares its best military technology with allies, and all come together to pool their markets behind a shared tariff or regulatory wall erected against China. This kind of coherent and interoperable bloc, with the United States at its core, would generate aggregate advantages that China cannot match alone.

But such an approach demands a fundamental reorientation, from command-and-control diplomacy to a new capacity-centric statecraft. This radical shift in how the United States builds and wields power is essential in a world where it no longer has the singular advantage of scale. As China plays for time and mass, the United States and its partners must play for cohesion and collective leverage. To repurpose the warning often attributed to Benjamin Franklin: we must hang together, or we will all hang separately.

FROM SIZE TO SCALE

Not every large country becomes a great power. Size refers to dimensions; scale is the ability to use size to generate efficiency and productivity and thereby outcompete rivals. Small states can become world-class by maximizing efficiency on a small foundation, but when large states run that playbook on a much larger foundation, they can remake the world. Broader internal markets can drive down costs, enabling companies to outcompete others around the world. Bigger populations create deeper pools of talent and research. Large states are less reliant on trade, which gives them greater resilience. And they can field larger militaries.

Small states have risen to power on first-mover advantages, often with the acquiescence or benign neglect of larger states. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the United Kingdom was able to dominate the world with a first-mover advantage in industrialization. But that dominance was short-lived. Germany and the United States—thanks in part to the diffusion of British industrial methods—were able to achieve greater scale than a small island in the northwest corner of Europe. From 1870 to 1910, the British share of global manufacturing fell by half as the United States and Germany caught up and surpassed it. While the United Kingdom’s steel production doubled, to 6.5 million tons, Germany’s quintupled, to 12 million, and the United States’ grew sixfold, to 23 million. Germany and the United States pushed the British out of major industries, leveraging their larger internal markets, resource bases, and talent pools to drive down marginal costs. That economic advantage translated into still greater military and technological advantage. Together, these trends led to the United Kingdom’s gradual deindustrialization and eventual decline.

British leaders and strategists were aware of the problem. In the late nineteenth century, the British historian John Robert Seeley, in one of the most influential books of the era, worried about the emergence of “highly organized states on a yet larger scale,” noting that as technology diffused, “Russia and the United States will surpass in power the states now called great as much as the great country-states of the sixteenth century surpassed Florence.” Even before the collapse of the British Empire, he feared that the United Kingdom would be reduced “to the level of a purely European Power” such as Spain. Seeley was not alone in calling for his country to pursue the kind of scale and efficiency gains an island could not generate on its own, through “Greater Britain”—tighter integration with imperial holdings in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa. But these efforts were delayed, inconsistently pursued, and ultimately a failure. The colonies went their own way, and the British never found scale.

When World War I broke out, London was fortunate to have a much more powerful ally in Washington—one with the scale to help win World War I. That scale was clear to rivals. Before the war, Hitler had observed that “The American Union . . . has created a power factor of such dimensions that it threatens to overthrow all previous state power rankings.” Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto predicted that his country’s forces would “run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years” because of the United States’ manufacturing advantage. Italy’s foreign minister also recognized that a protracted war favored the United States: “Who will have the most stamina? This is the way the question should be put.” All the Axis powers feared U.S. industrial capacity. They understood that quantity was a quality of its own.

Today, that daunting scale and capacity belongs to China. American strategists must confront the risk that the United States could find itself in the position of the United Kingdom a century ago. The British experience offers both lessons and warnings: its effort at imperial integration was too little and too late. But the United States today can succeed where Britain failed, by harnessing allied and partner scale in new ways.

RISE AND FALL AND RISE

The starting point for that success must be accurate self-assessment. In recent years, the pages of Foreign Affairs have featured a slew of essays making the case that the United States has a clear and enduring advantage over China. Michael Beckley argues that “the Chinese economy is shrinking relative to that of the United States” and that “current trends are solidifying a unipolar world.” Stephen Brooks and Ben Vagle claim that “the United States still has a commanding and durable advantage” that would give it significant economic leverage in a conflict. Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass conclude that “the United States still has a vital edge over China in terms of economic dynamism, global influence, and technological innovation.”

Predicting the rise or fall of great powers is always a fraught exercise, given inadequate information, the risks of bias, the long shadow of current events, and the challenge of sorting out which metrics matter most and in what time frame. American strategists previously swung from one extreme to another in their estimation of Japan and the Soviet Union. That same weakness has characterized net assessment of China and the United States.

There is no question that China faces significant problems: an aging society, towering debt, stagnating productivity, growing risks in its housing market, high youth unemployment, crackdowns on the private sector. But even grave macroeconomic challenges do not neatly translate to strategic disadvantage. Two facts can be true at the same time: that China is slowing economically and that it is becoming more formidable strategically. And Beijing might well address economic challenges with a return to sound decision-making in the years ahead. Emphasizing China’s weaknesses risks understating its scale and capacity on the metrics and time frame most relevant for great-power competition.

For example, the idea that the United States’ economy will remain larger than China’s—contrary to most expectations just a few years ago—is frequently offered as evidence of commanding U.S. advantage. But as the economist Noah Smith argues in his analysis of these GDP comparisons, “Americans should take little comfort in the fact that their total GDP at market exchange rates is outpacing China’s.” As exchange rates shift, so do comparisons of relative size, so that a 15 percent depreciation of the renminbi—as has occurred since its peak three years ago—would make the Chinese economy seem 15 percent smaller even if its output stayed the same. Accounting for purchasing power and local prices using the World Bank’s methodology, although imperfect, reveals instead that China’s economy surpassed the U.S. economy about a decade ago and is 25 percent larger today: roughly $30 trillion to the United States’ $24 trillion. This purchasing power adjustment captures the real cost of the determinants of national power, including infrastructure investment, weapons systems, manufactured goods, and government personnel—key factors in sustaining long-term strategic advantage.

An electric vehicle factory in Zhejiang province, China, March 2025 Florence Lo / Reuters

Using this approach, if one looks narrowly at goods rather than services, China’s productive capacity is three times as large as that of the United States—a decisive advantage in military and technological competition—and exceeds that of the next nine countries combined. In the two decades after China joined the World Trade Organization, its share of global manufacturing quintupled to 30 percent while the U.S. share halved to roughly 15 percent; the United Nations has estimated that, by 2030, the imbalance will grow to 45 percent and 11 percent. China leads in many traditional industries—producing 20 times as much cement, 13 times as much steel, three times as many cars, and twice as much power as the United States—and increasingly in advanced sectors as well.

Although still catching up in fields such as biotechnology and aviation, which have been traditional U.S. strengths, China—thanks in part to ambitious industrial policy efforts such as Made in China 2025—produced almost half the world’s chemicals, half the world’s ships, more than two-thirds of electric vehicles, more than three-quarters of electric batteries, 80 percent of consumer drones, and 90 percent of solar panels and critical refined rare-earth minerals. And Beijing is taking steps to ensure its dominance continues and expands: China was responsible for half of all industrial robot installations worldwide (seven times as many as the United States), and it is a decade ahead of anyone else in commercializing fourth-generation nuclear technology, with plans to build over 100 reactors in 20 years. The last great power to so thoroughly dominate global production was the United States, from the 1870s to the 1940s.

American observers tend to underestimate China’s ability to innovate, mistakenly assuming it simply copies and reproduces Western innovations. Like the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and the United States before it, China’s manufacturing strength creates a foundation for innovative advantage. State investment helps, too; it now rivals the United States’ investment in science. And China’s large population provides a deep talent pool and competitive scale. In ten industries of the future, according to a recent report from the Information Technology and Industry Foundation, China is near the leading edge of innovation (or better) in six.

This industrial and innovative strength can be activated for military purposes. China’s navy, already the largest in the world, will add a staggering 65 vessels in just five years, reaching a total size 50 percent larger than the U.S. Navy—roughly 435 vessels to 300. It has rapidly increased its ships’ firepower, surging from one-tenth of the United States’ vertical launch system cells a decade ago to likely exceeding U.S. capacity by 2027. Although China lags the United States in aviation, it has broken a long-standing technical barrier by building jet engines at home and is now rapidly closing the production gap, with the ability to build more than 100 fourth-generation combat aircraft annually. In most missile technologies, China is probably the world’s leader: it boasts the first antiship ballistic missile, impressive air-to-air missile range, and the largest stockpile of conventional cruise and ballistic missiles. And in a growing number of military fields, from quantum communications to hypersonics, China is ahead of any competitor. These advantages, built over decades, will persist even if China stagnates.

KNOW YOUR RIVAL

China’s challenges are significant. But their strategic importance is often overstated. For example, its demographic challenges will be a major issue in the long term, but in the medium term—a timeline much more relevant to competition with the United States—they are manageable. A generational “echo boom,” as the grandchildren of the Mao-era baby boomer generation enter the workforce, means that, despite an aging population, the percentage of the population below the age of 15 has actually increased, by over 30 million between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, and it has also grown as a percentage of the total population. China’s dependency ratio (of adult workers to children and retirees) will remain below Japan’s current ratio until 2050. And massive investments in education, industrial robotics, and embodied artificial intelligence will help China weather labor shortfalls.

Debt levels are also illustrative. Although China’s household, corporate, and government debt is at a record 300 percent of GDP, other powers—including India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have similar levels of total debt. In some cases, metrics that indicate weakness in one area reflect strategic strengths in another. China’s housing bust, for example, is a drag on growth. But Beijing is plowing credit from that sector into industrial policy efforts that are boosting competitiveness. Similarly, while American firms continue to capture a higher share of profits and dominate rankings of market capitalization, Chinese firms are focused on different goals, often running losses to gain market share and put rivals out of business. Despite short-term challenges, China continues to play the long game.

Even if its weaknesses prove more severe than projected, China will remain vastly more powerful than any past U.S. competitor on the metrics most relevant for competition. Washington may have overestimated past rivals, including Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union. But China is the first to outmatch the United States in size alone, as well as in several strategically relevant areas. Stagnant or not, Beijing will remain more formidable than any past challenger.

Some analysts warn that American declinism is itself a risk, which could become “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” There is wisdom in that admonition; the rise and fall of great powers often begins with flawed self-diagnosis. But it is also the case, as the political scientist Samuel Huntington argued in these pages before the fall of the Soviet Union, that fretting about decline can just as often drive renewal. The greatest risk is not declinism; it is complacency, leading to a lack of strategic intention and a failure to catalyze collective action to rise to the China challenge. If anything, the United States—particularly in the era of President Donald Trump—risks overestimating unilateral power and underestimating China’s ability to counter it.

CAPACITY-CENTRIC STATECRAFT

For Washington, three realities must be central to any serious strategy for long-term competition. First, scale is essential. Second, China’s scale is unlike anything the United States has ever faced, and Beijing’s challenges will not fundamentally change that on any relevant timeline. And third, a new approach to alliances is the only viable way the United States can build sufficient scale of its own. Altogether, this means that Washington needs its allies and partners in ways that it did not in the past. They are not tripwires, distant protectorates, vassals, or markers of status, but providers of capacity needed to achieve great-power scale. For the first time since the end of World War II, the United States’ alliances are not about projecting power, but about preserving it.

During the Cold War, the United States and its allies outclassed the Soviet Union. Today, a slightly expanded configuration would handily outclass China. Together, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union have a combined economy of $60 trillion to China’s $18 trillion, an amount more than three times as large as China’s at market exchange rates and still more than twice as large adjusting for purchasing power. It would account for roughly half of all global manufacturing (to China’s roughly one-third) and for far more active patents and top-cited journal articles than China does. It would account for $1.5 trillion in annual defense spending, roughly twice China’s. And it would displace China as the top trading partner of almost all states. (China is today the top trading partner of 120 states.)

In raw terms, this alignment of democracies and market economies outscales China across nearly every dimension. Yet unless its power is coordinated, its advantages will remain largely theoretical. Accordingly, unlocking the potential of this coalition should be the central task of American statecraft in this century. And that cannot be done by simply doubling down on the traditional alliance playbook.

The starting point for the United States can be long-standing bilateral alliances (such as those with Japan and South Korea) and multilateral alliances (such as NATO), along with newer partnerships (such as the AUKUS defense technology agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom) and less institutionalized groupings (such as the Quad, which also includes Australia, India, and Japan). But rather than simply celebrating these frameworks or expanding their membership, the task ahead is to deepen their function—to make them foundations for capacity-centric statecraft across multiple domains. These relationships have too often operated on the assumption that the United States provides security while others contribute political support or, at best, niche capabilities. It has been largely security-centric, too—focused on deterrence, access, and reassurance—while leaving economic coordination, industrial integration, and technological collaboration as emerging but still secondary concerns. The traditional model was simply not designed to compete with a systemic rival on the order of China. It is dangerously inadequate to the demands of the moment.

The U.S. approach to alliances and partnerships in recent decades has been shaped by a combination of strategic habit and structural hierarchy. Now, it must become a platform for generating shared capacity across all critical domains—not just military ones. That will require a level of coordination and codependence that is unfamiliar and will at times be uncomfortable for both the United States and its partners. For military power, creating scale requires capacity to flow in both directions, including investment in the weaker parts of the U.S. defense industry and more generous provision of advanced U.S. military technologies to allies who historically have not received it. For the economy, scale means building a shared tariff and regulatory wall against China’s excess capacity while constructing new mechanisms to coordinate industrial policy and pool allied market share. For technology, the challenge will similarly be to erect common investment rules, export controls, and research protections to prevent technology transfer to China while undertaking joint investment. These steps mark the difference between a coalition that is aligned in principle and one that is fused in practice. That shift—toward shared capacity as the foundation of strategy—will allow the United States and its partners to compete at scale and at speed.

