Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

– Socrates

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

– Denis Diderot

“Authoritarian rulers have strong incentives to control the information environment in order to suppress individuals, ideas, and organizations that can enable mobilization against them."

– Professor Jennifer Pan, Stanford University

1. 2025 William J. Donovan Award (OSS)

2. On GPS: Michael Lewis on what DOGE gets wrong about the federal workforce

3. Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis has released a statement. Here is the text of the complete statement.

4. For these veterans, the secret to crossing political divides starts with a beer

5. Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

6. Kyiv Is On the Clock to Respond to Trump Plan to End Ukraine Conflict

7. Sweden Has the Tanks. Finland Has the Troops. Welcome to the Pan-Nordic Army.

8. Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’

9. Tragedy killed 4 U.S. soldiers in Lithuania. A small army got them home.

10. Breakdown in U.S.-China Relations Raises Specter of New Cold War

11. Opinion | Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson: There’s a ‘Meltdown’ on Hegseth’s Watch

12. The Numbers Don't Lie: The United States Is Not Broke

13. US, Philippines Open ‘Super Bowl’ of Drills Amid China Tensions

14. Real Military Reform Begins – Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline? by Gary Anderson

15. How Long Will Big U.S. Banks Continue to Lead the World?

16. Crypto Knocks on the Door of a Banking World That Shut It Out

17. Do not Ignore the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Conflict

18. Hostile Influencing and Finland’s Vulnerabilities

19. The Global Trading System Was Already Broken

20. How Europe Can Deter Russia

21. Europe Could Lose What Makes It Great

22. 250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

23. 250 years later, legacy of North Bridge lives on in the National Guard

1. 2025 William J. Donovan Award (OSS)

Save the date. I hope you can join us to honor a great American in the tradition of General Donovan.

News and Announcements

2025 William J. Donovan Award (OSS)

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/21/2025-william-j-donovan-award-oss/

by SWJED

04.21.2025 at 11:56am

(Reposted now that the legal review is complete. )

Congratulations to General Fenton.

2025 William J. Donovan Award (OSS)

William J. Donovan Award®

Admiral Louis Mountbatten, upon receiving the William J. Donovan Award® in 1966, said: “William Donovan wasn’t just a great American. He was a great international citizen, a man of enormous courage, leadership, and vision. I doubt whether any one person contributed more to the ultimate victory of the Allies than Bill Donovan.”

Ambassador David K.E. Bruce said that “judged by any standard, Donovan was a remarkable personality. If I could sum up my impression of him, I would say that he was a universal man in the sense that nothing human was alien to him.”

The OSS Society presents the William J. Donovan Award® to an individual who has rendered distinguished service to the United States of America. The purpose of the award is to recognize someone who has exemplified the distinguishing features that characterized General Donovan’s lifetime of public service to the United of States of America as a citizen and a soldier. General Donovan is the only person to receive our nation’s four highest decorations: the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal.

He served as an Assistant United States Attorney General, as the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, as a candidate for governor of New York, as a personal advisor to President Roosevelt before and during World War II, as an assistant to the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, as ambassador to Thailand, and as the founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations Forces.

General Donovan’s statue stands today at the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency alongside a book containing the names of OSS personnel killed during World War II. The U.S Special Operations Command wears the OSS spearhead as its insignia. General Donovan’s “glorious amateurs”® – the term he used to describe OSS personnel – have become today’s “quiet professionals.”

Upon learning of General Donovan’s death in 1959, President Eisenhower said: “What a man! We have lost the last hero.”

William J. Donovan Award® Recipients

1961 The Honorable Allen W. Dulles

1963 The Honorable John J. McCloy

1964 Lt. Gen. William W. Quinn, USA

1965 President Dwight D. Eisenhower

1966 The Earl Mountbatten of Burma

1967 The Honorable Everett McKinley Dirksen

1969 J. Russell Forgan

1970 The Astronauts of Apollo 11

1971 Ambassador David K.E. Bruce

1974 The Honorable William J. Casey

1977 Ambassador Robert D. Murphy

1979 His Excellency Jacques Chaban-Delmas

1981 The Right Honorourable Margaret Thatcher

1982 The Honorable John A. McCone

1983 The Honorable Richard Helms

1983 Sir William Stephenson

1986 President Ronald W. Reagan

1991 President George H.W. Bush

1993 Dr. Carl F. Eifler

1995 The Honorable William E. Colby

2004 Dr. Ralph J. Bunche

2005 Judge William H. Webster

2009 General David H. Petraeus, USA

2010 H. Ross Perot

2011 Adm. Eric T. Olson, USN (Ret.)

2012 The Honorable Robert M. Gates

2013 Adm. William H. McRaven, USN

2014 The Honorable Leon E. Panetta

2015 Ambassador Hugh Montgomery

2016 Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, USAF (Ret.)

2017 The Honorable Michael G. Vickers

2018 The Honorable Gina C. Haspel

2019 The Honorable James N. Mattis

2022 The Honorable George J. Tenet

2023 The Honorable William J. Burns

2024 LTG Patrick M. Hughes, USA (Ret.)

https://www.osssociety.org/award.html

Honorary Chairs

John D. Bennett

Gen. Bryan D. Brown, USA (Ret.)

Lt. Gen. Charles T. Cleveland, USA (Ret.)

The Hon. Robert M. Gates

The Hon. Porter J. Goss

The Hon. Gina C. Haspel

The Hon. Ronald D. Johnson

Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, USMC (Ret.)

The Hon. James N. Mattis

The Hon. Ellen E. McCarthy

Adm. William H. McRaven, USN, (Ret.)

Adm. Eric T. Olson, USN (Ret.)

The Hon. Leon E. Panetta

Gen. David H. Petraeus, USA (Ret.)

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, USAF (Ret.)

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, USA (Ret.)

Judge William H. Webster

Amb. R. James Woolsey Jr.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Yoo, USMC (Ret.)

Chair

The Hon. Michael G. Vickers

President

Charles T. Pinck

Secretary

Aloysia Pietsch Hamalainen

Treasurer

Paula A. Doyle

Board of Directors

James E. Campbell

David Cohen

Paula A. Doyle

Aloysia P. Hamalainen

Tom Higgins

Dana W. Hudson

RADM Brian L. Losey, USN (Ret.)

Col. David S. Maxwell, USA (Ret.)

Patrick K. O’Donnell

Charles T. Pinck

Mark F. Pretzat

LCDR Chris Randolph, USCG (Ret.)

The Hon. Michael G. Vickers

The OSS Society

220 Spring Street STE 220

Herndon, VA 20170-6205

Phone: 703-356-6667

Email: oss@osssociety.org

https://www.osssociety.org/leadership.html

2. On GPS: Michael Lewis on what DOGE gets wrong about the federal workforce

These are two very interesting segments from Fareed Zakaria's weekly show GPS. They are very much worth the 6 minutes each to watch,

These are the federal government workers that I know and love. Please watch these.

Video 1

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/20/politics/video/gps0420-doge-federal-workforce-michael-lewis

Video 2

https://fb.watch/z5qI6HoqJF/

On GPS: Michael Lewis on what DOGE gets wrong about the federal workforce

Fareed Zakaria, GPS

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — eliminated more than 280,000 federal jobs in February and March. In the second part of this conversation, author Michael Lewis tells Fareed about what Musk doesn't understand about these vitally important workers.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/20/politics/video/gps0420-doge-federal-workforce-michael-lewis

3. Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis has released a statement. Here is the text of the complete statement.

Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Corps General James Mattis has released a statement. Here is the text of the complete statement.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-defense-secretary-retired-marine-corps-general-martin-katz-uw84e/?trackingId=xe5UrghoP%2B7F3lXAGehHIA%3D%3D

Martin Katz

Retired Detective Sergeant, Law Enforcement Trainer, Author, and Martial Artist

April 18, 2025

IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

-Veterans For Common Sense

4. For these veterans, the secret to crossing political divides starts with a beer

Excerpts:

"We support elected officials from both parties that are committed to publicly defend the most core, fundamental principles of our democracy that we do not believe are partisan," he says by way of introduction. "They are: the right to vote for eligible citizens; denouncing political violence against your opponents; stopping the spread of misinformation about our elections; and accepting the outcome of elections and supporting the peaceful transfer of power."

For these veterans, the secret to crossing political divides starts with a beer

NPR · by Quil Lawrence

Bryan Noyes (left), who served in the Army and overseas in Iraq, and Larry McNarmara, who is a Vietnam War veteran, chat together at a "Pints and Patriotism" event in Portland, Maine. Veterans and members of the public met for patriotic conversation and drinks. Ryan David Brown for NPR

PORTLAND, Maine — Earlier this month, about 60 people, mostly veterans and family members, gathered for a beer and some civil conversation at Definitive Brewing Co. in Portland, Maine.

"I was joking that veterans are the referees that America needs right now. I think it's helpful to have veterans in the room because we don't start a conversation with 'who cares more about America?' It's just sort of assumed," said Allison Jaslow, who leads the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).

IAVA started holding public meetings, usually at brewpubs, during the heat of the presidential campaign last year. They called the events "Pints and Patriotism." The idea was to make a space for a civil conversation across partisan lines. Given everything, the meetings went pretty well — but the need hasn't gone away, so the group is holding more.

Sponsor Message

The co-host for the Maine gathering was Jordan Wood, with a group called Democracy First.

Jordan Wood (left) with Democracy First and Allison Jaslow, who leads the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, co-host the event. Ryan David Brown for NPR

"We support elected officials from both parties that are committed to publicly defend the most core, fundamental principles of our democracy that we do not believe are partisan," he says by way of introduction. "They are: the right to vote for eligible citizens; denouncing political violence against your opponents; stopping the spread of misinformation about our elections; and accepting the outcome of elections and supporting the peaceful transfer of power."

Fearing for their benefits

With a few more remarks as preamble, they start passing the mic around the bar. There's a good deal of worry about proposed budget cuts to veterans' health and benefits. VA care is broadly popular nationwide and that seems to be true here as well. The Trump administration has proposed cutting about 83,000 VA jobs.

"My concern is directly to the point of how we can fight against the teardown of the VA ... How we can protect the veterans? They're all brothers and sisters of mine," said Sven Lee, who served in the Army in the '80s.

Sven Lee, who served in the Army in the '80s, is concerned about the future of the VA. Ryan David Brown for NPR

Another participant says she's about to commission as an officer but is now uncertain about her future because of recent firings of several female military leaders. She asked not to be identified because she's currently serving.

Sponsor Message

"And as a woman in the military, I'm curious about your thoughts on the recent backsliding in women in leadership roles," she asked the event's organizers.

" For example, in boot camp we had to memorize every important person and Chief JoAnne Bass was obviously someone we had to memorize," she says, in reference to the Air Force chief master sergeant who was the first woman who reached the senior-most enlisted rank in any branch. "And recently her bio was taken down from several DOD websites. And my commissioning is in process, and I'd like to become a doctor for the military, but I do wonder what message it sends in your opinion when women's — women who have earned it far more than myself ... — when their bios are being taken down and their accomplishments are being hidden."

Several people in the audience raised the recent controversy about the secretary of defense sharing airstrike plans on the Signal app.

"I can tell you that had I done that when I was in the military, I would've gotten my ass handed to me," says Jaslow, echoing several comments from the crowd. She says IAVA is planning to ask veterans about it in their next membership poll. "I think that most vets would say there needs to be accountability here ... when you are risking national security and the lives of our men and women who are deployed in harm's way right now."

IAVA started holding public meetings, usually at brewpubs, during the heat of the presidential campaign last year. Ryan David Brown for NPR

This crowd seems to skew toward people who are upset with the current administration, which stands to reason — people who support the way things are going might not feel the need to come out and air their complaints. One man does quietly leave after asking his question or two. Outside the bar, he explains why.

"I heard enough," he said with a laugh.

Sponsor Message

Cody Gillis says he didn't serve, but his son is in the Navy. He says he doesn't like President Trump much, but agrees with his politics, and points out that Trump won the election decisively and is doing much of what he promised to do during the campaign.

Gillis thinks the crowd was left-leaning and didn't want to hear his points about issues of antisemitism at colleges and vandalism of Teslas. And what was discussed, he thinks, was overblown, like the leak of the airstrike details on Signal.

"Signalgate. If you listen to something other than the legacy media, you'd know there was really, there was nothing. They say, 'Oh, it was war plans.' It wasn't," he says. (It has been widely reported that the information shared in the Signal conversation was, indeed, highly specific and detailed information about the Yemen strikes that might have endangered the American pilots flying that mission.)

Searching for truth, standing up for democracy

Gillis also says he thinks insider agitators — against all evidence — helped ramp up the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Which brings us to a subject being discussed back in the bar: What is a fact, even, anymore?

"How we as vets can help get truth into the, get truth into the system, into the fabric of life again?" says Joel Lehman, who served from 1966 to 1969.

Joel Lehman (center) reaches for the microphone. Ryan David Brown for NPR

Just being a Vietnam-era veteran gets him a round of applause from the crowd, and then he goes on, his voice full of emotion.

"I see our country with two separate truths. I have Republican and Democrat friends that can't talk to each other, because they don't know what truth is," he says.

That strikes a chord with people — some say they think the media wants society divided because it's good for ratings. Others suggest ways of contacting Maine's members of Congress to keep vets' issues front of mind.

Another fellow takes the mic to say democracy is messy, but there's always a chance to hold people accountable at the next election. Jeff Edelstein is his name; he's not a veteran, but he swears like one.

"I don't know how many of you know the quote from Churchill? He said democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for everything else that has been tried. And, and so it, you know, it sucks ... Democracy is tough, but it is the best f***ing thing."

Edelstein says that's what gives him hope.

"I not only agree with you, I don't need Winston Churchill quotes," says Jaslow. "Rooms like this give me hope."

Larry McNarmara's hat rests on a table next to a pint of beer. Ryan David Brown for NPR

But her co-host of the event, Wood, ends the night on a cautionary note.

"I would just add, though, that we can't let democracy protect itself. It needs us to defend it. And democracy has fallen in many countries throughout history. It takes citizens to say: We want to preserve this. We wanna stand up for it," he says.

NPR · by Quil Lawrence

5. Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

Sigh...

Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother, people familiar with the matter said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/hegseth-yemen-attack-second-signal-chat.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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The information that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared on the second Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen, according to some of the people familiar with the chat.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Greg JaffeEric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman

April 20, 2025

Updated 8:01 p.m. ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

The continued inclusion following Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer, none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting underway, is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.

The chat revealed by The Atlantic in March was created by President Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, so that the most senior national security officials across the executive branch, such as the vice president, the director of national intelligence and Mr. Hegseth, could coordinate among themselves and their deputies ahead of the U.S. attacks.

Mr. Waltz took responsibility for inadvertently adding Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, to the chat. He called it “Houthi PC small group” to reflect the presence of members of the administration’s “principals committee,” who come together to discuss the most sensitive and important national security issues.

Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Mr. Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.

Mr. Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior U.S. officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Mr. Hegseth’s chat group said.

The Yemen strikes, designed to punish Houthi fighters for attacking international cargo ships passing through the Red Sea, were among the first big military strikes of Mr. Hegseth’s tenure.

After The Atlantic disclosed that Mr. Hegseth had used Mr. Waltz’s Signal group to communicate details of the strikes as they were being launched, the Trump administration said he had not shared “war plans” or any classified information, an assertion that was viewed with tremendous skepticism by national security experts.

In the case of Mr. Hegseth’s Signal group, a U.S. official declined to comment on whether Mr. Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach.

“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official said. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, did not respond to requests for comment.

The “Defense/Team Huddle” Signal chat until recently included about a dozen of Mr. Hegseth’s top aides, including Joe Kasper, Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, and Mr. Parnell.

The chat also included two senior advisers to Mr. Hegseth — Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick — who were accused of leaking unauthorized information last week and were fired.

Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Selnick were among three former top Pentagon officials who proclaimed their innocence in a public statement on Saturday in response to the leak inquiry that led to their dismissals.

On Sunday, another former Defense Department official, John Ullyot, who left the department last week, said in an opinion essay for Politico that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and suggested that Mr. Trump should remove him.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about Mr. Hegseth’s use of the Signal group chat. When Mr. Goldberg released details of what Mr. Hegseth put into the Signal chat created by Mr. Waltz regarding the upcoming strikes in Yemen, Mr. Trump defended him and said he had done nothing wrong.

While the Signal chat created by Mr. Waltz for senior officials was criticized for sharing details of a military operation on an encrypted but unclassified app, the participants — other than Mr. Goldberg of The Atlantic, who appears to have been added accidentally — were senior government officials with reason to track the progress of the attack.

But some of the participants in the group chat created by Mr. Hegseth were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation.

Jennifer Hegseth has drawn attention for the access her husband has given her. Mr. Hegseth brought her into two meetings with foreign military counterparts in February and early March where sensitive information was discussed, a development first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Parlatore, who has been Mr. Hegseth’s personal lawyer for the last eight years, was commissioned as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps about a week before the Yemen strikes were initiated.

In an interview before rejoining the military, Mr. Parlatore told The New York Times that he would work with Mr. Hegseth’s office to improve training for the military’s uniformed lawyers.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil works inside the Pentagon as a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and as a senior adviser to the defense secretary.

One person familiar with the chat said Mr. Hegseth’s aides had warned him a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat, which, while encrypted, is not considered as secure as government channels typically used for discussing highly sensitive war planning and combat operations.

It was unclear how Mr. Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News host who before his confirmation in January had never previously served in a high-level government position, responded to those warnings.

Many of those in Mr. Hegseth’s inner circle during his first months in the Pentagon were combat veterans with deep experience in the military but little firsthand knowledge of how the government operates at the highest levels.

Several of these staff members encouraged Mr. Hegseth to move the work-related matters in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat to his government phone. But Mr. Hegseth never made the transition, according to some of the people familiar with the chat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced earlier this month that he would review Mr. Hegseth’s Yemen strike disclosures on the Signal chat that included top Trump aides.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the secretary of defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins, said in a notification letter to Mr. Hegseth.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Stebbins’s review has uncovered the Signal chat that included Mr. Hegseth’s wife and other advisers.

Mr. Stebbins started the review in response to a joint bipartisan request from Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Beyond the controversy of the Signal chat, Mr. Hegseth’s office has been shaken by the sudden firings of Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Selnick and Colin Carroll, all top advisers to the defense secretary. They were escorted from the Pentagon last week after being accused of leaking sensitive information.

The dismissals and turmoil around the inspector general’s investigation have raised tensions and prompted talk of more resignations, according to current and former defense officials.

Among those considering leaving are Mr. Kasper, Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, who helped lead the leak investigation that resulted in his colleagues’ dismissal but has not been implicated in wrongdoing, according to senior defense officials.

In the wake of the report in The Atlantic disclosing the first Signal chat, Mr. Hegseth and other senior administration officials repeatedly denied that any classified information was shared among the participants.

“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters. At a Senate hearing, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, echoed Mr. Hegseth’s assertion that no classified information was shared.

But other former senior defense officials said texts describing launch times and the type of aircraft being employed before a strike would be classified information that, if leaked to the enemy, could have jeopardized pilots’ lives.

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades.

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

6. Kyiv Is On the Clock to Respond to Trump Plan to End Ukraine Conflict

Excerpts:

“Every sovereign nation on Earth has a right to defend itself,” Rubio said Friday. “Ukraine will have a right to defend itself and to enter into whatever agreements it wants to enter into on a bilateral basis with different countries and so forth.”

