Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."

– Winston Churchill

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

– Plato

Please note: I will be travelling overseas today and for the month of August my messages will be somewhat erratic due to my work schedule so please bear with me.

1. Trump Positions Nuclear Submarines Following Threats From Former Russian Leader

2. Trump’s Nuclear Submarine Message to Russia

3. How American Power Should Be Deployed

4. Hegseth’s Latest Battle: Infighting Inside the Pentagon

5. Senate Passes Key Funding Bills, Reasserting Power Over Spending

6. Ukraine’s Supporters Plan New NATO Fund to Buy U.S. Weapons

7. Why Isn’t Enough Food Getting Into Gaza?

8. Trump’s Warm Embrace of India Turns Cold

9. Trump's Asia policy should prioritize security over revenue

10. US going all in on sea drones to deter Taiwan war

11. Senate confirms trio of nominees for Navy, Space Force, SOCOM

12. India Will Buy Russian Oil Despite Trump’s Threats, Officials Say

13. Sanctions bill targets China for enabling Putin’s war in Ukraine

14. Trump Defense Department callously endangers Afghan allies

15. PACAF Chief: A more contested Indo-Pacific needs a new kind of exercise

16. The Quad in an ‘America First’ World

17. Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve

18. Army will review selection boards that choose leaders for command

19. Failure of Taiwanese recall elections leaves defence build-up in gridlock

1. Trump Positions Nuclear Submarines Following Threats From Former Russian Leader

I hope we do not have the 2025 equivalent of a "missiles of October" in the form of a "submarines of August."

Let's ensure there is no miscalculation on either side.

Strategic communications through social media: e.g., Truth Social.

Excerpts;

“Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” Trump added.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for more information.

The U.S. routinely keeps strategic submarines at sea that carry nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles as part of its nuclear deterrent. It isn’t clear whether Trump was suggesting the U.S. would put more of these submarines to sea or why moving them to other areas of the ocean would add to U.S. nuclear firepower, since the ballistic missiles they carry are of intercontinental range.

Trump Positions Nuclear Submarines Following Threats From Former Russian Leader

The U.S. president criticized Dmitry Medvedev, saying words ‘can often lead to unintended consequences’

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/trump-positions-nuclear-submarines-following-criticism-from-former-russian-leader-79f8006c

By Michael R. Gordon

Follow, Robbie Gramer

Follow and Alex Leary

Updated Aug. 1, 2025 2:50 pm ET

President Trump, Dmitry Medvedev. Photo: brendan smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Key Points

What's This?

President Trump said he would position two nuclear submarines in response to comments from Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev said Trump’s threat of new sanctions on Russia is a step toward war.

WASHINGTON—President Trump said he would position two nuclear submarines “in the appropriate regions” in response to recent comments from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, escalating tensions with Moscow as the U.S. pressures Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump, in a Friday social-media post, criticized Medvedev, who earlier this week said Trump’s threat of new sanctions on Russia is a “step towards war.”

“Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” Trump added.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for more information.

The U.S. routinely keeps strategic submarines at sea that carry nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles as part of its nuclear deterrent. It isn’t clear whether Trump was suggesting the U.S. would put more of these submarines to sea or why moving them to other areas of the ocean would add to U.S. nuclear firepower, since the ballistic missiles they carry are of intercontinental range.

Another possibility is that Trump was referring to nuclear-powered U.S. attack submarines that could be moved closer to Russia so they could be used against Russian strategic submarines in the event of a conflict, a former senior Pentagon official said.

The U.S. also has nuclear-powered submarines that carry nonnuclear cruise missiles that can be used to strike targets on land, as the U.S. used in its attack on Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility in June.

While in Scotland, President Trump said he was disappointed in Russian President Vladimir Putin for not yet reaching a deal to end the war in Ukraine. Photo: Andrew Leyden/Zuma Press

Former U.S. officials and experts outside the government said it was striking that the U.S. president appeared to be engaging in the sort of nuclear signaling that American officials have long criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for doing.

Medvedev, a former Russian president, has long engaged in provocative statements on social media and in interviews against Ukraine’s leaders and Western officials who support Kyiv. But his statements don’t carry the same weight as pronouncements by Putin.

“Trump hasn’t attacked Putin, just Medvedev. But moving subs has certainly raised the stakes in what has been just a verbal mud fight,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official on NATO policy.

Trump previously said he is sending his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Russia after Witkoff finished his current visit to Israel. He didn’t elaborate on Witkoff’s schedule or agenda. A spokesperson for Witkoff didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s latest threats come just a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio played down Medvedev’s warnings. “He basically is not a relevant player in Russian politics,” Rubio said of Medvedev in a Fox News interview. “He’s certainly someone in an official position in Russia who’s saying things that are inflammatory. But that’s okay. I don’t think that’s going to be a factor one way or the other.”

Trump’s social-media post contrasted with the more reassuring comments the president made last week when he indicated that he wanted to find a way to maintain limits on U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear weapons after the New START treaty between Washington and Moscow expires in February.

“If Donald Trump is truly concerned about Russian nuclear weapons, he should engage in a serious negotiation with Russian counterparts to maintain caps on the massive U.S. and Russian arsenals and negotiate concrete measures to avoid nuclear confrontation and slash arsenals,” said Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association, a private group that supports arms control agreements.

Trump has for months threatened to impose new sanctions on Russia as his frustration with Putin grows. Trump has criticized Putin for pressing on with the war in Ukraine, despite the U.S. president’s efforts to end the conflict. Earlier this week, Trump said he would give Putin 10 to 12 days to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine or face additional sanctions, shortening a previous deadline of 50 days.

“Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10…He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country,” Medvedev wrote Monday on X.

The president responded by calling Medvedev “the failed former President of Russia,” and warned him to “to watch his words,” adding, “He’s entering very dangerous territory!” On Thursday, Trump told reporters he planned to move forward with sanctions, but said he didn’t think it would deter Putin.

“I don’t know that sanctions bother him,” Trump said.

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Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 2, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Will Reposition Nuclear Submarines

2. Trump’s Nuclear Submarine Message to Russia

I wonder if they are having a Clausewitz discussion aboard the submarine like Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman had in the film Crimson Tide.

"Tell us who is the true enemy, "Von."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hur6LcyuTuU

A great military scene.

Trump’s Nuclear Submarine Message to Russia

The President is showing he won’t be cowed by nuclear blackmail.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-nuclear-submarines-russia-dmitry-medvedev-e0ed310f?mod=hp_opin_pos_3

By The Editorial Board

Updated Aug. 1, 2025 7:56 pm ET

Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Minnesota (SSN-783) is seen off the coast of Western Australia, Australia March 16. Photo: colin murty/Reuters

The U.S. submarine force is known as the silent service because the job is to lurk undetected all over the world, and so it’s notable that President Trump on Friday announced that he’d move two nuclear subs after a non-nuclear social-media exchange with a Russian politician.

“Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev,” Mr. Trump wrote, “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences.”

The Commander in Chief is responding to Mr. Medvedev’s smashmouth online threats, most recently that Mr. Trump’s truncated deadline to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine was a “threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.”

Mr. Trump is moving submarines as a deterrent signal, and perhaps the Kremlin needs the warning. The Biden Administration tolerated far too much nuclear blackmail from Russia and calibrated its every move in Ukraine on fear of escalation. Who can forget Mr. Biden musing about a potential nuclear Armageddon at a fundraiser in 2022?

Then again, Mr. Trump’s madman theory has its limits. Let’s hope he’s keeping lines open to Moscow so there is no escalation based on misjudgments about intentions. Mr. Putin wouldn’t get much benefit if he used tactical nukes in Ukraine, on the battlefield or in world opinion, not that he cares much about the latter. He is even less prepared for a NATO confrontation with his weak and overextended war economy.

But even rhetorical exchanges over weapons that could create mass destruction are worth avoiding. Mr. Trump earlier this summer rebuked Mr. Medvedev for “casually throwing around the ‘N word’ (Nuclear!)” and he was correct then. He’s also right to be losing patience with Mr. Putin’s murderous Ukraine campaign and he can show that seriousness by imposing secondary sanctions and arming Kyiv.

Appeared in the August 2, 2025, print edition as 'Trump’s Submarine Message to Russia'.

3. How American Power Should Be Deployed

This is a podcast that you can listen to at the link or read the entire transcript below.

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/08/how-american-power-should-be-deployed/683725/

Some fascinating excerpts from both Kasparov and Bolton.

Excerpts:

Kasparov: The first: “Good leaders do not threaten to quit if things go wrong. They expect cooperation, of course, and they expect everyone to do his share, but they do not stop to measure sacrifices with a teaspoon while the fight is on. We cannot lead the forces of freedom from behind.”

And the second presidential quote, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

The first, with the memorable line about not measuring sacrifice with a teaspoon while the fight is on, was spoken by my namesake, President Harry S Truman, in a 1951 address in Philadelphia at the dedication of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. He had brought American troops into combat in Korea: a controversial decision to stand up to Communist aggression, only six years after the end of World War II.

The second presidential quote, about nations being morally justified to use force, is more surprising. It was spoken on stage in Oslo, Norway, in 2009, during Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Donald Trump’s “America First” isolationist cry echoes the America Firsters of the 1930s who wanted to stay out of what they called “Europe’s war,” even as late as 1941. Refusing to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion has many parallels to the U.S. staying out of World War II until Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman learned the lesson. As he said in Philadelphia, you fight small conflicts to avoid big wars. Evidence of the good that can come from military intervention starts with South Korea, a thriving democratic ally, and North Korea, a prison-camp nation.

From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Garry Kasparov.

...

I think that Trump himself doesn’t understand alliances. I’m not sure Vance understands them any better. In Trump’s case, he looks at NATO, for example, and he sees it as the United States defending Europe: We don’t get anything out of it, and they won’t pay. Well, if I thought NATO worked that way, I probably wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about it either. But the whole point of a collective-defense alliance is that the security of all the members is enhanced when they live up to their obligations. And I think NATO remains the most effective politico-military alliance in human history.

There are members who are not pulling their fair share. That’s right. I think Trump was right to criticize that. What’s not right is to break the alliance up over it. And I think we are—notwithstanding the recent NATO summit where everybody smiled and seemed to be happy—I don’t think we’re past the danger point of Trump potentially withdrawing the U.S. from NATO in less happy times.

Kasparov: Oh, that’s interesting. So can he withdraw from NATO unilaterally without a vote in the Senate, Congressional approval, whatever—or is it just totally in the hands of the president?

Bolton: It’s my very firm view that the Constitution does entrust that authority solely to the president. In the case of NATO, ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and some others passed legislation a few years ago that said the president could not withdraw from NATO without the consent of the Senate. I think that provision is unconstitutional. I don’t think you can limit the president’s authority. So if Trump decided to pull out, and he issued an executive order doing that, that might be challengeable in litigation, but it would take years to resolve. And in effect, Trump would have withdrawn by the time the case was decided by the Supreme Court.

Kasparov: Do you think it’s realistic, that he will go that far?

Bolton: You know, I think he, as I say, he doesn’t understand the alliance viscerally. He doesn’t like it. He has said, and his advisers have said, things like, Well, we’ll only defend NATO members that are meeting what used to be the 2 percent threshold: 2 percent of GDP spent on defense, now 3 and a half percent, 5 with infrastructure. Well, that’s a statement that the NATO alliance is like a piece of Swiss cheese. You can’t defend this country and then not defend the country next to it because it’s not at 2 percent; it’s just not viable militarily. But that kind of thinking has not left Trump’s mind, and has not left the minds of his advisers. So I remain very worried, notwithstanding this recent NATO summit where things seem to go well. This is deep within Trump that he distrusts the alliance, thinks it’s part of America getting a raw deal.

How American Power Should Be Deployed

America’s retreat and its threat to democracy

By Garry Kasparov

The Atlantic · by Garry Kasparov · August 1, 2025

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

How should American power be deployed in the world? Since the Cold War, America’s role as a global leader has been up for debate.

Host Garry Kasparov and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton dissect the state of the neoconservative geopolitical worldview. They consider what the latest iteration of the “America First” foreign-policy rationale signals for democracy worldwide and analyze what it means that the new American right sometimes sounds like the old American left.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Garry Kasparov: I would like to begin this episode with two quotes from American presidents. You might try to guess which presidents they are from.

[Music]

Kasparov: The first: “Good leaders do not threaten to quit if things go wrong. They expect cooperation, of course, and they expect everyone to do his share, but they do not stop to measure sacrifices with a teaspoon while the fight is on. We cannot lead the forces of freedom from behind.”

And the second presidential quote, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

The first, with the memorable line about not measuring sacrifice with a teaspoon while the fight is on, was spoken by my namesake, President Harry S Truman, in a 1951 address in Philadelphia at the dedication of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. He had brought American troops into combat in Korea: a controversial decision to stand up to Communist aggression, only six years after the end of World War II.

The second presidential quote, about nations being morally justified to use force, is more surprising. It was spoken on stage in Oslo, Norway, in 2009, during Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Donald Trump’s “America First” isolationist cry echoes the America Firsters of the 1930s who wanted to stay out of what they called “Europe’s war,” even as late as 1941. Refusing to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion has many parallels to the U.S. staying out of World War II until Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman learned the lesson. As he said in Philadelphia, you fight small conflicts to avoid big wars. Evidence of the good that can come from military intervention starts with South Korea, a thriving democratic ally, and North Korea, a prison-camp nation.

From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Garry Kasparov.

[Music]

Kasparov: Terms like intervention and regime change are practically dirty words in U.S. politics, since the disastrous occupation of Iraq. But when aggressive dictatorships—like the Soviet Union in the past, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia today—go on the march, words alone do not stop them.

My guest today, Ambassador John Bolton, would agree with both of those presidential quotes, although, like me, he did not find much else to agree on with Obama during his eight years in office! Bolton has strong opinions on American foreign policy and the use of force. At a time when the new American right sounds like the old American left, his thoughts are critical.

[Music]

Kasparov: John Bolton, you have had many distinctions and titles in your career, including ambassador to the United Nations, national security adviser, and many others. I will add one more. You are the only guest to join us in both seasons of this show. Thank you for doing it.

John Bolton: Glad to be with you.

Kasparov: And by the way, I see the chessboard in your office. Do you play chess?

Bolton: I do. You know, that was given to me by Nikolai Patrushev, my opposite number—

Kasparov: Ooof! (Laughs.)

Bolton: —when he was the Russian national security adviser. And it is interestingly made out of Karelian wood from the Finnish territory. So, and it was checked out by the Secret Service before I accepted it.

Kasparov: Do you think that the chess rules apply to this, you know, current geopolitics? Or it’s more like a game of poker?

Bolton: Well, I think I wouldn’t argue with you about the rules of chess. I don’t think people like Vladimir Putin care about the rules. When people talk about the rules-based international order, the prime malefactors didn’t get the memo. They don’t believe in it, and they don’t act like it’s there. And for us to believe that it’s there, I think, handicaps our ability to defend ourselves.

Kasparov: I want to talk with you about how American power should be deployed in the world, in service of democracies and against autocracies. But I want to start with what seems to be the ever-changing meaning of “America First” as a foreign-policy rationale. How do you interpret that term based on what you’re seeing in the second Trump administration?