SCALE BOTH WAYS

The Biden administration used existing security alliances and partnerships to construct a “latticework” meant to better distribute force posture, increase allied defense spending, and launch new security arrangements such as AUKUS while elevating bodies such as the Quad. These efforts should be reinforced, but the next step is to transform defense-industrial cooperation. The lessons from Ukraine are clear: the United States would lack sufficient capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict with China on its own. Although innovation from new firms in uncrewed systems is promising, true scale, particularly in legacy systems, will require co-production and deeper industrial integration with allies. The World War II Arsenal of Democracy is unlikely to return. In its place, the United States needs to construct what the historian Arthur Herman has called an Arsenal of Democracies: a networked defense industrial base built on joint production, shared innovation, and integrated supply chains.

This marks a sharp change from the past, when the United States primarily provided capability to others. Now, scale demands two-way flows, including allied investment and manufacturing in the United States. Some initial steps the Biden administration took, such as having the Japanese repair American destroyers, provide a modest glimpse of what is possible. More ambitious efforts might involve joint ventures with Japanese and South Korean shipbuilders (which are two to three times more productive than U.S. firms); partnerships between Europe’s missile manufacturers and U.S. companies; or recruiting Japanese or Taiwanese firms to build legacy microelectronics in the United States. Too often, dated regulatory and political constraints, which must be addressed jointly by Congress and the executive, create barriers to benefiting from allied capability.

The United States’ own capability must also flow outward to allies. Biden-era efforts such as AUKUS and the co-production of Tomahawk missiles with Japan are steps in the right direction. But real progress requires overcoming a bureaucratic alliance between a State Department concerned about proliferation and a Defense Department fearful of eroding its edge. Sharing technology quickly is the key to ensuring that Australia builds nuclear submarines, that Asian allies have sufficient antiship cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, that Taiwan can deter Chinese invasion, and that India is able to turn the Andaman Islands to its east into a fortress that Beijing cannot ignore. In practice, this could mean harmonizing export-control laws, aligning procurement standards, and coordinating investment in chokepoint components, from semiconductors to optical equipment.

American observers tend to underestimate China’s ability to innovate.

Allies can also transfer capacity to each other, both within regions and between different ones. Some of this has begun to happen haltingly, but much more is possible. South Korean weapons can help Europe rearm and reindustrialize. French nuclear technology can support India’s submarine program. Norwegian and Swedish missiles can help Indonesia and Thailand defend their waters. Pooling capacity requires thinking across alliances, with the United States facilitating collective action.

Tighter integration also requires more burden sharing—and burden shifting. Even as allies and partners build bridges across continents, they must also play a bigger role in deterrence closer to home, with Europeans stepping up in Europe and Asians stepping up in Asia. That can be done in part by strengthening the security dimension of increasingly important groupings (the Quad or the trilateral relationship with Japan and Korea). But Washington also needs to strengthen coordination with allies for actual warfighting—through steps such as modernized joint command-and-control systems, new investments in interoperability, and more sophisticated joint exercises. That could include creating joint units with U.S. allies and partners, starting with ground-based antiaircraft and antiship missile battalions to be used in a crisis in the Indo-Pacific and later extending to more complex air and naval air formations. The United States should also reinforce extended deterrence by offering allies a greater say in nuclear command and control and the kinds of nuclear sharing arrangements that it pursued with European allies during the Cold War.

Globally, the United States could pursue a new version of U.S. President Richard Nixon’s “Guam Doctrine,” which devolved responsibilities to partners after the Vietnam War. That would empower regional states—what former Australian Prime Minister John Howard called “deputy sheriffs”—to take the lead on security challenges in their neighborhood: Australia in the Pacific islands, India in South Asia, Vietnam in continental Southeast Asia, Nigeria in Africa. In practical terms, the next time a South Asian country faces challenges, the United States would defer to India’s judgment on what might serve regional stability or counter China’s influence rather than seek to advance its own preferences.

COMMON MARKETS

The Biden administration took important steps in the economic and technology competition with China, with initiatives such as the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, and coordinated semiconductor export controls with Japan and the Netherlands. But withstanding China’s excess capacity and retaining technological leadership will require more ambitious action, beyond what Washington has typically been willing to do.

China’s nonmarket practices and sheer scale have overwhelmed the World Trade Organization and now pose an existential risk to the industrial base of the United States and its allies and partners. Attempting to act alone against this threat will mean failure: securing the U.S. market will do little good if China can still push U.S. companies out of partner markets, depriving them of the scale they need to remain competitive. Instead, the United States and its allies and partners must find scale together, through a defensive moat against Chinese exports. Building a protected common market could start with coordinated tariffs on Chinese goods. But because tariffs can be easy to circumvent, a better approach might be to use coordinated nontariff barriers, including regulatory tools. (The Biden administration used such barriers against digitally connected vehicles from China.) Such regulatory measures could be coordinated with partners relatively quickly and easily.

Another tool is “preferential plurilateralism”—selectively opening allied and partner markets while creating higher barriers for Chinese goods. This approach, broadly supported by figures across the political spectrum, from Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative during Trump’s first term, to prominent Democratic legislators, echoes aspects of the early post–World War II trading system, which gave preferential treatment to members of the free world over autocratic rivals. If the era of free trade agreements is over for now, then sectoral agreements with allies could offer promising avenues for pooling markets while avoiding political sensitivities.

Coordinated industrial policy instruments would also be useful, such as a new international industrial investment bank that would make loans to firms in strategic sectors to diversify supply chains out of China, especially in key sectors such as medicine and critical minerals. And coordinated efforts to remove barriers to allied and partner investment could, for example, allow the bypass of national security review. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have invested heavily in industrial cooperation with the United States (over $300 billion during the Biden administration with continued growth under Trump). And despite a tendency to dismiss Europe as economically stagnant, it outproduces the United States in steel, cars, ships, and civil aircraft; claims a greater share of global manufacturing; and has a manufacturing workforce three times the size of that of the United States. Meanwhile, stronger connections between scientific ecosystems—with more cooperation and people-to-people ties, along with common research protections—will help ensure that U.S. allies and partners can match China’s scale.

Pooled market share would also create strategic leverage. A collective framework for economic defense—what some have called an “economic Article 5,” drawing on NATO’s mutual defense clause—is a long-overdue response to China’s economic coercion. Such an agreement would trigger coordinated sanctions, export controls, or trade action if one of the group’s members encountered economic pressure from Beijing. It would also function as a platform for deterring military aggression.

EXIT OR LOYALTY?

Trump has presented the United States’ partners with hard choices and outright threats. Many may understandably be loath to further tie themselves to Washington any time soon. Trust, built over generations, is easily squandered.

Great powers often overestimate their influence over others. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev did not believe his experiments in regional autonomy would result in the exit of Soviet republics from the Soviet Union. The Trump administration may not expect its belittling and coercion of allies to lead to a “Gorbachev moment,” but key U.S. allies are already considering declaring “independence” from Washington—pursuing nuclear weapons, building new regional groupings, challenging the dollar’s role. Some, spurred by domestic reactions to U.S. pressure, are contemplating moving closer to China, even at enormous peril to their industries or security. The United States risks fracturing the free world and closing its best path to scale.

Yet as Washington turns away from its coalition, China is constructing its own. Driven together by anti-Western grievance and their own parochial interests, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are creating substantial authoritarian scale. China has built Russia’s defense industrial base, helped Iran provide Russia with one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, and assented as North Korea has sent troops to fight in Europe. All four governments are working to erode U.S. sanctions and are engaged in diplomatic coordination, intelligence sharing, and military exercises. This is a unified challenge that requires a unified response.

The rise and fall of great powers often begins with flawed self-diagnosis.

As some in the United States talk about creating divisions among China’s partners by executing a “reverse Kissinger” with Russia, Beijing is determined to exploit fissures in Western alliances, notably between the United States and Europe. The risk now is that Washington will split from Europe while failing to split China and Russia. Efforts to build democratic capacity have been aided by China’s own missteps in conducting confrontational “wolf warrior” diplomacy; the United States is now engaged in counterproductive diplomatic pugilism of its own, providing openings for China to play the role of reasonable partner. Washington will have better luck partnering with allies than with adversaries animated by deep anti-U.S. sentiment.

If the United States fails to pursue scale with others, or retreats to the Western hemisphere while undoing its alliances, the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose. The United States, like the United Kingdom before it, will find itself diminished by a great power with unprecedented scale. It will encounter a world divided among multiple great powers, but with China the strongest among them and in some areas stronger than all of them. The result will be a United States that is weaker, poorer, and less influential—and a world in which China sets the rules.

Although a growing consensus has swung toward underestimating China’s power and overstating America’s resurgence, that thinking echoes past cycles of misjudgment. Rosy perspectives on America’s trajectory risk fueling the kind of go-it-alone unilateralism that assumes, implicitly and increasingly explicitly, that American allies and partners are obsolete or overvalued when they are in fact the only path to scale against a formidable competitor. Success requires going much further and with greater ambition than the alliance-friendly policies of the previous Biden administration and rejecting outright the alienating, go-it-alone “America first” approach taking shape under Trump.

Such a commitment is not just a policy, but a signal of the capabilities of the United States, its allies, and partners. The Chinese Communist Party is inordinately focused on perceptions of American power, and a critical input in that equation is its estimation of Washington’s ability to pull in the allies and partners that even Beijing openly admits are the United States’ greatest advantage. Accordingly, the most effective U.S. strategy—the one that has most unsettled Beijing in recent years and can deter its adventurism in the future—is to build new, enduring, and robust capacities with these states. A sustained, bipartisan commitment to an upgraded alliance network, coupled with strategic cooperation in emerging fields, offers the best path forward to finding scale against the most formidable competitor the United States has ever encountered.

KURT M. CAMPBELL served as Deputy Secretary of State and Indo-Pacific Coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Kurt M. Campbell · April 10, 2025

13. White House Should Direct Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff to Review Strategic Choices on Embassy Crisis Response

I notice there is no discussion of the former CIFs ("CINC's Inextremis Forces") of the RSTs (Regional Survey Teams) that used to belong to the forward stationed Special Forces units.

White House Should Direct Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff to Review Strategic Choices on Embassy Crisis Response

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/10/white-house-should-direct/

by Michael Walsh

04.10.2025 at 06:00am

Media reporting suggests that there has been an increase in the risks facing U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff worldwide. That reality poses a serious challenge to the Trump Administration and its legacy. The America First Agenda (AFA) demands that U.S. foreign policy advances the prosperity, safety, and security of the American people. Logically, one would expect that includes U.S. diplomats and their dependents. However, there appear to be gaps in the global posture of the specialized tactical units that would need to respond in the event of a serious attack on U.S. diplomats and their dependents. That includes the Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) Companies of the United States Marine Corps (Marine Corps). There are concerns that those gaps could make it difficult for the U.S. Department of Defense (Department of Defense) to be able to rapidly deploy FAST teams (Figure 1) to respond to urgent threats against U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff in particular regions of the world. To mitigate against the risk of another Benghazi, the Marine Corps and Department of Defense should make it a priority to re-evaluate and realign the FAST Companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response. To ensure that happens, the Trump Administration should immediately direct the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to re-evaluate and realign the global posture of the FAST Companies and the other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response with the America First Foreign Policy Agenda (AFA/FP).

Figure1: Current Global Footprint of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.Background Information

In the aftermath of the recent attacks on diplomatic missions to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serious questions have been raised about whether the Trump Administration is adequately prepared for a significant attack on the U.S. Government’s overseas presence. In the event of such an attack, the Department of Defense may need to call upon the FAST Companies of the Marine Corps Security Force Regiment to respond. These tactical units are forward deployed to overseas military bases (i.e., Bahrain, Japan, Spain). They provide Geographic Combatant Commanders with a unique set of rapid response expeditionary anti-terrorism and security capabilities that can be used to protect national assets and conduct other limited-duration contingency operations. Those include a unique set of capabilities for rapidly responding to non-traditional security threats against U.S. diplomatic missions and their staff (e.g., the 2012 Attack on the U.S. Consulate Benghazi). There is, therefore, a clear and present need for the Marine Corps and Department of Defense to better understand whether they need to make new strategic choices about the FAST Companies. That starts with conducting an environmental scan.

Environmental Scan

The Marine Corps should conduct a systematic scan of all environment levels (Figure 2) of the FAST Companies. Those levels include:

Internal Level:
The Marine Corps will need to identify the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of the FAST Companies.
External Level
General External Sublevel: The Marine Corps will need to identify the key political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal forces at the global and regional levels.
Specific External Sublevel: The Marine Corps will need to identify the key stakeholders in the external environment. That includes customers, allies, partners, competitors, adversaries, enemies, and societies.

When scanning the external environment, the Marine Corps will need to place special emphasis on the external forces affecting the current and forecast locations where customers will demand services (e.g., diplomatic posts, overseas military installations, protected third-country sites).