While the Trump administration temporarily withheld arms and intelligence from Ukraine to pressure it to seek a diplomatic compromise with Russia, it hasn’t imposed economic sanctions or taken any concrete steps to pressure Putin.

Ukraine has said it is willing to agree to a comprehensive 30-day cease-fire if the Kremlin follows suit. Several days ago, Putin declared a short cease-fire for the Easter holiday but Ukrainian officials said Moscow continued to carry out attacks during the religious holiday.

There is still no resolution regarding what types of security guarantees Ukraine might receive if it agrees to a peace settlement. The Trump administration hasn’t said if it is willing to provide any military support to European nations that send troops to Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” to deter future Russian aggression.

The Kremlin has sought a lifting of U.S. sanctions and rekindling economic ties between Russia and the U.S. during talks in Moscow and Saudi Arabia that Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, has taken part in.

Kyiv Is On the Clock to Respond to Trump Plan to End Ukraine Conflict

U.S. proposal includes recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and blocking Ukraine from joining NATO

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/kyiv-is-on-the-clock-to-respond-to-trump-plan-to-end-ukraine-conflict-f3538799?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Michael R. Gordon

and Alan Cullison

April 20, 2025 6:49 pm ET

Members of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea in February. Photo: Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters

Ukraine is under pressure to respond this week to a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for how to end the war in Ukraine by granting concessions to Russia, including potential U.S. recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and excluding Kyiv from joining NATO.

The ideas were outlined in a confidential document presented by senior Trump administration officials to their Ukrainian counterparts in Paris on Thursday, according to Western officials. They were also shared with senior European officials at the daylong meeting.

The U.S. is now waiting for Kyiv’s response, which is expected to come at a meeting of U.S., Ukrainian and European officials in London later this week. Then if there is a convergence among the American, European and Ukrainian positions, the proposals could be floated to Moscow.

To put pressure on Ukraine and Russia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the administration may pause its negotiating efforts if headway isn’t made on core issues in the next several weeks.

“The Ukrainians have to go back home, they have to run it by their president, they have to take into account their views on all of this,” Rubio said. “But we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”

The U.S. diplomatic push is intended to set the stage for a cease-fire, which would be broadly along current battle lines, and an eventual settlement. Accepting some of the Trump administration’s ideas could prove difficult for Kyiv since Ukraine has refused to accept that Russia has a legal claim to any of its territory.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials met on Thursday in Paris. Photo: Ludovic Marin/Press Pool

A senior State Department official on Sunday cast the ideas presented to the Ukrainians as options for Kyiv to weigh and not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The official said a “list of potential options” was shared “for discussion and feedback.” A spokesman for the National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, the retired Army lieutenant general who serves as an envoy to Ukraine, met on Thursday in Paris with senior Ukrainian officials, including Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.

Rubio, Witkoff and Kellogg are planning to attend the coming London meeting, according to U.S. officials. After that, Witkoff might make another trip to Russia, though no travel has been announced.

Witkoff, a real-estate executive who is close to Trump, has met with Russian President Putin three times and reported that he has made progress in his discussions with the Kremlin leader. Other U.S. officials have advised Trump to be more skeptical of Putin’s intentions.

A U.S. move to recognize the Russian seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 would reverse a more than decade of American policy from both Democratic and Republican administrations. In 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served during the first Trump administration, denounced Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a threat to “a bedrock international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force.”

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, 2023. Photo: alina smutko/Reuters

The U.S. Congress has passed legislation opposing U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The ideas presented by the U.S. in Paris also include ruling out Ukraine’s membership in NATO. “NATO isn’t on the table,” Kellogg said in an appearance on Fox News Saturday.

Yet another U.S. idea, Western officials said, calls for designating the territory around the nuclear reactor in Zaporizhzhia as neutral territory that could be under American control.

In a March call with Zelensky, Trump raised the possibility that the U.S. would acquire Ukrainian power plants, including nuclear facilities, calling it the “best protection for that infrastructure.” The Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest in Europe, would then presumably feed power to both Ukrainian territory and regions that Moscow has conquered since its invasion of 2022 and that remain under its control.

The ideas put forth by the Trump administration fall short of some Russian demands, according to Western officials. They wouldn’t concede that Russia has a legal right to control four regions in the eastern part of Ukraine that it claims to have annexed, though they don’t require the Russian military to leave those areas. The idea that the U.S. consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was earlier reported by Bloomberg.

The U.S., Western officials say, is also not proposing a cap on Ukrainian forces and isn’t precluding Western military support for Kyiv or the deployment of European troops there, a key sticking point with Moscow.

“Every sovereign nation on Earth has a right to defend itself,” Rubio said Friday. “Ukraine will have a right to defend itself and to enter into whatever agreements it wants to enter into on a bilateral basis with different countries and so forth.”

While the Trump administration temporarily withheld arms and intelligence from Ukraine to pressure it to seek a diplomatic compromise with Russia, it hasn’t imposed economic sanctions or taken any concrete steps to pressure Putin.

Ukraine has said it is willing to agree to a comprehensive 30-day cease-fire if the Kremlin follows suit. Several days ago, Putin declared a short cease-fire for the Easter holiday but Ukrainian officials said Moscow continued to carry out attacks during the religious holiday.

There is still no resolution regarding what types of security guarantees Ukraine might receive if it agrees to a peace settlement. The Trump administration hasn’t said if it is willing to provide any military support to European nations that send troops to Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” to deter future Russian aggression.

The Kremlin has sought a lifting of U.S. sanctions and rekindling economic ties between Russia and the U.S. during talks in Moscow and Saudi Arabia that Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, has taken part in.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com

7. Sweden Has the Tanks. Finland Has the Troops. Welcome to the Pan-Nordic Army.

Sweden Has the Tanks. Finland Has the Troops. Welcome to the Pan-Nordic Army.

Nordic countries, hawkish on Russia, pool resources to punch above their weight

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europe-nordic-military-defense-a5d5da5b

In Sweden, military service is highly selective, making it an elite pursuit. Photo: Åsa Sjöström for The Wall Street Journal

By Sune Engel Rasmussen

April 20, 2025 11:00 pm ET

For a long time, the Nordic countries were better known for their peace efforts and cozy living than militarism.

Now, they are shedding that persona. The Nordics have emerged as a model for Europe’s defense. They are leading efforts to reverse decades of military drawdowns to counter both Russian aggression and uncertain security guarantees from the Trump White House.

The four main Nordic countries are among Europe’s top donors of military aid to Ukraine by population, and have taken steps to usher in a new regional security architecture that’s less reliant on the U.S.

Any Nordic country would struggle to militarily square up to Russia on its own. But combined, the Nordics have an economy about the size of Mexico’s, and nearly the same size as Russia’s. Following Sweden and Finland’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they have pooled some of their forces.

Sweden boasts an advanced defense industry that makes submarines, battle tanks and supersonic jet fighters. Norway possesses maritime surveillance and fighting capabilities in the Arctic. Finland has one of the largest standing armies and artillery forces per capita in Europe. And Denmark’s special forces have decades of experience deploying to some of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan and Iraq to fight American wars. (The fifth Nordic country, Iceland, has no standing army or defense industry).

“You have a regional grouping with the economic and resource potential to develop a fully integrated defense-industrial base like Germany has, but with a completely different kind of threat perception and political will,” said Eric Ciaramella, senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank and former senior U.S. intelligence analyst.

NATO training exercises take place off Harstad, northern Norway. Photo: Danielle Bochove/Bloomberg News

A Swedish military armored vehicle takes part in a drill near Boden, northern Sweden. Photo: jonathan nackstrand/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The Nordics share historic cultural bonds. In the Middle Ages, Scandinavian Vikings colonized and marauded throughout Europe, even reaching North America. For centuries after, the Nordic countries fought bloody wars among themselves, with regional powers Denmark and Sweden fighting over territory and beheading each other’s nobilities in town squares. Later, in a more conciliatory gesture, Sweden let the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded in Norway, even after the two countries dissolved their union in 1905.

Now, the shared Nordic view of Russia as a serious future threat has pulled those countries closer together than at any point in modern history. A recent Danish intelligence assessment said Russia could start a major war against one or more European NATO countries within three to five years, a view that chimes more with the Baltic nations than other Western capitals.

“The Nordic countries have a unified security policy for the first time since the Kalmar Union in the 1400s,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the former NATO secretary-general who is now Norway’s finance minister. “They have recognized the importance of deepening their military cooperation in a way that we haven’t seen for several centuries.”

The Nordics have combined their air forces, establishing a Joint Nordic Air Command in 2023. Last year they set out a vision for common defense through 2030 under the Nordic Defense Cooperation, or Nordefco.

To be sure, the Nordics are compensating for decades of disarmament following the end of the Cold War. The need to rearm has only grown amid Europe’s fading trust in the U.S. as a reliable ally under President Trump.

Identity shift

While the Nordics’ call to arms may clash with their global image, it has been long under way.

Finland has one of Europe’s largest armed forces per capita. It can mobilize 280,000 troops in weeks, and nearly one in six Finns, or about 900,000, are reservists. Underground shelters across the country can house roughly the remainder of the population. Finland is now contemplating withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention, which bans antipersonnel land mines.

Sweden is an engine of military innovation. JAS 39 Gripen jet fighters, designed to operate on short runways and counter Russian aircrafts, participated in a NATO surveillance mission for the first time in March. Sweden’s Stridsvagn 122 is one of the world’s most advanced battle tanks, and its CV90 is one of the best infantry fighting vehicles.

Finland and Sweden both have mandatory conscription. In Sweden, military service is gender-neutral and highly selective, making it an elite pursuit. While other European countries struggle to boost their ranks, Sweden’s armed forces turn away thousands of young people each year.

Norway, long criticized for underspending despite sitting on the world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund of $1.5 trillion while profiting from energy prices pushed up by the Ukraine war, recently announced a doubling of its support for Kyiv, to more than $8 billion in 2025.

Aid to Ukraine

UKRAINE

Total bilateral allocations

(Percentage of GDP)

0.05

0.15

0.25

0.45

0.75%

Note: 2021 GDP

Source: Kiel Institute

“It is a recognition that we need to do more to support Ukraine, but also that we need a fairer burden-sharing among NATO countries,” Stoltenberg said.

Denmark has become one of the loudest voices calling for European rearmament. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in March that she wouldn’t rule out housing nuclear weapons on Danish soil, a historic shift in stance. After donating all of its artillery to Ukraine, Copenhagen conceived of a plan to fund contracts between the Ukrainian government and the country’s cash-strapped defense firms to produce weapons tailored for its shifting battlefield needs—an approach dubbed “the Danish model.”

Propping up Ukraine’s own defense industry is a sustainable way to add deterrence against Russia while the U.S. blocks Ukrainian membership of NATO, said Anna Wieslander, the Stockholm-based director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“Linking our defense industries together is a very strong signal,” she said.

Nordic paths may diverge in the future. For example, while Denmark and Sweden are willing to contribute troops to a peacekeeping force after a cease-fire in Ukraine, Finland, with its 830-mile border with Russia, would likely prefer to keep soldiers at home.

For now, a united Nordic bloc could serve as a model for other clusters of nations, such as around the Black Sea, said Matti Pesu, senior research fellow with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. The model can also serve as an insurance policy for the future, if the trans-Atlantic alliance disintegrates under Trump, he said.

“It’s a potential Plan B if NATO doesn’t work,” Pesu said.

Norwegian F-35 jet fighters take part in a drill with allied countries. Photo: Cornelius Poppe/NTB/Associated Press

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

8. Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’

Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’

A former top Hegseth adviser suggested Sunday night that Trump should consider replacing the embattled Defense chief

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-faces-heat-after-new-signal-chat-emerges-and-claim-of-pentagon-chaos-e717ea84

By Nancy A. Youssef

and Alexander Ward

Updated April 20, 2025 10:12 pm ET

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attending a cabinet meeting earlier this month. Photo: nathan howard/Reuters

WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created a Signal chat with his wife, his personal lawyer and others, and posted sensitive military information into it, people familiar with the matter said Sunday, a revelation that has added to the increasing scrutiny of the novice leader.

Hegseth was already facing questions for writing flight plans and other details about a military operation ahead of U.S. strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen into a Signal chat with senior Trump administration officials. Hegseth posted nearly the same information into another chat featuring his wife and other aides that don’t require real-time knowledge of the mission, a person familiar with the chat said.

The disclosure of the Signal chat comes after an unusual number of top political appointees have either been removed from the Pentagon or resigned just in the past few weeks, some with little explanation. President Trump’s national-security team, meanwhile, is attempting to broker sensitive deals with Russia, Ukraine and Iran, putting enormous pressure on a group that is largely inexperienced in sensitive foreign-policy diplomacy.

The latest Signal chat group, a defense “Team Huddle,” included 13 people, one person familiar with it said. The chat included Hegseth’s brother, a Department of Homeland Security liaison who has traveled with the defense chief. The chat also included Hegseth’s personal lawyer. Hegseth began the chat around the time of his confirmation hearing and it was used, in part, to craft strategies ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill, the person said.

Shortly after the New York Times earlier reported on the new Signal chat, John Ullyot, a former top Pentagon spokesman working under Hegseth, wrote in Politico that the Pentagon is in “total chaos” and “disarray” under the secretary’s leadership. Ullyot alleged that three fired Pentagon officials—all loyal to Hegseth—were wrongly smeared by anonymous officials as leakers who failed polygraph tests.

“While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test,” Ullyot wrote. “Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”

John Ullyot resigned from the Pentagon last week. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

“From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president—who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote. “President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”

Asked for further clarification about his claims, Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, pointed the Journal to his piece.

“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda,” Sean Parnell, Pentagon spokesman, posted on X Sunday night.

In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said “any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”

Among some Pentagon officials, the latest Signal chat revelation was more evidence of a Pentagon mired in unpredictability under Hegseth’s leadership. He has fired at least 10 admirals and generals, changed longstanding practices, attacked diversity initiatives and called for bringing back standards.

“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

Some Republicans have defended Hegseth’s leadership, however.

“Secretary Hegseth is working hard to implement the president’s agenda,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R, Ark.) wrote on X Sunday night.

“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Sunday night.

So far, he has often been quick to defend his secretary, praising his look in the job and his loyalty to the president’s America First agenda. Trump also backed Hegseth and other top aides, namely national security adviser Mike Waltz, after the media firestorm kicked off by news of the first Signal chat. And he stood by Hegseth, and expended plenty of political capital, pushing for his confirmation as the Pentagon chief despite allegations of excessive drinking, infidelity and financial mismanagement.

But Hegseth has featured in many early public-relations problems for the Pentagon—and broader Trump administration—in his first three months.

Hegseth has brought his wife, who isn’t a government employee, to some sensitive meetings at the Defense Department. He authorized a top-secret military briefing for Elon Musk about China strategy, only to downgrade the sensitivity of the meeting after intense White House blowback. And videos of the Tuskegee Airmen and images of the Enola Gay, the warplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, were temporarily removed from Defense Department websites as part of what some saw as Hegseth’s purge of anything resembling “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—or DEI. Some Pentagon officials blamed Ullyot for the website changes.

Last week, the Pentagon said it put three Hegseth staffers, Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick, on administrative leave, escorting them out of the building. In a post on X, the three said in a joint statement that “we still haven’t been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”

The Defense Department inspector general, at the request of the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, launched an investigation earlier this month into Hegseth’s handling of the first revealed Signal chat. It is unclear if the inspector general was aware of the second Signal chat—and whether it would be part of his investigation.

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

Appeared in the April 21, 2025, print edition as 'Hegseth Had Second Sensitive Chat'.

9. Tragedy killed 4 U.S. soldiers in Lithuania. A small army got them home.

May our soldiers rest in peace and their families find comfort and closure.

Tragedy killed 4 U.S. soldiers in Lithuania. A small army got them home.

Over seven days, hundreds of people from four countries searched a muddy bog for the missing Americans. This is their remarkable story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/20/us-soldiers-lost-lithuania/

Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT

11 min

How hundreds helped recover 4 deceased U.S. soldiers

1:38

After an armored vehicle sank in a peat bog in Lithuania, hundreds of people from four countries came together to recover the servicemen. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: U.S. Military/The Washington Post)

By Alex Horton

The search party fanned out to scout for any sign of four American soldiers — and their 70-ton vehicle — who last month vanished in the night deep in the woods outside Pabrade, near Lithuania’s border with Belarus.

It was 1st Sgt. Matthew Riley who discovered the tread marks that had gouged the soft earth along a firebreak trail. They led to a wet patch, barely 30 feet in diameter, but did not continue on the other side. Afloat on the surface was a soldier’s satchel and a bottle of weapon lubricant.

There was a strong smell of fuel, but those who eyed the bog were skeptical something that small could swallow such a massive armored vehicle. A soldier waded in to their waist, but Riley was adamant: Someone had to dive down into the muck and be sure.

Over the next seven days, scores of people from four countries plumbed the muddy bog to locate and recover the missing men. The mission, fraught with extreme environmental and engineering challenges, was animated by risk and ingenuity — and a guiding belief in the military imperative that everyone must go home.

“We weren’t leaving without our boys,” Senior Chief Master Diver Carlos Hernandez, who led the U.S. Navy dive team on-site, told The Washington Post.

From left, Army Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, 21; Army Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, 25; Army Sgt. Jose Dueñez Jr., 25; and Army Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28. (Defense Department/AP)

This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen individuals either involved with the operation or who knew the four soldiers who died in the March 25 tragedy: Staff Sgt. Jose Dueñez Jr., 25; Staff Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, 25; Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, 21; and Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28. Efforts to speak with their families were unsuccessful.

An investigation is underway to determine how the crew was lost, with a separate inquiry focused on safety takeaways, said Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the commander of the 1st Armored Division who led the recovery effort. A part of the investigation, Taylor said, will focus on whether it was appropriate for the soldiers to be sent into the woods by themselves. Georgia Franco, whose husband was among those killed, told CBS News she has demanded answers about that decision.

“They were never supposed to be out there alone,” Franco told the network.

Vehicle tread marks led rescue teams to a bog, but some were skeptical it could have swallowed a massive armored vehicle. (Lukas Tamosiunas/Lithuanian Armed Forces/AFP/Getty Images)

The recovery

There are roughly 80,000 U.S. troops across Europe, and following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and its expanded war that began in 2022, training among NATO allies has intensified. Few countries are concerned more about Russian aggression than Lithuania, a small Baltic country bordering Moscow’s ally Belarus. About 2,000 U.S. personnel are stationed there on rotational deployments.

Since February, that mission has belonged to 1st Armored Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. A cornerstone of these deployments is training at the military reservation near Pabrade, a vast tract of rolling hills, wetlands and dense forests, not unlike their stomping grounds back home at Fort Stewart in eastern Georgia.

An artillery unit in the brigade had settled into nighttime training with its howitzers when a tactical vehicle became mired in the mud. The job to haul it out was tasked to Dueñez, Franco and Taitano, who were Abrams tank maintainers versed in retrieving disabled vehicles. All three had trained to recover vehicles at night, and this presented a valuable real-world opportunity to further hone those skills.

Two M88 recovery vehicles assist in the efforts. (Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images)

A field of gravel was trucked in and spread across the site to stabilize the ground. (Valdemar Doveiko/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

They climbed inside their M88A2 Hercules, an armored behemoth itself built on a tank chassis with a heavy towing system, and set out through the forest. With them was Knutson-Collins, an artillery mechanic in the brigade, helping to guide the crew.

