Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The first step and liquidating of people is to be a race it's memory. Destroy its books, it's culture, it's history. Then have somebody right new books, manufacturing, new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is, and what it was… The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

– Milan Kundera.

"Assembled in a crowd, people lose their power of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice."

– Aldous Huxley

"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."

– Maximilian Robespierre

1. Under Attack by Trump’s Tariffs, Asian Countries Seek Out Better Friends

2. Russia Intensifies Its Drone War

3. Patriot System Will Be Sent to Ukraine, Trump Says

4. Trump Proves the ‘Restrainers’ Wrong—Again

5. Iran, Ukraine, and the Realities of “Resistance” & “Regime Change”

6. How China’s Military Is Flexing Its Power in the Pacific

7. Special Operations News – Monday, July 14, 2025

8. How the Trump shooting changed America

9. US Institute of Peace employees experience another round of mass firings following court ruling

10. Trump's paranoid security state

11. Li Cheng and Andy Browne discuss what Trump gets wrong about China and where next for ties

12. In His Own Words: How Trump Changed His Tone on Putin and the War in Ukraine

13. The Philippines is quietly working with Taiwan to counter China

14. Super Quiet Special Operations Drones Being Modified To Launch Smaller Drones

15. Some world leaders butter up Trump. Others welcome the fight.

16. Senate panel pushing DOD on strategy to deter Chinese cyber activity on critical infrastructure

17. Ukraine Spy Chief Says 40% of Russian Ammunition Is North Korean

18. Digitize or die: Ukraine’s war is a wake-up call for 20th century militaries

19. What is Pete Hegseth so scared of? – The Navy needs leaders like Buzz Donnelly.

20. How Iran Overplayed its Hand

21. Is America Breaking the Global Economy?

22. Why Force Fails to Stop Nuclear Proliferation

23. A Goodbye from a U.S. Diplomat

24. The Human Element – Why Today's Military Innovations Won't Change the Nature of War

1. Under Attack by Trump’s Tariffs, Asian Countries Seek Out Better Friends

How can we compete with China and if necessary defeat China without the strength of our alliances?

Excerpts:

Business and political leaders around the world have been roundly baffled by the White House’s imposition of new duties, even as governments shuttled envoys back and forth to Washington offering new purchases and pledges of reform. Mr. Trump is erecting new trade barriers and demanding deep concessions by Aug. 1, claiming years of grievance because America buys more than it sells.“

Across the world, tools once used to generate growth are now wielded to pressure, isolate and contain,” Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, said at a gathering of Southeast Asian leaders on Wednesday. “As we navigate external pressures, we need to fortify our foundations. Trade among ourselves. Invest more in one another.”

...

“As more and more countries are feeling that it’s more difficult to satisfy U.S. demands, then their interest in working with others is going to intensify,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

There is plenty of precedent for countries to seek other partners when their longstanding relationships sour.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, China retaliated against U.S. tariffs by buying smaller amounts of U.S. soybeans. Brazil filled the hole and now supplies most of China’s soybean demand, leaving American farmers with too much product and not enough buyers.

...

“I haven’t seen indications that Southeast Asian nations are trying to join together and present a united front,” said Alexander Hynd, an assistant professor at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. But that could change if the current pace of upheaval continues.

“The U.S. is fairly rapidly attempting to dismantle the system that it set up, which is surprising a lot of people,” Mr. Hynd said.

Under Attack by Trump’s Tariffs, Asian Countries Seek Out Better Friends

Most nations are still negotiating in hopes of avoiding punitive import taxes. At the same time, they’re looking for trading partners as a way around the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/business/economy/trump-tariffs-trade-deals.html?utm

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President Trump’s tariffs have baffled business and political leaders around the world.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Lydia DePillis

Reporting from Seoul

July 13, 2025

Updated 11:18 a.m. ET

The DealBook Newsletter Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who shape them. Get it sent to your inbox.

For most countries that received President Trump’s letters last week threatening steep tariffs, especially the Asian nations with economies focused on supplying the United States, there are no obvious substitutes as a destination for their goods.

But they are doing their best to find them.

Business and political leaders around the world have been roundly baffled by the White House’s imposition of new duties, even as governments shuttled envoys back and forth to Washington offering new purchases and pledges of reform. Mr. Trump is erecting new trade barriers and demanding deep concessions by Aug. 1, claiming years of grievance because America buys more than it sells.

“Across the world, tools once used to generate growth are now wielded to pressure, isolate and contain,” Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, said at a gathering of Southeast Asian leaders on Wednesday. “As we navigate external pressures, we need to fortify our foundations. Trade among ourselves. Invest more in one another.”

Image

“As we navigate external pressures, we need to fortify our foundations,” Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia said on Wednesday. Credit...Vincent Thian/Associated Press

There are already a few signs of such efforts. South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, sent special envoys to Australia and Germany to discuss defense and trade issues, and plans on dispatching delegations to several others. Brazil and India announced plans to increase their bilateral trade by 70 percent, to $20 billion.

Indonesia says it is nearing a treaty with the European Union that would drop most tariffs on both sides to zero. And in Vietnam, which Mr. Trump said had accepted 20 percent tariffs on its goods headed to the United States before last week’s letters, the deputy trade minister emphasized efforts to reduce her country’s reliance on American consumers by leveraging other trade agreements.

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“As more and more countries are feeling that it’s more difficult to satisfy U.S. demands, then their interest in working with others is going to intensify,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

There is plenty of precedent for countries to seek other partners when their longstanding relationships sour.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, China retaliated against U.S. tariffs by buying smaller amounts of U.S. soybeans. Brazil filled the hole and now supplies most of China’s soybean demand, leaving American farmers with too much product and not enough buyers.

In 2017, China boycotted goods from South Korea in retaliation for its willingness to host an American antiballistic missile system, seriously damaging South Korea’s China-dependent consumer and tourism industries. In response, South Korea expanded trade and investment with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Since Asian nations had already been working to diversify their customer bases, the current drive is not entirely new. But the region is still far from seamlessly integrated. South Korea, for example, has resisted joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that rose from the ashes of negotiations with the United States that foundered in 2016.

Our economics reporters — based in New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Hong Kong and Seoul — are digging into every aspect of the tariffs causing global turmoil. They are joined by dozens of reporters writing about the effects on everyday people.

Here’s our latest reporting on tariffs and economic policy.

Byung-il Choi, a South Korean economist and former trade negotiator, has been urging his country to join that agreement, which its neighbor Japan has signed. New hostility from Washington may finally make it possible, and South Korea’s president, Mr. Lee, has been more amenable to Japan than many expected during his campaign.

“Japan and Korea believed that we are a staunch, ironclad ally of the U.S., but Donald Trump doesn’t believe in allies,” Mr. Choi said. “So Japan is anxious to get more significant members, and Korea’s incoming government is saying, ‘In the name of national interest, we could do anything.’”

Image

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met this month with the foreign minister of Japan, left, and South Korea’s vice foreign minister as Mr. Trump erected new trade barriers and demanded concessions from a number of countries. Credit...Pool photo by Mandel Ngan

The latest tariff barrage has arrived as China has also been flooding the world with cheap goods to sustain its export-based growth. That oversupply of cars, appliances, electronics and textiles makes it harder for China’s neighbors to find their own niches.

Some of them could benefit from the Trump administration’s determination to prevent Chinese goods from filtering through other countries to American ports. Chinese businesses have already been setting up factories in Southeast Asia in search of lower labor costs, and the new agreements may encourage them to locate more of their supply chain outside China as well. Companies in the region, squeezed by competition from China and now by tariffs, could work to improve their productivity and maintain market share.

“They can do more efficiencies, maybe investing in new technology, digitalizing some of their factories, in order to reduce costs,” said Dionisius Narjoko, a senior economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia. “It could be cheaper to export, and therefore they can become more competitive in new markets or even in the U.S.”

To increase their citizens’ incomes, developing nations in Southeast Asia still need to create more homegrown enterprises. It’s not enough to remain the workshop for major powers. That requires steady leadership and focused investment, of the sort that allowed South Korea and Japan to grow into manufacturing powerhouses.

For example, while mostly Japanese companies now produce more than a million cars a year in Thailand, and the South Korean giant Samsung makes many of its cellphones in Vietnam, those Southeast Asian countries remain relatively poor.

“They need to internalize some industrial technology from the foreign direct investment,” said Kim Dongsoo, a senior research fellow with the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. “Everybody knows that’s kind of a problem, but not all governments can escape from that trap.”

Ultimately, it could be advantageous for the countries that have become the targets of Mr. Trump’s tariff campaign to come up with a more collective response. So far, that hasn’t happened, as world leaders have continued to try to secure more favorable treatment for their own countries. Even the growing BRICS alliance, which drew Mr. Trump’s ire as it met in Rio de Janeiro and welcomed Indonesia as an official member, stopped short of taking any action to resist U.S. tariffs.

Image

So far, world leaders in the growing BRICS alliance have stopped short of taking any collective action to resist U.S. tariffs.Credit...Pablo Porciuncula/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“I haven’t seen indications that Southeast Asian nations are trying to join together and present a united front,” said Alexander Hynd, an assistant professor at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. But that could change if the current pace of upheaval continues.

“The U.S. is fairly rapidly attempting to dismantle the system that it set up, which is surprising a lot of people,” Mr. Hynd said.

Reporting was contributed by Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul; Ana Swanson from Washington; Alexandra Stevenson from Jakarta, Indonesia; and Tung Ngo from Hanoi, Vietnam.

Lydia DePillis reports on the American economy. She has been a journalist since 2009, and can be reached at lydia.depillis@nytimes.com.

2. Russia Intensifies Its Drone War

Excerpts:

To put the size of these attacks in context, the Kyiv Independent reports that through the entire month of June 2024, Russia launched a total of 332 drones. Last week Moscow launched more than twice that number in a night. Experts here estimate that Russia is producing between 100 and 170 drones daily. They’re rolling off the assembly line and into the Ukrainian skies every few days, with Russia concentrating its deadly attention on one city at a time.

These attacks terrorize civilians, but the scale and narrow focus also make Ukraine’s high-value targets more vulnerable. Russia sends huge numbers of drones “to exhaust the air defense,” then follows it up with missiles, says Oleksandr Humeniuk, an air-force expert at the Sahaidachnyi Security Center, a think tank. That “makes it very hard to do differentiated detection and interception.” Ukraine sometimes has to use its fighter jets to intercept drones, which consumes scarce aviation assets and puts pilots at risk.

...

Ukraine is imploring its partners to invest in its domestic weapons production. The West may have the money Kyiv lacks, but “this is the fastest war in history in terms of newly developed technology,” Mr. Kuzan says. Russian drones have the range to hit NATO members. Are the allies ready?

Ukrainian experts say no. Russia is on a wartime footing, but NATO countries are still budgeting as if it’s the end of history. Procurement takes years when it should take months or weeks. Shahed-style drones are cheap, and the West’s interception solutions are expensive.

Ukraine’s air-raid warning app features alerts recorded by Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. “Don’t be careless,” he warns. “Your overconfidence is your weakness.” That advice served me well on Friday night, and it would serve the West well as it thinks about the emerging drone threat. Kyiv needs Western support, and the West may soon need Ukraine’s hard-won expertise.

Russia Intensifies Its Drone War

It launched 332 of them against Ukraine in June 2024. The nightly number can now be double that.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/russia-intensifies-its-drone-war-on-civilian-areas-reporting-from-kyiv-adaffb2d

By Jillian Kay Melchior

Updated July 13, 2025 5:19 pm ET

Ukrainians take shelter in a Kyiv metro station Saturday. Photo: stringer/Reuters

Kyiv, Ukraine

It’s 8:30 p.m. Friday, and I’m writing from my hotel’s bomb shelter, relieved I got here fast. We had only about 20 minutes’ notice before the explosions started. The pops above are reportedly from Ukraine intercepting a drone. More are en route. A wailing baby is among those taking refuge down here.

Russia’s massive drone attacks on Ukrainian cities the past week should be a wake-up call to the West. But they aren’t prompting the same level of introspective concern as Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, which targeted air bases deep inside Russia and destroyed dozens of strategic bombers last month. That mission made Europe and the U.S. recognize they share vulnerabilities with Russia. Do they realize they share vulnerabilities with Ukraine, too?

Last Tuesday night Russia launched a record-breaking 741 Shahed-type and decoy drones at Ukraine, focusing its attack on the western city of Lutsk. The next night it was Kyiv’s turn to bear the brunt of nearly 400 drones. The city burned in several places above me, and when I emerged at about 5 a.m. Thursday after the all-clear, smoke soured my nostrils and clouded the cotton-candy dawn. The alarms sounded again less than an hour later. Overnight on Friday, Russia conducted its third combined strike of the month involving more than 500 drones. The targets included Kyiv and cities far west in Ukraine.

To put the size of these attacks in context, the Kyiv Independent reports that through the entire month of June 2024, Russia launched a total of 332 drones. Last week Moscow launched more than twice that number in a night. Experts here estimate that Russia is producing between 100 and 170 drones daily. They’re rolling off the assembly line and into the Ukrainian skies every few days, with Russia concentrating its deadly attention on one city at a time.

These attacks terrorize civilians, but the scale and narrow focus also make Ukraine’s high-value targets more vulnerable. Russia sends huge numbers of drones “to exhaust the air defense,” then follows it up with missiles, says Oleksandr Humeniuk, an air-force expert at the Sahaidachnyi Security Center, a think tank. That “makes it very hard to do differentiated detection and interception.” Ukraine sometimes has to use its fighter jets to intercept drones, which consumes scarce aviation assets and puts pilots at risk.

A Russian drone is shot down over Kyiv Thursday night. Photo: afp contributor#afp/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ukrainian experts worry that by the end of the summer Russian strike packages will include 1,000 drones or more. “An assault of this magnitude could overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses on a strategic level, not just a tactical one,” Mr. Humeniuk says. If Ukrainian counterdrone technology doesn’t keep pace, air defense could be “unable to filter or stop the sheer volume of incoming threats.”

The massive attacks come as the U.S. has spent months pushing Moscow and Kyiv toward peace talks. The Russians are “bulls— us, they’re bulls— Trump, they’re buying time, and they’re weaponizing,” says Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries. Even so, “no one anticipated the Russians would improve their drones so much that our countermeasures would be rendered inefficient,” he says.

Ukraine has long relied on mobile ground groups to shoot down Shahed-type drones far from their targets. This was a good solution until Russian drones recently began flying higher than the range of their machine guns. The drones’ trajectory has also changed: Before, they descended gradually on their target, like a commercial plane landing, but now they dive down “almost like a ballistic missile,” Mr. Sak says. Interceptions often occur over cities, where debris can wound people and damage infrastructure.

To waste Ukraine’s scarce air-defense resources, Russia is churning out decoy drones with radio signatures identical to Shaheds and no payload. They’ve also been working on drones with “an increased number of components that makes them better able to withstand electronic warfare,” says Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force. The scale is limited but will increase.

Rescuers in destroyed apartment in residential building after a combined Russian strike on Kyiv on Thursday. Photo: Anton Shtuka

Earlier in the war, Ukraine advised civilians to ensure there were at least two solid walls between them and the street during an attack. That is no longer enough to keep safe. Ukrainian experts say the Russians sometimes pack drones with cluster munitions and dramatically increased the payload, making them more lethal.

Ukraine’s struggle to respond to the changing drone threat is a failure of procurement and finances, not ingenuity. “The front line is like a Silicon Valley for defense innovation,” says Daria Kaleniuk, a co-founder of the International Centre for Ukrainian Victory, an advocacy group. Yet in this war technology becomes obsolete about every three months. Ukraine’s procurement cycle is much faster than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s, but Kyiv needs to do more to make contracts flexible enough for breaking software upgrades and hardware improvements.

In the air, “of course we’re overstretched,” says Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Kyiv think tank. Ukrainians have already developed drone interceptors that cost less than $10,000, compared with $50,000 or more for a Shahed-type drone. But Kyiv hasn’t yet produced them on a scale that matches Moscow’s. Ukraine has only about $10 billion to spend producing weapons this year, though it has the capacity to manufacture three times that or more. “Our production capacities are underutilized, and we are running around putting out fires,” Mr. Kuzan says. “This is a war of resources, and at this point we are losing or have lost the war of resources.”

Ukraine is imploring its partners to invest in its domestic weapons production. The West may have the money Kyiv lacks, but “this is the fastest war in history in terms of newly developed technology,” Mr. Kuzan says. Russian drones have the range to hit NATO members. Are the allies ready?

Ukrainian experts say no. Russia is on a wartime footing, but NATO countries are still budgeting as if it’s the end of history. Procurement takes years when it should take months or weeks. Shahed-style drones are cheap, and the West’s interception solutions are expensive.

Ukraine’s air-raid warning app features alerts recorded by Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. “Don’t be careless,” he warns. “Your overconfidence is your weakness.” That advice served me well on Friday night, and it would serve the West well as it thinks about the emerging drone threat. Kyiv needs Western support, and the West may soon need Ukraine’s hard-won expertise.

Ms. Melchior is a London-based member of the Journal’s editorial board.

Review & Outlook: The President reverses a Pentagon decision from last week and says he'll deliver weapons to Ukraine.Appeared in the July 14, 2025, print edition as 'Russia Intensifies Its Drone War'.

3. Patriot System Will Be Sent to Ukraine, Trump Says

Excerpts:

President Trump said Sunday the U.S. will send Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine that will be paid for by the European Union, and he again criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It’ll be business for us, and we will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people,” Trump said. “He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” he added on his way back to the White House from New Jersey. “There’s a little bit of a problem there, and I don’t like it.”

Trump said he hadn’t decided how many Patriot air-defense systems he will send. He is expected to meet with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House Monday morning.

Trump said that the EU will pay for the weapons but didn’t provide any details.

Late last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Germany and Norway would purchase three Patriot batteries on behalf of Ukraine. A German official later told The Wall Street Journal that Berlin had requested to buy two batteries but had yet to hear back from the U.S.

...

Graham said the U.S. had reached “a turning point regarding Russia.”

Blumenthal and Graham are co-sponsoring a Russia-sanctions bill that Graham said would be “the most consequential sanction package in the history of the country,” giving Trump the ability to impose a 500% tariff on any country that is aiding the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine.

“China, India and Brazil buy oil and petroleum products and other goods from Russia—that’s the money Putin uses to prosecute the war,” Graham said. He described the bill, which he said has 85 co-sponsors, as a “sledgehammer” that Trump can use in his stymied efforts to end the conflict.

“This moment of unity must be seized, and the timing is absolutely critical,” Blumenthal said about the collective measures. “We need to really express the strength of the United States, because only strength can get Putin to the table.”

Patriot System Will Be Sent to Ukraine, Trump Says

The president’s announcement comes a day before he meets with NATO’s chief

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/patriot-system-will-be-sent-to-ukraine-trump-says-361165ef

By Tarini Parti

Follow and Brett Forrest

Updated July 14, 2025 4:52 am ET

A Patriot air-defense system in Ukraine last year. Photo: valentyn ogirenko/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

President Trump said the U.S. will send Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine, which will be paid for by the European Union.
Trump criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he “talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening.”
Trump indicated he will have a “major announcement” related to Russia on Monday.

President Trump said Sunday the U.S. will send Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine that will be paid for by the European Union, and he again criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It’ll be business for us, and we will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people,” Trump said. “He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” he added on his way back to the White House from New Jersey. “There’s a little bit of a problem there, and I don’t like it.”

Trump said he hadn’t decided how many Patriot air-defense systems he will send. He is expected to meet with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House Monday morning.

Trump said that the EU will pay for the weapons but didn’t provide any details.

Late last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Germany and Norway would purchase three Patriot batteries on behalf of Ukraine. A German official later told The Wall Street Journal that Berlin had requested to buy two batteries but had yet to hear back from the U.S.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Germany has given Ukraine three Patriot batteries, or a quarter of Germany’s stock of the weapon at the time. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is in the U.S. Monday and will discuss arming Ukraine with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the German government said last week.

Trump has indicated he will have a “major announcement” related to Russia on Monday.

The president had been considering sending more Patriots, the Journal reported last week. Doing so would be a significant step for the White House, marking the first time the president has approved providing a major weapons system to Kyiv beyond the number authorized by the previous administration.

Ukraine currently has only a handful of Patriot systems, donated by the U.S. and other countries, and has been seeking more to fend off escalating Russian attacks. Each Patriot consists of multiple launchers, a radar, a command and control element and interceptor missiles.

Ahead of Trump’s comments Sunday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) revealed a planned arms agreement for Ukraine in advance of meetings Monday and Tuesday that lawmakers and administration officials have scheduled in Washington with Rutte.

“Part of the plan that I think will be sought in this meeting involving the secretary-general is for Ukraine to be given assets by NATO and their purchasing those military assets from the United States,” Blumenthal said Sunday on CBS.

The U.S. has attempted to effectuate a cease-fire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, but while Kyiv has aligned with Trump on the effort after early turbulence, Moscow has only intensified its aerial assault of the Ukrainian capital in recent weeks.

The aftermath of Russian drone and missiles strikes on Kyiv that hit residential buildings, a kindergarten and civilian infrastructure in June. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Earlier this month, the U.S. suspended the delivery of air-defense interceptors and other weapons intended for Ukraine, but Trump reversed the decision last week, indicating his rising frustrations with Putin.

Blumenthal, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg discussed the strategy of selling U.S. arms to NATO with European leaders in Rome last week, Blumenthal said.

“Stay tuned for a plan where America will begin to sell to our European allies tremendous amount of weapons that can benefit Ukraine,” Graham said on CBS Sunday.

Graham said the U.S. had reached “a turning point regarding Russia.”

Blumenthal and Graham are co-sponsoring a Russia-sanctions bill that Graham said would be “the most consequential sanction package in the history of the country,” giving Trump the ability to impose a 500% tariff on any country that is aiding the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine.

“China, India and Brazil buy oil and petroleum products and other goods from Russia—that’s the money Putin uses to prosecute the war,” Graham said. He described the bill, which he said has 85 co-sponsors, as a “sledgehammer” that Trump can use in his stymied efforts to end the conflict.

“This moment of unity must be seized, and the timing is absolutely critical,” Blumenthal said about the collective measures. “We need to really express the strength of the United States, because only strength can get Putin to the table.”

Write to Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com

4. Trump Proves the ‘Restrainers’ Wrong—Again

Trump Proves the ‘Restrainers’ Wrong—Again

The president made a wise choice on Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-proves-the-restrainers-wrong-again-ukraine-war-israel-iran-e42ef644

July 13, 2025 11:39 am ET

Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump in The Hague, June 25. Photo: handout/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman make a fine case for why the U.S. shouldn’t cut off weapons to Ukraine (Letters, July 11). Here’s another: Failing to deliver promised weapons after President Trump’s successful North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit where allies committed to investing 5% of gross domestic product on defense would have undermined our credibility at a geopolitical high point. The decision wouldn’t merely risk demoralizing Ukraine and emboldening the Kremlin; it could cause European allies to question our word as Mr. Trump is trying to get them to boost defense procurement by buying American weapons.