Figure 2: The Multidimensional Environment of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.Strategic Alignment

Once the Marine Corps has completed its scan of the environment, the Department of Defense should re-evaluate the strategic alignment of the FAST Companies. That assessment should examine all three axes:

Horizontal: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of similar specialized tactical units within the United States Government. (Examples of relevant specialized tactical units include the Marine Raider Regiment, Regimental Reconnaissance Company, Naval Special Warfare Development Group, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, 24th Special Tactics Squadron, Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation Unit, Mobile Security Deployments, and FBI Hostage Rescue Team). That includes the special mission units of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Vertical: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of higher-level components within the United States Government. That must include those of the Executive Office of the President.
Diagonal: The Department of Defense will need to re-evaluate the alignment of the FAST Companies with the functions, structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles, staff, and values of key stakeholders outside of the United States Government. That includes the specialized tactical units of foreign governments (e.g., Special Program for Embassy Augmentation Response Teams).

When evaluating strategic alignment (Figure 3), the Marine Corps should pay special attention to any misalignments with the style, strategies, and values of the Executive Office of the President. Those values appear to include dominance, efficiency, effectiveness, and reciprocity.

Figure 3: The Strategic Alignment Evaluation of FAST Companies Michael Walsh. [Lecture notes on U.S. foreign policy planning]. Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. 2025.Risk Assessment

After the Department of Defense has re-evaluated the strategic alignment of the FAST Companies, the Marine Corps should conduct a risk assessment for the FAST Companies:

Risk Assessment: The Marine Corps should seek to identify and evaluate risks that exist in the internal and external environments. Examples include asset impairment risks, competitive risks, operational risks, and political risks.
Mitigation Measures: The Marine Corps should seek to identify ways that the Department of Defense could enhance decision-making, foster innovation, reduce costs, minimize the negative risks, maximize the positive risks, and promote accountability to the American taxpayer. This includes ways to mitigate further foreign entanglements in the course of crisis response.
Management Decisions: The Marine Corps should determine if any risks exceed acceptance levels. If so, the Department of Defense should develop a security plan with a cost evaluation for those risks.

When conducting the risk assessment, the Marine Corps should prioritize threats to the provisioning of essential services to customers (Figure 4). This is important as there appears to be a serious misalignment between the current spatial distribution of the FAST Companies and the spatial distribution of country-level risk. Given the global distribution of diplomatic posts and other customer sites, one would imagine that this means that FAST Companies would struggle to provide essential services to customers across a wide range of contingencies.

Figure 4: The Multi-Dimensional Risk Facing FAST CompaniesThe European Commission publishes an annual report of global risks. The INFORM Risk Index is based on the concepts of hazards & exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping capacity dimensions. It shows that the independent states with the highest risk tend to be located between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Since the FAST Companies tend to be located north of the Tropic of Cancer, that begs the question of whether they would overcome the tyranny of distance and adequately provision essential services to customer locations in places like South America, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.Strategic Choices

Once the Marine Corps and Department of Defense have a good grasp of the environment, strategic alignment, and risks, then their leadership figures will be in a much better position to make a new strategic plan for the FAST Companies. That will require making five interdependent strategic choices (Figure 5):

What is the principal mission of the FAST Companies?
Where can/will the FAST Companies operate to accomplish their mission?
How will the FAST Companies’ success be determined?
What capabilities will the FAST Companies need to be successful?

What command and management systems will the FAST Companies need to be successful?

Figure 5: Strategic Choices for the FAST Companies

When making these strategic choices, the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense will need to consider a large number of factors beyond the environment, strategic alignment, and risks. Some examples include the resource constraints and competing interests of the FAST Companies.

Political Considerations

The Marine Corps and Department of Defense need to be mindful that there is a political imperative to rapidly re-evaluate and realign the FAST Companies. In the past, President Donald Trump has not only criticized how the Obama Administration responded to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens and American diplomat Sean Smith. He has criticized how the Biden Administration mitigated the known threats associated with the Kabul Airlift that resulted in the deaths of over a dozen American service members. If a Geographic Combatant Commander were to struggle to respond to a future threat against an overseas diplomatic mission or military base, then those prior comments would provide powerful ammunition for political opponents to launch a direct attack on the Trump Administration. For that reason, the Trump Administration has a political imperative to ensure that the Marine Corps and Department of Defense re-evaluate and re-align the FAST Companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response as quickly as possible.

Recommended Policy Directive

To mitigate against another Benghazi incident on its watch, The White House should direct the Department of Defense to immediately re-evaluate and re-align the FAST companies and other specialized tactical units responsible for overseas crisis response with the administration’s strategic priorities. That can be achieved through an executive directive that requires the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide the National Security Council of The White House with an environmental scan, strategic alignment evaluation, risk management assessment, proposed strategic plan, and prioritized list of recommended posture changes within 60 days.

Tags: Crisis Response, Embassy Security, Foreign Policy, U.S. Marine Corps

About The Author

Michael Walsh
Michael Walsh is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He conducts research on the strategic, operational, and tactical gaps that exist in American foreign policy. Mr. Walsh is best known for his policy-relevant contributions to the alignment of governance, foreign aid, and military posture with regional realities, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula, Northern Africa, the Pacific Islands, Southeastern Europe, and Southern Africa. His scholarship tends to bridge the theoretical and applied policy realms, akin to Richard Haass’s pragmatic diplomacy, Graham Allison’s decision-making frameworks, and Susan Strange's structural dynamics. At the Lasky Center, Mr. Walsh is working on his PhD project on the quality characteristics of American foreign policy planning, with a particular focus on the implications for public perception and the collective good. Publications related to this project have appeared in Orbis.

14. Lawmakers fearful of SOCOM cuts, possible risk to mission

In listening to members of the HASC and SASC the past two days it seems as if they will support SOF on a scale we have not seen in recent years. SOF has always enjoyed bipartisan support and it seems to be strong based on these two hearings.

Lawmakers fearful of SOCOM cuts, possible risk to mission

https://defensescoop.com/2025/04/09/lawmakers-fearful-of-socom-cuts-and-possible-risk-to-mission/?utm

Mark Pomerleau

April 9, 2025

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Special Tactics Airmen assigned to the 24th Special Operations Wing secure an airfield during exercise Emerald Warrior 2024 at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, March 1, 2024. Special Tactics Airmen are continuously adapting and training in order to ensure mission success for the joint force. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Stephen Pulter)Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle expressed concern this week over cuts to special operations forces, with many vowing to plus-up their budget as a response.

During Senate and House subpanels, military leaders and members of Congress outlined force cuts and budget reductions that have led to risks in missions for special operations forces because, in many cases, the head of Special Operations Command has been forced to tell combatant commanders “no” when they request capabilities.

Headlining the details outlined on Capitol Hill in recent days is the fact that SOCOM has had a flat budget since 2019, leading to a 14% decrease in purchasing power and a 5,000-person reduction in forces across the command over the last three and a half years. That includes reducing roles in communications, logistics, intelligence, civil affairs and psychological operations, and specifically a reduction of 3,000 personnel for military information support operations.

“SOCOM has operated under stagnant budgets. The limitation of SOF end strength was a very short-sighted decision at a time when SOF capabilities are needed more than ever. We must change course now,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon. “That is why I intend to work with the DOD to rebuild SOCOM’s budget. Given SOF’s critical role in national security, this is a wise and cost-effective investment.”

That view was shared among other members of the panel, as well as their counterparts in the House.

“I would like to plus them up … A big bump up in funding for the SOF community,” Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, a retired Navy SEAL, told DefenseScoop in an interview Tuesday. “I know for a fact that they are hurting for funding lines, for pots of money in certain places, through discussions with the leadership. My stance is: Hey look, I’m going to work as hard as I can with the members in [House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations] and with the committee to get you what you need, which we are having those discussions.”

A bump in funding for SOF will provide more placement and access for units forward-deployed, Luttrell said. Their global footprint and ability to flex at a moment’s notice provide a defensive posture that exceeds traditional measures, he said, whereas if conventional forces are required to show up, “we are in trouble.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, noted that, like how Space Force was excluded from taking cuts, her hope was these high-demand mission sets would be taken into consideration as well

“[I] just would hope that if there’s someone who’s picking and choosing missions that are going to be cut versus protected, I know you’re advocating, but that we realize that the units that are in highest demand should not be taking the same haircut as everybody else across the force,” she said.

Members of Congress led witnesses in talking about how the cuts to purchasing power and end strength have hurt special operations forces’ ability to meet the requirements of combatant commands, with SOCOM Commander Gen. Bryan Fenton explaining how it’s hurt his ability to offer support.

Combatant command requests are up 35 percent in the last three years due to the need for deterrence, Fenton said. Special operations forces bring a variety of capabilities in the way of building relationships, developing access, providing indications and warnings, closing kill webs or kill chains, and giving commanders options and opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have in the hopes of preventing a drawn-out conflict.

“Where we’ve had to say, ‘no,’ I’ll give you a number: Last December in one of the global force management tanks, I had to say no 41 times to request[s],” Fenton told members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations on Wednesday. “It’s a high compliment that this SOF team is that value proposition to the entire department … [Why] we couldn’t do it, my sense, and I’ll wind this down for you, is two reasons: There’s certainly a capability and capacity piece against the great humans that do that work. And as you know, we’ve been reduced in the past couple years by up to 5,000. But there’s also now a fiscal constraint that’s pulling at us based on an increasingly decreasing top line that now comes into play.”

Others warned of the proposed eight percent cuts the Department of Defense is seeking across the board in a measure to reduce inefficiency and redundancy.

"I’m not a doctor, but if I was, it would be cutting into bone. We are already lean and efficient,” Colby Jenkins, the official performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said when asked by Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., what an eight percent cut would look like.

To that, Crow added: “There’s no fat in SOCOM. You’re lean and mean as you’re supposed to be.”

Jenkins replied that special forces leaders are doing their best to avoid the negative impacts of DOD-wide budget cuts at all costs.

Aside from deterrence, the cuts in personnel and resources have also hurt SOCOM’s ability to modernize, particularly as the character of war changes, slowing its ability to adopt new technologies such as uncrewed systems, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing and autonomy.

Fenton described that due to a 14 percent reduction in buying power, which equates to about $1 billion, his command is unable to acquire capabilities that might be able to provide asymmetry on the battlefield.

To stress the importance of that, he used the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, where the Ukrainians have been outmatched in terms of legacy capabilities — tanks, missiles, airplanes and helicopters — against the Russians, but adopted asymmetric tools to impose costs on Russian forces and stay in the fight.

“From the modernization piece first, I think first and foremost, the risk is not winning, not being able to complete the mission in the future environment,” Fenton said. “We’re taking risks there, the inability to get after the things I think that are asymmetric, that are part of the changing character of war, to do it at speed. You could add anything uncrewed, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, autonomy, all that. I think we’re accruing high risk because we as SOCOM are not able to get after that based on a flat top line.”

Fenton noted that, additionally, the acquisition system needs significant modernization to keep up with these emerging technologies driving the changing character of warfare.

He called the current system “outdated” and “glacial,” designed for the old world of aircraft carriers and airplanes, but not suited for the modern battlefield.

“But what we’re seeing through the lens of Ukraine needs to be an acquisition and procurement system that is hyperspeed, supersonic. Because over there, we’re watching the changes in minutes, hours and days,” Fenton told members of the House.

He added that requirements must be addressed and updated by reducing the number of people involved in them to enable a faster cycle between operator, commander and acquisition, such as allowing those downrange to directly inform requirements.

The cycles could also be faster.

“As I think about the requirements process, certainly the buckets of time give us an opportunity to think through multi-year processes,” Fenton said. “Two years might see multi-year. I think to all of us, multi-year probably needs to be five-to-10 years so we can move at the speed and evolution of what we’re seeing out on the battlefield.”

Fenton also advocated for consolidating the “colors” of money and compressing multiple funding pots. Within the DOD, funds are divided into separate categories of operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development, and they must be used only for those purposes, negating flexibility to move around additional allocated funds if needs require more in another pot.

“I think there’s a way to take a lot of that off, compress the multiple lines to just a couple and really modernize there,” Fenton said.

Written by Mark Pomerleau

Mark Pomerleau is a senior reporter for DefenseScoop, covering information warfare, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, intelligence, influence, battlefield networks and data.

15. Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose

Excerpts:

When it comes to real war, if you have reason to be afraid of being invaded, it would be suicidal to provoke your adversary before you’ve armed yourself. That is essentially what Trump’s economic attack risks: given that the U.S. economy is entirely dependent on Chinese sources for vital goods (pharmaceutical stocks, cheap electronic chips, critical minerals), it is wildly reckless not to ensure alternate suppliers or adequate domestic production before cutting off trade. By doing it the other way around, the administration is inviting exactly the kind of damage it says it wants to prevent.

This could all be intended as just a negotiating tactic, Trump’s and Bessent’s repeated statements and actions notwithstanding. But even on those terms, the strategy will do more harm than good. As I warned in Foreign Affairs last October, the fundamental problem with Trump’s economic approach is that it would need to carry out enough self-harming threats to be credible, which means that markets and households would expect ongoing uncertainty. Americans and foreigners alike would invest less rather than more in the U.S. economy, and they would no longer trust the U.S. government to live up to any deal, making a negotiated settlement or agreement to deescalate difficult to achieve. As a result, U.S. productive capacity would decline rather than improve, which would only increase the leverage that China and others have over the United States.