Their trek in the early morning hours was slow going, with the heavy M88A2 capable of reaching a speed of around 25-30 mph. When radio contact with the crew was lost, a search effort was initiated that led to the muddy peat bog discovered by Riley.

A team of six Lithuanian divers was dispatched to the site, and what the divers found alarmed them. The bog, innocuous looking from level ground, churned with danger under the surface.

The wetland vegetation had partially decayed and, fed by a small pond nearby, created a thick morass of mud, sticks and grass. Its consistency made any movement exhausting, as if the divers were wading through drying concrete. They couldn’t see through their masks or get enough air through their regulators.

A drone with ground-penetrating radar scans the bog. (Staff Sgt. Rose Di Trolio/70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment/U.S. Army)

The dive team prepares a floating platform before entering the water. (Spc. Trevor Wilson/70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment/U.S. Army)

The Hercules, which can hold hundreds of gallons of fuel, had released significant amounts into the water, instantly degrading the divers’ equipment and limiting the time they could be submerged.

The divers made first contact with something steel around a depth of about 15 feet. Commanders on scene, worried it could have been some long-lost military vehicle or a farmer’s tractor, wanted to be certain it was the Hercules. The divers, having studied a similar vehicle in the motor pool, said they were confident that they touched the M88A2’s distinctive crane.

But problems were mounting. The vehicle, entombed in several feet of mud, was above a high-pressure gas pipeline but continued to sink, and fear quickly set in that any misstep could cause an explosion. Orders came down to clear the line.

Commanders assessed that the likelihood of recovering the soldiers would diminish the deeper the vehicle settled, so they turned their focus to thinning the mud. A field of gravel, 237 tons in all, was trucked in and spread out across the site to help stabilize the ground, and engineers felled nearby trees. Slurry pumps hummed around-the-clock.

A coffer dam was built over about 30 hours in what would prove to be a failed bid to drain the bog. Though officials estimated that as many as 700,000 gallons were pumped out, water kept seeping in from nearby.

U.S. soldiers attend a Mass at the Cathedral Basilica in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the four soldiers. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

Breakthroughs

The recovery team grew by the hour, eventually reaching hundreds of personnel. There were 250 U.S. service members, 160 Lithuanian soldiers and civilians, 50 Polish troops, and working dog teams from Estonia and Lithuania.

Some 2,000 miles away in Rota, Spain, a team of U.S. Navy divers received urgent orders to fly across the continent. When the sailors of Task Force 68 arrived for a briefing with their Lithuanian counterparts, they absorbed the gravity of the task. For some, it would be their first time working to recover human remains.

Their objective was to connect heavy cables to the Hercules’ tow points so it could be pulled from the bog. The divers would have to find their way to the submerged vehicle entirely by touch. To rehearse, they climbed over a spare vehicle, closing their eyes to learn its contours.

The bog, innocuous looking from level ground, churned with danger under the surface. (Staff Sgt. Christopher Saunders/70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment/U.S. Army)

Construction Mechanic 2nd Class Steven Tausch, left, and Construction Mechanic 1st Class Ryan Filo after a dive. (U.S. Navy)

Once in the water, the divers used a fire hose to create a chimney in the mud through which they could swim and maneuver. It was an agonizing process. They struggled to kick through the sludge, and their arms approached muscle failure.

It took more than two hours to connect one cable to the tow point and then 15 minutes to tunnel themselves out again with the fire hose.

“We felt like the earth was re-encasing around us,” said Construction Mechanic 2nd Class Steven Tausch, describing a subsequent dive to reach the Hercules’ second tow point. They surged water from the hose to push away mud from their helmets and bodies as they drew nearer.

At the surface, the team leader, Hernandez, anxiously awaited every update delivered by radio through labored breathing. The divers, though tethered to the surface, knew that in an emergency they may not be pulled from the bog in time.

“Everyone on the dive site was completely on edge,” Hernandez said.

It took 90 minutes for Tausch’s team to reach the second shackle point. The vehicle was secured.

“Get me … out of here,” Tausch said over the radio, using an expletive.

Two other M88s and two bulldozers were needed to pull the Hercules from the muck. Inside were the remains of three soldiers: Dueñez, Franco and Taitano.

The fourth, Knutson-Collins, was still missing.

Last man out

Back home in Battle Creek, Michigan, Knutson-Collins’s family was feeling a mix of worry and optimism. He was a talented swimmer, they reasoned. Maybe he got out?

“I still want to be positive and hopeful that he’s somewhere else, still alive,” his father, Robert Collins, told local media.

A drone equipped with ground-penetrating radar was flown in to scan what lay concealed in the bog. It detected a helmet.

In the early morning hours of April 1, two search-and-rescue dog teams from Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board arrived. The lead handler, Risto Kotkas, boarded a small inflatable boat with Maik, his 4-year-old German shepherd.

Maik was trained to bark when he found someone living or dead. (Staff Sgt. Christopher Saunders/70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment/U.S. Army)

The wind had picked up, scattering the scent, and all the fuel in the water masked the odors Maik needed to track.

Maik was trained to bark when he found someone living or dead. He was not barking. Kotkas watched him carefully for any subtle body language — a tail wag, anxious energy or trying to lick the water’s surface. Kotkas and Maik orbited the bog until those signs converged, and the handler pointed out a spot to investigate.

Using an excavator, the recovery team gently dug down into the quagmire. Brig. Gen. John P. Lloyd, who as chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Atlantic Division oversaw the process, recalled spotting a pair of boots.

“I immediately knew that we had him,” Lloyd said.

Near the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, people mourn the soldiers who died. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

The loss

Thousands gathered in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, on April 3 as a procession of hearses transported the soldiers’ remains for the first leg of their trip home. Among them was Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, who tapped into the country’s painful past under Soviet occupation. “We have experienced trials in our history, and therefore we understand well what loss is, what death is, what honorable duty is,” he said in his remarks.

In a private moment, members of 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, the unit the deceased soldiers were assigned to, huddled together and were silent for 10 minutes, said Capt. Madyson Wellens, the commander of the diesel forward support troop for the battalion.

Soldiers in the unit described profound loss.

Lithuanian army soldiers and children with American and Lithuanian flags attend a farewell ceremony at Cathedral Square in Vilnius. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

A Catholic priest during the farewell ceremony. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

Franco, a jokester from Glendale, California, stood out for his big smile and oversize glasses, said Sgt. Jeremiah Benetti. Wellens recalled that Franco spoke with admiration for his wife, who was home raising the couple’s infant by herself while he was deployed.

Dueñez, of Joliet, Illinois, was a “duct tape and bubble gum” kind of guy, Riley said, explaining his innate gift for figuring out how to get nonfunctioning tanks running again. Dueñez volunteered for assignments more than any other soldier Riley’s ever known, he said, including the fateful mission to the peat bog, when he went to help even though he was not on the Hercules crew.

Knutson-Collins was similarly wired, said Staff Sgt. Caleb Cutting, a friend. They would talk and laugh about their kids, Cutting recalled, and it was evident he was eager get home to Georgia and see his family.

The youngest soldier in the group, Taitano, a native of Guam, was known for his twin passions: cooking Spam with rice and tinkering with his old Nissan pickup. He offered oil changes in the barracks parking lot, to the chagrin of the unit’s senior leaders who couldn’t help but be impressed with his acumen.

Pfc. Ephraim Adakwaah, who trained in vehicle recovery with Taitano, said the men’s deaths felt like losing family.

“It’s something that hurts on a deeper level,” he said.

What readers are saying

The comments overwhelmingly criticize President Donald Trump for prioritizing a golf event over attending the dignified transfer of the soldiers' remains, highlighting a perceived lack of respect and empathy from the U.S. administration. In contrast, the Lithuanian people and... Show more

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By Alex Horton

Alex Horton is a national security reporter for The Washington Post focused on the U.S. military. He served in Iraq as an Army infantryman. Send him secure tips on Signal at alexhorton.85follow on X@AlexHortonTX

10. Breakdown in U.S.-China Relations Raises Specter of New Cold War

Excerpts:

At an April 10 Senate hearing, Adm. Sam Paparo, head of U.S. forces for the Indo-Pacific, called attention to China’s increased military activities near Taiwan, which he said threatened the security of the U.S. and its allies.

On the U.S. side, Trump has signaled he is willing to withdraw security guarantees for countries depending on American support unless they make economic concessions.

Behind the heightened risk of escalation beyond trade is a lack of effective communication between senior officials on both sides of the Pacific. Initially, Beijing hoped for dialogue but its insistence on formal diplomatic protocol proved to be a mismatch with a Trump team willing to engage only with those closest to Xi, in particular the Chinese leader’s chief of staff, Cai Qi, whose portfolio includes cybersecurity—a core concern for Washington.

In the face of Trump’s tariff assault, Beijing has clammed up. Most recently, as trade tensions spiral, Trump himself has indicated that he would like Xi to call him. Trump officials have also suggested to Chinese diplomats that Foreign Minister Wang Yi reach out to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to people familiar with the matter. So far, Beijing has refused to engage on either front.

Instead, in search of ways that can minimize political costs for the Xi leadership, policy advisers in Beijing are floating names including former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, as potential intermediaries with Trump, the people said. But those discussions haven’t gone far enough in either capital, as neither side appears to be in a rush to negotiate.

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump reiterated that the U.S. will “make a deal” with China. “We’ve had some very good talks,” he said, without elaborating, while adding, “I think we have a lot of time.”

Breakdown in U.S.-China Relations Raises Specter of New Cold War

What is at stake as economic ties careen off the rails is overall global security and economic stability for years to come

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-economic-relations-tariffs-cold-war-ddb43fca

Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/WSJ

By Lingling Wei

April 20, 2025 9:00 pm ET

For decades, no matter how relations between Beijing and Washington waxed and waned, trade and investment provided the glue that kept the two powers together.

Today, with economic relations between the two careening off the rails, China and the U.S. are headed toward what could be a Cold War that extends beyond trade—to deepening conflict or even military tension as both seek to form their own blocs.

The current scenario was once unthinkable. During President Trump’s first presidency, Washington and Beijing were both reluctant to throw their deep entanglements into complete disarray. Their first trade war played out over two years and involved frequent negotiations and fear of escalation on both sides.

This time, the two countries have effectively erected trade embargoes against each other in less than three months and are taking economic warfare into new territory. What is at stake is overall global security as well as economic stability for many years to come.

“The U.S. and China are in a state of economic decoupling and there do not seem to be any guardrails to prevent escalations in trade tensions from spreading to other areas,” said Rick Waters, a former senior U.S. diplomat who now runs the China center at the Carnegie Endowment for Global Peace. “It’s becoming more difficult to argue that we’re not in a new Cold War.”

President Trump reiterated this past week that the U.S. will ‘make a deal’ with China. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Press Pool

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it is an all-hands-on-deck moment that he and his inner circle have been preparing for since Trump’s first term. After the initial shock from the magnitude of Trump’s recent tariff hits, Beijing is now in full-blown retaliatory mode, vowing to “fight to the end.”

And its tools to hit back at the U.S. aren’t limited to economic weapons such as retaliatory tariffs, blacklists targeting U.S. companies and restrictions on its exports of critical minerals.

According to people who consult with Chinese officials, Beijing’s recent statement that it is done with tit-for-tat tariff responses signals that it might be moving to other, noneconomic methods.

Both countries have accused each other of increasingly brazen cyberattacks. One option Beijing has, the people said, involves leveraging the data, call logs and other information it gathered from years of intrusions into computer networks at U.S. ports, water utilities, airports and other targets.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that in a secret Geneva meeting in December with the outgoing Biden administration, Chinese officials linked a series of cyber assaults on U.S. infrastructure to Washington’s support for Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing has pledged to bring under its fold.

Beijing could also step up strategic coercion against partners of the U.S., especially in the Indo-Pacific, at a time when the Trump administration’s commitment to providing security in the region appears to be in doubt.

A photo released by Taiwan’s Coast Guard showing one of its ships and a Chinese Coast Guard ship off Taiwan’s Matsu Islands. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Security threats

Alarms about the security threat from China, which had been rising within the U.S. political and military establishment even before the latest cycle of tit-for-tat tariff increases, have ramped up further.

At an April 10 Senate hearing, Adm. Sam Paparo, head of U.S. forces for the Indo-Pacific, called attention to China’s increased military activities near Taiwan, which he said threatened the security of the U.S. and its allies.

On the U.S. side, Trump has signaled he is willing to withdraw security guarantees for countries depending on American support unless they make economic concessions.

Behind the heightened risk of escalation beyond trade is a lack of effective communication between senior officials on both sides of the Pacific. Initially, Beijing hoped for dialogue but its insistence on formal diplomatic protocol proved to be a mismatch with a Trump team willing to engage only with those closest to Xi, in particular the Chinese leader’s chief of staff, Cai Qi, whose portfolio includes cybersecurity—a core concern for Washington.

In the face of Trump’s tariff assault, Beijing has clammed up. Most recently, as trade tensions spiral, Trump himself has indicated that he would like Xi to call him. Trump officials have also suggested to Chinese diplomats that Foreign Minister Wang Yi reach out to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to people familiar with the matter. So far, Beijing has refused to engage on either front.

Instead, in search of ways that can minimize political costs for the Xi leadership, policy advisers in Beijing are floating names including former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, as potential intermediaries with Trump, the people said. But those discussions haven’t gone far enough in either capital, as neither side appears to be in a rush to negotiate.

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump reiterated that the U.S. will “make a deal” with China. “We’ve had some very good talks,” he said, without elaborating, while adding, “I think we have a lot of time.”

Cai Qi, the chief of staff to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Photo: Florence Lo/Reuters

Building blocs

As the communication stalemate continues, both powers are seeking to recruit allies in their battle. The Trump administration is currently seeking to cut deals with dozens of countries to cooperate in isolating China. Meanwhile, Xi and his senior lieutenants have fanned out in recent days, trying to pull trading partners away from the U.S.

In exchange for reductions in tariffs imposed by the U.S., the Trump administration is planning to pressure more than 70 nations to bar China from shipping goods through their countries to the American market, restrict Chinese investments and prevent cheap Chinese products from flooding their markets.

In short, as Trump told the Spanish-language program “Fox Noticias” last week, he may want countries to choose between the U.S. and China.

But building coalitions is unlikely to be easy for either side.

Even though Beijing’s manufacturing overdrive has antagonized many countries big and small, some of them, especially those in Asia that count China as one of their biggest trading partners and sources of investment, are finding it very hard to completely pivot to the U.S.

Xi’s recent tour to Southeast Asia highlights how this region is emerging as a key battleground for Beijing and Washington.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a recent visit to Vietnam. Photo: minh hoang/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Just over a week before Xi arrived in Hanoi on Monday, Vietnamese leader To Lam agreed with Trump to discuss a deal to remove U.S. tariffs in a call the American president described as “very productive.” Vietnam, also under Communist rule, has sought to improve economic ties with the U.S. in recent years.

The call, just as Xi was getting ready for what was billed as a state visit to Vietnam, displeased Beijing, according to people familiar with the matter.

At the end of Xi’s visit, China and Vietnam made a joint statement promising to deepen their strategic partnership without much detail—suggesting Hanoi isn’t picking one side over the other, leaving its options open.

Another focus for Beijing’s charm offensive is Europe, which has been alarmed by Trump’s handling of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, China named Li Chenggang, who for the past four years was China’s envoy to the World Trade Organization, as its chief trade negotiator. The appointment signals the Xi leadership’s desire to align with European countries more intent on protecting the global trading norms that Trump says have benefited the rest of the world, China in particular, at the U.S.’s expense.

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Li is a harsh U.S. critic. As China’s WTO representative, he called the U.S. a “unilateral bully.”

Meanwhile, with the communication impasse between China and the U.S. continuing, Washington is likely to further restrict Chinese companies’ access to American technology, making it even more difficult to unwind the trend of economic separation that is currently under way.

Ryan Fedasiuk, a former China policy adviser at the State Department and currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said the Commerce Department may significantly increase its use of export controls by blacklisting subsidiaries of the Chinese companies already on its trade list.

“Blacklisting subsidiaries would drastically increase the number of firms subject to U.S. export controls,” Fedasiuk said, “and accelerate the decoupling unleashed by tariffs.”

If the economic warfare keeps accelerating, foreign-policy experts say, both sides may expand their toolboxes to strike back at each other.

“What we’re seeing now is the biggest trade war in history,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “The risk of the trade war expanding to other domains is quite high.”

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

11. Opinion | Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson: There’s a ‘Meltdown’ on Hegseth’s Watch

Sour grapes for being fired or is there a there there?

Opinion | Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson: There’s a ‘Meltdown’ on Hegseth’s Watch

Opinion by John Ullyot

04/20/2025 07:15 PM EDT

John Ullyot is former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Politico

A month of total chaos at the Department of Defense is becoming a major distraction for the Trump administration, writes John Ullyot.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 10, 2025 in Washington. | Getty Images

Opinion by John Ullyot

04/20/2025 07:15 PM EDT

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.

President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The latest flashpoint is a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks. On Friday, Hegseth fired three of his most loyal senior staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Defense. In the aftermath, Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month.

Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.

On Friday, POLITICO reported that Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was leaving his role. Kasper had requested the investigation into the Pentagon leaks, which reportedly included military operational plans for the Panama Canal and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.

Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge that will leave him without his two closest advisers of over a decade — Caldwell and Selnick — and without chiefs of staff for him and his deputy. More firings may be coming, according to rumors in the building.

In short, the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.

Fortunately, I was not a victim of this purge of his senior leadership. Like Caldwell and Selnick, I am a longtime backer of the secretary. In December, when his Senate confirmation was in jeopardy, I wrote an opinion piece arguing strongly that he was the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon in need of serious reform.

A month later, Hegseth invited me to stand up and lead the Pentagon public affairs operation for his initial time in the building, and then possibly take on another position in the department after that.

We accomplished a lot together, including bringing new, largely more conservative, media outlets into the Pentagon press space, and ensuring the public understands Trump’s commitment to rebuilding our military after four years of drift under President Joe Biden and his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, including their injecting divisive identity politics and lowering high standards on body composition and physical fitness in the uniformed services.

Last week, a month after leaving my public affairs role, I respectfully declined the secretary’s generous offer for a new position and informed him of my decision to leave the department, wishing him all the best. I value his friendship and am grateful for his giving me the opportunity to serve. I salute his leadership in helping the president make America strong again.

Yet even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.

First there was Signalgate, where the secretary shared detailed operational plans, including timelines and specifics, about an impending military strike on the Houthis in Yemen over an unclassified Signal chat group that happened to include a member of the news media.

Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that “nobody was texting war plans.” This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.

His nebulous disavowal prompted the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, to release Hegseth’s full chat string with the detailed operational plans two days later, turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president’s national security team. Hegseth now faces an inspector general investigation into a possible leak of classified information and violation of records retention protocols.

That was just the beginning of the Month from Hell. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that Hegseth “brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.”

Next, the Pentagon set up a top-secret briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on China for Elon Musk, who still has extensive business interests in China. After learning about it, the White House canceled that meeting.

Then came the purges. And the news keeps coming. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details about the Yemen strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother.

There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately.

One reason the American people gave Trump a conclusive victory last November is that he’s not a go-along, get-along creature of the Beltway like many of his recent predecessors, but rather a shrewd businessman who expects results and holds his team accountable for serious mistakes that occur on their watch. Just ask Cabinet Secretaries Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Rex Tillerson, David Shulkin, Tom Price and Ryan Zinke. They, like Hegseth, are all good men and patriots whom Trump dismissed in his first term when he found their performance wanting.