Opponents of aiding Ukraine who call themselves “restrainers” objected to our support for Israel’s military campaign against Iran and fiercely opposed U.S. military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. They argued that these operations would impair the president’s hand to deal with China and inevitably cause uncontrolled escalation. Neither has happened, as China is weakened when Russia and Iran are weakened.

The better course for such analysts now is to put aside emotion, recognize these hard realities and prioritize the safety of Americans by supporting the president’s wise decision to arm Kyiv and rebuild the defense industrial base.

Rebeccah Heinrichs

Hudson Institute

Washington

Appeared in the July 14, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Proves the ‘Restrainers’ Wrong—Again'.

5. Iran, Ukraine, and the Realities of “Resistance” & “Regime Change”

Excerpts:

For the West, what will “support to resistance” look like in Iran? How will it draw from the realities of resistance in Ukraine? The only viable path to a new Iran is one charted by the Iranian people, in a grassroots campaign against the Islamic Republic. What is the role of Western states in supporting this process? Alternatively, what aspects of support to resistance might be better left open to society-to-society engagement?

Questions over the future of Iranian governance, and likewise NATO’s prevailing assumptions about the appropriate relationship between state and society and between military action and civic mobilization, require a reset—one that not only accounts for the realities witnessed in Ukraine, but also the appropriate role of the government in democratic nations. It is one thing for Western states to engineer resilience within their electrical grids and supply chains. But government-led social engineering is something quite different, prone to blowback and unintended consequences, and rightly anathema to free societies.

Iran, Ukraine, and the Realities of “Resistance” & “Regime Change”

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/14/iran-ukraine-and-the-realities-of-resistance-regime-change/

by Nicholas Krohley, by Petro Koshukov

07.14.2025 at 06:00am

“Regime Change” Returns

In the aftermath of Israel and America’s 12 Day War with Iran, “regime change” is once again in the headlines. Proponents for regime change in Iran argue for the wholesale destruction of the Islamic Republic, with the supporting logic being that Iran’s sitting government will never be a viable interlocutor for peace, human rights, and counter-proliferation. Detractors recoil from the idea, warning against a repeat of history after the catastrophic failures of similar efforts in the Global War on Terror.

Common to the bulk of public discourse, most notably among skeptics of regime change, is the assumption that regime change would be led by outside forces, and conducted as a top-down decapitation strike against the leadership of Iran, focused on creating an externally imposed new government. This approach to regime change is a critical mistake. It is rooted not only in the toxic legacy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in the prevailing zeitgeist within American and European defense circles, where “whole-of-society resilience” and civic agency writ large are primarily conceptualized as government-led activities. These statist assumptions need to be acknowledged and corrected, as they are shaping efforts toward preparedness and action in ways that undermine the true potential of civil society—in scenarios as diverse as NATO’s defense against Russia and policy debates over the future of Iran.

Conventional wisdom across the United States and Europe, captured most famously within NATO’s Resistance Operating Concept and theory of Total Defense embraced by the Nordic states, posits that it is the role of the state to cultivate societal resilience and orchestrate civil resistance. This paradigm is built upon an assumption of robust state-society relations and cohesive trust across the civil-military interface. To its credit, it offers a powerful organizational framework where those conditions exist.

But what if they do not? Across the Black Sea Region, in Taiwan, and in the United States itself, it is unclear how these concepts can be applied. Tensions between governments and the populace, between militaries and civil society, are pervasive and powerful. This begs the question: how are societal mobilization and civil resistance supposed to happen when the state and civil society are at odds, or where fault lines in the human terrain preclude any sort of “whole-of-society” endeavor? More broadly, in philosophical and practical terms, do we really want the government to act as the architect and orchestrator of civic agency?

Resilience & Resistance in Ukraine

This debate, and likewise current speculation over regime change in Iran, must look to the realities of Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance is universally hailed as the gold standard of state-society collaboration in wartime, and sustained whole-of-society mobilization. Indeed, this dynamic has been Ukraine’s greatest strategic asset in its war against Russian aggression—insofar as the military and financial support provided by the West that has sustained the Ukrainian state would have been unthinkable if significant segments of Ukrainian society had welcomed the Russians, ran from the fight, or simply hid in their homes in search of relative safety. President Zelenskyy rose to the occasion and spoke for his country on the international stage, but his remarkable performance would have been for naught if the Ukrainian people had not spontaneously mobilized en masse.

Where did this societal capacity come from? Contrary to the foundational assumptions of the Resistance Operating Concept and Total Defense, it was not developed or orchestrated by the Ukrainian government. Quite the opposite—it was the outgrowth of three decades of societal agitation against the abuses and corruption of the Ukrainian state.

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukrainians have fiercely resisted tyranny through powerful uprisings. In 1990, students launched the Revolution on Granite, taking to the streets to demand democracy from a dying Soviet system. In 2001, the Ukraine without Kuchma movement erupted against a corrupt president’s authoritarian grip. The 2004 Orange Revolution saw millions reject a rigged election, forcing a fair vote. Then, in 2013-2014, the Revolution of Dignity exploded when a pro-Russian regime sought to divert Ukraine’s westward geo-economic trajectory back toward Moscow.

These actions, which can be understood as recurring efforts toward “regime change,” were the process through which Ukrainian society developed the connective tissue and muscle memory to resist aggression that has been on display to the world since the 2022 full-scale invasion. It was an organic process through which the Ukrainian people embraced and refined their agency to shape the future of their country.

At present, Ukrainian society is working alongside the government in an existential fight for the survival of the Ukrainian nation. This is a radical break from the past. Looking ahead, there is every reason to expect a reversion to the norm—wherein a post-war civil society will hold its government to account for Ukraine’s failures to prepare for the full-scale invasion, and for errors in the prosecution of the war. Depending upon the ultimate outcome of the war, “regime change” in one shape or another may once again be on the menu.

Implications for Iran

What does this mean for Iran? Iranian civil society, like its Ukrainian counterpart, has generations of experience in spontaneous societal mobilization against tyranny and corruption that go back to the fall of the Shah and the founding of the Islamic Republic. More recently, the Green Movement of 2009 and the nationwide uprisings that followed the murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022, coupled with recurring societal mobilization across the country in response to economic hardship and environmental degradation, all demonstrate that the Iranian people have built up their own connective tissue and muscle memory to demonstrate and resist.

Discussions about Iran’s future should be focused on precisely this—not externally orchestrated “decapitations.” Concurrently, bridges should be built between Ukrainian civic leaders and resistance practitioners and their Iranian counterparts. The two peoples share a common cause—namely freedom and dignity—and common enemies as well. Encouraging developments are already unfolding, as Ukrainian resistance practitioners have documented their lessons learned for Iranian citizens. Time is of the essence, however, as the Islamic Republic is poised to conduct a sweeping, brutal cull of its domestic opponents.

Which Way Forward?

For the West, what will “support to resistance” look like in Iran? How will it draw from the realities of resistance in Ukraine? The only viable path to a new Iran is one charted by the Iranian people, in a grassroots campaign against the Islamic Republic. What is the role of Western states in supporting this process? Alternatively, what aspects of support to resistance might be better left open to society-to-society engagement?

Questions over the future of Iranian governance, and likewise NATO’s prevailing assumptions about the appropriate relationship between state and society and between military action and civic mobilization, require a reset—one that not only accounts for the realities witnessed in Ukraine, but also the appropriate role of the government in democratic nations. It is one thing for Western states to engineer resilience within their electrical grids and supply chains. But government-led social engineering is something quite different, prone to blowback and unintended consequences, and rightly anathema to free societies.

Tags: Iran, regime change, resistance, Resistance Movements, strategu

About The Authors

Nicholas Krohley
Dr. Nicholas Krohley leads the Resistance Team at the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and is the founder of FrontLine Advisory.
View all posts
Petro Koshukov
Mr. Petro Koshukov is a civil society and organizational development practitioner, and an active duty member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 2022.

6. How China’s Military Is Flexing Its Power in the Pacific

Please go to the link to view the maps and graphics and proper formatting.

Excerpts:

In the U.S. view, the greatest menace in China’s wide-ranging military exercises is to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own and has threatened to seize by force. Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, describes Chinese military exercises around Taiwan as rehearsals for an invasion.

Along the Taiwan Strait, the roughly 100-mile-wide body of water that separates the island from mainland China, the threat is registered daily on the surface and in the air. Chinese military aircraft these days regularly cross a nominal median in the strait, Taiwan says, entering Taiwan’s de facto air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ, in numbers that would have been shocking only a few years ago.

...

The most visible example of the Trump administration’s push may be its pressure on Asian allies to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense.

That effort has encountered some resistance. Japan is seeking to raise its outlay to only about 2%, while South Korea said in June that its military spending was already “very high.”

The U.S. meanwhile maintains a security footprint in Asia that includes tens of thousands of troops on the Japanese island of Okinawa, less than 500 miles from Taiwan. About 55,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan and more than 28,000 in South Korea.

The U.S. military has beefed up its presence in the American territory of Guam, which already hosts several nuclear submarines and deployments of long-range bombers, by adding a new base expected to house 5,000 Marines.

World
Asia

How China’s Military Is Flexing Its Power in the Pacific

The U.S. sounds the alarm and calls on allies to do more as Beijing’s forces venture further from its shores

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/how-chinas-military-is-flexing-its-power-in-the-pacific-17e6e280?st=Ms8Kro&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Austin Ramzy

Follow and Emma Brown

July 13, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

China is expanding its military presence in the Pacific, challenging the U.S. and its allies in the region.
The U.S. is reinforcing defenses in Asia and urging partners to increase military spending to counter China.
China’s military activities near Taiwan are viewed by the U.S. as rehearsals for an invasion.

HONG KONG—China’s military is extending its reach deeper into the Pacific, sending ships and aircraft into new territory in a push that has spurred the U.S. to strengthen defenses and alliances in the region.

Beijing has long resented what it sees as interference by the U.S. and its allies in its traditional sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Now, it is asserting itself more aggressively in its backyard while also pushing well beyond longstanding geographical limits of its military.

In response, the U.S. and its allies are dispersing military assets more widely so that they can respond better in case of a clash with China. The U.S. is also pressing its Asian partners to bolster their own defenses.

Here is a look at how China’s military is pushing boundaries in the Pacific and how the U.S. seeks to respond to the perceived threat.

When two Chinese aircraft carriers performed joint exercises in the western Pacific in June, Chinese forces conducted more than 1,000 aircraft takeoffs and landings, and jet fighters twice tailed Japanese patrols that were monitoring the exercises, Japan said.

The U.S. has deployed so-called carrier-killer missiles in the northern Philippines, making it more dangerous for the Chinese to pass through the first island chain in a conflict. But the Chinese show of force in June was an important sign of defiance.

“The issue is not that they have increasing blue water capabilities and are deploying further from their coast—that’s to be expected,” said Jennifer Parker, an adjunct fellow in naval studies at the University of New South Wales Canberra. “The issue is the nature in which they are doing it, which is provocative.”

Similarly, a Chinese trip in February and March around Australia was seen as cause for concern. “Australia is not on its way to anywhere. If you send a naval task group to circumnavigate Australia, you’re doing it to prove a point,” said Parker.

In the U.S. view, the greatest menace in China’s wide-ranging military exercises is to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own and has threatened to seize by force. Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, describes Chinese military exercises around Taiwan as rehearsals for an invasion.

Along the Taiwan Strait, the roughly 100-mile-wide body of water that separates the island from mainland China, the threat is registered daily on the surface and in the air. Chinese military aircraft these days regularly cross a nominal median in the strait, Taiwan says, entering Taiwan’s de facto air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ, in numbers that would have been shocking only a few years ago.

China's aircraft entries into Taiwan's de facto ADIZ

450

China

Median line

400

350

Taiwan

300

250

De facto ADIZ

200

150

100

2021

’22

’23

’24

’25

Source: Taiwan Ministry of National Defense

President Trump has followed an American policy of not stating whether U.S. forces would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion. A U.S. intervention is seen on the island as essential to preventing a takeover. For now, the U.S. sells weapons to Taiwan including missile defense systems, trains some of the island’s soldiers and aids its defense industry.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a gathering of defense officials in Singapore in late May that threats to Taiwan from China “could be imminent,” and warned of “devastating consequences” should Beijing seek to take over the island—part of a push for partners in the region to do more to counter China.

Senior Communist Party official Liu Jianchao told a July forum in Beijing that Hegseth’s remarks about China’s intentions were inciting “confrontation and conflict.”

Allied cooperation

The most visible example of the Trump administration’s push may be its pressure on Asian allies to spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense.

That effort has encountered some resistance. Japan is seeking to raise its outlay to only about 2%, while South Korea said in June that its military spending was already “very high.”

The U.S. meanwhile maintains a security footprint in Asia that includes tens of thousands of troops on the Japanese island of Okinawa, less than 500 miles from Taiwan. About 55,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan and more than 28,000 in South Korea.

The U.S. military has beefed up its presence in the American territory of Guam, which already hosts several nuclear submarines and deployments of long-range bombers, by adding a new base expected to house 5,000 Marines.

U.S. Defense sites in the Indo-Pacific

Enduring military presence

Rotational/episodic presence

RUSSIA

Sea of

Okhotsk

MONGOLIA

Sea of Japan

(East Sea)

JAPAN

S. KOREA

CHINA

PACIFIC OCEAN

East China

Sea

Okinawa

(Japan)

TAIWAN

INDIA

Wake Island

Philippine Sea

South China

Sea

Guam

Kwajalein

Atoll

Bay of Bengal

PHILIPPINES

INDONESIA

Diego Garcia

PAPUA NEW

GUINEA

Banda Sea

INDIAN OCEAN

AUSTRALIA

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

The U.S. has no permanent troops based in the Philippines, but Manila has given U.S. forces access to more bases in recent years. The U.S. has stepped up its activities there, including by deploying the Army’s Typhon Missile System to the northern island of Luzon—putting Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance.

U.S. military exercises throughout the Indo-Pacific include extensive drills in far-flung islands, such as the recent delivery of a high-precision antiship missile system to a Philippine island 120 miles south of Taiwan. A three-week exercise involving 19 participating countries, Talisman Sabre 2025, began Sunday in Australia, with the U.S. coleading the event.

Beijing typically calls military exercises on its periphery provocative and destabilizing. In June, as a U.K. aircraft carrier group was making its way to Australia, a British naval vessel sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time in four years. Beijing denounced the passage and launched military drills that security officials in Taiwan described as a direct response.

“It’s clear that Beijing is really pushing back against the way democratic countries are coming together,” one of the officials said.

Write to Austin Ramzy at austin.ramzy@wsj.com and Emma Brown at Emma.Brown@wsj.com

7. Special Operations News – Monday, July 14, 2025

Special Operations News – Monday, July 14, 2025

https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?e=e98f0a3634&u=f6fa55ce0e459e2f060ddda0b&id=d67794bef0

July 14, 2025 SOF News Update 0

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: Two U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando II aircrafts, operated by the 67th Special Operations Squadron, fly in formation prior to conducting static line jump training with Greek special forces during exercise Trojan Footprint 24, over Greece, March 8, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Westin Warburton)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it 2 or 3 days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

The Cult of SOF. Richard Hinman, a retired U.S. Army officer, argues that there is an obsession with elite and specialized forces that needs to be rebalanced. He believes that Congress and the executive branch officials should strenghten oversight of SOF. “American cult: Why our special ops need a reset”, Responsible Statecraft, July 9, 2025.

Tim Kennedy – Green Beret Under Fire. In recent years the rumors have swirled in the special operations community about how a Special Forces personality may have distorted his past history. It seems some untruths have caught up to him and he has publically admitted his misrepresentation of his past. The sad part of all this is he is an accomplished individual that should be proud of what he has done. “Tim Kennedy, Green Beret and Army Hype Man, Under Investigation for Lying About Combat Valor”, by Steve Beynon, Military.com, July 10, 2025.

Cuts to OA-1K Armed Overwatch Program. U.S. Special Operaitons Command is slowing down its acquisition of the Skyraider II multipurpose counterinsurgency plane. The fiscal 2026 buy will be just six of the aircraft, down from 12. The planes are designed to conduct light attack, close air support, and ISR missions. The program of record remains at 75 aircraft but the pace of production has been drastically cut. “SOCOM Halves OA-1k Armed Overwatch buy for 2026”, Air and Space Forces, July 10, 2025.

Comparing Rangers and Green Berets. Samantha Franco describes the differences between U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Army Rangers. She outlines the requirements of the Ranger Assessment Selection Process (RASP) and Ranger School and the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC). Newsbreak, July 11, 2025.

1st SFG(A) in Taiwan. Guy D. McCardle writes on Special Forces are conducting continous training missions with Taiwan’s elite 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion and its Airborne Special Service Company. “U.S. Special Forces Deepen Presence in Taiwan Amid Rising Regional Tensions”, SOFREP, July 12, 2025.

Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025. A large-scale military exercise involving special operations forces from Australian and the United States will be taking place between mid-July and early August. It will involve over 30,000 personnel from 19 nations, making it the largest iteration of the exercise to date. The exercise will focus on multi-domain warfighting across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains, with activities including amphibious landings, live-fire exercises, and combat operations.

SOF History

August 1968 FOB4 Battle. In the early hours of August 23rd, the Da Nang MACVSOG camp known as FOB4 was attacked by members of a Viet Cong battalion and North Vietnamese Army regiment. The enemy roamed through the camp during the surprise attack. In total, there were 16 American KIA and 40 Vietnamese KIA. “Deadly Assault on Special Forces Camp in Vietnam”, by Gene Pugh, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, July 8, 2025.

On July 20, 1942. First Special Service Force officially activated.

http://www.firstspecialserviceforce.net/history.html

On July 22, 1940. Special Operations Executive (SOE) Charter approved, formed from Section D, MI(R), and EH.

Ukraine Conflict

Trump and Ukraine. Rob Danneberg, former chief of operations for CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, says that the U.S. president is being offered a unique opportunity to make a mark in history. Trump and his inner circle have finally realized that he has been taken for a ride by the Russian president. Now is the time to act in a decisive manner. “How Trump Can Be the Winning President in Ukraine”, The Cipher Brief, July 11, 2025.

‘Wobbly’ on Ukraine? H.R. McMaster and Bradley Bowman say that any pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine will hit U.S. interests over the long run. They explain “Why This Is No Time to Go Wobbly on Ukraine”, Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2025 (subscription)

U.S. Weapons Shipments – Turned Off and Now Back On. The zig zag U.S. policy seems to be to intentionally keeping the international community guessing on the Trump administrations views and objectives with the Ukraine – Russia conflict. Earlier this month the Department of Defense announced that it was limiting the sending of specific types of military equipment to Ukraine. That policy lasted about ten days until President Trump announced that the aid would be resumed.

German Missiles to Ukraine. The first batch of long-range missiles from Germany will be sent to fight the Russians by the end of July. The cruise missiles will allow Ukraine to target Russian military infrastructure beyond the frontline. These missiles will complement the British Strom Shadow and French SCALP missiles already being used by Ukraine.

References:

Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War and Critical Threats. On storymaps.arcgis.com See also https://www.national-security.info/ukraine/maps.html
U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine, Congressional Research Service, CRSIF12040, periodically updated, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
Ukraine Conflict, National Security Info. https://www.national-security.info/ukraine-conflict.html

Sudan Conflict

Sudan Conflict Forecast. Drones and members of private military firms are increasingly part of the fight for the Rapid Support forces (RSF). The drones are hitting critical infrastructure and military targets held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Contractors from Colombia and the Sahel are operating in Sudan on behalf of the RSF. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) are continuing its frequent arms transfers. The two-year long Sudan civil war sees no sign of abating. Read more in “Sudan Conflict 2025 Forecast: Drones, Contractors, Cover Activity”, by Daniel Blanco Paz, Grey Dynamics, June 23, 2025.

Update on Sudan War. Robert S. Burrell provides an update on the conflict in Sudan between the RSF and SAF. He describes how the war came about, what has transpired in the past two years, and where the conflict is headed. “Inside the Flames – Two Years of Civil War in Sudan”, Small Wars Journal, July 8, 2025.

National Security

Hegseth, Lethality, and Professionalism. Mike Nelson, a retired Special Forces officer, argues that lethality alone doesn’t win wars. Officers and men also need a sense of morality and maintain their professionalism. “What Pete Hegseth Doesn’t Understand About Soldiers”, The Atlantic, August 2025.

Report – World Geography and Defense. The geography of the world has an influence on U.S. strategy, which in turn, shapes the design of U.S. military forces. One national strategy has been the prevention of an emerging power to control the Euroasian land mass – which could then threaten the security and vital interests of the United States. Read more in “Defense Primer: Geography, Strategy, and U.S. Force Design”, Congressional Research Service (CRS), IF10485, July 7, 2025.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10485

NATO’s Southern Flank Exposed. The countries of Spain, Italy, and Greece have been subjected to Russian ‘gray zone’ tactics and have not stepped up to counter these attacks. The eastern flank countries of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Finland are well aware of Russia’s antics and how to defend against them. As these southern tier countries slumber in their complacency, they become an easy target for Moscow and its influence campaigns. “Southern Europe: a soft target in Russia’s expanding hybrid war”, New Eastern Europe, July 8, 2025.

Spies – No Place to Hide. Technology has become a limiting factor for Central Intelligence Agency officers seeking to hide in plain sight. Facial recognition, fingerprints, ad tech ID, and now how they walk can be identifying factors when in public, traveling through airports, in restaurants, or meeting contacts on a dark street corner. Attempts at secrecy by using ‘burner phones’ can sometimes make it easier for agents to be discovered by security organizations. Sometimes, staying off the grid and eliminating your social profile just leads to more chances of being discovered. Modern technology has shattered the old school methods of using ‘cover’ and ‘tradecraft’ for spies to conduct their business. A number of newly established firms are offering solutions to the agency that will assist its operators in this new technological environment. “A band of innovators reimagines the spy game for a world with no cover”, The Washington Post, July 10, 2025.

Haiti Gang Violence. intensifying gang violence in Haiti could destablize the Caribbean region. A recent report by the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) paints a grim picture of Haiti’s future. Mass killings have become more frequent. “Haiti gang violence spurs concerns for regional destabilization”, by Kareem Assaf, Jurist News, July 12, 2025.

Dismantling Defenses Against Foreign Online Influence. The dismissal of workers from the Voice of America along with cutbacks in other government programs has all but eradicated the U.S. ability to counter nefarious foreign interference in the online world. Some of the government entities that were shut down or drastically reduced included the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Election Protection Activities at the Deparment of Homeland Security, Center for Countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference at the State Department, and more. These actions increase the exposure of the United States’ vulnerabilities to digital attacks from Russia, China, and Iran. “The Trump Administration’s Withdrawal from the Fight Against Foreign Interference – Strategic Implication”, by David Siman-Tov, Institute for National Security Studies, July 7, 2025.