The Trump administration is embarking on an economic equivalent of the Vietnam War—a war of choice that will soon result in a quagmire, undermining faith at home and abroad in both the trustworthiness and the competence of the United States—and we all know how that turned out.

Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose

Foreign Affairs · by More by Adam S. Posen · April 9, 2025

Beijing Has Escalation Dominance in the U.S.-China Tariff Fight

Adam S. Posen

April 9, 2025

A trading chart on the New York Stock Exchange, New York, April 2025 Brendan McDermid / Reuters

ADAM S. POSEN is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with,” U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted in 2018, “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” This week, when the Trump administration imposed tariffs of more than 100 percent on U.S. imports from China, setting off a new and even more dangerous trade war, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a similar justification: “I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese escalation, because they’re playing with a pair of twos. What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.”

In short, the Trump administration believes it has what game theorists call escalation dominance over China and any other economy with which it has a bilateral trade deficit. Escalation dominance, in the words of a report by the RAND Corporation, means that “a combatant has the ability to escalate a conflict in ways that will be disadvantageous or costly to the adversary while the adversary cannot do the same in return.” If the administration’s logic is correct, then China, Canada, and any other country that retaliates against U.S. tariffs is indeed playing a losing hand.

But this logic is wrong: it is China that has escalation dominance in this trade war. The United States gets vital goods from China that cannot be replaced anytime soon or made at home at anything less than prohibitive cost. Reducing such dependence on China may be a reason for action, but fighting the current war before doing so is a recipe for almost certain defeat, at enormous cost. Or to put it in Bessent’s terms: Washington, not Beijing, is betting all in on a losing hand.

SHOW YOUR HAND

The administration’s claims are off base on two counts. For one thing, both sides get hurt in a trade war, because both lose access to things their economies want and need and that their people and companies are willing to pay for. Like launching an actual war, a trade war is an act of destruction that puts the attacker’s own forces and home front at risk as well: if the defending side did not believe it could retaliate in a way that would harm the attacker, it would surrender.

Bessent’s poker analogy is misleading because poker is a zero-sum game: I win only if you lose, you win only if I lose. Trade, by contrast, is positive-sum: in most situations, the better you do, the better I do, and vice versa. In poker, you get nothing back for what you put in the pot unless you win; in trade, you get it back immediately, in the form of the goods and services you buy.

The Trump administration believes that the more you import, the less you have at stake—that because the United States has a trade deficit with China, importing more Chinese goods and services than China does U.S. goods and services, it is less vulnerable. This is factually wrong, not a matter of opinion. Blocking trade reduces a nation’s real income and purchasing power; countries export in order to earn the money to buy things they do not have or are too expensive to make at home.

What’s more, even if you focus solely on the bilateral trade balance, as the Trump administration does, it bodes poorly for the United States in a trade war with China. In 2024, U.S. exports of goods and services to China were $199.2 billion, and imports from China were $462.5 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $263.3 billion. To the degree that the bilateral trade balance predicts which side will “win” in a trade war, the advantage lies with the surplus economy, not the deficit one. China, the surplus country, is giving up sales, which is solely money; the United States, the deficit country, is giving up goods and services it does not produce competitively or at all at home. Money is fungible: if you lose income, you can cut back spending, find sales elsewhere, spread the burden across the country, or draw down savings (say, by doing fiscal stimulus). China, like most countries with overall trade surpluses, saves more than it invests—meaning that it, in a sense, has too much savings. The adjustment would be relatively easy. There would be no critical shortages, and it could replace much of what it normally sold to the United States with sales domestically or to others.

Countries with overall trade deficits, like the United States, spend more than they save. In trade wars, they give up or reduce the supply of things they need (since the tariffs make them cost more), and these are not nearly as fungible or easily substituted for as money. Consequently, the impact is felt in specific industries, locations, or households that face shortages, sometimes of necessary items, some of which are irreplaceable in the short term. Deficit countries also import capital—which makes the United States more vulnerable to shifts in sentiment about the reliability of its government and about its attractiveness as a place to do business. When the Trump administration makes capricious decisions to impose an enormous tax increase and great uncertainty on manufacturers’ supply chains, the result will be reduced investment into the United States, raising interest rates on its debt.

OF DEFICITS AND DOMINANCE

In short, the U.S. economy will suffer enormously in a large-scale trade war with China, which the current levels of Trump-imposed tariffs, at more than 100 percent, surely constitute if left in place. In fact, the U.S. economy will suffer more than the Chinese economy will, and the suffering will only increase if the United States escalates. The Trump administration may think it’s acting tough, but it’s in fact putting the U.S. economy at the mercy of Chinese escalation.

The United States will face shortages of critical inputs ranging from basic ingredients of most pharmaceuticals to inexpensive semiconductors used in cars and home appliances to critical minerals for industrial processes including weapons production. The supply shock from drastically reducing or zeroing out imports from China, as Trump purports to want to achieve, would mean stagflation, the macroeconomic nightmare seen in the 1970s and during the COVID pandemic, when the economy shrank and inflation rose simultaneously. In such a situation, which may be closer at hand than many think, the Federal Reserve and fiscal policymakers are left with only terrible options and little chance of staving off unemployment except by further raising inflation.

When it comes to real war, if you have reason to be afraid of being invaded, it would be suicidal to provoke your adversary before you’ve armed yourself. That is essentially what Trump’s economic attack risks: given that the U.S. economy is entirely dependent on Chinese sources for vital goods (pharmaceutical stocks, cheap electronic chips, critical minerals), it is wildly reckless not to ensure alternate suppliers or adequate domestic production before cutting off trade. By doing it the other way around, the administration is inviting exactly the kind of damage it says it wants to prevent.

This could all be intended as just a negotiating tactic, Trump’s and Bessent’s repeated statements and actions notwithstanding. But even on those terms, the strategy will do more harm than good. As I warned in Foreign Affairs last October, the fundamental problem with Trump’s economic approach is that it would need to carry out enough self-harming threats to be credible, which means that markets and households would expect ongoing uncertainty. Americans and foreigners alike would invest less rather than more in the U.S. economy, and they would no longer trust the U.S. government to live up to any deal, making a negotiated settlement or agreement to deescalate difficult to achieve. As a result, U.S. productive capacity would decline rather than improve, which would only increase the leverage that China and others have over the United States.

The Trump administration is embarking on an economic equivalent of the Vietnam War—a war of choice that will soon result in a quagmire, undermining faith at home and abroad in both the trustworthiness and the competence of the United States—and we all know how that turned out.

ADAM S. POSEN is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Adam S. Posen · April 9, 2025

16. Trump and Xi Are in a Tariff Trap

Excerpts:

What emerges next is the depth of mutual miscalculation. Trump sees relentless pressure and personal flattery as complementary, convinced he can batter Beijing while buttering up his “great friend” Xi to make a deal. Yet China reads his taunts as duplicity—proof that Washington cannot be trusted even if talks resume. After years of back-and-forth negotiations and high-level bilateral engagements, neither side truly grasps the other’s calculus. Unless the two sides can craft an off-ramp that preserves Xi’s authority while satisfying Trump’s appetite for triumph, this trade war appears destined to escalate further if for no other reason than neither leader wanting to step back and neither leader knowing how.

Which means the worst may be yet to come. Both sides are bracing for impact, convinced time will tip the scales in their favor. But what began as a tariff tit-for-tat is fast morphing into a contest to redraw the global order, with each side convinced that in this fight, second place is no place at all. And on that, at least, they see eye to eye.

Trump and Xi Are in a Tariff Trap

Neither wants to back down—and neither knows how.

By Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton

Geopolitics
China

April 9, 2025, 4:46 AM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

The U.S.-China trade war has erupted into a full-scale tariff spiral, with triple-digit levies on Chinese products going into effect today and Washington showing no signs of slowing its assault. Confronted with this economic barrage, Beijing would ordinarily search for a quiet path back to détente through dialogue. But that path has all but vanished.

The reason is simple. For U.S. President Donald Trump, his pressure campaign isn’t a prelude to any negotiation—it is the strategy itself. Each tariff taunt feeds the next, leaving China with fewer options at every turn. Worse, Beijing’s political rigidity, deep insecurities, and defensive overreaction to Trump’s tariff announcements have seemingly slammed shut the very doors it quietly needs to reopen.

All of this points to a stark reality: Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are now locked on a collision course. Trump believes relentless pressure will ultimately force Beijing to capitulate, and he sees every uptick in tension as proof his approach is working. Xi, for his part, knows that genuine concessions are unlikely to win a reprieve; Trump would simply pocket the gains and press for more. What lies ahead, then, is no longer a test of endurance, but a clash of hard lines—an unpredictable escalation with no ceiling and no clear escape.

For Trump, tariffs are the blunt instrument of choice—central to his economic playbook and essential to his view of U.S. power. He sees them as a way to redraw the global trade map, punish rivals, and restore U.S. industrial supremacy. Tariffs deliver multiple dividends: They inflict pain on foreign industries, force companies to rethink supply chains, and send a clear signal that he is willing to do what past U.S. leaders would not. At home, they feed his populist narrative, casting him as the champion of forgotten workers and the defender of the heartland. Trump isn’t waiting for economists or trade lawyers to validate his approach—he uses every new tariff announcement to claim victory, portraying each escalation as proof positive that his strategy is working and U.S. leverage is growing.

With many countries, Trump is treating tariffs as tactical leverage to force quick, pragmatic deals. He sees partners like Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, and even Europe as transactional players, ready to negotiate when the pressure rises. Tariffs in these cases are a means to an end, a squeeze for concessions on reshoring supply chains, lowering trade barriers, or scrapping tariffs altogether. Trump pushes hard but expects them to play ball, and he frames these fights as winnable negotiations rather than permanent battles. Even as tariffs go into effect, he keeps dangling the prospect of side deals, signaling that cooperation can still earn relief—at least for those willing to bargain.

China is a different story entirely. Trump sees Beijing as the architect of a rigged global order, and he isn’t angling for compromise—he’s driving for capitulation. For Trump, this goes far beyond resolving trade disputes at the margins; it’s about dismantling China’s unfair advantages and upending China’s trade centrality. Chinese retaliation only emboldens him, reinforcing his belief that tariffs are working and that doubling down will eventually force Xi to fold. Crucially, because Beijing hasn’t figured out how to de-escalate without appearing weak, Trump sees no reason to ease the pressure, at least not yet. As a result, he is isolating China by design, tightening the screws with each new escalation, and betting that relentless strain will leave Xi with no off-ramp—and no choice but to buckle.

Against this backdrop, Xi’s options are narrowing fast. His instinct is to project strength and play for time, hoping that endurance and discipline can outlast Trump’s tariff blitz. But Trump’s unyielding offensive leaves little breathing room. After Beijing announced 34 percent reciprocal tariffs on U.S. imports this month—a move meant to signal defiance but not full rupture—Trump immediately countered by raising U.S. tariffs by another 50 percent. For Xi, the message was unmistakable: Retaliation risks harsher penalties, yet doing nothing invites humiliation at home. Xi now faces a bitter choice. He can escalate and provoke more pain, or hold back and appear weak to both foreign rivals and his domestic audience. Either way, the noose tightens.

China’s structural challenges compound Beijing’s bind. Xi’s rigid hierarchy leaves everyone waiting for cues from the top, but he has given none. Even if Xi wanted to de-escalate—and there’s little sign he does—his defiance and propaganda-fueled nationalism leave few credible ways to retreat without eroding his authority. Personnel problems deepen the dilemma. Trade falls outside Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remit, and Xi shows little trust in Premier Li Qiang to handle such high-stakes talks. But if not them, who? Xi’s consolidation of power has hollowed out China’s bench of credible envoys, leaving no one willing to risk misreading Trump or misplaying China’s weak hand. Even in a system steeped in quiet deal-making, Beijing cannot project resolve and seek reconciliation at once—and Xi has yet to choose a path.

At the same time, Beijing lacks a clear counterpart in Washington. Trump has blurred lines of authority, leaving China unsure who, if anyone, can negotiate credibly on his behalf. Cabinet secretaries and envoys come and go in Trump’s orbit, but he makes clear that any real deal starts and ends with him. He taunts Beijing by claiming to await China’s call, even as he courts dozens of other nations—friend and foe alike—that appear eager to strike deals. This is no accident; it’s the Art of the Deal applied to a global trade war. Trump thrives on disorder, keeping adversaries off-balance and sharpening his leverage. China, by contrast, is trapped in the art of the delay, waiting for clarity that never comes. The longer Xi stalls, the greater the peril, as Trump fills the vacuum with new tariffs and sidelines Beijing in a game that keeps accelerating.

What emerges next is the depth of mutual miscalculation. Trump sees relentless pressure and personal flattery as complementary, convinced he can batter Beijing while buttering up his “great friend” Xi to make a deal. Yet China reads his taunts as duplicity—proof that Washington cannot be trusted even if talks resume. After years of back-and-forth negotiations and high-level bilateral engagements, neither side truly grasps the other’s calculus. Unless the two sides can craft an off-ramp that preserves Xi’s authority while satisfying Trump’s appetite for triumph, this trade war appears destined to escalate further if for no other reason than neither leader wanting to step back and neither leader knowing how.