Biden did the opposite. From his Defense secretary’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and disappearing for six days telling neither his staff nor the White House, to his Transportation secretary’s weeks-long refusal to visit the site of a major railroad derailment and catastrophic chemical spill, to his secretary of State’s allowing Chinese officials to lecture him about race relations, Biden held not a single one on his team accountable and just let them skate.

In Trump’s first term, he produced more national-security wins than any president in a generation or more. Trump countered Communist China’s aggression, strengthened our Indo-Pacific partnerships, began America’s long-awaited departure from Afghanistan, eliminated the ISIS caliphate, and killed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, among other big wins.

In the first three months of his second term, Trump has continued that great record on national security, in particular refocusing the Defense Department on its core mission of preparing to fight and win wars. Unfortunately, after a terrible month, the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.

The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department.

Politico

12. The Numbers Don't Lie: The United States Is Not Broke

The Numbers Don't Lie: The United States Is Not Broke

Alarmists insist that the country is sliding into insolvency. But the government can balance its books far more quickly than most Americans realize.

By Doomberg

04.20.25 — U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-united-states-is-not-broke

(Illustration by The Free Press, images via Getty

“I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.” —Donald Trump

When private sector companies become distressed, an entire ecosystem of experts springs into action. Turnaround specialists swoop in to replace management teams, cut spending, and negotiate with creditors. A sophisticated set of tools is deployed with vigor, much like triaging patients in hospital emergency rooms. Identifying which companies will survive has enriched many a bond investor, and executives experienced in navigating workouts are highly sought after.

The question of solvency is rarely clear-cut, and filing for bankruptcy is often a strategic decision. Companies can remain insolvent for some time but never file, while others seek court protection long before all options are exhausted. Deciding if and when to act is more art than science, as demonstrated by the divergent paths chosen by Ford and General Motors during the global financial crisis. The former, you may recall, had borrowed every penny it could before the crash and avoided bankruptcy; the latter used bankruptcy to right itself.

By any measure, the current U.S. fiscal situation is highly distressed. Total public debt outstanding exceeds $36 trillion, double what it was just a decade ago and more than 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Annual interest expense is set to surpass a staggering $1 trillion. The federal deficit was $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2024, or 6.4 percent of GDP. Respected analysts argue the U.S. is already in what’s called fiscal dominance, defined as “an economic condition that occurs when a country’s debt and deficit levels are sufficiently high that monetary policy ceases to be an effective tool for controlling inflation.”

Lurching rapidly toward this wall of worry is the looming wave of debt refinancings confronting recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The situation was exacerbated by his predecessor, Janet Yellen, who relied heavily on short-term debt to finance deficits during her tenure. Perhaps no American president has been more familiar with the bankruptcy code than the current occupant of the Oval Office, a man who previously boasted of using such laws “brilliantly” in the corporate setting. To wit, the first three weeks of his presidency bore the telltale signs of an experienced executive navigating a turnaround with urgency and direction.

Contrary to the constant alarmism about America’s irreversible slide into insolvency, the country is far from broke, and Trump has considerable flexibility at his disposal. Let’s review the options and set a few markers for success.

To quantify both the challenge and opportunity facing Trump, consider that federal government outlays have skyrocketed by about 40 percent since fiscal year 2019. In essence, the deluge of money printed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been codified into baseline spending. Conversely, total federal receipts in fiscal year 2024 were substantially higher than pre-Covid outlays, making a balanced budget far more plausible than many analysts believe. Was the 2019 government too lean? Of course not. It was a bloated mess of waste, fraud, and mismanagement back then, and it only worsened under President Biden. Through this lens, the $1.8 trillion deficit seems a worthy and achievable gap to close.

A popular tool used in financial turnarounds is zero-based budgeting, where every dollar of spending is frozen until it can be justified. Developed by management expert Peter Pyhrr, the technique is not without controversy, especially among employees subjected to this rigorous process. Taken to its extreme, all spending, including salaries and bill payments, is halted—even to the point of damaging the business and breaking contracts—and outlays are reinstated selectively and systematically. A stunning amount of what happens in business and government is simply not necessary to the underlying mission, and the U.S. federal government is undoubtedly the largest and most obvious candidate for such a reform. Purging the system entirely would be disruptive because the government has entrenched itself in virtually every corner of the economy. Its absence would be mostly celebrated, not bemoaned.

Critics argue that certain expenditures—defense spending, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—are all but untouchable, and combined with interest expenses, these outlays alone now exceed total receipts. This is nonsense. The Constitution does not mandate any of these programs, and all of them are replete with fraud and waste. The budget for the Department of Health and Human Services has more than doubled since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, adding an extra $1 trillion to U.S. spending. This is despite the fact that the ACA was sold as a measure to lower overall healthcare costs. The Pentagon’s budget is approaching $1 trillion and has now failed seven consecutive audits, and the Department of Defense remains the only federal agency to have never passed one. These are scandals ripe for exposure, and Trump seems intent on doing just that, according to Reuters:

U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects Elon Musk to find hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse at the Pentagon during an audit that the billionaire will lead.

“I’m going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. . . . Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military,” Trump said in a Super Bowl interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Trump said of the largest federal department.

Even the much-vaunted third rail of American politics—Social Security—can be reformed with rigor. How much of the money spent on this program annually—$1.4 trillion in 2023—is fraudulent? Nobody knows exactly, but everybody knows it’s material. Every payment issued should be tied to a verified living recipient, requiring all beneficiaries to reapply for benefits. Those who truly need the money will certainly comply, but we suspect a shockingly high proportion of current payouts would be eliminated. Once recipients are verified, buyout offers could be made to all beneficiaries under a certain age, means testing could be implemented, and additional measures could be introduced to reduce costs. None of this is rocket science, and pension reforms such as these are common in the private sector.

Profligate spending by governments eventually enriches somebody somewhere, and American households have never been richer. U.S. household net worth—defined as assets minus debt, excluding potential tax obligations—has grown to nearly five times the country’s total public debt:

The recent surge in net worth indicates that asset growth has continued to outpace the rise in total debt. This trend has brought the debt-to-asset ratio, a key metric for assessing household balance sheet health, down to a fresh 50-year low. The household debt-to-asset ratio stood at 11% in the third quarter, compared to the previous low of 11.1% in the first quarter of 2022.

The federal government has enormous taxing power and a vast resource base to leverage. Would taxing wealth directly be unpopular? Absolutely. Would doing so cause economic disruption? You bet, but one thing is certain: The total federal deficit amounts to just over 1 percent of the nation’s household net worth, and the entire gap could be closed with an annual levy.

And then there is the possibility of raising money by implementing tariffs. The U.S. imported nearly $4 trillion of goods last year and collected $77 billion in revenue, or just 2 percent of the total value crossing the border. Raising this revenue lever to 20–25 percent would reduce the current deficit by half.

Moving from the income statement to the balance sheet, the federal government’s asset values are materially incomplete and misleading. The government owns 261.5 million ounces of gold, most of which is held in secure storage sites like Fort Knox. The country’s gold is marked at just $42.22 per ounce, a fraction of its present market value. Revaluing these holdings to the current, historically high prices for gold could be worth over $750 billion.

The federal government owns 640 million acres of land across the country and also controls a staggering 3.17 billion acres of offshore waters within the Outer Continental Shelf. Most of this area is recorded at cost or omitted entirely from the books, a gross understatement of its multitrillion-dollar value.

However unpopular tax increases and tariffs might be, political support for cutting federal spending is quite high. While the Democrats in Washington have been howling in protest at the methods used by Elon Musk and his team, their stance is politically untenable. With each new round of exposure, calls for a genuine reckoning will only grow louder, and Trump is a master at leveraging the bully pulpit to achieve his objectives. No executive leading a turnaround is popular among employees, and Trump will certainly be despised by those whose livelihoods depend on government largesse. Considering that 92.5 percent of the votes counted in the District of Columbia in the last presidential election were for Kamala Harris, we suspect he will not be too bothered. Change has come for the establishment, and the smart ones will brace for impact.

We’ll be keeping a close watch on long-term U.S. government bond yields. If the market believes spending will be materially cut, expect rates to drop significantly, which will only make Trump’s job easier. Interest payments account for half of the budget deficit, and both the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have many tools at their disposal to manage them lower.

With government expenditures and monetary policy, trade-offs matter. Through a balanced combination of spending cuts, increased revenue generation, and lower interest rates, the government could balance its books more quickly than most anticipate. Far from being broke, the U.S. government just needs a classic workout. As far as turnarounds go, this one is utterly achievable.

Free Press readers have consistently told us they want more coverage of the economy and energy. The Doomberg team—who writes under a pen name—offers a skeptical, shrewd, and often humorous take on energy and finance policies around the world. Visit Doomberg’s website, where a version of this piece was originally published under the headline: “The U.S. Is Not Broke.”

13. US, Philippines Open ‘Super Bowl’ of Drills Amid China Tensions

Excerpts:

The planned exercise builds on previous drills, “signaling continuity with the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, both of which defined China as the greatest threat to the United States,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the US.

The drills are happening as China’s trade war with the US intensifies. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview this month that Manila expects a sustained $500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region.

“This is the Super Bowl of all exercises in this part of the region,” Logico said.

US, Philippines Open ‘Super Bowl’ of Drills Amid China Tensions

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-21/us-philippines-open-super-bowl-of-drills-amid-china-tensions?sref=hhjZtX76

The Philippine Coast Guard members during a joint maritime exercise with Coast Guards from Japan and the US in 2023.Photographer: Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg

By Cliff Harvey Venzon

April 20, 2025 at 5:05 PM PDT

Updated on April 21, 2025 at 1:22 AM PDT

The US and the Philippines kicked off their flagship annual military drills Monday, touted as a “rehearsal” for Manila’s defense amid ongoing tensions with China.

Billed as the “Super Bowl” of exercises in the region, this year’s drills underscore the Trump administration’s intent on keeping military support for its long-time ally as it faces growing pressure from Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.

Over 14,000 troops, including 9,000 from the US, will participate in drills that will be staged in western and northern Philippine locations facing the South China Sea and Taiwan, considered as regional flashpoints.

“The full battle test is intended to take into consideration all of the regional security challenges that we face today, beginning in the South China Sea,” US Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Glynn told reporters.

The allies’ defense partners, Australia and Japan, are also set to participate, while over a dozen other countries were invited to observe the exercises that run through May 9 — called Balikatan — a Filipino word that translates as shoulder-to-shoulder.

Manila is “treating the exercise as a rehearsal for our defense,” Philippine Brigadier General Michael Logico, director for the drills, said last week.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular press briefing Monday in Beijing that the Philippines holding the drills with other nations “disrupts regional strategic stability” and hurts the prospects for economic growth.

Guo did not name the US specifically but added: “China firmly opposes any country using the Taiwan question as an excuse to strengthen military deployment in the region, heighten tensions and confrontation, and disturb regional peace and stability.”

Beijing claims nearly the entire South China Sea — an assertion that Manila rejects because it has its own claims in the resource-rich waterway. China also sees self-governing Taiwan as a renegade province and held military drills around the island recently.

“Balikatan is not against any nation, but it is a joint training with US forces to increase our capability in securing our territory,” Philippine Major General Francisco Lorenzo said Monday.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced during his visit to Manila last month that the US would be deploying the NMESIS anti-ship missile system for this year’s drills, which will cover air and missile defense — a new feature in the war games.

The NMESIS will be used during the maritime security exercises in northern Luzon and the Batanes Islands, areas that are near Taiwan, according to the US Indo-Pacific Command.

The planned exercise builds on previous drills, “signaling continuity with the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, both of which defined China as the greatest threat to the United States,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the US.

The drills are happening as China’s trade war with the US intensifies. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview this month that Manila expects a sustained $500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region.

“This is the Super Bowl of all exercises in this part of the region,” Logico said.

— With assistance from Philip Glamann

(Updates with comments from China’s foreign ministry and US and Philippine military officials.)

14. Real Military Reform Begins – Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline? by Gary Anderson

Excerpts:

This is a political-military challenge. With the combination of their Belt and Road Initiative and coercive diplomacy, the Chinese are challenging us for control of the Indo-Pacific Region, and they are making significant inroads. They are constructing resort hotel complexes with adjoining airfields (some of which we built in World War II) in Micronesia and Melanesia that can quickly be converted to military purposes. In the strategically significant Solomons, the Chinese co-opted the corrupt and authoritarian government to serve their interests while the Biden administration slept.

The U.S. has slowly begun to recognize the issue, but our military and diplomatic influence in the region has been severely under-resourced. As previously mentioned, the naval presence in the region has been scaled back due to the shortage of Navy ships. This reduction has led to fewer goodwill civil-military projects that once helped sustain American dominance in the region.

It will take more than four years to repair the Biden administration’s neglect of the military, but Hegseth appears dedicated to stopping the downward spiral. If he succeeds, he will have done a great service to our nation.

Real Military Reform Begins

spectator.org · by Gary Anderson · April 18, 2025

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In Print - Spring 2025

Real Military Reform Begins

Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

April 18, 2025, 10:05 PM

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Bill Wilson/The American Spectator)

America’s military has been adrift for some time. President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, appears determined to set it back on the proper course. So far, he appears to be on track. He has largely deconstructed the corrosive DEI culture that has hindered both morale and recruiting. He is emphasizing lethality over bureaucracy and is moving to demand accountability for the debacle that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Perhaps most importantly, he is committed to rebuilding our defense industrial base, particularly in regard to shipbuilding, naval maintenance, and the production of sufficient ammunition to fight a prolonged major war. I have not seen such an uptick in morale among our uniformed service members since Caspar Weinberger became Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense.

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However, much remains to be done. There are four critical areas that must be addressed. Each of these was allowed to deteriorate during the Biden–Obama years. In his first term, Trump was unable to adequately address them due to incessant legal and social pressure from the Left. But he now appears to be ready to tackle these challenges through Hegseth.

Making the Navy and Marine Corps Great Again

The two services that have suffered the most from the Biden administration’s neglect are the Navy and Marines. The new secretary of the Navy designee has promised to go line by line over existing and future contracts to ensure that the waste and corruption of the past decade are eliminated, but the rot runs deeper than that. Until the military-industrial base is revitalized, shipbuilding and maintenance must be subject to innovative solutions, even if that means temporarily outsourcing them overseas.

First, the attack submarine fleet must be expanded to the point that it can simultaneously deter a war with China, maintain commitments to NATO, and ensure freedom of the seas in the Persian Gulf.

Additionally, there are not enough large-deck amphibious ships to provide a 24/7 Navy–Marine Corps presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and the Indo-Pacific regions). The Marine Corps is equally responsible here, as it released the Navy from its commitment to maintain thirty-eight amphibious ships, reducing the number to thirty-one; this did not account for the chronic maintenance problems that now limit the Navy to twelve to thirteen operationally ready amphibious ships at any given time. A minimum of eighteen combat-ready amphibious ships are needed at all times — nine on station and nine working — to maintain the required 24/7 presence worldwide.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Bill Wilson/The American Spectator)

The Marine Corps is a mess. The Biden administration allowed the last two Marine commandants to emasculate the Corps’ offensive warfighting capabilities in order to build a futile defensive maritime Maginot Line using nearly obsolete missiles that the other services already possess. This would all be based on islets and shoals in the South China Sea that no regional nation has granted us permission to use. To afford this travesty, the Marine Corps gave up tanks, heavy assault bridging capabilities, and wheeled artillery to the point that it could not meaningfully contribute to large-scale military operations.

The Marine Corps’ entire Force Design 2030 project, which aims to transform the branch “into a more agile, efficient, and technologically advanced force,” is based on questionable war games and shoddy analysis, much of which has been discredited by legitimate games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as the Marine Corps Times and the Wall Street Journal. Despite all this and the strong objections of virtually every former Marine Corps commandant, Generals David M. Berger and Eric M. Smith have repeatedly refused to revisit the flawed assumptions that underlie the concept. Unless Smith and the coterie of three-star generals who have enabled him are removed, the Marine Corps will degenerate from the world’s foremost maritime assault force into a bizarre combination of light infantry and coastal artillery.

Reforming the Goldwater–Nichols Act

The Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 has not aged well. Its original intent of improving joint warfighting capabilities has yielded unintended consequences. For instance, its requirement that any officer aspiring to flag and general officer rank (FOGO) complete a tour has led to a bloated system, with far more FOGOs and staffs, even as the number of troops in uniform has been reduced.

Military education has suffered as well. Our command and staff colleges should be the places where majors and their naval counterparts learn the real skills of high-level military tactics. Today, due to the military education reforms of Goldwater–Nichols, these schools are more concerned with granting second-rate political science master’s degrees. Additionally, our war colleges place greater emphasis on civil-military relations than on strategy and military history.

Continuing Dominance of the Skies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has maintained uncontested dominance in airpower. However, that is now changing. While American aircraft and aviators outclassed our adversaries in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, advancements in unmanned aircraft and artificial intelligence are beginning to challenge that superiority.

If we have learned anything from the Russo-Ukrainian War in the sky, it is that quantity has a quality of its own. In the immediate future, the side that can best integrate human decision-making with swarms of armed unmanned aerial systems and inexpensive “kamikaze” drones will control the air. This is a competition we cannot afford to lose. Currently, the Russians, Chinese, and even the Ukrainians are producing large quantities of relatively cheap, “good enough” drones — far outpacing our overly engineered and expensive systems. In World War II, large numbers of cheap, easily produced U.S. and Russian tanks overwhelmed the smaller numbers of technologically superior German Panzers. A similar dynamic threatens to play out in the sky today, but this time, we’re on the losing end. We must rethink the production of unmanned aerial systems and develop tactics to effectively take advantage of AI.

Making Our Pacific Strategy Viable Again

This is a political-military challenge. With the combination of their Belt and Road Initiative and coercive diplomacy, the Chinese are challenging us for control of the Indo-Pacific Region, and they are making significant inroads. They are constructing resort hotel complexes with adjoining airfields (some of which we built in World War II) in Micronesia and Melanesia that can quickly be converted to military purposes. In the strategically significant Solomons, the Chinese co-opted the corrupt and authoritarian government to serve their interests while the Biden administration slept.

The U.S. has slowly begun to recognize the issue, but our military and diplomatic influence in the region has been severely under-resourced. As previously mentioned, the naval presence in the region has been scaled back due to the shortage of Navy ships. This reduction has led to fewer goodwill civil-military projects that once helped sustain American dominance in the region.

It will take more than four years to repair the Biden administration’s neglect of the military, but Hegseth appears dedicated to stopping the downward spiral. If he succeeds, he will have done a great service to our nation.

Gary Anderson retired as the chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a special adviser to the deputy secretary of defense. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University.

15. How Long Will Big U.S. Banks Continue to Lead the World?

Excerpts:

So when it comes to a global trade war, U.S. megabanks could become collateral damage. Many of Europe’s champions retrenched over the past 15 years, while Chinese and Asian powerhouses have limited heft beyond their region. A long-lasting trade war could begin to change the playing field.

Already, U.S. banks have reported a slowdown in dealmaking activity, with clients on pause as they wait for clarity on trade policy. The risk is that they lose even the deals that are getting done to foreign rivals they previously bested.

“We will be in the crosshairs. That’s what’s going to happen,” JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon acknowledged on the bank’s first-quarter earnings call.

“And it’s OK. We’re deeply embedded in these other countries, people like us,” he added. “But I do think some clients or some countries will feel differently about American banks, and we’ll just have to deal with that.”