CIA’s Book Club. During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency may have had as much success with books and magazines as with gun-running and spies. Books like George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” had a profound influence on anti-Soviet sentiment. Gary Saul Morson tells the story in “The CIA Book Club Review: Typewriter Revolution”, The Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2025. (Subscription)

Strategic Competition

Ukraine Counters Russia in Africa. Russians are being confronted with an active Ukrainian diplomatic offensive in Africa that is trying to diminish Russia’s influence on that continent through a variety of means. But it is just a diplomatic effort; there appears to be some more covert action taking place as well. David Kirichenko explores this topic in “How Ukraine is Challenging Russia in Africa and the Middle East”, Lawfare Blog, July 2, 2025.

Diplomacy Taking a Back Seat. National power on the international scene is more than just military forces and leadership willing to use it. Some national power comes from the use of diplomatic tools and ‘soft power’. The demise of Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for International Development has weakened U.S. ‘soft power’. Now it seems even more is being done to diminish U.S. influence with the cutting of over 1,300 Department of State staff. The resulting cost to America’s standing and influence around the world will be high. “Rubio’s Cuts at State Department Demote Longtime U.S. Values”, The New York Times, July 11, 2025.

Paper – Global Swing States. The United States should prioritize six countries in its foreign policy. This would help the U.S. maintain its influence in the world and counter the ambitions and nefarious activities of adversary nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. “Global Swing States and the New Great Power Competition”, The Washington Quarterly, July 7, 2025, PDF, 23 pages.

Afghanistan

DOS’s CARE Eliminated. The entire leadership of the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) has been dismissed from their jobs. Afghan allies, interpreters who worked alongside U.S. conventional and special operations forces and who have received a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) have been left in the lurch in places like the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Losing Friends. The current administration is dismantling Afghan immigration policies that are hindering the relocation and resettlement of Afghan interpreters and Afghan special operations forces that worked for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan during the twenty year’s of U.S. involvement in the Afghan conflict. Erin McFee, the founder and president of the Corioli Institute, makes the case that deserting our Afghan allies undermines the future of U.S. security. “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Partners”, Foreign Policy, July 11, 2025. (Subscription)

Afghan Allies in Limbo. Beth Bailey, a podcaster and veteran of the #AfghanEvac, writes on how America’s friends are now at risk because of the Biden administrations misteps and the current changes in policy under the Trump administartion. One set of Afghan allies are the former members of the Zero Units that worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. Thousands remain in Afghanistan or other countries awaiting entry to the United States; but the Trump administration is turning its back to them. “Our closet Afghan allies are in limbo”, Washington Examiner, July 11, 2025.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Book – Black Ops. Ric Prado, a former CIA clandestine services officer, has authored a non-fiction book describing the life of a CIA shadow warrior. It hit the New York Times bestseller list. The memoir offers a glimpse into the shadow wars that America has fought since the Vietnam Era. Prado’s carreer spanned the Cold War and the Age of Terrorism. https://www.ricprado.com/

Book Review – Into the Void: Special Operations Forces after the War on Terror. Eric Robinson reviews this book published by the US Army War College Press (2025). The book presents a positive, forward-looking vision of what makes special operations forces unique and explore how the SOF enterprise’s character, concepts, and capabilities can – and must – evolve.

SOF News Book Shop

View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.

Upcoming Events

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8. How the Trump shooting changed America

Conclusion:

That is the state of Donald Trump’s reputation one year on from what is probably the most extraordinary thing he ever did. The shooting at Butler is hardening into legend — but only a partisan one. Becoming a national legend takes longer, and may not ever happen. When Delacroix painted his depiction of the July 1830 Revolution, half a century had passed since the French Revolution, half a century during which much of the country viewed it as an ordeal of destruction, gore and institutional collapse. He was painting for the first generation of Frenchmen to understand the Revolution, and revolutions more generally, as their common inheritance. Whether Trump gets that treatment from future generations will depend on how his own revolution fares. A year ago this weekend, he inspired his followers through his rage to endure, fight, and lift himself off a speaker’s platform in Butler, Pennsylvania. Future generations may be similarly moved, particularly if he can summon other virtues than these.

How the Trump shooting changed America

unherd.com · by Christopher Caldwell · July 11, 2025

Donald Trump raising his fist, spitting out the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as blood streams down his face from a bullet wound in his ear — it is the sort of image that used to be called iconic back before that word degenerated into a synonym for famous. The attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, a year ago this weekend was the great symbolic moment of his 2024 presidential victory. There are certain events so transformative that we mark their anniversaries as a way of measuring the change they’ve wrought on us. The near-assassination of Trump is one of these.

We know that the 21-year-old sniper Thomas Crooks, a zitty and cerebral loner from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, brought an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to the roof of a warehouse 180 yards away and fired eight shots at Trump, hitting three bystanders and killing the 50-year-old fireman Corey Comperatore. But there is still no consensus about the larger meaning of what happened at Butler.

Certainly, the attack shaped the election. It changed the moral climate. In the spring of 2024, four criminal prosecutions dating to Trump’s first term approached resolution almost simultaneously. They had been strung along by Democratic-party prosecutors to fall just then, in election season, for maximum dissuasive effect. Oddly, the New York case in which Trump’s opponents prevailed was the weakest and most convoluted of them. Trump was now a “convicted felon”. But an argument persisted on the campaign trail that summer over whether Trump was being righteously held to account for his own corruption, or persecuted by adversaries who were corrupt themselves. The bullet fired at Trump settled that controversy. Not in any logical way, of course. But in an emotional way it validated the notion that “they” — meaning something in society and the spirit of the times — were out to destroy Trump.

It thus reinforced a shift that has been evident in American politics for quite some time. Voters used to respond to rational appeals based on policy differences. Now they prefer emotional appeals based on group allegiances. Pundits usually point out this change only to deplore the new system’s superficiality. But it’s not that simple. The “policy debates” in the old system were often phoney. Having conducted them, the political parties went off and did what they wanted anyway. Voting publics prefer the new, populist style because it actually gives them more information. Conservative policy wonks used statistics to deplore mass immigration, but then did nothing. Trump blustered and burbled — but then acted.

It thus reinforced a shift that has been evident in American politics for quite some time. Voters used to respond to rational appeals based on policy differences. Now they prefer emotional appeals based on group allegiances. Pundits usually point out this change only to deplore the new system’s superficiality. But it’s not that simple. The “policy debates” in the old system were often phoney. Having conducted them, the political parties went off and did what they wanted anyway. Voting publics prefer the new populist style because it actually gives them more information. Conservative policy wonks used statistics to deplore mass immigration, but then did nothing. Trump blustered and burbled — but then acted.

The striking thing about Trump’s behaviour on 13 July 2024 was that it was excellent, and it was excellent in a way that was unreflective and spontaneous. Everything about it was at odds with the American postwar conception of leadership. In a culture where equality of opportunity is everything, the public came to believe there was something reprehensible about the idea that anyone has any special aptitude for anything. We’re not living in a democracy, they felt, unless anyone can go out and become a leader, through hard work or a degree-granting course. Nothing could be more repugnant than the notion that leadership is something you either have or you don’t. And yet here was Trump, in a moment of disruption, behaving like a born leader.

“The most striking thing about Trump’s behaviour on 13 July 2024, was that it was excellent.”

The effect was electric. Within minutes of Trump’s being rushed offstage, Elon Musk stunned the country by endorsing him. “We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs,” Musk would later say, recalling the long decline of Joe Biden. “And another president who was fist-pumping after getting shot.” It is often forgotten that Biden’s rambling, mumbling, senescent performance in a June debate did not immediately end his candidacy. It was the shooting that did it. Biden was still hanging on at this point. It was only after Trump’s demonstration of relative vitality that Biden’s withdrawal became inevitable. He ended his candidacy the following weekend.

But the event was about more than vitality. “On a personal note,” Mark Zuckerberg said that week, “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air, with the American flag, is one of the most bad-ass things I’ve ever seen in my life. At some level, as an American, it’s hard not to get emotional about that spirit.” Trump was doing something archetypal: the pose in which many photographers caught him that day was almost exactly the one you will see in Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People, the great symbol of revolutionary republican patriotism that hangs in the Louvre: the raised right hand. The flag. The rallying of wounded followers. Trump was not just being brave or strong. He was, without meaning to, summoning Americans to feelings buried so deep that they had forgotten they had them. It was a powerful irruption into politics of reality, and even of religion.

Trump himself, though not conspicuously conversant in the language of faith, could see this. Seconds before the shooting, he had been excoriating Joe Biden as “the worst president in the history of our country”, and had planned to continue in that vein when he spoke at the Republican National Convention, due to convene two days later. That changed. “It went from the world’s most vicious speech,” Trump informed Senator Lindsey Graham the following day, “to ‘Let’s bring the country together’. May not be as exciting, but there it is.”

When he returned to Butler for a campaign rally three months later, on the eve of the election, Trump credited “the Hand of Providence and the Grace of God” for having brought him through the ordeal. Increasingly, he discussed the incident as a homespun and prayerful old lady might, dwelling on fateful coincidences: What made him turn his head to look at a graph behind him on the stage? What made him decide to ask that the graph be shown earlier in the speech rather than later, as he usually did? Whether we think of this as sincere religious reflection or electoral pandering, Trump was reacting as most reasonable people would after such a trauma — groping towards a language through which to understand how contingent, how out of human control everything that happens to us is, a quest that, even if it doesn’t lead one to belief in God, can teach one humility. In theory, at least.

Politicians of both parties sensed that something special had happened, that the voting public had come to feel a new kind of connection with their leaders. American officeholders have, in the past year, striven to place themselves in similar filmable situations in which the politician appears to be battling for the people, not metaphorically but physically, thwarted by evildoers while pushing indomitably against them. Fight, fight, fight. It is probably to the Butler assassination attempt that we owe a new sort of campaign stunt, the ideological tableau vivant. At a Los Angeles press conference held by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem in early June, California Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat, moved along an aisle towards the podium and, when he got too close, was stopped, expelled from the room by security agents and handcuffed, as any American would have been. His office then circulated the video. A few days later, New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander staged a similar disruption, clinging to a migrant being removed by customs officials and demanding that they “show me the judicial warrant”, even though, as The New York Times noted, warrants are not needed for arrests made inside courtrooms.

If Republicans, for now, appear to be better than Democrats at this kind of myth-making, half a century of government by experts is probably responsible. Republicans have a fair claim to represent the uncredentialed masses who were not at the table when the rules were drafted. Democrats are inclined to work the regulations and technicalities, never the most mythopoeic part of any constitutional order.

What the Trump shooting has not yet yielded up, one year on, is a consensus interpretation. Feelings about the event have tended to skew according to feelings about Trump himself. In testimony almost two weeks after the incident, FBI director Christopher Wray, a longtime Trump nemesis, cast doubt on the idea that Trump had been hit with a bullet at all. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray said. He resigned in January as Trump took office. At Butler, Sean Curran was one of the Secret Service agents who rushed to Trump’s aid. He can be seen in sunglasses protecting the candidate’s left side while Trump pumps his free (right) hand. In January, Trump named Curran head of the Secret Service.

A similar division besets the public at large. For Trump supporters, certain details have given rise to suspicions of conspiracy: the grounding of the Secret Service’s drones that day in Butler, the speed with which the suspect Crooks was cremated (“faster than most household pets”, in the opinion of Trump’s son Eric), the paucity of information about Crooks’s internet browsing habits (although we do know that he queried before the rally: “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?”). But the cloudier the circumstances surrounding the shooting, the more miraculous Trump’s emergence from them. Trump’s detractors are only beginning to assimilate the unquestionable virtues Trump showed at Butler into the unquestionable vices that mark his presidential style. A typical verdict is that of Peggy Noonan, the literary speechwriter in the administration of President George H.W. Bush back in the Eighties, who calls Trump “a fearless man with bad judgment”.

That is the state of Donald Trump’s reputation one year on from what is probably the most extraordinary thing he ever did. The shooting at Butler is hardening into legend — but only a partisan one. Becoming a national legend takes longer, and may not ever happen. When Delacroix painted his depiction of the July 1830 Revolution, half a century had passed since the French Revolution, half a century during which much of the country viewed it as an ordeal of destruction, gore and institutional collapse. He was painting for the first generation of Frenchmen to understand the Revolution, and revolutions more generally, as their common inheritance. Whether Trump gets that treatment from future generations will depend on how his own revolution fares. A year ago this weekend, he inspired his followers through his rage to endure, fight, and lift himself off a speaker’s platform in Butler, Pennsylvania. Future generations may be similarly moved, particularly if he can summon other virtues than these.

Christopher Caldwell is a contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books and the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

unherd.com · by Christopher Caldwell · July 11, 2025

9. US Institute of Peace employees experience another round of mass firings following court ruling

I wonder if Congress is going to take a stand on this?

US Institute of Peace employees experience another round of mass firings following court ruling | CNN Politics

CNN · by Shania Shelton · July 12, 2025

A sign for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is seen on its' building headquarters on February 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

CNN —

Employees at the United States Institute of Peace were terminated for a second time by the Trump administration, after a federal court ruling last month paved the way, according to multiple fired employees.

Liz Callihan, a now-former employee, said Department of Government Efficiency personnel installed at USIP notified the staff of the firings with a “few remaining employees retained to conduct close-out activities and wind down USIP.”

“These actions reflect a continued pattern of DOGE’s cruel indifference toward USIP’s dedicated workforce. Beyond the harm to these committed professionals, such reckless actions will immediately end the important training, education, facilitation, and research work that USIP does around the world in the field of conflict resolution,” Callihan, a former senior adviser for strategic engagement at USIP, said in a statement.

The administration has attempted to reimagine the role of the US abroad and dramatically dismantle key parts of the federal government through DOGE. In recent months, though, it has quietly backtracked in some cases as federal agencies have rehired and ordered back from leave some employees as a result of it scrambling to fill critical gaps.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Callihan, who has been with USIP since 2012, said it’s been “devastating” and emotional with the “constant change and flux and tumult.”

She was a part of the “landing team,” who were brought back to rebuild operations and programs after the first round of mass firings. Those employees began receiving their termination notice Friday afternoon. The rest of the USIP workforce, who had been furloughed, began receiving their letters in the evening.

USIP employees originally received termination letters on March 28, though a federal judge ruled in May that the Trump administration unlawfully removed the board of USIP and that subsequent actions taken by officials installed by DOGE to cripple the agency are therefore “null and void.” In late June, a federal appeals court stayed that ruling, leading to this week’s firings.

Hodei Sultan, another employee on the landing team who was fired on Friday, has been working with the institute since 2009 and oversaw operations and strategy within the Asia center. She said the personal impact of the recent firings is “really horrific.”

“Both on March 28 and on July 11, they have a tendency to do these mass firings at night,” she said. “We joked about it, but ‘Friday night massacre 1.0,’ and last night was ‘Friday massacre 2.0.’ So the intention is very much mental torture and emotional anguish, whether that’s inflicted on the partners and individuals in these conflict environments that so desperately need our help and support, but also the staff.”

“DOGE succeeded in getting a stay of the district court’s order,” Callihan said in her statement. “Having regained control of USIP, DOGE is renewing its mistreatment of USIP employees and its systematic dismantling of an institution authorized by Congress to promote peacebuilding efforts around the world.”

USIP is not a federal agency within the executive branch. It was created by Congress as a nonpartisan, independent body in 1984 that owns and manages its headquarters.

The institute, which was founded during the Reagan administration, “promotes research, policy analysis, education, and training on international peace and conflict resolution in an effort to prevent and resolve violent conflicts, and to promote post-conflict stability,” according to a description on usa.gov.

The Trump administration has had a series of significant wins in recent weeks, including in the Supreme Court, which, earlier this month backed Trump’s effort to carry out mass firings and reorganizations at federal agencies. It put on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked the president from taking those steps without approval from Congress.

The employees at USIP are the latest group of mass firings as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to shrink the federal government. The State Department also began firing more than 1,300 people on Friday as part of a dramatic overhaul of the agency.

The State Department firings will affect 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers in Washington, DC, an internal notice seen by CNN said. Those fired on Friday worked on issues like countering violent extremism; helping Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover; educational exchanges; and issues related to women’s rights, refugees and climate change.

Sultan pointed to the recent firings at the State Department and said the “US is very much losing its credence and credibility on the world stage.”

“We’re completely self-isolating from the world and pulling away on this vital livelihood foreign assistance, foreign aid programs that were more than just helping people in other countries. They really were about flexing our soft power approach and making sure that we were a credible partner on the world stage,” she said.

CNN’s Betsy Klein, Jennifer Hansler and Devan Cole contributed to this report.

CNN · by Shania Shelton · July 12, 2025

10. Trump's paranoid security state

21 hours ago -Politics & Policy

Trump's paranoid security state

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/13/trump-leak-hunts-polygraph-tests-fbi-pentagon

Dave Lawler

Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photos: Win McNamee/Getty Images, Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

America's top national security agencies have been using polygraph tests, seeking employees' communications and threatening criminal investigations, all in the name of ferreting out leakers or ensuring loyalty.

Why it matters: The recent revelations expose the deep mistrust between top national security officials and their own staffs — starting at the top, with a commander-in-chief who considers himself a victim of Deep State abuses.

Driving the news: The FBI has subjected senior agents to lie-detector tests to find the sources for fairly innocuous news stories, and even to ask whether agents have ever disparaged Director Kash Patel, the NYT's Adam Goldman reports.

Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, made their names in part by castigating the FBI before being tapped to run it.
Relations with career agents have been contentious from the start, and a number of senior agents have been reassigned or put on administrative leave.

Zoom out: The FBI isn't the only agency pulling out the polygraph.

A March memo from Joe Kasper, then chief of staff to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stated that polygraphs would be used as part of a leak hunt. Incidentally, that probe devolved into a power struggle that saw Kasper himself ousted.
The Department of Homeland Security also said in March that it was using lie detector tests to try to find out who was providing alleged tip-offs ahead of ICE raids.
Agencies all across the federal government have used the devices, which aren't considered highly reliable, for even fairly minor leaks, per Reuters. In one case, FEMA staffers who attended a March meeting involving Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were subjected to polygraph tests after some contents of the meeting became public.

What they're saying: "President Trump and the entire administration take operational security seriously – and that commitment was crucial to the success of operations like Midnight Hammer, which totally obliterated Iran's nuclear facilities," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Axios.

"We certainly do not trust leakers who provide sensitive information to the media, or who commit felonies by leaking top secret intelligence."

Zoom in: A new unit under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is seeking email and chat records from across America's spy agencies to find employees who may be undermining President Trump's agenda, the Washington Post reports.

The goal, The Post says, is to run that bulk data through AI programs to uncover malfeasance. Gabbard's spokesperson said the new unit's mission was "to expose the truth and end the politicization and weaponization of intelligence against Americans."

Gabbard has repeatedly accused the spy agencies she now oversees of "weaponizing" or "politicizing" intelligence under previous leadership.

She also announced in April that she'd referred multiple leaks to the DOJ for criminal investigations. "These deep-state criminals leaked classified information for partisan political purposes to undermine POTUS' agenda," she said.

The bottom line: Trump and his team now run the government. But that doesn't mean they trust it.

11. Li Cheng and Andy Browne discuss what Trump gets wrong about China and where next for ties

Does this subtitle describe the US problem?

White House ‘should really find some people who understand the Chinese economy and politics’, political science expert suggests

A long read but this excerpt surely paints a picture of the relationship.

Excerpts:

Of course, US-China relations are not in good shape, to state the obvious. But this did not start five months ago. The Biden administration’s relationship with China did not go well and in Trump’s first term – especially the last couple of years – it was also in terrible shape.

World leaders react to Trump’s new tariff blitz as global trade war escalates

In my view, this relationship and status have less to do with the top leaders – whether American or Chinese – and more to do with structural factors in terms of global geopolitical landscape changes and also the growing fear in the US, rightly or wrongly, of China.

The US feels that since World War II there has been no competitor so strong in terms of not only economic and technological areas but also military and even probably financial areas, although some of these concerns may be exaggerated.

That’s what the US calls the Thucydides Trap and what the Chinese call the rivalry between the No 1 and No 2 powers. So that is what has shaped the relationship.

But on the other hand, looking back, I think China probably sees Trump as less problematic compared with former president Joe Biden because Biden’s “two camps” framework of democracy versus autocracy certainly put China into a corner.

But under Trump, America alienates its own allies, whether in Europe or elsewhere. So it depends on how you look at it and who you ask. Of course, China is still very much concerned because Trump is surrounded by hawkish people, but on the other hand, he has said that he wants to visit China.

...

So I think that both leaders should think outside the box about how to, through economic cooperation, gradually enhance some confidence in each other. It’s a high calling but it’s still possible. Donald Trump, in that regard, may be the right person because, to him, everything is transactional; he is not ideological.

Trump has never insulted the Chinese leader. Some people probably will have different views, but I think overall he has shown that he has strong interests in cooperating with China.

There’s some distrust, there are some structural tensions. Nevertheless, you do need to find some ways to avoid free-falls in this most important bilateral relationship in the world, which could be devastating.

I think the bottom line is to avoid military conflict. If we talk about the two major powers, or the two leading powers, or two AI powers caught up in war, this is beyond anyone’s imagination. This is the thing to absolutely avoid.

Open Dialogue | Li Cheng and Andy Browne discuss what Trump gets wrong about China and where next for ties

White House ‘should really find some people who understand the Chinese economy and politics’, political science expert suggests

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3317809/li-cheng-and-andy-browne-discuss-what-trump-gets-wrong-about-china-and-where-next-ties?tpc

Dewey Simin Beijing

Published: 6:00am, 14 Jul 2025Updated: 12:36pm, 14 Jul 2025

Welcome to Open Dialogue, a new series from the Post where we bring together leading voices to discuss the stories and subjects occupying international headlines.

In this edition, two leading China watchers discuss the consequential relationship between the world’s two largest economies and how ties might develop under the second Donald Trump administration amid growing trade frictions.

Professor Li Cheng, a leading political scientist who has studied China for decades, is the founding director of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World. He previously spent 17 years at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, which included heading up the think tank’s John L. Thornton China Centre.

Andrew Browne is an award-winning journalist who has covered China for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters and the South China Morning Post. More recently, he was a partner at advisory firm The Brunswick Group, where he advised some of the world’s largest companies on geopolitical strategy from his New York base.

The past few months have been a roller-coaster ride for US-China relations, beginning with President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, followed by the tit-for-tat trade war and then trade negotiations.

What are your assessments of the health of bilateral ties and how do you see things unfolding?

Li: China certainly feels that the pressure is not just on China. Of course, China is a major trading partner of the US, but the US is not China’s No 1 or No 2 trading partner and trade with the US is only 16 per cent of China’s entire foreign trade – we should put that into perspective.

In my view, the trade issue certainly puts tremendous pressure on China, but there are other issues that are probably far more important from the Chinese leadership’s perspective.