Bolton: Well, I think Trump himself has basically given us the answer on “America First,” “Make America great again”—whatever his slogans are. They are exactly what he says they are at any given moment. They don’t reflect an overarching philosophy. They don’t reflect, in this case, a clear national-security grand strategy. Trump doesn’t even really do policy as we understand it. I don’t think to this day that he really appreciates that the words America first were initially used in the run-up to World War II to be the slogan of the isolationists, those who did not want to be drawn into the European war.

He doesn’t see, he never saw the background of that, or the concerns about anti-Semitism that lurked in that “America First” movement. And I think from Trump’s point of view—because to him everything is transactional—it means he just makes the best deals in the world, and he doesn’t necessarily distinguish among the terms of the deals he’s making. It’s the fact of making a deal that shows who’s in charge.

Kasparov: You said, and we all suspected, that Trump was not aware about the true meaning of “America First,” because he’s not a—no matter what he says—a good scholar of history. But assuming he knew that “America First” meant isolationism back then in 1939, 1940, and a clear distinction of anti-Semitism, would he care?

Bolton: I don’t think he would care. And I think he views truth in a very relative way. People say Trump lies a lot. I actually don’t think that’s an accurate description. I don’t think he cares much about what’s true and what’s not true. He says what he thinks he would like the world to be, and as it benefits him at any given time. And if pressed on that point about anti-Semitism in particular, I think he would just brush it away.

Kasparov: So you’ve written that Trump’s decisions are like an archipelago of dots that don’t really line up, and that advisers in the first term, you included, would try to string good decisions together. Now, what about the second administration? What is happening now?

Bolton: Well, you know, even just about six months in, I think you can see the difference in personnel selections pretty clearly. Certainly in the national-security space. In the first term, he had people who largely shared a Republican philosophy, a Reaganite approach to foreign policy. Obviously there were many disagreements on tactics, on priorities, on a whole variety of things, which is perfectly natural in any administration. And Trump, not knowing much about international affairs, could often buy one argument one day and another argument the next day. But eventually he got frustrated, I think, that his visceral instincts weren’t necessarily automatically adopted by his advisers, who were trying to give him the best advice, trying to get to the optimal outcome. So to avoid the problems that he saw in the first term, in the second term, I think, he has consciously looked for people who act as yes-men and yes-women.

They don’t say, Well, have you considered these alternative options? Have you looked at these facts? He wants people who will listen to what he says and then go out and implement it. Now, in the first term, people said his advisers tried to constrain him, tried to really to make the decisions in his place. And I just think that’s wrong. I think I can speak for many others: We were trying to make sure that he made the best decision possible, and giving our advice was part of our function. My title was national security adviser. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, other than give advice, in that job. But in the second term, he wants not loyalty—I think loyalty is a good word; I think it conveys a valuable commodity—he wants fealty. He wants people who are gonna say Yes, sir, and do it really without thinking, in many cases without trying to improve or suggest modifications. I think that’s—ironically, it’s gonna be harmful to Trump. It’s certainly gonna be harmful to America, but that approach ultimately will hurt Trump too.

Kasparov: How so?

Bolton: Well, if a president is making decisions in a very narrow focus without understanding the broader implications, the additional risks, the additional opportunities, he’s gonna miss a lot of what the rest of the world will see. And then contingencies will arise that he simply won’t be prepared for. So that even what was a reasonably good decision can go bad, because you don’t take into account the second- and third-order consequences. And I hesitate to say this with Garry here, but in chess you have to think a couple moves ahead. Maybe some people think lots of moves ahead. Trump plays it one move at a time, and that is dangerous.

Kasparov: Yeah, it’s not a very rosy picture. So it seems that his Cabinet now, and all people who are supposed to give him advice, they are not going to contradict him.

Bolton: You know I have to say, contrary to the first term, there haven’t been so many leaks out of this White House in the early months. So I don’t have confidence we really know how the decision making is going. But to the extent we do, my impression is that while there’s a lot of discussion about the optics of how you present a particular decision—the kind of background politics, how it makes Trump look—in terms of strategic thinking by people who understand international affairs, there’s not an awful lot of that.

And indeed, even in some cases it might seem unusual, people who disagree get excluded. It appears Tulsi Gabbard—who opposed, from all we can tell, the strikes against Iran’s nuclear-weapons program—was just cut out of the picture. And I have to say in the short term, I’m delighted by that. It probably contributed to the right decision. But what that means more basically is that Trump made a fundamental mistake appointing her, because you want people who will give their best advice, and it helps the president—should help the president—make a better-informed decision.

Kasparov: You mentioned Tulsi Gabbard. What about other advisers? Who do you find the most worrisome?

Bolton: Well, I think Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth really is in over his head in this job. I think his comments in public about comments and criticisms that people made about the outcome of the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites demonstrated that. It’s fine to defend the president. That’s what Cabinet members should do. If you get tired of defending the president, you should resign. But that’s not your only job. Your job is also to explain and justify the conduct that you’ve ordered on behalf of the president. Not in a partisan way, but in a way that helps the American people understand. Leadership here is in large part education, and that’s not what they’re doing. They’re doing a kind of attack partisan politics. Again, it makes Trump feel good in the short term, but in the longer term, he will not be well served by that kind of approach either.

Kasparov: Now a strategic question: our allies in Europe. J. D. Vance went to Munich, the Munich Security Conference, back in February and chastised European democracies for many things—among them being afraid of the far right and suppressing democracies at home. What’s your take?

Bolton: Well, there are a lot of interesting things in that speech. No. 1, you know, Vance is really on the quasi-isolationist side of the political spectrum. And he, and people like him, have been very critical over the years of the neoconservatives for their constant emphasis on human rights and similar concerns. And yet at Munich, what he gave was a neoconservative speech. Although he was criticizing the Europeans for their democratic failures, I would’ve felt better if he had included Russia and China as part of his critical analysis. But he was doing exactly what he criticized the neoconservatives for doing. This is, I think, a measure of how really partisan these kinds of approaches are from a domestic American point of view. He’s scoring—Vance there is scoring points against the neoconservatives, against liberal internationalists, against a variety of people that I’m not part of. So I didn’t take it personally. But it was carrying on a domestic-U.S. political debate in an international forum.

I think that Trump himself doesn’t understand alliances. I’m not sure Vance understands them any better. In Trump’s case, he looks at NATO, for example, and he sees it as the United States defending Europe: We don’t get anything out of it, and they won’t pay. Well, if I thought NATO worked that way, I probably wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about it either. But the whole point of a collective-defense alliance is that the security of all the members is enhanced when they live up to their obligations. And I think NATO remains the most effective politico-military alliance in human history.

There are members who are not pulling their fair share. That’s right. I think Trump was right to criticize that. What’s not right is to break the alliance up over it. And I think we are—notwithstanding the recent NATO summit where everybody smiled and seemed to be happy—I don’t think we’re past the danger point of Trump potentially withdrawing the U.S. from NATO in less happy times.

Kasparov: Oh, that’s interesting. So can he withdraw from NATO unilaterally without a vote in the Senate, Congressional approval, whatever—or is it just totally in the hands of the president?

Bolton: It’s my very firm view that the Constitution does entrust that authority solely to the president. In the case of NATO, ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and some others passed legislation a few years ago that said the president could not withdraw from NATO without the consent of the Senate. I think that provision is unconstitutional. I don’t think you can limit the president’s authority. So if Trump decided to pull out, and he issued an executive order doing that, that might be challengeable in litigation, but it would take years to resolve. And in effect, Trump would have withdrawn by the time the case was decided by the Supreme Court.

Kasparov: Do you think it’s realistic, that he will go that far?

Bolton: You know, I think he, as I say, he doesn’t understand the alliance viscerally. He doesn’t like it. He has said, and his advisers have said, things like, Well, we’ll only defend NATO members that are meeting what used to be the 2 percent threshold: 2 percent of GDP spent on defense, now 3 and a half percent, 5 with infrastructure. Well, that’s a statement that the NATO alliance is like a piece of Swiss cheese. You can’t defend this country and then not defend the country next to it because it’s not at 2 percent; it’s just not viable militarily. But that kind of thinking has not left Trump’s mind, and has not left the minds of his advisers. So I remain very worried, notwithstanding this recent NATO summit where things seem to go well. This is deep within Trump that he distrusts the alliance, thinks it’s part of America getting a raw deal.

Kasparov: But I think that all countries that might be in danger, countries that border Russia or are just in the vicinity of potential Russian aggression, they already are almost at 5 percent. They spend a bigger percentage of GDP than the United States on their defense. Does it mean that America will defend them?

Bolton: Well, we certainly should, but I think this is an important question about Trump the man faced with a crisis situation like that. Let’s say Russia invades the Baltics: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Not impossible; certainly something the Baltics fear very much. Now, we did not have any crisis nearly that dangerous in the first term. COVID was a crisis, but it was a health crisis played out over a long period of time. So what would Trump do if the Baltics were attacked by Russia? I don’t know the answer to that question. And it’s legitimate for the Eastern European countries in NATO in particular to be worried about, because Trump does not like decisions where he can’t reverse himself the next day. And obviously a decision to comply with Article V and defend countries invaded by Russia would be a decision that would be irrevocable for a long time until the military struggle played itself out.

Kasparov: So what do you expect to happen in Ukraine? Again, Ukraine is fighting this war, and many of us believe it’s shielding the free world against Russian aggression. And Ukrainians and many Europeans, especially neighboring countries, they are disappointed, I would probably say shocked, by the Trump administration’s policy in the region. Can Ukraine survive on its own, or basically can Europe provide enough for Ukraine? And how long will America take this neutral stand?

Bolton: Well, I’m afraid the answer is the rest of Trump’s presidency. I think it’s gonna remain undecided. My guess is in the near term—which may be the remaining three and a half years of the administration—Trump is not gonna go back and make a major effort to seek a diplomatic solution. I think he was burned by the failure of Russia to show any conciliatory impulses at all when he tried in the last few months.

And I think he sees it as a failure to live up to his campaign boast that he could solve the problem in 24 hours, which of course was never realistic. So the real issue is: Will he allow the continuation of U.S. military assistance at approximately the same levels—weapons, ammunition, and, to my mind, most important of all, military intelligence that’s so critical to the Ukrainians on the battlefield?

And to the question you’ve raised, can the Europeans make up the difference? I don’t think they can on the intelligence. I just don’t think they have the capability. It could be they can make it up in hardware. I would hope they could, but it just won’t be the same if Trump really does cut off the aid.

Kasparov: Now, about another crisis or another war, it’s the Middle East. How do you rate Trump’s actions there—attacking Iran, then offering the olive branch? And again, some say he did it in a desperate search for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump’s policy vis-à-vis Israel-Palestinians.

Bolton: Right. Well, I think he’s not gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Ukraine, that’s for sure. So he’s looking for another opportunity. I find myself to a certain extent satisfied, but to a certain extent frustrated. I think it was the right thing to do to order American military attacks on some of the key Iranian nuclear-weapons facilities. There’s been a huge and kind of intellectually arid debate about exactly how much damage was done by those attacks, which we don’t know because we were not close enough to get a full assessment. But I think Trump cut off U.S. military action too soon. I don’t think that there will ever be peace and stability in the Middle East while the regime of the ayatollahs remains in power. I’m not saying that requires extensive U.S. involvement. It certainly doesn’t require boots on the ground. It could involve assistance to the Iranian people.

[Music]

Bolton: I think the question is: Will they have the courage to try to take advantage of the splits and tensions within the regime that I think are pretty obvious across the world now, and see if this is not the moment to rid themselves of the ayatollahs.

Kasparov: We’ll be right back.

[Break]

Kasparov: Let’s move from the world of practicalities into the world of idealism. What could be an ideal world if we could have our wishes granted? So, how should American power be deployed in service of democracy? So what are the tools to use, and where to use them? Exporting democracy, military interventions, regime change?

Bolton: Well, I think where American interests are at stake, there are a number of things we could do. I think regime change doesn’t obviously have to involve American boots on the ground. There are all kinds of ways that regime change can take place. We tried that in the case of Venezuela in 2018 and 2019, that would’ve allowed the Venezuelan people to take control away from the [Nicolás] Maduro, really the Chavez-Maduro dictatorship.

But we would’ve, at the same time, pushed the Russians, the Cubans, the Chinese, the Iranians out of positions in Venezuela, very advantageous to them. It didn’t work, but it was worth the effort. If we had succeeded, I would’ve said basically to the people of Venezuela, Congratulations. It now belongs to you. You figure out what you’re gonna do with it. I have never been a nation builder, in the sense that some people have been, but I don’t shy away from regime change. In the case of Iraq, which is the case that people point to again and again, I give full credit to the people who tried to make the coalition provisional authority in Iraq work. I think they did it out of the best of motivations. But it’s not what I would’ve done. In my perfect world, I would’ve given the Iraqi leaders—some in exile, some who had been in the country—a copy of the Federalist Papers and said, Good luck. Call us if you have any questions. We’ll hold the ring around you. We’ll protect you from Iranian and other external influences, but you need to do this yourself.

And I think that’s really how you nation build. You don’t enhance people’s political maturity by making decisions for them. Even if you can make better decisions than they can, you enhance political maturity by saying, You’re gonna make the decisions, and you’re gonna learn by your mistakes. It’s not guaranteed for success, but I think that’s a more solid way of nation building than for Americans to try and do it for them.

Kasparov: But let me press on this issue. Because you mentioned Venezuela. I can add Belarus. In these countries, we clearly saw the opposition winning elections. Not hearsay. Winning elections, having physical proof of receiving, in both cases, 70 percent of votes. And both dictators—[Alexander] Lukashenko and Maduro—they stayed in power. They didn’t care. They used force. Lukashenko, we understand he’s too close to Russia. Putin was there. The opposition stood no chance. But Venezuela is just next door. Recently we had these elections, and Maduro basically ignored it. He made the deal with the [Joe] Biden administration, so some kind of relief of sanctions, but promising free and fair elections. So he reneged on his promise. Should America intervene?

Bolton: Well, look—back in 2018 and 2019, I think we were at the point where we should have been doing more. But you know, we didn’t have many capabilities in the Western hemisphere, thanks to the Obama administration, that where we could have had opportunities through our intelligence community and others to help Juan Guaidó, the legitimate president of Venezuela. The days are long gone by when we really could have done very much, and I feel we didn’t enforce the sanctions as strictly as we could have. We made a lot of mistakes there. The Biden administration didn’t even try that. They thought they could make a deal with Maduro. It was a total mistake. I don’t see how anybody could believe he would honor any commitment he made.

I want to come back to Belarus, though, because I do think that that was a situation where it was very much in our interest to see if there was any way at all to persuade Lukashenko to pull away from Russia. So I went to Minsk in August of 2019, about two weeks before I resigned—I was the first senior American to visit Belarus in a long, long time—just to see the guy, and see if there were some hooks we could put in to bring him away, for his own safety’s sake, but ultimately leading to popular government. I, as I say, I resigned two weeks later, so I didn’t carry through on it. But it was a case to me that suggested we could have some influence there, and maybe, as in the case of Poland with solidarity, maybe there were ways to make that work. But we never tried, because Trump didn’t really care about Belarus. Trump asked in his first term, Is Finland still part of Russia? So to him, Belarus, Ukraine: They all look Russian to him. And it’s hard to get him to focus on things.