Since these U.S. giants already have a huge share of their home market, global diversification isn’t about bragging rights. It’s an important driver of growth.

How Long Will Big U.S. Banks Continue to Lead the World?

The trade war threatens the global dominance and growth of America’s megabanks

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/us-banks-global-trade-war-jpmorgan-citigroup-c237d9d1

By Telis Demos

April 21, 2025 7:00 am ET

JPMorgan says every day it moves more than $10 trillion across 160-plus countries in over 120 currencies. Photo: John Taggart for WSJ

America is the China of banking.

While the U.S. may import more manufactured goods than it exports, it runs a large trade surplus in one notable business: financial services. The overall U.S. trade surplus for financial services in 2024 was about $130 billion, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Some of that reflects quirks of global money flows, like U.S. firms managing offshore funds. But it also includes things such as trading commissions, underwriting and mergers-and-acquisitions advice. Categories including those services collectively represented a nearly $10 billion surplus last year.

This plays out in practice in global league tables for advising on deals and fundraising. The rankings have tilted sharply toward American banks in the period since the 2008 financial crisis. Last year, U.S. banks occupied the top five spots for investment-banking revenue worldwide, and were seven of the top 10, according to Dealogic.

So when it comes to a global trade war, U.S. megabanks could become collateral damage. Many of Europe’s champions retrenched over the past 15 years, while Chinese and Asian powerhouses have limited heft beyond their region. A long-lasting trade war could begin to change the playing field.

Already, U.S. banks have reported a slowdown in dealmaking activity, with clients on pause as they wait for clarity on trade policy. The risk is that they lose even the deals that are getting done to foreign rivals they previously bested.

“We will be in the crosshairs. That’s what’s going to happen,” JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon acknowledged on the bank’s first-quarter earnings call.

“And it’s OK. We’re deeply embedded in these other countries, people like us,” he added. “But I do think some clients or some countries will feel differently about American banks, and we’ll just have to deal with that.”

Since these U.S. giants already have a huge share of their home market, global diversification isn’t about bragging rights. It’s an important driver of growth.

JPMorgan has said that every day it moves more than $10 trillion across 160-plus countries in over 120 currencies. Lending to non-U.S. commercial customers, meanwhile, is a major source of new loans for Bank of America. As of the first quarter, these were up almost 14% since the end of 2022 compared with overall loan growth of 6%.

Speaking on his bank’s earnings call last week, Bank of America finance chief Alastair Borthwick described lending outside the U.S. as “a big part of our growth” over the past 15 years. “As we’ve become a more global and international company than maybe we were in 2007, it was important for us to diversify the loan book outside of just the U.S.,” he said.

Not that this path is going to close overnight. Companies may find it difficult, in a short-lived trade spat, to disentangle themselves from a U.S. bank that has served them for years.

And U.S. banks have another advantage: They provide access to the U.S.’s deep capital markets, which have long been a lure for foreign companies. That makes it valuable to stay close to American banks.

Citigroup, for one, hasn’t seen shifts in business away from it in recent weeks, Chief Executive Jane Fraser told analysts last week. Global companies might even turn more often to the bank if they need to rework their cross-border operations or money flows, she said, calling Citigroup “a port in the storm.”

Citigroup has long had global banking at the core of its business, including providing day-to-day treasury services, with a physical presence in 94 jurisdictions.

“Many of these markets around the world, we’ve been in for over a century,” Fraser said. “We were the first bank in, sometimes we’re the only international bank in” a country.

The longer a trade war goes on, though, the greater the threat to U.S. banks is likely to become.

“Foreign firms don’t generally have to use the global arms of U.S. banks for high-fee transactions,” said Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Amid trade tensions and other cross-border spats, “there could be a chilling effect—in much the same way as Canadians are reconsidering whether they want to take a vacation in the U.S.”

A durable reshaping of the global trading system could also give greater urgency to long-term reforms in other countries and a decoupling from the U.S. Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president, has urged the European Union to enhance the continent’s capital markets for raising money.

If successful, such a move could give rise to stronger, broader European banks and might lessen the need for companies to access U.S. markets. In that case, there might be less need for the services of big U.S. banks.

U.S. megabanks are built to straddle the globe, and their growth depends on it. That will become more difficult, and less profitable, in a deglobalized world.

Write to Telis Demos at Telis.Demos@wsj.com

16. Crypto Knocks on the Door of a Banking World That Shut It Out

I plead complete ignorance on crypto. Is it going to help or hurt economically? Is this the way of the future? What are the implications? I guess I am going to have to study up on this.

Crypto Knocks on the Door of a Banking World That Shut It Out

Circle, BitGo and other crypto firms plan to apply for bank charters or licenses

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/crypto-knocks-on-the-door-of-a-banking-world-that-shut-it-out-082b3968

By Gina Heeb

and Vicky Ge Huang

April 21, 2025 5:30 am ET

Illustration: ELENA SCOTTI/WSJ, ISTOCK

Crypto is pushing deeper into the banking system.

A regulatory crackdown on crypto in the wake of the meltdown of FTX and two crypto-friendly banks prompted some in traditional finance to break up with the industry two years ago. Now President Trump’s pledge to make America a “bitcoin superpower” has set the stage for crypto to become more intertwined with the banking system.

A host of crypto firms including Circle and BitGo plan to apply for bank charters or licenses, according to people familiar with the matter. Crypto exchange Coinbase Global COIN 1.64%increase; green up pointing triangle and stablecoin company Paxos are considering similar moves, other people said.

That comes as the Trump administration moves to incorporate crypto into mainstream finance and Congress advances a pair of bills that would establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, which let people easily trade in and out of more volatile cryptocurrencies. The legislation would require stablecoin issuers to have charters or licenses from regulators.

Some crypto firms are interested in national trust or industrial bank charters that would enable them to operate more like traditional lenders, such as by taking deposits and making loans. Others are after relatively narrow licenses that would allow them to issue a stablecoin.

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto project, unveiled plans to launch a stablecoin called USD1 last month. It said the stablecoin’s reserves would be safeguarded by crypto custodian BitGo, which is getting close to submitting the bank charter application, people familiar with the matter said.

Any crypto firm that obtains a bank charter would become subject to stricter regulatory oversight.

Anchorage Digital, so far the only crypto firm in the country with a federal bank charter, said it spent tens of millions of dollars to comply with regulations.

In 2022, a bank regulator issued a consent order against Anchorage, pointing to anti-money-laundering deficiencies.

“It has not been easy,” said Nathan McCauley, chief executive officer of Anchorage, which obtained its charter in 2021. But he said the “whole gamut of regulatory and compliance obligations that banks have can be intertwined with the crypto industry.”

BitGo is among the crypto firms planning to apply for a bank charter. Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg News

The San Francisco-based company this year became a custodian for BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust alongside Coinbase. Anchorage also joined with Cantor Fitzgerald along with crypto custodian Copper for the firm’s $2 billion bitcoin-backed lending program. Tether is a major client of Cantor, which was previously headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Stablecoins are pegged to the dollar or other government-issued currencies, and store reserves in cash or cash-like assets such as Treasurys to keep a one-to-one ratio in value in place. Tether is the largest stablecoin with a $145 billion market cap, and Circle’s USD Coin is the second-largest with roughly $61 billion of tokens in circulation.

Just a few years ago, major banks cut ties with the crypto firms after a regulatory crackdown on the industry following FTX’s collapse. After the downfall of Silvergate Capital and Signature Bank, many founders in the industry struggled to find new banks that would take their deposits or lend to them.

After Trump returned to the White House, regulators rolled back rules requiring banks to get approval to engage in crypto activities. Further guidance for how banks can engage with crypto is expected later this year, a person familiar with the matter said.

Meanwhile, some banks are looking to play catch-up and forge ties with the industry.

In February, Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said his bank would issue its own stablecoin if a legal framework for doing so is established. U.S. Bancorp said this month it would relaunch its crypto custody service through a partnership with NYDIG, a bitcoin trading and banking firm.

Separately, a consortium of banks, which includes Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, has started to examine how to expand crypto operations to the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Standard Chartered didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some banks remain cautious. KeyCorp Chief Executive Chris Gorman said crypto could increasingly become competition for the industry and that his bank sees potential opportunity in the space but wants to first see how it develops.

He pointed to regulatory challenges such as anti-money-laundering safeguards with crypto. Banks can see where it goes at first, he said, “but beyond that it’s hard to trace.”

Write to Gina Heeb at gina.heeb@wsj.com and Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com

17. Do not Ignore the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Conflict

Excertps:

To reduce the chance that Uganda will become directly involved in kinetic conflict, a carrot-and-stick approach should be employed. The carrot being the provision of defensive-only military assistance and development aid. The stick being made clear that entry into the conflict will result in export restrictions on Ugandan food products and increasing diplomatic pressure with third-Party African nations. It is easier to keep a country out of conflict than it is to get them out of it.

Further, because the United States under President Donald Trump has gutted the USAID and its humanitarian efforts, third-party nations both inside and out of the Great Lakes region should be preparing for many refugees who will need help should the conflict expand. The rest of the global community must ensure that funding is available to support an African-led response should the fighting continue to intensify. A benchmark for preparedness should be the ability to provide humanitarian assistance up to a similar number of civilians who needed help in the Second Congo War.

Opinion / Perspective| The Latest

Do not Ignore the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Conflict

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/21/do-not-ignore-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc-conflict/

by Cameron Hendrix

04.21.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

The humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is only deepening as March 23 Movement (M23) and Rwandan forces continue their push deeper inside the nation. Should the recently proposed ceasefire fail, the likelihood of the conflict spilling over into a regional war in one of the most densely populated parts of the world increases dangerously. As each day peace is not achieved, the risk of a humanitarian disaster not seen since the Congo Wars escalates. To prevent this disaster, nations with the ability to help develop peace should provide greater focus on the region and support solutions led by third-party African nations.

Context

As the M23 group continues its crusade into the DRC, Rwanda’s true intentions are increasingly suspect. Ostensibly to rid the Eastern DRC of those responsible for the Rwandan Genocide, the truth, in part, seems to lie in Kinshasa’s vast mineral reserves in the region. Rwandan mineral exports have doubled since the most recent phase of the conflict and the country is exporting more than it mines, a mathematical impossibility. Rwanda has capitalized on limited DRC governmental control of its eastern borders, seizing large swathes of the $24 trillion worth of minerals in its territory.

Rwanda does in fact benefit from their mineral rich neighbor being in a constant state of internal conflict; it is one less nation to compete against. Except for diamond and manganese mining, most of the DRC’s mineral wealth is in these contested eastern reaches. Yet, the region has no direct links to Kinshasa without having to use a combination of earth tracks and ferries. Rwanda, however, is right next door and has easier logistical access.

It would be easy to think that the current conflict is caused by resource competition alone, but in doing so one ignores the potent drivers that are a bloody history of colonialism and warfare whose impacts are still experienced by the region’s inhabitants today. After all, Rwanda would have far less of a causa belli for the current invasion had the Belgians not installed members of the Tutsi people during the colonial era. While wars are almost never caused by cultural disagreements alone, they certainly set the foundation for attritional warfare and crimes against humanity. The current fighting has significant impacts for all key players and creates even more of a threat to stability in the region.

Future Risks

The upcoming Doha-sponsored cease-fire negotiations between Rwanda and the DRC are a promising step should both nations come to the table and agree to a ceasefire which is never a guarantee of peace. There have been ceasefire agreements, notably one in August 2024 that was violated by M23 two months later. The DRC is likely cautious to enter any ceasefire negotiations but may be forced to the table by the simultaneous withdrawal of the South African Development Community plus Burundian troops and more Ugandan soldiers—favorable to M23—entering the DRC. Should the ceasefire not be successful, the risk of a disastrous regional conflict not seen since the Congo Wars will increase.

Since the beginning of the year alone, there have been 230,000 refugees stemming from the conflict. Continued fighting will displace even more. These refugees will need extensive international humanitarian support as the DRC does not have the resources to adequately provide for them. Besides President Trump’s comment that the situation is a “very serious problem,” not much attention has been given from the U.S. to the crisis besides mulling over a mineral deal. It seems that the United States will be uninvolved in mediating the conflict or providing meaningful humanitarian aid.

To its credit, the French government has shown a degree of interest in solving the problem. Other EU nations, perhaps due to a primary focus on security concerns closer to home, have responded in a way so disjointed that other nations in the Great Lakes region may see this as an opportunity to capitalize on the crisis.

Should M23 continue in their stated goal of pushing all the way to Kinshasa, the fighting will become more intense as the quality of DRC-held infrastructure improves the closer to the capital therefore allowing the DRC military to deliver a greater number of troops and resources quickly. Coupled with the limited troop numbers of M23, the separatist group risks becoming overextended against increasingly concentrated DRC troops. M23 would likely respond to this by increasing its forced recruitment campaigns and use of child soldiers on both sides of the fighting.

Analysts are uncertain if M23 would attempt to march on Kinshasa because as it expands in towards the capital, its ability to be resupplied by Rwanda diminishes. A more feasible, and disruptive, move would be expanding southward towards the DRC cobalt mines (roughly 10% of the nation’s GDP). M23 would benefit from keeping as close as possible to Rwanda while preventing the DRC from achieving a logistical advantage.

Inattention from third-party governments combined with potentially increasing support of M23 from Uganda are key factors in the conflict expanding. The state of Burundi will continue to see an increase in refugees should the conflict continue to push south and may find itself needed to enter the conflict to a greater degree due to recent skirmishes with M23 and Rwandan troops. If these conditions continue, Burundi may feel it has little choice but to increase its military response should it view the conflict as even more existential than it already is.

Recommendations

If non-sub-Saharan countries continue to take the same approach they are now, the risk of a larger regional conflict increases. This is not to say that the argument for African Solutions to African Problems is illegitimate by any means. In fact, evidence points to third party African nations being more effective than non-African nations in mediating conflict on the continent. Third-party countries not in Africa that want to ensure a cessation of the conflict and prevent a third Congo War need to listen to third party African nations in how to approach the issue. Further, they need to understand that viewing the conflict as just about minerals minimizes the nuance of culture and the impacts of colonialism on the region today.

This does require a larger lift than what the international community is providing right now but the current approach of limited sanctions is clearly not effective. The level of forces in the region is increasing and the geopolitics are complex. Western nations in particular must remember that this conflict is not just about minerals – there are dozens of distinct groups in the region, each with their own agenda.

Western nations should consult their Sub-Saharan third party counterparts for next steps in reducing the impact of this conflict and prevent its expansion. In the meantime, the international community should take a firmer and more unified stance on sanctions with Rwanda. As a matter of principle alone, concerned parties should aggressively scrutinize, if not cease, exports of minerals from Rwanda especially with coltan, tin, gold, and their derived products until Rwanda ceases support of conflict in the region.

However, Rwanda has limited exposure to trade with western nations so it may not be enough alone to force them to cease their invasion. Ultimately, the next step should be the cessation of economic, education, and governance aid but preserving humanitarian assistance. Should this not work, and the conflict has led to humanitarian impacts seen during the Congo Wars, all aid to Rwanda would cease and instead be sent to the harmed populations in the DRC.

To reduce the chance that Uganda will become directly involved in kinetic conflict, a carrot-and-stick approach should be employed. The carrot being the provision of defensive-only military assistance and development aid. The stick being made clear that entry into the conflict will result in export restrictions on Ugandan food products and increasing diplomatic pressure with third-Party African nations. It is easier to keep a country out of conflict than it is to get them out of it.

Further, because the United States under President Donald Trump has gutted the USAID and its humanitarian efforts, third-party nations both inside and out of the Great Lakes region should be preparing for many refugees who will need help should the conflict expand. The rest of the global community must ensure that funding is available to support an African-led response should the fighting continue to intensify. A benchmark for preparedness should be the ability to provide humanitarian assistance up to a similar number of civilians who needed help in the Second Congo War.

Tags: democratic republic of congo, DRC, sub-Saharan africa, USAID

About The Author

Cameron Hendrix
Cameron is a graduate of Arizona State University with two degrees in Political Science and Urban Planning. This also included a final year of coursework at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia where he researched shared security concerns between the US and Australia. Currently, he is a Master of Public Administration student with a focus in security studies at George Washington University. In that capacity he has written about Australian voter perceptions of AUKUS, defense and intelligence policy, and administration of intelligence organizations. In his past work at ASU's Decision Theater as a research and policy aide he spent time identifying, researching, and visualizing public policy issues ranging from water rights in the Mekong River Basin to critical infrastructure security.

18. Hostile Influencing and Finland’s Vulnerabilities

Excerpts:

Following earlier criticized legislative changes, in 2024 parliament adopted the Act on Temporary Measures to Combat Instrumentalized Migration (known as the “pushback law”). The law makes it possible to turn people back at the border without assessing their asylum applications. This is an extraordinary development for a country that has repeatedly stated its commitment to a rules-based international system, the rule of law, and human rights. During the legislative process, Finland’s parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee chose to ignore the lack of support for the proposed law from the external legal experts it consulted. This reinforced calls for urgent reform of the system of constitutional review. Little is known publicly about the level of assessed threat surrounding the new law and border closures.

It is legitimate to raise questions about the chain of events, the factors at play, and their consequences. One view is that Finland has successfully responded to a hybrid threat from Russia through legislative changes and by closing its borders. Another perspective is that the rule of law and democratic institutions and processes in Finland have suffered significant damage. Critics would add that the unprecedented level of disagreement about the legality of the border security law and border closures has been a bonus for bad actors aiming to cause division. The unanswered question remains: what really happened and what are the potential implications for other NATO countries?

Hostile Influencing and Finland’s Vulnerabilities

How Finland Is Confronting Hybrid Threats and Russian Interference

irregularwarfare.org · by Joy Hyvärinen · April 18, 2025

In 2024, Finland experienced a sharp increase in GPS disturbances. Affected flights forced airports to switch to other navigation systems, preventing some flights from landing. Over 2,800 incidents reportedly affected flights that year compared to just 200 the year prior. The sudden increase raised suspicions of deliberate interference by Russia.

These disruptions are not occurring in a vacuum. Finland’s unique geography and shifting geopolitics makes it a particularly vulnerable and strategically significant target for hybrid operations. Unlike its Nordic-Baltic neighbors, Finland’s 5.6 million citizens share a land border of more than 800 miles with Russia. Though Finland was able to maintain a strong defense capability and carefully managed relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed Finland’s national security context radically. Recognizing that standing alone wasn’t a viable option, Finland went from a long-standing policy of neutrality to joining NATO in 2023. This decision built on an earlier pivot toward deeper integration with the West, marked first by Finland’s accession to the European Union in 1995.

While creating considerable challenges for defense policy, Finland’s geopolitical reality also places it in a unique position within NATO. One of Finland’s challenges is countering hostile malign influence, which exploits freedom of expression to undermine democratic institutions and processes. Finland’s response to these hybrid threats to democratic freedoms raises fundamental questions about the balance between national security and the preservation of democratic values. As Finland faces increasing pressures from external actors, the country’s ability to safeguard the rule of law and its democratic institutions is being tested in new and complex ways.