Of course, US-China relations are not in good shape, to state the obvious. But this did not start five months ago. The Biden administration’s relationship with China did not go well and in Trump’s first term – especially the last couple of years – it was also in terrible shape.

World leaders react to Trump’s new tariff blitz as global trade war escalates

In my view, this relationship and status have less to do with the top leaders – whether American or Chinese – and more to do with structural factors in terms of global geopolitical landscape changes and also the growing fear in the US, rightly or wrongly, of China.

The US feels that since World War II there has been no competitor so strong in terms of not only economic and technological areas but also military and even probably financial areas, although some of these concerns may be exaggerated.

That’s what the US calls the Thucydides Trap and what the Chinese call the rivalry between the No 1 and No 2 powers. So that is what has shaped the relationship.

But on the other hand, looking back, I think China probably sees Trump as less problematic compared with former president Joe Biden because Biden’s “two camps” framework of democracy versus autocracy certainly put China into a corner.

But under Trump, America alienates its own allies, whether in Europe or elsewhere. So it depends on how you look at it and who you ask. Of course, China is still very much concerned because Trump is surrounded by hawkish people, but on the other hand, he has said that he wants to visit China.

Let’s see if it happens. His visit certainly would improve the relationship in a dramatic way, though it may or may not be sustainable. There’s a lot of irony and uncertainty, so people have been very much confused about the whole situation.

Andy, Professor Li mentioned that US-China relations don’t appear to be in good shape and that Trump could be less problematic than Biden for China. Do you agree?

Browne: Well, I think so – to the extent that Trump is non-ideological and almost entirely transactional. And he’s quite capable of executing U-turns and flip-flops, is open to persuasion, and is subject to multiple forces working on him, not least the last person who has his ear.

So I think that, from a Chinese perspective, they probably feel that in Trump they’ve got somebody that they can work with. To echo Dr Cheng Li, the fundamental problem with this relationship is that it is almost completely devoid of trust.

At a high level, they’re strategic competitors, and each thinks the absolute worst of the other.

On the US side, there’s a great fear that China is accelerating its technological development, catching up and surpassing the United States, and dominating many of the powerful technologies that will shape the global economy. This presents nightmare scenarios for the United States and zero-sum competition.

On the other hand, these two economies are joined at the hip. They are entirely dependent on each other in a host of different ways. And both of these economies have just stared into the abyss and realised that.

This isn’t, by the way, a tariff war any more. This is now a supply chain war – much more difficult, much more threatening, far more consequential.

China essentially threatened to close down the US automotive and defence industries – and it could do so by denying the United States access to certain rare earths. There are 17 rare earths sitting at the bottom of the periodic table. China has almost 100 per cent control over many of these.

On the US side, it has threatened to disrupt China’s entire petrochemical sector by denying it ethane, threatened to derail its entire civilian airline programme by putting export controls on jet engine parts, and so on.

The two sides looked at that and recoiled. In some ways, you could say that it was a positive development.

Donald Trump needs an agreement, probably more than Xi Jinping needs an agreement.

Andy Browne

You mentioned that Trump is non-ideological and open to persuasion. He has also branded himself as a deal maker. Does this leave more room for US-China relations to improve?

Browne: We saw this playing out in his first term with the much-ballyhooed phase one trade deal. This was supposed to be the culminating achievement of months, if not years, of trade negotiations between China and the US.

As a matter of fact, it wasn’t a trade agreement at all. It was a very thin purchase agreement and in the end, it turned into a bust partly because of Covid-19. Nonetheless, Trump was quite capable of packaging this up as an enormous achievement.

I have no doubt now that as these two sets of negotiators go into talks, these are going to be incredibly difficult, tough, give-and-take talks – if they try to achieve something that is really ambitious, such as completely changing the terms of their trade arrangement or changing the internal structures of each other’s economies.

This is going to be impossible, and they’ll probably end up with something that looks rather similar to what they ended up with in the first term, which is China agreeing probably to something around fentanyl, and attached to that is some kind of purchase agreement. That would be the base case.

If they want to get more ambitious, they can start talking about things like whether Trump could potentially open up the United States to Chinese investment around tech transfer, IP transfer, licensing and so on. But let’s see.

I think, though, with Trump, he needs an agreement, probably more than President Xi Jinping needs an agreement.

The World Bank halved projections for US GDP growth this year – more than any other country in the world. Real threat and real danger of inflation, falling growth, rising inflation. This is your stagflation nightmare. Trump does not want that going into the midterms in 2026.

China, US slash most tariffs on each other after first round of trade talks

Li: I agree with Andy, but I want to explain a Chinese perspective. Yes, Trump is ideological, but China would probably follow up that statement by saying he is very political.

In his first term, after Covid-19 spiralled out of control, he completely changed his policy towards China. Former Chinese vice-premier Liu He’s visit to the US was just two months before Trump’s 180-degree U-turn, and so the Chinese will remember that.

This is related to what Andy said – accurately – about the lack of trust, about Trump and his unpredictable nature. Of course, there are some things that he is very predictable about, but his political nature is very important from the Chinese perspective.

The way Trump treated American allies in Europe, no Chinese leader wants to go to the White House at the moment. I think Andy made a very important point, that the trade war will certainly hurt both countries but at different levels. It will probably hurt the US more for various reasons.

When Trump imposed tariffs on China, Beijing did not budge, matching them instead. How does this inform us about China’s approach towards Trump’s second presidency? And how does it differ from the Chinese approach in his first term?

Li: The negotiations in Geneva that resulted in a return to 30 per cent, with some months of waiver, reflected the degree of tariffs that China can accept. It has been consistent.

If US tariffs go beyond 60 per cent, China may still want to cut a deal, but China might also want to get something in return, like market access and removing some Chinese companies from the Entity List.

And all the economic and geopolitical issues will be related, including TikTok and many others. This is the way to explain the Chinese behaviour.

This tells you that Donald Trump got China wrong.

Li Cheng

But I want to add one more thing. Donald Trump is not really well prepared for this tariff war with China. The way he talked about Xi Jinping and thought that [Xi] would call him – people in China know that Xi Jinping would not call Trump under these circumstances.

He also talked about how China would have an uprising – like a revolution – if the trade deal was not made. It’s certainly not the case. When the foreign pressure is so strong, usually Chinese people will unite and support the leadership rather than the other way round. This tells you that Donald Trump got China wrong.

I also want to echo what Andy said about inflation. A more important impact is related to the broader cooperation in certain sectors that Andy mentioned. This will hit the US very badly.

But fundamentally, the most important one is already happening, in terms of global reaction and its impact on the US stock market and bond market.

That also explains how US$5 trillion of market value disappeared. This probably got Trump very much concerned about what China will do, as its actions will probably hit the US very badly – although China will be hesitant to use that kind of revenge.

From the Chinese leadership’s perspective, political pressure is more critical, but the fact that Donald Trump’s tariff war is against the entire world puts China in a relatively good position. The dialogues in Geneva and London certainly made China less worried about the situation.

Browne: I would just echo one point that Professor Li made. I think that the US severely underestimated China and the degree to which it was prepared this time for a trade war with the Trump administration.

So you have a figure like Peter Navarro who – at least judging from his writings, his books – has a sort of comic book understanding of China and the Chinese economy as a place filled with Dickensian workshops and slave labour, when he talks about Chinese sofas that are really acid baths, and so on.

But even a sophisticated figure like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, before the first set of tariff talks, said: “Look, the Chinese would be crazy to escalate. We have all the cards.” He said they’re playing with a pair of twos. Well, it turns out that the Chinese had a couple of aces up their sleeves and very, very powerful cards – which they played.

They really should talk to real experts in the United States regarding China.

Li Cheng

Which is why, I think now, when we go back to the negotiations, they are not going to be negotiations such as those the United States is going to have with other countries, which aren’t really negotiations.

They are more about “you present us with your best offer, we will evaluate it, tell you whether it’s acceptable, and if it’s not we’re going to put the tariffs back up again”.

Now there’s an understanding that they’re going into real negotiations with China, and both sides have leverage.

Building on that, what are some lessons that Trump should learn or would have learned from this recent tariff war with Beijing? And how tricky will negotiations be, given this context?

Li: First of all, there is a lack of expertise on China in Washington, be it economic, social issues, technological issues, you name it. It’s an important phenomenon, and on top of that is also Trump’s ignorance about the Chinese mindset.

And also, among his cabinet members, six of them were anchor people from Fox News. The prevailing perception in Washington nowadays is that those hawkish US policymakers are not brainwashed by China. This is a very bad assessment. They really should talk to real experts in the United States regarding China.

But if you look at the current cabinet, look at the deputy level, there are very few or no experts on China. I think they probably should really find some people who understand the Chinese economy and politics, who can negotiate with Chinese financial or economic technocrats.

Andy has said rightly that they have absolutely underestimated China’s capacity. Yes, China has some economic problems, but remember just a few months ago there was talk about China’s economy being past its peak, that China was not investible, and also that Chinese technology would never catch up with the United States for political, cultural and other reasons. All these are being challenged now.

‘Made in China 2025’: how has the nation changed 10 years after setting its manufacturing blueprint?

And so I think that certainly there are lots of mistakes being made on the part of the US that are very hard to fix. You do need to have a capable team to follow up. This is not just about one person or several cabinet members. But the US is not in the mood to seriously study the outside world.

Donald Trump is a great example. He only listens to Peter Navarro and a few others. So I think this will be very devastating from a US perspective. This is only one of the many problems I want to mention.

Browne: I would also say that the Chinese side has made some mistakes too, and the first was to believe that their problem is primarily with the United States. It’s not. Everybody is worried about China’s export machine and the degree to which Xi Jinping has attempted to rescue his economy – suffering from high debt and suffering from a multi-year real estate meltdown – by doubling down on manufacturing. And this is not sustainable.

Actually, as the United States puts up high tariffs against China, other countries are even more alarmed that goods that were headed towards the US are going to be diverted towards them. Europe is extremely worried about that. Southeast Asian countries are worried about that. There is a real problem.

Scott Bessent got it about right, that the Chinese economy is severely unbalanced, and they need to fundamentally address that issue. They are far too big to export their way out of economic difficulties. China needs to spend down its savings. It needs to reallocate national wealth from the state sector to the household sector.

On the other hand, the United States needs to do the opposite. It needs to save more, which would mean higher taxes potentially. It needs to spend less, which means curbing entitlement spending and so on.

Politically, in both countries, that type of resolution to the trade issue, which is really the only resolution, is unacceptable. And so both sides are mistaken in believing that they can resolve their issues through trade and through tariffs.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng pictured in Geneva on May 10, ahead of their meeting to discuss trade relations and tariffs. Photo: AFP

Li: I understand Andy’s view. I also wrote extensively on the importance of empathy and inclusive growth in China’s outreach to the world, be it the Global South or North America or Europe.

I’ve been concerned about the Made in China 2025 policy. But the thing is that Beijing is working on domestic consumption for China’s economic growth. It’s not so easy.

And also, if we compare China with the United States, the US is so rich in terms of natural resources and in terms of land. But the US is not doing well. Economic disparity is out of control.

China’s policy, looking back, was wise on common prosperity, poverty elimination and the redistribution of wealth. Despite all the challenges and the overall GDP slowdown, China’s GDP per capita still grew, which means that the middle class is still growing.

I think that all countries should look at their own problems. It’s very difficult to tell the Chinese to slow down, to not do foreign trade or other things. China will probably very strongly reject this due to Chinese entrepreneurship.

My view is, yes, both parties in the US-China relationship should fix some of their own problems. But the nature and seriousness of their problems are quite different. The US has a distribution problem, economic disparity, and also it continues borrowing and spending. It’s far worse than China’s difficulties or China’s so-called industrial policy.

Nowadays when we talk about industrial policy, it’s not mainly about China but the United States. That’s the reason the trade war actually may not serve the US well. Its manufacturing sector is in terrible shape.

The US should really take advantage of its services sector, but the whole campaign is to bring manufacturing back. Unless artificial intelligence can play an important role in this area, it will not work.

Trump promises to bring US manufacturing back from China, but will his tariffs work?

In their call in June, Xi invited Trump to visit China. How useful would a summit be in easing tensions? Is the relationship so fragile it can only have a small truce after a small truce? What is needed to stabilise ties now?

Browne: I think small truce followed by small truce is probably what we should expect, and it may be the best that we can expect given that, as I was describing earlier, there’s this high-level problem of a lack of trust.

They regard themselves as strategic competitors, and all of that leaches into the trade relationship and everything else – into people-to-people exchanges, scientific exchanges, education, technology, you name it. A fragile truce is where we are and where we’re likely to remain.

I think it’s critical that these two leaders meet to prevent things from spinning out of control, and to keep things on track. Clearly, these two are the decision makers. Every decision reaches their desk.

Trump has concentrated more power in his hands than perhaps any other US president in modern times. Xi Jinping is often described as the new Mao Zedong. It’s vitally important that they meet and there is a good chance that they will later this year at an Apec summit.

The question is, what sort of expectations should we have for the outcome of a meeting between Xi and Trump? I think that in Trump’s mind, he believes that man-to-man, we can sit together and negotiate anything. We can do a deal, make a grand bargain.

I think he may be exaggerating the utility of a summit in that respect, that when he sits down with Xi Jinping, he is sitting down with a through-and-through nationalist who represents China’s interests.

US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka on June 29, 2019. Photo: AFP

When you sit down with Trump, you’re sitting down with the US president. You’re sitting down with the head of the Maga movement. You’re sitting down with a figure who has personal interests. He’s a media figure. He wants media moments. He has business interests. That was very much top of mind for leaders in the Gulf when he visited in May.

When you sit down with Xi, he is disciplined. He is focused. He represents his country and he’s not going to make spur-of-the-moment decisions. He’s going to stick to his plan, and he’s executing on that plan very, very effectively.

So if Trump feels that he’s going to go in and Xi – because he has some kind of personal rapport or affinity with Trump – is going to do a deal, I think he’s mistaken.

Li: I just want to say one thing based on what Andy said. The way Xi handled the situation showed that he’s not primarily a Mao-like figure. It was a combination of Mao and Deng Xiaoping.

But most importantly, it’s Xi who has supervised the country’s rapid development and through a historical geopolitical landscape change. So that’s quite unique in many ways.

It’s probably too simplistic to say “just like Mao”, when with Mao the country was very much isolated, and with Xi Jinping supervising, the country is on a very different path. Finally! Andy and I have found some differences in our views!

Browne: Look, you’re obviously right. I was referring to Xi Jinping as a Chinese nationalist and, in that sense, that is the Mao legacy that he embraces. He certainly doesn’t embrace the legacy of Mao’s chaos. In fact, quite the opposite. But he does inherit quite a lot of the authority of Mao through his father. He is red aristocracy. But I agree there are fundamental differences between Xi and Mao.

Professor Li, given Chinese thinking and considering Trump’s more mercurial and unpredictable character, is a summit between the two leaders more distant than we might expect?

Li: First of all, there are at least six or seven issues that are far worse than a tariff war from the Chinese perspective. Even though 60 per cent tariffs will certainly bankrupt some companies, the country probably can muddle through.

But there are other issues – for example, a complete decoupling. If there was a complete decoupling, it would hit China very severely. That’s No 1.

No 2, a freezing of Chinese assets or Chinese official’s assets. This would also be a terrible thing from the Chinese perspective.

Donald Trump can do everything and anything in his view. This kind of attitude is really disturbing.

Li Cheng

Asking China to pay for the losses from Covid-19 – some of Donald Trump’s team members, including some congressmen, have argued for that. Of course, China is not going to do that, so that would mean a very serious clash.

Also – as Andy said on completely stopping cultural and educational exchanges – no longer giving out visas for Communist Party members and their immediate family.

How many? 300 million! How do they know these people are Communist Party members? So, they are basically saying that no Chinese should enter the US and they are putting a stop to educational exchanges.

Even more important is the political or military pressure on the Taiwan issue and in the South China Sea.

These are all very crucial issues from the Chinese perspective. Now, there’s hope that Donald Trump’s visit to China will at least prevent some of these crashing issues, otherwise his hawkish team will dominate.

But the Chinese are also keenly aware that there is a lack of trust. How do we know that Donald Trump will not change the next day? And how to prevent Trump’s positive policies and approaches to China from being hijacked by his anti-China team members?

An important factor in international relations is that we cannot control unexpected events. Events can drastically change. But they could also make China and the US work together – because Donald Trump is still interested in getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Look at his parade, look at the AI-generated images of him. What can he not do? He can do everything and anything in his view. This kind of attitude is really disturbing. He wants to end the war in Ukraine... He probably still wants to visit North Korea and hug Kim Jong-un and stop nuclear proliferation in the region.

In all these areas, he needs China’s help. For China, these are not vital or the most critical issues.

Andy, circling back to your earlier point about how the two countries think the worst of each other, how would you explain Washington’s growing anxiety over China? And what is Trump’s biggest fear when dealing with Beijing?

Browne: Trump is fixated on trade and the trade deficit, and he is nothing if not consistent on this. With China, he is determined to narrow this trade deficit. He’s also determined to create jobs.

He rightly perceives that the import surges which followed China’s entry into the World Trade Organization helped to hollow out the US industrial base.

He sees that America’s lack of industrialisation is now a security threat – that during the pandemic, the US couldn’t get hold of supplies of emergency medical equipment and protective gear and syringes, and so on. So all of this is top of mind.

Layered on top of this, of course, are fears that China is outcompeting the United States in areas of high technology. That was a concern of the Biden administration as well. And so that’s where I think the fear that Professor Cheng Li talked about comes from. It’s really the technological competition.

Li: The thing is that, in reality, technology also requires cooperation. I do believe that both countries are equally competitive in many areas. Maybe in AI, the US has an advantage, though this is only relative and subject to change. That has certainly caused a lot of anxiety. Probably, Donald Trump wants more cooperation in these areas but his hawkish team will not let that happen.

One thing I wanted to alert you to was some recent surveys of American public opinion – that despite still being quite negative, there are some changes. I think we will see more changes, looking at Trump’s current way of dealing with China.

Some other countries may also adjust their policy, despite having some concerns with China. That will put tremendous pressure on the US and on Donald Trump.

Andy is probably more aware of the general atmosphere than I am, since I left the US two years ago, but while I think it’s quite negative about China, we should not jump to the conclusion that Americans want to fight a war with China. These are different issues.

If the US is in a really chaotic situation, it’s not necessarily good news for China.

Li Cheng

Nothing is predetermined in this area. I think the Chinese should be fully aware that, in my view, the US will probably review its policy towards China after 10 years. My favourite quote is from Winston Churchill – that America will do the right thing only after it has tried everything else.

Unfortunately, the US is in a very difficult period at the moment. Look at the military parade last month. It was astonishing to see this for a person who lived in the United States for over 30 years.

I hope it’s temporary but it will last for a while. But, as Andy said earlier, we need to emphasise inclusive growth and not see things in an absolutely zero-sum way. Because again, if the US is in a really chaotic situation, it’s not necessarily good news for China.

The same things can be said about China – if China is in trouble or chaos... it could also be a disaster for the world. So I think all these things require a mindset change, a perspective change. It will take some time. I think there will be some tough times ahead.

Browne: I would just pick up on one point there, which I think is an important one – I don’t think that when it comes to China, Trump is as fixated as Biden or the Biden administration was on national security.

Witness the presence of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at the inauguration, witness Trump’s strenuous efforts to try to save TikTok, in spite of a Congressional Act that insists TikTok is sold to a US business.

Look at what happened on AI and the AI diffusion rule. The Trump administration just blew away the whole framework put in place in the final few days of the Biden administration.

It was designed to sort of rank countries in tiers based on their geopolitical alignment with the United States, and based on that the US would dole out semiconductors. That has now been completely scrapped.

On his trip to the Gulf, Trump pretty much pledged to give Gulf countries what they wanted to turn the region into an AI superpower.

And the reason for that whole AI diffusion framework was to prevent leakage of advanced semiconductors to China. So if you look at that precedent, it suggests that there is actually a deal that can be made.

As I said earlier, I think that deal may well have something to do with opening up the US wider to Chinese investment. There’s a recognition, I hope, in the US that China has technologies that the US doesn’t have and really needs, and may not be in a position to develop for years, if ever.

Batteries are a great, classic example, and I think that given the right understanding, it is possible that you could see a deal where a CATL is allowed to invest in the EV sector in the United States. Or that a TikTok or a Shein or a Temu could figure out a way of entering and remaining in the US markets by resolving issues around data and ownership and AI algorithms, and so on and so forth.

So I think that there could be technical solutions that could improve the overall US-China trade and investment relationship.

Li: What Andy said is very important. But also there are some even more obvious things – probably less controversial – like the agriculture sector, the energy sector, oil and natural gas. The US wants to sell, China wants to buy.

With China’s help, American infrastructure could improve profoundly. I think Donald Trump may not be so ideological and he may push for that, and that would be great news for China.

So I think that both leaders should think outside the box about how to, through economic cooperation, gradually enhance some confidence in each other. It’s a high calling but it’s still possible. Donald Trump, in that regard, may be the right person because, to him, everything is transactional; he is not ideological.

Trump has never insulted the Chinese leader. Some people probably will have different views, but I think overall he has shown that he has strong interests in cooperating with China.

There’s some distrust, there are some structural tensions. Nevertheless, you do need to find some ways to avoid free-falls in this most important bilateral relationship in the world, which could be devastating.

I think the bottom line is to avoid military conflict. If we talk about the two major powers, or the two leading powers, or two AI powers caught up in war, this is beyond anyone’s imagination. This is the thing to absolutely avoid.

Dewey Sim

Dewey Sim is a reporter for the China desk covering Beijing's foreign policy. He was previously writing about Singapore and Southeast Asia for the Post's Asia desk. A Singapore native, Dewey joined the Post in 2019 and is a graduate of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and

12. In His Own Words: How Trump Changed His Tone on Putin and the War in Ukraine

In His Own Words: How Trump Changed His Tone on Putin and the War in Ukraine

After years of lavishing praise on the Russian leader, President Trump abruptly changed his posture amid mounting frustration with the lack of progress on a cease-fire.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/us/politics/trump-putin-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WU8.KGeb.d9vu1kf--Flt&smid=url-share

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Trump in 2019. While he was running for president in 2024, Mr. Trump said he could settle the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Minho Kim

Reporting from Washington

July 14, 2025,

5:01 a.m. ET

President Trump’s harsh words in recent days about President Vladimir V. Putin marked a sharp break from the strikingly positive posture he has taken for years toward the Russian leader.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly praised Mr. Putin and predicted the two men would forge a productive relationship. When Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Trump called Mr. Putin a “genius” for moving to seize large swaths of territory — applauding what he viewed as hard-line negotiation tactics.

“How smart is that? And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” Mr. Trump said, adding: “Here’s a guy who’s very savvy. I know him very well.”

As Mr. Putin’s army slaughtered civilians in a Ukrainian suburb and abducted Ukrainian children to Russia, Mr. Trump called such actions “terrible,” but stressed that he “got along with him really well.” Mr. Putin responded with his own compliments, saying that he couldn’t “help but feel happy about” Mr. Trump’s continued support for a negotiated peace favorable to Russia.