Kasparov: We’ve talked now at length about Trump’s view of the world, such as it is. Now I want to talk about the Bolton view. So my experience of growing up in the Soviet Union during the Cold War instilled in me a great deal of clarity about good and evil in the world of geopolitics. But there has been a terrible decline in American values after the Cold War, and a new lack of clarity about the American role in the world. So what has that meant for how you see America’s place as the global leader?

Bolton: Well, I think we’re seeing today play out in the Trump administration and among many people who are supportive of him that this virus of isolationism—which isn’t a coherent ideology itself, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to the external world—can go through a long period of being irrelevant and then suddenly reappear.

And I attribute this in part to a failure in both political parties, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to develop political leaders who thought about what it would take from America to help in the wider world, create conditions of stability that would be beneficial to the U.S. here at home: that would allow our economy to flourish, that would allow our society to flourish. And so people at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some were saying, It’s the end of history. Others were saying, you know, We can have a peace dividend; we can cut our defense budgets; globalization will take care of everything; it’s the economy, stupid.

And we lost the post–World War II and Cold War generations of leaders, who spoke very plainly to the American people—whether it’s Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, many, many more—to say, look, safety for America doesn’t begin on the Atlantic and Pacific shores. Safety for America is having a broader place in the world, a forward defense posture with allies to guard against aggression and to try and deter aggression. And that means a robust, strong America that sees its economic and political and social issues really involved all over the world.

Now, there’s a cost to that. There’s a defense budget that has to be paid. There are allies that have to be dealt with. There are risks that have to be taken. But to say we don’t live in a perfect world, far from it, but the way to protect America is not to put our head in the sand—not to turn away from the rest of the world—but to deal with it in ways that are most favorable to us.

And I think one of the things we’re seeing today, 35 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is: We don’t have much in the way of political leadership that can speak to the American people in these terms. The Americans have always risen to the challenge when their leaders are straight with them. And the idea that we can’t, we don’t need to worry about the rest of the world—it’s not a threat, it doesn’t concern us, it’s not gonna affect us—is deeply uninformed. I don’t call it naive. It’s almost perverse, and yet that’s what we’re dealing with. If we could see political leaders emerge, most likely I think in the Republican Party, that can make that case to the American people, we could return to a Reaganite kind of foreign policy that that was successful in the Cold War and could be made applicable to the very different, but no less threatening, challenges we see around the world today.

Kasparov: Going back to 1991, 1992. The Soviet Union is gone, and I think Americans expected some benefits from the victory, phenomenal victory in the Cold War. But eight years of [Bill] Clinton presidency brought no security. Prosperity yes, but security no. Because by the time Clinton left the office, al-Qaeda was ready to strike. Something went wrong, terribly wrong, in the ’90s. So do you think that if [George H. W.] Bush 41 would’ve won the elections and stayed in the office, the Republican administration had a plan on how to redefine American leadership in the new world?

Bolton: No. I mean, I think there was a lot of uncertainty all around the political spectrum. George H. W. Bush talked about a “new world order.” Well, it wasn’t much order before, and frankly there wasn’t much order after. But what he was referring to was the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we didn’t see, because we were too optimistic perhaps, was that Russia would return to authoritarianism. We thought, Well, now they’ve got the chance; everything will be fine. That obviously didn’t work out. We didn’t see the turmoil in the Arab world. We didn’t see the radicalization, the effect of the 1979 revolution in Iran. And we also, in the 1990s, didn’t see China, didn’t see that it was a threat, that it would be a threat. You know, we heard Deng Xiaoping say to the Chinese, Hide and bide. Hide your capabilities; bide your time. We didn’t realize what he was saying. So this illusion that the end of the Cold War meant the end of history—that conflict was no longer a threat to us—led us to make grave mistakes about Russia, about China, about the threat of Islamic terrorism.

And we have suffered through all of those and are still suffering through them today. So it was a catastrophic series of mistakes, that there’s a lot of blame to spread around here for sure, and [the] Clinton administration bears a full share of it. Whether George H. W. Bush would’ve done better? I don’t know. I think so, because I think he understood the world a lot better than Bill Clinton did.

Kasparov: But it still sounds very disturbing that the same people—okay, Clinton replaced Bush, but the apparatus was there, you know, the CIA, Pentagon, the so-called deep state. And the same people, the same agencies, the same institutions that were instrumental in defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War made such huge blunders. You said—missed Russia, missed China, missed Islamic terrorism, basically missed everything. Every threat that we are dealing with now has been totally missed in the ’90s. What was that? It’s just a kind of relaxation? We won. Let’s go celebrate. You know, let’s uncork champagne bottles.

Bolton: Look, I think it was escapism, and I think it was the desire to think, Okay, so in the 20th century we’ve had three world wars. Two of them hot, one of them the Cold War. We’re past all that. Now, that’s what “the end of history” means. And, it was a delusion. It was a detour from history. It really was. And we’ve paid the price.

We’re still paying the price, and one reason is we’re not spending nearly what we should on defense. The 5 percent commitment that NATO made, we’re not approaching. The Trump budget for the next fiscal year is only a small nominal increase over the current budget. It’s not gonna do nearly enough. We’re setting ourselves up for, I think, a very risky future if we don’t change that.

Kasparov: You just mentioned Trump’s budget and its nominal increase in defense, but it’s a huge increase in ICE. So do you think it’s a bit dangerous? Yes? That this military force has been built in America and the control of the DOJ? And they already demonstrated very little respect for the Constitution. Could it be a potential tool for terror?

Bolton: Actually, Trump has come very close to achieving the goal he expressed of closing the border. I mean, he had the border closed at the end of the first term, because deterrence works. If you think you’re gonna walk through Mexico and get stopped at the Rio Grande, you’re not gonna leave your city or town or village. That’s been restored. His—what he wants now is the deportation of the illegals. And I think he’s going to have a lot of trouble with that. But the immigration issue is, I think, part of the isolationist temptation that somehow the rest of the world is gonna corrupt us. I think with careful attention and screening of who comes in, we can minimize the risk of terrorists coming in, criminals, agents of foreign governments. Nothing’s perfect, but I think we can do a pretty good job of it. I don’t think that’s what Trump wants to do. He wants the issue of the fight with California, for example. That’s why he federalized the California National Guard and sent in the Marines. Ironically, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, wanted to fight too. It benefited both of them politically. It was just the country that was hurt.

Kasparov: So do you think it’s a real chance that Trump will do something totally unconstitutional in America to preserve his power, or just to secure the desired outcome of the next elections?

Bolton: Well, I think he tried that in 2020, and he failed. The system was stressed, but it held. I think Trump is gonna do—he did a lot of damage in the first term; he will do more damage in the second term. Some of it might be irreparable. I think withdrawing from NATO would be irreparable, for example. But I have confidence in the Constitution and the institutions. This is not the late Roman Republic. We’re not—I don’t think we’re in danger of succumbing. It does require more people to stand up and say, We don’t accept the way Trump behaves. I’m disappointed more Republicans in the House and the Senate haven’t done that. I don’t think this is gonna be easy. But I do think, for example, the courts are holding up pretty well. I think their independence is critical to sustaining the Constitution. And I think as time goes on, Trump’s influence will decline. Remember, he’s not just a new president now, which he is. He’s also a lame-duck president. And as people begin to appreciate that more and more, I think his influence will wane.

Kasparov: So, anything to be optimistic about today? Just, you know, give us just some hope that with Trump in the office, with the rise of authoritarianism, with Iranian regimes surviving, and with terrorism not yet being defeated, what’s the best-case scenario?

Bolton: Well, I think realistically we’ve been through worse. I mean, it always seems you’ve got troubles unique to our time. But the U.S. has been through a lot worse than this, including an incredibly violent Civil War. And we came out on top. And I think one reason is that when you level with the American people—and it’s gonna take the next president to do it—then we do rise to the occasion. I believe in American exceptionalism. And I think betting against America is always a dangerous thing to do.

[Music]

Bolton: So I think in the near term, we’ve just gotta grit our teeth, make sure we do the best we can to minimize the damage that Trump will cause, and try and get ready to meet the challenges we’re gonna face. The threats from China, from the China-Russia axis, from the nuclear proliferation, the threat of terrorism. There are a lot of threats out there, and it’s gonna take a lot of effort. But I believe in the United States. I think we will prevail.

Kasparov: John, thank you very much for joining the show. And let’s see, you know, if the future brings us more positive than negative news. Thank you.

Bolton: I certainly hope so. Thanks for having me.

Kasparov: This episode of Autocracy in America was produced by Arlene Arevalo and Natalie Brennan. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Polina Kasparova and Mig Greengard. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Next time on Autocracy in America:

George Friedman: It is a historical norm, that there is a king, that there is a ruler. So authoritarianism historically is far more the norm than liberal democracy. Liberal democracy opened the door to the idea that people with very different beliefs could live together. It is a great experiment, but it’s a very difficult experiment. If you believe that the way you should live is a moral imperative, then it is very difficult to have a liberal democracy.

Kasparov: I’m Garry Kasparov. See you back here next week.

The Atlantic · by Garry Kasparov · August 1, 2025

4. Hegseth’s Latest Battle: Infighting Inside the Pentagon

Excerpts:

On Thursday, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell attempted to rescue the Pentagon from what they considered an insufficient budget request that they blame, in part, on Hegseth. Some Republican lawmakers are concerned that Hegseth’s loss of top aides has left him especially ill-equipped to run the Defense Department.

“If you just look at the broader turnover and the lack of consistency there in terms of executive management, I think it’s a red flag,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who cast the decisive 50th vote to confirm Hegseth in January and recently announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.

There is no indication Hegseth’s job is in jeopardy. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have stuck by him after expending immense personal energy and political capital to see him confirmed. The president likes Hegseth personally and was particularly pleased by the successful U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, officials said.

Hegseth’s Latest Battle: Infighting Inside the Pentagon

Defense secretary has made a series of missteps and feuded with top generals

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pete-hegseth-leadership-pentagon-1e57ca5f

By Lara Seligman

Follow, Alexander Ward

Follow and Lindsay Wise

Aug. 2, 2025 5:30 am ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hadn’t run a large organization before he assumed leadership at the Pentagon. Photo: Cliff Owen/Associated Press

Key Points

What's This?

Defense Secretary Hegseth’s leadership is under scrutiny due to alleged missteps and internal conflicts within the Pentagon.
Hegseth’s lack of experience, controversial decisions and feuds with generals have sparked concerns among Republicans.
Despite the criticism, Trump supports Hegseth, while some Republicans defend him, citing positive changes in the department’s direction.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s string of missteps has spurred infighting inside the Pentagon and raised concerns among some Republicans on Capitol Hill about his ability to run the department.

The problems are rooted in Hegseth’s lack of managerial experience in overseeing an entity anywhere near as large as the Pentagon, which employs around 3.4 million people on a budget now approaching $1 trillion, according to current and former officials.

White House officials were frustrated by Hegseth’s refusal to part with his acting chief of staff despite their misgivings about the aide’s qualifications, according to current and former administration officials. Some blame poor Pentagon staffwork for leaving Trump in the dark about a pause in some weapons deliveries for Ukraine, some of these people said. Hegseth has feuded with top generals and fired three senior aides that were well-liked at the White House.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell attempted to rescue the Pentagon from what they considered an insufficient budget request that they blame, in part, on Hegseth. Some Republican lawmakers are concerned that Hegseth’s loss of top aides has left him especially ill-equipped to run the Defense Department.

“If you just look at the broader turnover and the lack of consistency there in terms of executive management, I think it’s a red flag,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who cast the decisive 50th vote to confirm Hegseth in January and recently announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.

There is no indication Hegseth’s job is in jeopardy. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have stuck by him after expending immense personal energy and political capital to see him confirmed. The president likes Hegseth personally and was particularly pleased by the successful U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, officials said.

Pete Hegseth, despite a few missteps and controversies, apparently has retained the backing of President Trump. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“President Trump has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth, who is doing an incredible job leading the DOD,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “These anonymous sources have no idea what they’re talking about and are just plain wrong.”

No room on Air Force One

Hegseth stepped into the role of defense secretary after a grueling confirmation process, and he quickly surrounded himself with a small group of trusted advisers. They include Ricky Buria, a retired Marine Corps colonel who Hegseth promoted to acting chief of staff; Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s personal lawyer and a naval reservist; and Justin Fulcher, a member of the Department of Government Efficiency team at the Pentagon whom Hegseth promoted to senior adviser. Fulcher left his post in July, the latest in a series of recent departures from Hegseth’s inner circle.

From the start, Hegseth didn’t keep the schedule of a typical defense secretary. He did away with the regular “stand up” touchpoint with top Pentagon officials, preferring to meet daily with his inner circle and delegate to them, according to former and current officials. Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, became particularly close with Buria, who served as the junior military aide to Hegseth’s predecessor Lloyd Austin.

Billions lost in defense spending

Hegseth’s battles with the generals extended to retired Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the former chief of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander.

Hegseth’s dislike of Cavoli dates to February, when he blamed the general for not preventing demonstrations by military families, who opposed the secretary’s anti-diversity initiatives, at a base in Germany that Hegseth was visiting, according to current and former officials.

Then in April, Hegseth became incensed with Cavoli’s comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee about Russia and Ukraine, which he thought were at odds with the Trump administration’s goal at the time of making a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the people said.

Shortly after the hearing, Hegseth ordered his staff to let Cavoli know he was fired, one of the people said. Ultimately, Hegseth was persuaded to allow Cavoli to keep his job, as he was scheduled to retire this summer. Cavoli didn’t comment.

Pete Hegseth has blamed top Pentagon brass for leaks to the media. Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press

Hegseth’s management of the Pentagon’s trillion-dollar budget request to Congress has also come under scrutiny. In May, Republican members of Congress and staff were irked when the Trump administration unveiled a fiscal 2026 budget proposal that would maintain military spending at current budget levels of $892.6 billion—a number that GOP defense hawks decried as inadequate. They thought they had received assurances from Hegseth that the total would be larger.

McConnell, the Kentucky senator and former Senate Republican leader who now chairs the subcommittee that funds the defense department, complained—along with other top Republicans—that the request would effectively be a cut. It didn’t account for inflation, and factored in nearly $120 billion passed by a separate process known as budget reconciliation to claim an increase in military spending by 13% to $1.01 trillion.

On Thursday, the Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee voted to advance its own version of the military-spending bill, which would allocate $21.7 billion over the Trump administration’s request.

By June, Hegseth still hadn’t replaced the senior advisers Caldwell or Selnick, so the immense work of managing the Pentagon was being done by Buria and a handful of staffers. Some administration officials and lawmakers think poor staffwork by the Pentagon’s front office was responsible for leaving the president in the dark about a temporary halt in some weapons deliveries for Ukraine, according to current and former officials. Trump later reversed the pause.

“Making that decision without telling the president? said Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.). “That wasn’t smart.”

Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a retired Air Force brigadier general, said he stands by his original assessment of Hegseth after the Yemen strikes Signal chat: “If I was his boss, I would have fired him.”

Other Republicans vigorously defend Hegseth’s record so far.

“I think Secretary Hegseth has done a great job,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services panel. “You can see the direction we’re moving. It’s in the right direction. So if he needs a front office filled, he’ll fill it as he needs it.”