Which means the worst may be yet to come. Both sides are bracing for impact, convinced time will tip the scales in their favor. But what began as a tariff tit-for-tat is fast morphing into a contest to redraw the global order, with each side convinced that in this fight, second place is no place at all. And on that, at least, they see eye to eye.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton

17. Total Defense Strategy: How Small Nations Strengthen Resilience and Trust

From two of our nation's experts on resistance and resilience. They are asking tough questions that we must consider.

Excerpt:

This cursory analysis suggests other questions for further research, such as: What are the criteria for assuming a total defense approach within a specific nation? What is the deterrent value, over time, for assuming a total defense? Does the scope across society and scale in terms of resourcing, plans and coordination of total defense matter to its effectiveness and deterrent value? To what extent do the cases evaluated in this analysis share linguistic, ethnic, and religious commonalities with the relevant hegemons (i.e., Russia and China), and does such a correlation tell us anything about how resiliency may act as a dependent variable? Recent history and future trends in the geostrategic environment signal increasing interest and institution of a total defense strategy amongst smaller nations in a more uncertain and dangerous world, suggesting that further research in this issue would be of interest to security studies.

Total Defense Strategy: How Small Nations Strengthen Resilience and Trust

irregularwarfare.org · by Robert Burrell, John Collison · April 10, 2025

Total defense encompasses a government’s strategy and related policies which combine and extend the concepts of military and civilian defense. The concept entails developing a high level of readiness for the state and its society to secure a nation in case of war or to prepare the population for a crisis or natural disaster. Some have argued that total defense can also deter external aggression by opponents. This whole of society endeavor “is united by a shared threat perception and willingness to do what is needed.”

Since at least the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, total defense strategies have become increasingly relevant and urgent for smaller states concerned about aggression from larger, often neighboring, states. Although academic literature on the efficacy of total defense strategies remains limited, several small states with historic or recent experience offer case studies regarding the impact of total defense on national resilience. Put simply, resilience, in the context of a government and society, is the ability to withstand and recover from internal or external threats, including coercion, aggression, natural disasters, and biological events, while maintaining essential functions. Utilizing available datasets and polling data, this essay examines a set of countries that adopted or reimplemented total defense strategies between 2013 and 2024 to evaluate the impact of these strategies on governmental and societal resilience.

Examples of Modern Total Defense

Total Defense entails variations in scope, scale, and execution. Professors Jan Ångström and Kristin Ljungkvist at Swedish Defense University typologized total defense as either centrally controlled by the government or decentralized in a cellular approach. Total defense strategies have become quite topical for smaller states, including Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Singapore, and Taiwan, amongst others.

Singapore’s total defense concept, initially launched in 1984, currently adheres to six defensive pillars—military, civil, economic, social, psychological, and digital. Through conscription, all male citizens and residents in Singapore must serve in the military, police, or civil defense (emergency services/first responders) for 24 months. Per capita, Singapore’s military is one of the best funded and equipped in the world. The Singapore Civil Defence Force and Police Force address individual and national crises as first responders in emergency services and healthcare. Economic defense revolves around a healthy economy which can endure regional or global catastrophes. Social defense addresses the cohesion required to collaborate in a diverse population. Psychological defense focuses on dispelling misinformation. Finally, the newest pillar of digital defense represents cybersecurity, providing overarching support to the other pillars by defending their cyber networks and identifying subversive propaganda.

Figure 1. The Six Pillars of Singapore’s Total Defense Concept (Source: Authors)

Comparatively, the Finnish model of total defense strategies—considered by some as an optimal approach—mandates legally required resistance from the entire society against adversaries and threats. Finland describes their model as “a combination of all national and international military and civilian efforts to secure the conditions of homeland defense in all security situations.” This strategy facilitates collaboration between government and society to holistically prepare the military, public health, and infrastructure. Conscription trains the majority of the population on how to wage war. Additionally, the government emphasizes mental preparedness and public education on crisis preparation. For flexibility, the state integrates local agencies and communities into emergency planning. Meanwhile, public infrastructure supports civil defense shelters, supplies, and communications.

Ukraine has made efforts to emulate elements of Finland’s total defense concepts. In 2021, the government adopted legal frameworks such as Law 5557, which outlined the fundamentals for resistance to occupation. This statute detailed how the government would allocate public resources, conduct planning, and carry out rehearsals—fundamentally altering Kyiv’s approach to national defense. Drawing on lessons from successful grassroots resistance and militia efforts in Crimea and the Donbas during the previous decade, the Ukrainian government implemented similar techniques to counter Russian hybrid warfare. In effect, Kyiv recognized that mobilizing broader society alongside government institutions could offer a more effective defense. Total defense proved its value in 2022 by blunting the Russian invasion and initially repelling a shocked and unorganized Russian army.

Variances in Total Defense Approaches

One disputed aspect of total defense strategies is whether and how to incorporate decentralized resistance following an occupation. In some countries, nationalized resistance is deliberately planned in advance of defeat, with networks, resources, and territorial structures built in to enable civil disobedience and insurgency-like activity. The Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) describes the tactics and techniques of this approach. Nordic and Baltic states appear more amenable to integrate a resistance strategy in advance of hostilities, while Taiwan and Singapore support a more centralized whole-of-society approach to prevent occupation. Despite these differences, most total defense models share the common goal of deterring aggression through a credible national defense posture.

There remains tension between the aspirational ideas of total defense and their actual implementation. Universally, states adopting total defense prefer funding, organizing, and maintaining hierarchal control over the nation’s activities during crisis. However, resistance to occupation is typically associated with decentralized execution. World War II provides excellent examples in France and the Philippines, where local resistance organizations had no national organizational structure, nor did they follow direct orders from their governments-in-exile. Organization of nonstate entities to conduct violent resistance activities under occupation following state failure becomes politically controversial in planning for their state’s defeat, but some choose this approach because of a belief that a decentralized strategy would be more effective.

The following figure illustrates some variances in total defense strategies in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, and Singapore, as well as Taiwan (Figure 2 utilizes open-source data and may not reflect clandestine activities). Conscription and creating defensive infrastructure prior to conflict remains universal, with the exception of Singapore due to its limited geography. However, all five states plus Taiwan appear apprehensive to prepare for occupation and governmental collapse. This includes planning for a government-in-exile, establishing shadow governance frameworks, preparing for armed insurrection, establishing resistance infrastructure (like caches or civilian shelters), and education on civil disobedience.

BaselineDuring OccupationConscriptionDefensive InfrastructureGovernment-in-ExileShadow GovernanceArmed InsurrectionResistance InfrastructureCivil DisobedienceSwedenYesYesNoNoNoYes YesFinlandYesYesNoNoNo YesNoTaiwanYesYesNoNoNoNoNoEstoniaYesYesNoNoYes No NoLithuaniaYesYesNoNoYes Yes YesSingaporeYesNoNoNoNo Yes No

Figure 2. Variances in Publicly Available Total Defense Strategies, 2024

Who Adopts Total Defense?

Adopters of total defense strategies share some common traits: Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Singapore, and Taiwan all have relatively small populations. Each of these countries seeks to mobilize the full capabilities of their society, despite being significantly smaller than potential adversaries—Russia, with a population of 144 million, and China, with over 1.4 billion citizens. These states, as well as Taiwan, also acknowledge the conventional overmatch they face, which incentivizes unorthodox and asymmetric national defense strategies like total defense.

Surprisingly, a demographically uniform society is not requisite for a successful total defense strategy. The following figure compares the ethnic, linguistic, and religious fractionalization in these five states plus Taiwan with the rest of the world, enumerating 100% as most diverse and 0% as the least diverse. Estonia and Singapore, as well as Taiwan, represent more social fractionalization than most nations at over 50%. In fact, Estonia and Lithuania contain high numbers of Russian speakers, the demographic which might pose a weakness to enabling total defense against a likely adversary.

Figure 3. Average Social Fractionalization in Terms of Ethnicity, Language, and Religion (Data Source: Alesina et al)

Evaluating Social Cohesion

In order for total defense strategies to be a viable option, there must be mutual trust between the government and its population. The following chart compares trust in government in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania between 2013 and 2023. As these nations adopted or reinvigorated total defense strategies during this timeframe, one could expect that public’s trust in government rose in “a spirit of mutual reinforcement.” During the surveyed ten-year period, trust in government increased by 21% in Finland, 18.4% in Estonia, and 15.7% in Lithuania. Meanwhile, the trust in government within Sweden remained consistently above the general average despite decreasing by 6.1%. Similar data for Taiwan suggests government approval ratings moved from 10% in 2014 to over 70% in 2024. Meanwhile, Singapore’s government consistently maintains high levels of trust, a record high in 2024 at 76%. Consequently, there appears to be a correlation between adopting total defense and increasing trust and confidence in governance.

Figure 4: Trust in Government Comparison Between 2013 and 2023 by Nations with Total Defense Strategies (Data Source: OECD)

Assessing Governmental Resilience

The World Bank began assessing the resiliency of governmental structures in 2013. They use six indicators: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. States adopting total defense strategies across a whole-of-society spectrum might expect to increase political stability, decrease intrastate violence, curtail illicit corruption, and increase rule of law. The following figures compare the mean average across all six indicators for each of the five nations and Taiwan at two timeframes: 2013 and 2023. The resiliency of Finland and Sweden, although some of the highest in the world, fell during this period. Meanwhile, Taiwan, Estonia and Lithuania realized appreciable gains, while Singapore generally stayed the same. In total, the mean difference in resiliency of all five nations plus Taiwan between 2013 and 2023 had only 1% variance. Thus, in data-centric terms, adopting a total defense approach did not demonstrate an increase in the resiliency of governmental institutions.

Figure 5. Mean World Bank Indicators Between 2013 and 2023 (Data Source: World Bank)

To further evaluate how total defense strategies enhance national resilience, we used metrics from the Fragile States Index to identify any measurable differences when compared with the World Bank criteria. The Fragile States Index utilizes three separate indicators in four subcategories (twelve in total) for cohesion, economic, political and social factors. Consequently, the Fragile States Index provides a broader assessment than the World Bank and includes human development, public services, and military competency (Note: data for Taiwan is not available in the Fragile States Index). Figure 6 demonstrates that Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, and Singapore remain some of the most resilient nations on earth. However, adoption of total defense strategies over a ten-year period showed no appreciable increase in resiliency, with the mean average change over time less than one percent, similar to the results from the World Bank data analysis.

Figure 6: National Resiliency per Fragility Index Between 2013 and 2024 by Nations with Total Defense Strategies (Data/Fund for Peace)

Conclusion

In summary, evaluating total defense strategies from a data-centric approach produces some surprising observations. First, a whole-of-society approach to national security does not require a relatively homogeneous society. Singapore, Taiwan, and Estonia exhibit an average or above average linguistic, ethnic, and religious fractionalization and still maintain social cohesiveness. Seemingly more important is that the population and government share a common threat-perception.

Second, total defense strategies may significantly impact a population’s trust in its government, presumably by providing its citizens and residents agency in assuring their mutual aims of strong national security. Lastly, total defense strategies do not appear to strengthen government institutions or national resiliency. However, these five nations plus Taiwan exhibit some of the strongest resilience in comparison with the world average. This generally high and pre-existing level of resilience may be one of the decision criteria for choosing a total defense strategy. A government’s choice for total defense seems more about the shared threat perception across society.

This cursory analysis suggests other questions for further research, such as: What are the criteria for assuming a total defense approach within a specific nation? What is the deterrent value, over time, for assuming a total defense? Does the scope across society and scale in terms of resourcing, plans and coordination of total defense matter to its effectiveness and deterrent value? To what extent do the cases evaluated in this analysis share linguistic, ethnic, and religious commonalities with the relevant hegemons (i.e., Russia and China), and does such a correlation tell us anything about how resiliency may act as a dependent variable? Recent history and future trends in the geostrategic environment signal increasing interest and institution of a total defense strategy amongst smaller nations in a more uncertain and dangerous world, suggesting that further research in this issue would be of interest to security studies.

Robert Burrell, PhD is an award-winning author, Senior Research Fellow at the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, and retired Marine. He is also a 2025 Irregular Warfare Initiative Non-Resident Fellow, for Chief of Doctrine at US Special Operations Command, former History Instructor at the U. Naval Academy, and former Professor of Irregular Warfare at Joint Special Operations University.

John Collison is a Core One contractor supporting Special Operations concept development in Tampa. John is a retired Army Lieutenant-Colonel with over 26 years of active-duty service in the Civil Affairs and Infantry career fields. He served on the USSOCOM Staff, the Army Staff and various assignments in both Civil Affairs and Infantry units as an Operations Officer, Executive Office, Company Commander and Platoon leader. John’s overseas assignments and deployments include: Cambodia, Egypt, Honduras, Bosnia, Iraq and Alaska.

Main Image Credit: DVIDS. Swedish Home Guard with U.S. Army Special Forces, 2020.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

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18. Tyranny of Time & Distance: Logistics & Contested Deployment in LSCO

As the saying goes, amateurs talk tactics....