Many of Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Putin have reflected his anger about the U.S. investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election that dominated his first term.

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” he said in February, seated next to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with his Russian counterpart over the lack of progress on a cease-fire in Ukraine, as The New York Times has reported.

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The changes in Mr. Trump’s public remarks illuminate the challenges he has faced in fulfilling one of his main campaign pledges: that he would swiftly end the conflict.

Mr. Trump now acknowledges the war in Ukraine has been “difficult” to end.

Video

While he was running for president, Mr. Trump said he could settle the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, ending the largest land war in Europe since 1945 before his first day in office.

The promise was implausible, but he kept doubling down.

After he took office, Mr. Trump said he had been speaking “figuratively.” By May, Mr. Trump was telling Mr. Zelensky and other European leaders that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.

The war is still raging, and Mr. Trump’s early message has changed dramatically.

“It’s more difficult than people would have any idea,” Mr. Trump said at the NATO summit last month. “Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky.”

While Mr. Trump previously expressed skepticism about devoting American resources to the conflict, he told reporters last week that it was necessary to bolster Ukraine’s defenses. He resumed the delivery of U.S. weapons to the country that had been temporarily paused.

“They have to be able to defend themselves,” he said. “They’re getting hit very hard. Now they’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess.”

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said that Mr. Trump had always been consistent on foreign policy and blamed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the prolonged war in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump “will always put America first, and he wants peace in Ukraine and around the world,” Ms. Kelly said in a statement. After a review “to ensure all foreign military aid aligns with American interests, the president decided to send Ukraine defensive munitions to help stop the killing in this brutal war.”

Since the resumption of U.S. military aid, Mr. Putin has escalated his attack, again striking cities and towns across central and western Ukraine.

According to people close to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin is now convinced that his military could overpower Ukraine’s in the months to come, aiming for a strategic victory in the war that has lasted 40 months and led to hundreds of thousands of casualties within his military.

Mr. Trump is now sharply expressing his displeasure with Mr. Putin.

Video

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly expressed optimism that he could work with the Russian leader.

“It’s a smart thing” to talk to Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in October when asked whether he talked to Mr. Putin after his first term. “If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing.”

After his re-election, Mr. Trump seemed to side with Russia in the conflict.

He scolded Mr. Zelensky for being an ingrate and asking for more military support. He sent his envoys to Saudi Arabia to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine with Mr. Putin’s surrogates — all without input or consent from Mr. Zelensky, an American ally.

In March, Mr. Trump said he was confident Mr. Putin wanted to find a path to peace, even though the Russian leader was continuing to bomb Ukraine. “I believe him,” Mr. Trump said. “I think we’re doing very well with Russia.”

But his tone has shifted in recent weeks.

After a July 3 call with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump complained to reporters that their conversation did not lead to “progress.”

The next day, Russia assaulted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with the largest number of drones and missiles launched since the beginning of the war.

“I’m not happy with President Putin at all,” Mr. Trump said on July 7.

Last week, after reversing the pause on U.S. military aid, Mr. Trump further expressed his frustration over Mr. Putin’s recalcitrance.

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting.

On Sunday, he again suggested the Russian president was being duplicitous: “He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening.”

McKinnon de Kuyper, Meg Felling and Jamie Leventhal contributed video research and production.

Minho Kim covers breaking news and climate change for The Times. He is based in Washington.

13. The Philippines is quietly working with Taiwan to counter China

The Philippines "gets it." Its security (and fate?) is tied to Taiwan.

Excerpts:

This marks a significant departure from Manila’s conservative approach toward Taiwan and could pave the way for the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, to play a bigger role if China makes good on its threats to invade Taiwan.

“Any force projection of China within our area is a matter of extreme concern,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said in an interview Thursday.

While Manila still observes the one-China policy stipulating that there is only one Chinese government — the People’s Republic of China — the fates of the Philippines and Taiwan are increasingly enmeshed, he said.

“It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” added Teodoro, who recently endorsed a Japanese proposal to view the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula as a single “theater” of battle.

The Philippines is quietly working with Taiwan to counter China

Chinese aggression at sea is driving Manila closer to Taipei, officials say.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/14/philippines-taiwan-security-ties-china/

July 14, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDTToday at 5:00 a.m. EDT

8 min

Summary

U.S. Apache helicopters maneuver during a live-fire drill as part of U.S.-Philippine military exercises in Aparri, Philippines, on May 3. (Daniel Ceng/Anadolu/Getty Images)

By Rebecca Tan, Frances Mangosing and Pei-Lin Wu

MANILA — Faced with intensifying Chinese encroachment at sea, the Philippines increasingly sees its national security as intertwined with that of Taiwan and is quietly ramping up both formal and informal engagement with the self-governing island, including on security, according to government officials, defense analysts and diplomats here.

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This marks a significant departure from Manila’s conservative approach toward Taiwan and could pave the way for the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, to play a bigger role if China makes good on its threats to invade Taiwan.

“Any force projection of China within our area is a matter of extreme concern,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said in an interview Thursday.

While Manila still observes the one-China policy stipulating that there is only one Chinese government — the People’s Republic of China — the fates of the Philippines and Taiwan are increasingly enmeshed, he said.

“It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” added Teodoro, who recently endorsed a Japanese proposal to view the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula as a single “theater” of battle.

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China and the Philippines have clashed with rising intensity in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway that China has claimed in its entirety over the competing claims of six other governments, including the Philippines and Taiwan. The number of Chinese vessels in waters off the western coast of the Philippines has increased markedly in the past year, along with cybersecurity attacks, espionage and other threats emanating from Beijing, according to the Philippine national security council.

Taiwanese coast guard vessels and speedboats maneuver in formation during a joint-forces exercise off Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on June 8. (Daniel Ceng/Anadolu/Getty Images)

The Philippines is entitled to negotiate its relationship with Taiwan in response to these changes, Teodoro said. This may anger China, but, in Manila’s experience, previous attempts to appease its powerful neighbor have gone nowhere, he added.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in April loosened decades-old restrictions on government personnel engaging with Taiwanese officials and issued a directive allowing visa-free entry for Taiwanese nationals — changes that Taiwan had sought for years.

Officially, the Philippine government said this was aimed at boosting Taiwanese investment and tourism. But in interviews, officials said it also serves to support a push by both governments to increase security cooperation, which is further along than publicly disclosed.

According to government officials and advisers from the Philippines and Taiwan — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details of engagement that have not been previously reported — Philippine academics close to the defense establishment early this year participated in closed-door forums with high-ranking Taiwanese generals to familiarize themselves with Taiwanese security thinking.

The Philippine coast guard recently carried out patrols alongside the Taiwanese coast guard in the Bashi Channel, the waterway between the two jurisdictions, the officials and advisers said.

And last month, observers from Taiwan’s navy and marine corps were present during a joint exercise led by U.S. and Philippine marines, they said.

A Philippine fishing boat plies the waters of the West Philippine Sea as a Chinese Jiangkai 579 warship sails near a fleet of U.S. and Philippine naval vessels conducting a maritime exercise on April 26. (Daniel Ceng/Anadolu/Getty Images)

During the exercise, named Kamandag, U.S., Philippine and Japanese troops practiced launching anti-ship missiles off the Batenes islands, the northernmost tip of the Philippines, less than 130 miles from the southern tip of Taiwan. Though Philippine forces have said the exercises were not aimed at any country, defense analysts said it was clear they were drills to counter Chinese ships in the case of an invasion of Taiwan.

Taiwanese personnel did not officially participate but were involved in tabletop planning and watched in real time as cooperation unfolded among the U.S. allies, said a Taiwanese government adviser. “Our security and military cooperation with the Philippines is going to get closer and closer,” he added.

Chinese officials have protested the growing relationship between the Philippines and Taiwan at every stage, said Philippine officials and diplomats from U.S.-allied countries. In April, when the chief of staff of the Philippine armed forces, Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., was unknowingly caught on video telling troops to prepare themselves for an invasion of Taiwan, China’s Foreign Ministry warned the Philippines against overstepping.

“The Taiwan question … is at the core of China’s core interest,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said. “We urge certain people in the Philippines to refrain from making provocations and playing with fire on the Taiwan question.”

More recently, in response to the deployment of advanced American missile systems in the Philippines, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Zhang Xiaogang said Manila has “tied itself to the U.S. war chariot and become a co-conspirator in destabilizing the region.”

Philippine officials say they are aware that some countries in Southeast Asia — including Malaysia, which currently chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — are uneasy with Manila’s newfound rapport with Taipei, which they fear will draw the region deeper into a potential U.S.-China war.

But there’s widening consensus among Philippine policymakers, including from cautious factions of the foreign policy establishment, that the country has no choice, said Don McLain Gill, a geopolitical analyst and lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila.

“If there was a way for us to look the other way, we would,” said Gill. “But as things stand, we’d be kidding ourselves not to see the necessity of working with Taiwan.”

There are more than 150,000 Philippine migrant workers on the island who would need to be evacuated in the case of an invasion, along with nationals of other countries fleeing southward. The Philippines’ mutual defense treaty with the U.S. means the country would probably be involved in any American military response, analysts say.

In 2023, the U.S. secured access to four new military sites in the Philippines, three of them on the northern island of Luzon. Philippine officials have not said whether they would allow these sites to be used as a staging ground for a defense of Taiwan.

But it’s a contingency that has to be plotted out among partners, said Rommel Jude G. Ong, a professor at the Ateneo School of Government in Manila and a retired rear admiral in the Philippine navy.

It’s in the interest of the Philippines to preserve Taiwan’s status quo, Ong said. “Taiwan is our buffer from an expansionist China.”

Air Force Patriot missile systems are deployed at a local park during Taiwan's annual Han Kuang military exercise in Taipei on July 11. (I-Hwa Cheng/AFP/Getty Images)

Though China’s strategic thinkers have largely regarded the Philippines as a puppet of the U.S., it is Beijing’s actions that have been the most influential in driving Manila to change its approach toward Taiwan, said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Chinese ships have rammed, swarmed and pounded Philippine vessels in waters off the western coast of the Philippines, including in an intense confrontation in June last year when Chinese personnel wielding knives and machetes boarded Philippine boats. It was after this incident, Philippine officials said, that engagement with Taiwanese leaders picked up across multiple agencies.

“I’m not sure Beijing fully anticipated that its actions would drive this outcome,” said Poling.

Still, analysts and officials acknowledge this is a sensitive relationship. A recent incident illustrates the stakes: A Philippine coast guard official and navy official in early July attended a forum on maritime affairs in Taiwan and met with various leaders, including President Lai Ching-te, who has vowed to repel Chinese aggression, angering Beijing.

Though the two Philippine officials said they were not traveling in their official capacities, they spoke to local reporters and were described in the Taipei Times as a “high-profile delegation” from the Philippines. Diplomats from both governments were caught off guard.

In a strongly worded letter, which has not been previously reported, Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa P. Lazaro said the two traveling officials had not acted prudently.

“These actions cause severe diplomatic complications that could derail current efforts, under the guidance of the President, to stabilize our bilateral relations with China,” she wrote in the July 4 letter to the heads of the Philippine Defense Department and coast guard, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

While there are clear “inconveniences” in the relationship, there is momentum driving closer ties, said Wang Ting-yu, a lawmaker from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party and a member of the parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee.

Strategists from the two governments want to increase cooperation between their coast guards, including by carrying out joint patrols. They also want to increase intelligence sharing, particularly on Chinese ship activity as well as Chinese cybersecurity threats and espionage, officials said.

Until recently, the relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines could be described as “close strangers” — geographically proximate but diplomatically distant, Wang said. No longer. “The strangers,” said Wang, “have started to smile at each other.”

Wu reported from Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Katrina Northrop in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

2 Comments

By Rebecca Tan

Rebecca Tan is the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, with occasional stints elsewhere. She was a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on conflict in Myanmar and was previously part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. follow on X@rebtanhs

14. Super Quiet Special Operations Drones Being Modified To Launch Smaller Drones

LEA = Long Endurance Aircraft.

Excerpts:

“The LEA provides SOF [special operations forces] with relatively low-cost uncrewed aircraft family of systems to meet ISR requirements in austere and permissive environments for use in Irregular Warfare operations,” SOCOM’s 2026 Fiscal Year budget request offers as a basic description of the drones. Irregular warfare has historically included a number of lower-intensity mission sets, including counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, as well as advising and assisting foreign forces, but which could also be applicable as components of a higher-end fight.

In a low-intensity context, ALEs could enhance the LEA’s existing capabilities by extending its sensor reach without having to directly fly over the target area, further reducing the chance of being detected and otherwise being vulnerable to enemy action. With their discreet appearance and very quiet nature, the LEAs are already ideal platforms for persistent surveillance in permissive environments, where they can help to establish the so-called “patterns of life” of specific individuals or small groups.

ALEs also open the door to more complex ISR operations, with a single LEA acting as a central communications relay node for smaller drones sent off into potentially multiple target areas along different vectors. An LEA could also dispatch ALEs to pursue targets departing the area where it is orbiting, allowing it to remain on station to monitor for additional developments. As an example, an LEA carrying ALEs while surveilling a house would offer valuable additional options if an individual of interest were to head off in a car or on a motorcycle. Without this added capability, a call would have to be made about whether to follow them or remain over the objective.

With ALEs configured for kinetic strikes, the LEAs would transform from purely ISR assets into discreet attackers, as well.

Super Quiet Special Operations Drones Being Modified To Launch Smaller Drones

Air-launched drones would be a major force multiplier and open the door to all new operational possibilities for the Long Endurance Aircraft.

Joseph Trevithick

Jul 11, 2025 1:53 PM EDT

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

U.S. special operations Long Endurance Aircraft (LEA) surveillance drones, which are based on a popular civilian powered glider design, are set to gain the ability to launch smaller uncrewed aerial systems. An air-launched drone capability is a huge force multiplier for the ultra-quiet LEAs, with their innocuous outward appearance, that opens up the possibility of employing them in new ways, including using them to conduct kinetic strikes.

U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) portion of the Pentagon’s recently released budget request for the 2026 Fiscal Year includes an update on plans for the LEA fleet. SOCOM is not asking for any additional money for the LEA program in the upcoming fiscal cycle and is also axing work on a successor LEA UAS Next Generation drone.

A Long Endurance Aircraft (LEA) drone. TSC

The plan now, instead, is to “realign previously requested FY 2025 funding from LEA UAS Next Generation aircraft development to Long Endurance Aircraft (LEA) UAS Payload Prototypes and Integration to procure and integrate Air Launched Effects (ALE) payloads and a communication system upgrade to the existing LEA platform,” according to the SOCOM budget documents.

SOCOM’s budget documents do not elaborate on what kinds of ALEs the LEAs will be able to launch. The U.S. military uses ALE as a catch-all for air-launched uncrewed aerial systems, which could be configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, to conduct electronic warfare tasks, act as decoys, or even be employed as loitering munitions. The basic term “launched effects” now encompasses similar categories of drones that can also be launched from ground and maritime platforms.

Details about the current configuration of the LEAs, which are also now designated RQ-29s, are limited. It is unclear how many of the drones are in U.S. service today. TWZ was first to report in-depth on the government-owned but contractor-operated drones, which are derived from the Pipistrel Sinus powered glider, in 2021, after the loss of one in an accident in Iraq the preceding year. The LEA program dates back to at least 2013 and Technology Service Corporation (TSC) is the prime contractor.

“The LEA provides SOF [special operations forces] with relatively low-cost uncrewed aircraft family of systems to meet ISR requirements in austere and permissive environments for use in Irregular Warfare operations,” SOCOM’s 2026 Fiscal Year budget request offers as a basic description of the drones. Irregular warfare has historically included a number of lower-intensity mission sets, including counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, as well as advising and assisting foreign forces, but which could also be applicable as components of a higher-end fight.

In a low-intensity context, ALEs could enhance the LEA’s existing capabilities by extending its sensor reach without having to directly fly over the target area, further reducing the chance of being detected and otherwise being vulnerable to enemy action. With their discreet appearance and very quiet nature, the LEAs are already ideal platforms for persistent surveillance in permissive environments, where they can help to establish the so-called “patterns of life” of specific individuals or small groups.

ALEs also open the door to more complex ISR operations, with a single LEA acting as a central communications relay node for smaller drones sent off into potentially multiple target areas along different vectors. An LEA could also dispatch ALEs to pursue targets departing the area where it is orbiting, allowing it to remain on station to monitor for additional developments. As an example, an LEA carrying ALEs while surveilling a house would offer valuable additional options if an individual of interest were to head off in a car or on a motorcycle. Without this added capability, a call would have to be made about whether to follow them or remain over the objective.

With ALEs configured for kinetic strikes, the LEAs would transform from purely ISR assets into discreet attackers, as well.

ALEs could open up further operational possibilities for the LEAs outside of low-intensity missions, as well. Air-launched drones have been very publicly pitched already as a way to help keep U.S. Army MQ-1C Gray Eagle and U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones relevant at least on the sidelines of future higher-end operations. At the same time, those two services are both working to scale back their use of those drones, in part due to concerns about their limited survivability in larger-scale conflicts.

A rendering of an MQ-9 Reaper drone launching smaller uncrewed aerial systems. GA-ASI

Last year, the potential emerged for a deployment of LEAs to support special operations forces in the Indo-Pacific region. The Pacific has been the focal point for a broad shift across the entire U.S. military away from counter-insurgency and other low-intensity operations toward preparing for potential high-end conflicts. However, TWZ noted at the time that the RQ-29s would still be most applicable for supporting ongoing counter-terrorism efforts and other missions in permissive airspace in this part of the world.

All of this comes amid larger questions that have emerged about the relevance of special operations aircraft, in general, including AC-130 gunships and SOCOM’s new OA-1K Skyraider II light attack aircraft, in a future centered on large-scale operations, such as a conflict with China. Special operations aviation assets, including crewed and uncrewed fixed-wing aircraft, as well as helicopters, had been heavily employed in largely permissive airspace over countries like Afghanistan and Iraq for decades during the Global War on Terror era. Those are the same environments that birthed the LEA program in the first place.

ALEs and other standoff capabilities are being pursued for the AC-130 and OA-1K to help them remain viable platforms going forward. In talking about the OA-1K, in particular, SOCOM and the Air Force have stressed that, while future high-end operations in the Pacific are now central to U.S. military planning, there will continue to be lower-intensity missions and a need for assets to support them. SOCOM has also been slowing its purchases of Skyraider IIs, though it insists the plan remains to buy a total of 75 of them eventually.

The video below shows a test of Leidos’ Black Arrow Small Cruise Missile (SCM), in development as a new standoff munition for the AC-130J Ghostrider gunship and potentially other platforms.

It’s also worth noting here that there have been a number of other ultra-quiet and long-endurance drone programs in recent years. This includes the Air Force’s Unmanned Long-endurance Tactical Reconnaissance Aircraft (ULTRA), a design very broadly similar to the LEA based on a commercial sport glider, and that has also been employed in operations in the Middle East and reportedly over Afghanistan. There are also efforts more tailored to operations in higher-threat environments, like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) XRQ-73A Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration (SHEPARD) project and the Air Force’s GHOST program. The XRQ-73A design evolved directly from an earlier drone called the XRQ-72A Great Horned Owl that the U.S. Intelligence Community developed in cooperation with the Air Force. This is also just what we know about and doesn’t account for any additional relevant developments ongoing in the classified realm.

The XRQ-73A drone. Northrop Grumman

Regardless of how SOCOM moves to employ its LEA fleet going forward, the drones are now set to get a major boost in capability from being able to launch smaller uncrewed aerial systems.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Joseph Trevithick

Deputy Editor

Joseph has been a member of The War Zone team since early 2017. Prior to that, he was an Associate Editor at War Is Boring, and his byline has appeared in other publications, including Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defense Journal, Reuters, We Are the Mighty, and Task & Purpose.

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick

15. Some world leaders butter up Trump. Others welcome the fight.

Some world leaders butter up Trump. Others welcome the fight.

World leaders are choosing to either flatter or defy President Trump. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu chose the former, becoming one of several leaders to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/14/trump-flatter-pander-defy-world-global-leaders-nobel-opposition/

July 14, 2025 at 12:00 a.m. EDTToday at 12:00 a.m. EDT

6 min

Summary

Column by Ishaan Tharoor

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hands President Donald Trump a letter he sent to the Nobel Peace Prize committee to nominate Trump for the prize, during a dinner at the White House on July 7. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The two most fruitful paths for world leaders to navigate the tumult of President Donald Trump’s second term are opposite ones. You can either do your best to praise, ingratiate yourself with and pander to an American president whose egotism is constantly on show. Or you can set yourself in tacit or explicit opposition to the world’s most powerful nationalist, recognizing that this display of defiance may boost you politically at home even if it incurs the wrath of the White House.

The past week offered a snapshot of the two dynamics. Last Monday, in a naked show of flattery, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proffered a letter he sent to the Nobel committee nominating Trump for the peace prize. Netanyahu — who is trying to keep his right-wing coalition government intact amid international pressure for Israel to end its campaign in Gaza and an ongoing trial over Netanyahu’s alleged corruption at home — needs Trump on his side. And he knows, like other world leaders, that if you want to win favors at the White House, just talk about the Nobel Prize.

Pakistan’s army chief first nominated Trump in June, saying that the United States’ intervention in a flare-up between Pakistan and India was instrumental to world peace (the Indian government maintains that the U.S. played no mediating role whatsoever in easing the crisis). Then, in the wake of Washington brokering a deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda over a ruinous insurgency taking place within the former, Trump bemoaned on social media how this diplomatic effort would still not win him the award he covets.

Follow Trump’s second term

Trump has talked about his eligibility for the Nobel Prize since at least 2019, in his first term. A slew of prominent world leaders, from the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to the now-jailed ex-Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan, have been enlisted in conversations about Trump’s deserving the honor. That job fell this past week to Gabonese President Brice Oligui Nguema and Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, who both backed Trump for the prize in a somewhat cringe-inducing meeting in front of cameras at the White House.

“I didn’t know I’d be treated this nicely,” Trump said in response. “We could do this all day long.”

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wears a cap that reads “Brazil belongs to the Brazilians” at a ceremony to announce the start of payments under the Income Transfer Program for farmers and fishermen in Linhares, Brazil, on Friday. (Ricardo Stuckert/Brazilian Presidency/Reuters)

The other approach was taken by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In a wave of new tariff threats last week, Trump targeted Brazil with a hefty 50 percent import levy. He made no secret that his motivations were less economic than political, noting that he opposed the ongoing prosecution of former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (a close Trump ally) on charges of plotting to retain power through military force following his 2022 electoral loss to Lula.

Instead of acquiescing or attempting to placate the White House — as Lula’s leftist Colombian counterpart, President Gustavo Petro, did in an early standoff with Trump at the end of January — the Brazilian leader is standing up to the U.S. president. “If he charges 50 from us, we will charge 50 from them,” Lula said in a Thursday broadcast interview. “Respect is good. I like to offer mine, and I like to receive it.”