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

5. Senate Passes Key Funding Bills, Reasserting Power Over Spending

Senate Passes Key Funding Bills, Reasserting Power Over Spending

Lawmakers vote, 87-9, to pass package funding veterans programs, new military facilities, Agriculture Department

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/senate-passes-key-funding-bills-reasserting-power-over-spending-a9c8b9d6

By Siobhan Hughes

Aug. 1, 2025 9:29 pm ET

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Zuma Press

WASHINGTON—The Senate late Friday passed more than $180 billion in funding for veterans programs, new military facilities, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration, as lawmakers moved to reassert their control over federal spending amid challenges from the Trump administration.

The Senate approved the bulk of the spending in a 87-9 vote. It separately cleared a measure funding Congress’s own operations as well as related entities that audit federal spending and evaluate the budgetary implications of federal laws. The legislation must go back to the House, which is on recess and will return for legislative business in September.

“We are on the verge of an accomplishment that we have not done since 2018, and that is, pass appropriations bills across the Senate floor prior to the August recess,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R., Maine) said shortly before the measures passed. “That is exercising our constitutional responsibility for the power of the purse.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the top Democrat on the panel, said, “I believe Congress should decide how to spend taxpayer dollars. This is how we do it.”

The Senate passage of three of the 12 annual spending bills, if they clear the House and are signed into law, would help mute the impact of any impasse over federal spending ahead of the new fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.

Some Democrats have been warning about the risk of a government shutdown later this year because of concerns that the White House isn’t respecting either Congress’s constitutionally mandated power of the purse or the bipartisan deals through which Congress exerts that power.

The Trump administration wants to shrink the government, using a host of tactics to defer spending money that Congress appropriated. While some of its tactics have triggered lawsuits and others were found by the Government Accountability Office to have amounted to an illegal withholding of funds, one piece of the problem is of Congress’s own making. Lawmakers’ decision to operate under a so-called continuing resolution gave the White House more flexibility over federal dollars, since it could operate free of the legally binding set of detailed instructions that accompany ordinary appropriations bills.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com

6. Ukraine’s Supporters Plan New NATO Fund to Buy U.S. Weapons

Innovative or just necessary due to the political situation in the US? It is certainly better than the US taxpayer footing the entire military assistance bill. Can the US industrial base keep up and ensure sufficient stockpiles for US contingencies and wars?

Ukraine’s Supporters Plan New NATO Fund to Buy U.S. Weapons

Mechanism is part of Trump’s plan to funnel more American equipment to Kyiv for its fight against Russia

By Lara Seligman

Follow and Michael R. Gordon

Aug. 1, 2025 4:45 pm ET

A Patriot air-defense system in Ukraine last year. Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

Ukraine supporters will establish a NATO holding account for allies to purchase billions of dollars worth of U.S. weapons for Ukraine.
The account is the first step in realizing Trump’s plan for NATO allies to pay for U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine.
Allies will voluntarily donate funds, with the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. Grynkewich, vetting Ukraine’s needs.

Ukraine’s supporters will set up a new NATO holding account to allow allies to buy billions of dollars of U.S. weapons for Ukraine, part of President Trump’s latest scheme to arm Kyiv, according to three Western officials.

The creation of the new account marks the first tangible step in making Trump’s vow to have North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies pay for U.S. weapons for Ukraine a reality. Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced the deal last month but didn’t provide details.

“We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” Trump said, sitting next to Rutte in the Oval Office in July. “We’re not buying it, but we will manufacture it, and they’re going to be paying for it.”

The decision is a policy shift for the U.S., which under President Joe Biden donated weapons from its own inventories to Ukraine. The end goal is to get Russia to the negotiating table and end the conflict, according to a senior NATO military official.

The idea is for NATO allies to voluntarily donate funds into the new account, the three people said. The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, will be responsible for vetting Ukraine’s weapons requirements. The money in the account will be used to pay for American-made or supplied weapons sent to Kyiv after Ukraine’s battlefield demands are balanced against the U.S. military’s needs.

Ukraine’s supporters aim to initially spend a total of $10 billion on weapons for Ukraine, one of the people said, most of which are expected to come from U.S. defense industry production lines.

Why Isn’t Enough Food Getting Into Gaza?

Breakdown in law and order means aid gets looted before reaching people who need it most

Palestinians carrying sacks of flour brought to Gaza in an aid convoy. Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press

By Feliz Solomon

Updated Aug. 2, 2025 12:05 am ET

Key Points

What's This?

Aid delivery to Gaza is severely hampered by lawlessness, with desperate civilians and criminals looting supply trucks.
The U.N. and Israel are blaming each other for the crisis, as famine conditions worsen for over two million Palestinians.
Despite eased restrictions, aid distribution faces challenges including denied movement requests and dangerous conditions.

JERUSALEM—About 10 miles stand between truckloads of food and flour and the more than two million hungry Palestinians who need it. Yet only a trickle is reaching them.

The biggest obstacle right now between stockpiles of food just beyond the border and Gaza’s most vulnerable people—starving children, women, elderly and injured—is a breakdown of law and order. Chaotic mobs ransack every food-bearing truck that enters, aid workers say. The masses are largely made up of desperate civilians, armed criminals looking to sell it on the black market—or a dangerous mix of both.

Officials and aid groups have no control over where it goes from there.

Antoine Renard, a United Nations official in Gaza, recalls how a wave of gaunt-faced men converged on his armored vehicle and the convoy of aid trucks following him as they tried to reach the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah on Tuesday. He said the vehicle rocked from side to side as the men swarmed, jostling over the cargo.

“I’ve never seen anything even a little bit like this,” said Renard, who has worked with the U.N.’s food agency, the World Food Program, for more than 20 years and now heads its operations in the Palestinian territories. “I have never, ever seen this level of despair.”

Israel and the U.N. have traded blame for the worsening hunger crisis that experts warn is now tipping into famine. Israel says the U.N. has failed to distribute the food that it allowed in. The U.N. says Israel created impossible conditions that put staff and civilians at risk, while impeding their work with delays and restrictions on movement.

WSJ reporter Feliz Solomon visits aid depots in a bid to understand why only some supplies are making it into Gaza. Photo: WSJ/Feliz Solomon

At the core of the crisis is extreme and widespread food scarcity. Israel banned all aid and commercial goods from entering Gaza in early March in what it said was an effort to pressure Hamas. Israel says the group steals aid to fund its war effort, which Hamas denies. Aid groups say they have seen no evidence of systematic diversion.

Israel started letting in much smaller volumes of aid in late May as food supplies dwindled, but it hasn’t been nearly enough.

The World Food Program says almost 95% of its trucks entering the Gaza Strip are looted before they reach their destination. It says the only solution is to flood the enclave with food until scarcity no longer drives civilians to risk their lives for a bag of flour, or provides an opportunity for militants and criminals to exploit their desperation.

Under growing international pressure, Israel took steps recently to ease the flow of aid. It started with airdrops, then announced a pause in fighting in some parts of the strip and the creation of humanitarian corridors. Israeli officials say the country isn’t blocking aid and is doing more to facilitate it.

“The bottleneck, regarding food reaching the people of Gaza, is the U.N. agencies not distributing the aid, not picking it up and not distributing it,” a senior Israeli military official told The Wall Street Journal.

Jordanian forces dropping aid to Gaza on Friday. Photo: mohamed ali/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

A Palestinian truck carrying aid at a Gaza border crossing, in a picture taken by a photographer embedded with Israeli forces. Photo: atef safadi/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Until Israel recently eased some restrictions, the U.N. also had difficulty getting aid in at all. Part of the problem stemmed from the overall unworkable conditions of destroyed roads, chronic fuel shortages and frequent fighting along what few routes were available, despite deconfliction efforts.

Medical workers say they are now battling the worst hunger crisis to grip the enclave since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a group of experts set up to study hunger crises around the world, said Tuesday that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is currently unfolding in Gaza.

Since a cease-fire collapsed in March, Israel has taken control of roughly 70% of Gaza, Israeli officials say, pushing the population into a small area along the coast and creating a large civilian-free zone all around them occupied by soldiers. To reach population centers, aid must traverse this territory.

Aid can enter Gaza through one of four border crossings, a senior Israeli military official told the Journal, but the lion’s share comes through just two—Zikim in the north and Kerem Shalom in the south.

The most perilous part of the journey is when an aid convoy crosses out of Israeli-held territory, as crowds must come close to Israeli military positions to be first to grab the supplies.

They frequently overtake the aid convoys, swarming the trucks and taking everything they can carry, at times drawing deadly fire from Israeli soldiers.

In the north, Palestinians often go deep inside Israeli-held territory, which the military refers to as a dangerous combat zone and warns them not to enter, to intercept aid convoys a mile or two from the border, according to the WFP.

And in the south, Egyptian officials told the Journal that almost all aid coming from the country is ambushed by criminal gangs almost immediately after it enters through the Kerem Shalom border crossing. Some of it is sold for exorbitant prices at markets, they said. Most is completely unaccounted for.

“Some aid makes it in, yeah…but thieves steal 90% of it and sell it for insane prices,” said Mohammed Al-Saafin, a 25-year-old Gazan sheltering in Deir al-Balah. “Total robbery, but we have no choice,” he said.

Currently, there are two distribution channels for aid. One is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial new initiative backed by Israel and run by private American contractors. The other is a U.N.-led system it was meant to replace.

Israel allowed both to start bringing aid into Gaza in late May. Both have been completely overwhelmed, as hunger was already widespread by then.

Palestinians carrying aid in the central Gaza Strip on Friday. Photo: Reuters

Palestinians wounded while trying to reach humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday. Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press

GHF has four distribution points, three of them in the south, all within areas under Israeli control. That meant Gazans largely have to travel by foot or donkey cart through a militarized zone to get there. Large crowds drawn to the sites have at times come under fire by Israeli soldiers when they were perceived to pose a threat.

Before the blockade, the U.N. had a network of more than 200 distribution sites throughout the Gaza Strip. It has warehouses peppered around dense areas like Deir al-Balah and Gaza City, which it kept regularly stocked with food from its stockpiles kept in Israel’s Port of Ashdod, as well as in Jordan and Egypt.

From there, partner organizations would load up and take it to community kitchens or pickup points closer to where people live.

Since the U.N. was allowed to resume aid distribution on May 21, almost none of World Food Program’s trucks have reached the warehouses, and its distribution network has collapsed, according to U.N. officials.

Part of the problem is that even when Israel technically allowed the U.N. to start delivering aid again, the military frequently denied its movements. This meant that from May 21, when aid resumed, to July 26, the day before Israel started easing restrictions, there was very little aid entering the Strip and people were largely relying on food stored during the cease-fire.

The U.N. uses a standard protocol in many of the war zones where it operates around the world called the Humanitarian Notification System, according to U.N. officials. In noncombat zones, it notifies armed actors of movements by its agencies and partners so they can avoid harming aid workers. In battle zones, it coordinates with the warring parties to ensure a safe route.

In the period from May 21 and July 26, 53% of U.N. requests to coordinate movements were either denied or impeded by Israeli authorities, according to data provided by the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, OCHA.

During that time, the U.N. said 271 movements were facilitated, which means they were approved and accomplished, while 288 were denied by Israel. Another 99 were canceled by the U.N. or its partners, either because they determined it wasn’t safe, were routed on roads known to be impassable or for other prohibitive reasons, OCHA said.

An Israeli military vehicle near the Gaza border recently. Photo: jack guez/AFP/Getty Images

A further 119 movements were in some way impeded by Israel, OCHA said. That could mean that the military caused long delays, detained their staff, changed their route with little notice or hindered them in other ways that kept them from being fully accomplished.

The Israeli military unit charged with humanitarian coordination, called COGAT, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the figures. A senior Israeli military official told the Journal recently that delays and denials are made out of necessity to avoid potential conflicts.

Since Sunday, the proportion of requests that are approved has markedly increased, raising questions by aid groups about how Israel is able to facilitate more movements now than it could before, even though conditions on the ground have deteriorated further.

“Aid doesn’t reach people because of the chaos,” said Nahid Shuhiber, who runs a transportation company that provides trucks for aid agencies inside Gaza. Israel, he said, “is not interested in creating order.”

Write to Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com

Appeared in the August 2, 2025, print edition as 'Chaos Hurts Aid Deliveries'.

8. Trump’s Warm Embrace of India Turns Cold

India will never align with any other country. India will do what India thinks is best for india.

Trump’s Warm Embrace of India Turns Cold

Trade disputes and ties with Russia rankle the president, threatening to sink the U.S.-India relationship

https://www.wsj.com/world/india/trumps-warm-embrace-of-india-turns-cold-f8d0bbee

By Alexander Ward

Follow, Robbie Gramer

Follow and Shan Li

Aug. 2, 2025 5:30 am ET

Credit for a cease-fire

U.S.-India ties hit another snag in May when India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, clashed over a four-day stretch. The conflict started after a militant attack in the disputed Indian-administered Kashmir region that Modi’s government blamed on Pakistan. Pakistan denied any role in the assault.

As the conflict raged, the U.S. received intelligence that India launched the Brahmos cruise missile to strike targets in Pakistan, according to Trump administration officials. The U.S. assesses that the weapon, produced in partnership with Russia, can carry nuclear warheads, current and former officials said, though India says it is solely a conventional missile.

Trump feared that India might decide to equip one of the missiles with a nuclear bomb if the crisis spiraled out of control, officials said, or that Pakistan could decide to launch a nuclear device of its own, leading Trump to encourage Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to call their counterparts.

Trump posted on social media that his team brokered a deal that led to a cease-fire on May 10. Pakistan embraced the announcement, praising Trump and nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

India, by contrast, bristled at Trump’s assertions and insisted no outside power dictated the cease-fire. India’s insistence that the U.S. role was overblown has privately angered Trump, who has told aides he’s upset with Modi for not thanking him.

A White House official said Trump leveraged his relationships with both India and Pakistan to secure a cease-fire that the administration insists could have gone nuclear without his involvement. The official wouldn’t comment on India’s use of the Brahmos missile as the reason for Trump’s concerns.

Officials at the Indian Embassy in Washington said India has a no-first-use nuclear policy, so its use of the Brahmos missile should have caused no alarm in the U.S. about a nuclear escalation.

Trump strained ties even further by offering to mediate the longstanding Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

“That was embarrassing for India. India has always rejected the idea of third-party mediation, something that Pakistan has always sought,” said Lisa Curtis, a former senior National Security Council official who oversaw South Asia policy in Trump’s first term. “If there had just been one or two tweets on May 10, the two sides could have recovered from it. However, Trump has talked multiple times about the U.S. bringing about the cease-fire.”

A resident of the Neelum Valley in disputed Kashmir inspected damage to his house following cross-border shelling in May between India and Pakistan. Photo: muzammil ahmed/AFP/Getty Images

Russian ties

Trump’s embrace of Pakistan and pressure on India over its ties with Russia and trade could backfire at just the moment when India was warming up to defense ties with the West.

“It’s going to push India increasingly into the hands of Russia,” said Derek Grossman, a former U.S. intelligence official and professor on Indo-Pacific security affairs at the University of Southern California.

In recent years, India has sought to pivot away from relying on Russia for military equipment, especially after the Ukraine war cut off the ready flow of Russian-made weapons.

From 2020 to 2024, India imported 36% of its military hardware from Russia, its largest supplier, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That was a shift from the 2006-10 period, when 82% of India’s military equipment was imported from Russia.