Hybrid challenges

Hybrid threats have been a longstanding national concern Iin Finland, and these concerns have escalated since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. The related concepts of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare, often used interchangeably, encompass a wide spectrum of activities, from influence campaigns, economic pressure and covert political maneuvering, to sabotage, cyberattacks and instrumentalization of migrant flows. Instrumentalized migration refers to a country directing large flows of migrants to the border of another country with the aim of creating pressure on the receiving country, a practice that has gained increased attention since 2021, when Belarus began orchestrating migrant flows to its border with Poland to place pressure on Warsaw and NATO. Among these tactics, influence activities are particularly insidious. They often involve spreading false and misleading information to destabilize states …whether by deepening societal tensions or influencing political processes in favor of a particular party.

Though hybrid activities are far from being a new phenomenon, they have emerged as an increasing concern in recent years, with NATO pointing to the speed, scale, and intensity of hybrid activities as a new feature. In response, the leaders of the Nordic and Baltic countries have tasked former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with preparing recommendations for Nordic-Baltic security and defense cooperation in advance of the June 2025 NATO summit. One of these priorities is “countering hybrid activities and operations, including threats in the cyber domain and to critical underwater infrastructure.” This reflects a growing recognition that hybrid threats—particularly those targeting cyber systems and critical infrastructure—require a coordinated, forward-looking regional strategy.

In the period between Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia appears to have stepped up its hybrid activities with the goal of undermining support for NATO, the EU, and Ukraine’s defense. As a consequence, responding to hybrid activities, which have the potential to develop rapidly in new directions, needs to remain a high priority for Finland. The country hosts the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, which shares best practices, provides recommendations, tests new counter-hybrid warfare approaches, and builds collective operational capacities. The center notes that hybrid activities can take advantage of political rights in democratic societies. Methods that exploit and twist fundamental political and civil liberties pose a challenge for democracies, including the wider democratic transatlantic alliance, as countermeasures can unintentionally infringe upon rights and liberties, such as the right to freedom of expression.

The Right to Freedom of Expression

The right to freedom of expression, or “free speech,” is a central issue in countering hostile influencing activities. A constitutionally-protected right in Finland, it is also protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty with binding decisions overseen by the European Court of Human Rights. The convention permits restrictions of free expression in the interest of national security, but only when strict criteria are fulfilled, according to Article 10.

Adversaries exploit this right to freedom of expression, which can create challenges for the development of countermeasures, especially since freedom of expression is fundamental to healthy democracy and must be protected. Restrictions on freedom of expression can also have impacts that are difficult to predict, which creates additional challenges. For example, there is a risk of playing into the hands of destabilizing forces, because measures that involve some degree of censorship can cause strong counter reactions amongst democratic populations. For example, the EU’s 2022 decision to prohibit Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik raised concerns about state censorship of media, causing intense debates and drawing criticism.

One alternative approach governments can take is to institute policies that encourage media literacy and the population’s resilience to false and misleading information. While this is a better approach than measures that restrict freedom of expression, it does not by itself solve the problem of vulnerability to hostile influencing campaigns. An effective strategy requires a mix of mutually supportive approaches across different sectors. As an example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recognizes the importance of building societal resilience through digital and civic literacy, but also emphasizes the importance of promoting a diverse and independent media sector. A range of different approaches are needed, such as fact-checking, counter messaging strategies and regulating online communications.

Finland’s Comprehensive Security Approach and Perceived Resilience to False and Misleading Information

Finland’s comprehensive approach to security emphasizes preparedness based on the collaboration of authorities, business, civil society organizations and all citizens, an approach that has been praised by international media. This strategy is based on a national assessment and includes plans to counter threats such as influencing activities, political, financial and military pressure, instrumentalized migration, terrorism, and disruption of food or energy supplies. Households are expected to have stockpiles that can sustain residents for 72 hours in case of major disruptions to critical supplies and civil defense shelters across the country can house around 4.8 million people.

Despite these strong resistance preparations and associated attitudes amongst the population, Mediapooli, the body that coordinates media sector preparedness, recently published a report which found that certain narratives (particularly ones that resonate with anti-establishment sentiments) appear to be having an impact. This is despite Finland having a historically strong resilience to Russian propaganda. The report warned that a subtle spread of anti-defense or anti-NATO rhetoric could slowly begin to impact public sentiment.

Despite Finland’s strong track record in high levels of media literacy and resilience to disinformation, recent reflections suggest the population may not be as immune as once believed. In May 2024, journalist Johanna Vehkoo, an expert on disinformation, argued that Finland might not manage as well as expected when facing a major foreign state-led disinformation campaign. Vehkoo pointed to events in 2015–2016, when Finns were confronted with a large-scale, homegrown disinformation effort. During that time, as significant numbers of asylum seekers arrived in the country, websites masquerading as news media began circulating false stories and racist narratives. Many Finns unwittingly amplified these messages on social media. While one could speculate about the role of domestic bad actors or so-called “useful idiots,” Vehkoo’s warning raises an important and timely concern.

Deep Divisions and Rule of Law Under Pressure

Deep divisions in Finnish society offer opportunities for hostile influence aimed at driving conflict and undermining democracy. The aggressive tone of public debates, including harassment of journalists, researchers and others who take up controversial topics such as immigration, has been a growing national concern for several years. In 2020 then-President Sauli Niinistö warned that “A culture of hate will not carry us far”.

This growing culture of hate appears to mirror and reinforce the political polarization increasingly evident in Finnish society. Suspects in many hate speech-related crimes have had connections to political parties and research has found increased polarization in politics. The current right-wing government was formed after elections in 2023, when the anti-immigrant Finns Party won 20.1 percent of the vote. The party has remained in government despite repeated controversies involving racism and comments about Nazis.

For several years, leading judges and experts have warned that the independence of the courts needs safeguards. They argue that the current system could allow a future government with a strong parliamentary majority to take control of the courts. In response, the government established a working group to develop constitutional guarantees for an independent judiciary. Issues with serious implications for the rule of law and Finland’s democratic institutions and processes have arisen in the context of legislative changes related to border security. These changes have been in response to possible attempts by Russia to direct large flows of migrants to Finland’s border.

Following earlier criticized legislative changes, in 2024 parliament adopted the Act on Temporary Measures to Combat Instrumentalized Migration (known as the “pushback law”). The law makes it possible to turn people back at the border without assessing their asylum applications. This is an extraordinary development for a country that has repeatedly stated its commitment to a rules-based international system, the rule of law, and human rights. During the legislative process, Finland’s parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee chose to ignore the lack of support for the proposed law from the external legal experts it consulted. This reinforced calls for urgent reform of the system of constitutional review. Little is known publicly about the level of assessed threat surrounding the new law and border closures.

It is legitimate to raise questions about the chain of events, the factors at play, and their consequences. One view is that Finland has successfully responded to a hybrid threat from Russia through legislative changes and by closing its borders. Another perspective is that the rule of law and democratic institutions and processes in Finland have suffered significant damage. Critics would add that the unprecedented level of disagreement about the legality of the border security law and border closures has been a bonus for bad actors aiming to cause division. The unanswered question remains: what really happened and what are the potential implications for other NATO countries?

Joy Hyvärinen specializes in freedom of expression, in particular issues related to national security. She is board chair of Finnish PEN. The views in this article are her own.

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.

Image Description: In the morning, the Finnish and NATO flags were hoisted in front of the main building of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Merikasarmi. 4 April 2023, 08:46:24 (FinnishGovernment)

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irregularwarfare.org · by Joy Hyvärinen · April 18, 2025

19. The Global Trading System Was Already Broken

Excerpts:

The best way to achieve this kind of globalization is to create a new customs union, along the lines of what Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods. States that join would agree to keep trade between them broadly balanced, with penalties for members that fail. But they would also erect trade barriers against countries that don’t participate in order to protect themselves from imbalances outside the customs union. Trade would not be expected to balance bilaterally, of course, but rather across all trade partners. Its members would have to commit to managing their economies in ways that would not externalize the costs of their own domestic policies. In that system, every country could choose its own preferred development path, yet it could not do so in ways that inflict the costs of domestic imbalances onto trade partners. (Smaller, less developed economies might receive some limited exemptions from the union’s rules.)

Until policymakers change the incentives, trade tensions will not abate.

Many countries, especially ones that have structured their economies around low domestic demand and permanent surpluses, might initially refuse to join such a union. But organizers could start by gathering a small group of countries that comprise the bulk of global trade deficits—such as Canada, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and bringing them into it. These states would have every incentive to join, and once they did, the rest of the world would eventually have to participate. If deficit countries refuse to run permanent deficits, after all, surplus countries cannot run permanent surpluses. They would instead be forced to raise domestic consumption or domestic investment—either of which would be good for global demand—or they would have no choice but to reduce domestic overproduction.

If the world created such a customs union, international trade “would cease to be,” as Keynes wrote, “a desperate expedient to maintain employment at home by forcing sales on foreign markets and restricting purchases.” The reason countries maximize exports would no longer be to export the cost of subsidizing domestic manufacturing but rather to maximize imports and household welfare.

If such a customs union isn’t possible, however, the most likely outcome is the beggar-thy-neighbor game predicted by Robinson in which states endeavor “to throw a larger share of the burden upon the others,” as she wrote. “As soon as one succeeds in increasing its trade balance at the expense of the rest, others retaliate, and the total volume of international trade sinks continuously.”

That seems to be the condition into which the world has been heading. It is what has delivered Trump’s tariffs, along with rising trade complaints from people around the globe. Until policymakers change the incentives for economies, international trade tensions will not abate.

The Global Trading System Was Already Broken

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Pettis · April 21, 2025

But There’s a Better Way to Fix It Than a Reckless Tariff Regime

Michael Pettis

April 21, 2025

Shipping containers in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, April 2025 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters

MICHAEL PETTIS is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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The sweeping tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 2, along with the subsequent postponements and retaliations, have unleashed an enormous amount of global uncertainty. Much of the world’s attention is on the chaotic, short-term consequences of these policies: wild stock market fluctuations, concerns about the U.S. bond market, fears of a recession, and speculation about how different countries will negotiate or react.

But whatever happens in the near term, this much is clear: Trump's policies reflect a transformation of the global trade and capital regime that had already started. One way or another, a dramatic change of some kind was necessary to address imbalances in the global economy that have been decades in the making. Current trade tensions are the result of a disconnect between the needs of individual economies and the needs of the global system. Although the global system benefits from rising wages, which push up demand for producers everywhere, tensions arise when individual countries can grow more quickly by boosting their manufacturing sectors at the expense of wage growth—for example, by directly and indirectly suppressing growth in household income relative to growth in worker productivity. The result is a global trading system in which, to their collective detriment, countries compete by keeping wages down.

The tariff regime Trump announced earlier this month is unlikely to solve this problem. To be effective, American trade policy must either reverse the savings imbalance in the rest of the world, or it must limit Washington’s role in accommodating it. Bilateral tariffs do neither.

But because something must replace the current system, policymakers would be wise to start crafting a sensible alternative. The best outcome would be a new global trade agreement among economies that commit to managing their domestic economic imbalances, rather than externalizing them in the form of trade surpluses. The result would be a customs union like the one proposed by the economist John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. Parties to this agreement would be required to roughly balance their exports and imports while restricting trade surpluses from countries outside the trade agreement. Such a union could gradually expand to the entire world, leading to both higher global wages and better economic growth.

Keynes’s plan failed to carry the day at Bretton Woods, largely because the United States—the leading surplus economy at the time—opposed it. Today, however, there is a chance to revive and adapt his proposal.

MIND THE GAP

To understand what ails the global trading system, consider how wages shape an individual economy. Higher wages are usually good for the economy because they boost demand for businesses while increasing their incentive to invest in efficiency. The result is a virtuous cycle. The growing demand spurs increased investment into ways of producing more with fewer workers, raising economic productivity which, in turn, drives further increases in wages.

Individual businesses, however, have different incentives. They can boost profits by suppressing wages. The problem is that although lower wages can benefit an individual business, they reduce the profits of others. In an economy in which business investment is mainly constrained by whether there is demand for more production, if businesses collectively suppress wages, either household and fiscal debt must rise to replace the lost demand, or total production and business profits will decline.

Although this phenomenon, sometimes called Michal Kalecki’s Paradox of Costs (named for the economist who first proposed it), mainly describes businesses, it also applies to countries in a global economy. If suppressing wage growth can make manufacturing in one country more globally competitive, it can generate faster growth for that country by subsidizing and boosting manufacturing exports. But if all countries suppress wage growth, growth in global demand is reduced, and all countries suffer.

Wage suppression subsidizes domestic production.

In a highly globalized world where some states are more successful than others at suppressing labor costs, the result is an asymmetry in the demand for and supply of goods. Because businesses do not have to make products in the same places where they sell them, local labor costs become crucial to the competitiveness of manufacturers. Businesses that shift production to countries where labor costs are lower relative to workers’ productivity can produce goods more cheaply, making their products more attractive globally.

In any given state, wage suppression puts downward pressure on domestic consumption while subsidizing domestic production. This results in a rising gap between production and consumption which, if it remains within the economy, must be balanced by raising domestic investment (which can further exacerbate the gap between production and consumption). Otherwise, the gap invariably reverses, either via raising wages or by cutting back on production.

But in a globalized economy, there is another option: running a trade surplus. This allows the country to export the cost of the gap between consumption and production to trade partners. This is why, in 1937, the economist Joan Robinson referred to the trade surpluses that resulted from suppressed domestic demand as the consequences of “beggar-my-neighbor” policies.

Washington disguised the employment consequences of its consistent trade deficit.

It is also why, at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Keynes opposed a global trading system that allowed countries to run large, persistent trade surpluses. A system that accommodated these surpluses, he said, would encourage countries eager to expand manufacturing to subsidize it at the cost of domestic demand. The result, Keynes explained, would be downward pressure on global demand as countries fought to remain competitive by suppressing wage growth. The countries most successful at doing so would become the winners of global trade. Their share of global manufacturing would expand while that of their trade partners contracts.

Keynes instead called for countries to “learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy.” In such a world, he argued, there would not be “important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours.”

At the time that Keynes and Robinson were writing, the cost of beggar-thy-neighbor policies came mainly in the form of higher unemployment, as higher exports—unbalanced by higher imports—undermined manufacturers in trade deficit countries and forced them to lay off workers. But after the world abandoned the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s, governments—including the U.S. government—learned to allay the costs of unemployment either by lowering interest rates to encourage consumer lending or through unrestricted deficit spending. The United States thus disguised the employment consequences of running a consistent trade deficit, but it did so through surging household and fiscal debt.

EXPORT TO IMPORT

The link between the internal imbalances of one country and that of its trade partners has implications that economists sometimes fail to fully understand. In every economy, internal and external economic imbalances must align, just as each country’s external imbalances must align with the external imbalances of the rest of the world. This means that countries able to control their internal imbalances will at least partially drive the internal imbalances of trade partners. It is why in any globalized system, as the economist Dani Rodrik has explained, countries must choose either more global integration or more control over the domestic economy.

Within Rodrik’s formulation, there are at least two very different ways of understanding globalization. In the one most analysts assume describes the world, major economies all chose to give up broadly the same degree of control over their domestic economies in favor of more global integration. Global trade is thus generally balanced as market forces reverse government policies that create internal imbalances. If a country runs large, persistent trade surpluses, for example, its currency will appreciate, or its wages will rise, making its goods more expensive. That will, in turn, cause the trade surplus to shrink as the welfare of domestic households expands.

In the other model of globalization—one that better describes the world as it is—some major economies exert less control over their domestic economies in favor of more global integration, whereas others choose to retain control over their domestic economies, perhaps by controlling wage growth, or determining domestic prices and allocation of credit, or restricting trade and capital accounts. To the extent that the latter set of states intervene to prevent their domestic economic imbalances from reversing, they effectively impose their internal imbalances on countries that retain less control over their trade and capital accounts. If they choose industrial policies aimed at expanding their manufacturing sectors, for example, they are also implicitly imposing industrial policies on their trade partners, albeit ones which result in a relative contraction in those partners’ manufacturing industries.

The world needs a new customs union.

This is precisely the kind of globalization that Keynes and Robinson opposed. It is the kind of globalization that allows governments to pursue Kaleckian strategies that are expansionary for their economies but contractionary for the global economy as a whole.

If globalization is to thrive, the world must revert to a kind of globalization where countries export in order to import and where a country’s production, consumption, and investment imbalances are resolved domestically—not foisted onto trade partners. The world requires, in other words, a new global trade regime where countries agree to restrain their domestic imbalances and match domestic demand with domestic supply. Only then will states no longer be forced to absorb one another’s internal imbalances.

The best way to achieve this kind of globalization is to create a new customs union, along the lines of what Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods. States that join would agree to keep trade between them broadly balanced, with penalties for members that fail. But they would also erect trade barriers against countries that don’t participate in order to protect themselves from imbalances outside the customs union. Trade would not be expected to balance bilaterally, of course, but rather across all trade partners. Its members would have to commit to managing their economies in ways that would not externalize the costs of their own domestic policies. In that system, every country could choose its own preferred development path, yet it could not do so in ways that inflict the costs of domestic imbalances onto trade partners. (Smaller, less developed economies might receive some limited exemptions from the union’s rules.)

Until policymakers change the incentives, trade tensions will not abate.

Many countries, especially ones that have structured their economies around low domestic demand and permanent surpluses, might initially refuse to join such a union. But organizers could start by gathering a small group of countries that comprise the bulk of global trade deficits—such as Canada, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and bringing them into it. These states would have every incentive to join, and once they did, the rest of the world would eventually have to participate. If deficit countries refuse to run permanent deficits, after all, surplus countries cannot run permanent surpluses. They would instead be forced to raise domestic consumption or domestic investment—either of which would be good for global demand—or they would have no choice but to reduce domestic overproduction.

If the world created such a customs union, international trade “would cease to be,” as Keynes wrote, “a desperate expedient to maintain employment at home by forcing sales on foreign markets and restricting purchases.” The reason countries maximize exports would no longer be to export the cost of subsidizing domestic manufacturing but rather to maximize imports and household welfare.

If such a customs union isn’t possible, however, the most likely outcome is the beggar-thy-neighbor game predicted by Robinson in which states endeavor “to throw a larger share of the burden upon the others,” as she wrote. “As soon as one succeeds in increasing its trade balance at the expense of the rest, others retaliate, and the total volume of international trade sinks continuously.”

That seems to be the condition into which the world has been heading. It is what has delivered Trump’s tariffs, along with rising trade complaints from people around the globe. Until policymakers change the incentives for economies, international trade tensions will not abate.

MICHAEL PETTIS is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Pettis · April 21, 2025

20. How Europe Can Deter Russia

Excerpts:

Finally, it is critical for European military planners to concentrate combat power. He who defends everything defends nothing, or so the saying goes. The continent should be focused on being able to deploy to Poland, on short notice, one or two independent corps with accompanying air support—both of which must be able to operate without U.S. assistance. (A corps is the principal command organization for large ground force operations, coordinating the actions of five-to-ten brigades to achieve a common purpose.) The preparations that NATO has already made to reinforce Poland in a crisis can serve as the foundation for a repurposed, independent European effort. The existing NATO Multinational Corps Northeast, located in Poland and currently focused mainly on the Baltics and the Polish-Belarussian border, could serve as the foundation of one corps. The EU’s Eurocorps headquarters in the French city of Strasbourg could serve as the foundation of a second corps. The EU corps, a unit independent of NATO, should start to now master the challenge of managing large field operations without American help. This corps should serve as the test bed for employing existing European command and control, navigation, and intelligence satellites.

Contrary to public perception, the continent has all these capabilities, even if they are not plentiful. Individual European nations are also accustomed to keeping their national hands on them. They share intelligence grudgingly. This must change. France and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, will need to think hard about how their nuclear forces can backstop the continent’s conventional forces in an independent European deterrence strategy.