As my colleagues Terrence McCoy and Marina Dias reported, the optics of the moment may be welcome in Brasília, where Lula and left-leaning allies face a tough election in 2026. “Lula now has a clear foe and a potent line of attack against Bolsonaro, or whoever takes on his political mantle in next year’s presidential election — able to tar them as being aligned with a hostile foreign power,” my colleagues wrote.

“Now you will have to decide whether you are on Trump’s side or Brazil’s side,” left-wing lawmaker Guilherme Boulos said in a speech. “That Trump tax now has a name … it is the Bolsonaro tax.”

“They made politics out of this, and we’re going to play the game,” a Lula aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to The Washington Post to explain the president’s thinking, told them. “He won’t make threats or fall into provocation, but his responses will be firm and bold.”

Trump has been an electoral gift to liberal or left-leaning politicians elsewhere. He upended Canada’s election campaign with his aggressive trade war, allowing the Liberals in Ottawa to extend their tenure in power and cratering the prospects of Conservative challenger Pierre Poilievre, who just seven months ago was widely believed to be Canada’s prime minister-in-waiting, but whose ideological proximity to Trump doomed his political fortunes.

A similar phenomenon followed in Australia, whose Labor government tarred right-wing challenger Peter Dutton as a would-be Trump. “The Trump tariff decisions that were seen as mad by Australians, that really accelerated the process of people looking at Dutton, and at Trump, and going, ‘No,’” Chris Wallace, a professor of political history at the University of Canberra, told the New York Times. “It’s a victory for sensible, centrist politics.”

Of course, not all leaders can afford confrontation with the U.S., which is why so many have tried to take an awkward middle path with a president who sees geopolitics often in stark, transactional terms. “Foreign leaders who have tried to confront him have not come out happy, and so there seems to be a competition to see how effectively they can flatter him,” Jon Alterman, chair of global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Politico.

Trump tours the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, on May 15 in Abu Dhabi. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

It explains, as critics never cease to point out, why Trump is close to petro-rich Arab monarchies, whose leaders are happy to support Trump’s family businesses and lavish Trump with gifts. But some governments are struggling to balance keeping the U.S. close while assuaging domestic public opinion. The clearest example of this is the plight of Japan, whose Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was the first Asian leader to call on Trump at the White House but has failed to stave off damaging tariff threats ahead of tough parliamentary elections this month.

“They’re coming to a very hard realization that Japan is not special enough to Trump,” Mireya Solís, director of the Center for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, told my colleagues. “At the end of the day, when Trump sees deficits, he’s not thinking, ‘This is my close security partner.’ He sees deficits.”

What readers are saying

The comments express strong criticism of Donald Trump, particularly focusing on his perceived incompetence and the way foreign leaders, like Netanyahu, manipulate him for their own interests. Commenters argue that placating Trump only leads to more demands and that standing firm... Show more

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By Ishaan Tharoor

Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.follow on X@ishaantharoor

16. Senate panel pushing DOD on strategy to deter Chinese cyber activity on critical infrastructure

It is about time to take this seriously. We have only known about this since 1999 when China telegraphed it in the two PLA Colonels' book, Unrestricted Warfare.

Senate panel pushing DOD on strategy to deter Chinese cyber activity on critical infrastructure

The Senate Armed Services Committee released a summary of its draft of the fiscal 2026 NDAA.

Mark Pomerleau

July 11, 2025

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · July 11, 2025

The Senate Armed Services Committee is proposing legislation that would require the Department of Defense to develop a deterrence strategy against cyber activity on critical infrastructure.

The provision is part of the annual defense policy bill. The committee released a summary Friday, although the full text of the legislation won’t be released until a later date.

The executive summary of the bill only offers that a provision mandates “a strategy to reestablish a credible deterrence against cyberattacks targeting American critical infrastructure using the full spectrum of military operations.”

A senior congressional official who briefed reporters Friday on the condition of anonymity described the provision as trying to identify a full scope using various methods and full spectrum options to more critically deter adversaries, particularly China, from conducting attacks on critical infrastructure, especially defense critical infrastructure.

An official noted the provision directs DOD toward what the department needs to be doing to more effectively establish a deterrent. Officials in open testimony have indicated a clear concern that Beijing, in particular, continues to attack critical infrastructure.

They singled out Volt and Salt Typhoon by name, noting they’re a growing and more aggressive threat in cyberspace to utilities and critical infrastructure that supports DOD.

Volt Typhoon is one of a number of cyber players from China that have been discovered in U.S. networks, troubling American officials. For its part, Volt Typhoon was discovered inside U.S. critical infrastructure using a technique in the cybersecurity world dubbed “living off the land,” which means it’s using legitimate tools organic to the systems for malicious purposes.

China has become more brazen in intrusions and probes into U.S. and defense networks, particularly in maritime or port environments to potentially limit an American military mobilization response if Chinese leaders decide to invade Taiwan.

Guam, a key U.S. military outpost, has been a top target for Beijing in recent years. Chinese hackers targeted critical infrastructure there, burrowing deep inside a couple of years ago and startling experts who referred to it as one of the largest cyber espionage campaigns against America.

What has particularly alarmed officials regarding Volt Typhoon is the paradigm shift of Chinese threats moving from espionage and intellectual property theft to holding critical infrastructure at risk.

Salt Typhoon, by contrast, has been found inside networks of telecoms and other companies, likely for the purpose of espionage.

Cyber deterrence has been an elusive policy point for many years. While some academics have pointed to evidence cyber deterrence exists, such as U.S. hesitance to hit back against Russia following its malicious activity in the 2016 election for fear of America’s great digital vulnerability, current and past officials have noted the difficulties of deterrence and how adversaries don’t fear the United States in cyberspace.

Senators recently pressed the Trump administration’s nominee to be the top cyber policy official at DOD on the subject.

“There’s no price to pay for our adversaries. I hope in your counsels within the Defense Department and in the administration you’ll argue for a serious and substantial cyber deterrent stated policy. If it’s not stated, a deterrent doesn’t work,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a fierce critic of perceived weaknesses in cyber deterrence, said at the May hearing.

For her part, Katie Sutton, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, wrote to senators as part of her confirmation process that a critical part of her role, if confirmed, would be to improve the nation’s defenses and digital deterrent.

“Deterrence is possible in cyberspace and can be made more effective through a combination of denial, resilience, and credible responses. If confirmed, I will review the capabilities we have in our toolkit, integrate military cyberspace capabilities with other tools of national power, and restore deterrence in the cyber domain. One of my core goals as ASD Cyber Policy will be to ensure the Department has the offensive and defensive capabilities and resources necessary to credibly deter adversaries from targeting the United States,” she wrote.

While Salt Typhoon was considered traditional espionage activity, which is virtually impossible to deter, especially given the United States does the same thing, officials are hoping to deter activity like Volt Typhoon in the future.

As Trump was coming back into power for his second term, officials associated with the transition and new administration vowed a top priority would be a more aggressive posture in cyberspace to respond to a bevy of activity against the U.S., namely from China.

Written by Mark Pomerleau

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

defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · July 11, 2025

17. Ukraine Spy Chief Says 40% of Russian Ammunition Is North Korean

I bet the munitions factories in north Korea are humming. And KJU is raking in the rubles.

Ukraine Spy Chief Says 40% of Russian Ammunition Is North Korean

military.com · July 11, 2025

North Korea is now supplying as much as 40% of Russia’s ammunition for the war in Ukraine as the partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow deepens, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence.

Kim Jong Un’s regime is also sending other weapons to Russia, including ballistic missiles and artillery systems, Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Russia is providing money and technology to North Korea in return, helping to ease Pyongyang’s international isolation, he said.

“Those are good weapons,” Budanov, who attributed 60% of losses in military-intelligence units in the past three months to strikes by North Korean-made artillery, said in his office in Kyiv. “North Korea has huge stockpiles and production goes on around the clock.”

Russia has intensified military ties with North Korea since President Vladimir Putin signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty with Kim in June last year, his first visit to Pyongyang in 24 years. North Korea sent thousands of troops to help Moscow push Ukrainian forces out of territory they’d seized in Russia’s Kursk region. With Kim vowing to back Russia “unconditionally” in the war, western intelligence estimates that Pyongyang has sent millions of artillery rounds to Putin’s army.

Bloomberg News could not independently verify Budanov’s assessment of Russia’s weapons stockpile from North Korea.

A series of top Russian officials have traveled to North Korea. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to begin a three-day trip to Pyongyang on Friday, while Putin’s top security council aide, Sergei Shoigu, visited North Korea for the third time in as many months in June.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a resumption of weapons supplies to Ukraine, including vital air defenses, that were unexpectedly interrupted last week. He accused Putin of “killing too many people” and said the Russian leader’s engagement with U.S. calls for a truce was “meaningless.”

Budanov said U.S. support for Ukraine will continue “in the near future” and Washington may send additional air-defense systems.

Trump’s “position is consistent, one should not judge him by media characteristics,” Budanov said. “As head of a special service I know more things.”

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to U.S. calls for an unconditional ceasefire, Putin told Trump in a phone call last week that Russia “will not back down” on its war aims, according to a Kremlin transcript.

Budanov said a ceasefire must be reached as soon as possible and well before the end of this year.

“Is it realistic to do so - yes. Is it difficult - no,” he said. “It takes at least three sides - Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. And we will get to this position.”

Russia has stepped up air attacks on Ukraine including with record numbers of drones in recent weeks. It launched 728 drones on July 9, damaging residential buildings and infrastructure, while the United Nations reported that June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured.

“Civilians across Ukraine are facing levels of suffering we have not seen in over three years,” Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Thursday. “The surge in long-range missile and drone strikes across the country has brought even more death and destruction.”

Russia’s grinding battlefield assaults in Ukraine have also picked up speed again in the war, now in its fourth year. Kremlin forces entered Ukraine’s northeast Sumy region bordering Russia last month in an attempt to create a buffer zone. They made marginal advances in the partly-occupied Donetsk region in the east and in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. The Russian army is also attempting to cross into the central Dnipropetrovsk region next to Donetsk.

“It’s not realistic for Russia to seize all of the Donetsk region by the end of the year,” Budanov said. Russian troops “have a political goal to declare that they entered” Dnipropetrovsk region and are tasked with setting up another buffer zone of as much as 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in depth, he said.

Dressed in black military fatigues, 39-year-old Budanov has earned a reputation for planning bold operations to strike at Russian forces — and even participating in them personally. He joined Ukraine’s military intelligence in 2007, fought in the country’s east after Russia incited separatist conflict there in 2014 and took part in operations in occupied Crimea.

Budanov was wounded three times in fighting. He has also been the target of Kremlin-backed poisoning attempts, according to Ukrainian intelligence officials, while his wife Marianna survived a poisoning in November that some officials blamed on Russia.

The military intelligence chief has become one of the most popular public figures in Ukraine, ranked among the three most trusted officials, opinion polls show. A Rating Group poll from July 4-5 showed 56% of Ukrainians trust him, compared with 67% for Zelenskyy and 73% for former top military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

Budanov will mark five years as head of military intelligence next month, “if I survive,” he said. Asked to explain, he said “anything can happen” and referred to a memorial at the agency to intelligence officers killed in the line of duty. There is much space for more names, he said.

The black flag of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency hangs from a pole in his office, which is also decorated with models of Russian ships sunk in operations masterminded by his agents.

Budanov described intelligence cooperation with western counterparts as “excellent,” adding that he expects exchanges of information to continue. Ukraine depends on the U.S. for the early warning of missile launches and access to satellite imagery, he said.

“I don’t see any signs our cooperation in the security services will stop,” Budanov said. “This is not beneficial for us and not beneficial for our partners either, because they get information from us.”

Budanov even urged allies to return to relying on human intelligence — networks of spies — that he said “almost all European countries have buried, unfortunately.” He added: “Stop believing that technical intelligence will solve everything. No one will discuss and plan an operation on a mobile phone.”

He said he hopes to remain in his post until the war ends. “Now, my dream is to stop this war,” Budanov said. “Ukraine is a country of opportunities. In future, I’ll decide what I would like to do.”

With assistance from Maxim Edwards.

___

military.com · July 11, 2025

18. Digitize or die: Ukraine’s war is a wake-up call for 20th century militaries

"March or die" (French Foreign Legion) is now "digitize or die."

Excerpts:

I’m not saying “copy Ukraine,” or that this is the only way. We were forced to modernize under fire, mid-war, with no room for failure. The war we are fighting today is both a wake-up call and a chance to prepare. Here’s the lesson: Learn from our experience — and be ready before it’s too late.

Digital transformation in defense isn’t just about apps, but about trust and building military systems that treat time as the finite, lethal resource it is. Modernization cannot wait for perfect conditions. If the world’s most digital-ready society can overhaul mobilization in the midst of full-scale war, so can its allies in peace.

In an age of AI, autonomous drones, and cyberwarfare, it’s easy to overlook how dangerous bad logistics and bureaucratic inertia can be. But trust me: your systems will be tested long before your soldiers are.

Legacy systems don’t win future wars, they lose them. Quietly. Bureaucratically. Irreversibly. The next front line is inside your own institutions. You don’t have to face invasion to find the cracks — but you do have to act.

Digitize or die: Ukraine’s war is a wake-up call for 20th century militaries - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed Ukraine's deputy minister of defense for digital development argues that in modern combat, there's another frontline: the digital battle against bureaucracy.

breakingdefense.com · by Kateryna Chernohorenko · July 11, 2025

A Ukrainian serviceman uses the internet on his smartphone at a base in the Donetsk region on February 23, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)

Four years ago, I was managing digital services for newborn registration and COVID certificates in the Ukrainian government. We were building a government in a smartphone. In fact, we were among the first in the world to move so much public administration fully online. Back then, digital transformation was about convenience.

But then Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, the stakes were different. Our job was no longer about convenience — it was about survival.

We faced not only an invasion of our territories, but also a war unlike any seen before: where technology, data, and logistics mattered as much as troops and weapons. That’s when we confronted a truth few militaries want to admit: Bureaucracy kills. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Delays aren’t just inefficiencies — they’re casualties. And the tools you use to move information — whether it’s a form, a request, or a call for help — are just as essential as the weapons in your arsenal.

In 2022, it became painfully clear that no amount of courage or firepower could compensate for outdated processes and broken logistics. Paper forms, manual approvals, soldiers waiting weeks to change units, citizens queuing at recruitment offices for hours, just to confirm basic data. We were losing time, and time in war is oxygen.

Bureaucratic Lag Is A National Security Threat

When people imagine modern war, they think of missile strikes, drone swarms, cyberattacks — sure, all of that is true. But it’s not the full story. The hidden war is logistical, administrative, and systemic.

The US and other NATO countries rely primarily on professional armies. In Ukraine, under martial law, we operate under mass mobilization: A legal obligation that requires millions of ordinary civilians — teachers, IT workers, engineers — to be ready for military service if called upon. This means every citizen of military age must keep their personal and military records up to date, so that the government can quickly reach them if mobilization is necessary.

Kateryna Chernohorenko is the deputy minister of defense of Ukraine for Digital Development, Digital Transformation, and Digitalization. (Handout)

Before the war, these records were collected manually through local enlistment offices, where data was recorded on paper forms and entered into Ukraine’s register of conscripts. This system had not been built for war. It was quite slow, fragmented, and full of errors. People’s addresses were outdated. Summons letters were occasionally sent to deceased individuals. Records were sometimes missing entirely.

The result was confusion, frustration — and dangerous delays at the very moment when speed was most critical.

So when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in early 2022, thousands of Ukrainians rushed to enlist. But the system just wasn’t ready. One conscription center could physically process 20 to 40 people a day while hundreds stood in line. People sometimes stood in line for hours, even days, simply to submit their information. Meanwhile, frontline units were urgently requesting reinforcements.

We faced a modern military effort tied to 20th-century processes. So we made a shift — not only a tech upgrade, but a cultural one.

We decided that bureaucracy should not be the bottleneck to our survival. Mobilizing for war isn’t just about gear or personnel, but also about information systems. So we built and launched a secure mobile app called Reserve+. With it, Ukrainians can update military registration, explore open positions in the armed forces, and soon, enlist — all from their phones. It’s a win-win system that respects the citizen’s time while giving the military real-time visibility into manpower readiness.

Last year, a new law required all conscripts in Ukraine to update their data. Millions of people were required to do this — and there are only 178 such centers across the entire country. They processed 728,000 people in two months. The Reserve+ app handled 3.4 million. That is the scale digital systems can deliver. We redesigned the logic of mobilization for a country at war.

Let Tech Handle The Friction So People Can Fight

The war in Ukraine has exposed systemic weaknesses in global military internal processes. Western militaries are investing billions into next-gen weapons, but still rely on workflows powered by file folders and fragmented databases, instead of automation. A lot of internal military processes still run on paperwork and disconnected systems. In a crisis, those systems may not scale.

Here are a few simple questions to ask yourself: Can 3 million citizens update their data in the national military system in 60 days? Is it possible for a young adult to enlist without leaving home? Can your troops update data or request services without waiting in line? These aren’t hypotheticals, but readiness metrics.

But let’s remember one simple truth that bureaucracy doesn’t stop at enlistment. Once in uniform, soldiers often face a second battlefield — paperwork. That’s why we built Army+, an app for active soldiers that replaces the paper-based command chain with real-time, transparent processes. Soldiers file reports, request transfers, and provide real-time feedback through in-app surveys that directly inform command decisions — something unprecedented in our military culture. In a military built on rigid hierarchies, digital services give soldiers a voice, not only to serve, but to help shape how the institution evolves.

The economic impact is enormous: Digital platforms like Reserve+ and Army+ have already saved Ukraine over 70 million hours of administrative time for both soldiers and government staff, the equivalent of over 8 billion UAH ($200 million) in direct and indirect economic value, and eliminated billions more in potential corruption risks by closing loopholes for unofficial “expedited payments.”

Ukraine’s design philosophy is simple: Let technology manage processes, so people can manage missions. Because modern war is not only a contest of firepower or manpower — it’s a race of systems. Victory also depends on which side can optimize faster. Technology doesn’t replace soldiers; but it amplifies their effectiveness by removing everything that slows them down.

Lessons you can borrow — before you’re forced to

I’m not saying “copy Ukraine,” or that this is the only way. We were forced to modernize under fire, mid-war, with no room for failure. The war we are fighting today is both a wake-up call and a chance to prepare. Here’s the lesson: Learn from our experience — and be ready before it’s too late.

Digital transformation in defense isn’t just about apps, but about trust and building military systems that treat time as the finite, lethal resource it is. Modernization cannot wait for perfect conditions. If the world’s most digital-ready society can overhaul mobilization in the midst of full-scale war, so can its allies in peace.

In an age of AI, autonomous drones, and cyberwarfare, it’s easy to overlook how dangerous bad logistics and bureaucratic inertia can be. But trust me: your systems will be tested long before your soldiers are.

Legacy systems don’t win future wars, they lose them. Quietly. Bureaucratically. Irreversibly. The next front line is inside your own institutions. You don’t have to face invasion to find the cracks — but you do have to act.

The clock is ticking.

Kateryna Chernohorenko is the deputy minister of defense of Ukraine for Digital Development, Digital Transformation, and Digitalization.

19. What is Pete Hegseth so scared of? – The Navy needs leaders like Buzz Donnelly.

What is Pete Hegseth so scared of?

The Navy needs leaders like Buzz Donnelly.

defenseone.com · by Jon Duffy

I spent thirty years in uniform, much of it in the Pacific, and served as commodore of Destroyer Squadron 15 while embarked on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan from 2017 to 2019. Buzz Donnelly, who was Reagan’s commanding officer at the time, was a peer, a friend, and an exceptional naval officer.

But Buzz’s Trump-approved, Senate-confirmed promotion to vice admiral and command of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet was just rescinded, reportedly because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided that “hosting drag shows” while in command of Reagan during the first Trump administration wasn’t compatible with whatever “warrior ethos” is now required to lead the fleet. Hegseth’s office has declined to provide an official rationale, but on its face, this is absurd.

Let’s be clear about what actually happened. Every ship in the Navy, especially during long deployments, holds morale events: talent shows, lip-sync contests, comedy skits—anything to break up the monotony of life at sea. For generations, “crossing-the-line” ceremonies marking a sailor’s first cruise across the equator have often included a lighthearted “beauty pageant,” with sailors dressing up in wigs or dresses. It was never about division; it was about building camaraderie and keeping crews connected through long, demanding stretches at sea.

Aboard Reagan, a sailor who sometimes performed in drag took part in these talent shows. He was good at it, the crew enjoyed it, and it boosted morale without compromising readiness. Whether that sailor was gay, trans, or simply liked performing wasn’t something I asked or cared about, because it didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with his ability to stand the watch, do the job, or fight if called upon.

Buzz Donnelly understood that, too. He was responsible for the safety and readiness of thousands of sailors and one of the Navy’s most critical warfighting platforms in the world’s most complex theater. He did that job exceptionally well, and the Navy promoted him from captain to rear admiral in 2019. Since then, he has excelled as Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Korea, led Task Force 70, and served on the Navy staff in the Pentagon—all after his time on Reagan. That these talent shows are now grounds to block his promotion is beyond ridiculous.

What is Hegseth so scared of? For a man who constantly rants about “warrior ethos” and “toughness,” he seems terrified of a sailor in a dress—at a talent show, years ago. But this isn’t about toughness. It’s about political intimidation, and too many senior leaders who know better are staying silent.

The Navy needs leaders like Buzz Donnelly: leaders who know that warfighting readiness isn’t threatened by a sailor’s talent show, but by corrosive fear-mongering and political purity tests. Leadership means understanding what truly matters when preparing to fight and win the nation’s wars. It means building trust within your crew and standing by your people so they will stand by each other when it counts.

What’s happening now is a test—not for Buzz, who will step aside as we were trained to do—but for the Navy and the nation. It’s a test of whether we will let political opportunists undermine military readiness by turning inclusion and morale-building into culture war fodder. It’s a test of whether fear and opportunism will dictate who gets to serve—and who gets to lead.

I’ve seen what real toughness looks like. It’s the sailor standing watch in the middle of the night, the petty officer keeping the engines running during a casualty, the officer making life-and-death decisions in the fog of crisis. It’s not the loudest guy in the room yelling about “warrior culture.” And it’s certainly not a political commentator trying to score points by marginalizing a man who has spent his life leading sailors in defense of this country.

Buzz Donnelly deserves better. The Navy deserves better. And this country should demand better from those who would rather stoke fear than stand for principle.

If the Navy wants to continue earning the trust of its people—and if the nation wants its military led by the best—it needs leaders who know what truly counts.

And it needs those of us who know what leadership really looks like to say so, plainly, while it still matters.

Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain whose active-duty career included command at sea and senior national security roles.

defenseone.com · by Jon Duffy

20. How Iran Overplayed its Hand

Conclusion:

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the attacks will now embolden the Iranian hawks, who will claim that the “hedging” strategy has failed, and the only alternative is to cross the nuclear Rubicon and build a reliable nuclear deterrent, in a way North Korea did in the 2000s. While Iran’s recent decision to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency could be used as just another bargaining chip, the halt of inspections could also facilitate covert activities leading toward weaponization. If that happens, history will likely see 2025 not only as a year in which Iran’s coercive strategy failed, but also a year in which a meaningful diplomatic solution was pushed aside by an unsuccessful attempt at military counterproliferation that eventually led to the emergence of a 10th member of the contemporary club of nuclear-armed states.

How Iran Overplayed its Hand - War on the Rocks

Michal Smetana

July 14, 2025

warontherocks.com · July 14, 2025

After Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, there were good reasons to be skeptical about the official justification for launching the operation. After all, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a decades-long history of crying wolf about the “imminent threat” of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons. When Israel recently presented the United States with what was supposed to be new evidence of Iran’s sprint towards the bomb, American officials were less than convinced.

Yet, every skeptical voice ultimately had to deal with what seemed to be the key question: Why else would Iran recently produce such large stocks of highly enriched uranium, if not to build nuclear weapons? As representatives of Western states have kept repeating, uranium enrichment to a 60 percent concentration of the isotope U-235 — close to a 90 percent “weapons-grade” level — is unusual for a country without a nuclear arsenal and with “no credible civilian justification.” As such, after the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report highlighted a further dramatic increase in the production of sensitive fissile material, as well as a host of additional concerns about Iranian non-transparency, it has been fairly easy for many observers of Iran’s behavior to settle for a simple answer: Tehran is probably on a quest to acquire nuclear weapons. And it is only a matter of time until it gets there.

All the existing evidence, however, points to a more complex story behind Iranian decision-making. Rather than a sign of immediate intent to build nuclear weapons, Tehran’s decision to amass highly enriched uranium could be plausibly interpreted as a gambit for leverage in negotiations with the United States. The situation has become particularly urgent this year: Without a new agreement in place, Iran faced the prospect of reimposed “snapback” sanctions and overall worsening of its strategic position. However, by speeding up enrichment and effectively becoming a “latent nuclear state,” Iran may have overplayed its hand — and now faces limited options for adapting its failed coercive strategy.

BECOME A MEMBER

A Route to a Latent Arsenal

After President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran was left with a limited set of response options. One option was to condemn Washington’s breach of the agreement and keep upholding its end. From a purely external security perspective, this approach would carry minimal short-term risks. However, in the long run, the regime would appear weak, while the Iranian economy would continue to be battered by sweeping American sanctions.

Another option for Iran was to stick to the agreed enrichment limits and rely on the remaining parties — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China — to counterbalance American pressure. Iran attempted to take this approach until early 2019, when the International Atomic Energy Agency found Tehran to be still abiding by the deal. However, there was no sign of Trump changing his “maximum pressure” policy. And while the Europeans explored mechanisms such as a “special trade vehicle,” the imposition of American secondary sanctions on non-U.S. entities ensured that these initiatives brought little relief to Iran’s strangled economy.

Lacking any other meaningful leverage, Iran started to gradually breach the restrictions in 2019. From the start, it was a calibrated approach: enriching slightly above the 3.67 percent limit, accumulating more low-enriched stocks than allowed, and installing more advanced centrifuges in contravention of the original deal.

When incremental steps failed to budge Washington, Iran had to decide whether to back down or escalate further. In practice, this meant breaching the enrichment limits to the extent that Iran would become a “threshold” or a “latent” nuclear power — a state that does not own nuclear weapons, yet possesses the technological capability to build them on short notice. Tehran likely calculated that demonstrating this latent potential might pressure the United States into coming back to the agreement or signing up for a new deal.

Iran took steps toward nuclear latency already in 2021 when it started enriching uranium to 20 percent and 60 percent, gradually expanding the stocks of the latter in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Some Iranian officials have not shied away from communicating their intention to the rest of the world. As the former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran mentioned during an interview in 2024, “We possess all the nuclear science components and technology … It’s like having all the parts to build a car.”

The Critical Year

As Tristan Volpe argues, aspiring latent nuclear powers face a credibility dilemma. On the one hand, they need to demonstrate sufficient resolve through the capacity to build nuclear weapons in a (relatively) short time. On the other hand, they need to signal enough restraint to demonstrate a willingness to scale the program back when the other party accepts their demands. Historical studies of Japan, South Korea, and North Korea show how critical it is to find the “sweet spot” for latent nuclear states’ coercive diplomacy to succeed.

In 2025, Iran likely sensed a new urgency to get to this spot. October would mark 10 years since the Iran nuclear deal’s adoption, when many restrictions would be lifted. It is also the deadline for the signatories to activate the “snapback” mechanism to bring back the original U.N. Security Council sanctions if they found that Tehran did not comply with its obligations. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have already signaled that unless they see a new agreement or a return to compliance, they would use this mechanism to reapply the sanctions.

This was an outcome that Tehran wanted to avoid at any cost. Even though the direct economic impact of the “snapback” would likely be limited, activating this measure would re-legitimize multilateral Western sanctions and further isolate Iran diplomatically. Iran’s bargaining position would worsen significantly, reducing the prospects of a deal that removes the punitive measures that bite Tehran the most: American primary and secondary sanctions. The situation has been a ticking time bomb — in a country battling low economic growth and high levels of inflation, continued sanctions could contribute to domestic instability, stir up anti-government protests, and further threaten the regime from the inside. The “snapback” could also have been used by Israel as a pretext for military action: Without President Joe Biden’s pressure, Israel would have probably struck Iranian nuclear facilities in 2024.

Consequently, Iran once again faced a decision. Backing down would probably appease the European parties to the original nuclear deal. But doing so would be a blow to the regime’s defiant image, and it would not solve the problem of continuing American sanctions. A clearly more attractive, but risky, option was to move forward on the nuclear latency spectrum. Primarily, this would create a similar sense of urgency in Washington to close the new deal in time. Secondarily, it would create a security “hedge” and retain Tehran’s option to quickly weaponize its uranium stocks if the situation turned sour and there were a threat to the regime’s existence. Iran may have even believed that reaching the nuclear threshold would itself work as a functional “weapon-less deterrent” against external aggression by signaling that any such military action could trigger immediate weaponization.

On the Horns of a Dilemma

On the resolve side of the credibility dilemma, Iran has dramatically expanded its stocks of 60 percent enriched uranium to more than 400 kilograms. This was an increase of almost 134 kilograms in three months. Altogether, this was enough material to produce about nine nuclear weapons if further enriched to 90 percent, an operation that would take about three weeks in the Fordow enrichment plant. The “breakout time” was estimated to be just two or three days. Importantly, this expansion was taking place alongside concerns that Iran was experimenting with even higher enrichment levels than 60 percent, hoarding undeclared centrifuges, conducting computer simulations potentially useful for building a bomb, and being insufficiently transparent about its nuclear-related activities at several undeclared locations.

On the restraint side, Tehran likely believed it was signaling sufficient willingness to reverse this course of action if its core demands were met in the negotiations with Trump officials: These were the lifting of American sanctions and the guaranteed possibility of low-level (3.67 percent) enrichment for civilian purposes. From what is known about the talks with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, Iran was once again willing to accept intrusive monitoring and inspections, including the implementation of the Additional Protocol, and return to original 2015 “Iran deal” level of enrichment capacity, with stocks of highly enriched uranium shipped out of the country and excess centrifuges uninstalled.

Given Iran’s urgency to secure a deal, it is also conceivable that the United States would be able to push Tehran into accepting longer timeframes than the “sunset clause” that was included in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This way, Trump could have credibly claimed that he had, indeed, struck a better deal than President Barack Obama, as he had promised to do in 2018. With the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war nowhere in sight, this could have been a major foreign policy win for Trump’s second term.

There are various sources to support the Iranian claim that Witkoff preliminarily agreed to a deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium to low levels. However, following pressure from Netanyahu and hardliners in the United States, the Trump administration subsequently did a U-turn, demanding a zero-enrichment agreement. The complete shutdown of Iran’s enrichment capacity was a red line that Tehran was never willing to cross.

All the evidence points to the fact that Iran’s approach to negotiations was serious, and there would have been a high chance of striking the deal in June had the United States stepped back from the zero-enrichment demand. Iran has even signaled openness to the idea of a regional enrichment consortium, a potential compromise to bridge the divide between the two sides. It is also clear that, in the context of these ongoing talks, it would make little strategic sense for Iran to cross the nuclear threshold and launch a serious effort toward weaponization. Such a decision would immediately lead to the re-imposition of multilateral sanctions that would threaten the regime’s domestic stability. It would disrupt Iran’s diplomatic relations with other states in the region and beyond, completely ruining the long-standing normative position in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime.

But most importantly, it is not at all clear that Iran would manage to build a deliverable nuclear weapon before its attempt was detected by Israel and the United States. There is a dangerous window for proliferating states between the launching of the weaponization process and building a survivable arsenal that would serve as a functional deterrent against preventive strikes. If we assume that the number one motivation of Iran’s theocratic regime is its survival, dashing to a bomb in the context of these negotiations would bring enormous costs and risks and very unclear strategic benefits, even if it succeeded.

Iran’s Failure

In hindsight, Iran has tragically missed that critical “Goldilocks” zone between resolve and restraint in its coercive strategy. Even more importantly, however, it underestimated the Israeli motivation to strike and convince the Trump administration to go along, even at a time when talks were ongoing.

It appears likely, however, that the Israeli-American strikes merely moved Iran back on the latency spectrum rather than destroying its latent nuclear capability. The key issue is that Iran still likely possesses the stocks of 60 percent highly enriched uranium that were originally stored in a facility near Isfahan, and now their whereabouts are unknown. Even if all centrifuges in Natanz and Fordow were destroyed, Iran may have stored additional ones in hidden locations, or it can build new ones using available stockpiled components. Similarly, although the conversion facility — that could have been used to convert enriched uranium hexafluoride to metal for a nuclear weapon core — was likely completely destroyed in the strikes, Iran may have a hidden backup conversion capacity or build a new one. Iran has a deep network of underground tunnels and available locations that can be used for weapon-related activity — for example, Kolang Gaz La, a deeply buried tunnel complex near Natanz.

After the failure of Iran’s strategy to compel the United States into a new deal, Iran now faces few good options. It could still accept the zero-enrichment proposal, but this would be akin to admitting strategic defeat, something that Iranian elites will likely see as a humiliation that would make the regime appear weak and potentially endanger it over the long haul. Relying on nuclear latency as a coercive strategy vis-á-vis Washington will probably not be seen as a wise choice: The equilibrium has now shifted, and it is extremely improbable that the United States (and Israel) would now accept any Iranian enrichment, as that would invalidate their earlier justifications for the strikes.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the attacks will now embolden the Iranian hawks, who will claim that the “hedging” strategy has failed, and the only alternative is to cross the nuclear Rubicon and build a reliable nuclear deterrent, in a way North Korea did in the 2000s. While Iran’s recent decision to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency could be used as just another bargaining chip, the halt of inspections could also facilitate covert activities leading toward weaponization. If that happens, history will likely see 2025 not only as a year in which Iran’s coercive strategy failed, but also a year in which a meaningful diplomatic solution was pushed aside by an unsuccessful attempt at military counterproliferation that eventually led to the emergence of a 10th member of the contemporary club of nuclear-armed states.

BECOME A MEMBER

Michal Smetana (@MichalSmetana3) is an associate professor at Charles University and the director of the Peace Research Center Prague. He has published extensively on nuclear weapons in leading academic and policy journals. He is the author of Nuclear Deviance.

Image: Standardwhale via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com · July 14, 2025

21. Is America Breaking the Global Economy?

Excerpts:

The world is facing a great deal of insecurity. There are few principles, rules, or institutions that officials and investors can rely on. The U.S. economy is becoming less stable, and Washington is less engaged in global policy coordination. After nearly 80 years, the global trading system is at risk of fragmentation. There are no sure bets on the future.

That fact is not, by itself, bad. But it does mean decision makers need to be hypervigilant. The choices people make in the coming months will have profound consequences for the future of the global economy and the well-being of billions. Government officials must be humble, but now is also not the time for timidity. It is, instead, the time for boldness, for creativity, for imaginative scenario planning, and for challenging the conventional wisdom.

The tasks ahead are difficult. They require a fundamental rethinking of how to manage economies, businesses, and investments. But if leaders are capable rise to the challenge—and they should be, bolstered by the coming diffusion of exciting innovations—the world can do more than just navigate the storm. It can emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before.

Is America Breaking the Global Economy?

Foreign Affairs · by More by Mohamed A. El-Erian · July 14, 2025

What an Age of Economic Uncertainty Will Mean for the World

Mohamed A. El-Erian

July 14, 2025

At the New York Stock Exchange, New York City, April 2025 Brendan McDermid / Reuters

MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN is the President of Queens’ College, University of Cambridge and the Renee Kerns Professor of Practice at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 2007 to 2014, he was the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Company.

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The global economy is, to put it mildly, in a state of flux. Before the most recent U.S. elections, it was already being buffeted by geopolitical shocks and the prospect of transformative technological innovations. But now, it also has to endure an unusually high amount of policy volatility from the world’s most powerful country. The result has been a roller coaster not just for bonds and equities but also for economic forecasters and policymakers.

At a deeper level, this turmoil has called into question consensus narratives about the United States. Long-standing assumptions that underpin the choices households, companies, and investors make have gone away. Rules of thumb have become far less helpful. Measures of consumer and producer confidence fell off a cliff. Expectations of inflation, meanwhile, surged to levels last seen in 1981.

Amid this deep uncertainty, forecasters have struggled to predict where the U.S. economy will ultimately end up. But two main visions bookend a dispersed and unstable set of individual projections. In the first, the United States is on a bumpy journey that will culminate in an economic restructuring resembling the ones that took place under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, where it will emerge with less debt and a more efficient private sector and where it will trade in a fairer international system. In the second scenario, the country is slowly slipping into the stagflation and, as happened under U.S. President Jimmy Carter, could end up in a deep recession, perhaps with pronounced financial instability.

Whatever the outcome proves to be, it will have international ramifications. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. economy and financial system have been at the center of global markets. Washington carries great influence in multilateral institutions. The United States has long been the only reliable driver of world economic growth, and it leads in the development and adoption of most productivity-enhancing innovations, such as artificial intelligence, life sciences, and robotics. Many foreign investors have outsourced the management of their savings and wealth to American financial markets, thanks to their deep liquidity and strong architecture. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency. If the United States slips into stagflation, other parts of the planet are at risk of doing so as well.

Most governments seem to know this. That is why countries around the world are seeking to insulate themselves from the policy volatility emanating from Washington. Europe, for example, is striving to improve its regional standing while forging new and more robust economic relationships with Africa, Asia, and Latin America. China, meanwhile, sees an opportunity to position itself as the more reliable economic superpower. Yet so far, these efforts are running into headwinds. There is simply no other country that is as wealthy or powerful enough to step into the United States’ shoes.

With little prospect for stability, governments, companies, and investors will need to do more to insure themselves against potential damage. They must be agile and flexible. They need capital and human resilience, so they can absorb setbacks and fund new initiatives. And they need to be open to fresh ways of thinking and behaving. If these actors can become more nimble, they will survive the volatility—and perhaps emerge better for it. But if they freeze up, they will undermine the wellbeing of both the world’s current generations and its future ones.

A PAUSE ON EXEPTIONALISM

The United States is still the most powerful and prosperous country in the world, and it has mature institutions. But in economic and financial terms, the country now sometimes resembles a developing nation. Like countries with immature tax systems that desperately need revenue, Washington erected sudden, high tariffs on most external goods. It then slipped into a swiss cheese approach to concessions—exempting products and sectors in a seemingly arbitrary manner. It did all this as its deficit continued to increase. Indeed, at times, it looks as if U.S. officials have adopted an approach to policymaking more akin to what happened in parts of Latin America than to what one would expect from the most powerful economy in the world.

The longer this behavior continues, the greater the risk that the American economy will be beset by problems more common to developing countries. Already, there are signs of capital outflows and more hesitance from external investors, and there is concern about central bank independence. U.S. markets, after decades of dominance, underperformed at the beginning of 2025. The once-mighty dollar is losing its value, even as the yields earned by holding it go up. There has even been a sharp reduction in tourist visits.

And the turbulence is unlikely to dissipate. U.S. President Donald Trump ran for office in 2024 on a promise to upend both the U.S. and global economy, to pull back Washington’s security umbrella, and to distribute more evenly the cost of supplying key global public goods such as aid and defense. He is making good on these pledges, and there is no reason to think he will stop anytime soon. In fact, the question is how far he will go, and how quickly he will move.

The United States now sometimes resembles a developing nation.

Other countries might hope that, when all is said and done, Washington’s current policy approach will only modestly unsettle the economic order. But the tariffs, the weakening of the dollar, the risk of financial instability, and suggestions that the United States may try to force some of its external creditors to extend the maturity of their US Treasury bond holdings have left the world on edge, with even seasoned observers struggling to make sense of what the future will bring. Simply put, Washington has shaken the very foundations of the global order, and there is no trusted conductor to guide countries and companies through the complicated transition to whatever is coming next.

The list of uncertainties is long and daunting. It is unclear, for example, if Washington can upend global trade without upending global capital flows. Experts do not know whether the price effect of tariffs will prove to be a one-off affair or fuel an inflationary cycle. It is uncertain how central banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve, will handle the delicate balance between taming prices and avoiding a sharp, economic contraction. (The tension between Trump and Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, only adds to the uncertainty—and risks the bank’s independence, effectiveness, and credibility.) No one can predict the long-term consequences of the pandemic’s supply chain disruptions, which geopolitical tensions have exacerbated. And several countries are still waiting to find out if they will be forced to choose between China and the United States as tensions in the Pacific mount.

These open questions obviously make life difficult for governments. But they also complicate things for businesses and investors. Long-standing historical correlations between asset classes, most importantly the prices of stocks and bonds, were once a bedrock of investment strategy. Now, these relationships are both unusual and unstable. Traditional safe havens, meanwhile, are no longer actually secure. The basic building blocks of any investment approach—expected returns, volatility, and correlation—are as uncertain as they have been in decades. As a result, investors are struggling with how to allocate assets and how to mitigate risk. They know they need to evolve their approach, but it is far from clear what they should be evolving to.

OF TWO MINDS

In trying to predict what will happen, economic forecasters have generally been pulled in one of two extreme directions. The first is optimistic about where the current bumpy journey will lead. According to this vision, the Trump administration would succeed in shrinking the bureaucracy, eliminating unnecessary regulations, and curtailing spending—thus creating a more efficient government that is less encumbered by debt as growth picks up. The economy would emerge from the present turmoil with an unleashed private sector that can better seize exciting productivity-enhancing innovations in areas where the United States already leads, such as artificial intelligence, the life sciences, robotics, and (down the road) quantum computing. Washington may still have higher tariffs than it did before Trump came into office. But those tariffs would have produced a fairer trading system, where other countries have dismantled their higher tariffs and onerous nontariff barriers, while also assuming more of the cost for providing global public goods. This scenario is not just reminiscent of the early 1980s reforms pursued by Reagan and Thatcher. It goes beyond. It would entail a reset of not only the domestic economic order but the global one, as well.

To achieve this outcome, of course, many things would have to go right. Most importantly, higher growth would need to materialize quickly to alleviate the forming debt overhang. Financial markets would need to show patience, absorbing uncertainties about the dollar and U.S. government bonds. Internationally, countries would need to trust that Washington would stick to whatever it agreed to on trade and tariffs. They would need to become more comfortable with their still sizable holdings of dollars and treasuries. And they would need to navigate what are likely to be persistent tensions between China and the United States, the world’s two economic superpowers.

Then there is the Federal Reserve. In a world of higher productivity, lower inflation, and less threatening deficits and debt, the central bank should feel more willing and be more able to significantly cut rates. But to get there, Trump and Powell would have to resolve their differences, with either Powell stepping down or Trump showing greater patience until May, when Powell’s term is scheduled to end.

This is a world in which volatility remains high.

Trump might also get a rate cut in a more pessimistic scenario—but not in the way he wants. In this world, Washington does not get a handle on its swelling deficits. Trust in institutions continues to erode, as worries increase about the rule of law and executive overreach. The United States displays ever less interest in both setting and abiding by global standards and regulations. Other countries reconsider their role in the global order. At a minimum, they are forced into greater self-insurance, seeking more domestic resilience in the face of a changing world. They could even end up forming multicountry alliances that would worry the United States not just economically but also with respect to national security.

This scenario would effectively repeat much of what the world experienced in the 1970s, when the global economy also grappled with supply shocks, rising commodity prices, and policy missteps. It would be grim for everyone involved. Companies would have to juggle rising costs with weakening demand. Investors would struggle to eke out returns in an environment where both bonds and equities were vulnerable. And households would have less purchasing power and job security. The whole world might then tip into a recession, scarring a generation that already has less financial and human resilience. Future generations, already due to inherit a world of high debt, inequality, and climate crises, would suffer as well.

Right now, both the good and bad scenarios are plausible, as are many points on the range bookended by them. In fact, at the beginning of 2025, various market price indicators suggested that there was a roughly 80 percent chance of change for the better and a 20 percent chance of change for the worse. The outlook for the good scenario fell to below 50 percent in early April, as Trump announced much higher tariffs than markets had anticipated. It became more favorable by the end of the month, as traders and investors grew more confident that his subsequent 90-day delay would result in manageable tariffs and no major shock to the global trading system. But this mix is inherently fluid and is likely to keep on shifting, at least for the near future.

BRACE FOR IMPACT

As much as they would like to, there are very few, if any, public or private actors that can fully protect themselves from the ongoing economic volatility. But there are strategies they can take to steer themselves through.

One approach is to simply stay the course and bet that, when all is said and done, the world will not look tremendously different than it did in January. The markets, after all, have already recovered from Trump’s sweeping trade pronouncements, with the major stock indices establishing new record highs. As the president talks and negotiates with different countries, deescalation might prevail. And no matter what happens, the United States will end up retaining its private-sector dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit. It will lead the world in tech and biological development. Some economists go as far as to argue that an unsteady and volatile U.S. Treasury market need not contaminate a strong corporate sector. To them, one can be a good house in a volatile neighborhood.

Other countries, meanwhile, might fix their own economic troubles, forced to do so by the withdrawal of the U.S. security blanket. Europe could spur more growth by rationalizing its complex regulatory system, encouraging innovation and diffusion, and thus promoting productivity. This would be supported by better regionwide efforts to complete the EU’s architecture, which relies too heavily on its monetary union and desperately needs progress on its fiscal and banking unions.

Meanwhile, in Asia, Beijing might limit its exports so that countries do not fret about Chinese products being dumped into their markets—much as Japan did a few decades ago with its voluntary export restraints. China could also fundamentally revamp its growth model, replacing the traditional engines of exports and state investment with the unleashing of private domestic consumption and private investment.