Excerpts:

An important consideration is that LSCO will be a dynamic environment which rapidly changes and results in often unpredictable outcomes. Any LSCO opponent can be expected to react and adapt in the face of setbacks and tactical reverses. A LSCO opponent will face the same difficulties in overcoming geography, weather, and the competition for resources as the U.S. military.

Planning today against China, our pacing threat — or worse, against adversarial collusion between members of the “Axis of Upheaval” — in a contested deployment environment will mean facing a variety of threats during the mobilization and movement process and beyond. Anything that would hinder or affect information networks (cyber) or physical infrastructure (sabotage) should be taken into consideration for force protection during the mobilization process. During the movement and RSOI processes, that interference will more likely be kinetic. The ability to adapt deployment processes to adjust to changing circumstances will also require creativity and command flexibility. While obvious changes as far as strategic airlift and information technology have added different dimensions to the deployment process, the need to overcome the tyranny of distance and time remains as critical today as it did in 1944 and 1945.

April 10, 2025 by iankersey3

529. Tyranny of Time & Distance: Logistics & Contested Deployment in LSCO

https://madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil/529-tyranny-of-time-distance-logistics-contested-deployment-in-lsco/

[Editor’s Note: As noted in the Contested Logistics section of TRADOC Pam 525-92, The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations:

“The increased logistics requirements of LSCO will challenge Army sustainment operations, and adversaries will target those same operations from the Homeland to the battlefield.“

Army Mad Scientist welcomes guest blogger Dr. Stewart Bentley with his insightful post exploring the challenges of sustainment during contested deployment in LSCO. Looking back to the Second World War’s European and Pacific Theaters of Operation, Dr. Bentley examines the enduring lessons these 80-year-old campaigns have for us in the Twenty-first Century Operational Environment (OE). Recognizing that strategic airlift, battlefield automation, complex fires across multiple domains, and the loss of sanctuary (China, our pacing threat, can reach out and disrupt our flow Soldiers and materiel from fort to port to theater) are contemporary realities of LSCO — the enduring requirement to project and sustain expeditionary forces and the twin tyrannies of time and distance remain immutable — Read on!]

The Army is currently working to conceptualize the Operational Environment beginning with contested deployment for LSCO. The threats the Army could face throughout the mobilization and deployment process — from fort to port to Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration (RSOI) in theater — range from the non-kinetic (influence operations and cyberattacks) to kinetic fires (including small scale to saturation and even swarming strikes) across multiple domains. In addition, the Army has conducted few large-scale deployments over the past twenty years — focusing mostly on Brigade Combat Team (BCT) rotations. Finally, the Army has not faced a contested deployment environment (i.e., operating in a semi-permissive or non-permissive environment) since World War Two. There are lessons to be learned from that war, both in the European and the Pacific Theater of Operations (ETO/PTO).

Despite extensive advance planning by the War Department, even prior to World War Two 1, fluid combat situations — combined with geographic and weather considerations — against formidable enemies, meant that a certain level of improvisation was required to overcome various friction points.

In the ETO, the largest contested deployment environment the Allies had to contend with was the Atlantic Ocean. Overcoming the threat was a huge challenge for the U.S. Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy. Convoy operations were an improvised response to defend merchant marine vessels against the German U-Boat threat. However, the convoy system was not adopted until the spring of 1941 — after millions of tons of supplies and thousands of merchant marine sailors had died during the initial stages of the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Allies conducted several non-permissive amphibious operations during the period 1942-1944 with Operation Overlord (D-Day) being the largest and arguably the most consequential one in the ETO. Overlord could never have been executed without the enormous staging area provided by the United Kingdom. Following two years of planning, even with the impact of the Mediterranean landings, the U.S. Army alone had assembled over 1.5 million Soldiers with 144,000 tons of supplies pre-loaded and an additional stockpile of 2.5 million tons of equipment for follow-on operations.2

In the PTO, amphibious landings in non-permissive environments were the rule against determined Japanese resistance. The largest and perhaps most relevant landing to discuss here is the Okinawa operation, codenamed Iceberg. That invasion called for the use of the Tenth Army with one Army Corps (XXIVth), consisting of four Army divisions, and one Marine corps (III Amphibious), consisting of three Marine divisions. Planning and coordination for the operation was extraordinary: “For the assault echelon alone, about 183,000 troops and 747,000 measurement tons of cargo were loaded into over 430 assault transports and landing ships at 11 different ports, from Seattle to Leyte, a distance of 6,000 miles.”3 This distance is contrasted with the comparatively short hop across the English Channel from Portsmouth to Normandy of between 100-130 miles.

A strategic consideration for the Allies was the tyranny of distance; supplying the invasion force meant a crossing of a minimum of five days sailing time from the Marianas, which offered the nearest available port. Shipping from the West Coast entailed 26 days of sailing time across 6,250 miles — depending on the port. This tyranny of distance and time also impacted requisitioning, procurement, manifesting and loading.

Because of logistical considerations, the initial plan for the invasion of Okinawa called for the seizure of the southernmost Ryukyu Islands of Kerama and Keise nearby to establish base operations. This would facilitate the main invasion force by providing: “…a base for logistic support of fleet units, a protected anchorage, and a seaplane base.”4

A common Allied practice during operations in the PTO was that almost as soon as landings had taken place (even before combat operations had ceased), existing airfields were repaired or improved, and new fields were built. This practice extended to ports and docks in harbors previously occupied by the Japanese. The Allies’ ability to sustain their combat forces, even in the face of determined Japanese resistance, and interdict enemy reinforcement was key to Allied victory.

The lack of logistical infrastructure on remote South Pacific islands, unlike the established ones in Western Europe, meant that the Allies had to improvise solutions to meet the demands.

As might have been expected (in what will ring true today for planners), there was a significant shortfall of available sealift (for both strategic and littoral waters). The supply chain that resourced the Tenth Army stretched back to not only to South Pacific bases, but to the American West Coast. Strategic airlift, as it is recognized today, did not exist. Of note, mitigating lengthy supply lines had the invasion force taking a 30-day supply of rations, essential clothing and equipment, fuel, and medical and construction supplies.”5

For planners today, the ability to adequately forecast and requisition all classes of supplies, match them with available lift assets, and move them into theater should be a priority for combatant commands and supporting commands.

In a forced entry, non-permissive environment, ships and aircraft will have to be combat loaded — with the expectation of Soldiers being prepared to fight upon landing. This places a premium on: 1) being able to expand and reinforce any lodgment, and 2) where to do the strategic to operational hand-off with watercraft and when to stow as combat loaded forces. Airfield seizures and securing port facilities should take precedence in planning considerations. This is where advanced knowledge of existing infrastructure plays a key role. Geography does not change: Deep water harbors and airfields capable of hosting American lift assets can be readily identified and categorized based on capabilities.

However, those same locations will likely be identified by aggressive nation states as “high value” targets with which to disrupt America’s ability to deploy into theater and subsequently sustain its forces. This same mindset also puts CONUS-based deployment and supply chain infrastructure at risk as the non-kinetic to kinetic threat stretches back to the homeland.

The proximity of permissive environment staging areas will also be a primary consideration for logistical support, as well as the ability to tactically support the landing and interdict threat reinforcements.

Click the link to review this insightful graphic describing how UAVs are changing the character of warfare in the Twenty-first century.

The recent advent of masses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) carrying out saturation strikes in the Operational Environment presents its own unique challenges. The widespread proliferation of armed UAVs which are relatively cheap to procure and difficult to defend against, as seen in the Ukraine war, calls for the development and employment of layered, organic, and mobile counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capabilities across all unit levels. The Army is already deploying UAVs for reconnaissance and surveillance at the unit level; countering this same threat requires emerging technologies — both kinetic and electromagnetic. This C-UAS requirement, however, will also add to the training and logistical challenges facing our Soldiers.

An important consideration is that LSCO will be a dynamic environment which rapidly changes and results in often unpredictable outcomes. Any LSCO opponent can be expected to react and adapt in the face of setbacks and tactical reverses. A LSCO opponent will face the same difficulties in overcoming geography, weather, and the competition for resources as the U.S. military.

Planning today against China, our pacing threat — or worse, against adversarial collusion between members of the “Axis of Upheaval” — in a contested deployment environment will mean facing a variety of threats during the mobilization and movement process and beyond. Anything that would hinder or affect information networks (cyber) or physical infrastructure (sabotage) should be taken into consideration for force protection during the mobilization process. During the movement and RSOI processes, that interference will more likely be kinetic. The ability to adapt deployment processes to adjust to changing circumstances will also require creativity and command flexibility. While obvious changes as far as strategic airlift and information technology have added different dimensions to the deployment process, the need to overcome the tyranny of distance and time remains as critical today as it did in 1944 and 1945.

If you enjoyed this post, review the TRADOC Pamphlet 525-92, The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations

Explore the TRADOC G-2‘s Operational Environment Enterprise web page, brimming with authoritative information on the Operational Environment and how our adversaries fight, including:

Our China Landing Zone, full of information regarding our pacing challenge, including ATP 7-100.3, Chinese Tactics, BiteSize China weekly topics, People’s Liberation Army Ground Forces Quick Reference Guide, and our thirty-plus snapshots captured to date addressing what China is learning about the Operational Environment from Russia’s war against Ukraine (note that a DoD Common Access Card [CAC] is required to access this last link).

Our Russia Landing Zone, including the BiteSize Russia weekly topics. If you have a CAC, you’ll be especially interested in reviewing our weekly RUS-UKR Conflict Running Estimates and associated Narratives, capturing what we learned about the contemporary Russian way of war in Ukraine over the past two years and the ramifications for U.S. Army modernization across DOTMLPF-P.

Our Iran Landing Zone, including the latest Iran OE Watch articles, as well as the Iran Quick Reference Guide and the Iran Passive Defense Manual (both require a CAC to access).

Our Running Estimates SharePoint site (also requires a CAC to access) — documenting what we’re learning about the evolving OE. Contains our monthly OE Running Estimates, associated Narratives, and the 2QFY24, 3QFY24, 4QFY24, and 1QFY25 OE Assessment TRADOC Intelligence Posts (TIPs).

Then check out the following related Mad Scientist Laboratory content:

The Hard Part of Fighting a War: Contested Logistics

Operation Northeast Monsoon: The Reunification of Taiwan, by Sherman Barto

Weapons on Demand: How 3D Printing Will Revolutionize Military Sustainment, by Scott Pettigrew

Sinews of War: Innovating the Future of Sustainment by then MSG Donald R. Cullen, MSG Timothy D. Roberts, MSG Jessica Cho, and MSG Johanny Ortega

In the Crosshairs: U.S. Homeland Infrastructure Threats

Weaponized Information: One Possible Vignette

The Most Consequential Adversaries and associated podcast, with GEN Charles A. Flynn

Volatility in the Pacific: China, Resilience, and the Human Dimension and associated podcast, with General Robert Brown (USA-Ret.)

How China Fights and associated podcast

China’s PLA Modernization through the DOTMLPF-P Lens, by Dr. Jacob Barton

Three Dates, Three Windows, and All of DOTMLPF-P, China and Russia: Achieving Decision Dominance and Information Advantage, and “No Option is Excluded” — Using Wargaming to Envision a Chinese Assault on Taiwan, by Ian Sullivan

Flash-Mob Warfare: Whispers in the Digital Sandstorm (Parts 1 and 2), by Dr. Robert E. Smith

>>>>Reminder: Army Mad Scientist wants to crowdsource your thoughts on Great Power Competition & Conflict — check out the flyer describing our latest writing contest.

All entries must address one of the following writing prompts:

How are the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa shaping how the U.S. Army may need to fight in 2035?

What role can the U.S. Army play in helping the U.S. counter Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence across the Global South?

How can the U.S. Army counter growing Russian/Chinese collusion in the Arctic, and China’s growing presence in the Antarctic?

What emergent technology(ies) or convergences of technologies could disrupt Great Power dominance in 2035? In 2050?

We are accepting three types of submissions:

1500-word Non-Fiction Essay
1500-word Fictional Intelligence (FICINT) Story
Hybrid 1500-word submission incorporating a short FICINT vignette, with a Non-Fiction Essay expounding on the threat capabilities described in the vignette

Anyone can participate (Soldiers, Government Civilians, and all global citizens) — Multiple submissions are encouraged!

All entries are due NLT 11:59 pm Eastern on May 30 , 2025 at: madscitradoc@gmail.com

Click here for additional information on this contest — we look forward to your participation!

About the Author: Dr. Stewart Bentley is a military analyst studying Army deployment trends at the Deployment Process Modernization Office, CASCOM TRADOC. He is a prior service Infantry and Military Intelligence officer with a Masters in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Army Futures Command (AFC), or Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

1 Matloff, Maurice; Snell, Edwin (1952). Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-1942. US Army Center for Military History, 14 December 1951. Retrieved on 3 July 2024. Page 6.

2 Omaha Beachhead: 6 June-13 June 1944 (American Forces in Action Series) US Army Center for Military History. 20 September 1945, retrieved on 1 July 2024. Page 2.

3 Appleman, Roy; Burns, James; Gugeler, Russel; Stevens, John (1948). Okinawa: The Last Battle. United States Army Center of Military History. ISBN 1410222063. Archived from the original on 8 November 2010. Retrieved 1 July, 2024. Page 36.