The U.S. has previously targeted Indian businesses for allegedly helping Russia evade sanctions by selling dual-use technology that could bolster Moscow’s military production.

In announcing that the U.S. would place 25% tariffs on Indian goods, Trump also criticized India for purchasing large quantities of Russian oil. India has taken advantage of discounted oil prices from Russia after many Western countries stopped buying or curbed their purchases. In the last quarter of 2024, India accounted for one-third of Russia’s oil exports, according to ORF.

“It is most certainly a point of irritation in our relationship with India—not the only point of irritation,” Rubio said in a Fox News interview on Thursday. “With so many other oil vendors available, India continues to buy so much from Russia, which in essence is helping to fund the war effort and allowing this war to continue in Ukraine.”

The newfound U.S. attention to the matter has put India in a bind.

“Abruptly dropping Russian oil will have consequences for the relationship. On the other hand, the promised U.S. sanctions will have their own impact,” said ORF’s Joshi. “Just how to square this circle is a tough one.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com and Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com

9. Trump's Asia policy should prioritize security over revenue

This conclusion:

It is far from certain that the geostrategic component of US policy toward the Asia-Pacific—specifically, winning the competition with China—can succeed without subordinating revenue generation to the goals of helping security partners maximize their strategic value to the US.

"America First, Allies Always."

Trump's Asia policy should prioritize security over revenue - Asia Times

Government’s focus on raising revenues and cutting costs at odds with leveraging allies to face and counter China’s challenge

asiatimes.com · by Denny Roy · August 2, 2025

Although People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials say they do not seek hegemony, US regional pre-eminence is standing in the way of achieving their objectives, which include satisfying Beijing’s vast irredentist claims, holding veto power over the foreign policies of neighboring countries and keeping out unwanted foreign military influence.

China enjoys important advantages in this competition with the US for regional leadership: geography, ability to focus its forces close to home and superior manufacturing capability. China is also narrowing the technological gap.

Washington recently tried to slow China’s technological progress by restricting sales of US semiconductors and limiting visas for Chinese students, but soon relented because of American dependence on rare earth elements, of which China controls 90% of global production.

Despite questions about possible US retrenchment, senior Trump administration officials say they are committed to maintaining US leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. One of their primary stated US foreign policy goals is to rally friendly governments to block Chinese expansionism.

Perhaps the clearest advantage the US enjoys in pursuit of that goal is a robust network of allies and security partners. As the competition with China reaches a critical stage, America needs the full strategic value of these partnerships—to help prevent Chinese domination of vital supply chains, to unitedly oppose Chinese coercion and aggression against individual countries, to offer bases for US forces, to be prepared to provide additional combat capability if needed and even to build ships for the US Navy.

The administration’s efforts to raise revenue and cut government expenditures, however, are at odds with the geostrategic task of facing up to the China challenge. After half a year in office, the new US government still lacks a coherent Asia strategy.

The most prominent issue here is the tariffs. Trying to maximize revenue from security partners both antagonizes them and makes it harder for them to fulfill US demands that they increase their defense spending.

Washington announced a deal in July that would set Japan’s tariff to 15%, which while lower than a previously threatened 35% rate, is still 10 times what the average US tariff on Japanese imports was in 2024.

Simultaneously, the US has demanded that Japan further raise its defense spending target from an already difficult 2% to 3.5%, then 5%. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba spoke of Japan becoming “less dependent on America” for its security.

South Korean tariffs on US imports already dropped to 1% under the 2012 US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). Then the first Trump administration renegotiated KORUS in 2019, resulting in a deal that Trump called “fantastic” and “a model for fair trade.”

Nevertheless, on July 7, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on South Korea imports. A statement from Korea’s ruling Democratic Party said, “Trump is betraying the trust of allies.”

Later, Washington lowered the figure to 15%, but South Korean trade negotiator Yeo Han-koo said, “We cannot be relieved, because we do not know when we will face pressure from tariffs or non-tariff measures again.” Such US pressure could give Seoul’s new liberal government additional reason to seek a more equidistant position between the US and China.

Australia has a trade deficit with the US, but still drew a 10% tariff, plus higher rates for steel and aluminum products and auto parts. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the tariffs “have no basis in logic” and are “not the act of a friend.”

Although Taiwan is not a US ally, a similar incoherence is in play. Taiwan got a 20% tariff despite committing $100 billion to build factories for its economic crown jewel, advanced semiconductors, in the US.

Although the US has strong political and strategic interests in helping Taiwan avoid forcible annexation by the PRC, Trump has spoken far more about the US-Taiwan relationship as an economic issue than a strategic issue, suggesting he thinks Taiwan has no value to the US beyond its ability to pay for US military protection.

There are other examples of US policy being economically penny-wise and strategically pound-foolish, including reducing US diplomatic impact by large staff cuts at the Department of State and cutting funding for organizations such as USAID, which promotes international goodwill toward the US, and Radio Free Asia, which counters the anti-American narratives of the Authoritarian Bloc.

Cuts to developmental aid and capacity-building programs are especially damaging in a region such as the Pacific Islands, where Beijing is attempting to increase its influence at the expense of traditional benefactors the US, Australia and New Zealand.

In that case, an amount of aid that is relatively modest in monetary terms goes a long way because the small populations in the island states have sovereignty over huge and strategically important expanses of ocean.

According to a recent report, US Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby asked British defense officials if they could recall a UK aircraft carrier that was en route to a patrol in Asian waters. This bizarre episode seems to represent another instance of elevating economic concerns to the point of strategic counterproductivity.

The Trump government wants NATO countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense. This has led US officials to discourage European allies from maintaining a military presence in Asia that could help deter China, based on the logic that the Europeans should concentrate on their own neighborhood to free up American resources for Asia.

But if the primary US objective is countering China, Washington should be welcoming rather than rebuffing such direct European assistance. Already outnumbered by the Chinese Navy, America is in no position to turn away additional friendly platforms.

Showing the flags of European countries in maritime Asia complicates Chinese planning for possible aggressive actions and signals that the international costs to Beijing of such actions would be high. Moreover, sending ships to visit Asian waters has minimal negative impact on Europe’s capacity to defeat a Russian invasion, which would primarily require ground and air forces.

Trump government officials have said they will stop helping China wrest global technological leadership from the US, a goal clearly in line with US strategic and security interests. There is a danger, however, that this goal will conflict with Trump’s pursuit of a bilateral trade agreement with China.

During the first Trump Administration, US sanctions came close to killing Chinese telecommunications company ZTE, which would have reduced the danger of China stealing sensitive data from US trade and security partners. Trump, however, decided to let ZTE off the hook, apparently to grease US-China trade talks.

In May 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that out of national security concerns, the US would revoke the visas of Chinese students who have ties to the Chinese Communist Party or study in sensitive technological fields.

In June, however, Trump said in a social media post that “our deal with China is done,” and “we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities.”

In the recent past, the implied American pitch to friendly governments was “help us support a global order that we overpay for and that benefits you.” Now it’s “you must pay more, and our relationship must clearly benefit us.”

It was not always like this. After World War II, the US offered its former bitter enemy Japan generous economic assistance, including $25 billion (in today’s dollars) in grants and loans from 1945 to 1952.

Washington opened the US market to Japanese exports, becoming Japan’s largest trade partner. The Americans also facilitated Japan’s entry into international financial institutions and helped Japan re-integrate into the Asian regional economy.

The assistance was significant enough that Tokyo felt obligated to offer at least symbolic concessions when US President George H. W. Bush visited in 1992 to ask for a redress of the US trade deficit with Japan (a request punctuated by Bush becoming sick during dinner and vomiting on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa).

Under the cloud of a compelling geostrategic threat (in that case the Cold War), Washington viewed bilateral trade and investment not as decontextualized transactionalism, but as part of a larger strategic vision. Such an approach is necessary again.

In setting tariffs, the US government should consider both the strategic value of its relationships with friendly governments and efforts these countries are making to increase their potential contributions to a counter-China coalition. These considerations should at least partially, if not fully, offset the assessment that a security partner is underpaying for its access to US markets.

Washington should go back to encouraging Western European governments to send military vessels and aircraft to visit the region to demonstrate support for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The non-military tools that increase US influence in the Asia-Pacific tend to be highly cost-effective.

Yanking funding from them is not wise policy. In trade, investment and research cooperation with China, the US government should carefully identify critically important areas in which to implement de-risking and should stick to the policy even if the Chinese complain it is preventing a trade agreement.

It is far from certain that the geostrategic component of US policy toward the Asia-Pacific—specifically, winning the competition with China—can succeed without subordinating revenue generation to the goals of helping security partners maximize their strategic value to the US.

Denny Roy is senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

asiatimes.com · by Denny Roy · August 2, 2025

10. US going all in on sea drones to deter Taiwan war

Other than perhaps a nuclear weapon, no single weapon or platform is likely to be "war-winning."

Excerpts:

But as Wills and Stavridis make clear, USVs are still more complements than war‑winners. They are fragile in rough seas, maintenance‑intensive and dependent on manned ships and logistics networks.

The US Navy’s shift to commercial standards, mass production and OTAs reflects urgency over perfection: getting drones in the water within 18 months to enable Paparo’s “hellscape” could buy the month of breathing room that US strategy requires.

Whether that month is enough will depend on how fast Taiwan and the Philippines can convert US financing, training and technology transfer into resilient self‑defense—and on Washington’s ability to deter China without igniting the war it hopes to prevent and ultimately not lose.

US going all in on sea drones to deter Taiwan war - Asia Times

US Navy wants integrated fleet of unmanned surface vessels fielded in 18 months while experts warn strategy is full of holes

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · August 1, 2025

The US is betting on swarming unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to harass China and delay a Taiwan or South China Sea conflict, wagering that drones and allied self‑defense can deter Beijing without triggering a war.

By all accounts, the US Navy is moving fast in that direction. Breaking Defense reported in July 2025 that the service has issued a formal call for industry proposals to rapidly prototype modular USVs, following an industry day earlier this summer.

Led by the US Navy’s unmanned maritime systems office, the solicitation seeks designs that can carry containerized payloads, integrate with existing naval assets and be fielded within 18 months of contract award.

It identifies three vessel concepts, prioritizing one capable of carrying two 40‑foot containers—each weighing 36.3 metric tons and drawing 75 kilowatts—over 2,500 nautical miles at 25 knots in NATO Sea State 4.

The US Navy emphasizes affordability and scalability, favoring commercial‑standard, non‑exquisite designs to enable construction across multiple shipyards. Though no award timeline has been specified, the service plans to use Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) to accelerate the contracting process.

Rear Admiral William Daly has highlighted the need for a simplified, mass‑producible USV, moving away from earlier bespoke Medium and Large USV programs. The shift underscores the US Navy’s urgency to operationalize distributed lethality and containerized modular warfare on affordable, scalable platforms.

US planners see USVs as tools to delay or disrupt Chinese operations in a Taiwan contingency. Admiral Samuel Paparo told The Washington Post in June 2024 that the US has adopted a “hellscape” US strategy that aims to saturate the Taiwan Strait with thousands of unmanned systems—submarines, surface vessels, and aerial drones— the moment China’s invasion fleet mobilizes.

Paparo said this mass deployment is designed to harass and paralyze People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces for about a month, creating a window for US, Taiwanese and allied forces to mobilize a full defense and deny Beijing a rapid “fait accompli.”

The strategy extends to the Philippine theater. USNI News reported in June 2025 that the US is upgrading Naval Detachment Oyster Bay on the Philippine island of Palawan to support USVs, enhancing Manila’s South China Sea capabilities.

A US‑funded facility there will maintain Devil Ray T‑38 USVs already transferred to the Philippine Navy, alongside conventional boats, enabling rapid deployment to Philippine outposts near disputed waters. The US Department of Defense (DoD) anticipates issuing construction contracts within two months, reinforcing bilateral maritime cooperation.

Yet this unmanned push faces technical and operational constraints. Steven Wills wrote in April 2025 for Breaking Defense that USVs have short range, power limitations, and high vulnerability in contested environments.

He noted that small platforms require frequent servicing, struggle to endure transoceanic deployments and impose logistical strain on the fleet. He also warned that AI‑driven USV control systems are vulnerable under electronic attack, with long‑range operations susceptible to delay or interception.

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis echoed those concerns in an October 2024 Washington Post article. While acknowledging USVs’ disruptive potential, he cautioned against prematurely sidelining conventional warships, which provide endurance, force projection and layered defenses that drones cannot match.

Stavridis advocates a high‑low mix: cost‑effective swarms of USVs augmenting—but not replacing—large, manned platforms. He emphasized that in contested environments, human decision‑making and survivability remain essential, demanding a balanced modernization strategy.

Geography and strategy would compound these limits in a Taiwan or South China Sea war. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan and the Philippines cannot rely on overland resupply. China can blockade Taiwan and potentially cut off Philippine access to US reinforcements from Guam using carrier battlegroups in the Philippine Sea.

A firm US combat commitment to Taiwan risks eroding the strategic ambiguity that has helped maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, while unambiguous support for Philippine claims in the South China Sea risks pulling Washington into a wider confrontation over features of marginal strategic value to US interests.

This situation has pushed Washington toward ally self‑defense models, in which USVs feature as part of a broader denial strategy. Charles Glaser proposed in an April 2025 Washington Quarterly article a US‑supported “self‑defense” model for Taiwan: arms sales, training and financing without US combat intervention.

He urged Taipei to embrace a porcupine strategy, relying on mobile, survivable systems—coastal defense missiles, naval mines, drones and fast attack craft—to raise the cost of a Chinese invasion.

According to Glaser, US support would include Foreign Military Financing (FMF), US$1 billion in drawdown authority and Harpoon and Stinger missile transfers, complementing Taiwan’s domestic Hsiung Feng missile production.

A parallel logic applies to the Philippines. Sarang Shidore, in a February 2025 Quincy Institute report, argued for a restrained, US‑supported self‑defense posture, with aid, intelligence and training rather than direct combat.

He noted that the US has pledged $500 million to modernize the Philippine Navy and Coast Guard, expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites, increased joint exercises and deployed surveillance and mid‑range missile capabilities—building deterrence without co‑production or combat entanglement.

Reflecting an indigenous turn, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported in July 2025 that Philippine engineers have proposed a USV concept for maritime interdiction or suicide strikes against enemy warships.

In sum, Washington’s unmanned gamble is to field swarms of USVs to buy time, blunt China’s advance and reinforce allies under a self‑defense framework—all while avoiding a direct slide into full‑scale war.

But as Wills and Stavridis make clear, USVs are still more complements than war‑winners. They are fragile in rough seas, maintenance‑intensive and dependent on manned ships and logistics networks.

The US Navy’s shift to commercial standards, mass production and OTAs reflects urgency over perfection: getting drones in the water within 18 months to enable Paparo’s “hellscape” could buy the month of breathing room that US strategy requires.

Whether that month is enough will depend on how fast Taiwan and the Philippines can convert US financing, training and technology transfer into resilient self‑defense—and on Washington’s ability to deter China without igniting the war it hopes to prevent and ultimately not lose.

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · August 1, 2025

11. Senate confirms trio of nominees for Navy, Space Force, SOCOM

The path to USSOCOM is nearly always through JSOC.

This myth.

"pivot from the non-stop tempo of kinetic action during the Global War on Terror to the relationship-building, long-term strategic focus of great power competition."