A screen showing U.S. President Donald Trump, New York City, June 2025 Jeenah Moon / Reuters

Yet given the uncertainties, neither companies nor governments may wish to bet the farm on such a happy outcome. If the United States’ role in the global economic and financial systems has become inherently more uncertain and chaotic, then decision-makers need to prepare for a more fragmented world with more frequent and violent risks. This is a world in which policy-induced volatility remains high, global supply chains unstable, and financial debt markets nervous. Countries could attempt to de-risk more, initiating a deeper decoupling. Competition between Beijing and Washington would grow more intense. A handful of important swing states, namely Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, could maintain good relations with both governments. But most countries would have to choose.

In this case, decisionmakers will need to do a whole lot more to regain control of their economic and financial destinies. Led by a Germany more interested in defense and infrastructure, Europe would have to overcome its long-standing hesitancy to issue joint debt, delegate more authority to Brussels, and undertake many more regional initiatives, including in defense. China would have to be less hesitant to sacrifice short-term growth in pursuit of a fundamental revamp of its economy. Major developing countries, such as Brazil and India, would also become more reform oriented and drive their economies through the stubborn middle-income trap.

Fortunately for them, Washington’s behavior could provide exactly the impetus needed to make such changes. Europe, in particular, can use today’s instability as air cover to pursue the reforms proposed by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, which seek to address the region’s lack of innovation, productivity growth, and internal financing. Europe might also create more homogeneous capital markets that can absorb the continent’s excessive investment in U.S. assets.

But dramatic change, like staying the course, has risks as well. If the future remains uncertain, then policymakers may not want to make big, irreversible shifts. Instead, they may want to walk a kind of middle path. They could, for example, reduce their exposure to the United States but at the margins, in an alterable fashion. They might do so quietly, in order to avoid triggering Washington’s ire.

Decision-makers must avoid falling into behavioral traps.

Choosing between these different courses will not be easy. Each actor will have to decide what makes the most sense for them. But in an increasingly chaotic planet, every player will have to learn to quickly adapt, including those thinking the world will change little. That means actors should try to build up considerable financial, human, and operational resilience.

Companies and investors, for example, should hold more cash and strengthen their balance sheets, diversify their supply chains and portfolios, invest more in employee development using innovative tools, and communicate more effectively. Decision-makers must also do a better job of gaming out future scenarios, stress testing their strategies, and identifying potential vulnerabilities. That means empowering local units, officials, and individuals to game plan and stress test policies.

Finally, decision-makers must avoid falling into behavioral traps. In times of uncertainty, people are more prone than usual to cognitive biases that lead to poor decisions. This tendency goes beyond denying that change is happening. Often, it entails what behavioral scientists call “active inertia”: when actors recognize that they need to do behave differently but end up sticking to familiar patterns and approaches regardless.

The fate of the once-great IBM provides a case in point. In the early 1980s, the company’s unique focus on mainframe computing was increasingly threatened by the rise of the personal computer. In response, both the board and management signed off on what was, fundamentally, the correct strategic decision: reallocating human, financial, and innovation resources to personal computer production. Yet the company’s attempt to shift was derailed when executives struggled to move workers and finances away from the familiar. As a result, the corporation was soon eclipsed by newer companies, and it had to remake itself, essentially, into a service company in order to survive. It has never recovered its dominant position in the industry.

BE SO BOLD

The world is facing a great deal of insecurity. There are few principles, rules, or institutions that officials and investors can rely on. The U.S. economy is becoming less stable, and Washington is less engaged in global policy coordination. After nearly 80 years, the global trading system is at risk of fragmentation. There are no sure bets on the future.

That fact is not, by itself, bad. But it does mean decision makers need to be hypervigilant. The choices people make in the coming months will have profound consequences for the future of the global economy and the well-being of billions. Government officials must be humble, but now is also not the time for timidity. It is, instead, the time for boldness, for creativity, for imaginative scenario planning, and for challenging the conventional wisdom.

The tasks ahead are difficult. They require a fundamental rethinking of how to manage economies, businesses, and investments. But if leaders are capable rise to the challenge—and they should be, bolstered by the coming diffusion of exciting innovations—the world can do more than just navigate the storm. It can emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Mohamed A. El-Erian · July 14, 2025

22. Why Force Fails to Stop Nuclear Proliferation

Excerpts:

At best, Operation Midnight Hammer may have delayed Iran’s nuclear program by roughly 12 to 18 months. According to reporting published in The Wall Street Journal on July 2, the Pentagon has estimated a one-to-two‑year setback at most, but other U.S. intelligence assessments have also suggested that the delay the strikes imposed could be as short as a few months, given Iran’s ability to salvage materials, disperse its sites, and rebuild using hidden facilities. Viewing this pause as a strategic victory would be a critical error. In response to the attacks, Tehran will build deeper, more dispersed, more heavily defended nuclear facilities, thereby diluting the efficacy of subsequent strikes.

To turn this tactical pause into a strategic gain, Washington should use this short window to pursue a diplomatic off-ramp. Such a deal could take many forms, including requiring Iran to return to its past nuclear nonproliferation commitments and grant the IAEA immediate access to and snap-inspection authority over its nuclear sites, perhaps in exchange for phased sanctions relief and a pledge from Gulf countries to forgo their own uranium enrichment.

The problem is that negotiators now face an Iran that has been attacked by two of the world’s most advanced militaries and may see any compromise as an invitation to future attacks. Experience shows that a wounded proliferator learns from the attacks it survives, hardens its infrastructure, and returns to the task with greater secrecy and political resolve. Bombs can buy time; only diplomacy can buy lasting security.

Why Force Fails to Stop Nuclear Proliferation

Foreign Affairs · by More by David Minchin Allison · July 14, 2025

Only Diplomacy Can Ultimately Keep Iran From Getting the Bomb

David Minchin Allison

July 14, 2025

A U.S. stealth bomber returning from Iran, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, June 2025 U.S. Air Force / Reuters

DAVID MINCHIN ALLISON is a Fellow at Yale University’s Nuclear Security Program.

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For a third time in four decades, warplanes have tried to bomb a Middle Eastern nuclear program into submission. The most recent attempt began with an Israeli air campaign against Iran on June 13. Then, in the early morning hours of June 22, seven U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers unleashed 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear sites. The United States’ primary targets were the deeply buried enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz, as well as a nuclear technology center at Isfahan.

Washington declared the mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, a resounding success; President Donald Trump said the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” But the reality is far less certain. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the intergovernmental body that assesses compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was barred from going within about 40 miles of the affected facilities and has been unable to check the extent of the damage to the underground halls at Fordow and Natanz. The U.S. Department of Defense later softened Trump’s claims about the scale of the destruction and conceded that it did not know the whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.

Indeed, there is strong circumstantial evidence that before the American bombs fell, Tehran had evacuated nuclear materials, as well as advanced centrifuge assemblies used to enrich uranium, stored at the target sites. Commercial satellite imagery showed significant truck activity at the Fordow site in the days preceding the June 22 attack. According to information Iranian regulatory authorities gave to the IAEA, after the bombing there was no measured increase in radiation levels in areas surrounding the targeted facilities, indicating that the strikes probably failed to destroy uranium stocks. In fact, it is likely that Iran still possesses much or even all of its pre-strike stockpile of highly enriched uranium—enough, by some estimates, to build as many as ten nuclear bombs.

But even if the bombing campaigns did wreak substantial damage on Iranian nuclear sites, history shows that shattering surface infrastructure rarely yields lasting security. Strikes may set back an emerging nuclear state’s capabilities, but they also tend to intensify that state’s nuclear aspirations. When it comes to Iran, the Trump administration, like Israel before it, appears to be caught up in the “smart-bomb trap”—a mistaken confidence in the power of precision weapons to stunt nuclear breakout or even provoke regime collapse. The more plausible reality is that Operation Midnight Hammer has merely bought the Trump administration time—time it should use to negotiate the long-term strategic solution to Iranian nuclearization that it wrongly believes it has already achieved.

JUST FOR SHOW

Direct military attacks on nuclear programs are designed to eliminate a state’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by destroying critical infrastructure, killing key personnel, or otherwise limiting the target’s capacity to assemble a device. But physical capability is only half of what goes into a nuclearization push. Building a nuclear deterrent also requires immense political will. In the forthcoming edited volume Atomic Backfires: When Nuclear Policies Fail, Tyler John Bowen and I detail how conventional military attacks on all but the most nascent nuclear programs rarely achieve their long-term objectives. Our research, encompassing every case of offensive counterproliferation, shows a consistent pattern: although bombing a country’s nuclear program may temporarily reduce its physical capability to build a device, such an attack almost invariably strengthens the target country’s belief that building nuclear weapons is essential to its survival.

Proponents of conventional strikes against nuclear programs point to Israel’s 2007 bombing of Syria’s al-Kibar reactor. The attack seemed to be remarkably effective. Al-Kibar, a covert plutonium-production reactor modeled on a North Korean design, was destroyed before it became operational, after which Syria never renewed its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But al-Kibar is the exception that proves the rule. The success of the operation relied on factors not likely to be repeated. The reactor was imported wholesale, and Syria lacked the domestic expertise to replicate it independently, making its nuclear program critically reliant on foreign assistance. This dependence severely constrained Syria’s ability to reconstitute the program; following the strike, international scrutiny intensified, and Syrian leaders could not domestically procure or rebuild essential components. The country was furthermore buckling under the weight of a devastating drought and on the verge of a catastrophic civil war. The site was later seized by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Ultimately, the al-Kibar strike was less a decisive blow than a firm nudge to a program already teetering on the brink of collapse.

The case of Iraq offers a more cautionary tale. Israel’s airstrike on the country’s Osirak reactor, in 1981, was originally lauded as a triumph of preventive action. But a closer examination reveals that the attack was probably counterproductive. Although it destroyed the reactor, it also convinced Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, that he needed a nuclear deterrent. Instead of halting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, the attack drove it underground—further from international scrutiny—and prompted Saddam to invest more resources into enriching uranium. By 1990, Iraq was perilously close to being able to build a nuclear bomb.

What ultimately dismantled Saddam’s program was not a targeted strike but the bureaucratic and legal controls imposed after the Gulf War—namely, the United Nations’ comprehensive sanctions and its intrusive inspections regime, which oversaw the destruction of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent U.S. cruise missile strikes on sites such as Zaafaraniyah were largely performative; UN inspectors confirmed that the sites had already been mothballed. The lesson is clear: inspections and sanctions, not bombs, were the key to Iraqi disarmament. The United States’ subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq, predicated on a phantom weapons-of-mass-destruction program, provided a powerful example to Iran and North Korea on the perils of lacking a nuclear deterrent. Pyongyang explicitly cited Saddam’s fate when it accelerated the work that culminated in its first nuclear weapons test, in 2006.

THE NUCLEAR UNDERGROUND

Iran has long weathered attacks that failed to fatally damage its nuclear program. These include the Stuxnet cyberattack on the Natanz facility, a joint U.S.-Israeli effort that damaged roughly 1,000 centrifuges in 2009 and 2010; a wave of Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012; and more recent Israeli acts of sabotage against the Natanz facility in 2020 and 2021. Iran has responded to each attack by making its physical infrastructure more resilient, including by building more advanced centrifuges and moving key facilities such as Fordow deep underground. Some of Iran’s advantages remain beyond the reach of airstrikes, including its mastery of the nuclear-fuel cycle—something Syria’s far less extensive program lacked.

Crucially, the attempts to attack its nuclear program have hardened Iran’s resolve and intensified the beliefs of the country’s leadership that a nuclear deterrent is necessary to prevent its enemies—primarily Israel and the United States—from threatening Iran at will. Senior regime officials have condemned the latest U.S. assault as a “barbaric violation” of international law and publicly discussed withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a move that would end IAEA oversight of Iran’s nuclear program and remove the last legal barrier to rapid weaponization. Even if inspections continue, Tehran will likely become less cooperative with them. Politically, the strikes reinforce the Iranian hard-line view that compromise invites vulnerability—Tehran believes that allowing IAEA inspectors to remain onsite would make future attacks easier by exposing sensitive locations to adversaries under the guise of international monitoring.

Counterproliferation efforts against Tehran reverberate far beyond Iran’s borders. Should the country walk away from the nuclear treaty, for instance, a regional shift toward nuclear proliferation is all but inevitable. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have long harbored nuclear ambitions, would almost certainly accelerate their own programs, thereby opening new fronts in the Middle Eastern nuclear race. In this way, a strike intended to solve one proliferation problem could end up creating several more.

A wounded proliferator learns from the attacks it survives.

At best, Operation Midnight Hammer may have delayed Iran’s nuclear program by roughly 12 to 18 months. According to reporting published in The Wall Street Journal on July 2, the Pentagon has estimated a one-to-two‑year setback at most, but other U.S. intelligence assessments have also suggested that the delay the strikes imposed could be as short as a few months, given Iran’s ability to salvage materials, disperse its sites, and rebuild using hidden facilities. Viewing this pause as a strategic victory would be a critical error. In response to the attacks, Tehran will build deeper, more dispersed, more heavily defended nuclear facilities, thereby diluting the efficacy of subsequent strikes.

To turn this tactical pause into a strategic gain, Washington should use this short window to pursue a diplomatic off-ramp. Such a deal could take many forms, including requiring Iran to return to its past nuclear nonproliferation commitments and grant the IAEA immediate access to and snap-inspection authority over its nuclear sites, perhaps in exchange for phased sanctions relief and a pledge from Gulf countries to forgo their own uranium enrichment.

The problem is that negotiators now face an Iran that has been attacked by two of the world’s most advanced militaries and may see any compromise as an invitation to future attacks. Experience shows that a wounded proliferator learns from the attacks it survives, hardens its infrastructure, and returns to the task with greater secrecy and political resolve. Bombs can buy time; only diplomacy can buy lasting security.

Foreign Affairs · by More by David Minchin Allison · July 14, 2025

23. A Goodbye from a U.S. Diplomat

I am seeing so many similar messages. This is disappointing and tragic and I fear we are going to suffer long term consequences with the loss of these diplomats.

And it pains me as well seeing the cruel messages disparaging and insulting these great Americans who are (were) serving our nation selflessly.

A Goodbye from a U.S. Diplomat

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/goodbye-from-us-diplomat-wren-elhai-scsne/?trackingId=ApIEb6zSilJTjoP%2BPaS2jA%3D%3D

Wren Elhai

Former U.S. Foreign Service Officer

July 13, 2025

As a U.S. diplomat, I never wore a uniform, but I was issued a helmet and body armor when I served at a consulate where we went on lock down regularly due to terrorist threats and protests, with images of Benghazi replaying in our minds. I was never wounded, but my body bears scars from a surgery I received after being medically evacuated with a serious infection from a post where I couldn't get the medical care I needed. My family never got the proverbial knock on the door, but there were many years we saw each other in person just once and my friendships and relationships were strained by distance. These are some of the costs I willingly bore to do a job I loved – serving the American people as a Foreign Service Officer.

The State Department fired me on Friday, along with about 1,350 other dedicated public servants. Over my 14 years of service, I did my best to represent the American people accurately to foreign audiences and implement the foreign policy of three Presidents and six Secretaries of State.

A few moments that stay with me:

I issued the last immigrant visas to American families who adopted children from Russia before Vladimir Putin's adoption ban slammed the door shut. From visa officers up to the Ambassador, our Embassy did everything in our power to track the implementation of the ban, advocate for children who had spent years getting to know their adoptive families, and share information with the families we were able to unite and those we were not.
I gathered the stories of Baloch student activists on hunger strike to protest the enforced disappearances of their loved ones and organized the first Baloch Culture Day event at the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi. The event demonstrated how the United States (itself a melting pot of proud cultures) could both support the rights and identity of the Baloch people while also supporting the Pakistani state.
I led a team that ran a public outreach campaign to highlight the United States' respect and appreciation for Kazakh culture -- producing videos that made national news and garnered millions of views. Our efforts pushed back against anti-American Russian and Chinese propaganda in a key U.S. trading partner, helping the people of Kazakhstan see America as a friend.
I helped bring into being a State Department bureau (basically an operating unit of the Department, in this case housing 100+ tech policy specialists) to make sure the Department could address the security, economic, and rights implications of rapid technological change. As part of that effort, I led design of a training course that offers U.S. diplomats an introduction to the intersection of tech policy and geopolitics -- so that every U.S. Embassy in the world could have at least one person on staff who understood how diplomacy and technology are shaping each other.
I led the U.S. government's communications efforts at two UN climate change conferences, wrangling messages and messengers across 20 federal agencies to give reporters and observers a clear picture of what the United States was doing to curb pollution, protect forests, and reduce the cost in dollars and lives of extreme weather events.
On personal time, I organized and performed in musical groups that (in addition to being a ton of fun) helped to build appreciation and trust between Americans and foreign audiences. Among other unforgettable memories, I traded riffs (on fiddle) with a sarangi player at an outdoor music festival in Karachi, played the Foggy Mountain Special for the President of Kazakhstan on July 4, and placed third in a competition of traditional nomadic stringed instruments (playing the Kazakh kobyz).

Not all Americans would choose to spend tax dollars on all of these activities. Watching colleagues post their own farewell messages over the last two days, I have been struck by the responses from those questioning the patriotism and skill of my colleagues and me and suggesting the country is better off without us.

Besides being cruel, I think these perspectives are wrong. The State Department is not a perfect institution, and many of us who served have spent our careers trying to make it less process-bound, more agile, and more strategic. But fundamentally, I think it's a mark of a great country that there are people like us willing to undergo years of rigorous selection and training to dedicate our careers working for the public good. I wish that was an uncontroversial position.

I did not know I would lose my job until it happened – I'm one of those who were fired based on where we were working back in May despite having rotated since then to new assignments. My wife and I were both working on our French and planning a move to a U.S. Embassy in West Africa when this news arrived. I'm two days into processing the loss of a career and a calling, and I'm not quite ready to start searching for a new job. However, I hope that whatever I do next can involve trying to help Americans see the value of public service, the calling my former colleagues at the State Department will carry on. If you have ideas for what that might look like, please let me know.

24. The Human Element – Why Today's Military Innovations Won't Change the Nature of War

Excerpt:

In conclusion, the lessons of the past remind us that while technology will continue to evolve, the essence of warfare will remain rooted in human nature. The current excitement surrounding drones and AI should not blind us to the enduring truths of conflict. As we stand on the precipice of what some are calling a new RMA, we must resist the temptation to overstate the impact of technology and instead focus on the human element that has always defined warfare. By doing so, we can navigate the complexities of modern conflict with a clear understanding of what truly matters: the decisions made by individuals, the relationships forged on the battlefield, and the moral imperatives that guide our actions. The future of warfare may be shaped by technology, but it will always be fought by humans.

The Human Element

By Andrew Latham

July 14, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/07/14/the_human_element_1122409.html

Why Today's Military Innovations Won't Change the Nature of War

In the 1990s, the military world buzzed with the promise of a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA), heralding a new era defined by cutting-edge technology and transformative strategies. Yet, as history has shown, the anticipated seismic shifts in warfare were often overstated, overshadowed by the enduring truths of human nature and the timeless nature of war. Today, as we stand on the brink of another supposed RMA driven by drones and artificial intelligence, we must confront a harsh and enduring reality: the nature of war remains unchanged. The human element—our motivations, fears, and decisions—continues to shape the battlefield far more than any technological advancement ever could. This article argues that, much like the RMA of the past, the current fixation on technological innovation risks neglecting the enduring centrality of the human element that has defined the very nature of war down though the ages and across the globe.

The 1990s RMA was characterized by an overwhelming belief that technology would redefine how wars were fought. Proponents argued that precision-guided munitions, advanced surveillance systems, and network-centric warfare would render traditional military strategies obsolete. However, as conflicts unfolded in the years that followed, it became clear that while technology could enhance capabilities, it could not replace the human judgment and adaptability that are essential in warfare. The Gulf War showcased the effectiveness of high-tech weaponry, but subsequent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed the limitations of relying solely on technology in complex, asymmetric conflicts. The human element—understanding the local populace, navigating cultural dynamics, and making ethical decisions—remained paramount.

Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves enmeshed in a similar narrative. The rise of drones and AI has sparked a nearly giddy excitement about a new era of warfare, with many experts proclaiming that these technologies will revolutionize military operations. Drones promise precision strikes with minimal risk to personnel, while AI offers the potential for rapid data analysis and decision-making. However, this enthusiasm often overlooks a crucial point: technology does not operate in a vacuum. The effectiveness of these innovations hinges on human operators who must interpret data, make strategic choices, and engage with the complexities of warfare. The belief that technology alone can dictate the outcome of conflicts is a dangerous oversimplification.

Moreover, reliance on technology can create a false sense of security. As we witnessed in the early days of drone warfare, the initial successes can lead to overconfidence, resulting in strategic miscalculations. The human element is not just a factor; it is the foundation upon which military success is built. The decisions made by commanders, the morale of troops, and the perceptions of local populations all play critical roles in shaping the outcome of conflicts. Ignoring these factors in favor of a purely technological perspective risks repeating the mistakes of the past.

The current discourse surrounding AI in warfare further exemplifies this oversight. While AI has the potential to enhance decision-making processes, it cannot replicate the nuanced understanding that human leaders bring to the table. The ethical implications of autonomous weapons systems raise profound questions about accountability and the moral responsibilities of military leaders. As we integrate AI into our military strategies, we must remain vigilant about the potential for dehumanization in warfare. The reliance on algorithms and machine learning should not eclipse the necessity for human judgment, empathy, and ethical considerations.

Additionally, the character of war itself remains unchanged, regardless of the tools at our disposal. War is fundamentally about human conflict, driven by political, social, and economic factors. The motivations that lead nations to engage in warfare—territorial disputes, ideological differences, and resource competition—are deeply rooted in human nature. While technology may alter the methods of engagement, it does not alter the underlying causes of conflict. The belief that drones and AI can fundamentally change the nature of war is a misreading of history and human behavior.

As we navigate this new landscape of military innovation, it is essential to recognize that the human element must remain at the forefront of our strategies. Military leaders must prioritize training that emphasizes critical thinking, cultural awareness, and ethical decision-making. The integration of technology should enhance, not replace, the human capacity for judgment and adaptability. By fostering a culture that values the human element, we can ensure that our military remains effective in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world.

In conclusion, the lessons of the past remind us that while technology will continue to evolve, the essence of warfare will remain rooted in human nature. The current excitement surrounding drones and AI should not blind us to the enduring truths of conflict. As we stand on the precipice of what some are calling a new RMA, we must resist the temptation to overstate the impact of technology and instead focus on the human element that has always defined warfare. By doing so, we can navigate the complexities of modern conflict with a clear understanding of what truly matters: the decisions made by individuals, the relationships forged on the battlefield, and the moral imperatives that guide our actions. The future of warfare may be shaped by technology, but it will always be fought by humans.

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

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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