If Europeans want to deter Russia, reassure Ukraine, defend existing EU or NATO members, or even defend Ukraine, then they need combat power that can match to the challenges posed by Russia’s military. This means assembling a capable mass of maneuver that makes Moscow more cautious when it comes to the continent in every which way. Peacekeeping with American help is old think. Independent combat capability is the necessary new-think in Europe.

How Europe Can Deter Russia

Foreign Affairs · by More by Barry R. Posen · April 21, 2025

Deploying Troops to Ukraine Is Not the Answer

Barry R. Posen

April 21, 2025

British military equipment at a training area in Poland, May 2024 Kacper Pempel / Reuters

BARRY R. POSEN is Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump began his effort to settle the war in Ukraine, European leaders have tried to assemble a military coalition capable of defending Kyiv. They have promised, specifically, to station forces in Ukraine. “There will be a reassurance force operating in Ukraine representing several countries,” said French President Emmanuel Macron in March. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for a “coalition of the willing” to help protect Kyiv.

This initiative may seem novel and bold, but it is old-think disguised as new-think. Europeans can call these forces whatever they want—peacekeepers, peace enforcers, a reassurance force, a deterrent force. But European leaders are simply repackaging NATO’s 1990s Balkan peacekeeping model for Ukraine. Penny packets of military force would be spread around the country to send the Russians a deterring message. Yet these forces would have limited combat power, and their credibility would depend on the promise of U.S. military force in reserve. European leaders even admit that their forces must be “backstopped” by Washington, which could provide massive air support in the event that the continent’s ground troops are attacked.

The scheme depends on Trump’s support and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s acquiescence. And both of them have already rejected their appointed roles. Trump is no more likely to commit the United States to wage war in Ukraine under any circumstances than was the Biden administration, which refused to do so. Moreover, the European plan would also have the effect, almost surely intended, of anchoring a wayward United States back into NATO, a project that U.S. Vice President JD Vance has repeatedly and categorically rejected. To Putin, meanwhile, acceptance of the European scheme would mean abandoning a key war goal—keeping Ukraine out of NATO and NATO out of Ukraine. European leaders get high marks for diplomatic subtlety as they attempt to disguise this two-pronged effort to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat. But it is very unlikely that either Putin or Trump will bite.

Even if Trump and Putin were to accept such a scheme, Europeans should not want to pursue it. The continent’s people face many potential threats from Russia, and so it is foolish for them to tie down their readiest forces in garrisons across Ukraine. They may deter Russia there, but the forces would be unavailable for anything else. This kind of mission would lure European armies into rotating units through these positions in a way that doesn’t leave their soldiers far from home for long periods. Every unit will either be getting ready to go to Ukraine, be somewhere in Ukraine, or will just have returned from Ukraine. This routine is not a formula for a combat capable army.

So what should Europe do, not only to deter future Russian threats to Ukraine, but also to improve its ability to deter Russian aggression in the continent’s east and southeast? The answer is simple—Europe must organize what military planners call a “mass of maneuver” that can quickly deploy where it is needed. Europe cannot know in advance whether a refreshed Russia would renew attacks on Ukraine, move forward into Belarus, threaten Poland, or snarl at the Baltics. As a result, its officials must consolidate meaningful combat power that can intervene quickly wherever and whenever needed. That means they must stop distributing European military forces over the continent’s east and southeast simply as symbols of their commitment, linked to a U.S. cavalry that may no longer ride to the rescue. Rather, they must conceive of European military formations as scarce, expensive, and potentially lethal combat power, which can be deployed as a concentrated fist with the ability to fight independently, under either a NATO or an EU banner.

Contrary to what is widely believed, Europeans have most of the military wherewithal needed to create such a force. The question is whether they have the will.

ARMED, NOT READY

In their Trump-induced panic, European military leaders and pundits have spent the last few months talking about all the combat power that Europe does not have. But they have failed to evaluate and consolidate the combat power that Europe does have. For example, General Mikhail Kostarakos, the chair of the European Union Military Committee, observed that Europe lacks the “strategic enablers that would render it capable of independently performing the full range of tasks associated with the missions and operations it launches”—such as airlift and aerial refueling; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; satellites; and air and missile defense. But Europe doeshave many of these systems, just not as many as commanders would prefer. Europeans may not have spent what the United States or NATO itself asked of them over the last decade, but they have spent hundreds of billions of euros. They have hundreds of thousands of people under arms, and possess meaningful numbers of ground, air, and naval units.

Europeans, in other words, have combat power. To deter and defend themselves, what they need to do is consolidate that combat power and either deploy it close to the possible areas of a Russian challenge or at least demonstrate that they can do so in short order. In the first instance, this means being able to reinforce Poland, which by reason of size, location, and topography is both the eastern lynchpin of European defense and the ideal base from which to counter Russian threats against the Baltic states and the continent’s southeast. It is also the ideal place from which it can intervene in Ukraine, should Europeans choose to do so.

To achieve this aim, the continent should fulfil the NATO Readiness Initiative, a proposal spearheaded by Jim Mattis, who served as U.S. secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019. This initiative called for NATO to develop the ability to deploy 30 battalions, 30 squadrons, and 30 ships to eastern Europe in 30 days. These four 30s were never achieved, even when the United States almost surely would have been a key contributor. It might thus be hard to see how Europe will succeed now. But much of the problem then was that Europeans were simply not scared enough to do their part. They are scared now, and that energy can be harnessed to fulfill the initiative and do even more.

European ground forces vary in their readiness.

The continent has the forces: European members of NATO collectively field nearly 100 fighter squadrons, 100 major warships, and over 100 brigades—of which it would need ten to meet Mattis’ 30-batallion objective. Ground forces are the long pole in the tent, but Europe’s air forces are large, modern, experienced, and well trained. They can provide powerful support to ground troops.

Some might argue that ten brigades is still not much force compared to the 90 odd regular, and 80 odd irregular regiments in the Russian army. (A Russian regiment is similar to a European brigade, albeit usually smaller, less well-supported, and often understrength due to combat attrition.) But properly organized, ten good brigades, split into two mechanized corps, would be a capability that a Russian campaign planner could not ignore. For comparison, this force would be similar in size to the force that NATO planners encouraged Ukraine to concentrate for one attack in their 2023 counter-offensive in Zaporizhzhia. (The Ukrainians ignored this advice, divided their forces, and instead launched two weak offensives.) It is several times the size of the force that Ukraine thrust into the Kursk region of Russia in 2024. And it is about two-thirds of the size of the force that conquered all of Iraq in 2003.

Between them, the three key military players in western Europe—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—field some 22 combat brigades, so they are well able to fill out the initial force on their own, and if need be enlarge it. Although not all of these brigades are tank-heavy armored units, they are all well-equipped by the standards of the Russian and Ukrainian troops that have fought one another to a bloody standstill in the last three years. This ten-brigade force would reinforce the Polish army, which according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, itself has 14 brigades. A reinforced Poland would then become a tough nut for Moscow to crack, fielding roughly as many forces as Ukraine deployed to stop the Russian offensive in Ukraine in early 2022.

European ground forces do, however, vary in their readiness. Some of their equipment may need maintenance, and some units are understaffed. Munitions and spare parts, about which there is generally little public information, are almost surely not plentiful. And these forces would benefit from additional, short-range air defense systems that can handle the kind of drone attacks that are common in the war in Ukraine. Thankfully for Europe, rectifying these problems is straightforward: allocate more funds, double and triple shift the continent’s defense factories, and abandon the obsession with sharing defense spending and industrial work equally across borders. European military planners have already done some of this, but they must to do more.

NEED FOR SPEED

In addition to readiness, mobility is a problem for the continent. If Poland is to be the fulcrum of a large-scale European crisis reinforcement effort, then Europeans have to figure out how to get there. Skeptics complain that Europe lacks the airlift rapidly to move forces around Europe, but this is a rhetorical diversion. No one, including the United States uses airlift to move this much armor. Instead, armor mostly moves by rail, sea, and road. NATO planners and European Union officials know what needs to be done to get the continent’s infrastructure ready for such a task: strengthen bridges in eastern Europe, complete the integration of eastern European railroads with the rail network in the west, acquire diesel locomotives to pull trains if electrical power is interrupted by enemy action, and improve port facilities for the shipment and unloading of military cargo.

Some of these preparations are already underway. Several bridges in western Poland have been strengthened in recent years, to accommodate heavy military loads. More broadly, the European Union has spent at least 15 years funding a major effort to upgrade Europe’s transportation infrastructure, and has spent or committed over $38 billion to the effort. But this endeavor remains incomplete, and it should be accelerated. The European civilian-trucking industry, which is massive, should also be organized so it can support the movement of military goods to eastern Europe. (During the Cold War the West German army had the right to requisition 90,000 individual pieces of civilian heavy equipment.) To further enhance the credibility of Europe’s commitment to reinforce its eastern and southeastern members, reception and sustainment facilities can be improved across both areas. This means strengthening and building fuel tanks, skeletal bases with paved parking areas and bunkers, fiber-optic cables, and even railway-sidings to permit rapid unloading off trains. Civilian and military airfields in eastern and southern Europe would benefit from similar kinds of improvements. These efforts can be managed by European civilian construction, manufacturing, and transportation firms.

Finally, it is critical for European military planners to concentrate combat power. He who defends everything defends nothing, or so the saying goes. The continent should be focused on being able to deploy to Poland, on short notice, one or two independent corps with accompanying air support—both of which must be able to operate without U.S. assistance. (A corps is the principal command organization for large ground force operations, coordinating the actions of five-to-ten brigades to achieve a common purpose.) The preparations that NATO has already made to reinforce Poland in a crisis can serve as the foundation for a repurposed, independent European effort. The existing NATO Multinational Corps Northeast, located in Poland and currently focused mainly on the Baltics and the Polish-Belarussian border, could serve as the foundation of one corps. The EU’s Eurocorps headquarters in the French city of Strasbourg could serve as the foundation of a second corps. The EU corps, a unit independent of NATO, should start to now master the challenge of managing large field operations without American help. This corps should serve as the test bed for employing existing European command and control, navigation, and intelligence satellites.

Contrary to public perception, the continent has all these capabilities, even if they are not plentiful. Individual European nations are also accustomed to keeping their national hands on them. They share intelligence grudgingly. This must change. France and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, will need to think hard about how their nuclear forces can backstop the continent’s conventional forces in an independent European deterrence strategy.

If Europeans want to deter Russia, reassure Ukraine, defend existing EU or NATO members, or even defend Ukraine, then they need combat power that can match to the challenges posed by Russia’s military. This means assembling a capable mass of maneuver that makes Moscow more cautious when it comes to the continent in every which way. Peacekeeping with American help is old think. Independent combat capability is the necessary new-think in Europe.

ARRY R. POSEN is Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Barry R. Posen · April 21, 2025

21. Europe Could Lose What Makes It Great

Excerpts:

The EU should also take advantage of shifting global alliances and the fact that many countries are threatened by both U.S. big tech and the Trump administration. In a world where the United States is turning on its friends, the Brussels effect is part of what makes Europe an appealing partner. For instance, countries including Australia, Brazil, and South Korea have adopted tough approaches to digital regulation modeled on the EU’s. EU protections of the rights of citizens serve as a symbol and a shield against American saber rattling for many people worldwide.

EU officials—those in the commission first and foremost—should heed the appeals of civil society and recommit themselves as “guardians of the treaties.” The EU is enjoying record levels of public support, and its regulations enjoy a strong backing by citizens. The growing European boycott of American goods and services suggests that surrendering to U.S. pressure could trigger a public backlash. Capitulating to Trump’s demands would also only invite fresh demands, as extortionists always come back for more. The collapse of the rules-based international order also makes enforcing the EU’s regulatory standards and rights protections more vital than ever. Faced with geopolitical uncertainty and the specter that “might makes right,” the EU can stand as a beacon of stability and the rule of law. It can reassure the world that, unlike the United States, the EU has not lost sight of where its influence comes from, who its allies are, and where its values lie.

Europe Could Lose What Makes It Great

Foreign Affairs · by More by Anu Bradford · April 21, 2025

U.S. Pressure and Domestic Rancor Threaten the EU’s Regulatory Superpower

April 21, 2025

The headquarters of the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium, April 2025 Yves Herman / Reuters

ANU BRADFORD is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School.

R. DANIEL KELEMEN is McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

TOMMASO PAVONE is Assistant Professor of European Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

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“The European Union was formed to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it and they’ve done a good job of it.” So claimed U.S. President Donald Trump in late February as he geared up to levy massive tariffs on Washington’s rivals and allies alike. His administration asserts that the EU hurts U.S. exporters by erecting barriers to free trade, including tariffs, state subsidies, and unfair regulations on American firms. The prior month, Vice President JD Vance had lodged his own complaints about Europe’s alleged perfidy, threatening that the United States might withdraw its security guarantees from Europe if the EU continued to aggressively regulate U.S. tech companies. This threatening rhetoric turned into reality in April, when Trump announced a blanket 20 percent tariff on goods from the European Union, as well as more targeted 25 percent penalties on steel, aluminum, and cars—all part of a blizzard of new tariffs on countries around the world that Trump dubbed “Liberation Day.” Although the Trump administration has since reduced the blanket tariff to ten percent as part of a 90-day “pause,” the targeted tariffs remain in place.

EU officials have approved a set of retaliatory tariffs targeting products such as poultry, grains, and metals, but these could still be suspended in reaction to the newly announced pause. But in seeking an off-ramp from tit-for-tat escalation, the EU may agree to make broader concessions to Washington. Those could include trimming the thicket of regulations that seek to protect EU citizens and constrain private companies. Were that to happen, the EU would risk losing what makes it truly influential in the world: its global regulatory superpower.

The EU determines national and corporate regulatory standards in many areas, including data privacy, market competition, the use of pesticides on farmlands, and corporate sustainability practices. But thanks to its size, the standards and rules it imposes domestically often get voluntarily adopted abroad by multinational companies that want both simplicity and smooth access to the European market. As a result, the EU ends up regulating the food people eat, the air they breathe, and the items they produce and consume not just in Europe but around the world. Even the powerful U.S. tech giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft use the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation as their global privacy policy. The combination of the EU’s market size, its high regulatory standards, and its resolve to enforce them grants the union an extraordinary amount of global regulatory influence—a phenomenon that one of us (Bradford) has dubbed “the Brussels effect.”

As the EU has faced mounting geopolitical challenges, the Brussels effect has remained a key pillar of its global power. And behind this power also lies Europe’s normative appeal: unlike the Chinese model of statist regulation or the traditional American model of deregulatory market capitalism, the EU’s regulatory approach puts the rights of citizens first. EU regulations in areas such as data privacy, content moderation, environmental protection, and product safety have therefore become a template that many governments around the world emulate, benefiting countless people who never set foot on European soil.

And yet today, the EU seems poised to trade away its leverage as a global regulatory superpower. In January, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg appealed to the Trump administration to pressure Europe to loosen its regulations on U.S. tech firms, likening Brussels’ antitrust fines to tariffs on American companies. According to Zuckerberg, the EU was “screwing with” U.S. industry. Subsequent media reports suggested the EU was thinking of shelving probes into Apple, Google, and Meta in response to threats from the Trump administration.

The Trump administration’s tariffs and threats of withdrawing security guarantees can’t simply be brushed off, but on their own they cannot force EU regulators to capitulate. The EU has considerable leverage as the United States’ largest bilateral trade and investment partner and the primary market of choice for most American companies. If the EU lets the Brussels effect die out, it would not be a defeat but an unnecessary surrender. In fact, the greater threats to the EU’s regulatory power today are those coming from inside the EU, such as calls by European industry for relaxing regulation in the name of enhancing competitiveness. The EU must not bend in the face of American pressure and domestic rancor. By reminding itself—and showing the world—that regulation and economic dynamism are not inherently at odds, the bloc can retain its status as a regulatory superpower.

FROM FORBEARANCE TO SURRENDER

How did the EU get to the point of seriously considering giving up its regulatory superpower? Recent pressures from the Trump administration and American tech giants may be tipping the balance, but only because they are exacerbating two long-standing trends in EU politics. For too long, EU officials have been hesitant to enforce their own laws. And they are now also coming to the ill-judged conclusion that these laws and regulations stand in the way of economic growth.

More than two decades ago, in the halls of its Berlaymont headquarters, the European Commission was quietly transforming its approach to enforcement. This new approach, which two of us (Kelemen and Pavone) have labeled “forbearance,” involved the intentional underenforcement of EU laws and regulations.

The EU’s turn to forbearance had nothing to do with external pressures but was instead a response to problems at home. Amid a rising tide of Euroscepticism in the years before the 2008 financial crisis, EU member states increasingly complained about the commission’s vigorous enforcement of regulations. The president of the commission at the time, José Manuel Barroso, became convinced that by relaxing the enforcement of EU rules and adopting a more conciliatory approach, he could win back support from national governments. By reining in the lawyers and bureaucrats who had been suing member governments before the European Court of Justice, the commission began sacrificing its legal role as the “guardian of the treaties” to safeguard its political role as the engine of European integration.

The commission’s relaxation of enforcement had a greater effect than even its advocates anticipated. From 2004 to 2018, the number of cases that the commission brought against member states at the European Court of Justice plunged by 87 percent and have not rebounded since. Strikingly, this decline occurred even while the EU nearly doubled in size and as many governments very publicly failed to comply with EU laws.

By eroding the enforcement of the EU’s high regulatory standards, forbearance already weakened one of the pillars of the Brussels effect. In fields such as consumer and environmental protection, citizens and civil society began to lose confidence in the commission’s resolve to enforce EU standards. If EU regulations are not effectively enforced, foreign companies seeking access to Europe’s lucrative market may also take notice and no longer feel obliged to adjust to meet EU standards, weakening the radiating effect of the EU’s regulatory model across the world.

The EU can revive and strengthen its regulatory powers and their outsized global influence.

Of course, the EU did not give up entirely on enforcing its laws and rules. For instance, in taking on big tech from 2017 to 2024, the EU’s antitrust commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, successfully challenged the anticompetitive business practices of the U.S. tech giants, resulting in almost $10 billion in fines against Google alone. EU Single Market Commissioner Thierry Breton was equally fierce in holding the U.S. tech companies accountable. Together with Vestager, he opened an investigation into violations of EU rules on content moderation by the social media platform X in 2023 under the Digital Services Act. These enforcement actions made the EU a digital empire, writing rules for the global technology industry and keeping the Brussels effect alive.

This resolve in enforcing EU tech regulations may now be fading. Indeed, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intervened to push France not to renominate Breton, who had become Elon Musk’s bete noire. Vestager also departed the commission following a poor showing by her Danish Social Liberal Party in the 2024 European elections.

Beyond changes in personnel, another force has worked to suppress the EU’s regulatory prowess: the imperative of competitiveness. The 2024 report titled “The Future of European Competitiveness,” authored by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, proposed a paradigm shift in EU economic policy. The report criticized the damaging effects of EU regulations on innovation and competitiveness, calling for a “regulatory pause.” Von der Leyen embraced this narrative and responded in “a lightning-fast deregulation drive” that blindsided EU insiders. She abandoned some of her signature regulatory initiatives, such as the Green New Deal, and announced a new “Green Industrial Deal,” “Competitiveness Compass,” and five omnibus packages designed to reduce the EU’s regulatory burden by a quarter. Reacting to this sudden policy shift, the European Trade Union Confederation warned of an incoming “bonfire of regulations.” Prominent targets of this deregulation drive include simplifying sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements for businesses, and the shelving of the AI liability directive.