4 Ibid. Page 30.

5 Ibid. Page 37-8.

19. CIA is reviewing its authorities to use lethal force against drug cartels

CIA is reviewing its authorities to use lethal force against drug cartels | CNN Politics

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen · April 7, 2025

A shop's windows are riddled with bullets after a gun battle between a heavily armed drug cartel assault group and security forces in Villa Union, Mexico, near the border with the US, in December 2019.

Eduardo Verdugo/AP/File

CNN —

The CIA is reviewing its authorities to use lethal force against drug cartels in Mexico and beyond as the Trump administration moves to make taking on the cartels a major priority for the intelligence agency, according to a US official and three people briefed on the matter.

The review does not indicate President Donald Trump has ordered the CIA to take direct action against the cartels. But it is designed to help the agency understand what kinds of activities it could legally undertake and what the potential risks would be across the suite of options, the sources said — underscoring how seriously the Trump administration is considering the possibility.

It also highlights some US officials’ concerns that using traditional counterterrorism tools against cartels — as the Trump administration has said it intends to do — carries a much higher risk of collateral damage to American citizens than similar operations conducted in the Middle East, far from US soil.

An MQ-9 Reaper drone with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) awaits the next mission over the US-Mexico border on November 4, 2022, at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

John Moore/Getty Images

Among the issues agency lawyers are examining is the CIA’s and its officers’ liability if an American is accidentally killed in any operation, according to one of the people briefed.

Agency officials are “cautious” about using “assets traditionally going after what were seen as military targets now being employed against cartel targets,” the US official said.

The Trump administration earlier this year designated a number of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — a maneuver some current and former US officials believe is designed to build a predicate for lethal action — and the CIA is already flying surveillance drones that are capable of being armed over Mexico.

The CIA declined to comment.

CNN was not able to determine whether the effort was ordered by the White House or CIA Director John Ratcliffe, or whether it was undertaken as a prudent planning measure by agency staff in response to clear signals from the Trump administration that it wants national security agencies to ramp up pressure on the cartels.

“If any administration is pushing us to do something that has potential significant adverse ramifications for the agency, [the CIA] is going to want to double and triple check: ‘Is it legal?’ and ‘Do we have extraordinarily clear policy direction to do what we’re going to do?’” said one former CIA official with experience building this kind of review.

“Just because something is legal under [the law of armed conflict] doesn’t mean it’s something you should do,” this person said, referring to protocols regulating the conduct of states during war. “There’s an ethical component. There’s a practical component. There’s a pragmatic component.”

CIA can use lethal force if authorized by president

The CIA has the legal authority to either conduct lethal strikes itself or provide targeting information or other support to another nation to carry out a lethal strike, as long as it’s properly authorized by the president and abides by the interlocking constellation of US laws and regulations that govern armed conflict.

But to do so against cartel actors in an area where there are, comparatively, far more US-born citizens and green card holders — people who might have the standing to sue the US government if they are harmed — is novel for the CIA.

“It’s not a question of whether they can or cannot use lethal force. They can,” said one of the people briefed on the review. “It’s more about the implications of Americans being potentially injured or killed based on their broader presence in the space.”

Collateral damage could also blow back on any partner nation that either allows the CIA to conduct direct action inside its borders or that accepts intelligence support from the agency to conduct its own lethal operations, the US official noted. If the CIA support creates a political problem for the partner nation — Mexico, for example — its government could refuse to allow the agency to operate there going forward.

Former officials have also warned about the risks of retaliation by cartels, some of which maintain a presence inside the United States.

“Mexican cartels are not merely criminal organizations; they operate as paramilitary entities with deep financial resources, global supply chains, and sophisticated logistical networks that extend into the United States,” Doug Livermore, a specialist in irregular warfare and a former Defense Department official, wrote in a recent study for the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank. “Cartels are highly likely to retaliate” and “possess a substantial capacity for terrorism that, when coupled with their established presence within the United States, could escalate conflict.”

One of the people briefed on the review said it reflected a deep institutional memory of the George W. Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program, which lawmakers and the Obama administration subsequently deemed to be torture. In that instance, former officials said, the agency pushed its operations to the limit of what they believed the law could bear. Critics, of course, contend the agency and the administration went beyond what was legal, and in the years following, the CIA and its officers were put through a series of public and high-profile investigations into the propriety of their actions.

This sort of review, the people briefed on the matter said, reflects an understanding that the agency may be called to account for any action it takes against cartels — especially if there is blowback. And especially if the agency conducts operations that are ultimately seen as disproportionate to the threat from cartels — key criteria that lethal action must meet under the law of armed conflict.

The US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, published last month, led with the threat from drug cartels for apparently the first time in the report’s nearly 20-year history. Many current and former national security officials, however, have repeatedly argued that while cartels are a serious problem, they are not an existential threat to the country.

“I think it’s very understandable that people are mindful of [the history of “enhanced interrogation”] to the extent that they actually don’t believe we’re in a crisis,” said one of the former officials.

CNN · by Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen · April 7, 2025

20. Fentanyl Should Not Be Designated as a WMD. Period.

Excerpts:

There’s no question that the number of deaths caused by fentanyl overdoses is a national tragedy. It is, however, not one caused by a weapon of war, and the legal definitions of WMD do not support identifying fentanyl analogues as a WMD. Even if the US government focused on the most used fentanyl analogues, criminal organizations could merely switch to another version to get around federal regulations. If the counter-WMD community and international partners view fentanyl trafficking as similar to WMD proliferation, does that mean that the counter-WMD community will continue to be fully resourced to focus on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons? Unless there are additional funds coming to the counter-WMD community, the resulting actions would decrease the US military’s preparedness for military combat that involves real WMD.

Between 2009 and 2012, Defense Department leaders responsible for overseeing the department’s chemical and biological defense program redefined emerging infectious diseases as WMD, resulting in the movement of research and development funds from service-validated requirements to global biosurveillance and medical countermeasures for natural diseases. There were no additional funds that came with the policy change, and as a result, nearly two dozen defense programs were cut or eliminated with little to no benefit to the military’s global health security efforts. On the other hand, there is a clear and consistent record of addressing illicit drug trafficking, criminal prosecutions, and treatment regimes within existing law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic offices.

This is not a fight that the US government will win based on broadening legal definitions to increase emphasis on the national crisis du jour. We should consider the downsides of labeling persistent public problems as national security threats to automatically elevate their priority for resources. Congress needs to exercise its oversight role and resource the law enforcement and public health communities to accomplish their clearly defined agendas. Classifying fentanyl as a WMD will not alter how the United States and its allies address the opioid crisis at all. In fact, it will hurt the counter-WMD community more than it will help efforts to counter illicit fentanyl trafficking.

Fentanyl Should Not Be Designated as a WMD. Period. - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Al Mauroni · April 10, 2025

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The doctor had just completed his rounds at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg. He was visibly upset, causing a colleague to ask him what was wrong. “We’re out of fentanyl lollipops and fentanyl patches again,” he said. “Our producer’s facility was raided by the FBI.”

Of course, this fictional scenario hasn’t happened because fentanyl hasn’t been reclassified from a controlled substance to a weapon of war—yet. Concern over the rising number of overdose deaths in the United States—nearly seventy-four thousand in 2022—has caused calls for action, any action, that might reverse this trend. In 2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. More recently, the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community noted that there had been more than fifty-two thousand overdose deaths in fiscal year 2024—a significant decrease since 2022 but still a clear sign that fentanyl production and global distribution “endanger the health and safety of millions of Americans and contribute to regional instability.” If a toxic chemical such as fentanyl is causing so many deaths, does it qualify as a weapon of mass destruction? Would changing its designation from a prescription drug to an unconventional weapon bring in additional resources and partners and reduce the number of deaths?

Some evidently believe so. A bill introduced this year in Congress would require the Department of Homeland Security to treat fentanyl as a WMD. And in a recent MWI research publication, Nicholas Dockery argues that the lethality of fentanyl analogues—as low as a two-milligram dose—“make it a clear candidate for WMD classification under federal law.” He believes that this would open up interagency coordination and resources to address the opioid crisis by “fundamentally alter[ing] how the United States and its allies address the fentanyl crisis.” This measure could “strengthen international partnerships in the fight against synthetic opioids” and “provide the legal and strategic framework necessary to treat the fentanyl epidemic as a global security threat.” That all sounds great—except that it ignores the fact that countering WMD policy and strategy is one of the most neglected and underresourced defense issues in contemporary times. Ask employees of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency if they’re feeling any love from the national security community.

There are both legal and policy challenges in trying to regulate fentanyl analogues as chemical weapons and WMD. Let’s look at the legal aspects of the argument. The low lethal dose and high number of overdoses do not make fentanyl a chemical weapon under federal law. There are several federal laws that define what a WMD is, so that is a point of confusion in and of itself. The most applicable statue is 18 USC 2332a, which notes that a person who unlawfully uses, threatens, or attempts or conspires to use a WMD against any US person or property can face a significant prison term or even the death penalty. This includes any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of a toxic or poisonous chemical. There is no limitation as to the amount of chemical or the amount of people injured, as one might expect from a mass-casualty event. This is usually the go-to law when the FBI investigates a terrorist WMD incident.

Other WMD definitions exist for guiding the Proliferation Security Initiative (50 USC 2902), implementing the US government’s Domestic Preparedness Program (50 USC 2302), and implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention (19 USC 229). The common thread that these laws all have is the word “weapon.” In general, a weapon must be a device, instrument, material, or substance that is used to cause or capable of causing death or seriously bodily damage. It does not include devices that are not designed or redesigned for use as a weapon. A fentanyl-laced pill is not, under any circumstance, a weapon. No one is forcing an individual to take illicit drugs for anything other than pleasure or physiological need. If a drug user has an accidental overdose, it is most likely that the person took the drugs voluntarily and assumed the risk of the effects.

The United Nations defined the term “WMD” to guide nation-states as to the acceptability of production and use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Its greatest utility is to the arms control community, which evaluates and litigates as to where WMD programs may exist or whether nation-states have employed WMD. For a system to be considered a WMD, I would suggest that first of all, it must be a weapon that is capable of causing death. It must be capable of causing mass casualties in a single moment at a single location. Last, the international community must agree on the list of prohibited weapon systems. These ought to be simple requirements.

From a policy perspective, how would classifying fentanyl as a WMD enhance what the federal government seeks to achieve? Currently, we can see that the Drug Enforcement Administration has a huge role in drug interdiction and enforcement, the State Department has a role in eradication and interdiction of illegal drugs, and the Department of Defense has a role in counterdrug operations. These functions have existed for years and are significantly resourced. Are they not working to the degree that the counter-WMD community needs to assist them? What authorities are lacking?

Let’s say that the White House issued an executive order to direct government agencies to treat illicitly trafficked fentanyl as a WMD. Forget for a moment about all of the work necessary to allow the US public health system to continue to use fentanyls in legal medical manners. Exactly which fentanyl compounds would be included on the prohibited list for the purposes of inspections and seizures? Does it include alfentanil, carfentanil, remifentanil, sufentanil, butyryl fentanyl, furanyl fentanyl, acryl fentanyl, or one of the many other fentanyl analogues? If you’re going to outlaw a specific chemical, you have to provide specific guidelines for the executive agencies to plan their actions against it. Are all fentanyl analogues to be listed on the banned list?

There are certainly parallels between counterproliferation, countering terrorism, and countering illicit drug operations. From a security viewpoint, they all have characteristics of a network of suppliers and customers—networks that can be disrupted with focused military operations—and particular key individuals who can be targeted. These missions all come out of the same major executive agencies but rely on specific policy definitions to guide their resourcing and objectives. There are no military, intelligence, or law enforcement tools in the counter-WMD toolbox that would increase the emphasis on international drug enforcement. Dockery’s argument is based on the assumption that the public’s concern over WMD is higher than it is regarding fentanyl overdoses. While international and public opinion on nuclear weapons remains one of high concern, there is no similar outcry over the erosion of the arms control regime addressing chemical weapons.

When we examine the opioid crisis, we need to consider the medical principle of first, do no harm. The Defense Department’s funding for countering WMD, not including theater and national missile defense, runs about $6 billion a year. The Department of Homeland Security spends less than a half billion a year on countering WMD programs. At State, there is another billion dollars for counterproliferation programs. The Department of Energy has $2.5 billion for nonproliferation. In round numbers, the US government counter-WMD budget probably runs at about $10 billion. This has been pretty much a flat-line budget for years. The Fiscal Year 2025 federal drug control budget was $44.5 billion across the interagency. Are we now suggesting that the limited tools and resources of the counter-WMD community are absolutely necessary to help fight the opioid crisis? What specific resources would open up to the counterdrug community that do not currently exist? It’s hard to follow the logic here.

There’s no question that the number of deaths caused by fentanyl overdoses is a national tragedy. It is, however, not one caused by a weapon of war, and the legal definitions of WMD do not support identifying fentanyl analogues as a WMD. Even if the US government focused on the most used fentanyl analogues, criminal organizations could merely switch to another version to get around federal regulations. If the counter-WMD community and international partners view fentanyl trafficking as similar to WMD proliferation, does that mean that the counter-WMD community will continue to be fully resourced to focus on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons? Unless there are additional funds coming to the counter-WMD community, the resulting actions would decrease the US military’s preparedness for military combat that involves real WMD.