While the GWOT was certainly a distraction, anyone serving in any of the SF groups, as well as in the PSYOP and CA units, will tell you that relationship building for long-term strategic focus was still on everyone's mind, The real killer of OPTEMPO was the fact that every SF group was rotating to Afghanistan and Iraq yet also deployed to their assigned theater to continue to build and sustain relationships in between those deployments. This is too often overlooked or not understood by the press, pundits, public, and policymakers.

Excerpts:

Meanwhile Bradley, the confirmed SOCOM nominee jumping up to the rank of admiral, comes from the secretive world of Joint Special Operations Command, which he currently leads. A Navy SEAL and former member of SEAL Team 4, Bradley previously served as head of US Special Operations Command Central “leading joint special operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia,” according to his official biography. He was “among the first” to deploy to Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda.

Bradley’s appointment comes during a turning point for the special operations community, which for the last few years has attempted to pivot from the non-stop tempo of kinetic action during the Global War on Terror to the relationship-building, long-term strategic focus of great power competition.

“On a strategic landscape where adversaries and competitors challenge the rules-based international order, SOF provide the agility, precision, and nuance needed to confront and disrupt these threats in competition,” he told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing in July. “Should the need arise, we are also ready to integrate into the joint force to respond to crisis and engage in high-end conflict, where the precise delivery of violence will be critical to shaping success on the battlefield.”

Senate confirms trio of nominees for Navy, Space Force, SOCOM - Breaking Defense

Navy gets submariner Adm. Daryl Caudle for CNO, Space Force gets Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton for vice chief of space ops and SOCOM gets JSOC's current head, Vice Adm. Frank Bradley.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · August 1, 2025

The Senate has confirmed the Trump administration’s nominees for a trio key military positions: Adm. Daryl Caudle for the Chief of Naval Operations, Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton for Vice Chief of Space Operations and Vice Adm. Frank Bradley for head of US Special Operations Command.

The three passed the upper legislative house in voice vote late Thursday, according to congressional records.

Just a few days ago Caudle, currently the commander of US Fleet Forces Command, appeared before lawmakers for his confirmation hearing which, as Breaking Defense previously reported, went mostly smoothly for the career submarine commander.

He did reveal in response to lawmaker questions that he would consider scrapping one of the Navy’s submarines, the USS Boise, which has been stuck in maintenance for the better part of a decade. He said that the Boise’s troubled recent history was “a dagger in my heart as a submarine officer.”

Bratton, the current deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans, programs and requirements, previously served at US Northern Command and at the Space Training and Readiness Command.

In his current role, Bratton played a key part in development of the Space Force’s overarching “warfighting framework” that seeks to substantiate Space Force plans to conduct warfare “in, from and through” space — as well as establish the centrality of “space superiority” to joint military operations against peer adversaries China and Russia.

Bratton, whose confirmation confers on him a fourth star, will replace Gen. Michael Guetlein, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the program manager for his ambitious Golden Dome effort to build a comprehensive missile shield for the US homeland.

presented by

Between defence and political shifts: AlRaqib returns to read the future of the Arabian Gulf

Al-Raqib Podcast launches its second season with a confident stride, continuing to fill a significant gap in Arabic content specializing in defense and geopolitical affairs within the Arabian Gulf.

By Al-Raqib Podcast

Meanwhile Bradley, the confirmed SOCOM nominee jumping up to the rank of admiral, comes from the secretive world of Joint Special Operations Command, which he currently leads. A Navy SEAL and former member of SEAL Team 4, Bradley previously served as head of US Special Operations Command Central “leading joint special operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia,” according to his official biography. He was “among the first” to deploy to Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda.

Bradley’s appointment comes during a turning point for the special operations community, which for the last few years has attempted to pivot from the non-stop tempo of kinetic action during the Global War on Terror to the relationship-building, long-term strategic focus of great power competition.

“On a strategic landscape where adversaries and competitors challenge the rules-based international order, SOF provide the agility, precision, and nuance needed to confront and disrupt these threats in competition,” he told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing in July. “Should the need arise, we are also ready to integrate into the joint force to respond to crisis and engage in high-end conflict, where the precise delivery of violence will be critical to shaping success on the battlefield.”

Justin Katz and Theresa Hitchens contributed reporting.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · August 1, 2025

12. India Will Buy Russian Oil Despite Trump’s Threats, Officials Say

India Will Buy Russian Oil Despite Trump’s Threats, Officials Say

President Trump said last week that he would punish India if it did not cut off Russian oil imports, but he did not specify what the penalty might be.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/world/asia/india-russia-oil-trump-threats.html

An oil refinery in Guwahati, India, in 2023. Russia is the source of more than one third of India’s oil imports.Credit...Biju Boro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar

Reporting from New Delhi

Aug. 2, 2025

Updated 4:58 a.m. ET

Indian officials said on Saturday that they would keep purchasing cheap oil from Russia despite a threat of penalties from President Trump, the latest twist in an issue that New Delhi thought it had settled.

Mr. Trump said last week that as part of his latest round of tariffs, he would impose an unspecified additional penalty on India if it did not cut off its imports of Russian crude oil. On Friday, he appeared to echo reports of a recent dip in the arrival of Russian oil to India.

“I understand that India is no longer going to be buying oil from Russia,” he told reporters. “That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s right or not. That is a good step. We will see what happens.”

But on Saturday, two senior Indian officials said there had been no change in policy. One official said the government had “not given any direction to oil companies” to cut back imports from Russia.

At a news conference a day earlier, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, declined to address Mr. Trump’s threat directly. But he suggested there would be no change of policy regarding Russia.

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“Our bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,” Mr. Jaiswal said. “India and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership.”

Mr. Trump did not say what the penalty would be if India were to defy his call to cut off Russian oil imports. Some officials and analysts have said that Mr. Trump’s focus on India’s purchase of Russian oil could be a negotiating tactic as India and the United States try to conclude the early phases of a bilateral trade agreement. China and Turkey, two other major importers of Russian oil, have not faced similar penalties.

India has drastically increased its purchases of Russian oil since the war in Ukraine began. Russia is now the source of more than one third of India’s oil imports — up from less than one percent before the war. Bringing in more than two million barrels of crude oil a day, India is the second largest importer of Russian oil, after China.

New Delhi faced strong pressure in the early months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine to cut down on its economic ties with Russia. That pressure continued as Indian oil imports spiked.

But by the second year of the war, the tone began to shift on the imports of India, the world’s most populous nation. It appeared that India had convinced its American and European allies that its expanded purchase of cheap Russian oil — at a price cap imposed by the European Union and Group of 7 — was good for keeping global oil prices in check.

Early last year, senior officials at the U.S. Treasury Department visiting New Delhi said India was working within a formula that was proving effective: Keep Russian oil flowing into the global supply but at a cheap enough price that it would shrink Russia’s revenue.

“They bought Russian oil because we wanted somebody to buy Russian oil at a price cap; that was not a violation,” Eric Garcetti, then the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, said last year. “It was actually the design of the policy because, as a commodity, we didn’t want the oil prices going up, and they fulfilled that.”

Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.

Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.

13. Sanctions bill targets China for enabling Putin’s war in Ukraine

Will the president sign it?

Excerpts:

In a statement, the White House said: “The Constitution vests the president with the authority to conduct diplomacy with foreign nations. Any sanction package must provide complete flexibility for the president to continue to pursue his desired foreign policy.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Russian Embassy.

While courting Putin earlier this year, Trump complained publicly about Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, while baselessly accusing the government in Kyiv of perpetuating the war. The president’s change in tone has provided cover for Republican defense hawks, such as Cornyn, to push more aggressively against Russia.

Sanctions bill targets China for enabling Putin’s war in Ukraine

The bipartisan legislation was introduced as tensions soared between Washington and Moscow, which has spurned President Donald Trump’s bid to end the war in Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/01/china-sanctions-bill-russia-ukraine/

UpdatedAugust 1, 2025 at 6:56 p.m. EDTyesterday at 6:56 p.m. EDT

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Moscow in May. (Pavel Bednyakov/AP)

By Noah Robertson

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate on Friday would force the Trump administration to impose economic penalties on China for supporting Russia’s war machine, targeting Moscow’s most important sponsor as the president intensifies efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

The bill introduced by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) would require the administration to target Chinese “entities and individuals” that have helped sustain the Russian defense industry despite enormous battlefield losses and widespread Western sanctions imposed since the start of the war.

“To finally bring Putin to the negotiating table and end this war, the United States must hold Chinese companies, CEOs, and banks accountable for this activity,” Shaheen, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement singling out the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

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The bill is among the efforts by Ukraine’s supporters in Congress seeking to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s recent pivot away from Moscow, where the Russian leader has spurned his efforts to broker a peace deal. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin and on Tuesday set a 10-day deadline for the Kremlin to stop the fighting, warning that a failure to comply would invite punishing new sanctions.

Follow Trump’s second term

On Friday, Trump said on social media that he had directed the Pentagon to dispatch two nuclear submarines to “the appropriate regions.” The president’s Truth Social post was aimed at Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, who has ridiculed Trump’s ultimatum.

In a statement, the White House said: “The Constitution vests the president with the authority to conduct diplomacy with foreign nations. Any sanction package must provide complete flexibility for the president to continue to pursue his desired foreign policy.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Russian Embassy.

While courting Putin earlier this year, Trump complained publicly about Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, while baselessly accusing the government in Kyiv of perpetuating the war. The president’s change in tone has provided cover for Republican defense hawks, such as Cornyn, to push more aggressively against Russia.

“By imposing sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals who advance Putin’s aggression, this legislation would deliver a significant blow to bad actors in Beijing and Moscow alike and bring us one step closer to President Trump’s goal of ending the war in Ukraine,” Cornyn said in a separate statement.

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). (Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

China has been one of Russia’s closest backers in the conflict following a summit between the two countries’ leaders, who promised a “no limits” partnership shortly before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago. Chinese firms have supplied an estimated 70 percent of the equipment Russia has needed to refill its supply of missiles, drones and other munitions throughout the war, said a Democratic congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive matter.

China has avoided sending direct lethal support, in part out of concern that the U.S. and its allies would impose financial penalties on Beijing, the aide said. Still, in July, the European Commission levied its first sanctions on Chinese firms “for supplying goods used on the battlefield.”

North Korea and Iran also have come to Putin’s aid, allowing the Russian military to replenish its substantial combat losses.

While unlikely to pass, the bill presents a more tailored option next to a severe sanctions package on Russia introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut). That bill, which has 84 co-sponsors, would impose 500 percent tariffs on countries that continue to buy Russian uranium and gas, all but cleaving them from the U.S. economy.

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The legislation introduced Friday would also direct the administration to work with U.S. allies on further sanctions to limit China’s support for Russia and to assess whether to target Chinese defense firms.

While the Trump administration has made concessions to China while negotiating a trade deal and a potential summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters he raised the issue of Beijing’s support for Russia’s war in trade talks this week.

“The Chinese take their sovereignty very seriously,” Bessent said. “We don’t want to impede on their sovereignty, so if they’d like to pay a 100 percent tariff, pay it,” he said of the possible penalty.

What readers are saying

The comments on the bipartisan sanctions bill targeting China for its support of Russia in the Ukraine conflict express skepticism about the effectiveness and consequences of such measures. Some commenters criticize the U.S. for hypocrisy and question the utility of sanctions,... Show more

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By Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson joined the Washington Post in 2025, where he covers the core national security committees in Congress. He previously covered the Pentagon and American politics from gun control to policing. follow on X@noahjrobertson

14. Trump Defense Department callously endangers Afghan allies

What the.....?

Trump Defense Department callously endangers Afghan allies

By Beth Bailey

Washington Examiner · August 1, 2025

I have confirmed that the source’s flagged photos and several others that featured allies have been removed from the web. However, numerous rereleased photos featuring Afghan commandos and Afghan military personnel remain online. In one photo, Afghan military personnel training inside the United States are identified by first and last name and rank. I have also uncovered photos of concern that appear never to have been archived. These include one picture featuring the faces of several Afghan National Security Forces members, and another showing numerous employees of a named Afghan construction company, which carried out millions of dollars in U.S. contracts. These individuals are likely eligible for Special Immigrant Visas due to the danger this work placed them in.

The Pentagon failed to respond to my questions about the rereleased images.

The ill-conceived rerelease of untold numbers of images of our partners is on par with the news from the United Kingdom of a 2022 data leak, which may have provided the Taliban a “kill list” of 33,000 U.K. Afghan allies, particularly considering a new tool in the Taliban’s arsenal. In February, the BBC reported on the vast system of 90,000 closed-circuit television cameras the Taliban use to monitor Kabul. Just 850 cameras were in use in Afghanistan’s capital prior to their takeover. The Taliban reportedly demonstrated that their equipment “features the option to track people using facial recognition.”

This system is believed to be operated by equipment from Dahua Global, a Chinese company. The company did not respond to my questions about whether their cameras can aid the Taliban in their reprisal campaign against their former enemies, or increase the Taliban’s ability to enforce onerous restrictions that deprive Afghan women of their most basic human rights.

Though reporting on reprisals has declined in the years following the Taliban’s rise to power, the Daily Mail reported on July 20 that 10 reprisals were counted in the days following the U.K. data leak. At least 3,200 former U.S. interpreters, Afghan military personnel, and Afghan government personnel are known to have been killed or disappeared since August 2021. 1208 Foundation founder and Green Beret Thomas Kasza explained the risks involved here. He referenced the elite National Mine Reduction Group member Omar Khan, featured in National Geographic’s 2022 documentary, Retrograde. The Taliban recognized Khan in April 2023. He was tortured for weeks and died of his injuries. Khan’s widow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Hulu, Disney, and National Geographic.

Top line: DVIDS’s callous oversight and the DoD’s apparent disinterest in resolving this problem are an atrocious misreading of ongoing dangers to America’s allies. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should do better. Those U.S. allies who were left to hide in post-August 2021 Afghanistan did so in the desperate hope the reprisal-happy Taliban would not discover them. The luckiest among them awaited absurdly slow processing for refugee and visa programs. Others fled to find safety through the U.S. border, and now may find themselves facing deportation.

TEAM TRUMP IS BLOWING ITS CHANCE TO REFORM THE DEEP STATE

The source who discovered the discrepancy hopes that DVIDS will continue to display documentation of “people working towards a goal of a better Afghanistan,” but “black out faces and remove names of people and villages.”

I advocate rather for the re-archival of all rereleased photos and an examination of unarchived photos that could imperil our closest partners until this obvious threat is resolved.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Washington Examiner · August 1, 2025

15. PACAF Chief: A more contested Indo-Pacific needs a new kind of exercise

REFORPAC does not have as nice a ring to it as REFORGER. I think SGT Provo would say it does not "sing." (IYKYK)

PACAF Chief: A more contested Indo-Pacific needs a new kind of exercise - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed, Kevin Schneider explains how REFORPAC, an exercise in the Indo-Pacific, can improve readiness for the US.

breakingdefense.com · by Gen. Kevin Schneider · August 1, 2025

I have been fortunate to serve in the United States Air Force for over 37 years, with a large portion of that time spent in multiple assignments across the Indo-Pacific theater. And while my experience is not necessarily unique, there is a bit of perspective that comes with longevity.