To be sure, the rights-based regulatory model propelling the Brussels effect has its downsides. If the EU overshoots the mark, companies may conclude that the cost of complying with EU standards outweighs the cost of leaving the European market entirely. The Draghi report stressed that 60 percent of European businesses cite regulatory burdens as obstacles to investment. The General Data Protection Regulation has unintentionally entrenched the power of the large tech companies that can afford to comply with its stringent provisions, whereas the compliance costs can be prohibitively high for small firms. The EU’s corporate sustainability reporting can also be burdensome, in particular for smaller companies who faced extensive requirements to gather and analyze data.

Europe can stand as a beacon of stability and the rule of law.

But pitting regulation against competitiveness sets up a false choice. Many other barriers slow innovation and competitiveness in Europe much more than regulations do: the continent’s fragmented digital single market, lack of deep and integrated capital markets, restrictive immigration policies, inflexible labor markets, and risk-averse entrepreneurial culture. All these areas require ambitious policy reforms. But preaching deregulation as a solution to Europe’s competitiveness woes could weaken the EU’s global influence without actually generating the desired economic growth.

These questions and uncertainties have only been magnified by the arrival of the second Trump administration and its assault on the EU’s regulatory powers. For years, the United States has been mounting a pressure campaign on Europe to ease its regulation of U.S. tech giants. A decade ago, President Barack Obama called out European regulators, accusing them of protectionism, but he did not take concrete measures to rein in the EU’s regulatory ambitions. The Biden administration mobilized diplomats to push back on some European regulatory initiatives while embracing others. President Joe Biden warned that the EU’s antitrust policy should not exclusively target American companies while resolutely pursuing the very same tech giants back home under U.S. antitrust laws. Trump, on the other hand, did away with diplomatic niceties and launched an all-out war on the EU’s rights-based regulatory model.

At his inauguration on January 20, Trump seated the CEOs of Apple, Meta, X, and Amazon in the front row, overshadowing his own cabinet picks. Then, in an unprecedented collusion between big tech and U.S. state power, Trump handed Musk the reins of the U.S. government just as the world’s richest man was using his social media platform to prop up the neofascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the German parliamentary elections. Next, Trump dispatched Vance to deliver a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference attacking the EU’s laws on content moderation that supposedly stifle alternative viewpoints. Vance called these “assaults” on free speech the “threat from within.” Simultaneously, Trump allies in Congress subpoenaed eight U.S. tech giants to turn over evidence of EU “censorship.” Trump dealt the next blow himself in April, acting on his repeatedly voiced resentment toward European tech regulations and other unfair trade practices by slapping tariffs on the EU as part of his global trade war.

In press conferences, EU officials have promised not to bow to the Trump administration’s threats. The commission denied media reports that it is dropping its investigations of Apple, Google, and Meta under the EU’s Digital Services Act. But these affirmations ring hollow. Indeed, the commission seems to already be bending. In its outline of plans for 2025 (its “work programme”), the commission has scrapped draft rules protecting consumer privacy on messaging apps and an AI liability directive aimed at facilitating lawsuits against AI companies. The commission is also delaying the application of a new corporate due diligence law until 2028 and weakening firms’ reporting obligations regarding the compliance of their supply chain with human rights and environmental obligations. The EU is inching closer to relinquishing the Brussels effect.

REVIVING THE BRUSSELS EFFECT

It does not have to be this way. The EU has no need to raise the white flag: it can revive and strengthen its regulatory powers and their outsized global influence.

Rescuing the Brussels effect does not mean giving up on boosting European competitiveness and innovation, as both regulation and tech dynamism are vital to the EU’s long-term strategic autonomy, prosperity, and security. Out of 100 global startups valued at over $1 billion, only eight are headquartered in the EU. Silicon Valley is leaving Europe far behind in artificial intelligence investments, with U.S. companies investing six times more in AI compared with their European counterparts. But shredding EU regulations will not close this gap. Letting Musk write the rules for Europe and not enforcing Europe’s digital regulations will not make the EU a global superpower. Instead of relinquishing its rights-driven regulatory model, the EU should now deploy that same zeal to build other pillars of a thriving tech ecosystem.

The EU should focus its drive for reform on cultivating tech entrepreneurship through completing the digital single market and creating a true capital markets union that would help EU tech companies scale and fund their innovations. It should relax immigration laws that inhibit attracting global talent. And it should harmonize the bankruptcy regimes across member states to make failure less fatal and ensure that European entrepreneurs are given a second chance if they fail. This would encourage them to take risks and pursue more disruptive innovations. Mimicking the American deregulatory model and fueling inequality and oligarchy will not make Europe more attractive, but safeguarding a rights-based regulatory regime and standing up for citizens and consumers will. As the United States retreats from defending fundamental rights and liberal democracy, the EU’s regulatory superpower is more necessary than ever.

The EU should also take advantage of shifting global alliances and the fact that many countries are threatened by both U.S. big tech and the Trump administration. In a world where the United States is turning on its friends, the Brussels effect is part of what makes Europe an appealing partner. For instance, countries including Australia, Brazil, and South Korea have adopted tough approaches to digital regulation modeled on the EU’s. EU protections of the rights of citizens serve as a symbol and a shield against American saber rattling for many people worldwide.

EU officials—those in the commission first and foremost—should heed the appeals of civil society and recommit themselves as “guardians of the treaties.” The EU is enjoying record levels of public support, and its regulations enjoy a strong backing by citizens. The growing European boycott of American goods and services suggests that surrendering to U.S. pressure could trigger a public backlash. Capitulating to Trump’s demands would also only invite fresh demands, as extortionists always come back for more. The collapse of the rules-based international order also makes enforcing the EU’s regulatory standards and rights protections more vital than ever. Faced with geopolitical uncertainty and the specter that “might makes right,” the EU can stand as a beacon of stability and the rule of law. It can reassure the world that, unlike the United States, the EU has not lost sight of where its influence comes from, who its allies are, and where its values lie.

ANU BRADFORD is Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School.

R. DANIEL KELEMEN is McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

TOMMASO PAVONE is Assistant Professor of European Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Anu Bradford · April 21, 2025

22. 250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

AP · by MICHAEL CASEY · April 19, 2025

LEXINGTON, Mass. (AP) — Tens of thousands of people came to Lexington, Massachusetts, just before dawn on Saturday to witness a reenactment of how the American Revolution began 250 years ago, with the blast of gunshot and a trail of colonial flair.

Starting with Saturday’s anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the country will look back to its war of independence and ask where its legacy stands today. Just after dawn on the Lexington Battle Green, militiamen, muskets in hand, took on a much larger contingent of British regulars. The battle ended with eight Americans killed and 10 wounded -- the dead scattered on the grounds as the British marched off.

The regulars would head to Concord but not before a horseman, Dr. Samuel Prescott, rode toward the North Bridge and warned communities along the way that the British were coming. A lone horseman reenacted that ride Saturday, followed by a parade through town and a ceremony at the bridge.

The day offers an opportunity to reflect on this seminal moment in history but also consider what this fight means today. Organizers estimated that over 100,000 came out for events in the two towns Saturday.

“It’s truly momentous,” said Richard Howell, who portrayed Lexington Minute Man Samuel Tidd in the battle.

“This is one of the most sacred pieces of ground in the country, if not the world, because of what it represents,” he said. “To represent what went on that day, how a small town of Lexington was a vortex of so much.”

AP AUDIO: 250 years after America went to war for independence, a divided nation battles over its legacy

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Among those watching the Lexington reenactment was Brandon Mace, a lieutenant colonel with the Army Reserve whose ancestor Moses Stone was in the Lexington militia.

He said watching the reenactment was “a little emotional.”

“He made the choice just like I made and my brother made, and my son is in the Army as well,” Mace said. "... He did not know we would be celebrating him today. He did not know that he was participating in the birth of the nation. He just knew his friends and family were in danger.”

The 250th anniversary comes with President Donald Trump, scholars and others divided over whether to have a yearlong party leading up to July 4, 2026, as Trump has called for, or to balance any celebrations with questions about women, the enslaved and Indigenous people and what their stories reveal.

What happened at Lexington and Concord?

Historians can confidently tell us that hundreds of British troops marched from Boston in the early morning of April 19, 1775, and gathered about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest, on Lexington’s town green.

Witnesses remembered some British officers yelled, “Throw down your arms, ye villains, ye rebels!” and that a shot was heard amid the chaos, followed by “scattered fire” from the British. The battle turned so fierce that the area reeked of burning powder. By day’s end, the fighting had moved to about 7 miles (11 kilometers) west to Concord and some 250 British and 95 colonists were killed or wounded.

But no one knows who fired first, or why. And the revolt itself was initially less a revolution than a demand for better terms.

Woody Holton, a professor of early American history at the University of South Carolina, said most scholars agree that the rebels of April 1775 weren’t looking to leave the empire, but to repair their relationship with King George III and go back to the days before the Stamp Act, the Tea Act and other disputes of the previous decade.

“The colonists only wanted to turn back the clock to 1763,” he said.

Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose books include biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, said Lexington and Concord “galvanized opinion precisely as the Massachusetts men hoped it would, though still it would be a long road to a vote for independence, which Adams felt should have been declared on 20 April 1775.”

But at the time, Schiff added, “It did not seem possible that a mother country and her colony had actually come to blows.”

A fight for the ages

The rebels already believed their cause was bigger than a disagreement between subjects and rulers. Well before the turning points of 1776 — before the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Paine’s boast that “We have it in our power to begin the world over again” — they cast themselves in a drama for the ages.

The so-called Suffolk Resolves of 1774, drafted by civic leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, prayed for a life “unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles,” a fight that would determine the “fate of this new world, and of unborn millions.”

The revolution was an ongoing story of surprise and improvisation. Military historian Rick Atkinson, whose book “The Fate of the Day” is the second of a planned trilogy on the war, called Lexington and Concord “a clear win for the home team,” if only because the British hadn’t expected such impassioned resistance from the colony’s militia.

The British, ever underestimating those whom King George regarded as a “deluded and unhappy multitude,” would be knocked back again when the rebels promptly framed and transmitted a narrative blaming the royal forces.

“Once shots were fired in Lexington, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren did all in their power to collect statements from witnesses and to circulate them quickly; it was essential that the colonies, and the world, understand who had fired first,” Schiff said. “Adams was convinced that the Lexington skirmish would be ‘famed in the history of this country.’ He knocked himself out to make clear who the aggressors had been.”

A country still in progress

Neither side imagined a war lasting eight years, or had confidence in what kind of country would be born out of it. The founders united in their quest for self-government but differed how to actually govern, and whether self-government could even last.

Americans have never stopped debating the balance of powers, the rules of enfranchisement or how widely to apply the exhortation, “All men are created equal.”

That debate was very much on display Saturday — though mostly on the fringes and with anti-Trump protesters far outnumbered by flag-waving tourists, locals and history buffs. Many protesters carried signs inspired by the American Revolution including, “Resist Like Its 1775,” and one even brought a puppet featuring an orange-faced Trump.

“It’s a very appropriate place and date to make it clear that, as Americans, we want to take a stand against what we think is an encroaching autocracy,” Glenn Stark, a retired physics professor who was holding a “No Kings” sign and watching the ceremony at the North Bridge.

Massachusetts’ Democratic governor, Maura Healey, who spoke at the North Bridge ceremony, also used the event to remind the cheering crowd that many of the ideals fought for during the Revolutionary War are again at risk.

“We see things that would be familiar to our Revolutionary predecessors — the silencing of critics, the disappearing people from our streets, demands for unquestioned fealty,” she said. “Due process is a foundational right. if it can be discarded for one, it can be lost for all.”

___

Italie reported from New York.

AP · by MICHAEL CASEY · April 19, 2025

23. 250 years later, legacy of North Bridge lives on in the National Guard

250 years later, legacy of North Bridge lives on in the National Guard

militarytimes.com · by Gen. Steve Nordhaus · April 19, 2025

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on April 19, 1775, a small wooden bridge spanning the Concord River in Massachusetts became the crucible for a revolution that would reshape the world. The Battle of North Bridge was no mere skirmish — it was a defiant stand by colonial minutemen, ordinary citizens who transformed into defenders of liberty against the might of British regulars.

This clash marked one of the opening salvos of the Revolutionary War and was sparked by escalating grievances. Alerted by Paul Revere’s midnight ride, approximately 400 militiamen from farming towns converged at the timber-and-plank trestle, their resolve accompanied by the bright pitch of a fife and the steady cadence of a drum. When the “shot heard ‘round the world” rang out, it marked the birth of a nation and the warfighter legacy that lives on in today’s National Guard.

Among those minutemen was Capt. Isaac Davis, a farmer and blacksmith from Acton, Massachusetts, who epitomized the courage of that day. His company of mostly farmers assembled in his front yard, sharpening their bayonets and checking their powder. Faced with a monumental decision, his patriotism and duty propelled him forward. As smoke rose from Concord, signaling the town was under attack, Davis was asked to lead the advance across the bridge.

“I haven’t a man who is afraid to go,” he declared.

Moments later, Davis suffered fatal injuries from a British volley, his sacrifice cementing a pivotal moment in American history. These were not professional soldiers — they were farmers, shopkeepers and laborers who answered the call to service when liberty hung in the balance. They embody the enduring spirit of our National Guard today.

“People are relying on us” — National Guard evolves to fight wars, secure homefront

The last two years have seen a rash of domestic crises and the National Guard has been on the frontline responding to everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to historic fires and flooding, and even widespread protests.

By Sonner Kehrt

Putnam County, Ohio, was named in honor of Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam, a Massachusetts-born militiaman who rallied troops at Bunker Hill. I feel a deep personal connection to this history, given my hometown was in Putnam County. Just two months after the battle at North Bridge, Putnam’s leadership at Bunker Hill proved citizen volunteers could fight with deadly effect. Though the British eventually took the hill, their heavy losses shattered any doubt about the resolve of colonial forces. From Concord to Bunker, the minutemen refused to yield. Their legacy forged an unbroken line of service and sacrifice, stretching across time to our National Guard today.

The Battle of North Bridge was more than a fight; it was a declaration of the National Guard’s dual mission that has defined the Guard since its first muster in 1636. This mission — serving both local communities and the nation — has carried the Guard through centuries of conflict and crisis. In the War of 1812, militia units shielded our fledgling republic. During the Civil War, they fought to mend a broken Union and redefine who we were destined to be as a nation.

The 20th century saw Guardsmen enduring the muddy trenches of World War I, storming Normandy’s beaches, flying through fiery skies over Europe and trudging through the frozen Ardennes. They braved Korea’s bitter winters, persevered in Vietnam’s steamy jungles and stood steadfast in the deserts of Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, whether battling hurricanes and wildfires at home or serving overseas on global battlefields, the Guard remains “always ready, always there.”

This 250th anniversary of the American Revolution compels us to see North Bridge not as a simple story, but as an enduring promise. The National Guard has remained a cornerstone of our defense — a lethal, community-based and globally engaged force uniquely equipped to serve both state and nation.

At home, Guardsmen are often called upon to serve as first responders, combating natural disasters and cyberattacks with the same resolve as those original minutemen. Abroad, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with active-duty forces, embodying the courage of those who put down their plows and picked up their muskets in 1775. The National Guard’s strength lies in our roots: We are farmers, teachers and entrepreneurs drilling on weekends, firefighters swapping civilian uniforms for military ones, parents serving their families by serving their community, state and nation. This is what keeps the National Guard grounded, accountable and true to our warrior ethos.

The Guard’s adaptability is as vital today as it was in 1775. As threats evolve and become more complex, the National Guard continues to innovate, mastering new technologies and domains while holding fast to our core values. This flexibility extends beyond our borders through initiatives like the State Partnership Program, fostering international cooperation and readiness with our partners around the globe. Yet, at its heart, the National Guard remains a community-based force, standing ready, protecting life and property in collaboration with state and local partners. This balance between our local roots and our global reach makes the Guard indispensable to America’s security and defense.

The minutemen of North Bridge are not distant figures but another link in a chain connecting to every Guard member today. Their legacy is alive in our teachers who train, our nurses who deploy, our neighbors who serve. It’s alive in our families who sacrifice alongside their soldiers and airmen and in our veterans who have carried the torch of service through generations. The National Guard is not just a military institution; it’s a living embodiment of the liberty experiment that began back on that muddy bridge — a testament to the awesome power of ordinary citizens united for a greater cause.

As we commemorate this historic day, we must recommit to the minutemen’s promise. Their stand was not just for their time but for all time — a call to protect this nation, its history, its people and its ideals. Like Capt. Davis and his men who marched shoulder-to-shoulder toward an uncertain fate, we face today’s challenges with the same resolve. We honor them by ensuring their sacrifice endures in a nation that remains free, resilient and united.

Much has changed since 1775, but the National Guard’s mission remains constant. We will answer when the nation calls, we will defend the cause of liberty, and we will aggressively pursue peace and prosperity through overwhelming strength. Let us lead boldly through uncertainty, through inspiration from our original minutemen who swapped plows for muskets and turned the tide of history. Let us pledge to be stronger together, building a stronger tomorrow.

The minutemen’s rallying cry still echoes — through every Guard member, every community, every heartbeat of this nation. May we carry it forward for generations to come, ensuring that the spirit of North Bridge remains alive in the courage, duty and unity of our National Guard.

Always ready, always there!

Gen. Steve Nordhaus serves as the 30th chief of the National Guard Bureau and as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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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2025 William J. Donovan Award (OSS)

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Searching for truth, standing up for democracy

Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

Kyiv Is On the Clock to Respond to Trump Plan to End Ukraine Conflict

U.S. proposal includes recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and blocking Ukraine from joining NATO

Sweden Has the Tanks. Finland Has the Troops. Welcome to the Pan-Nordic Army.

Nordic countries, hawkish on Russia, pool resources to punch above their weight

Identity shift

Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’

A former top Hegseth adviser suggested Sunday night that Trump should consider replacing the embattled Defense chief

Tragedy killed 4 U.S. soldiers in Lithuania. A small army got them home.

The recovery

Breakthroughs

Last man out

The loss

Breakdown in U.S.-China Relations Raises Specter of New Cold War

What is at stake as economic ties careen off the rails is overall global security and economic stability for years to come

Security threats

Building blocs

Opinion | Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson: There’s a ‘Meltdown’ on Hegseth’s Watch

US, Philippines Open ‘Super Bowl’ of Drills Amid China Tensions

Real Military Reform Begins

Real Military Reform Begins

Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

Making the Navy and Marine Corps Great Again

Reforming the Goldwater–Nichols Act

Continuing Dominance of the Skies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Making Our Pacific Strategy Viable Again

How Long Will Big U.S. Banks Continue to Lead the World?

The trade war threatens the global dominance and growth of America’s megabanks

Crypto Knocks on the Door of a Banking World That Shut It Out

Circle, BitGo and other crypto firms plan to apply for bank charters or licenses

Do not Ignore the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Conflict

Introduction

Context

Future Risks

Recommendations

About The Author

Hostile Influencing and Finland’s Vulnerabilities

How Finland Is Confronting Hybrid Threats and Russian Interference

Hybrid challenges

The Right to Freedom of Expression

Finland’s Comprehensive Security Approach and Perceived Resilience to False and Misleading Information

Deep Divisions and Rule of Law Under Pressure

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