Between 2009 and 2012, Defense Department leaders responsible for overseeing the department’s chemical and biological defense program redefined emerging infectious diseases as WMD, resulting in the movement of research and development funds from service-validated requirements to global biosurveillance and medical countermeasures for natural diseases. There were no additional funds that came with the policy change, and as a result, nearly two dozen defense programs were cut or eliminated with little to no benefit to the military’s global health security efforts. On the other hand, there is a clear and consistent record of addressing illicit drug trafficking, criminal prosecutions, and treatment regimes within existing law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic offices.

This is not a fight that the US government will win based on broadening legal definitions to increase emphasis on the national crisis du jour. We should consider the downsides of labeling persistent public problems as national security threats to automatically elevate their priority for resources. Congress needs to exercise its oversight role and resource the law enforcement and public health communities to accomplish their clearly defined agendas. Classifying fentanyl as a WMD will not alter how the United States and its allies address the opioid crisis at all. In fact, it will hurt the counter-WMD community more than it will help efforts to counter illicit fentanyl trafficking.

Al Mauroni is a retired civil servant with forty years’ experience in counter-WMD policy and programs, and is the author of the book BIOCRISIS: Defining Biological Threats in U.S. Policy. His last government position was as the director of the US Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies between 2013 and 2024.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: CBP Photography

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Al Mauroni · April 10, 2025

21. Trump Signs Order to Revive US Shipbuilding, DOGE Review of Navy

Excerpts:

The order also directs the Navy, Coast Guard and Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security to conduct a separate, 45-day shipbuilding review that would cover more areas than one conducted under the Biden administration, which disclosed a 12-to-16-month schedule slip in the estimated first delivery of its next-generation nuclear-missile submarine as well as the delays for the frigates and Virginia-class submarines.

In addition, the order calls for the administration to develop a strategy to secure Arctic waterways, the official said. Trump has previously called for dozens of ‘icebreaker’ ships to be added to the US fleet, which the official said will eventually be built in the US. The order emphasizes that having a US presence in the Arctic quickly is a priority of the president, he said.

Although the USTR’s proposal isn’t finalized, the new order — called Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance, according to the official — offers clues about how the port fees, intended to curb China’s dominance of the shipbuilding market, could work to revitalize the American maritime industry instead.

The executive order directs fees and tariffs collected from Chinese-affiliated vessels and cargo-handling equipment such as cranes to create a new revenue stream for investment in domestic maritime industries, the official said. It would also develop cargo preference targets and tax incentives for US-flagged vessels. The goal is to expand the fleet of ships trading internationally that could serve as on-call assets for national security purposes.

Trump Signs Order to Revive US Shipbuilding, DOGE Review of Navy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-09/trump-signs-order-to-set-up-port-fees-doge-review-of-navy?sref=hhjZtX76&mc_cid=530b132228

The Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Photographer: Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg

By Laura Curtis and Anthony Capaccio

April 9, 2025 at 4:01 PM EDT

Updated on April 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM EDT

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that seeks to revive US shipbuilding and will dispatch Elon Musk’s efficiency squad to investigate how the US Navy fell so far behind in turning out vessels.

The order is intended to blunt China’s maritime dominance by offering new funding streams to support American shipbuilding, according to a senior White House official who asked not to be identified discussing the document before its release.

It clears the way for tax breaks on investments in “maritime opportunity zones” and directs agencies to study in particular the US presence in the Arctic, the person said.

China Accounts for More Than Half of the World's Ship Deliveries

Beijing has filled the gap left by traditional vessel-building nations including Japan

Source: Clarksons

Note: Percentage represents portion of global total in deadweight tons. 2025 data reflects levels as of Feb. 1.

Challenges over maritime commerce and seagoing defenses have the president’s attention. During his speech to Congress in March, Trump announced a new office of shipbuilding and said the US would be making ships “very fast and very soon.”

The Maritime and Industrial Capacity Directorate is already in place to drive the effort. Leading the seven-person shipbuilding office inside the National Security Council is Ian Bennitt, a former staff director on the seapower panel of the House Armed Services Committee.

China Fees

It won’t be an easy task. In just two-and-a-half decades, China’s shipyards went from turning out less that 5% of the world’s commercial shipping capacity to building more than 50% this year. China’s navy is rapidly growing and it now has a larger fleet than the US.

QuickTake: Why Trump Wants to Target China’s Dominance in Shipbuilding

The new executive order dovetails with a proposal by the US Trade Representative to charge million-dollar fees on Chinese-built ships upon entry to a US port. Dozens of commodities exporters and trade groups have warned that the plan would spike the inflation rate, cause major supply chain disruptions and make businesses go belly up overnight.

The order also expands the Harbor Maintenance Fee to include cargo that arrives in Mexico or Canada by ocean before clearing US Customs at an inland location. That addresses a concern raised by West Coast dockworkers, who warned that the tariffs and fees proposed would encourage cargo to flow through Canadian and Mexican seaports instead of US hubs.

The executive order directs the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to review past Navy shipbuilding decisions that have led to problems with some major platforms, including the $22 billion frigate program, the official said.

Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee, praised parts of the order but questioned the inclusion of DOGE.

DOGE, he said, is “not going to create welders, electricians, and outside machinists through the tools they have, which is exactly what we need to build on the momentum we are seeing in the shipbuilding industry.

The order also directs the Navy, Coast Guard and Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security to conduct a separate, 45-day shipbuilding review that would cover more areas than one conducted under the Biden administration, which disclosed a 12-to-16-month schedule slip in the estimated first delivery of its next-generation nuclear-missile submarine as well as the delays for the frigates and Virginia-class submarines.

In addition, the order calls for the administration to develop a strategy to secure Arctic waterways, the official said. Trump has previously called for dozens of ‘icebreaker’ ships to be added to the US fleet, which the official said will eventually be built in the US. The order emphasizes that having a US presence in the Arctic quickly is a priority of the president, he said.

Although the USTR’s proposal isn’t finalized, the new order — called Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance, according to the official — offers clues about how the port fees, intended to curb China’s dominance of the shipbuilding market, could work to revitalize the American maritime industry instead.

The executive order directs fees and tariffs collected from Chinese-affiliated vessels and cargo-handling equipment such as cranes to create a new revenue stream for investment in domestic maritime industries, the official said. It would also develop cargo preference targets and tax incentives for US-flagged vessels. The goal is to expand the fleet of ships trading internationally that could serve as on-call assets for national security purposes.

(Updates with DOGE role, congressional reaction, starting in tenth paragraph.)

22. NATO Is a Corpse

Excerpts:

A dead NATO still carries risks. Strategic ambiguity, brittle expectations, and performative deterrence are a recipe for miscalculation. The Alliance’s political leadership must either acknowledge the need for transformation or risk a future crisis that reveals, in real time and in blood, what we already know: that the emperor has no tanks.

The solution is not sentimental nostalgia. It is clear-eyed realism. NATO in its current form is not worth saving. But its core idea—collective defense among likeminded powers—still has value. What’s needed is a reset: a reimagined Euro-Atlantic security framework led by capable European states, with American support but not American dominance. A NATO that deters by capability, not by assumption. A NATO that can say no as well as yes. A NATO, in short, that lives in the real world.

The alternative is strategic decay. A slow slide into irrelevance. More summits, more selfies, more hollow communiqués. Until, one day, NATO doesn’t die with a bang—but with a bureaucratic whimper.

That future is already here. NATO is dead. The only question now is what comes next—and whether we have the courage to build it.

NATO Is a Corpse

By Andrew Latham

April 10, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/10/nato_is_a_corpse_1103126.html?mc_cid=530b132228

And Trump Might Be Its Undertaker

NATO is a corpse. All that remains is the grotesque performance art of a diplomatic zombie stumbling from summit to summit, mouthing tired clichés about “shared values” and “burden sharing,” even as its core strategic logic lies rotting beneath the surface. The Atlantic Alliance, once the steel scaffolding of Western security, has become a hollow ritual. Its military readiness is an illusion. Its political cohesion is fraying. Its future, if it has one, lies not in revival—but in reinvention or replacement.

This is not a triumphalist declaration from the Kremlin or Beijing. It is a sober diagnosis, grounded in realism and restraint. And it should be a wake-up call in Washington, Ottawa, Berlin, and beyond.

NATO’s death was not caused by Donald Trump, though he may soon become its undertaker. Nor was it caused by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, though that war has exposed the Alliance’s hollowness in ways no war game or communique ever could. The real cause lies in decades of European free-riding, American strategic drift, and a foundational lie at the heart of the Alliance: the idea that an empire can masquerade as a collective defense pact without consequences.

Let’s start with the numbers. Most NATO members still do not meet the 2 percent of GDP defense spending benchmark, despite years of promises and performative panic. Canada, which has taken freeloading to an art form, has shown no serious intention of meeting its obligations. As I’ve written elsewhere, Trudeau’s empty pledges mask a decaying defense industrial base, a stagnant recruiting system, and an Arctic strategy made of snow and sentiment.

Germany—the economic motor of Europe—still can’t field a combat-ready army for more than a few weeks at a time. The Bundeswehr is a shell. Its special fund is already mostly spent, and its political class remains addicted to strategic ambiguity and military minimalism. France wants “strategic autonomy” but lacks the scale and will to lead Europe alone. Poland, despite its impressive rearmament, cannot carry the continent’s defense burden on its shoulders—certainly not while Berlin dithers and Washington increasingly looks west, not east.

Meanwhile, the United States—still NATO’s military backbone—faces a fiscal cliff, a recruitment crisis, and an overstretched force posture. The era of limitless resources is over. American global primacy has ended. Multipolarity has arrived. The U.S. must now prioritize. And that means making hard choices about where its forces are truly needed—and where others must finally step up or face the consequences.

The war in Ukraine has laid these contradictions bare. NATO as an institution is not fighting the war. The United States is. Some European countries are helping—but most are hedging. NATO has been bypassed in favor of bilateral and ad hoc coalitions. Article 5 hasn’t been tested, and it may never be. The idea that NATO is “more united than ever” is a comforting fiction, trotted out to conceal the fact that the Alliance can no longer mount a serious, conventional defense of Europe without massive and prolonged American escalation.

Even the so-called Nordic expansion—Sweden and Finland joining NATO—has not changed the equation. It’s a strategic sideshow. Unless Europe can build up a credible, conventional deterrent in the East, without expecting Washington to always bail it out, the Alliance will remain a Potemkin village: flags, acronyms, and summits without substance.

Trump’s likely return to the White House in 2025 should not be viewed as a cataclysm but as an overdue reckoning. He will not end NATO. He will force Europe to decide whether it is willing to pay for its own defense or not. He will not blow up the Alliance. He will make it answer for its contradictions. And that, frankly, is what a serious ally should do.

Some critics will scream that this is the death knell of the “rules-based international order.” But the order they mourn was already breaking down—long before Trump, long before Ukraine, long before Brexit or Crimea. What we are witnessing is not a collapse but a transition: from the illusion of Atlanticism to the reality of multipolarity. And NATO, if it is to matter at all in this new world, must either become a true European-led military alliance with American support—or fade into history like SEATO and CENTO before it.

This doesn’t mean abandoning Europe to Russian domination. It means telling uncomfortable truths. Europe is rich. Europe is populous. Europe is not helpless. The United States can and should support its European allies—but it should not subsidize their illusions indefinitely. A more self-reliant Europe is not a threat to American interests; it is a precondition for strategic focus on the North Pacific, the Arctic, and the Western Hemisphere—where the real contests of the 21st century will be decided.

In my writing here and elsewhere, I have repeatedly argued that Canada must stop pretending it is a global power and start acting like what it is: a North Pacific, Arctic, and North Atlantic state. That means prioritizing regional defense, rebuilding naval and aerospace capabilities, and getting serious about continental defense. NATO is not the vehicle for that anymore—if it ever was. For Canada, continuing to hide behind NATO rhetoric while failing to meet even the most basic obligations is not only cowardly—it is dangerous.

A dead NATO still carries risks. Strategic ambiguity, brittle expectations, and performative deterrence are a recipe for miscalculation. The Alliance’s political leadership must either acknowledge the need for transformation or risk a future crisis that reveals, in real time and in blood, what we already know: that the emperor has no tanks.

The solution is not sentimental nostalgia. It is clear-eyed realism. NATO in its current form is not worth saving. But its core idea—collective defense among likeminded powers—still has value. What’s needed is a reset: a reimagined Euro-Atlantic security framework led by capable European states, with American support but not American dominance. A NATO that deters by capability, not by assumption. A NATO that can say no as well as yes. A NATO, in short, that lives in the real world.

The alternative is strategic decay. A slow slide into irrelevance. More summits, more selfies, more hollow communiqués. Until, one day, NATO doesn’t die with a bang—but with a bureaucratic whimper.

That future is already here. NATO is dead. The only question now is what comes next—and whether we have the courage to build it.

Andrew Latham,Ph.D., a tenured professor at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is also a Senior Washington Fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Ottawa and a non-resident fellow with Defense Priorities, a think tank in Washington, DC.

23.

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."

Access NSS HERE

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