Since my first assignment in the Pacific in 1990, I’ve watched state actors across the Indo-Pacific become more advanced and more ambitious. Both the quality and quantity of their weapons continue to increase, and with that comes more dangerous behaviors, which are exhibited regularly. This critical and vast region — on which peace, stability, and global prosperity hinges — is becoming more turbulent and volatile.

The Indo-Pacific has always been important, but that importance grows each day. Which is why the Air Force is right now staging a complex, month-long exercise across the Indo-Pacific known as Resolute Force Pacific, or REFORPAC. We have to be prepared for what can happen in the most important sector of the world.

Today’s world is intricately entwined, with the Pacific at the heart of it: 60 percent of the world’s shipping goes through Pacific Ocean routes and 60 percent of all semiconductor chips are produced in Taiwan. The whole world benefits from — and are invested in — the byproducts of this region.

But China, North Korea, and Russia are all capable of presenting challenges to the United States and other Indo-Pacific nations that seek continued peace, stability, and prosperity. Beijing has undertaken an unprecedented buildup of its military arsenal — across all domains — and has shown a willingness to use that arsenal in pressure campaigns against Taiwan as well as allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region. Those campaigns range from subtle influence efforts to outright bullying and aggression. North Korea launches ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan with regularity, and Russia’s growing presence in the Pacific reminds the world that peace is not a given. Deterrence, rooted in credible combat capability, is paramount.

Which is why REFORPAC is now underway, in full alignment with US Indo-Pacific Command objectives, and its Joint Force sister services and allied forces. Virtually every element of the Air Force — fighter aircraft, bombers, tankers, transport planes, intelligence platforms, command and control personnel and logistics teams — has locked arms with the Space Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and allied air forces in one of the largest, most complex air-centric exercise events in decades.

REFORPAC, which began on July 10, has featured around-the-clock air operations with nearly 400 aircraft across the INDOPACOM area of responsibility, many of those operating from austere airfields. The exercise refines our ability to rapidly deploy and sustain forces in a highly contested environment.

Unlike the Middle East, fighting an air war in the Pacific presents immense logistical and operational challenges due to the vast distances, refueling requirements, and resupply demands. REFORPAC has given us the opportunity to refine our tactics to test these concepts.

These operations demand agile communications networks and validate the trust we place in our young warfighters to make critical decisions, even when separated from higher echelons of command. The unprecedented speed and scale of REFORPAC is building confidence that we and our allies are prepared to prevail in any contingency.

Conflict is not inevitable, but maintaining peace requires constant diligence and forward progress to prevent it from being overtaken by threats. Deterrence is built upon a lethal Joint Force with strong alliances steeped in global experiences and characterized by discipline, ingenuity, and tenacity.

Deterrence demands that we stay ahead of potential aggressors. We do this every day, by advancing our strengths, our capabilities, and our unmatched partnership with others. But the REFORPAC exercise stands out as a demonstration of a strong commitment to peace through strength in the Indo-Pacific.

Gen. Kevin Schneider, a fighter pilot with more than 4,000 flight hours, including 530 in combat, is commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces. He is responsible for Air Force activities spread over half the globe and for more than 46,000 Airmen serving principally in Japan, South Korea, Hawai’i, Alaska and Guam.

breakingdefense.com · by Gen. Kevin Schneider · August 1, 2025

16. The Quad in an ‘America First’ World

Excerpts:

Two decades after the Indian Ocean tsunami and eight years after its resuscitation, the Quad has yet to build the hard power credentials to become more than what China dismissively called it in 2018: “sea foam.”

The Quad’s key dilemma is tied to its very foundation: it remains a partnership of four democracies that are among the world’s leading economies and have considerable military power. The four countries are trading partners, conduct military exercises, and share similar security challenges. While all four profess strategic alignment, it often rings hollow in practice.

However, if the overarching goal is to provide an alternative to the China model and send a message of deterrence to China, then these bonds of trust need to be enhanced through economic investment and backed up through hard power. Historically, India has publicly pushed back against the idea, and it is unclear if either Japan or Australia are keen about advancing such a shift under the current circumstances.

The Quad has survived and is likely to maintain continuity despite leadership transitions across its four member states. This is no small feat in today’s fluid geopolitical environment. Yet, the frequency of summit meetings and proliferation of formats aside, the Quad still faces a significant gap between ambition and capability. Unless it acquires the capabilities to become the true deterrent to China’s assertiveness, the Quad risks being viewed as more performative than transformational.

Cover Story

The Quad in an ‘America First’ World

Eight years after its resurrection, the Quad still faces a significant gap between ambition and capability.

https://magazine.thediplomat.com/2025-08/the-quad-in-an-america-first-world

By Aparna Pande

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, is the centerpiece of U.S. Indo-Pacific diplomacy, but contrary to the desire of American strategic planners, it is far from being the lynchpin of regional security. The Quad brings together three Asian democracies – Australia, India, and Japan – and the resident external power, the United States. It is an ad hoc nonsecurity grouping that has retained attention even though the second Trump administration views multilateralism, multilateral institutions, and security alliances with suspicion.

The United States is recalibrating its global involvement based on selective hard power considerations. The Quad, however, is not yet a hard power actor. In his confirmation hearing in January 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delineated the second Trump administration's policymaking priorities based on three questions: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? And does it make America more prosperous?”

The Quad has, so far, not made the U.S. safer, stronger, or more prosperous. But the administration continues to see it as important, primarily because of its potential in containing China’s rising power and influence. The Quad countries encompass over 2 billion people and together account for one-third of global gross GDP; their combined efforts would go a long way toward countering China.

Quad’s Origins

The Quad was first forged, informally, in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami when Australia, India, Japan, and the United States coordinated to mobilize humanitarian assistance and disaster relief across the region. Three years later, in 2007, the idea of the Quad as a standing group was conceived, with late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo pitching the concept of these four democracies working together to strengthen regional stability based on shared norms and interests.

After a fizzling out in 2008, the Quad grouping was resuscitated in 2017 under the first Donald Trump administration, amid growing concerns about China’s aggressive economic and military expansion in the region. The subsequent Biden administration then further elevated the Quad, adding annual leader-level summits to the existing foreign ministers’ dialogue. Both the frequency of annual meetings and the breadth of agenda items significantly expanded.

If the goal was to create an Indo-Pacific minilateral, the Quad can be counted as a success. In under a decade, the four countries have enhanced cooperation beyond humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) into health security, debt management, regional connectivity and infrastructure, critical and emerging technologies, and maritime security.

If, however, the aim was to create a minilateral that counters China’s increasingly assertive posture in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad has a long way to go.

Quad’s Evolution and Achievements

Starting with the first Trump administration, the Quad has been central to the foreign and security policy of three successive presidential administrations. While China’s rise was the most immediate unifying concern, the Quad’s revival under Trump 1.0 reflected broader systemic shifts in geopolitics. Since the end of World War II, U.S. grand strategy has rested on building a network of alliances across the globe, especially maritime Asia, currently referred to as the Indo-Pacific. The economic and military rise of China poses a challenge to this global security architecture.

The first Trump administration’s shift from the Obama administration’s “Asia-Pacific” framing to “Indo-Pacific” was more than semantic – it reflected a strategic recalibration to incorporate the Indian Ocean region as part of a larger global perspective on Asian security. Under Trump 2.0, however, the phrase “Asia-Pacific” has reappeared.

In June, for example, in a tweet responding to news that that two Chinese aircraft carriers had been spotted conducting simultaneous operations in the Pacific, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby tweeted: “This is why @SecDef at Shangri-La stressed so strongly the importance of Asia-Pacific allies dramatically stepping up their defense spending.” Colby’s post referenced not “Indo-Pacific allies,” but “Asia-Pacific allies.” Countries in the region, including China, have taken note of this shift.

With the first Trump administration’s skeptical view of multilateral institutions, and traditional alliances, there was a preference for smaller focused groupings. The Quad, with its ad hoc nature, flexibility, and alignment between democracies, fit perfectly within this vision, as was reflected in the 2017 National Security Strategy. However, the Quad was framed not as a security construct but a values-based grouping of like-minded democracies that shared a commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Following on the heels of an administration that was skeptical of alliances and allies, the Biden administration saw as its primary objective in reinforcing and strengthening global alliance and partnership networks. Understanding that it was no longer possible to build new large security alliances, like during the Cold War, the Biden administration turned to minilateral groupings as adaptive tools to reinforce traditional security alliances.

The Biden administration, however, maintained the first Trump administration’s view of China as a peer competitor, and this cemented the centrality of the Indo-Pacific in the administration’s national security strategy. Within the Indo-Pacific, the Quad’s prominence was elevated both at the symbolic and substantive levels. At the symbolic level, the Biden administration organized the first-ever Quad leaders’ summit in 2021. Over the course of the next four years, the Quad leaders met six times, four of which were in-person meetings.

On the operational front, there was a spurt of both activities and growth in areas of cooperation. The Quad’s origins lie in HADR, and that remains a core area. Over the years, the Quad countries have established guidelines that assign roles and responsibilities to member countries when responding to disasters and pre-positioned essential relief supplies across the Indo-Pacific, facilitating quick mobilization in disaster-prone areas. This support is a way of demonstrating to regional countries that unlike China – which seldom extends such generosity – the Quad partners are committed to tangible delivery.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for capacity building in healthcare and for building resilient supply chains. The Quad countries took on this challenge and over time converted their pandemic cooperation – namely vaccine production and distribution – into a broader partnership focused on building resilient health infrastructure and ensuring pandemic preparedness. China-U.S. strategic competition, which deepened further following the pandemic, has ensured the need for resilient supply chains in key sectors like critical minerals, energy, and technologies. The Quad’s focus has been not just to ensure these for their own citizens but also build the technical capacities of Indo-Pacific countries.

Regional connectivity and infrastructure, whether digital or physical, is critical to countries across the Indo-Pacific. The high cost of infrastructure investment and lack of access to low-interest loans from multilateral financial institutions are key reasons for the participation of 147 countries in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Even though the Quad flagged infrastructure building and debt sustainability as priorities, none of its participating countries has mobilized resources at a scale that rivals China’s.

In October 2025, the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership is expected to be launched in India. The stated aim of the initiative, which seeks to mobilize public and private sector investment, is to provide the region with an alternative when it comes to building quality port infrastructure. If the Quad truly seeks to become a credible alternative to China for smaller countries of the Indo-Pacific region, it will need several such initiatives backed by serious economic heft.

As maritime countries situated in the Indo-Pacific’s four corners, maritime security cooperation is often touted as the cornerstone of the Quad. Countries across the region lack the capacity to monitor illegal fishing, track foreign ships, and respond to humanitarian disasters. The Quad’s response is the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative, which tracks commercially available data and shares this information through fusion centers located in India, Singapore, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. In 2024, to ensure that smaller countries know how to use this data, the Quad also launched a regional Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI).

In May 2025, the Quad countries launched the Quad Indo Pacific Logistics Network (IPLN). The initiative seeks to leverage the logistics capabilities of partner countries to enable them to respond to any natural disasters more quickly and efficiently than before. Together with the IPMDA, the IPLN reflects the Quad’s commitment to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific and highlights the value of strengthening practical cooperation to address regional challenges.

In July 2025, the four partners launched the Quad-at-sea Ship Observer Mission deploying coast guard observers from each country on board U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Stratton, operating in the Indo-Pacific. The mission seeks to build upon existing initiatives to enhance maritime domain awareness, deepen operational coordination, and enhance joint readiness among the Quad nations' coast guards.

And yet, these initiatives fall short of achieving their main aim: projecting genuine hard power to deter China’s actions.

Trump 2.0

Six months into the second Trump administration there are divergent impulses vying with each other in the geopolitical and geoeconomic ecosystem. China remains the peer competitor and there remains, by and large, a strong push within the administration to halt China’s economic and technological rise. This, however, must reckon with the strategic imperatives of an “America First” approach that seeks to rebuild the U.S. civilian and military industrial base and pull back from most global commitments.

The Indo-Pacific strategy, and the Quad minilateral, align with the former objective, but run counter to the latter.

A key principle of the second Trump administration is its focus on hard power deliverables, namely economic and military power. Any policy or any grouping that the United States is a part of will be measured from the lens of what it delivers on these fronts. This is consistent with the central tenet underlying the policies of the second Trump administration that the U.S. is not —and must no longer be — the world’s default policeman.

The Quad countries comprise some of the leading economies of the world and they have close bilateral economic ties. However, the Quad has long lacked a formal economic pillar through which its members could systematically deepen regional economic engagement. While the July 2025 streamlining of the Quad has included an economic security theme, it will face structural headwinds. Bilateral relations cannot be divorced from mini- or multilateral ones. The fractious bilateral tariff and trade negotiations that are currently going on between the U.S. and every country, including the Quad countries, will make it politically and economically tougher to do more in this arena.

On the security and military front, the Quad countries participate in several bilateral and multilateral military exercises. The annual Malabar exercise, currently limited to the four Quad countries, faces interoperability challenges and has yet to be formally designated as the official Quad exercise. The reluctance to publicly signal to Beijing, at a time when China has dual-use ports across the Indian and Pacific oceans, is puzzling to say the least.

If China’s military aggression is truly a concern for all four countries, then more joint military activities under the Quad rubric are needed. With China outspending three of the four Quad countries in the defense realm, enhanced security cooperation between the Quad countries is essential to project a credible hard power signal to China.

At the symbolic level, the Quad has done well in the first six months of the second Trump administration. A Quad Foreign Ministers Meeting was held on January 21, the day after Trump’s second inauguration. Six months later, a second Foreign Ministers Meeting was held on July 2. In May, at the leading Indo-Pacific defense forum, the Shangri-La Dialogue, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth promised amplified cooperation with the Quad, focusing on the logistics and interoperability arrangements. In addition, Trump is scheduled to attend a leader-level summit to be held in India later this year.

At the substantive level, the imperatives driving the Trump administration are increasingly discernible. Under the Biden administration a proliferation of initiatives unfolded under the Quad rubric. At the most recent Foreign Ministers Meeting, it was clear that a consolidation of these was being undertaken – an attempt to streamline efforts and lend coherence to the agenda. The pre-existing 15 working groups were placed under four broad themes that cover maritime and homeland security, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, tech security, and economic security. These reflect the clear preference of an administration that seeks to emphasize concrete hard power deliverables – prioritizing operational capability over symbolic gesture.

Going back to the first Trump administration there has been a demand for burden sharing, though initially confined to the defense domain and directed chiefly at formal security allies. Under the second Trump administration, the impulse for burden sharing appears to be broadening into the economic realm as well. The Quad’s advantage was that since it originated as a collaborative endeavor, there is built-in burden sharing – but it is limited to the public goods arena. Each member of the Quad has allocated funds for activities over the last few years, and there has been no overdependence upon American largesse. However, doubts over U.S. interest and support remain a constant undercurrent to the Quad, just as they do any other U.S.-led mini or multilateral grouping.

There are several U.S.-led minilaterals and initiatives that seek to help build regional connectivity and aid countries in building up their infrastructure. However, none of them has been able to counter China’s BRI, in scale, resources, or symbolism. The Quad was conceived as a deterrent to China not just at the symbolic but also at the substantive levels. The Quad was to offer an alternative to countries in the Indo-Pacific when it came to China’s BRI through HADR, infrastructure and capacity building, and maritime security. The Quad was also seen as helping counter China’s technological dominance by bringing together four countries that had the manpower and skills to challenge China.

And finally, the Quad was meant to signal to China that the U.S. was keen to remain a resident power in the region, and it would support its friends and partners against any military aggression by China. Realizing this vision would require the Quad to build interlinkages – economic, tech, and military – between the four partner countries and countries across the entire Indo-Pacific region. That level of integration, however, remains aspirational.

Further, the rethinking of existing alliances and commitments being undertaken by the second Trump administration will cast a shadow over bilateral ties – reverberations that will inevitably shape the Quad’s trajectory. The announcement that the administration is rethinking the AUKUS treaty has not gone down well in Canberra, raising fresh doubts about the durability of U.S. security assurances. The testy trade and defense burden-sharing negotiations with Tokyo have resulted in a postponement of both a trade agreement to avoid Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” and the annual 2+2 dialogue. The Trump administration’s response to the India-Pakistan clashes of April-May 2025 and frequent references to an U.S. role in the ceasefire, conflation with trade negotiations, and the renewed U.S. engagement with Pakistan, have rekindled Indian skepticism about a transactional American foreign policy.

While HADR, logistics sharing, coast guard cooperation, and IPMDA are valuable for fostering bonhomie and camaraderie, the real synchronization of militaries occurs with deeper, institutionalized integration that is combat-oriented and ensures interoperability. One way of achieving interoperability would be synchronization of defense equipment. Australia and Japan have historically purchased heavily from the U.S.; India is the exception. In recent years India has started to purchase more from the U.S. and other American allies like Israel and France.

However, the second Trump administration’s skepticism toward traditional allies in the West and Europe have led many in Canada and Europe to talk about limiting defense purchases from the U.S. and instead pushing to indigenize. India, a country that has long preferred indigenization, is currently faced with a similar dilemma. For example, India needs fifth-generation fighter aircraft and engines, and India’s choices are U.S., Japanese, or indigenously produced. Whichever path India chooses will determine its military procurement trajectory over the next three decades. It will also have significant consequences for both bilateral ties and the broader multilateral military cooperation – including the future cohesion of the Quad.

Technology, often referred to as the “oil of the future,” is essential to economic strength, military power, and overall hard power. Over the last two decades, China has moved from being a country that stole Western technology to being one of the key innovators. A key objective of successive U.S. administrations has been to stop China’s tech rise and to provide an alternative to Chinese technology, especially to the Global South. The Quad countries understand this, as can be seen in their focus on critical and emerging technologies and building tech capabilities of countries in the region, all of which will now fall under the tech security stream. However, progress in this sphere must accelerate significantly beyond the current pace.

Right from the start, the Quad countries have sought to work across the Indo-Pacific. The July 2025 joint statement mentions Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Indian Ocean region more broadly. However, there are other key geographies where Chinese influence needs to be countered. These include the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, all of which matter to the Quad countries.

Finally, policy coordination is critical, and the Quad must remain focused on its core goal: deterring China or offering a credible alternative. For the second Trump administration it is important that tangible deliverables are visible for any engagement or dialogue, and this will have an impact on the bilateral and trilateral cooperation that had grown between Quad countries. Failure to deliver will drive member states toward unilateral projects, undermining the Quad’s foundational cohesion and diminishing the scale and scope of collective endeavors. Any such gaps will create strategic openings that Beijing is poised to exploit

Geopolitics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The second Trump administration seeks to pare down, redirect, or refocus its economic and military resources. And it expects its allies and partners to fill in any gaps that are created. The challenge, however, is that unless U.S. partners fill in the vacuum, China certainly has the resources and will to do so instead.

Conclusion

Two decades after the Indian Ocean tsunami and eight years after its resuscitation, the Quad has yet to build the hard power credentials to become more than what China dismissively called it in 2018: “sea foam.”

The Quad’s key dilemma is tied to its very foundation: it remains a partnership of four democracies that are among the world’s leading economies and have considerable military power. The four countries are trading partners, conduct military exercises, and share similar security challenges. While all four profess strategic alignment, it often rings hollow in practice.

However, if the overarching goal is to provide an alternative to the China model and send a message of deterrence to China, then these bonds of trust need to be enhanced through economic investment and backed up through hard power. Historically, India has publicly pushed back against the idea, and it is unclear if either Japan or Australia are keen about advancing such a shift under the current circumstances.

The Quad has survived and is likely to maintain continuity despite leadership transitions across its four member states. This is no small feat in today’s fluid geopolitical environment. Yet, the frequency of summit meetings and proliferation of formats aside, the Quad still faces a significant gap between ambition and capability. Unless it acquires the capabilities to become the true deterrent to China’s assertiveness, the Quad risks being viewed as more performative than transformational.

The Authors

Aparna Pande is a research fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in defense strategy and foreign policy, with a particular focus on South Asia.

17. Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve

Could this be a fight for legitimacy among relevant populations?

Conclusion:

If Hamas believes that the suffering of Gazans bolsters its cause, Israeli decision makers should take that to heart. They should abandon their misguided and inhumane policies and cease their efforts to pressure the population as a means of pressuring the terror group. The best way to undermine Hamas’s position is to instead flood Gaza with food, and to alleviate the suffering of its people.

Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve

Starvation only helps Hamas end the war in a way that advances its aims.

By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

The Atlantic · by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib · July 31, 2025

This week, the world seems to be finally paying attention to the magnitude of the suffering in Gaza. The futile policies pursued by the Israeli government—prodded by the far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir—have reduced the supply of humanitarian aid, food, and supplies in Gaza. Israel has unnecessarily reengineered the distribution of aid, failing to achieve its goal of separating the civilian population from Hamas while further constricting its supply. And for these decisions, it has attracted the justified condemnation of the international community.

Despite the surge of hundreds of trucks into Gaza over the past four days, very few supplies have made it into warehouses to be distributed to the population. Aid shipments are being seized by a combination of desperate civilians, lawless gangs, clan-affiliated thugs, and merchants of death. Chaos and apocalyptic scenery are the norm, not the exception. There is no denying the reality of the widespread malnutrition and hunger in the Gaza Strip.

In recent days, I’ve spoken with dozens of Gazans who are furious about what is unfolding around them. They are angry, one told me, at the “hordes of selfish people who are attacking aid convoys to steal and collect aid in a horrific manner without caring for Gazans who chose not to participate in these humiliating and demeaning displays of inhumanity, no matter the level of hunger.” But their anger is directed primarily at Hamas, which they hold responsible for putting the people of Gaza in this position, and for its continued refusal to end the war that it started. “Hitler fought in his bunker until he killed himself in World War II in the Battle of Berlin,” another person said, complaining that Hamas is hunkered down in its tunnels, willing to see Gaza destroyed to the very last child.

Yair Rosenberg: The corrupt bargain behind Gaza’s catastrophe

Hamas actually wants a famine in Gaza. Producing mass death from hunger is the group’s final play, its last hope for ending the war in a way that advances its goals. Hamas has benefited from Israel’s decision to use food as a lever against the terror group, because the catastrophic conditions for civilians have generated an international outcry, which is worsening Israel’s global standing and forcing it to reverse course.

Online supporters of the terror group have consistently attacked any efforts to alleviate the crisis. In posts and videos, they have dismissed efforts to send in food by convoys of trucks from Egypt and Jordan, pointing to the chaotic scenes as desperate Gazans scramble for aid. They have likewise attacked the airdrops that are now under way and called for them to be stopped immediately.

Hamas’s evident desire to extend and deepen the crisis of hunger helps explain the recent breakdown of cease-fire negotiations, even as Gazans are needlessly dying. The group’s intransigence led both Israel and Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, to walk away from the talks. If the hunger crisis and humanitarian issues are addressed, Hamas can no longer use the suffering of Gazans to generate an international outcry or use the resultant leverage to end the war on its own terms.

Read: Why Trump broke with Bibi over the Gaza famine

But the two-state-solution conference convened by France and Saudi Arabia at the United Nations shows the way forward. In a remarkable statement, endorsed by the European Union and the Arab League, the participants condemned the October 7 attacks and the taking of hostages, and declared that “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.” The conference envisions the end of hostilities, the establishment of an international mission in Gaza, and the ultimate return of the Palestinian Authority to govern the strip.

Many Arab states have been reluctant to call out Hamas publicly, even though they do so privately on a regular basis, for fear of upsetting their own populations. But now they have recognized the importance of openly and transparently calling for Hamas to give up control of Gaza and disarm. Both Israel and the international community should capitalize on this shift, to isolate the terrorist organization and give hope for a better trajectory for Gaza’s future.

If Hamas believes that the suffering of Gazans bolsters its cause, Israeli decision makers should take that to heart. They should abandon their misguided and inhumane policies and cease their efforts to pressure the population as a means of pressuring the terror group. The best way to undermine Hamas’s position is to instead flood Gaza with food, and to alleviate the suffering of its people.

The Atlantic · by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib · July 31, 2025

18. Army will review selection boards that choose leaders for command

Army will review selection boards that choose leaders for command

The Command Assessment Program, or CAP, uses formal review boards to select soldiers for command positions. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll ordered a review of the program.

Patty Nieberg

Aug 1, 2025 9:02 AM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg

The Army will review the use of selection boards to assess senior soldiers for command positions, officials said.

In a memo Thursday, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll rescinded the official status of the Army Command Assessment Program, or CAP. CAP is a review board system that evaluates command sergeants major, lieutenant colonels, and colonels for command assignments. Those soldiers appear before a selection board of general officers and sitting or former brigade commanders. The boards evaluate a candidate’s suitability for command based on peer reviews, subordinate feedback, and other criteria to determine if they should be recommended for command.

CAP was elevated to an official program of record in a Jan. 13 memo by former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, just days before the end of the Biden administration. Driscoll’s Thursday memo rescinded that status.

Driscoll ordered a “deliberate review of how CAP fits into our broader talent management and warfighting strategy,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey Tolbert, a spokesperson for Secretary Driscoll, told Task & Purpose in a statement.

It’s unclear if the change in status for the program will immediately impact ongoing selection boards. The review of the program will take place over the summer, Tolbert said.

Tolbert said that decertifying CAP as an official program gives the Army the ability to make changes, such as editing the selection criteria that the board uses to score candidates. Driscoll is calling for a review to determine whether the program assesses candidates for the “appropriate attributes” that Army leaders view as promoting “lethality” and “meritocracy,” Tolbert said, concepts that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has put at the center of his time at the helm of the Pentagon.

According to an essay in Military Review by former CAP officials Bob O’Brien and Col. Andrew Morgado, the program was set up to identify “potentially ‘hidden’ attributes by measuring intellect, behavior, and personality as well as counterproductive and ineffective leadership.” The program’s “psychometric” tests measure “cognitive capacity, emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, self-awareness, and other behavioral traits.”

The Command Assessment Program came under scrutiny last year when Army Gen. Charles Hamilton was relieved as the head of Army Materiel Command. The decision to relieve Hamilton of command came after an investigation found he attempted to use his authority to get a subordinate selected for battalion command.

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Peer and subordinate reviews are one component of a candidate’s overall CAP score, along with other skills like written and verbal communication, physical fitness and body composition.

Scores that candidates receive for peer and subordinate feedback along with an interview, “make up the Leadership Strength Spectrum in equal parts,” Bullock told Task & Purpose in January when the program became official. Brigade and battalion levels of command, key billets, and the soldier feedback make up 5% of a candidate’s score.

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Patty Nieberg

Senior Staff Writer

Patty is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. She’s reported on the military for five years, embedding with the National Guard during a hurricane and covering Guantanamo Bay legal proceedings for an alleged al Qaeda commander.

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg

19. Failure of Taiwanese recall elections leaves defence build-up in gridlock

Failure of Taiwanese recall elections leaves defence build-up in gridlock | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Thijs Stegeman · August 1, 2025

The failure of Taiwan’s ruling party to unseat opposition members of the legislature in recall elections last weekend may prevent President Lai Ching-te from lifting defence spending.

Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) failed in all 24 recall elections held on the weekend, leaving the Taiwan’s opposition with its blocking majority.

In July the legislature postponed a US$14.2 billion bill intended to strengthen national security and mitigate the economic impacts from US tariffs, raising questions about Taiwan’s commitment to its own defence.

The recall elections were the culmination of a campaign by the DPP to remove 35 members of the opposition Nationalist Party (KMT). Under Taiwan’s electoral law, a petition by at least 10 percent of voters in a district can trigger a recall election. The DPP needed to unseat at least six KMT legislators to gain a majority. In the event, it unseated none.

Seven more recall elections are scheduled for this month, but the campaign has clearly lost momentum.

Instead of clearing the way for the DPP’s policy agenda, which includes raising the defence budget to at least 3 percent of GDP, the campaign failure will embolden the KMT and deepen political polarisation.

Several key elements of Taiwan’s defence build-up are stalled due to political deadlock, in which two independents and another party, the Taiwan People’s Party, work with the KMT to form the blocking majority. This is much to the frustration of US officials urging Taiwan to spend more on protecting itself.

The legislature this year cut T$8 billion (US$270 million) from the proposed defence budget and froze spending of a further T$90 billion (US$3.3 billion). This would have knocked 2025 defence spending down from the intended 2.5 percent of GDP to 2.1 percent, but money is again flowing for most of the 279 frozen projects.

In early July, the legislature postponed consideration of a key T$410 billion (US$14.2 billion) special investment bill intended to boost national security and mitigate the economic impact of US tariffs. The bill included T$150 billion (US$5.0 billion) earmarked for military and coast guard upgrades, including acquisition of drones and systems for cybersecurity and coastal surveillance. The legislature passed the bill only after the DPP made concessions, including agreement to a one-off cash handout of T$230 billion (US$7.7 billion) to citizens.

The repeated conditional freezes, shifting of funds to populist handouts, and legislative delays have impeded Taiwan’s military build-up and frustrated the United States. US Republican Senator Dan Sullivan addressed the Taiwanese people during the confirmation hearing of Defence Under Secretary for Policy Elbridge Colby. Taiwanese, Sullivan said, needed ‘to realise they’re playing a dangerous game. Cutting defence spending right now is not the right signal.’ Senator Angus King, an independent, asked ‘how are we to be expected to think about sending Americans into harm’s way on behalf of an entity that doesn’t seem all that interested in protecting itself?’ With the failure of the recall elections, expect more such criticism.

Council of Foreign Relations fellow for Asia studies David Sacks warned on Monday that Taiwan’s failure to raise defence spending would be interpreted in Washington as ‘not taking its defence seriously’ and would ‘embolden Chinese aggression’.

Chinese military pressure on Taiwan has climbed sharply in recent years. In 2024 alone, Chinese military aircraft made 3,615 incursions into Taiwan’s air-defence identification zone (ADIZ), nearly four times the 972 recorded in 2021. More again are likely this year. In one 24-hour stretch in mid-July, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry logged 58 Chinese warplanes inside the ADIZ.

In April, 76 Chinese combat aircraft and 15 naval vessels conducted live-fire drills off Taiwan.

If Taiwan cannot overcome domestic gridlock and build a credible defence capacity, it risks not only undermining deterrence but also alienating its closest partners. It’s sending the wrong signal—to Beijing and to Washington.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Thijs Stegeman · August 1, 2025

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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